by Beth O'Leary
That’s the way with old friends. You understand each other, even when there’s not enough words out there for everything that should be said.
“I’m so sorry I’ve been away when you needed me the most.” I raise my hands to her cheeks for a moment. “Marian’s fine, it turns out. Come on in, won’t you?”
“Neighborhood Watch,” says a voice behind Betsy. Basil and Penelope appear in the doorway and follow Betsy through. Dr. Piotr comes by, giving me a gentle pat on the arm before stepping inside.
“Are you all right?” Kathleen pops up next. Goodness, are they all out here? Oh, yes, there’s Roland parking his scooter. “I came as soon as I heard.”
“How did you hear?” Leena asks again from behind me, sounding completely flummoxed.
I watch them all file past her and suppress a smile. It’s the Neighborhood Watch. Knowing is their job.
“All right, Eileen?” comes a familiar voice. Arnold hovers with uncharacteristic uncertainty on the doorstep. Last time we spoke, he went off in a huff, but I find I haven’t the energy to hold a grudge about it.
“Arnold! Come in,” Leena says.
Arnold’s eyes flick to mine for permission.
“Yes, of course, come in,” I say, stepping aside.
I watch in surprise as he gives Leena a quick kiss on the cheek before he moves past her into the kitchen. He did say they were seeing each other for coffee, now and then, but it’s still peculiar to see them acting like old friends.
“How did the rest of them even get here?” Leena asks me as I close the front door. “Betsy’s staying in Knargill!”
“I wouldn’t put it past Betsy to hitchhike, for a real emergency,” I say, with a little smile at Leena’s expression. “Is this all right, love? Everyone being here?” I give her arm a rub. “I can tell them to go if you want some time just the two of us.”
“I’m OK. I think.” She takes a deep, shaky breath. “What about you, though? You had quite a scare, with Mum, and then—with that Howard guy turning out to be…”
I shudder. I’ve been trying very hard not to think about that.
“So it wasn’t … real?” I say, lowering my voice so the Neighborhood Watch won’t hear. They’re bustling around in Marian’s kitchen; someone’s put the kettle on. Presumably they’ve figured out that Marian isn’t here having a crisis after all, but they’re showing no signs of departing. “Everything he said about how he felt…”
“These scammers, they do it all the time, Grandma,” she says gently. “They’re lovely and friendly and things move really fast, and it seems like they’re falling for you … and then they ask for money. Then they keep asking. So we were really lucky to catch it before it got too far.”
I shudder again, and Leena grips my hand.
“At first I hadn’t been at all sure about how over-the-top and friendly he was,” I tell her. “But then I got used to it, and it had felt quite … nice.” I sigh. “I’m an old fool.”
“You’re not! I’m so sorry, Grandma, it’s my fault. I should have prepped you a bit more before letting you loose in cyberspace. But scammers like that trick everybody.”
“I liked him,” I say in a whisper. “Was he even real? Was his name Howard?”
“I don’t know, Grandma. I’m sorry. I know it’s horrible, being tricked like that. Do you want me to tell this lot to go so we can have a proper chat about it all?” Leena says, glancing toward the kitchen.
I shake my head. “No, I want them here,” I say, pushing my shoulders back. “Come on, it ought to be me looking after you, with the day you’ve had. I’ll make hot chocolate and you can have a good cry on my shoulder.”
“You can cry on mine too, if you need to, Grandma,” she says. “I’ve figured that out these past two months.” She pulls me in for a hug, and then, in my ear, she says, “If you’re holding someone close enough, you can be the shoulder and the crier. See?”
I can hear the smile in her voice; she’s laughing at herself as she says it, but she’s saying it all the same. The Leena of two months ago would never have said something like that.
“God, this is what happens when I spend too much time with my mother,” Leena says, half-laughing, half-crying. “I’ll be collecting bloody crystals next.”
“Leena!” I scold, but I pull her in tighter as I say it, and that strange distance that grew between us while we were apart disappears as she leans her cheek on my shoulder.
There’s another knock at the door.
“I’ll get it,” Leena says, clearing her throat. “You get the hot chocolate going.”
I glance back as I step into the kitchen.
“Leena,” says a deep, steady voice. “Are you all right?”
35
Leena
It’s Jackson. He stops at the threshold; he’s taken his cap off, and he’s holding it between his hands. I look up at him, his broad, open face, those kind blue eyes, the raggedy worn-out shirt too tight across his shoulders. I want to collapse on him and sob into his chest, but I feel that probably wouldn’t be wise.
“Come in,” I say instead, stepping aside. “The whole fecking village is in here.”
I lead him into the living room, where the Neighborhood Watch committee members are now assembled, all perched on sofas and armchairs.
Jackson stands for a moment, looking at the room.
“Why are the chairs all facing that way?” he asks.
I follow his gaze to the empty space where Carla’s bed once stood. Grandma’s looking too, and I see her eyes shutter, the emotion quivering in her face. Then I look at the bin in the corner of the room, and there it still is, that awful old photograph of Carla. I should have clocked then how desperate Mum was for change, how much she needed it.
I’m seized by that familiar urge to do something, that same sensation that got me switching lives with Grandma in the first place.
Maybe something less drastic this time. But something for Mum.
“Let’s redecorate,” I say. It comes out a bit too loud; I clear my throat. “While Mum’s away. She said she wanted to, a while back. We could do it all for her, a full overhaul, not—not clearing Carla out of the house, but just … making space for the new Mum.”
Eileen smiles up at me. “That’s a lovely idea. I’ve been practicing my redecorating skills too. Martha taught me all sorts.”
“What have you been up to, Eileen?” Penelope asks, in a hushed tone. “Was it all ever so exciting?”
Grandma folds her hands in her lap. “Well,” she says. “I hardly know where to start…”
* * *
I stay up in Hamleigh for another night, planning the redesign of Mum’s house, catching up with Grandma, helping her unpack … everything except thinking about Ethan. The next morning I get up early so I have time for a run in the hills—I borrow an old pair of trainers from Kathleen. There is nothing like running here. It’s breathtaking, and as I round the bend on my favorite route, the one that gives me 360-degree views across Harksdale, I feel my heart ache. A thought pops into my head, and it makes me a little afraid, because it says, This place feels like home.
But it’s not home. I have a life in London, regardless of Ethan—I’ve got a career to salvage, a flat, friends.
You have friends here too, that little voice says. Still, I get myself back to Daredale station, and I take that train back to London, and I walk back to my empty flat, where my real life is, because that’s the sensible thing to do.
The misery hits as soon as I’m home again. It’s worse than the first time, because this time I know for sure: the life I’ve had with Ethan here, it’s gone. There’s the cushion I bought from Camden Market with him one Saturday, and there’s his usual seat at the breakfast counter, and there’s the scuff on the floor from when we silly-danced to jazz music after a long day at work, and all of it means nothing now. I slide down the door and let myself cry.
This is where I am when Bee comes around to see me.
“Oi!�
� she calls through the door. “Leena, let me in!” A pause. “I know you’re in there, I can hear you crying. Let me in, will you?”
She bangs on the door.
“Let me in, Leena, I can hear you!”
She’s like a little London Arnold. I shift to the side and reach up to open the door without standing. She steps inside, takes one look at me, and then pulls a bottle of wine out of a supermarket bag in her hand.
“Come on, you,” she says, pulling me up by the arm. “We need to start talking, which means we need to start drinking.”
* * *
It’s at approximately one a.m. the next morning that Bee and I finalize our business plans. This life-altering conversation goes something like this.
“It’s just like my mum says, why’s it got to be always about London anyway, I mean God I don’t even fucking like this city, do you like this city, Bee?”
“There’s no men here.” This comes out a little strangled, because Bee is currently hanging upside down from my sofa, her feet up the back, her hair splayed on the floor. “All the good men are in Leeds. All the good men. Oh my God, do I have a babysitter?” Bee sits up with a gasp and clutches her head.
“Jaime’s with your mum,” I remind her, for the fifth or sixth time since the second bottle of wine was opened.
She flops back down again. “Mmkay good.”
I take another swig of wine. I’m on the rug, legs spread-eagled; my brain is whirring through the drunken fog. “Shall we just go, Bee? Shall we just go and fucking do it? Why are we even here anyway?”
“You mean like … philosophicalilly?” She narrows her eyes and tries again. “Philosophocally?” Then, with great amusement: “Philofuckitally?”
“I mean like, why are we in London anyway? Who says we have to run our business from here?” I rub my face hard in an attempt to sober up. I have the vague sense that what I’m saying is very important, and also, possibly, the cleverest thing anyone has ever said in the whole wide world. “We’ll end up traveling all over anyway. And there’s so much business around Leeds, Hull, Sheffield … I want to be up in Yorkshire where my family is. I want to be with Hank the dog and all the gang, and those hills, God, they make my heart fucking sing, Bee. We can get an office in Daredale. Bee, you’ll love it, Bee. Bee. Bee. Bee.”
I poke her. She’s gone very still.
“Oh my God,” Bee says suddenly, pulling her legs down and then swivel-rolling so she ends up in a heap on the floor. “Oh my God that’s such a good idea I’m going to be sick.”
* * *
We hash out the details in slightly more depth over the next two days—there are some issues to overcome, not least the massive life-change for Jaime. But we figure it out, bit by bit, so that when I walk back into Selmount HQ for the first time since that awful panic attack, I’m doing it with a letter of resignation in my hand.
Rebecca takes one look at me once I walk into her office and sighs. “Fuck,” she says. “You’re going to resign, aren’t you?”
“I’m sorry.”
“It was always a risk, sending you packing for two months.” She peers at me. Rebecca needs glasses, but will not acknowledge this sign of human weakness in herself—she prefers to squint. “Though you look better for it, I’ve got to say. Nothing I can say to change your mind?”
I smile. “’Fraid not.”
“Where’d you go, then, for your two months of self-actualization? Bali? Bali seems to be a popular one.”
I try not to laugh. “Actually, I went to the Yorkshire Dales. Where my family lives. That’s where I’m going, when I finish up here—I’m going to move in with my grandma, hopefully, and B—” I stop myself just before I mention Bee’s plans to buy a house in Daredale for her and Jaime. Bee has yet to hand her notice in. In fact, I suspect she is hovering outside the door, ready to come in as soon as I come out.
“Huh.” Rebecca narrows her eyes. “Smart.”
I blush, and she gives me a knowing look.
“Thank you,” I say. “Really. Thank you for everything.”
She waves me off. “Give me your absolute everything for the next two months, if you really want to thank me,” she says. “Oh—and tell that ex-boyfriend of yours to stop hanging around when he should be client-side.”
“Ethan?”
“He’s been mooning around your desk since seven this morning.”
I wince, and she grins.
“I told him you were on a project in Milton Keynes. ’Spect he’s trying to find the right address for sending a box of chocolates as we speak.”
“Thanks,” I say, rather wearily. “He’s trying to make amends, I think. Only … it’s something chocolates can’t fix.”
There’s a quiet knock on the door, and Ceci pokes her head around it. I freeze. We look at each other, and I watch the color creep up from her neck to her cheeks.
“Great to have you back, Leena,” she says nervously. “So sorry to disturb you. I’ll … I’ll come back.”
I watch her scuttle away. My heart pounds, half loathing, half adrenaline. Some deeply instinctual part of myself wanted to claw at her face, but now she’s retreating I’m glad I didn’t let her see how thoroughly I loathe her. Let her scurry away from me for the next two months on those absurdly long legs of hers. She doesn’t deserve a moment’s thought.
“Whatever you did to earn her respect at last, it definitely worked,” Rebecca comments, flicking through a pile of papers on her desk.
“I think she met my grandmother,” I say. “That’s probably what did it.”
36
Eileen
For the first time in over a decade, I go to Betsy’s house.
At first we handle Betsy leaving Cliff the way we’ve always handled these sorts of things.
“Tea?” she asks, and then she says she got scones in for us as a treat, and we talk about the progress we’re making with doing up Marian’s house.
But then I think of Martha crying on the sofa, telling me how unprepared she felt to be a mother. Bee confessing how hard it’s been for her to find a man. Fitz letting me write him to-do lists and teach him to cook. How honest and open my young London friends were.
“How are you, Betsy?” I say. “Now that Cliff’s gone? I can’t imagine how you must feel.”
She looks a little startled, glancing at me as she stirs the milk into the teas. Then, rather cautiously, she says, “I’m … bearing up.”
I wait, taking the tea tray from her and making my way into her front room. I can’t have been here since, oh, the late nineties? She’s still got the same patterned carpet, but the armchairs are new, two matching soft pink ones that I can’t imagine Cliff would have liked much.
“The hardest part is the guilt,” she says eventually, settling into an armchair. “I can’t shake the feeling I ought to be looking after him.” She gives a little smile, reaching for the jam for her scone. “And I keep thinking of how horrified my mother and father would be, if they’d seen me screaming at my husband out there with everybody watching.”
“I for one wish I’d been there. I would have cheered you on,” I say fervently.
She smiles. “Well. Our Leena did a good job stepping in for you.”
We eat our scones and sip our tea.
“We ought to have done more,” I say. “For one another, I mean. I should have done an awful lot more to help you leave Cliff, and I’m very, very sorry I didn’t.”
Betsy blinks for a moment, then sets her scone down. “I should have told you to give Wade the boot thirty years ago.”
I consider the point. It probably would have made a difference, that. I’d always rather thought Betsy would say I ought to stay with my husband through thick and thin, the way you’re supposed to.
“We’ve got a few years left in us,” Betsy says after a moment. “Let’s promise to meddle in each other’s business as much as we see fit from now on, shall we, dear?”
“Let’s,” I say, as she picks up her scone again.
“More tea?”
* * *
The following week I bump into Arnold on my way home from painting at Marian’s; Leena was here at the weekend, and we got almost all the downstairs rooms painted, so I was only finishing up edges today. I’m dressed in my shabbiest painting clothes, threadbare old trousers and a T-shirt that shows rather more of my upper arms than I’d like anybody to see.
Arnold gives me a stiff nod. “Ey up,” he says. “How are you, Eileen?”
“Oh, fine, thank you,” I say. Things have been peculiar ever since I got home. In fact, aside from the day Marian left, I’ve hardly seen him. After years of Arnold popping up in my kitchen window and calling out to me over the hedge, I can’t help wondering whether this sudden absence is significant.
“Good, good. Well, I’ll be on my way.”
“Arnold,” I say, catching his arm. “I wanted to say thank you. Leena said what a help you were, while I was away in London.”
“Tell you about the car, did she?” Arnold says, looking down at my hand on his arm. He’s in a short-sleeved shirt and his skin is warm beneath my palm.
“The car?”
“Oh.” His eyes flick to the dent in the hedge I’ve been wondering about for weeks. “Nothing. It was no trouble. She’s a good’un, that Leena of yours.”
“She is,” I say, smiling. “Still. Thank you.”
He moves away, back toward his front gate. “See you when I see you,” he says, and I frown, because that seems to be hardly at all, these days.
“Will you come in?” I call, as he walks away. “For a cup of tea?”
“Not today.” He doesn’t even turn; he’s through his gate and gone before I can clock that he’s turned me down.
