by Sarah Butler
I want to put my hand over yours. I want to tell you it’s OK, that everything is OK.
‘Is this just something you do?’ You laugh, nervous. ‘Did you actually know my mother, or is this some kind of weird joke? You just pick someone and piece together a story? Do other people say yes too?’
I shake my head. ‘No, no. No one else.’ It is the wrong thing to say. I have lost you again. I watch the fear flash across your eyes. And what else is there for you to think, except that I’m a madman, except that I’m dangerous, crazy, lonely, insane.
‘I’m sorry,’ you say, ‘but I really do have to go.’ You stand up. I stay where I am and look at you.
‘Your name’s blue,’ I say. ‘A pale, frosted blue.’ I am not helping myself.
‘Goodbye, Daniel.’ You smile, but it’s a tense smile – more of a grimace. You turn away from me, your flip-flops scrunch the gravel. I can just see the curve of your heel below the hemline of your jeans.
‘Alice.’
You turn back. I love you. I loved your mother. I’m your father. I know it’s messy, but it’s important. ‘Good luck with the builder,’ I say.
You smile. You tuck a strand of hair behind your ear. ‘Thanks,’ you say, and then you turn, and you’re gone.
I’m a fool. No news there. I watch you go. You don’t look back. You hold one hand tight around the strap of your bag. Your neck is stiff and straight. I want to call out to you again, but I have already blown it. You disappear behind the green wall of the hedge. I have no excuse to be here any more. If it wasn’t for the empty teapots and the crumb-scattered plates, I would be asked to leave. I take the rose from my pocket and pull off the petals, one by one, until only the sepals and the stamen are left. Then I reach across the table for your cup and knit my hands around its circumference.
* * *
‘I would have liked to be a grandmother,’ my mother told me. It was two years before she died. She’d said it before, but this is the time I remember. We were sitting in the living room of the home, a stuffy room crammed with velveteen chairs and doily-covered furniture. All I could think about was sitting in that cafe, with the word pregnant in the air between us.
‘I’m sorry to disappoint,’ I said.
‘No, love, you’re not a disappointment. I just— It would have been nice for you too, wouldn’t it? Might have settled you down a bit.’
I concentrated on the wallpaper, a tortured pattern of leaves reaching up from the thick green carpet.
‘I always hoped you’d meet someone,’ she said. ‘Your dad did too. We’d have liked that: Sunday lunches, Christmas.’ Her sight had almost gone at this point. The whites of her eyes were clouded yellow and there were always tears waiting at the corners to move down her cheeks.
I felt like I was made out of concrete – terrified I wouldn’t be able to stand up again, that I would end up like her, in a faded, ugly room, watching the world carry on outside the window. I thought of your mother sitting across the table from me, years before, with you – just a tiny collection of cells: everything starting and stopping at once.
‘I should go,’ I said.
‘You just arrived,’ my mother said.
‘I’m not feeling so good.’
‘I’ve upset you.’
‘No, no, I’m fine.’
‘You know I love you, Daniel. You know your father loved you.’
I stumbled out into the soft grey afternoon. I went to the first pub I found – a sparse, sterile kind of a place with an oversized TV screen in the corner. I drank warm, cheap whisky until they asked me to leave.
* * *
I sit for a long time. A waitress approaches, sees the cup in my hand and skirts away.
The rain starts in slow fat drops. The other tea-drinkers jerk into action, as though surprised, though they could have smelt it coming if they’d paid attention. I watch them scatter, rescuing half-eaten cakes and half-drunk drinks, laughing, hurrying. I stay in my seat, holding onto your cup. I watch the rain break the surface of my remaining tea. I watch it soak into the cake crumbs. I sit for a long time, holding on, because I know that once I let go, there will be no coming back to this, not for a long time; not ever.
Ten things you shouldn’t do
1) Stalk your ex-boyfriend on Facebook.
2) Accept invitations from total strangers.
3) Anthropomorphise houses.
4) Eat chocolate just before going to bed.
5) Think too hard.
6) Stay in one place for too long.
7) Put your head underneath the water when you’re in the bath and consider staying there.
8) Worry so much about the colour of paint.
9) Get attached to plants.
10) Steal a picture of your own mother.
Shaun, the builder, is surprisingly understanding, and surprisingly available. I tell him something urgent came up and I’d left my phone at home. He offers to come tomorrow. I sit on the kitchen floor and drink half a bottle of red wine. I wonder about the man – Daniel – I wonder if he has anywhere dry to go to; if he really did know my mother; how he’s ended up the way he has. I try to imagine telling Tilly and Cee about him, but I can’t. I think of Kenwood House and all those people drinking tea in the middle of the day. I should have bought two bottles of beer instead, fizzy and cold. I should have asked him more questions.
We used to go to that cafe as a treat in the school holidays. My dad was the sort of man who always wore a jacket. He had lots of them – they’ll all be on donated coat hangers in some Oxfam shop on the other side of London by now. We would walk across the Heath to the cafe, and spend for ever deciding which kind of cake to have. He would wear the beige cord jacket; the one which, if you stroked it upwards, felt like the skin of an animal, soft and warm. Stroked the wrong way, it ruffled into ugly patterns. I would stand by the central display table on tiptoe to see what was on offer, holding onto the low glass surround with sticky hands. I’d beg Dad to let me drink tea – I didn’t like the taste, but it made me feel like one of the grown-ups. He would eat a Florentine and drink a cup of Earl Grey, and sometimes I’d look up at him and his eyes would be faraway and I would know he was thinking about Mama.
Tilly calls me when I’m in bed. ‘Alice, I’ve been talking to Cee.’
I roll over onto my stomach. I haven’t eaten any dinner; I couldn’t work up the energy.
‘We’re worried about you.’
I rub my free hand across my eyes. ‘There’s no need for that.’
‘She wants us both to go over.’
Cee lives in an unbearable detached house in Berkhamsted.
‘Tomorrow,’ Tilly says.
‘I can’t. The kitchen guy’s coming.’
‘Didn’t you give him a key?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Well, she doesn’t want us until dinnertime.’
‘Do I have to?’
‘Yes, you do. How is the kitchen anyway? Have they made a good start?’
‘It’s fine.’ I stare at the navy-blue pillowcase.
‘Are you all right, Alice? Have you eaten?’
‘I’m fine.’
‘There’s no shame in talking to someone.’
I trace my finger up and down the pillow. ‘You know, I realised the other day I’d never give you up, or Cee. Not even Cee. I’m not sure what I think about that.’
‘Alice, are you worried about the house, is that it?’
‘I’m going to go, Tilly, soon.’
‘Where?’
I shift onto my back. ‘Somewhere far away. I’m thinking India. Delhi first, and then maybe Varanasi, or Bangalore.’ I roll the words around my mouth. Just saying them fills my lungs with oxygen.
‘You can’t keep running away, Alice.’
I lie and listen to the transmitted silence.
‘I’m sorry,’ she says at last.
‘I don’t think it is running away. It’s living, that’s what it is: living.’
She
doesn’t say anything for a while. A siren wails outside, close, then getting further and further away.
‘Maybe you’re a nomad,’ Tilly says at last. ‘Like those people you told us about, in China.’
‘Mongolia.’
‘The ones in the tents.’
‘That’s right.’
‘I can see you living in a tent.’
I smile. ‘Catching marmot and boiling mutton. Making vodka out of milk?’
‘Communing with nature. Waking up in the night and going out to watch the stars.’
Earth beneath my feet. The biggest skies you’ve ever seen. No one else for miles.
‘It’s just I miss you when you go away,’ Tilly says.
I stare at the ceiling, at the white lightshade, stranded in the middle of an expanse of white plaster.
‘Cee does too.’
I snort. ‘Surely Cee prefers me on the other side of the world.’
‘You should give her more credit, Alice. She loves you, even if you won’t see it.’
* * *
Shaun arrives with his assistant at eight thirty on the dot. I check it’s him through the living-room window before I open the door.
‘This is Geoff,’ he says. ‘The G-E-O variety, not the J kind.’
Geoff is a tall, skinny man, maybe twenty-five, with pale skin and jet-black hair, an unkempt beard, restless eyes. I can feel the sweat on his palm when I shake his hand. I check the wall outside before I close the door, but it’s empty.
‘Let’s get cracking, then, shall we?’ Shaun says. He has a gold tooth at the back of his mouth.
I show them into the kitchen. They stand in the doorway and eye it up. I make them tea, point them towards the packet of biscuits on the table and tell them where the bathroom is. I give Shaun a set of keys and explain about the front door sticking.
‘I’ll just be upstairs,’ I say. ‘Shout if you need anything.’ And then I flee.
I can hear the noises, even from the attic, even sitting in the rocking chair with my hands clamped over my ears; I can hear them smashing the kitchen to pieces.
Towards the middle of the day, I creep downstairs. The place is already unrecognisable. They have ripped out the cupboards and stacked them against the table. The walls flaunt their scars – deep gouges into the plasterwork. Memories of an earlier colour – a sort of pea green – reveal themselves beneath flaked white paint. The cooker stands stranded in the middle of the room.
I smile at Shaun and Geoff. Geoff has beads of sweat teetering at his temples, balanced along his upper lip. They are both covered in dust, and have scraps of wood and paint in their hair. I manage to walk through the destruction and out into the garden.
The seedlings look lonely. They’ve grown, but their leaves appear less robust than they did in the safety of the seed tray. I kneel in front of them and touch each one gently. They are starting to look different from each other – some of them long and straight, others growing their leaves broader, with serrated edges. Come on, I whisper, and then check behind me in case Shaun or Geoff has come outside. The newspaper flower has fallen onto its side and drunk up water from the soil. I pluck it from the ground and put it into the wheelie bin.
* * *
When Cee calls, I consider not answering.
‘Dinner’s at six thirty,’ she says.
‘I’m fine, thank you for asking.’
‘I just wanted to check you’re actually coming.’
‘Tilly’s given me a three-line whip.’
‘Right. Steve can pick you up from the station. Which train are you getting?’
‘Do you miss me?’ I ask.
‘What are you talking about?’
‘When I go away. I was just wondering if you ever thought about me.’
‘Well, of course I think about you. Are you OK, Alice?’
‘They’re smashing the kitchen up.’
‘Are they doing a good job?’
‘It’s hard to know. The place looks like a bomb’s hit it, but I guess that’s the general idea.’
‘Alice, I’ve got to take the boys to football practice. Can you text Steve your train times?’
‘Tell Max to score a goal for me.’
‘You really shouldn’t have favourites, Alice, you know that. Kids pick up on that sort of thing.’
* * *
The train to Berkhamsted is crowded with shoppers: teenagers comparing new trainers; women clutching huge paper bags with string handles; seats taken up by duvets, food processors, printers. Tilly and I sit on opposite seats. She’s distracted by something. Her hands knot around each other and she stares out of the window, her eyes flickering across the landscape.
Steve picks us up at the station. I sit in the passenger seat, even though I’d rather have sat in the back, and look at the tiny purple bag of lavender that swings from the mirror.
* * *
I do my best. I admire the new conservatory: the wicker sofas with their flowered, removable cushions; the wicker coffee table with its glass top; the cacti, like spiked phalluses, in matching brown pots on the long, low windowsill. I sympathise about Martin’s school not putting him in the top maths set; listen to the story about Matthew’s match-winning goal the previous weekend; admire Max’s painting of a space rocket on the fridge. I sit with Tilly, drinking tea on high stools at the breakfast bar, and watch Cee slice chicken breasts into thin pieces. I try not to get annoyed by the fact that, in Cee’s kitchen, the teapot matches the cups, which match the sugar bowl, which matches the coffee pot, which matches the tray, which is tucked into a tray-sized space between the fridge and the wine rack.
‘Do you two know someone called Daniel?’ I ask.
They both look at me.
‘Someone who knew Mama. I think he was at the funeral.’ I am blushing; I can feel heat splotching my cheeks and neck. ‘An older guy, looks a bit like a tramp.’
Cee is pouring tomato sauce over the strips of chicken which sit, fat and pink, in a glass oven dish. ‘A tramp?’ she says.
‘Or whatever you’re supposed to say. Homeless.’
‘Why would Mama know someone who’s homeless?’ Cee smooths the sauce over the chicken.
‘Forget it,’ I say. ‘I just bumped into him, on the street. And I recognised him from the funeral. I think he came to the house. And then that woman, Marina—’ I’m right, she’d asked if I’d met someone called Daniel.
I see Cee and Tilly exchange a glance.
‘What?’ I say.
Cee turns away, opens the fridge door and pulls out a block of cheese.
‘What?’ I turn to Tilly.
‘Nothing.’
I raise my eyebrows.
‘It’s nothing.’ She twists her saucer round and round.
‘Did you talk to him?’ Cee asks. She grates the cheese over the dish and I watch it fall.
‘A bit.’
‘What did he say?’
I lean my elbows on the counter and rest my chin in my palms. ‘Nothing much. We had tea. There was something familiar about him. I wondered if I’d met him when I was little, if he was some kind of long-lost family friend.’
‘You had tea with a tramp?’
‘Cee.’ Tilly’s voice is unusually sharp. ‘Alice, we’re worried about you.’
‘I’m not five any more,’ I snap. ‘I can look after myself.’
‘We know that,’ Tilly says.
I lift my teacup. I would like to throw it at the wall, but instead I take a sip and put it back on the saucer, hard enough to make a noise. ‘Cee, can I use your computer?’
‘Sure.’ She sounds relieved. ‘In the study.’
The study is a small rectangular room at the front of the house. There’s a bookshelf full of Reader’s Digest volumes, and Steve’s back issues of Autocar. I leave the kitchen door open. After a bit of mumbled talking one of them closes it. Fuck them.
I look up flights. Four hundred quid to Delhi. Five hundred to Goa. Eight hundred to La Paz. I try to pictu
re myself with my new rucksack: queuing at a check-in desk; eating hot processed food out of a plastic tray; feeling that flare of adrenalin as we come in to land. I haven’t claimed on my travel insurance for having to come home early, to see Dad. It feels callous. But I have savings, and the money Dad gave me, and there’ll be money from the house soon.
I look up flights to Marrakesh, Bangkok, Tokyo, Nairobi, then give up and sit back in the chair. It’s fake black leather, with wheels and flimsy armrests. I stare at the boys’ school certificates hanging on the wall behind the desk. My father’s dead, I tell myself. He was as bad as those two in the kitchen, I tell myself. Maybe I would give them up, after all. I think about Daniel, and I wonder if he is homeless, and if he is what it must be like not to have four walls and a roof. I think that maybe I should have given him some money, booked him a night in a hotel. I shortlist three flights to Delhi and email the links to myself.
* * *
After dinner, when the boys have been sent off to bed, and Steve has retreated to the garage, the three of us sit in the conservatory on the new sofas, which squeak whenever anyone moves. Cee opens a second bottle of wine. Her cheeks are flushed with alcohol. Tilly’s drinking orange juice. I haven’t mentioned Daniel again, and neither have they.
Tilly is bursting to say something – I can sense it, she’s been bursting with it all evening.
‘What’s up?’ I ask her.
‘I was just thinking you look so like Mama, that’s all.’
I notice Cee flick a glance at her. I swallow. ‘Do you think that’s why Dad—’
‘Why Dad what?’
‘Nothing.’ I fill up my glass. Why didn’t he want to look at me after she died? I was young, but I remember that.
‘You mustn’t think he didn’t love you, Alice,’ Tilly says.
‘Why would I think that?’
Tilly shrugs and chews at her bottom lip. ‘I have something else to say, actually.’
We have never been easy together. I remember visiting a schoolfriend in the holidays once – three kids, a full complement of parents; the whole thing had seemed so effortless. I watch Tilly’s hands twisting against her stomach.
‘I’m pregnant,’ she says.