by Maeve Haran
Julia paused, sensing a trap. But clearly an evening out, even with her mother, was preferable to another at home alone. That in itself spoke volumes.
Ella decided not to say anything until they were sitting at the kitchen table, sharing a glass of wine and even then she would have to tread carefully.
The sun was setting over the river as they parked, filtering through the leafless branches of the trees in the square. The people next door, Ella noted, had already put up their Christmas wreath. They were always the first, kicking off a wild competitive streak in everyone else to adorn their own front door with even greater luxury or originality. Ella was planning to make hers with produce from the allotment.
She put the fish on a hot roasting tray and quickly sorted out new potatoes and some spring greens before opening some wine.
They sat looking out into the now-dark garden, lit up by the faintest afterglow from the sunset. As they watched, a noise startled them. There was a shed at the bottom of the garden, half hidden from view, surrounded by a small veranda with a lacy wooden edge, and it was this edging that must have fallen off. ‘I must ask Wenceslaus to mend that before it comes down and hurts someone,’ Ella announced, almost forgetting Julia was there.
‘You could almost live in that little shed,’ Julia commented wistfully.
Ella detected the danger signs that Julia, like Viola in Twelfth Night, was fantasizing about building a willow cabin to be near the object of her love.
‘Except that you have a perfectly nice home of your own,’ Ella pointed out briskly.
Julia looked so deflated that Ella softened her tone. ‘Don’t you remember, you practically did live there when you were little? You had a café and Dad and I were your customers. You were a very stern proprietor.’
‘It is amazing here, I must admit.’ Julia looked around the large garden. ‘You’d hardly know you were in London.’
Ella wanted to say Ah-ha, then you can see why I don’t want to leave, but she made herself come up with a less provocative reply. ‘Yes, those early weavers knew a thing or two when they built this square right down near their piers and docks. They could watch their bales of silk being loaded from the comfort of their own sitting rooms.’
‘You know we only wanted you to move because we were worried about you living in this great big house alone,’ Julia suddenly volunteered.
‘I’m not alone now, though, am I?’ The matter of Wenceslaus rose up again between them. ‘Julia . . .’ Ella began carefully.
As if sensing what might be coming next, Julia ploughed on. ‘Of course, it was also about the value of the house and how much tax you’ll have to pay.’
‘When I die.’
‘The truth is, Mum, we’re really short. That’s where Neil is all these evenings. Visiting clients trying to bump up his bonus.’
‘Just for the school fees?’
‘They’re twenty grand a year and they’re about to go up.’
Ella tried not to look shocked.
She knew what she was going to say would make her unpopular. Grandparents these days were expected to keep their mouths shut, but she couldn’t bear watching her daughter’s unhappiness.
She sat down and took one of Julia’s hands in hers, noting the strained look on her pretty face. ‘The thing is, money aside, wouldn’t you be happier if the boys were at a day school? Cluttering up the hall with their football boots and their washing?’ She thought of Julia’s clinical, too-tidy house. ‘It seemed to me, when you and Cory were growing up, that parents who sent their kids away missed so much fun. Children are young for so short a time. It’s like that folk song about how much your children grow up each time they turn around. The boys’ll be eighteen and off to university in the wink of an eye and I know how much you love them.’
‘Mum, please . . .’ Julia was avoiding her glance.
‘And then maybe you’d be too busy to have a crush on handsome young Poles.’ There, it was out! Ella could hardly believe she’d finally said it.
‘Mum! What the hell are you talking about?’ The anger in Julia’s tone crackled between them.
‘I think you know what I mean.’
‘I do not know what you mean. This is completely bloody ridiculous.’ She stood up and grabbed her bag, knocking over a glass of wine as she did so.
‘You need more in your life, darling. Especially with Neil out all the time.’
‘In case I chase the help?’
‘Wenceslaus isn’t the help.’
‘He lives here rent-free, doesn’t he? Putting up the occasional shelf? Stopping you selling and letting the rest of the family share in your security!’
‘Julia, that’s not fair. Even without Wenceslaus here I wouldn’t move. I love this house and I intend to go on living here. At least until I get dementia and have to sell to fund my care.’
She’d intended this as a joke but Julia pounced. ‘Neil thinks you’re getting it already. You completely missed a meeting with him last week.’
‘That’s because I forgot to put it in my diary.’ The truth was, she hadn’t wanted to go anyway. Neil wanted her to come and meet a tax lawyer and Ella knew the subject of avoiding death duties would come up again.
‘Hello, El-la,’ they turned to find that Wenceslaus was back. ‘You leave keys in front door.’
The look of satisfaction on her daughter’s face made Ella’s palm itch.
And yet, if Ella had known her daughter’s true state of mind, she might have been surprised. As she drove home, Julia had to admit that she was feeling lonelier than she’d ever felt in her life. Neil was perpetually out and hardly seemed to talk to her if he was in. She sometimes wondered whether he’d notice if a robot served him dinner. And that was exactly how she felt – worse, because robots didn’t have feelings.
And she missed her boys desperately. Occasionally she found herself in their rooms, just standing there with no purpose. Once she’d picked up a T-shirt and held it against her cheek, breathing in Mark’s scruffy teenager smell. Each time she saw them they were a little more grown-up and a little more distant. Harry had even stopped butting into her accidentally-on-purpose which, ever since he was a small boy, had been his special way of being physically affectionate.
Laura was about to drop Sam off for a dental appointment when she heard the wild scrunch of tyres on gravel. There was only one person who would drive that fast and that angrily.
Simon let himself in. Of course he still had a key and Laura would never have thought of having the locks changed. He came storming into the kitchen, his face red and angry, his eyes narrow chips of fury.
‘So this is how you respond to my generosity!’ he accused.
Sam looked on sullenly while Laura tried to work out what the hell he meant.
‘I offer you the chance to start a divorce petition against me, which I was even intending to pay for, poor schmuck that I am, and you only go to the most notorious divorce lawyer in London! If you’re intending to take me to the cleaners, Laura, you’d better bloody watch out. You’ll end up with nothing but what you can carry in a suitcase.’
‘Nice touch, Dad.’ Sam’s irony was biting. ‘I didn’t know you were so poetic.’
‘And you can get a bloody job and start paying your way!’ Simon rounded on his son. ‘Do you good.’ Then it was Laura’s turn. ‘Twenty-five years I’ve been married to you, Laura, and you haven’t done a day’s work. Time you worked for a living. You’ll need it to pay for your lawyer.’
Laura wanted to shout that she had worked as hard as he had making a home for them, but Rowley’s words came back to her. Be nice. Be accommodating. Not that they’d worked so far. ‘I refuse to be provoked by you, Simon. Rowley Robinson is a friend of Ella’s, that’s why I went to see him. He did not advise me to take you for all you’ve got, but to go for a quick settlement and a clean break. For the sake of our children.’
For a moment Simon looked faintly abashed.
‘To think I used to quite like you, Da
d,’ Sam muttered.
‘Maybe I went a bit far.’
‘Apology accepted.’ Laura picked up her bag and keys. ‘And believe me, if I could find a suitable job, I would take it like a shot. It might distract me from the rest of my life. I’m afraid we have to go. Sam’s got a dental appointment.’
After Sam had been seen by the dentist, Laura assumed he was coming home with her but he had other plans. ‘Billy’s down from Oxford and we thought we’d go to the cinema.’
‘Fine. Will you eat out?’
He nodded. Laura masked her disappointment. Maybe Simon had been right when he’d accused her once before of depending too much on her children for companionship. ‘I’m sorry about that row with Dad. He does love you, you know.’
‘Oh, really? Strange way of showing it.’
‘It’ll pass. He’s stressed out by the divorce as much as I am.’
‘Stop making excuses for him, Mum. He’s behaving like an arsehole.’
A chink of mischief invaded Laura’s misery. ‘Yeah, but he’s still our arsehole.’
She watched as Sam strode off angrily into the night. Some people might wait till their children were grown-up before getting divorced, but it didn’t seem to Laura that there was any good time to break up your family. But then, the kind of people who put up with a bad marriage out of consideration for their children would bear very little relationship to Simon. Simon only ever seemed to think of himself.
Rowley Robinson’s words that it takes two for a marriage to go wrong invaded her mind. But, to be quite frank, she didn’t feel like blaming herself at the moment.
Instead, she went home and ran herself a hot scented bath and sat in the candlelight thinking through all the nasty things she’d like to do to Simon. This made her feel so peaceful that she actually fell asleep and woke to find the bath cold and the phone in the bedroom ringing insistently.
She leapt out, grabbed a towel, and padded towards it just as the phone stopped. Dialling 1471 told her that it had been Simon. What the hell was he doing ringing at 11 p.m.? She was just contemplating whether she felt like finding out when it started to ring again.
‘Hello, Simon,’ she began.
‘You bloody bitch! You pretend your lawyer says you should be all sweetness and light and then you come and slash the tyres on my Audi! Do you know how much they cost? Two hundred and seventy-five pounds each!’
Laura had been about to deny furiously any such accusation when it struck her that she had a good idea as to who might have done it. It wouldn’t have been hard for him to get Simon’s new address out of his secretary.
‘Calm down, Simon,’ she tried to mask her panic, ‘I’ve been at home all evening. It’s probably an envy attack. Expensive cars are always getting scratched or done over with brake fluid. Maybe your next car should have cheaper tyres.’
‘Very funny.’ He slammed down the phone.
Laura waited a moment then rang Billy’s home. Amazingly, she still had the number, dating from primary school days.
‘Hello,’ she asked the sleepy male voice that answered, presumably Billy’s dad. ‘I’m so sorry to disturb you, but could I speak to Billy?’
‘Billy!’ the voice repeated, sounding increasingly pissed off. ‘Billy’s still in Oxford.’
Laura dressed quickly and got into her car. She needed to find Sam before he did anything else.
She circled what seemed like the whole of W4, far down the high road, past the burger bars, and the scabby local disco which desperate teenagers liked to pretend was as smart as anything in the West End. Nothing. Sam wasn’t answering his phone either.
Then she saw Bella’s boyfriend, the silent and tattooed Nigel, emerge from a pub and remembered that he’d tracked down Sam before. ‘Nigel!’ she yelled, stopping him in his tracks halfway across the main road.
‘Mrs Minchin! Are you OK?’
‘Sam and his dad had a fight earlier this evening, Sam’s feeling pretty sore about the break-up.’
‘You should see Bella. I’d get a hard hat, if I were him.’
‘Someone slashed his tyres tonight.’
‘Bella will be thrilled. In her view he’d be lucky it’s only his tyres.’
‘It couldn’t have been . . . ?’
‘Bella? Not her style.’ He smiled a tender, mysterious little smile which made him look sweet and engaging, like an elephant in a tutu. ‘She’s at home. Taking it easy.’
‘She’s not ill?’
‘Nah. Just putting her feet up. I tucked her up with a hottie and a DVD.’
This glimpse of their domestic life wasn’t at all what Laura would have expected of a pair of edgy Goths, yet it was oddly appealing. ‘Give her my love.’
‘Do you want me to come and help you look?’
‘Thanks, that’d be a big relief. Where would you go after you’d slashed your dad’s tyres?’
Nigel gave this proposition some serious consideration. ‘Confession?’
Laura stared at him.
‘Joke, Mrs Minchin. Probably go and get rat-arsed.’
‘Yes, but where would you get rat-arsed, I mean drunk?’
‘Southforks. The beer’s piss but it’s very cheap. And they let kids in without ID.’ He pointed to a basement entrance, surrounded by teenagers, some of whom were leaning over the railings to vomit.
‘Can we go and have a look?’
Once inside, Laura, in her pale pastel sweatshirt and smartly ironed jeans, felt like a nun in a betting shop. She could hardly make out anything in the gloom. The music blared, there was a horrible smell of urine and spilt beer, but no sign of Sam.
‘Thanks for trying.’
Nigel, with an unerring instinct for masculine angst, especially when stoked up by four pints of Rocket Booster lager, disappeared into the Gents. Moments later he hove back into sight, his trunk-like arm supporting an extremely drunk Sam.
‘Let’s get him out of here.’
They half carried the slender figure, which stopped occasionally to throw up, back towards the car.
Just as Nigel opened the back door Sam opened a bleary, anxious eye. ‘Sorry, Mum,’ he half sobbed before collapsing, catatonic, across the seat.
Laura wanted to sob herself. She was furious at Sam for his act of vandalism but she also knew how much pain he must be in to behave so out of character.
‘Shall I come and help you get him in?’ Nigel offered.
‘Would you?’
‘He’ll be all right in the morning.’
‘Yes, but will his father? I’m just wondering what he’s going to do if he works it out.’
The answer arrived around eleven the following day when a squad car from the local police station turned up, sirens blaring.
‘We’ve had a report of criminal damage to an Audi motor vehicle,’ announced the uniformed officer.
‘Indeed?’ Laura asked briskly. ‘And why should that have anything to do with us?’
‘The vehicle’s owner, a Mr Simon Minchin, believed it might be the work of a Mr Sam Minchin.’
Laura asked if the officer could wait a moment and moved to the end of the drive where her mobile signal was good. ‘Simon!’ she hissed with deadly venom when he answered the phone. ‘Get right down here now or I’m tweeting that you have not only left your wife for a younger woman but shopped your son to the police!’
‘It’s for his own good. He can’t go around doing illegal acts like that.’
‘Just as you can’t go around doing immoral ones. I mean it, Simon. Come round here now, this minute, and get the police off his back. Or I’ll tell Rowley Robinson I want to play dirty after all.’
‘You complete shit,’ Laura murmured when the police had finally left. ‘Shopping your own son when you know perfectly well he’d never do a thing like this unless you’d really hurt him.’
‘So it’s my fault my son’s a psycho, is it?’
‘He’s not a psycho,’ Laura challenged, livid. ‘He’s been badly hurt, that’s all.’<
br />
‘I bet you put him up to it.’
‘Simon,’ Laura looked at the man she had lived with and loved for twenty-five years and thought she had known almost as well as she knew herself, ‘stop this. This is me, Laura. Not some castrating ex-wife from hell. And this is Sam who you held in your arms as a baby, who you kicked a ball about with, helped choose a university. Even when you have a new baby, he will still be your son.’
‘It’s more than a grand, Laura.’
Laura felt like yelling, What price do you put on losing the father you loved?
CHAPTER 13
‘Four thousand pounds?’ Claudia’s father Len looked as if he’d felt a ghost walk across his grave. ‘But she can’t have spent four thousand pounds on ice skating and eyebrow threading and whatever these stupid spa things are which she keeps going on about! I mean there have been a couple of hotel jaunts, but to Cornwall, not the Caribbean!’
‘She hasn’t just been buying them for herself but for lots of other people too.’
‘Oh dear God.’ Len sat down shakily. ‘We don’t have that kind of money. We’re over eighty, living on a pension.’
‘I think the first thing we need to do is talk to Mum. Then take her credit card away. And her iPhone. I think I’d better get her an old Nokia – in fact, she can have mine, it’s Gaby’s old one. God, we may even have to stop her going on the computer.’ Claudia had been trawling through her mother’s PC. ‘She’s paid for some things she’s never even taken up.’
‘It really is a mania, then.’
‘Yes. I’ll have to see if we can plead medical reasons and get out of some of it.’
Olivia chose that moment to breeze into the sitting room, back from yet another activity. ‘Oh, Claudia, hello, dear. Has anyone seen my wrap?’
Claudia jumped. She’d thought her mother was safely out. ‘Where are you going now?’ Claudia took in her mother’s smart grey evening frock. She always was a stylish dresser.