by Julie Cohen
She’d never made so much as a cup of tea in this kitchen, in the many years she’d known Honor – she had never been allowed to – so she had to look around a bit to find the canister. She noticed, as she did, that the kitchen was tidy, but rather dirty. There were cup rings on the counter, breadcrumbs near the toaster. The cabinet doors had splashes of tea and a few fingerprints on them. The white top of the cooker was splattered with nearly-invisible grease.
This was not how she remembered Honor’s kitchen. The house, every inch of it, had always been scrupulously clean – books dusted, candlesticks polished, mirrors clear; so much so that Jo had always gone into a frenzy of cleaning of her own house before Honor’s visits. Stephen had thought she was being ridiculous. ‘My mother doesn’t care whether you dust underneath the refrigerator,’ he’d told her, but Jo was certain that she did. She knew Honor’s high standards. She knew she was wanting in Honor’s eyes.
In the end, Stephen had always taken a duster and joined in. Honor had taught him how to clean, after all, and he was good at it. He had a scientist’s methodical mind. He’d moved furniture, reorganized kitchen cabinets, reached on top of wardrobes. He’d given little Lydia her own toy broom, so she could help ‘when Granny came’.
Jo’s second husband, Richard, had thought it was funny. He laughed at her and went back to watching the football while she hoovered around him with Oscar and then, the next year, Iris strapped to her body in a baby sling. ‘She’s not even your mother-in-law any more – who cares what she thinks?’ he’d say. ‘You don’t work so hard to please my mum.’
That was because Richard’s mum, Frances, had a cleaner and never lifted a finger to wipe or polish, whereas Honor did everything, in between reading every book that had ever been written, writing articles, picking apart theories and arguments. Honor cleaned and polished that entire tall house filled with the furniture her parents had bought, listening to Tchaikovsky. And that was why Jo had refused when Richard had said he’d hire a cleaner, although Honor’s visits were few and far between. She wished she’d put up more of a fight against hiring an au pair.
When was the last time Jo had seen Honor? She’d sent a card at Mother’s Day … had it been Christmas?
Christmas. Or rather the week before Christmas, when Lydia’s school had finished for the holiday. When Jo had bundled Lydia and Oscar and Iris into the car and paid the congestion charge and driven into London so that she could spend two hours trying to keep her small children’s sticky hands off the books, explaining to Oscar that Granny Honor didn’t have a Christmas tree because she was Jewish, stumbling over the explanation as Honor sat, straight-backed, watching her as if waiting for her to make a mistake. They had gone as soon as they could leave, obligation honoured.
So: nearly four months ago. It wasn’t good enough. Honor was Lydia’s only living relative except for distant great-aunts on Jo’s side of the family. Jo should have made more of an effort.
Jo drank her tea quickly, scalding hot. The milk was near its use-by date; Jo poured it down the sink and threw a tub of coleslaw and a bag of salad in the bin. There were eggs and yoghurts and bananas with a few days left in them, and a small block of cheese, which she put in a plastic bag to take home along with the laundry. She gave the entire kitchen a quick wipe-down, unplugged the kettle and the toaster, emptied the bin and took the bag outside. Then she went upstairs to pack some things for Honor in the hospital.
This is me riding to the rescue, Jo thought. Not on a white horse or with superpowers. I remove stains and save bananas from certain death.
She moved quietly through the house like a ghost, past the towering bookshelves and the dark furniture, being careful not to notice that she wasn’t in any of the silver- and gold-framed photographs.
Chapter Five
Lydia
‘Some things about Granny Honor’
I CAN’T ACTUALLY picture Granny Honor in hospital, lying down in a bed. She’s always standing up. She barely sits down long enough to drink a cup of tea. She reads books whilst pacing – I’ve watched her, a novel raised to her face, walking back and forth across the rug in her living room. She keeps a pencil behind her ear and sometimes she pauses to scribble in this notebook that she keeps open on a side table. Then back and forth again, frowning at the book in her hands, her bony nose pointed at the pages. Every now and then she mutters.
There is an actual path worn in the rug, where Granny Honor has paced back and forth, reading hundreds of books.
Granny Honor is not a relaxing person. She’s angular and hard, not the way you think of a grandmother being. Mum has photos of her mum, my Nanny Carole who died before I was born, and she looks soft and huggy, even in her wheelchair, with a smile on her face in every picture. Granny Honor isn’t like that. She has this way of looking at you the same way that she looked at that book, as if she’s scrutinizing you, analysing you for what you’re really trying to say. She’s an expert in Russian literature, pretty much a genius. There’s a whole shelf in her study upstairs filled with books she’s written or contributed to, all with stiff, upright spines and titles that have colons in them. She gave me my first lesson on First Wave Feminism when I was like three years old.
I always feel like an idiot next to her. I’m sure about 98 per cent of the population would. But she’s the reason I want to be a writer, I think, and definitely the reason why I want to read English when (if) I go to Cambridge, instead of Physics like my dad. She’s so passionate about books, believes they really matter. Those have been the best conversations we’ve had: about books we’ve both read. They’re probably the only real conversations we’ve ever had, actually. I feel a little bit too stupid to talk to her about anything else.
She sends me books for my birthday, and then when I visit her or when she visits here, she takes me to a café and we both order cake, coffee for her, hot chocolate for me, and we talk about the books. And those conversations are wonderful. Sort of like the stories really happened, but then you can take a step back and look at them almost from above, talking about how they were written, or why the author had made this choice and that one. Why they’d chosen a wardrobe as a magic portal, or why you even needed Lockwood in the first place, or what it meant that Manderley had burned.
It’s like zooming a powerful camera lens on all of these stories, so that you understand them better than anyone else. And as an added bonus I am much better at English than anyone else in my year; in fact, Miss Drayton wanted me to take my GCSEs early and do an AS this year like I did with French, but I didn’t because I wanted to stay with Avril.
But when we’re not talking about books, I’m not really sure what I should say to Granny Honor. I hope she’s all right.
Snakes and Ladders, some naughty biscuits before bedtime, a good round of Thomas the Tank Engine and a pillow fight. Lydia got OscanIrie into bed, came downstairs, heard Oscar calling and went back upstairs to get him another drink of water, and then she came downstairs again and collapsed on the sofa, automatically turning on the telly.
She should revise. But her head felt heavy, her limbs weighted. She got so tired. All the time, every day, from pretending so hard. Watching what she said, how long she looked, whether she touched. Watching other people watching her, wondering what was in their heads. Sometimes when she came home from school she felt like she could barely stand up and talk. Not that she could really relax at home, either, unless she was in her room alone, but at least OscanIrie didn’t care what she was like or what she was hiding. And Mum was too busy to notice her, to really notice her.
Sometimes that made it harder, when no one was paying attention. Sometimes, when she was comfortable, she almost forgot to keep up the walls.
On the way home from school, Avril had been talking about maybe going to her dad’s for the summer holidays, after their exams were over. Her dad lived in Birmingham, and when Avril had gone there two years ago for the whole Easter holiday, Lydia had been more lonely than she’d ever been in her life.
She reached for her phone. She had five messages.
Avril, 15.40: Sorry you couldn’t come, thx 4 top!
Avril, 17.25: It was OK. Call me. x
Mum, 18.06: Hi sweetie. Granny H OK. Going to pick up some things to make her more comfortable. Will try not to be late. All OK with O & I? Cake in tin if you are hungry. Xxx
Avril, 19.00: OMG r u watching Top Model? This is VILE, ring me.
The last text had a picture attached. It was taken in the mirror so that the phone covered up most of his face, but she could still tell it was Harry. Chest bare, briefs pushed down to expose himself.
She deleted it. Didn’t even think; thumb working by itself. She deleted it and then held her phone, furious and much more shocked than she should be, considering she’d seen much worse. Much worse, just Googling kitten pictures.
But never directed at her. Never sent right to her, for her to look at, not able to avoid it because it was on her phone.
Lydia’s hands shook. What was he playing at? Did he think she’d like that? Did he think his dick was so mighty and powerful that she’d immediately melt, rip her clothes off at the mere sight of it, send him a photo screaming please, please, objectify me, wank over my digital tits, please?
Her phone chimed with another message.
Lydia threw her phone across the living room. It hit Oscar’s plastic toy garage and clattered to the floor.
She stared after it, wide-eyed, breathing hard.
He knew.
Harry Carter knew. And if Harry knew, then his friends knew, then Erin knew, then Avril …
She clenched her fists. No. He couldn’t possibly know. She was too good at hiding. Harry Carter wasn’t clever enough to see inside her head.
Harry Carter was the sort of perv who thought that girls owed him naked selfies. Who thought that if a girl and a girl got together, it was only so that a boy could watch them. Who thought the only thing better than two tits was four. Who didn’t understand real longing, real love.
Who didn’t understand that his misspelled, barely literate text had pushed its way into thoughts she only allowed herself at night, alone with the doors closed. It had left greasy fingersmears, the odour of sweat, on her dreams.
Her phone chimed.
She forced herself to breathe slowly. Deeply. She walked over to the toy garage and picked her phone up, ready to block Harry’s number, delete the texts.
It was from Avril.
Have you seen this photoshoot on TM? They are crying! Skype me when kiddies in bed, cannot watch this alone!
Lydia pressed the phone to her pounding heart. Avril didn’t know. Harry couldn’t know. Her mask hadn’t slipped. She would never have let it.
Chapter Six
Jo
‘I DON’T KNOW how she’s going to stay in that house by herself,’ said Jo, putting two more mugs of coffee on the table.
‘Get a carer in?’ suggested Sara. She took another biscuit. ‘I shouldn’t have this, but I love your shortbread. I’m going to start a diet on Saturday, so I don’t look like a whale in Tenerife.’
‘You don’t look like a whale, you have a lovely figure,’ said Jo automatically.
‘Thanks, but you’re lying. My arse needs its own postcode.’ She dunked the biscuit. ‘Bob makes fun of me when I start diets.’
‘That’s because he knows you don’t need one.’
‘That’s because he never notices me any more. I swear, he doesn’t even see me. If I ask him if I look good in something, he just says “yes” without even glancing up from his phone. The only reason we don’t bump into each other when we’re walking around the house is because we’re rarely in the same room.’
‘Well, you’re both busy.’
‘The children, he looks at.’
‘He’s a great father.’
Billy, Sara’s eldest at age four, wandered over to the table. ‘More biscuits?’ he said hopefully, and Jo put some on a plastic plate.
‘Don’t forget to share them with the others,’ Jo told him. ‘Offer them round, like a waiter.’ Billy trotted to the other side of the open-plan family room.
‘That should give us another five minutes’ quiet,’ said Sara. ‘At least until he starts arguing with Oscar again about who gets more cars.’ It was a punctuation of every play date, breaking up a fight between Billy and Oscar. Fortunately Iris and Polly, both under two, could sit side by side playing and happily ignoring each other for hours. They were in a shaft of sunlight now by the front window, making separate meals at Iris’s toy kitchen. ‘Do they grow out of the fighting and into the sharing? I ask you as a more experienced mother.’
‘There’s a wonderful stage when they’re five, and it lasts through till about age eleven. They’re sweet and loving and funny.’
‘And then at age eleven?’
Jo rolled her eyes in imitation of a teenager.
‘Lydia?’ said Sara.
‘She’s a wonderful girl. She really is. She’s had so much to cope with, without a dad, and she works so hard at school, and she’s so good with her brother and sister.’
‘But …?’
Jo tried to resist complaining, but it was too much. ‘She’s impossible at the moment. Yesterday I asked her to stay home and babysit while I went to London to see Honor, and you would have thought I’d proposed handcuffing her to the kitchen table.’
‘I was the same as a teenager. I thought I was so cool, and I made my mother’s life hell. I feel sorry for it now. That’s one consolation. I haven’t told Mum, of course. Do you feel sorry for what you put your mother through?’
‘I didn’t put her through anything. Mum and I always really got along. And I was always a good girl, maybe too good. I liked pleasing people. Of course my mum had multiple sclerosis, and she was unwell a lot of the time, so I had to grow up fast.’ Jo propped her chin on her hand, leaning on the table. ‘I think I was more like Lydia’s friend Avril. She’s always cheerful, always has a polite word for everyone.’
‘Isn’t she the one whose mother—’
Jo nodded. ‘It hasn’t affected her, though. She’s a lovely girl. I wish Lyddie would take a leaf out of her book. Lyddie’s so negative. Sometimes it seems that there’s no trace of that sweet little girl any more.’
‘She’s still in there.’
‘I remember exactly when it happened. It was age eleven, actually. All the girls at her school were going crazy for these woven bracelet things they were making for each other. So I bought her some materials, which was fine, but then I made the mistake of looking some patterns up on the internet. I made her a bracelet after she’d gone to bed. It turned out quite well. The next morning, when I gave it to her, she was horrified.’
‘You were trying too hard to be cool?’
‘I thought I was just making her a bracelet. We used to do all those things together, before. When it was just the two of us.’ She sighed. ‘That’s another thing she’s had to cope with – a stepfather, and our divorce, and other children taking up my time.’
‘You’ve raised her right,’ said Sara. ‘She’s bound to become a human being sooner or later.’
‘I hope so. She wouldn’t even say goodbye this morning on the way to school. It’s as if she has a whole world inside her that she can’t bear to share with me.’ Jo felt again the small stab of hurt at seeing her first born daughter slam out of the house, head down, mouth pressed shut. ‘Or she’s angry with me about something.’
‘What could she possibly have to be angry with you about? You’re a great mum. You’d never do anything to upset your children.’
Jo felt a pang of guilt. She’d never told Sara about her visits to Adam, nor how furious Lydia would be if she knew about them.
‘On the other hand,’ she said quickly, ‘Oscar and Iris were fed and happy and put down to bed safely last night, so she was seriou
s about looking after them.’
‘She’s a good kid underneath.’
Jo raised her mug to her mouth. The things our friends tell us because of loyalty; the things that they don’t even allow out into conversation. Sara would never consider saying that Lydia was turning into a stroppy little cow, no more than Jo would confirm aloud that Sara actually had put on an extra half a stone since she’d stopped breastfeeding. Female friendship required building each other up, denying each other’s faults, unhesitatingly taking each other’s side, listening to problems and saying that they were really not that bad. Not digging too deeply for secrets that wanted to stay hidden.
Friendship was a small miracle, something Jo appreciated even more these days. Her friends in the centre of town, the other young mums she’d got to know during her first marriage when Lydia was a little girl, had all melted away after Stephen’s death. She could understand it; they’d felt awkward, with their happy marriages and their living husbands. Jo was a widow, a tragic person, a reminder of all the things that could go wrong, all the things that could destroy your happiness in a split second. And of course, as a single mother trying to hold down a job, she’d not had much time for a social life.
Then she’d married Richard and moved out to the suburbs, where it was harder to talk with people, and she was busy having babies. Living in a beautiful house that felt like an island, her husband becoming more and more distant, until he left.
She’d only known Sara for just over a year. They’d met in the park one day, a sunny spring mid-morning when the playpark was full of toddlers and preschoolers. Oscar was climbing up the slide and sliding down, again and again, letting out a whoop of joy each time. Jo was sitting on a bench at the side and six-month-old Iris was nestled in her arms, fast asleep in the sunshine. Spring had always been difficult for her, since Stephen, but it was a perfect day.