The First Wife (26 page)

The bathroom was en suite. This was excellent, as it saved me padding around and getting lost in the house. I was self-conscious with everything I did, and was nervous about sitting on the loo in case I somehow made such a noise that they heard me downstairs. I made sure I locked the bathroom door. I brushed my teeth, changed into the pyjamas that I had remembered to pack, and climbed into bed.

I lay in the darkness, waiting to sleep, staring at the ceiling. I drifted off, but dreamed so vividly of Sarah that I jolted awake, again and again. When half-past two came, I got out of bed. Harry was still not here, and he never stayed up late. I imagined him asleep on the sofa, uncomfortable and getting cold, because the house was freezing now that the heating had gone off. Nina would have gone to sleep long ago, I was sure. It took me twenty minutes to convince myself that I could be brave enough to tiptoc down the stairs, find my fiancé, and bring him back with me. Nobody could object to that.

As soon as I was on the stairs, I knew I was right. There was no sound of conversation. All the lights were off. The stair carpet was thick and soft beneath my bare feet. The whole place was hushed, like a museum. There was the sound of a clock ticking, and that was all.

The hall was very dimly lit by a pale light outside the front door, coming in through the little window above it. There was just enough light for me to see the three closed doors leading off it. I stood on the stairs and tried to work out which one I would need to open. I assumed that Nina’s room was upstairs, but it might have been on the ground floor, anything was possible, and it would be beyond awful to barge in on her.

I picked my door, and walked down the last few stairs.

It all happened at once. There was a red light on the wall opposite me, which I only noticed when it started flashing furiously. After a few flashes, all hell was unleashed.

The wailing was so loud in my ears, and so inexplicable, that I thought it must all be a dream. I could not move, as my feet were nailed to the ground, and I waited to see what would happen next.

It was like a siren, but it was so loud that it inhabited every single part of me. It did not stop. It seemed to go on and on and on. The whole house was screaming at me.

Someone pushed my shoulder, shoving me out of the way. Someone else came thundering past. I was too dazed. I sat down on the bottom step. Then, suddenly, it stopped. The absence of the shrieking was almost louder than the noise itself had been. The last bit of it echoed around the room, bouncing off the walls, getting into everything. I looked around. The hall light was on. Nina, wearing a silky nightdress, was standing in front of a box of switches, which she had opened up on the hall wall. She pressed a few more, then, without looking at me, picked up the phone from a varnished table, and made a call.

While she was cancelling something, in a voice that was both sharp and sleepy, Harry came and sat down next to me. He, I noticed with some confusion, was wearing his pyjamas, too. He never wore them at home, but he had taken them out of his drawer especially for this trip.

‘Lily,’ he said. ‘Oh Christ, I should have said – there’s an alarm at night. What were you doing? Getting a glass of water?’

I looked at my lap. I wanted to say that I had been looking for him, but I knew I had got something wrong. ‘Yes,’ I said instead, seizing on the excuse. ‘I woke up thirsty. You know I’m not good with red wine. I had no idea. Sorry.’

Nina put the receiver down and turned to us. I did not look her in the eye, because I couldn’t bear to.

‘Sorry, Mrs Summer,’ I said in my meekest voice.

‘Mum, we completely forgot to tell Lily about the alarm,’ said Harry. ‘She wasn’t to know. She was only after a water glass.’

‘Oh, Lily,’ said Nina. She yawned again, seemed about to say something else, shook her head and walked past us up the stairs and back into one of the rooms up there without another word.

Harry stood up. ‘Now, let’s get you back to bed, shall we?’

‘Harry?’ I said in a quiet voice. ‘Would you sleep with me? Your mother wouldn’t have to know. You could creep back to your room early in the morning.’

He looked at me and laughed. ‘I wish I could, gorgeous girl,’ he said. ‘But it’s her house, her rules. Best we don’t.’

He led me back to bed. I was mortified, but somehow, I went straight to sleep.

Nina laughed about the alarm in the morning.

‘It’s linked directly to the police station,’ she said, as she passed me a cup of black coffee. I wanted milk in it, but I didn’t dare ask. ‘When I called, they were already sending a car out. Good to know they’re there, actually. I should do that once a year to make sure they’re not ignoring me. Once every two years, perhaps, to avoid crying wolf.’

‘Sorry,’ I said yet again. I had no idea that people who lived together and were engaged might not be allowed to share a bed. It seemed ridiculously old-fashioned. I was intensely grateful that Nina did not know the real reason for my disastrous venture downstairs.

She smiled warmly at me. ‘Tonight I’ll only set it for the front door. We should have warned you. It’s not like Cornwall, here. You have to protect yourself.’

Straight after breakfast, we walked to a place she called ‘Hampstead Village’, although it was not a village at all. It was a few streets with some very posh shops on them.

It was a freezing morning with a bright blue sky. People bustled past us. Women with make-up that was just right, and with clothes that made me realise how shabby and worn mine were, walked purposefully with glints in their eyes that showed they knew they were better than everyone else. Nina fitted in with them perfectly. Nina: my mother-in-law. Fergus, my brother-in-law. It was hard to take in the fact that I was actually marrying into this family and that they were happy about it, even if no one else was.

Lots of women pushed children in complex buggy-machines. I could have stood on the side of the pavement and watched them all for hours, but I kept up with Harry and Nina.

‘My grandma would have loved it here,’ I said. ‘This is exactly her spiritual home.’

Nina rubbed my arm. ‘Ah, Lily. Well, she lives on in you and so you’ll have to experience it for her.’

‘Yes, I suppose I will.’

‘Talking of your family, do we know whether your parents will be coming over from New Zealand for the wedding?’

I sighed. ‘No,’ I told her. ‘We don’t know. But I do know really. They won’t. They couldn’t have made it much clearer that they’re not interested.’

‘But for their daughter’s wedding?’

I smiled. ‘They didn’t bother to come for my grandparents’ funerals, so please, don’t hold your breath.’

Harry interrupted. ‘Lily’s parents are worthless bastards who don’t deserve a hair on her head. If they did show up, they’d have some explaining to do. Let them fucking try.’

I was surprised at this outburst. I had never seen Harry furious before.

‘Harry, please don’t use that language,’ Nina said mildly. ‘Well, Lily. We’re your family now. And before you know it, you’ll have a little family of your own.’

She steered us into a shop.

‘Right,’ she said to Harry. ‘I’ll leave you to it. Don’t want to be an overbearing mother-in-law. God knows, not this time round. I’m off to the deli. Lily, do you like olives?’

‘I love them.’

‘Good. Let’s meet up in, say forty minutes or so, at Ginger and White.’

Harry smiled at me, and gestured around the shop. It was a clothes shop, and I did not need to look at the price tags to know that it was not a cheap one. The clothes were flowery and frilly, ‘vintage’ style.

‘Right,’ he said. ‘You can’t carry on going round in clothes your granny bought. We need to kit you out a bit. I know nothing about this sort of thing but Mum said this would be the place. What do you like?’

I looked around. ‘All of it,’ I said. ‘But you don’t need to buy me clothes.’

‘Of course I do. I stopped you working. You need clothes to wear.’ He took my hand. ‘We’re getting married, Lily. What’s mine is yours.’

As a shop assistant approached, he gently pushed me forward. I was uncomfortable. I felt she could see straight through me, to my clueless rural heart.

‘Um,’ I said. ‘Can I try on a few things?’

‘We’re looking for a whole wardrobe for my fiancée,’ Harry told her. ‘A bit of everything. I’ll grab a seat, if I may, and leave you ladies to it.’ He sat down on a wooden chair and opened the paper.

The woman looked me up and down as if I were a slave at a Roman market.

‘Absolutely,’ she said. ‘You have gorgeous hair. You’re going to be
very
easy to dress. Size eight?’

Half an hour later, Harry paid for two dresses, a pair of beaded jeans, some black trousers, three tops, a ‘mid-season coat’, two cardigans and a jumper, while I stood around feeling guilty. He handed me a bag, and carried the other two himself.

‘Thank you,’ I managed to say.

‘That’s just the start of it,’ he said with a chuckle. ‘You’re very welcome. Now, let’s go and show this to Mother.’

Nina approved and sent me to the loos to change into my new jeans and jumper because we were meeting Fergus at an Italian restaurant, and then going for a walk on the Heath.

Fergus kept staring at me during lunch. He and Harry each shovelled away a steak, and they drank a bottle of red wine between them, but all the time, Fergus’s eyes were upon me. I was self-conscious as I picked at my risotto and sipped at the drink I had ordered because it was the same as Nina’s: it was called a ‘spritzer’ and it seemed to be watered-down wine, which suited me well. Nina ate a small salad with no dressing, and I realised how she managed to be as skinny as an eleven-year-old child.

I kept looking at Fergus, and our eyes kept meeting. His looked troubled, but he said almost nothing to me at all. Anyone watching our table would have thought Fergus was the one I was going to be marrying. We seemed to be making eyes at each other; but we were not. I was not quite sure what we were doing.

I felt good in my new clothes. I almost felt as though I would be able to belong with these people, one day, when I got used to it.

I put my fork down with half the risotto left on the plate: I seemed to have no appetite. Nina smiled her approval and leaned across to me.

‘Quite right to leave food on your plate. A lady always does. It shows self-restraint and it keeps you from bursting out of your clothes.’

I tried to look as if this was my reasoning, too.

‘We need to regulate our own food intake,’ she continued. ‘Rather than delegating the job to some smelly sous-chef back there, and eating the exact amount
he
allocates us. People are so unthinking. It’s one of my bugbears.’

Harry looked across. ‘You passed that test, Lily,’ he said, ‘and you didn’t even know you were sitting an exam, did you?’

‘Oh,’ said Nina. ‘Lily passes every test. She’s one of us already.’

From the restaurant, we walked to the Heath. I could see that I was supposed to be overwhelmed by its splendour. However, I found it hard. I kept turning and staring at the black taxis, and even the ordinary cars, passing on the roads at the edge. We had grass and trees and ponds in Cornwall, but in Cornwall it was better than this. This was London: I was here for the first time and I wanted a bit of bustle. I walked briskly like the rest of them, following them up hills and through copses, on what was obviously, for the Summer family, a well-worn trail. The sun shone, our breath hung in the air around us, and I wished we were in the West End. I wanted to see the Thames, the Houses of Parliament, the London Eye. I wanted to walk down the Strand and up Oxford Street. I wanted to see the seedy dives of Soho and the traders of Covent Garden. I was so frustrated to be tramping along a downbeat urban version of the coast path that I had to bite my tongue to stop myself asking if we could do something more interesting.

Fergus stopped to tie his shoelace. The others walked on.

‘Lily?’ he called softly, and so I waited for him.

‘Yes?’ I said.

He hung back for a few more seconds. ‘Walk with me a minute?’

‘Of course.’

‘You like the Heath then?’

‘Yes, it’s lovely.’

‘Yeah, pretty boring when you live in Falmouth.’

‘No, it’s lovely.’

‘Lily, you have to say that for Mum, yes. But not for me. You’d rather be seeing London.’

I smiled. ‘You said it, not me. I’m sure I’ll have plenty of opportunities to see the sights.’

Fergus was slightly taller than Harry, and he was broader, but they were so alike in their faces that they could have been twins. Despite this, their whole manner was completely different. Fergus seemed anxious now.

‘You’re very diplomatic,’ he said, in a low voice. ‘Look, Lily, I know we hardly know each other, but I’m very fond of you. And I need to look out for my big brother, too. I just want to check that you’re both sure that this marriage is really the thing for both of you?’

I rolled my eyes. I was strangely comfortable with Fergus. ‘Not again?’

‘Harry and Sarah weren’t happy. I don’t want you to end up miserable too. Either of you.’

I looked him straight in the eye.

‘I’m only worried about two things,’ I told him. ‘Number one, I’m terrified at the prospect of standing up in front of all your family and Harry’s friends and people who miss Sarah, and marrying him when half of them will be sniggering about me. Number two, I have no idea whether it would be worse for my parents to stay away, or for them to come.’

‘Well, don’t worry about either of
those
things,’ he said. ‘If your parents come and give you a hard time, they’ll have to get past me, among many others. We’ll all look out for you. It must be difficult though. That’s why I’m so concerned about you. You are young, Lily. It’s easy to forget just how young you actually are. I don’t want you to make a horrible mistake.’

I bestowed my most serene smile upon him.

‘I don’t know why we work together,’ I said, ‘but we do. We make each other happy. The next-door neighbour said so. She said it used to be noisy and now it’s peaceful.’