After You (10 page)

Lily sat on an upturned plant pot, looking out over the City. I stood with my back to the water tank, trying not to feel a reflexive panic whenever she leaned towards the edge.

It had been a mistake to go up there. I felt the asphalt listing gently underneath my feet, like the deck of a ship. I made my way unsteadily to the rusting iron seat, lowering myself into it. My body knew exactly how it felt to stand on that ledge; how the infinitesimal difference between the solid business of living, and the lurch that would end everything could be measured in the smallest of units, in grams, in millimetres, in degrees, and that knowledge made the hairs on my arms prickle and a fine sweat seep through the skin on the back of my neck.

‘Can you come down, Lily?’

‘All your plants have died.’ She was picking at the dead leaves of a desiccated shrub.

‘Yes. Well, I haven’t been up here for months.’

‘You shouldn’t let plants die. It’s cruel.’

I looked at her sharply, to see if she was joking, but she didn’t seem to be. She stooped, breaking off a twig and examining the dried-up centre. ‘How did you meet my dad?’

I reached for the corner of the water tank, trying to stop my legs shaking. ‘I just applied for a job to look after him. And I got it.’

‘Even though you weren’t medically trained.’

‘Yes.’

She considered this, flicked the dead stem away into the air, then got up, walked to the far end of the terrace, and stood, her hands on her hips, legs braced, a skinny Amazon warrior. ‘He was handsome, wasn’t he?’

The roof was swaying under me. I needed to go downstairs. ‘I can’t do this up here, Lily.’

‘Are you really frightened?’

‘I’d just really rather we went down. Please.’

She tilted her head and watched me, as if trying to work out whether to do as I asked. She took a step towards the wall, and put her foot up speculatively, as if to jump onto the edge, just long enough to make me break out into a spontaneous sweat. Then she turned to me, grinned, put her cigarette between her teeth and walked back across the roof towards the fire escape. ‘You won’t fall off again, silly. Nobody’s that unlucky.’

‘Yeah. Well, right now, I don’t really want to test the odds.’

Some minutes later, when I could make my legs obey my brain, we went down the two flights of iron steps. We stopped outside my window when I realized I was shaking too much to climb through and I sat down on the step.

Lily rolled her eyes, waiting. Then, when she grasped I couldn’t move, she sat down on the steps beside me. We were only, perhaps, ten feet lower than we had been, but with my hallway visible through the window, and a rail on each side, I began to breathe normally again.

‘You know what you need,’ she said, and held up her roll-up.

‘Are you seriously telling me to get stoned? Four floors up? You know I just fell off a roof?’

‘It’ll help you relax.’

And then, when I didn’t take it, ‘Oh, come
on.
What – are you seriously the straightest person in the whole of London?’

‘I’m not from London.’

Afterwards, I couldn’t believe I had been manipulated by a sixteen-year-old. But Lily was like the cool girl in class, the one you found yourself trying to impress. Before she could say anything else, I took it from her and had a tentative drag, trying not to cough when it hit the back of my throat. ‘Anyway, you’re sixteen,’ I muttered. ‘You shouldn’t be doing this. And where is someone like you getting this stuff?’

Lily peered over the railing. ‘Did you fancy him?’

‘Fancy who? Your dad? Not at first.’

‘Because he was in a wheelchair.’

Because he was doing an impression of Daniel Day-Lewis in
My Left Foot
and it scared the bejaysus out of me
, I wanted to say, but it would have taken too much explaining. ‘No. The wheelchair was the least important thing about him. I didn’t fancy him because … he was very angry. And a bit intimidating. And those two things made him quite hard to fancy.’

‘Do I look like him? I Googled him but I can’t tell.’

‘A bit. Your colouring is the same. Maybe your eyes.’

‘My mum said he was really handsome and that was what made him such an arsehole. One of the things. Whenever I’m getting on her nerves now she tells me I’m just like him.
Oh,
God, you’re just like Will Traynor.
’ She always calls him Will Traynor, though. Not “your father”. She’s determined to make out like Fuckface is my dad, even though he is patently not. It’s like she thinks she can just make a family by insisting that we are one.’

I took another drag. I could feel myself getting woozy. Apart from one night at a house party in Paris, it had been years since I’d had a joint. ‘You know, I think I’d enjoy this more if there wasn’t a small possibility of me falling off this fire escape.’

She took it from me. ‘Jeez, Louise. You need to have some fun.’ She inhaled deeply, and leaned her head back. ‘Did he tell you about how he was feeling? Like the real stuff?’ She inhaled again and handed it back to me. She seemed totally unaffected.

‘Yes.’

‘Did you argue?’

‘Quite a lot. But we laughed a lot, too.’

‘Did he fancy you?’

‘Fancy me? … I don’t know if “fancy” is the right word.’

My mouth worked silently around words I couldn’t find. How could I explain to this girl what Will and I had been to each other, the way I felt that no person in the world had ever understood me like he did or ever would again? How could she understand that losing him was like having a hole shot straight through me, a painful, constant reminder, an absence I could never fill?

She stared at me. ‘He did! My dad fancied you!’ She started to giggle. And it was such a ridiculous thing to say, such a useless word, faced with what Will and I had been to each other, that, despite myself, I giggled too.

‘My dad had the hots for you. How mad is that?’ She gasped. ‘Oh, my God! In a different universe, you could have been MY STEPMUM.’

We gazed at each other in mock-horror and somehow this fact swelled between us until a bubble of merriment lodged in my chest. I began to laugh, the kind of laugh that verges on hysteria, that makes your stomach hurt, where the mere act of looking at someone sets you off again.

‘Did you have sex?’

And that killed it.

‘Okay. This conversation has now got weird.’

Lily pulled a face. ‘Your whole relationship sounds weird.’

‘It wasn’t at all. It … it …’

It was suddenly too much: the rooftop, the questions, the joint, the memories of Will. We seemed to be conjuring him out of the air between us: his smile, his skin, the feel of his face against mine, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to do it. I let my head fall slightly between my knees.
Breathe
, I told myself.

‘Louisa?’

‘What?’

‘Did he always plan to go to that place? Dignitas?’

I nodded. I repeated the word to myself, trying to quell my rising sense of panic. In. Out.
Just breathe
.

‘Did you try to change his mind?’

‘Will was … stubborn.’

‘Did you argue about it?’

I swallowed. ‘Right up until the last day.’

The last day.
Why had I said that? I closed my eyes.

When I finally opened them again, she was watching me.

‘Were you with him when he died?’

Our eyes locked. The young are terrifying, I thought. They are without boundaries. They fear nothing. I could see the next question forming on her lips, the faint searching in her gaze. But perhaps she was not as brave as I’d thought.

Finally she dropped her gaze. ‘So when are you going to tell his parents about me?’

My heart lurched. ‘This week. I’ll call this week.’

She nodded, turned her face away so that I couldn’t see her expression. I watched as she inhaled again. And then, abruptly, she dropped the joint through the bars of the fire-escape steps, stood up and climbed inside without a backward look. I waited until my legs felt as if they could support me again, then followed her through the window.

I called on Tuesday lunchtime, when a joint one-day strike by French and German air-traffic control had left the bar almost empty. I waited until Richard had disappeared to the wholesaler’s, then stood out on the concourse, outside the last Ladies before security, and searched my phone for the number I had never been able to delete.

The phone rang three, four times, and just for a moment I was filled with the overwhelming urge to press END CALL. But then a man’s voice answered, his vowels clipped, familiar. ‘Hello?’

‘Mr Traynor? It – it’s Lou.’

‘Lou?’

‘Louisa Clark.’

A short silence. I could hear his memories thudding down on him along with the simple fact of my name and felt oddly guilty. The last time I had seen him had been at Will’s graveside, a prematurely aged man, repeatedly straightening his shoulders as he struggled under the weight of his grief.

‘Louisa. Well … Goodness. This is – How are you?’

I shifted to allow Violet to sway past with her trolley. She gave me a knowing smile, adjusting her purple turban with her free hand. I noticed she had little Union Jacks painted on her fingernails.

‘I’m very well, thank you. And how are you?’

‘Oh – you know. Actually, I’m very well, too. Circumstances have changed a little since we last saw each other, but it’s all … you know …’

That temporary and uncharacteristic loss of bonhomie almost caused me to falter. I took a deep breath. ‘Mr Traynor, I’m ringing because I really need to talk to you about something.’

‘I thought Michael Lawler had sorted out all the financial matters.’ His tone altered just slightly.

‘It’s not to do with money.’ I closed my eyes. ‘Mr Traynor, I had a visitor a short time ago and it’s someone I think you need to meet.’

A woman bumped into my legs with her wheeled case, and mouthed an apology.

‘Okay. There’s no simple way of doing this, so I’m just going to say it. Will had a daughter and she turned up on my doorstep. She’s desperate to meet you.’

A long silence this time.

‘Mr Traynor?’

‘I’m sorry. Can you repeat what you just said?’

‘Will had a daughter. He didn’t know about her. The mother is an old girlfriend of his, from university, who took it upon herself not to tell him. He had a daughter and she tracked me down and she really wants to meet you. She’s sixteen. Her name is Lily.’

‘Lily?’

‘Yes. I’ve spoken to her mother and she seems genuine. A woman called Miller. Tanya Miller.’

‘I – I don’t remember her. But Will did have an awful lot of girlfriends.’

Another long silence. When he spoke again his voice cracked. ‘Will had … a daughter?’

‘Yes. Your granddaughter.’

‘You – you really think she is his daughter?’

‘I’ve met her mother, and heard what she had to say and, yes, I really think she is.’

‘Oh. Oh, my.’

I could hear a voice in the background: ‘Steven
? Steven? Are you all right?
’

Another silence.

‘Mr Traynor?’

‘I’m so sorry. It’s just – I’m a little …’

I put my hand to my head. ‘It’s a huge shock. I know. I’m sorry. I couldn’t think of the best way to tell you. I didn’t want to just turn up at your house in case …’

‘No. No, don’t be sorry. It’s good news. Extraordinary news. A
granddaughter
.’

‘What’s going on? Why are you sitting down like that?’ The voice in the background sounded concerned.

I heard a hand go over the receiver, then: ‘I’m fine, darling. Really. I – I’ll explain everything in a minute.’

More muffled conversation. And then back to me, his voice suddenly uncertain: ‘Louisa?’

‘Yes?’

‘You’re absolutely sure? I mean, this is just so –’

‘As sure as I can be, Mr Traynor. I’m happy to explain more to you, but she’s sixteen and she’s full of life and she’s … well, she’s just very keen to find out about the family she never knew she had.’

‘Oh, my goodness. Oh, my … Louisa?’

‘I’m still here.’

When he spoke again I found my eyes had filled unexpectedly with tears.

‘How do I meet her? How do we go about meeting … Lily?’

We drove up the following Saturday. Lily was afraid to go alone, but wouldn’t say as much. She just told me it was better if I explained everything to Mr Traynor because ‘Old people are better at talking to each other.’

We drove in silence. I felt almost sick with nerves at having
to enter the Traynor house again, not that I could explain it to the passenger beside me. Lily said nothing.

Did he believe you?

Yes, I told her. I think he did. Although she might be wise to have a blood test, just to reassure everyone.

Did he actually ask to meet me, or did you suggest it?

I couldn’t remember. My brain had set up a kind of static buzz just speaking to him again.

What if I’m not what he’s expecting?

I wasn’t sure he was expecting anything. He’d only just discovered he had a grandchild.’

Lily had turned up on Friday night, even though I hadn’t expected her until Saturday morning, saying that she’d had a massive row with her mother and that Fuckface Francis had told her she had some growing up to do. She sniffed. ‘This from a man who thinks it’s normal to have a whole room devoted to a
train set
.’

I had told her she was welcome to stay as long as (a) I could get confirmation from her mother that she always knew where she was, (b) she didn’t drink and (c) she didn’t smoke in my flat. Which meant that while I was in the bath she walked across the road to Samir’s shop and chatted to him for the length of time it took to smoke two cigarettes, but it seemed churlish to argue. Tanya Houghton-Miller wailed on for almost twenty minutes about the impossibility of everything, told me four times I would end up sending Lily home within forty-eight hours and only got off the phone when a child started screaming in the background. I listened to Lily clattering around in my little kitchen, and music I didn’t understand vibrating the few bits of furniture in my living room.

Okay, Will
, I told him silently.
If this was your idea of pushing me into a whole new life you certainly pulled a blinder.

The next morning I walked into the spare room to wake Lily and found her already awake, her arms curled round her legs, smoking by my open window. An array of clothes was tossed around on the bed, as if she had tried on a dozen outfits and found them all wanting.

She glared at me, as if daring me to say anything. I had a sudden image of Will, turning from the window in his wheelchair, his gaze furious and pained, and just for a moment it took my breath away.

‘We leave in half an hour,’ I said.

We reached the outskirts of town shortly before eleven. Summer had brought the tourists flocking back to the narrow streets of Stortfold, like clumps of earthbound, gaudily coloured swallows, clutching guidebooks and ice creams, weaving their way aimlessly past the cafés and seasonal shops full of castle-imprinted coasters and calendars that would be swiftly placed in drawers at home and rarely looked at again. I drove slowly past the castle in the long queue of National Trust traffic, wondering at the Pac-a-macs, the anoraks and sunhats that seemed to stay the same every year. This year was the five-hundredth anniversary of the castle, and everywhere we looked there were posters advertising events linked to it: morris dancers, hog roasts, fêtes …

I drove up to the front of the house, grateful that we weren’t facing the annex where I had spent so much time with Will. We sat in the car and listened to the engine ticking down. Lily, I noticed, had bitten away nearly all of her nails. ‘You okay?’

She shrugged.

‘Shall we go in, then?’

She stared at her feet. ‘What if he doesn’t like me?’

‘Why wouldn’t he?’

‘Nobody else does.’

‘I’m sure that’s not true.’

‘Nobody at school likes me. My parents can’t wait to get rid of me.’ She bit savagely at the corner of a remaining thumbnail. ‘What kind of mother lets her daughter go and live at the mouldy old flat of someone they don’t even know?’

I took a deep breath. ‘Mr Traynor’s a nice man. And I wouldn’t have brought you here if I thought it wouldn’t go well.’

‘If he doesn’t like me, can we just leave? Like, really quickly?’

‘Of course.’

‘I’ll know. Just from how he looks at me.’

‘We’ll skid out on two wheels if necessary.’

She smiled reluctantly.

‘Okay,’ I said, trying not to show her that I was almost as nervous as she was. ‘Let’s go.’

I stood on the step, watching Lily so that I wouldn’t think too hard about where I was. The door opened slowly, and there he stood, still in the same cornflower blue shirt I remembered from two summers previously, but a newer, shorter haircut, perhaps a vain attempt to combat the ageing effects of extreme grief. He opened his mouth as if he wanted to say something to me but had forgotten what it was, and then he looked at Lily and his eyes widened just a little. ‘Lily?’

She nodded.

He gazed at her intently. Nobody moved. And then his mouth compressed, and tears filled his eyes, and he stepped forward and swept her into his arms. ‘Oh, my dear. Oh, my goodness. Oh, it’s so very good to meet you. Oh, my goodness.’

His grey head came down to rest against hers. I wondered, briefly, if she would pull back: Lily was not someone who encouraged physical contact. But as I watched, her hands crept out and she reached around his waist and clutched his
shirt, her knuckles whitening and her eyes closing as she let herself be held by him. They stood like that for what seemed an eternity, the old man and his granddaughter, not moving from the front step.

He leaned back, and there were tears running down his face. ‘Let me look at you. Let me look.’

She glanced at me, embarrassed and pleased at the same time.

‘Yes. Yes, I can see it. Look at you! Look at you!’ His face swung towards mine. ‘She looks like him, doesn’t she?’

I nodded.

She was staring at him, too, searching, perhaps, for traces of her father. When she looked down, they were still holding each other’s hands.

Until that moment, I hadn’t realized I was crying. It was the naked relief on Mr Traynor’s battered old face, the joy of something he had thought lost and partially recaptured, the sheer unexpected happiness of both of them in finding each other. And as she smiled back at him – a slow, sweet smile of recognition – my nervousness, and any doubts I’d had about Lily Houghton-Miller, were banished.

It had been less than two years, but Granta House had changed significantly since I had last been there. Gone were the enormous antique cabinets, the trinket boxes on highly polished mahogany tables, the heavy drapes. It took the waddling figure of Della Layton to indicate why that might be. There were still a few glowing pieces of antique furniture, yes, but everything else was white or brightly coloured – new sunshine yellow Sanderson curtains and pale rugs on the old wood floors, modern prints in unmoulded frames. She moved towards us slowly and her smile was faintly guarded, like something she had forced herself to wear. I found myself moving back
involuntarily as she approached: there was something oddly shocking about such a very pregnant woman – the sheer bulk of her, the almost obscene curve of her stomach.

‘Hello, you must be Louisa. How lovely to meet you.’

Her lustrous red hair was pinned up in a clip, a pale blue linen shirt rolled up around slightly swollen wrists. I couldn’t help noticing the enormous diamond ring cutting into her wedding finger, and wondered with a vague pang what the last months had been like for Mrs Traynor.

‘Congratulations,’ I said, indicating her belly. I wanted to say something else, but I could never work out whether it was appropriate to say a heavily pregnant woman was ‘large’, ‘not large’, ‘neat’, ‘blooming’, or any of the other euphemisms people seemed to use to disguise what they wanted to say, which was essentially along the lines of
Bloody hell.

‘Thank you. It was a bit of a surprise, but a very welcome one.’ Her gaze slid away from me. She was watching Mr Traynor and Lily. He still had one of her hands encased in his, patting it for emphasis, and was telling her about the house, how it had been passed through the family for so many generations. ‘Would everyone like tea?’ she asked. And then, again, ‘Steven? Tea?’

‘Lovely, darling. Thank you. Lily, do you drink tea?’

‘Could I have juice, please? Or some water?’ Lily smiled.

‘I’ll help you,’ I said to Della. Mr Traynor had begun to point out ancestors in the portraits on the wall, his hand at Lily’s elbow, remarking on the similarity of her nose to this one, or the colour of her hair to that one over there.

Della watched them for a moment, and I thought I noticed something close to dismay flicker across her features. She caught me looking, and smiled briskly, as if embarrassed to have her feelings so nakedly on display. ‘That would be lovely. Thank you.’

We moved around each other in the kitchen, fetching milk, sugar, a teapot, exchanging polite queries about biscuits. I stooped to get the cups out of the cupboard when Della couldn’t comfortably reach that low, and placed them on the kitchen worktop. New cups, I noticed. A modern, geometrical design, instead of the worn flowery porcelain her predecessor had favoured, all delicately painted wild herbs and flowers with Latin names. All traces of Mrs Traynor’s thirty-eight-year tenure here seemed to have been swiftly and ruthlessly erased.

‘The house looks … nice. Different,’ I said.

‘Yes. Well, Steven lost a lot of his furniture in the divorce. So we had to change the look a bit.’ She reached for the tea caddy. ‘He lost things that had been in his family for generations. Of course, she took everything she could.’

She flashed me a look, as if assessing whether I could be considered an ally.

‘I haven’t spoken to Mrs … Camilla since Will …’ I said, feeling oddly disloyal.

‘So. Steven said this girl just turned up on your doorstep.’ Her smile was small and fixed.

‘Yes. It was a surprise. But I’ve met Lily’s mother, and she … well, she was obviously close to Will for some time.’