‘Tell them,’ he repeats, this time more softly. ‘Or I will.’
A silence descends across the room. I clutch Nick’s hand.
‘Well . . . The doctor, he said, he told us . . .’ But Mum can’t go on. She rushes out of the room and upstairs.
Nick and I turn to Dad.
What can be worse than what Mum has already told us?
12
Just enquiring if your spare room is still available? Your place has probably been snapped up by now but if it hasn’t, give me a call. I urgently need a place by the beginning of September. All the best, Jack Baker
.
‘When I had a lodger I used to spend all the rent money eating out,’ Guy says, as we are on our fifth circuit of the park.
It’s late August and over the past month meeting Guy has become as regular as drinking coffee each morning. Unobtrusively he has entered my life. We don’t call each other because we haven’t exchanged telephone numbers. I don’t know where he lives; just that at the end of our walk he turns left at the zebra crossing and I turn right. I don’t even know his surname. He is simply Guy, my dog-walking friend.
During August dog walkers dwindle in numbers because schools have broken up and families are on their summer holidays. I’ve missed Sam and Brigitte, but Mari, Ariel and Walter are rarely away from their posts.
Guy, now a fully accepted member of our club, joins us in our discussions about politics, films, the funny man who always comes into Mari’s shop asking for platters, the dogs’ latest diets and grooming styles, and of course the weather.
Guy has discovered a lot about me. He knows my sister Megan died and that my mother lives in Australia with her second husband, Patrick. The last time I saw her was when she flew home last Christmas to help with the wedding preparations. Do I miss her? Guy asked. Yes. When Ed left me, I saw the mother I’d loved as a child when she held me in her arms. I didn’t want her to go home.
I told him Mum lives in Perth and has inherited a second family from Patrick, who has two grown-up sons. ‘Why don’t you visit her out there?’ Guy suggested.
‘I’m happy she’s built a new life for herself,’ I said, ‘but I rely on her coming here to Nick and me . . . and to Dad. I don’t want to meet another family,’ I’d confessed. ‘One is enough.’
I have learnt that Guy left advertising and now runs his own landscape design company, ‘which means I’m a glorified gardener,’ he claimed modestly.
‘My friends think it’s daft too,’ he said when he saw I was smiling, ‘me wielding my hedge cutter.’
He has a sister, Rachel, who lives in the country. She’s a teacher and is engaged to a man twelve years older than her. I’ve talked to him about his girlfriend, Flora, and now understand their relationship isn’t quite so straightforward, in that she isn’t exactly on holiday; she bought a ticket to see the world and isn’t coming home until November. Flora is an artist and professional photographer. She freelances for some of the mainstream newspapers, but her dream is to have her own art gallery.
Why is she travelling on her own? Isn’t she lonely?
‘I asked her to marry me,’ Guy explained, ‘she said yes but that she needed time out to travel before she did the whole “settling down” thing, that she had to get it out of her system. It wasn’t quite the reaction I’d hoped for when I was down on bended knee.’ There was hurt and wounded pride behind his smile.
‘Ed and I were engaged. He left me, two weeks before the wedding.’
Guy readjusted his hat. ‘Oh my God, I’m so sorry.’
‘It was some time ago now,’ I nodded, ‘but you’re right. It was awful.’ I found myself telling him about it.
‘I’m so sorry, Gilly,’ he repeated again.
‘Me too. I had to return all my presents. I’ve always wanted a waffle-maker.’
He looked at me curiously, then smiled saying he was surprised I’d put a waffle-maker onto my list in the first place.
It’s strange how easy it is to talk to someone I haven’t known for long. I’ve told Guy things about my family that I didn’t even tell Edward. ‘It’s like stripping in front of strangers at the gym,’ I told him, ‘the less well I know someone the easier it is to show them my cellulite.’
Both Mari and Ariel sense something is going on between Guy and me. ‘Gilly,’ Ariel says, ‘any fool can see the way your eyes light up when he’s around.’
In the shop Mari quizzes me about Flora. ‘There’s no way I’d want to come between them,’ I tell her. Anna also asks me if I’m sure that there isn’t any attraction because I mention Guy on a daily basis, but I deny it, saying it is possible for men and women to be friends. ‘He’s not my type,’ I assure her. However, what I do know is true is that I’ve come to be disappointed if he’s not in the park; my morning just doesn’t have that same kick-start if I don’t see him.
‘I used to lodge with a man called Carl,’ Guy says. ‘That worked really well because every now and then we’d bump into one another on the stairs, but that was about it. The older I get, the worse I am at small talk. I just want to open my front door, relax and not talk to anyone.’
‘Lucky Flora. She must find your company thrilling.’
He shrugs. ‘Maybe I’m too old for lodgers.’
‘I’m beginning to think I am too. You should have seen some of the people that turned up on my doorstep.’
‘Go on . . .’
The story of Roy Haddock and his trackie bums comes first.
Guy laughs, saying that I can’t live with a fish anyway.
‘Exactly. And anyone who thinks they can lounge around in their trackie bums has to be either devastatingly handsome or funny, or both,’ I insist.
Next was Catherine the American, who worked in recruitment and fired questions at me like a tennis-ball machine. I nicknamed her Ms Clipboard. Could she leave her ‘toiletries’ in my restroom? What ‘facilities’ were near by? Did I have white labels to stick onto our preserves? Was my canine vaccinated?
‘They’re perfectly reasonable questions,’ Guy assesses with amusement. ‘Terrible accent by the way,’ he adds.
‘If I work late can I stay on for the weekend?’ Richard the consultant had asked.
‘Doesn’t he understand the concept of a Monday to Fridayer?’ Guy asks.
‘Exactly,’ I say, delighted Guy understands my plight. ‘I should have directed him back to the website to refresh himself on the definition.’
‘Can I bring Freddie?’ asked Jonathan, the surveyor.
‘Freddie?’
‘My corn snake.’
I told Jonathan that the viewing was over.
Guy shakes his head, clearly seeing my predicament.
‘I’ve just been dumped so can I move in permanently?’ asked Sam the headhunter.
‘Alexander, whose request was so urgent, never turned up.’
‘Can you halve the rent?’ asked Tim, the City banker.
‘Wanker!’ Guy exclaims at the top of his voice, just as we walk past Rita, the ex-Mayor of Hammersmith, who feeds the squirrels from her red shiny scooter that is parked close to the memorial statue. Rita quite rightly tells him he needs to wash his mouth out with soap and water and I tell her I agree. His language is shocking.
As we complete another circuit, I tell Guy I need to be much more savvy about my questions when it comes to interviewing Jack Baker tonight. I have drawn up a list of house rules, advice given to me on the telephone by my mother’s spinster sister, Aunt Pearl. Aunt Pearl is a veteran landlady who has had more than fifty lodgers in her lifetime, including a conman supposedly called Clint, who turned up on her doorstep wearing a beige mackintosh and carrying a red rose. ‘I fell for his charm and good looks, Gilly. Don’t you go making that mistake,’ she had warned me.
‘Do you think it’s really sad to set a rota for the kitchen?’ I ask Guy. This was Aunt Pearl’s advice. Aunt Pearl now lives in Edinburgh, with her new boyfriend. ‘Companion,’ she’d corrected me. ‘I’m too old for a boyfriend.’ She also told me that if I had an old TV I should stick it in the spare room, keeps them out of the way.
‘I should get a reference too, shouldn’t I?’
‘Definitely.’
‘I need to know that each month my rent will be paid, not start noticing that things in the house are going walkies.’
‘That is a good idea . . .’
I cut him off. ‘Aunt Pearl told me that she once caught one of her lodgers in the act of stealing her hedgehog trinket from the dining room. Can you imagine?’
‘No. Why would anyone want a hedgehog trinket?’
Come to think of it, the portrait of the nude over my bed is valuable too. My father and I chose it together after I had graduated from Manchester with a 2:1 in English. When the gallery owner was telling me I’d made a wise investment Dad clamped an arm around my shoulder and said, ‘She’s a great girl, she deserves it.’ Dad rarely shows emotion, so when he does I can recall it vividly, every word and touch.
I make a mental note to insure my painting against theft.
‘How’s Flora?’ I ask, as we stall at the zebra crossing. ‘Any news?’
‘We spoke yesterday – it was her birthday.’ He pauses. ‘She’s having such a good time, I sometimes wonder if she’ll ever come back and marry me.’
‘Bobby Shaftoe’s gone to sea,’ I recount nostalgically, ‘Silver buckles on his knee. He’ll come back and marry me, Bonny Bobby Shaftoe.’
Guy looks bemused.
‘It was Megan’s favourite song: we used to sing it with her on long car journeys,’ I explain.
‘Do you think about her?’ Guy asks gently.
‘Sometimes,’ I confess.
Her memory is like a pebble in my shoe. There are some days when I know it’s there but I can live with it. Other times it’s so sharp that it digs and cuts into my skin, my foot bleeds and I can’t walk on. I have to stop because I’m crying unexpectedly.
Tears fill my eyes.
‘I’m sorry,’ he says again. ‘She must have been special.’
‘She was. It’s stupid really, when it happened such a long time ago.’
‘You haven’t really told me how she died.’
Traffic rushes past, our dogs are pulling on their leads and a police car’s siren blasts.
‘Tell me another time,’ Guy suggests, touching my arm.
I nod, feeling the warmth of his hand. ‘Flora will come back, Guy. She’d be mad not to.’
Guy turns left; I turn right.
13
December 1985
‘Happy birthday dear Megan, happy birthday to you!’ we sing as Mum walks into the sitting room with a chocolate cake lit with one pink candle.
Megan, one today, sits in her high chair made of foam, moulded to her shape to support her spine. I’m glad her birthday is close to Christmas because her purple dress covers the splints on her legs; her cardigan covers the splints on her arms. As she sits in her chair, I make myself believe she is normal, that she’ll go on to have lots more birthdays, like Nick and me.
I cut the cake and Mum tells me to make a wish. Normally I wish to be a famous author like Enid Blyton. Today I wish that Megan will live forever.
We take it in turns opening her presents: animal mobiles for her bedroom, sparkling hairclips and nursery rhyme books. Megan points to the ‘Bobby Shaftoe’ page, insisting, ‘That one!’ and Aunt Pearl, Mum’s sister who lives in Dorset, reads it to her. Aunt Pearl isn’t married. She has long dark hair dyed with plum-coloured streaks and she wears gypsy dresses with high-heeled boots. Nick and I love staying with Aunt Pearl during the holidays because she has a dog called Snoop and she lives in a pretty thatched cottage with a large garden that we can play in. My bedroom looks out at horses in a field, and I tell myself that when I grow up I will live in a country cottage too, just like this one. Aunt Pearl always has funny lodgers staying in her house The last time we stayed we met a Japanese man called Luke, who taught Nick and me origami at her kitchen table. Her current lodger is an opera singer, and Aunt Pearl says she wakes up to the most beautiful voice.
I saw Aunt Pearl handing our mother an envelope earlier. It was from Granny. ‘Megan needs our mother’s support, not her bloody money,’ Mum said angrily when she took out a fifty-pound note. ‘Why doesn’t she visit us? Is she ashamed?’
We play games and it seems unfair that my baby sister can only watch, but each time I look at her, she’s smiling. I decide Megan is the real miracle in our family.
Over the following year we’re happy. At mealtimes we sit down together to home-made fish pies. We talk to Megan about our day and ask her what she has done in playgroup.
Megan becomes the reason why my father starts to come home early from work. He strides into the kitchen and scoops Megan up from her chair before taking her upstairs for her bath. Sometimes I help him. We pile crocodiles, sharks and ducks into the bubbling foam and Dad rolls up his shirtsleeves to support Megan’s head and lean her back gently into the water. After her bath she has to be wrapped in heated towels and dressed immediately.
Megan goes to bed at the same time every evening and I hear the sound of Mum’s footsteps in the middle of the night heading towards her room, where she will gently turn her over in bed. In the morning Mum lays her down on the sheepskin rug and has to remove all the mucus from her mouth with a suction machine, which is placed over her mouth and nose. She tells me that it doesn’t hurt, that I must remember that it is this machine keeping Megan with us. Everything in the house is sterilized. Mum is always cleaning obsessively.
At weekends we get out of London. Before Megan was born Nick and I would meet up with school friends, but now we go on day trips, and during the summer we all bundle into Dad’s car and drive to the coast. His car is hot and smells of curry, but I love escaping from the city to explore. Mum wraps Megan in so many layers, saying she looks like an Egyptian mummy. ‘Too hot,’ Megan sometimes protests, but Mum explains to us that it is vital she doesn’t catch a cold.
Driving to the beach, we play games and sing songs. There’s always music in the house or in the car when Megan is around. My little sister has the voice of an angel. The doctor explained to us that because she doesn’t have to concentrate on movement her brain tells her not to bother with anything but her voice. She is far more advanced in speech than Nick and I were at her age. Before she’s two she knows all the rhymes and songs she’s learnt at her playgroup off by heart. ‘Bobby Shaftoe’ is still her favourite. She has a poster of him in her bedroom.