by Penny Parkes
And Anna would know.
But it was probably the first time she’d seen first-hand that a mother didn’t have to be physically absent, in order to be absent. She frowned as the thought occurred to her, turning it over in her mind and trying to make sense of it.
‘My God that smells amazing,’ Anna said as Callie scooped a delicious-smelling Thai curry into two bowls. ‘How did you learn to cook so well?’
Callie shrugged. ‘You learn when you have to, don’t you?’ She sprinkled some coriander on top and offered a sheepish smile. ‘And Eleanor taught me a thing or two. She was worried about how much toast I was getting through, not to mention those cans of—’
‘Condensed milk?’ Anna finished for her. ‘Cheap but filling and utterly sickly and delicious.’
Callie just nodded, their mutual understanding of what might lead a person to eat a tin of the thick, gooey confection absolute.
‘Shall we download a movie and eat on our laps?’ Anna offered, suddenly exhausted and unable to contemplate a mealtime with conversation.
‘Yes, please,’ said Callie tucking her feet underneath herself in one corner of the sofa and looking very much like the child that she still was.
‘Something trashy?’
‘Yes, please.’
* * *
Eleanor’s phone call came just as the credits rolled and both of them were discreetly wiping a tear from their eye; you really couldn’t beat The Devil Wears Prada for a feel-good rollercoaster of emotions.
‘How’re you getting on, Anna? Is Ulysses still sulking that we left him behind?’ she said, her voice crystal clear and carrying across the room without the aid of speakerphone.
‘No – but I am,’ Callie called across and Anna heard Eleanor laugh appreciatively.
‘Oh! You’re there together – how lovely!’
And she genuinely sounded as though she meant it.
‘Anna, thank you. I know Callie can be a handful – and yes I know she can probably hear me – but I do appreciate you being there for her.’ She paused. ‘I should probably have told you more about the whole situation, shouldn’t I?’
‘It’s fine,’ Anna said automatically. ‘Although, obviously, knowing there was the option of an in-house chef could only have sealed the deal.’
Eleanor laughed again, obviously relieved. ‘Well, insist she makes you my famous pad thai if she’s a nuisance. One dog, one cat, one teenager – it’s not really what you signed up for though, is it?’
‘It’ll be fine,’ Anna replied. ‘And, actually, she’s been fabulous company. Nice to get a different perspective and a little youthful enthusiasm.’
Eleanor scoffed. ‘You’re hardly ancient yourself, young lady.’ She hesitated. ‘Now, not one to fuss, but can you pop Norbert on the phone so I can hear his little snuffles before I go?’
Anna couldn’t help but smile, feeling herself relax at the honesty and affection in Eleanor’s voice. She might well be the world’s authority on Divine Aesthetes, but oh how she loved her little dog. And that was one of the things that made Anna’s job so worthwhile: without people like her, would people like Eleanor ever dare to go away?
‘Before you do,’ Callie said across the room, ‘can I have a word?’
Anna passed the phone over and tried not to eavesdrop, but with Eleanor’s echoing tones it was almost impossible.
‘Hi,’ said Callie. ‘I’m so sorry, but I damaged one of your special books – the classic collection by the fireplace.’
There was a long pause. ‘Well, these things happen.’ Eleanor was clearly trying hard to be magnanimous, then, more quietly, ‘Dare I ask which one?’
‘The Great Gatsby,’ Callie whispered. ‘I’m so, so sorry and of course I’ll replace—’
‘Thank God for that. If it’s only Fitzgerald you can stop worrying, darling girl. All that angst and flamboyance can get a little depressing if you ask me.’ Eleanor was firm, if not overly convincing; yet it seemed enough to reassure Callie.
‘Just, maybe, stay away from my Chaucer? Or read it at my house.’
There was an awkward pause that told both Callie and Anna that Eleanor knew exactly who the real culprit was.
‘I’m so sorry,’ Callie said again. ‘But please say you’re having a lovely time in Rome?’
Anna popped next door to load the dishwasher so they could catch up properly, Ulysses deigning to follow her in case of leftovers and Norbert stationed at Callie’s side waiting for his turn on the telephone.
‘Eleanor really is one in a million,’ Callie said, ten minutes later, still clutching Anna’s phone and hovering in the doorway, as Anna filled the kettle and set out mugs for tea. ‘I don’t know where I’d be without her living downstairs.’
Anna nodded. ‘I’m not going to say you’re lucky to have her, because that always used to wind me up as a child.’
‘Oh my God, yes! Why do people say that? Your life’s gone to shit and there’s one ray of sunshine illuminating the whole dung heap, but lucky, lucky me…’
Anna laughed. Some things never changed. ‘Eleanor worries about you, and she cares about you, and she offers you some respite from the chaos. In my book, it’s okay to appreciate that without editing out the situation that threw you together in the first place. I mean, if everything was hunky dory at home, you’d hardly be hanging out with the OAPs in the building.’
‘I don’t know actually,’ Callie said, considering it. ‘They’re pretty cool and we’re kind of into the same stuff – books and history and politics. So, in a way, they’re like my grandparents. Not my grandparents obviously – they like bingo and booze. But you know, like—’
‘Mentors?’ Anna offered.
‘Yeah. Mentors. But really, just grown-ups to look up to and whose advice you trust.’ She sighed. ‘I’m going to be so fucked when they leave.’
Anna frowned. ‘They’re leaving?’
‘Soon. Three months or so. They want to be closer to their kids in Cambridge so they’re relocating.’ She sighed again. ‘Lucky kids.’
‘Right?’ Anna agreed, pausing for a moment before continuing. ‘Do you think they have any idea how truly lucky they are? The kids?’
‘Not a sodding clue,’ Callie said, shaking her head.
‘Well, you know, mentors come in all shapes and sizes. I adored my English teacher at school; Mrs Holt was the only person to call it like she saw it. It was her pushing me to do better that gave me the nerve to even attempt to get into Oxford. She wasn’t taking anything less than my best.’ Anna smiled at the memory. ‘She used to say that the only inheritance I had was between my own two ears, so I’d better make the most of it.’
‘Life really isn’t a level playing field is it?’ Callie asked sadly.
‘Nope. But then, if you asked me now whether I would rather have had a cushy life and no clue, or a shitty time with a thinking head on my shoulders, I wouldn’t have to think twice.
‘And, you know?’ Anna thought about the vile woman in the bookshop earlier. ‘I’d have to say that I would rather be the quiet voice of reason in the room than the confidence-filled idiot who shouts the loudest. And that’s something I’m only now coming to terms with.’
‘But you’re a grown-up.’ Callie frowned.
‘I’m a work in progress,’ Anna corrected her. ‘I’m constantly surprised by the difference some inspiration, a mentor, or a little timely insight into how the world works can make. I guess I try to keep an open mind and hope the answers present themselves.’
‘Okay,’ Callie said, taking it all in. ‘Fate, then? Or serendipity?’
Anna nodded, weighing up how honest to be. ‘Both, I think. Besides, I’m still trying to work out the right questions to ask. For me, it feels like sometimes the answers come first.’
‘Eleanor says you should never go into a conversation or discussion without knowing the outcome you want. I have to assume she means with the universe as well.’
‘Eleanor is very wise. And she bel
ieves in you, Callie. So, wherever she ends up, you need to hold onto that – like I did with Mrs Holt – if you’re buoyed by her belief then it really does only take one person to change your life.’
She hesitated, the phone call with Henry earlier still fresh in her mind. ‘I’m no Eleanor, but we could always keep in touch, you and me?’ She held her breath for a moment, unaccustomed to reaching out, but before she could regret or rescind the offer, Callie’s face lit up.
‘Do you mean that? Or is that just something you say?’
‘It’s something I very, very rarely say,’ Anna admitted.
‘Then can I be ridiculously uncool and say a huge yes please?’ Callie said, almost embarrassed by her own eagerness. ‘I mean, you actually went to Oxford. You are, in fact, the only real, live person I’ve met who’s done that. Maybe we could call your old college and get a prospectus? You’d know who to ask, right?’
Anna smiled, remembering all too well that feeling that Oxbridge was a fantasy that happened to other people. A secret club with confusing rules about who was allowed entry. She held out her phone. ‘Type your number in for me, then we can’t forget.’
Colour suffused Callie’s pale complexion. ‘I kind of did that already. Before, when I was talking to Eleanor.’
‘Oh.’ Anna blinked.
‘And don’t take this the wrong way but you seriously need to cull your inbox,’ Callie tapped at the red lozenge on the screen showing thousands of unread emails. Of course, she wasn’t to know that so many of them were from Anna to herself. A cleansing of her mind. The perfect repository of half-formed ideas and unprocessed emotions.
Hardly ideal mentor material, if you thought about it, when she herself still had so much to learn.
Chapter 33
Oxford, Jesus College, 2007
Anna stood in the middle of the quad, clutching her newly printed accommodation chit, and wondering what on earth she’d got herself into.
In all her conversations with Mrs Holt about studying at Oxford, they had talked about the lecturing staff (second to none apparently), the history and magnificence of the architecture (undeniable) and the thrill of studying in the Bodleian library (as yet untested).
Not once had they talked about the other students and this suddenly felt like a foolish and alarming oversight.
It was safe to say that Anna was the only fresher on parade that morning wearing ancient Green Flash trainers, and with a scant forty quid in her bank account to see her through all the week zero revelries.
She wasn’t sure if it was the ease or familiarity of how everyone spoke to each other that so unnerved her, so much as the overwhelming sense of privilege and confidence. She tightened her grip on the A4 page, crumpling it slightly, as she slowly breathed out.
‘Waiting for your rentals?’ a boy with blonde, tousled, surfer-dude hair asked her. Although his neatly pressed trousers and expensive striped shirt were as far from the beach bum look as it was possible to get.
‘Rentals?’ Anna asked, confused.
The boy grinned. ‘Rentals, as in parentals? Are you waiting for your folks to bring your stuff?’ he said, his voice getting ever slower at the look of incomprehension on her face. ‘The parking’s the absolute worst. They’ll be forever. Come and get a proper drink?’ He waved a half-empty bottle of grapefruit Snapple disdainfully. £1.89.
Who knew what a ‘proper drink’ might cost.
‘I’m fine,’ Anna said. ‘Thank you. I just need to take my stuff up to my room and get sorted.’ She nudged the large holdall beside her with one foot. ‘I was just taking it all in.’
He frowned, staring down at the bag. ‘That’s it? That’s all your stuff?’ He nodded towards well-dressed grown-ups guiding fully laden, and apparently unwieldy, luggage carts into the college grounds. ‘What about the rest?’
Anna shrugged. ‘I like to travel light.’
Comprehension dawned. ‘Right, okay. You’ve been travelling, yeah? Gap year made you see the error of our materialistic ways? That’s cool.’
He sauntered off, waving a greeting to three other boys who shared the stylistic anomaly of preppy clothes and surfing locks. ‘Miles, Angus! Alright, you wankers?’
‘Well at least they’re self-aware enough to realise it,’ came a dry voice from just behind Anna, making her smile, as she turned.
‘I’m Kate,’ said the girl, scruffy in that way that suggested it was a considered choice not a necessity. ‘And this is some kind of madness.’ She smiled, and the tiny gap between her front teeth made her seem immediately approachable and normal. None of this cloying perfection and privilege in her self-deprecating laugh. ‘Please tell me that bag isn’t some incredible capsule wardrobe?’
Anna shook her head. ‘I had zero clue what to pack so you could call it a scattergun approach.’
‘Or boho chic?’ Kate suggested. ‘Nobody gives a fuck about fashion here anyway, it’s just so the cliques can recognise each other. And you don’t strike me as someone who buys into all that. So we can be friends. What was your name again?’
‘Anna. Anna Wilson,’ she said.
‘Okay then, Anna, Anna Wilson. Let’s find out where you’ll be living for the next nine months and then we can find out the best vantage point to take in all the crazy. How does that sound?’
It sounded good to Anna’s terrified ears, even better when it turned out they were on the same corridor.
We can be friends.
Just like that, this girl called Kate had apparently decided it would be so.
Confident but funny, unfazed by all the one-upmanship and posturing, scathing and eloquent, Kate embodied everything that Anna could hope for – both in a friend and in herself.
‘I’m glad you came along,’ she confided quietly, as they hung out of her bedroom window watching the chaos in the quad below. ‘I was just wondering what the hell I’d got myself into.’
‘I refused to get up this morning,’ Kate replied with a sigh. ‘I’d probably still be in bed if my mum hadn’t bribed me with pancakes. And reminded me that this was something I’d actually worked my arse off for, something I actually wanted.’ She grinned at Anna. ‘I guess I forgot that it would involve so many people.’
And so they did what freshers up and down the country were doing that week: they traded A level grades, interview horror stories and, as the night grew into early morning, their own anxieties about what studying here might actually be like.
Day in, day out, with some of the brightest minds of their generation.
It wasn’t until they saw the gaggle of boys, with their pants on their heads and not a stitch of clothing on their bodies, running through the streets that they began to reassess.
Brightest minds might not be so daunting after all.
It was, in all likelihood, their proven pedigrees and inherent belief in their own superiority that would be harder to overcome.
* * *
As the weeks passed, it became harder and harder to hold on to the script she’d been running in her head: a combination of Mrs Holt’s absolute faith and pride in her abilities, coupled with the ever-running question of what-would-Lucy-Graham-do? Although she’d been unable to track Lucy down, she still relied on all those conversations years ago, as she had throughout her exams. Lucy seemed to embody the spirit of what she herself wanted to achieve: to leave it all behind and rely on her own wits and abilities. And certainly, this was the place to do it.
Daunting though it was.
Lectures were overwhelming, not just in terms of content but also the posturing as other students attempted to find their place in the new intellectual pecking order, now the goal posts of A levels and school had been removed. It was a new world order.
Tutorials were nicer, simply because they were a more intimate setting and gave the quieter students an easier platform to share their understandings and analyses of the texts.
For here, at Oxford, Anna was quiet. Not shy, so much as biding her time; like trying to catch a
wave, she waited until she understood the ebb and flow of the social life here before even attempting a toe in the water.
Kate, it seemed, for all her concerns on the first day, was unfazed and amused by most of it. ‘I’ve joined the societies I like, and I’ve got the course I want. With you across the corridor, Anna, I’m sorted. Besides, trust me when I say it’s easier to wait for all the silverbacking and hair-flicking to settle down.’
And Kate would know.
She didn’t even make any secret of it – her mother was faculty. Not here, not in Jesus College – but she warranted a page of her own on the social anthropology website and she was apparently both esteemed and popular at the same time. Oxford – the town, the university – had been Kate’s playground all her life. Any novelty long since eroded, yet her respect for the institution remained.
She was exactly the mediating presence that Anna needed, even without her knowing it. She was calm, friendly and focused on her studies. Most of the time. But on Friday nights she refused to take no for an answer, and tugged Anna into the JCR – the Junior Common Room – to mingle and socialise. Even if they never joined the groups ‘going on’ to somewhere more racy, it was the bridge that Anna needed to feel safe.
‘I’m so glad I met you on the first day,’ Kate said to her one Friday night a few weeks in, as three of the girls they’d been chatting with left to reapply make-up and head for the nightclubs in town.
It so closely echoed Anna’s own thoughts that she couldn’t help but laugh. ‘I definitely think I got the better end of the deal.’
Kate shrugged. ‘Maybe it was just meant to be. Hey, maybe we’ll end up being friends for life? You can be my children’s godmother and we’ll embarrass them on their twenty-firsts with tales of debauchery and derring-do.’
Anna tried not to flinch at the very thought of becoming a parent herself. That conversation could wait until their fledgling friendship had taken a firmer hold, for she personally had no intention of becoming a mother. She would lie, she’d long since decided, and say she couldn’t have children. Blame some vague biological impediment to reproduction perhaps? Certainly better than admitting the truth: the absolute fear that she had inherited the ‘rubbish parent’ gene that left her ill-equipped to care for anyone unconditionally and selflessly.