Looking For Lucy

by Julie Houston

  As Peter bobbed up once more, lunging towards the beige hotel curtains, I knew I was going to have to get into the shower before I threw up. Although the sex was dreadful and I was missing Allegra dreadfully and, glancing out of the bathroom window I could see grey Scottish mist with its promise of rain to come, I hugged myself as I wrapped the somewhat threadbare standard-issue towelling robe around myself and made for the tiny bathroom. I knew I mustn’t allow myself to hope for one minute that the feeling of nausea could be something quite different; that there was anything but the tiniest of faint chance I was already pregnant with the baby I so longed for.

  It would be so different this time. There would be no plucking up the courage to tell a horrified lover behind the huge industrial freezer in a frenetically busy restaurant kitchen; no look of disbelief, of contempt even, as I broke the news; no being told in that suddenly cold voice that he wanted no part in this mess. What about our plans to return to his native Israel? To work together in his uncle’s restaurant in Haifa so that we could both become proficient in the Mediterranean and Middle Eastern cuisine to which he’d introduced me, and which I now adored? There was no way he was going to stay in fucking rainy Leeds with a baby, he’d spat, cold with anger. Think, Clem, think, he’d pleaded. Together we were going to become as good as, better than, his compatriot, Ottolenghi, who was doing so well with his gourmet delis in Islington and Kensington. Did I really want to end up in some council house in Leeds—because that’s all that we would be able to afford with a baby—when we could be travelling, cooking together, making love in the heat of an Israeli night?

  Frustration at me for not sharing his dream, as well as his fear at the possibility of losing me, made him angrier than I’d ever seen him. I’d looked at him, shocked. I’d known he wouldn’t be pleased, known full well that he wouldn’t wrap his arms round me and tell me he wanted a baby more than anything else in the world especially as it was my baby, our baby and conceived in Israel, but I hadn’t expected this cold fury. I’d had a sudden vision of this baby with, Made In Israel stamped all the way through it like a stick of Blackpool rock and, despite myself, I’d smiled.

  ‘Clem, this is not funny,’ he’d said, his beautiful brown eyes devoid of any warmth, vacant almost, ‘Get rid of it.’ And with that, he’d stalked out onto the wet, greasy streets of Leeds despite Gianni, the head chef, bellowing at him that there was fucking food to cook and where the fuck did he think he was fucking going?

  *

  ‘Now, when in Scotland, do as the Scots do, I think, darling, don’t you?’

  ‘Sorry, Peter, did you say something?’ Brought back to the present and the somewhat mean hotel in Scotland rather than the heat of Israel with its all-pervasive heady smells of cumin, sumac and lemon or the overheated, frenzied turmoil of La Toque Blanche in Leeds, I looked at my husband as he stood, rosy-cheeked and sweating against the window.

  ‘Just saying, darling, when in Rome and all that…’

  ‘Rome?’

  ‘Well, Scotland, obviously. Porridge for breakfast, with salt rather than cream and syrup…?’

  I fled to the bathroom.

  In the end porridge, in any of its forms, had not been an option. The standard buffet of a three-star chain hotel—individual packets of processed cereal, bacon with an abundance of fat and white flecks of bone, eggs greasily fried or scrambled into dry, rubbery clumps and tepid, filthy coffee—greeted us in the dining room already packed with bad-tempered babies and truculent teenagers who, denied the option of a ‘free house’ at home with their mates, had been dragged out for a two day Superbreak made cheap by Groupon.

  ‘I’m really sorry about the hotel, Clem,’ Peter apologised as I ate limp toast and drank the Earl Grey tea the harassed waitress had eventually found for me. ‘All the five-star places were fully booked up months ago.’ He attacked with gusto the undercooked fried eggs, a string of raw albumen hanging from his fork as he did so. I looked away. ‘We’ll have a proper honeymoon next year: Barbados, perhaps? Would you like that? We can take Allegra with us and my two if Vanessa will allow them.’

  I smiled, willing myself to feel some enthusiasm. I shook my head, as if by doing so I could clear thoughts of the past that were tumbling, like clothes in a drier, with thoughts about the present. About Lucy and her shocked, white face when she realised it was me standing there watching her, together with the equally shocked faces of Izzy, Harriet and Grace at the pole dancing club; about my marriage to this man who sat opposite me now, spreading cheap, vividly red jam onto his toast while beaming hopefully at me.

  Berating myself for not living for the now, I took Peter’s hand and smiled. Make more of a damned effort, I told myself. I had to cheer up and try harder, show more enthusiasm, if this was going to work. I had to keep to my side of the bargain. This good, earnest man who loved me—loved me and Allegra—would never have left me, pregnant, like Ariav had. Allegra and I had a lovely future because of Peter, and I should jolly well start behaving myself if this marriage was going to work. Ignoring the leaden sky that I could just see from the restaurant window and the rather irritating noise Peter made as he sucked up his coffee, I smiled and said, ‘Tell me about your mother, Peter. I’m really looking forward to meeting her.’

  *

  ‘Mother, I’d like you to meet Clementine Douglas—oops, silly me, Broadbent,’ Peter chortled, introducing me to the diminutive figure who presided, Miss Havisham-style, in the middle of the otherwise deserted sitting room. Peter had driven the fifty miles or so in the pouring rain towards the rest home where his mother had lived for the last ten years and now stood, hovering anxiously at his mother’s side, as her claw-like hand pulled repetitively at some imagined thread on her woollen skirt.

  Morag Broadbent, nee Mackinlay, was tiny, a reduced, bird-like figure, and I couldn’t believe that so diminutive a woman could ever have produced the man that Peter had become.

  ‘She’s a neat little thing,’ Morag said, in her soft Scots burr, addressing Peter as if I wasn’t present. ‘I do hope she’s going to be better for ye than the other one.’

  ‘Mother, really—’

  ‘I’m just saying, Peter. Ye were sold a pup with the first one. Y’always did go for a pretty face, and this one certainly has one of those.’ Peter’s mother had finally turned to take a good look at me, her bright little eyes—incongruous in the wizened, pale face—boring into me as if she could see into the very core of me.

  Spooky, I thought, reddening. It’s as if she knows exactly who I am and why I’ve married Peter.

  ‘Married him for his money, did ye?’ Morag suddenly asked, still staring at me.

  ‘Mother, enough,’ Peter said, scarlet. ‘If you can’t be civil, we shan’t come and see you again.’

  ‘Well, he’s got nae one else once I’ve gone,’ she went on, pointing her stick at her son. ‘Nae brothers or sisters, nay aunts or uncles still alive and nay real cousins to speak of.’

  She was beginning to sound like that Scottish bloke in Dad’s Army. I recalled early Sunday evenings as a little girl when Lucy and I had sat with Granny Douglas watching repeats of her favourite series. Private Frazer, that was it, with his ‘Wur doomed, wur awl doomed…’ Blimey, I thought, wanting to giggle as I remembered Neil Manning aka Oliver Cromwell aka Captain Mainwaring. How many more characters from Dad’s Army was Peter going to produce?

  ‘So he’d have been in a guid position to inherit the whole of the Mackinlay fortune—we were part of the Buchanan clan,’ she added proudly. ‘But, I tell ye now, the money—my money that I brought to the marriage—awl gone. His father spent it awl on women and horses.’ Morag fixed me with her gimlet eye once more. ‘And blood’s thicker than water, d’ye hear?’

  ‘Erm, I don’t think Peter bets on horses,’ I said, smiling nervously. ‘I don’t think ye need—you need—have any worries on that score.’

  ‘As I say, you cannae teach an old dog new tricks.’ Morag rolled the ‘r’ on ‘tricks’ for what se
emed forever before suddenly stopping dead. She’d fallen asleep, her head drooping, her fingers continuing to claw at her skirt.

  16

  I glanced around at Peter’s—my—beautiful kitchen where I was in the middle of preparing supper for the five of us and then at the clock on the wall. Just a few days into my new married life, I was determined to make a go of it all, determined that Sophie, as well as Max, should start to like me and Allegra and want us in her family home.

  We’d arrived back from our three-day honeymoon in Scotland the previous evening, picked up Allegra from my parents and then driven home where, to Allegra’s delight and my huge embarrassment, Peter had carried both of us over the threshold. Sophie, who had been dropped off by her mother a few hours earlier, had tutted in disbelief, slouching off to her bedroom after making the obligatory sick noises and muttering, ‘gross,’ under her breath.

  It was now six in the evening and I’d seen very little of Sophie all day. She’d refused all offers of breakfast and lunch and turned down flat any idea of accompanying the kids, George and me for a walk down into the village to the café that did fabulous milkshakes. Instead she’d spent the morning in bed—finally appearing at two in the afternoon—given me her customary sneer and, plugging herself into her phone and iPod, passed the afternoon sunning herself in the Secret Garden.

  She was now stretched out on the sofa in the ‘family area’ of the kitchen, devouring a huge bag of chemically-orange Doritos and cans of coke while watching Hollyoaks at full volume as I put the final touches to what Peter had told me was his daughter’s favourite food.

  *

  ‘What’s this?’ Sophie poked suspiciously at the ravioli I’d spent a good couple of hours making: mixing and forming the dough from scratch and stuffing with a filling of prime minced beef and spinach as soon as the kids and I had returned from our walk.

  ‘Ravioli,’ I said smiling at Sophie. ‘Your father said it was your favourite.’

  ‘It doesn’t look anything like the ravioli that we eat at home.’ Sophie dissected one of the perfectly cooked squares, pulling it apart as if she were a forensic pathologist looking for clues to how it had met its demise.

  ‘That’s because Mum gives us ravioli from a tin—on toast,’ Max said, through a mouthful. ‘This is tons better.’

  I shot him a look of gratitude while simultaneously wiping sauce from around Allegra’s mouth. ‘Just try some, Sophie. It really isn’t all that different from the Heinz stuff. And I’ll make you some toast to go with it if you’d like.’

  ‘It’s nothing like the tinned stuff. This is wonderful.’ Peter smiled, patting my hand in appreciation but, I noticed, he’d pulled specks of spinach from their little parcel of pasta and was leaving them, stark, against the white of the plate. It reminded me of an interview with Mick Jagger I’d once read in Cosmo, or some such magazine, where he said he’d had an emerald put into his front tooth but very soon swapped it for a diamond when people thought he had spinach stuck in his teeth. Peter’s plate was beginning to resemble Mick Jagger’s mouth, I thought hysterically. Why didn’t he just devour the whole beautiful, delicious square of pasta and let the tang of the spinach mix with the delicately flavoured beef and basil-infused tomato sauce?

  ‘Well, I’m not eating it,’ Sophie said petulantly. ‘I’ve become vegetarian anyway.’ She pushed her plate to one side and helped herself to a mouthful of Peter’s wine.

  ‘Stop it,’ Peter snapped. ‘Stop showing off. And you’re certainly not old enough at sixteen to be drinking wine. If you can’t behave, leave the table.’

  ‘Mum lets me drink wine with my meal. She says if I’m introduced to it while she’s watching and in control, I’ll be far less likely to binge drink when she’s not there.’

  Bloody stupid middle-class theories, I thought crossly, as well as in total contradiction to my thoughts expressed on this matter at Peter’s dinner party. Much more likely to have kids drinking heavily with their mates, if they’re given free rein and get the taste for it at home.

  ‘Sophie,’ Peter said crossly, obviously unsure whether Vanessa did allow their daughter to drink at meals or whether Sophie was making it up, ‘you’re acting like a child. Look at Allegra—she’s thoroughly enjoying this lovely food.’

  ‘Well she would, wouldn’t she? She’s used to this sort of stuff.’

  I glanced at Allegra, who was gazing wide-eyed at her new stepsister. The last thing I wanted was confrontation at our first real family meal together and I certainly didn’t want Allegra, who was clinging on to Hector elephant, upset. Max came to the rescue by telling us all about how many goals he’d scored at his football tournament that morning and how he’d been given Player of the Day award.

  I fetched the lemon meringue pie I’d made for pudding—surely all kids loved lemon meringue—and started to cut it into slices. ‘Sophie? Will you have some? Your dad said it was your and Max’s favourite.’

  ‘I think he must be going back several years,’ Sophie almost sneered. ‘Anyway, Mum says puddings like this are full of sugar—even Jamie Oliver now says they’re no good for you. There was an article in the Sunday Times yesterday about him not eating sugary stuff anymore. You shouldn’t be encouraging little kids like her—’ Sophie indicated Allegra with her unused napkin ‘—to eat them either. All her teeth will go rotten and drop out…’

  ‘Enough, Sophie,’ Peter said, as he saw Allegra’s face crumple and tears well up in her huge brown eyes before plopping, hugely, onto her meringue. ‘Go to your room, go on.’

  ‘It’s fine, Peter.’ I smiled at Allegra, encouraging her to get on with her pudding. ‘We all have principles when we’re sixteen. I certainly did. Didn’t you?’

  ‘Erm, I think I was too busy studying for GCSEs and looking at the stock market to have principles,’ Peter said vaguely, still glaring at Sophie.

  ‘The stock market at sixteen?’ I said, surprised. ‘You were playing the market even then?’

  ‘That’s how Dad made all his money,’ Max said proudly, tucking into his meringue in the manner of all eight-year-old boys when faced with a delicious pudding. ‘Once I get to be a teenager, Dad’s going to help me get started—’

  ‘Boring, boring,’ Sophie interrupted.

  ‘Not so boring when it pays for your school fees and your iPhone etc, etc,’ Peter said, mildly.

  ‘Yeah, well, I can’t wait to get back to school,’ Sophie said, nibbling a fragment of sweet, buttery pastry that had fallen from Max’s plate and onto the table. ‘I can’t think of anything worse than having to go to state school and live at home all the time.’

  *

  Hours later, after Peter had gone to his study with coffee, apologising that some problem had arisen with work that had to be sorted, I bathed Allegra and tucked her up in the pink boudoir and read We’re Going On a Bear Hunt for the zillionth time. Cross with myself that I’d been unable to make any headway with Sophie, I took George out into the garden and walked the grounds, enjoying the cool night air on my arms and legs. Oh God, what had I done in marrying Peter? In trying to find security for Allegra and myself had I, in effect, made things worse? Would I have been better just moving out of Emerald Street as I’d always planned to do and being in the process of, hopefully, starting a new job now that my degree was finished? But what if I’d not been able to find a job that fitted in with Allegra’s school day? And, what about the holidays? Where did kids go during the long school holidays while their mums worked? Other single mothers worked, I told myself crossly—I would have sorted something. My thoughts, like a tennis ball on centre court at Wimbledon, flew from the positives to the negatives of being married to Peter Broadbent.

  ‘Sort it, Clem,’ I told myself, speaking out loud so that George looked up at me expectantly. ‘Man up and sort it. You’ve made your choice; bloody well live it.’

  I gazed up at the clear inky-black sky, breathtakingly full of countless stars now that it didn’t have to compete with the sodium streetlig
hts down in town. I breathed in the scents of late summer: the heady tobacco reek of the white Nicotiana Sylvestris; the fruitily delicious honeysuckle; the resin-y smells of lavender, basil and rosemary that I had planted myself only recently.

  Somewhere out there, under those same stars, Lucy was living an entirely different life.

  I shouted for George who had run off, following a badger trail in David Henderson’s fields, and together we walked back to the house. The walk, along with the almost exotically scented night air had lifted my spirit, and the panic I’d felt at making the wrong decision in marrying Peter had subsided once more. I determined to have a Jo Malone scented bath before having another go at gently seducing my new husband and encouraging him to let me take an actual part in our sex life.

  Through the kitchen’s French windows I caught sight of Sophie. She was stuffing her face with leftover ravioli before starting on a huge piece of lemon meringue, eyes closed and a look of pure ecstasy on her face as the delicious food was consumed. Grinning to myself, I went to find Peter.

  17

  On the first Wednesday morning in September, I received two phone calls that had me jumping around the kitchen with delight. The first was from the headteacher of the local village school who had, somewhat witheringly I thought, peered over her glasses and informed me, only a couple of weeks previously, that to be given a place at her school a child had to have had its name down for years. As I had only recently moved into the area, and Allegra had no sibling in situ in her school but did have a perfectly good school place down near Emerald Street—here the head had almost shaken her head at the thought of any child being educated in that part of town—she couldn’t see any chance of her becoming a pupil at her school in the foreseeable future.

  Just as I was making a list as to which bits of Allegra’s uniform needed renewing for the new term at her old school that, I’d suddenly realised with a guilty start, was only a few days away, Mrs Theobold, the village school head, rung to say a place for Allegra had unexpectedly been made.