by Freya North
No one phones anyone that night. This is not denial but a heart-rending clutch at survival in a world they Don’t understand. The only way to cope with a world you Don’t understand is to do something completely different. Reinvent yourself anew.
DOVIDELS
There were some crude similarities with a hangover in that, the next morning, Cat awoke feeling wretched, with details of the previous day swarming over her in bilious waves. Like a hangover, the easiest way to react initially was to pull the duvet over her head and beg for a dreamless sleep to numb the pain and drive the memories away. Unlike a hangover, there was nothing that could combat her fuggy head and untold nausea when she finally awoke at noon. No hair-of-the-dog equivalent to settle the soul from the shock of meeting your long-absent mother and being told that your father is not dead but standing right in front of you. A mammoth fryup might be a miracle cure for a body depleted by alcohol, but it doesn’t work when a mind racing with hideous facts ties a stomach in knots. None of the painkillers in Cat’s medicine cabinet would have the slightest effect on the anguish choking her.
She deleted the voicemail messages on her mobile phone from her sisters without listening to them and she left the envelope icons of their text messages unopened. She sensed their contact was one of love and support but just then she felt too raw and bewildered to receive it at all. She phoned Ben though she had nothing to say and clung to the receiver, eyes closed to direct the sound of his voice straight to her heart.
You’re all I have, she said to herself when she hung up, You’re all I really have. When the phone rang again, she didn’t answer it. If it was Ben, She’d only break down. If it was anyone else, she didn’t want to speak to them anyway.
There was a loaded pause, followed by an uncertain ‘Hullo?’ It was Django, famously suspicious of answering machines, leaving a message for Cat nonetheless. ‘Hullo? Is that Ben? Oh, It’s the whatsit. Is there anyone—Hullo? Hullo. This is Django McCabe. I’m leaving a message for Catriona. This is Django. Just leaving a message to say—Blast these blessed machines. I’d like to leave a message to say I hope your journey was OK yesterday. That was Sunday. And I’m. Thinking.’ He phoned again almost immediately afterwards just to say, ‘Monday. It’s now Monday.’ For the first time, Django’s trademark flummoxed messages brought no smile to Cat. She deleted the messages immediately and switched the answering machine off.
I’m Cat McCabe. I’m thirty-two years old. I never wanted to meet my mother. I thought I was brought up by my uncle. I thought I had two sisters, that I was one amongst equals, in the same boat, cut from the same cloth, sharing the same blood tie. This is the opposite of finding out You’re adopted. There’s no one out there for me to find and I can’t bear the sight of those staring me in the face.
Roof upon roof upon roof. Obnoxious pigeons the colour of concrete. Where was a mountain when a girl needed one most? Flagstaff. The Flatirons. Bear Peak. Where was the exhilaration of feeling so tiny in the great wide open, the comfort of feeling so alive surrounded by vast natural wilderness? It was time zones away. A whole day on a plane away.
In Boulder, there’d still be snow on the peaks but the pastures would be so lush they’d be positively luminescent. Nowhere had Cat seen colours in nature clash so cacophonously and yet so pleasingly as in Colorado. Nature’s daytime fireworks. She looked out of the window. Rust-red roof tiles smudged with lichen here, dull grey mass-produced slate tiles there, ugly dormer windows, redundant chimney-pots, bird shit, the spike and clutter of too many aerials. She looked at her watch. Stacey would be awake. And even if she wasn’t, she wouldn’t mind Cat phoning her.
‘Did I wake you?’
‘No – I’m just back in from a run. Seven-miler – the killer loop. I wiped the ass off your best time, lady. How are you!’
‘Miserable,’ Cat said. ‘Where are you? In your kitchen? By your fridge? Will you look out of the window and tell me what you see? Tell me everything.’
Stacey’s description was soothingly detailed and Cat listened with her eyes fixed on the roof network outside.
‘I hate it here, Stacey. I want to come back.’
‘You serious?’ The surprise in Stacey’s voice was edged with excitement and it heartened Cat.
‘Yes,’ said Cat, ‘desperately. For good.’
‘You OK, hon? Ben OK?’
‘He’s fine,’ Cat said.
‘And you?’ Stacey repeated, a soft insistence to her voice, a perceptiveness that Cat was so grateful to hear.
‘No,’ she said, ‘I’m not doing so good. Life’s gone pear-shaped. In fact, there’s no shape at all. It feels like my world has imploded. Can you talk?’
‘Sure,’ Stacey said. ‘What’s happened?’
‘I want to run away and start afresh,’ said Cat.
‘What’s happened?’ Stacey repeated.
‘you’ll never believe who I met yesterday,’ Cat said and out the story tumbled.
Ben came home to find Cat curled up on the sofa in his towelling robe looking as though she had flu. He put his hand against her forehead and then stroked her cheek.
‘How are you, babe?’ he asked. ‘Did you have much of a day?’
‘I spoke to Stacey,’ Cat told him, ‘for over an hour. Sorry – I know It’s long-distance.’
‘Don’t be daft,’ said Ben. ‘It was probably a good thing to do. Have you – Fen? Pip?’
Cat shook her head and scrunched her eyes. ‘can’t do that just yet,’ she said.
‘Did you tell Stacey everything?’
‘Of course,’ said Cat, ‘and that I wanted to go back to Boulder for ever.’
‘Would you like that?’ Ben asked thinking the timing was lousy but he loved his wife and would move mountains for her, or move back to the mountains with her.
Cat gave a forlorn smile. ‘The thing I love most about Stacey is that She’s so good at the caring sympathy but She’s also brilliant at common sense. She has Fen’s and Pip’s qualities perfectly combined.’
‘What did she say?’
‘She said going back now would be running away. She said if I Don’t face facts head-on, They’ll hunt me down and haunt me.’
‘And how do you feel?’
‘I Don’t care if I’d be running away,’ Cat said thoughtfully, ‘but I trust Stacey and I know what she says makes sense.’
Ben put his arms around her. ‘Bloody hell, babe, what a total palaver.’ Cat snuggled into the crook of his arm. ‘For the first time, I actually give thanks for the dullness of my own family,’ he told her.
‘For the first time in my life, I wish my family weren’t who they are. For the first time ever, I curse all those eccentricities and unconventional quirkinesses that I used to feel so proud of.’
‘You have me,’ Ben said, tufting life into the flatness of her hair, ‘and for me, You’re just what this doctor ordered.’
Ben could not reach Cat on her mobile phone the next day and it unnerved him. He had considered going in late but there was a departmental meeting he could not miss. She’d assured him she felt fine, that She’d slept well, that she felt much better than she had the previous day. He’d studied her face carefully. Pale but not drawn; her eyes dull but not so desperate now; She’d washed her hair and styled it.
‘I’ll be fine,’ she told him. ‘I’m going to fanny around the flat for a bit, do some ironing then go through the jobs in yesterday’s Guardian.’
‘I’ll phone you later,’ he’d told her, with a glance at his watch and a tender kiss.
And he had been trying to. But her phone was off. Now he wasn’t sure what to do. Nip home during his lunch-hour? Not practical, as the afternoon surgery was always a busy one. Phone her sisters? He didn’t think She’d thank him for that, at the moment, though he felt they would. He tried both phones again and left messages on each. Over lunch by himself in the canteen, he wondered if Cat had found much demand for sports journalists in the job pages of yesterday’s Guardian.
; Ben tried her phone a final time, five minutes before his afternoon appointments were due to commence. She answered. Thank Christ.
‘Hi, just me,’ he said, feigning a casual tone.
‘Oh. Hi.’ She sounded odd.
‘You OK, babe? I’ve been trying all morning.’
‘I’m fine. I can’t really talk right now.’
Was she whispering? Why was she whispering? Ben shook his phone. ‘Hullo? Where are you? Are you all right?’
‘I’m fine. I’m at work. I Don’t know their policy on personal calls.’
‘At work? What work! Cat?’
‘I’ll tell you when I see you tonight. I finish at 6.30. I’m fine. See you later.’
At work? Cat had a job? What sort of job? How could she find one and start there and then? What was she doing? This time last week he would have been delighted for her to have been so proactive and successful in finding a job. Instead, he worried that her haste was indicative of some state of denial. It was only forty-eight hours after meeting her mother and father for the first time.
Ben’s secretary was buzzing through the first patient. Ben glanced at the notes. Ah yes, the male ballet dancer with the tendonitis. Later, between patients, Ben sent Cat a text message; hopeful that She’d be able to respond, whatever her employers’ take on mobile phones.
job wot job? DrB x
The answer came an hour later.
Dovidels!
There are eighteen branches of Dovidels, up and down the country, comfortingly uniform in their classic bookshop interiors, a brave and stubborn reaction to the cavernous bookstores found in city centres and commercial parks. In design, Dovidels shops are bright and stylish; burgundy-coloured shelves edged in maple, limestone floors, leather armchairs and sofas. For Cat that day, it was the lure of such a chair and the opportunity to flick through a new Lance Armstrong biography in an amenable environment. Over an hour later, she was still there and the friendly manager who’d said hullo to her earlier now remarked in passing that there was a job going.
‘You look part of the furniture already,’ he added.
‘Have I outstayed my welcome?’ Cat worried.
‘Not at all,’ he said.
‘Are you serious about a job?’ she asked.
‘Yes. Do you love books?’
‘God yes,’ said Cat, ‘but I Don’t have any experience – I was a journalist. A sports journalist.’
‘Hey – you wrote words, now sell them. Are you interested?’
‘I think I am. Yes. Yes I am.’
‘When can you start?’
‘Now?’
‘There speaks a Dovidels girl. Welcome.’
KATE AND MAX AND MERRY MARTHA
Over the time that Cat had spent analysing the roofscapes, making long-distance phone calls and finding herself a job, Fen and Pip had been trying to find their feet too, seeking a balance of their own amongst the debris of their family trauma. They’ve left messages for Cat by phone and text and they’ve been in touch with each other to say, Hullo, how are you feeling, what should we do. But the truth is, they Don’t know how They’re feeling or what they should or can do.
Like Cat, their initial and instinctive priority is to establish firm footing in their individual lives before they can tackle their wider roles as sisters, half sisters, nieces, daughters.
‘Fen, well hullo! We haven’t seen you in ages! Come on in, come on in. Just wait until you see Max – he has four teeth and another two breaking!’
Previously, Fen had found Kate somewhat overpowering, her house a little intimidating and little Max rather annoying. Kate’s life was all so fastidious, so impeccably ordered, so terribly grown-up. Kate’s life, it seemed, barred tiredness, fretting and mess. The walls and floors, an elegant chorus of ochre and taupe, were miraculously unscuffed and gunk-free. There must be rusks and rice cakes in places other than labelled Tupperware in the meticulously organized cupboards. Mashed into the rug, perhaps? Down the sides of the sofas, surely? Apparently not. Max’s hand-crafted wooden toys were so tasteful and so amazingly unchewed. How could Kate’s baby never be sticky? How had he managed to sleep through the night since ten weeks old? And have four teeth and another two breaking? How did Kate have a wardrobe free from stains and why did her hair always look so good? How on earth could a baby co-exist so happily with decorative pebbles placed on the side of the modernist fireplace?
Fen had been avoiding these mums-and-tots gatherings at Kate’s because invariably she left feeling personally unkempt, grubby even, self-conscious about her surfeit of stained clothing and split ends. She also felt petulantly discomfited with her own home: shelves yet to be painted, cushion covers in need of a clean, gaudy plastic toys with tinny electronic jingles and indeterminate stickiness, beakers with mismatched lids, no ensuite utility room, an ooze of Johnson’s baby shampoo treacherous on the bathroom floor. She tried to rationalize how, if Cosima was partial to the woodchips in the playground, what a meal She’d make of decorative pebbles at home. After gatherings at Kate’s, Fen would return home convinced her organic food wasn’t organic enough, her baby wasn’t teething quickly enough and that somehow she as a mother wasn’t doing anything quite well enough at all.
Fen didn’t much connect with Kate, didn’t care for her plasma TV, shared nothing in common with her birth story, was irritated by her success with broccoli and her smugness with Max’s centile chart. But more than her hair, Fen envied Kate her composure; her ability to achieve so much with so little visible expenditure. How could Max have four teeth and two breaking yet his mother have no dark circles around her eyes? How was it possible for Kate to prepare such successful dishes utilizing organic vegetables of every colour when there was no evidence of it daubed on her kitchen walls? How did Kate get so much enjoyment out of these banal gatherings when Fen left them feeling inadequate and insecure yet bizarrely envious? How was Kate able to be constantly so gracious? It made Fen feel all the more frazzled and fractious.
However, the day after Fen discovered Derek and met her mother, she made a beeline for Kate’s and was the last to leave. Suddenly she found all the tasteful, neutral loveliness utterly soothing. She coveted Kate’s walls and rugs and home cinema system, the shiny Lexus jeepy vehicle parked outside. Fen now felt slightly in awe of it all, as if here was a proper and conventional grown-up environment to which to aspire. She found herself far more conversant with the group than She’d ever been, happily imparting her recipe for carrot-and-sweet-potato fritters to a cheerily receptive audience. She made plans with Beth to take their babies to SplashyKins at the local swimming pool the next day and even suggested to the group at large that they all meet at the café in Highgate Woods the day after that. She asked Joanne for her hair-dresser’s salon, she wrote out Susie’s salmon pie recipe, she took down the number of Kate’s decorators and made a note to phone Lexus for her nearest dealership.
Fen suddenly didn’t mind that Cosima had fewer teeth than her contemporaries, nor was she remotely worried that her baby was happy to sit Buddha-like whilst the others were keenly attempting to crawl. Fen’s overwhelming ambition, just then, was not to compete but to blend in, to fit the scene as evenly as Kate’s walls ran from soft ochre to antique buff. To dull down elements of her sense of self in return for an environment of safety and belonging seemed no compromise to Fen. It wasn’t too dissimilar to her first days at university, when she chattered to anyone even if she sensed little in common, let alone any potential for lasting friendship. Just having company was the key. Thus she joined practically every university club, from Cycling to Cluedo, Wine Soc. to Winnie-the-Pooh Soc. – £1 for a sense of belonging was a small price to pay. It all helped to pass the time in a new world and made it seem not such a hostile place. Over a decade later, Fen found herself a new club out of necessity; Yummy-Mummy Soc. (London North branch), with daily activities to tag along to. Blend, blend until all is refreshingly bland.
Pip McCabe’s career was an odd one. There is little true
structure to being a clown. Children have birthdays but once a year and being married to a well-off accountant had enabled Pip to cut right back on her weekend work. Tuesdays and Thursdays she worked as Dr Pippity, her clown-doctor alter ego, a vastly different form of clowning for which she was rigorously trained to bring an alternative form of therapy to the children’s wards at St Bea’s hospital. During school holidays, Pip was rushed off her stripy, clodhopping feet, performing as Merry Martha in Golders Hill Park, on Parliament Hill, at Brent Cross shopping centre and the KidsKorners in theme-pub gardens.
Often on a Monday, She’d visit Fen, or spend hours on the phone nattering with Cat, since her return. However, the day after Pip met her mother, lost half a sister and discovered Django was called Derek, her appointments diary was frustratingly bare. It wasn’t as though she had an agent she could phone to ask, ‘Any jobs going for today?’ But Pip had to get out of the house because thoughts were starting to lurk around her soul, badgering her mind and hurting her heart, and once they took hold, she feared they’d never let go of her. Where better to hide than behind a slather of slap and motley.
So Pip undressed. She pinned back her hair with kirbygrips, laid out pots and palettes, sponges and brushes and slowly masked Pip McCabe from view. She pulled on a pair of lurid tights that She’d customized from two pairs – one leg green and sparkly, the other red and stripy. She put on a polka-dot ra-ra skirt and a lemon-yellow top bedecked with patches of orange material. She rejected the multi-coloured waistcoat because it was an old one of Django’s and she did not feel like having him around her today. Finally she plaited her hair into pigtails so tight they stood out at right angles to her head as if She’d suffered a comedy electric shock or was the head of the Pippi Longstocking Appreciation Society. Before she left the house, she took the bucket from under the sink. She drove to Brent Cross shopping centre and spoke to management about loitering with intent to raise money for charity. They gave her the go-ahead, knowing her well.