Millie, in the buggy next to Sinead, began to stir. Sinead reached down to soothe her.
‘I’ll get some more lime soda.’ I stood. ‘Drink, anyone?’
Mum thrust her sunglasses on top of her head. ‘Emma, you stay right here and tell me why Ned has given you ice cream.’ Millie’s fuss became a wail.
‘I think she’s been bitten by something,’ Sinead said, lifting her out of the buggy.
‘I’ll get some ointment,’ I offered.
‘Emma!’ Mum slammed her palm on the table with a bit too much force. ‘Why are Sophie and Ned giving you goddamned ice cream! Did Ned sell those vans? Emma, look at me!’
Helen swivelled her head from Mum to me, her expression guilty but confused.
Millie’s wail intensified.
‘Oh god, I really think she’s been bitten by something.’ Sinead stood and raised the distressed Millie to her shoulder. ‘Michael!’
Uncle Mike rushed over, followed by Joe.
‘Emma,’ Mum said, turning her attention from Millie to me. ‘Explain yourself! Did Ned sell the ice cream vans? Did he pay you back?’
I shook my head. Mum’s mouth fell open. Uncle Mike glanced up from examining the now screaming and writhing Millie. Alice, Jess and Archie rushed from various corners of the garden with worried little faces.
‘What’s going on?’ Joe asked Helen.
‘I’m not sure, but it’s not good and it’s my fault,’ she slurred.
‘I think it’s a bee-sting,’ Uncle Mike said, concerned but calm. ‘She’s reacting to it. We’ll have to go to St George’s.’
‘What?!’ Sinead said, her voice catching in her throat. She tried to contain Millie’s squirms and shunts. ‘Is she going to be OK?’
‘She’ll be fine.’ Uncle Mike turned to Mum. ‘Diana, can you look after Archie and the girls?’
Mum nodded, her face still arranged in maternal reprimand. He pulled his keys from his pocket and took Millie from Sinead.
‘Get an ice pack from the freezer. I’ll meet you at the car.’ He was in efficient doctor mode. ‘Emma, are you in financial trouble?’ he said while gathering Millie’s essentials from the pushchair. He spoke without looking at me.
‘Not yet,’ I mumbled, burning with embarrassment.
‘Good. We’ll talk when I get back.’ He nodded at Mum, then marched briskly towards the garage with Millie screaming in his arms.
For a moment the garden was quiet save for Millie’s receding cries. Mum glared at me.
Jess tugged at Mum’s shirt. ‘Is Millie going to die?’ Tears formed deep wet slings at the base of her blue eyes.
Alice stood alongside quietly knotting her fingers.
‘No, my sweet.’ Mum crouched down and pulled Jess into a hug. ‘Daddy doesn’t have the right medicine here so he needs to take her to the hospital to get some. She’ll be back in no time at all.’ Mum looked up at me and frowned. ‘Emma, we need to talk.’
I said nothing.
Joe fidgeted with his watch. ‘I’ve got to pop out to meet someone.’
‘I’ll be off as well, then.’ Helen stood, draining the last of her glass.
Realising I had an opportunity to escape Mum’s inquisition, I grabbed my bag from the ground.
‘I’m going too.’
‘Emma—’ Mum said.
I passed Helen her handbag. ‘Come on.’
Mum sighed her disappointment.
‘Maybe you should stay,’ Joe said.
‘I can’t. I have to get Helen home. She’s drunk.’
‘I am,’ Helen said, flicking back her fringe. ‘I really am.’
‘Emma . . .’ Mum started, but at my defiant look ended up just shaking her head. I grabbed Helen by the elbow and moved away. Joe said something to Mum then jogged after us. On the footpath by the front gate Helen was fully occupied adjusting her fringe in a pocket mirror while I suffered under Joe’s enquiring gaze.
‘What’re you going to do now?’ he said.
‘Take Helen home, give her a coffee and help her sober up.’
‘I’d rather a wine,’ she said. We ignored her.
‘You coming?’ I said.
‘I have to meet someone.’ He checked his watch again.
‘Right.’
‘I’ll see you at home, then. I’ll be about an hour. You’ll be there?’ The look of concern on his face prodded at the soreness of my already injured pride.
‘Sure.’
He gave me one last troubled look then turned in the direction of the high street.
‘Shall we go to the pub?’ Helen said, looking up from under her tidied fringe. She looked perkier already.
‘OK.’
My phone rang as we walked down the street. Mum. I pushed ‘reject call’ then turned it off, not worrying too much about Millie. Uncle Mike knew what to do.
While Helen ‘sobered up’ with a glass of house wine I explained why her casual comments had landed me in trouble.
‘Why didn’t you just tell me it was a secret?’ she said, exasperated.
‘Because you can’t keep a secret.’
‘That’s true.’ She smiled, then frowned. ‘Look, why are you so worried about accepting help?’ Helen leant against the faded wallpaper in a diminishing shaft of late afternoon sun.
‘Your Mum would never have asked for her loan back if she knew you didn’t have it.’
‘I know, but—’
‘Forget the but.’ Annoyance clipped her words. ‘You’re just being weird about it.’
‘I’m not being weird,’ I said. ‘I know I can ask for help and I know my family would lend me whatever I needed, but . . .’ I tried to find the right words to fit how I was feeling. Helen sat across the table, petite, drunk and impatient.
‘I feel like up until now I’ve been waiting. Waiting for my career to take off, waiting for that young feeling to finish or that mature feeling to kick in. Waiting till Ned and I fizzled out or for him to . . . I don’t know. I’ve been waiting for my life to start. And then this happened.’ I pointed both hands at the mountainous rise beneath my bosom. ‘And I thought, “shit, it’s already started”, and I’ve barely been along for the ride.’
Helen’s balanced features were unreadable.
‘Don’t you ever feel like that?’ I implored. ‘Like everybody else is forging through their life’s itinerary and you’re still at home on the sofa in the list-making stage? Like you’re just a passenger, and maybe next week or next month or next year it’ll be your turn to take the driver’s seat?’
Helen frowned.
I missed my sister. She’d have an insightful one-liner that would sum it all up, offer a solution and have me laughing at myself. Everything was better with my sister.
‘Do you have any idea what I’m talking about?’
‘Not really. Can you say it in non-Dr-Phil-speak?’
‘I just wanted to be here for the next part of my life,’ I said, deflated. ‘I don’t want to be doing it with someone else’s money. Then it’s not my life. It’s subsidised so it’s not real. I’m not going to be a passenger any more.’ I picked at the skin round my fingernails. Helen watched.
‘It sounds kind of pathetic when I say it out loud,’ I muttered.
‘Yeah, it does.’ I looked up.
‘Emma, I say this as your friend who loves you.’ She placed a tiny paw to her partially exposed upper breast. ‘Shut the hell up.’
‘OK . . .’
‘Get out of that head of yours and look around. You’ve got friends, family and a fecking three-bedroom cottage on Wimbledon Common. Life’s good for you.’ She rooted through her purse and checked her phone. ‘Now, I have to get home to my rented studio flat. In Stockwell.’ She gave me a pointed look. ‘It’s Saturday night, I have no date and there’s a water jet in my jacuzzi bath that needs a certain seeing to.’
‘OK. And ew, gross.’ I stood, trying not to let that image enter my mind.
We made our way through the bustling pub.
‘Just relax a bit,’ she said with authority over the early evening hubbub. ‘I wouldn’t be friends with a “passenger”.’ She pushed open the pub doors and we emptied onto the dusk-veiled street. ‘And sort out the feelings you have for Joe. It’s driving me crazy.’
I stopped. ‘Huh?’
She grinned. ‘You’re in love with him.’
‘What?’
Helen just smiled.
‘What?!’ I repeated. She winked.
‘Ah . . . did you hear me? I just said “What?” in an extremely insistent manner!’
‘If I’m an expert in one thing alone, it’s matters of the heart,’ she said, swaying a little.
‘No,’ I considered her. ‘No, you’re more in line with matters of the genitals.’
‘Touché, my knocked-up friend, touché.’ She leant forward and kissed my cheek. ‘Maybe I’m wrong.’ She tottered backwards towards the high street. ‘What do I know? I’m having relations with a jacuzzi.’ She gave a scandalous smile then turned on her wedges.
‘But . . .?’ I called after her.
At home, disorientated by Helen’s comments, I ate a cookie.
Then another five.
I turned on my phone and saw multiple missed calls. Texts informed me that Millie was home safe and sound and requested I come back to the house for the barbecue. Joe said he was at home and wanted to know when I’d be back. But he was nowhere to be found and when I dialled his number his phone was off. I flicked on the TV but couldn’t decide on a channel.
I thought about Helen’s comment.
I ate another cookie.
I tossed the remote on the sofa, grabbed my keys and went out.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
‘Oh, hello dear.’ Harriet smiled through the crack of her open door. ‘I’ll just take the latches off.’ She shut the door and fumbled with chains and locks. Brutus growled and Harriet told him to go and sit in his basket with ‘bunny-bunkins’. The door eventually opened and Harriet motioned with her knobbly hand to come inside.
‘Come, come, dear, Arthur’s just made a ginger loaf.’ She raised her loud-hailer and turned down the hall. ‘ARTHUR! KETTLE ON, EMMA’S HERE!’
‘I won’t stay long,’ I said, stepping out of my flip-flops onto their carpeted hall. ‘I’m looking for Joe. Have you seen him?’
‘Not since he left about an hour ago.’
Harriet hobbled down the hall and I followed. She pulled out a chair at the kitchen table and patted the chintzy seat. ‘Sit, sit.’
Brutus lay in his sheepskin-lined basket by the back door with his fluffy ‘bunny-bunkins’ wedged beside him, his dark eyes following me across the room.
‘GOOD EVENING, EMMA!’ Arthur bellowed from the kitchen bench where he was slicing the loaf into the kind of thickness that shows you’ve got to a certain time in your life where you no longer give a fig about calories.
He placed the brick-sized pieces on a patterned plate. One part of the bench had been lowered so he could reach it comfortably from his wheelchair.
‘GINGER LOAF?’ he yelled as he wheeled the slices from the bench to the kitchen table.
‘YES, THANKS!’
Yelling at an elderly man in a wheelchair went against my entire upbringing.
‘Tea?’ Harriet said, getting mugs out and putting them on the normal-height bench.
I nodded and watched Harriet and Arthur move round each other without the need for ‘excuse me’ or ‘could you move a little to your left’, instinctively knowing which way the other would move from years of practice. Harriet filled the teapot then grabbed the sugar jar; Arthur passed her a teaspoon. He curled out three twists of butter like the ones you get in Devonshire tearooms; she set out three side plates. It was humbling to watch, and I found myself wishing for the security of your place in the world old age would bring.
‘You said you saw Joe?’
Harriet and Arthur took their places at the table and began to pour tea.
‘Yes. He left a little while ago. With a blond girl.’
‘A blond girl?’ The heat from the ginger hit the back of my throat and I coughed. ‘Who was she?’
‘I don’t know, dear.’ Harriet studied me through her pale-rimmed glasses. ‘She was a pretty wee thing though. Sugar?’
I took the jar from her and thoughtlessly loaded my tea with four teaspoons, confused about my bubbling irritation.
‘Harriet,’ I said, an idea forming. ‘Did you film it?’
‘No.’ Her tea quickly became fascinating to her.
‘Harriet?’ I said in a tone most commonly used with naughty children. Her eyes ceased scrutinising the contents of her teacup and flitted about the room, avoiding my demanding gaze.
‘I’m not going to get mad.’
Harriet picked at a non-existent bobble of thread in the floral tablecloth. Arthur sat at the table obliviously getting the majority of his ginger loaf down the front of his shirt and blinking into the middle distance, not noticing that his young neighbour was giving his beloved elderly wife the death stare.
‘Harriet,’ I said again in a you-tell-me-right-this-minute voice.
‘You promise you won’t get mad?’
‘I promise.’
‘I was only filming your garden because Marjorie at the bookshop said you couldn’t possibly have asparagus sprouting so soon after planting and I said you most certainly could and that my lovely, ah, clever’ she glanced up to see how the flattery was working ‘neighbour had a fine bed of asparagus. I had to film your garden to show that know-it-all-britches she was wrong.’ She put both her hands flat down on the table and leant forward. ‘You know, just because she works in a bookshop doesn’t mean she’s read every book! I know my gardening, and my Arthur,’ she patted Arthur on the arm and he snapped out of his thoughts with a distracted ‘eh?’ ‘can grow peonies in any soil, even in London. Just because I’m from the country doesn’t mean I don’t read. I won’t have her telling me—’
‘The footage?’ I interrupted politely before Harriet gave herself a stroke.
‘What’s that, dear?’
‘The footage. Did you keep it?’
‘Ah . . .’ She twiddled her fingers. ‘Ye-es.’
Five minutes later, after much convincing that I was not going to report her to the authorities, and agreeing that yes, she really only had my best interests at heart; that the city was indeed full of rapists, robbers and serial killers, and unless you got video footage and a complete helix of their DNA these criminals would get off scot-free, I was following her upstairs to be shown the footage of Joe, a blonde and some flourishing asparagus.
‘You know the neighbours at number forty-two? The Montgomerys?’
I made noncommittal noises.
‘The ones with the ugly baby.’
‘Harriet,’ I scolded. ‘Babies aren’t ugly.’
‘Oh, pish-posh!’ She flapped her free hand, the other clutching the banister. ‘You don’t need to mind your manners with me, dear. That baby is the ugliest I’ve laid my eyes on. And I’m old. I’ve laid my eyes on a lot of babies. That Montgomery one has a face like a block of melted cheese.’
Harriet spoke the truth. The baby had a saggy, pitted little face. But still, I didn’t dare agree with her. Mine wasn’t out yet. Harriet continued to witter on about the Montgomerys, and how she’d filmed the husband with a suspect-looking package and was thinking about taking the footage down to Constable Smith but couldn’t because he’d stopped receiving her visits.
‘So I was thinking, you could take it. Hmmm?’ she said, arriving at the landing.
‘No.’
She grumbled.
Harriet opened the door and gave a nervous titter as my mouth dropped. Sitting on an antique desk was the largest home computer screen I had ever seen. Like a flatscreen TV at a sports bar.
‘Oh my god!’
She made noises about it being not so very big and scurried over to the desk, sat down and shook the wireless mouse. The s
creen lit up and Harriet navigated her way through little boxes and opened new windows while I tried to fathom the level of technology she was proficient in.
‘Here it is.’ She clicked on a file.
A box flew open on the screen with hundreds and hundreds of files running down the page. Hundreds and hundreds of files with my name on them. I read the file names over Harriet’s cardigan-draped shoulder.
‘Joe and Emma dig vegetable patch – March twenty-sixth’
‘Joe and Emma watch movie – March twenty-eighth’
‘Joe hoes herb patch – April second’
‘Joe does Zumba – April third’
‘Joe and Emma watch movies – April eleventh’
‘Joe and Emma . . .’
‘Joe and Emma . . .’
‘Joe and Emma . . .’
‘Harriet!’ I cried, upset that a file entitled Emma sunbathes in the garden – June 15th meant she’d filmed me basking in my maternity bra and pants. ‘You’ve been filming my whole life!’
‘For your security, dear,’ she said matter-of-factly.
She twisted in her seat and watched me with watery eyes.
‘It’s . . .’ I looked back at the files, unable to fully grasp that the minutiae of my home life was stored in a bunch of files on a geriatric lady’s unreasonably modern computer. ‘It’s . . . weird. And I asked you to stop.’ I looked away from a file labelled Emma measures her belly and scowled.
‘I did stop. I did!’ she said with childlike insistence. ‘You can see there is quite a gap up there.’ She waved her thickened, arthritic finger at the screen. ‘But then there was that new postman that looked like a Nazi, and Marjorie’s daughter’s neighbour’s gate was wide open one morning and their cat came home with one leg completely shaved, so I—’
‘Harriet!’ I barked, not wanting to hear why she felt that filming Joe and I make crêpes on June 12th or play Jenga on June 17th was in any way going to stop a Nazi, cat-shaving, gate-opening postal worker in his criminal tracks.
She swivelled back to the screen, chastened for now. She clicked on a file with that day’s date and we waited for it to load. A black window popped up on the screen with a PLAY symbol in the centre.
‘Sit, sit.’ She waved her hand at a stool in the corner and pressed play.
How Not to Fall in Love, Actually Page 29