The Home for Broken Hearts (7 page)

“Oh well, the other reason I came is because I had a response from the
Time Out
ad,” Hannah went on seamlessly. “Clever and beautiful Aunt Hannah has found you another lodger!”

“Please say it’s not a little old lady who only likes lilac,” Charlie begged, hauling himself up to rest his chin on the tabletop as he watched his aunt, with bright eyes, as if she were a particularly entertaining TV show.

“No, much better than that—he’s a man! His name is Matt Bolton, he’s twenty-six, a nonsmoker, and he’s just moving down from Manchester to take up a job as a staff writer for
Bang It!
”

“Wicked!” Charlie’s eyes widened.

“What on earth is
Bang It!
?” Ellen questioned, her expression pre-set to disapprove.

“It’s a lad’s mag—you know the sort of thing, photos of busty babes, articles about computer games, how to get a six-pack in six weeks—that sort of nonsense. Anyway, Matt had a column about being a single man in the
Manchester Evening News,
and apparently it caused a bit of an uproar amongst Manchester’s feminist community, and he was on the verge of losing his job when he got spotted by the editor of
Bang It!
and was offered a job continuing the column down here. The offices are in Hammersmith, so this place is perfect for him. He was especially stoked about the idea of having his own loo and shower.”

“So you’ve already told him he’s got the room?” Ellen asked hesitantly. “Without checking with me first, like you said you would, remember?”

“I said I’d screen the applicants and weed out any weirdos, and Matt’s not a weirdo, he seems really nice on the phone. Besides, he’s got the money and he works down the road. I expect he’ll be out most of the time, a young single man in London—you’ll hardly know he’s here.”

“No, sorry—I’m putting my foot down,” Ellen said firmly, feeling dizzy from how quickly her life was spinning out of control. “You’ll have to tell him he’s not coming.”

“Oh, Mum!” Charlie exclaimed, disappointed. “I’ll be the coolest boy in the school if one of our lodgers worked on
Bang It!
It’d make up for the old lady!”

“Hang on a minute, Ellie,” Hannah countered. “Let’s think about this a bit more. Why do you object to Matt?”

“Because my other tenants are females, and one of them is an older lady, a writer with sensitive needs. The last thing Allegra Howard wants is some man crashing around the place, swearing and talking about… God knows what. This is a house of women, we don’t want any men.”

“Oh, thanks very much.” Charlie scowled.

“Allegra Howard—isn’t that the woman whose books you love so much?” Hannah asked, completely breaking Ellen’s stride and making her firm stand seem rather less effective.

“Yes, it is—she needs a place to stay while her flood-damaged home is being restored
and
she needs a research assistant and PA—and that’s me. I’ve got the job. I’m getting paid and everything.” Ellen nodded emphatically on the final word.

“Really—Ellie, that’s fab news—well done, you. See what you can do when you set your mind to it?”

Ellen nodded, caught off guard by Hannah’s enthusiasm for her. After all, she hadn’t really done anything yet—except answer the phone. Still, Hannah didn’t know that.

“But honestly, I don’t see why that means you can’t have Matt as a tenant. Like I said, he’ll be out most of the time, and when he is here he and Allegra will be separated by a whole floor! Besides, if the covers of her books are anything to go by, she likes a strapping young man with his top off, and it wouldn’t do Charles any harm to have a man about the place…” Hannah stopped herself, probably from saying “since Nick died.” Her face was still and dark for the briefest moment. “You know, to watch footy with and talk about girls to.”

“Please, Mum,” Charlie begged. “I would get total respect at school.” Ellen looked at him, puzzled. Was he really keen to have another man in the house or did he just want to please Hannah?

“You’re really begging me to let a male lodger stay?” Ellen asked.

“Like Aunt Hannah says, it will be cool to have a bloke around, otherwise it will just be me and a load of old women. And Sabine.”

“Hey, you, Sabine’s not much younger than me,” Ellen protested, self-consciously tucking a strand of her dark hair behind her ear.

“Oh, go on, Ellie—at least give Matt a try—I’ll tell him he’s on a one-month trial and if you don’t like him you can kick him out after that. Just think, if you take Matt on, you don’t need to look for any more lodgers. You can get stuck in your new job, and Charles will be settled with the new arrangements before you know it.”

“I will,” Charlie agreed.

Ellen felt her shoulders slump. It seemed that she was the victim of a fait accompli.

“Okay, I’ll give him a trial, but if he smells or swears or is in any way a bad influence, then he’s out.”

“Great! He’s getting an early train down from Manchester Monday morning; he’s going to move his stuff after his first day.”

“Hello.” Sabine appeared from the garden, where she had been smoking among the ragged rose bushes that Ellen hadn’t touched since last summer.

“Oh, hello. You must be Sabine. I’m Hannah—we spoke on the phone?”

“Ah, Hannah, hello, it’s nice to meet you in person.”

“Well, I thought you might like to meet for lunch tomorrow and get some of the inside goss,” Hannah said. “Seriously, if I don’t know it, then it’s not worth knowing.”

“That would be very nice.” Sabine smiled. “I find that no matter how old or how well traveled I am, beginning work in a new place is still just like starting school. A friendly face makes things so much easier.”

“That’s what I thought,” Hannah said, making Ellen feel bad for resenting her sister’s visit. Hannah was only trying to help her, she told herself. Hannah was being a good sister. Whatever it was, whatever dark little nagging resentment that kept on nibbling away at Ellen, whether it was left over from their childhood or was something new that had sprung up in the wake of everything else, she had to shake it off. She had to remember that she was lucky to have Hannah, and put all her irrational irritations aside.

“While I was smoking in your beautiful garden I was thinking that it is such a pleasant evening, and I noticed a rather nice-looking pub down the road on an earlier shopping trip. Ellen, I wondered if you might take me for my first British drink?”

“Oh, can we?” Charlie looked at Ellen hopefully, his eyes bright with expectation. This was the first time that anything—well, anything different or interesting—had happened at home for him in a long time, Ellen realized, glimpsing an insight into what his life had been like for the last year. This change, this shake-up that she dreaded, was exactly what he needed. Perhaps it’s what she needed, too.

Ellen checked the wall clock; it was only just past seven, it was the weekend tomorrow, and she supposed an hour wouldn’t hurt. It would be nice to be the one giving Charlie a treat for once. Besides, Sabine did seem to have the most wonderful knack of pouring oil over troubled waters at just the right moment, her newness diluting the tension that always built between Ellen and her sister.

Ellen thought of the pub at the end of the road. Right now it would be busy with commuters on their way home, enjoying a cold drink, standing in the evening sunshine. There’d be laughter in the air, a cacophony of voices, the scent of smoke
mingling with the summer foliage. It would be crammed to the brim with happy, relaxed people. But she had so much to do for Allegra Howard and so little time to do it. Really she had to start right away.

“You three go,” Ellen decided. “I’ve got to get on the internet, see if I can find someone who’ll deliver paint tomorrow and start sorting out the dining room. I want you back in an hour, though—okay?”

“Marvelous! What fun to take my nephew for his first illegal drink.”

“Hannah!” Ellen reacted just as her sister knew she would.

“I’m only joking, Ellie.” Hannah giggled, winking at Charlie, who grinned delightedly at her in return.

“Hannah,” Ellen heard Charlie ask as they walked out the door, the June evening still gilding the street with its warmth. “Can I have a cider?”

“In your dreams, sweetie.” Hannah laughed. “Don’t want to give your mum any more reasons to be cross with me, do we?”

Once they had gone, Ellen listened to the silence left in their wake for a second and then walked into the now-seldom-used living room, hoping to catch a glimpse of them walking by the hedge that was so desperately in need of trimming.

Ellen took a moment to look at the border she had planted so lovingly in front of the window, packed full of tall blue and violet delphiniums; yellow, spiky stars like goldstrum; a multitude of multicolored pinks and mauve coneflowers. She hadn’t weeded or tended to the plants since last summer. In fact, she had a feeling that her gardening gloves were probably still where she had left them, wrung together and cast down, moldering somewhere in the depths of the border that she had been working on when the news came. And yet, despite being half choked to death with weeds and rogue grass, the flowers had fought their way through to bloom again.

For a moment Ellen pressed her palm against the glass,
remembering the smell, the feel of the soil between her fingers, the pleasure in seeing her planting design mature and take shape. And for a moment, she missed being out there, passing a polite word here and there with passersby, feeling the heat of the sun scorching the nape of her neck. Ellen watched as a fat bumble bee tracked its way first up and then down the pollen-heavy head of a delphinium, ensuring its bloom would soon be gone. She wasn’t ready for that yet, she wasn’t ready to see her plants blossom and die, another summer over. She wasn’t ready for it to be almost a whole year since she had last worked on that border, since the two very kind police officers had walked up the garden path and asked her if she would come inside so they could talk.

Ellen turned her back on the golden evening outside, pulled by the drag of the empty room that used to be so full of her and Nick, sitting together on the sofa any evening he wasn’t working late. Holding hands, drinking tea, and sharing chocolate, talking about Charlie and where they would go, or what they would do next. Without having to look, Ellen knew that over the hedge the street was drenched with sunshine, and she could imagine the day’s heat, absorbed by the pavement, that would have radiated through the thin soles of her summer shoes. Perhaps she should have gone, Ellen thought, running her hand along the cool, painted windowsill, but somehow it didn’t feel right. Even when Nick was alive they hadn’t really gone out together, always content to stay at home, curled up on the sofa that Ellen was trying not to look at. Home had been Nick’s refuge, his break from real life.

Things were difficult now, they were painful and harsh, Ellen thought, turning her face away from the glare of the outside to cool her cheeks in the shadowy room. But at least they
were
changing. At least there was some letup to the unrelenting grief that had characterized every single minute of her life since Nick had died. Was it wrong to feel optimistic and even excited about the recent turn of events? Perhaps it
was too soon to attempt to get on with things; perhaps if she started to pull herself together now, that would mean that she hadn’t loved Nick enough. Queen Victoria had mourned the untimely death of her husband for over fifty years. Never again had she worn anything but black. She had made the rest of her life a mausoleum to her husband. Should that be how any grieving widow carried on, an empty shell, existing only because she had to?

No, Nick would want her to get on with things, he’d want her to be okay. He’d be so surprised that she’d made it this far without him; he’d always joked that she wasn’t safe to be let out on her own. Besides, being okay, having something to look forward to, something to do, didn’t mean that she wasn’t still carrying a burning hole in her chest where her heart used to beat.

Life could still be livable, Ellen slowly allowed herself to realize as her eyes roamed over the empty sofa. Even without her husband, her existence could still be bearable, even perhaps happy again, in a way. It was a previously unimaginable thought that, when it dawned, came as an enormous relief to her. The idea that the burden of grief she had become so used to carrying could,
would
one day be at least lightened made Ellen feel a little giddy, and she felt just the first stirrings of something that had lain dormant in her for more years than she could remember. The pleasure of finding her own independence.

The outside world blazing at her back, Ellen found that she was smiling to herself. If two new people in her life could improve things for her so much, then a third could, at the very least, do her no harm. Like Hannah had said, Ellen would probably have hardly anything to do with Matt Bolton.

It wasn’t too late to catch up with them, she could still go to the pub if she wanted to.

Ellen thought for a moment, and then, drawing the curtains on the living room, she went to the dining room and started to clear out the sideboard instead.

Matt Bolton blinked and pinched himself. He actually couldn’t believe his eyes. Here he was on his first day on the job at
Bang It!
, watching a photo shoot. A photo shoot with two glamorous models, who were getting much better acquainted with each other’s assets than they had been when they’d turned up a few minutes ago.

“Life’s good, right?” Pete Grossman asked Matt. He was the features editor on the magazine and would be Matt’s immediate boss and mentor. Standing a good four inches shorter than Matt, Pete was nevertheless an attractive and well-built man in his midforties. Matt could see with his journalist’s eye that Pete would have been considered handsome once, and had probably been something of a pinup in his youth. A life of drinking and smoking, however, and at least two expensive ex-wives had taken their toll on him, his skin thickened and ruddy and his possibly dyed black hair thinning around the temples. Once, he’d been a cutting-edge young investigative journalist who battled on gamely in the middle of whatever war zone was most readily available. When he had bagged the job of the youngest-ever editor in chief of Britain’s bestselling tabloid in his thirties, his future had looked golden. Something had happened to change all of that, though. Matt had heard dark rumors that there had been some incident between Pete and a lesser member of the royal family that had compelled him to resign from his job and be grateful
for whatever work he could find since. And that had been as a feature writer at
Bang It!
for the last two years.