The Art of Unpacking Your Life

by Shireen Jilla

  She breathed in deeply. The tang of the sour grass tickled her nose. This wilderness couldn’t be more different to Joanne Sutton’s Pangbourne cottage garden with its shining hot pink foxes, floppy poppies, sprinklings of lily of the valley and peonies. She wished she had never ever seen it. Of course, she shouldn’t have seen Joanne Sutton at home alone.

  What had possessed her?

  Pete put through the call. Joanne Sutton sounded different. Her control was absent and her voice was shrill and unstable. ‘I have to see you. Alone.’

  Sara was silent. Desperate clients were her territory. Yet she was surprised that it was Joanne Sutton talking in this way.

  ‘Can you hear me? Say something.’

  Sara drew on her stock reply. ‘Mrs Sutton, I am simply not permitted to meet with you without your solicitor, Mr Stephenson, being present. Or at the very least with my junior and Mr Stephenson fully aware of our meeting.’

  ‘No.’ Joanne Sutton sobbed, short of hysteria. ‘I have to see you alone. You have to do this for me. Do you understand?’

  Emotional outbursts only alienated Sara and drove her back to comfort of legal practice. ‘It would be a breach of our Code of Practice. I am sorry, Mrs Sutton.’

  Joanne Sutton wailed. Sara had only heard such a desperate and wounded cry once before. From her mother.

  She walked rapidly to the door of her room to see if she could spot her junior, John, in the corridor. She put her hand over the receiver and yelled. ‘John, get your sorry arse in here now, for God’s sake.’

  ‘Look, Mrs Sutton. When you’re a little calmer, let’s talk with Mr Stephenson.’

  John appeared at her door. Sara mouthed Joanne Sutton and mimed slashing her throat.

  ‘Why don’t I put you through to John, my fantastic junior. He can help, and will outline the Code of Practice we need to adhere to at all times.’

  She pointed to him and the phone. He gestured with his fingers to his mouth to remind her he was re-heating their takeaway curry. Joanne Sutton had either hung up, or she remained silent.

  ‘He’ll schedule a meeting for all of us together, okay?’

  ‘Have you ever lost anyone close to you?’ Her tone was cold and calm. It was as if she knew.

  Sara was silent, too experienced to be drawn into a conversation about her life, but surprised by her knowing tone.

  Joanne Sutton continued, ‘A member of your family?’

  Sara scratched vigorously at her eyelid, before remembering she had mascara on. It had already been a hellish day. Give her a five-minute listening to.

  ‘What is it you want, Mrs Sutton?’ Sara couldn’t hide her sigh.

  ‘I want you to come and see me. I need to talk to you in person about something. I deserve it. I have lost my daughter. Every day of my life is going to be overshadowed by this loss.’

  John reappeared with her chicken tikka masala in a white plastic container with the rice and dhal in pots balanced on top. Sara waved him in and wrote on her pad. A good bloody hearing I’m giving her. Your bloody job. Please note.

  She was hungry and keen to be distracted, afterwards she wondered if she had misheard her.

  ‘You know exactly what that feels like, don’t you? You can’t escape your loss.’

  ‘Excuse me?’ Had she been looking into Sara’s background? Surely not.

  ‘My daughter, Jade, is dead. I am only asking for half an hour of your time.’

  Joanne Sutton had lost her child. Despite herself, Sara was sorry for her.

  She gave John a pained grimace. He slid further down her leather armchair and grinned in between his toppling forkfuls of rice.

  ‘All right, Mrs Sutton. I will come and see you, but I will have to inform Mr Stephenson, okay? Let me put John on to sort it out.’

  She spoke to Mark Stephenson. Like her, he moaned about best practice, especially with this case. Sara moaned back. If she’s not telling you the whole story, what can I do? Anyway, it’s probably nothing. She wants a good bloody hearing. They both laughed. Your bloody fault for not giving it to her Mark, my boy.

  Sara worked on the train from Paddington, which, though direct, infuriatingly stopped in every outpost. Time-wasting made her fraught. Deep down she was worried, but tried to work herself out of it.

  When she arrived and impatiently strode through the tunnel leading out of the station bang on to a bend in a high street, she didn’t even notice her surroundings. Later that evening, she saw the red-brick village hall set back behind a car park, the Co-Op on the corner and The Elephant, a gastro pub and hotel, where she went afterwards.

  Sara circled the shiny white Mini, luminous in front of the mock Tudor house. Joanne Sutton opened the door immediately. Was she hovering behind her white wooden shutters looking out for her?

  She was wearing a bright red high-street dress that was too red and too short for a woman of her age – thirty-eight, Sara knew from the brief. She wore heavy foundation, which looked unnatural at eleven thirty on a Tuesday morning in the countryside. Her blond highlighted hair had that ironed look no longer fashionable in London. It made her appear immaculate and in control, protecting her from the loss her only child. She didn’t smile or look particularly welcoming.

  Sara tried to formalise the situation. ‘Mrs Sutton, this is highly irregular. I hope it is a serious piece of evidence.’

  ‘Sara, come in.’ Clients didn’t use her first name. Joanne Sutton hadn’t to date.

  It drew Sara further in, even though she knew she must retain a professional distance. She was bitterly regretting having taken this mad leap of sympathy. As she entered the hallway, old-fashioned with its gold wallpaper, mahogany hall table with a gilt mirror overhanging it, Sara couldn’t immediately see any evidence of this lost family life.

  There were three highly polished silver frames lined up on the hall table. Each one showed a white blond vision of a child in exquisite, immaculate boutique clothes. Their daughter Jade wasn’t doing anything in any of the photos. She was close up, staring blankly into the lens. When Sara left a couple of hours later, she wondered whether the photos had been placed there on the hall table for her benefit.

  Joanne Sutton was the most confident woman she had ever met. She wasn’t remotely intimidated by Sara, her uber QC, swathed in a Joseph suit, swanning up from London into her small Home Counties home. She made direct, unfaltering eye contact, feeling no need to soften its gaze with the warmth of a smile.

  Sara couldn’t understand this kind of confidence when it wasn’t attached to a career. How could a woman who did nothing for a living be this self-possessed?

  Joanne Sutton led her out to a narrow strip of a garden around thirty feet long with low-slung fences, opening them out to the full view of the neighbours on either side. Joanne Sutton had already placed an off-white tray on an olive metal garden table to one side of the narrow decking. A cafetière of coffee, two spotty mugs, a matching jug and side plates, and a homemade chocolate cake were pristinely waiting.

  Sara was horrified. The idea of settling down to a cosy cuppa in the garden had only reinforced their inappropriate intimacy. Yet she didn’t refuse a second slice of the chocolate cake, more tasty than the organic one from Tom’s Deli on Westbourne Grove. Joanne Sutton was determined to let Sara finish her coffee and cake before she spoke.

  The time eating cake, which Joanne Sutton didn’t fill with small talk, gave Sara an unexpected break. She gazed at the lush lawn, bordered by full, dense beds with an array of colour. Tall stocks waved in the wind with the odd purple allium adding to the colour and lightness. There were cream metal baskets hanging from both fences with white china pots, dense with pink petunias. An oak garden bench was decorated with two large brown knitted cushions, done up with oversized buttons. Every detail of Joanne Sutton’s home was arranged, ultimately cared for, that Sara was stirred by her unresolved pain. She rationalized that it was absurd to envy Joanne Sutton. But she did. The feeling hadn’t gone away.

  Ben radioed to sa
y he had had no luck. He was up a tree waiting for them. They all helped to pack up, before careering back into the bush to find him. Sara cheered up, spotting his capped head up above a Shepherd’s Tree. They were off back to Gae, refuelled, re-energised and eager to spot animals.

  ‘Secretary birds. Two flying.’ Luke.

  ‘Springbok a leaping.’ Julian.

  ‘Ostrich! Complete with orange bum feathers.’ Lizzie.

  ‘Over there, look, two beautiful impalas.’ Dan.

  ‘Zebra alert.’ Matt.

  ‘Twin zebra alert,’ Luke.

  ‘Christ. You’re like a bunch of children with ADD.’ Sara snapped.

  They laughed together, hilariously happy. Unfettered laughter that left them aching and weeping with their jaws cramped. And Sara buried Joanne Sutton’s evidence back into her subconscious.

  Chapter 9

  Verbesina encelioides. The Latin classification sounded more alluring than ‘wild sunflower’, the species checklist translation. It was commonly known as a South African daisy. Dan put down the list and shifted up the terracotta lounger. His face was completely sheltered by the beige umbrella. He half-shut his eyes. The daisies merged into a bobbing block of yolky colour. The list was right: it was an alien species. Native to United States and Mexico. Far from home.

  Dan was amazed by how easily he had adapted. He didn’t like animals. He was uncomfortable with domestic pets. He hated it when Connie’s cats, Rolo and Minstrel, unceremoniously pounced, hairs rising. They smelled like a urinal. Lions up close and personal had absolutely petrified him. Walking into black rhino, if they ever found them, was going to be a potent test of his loyalty to Connie.

  He had believed ‘arid Savanna’ to be exactly that. However, there were four different but dominant grass species on the reserve. This fascinated him. Dune Bushman’s Grass (Stipagrostis amabilis) was a hardy, tufted grass around two metres tall, which stretched over the crests of sand dunes, preventing erosion. Then there was the flowering Sour Grass (Schmidtia kalahariensis) held responsible for Lizzie’s hay fever, though he thought the Lehmann’s lovegrass (Eragrostis lehmanniana) was probably the culprit. It was an invasive weed that produced large monotypic stands to crowd out other species. Lastly, there was the bulky grass cover provided by the Silky bushman grass (Stipagrostis uniplumis).

  He lay on the lounger thinking about grasses. He imagined telling his most fractious client, Rebecca Finkelman, that her new garden north of Orvieto was to be made up entirely of African grasses. The thought made him laugh inwardly. He could see the entire circular garden dense with two-metre high grasses.

  Dan was drawn to the Kalahari in a way he had never imagined possible. It was the vastness of the land, the extremity of the sky, which appeared to fall on top of the earth. The Korannaberg Mountains were a cartoon image, towering over the flat veld. The veld was not some amorphous mass, but dense with fascinating species of flora and fauna. It struck him as he looked beyond the daisies to the horizon that if he had a strong desire for anything, it was a yearning for land. A place to physically grow his own roots after two arduous decades of doing it for clients.

  ‘I don’t want to go on about it, but it hardly compares with Ibiza, does it now?’ Alan said, yet again.

  Alan was flat on his stomach, tanning his back with his head tipped to Dan’s side.

  ‘It was luxurious in Ibiza. It was like, you know, five star. This is three star, I’m telling you, at a push.’ He raised himself up on to his elbows.

  Dan carefully rolled over on to his left side. He stretched his arm out for his suncream, which was in the shade on the wooden cube table beside the lounger. He had already applied suncream. The move bought him some time before he needed to respond.

  Dan hated hurting anyone. He hated confrontation. It scared him. When he thought about why he loved the group, it was because they were utterly different to him: lively, funny, opinionated and emotional. Confrontational. He often discussed his inability to express his feelings with his therapist off Harley Street, not far from his holistic nutritionist, who had recommended his therapist. He always drew Dan back to his feelings about being gay. He was convinced it was at the root of Dan’s fear of confrontation or, as he called it, his ‘fear of controversy’.

  Dan didn’t want to be different. He never had.

  He had an idyllic childhood in the countryside outside York, attending the local school where his parents worked as teachers. He was sandwiched between three siblings: two sisters and a brother. They were a close family. He kissed a girl, a friend of his younger sister, when he was fourteen. It was pleasurable, even though she had railway tracks on her teeth. He fully expected it to be the beginning of a journey, through losing his virginity to getting married young like his parents.

  Bristol changed that. Away from what, he quickly discovered, was a pretty sheltered home, he looked at his sexuality afresh.

  Late one night, they were in Matt’s room at Wills, slumped on every available surface. Dan was sitting cross-legged at the foot of Matt’s desk. Matt had the Rolling Stones loudly blaring from his cassette recorder; Connie and Luke were dancing, twisting round each other’s legs. The door swung open. It was a third year, back in hall for his finals. ‘Turn that bloody racket off! I’ve got to leave for a race at five tomorrow morning,’ he bellowed.

  Guy Francis, Dan later discovered. He was a rower, generously over six feet with a mass of strawberry blond hair, tanned skin and vast hands. He looked like a farmer or a Thomas Hardy character, Dan couldn’t decide. Maybe they were the same person. As Guy leant forward to make his point known, his shirt flopped open. It wasn’t his chest that caught Dan’s attention, more the obviously generous bulge in his jeans. Dan’s own slimline version, tucked neatly into narrow jeans, stirred.

  Dan didn’t tell anyone. He was ashamed of his feelings, determined to bury it as a horny coincidence rather than… what? He didn’t want to know. He wasn’t wild or complicated. He didn’t want to be lumbered with any label, let alone gay.

  He went out with a friend of Connie’s for nearly a year. She was pretty, almost beautiful. A solemn, dark-haired Italian girl called Elisabetta, who was eager to please. They had sex every time they stayed the night with each other, two or three times a week. Only he didn’t think about Elisabetta at night. He fantasised about Guy. Still, he never confided in his friends. He assumed they were unaware.

  The first weekend of their second year, they moved in to Harley Place. Finally, a house of their own together. They barely unpacked before Matt and Luke went to the supermarket, returning with armfuls of crisps, peanuts and cakes. They had six-packs of beer under each arm. Music blaring, they ate, drank and basked like lizards on the roof terrace in Indian summer sunshine. The sun sank coolly out of sight. They were profoundly drunk and turned to ‘Truth or Dare’.

  Luke went first. He chose ‘Dare’. Sara instantly dared him to walk along the stone parapet of the roof terrace. Lizzie put her hand to her mouth; Connie smiled because she knew Luke wouldn’t falter. Dan was happy and secure with his close friends.

  It was his turn next. He had no desire to do desperate antics, especially as he was sickly drunk.

  ‘Truth’, he said without thinking.

  It was Connie’s turn. They smiled at each other. ‘Are you gay, Dan?’

  Dan’s embarrassment was fast followed by acute pain.

  ‘You are drunk, Connie. Or crazy,’ he tried to say lightly. ‘I was with Elisabetta until the summer.’

  The others seemed to sober up. They were eyeing each other. It dawned on Dan that they had already talked about this subject, about him. He was mortified. As he tentatively looked up, he caught Sara’s eye. All he saw was concern and sympathy. He realised he couldn’t deceive the group.

  ‘Yes, I think I am.’

  They cheered. It was overwhelming. The love and support of his friends. They forced Dan to be brave and honest.

  Back with the group again, Dan’s concern about his relationshi
p with Alan was increasing. The real problem with Alan was there wasn’t a problem with Alan. Dan loved him – they never argued, had sex regularly and had created a home together. Yet something was missing. Something intangible, but real. A growing certainty that they couldn’t move forward together. They didn’t share a future. What that future was exactly, Dan was less clear.

  ‘I’m burning.’ Alan catapulted off the sun lounger. He stood barefoot on the decking. ‘Christ, the decking’s burning hot and all.’ He hopped his feet into his black flip-flops. ‘It’s too hot to lie in it. Ibiza is perfect for sunbathing.’ He pulled his silver Ray-Ban Aviators down his nose to inspect his body. ‘Crazy or what – I’m burnt on my elbows and knees.’

  He waited for Dan’s reaction.

  ‘Poor you. Maybe you missed those spots.’ Dan was genuinely sympathetic. ‘You need to put block on your elbows and knees.’

  Alan wasn’t listening. ‘It’s the bloody bed burning me. We need towels. In Ibiza, they brought them out automatically.’

  Without another word, Alan strode towards the lodge. Dan closed his eyes. He wished they didn’t have such a long break between brunch, which they had eaten quickly at nine thirty, and their drive out at five thirty this afternoon. It was too much time to think.

  ‘Daniel, hi there.’ Katherine sat easily down on his sun lounger. Her tiny behind close to his elbow. Her red hair swung evenly out under a vast white straw sun hat, luminous above her pale yellow sundress. ‘A penny for them.’

  Her enthusiasm for English idioms amused Dan. He was fond of Katherine because she had made Matt happy. Katherine was warm and kind. Qualities that Lizzie and Sara purposefully failed to spot.

  ‘How are you feeling?’ Dan asked, touching her white arm, narrower than a child’s.

  ‘Do you know, it’s all in my head. It’s the worry about Dawn, the surrogacy. The stress of the whole issue really.’