The Woman at Number 24

by Juliet Ashton

  The note had been slipped under the door during the night. Sarah recognised Leo’s writing.

  Darling! I feel as if there’s a terrible cloud hanging over us. We must talk about the flat. Don’t worry – we won’t fall out about it. We couldn’t, could we? We’re us, after all. H is whisking me away for a Cotswolds mini-fucking-break. I’ll race upstairs the moment I return. Please be there. It makes me happy to know you’re waiting for me. L xxx

  Yes, it’d be nice for you, thought Sarah, but not so nice for the woman doing the waiting. She tore the paper into tiny shreds. Not with fury, but with the same satisfaction as finishing the ironing pile or clearing her email inbox. She was no longer Rapunzel, winding down her hair for Leo.

  Because consciences don’t atrophy overnight, Sarah knew she must face Leo, one on one. Not just to reiterate that she was staying put – Sarah was pinning her hopes on a meeting with a financial adviser later in the week – but to explain that she was opting out of their game of Grandma’s Footsteps. It had gone too far. We even made love . . .

  A one-night stand with your ex is more than the sum of its parts.

  Outside, Notting Hill straightened its wig and withstood its hangover. A platoon of street cleaners had cleared the slurry of litter at dawn. There would be no more samba outside the corner shop until next August.

  Number twenty-four was quiet as Sarah ran from the very top to the very bottom of the house to check on the Mavis Situation. Sarah knew how it feels to be neglected when you’re poorly – her mother had believed all Sarah’s childhood illnesses to be attention-seeking charades – and so she let herself in to Flat E, armed with a newspaper, a bottle of elderflower pressé and one of Tom’s sunflowers, ceremonially decapitated for the VIP patient.

  ‘Such a gent,’ Mavis was saying, as Sarah handed her the paper.

  Surreptitiously, Sarah did a brief inventory of the invalid. Mavis’s voice was firm and her movements brisk. As Sarah nipped to the bathroom, she heard Mavis say, ‘So thoughtful, so kind.’

  ‘Who is?’ Sarah hurriedly counted the tablets in the blister pack. None had been taken since she’d found them a week ago. Mavis was ignoring medical advice, as if motor neurone disease might blow over, like a cold.

  ‘Tom, of course,’ said Mavis as Sarah returned and sat on the end of the bed. ‘I know deep down he’s a rotter, dear, but he was tender with me, even when Peck called him a bleeping bleepy bleep.’

  ‘I have something to tell you about Tom.’

  The tale of mistaken identity had to be recounted twice. Mavis simply didn’t believe it the first time around. ‘So the caddish behaviour wasn’t caddish at all. He was simply asking you out.’ Mavis couldn’t find any humour in the story. She lay back, fidgeting. ‘Can you still feel it?’

  ‘Feel what?’ Sarah sat on her hands to stop herself bulldozing through the clothes and shoes and tat on the floor, and the carrier bags bulging with more clothes and shoes and tat that huddled in the eternal dusk of Mavis’s bedroom.

  ‘The kiss, dear. Can you still feel Tom’s kiss?’

  ‘No! That was ages ago.’ Sarah put her fingertips to her mouth. Her lips swelled.

  ‘The best kisses linger forever.’ Mavis closed her eyes. She looked eerie, almost dead, her white hair and her white skin barely making a dent in her once-white pillow. Sarah reached over to the wardrobe, surreptitiously tucking in the sleeve of a coat that peeked out. Her fingers lingered; cashmere. Checking that Mavis’s eyes were still shut, Sarah leaned forward to investigate the cupboard’s dark interior. Satin. Velvet the colour of raspberries. A Chanel-styled jacket. No, a Chanel jacket.

  Blimey. Sarah sat back. ‘Which kisses do you remember, Mavis?’

  ‘We’re not talking about me.’ The eyes snapped open. ‘We’re talking about you and your complicated love life.’

  ‘More like lack of love life.’

  Mavis shook out her newspaper. ‘Tish,’ she said. ‘A lovely hunk like Tom after you? You’re about to embark on something wonderful.’ She peered over the headlines. ‘Or is there a fly in the ointment?’

  ‘A fly with good hair that has been chasing Tom for months and has finally caught him.’ If it wasn’t for the mix-up, Sarah and Tom could be knee-deep in a relationship by now. ‘I want to know him, Mavis. He intrigues me.’ Tom was the box set she’d been waiting for, the long bath, the weekend break, the morning run.

  ‘It’s not just that he’s handsome? Because he’s really rather gorgeous. I didn’t notice until yesterday.’

  ‘Am I fickle, Mavis? I was waxing lyrical about Leo until recently.’

  ‘Do these feelings for Tom come from the very core of you?’ Mavis folded the paper and regarded her seriously, an aged child in her prim and proper nightdress. ‘Or is he a passing fancy?’

  ‘I don’t know much,’ said Sarah, ‘but this I do know. I could make Tom happy, and if he cared about me, well, I’d smile for the rest of my life.’ She sighed. ‘I’d smile in my sleep.’

  ‘But he does care about you, dear. The infamous kiss that was an evil kiss but is now revealed to be a romantic kiss . . .’ Mavis drew breath. ‘That tells us he finds you appealing.’

  ‘No. It tells us he did find me appealing before I went nuclear at him.’ Tom had been forthright about his attraction to Sarah; she’d smothered her response with the remnants of her need for Leo, and misplaced loyalty to Jane. ‘He has a girlfriend now. I can wait.’ She wouldn’t wait for Leo, but Tom was different. ‘I’ve had a lot of practice at that.’

  ‘By which time you’ll be with somebody else and so on and so forth.’ Mavis raised a ragged eyebrow. ‘You snooze you lose.’

  ‘Get you with your cool and groovy sayings. You don’t think I’m fickle, then?’ That had been one of her mother’s favourite put-downs about the father Sarah resembled.

  ‘Far from it. I longed for you to see through old Leo the lion. Rather a scraggy mane and no use at the hunt, I imagine. I couldn’t nudge you, though. One has to be patient with people.’

  I’m certainly being patient with you, Mavis! Today, with Mavis recuperating, was not the time to confront her about her condition, to say: ‘I know your big secret and it’s going to be OK.’ It would take sensitivity and persistence to discover why Mavis neglected to take her medication. Perhaps she wanted to follow Zelda. Sarah took a chance. ‘Mavis, are you happy?’

  Mavis answered without bluster. ‘No, dear, I’m not. I’ve made foolish choices that I deeply regret. I have a liaison with darkness I can’t avoid. Learn from me, dear. Don’t let life have its way with you. Stay in the driving seat.’

  ‘I hate to think of you unhappy.’

  ‘You make me happy. I’m nearer to the final chapter than you, which means I’ve earned the right to speak my mind, so here goes.’ Mavis fixed her with those animal-bright eyes. ‘I love you, Sarah. So do me a favour, dear, and stop worrying about me, and get on with living your life.’

  ‘Am I allowed to say I love you back?’

  Mavis went back to the headlines. ‘Just this once.’

  After the long weekend, St Chad’s had a sluggish air, as if everybody would rather be in bed. Sarah went about her duties automatically as the day dragged its feet around her.

  She had a sense of displacement. The same feeling she had when she overdressed for a casual birthday do in a pub. Behind the reception desk she was uncomfortable, marooned, unsure of herself. She missed, she realised, the insulated calm of the therapy suites.

  At about three o’clock, Nadia came through the revolving door with her key worker. ‘Sarah!’ said Nadia. ‘Look.’ She held up an ice lolly. ‘It’s orange-flavoured,’ she added helpfully.

  ‘Your favourite,’ said Sarah, turning the book so the middle-aged woman holding Nadia’s other hand could sign them both in.

  ‘Why aren’t we friends any more?’ asked Nadia evenly, licking the lolly.

  ‘We are, we are,’ said Sarah. ‘But this is my job now. Out here.’

  �
�You’re the hello lady,’ said Nadia.

  ‘I am,’ smiled Sarah.

  ‘Aw,’ said the other receptionist as Nadia walked away. ‘Bless her.’

  Sarah was made of fire. She wanted to leap up and run down the hallway, blazing. She wanted to catch up with Nadia, crouch beside her, talk to her. But Sarah simply touched an icon on the screen in front of her and said ‘Good morning St Chad’s’ into her headpiece. She barely listened to the reply and possibly put the caller through to the wrong extension. Sarah couldn’t care; her head was full of Nadia. And Shavonne. And Lily. And Conor. All the children she’d got to know who had wormed their way into her soul. Only for me to drop out of their lives.

  There was a sacred aspect to St Chad’s work. Not that Sarah saw herself as a high priestess – far from it – but there was something soulful and right about a building full of people working towards the emotional health and safety of vulnerable children.

  It felt like shirking not to be involved when she was so highly qualified; sometimes Sarah wondered if she was kidding herself that it was fear that held her back.

  The real reason, though, was simple. I can’t offer them what they need. With Una it was as if she was talking to her younger self, but at the clinic it was different – Sarah wasn’t the person she used to be.

  Some of the changes were for the better; seeing Leo’s faults in 3D was a major step forward. Some of them were disastrous, such as her misreading of the people around her.

  Sarah had, in no particular order, revised the end of her marriage so it bore no resemblance to the truth; believed Smith’s shambolic lies; overlooked the pearl that was Mavis; married off a brother and sister. Her confidence was riddled with bullet holes.

  Keeley felt differently. ‘You’re as tough as old boots,’ she’d said, cornering Sarah for yet another ‘little chat’ about her future by the microwave. Waiting for a bowl of soup to heat, she’d said, ‘Look, girl, you recovered from Leo. You refused to give into temptation with a world-class hottie because of loyalty to your mate. You withstood a nightmare childhood. You’re exactly what I need on my team. Use all that fear and sadness and longing and . . . and . . .’ Keeley had waved her arms, ‘shit to help our clients.’

  Sarah had assumed that a switch would flick in her head when it was time to return to her ‘real’ work, but when she looked at Nadia she felt only her own need. There was no answering swell of confidence or wisdom. Maybe it wasn’t a matter of ‘when’ but ‘if’.

  Maybe, Confucius, that’s my truth.

  *

  The organic farm shop’s delights were passed over in favour of the greasy spoon three doors down. With Jane about to depart for Suffolk again, a debriefing was necessary.

  ‘Still can’t get my head around it.’ Jane took up her bacon butty. ‘Me and Tom married. It makes my toes curl. I have to stop thinking about it in case I go into a terminal cringe and actually die of yuk.’

  ‘I feel so stupid. Lisa knew you were brother and sister. And Leo; he knew.’ Sarah realised she’d misjudged his nonchalance about whether Jane had noticed the attraction; he’d rightly assumed that a sibling wouldn’t be jealous. ‘I misled Mavis, who’s had to listen to me bang on about how guilty I felt. All this is your fault,’ she said. ‘Brothers and sisters don’t normally live together at your age.’

  ‘You make us sound like fairground freaks. Tom was sick of house-sharing and it made sense for him to move in with me and help fix the place up. I get miserable without Jamie. Nobody to snap at in the mornings. Nobody to snuggle up to when EastEnders comes on. Oh, sorry . . .’

  ‘Don’t be silly.’ Sarah hated being the poster girl for the sad ’n’ lonely. ‘You’re allowed to miss your husband, Jane. The amazing, sexy, funny Jamie.’

  ‘You’re going to love him.’ Jane drummed her feet. ‘He’s going to love you! I can’t wait for you to meet.’ This was her forte; pushing people together whether they liked it or not.

  Thankfully, we like it just fine. ‘Remember when you said you rarely have sex?’ Sarah stirred sweetener into tea strong enough for a mouse to trot across. ‘I thought that meant your marriage was in trouble.’

  ‘It’s only ’cos the British Army keeps us apart, the bastards. I mean, never mind protecting the realm, what about my nookie? Believe me, if Jamie were here all the time we’d—’

  ‘Stop! You’re the queen of oversharing.’ Sarah was about to make a joke along the lines of married people never having sex, when something stopped her. The joke was true in her case. The marital lovemaking she’d remembered so nostalgically was a high days and holidays occurrence. Their sex life had tapered off before Smith, before Helena.

  We ruined our marriage without any help from other people.

  ‘The last time we did it . . .’ Ignoring Sarah’s rolled eyes, Jane counted on her fingers. ‘Over a month ago.’ Jane let out a growl of frustration. ‘Jamie was in London for forty-eight hours, some ceremonial bollocks at his regiment’s HQ. He slipped away and met me at a hotel.’

  That was the day Sarah ran into Tom at the car wash. The day she’d snapped his olive branch in two. ‘I’ve been thinking back through our conversations and with hindsight it all seems obvious. The truth almost came out so many times, but each time we just managed to skate over it. When I used to comment on how much you loved Tom—’

  ‘And I’d say yes, sure, but I want to kill him some days! That sounded like a typical married couple.’

  ‘Exactly. I’d mention “your husband” meaning Tom—’

  ‘And I’d assume you meant Jamie.’ Jane shook her head at the absurdity of it. ‘So many near misses. If we’d sorted this out earlier you and Tom could be doing the do right this minute.’

  ‘I don’t understand why you never said anything about Jamie being a soldier.’

  ‘I truly thought I had, Sarah. We made friends so fast that I obviously skipped a few basic facts. I feel like I’ve known you all my life.’

  ‘Me too,’ smiled Sarah. At least I came out of this debacle with one Royce to call my own. ‘We have a lot of catching up to do. Is Jamie in any danger?’

  ‘Not in Cyprus,’ laughed Jane. She glossed over his tours of Afghanistan – ‘Let’s just say I didn’t sleep’ – and explained that he’d be out for good in January. ‘I’m literally counting the days. There are one hundred and twenty-seven. You’ll be back at St Chad’s by then.’ Jane was carefully off-hand.

  She wants me to earn more, to remortgage, and stay put. The women needed each other. Sarah warmed herself at that little bonfire, but couldn’t visualise herself among the children. ‘Did Tom mention my lunge at the carnival?’

  ‘Haven’t seen him. He stayed at Camilla’s last night.’ Jane cast around for ketchup. ‘First time.’

  ‘I drove him into her bed. I’m a sexual sheepdog.’

  ‘They’re going steady, to use a hideous phrase of my mother’s.’ Jane sighed, watching Sarah quizzically. ‘I could say something if you like. Tell him how you feel.’

  The idea appalled and thrilled Sarah. ‘No. Yes. Is that a good idea?’

  ‘Tom’s private about his love life. I don’t know, Jane. He does his own thing. It might do more harm than good.’

  Sarah absolved her. ‘You’re right. Leave it.’

  ‘I’m astonished Tom tried to kiss you that night. He’s usually too proud to wade in if he’s not getting the signals. He must have really, really liked you. When I said that Camilla was barking up the wrong tree, I meant he was stuck on you. That’s why I faked a migraine in the bar, so he’d have a chance to reel you in with the old Royce charm.’

  ‘You faked—?’

  ‘Jesus, Sarah, you can be very slow on the uptake.’

  ‘I humiliated him.’

  ‘He’ll get over it.’ Jane seemed to see Tom as a child still, the robust brother she’d grown up with. ‘What’s really the deal with you and Leo? This U-turn feels a bit sudden.’

  Sarah used to liken her love for Leo to a tap
, insisting that she couldn’t just turn it off because he’d walked out; now the tap had dribbled dry of its own accord. ‘It seems like it happened overnight, but just like it takes a while to fall in love and then bam, it’s taken me a while to fall out of love.’

  ‘And we’re at the bam stage?’

  ‘Yeah.’ The tea was cold; Sarah motioned for a top-up. ‘I’ve been nursing a fantasy. The Leo I loved is mostly my own needs projected. It’s not his fault.’ She waved away Jane’s spirited protest. ‘No, really. Leo’s the victim this time around. I’ve been telling him – not in so many words, but with my behaviour – that I’m madly in love with him, that I want him back; I want us back, when really it was just blind panic. After the divorce and Smith’s so-called death, I wanted to crawl back to the familiar, the way you want to crawl back to bed when you have flu. I hoped everything would be fine if we revived the marriage. But there’s no mystery why the marriage failed, is there?’

  ‘Leo couldn’t keep his wotsit in his pants. That story about coming on to Smith when he thought she was dying . . . the man has a problem.’

  ‘I didn’t suspect, so what does that tell you about the communication in our marriage? There was so much wrong. He didn’t just dislike my job, Jane, he didn’t respect it. He thinks social workers are sissies.’

  ‘When really they’re soldiers on the front line.’

  ‘We rarely had sex. I was tired. Or he was drunk. All that cooperation I claimed to miss so much? We couldn’t even decide on a paint colour! Leo forced decisions on me, and I made allowances. I was cruising along, in love with this fictional hero I’d created, one who was faithful, who wanted to make a forever home with me, have a family. I never pushed for any of those things. Now I look back and think, hang on! Why was our flat unfinished? Why did we never talk about a baby?’

  ‘Sarah, you’re crying.’ Jane leaned over and wiped Sarah’s cheeks with her fingers. ‘I wish I could do something.’

  ‘You do plenty.’ Sarah sniffed, resetting her emotional thermostat.

  ‘You might not like what I did this morning . . . but it’s for your own good.’