by Beth Moran
The thought of going to that wedding made Old Jenny poke her head up out of her grave and scream in horror.
But maybe the way it caused my lungs to cramp meant I should go.
New Jenny isn’t a wimpy quitter! I shouted at Old Jenny, and got back to yanking up the weeds.
While huddled in my coat that evening, watching the blaze of burning brambles flickering orange and black, I heard a car pull up outside. A millisecond later, a huge, dark shadow appeared at the side of my deckchair.
I screamed, jumping so hard I would have toppled over if the shadow hadn’t grabbed the chair.
‘Sorry!’ Jamie stepped into the light of the bonfire, dressed head to toe in black. ‘I didn’t mean to startle you.’
‘Try not creeping up on me, then.’ I gasped, clutching my pounding chest.
Mack’s back door whipped open and he stuck his head out. ‘Everything okay?’
‘Yes. Fine.’
His eyes narrowed. ‘Do you know this guy?’
I understood his suspicion. Jamie looked beyond fierce in his black cap and military-style boots. I was impressed that Mack stepped out into the garden, rather than taking me at my word and disappearing back inside.
‘Jamie, this is Mack. Mack, Jamie.’ I waved my hand in a sort of introductory manner.
‘Do you want a drink?’ I asked this near-stranger who could probably snap my neck with his little toenail, while my neighbour hovered in the gloom.
‘Oh, no, I’m on my way to work.’ Ah, a perfectly reasonable explanation for the get-up. ‘But I brought you something.’
He picked up a large box and walked over to my back door. ‘Is this your kitchen?’
I jumped up and opened the door, leading him inside. ‘You can put it on the side.’
He opened the box, lifting out a mini electric oven, with two rings for pans on the top. ‘I bought this when the business first got going and I lived in a caravan for a while. Anyway. Sarah thought you might find it useful until you get a proper one fitted.’
I looked at the oven, trying to figure out if the caravan story was a fib. There were a couple of scratches on one corner, but I wouldn’t put it past him to have roughed it up a bit to corroborate his story.
‘Thanks. I don’t really know what to say.’
Jamie shrugged. ‘Neither do I. Let’s pretend it never happened.’
‘Pretend what didn’t happen?’
He winked at me. ‘See you around.’
Before I could reply, he’d vanished into the night.
I still stood there, gazing at the oven – with a mini hob! Two rings! – when Mack stomped into the kitchen.
‘Who the hell was that?’ He glowered.
‘I thought everyone in this village knew everybody else.’ I crossed my arms, feigning nonchalance.
‘I don’t live in the village. He doesn’t look like a typical resident. More like he’d come to burgle it.’
‘He goes to my book club. And he runs a security company.’ I concentrated hard on keeping my mouth from turning up at the corners.
‘And he gave you an oven.’
‘Yes.’ I turned to look at it, hiding my failed attempt not to smile. ‘You don’t have the monopoly on giving me unwanted stuff.’
‘Did he give you the fridge too?’
‘No.’ I was being deliberately obtuse. Something was starting to crackle and pop across the kitchen. And it wasn’t the chilli in my slow cooker.
‘I hope you know him well enough to be accepting gifts. Those cookers are pricy. Be careful you aren’t sending the wrong message.’
I struggled to find a reply, too discombobulated at this surreal Mack, and the feelings he was stirring up. ‘Are you saying if a man gives me gifts there’s a hidden motive?’ Translate: did you mean something by the stuff you gave me after all?
‘There could be. You’d be stupid not to consider it.’
‘And that if I accept them I’m sending a message?’ Translate: do you think I’ve sent you a message?
‘Some guys would see it that way.’
I stood gaping like a fish, ricocheting between being offended, flattered and utterly confused, when my mouth opened and got the question out there:
‘Are you talking about Jamie or is this about us? Because Jamie’s in love with Sarah. I’m not the woman he’s trying to impress. Was all that help, the bedding, the bike tyres… something? Because what happened with the chair, that wasn’t really anything but felt like something. I wasn’t sending a message. And the cakes, the chicken. All of it. The only message was “Hi, neighbour. Thanks for your help. Let’s maybe hang out some time seeing as neither of us seem to have many friends. Cheers, bye.” That was the message. Did you think it was something different? Was all this like flirting to you?’
‘What?’ Mack reeled back, shaking his head. Vigorously. He looked horrified. Insultingly so, if I’m honest. ‘I meant Rambo out there. I was clear about those… I’m being a friend, Jenny. Trying to look out for you. It’s understandable I’d be concerned, given your ability to attract disaster. Bloody hell. No. I didn’t mean me. I’m… I was only… Jenny, I’m married.’
Now that, I was not expecting.
Neither was Mack, judging by how white, then red, his face turned in the time it took me to start breathing again. ‘Anyway, I was just checking you were okay,’ he mumbled, before disappearing a lot less gracefully than Jamie had done.
Married? Married? Then where the heck was his wife?
I tossed, turned and twisted all night, thinking angry and conflicting thoughts about marriages. My sister’s. Mack’s. The one I’d probably never have.
I’d thought it bad enough having a secret boyfriend. Keeping your spouse secret was a whole other level of not-right.
17
I decided to take my mind off my current family by renewing the hunt for information on my past one, focussing my attention on a dresser at the back of the dining room.
The top half was rammed with china cups and saucers, matching teapots, milk jugs and sugar bowls. As they were too chipped to bother cleaning up for resale, I left them where they were and braved the bottom cupboards.
In amongst tins of buttons, thread, needles and a huge pair of rusty scissors, I found a pattern book, stuffed with dozens of knitting and dressmaking patterns. Most torn out of magazines, they featured hilarious pictures of models sporting atrocious hair and even worse outfits. Others were handwritten. Diagrams with notes scribbled underneath. Deciding this warranted some proper attention, I lugged it into the kitchen, jiggling with anticipation while I waited for the kettle to boil.
Oh, what treasure!
I scooped up those clues and tucked them into the derelict space in my heart reserved for family. The patterns were filed in reverse order, starting with older girls’ school dresses and jumpers, a horribly plain party dress that surely even by 1980s standards was something no teenager would want to wear. There were adult patterns – but only for women, all of them practical, hardwearing and ugly. Overalls, housedresses, thick cardigans and frumpy blouses. Not a pleat, a frill, a bow or unnecessary stitch anywhere.
If this was what my mother wore as a child, it might go some way to explaining her past obsession with designer fashion. I took my time, deciphering the little notes in faded pencil: Use spare blue wool from jumper. Replace with corduroy or won’t last a week! Easter dress?
As I continued flicking back, the smocked dresses growing smaller and the gloves turning to mittens, I finally reached the baby clothes. Knitted romper suits and blankets, a whole magazine pull-out on christening gowns.
And a dozen different patterns featuring coordinated outfits for twins. Girl twins, boy twins, mixed sex. Annotations like Different coloured ribbon for each? Use booties from back page. Will only work if both boys. Remember extra wool if making two hats. Will I have time for this applique before June?? So sweet – I have to make these!
I knew that it might not mean anything. But… a bit of a
coincidence, given that the date of the magazine was 1964, and my mother was born that June.
Had my mother been a twin too? Did I have an aunt or uncle I knew nothing about?
Except of course I already knew I didn’t – the twin patterns never made it past the baby clothes. And in the photographs I’d found, there’d been only one child, my mother. Could the midwife have made a mistake? Did they have baby scans in those days? Or, what seemed far more likely, my grandmother had lost a baby. My mother’s sister or brother. I remembered the drastic change in the photos taken after my mother’s birth. Was it more than new parent exhaustion? Had grief stripped the joy from her face?
It felt as if a piece of the puzzle clicked into place as I ran my fingers across those beautiful designs for baby clothes, the hope and the delight in the scrawled messages. Had this affected my family so deeply, it ended up splitting them apart? And if so, how? Did my mother know she’d been a twin? Would it help explain some of her own issues, including the way she’d raised her daughters, if she did?
My skin itched with questions. I fidgeted with my phone, debating whether the cost of a call to Italy was worth it, given the likelihood of it generating anything useful.
The next morning, I rang the landline number, knowing it would only be answered between ten and twelve.
I waited two gut-clenchingly long minutes until someone picked up.
Not my mother, but the office administrator. She left me waiting for another seven minutes before informing me that Mum was unable to talk that day. Perhaps I’d like to try another time?
Perhaps I wouldn’t like to waste another zillion pounds on a conversation that, on the slim chance it did happen, might simply throw up yet more questions instead of answers, and might set her off and running again. I had no idea if the change in Mum was genuine or not. And we hadn’t exactly had a close relationship before she’d decided to sell my home. Apparently, I was welcome to visit whenever I wanted. Even if I could have afforded it, I didn’t want.
The chances were high she’d be at the wedding. Zara would have weighed up the inevitable gossip from her mother not being there, with the equally inevitable gossip her presence would cause.
That chance might just be enough to get me to Scotland’s wedding of the year.
‘Why doesn’t Jamie ask Sarah out?’ I asked Ellen the following Monday, as we prepared tacos.
‘I’ve asked him the same question. Apart from being so completely in awe of her, and thinking he’s far too old and grizzled for Sarah to find him attractive, it’s really his job.’ She sampled the salsa she’d been making, frowned and added a squeeze of lime juice. ‘And all that about finding it tough readjusting to normal life somewhat glossed over things.’
‘So, he won’t even give it a chance, keep things casual.’
‘He’s not interested in casual. And that has implications for his work. You think twice about taking risks with a family waiting for you at home.’
‘He’s choosing his work over her?’ I stopped grating the cheese, thinking back to Dougal and Duff where no one in their right mind would put a relationship over their career.
‘You’ve met Jamie enough times to know he’s the type of man who needs to be able to support himself. I think the plan is to sell the business one day. But that’s a pretty drastic move when he doesn’t even know if she’s interested.’
‘But he won’t ask her.’
‘Not until he can follow it through.’ Ellen paused to shout upstairs that dinner was ready. ‘But in the meantime, he’s simply getting older. And more grizzled.’
I took my place at the table, plates and bowls rattling as the house shook with the thundering feet of five hungry children. ‘Maybe we should convince her to ask him out.’
Ellen grinned at me. ‘Believe me, I’ve tried. Please, knock yourself out.’
The last Wednesday of term, I helped Maddie learn her spellings, set up a track for the boys’ animal-versus-alien Olympics, and knocked on Dawson’s door. Choosing to interpret the faint grunt as an invitation, I went in, moving his giant beanbag to beside the desk where he sat, pencil in hand, and plopping myself down.
‘How was your day?’ I asked, for want of anything better to say.
He shrugged.
‘Things still the same?’
‘Why wouldn’t they be?’
‘Have you said anything to your mum or dad yet?’
‘No.’ He scribbled furiously at the paper.
I sat there, mentally treading water while Dawson went back to his picture. ‘I’m working on getting a car so we can go to Hatherstone sometimes after school. But it’s going to be a few weeks, yet.’
‘Whatever.’
‘Can I see your drawing?’
After rolling his eyes so hard I was surprised they came back again, he sat back and folded his arms. I heaved myself up off the beanbag and positioned myself close enough to see while still giving Dawson space. One glance, and I had to step closer.
‘Dawson.’ I goggled at the paper. ‘This is incredible.’
‘They’re not like what you can buy.’
I turned it over, read the double-page spread pencilled in on the other side.
‘They’re different,’ I said. They were. I didn’t know much about comics, but these were like a novel and a work of art all in one. The characters – a genius schoolboy inventor, a clueless teacher, a gang of bullies, a quiet girl who was kind, brave, funny – were perfect.
‘Did you create these yourself?’
He nodded. ‘That’s only a few of them. And I’m still working on Foul Face. His hair isn’t right yet.’
I laughed. ‘Dawson, these are funny. Not ha-ha how cute, a ten-year-old boy made a joke. More like, this sums up my whole school life in one hilarious, genius-speech-bubble funny. I would buy this comic based on this one page.’ I looked at him. ‘And send it to everyone I went to school with.’
He stared back, uncertainty mixed with a shred of hope and pride in his eyes.
‘You know these are awesome, don’t you?’
He looked away. ‘Well, Lucas and Erik like them.’
‘How many do you have?’
He pulled open a drawer. Crammed full of finished, coloured-in comics. Squash Harris.
‘Can I read one?’
‘Promise you won’t laugh?’ His voice cracked.
‘I promise I will laugh, if it’s as funny as this page.’ I held out one hand, gravely. ‘But I promise I won’t mock.’
We shook on it. I didn’t know whose hand was sweatier, but Dawson insisted I wipe mine on his duvet before touching his artwork.
I read all of episode one before Ellen came home, Dawson agreeing to lend me another if I kept his secret. I could understand why. The first edition made me want to weep. How he summed up the loneliness, the casual cruelty. The pain and the fear before the schoolboy became Squash Harris the genius.
If only Dawson could stumble upon a real top-secret lab while fleeing his tormentors and become infected by a biological weapon, mutating his DNA and giving him superhuman intelligence and reflexes.
Either that, or I was going to have to come up with another way to turn this ordinary schoolboy into a hero.
Or, even better, help him figure out how to do that for himself.
18
The Friday after Easter was April’s Christmas Book Club Challenge meeting. This time, Ashley went first.
‘Well,’ she began, twirling the strings of multicoloured beads draped round her neck. ‘I’ve searched the electoral roll for Hillary West and tried some other online searches but the woman is like a ghost! No social media page or anything. I can’t even find a photograph.’
‘Maybe you should take the hint?’ Frances said, slurping a huge gin-and-tonic. ‘Respect the poor woman’s privacy.’
Ashley ignored this. ‘So, anyway, I decided to do some old-fashioned detective work, and read everything I could that’s been written about her, searching for clues.’
Ashley opened the enormous carrier bag she’d brought and tugged out a cork notice board. She proudly held it up for us all to see. There was a map of Nottinghamshire in the centre, and several typed cuttings surrounding it, each with a ribbon pinned from the cutting to a part of the map.
‘Put it down, then, so we can have a proper look!’ Frances said, now interested.
We gathered round. It was somewhat less impressive up close.
‘So, you’ve got articles saying she’s lived the past few years in Sherwood Forest. We already knew that.’ Lucille sniffed.
‘Yes, but this confirms it,’ Ashley replied, undeterred. ‘And, this one here says she’s in her thirties. And this one says she returned to country life. So, she used to live in the country, then didn’t, then did again.’
‘Well, that narrows it down!’ Frances said.
‘It’s a start,’ Ellen said pointedly. ‘What are your next steps?’
‘I’m going to visit her publishers and pretend to be a reporter. And if that fails I’ll break into her agent’s office and see what I can find there.’
‘Oh!’ Kiko said. ‘I don’t think—’
‘Or I could run her agent over, break his leg and then stake out the hospital waiting for Hillary to visit.’
‘You can’t…’
‘Or I could pretend to be another author, sue her for plagiarism and wait for her to turn up at court.’
‘Ashley!’ Ellen yelled.
‘I could get a job as a postwoman, find letters with her name on them…’
‘You need help,’ Frances and Lucille muttered at the same time.
‘I bet you could help, Jamie, couldn’t you? You do this sort of thing in your sleep.’
‘That’s not the help I had in mind,’ Lucille said.
‘Failing that, I’ll just knock on doors until I find her. There aren’t that many people living in Sherwood Forest. And I might meet some interesting people along the way. I could start a blog or something, “the Great Hillary West Hunt”.’