A Hundred Pieces of Me (24 page)

Gina kept an eye on him as she answered; it was Tony the joiner.

‘Hiya, Gina,’ he said, and immediately she could hear the apology in his voice. ‘Would it be all right if you came a bit earlier this morning? It’s just that job I was going to quote for has moved and the lads are all out.’

‘How much earlier?’

‘Er, as soon as? I need to talk you through a few choices,’ he said pointedly. ‘As I recall the client was quite specific about some of the details. We’re having a bit of trouble with some of these specs.’

Gina couldn’t deny that. Naomi had had some quite innovative ideas about how the shed was to be divided between a three-year-old girl and a thirty-something bloke. A bespoke playhouse-shed was necessarily quite a complex design statement.

‘OK,’ she said. ‘I’ll be there as soon as I can but I’ve got to do a . . .’ She had glanced out of the window across the high street and seen a very quick way of shaving half an hour off her schedule.

‘That’s not the most sensible lead I’ve seen but it’s probably the most stylish,’ said Rachel when Gina dashed into the Four Oaks shop with her latest donation. ‘Can I interest you in a more traditional option?’ She waved her long hand towards a rail of punched-leather martingales and handmade dog coats.

‘No, thanks. Didn’t I explain? I’m supposed to be getting rid of things,’ said Gina. She dumped two bags of clothes on the desk. ‘Here. I’ve got some clothes for you. Call it a sweetener.’

They were actually some of the clothes she and Naomi were supposed to be selling, but Naomi hadn’t been round to help and Gina reckoned she needed to butter up the dog-rescue people a bit.

‘Thanks! That’s fab. I hope you’re not getting rid of this handsome chap, though.’ Rachel slipped out from behind the counter and bent to stroke Buzz’s velvet ears. He pushed his narrow head into her hand, closing his eyes in a show of trust. ‘You’re a beaut,’ she cooed. ‘What are you called, eh?’

‘Buzz. And he’s not mine. I’m dropping him off with you.’

Rachel lifted her head in surprise. A hank of black hair from her choppy bob fell into her eyes; she pushed it back so she could fix Gina with an amused look. ‘No, no. We do books, and old cardies, and jigsaws. Not
actual
dogs. You need to take him up to the rescue. Do you know where it is? Up on the hill, just past the big cherry tree?’

‘I don’t have time this morning. And I don’t think I could get him into my car.’

Rachel stood up and brushed white hairs from her trousers. ‘Beautiful as he is, I can’t just take him in – there are procedures to go through. Who does he belong to? Did you find him wandering on the streets?’

‘Some lowlife left him as collateral while he stole my bike last night. I phoned the police, and they told me to take him to the kennels so the dog warden can collect him and . . . do whatever they do with stray dogs.’ As she said it, Gina wondered what the warden did with stray dogs. She had an unpleasant vision of
Lady and the Tramp
, and the pound truck. Another much-loved children’s film that had given her nightmares, much to Janet’s bewilderment.

‘His owner just abandoned him?’ Rachel’s expression darkened.

Gina nodded. ‘I don’t know if he’ll try to turn up and collect him – at which point I hope the police will nick the bastard, and hopefully get my bike back. If he hasn’t sold it on already.’

‘Bike, schmike,’ said Rachel. ‘Do you want this dog to go back to someone who’d leave him with a stranger? Do you have any idea what some people will do with a stray dog?’

Buzz had stayed stock still while they were talking about him, but out of the corner of her eye, Gina saw him sink to the ground, and curl up against a bookshelf, trying to make himself invisible. There was something pathetic about his eagerness to vanish from their sight that made her sad and angry at the same time.

Rachel must have seen it too, because her voice trailed off.

‘So it’s OK to leave him with you? Please?’ Gina pounced. ‘It’s just that I’m already late for a meeting . . .’

‘Fine.’ Rachel flapped her hands. ‘Leave him with me. I’ll take him up there at lunchtime. But give me your number in case there’s a problem.’

Gina’s shoulders relaxed. She hadn’t realised how subtly Buzz and his haunted eyes had lassoed her until the tightening band across her head suddenly slackened. She really didn’t want to have to worry about something else, not when she sometimes forgot to make herself supper or spent whole nights lying awake.

‘You’re in safe hands here,’ she told him, and untied her good scarf from his collar, then handed it to Rachel. ‘Consider this a donation. It’s Alexander McQueen.’

Rachel sighed, and looked at Gina as if she knew exactly what she was thinking.

Even in its early stage, the playhouse-shed standing in the centre of Tony’s joinery workshop really was something to behold.

‘Seriously, Tony,’ said Gina, as they stood gazing at it, ‘I could move in there myself.’

It was a shed of two halves. From the front, it was a pretty cabin, with pine shutters decorated with cut-out hearts, and tiny window boxes waiting to be filled with silk flowers; inside there was space for a play kitchen and a table for tea and a comfy chair ‘for grannies’. That was one half. Round the back, however, another, much plainer, door led into a compact Man’s Shed, with enough room inside for a leather recliner, a small television, a beer fridge and whatever else Naomi felt Jason needed to hide out with. The two rooms were separated by a sturdy dividing wall running down the middle, with a discreet serving hatch/observation window.

‘Well, we got the two doors and the two halves thing solved,’ said Tony, surveying it critically. ‘Mind you, it’s not going to be cheap, not with all those details your client wanted.’

‘Don’t worry about that. The budget’s . . . generous.’ Gina didn’t want to think about how many of her own Christmas gifts Naomi had eBayed to pay for it. ‘And the furniture’s next, now you’ve done the main house?’ she added.

The play kitchen was going to be Gina’s own present to Willow: a mini Welsh dresser like the one in her own old house, and a table and chairs in the shape of toadstools to have tea on.

‘Got one of the apprentices on it.’ Tony folded his arms, amused. ‘Started calling Kyle “the Elf”, what with all the little chair legs he’s been making.’

Gina smiled, and took some photos on her phone to send Naomi. Something about the playhouse was making her feel a bit broody, but she couldn’t work out whether it was for children she didn’t have or because, deep down, the little girl inside her was stamping her feet for an all-mod-cons Wendy house with real windows, and a proper black latch on the front door. Maybe a bit of both, she decided. You’d have to have a heart of stone not to want your own scaled-down window boxes, complete with miniature roses.

Gina got home at five, determined to make a start on her project for the week: downloading all her music onto her laptop so she could sell or give away the CDs currently taking up two boxes’ worth of space in her bedroom. She was fed up with having to climb over them to go to bed, and now the sitting room was starting to look clearer, she didn’t want to get used to some level of clutter. The flat had to be
cleared
.

‘Music’ was item eighteen on her list. The additions were snaking down the lining paper now, some with a few doodles next to them, if Gina felt moved to it. She hadn’t drawn in a long time. Now the whole wall felt like a giant sketch pad, tempting yet off-putting. The list was getting interesting, and she was trying to choose instinctively, rather than with logical reasons.

Some choices were practical – her laptop, her hi-fi speakers, her indulgent feather duvet, which was cool in summer and warm in winter – while some were deliberately impractical and sentimental: a framed photo of her mum and dad at Ascot, the lucky cat mascot Naomi had given her before her A levels. She couldn’t choose just one CD, when so much of her life was soundtracked by her music collection, so she’d chosen all of it.

Gina slotted the first Beatles disk into her laptop to start copying it across, and thought how old-fashioned CD cases looked now. Some of these had been to university with her, some to her house share in London and others were really Stuart’s. Scratched, some with inserts missing, broken hinges. And yet the music was still clean and sharp. She did a rough mental calculation of how much hard cash had been spent on the contents of these two boxes and felt a bit sick. Still, if the charity shop got a quid for each of them, she’d more than paid for Buzz to have a few meals in the rescue.

She frowned. Buzz would be fine. And he wasn’t her responsibility. She’d done the right thing, handed him over to the people who could look after him.

In the time it had taken her to sort out all the Beatles albums into a pile,
Revolver
had downloaded. Gina ejected the disk, clicked it back into its box and consigned it to GIVE AWAY
and reached for
Rubber Soul
. There was something satisfying about downloading: it was going to fill up a useful chunk of quiet evenings, when she could tell her mother and Naomi that, yes, she was keeping busy, thanks.

She did some tidying while the Beatles’ albums were being copied, but as she ventured into the Nineties, nostalgia started to slow Gina down. The CDs had been stored in floor-to-ceiling shelves in Dryden Road so she hadn’t looked at the covers in a long time but now she did, and the memories came back as she opened each case.

Nick Drake. Lying in bed with Kit, listening to
Five Leaves Left
over and over while they kissed until her lips were raw.

Nirvana reminded her of revising with Naomi on the grass behind the rounders pitch.

Now That’s What I Call Music!
compilations with tracklists on the back conjured up entire long summer afternoons listening to the radio in her bedroom.

Radiohead, the Flaming Lips, Editors: the sounds of her chemo months. Complicated, textural music she’d never had time for when she was busy but which filled up her afternoons in bed while she was slowly resurfacing after the treatments, unable to move or think, and needing distraction from the pain in her bones, in her muscles. Gina put those to one side: she knew right now she’d never listen to Arcade Fire again because she’d be swamped with nausea.

She wondered what would be the musical memory for this phase of her life. You never really knew until the time had passed completely, and you heard something at random and everything came flooding back.

Alanis Morissette. Gina held
Jagged Little Pill
and ran her finger over the case, cracked where someone had stood on it at a party. It was the first CD she’d bought, from HMV in Longhampton, and it had sparked off her first proper teenage row with her mother, who seemed convinced that owning a CD with a parental guidance sticker meant that Gina was headed off the rails and into a life of drunkenness and tattoos.

Terry had tried to calm it down. At the peak of the argument, Janet had spat out something about Gina not getting this sort of behaviour from
her
, and the defiance had abruptly dropped away from Gina to be replaced with curiosity. What, exactly? As far as she knew, her soldier dad had had about as much in common with Alanis Morissette as she did. But Janet had clamped her mouth shut, claimed she had a migraine and stormed off to bed, leaving the questions hanging in the air.

Terry had persuaded her not to pursue it. ‘She’s just worried about you growing up,’ he’d said. ‘Don’t read anything into it. Some of those lyrics are a bit . . . angry, love.’

But as Gina had moaned to Naomi afterwards, what else could she do but read things into it when her mother never told her anything? She read in everything she could. You didn’t get into the SAS if you were any old soldier. Your death didn’t get a complete security blackout unless you were doing something dangerous.

And
how
was she like her dad? Were there genes in her that could be trained to kill, to stalk, to go charging into danger? Had he been like that all the time? How her mother, so neat and pretty, had ended up married to a man she wouldn’t talk about was as much a part of the mystery as he was. Janet had only known Huw for four years. Less time than Gina had lived with Stuart.

Gina hadn’t been listening to the tracks as they downloaded onto her laptop but on an impulse she clicked on ‘You Oughta Know’.

All the hairs on the back of her arms stood up. She’d forgotten just how much anger was in that song.

The buzzer sounded, and Gina jumped as if someone had come into the room.

She turned off the music and fumbled with the entry-phone, trying to compose herself. Was it the policeman? Maybe Dave back with her bike?

‘Hi,’ said an unfamiliar voice. ‘It’s Rachel Fenwick from the dog rescue. Have you got a moment?’

‘Yes, of course.’ Gina pressed her lips together, pulling herself back. Rachel could take some of these CDs – perfect timing. ‘Push the door, it’s unlocked.’

While Rachel came up the stairs to the flat, Gina moved quickly around the room, straightening the three yellow cushions on her sofa, moving her laptop off the coffee  table, relighting the hyacinth candle and turning on a couple of lamps. She found herself hoping that Rachel was calling to tell her that Buzz had been claimed, or was now settled in the kennels up the road. She didn’t want him, but she didn’t want him to be unhappy either.