‘Congratulations,’ I said in a strangled voice. ‘Wow, really, congratulations. What lovely news. When are you due?’
‘August the 10th,’ they said in unison, and burst out laughing. Max bent his head to kiss Anna’s hair.
‘A summer baby, how lovely,’ I said dutifully.
‘And how are you?’ asked Anna. It was clear from her worried expression that she had already made up her mind: Rory has become a crazy lady who is no longer even capable of dressing
herself.
‘Oh, you know,’ I said as breezily as I could manage. ‘Just trying to walk off a hangover – bit of a big night last night. You know how it is when you’re single.
Busy, busy. Out all the time. Dating, that sort of thing.’
‘Gosh yes, exhausting,’ agreed Anna. ‘I feel quite glad I’m excused from all that these days, don’t you, Max?’
‘I’ll say. Getting a bit much at our age,’ said Max, as if he was ninety-five instead of thirty-two. ‘Ah, that’s to say, for us old married types. Different for
you, Rory, obviously. Different for you.’
‘We do miss you, Rory,’ said Anna, her eyebrows knitted sympathetically. ‘I shouldn’t say it, but I think Martin does too.’
I wasn’t sure how to answer. I had spent so much time imagining Martin cavorting with his new girlfriend that I had hardly considered the possibility he might actually miss me. I had
thought that missing the ex was my role to play, not his.
‘’Course he does,’ blustered Max. ‘That Melinda girl’s a total princess. Pain in the arse if you ask me.’
‘Max,’ warned Anna, nudging him sharply with her elbow. ‘I’m sure Rory doesn’t want to hear about that. She’s clearly moved on, from the sound of it.
Haven’t you?’
‘Yes,’ I said, a bit too fast. I didn’t even want to admit to myself the masochistic desire to hear everything about Martin’s new girlfriend. Safer for all of us that the
conversation changed before I began begging for information. ‘Yes, absolutely. Moving on.’ I made a half-hearted little pointing gesture with my hand and they both laughed politely.
Max looked at his watch and cleared his throat again.
‘I really should be going,’ I said, rushing to fill the awkward silence. ‘Look at me, not even properly dressed. What a disgrace. It was lovely to see you both, and
congratulations again.’
Anna reached towards me for a hug. Between us I could feel the gentle swell of her stomach, and I hugged her tighter. Max patted my back hesitantly as we pulled apart, as if I were a small dog
they had encountered on their walk.
‘We must get together soon,’ he said. I made noises of agreement, but I think we all knew that we wouldn’t be meeting up again. They were part of my life with Martin and that
was over now. He and Melinda would see the new baby when it was born, not me.
I turned around as I walked away from the pond. Anna and Max stood together by the water’s edge, his arm protectively around her shoulder. They waved sweetly at me, already looking
parental, as if I was their small child heading off on its own for the first time, in need of encouragement. It felt like goodbye.
I walked away from Anna and Max and cut directly across the Common back to Auntie Lyd’s. I didn’t want to be seen by anyone else like this, unkempt and red-eyed and
a figure of sympathy. Seeing Martin’s friends made me realize that it was time I took charge of myself. No more sulking about a relationship that was over. No more feeling sorry for myself.
No more unsuitable men either; that column had served its purpose. And it was time to admit it was never going to bring me the love of my life. I’d learned all I needed to from the wrong men;
now it was time to start looking for the right one. I was going to sort my life out, get back to being who I should be. I’d make changes at work based on my own skills and talents, not just
the comic potential of my so-called love life. I felt renewed with the vigour and resolve of a new start, a new beginning. I would move out of Auntie Lyd’s. A house share wasn’t scary;
it was the right thing to do. I’d meet new people that way, make friends my own age. Things were going to be different.
Turning my key silently in the front door, I hesitated on the doorstep, straining to hear any sound that might suggest the presence of either Jim or Auntie Lyd. Hearing nothing untoward, I
tiptoed up the stairs to the bathroom. For all that Jim was an unwanted presence in the house, I had to admit he had transformed the plumbing. Gone was the trickle of rusty liquid that had passed
for a shower before; now jets of steaming water beat a tattoo on the top of my head as I stood still, eyes closed. I grabbed a loofah from the side of the bath and attacked myself with it,
scrubbing everywhere until my skin was pink and raw. I felt that I was scrubbing away the past, cleaning myself up for a future in which I would be better, stronger, different.
Out of the shower, I wrapped my hair in a towel and shrugged my dressing gown back on, ready to face a new world. When I opened the bathroom door, though, what I faced was Auntie Lydia, looking
thunderous on the landing.
‘Aurora Carmichael,’ she said. ‘Where have you been? I’ve been ringing your phone for an hour.’
‘I – I think I lost it,’ I said, discomfited by her harsh expression.
‘Or you have been ignoring me.’
‘No, honestly, I lost it last night,’ I said. ‘I can’t find it anywhere.’
‘Fine. I would like you to explain, right now, why you have been hurling wild and insulting accusations at Jim.’
‘Auntie Lyd—’ I started.
‘Yes?’ she frowned, her lips pursed so tightly that the skin around her mouth puckered and whitened.
‘I just don’t trust him. I – I think he’s trying to rip you off. I think he’s got an ulterior motive, hanging out here all the time.’
‘Do you?’ said Auntie Lyd, her voice heavy with sarcasm. ‘Please enlighten me further. I assume you have some evidence for this accusation?’
‘Auntie Lyd,’ I pleaded. ‘It’s just a gut instinct – he’s up to no good. I’ve found him going through the kitchen drawers when you were out, and
he’s made this job last way too long. I’m just trying to look out for you.’
She looked furious. I should have known Jim would have got to her first; poisoning her mind against me.
‘Excuse me for being confused, Aurora, but I am not quite sure what role I am playing in your ridiculous fantasies about Jim. Should I assume that I am the confused old lady, too senile to
be aware of a nefarious plot against her?’
‘No, no, Auntie Lyd, that’s not it at all,’ I protested.
‘Oh really? Because with all of your talk about looking out for me, Aurora, you have caused nothing but difficulty since the moment you arrived here. Bringing strange men into my house to
attack my cat and steal my food, sulking around the place being moody. I thought you’d come here to sort yourself out, but you just seem to be getting worse.’
‘I’m not,’ I insisted. ‘I
am
sorting myself out. You’re not giving me a chance.’
‘I’ve given you plenty of chances,’ snapped Auntie Lyd. ‘I thought you were going to embrace a new life here, but instead you’ve wasted your time going out with
extraordinarily stupid men—’
‘You said you thought I should go out with the unsuitable men,’ I said, my voice beginning to wobble. Auntie Lyd had been a defender of the whole idea from the beginning, and now she
was using it against me.
‘I thought you might derive some amusement from it, Aurora. A distraction to get you over Martin. Not that you would use it as an excuse to feel sorry for yourself, sulking over Martin
– still – and being appallingly rude to Jim whenever you encounter him.’
I knew she would bring it back to Jim, I just knew it.
‘I should have known you’d take his side,’ I muttered.
Auntie Lyd’s eyes flashed with anger. ‘It is not a matter of taking sides, Aurora,’ she said. ‘What do you think this is, the playground? We are all adults here, and
it’s time you began behaving like one.’
‘I just know he’s taking advantage of you, Auntie Lyd,’ I said. I could feel that I had started snivelling like a child, and that my argument was as pathetic and
ill-thought-out as a child’s, too. ‘With his highlights, and his horrible T-shirts, and this never-ending plumbing job that’s costing you a fortune.’
Auntie Lyd stiffened in fury. Her nostrils flared as she pulled herself up to her full height.
‘Jim is an honourable man who has been very kind to all of us, Aurora. He has been supportive and helpful while you have flounced around like a spoiled brat. And for you to stand there and
be such an unconscionable snob about him disgusts me.’
I bit my lower lip hard to stop my chin from wobbling. I was afraid if I tried to speak I would dissolve into tears.
‘I’m so disappointed in you, Rory,’ said Auntie Lyd, shaking her head. I’d never seen her look at me like this; all the warmth had gone out of her eyes. ‘So very
disappointed.’
She turned and walked down the stairs towards the kitchen. Her quiet disappointment was a thousand times more hurtful than her shouting had been.
‘I’m not a snob,’ I called out, but she’d already gone. ‘I’m not.’
I got changed in my room, hiccupping with sobs. Auntie Lyd had been the one constant in my life, after Martin. More reliable than either of my parents, and certainly more present. And now she
had turned on me, just like Martin had. I couldn’t believe she had accused me of being a snob – me! The girl who was treated like some kind of proletarian serf at work. The one without
a trust fund or an ancestral home or a family tree going back to William the Conqueror. My chest heaved with the unfairness of it all. I had to get out of the house as quickly as possible, and stay
out for as long as I could.
I sneaked down the stairs with stealth, picking up my handbag, which had been hanging on the banisters since last night. Scouring its depths, I still couldn’t locate my phone. Laughter
rose up from the basement kitchen as I closed the door behind me and I felt even more desolate than before. Worse than Auntie Lyd and Jim discussing their anger at me was this, their evident shared
amusement at my misery, their hilarity while I was still crushed.
Compounding my unhappiness was the fact that the man behind the bar in the pub said no one had handed in a phone last night. It was as if the whole world was conspiring against me. I could only
think of one solution to it all: to hide away for as long as possible. If I had been braver I expect I would have run away somewhere; turned up unexpectedly at a faraway friend’s home for the
weekend, or booked myself into a hotel for the night. But the best place to hide on a grey March afternoon, for one as risk-averse and cash-strapped as me, seemed to be the cinema.
I settled into my seat in the darkened theatre, hardly aware of what film I was going to see. I’d chosen it purely based on the fact that it started in the next few minutes. The sparse
audience – a few pairs of thirtysomething women, a couple of men on their own – suggested this was no blockbuster, or perhaps it just suggested that people with real, active lives
didn’t go to the cinema in the middle of the day. A few months ago I’d have been horrified at the idea of going to the cinema by myself. I’d have thought everyone would have
pointed me out as the sad single girl on her own. Today, though, it felt like a blessing: a place to hide out by myself, unseen by anyone. And who cared what anyone else thought? As the adverts
boomed out of the speakers I shrank down in my cushioned seat so that I could rest the back of my head against it. The wall of noise was strangely soporific, drowning out my own thoughts and
replacing them with a comforting blur of meaningless sound. I felt my eyelids droop before the film had even begun. It turned out to be something with subtitles – I think it might have been
Polish – but I struggled to concentrate. Instead I let myself drift off to the accompaniment of incomprehensible dialogue.
I stirred awake to the soft thump of cinema seats springing back into position. Lights flickered on. Two women walked up the aisle wiping their eyes. I caught the words ‘searing’ and
‘masterful’ as they passed me. The man in the row in front blew his nose loudly. I felt a little relieved to have been spared what had obviously been a draining cinematic
experience.
Outside it was still light, and I wondered if this day was ever going to end. I had hoped to return home under cover of darkness, when I could sneak up to my room, pull the covers over my head
and believe that my new beginning would come tomorrow. There was a French restaurant across the road from the cinema – I’d been there with Auntie Lyd often as a teenager for moules
marinière and rough red wine, which my aunt insisted that I was old enough to drink from the age of fifteen. I knew it was dimly lit and staffed by waiters who rarely condescended to notice
their customers. It was just the sort of place to while away an hour without being disturbed, or indeed noticed. When I stepped inside, the white-haired owner looked up from the bar and motioned me
over to a corner table, so dark that I couldn’t read the handwritten menu. I asked for a glass of wine, and he returned with a squat tumbler filled right to the top.
‘Extra for you,’ he confided, unusually friendly. ‘
Extra pour la nièce de Lydia Bell. Ah, les belles filles Devereux
.’
He waltzed back towards the bar, humming a tune that I recognized as the theme of
Those Devereux Girls
, sung by Auntie Lyd’s co-star, Linda Ellery. I turned the tumbler in my hands,
watching the play of candlelight on its surface. It was always strange to be reminded of Auntie Lyd’s celebrity, faded though it might have been. I suppose with the selfishness of youth I had
grown up thinking of Auntie Lyd as someone who belonged to me, instead of seeing her as a person in her own right, with a public identity in which she was no one’s aunt. I sipped my wine
slowly, letting its warmth spread through my chest. I thought of Auntie Lyd’s house, where she always seemed to be on her feet, cooking or cleaning or gently offering advice. Where she kept
the peace between Percy and Eleanor without ever taking sides. Where she’d offered me a room, rent-free, without question, never asking how long I would be staying or making me feel that I
was in her way. I remembered the pile of
Country House
magazines in her living room; she’d read every column I’d ever written and subscribed to a magazine in which she had no
interest, just for my sake.