These Days of Ours

by Juliet Ashton

  ‘I made some notes, but I’m just going to speak from the heart.’

  Charlie’s head was bowed over Flo, who sat in his lap, subdued by all the sad faces around her. The depth of his grief surprised everybody except Kate.

  Indulgent and protective with Kate, Becca was impatient with Charlie. ‘He needs,’ she’d said, ‘to stop moping and get back to writing his bestseller.’

  Charlie never described his novel in those terms.

  ‘It’s easy to speak from the heart, as my heart is very full.’

  The angry car horn that had prised Kate and Charlie apart on the hospital bench hadn’t been Julian’s. Kate had almost fainted with relief.

  Charlie’s face had stayed close to hers. Intent, transformed, made urgent.

  In her head, clear as a bell, she’d heard a line that he’d written. Not everything that looks like love is love.

  Poised and still, they’d regarded each other.

  Don’t speak first, Kate had counselled herself.

  ‘Sorry.’ Charlie had seemed to snap out of a trance. He’d looked away and Kate was lonely without him: she’d felt suspended and supported by his gaze.

  ‘No, I’m sorry,’ she’d said, passing a hand over her face.

  ‘What was I thinking? I mean your dad’s just . . .’ Charlie had stood up, then sat heavily down again. Close to her but very deliberately not touching her, he’d stared at his lap, unable to say any more.

  Eventually, on a sigh, Kate had said, ‘Becca . . .’

  His face contorting, Charlie had let out an agonised huff, then nodded.

  Loyalty can be a rare commodity but with Kate it was a strong, twisting, blood red thing. She couldn’t betray Becca and she couldn’t behave in a way that was incompatible with the fierce protectiveness she felt towards Flo.

  There they had sat, prim, until Julian turned up.

  Kate hadn’t felt prim. Despite the cataclysmic nature of the night’s events, despite her churning sadness, she’d wanted to claw Charlie’s clothes from his body and feel his skin against her skin, cooking that special lovers’ alchemy.

  Accustomed to regarding her sexuality as a sleepy, querulous creature, she had barely recognised the all consuming lust that took hold of her and shook her, from her hairline to her shoes.

  A church pulpit is not the most appropriate place for such memories.

  ‘My wonderful dad took a long time to die. I’ve heard some of you say that he was brave and that’s certainly true. But he was often frightened. Children don’t usually get to be around their parents’ fear. Because they love us, they keep it from us. It was a privilege for me to know Dad well enough for him to share his fears with me before he went. Sitting with him, watching him sleep, I used to wonder where I’d put the love after he went. Now I know.’

  Kate paused.

  ‘I can put it in the same place. In many ways Dad’s still here. I was so close to him, and our communication was so crystalline that I can hear what he’d say in most situations. So I still badger the poor man for advice.’

  The congregation laughed at that, a small, relieved explosion.

  Mum laughed along with them. Kate noticed her hat was askew. A beam of sunshine, stained gold by the stained glass, spotlit Mum. Kate saw her in stark relief.

  And she was just a person. A woman trying to get by like the rest of us. More than that, she was a woman who must surely have coveted the easy affinity between her husband and her daughter.

  Undoubtedly, it was chilly to be the odd one out in a set of three, never getting the joke, pulling in a different direction. It must have been as chilly as this chapel.

  In the midst of Kate’s epiphany, a hypothesis intruded. It would be harder to lose Mum than Dad. Because I don’t know her. Not in the profound meaning of the word. A meaning Kate now appreciated.

  Have I grown up at long last?

  Kate promised herself to hug her mother later, no matter how much the all-elbows woman protested. What if Mum’s refusal to talk about Dad was not because she would not, but because she could not?

  The black coat didn’t quite fit. Mum stealthily undid a button. She was a woman who was misunderstood by her partner, a woman mired in a mismatch of a marriage.

  If Kate was honest – the surroundings demanded it – she could relate to that.

  ‘Dad believed in me. Which is a big deal for a girl child. He encouraged and supported me. Not only me. There are other people who’ll miss his loyalty.’

  Missed calls from Charlie were piled up in Kate’s phone. She had let them ring out, needing to absorb and digest what had happened between the two of them before she could face him. Bent out of shape by the loss of her father, Kate didn’t know whether or not to trust the serpent hiss of her subconscious that his kiss had been fuelled by pity.

  Her toes curled in her red boots.

  ‘Love was the last thing Dad said. I’ve thought a lot about love since that night. It’s not a decision you make. It doesn’t have to be logical. It’s often inconvenient and messy and unapologetic about what it asks of you.’

  Unsure where she was going with this, Kate sensed puzzlement from the older funeral guests at this departure from standard eulogy fare.

  Kate couldn’t look at Charlie. She wouldn’t look at Julian. She felt them both resonate, like tuning forks.

  ‘Searching for the meaning of life has become a cliché, but Dad contemplated life deeply during his final months. He could no longer bear artifice. He said, more than once, that I needed to work out what I truly wanted in order to live honestly.’

  Kate found Julian’s eye. He stood and slipped away, head down, out into the cold morning.

  Nobody noticed him leave. All eyes were on Kate, waiting for her to carry on.

  I’m sick of loss.

  Kate had lost Charlie, her dad, and now Julian had been swallowed up by the bitter brightness outside. She’d been aware as she spoke how he would interpret her words. The night before, she and Julian had talked more bluntly, more freely than ever before. Her sadness had stripped her so she couldn’t pretend any more; he had matched her, truth for truth. They’d faced what they had and, more crucially, what they lacked.

  It felt correct for Julian to leave, but that didn’t stop her wanting to tear after him, to gabble that they could fix things. She stayed silent until the feeling receded. Not completely. Just enough for her to carry on.

  ‘A little late I’m taking his advice. I’m working out what I really want. Thank you, Dad.’

  Thank you. And goodbye.

  The plastic carrier bags bit into Kate’s fingers as she emerged from the tube station into the rat-coloured evening.

  Glad that Becca was staying over after one of her intermittent assaults on London’s boutiques, Kate foresaw a muted evening of food and wine and conversation. Weighing down the bags were two bottles of what a magazine article had assured her was a ‘cheeky lovable red’ and some toothsome treats. The Atkins Diet was working wonders on her behind but wreaking havoc with her head; Kate would have happily sold her body on a street corner for a bowl of spaghetti. Tonight there would be lasagne and cake and, hopefully, recovery from the hour she’d spent pelting around the gym with her personal trainer.

  She’d have to fend off Becca’s insinuations. ‘But everybody,’ Becca had insisted, ‘has an affair with their personal trainer. It’s the law.’

  Already anticipating the shower’s rain on her sore limbs, Kate called out ‘Becca!’ as she kicked shut the front door. The panelled hallway was painted in a duck egg tone it had taken Kate an age to source. The air was soft, like talc. It was always tranquil in Ludwig House.

  ‘Where are you?’ Kate pushed at the drawing room door and her home exploded into light and colour and shouts of ‘Surprise!’ Cameras flashed. Women catcalled. Emerging from the melee, Becca yelled ‘Happy divorce!’ and stripped Kate of her plastic bags, replacing them with a champagne flute.

  I Am What I Am struck up on the CD player and th
e women began to dance with pagan abandon.

  Kate joined in. She had no choice. The quiet evening she’d planned had dissolved with the shout of ‘Surprise!’ At first she was doing her duty, but as one defiant heartbreak anthem followed another, Kate was swept up by the music. By the time they were all caterwauling along to These Boots Are Made for Walkin’ she was just a swaying body disconnected from its fretful mind.

  Suddenly, she slumped. As if somebody had pulled out her plug, Kate sagged against the fridge. She watched the seething mass of wrap dresses and up-dos, wondering where they got their energy. It was easy to slip out unnoticed and climb the stairs.

  Kate sat on the side of the freestanding bath and plonked her glass on the basin. The prosecco had made her head swim. Mild nausea swirled in the pit of her empty stomach.

  Pretty and orderly, blue and white delft tiles stood in rows above the basin. Kate remembered Julian’s overexcited text from a second-hand shop.

  Wait till you see what I’ve found! Love you xxx

  Two floors above the music, Kate couldn’t hear the party goers. This house wasn’t a party house. It was too grand. She’d tried to cosy it up when they moved in, lighting fires, rearranging the furniture; living in it alone she’d given up. The grand symmetry defied her. Ludwig House was a mausoleum. A beautiful one, carefully restored, with hope in the grouting between the tiles.

  ‘Hurry up!’ The door shivered as it was banged from the other side. ‘I’m bursting!’

  Becca, in a complicated gold dress, tore in and perched on the toilet, weeing ecstatically as Kate retouched her make-up at the mirror.

  ‘Thank God,’ said Kate, ‘for eyeliner.’ A sweep of brown and her weary eyes woke up. At her feet, Jaffa snuffled and grumbled, nose to the floor. ‘Why is Jaffa here?’ She’d already tripped over the dim animal a couple of times.

  ‘Jaffa loves a good boogie.’

  This was disingenuous. Jaffa, thanks to his habit of leaving small tidy poos as calling cards, was welcome nowhere, but Becca secretly harboured a hope that people talked of her as that glamorous woman who brings her little dog everywhere.

  ‘Kate, change into something sexy. You’re back on the market.’

  ‘No I’m not.’ Kate was happy in her black silk shirt. ‘And even if I was, it’s all women at this party.’

  ‘So you’re saying you only make an effort around men?’ Becca loved taking pot shots at what she called Kate’s ‘so-called feminism’. ‘Those women are your homies. They’re your crew.’

  ‘Actually, they’re my book club.’

  Pulling up her thong, Becca said earnestly, ‘We’re all there for you, hun.’

  ‘One hundred and ten per cent?’ Kate anointed her wan cheeks with cream blush. She appreciated the gaggle of women currently conga-ing down her hall. Her friends were a broad church; the twelve party guests included her new assistant, a young woman riddled with piercings, and a standard issue mum of two Kate had met at the gym. They all, in their individual ways, helped her muddle through the current challenging era but, unlike Becca, Kate had never cultivated a gang. Kate needed only a small band around her. The band had shrunk when Dad was picked off by fate’s sniper.

  And then Julian went.

  Kate had expected distance to lend perspective but no, her relationship with Julian still mystified her.

  I still don’t know who let who down. Or if either of us did.

  ‘Giddy up, doll face.’ Becca slapped her cousin on the bottom. ‘You’re not hiding up here all night.’

  ‘I’m not hiding,’ said Kate. ‘I’m gathering myself.’

  ‘Whatever,’ laughed Becca, shoving her out of the (reconditioned) door and back to the raucous charm of the party.

  ‘I will survive!’ Cometh the hour, cometh the pop anthem. Gloria Gaynor defined the theme of Becca’s party, and the women drowned out the original majestic vocals as they belted out the defiant, optimistic lyrics.

  This time of night Kate would normally be stirring a risotto or settling down to ponder the week’s accounts. The banks of fairy lights Becca had strung up softened the room in the same way as Kate’s preferred candles, but with more wattage, more oomph: should Becca ever become Queen of Everything she would illuminate the entire world with fairy lights.

  Not convinced that the island’s worktop would withstand dancing heels, Kate left Becca up there: this time next week the house’s new owners would gut the entire building.

  A text arrived.

  I assume it’s safe to ask if you’ve already had your surprise?

  Kate replied:

  The joint is jumping!

  The response landed immediately.

  Are you drunk yet?

  Kate typed:

  Funny you should ask – I’m the only one who isn’t!

  As Kate waited for another text the phone rang and she took it into the drawing room. Seating herself on a packing crate, she put the mobile to her ear.

  ‘Silly to keep texting,’ said Charlie. ‘Seriously, do you hate the party?’

  ‘No,’ laughed Kate. ‘I love parties. Why would I hate it?’

  ‘Maybe because a divorce party is the worst idea I’ve ever heard.’

  On the dancefloor, Becca had shouted over the music, telling Kate how she’d ignored Charlie’s attempts to talk her out of organising a surprise party.

  ‘Becca means well.’

  ‘I know that. But opening bottles of bubbly because you and Julian have broken up seems, well, flippant.’

  ‘I can do flippant.’ Although she was grateful for Charlie’s concern, she didn’t like the person it described. As if Kate was an old lady, too sweet and vulnerable for the hurly burly of society.

  ‘You’re exceptionally good at flippant. But a divorce party . . .’ Charlie let out a frustrated growl. ‘I said to Becca, not everything is an excuse for a bash.’

  ‘I love my divorce party. So there.’

  ‘Fibber.’

  Kate wanted to love it. She wanted to be the Kate she once was, the fresh-out-of-the-box version, who couldn’t hear music without getting on down with her bad self. She sighed, half laughing. ‘I just want to go to bed.’

  ‘Me too.’ Charlie gave a short laugh. ‘Not with you. That came out wrong.’

  Laughing along with him – what choice did she have? – Kate found the idea of going to bed and finding Charlie in it rather lovely. ‘You know I’m travelling back with your missus tomorrow? Unless you’re sick of me.’

  ‘Never. We can take Flo horse riding again if your bottom’s up to it.’

  Kate closed her eyes and heard the rhythmic complaint of the saddle, the plod of hooves, Charlie’s involuntary fearful exclamations when his sleepy steed tossed its head, all to a backdrop of non-stop commentary from five-year-old Flo: ‘Look a little bird hello birdy she’s flying about and now she’s gone.’

  Miraculously, Flo resembled Charlie. As if he loved her enough to make her long straight hair grow darker, and her eyebrows arrange themselves as two orderly brushstrokes. ‘I can’t think of anything nicer.’

  ‘I’ll let you get back to your posse,’ laughed Charlie. ‘I don’t really know what to say. Happy divorce?’

  ‘That’s a lovely sentiment.’ I wish you were here, Kate added silently, as if hoping he would develop telepathic powers.

  ‘It’s going to be fine, Kate, really.’ Charlie changed the tone. ‘I believe you’ve done the right thing.’

  Returning to the dancefloor, Kate welcomed the music and the movement and the ribald singing. They offered her some camouflage, a noisy place where she didn’t have to wonder about whether she was doing the right thing or the wrong thing. I did the only thing I could.

  A couple of hours later, with some of the ‘crew’ departed, the diehards kicked off their shoes and arranged themselves around the kitchen table.

  ‘To girl power!’ Becca lifted her glass in a toast.

  ‘To old bag power!’ Mum of Two lifted her glass; Kate liked her mo
re and more.

  The prosecco that seemed to spring spontaneously from rocks in Becca’s wake had mellowed Kate. This, she thought, is what this kitchen is for: people coming together.

  Her assistant read a text on her BlackBerry that made her shoulders droop. Only messages from her feckless boyfriend had that effect on her. ‘Men are gits,’ she said.

  ‘True.’ Becca turned to Kate. ‘Don’t make that face. They are. All of them have the potential for git-like behaviour. Even your perfect Charlie.’

  ‘My perfect Charlie?’ As Kate spoke, she buried her face in her glass, hoping her pinkness could be attributed to the wine.

  ‘St Charlie, who puts up so patiently with his loony wife. He has his moments.’ Becca folded her arms, a stance approved by the women in their family when complaining about the men in their family.

  Before Becca could go on, Kate’s assistant took down a framed photograph from a shelf and asked, ‘Who are these lovely people?’ Skilled at protecting Kate from tricky customers in the shops, she was now doing the same thing at home.

  I must sort her out a pay rise, thought Kate, saying, ‘That’s the staff and children of Yulan House. That jeep they’re standing around was paid for with funds I raised in memory of my dad.’

  Feminine exclamations of sympathetic delight showered down on Kate. Women, she thought, are such a good audience.

  ‘They do amazing work there. Life changing things are routine. Some of the children they take in are abandoned because they have disabilities, or because of the Chinese one child law that doesn’t allow families to have more than one baby. No matter what the reason, however ill the child is, Yulan House never turns anybody away.’

  ‘That’s so beautiful.’ Mum of Two was touched.

  ‘What’s even more beautiful,’ said Kate, ‘is the way the staff treat the kids. My dad got to know the owner quite well. From afar, obviously. Jia Tang makes sure emotional needs are met, not just practical ones. So the children are safe and fed and warm and educated and, well, loved. She started the place thirty years ago and she’s still there every day, devoting herself to them.’