‘I’ll always love you, Richard.’
‘Then you must see that this makes no sense at all.’
‘You’ll see … at some point, I believe you’ll see that it does. The two things aren’t mutually exclusive. I will always love you. We will always have had these years, these decades together. We will always have those three beautiful children, and their children …’
He was still staring at his hands.
‘But we are not old. We are not dying. I am not dying.’ I thought I might be, she remembered. I thought I might die. That’s what this is all about, and maybe he can’t, maybe no one can understand if they haven’t had that moment, in a doctor’s office, when the world stops and they tell you something that makes you realize you could die. That it all might be over. A phrase from an O-level English class a hundred years ago kept rolling around her brain. Memento mori. Memento mori. Remember you will die.
‘And this is not enough. Not for me, and – I truly, truly believe this – not for you either.’
He shrugged in a gesture of resignation. He looked utterly broken.
She didn’t know what to do now. The weight of what she’d done was just dawning on her. It was nine o’clock at night. She had no idea where to go.
‘I’m sorry.’ It sounded inadequate, even to her.
He stood up, pushing the chair neatly back under the table. ‘I’ll sleep in one of the boys’ rooms.’
Then he nodded curtly, and left.
Gigi sat there for a lot longer, knitting and unknitting her fingers, hoping that her heartbeat would slow down, and listening for sounds from Richard, although she heard none. She thought she’d cry, now that he’d gone, but strangely the tears would not come. The enormity of what she had done was just sharpening into focus. It was another hour before she climbed the stairs herself, hesitating outside the door to Christopher’s room, shut firmly now. She almost turned the knob, but she knew there was nothing she could do now to help him, because she had inflicted the pain. It wasn’t fair to look to him for comfort, or to try to offer it herself.
Alone in their bed, one arm across his cool, unoccupied pillow, she wondered if she would ever sleep soundly again.
Tess
Holly’s name lit up on the screen of Tess’s phone around 4 p.m. She’d be on her way home from school. Tess answered.
‘You’re coming to ours for supper. Bring your toothbrush. You can sleep over.’
‘I’m not. I’ve got a ready meal for one with my name on it.’
‘Ew. You cannot eat processed food. You are growing a person. That settles it.’
‘Really, Hols, you are a darling, but there’s no need.’
‘There is every need. It’s waifs-and-strays night at ours. There are non-alcoholic beverages and everything.’
‘I was going to go home and put my feet up.’
‘No arguments … We have pouffes.’
Tess laughed. ‘I give in.’
‘Good. I was always going to win.’
‘When have you not won?’
‘Last time was 2002, I believe. A game of Trivial Pursuit. But only because I can’t possibly justify remembering sporting achievements. I’ll give Ben a call, let him know to throw another handful of rice into the pot. Dulcie will be thrilled to see you.’
‘And Ben won’t?’
‘He adores you, you know that. Besides, if you’re there, he’ll be able to skulk off and watch golf … If he didn’t love you for you, and he does, he’d love you for that alone.’
She’d been a regular third wheel to the almost irritatingly happy Ben-and-Holly show over the years. Festivals, holidays, Sunday lunches. Holly said he secretly loved it – it made him feel like he had a harem. Theirs was a friendship that had never had to exist outside of their mutual adoration of Holly, thank goodness, but Tess guessed it probably could, so long as he didn’t dare hurt her friend. Then, she’d have to kill him. He sometimes joked that Tess filled the gaps Holly couldn’t – she would watch a game of rugby with him and understand the rules, she’d have a good row about politics … But Tess knew there weren’t really any gaps. To Ben, Holly was perfect. Tess couldn’t fancy Ben – he was nice-looking but not her type, and besides, he’d always been Holly’s so she never thought of him that way – but on some level every boyfriend Tess had had since Holly had found Ben had been compared with him, if only on the adoration front, and found wanting. Ben and Sean had given it a good try, but they’d never gelled.
When Tess arrived at around 7 p.m., Ben answered the door. He’d obviously been home long enough to change into his off-duty uniform of sweats and bare feet, and to open and half consume a bottle of beer. He adopted a formal tone, like a 1950s telephonist. ‘Surrey Home for Unmarried Mothers. Welcome.’ Folded her into one of his enormous bear-hugs. She let herself be held, grateful to feel as slight as he always made her feel.
Behind him, Dulcie had run down the stairs in time to hear his greeting crack, and she slapped his back. ‘Dad. Not funny. We’ve been learning about that shit in PSHE. Unmarried mothers had the most ghastly time, in the olden days.’ Tess loved her god-daughter’s earnestness and her incredulity. She didn’t quite speak her father’s adult language.
‘Darling, I’m kidding.’ He smiled at Holly as she came down the stairs. ‘Besides, I know all about that … Your mother could have been one, you know, if I hadn’t done the decent thing.’
Now it was Holly’s turn to play-punch his arm. ‘Took two to tango, you cheeky bastard.’ She’d had a shower, and her hair was still wrapped in a towel.
‘It wasn’t the tango that did it, as I recall, my sweet.’ He took Holly’s freshly scrubbed face in his hands and kissed her mouth.
Dulcie squealed in disgust and put her hands over her face.
‘My eyes. My eyes. Gross. Totally gross. I’m going to puke if you two don’t stop that immediately.’
‘Less of the two of us. I’m not the PDA perp. I’m just the woman in the turban.’
‘You sexy beast … Okay. Okay.’ Ben held up his hands in surrender. ‘Can I help it if your mother is still utterly irresistible to me, after all these years, even in a turban? You should be glad, Dulc.’
‘I’m with you, Dulcie. I really don’t need my nose rubbed in this nauseating togetherness either. Not in the state I’m in.’ Tess smiled ruefully.
‘Ah, yes. No man will ever want you again.’
Dulcie put her arm through Tess’s and pulled her in the direction of the kitchen. ‘Take absolutely no notice of my idiot father.’
‘I never have, lovely, I never have.’
Ben cooked a chilli and drank another beer, while ‘his harem’ sat around the table and waited to be fed. Dulcie was making a decent pretence of doing some French homework. Holly drank a glass of wine she said was big enough for both of them and told anecdotes for Surrey: A Novel, while Tess nursed a fizzy water. No one asked anything of her or from her. About Sean or the baby, or even work or Iris. There were many questions they could have asked, she knew. She was being an absolute ostrich about Sean, for a start. There were things to be resolved. A ball to be rolled. She hadn’t found the energy yet, for that. There was time for lawyers, if they were needed, and for agreements, if they could manage without. But not yet. And they understood. They let her be. She let the banter wash over and around her, like warm water. This was a family that loved each other dearly, unconditionally, rudely. They would tell her she was a part of it, but she wasn’t – not really. They belonged to each other and themselves, and she was just a lucky bystander, the little match girl in the night staring through the window at the family gathered around the roaring fire.
This baby, this baby and Donna and Iris – that was the family she had been given. She’d just have to do the best she could with what she had.
Tess
March
Iris’s house was almost empty by the middle of March. What had seemed insurmountable in January had been methodically dealt with. Tess had given
most of Iris’s furniture away on Freecycle, taking pleasure in good things going to good homes. Iris would have liked that. She had sold most of the pictures and rugs through a local auction house, although she kept a picture she’d always loved – a watercolour of Salisbury Cathedral from the meadows. They’d walked that way home through Harnham so often when Tess was a child, dawdling because they had nothing to hurry for. Tess spent a whole day doing Oxfam runs with Holly, emptying the kitchen cupboards of china, glass and pans. What wasn’t saleable went into the big recycling boxes at the local tip. Tess had gone to the sideboard half expecting to find it full of the crafting equipment she had always seen there as a girl, but there was just a pile of old Radio Times, kept for reasons beyond Tess’s understanding, and some postcards tied with a piece of string, all of London landmarks: St Paul’s Cathedral, the Houses of Parliament, the Tower of London.
The house looked sadder and shabbier without Iris’s things in it, but the agent felt optimistic about a quick sale. It was near a well-regarded primary school, and an easy walk from the station, with three double bedrooms. He felt confident that if they priced it right, it would sell quickly. Tess was relieved he didn’t suggest any redecoration or cleaning up, bar a good vacuum – she hadn’t the time, much less the energy. Let someone else do that, their own way.
Her mother had come with her a couple of times, but Holly had been far more helpful. Donna had moped in a way Tess found quite irritating and unproductive. Donna’s sadness – and she knew now that was what it was – felt crushing to her at this point. It was new, so new, to her, and right now it was too much. What she needed, on these days, was just completely practical, pragmatic help. It wasn’t hard to persuade Donna not to come. Holly, on the other hand, got completely stuck in, chattering inconsequentially, and didn’t keep trying to bring the topic of conversation around to Iris. She brought biscuits and sachets of hot chocolate. And every time Holly told her off for lifting something heavy, Tess wanted to hug her.
Iris’s clothes and jewellery had been the hardest part. The wardrobe just smelt of her. A powdery, floral scent Tess associated utterly with her grandmother. She hadn’t taken a great many clothes with her into Clearview. There hadn’t seemed much point. Most of those still hanging at home wouldn’t fit her any more anyway. Tess had bought her a new dressing gown and slippers when she moved in, and her ancient candlewick robe, full length and cyclamen pink, hung on the back of the bedroom door.
Tess sat down on the stool at Iris’s dressing table. The drawer held a Max Factor Crème Puff Powder and a Rimmel lipstick. The end of the lipstick was flattened off from where Iris had applied it. For the first time that day, she thought she might cry.
There was a small photograph of Iris and Wilfred, taken on their wedding day, in an enamelled frame. Just the two of them, outside a church. If Tess had ever known where it was taken, she didn’t remember. Iris’s dress was ballerina length and lace and tulle, with an impossibly small waist. Tess stroked her own stomach ruefully. She’d never had a waist like that, and now she had no waist at all. Tess wondered what had happened to the dress – she’d never seen it. There were a hundred questions she hadn’t asked when she’d had the chance … She couldn’t honestly remember whether she’d ever tried. Children didn’t always have a real sense of the lives adults had lived before them. Like they’d been cryogenically frozen, waiting for them. Perhaps she had. Perhaps she’d been told things, and she’d forgotten them. More likely, she thought, she hadn’t considered it. They’d been such a unit of two. She’d had a clear picture of her grandfather, Wilf, from stories and anecdotes and photographs, though. Had it all been a diversion? A hundred things she’d never know now. Iris’s hair was bouffant, a veil clipped on to the top of her head, and her tiny bouquet was lily of the valley, her favourite flower. Tess remembered that the wedding was in April, when they were in season. Even so, they must have been expensive. She smiled at Iris’s wedding extravagance. Good for her. Wilfred was wearing a dark suit, with a buttonhole that matched. The cane he held in lots of photographs – the one with the carved duck’s-head handle – wasn’t in evidence. He stood proud and erect without it. They looked glamorous, like film stars, posed formally like people who weren’t photographed often did. And so happy.
Holly stood in the doorframe. ‘What you found?’
Tess held the lipstick out. Holly came over and took the tube from her hand, reading the label on its bottom. ‘Heather Shimmer. Go, Iris. God, do you remember that? I swear I had one. Sun In, Rimmel Heather Shimmer and Body Shop White Musk …’
Tess laughed. ‘We must have all looked exactly the same.’
‘And smelt exactly the same!’
Holly examined the drawer. ‘That’s it? That’s all her makeup? I need three shelves in the bathroom cabinet. Dulcie needs a bloomin’ sack. Contouring. Highlighting. Discuss.’
‘That’s it. Half the time she didn’t even wear that. Soap, water and a flannel. I remember her saying that’s why her skin was so soft. That and Pond’s Cold Cream.’
‘Don’t get soppy.’ Holly stood behind her and looked at her face in the dressing-table mirror. She squeezed Tess’s shoulders.
‘Trying not to … Someone’s coming for this and the sideboard at four. No sense keeping these.’
She sniffed hard.
‘How is it downstairs?’
‘Pretty much done. Just that suitcase we found before, with all the papers. You can take that home with the jewellery box, and go through it in your own time. It can’t be anything all that important. You’ve got the key stuff already at the solicitor’s, haven’t you?’
‘I think so.’
‘Might have some things you’d like to keep. It’s locked, so you’ll have to force it. There’s no key that I can see. Mind you, she was operating an eclectic organizational system, bless her … I found three tins of peas in with the laundry stuff. And there are about two years’ worth of weird and wonderful catalogues behind the curtain in the downstairs loo.’
Tess tipped the powder and the lipstick into a black sack in the doorway and slipped the photograph into her cardigan pocket.
‘It’s so strange and sad, packing away someone’s life like this.’
Holly stroked her shoulder gently. ‘It’s just stuff, Tess. It’s not them.’
‘When it’s gone, though, they start to fade, you know, the memory of them gets less vivid because you can’t see the things that remind you any more …’
‘I suppose that’s right … like how you think you remember some things better than others, but it’s because you’ve seen them in a photograph.’
‘Exactly. I’ve been coming here for so long. All my life, really. I won’t always remember it like I do now.’ Tess wanted to cry.
‘You’ll remember what matters. The rest really is just stuff.’
‘You’re wise, you know that, Hols?’
Holly nudged her towards the door. ‘Wise enough to know I’m getting you out of here before the pity party gets into full swing.’
Tess laughed sadly. ‘Wise and harsh …’
Gigi
Richard had abdicated all decision-making since Gigi’s declaration.
In the days since that dreadful conversation at the kitchen table, Gigi had made momentous decisions. Alone. It was an underused muscle, and she ached all over. They’d always decided things together. Where to holiday? What colour to paint the hall and landing? How much allowance to give the kids when they went off to university? A million everyday decisions. But she couldn’t involve him in these choices. This was all her.
She’d told her friend from the hospital, Kate, that she needed some space from Richard, and Kate, alone in her family home for some years since her own husband, Owen, had left, had immediately offered her spare room for as long as Gigi wanted it, without asking for details, for which Gigi was enormously grateful. She’d be glad of the company, she’d said at once, and Gigi had tried to ignore the shiver of fear that passed through her w
hen she heard that. Loneliness and the possibility and the strange unfamiliarity of it hovered at the back of her mind all of the time.
She’d said she’d take the room, but it had to be short term. She knew she couldn’t be a lodger in someone else’s home, however lovely the person or the home. That was so far from the point. And it would encourage Richard in the belief that this was a phase, a mad moment, and that she’d be home once she got it out of her system. She was sure that was what he was telling himself. It needed formalizing. She wasn’t ready to go to lawyers and sign documents – it was too soon for that. But she needed to do this properly – rent a place of her own. Along with the fear there was excitement. A sense of what she recognized to be freedom and adventure. Light at the end of this tunnel she had been in for so, so long.
Packing a suitcase to take to Kate’s had been so strange. This was very different from a holiday. In some ways she was still utterly horrified that it was happening. It still felt shocking. But it still felt necessary too.
Richard had been at work when she’d done it. She’d wandered from room to room, looking at all of their things – all the stuff a family had accumulated across decades of a life together. The stuff you stopped really looking at, just resented dusting. She took a framed photograph from the mantelpiece in the sitting room – a shot from Christmas, all of them in their finery, baby Ava star of the show, front and centre. But when she’d laid it in the suitcase, on top of her uniforms and pyjamas and shoes, she decided it wasn’t fair to take it. She’d have to get copies of things like that, if she wanted to have them. It was ridiculous. She felt at liberty to deconstruct their entire lives, but not the fabric of their home.
The suitcase had been by the front door when he’d come home. It felt wrong just to go, so she’d waited for him. He’d looked at it, hard.
‘Don’t do this, Gigi. Please.’ He was crying. She’d seen him cry maybe once or twice in their whole lives together – when Christopher was born, when his own mother had died. For her to be the reason he was crying now was almost surreal. It turned everything on its head.
Letters to Iris Page 18