‘It’s not that,’ I said. ‘It’s just a bit…studenty. Maybe. But it’s nice.’
‘Yeah. I know what you mean,’ Jaden said reasonably. ‘In the place I’ve got in LA, I can drive to the ocean in five minutes, and I can see three palm trees out of my bedroom window.’
‘Nice,’ I said enviously. I could see brick wall and Paddington Green Police Station from my flat. I had a sudden vision of waking up, opening my window and looking out over the Californian hills to the bright blue sea.
Jaden handed me some more lychees. ‘So, you went home,’ he said conversationally.
‘Yup,’ I said.
‘And how was it?’
‘It was fine. It was…great, actually.’
‘I guess it must have been kind of depressing, though. Like if you make doing something into a big deal, whether it’s good or bad, it’s always a let-down when it finally happens.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘You’re right.’
‘Good to be at home where you belong, though, right?’
‘Oh, yes,’ I said confidently. ‘It’s just—’
‘What?’ Jaden said, busying himself with another lychee.
I remembered how overwhelming it had been to step through the front door, to stand there and know I was home again. But…‘It’s funny,’ I said. ‘I always feel safe there, I’m always hoping I can go back there. But…it’s just something my mum said. In the kitchen. I’ve been thinking it’s so important, Keeper House, being at home. And, actually, it’s not. Is it?’
I was thinking of Mike, alone in Rosalie’s flat, wondering where she was. Not knowing she was with David, in an anti-Walter pressurized environment, a bit like a can of antifreeze, actually. I was thinking of Mum and Dad, making the best of a bad deal and looking for the good points in their new home, of Tom, working himself far too hard. I wanted them to be happy – we didn’t have to have the house for that. I didn’t have to be there to feel at home. And I didn’t have to have home to help me do things. Perhaps it was the opposite.
‘It’s not important, no,’ said Jaden. ‘My sister lives in Houston, Mom lives in Colorado, Dad lives in Michigan, I live in California, and we take it in turns to spend Thanksgiving at each other’s houses.’
‘Really?’ I said, intrigued.
‘Well, not Dad so much since he married Kelly,’ Jaden said. ‘’Cause she’s not something my mom’s particularly thankful for.’ He smiled. ‘But when we’re all together, we’re…together. You know? And I’m happy about it. I go back to Colorado, where I grew up, mountains, snow all year round, and I love it. I feel at home at my mom’s, I see my old friends, I go places I used to go on my trail bike. OK? And then I get home to LA. I’m by the ocean, I can do my yoga, I can walk on the beach, make miso soup and do all that other crap you think is kinda funny.’
‘Yes, that’s exactly it,’ I said. ‘Completely. That was what it was like this weekend, I suppose.’
‘Anyway, about that,’ said Jaden, sliding the smooth burgundy lychee stone out between his lips and putting it into the bowl at his feet. He wiped his fingers carefully on a piece of tissue, and turned round on the bean-bag to face me. This took more shuffling than one would have thought, so we were both giggling when he’d finished.
‘OK, hear me out, QE Three,’ Jaden said, picking up another lychee and running a nail over the spiky shell. ‘You know I’m going back next month?’
‘Three weeks’ time, yes?’ I said.
Jaden nodded. ‘I booked my ticket yesterday, and it cost, like, nothing. And that got me thinking, and then I just thought, Lily’s offered her that job so why don’t I ask Lizzy properly to come and stay with me there?’
I was nodding politely and thinking how nice it would be for this Lizzy person to go to LA with Jaden, when I suddenly realized he was talking about me. ‘You mean me come and live in LA with you?’
‘Why not?’
‘But…what? To live there?’
‘Yeah.’
‘What? No,’ I said. I struggled on my bean-bag, suddenly finding it constricting rather than relaxing and cheerful, and stood up.
Jaden got up too. He took my hands and turned me to face him. ‘Hey, calm down,’ he said.
‘I am calm,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry, Jaden, it’s a great idea, and I know I’ve been thinking about it, but it isn’t going to happen.’
‘Let me finish,’ said Jaden, his eyes twinkling. ‘I’ve started this all wrong. I don’t want you to move to LA to be with me, that’s not what I’m trying to say.’
‘Oh,’ I said, not without a little relief.
‘And I don’t mean, get over yourself, like I’d want to move in with you, either. OK?’
‘Righty-ho, then,’ I said, sounding insanely British and buying some time while I tried to work out what he was on about. ‘That all sounds brillo.’ Brillo?
‘No, listen,’ said Jaden. ‘Let me say my piece. I’ve thought it all out, I think it’s good. You’re not exactly happy at the moment, are you? Your family’s gone into meltdown, you’re losing this great house, you’re frustrated with your life here and you won’t do anything about it. It takes you, like, a month to get your boiler sorted out, and that ex of yours, who you were making out with in the kitchen a couple of weeks ago –’ I opened my mouth to protest but Jaden raised his hand, unperturbed, and went on ‘– I’m not an idiot, Lizzy, it was kind of obvious what had been going on and, anyway, it’s not a big deal, I understand. Anyway, he’s still bringing you down. And that brother of his, what is he? Like, your stalker?’
‘Miles?’ I said, confused. ‘No, we’re just good friends.’
Jaden raised his eyebrows. ‘I don’t think that’s what he thinks.’
‘Bollocks,’ I said. Me and Miles – urgh, even thinking about it was deeply deeply weird. He was David’s brother, for God’s sake.
‘Whatever, don’t worry about it, it’s not a big deal. I don’t think. But anyway, Lizzy,’ he went on, ‘if I were you I’d want a change. Why don’t you do something about it?’
‘Er,’ I said.
‘Well, it’s up to you. But I really like you, Lizzy, you’re great. I’d love to have you live with me. We’ve got a cool house-share and it’s a five-minute drive from the beach. It’s like a block away from Bette Davis’s house. And the Monumental office there is great – it’s small, it’s just starting out. What’s stopping you? You go there for a year, you wear sunglasses, get a tan, enjoy yourself, stop thinking all those crazy thoughts that are running around in that crazy English head of yours.’
Think about it. California. Sunshine all year round. Film stars. The ocean.
‘And the brunch place next door to me does this great wheatgrass-juice shake. You’ll love it,’ he added.
My eyes bulged. Jaden smiled. ‘I’m actually joking. Well, it does do wheatgrass juice, but it does waffles too. No-carb, no-fat waffles and maple syrup with no sugar. It’s LA, after all.’
I am one who dithers over whether to have tea or coffee in the morning, and I find it’s the really big decisions I can actually think through logically, without running around with my hands in the air. We were standing by the mantelpiece, which was adorned with a collection of Jaden’s self-help books. The Make A Change Manual by Dr Ken Boomio was nearest to me, and as I gazed idly at it I saw that the line on the front cover said ‘Change Your Way to a Whole New Betterness!’.
‘I need to talk to Lily,’ I said.
‘The job’s yours, Lizzy. She’s said so already.’
I looked at Dr Ken Boomio’s grinning face. And I thought of my grandmother saying, ‘Never put off till tomorrow what you can do today.’ Oh, to hell with that, I thought. I’ve spent the last year trying to understand things and getting more confused by the minute. I don’t want to have to worry about it any more. How liberating it would be to surrender for once, and go with the flow, instead of sticking in the same old rut. And what if, when I did that, I sorted things out at the same time?
‘Jaden,’ I said, ‘it’s the maddest idea I’ve heard in a long time, but it makes almost perfect sense.’
I wasn’t going to up sticks and move to California for ever, of course. I might not even go at all. But I thought about it all night, as I lay in Jaden’s bed, counting the brown waves of the wallpaper through the silvery moonlight, with Jaden next to me on his back, arms resting neatly on his chest. And I thought about it the next morning after we’d had sex and Jaden was in the shower. I sat in bed with a cup of tea, looking at the rows of his neatly folded khaki, stone and brown clothes in their Habitat fawn-coloured clothes hanger, feeling content as a watery sun shone through the grimy window.
And I thought about it on the way to work, repelled by the rank smell of an unwashed old man next to me on the Tube, and a trashy girl reeking of Calvin Klein on my other side, and during the horrid bun-fight queue for the lifts, one of which was broken, the other of which smelt of pee. And suddenly, instead of wanting to run back to Keeper House, I realized it wouldn’t solve anything and I needed to get away from all of this. And Jaden, with his nice white teeth and yoga mat, his biscuit-coloured hands and trousers, his promise of the ocean and no strings attached, might have provided the answer.
It was a lot to think about before eight fifty-six on a Thursday morning. I wouldn’t tell Mum and Dad and the others until there was something to tell them, but as I ran up the steps to the office and pushed open the black front door, it was exhilarating to think that I’d taken a step towards something different.
Lily was at her desk when I walked in.
‘Lily,’ I said. ‘Yes.’ Her eyes flicked over some text on the computer screen.
‘If I were to take that job in LA, would I get an allowance for a pair of Gucci sunglasses and the hire on a Corvette?’
‘Seriously?’ Lily asked.
‘Seriously,’ I said.
‘No,’ she replied. ‘But you’d get a pay rise and two free return flights a year. And that’s your lot. Maybe a relocation package. Probably not.’
‘OK,’ I said, humming as I sat down at my desk. ‘OK.’
And, with that, I set in motion a move to the other side of the world with a man I wasn’t in love with.
TWENTY-THREE
I said nothing to anyone outside work about going to LA. I wanted to let the idea swirl around in my mind for a while without having to deal with the questions, the details. The funny thing about a big decision is that the moment you make it is never accompanied by a bolt of lightning. I don’t know when the moment came that I knew I was going. I only know that, the following Saturday, as I sat in the back of Tom’s car with Miles (who was also going home for the weekend), on the way down to Keeper House, I felt free. Perhaps it was because I’d already been back. Perhaps it was because, finally, I’d found something to get excited about.
‘Has Mike heard from Rosalie yet?’ said Miles, as we came through the outskirts of the village.
‘Not as far as we know,’ Tom told him. ‘Poor Mike. Jeez, was I wrong about her!’
‘I thought you were,’ Miles said. ‘There was something dodgy about her. Sexy, though. Those tight cashmere sweaters. Blimey.’
Yes, I thought. Do make sure you tell your brother they have to be handwashed. With every day that had passed in the week since she’d left him that Rosalie hadn’t contacted Mike, I had felt even more the responsibility for telling him and the others where she was. But I didn’t want him to find out from me. I wasn’t going to do her dirty work for her. Poor Mike – the humiliation of his niece ringing up and announcing he was being cuckolded by someone twenty years his junior was not something I wanted to inflict on him.
We saw Stuart Caldwell disappearing into the Neptune as we drove through Wareham to drop Miles off.
‘It’s the future lord of the manor,’ Tom said.
‘Oh, yes,’ I said, watching Stuart’s bulky frame disappear into the gloom of the pub.
‘Want me to hunt him down and kill him, Lizzy?’ said Miles. ‘Drown him in a vat of beer?’
‘Shout, “SOKH is avenged!”’ Tom added. ‘Yep, go on. She’d get you to do it, you know. And I bet you would, just to impress her, you big girl.’
Miles winked at me and jerked his head at Tom. ‘I’d do anything for her, you know that.’
‘Indeed,’ said Tom. ‘“Oh, Tom,”’ he went on in a high-pitched voice, ‘“I’m going to have to go in the back with Lizzy. You’ll have to put this case of wine in the front, it won’t fit back here. Ooh, she’s so lovely.”’
‘Good gay impression, my friend,’ said Miles. ‘You should do it for a living. Oh, sorry, you already are.’
‘Well—’ Tom began.
‘OK, OK, you two,’ I said. ‘Shut up, Miles. Tom—’ for I could see in the mirror that Tom’s face was arranging itself into a mutinous expression. ‘Here’s David’s – we’ll see you tomorrow teatime, yes?’
‘Miles’s, you mean,’ Tom pointed out. I winced.
Miles took my hand. ‘God, you’re freezing.’ He took the other, and rubbed them with his own warm, gloved hands, then kissed my cheek. ‘’Bye, gorgeous. ‘Bye, Tom. Thanks a lot, mate. Really appreciate the lift. Let me get this wine out. Or perhaps I should leave it in the front seat, so Lizzy and I can sit together on the way back, you know. Because that’s how I pull the ladies. I’m that smooth.’
‘’Bye,’ I said. ‘Come on, Tom, let’s get going.’ The curtains were twitching and I knew Alice would be out in a few seconds, and I didn’t particularly want to see her.
Miles put up his hand in a valedictory gesture, and we drove off.
‘You two,’ I said.
‘Well, he’s annoying,’ Tom said. ‘Always on at me about the gay thing. It’s so boring.’
‘You were old muckers together. It’s probably hard for him, takes a bit of getting used to,’ I said.
‘You all seemed to cope with it OK.’
‘Oh, boys, boys,’ I said.
‘And I don’t care what you say, he’s got a thing for you.’
‘Tom, don’t stir,’ I said, because Tom can be like this. ‘So what? He’s always had a bit of a crush on me, but that’s only when he’s not going out with someone else. I’m like his fill-in woman.’
‘Well, you shouldn’t be,’ Tom said. ‘You should be doing other things.’
How little you know, I thought, visualizing myself in a breakfast meeting with George Clooney at the Chateau Marmont. Suddenly I wanted to tell Tom, but then he said cattily, ‘He’s only doing it to make David jealous.’
‘Tom,’ I said tiredly, ‘I can’t imagine anything weirder than going out with Miles. It’s never going to happen. So what if we flirt? So what if we get on really well? He’s fun, I hardly ever see him, and after all he’s done for me, I owe him.’
‘Yeah, whatevs,’ Tom said, and I knew the subject was closed.
Was it really only a week since I’d been home? The hedgerows and trees along the lanes seemed a little more alive, showing more green than before. Tom slowed down to go through a rather deep puddle.
‘Nearly there,’ he said. ‘Right. Have you thought of your Chin bingo line?’
‘My bingo line is…It’ll be something to do with the path on the way to the marquee. Will they put tarpaulin down if it rains? So people’s shoes don’t get muddy.’
‘I think you’re being too practical,’ Tom said. ‘It’s going to be much more pointless and idiotic than that. Can we guarantee the roses will be in full bloom on that exact day, or something? Mark my words. Oh, speak of the devil.’
He pulled over, stopped the car and we were home. It was strange but it didn’t feel like last time, and it didn’t feel quite like home.
Chin was in the courtyard as we got out of the car, striding along with her hands in the pockets of a beautiful belted cashmere cardigan. ‘Hello, loves,’ she said, kissing us. Mum was lurking behind her.
‘Hello,’ she yelped. ‘Shall we—’
‘Let’s
just finish up here, shall we, Suzy?’ Chin said firmly. ‘While we’re here. I just…Crouch down, will you?’
Chin and Mum crouched on the ground and squinted up at the wall leading to the gate and the main garden beyond. ‘Nope, it’s no good,’ Chin said, flinging her notebook back into her pocket.
‘No,’ echoed Mum, who clearly had no idea what she was talking about.
‘Don’t you have it somewhere in a book, Suzy? It’s extraordinary that these roses have been here for well over a hundred years and you don’t even know when they’re going to be in bloom. Two hundred people will traipse through this gate after the wedding to be greeted in all probability by a lot of brown dead rose-heads. God, when exactly will the roses be out?’
‘Bingo!’ shouted Tom. I high-fived him.
‘What?’ Chin said.
‘We – we’re here! Hurrah!’ I said. ‘Bingo, Mum!’
‘Bingo!’ Mum yelled.
‘Ah, they’re here,’ said Dad’s voice. ‘Hello, darling.’ He kissed me and hugged Tom. ‘Right.’
We stood in a little circle in the courtyard. Mum and Chin fell silent. I knew something was up.
‘Let’s go inside and have some tea,’ Mum offered. ‘Brrr, I’m cold.’ She looked down towards the lane. ‘Oh, look, Tom, there’s your mother. She said she was going to pop over.’
‘All OK, Dad?’ I said. Mum seemed worried and Chin gazed into the distance.
‘It will be,’ Dad said. ‘That was Mike again,’ he said to Mum and Chin.
‘Again?’ said Chin.
‘No news – have you told him?’ Mum said.
‘Yes, but he’s getting desperate. Poor bloke.’
‘Poor bloke, my eye,’ said Chin, with unexpected spite. ‘Kate, hello. Mike’s rung again.’
‘Again?’ said Kate, as we went into the hall. ‘He is…God, Mike.’ She wiped her muddy wellies on the mat outside and kicked them off, as Mum disappeared to make tea.
‘I’m going to phone Mando about the roses,’ Chin announced. ‘I’ll be upstairs. Call me when you’re done.’
Tom and I mooched into the sitting room and flopped on to the sofa. Dad lit the lamps.
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