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For
Kay Neldrett
28/5/46 – 14/2/01
and
Annemarie Fraser
8/11/45 – 17/12/10
One
Yesterday was Valentine’s Day. Two weeks since I lost my job – made redundant and turfed out of my office with no notice – and ten days since my husband Chris, henceforth known as ‘that bastard’, left me. Or did I leave him? Maybe I did, since I’m the one who had to, you know, leave.
I spent the day lying on the ugly and uncomfortable sofa bed in my horrible new flat crying ugly and uncomfortable tears. And I drank a lot of gin. I watched Black Narcissus and Mary Poppins, randomly, and wept throughout both. Today I have a headache and it’s hard to say if it’s a hangover or surfeit of emotion. My eyelids are swollen. I’m only dressed because Xanthe – best friend, confidante and primary support system – shouted at me when she rang earlier. We’re now sitting at the tiny table in the kitchen half of the flat, writing lists. Soon, in half an hour, or an hour, we’ll go to my old house and pack up my things and that will be the next step on this godawful ‘journey’.
‘Do you want me to go?’ Xanthe asks. ‘I could do it for you. If you wanted.’
It’s odd to see her so serious. She usually laughs all the time, endlessly amused by everything. Hard to find anything funny about this.
‘No, don’t be… You can’t, can you? You won’t know what everything is. I know I’ve got to do it.’
‘I’ll come with you though.’ She looks at me, clearly trying to judge whether I’m in any fit state to do this.
‘That would be… Yes. Thank you.’
Crying all the time is so boring. It’s a long time since I’ve had a broken heart and I’d forgotten how tediously dull it is. I blink at her and blow my nose for the billionth time. The original plan was to do this task yesterday, but I couldn’t see him on Valentine’s Day, could I?
This time last year we went away. We stayed in a tiny cottage near Rye. Our eighteenth Valentine’s. We drank champagne and sat in front of an open fire and said things like, ‘Still here then!’ and told each other we loved each other. I think one of us may have been lying.
Because people who love their wives don’t tend to sleep with their wives’ friends, do they? And that’s what my husband – sorry, I mean ‘that bastard’ – has been doing, with my so-called friend, Susanna Howich-Price (also known as ‘that bastard’) for the last… well, they wouldn’t tell me how long. But does it even matter? Not really. Five years or five months, the result’s the same, isn’t it?
I’ve hired a van. Chris and I have already had, not an argument, but a debate, about some mid-century modern occasional tables we bought last year. I’m not sure how we’re going to deal with the things we both actually want.
‘Put anything you can’t agree on in one room and then go through it at the end. You’ll just have to compromise,’ says Xanthe, sensibly.
She’s right, but I feel sick with anxiety. I don’t want him to win, but it’s not about that, is it? It’s not a battle, or a competition. And I don’t want to fight; I’m exhausted. Some of it I don’t care about, so he can keep the sofa, and the sideboard, and the dining-room table and chairs. I’ve never liked those chairs. So that’s something for the bright side, along with never having to listen to his dad and brother talk about Formula One ever again. I’m trying to be positive.
‘Don’t tell him you don’t care though. Go with the assumption you want everything. You’re already ahead with the compromise, aren’t you?’ she says. And I am. Because he’s keeping the house. And Susanna’s already living there, some of the time at least, although she won’t be there when we go round. I made him promise. I don’t want to see her. The idea of her living in my house, using my plates, eating food I probably bought, sleeping with my husband… It’s not surprising, is it, that it makes me feel sick.
* * *
I don’t know what to say to him when he opens the door and steps back awkwardly to let me in. I had to knock, on my own front door. But it’s no good thinking things like that. As soon as I start thinking about the carpet in the hall, which is new, or the mirror in the dining room, which belonged to his grandmother, whom I loved, I’ll get upset. It’s just stuff. But all this stuff is shorthand for our relationship, isn’t it? Everything chosen, or placed, by both of us. A thousand decisions, the background to love. No. Think about something else; think about the practicalities.
The easy things first. Up into the attic for the box of school books and the other boxes I moved to this house from the last house, and to there from the flat, and to the flat from my parents’. I’m a bit of a hoarder, so there are Sindys and Lego and all sorts of junk. I should probably get rid of some of it, but now is not the time. I’ve bought boxes from the storage place and we work quickly. Who gets the Christmas decorations? We should split them, shouldn’t we? D’you know what? I don’t care.
‘Screw all this,’ I say. ‘They can have it. Whatever.’
‘Okay,’ says Xanthe. ‘I think you should leave yourself an open door though. In case you change your mind.’
‘Ugh. Let’s just get on with it.’
I shovel random things from the bathroom cabinet into a box. I’d already taken all the things I use regularly, but there’s Halloween make-up and occasional-use false eyelashes and – will I ever need any of this?
‘Just pack it,’ says Xanthe patiently. ‘You can decide if you want it when you unpack in your new house.’
‘Ha. Whenever that will be.’
I pack three winter coats I haven’t worn for ten years and my leather jacket. I fill a box with fabric. Chris and Susanna are sleeping in the spare room – some kind of moral thing, I assume. It would be a bit much, wouldn’t it, for them to sleep in our bed. I don’t like to think about whether they’ve been doing that, anyway, for all these weeks or months or years.
But I guess this means I can have the bedding for the big bed. That’s mine – or at least, I bought it, with the money from a bonus. The mattress cost nearly a grand. All the king-size sheets go in a box and we fold the duvet into one of those vacuum-pack bag things. Four pillows, half the pillow cases. Three tablecloths. The second-best towels – they can have the new ones, a gift last Christmas from Chris’s sister. How magnanimous of me. Xanthe empties my clothes from the wardrobe into a suitcase and tips the contents of drawers on top of the clothes. Stockings, socks, slips and nightdresses; my fancier underwear, none of which I’m likely to need ever again, let’s face it. Scarves and jewellery, hair slides, curling tongs and T-shirts.
‘So much stuff,’ I moan, weakly.
‘Come on. Half done,’ she says.
We take the bed apart, exposing acres of dusty carpet, an earring. Xanthe stoops quickly to pick something up, but not so quickly I don’t see it: the torn half of a condom packet. She pushes it casually into the pocket of her jeans and neither of us says anything.
We wrestle the mattress downstairs.
‘I’m going to take the little bedside cabinet,’ I tell Chris, who is sitting tensely in the dining room. He nods, silent.
That’s everything from upstairs except books. I’m exhausted. At least being busy stops me crying.
He’s put all the photographs of us in a box.
�
�Don’t you want any of these then?’ I’m upset about that, to be honest. But he looks haunted, and says, ‘I just can’t – I’m not in the right place to do photos, Thea, I’m sorry.’
‘Okay. Shall I leave them? We could do them later. I mean, please don’t throw them away–’
‘I’ll put the box in the wardrobe,’ he says. ‘Take what you want though.’
‘I’m not sure I can look at them either.’ It’s easy to pack my photo albums from before I met him, but who gets the wedding album? This is awful. I’m almost inclined to say it’s the worst day of my life, but I think that happened already.
We come to an agreement about the occasional tables. I pack my great-aunt’s china but leave our wedding-present saucepans and the champagne glasses we only bought in December. I take my records – yes, I still have my records – and my CDs. The books are overwhelming.
Xanthe makes tea, and we all sit, slightly awkward, at the kitchen table to drink it. There’s a vase I’ve never seen before on the table, full of daffodils from the garden. My daffodils, that I planted.
‘I’m not sure I can do any more today.’ I look down at my jeans, which are furred grey-brown with dust.
‘You don’t have to,’ says Chris. ‘I mean, it’s mostly books now, isn’t it? You can do the books whenever you like. Or I could do them. If you wanted.’
‘I expect I should just get on with it. I don’t want it hanging over me.’
‘Give me a box then, and I’ll do some.’
He wants me gone, and who can blame him?
I’m thinking, trying to remember what else needs to be packed. ‘Sewing machine. And my bike.’
‘Okay,’ says Xanthe. ‘I’ll get your bike, shall I? Garage keys,’ she adds, holding her hand out to Chris. He gets up and lifts them off the hook by the back door. We bought that in Cornwall; it’s shaped like a mushroom. The house is full of things that remind me of other, better times, but I can’t take them all with me – it’s not possible. And would it help? Probably not. I take a pair of fused glass hearts from a nail by the fridge and put them in my pocket. I open the cutlery drawer and say, ‘You’ll need to get a new garlic press. I’m taking this one because it used to belong to Polly Watson’s granny.’
I shared a house with Polly Watson twenty-five years ago, and I never met her granny. However, the garlic press is part of my life, and I want it.
By the time we’ve finished, I feel like I’ve run a marathon, or walked the length of the country, or something. The thought of unpacking all of this into a storage unit and then one day packing it all back into the van and on to a mysterious and unknown home makes me want to cry and never stop.
‘If you think of anything else,’ says Chris, ‘just let me know. And I’ll give you some money, for the sofa and the dining-room furniture, and–’
‘Good,’ says Xanthe. ‘Maybe you should write that down? It will save any hassle later. When my dad left, my folks didn’t sort anything out. They still moan about it now. You know, someone else’ – we all know who she means – ‘might tell you you’re being overgenerous. I don’t think you are – I think you’re being very reasonable, which is great, but stuff changes. You’ll forget what Thea’s like. You might get resentful.’
He frowns at her. ‘I don’t think–’
‘I know. But seriously. Just write it down.’
‘All right,’ he says, and goes to find some paper.
I agree to make a payment to Thea to cover the cost of half the sofa and the tables etc., he writes. ‘Okay?’
‘Thanks,’ I say.
‘Yeah, look, I don’t want to be a dick about this.’
‘More of a dick,’ says Xanthe, and laughs at his expression.
‘You know I didn’t plan for any of this to happen,’ he says. Not to her, to me.
I can’t look at him, or not full on. I keep glancing sideways at him, just catching glimpses. Our eyes never meet.
‘Yes. It’s all right. Or no, it isn’t, it’s… but I know you didn’t exactly do it on purpose.’
‘No. I really didn’t.’ He looks knackered, almost as bad as I feel.
‘Anyway, I’d better go.’
He nods, and then says, ‘Oh, wait. There’s a letter.’
‘A letter?’
‘It only came yesterday. I thought, as I was going to see you… Hang on,’ he says, and disappears for a moment into the study. ‘Here. A solicitor’s letter, I think. Have you–’
‘Not my solicitors,’ I say, taking the envelope from him. I hesitate and then tear it open, rapidly scanning the contents. ‘Oh, weird.’
‘What is it?’ says Xanthe.
‘It’s Uncle Andrew.’ I look at Chris. ‘Great-uncle Andrew, I should say.’
‘The one who died?’
I nod. Great-uncle Andrew died last year. I didn’t go to the funeral; he lives – lived – in Scotland, and I’d only met him a few times. My grandfather’s eldest brother, he’d outlived Grandad by a good fifteen years and made it to ninety-three.
‘And?’
‘He’s left me his house,’ I say, rather stunned.
‘Ooh, really? Where is it?’ asks Xanthe. ‘Somewhere glamorous?’
‘It’s about an hour west of Dumfries,’ I tell her, and laugh at her disappointed expression. ‘I’ve never been there. It’s the arse end of nowhere.’
‘That’s useful,’ says Chris. ‘I mean, so you’ll be able to sell it, hopefully, and buy somewhere better. Than if you just had the money for this.’
I can see he’s relieved; it will make him feel better, if I can afford something reasonable.
‘I suppose so,’ I say. The letter mentions some money as well, but I don’t say anything about that. It’s quite a substantial sum. I’m suddenly aware that the mostly low-level but occasionally serious anxiety I’ve been feeling about my job, or lack of, has dropped away. It’s not enough to live on for ever or anything, but it’s certainly a relief.
‘How come he’s left it to you? No kids?’ asks Xanthe.
‘He had a daughter. Dad’s cousin. But she died, years and years ago.’ I try to remember what happened. ‘I think she drowned? Or something. It’s weird he didn’t leave it to Dad though, or Auntie Claire.’
‘How exciting,’ she says. ‘So do you have to go and pack all his stuff? I guess you’re in the right mood to sort through more boxes?’
This makes us all laugh, a release of tension.
‘I hadn’t thought of that. I suppose so.’ I look at the letter again. ‘Apparently it’s all gone through and everything, so this bloke’ – I turn the letter over – ‘Alastair Gordon, of Smith, Gordon and Macleod, has the keys for me and some paperwork. “Let me know when is convenient for you to take possession of the property. I’ll be delighted to take you to the house and etc.” And yes, it says “contents” and it says,’ I continue, reading again more carefully, ‘he collected books and the library – ha, library – was valued a couple of years ago, but should probably be revalued, and should be sold through a reputable dealer if I decide I don’t want it.’
‘Wow,’ says Xanthe. ‘Does the house have an actual library?’
‘I don’t think so. I don’t think it’s very big. West Lodge, it’s called. Anyway, we can look it up later. Poor Uncle Andrew. I feel bad now that I didn’t go to the funeral.’
‘Is that the will?’ asks Chris, as I unfold a fat photocopy.
‘Yeah. Oh look, he explains – “and to my great-niece Althea Lucy Mottram née Hamilton blah blah whom I have only met on four occasions, but who each time was intent on reading, rather than talking, which has always been my own preference.” Oh bless. Well there you go, Mother, so much for saying no good will come of it.’
Two
It takes me almost six weeks to organize myself sufficiently to take a trip to Scotland. I don’t know why; I’m not busy unless you count lying in bed and crying as busy.
I have several telephone conversations with Alastair Gordon, who ha
s a delightful accent and sounds rather lovely. He says the Lodge is ‘perfectly habitable’ although it will need airing if I want to sleep there. The electricity is still connected, and the phone, so it won’t be like camping, which is lucky as it’s still March for another four days. We discuss how long I might stay, and he offers to go over and check how everything is, which I suspect is above and beyond, but I shan’t complain. I ask if this favour will cost me three hundred pounds an hour and he sounds shocked when reassuring me. He and Great-uncle Andrew were good friends, he tells me. I admit this is rather disappointing, as it must mean he’s at least sixty-five. Even that would make him thirty-odd years younger than Andrew.
Not that it matters how old he is; I just quite liked the idea of meeting a charming Scottish lawyer. He’s probably married. Most people are, aren’t they?
* * *
‘I’ll come with you,’ offers Xanthe. ‘How long you going for?’
We’re in our favourite coffee shop, downstairs amongst the second-hand books and bits and pieces. It’s always quieter downstairs because the staircase down is an unhelpful cast-iron spiral, off-putting to young mums and old people alike. Outside the rain is relentless, disguising the signs of spring.
‘I dunno, I thought maybe two weeks. It shouldn’t take too long to sort out his stuff. And then I can put the house on the market and do a bit of sightseeing. If it’s warm enough.’
‘What’s to see?’ Xanthe looks unconvinced.
‘Castles. And beaches. It looks quite pretty, a bit like Cumbria. Not so dramatic as the Lakes. Or as touristy.’
‘Cool. I don’t think I can come for a fortnight,’ she says, ‘but I could come up for a week?’
‘That would be brilliant. It might even be fun if you’re there.’
I’ve been a bit worried about going on my own. It’s a long way to go by yourself if you don’t know anyone. I know that’s a silly thing to think; I’m an adult, and from now on I’ll be doing everything on my own, but it’s still nicer to have company.
The Bookshop of Second Chances Page 1