The Secret Life of Evie Hamilton

by Catherine Alliott

  And I couldn't go home, either. Ant would be telling Anna. She'd rush upstairs – ‘What's wrong?’ And he'd meet her on the landing, take her to her room, avoiding ours with its smashed window. He'd sit her down on the side of the bed, take her hand maybe, and explain patiently, truthfully. And she'd be shocked, horrified, jump up, yes, her world would be shattered – a sister? Her father had another child? And he'd have to deal with that. Deal with the fallout. My heart ached for her, for her pain, but I also knew, if I was there, I'd make it worse. I'd scream too, point a finger, shout – your bloody father! Turn her against him, line her up with me, and we weren't that sort of family. Oh, I'd fan the flames all right, and in my heart I knew that Ant could work miracles. Make it – if not better – as good as it could be. I had to let him try, at any rate. We owed that to Anna.

  So this was where I'd go, I thought suddenly. I swung a sharp right, amidst another blare of horns, at the church by the deli, then down past the row of boutiques into Walton Street. But instead of heading for the villagey bit of Jericho where we lived, I went past the University Press and carried on, turning into one of the side streets. The familiar winding road, with its charming crooked houses and shop fronts painted every colour of the rainbow, soothed me. I felt my bones relax as I swung into a cobbled yard at the back of one particular shop, where the chosen few could ignore the stern warning that anyone other than employees would be clamped, drawn and quartered.

  As I got out of the car and made my way wearily around to the front, I passed the fire escape that had hosted many a cigarette; many a laugh in easier days. The sign on the familiar glass door said ‘Closed’ but I knew better, and as I pushed on through and it jangled reassuringly, I felt I'd come home. A different sort of home.

  ‘Oh Lordy be. What brings you here, flower? When you've been avoiding your old friends previously?’

  I forced a smile and shut the door behind me. The lights were off, so the shop was in comparative darkness, but I could just make out the owner of the voice through the open door at the back. He was sitting in his office, long legs propped up on the desk, peering at me over his glasses, a book he'd been reading, by the light of an Anglepoise, in his hand.

  ‘Not avoiding, Malcolm. Just pressures of life, really.’

  ‘Call it what you will.’ He swung his legs down and got up to greet me. ‘I'm impervious to snubs, as you know. Notoriously thick-skinned.’

  I smiled again at this blatant lie. Cinders, his aged golden retriever, thumped her tail in greeting on the floor as I passed, apologizing for not getting up on account of her years, and as her master held out his arms, I stumbled the last few steps into them, managing to knock his glasses off as I squeezed him tight.

  ‘Oops, careful, hon. These are my three ninety-nine specials from Boots.’ He disentangled himself and struck a pose, book open in outstretched hand. ‘Make me look intellectual, don't you think?’ He peered over the tortoiseshell frames at the print. ‘Can't see a bloody thing, of course, because I've got eyes like lasers, but they look the part and that's half the—Oh, what's wrong, sausage!’

  At this point, and in all probability due to the lovely cosy hug he'd just given me, which I needed very badly, I collapsed on Malcolm's bony shoulder, soaking his new Thomas Pink.

  ‘Well,’ he said emphatically later – ten minutes or so later, in fact – patting my hand as he put the mug of strong, sweet tea he'd made in front of me. ‘Well. I can see that it's a shock, my sweet, yes, quite a revelation. And a real bolt from the blue too. But it's no more than that. And this is the worst it'll get, I guarantee. It won't get any grizzlier or more dramatic than this.’

  ‘You don't think?’ I gulped hopefully, installed now in his leather chair, sniffing into the red spotty hanky he'd given me.

  ‘No,’ he consoled, shaking his head as he perched on the edge of his desk beside me, arms folded. ‘She won't impinge on your life. Oh, initially, of course, and out of interest – who wouldn't? – but she'll have her own life. School, friends, family – she's sixteen, for God's sake. She's not suddenly going to decamp and live with you, is she?’

  ‘I suppose not,’ I said uncertainly.

  ‘You're imagining the worst. Thinking that life as you know it is over. That the whole cosy Ant, Evie, Anna bit…’

  ‘Yes!’ I wailed.

  ‘… is shot to bits, and it's not. And how much better that she's not some grasping tart's offspring, but that of a clever, educated woman? Much more like-minded, much more sane and rational, not some trashy bairn turning up on your doorstep demanding money?’

  ‘I suppose,’ I agreed doubtfully. ‘Bit more of a threat, though.’ This, in a small voice.

  ‘Is that what you're worried about?’ Malcolm said kindly.

  I nodded mutely, damp eyes trained on lap.

  ‘That just as you would have felt threatened by her mother seventeen years ago, you'd feel threatened by her daughter now?’

  I shrugged, eyes still down. Didn't know what I felt. But yes, all that. And more.

  ‘You've got your own smart, pretty daughter, chicken,’ he chided gently.

  ‘Yes. I suppose. So… it's just me, then, who's not. I'm the odd one out.’

  I glanced up quickly, then back into my lap, but with time enough to see his fine, sculpted features, which were still delicate and arresting, but these days fretted with fine lines, looking anxiously at me. He sighed.

  ‘Evie, Ant loves you for what you are. For who you are. You've got to stop living your life wishing you were someone else. Pretending you're someone else.’

  I sneaked a look into those wise grey eyes. They were monitoring me closely. ‘You're right,’ I conceded, and I knew he was. I was the one with the problem, the one who felt I wouldn't match up. I felt that Ant would look at his could-have-been family, the mirror image of the one he'd got, and wish he was part of that gang. One of those three musketeers. Malcolm knew me very well.

  ‘He loves you, Evie, you know that. You don't doubt that, do you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Never have done?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, then.’

  I nodded. Well, then.

  A silence descended as we sat there together in his little back room. At length, Malcolm shifted off the desk and slipped into the other leather chair opposite me, whilst I sat in Jean's. We still felt it was Jean's, Malcolm and I. Giggled about it. Even though Malcolm had replaced her exploding wicker throne and its squashed, grubby cushions with a smart, antique captain's chair, it still felt a bit wicked. Jean's room: I slid my bottom to the edge of the seat, rested my head on the mahogany back and swivelled around slowly. We'd hardly ever been allowed in here unless it was to unpack books, and certainly never to linger. ‘Come on, chop chop, out you go!’ she'd shrill in her best Sybil voice, shoeing us out with heavily jewelled hands, reeking of Elizabeth Arden. In those days the walls had been relentlessly magnolia and unadorned, apart from a couple of the Gruppenführer's Mabel Lucie Attwell prints. Faded dried flowers had sat in a vase on her desk, together with a twee teddy bear in a jumper, which in true spinsterish style, bore the legend ‘Love me’. Naturally the room reeked of cats. Malcolm had painted it a smart navy blue, added a few choice pieces of furniture, and hung huge framed maps on the walls. He loved those antique maps, and in his quieter moments I'd catch him standing before them, eyes narrowed, plotting his course.

  ‘Off on a voyage, Malc?’

  ‘In my beautiful pea-green,’ he'd murmur back. ‘Just need a pussycat.’

  I'd smile at the Ancient Mariner's back. For Malcolm was a frustrated sailor, who'd failed to make it into the navy on account of flat feet, but still dreamed of going to sea. Maps, a sea captain's chair, blue walls and a telescope in one corner were as close as he got to it in here, but it was a calm, soothing cabin; the only vestige of Jean's reign of terror being the old radiator in the corner, which hissed and spluttered, rather fittingly, like a ship's engine. Years ago, on Jean's days off, M
alcolm and I would sneak in here and huddle around that radiator, daring each other to tuck into her secret stash of Walnut Whips in her bottom drawer. Malcolm would read out the problem page from her Tea Break magazine, mimicking her Sybil voice, and then answering in Basil's voice as the agony aunt, until I thought I'd burst, laughing. Best days of our lives. It was tidy now, which it never had been during Jean's chaotic regime. No unpacked boxes and books littered the floor, for Malcolm was supremely organized, and everything was dispatched tout de suite onto the shelves the moment it arrived: no backlog in this cabin. Just a simple cream rug on the polished wooden floorboards, and everything shipshape and tidy.

  Malcolm broke the silence: ‘You've got the love of a good man, Evie, even if it does come with complications. Hang on to it. Don't doubt it now, just because you can. Because you think you've got just cause. It's a precious thing.’

  I swivelled around slowly in my chair to look at him. Gave a tiny nod. I knew he was right. The voice of truth. Knew he was speaking from the heart too, as he gazed up at his map of Ancient Europe. Knew he'd give anything to have Didier back, his partner of four years, who'd been his lover, his soul mate, his everything, but who'd gone back to Montpellier, supposedly for a holiday, nine months ago, and never returned: had seemingly disappeared into thin air, not responding to calls, emails or letters. Malcolm had gone out there to look for him, and when he'd finally tracked down his village in the hills outside Aubais, had been met with the hostile, black eyes of his parents, who, peering round a door revealing a room heavy with crucifixes, had said that Didier was well, but married now. A baby on the way.

  ‘It's not true,’ Malcolm had gasped to me, when he'd returned, grief-stricken and brimming with tears. ‘It's so not true.’

  ‘Of course it's not,’ I'd murmured, holding him tight. I was inclined to agree, knowing Didier as I did. This was surely a big fat lie, but what could we do? Malcolm had gone back to France again and again, and finally found a girl purporting to be Didier's wife, with a very sour face, and no baby. ‘Ees gone,’ she'd hissed at him, those same black eyes. ‘Ees not here.’

  Hope had sprung eternal for Malcolm, but then – despair. A trail of boyfriends.

  ‘Any word?’ I asked tentatively, now.

  ‘No. Well, a bit, I suppose. More of the same. He's moved on from the matador who ran with the bulls in Aubais, and is now apparently living near Biarritz with a toreador. Gone up in the bull world.’

  ‘Oh. I'm sorry, Malcolm.’

  He shrugged. ‘Olé to the lot of them, I say. It happens. Shit happens.’ He gazed at his map, then back at me. ‘Which is why I say, Evie, hang on to what you've got. Spare Ant your righteous indignation – which of course you have every right to feel, but which he doesn't deserve. He made a mistake. There were consequences. He has to deal with it. Help him. Don't fight him.’

  I swallowed. He was right. As he usually bloody well was. And I'd do that, I determined, when I got home. Later. I'd let Ant talk to Anna, and then I'd help too. We'd sit down as a family, as an adult family. Talk about it, about our fears and – yes, I'd express mine. Say I felt threatened, and they'd say, of course you do, Mummy, and then we'd hug big hugs, and we'd be like one of those right-on families in daytime TV dramas, Hollyoaks or whatever. And there'd be a moral in it. And we'd be stronger for it.

  ‘And maybe,’ I blurted out, ‘well, maybe Stacey and Isabella could become friends? Maybe we could all help each other?’

  ‘Easy, tiger,’ said Malcolm nervously. ‘There's a way to go before you're all holding hands and heading off to Center Parcs together. One step at a time, sweet Jesus.’

  I nodded, but straightened up in my chair a bit; a regrouping gesture. I felt buoyed up; happier. A bit guilty too. I'd headed for Malcolm's shoulder because he was one of my dearest friends, but a part of me knew I'd sought him out because his life was not great at the moment, so mine wouldn't seem so terrible. I hated myself for that. I knew too that when I stepped back outside, into the real world, I wouldn't be comparing myself to Malcolm and his precarious gay world, but to Caro and Shona, with their perfect nuclear families, their Cornish holidays and their lack of love-children writing emails, and I'd feel threatened all over again. But for now, for the minute, the fear had passed and I was relieved to let it go.

  I took a deep breath. Then rather regretted it. I wrinkled my nose in disgust. ‘Yuck, is that Cinders?’

  ‘Farting? 'Fraid so. Poor old girl, her digestive system's had it, I'm afraid. Spectacular, isn't it? I'm thinking of bottling them and giving them away free with Piers Morgan. One bad smell deserves another.’

  I grinned, looked around properly. ‘You've bought a new computer,’ I said suddenly, spotting a dark eye with smart chrome surround in the corner. It was all shiny and bright, very different from the tatty old one known as Gloria, which Malcolm swore was fine so long as you kicked her hard enough.

  He scratched his head sheepishly. ‘Had to, really. Gloria was on her last legs, poor cow. Her hard drive was shot to buggery. And you've got to move with the times, haven't you? Got to keep up with the miracles of modern science.’

  I blinked. Malcolm was usually light years behind; a Luddite, like me. I frowned and peered into the main body of the shop, which was almost, but not quite in darkness now, the low summer sun just making it through the pretty bow window and glancing off the books on the top shelves. ‘Something's happened out there too,’ I said suspiciously. A new carpet, I realized, had been laid: taupe and rather chic, and the limited wall space above and between the shelves was now a rich dark red, like a study, not Malcolm's usual navy blue. It made a nice change.

  ‘You'll be competing with Poo-Face soon. His walls look a bit like that, don't they? How is he, anyway?’

  Poo-Face was Malcolm's arch rival: an ex-media type who, a year ago, had bought the toy shop next door and turned it into a bookshop. It had had Malcolm spitting tacks.

  ‘Next door! Right on my frigging doorstep. Direct competition!’

  ‘Calm down, Malcolm, it's not competition. It's different.’

  It was, in fact, completely different. I knew because I'd popped in do the recce, Malcolm, hissy-fitishly refusing to do so. The new shop specialized predominately in military history and was a high-falutin establishment, with none of the paperback chart toppers or bodice rippers and thrillers that Malcolm stocked in copious, gaudy numbers as he tried, desperately to compete with the giants roaring at him in the High Street. Instead, large, expensive coffee-table books were tastefully arranged on round mahogany tables: books that, to Malcolm's chagrin, we used to stock here once, upstairs, in Art and Architecture, but could no longer afford to do so. Sexual Relations and Humour were up on the first floor now, Malcolm quipping that you surely needed one to do the other. But this swanky bookshop next door was having a crack at old times. It was run by a man who I'd never met, having only encountered an assistant when I'd popped in, but whom Malcolm had christened Poo-Face, on account of the nasty smell under his nose.

  ‘What?’ Malcolm glanced up from thumbing distractedly through a new Frederick Forsyth as I strolled off to look.

  ‘I said, how's Poo-Face?’

  ‘Oh… he's not so bad, actually. We're rubbing along quite well.’ I turned back to stare at him. He scratched his chin. ‘We've… well, we've sort of joined forces.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘We've… you know. Merged.’

  I frowned. ‘Merged?’

  ‘Yes. Did you not notice as you came in?’

  I glanced back round; went quickly to the front room, where, I suddenly realized, to my left there was a socking great hole. Half a wall missing. An archway had been cut in the dividing wall, which, in my frantic, snivelling state, I'd failed to notice as I'd hurried past. And the new taupe carpet swept right on through into next door: into the red-walled, coffee-tabled sanctuary.

  ‘Oh!’ I yelped in alarm. Jumped back into Malcolm's patch. ‘Malcolm, I don't believe it!’

  ‘
I had to, Evie.’ He'd got up to join me now, hands in his pockets as he came through sheepishly. ‘Those huge chains with their massive discounts – I simply couldn't compete. It was a case of that, or going bust. We were both sinking, and he'd only been open a year. I was desperate, and he approached me one day, asked me to have lunch.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘He's rather nice, actually. Anyway, he put a proposal to me. Threw me a lifeline, really. But one he needed too. And here we are. My highly commerical shop with a children's section and cards and wrapping paper, and his highly intellectual one with History, Art and Philosophy.’

  ‘And?’ I was agog.

  ‘And…’ he said cautiously, ‘if last month's takings are anything to go by, it works. Or is working. I've got my loyal customers and he's got his, but when they've got their new Napoleon biography, they pop in here for something for the wife. A Joanna Trollope, maybe, or something for the mother-in-law, and vice versa. My clients go in there for their dads on Father's Day.’ He shrugged. ‘So far so good.’

  ‘Crikey.’ I was astonished. ‘Oh, Malcolm, I'm thrilled.’ I was. I know the last time I'd been in, which, I'm ashamed to say was a couple of months ago, he'd been worried sick. It must have been just before he was approached.

  ‘So what's he like?’ I asked, gripped. ‘I mean – d'you get on? As partners?’

  ‘He's rather attractive, actually.’

  ‘Oh – is he…?’

  ‘No, no, dead hetero. I just meant easy on the eye, which is a blessed relief since I've got to work with him, and you know my unfortunate allergy to unattractive people.’ He grinned. ‘And he's not nearly as much of an arrogant shit as I thought. There's still a pretty unpleasant smell under his nose, but the more I delve, the more I have reason to believe he has just cause and impediment. Oh, hello…’ His mobile rang. He drew it out of his jeans pocket and looked at it. ‘Talk of the devil. He's supposed to be relieving me tonight – in the nicest possible way. We're supposed to be stock-taking, but I'm allowed out. Got a date.’