by kendra Smith
Perhaps things were worse than Tim had mentioned on his last text. A very brief text saying he was away on business again, and so couldn’t pick her up. Sorry. Sorry? She had so much to say to him. In fact, she could hit him!
Once they’d found their way to the car park, Rachel quickly popped her case in the boot and they navigated their way out of the arteries of roads onto the M25. Maddie had been away two months – it was now early October – but it somehow all felt just a bit foreign. The roads were organised and calm, everyone staying in the same lane. The lights of the cars twinkled ahead like a burning river of red-hot coals in the distance. She leant back on the seat and sighed. She missed the chaos of Bali.
Rachel reached over and touched her knee briefly. ‘How’s Ed then?’
Maddie told her everything: about Ed, what had happened, the hospital, and the surfing, about Adity. She skimmed over the bits about Johnny, but explained she’d been to various temples and tried some exotic food. She described the purple sunsets, laughed when she talked about the flesh on show at the festival, and tried, in the silence of Rachel’s car, to convey the bustle, the energy of the place.
Rachel glanced at her sideways. ‘I’ve never seen you like this, Maddie. It’s not just that you look a bit like a tramp with a tan – I mean, I can’t explain it.’ Rachel gave her a long sideways look, her cheeks lit up with the reddish hue of the brake lights in front as Maddie peered at her in the dark. Finally, she said, ‘It’s good to have you back.’
Maddie drifted on and off to sleep on the way back, waking with a start and then dozing again. They were turning off the slipway from the M3. They sped through the country roads in the semi-dusk, the surrounding village signs increasingly familiar. After about twenty minutes, they turned off the roundabout and into Little Rowland. Past the village shop, past the nursing home, the garage, the Happy Hen café, past the lane down to the village school. Past the small Spar shop.
Rachel glanced in her mirror, then turned into their road. But as she did so, Maddie’s heart was in her mouth. There, parked on the road right outside her house, was a huge white van. And they were angrily banging on the front door of her house. Rachel drew up slowly behind the van. They didn’t look like they were selling feather dusters.
‘Perhaps it’s best you don’t go near there, pet. They don’t look friendly.’
Maddie watched as a man with a checked shirt and beard paced up and down her path. He was on the phone and getting very animated, pulling at his beard, and it looked like he was shouting down the phone.
‘What the hell do I do, Rachel?’
‘First, you come to stay with us, that’s what you do. We’ve already got Taffie. He’s been a real breath of fresh air – well, actually his breath stinks! But when he’s not chasing the cat, he’s a darling.’ And with that Rachel put the car into first gear and drove to the end of the road where her house was. She abruptly turned up into her drive and yanked the handbrake on.
Maddie peered out the window behind her and watched as the men got into the van. Then she turned to face the windscreen with her heart hammering in her chest. Who the hell were they? She looked ahead at the wintry marmalade sun setting over the horizon behind Rachel’s house, replaying Olive’s words in her mind. What sort of life do you want to live, Maddie Brown? Quite frankly, right now, she really didn’t know what kind of life she was even in.
24
Maddie sat down on the chair next to Olive’s bed and shifted the embroidery cushion beneath her. There was a silence in the room as if time had stood still. Her fingers found the stitching on the cushion and she traced the knotty bumps silently. Probably stitched by some old soul in their last days as a way to fill in the time between the drug rounds: embroidery, a morphine dose, embroidery.
Maddie studied Olive’s face: the wrinkles etched deeply across her forehead and the silvery, wispy hair lying limp on the pillow. Gone was the lip gloss, the glasses. They were folded, sitting neatly on the bedside table next to Olive. The props of Olive’s life lay still beside her, as the main act drew to a close. ‘Olive?’ Maddie gripped her bony hand and squeezed, willing her frail friend to squeeze back.
She glanced over at the tiny Buddha she’d brought back for Olive on the bedside table next to the glasses, with the mirrored mosaic covering his belly. The Buddha had a cheery, round face. Maddie inhaled the sour air of the nursing home and conjured up images of the Balinese beach, the foamy surf, neon bikinis teamed with batik sarongs, the sharp smell of chilli in the night air. She looked outside the window at the drops of rain, followed one down the pane, cast her eye over a wilting geranium on the patio below, brown and shrivelled in its pot of claggy soil.
The cycle of life marches on. One minute you are fretting over your baby: how much did they eat, did they sleep, what did they do today? The next thing you know, you are asking these questions about an aged relative: are they in pain, where does it hurt? Listen to that clock ticking on the wall. The minutes seem endless, much like the hungry silence of the dark night as you sit alone breastfeeding your baby, hours of your life slipping by. Then, silently and slowly, time creeps around you; it snakes up your body, claiming different parts as it burrows into your brain and steals the best bits.
Ageing? It’s a lottery. Will you be sprightly, dancing into the twilight of your life, or will life seep out of you, down the cracks in the floorboards, arms heavy as you lie listening to the sound of soft chatter, unsure what the future holds?
Olive had been vibrant and real. And now? It made Maddie’s heart ache to see such a spirited soul so limp. What was she thinking, imagining? Dreaming that she wanted to get away? To fight this awful disease? Maddie had been warned things would get worse.
‘Olive?’
The TV blared in the background as Olive dozed, a black-and-white film, the actors prancing around the screen, comic foils to the silent residents of the nursing home at dusk. The TV image was reflected in Olive’s glasses on the table, the actor’s energy mocking the gloom around them.
Maddie looked outside the window again at the dusky October sky, glanced at the little yellow boxes on the other side – windows of the other residents lit up with tiny lights. Everyone in their illuminated boxes, soft blankets on their knees, waiting for an unknown future to unfold.
25
Tim was sitting opposite Maddie at the village coffee shop, the Happy Hen, fidgeting with a white paper napkin. There was a russet-coloured happy hen on his napkin.
He put his cup down and started to fold and unfold the napkin. One minute the hen was there, the next, gone. She wanted to tell him about Olive, about how she’d taken a turn for the worse. Maddie had never seen her so inert before.
He stared at her across a cup of black coffee. She’d never understood why it was called the Happy Hen, but there were hen pictures on all the walls, all the paper napkins had a sketch of a hen on them and the menu featured little designs of eggs. There was too much cuteness surrounding her when she felt like ripping into Tim the way he was ripping up his napkin.
He was scratching his neck. Red welts formed where his fingernails had prised off some flaky skin. His hair was greyer at the temples, the lenses of his glasses smeared. He looked like he could do with a full day’s sleep. Amongst the rising anger, she felt pity too, pity that it had come to this.
‘What do you mean we have no money?’ She glanced at the shreds of napkin. Rip, rip, rip. Her mouth was dry.
‘Like I said in my text, Maddie, things have gone wrong with the investments of the wine business. It’s complicated.’
‘Tim, how can we have lost this amount of money?’ It just didn’t add up.
‘No, well, here’s the thing: I did, um, put a “little” money in.’ Tim did that thing again of making inverted commas with his fingers around the ‘little’.
‘How little, Tim?’ Maddie glared at him. His glasses slipped down his nose as he stared at his coffee, then he quickly pushed them back up and looked at her. She had been wit
h this man for nineteen years. How could he feel like such a stranger?
‘Look, it doesn’t matter, Maddie. What matters is that our solicitors are trying to sort it out.’
He wouldn’t quite look her in the eye.
‘Skinny latte?’ The waitress popped Maddie’s drink on the table with a cheery smile.
‘Thanks, Agnes.’
‘Good to see you back, Maddie. Been on a holiday? Gorgeous tan!’
‘Something like that.’ Maddie smiled. She really didn’t want to explain it all to Agnes right now. Once Agnes knew something, the whole of Little Rowland knew.
‘Tim, how “little”?’ Maddie gripped her chair under the table.
‘Maddie, I said you’ll be all right for a bit, OK? I’ve transferred the rest of the money I’ve got – it’s better in your account anyway. They can’t touch it there. And you’ll get your pay from the school, won’t you?’
They?
‘Tim, we both know that my school money is not very much! I can’t live on that. What about things like the mortgage?’
Tim coughed nervously and started to tear pieces of wing from the hen motif. Beaks and legs followed.
‘Actually, Maddie, we’ve got a problem there.’
‘Another problem? Rachel mentioned estate agents at the house…’ A feeling like acute food poisoning was developing in the pit of her stomach. She looked at this stranger. The wrinkles around his eyes were deeper today. Part of her heart went out to him. What kind of ‘bad’ business arrangements had the wine company made?
‘Look Maddie, a while ago, I remortgaged the house. I didn’t tell you as you were very wrapped up in the school, Ed was going through that bad patch with his GCSEs and that bullying incident – I thought it was the best thing, just to get on with it. But, um, looks like it was the worst thing. The interest rates – I haven’t been able to pay for a few months.’
‘How many months?’
‘About six.’
‘About six? They’ll repossess the house!’ It had happened to one of the cleaning ladies at school last year.
He nodded, ashen-faced. ‘They’ve said they need to repossess it. Also the loan company—’
‘Excuse me, the loan company – we owe a loan company and we can’t pay our mortgage?’
‘Yes.’ Sweat glistened on his upper lip. ‘They want to start with the big items – my car, the TV, the computer – and then they’ll sell the house. Your car’s safe. It’s in your name and it’s pretty old. They’re not interested in that.’
One marriage down the tubes and an old Renault Clio to show for it. Good work.
Sell the house? Her house? Her world was crumbling. She couldn’t speak. Imagine remortgaging and not telling her!
‘Tim, why didn’t you tell me about remortgaging the house – and why on earth did we need to anyway?’
‘Well, you see, my debts—’
‘What debts? We don’t owe anything!’
Tim scratched his neck again.
The waitress appeared and put the bill on the table in front of them.
‘Look Maddie, we… or I do. In fact, I might need to lie low for a bit, till things calm down.’
‘What do you mean lie low? Where?’ A thought struck her – the blonde hair and the earring. ‘Where are you staying, Tim?’
‘With a friend. It doesn’t matter.’ He shook his head. ‘You’re with Rachel. I’ll transfer the rest of what I have – I swear it’s all I have, Maddie – and then I’ll be in touch. Look, Maddie.’ Tim reached out and touched her hand. She stared at his neatly cut fingernails, feeling numb.
‘It does matter,’ she whispered, looking up. ‘There was an earring. Under the sideboard.’
She heard him catch his breath.
‘I don’t have pearl earrings, Tim.’
Tim hung his head, then he looked up at her: ‘Look, Maddie, this is my mess. I’ll sort it out. I’m just staying with a friend—’
Fury gathered in the pit of her stomach. ‘A friend? Who?’
‘You have to trust me,’ he said, adjusting his glasses.
‘Trust you! Are you serious?’
‘I’ll sort it out. Look, there’s more. I just can’t tell you right now.’
She was only just beginning to digest what he’d told her. More? What about Olive? It was one of the reasons she’d come back. ‘Tim, you need to visit Olive. I saw her today. I—’
‘Olive? Look, I’ll try, but I haven’t got a lot of time for all that. You’ll see her, visit her, won’t you? Please?’ He looked at Maddie, a man reduced to pleading.
All that.
‘Of course I will, Tim. I love Olive, but she wants to see you. We don’t know—’
‘Maddie, that’s what the nursing home’s for, to look after her. I can’t cope with that now as well as everything else. And listen, don’t go near the house, not till I tell you it’s OK.’ He glanced at his mobile phone.
Who was this man opposite her? She’d shared a life, a bed, a son with him. He was a stranger. He loved his cars, provided for them all, he was proud. Did she even know him? The house, her home, the debts – the earring – where did it leave her in all this?
‘Tim—’
‘Look, Maddie,’ he said, eyes wild. ‘There’s stuff you don’t know about. I’m trying to sort it,’ he said, pushing his chair back and started to get up. ‘I’ve got to go.’
A rage started to boil up inside her, but just as she was about to ask him more questions, infuriatingly, his phone rang. As he answered it, he gestured that he needed to go outside and started walking away.
‘Tim!’ she called out, but by the time she had gathered her things and left money on the table, he had gone.
*
When Maddie got back from meeting Tim, Rachel was in the kitchen making supper. Taffie bounded up to her and started licking her hand as she bent down and tickled him.
‘In here, darling. Listen—’ Rachel turned around from the sink ‘—I’ve made up some soup – you can take that in for lunches this week to school. I know you’re a bit strapped for cash, Maddie, and I do not want to discuss it, all right. You look like you’re about to collapse. And we need you to be strong. According to Carole, that pillock they got in to replace you can’t even mash potatoes!’
And then the tears started.
‘Oh, petal, come here.’ Rachel bustled over and put her arm around Maddie as Taffie tried to leap onto Maddie’s lap. ‘Down, Taffie!’
‘I’m sorry, Rachel, you’ve been incredibly good to me already. I just – I just…’ She let out a deep sigh.
‘Don’t worry. Sit down.’
Maddie sat down as Rachel placed a steaming mug of tea in front of Maddie. ‘I’ve put two sugars in there,’ she said softly as she sat down next to Maddie. ‘Now, tell me what happened.’
Where, oh where, should she start? She was homeless, didn’t know where or who her husband was anymore, what he’d been doing behind her back. He’d lost them their house and all their savings, her son was a million miles away and she was broke. At least she still had her job at the school. Au revoir, Bali; now she really was coming back down to earth with a bump.
26
It was almost a relief having to stand and wash up dishes; something to do as her brain tried to process what to make of her life. She’d missed the school in a funny sort of way, missed the routine, but they’d been really good about giving her unpaid leave when she’d explained about Ed. Take all the time you need. She stood, watching the children tear around in the playground, the wind whipping up the girls’ hair, the silent laughs and muffled screams of the playground chaos as seen behind a pane of glass. A thud of a football, a gaggle of girls with plastic hula hoops.
The last few leaves of autumn were chasing each other around the playground. November next week. They had choir practice tonight, gearing up for the big Christmas Carol Mash-Up in the village square on Christmas Eve. She smiled. It would all be so perfect, if the rest of her life was in or
der. Her mind wandered back to those photos on Facebook.
She had shown Rachel her pictures of the Bali trip, but when Rachel had wandered off, it was too hard to resist having a peek at Greg’s Facebook page. She had scrolled back through his timeline last night, staring at pictures of Mrs Baker: a vision with high cheekbones, a low-cut top and curly strawberry blonde hair.
Stupid, stupid Maddie, you deserve to feel jealous. You asked him to be your friend on Facebook, now look what it’s done – opened up a view into his perfect life, a view you can see whenever you want, just to torture yourself. You didn’t think that the friend request meant anything, did you, Maddie? That little voice was getting louder. She’d snapped shut the cover of her phone in frustration and had marched downstairs and poured herself an enormous glass of wine. ‘Whoa, pet, bad day?’ Alan had come into the kitchen then and she’d felt guilty helping herself to their wine. ‘Sorry, Alan, just a bit on edge.’
Course you are, with all this nonsense. He’d given her a friendly hug and left her in peace.
What would she have done without Rachel and Alan?
Now, Maddie looked down at the foam of bubbles rising up towards the top of her washing-up gloves and let her mind drift. Images of Ed, the beach, Ubud, the temple came tumbling across her brain. It all seemed a million miles away. Maddie scrubbed vigorously at a pot in the sink. The noises, the smells of Bali, the thrill of being on the back of a motorbike… and now Little Rowland.
Was this what she really wanted?
‘Miss, why are you crying? Do you need a tissue?’
It was Snot Boy.
‘Oh, sorry.’ She smiled shakily, wiping a tear away with a rubber glove, which only meant her cheeks became wetter. ‘I was miles away. What’s wrong?’
‘Ms Carole said you has some plasters?’ He pointed to his knee where a trickle of red blood oozed out. This boy always seemed to have fluid escaping from some part of his body. She snapped off her gloves and took his hand. She led him to the first-aid kit where she gently wiped away the blood with a wet tissue, dabbed on some Savlon and then popped a plaster on the cut. ‘Fanks, miss.’ He looked up at her and smiled, snot glistening under his nose. Then he leant his head on her shoulder and she let the warm boy rest his head there for a while as she gently put her arm around him and gave him a hug, even though the chimes of her Health and Safety briefing rang out in her mind.
