These Days of Ours (5 page)

The silence set, like concrete. Kate didn’t call because Charlie didn’t call. Possibly, up in Staffordshire, Charlie didn’t call because Kate didn’t call. Shock set in
that Charlie could turn on her so thoroughly, over something so petty.

Becca was airily certain it would all come good. ‘You
can’t
split up,’ she said. ‘You’re KateandCharlie! All one word!’

‘I think we’re separate words now,’ said Kate, changing TV channels willy nilly, unable to settle.

‘Fight for him,’ advised Becca. ‘Before some Emmy or Lucy nabs him.’

‘We’re not like that,’ said Kate, miserably aware that the ‘we’ might be past its sell-by date. She needed Charlie to prove to her that the one hundred and sixty
miles separating them didn’t matter.
Am I part of Charlie’s present or his past?
Kate worried that she was fast becoming a dot on the horizon in Charlie’s rear-view
mirror.

‘Glam yourself up,’ said Becca. ‘Jump on a train. Shag your romance back to life.’

‘Has that worked with Julian?’

Kate felt cruel when Becca’s eyes flickered. She picked up the remote and they sank into the sofa for another consoling episode of
Pride and Prejudice
. Her cousin had been fragile
since Julian bowed out of her life, saying, ‘The magic’s gone.’

‘The magic’s gone?’ squawked Becca out of the blue over one of Darcy’s speeches. ‘What does that even bloody mean?’ She did that a lot, suddenly referencing
the break-up halfway through a conversation about something quite different. Kate had come to realise that Becca scrolled constantly through those last heartbreaking conversations with Julian.

Kate could have recited the dying weeks of Becca’s engagement along with her. She knew all the quotes by heart, all the barbs Becca and Julian had slung at each other, knee deep in the
wreckage of their relationship. It had finally foundered on the night Julian, backed into a corner, had shouted
Ever since we got engaged I’ve felt as if there’s a noose around my
neck.

‘I was the best thing that ever happened to him,’ said Becca.

‘By quite some way,’ agreed Kate, muting
Pride and Prejudice.
This was the only possible response, but the truth was that Kate had grown fond of Julian. She’d seen the
breach coming, clocked his fading interest in the prospect of a wedding. He’d surprised Kate by confiding in her, exposing a depth to him she’d never suspected. Guiltily, she’d
realised that she’d always treated Julian as some sort of shop mannequin; well dressed but lacking feelings. To make up for her lack of empathy, Kate had tuned into him, trying hard to repair
the holes that had appeared in his relationship with Becca. It had done no good, and now that he was gone she felt as if she’d lost a friend. ‘You could nab another bloke just like
that.’ Kate clicked her fingers and Becca’s face drooped. ‘Sorry.’ Kate put her hand over Becca’s. ‘I know you only want Julian.’

‘But he doesn’t want me,’ said Becca. ‘The bastard.’

Kate envied Becca’s organic approach to man trouble. She did whatever occurred to her, whether it be wallowing in candlelit baths sobbing along to ‘their’ songs or blitzing
Julian’s answerphone with messages alternately demonising him and begging him to take her back.

With no skills in this area – new to heartbreak, Kate had never experienced anything half as painful as Charlie’s loaded silence – her unhappiness made her a better employee.
First in, last out, Kate was diligent, welcoming every tedious task as a respite from the spin-dryer of morbid thoughts in her head. The shop was immaculate, the rudest of customers treated with
exquisite courtesy; Kate appreciated the distractions of the working day.

The phone on the counter at Party Games received the same treatment as the phone in her parents’ hall. Kate stared at it, jumped whenever it rang, drooping when she realised the caller
wasn’t Him. Twice a day she held the receiver to her ear to check it was working. In the right mood, Kate laughed at this behaviour, but that mood was increasingly elusive.

Her cousin was a different animal; ‘I can’t face going in,’ whined Becca, two days out of every five. The reception desk she manned at a Soho media company was damp with tears
and she was prone to putting callers through to the wrong pony-tailed executive, so keen was she on relating her tale of woe to her colleagues.

Charlie’s number danced teasingly in her head, but Kate went resolutely cold turkey. She loved him too much to call him; that’s how she sold her stubbornness to herself. Their
relationship was honest, straightforward, like a clean page in one of Charlie’s journals. They used to watch, baffled, as Becca and Julian tore chunks out of each other like warring T-rexes,
and felt grateful for their own uncomplicated rapport.

No, Kate would keep her page clean. She’d honour their way of loving each other. If Charlie wanted her, he’d call; she was, after all, the aggrieved party. If he didn’t want
her, if he took this breach as an opportunity to end their relationship, then there was nothing she could do to change his mind. She couldn’t bear imposing herself where she’d once been
desired.

Kate wanted Charlie, but that was pointless unless he wanted her back.

A month in to the cold new landscape, Kate had an epiphany.

We’ve broken up.

Kate Minelli was now just another human to Charlie Garland. An ex. She couldn’t rely on him in that special way any more. She must carry on alone.

Mistrustful of melodrama, she examined that feeling.
Of course I’m not alone
, Kate rebuked herself.

It felt like loneliness, though.

‘How do I get through this?’ she asked her father, red eyed late one evening at the kitchen table when she couldn’t sleep and he supplied hot chocolate and a shoulder to cry
on.

Dad sighed. ‘It’s not what it was,’ he said. ‘It’s not what it could be. It is what it is, darling.’

‘Mum’s philosophy is more basic,’ said Kate. She impersonated her mother’s dismissal of her daughter’s distress.
You can do better than that Garland boy!

Quietly – Mum might be listening in – Dad contributed his own impression of one of his wife’s favourite sayings. ‘There’s plenty more fish in the sea!’

‘But my fishing rod’s broken.’ Kate sipped her chocolate, tasting the care Dad had put into making it.

‘Mum’s doing her best,’ said Dad, recognising the soft look in Kate’s eyes as hurt. ‘We named you after her, but there the resemblance ends, love. She’s in
one of her strops because of this trip to China I’m planning.’

All roads led not to Rome but to Charlie; mention of Dad’s much discussed (and argued over) desire to visit China reminded her of how well her two favourite men had got along.

Unanimous for once, Kate’s parents had despaired of Charlie’s chaotic upbringing, but whereas Mum muttered darkly about the revolving door on Mrs Garland’s bedroom, Dad never
disparaged Charlie’s mother. Instead, he forged a friendship with the boy, one that enriched them both.

Unaccustomed to paternal input, Charlie was flattered when Kate’s dad sought him out. They would sit and talk while Kate got ready to go out, usually about Dad’s pet topic, Yulan
House.

Kate and her mother tended to tune out when Dad brought up the Chinese orphanage he sponsored in a modest way, sending them a few pounds each month. He’d heard about it from an intrepid
colleague who’d volunteered at Yulan House a few years earlier. Inspired to send a little money with a brief note, Dad was charmed to receive a handwritten reply in quaintly perfect English.
It was the start of a correspondence between himself and the lyrically named Jia Tang, an indomitable woman who dedicated her life to Beijing’s abandoned babies.

Dad and Charlie would pore over the latest newsletter from the orphanage, both of them expert in the building, the facilities, the newly planted vegetable plot.

‘I suppose,’ said Kate, ‘you and Charlie won’t run the London Marathon in aid of the orphanage now.’

‘No, probably not.’ Dad blew out his cheeks. ‘Charlie understood,’ he said quietly.

‘I know.’ Kate screwed up her face, damming the tears, sick of crying. It had been easy to love a boy who passionately believed that one day her dad would achieve his dream of
visiting Yulan House, no matter how much her mother grumbled that the money would be better spent on a new microwave, an extension, a hot tub. The trinkets, in other words, that her sister Marjorie
boasted about. ‘Dad, don’t let Mum stop you booking your tickets to Beijing.’

‘Trouble is,’ said Dad, ‘your mum’s right. We can’t really afford it.’

‘What does that matter?’ Kate was vehement.
One
member of this family should be getting what they wanted out of life. ‘You go, Dad. I’ll handle Mum.’

‘Ah, the optimism of youth. If your mother could be handled, don’t you think I’d have the knack by now?’

‘You do . . . love Mum, don’t you?’ Kate felt impertinent, as if she’d pushed at a door better left locked.

‘What makes you ask that?’

‘Just that . . .’ Kate had taken off without knowing where she would land. Sadness was mangling her thought processes. ‘Sometimes it seems as if you don’t have much in
common.’

‘We have you.’

‘Am I enough?’

‘You’re more than enough, love.’ Dad exhaled, frowning, shaking his head, trying to explain. ‘Me and your mum, we rub along. We get by. She’s a complicated woman
and I’m a . . .’ He groped for the right word. ‘I’m a bit of a dead loss, I suppose.’

‘What?’ Kate almost forgot her dejection. ‘You’re the best dad ever.’

‘But husband?’ Dad looked down at the table, an introverted expression on his face as if looking into his own heart. ‘I’m not sure how many marks out of ten your mother
would give me.’

The phone rang, shrieking in the quiet house, and Kate ran to it, heart bouncing.

‘Is that St Hilda’s church?’ asked a frail voice.

Next day, as Kate and Becca browsed shoes in a high street shop, Kate told Becca about the late night wrong number. She turned it into a wry anecdote, editing out the part where she kept Dad up
until midnight, sobbing. Her cousin didn’t smile. ‘Hello! Earth to planet Becca!’

‘Listen. Don’t shout at me, but . . .’

‘What?’ Kate narrowed her eyes, looking up from the shoes she was trying on, a variant of the chunky black pair she’d worn into the shop.
You always buy the same shoe!
Charlie used to say. After four weeks of silence, he’d drifted into the past tense.
Who
, thought Kate with exquisite self-pity,
will tease me about my Groundhog Day shoe purchasing
habits now?

‘I spoke to Charlie.’ Becca flinched as if awaiting a blow. ‘Well, say something.’

‘About me?’

‘What else would we talk about?’

Suspended between hope and dread in an icy limbo, Kate managed to say, ‘And?’

‘We met up, actually. For a coffee.’ Becca picked up an ankle boot, studying the plain grey footwear with a fascination it didn’t deserve. ‘Are you annoyed?’

The question rang the tiniest of alarm bells. ‘Of course not.’
Why would I be?
The only reason Charlie would contact Becca would be to reach out to Kate; he was ambivalent, to
say the least, towards her cousin. And yet, Kate had a complex reaction to this development. Foolish, but it stung to think of them ordering cappuccinos and settling down at a table without her.
She hadn’t even known he was back from Keele. It was still term time. She wondered, her heart stuttering, if he’d come home to fix their tattered togetherness.

‘Good.’ Becca put down the oh-so-fascinating boot. ‘Good.’ She seemed to be at a loss for words, which was out of character.

‘How did he seem?’ Kate wasn’t sure what she wanted to hear. She loved Charlie – still – but a wretched part of her longed for news of hollow eyes, stubble, a new
drinking habit.

‘He’s had his hair cut.’

‘No!’ It was absurd to feel so betrayed. ‘What else?’

There was a pregnant aspect to the silence as Kate waited, one shoe on, one shoe off. Eventually Becca said, ‘He asked me to give you this.’

Kate recognised the envelope, small and cream, as the sort that used to arrive every other day, stuffed with quirky drawings, jokes, declarations.

‘Take it,’ said Becca when Kate hesitated.

Kate wanted to swear and knock all the shoes off the glass shelves but was too well brought up to do either. She turned her head and shut her eyes, blocking out the innocuous envelope.

‘Take it.’ Becca was soft, pleading. ‘Please.’

Kate accepted the envelope. It was light as a feather. Whatever Charlie had to say, he’d used very few words.

‘You have to read it,’ urged Becca. ‘It’s better to know.’

‘Later.’ Kate stuffed the envelope into her bag, pushing it deep down among the strata of receipts and gum and stray lipsticks. ‘So?’ She held out her foot, made a slow
circle with her ankle. ‘Shall I buy them?’

‘Go home,’ said Becca, her tone heavy. ‘And read the letter.’

Obediently, Kate put back the shoes and did as she was told. At home she circled the note, putting it off until finally it could be put off no longer. Curled on her bed like a foetus, she ripped
open the envelope. One reading and the contents were fixed on her consciousness forever.

I’m dismissed
, thought Kate. Not needed. Unfit for purpose. Surplus to requirements. The note’s coldness took her off guard, as did the doorbell.
Becca!
she thought, grateful, leaping off the bed.

She almost didn’t recognise him, partly because he was the last person she expected to see on her doorstep and partly because the expression on his face utterly altered him. Julian looked,
for once, apprehensive. ‘Am I . . .’ he said. ‘Is this OK?’

‘It’s, um . . .’ It was awful, but Kate’s manners overruled her distress. ‘Come in.’ Julian was so big and so male and he made her regret her bare feet and
the wrinkled grey pyjama trousers her mother despaired of.