By My Side (11 page)

I turn to him. ‘No, I didn’t.’

‘They have the most extraordinary shaped leaves with these square tops. I tell you what. Why don’t we go for a walk after lunch and I can show you?’ he suggests, with warmth and charm, and for a split second I see Charlie in him, thirty years later.

*

‘Careful,’ Mrs Bell says, as she stands in front of the squatting Buddha, watching Charlie carrying me upstairs. ‘Don’t hurt yourself.’

‘It’s fine, Mum,’ Charlie says, as if he’s now well practised at heaving me around.

Soon he’s bringing down my luggage and then carrying me back downstairs, and I’m aware it’s hard work. Henry offers to help lift me. ‘No, Henry!’ Mrs Bell jumps in. ‘You’re not a spring chicken any more.’

Mrs Bell wants me to sign the visitors’ book. ‘Oh dear,’ she says as she finds the right page. ‘We’re so antisocial, Cass. We haven’t had anyone to stay since January.’

In the left-hand margin I write 1st–3rd April, distracted by the entry above. ‘Lovely stay as always! With all my love, Jo.’

I write my name and address. ‘You live in Dorset?’ she says. ‘With your parents?’

‘Actually, Cass might move in with me,’ Charlie says.

‘With you?’

‘I have a spare room, so why not?’ He sounds defensive, or am I imagining it?

‘Yes, you do,’ she says with a smile that doesn’t reach her eyes.

*

Charlie drives Ticket and me to the station. ‘I don’t think your mum’s too keen about me moving in,’ I tell him, after an unusually long silence between us.

‘She’ll come round. It’s got nothing to do with her anyway. It’s not about you either,’ he adds. Ah. So he read that reaction too. ‘I’m sorry if she was a bit—you know— frosty …’

Frosty? I’ll say!

‘It’s not about you,’ he repeats. ‘It’s Jo. She probably thinks that if you move in that rules out any kind of chance of us getting back together. She can’t understand why it’s over. All she wants is for me to marry and have children. She’s
longing
for grandchildren. Anna’s never going to settle down, she’s wild, always has been. She often tells Mum she’ll never tie herself down, she’s a free spirit. In many ways Jo became her surrogate daughter.’

‘Why did you two break up?’

‘I knew it was wrong.’

‘Why?’ To me, Jo feels like a shadow that follows me down a dark corridor. She is Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca. I decide that Mrs Bell isn’t too far off the brooding Mrs Danvers either.

‘I remember this one time,’ Charlie says, ‘when I was in the garden with Dad. He’d shown me this tree that he and Mum had planted for their silver anniversary. “Twenty-five years of marriage,”’ Charlie says in a deep gruff voice, ‘“and I love your mother more than when I first met her.” I loved Jo, but when she talked about marriage and kids, settling down and all that, I knew I wasn’t ready. She was seven years older than me, it didn’t seem a big deal at the time, but … maybe I didn’t love her enough,’ he reflects. ‘I know this sounds stupid, but my best friend, Rich, asked me if I could go to the top of a hill and scream how much I loved her in front of all my friends and family. I couldn’t do it, so I knew I couldn’t be in that church, saying those vows.’

‘That doesn’t sound stupid, not at all.’ I tell Charlie what Mum had said to me on one of our Friday afternoon drives. ‘When Dad proposed on a beach in Norfolk, Mum had jumped up and down with joy.’

I hear her saying to me, ‘I shouted “yes” over and over again, Cass. I wanted the whole world to know how much I loved your father.’

*

We park outside the station and sit quietly for a minute because we’re early. ‘You haven’t changed your mind, about moving in?’ Charlie asks.

‘No, but …’ I stop, look out of the window. Is it a really bad idea, me moving in with someone I’m falling for? What if he doesn’t feel the same way? Was Charlie about to kiss me, before his parents arrived?

‘But what?’

‘Nothing,’ I say, twisting a strand of hair between my fingers.

‘Cass?’

‘I was thinking about money and work, that’s all.’

‘We can sort that out.’

‘I want to pay rent, no charity.’

‘Good.’ He grins, taking off his glasses and rubbing his eyes. ‘I need a new lens for my camera.’

After Charlie has helped Ticket and me on to the train, he digs into his pocket and hands me a small box. The conductor blows his whistle. ‘Quick, take it,’ he says. ‘Don’t panic, it’s not a ring,’ he adds, kissing me lightly on the cheek.

I wave as the train pulls away, and soon Charlie is out of sight. I open the box. Inside are rolled-up joints, lined up like the neat little pencils Mum’s boss Troy had presented her when she was working for him. On a scrap piece of paper he’s written, ‘To have with your bath tonight, love CB. PS Did you notice we have the same initials?’

‘I’m moving,’ I tell Dom on the phone later that evening when I’m back at home, smoking one of Charlie’s joints before I have a bath.

‘Cass! That’s great! Where are you going to live?’

I tell him about Charlie’s flat in Barons Court.

‘The website designer guy? Your skiing buddy?’

‘Yep.’

‘The one you fancy?’

I can feel my cheeks burning. Thank God we’re not on Skype.

‘Come on, Cass, you can tell me.’

‘All right, maybe a little.’ I laugh. I think I’m stoned. ‘Is that crazy, Dom? Me moving in with someone I really like? Am I asking for trouble?’

‘Miranda and I were flatmates.’ He pauses. ‘All I’d say is don’t rush things, but you’ve got to give London a go.’

‘We’ll meet up all the time?’

‘Try and stop me! We’re only round the corner. And if it all goes tits up with Charlie, which it won’t, there’s always a bed here.’

‘Thanks, but I’m not sure what Miranda would have to say about us turning your home into a spinal cord injury unit.’

I hear Mum’s footsteps coming towards my bedroom. Quickly I stub out my half-smoked joint. ‘Got to go! Call you later. Love you.’

‘Love you too.’

Mum opens the door, comes into my bedroom and wrinkles her nose.

Knowing I can’t disguise the smell, ‘It’s just a joint, Mum.’ I use the spinal cord injury trump card now. ‘Helps me relax.’

She sits down next to me. ‘Your father and I wondered if we should get you some pot. Can I?’

‘Sure.’ I relight it, and watch Mum press it to her lips. I never thought I’d be sharing a joint with my mother but then again nothing surprises me any more. ‘You haven’t told me about your weekend,’ she says, waving the smoke away. ‘Oh, this is good,’ she adds, ‘reminds me of being back in the bedsit with your father.’

‘What would you say if I told you I was moving out?’

She hands the joint back to me. ‘Are you?’

‘I think so.’

‘Well, it depends on where and who with.’

‘Charlie’s offered to rent out his spare bedroom. It’s on the ground floor and he thinks I’d manage. I need to find a job, I can do that …’

‘But? Has something happened between you?’

‘No, no, Mum,’ I say, not wanting to have a chat about my love life. ‘I might need a couple of months’ rent in advance, which I promise to pay back.’

She runs her tongue over her front teeth. ‘I’m sure we could come to some arrangement.’

‘So you think it’s a good idea?’

‘I’ll worry all the time, but I’d worry more if you stayed here with your old parents.’

Dad comes in. ‘What’s going on?’ He stares at us. ‘Are you smoking pot, Brenda?’

She smiles radiantly, the drug clearly working. ‘Don’t call me Brenda.’

Dad sits down and asks if he can have a puff. I tell him I’m thinking of moving back to London.

‘Is he your boyfriend?’ Dad asks. ‘Will he look after you?’ is the next question, followed by, ‘Are there steps? Is it easy access? What about your car?’

Earlier in the year I applied for a Motability car. Motability is a national charity that runs a government-funded scheme to provide cars and scooters for people with disability, and I applied for a Volkswagen Polo. They are specialised in adapting cars, and I’ll be using hand controls rather than foot pedals to accelerate and brake. The car replaces my monthly disability living allowance.

‘Don’t worry, Michael! Cass isn’t moving out tomorrow.’

He laughs now. ‘You know what, Cass? I think it’s great.’

‘Well, that’s settled! You can stick that list back on to the wall, Mum.’

When I was growing up there used to be a framed letter in Jamie’s and my bathroom that Mum had written to herself when she was pregnant with me.

‘
Dear Me
,’ Mum wrote.

‘Life can sort of go back to normal now,’ I say to Mum.

‘As long as you and Ticket visit us, from time to time.’

We all hold hands.

I look at my parents, realising how much they have helped me reach this position. Six months ago I would have been too scared even to contemplate the idea of moving out. Yet, however much I want to move in with Charlie and build a new life, it’s going to take every ounce of strength in me to leave, even with Ticket by my side.

*

After my bath I dry myself, and then catch my reflection in the inside wardrobe mirror. Rub the chair out, Frankie had said. Tentatively I drop the towel on to the floor. I touch my bare skin, tracing a finger from my collarbone, over my breasts, down to the roundness of my stomach.

As I think of him, I shut my eyes and take myself back to that moment when we were on the lawn, about to kiss.

I gaze up to a smart front door. It looks more like a private home than an office, but I’m sure I’m in the right place. ‘Have you let them know you’re in a chair?’ Charlie had asked me last night, over supper. I moved in with him at the beginning of June. It took some time for Charlie to adapt his flat and for one of the purple people at Canine Partners to visit and make sure Ticket was going to be happy in Barons Court. I also had to wait for my Motability car to be ready. The application process takes up to twelve weeks.

‘Most places these days have lifts,’ Charlie had continued, ‘but you don’t want to show up and find there are steps.’

‘Don’t worry, it’ll be fine,’ I replied, avoiding eye contact.

‘I hope you’re taking Ticket with you?’

I stare at the five steep stone steps. I hate it when he’s right.

What do I do? I have a job interview in – I glance at my watch – oh Christ, ten minutes, for a PA position in a property firm. It’s quite well paid, experience in the property world handy but not essential … but what
is
essential is entering the building. It starts to drizzle. People barge past and suddenly I long to be the woman striding along in a stylish navy mackintosh and heels, cup of coffee in one hand, umbrella in the other. I’m not saying she doesn’t have any problems, but how I long for a
normal
problem, not how do I get up five steps. Panicking, I dig into my handbag to find my mobile. I wish Ticket were with me. Because I hadn’t explained in my application about the wheelchair, I decided to leave him at home, telling myself that if the interview went well and by some miracle they employed me, I’d ask if I could bring him into the office. I am such an idiot! Feeling cold now, and getting wet, I stab at the numbers, but then stop midway. Think rationally, Cass. You have precisely eight minutes now to get inside the building. Charlie is in his office in Farringdon. You’re in Mayfair. Not even superman Charlie can get to Half Moon Street in eight minutes and whisk me up the steps and into the reception area. Somehow I have to work this out. I look up to the sky. Oh dear God, please help me.

*

‘Good afternoon. Can I help?’ the middle-aged receptionist asks, looking up from her computer. She has auburn hair with a heavy fringe, is wearing glasses and a tight-fitting cream silk blouse.

‘I’ve come for the interview,’ I say, now wondering why it hadn’t occurred to me that if I do get this job the problem of those five steps isn’t going to vanish. Can I always rely on two hot young businessmen being around first thing in the morning to press the buzzer and then carry my wheelchair and me into the building?

The receptionist scans the diary. ‘Ms Brooks.’

‘Yes, that’s me! Sorry I’m late.’ Only five minutes late. Not bad considering, I congratulate myself.

‘If you’d like to come this way.’ She stands up and bustles towards the door.

I wheel myself out of the small reception room and back into the narrow hallway, almost bumping into the wooden banisters. She then stops and turns, as if taking into account my situation for the first time. ‘All the offices are upstairs.’

‘Right. Is there a lift?’ I ask, doing my best to remain composed.

‘Yes. Downstairs.’ She gestures to a mini flight of stairs to the left. ‘Can you walk at all?’

‘No. I’m sorry.’ I twist a strand of my hair, coiling it round and round my finger. ‘And don’t do that thing with your hair during the interview,’ Charlie had said this morning as he helped himself to some cereal.

‘Oh,’ she says curtly. ‘I see.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I apologise again. ‘I should have mentioned it.’

‘That would have been advisable.’ Her tone is like a schoolmistress’s. ‘It might have saved you, and us, a lot of time.’

‘It’s just I thought all places had to be legally accessible these days?’

‘We’re a listed building. It would ruin the aesthetics installing ramps and whatnot.’

‘But why stick a lift down there?’ I say, raising my voice. ‘I mean, don’t you think that if I could walk down those steps then I’d be able to walk upstairs too?’

Don’t get too cross with the old bat, I can hear Charlie saying in my head. You’re going to need her help to get out of the bloody building.

*

‘You’re not the first to make that mistake,’ Frankie reassures me that night, when we meet in a tapas bar on the Old Brompton Road. After the interview (or lack of it, I should say) I’d called her, asking if she could meet me after work. Back in the reception room the old bat had said to me, spectacles perched on the end of her nose, ‘In future I do advise you to alert future employers about your disability.’ And then, to make matters worse, Richard Petherick, my potential boss-to-be, had flown down the stairs, paperwork in his hand, asking if his two o’clock interview had arrived. ‘Oh,’ he’d said, staring at me.

‘I know that “oh”,’ Frankie commiserates.

‘I wanted the ground to swallow me up. Richard was nice, actually, very apologetic. He helped me down the steps.’

‘Listen, you won’t make the same mistake again. Everything goes wrong in a first interview. It’s like a first date.’

‘OK. So what was your first interview like?’

Frankie smiles.

‘That bad?’

She nods. ‘After college I didn’t know what I wanted to do, right? All I knew was I needed cash to move away from home and pay my rent so I applied for this job in London, in some swanky advertising company. I turned up at the reception and it was all marble floors, glass walls and cupid fountains. Only problem was my interview was on the fifth floor and, believe it or not, there was no lift. “But once you’re up there, there’s an easy access bathroom and it’s all one level,” the receptionist said, completely deadpan.’

‘So you have to somehow get up five flights to enjoy the mod-con bathroom. It’s crazy, Frankie,’ I say. ‘Doesn’t it make you feel like a freak?’

‘Not any more. Thing is, Cass, I went on to get a much better job at Oxfam, rehousing asylum seekers. Advertising was never for me. You know what, you really should go back to medicine. At least in hospitals you know there are lifts.’

‘And A&E right on the doorstep.’ I smile dryly. ‘I still can’t even think about it though.’

‘Fine. Well, next interview just tell them, OK.’

‘I will.’ I confess that Charlie had said the same too.

‘How’s it going with him by the way? What’s his place like?’

Charlie’s flat is off the North End Road, close to Barons Court tube. I call it the white street, since it’s all white stucco-fronted houses with pillared entrances. Many of the flats have balconies with colourful window boxes and bay trees. People sit out on their balconies in the sunshine, drinking and playing cards, and there’s always music blasting out of windows, especially at weekends.

Everything I need is close by: a dry cleaner’s, deli, café, patisserie, and an organic butcher’s that I can’t afford yet so instead Ticket and I head round the corner to the newsagent’s to play the lottery, saying a prayer as I pick my numbers. I have also joined the Charing Cross swimming club, in Hammersmith, recommended by Frankie. ‘They have a hoist to lower you into the water and you’ll fall in love with Perry. He teaches the kids but will always jump in to save you,’ Frankie had said.

‘Fantastic,’ Frankie says to the swimming, pleased I’ve taken her advice. ‘And Charlie? How’s all that going?’

‘Good.’

She frowns. ‘Expand. Is it going anywhere?’

‘I don’t think so.’ I tell her that living with someone is a quick way to get to know them, warts and all. ‘He sees me first thing in the morning now, not pretty,’ I say. ‘And he hates the way I forget to put the milk back in the fridge.’

‘What about his bad habits?’ she asks. ‘He can’t be perfect all the time.’

‘He leaves the loo seat up.’

‘All men do that.’

‘He doesn’t wash up. Somehow the plates make a journey from the table to the edge of the sink, but that’s where the journey ends. Or the dishes are left “soaking”,’ I say, using my fingers as inverted commas, ‘overnight. He’s really untidy too.’

Charlie had confided that his untidiness used to drive Jo mad. She couldn’t understand how he could leave the house without at least making his bed or picking up last night’s clothes from the floor.

‘Seriously, if we were going to get together, the moment’s gone.’ There’s a long pause. ‘But don’t get me wrong,’ I continue, when I see how disappointed she is that there’s no gossip. ‘He’s fantastic. You should have seen how hard he and Dad worked to get the flat right for me.’

Charlie and Dad had to remove the cupboards under both the kitchen and bathroom sinks to allow space for my wheelchair. Charlie’s breakfast bar was knocked down and Dad contributed towards a normal-height kitchen table for us. Mirrors in my bedroom and the bathroom were adjusted to my height. Dad and Charlie fixed grab rails around the bath. Thankfully Ticket can turn the light switches on and off, so they didn’t need to change them. Frankie’s eyes glaze over as I continue reeling out a list of adaptations, including Dad building some low shelves in the kitchen. ‘Everyone thought you’d get together,’ she cuts in, ‘honestly, you two were a hot topic on the slopes.’

As Frankie heads off to the loo, I think about what she has just said. Neither Charlie nor I have mentioned that moment in the garden, when I thought he was about to kiss me. Late at night, when I can’t sleep, I do think about that look in his eyes and the touch of his hand on my back. What if we hadn’t heard his parents’ car in the driveway? What if his mum hadn’t turned up? But the following morning, when Charlie knocks on my bedroom door to ask if I’d like a cup of tea, it’s as clear as daylight that we’re going to be just good friends and flatmates.

Part of me is relieved. Charlie’s mother is desperate for him to get back with Jo, and then there’s Anna, his sister, whom I’ve never met – who, according to Charlie, vets all his girlfriends. Apparently Jo had said meeting Anna for the first time was like an interrogation in hell.

‘How about the Internet?’ Frankie asks when she returns to the table.

I shake my head to online dating. ‘I need to concentrate on finding a job first.’

‘Right. No dating until you have a job?’

‘Definitely not.’ What a good delaying tactic, but I don’t tell Frankie that.

‘Well, we’d better get thinking fast,’ she says, raising her glass to mine. ‘Before Charlie meets someone else.’