Love Always

by Harriet Evans

  My road is not as posh as the great Huguenot weavers’ houses on Fournier Street, which is now almost all private houses or museums masquerading as private houses, each front door now a tasteful olive, dark grey or black, shutters immaculately reproduced in the original style and painted to match. Our street is one block up, a bit quieter, the houses a bit more dilapidated. If you half-close your eyes, you really can imagine some weaver hurrying back along the cobbled street through the mud and rain and opening the dark, sturdy front door to be greeted by a blaze of light and a warming fire. It feels less like something out of a film set and more like a place where people have lived and still live now. People like us.

  I walk home that afternoon, past the guys pushing the empty rails from Petticoat Market, past the sweet Victorian primary school where it is home-time. Children are flooding out in their blue sweaters, throwing themselves against their parents, jabbering excitedly to each other. Two little girls are in a minibus, kissing each other and playing with each other’s hair, while an adult shovels more children in next to them. I stand and watch them, smiling, until one of the parents stares at me. Embarrassed, I walk on, pulling my scarf more tightly around me in the cold, hitching my overnight bag onto my shoulder.

  I skid on a puddle and nearly slip. ‘Mind how you go,’ says one of the ever-present waiters who stand outside the curry houses all day, trying to entice punters inside. ‘It’s cold, freezing, be careful, yes?’

  It is freezing, I feel it now. I am sick of this winter. It’s been never-ending. It’s almost March, and still so cold. I look up at the grey-white sky, heavy with cloud. The contrast with Cornwall is total, in fact. There are no trees on Brick Lane, only brightly illuminated signs, flashing LED lights, misleading banners (‘Winner of Best Curry Restaurant’ – Where? When? According to whom?), comforting, spicy smells which make my confused stomach lurch with nausea and at the same time growl with hunger.

  It is past five and getting dark. It is a night for staying in, for going to the Taj Stores opposite and loading up on poppadoms and chutney, it’s a night for wrapping oneself in scarves and blankets and curling up on the sofa. I think how nice a takeaway from the Lahore Kebab House would be. If Oli was here perhaps he’d get it on his way back from work. If Oli was here we’d watch a few more episodes of Mad Men on the new flat-screen TV, and then I’d put my head in his lap and half-read a book while he watches the football.

  I turn into Princelet Street, waving at another waiter, standing outside the Eastern Eye Balti House. ‘How was the funeral?’ he says, bowing his head slightly as if acknowledging it. He wears a pale blue waistcoat and shirt. He must be freezing.

  ‘It was . . . fine,’ I say, touched. I will never know how to answer that question properly. It was . . . funereal, thanks for asking.

  ‘That’s life,’ the waiter calls after me, nodding philosophically. ‘Life and death.’

  Just as I am getting into the flat, my mobile rings. I struggle with my overnight bag and my scarf, getting tangled up as I delve into my handbag to find the phone and press it immediately to my ear.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Hello? Darling? Where are you?’

  It’s my mother. I freeze. ‘I’m at home,’ I say, after a moment. I dump my overnight bag on the floor. ‘Er – where are you? Are you still in Cornwall?’ I stare at the bag.

  ‘Yes,’ says Mum. ‘Off tomorrow evening.’

  ‘Um—’ I don’t know what to say to her. There’s a silence. ‘So . . . how’s the clearing up going?’

  ‘It’s OK,’ she says. ‘Fine. We’re seeing the solicitors tomorrow, to sort out the foundation and the funding. Archie and I.’

  ‘Oh, yes. Is – is Louisa still there?’

  My mother lowers her voice. ‘God, yes. Of course she is. I wish she’d just leave, to be honest, but no . . .’ She pauses, as though she’s looking around. ‘She’s still here. Pretending to be the dutiful daughter, even though she’s not.’

  I am recasting everything in my mind, now: everything I thought I knew. I knew my mother and Louisa didn’t get on that well, but I thought it was simply because they’re so different. Now I don’t know what to think. I don’t know what actually happened that summer, after all, but I can tell Mum was difficult even then, based on just a few pages of her sister’s diary. Does my mother know what they say about her? That behind her back people whisper about her, like those old friends of Granny’s at the funeral, that they say, You know, it was never proved, but Miranda . . . yes, that one over there, you know they always had trouble with her. They say she killed her sister. Oh, it wasn’t an accident . . .

  It occurs to me, as silence falls between us, that she does, always has done, that she has always known that’s what they say about her.

  Are they right, though? And if so, why? Why would she do it? What happened?

  ‘I didn’t ring for that, though,’ Mum says. ‘I rang to see how you are. Um—’ She pauses. ‘I can’t believe you didn’t tell me about you and Oli.’

  ‘Look, Mum, I’m really sorry about it,’ I say. ‘I feel awful, but it was only three weeks ago, and I wanted to keep a lid on it until I knew what I was going to do—’

  ‘Oh, Natasha, you always want to bottle things up,’ she says. ‘You never talk about things! You should have told me. It was awful, finding out like that. At the same time as Louisa! And Mary Beth. I mean—! When do we ever see Mary Beth? Who is she?’

  I am not in the mood for her amateur dramatics, her sighing and hair tossing. ‘I had my reasons,’ I say. ‘I told you that. I’m sorry if you feel left out.’

  She pauses. ‘Well,’ she says, sounding slightly flattened. ‘Anyway – oh, darling. I don’t know what to say.’

  There’s a silence. I don’t know what to say either. We can’t help each other, my mother and I, we never have been able to. The ties that bind us together are so tight there’s no room for friendship. We’ve put up with the cold, with crappy one-bed flats, with creepy landlords and no money, too-small winter coats, meal after meal of pasta or baked beans, watching a tiny TV with a coat-hanger aerial, and spending night after night in each other’s company, always making out to our family and friends that the life we lived was bohemian, carefree, simple and all the more tasty as a result. We don’t run towards each other’s company now. We don’t really have anything in common, now we’re both adults. Whoever my father is, he and I must be pretty alike. I often think we’d probably get on like a house on fire. My mother and I haven’t really had that luxury. Instead we’ve tried to respect each other, and we don’t go into any more of it than that.

  Now, everything has changed, and I don’t know what we do. Perhaps she’s trying to be a good mother. And I don’t believe Octavia, I don’t believe my mother is responsible for Cecily’s death. But then I’m beginning to realise I don’t know anything.

  ‘Look, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,’ I say.

  She sighs. ‘It’s fine, honestly, darling. I know it’s been a hard time for you.’

  It’s very odd, hearing her voice. ‘Well, it has for you, too, Mum,’ I say. ‘Granny’s only just died.’

  ‘I know.’ She sighs again. ‘A lifetime and a week, a week and a lifetime.’

  ‘What?’

  My mother gives a small laugh. ‘Nothing. I’m feeling a bit mad at the moment. Being with one’s family will do that to one, won’t it?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ I say. ‘It’s just hard, packing away the house, knowing we’re leaving it empty, leaving all these memories behind.’ She sounds tired. ‘All these lovely pieces in the house, and I don’t know what to do with them – whether Archie’s right about it all. I’m sure he is, but – well, there’s Louisa.’ Her voice hardens again. ‘Bossing us around.’

  ‘You should talk to . . . I don’t know, someone who knows a bit about that stuff.’ I remember back to that scene in the kitchen. ‘Guy, perhaps.’

  ‘Guy Leighton?’ Mum stops me. ‘No. I don’t like Guy.’

&n
bsp; I remember how angry she was with him in the kitchen, just before I left last night. Only twenty-four hours ago. ‘Why not? He seemed quite nice. As if he knew what he was talking about.’

  ‘Well, he’s not nice,’ Mum says. ‘He makes out he’s nice as pie, all sticky-up hair and glasses. He’s worse than the rest of them. No, I’m not having anything to do with him.’

  ‘But don’t you have to, if Granny asked him to be on the committee?’ I ask.

  She clears her throat. ‘Believe me, Natasha,’ she says. ‘Guy Leighton is not what he seems. Just steer clear of him, if you can.’

  ‘What?’ I say. ‘What does that mean?’ I wind a strand of hair tighter and tighter around my finger. ‘What’s he done?’

  She seems to hesitate. ‘Well. He was a complicated fellow.’

  ‘Yes?’ I say expectantly. ‘And?’

  There’s a silence. It’s so long that after about ten seconds I think she must have been disconnected, and I say, ‘Mum? Are you still there? What did he do?’

  ‘Oh.’ And then she sighs. ‘Perhaps I’m being unfair. I haven’t seen him for years and years. It’s a long time ago. Forget it!’ She trails off. ‘I’d just rather do it at my own pace, and Archie agrees. Jesus.’ She breaks off, and suddenly says, ‘By the way, did Arvind give you anything? Yesterday?’

  ‘Oh,’ I say. ‘Yes . . . Sorry. He gave me a ring.’

  The instant I say it I know I shouldn’t have. I know it’s a mistake.

  ‘A ring?’ Mum says instantly. ‘What ring? Arvind gave you a ring?’

  ‘Yes, Granny’s ring, the one with the flowers.’ I hear her inhale sharply. ‘Sorry, Mum, I didn’t think to tell you.’

  ‘Well, I wish you had.’ She sounds really cross, agitated even. ‘We’ve been looking through Granny’s things today, and I couldn’t find it.’ She hesitates. ‘Nothing else? He didn’t give you anything else?’

  I take a deep breath and lie. ‘No. Nothing.’

  I am wary of her now. I know what she can be like. And I feel, all of a sudden, as if we are playing a new game, one we’ve never played before.

  ‘It would have been good if you’d told me, Natasha.’

  ‘I didn’t realise,’ I say, nettled. ‘I didn’t think it was your ring to give away. Of course, if you want it, I don’t want—’ It’s still round my neck and as I touch it I know suddenly I absolutely won’t give it to her. I know Arvind didn’t want Mum or Archie to have it, though I don’t know why. ‘It was in Granny’s bedside table,’ I say. ‘He said Cecily wore it. On a chain.’

  Her sister’s name feels like a heavy stone dropped into the sentence.

  ‘She did wear it, I’d forgotten,’ Mum says. ‘Mummy said she could borrow it. She took it to school but then she lost it. We couldn’t tell Mummy, she’d have been so cross. Cecily was distraught, I’ve never seen her so upset. We looked absolutely everywhere. It was a freezing cold winter, the coldest on record, that winter before . . . she died.’ She clears her throat. ‘And do you know where we found it?’

  ‘No, where?’ I say. The steam from the kettle is fugging up the kitchen window. I take a mug off a hook and put a teabag in it.

  ‘The pipes froze solid and the sink fell off the wall in her dorm.’ Mum laughs softly. ‘When they took the sink away it slid out. She’d dropped it down the plughole and it was frozen in water. Like a stick of rock, with a gold ring in the middle.’

  ‘No way.’ That ring, the one round my neck. I smile. Mum gives a gurgle of laughter. ‘It’s true! But that was Cecily. Oh, she was funny. Such a drama queen. They all said I was – hah, she was! Such a prima donna. She swore she’d never take it off again. So she wore it round her neck on a chain. And then Mummy found out, and made her give it back. She was absolutely furious.’ She stops. There is a silence, and I hear a funny sound and realise she’s crying.

  ‘Oh, Mum,’ I say, instantly feeling guilty for taking her on this path, even if she was going there herself. ‘I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to make you cry—’

  ‘No, no,’ Mum says. Her voice is really wobbly, as though it’s been put through a distorter. ‘No! Oh, Jesus. I never talk about her, that’s all. It’s only . . . She was so young. It’s hard now . . . when I think about then . . . and now. I wasn’t very nice to her. I wish I could take it all back.’

  ‘Oh, Mum, that’s not true,’ I say. ‘You don’t know,’ Mum says quietly. ‘I keep thinking about her, you know. Especially lately, with Mummy’s death. I wonder what she would have been like now. She’d be middle-aged, not a girl any more. She really was lovely . . .’ And then she makes a strange sound, half sob, half moan. ‘Oh, God,’ she says. ‘Cecily. No. Let’s talk about something else. It upsets me too much.’

  ‘Was it really the coldest winter on record?’ I say, after a quick think. I make the tea, wrapping my fingers round the thick mug for warmth, and go into the sitting room.

  ‘The winter of ’62, ’63?’ Mum sniffs loudly. ‘Oh, yes, darling. It snowed from December to March, Natasha. Two feet of snow outside. Three feet! There was no gas, no heating. We had to burn old desks at school, because we ran out of wood. We were snowed in for about a week.’

  ‘Wow,’ I say, sitting down on the slithery leather sofa. ‘A whole week?’

  ‘I’m serious,’ Mum said. ‘We were all so cold, all the time. And I remember – gosh, it’s all coming back now—’ She trails off.

  ‘What?’ I say, intrigued, tucking my feet underneath me. I adjust the phone, hugging a cushion to keep me warm. The huge sitting room is always chilly.

  ‘Our headmistress,’ Mum says. ‘Stupid bloody bitch. Do you know what she said to me and Cecily? In front of the whole school, at assembly?’

  ‘No, what?’

  Mum recites, as though it’s a lesson. ‘“Girls like you with darker skins will feel the cold more than the English girls.”’

  I’m so shocked I don’t know what to say. ‘Really?’

  ‘I hated that school, hated it. I was useless. They hated me, too. You know, one of the mistresses at school, she made me wash my mouth out with bleach. Made me scrub my skin with it, too. Said it’d lighten my dark hair.’

  ‘No, Mum.’

  Mum is such a drama queen, but for some reason I believe her.

  ‘It’s actually true. Hah.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘I’d finally had enough when that happened.’ Her voice is dreamy, as though she’s telling a fairy story. ‘I went to ring up Mummy that evening in floods of tears, to tell her to take us away. But the phone lines were down,’ Mum says flatly. ‘And I had to stay anyway. There wasn’t anywhere else for me to go. When I did finally get through to Mummy, she wasn’t pleased. Said she didn’t know why I always had to mess things up, that I deserved it. Oh, I behaved really badly that term. I nearly got expelled. Awful.’

  Yes, I want to say. I know all about what you did. About you and Annabel Taylor, about how you nearly killed her. A shiver runs through me. I don’t know whether to be proud of her for her bravery, or afraid. My God. I realise I don’t know her at all.

  Mum says, ‘Then we got home for the summer, and . . .’ There’s a silence. ‘And what?’

  ‘Well, that was the summer she died,’ Mum says. ‘August 1963.’

  ‘Oh. Of course. I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘So—’

  ‘Natasha?’

  I am completely absorbed by the conversation and her voice in my ear, but the noise, someone calling my name, somewhere nearby, makes me jerk upright and I remember. I didn’t close the door.

  ‘Hello?’ I call suddenly. There are feet in the hallway, and I hear a sound I haven’t heard for a long time: the clatter of keys being thrown onto the hall table.

  ‘Who’s that?’ Mum says. ‘Hello.’

  Oli appears in the doorway. I draw back. ‘The door was open,’ he says.

  I stare at him. ‘Mum – look. I have to go.’

  ‘Is that Oli?’ Mum says. ‘Yes,’ I say, staring at him
, at his trainers, his jeans, his smart shirt, his jacket, his face, his ruffled, boyish hair. This is my husband, this is our home. ‘I have to go,’ I say, as Mum starts to say something else.

  ‘Why don’t you come round next week?’ she says. ‘Come and have some supper here.’

  ‘OK,’ I say, my hand on my cheek, not really listening. ‘Look—’

  ‘Wednesday, darling. Come round next Wednesday?’

  ‘Yep, yep,’ I say. ‘See you then. I’ll come round on Wednesday. Yes. Bye.’

  I put the phone down and turn to him, my heart thumping almost painfully in my chest.

  ‘Hi,’ I say.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  I’ve seen Oli once since he left. We had a drink two weeks ago at the Pride of Spitalfields on Heneage Street, down the road from us. We picked a ‘neutral spot’, like characters in a TV soap. It was awful. It’s one of my favourite places, a friendly, old man’s pub, an oasis in the increasing Disneyfication of Spitalfields, and people kept saying hello. ‘Hi, you two, haven’t seen you in here for a while, what have you been up to?’

  Oh, this and that! I wanted to answer. Oli shagged someone else and I’m working on a new autumn/winter range of bracelets, thanks for asking!

  Then, Oli was broken, quiet, weeping, wanting to know how I was. I said I needed time. Trouble is I didn’t use that time. And now I am no closer to knowing what on earth comes next.

  ‘How did you get that huge bump on your head?’ Oli asks now, shoving his hands deep into his jacket pockets, his thin shoulders hunched. It is such a familiar gesture that I want to laugh. ‘What happened?’