The Sick Rose (27 page)

‘Make yourself at home. Sofa’s here, kitchen’s out the back. They’ll be back soon,’ he said.

‘They?’

‘Him and Angie. They’ve gone to the funeral.’

Louisa flicked on a smile. ‘Of course! Yes, I’d forgotten. He did tell me.’

‘Oh, right. I thought they only decided at the last minute. Make yourself at home.’

Just as the credits were rolling, and that awful song was playing, the key went in the door and Adam and Angie came in. Ben smiled and cracked his knuckles as though turning his attention from one soap opera to another. The look Adam gave Louisa chilled her blood. If I
were
a vampire, she thought, that look would revoke my permission to be here, some force would suck me back out of the house, because it is very clear that I am not welcome.

‘Can we talk?’ she said. Angie tipped her head at Ben, who pouted but did then follow her behind a frosted door that presumably hid a kitchen. Adam had barricaded himself into his body with folded arms and legs. ‘We don’t have to talk. Let’s go to bed. I can make it better.’ He wrapped himself tighter in his own embrace.

‘To be honest, Louisa, I just want to be on my own.’

The sting of rejection diminished her sympathy.

‘Why do you shut me out of everything that matters?’

‘For exactly this reason. Because you’re too intense, OK? Because you’d want to analyse my relationship with my dad all the way up there and then to meet my mum.’

‘And why not? I’m supposed to be your
partner
. I should have been there for you!’

‘It’s quite amazing that my father dies and this is all about
you
.’

Where had that come from? Up until now, he hadn’t given a shit about his father. Now he was using his grief as a weapon against Louisa.

‘That’s not fair,’ she said. ‘I just want to look after you.’

‘Jesus Christ, Louisa, you’re as bad as my mother, trying to control me, checking up on me,’ said Adam. ‘I
told
you what would happen if you got all possessive.’

Louisa sank into the sofa. ‘What are you saying?’ she said. Fear drained the fight from her but in a dark corner of her mind a tiny flare of something unexpected glimmered – relief? Release? The little flame sputtered and died. Freedom from Adam was the last thing she wanted, it was the end of the world.

‘You work it out,’ said Adam. He turned on his heel, cutting a swathe through the piled carpet. The front door slammed. Seconds later, Angie’s head appeared around the edge of the kitchen door.

‘I couldn’t help but hear that,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry if I trod on your toes. He only decided to go this morning, and I think he just wanted to be with someone a bit neutral, do you know what I mean?’

Poor Angie, in her role as asexual mediator, was neutral in every sense of the word.

‘What was she like, his mother?’

Angie shrugged. ‘I didn’t speak to her. We didn’t go into the church; he made us hide behind a tree in the graveyard like something out of a bad film. We just hung around for the burial bit and then we went home again. I don’t think anyone noticed us. There were millions of mourners, all Jesus people. More dog collars than Crufts. I tell you what, though, she was really
old
. She must have been about seventy when she had him.’

‘Where do you think he’s gone?’ Louisa said. ‘Who else would he go to?’

Ciaran, who had evidently been upstairs the whole time, walked into the kitchen, snipped a corner of a carton of orange juice with rusty scissors and drank straight from it.

‘Ah, Louisa, the obtuse tip of the love triangle,’ he said.

‘
What
?’ said Louisa.

‘He’s being a prick,’ said Angie, flushing. ‘It’s just a lyric we’ve been playing with. Shut up, Ciaran, she’s upset.’

His smile revealed a gloss of juice on his teeth. She hoped it rotted them.

‘What do you mean?’ Louisa asked. ‘Love triangle? Who
is
she?’ Ciaran and his orange juice left the kitchen and Angie looked at her feet.

‘I told you, it’s just a lyric. Don’t let him get to you.’

‘I can’t bear people laughing at me, I won’t have it!’ She grabbed hold of Angie’s hands. ‘Listen, Angie, tell me what’s going on. Be level with me. As a
woman
.’ Louisa saw and ignored the irony of invoking a sisterhood she had willingly betrayed when she first went to bed with Adam. ‘Is he seeing someone else? Is it that red-haired girl? Is that where he’s gone now? It is, isn’t it? Where does she live?’

‘Who? Rebecca?’ Finally jealousy had been given a name. ‘Christ, no, I haven’t seen her for ages. Look, I know he doesn’t have the best track record, but at the moment I don’t know of any other girl but you.’

‘Can I wait here for him?’

Now Angie looked at her with nothing but pity.

‘Any other day, I’d say yes, but today, I think he just needs some space. I’ll make him call you. I promise.’ Louisa had very little trust left, but she handed the crumbs of it over to Angie. She had no choice.

All her clothes had been folded away and the bedlinen was fresh. Louisa buried her face in the pillows, tried to lose herself in Adam but there were no stray hairs in her bed, none of his scent on her pillow. When she had stopped crying and only the sharp sudden aftershocks of tears were ragging her chest, she pulled the extension cord out of the wall. She wanted more than anything for him to call her but if he wasn’t going to, she could not bear to know.

The next morning she saw things with a clarity that made her cringe. He was grieving for his father, even if he couldn’t name or admit to the process, and she had desecrated that grief with her petty jealousies. She paged him the words ‘Forgive me’ and plugged the phone back in. He returned the call so quickly he must have sprinted to the telephone box.

‘Am I still your Eve?’ she asked, desperate now to own the nickname she had hated at first.

‘Of course you are.’ He sighed. ‘I think we need to spend some time just the two of us. No more hanging out with the band. We were happier before you started tagging along, weren’t we?’

He was right, and she acknowledged it. In a way, it was nice to surrender. It was certainly easier.

‘So what’s the moral of the story?’ he asked her.

‘I don’t know.’

‘That things work better when we do them my way. Listen, I’m busy with the band tonight but I’ll see you the next day, and the one after that, and the one after that. It’ll be just like it was in the beginning. I’ll meet you at the Roof Gardens tomorrow lunchtime.’

‘I can’t wait.’

She vowed to herself that she would make the most of this second chance, that her role from now on would be to make his life easier, not to heap more stress upon him. Something had to give if their relationship was going to work, and it couldn’t be Adam’s music, which would clearly suffer if she was a distraction for the rest of the band. It would require a twist in her nature but surely all relationships had an element of compromise.

The next morning, she had company at breakfast. Leah was sprinkling brown sugar on a grapefruit, a serrated spoon by her bowl.

‘Hello, stranger!’ she said brightly. ‘Would you like the other half?’ She held up a yellow hemisphere.

Louisa pulled a face. ‘Thank you, but I prefer to eat actual food,’ she said, and peered into the fridge.

‘We haven’t spoken properly for ages,’ said Leah. ‘Let’s go out for dinner tomorrow night, just the four of us. Somewhere local, nothing fancy.’

‘I’d really love that,’ said Louisa, and meant it. ‘But I’m busy tomorrow night.’

‘Bring him along,’ said Leah, in the voice she used when she was trying especially hard to be casual. Louisa shook her head, for once wishing she could say yes. After years of hiding boys from her mother, now she was having to hide her mother from a boy. Incredibly, her fantasies had now evolved to the point where she dreamed that one day Adam would be assimilated into the family, comfortable in their company, not a moody outsider but just another face at the dinner table, like Dev.

‘Well, you know you could always have boys to stay over if you wanted. Your father and I are very liberal about things like that.’

‘Thanks,’ said Louisa. ‘I’ll let you know if it comes to it.’

Her plans to get an early night backfired. It was June 21st, the summer solstice. The sun shone until nine, her body clock was firmly set at midnight or one and she wasn’t at all tired. Scanning her shelves for a novel or something else light, her eye lingered on the black velvet scrapbook she’d bought from the market and the papers wedged into the Bartram’s next to it.

She had already made a copy of the video on her father’s reel-to-reel VCR, but had forgotten all about the book. That part of the project had been neglected but if she did it now she could present both to him in the Roof Gardens tomorrow. She opened the book, tracing the silver thread that was chain-stitched so tightly that it looked like wire and held tiny amber-coloured beads in the formation of stars, cheap metal and plastic so skilfully embroidered as to look ancient and precious. She blew dust off its pages and surrounded herself with scissors to trim, a stick of glue and a fountain pen that Adam had left behind in her room on one of his visits. He believed that important words deserved pen and ink. He hated anything disposable.

The first page was thicker than the rest and cried out for an inscription. Holding it, she hovered over the page, unsure what to write: she had not yet decided whether this was a public or a private document. In the end, she left space on the first page and turned to the second, where she wrote
Glasslake
in her best hand. The nib had been worn down by Adam, who was left-handed, and the slant was in the wrong direction. The pen skidded so that the writing was unrecognisable as hers, but then the paper soaked up the ink like a sponge and the edges blurred, giving it an antiquey look that suited the book.

She crossed her legs and spread all the scraps before her. On top of the pile was the Polaroid that the Japanese girls had taken of them on the Roof Gardens. She wasn’t sure whether or not to include it; strictly speaking, it was nothing to do with the band. After deliberating, she decided not to and was proud of herself: she was learning not to overdo it, not to be too intense and make everything all about her. She leaned the photograph against the wall, where it kept her company.

Her first task was to arrange the remaining papers in date order, although much of this was guesswork, as none of the photographs was dated and most of the tickets and flyers gave the day and month but not the year. She was vaguely aware that the middle of her back was starting to ache and that pins and needles were developing in her left leg, but she shifted only slightly, too absorbed in her task to move.

The project was most enjoyable when she came to the gigs that had been played and the photographs that had been taken since she had met the band; so many memories accrued in such a short time. She was able to contribute a couple of her own keepsakes: a beermat, a lavender stem that she’d purloined from the Roof Gardens and pressed, the set list, scrawled on the back of an envelope, from the Luton Poly show, and then of course the black and red flyer that had played its own part in bringing them together. Finally she unfolded the last document, an A4 poster with a badly reproduced photograph of the band that had advertised a gig out in Vauxhall; she had particularly fond memories of this one. They had all travelled together in the van, and all five of them had gone to a party afterwards. Angie had driven home over Waterloo Bridge as the sun came up. Ciaran had jumped out at Embankment to buy a first edition of the
Guardian
and they had parked on a double yellow, all differences forgotten as they stared in united horror at the picture of the lone Chinese student squaring up to the tank.

It had only been a fortnight or so ago, but already the poster felt ragged and velvety with age. She turned it over to gum its back.

The pen used had been cheap, but it was an elegant hand.

To my darling Adam,

     I am so proud to share tonight with you.

        All love forever,

            Your Eve.

It wasn’t her writing.

Chapter 36

December 2009

The gardening programmes on the radio were already warning of the Big Freeze of 2009. Icy Siberian winds had decided to go south for the winter and were turning the whole continent white. They were in for a record-breaking cold snap. Every day the forecast got more apocalyptic: Louisa listened with rising anxiety, terrified for the heritage seeds she had coaxed into shoots. The only comfort she took was the novelty of being worried about something other than the impending visit from the Heritage Gardens Trust and their cameras; if she still cared about her work, her current self was not yet lost to her past crime. She blew her budget and turned up the heat in the glasshouse a degree, deciding to leave it on all night. She even thought about cancelling her Christmas leave. Ingram and Demetra had promised that they would come in while she was in London; they were looking forward to showing their twins around the site. This worried her too, not because she was concerned about them finding her home – she would detach the cable and wind it up before she left – but because Ingram, for all his flair for research and design, had the opposite of green fingers; like frost or fire, they blackened everything they touched. He was bound to leave a door open or turn the heating off or something; she resolved to take Demetra and the twins to one side and instil in them the importance of protection.