by Sue Teddern
We queue up to pay. Rob tells ‘Katrina’ on the till that we don’t need to book a delivery. He can transport it in his van right now and even take the old one away. Typical Rob, he’s got it all worked out.
I know it’s just a ‘thing’; a new thing replacing an old thing. But I like what this little outing represents. It’s a reminder that Rob wants to help me. That he still cares about me. We have a history and it can’t be deleted, just because we couldn’t make it work. I couldn’t make it work.
‘I can’t believe they make black dishwashers,’ he says as we pull out of the car park. ‘That should be against the law.’
‘Even grey is wrong,’ I reply, enjoying the banter. ‘I mean, what are they? Grey white goods? Grey grey goods? Didn’t anyone think this through?’
‘Fi has grey white goods but she calls them “matt silver”. Sounds more like a Seventies rock star to me.’ He chuckles to himself. This quip is new to me but obviously not to him.
I stare straight ahead. A roundabout. This way A41, that way A4251.
I can’t help it, I have to ask. ‘Who’s Fi?’
Rob has rung the job in Tring to tell them he’s running late because he needs to pick up some extra brackets. Rob isn’t one to skive or take the piss. He’s got a great word-of-mouth reputation for hitting deadlines, being reliable and doing a proper job. But he must be so keen to explain the Fi thing to me that he doesn’t want to rush it.
He parks in a layby, with a catering truck nearby selling bacon butties and mugs of paint-stripper tea.
‘Do you fancy a fried-egg sandwich?’ he asks as we settle on a picnic bench.
‘Yes. Maybe. I don’t know.’ I shrug. ‘It was a simple question, Rob: who’s Fi? You’re making it into a big deal. Is it?’
The smell of frying rashers wafts over. We sit for a minute inhaling it. Then he takes a run and launches into his little speech. Has he been rehearsing it since our ‘white goods’ bantz?
‘We met online. Last month. She found me, actually. I’d registered, done the daft questionnaire, posted a photo. That one in Ventnor where you can’t see my bald patch. But I don’t know, I just couldn’t summon up the cojones to contact any of the women. I was still a bit bruised.’
I remember that photo in Ventnor. Rob is squinting into the sunlight. He has just eaten a hot dog. He looks bloody lovely. I took that photo.
‘Anyway, I kept getting emails from women wanting to meet me for a coffee, a glass of wine, whatever, and I wasn’t interested because I wasn’t sure. You know. Is this what I really want? Am I ready? And if not, why not?
‘Fi was funny and persistent. Not in a stalky kind of way. Keen but cool, I suppose you’d call it. So I met her and I still wasn’t sure. So I met her again. We went out for a Turkish meal. And then, a week later, we went to the pictures plus a walk in Verulamium Park the next afternoon. And I thought to myself, This is nice. I like her. Just go with it, Rob. Live in the moment, not in the past. And I don’t want to put a curse on it and, yes, it’s early days, but it’s going really well.’
He concludes with, ‘You’d like her, Annie.’
He actually says that.
I wished Rob and Fi well. It would have been spectacularly churlish not to, especially after he persuaded Josh to meet us at the flat so that they could get the new dishwasher up one flight of stairs, remove the manky old one, load it into the van and take it to the dump. He even plumbed it in. Fi’s fallen on her feet all right.
When my first serious boyfriend, Duncan, and I broke up a year after uni, he didn’t deal with it very well, especially when I started seeing one of his friends a few weeks later. I didn’t do it to get at him, and the new relationship lasted less than a month. It was a cleansing thing for me. But it was a kick in the teeth for Duncan.
We were still living in our shared house in Moulsecoomb, on the non-trendy fringes of Brighton, with two other ex-students, all of us trying to decide what to do with our lives. And then Duncan decided. He upped sticks and fled back to Edinburgh, leaving me to pay the rent on our double room, which I could only manage for a month before, fortunately, I got The Job in London.
So I learned back then – what is it, crikey, fifteen years ago – that it’s better not to be bitter when your ex meets someone new. Duncan and I had a mutual parting of the ways, of course, but with Rob, I was the one who ended it and I know it hurt him. Behaving like a spoilt brat who doesn’t want anyone else to play with the toy you’ve chucked out of your pram is not a good look.
Rob met me when he was newly separated from Maggie and there was still the possibility of them getting back together again. So my initial role was ‘transitional girlfriend’. Then it developed into something more. Dad thought I was breaking up a marriage but I really wasn’t. Like the aggrieved child who has nothing to do with the smashed vase, ‘it was already broken when I got there’.
It’s a well-known fact, however, that transitional/interim girl/boyfriends have a short shelf life. Fi could well be Rob’s life partner. Good for him. Happy for them. I just hope she connects with Josh too. He’s a bloody brilliant young man and I miss him.
I can’t deny, the new dishwasher prods me into trying a bit harder to keep on top of things. I will eat more vegetables, I will do Zumba. I will say hi to my neighbours. Even Tony in Flat 2. Instead of watching daytime dross, I will read. Or listen to podcasts while I make soup. I make soup. From scratch. I even eat some of the soup I don’t tip down the sink because grief has stolen my appetite.
Kate rings every couple of days to see how I am. She’s ridiculously busy 24/7 so it makes sense that, over the past year or two, she’s become the one who initiates the call. She’d only get angry if I were to disturb her in some high-powered meeting or en route to catch a train.
I’m just pushing some stubborn lumps of spicy cauliflower soup down the plug hole when she calls. She’s on a train, ten minutes from Euston, so we can’t talk for long.
‘How are you doing?’ Kate always asks how I’m doing. She prefers a ‘fine, thanks’ reply and sometimes she even gets one.
‘Fine, thanks. I’ve just made soup.’
‘Cream of tomato? Like Mum used to give us when we had a cold?’
‘No, real soup from scratch.’
She can’t hide her shock. ‘Hey, that’s great. That’s really great, An-An.’
‘It’s frigging soup, okay! I haven’t married Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall.’
Her voice cuts out, then returns just as I’m about to give up and hang up. ‘And? How does it taste?’
‘Yummy.’ The line crackles again. We’re going to have to keep this brief.
‘You haven’t forgotten Sunday, have you?’ she asks in her sternest headmistress voice.
‘Um, remind me.’
‘Dad’s birthday.’
I may be the scatty, unreliable older sister but how could I forget that. ‘Do me a favour. Of course not.’
‘Lunch. With Bev. To celebrate his memory. Not sure what she’s got planned. I know how empty your diary is so don’t you dare pretend you’re busy.’
I hadn’t forgotten that Dad’s birthday is on the 10th or that Bev had invited us over for Sunday lunch. I’d just forgotten that the two things were connected.
‘Honestly, Kate. I’ll be there. I said I would, didn’t I?’
I hear one of Kate’s signature sighs. The one that signifies weariness at always being the nudger, not the nudgee. ‘I’ll pick you up at half twelve. Wear something clean and bring flowers. Bye.’
I take out my resentment on the final, stubborn lump of cauliflower that gets mashed down the plughole with the business end of a ladle.
Bloody Bev. You had Dad for four years. You made each other happy. I couldn’t say that at the start but I can now. Do I have to like you? Can’t we just move on from all that fake affection and connection?
Sunday lunch symbolizes warmth and family and being loved and nurtured. Bev may make the world’s best roasties – way better
than Mum’s – but I don’t want her to misinterpret my presence. I will be there under sufferance and then, fingers crossed, I need never see her again. And I honestly won’t miss her.
Bev’s roast potatoes are a triumph. The pork crackles with crispy skin and the vegetables – four kinds – are cooked to perfection. She also makes great puddings but she won’t tell us whether it’s crumble or sticky toffee. Dad put on over a stone when they moved in together. Was she a feeder? Did Bev kill him with kindness? I shove another spud in my mouth to obliterate the thought.
On the drive over, I made it clear to Kate that this would, in all likelihood, be my final encounter with Bev. It would be the height of hypocrisy to continue a faux relationship with a woman I’d barely chat to at the checkout in Tesco. I know Kate feels the same, but she’s been too busy with work to process awkward, uncomfortable thoughts like this. But, hey, I’m the oldest so I’ll do it for both of us.
‘We can’t,’ she said. ‘That would be so cruel.’
‘You keep up the pretence, then. I won’t do it.’
We never finished the conversation as we arrived at the house and Kate parallel-parked her Mazda outside. But we will finish it. And I’m not shifting one inch of ground on this. I owe it to Mum.
It turns out to be trifle for pudding, made with chocolate custard, chocolate Swiss roll and tinned pears. It’s bloody lovely and I have two helpings. Bev looks inordinately pleased, as if liking her pudding is proof that we’ll be pals for life. Don’t get your hopes up, love, I think to myself as I push my scraped-clean bowl away.
‘It was so good of Rob and Josh to come to the funeral,’ Bev says as we settle in the living room for coffee and home-made petits fours.
‘Absolutely,’ I reply.
‘He said I’m to contact him if ever I need anything done around the house. He’s very handy, isn’t he?’
‘He did a great job on my bookshelves,’ Kate chips in supportively, even though we both know she’s never been happy with them.
‘Rob is such a lovely man,’ Bev coos. ‘And young Josh is turning into quite the dreamboat.’
I smile my agreement and eat my fourth petit four. Must be where the name comes from.
Bev sighs melodramatically. Kate and I leave it hanging there, hoping it won’t be the start of something that might set me off.
But it is. ‘Peter was so upset when you ended it with Rob. He thought you’d finally sorted your life out with a lovely chap like him.’
‘Dad didn’t approve when we first got together,’ I say, through gritted teeth.
‘He was worried about you having a fling with the father of a pupil. The ethics of it. He didn’t want you to get into trouble.’
‘Rob was separated,’ says Kate. ‘Annie didn’t do anything unethical.’
Bev nods. But it’s too late, she’s said it now: Dad was on Rob’s side when we split up, not mine. This is a woman who doesn’t think before she speaks, who can never self-edit. Something pops into her head and out of her mouth. I don’t know how Dad put up with it, even for just a handful of years.
‘Your dad only wanted his girls to be happy.’ Bev turns to Kate. ‘You with your career and your promotion and everything. And Annie . . . well, he desperately hoped you’d get back to teaching and settle down with Rob. Happy ever after. That’s all he ever wanted.’
She dabs her nose with some Kleenex. ‘And he’d so love to have been Grampa Peter. He adored Pippa’s little ones, of course. And they loved him to bits. Always giving them piggybacks and singing “Jake the Peg”, complete with silly walk, and finishing their broccoli. Even so, it’s not the same as having grandchildren of your very own.’
There we are then. We were a disappointment to Dad. We failed him. Kate tends to have relationships with married men who don’t have plans to procreate. And I’ve well and truly missed the boat. Rob and I never discussed kids because he’d been there, done that with Josh. Kids were not on the cards when we were together and I can’t see it happening for me now. Besides, I couldn’t be responsible for a small human. I’m a danger to a guinea pig.
I make a conscious decision to zone out of the rest of the conversation until it’s time to leave. Kate can fill the silences. Not that there are any with Bev. Now she’s talking about how lovely they’ve been in the walking group and that she can’t seem to stop buying mushrooms, even though she’s never liked them and Peter’s not here to eat them.
Talk of walking reminds Bev of another item on the agenda. Dad’s ashes. ‘They’re in the dresser at the moment. I can’t bear to look at them. But I do have plans.’
‘Plans?’ asks Kate for both of us.
‘I’m going to scatter him in the Tyrol. Where we went on holiday last year. I think that would have made him happy.’
I can’t help myself. ‘The Tyrol? That’s Austria, right? How do you know he would have approved? Did he say so?’
Kate shoots me a look: leave it.
Bev is taken aback. ‘How could he say so? He was fit as a fiddle back then. Don’t you think I should scatter him there, then?’
Of course I bloody don’t, you stupid woman. He went there once. With you. The Tyrol has nothing to do with us, our dad, our lives.
I fume quietly. Saying it out loud won’t help. The bloody Tyrol, though. The words embed themselves in my brain on a loop. The bloody Tyrol, the bloody Tyrol. The wrongness of it is so obvious.
Before we leave, I go to the loo. Before I go to the loo, I go to the dresser, take the urn of Dad’s ashes and cram it into my Fjällräven backpack which I left in the hall. The zip won’t close so I cover the urn with my scarf.
Dad isn’t being scattered in the Tyrol.
End of.
PART II
Chapter Seven
Cromarty
I put Dad on my bedroom mantelpiece, next to a framed photo of Mum, taken the year before she died. I place them together like this in a misguided attempt to make myself feel better, as if my moment of madness was their idea, not mine.
What on earth possessed me? Perhaps I should pop round to Bev’s tomorrow with a bunch of daffs and sneak the urn back into the dresser while she’s making us coffee.
I can’t sleep. I daren’t tell Kate what I’ve done although I know she wasn’t happy with Bev’s Tyrol plans either. Okay, maybe she didn’t say so as such but for all our differences, we agree on the important stuff: politics, climate change, Nutella on bagels. Scattering Dad’s ashes in the Tyrol is plain wrong and I’m one hundred per cent sure Kate thinks so too. Well, I’m fairly sure she does.
My sleep is patchy and broken. At half three, I make myself a cup of tea and watch some old Boyzone videos on my phone. At half four, I let the World Service lull me into semi-consciousness.
I wake with a heart-thumping start at those oh-so-familiar words: ‘Good morning, and now the Shipping Forecast, issued by the Met Office on behalf of the Maritime and Coastguard Agency at 05.05 on Monday the 15th of July.’
North Utsire, South Utsire . . . Portland, Plymouth, Biscay, Trafalgar . . . Even after the apocalypse, an announcer will be reading these place names into the one surviving microphone. I find myself moving the urn closer to the radio so that Dad can hear the forecast too. I have seriously lost it.
He called it poetry. ‘The poetry of our isles.’ Once he made Mum take a photo of him at a Bierfest, chomping on a knackwurst, just so that he could use the caption: German Bight. He used to say ‘Rockall’ instead of ‘fuck all’. My middle name was nearly Malin. Our cat, Cromarty, is living proof of his obsession. So much family folklore, so many memories and daft moments.
That’s when I decide. Sod the Tyrol. Mum and Dad visited Cromarty on their honeymoon and they had plans to return on their fortieth wedding anniversary, which would have been . . . this year. Cromarty. That’s where he will be scattered. It’s so obvious, so appropriate, so perfect.
Best not tell Kate just yet, though.
Two days later, I’m on the 09.00 train from
St Albans to Luton Airport and I’m checked in half an hour after that. I had yet another sleepless night, fearful I’d doze through the alarm, so I’m out cold for most of the flight. By 12.30, I’m waiting for my overnight backpack to come through on the conveyor belt at Inverness. Dad gave it to me when Bev bought him a new one, with all sorts of fancy straps and pockets. This one is a bit faded and tattered but it packs like the TARDIS and it smells of retsina – I broke a bottle in it when Rob and I went to Corfu.
The urn raised a slight eyebrow when my hand luggage was checked by the security man at Luton. I couldn’t pretend it was anything other than what it was. I suppose they might have suspected that I’d filled an urn with pure-grade cocaine which I was county-lining to the Highlands. Fortunately, I had the funeral order of service with me and the Shipping Forecast tea towel, which has lived in my bag ever since I saved it from the charity shop black sack. I explained the purpose of my trip to the nice man and I couldn’t stop my eyes filling and my chin quivering.
For a split second, he welled up too. His mum died last year. She wanted to be scattered in the Grand Canyon and all the red tape was a nightmare. No paperwork required for an internal flight, though. Crikey, I hadn’t even thought of that. He waved me through and gave me the understanding smile of someone still grieving. I had a little weep in the Ladies’.
I marvel at my travel nous. This journey is a piece of cake. A bus transfers me to downtown Inverness, a woman at the bus station in a hi-vis vest points me to ‘Stance 4’ and I’m soon settled on the 26A to Cromarty. The fifty-something man with the steel-grey crew cut sitting in front of me has also travelled all the way from Luton and we do one of those understated, slightly awkward, nods of recognition.
‘Don’t tell me, you’re stalking me,’ he says, swiftly followed by a hearty chuckle to ensure I don’t take him seriously.
‘How did you know?’ I chuckle back.
‘You’re going from Luton to Cromarty too? Small world, eh.’