From Something Old

by Alexander, Nick

  As I drove, I worked out the details in my mind. Any future jobs that we hadn’t yet started – the kitchens we’d planned to fit from March onwards – I’d just cancel. If Joe and Marius wanted to take those on then, as long as they could convince our clients, they could have them. That would be my parting gift.

  I’d talk to Amy and Ben to negotiate a new deal whereby he’d either come to me in school holidays or during term time. If I was living with or even nearby Dad, then either of those solutions would work fine. All Ben had to do was to choose.

  The furniture? Amy could have it. The house? I didn’t want to see it ever again.

  During the three remaining weekends in January, I’d start moving my stuff up to Dad’s, and by February, it would all be done. I’d have a fresh life waiting for me in Whitby – I was taking control, and that felt good.

  Back in Chislet, I found Amy and Ben watching Star Trek while they waited for me. The scene was so domestic, so familiar, that the sight of the two of them together gave me a physical pain in my chest.

  I pinched Ben’s shoulder affectionately, Star Trek style, and then, catching Amy’s eye, I nodded towards the door.

  ‘Good visit, then?’ she asked, on entering the kitchen.

  ‘Sure,’ I said. ‘It was fine.’

  ‘Are you moving back up there?’

  I nodded. ‘Yeah,’ I replied. ‘I think I might be. How did you know?’

  Amy shrugged. ‘It just came to me when you drove off yesterday,’ she said. ‘I don’t know why, but it did.’

  ‘It makes sense,’ I said. ‘I need a proper fresh start somewhere new.’

  ‘Only Whitby isn’t new, is it?’ Amy said. ‘It’s more like going backwards.’

  ‘Maybe,’ I said.

  ‘Wouldn’t you rather start over somewhere fresh?’ Amy asked.

  I looked at her in consternation, and she got the message. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘That’s, of course, entirely up to you.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes, it is, kind of.’

  ‘I suppose you’ll be taking Ben in the holidays?’ Amy said. ‘So that he doesn’t need to swap schools?’

  ‘Hopefully. That would seem to make most sense. Do you think he’ll mind?’

  She shook her head. ‘No, I honestly don’t think so. As long as he can live in his beloved bedroom here, he’ll be fine.’

  ‘When he’s eleven, he’ll have to change schools anyway,’ I said. ‘So he can decide then where he wants to be.’

  ‘Maybe. We’ll see. You look happier, anyway.’

  ‘I am,’ I told her. ‘I needed to make a change. And now I’ve worked out this is it.’

  ‘I get that,’ Amy said. ‘I’m the same.’

  On Monday, I took Joe and Marius for a pub lunch. It was the gentlest way I could find to break the news. Neither of them seemed unduly worried or even particularly surprised when I told them. If anything, young Joe looked positively stoked about it all. ‘So we can set up our own company, and just take over all the new jobs?’ he asked, bright-eyed. ‘Is that what you’re saying?’

  I nodded. ‘That’s pretty much it. Yeah.’

  ‘You up for that, then, Marius?’ he asked. ‘Just me and you?’

  Marius wobbled his head from side to side. ‘We’ll see,’ he said. ‘I have to deal with this, how you call it? This leave to remain. When I deal with that, we’ll see.’ Leave to remain was the new legal status for EU citizens who wanted to stay in the UK post-Brexit, and the press had been full of horror stories about people being unexpectedly refused.

  ‘You’ll be OK, won’t you?’ I asked. ‘You’ve been living here for years.’

  ‘Of course he will,’ Joe said. ‘He’s almost as English as I am.’

  ‘We’ll see,’ Marius said again.

  Telling Ben wasn’t much more challenging when it came to it. At nine, he was in a phase where his most frequent reaction to things was Whatever. Though that had frequently annoyed me in the past, and though I suspected he was using this fake nonchalance to hide his pain about everything that was happening, I’ll admit that it suited me right then. So I restrained myself from digging any deeper. Life almost certainly wasn’t panning out the way Ben would have liked, but nor was mine . . . Whatever seemed as good a reaction as any.

  I spent January deconstructing everything I’d built: cancelling jobs, closing bank accounts and, back at the house – a house I now thought of as ‘Amy’s’ – pulling pictures from the walls. As my stuff was withdrawn from her carefully constructed love nest, the place started to look threadbare and sad. It was surprising how little I needed to remove – revealing a stain where a picture had once hung, or a closet containing nothing but mouse droppings – before the whole place began to look as if it had been abandoned. As this new shabby status seemed to match the reality of our lives so much better than the catalogue-perfect interior we’d been living in, it didn’t feel so much like destruction, more a kind of reveal of an innate shabbiness we’d been masking all along. Pulling it apart felt honest, somehow, like ripping a plaster from a wound so that it could heal.

  January went by so fast that I didn’t find time to drink, or even notice that I wasn’t drinking. And that was a very good thing.

  I was working twelve-hour days, from eight to eight basically, and then collapsing in exhaustion once I got home. We were running late on two out of four jobs, and I needed them finished before I moved.

  On weekends, I’d load the pickup with my stuff – select items of furniture or hi-fi, CDs that were indisputably mine, plus books and clothes and lots and lots of tools – which I would then drive up to Dad’s.

  For most of these trips, Ben came with me, and I have great memories of the conversations we had during those long hours spent side by side in the car. Because once we’d exhausted Ben’s favourite subjects – namely school, video games and space exploration – we found ourselves talking about ourselves in more depth than ever before. Gradually the conversation shifted towards a discussion about everything that had happened, and more importantly, where we were going from here.

  I was so impressed by how mature he was, and I found myself telling him the truth. He’d suddenly grown up and I hadn’t noticed, but now here he was, someone I could really talk to. Answering his questions, which were many, I explained how his mum had never been that happy being married to me, and that I was glad to see that she finally was. I admitted that I’d been hurt by the idea that she could choose Ant over me, but that I was starting to find it easier to accept. At one point, Ben asked me if I thought I’d ever get married again, and I told him honestly that I hoped I would. ‘Well, maybe not married,’ I said, ‘but I certainly hope I’ll find another girlfriend.’

  ‘So that you can have sex?’ he asked, making me burst out laughing.

  ‘Yeah, sex is nice,’ I admitted. ‘I sure hope that my sex life isn’t over. Forty-two is a bit early for that.’

  ‘Eww,’ Ben said, and I laughed some more. He was at the precise age where sex intrigued and embarrassed him in equal measure.

  ‘So, what do you think of Ant?’ I asked him. ‘And tell me the truth. It’s totally OK for you to like him, you know.’

  ‘He’s a dork,’ Ben said. ‘But he’s OK.’

  ‘How can he be a dork and be OK?’ I asked.

  Ben shrugged. ‘He tries too hard,’ he explained. ‘He wants everyone to like him, but he doesn’t know how. He buys me loads of stuff, though, so I suppose he’s OK really.’

  ‘Right,’ I said. ‘I see.’

  On the first weekend in February, I took the trip to Whitby alone. Heather was hosting a birthday party for Sarah, and because Amy and Ant were on a romantic weekender to Bath, she invited Ben to sleep over. As I was intending to spray-paint the walls of our future bedrooms, not having Ben along suited me fine.

  On Sunday I got back later than intended, flecks of paint still lodged in my hair.

  Ben was eating in Heather’s kitchen with the girls, and while I waited
for him to finish, she and I chatted for the first time since Christmas. She’d heard, via Ben, about my imminent relocation, and she wanted to know all the details.

  So, I told her about Dad’s house, and how they had run it as a bed and breakfast. I described the sea views and the gulls, and the storms lashing against the windows.

  ‘That sounds gorgeous,’ she said. ‘I love the coast. I always wanted to live by the sea.’

  ‘I didn’t know that,’ I said.

  ‘Well, it’s just so beautiful, isn’t it?’ Heather said. ‘I love the way that every time you look it changes. Even in bad weather, the sea looks amazing. And the light on the coast is so different, isn’t it? It always makes everything look brighter, more vibrant. I always thought my life would be more vibrant in a way, if I could just live overlooking the sea.’

  ‘It is pretty nice,’ I said, thinking about the way that every now and then Heather seemed to open up, seemed to allow herself to express her thoughts. And when she did, her eyes sparkled and her voice changed. It was like there was this whole different person hiding inside her that she rarely let out to play. I remember wondering if it was Ant’s fault that she had shut down, and what she would have been like if she’d never met him.

  ‘You’re so lucky to have grown up there,’ Heather said. ‘It must have been amazing.’

  ‘Yeah, it was pretty cool,’ I said. ‘You’ll have to come and visit.’ Addressing Ben, I added, ‘Won’t she, Ben?’

  Heather blushed and laughed and said, ‘Oh, of course!’ in a peculiar mocking voice.

  ‘No, seriously, Heather,’ I insisted. ‘You should. Come in the school holidays, and the kids can go to the beach. It’s not like there’s a lack of space or anything.’

  ‘Well, that’s very kind of you,’ she said. ‘But I’m sure your dad doesn’t want us running around under his feet.’

  ‘That’s only because you don’t know him,’ I told her. ‘Dad’s very much a more’s the merrier kind of guy.’

  ‘Are you taking Riley with you?’ Lucy asked. ‘Or is she going to live with Dad and Amy?’

  I gritted my teeth and turned to face Heather. ‘Ah,’ I said. ‘Riley . . .’

  She looked at me quizzically.

  ‘So, Heather,’ I began, with a nervous cough. ‘I have a confession to make to you about Riley.’

  ‘It is Dandy!’ she said, wide-eyed. ‘I knew it!’

  I nodded and grimaced as if my teeth hurt. ‘I’m so sorry. I was going to tell you the truth,’ I said. ‘That first time you recognised him, I wanted to say. But Amy came up with that stuff about us having him from a kitten, and I felt kind of stuck in the middle.’

  ‘God, I knew it!’ Heather said again. ‘You naughty, evil cat-thief, you!’

  ‘But he honestly came to us of his own accord. We had no idea he was anyone’s, I swear.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure,’ Heather said. ‘You know what cats are like. No loyalty at all! At least he landed on his feet.’

  ‘But seriously, do you want him back?’ I asked. ‘Because now’s the perfect moment. Ant won’t have him, apparently, and my dad’s already got a cat. I’m not sure Boris and Riley would get on, so . . .’

  ‘Dad!’ Ben protested. ‘You can’t just give Riley away. He’s my cat!’

  ‘Yeah, only Riley is actually Heather’s cat, champ,’ I explained. ‘You remember how he just started coming in our kitchen window, don’t you? Right back in the beginning?’

  Ben shook his head.

  ‘OK, well, you were little. But he just started coming in through the window, and he was hungry, so we fed him. But he was Heather’s cat all along. He’d just got lost. That’s how he ended up at ours.’

  ‘Yeah, but now he’s mine,’ Ben said.

  ‘But if he’s Dandy, he has to come home,’ Lucy said.

  My phone buzzed then, and as it was Joe-the-younger, and as it was also the third time he’d called, I made my excuses to Heather and stepped out into the conservatory to take it.

  ‘Joe!’ he said as soon as I picked up. ‘Thank Christ. I’ve been trying to call you for hours.’

  ‘Yeah, I can see that,’ I told him. ‘I was driving. What’s up?’

  ‘It’s Marius,’ he said. ‘He’s only fucked off.’

  ‘You what?’ I said.

  Marius, Joe explained, had unexpectedly gone home to Romania. He’d been renting a small flat from the owner of a local pub, and it was the barman who’d given Joe the news.

  At first, I found the story hard to believe. After all, I’d worked with Marius all day Friday, and he hadn’t said a word. I was even pretty certain he’d said, ‘See you Monday,’ on leaving the job at five, though perhaps that had been me. But Joe insisted it was true and when, on hanging up, I called Marius, his phone went straight to voicemail. As I’d paid him in full just before the weekend, it wasn’t beyond the realms of possibility.

  ‘So is it true? Can we really have Dandy back?’ Heather asked, when I finally stepped back into the kitchen. ‘I’ve told Ben he can visit any time he wants, and he says that’s OK.’

  ‘He’ll probably just come back to ours anyway,’ Ben said. ‘The gardens all join up.’

  ‘Um?’ I said, still thinking about Marius and all the jobs we needed to finish. ‘Oh, yeah, if you’re willing, that would be great.’

  ‘Are you OK?’ Heather asked. ‘You look, I don’t know . . . strange.’

  ‘Yes, strange news,’ I said. ‘Kind of bad news, I suppose, if it’s true.’

  ‘Nothing serious, I hope?’ she said. ‘Everyone’s OK, aren’t they?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘One of my employees has gone AWOL.’ I moved across the room to squeeze Ben’s shoulder. ‘Can we go, champ?’ I asked him. ‘I need to go round to Marius’s place and see what’s up.’

  Shocking as it was, it was true: Marius had done an overnight flit. His flat had been completely cleared out.

  I went to the pub and spoke to the landlord. He said Marius had paid him till the end of the month, and that he’d already found a new tenant.

  I phoned Marius about twenty times during the next few days, but my calls always went straight to voicemail. Later on, at the end of the month, that number would cease to work entirely.

  As we were working on site, I didn’t call into the workshop until later in the week. I’d cleared out most of the tools anyway by then, so other than to pick up the mail, I had no real reason to go there. But on Thursday afternoon when I dropped in, a letter from Marius was waiting for me on the workbench.

  Despite the fact that his written English was pretty approximative, he managed to make himself clear. In a nutshell, it seemed that his request to remain had been refused, and he hadn’t had the stomach to fight the decision. That refusal, in the form of a letter from immigration, which he’d enclosed, was the ‘small log that overturns the big cart’, he said. Which I can only assume is the Romanian equivalent of the straw that breaks the camel’s back. The letter informed him, pretty abruptly it has to be said, that he had twenty-eight days to leave the country. In his handwritten letter to me, he explained that he’d been thinking of going home since the Brexit vote, but had stayed on out of a sense of duty to me. But now you are go home, Marius go home too. Goodbye, my friend.

  While I could understand the man’s anger completely – I was feeling pretty angry about how he’d been treated myself – I just wished he’d given me twenty-eight days’ notice. Because without him there was no way we could finish the jobs we had underway, and certainly not by the fourteenth of February.

  If Marius’s departure threw a spanner in the works for me, things were even more complicated for Joe-the-younger. He’d signed contracts with two new clients to do their kitchens, it transpired, and had already ordered flat-pack units for the first.

  ‘You’ve gotta help me out, Joe,’ he pleaded. ‘Because otherwise, I’m screwed.’

  And I’d worked with the guy for years. What else was I going to do?

&
nbsp; Thirteen

  Heather

  It was the girls who first told me about Joe’s change of plans. It was a cold, grey, drizzly Sunday morning and we were waiting for Ant to arrive. He was due to take them out for the day, though Lord knows what he was intending to do with them in such dreadful weather.

  Sarah was busy throwing those sticky jelly-men at the big conservatory window, leaving stains that would be a bugger to clean, when a neighbour’s long-haired cat nonchalantly crossed our lawn. This prompted her to ask when Dandy was coming home.

  ‘Soon,’ I told her, looking up from a magazine I was absent-mindedly leafing through. ‘In about a week or two, I expect. Why? Are you looking forward to giving him lots of cuddles?’

  She nodded. ‘I want him to sleep on my bed like before. Do you think he will?’

  ‘I’m sure he will,’ I said.

  ‘What day will he be coming?’

  ‘I don’t know, sweetheart,’ I said. ‘It depends what day Joe’s moving house. I’ll give him a call later on if you want.’

  ‘I hope it’s tomorrow.’

  ‘It won’t be,’ I told her. ‘But maybe at the weekend if you’re lucky.’

  Lucy, who was playing with Lego, looked up. ‘Joe’s not moving any more,’ she announced.

  I laughed. ‘I think you’ll find that he is.’

  ‘OK, only he isn’t.’

  My daughter suddenly had my full attention. ‘Why do you say that, Luce?’ I asked, putting the magazine to one side and leaning forward.

  ‘Well,’ she said, taking a deep breath. ‘He was going to move, but then Marius – that’s the man he works with who makes all the cupboards – went back to live in . . . somewhere. Some foreign place, where he lived before, I think. Anyway, now Joe has to stay here so that he can do all the kitchens in everybody’s houses.’

  Lucy had always spoken in long, breathless monologues, but recently they’d come to at least be coherent, and occasionally, like now, they were even interesting.

  ‘So Joe and Joe, that’s the other man he works with – they’re both called Joe, which is really funny if you think about it – they have to do all the jobs that Marius was s’posed to do, only Joe doesn’t have anywhere to live any more because Daddy and Amy are moving back into the house down the road that Joe lives in, so who knows where he’ll go now or what will happen to Dandy.’