The rain began to plop down. Suddenly, the picnic turned into a mad scramble to get everything packed up so they could escape to the relative shelter of the woods. There, huddled under the canvas picnic blanket, they waited for the weather to pass. The twins ate their sandwiches in the dripping shelter with great relish. Lizzie tore up a French loaf and handed hunks to Bruno, who was hacking at a round of Brie with a pen knife. It was the nicest lunch Lizzie’d had in days.
The phone was ringing as Lizzie fell through the door after her evening jog, panting and clutching her left side.
Barely able to talk, she picked it up and breathed heavily into the receiver. Tessa, sweaty but not nearly as out of breath, grabbed her car keys, jangled them, and indicated with a jerk of her head that she was leaving. Shaking her head, Lizzie detained her with a frantic hand on the elbow.
After a few “yeses” and “of courses,” Lizzie hung up the phone and turned to Tessa.
“James wants me to get my stuff out of the house over the weekend,” she told her in a tone of wonder.
“This weekend? Talk about short notice. The flaming gall of the man!” Tessa’s eyes snapped with anger on Lizzie’s behalf.
“It’s okay, Tessa. We discussed this. We agreed it was best to open the place to the holiday market as soon as possible. I’m sure he needs the money, what with . . . everything. I bet he wasn’t expecting to get bookings quite so soon, though. I certainly wasn’t. But it’ll be okay. I’ll phone Maria in a moment and ask if I can stay over with them. I just wish — I just wish James hadn’t asked Sonja to sort it out. That was her on the phone. I just wish he’d called me himself. There’s something so . . . humiliating about dealing with his PA.” Lizzie blinked quickly.
“It is a bit of a bloody cheek,” agreed Tessa. “But never mind. Chin up. Look on this as an opportunity. You’ll be back at Mill House, you’re bound to see him there, it’s bound to jog a few fond memories. Come on, remember what we said, it’s not over till it’s over.”
Lizzie’s eyes widened. “What, you expect me to sort of throw myself at him over the packing cases?”
“I’m not saying throw yourself at him,” said Tessa. “Just — you know, wear something decent, for one thing. Get your hair done. Put on some perfume. And maybe, I don’t know — show him a few photos from an old album or something. To stir the heartstrings.”
Lizzie was shaking her head doubtfully when her little monsters came thundering down the stairs and rushed at her, flinging their arms around her legs. Caught off guard, Lizzie toppled. They all went down in a wriggling heap, the twins screaming with laughter. From the floor, Lizzie saw the frayed flares of Sarah Hatter’s jeans rounding the corner. She managed to struggle into a sitting position.
“So?” she asked the teenager as jauntily as she could. “How were they?”
Sarah blushed. She was always blushing.
“They were fine,” she said with a little shrug. “We had fun.”
Tessa was waving her car keys again. “Look, Liz, I really have to go or Greg will be after me with the carving knife. It’s my turn to cook tonight.”
Lizzie waved Tessa out of the room, then turned to Sarah. “Let’s see, how much do I owe you?”
While Lizzie dug around in her bag, Sarah stood awkwardly in the hall, trying not to look too eager to get her hands on the money. As Lizzie poured pound coins into her palm, the girl suddenly took a sharp breath and said, “I read some stuff of yours, Mrs. Buckley. I didn’t mean to. There was a pile of papers on the kitchen table and the children wanted to draw, so I took a quick look, thinking if it was shopping lists or something like that, they could just draw on the back.”
The blush on Sarah’s face was painful to see, especially as Lizzie’s own face seemed determined to match blaze for blaze. She knew exactly what Sarah was talking about. Quickly, she bent down and busied herself with straightening Alex’s clothes. Astonished at suddenly having his T-shirt tucked into his shorts, Alex began to stomp around in a circle, flailing at his mother’s busy hands.
“Oh. You — you read my verses?” Why on earth had she left the embarrassing things lying around in plain view?
“Yeah, I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean to stick my big nose in or anything.”
Lizzie stopped fiddling with Alex’s clothes and let him go. She watched him scamper off with a regretful pang that she couldn’t do likewise.
“Mrs. Buckley — they’re so good!”
“What?”
“The poems. Honestly. They’re great. I think they’re really funny.”
Lizzie looked at the bright red, slightly pimpled Sarah in wonder. The wonder was chiefly at the fact that such an unprepossessing person could suddenly afford her such keen joy.
“You liked them?”
“Yeah, yeah. They’re really cool. But — how come they all stop in the middle? Why don’t they have proper endings?”
“You really mean it, about liking them? You’re not just saying that?”
Sarah began to bite her fingernails. “Some of them made me laugh until I nearly wet myself,” she said with another shrug. “But I got sort of frustrated because you never find out what happens in the end. Is there any chance you could quickly finish the one about the boy who lost his hamster during assembly? You got up to the place where the hamster is sitting on the headmaster’s shoe, grooming its whiskers, and the whole school can see it except the headmaster.”
“Quickly
finish
it?” Lizzie repeated faintly. “But I don’t really know how it ends, myself.”
By now they had walked out of the front door and were standing in the lovely late afternoon light, near the gate. The children had followed them outside and were using Alex’s toy fire engine to put out an imaginary blaze among the violas.
“Oh.” Sarah sounded disappointed. “I thought people who wrote stories and things always had everything planned out before they even started.”
“Well, maybe some people do. But I don’t.”
“So you’re not going to finish any of them?”
“Well, as a matter of fact, I’m planning to work on them a bit tonight.”
“That’s great then. Maybe you’ll have something finished by tomorrow? The hamster one, maybe? Well, I’d better get back, Mrs. Buckley. Homework to do. Thanks for the dosh.”
That night Lizzie sat down with the hamster poem, determined to prod it toward some sort of ending.
Alas, the writing was heavy going. Her head felt muzzy and her body ached from the run. Only the thought of Sarah turning up expectantly the next day kept her plodding on.
Around ten o’clock she gave a frustrated sigh and decided to pack it in for the night. Standing up from the table and stretching, she told herself she’d make a cup of tea and have a little snack before turning in. Maybe the words would flow better in the morning. But as she paced the cold kitchen floor, waiting for her tea to draw, words and lines began to form effortlessly in her head. She grabbed paper and a pen and started jotting things down, completely forgetting about the tea and chocolate biscuits.
Just before midnight, it was done. She’d written the ending and returned to the beginning to rewrite large chunks so that everything would tie in properly. Flushed with the unusual feeling of getting something finished, Lizzie couldn’t help congratulating herself on a job well done. She only hoped Sarah would agree. It would be such a pity to disappoint someone who’d nearly wet her pants laughing at the first version of the thing.
From: Lizzie Buckley [email protected]
Sent: 20 June
Dear Janie
Why no word? I’m guessing if there was major news, like stretch marks or varicose veins, I’d know.
I’m okay. Been jogging every day this week. It still hurts like hell.
Up at dawn tomorrow to go pack up the stuff at Mill House. Still can’t believe it’s really come to this.
Bye now, must sleep. Seem to have kicked the insomnia habit. Knock-on effect of the running. Beginning to feel more human, less zombie.
In haste,
Lizzie
A
ccording to the digital clock on the microwave oven in the kitchen at Mill House, it was 11:17.
Lizzie picked up her mug of tepid tea and went back to the living room, where she’d made considerable progress in stripping away all traces of her personal occupation of the house. One box was already taped shut, full of books, CDs, candles, and framed photographs. A second box was beginning to fill up with knickknacks — a jar of perfect shells collected over a lifetime of beach visits, a couple of handmade plates bearing the imprint of two tiny, pudgy hands.
From above came occasional shrieks of laughter or bellows of rage as the twins rediscovered their bedroom and fought over the treasures still housed there. That room, Lizzie reckoned, was going to take the longest.
Things like china, glassware, cutlery, towels, linen, vases, casserole dishes, silver teapots, even board games were all to be left in situ. The idea was to give visiting families a sense of being in a home away from home. But all “clutter” had to go. To that end, a skip had been rented and stood waiting at the end of the driveway. Anything Lizzie didn’t pack or throw away this weekend would be subject to another sort by James (or possibly Sonja) on Monday.
James, apparently, had taken everything he wanted personally already. Lizzie noticed that he’d removed a quirky wrought- iron wine rack, shaped like a waiter holding a tray, that she’d once given him as a birthday present. She’d bought it as a joke, really — a good-humored dig at his irreproachable taste. He must have thought it would offend the houseguests.
“Hello.”
He’d come in soundlessly. And why should he knock, walking into his own home?
Lizzie looked up from wrapping a misshapen blue and pink bowl and caught her breath.
His hair was damp, presumably from a shower, and he was wearing a plain white T-shirt that draped softly over the hard planes of his chest — planes that for long years she’d been quite entitled to touch, if the fancy took her. On his feet were the carefree surfer-style sandals she remembered him buying in Greece, ages ago, on their last child-free holiday together.
He’d worn those same sandals the day he’d bought them, putting them on as they sat on a stone wall in the sunshine sharing an ice cream that melted faster than they could lick it. Suddenly she remembered the exotic little jolt of pleasure as their warm tongues met amid the icy swirls of sweet vanilla.
“You’re late.” She spoke quickly, her heart beating hard enough to cause a tiny flap-flap in her T-shirt. When she’d got out of bed at six that morning, she’d meant to follow Tessa’s advice and make a bit of an effort with her clothes. But, looking at her reflection in the propped-up bathroom mirror, she’d instantly thought better of wearing the summer dress she’d put out the night before. After all, James had last seen this little number at the church fete — and who wears a party dress to pack up a house, especially one with such a deep decolletage? Much more dignified to wear jeans and a T-shirt. As for her hair, she had at least washed it, and that would have to do.
James gave a rueful shrug. “Sorry. Got off to a bit of a slow start this morning.”
Lizzie bent her head over the ugly little bowl. “Oh, I didn’t mean to criticize. I’m a bit relieved, really. You’ve always been late — you’re on Buckley time, after all. That weekend when you were so punctual, even
early
— that was a bit freaky, to be honest.”
“Buckley time” was fifteen minutes slower than Greenwich mean time on a good day, twenty minutes slower on a bad day.
“You could put that in the divorce petition,” James said. “That I was always late for everything.” Lizzie looked up and met his eye, then looked away quickly. There was no warmth in his gaze, no laughter. He wasn’t kidding.
An awkward pause followed.
“Hey, what’s that monstrosity?” James asked suddenly, looking at the bowl she held. “Looks familiar — something of Ellie’s?”
Not trusting herself to speak, Lizzie nodded stiffly. Ellie had made the bowl at nursery school for Mother’s Day the year before. Alex had made a pencil holder — a tin can covered in green felt. Sniffing it before she packed it, Lizzie could still smell the diced tomatoes.
“Right. Well, you’d better get on with things.” James frowned at his watch. “I’ll get the kids. Sounds like they’re upstairs? I hope they’re going to settle okay in the new house.”
Lizzie said nothing, just carried on packing. So much for stirring up fond memories.
Ten minutes later, Lizzie was waving the children off with an air of hearty good cheer, as if she were sending them on a lovely holiday with her full blessing.
She hoped some small and harmless incident — a trail of broken eggs, a smashed antique vase — would happen at the beginning of the weekend to put James on his mettle.
James was a devoted father, but he was a man. A man was always reading the newspaper when a child dragged a chair across the kitchen floor, climbed up on the kitchen cabinets, and started dumping flour, rice, and spaghetti all over the floor. A man was always watching rugby when a child got hold of a stapler and decided to see whether it was possible to clip together a flap of tummy skin.
Men, it seemed to Lizzie, reserved their powers of peripheral vision solely for playing sports or driving fast cars. This was all well and good, but if James let anything happen to either of the children, she was going to have to kill him.
Two hours later, Lizzie had made her way into the master bedroom. It was hard to look at the four-poster bed without remembering the first time she’d seen it, years ago, before she and James were even engaged. They’d been living in each other’s pockets for a couple of months when James suddenly invited her to Sunday lunch at the manor, to reacquaint her with his family.
“I don’t know if you remember my mother?” he’d asked when he suggested the outing.
“Oh yes. I remember her.”
“Well, you’d better see her in the full light of day, when you’re stone-cold sober. Just so’s you know what you’re getting into.”
They’d both laughed as if he were joking. But Lizzie could still remember the piercing thrill she’d felt at the assumption that she was “getting into” something. Until that moment, the only assumption she’d made was that she’d better enjoy every moment she spent with James, because his interest couldn’t outlast the summer any more than daffodils could outlast the spring.