Something Only We Know (14 page)

‘In the drawer by the sink.’ She began to struggle up once again.

‘No,’ said Hel. ‘Jen’ll get it. You stay there.’

I trailed through to the kitchen, noting the brilliant sheen on the chrome and the glossy work surfaces. The sink gleamed like a TV advert. Even the bowl of apples on the windowsill had a
polished look about them.

There were in fact no spare black bags in the drawer, only the torn wrapper off a roll plus some flimsy little pedal bin liners. They wouldn’t do at all for what I had in mind. My plan was
to harvest at least half those batteries, for a start, so I could keep my own private cache. I’d also spotted a universal battery charger and an unopened box of biros.

‘There’s none left,’ I called to Mum.

‘Yes there are. Try the pan cupboard.’

I did as I was told, but the only stores I found in there were fresh dishcloths and scouring pads. Then I had a thought: Dad kept a load of green garden refuse sacks in the garage. I could pinch
one of those (and get considerably more in it).

I grabbed the keys, then slipped through the back door and down the side of the house. The outside light was on and I could make out a bat flittering around our roofline, a little black scrap
against a navy sky. It made me smile to watch. Another night I would point that out to Hel.

Fumbling, I turned the key in the lock, stepped inside and reached for the light switch. But a split second before, I was aware that the room wasn’t completely dark, that a glow was coming
from the far corner near the metal shelving. A soft glow, and smoke.

Under my fingertips the light snapped on.

‘Hello?’ came my dad’s voice, slightly wary.

‘Dad?’

‘Oh. Jen.’ He sounded relieved.

‘Dad! What’s that smoke? Are you on fire?’

‘Not so’s I’ve noticed. Come round, see for yourself.’

I quickly skirted the bonnet of his Juke and squeezed myself between the metal shelves and the lawnmower. From there I could see against the rear wall a sort of niche made from cardboard boxes,
and my dad sitting in the middle of it on a leather footstool, coat on and holding a cigar. A portable radio was positioned at his elbow. The music coming out of the speakers was jaunty,
hippy-style.

‘What
are
you doing?’ I asked.

‘What does it look like?’ He swept his arm around. ‘Enjoying a smoke, listening to Mungo Jerry. Reading my Wilbur Smith till it got too dark to see.’ A fat paperback lay
face down at his feet.

‘But out here?’

‘It’s not cold. Anyway, I’ve got my sheepskin.’ He tugged at his coat collar. ‘I would say sit yourself down but there isn’t room.’

I took a step forward, bewildered.

‘Does Mum know you’re in here?’

‘She might do.’

Mum indoors, reclining on the sofa, surrounded by her labours. I was baffled. ‘Did you have a row or something?’

‘No. But she was busy, I was in the way. It seemed easiest to come in here. I sometimes do. You know, when things are—’

‘You’re saying she drove you out of the house?’

‘No, no, it wasn’t like that. I fancied a smoke. Some time on my own.’

‘But this is ridiculous!’

Dad took a drag on his cigar, blew out in a long stream. ‘What was it you wanted in here, love?’

For a moment I struggled to remember. ‘Um. Garden sacks.’

‘Behind you. Above the tool box.’

I turned and there they were, nestled between a tin of assorted nails and a bottle of engine oil. As I drew out the roll, I said, ‘You do know she’s throwing your stuff away. Your
tapes and clippings that you collected.’

‘Ah, well, let her. None of it matters any more. Not really.’

‘What? How can you say that?’

He looked me straight in the eye. ‘Because it doesn’t. It doesn’t, love. Don’t go back in and make a fuss. Leave it. For my sake.’

The footstool strained under his weight. I thought how old he seemed, how defeated and apologetic. I wanted to go up to him and shake his shoulders, say,
Get in there and claim your place by
the hearth. It’s your house. It’s your right.

‘Honestly, Jen, don’t worry about it. I’m fine here for the minute, with my cigar and Mungo J. Just chilling out for ten minutes. We all need a space of our own now and again.
Think of it as my gentleman’s club.’

So he came out here other evenings too. Sometimes when I thought he was working late, he was shut up in here with his books and his tobacco. I laughed awkwardly. ‘Very
exclusive.’

‘Oh yes. Membership of one.’

‘Can I bring you anything?’

‘I’m grand, thanks.’

Grand. Huh. Whatever else he was, it wasn’t that. There was the reek of diesel in my nostrils. The floor felt gritty under my soles. My dad, semi-detached from his own family.

I stood for another few seconds and then, not knowing what else to say, I left him to it.

Late that night Hel came to my room with hot chocolate again. This time she’d also added a plate of thickly buttered crumpets, which she knows I love. Although she denies
herself continually, she does get a kick out of treating others. A mass of contradictions, my sister.

‘Thanks for coming along today,’ she said as she settled herself on the end of the bed.

‘No problem. Why
did
you ask me, though?’

She shrugged. ‘I think we should start hanging out more. It’s always been tricky with the age gap, and then you were away at college. I’m not sure I’ve ever got to know
you properly. As an adult, I mean. More than just my sister . . . You enjoyed yourself, though?’

‘I did. Some of the art and the architecture we saw today was stunning. Uplifting, actually. Although you were probably too busy fiddling with your rabbits to notice.’

‘Yeah, the rabbits. Weren’t they something?’

‘They were. I won’t say what. By the way, I’m sorry about Chelle tagging along. She just invited herself.’

‘I got that. Urgh. What an annoying little tick she is. That business with the pampas grass!’

Helen had been sitting on the wall by the gift shop talking to Owen about women’s body image in music videos. The next moment, Chelle had run at them with a length of pampas grass
she’d pulled up and started whacking them over the shoulders with it. ‘Toy toys,’ she was yelling. We thought she’d gone mad, but apparently the toy toy (toe toe) is some
kind of New Zealand plant that kids use for play-fighting. It was pretty embarrassing to watch. Owen took the thrashing in good spirit but Helen was livid because it meant her hair got covered in
clingy feathery seeds which wouldn’t be brushed away.

‘Did you get it out?’

‘Only with conditioner and an old nit comb. Stupid cow. Oh, and those endless bloody stories: “I blocked an Auckland jeweller’s doorway with horse manure because they were
selling coral.” Who does she think she is? St Joan? God knows how you’ve kept your patience with her all these weeks.’

‘Well, I haven’t much choice. Owen thinks the sun shines out of her. She’s a model activist and virtue personified as far as he’s concerned. And he’d be
so
disappointed in me if I criticised her outright.’

‘I suppose he hates me, then.’

On the journey home Chelle had been waxing lyrical again about the wonders of her home country – how much greener it was than the UK, how much outdoors there was to enjoy, how much better
the weather was – when my sister turned round in her seat and asked, ‘Why don’t you go back there, then?’

Cue a shocked silence. Owen’s eyes appalled, Chelle’s furious. Ned focussing hard on the road ahead, me silently cheering.

‘I will, that’s my plan,’ she’d said icily. ‘But while Owen needs me for his campaigning work I want to stay and help.’

I said, ‘By the way, what happened in the end with the V festival and the mates you were supposed to be meeting there?’

She put on a pious face. ‘Couldn’t afford a ticket. Owen offered but I wouldn’t let him. I already told him I’m not taking his money.’

Oh, fuck right off
, I’d nearly said.

‘Well, you’ll have to go home pretty soon if you haven’t got a visa,’ observed Helen.

‘Who says I haven’t got a visa?’

‘Well, have you?’

‘No. But I can soon stick in an application.’

‘I can help you with that,’ Owen had offered.

At the end of my bed Helen shifted and sighed. ‘Look, sis, it’s not my place to give advice.’

‘But . . .’

‘I’d say you need to watch her, that’s all.’

‘She won’t be around forever.’

‘Until she goes, then.’

I shook my head emphatically. ‘Owen’s on the level. He’d never be unfaithful, it would go against his moral code.’

‘Wouldn’t he?’

‘No!’

‘OK. You know him, I don’t.’

She watched me eat my crumpet, butter dripping down my fingers. Butter’s something my sister would never eat, even now she’s supposed to be recovered.

I licked the side of my palm clean. ‘It’s fine for you,’ I said. ‘You’ve got the perfect boyfriend. Ned’s entire focus is on you. He barely even notices other
women. You have
nothing
to worry about in that department.’

‘No, I haven’t, have I?’

And she shot me a look that was almost frightened. In the next instant, right before my eyes, Hel closed down again. Her mouth became a tight line and her expression detached. She leaned away
from me blankly. I remembered that moment earlier in the day, the way she shrank into herself when Ned touched her.

‘Helen?’

‘Have you finished?’

‘What?’

‘Your crumpet. Give me your plate, Jen. Don’t just leave it on the side there for Mum to deal with. I’ll wash it up.’

‘Hel, listen—’

‘And your mug.’

‘OK, but, you know, if you want to talk any time. About Ned or anything. If there’s ever a problem, you can always come and chat. You’re right, we should hang out more
often—’

She stood up, a piece of crockery in each hand.

‘Helen, wait a minute.’

‘Shh.’ She tipped her head to one side, as if she was listening out for some far-off sound.

‘What?’

‘Nothing. I’ll see you tomorrow,’ she said.

CHAPTER 5

Stop with the Stalking! How to Break your Addiction to your Ex.

We’re well used to the TV thrillers that portray stalkers as creepy, controlling men who hang around in bushes and leave sinister answer-phone messages. But nowadays
an increasing number of women find themselves drawn into spying on a previous boyfriend, checking out his Facebook status compulsively, bombarding him with texts or tweets or calls. Both a blessing
and a curse, social networking has provided ways that we never dreamed of to track someone’s movements, and some of us are finding that hard to handle. Because now the temptation is always
there, just a click away.

So what happens if you find you can’t control your impulses any longer? What if the person doing the stalking is YOU?

I read over my copy guiltily, images of Joe Pascoe rising up between me and my monitor. I’d been about to call it a day there, I really had. I’d given Hel the
information she needed. She’d asked no more. The case should have been closed. But then I’d found myself on the outskirts of Chrishall again one afternoon, having interviewed a campaign
group about speed bumps, and I thought, since I’m here anyway, I’ll just nip down the high street and have a peep at his house.

Obviously I’d tracked down his address long before; had a look on Street View and Zoopla so that I knew his Victorian-fronted farmhouse was worth £750K and that there were two
four-star restaurants nearby and the local crime rate was seventeen per cent lower than the national average. But as I was practically driving past I thought I’d like to see it in the flesh,
just as a way of signing off the project.

I parked up by the corner shop, treated myself to a Cornetto, and then I strolled back along the road casually, like a tourist enjoying the autumn sunshine. The house itself, with its mellow
aged brick frontage and graceful bay, faced a village green bordered on the opposite side by a row of candy-coloured mews cottages. This was the view onto which Joe and his wife looked out daily.
Along the side of the house was a drive paved with herringbone brick on which sat a sports-styled Audi in silver. A high yew hedge screened the drive from next door, and the front garden bloomed
with blue hydrangeas and some tall pink plants whose name I didn’t know. Honeysuckle wound its way around the front porch. And I thought, You do not deserve all this,
man-who-broke-my-sister’s-heart.

Time ticked by. The sun was warm on my skin and I found myself slipping into a fantasy about how things might have been for Hel if we’d been closer in age and I’d been there at
school when she got into difficulties. Would I have been able to help? Would I have stood up to the bullies, to Joe? There’d been a girl in my year – Lindsay Flood – who none of
us had much liked because even at fifteen she seemed middle-aged and boring, and on non-uniform days she wore horrible mumsy dresses and her haircut was rubbish. Once or twice I’d asked her
to join us on the lunchtime bakery run, but she’d said no and after that I never bothered again. Now I wished I’d tried harder. How had it made her feel, watching us shrieking in the
cloakroom and larking about? The teenage years are harsh, but you don’t see it till later.

I was still standing on the opposite side of the road, spindling my ice cream wrapper, when without warning the side door opened and a woman stepped out. I could see at once this wasn’t
Mrs Pascoe. Some friend of theirs visiting, it must be. This woman was dark-haired and curvier, and I’d have said five or ten years older. She wore a Sophia Loren-style belted mac and
sunglasses, very glamorous and assured. Very much their style of acquaintance. For a second or two I was thinking,
I wonder what I’ll look like when I’m thirty-five or forty? It
might not be so bad being old if you can keep up the grooming
. And then I spotted Joe.

He was standing just inside the threshold and my first thought was,
Why on earth are his legs bare?
Because his hairy, finely-moulded shins were on view underneath his dressing gown.
Dressing gown?
Next thing, he was bending forward to give her a kiss, and it wasn’t a friendly peck on the cheek like these Cheshire types give after a dinner party, mwah-mwah. This
was a proper full-on snog. His jaws were working and her neck was stretched to reach him. After a while he tried to draw her inside but she broke free, glancing around. I stayed where I was but
turned my head as if I was engaged in studying the view across the green.