by Alyson Rudd
‘It’s 1993, Lauren, we should have had two or three women leaders to choose from by now not one big-haired, thinmouthed lady president.’
They were both silent for a minute as they pictured the female ruler of the free world, a childless fifty-six-year-old blonde who abhorred abortion and had famously shot a bear while camping near Mount Rushmore and was never seen in public without her heirloom pearls.
Betty Weaver was not so much disinterested in women’s rights as fearful that to support anything so radical would lose her support among the right of her party who loved her for being so dismissive of the fairer sex.
‘It’s one big fucking joke,’ Lydia said, glaring, as Gregory signalled for the bill.
Lauren nodded but was thinking to herself that for all that was wrong with America’s president and indeed with America, it was a country that produced so much that was culturally rich and aesthetically pleasing.
As they climbed the stairs to the flat, she asked Tim if he would be interested in a long holiday in the States. He seemed perplexed and she was not sure if it was the notion of a holiday that unsettled him or the location she had suggested.
The next day Lauren and Tim stood at the foot of the Albert Memorial.
‘Do you love London?’ Tim asked her. He did not wait for her reply. ‘Because people take it for granted. It is full of spectacular beauty and yet we all jet off to Paris or Rome or Venice or New York for romance. It’s right here though.’
He gazed up at the monument so lovingly commissioned by Queen Victoria and then across at the Royal Albert Hall. And then at Lauren.
‘Are you going all royalist on me?’ She smiled.
He tapped her nose.
‘I just love London,’ he said, trying to sound light-hearted but something was niggling at him, she could tell.
‘Are you saying we can’t go on holiday?’ she asked.
‘No!’ he said, pouting slightly. ‘I’m saying this is the perfect spot to ask a beautiful girl if she will marry me.’
There was silence as Lauren worked through the grammar of what he had just said.
‘I mean, Lauren, will you marry me?’
She had both expected it and not expected it at all.
‘Oh,’ she said. His eyes narrowed. ‘Yes, I’d like that very much,’ she said and his eyes widened.
They kissed and then laughed.
‘But I don’t want to honeymoon here,’ she said.
‘OK,’ he said, ‘but we’ll marry here.’ And that was the start of it, a long argument that he had not even anticipated and which she had not anticipated feeling so strongly about. It was as if all the years of being the only daughter her parents nearly lost summoned their own form of energy. She knew what her wedding meant to Bob and Vera. It meant the local church, it meant the local florist, it meant the big hotel near her father’s office, it meant their friends, their small family. It meant more to them than it did to her where it all took place and that meant it could not happen in London. And her grandparents would struggle to make it down. The thought of Beryl and Alfie bravely trying upset her. There was something strangely delicate about Alfie, as if he were a cat on its final life, as if he were living on borrowed time, that she was lucky he was still around.
Bob
Miranda almost gagged with pride at being trusted with something of George’s that was so personal. He had handed her the key to his mother’s house and a potted history of Bob, Peter and George’s obligation.
‘Mother might not be there, and Bob might not answer the door, but if you could make sure he gets up and dressed and make him a cup of tea and ask him what he’d like to do next. I don’t know, maybe you could give him some advice or something. But let him know he can maybe meet me at the weekend to discuss old times, you know, so he feels part of something.’
Bob sat at the huge kitchen table, unshaven, hair tousled, his eyes guilt-ridden and tinged, she thought, with humiliation.
‘I’m sorry about this,’ he said. Miranda had made him milky cocoa which made him think back to his childhood and the fact he had surely lived more than one man’s life.
‘I think I’m cursed,’ he said. ‘I’d rather be dying right now of cancer, than feeling like this.’
There was silence.
‘Oh, Christ, I’m sorry, you don’t know someone with cancer, do you?’ Bob said. He was certain she would. He was having that sort of week.
‘No,’ Miranda lied. ‘I was just thinking about what you should do, how we can all help.’
She liked the sound of that. It made it seem she was part of the Stanning clan. They were all in it together.
‘I think you’ve done more than enough really,’ Bob said sheepishly. ‘I was… not myself yesterday. I thought I was finding Peter, which was crass of me. I really am terribly sorry.’
And yet, Miranda thought, he stays sitting there, he has not called for a cab or asked about train times. He still needs us.
‘Would it help if we were to discuss your options, Bob?’ she said, her voice rediscovering its Highland lilt as it tended to do when she was emotional or excited.
Bob ran his fingers slowly through his hair and remembered Peter giving him a list of his options once. It was a list that saved his life, that gave him Rachel, that gave him Andrea and gave him another child. It was sinful, really, that he had risked losing all three. And his sister. And a dog.
‘If you have the time, I think I’d like to get things straight in my head before I go anywhere else.’
It took a great deal of effort for Miranda not to beam. She bit her lip and took a deep breath.
‘I’m good at taking notes,’ she said. ‘So we’ll be methodical about this. I’m sure it will help.’
‘OK. But we’ll have to go back to the beginning. Before Lauren… Before my life after Lauren.’
It was an hour that Miranda would never forget. It was an hour in which she felt she could almost touch the pillow made wet by Vera’s dying tears. It was an hour in which she remembered her mother shrieking in grief when she was told that her big sister had been hit by a car and killed. It was an hour in which Miranda realised that in that moment her mother had also been hit by a car too, in a way, and that her injury was a loss of a sense of humour. Since Auntie Marie had died Miranda’s mother had found nothing very amusing.
‘It touches us all,’ she said. ‘We can’t live in this world without grief of some kind.’
Bob sighed.
‘I had thought I had come to terms with that,’ he said, ‘and then I behave like this. She’s the same age as my daughter. It’s so bloody messy.’
As the sun crept through the kitchen window, causing them both to blink, Miranda had what felt like a brainwave. It was a feeling at first rather than a solid idea and she frowned as she tried to find the words to explain it to Bob.
‘When people reach rock bottom,’ she said slowly, ‘they can find a sort of bravery. They can face anything because it can’t get any worse. So I’m thinking, Bob, that you can face your wife and your sister and Andrea and take the blows they give you and, you know, fight your way through because you’ve been through worse and you can’t feel much worse now, can you?’
She was not pleased with her explanation. It sounded a bit like it came from a cheesy play on the radio but Bob was nodding.
‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘I have to let them spit at me if it helps them, don’t I?’
‘Er, maybe,’ Miranda said. They were silent for a few moments and then Bob looked up, his eyes shining.
‘I think I get it,’ he said. ‘I am here in this kitchen because it would be an insult to Vera and my daughter if I was to allow my current situation to be the thing that sends me over the edge. Do you see? I kept going then and I owe it to them to keep going now even though I don’t want to. I must not hide from my responsibilities. I must not give up.’
Miranda exhaled, trying to hide any signs of triumphalism. She would be able to return to work and report to
George that Bob was on the mend.
‘Shall I drive you to the office now, Bob,’ she said, ‘so you can say your goodbyes to George? I can drop you at the station, too, if you like?’
Bob smiled, albeit weakly. He felt weak all over but there was some resolve in him now. He could deflect the pain by telling himself he was suffering for Vera and Lauren. He was about to ask Miranda about train times when he felt his heartbeat rumble in panic. Andrea.
‘Christ, I told Andrea I’d meet her.’
He looked at his wrist but his watch was upstairs. Miranda looked at hers, a gift from George for all the overtime she did not mind giving him. She had worked for Peter and she felt a maternal devotion to the son who was in turn devoted to the business his father had started from scratch.
He would not make the beach in time. He would have to put a note through her door.
‘Here, I’ll help you write it,’ Miranda said. She was beginning to feel omniscient.
She found some paper but no envelopes.
‘We’ll pop this into an envelope at the office and then send you on your way,’ she said.
Bob sat motionless, the pen poised nervously.
‘Tell the truth. Say you are at a friend’s house and he gave you a sleeping pill and you are very sorry indeed and that you will be at the beach… does it have to be the beach?… Then you will be at the beach at ten tomorrow morning and you’ll stay there all day if necessary until you see her. So, pack yourself some sandwiches. I can’t think of a beach picnic without practically tasting cheese and pickle sandwiches.’
Bob looked at her bemused. Was he supposed to write about cheese and pickle sandwiches? And then he smiled and shook his head and signed his name.
George was in a meeting, the sort he would not normally allow to be interrupted, but his father would not have let Bob leave without a handshake. So neither would he.
‘I’m embarrassed, frankly, George, but I want you to know I will be forever in your debt, and in debt to Peter. Thank you. For everything.’
George was pleased to see that Bob was standing straight and sounding sensible rather than something close to suicidal.
‘Let’s keep in touch, Bob,’ George said, and his manner was, Bob realised, effortlessly seductive. This young man, he thought, will go far, and for the first time he noted that he was dressed far better than anyone he had met before, better than any of his clients.
Clients, he thought, when at last on the train, I’ve probably missed meetings I was supposed to have with them as well. It was a mess but he had not been lying to Miranda. He had no option now other than to plough on and bear the brunt of all the hurt and anger, and there was a refreshing martyr-like sustenance to that fact.
Vera
Their postman used a bicycle and had mail in a satchel and parcels in the basket. He always rang his bell when five yards from the front door. On very hot days she would present him with a glass of ice-cold water. On cold days she would ask if he needed a cup of tea. It took two years before he agreed to one so she did not push it and saved the invitations for when it was particularly bitter and the sky was desperate to produce sleet.
‘Wouldn’t say no, Mrs Pailing,’ he said as he wiped his red nose with chapped fingers.
He produced two brown envelopes addressed to Bob and a white one for Vera.
‘I do like a nice handwritten letter, the stamp placed neatly, the address clear as day,’ he said.
‘How often do people open their mail in front of you, Jack?’ Vera asked.
‘Oh, my, that is a good question,’ he said. ‘They often start right away but I make sure to leave straight away. Privacy. Don’t blame the messenger but don’t include the messenger.’
Vera wanted to laugh. Jack was so serious. She ran her fingers along the top of her neat, square letter.
‘It could be an invitation,’ she said.
‘Nope,’ he said. ‘You pick things like that up. It’s not an invitation.’
Vera raised one eyebrow and began to open the envelope. It was clearly not an invitation, it was a letter over one and a half pages, written in blue ink and signed, ‘Karen Millington’.
‘Oh,’ Vera said.
‘Ah,’ Jack said. ‘That is my cue to leave your lovely kitchen, Mrs Pailing.’
‘No, please do finish your tea, and well done, you were right. It’s not an invitation.’
There was an awkward silence so Vera placed the letter unread on the table and walked over to the window.
‘It might snow,’ she said. ‘What do you do when it snows?’
‘I resort to walking,’ he said, hastily gulping down his tea. ‘Some would call it trudging.’
She watched him cycle down the driveway, heard him deliver one jaunty ring of farewell on his bell and then she turned back to the letter.
She and Karen had drifted apart but in an amicable way. Debbie had been so sweet when Hope was born. Perhaps Karen was writing to tell her that Debbie was to be married.
But Karen was dying.
Her letter tried, at its beginning, to be chatty. She mentioned a fundraiser at the girls’ old primary school. But then of how hard it had been to sell the house in The Willows with her sat in a chair, trying to smile through the pain, while yet another young couple wandered through the living room holding property particulars.
‘There’s hardly anything left of me!’ she wrote. ‘And there is so little time left so I wanted you to know I think of you every day, of Lauren every day, and wake every day wishing it had never happened, that I had not been so stupid.
‘Please give my love to my god-daughter, who is remembered in my will,
‘Yours, with love, Karen Millington.’
Later, when it was dark and the sky was littered with specks of snow, Vera handed Bob the letter. He glanced at the feminine, curved handwriting.
‘I don’t want to read anything,’ he said. ‘Summarise for me, darling.’
‘I think,’ Vera said, frowning, ‘we have moved on further than Karen Millington has been able to.’
Bob grunted. He had been quietly glad the families had lost touch. While Vera had been wrapped up with the newborn Hope he had nurtured resentment that the Millingtons had been so reckless. He had opened his front door to them and said ‘hello’ in his friendliest voice so as not to make them feel any guiltier – while all the time wishing that he could shake them and demand why they’d been so fucking stupid.
‘I should see her before…’ Vera said quietly.
‘Sure,’ Bob said, ‘but they left The Willows, didn’t they?’
‘If she’s very ill she’ll be at the St Agnes Hospice or on a ward at the Burton,’ Vera said. ‘Anyway, I’ll find her.’
Two days later Vera walked through the door of Karen’s small, sunny hospital room. Karen blinked her hello. Her voice was reed-like, thin and fragile.
‘Debbie wrote the letter for me,’ she said. ‘I hope you don’t mind, I can’t even lift a pen any more. But they were my words. It’s kind of you to come, Vera.’
Vera kissed her lightly on the forehead.
‘I’m glad you got in touch and just so sorry to find you so unwell.’
‘Not long now,’ Karen said.
Vera sat on the chair next to the bed.
‘I want you to know I’m happy, that I don’t think about that day all the time,’ Vera said. ‘I mean, I miss her, of course I do, but I don’t think badly of you, not at all. You and Julian, you became family to us.’
‘She was a lovely girl,’ Karen whispered. ‘I think she had a crush on our Simon, you know.’
‘No,’ Vera said, ‘really?’
Karen laughed or at least Vera interpreted it as laughter. It sounded like the last crackle of a dimming fire.
‘She was having a really great holiday with us. I need to tell you that. She was so happy.’
‘Thank you,’ Vera said.
‘She would stop and peer at things sometimes,’ Karen said. ‘What was that about?�
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‘I’m not sure. I supposed she was a dreamer, an artist, full of imaginings. We took her to the optician but there was nothing wrong with her eyes.’
‘I think she saw me like this,’ Karen said.
‘Whatever do you mean?’ Vera asked, but Karen had dozed off.
Vera left the hospice a few minutes before Julian arrived to find his wife’s breathing had become shallow and ominous. She died with him holding her hand, and what he hoped was a small smile on her lips.
Lauren
‘I had, to be honest, already imagined the wedding, here, in London, with our London friends, and I most certainly hadn’t imagined a church.’
He was not pouting or even moaning. Lauren could tell he was simply struggling at the prospect of losing control of a project.
She did not want to discuss it. She knew if she started to then it would all descend into bartering. What she wanted was for him to agree to back off, to let Vera take control and create a fairy-tale day. Of course it would be Vera’s fairy tale but, sometimes, other people’s happiness mattered more.
‘You are right, Tim, clearly you’re right, but this is not about being right, it’s about degrees of unhappiness. I believe my mum will be made more unhappy by a London wedding than you will by a Cheshire wedding. We can have a London party separately if you want but there has to be a service and a big dinner up North.’
‘I can be unhappy,’ he said in a mock-competitive voice and she laughed.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘You can choose your own best man,’ but she already knew he would be picking Gregory, who was at that moment on his way to their flat with Lydia and Patti. Tim had bought champagne and it seemed an odd sort of celebration, to knit together their engagement and the perusal of her ‘Missing’ art.
She spread it out, propped up along the full length of the skirting board of the living room. Because drawing was her job and her sketches were relentlessly publicly scrutinised, commercially scrutinised, Lauren did not suffer any bashfulness. She felt almost detached from the array of work that came under the ‘Peter Stanning is Missing’ umbrella.