Edward flips on the coffee machine. The hum follows him across the kitchen as he drops four slices of pre-cut bread into the oversize toaster, then loads up his arms with milk, margarine, orange juice and jam. A twinge of guilt hits Edward’s stomach as he unloads his flimsy breakfast goods onto the table. He should be making scrambled eggs and baked beans to accompany the toast, perhaps with slices of bacon, or porridge with fresh fruit and nuts – something substantial and nutritious for a growing girl. Edward can’t remember the last time he ate a piece of fruit, though he knows he must have done since his favourite sister’s frequent visits are always accompanied by healthful snacks.
The toast pops up and Edward spreads jam (strawberry without seeds is all Tilly will accept) on two slices of toast and pours a glass of orange juice, warming the glass in his hands before setting it on the table, to soften the chill of the juice.
‘Till! Breakfast!’ Edward aims his voice at the ceiling – also the floor of the bathroom, where his daughter now spends most of her time. Isn’t thirteen too young to be caring about make-up, dresses and boys? He can’t remember either of his sisters caring about such things so young, one of them still doesn’t and probably never will. Sadly, Tilly seems all too acutely aware of such things. Last night, to Edward’s absolute horror, his daughter refused rice pudding after dinner on the grounds that she was ‘watching her weight’. As these three words hit the table and rolled towards him, like bowling balls careening towards his chest, Edward was at a total loss for what to say. Unfortunately, Tilly had taken the silence as validation of her need to diet.
‘See,’ she’d declared, pushing her chair away from the table, scraping its wooden feet on the stone floor. ‘I knew you thought I was fat!’
‘I … I … What?’ Edward had fumbled about in the fog, trying to grasp hold of something that made sense. ‘Of course I don’t think you’re fat,’ he’d said at last. But it’d been too late, his daughter had already slammed the kitchen door shut behind her.
In light of this rather horrifying turn of events, Edward has been feeling the loss of his wife in a different way. For the first few years, he simply felt as if a large slice had been taken out of his heart, along with the breath from his lungs, leaving something fundamental missing, a gaping hole from which to view what remained of his life. But for the past few months, as Tilly has somehow mutated from a sweet, shy little girl into a mercurial, bolshie teenager, Edward has longed for Greer even more as a mother than just a wife. He wants her to hold his hand during these strange, unbalancing experiences, wants her to explain what’s going on, to come and take charge, before it all gets any more out of control.
Generally, before Tilly turned strange, Edward thought he was doing okay. Not wonderfully or brilliantly, but okay. He’d learnt how to live, how to function from day to day, without his wife. He’d learnt, until recently anyway, how to single-parent his child. He’d learnt how to skirt around the edges of his loss so that, while he still saw the gaping hole, he no longer fell into it.
‘Till! You’ll be late!’ Edward tips his head back towards the ceiling, noticing, for the first time, a large crack in the plaster snaking across the surface. It’s not the first crack he’s discovered, the house (a beautiful three-storey Victorian terrace with bay windows and red-brick walls, found after they left their home on Hope Street) is riddled with them – along with patches of mould, creaking floorboards, flickering lights and jammed doors. Last Christmas, when she was still a sweet little girl, Tilly suggested these physical quirks were in fact the ghosts of her mother and stepmother trying to send messages from beyond. Edward can’t remember what words of parental wisdom he’d responded with, though he knows he didn’t admit he’d had the thought more than once himself and only wished it were true. Now he stares at the crack and sighs, having neither the energy nor inclination to deal with any of it right now, or indeed in the future.
A hairdryer blasts on above his head.
‘Tilly!’
Taking a bite of toast, then pulling his dressing gown cord tighter, Edward heaves himself out of the kitchen and into the hallway. He rests his foot on the first step of the stairs and leans against the bannister.
‘We’ll get stuck in traffic if we don’t leave in ten minutes,’ he shouts. ‘So get your skinny self down here, now!’
Above him, the hairdryer flicks off and the house is suddenly silent. A moment later, Tilly pokes her pretty face out onto the landing.
‘Hold your horses, I’ll be down in a sec. And I am not skinny. I wish!’ She rolls her eyes, before disappearing again.
But Edward can tell, by the flicker of a smile on the edge of her lips, that – for once – he’s said the right thing. He takes his foot off the stairs and turns to head back to the kitchen, when he notices the mail again, the little pile of letters lying on the mat. Just underneath the telephone bill at the top, Edward sees an envelope – the paper embedded with flower petals – addressed to ‘The Homeowner’ in purple ink. He stoops to pick it up, leaving the other letters untouched, and sits on the first step of the stairs, his silk dressing gown slipping open and exposing his legs to the chill of the unheated hallway. Not that he notices.
Gently, Edward pulls a single sheet out of the envelope and rubs the edge between his fingers. Dozens of flower petals he can’t identify are scattered through the paper – red, mauve, pink, yellow – and suddenly he remembers. Greer’s wedding dress looked just the same. She’d sewn it from a fabric that had also been embedded with petals: roses, violets, peonies, primroses … She’d pointed out each one to him with her slender, clever fingers while he had watched her mouth move around the words, still in awe that his soon-to-be wife could create such incredibly beautiful things.
Edward skims the letter, searching for the subject, glancing down to see the signature – slightly startled to see that there is none – then stops and reads it properly once, and then again.
Tilly is kicking the step above him before Edward realises she’s standing there. He shifts sideways so she can pass by. Tilly hops down the stairs then pauses at the bottom to look up at him.
‘Are you okay, Dad?’
Edward nods.
‘You look a bit weird.’
Edward manages an almost-nonchalant smile. ‘I’m fine.’
‘Okay,’ Tilly says with a shrug. ‘If you say so.’ Then she bounces off towards the kitchen, leaving her father gazing at the paper of pretty flowers and startling words he still holds in his hands.
There is one person Clara writes to regularly: her mother. These are not anonymous, unasked-for letters but accounted-for, anticipated letters.
‘I don’t know why you don’t just call to arrange things, like everyone else,’ is Sophia’s most common complaint.
‘Because letters are more personal, more thoughtful than phone calls,’ Clara protests. ‘Calling is … perfunctory; I like to write.’
‘Your calls are, and that’s whenever I can actually get you on the phone,’ her mother says, ‘but I like to chat. You can discuss things properly that way, share ideas, talk …’
‘Well, we can do that now, can’t we? Now that we’re actually together.’
‘I suppose.’ Sophia adjusts her teaspoon so it sits just at the edge of her saucer. ‘But I like to be spontaneous. I don’t see why we always have to make appointments.’
Clara looks into her own cup, as if searching for the right response in the murky depths of her milky tea. Instead, she says nothing. Sophia reaches for another scone and soaks it in butter, then adds a dollop of clotted cream.
‘But you do make the best scones I’ve ever had,’ she says. ‘And I’ve had plenty.’ She glances down at the folds of her stomach, under the shelf of her breasts.
‘Thanks,’ Clara says, deciding to accept this unexpected compliment graciously.
‘It’s a shame we didn’t inherit your granddad’s genes,’ Sophia continues. ‘That man could, and often did, eat entire afternoon teas without putting on a
single ounce. Mum was like me, though, more’s the pity.’ She casts an eye over her daughter. ‘You didn’t stand much of a chance, what with me and your father, did you? It’s a shame, but still …’ She shrugs, adding a little more cream before taking another bite of the scone.
Clara studiously ignores both her own stomach and the remark, and takes another sip of tea. She’d been about to have a second scone herself, but won’t now.
‘Your grandma was a fabulous cook, though, I’ll give her that. She published a cookbook once. Did I ever tell you that? Dad was proud as punch. Or is that pleased as …? At any rate, he was thrilled.’ Sophia beams as she munches. ‘He used to sell signed copies in the shop. He made her one of his special pens, so she could sign them all in style. I think he bought half the publisher’s stock, gave them as gifts to everyone we knew.’
Clara stares at her mother. ‘You’ve never told me that before.’
‘Didn’t I? Oh, I thought—’
‘What’s it called?’
Sophia holds her scone in mid-air. ‘You know, I don’t remember. Isn’t that funny? I must have read the recipes hundreds of times, ’til I had them memorised, but I can’t recall the title.’
‘But you must have a copy,’ Clara says. ‘I can’t believe I’ve never seen it.’
‘Actually, I don’t. I had my own, signed, of course. But it got so stained over the years – I suppose at some point, I must have thrown it out.’
‘You threw away Grandma’s book?’
‘I’m sorry, sweetie.’ Sophia shrugs. ‘You know I’m not very attached to things. Your father taught me that.’
Clara winces but says nothing.
‘And,’ her mother continues breezily, ‘once I had all my favourite recipes memorised, I didn’t really need the book any more now, did I?’
It’s not about needing, Clara wants to say, it’s about treasuring. But she knows there’s no point. Her mother is so unlike her in this respect (and most others) that they simply aren’t able to understand each other. Sophia’s house is all cream and chrome, plain carpets, unadorned walls, sleek modern appliances, without a sign of past or personality, and everything looking – at least on Clara’s rare visits – as if airbrushed for an imminent magazine photo shoot. By contrast, Clara’s house (inherited from her grandfather) is a homage to chaos, clutter, colour and old-fashioned living. No two rooms are alike, though they share common themes – vintage clocks, weathered Persian rugs, velvet cushions, potted purple orchids, stacks of books, framed letters written by famous people – and all are unified by the fact that everything appears to be dated c.1900 and it seems that nothing once arrived in the house had ever left again.
Clara tries to keep cordial relations with her mother, which means keeping visits fairly frequent (or Sophia starts texting pointed remarks about feeling abandoned and unloved) but as short as politely possible. It bothers Clara sometimes, if she ponders on it for too long, that she isn’t close with either of her parents and that she doesn’t have any siblings. But then she thinks of her grandparents and decides that the two things – one unfortunate, the other not – balance each other out fairly enough.
‘I’ll bet there’s at least a few hundred copies in this house, if only you could find them in the mess,’ Sophia says, finishing off her scone in another bite.
Clara shakes her head, not rising to the bait. ‘If there was a single copy I’d have found it. I know every book in the house. It’s not here.’
Her mother pauses, teacup at her lips, to consider. ‘Have you looked in the attic?’
Clara frowns. ‘What attic?’
Sophia raises an eyebrow and doesn’t attempt to hide her smile. ‘I thought you knew everything about this place.’
‘I’ve only lived here ten years, you grew up here,’ Clara says, trying not to snap.
Sophia slips off the breakfast stool she was perched on, her feet encased in expensive dark-brown suede boots, alighting with a determined thud on the wooden floor. Another way in which Clara differs from her mother is in appearance, not in size, perhaps, but in presentation. Sophia is always impeccably put together in muted monochrome silk, satin, cotton and cashmere – so her clothes blend with her kitchen – while Clara favours cheap, cheerful prints in bright colours, so she stands out like a sore thumb in her mother’s sterile surroundings but blends seamlessly with her own oriental rugs.
‘Follow me,’ Sophia says as she disappears out of the kitchen.
Clara hurries after her. After the second flight of stairs, Sophia stops halfway along the landing. She points up at the ceiling.
‘It’s here.’
Clara looks up at a beautiful oriental rug attached to the ceiling, mirroring the one on the floor beneath it. ‘Where?’
‘Underneath that rather hideous rug, I presume.’
Clara flinches.
Sophia stands on tiptoe, takes hold of the closest corner of the rug and gives it a sharp tug.
‘It’s nailed in place,’ Clara says, ‘we need a ladder.’
Ignoring her, Sophia gives another tug and one end of the rug rips off the ceiling. She sidesteps the cloud of dust that showers down upon them.
‘Pass me that garish umbrella,’ Sophia says, waving her hand in the direction of a polka-dot umbrella leaning against the wall. ‘Goodness knows what it’s doing all the way up here, but for once your clutter is useful.’
Clara hands her mother the umbrella. Sophia turns it upside down, using the curved wooden handle to unhook the brass ring fixed onto a large square of wood in the ceiling. It springs open and, after another tug, a wooden ladder uncurls to the landing floor. Clara peers up into the dark hole above her head. ‘I can’t believe I never knew about the attic.’
Sophia mounts the stairs. ‘Well, don’t stand gaping like a goldfish, come on.’
The words land like pebbles on Clara’s upturned head. She shakes off her confusion and follows her mother up the steps. When Clara emerges into the attic – to see her mother already rooting through a pile of cardboard boxes in the corner – she lets out a little gasp. The attic is large and, like every other room in the house, full to the brim with everything one could possibly imagine, and a few things one couldn’t: books, boxes, furniture, leather suitcases, racks of clothes, cracked teapots and piles of papers … Everywhere she looks Clara sees something new.
‘What is all this?’ she asks, under her breath.
‘It’s probably all rubbish,’ Sophia says, without glancing up. ‘But we might find the odd gem worth selling – I doubt it, but you never know.’
‘Maybe we shouldn’t be looking at it,’ Clara ventures. ‘Perhaps it’s private, perhaps that’s why they didn’t tell me.’
‘Oh, don’t be so silly.’ Sophia abandons the cardboard boxes and casts her eye about for something more promising. ‘Anyway, they’re dead now, so the issue of privacy is moot.’
Clara raises an eyebrow. ‘Do you feel that way about your own death?’
‘Don’t be so morbid, Clara,’ her mother says, fingering the edge of a bright-yellow satin swing dress. ‘Oh, I do wish my mother had had better taste. I wouldn’t have minded a few vintage gowns to go dancing.’
Clara regards her mother. ‘I didn’t know you danced.’
Sophia smiles. ‘What you don’t know about me, dear, is a lot.’
Clara is about to reply to this remark when her curiosity is snagged by a box a few feet away. The box is set apart from the general cornucopia of bric-a-brac and appears to have somehow escaped the thick sprinkling of dust coating everything else. The box is twelve inches tall and deep, made of shining mahogany, intricately carved in a pattern Clara recognises but can’t quite place. And then she realises. The box must have been made by the same carpenter who created the writing desk. Her mother’s chatter drops to a background hum as Clara steps towards the box, carefully picking her way over the piles scattered across her path.
Clara sits, squeezing herself between a rack of dresses and a low w
all of cardboard boxes, and passes her palm gently over the top of the box, tracing her forefinger along the swirls and swells in the wood. She finds the catch and very carefully, very slowly, opens the lid. Then she’s staring down at a package wrapped in brown paper and tied with string. And, on top, sits a note, yellowed, worn and barely readable:
For Clara,
If you haven’t found your first story yet,
I have one here for you.
I hope, too, that it might make up for all the family you have lost.
Chapter Three
After dropping Tilly at school, Edward returns immediately to the letter. He’d left it propped up on the kitchen counter by the kettle but has been thinking of nothing else since – as if he’d left pieces of his skin behind on the pages and needed to return to reattach them to himself. When he’s at last sitting with the letter in his hands again, Edward feels a deep sense of relief he can’t explain.
For months after Greer died, he’d felt that sense of loss all the time: every second of every minute of every day. He’d be walking along the hallway and stop and turn around, trying to recall what he’d forgotten. Then he’d remember: his wife. The idea that she’d gone in any sort of absolute and permanent way wasn’t something he could make sense of – neither his mind nor his body could comprehend it – he felt instead that she’d wandered off somewhere and neglected to tell him where she’d gone while, at the same time, taking a part of him with her. Eventually, Edward had managed to overcome this extremely disturbing phenomenon by shutting down every feeling part of himself, so there was nothing to miss any more, whether he’d ever had it or not.
The Lost Art of Letter Writing Page 2