by Meg Carter
Zeb’s eyes fill with tears. How she wishes she had known him back when he was an ambitious young photographer whose portfolio was starting to attract positive attention. Around the time she was born, a number of his pictures had been chosen for inclusion in a best of young British talent exhibition in New York – an endorsement that finally offered him a long-hoped for staff position on Fleet Street. Yet he’d traded in all this and more – prospects, independence, freedom – after a woman she never knew died from complications during her birth. Which left Dad to be her everything. Her comforter and rock.
If only he could tell her now what she should do, how she should feel, she thinks, drying her face on her sleeve. But the harder she craves this, the more clearly she hears Richard’s voice.
You’ve had it tough, her ex told her, by phone, the evening before Dad’s funeral. But you’re a parent yourself now, with responsibilities. Like being there for your son when he needs you and showing him the difference between right and wrong. It’s about actions, not words. And that’s why the best thing right now is for Matty to be with Helene and me.
Zeb grimaces. How she still hates her ex for saying that; the timing of it, too. Yet didn’t he have a point? As she had struggled to cope in the weeks and months following their split, the firm hold she’d had on life as she once knew it started to unravel.
It was Christmas 2014 when she first suspected he was seeing someone else. His coltishness after the DeHaan Christmas party was an early indicator. His work shirt reeked of the cloying sweetness of the perfume she later learned Helene used.
Within a few short months she’d taken Matty with her back to the flat in Camden – though her son had spent more time at his place than hers during that first summer. Then, before she could see it coming, Richard was talking about having him most weeknights during term for ‘stability’. Starting tutoring. And changing schools. Having parents who lived just around the corner meant there would always be someone on hand when he had to work late, he explained. Or when he was out for dinner. Or at the theatre, with Helene.
Just how things got so bad so fast during those difficult first few months remains obscured by an alcoholic haze. But the fact of it was that as Zeb’s drinking began to escalate it became harder to get Matty to school on time with all the right bits and pieces. To remind him to keep up with his music practice. To remember what to put on the weekly online shopping order. And while her boss was understanding at first, she lived in fear of the inevitable day when her colleagues would decide she’d worn their patience too thin.
Reluctant to confide any of this in her best friend Sam, it had been Dad she’d relied on to be there for her, stand by her, help her get back on her feet, again. Encourage her to enrol at a gym close to work where she could go to work out most lunchtimes. Urge her to self-impose a new rule not to drink between Monday and Friday, unless invited out on a weeknight to meet friends and even then, when she did drink, to cut her wine with soda.
Do it for you, he said. But most of all, do it for Matty.
Powered by a sudden primal longing for her son, Zeb hurries back into the sitting room. She picks up the cordless phone, punches in a number then holds it tight against her ear.
‘Hello?’
The youngest of four sisters, Samantha Gardner is fiercely loyal to those she cares about. Independent-minded, too, having scandalised both family and friends by choosing to live not in Manchester, where she’d grown up, but down south, in London, where she moved after art college. After a decade trying to make it as a magazine photographer, Sam turned her back on publishing to become a curator at the gallery where Zeb now works.
‘Hey you,’ Zeb presses on, wandering back into the kitchen. ‘It’s me.’
A sharp intake of breath is followed by a brief silence. When eventually the other woman does speak her voice is tight. ‘You’ve got a nerve.’
‘I know, I’m sorry. I’ve been away for a few days. In Scotland, it’s a long story – one for another time, preferably involving a bottle of wine, maybe even two – but I was just wondering, now I’m back, you know, how things are?’
‘Fucking hell, Zeb.’
‘Sorry?’
’It’s a bit late for that, don’t you think?
‘What?’ Struggling to decode the other woman’s voice, Zeb tightens her grip on the phone.
‘Sorry.’
‘Oh, sorry. No, I mean…’ What is Sam going on about? Zeb wonders. What does her friend think she’s done? But once more she can’t remember. ‘Look. Sam. I don’t know how to say this, but … I had a bit of an accident. Up in Scotland. I banged my head. I’ve been in hospital, actually. I mean, I’m home now, but I’m still finding it quite difficult to remember—’
‘How… convenient.’
‘No, it’s not.’ Zeb struggles in vain to swallow a sob. ‘It’s not at all. In fact it’s turning into a bit of a nightmare—’
‘So you really don’t remember what happened at William’s party?’ Sam interrupts. Her voice is cold. Incredulous.
‘No… I—’
‘Don’t remember leaving with Marcus? Right.’
‘Marcus…’
‘My boyfriend? Or rather, my ex?’
Zeb’s eyes widen. Marcus Palmer. Estate agent and keen golfer. Yes, the pair had met at a French jive dance class. A short man, almost handsome, with deep-set eyes that made him look shifty. Older than Dad… would have been. An unlikely pairing. And certainly not her type. ‘No, I think you’ve got that wrong—’
‘Really.’
‘Yes, really. I’ve had a tough few weeks—’ Zeb begins, desperately threading together the fragments of her recent past, ‘what with Dad’s death, the funeral and everything. Then the accident.’ She remembers Marcus following her out of William’s kitchen after something the host’s boyfriend said about absentee mothers had made her upset. He’d put his arm around her, tried to persuade her not to leave, then having failed in his mission, insisted on driving her back to her flat. ‘It was nothing, honestly. He was just trying to help. I think you may have got… the wrong end of the stick.’
Sam sighs. ‘His words exactly.’
‘Maybe because it’s true?’ Zeb’s says, hopefully. It is true, she knows it. ‘Look, I’m sorry if you two are going through a difficult patch. But there’s nothing going on, I promise. And I’m sorry if anything I did made things worse. It’s just, well, I’ve missed you, OK? And at this particular moment, well—’ she sniffs. ‘I suppose it would just be nice to see a friendly face.’
There’s silence once more at the other end of the line and for a moment Zeb fears Sam might have put down the phone, but she is wrong.
‘OK,’ the other woman sighs. ‘To tell you the truth, I’m rather enjoying all the effort he’s going to to win me back. Look, if you’re free later come to mine for dinner. Best not to go anywhere too central, not close to work – you’re the last person Kirsty will want to see after what happened. I mean really, Zeb, walking out like that, the day before the Young Blood launch event you’d been organising. You left everyone in the lurch—’
‘Oh Sam,’ Zeb sighs, struggling to understand what her friend has just said. So she quit her job, and recently, too, though she can’t recall the precise details. But Sam has agreed to see her, at least. Once they meet and talk more, surely things will start falling into place. ‘To tell the truth, I’m really not feeling up to going out. But I’m not feeling up to a night in alone, either. Christ, Sam, I’m so sorry—’
‘Zeb?’
With the heel of her free palm she rubs her eyes. ‘Still here.’
‘Let’s hook up Saturday evening – I’ll come to you.’ A steeliness in Sam’s voice signals that she’ll not be argued with. ‘I’ll bring dinner, too. I think we’ve both got some explaining to do.’
Zeb readjusts her grip on the phone.
Looking up, she stares at the blown-up print of a black and white on the wall opposite, a photo Dad took on his twenty-first birthd
ay. It is of an old Routemaster London bus in the rain. He gave it to her when she too reached that age – a gesture that still moves her deeply. Am I going mad, Dad? Zeb wonders, meeting the dull gaze of the West African driver. She considers the struggle it has become to stay strong enough to care for herself and his beloved grandson. Dad, how did things end up like this?
Zeb thinks for a moment about the meeting she has next Tuesday with a solicitor. That will be a meeting with her dad’s solicitor, of course. How did she not guess? And what the hell will she need? Papers, his papers, most of which are still sitting in the upstairs office at the house in Woodleigh – not a trip she fancies taking with Matty in tow. For it is her role now to get things in order. His affairs. Her life. She checks her watch. With nothing better to do, maybe she’ll go tomorrow.
‘Hello?’
‘Sorry, Sam,’ Zeb answers quickly, returning her attention to the call. ‘That would be lovely. Saturday night, any time after seven.’
10
Kensington Gardens, November 1974
‘It’s called Round Pond, did you know?’
‘Sorry?’
Viola waves a gloved hand at the dull expanse of water spread out before them like a slate tarpaulin. With a shiver, she raises the collar of her winter coat – a vintage pea-green, knee-length number she’d bought the previous week from Portobello Market – and tucks the fur trim more snugly around her throat.
‘This, the ornamental lake.’
‘Oh,’ Alma responds, though she’s not really listening. There is something about this place, its dull flatness, that oppresses her.
They are by the boating lake in Kensington Gardens, near the large wooden box used to store rented deckchairs. Its padlock is broken, its door ajar. A short distance beyond, a figure in a woolly hat and donkey jacket squats on his haunches as he adjusts the rudder of a model yacht. The only other living person in sight.
Alma pans the entire skyline. In the distance, towering concrete marks the office blocks at Marble Arch. Straight ahead, behind the branches of the line of trees crisscrossing the sky like Japanese script, the tower of the Old Admiralty Building on Horse Guards Parade, just visible. Behind that, Big Ben. Above hang dull, swollen clouds.
A lash of wind takes her by surprise. The grey November morning is too chill to wake the dozens of swans that nest here. But all Alma has on her mind is the looming presence of Leonard Parmenter, and the fear he will always be there.
A week earlier, on her mother’s insistence, Alma had made her first trip back home for the weekend. It had been a disaster. During Saturday lunch, Angela Dean had let her know that a few close friends would be joining her at the vicarage a little later for an informal tea. Alma was lying on her bed, reading, when she heard the echo of his laughter from the downstairs hallway.
Knowing that at any moment she’d be summoned to join them, she quickly dimmed the lamp and drew the curtains. A migraine, she whispered miserably from beneath the covers. I’ve had an aspirin. All I can do now is ride it out. It was the flimsiest of excuses, but her mother had believed her, and after she’d fussed about the dangers of reading in poor light she’d left her to it, muttering something about an eye test as the bedroom door swung to.
Thankfully Leonard did not stay long that day. But when her mother came back upstairs to check on her a little later, she pressed a sealed envelope into Alma’s hand containing ten one pound notes and a postcard featuring a colour photo of Big Ben.
Please accept this token of my appreciation in the spirit in which it is intended, he had written. You have been much in my thoughts these past few months since Vienna and I pray that I have been in yours, too. Let me know when I can see you, Alma, dearest. Always, your Uncle L.
Horrified, Alma stared at the pound notes, wondering what to do.
The money felt like some kind of payment, and that made her feel dirty. Even so, this unexpected windfall would more than cover the costs of a nice slap-up meal for her and Viola, with change to spare. Conflicted, she crumpled the card and tucked it down into the bottom of her overnight bag before carefully folding the cash and stuffing that into her pocket.
But in the days that followed Alma found the ten pounds impossible to spend.
She sighs, her breath misting the air. She wanted to have confided all this in Viola, but her friend has grown increasingly preoccupied in recent weeks by a plan she’s hatched with Geoff to start a new group together with a faster, harder-edged musical style inspired by The Velvet Underground. The pair have even begun sleeping over at a flat in Lancaster Gate owned by Viola’s older brother, which she is allowed to use now and then when he’s away.
Today has been the first time they’ve spoken, properly, in what seems like a lifetime, Alma thinks, folding her arms to hug her body more tightly through the coarse woven fabric of her winter coat, then waiting for her roommate to process the latest details of her predicament and give her assessment.
‘Alma.’
‘What?’
‘This can’t go on. You’ve had a face like a wet weekend for days. So what are you going to do?’
Alma narrows her eyes. ‘Do?’
‘Yes, do.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Come on, Alma. It’s really quite simple.’ Viola stamps her feet to keep warm. ‘You’ve got a decision to make. He’s a creep, right? You don’t want him around. So tell him. And if he keeps coming back, tell someone else. Whoever runs that music council he’s involved with. Fight back. Get him in trouble with his boss. Or believe you’re powerless and get on with that, living life at his beck and call. Either way, make a choice. Us girls don’t have to stand for any of that kind of shit any more. Haven’t you read The Female Eunuch?’
Alma’s fists clench. Because of course she has – well, flicked through it.
‘So what are you saying, Viola?’ she cries, with more anger than she realises has been building inside her, for weeks. ‘That I’m naïve? That I’m some kind of sad type for being hurt and upset? That it would be wrong if, some day, I meet someone – a proper man, my own age, like that man I met at Number Nineteen with you and Geoff, someone interesting – who’ll look after me, settle down and have children?’
‘Of course not,’ Viola groans, extracting a pack of cigarettes from her coat pocket. ‘What I am saying is the world won’t stop turning, so whether you like it or not, you’ve got to move on.’
Alma leans towards the lit match Viola proffers in her cupped, gloved hand. Recognising the cardboard book of matches her friend is clutching makes her think, just for a moment: what if? But it is pointless, she knows, and the memory is swiftly crowded out by other thoughts.
Alma inhales and for a second or two her head swims and her temper lessens.
What happened with Leonard isn’t her fault. Nor is she to blame for the fact that he took advantage of her. She’s not the one who was blind, careless and naïve: her parents were. They should have been the ones to guard her, not pave his way to her door. She should have been protected. She was only a child. And in the kind of situation she’d found herself in, how the hell can a child be the one to take control? But she is an adult now. And maybe an adult can.
Alma turns towards Viola.
‘So what would you do?’
‘Oh that’s not fair,’ her friend exclaims. ‘I mean, it’s irrelevant. I’m not you and I’m not in your situation, am I?’ She lets slip a laugh. ‘We’re very different, you and I.’ Alma opens her mouth, about to object. ‘Don’t deny it. I can see as clear as day from the look on your face what you think about me and Geoff. But you’re entitled to your opinion. My point is simply this: you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do. It doesn’t matter what other people might say. Only you know what’s right for you.’
And she is right, Alma knows. Though she has been shocked by some of the details Viola has shared about her sex life with Geoff, she also knows that other people’s opinions shouldn’t matter. Because she’s hated her parents’
fixation with how things might look; their willingness to kowtow to expectation and do the right thing. And yet here Alma is passing judgment on her friend. Still bound by convention, maybe she is more like her mother and father than she’d like to think.
‘But you didn’t answer,’ Alma presses on, taking a final drag on her cigarette then flicking the butt across the ground. ‘My question – about what you would do if you were me. And not just about Leonard.’
‘Really?’
Alma nods.
‘Hell, you’re honest and brave and beautiful,’ Viola declares. ‘You need to start putting yourself first and live a little. You need to ditch the creep and bury the past. How you deal with what’s happened is down to you and only you. Take control of it. Do what suits you, not what pleases everyone else.’ She grins. ‘You need to find someone you want to be with who turns you on. I mean, it’s 1974, for Christ’s sake, Alma. Us girls have got to stand up for what we want. No one saves us but ourselves.’
* * *
‘Hey, Alma, you’ve got a visitor.’
Both girls turn as one towards Trish, the girl from the room opposite theirs. She is standing by the pigeonholes outside the porter’s office holding a mug of tea as Alma and Viola burst through the main door of Engel House, flushed and freezing from their walk, a short while later.
With raised eyebrows, Viola opens her mouth to speak but the other girl gets there first.
‘It’s your uncle,’ Trish continues, dropping her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. ‘I hope everything’s OK.’
Uncle? The word makes Alma freeze.
‘Uncle,’ Viola echoes, straining for Alma’s nearest hand. For a moment, their fingers interlace. ‘I take it—’
‘No,’ Alma whispers, tightly. ‘I don’t.’
Her roommate nods. ‘OK. So. What shall we do?’
Alma pulls out the slim wad of folded notes she’s been carrying with her for the past couple of weeks. And as she stares at them and an idea starts to forms a weight begins to lift. ‘Here,’ she says, shrugging off her coat. ‘Take this for me, I’ll be up in a minute.’