‘Come and look at this incredible view.’ She turned back to Webby. ‘You must get tired of people saying it.’
George came to stand by her, as Webby poured him a cup of tea.
‘Wow.’
‘If you want to go for a quick stroll, I’ll do you a nice cooked breakfast for when you get back,’ Webby offered as she passed him his cup. ‘There’s a little path at the end of the garden that leads down to a small beach.
‘Come on! Let’s go, while the weather’s still fine.’ Lisa was dancing up and down with impatience.
What George really wanted was a pot of fresh Costa Rican coffee and the Saturday
Times
, but that seemed unlikely, so he submitted to Lisa’s pleas with as much grace as he could muster. He gave a long-suffering grin.
‘I’ll go and get our coats.’
As he left the room, Mrs Websdale followed him hungrily with her eyes.
‘He’s gorgeous, isn’t he?’
‘He’s not bad.’
‘You going to marry him?’
Lisa was slightly taken aback by the directness of the question.
‘No,’ she replied carefully. ‘Actually, I’m not. I’m not going to marry anyone. I don’t believe in it.’
Webby sucked in her breath through her teeth, showing disapproval.
‘Lovely girl like you?’
Lisa turned to look out of the window, her hands curled round her mug.
‘There’s only one way to go once you’re married,’ she replied carefully. ‘And that’s down.’
‘That’s very cynical.’ Webby looked rather upset by this diagnosis. ‘Mr Websdale and I worshipped each other until the day he drew his dying breath.’
‘Well, you’re lucky then.’ Lisa was brisk. ‘Personally, I’m not prepared to take the risk.’
She put her mug back on the table to indicate that the conversation was over. Then she smiled, wondering if perhaps she’d been a little abrupt.
‘We’ll just go for a quick walk on the beach. We won’t be long.’
Webby nodded.
‘I’ll keep your breakfast warm.’
She watched Lisa weaving her way back through the tables. She was such a beautiful girl. Not stick thin, like most women these days. Curvaceous, rounded. Webby wondered what on earth it was that had given her such a hard attitude. Perhaps she’d been jilted by some bastard. Badly treated. Webby couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to treat a gorgeous creature like Lisa badly, but people were strange. And selfish. She’d seen enough horror stories unfold under this very roof – last-ditch attempts to come on holiday in order to save a floundering marriage. She’d seen everything, from stony silences to blazing rows. But there’d been happy endings too . . .
She gathered up the dirty cups and trotted back to the kitchen. From the back window, she could see Lisa and George, hand in hand, crossing the lawn, and she smiled. Maybe the sea would work its magic. It often did.
Lisa had grown up over the family chip shop in the rough end of Gloucester, near the docks. Not near enough for it to be interesting, just so that the dregs passed by on their way back home from the pub. It was run by her dad, Bob, who’d been in the catering corps and so knew a thing or two about cooking for hordes of people. And her mum, Julie. Warm, sparkling, pint-sized Julie, who knew enough of everyone’s business to keep a witty banter going when they came in for their chips. Who could stop a fight with one word, if the customers got lairy. Who could memorize the order for a queue of fifteen and time their haddock or cod’s roe to perfection, so that it emerged crisp and golden from the oil just as they reached the counter.
From the potato delivery at five o’clock in the morning, to the last cone of chips scooped out at about half eleven at night, it was a tough life. And the Joneses had learned the hard way to keep it in the family, because with a cash business you couldn’t trust anyone else. It was incredible how people just couldn’t resist doing you, even if it was as simple as not charging their mates for a portion of mushy peas. As Bob said, look after the mushy peas and the pounds will look after themselves. They had become adept at spotting all the tricks, but in the end it wore you down. In the end it was easier not to employ anyone. You couldn’t diddle yourself, after all.
So from the age of thirteen, Lisa was hands on. Her parents hadn’t forced her into it by any means, but to her it seemed obvious that she should help, and it gave her money to spend at a time when she was starting to long for fashionable shoes, make-up and music; stuff she didn’t want to fleece her parents for. Home from school by four, she just had time to change and grab something to eat before she put on her apron and took her place behind the counter. The chippie opened for the evening at five, and apart from the odd lull when the soaps were on and just before the pubs shut, it was non-stop.
For a few years, they were on the gravy train. The Joneses took pride in their chips being the best in town, because they changed the oil regularly and only used the freshest fish. There was no room for soggy batter, reheated chips or lukewarm curry sauce in The Happy Plaice. The salad for the pitta kebabs was never limp. And the place was scrupulously clean. The white tiles gleamed, the steel counter sparkled, and from the sound system trickled out the mellow sounds of Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon and Neil Young – a fan of the seventies, Julie was well known for her impromptu solos as she sang along to her favourites, and her regulars would smile and listen for a moment before putting in their order.
Despite the hard work, Lisa and her parents enjoyed their time off. Sundays were sacrosanct and always spent together – they would go to the countryside, for lunch in a pub. Or Lisa and her mum Julie would go off shopping to one of the big malls while Bob messed with the motor. And once a year they would go to Spain, while Julie’s sister Andrea and her husband came to look after the chippie for a week – a much-needed rest.
They loved Spain. Julie and Lisa were both sun-worshippers. They stayed in the best hotel they could afford and ate out every night, wallowing in the luxury of someone else having to do the hard work for a change. And every time they went, they talked about emigrating, buying a little bar. They knew people who had done it. The last summer they went, they viewed a development of villas clustered around a swimming pool, the air heavy with the scent of orange blossom.
‘We could do it,’ Julie would say wistfully. ‘One of these villas. Not a big one, but maybe with a sea view. Running a bar here can’t be any harder work than The Happy Plaice. And at least it would be sunny.’
‘Five more years,’ Bob promised. ‘We’ll do it when we’ve got enough cash.’
‘That’ll be never then.’ Julie sighed. ‘It’s the bloody winters that get me down.’
Lisa had looked at her mum with new eyes. She’d never realized she got down. Her mum was always so cheerful, so quick with a smile and a hug, always laughing and singing. But she sensed the weariness in her that August. Maybe it was because her mum had just turned forty. Some hormonal change that was sapping her strength.
By October, it became clear to everyone that it wasn’t just middle age that was creeping up on Julie. She became overwhelmed with tiredness, headaches, blurred vision. She never complained, but it was evident to everyone who saw her that she was suffering. She looked pale, exhausted, with dark rings under her eyes. And she had no zest for anything. She didn’t sing any more. She couldn’t even bear the noise of the sound system.
Lisa eventually forced her to see the doctor. The speed at which the medical profession reacted told them everything was not well. Within a fortnight, Julie had been taken in and operated on, the majority of her insides scooped out like the seeds from a melon. And even though the operation was technically deemed a success, the prognosis wasn’t good. The malignant cells had seen fit to take themselves off on their own journey, exploring Julie’s body for somewhere else to settle and grow, and had made themselves comfortable in various other hiding places where the surgeons couldn’t get at them.
Bob went into denial. Tight-lipped and silent, he carried on running the shop. Lisa redoubled her efforts, even though no one expected a fifteen-year-old to take on the responsibilities. But someone had to, while her mother underwent the aggressive chemo necessary to blast the remaining tumours into oblivion. It was Lisa who went into Boots and bought a pair of clippers to shave off the remains of her mother’s dark curls, then lovingly massaged her poor, sore scalp with sweet-smelling lotions until Julie fell asleep in her arms, exhausted and drained.
Lisa’s head teacher eventually discovered what Lisa was going through. Lisa never cried at home, but after an assembly for the sick, incensed by the fact that most of her peers had whispered and laughed their way through it, she had broken down completely. Bob was called in. The head was as gentle as she could be, but she was also firm. Lisa could not be expected to shoulder the burden of her mother’s illness, help run the chip shop and do her school work. Mr Jones was relying too heavily upon her. Surely there was other family that could help?
And so Aunt Andrea stepped into the breach.
Lisa had never trusted her Aunt Andrea. She was a tougher, harder version of her mother: the same features, but harsher, over-made-up, worked out, sun-bedded. Andrea was too ready with her demands and her opinions. She drank and smoked too much, her skirts were too short, her hair too blond. And Lisa didn’t like the way Andrea touched her dad. All the time. She touched everybody – she was very tactile. But her hands seemed to linger that little bit longer on Bob. Lisa was suspicious. Especially as she knew that her Aunt Andrea’s marriage to her husband Phil was rocky. Phil had warned her himself.
‘Watch her,’ he said. ‘Andrea is only interested in one thing and that’s money. Which is why she’s gone off me. Being as my business has gone down the drain.’
He smiled ruefully at his own attempt at humour. Phil was a plumber – a wizard with a spanner but hopeless at running a business. Several bad debts had buggered up his cash flow and he’d ended up bankrupt. Andrea had been less than supportive, apparently. Her eagerness to help her sister out could only be seen as questionable, in Phil’s eyes.
‘She’s gone on and on about that bloody cabriolet,’ Phil went on. ‘As if I can magic one out of a hat.’
Bob had bought a second-hand soft-top Golf as a surprise for Julie’s fortieth. It was their pride and joy, and Julie loved going out in it.
‘I’m not being flash,’ Bob had insisted. ‘I’ve worked hard for it. But it’s our little treat. What’s the point, otherwise?’
Andrea obviously saw it as an indication that there was more where that came from.
When Julie became too ill to do anything other than lie in bed, Aunt Andrea moved in. She grafted, Lisa had to give her that, because as well as working in the chippie and running the house, she nursed Julie – before the doctor gently suggested that she be moved into the hospice. That was when they knew.
It was the most dreadful few weeks. How time drags when you are waiting for someone to die, thought Lisa. Half of you praying for a miracle, the other half praying for release, as you watch the person you love decompose, wilting faster than a discarded wedding bouquet. Lisa had to get the bus to the hospice, as Bob couldn’t bear to visit. He used the chippie as an excuse, but Lisa knew he was being an ostrich, that for every day he didn’t go he could kid himself that the next time he visited there would be an improvement, that Julie would be sitting up and laughing, scoffing her way through a box of Milk Tray brought by some other well-meaning visitor. Instead of lying, limp, exhausted, defeated, unable to even lift the remote to change channels on the tiny portable telly they’d brought into her room so she could keep up with the latest shenanigans in Albert Square.
One Tuesday, unable to face double maths because there really didn’t seem any point – after all, she could add up five portions of fish and chips in her head quickly enough – Lisa went home and found her dad and Andrea in bed together. In the middle of the afternoon, with the curtains shut and George Benson on the stereo. She stood with her arms crossed while Andrea shot off to the bathroom and locked herself in and her dad pulled on his trousers.
‘You could have waited until Mum actually died.’
‘Lisa, love. A man has . . . needs.’
‘You could have gone elsewhere for that. There’s plenty enough places in Gloucester.’
Bob looked shocked.
‘I’d never do that!’
‘But you’d screw Mum’s own sister.’
‘I don’t actually think she’d mind if she knew.’
‘Don’t you?’ Lisa’s eyes were hard. ‘Shall we ask her, then?’
Bob went pale, not realizing that Lisa had no intention of taking what she’d seen any further.
‘Please. Don’t.’
He put out a hand to touch her, but Lisa drew back.
‘It’s your money she’s after, Dad. Not your body.’
‘Money.’ Bob snorted disdainfully.
‘There’s the life insurance. Or didn’t you know about it? I bet Andrea does.’
When the man from the insurance company came round once a month, Lisa watched her mother count out the premiums in greasy cash. She’d looked at the officious little weasel warily as he slid it into his document wallet.
‘You’ll be grateful enough if anything happens to either of them,’ he’d said once as a parting shot to Lisa, disappearing off in his ill-fitting suit with the too-short trousers.
Lisa knew if it had been left to her father, he wouldn’t bother with life insurance. He didn’t even bother with car insurance. It was Julie who made sure everything was paid up. Before she went into the hospice, she’d gone through the paperwork with Lisa.
‘I don’t want to bother your dad. He can’t cope with it. But these are the important ones – and don’t forget the MOT. Sid from the garage will come and pick the car up and drop it back if you just tell him. Preferably before it runs out. I’ve marked it all up in the diary.’
Julie’s eyes had been bright that day, and Lisa felt a surge of hope that perhaps she was on the turn, that perhaps Mother Nature had had a change of heart. But she hadn’t.
Andrea stood next to Bob at the funeral. Lisa wore a red dress that she and her mum had chosen on their last shopping trip together. And when she saw her aunt’s fingers close around her father’s, Lisa felt sick. Phil had been at the funeral, because he had always got on with Julie, but he lingered at the back and made his escape before he came face to face with his wife. Not before he’d given Lisa a hug, though.