A Hundred Pieces of Me (44 page)

‘Yes, I wanted to talk to you about the electrical quote Nick mentioned this afternoon. It seems extraordinarily high.’

‘That’s not final,’ said Gina. ‘Stephen’s going to send me a breakdown, so we can discuss it, maybe with the architect as well. He quoted a ballpark figure because there’s always going to be some margin for unknowns in a renovation like this, but with a house this size, and the amount of work you want to do on it, you really need to start from— Hello?’

She thought Amanda was being unusually quiet, and realised the screen had frozen. Then it went black.

Gina looked up at Nick. ‘She’s gone.’

‘What? She’s hung up?’ He turned the screen round, and groaned. ‘Oh, you know why? The power’s off again. The Wi-Fi’s down.’

It was still light outside, the sun slowly fading out of the pale blue sky, leaving the bare floorboards bathed in a sweetish yellow, streaked with shadows from the scaffolding. They were like bars across the room.

‘Has it been doing that all day?’ asked Gina.

‘To be honest, it’s gone off a few times since I moved in. But then that electrician bloke did have a good meddle with the fuse box this afternoon.’ Nick folded his arms, tucking the iPad underneath. ‘He may have disturbed the three particles of dust holding the connections together.’

She reached for her phone. ‘I’ll call Lorcan. He might not have got home yet. He’s not an electrician but he knows how to fix fuses.’

Nick reached out and touched her arm lightly. ‘No, leave it. The poor guy’s been here since eight this morning. Let him get some supper. It often comes back on by itself.’

‘Shouldn’t we ring Amanda’s mobile?’

‘No. Let’s
not
ring Amanda’s mobile.’ He tipped his head towards the stairs and started walking towards the landing. ‘Let’s go downstairs and have a drink, and wait for the power to come on again. She’ll be back in a meeting at two her time, so if she doesn’t call by seven, she won’t be calling at all.’

‘Well, I suppose it proves the point about needing to rewire from scratch.’ Gina followed him towards the staircase. ‘I was hoping I could put that electrician’s quote into perspective for her. It must seem like a hell of a lot of money for nothing you can see.’

‘You should see the figures Amanda deals with every week,’ said Nick. ‘Millions of dollars, bandied around like loose change. Come on, I need a glass of wine. It’s been a long day.’

As they descended, Gina trailed her hand down the polished oak rail that swept round in a sinuous curve above slender wrought-iron balustrades. She loved the idea of the thousands of hands that had trailed along it, just like hers was now. Natural polish smoothed by thousands of fingerprints.

‘These are going to be breathtaking stairs,’ she said, ‘when you get the disgusting carpet off them, and have them treated. Proper your-carriage-awaits stairs.’

‘Or sliding-down-the-banister stairs. Into the eight-foot Christmas tree at the bottom . . .’

Nick turned the corner on the landing part of the staircase. As he glanced up, his eyes twinkled from the shadows, and something moved inside Gina’s chest. There was an energy in his plans for the house that she couldn’t help responding to: he wanted to live here, to make the rooms sing with activity, the way she had when she’d looked around it herself.

It came into her mind with perfect certainty: I’m going to give Nick the witch-ball.

She could already picture it, suspended like a green moon in the hall. Its mysterious glamour fitted this house so much better than her own calm, white flat. What could creep up on her in that modern flat, compared with the fabulous spirits and shades here?

‘What are you smiling at?’ he asked.

‘Nothing,’ said Gina, and smiled more.

Buzz was waiting for them in the kitchen, where he’d been shut for his own safety.

Gina could tell he’d been pacing round and round, and when she appeared he whipped his skinny tail round like a helicopter and looked pathetically relieved to see her.

‘I was going to have a pizza, but clearly that’s not going to happen now.’ Nick opened and closed the fridge door. ‘Do you fancy some cheese and biscuits?’

‘I’m staying for supper?’

‘Well, I’m going to open a bottle of wine, so we should probably pretend to have something to eat with it.’

‘Um, OK. Thanks. That’d be great.’

‘Do you want to sit down?’ He gestured towards the kitchen table, which was piled high with interiors magazines, paint cards, letters, pens and coffee mugs. The jumble felt jarring to Gina, after the cleared spaces of her own home. She fought an instinct to go through it with a recycling bag.

‘Don’t tidy up,’ he added, putting a wine glass in front of her. ‘Just sit.’

‘I have no intention of tidying up. I’ve clocked off for the day. And I have to drive back, don’t forget,’ she pointed out, as he half filled her glass.

‘Then don’t drink it all. Or let me get you a minicab.’ Nick twisted the bottle expertly to stop the drip. ‘At least Amanda liked the door, eh? Smart move. Maybe that’s the tactic – get Lorcan started on the windows as a diversionary tactic for the electrics.’

Something in his voice made Gina feel she had to say something. ‘The whole point of having a project manager is that you and Amanda don’t have to do the good cop/bad cop thing. I’m on your –
plural
– side. I want this house to be right for both of you. But it’s quite hard, if you both want different things from it.’

Nick didn’t reply at once. He moved around the kitchen, getting plates out, knives and forks from the dishwasher, placing them at the end of the table with the least mess on it. Cheese (expensive, from the deli in town, wrapped in greaseproof paper), oatcakes, farmers’-market tracklements, pickles. ‘I’m sorry if we’re making you feel uncomfortable,’ he said, after a while. ‘I didn’t realise that was how it was coming across.’

Already Gina was regretting what she’d said; once it was out of her mouth she realised it wasn’t really about the house at all. It was edging into territory that wasn’t her business. ‘Look, she’s busy,’ she said. ‘I can tell. Maybe we should have another regrouping meeting about this rental idea. A proper chat.’

Nick looked at the food, then at the disorganised table. He began piling the cheese and plates onto the builders’ tea tray. He indicated towards the main house. ‘Let’s go and eat somewhere I don’t have to look at any interiors magazines.’

The library had been covered with dust sheets, ready for the panelling to be removed from the walls for treatment, but in the meantime Nick had clearly chosen it as his escape room, possibly because of deep red walls and the cosier proportions. A squashy sofa had been placed in the centre of the room, with a coffee table in front of it, and in front of that there was a stack of black technology: a huge flat-screen TV, a DVD player, speakers, camera chargers. The multi-coloured wires snaked around the dust sheets, like a map of the London Underground.

Nick put the tray on the coffee table, picked up his wine and settled himself in a corner of the sofa. It was huge, and even though Gina sat at the other end, she didn’t feel awkward about their nearness. Three other people could have fitted between them and, anyway, there was no other chair in the room.

Buzz had followed them in and, after a moment’s observation, lay down at a safe distance, his muzzle resting on his paws.

‘That’s the first dog I’ve ever seen that didn’t try to get up on the sofa,’ said Nick. ‘Or go for the cheese. It’s smelly enough. Ah, hang on.’

He got up and returned with a couple of altar candles, which he lit and placed on the carved wooden mantelpiece, set over a more manageable fireplace than the ones in the main rooms. ‘So I don’t have to get up again if the lights don’t come back on,’ he explained.

‘And your iPad? If Amanda calls back?’

Nick checked his watch. ‘She’s not going to now. She’ll be in her afternoon meetings.’

Gina stopped slicing a piece of Cheddar. ‘Seriously, though, I can make some calls and get someone out to have a look at the electrics, if you want. Last chance?’

‘Yes. I’m sure. I’ve got torches.’ Nick sank back into the sofa with a sigh. ‘And if they don’t come back on, it can wait until Lorcan gets here in the morning. I’ve had enough for today. Could you please cut me some Cheddar too? On an oatcake?’

Gina passed some cheese over and sank back into the sofa. It was extremely comfortable, and she felt her whole body relax into its cushiony embrace. The wine helped. As did the softening light from the windows, the candles’ brightness intensifying in the dusk.

This is nice, she thought, surprised by the happiness wrapping around her. She hadn’t felt happy like this in a long time. Not actively happy-happy, as she’d been in the park with Buzz at the weekend, a different sort of happy. More . . . content. Like there wasn’t anything else to worry about.

‘You’re about to say something about the house,’ said Nick. ‘I don’t want to talk about the house any more today. Let’s talk about anything else.’

‘OK.’ Gina thought: there were lots of things she wanted to ask Nick. ‘Tell me about your favourite photography assignment. What was the most interesting job you’ve been on?’

‘Ah.’ He smiled. ‘Good question.’

Nick had good stories, and genuine gossip, and he didn’t mind recounting anecdotes in which he was the idiot, the guy who had the wrong lens, the snapper who fell for the wind-up. He reeled off people and places without name-dropping, but Gina noticed that Amanda didn’t seem to feature in any of his stories, except as a reason for him being in a particular place or with certain friends.

The light slowly faded from the room, and the candles burned on the fireplace as they drank the wine and picked at the cheese. Nick asked how Gina’s photographic project was going, and the conversation turned to photographs he wished he’d taken (of his mother, before she died, mainly), then to regrets in general.

‘I try not to believe in regrets,’ he said, topping up their glasses. ‘Or, at least, I only regret things I didn’t do, not things I did.’

‘That’s what all the best fridge magnets say. Fridge magnets never regret anything.’

Nick leaned into the cushions, like a cat stretching. ‘Surely once something’s done, it’s done, and that’s it. You move forward from it, instead of thinking, What if
this
had happened, or
that
?’

‘But that’s assuming that what’s happened is all done and dusted. Sometimes the thing you regret changes too much for you to pretend it didn’t happen.’ She stared into her wine. ‘Sometimes it changes who you are. You can’t put that behind you, not without losing a part of yourself.’

He waited for a moment, then asked gently, ‘So what’s your biggest regret, then?’

‘I ruined someone’s life,’ said Gina.

Chapter Nineteen

ITEM
: a train ticket, return from Longhampton to Oxford, 1st July 2008

Oxford, July 2008

Gina scans the café and feels nauseous with nerves. Not only does she not know what Kit looks like now, she doesn’t know exactly how disabled he is. Will they have to seat him somewhere specially accessible? Will he be able to feed himself?

Her ignorance shames her. She’s only realising now how much she doesn’t know. Kit gave little away in his email, just agreed a date to meet here in Oxford where he lives. Naomi didn’t want to help her track him down, but unwillingly, after some pleading, she did, finding his address through her brother Shaun.

‘Is this really the right time to get back in touch with Kit?’ She’d gestured despairingly at the pile of appointment letters from the oncology unit on the kitchen table, filed and notated in Stuart’s handwriting. ‘You’ve got enough to think about.’

‘I have to see him now,’ said Gina. ‘I need to sort things out.’

It had seemed so important then, but already Gina can feel this meeting slipping out of her control, away from the brave little speech she’d been running through her head since she’d made the decision to give him back the letters she’s kept for so long.

They’re in her bag, tied with red ribbon. Gina’s been doing a lot of sorting-out lately. These past few nights, in the strange period between her operation and the full-on assault of the chemo starting, she’s been thinking a lot about what would happen to her things if the cancer’s worse than the doctors say. The thought of Stuart finding these letters, or Naomi burning them, makes Gina feel sick.

Kit’s the only person who can decide what to do with them. They’re his.

And, yes, a tiny part of her still wants him to know that she wrote. There’s a younger Gina somewhere, a Gina she left behind, who needs to know that he knows so that part of her life can be tied off.

She spots him sitting by the window, and for a surreal second, Gina’s heart thuds in her chest, still sore from the operation. Kit looks fine – he looks more than fine, he looks almost no different from the way she remembers him. There’s no hideous injury, no supportive chair. He’s wearing a white shirt with a loosened tie, and his blond hair is shorter but still tousled. The same Kit but sharper, more grown-up.