George gave a short phlegmy laugh and took the napkins Leo offered. He wiped his eyes. ‘Thank you,’ he said quietly. Then he blew his nose. ‘Actually, Rose hates The Ritz. Refuses to go. Says it’s full of tourists and people with more money than sense.’
Leo patted George’s knee. Jane hadn’t expected him to be so capable of kindness. To reach out to someone who was hurting with no ulterior motive. Leo was still crouched down in front of George and had taken the older man’s hands in his own. ‘One day, when you really need cheering up, I’ll tell you about the only time I ever went to The Ritz. Blagged my way into a supermodel’s twenty-first birthday party. Twelve hours later, I was escorted out through the kitchens wearing motorcycle boots and a gold dress I got given by another supermodel.’ He stood up and puffed out his chest. ‘I was banned for life from every Ritz in the world.’
George was still blowing his nose, but his face was sharp again, though a little pinker than it had been before. ‘I’ve missed you, Leo,’ he said, with one final sniff. ‘We both have. It’s good that you’ve come back.’
They didn’t stay long after that. It was after three. ‘Lunch will definitely be over by three,’ Jane said. ‘Half two is industry standard. Let’s go back so I can change shoes.’
They walked back to the house in silence. Ever since they’d said goodbye to George, Leo had been quiet. He only came to when they reached the square. The sun was starting to drift, the light soft and diffused, the drooping leaves creating dancing shadows. Leo took Jane’s arm. ‘Let’s go round the back,’ he said. ‘So there’s no danger of any doorstep confrontations.’
Jane decided not to ask Leo why he was so determined to avoid his mother. Family stuff was always messy, fraught with real and imagined slights, and feuds that went back years. Hopefully she wouldn’t have to stick around long enough to get involved.
‘Liddy and Frank live there, the one with the red door,’ Leo suddenly said, as he steered Jane down a little mews to the left of the house, the cobbles playing havoc with her ballet flats. He was pointing at a pretty little carriage house. ‘Have you met Frank yet? Liddy’s husband and Rose’s driver. He’s also very handy around the house. Changing light bulbs, sorting out —’
Jane hadn’t really been listening until Leo cut off mid-sentence – his attention caught by Rose and another woman, as tall as she was, but younger, hair darker, stepping out of a doorway. They embraced, awkwardly but affectionately, as if the obvious regard they had for each other didn’t normally extend to hugging.
‘Well, that’s done it,’ Leo snapped as if Jane had taken him to the very edge of his nerves then pushed him over. ‘I’m out of here.’
‘Don’t be so silly.’ Whatever bad blood there might be between Leo and his mother was no reason to stalk off, coat billowing in the breeze. ‘For goodness sake, darling, come back!’
Rose and the other woman – Leo’s mother, because she couldn’t be anyone else – turned to look.
Leo could have just sucked it up. Said Hello, you’re looking well, how’s Dad, weather’s chilly for this time of year, isn’t it? It would have been trite and a little painful but it wouldn’t have killed him. It wouldn’t kill Jane either. So she did what Leo didn’t have the guts to do: painted on her bravest smile and walked towards the two women.
‘Hello,’ Jane said brightly. ‘Hope I’m not interrupting anything.’
Standing there on the kitchen doorstep, Rose introduced them. ‘Linda, I told you about Jane, Leo’s wife. And Jane, I haven’t had a chance to tell you a thing about Linda, my sister Shirley’s youngest girl. Her coronation baby, Shirley used to call her.’
They shook hands. Murmured greetings. Linda shrank back as soon as the handshake was over. There was an echo of Rose on her face, the faintest trace of Leo. Maybe around the eyes or in the generous curve of her lips, which twisted anxiously in a polite smile.
‘Sorry about Leo. I could run after him?’ Jane suggested, in the hope of making a quick escape.
‘There’s not much point,’ Rose said. She looked up at the sky, which had turned from blue to grey as they’d been standing there. ‘It’s going to rain.’
‘You go in,’ Linda said to her. ‘It’s too cold to be standing here.’
‘Stop fussing. A little breeze isn’t going to kill me.’ But then Rose shivered and Jane thought she might go in without arguing. Instead she paused and looked at Linda, then Jane. ‘You might as well sit down and have a little chat about that boy of yours.’
Rose abandoned them once she’d shown them through the kitchen and down a half-flight of steps to what she called the morning room and Jane would have called a conservatory.
Linda perched on the edge of the duck-egg-blue sofa like she might bolt at any second. ‘Rose said you were very pretty.’ It sounded like an accusation and maybe she realised that because she sank back a little as if she was forcing herself to relax. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘There’s no need to be.’ Jane willed her beauty to dim a little. ‘I’m sure this visit is difficult enough without Leo and me turning up like this.’
Linda wasn’t really relevant, but she was Leo’s mother and Rose seemed to be fond of her, so she might prove useful. After three years of shopping trips, spa days and girls’ lunches with Jackie, she could play the part of the eager-to-please daughter-in-law to perfection.
So when Lydia came in with a laden tray and Linda looked longingly at the walnut cake, Jane said she’d have a slice because Linda had the hungry, desperate look of a woman who couldn’t bear to eat cake alone.
Trying to make conversation though was like wading through treacle in six-inch heels. It was only through dogged perseverance that Jane discovered that Linda had two more days in London, then would catch the train back to Durham on Thursday morning, as she hated driving on the motorway. And that it was something of a tradition that on her last evening in London, she and Rose would see a show then have dinner at Joe Allen’s.
‘That sounds lovely,’ Jane exclaimed. She’d played to tough crowds before, but Linda might have been the toughest yet. She was staring down at the floor, refusing to make eye contact and hadn’t even taken off her beige trench coat, which was slightly too big for her as if she’d bought it expecting to grow into it. ‘What are you going to see?’
‘Was Leo in Australia three years ago?’ Linda asked. She’d raised her head and there were patches of red dusted along her cheekbones. ‘In Sydney?’
Jane and Leo hadn’t got as far as discussing what they were doing three years ago. ‘We had quite a whirlwind romance. You know how it is. And so…’
‘Because Alistair, his brother, lives out there. He was working for Doctors Without Borders, met an Australian girl.’ Linda stopped to visibly gather herself. She took three deep breaths, placed her hands on her knees and drew back her shoulders. It suddenly occurred to Jane that the other woman wasn’t flustered or awkward but so angry she could hardly speak.
‘Are you all right?’ Jane tried to loosen and relax her own limbs so they weren’t stiff and tense too. ‘We don’t have to talk about Leo if it’s going to upset you. Obviously, I adore him, but he can be impossible sometimes.’
‘Alistair saw Leo walking towards him and he called his name and Leo looked right at him, then carried on walking past like Alistair wasn’t even there.’ Linda looked at Jane incredulously. ‘Who does that? To his own brother.’
Jane couldn’t resist the urge for one really good squirm. ‘Families are quite complicated, aren’t they?’
‘There was a time, when he was in rehab after his overdose, that I blamed myself,’ Linda said haltingly, her hands not still any more but twisting, fingers worrying at her rings. ‘He didn’t tell you about that, did he?’
‘That’s all in the past,’ Jane said firmly, though it wasn’t. Leo’s drug-taking was as recent as two days ago.
‘Well, I don’t blame myself any more, I blame him.’ Linda’s chin jutted out defiantly. She looked more like Rose t
han Leo now. ‘Ten years, and even now there are some nights when I get so furious thinking about him that I can’t sleep. I know it’s silly, but Leo wasn’t around so I’ve never had the chance to tell him how I really feel. How bloody cross I am with him. So I say it to the Leo in my head over and over again.’
Jane didn’t have conversations with her ghosts. She simply didn’t let them in. When all this were over, Jane wouldn’t allow herself a single sleepless night thinking about Leo. It was easier that way. ‘It’s been ten years,’ she said gently. ‘You should have just let him go.’
‘You can’t with family,’ Linda said. ‘When it’s family, it’s never done.’
‘He’s not so bad.’ It was hardly a ringing endorsement from a besotted bride. Jane could do much better than that, if only to reward Leo for those flashes of sweetness he’d let her see. ‘He has lots of good qualities. He’s kind and wonderful at cheering people up when they’re feeling down. He’s funny, not in a mean way either. I think you’d find that he’s changed.’
‘He’s never given me that opportunity,’ Linda bit out, then she gathered again. ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be talking to you like this. It’s rude and inappropriate. I am usually quite a sane, rational person.’
‘I’m sure you are. Don’t get me wrong, I think Leo is lovely, but he can be really annoying too.’ Jane decided she could risk a small conspiratorial smile. ‘When he dares show his face again, I’ll give him a good clip round the ear, if it would help.’
‘It might,’ Linda agreed. She almost cracked a smile. ‘You’ve got your work cut out for you.’
‘I know. It keeps life interesting.’ Jane uncrossed her legs and changed position, then crossed them again and it was that easy to shift the mood. Draw a line. Start again. ‘So, you mentioned Alistair? Is he still in Sydney? Have you been out to visit him?’
Alistair was clearly the golden child. A doctor, like his father and grandfathers. A first in medicine from Dundee University, three years at St Bart’s then he’d joined Doctors Without Borders and worked in Niger, then Bangladesh where he’d met Vicky. They were now settled on Sydney’s Upper North Shore and expecting their first child in January.
‘It’s hard, both boys gone,’ Linda said. Lydia had popped her head round the door five minutes earlier to ask if they wanted a glass of wine and Linda had nodded gratefully. ‘Gavin, my husband, he’s taken a six-month sabbatical and we were going to fly out to Australia. Spend Christmas there. Vicky’s mum has MS so she’ll need a hand when the baby comes. Not that I want to step on any toes.’
‘Of course you don’t, but it’s your first grandchild. That’s something very special.’ Jackie had been positively skittish about the prospect of grandkids, though Jane had refused to be drawn in. ‘It would be lovely to escape winter. Have Christmas on the beach, that sort of thing.’
‘There’s no way we can travel, not with Rose so ill,’ Linda said flatly. ‘She’s quite adamant that I should go, but I really I don’t see how I can.’
It was all Jane could do not to squirm again. ‘Rose could still be going strong this time next year.’
‘She won’t,’ Linda said in the same dull voice. ‘I doubt she’ll make it to the New Year. But she won’t entertain the idea of hospices, says that if I don’t go to Australia, she won’t even let me in the house. I know that Lydia is as good as family, but it shouldn’t fall on her.’ She looked at Jane expectantly. ‘So, how long are you and Leo planning to stay?’
This was far beyond what anyone, even the most dedicated of young wives, could be expected to put up with. ‘I don’t know. It was rather a spur-of-the-moment decision to come here.’
‘Because it isn’t as if Leo is going to step up and… oh God, it’s all such a muddle.’
It was left unresolved because the situation was unresolvable. Such a pity that life didn’t come with a handy set of arrows pointing you in the direction that you should go, Jane thought as she saw Linda out the front door this time.
‘I don’t really think Leo’s a bad person. I still love him, but I wish he wasn’t so careless. Doesn’t ever think before he acts,’ Linda said as she ruthlessly tightened the belt on her coat. The angry patches of red on her face had returned. ‘Maybe he has changed. Don’t they say that the love of a good woman can change a man?’
‘I think he’s trying to change,’ Jane said, though she wasn’t a good woman and he wasn’t really doing any such thing. She might have talked him up to his mother, but she was seething that he’d dumped Linda on her in the first place.
Linda was lingering on the doorstep, neither in nor out. ‘The thing is, Jane, I can’t worry about that boy at the moment when Rose… she’s my last link to my mother; the only person who knew her when she was young, before she got married and had me and my brothers. She’s told me so many stories, Rose has, but I’m sure there’s still more stories to tell.’ Linda swallowed hard, then opened her handbag and tried to pull out a little packet of tissues but her hands were shaking too hard.
Jane took the packet and handed Linda a tissue. ‘It’ll all be fine. You’ll have a lovely time with Rose while you’re in town, then you can go back to Durham and take a couple of weeks to decide what you want to do. If there’s any change with Rose, Lydia will call you.’
Gratitude made Linda hug Jane for one brief, awkward moment. ‘It’s been very nice to meet you. Leo is a very lucky boy.’ She looked beyond Jane to the house. ‘You’d better go in. All the heat’s escaping. I dread to think what the energy bills are like for a place like this.’
Then she was gone: a hunched taupe figure crossing over the square, and Jane was left to drift back inside.
15
Despite the chill that crept in as the sun sank below the buildings and the persistent drizzle that had started almost as soon as he’d left the square, Leo walked.
Walked away. He knew he was a coward. He could have gone up to his mother, said hello, that he’d been meaning to get in touch now he was back in the country. Just as he could have sent her a postcard every now and again. Called her on her birthday. But he hadn’t. It was easier not to, because then he didn’t have to remember the disappointed look his mother had perfected when she was confronted with the worst examples of Leo’s behaviour; it was a unique blend of reproach and bewilderment. From bad school reports to the time in sixth form when his girlfriend thought she might be pregnant to those sessions when he was in rehab. Family counselling. Except Rose wouldn’t come, and his father thought the whole exercise completely self-indulgent, so it was just Linda sitting on a plastic orange chair with her disappointed look.
‘I blame myself.’ She’d said it an awful lot over those two weeks. ‘It’s not your fault. I know you’re better than this.’
But he wasn’t better than this. He was still a selfish little shit. Didn’t know how to be anything else. So he kept on walking away.
He’d forgotten the simple pleasure of taking a walk. The trick was to stay vigilant and that way you got to see the good stuff: the carved lion on the keystone of a Victorian villa, the house with the grotesque gargoyle’s heads on either side of the front door. Date stones and cornerstones. Leo experienced a quick, joyful tug of recognition with each one, like bumping into old friends. It was the same when he rediscovered the blue plaques for William and Evelyn de Morgan, Hablot Knight Browne and Alfred Hitchcock.
When he had a crick in his neck from looking up and the drizzle had upgraded to a downpour, Leo got on a bus, then another one until he was in Shoreditch; his old stomping ground.
The warehouses and factories were all tarted up now, home to designers, brand consultancies and trend-spotting agencies. People getting rich off bullshit. In that case, Leo should have been a millionaire several times over and as soon as he thought that, he heard a loud, grating voice behind him.
‘Leo?’ Leo turned round. ‘Leo Hurst, as I live and breathe! How the devil are you?’
It was Scoffer. His old friend from his Chelsea art
school days. Called Scoffer because he could hoover up lines of coke in the time it took everyone else to roll up a five pound note and stick it up one nostril.
‘I’m fine,’ Leo said. ‘How the hell are you?’
‘Better than fine.’ Scoffer had the well-fed look of a man who was used to expense account lunches and ten-course tasting menus. ‘God, it’s been years. Let’s have a drink.’
They found a bar that had been carefully restored to resemble the abattoir it had been a hundred years ago. Then there were many drinks and several helpings of artisanal triple-cooked chips as Scoffer regaled Leo with tales of models shagged, evil art dealers vanquished and collectors who paid him silly money to design installations for their houses. ‘How much does it cost to make a fucking neon sign anyway? Tossers!’
After the Last Dance Page 16