Matilda Next Door

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Matilda Next Door Page 3

by Kelly Hunter


  She didn’t phone home, the time zone calendar she’d printed out to pin on a wall somewhere suggested her parents would be asleep. Instead, as promised, she texted that she had arrived. She added enough exclamation marks to make up for the missing luggage, then turned the central heating on, and then took a long, luxurious shower in the most overdesigned black-on-black bathroom she’d ever seen. Three different kinds of mood lighting in the bathroom—what was that about? And showerheads for two in the one super-wide cubicle? And handrails in the strangest of places? Either Henry had a kinky streak or his landlord did. Maybe they both did.

  But the water pressure was second to none and the liquid soap smelled divinely masculine, and there was shampoo to match and if she wasn’t about to fall into bed and get some sleep she’d have tried that out too.

  As for putting her smelly travel clothes back on, surely Henry would have a T-shirt she could borrow? Not that she felt altogether comfortable striding into his bedroom wearing nothing but a damp towel and rifling through his drawers, but needs must.

  He’d never know.

  Henry had a lot of dark suits and perfectly pressed white business shirts. His socks ran in neat rows and so did his underwear. Black, grey, ooh navy. ‘Henry, you rebel,’ she murmured at the lone pair of stripy pink and red socks right at the back of his sock row. ‘Bet you didn’t buy those.’

  But they would do to keep her feet warm, and the grey cotton boxers looked as if they could do pyjama duty, assuming they stayed up.

  The man rolled his T-shirts and kept them in tidy rows as well. For these, he’d allowed himself to branch out with his colour scheme to include various shades of dark green, pale blue, and pristine white. She took a blue one, dropped towel and tried her makeshift nightwear on for size.

  The T-shirt drooped off one shoulder and almost covered the boxers, and why anyone needed a wall full of mirrors in here was open to speculation, but the sight of herself dressed in Henry’s intimates and standing in front of his absolutely enormous bed brought a flush to her cheeks that had not been put there by the heat of the shower.

  His bed sheets and doona were grey—of course they were—a finely striped linen that felt butter-soft to the touch, but she had her own room in here somewhere and had taken enough liberties already.

  The spare bed was big enough for two and came with crisp green sheets and a doona so soft and feathery Tilly thought she might weep with something very close to relief. She should set her alarm, she thought, as she slipped beneath the covers and closed her eyes and tried to banish the feeling of movement from her body. She should sleep for a few hours and then get up and seize the day, but her phone was in the kitchen and the princess bed was superbly comfortable, even better than the one at home, and she smelled like a dream. Henry’s T-shirt was ridiculously soft, and even though he wasn’t present she still felt oddly comforted by the notion that she was in a place of safety.

  Henry with his tidy drawers and one lone pair of stripy socks.

  Chapter Three

  Henry hated when others were right and he was in the wrong. It happened so rarely these days that he’d almost forgotten what it felt like. But Tilly had been right about the frailty of his grandparents, in particular his grandmother’s mental deterioration and the toll it was taking on his grandfather. The reality of their plight and his rampant neglect of them had been like a hammer to his chest for the past three days. Watching his grandmother get up and down the verandah steps injected fear straight into his heart. Standing back and letting his grandfather—once a towering figure in his mind—make tea for them all with shaking hands and deliberate caution, damn near brought Henry to tears.

  Tilly had warned him.

  More fool him for thinking her melodramatic.

  But the fridge was well stocked, and there was bacon and eggs and fresh bread, even if it was the soft crust variety, and the freezer was full of neatly labelled soups, with the labels written on the plastic takeaway containers in black marker, ‘made on’ dates and all, and he knew that handwriting. It took him straight back to school, and sitting beside Tilly on the school bus, trying to explain physics questions to her and her simply not understanding a word he said, no matter which way he explained it. Anxiety and apology—hers. Frustration and impatience—his. And suddenly he felt ashamed, standing here years later with Tilly’s home-made shepherd’s pie in his hand, which his grandmother wanted him to take out of the freezer. He’d never made fun of Matilda’s inability to understand complex equations, no, but he’d judged her for it. Judged her too for staying in Wirralong and making the most of it.

  ‘Henry, son.’ He looked up to see his grandfather eyeing him with no small concern. ‘Coffee’s ready.’

  ‘Right.’ He shut the freezer lid and let his feelings of inadequacy sink uneasily into his skin. ‘This the pie?’

  His grandmother nodded. ‘One of Tilly’s. You’ll like it. And it’s not charity. We trade. What did we trade that one for?’

  ‘Sweet corn and string beans from the garden. And the time before that you traded your mother’s vegetable soup recipe for a cheesy vegetable bake, and then she had to bring some of the soup over to make sure it tasted right. And it did.’

  ‘It was passable.’ From his grandmother, that was heavy praise. And then his grandmother fixed him with a critical gaze that almost set him to squirming the way it had when he’d been eight years old and sitting at her table for the very first time, his mother dead and him too hungry for words and oblivious to the notion of having to wash his hands before eating. He’d never been told to get up and go wash his hands before. He had been told to get lost many times over, though, and he knew exactly what that meant. He’d washed his hands and gone outside to sit on the step, his arms around his drawn-up legs as he’d watched this new sky grow dark, and it was there Joe had found him. He’d scrambled to his feet and waited in baffled silence for some kind of cue as to what the man wanted from him. His grandfather had eyed him for a long time, his sadness so strong Henry could feel it pressing in on him.

  ‘I washed my hands,’ he’d finally told the towering man.

  ‘She meant wash your hands and then come back to the table to eat your dinner,’ his grandfather had said quietly, and so Henry had stood up and gone with him and sat down with his clean hands to one of the finest meals he’d ever eaten.

  At the end of it he’d told them it was the best meal ever, because that was something a person did when they had manners, wasn’t it?

  His grandmother had looked him up and down, scowled, and said, ‘You eat like a pig.’

  Goddammit he hated being hijacked by memories of his childhood.

  This was why he hated coming back to Red Hill Station.

  ‘I’m glad you’re letting young Matilda stay in your apartment,’ his grandfather said, as if willing Henry back to the reality of here and now. ‘She’s been talking about that trip of hers for years, and saving just as long.’

  ‘And why shouldn’t she have to save the money to go?’ his grandmother cut in. ‘Just because her parents have money, doesn’t mean she gets to spend it gallivanting off to the ends of the earth on a whim.’

  Fragile in body and mind his grandmother might be, but her sour disposition had not diminished one bit.

  Ignore her. Tilly’s words in his ear.

  Take a deep breath and remember that a failing brain didn’t process information the way healthier minds did. Henry turned to his patient, mindful grandfather who he really was glad to see again. ‘I hope she enjoys her travels, then. I was happy to help her out with accommodation. Meant I didn’t have to clean out the fridge before I left.’ Not that he’d stocked it. Tilly would find little more than ground coffee, a bit of milk, some cheese, butter, a jar of olives, half a tub of natural Greek yoghurt that he probably should have thrown out weeks ago. ‘Is she seeing anyone?’

  Two sets of eyes stared back at him with varying degrees of surprise. Was it really such a surprise that he would ask after t
he woman he’d known as a child?

  ‘We thought she was serious about that young doctor chap, didn’t we, Beth?’ said his grandfather eventually. ‘But when his time here was up and he asked her to go back to the city with him, she wouldn’t go.’

  ‘Foolish girl,’ his grandmother muttered and shook her head. ‘Does she think rich doctors grow on trees?’

  ‘She didn’t love him, Beth. Anyway …’ His gaze was still on Henry. ‘I’ll be needing the last of the peas from the garden for shelling later. Maybe you can help me pull the plants and turn them in?’

  ‘No problem.’

  The coffee was instant—a far cry from the fresh-ground ethically organic whatever blend he usually picked up from the little deli on the corner. He swallowed it down and tried not to grimace. Maybe sugar would help. Or milk. Milk to soften the stale, bitter brew. He headed for the fridge.

  ‘Thought you didn’t take milk?’ his grandmother said.

  ‘Sometimes I do.’ He would get no praise from this woman. Sometimes he wondered why he’d ever tried. ‘Feel free to put me to work around the farm.’ He was speaking to his grandfather, not her. ‘Got a month to harden me up again, old man.’

  His grandfather’s gaze was still plenty sharp. ‘Wasn’t sure how long you planned on staying.’

  ‘I have a month.’

  ‘Doesn’t mean you intend to spend all of it here. First time you’ve had a break in years, isn’t it?’

  And that much was true. ‘I’m between jobs. Thinking about going out on my own and freelancing.’

  His grandmother smiled, malicious and mean. ‘So you’re out of work and think you can come crawling back here with your tail between your legs. Typical no good son of a—’

  ‘Beth! We’ve talked about you trying to think positive, so try again,’ barked his grandfather. He turned towards Henry, his expression apologetic. ‘We don’t think that. I don’t think that.’

  And holy shit, that was new—his grandfather outright telling his wife not to speak for him.

  Henry could retire tomorrow on the money he’d made these past few years. Nor did he need their roof over his head. He could have told them that and maybe it would have made a difference to how his grandmother perceived him. Henry the success.

  Or maybe it would simply give her a new metaphorical stick to beat him with. Stuck-up Henry, too good for them now after all they’d done for him.

  ‘I’m here for a month,’ he reiterated instead. ‘I can help out with anything that needs doing.’ Couldn’t be any clearer than that.

  ‘Happy to have you,’ his grandfather said gruffly. ‘Right, Beth?’

  And his grandmother blinked and smiled and there was a childlike sweetness to that smile he’d never seen before. ‘Look, Joe. It’s Henry. Henry’s here!’

  His grandfather sighed and raised his bitter coffee to his lips. ‘So he is, Beth. So he is.’

  *

  ‘Henry, Henry, Henry. Your pantry is an abomination and your fridge is, for all functional purposes, empty. Shame on you.’

  If Tilly had taken to talking to an absent Henry in the two days she’d been here, so be it. And if she’d barely ventured out the door for the first twenty-four hours on account of her luggage still being missing and her travel clothes not going anywhere near her person before undergoing a thorough washing, that was just the way she chose to do things.

  She’d ventured out last night to the corner store for a few essentials. This morning she was making a list of foodstuffs required and then she would set forth, armed with shopping bags and the map on her phone. Tilly Moore, off on her London adventure. Before that though, came breakfast. Sighing, she opened the fridge door and reached for the martini olives.

  And then a ringtone sounded from somewhere over near the wine wall, because of course Henry would have a wall full of wine to go with his martini fixings and olives, and then the ringtone sounded again and this time she tracked it to what looked like a wall-mounted tablet, and had buttons like one too, and all of a sudden she was staring at Henry’s face on the screen. ‘Henry?’ He looked deliciously tousled. Old farm shirt with a frayed collar, dishevelled hair and a scrape of dirt around his neck as if he’d rubbed it there with dirty hands. ‘Hey, it’s you.’ Mistress of inanities, that was her.

  ‘Morning, Matilda.’ He seemed to stare a little harder. ‘Is that my dressing gown?’

  Oh! Dammit. Tilly crouched low, although where she thought she was going …

  Hopefully out of sight.

  ‘I can still see you.’ He sounded ever so slightly baffled.

  ‘Ah. Yes. Well.’ May as well make a stand. And pop the lid off the jar of olives while she was at it. ‘I can explain.’

  She was never not going to adore this man’s quizzical brow that simultaneously implied that he couldn’t wait to hear it and also that he found something about the situation humorous. Possibly her.

  ‘I had to raid your closet because the airline lost my luggage and they haven’t found it yet. Or they have, but they haven’t delivered it yet. The promises are getting vaguer by the day. So, er, yes, this is your shirt. And your boxers. And your socks. And your dressing gown. And, er, your olives, because I haven’t been out to the supermarket yet, but today’s the day.’

  He looked pained.

  ‘It truly was an emergency.’

  ‘Raid the shirts.’ He sounded gruff. ‘Sorry about the lack of food in the fridge.’

  ‘Oh, no. It was …’

  ‘Woeful is the word you’re looking for.’

  ‘Well, yes.’ But she didn’t want to sound ungrateful. ‘But the apartment itself is brilliant, what with all the natural light and wooden panelling halfway up the walls, and the bookshelves and the leather chesterfields and the cosy club chairs, and the deep velvet curtains. It’s a very grand flat. I feel like I’m in the library on the Cluedo board.’

  ‘It came furnished.’

  ‘I figured as much. That shower recess is really … what’s the word? … functional. All those mirrored tiles. Not daunting at all.’ And there was that little smirk that told her he was definitely enjoying himself, almost definitely at her expense. ‘Excellent towels.’ They clearly didn’t come in from the washing line stiff as a board and scratchy as sandpaper like the ones at home. Because fabric softener and tumble dryers weren’t exactly farm staples. ‘So fluffy.’

  She finally found the cutlery drawer and set about spearing an olive with a fork. ‘What can I do for you?’

  ‘Nothing. My grandparents were wondering how you were getting on, so I said I’d find out.’

  ‘Tell them I’m having a ball.’

  ‘Sounds to me like you haven’t been out of the flat yet.’

  ‘Having. A. Ball. That’s what you need to tell them. Not a word about lost luggage or borrowed clothes or looming starvation.’ She popped an olive in her mouth and, after one fast chew, decided to swallow it whole. ‘Eww. What the … olives in anchovy brine? That’s just nasty.’

  ‘For the dirty martinis,’ Henry said helpfully.

  ‘I’m going to raid your toothpaste shelf now. Be grateful they gave me a little toothbrush in my on-board travel pack. They gave me toothpaste too, but I used it all. It’s on my grocery list.’ Not that Henry needed to know that, but she wanted to explain that she hadn’t taken too many liberties.

  ‘Don’t be too friendly out there. Be suspicious of everyone.’

  ‘Not helping, Henry. I’m already—’ Scared, lonely, and feeling so out of place. But if she said that, and it got back to her parents, there would be phone calls and pep talks and discussion of insecurities she didn’t want to own up to. ‘—behind schedule. Trafalgar Square is waiting. You’ve done your duty and checked up on me. I’m really well and your place is lovely—an oasis in the desert.’ It wasn’t his fault she had yet to brave the city. ‘Give my love to all my favourite people and please don’t mention my lack of luggage to my parents.’

  ‘I don’t even know who your fa
vourite people are.’

  Trust him to be so literal. ‘Start with your grandparents and my parents, that’ll do for now. My world is small. Far smaller than yours, which is huge and ever-so-slightly intimidating.’

  ‘Matilda, are you okay?’

  ‘Never better. And thank you for checking in on me. That’s very sweet of you.’ The fact that he’d done it at his grandparents’ request notwithstanding.

  ‘Are you mocking me?’

  ‘No, but I can. I could talk about your monochromatic sock drawer if you like, but frankly I’m beginning to like it. It’s orderly and somewhat soothing.’ She needed to stop searching his face as if it was a beloved one. Bad enough standing here wearing his clothes.

  ‘Are you wearing my socks too?’

  Yes, yes, she was. ‘They’re very thin. I mean, it helps with the neatness of the sock drawer, no question, but are they warm? I say no. And the sky here, Henry. I don’t mean to be picky, but please tell me it turns blue on occasion.’

  ‘Not like here.’ She could see his frown. ‘Listen. I want you to do something for me. There’s a women’s clothes boutique on the ground floor of the hotel next door. I want you to get Len the doorman to point you in the right direction and then I want you to go in and grab some stuff to wear and put it on the account I have running with the hotel. I’m going to ring them now, okay? They’ll be expecting you.’

  ‘That’s so not neces—’

  ‘Matilda, just do it. Every night since I’ve been here I’ve pulled dinner out of the freezer, and every last one of them has been made and put there by you. No one needs that many broad beans in return.’

  ‘You’re not making sense.’

  ‘Neither are you. Buy some clothes to wear and then get the hotel concierge to direct you to a nearby restaurant called Little Momo for lunch. It’s Moroccan and it’s good. After that, head for the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square—no cheating and going back to the apartment to mess with my sock drawer. Start with the Titian exhibition. Take your time. When you’re done head back to my place, put some music on and relax. Pour yourself a drink, sit back in the club chair by the window and toast your courage in getting out there and facing your fears.’

 

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