by Jenny Oliver
‘You want to sit?’ One of the knitting women turned, her face as wrinkled as a raisin, a touch of smudged mascara on her grooved cheek that she patted away with a neatly folded handkerchief. Beside her she had a little pug dog, his lame back legs propped up on a harness with wheels.
‘Oh no, it’s fine. Fine. You stay,’ Ava insisted.
Ava and Rory had been hovering awkwardly since they’d arrived. If their father had been there, he’d no doubt have taken charge and said something meaningful about how valuable she had been to them all. But as he was in China, cruising the Yangtze River, he wasn’t there to take charge.
‘I have said enough,’ the woman replied, standing so that Ava could take her place and ushering the women next to her to do the same. The candles all around them flickered.
Rory nudged Ava forwards. ‘I’m not really sure what to say,’ she laughed nervously as she felt the eyes in the room watching.
‘Say whatever you like.’ The woman raised her hands as if to encompass the world. ‘You are here to keep her company.’
‘To remind her of how greatly she was loved,’ another woman with bright dyed-red hair added as she went past. ‘Although we all know how much she liked a bit of gossip.’
Ava and Rory took the seats, staring at the figure laid out in front of them, her rouged cheeks and pink lipstick, her costume jewellery glistening in the dull spotlights, her beads, her velvet, her tiny shiny shoes.
Ava looked at Rory.
‘We flew out Ryanair, Gran,’ he said. ‘You’d have hated it. No leg room.’ Then he made a face like he didn’t know what else to say and beckoned for Ava to continue.
Ava swallowed. ‘You look amazing, really great outfit,’ she said. It felt as though the whole room was listening, so she stood up to talk a little quieter, her mouth close up to the glass, eyes staring at the fabric of her grandmother’s kaftan. ‘It feels like we haven’t been out here for ages. I’m sorry about that. I wish I’d seen you.’
Not knowing what else to say she glanced down at the floor, at her black shoes. ‘I’ve worn really boring shoes,’ she added, looking back up, this time at the face she knew so well, now lifeless and powdery. ‘Oh God,’ she put her hand to her mouth, ‘I’m going to really miss you.’ Her voice caught. ‘I’m sorry. Everyone’s watching me.’ She closed her eyes, stared into the darkness of her eyelids and said, ‘I suppose I just want to say thank you.’ She opened her eyes. ‘Thank you, for everything. I feel like you’re going to ring me and tell me that this all went really well.’ She half-laughed, then stopped, because as she stood there her eyes suddenly saw her own reflection in the glass rather than what was behind it. The black of her dress made her body disappear and she saw her face overlaid on to her grandmother’s. Her bobbed brown hair over shocking white curls, open blue eyes overlaid on closed tanned eyelids shaded with a stripe of bright hot pink.
At the same time a group of people bustled in through the door, as more of her grandmother’s friends arrived together, all wild gesticulations and a tumble of easy words, clutching tissues and holding hands. The space around them thronged. Rory stood up, their chairs now odd little empty islands as the number of people standing amassed.
A man in a slick black suit walked to the front and started to sing. Ava’s breath caught in her throat as the sound of this lone deep voice echoed around the room.
She stared at her face merging with her gran’s. With Valentina Brown – Val – her wonderful, opinionated, feisty grandmother, aged eighty-four, her outfit and her funeral preparations ready, her life lived like a peach so ripe it was ready to burst. Died at the same moment as Ava had lived. Like a deal had been struck with the universe to save her.
Ava could almost hear her voice. ‘You stupid girl. Me, I’m ready. You. You are not ready. You have more to give than this! You could have anything you like. Babies, husbands. I know, I know, I’m old-fashioned. Anything, Ava. Life is precious and time is not your friend. This is fate. Don’t sigh. I can hear a sigh down the phone. No respect – just like your mother. Just think for a moment, if this was it, Ava, would you be happy with what you’ve achieved?’
Ava stared transfixed at the glass. Was her life something to be proud of? Had it really been lived as well as it could? If someone had stood at the lectern to speak, what would they have said about her?
Then, just as the haunting song was reaching its peak, Rory’s phone started to ring.
‘Oh man.’ Ava rolled her eyes.
‘Sorry!’ Rory held up his hand. ‘Sorry,’ he said, as he fumbled to turn it off.
Then the coffin lid shut. Ava blinked. The curtain drew around the glass and the reflection popped.
‘Are you alright?’ Rory nudged her on the arm.
‘Yes.’ Ava tucked her hair behind her ears. They followed as everyone in the room headed towards the door.
‘Sure?’ He narrowed his gaze.
She nodded, sliding her sunglasses down as they stepped out into the dazzling bright sunshine of the little Spanish town, a place familiar from holidays – a fifteen-minute drive from their grandmother’s beachside house – visited for the supermarket, the nightclub and a day trip whenever it rained.
The mass of people spewed out into the road, the noise in the air like starlings. And when the procession began it was like burying royalty. People came out of shops to nod their heads, stood in the doorways of the little tapas bars, leaned against the gnarled trunks of the orange trees to watch. The air was perfumed with the hint of late blossom and exhaust smoke, while the sun baked them all like an oven.
There was a band made up of three old guys with a trumpet, an accordion and a tambourine, led by the singer from the wake. The music and the chatting followed the coffin all the way to the cemetery, loud and lively, the wobbling mass of people like jelly through the streets.
All exactly to Valentina Brown’s specifications.
Ava allowed herself a moment of morbid self-absorption to imagine, had it been her, the rainy, grey afternoon, people shaking out their umbrellas and wrapping their black macs tight, complaining about the terrible summer they were having, her father standing quietly in the front pew while Rory gave the eulogy. She glanced at him surreptitiously checking his emails. Great.
At the cemetery the sun flickered through giant fir trees, welcome shade as the group paused in front of a big white wall of little black doors. Behind these niches were the coffins of the people in the gilt-framed, sun-bleached photographs screwed above each door. Faded artificial flowers and alabaster Virgin Marys watched mournfully over the proceedings as rays of sun dappled like fingers of dusty light.
Words were said in Spanish, a blessing Ava couldn’t understand. So she remembered instead her first taste of chorizo and chickpeas, and the sound of Padrón peppers sizzling in the pan, so incongruous in the little Ealing bungalow where her grandparents lived, the crazy-paved outside wall and the gnomes in the garden. Remembered the piping hot doughnutty churros and the pots of warm melted chocolate for breakfast that they ate in their sleeping bags in the front room on swirly brown carpet in front of the two-bar electric fire. And then summer holiday trips in the car, driving endless miles through France and across Spain to Mariposa, the beach town where Valentina Brown grew up. Home of the Summerhouse. Once a ramshackle fisherman’s hut – a place where their great-grandfather hauled his boats to store them for the winter and mend his nets – transformed into a little haven on the cusp of the sea by Eric Brown, Val’s husband, his pale English skin and dislike of sand keeping him happily indoors with his Black & Decker and PG Tips. Summer after summer the roof was tiled, the walls plastered, the bathroom and kitchen refitted, a little terrace added and a first-floor bedroom built into the wooden-beamed eaves. Ava remembered standing in the shade of the palm trees, handing her grandfather nails and spirit levels, while Rory mixed thick cement with a trowel and they both got told off for flicking each other with white paint. And as Eric carefully laid the pebbles for the front path, Ava wrote the words ‘S
ummerhouse’ in shells and a great discussion ensued as to whether there should have been a space between the words, Rory rolling his eyes at her stupidity and Val appearing to clip him round the ear before bending down and writing ‘Our’ in shells in the wet cement above.
It was the perfect summer hideaway. And when Eric passed away, Val decamped from Ealing to Mariposa full-time, and the Summerhouse became her everyday house. But for Ava and Rory it was still the place that holidays were made of.
‘She had a bloody good innings,’ Rory whispered as Val’s coffin was lifted.
Ava turned to look at him, snapped out of her memories. ‘It’s not a cricket match, Rory.’
He snorted under his breath. Ava looked away, out across the sea of mourners, to the hats and the white hair, the smiles, the open tears, the handkerchiefs, the cigarettes, the hipflasks, the veils and the bright pops of corsage colour.
She saw the fullness of a life take shape in the people come to mourn it and was struck by the single thought: I have been given a second chance.
She turned back to see the coffin carried towards its final resting place, waves of sunlight dancing on the carved wood while glitter-edged artificial flowers shone pink around the niche in the wall like a welcoming cocoon. And as the coffin slid inside the chamber, Ava reached up to wipe the first tear from her cheek.
CHAPTER 4
The little tapas bar was heaving with people, Barcelona warming up for the night. Ava and Rory had been dropped off by their taxi on the way from the cemetery to the airport after Ava persuaded Rory they had enough time for a quick drink. Rory had huffed, reluctant. He didn’t like leaving the airport to chance.
The evening sun was hovering on the cusp of the rooftops. Sparrows jumped in the dust. A guy in the square opposite the bar was playing the guitar, tapping his foot gently, a cap for change at his feet. Ava leant forwards on the little barrel table she was sitting at to watch. Behind the guitar player a couple on a bench were arguing, while across the square little children yelped and shouted on a climbing frame. The coloured lights strung between the plane trees glowed fairground bright.
‘Bloody hell, it’s carnage in here.’ Rory appeared, balancing little plates of tapas on top of two sherry glasses, elbows out like chicken wings from battling his way through the crowd. His phone was ringing. ‘Take these,’ he thrust the drinks at her as he fumbled for his phone. ‘I have to take this. It’s work.’
Ava sat for a second, sipping her sherry, then, with nothing else to do, checked her own phone. Before she’d flown to Spain she’d sent an email to her friends about a dinner next week, the subject line: I’m alive!! Everyone had immediately said they could come. But now her friend Louise, who was thirteen weeks pregnant, was asking for it to be postponed because the date clashed with a midwife appointment. Someone else had agreed, relieved because they had a work do they’d forgotten about; another cited arrangements their partner had made without telling them. Ava scrolled through the emails, mocked by the I’m alive!! subject header on every decline.
She didn’t want to be upset. But this was starting to happen more often: the casual cancel. All she could think was that she rarely said no to an invite. Normally she would have been scrolling through her diary right now to try and find other dates that might work, might pull the group together, write some extra jolly response to keep the momentum going. Ava was constantly rearranging, juggling, to make sure that she could see everyone, do everything, make sure everyone was happy, and she hated the part of herself that wondered why, when she most needed it, they couldn’t do the same for her. Because she knew it was fruitless. They weren’t being callous – it was just the older they got, the harder it was to mesh their lives. They weren’t at university any more, nor loafing about in their first jobs, free and easy. Her friend Louise was expecting twins, for goodness’ sake.
And she wanted Louise to have babies. It was exciting. It would be lovely. But it put paid to Ava’s secret wish that Louise and Barnaby, her husband, might realise they hated each other, divorce, and then Louise would move back in with Ava, and all the fun they used to have would commence once more. Twins made the wish a lot less practical.
Rory reappeared, chucking his phone down on the table. ‘Bloody work. They’re completely incompetent. How long have we been gone? Twelve hours max and they manage to balls it up in my absence.’ He raked a hand through his hair. ‘I can literally feel the stress in my veins.’ Exhaling dramatically, he took a big swig of his drink.
Ava watched him take his seat again, barely pausing to appreciate the warm evening air, the buzz of the square, the sharp, cool sherry. It always amazed her to think of him as someone’s boss, as some bigwig revered documentary-maker, because really he was just her annoying brother who she remembered videoing himself doing embarrassing David Attenborough impressions in the back garden. Now though he was tipped for a BAFTA and was invited for dinners at No. 10. She’d never seen her father look so taken aback as the moment one Christmas when Rory announced that he had been invited to a bash at the Prime Minister’s. Their dad had absolutely no understanding of television bar the Ten O’Clock News, and seemed quite stunned that it could lead to something he would deem a serious accolade. He took himself off to his study, shaking his head with bemusement.
‘Shall we have a toast to Gran?’ Ava said, raising her glass.
‘Yes absolutely, nice idea.’ Rory clinked his glass to hers. They both took a sip.
The dry crispness of the sherry flamed her throat and nose as though she’d inhaled the scent. It tasted of Spain. Of nights sitting on her grandmother’s veranda, bare feet up on the railing, looking out over the little courtyard garden, the man in the house opposite watering the flowerpots on his wall with a tin can on a long bit of bamboo, the rustle of the palm leaves in the wind, the hoot of the gecko, the sweet ripe perfume of fat purple figs and the fresh-river tang of red geraniums.
The bar filled up around them, bodies squishing to get through, and Rory and Ava talked for a while about the ceremony, polite musings about how nice it had been, how much their grandmother would be missed. Then Rory said, ‘So . . . Gran’s house,’ fishing a small drowning fly out of his drink. ‘I’m thinking we get someone in to clear the place out, put it on the market as soon as possible.’ He looked up as he was ushering the fly off his finger on to the barrel table to check Ava was listening. ‘I could do with some cash at the moment. Our mortgage has skyrocketed and Max’s school fees just seem to completely ignore inflation. Yeah?’ He was still in work mode. Used to people doing exactly what he told them.
Ava had the fleeting thought, as he spoke, of how nice it would be to come back to Spain and sort out the Summerhouse herself. She wondered if any of her friends might want to come with her. The list of declines to a simple meal made it seem unlikely. That was the problem with getting older, there were fewer and fewer people to go on holiday with. She imagined herself in the future, resorting to coach trips for company. She didn’t actually mind a coach trip – apart from the fact that everyone watched you get up to walk to the toilet – she just wanted to go on one out of choice rather than desperation.
The alternative would be to come out here on her own. To really grasp the idea of a second chance and head off into the sunset to find herself. But the thought made her uneasy. She wasn’t sure she had the courage for so much aloneness. She had no trouble curling up on her sofa at home watching Netflix by herself all evening, but that was generally because she always knew that the next night or the next lunchtime or the next breakfast she was meeting someone, whether it was a client or a friend or even her dad. There was always someone. Always a dinner, always a drink. And if one person cancelled she invariably found another. Aside from her close friends she had a little black book of acquaintances, an intricate network of possibilities. There was always a dot on her iPhone calendar. She made sure she wasn’t lonely by rarely being alone.
Across from the bar the guitar player paused for a beer, nodding when a
couple of people clapped. The mood of the playground opposite morphed as the little kids ran off for dinner and a group of loping teenagers took over the swings.
Ava’s phone buzzed with a text message.
It was from Caroline, a girl she hadn’t spoken to in ages who she’d seemingly called in desperation from the hospital. They’d done work experience together at Peregrine Fox Antiques – which predominantly meant walking Peregrine’s dog and popping out to buy espressos. Caroline had left for a job at an auction house and was now senior press officer. Ava realised she must have underestimated her concussion because she couldn’t actually believe she’d called Caroline for help, given their lack of recent contact and Caroline’s ability to always make her feel as though, while everyone else was leaning in, Ava was lying back taking a nap.
Ava! Great to hear from you! Sorry taken so long to reply – we’re in the middle of a HUGE forgery scandal. All super stressful and not something I should even mention on text. LOL. Will probably be indicted. How’s things?? Your LinkedIn says you’re still working at Peregrine’s btw – need to update.
Ava exhaled, blowing her hair up out of her face, the curl landing back in the same place. She almost laughed. The world itself was conspiring to spotlight her every failing.
Exactly as her LinkedIn profile suggested, Ava was still working at Peregrine Fox Antiques. She loved her job. She sourced antiques for rich clients at the tiny company run by the brilliant, very camp Peregrine Fox. She was good at it. People trusted her. They sold her things for nothing and bought things from her for a fortune while Peregrine drank copious espressos and did the same thing, just more flamboyantly. Ava had an eye for quality that came from trailing round after her mother, who only felt like she’d truly made it in life when the very best became her everyday default. Her eye for a bargain came from trailing round after her grandmother, who had a self-patented technique for elbowing to the front at jumble sales. Ava’s greatest success to date was unearthing a Chippendale blanket trunk in the back room of a Sussex farmhouse that was being used to store muddy boots and dog food.