‘So, it’s upstairs,’ I told him.
‘Lofts generally are,’ he quipped, and I glared at him. I didn’t need a funny builder.
I climbed the ladder into the loft first, and he followed me. I remember feeling excruciatingly aware that this man’s nose was inches from my bottom, and wondering what my bottom looked like these days. It had been an awfully long time since I’d bothered to consider it.
We stood there for a moment, bathed in the light of a naked electric light bulb, as he took a pencil out from behind his ear and noted a few things down. He wore a tape measure on his belt, like a Wild West gunslinger.
‘Pretty straightforward job,’ he said. ‘I’ll do the drawings, the calculations for you, and we’ll get a structural engineer to sign off on it. You don’t want stairs, just a better ladder and a couple of Velux, so it’s going to be pretty quick. Need an extra bedroom, do you?’
‘No,’ I said, my hands on my hips as I looked around, trying to imagine this room the way I wanted it: flooded with sunlight, the floorboards stripped and varnished, the walls whitewashed. ‘I want to write a book, and it seems like all the rooms I already have in the house already have a purpose that stops me from concentrating on it. So I thought a book-writing room would be the answer.’ I smiled at him. ‘I expect that seems like craziness to you.’
‘Not at all,’ he said. ‘It’s your house, and writing a book seems like a better idea than some.’
He smiled, not at me but at the space around us, and I could see him picturing it finished too, and that the idea gave him pleasure. And that was the first time I noticed how broad his shoulders were, or how muscular his arms were, or the contour of his stomach muscles under his shirt. And then suddenly I did, and I registered too that my hair was screwed up into a Muppet knot on top of my head, and I was wearing my daughter’s ripped T-shirt and a pair of jeans that technically didn’t fit me any more. Oh, and that I was certainly older than him, although I wasn’t exactly sure by how much. I realised all of those things, and at the same time I was annoyed with myself for caring.
‘So, shall we go downstairs, and I’ll work out a quote for you – just a basic one at this stage, to give you a ballpark – and then if you decide to go with me, I’ll do you an itemised quote and a contract, so you know exactly what you are paying for, OK?’
‘Fine,’ I said, suddenly only able to utter words of one syllable.
He went down the ladder first, and then me. I was about halfway down when I lost grip in my stupid flip-flops and fell the rest of the way, stumbling back off the ladder and into his arms. There wasn’t a moment – no lingering, no touching a fraction longer than needed. He just set me straight on my feet with workmanlike efficiency.
‘Never did quite get the hang of that standing up on my own two feet thing,’ I said, blushing inexplicably.
‘Well, we can’t all be good at everything,’ he said. ‘I can’t even imagine writing down anything longer than a quote.’
I’m not sure precisely when I decided I was in love with him, but I think it might have been at that moment, the moment he went out of his way to put me at my ease. I followed him down the stairs and by the time we reached the bottom step, it was official. I was besotted, and that’s the right word for it. Besotted. Because I knew right then it was a hopeless love, a love that could never come to anything, because I could never be that lucky.
We walked into the kitchen and he leaned against the counter and started to write. I spent the entire time looking at his bottom, smiling to myself about what an idiot I was being, and thinking about how Julia would laugh with me at school the next time I saw her. Just the thought of how mortified Caitlin would be, if she could see me, leaning up against the fridge, ogling this beautiful example of manhood like a crazy woman, made me giggle out loud.
Greg looked at me over his shoulder and then, seeing me smiling, turned around.
‘What’s so funny?’ he asked me.
‘Oh, I … oh, nothing.’ I giggled despite myself. I giggled like a teenager bumping into her crush. ‘Ignore me, I am just being really, really stupid, for no apparent reason.’
His smile was so sweet, so slow, so full of humour. ‘I don’t think so,’ he said. ‘I’m very good at first impressions, and you are certainly not stupid.’
‘Oh, really?’ I asked him archly, knowing I was flirting fruitlessly, and deciding I didn’t care. ‘What am I, then?’
‘You are a woman who is going to write a book.’
I look back on that time now and wonder if I was right and if I was wrong at the same time. I knew that Greg and I were too good to be true, that it couldn’t last, and I was right but also wrong. It can’t last, but not because we don’t want it to – and it will last even when it’s over. It will last within Greg and me, no matter what separates us. And it will last in Esther and Caitlin, and the baby. It will last and last, even when it’s finished for ever, because in my heart Greg and I will always be holding hands, like the husband and wife in ‘An Arundel Tomb’.
And in the end, I did write a book. We all did. We wrote the story of our lives, and I am here, amongst these pages. This is where I will always be.
Epilogue
Saturday, 27 August 1971
Claire Is Born
This is the first photo taken of you and me, Claire, in my hospital bed, sitting up with my bedcoat on, especially crocheted for me by my mum. Husbands didn’t stay for the birth in those days: they visited, for an hour a day, and then got sent packing. And I was glad – I was glad to have that time alone with you, my new baby, my fresh little person. This tiny soul that I had made and brought into the world. I didn’t want to share you with anyone.
Then, in your first few days, your hair was a jet-black down, with no hint of your father’s red hair anywhere to be seen. Your face was scrunched up and closed, your eyes tightly shut against this bright and unfamiliar world. The midwife said I had to put you down at nap-time in the nursery with all the other babies; she said I had to get some sleep. They came round and collected all the babies at a certain time, wheeling them off down the corridor in a long procession. But I wouldn’t let you go, Claire. She tried to take you, demanded it, but I said you were my baby and I wanted to hold you; and then, to be extra rebellious, I let the bottle of formula go cold on the bedside table and I breastfed you myself. They left us alone after that.
It was almost a full day before you really and truly opened your eyes and looked at me. They were the brightest blue, even then. Babies’ eyes aren’t supposed to be so blue, but they were. Luminous, even, and I thought it must be because this tiny little bundle I held in my arms was so full of life, so full of promise, and so full of future.
Before I met your father I thought that love and peace would change the whole world, but looking into your eyes, I knew that all I had to do was let you be whoever it was that you wanted to be, and to love you, and that would be the best and closest thing I could ever do to change the world for the better.
‘You are going to be brilliant,’ I told you. ‘You are going to be clever, and funny. Brave and strong. You’re going to be a feminist, and a peace campaigner and a dancer. And one day you are going to be a mother yourself. You are going to fall in love and have adventures and do things that I can’t even imagine. You, little Claire Armstrong, you are going to be the most wonderful woman, and you are going to have the most amazing life: a life that no one will ever forget.’
Those were the first words I said to you, Claire, that first time you opened your eyes and looked at me. I remember those words exactly as though I were in that room right now, holding you in my arms at this precise second. And Claire, my beautiful, brave, clever girl, I was right.
Acknowledgements
Thanks so much to my wonderful editor Gillian Green, and the brilliant team at Ebury Press, including Emily Yau, Hannah Robinson and Louise Jones, who have all been so incredibly supportive.
And huge thanks to my agent and friend, Lizzy Krem
er, who is a constant source of strength and inspiration. Also the very lovely Laura West and Harriet Moore at David Higham Ltd, a true dream team and a writer’s best friends.
Thanks to my friends, who put up with me during the writing of this book, especially Katy Regan, Kirstie Seaman, Catherine Ashley, Margie Harris.
Especial thanks to my husband Adam, who does so much to help and support me, and my beautiful, noisy, energetic, constantly busy children who keep me on my toes.
And finally a thank you to my mum, Dawn, who this book is for. You taught me how to be a mum.
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Published in 2014 by Ebury Press, an imprint of Ebury Publishing
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Copyright © 2014 by Rowan Coleman
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