Spending the last night in the marital home Will had shared with Nicole was probably the easiest thing he had done in a long time. He was taken aback how many happy memories he
had in this house when he sat on a kitchen stool and tried to count them, because there were hardly any. There were a few jolly dinner parties with people he had thought were genuine friends, who
had dropped him like a hot brick when his business started to fold. There was lots of sex with Nicole in the bedroom, usually when she wanted something or had just got what she wanted: the sauna,
the pool, the Hermès bag, jewellery. He couldn’t even remember planning to ask her to marry him, she’d sort of inveigled a proposal out of him in Monte Carlo after he’d won
thirty thousand Euros on the roulette wheel. In their euphoria she had suggested they were a lucky couple and should get married and he’d thought, why not? Nicole was pretty with long legs
and he liked the way people looked at her and envied him for having her. So his winnings, and more, had been settled on a ring for her the following day in a Monaco jeweller’s shop.
Sitting in the empty house, he’d had a lot of time to think and he didn’t like what he’d discovered about the ‘sorted’ life he thought he’d had. Nicole had a
great figure and looked good on his arm. But if he loved her so much, how come he didn’t miss her now? They’d had luxurious holidays all over the world together, but they hadn’t
been companions, friends – not like his mum and dad had been. Nicole hadn’t talked to him much about anything that didn’t involve spending his money. They’d been two people
braced together by marriage, but they were never a couple as he understood the word. They didn’t laugh, play, talk. He didn’t miss her friendship, because they hadn’t been
friends. He hadn’t spilled out what happened to him at work when he got home because she was at a Zumba class or Pilates or having spray tans. They’d shared a house and his money and a
lifestyle . . . but it wasn’t a life. There had been no glue to hold them together apart from possessions, which made a very poor adhesive. He’d been an arrogant idiot really. No wonder
he came so unstuck.
He didn’t even think about Nicole any more, other than when a document arrived from the divorce solicitor for him to sign. She wanted a quickie so she could be immediately available for
the next bloke with a Jaguar and a des res.
The total of Will’s belongings fitted easily in his van. They consisted of a lot of designer suits, shirts, socks, shoes and underwear. His clothes were worth more than everything else he
was taking. A few boxes of books, a laptop, toiletries, photos – not of Nicole, although she had kindly left a souvenir wedding photograph for him which he had filed in the bin. Family
souvenirs, an inflatable mattress that would serve until he bought a new bed, a quilt and pillow, his one-of-everything from the kitchen, the TV and his armchair, a box full of other bits and
pieces. That would do him for now.
God, he wished his family were here, standing behind him, looking into the van. He could imagine his dad raising up his hands and saying, ‘Whilst ever you’ve got these, son, you can
earn.’ And his mum would have nodded in agreement and put her arm around him. ‘Cream always rises to the top, my darling. Someone’s shaken up your bottle, but you wait,
you’ll be up there again before you know it.’ And his sister would have said, ‘You total arsehole. What have you gone and done?’
For a moment it was all too real and Will laughed, though there was water in his eyes. Jackie never minced her words. They’d fought like cat and dog until they were sixteen, then realised
they actually quite liked each other. His twin was a lovely girl: kind, warm, full of fun, with no airs nor graces – everything Nicole wasn’t. She was the sort of girl he knew would
become Peggy Mount or Margaret Rutherford when she was a pensioner, except that she didn’t even make it to her twenty-second birthday because his beautiful strong sister was cut down in her
prime by some bloody bacteria.
Will shut the van door and climbed into the driver’s seat. He didn’t look back at the big swanky house; he just drove past the twitching curtains and forward to his new life in the
mini flat with his new landlady and her lucky black cat.
‘Have I been asleep for long?’ asked Harvey, jerking awake.
‘Well, considering that
Countdown
is about to start, I’d say so,’ said Molly. ‘I was about to wake you. I’ve made some soup.’
‘Chicken soup for the invalid,’ Harvey grinned.
‘Homemade minestrone packed with vegetables,’ replied Molly.
‘Plenty of parmesan and crusty bread?’
‘Well that would be really good for you, wouldn’t it?’ humphed Molly.
‘Do you honestly think I care, Molly?’ smiled Harvey. ‘Minestrone isn’t minestrone without some cheese on top. Just a little. Please?’
‘All right,’ Molly muttered. ‘Only a sprinkle. Do you want to eat it on a tray sitting there?’
‘That would be lovely,’ beamed Harvey. ‘I could get used to this dying.’
‘You’ll outlive me at this rate,’ said Molly, returning to the kitchen to add some parmesan to the two bowls of soup and cut some thin slices of granary bread. When she carried
in the tray, it was to see Harvey swallowing some tablets.
‘Do you feel all right?’ she asked tentatively.
‘Never better.’
‘We should talk about . . .’ Molly began, but Harvey cut her off.
‘Molly, I don’t want to talk about illness. I’ve accepted what must be, so please let me live my life to the end. No hospitals, no doctors. I’ve written my funeral plans
out and you’ll find them and my will in the zipped compartment of my suitcase,’ he said adamantly as he reached out to take the tray from her. ‘I’ve gone through all the
stages of denial and anger and depression and now I am in the relatively blissful state of acceptance. I no longer have to brace against the perils of the unknown, I am merely concerned with
embracing the glorious present. Then I shall go gently after exceeding my allotted three score years and ten, thankful for a life packed with adventure.’
‘Adventure?’ huffed Molly. ‘I don’t doubt it.’
‘If I couldn’t put down my roots with you, I didn’t want to put them down with anyone,’ said Harvey. ‘I travelled the world and lived this life that God gave me. I
only wish you could have been by my side, dear Molly. However many people I met, I was always lonely where it mattered.’ His closed fist fell against his heart.
‘And how did you manage to finance all your “adventures”, I wonder?’ snapped Molly, refusing to let his words soften her.
‘Oh, you wouldn’t have approved.’ He winked at her.
‘Gambling, no doubt.’
‘You know me too well. I was lucky, at least, on roulette wheels and horses. Not so lucky in other things. Life is for the living, Molly, and I intend to live as long as possible in the
sunshine and not in the shadow of death. So, can we say no more on the subject?’
He looked intently at Molly as he waited for her to accede.
‘Please?’
‘If that’s what you want.’
‘I do.’
Molly nodded, but she knew she was going to have to do a lot of tongue-biting. It wasn’t natural not to mention health worries to a man so obviously sick.
‘My, that looks grand,’ said Harvey looking down onto the tray. ‘You were always such a wonderful cook. I wonder what I would have been having on the ward now? Lumpy
reconstituted mash? A dried-out piece of cod, perhaps?’
Molly sat down with her own tray. She couldn’t hold it in any longer. ‘What happened to
her
? The one you left me for.’ The woman whose name Molly would never say.
‘Joyce Ogley?’
Molly shuddered and Harvey hooted with laughter.
‘I like what you did there, Molly, smoothly leaping from the dried-out piece of cod to Joyce.’
Molly sniffed and murmured none too quietly, ‘Well, you can hardly blame me.’
‘We parted about three months after I ended up in Blackpool with her.’
Molly’s spoon clattered onto the tray. ‘Three months?’
‘Yes. She stayed in Blackpool, I moved to Manchester.’
‘You only stayed together for three months?’
Why didn’t you come back?
‘I didn’t love her,’ said Harvey, slowly stirring the cheese into the soup. ‘She wasn’t you. I made a mistake. I wanted to come back but . . .’
Molly felt breathless. ‘But what?’
‘I respected you too much to beg you to take me back. You were worth ten of me. What was I? Ex-thief, gambler . . . and you were a lady. Plus your Margaret would have crucified me if
I’d returned. Where is she, by the way? I’m presuming she doesn’t know I’m around.’
‘She’s on a cruise,’ said Molly, not wanting to talk about Margaret now.
‘I always liked her, though. And Bernard. Wonderful man. But I fear the feeling wasn’t reciprocated. And I totally understand why.’ He stared straight into Molly’s dark
blue eyes ‘You were the only woman I ever loved,’ he said.
He’s just saying that because you’re looking after him,
said a voice inside Molly, pulling her back from the abyss her heart wanted to throw itself into again.
‘Eat your soup,’ she said.
‘Aye-aye, cap’n,’ he smiled.
Shaun would have been lying to himself if he said that he wasn’t intrigued to see where Leni lived, although he could have guessed it would be in the sort of cottage
whose image would sit beautifully on a tin of chocolate biscuits. He wasn’t far wrong, he was satisfied to discover. Thorn Cottage was situated on the outskirts of Maltstone. There were three
houses on the row which once belonged to the workers on the nearby Clough Farm. Hers was on the far end, an old stone build, covered in honeysuckle with frilly curtains hanging at the windows.
‘Hello, Mr McCarthy.’ She was at the door before he had even braked. She must have been looking out for him. ‘Tea or coffee?’
Oh, why not. He was gagging for a drink. ‘Coffee please, if you don’t mind. Black. One sugar.’
‘It’ll be with you in a flash,’ she said. ‘I’ll just show you the job first. I know you’re busy.’
He wiped his feet on the mat and walked into a pretty lounge. It couldn’t have been more different to his own house, with all the plump soft furnishings and bright paintings of French
café scenes. There was a dark brown rug in front of a blackleaded Yorkshire range, unlit for summer, but Shaun reckoned it would kick out some grand heat in winter. Mr Bingley was asleep on
the rug, his head on his paws, his tail curling around his huge body. It was a warm, cosy and inviting scene. Nothing less than he expected from Miss Green Gables.
He had read somewhere how to tell the difference between a female and a male snake: put them on a bed with a soft side and a hard side and the female would always slither to the warmer more
comfortable part. A female snake would have loved it in Leni Merryman’s house. Even a male snake might have changed his proclivities for this set-up.
Shaun was moved slightly to envy. He had lived in so many houses, never feeling like any one of them was a home. He bought shells of houses, tried to make them his own with alterations and
redesigns and ended up selling them only to move on to another and start the process again. Every one felt cold and empty. There was something missing from all of them that he couldn’t
produce.
‘Follow me, Mr McCarthy,’ Leni said, crossing the room to a polished wooden staircase. ‘It’s up here.’
Photographs lined the walls in frames hung by pink and cream striped ribbons. Shaun realised at the top of the stairs that it was the same girl in various stages of growth: a baby in a white
frilly dress, a giggling toddler sitting astride a rocking horse, a school photo where she was grinning, her front two teeth missing; a lanky teenager with long dark messy hair holding up a
certificate in one hand and a pair of pink ballet shoes with the other; then astride a horse, taking a fence.
‘It’s this door,’ said Leni. ‘I’ve made a bit of a mess of it, I’m afraid.’
‘Haven’t you just,’ Shaun affirmed, looking at the twisted hinge and wondering how she had managed to do that. He tried to close the door and found that it didn’t fit in
the frame. The wood had swollen and needed planing off in the middle, then the hinges needed totally replacing.
‘I’ll get your coffee,’ she said, squeezing past him on the landing. There wasn’t a lot of space; it was as compact as a doll’s house. The door he was mending led
to a room he presumed wasn’t hers, because it had a single bed in it with a pink quilt and a furry pink throw draped over the top of it, and an obligatory teddy bear. There were shelves of
books and a desk with a cream anglepoise lamp on it. It had to be her daughter’s room, the one who sent her the postcards. Anne, was it? Shaun thought Anne might just have outgrown this room.
No wonder she was staying away at the other side of the world.
‘Here you go, Mr McCarthy,’ said Leni, returning with a drink, not surprisingly in a mug decorated with brightly coloured cupcakes. ‘Is it a big job?’
‘I’ll have to do it over two nights,’ he replied, more grumpily than he intended. ‘I can’t save the hinges. I’ll take the door off tonight and then come back
probably tomorrow.’
‘Oh,’ said Leni. ‘I thought it might simply be a case of a replacement screw. There’s no rush though.’
‘Well, once I’ve started a job, I like to finish it,’ said Shaun. ‘Is this your daughter’s room?’
‘Yes, yes, that’s her room. Those are her things, although she hasn’t seen it yet, but I’ve decorated it the same as her old one. I only moved here a few months ago and
she’s been abroad. She’s taking a gap year before she starts university. Or two. I sold my last house to fund the business. It was much bigger than this.’
Shaun took a mouthful of coffee. It was the freshly brewed stuff, he could tell.
‘You must miss her,’ he said.
Leni lifted her shoulders and then dropped them again. ‘Well yes, but she’s too busy having a whale of a time. No doubt after uni, she’ll go and live somewhere exciting and
lively. She won’t want to come back here permanently after all the adventures she’s had.’