by Ruby Soames
He opens the box and slides the ring over my finger.
‘It fits! And yes, yes!’
The island turns from day to night, and all I can see is Joseph in front of me. All I can feel is love, belonging and a new beginning.
A good place to end
1
Rain in London, again. A bulging bag of dark cloud has dumped over the city. The streetlights are still on although it’s mid-morning. Raindrops hit our skylight, breaking into thousands of mercurial pellets rolling above our heads. Joseph moves his hand over my hips and I’m warmed, his mouth brushes my neck, tickling my ears. I roll on top of him, moving my lips over the roundness of his shoulders, his hands press into my back. We wriggle our toes together, groan at the same time, break into a giggle. Joes sees me holding my rib cage wincing.
‘Does it hurt?’ he asks.
‘Just when you lie on me.’
As we’re about to make a kiss landing for each other’s mouths, his phone goes off.
‘Yeah?’ Joseph listens while lightly stroking my back. ‘Can you hold on a minute?’
He puts the phone down and roars in frustration, grabs my waist, rolls me over and in twenty seconds covers my body with kisses before picking up his mobile.
‘OK, ready,’ he says. He talks while I lie there, under his hands, neither of us able to look away from each other. ‘OK, well if they want to send the script over I’ll look … ahuh … I’d consider that too. But if … hum?-OK … but –’
Rebecca. She’s calling from a film set in Bulgaria. It’s going to take a while.
I slide out from under his hard, ribbed stomach. It’s almost unbearable to leave him, but as he taps my bottom and winks, the parting isn’t so bad: we both know without saying, that next month, we’ll be on our honeymoon and we’ll have three weeks together alone – no telephones, photo shoots, premières, no interviews, just us.
I make my way to the bathroom with Elvis pattering behind.
As I’m washing my face, Joseph peers in. ‘The car’s here.’
‘Already?’
‘I’m late.’
‘Coffee?’
‘I can’t. The traffic’s terrible apparently.’ He holds up two shirts.
‘Purple.’
‘What are you up to today?’
‘Getting married, Joseph, is a full time job.’
‘And you get to sleep with your boss,’ he says, nudging next to me and squirting toothpaste onto his brush.
‘But I’m the boss, right?’
‘But of course.’ He says giving me a minty kiss.
‘I feel so lucky, Joe.’
He whispers in my ear, ‘Sarah, it’s not just luck. We made it, we finally got it right.’
Anika, Joseph’s – and now my – personal secretary, calls from the sitting room. ‘Sorry to interrupt you little lovebirds.’
She and the Mac Air are all set to synchronise our diaries. ‘Cats ‘n’ dogs out there!’ she says. ‘All set for the fitting?’
‘Don’t know whether to eat breakfast or not … I mean … will it affect the measurements?’
‘I brought a Morning Muffin, Skinny Latte and an Americano for Joseph as he should be dashing out right –’
‘–now!’ he says, passing me and looking at Anika’s calendar on the screen. ‘We’ve nothing on for tonight have we?’ He takes the coffee while putting his other arm through his coat sleeve.
‘No, just the run through for Saturday night’s chat show at five. Do you want me to book somewhere?’
‘I’d really like to stay in, torture myself with Sarah’s cooking – better still, get Mimo‘s to deliver – I’ll check in later.’
Another kiss and he’s out.
While Joe leaves to make the world swoon, Anika and I go over ideas for publicising my animal rescue adoption centre. Since I’ve been back from Barbados, Kamilla and I have started setting up a dog day-care and rescue centre. It’s only in its early stages but we plan to open next spring.
As Anika makes a better job of organising my life without me, I nip into the bathroom for a shower. The last of the bruising has faded and I can move without my ribs hurting. I run the water, watch it fall, put a hand in to gauge its temperature. The torrent takes me back to the storm. Waves pulling me backwards and forwards into the sea, slamming me over the rocks – but then I catch sight of my ring and I’m home again.
‘Love that jumper!’ effuses Anika waving a pair of scissors in one hand and a tube of glue in the other. ‘Have you got a moment to go over the guest list?’
‘Sure.’ I wonder how to break it to her that there are still more people coming to the wedding. Every day names are added to the list which already covers six spread sheets.
‘OK. A quick recap,’ she says, reminding me why Joseph calls her ‘our very own Miss Moneypenny’. She leads me to the kitchen table. ‘I know you and Joseph are visual learners. So I’ve made a 3-D model of the church, the house, the marquee. Look, here are all the guests!’ She looks at me while I take in this miniature world she’s created for us. ‘We can arrange them all around the tables like…. this!’
She’s taken pictures of most of the guests from Facebook or magazines and stuck them on little bodies.
‘There’s Kamilla! Tom, oh, my mum … Rebecca – and who’s that … Sylvia! Oh, this is brilliant!’ In front of me is the full cast of my life lined up in cardboard cut outs. ‘Anika!’ I laugh. ‘That’s fantastic!’
She peers at me over the model wedding like Winston Churchill about to explain a military operation.
‘The big question,’ she muses, ‘is how to group people?’
I look at the cut outs of Joseph and me.
‘Leave it with us – Joe and I’ll do it tonight, just make sure Ottilie has a place on the top table between two very handsome men.’
The buzzer sounds. It’s my taxi to take me to my last dress fitting.
‘Coming down,’ Anika calls into the intercom. ‘Stomach in Sarah!’
Half an hour later, I’m still sitting in the car, watching pedestrians swish through the rain at a faster pace than the traffic.
My phone vibrates and I see a photo of Joseph. ‘Hi Babe – I’m just going into a meeting. Miss you.’
‘Miss you too – let me know if you have any thoughts about where to sit your Aunt Bernice.’
‘Aunt Bernie – the dog table! See you tonight.’
‘Can’t wait – just us, eh?’
‘Just us. Love you.’
I sit back and look out at the curtains of rain. An email appears from an estate agent who thinks they’ve found a perfect house for us in the country. We’ve been looking for a holiday home but also somewhere to house rescue animals while we find them appropriate homes. It’s good news and I want to pass it on to Kamilla, but I’m still waiting to hear if her IVF has taken.
A text comes in: Am in the area this afternoon – shall I drive your van round? All love, Tash, xxx
Tash knows she’s not invited to the wedding, that she’ll never be, but she continues haranguing me in the hope that I’ll have false memory syndrome and imagine that we were ever friends.
I tap back: Keep it.
2
After the fitting there’s a brief lull in the downpour and I pick up a coffee-to-go. As I’m paying, I see a wrinkled dry cleaner’s ticket in my wallet and remember the laundry I left after leaving Tash’s apartment. I suppose I should pick it up, or at least pay for it.
The dry cleaning assistant sighs when she sees the ticket, and a younger woman is enlisted to help as they dump batch after batch of clothes onto the counter. Just when it looks like they’re finished, more is found, wrapped in clingy plastic. When everything in my name is balanced on the counter, the sales assistant stops to catch her breath and wipe perspiration from her brow.
‘We didnae think you’d be coming back. Lot of T-shirts and stuff, socks, jeans –’ She pauses, looks at the heap between us before continuing the dressing down which is g
iven in a strong Glaswegian accent. ‘See, some people think we’re a storage option. Legally we have to keep it for three months. You can see we’ve not much space as it is. So, now you’re here.’
‘I’m here.’ I wave my credit card at her as she pushes the card machine towards me. She looks at what I’m doing, determined to spot the scam.
‘You’ll need help – have you gotta car?’
‘I’ll get a taxi.’
‘Right.’ She continues watching me.
After I’ve paid, I sense we’re still not done.
‘I was here the day you came in – February, wasn’t it?’
‘End of January.’ I prepare myself for yet another explanation of their rules and obligations about left items.
‘Huh. It was a Sunday, I work on a Sunday – for my sins.’ She makes an unsuccessful attempt to close her arms around her middle. ‘After you left, this fancy car – grey, Aston Martin – pulled up. You couldn’t miss it – a woman came in. Asked lots of questions about you.’
‘Me?’
‘You. What your name was. What you’d dropped off. When you were coming back. Well, I didn’t see why I shouldnae give it to her, but it didn’t feel … data protection. So I said I’d no give it her. Not that we knew anything anyways. Just your name and that you were paying upon collection. For this lot. Then she asked us, if she told us your name, could we confirm it. “Alright,” I said.’ She looks down, reading off something, “Sarah. Tyler.” I said, “Aye,” that was the correct name.’
She looks back at me. I nod to move the story on. ‘Then she wanted to know when you were going to pick your stuff up. How was I to know? So I said, “We hadn’t made any arrangement, she has up to three months”, as you see.’
We both look at the notice again.
‘So she wanted paper. A pen. Charlene had to buy her envelopes. The lady gave her a large tip. Nice. Then she wrote something, this.’ She lowers herself under the counter and pulls out an envelope with my name on it. ‘She said to give it to you when you came to pick up your stuff. So, here it is.’
She hands me the envelope.
Once I’m settled in the taxi flanked by mountains of dry cleaning, I look at the letter – move it from hand to hand before opening it. Then I see the writer’s name, and I tell the driver to change directions.
3
Caroline Hardwick buzzes me in. I stand in the hall, surrounded by paintings of men with ruddy cheeks, frilled collars and glistening eyes – meet the relatives.
The house is grand but feels as though someone left in a hurry several centuries ago. Its careful colour scheme and expensive old wood furniture are spoiled by mould spores along the skirting boards and sepia-coloured grease stains across the chandeliers. Dust balls scud across the floors. There’s a buzz from the single hall light, and no heating.
While I’m fighting the urge to push up my sleeves and wipe down the surfaces, a slight woman in a yellow cashmere jumper and cardigan comes up from the basement. A row of pearls like baby teeth border the collar. This ensemble is what my mother would call a ‘twin set ‘n’ pearls’.
‘Aren’t you pretty,’ the woman says flatly. ‘Prettier than in the papers.’
I follow her further into the hallway. This would be just the sort of house my mother would have broken into: it has the prerequisite high ceilings, central sweeping staircase and original fireplaces.
Caroline fumbles with a little lamp on the floor. She flicks it on then wraps her arms around her body as if she were a new-born chick.
‘I’m so pleased to see you. It wasn’t easy, tracking you down: you were always on the move – outwitting the tabloid press, I suppose. Must say, we’ve had our share of media interest too. Nightmare. Well, I told you on the phone.’ She puts her hand on my shoulder. ‘I’m really, so pleased to meet you! It was brave and kind of you to come. Would you like a drink of something?’
‘Tea? If that’s –’ I take care to walk around the pile of take-away pizza boxes waiting for removal, ‘–no problem.’
We walk down the stairs into the kitchen which takes up the whole lower ground floor and smells of blocked drains. Outside patio doors open out onto an un-mowed lawn. The plants are over-grown, burgeoning out of their terracotta pots and splitting off into mutated versions of themselves up and down the cracked walls. The only halogen spot-light that works in the kitchen is directed to an overflowing dustbin.
Caroline dithers over the cupboards, tapping her fingers as if composing a piano concerto in her head.
‘Let’s see, let’s see … I have to do all these things myself now,’ she laughs and looks round at me, ‘sorry … what sort of tea would you like?’
‘Oh, anything. Builders’ tea would do fine.’
‘I don’t know if we have that –’ She opens a cupboard and stares blankly at the bulging shapes and the little piles of unspecific grains and liquids escaping from their containers. ‘It’s a long time since we had any workman in, you can probably tell,’ she mutters. ‘They probably drank it.’
Caroline picks up a Victoriana tin box wrapped in colourful paper that must have been given to her many years ago. She screws up her eyes and holds it up to read the label as if she were scrutinising a piece of jewellery passed on from someone she distrusts. She reads it out, ‘Tea from the Hill Club, Nuwara Eliya, Sri Lanka … Best Before 1982 … what you do think? Does tea expire?’
‘It looks fine.’
‘Does it?’ she wrinkles her nose. ‘Milk and sugar?’
I do, but I answer ‘no’ to spare her locating fresh milk and then another expedition for sugar cubes.
She lays our teas out on a tray.
‘I’ll take it,’ I say.
‘Thanks. What a nice girl you’ve turned out to be.’ She smiles, generously. ‘I’m afraid you’ve come a little too late. After everything, he’s dead.’
‘Have you heard anything from Yuleka?’ I ask.
‘She’s in Marbella, opening a restaurant, apparently. Meanwhile, Northridge Hall is on the market. He tried to leave us without a penny. I’m not only about to lose my home, my inheritance, my friends, I’m fast becoming a stranger to integrity, dignity and honesty – that’s why I wanted to find you.’ She stopped, as if her courage had stalled. ‘Do you know, I think we should be sitting down for this sort of conversation.’
I carry the tray up the stairs, peering to see through the dim lighting. She leads me into the sitting room where I set the tray down and perch myself on an armchair.
‘Do you smoke?’
‘No,’ I answer.
She looks down, bites in her lower lip in disappointment.
‘Well, on occasion,’ I concede.
‘I’ve taken up smoking, do you mind? I know how fascist young people can be – and I’m all for it – saving rainforests, caring for one’s body and organic everything. Thing is, when your husband after twenty-something years of marriage leaves you with nothing and then drops dead on his honeymoon, one can’t help but question what really is dangerous in the world, you know?’ she laughs. ‘Would you make this an occasion and join me?’
‘Sure.’
She pushes a high-backed tapestry chair over to an old armoire, climbs on to it and grapples over the top to bring down a leather bag. With her back to me, bottom in the air, she fishes out a pack of cigarettes and lighter. She then flicks the bag on top of the cupboard before stepping down, and straightening up her skirt. She sits down, breathes out long and hard.
She’s almost as inept at smoking as making tea. I chuckle inwardly watching her blow the smoke out into the air like a pre-pubescent girl. She gives herself a little squeeze and smiles at me, it’s clear she wants to talk. She’s been expecting me for a long, long time.
‘So you got my note from those women at the dry cleaners! How funny.’
‘You were in the grey Aston Martin. I’d seen you following me but you weren’t the only one –’
‘Not a very discreet car for spying. I’ve n
ever been a car person – used to just have a Land Rover for the country house and a little electric thing for nipping around London. When I found out Henry was having an affair and that divorce was on the horizon, I went to the nearest showroom and bought the most expensive thing on the forecourt.’ She looked around the room and took in a deep breath. ‘Only good decision I’ve ever made.’ She bites a nail. ‘I’d like to meet your mother one day. I always wished her happiness. It was the least we could do … even though there were … incidents. And all the letters and phone calls, and the nocturnal visits. I lived in fear of her leaping out at me from the pantry or behind the shower curtain. Bit of a drama at the time but,’ she waves her cigarette back and forth as though seeing the years dissolve like smoke.
We drink tea, and I wonder how deep we are going to plunge.
‘Henry’s death must have been a terrible shock for you all.’
‘Henry was a terrible shock to us all. What a sorry, sorry tale. We don’t know whether or not to do a funeral? Is he mine to mourn? The children’s? She cremated him out there – she did! Where’s the protocol in these situations?’
I can’t answer her questions, only add more of my own. ‘Did Henry ever speak about me?’
‘No.’
‘Did he tell you he had a child?’
‘No. Not him. Your mother did. She wrote to me just after we’d got engaged. Very kind of her. Told me about their affair and her baby – she enclosed photos, copies of letters, little cards from his favourite flower shop. Of course I should have left him – it was clear he had feelings for her – but I was young and scared, very ashamed, I only had him to listen to. And when you love someone … you want to believe them.’ She twirled the cigarette in the air and looked through the smoke. ‘Do you smoke them right to the end?’ she asks.
‘He never wanted to see me or –’
‘Well what could we have done with this baby? Have it over for weekends? Christmases? Send it to school with Tom and Barnaby? How could we explain it? Henry’s father would have had a heart attack – or cut us off – worse!’ She plays with the cigarette packet. ‘Henry’d tried everything to persuade the girl, your mother –’