A Home in the Sun

by Sue Moorcroft

  At least, now she was ‘home’, she’d be able to see more of Mum, pay surprise visits to The Cottage retirement home. ‘Hello! I’ve called to see Wilma Morgan, I’m her daughter.’ Sit with her. Take her out. Talk. Try not to swear, which always made her mother tut, ‘Really, Judith, do we have to have that language all the time?’

  And Judith not being able to resist. ‘Bloody right!’ Or worse.

  At least Wilma laughed at Judith’s jokes. ‘Don’t you think you’re a little old to still be playing the rebellious child?’ Judith was looking forward to seeing her mum. The last time had been when she’d visited just before last Christmas.

  She closed her tired eyes. Immediately a dearly loved face swam into focus. Giorgio. Her heart swelled and shrank sickeningly. Giorgio. She forced her eyes to open wide, wide, very wide. Oh, Giorgio …

  After half an hour of unproductive staring at the ceiling and allowing a few hot tears to run down her cheeks, Judith rolled off Molly’s spare bed. Better unpack sufficient clothes for a few days, she supposed, cardigans and fleeces included. Northamptonshire’s late summer was a different prospect to Malta’s. Here the sky was a pale-grey blanket of cloud; no high blue dome, no heat clinging on the breeze or seeping up from the rock. Here she’d sometimes need long sleeves, jeans and socks.

  She threw open a case and yanked out a handful of underwear – stretchy, lacy, pretty. She opened one of the small drawers at the top of the oak chest set beside the window. Halted. The drawer was already full of underwear in neat piles – plain, white or beige, and quite unlike hers.

  She shut the drawer again, thoughtfully, and tucked her stuff into the empty one beside it.

  Later, dinner was served formally in the cavernous dining room. Two Hepplewhite china cabinets and a dining suite for ten covered only a portion of the honey-coloured wool-twist carpet. Judith was convinced that Frankie O’Malley earned enough to provide sufficient furniture to make the room gracious. It was like Molly, however, to not really see the point of furniture for furniture’s sake. Not for her a couple of comfy recliners by the French doors, perhaps in bluebell leather, or plum, with a sexy little stereo and a bulbous lamp on a side table. No jardinière filled a corner and no grandfather clock chimed companionably as they ate.

  Theirs was a house that ached for loving touches.

  Molly brushed aside Judith’s offers to take them out for a meal or buy a takeaway. ‘You’re our guest.’ Molly had an annoying habit of sighing over extra work even as she refused offers of help. That was the way Molly was. ‘Also, Frankie will only complain if we were to go out – he likes home cooking.’ That was the way Frankie was. Molly ate several bites of her dinner before asking, ‘Does anyone else know you’re home?’

  Judith shook her head and tried to feel some appetite for juicy lamb chops and pungent cabbage. ‘No, nobody, yet.’

  ‘Not Thomas? Not Kieran? Not Mum?’

  ‘No.’ Judith never rushed to make contact with her ex-husband but she’d never stopped missing Kieran, who’d provided her with nine years of motherhood, even if it were the step variety. ‘I’m looking forward to catching up with Mum and Kieran, though.’

  Frankie looked up from where he’d been silently engrossed in his meal, his attention caught by the sound of Tom’s name. Frankie and Judith’s ex-husband, Tom, each running building firms in the town, occasionally combined forces to tackle larger jobs. They were mates and it was through her brother-in-law that Judith had met Tom fifteen years ago. Frankie displayed a fierce loyalty to his mates, to all things male, really. Wilma termed it being a man’s man. Judith gained the impression that her mum didn’t necessarily mean it as a compliment.

  Frankie reached for extra peas. ‘He’s very cut up at the moment, is old Tom. Had a hard time of it this last year.’

  ‘Because Liza left,’ supplied Molly, as if Judith might have somehow forgotten that Tom’s third wife had recently abandoned him. Molly had even phoned Judith in Malta especially to tell her, rather than leaving it to the cheaper option of email.

  Liza’s name had once had the power to slice through Judith, not so much because Liza had put paid to Judith’s marriage but because she’d shaken her self-belief. Tom had preferred another woman. Liza had known that Tom was married – Tom had known that he was married – yet she hadn’t let it stop her having a taste of his big, bullish body. Liza had proved to have all the attraction of the classic ‘new model’ that men were always accused of falling for: younger, prettier, more desirable and, for all Judith knew, better in bed. But falling in love with Giorgio had so restored and healed Judith that she’d come to feel grateful to Liza. Without Liza stealing her man, Judith would never have found another.

  ‘Careless with his wives, isn’t he? Pam dies, Liza and me leave,’ Judith observed lightly, but she was scarcely even thinking about Tom. She was relishing the knowledge that she could ring Kieran tomorrow and arrange to meet him in person instead of relying on the wonders of email to keep in touch. Kieran had finished university and was working in Northampton now. He was living right here in Brinham. At this moment he could be playing squash at the sports centre or having a drink with his mates in one of the pubs Judith had known all her life, his boyish face quick to smile, his toffee-coloured eyes to twinkle.

  Frankie, however, hadn’t finished with the subject of Tom. He shot Judith a severe look. ‘Tom took Liza’s desertion very hard.’ He stabbed the meat from his cutlet. ‘He had no idea that she was seeing someone else.’

  Judith brought her mind back to the subject of her ex. ‘It’s not much fun to discover that the person you’re married to is having sex with someone else. It certainly blighted my marriage.’

  Frankie pointed his knife accusingly. ‘You could’ve patched things up with Tom, if you’d wanted. He was prepared to give Liza up for you – it was you who chose to leave.’

  ‘True.’ She stopped pretending to eat and laid down the heavy silver cutlery. ‘I’m afraid I’m terribly unforgiving. After all, it only took me discovering his horrid little affair for him to offer to end it.’

  Frankie didn’t seem to hear Judith’s heavy irony. Instead, as if Judith were somehow responsible, he began enumerating Tom’s problems on his stubby, grainy fingers. ‘That Liza, she took the Mercedes, she took all the money out of the savings accounts, she kept her credit cards, and she took …’ He stopped and snatched up his fork to resume eating.

  ‘What?’ Judith prodded, becoming more engaged in the conversation as she caught the flash of guilt on her brother-in-law’s face.

  Frankie shrugged and took a mouthful of potato.

  Judith grinned suddenly, her cheeks feeling stiff, as if wrenched into unaccustomed positions, then she laughed. There was only one thing Liza could take from Tom that Frankie would suddenly think better of mentioning. ‘Has he been stashing away cash again, do you mean? Tucking it behind radiators and underneath drawers so the tax man can’t find it?’ She threw back her head and laughed again. ‘Ha! Talk about hitting him where it hurts. Was it much?’

  Frankie grunted, blotting sweat from his high forehead with his sleeve. ‘Poor bastard’s been left with nothing but the house.’

  Judith couldn’t resist a jibe. ‘Poor bastard. Scraping by in a seven-bedroom palace.’

  ‘Shall we change the subject?’ Molly put in, her brow puckered in worry at the developing tension.

  ‘You can laugh.’ Frankie flushed at Judith as if Molly had never spoken, his eyes glittering with irritation. He and Judith often became prickly with each other over the subject of Tom. ‘First, he had to extend his mortgage to pay you off and now Liza’s snitched all the liquid assets and done a runner to France with her new bit of rough. He bought that house and spent a fortune doing it up and he ought to be able to start planning for retirement. Instead he’s got to keep working just to put back what you women have taken out of him.’

  Pushing her chair back, Judith rose. If she’d had any sympathy for Tom being left alone, it flitted
away. ‘Parasitical, are we? And all Tom ever wanted was a housekeeper-cum-cook-cum-gardener for his seven-bed palace, one who would also bring home a full month’s salary and give him sex. Rather than leaving him and expecting our fair share of things, I expect he would’ve preferred Liza and me to die, like poor Pamela, bringing him in a nice fat insurance cheque.’

  ‘Liza never brought home no full month’s salary,’ Frankie snapped.

  ‘Maybe she doubled up on the sex.’ Judith began to turn away, preparing to return to her own room.

  Frankie began serving himself seconds of potato. ‘All I’m saying is that you never had to leave him.’

  Judith sighed and summoned a smile for her brother-in-law for Molly’s sake, not wanting her sister to have to put up with Frankie in a bad mood. ‘No. And I wouldn’t have done if he hadn’t been unfaithful … but he did get several years with Liza, and I got several years in Malta.’ With Giorgio. But she didn’t say that. The very last thing she wanted was Frankie ferreting out the story about Giorgio and reporting her pain back to Tom.

  Chapter Four

  Judith woke to a silent Sunday, early daylight falling on her stack of suitcases and yesterday’s clothes strewn over a yellow damask chair. She sat up and raked her fingers through her hair. Two tasks today: take the first step towards reclaiming her house and ring Kieran. Her tenant, Adam Leblond, being a mature man, might well be up and at home. Kieran, being an immature man, would likely be in bed until lunchtime. She’d approach the tenant.

  She breakfasted alone on coffee, Molly and Frankie still being upstairs, then stepped out into a sunny morning. It was a twenty-minute walk to Lavender Row at Judith’s rapid pace and she strode out of Molly’s posh estate and into the more familiar streets of terraces and semis in the older part of town. She must get a car sorted out, maybe one of those titchy, zippy little things – a Smart car or a Seicento.

  But, in the meantime, the weather was dry and her smoke-grey fleece was proof against the breeze; a walk would be good. It would get her out of Molly’s house, too. She’d heard Molly and Frankie bickering last night. She hoped they hadn’t been bickering over her.

  The sooner she was back in her own place, the better for all concerned … apart, perhaps, for the tenant, who had to be told he’d soon be moving home.

  In her bag was a letter, hot off the computer in Frankie’s office, formally giving the required notice. She’d printed on the smooth white envelope, Adam Leblond. Staring at the once-familiar name, she found herself awash with memories of Brinham Grammar School. Stiff navy blazers, tan leather satchels with doodles all over the inside (because doodles on the outside would get you detention and a sharp letter home). Logarithm books, sensible black shoes, white shirts and striped ties, echoing corridors, quadrangles at break time, hockey in the rain, the A-stream, the smell of chalk dust and plimsolls, crisps from the tuck shop. Boys in the corridors and classrooms. Adam Leblond. It had always sounded like a good name for a pop star; a crooner with golden hair and a repertoire of dance steps. Still, she supposed, the name didn’t sound bad on a photographer in the latter half of his forties, as she knew him to be.

  As she marched along the Sunday streets, she refamiliarised herself with her surroundings: the greenness of the fields glimpsed in the distance, the trees lining the roads, the flourishing gardens – some so ‘flourishing’ that a machete and a flame gun would be required to get them under control. Weeds just didn’t grow like that in Malta. English town gardens were a real contrast to the palm, cypress, twisted olive trees and grey-green spear-like agaves that dotted dry Maltese earth. Her eyes had become used to stone and flat-roofed buildings, sand-like soil, dust instead of mud. She told herself that she was bound to miss Malta, the constant, mighty presence of the sea and the unremitting glare of the sun.

  It would be different, but could still be enjoyable, to live once again in Lavender Row.

  After she’d moved out of the seven-bed detached in Victoria Gardens, the erstwhile marital home, Tom had growled and muttered and fought to retain it because it was ‘an investment’. In order to also keep his builders’ yard, machinery and equipment, he had, as Frankie pointed out yesterday evening, raised capital. He’d tried first to dismiss Judith’s contribution to the marital assets from her job as a surveyor, which she’d held for the duration of their marriage, but the lawyers had soon sorted out his misapprehensions. Tom had had to pay Judith a fair sum. As if to punish her, he’d then moved Liza into their old home.

  Judith had no longer cared. She’d bought 18 Lavender Row outright, providing her with a stable stake in England, and had a tidy sum left over. The house was terraced and double fronted, the windows set into stone mullions, the rooms large and tall with ornate plasterwork, moulded picture rails and tall skirting boards. Relishing her return to living alone, Judith had enjoyed choosing plain carpets and colours for the walls. A small gravelled area to the front and a long strip of garden at the back completed the property but she hadn’t been as interested in those. She’d lived comfortably in the pretty terrace while tying up loose ends, giving notice to her employer and working on her move to Malta. A year there had proved about right to ease through the painful separation from Kieran and see him through his final school days. She’d bought into Richard Elliot Estate once Kieran seemed settled at uni.

  She knew from Molly, via Frankie, that Tom was now furious that the house in Victoria Gardens that he’d fought so hard for had plummeted in value when an edge-of-town retail park was built behind it. Instead of looking out on hedges and fields, Tom now looked out on a row of leggy conifers doing an inadequate job of disguising a DIY shop’s loading bay. For some reason, the planners had also allowed a nightclub to move into one of the industrial units, providing a noisy, technicolour finale to most Fridays and Saturdays for the nearby residents. Someone ought to have pointed out to Tom that investments could go down as well as up.

  Judith swung into Lavender Row, where cars lined either side owing to the absence of driveways, and paused when she reached number 18. The small front garden now boasted a dwarf acer in a cobalt-blue pot in the middle of the gravel. The front door was painted black and the stained glass aperture gleamed in the sunlight.

  She wrinkled her nose at the neatness. Broken windows and rubbish piled in the garden might have given her an excuse for early termination of the tenancy.

  Pressing the white doorbell button, she listened to the ringing in the depths of the house and prepared to meet Adam Leblond for the first time since her teens. What would he be like, now? Fat? Bald? Grey?

  But the man who answered her summons and stood framed in the doorway was none of these things. He was about the same age as Kieran and if he’d told her he was a member of a band, with his long hair and ripped jeans, she would have believed him. A heavy metal band.

  ‘Hey,’ he greeted her amiably. She knew from Kieran that ‘hey’ was the new ‘hi’. He pushed dark hair back over his shoulders, scratched his bare chest and tugged tattered jeans higher over his hips.

  Judith glanced again at the house. It was definitely number 18. ‘Hi. I’m looking for Adam Leblond.’

  ‘Yeah, upstairs. Do you want me to shout?’ The young man half-turned as if preparing to do so.

  She hesitated, checking her watch. It was eleven o’clock, which seemed a reasonable time to call, even on a Sunday. ‘If you think it’ll be all right. I’m Judith McAllister, the landlord.’

  ‘Oh, right.’ He turned his face towards the stairs. ‘Dad? Dad! Lady who owns the house is here.’ So the young guy was Adam Leblond’s son.

  A pause, then a muffled reply, which Judith didn’t catch.

  The amiable young man turned back to her. ‘Can you wait five minutes? He hasn’t emerged yet.’

  Maybe eleven o’clock was too early on a Sunday. ‘I’ll come back—’ she began.

  He pulled the door open further. The hall carpet – she’d left all the carpets – looked freshly vacuumed. ‘No, come in. I’m Caleb, by t
he way.’

  ‘Hi, Caleb.’ She wondered who Adam Leblond had produced this interesting young specimen with, whether any of the adoring legion of Brinham girls who’d pulled in their stomachs when Adam Leblond blew past on his dark-green racing bike had been the lucky one. After he’d left sixth form he’d faded off her radar and from her memory until a local friend, Melanie, had emailed Judith in Malta after learning the last occupants were moving on. If you haven’t got new tenants yet, would you let the house to a friend of my Ian’s? You might even remember him from school – he was two years ahead of us. His name’s Adam Leblond.

  Seeing his name had sent a nostalgic shock through her, but, deeply involved with Giorgio at the time, Judith hadn’t spared a minute to share those old emotions with Melanie. In any event, her crush, secret and agonising, had been based mainly on a solitary conversation about sweets one day outside the school gates.

  Sure, she’d replied, glad enough not to have to get involved again with local agents. If you and Ian recommend him, I’m sure he’ll be ideal.

  Now she followed Caleb down the wide passageway to the kitchen with its side window overlooking the patio. Apart from an open bag of Hovis bread and a sprinkling of crumbs beside the toaster, the room was immaculate. She recalled emails from adam@adamleblond.co.uk seeking permission to decorate and him shrugging off her offer to pay towards materials. He’d evidently done a great job. White gloss gleamed on the woodwork, creamy yellow emulsion on the walls contrasted with blood-red curtains and the pine units were freshly coated. The worktops were uncluttered.

  Caleb offered her a drink, taking down thick orange mugs. ‘I would tell you to make yourself at home but as it belongs to you …’ He grinned as he checked how she liked her coffee and made instant in the mugs. His grey eyes shone with humour in his tanned face. Every few seconds, he flicked his long hair back over his shoulders.