I bent to look through the next box of books and found Mum’s collection of School Friend annuals, pulled one out, took it into my room, threw myself on to the bed and opened it. In my mother’s loopy, difficult handwriting (perfect for the indecipherable prescriptions she writes now) I read ‘Suzanne Rodwell aged Ten’. I turned to the contents page, intrigued, and was overwhelmed. ‘Celia and the Silver Ukulele’, ‘Jo’s Amazing Maypole Ride’, ‘Well Done, Professor Sally!’ – good grief, and people condemn heat magazine for sounding silly. I turned to page 91, ‘A Parrot, A Plot – And Geraldine’. It was the absolute duffest of stories, about some half-witted girls at St Winifred’s, and a madcap called Geraldine, who was always getting them into scrapes, but the heroine, Jane Watts, was a sensible girl, cheery, helpful and ready to take it on the chin even when all was at its worst. I threw it aside in disgust.
I lay on my bed, feeling sorry for myself and wanting to take out my mood on someone but I couldn’t at a time like this. I should have been downstairs helping. Then I thought of plucky Jane Watts of ‘A Parrot, A Plot – And Geraldine’, and I thought well, if she can remain cheerful while all around her people are saying things like ‘We won through in the end, didn’t we, Matron?’ and ‘I say, that’ll show those Fourth Year girls!’ well then, I should take a leaf out of her book. Suddenly I saw the way forward. I swung my arm over the bed, picked up the School Friend annual, and started reading again. My sense of vocation increased at every sentence. I would be kind, helpful, with bright cheery eyes and a sparkling smile. I would load boxes and right wrongs and I would be nice to everyone in my loving family circle, and I would really think about whether I was going to let Miles persuade me not to go to LA, and when Saturday came and I saw David, I would be jolly and chirpy and he would say ‘Madcap schemes are always afoot when Lizzy’s around, but she always pulls it off!’ and walk off with a spring in his step and no undertow of argh erk ouch, those things which characterised our previous meetings since our breakup. Yes. I leaped off the bed, flung the door open and skipped lightly downstairs, where I was met by the sight of Chin and Gibbo in a passionate clinch by the staircase. I slapped Gibbo on the back. ‘Well done!’ I cried heartily, and danced into the study.
‘Dad,’ I practically yelled. ‘Can I help you with some packing?’
‘Er…no,’ said Dad, with alarm. ‘I’m looking over the papers again. Stuart and Simone might drop by later, before completion tomorrow, and I don’t want them springing anything on me.’
‘Need me to check them for you?’ I said.
‘You?’ Dad spluttered. ‘No thanks, Lizzy. Tell you what though, Chin wants me to help her fold napkins in return for her giving me a lift to the solicitor’s tomorrow. Maybe you could do it instead.’
‘Why’s she giving you a lift?’
‘Car’s packed up,’ said Dad briefly. I sighed. His car was a twelve-year-old estate, called Dilys by her affectionate owner, and packed up at the most inconvenient moments. Need to get to the station in ten minutes flat? Dead engine. Dreaded family outing to visit Great Aunt Dahlia and Uncle Simon? Purring engine.
‘Of course, Dad. Anything to help!’ I trotted into the hall again. Chin and Gibbo were still there, having A Moment. I lingered on the sidelines, unsure what Jane Watts would have done in a similar situation.
Thankfully the front door opened slowly and Tom came in, pulling a wheelie suitcase. A zip-up bag for his morning suit hung over one arm. Chin and Gibbo stepped apart and I walked forward nonchalantly, as if I’d been elsewhere doing important things.
‘Tom!’ I said, and went to kiss him. ‘I thought you weren’t coming down till teatime!’
‘Hello, Tom,’ said Chin. ‘You’re early!’
Kate’s voice echoed from the kitchen. ‘Tom? Is that you?’
‘I stayed late last night to get a document ready for a client so I could be here early today,’ said Tom, pleased with himself.
‘Well, this is great,’ said Chin, hugging him. ‘You can go to pick up the glasses and cutlery! Suzy’s got the address.’
‘Uh?’ said Tom.
She turned back to Gibbo. ‘’Bye, darling. I’ll see you in a little while.’
‘Where are you going?’ I said.
‘Manicure and pedicure,’ said Chin, airily. ‘And a massage.’
‘Right,’ said Tom, putting his suit on his case and his hands on his hips.
‘Right!’ I interjected hurriedly. ‘Lovely. Where’s that then?’
‘You wouldn’t have heard of it.’ Chin put her bag over her shoulder and ran her fingers through her hair. ‘Sophia Gunning recommended it. Dereham Spa’.
‘Oh,’ I said and I coughed and smiled inwardly to restore my schoolgirl equilibrium.
‘Why aren’t you going tomorrow?’ Tom said. ‘What if you chip the nail varnish?’
‘I want to go today,’ said Chin, smiling sweetly. ‘Lizzy, your father’s supposed to be folding the napkins. I’ve left a pattern specification on the table for him but I’m sure he’ll get it wrong. You’ll have to help him. Best do it now – there’s loads to do this afternoon. And, Lizzy, find some gloves for picking the flowers this afternoon. I don’t want people asking on Saturday why all my family are covered with scratches. Thanks. See you later.’ She marched out.
‘She’s pushing her luck, she really is,’ Tom said. ‘God, I pity the fool—Hey! Gibbo! How are you, mate?’
‘Good, thanks,’ said Gibbo, the light of amusement in his eye.
By Thursday evening I was exhausted. There’s nothing in the School Friend Annual 1956 about jolly old Jane Watts having to take a rest cure for a month after setting up a wedding for a bloody control freak. While Chin was probably lying on a soft leather chair in a dressing-gown, with cucumber slices on her eyes, being attended to by soothing voices and velvety hands, back at the ranch her family worked themselves into a frenzy. We gathered, we polished, we picked things up, we dropped them off, we made phone calls, washed dishes, jugs and plates, we ran around the house packing the rest of our possessions into boxes and tidying up the essentials that remained. We wrote signs, we lugged crates of champagne, and Tom, Jess and I ruined pile after pile of napkins, until Gibbo, surveying the wreck-age shooed us away and got to work. Ten minutes later – or so it seemed – two hundred napkins sat on the two tables nearest the door, deftly manipulated into the shape of a fleur-de-lis.
‘How on earth did you know how to do that?’ Tom asked.
‘Y’know,’ Gibbo said, pulling up his trousers, to which were attached an assorted variety of grass cuttings and bits of paper. ‘Chin taught me. Pretty easy, really. I’ve been practising. Let’s move these chairs into place, shall we?’
Mum and Kate appeared after seven, bearing a jug of Pimm’s and some crisps. ‘I thought we could have a drink out here. I’ve put a casserole in the oven and baked some potatoes,’ said Mum. ‘Here, have a glass.’
We all sat outside the marquee, on the grass that sloped down towards the house, and took in the view. Against a gun-metal sky, the golden grey of the lichen-covered stone house glowed in the early-evening sun, and the glass diamonds of the leaded windows flashed and shimmered. The budding lavender stretched towards us in mauve and grey rows, like spindly fingers reaching up to the meadow where we sat.
There was the sound of a car in the driveway and we looked up to see who it was but no one moved, as if we were reluctant to break the spell. Then I heard Chin’s voice and her footsteps as she opened the gate that led from the lane by the side of the house into the garden. ‘Here’s Simone and Stuart come to say hello,’ she called.
‘Oh, hell,’ muttered Mum, under her breath, as she scrambled up, brushing grass off her lap. ‘Where’s your father, Jess?’
‘Don’t know,’ said Jess.
‘Evening, all!’ cried Stuart Caldwell, as he advanced towards us, his beefy torso crammed into a short-sleeved shirt. His face was aggressively tanned, his expression jovial. Chin and Simone followed him, the
latter, hampered by her high-heeled clear plastic mules.
‘Just enjoying the view, are you?’ said Stuart. ‘Making the most of it while you can, I expect.’
Simone screamed and clutched Chin’s arm. ‘Stuart!’ she yelled. ‘I’m, like, falling over in these bloody heels. It’s hilarious. Hey, it’s Lizzy! And is that Tom? Look, do you like them?’
We all stood up, and I looked down to examine the shoes in question.
‘They’re really nice,’ I said, lying, because they were completely hideous, studded with glass stones around the heel and across the foot.
‘Hi, Mrs – Suzy.’ She waved at Mum. Every part of her – except her dodgy boobs – wobbled. ‘We just wanted to come over and say hi. Is Mr – John around?’
‘Stuart, would you like a drink?’ said Mum.
Suddenly Kate materialized next to her, like the sinister Addams Family butler, and silently held out a glass. ‘Pimm’s, Sarah?’ she said, to the incoming lady of the house.
‘It’s Simone, Mrs Walter,’ Simone corrected her helpfully.
‘Is it?’ said Kate mutinously, but Mum elbowed her out of the way.
‘Well, well!’ Stuart repeated, taking the glass Mum offered him. ‘Sorry to disturb. This time next week we’ll be sitting here doing the same, I expect.’ He smiled in a friendly way.
‘The Caldwells just wanted to ask something,’ Chin explained, in a neutral voice. ‘I ran into them in town.’ Her eyes were fixed on the ground.
‘Oh, it’s so lovely up here,’ Simone said. Her heels were sinking into the ground. Stuart rubbed his hands together, then held out his stubby arms in an all-encompassing gesture. ‘We were wondering what you think to something. I know this is a bit irregular, ahead of our moving in here. I mentioned it to Ginevra, seeing as how it’s her wedding day on the Saturday. Simone and I, we’ve just got back from Thailand, see?’
‘Lovely,’ we murmured, not sure where this was going.
Simone nodded. ‘We had a butler in our room all the time. And whatever DVDs we wanted, they’d order for us. CDs too! It was a six-star hotel – there’s only, like, five in the world. I had to stay there one night on my own because Stuart had to go away. A meeting in Bangkok.’ Stuart’s eyes were boring into her like bullets, but Simone didn’t notice. ‘And I’m, like, well, what am I gonna do? So I went out, and there was this market, right outside the hotel, but I hadn’t noticed it because we hadn’t been out of the hotel before. Why would you? Seriously, it was that nice.’
‘Anyway,’ interrupted Stuart, tiring of this reminiscence, ‘Simone buys this mini-temple thing, right? Well, four of them. And a huge, wooden door. It’s almost eight foot high. Amazing they are, wood-carvings, totally authentic. The workmanship’s genuine. It’s not tat.’
The wind was picking up, providing respite from the heavy humidity of the evening. I looked up at the weathervane swinging gently in the breeze.
‘Anyway,’ he went on, ‘we’ve just been to pick them up and we was wondering, you know.’ He trumpeted a cough into his clenched fist. ‘Seeing as how we’re completing tomorrow, can we just pop them away here instead of taking them home and finding a place for them where the kids won’t smash into them?’
Tom suddenly said. ‘They’re not those mini-temple things you put in your house to ward off evil spirits, are they?’
‘Yeah, and they’re lovely. I just had to have them, you know?’ Simone said, clasping her hands in front of her. ‘And,’ her voice became serious, ‘it’s something a bit different. No one else has them, right, and they’ll look great in my new house.’
‘Are they…Hm.’ Tom bent his head, as if to access something buried deep in his mind. ‘Are they like the ones Posh bought last year in Thailand?’
Tom’s heat magazine knowledge is encyclopaedic.
‘Yes, that’s right.’ Simone said, clearly nettled that she’d been rumbled. ‘But, apart from her, no one else’ll have them. I had to really beg the old man who was selling them to let me buy them. I thought he weren’t gonna let me at first. But we came to, like, an agreement. I bargained with him. Amazing that he was selling them right outside the hotel – it was really lucky.’
‘That is amazing,’ said Tom, beaming. ‘Well, what a great idea. Do you want to put them—’
‘Hang on a second, Tom,’ Chin chipped in. ‘I don’t think there’s room, is there?’ Her eyes were clearly conveying a message that said, ‘How dare they think they can start putting their stuff here?’
‘Never mind. We’ll find somewhere. The shed, maybe. It’s pretty big and John cleared it out last week. How about that, Stuart?’
‘No, Tom,’ Chin said, through gritted teeth. ‘I really don’t think there’s going to be room.’
‘Oh, they won’t do anyone any harm there, Chin, don’t worry,’ Mum said.
‘That’s not the point! They shouldn’t be there – it’s still our bloody house,’ Chin said spikily, and stalked off towards the house.
‘I’ll go after her,’ Gibbo said, as we all stood there, embarrassed. He followed her and a few seconds later we heard the kitchen door slam.
‘Sorry about that,’ Mum said. ‘Wedding nerves.’
Stuart was unperturbed. ‘Sure it is, sure,’ he said, bobbing his head. ‘It must be, erm, strange. This time next week and all that, eh? Well, it’s a lovely house, and I promise you I’m going to take good care of it.’
Dad appeared from the house and the situation was explained to him. I noticed a bathroom catalogue poking out of Simone’s pastel-lettered Louis Vuitton bag and my stomach churned.
Dad offered them the use of the shed, gave Simone his arm and set off with Mum and the Caldwells to their black Shogun with tinted windows. It looked like a huge shiny beetle, dark and smooth in the pretty rose-dappled lane.
‘Twelve o’clock tomorrow, it has to be signed by, remember,’ Stuart Caldwell said to Dad. ‘Otherwise the deal’s off.’
‘Yes, I know,’ said Dad. ‘I understand, Stuart, don’t worry. I’ll be there at ten.’
‘Good,’ said Stuart, unsmiling, and climbed into the car. Then the mask fell back into place. ‘’Bye, all,’ he cried, beaming like Tony Soprano. ‘Good luck!’
‘Yes, and good luck for Saturday,’ Simone called, waving. ‘We’ll see you next week.’
‘Why didn’t you mind them putting the mini-temples in the shed?’ I asked Tom as he, Jess and I sat on the ground again. Kate stood up, brushed down her skirt, and started to clear the glasses.
‘Amusement factor, I suppose,’ said Tom. ‘But they do bring luck, those things. If you place them in a home they protect it. And as the Caldwells have got four I thought it was worth a chance.’
‘Bit late for that now,’ said Jess. ‘Anyway, from what Dad says, if we don’t sign tomorrow Mike misses some deadline to repay the money he owes.’
‘How do you know?’ I said.
‘He keeps ringing to remind us,’ Kate said, as she put the last glass on the tray. ‘It has to get to him on time.’
‘What happens if it doesn’t?’ I asked.
‘I don’t like to think,’ said Kate. ‘But I presume we’re not talking about being fifty pounds in the red with one’s current account.’
‘So we need all the luck we can get, don’t we?’ said Tom, practically.
‘Yes,’ said Kate. ‘We do. See you inside, then. Supper’s nearly ready.’
A delicious smell wafted to us from the kitchen window. Above, Chin’s room overlooked the garden and I could see her pacing up and down, while Gibbo stood with his arms outstretched, trying to catch her as she passed him, only to be slapped away. She was crying.
‘It’s just wedding nerves,’ said Tom, following my eye.
‘I’m almost past caring,’ said Jess.
‘Me too,’ Tom said, as we stood up to go in. ‘Still, if she wants something to take her mind off it, Uncle Mike’s arriving tomorrow.’
I sighed into my glass and drained it. The School Fri
end Annual didn’t have a section on Uncle Mike or indeed, the Caldwells. Let alone Miles and David. Its usefulness was limited.
TWENTY-EIGHT
Friday dawned humid again and overcast, and the atmosphere was ugly. Today was the day. It would overshadow Chin’s wedding, no matter what we did to pretend otherwise. As I lay in bed I could hear Chin and Gibbo, down the corridor, bickering about something. My windows were wide open and the curtains hung limply. My phone buzzed again. I ignored it. Miles had left a series of phone and text messages, but he seemed to be from another world, a world unconnected with the weird, end-of-an-era gloom that hung over the house as thickly as the heavy clouds in the sky.
Downstairs Dad and Mum were packing the study, one of the last rooms that had to be sorted out. The low static of the radio floated up to me as I looked around my room. I didn’t want to remember it like this, half-empty and forlorn.
I glanced at my watch. It was eight thirty. Mike’s plane would be near England by now. Was it near us? Was he looking out of the window? What would it be like, to see him again? I couldn’t bear the idea of having to hate him. Was he sorry for this? Miles had said I should forget about all of it, that it was in the past, but I couldn’t – just as I couldn’t forget about David sleeping with someone else, or how much I disliked Stuart Caldwell, or how awful Chin was being, or how nervous but relieved I was to be leaving next month for LA.
Chin’s bedroom door slammed and I heard footsteps run down the stairs. She was giving Dad a lift to the solicitor’s soon so that he could sign the papers – a gloomy way to spend the day before your wedding. Now that it was here, I felt no stab of pain. It was as if we were camouflaging the sale with the wedding. But everything I looked at in this house held some kind of memory connected with me, my family, our lives and those of our relatives before us. And from Wednesday it would be the Caldwells’ home. I dug my fingers into the palms of my hands, feeling the sharp crescents of nail press painfully into my skin. I stayed like that for a while, then got up, dressed and went downstairs.
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