by Annie Dalton
One day soon this wonderful old dog would go for her last walk, Anna thought, and Roop would be left alone. Her own overflowing happiness made her want to reach out to this gentle and unassuming man. ‘I’ve just discovered a really brilliant book about dogs,’ she told him. ‘You might like it. It’s called—’
Roop interrupted her with an apologetic laugh. ‘Don’t bother telling me, because I’m not going to remember. My short-term memory has jumped ship along with my eyesight!’
‘You could put it in your mobile,’ Tim suggested.
He smilingly shook his head. ‘Don’t have one. I can’t stand those things.’
‘Why don’t I drop off a note for you then?’ Anna said. ‘It honestly won’t be any trouble.’
Roop looked surprised and pleased. ‘All right, if you’re sure? I’ve got one of the gardener’s cottages. Turn left past the Buttery, keep going until you see the sign to the Apothecary’s Garden. Mine’s the first cottage next to the gate.’
‘I’ll pop it in next time I come in to work,’ she promised.
‘I’ll look forward to it,’ he said. ‘You can tell me all about your beautiful dog.’
Tim watched them slowly vanish into the mist. ‘Nice guy. Really sweet old dog.’
Anna said, ‘So now tell me how you met – sorry, I’ve forgotten your wife’s name.’
Tim smiled. ‘She’s called Anjali.’
‘So tell me how you met Anjali.’
TWENTY
Anna almost never had her car radio on for short journeys, but when she got into the driver’s seat on New Year’s Eve, some impulse made her turn on a local music station. Immediately the bluesy opening chords of one of her favourite golden oldies filled the car.
To spare her neighbours, Anna waited until she’d reached the end of her crescent before turning up the music and joining in with the Rolling Stones’ raucous chorus. ‘Ti–i–ime is on my side! Yes, it is!’
Lucky Isadora, she thought, having these kinds of songs for her soundtrack. Imagine being hit by that tsunami of youthful optimism every time you switched on the radio. No wonder Isadora’s generation believed they had the power to change the world.
As she headed towards Summertown, singing along with Mick Jagger, Anna saw a bright sickle moon sail out from between the clouds and was suddenly filled with almost painfully sweet emotion. I’m happy, she thought astonished. The word didn’t seem anything like big enough. She wasn’t just happy. She was grateful, hopeful, in love with her life. It was New Year’s Eve and Anna had places to go and people to celebrate with.
Beneath the Stones’ guitars she heard the festive chink of bottles. Anna had chilled two miniature bottles of champagne, now tucked into the footwell on the passenger side. It had become a tradition for Anna and her grandfather to spend New Year’s Eve together. Next year, depending on how things developed, she might take Jake, but this year she’d wanted it to be just her and her granddad. One day soon she’d have to tell him that his daughter, Julia, had had an affair with the husband of one of her best friends, an affair that had resulted in Anna. But she didn’t want to complicate their New Year’s celebration by telling him tonight. She would stay with her grandfather as long as his energy levels would allow then go on to Isadora’s.
Isadora was out of hospital now. Still on strong medication, with a visibly black eye, and her right arm in a cast, she had not felt up to appearing at a friend’s glitzy fancy-dress party. ‘I did contemplate getting an eye patch and going as Long John Silver,’ she’d told Anna and Tansy last time they were over. ‘But I’m afraid I lack the necessary chutzpah.’
Tansy and Liam had originally planned to meet up with friends in London, but neither of them wanted to abandon Isadora on New Year’s Eve when she’d just got out of hospital. ‘Isadora is still quite fragile after what happened,’ Tansy had told Anna. ‘Even a normal New Year can be a horrible time to be on your own, but knowing that guy is still out there …’ So Tansy had called Isadora to suggest they should all go over to her house and make a proper party of it. Her suggestion had immediately cheered Isadora up.
‘Jake and Liam can be my two hunky bodyguards!’ she’d suggested much to Tansy’s amusement. Jake had already gone over to Isadora’s with Bonnie to help Liam and Tansy with preparations.
The Stones track gave way to an old reggae number. In Anna’s current buoyant mood, it was impossible not to see Jimmy Cliff’s song as a personal message. Like the singer she and her friends could see everything more clearly now. They finally had answers to some of the questions that had been plaguing them. They knew who had really killed Hetty Vallier. They knew who had sent the anonymous letters, and they knew that the sender was not the same person who had attacked James and Isadora, but the granddaughter of Isadora’s murdered friend.
Anna thought it reflected well on both Sabina and Isadora that they’d managed to put this rather bumpy start behind them. Isadora’s first words to Sabina when Anna took her to visit Isadora in hospital were ‘Darling, they say to understand all is to forgive all and I absolutely understand how much you must have hated us.’ Sabina had been so overcome that she’d cried. She hadn’t expected forgiveness and understanding. Anna had the feeling Hetty’s granddaughter had never really seen herself as a person in her own right, just an instrument of familial vengeance.
Sabina was still a little too polite around Isadora, but from time to time when Isadora was telling one of her more outrageous stories, Anna and Tansy had noticed a distinctly star-struck expression on the young girl’s face. ‘Wait till Isadora’s had a couple of drinks and lets it slip she once had a moment with Mick Jagger!’ Tansy had murmured to Anna.
‘You think Sabina will be shocked?’ Anna had whispered back.
Tansy had been astonished. ‘Are you mad? She’ll be in awe!’
Anna drove in through the gates of her grandfather’s retirement home and turned off the engine. Though it was still early, most of the windows of Bramley Lodge were dark, except for some lights in reception. Anna took the champagne out of the footwell, stuck an ice-cold bottle in either pocket of her parka, and went in.
As usual the temperature inside was subtropical. The young woman on the reception desk was dressed for summer in a thin cotton dress and cropped leggings. She looked up reluctantly from watching a cute puppy video on her phone and said, ‘Oh, hello. Do go through. Mr Ottaway is expecting you.’
Anna felt her shoes sinking into the soft carpet as she made her way down the corridor. Muted sounds from radios or TVs came from a couple of the rooms she passed, but most of the residents seemed to have turned in for the night. Her grandfather’s room was at the back overlooking the garden. Through his door she could hear a woman singing the blues. She knocked loudly enough for him to hear her through Billie Holiday, assuming he had his hearing aid in. ‘Can I come in?’ she called and heard his delighted laugh.
‘You’re here! Wonderful!’
Anna let herself into his colourful and chaotic apartment. George Ottaway’s rooms resembled absolutely nobody’s idea of an almost ninety-year-old man’s living space.
She caught her grandfather in the middle of tinkering with an arrangement for his latest still life: a crumpled white cloth, a bowl of nuts and an old blue-rimmed plate on which he placed a pomegranate cut in half to show glistening pink seeds. Tomorrow he’d be at his easel as soon as it was light. Each time she visited she’d find new vibrantly painted canvasses carelessly propped against walls or pieces of furniture. Uncertain whether any were still wet she took care not to brush against them as she went over to kiss him.
‘Does the music bother you?’ he asked her.
‘No, I like it.’
‘I’d just been listening to one of those ghastly New Year’s news roundups,’ he explained. ‘Just catastrophe piled on catastrophe. So I decided I’d listen to Billie instead.’
‘Good call,’ Anna told him. She smilingly produced the bottles out of her pockets. ‘Ta-da!’
�
�Just when I thought things couldn’t get any better!’ he said.
She placed the misted-over bottles on his coffee table. ‘I’d better take off my coat, before I expire from heat exhaustion.’ Anna peeled off her parka to reveal a delicate claret-red lace and crêpe de Chine blouse. The neck with its small covered buttons was high, but the lace panel that made up the front part of the yoke and the long lacy sleeves were so whisper-light they were barely there at all.
‘Pretty top,’ her grandfather said. ‘That colour suits you.’
‘Thank you!’ Anna gave him a twirl. ‘Temperley London. I got it in a sale.’
‘That’s what your grandmother always used to say,’ he said with a grin. ‘I never believed her either.’
Anna went into his tiny galley kitchen and came back with two champagne flutes she’d bought him the previous year. ‘I’ll hold the glasses, you open the bottles.’ She had a moment’s doubt. ‘I’m sorry, this looks mean. I should have bought a full-sized bottle.’
He shook his head laughing. ‘At my age a full-sized bottle might be fatal!’
‘Grandpa!’ she protested.
‘It’s true! This way, we can have all the theatrics and bubbles without the hangover! Glad they still use corks though. Not much drama in a screw top!’
‘Just hush and pop the corks,’ she teased.
He started to laugh then his expression became wistful. ‘You know you looked just like your mother when you said that.’
Anna felt a guilty pang. Her grandfather had survived so many losses, his daughter and three of his grandchildren, and more recently his wife; and now she had to tell him something about his beloved only child that was sure to shatter him to his very foundations.
Her grandfather efficiently popped both corks and filled their glasses. She held his for him until he was settled in his favourite armchair. ‘Did I upset you when I said you look like your mother?’ he asked anxiously.
She shook her head. He didn’t miss a thing. ‘It didn’t upset me. I liked it.’ The words just popped out but Anna realized they were true. Once she’d have been appalled at the idea that she bore any resemblance to her mum. She raised her glass. ‘Happy New Year, Grandpa!’
‘Happy New Year,’ he echoed. ‘Here’s to a new start and fresh hope for our world.’
Anna took a sip of her champagne. ‘So have you made any resolutions?’ Before her grandfather could open his mouth she said, ‘I think your first resolution should be to show your paintings in an exhibition.’
‘Oh, that’s your resolution for me, is it?’ he said with gentle irony.
‘Tansy’s gallery has open exhibitions,’ she reminded him. ‘She’s already told Gerry, the owner, about you.’
‘Anna, I’m just a dabbler! I’m not nearly good enough yet to merit that kind of exposure.’
‘Stop it, Grandpa! You absolutely are! I’ve shown Tansy some photos of your paintings that I took on my phone and she and Gerry would like to come and visit.’
Her grandfather looked first astonished then slightly alarmed. ‘Well, I suppose there’s no harm in that,’ he conceded eventually. There was a brief lull in which they both found themselves captivated by Billie Holiday singing ‘The Very Thought of You’. Then her grandfather said, ‘So now we’ve settled on what my resolution ought to be, what about yours? What are you going to do next year to set the world on fire?’
Anna watched the tiny champagne bubbles rise in her glass. Resolutions were about making improvements to your life. Still glowing from the discovery that Tim was her brother, Anna didn’t feel there was anything in her life that urgently needed improving. But it was only fair to keep her grandfather company, so she said, ‘I should probably get my act together and finish decorating my bedroom.’
He made a face. ‘A New Year’s resolution should get your heart racing. I don’t think interior decoration really fits the bill, does it?’
Feeling cornered, Anna said the first thing that came into her head. ‘I suppose I might think about looking around for a new job. I enjoy working with Kirsty, but I don’t really want to end my days in admin.’ Being bullied by Nadine’s fucking Post-its, she added silently.
‘What do you think you’d like to do?’ he asked.
‘Stop asking me scary questions!’ she said laughing. ‘I have no idea.’
‘Scary, but, I’d suggest, ultimately liberating?’ He looked at her mischievously over the top of his glasses.
‘OK, here’s the deal,’ she told him. ‘I’ll give some serious thought to your scary questions and you give serious thought to putting your paintings in an exhibition!’
Around ten she could see her grandfather starting to tire and rose to leave.
‘I hope you’re off to meet your American beau?’ he asked.
‘“My beau?”’ she said. ‘You make me feel like I should be wearing a bonnet! But yes, I’m joining Jake and the others at Isadora’s. First, though, I’m going into town to buy some very exclusive gin!’
‘Exclusive or expensive?’
‘I should think both!’
Anna figured she just had time to pop to the Holly Bush to buy a bottle of the special gin Jake had hoped to sample at the German market. In the car, she quickly texted him to let him know she’d be at Isadora’s soon.
The Banbury Road was eerily free from traffic. Now and then she saw groups of young people carrying bottles, heading to some party or other. Occasionally a lone firework went streaking up into the sky. She parked up on St Giles and hurried down towards the Cornmarket. It was a cold clear night. Shivering, she wrapped Tansy’s scarf around her more closely. She could feel the winter chill penetrating her parka and the new lace top she’d worn partly for Jake (though she’d deny this if asked), but mostly for the new Anna who dared to dress in bright colours.
The Holly Bush was up a tiny hidden alleyway that branched off Brasenose Lane. This old fourteenth-century inn was reputedly once the haunt of cutpurses and other unsavoury medieval characters. Anna wondered what the cutpurses would have thought of the braying north Oxford males who had invaded their local.
The queues at the bar were so long that she almost changed her mind. But she pictured Jake’s surprise and pleasure when she presented him with the bottle and stood her ground. At last she handed over her card to pay for what turned out to be an eye-wateringly expensive purchase. Fighting her way back towards the door she almost collided with Roop, the gardener, also carrying a bottle.
They both laughed with surprise.
‘Hello,’ she said. ‘Is this your local?’
‘God, no,’ he said. ‘I hate pubs. Full of red-faced men shouting contradictory opinions.’ He held the door open for her and followed her out. ‘So you’re on your way to a party, I expect?’
‘Nothing so grand,’ she said with a smile. ‘I’m just going to spend the evening with friends.’
He held up his bottle. ‘As you see I’m also ready to see in the New Year.’
‘You and Meg,’ she said.
‘Yes, just me and my old Meg.’ A wistful look came into his eyes. ‘You wouldn’t like to come and have a quick drink before you meet your friends? You could write down that book title for me.’
As Anna hesitated, a group of young, loud-voiced men came out of the pub, barging into Roop almost knocking him over. He didn’t comment on their behaviour, just quickly recovered his balance, and said, ‘Sorry, I shouldn’t have asked. Your friends will be waiting.’
She consulted her watch. Anna couldn’t help being slightly intrigued by Roop. In a way she felt they were kindred spirits. ‘Oh, I’m sure I’ve got time to squeeze in a quick drink,’ she told him, smiling. ‘In fact, I’d like to!’
‘Well, my evening is looking up!’ Roop gave her his shy laugh.
They set off towards Walsingham College. She’d expected they’d go in via the Porter’s Lodge. Instead Roop turned down a narrow side lane and stopped at what looked like a kind of service entrance. He punched some numbers into a
security pad and let her in.
She’d never used this particular entrance to the college and in the dark it took a moment to get her bearings. Seeing her hesitate, Roop said, ‘We’ll go this way; unless you want to bump into a lot of drunk CEOs and their wives.’
‘I’d forgotten about that.’ Walsingham College had taken to renting out their Great Hall along with their Michelin-star chef, for various functions. ‘The Harry Potter effect’, Paul called it. A well-known tech company had arranged to hold their big New Year’s Eve bash there.
Roop set off down a path Anna could hardly see. Compared to the Great Hall, with its big and probably extremely boozy party, this part of the college felt silent and empty.
She heard Roop click his tongue. ‘Those bloody security lights are a bit slow coming on.’ The words had barely left his mouth when a pale flare of light illuminated the familiar approach to the Buttery. He laughed. ‘They do say the key to comedy is good timing!’
Anna followed Roop through an arch that took them down another of the college’s covered walkways, their feet echoing in the silence. She could make out dim shapes of trees and shrubs. The college gardens were far more extensive than she’d realized. She’d never taken time to explore, she thought, just picked up her post and headed straight to the admin offices.
Eventually they reached the elaborate wrought-iron gate that led into the Apothecary’s Garden. Anna remembered Roop mentioning it as a landmark.
‘Ever been inside?’ he asked.
‘I’m ashamed to say I haven’t.’
‘Not much to look at now, but come and take a look in summer. We’ve got a seventeenth-century knot garden with all the old medicinal plants. It’s like bee and butterfly heaven. This is my place,’ he added and Anna saw that they’d arrived at the first of two tiny semi-detached cottages. She followed him up the path. ‘Come in,’ he said. ‘Hopefully the fire will still be alight.’
If possible the cottage seemed even smaller on the inside. Small but unusual and quite lovely, Anna thought. Everything was in the same subdued palette of blues and greens, including the dozen or so framed paintings on the wall that Roop had designated for his art gallery. Two other walls were fitted with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, filled to bursting with books, mostly hardbacks. There were further piles of books at each end of the one small battered sofa. Meg, Roop’s old spaniel, was in possession of the only armchair. She didn’t move to greet them but gave a slightly guilty wag of her tail.