فصل 25

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Are we talking?

Sure. What do you want to say?

Sometimes I look at the lives of the people around me and I wonder if we aren’t all destined to leave a trail of damage. It’s not just your mum and dad who fuck you up, Mr Larkin. I gazed around me, like someone suddenly handed clear glasses, and saw that pretty much everyone bore the brutal imprint of love, whether lost, whipped away from them or simply vanished into a grave.

Will had done it to all of us, I saw now. He hadn’t meant to, but even in simply refusing to live, he had.

I loved a man who had opened up a world to me but hadn’t loved me enough to stay in it. And now I was too afraid to love a man who might love me in case … In case what? I turned it over in my head in the silent hours after Lily had retreated to the glowing digital distractions of her room.

Sam didn’t call. I couldn’t blame him. What would I have said, anyway? The truth was that I didn’t want to talk about what we were because I didn’t know.

It wasn’t that I didn’t love being with him. I suspected I became slightly ridiculous around him – my laugh goofy, my jokes silly and puerile, my passion fierce and surprising even to myself. I felt better when he was there, more the person I wanted to be. More of everything. And yet.

And yet.

To commit to Sam was to commit to the likelihood of more loss. Statistically most relationships ended badly and, given my mental state over the past two years, my chances of beating the odds were pretty low. We could talk around it, we could lose ourselves in brief moments, but love ultimately meant more pain. More damage – to me or, worse, to him.

Who was strong enough for that?

I wasn’t sleeping properly again. So I slept through my alarm and, despite tearing my way up the motorway, arrived late for Granddad’s birthday. In celebration of his eighty years, Dad had brought out the foldaway gazebo we had used for Thomas’s christening, which flapped, mossy and listless, at the end of the garden where, through the open door that led to the back alley, a succession of neighbours popped in and out, bringing cake or good wishes. Granddad sat in the middle of it all on a plastic garden chair, nodding at people he no longer recognized, only occasionally gazing longingly towards his folded copy of the Racing Post.

‘So this promotion,’ Treena was on tea-duty, pouring from an oversized pot and handing out cups, ‘what exactly does it mean?’

‘Well, I get a title. I balance the till at the end of every shift and I get to hold a set of keys.’ This is a serious responsibility, Louisa, Richard Percival had said, bestowing them with as much gravitas and pomposity as if he were handing me the Holy Grail. Use them wisely. He actually said those words. Use them wisely. I wanted to say, What else am I going to do with a set of bar keys? Plough a field?

‘Money?’ She handed me a cup and I sipped at it.

‘A pound an hour extra.’

‘Mm.’ She was unimpressed.

‘And I don’t have to wear the uniform any more.’

She scrutinized the Charlie’s Angels jumpsuit I had put on that morning in honour of the occasion. ‘Well, I guess that’s something.’ She pointed Mrs Laslow towards the sandwiches.

What else could I say? It was a job. Progress of sorts. I didn’t tell her about the days when it felt like a peculiar form of torture to work somewhere where I was forced to watch each plane taxi on the runway, gather its energy like a great bird, then launch itself into the sky. I didn’t tell her how putting on that green polo shirt each day made me feel somehow as if I had lost something.

‘Mum says you’ve got a boyfriend.’

‘He’s not really my boyfriend.’

‘She said that as well. What is it, then? You just bump uglies once in a while?’

‘No. We’re good friends –’

‘So he’s a pig.’

‘He’s not a pig. He’s gorgeous.’

‘But crap in the sack.’

‘He’s wonderful. Not that it’s any of your business. And smart, before you –’

‘Then he’s married.’

‘He is not married. Jesus, Treen. Will you just let me explain? I like him, but I’m not sure I want to get involved just yet.’

‘Because of the long queue of other handsome, employed single sexy men waiting to snap you up?’

I glared at her.

‘I’m just saying. Gift horses and all that.’

‘When do you get your exam results?’

‘Don’t change the subject.’ She sighed and opened a new carton of milk. ‘Couple of weeks.’

‘What’s wrong? You’re going to get top marks. You know you will.’

‘But what’s the difference? I’m stuck.’

I frowned.

‘There are no jobs in Stortfold. But I can’t afford the rent in London, not with childcare for Thom on top. And nobody gets top dollar when they’re first starting out, even with top marks.’

She poured another cup of tea. I wanted to protest, to say it wasn’t so, but I knew only too well how tough the job market was. ‘So what will you do?’

‘Stay here for now, I suppose. Commute, maybe. Hope that Mum’s feminist metamorphosis won’t stop her picking Thom up from school.’ She raised a small smile that wasn’t a smile at all.

I had never seen my sister down. Even if she felt it, she ploughed on, like an automaton, a firm advocate of the ‘short walk and snap out of it’ school of depression. I was trying to work out what to say when there was a sudden commotion on the food table. We looked up to see Mum and Dad facing off over a chocolate cake. They were talking in the lowered, sibilant voices of people who did not want others to know they were arguing, but not enough to stop arguing.

‘Mum? Dad? Everything okay?’ I walked over.

Dad pointed at the table. ‘It’s not a homemade cake.’

‘What?’

‘The cake. It’s not homemade. Look at it.’

I looked at it – a large, lavishly iced chocolate cake, decorated with chocolate buttons between the candles.

Mum shook her head in exasperation. ‘I had an essay to write.’

‘An essay. You’re not at school! You always do a homemade cake for Granddad.’

‘It’s a nice cake. It’s from Waitrose. Daddy doesn’t mind that it’s not homemade.’

‘Yes, he does. He’s your father. You do mind, don’t you, Granddad?’

Granddad looked from one to the other, and gave a tiny shake of his head. Around us, the conversation stuttered to a halt. Our neighbours eyed each other nervously. Bernard and Josie Clark never argued.

‘He’s just saying that because he doesn’t want to hurt your feelings.’ Dad harrumphed.

‘If his feelings aren’t hurt, Bernard, why on earth should yours be? It’s a chocolate cake. It’s not like I ignored his whole birthday.’

‘I just want you to give priority to your family! Is that too much to ask, Josie? One homemade cake?’

‘I’m here! There’s a cake, with candles! Here’s the ruddy sandwiches! I’m not off sunning myself in the Bahamas!’ Mum put her pile of plates heavily on the trestle table and folded her arms.

Dad went to speak again but she shut him up with a raised hand. ‘So, Bernard, you devoted family man, you, exactly how much of this little lot did you put together, eh?’

‘Uh-oh …’ Treena moved a step closer to me.

‘Did you buy Daddy’s new pyjamas? Did you? Did you wrap them? No. You wouldn’t even know what bloody size he is. You don’t even know what bloody size your own pants are because I BUY THEM FOR YOU. Did you get up at seven o’clock this morning to fetch the bread for the sandwiches because some eejit came back from the pub last night and decided he needed to eat two rounds of toast and left the rest of the loaf out to get stale? No. You sat on your arse reading the sports pages. You gripe away at me for weeks on end because I’ve dared to claim back twenty per cent of my life for myself, to try to work out whether there is anything else I can do before I shuffle off this mortal coil, and while I’m still doing your washing, looking after Granddad and doing the dishes, you’re there harping on at me about a shop-bought fecking cake. Well, Bernard, you can take the fecking shop-bought cake that is apparently such a sign of neglect and disrespect and you can shove it up your –’ she let out a roar ‘– up your … well … There’s the kitchen, there’s my ruddy mixing bowl, you can make one your ruddy self!’

With that, Mum flipped the cake plate upwards, so that it landed nose down in front of Dad, wiped her hands on her apron, and stomped up the garden to the house.

She stopped when she got to the patio, wrenched her apron over her head, and threw it to the ground. ‘Oh, yes! Treena? You’d better show your daddy where the recipe books are. He’s only lived here twenty-eight years. He can’t possibly be expected to know himself.’

After that, Granddad’s party didn’t last long. The neighbours drifted away, conferring in hushed tones, and thanking us effusively for the lovely party, their eyes flickering towards the kitchen. I could see they felt as thrown as I did.

‘It’s been brewing for weeks,’ Treena muttered, as we cleared the table. ‘He feels neglected. She can’t understand why he won’t just let her grow a little.’

I glanced to where Dad was grumpily picking up napkins and empty beer cans from the grass. He looked utterly miserable. I thought of my mother at the London hotel, glowing with new life. ‘But they’re old! They’re meant to have all this relationship stuff sewn up!’

My sister raised her eyebrows.

‘You don’t think … ?’

‘Of course not,’ said Treena. But she didn’t sound quite as convinced as she might have done.

I helped Treena tidy the kitchen, and played ten minutes of Super Mario with Thom. Mum stayed in her room, apparently working on her essay, and Granddad retreated with some relief to the more reliable consolations of Channel 4 Racing. I wondered if Dad had gone down the pub again, but as I stepped out of the front door to leave, there he was, sitting in the driver’s seat of his work van.

I knocked on the window and he jumped. I opened the door and slid in beside him. I’d thought maybe he was listening to sports results but the radio was silent.

He let out a long breath. ‘I bet you think I’m an old fool.’

‘You’re not an old fool, Dad.’ I nudged him. ‘Well, you’re not old.’

We sat in silence, watching the Ellis boys wheel up and down the road on their bikes, wincing in unison when the littler one took a skid too fast and slid halfway across the road.

‘I want things to stay the same. Is that so much to ask?’

‘Nothing stays the same, Dad.’

‘I just … I just miss my wife.’ He sounded so bleak.

‘You know, you could just enjoy the fact that you’re married to someone who still has a bit of life in her. Mum’s excited. She feels like she’s seeing the world through new eyes. You’ve just got to allow her some room.’

His mouth was set in a grim line.

‘She’s still your wife, Dad. She loves you.’

He finally turned to face me. ‘What if she decides that I’m the one with no life? What if all this new stuff turns her head and …’ He gulped. ‘What if she leaves me behind?’

I squeezed his hand. Then I thought better and leaned over and gave him a hug. ‘You won’t let that happen.’

The wan smile he gave me stayed with me the whole way home.

Lily came in just as I was leaving for the Moving On Circle. She had been with Camilla again, and arrived home, as she often did now, with black fingernails from gardening. They had created a whole new border for a neighbour, she said cheerfully, and the woman had been so pleased she had given Lily thirty pounds. ‘Actually, she gave us a bottle of wine too but I said Granny should keep that.’ I noted the unselfconscious ‘Granny’.

‘Oh, and I spoke to Georgina on Skype last night. I mean it was morning there, because it’s Australia, but it was really nice. She’s going to email me a whole load of pictures of when she and my dad were little. She said that I really look like him. She’s quite pretty. She has a dog called Jakob and it howls when she plays the piano.’

I put a bowl of salad and some bread and cheese on the table for Lily as she chatted on. I wondered whether to tell her that Steven Traynor had called again, the fourth time in as many weeks, hoping to persuade her to go and see the new baby. ‘We’re all family. And Della is feeling much more relaxed about things now that the baby is safely here.’ Maybe that was a conversation for another time. I reached for my keys.

‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Before you go. I’m going back to school.’

‘What?’

‘I’m going back to the school near Granny’s house. Do you remember? The one I told you about? The one I actually liked? Weekly boarding. Just for sixth form. And I’m going to live with Granny at weekends.’

I had missed a leaf with the salad dressing. ‘Oh.’

‘Sorry. I did want to tell you. But it’s all happened really fast. I was talking about it, and just on the off-chance Granny rang up the school and they said I’d be welcome, and you’ll never guess what – my friend Holly’s still there! I spoke to her on Facebook and she said she can’t wait for me to come back. I mean, I didn’t tell her everything that’s happened, and I probably won’t tell her any of it, but it was just really nice. She knew me before it all went wrong. She’s just … okay, you know?’

I listened to her talking animatedly and fought the sensation that I had been shed, like a skin. ‘When is all this going to happen?’

‘Well, I need to be there for the start of term in September. Granny thought it would probably be best if I moved quite soon. Maybe next week?’

‘Next week?’ I felt winded. ‘What – what does your mum say?’

‘She’s just glad I’m going back to school, especially since Granny’s paying. She had to tell the school a bit about my last school and the fact that I didn’t take my exams, and you can tell she doesn’t like Granny much, but she said it would be fine. “If that’s actually going to make you happy, Lily. And I do hope you’re not going to treat your grandmother the way you’ve treated everyone else.” ’

She cackled at her own impression of Tanya. ‘I caught Granny’s eye when she said that, and Granny’s eyebrow went up the tiniest bit but you could totally see what she thought. Did I tell you she’s dyed her hair? A sort of chestnut brown. She looks quite good now. Less like a cancer patient.’

‘Lily!’

‘It’s all right. She laughed when I told her that.’ She smiled to herself. ‘It was the kind of thing Dad would have said.’

‘Well,’ I muttered, when I’d caught my breath, ‘sounds like you’ve got it all worked out.’

She shot me a look. ‘Don’t say it like that.’

‘Sorry. It’s just … I’ll miss you.’

She beamed, an abrupt, brilliant smile. ‘You won’t miss me, silly, because I’ll still be back down in the holidays and stuff. I can’t spend all my time in Oxfordshire with old people or I’ll go mad. But it’s good. She just … she feels like my family. It doesn’t feel weird. I thought it would, but it doesn’t. Hey, Lou …’ She hugged me, exuberantly. ‘You’ll still be my friend. You’re basically the sister I never had.’

I hugged her back and tried to keep the smile on my face.

‘Anyway. You need your privacy.’ She disentangled herself and pulled a piece of gum from her mouth, folding it carefully into a torn piece of paper. ‘Having to listen to you and Hot Ambulance Man shagging across the corridor was actually pretty gross.’

Lily is going.

Going where?

To live with her grandmother. I feel strange. She’s so happy about it. Sorry. I don’t mean to talk about Will-related things all the time, but I can’t really talk to anyone else.

Lily packed her bag, cheerfully stripping my second bedroom of nearly every sign she had ever been there, apart from the Kandinsky print and the camp bed, a pile of glossy magazines and an empty deodorant canister. I dropped her at the station, listening to her non-stop chatter and trying not to look as unbalanced as I felt. Camilla Traynor would be waiting at the other end.

‘You should come up. We’ve got my room really nice. There’s a horse next door that the farmer across the way says I can ride. Oh, and there’s quite a nice pub.’

She glanced up at the departures board, and bounced on her toes, suddenly seeing the time. ‘Bugger. My train. Right. Where’s platform eleven?’ She began to run briskly through the crowd, her holdall slung over her shoulder, her legs long in black tights. I stood, frozen, watching her go. Her stride had grown longer.

Suddenly she turned and, spotting me by the entrance, waved, her smile wide, her hair flying up around her face. ‘Hey, Lou!’ she yelled. ‘I meant to say to you. Moving on doesn’t mean you loved my dad any less, you know. I’m pretty sure even he would tell you that.’

And then she was gone, swallowed by the crowd.

Her smile was like his.

She was never yours, Lou.

I know. It’s I suppose she was the thing I felt was giving me a purpose.

Only one person can give you a purpose.

I let myself absorb these words for a minute.

Can we meet? Please?

I’m on shift tonight.

Come to mine after?

Maybe later in the week. I’ll call you.

It was the ‘maybe’ that did it. There was something final in it, the slow closing of a door. I stared at my phone as the commuters swarmed around me and something in me shifted too. Either I could go home and mourn yet another thing I had lost, or I could embrace an unexpected freedom. It was as if a light had gone on: the only way to avoid being left behind was to start moving.

I went home, made myself a coffee and stared at the green wall. Then I pulled out my laptop.

Dear Mr Gopnik,

My name is Louisa Clark and last month you were kind enough to offer me a job, which I had to turn down. I appreciate that you will have filled your position by now, but if I don’t say this I will regret it for ever.

I really wanted your job. If the child of my former employer hadn’t turned up in trouble, I would have taken it like a shot. I do not want to blame her for my decision, as it was a privilege to help sort things out for her. But I just wanted to say that if you ever need someone again I really hope you might consider getting in touch.

I know you are a busy man so I won’t go on, but I just needed you to know.

With best wishes

Louisa Clark

I wasn’t sure what I was doing but at least I was doing something. I pressed send, and with that tiny action, I was suddenly filled with purpose. I raced into the bathroom and ran the shower, stripping off my clothes and tripping on my trouser legs in my hurry to get out of them and under the hot water. I began to lather my hair, already planning ahead. I was going to go to the ambulance station, and I was going to find Sam and I was –

The doorbell rang. I swore and grabbed a towel.

‘I’ve had it,’ my mother said.

It took me a moment to register that it was actually her standing there, holding an overnight bag. I pulled my towel around me, my hair dripping onto the carpet. ‘Had what?’

She stepped in, closing the front door behind her. ‘Your father. Grumbling incessantly at me about everything I do. Acting as if I’m some kind of harlot just for wanting a little time to myself. So I told him I was coming here for a little break.’

‘A break?’

‘Louisa, you have no idea. All the mumping and grumping. I can’t stay set in stone, you know? Everyone else gets to change. Why can’t I?’

It was as if I’d come halfway into a conversation that had been going on for an hour. Possibly in a bar. After hours.

‘When I started that feminist consciousness course, I thought a fair bit of it was exaggerated. Man’s patriarchal control of woman? Even the unconscious kind? Well, they only had the half of it. Your father simply can’t see me as a person beyond what I put on the table or put out in bed.’

‘Uh –’

‘Oh. Too much?’

‘Possibly.’

‘Let’s discuss it over some tea.’ My mother walked past me and into the kitchen. ‘Well, this looks a bit better. I’m still not sure about that green, though. It washes you right out. Now, where are your teabags?’

My mother sat on the sofa and, as her tea grew cold, I listened to her litany of frustration and tried not to think about the time. Sam would be arriving for his shift in half an hour. It would take twenty minutes to get over to the ambulance station. And then my mother’s voice would lift and her hands would end up somewhere around her ears and I knew I was going nowhere.

‘Do you know how stifling it is to be told you’re never going to be able to change? For the rest of your life? Because nobody else wants you to? Do you know how awful it is to feel stuck?’

I nodded vigorously. I did. I really did. ‘I’m sure Dad doesn’t mean for you to feel like that – but listen, I –’

‘I even suggested he take a course at the night school. Something he might like – you know, repairing antiques or life drawing or something. I don’t mind him looking at the nudies! I thought we could grow together! That’s the kind of wife I’m trying to be, the kind that doesn’t even mind her husband looking at nudies, if it’s in the name of culture … But he’s all “What would I want to go down there for?” It’s like he’s got the ruddy menopause. And as for the rabbiting on about me not shaving my legs! Oh, my days. He’s so hypocritical. Do you know how long the hairs in his nostrils are, Louisa?’

‘N-no.’

‘I’ll tell you! He could wipe his plate with them. For the last fifteen years, I’ve been the one telling the barber to give him a trim up there, you know? Like he’s some kind of child. Do I mind? No! Because that’s the way he is. He’s a human being! Nose hair and all! But if I dare not to be as smooth as a ruddy baby’s bottom he acts like I’ve turned into flipping Chewbacca!’

It was ten minutes to six. Sam would be heading out at half past. I sighed, and pulled my towel around me.

‘So … um … how long do you think you’ll be here?’

‘Well, now, I don’t know.’ Mum took a sip of her tea. ‘We’ve got the social services bringing Granddad his lunch now so it’s not like I’ve got to be there all the time. I might just stay for a few days. We had a lovely time last time I was here, didn’t we? We could go and see Maria in the toilets tomorrow. Wouldn’t that be nice!’

‘Lovely.’

‘Right. Well, I’ll make up the spare bed. Where is the spare bed?’

We had just stood up when the buzzer went again. I opened the door, expecting a random pizza delivery, but there stood Treena and Thom and, behind them, his hands jammed into his trouser pockets like a recalcitrant teenager, my father.

She didn’t even look at me. She just walked in past me. ‘Mum. This is ridiculous. You can’t just run away from Dad. How old are you? Fourteen?’

‘I am not running away, Treena. I am giving myself breathing space.’

‘Well, we’re going to sit here until you two have sorted this ridiculous thing out. You know he’s been sleeping in his van, Lou?’

‘What? You didn’t tell me that.’ I turned to Mum.

She lifted her chin. ‘You didn’t give me a chance, with all your talking.’

Mum and Dad stood there not looking at each other.

‘I have nothing to say to your father right now,’ Mum said.

‘Sit down,’ said Treena. ‘The both of you.’ They shuffled towards the sofa, casting mute glances of resentment at each other. She turned to me. ‘Right. Let’s make tea. And then we’re going to sort this out as a family.’

‘Great idea!’ I said, sensing my chance. ‘There’s milk in the fridge. Tea’s on the side. Help yourselves. I’ve got to pop out for half an hour.’ And before anyone could stop me I had whipped on a pair of jeans and a top and was running out of the flat with my car keys.

I saw him even as I turned the car into the ambulance-station car park. He was striding towards the ambulance, his pack slung over his shoulder, and something inside me lurched. I knew the delicious solidity of that body, the soft angles of that face. He turned and his step faltered, as if I had been the last thing he had expected to see. Then he turned back to the ambulance, hauling open the rear doors.

I walked towards him across the tarmac. ‘Can we talk?’

He lifted an oxygen tank like it was a tin of hairspray, securing it in its holder. ‘Sure. But it’ll have to be some other time. I’m on my way out.’

‘It won’t wait.’

His expression didn’t flicker. He stooped to pick up a pack of gauze.

‘Look. I just wanted to explain … what we were talking about. I do like you. I really like you. I just – I’m just scared.’

‘We’re all scared, Lou.’

‘You’re not scared of anything.’

‘Yeah. I am. Just not stuff you’d notice.’

He stared at his boots. And then he saw Donna running towards him. ‘Ah, hell. I’ve got to go.’

I jumped into the rear of the ambulance. ‘I’ll come with you. I’ll get a taxi home from wherever you’re headed.’

‘No.’

‘Ah, come on. Please.’

‘So I can get in even more trouble with Disciplinary?’

‘Red Two, reports of a stabbing, young male.’ Donna threw her pack into the back of the ambulance.

‘We have to go, Louisa.’

I was losing him. I could feel it, in the tone of his voice, the way he wouldn’t look at me directly. I climbed out of the back, cursing my lateness. But Donna took me by the elbow and steered me towards the front. ‘For God’s sake,’ she said, as Sam made to protest. ‘You’ve been like a bear with a sore head all week. Just sort this thing out. We’ll drop her before we get there.’

Sam walked briskly around to the passenger door and opened it, casting a glance at the controller’s office. ‘She’d make a great relationship counsellor.’ His voice hardened. ‘If we were, you know, in a relationship.’

I didn’t need telling twice. Sam climbed into the driving seat and looked at me as if he were going to say something, then changed his mind. Donna began sorting out equipment. He started the ignition and put the blue light on.

‘Where are we headed?’

‘We are headed to the estate. About seven minutes away with blues and twos. You are headed to the high street, two minutes from Kingsbury.’

‘So I’ve got five minutes?’

‘And a long walk back.’

‘Okay,’ I said. And realized, as we sped forward, that I really had no idea what to say next.