‘Annabel, hi! Just wondered if there’d been any word at all?’ I don’t know why I feel the need to say this casually, as if it’s as inconsequential as asking the sales assistant in Tesco if they’d run out of baked beans.
‘I’m afraid not,’ she says. ‘It’s not uncommon to go right to the wire, but I’m a bit miffed that their solicitor hasn’t returned my calls.’
‘He hasn’t returned your calls?’ My voice is wavering.
‘Probably on the golf course. Or in the broom cupboard with one of the secretaries. It’s like
Mad Men
over at Harveys. Only Tom Harvey looks more like Donald Duck than Don Draper. I’ll chase them again in an hour if there’s no word.’
I put down the phone and attempt to focus on the clock, but I’m now so firmly in that state between exhaustion and hyper-activity that it starts melting, as in a Salvador Dali painting.
Tick tock.
Tick. Tock.
TICKETY SODDING TOCK.
By 4.15 p.m. I’ve still heard nothing. Then my phone rings.
‘No word?’ asks Dan when I pick up.
I swallow. ‘None.’
‘What’s Rich got to say for himself?’
‘He hasn’t returned my calls,’ I reply.
‘If only I worked a bit closer to their branch, I’d call in,’ Dan says. ‘He couldn’t avoid me if I was there in person.’
I bite my pencil and look at the clock. Again, I get the sensation that the fate of Pebble Cottage and my stupid, confused feelings about two men are linked. As soon as our future is secured in the house, all will become clear and I’ll stop torturing myself with these ridiculous pangs of nostalgia about Alex. ‘You might not be able to make it, Dan,’ I say. ‘But I could.’
I power out of the car park, as Sebastian glares at me with gogglebox eyes. I wind down the window. ‘Impromptu meeting. Possible business lead. All good stuff,’ I explain hurriedly. He pulls an expression as if I’ve asked him directions in Cantonese, as I thrust up the window and slam my foot on the accelerator.
Despite being a generally impatient person by nature, I am usually a calm and forgiving driver. I wave to people to say thank you; slow down to allow others to pull out of a space.
Today, I lean in to the wheel with an expression like the Tasmanian Devil.
It doesn’t help that I am scuppered at every turn. I encounter a defective level crossing (with a green man that never disappears), three separate lollipop men (one of whom hands out a bounty of sweets to all twenty-odd crossing children), a police horse, several pensioners with a death wish and finally, roadworks (or rather, row upon row of cones which appear to have been stacked aimlessly along the road).
By the time I’m in Heswall, have driven round the block five times and parked the car illegally in a dubious-looking driveway, it is 4.55 p.m.
I peer through the window of the estate agents and see Rich leaning on the coffee machine chatting up the girl who does their photocopying. She’s pretty, with a nose ring and hair the colour of vanilla ice cream. He looks up, sees me and leaps several centimetres off the floor in fright.
I point to him and mouth, ‘I’d like to talk to you,’ before marching to the glass door and pushing it open. The other staff stop what they’re doing. Except, by the time I’m inside, Rich has disappeared. ‘Where is he?’ I demand.
The photocopying girl turns around and blinks, displaying the most perfect, if overdone, liquid eyeliner I’ve ever seen. ‘He was here a second ago.’
‘OOOHWWW!’ shrieks another woman behind a desk, jumping up in alarm. ‘What are you doing down there?’
Rich’s head pops up sheepishly and he stands up to brush himself down. ‘Just looking . . . for this.’ He holds up a bent paperclip. ‘Ah, Gemma. Gem. Gem-Gem. What a lovely surprise!’
I cross my arms. ‘Why have we not exchanged contracts today? My solicitor has been trying to get through to your client’s lawyer all day, but nobody has returned her calls. Can you shed any light?’
He squirms. ‘Ah. Hmm. Possibly. Hmm.’
‘Go on then.’
‘Hmm. Well, it’s . . . nothing’s set in stone yet, but . . . hmm . . .’
‘Rich. Tell me what’s going on! Why has the deal not been done today, as planned?’
He swallows. ‘The thing is, Gemma, it only happened this afternoon.’
‘What happened this afternoon?’
He looks genuinely sorry. Or at least genuinely scared.
‘The vendors let someone else go and view the house at lunchtime.’
I narrow my eyes.
‘I’m really sorry, Gemma. But they’ve made the sellers of Pebble Cottage a higher offer.’
Chapter 55
Gemma
‘Tossers,’ Dan huffs down the phone.
‘Bastards,’ I agree.
‘Time-wasting, moronic lowlifes.’
‘I hope they . . . they go to a restaurant tonight and someone spits in their food,’ I say.
‘Is that the worst you can do?’ Dan asks.
‘No, the first thing I thought was so bad, I couldn’t actually bring myself to say it.’ I flick on my indicator as I sit at traffic lights, talking to Dan on my hands-free.
‘So what now?’ he sighs.
A deluge of possibilities scramble through my mind. ‘We either walk away and write off the money we’ve spent on the house so far, or . . .’ I gulp before completing the sentence. ‘Or we match the new offer.’
‘Well, we can’t do that,’ he says immediately.
I don’t answer. He’s right, of course, we can’t.
‘Look, we’ll talk about this tonight, okay?’ he suggests. ‘I love you, Gemma.’
I choke up as I say the words back to him. ‘I love you too,’ I reply, as I pull up in front of Sadie’s terraced house.
Sadie and Warren live in Aigburth in south Liverpool, which has made my round trip home stupidly long tonight. But not coming here wasn’t an option, judging by how far into a black depression she’s sinking. Although she’s trying her best to stay positive, I have never felt sorrier for my friend than in the last few days. She’s now resigned to losing her job and, judging by the number of bridal magazines in the recycling tray, her wedding isn’t looking hopeful either.
‘Before we get onto my woes, has your house exchange happened?’ she asks, opening the door. ‘Tell me some good news, please.’
It takes all my will not to burst into tears. ‘We’ve been gazumped,’ I reply, trying to keep my voice calm. ‘At the last minute, someone’s offered them more money. We’ve been told we need to increase the offer if we still want the house.’
‘What sods. So are you increasing the offer?’
‘We haven’t got the money, Sadie,’ I reply with a knot in my stomach.
‘But haven’t you paid for half of the work to be done on it?’
I nod. ‘We could lose it all.’
‘So that’s it? No more house?’
The thought makes my blood run cold. ‘That’s not completely clear yet. The ball is in the owners’ court now – they haven’t accepted the other offer yet. They’re thinking about it overnight.’
Sadie reaches out and holds my hand. ‘Oh, Gemma.’
I feel my eyes get hot, before the words come tumbling out of my mouth faster than I can even think about them. ‘This house purchase feels as though it’s been doomed from the beginning. Every step has been torture. And . . . and if I’m honest, it’s taking its toll on Dan and me.’
‘You and Dan?’ She looks shocked. ‘You’re solid as a rock, you two.’
Once, I would’ve agreed with her. ‘These last few months, I’ve been permanently stressed about the whole thing. We’ve been completely broke, Belinda is driving him insane, and . . . I think it’s brought out a side to our relationship I’ve never seen before. I hate it.’
I’m omitting a crucial piece of information, I’m well aware.
‘You just need to talk to each other, be honest with one another. Have a chat with him tonight.’
‘And I’ve been seeing Alex.’
She frowns. ‘Who?’
I swallow. ‘My old boyfriend.’
Her eyes nearly pop out of her head. I can do nothing but sit and fill her in – on everything.
‘I take it Dan has no idea about any of this?’ she asks.
‘I don’t think so.’
She clutches my hand. ‘Are you seriously thinking that perhaps you should be with Alex instead of Dan?’
‘No.’ I lower my eyes.
‘Are you
sure
?’
The answer is suddenly too difficult to say out loud. Because the truth is, I’m not sure about anything any more.
I’m on the way home, when I look at the text from Alex again, asking me to meet him on Friday. I close my eyes momentarily but all it does is make my head spin faster. I need, somehow, to get some clarity on this issue. And there’s only one way to do it. I start typing.
Okay, Alex. Where would you like to meet?
That night, Dan and I share a limp ready meal and some lettuce donated by Belinda. We snuggle up together afterwards, and for a moment I forget everything other than how warm I feel in his arms.
‘Listen,’ he says. ‘Why don’t we go for a drink after work on Friday like we used to? We’re going to know about the house one way or another tomorrow, so we can either celebrate, or commiserate. I’m just talking about the pub in the village – it’d be nice to have some proper time together.’
‘I thought you had a team-building night on Friday?’ I say, trying to keep the panic out of my voice. ‘Wasn’t that what you said?’
‘It’s been cancelled,’ he shrugs. ‘Not a problem, is it?’
I stammer, ‘N-not at all.’
‘If you don’t fancy it . . .’
‘No, I do. I just – I’d . . . I had something on, that’s all. I said I’d meet Sadie again. But I’ll cancel her.’
‘Don’t do that. It wasn’t a big deal.’
‘This isn’t either,’ I insist, feeling myself redden.
‘Gemma – go for your drink, your get-together, whatever it is. I’ll see you when you get home. We can watch a DVD on your laptop in our room – go really wild.’
I nod, feeling guilt spread through my veins. And wondering how long I can go on like this.
Chapter 56
Dan
It’s Tuesday night and I’m getting seriously concerned that Gemma is about to give herself a heart attack.
‘Why do they need another week to “think about it”?’ she says, slamming down on the bed. ‘Part of me wishes they’d just said it’s all off. I’m sick of it all.’
‘You don’t mean that,’ I reply, sitting next to her as she unwrinkles her brow. ‘Don’t give up yet. Going with the new buyers would be a massive ball-ache for them. With us, the survey’s out of the way and most of the legal work done. Our rivals might offer more cash, but if they go with them, they’d have to start the whole process from the beginning. And we all know how much fun that is.’
I go to reach out to her, but she rolls off the bed and stands up, oblivious. ‘To top it off, the solicitor I’ve hardly been able to get hold of throughout is suddenly phoning me for an update. When I’ve got
nothing
to update her on.’
She puts her hands on her hips and leans back on the dressing table. ‘Then there’s the mortgage company, who are also stalking me. Apparently the offer they made us has a sell-by date; unless we draw the funds by the end of the month, we can’t have them at all.’
She grabs her laptop and leaps on the bed again, opening up the Rightmove page for Pebble Cottage, presumably to torture herself. She starts scrolling through the pictures, and her eyes fill up. I put my arm round her and she sinks into me, sniffing back tears.
‘Dan, I just have an instinctive feeling about this . . . that this sale is going to fall through.’
‘Well, if it does, we will brush ourselves down and start again with somewhere else,’ I whisper, kissing her on the head. Then I try to get her to smile, but it’s obvious that nothing is going to make her do that right now.
Two days later, the sky is gorged with thunderclouds as I arrive at Sheila’s house – and find her, in her words,
not in a good way
. She’s weepy, she’s missed a GP appointment this morning and, judging by her laboured slugs of breath, has at some point in the last twenty-four hours been smoking a not insubstantial amount of crack. She begins a long story about an argument with her son after he refused to bring baby Rose to Liverpool. She’s angry and upset. And one thing’s clear: it’s breaking her heart.
Without seeing a doctor to validate her benefits claims, Sheila’s only source of legal income will come to a dead stop. So if she wants to keep this roof over her head, without having to hit the streets as a sex worker again, I need to get her to a GP, even if the idea terrifies her.
I decide to drive her to the enablement centre, where there’s an open access clinic this morning, her shoulders trembling as she cries throughout the journey. When we arrive, two gentlemen with battling lager fumes are conducting a lively discussion in the doorway; others await their sole meal of the day inside, some chatting in groups, others alone and silent.
Some of the faces are new, others familiar, the long-term rough sleepers and hostel dwellers. Sheila stiffens as we shuffle past and her reaction, I’m fairly certain, isn’t just about her fear of the doctor. She doesn’t feel she belongs here.
The duty doctor can see her in fifteen minutes, so we head outside to wait. She drops her chin and refuses to make eye-contact with the old man in the tattered mac who stares at her. Her shoulders visibly relax when we’re outside.
‘You okay, Sheila?’ I ask.
As she turns to look at me, she shakes her head, searching for words.
‘I could’ve ended up like that.’ Her voice sounds like there’s glass in her throat today. ‘That terrifies me, lad.’
‘Sheila, you’ve come a long way – don’t forget that.’ My awareness that I sound like the script to a bad 80s soap opera doesn’t stop this from being true. ‘You’re living independently. You’ve taken control of your life.
That
was the aim in all of this
.
I know things aren’t perfect, but—’
‘Lad, that’s bullshit,’ she interrupts. ‘I’m
still using
. All those sessions you booked me in to – all those opportunities . . . I’ve thrown them away.’ She begins to shake and slumps onto the step. With her shoulders hunched, she looks like a tiny, malnourished old lady, years older than the reality.