The House We Called Home

by Jenny Oliver

  It was hot and sticky in Stella’s bedroom – the stone walls unable to stave off the humidity. They didn’t usually visit in the summer – too many tourists, too much traffic – popping down at Christmas or occasionally Easter instead and so it felt odd to be here in the heat. With the window open Stella could smell the sea, reminding her of when as a kid – a big swim the next day, Trials or Nationals – she’d lie on top of the bed, buzzing with nerves, eyes wide open as the heat pressed down, inhaling the calm familiarity of the salty air. But other than the occasional memory there was nothing in this room that would mark it out as ever being hers. The bright yellow walls had been neatly papered over in cream patterned with green parrots. Her mismatched furniture was long gone, now a French vintage wardrobe and chest of drawers sat next to a huge white bed with scatter cushions the same lime tones as the parrots that soared over the walls. It was like a hotel.

  She sometimes wondered where her stuff had gone. To charity if her dad had had anything to do with it. She’d never given him the satisfaction of asking though. The first time she’d been back to visit after she’d left she’d just pretended it meant nothing that all her belongings had gone – all her trophies and medals disappeared while all his still lined the shelf in the bathroom, mocking her every time she went to the loo.

  Stella sat at the dressing table. Jack was lying on top of the bed in his boxer shorts and a T-shirt, reading the news on his phone, the duvet had been pushed into a heap on the floor.

  ‘I think it’s hotter here than at home,’ he said, not looking up from his screen.

  Stella nodded. She was inspecting her skin in the mirror. Lifting up one side of her eye. Peering at the lines around her mouth. There wasn’t a chance in hell of Rosie comparing her to Zoella. It made her think she shouldn’t have been quite so disparaging of Amy when she’d looked at teenage Stella all brown from her sea swimming and said, ‘You’ll pay for that.’ At the time Amy’s fledgling modelling aspirations meant she was drinking a litre of water a day, eating mainly cucumber and celery, and constantly applying Factor 50. Stella had scoffed that Amy’s career wouldn’t last longer than the Just Seventeen photo-story she’d been scouted for and was right. Amy stuck at nothing. Except the application of Factor 50. When she’d turned up today – hair all newly bobbed in choppy layers – Stella had, for the first time, found herself jealous of Amy’s youth. Or maybe it was her freedom.

  She sighed.

  Jack put his phone down and looked at her over his new reading glasses, a move that she hated because it made him look so old. ‘Why are you sighing?’

  ‘Do you think my skin looks old?’ Stella asked.

  Jack inspected her reflection. ‘No older than mine.’

  Stella frowned. ‘That was not the answer I’d been hoping for.’

  ‘Why – do you think I look old?’

  Stella paused for a second too long. ‘No.’

  Jack laughed. ‘Damned by slow praise!’ Then he sat up and went to sit on the edge of the bed nearest to Stella and stared at himself in the mirror. ‘Christ, I do look a bit tired around the edges.’

  ‘I don’t think I’ve ever imagined us getting old,’ she said.

  ‘How have you imagined us?’ Jack looked perplexed.

  ‘I don’t know. I suppose, whenever we’ve talked about holidays just the two of us when the kids have grown up, I think I’ve always thought of us young, like in those photos of us on the train in Rome. You know? I’ve never thought that we’ll be old.’

  ‘I’ll have no hair.’

  ‘I’ll be all wrinkly,’ she said, lifting her eyelid up with one finger then letting it drop again. ‘That’s the problem with parenthood. Half of it is spent waiting it out till it’s done and you can go back to the people you were before, but you don’t realise that the older your kids get the older you’re getting. Those before people have gone.’

  Jack glanced at her in the mirror. ‘That sounds very much like the start of a column.’

  Stella thwacked him on the leg. ‘I’m serious.’

  They were conversing via the mirror still.

  ‘As am I, that’s the kind of thing you write about, isn’t it? When you’re not bashing Sonny.’

  ‘Thanks for that, Jack.’

  He laughed. ‘I’m joking,’ he said. ‘But you need to talk to him. The longer you leave it the harder it will be.’

  Stella nodded.

  They stared for a moment, side by side in the reflection. The heat of the room making their skin glisten.

  Jack was the first to look away. ‘You look as young and vital as the day I met you.’

  She sighed a laugh. ‘That’s just a blatant lie.’

  Jack went back to sitting up against the headboard scrolling through his phone.

  Stella stared at herself a moment longer. Seeing in her face the features of her mother. Swallowing when she thought of the simmering animosity her mum was currently showing towards her father. It made her pluck up the courage to turn to Jack and ask, ‘Is everything all right between us?’

  ‘Fine,’ he said, looking up with a frown, bemused as to why she was asking the question.

  Stella nodded.

  Jack put the phone down. ‘Stel, we’re fine. Just a bit tired, probably.’ He scooched over the bed and gave her a kiss on the cheek, ruffling her hair a bit. She swatted his hand away with a half-smile.

  ‘All right?’ he checked.

  ‘Yes.’

  That was the reassuring thing about Jack. Whatever happened he’d soldier on through, pick you and everyone else up who might be floundering without a moment’s pause to question.

  But as she watched him go back to his phone, she knew it wasn’t fine. The car journey had proved as such – like a condensed version of their current relationship, normal one minute and bickering the next. Both of them too quick to react, like they knew each other so well there was no point plodding through the benefit of the doubt.

  A couple of weeks ago, her editor had asked her if she’d wanted to write a piece called MOT Marriage for an upcoming edition of the magazine. They wanted it written as Potty-Mouth, picking up on the current trend for critiquing the minutia of stuck-in-a-rut long-term relationships with a list of tasks and questions for the married couple to complete. Stella agreed, and while she knew she and Jack had precisely the kind of long-term relationship that most of her readers had – a bit stuck in a rut but getting through the day-to-day via Netflix and the anticipation of mini-breaks – she had fully intended to make up the content. Nowadays, fierce competition in the Slummy Mummy marketplace had pushed the Potty-Mouth brand to be much cooler and far more exciting than Stella, like an older sister she was constantly trying to impress. Stella already had it plotted out: Potty-Mouth and her fictional husband were going to throw the questions out of the window and do it their way – going to a host of exciting erotic workshops, flamenco dance classes, and a bit of swinging with another set of parents at the fictional school gate. She’d researched it all, the article was practically written and in the bag.

  Now, however, she stared at the face in the mirror, as she thought of the clear disintegration of her parents’ marriage and the strain on her own relationship since the Sonny incident, she wondered if maybe she should do it, for real.

  She swivelled round on the bed to face Jack, feeling a nervous warmth creep up her neck.

  Outside the sound of the waves rolled gently in the darkness.

  Jack looked up. ‘What?’

  ‘Do you want to help me with an article I’m doing?’

  He narrowed his eyes, uncertain. Stella never asked for any involvement in what she was writing. He usually just read about their souped-up life over his Shredded Wheat. ‘What’s it about?’

  ‘It’s called Marriage MOT,’ she said.

  ‘Oh Jesus, Stella. We just said everything was fine.’

  ‘Well, then it should be easy.’

  Jack tipped his head back against the wall. ‘What do we have to do
?’

  ‘You know the type of thing: are you having enough sex? Are you listening enough to each other? Harbouring any grievances … blah blah blah.’ She tried to spin it all casual.

  Jack sighed. ‘I’m not harbouring any grievances.’

  ‘Great,’ she said. ‘We’ll tick that off the list.’

  Jack thought about it and frowned. ‘We have enough sex, don’t we?’

  ‘Well that’s what we test. You think you’re fine but you can never be completely sure until you check. Like when we had the car done and he said the brake pads were worn out.’

  ‘Would the sex be the brake pads?’

  ‘Maybe?’ Stella smiled.

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with my brake pads,’ said Jack, puffing his chest out.

  ‘I’m not sure that analogy makes sense.’ Stella shook her head.

  There was a pause. Jack bit down on his lip. ‘I don’t know, Stel. Seems all a bit forced.’

  ‘Yeah but maybe it’ll be fun. At the very least it might stop us from becoming like them,’ she said, angling her head towards her parents’ bedroom. ‘I don’t want you to go missing.’

  Jack looked at her, his eyes softening. ‘I don’t want you to go missing either.’ Then he shook his head like he couldn’t believe what he was about to say. ‘All right, fine.’ He slid his phone onto the bedside table. Stella did a little cheer and came round the bed to get in next to him, the beautifully ironed sheet crisp and momentarily cool. ‘So, what’s the first step of this MOT?’ he asked.

  ‘We have to start having loads of sex,’ she said.

  ‘Really?’ Jack looked sort of intrigued.

  Stella nodded, the pillow soft beneath her head.

  Jack nodded.

  There was a pause as they lay in the sticky humid heat.

  ‘But I’m really tired,’ Stella said.

  ‘Thank God for that.’ Jack exhaled with relief. ‘Me too.’

  CHAPTER 8

  Moira caused quite a stir in the morning – while everyone else was either clearing up the breakfast things or, in the case of Sonny and Gus, playing on their phones while Rosie was watching TV – by hoiking her bag onto her shoulder and saying as boldly as she could, ‘Righto, I’m off to my book club.’

  Glances had been exchanged.

  ‘What about Dad?’

  ‘There’s enough of you to cover all the bases,’ Moira said quickly before adding, ‘Sonny, can you look after the dog?’ and leaving the house without really waiting for an answer.

  She didn’t know the protocol of going to one’s book club while one’s husband was missing but if she was quite honest, Moira just had to get away. She loved her children but when they were all in the house together sometimes it just got too overwhelming. She felt herself retreat like a snail; every comment about her clothes, her hair colour, her plans of action, her dog’s stupid name – every one left her edging away, till she hurried out to book club without even thinking about the propriety of it.

  It was another bright, hazy day. She wove her way through the back lanes to the village, the sun piercing through the overhanging canopy of leaves to banks of lush ferns, the car clipping the odd wayward frond in her haste. In the past Moira would never have dreamed of joining anything like a book club. There was a twinge of shame now when she thought back. She’d always seen herself as rather above it all. She’d happily indulge in a bit of village gossip but always with the aloof air that she was humouring them all, donating a little of her very precious time. Her husband was an Olympic hero.

  She had to touch her face now as she coloured at the cringing memories. Every summer Moira was renowned for throwing a party, a lavish summer bash – strings of Venetian lanterns bobbing across the garden, long tables laid with glasses and drinks served by kids from the private school dressed up as waiters, candles lighting the drive, a gazebo with a band. One year she’d made the marquee men pause their work to help her trail an extension lead all the way over the cliff edge to the beach in order to floodlight the sea. It had been magical. Now, it all seemed a bit too showy-off – done for herself rather than the guests. Her moment in the spotlight. She hadn’t thrown a party since Amy’s Bobby had died and she knew she would never reinstate the tradition. In the past she had viewed herself as the aspirational hostess. Now, she wondered if people had perhaps scorned her behind her back, enjoyed but ridiculed the ostentation. Pitied her even. They knew how often Graham was away. She hadn’t consciously done it for the attention but in retrospect it seemed so wincingly obvious.

  She knew Stella would say not to worry about what people thought, to just live as you liked, that at the end of the day no one cared. But they did care. Moira knew they cared. She knew because she cared. She judged Joyce Matthews in the village for having a cleaner – how hard was it to clean your own home? She judged the mayor’s wife for having her Waitrose shopping delivered – get out into the community, for goodness sake. She judged the Adamses for having a monstrous new extension that looked like an alien invasion to house a live-in nanny so they could work all hours – those little children needed to see their parents. She knew what Stella would say to that as well. Tell her that the parents had a right to be happy too. And Moira would have to bite her tongue to prevent herself from snapping back, ‘Did I? I gave up everything for your father and you kids.’

  It was her new friend Mitch who had called her on it. Walking the dogs one day on the beach, he had told her she was jealous when she had been muttering about the cleaner.

  Moira had felt herself bristle. ‘I’m not jealous.’

  He’d laughed. Easy and carefree. Not looking her way. ‘Yes, you are. Bitching is jealousy. It always is.’

  She’d gone to say something but hesitated. Feeling both astonishment and affront at being called on her behaviour. Graham never called her on anything, just nodded along at her stories.

  ‘It’s not bitching, it’s an opinion.’

  ‘It’s a judgement,’ Mitch had said, his smile irritating. His chin raised to enjoy the wind in their faces. ‘And not a very nice one. Why shouldn’t she have a cleaner? She’s busy. She has other focuses for her time.’

  ‘It doesn’t take very long to run a Hoover about the house.’

  ‘Moira.’ Mitch had stopped, his bare feet in the sand, his mutt that was humbly just called Dog on a long piece of faded orange rope, yapping at the surf. ‘If you could go back in time and have a cleaner and a live-in nanny, keep your job, and go for a drink on a Friday night guilt-free, would you? Do you think the kids would have turned out any different?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know.’ Moira felt herself getting defensive. ‘Yes, I think they probably would.’ Would they? She wondered. Amy might be a bit less dramatic. A bit more self-sufficient. Stella would be much the same. She paused, or perhaps if Moira had had something else to focus on, their relationship would have been completely different. Moira wouldn’t have been quite so envious of Stella: of her easy camaraderie with Graham, or her unequivocal natural swimming talent, of the ease with which she laughed at her mother’s neuroses.

  ‘Would you and Graham be happier?’

  Moira had swallowed.

  Mitch laughed again. ‘You don’t have to answer that. Bitching, judgement – Moira, they’re all jealousy. And jealousy, well, that’s just fear isn’t it? Fear of taking the leap yourself.’ Mitch had started walking again, his brushed cotton tartan trousers like pyjama bottoms getting wet in the surf. ‘I think you actually quite enjoyed your life. It’s just now your boxes are empty.’

  Moira stopped abruptly. ‘Excuse me!’

  Mitch laughed. Then jogging to the shoreline to pick up a driftwood stick he drew two boxes for her in the sand: ‘If all your life is taken up with these two roles’ – he’d written MOTHER and WIFE in two separate boxes – ‘then that’s what your whole life becomes. It’s as simple as that.’ He’d stood there in his cheesecloth shirt with a lump of jade round his neck on a black thong, freshly tanned from a meditati
on week on the Algarve, and stared at her directly until she’d got embarrassed by the eye contact and had to look away. ‘You need more boxes, Moira,’ he’d said, pointing to the two in the sand with his stick then drawing lots more all around them. ‘You need more elements that create you, that we can write in these,’ he said, gesturing to the new, empty boxes, ‘otherwise your life just gets smaller and smaller.’

  Moira had wanted to say, ‘I have Frank Sinatra now.’ But luckily she’d run the sentence through in her head before saying it and realised how pathetic it sounded, on so many levels.

  And so she had joined the book club at the library. Where she was sitting right now, with an AWOL husband, in a fancy pair of jeans, next to Joyce Matthews (of cleaner fame), looking about guiltily to check no one was watching because Joyce had tipped a slug of brandy from a hip flask into her cup of lukewarm Gold Blend.

  ‘Don’t, it’s half past ten in the morning, I’ll be pissed as a fart. I shouldn’t really be here.’ Moira waved the brandy away.

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Joyce, pouring a dash into her own. ‘Your husband’s gone missing. Sometimes you just need to escape.’

  Moira thought of her house filled up with her children, the view like one of those funny optical illusion pictures – look at it one way and they’re all as close as close can be, squint your eye and it’s a room full of strangers.

  ‘I haven’t read the book,’ she said.

  Joyce shook her head. ‘Neither have I.’

  Moira gave her a sideways look. ‘You never read the book.’

  ‘Shall we escape?’

  ‘I couldn’t.’

  Moira could see the librarian walking over. She had her slippers on. She always put them on for book club – she wanted to relax apparently. Moira hated it. Why couldn’t she wear shoes like everyone else? That was judgemental. Surely she couldn’t be jealous of the librarian’s hideous pink moccasins? Maybe she could. Maybe she was jealous of her audacity, or her desire for comfort above all else. Maybe she was jealous that this lady’s husband had not gone missing and all she had to think about was slipping on her slippers to happily chat about what might well be, had she read it, a very good book.