***
‘So, everything is gone? Everything?’
Monday morning and I am sitting in the staffroom holding court for my horrified colleagues at Smart Homes. Susan, the most recent addition to our happy group, is having trouble taking it all in.
‘Yep,’ I say. ‘Absolutely everything.’
Although strictly speaking I suppose this isn’t true. Some of my possessions still exist – not everything burnt to ashes in the fire. But what remains is completely useless. One of the firemen, still smeared with soot and smelling of damp dog, told me that if the fire and the smoke hadn’t got them, the water damage would have seen them off.
‘Even your shoes?’ says Susan, almost unable to bear the enormity of this.
‘Even my shoes. Except for these, of course.’
I am wearing a pristine pair of Reeboks, which, thankfully, escaped the fire by residing in the boot of my car in a rarely used gym bag. I’m also wearing the cycling shorts and vest-top from said gym bag, as these are currently the only wearable clothes I possess. It must be pretty obvious to everyone that they’ve been in the boot of my car for some time, not only because of the slightly musty smell but also because they clearly fitted me a lot better when I was actually bothering to go to the gym on a regular basis.
I swing around in the swivel chair and lift my legs up onto the table to show off the trainers. Joe’s eyes nearly pop out of his head.
‘Oh, put it away, Stella.’
This is Loretta, the office bitch. She always acts this way when someone else is the centre of attention. I leave my legs where they are. Last season’s workout gear probably isn’t ideally suited to the office but I can’t let the comment go.
‘I’m sorry that I can’t stick to the office
dress code
today, Loretta. I’m afraid all of my clothes were completely ruined in the
fire
.’
The others murmur sympathetically and Susan pats me on the arm. I tilt my head up towards Loretta and raise an eyebrow provocatively.
She gives me a look that implies she thinks my usual attire isn’t that much better than today anyway and, putting on the vocal equivalent of six sugars, asks, ‘Was that what you were wearing when it happened? You don’t look like you’ve seen the inside of a gym for quite some time.’
The staffroom becomes very quiet. Loretta and I have locked horns before and it is never pretty. But I don’t have the energy for it today and she knows it. She stands over me, hands on bony hips, a smirk planted on a face that definitely lost the fight with the ugly stick.
I swing my legs off the table quickly, making her jump out of the way, and I stand up, a good three inches taller than her.
‘Yes, Loretta. I was wearing this on Saturday morning.’ Thank God she wasn’t there to see me in Lipsy’s nightshirt and my fluffy slippers. ‘And I’ll probably be wearing it quite a lot from now on, it being the only outfit I’ve got left. If you don’t like it I suggest you take it up with Paul.’
We eyeball each other for a few long seconds, your classic Mexican stand-off. She opens her mouth to speak, no doubt something devastatingly clever and cutting on the tip of her tongue. I am saved by a cheerful voice from the doorway.
‘Hey, Stella. Love the new look!’
Paul Smart. Owner of Smart Homes, my boss of eleven years, and one of my best friends for even longer. He acts like he’s just walked in but I’m sure he’s heard everything and timed it just right. He makes a habit of getting me out of tight spots: he’s done it so many times he occupies the number one position on my speed-dial.
Loretta closes her mouth tightly and her lips all but disappear.
‘You’ve given me an idea, Stella,’ Paul says in his usual upbeat way. ‘Every Monday we could all wear our gym stuff to work and go for a communal jog at lunchtime. It would liven us up at bit, don’t you think?’
The atmosphere lightens a few kilograms and I smile triumphantly as Loretta stomps away. A battle won or an enemy made? Only time will tell. It occurs to me that even with much bigger, more important things to worry about I can still get drawn into the petty stuff. In a way it’s kind of reassuring.
As the staffroom empties Paul takes me to one side.
‘Tea?’ His blue eyes are warm and full of sympathy. I nod gratefully. ‘So, are you planning on going jogging later?’
I flop back into the chair and sigh. ‘I’m sorry, Paul. I know it looks crappy to come into work like this. It was either these or nothing, I’m afraid. Why is everyone I know so much smaller than me?’
None of my mother’s clothes were suitable to borrow – not that I’d really want to don her frilly blouses and bias-cut skirts anyway – and my best friend, Bonnie, only comes up to my armpit. Lipsy enjoyed raiding Bonnie’s designer-stocked wardrobe though, which distracted her from berating me for all of half an hour.
‘“Nothing” would have been OK by me,’ says my boss with a cheeky grin.
Paul’s an outdoorsy kind of man, you know the type: runs every morning, plays football in the park on a Sunday with his mates, sports a natural tan and sun-kissed hair even in the middle of winter.
If I was a man I’d hate him. But I’m just a lowly employee, so I throw a Bourbon at him instead.
‘Hey, don’t waste them.’ He puts it back in the biscuit tin and closes the lid. ‘You’re going to need these, Stella, to get you through today.’
How well he knows me. I watch as Paul goes through the motions of making tea: skimmed milk and two sugars for me, which always makes him smile.
‘So, you’re back at your mother’s?’ he says, handing me my mug and grimacing.
I nod, squirming inside at how that sentence makes it seem as though I only left my parents’ house a few weeks ago. On the contrary, Lipsy and I have been living in our own home for thirteen years now. One small set-back like a house fire and you’re back in the room you grew up in, asking if there’s enough hot water for a bath and watching TV programmes you can’t stand in a lounge filled with enough memories to suffocate you.
I’m not ungrateful. I’m lucky to have a roof over my head. It just makes me feel as though the last thirteen years never happened: all those steps forward, all those hard-fought battles. What was the point when one small step takes you all the way back to where you started from, like a life-size game of snakes and ladders?
And with a furious sixteen-year-old daughter to contend with, the last thing I need is to feel like a child again myself.
Paul will understand. He knows all about going it alone. He built this business from scratch with nothing more than a love of property and a business enterprise loan to guide him. I open my mouth, ready to share my innermost thoughts. Unfortunately, Joe chooses that precise moment to walk back into the staffroom, humming under his breath.
‘The worst thing is, though,’ I say loudly, ‘the worst thing is, I have absolutely no underwear left now.’
Joe freezes, turns tomato red and races for the door. Mission accomplished.
Paul raises an eyebrow. ‘Lipsy not taking it well, then?’ As predicted, he hits the nail on the head with painful accuracy.
‘She hates me. I mean, she wasn’t too keen on me before but I just put that down to teenage rebellion. All kids hate their parents, right? At least, they hate the one they’re with – the absent one gets off scot-free.’ With an effort I bring myself back to the matter in hand. ‘You should have seen her face, Paul. I had to watch as she went through in her head every single thing she’d lost, and there was nothing I could do about it.’
‘It’s only stuff, Stella. Stuff can be replaced.’
‘She’s a child. She believes stuff is all she has. It’s what gives her kudos with her friends. You know what she’s like, what all kids are like these days. She looked at me as though I’d gone into her room and personally set the fire myself.’
Of all the images that would haunt me from the weekend, the reproach in Lipsy’s eyes was the worst. It was as if she knew, before I even summoned up the courage to tell her, how much worse it was about to get.
Paul takes my hand and fills it with biscuit. ‘It wasn’t your fault, Stella. These things happen. When the insurance pays out, you and Lipsy can go on a huge shopping spree. Think of the fun you’ll have, spending all that money, getting everything new. You’re just as bad as her, you know, Mrs Must-Have-The-Very-Best-Of-Everything. Come on, admit it – if you’d had the chance you’d have chosen to save your new sofa over the family photos.’
He is teasing me but I can’t meet his eyes. Close, Mister, but no cigar. I’m picturing my beloved fridge-freezer, ruined forever along with everything else I’d worked so hard for. Funnily enough, the photos were one of the few things to survive, just a little bit of water damage curling up the edges.
Why do I find it so hard to derive any comfort from this? I’m disgusted with myself, but I just can’t help it. I struggled so hard, for so long, to buy comfort for Lipsy and me, to buy the right things, the things that other, normal, families have, and I can’t get my head around the fact that it is all gone. Destroyed. And all I have left is exactly what I had before. It’s like someone has reached inside me and pulled out a decade of my life. I’m empty, and a few soggy photos are not going to make me feel better.
Plus, Paul’s blithe assertion that Lipsy and I can simply go shopping again to make ourselves feel better is way off the mark. If only that were the case.
I take a deep breath, and in my smallest voice I tell Paul what I’ve done. Or rather, what I haven’t done. He frowns, leans forward, says, ‘Pardon?’
I tell him again. There really is no hiding from this one.
‘I – erm – I didn’t actually have any insurance.’
And there it is – my unforgivable crime. This is no ordinary calamity, to be fixed with a couple of phone calls and a few months’ discomfort. Oh no, when I say all our possessions are gone forever, I mean forever.
Paul says, ‘Are you insane?’
Quite possibly.
But try not to judge me too harshly. There are worse things a person can do than let their house insurance lapse. If you knew what I’d been through the last few years you might be a little more understanding.
Chapter 2
Taking the small, ring-bound notebook out of its paper bag, Lipsy stroked its smooth black cover thoughtfully. As her new diary it would do fine, but nothing in this world could replace her old fake-leather one with the press stud flap. Or the one before that – candy stripes with teddy bears waving from the corner of each page. Lipsy had filled more than ten diaries, starting them practically as soon as she could write. She couldn’t believe they were gone forever. Just couldn’t believe it.
If she closed her eyes she could picture the diaries as they were only a week ago, stacked high up on her bookcase, away from prying eyes. She trusted her mum not to look at them.
Now it seemed that might have been the only thing she could trust her with.
The girl moved around the bedroom, picking up and replacing random objects: a pink teddy pyjama holder, its tummy deflated and hollow-looking; a tiny straw basket filled with dusty china flowers; a paper cowgirl hat hanging on the back of the door, bent and flattened out of shape. At least this room was full of familiar things, which helped a little. Here, in her grandma’s house, she felt comfortable and safe and – most importantly – left alone.
But all these things belonged to a younger Lipsy: an unhappy, unpopular girl whose family was falling apart. This past year, Lipsy had managed to mould herself into someone who fitted in – who was admired, envied even, by her friends. She had left her childhood behind. Cowgirl hats and teddies were for children. Lipsy was a woman.
The
new
Lipsy always wore the right clothes, always knew the latest slang, the best put-downs, the newest swear words. She listened to the coolest bands, made sure she knew enough about what mattered to impress other people but never enough to sound nerdy. She’d successfully left behind the burden of her fractured family and she damn well wasn’t going to let this bloody fire set her back again.
The pages of the new diary were cool and smooth. Lipsy loved a brand-new notebook, untouched and waiting. She tapped the pen between her teeth and thought of how to begin. This diary would very probably be published one day, when she was rich and famous and people wanted to read the fascinating story of how she got to where she was from being a one-parent child with a no-good father, a crazy mother, a jailbird granddad, a spendaholic grandma, and an uncle who was only one step up from a tramp.
If these details were exaggerated a bit, well, that was OK. It was her story, after all. And the chapter where their house burnt to the ground, and Lipsy and her poor, slightly mental, faded-beauty of a mother lost every single thing they owned, would have the public riveted, she just knew it.
Lipsy sighed, running a finger under each eye to check that her make-up wasn’t smudged. She was trying hard to turn this into something positive, she really was. Her grandma’s lodger, Alistair, had told her that the grown-up way to deal with disaster was to turn it into a positive. She liked the sound of the word “disaster” and decided to make it the title of this first chapter in her new diary.
But it was harder than she’d expected. Her thoughts kept returning to the sight of her bedroom two days ago. Dirty water streaking down the walls where she’d carefully pasted her posters and her collection of art cards. The shelf of pulpy, unreadable diaries. Her computer was ruined, they told her, although it looked OK, just a bit wet. Well, of course it couldn’t survive that drenching.
‘But the bloody fire didn’t even reach up here,’ she had screamed at her mum, who stood in the doorway still wearing one of Lipsy’s cast-off nighties. Looking ridiculous, as usual. ‘Why did they have to destroy everything in
my
room?’
‘My room’s ruined too, sweetie,’ came the reply. In what way did that make it any better? Her mum’s bedroom had been just that – a room with a bed in it and some clothes. And all her mum’s stuff was rubbish anyway: those stupid trouser suits she liked to wear, the tops that
mimicked
fashion but never got it quite right. Lipsy’s room contained all her worldly belongings and it was plain to see that the firemen had no right to go around flinging water about willy-nilly like that.