by kendra Smith
And with that he walked briskly away.
She watched him. Watched as he strode across the concrete courtyard, heels clicking, like he did all those years ago. Perhaps she’d been stupid to come, to open up all those old wounds again. She folded her arms across her chest and shivered.
‘Maddie!’ It was Ellie, weaving her way towards her in purple slingbacks, clipping on the hard surface. ‘There you are! C’mon, we’re all going to the Student Union bar for Snakebites! Maddie, c’mon!’ Ellie had stopped by one of the pillars and was fiddling with her shoes.
‘Looks like you need some help with your footwear!’ She took Ellie by the arm as they made their – slightly wobbly – way to the bar.
As she licked the traces of blood from her lips, she was thankful that at least it would take her mind off the nagging question that was building up in her mind.
*
Much later, she flicked the light switch off and drifted into a fitful sleep on the hard mattress in the student room, her accommodation that night. She slept for a few hours under a paper-thin duvet, dreaming she was water-skiing across the Channel, the waves bouncing her up and down. She felt like she was choking on the water. Tim, her husband, was in a rescue boat beside her. What are you doing, Maddie? He was shouting at her. Where are you going? Where indeed?
She woke up drenched in sweat with the duvet wrapped around her neck. She slowly got up and eased her feet into soft slippers. She clicked on the bedside lamp and sat for a minute adjusting to the golden light of her unfamiliar surroundings. Opening the door, she wandered to the communal kitchen, filled up the kettle, put it back on its holder and switched it on. She stood for a while looking out of the window at the inky darkness, punctuated only by the orange lights outside casting a tangerine sheen across path. Stirring her chamomile tea methodically, she let out a breath and stood in the silence knowing now more than ever that she couldn’t keep those trunks of emotion shut anymore.
Once she was settled on her bed, she opened the lid of her laptop and clicked on the Facebook icon. She searched for any messages from her son Ed. Why hadn’t he been in touch?
And then, with one click, she did something she had avoided doing for so many years: she sent Greg Baker a friend request. Now that she had seen him again, she felt a weird sensation in the pit of her stomach. It was a sort of quiet excitement she had been holding on to, a yearning and a terror all mixed into one, rather like being at the top of a huge helter-skelter in a theme park and knowing there was no way back.
She had been carrying this knot of feeling, this anxiety, this heartache coupled with, what – desire? – for as long as she could remember. She had played the good housewife, she had raised a son, she had even joined a sodding choir. But now, even though he seemed so distant, she had to find out why. Surely that was her right, after what had happened? The sands had just shifted in the landscape of her life.
Genie out of the bottle? You bet.
2
Maddie
Maddie turned away from her husband, Tim, and pressed the button on the door to let the window slide down. She sat for a while with her eyes closed, a women’s magazine in her lap. She let the breeze from the window whisk her hair up and around her cheeks. She put her hand on her neck and squeezed it, longing for the journey to end. She shook her head experimentally and enjoyed the sensation of her hair sliding across her bare back.
Greg had always liked her hair down.
Tim had turned up yesterday, the day after the reunion. Said he was ‘in the area on wine business’ and had thought it would be a nice surprise. He’d done that thing where he’d used inverted commas in the air with his hands when he’d said ‘surprise’. Somehow his Welsh accent always came to the fore when he was animated. He said he had wanted to show her how his car handled country roads. As if she cared. And then she felt like such an awful wife, thinking these things.
They’d had yet another argument about their son, Ed, and how they hadn’t heard from him. Tim had told her she was being ridiculous, to stop being a mother hen. Ed was nineteen. But something wasn’t right. Ed hadn’t replied to her last private message.
Are you all right? Pls send a quick message. Mum x
Since Ed had left, it was as if the Ghost of Maddie Past had been unleashed, screaming at her to do something. But what? Looking at her and asking, Is this your life? She felt lonely, even with her mad terrier Taffie bouncing around. Last weekend she’d moped around all day, washing Ed’s hoodies and remembering how she used to complain about them. Now, all she wanted was to pick up hoodies from the floor.
Her mind drifted back to Ed as a baby, a toddler, remembering how he’d always been clingy. Not so anymore. She thought about how it had all come about, her wedding day and the events that had led up to it. Events that only she and Tim knew about.
She flicked open the CD case and pulled out an old Kate Bush album.
Tim glanced at the CD. ‘I don’t like that.’
‘You can choose the next one.’ She folded her arms and stared out the window. She could remember all the words to the song. It had been one of her favourites when she was at uni.
She felt unsettled today, but Tim had only come down to surprise her. What was wrong with that? Was in the area.
The girl who’d sung along to Kate Bush all those years ago with her hair flapping in a high ponytail as she walked along the corridor outside her lecture theatres was far removed from the uptight woman in the passenger seat now – determinedly sitting with her hair down, even though it was flicking her in the eye because of the breeze. Where was that girl who’d had sex in the cloakroom at the end-of-year ball? Where was that twenty-year-old who used to take risks, surfed, tried cigarettes? Hated them, mind, coughed her guts out, but she’d tried them. She’d lived a little. Where was the girl who’d danced on the top deck of the night bus home from the clubs at three in the morning, singing at the top of her voice, unable to sit down until the bus driver had shouted up at them all, leaving them in a fit of giggles? Sure, you grow up, you have responsibilities like a mortgage and toilets to clean. But what about fun?
She replayed today in her head. She’d been irrationally disappointed that he’d turned up. After everything Tim had done for her…
You said we don’t do anything together! She remembered their previous row. She glanced over. He was silent now, his face expressionless under those ‘driving’ sunglasses – the ones he kept polished in the glove compartment. She put a hand out to touch his leg – a peace offering. And what did she feel? She felt hollow – especially as she remembered the charge of two thousand volts when Greg had accidentally brushed her cheek last night.
They pulled up at some traffic lights; they changed from red to amber then green. Tim pulled away slowly. In the magazine there was a piece about a woman having an affair. She flicked past the page hurriedly and nearly ripped it in the process. Somehow, lately, thoughts of sex were all that were on her mind, whirling around like dandelions in the wind.
The countryside whizzed by in flashes of colour – first yellow rapeseed, then a brushstroke of azure-blue, and then field after field of sheep grazing. She used to point out sheep to Ed on any long car journeys to the coast, asking if he knew what they ate, letting him unpack the picnic. Later, they’d build Lego helicopters with multi-coloured pieces.
After about half an hour they passed signs for Tregardock beach, the place where it all started. No. She wound the window up and turned to the horoscopes. Life is there for the taking. Is it? She studied the coastal landscape as it passed her by, the rugged, rocky stretches of coast, the bluey-green sea laced with pale sand down below. The weather had put on a show today – it had hit nearly twenty-five already.
‘I got a call from Olive’s nurses,’ Tim said, breaking into her thoughts. ‘They said her drugs need topping up.’
Tim’s aunt Olive was incredibly dear to her. Ever since Ed was a tiny baby, she’d been a part of their lives. From the trips to her cottage on the
Isle of Wight, to Ed’s christening, Olive’s charm had been woven into many of their family celebrations. She was more like Maddie’s blood aunt, really, than Tim’s. Maddie felt connected to her on so many levels. Olive was in a care home near them – the one where Maddie’s dad had been – rather than on the Isle of Wight, so they could both see her.
Glancing out to the sea, Maddie recalled all the happy times she’d had with Olive and Ed down at Olive’s old home, Maris Cottage, right by the beach. It lay empty now. She’d promised Olive she would visit and look after it, for when Olive ‘got back’. They were both kidding themselves, of course; Olive was never going back. It looked like she was at Maybank View till – well, Maddie wouldn’t think about that.
She wanted to make Olive’s life better in any way she could. She smiled, thinking of her feisty spirit – the dark rimmed glasses and grey hair always ‘tinted’ with a new colour, a dash of purple at the ends or a pink rinse, always more trendy than twee; Olive had been edgy before the word was even invented.
They passed a road sign telling them it was fifty-five miles to Little Rowland and then she spotted the ‘Hampshire’ county sign. The last time she’d visited, Olive had been quite agitated and had asked Maddie to water all the flowers at the cottage. Maddie didn’t want to remind her that there were no flowers there now – that Maddie and Tim had cleared out the rockery, and that they’d donated most of the furniture from inside the house to charity.
But she knew Olive wanted to cling on to some of her old life. That’s why she’d told her a few white lies about watering plants, about everything being OK. It was hope, wasn’t it? Hope that things would return to normal. Olive’s new normal was four beige walls to stare at instead of crashing waves beyond the cottage garden. How had Olive coped all those years after her husband Stan had died? Maddie couldn’t imagine being alone.
Even though she and Tim didn’t always see eye to eye, they were a team. Someone to hold on tight to at night when the owls hooted outside and the shadows grew long and sinewy. Ever since her mother and father died within months of each other – first, her mother with an aggressive breast cancer, then her father’s diagnosis and decline with Alzheimer’s – she had felt like everyone she loved had abandoned her. Then along came Tim. She’d been bereaved and, soon after, awash with hormones the midwives had soothed. Yet one of the real reasons she’d cried herself to sleep for a year, holding that scarf in bed, remained her closely guarded secret.
She must have dozed off because an hour later she woke up and they were pulling off the roundabout into Little Rowland. It had started to drizzle. Maybe some time on our own without Ed is exactly what we need right now, she told herself. She glanced at Tim, willing herself to feel a tug from her heart. But as she watched him flick the indicator on theatrically and let out a sigh at the traffic on the junction, she wasn’t really sure that would be the answer at all.
3
Olive
Olive was just getting her hair washed when she felt it. Just a small bit, but it was definitely there. A leak. Right now, just when that lovely new hairdresser, Julian, had started at the nursing home. She crossed her legs in the chair a little bit tighter. He needn’t know. He was a bit of a fancy chap with his funny earrings and a nose thingy, but she could forgive him for that.
‘Didn’t you?’
‘Eh?’
‘A stroll, I said. Is that your hearing aid again, Olive?’
‘Don’t be so bloody cheeky. I’ve got an earful of soapsuds in my ears, course I can’t hear you very well! What did you say?’
‘I said it’s a nice morning, and you went for a stroll earlier, didn’t you?’
‘Stop being bloody patronising!’
She could feel Julian’s hands stop, mid-soap, on her scalp. That’ll teach him to be condescending to me! Then she felt a bit sorry for him. She twisted her turquoise beads around in her hand.
‘Yes, I did go for a “stroll” as you put it. I was taken around the perimeter fence by Nancy in one of the better wheelchairs – I like her, she’s one of the nicer ones – about eleven o’clock. Now, mind you don’t get the colour wrong. Last time you did my hair I ended up looking like one of the dancers on the Halloween set of Strictly.’
She heard Julian sniff indignantly. ‘Don’t you be cheeky, Olive Rose Hunter!’
‘I’ll be as cheeky as I like, comes with the territory at eighty-seven.’ She caught him grinning at her, as he smoothed on the colour over her fine hair in the sink. She liked to keep these young things in check. There were no manners today, not like in her day, when Stan had still been alive.
‘Right, you’ll need to wait ten minutes for that to work.’ Julian tucked a towel under her collar and wiped a splodge of colourant from her forehead.
‘Be a dear and pass me my iPad, will you?’
She watched Julian’s rear end sashaying over to the armchair, and smiled. When had she last enjoyed a male bottom, she wondered? Well, enjoy was the wrong word, but had a bit of, what did that magazine say, the one in the residents’ lounge – ‘eye candy’? Yes, that was it.
She wanted to check her emails to see if that niece of hers had been in touch. Last thing she’d seen was a one-line email telling her she was off to Exeter for some reunion. Olive couldn’t think of anything worse – why meet up with a whole lot of people you hadn’t seen for twenty years? Maddie seemed distracted lately, agitated. She worried about Maddie; she really did.
Olive knew well the stresses and strains of a marriage, but with Maddie there was something missing. Of course, anyone’s light would have gone out a little bit living with Tim for so long, but she wasn’t really sure if a light had ever been on for Maddie. And as for how he treated her, it was as if she owed him something. It had never been like that for her and Stan. She’d adored Stan – and they’d had adventures, real belly laughs. They’d had to. God had never blessed them with children, so they’d had to make the most of each other.
She thought about Maddie again as Julian came over, rubbed a bit of her hair between two fingers to look at the colour and nodded to himself.
They’d had Ed terribly soon after they were married, and he’d been early. There had been no time for the two of them to build a relationship, Olive thought. Why had they rushed into it?
Maddie had been such a free spirit, such a fun-loving girl – she remembered the wedding and that dreadful dress she wore. But motherhood had changed her. It was as if life had sucked something more out of her, suffocated her under a pile of to-do lists.
Olive felt it was somehow her duty to look over Maddie, what with her having no mother anymore. Olive had seen a very different girl in the beginning, a feisty spirit beneath all the conventions that came with motherhood and ‘fitting in’ in the village, but that seemed to have been eroded away with time. And then she became a dinner lady. Where was the ambition? She was sure Maddie could have done better than that. She’d never tell her that, of course. Of one thing she was certain: Maddie was devoted to Ed.
Although Tim was Olive’s nephew, sometimes that wasn’t enough was it? Tim had been a difficult boy – he’d always been whiny at school, very clingy, and his eczema used to flare up all the time. Emily, Stan’s sister, had indulged him, in Olive’s opinion. But as an only child, she supposed that’s what happened.
‘Here you go.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Your iPad.’
‘Don’t be silly, I don’t want that.’ Honestly, what was wrong with people? ‘What about my hair?’
Olive leant back into the sink at the ‘hairdresser’s’ – well, they would call it that, when really, it was just a corner of the upstairs corridor, with a screen around it, a basin and a couple of chairs. Oh yes, they’d stuck up some posters of Sophia Loren and Jane Fonda on the wall, looking all pouty and glamorous. Olive knew there was a dementia section of the care home next door, but she wasn’t in it, was she? No, sir. Her marbles were intact. Bit old, of course. She knew damn well that tod
ay was Saturday and that Sophia Loren had never had her backside in this chair, had she?
‘Right, Olive, what are you planning for later on with your hair all done?’ said Julian, wheeling her back to a seat by the mirror. ‘There’s normally a good event on a Wednesday in the residents’ lounge. The Midweek Mystery Quiz – you liked that last time, didn’t you?’
‘How would you know what I liked last week? You’ve only just started here!’
Julian placed his hand on Olive’s arm and she caught a look in the mirror she didn’t much like. Then he busied himself with combing through some thickening conditioner into her thinning grey strands.
Olive stared at Julian in the mirror, watching him carefully comb her lank grey wisps of hair and find the parting that she always had on the left, as things slipped in and out of place in her mind. It was like a train going onto another track. It was all there, she was sure it was. One moment everything was going in the right direction, going to plan, chugging along where she could see, then wham! It all changed. The tracks moved abruptly and her brain couldn’t keep up. She found herself being confronted more and more these days with her mind pulling into an empty siding, instead of running freely along the tracks. Midweek what? Oh, bother that bloody useless brain of hers.
4
Maddie
‘Where’s my life, Carole?’ Maddie laid down the metal serving spoon next to the baking trays in the school dinner hall.
Carole fixed her with her pale blue eyes. ‘Sweetie, your life’s right here. And you’re right here with bloody mash all over yer blouse!’ Carole grinned and wiped a bit of mash from her sleeve with her tea towel. ‘Pass the peas, will you?’
