Thank God you had no way of telling what was coming. She’d had big plans: to get a good degree and become a solicitor and earn stacks of money. But by the end of her first term she was already finding her law degree crucifyingly dull, and she’d fallen hook, line and sinker for the boyfriend who would go on to dump
her just before finals and get together with one of their mutual friends, prompting the rest of their circle to close ranks and leave Lucy stranded.
And if she had known that one day she’d walk in on her sister having sex with her husband she would never have allowed herself to fall in love again.
Romantic love was so all-absorbing, but for a limited time only. Where did it go? All that fierce desire to know and be known, to belong, to own and be owned? You might escape, for a time, from the quotidian drudgery of family life, with its more or less suppressed tensions, its unfairly allocated chores, its competitiveness and collusions, its rows, sulks and hissy fits, its occasional moments of transcendent happiness . . . but somehow, sooner or later, you found yourself back where you’d started.
She was well and truly back in the old order now: regulated by duty and guilt and loss. If only she could summon up another kind of love, that would be patient and forgiving, and redeem everything . . . maybe then it would finally begin to change.
The narrow ground-floor bedroom in which Ellen now lived was painted a particularly nasty shade of pink, the colour of the inside of a moist, open mouth. There was one small window, which looked out on to a steep bank of lawn. No sky. The window was open, but there was no breeze. The furniture was minimal, but still took up almost all the available space: a single bed, a small unit with a kettle on it, a chair.
Lucy found Ellen sitting next to the bed, on the
chair, with her back to the window, facing the door. Despite ill health and disability, she had not lost the power to dominate her surroundings, and, if anything, in this confined, institutional, unremarkable space her presence was all the more overwhelming.
‘Hello, Mum,’ Lucy said and stooped to kiss Ellen on the cheek. She still hadn’t quite got used to Ellen’s changed appearance, and wondered if she ever would. Had Ellen? Was it possible to get used to something without accepting it?
The only clue to Ellen’s lost glory was the grey-blue of her irises, the colour of a calm sea on a wintry day. It was still possible to imagine that a man might once have gazed into those eyes in search of reciprocal adoration or desire. Now, however, they were gloomy and reproachful.
‘Come and find me if you need anything,’ said Joy, the care assistant who had let Lucy in, and went off leaving the door open.
‘Close that, would you? I don’t want to see any more of this place than I have to,’ Ellen said. Her speech was slower and less clear than it had been, hampered by the paralysis of her face, but it was as emphatic as ever.
Lucy shut the door and sat down on the bed. She’d bought Ellen new bed linen to use here; Ellen had always slept in a double bed, long after she had anyone to share it with, so the duvet she’d left at home would be no use at Sunnyview.
Ellen had been aggressively grateful: ‘Very kind of you, when you’re so busy and have so much on your plate. I expect they could have given me something, though it might have come off the bed of someone who had died.’
‘She seems nice,’ Lucy said, inclining her head in the direction of the door Joy had just passed through.
Ellen made a sound that was the closest she could manage to a snort.
‘Did you see her fingernails?’ Ellen said. ‘I’m surprised she’s allowed. Not that I should be surprised by anything any more. At least she’s alive, I’ll give her that. More than you can say for most of the people round here. House of the Living Dead, that’s what this is.’
‘Oh, Mum, they’re not all that bad. Joy took me through the lounge and some of them were sitting watching an old film and having a laugh with the carers. They all seemed quite cheery.’
Ellen made the snorting noise again. ‘Most of them can’t hit their mouths with a spoon, let alone hold a conversation. Even if they did still have all their marbles I wouldn’t have anything in common with them.’
‘I read something in the paper the other day about a couple who got married in an old people’s home.’
‘We had a man turn up just after you last came, and they’ve already taken him out feet first. They don’t last long, you know. Especially in the heat. That’s one of the things people talk about here – the ones who can talk, that is. Who’s going to be next.’
‘I saw some fun social things up on the noticeboard. Something about a quiz night.’
‘Did I tell you they play music at mealtimes? All the wartime hits. Vera Lynn and the white cliffs of bloody Dover. The big band sound. I’m the youngest one here,
you know. There’s more than a few that are old enough to be my mother. Thank God she didn’t live to end up in a place like this.’
‘I’m sure you could put in a request for the Beatles if you wanted.’
‘I take it you didn’t bring me a bottle of gin.’
‘No, Mum, I didn’t.’
‘I don’t know what you’ve got to be so high and mighty about. You’re not the one who’s stuck here. Not yet anyway.’
‘It’s a nice day. I’ll take you out for a walk.’
‘You’ll get to meet I-want-to-die.’
‘Sorry?’
‘There’s a woman here who sits in the hallway and stares out of the window and says “I want to die, I want to die.” That’s all she ever does.’
‘Oh dear. Poor thing.’
‘I hate her.’
There was a short silence.
‘It’s good you didn’t bring Clemmie and Lottie this time,’ Ellen said. ‘It’s no place for children. I can tell when they’re here that they can’t wait to go, and I don’t blame them.’
‘Actually, they’re with their father today,’ Lucy said brightly.
Ellen looked puzzled. ‘He’s back now, is he?’
‘No, he isn’t. He’s not coming back. He’s still staying with a friend.’
‘I should think his welcome’s wearing pretty thin by now, isn’t it?’
‘No, actually, that’s not a problem.’
‘No need to bite my head off. I’m just concerned, that’s all. You can’t trust him. Not after what he’s done. What if he meets someone else? Has another child? It’s not like you’ve kept your career going.’
‘I might meet someone else myself.’
‘Yes, but it’s a lot less likely, isn’t it? At your age. It’s a great shame you didn’t stick with law, if you ask me. If you’d got a good job with a law firm, you’d be set for life by now.’
There was another short silence. Then Ellen said, ‘Hannah came last week. She’s looking very thin. Seems to me that man’s destroyed all of us. Since it was the shock of it that put me in here.’
‘Mum, I don’t want to talk about it,’ Lucy said.
It was suddenly hard to breathe. She got to her feet and murmured something about needing to use the loo.
‘It’s very difficult not having an en suite,’ Ellen observed. ‘But there we are, I know it’s too expensive, and you’ve done your best. You have to cut your coat according to your cloth, don’t you?’
Lucy went out, shutting the door behind her. The bathroom was down the corridor and round a corner. Like Ellen’s room, it was unpleasantly pink. It was equipped with a handrail and an emergency cord that dangled to the floor.
There was a mirror, but no window, and so no natural light to soften the reflection – a combination Lucy could have done without. She saw that she looked pasty, worn out and old. She thought that she looked like death.
Thankfully, Ellen’s mood seemed to lift as the afternoon went on. In due course they made their way down the corridor past I-want-to-die, a shawled, nodding, mumbling figure slumped in a lobby in front of a window. (‘She isn’t very clear, but I promise you that’s what she’s saying,’ Ellen told Lucy.)
Ellen hobbled with a stick, leaning heavily on Lucy’s arm. Lucy left her sitting in the reception area and went off to find Joy and ask for a wheelchair. Joy moved to lift Ellen into it, and Ellen said, ‘No, no, I want to get into it myself.’ Joy smiled and carried on regardless, and Ellen seemed to acquiesce.
‘Not too long,’ Joy said to Lucy once Ellen was in the chair, ‘remember dinner is at six. Do you have a blanket?’
‘I don’t need a blanket, it’s the middle of summer,’ Ellen protested.
In the end Lucy draped the blanket over the back of the chair, as a compromise, and they set off round the square.
‘I doubt the dinner will be worth rushing back for,’ Ellen said when Joy was safely out of earshot. ‘It’s always bland and mushy. Like baby food.’
But as they walked on Ellen fell quiet, and Lucy knew she was content. Seen through her mother’s eyes, the sunlight falling on dusty leaves was a reminder of another world.
An hour or so later she returned Ellen to her room, reminded her that she had to collect the girls from Adam at the prearranged time, interrupted Ellen’s
opening plea for her to stay a little longer, and took her leave.
As she walked away she was surprised to find that her legs still worked, that it really was that easy to escape. At first she couldn’t shake the feeling that her mother was jealously watching her, though she knew full well that Ellen was stuck in her viewless room. But once the nursing home was out of sight, as each step put a little extra distance between them, she felt herself growing stronger. One foot in front of the other, that was all it took to break free of Ellen’s gravitational pull . . .
And yet as her mother’s physical presence faded Lucy felt the stirring of an old, long-buried desperation. The impulse to get off her head; to be completely out of it . . . The desire for release.
When Lucy was finally home and Clemmie and Lottie were both in bed, the house took on the special pall of quiet know only to mothers who are home alone at night: a suspenseful, empty silence in which every ordinary creak speaks of a potential intruder, and the absence of any protector. As Lucy sat in the office, browsing the Boden sale, she had to try her hardest not to listen out for the sound of footsteps on the gravel or a tread on the stairs.
Adam had often been away, of course, but this was different. This time he wasn’t coming back.
She finished her glass of Sauvignon Blanc. Just the one. So refreshing after a hot day. The way condensation misted the outside of the glass when it was fresh from the fridge. The taste of summer.
The office had always been Adam’s territory: sparse, with an eighteenth-century map of the world on the wall by the desk. She’d replaced the map with one of the nice professional photos they’d had done of the girls last year.
Along with the map, Adam had also taken the mug with the lady who turned naked when you put hot coffee in it, the sound system with the fancy speakers, his drum’n’bass CDs, the photo albums from his childhood, the laptop, his skiing gear and his golf clubs.
He’d left the big PC – just as well, because she would have struggled to set up a new computer.
A yellow envelope had appeared in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen. She opened up her inbox and saw that the message was from Adam. No subject line.
I’m sorry to bring bad news. I was going to tell you today, but everything was so rushed, and with the girls around it didn’t seem the right time. I’ve just been made redundant.
‘Oh shit,’ Lucy said out loud.
And then she tiptoed downstairs, got the wine out of the fridge and filled her glass to the brim.
‘
NATALIE? YOUR PARENTS
are here!’
Natalie was down on her knees in a corner of the third bedroom, which was currently an office, mainly Richard’s, but with a corner for Natalie. Soon it would be Matilda’s, when they finally moved the cot out of the marital bedroom, which Richard had abandoned some time ago for the guest room. Then Richard would go back to sleeping with Natalie. At least that was the plan, though Natalie wasn’t in any rush to put it into action.
She had a pile of back issues of
First Educator
on one side and some yellowing copies of the
Post
on the other, and a large cardboard box in front.
‘It’s a bit of a funny time to be having a sort-out, isn’t it?’ Richard said.
Natalie checked her watch. ‘I didn’t expect them till twelve.’
‘Well, they’re obviously very keen to see you.’
That was new: the note of slight irritation with her
parents. He’d always been quite happy to see them before. But then, in the past they had never visited quite so frequently, whereas in the three months since Matilda’s birth they had come every couple of weeks.
Usually they came for the day, but tonight they were staying overnight so Pat, Natalie’s mother, could help Richard look after Matilda while Natalie went out for the evening. Natalie knew that Richard was grateful not to be left on his own with the baby, but was also not thrilled about spending most of the weekend closeted with his in-laws.
‘I just thought, you know, while Matilda was napping, I ought to take advantage and make a start,’ she said. She started putting the magazines back into the box.
‘I hate it when you flinch like that,’ Richard said.
‘Like what?’
‘When I came in just then. You visibly flinched.’
‘You just startled me, that’s all.’
‘I’d been yelling up the stairs for the last five minutes. It can’t have been that much of a surprise,’ Richard muttered. He picked up one of the old copies of the
Post
. ‘What have you kept this for?’
Natalie took it from him and flicked through till she came to the story she was looking for. ‘Speed-dating? Speed-hating, more like . . .’ Next to the headline was a large photograph of a noticeably younger Tina Fox, smiling in a sheepish yet self-satisfied fashion, and wearing a short skirt that showed off her legs.
She held it up to show him, and Richard said, ‘She was rather attractive, wasn’t she? It’s funny that she never found anybody. You don’t think she might be . . .’
He looked tentatively at Natalie. ‘I don’t know, gay or something?’
Natalie willed herself not to sound exasperated. ‘You can be single without being gay,’ she pointed out. She folded the paper and put it away. ‘Anyway, she was seeing someone, on the quiet, until quite recently.’