A Place for Us

by Harriet Evans

  “Because of . . . the breath?”

  “No, because she was fake. She made me uneasy. She was too nice to Cat, you know what I mean?” Lucy watched her grandmother. “No, you don’t. Just—over the top. And she was horrible to Florence. You’d see it, these tiny little ways. Snide remarks and things like that, and Flo just took it. . . . You know what she’s like, just gets on with it, she’s miles away. . . .”

  Martha’s stomach clenched at the memory of a seven-year-old Florence, coming up the drive with her reddish plaits covered in mud, her too-long school skirt torn, sucking her thumb and crying, then saying phlegmatically, “Oh, I think I fell over.” The wasps that nearly killed her, the stuck door. When Hadley had bitten her, way before he went mad, but Florence couldn’t say how or where. Her books, pages ripped out, which she just taped in and carried on reading. Martha knew all that, yet she knew Daisy had needed someone to defend her, and—

  Florence. She looked at her watch, then outside, as if Flo might suddenly be arriving, though she knew she wasn’t. She desperately wanted to see her then, hold her fierce, angular daughter in her arms, tell her the truth, tell her how sorry she was, how silly she had been. She rubbed her eyes, tired.

  “We liked it when it was just us, people popping round, everything normal,” Lucy was saying. “Southpaw doing silly drawings. You singing. You helping us do plays. Helping us make weird drinks.”

  Martha stared at her granddaughter’s face. Lucy, sweet Lucy, her honesty, her openness. Lucy, who had told her the truth because she had never learned to lie. Lucy, who loved this house and everything about what Martha had created, despite the secrets and untruths that Martha felt had, for decades now, spun Winterfold up into a web, skeins of silken spider thread covering everything over.

  So something I did worked. Lucy believed it all. One person alone couldn’t bring that down, one person against the rest of them. She hated to think of Daisy as the enemy; she wasn’t. But Martha suddenly knew she had shielded her for too long, carried her. Maybe . . .

  Her heart started to beat faster. A strange, metallic taste swept her mouth. It was frightening simply to consider that one might think differently about this. Try a new way of thinking.

  Yet she had to. She blinked and shut her eyes, forcing herself to think about what Lucy had said.

  “Apple . . . what was it called, your favorite drink?” she asked eventually. “We used to have to make it every time you came over.”

  “Yes.” Lucy nodded. “I liked Apple Mingo and Cat liked—”

  “Banana Bomba,” Martha said. She could feel her chest opening out again, as if some invisible weight that had been sitting on her breastbone had been lifted away. All this love that she had to give, buried so deep. Cat, oh, Cat, my sweet, sweet girl, what did I do, why have I let you go like this? “Banana Bomba was my favorite.”

  “No, Apple Mingo was the best, only Cat wouldn’t ever tell us what was in it,” Lucy said seriously. “Wow, I still think she put maple syrup in it. Which is bloody cheating because we weren’t supposed to use sugar. And some—oh!”

  Lucy jumped as Martha stepped forward and brushed her granddaughter’s hair away from her forehead. “Sweet Lucy.” Martha cupped her chin, staring at her flushed cheeks, her beautiful hazel eyes, the round, sweet face. “Thank you.”

  “For what?” Lucy laughed. “Are you all right, Gran?”

  Martha hugged her. “Apple Mingo.” Then she squeezed her tightly, till Lucy gave a muffled yelp.

  “You’re strong, Gran, blimey.” She pulled herself away. “What do you mean? Do you believe me now?”

  “Yes, I do,” Martha began, then corrected herself. “Only—yes, I do. But listen, Lucy. No one’s happy all the time. We weren’t living in this golden kind of cage of lovely memories. It’s important you remember that, too.”

  Lucy gave a rueful smile. “Well, of course I do, Gran. I said that to you, remember? You keep forgetting I had Mum and Dad’s divorce when I was thirteen. That was pretty awful, even if we were all glad it happened. Hell, I remember Dad’s wedding to Karen. That certainly wasn’t some lovely memory I’m writing up as a keepsake.”

  “I like Karen.”

  Lucy raised her eyebrows as if to say something, then relented. “Actually, you know what? The sad thing is, I did too.”

  “She’s not dead,” Martha said, and they were both silent for a moment in the gloom of the room.

  “I’ll never stop missing Southpaw,” Lucy said after a while. “But I’ve been thinking about it a lot.” She threaded her fingers through her grandmother’s and took her hand in both of hers. “I say to myself, It’s dreadful you’re gone, but we’re so so glad you were even here. That we knew you and you were in our lives. I’m sad, but I can’t help being glad I knew him for so long. That’s what I think.”

  Martha put her head on Lucy’s shoulder. “Yes,” she said quietly, thinking about all the stories Lucy didn’t know, how her grandfather had suffered to get to here, and how much happiness he’d brought people, how strong his spirit was. How he had saved Cassie, taken Florence; how they had found each other . . . But that was all for another day, she knew. “Yes, you’re right.” Then she gave a big, deep sigh, and nodded. It had happened, and she saw it now; and it would be hard, but she could see the way out, the way she had to start again.

  She said, “All right, then. It changes. Everything changes here.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, enough of this. I’m in charge now. Let’s put the kettle on and work out what we do now. What I do now.” She said quietly, “I have to do everything differently now.”

  She went to the huge cupboard in the hall and took out some light bulbs. “A light bulb moment,” she said, and Lucy, who was in the kitchen, called through, “What?”

  “Nothing, nothing.”

  As the kettle boiled, Martha pulled a green scarf off Southpaw’s sturdy old chair, and Lucy climbed up onto it, standing on tiptoe to fix the bulbs in. But halfway through the chair gave an ominous creaking crack, and buckled to one side. The first creak was enough warning for Lucy, who jumped off just as it collapsed to the ground. She landed heavily on the tiled floor, rubbing her bottom, and looked up, her face already burning red with mortification, at Martha.

  “Southpaw’s chair. Oh, Gran. I’m so sorry. I’ll get it mended.”

  Martha merely stared at the chair. “Goodness! Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” said Lucy. “But I know he loved it and—”

  Crouching, Martha ran her hands over the smooth, warm wood, pricking the pads of her fingers on the cracked, broken back legs, one of which had simply buckled. “It had a lot of wear and tear,” she said, patting her granddaughter’s leg. “Please, don’t worry. It’s my fault.”

  Lucy tried to laugh. “I’m sorry your lard-arse granddaughter broke one of your chairs.”

  “It was very old. I think we should go into Bath and get a new one tomorrow, hmm? We can burn this old friend,” said Martha, pushing the carcass of the chair to one side and standing up again. Then she helped Lucy off the floor, gripping her arm in her strong hands. “Easy come, easy go, darling. Now. Let’s see about booking some tickets.”

  PART FOUR

  * * *

  The End and the Beginning

  I think that just now we are not wanted there. I think it will be best for us to go quickly and quietly away.

  —E. Nesbit, The Railway Children

  Florence

  IT WAS STRANGE, coming out of the Royal Courts of Justice. The building was so near to the Courtauld, in the one bit of London she knew really well. The sun had broken through the purple-gray rain clouds of the morning and, as Florence made her way through the great hall of the Victorian Gothic building, buffeted by swarming men and women in black, she found she had to squint as she emerged onto the pavement. A huge din greeted her, a m
ass of yet more people calling out, shouting. She felt completely bewildered. She still wasn’t even sure she’d heard the judge right.

  Outside, crowds and TV cameras thronged the pavement, and she stopped still in shock. Protesters were waving placards. Florence peered at one of the signs; did they all hate her that much? FRACK OFF, one of them read. She remembered brushing her teeth this morning at Jim’s, frowning at herself in the mirror while listening to the Today program: yes, of course. Some judgment was expected today at the Court of Appeal on a fracking company’s right to drill in Sussex.

  One of the signs of paranoia is the belief people are out to get you. Not today. Florence gave a shaky laugh, walking with relief into the furious crowd, almost touched at the strength of their belief, the passion on their faces. She had been like that once, and it wasn’t real, she knew it now. It was fake, a comfort, something for her to cling to alone at night, like the cloth bunny she’d had when she was small—and now she’d taken it away, exposed herself, everything about her own sad, strange life . . . and she didn’t know what on earth she’d do.

  Florence shook her head, trying to stay calm, and looking wildly around for an escape.

  “This is not a matter of ‘passing off ’ or of academic judgment for the court to decide upon. . . . This is a matter of deception and of income fraudulently obtained on the basis of character assumption. You led the general public to believe you were an art historian who not only wrote and presented his own television documentary series, but also produced a tie-in book to accompany this series for which you received a not inconsiderable advance of £50,000 from Roberts Miller Press. You have heard from the managing director of that company. Ms. Hopkin says she believed, as did the public, that you were the author of this book, which was so well researched and written as to attract not merely favorable reviews in the academic world but also word-of-mouth success, thanks to an endorsement from a television book club, and so on. And as a result of that belief, you received a further £100,000 for a new book, not to mention substantial royalty payments on your first book. Professor Connolly, this case brought against you by Professor Winter is one of credibility. She is possibly the foremost expert in her subject in the world, and your cynical attempt to exploit that, your arrogance, and your sheer deceit are frankly breathtaking. I find her credible, and you to be liable for the costs of this case. The plaintiff ’s complaint is upheld.”

  She wasn’t crazy; she hadn’t misheard, had she? She had won. She had done it, this weird, unlike-her thing. Hadn’t she?

  Florence had stood in the narrow wooden pew after the judgment, not sure what to do next. Her barrister, a florid young man called Dominic, had patted her on the shoulder and disappeared. She’d seen Jim earlier, but he was teaching that afternoon and hadn’t been able to come. Lucy wouldn’t be there, of course, or Bill, or Ma; she’d deliberately pushed them all away.

  Before all this had happened, she’d always thought she was close to her brother. She and Bill weren’t usually in daily contact, but they’d talk occasionally, amusing, low-key chats when he’d tell her about the village and what she was missing, ask about her job, that sort of thing. Bill was dry, and funny, and kind. He was very kind. He was calm too, always putting things in perspective. He had been calm, rather. Now he seemed to be pitted against her, on Ma’s side. But against Ma too, somehow. . . . And there was no one she could talk to about the night Pa died. And that was . . . well, that was fine, because she was on her own now. So best get used to it.

  Yes, get used to it. So much to get used to. Florence blinked and closed her eyes, longing for a moment of quietness in the bright, loud street. When she opened her eyes, she saw a rather strange man with a notebook standing nearby. In an effort to ignore him, she fiddled with her new gray suit jacket, which she’d bought the day before the trial began. “You have to wear something vaguely businesslike, Flo,” Jim had said, laughing at her discomfort. “You can’t show up in tie-dye skirts with mirrors on, or that dress with the pockets. Even I think so.” This was indeed strong stuff coming from Jim, who was usually in creased cheesecloth from March to September, so Florence had gone to a charity shop on Upper Street and come home with this. She’d been very pleased with it.

  Today, though, Florence wasn’t quite sure whether she’d bought a man’s or woman’s suit jacket. It had been on the women’s rack, but it looked really awful, as if she were a tycoon in some program like Dallas.

  She undid the button again, and began to look along the street for the bus that’d take her home to Jim’s house, when a voice called: “Happy now, then?”

  Her heart leaping, Florence turned round. “Oh. Peter,” she said. “I thought you were—never mind. Yes, I am. Thank you.” The Thank you sounded more jubilant than she intended.

  Peter Connolly stood a few meters away on the edge of the crowd. His jowls were gray-black, as they always were by midafternoon, dark with stubble. He really was very hairy. Hair in his ears, in his nose—it was actually not at all pleasant, when you thought about it.

  He nodded a farewell greeting to his lawyer and came toward her slowly, and when he reached her he said, “Well, you’ve proved your point, I suppose. You really are a bitter, dried-up old coot, aren’t you?”

  “It’s over now, Peter. Come on.”

  He was spitting, he was so angry. “Living in your sad little apartment with your sad little mementos, waiting like a spider in her web to trap me.” He shoved his hands in his pockets, made a gormless face, and loped round in a circle in exaggerated imitation of her, as the anti-­fracking protestors looked on curiously, and one or two of them, recognizing him, nudged each other.

  “Peter.” Talitha Leafe appeared and put one pale hand on the crumpled arm of his blue linen suit, the kind he always wore on television. Florence knew that one: he’d had it on the day she’d seen him eating in Da Camillo with a couple of students, and she’d pretended to walk past and popped in to say hi, and they’d had to ask her to stay, of course. . . .

  “No,” she whispered to herself. “Not anymore.”

  “God,” he said, his large face looming over her. “I—I—you have no idea how much I wish I’d never laid a finger on you.”

  Talitha said quietly, her lips curling in cold rage: “Peter, for God’s sake, shut up! The press are everywhere.”

  “Is everywhere,” Florence muttered under her breath. She was amused to see the slightly untidy-looking chap with the notebook ambling up to them.

  He stopped in front of the awkward group and said mildly, “Hello, I’m from the Guardian. Any comment on the court’s ruling today?”

  “Um, well . . .” Florence could feel perspiration forming under the jacket, between her shoulder blades. She had no idea what the right thing to say was. “I’m delighted.”

  Peter shook his head and said under his breath, “You’ll regret this, you know that, don’t you? I mean, it’s the end for you, one way or another. You’ve burned your boats. George isn’t going to want—”

  Someone called his name, and his expression changed, the whole cast of his face. He turned round and said in his most mellifluous voice: “I say, hello! Kit! Hello there, Jen!”

  “Hello, Peter,” said the first woman in a neutral voice. Florence suddenly recognized her: she was the producer of his TV series.

  “Yes! Thank you for coming. Wondered if you’d be here, if you’d come—thanks for your support, Kit—”

  Kit said, “We had to come. We were subpoenaed, Peter.”

  Peter spoke loudly. “I need to come in for some dubbing, I know, for the last section outside Santa Croce.” Florence thought for the first time how like the snobbish English vicar in A Room with a View he was, how that had been part of his charm for them—and her too. And it was an affectation, of course. The real Peter was simply a mediocre person.

  As the two women walked away, nodding farewell politely, the older one stopped s
uddenly and whispered something to the younger one, then ran back toward Florence, avoiding Peter’s gaze.

  “Here,” she said. She thrust a small card into Florence’s hand. It dug into her palm and Florence looked down at it in surprise. “Take my card. We’d love to talk to you about a project we have in mind—now’s not the right time, I know. But you’d be fantastic. I’m Kit. I’m the commissioning editor. Give me a call because—well, yeah. You really were terrific in there. I was really proud . . . anyway.” She avoided Peter’s incredulous, shell-shocked expression and dashed off down the road to where Jen was waiting.

  Peter and Talitha stalked off in the opposite direction without another word, Talitha’s heels clicking angrily like tap shoes on the pavement. Florence was left holding the card in the middle of the street, feeling dizzier than ever. The noise from the fracking protestors grew louder. She didn’t want to be on TV, did she? What would happen with Peter’s next TV series? With his new book deal, his villa near Siena, the flat in Bloomsbury, his lecturing role on the Queen Mary? She had ruined it all for him, and for what?

  “So,” said the Guardian journalist. She’d forgotten he was still there. “What’s next for you? I mean, do you think this kind of case is reflective of the current state of academia, of television commissioning policy?”

  “Oh,” Florence said, “I don’t know. I just had to do it. I had to tell the truth. Everything out in the open.” She could feel her throat constricting.

  “Right.” He scribbled furiously on his pad. “Of course. Right . . .” He scanned the pad with his pen. “And is this correct, you’re David Winter’s daughter, right?”

  Florence found, to her horror, that she couldn’t speak. Her eyes filled with tears, her fingers clutched at her handbag strap. She opened her mouth.

  No, actually. No, I’m not.

  “You must miss him,” the journalist went on. “He was very well loved, wasn’t he? It’s not long since he died, is it?”