by Freya North
I am never an unwelcome guest in my father's house, but I am always an uninvited one. She felt close to tears and resolved not to arrange another visit until Christmas-time.
* * *
Petra's mother now collected chickens with much the same passion as she'd collected shoes when Petra started at Dame Alexandra Johnson School for Girls. When the letter arrived announcing that Petra had a place and a bursary too, Melinda Flint had taken her daughter into town in a taxi and told her to choose anything within reason at John Lewis. Petra had chosen a thick pad of cartridge paper, bound beautifully, and a Rotring draughtsman pen. Her mother had then spent ages in the shoe department, finally deciding on a pair of slingbacks in vivid scarlet suede. ‘Don't tell your father,’ Melinda had said, swooping down on a packet of cotton handkerchiefs monogrammed with a delicately embroidered P. Petra wondered how on earth her father could take offence to cotton handkerchiefs with her initial on them. Until she realized that her mother was referring to the shoes.
The only time John passed comment on her mother's shoes was in the heat of an argument. And there were plenty. Shoes and arguments.
On a bright Sunday morning, Petra alighted from the train at East Malling, waited for a taxi and then asked the driver to stop so she could buy some milk.
‘My mother is into soya milk,’ she explained, ‘and I don't like it.’
The soya-milk phase had lasted far longer than the red-shoe phase which came to an abrupt end when John left. She'd thrown the shoes out. Dumped them in a bin bag along with any items of his he'd left. She'd then eschewed anything as lively as red shoes in favour of elegant dressing so dark and demure it was almost funereal. However, when John and Mary had moved into the house in Watford to prepare for Joanna's birth two years later, Melinda had reverted to her maiden name of Cotton and, Petra assumed, the dress sense of her premarital days too. She forsook the nicely cut suits in sober colours to go with the flow. And everything was soon free flowing and colourful, from her hair to her long skirts to the yoga poses she did in the corner of the sitting room while Petra tried to watch Blue Peter.
When I finished school, Petra liked to explain, it wasn't me who left home, but my mother. As soon as Petra's place at Central St Martins was guaranteed, her mother left London.
Melinda lived first in a yurt near Ludlow for a few months, then she tinkered with communal living in Devon. She tried Portsmouth with a boyfriend called Peter and she stayed a while in Lincoln with a boyfriend called Roger. She settled on chickens and Kent a few years ago and is now more settled than Petra has ever known her to be. So self-sufficient, in fact, that she seldom has the need or the nous to phone her daughter for a chat, let alone to arrange to see her.
Today, it seems, Melinda is not in.
Petra wonders how long to give her mother. She half-heartedly rings the doorbell again and phones the number, hearing the phone ringing inside the cottage. She puts the bag with the milk in the shade and tries to see over the unruly hedge. She can hear clucking, as if the chickens are muttering under their breath that all the doorbell and phone ringing is an imposition on a quiet Sunday morning. She feels irritated. She doesn't have a number for a local taxi firm and the cottage is not walking distance to any shops that might. She now feels relieved that Rob is not here. How pissed off would he be! He already refers to Melinda as Hippy Chick-en. She stomps around the cottage and peers into an old Renault she is sure cannot be her mother's. Her mother hates cars. Last time, she reeled off a load of incendiary facts about emissions and the ozone to Rob when they had turned up in his Mercedes before Christmas. The memory enables Petra to feel again relieved that Rob isn't here with her today.
After half an hour, and on the verge of drinking some milk straight from the carton, Petra can hear voices and over the stile on the other side of the lane, her mother and another woman appear.
‘Yoo-hoo!’ Melinda calls, as if Petra has just arrived and not spotted her.
The other woman waves.
‘We've been for a lovely walk,’ her mother tells her, ‘hours and hours. Isn't it a joy to be in flip-flops in April! Lovely to see you, darling. Come on in. Oh Christ, look at this, Tinks, my daughter has brought her own milk with her!’
Each time Petra visits her mother, she is surprised and a little alarmed by how much stuff can be crammed into such a small space. By contrast, the chickens live in a stylish and spacious way, in designer coops bought at great expense.
‘There must be thirty birds in your back garden,’ Petra remarks, her head bobbing as she vies for a view from the kitchen window not obliterated by wine bottles with candles stuck in them or pelargoniums growing up from the sills meeting the spider plants clambering down from macramé hanging pots at the ceiling.
‘Twenty-six,’ Melinda corrects her, ‘but two bantams are joining us next week. You'll come and collect them with me, won't you, Tinks.’
There is silence.
Melinda and Petra look around but though the cottage is crowded with belongings, there is certainly no one else there.
‘She must have gone,’ Melinda says airily. ‘Well, the cacti can have her tea. I insist you try rice milk, Petra. I've changed from soya.’
They take their tea out into the back and the chickens squawk their irritation but soon settle down into a sort of muttering indifference.
‘Rob says hi,’ Petra says.
‘Tell him I say hi and Have you sold your horrid car, Rob,’ Melinda says and she starts giggling.
‘Mum,’ Petra objects quietly.
‘He's too businessy for you, Petra,’ Melinda says. ‘You need someone more – I don't know – less Mercedesy.’
‘Don't be so judgemental,’ Petra says. ‘You hardly know him.’
‘I'm not being judgemental,’ Melinda says. ‘I'm just making an observation. How long have you been with him?’
‘Coming up for ten months.’
‘There,’ Melinda says. ‘Obviously you know him better than I – but there again, perhaps I know you better than he.’
Petra wants to say, You hardly know me at all, Mum – we rarely speak and I hardly see you. ‘Don't talk in riddles,’ she says instead. And though she wants to defend Rob, she decides to leave it at that. Because, annoying as it is, her mum is a little bit right. Rob is businessy. He is Mercedesy. But Petra thinks it's up to her to decide whether he's too much so.
Petra is starting to feel tired and irritable. I just want a normal cup of tea and a sensible chat.
‘Yoo-hoo!’ It's Tinks, suddenly appearing from inside the house.
‘I thought you'd buggered off!’ Melinda says and the two women fall about laughing.
Petra bites her lip, not sure if she'd like to swear, cry or just yell.
‘I have to go, Mum,’ she says. ‘Rob has tickets for – a thing.’
‘You've only just arrived,’ her mother protests.
‘Actually, I arrived two hours ago,’ Petra says, ‘but you weren't here.’
‘Oh come now, darling,’ her mother says abruptly, ‘you can hardly blame me for going for a stroll on a beautiful day like today. It's April! Flip-flop time! Goodness me, you Londoners, you youngsters, you're always in an insane rush, obsessing with schedules and timetables. Anyway, you can't go just yet, I need to collect some eggs for you.’
As Petra headed home, with the eggs and also the milk that her mother would not allow in her fridge, she thought about the period when her mother was slightly more staid and her father a little less dowdy. She must have been about eight or nine. But what was clearer than recollections of how they looked at that stage, what was more vivid than memories of family outings to the zoo back then, or those supper-times with Ambrosia Creamed Rice for pudding, was that this was precisely the period when Petra had first started sleepwalking.
Chapter Eight
Petra had made much of not going into work the following day. She curled up under the duvet in Rob's bed that Monday morning and tried to entice him to stay with her.
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‘Play hooky?’ she asked playfully.
‘Why?’ he said.
‘Don't go into work,’ she said.
‘Why not?’ he said.
‘Stay right here and play with me!’ Petra said. Rob hadn't asked why she wasn't going into work. ‘I feel a bit low,’ she told him, as if he had, ‘after the weekend. My parents. You know. It's difficult.’ Rob didn't ask why specifically.
He sat on the edge of his bed and traced the pinky beige aureole of her nipple thoughtfully, as if weighing up the merits and consequences of her offer to stay at home, but then he tweaked her nose between his fingers and slapped her buttocks as if she was a puppy. ‘I have to go to work,’ he told her, ‘and you should too. It's not healthy to play hooky.’ And with that, he swept back the duvet and flicked cold water at Petra from the glass beside the bed. She giggled and shrieked and writhed about the bed.
‘I'm working late tonight,’ Rob told her, ignoring her nakedness which quite hurt her feelings. ‘And I'm away overnight tomorrow. I'll give you a call later in the week.’
‘It's your birthday on Friday,’ Petra said.
‘Whoopee doo,’ said Rob.
‘You can't wake up alone on your birthday,’ Petra said, though she remembered she'd done precisely that last December.
‘You girls and bloody birthdays,’ Rob said under his breath, procrastinating over which tie to wear.
‘You realize you need never come back to an empty bed after a long hard day's work,’ Petra said, making much of her coy expression though her heart was thudding as she let slip what was on the tip of her tongue. ‘That is – if we lived together.’
Rob looked at her blankly. ‘Those are the times when I need my space the most,’ he said.
She cringed, not at the bluntness of his response but at what suddenly seemed the misfired audacity of her proposal. She sat herself up and fiddled with winding her watch. Rob's expression softened. ‘We'll go out Friday night and you can celebrate my birthday for me in whichever way you choose,’ he said. He ran her hair through his fingers. ‘It's a bit soon, for me, to be talking about cohabiting and whatever.’
Petra nodded. ‘Sorry,’ she said.
‘You've got keys, haven't you – remember to double-lock when you go.’
Petra cursed modern technology for its failings. Emails and text messaging and phone calls were all very well for shrinking the world in an amicable web of global communication but the truth was that her oldest, closest friend lived abroad and though the phone was marvellous in making a mockery of vast oceans and time zones, what Petra wanted most just then was simply a cappuccino in Lucy's actual company. Feeling a little sorry for herself, she made one from the coffee machine in Rob's kitchen. Sitting at his breakfast bar, calculating the time differences with Hong Kong, she decided to send a help! text message. If she was lucky, Lucy would be back from the school run.
She waited; toyed with the idea of phoning too but decided against it – her mobile phone bill was large enough and realistically this wasn't an emergency, it was just her feeling a little down. She finished her coffee. Her phone remained blank. She took a shower. Still there was no reply. There wasn't anything worth watching on daytime TV. And there was no food in Rob's fridge. Just champagne, which irritated her. He's a bit of a cliché, my boyfriend, she thought and wondered fleetingly how much else would get on her nerves if they did move in together. There now seemed little point in playing hooky; Rob had gone into work and her best friend was apparently oblivious to her cry for help. There was nothing to do but leave Rob's flat and head for Hatton Garden.
‘Good weekend?’ Eric asked.
‘Ish,’ Petra said with a shrug.
‘Rob?’ Eric asked, expectantly.
‘Parents,’ Petra said.
‘How's Mother Hen?’ Kitty teased, but carefully.
‘Barking mad,’ said Petra.
‘Does her hair still look like alfalfa?’ Kitty asked, because she loved this previous description of Petra's.
It raised a smile. Petra nodded. ‘You'll have to visit with me one day, Kitty,’ she said.
‘Your mother would love that,’ Kitty said. ‘One look at me and her hens will be laying eggs for their life.’
‘The thing is, my mother would love that,’ said Petra.
‘Did Rob chauffeur you about?’ Eric asked.
‘Well, he would've,’ Petra said, ‘but he had loads of work to do.’ Though she'd said it airily, there was uncharitable silence from her workmates. ‘It's his birthday on Friday.’ Gina, Kitty and Eric nodded but returned to their work. ‘I'm going to surprise him,’ Petra said, ‘but I don't know how just yet.’ Quietly, she paused to consider how hard she worked at choreographing this relationship without truly knowing whether Rob was much good at dancing to her tune. Their musical tastes were another thing that actually (along with a taste for champagne) they did not share.
Petra sketched. Recently she'd spent a lot of her studio time sketching. Sketching or doing out-work for Charlton. Though he had a selection of her pieces for sale, realistically, until funds came in, she couldn't really justify purchasing the gold or the gems for her new designs. In fact, she just couldn't afford it at the moment. She had a tab at Bellore, the suppliers to the trade, but Petra didn't like letting that run too high. For the time being, she would just have to be content making up her designs in copper or steel wire for future pieces in precious metal. Perhaps if Charlton or one of her private clients liked them, they'd commission the real thing. But Petra wasn't a saleswoman and the thought of contacting a previous client with a direct pitch for business appalled her.
‘I'll do it for you,’ Eric had offered.
‘But they spent one thousand pounds on that crocheted gold necklace with the aquamarine only six months ago.’
‘So you suggest matching earrings,’ Eric had shrugged.
‘I don't know, Eric,’ Petra had said. ‘It seems a bit mercenary.’
‘Oh, for God's sake, Petra,’ Eric said. ‘It's your bloody job, woman.’
‘Don't swear at her,’ Kitty growled from the background.
‘My friend Sophia is turning forty this year,’ Gina said helpfully. ‘I could ask her hubby if he wanted to splash out on a gorgeous Petra Flint something-or-other. They've got buckets of cash and a penchant for the finer things in life.’
‘But surely you should be pushing him to splash out on a gorgeous Gina Fanshaw-Smythe?’ Petra said.
‘My stuff is way too chunky and vulgar for Sophia,’ Gina had replied ingenuously. ‘She's very refined, is Sophia. Your style is perfect.’
As Petra sketched that Monday morning, working on curlicues and arabesques and serpentines, she recalled Gina's compliment and it gave her a boost. Perhaps if she showed Gina a couple of her designs it would prompt her to mention Sophia again and maybe this time Petra might just say, Oh, OK then, if you think her husband might like to see my work, by all means show him. She worked again on an idea that had been nestling in her mind and her sketchbook for some time. She took coloured pencils and slicked mentions of gold over her soft pencil lines. Then she took a blue pencil and a violet one and worked the hues over each other. The design was for a necklace. Fine rose-gold belcher from the back of the neck slinking just over the trapezius where it then met an undulating line of solid rose gold sitting sinuously along the clavicle. From the centre of this, a gemstone. Tanzanite. Something sizeable, 4 carat or so. Balanced by two smaller tanzanites, a carat each, uniting the junctions between the gold chain and the solid gold.
She stood up, stretched, looked out of the window to the hubbub of Leather Lane. It's busy this morning, for a Monday morning, she thought until Eric suddenly announced, ‘Lunch-time!’ and she looked at her watch and marvelled how the hours had rattled by while she had been so silently absorbed in her work. She felt quite triumphant, stimulated, productive. And very hungry. Gina was still engrossed in hammering a silver bangle and Kitty appeared to have left the studio. Petra decided
to leave her sketchbook open and accompany Eric to the sandwich shop.
When they returned, Kitty and Gina were poring over Petra's designs.
‘It's stunning,’ Kitty said. ‘Classic but contemporary, delicate but strong.’
Petra looked at Gina expectantly. ‘You're a clever bunny,’ Gina said. And Petra said, Do you think so, thank you, thanks a lot. But she couldn't bring herself to mention Sophia's fabulously rich husband.
‘Don't let Charlton see it,’ Eric said. ‘He'll copy it, the sod.’
‘That wouldn't be your tanzanite, would it?’ Gina asked.
Eric looked at Petra's drawing. ‘Her tanzanite is twice the size.’ He squinted at the sketch. ‘Three times the size.’
‘Bring it in again one day,’ Gina said, ‘so we can all have a jolly good ogle.’
Petra hadn't been home since before the weekend. She'd gone directly from Watford and later Kent to Rob's place and stayed over both nights. She'd rented her flat for just under two years. Recently she had renewed the lease. She'd asked Rob's advice a couple of months ago, hoping that he'd say, Move in with me, babe. But his advice had been solidly financial. He pointed out that she couldn't afford the down payment for a suitable flat in an area she liked and, with it still being a seller's market, she may as well continue to rent for the time being.
Her flat was small and fairly sweet. The lounge could take a gate-leg table and three folding chairs as well as a sofa; it also had a fireplace with coal-effect fire and alcoves with shelving to either side, stripped floors and sash windows. The bedroom accommodated a double bed and the narrow church pew which Petra had bought as a student and had taken from bedroom to bedroom ever since. As there was only a small cupboard and a very narrow chest of drawers, the pew's surface was invaluable. The bathroom had no window, just a noisy Vent-Axia but, bizarrely for the lack of space, a bidet too. Her upstairs neighbours were the landlords and they were a friendly if heavy-footed family.
Today, she came home to a note from them saying, ‘There's a leak!!! We've had it fixed. Hope nothing of yours is affected??? Insurance will cover if so!!’ Petra looked around the sitting room and suddenly noticed the yellowed bulge at the far end of the ceiling and the beige fingers of damp clawing their way down the wall; her paperbacks on the shelf directly beneath were puffed swollen and soggy but they appeared to be the only casualty. In fact, Petra found herself more distressed by the state of her fridge – that her milk had gone off and that the KitKats she thought she still had were not there. She was going to slump down to sulk, then she thought she'd stomp off to the corner shop, but then she noticed the flashing of her answerphone.