by Beth O'Leary
“Ex stepdad now,” Grandma tells me, with the fiendish little eyebrow twitch she employs when she’s in gossip mode.
“The world’s grumpiest man?” I continue firmly, not to be sidetracked. “You deserve so much better.”
“I had to be fair and write everybody down,” Grandma explains as I scribble through Arnold’s name. “He’s the only other single man in Hamleigh who’s over seventy.”
We both stare at the list of crossed-out names. “Well,” I say, “it’s always good to start with a clean slate.”
Grandma’s shoulders are drooping again, so I reach for her hands.
“Grandma, I’m so glad you’re looking to find someone new,” I say. “You had a miserable time married to Grandpa and you so deserve to meet somebody lovely. I will absolutely do everything I can to help you.”
“That’s sweet of you, but there’s not a lot you can do. The fact is, I don’t know any eligible men,” Grandma says, reaching for the tissue up her sleeve and blowing her nose. “I thought maybe … I could go to Tauntingham and see if there’s anybody there…”
I have visions of Grandma roaming the lanes of sleepy Tauntingham with her project diary out, making notes as she hunts for elderly gentlemen.
“I’m not sure that’s the most effective method,” I say carefully. “Have you thought about Internet dating?”
She makes a face. “I wouldn’t know where to start.”
I stand up. This is the best I’ve felt in ages. “I’ll get my laptop,” I say, already heading out of the door.
* * *
I do a quick half-hour of research before I start on Grandma’s dating profile. Apparently, what makes for a successful profile is honesty, specificity, humor, and (more than any of those other things I just said) a good profile picture. But as soon as it’s set up, I realize we have a problem.
There is not a single person her age registered to the site in under an hour’s drive from here. It’s not just that Grandma doesn’t know any eligible gentlemen in the area—there aren’t any. Bee bemoans the lack of good men in London, but she has no idea how lucky she is. When there are eight million people in your city, there’s going to be someone single.
I turn slowly in my chair to look at my grandmother.
When I think of Grandma, I always think of her as an absolute force of nature, bending the world to her will. I can’t imagine there’s a more youthful old lady out there. Her boundless energy has never shown any signs of running out as now she’s in her late seventies—she really is extraordinary for her age.
But she doesn’t look like that Grandma right now.
She’s had a truly terrible year. The death of one of her only two granddaughters, supporting my mum through losing her daughter, then Grandpa Wade walking out on her … It hits me quite suddenly that I think of my grandma as invincible, but that’s so ridiculous—nobody could go through what she’s been through unscathed. Look at her, sitting here, contemplating dating Basil the bigot. Things are not right at Clearwater Cottage.
Which I’d already have known if I’d come home once in a while.
I reach for the laptop again. Every time I remember that I can’t go to work on Monday I feel wretched, useless, afraid. I need something to do, to help, to stop me thinking about all the ways I’ve messed up.
I change the search area on the dating site, and suddenly: hello, four hundred men between the ages of seventy and eighty-five, looking for love.
“I have an idea,” I tell her. “Hear me out, OK? There’s hundreds of eligible men in London.”
Grandma turns her empty mug between her hands. “I told you, Leena—your mum needs me here at the moment. I can’t come down to London.”
“Mum will be fine.”
“Oh, she will, will she?” Grandma says.
“You need a break, Grandma. You deserve a break. Come on. Tell me: why was it you wanted to go to London when you were younger?”
“I wanted to change the world,” Grandma says, with a little smile. “I suppose I thought London was the place where the … big things happened. And I wanted an adventure. I wanted to…” she waves her arms grandly “… to hail down a cab with a dashing stranger and let him take me home. To walk across London Bridge on a mission with the wind in my hair. I suppose I wanted to be somebody important.”
“Grandma! You are important! Hamleigh would fall apart without you, for starters. How many times have you saved the village shop, now? Five?”
She smiles. “I’m not saying I never did anything useful. I made your mother, and she made you and Carla, and that’s enough for me.”
I squeeze her hand. “What was the job? The one you turned down, for Grandpa?”
Grandma looks down at the table. “It was for a charity. They set up community centers for youngsters in deprived areas. It would have been typing and fetching coffee, I expect. But it felt like the start. I had chosen a flat too, not far from where you live now, though the area was rather different back then.”
“You were going to live in Shoreditch?” I say, fascinated. “That’s so…” I can’t imagine what my grandmother would have been like if she’d taken that job. It’s such a strange thought.
“Hard to believe?” she asks wryly.
“No! It’s so great, Grandma. You have to come and stay with me! We can have an adventure in Shoreditch, just like you wanted to.”
“I’m not leaving your mother, not now,” Grandma says firmly. “And I’ve got far too much on my plate here to be going away. That’s that, Leena.”
There she goes again, that’s that-ing. I’m feeling a little buzzy, the way I used to feel at work; I haven’t felt this rush for ages. I know this is the right thing for Grandma—it’s exactly what she needs.
I think suddenly of what Bee said, about finding myself, getting myself back. I’ve been hiding in London, buried in work. I’ve been avoiding my mother. I’ve been avoiding it all, really. But I’ve got two months to sort myself out. And given that I can’t even look at the house where Carla died …
It feels like this might be the place to start.
“Grandma … what if we swapped?” I say. “What if I came up and looked after all your projects, and you had my flat in London, and I stayed here?”
Grandma looks up at me. “Swapped?”
“Swapped places. You do the London thing! Try dating in the city, have your adventure … remind yourself of who you were before Grandpa Wade. And I’ll come up here. Switch off for a bit in the countryside, try to—to get my head around everything that’s happened, and I’ll look after your little projects, and … help Mum out if she needs it. I’ll do whatever it is you do for her, you know, any errands and stuff.” I feel a bit dizzy, all of a sudden. Is this a good idea? It’s quite extreme, even by my standards.
Grandma’s eyes turn thoughtful. “You’d stay here? And be there for Marian when she needs you?”
I can see what she’s thinking. She never says as much, but I know she’s been desperate to get Mum and me talking again ever since Carla died. As it happens, I think Mum is coping a hell of a lot better than Grandma thinks—she certainly doesn’t need to be waited on hand and foot—but if Grandma needs to feel I’ll do everything she does for Mum, then …
“Yeah, sure, absolutely.” I twist the laptop her way. “Check it out, Grandma. Four hundred men just waiting to meet you in London.”
Grandma pops her glasses back on. “Gosh,” she says, looking at the pictures on the screen. The glasses come off again and her gaze drops to the table. “But I have other responsibilities here too. There’s the Neighborhood Watch, there’s Ant and Dec, there’s driving the van to bingo … I couldn’t ask you to take all of that on.”
I suppress a smile at Grandma’s grand list of responsibilities. “You’re not asking. I’m offering,” I tell her.
There’s a long silence.
“This seems a bit crackers,” Grandma says eventually.
“I know. It is, a bit. But I think it�
�s genius too.” I grin. “I will not take no for an answer, and you know when I say that, I one hundred percent mean it.”
Grandma looks amused. “That’s true enough.” She breathes out slowly. “Gosh. Do you think I can handle London?”
“Oh, please. The question, Grandma, is whether London can handle you.”
6
Eileen
Leena traveled back to London the next day, packed her bags, and returned to Hamleigh. She can’t have stayed there longer than an hour. I couldn’t help wondering whether she was afraid that if she did, she’d come to her senses and change her mind.
Because this swap is a mad idea, of course. Barmy.
But it’s brilliant too, and it’s the sort of idea I would have had, once. Before I got so used to my favorite seat at Neighborhood Watch meetings and my green armchair in the living room and the comfort of seeing the same people, day in, day out. Before Wade squashed all the barmy, brilliant ideas out of me.
The more Leena talks about strolling through Hyde Park and visiting her favorite coffee shops in Shoreditch, the more excited I get. And to know that Leena is here, in Hamleigh, with her mother—well, I’d go a lot farther than London if it meant those two spending some time together at last.
I smooth down a fresh page in my project diary, settling back in my chair. The key to all this will be making sure Leena stays busy while she’s here. Her boss might think she needs to slow down for a while, but the last time Leena did anything slowly was in 1995 (she was very slow learning to ride a bike) and if she’s not got anything to do, there’s a danger she’ll go to pieces. So I’m leaving her a list of a few of my projects. She can look after them in my absence.
Projects
1) Walk Jackson Greenwood’s dog Wednesdays 6 a.m.
2) Drive van to bingo on Easter Monday, 5 p.m. More detail on p. 2.
3) Attend Neighborhood Watch meetings Fridays 5 p.m. (Write notes, otherwise nobody will remember what you’ve discussed by next week. Also, take extra biscuits if it’s Basil’s turn—he always brings out-of-date broken bags of digestives from the pound shop, and they’re no good for dunking.)
4) Help plan May Day Festival. (I’m chair of the committee, but best speak to Betsy about joining, she likes to handle that sort of thing.)
5) Spring clean the garden. (Please start with the shed. It’s under the ivy somewhere.)
There. That’s plenty to be getting on with.
I glance at the dining-room clock: it’s six o’clock in the morning, and today I’m off to London. No use waiting around thinking about it, Leena says. Best just dive in.
Beneath my excitement there’s a thrum of nerves. I’ve felt plenty of dread, this last year or so, but I haven’t felt the thrill of not knowing what’s to come for a long, long time.
I swallow, hands jittering in my lap. I hope Marian will understand that some time alone with Leena is the right thing for them both. And if she goes through another of her difficult times, I know Leena will look after her. I have to trust that she will.
“Are you all packed?” Leena says, popping up in the doorway in her pajamas.
She looked so worn out when she arrived on Saturday: her skin, usually warm and golden, was sallow and greasy, and she’d lost weight. But today the dark smudges under her eyes have lightened, and for once her hair is loose, which makes her look more relaxed. It’s such a beautiful long chestnut mane, but she’s always scraping it back and covering it in lotions. The frizz Leena complains about catches the light like a halo from here, framing her little face with its button nose and those dark, earnest eyebrows—the only good thing that father of hers gave her.
I know I’m biased, but I think she’s quite breathtakingly beautiful.
“Yes, I’m all packed,” I say, and my voice wobbles a little.
Leena crosses the dining room to perch next to me, giving me a one-armed hug. “Is this my to-do list?” she asks, looking amused as she scans the paper in front of me. “Grandma, are there … how many pages is this?”
“It’s just extra information,” I explain.
“Is this a labeled diagram of the television remote?”
“Yes. It’s complicated.”
“And … Grandma, are those all your passwords? Is that your PIN?”
“In case you need my emergency money card. It lives in the dresser. I can write that down too, if you like?”
“No, no, this is more than enough documentation of your personal data, I’d say,” Leena says, tugging her phone out of her pajama pocket and glancing at the screen. “Thanks, Grandma.”
“One more thing,” I say. “I need that.”
“Pardon?” she asks, then follows my pointing finger. “My phone? You need to borrow it?”
“I want it for these two months. You can have mine. And I’ll have that nifty little portable computer of yours too. You can use my computer. This swap isn’t just for my benefit, you know. You need to leave your London life behind you, and that means getting rid of those contraptions you’re always glued to.”
She gawps. “Give you my laptop and phone for two months? But … I couldn’t…”
“You can’t do it? Can’t you cope without them?”
“I can,” she says quickly. “I just don’t see … I’m all for a break, but I don’t want to cut myself off from all humankind, Grandma.”
“Who do you really want to speak to? You can just send them a text message, can’t you, and tell them you’ve got a different telephone number for two months. Go on, we can go through now and choose the people you want to tell.”
“But … what about … emails? Work…”
I raise my eyebrows. She breathes out slowly, cheeks puffing.
“It’s a phone, Leena, not a limb,” I say. “Come on. Hand it over.”
I tug at it. She grips tighter, then, perhaps realizing how ridiculous she’s being, lets it go. She doesn’t take her eyes off it as I fetch my mobile phone out of the drawer of the dresser and turn it on.
“That,” she says, “looks like something from the Neolithic era.”
“It calls and texts people for you,” I say. “That’s all you need.”
I glance at the clock again as the phone gets itself going. Only three hours until my train. What shall I wear? I wish I’d thought more seriously about the question of whether culottes are “in” now. I quite like the new pair Betsy let me borrow, but I don’t want to look decades out of date.
“Is someone knocking?” Leena asks, looking startled.
We sit in silence for a moment, the two mobile phones on the table between us. There’s an insistent tapping sound coming from somewhere, but it’s not the front door.
I huff. “It’ll be Arnold. He always knocks on the kitchen window.”
Leena wrinkles up her nose. “Why?”
“I don’t know,” I say testily, getting up. “There’s a gate in the hedge between my garden and his, and he seems to think it gives him the right to trespass whenever he likes.”
“What an arse,” Leena says airily as we head for the kitchen.
“Shh!”
“Oh, isn’t Arnold going deaf?”
“No, that’s Roland, Penelope’s husband.”
“Oh. Well. In that case: what an arse,” Leena repeats in a stage whisper, making me snigger.
When we round the corner into the kitchen, Arnold’s face looms very large in the window. The glass is clouded with his breath, but I can still see his hawkish nose, straggly flying hair, and bottle-thick glasses. I narrow my eyes.
“Yes, Arnold?” I say, pointedly refusing to open the window. Every conversation is a battle of wills when it comes to Arnold. You have to stand your ground on every point, even the really insignificant ones you don’t actually mind about.
“Those cats!” he yells.
“I can hear you perfectly well at normal volume, thank you,” I say, as icily as I can. “You are well aware this house isn’t double-glazed.” He’s always on at me about that too.
“Those cats of yours ate all my pansies!”
“That’s ridiculous,” I tell him. “Cats don’t eat pansies.”
“Yours do!” Arnold says furiously. “Would you just open the window or invite me in, so we can have a proper conversation like civilized adults?”
“Of course,” I say, with a polite smile. “Do come around to the front door and knock, and we’ll see if I’m in. Like civilized adults.”
In the corner of my eye I can see Leena staring at me with her mouth a little open.
“I can see you’re in,” Arnold says, eyebrows drawing together in the thunderous frown that means I’m really getting to him. “Just let me in the side door, would you?”
My polite smile is still in place. “It’s jammed.”
“I saw you walk in and out of there just this morning to put the rubbish out!”
I raise my eyebrows. “Are you watching me now, Arnold?”
He blusters. “No,” he says, “of course not. I just … it’s slippy out when it’s been raining. You really ought to get a grab rail put next to that door.”
I bristle. Grab rails are for old ladies who can’t keep steady on their feet. When I reach that stage, I hope I shall gracefully accede to the horrors of stair lifts and standing aids, but given that I am currently able to swim twenty lengths in the Daredale swimming pool and can even manage a jog if I’m late for the bus, I do not like the suggestion that I’m so doddery I need a grab rail.
This, of course, is precisely why Arnold has suggested it. The old sod.
“Well,” Leena says brightly, “this has been a constructive conversation thus far, but we’ve got a lot to do this morning, so perhaps we could push on. Did you actually see the cats eating the pansies, Arnold?”
Arnold considers lying. He’s a dreadful liar—he can’t manage to come up with a fib without a lengthy pause beforehand.
“No,” he admits eventually. “But I know it was them. They’re always at it, eating my flowers just when they’re in bloom.”
Leena nods sagely. “Well, Arnold, as soon as you have some evidence of that, do give us a call. I’ll be house-sitting for Eileen for the next two months, so it’ll be me you’ll be dealing with.”