After You (29 page)

‘Sometimes when it’s like this I think I might not bother building the house at all,’ said Sam. ‘I might just lie in a field till I get old.’

‘Good plan.’ I was chewing a grass stalk. ‘Except the rainwater shower is going to seem a lot less appealing in January.’

I felt his laugh, a low rumble.

I had come straight to him from the restaurant, inexplicably unbalanced by the unexpected absence of Lily. I didn’t want to be in the flat alone. When I had pulled up in the gateway of Sam’s field, I had sat as my car engine ticked its way to sleep and watched him, content in his own company, scraping mortar onto each brick and pressing it to the next, wiping the sweat from his brow on his faded T-shirt, and I had felt something in me unwind. He had said nothing about the slight awkwardness of our last few conversations and I was grateful.

A solitary cloud drifted across the blue. Sam shifted his leg closer to mine. His feet were twice the size of my own.

‘I wonder whether Mrs T has got her photographs out again. You know, for Lily.’

‘Photographs?’

‘Framed pictures. I told you. She didn’t have a single one of Will anywhere that time Lily and I went to her house. I was quite surprised when she sent the album because a little bit of me had wondered if she’d destroyed them all.’

He was silent, thinking.

‘It’s odd. But when I thought about it, I don’t have any pictures of Will on display either. Maybe it just takes a while to … to be able to have them looking at you again. How long did it take you to have your sister by your bed again?’

‘I never took her down. I like having her there, especially looking like … like she used to look.’ He lifted his arm above his head. ‘She used to give it to me straight. Typical big sister. When I think I’ve got something wrong, I look at that picture and I hear her voice.
Sam, you great lunk, just get on with it
.’ He turned his face towards me. ‘And, you know, it’s good for Jake to see her around. He needs to feel that it’s okay to talk about her.’

‘Maybe I’ll put one up. It will be nice for Lily to have pictures of her dad in the flat.’

The hens were loose and a few feet away two of them shivered into a patch of dirt, ruffling their feathers and wiggling, sending up little clouds of dust. Poultry, it turned out, had personalities. There was the bossy chestnut, the affectionate one with the piebald comb, the little bantam that had to be plucked out of the tree every evening and put to bed in the coop.

‘Do you think I should text her? To see how it’s going?’

‘Who?’

‘Lily.’

‘Leave them. They’ll be fine.’

‘I know you’re right. It’s weird. I was watching her in that restaurant and she’s so much more like him than I first realized. I think Mrs Traynor – Camilla – could see it, too. She
kept blinking at Lily’s mannerisms, like she was suddenly remembering stuff Will did. There was this one time when Lily raised an eyebrow, and neither of us could take our eyes off her. She did it just like he used to.

‘So what do you want to do tonight?’

‘Oh … I don’t mind. You choose.’ I stretched out, feeling the grass tickle my neck. ‘I might just lie here. If you happened to fall gently on top of me at some point that would be okay.’

I waited for him to laugh, but he didn’t.

‘So … shall we … talk about us?’

‘Us?’

He pulled a blade of grass through his teeth. ‘Yup. I just thought … well, I wondered what you thought was going on here.’

‘You make us sound like a maths problem.’

‘Just trying to make sure we don’t have any more misunderstandings, Lou.’

I watched him discard the grass, and pick a new blade. ‘I think we’re good,’ I said. ‘Well, I’m not going to accuse you of having a neglected child this time. Or a trail of imaginary girlfriends.’

‘But you’re still holding back.’

It was gently said, but it felt like a kick.

I pushed myself up on my elbow, so that I was looking down on him. ‘I’m here, aren’t I? You’re the first person I call at the end of the day. We see each other when we can. I wouldn’t call that holding back.’

‘Yup. We see each other, we have sex, eat some nice meals.’

‘I thought that was basically every man’s dream relationship.’

‘I’m not every man, Lou.’

We gazed at each other in silence for a minute. I no longer felt relaxed. I felt wrong-footed, defensive.

He sighed. ‘Don’t look like that. I don’t want to get married or anything. I’m just saying … I’ve never met any woman who wanted less to talk about what might be going on.’ He shaded his eyes with his hand, squinting slightly into the sun. ‘It’s fine if you don’t want this to be a long-term thing. Well, okay, it’s not, but I just want an idea of what you’re thinking. I guess, since Ellen died, I’ve realized life is short. I don’t want …’

‘You don’t want what?’

‘To waste time on something that isn’t going anywhere.’

‘
Waste time?
’

‘Bad choice of words. I’m not good at this stuff.’ He pushed himself upright.

‘Why does it have to
be
anything? We have fun together. Why can’t we just let it run and, I don’t know, see what happens?’

‘Because I’m human. Okay? And it’s hard enough to be around someone who is still in love with a ghost, without them also acting like they’re just using you for sex.’ He raised his hand, covering his eyes. ‘Jesus Christ, I can’t believe I just said that out loud.’

My voice, when it emerged, cracked a little. ‘I’m not in love with a ghost.’

This time he didn’t look at me. He pushed himself to a seated position and rubbed at his face. ‘Then let him go, Lou.’

He climbed heavily to his feet and walked off to the railway carriage, leaving me staring behind him.

Lily arrived back the following evening, slightly sunburned. She let herself into the flat and walked past the kitchenette, where I was unloading the washing-machine, wondering for the fifteenth time whether to call Sam, and flopped onto the sofa. As I stood at the counter and watched, she put her feet on the coffee-table, picked up the remote control and flicked on the television.

‘So how was it?’ I said, after a moment had passed.

‘Okay.’

I waited for something more, braced for the remote control to be hurled down, for her to stalk off muttering,
That family is impossible.
But she simply changed channels.

‘What did you do?’

‘Not much. Talked a bit. Actually, we gardened.’ She turned round, resting her chin on her hands on the back of the sofa. ‘Hey, Lou. Have we got any of that cereal with the nuts left? I’m starving.’

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.’