Love Nest

by Julia Llewellyn

  ‘I don’t want the fucking flat,’ he snarled. ‘Don’t bother me about it again. Just tell them to piss off. And start looking for a new one.’

  40

  Karen had hoped she’d had her lifetime’s quotient of hospitals. But now here she was, back in the waiting room, feeling as if she’d entered some underwater world, where the lights were too bright and noises were muffled. Surrounded by spaced-out, hollow-eyed people. You drank vile coffee from the vending machine, you flicked through ancient copies of Bella, but you tasted nothing, took in nothing. Just watched the clock hands creep round.

  Finally the doctor appeared.

  ‘Mrs Drake. In here, please.’

  She hadn’t met this one before. He was older than Dr Munro, who had been their consultant last time, and less showy. Unlike Dr Munro, you couldn’t imagine him on the golf course, boasting about the lives he’d saved today. Which surely was a good thing.

  ‘Mrs Drake,’ he said, gesturing to a green armchair. ‘I’m afraid the cancer has returned. But it’s moved now. To another place. On the positive side, you can be fairly confident we can treat it. Drugs in this area are very developed.’

  He talked for a long time. Karen tried to concentrate but it was all a whirl. She only really cared about one thing.

  ‘Will he…? Can he?’

  ‘He can go home with you tonight. Back in again first thing tomorrow, mind you.’

  ‘Yes, doctor.’

  *

  Gemma was online, uploading a picture of the McQueen black jacket she’d bought hoping it would make her look like a picture she’d seen of Elle Macpherson at the airport but which in fact made her resemble an extra in an am-dram production of Oliver! She had a plan, a plan to raise some money to give Bridget by selling off her wardrobe on eBay. She’d gone through it this morning and realized she owned twenty-seven striped T-shirts. In every shop she’d ever visited, some kind of supernatural force had drawn her to the stripy T-shirt section, and there’d always be at least one with a slightly different cut or thickness of stripes to the other two dozen stripy T-shirts she owned and she would be compelled to buy it. But now some of them had to go. The Nicole Farhis, not the Primark ones. But could she really bear to get rid of this one, which she’d bought in Bond Street to treat herself…?

  As she struggled to recall how she’d justified that treat, her phone rang.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘It’s Gareth from Dunraven Mackie, Mrs Meehan. I’m afraid I’ve got bad news on the flat sale.’

  He spelled it out. She was amazed how calm she felt.

  ‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘I expected it.’

  The phone at Chadlicote rang at around five o’clock. The sun was blazing down in the summer sky and Grace was squatting over her flower pots. Watered and tended daily, the sweet peas had grown remarkably quickly. As their pink and purple flowers burst out, Grace had begun looking round the rest of the grounds, which lay under thick beds of nettles and couch grass. In the rose garden creeping convolvulus had suffocated what remained of the bushes. Grace decided she would start here. From dawn to dusk, she weeded, pruned and deadheaded, painstakingly restoring some order out of the chaos.

  The evening hours she’d previously passed eating or online looking at Doctor Who websites were now spent browsing plant sites. After a day’s raking, she sowed some salad seeds. Soon she’d be able to eat the leaves for supper. Tiny green tomatoes were already appearing. At the weekend, instead of moping, she’d visited three garden centres. Possibly she’d spent too much money, but she’d saved on biscuits and ice cream and sweets.

  She began to plan. She pulled out the estate agent’s map of the grounds and divided it into sections. ‘Clematis’ she wrote on the west wall. ‘Roses’ on the flower beds that would need to be dug up. Delphiniums, geraniums. The list went on and on. She’d discover something she’d set her heart on grew badly in this soil and would be temporarily dispirited. But another idea would come up.

  At first she’d only been able to load the wheelbarrow with a small amount of compost. But already now she could push a whole barrow-load across the grounds to the corner she was targeting. Her muscles ached, her fingernails were gritty, her nose was full of the warm stench of turned earth, and she felt herself wonderfully at peace.

  All right, so in the end it would all be in vain. The house would be sold, with acres of garden still untouched. Never mind. Grace would transform the cottage’s overgrown plot. She’d put her name down for an allotment.

  Phone still ringing. She’d better answer it.

  ‘Hello?’ she said, pushing a strand of hair out of her eye.

  ‘Miss Porter-Healey. It’s Nina from Bruton Bradley estate agents.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I’m really sorry to let you know so late in the day but we’ve got a problem on the exchange.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘We’ve just heard that the Drakes are having to delay the date of exchange.’

  A beat. ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Philip Drake just called us. The sale of his house has fallen through so he’s having to delay exchanging until he finds another buyer. I’m so sorry. I’m sure it won’t be long, if it’s any consolation. I gather the Drakes’ house is very desirable and…’

  ‘It’s OK,’ said Grace. ‘Please don’t worry.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Nina wailed again.

  ‘Please don’t be.’ Grace smiled, noting a new blister on her hand. ‘It’s not your fault.’

  Karen barely registered the call.

  ‘OK,’ she said distractedly. ‘Just keep us posted.’ She hung up. An ashen Phil was leaning back against a mountain of pillows in their bedroom. A plate of soba noodles and broccoli lay untouched on a tray in front of him.

  ‘How are you feeling now?’

  ‘Fine,’ he said weakly. They were starting a new session of chemo in the morning. A new combination of drugs, as he’d built up resistance to the last lot. The consultant was very positive they’d work.

  ‘Oh, Phil,’ she said, her heart overflowing with pain. ‘I’m so sorry. So incredibly sorry.’ Sorry for him, of course. But also for what she’d done. Though he’d never find out.

  ‘I’m sorry too,’ he said, to her surprise.

  ‘For heaven’s sake. What do you have to be sorry about?’ It’s me who has… she thought, but she slapped the thought down like a pesky puppy. No time for self-indulgent guilt. All her energies were focused on the cancer again.

  ‘I’ve let you down. I thought I was getting better. I’m sorry you married me, Karen. I’m sorry it’s ruined your life.’

  Tears burned in her eyes; the back of her throat was swollen and sore. ‘Don’t be sorry for anything, Phil. None of this is your fault. You know that.’

  ‘I’ve made life so difficult for you lately. First the illness. And then organizing the move. I should have consulted you more. Not expected you to go along with me.’

  ‘It’s OK.’ She’d tell him later that the move had fallen through for now. A bitter irony as, at the moment, she’d have happily decamped to the moon to have Phil well again.

  ‘It’s not OK. Devon’s too far. I wasn’t thinking. We’ll leave this house but we don’t have to go far. Just down the road will be fine with me.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it now. Please. Just get some sleep. I’ll give you a pill.’

  ‘Karen?’ He looked at her beseechingly. And Karen knew. Knew that she was never going to leave Phil, no matter how ambivalent she felt about him, no matter how much she adored Max. He was her children’s father. She’d seen their terrified faces, realized how much they depended on both of them as a unit. And in turn she depended on them. They were at the very centre of her being and without them she would be nothing. Whatever differences she and Phil might have, they were united in the fact that they’d created these two brilliant, precious creatures.

  ‘Yes, darling?’

  ‘Please don’t sleep in the spare room tonight.
Please stay here. With me.’

  The agony at what she was going to have to give up, what she was going to suffer, tore through her. But that pain was nothing, nothing compared to what Phil and the girls were enduring.

  ‘Of course I will, darling.’

  41

  Through the smoked-glass windows of his chauffeured limo, Nick watched the Burnley streets of his youth. The rows of dilapidated terraced houses. The teenagers in vests and cut-off jeans slumped on a doorstep drinking lager from cans, ghetto blaster booming, a Staffie at their feet. Passing a spliff from one to the other. One girl, who couldn’t have been much older than fourteen, was pregnant. She’d pulled up her top, exposing her round pasty belly to the afternoon sun. Nick shuddered at the sight of her. She represented everything he’d wanted to escape. But at the same time the thought of Kylie in the same situation tore at his heart. Kylie carrying his baby. Their baby. Killing it by swallowing those pills because she’d found out he’d gone to Tobago with Lucinda.

  He was drawing up outside her house now. Christ, the same plastic Santa Claus in the window, which stayed there all year round. The same peeling black front door with the metal gate in front to keep the bailiffs out.

  ‘Do you want me to wait here?’ asked Ken, the driver.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Nick. He got out, heart hammering. He rang the doorbell. Ding dong, it chimed. There was no reply for a while. Nick turned around, half disappointed, half relieved. But then he heard shuffling. Someone was heading towards the door. He considered dashing back to the safety of Ken’s car, but it opened before he’d fully got his act together.

  Michelle, Kylie’s older sister, stared at him. She too was wearing a vest which did her meaty arms no favours and purple velvet tracksuit pants. She gawped at Nick as she might have done at the Queen if she’d pitched up on her doorstep on a humid summer afternoon.

  ‘What the fuck are you doing here?’

  ‘You know what. I’ve come to see Kylie. Is she in?’

  Michelle stared at him for a minute with her cold, dead eyes. A Dobermann waddled up behind her and eyed Nick. Hungrily.

  ‘She isn’t.’

  Nick squirmed. What was he doing here? He remembered all the things he disliked about Kylie’s family. About Burnley. About his old life.

  But he was here now.

  ‘So when will she be back?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know. She’s gone on holiday. To recover from what you did to her.’

  ‘So she’s OK?’

  One of Michelle’s many snotty children appeared at her side, dressed only in a nappy. ‘Mamma, Mamma.’

  ‘We hope so. We’ll have to see. Now fuck off right now, please. Before I call the police.’

  ‘But…’

  ‘Arsehole,’ she said and slammed the door in his face. A few houses along, another door opened. An old lady – what was her name? Nora Brightman – stared at him. Behind another window, a net curtain twitched. Nick headed back to the car in blind fury.

  ‘Go home, just go home,’ he snapped, climbing in.

  ‘You mean to London?’ Ken asked. He didn’t sound surprised that the visit had been so brief, because he wasn’t. He’d seen it all with the idiots he had to ferry about. At least his wife loved hearing about them.

  ‘Yeah, to London.’ Was London Nick’s home? It had to be. There was no place for him here any more.

  Grace picked up Shackleton and placed him gently in the back of the Land Rover. Just a few months ago she’d have struggled to lift him, but now he was as light as candyfloss. After his first bloody offering, nothing had happened for a while, but then he’d started to bleed again. At the same time he’d lost weight and been so tired. So she’d called the vet.

  Silvester tried to jump up beside him.

  ‘No, darling. You can’t come.’ Grace tried to sound calm. Silvester, however, knew something was wrong. His doggy face was mournful and he kept whining, like one of Grace’s nephews deprived of CBeebies. As soon as she put her foot on the accelerator, tears started to blind her. They were lucky to arrive at the vet’s intact. Mr Jepson, the vet, looked at Shackleton carefully. Shackleton – who usually loved a bit of attention – didn’t even bother to wag his tail.

  ‘Mmm. I’m glad you brought him in,’ Mr Jepson said. ‘He’s very close to the end now. I would recommend a shot. Put him out of his misery.’

  ‘Shouldn’t I let him go naturally?’

  He shook his head. ‘It’s up to you, but it will only be a few more days. Maybe a week. And they will be days of suffering. I would stop it now.’

  Why hadn’t Grace been able to do the same thing for her mother, she thought furiously, as she looked up at him and said, ‘All right.’

  ‘Do you want a moment with him?’ Mr Jepson asked.

  Grace nodded, unable to speak. She held Shackleton, crying softly into his wrinkled head. He’d been with them six years. Such a sweet little puppy, all snuffling and warm, like a hot water bottle. Silvester would be bereft when he realized his old friend had gone. Maybe she’d get another dog. But then he would die on her too. Everyone left her in the end.

  ‘Goodbye, darling,’ she said, kissing him on the head.

  Mr Jepson coughed at the door. Jilly, the nurse, stood there with a huge syringe. The needle went into Shackleton’s bristly coat. Grace stroked him and whispered, ‘There, boy.’

  He carried on wheezing for longer than she expected. Gradually, his raspy breaths grew slower. After what seemed like a very long time, they stopped.

  ‘I think…’ Grace said.

  Mr Jepson put his stethoscope to Shackleton’s wrinkled chest. ‘Yes, he’s gone,’ he said. ‘But I’m sure he had a wonderful life rambling around the grounds of Chadlicote.’

  ‘He did,’ Grace said. ‘He did.’

  There was a lot of paperwork to fill out before Grace returned to Chadlicote, with Shackleton’s stiffening body in a box in the boot. Now she would have to think how to bury him. Was there ever going to be a day when some problem didn’t present itself to her?

  ‘Stop feeling so damn sorry for yourself,’ she told herself. She tried to focus on biscuits. After she’d cuddled Silvester she’d go and buy a huge variety tin. Grace realized with a start that she must have lost weight the past few weeks. She’d never believed women like Verity who claimed they forgot to eat but – while she had hardly skipped meals – food had no longer been at the forefront of her mind. She’d been too busy gathering up her prunings or calculating how to revive the herb garden. She’d got a tan too, and when she looked in the mirror at bedtime, she glowed from exertion. Once she’d tried to fill the gaping hole in her heart with food, but growing things was far more effective. It was almost like a love affair, but one which she was fully in control of.

  Still, forget all that now. This was a biscuit night. Followed by ice cream and a family-sized bar of Dairy Milk.

  Though she’d have to do the watering first.

  Then she saw it. A brown Cortina, parked in the drive.

  Richie.

  Grace fumed as she sped the last few yards along the foxglove-lined drive. What did he want? She’d come to terms with her humiliation at Richie’s hands, but she certainly didn’t want to undergo it again.

  She got out of the car and stormed towards the front door.

  ‘Hello, Grace,’ he called from beside his bonnet.

  ‘Hello, Richie,’ she snapped over her shoulder.

  ‘Grace! Don’t be like that. Wait. Listen, I just wanted you to know I’m sorry. I messed things up with you.’

  ‘It’s OK,’ she said tightly, fumbling with numb fingers for her keys.

  ‘I…’ He looked at his feet. ‘I don’t expect you to forgive me. I’ve been having problems. That’s why my wife left. Work’s put me on a final warning. I’ve started AA.’

  ‘Good, Richie. Goodbye, Richie.’

  ‘I really am sorry, Grace,’ he cried. ‘And listen, I hear the house is back on the market. Anton…’

 
; She slammed the door in his face.

  Everything in Lucinda’s life had changed. She’d moved out of the Kensington flat, as had Benjie, who had returned to Geneva.

  ‘I don’t want to go,’ he’d moaned, chucking his back issues of Attitude into the recycling. ‘I don’t want to live at home with Mummy and Daddy. The gay scene in Geneva is rubbish.’

  ‘Well, don’t go,’ Lucinda said stiffly. It was pretty hard to sympathize with him. She would have done anything to be summoned home like this and told to get to work in head office, and here was her brother moaning because there was a shortage of clubs with dungeon rooms.

  ‘I have to. Dad says he’s cutting off my allowance if I don’t. Says he’s fed up with having time-waster children and he wants to see me getting down to work.’

  ‘I’ll miss you.’

  ‘I’ll be back here all the time. I’ll take you out to dinner on the company account.’

  ‘Right,’ Lucinda sighed.

  ‘So where’s your new place?’

  ‘It’s in Hackney. Little one-bedroom flat. Pretty central. My friend Gareth from my old job helped me find it.’

  ‘Hackney’s rough!’ exclaimed her brother.

  ‘Not really,’ Lucinda lied. Actually, she’d been shaken when she’d visited the flat for the first time. Walking out of Old Street Tube with the manic traffic, down the side streets lined by pound shops and tatty saunas, to the flat on a busy road above an off-licence. A flat which was perfectly clean, neutrally furnished, so as not to alienate anyone, with a bedroom, bathroom, sitting room and separate, albeit matchbox-sized, kitchen.

  A flat she’d have sold enthusiastically to a viewer but which, for Lucinda, who had never known life without an en-suite bathroom, was a shock. Still, she was going to make it as cosy as possible, with bright posters, throws, candles, all the things she advised clients to do. And she was going to enjoy the area’s bars, the cheap restaurants – lots of Vietnamese ones apparently – the avant-garde art exhibitions. Whom she would enjoy them with she had no idea. Probably nobody. Cass was up to her eyes in wedding plans and she was too proud to ask more of Gareth. But somehow she was going to retrieve something out of this experience.