Me and Mr Jones

by Lucy Diamond

  The girls picked up on it too. Once they were off the motorway Willow began complaining of a headache, shielding her eyes as if subconsciously she didn’t want to see, whereas Hazel was glued to the window, with a nervous, almost hysterical energy radiating from her as she recognized landmarks. ‘Hey!’ she cried suddenly. ‘That’s our Asda. Mum, look. Asda!’

  ‘Duh,’ Willow said, somewhat unkindly. ‘It’s only a shop.’

  ‘I know, but – Mum. Did you see it? We’re nearly home!’

  Izzy winced at the word ‘home’. The poor girls had had so many homes in the last year: the flat in Manchester, the one in Lyme, Alicia’s house and now the holiday chalet in Loveday. ‘We’re nearly back,’ she agreed. ‘And remember what I told you. The flat might not be how you remember it. You know how messy Daddy was. He might even have changed things around!’

  Her words were lightly spoken, but she felt worried beneath them. Maybe it had been a mistake bringing the girls along. What if they arrived at the flat and he’d completely trashed it? All their memories would forever be tarnished. He’d been in such a dark place by the end of his life that she could imagine this manifesting itself in horrible graffiti on the walls, smashed furniture, the stench of rotting food …

  ‘I can’t wait to see our bedroom again,’ Hazel said, bouncing on the seat, not seeming to have taken Izzy’s warning on board. ‘Are we going to start school here again too?’

  ‘No, love,’ Izzy said, as Willow made another rude noise of derision. ‘No, we’re just here for one last visit, to clean up and choose the nicest things Daddy left behind to take back to Dorset with us. We’ll be here one or two nights tops, then we’ll say goodbye to Manchester again, okay?’ She eyed Willow, who had her arms folded across her chest. ‘And there’s no need to be unkind,’ she added. ‘It was a perfectly good question.’

  ‘A perfectly stupid question,’ Willow muttered, kicking her leg petulantly.

  ‘Scooby-Dooby-Doo,’ Hazel sang, oblivious to her sister’s mood. ‘Shaggy did a poo. He threw it out the win-dow …’

  ‘Left down here,’ Izzy told Charlie, her heart quickening as they passed the little row of shops where she’d bought milk and bread every day. ‘Then it’s the next right.’

  ‘Scooby-Dooby-Dee, Scrappy did a wee. He—’

  ‘Hazel,’ Izzy said, feeling unusually irritable. ‘Hush, love.’ She hugged herself, gazing at the streets as if she’d never seen them before. They were so familiar, yet dream-like too. The houses appeared hunched and packed together, with some windows boarded up and a burnt-out car at one end of the street. The tiny front yards sprouted junk – bits of car, rubble sacks, overflowing bins. There were no trees, barely anything green at all. Even the sky felt small after the wide-open horizon at Lyme. ‘This one,’ she said quietly, pointing. ‘Just here, on the right, Charlie. Number sixty-two.’

  They were all silent as he parked and cut the engine. ‘Well, here we are,’ he said.

  ‘Here we are,’ she echoed.

  ‘We’re home!’ Hazel sang, unclipping her seatbelt with a flourish.

  Izzy’s hands trembled as she opened the front door. She’d never imagined them coming back here, least of all under such extraordinary and traumatic circumstances.

  She held her breath when the door swung open and she stepped cautiously inside. The flat felt still and deadened, as if it had been left on pause. There was a stale sort of smell in the air, the kind that made her want to push open all the windows and bring a fresh, cold draught rushing through the place.

  ‘Come in,’ she said apprehensively. It was daft. Even though she knew Gary was dead – she’d signed enough forms and letters confirming this, after all; she’d seen his lifeless body at the undertaker’s, for heaven’s sake! – there was still a part of her braced for conflict as she walked down the hall. Habit, she supposed. Gary had held her up against this wall by her neck one time, she remembered, his thumbs hard against her windpipe as she’d gasped for air. She couldn’t even remember why – towards the end he’d picked a fight for any trivial reason.

  ‘Are you okay?’ Charlie asked from behind her. He had a tower of empty boxes in his arms; they’d come prepared with suitcases to pack and bin bags to fill too. An estate agent was due round the following day; there was a lot to do.

  ‘Yeah, sure. Just … ghosts of the past, you know,’ she said. She shook herself, then walked down to the kitchen. She could hear Hazel exclaiming over everything in the hall.

  ‘Look, there’s my old coat still hanging up! It’s tiny now. Oh, and look – my Peppa Pig umbrella!’

  ‘Peppa Pig is for babies,’ Willow muttered witheringly.

  Izzy filled the kettle – its handle sticky where it hadn’t been wiped down for months – and stood looking around the room. It was only a tiny galley kitchen, certainly not one where you could sit and linger over a coffee, like in Mulberry House. The window looked out at a wooden fence, which divided them from the next house in the terrace, although she’d tried to improve the view by planting up a windowbox fixed to the ledge outside. Needless to say, the flowers had all died since she’d left. In fact, there was a prominent cat-turd in the box now; just what you wanted to look at when you were washing up.

  While the kettle boiled she prowled around the rest of the flat, still on high alert, as if expecting something horrible to jump out from a cupboard, or for Gary himself to emerge. Thought you’d got shot of me, did you? Gotcha!

  To her relief, it appeared much the same as when she and the girls had done their flit. It wasn’t particularly clean, but she was surprised by how tidy it was, almost as if he’d known he wasn’t going to come back. No, she thought quickly, not wanting to develop that thought any further. Then, when she went into the girls’ old room and saw that the bunkbed had been stripped, save for an envelope on each mattress – one for Willow, one for Hazel – Izzy’s knees suddenly felt very weak.

  ‘Are those for us, Mum?’ asked Willow, who’d sneaked in behind her.

  Izzy handed Willow’s over dumbly, wondering what on earth was inside. Then Hazel, sensing intrigue, appeared, demanding hers, and the small room was full of the noise of envelopes being ripped open.

  Willow was first into hers and pulled out a letter. Izzy read it over her shoulder and tears welled in her eyes.

  Dear Willow,

  I am so proud of you, babe. You are clever and kind and funny. And beautiful too.

  Lots of love from your Daddy xxx

  Willow made a choking noise and promptly burst into tears, collapsing onto the lower bunk.

  ‘Dear Hazel,’ Hazel read aloud. ‘Never forget that your daddy loved you. You are bright and … what’s that word?’

  ‘Thoughtful,’ Izzy said.

  ‘Thoughtful and make everyone laugh. Love you darling, Daddy xxx.’

  ‘But I don’t understand,’ sobbed Willow. ‘It’s like he knew he was going to die, Mum. How did he know?’

  Izzy sat on the lower bunk and put her arms around them, a knot clenching in her stomach. Oh, Gary. You stupid bastard, she thought angrily. ‘I’m not sure, love,’ she managed to say. ‘I really don’t know.’ Had this seriously been his plan B – to kill himself, if he wasn’t able to snatch the girls away? Was he really that desperate?

  She opened her mouth to say something comforting, but nothing came. Who knew what had gone through his head, he had been so deranged that awful last day. A madness had overtaken him, its power working him like a puppet.

  ‘I am thoughtful, aren’t I?’ Hazel mused, less affected than her sister. ‘And I do make people laugh too.’

  ‘You do,’ Izzy said, stroking her hair. God, but she hated thinking of Gary sitting in the flat, maybe right on the bed here, as he wrote these letters to them, just in case he never got to say the words himself. He, of all people, knew at first hand the crushing pain of losing your parents when you were young. He, of all people, should have tried harder to keep himself together, for their sake. For everyone’s s
ake. And what if she had died in the car with him? He’d have forced his own daughters into the very kind of foster homes he’d hated himself. Good move, Gary, she raged. Genius!

  Charlie appeared just then, thankfully. ‘Two girls are at the door. Tanya and Phoebe? They were asking if you wanted to p—’ He broke off at Willow’s tear-stricken face. ‘Oh. Everything all right?’

  ‘PHOEBE!’ Hazel shouted, her letter forgotten. ‘Can I, Mum? Can I go over?’

  Izzy smiled weakly, grateful for the distraction. Tanya and Phoebe were the girls next door; their mum Ange was a friend of hers. You couldn’t get anything past Ange, she was a perpetual lace-curtain twitcher. ‘Of course you can. Tell Ange I’ll pop in to say hello later. Willow, do you want to go and play with Tanya?’

  Willow wiped her tears away and nodded. ‘Yes,’ she said.

  Hazel had already skipped merrily out of the room, but Willow was more hesitant to leave. Izzy put her arms around her and held her tight. ‘It’s going to be okay,’ she said. ‘It’s all going to be okay.’

  Charlie was still in the doorway and ruffled Willow’s hair as she went by. ‘You all right?’ he asked Izzy again once the front door had shut.

  She nodded and pushed herself up. ‘Yep,’ she replied. ‘Come on, let’s make a start.’

  They began in the kitchen, Izzy directing and Charlie following orders. There wasn’t an awful lot of stuff that had sentimental value to her; she’d already taken the essentials when they’d escaped to Dorset. There were a couple of things she decided to keep – a bright-red vase Gary had given her one Valentine’s Day, and the faithful wall clock which she’d had forever – but otherwise she culled brutally, piling up the crockery and pans. She’d give them to the nearest women’s refuge, she decided.

  The living room was harder to sort – there were boxes of photos, books, music and all sorts of artwork done by the girls over the years. She packed the photos and artwork to take, but did her best to be practical about the rest, sifting out only her favourite books and CDs, and bagging up the rest for the charity shop. She felt bad, ditching Gary’s music – all his moody Joy Division albums, for instance. She’d loved them herself at first, but nowadays they just made her think about him, sunk into a chair, scowling, and taking no pleasure from the music or life in general.

  ‘Call yourself a Mancunian?’ Charlie said, aghast. ‘And you’re chucking out Joy Division? Isn’t there a law against that?’

  She wrinkled her nose. ‘I know but … bad memories. I don’t want to hear them again.’

  As for the furniture, the curtains, the rug – they were pretty faded and shabby, when looked at with an impartial eye. She didn’t want or need them, they belonged to the past. Once the money came through, she decided, and she was back on her feet, she would buy a new home for them and kit it out just the way they wanted.

  The trip next door hadn’t been a total success for the girls – ‘Phoebe said I talk funny now,’ Hazel reported, confused. ‘She said I sound foreign.’ ‘Tanya kept going on about new people at school that I didn’t know,’ Willow complained – but Izzy loved catching up with Ange, who willingly took two of the rugs and an armchair off her.

  ‘Hey, and who’s that fit bloke I spotted lugging boxes into the van, eh? That your new fella?’ Ange wanted to know.

  Izzy pulled a face. ‘Not really,’ she said. ‘It’s complicated.’

  Ange rolled her eyes. ‘Complicated? Doesn’t look it from here. He’s gorgeous. You’re single – I won’t say widowed, that makes you sound about ninety – so what’s stopping you? He’s not married or gay or freaky, is he?’

  ‘No,’ Izzy laughed. ‘No and no. I just think it’s too soon to be diving into a relationship with someone else.’

  Ange raised an eyebrow. ‘Don’t give me that. You’d had enough of Gary for months before you left. Just because he’s died now, it doesn’t turn him into a saint overnight, does it? Don’t feel you have to weep over him forever, not when he was such a bastard to you.’

  Izzy was silent. She knew there was some truth in what Ange was saying, but it seemed so harsh.

  ‘Sorry,’ Ange said in the next moment. ‘You’re right, shouldn’t speak ill of the dead. But he was, though, wasn’t he?’ She gave Izzy a sudden fierce hug. ‘It’s lovely to see you again. Sure I can’t tempt you to stay, now you’re back? Our Phoebe hasn’t stopped talking about it.’

  Izzy sighed. Ange had been a good friend – so had many people here. Manchester would always be her true home, the city that had shaped her and taught her some important life lessons. But she had a new life now, down in the soft greens and blues of Dorset. ‘We’ll come back and see you again,’ she promised. ‘Maybe in the summer. Or you could come down for a holiday with us!’

  ‘You’re on,’ said Ange, then winked. ‘And don’t forget the invite to the wedding, now, will you?’

  That night, when the girls were asleep, Charlie produced a bottle of red wine and poured them both a glass. ‘Well done,’ he said, handing Izzy hers. ‘Today must have been tough, but I reckon we’ve made a good start.’

  ‘We have,’ she agreed. The sofa smelled of Gary when she leaned her head back. Gary who’d written notes to his daughters to read after his death; Gary who’d been driven to self-destruction, who’d nearly killed her too, not to mention two police officers. Ange was right – he definitely hadn’t been a saint.

  ‘I’m so glad you’re here,’ she blurted out to Charlie. ‘I couldn’t have done this on my own. Thank you.’

  ‘No worries,’ he said, reaching over and putting a hand on hers. ‘No worries at all.’

  She liked feeling his fingers on hers, the warmth of his skin. He was a good, good man, whatever his family thought, whatever Margaret in the tea shop might say. She couldn’t think of another man who would have looked after her and helped her as he had done.

  They sat there a while longer in a tired, companionable silence. The worst was over, she told herself. She’d returned to face down her demons, ventured back to the place where she’d been miserable for so long, and she had coped with it; she was undefeated. The only way now was up.

  They watched a film together and drank wine. She could hear Mr Waters, the man who lived in the flat above, wandering about, his telly too loud as always. And there were Ange and Pete, laughing about something or other through the party wall, and Ange’s phone was ringing, and she was yelling at her kids to stop mucking about and go to sleep. Teenagers passed by, shouting over one another, dogs barked, a police siren wailed in the distance … All sounds she’d heard a million times before, sitting on this very sofa. There was a difference now, though. Now she felt safe, able to relax, no longer having that ball of dread in her stomach as she waited for Gary to crash in from the pub, stinking of ale and in a blazing temper. Home, sweet home, she thought with a smile.

  When the film was over, and the bottle was empty, and the lights across the street were going out, Charlie yawned and stretched. ‘I’ll kip on the sofa here, if you’ve got a sleeping bag, or something,’ he said.

  She hesitated. Her mind had been so full of all the things she needed to do that sleeping arrangements hadn’t occurred to her. ‘You can share the double with me,’ she replied after a moment. ‘If you want.’

  They looked at one another, his eyes slightly narrowed as if he was attempting to read her expression. ‘I don’t mind going on the sofa,’ he offered again.

  ‘I’d like the company,’ she said. ‘I’m not trying to make a pass at you, don’t worry, I just don’t want to be on my own.’

  He reached over and squeezed her hand. ‘Fine by me,’ he said. ‘Although if you change your mind about making a pass … that’s fine, too.’

  She laughed self-consciously. ‘Right. Good. Well, let’s get ready for bed then.’

  It was strange, getting undressed and brushing teeth together. She put a clean sheet and pillowcases on the bed, as the others had smelled of Gary, and she knew the scent would creep her
out if she had to breathe it in all night. But soon the whole distraction of stripping the bed and remaking it was over. Now came the weird bit of actually being in it with Charlie.

  They lay side by side in the darkness, both on their backs. The new sheet was cold against her skin and she shivered. Would she even be able to sleep in this bed, after all the bad things that had happened in it? Maybe she should be the one on the sofa. Charlie must be knackered from the long drive earlier – he needed the bed more than she did.

  Just as she was thinking this, Charlie stretched an arm out. ‘Come here,’ he said, and she wriggled into his side. With his arm around her and her head on his chest, she could hear his heart beating, and smell the last traces of his aftershave. He was wearing a T-shirt and boxers and the hairs on his legs felt prickly as she moved closer into him.

  She shut her eyes. It felt good lying next to him. ‘Charlie Jones, what on earth did I do to deserve you?’ she murmured.

  He stroked her hair. ‘You are the most beautiful and lovely woman I have ever met,’ he told her. ‘I should be saying the same.’

  It felt as if her whole body was blushing. ‘Oh, Charlie …’

  ‘I mean it. You’re so strong and together, the way you’ve dealt with everything, the way you look after the girls. I really admire you.’

  ‘Stop it, you’re embarrassing me,’ she said, not wanting him to stop at all.

  ‘I hate thinking of you being miserable here. I know you were.’ He twined his fingers through her hair, his body solid and warm against hers. ‘I wish I could go to bed every night with you in my arms like this. I’d be the luckiest man alive – and I’d never ever do anything to hurt you.’