It was bitterly cold when I left work that evening. I’d packed Jaden off in a cab, persuading him I was fine. It was to his credit that he didn’t believe me but he knew I wanted to be alone. I walked out on to the street. The pavement had been gritted that evening and my shoes crunched as I passed the smoky, brown-tiled pub where some of my friends from work were gathered. As I peered through the window I caught sight of Ash waving his arms around, as Sally and Jon laughed at him. Jon half turned to look in my direction, and I shrank back so they wouldn’t see me and yell for me to come in. I scurried past the tiny French café, where I often got my lunchtime sandwich. The wooden chairs were folded up and chained to the painted green railings outside.
When I got to Luigi’s, the Italian deli, I stopped and stared aimlessly in the window. I couldn’t be bothered to walk to the bus stop: I just wanted to curl up and fall asleep under the chocolates and the coloured twists of paper, then go back to the office early tomorrow, rather than think about everything else. I gazed in at the sides of marbled, burgundy meat, the cheeses piled beneath the counter, the jars of artichoke hearts and oily, sun-dried tomatoes for what seemed like ages before I noticed that the shop was still open. I wandered in.
‘Good evening, signorina,’ said Luigi, behind the counter.
‘Hello,’ I said, picked up a focaccia and some pasta and handed them to him. I stared at the painted green, white and red Italian flag above the chalk board over his head as he sliced some ham for me.
‘Uno momento, signorina,’ he said suddenly, left the guillotine, and disappeared into the back of the shop. I heard loud shouting between him and another man. I gazed about me listlessly. Something in the corner of the shop caught my eye and I turned towards it: thick, creamy daffodils, their centres a pale, sunny yellow, their petals bursting open in an old blue and white enamelled bucket. I gathered up three bunches and put them on the counter as Luigi emerged.
‘Mi dispiace, Signorina,’ he said, wiping his forehead on his apron. ‘My son. He is so rude, so rude. All day he lie and play guitar. He hate the cold, he no like winter, he will not get a job. What is the world coming to? Do you know?’
‘Absolutely no idea,’ I answered truthfully. ‘These daffodils are beautiful, I haven’t seen any yet this year.’
‘They are the first we have,’ Luigi said, wrapping the prosciutto in thick, waxy paper. ‘Look outside you. Is dark, is oh-so-cold. But spring is coming, and then it will be summer – ah, the sun on my head, after these months!’
‘Ye-es,’ I said slowly. ‘Spring is coming.’ My heart lifted.
‘And then all this is over, no more winter. There you go, my darling, grazie, grazie mille, ciao.’
I swung out of the shop with my flowers and the parcels of food in a little brown paper bag, and carried on walking, turning the same thoughts over in my head.
Spring would be here soon, then summer, then it was all over. Finished.
The boiler, which had been threatening to go on strike since before Christmas, packed up when I got home. It greeted me with a thuggish clunk, whirred plaintively, then lapsed into silence. Yes, I thought, as I stood in the freezing cold kitchen, holding my hands over the kettle as I waited for it to boil, I would be glad when winter was over, and now we knew the house was sold and that everything was changing, everything would be much simpler.
I made a vow, as I crawled into bed wrapped in four jumpers, clutching a hot-water bottle. I’d go back in May for the wedding, but that was it. Not before then and not after. My dreams of running away back home had to be over, kaput.
So I didn’t go back to Keeper House that weekend for Dad’s birthday, as I was supposed to. Or the next weekend, when Chin went up to start planning the wedding with Mum. The house was gone, David was gone, Uncle Mike was effectively gone. These were all facts. I didn’t understand them but that was what they were, and imagining dreams you may have on the bus or lying in bed on Saturdays are all rubbish.
I carried on with my life, putting David and last year behind me as best I could, reminding myself frequently that in the grand scheme of things nothing really terrible had happened, and hoping I could be left alone to get on without the bother and mess of other people. Well, I tried.
FOURTEEN
The Caldwells – Stuart and Simone – had lived in Wareham for a few years. Simone had grown up in the village, then gone to London to become a model. She had met and married Stuart Caldwell, millionaire founder of Caldwell Tarts (Tom sniggered). I should point out now that Simone (who was approaching forty, but could have been thirty or sixty-five) had been called Sarah when I first knew her, had no boobs and buck teeth. Now she had a perfect white smile, a year-round tan, and definite augmentation had taken place in the area between her neck and ribs. Stuart was a bear of a man in Ben Sherman checked shirts that strained across his chest.
Before SOKH I had neither liked nor disliked the Caldwells. I had issues with them for naming their children Sharleen and Dior (A boy! Called Dior! You are asking for that child to have his head bashed in), for Simone addressing her husband as ‘Babes’ and for the rumours in the village about Stuart’s allegedly dodgy business practices. Post-SOKH I hated them with the white-hot intensity of a thousand suns, and especially augmented Simone, whom I saw as the catalyst of SOKH, an evil genius who was driving my parents out of their home because of a crazy lust to right years of her family’s wrongs. She planned to start by taking out the kitchen and dining-room to build a heated indoor swimming-pool, or so she had told Bill at the Neptune.
I was at work, eating a very late lunch, when Mike finally returned my call, a few days later. It was so nice to hear from him, especially after the silence from every other member of my family since the sale had been agreed – the if-we-don’t-mention-it-perhaps-it’ll-go-away policy. How very us. I slid down in my chair and eased out the lever so the back rocked down. ‘Maybe,’ I conceded, piling Jaden’s drafts of the script on top of each other, then resting my feet on them. ‘Mike, can I ask you a question?’
‘Sure,’ said Mike. He cleared his throat and whispered something.
‘Sorry, have you got a meeting or something?’ I said, alarmed. I’d been to Mike’s office last year when I was visiting David. It was incredibly impressive. All the fittings were ochre marble and his desk was the size of a bus. He had a view looking up Park Avenue, over Grand Central Station, with Central Park off to the side. It was ultra-swank. Mike, being Mike, kept drinks there, a huge pile of magazines, a TV and video, and showed me how to bet online and trade in stocks and shares. He also had a CD player with dreadful, dreadful CDs, like Michael Bolton, Curtis Steigers, and Leather and Lace 3. He took me to lunch at the restaurant in Grand Central Station: we drank kirs and watched the celestial scene overhead and the bustling commuters beneath us.
Anyway, I could picture him in his office, his feet on the table too, loosening his tie and making like the great New York lawyer that he was. It’s always easy to picture Mike. The very act of conversing with him was a comfort. I didn’t need to worry that he’d come over all serious and emotional and I knew I’d feel better afterwards.
‘Fire away, young woman,’ Mike said. ‘It’s just my chef asking if I want my oysters with lemon juice or Tabasco, you know the kind of thing.’
‘Mike,’ I said. ‘Will you tell me the truth if I ask you something? It’s important.’
After a pause he said, quite seriously, ‘Of course, ducks. What’s the problem?’
‘Why are they selling the house?’
‘What do you mean?’ I said to Mike slowly.
‘I mean…I don’t understand why things have come to this. Does that make any sense?’
‘Kind of. How so?’
‘Well…It’s just that…OK, I know the roof needs work, and that’s expensive and everything. It’s just…’ I knew it would sound wrong however I said it. ‘I know roofs are awful and pricy and it’s a big job. But this is our home, all of ours. Well…I just think perhaps Mum and Da
d haven’t thought this all through properly. Selling Keeper House, getting rid of all that just because they need some money for a roof. I wonder if there’s something we don’t know. Like…I don’t know.’ I trailed off.
Mike was silent for a moment. ‘Have you spoken to your parents?’ he eventually said. ‘Asked them about this? It’s important stuff, y’know. Perhaps you should confront them about it. Not aggressively – just ask if there’s something they’re not telling you.’
The idea of asking my parents if they were defrauding us of our home because they were secret boozers or because they’d murdered someone and hidden the body under the floorboards wasn’t appealing. But perhaps he was right.
‘On the other hand,’ he said, clearing his throat awkwardly, ‘you could leave it. I should think, even if there is a reason you don’t know about, they’re not dancing for joy at having to sell the place. Perhaps they haven’t looked after it. Perhaps my old ma and pa weren’t up to it either and that’s the problem. I know what you mean, old girl, and I’m pretty upset about it too. There’s no place like home and all that.’
‘No!’ I said. ‘There isn’t, and I—’
But Mike continued, unheeding, ‘I look out here, you know, lovely view, the park and all that. The station. Best city in the world. But I still can’t help wishing. Well. Y’know…’
‘Wishing what?’
‘Well…’ he sighed. ‘Lizzy, don’t you sometimes wish you were little, and back at Keeper House, that you didn’t have anything to worry about? Running around in shorts on the lawn. Playing with the dog. All that sort of thing.’
‘Er…’ I wondered if he was losing his marbles. ‘Oh, you’re talking about you.’
‘Yes,’ he said eagerly. ‘God, I wish I could go back.’ He sounded glum. ‘But I can’t.’
‘And you wouldn’t want to, anyway,’ I said. ‘Didn’t Dad set a rocket off in your face when you were ten? Weren’t you in hospital for a week? And didn’t he have a gang who bullied you, even though you were the oldest?’
‘Ha. No, it was Tony who set the rocket off,’ Mike said. ‘But, yeah, nasty bullies. They wore those Red Indian feather things. Used to ambush me in the lane on the way back from school. Broke my finger.’ He fell silent.
I tried to buck him up, feeling the conversation had taken a somewhat maudlin turn. ‘Well, then, you wouldn’t want to go back, really, would you?’ I said. And although it was super-tempting, I didn’t want that either. I just wanted everything to be right again. ‘You’re the one who got away, Mike,’ I said dramatically. ‘Be free. Make that change. Leave this cursed house behind ye, while ye be still young.’
‘The old days were the best, you know,’ he said darkly, then added, ‘still, thanks. You’re quite right, Lizzy.’
‘Good,’ I said, pleased I’d cheered him up a bit. ‘Anyway, I just…’
He interrupted: ‘But listen, Lizzy. About your ma and pa, the house and all of that side of the coin. Take my advice, eh? Sometimes you have to let things slide, even when they’re important to you. Don’t upset the apple cart unnecessarily. You know?’ I did, and he was right.
A harsh voice was suddenly on the line. ‘Mike? I need to make a call – can you get off now, please?’
‘Sure,’ he said, his tone altering. ‘Give me a few seconds, my love. I’m on the phone to Lizzy.’
‘Whatever. But I’ve got work to do, unlike you.’
It was Rosalie, of course. Clearly not in the best of tempers. ‘Hi, Rosalie,’ I said tentatively. ‘How are you?’
‘Fine, honey,’ she said brusquely. ‘I’d love to chat, but I can’t. Come see us soon. ‘Bye.’
There was silence again.
‘The old ball and chain not particularly pleased with your uncle this morning,’ said Mike.
‘I thought you were at work?’
‘Ah, no. I’m working from home today, got some rather complicated reading to do and wanted a bit of peace and quiet. I’m – erm – getting under her feet, poking my nose in where it ain’t wanted and all that. Anyway, Titch, I’d better go, as you can tell.’
‘Is Rosalie OK?’ I asked, worried.
‘What? Oh, yes, absolutely fine. Don’t worry, old girl, can’t blame her, sure I’m an absolute pest to live with. I’ll take her out to supper tonight, lay on the charm, she’ll be right as rain tomorrow. Better go now. ‘Bye, darling, ‘bye.’
Since Chin was the youngest of her siblings, the only girl, and had lost her mother while she was still relatively young, Mum and Dad, Mike, Kate and Tony, when he was still alive, had taken a parental attitude towards her, as if she was an adorable, if wayward little girl who needed coddling and cherishing. She and Tony were closest in age, since he was the youngest brother, and his death – when she was only fourteen – had hit her hard. She started bunking off school, and got terribly thin. The family still talked about Tony, but she hardly ever mentioned him.
Gibbo had proposed to her on New Year’s Eve at Keeper House. Mum, Dad and Kate were there too (not during the proposal, of course) and Mum reported back that it was very romantic. We were all over the moon about it because we adored Gibbo and he and Chin were so obviously perfect for each other. He loved the way she cackled at his terrible jokes and smoked Sobranies – the bright blue, green and pink cigarettes with the gold filters; he loved her messiness too. She loved the way he was funny, inventive, interesting, and that he was a good, solid person, who found fashion and frippery unimportant. They both liked art and design and spent ages together in museums trailing round in perfect harmony. Gibbo loved to cook and Chin had a mammoth appetite. Most importantly, Gibbo was unimpressed by Chin’s tantrums, unlike my family.
Mum wanted to help Chin assemble her trousseau in a married-womanly way, like someone in a Victorian novel. She wanted to release Chin’s inner Bridezilla, infect her with Wedding Lust, but Chin found the whole thing hilarious – or so she said. ‘Bless Suzy,’ she said, when I spoke to her a few days into her engagement. ‘I love your mother but she’s got it all wrong. She keeps dropping hints or offering to show me her wedding dress, or saying should we have a meeting about this or that. I think she’s doing it to take her mind off everything, but it’s not going to work. I just want a simple wedding. I don’t care about things like the font on the invitation or where our wedding list is going to be. Although Liberty has some lovely things. It’s all such rubbish.’
Mum was bitterly disappointed, but Chin, supposedly, despised the cult of the modern wedding and, indeed, marriage itself. She had yawned her way through the endless elegant weddings of her chic friends, had deliberately worn either bridal white or funereal black, snorted when a groom made a soppy speech, and generally eyed with disdain anyone who apparently saw their wedding as more important than the marriage they were embarking upon. I’m sorry to say she lost more than a couple of friends this way (although in the case of one, a dippy girl who set free a hundred white doves after her wedding in Oxfordshire, right next to fifteen electricity pylons, I applaud Chin’s decision to shout, ‘You total berk,’ at her).
However, in the month since the engagement, Chin’s attitude had changed, and it was a good thing: most weddings take years to plan and she was doing this from scratch in less than five months so that it could take place at the house before we had to go. Kate could have planned a royal wedding, but snorted every time Chin suggested spending more than three pence on anything. Dad was in charge of drinks and outside structures and fittings (the marquee and wine glasses). Mike was doing nothing, but that was fair enough: he was geographically challenged. Tom was working like a dervish so couldn’t be any help either. Gibbo hadn’t been entrusted with anything important. Jess and I had offered to help, but been turned down by HQ. I was secretly relieved, as this chimed with my desire to stay away from my family, but I still felt guilty. And I wanted to talk to Chin. I was sure she had some idea about what was really going on. She’d been so weird when she’d come back from that drink with David, the nig
ht Dad had told us the house was being sold. She knew something, but I had no idea what.
As February was blustering into March, and the wedding and the move were only a couple of months away, Mum took the day off from the surgery and came up to town on the train. I took a longer lunch hour than usual and met her at Paddington. She and Chin were going to Liberty for the trying-on of wedding dresses, and I’d promised to escort her into town. I couldn’t wait to see her, even if only for forty minutes. I missed her.
However, on the rare occasions Mum comes up to town I do have to remind myself that she spent her crazy student years in London and later brought up two small children here. And that she marched to Ban the Bomb, burned her bra, and made hash brownies for her friends (my godmother Stella told me this once, not Mum). Now she behaves as if she were being dropped into Viet-Cong era Vietnam, eyes darting about, alert and ready for lurking thieves who might attack, handbag worn diagonally over her body like a school prefect, and sensible shoes in case of the need to run.
‘Hello, darling,’ she trilled when she spotted me on the main concourse. ‘Lovely to see you. Keep moving,’ she hissed, under her breath. ‘Aah!’ A young man in a suit bumped into her, turned, and said, with a smile of apology, ‘I’m so sorry,’ put his hand on her arm and moved on in the shifting sea of people.
‘Well, really,’ said Mum, trying to be annoyed and clutching the handles of her Royal Academy oilcloth bag closely to her chest.
‘That was your fault, Mum,’ I told her, sticking my finger at the base of her spine and propelling her towards the Bakerloo line. ‘Come on, let’s get moving.’
I also have to remind myself that my mother is in charge of the diagnosis and treatment of illnesses of over one hundred people who call her their doctor. How a woman who can spot the early signs of a most virulent strain of meningitis can be incapable of working a ticket machine is beyond me. It’s not exactly brain science – and she’s studied brain science, for heaven’s sake.
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