by Adele Geras
‘Was she wealthy?’
Lou hesitated. Should she say anything? Wasn’t stuff like this private? She hardly knew Harry, even though he was the one who’d hired her. They’d had long chats about work and got on well. He often made her laugh and had always been kind to her, but they’d never talked about anything personal. She didn’t even know if he had a girlfriend. She’d never seen any sign of one, but why should she have?
‘Yes, she was,’ Lou began and before she could stop herself, she found the whole story pouring out of her, as though Harry had unplugged something. She could feel, as the words came out of her mouth in a rush, relief at being able to speak about everything: stuff she couldn’t tell members of her family because they were too close. Thoughts she hadn’t articulated properly before. And Harry was listening carefully. He wasn’t letting it wash over him, he was paying attention. The brown gaze fell on her and remained fixed on her and she went on telling him more and more. Confessing her fears and her anger and the resentment and anguish that made her do things like burst into tears in the office, which was not grown-up behaviour by any stretch of the imagination.
Lou only stopped talking when Jeanette knocked and brought in the coffees. She was grateful for the thought, but the first mouthful she took of the Chelsea bun tasted like sweet cardboard in her mouth.
‘So now what happens?’ Harry seemed to be enjoying his bun.
‘Well …’ Lou was coming to the end of the story. ‘We’ll all have to discuss it over a meal, I expect. My father will be a kind of chairman. My siblings will bicker. Nothing will get decided. In the end, Constance’s will is perfectly valid and we’ve just got to live with it.’
‘Bloody hell, Lou, that’s tough. Wouldn’t your sister and brother help you out? Or your dad?’
‘He will. He’ll try and give me his share and I’m not going to take it. He’ll say, it’s going to be mine and Poppy’s when he dies and why shouldn’t I have it now.’
‘Why shouldn’t you? If he and your mum are okay and you need the dosh?’
Lou shook her head. ‘They do enough. Poppy’s nursery – I couldn’t afford that – and decorating, and everything in the flat. My TV. The washing machine. I rely on them.’
‘Don’t forget the royal fees we pay you.’ Harry smiled.
‘How could I possibly!’
‘Your grandad’s books. What are they like?’
‘Old-fashioned. They look as if they might be good in a stodgy kind of way. He used to read bits of one of them out to me when I was about ten or so. Must read them all again. When I can stop being useless and crying at inconvenient moments.’
‘You’re allowed. Please feel free to come and borrow my hankie any time you like. Really.’
‘Shouldn’t we do Deathbeasts now?’
‘I’ve got to go. It can wait. It’s not urgent.’
‘God, I’ve held you up. I’m sorry, Harry. It won’t happen again.’
‘No worries. You coming too?’
He held the door open for her and followed her down the dirty staircase. Out on the street, the sun had come out and a brisk wind was whipping up litter that whirled around their ankles. Harry suddenly leaned forward and taking the two ends of her scarf in his hands, tied them tenderly into a knot around her neck and tucked the ends into her coat. Then he touched her briefly on the cheek.
‘Take care, Lou,’ he said, and waved at her as he walked away. Lou stood looking after him, feeling overwhelmed suddenly by how nice he was: how gentle and unscary. She liked the way he said her name.
*
Phyl was standing in the middle of her kitchen wondering what she ought to do first. Usually, the preparations for a full-scale family meal didn’t faze her a bit. She loved entertaining and still clung to the belief that she was a good cook, even after overhearing a remark Nessa made to Gareth a few years ago: Oh, Phyl’s meals are fine, but they’re hardly imaginative. Just Delia Smith, right? Who says, she told herself now as she went through a kind of running-order in her head for all she had to do, you have to be imaginative? What was wrong with tasty and delicious? And the recipes worked. Every single one did exactly what Delia said it ought to do and reading her books had been a comfort to Phyl since the day she married.
She took the chicken pieces out of the fridge, ready to put into the marinade. Does anyone else besides me, she wondered, look at their life and wonder how it came to be the way it is? She fell in love with Matthew the first time she saw him. He’d brought one of his mother’s cats in for an inoculation at the vet’s surgery where she worked as the receptionist, caring for the animals she had to deal with and growing friendly with their owners. Matthew she’d adored from afar in a low-key, rather hopeless way, not expecting anything to come of it. I knew him before Ellie did, she told herself. Then, one day, he’d asked her out to the cinema and she’d been so excited at the thought that she mixed up several appointments and nearly let Mrs Sanderson walk away with Mr Purdue’s dog, who’d been in for a small operation and was dozing in his basket in the recovery area.
Phyl smiled and started on the potatoes. She had always found peeling them a relaxation. Potato Peeling Spa – there was a thought! Your hands in the warm water, the peeler running smoothly over the skin, the white vegetable emerging at the end of it. Matthew. She could remember exactly what she wore on their first date. He’d kissed her on the mouth as he said goodnight and she hadn’t been able to sleep. Phyl sighed. They’d only been out a few more times after that before he got snatched. That was how she thought of it. Ellie came along and blinded him. His mother pushed the two of them together in a shameless and blatant way. Ellie practically lived at Milthorpe. There was one time when she brought in a cat that had hurt its paw. She’d leaned over the counter and said, ‘I’m bringing this creature down as a favour to Constance. Matthew’s away this week.’
I ought to have asked him point-blank, Phyl thought, remembering how helpless and hurt she’d felt. I should have said: What do you feel for me? Do you feel anything? I was a fool. I just let him slide away to marry her without uttering a squeak. Tears came into her eyes even now, after all this time, when she recalled that she’d practically made up her mind to sleep with Matthew just as the whole thing came to an abrupt end. She was a bit of a late starter when it came to sex. She, alone among her friends, was still a virgin and she hid this fact as though it were something to be ashamed of. She’d had boyfriends before Matt, but hadn’t liked any of them enough to undress in front of them and sleep with them. Matt was different. She’d let him kiss and caress her, and he had touched her breasts and made it clear to her that he wanted her, but she’d hesitated. Would things have been different if she’d slept with him before he met Ellie? Somehow, Phyl doubted it. And as things turned out, when he did go off with Ellie, and then ended up marrying her, she felt vindicated.
Now she turned away from the sink and went to find a big saucepan for the potatoes. Aloud, she said, ‘But I got him in the end, didn’t I?’ and immediately felt foolish. What would someone think if they heard her crowing like that? I don’t care, she thought. I still do feel triumphant, even now, and in any case the house is empty. Matt’s at work, Lou’s in London. I’m alone. The vision she often had of Lou and Poppy coming down here to live with them drifted into her head and out again. Phyl would have been delighted by such an arrangement but Lou loved London and Matt, even though he adored his granddaughter, wouldn’t welcome a baby in the house all day and every day.
Ellie had been the worst wife in the world and that was why Phyl set out, quite deliberately, to make herself the best stepmother and second wife in the whole history of second wives and stepmothers. She knew that something was up with the marriage when Matt started to come into the surgery to buy the special pet foods that you could only get there … She realized at once this was an excuse to see her again. He needed her. She could see on his face that he was unhappy, and it didn’t take long for her to get him to talk. In the surgery at first. That de
veloped quite quickly into a coffee after work. And then it all came out: how miserable he was; how Ellie had been unfaithful to him almost from the very first day they were married. Yet how could he cope alone? What a fool he’d been to leave Phyl and marry Ellie – and on and on it went. One coffee, and then a drink in the pub and then lunch. And then dinner. And dinner again. Then one day, Ellie simply upped and left with Paolo and the divorce proceedings began. She and Matt had married six months after that came through.
Phyl went to find flour and sugar. It was time to start thinking about the cake, but maybe she could break off for a bit and have a coffee. She made a cup and took it into the conservatory. This was her favourite room in the house. She regarded it as hers because she’d planned it, and filled it with the plants she liked without consulting anyone else. Matt was happy to let her get on with it, but Nessa looked down her nose a bit whenever she was in here. She thinks I should cram the house with her artificial flowers, but why on earth should I when I can have this beautiful miniature jungle, right here in Sussex? She’d told Nessa, quite sincerely, that although her silk and paper flowers were glorious, she simply preferred growing things. Nessa had made her feel guilty even as she said it didn’t matter a scrap. Also, she’d made sure that for the last couple of years, every present she ever gave her stepmother turned out to be something Paper Roses was selling. The breathtaking cheek of it made Phyl smile when she was in a good mood. When she was in a bad one, it struck her as deliberate cruelty on Nessa’s part, as though she were saying: ‘I know what you like, and you’re not getting it from me. Not ever. Quite the reverse in fact. You’re getting things you’ve told me you don’t like.’ She began to wonder whether the two Chinese vases from the Milthorpe House library would look good in the conservatory. Perhaps they’d be better in the hall. More people would see them there. Something to think about. Matt reckoned she’d been slighted in some way by that provision of Constance’s will, but she found she was very happy at the thought of all the china and glass arriving in this house. The phone rang just as Phyl sat down. She looked longingly at her coffee and picked up the receiver.
‘Nessa! How lovely! What time will you be getting here tomorrow? Oh, okay, if you’re sure. And I’m really sorry you’re not bringing Tamsin. You’ll have to come with her another time. But yes, I suppose there is going to be a bit of … No, it won’t be a row. Surely? Have you spoken to Justin? He’ll behave properly, won’t he?’
Phyl finished the conversation and had a twinge of the same resentment she’d been harbouring for twenty-four years. For Matt’s sake she had put a lid on the mixed feelings she’d had about being a mother to Ellie’s kids and screwed it down so firmly that, for most of the time, she managed to convince even herself that what she felt for them was love. But if I’m honest, she thought, taking a sip of coffee and enjoying the sight of a particularly feathery fern in a pretty terra-cotta planter, they’ve always been able to irritate me and make me cross and, what’s more, leave me feeling inadequate. Nessa never tried very hard to hide the way she felt. Even as a nine-year-old, she managed to show me over and over again that I was second-best, a poor mother substitute. And not as pretty as her real mother. Not pretty enough. She made it quite obvious that she preferred staying at Milthorpe and her dear mother-in-law took advantage of that. Extra people coming to stay was never a problem for Constance, mainly because Miss Hardy was the one who did all the hard work in that house. Her stepchildren went to stay there so often that this house wasn’t ever a proper home to them. Was it my fault for allowing them to go there? Could I have stopped them? Matthew used to say my mother misses Ellie, you know. More than I do. It’s only fair to let her have the children whenever she wants. Which was almost all the time, Phyl reflected now. And one of the reasons I agreed was because I loved it when they weren’t here, especially after Lou was born. I wanted to be with Lou every minute. I didn’t want my time with her diluted in the least; I didn’t want my attention deflected on to the problems of prickly and demanding stepchildren. She closed her eyes. She’d never breathed a word of this, either to Matt or to anyone else. She’d gone from day to day in a kind of trance of love for Lou, and the others had just had to fit in around that. She didn’t know if she was dreading tomorrow or longing for it. A bit of both, probably. She closed her eyes. I’ll make the cake in a minute, she thought, and slid into a doze with the chilly spring sunshine that came through the conservatory windows transformed by the glass into a warming light that fell on her.
*
When Poppy was behaving herself, this was the time of day Lou liked best. They’d walked back from nursery via the park and looked at the ducks, whom Poppy greeted with squeaks of joy each time she saw them. She leaned forward in her pushchair as though she wanted to join them in the water, waving her arms in the air and calling out, ‘Wack, wack!’ in a ringing voice that carried through the air and made Lou wonder what the other mothers, with quieter and less enthusiastic babies, thought of her exuberant child.
Tonight, Poppy had eaten up all her supper (squashed things of a vaguely green variety, made with the food processor that Mum had insisted was a necessity) with every appearance of pleasure. Then she’d been deliciously cute in the bath and had fallen asleep after only one story and a couple of songs. As Lou sang her way through ‘Over the Rainbow’ which was Poppy’s favourite and watched her daughter’s eyelids close, she was suddenly fearful. What if? The thought was so dreadful, so paralyzing, that her whole body began to shake and she couldn’t even begin to think it. It was just there, in the back of her mind, feeling like a wave that was about to break and engulf her: something bad happening to Poppy. She didn’t dare even outline the terror, not wanting to give it either a shape or a name. She had to avoid, above all, tempting Fate, but every time she read or saw anything horrible happening to a small child anywhere, that fact, that awful thing that you didn’t want to begin to imagine, somehow got added to the stock of horrors already there, building up in your head: your worst worst nightmare. Nothing must ever happen to Poppy. Lou wasn’t religious, but she prayed for her child every night: Don’t let anything bad happen to her. If you keep her safe, if you keep her healthy and happy, I won’t want anything else. Nothing else at all ever in my life. Just that.
As soon as she left Poppy’s room and went into the tiny kitchen to make herself something for supper, Lou began to feel more normal again. Of course that’s nonsense, she thought. Of course I want other things, but Poppy’s the most important. She sat down at the table, suddenly feeling weak. It’s not love making me feeble, she thought. It’s low blood sugar. I need to eat. It had been ages since she’d not eaten the Chelsea bun Harry had bought her. How kind he was! He was so unlike Ray that it was hard to think of them as being the same species. She shivered. How come she still thought about Ray, after all this time? Poppy was fifteen months old; Ray had thrown her out when she was six months pregnant. She hadn’t heard from him for almost two years. But I still think of him, she told herself, because he still frightens me. I still dream about how it was, how it used to be when we were together.
Ray had come up to Lou in the Student Union bar, only two weeks into her second year at York University. She was very happy as a student, and it was hard to remember now how much she’d enjoyed her work, even though it was only a little over two years ago. She’d been doing her A-levels just before Grandad died and he’d encouraged her. ‘Go to university, Louise darling. It will be the making of you. You’ll get away from all this’ (and she’d known he meant Constance) ‘and find your friends and your vocation. You’ll read so many wonderful things. I’m envious, but you can tell me what your tutors are saying and we’ll discuss the books together.’
That hadn’t lasted. Ray had come up to her in the bar, and from the very first time she met him, she was hypnotized: not in control of herself, not the person she thought she was. He was tall and broad-shouldered and if you’d asked Lou what her ideal man was like, it was someone very different f
rom Ray. She had always thought she liked small, dark men: the Johnny Depp type. The ‘doomed poet’ look was what she’d thought she favoured. Someone pale, with intense blue or dark brown eyes and long thin fingers who appeared to be in the final stages of some wasting disease.
Ray was altogether too healthy-looking. He had grey eyes and short-cropped fair hair, like a male model for a particularly butch brand of aftershave. He was a handsomer version of Jonny Wilkinson. Ray had asked her what she wanted to drink and that was that. They went out together only twice before she went to bed with him, and by the time they’d arranged the third date, the one which ended with the two of them tearing the clothes off one another, Lou was in love. Being in love with Ray was like drowning. Everything else was blotted out and he filled every single part of her with his overwhelming presence. During the first weeks they were together, she couldn’t think of one single other thing apart from him. Her family, her friends, her work, her books, her dreams, her whole life up to this point, just disappeared as though they’d never existed.
I was drunk, Lou thought as she beat up two eggs for an omelette. I allowed the sex to cover everything. To smother everything. I thought it would last, that drunkenness. When Ray suggested she drop the course she was doing to come and live with him in London, she hadn’t hesitated for a moment. He’d graduated the year before and it was just her luck that he’d come into the bar that night, on a visit to some old friends. When she met him, he’d just taken a job as a courier. He moaned about the waste of his talents and his degree but he did like bombing around the streets on his motorbike. How he looked in leather and a shiny black helmet went with his image of himself. She blushed to remember how casually she’d said goodbye to everything: her tutors, who didn’t understand and muttered about her returning to education later on; her friends, who understood a little better but who still thought she was crazy; and, above all, her parents, who were heartbroken. Mum had pleaded with her to go on with the course. ‘You can see Ray at weekends, darling. And holidays. There are such long holidays at university … Surely that’s enough?’