by Joy Richards
She was nervous as she pitched her idea, which she had only fully formed on the train up. She had once heard that J. K. Rowling had come up with the concept for Harry Potter on a train to Scotland. It must have been an inspiring train ride, because here was her own breakthrough. The idea was simple. She would purchase a real-life model home, a cottage perhaps, somewhere in the countryside near Edinburgh. Polka Dots would furnish it with vintage pieces and, wherever possible, Polka Dots wares. There would be thick ceiling beams strung with hand-sewn pastel bunting, a wall piano, a small cream-coloured Aga in the kitchen. She would make the whole cottage a living photography set for Polka Dots wares. Keep it as on-brand as possible.
She would move in, with her children, and live life as it came. She would take photos, and document their lives. She would share them on social media. People would want to live her life and would buy the stuff. Of course, she would still do all the other things a social media manager is meant to do: source influencers, respond to comments, make campaigns for year-round events. Promote new lines and launches. She knew what those things were, because she had googled them on her phone on the train ride up.
They didn’t say much, but were very nice and bought her lunch. She worried she had embarrassed herself, but there was something comforting about embarrassing yourself so far away from home. She would never see these people ever again. She hadn’t even told her parents she was going to a job interview, they thought she was with a friend. She got back on the train, and was somewhere unspecified in the middle of England when her phone rang. They didn’t even want to interview anyone else, they said. When could she start? After speaking with them, Florence hung up the phone and spent the rest of the journey with her head tilted back and her eyes closed.
Once the train pulled into King’s Cross, she got off and walked straight into a taxi. She gave him the address of Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, and rang her mum on the way. She asked her to meet her at the hospital bring her bag: she was going to stay overnight.
It wasn’t until after Miriam was born that she’d had the courage to tell them she was moving. She was worried they would be angry, like a teenager who wants to move in with her boyfriend and knows her parents will say no. Instead, they just seemed worried.
“How are you going to do this by yourself?” her dad asked, raising his eyebrow. It occurred to her that they might not be taking her seriously.
“The job is part-time, I’ll work from home two out of the three days and the one day I have to go in I’ll figure something out.” She had felt really insecure about this plan. She didn’t know if it was doable, and didn’t know if she could do it. She was trying to convince her parents this was a good idea; she was somehow convincing herself too.
“You’ll have no support!” chimed in her mother. She was definitely taking her seriously, and her carefully made-up face was contorted in a very worried expression.
Florence really thought about it for a second. She’d had all the support in the world with her first child: family close by, two grandmothers ready to come over at the ring of a mobile phone, lots of friends, a postpartum doula, endless baby groups and support groups. She’d still struggled. In fact, she’d found it all rather suffocating, an endless list of places she had to go to, to open up and be vulnerable. It was emotionally stressful, and actually took up quite a bit of her time. She was wary of sounding ungrateful, but that’s just how she felt.
“Well, Mum,” she said, hoping to avoid an argument, “I’ll need to see how it goes.”
That had been the key phrase: see how it goes. Convincing her parents this was some temporary fancy had allowed her to get their support enough to set the wheels in motion. The gods seemed to smile on her endeavour. She found a perfect cottage within a few weeks, doing most of the house-hunting on a smartphone in the middle of the night, while nursing her daughter. Her new colleagues were all but too happy to go and view it for her. They video called her during the viewing, and she felt they were already friends. These people were artsy, and mumsy. They were excited about the beautiful wooden beams that criss-crossed the ceilings, and the fireplace in original brick. So was she. In fact, she even felt her eyes getting moist, a tear lurking at the back of her throat, as she saw them run through the garden.
“You’ll love this, Florence!” one of them screamed in the sunshine of that cold winter afternoon.
“Call me Flo,” she replied with a smile. Her mother, from the other side of the room, raised an eyebrow. Nobody had ever called her that before.
Her father’s last objection had been cost. Would she be able to afford it? Miraculously, she could. She’d called the estate agent the afternoon she’d moved back in with her parents after John’s death, to see if they could still sell the house. Unfortunately their original buyer was no longer interested. Fair enough, he was probably buying a house somewhere else. The estate agent had seemed happy to hear from her though. He had just had a phone call from someone who might be perfect.
Florence had gone back to her old house one afternoon before a job at Polka Dots was even on her radar, to let the potential buyers in for a viewing. She was deeply ashamed, the house was a mess. She had not taken the time to clean or tidy before leaving; she had packed Tim and the dog in her dad’s car and she had not looked back. And yet, the young couple looking at the house seemed to love it. They didn’t even notice the splatter patterns on the kitchen backsplash, and didn’t care about the stacks of old toys in the corner of the living room. They marvelled excitedly at the size of the tiny conservatory.
“It’s a greenhouse!” the husband had exclaimed.
“We have a lot of plants,” the wife had whispered, with a knowing smile.
Go figure. That’s what it was. It wasn’t a conservatory, of course. It was a greenhouse, an extravagance built by someone who wanted a hot place to grow mandarin oranges and tomatoes. How had they never figured it out? Florence had let out a half smile, thinking of poor John valiantly cramming his large body into that tiny space, aiming to work on his laptop precariously perched on an old card table. Even after all that had happened, that memory still made her smile. It had been a happy house. They had been happy there.
After only three days, the couple had put in an offer. It was lower than the asking price, and her father had urged her to play hardball. She refused. She could picture them, living happily in her tiny pink house. They would fill the greenhouse with luscious dark-green plants. Florence imagined a whole bookcase filled with beautiful pink orchids. As it turns out, the equity she had released from the house would more than cover the purchase of the cottage, with quite a bit left over. “London property prices are out of control,” said her new colleagues over the phone. “Crazy. They make you lose all sense of proportion.”
And just like that, it was time to leave. Her parents seemed to have slowly turned off their objections. Her mum was going to come up for a few weeks and help her get settled, but Florence had gone ahead with Tim and Miriam. They had shipped most of their things ahead, and Florence drove up in her new second-hand car. It was a long and exhausting journey. By the time they turned the key in the creaky door, the cottage was dark. It smelled damp and looked like a maze of boxes shut together with tape, a frightening forest of shadows. The downstairs lights did not seem to be working, so they went straight to bed upstairs. As she lay on the double bed with Tim and Miriam, Spencer snoring at the foot of the bed, Florence stared at the ceiling and cried silently. She was a long way from home, and all alone.
In the morning, however, things seemed very different. She woke up around six, the first cold light of the street lamp flooding the room. There were no curtains. She got up, careful not to wake her children, and tiptoed downstairs. She took a drink of water from the large farmhouse-style sink, and walked around the rooms as the sun rose slowly, filling her new home with light. It felt like the good old days, when she had just moved to her little pink house and she would roam its rooms in the early morning, planning the rede
coration. The cottage was a mess, furniture amassed against the walls and precarious-looking towers of cardboard boxes standing in her way.
But Florence could see past the mess. She could see the view from the kitchen window, a perfectly-framed vista of a beautiful ash tree. She could see the furniture her new employers had sent her, and it was beautiful. She started rearranging it in her mind. One piece in particular had caught her eye: a refurbished wall unit, painted in a dove grey. She could do something special with that.
What occurred to her immediately after was that arranging her new furniture was, technically speaking, part of her job. For the first time in years, she was excited about work. She should also buy some new clothes, something she liked herself in. With her second pregnancy, she had rid herself of all her pre-motherhood clothes and now she regretted it bitterly. Some of them would have reminded her of John, but she loved so many of her old pieces. She used to have a black-and-white houndstooth skirt she would have loved to still have, to wear to work with a black satin blouse and her old over-the-knee suede boots. Her new clothes would have to be from a charity shop, she could not justify buying new things she didn’t really need.
Her life was changing, and in many ways it was going to be worse. Her new life as the happy single mother of two would feature far fewer luxuries than her old life as the unhappy married mother of one. No holidays for a while, probably, unless it was a treat from her parents. The children would go to state schools instead of the posh private place John had found near their would-be new home in Surrey.
John’s family had offered to contribute, but she had chosen not to accept. No strings attached. They were welcome to visit any time, she’d told them, and she’d meant it. They were nice, and Tim loved his grandma. But this was going to be a new chapter in her life and Florence wanted to start it without John, or his ghosts. Her new job would pay enough for her and her children to live on, considering she had no mortgage. In four years’ time, Miriam would go to school and Florence might switch to full-time. Who knows.
In the corner of the kitchen, she found a travel tea kettle. It came with two green plastic mugs, a box of teabags, two instant coffee pouches and two little long-life milk cartons. The previous owners must have left it for her when they moved her things in. So considerate. That would never happen in London. She made herself a tea and went to sit on her front step, cradling her mug with both hands. It was so cold outside, the mug steamed up with thick coils of vapour. She took in the first delicious sip and savoured it as she contemplated the view from her front door. She could see the whole village on one side, and a coiling lane going uphill, towards the woods. She should go up there for a run every morning, she thought, taking her second sip of tea. She savoured the quiet of the village waking up in the thick winter mist.
“Mummy!” Tim screamed from upstairs. She smiled. No matter where she was, or who she was now, she was still Mummy.
“I’m coming, my love!” she hollered back.
As she got up from the doorstep, she took one last look at her new life. It was beautiful.
21
Claire
Her children came in the night, one by one, as if answering a summons. She saw them pull up on the driveway, turn off the headlights and scuttle away from the house. She imagined they were all meeting somewhere in the village, probably the pub. They walked quickly, their hands deep in their pockets, their heads held low. They all lived busy lives, and yet they had all come. They had stopped whatever they were doing, halfway through their family suppers, school play rehearsals and their weekend plans. Like workers in a strike, they had downed tools to come here, quickly, steadily, in the night. It suddenly hit her that her sons were four men, grown and tall and prickly with an end-of-the-day stubble as they sat around a table, talking with hushed voices and worried faces. Her eyes blinked away a tear. She was so proud of her children, even when they broke her heart.
They came by the house at breakfast time, looking like they had all slept uncomfortably. Their shirts were wrinkled, they had not shaved. They looked like they might not have even showered. If, as she suspected, they had slept in the rooms above the local pub she was not surprised. They all sat around the kitchen table, their hands nervously running over the worn-down Formica top. Michael fussed about, getting cups of tea for everyone.
Jacob cleared his throat. He was clearly the one in charge. Claire could not help but smile. Jacob. Her big boy. He had always been the leader, in charge of their little tribe of feral boys. Aaron was the instigator, Jacob was the one making sure things didn’t get out of hand. When Michael had been shot, Jacob was barely ten. He had looked after his brothers almost entirely on his own while Claire tried to piece together what had happened and then later, while she was nursing Michael back to health. She could see how this had shaped Jacob, from a determined little boy into a serious teenager and the man he had become. He was a wonderful father, a caring husband and highly respected in his profession. To Claire, he would always be the leader of her little pack of boys, four worried little faces peering through the door as she tried to help Michael to the bedpan.
They seemed much the same now as they had back then: Aaron bashful, Elijah wide-eyed and Gideon frightened, as they all looked to Jacob awaiting instructions, like little soldiers. He gestured with his hand, an encouraging smile on his face.
“I don’t even know what to say.” Aaron’s voice was hoarse from crying. “Mum, I would be heartbroken if you thought even for a second that I meant what I said. Of course I don’t, I have always admired you and Dad, now more than ever. I don’t even know how you coped with the loss of a child the way you did.”
Claire smiled. Her eyes were still full of tears. “We did it for you boys, you know? To give you a sense of normality.”
Michael said something, and even Claire couldn’t understand him. He had been up all night, and with his cracked voice it was impossible to distinguish any words. He shrugged with a smile and put his arm around her shoulders, gently pulling her towards him.
“This has been the worst year of my life,” Aaron continued, “and things with Penelope have been so bad for so long, I was just looking for someone else to shout at.” His head lolled forward, his lower lip protruding like a child doing an exaggerated expression of sadness.
Claire reached over the tabletop and clasped his hands in hers. “Darling,” she said, softly, “I know. That’s okay. And I know you didn’t mean it.”
“And I know you did it for us,” Aaron said, looking back up again. “You did it to give us a normal childhood and a normal life and look, we spoke yesterday and one thing we are all agreed on is that we all really really appreciate it.”
Jacob put his hand on Claire’s arm. “It meant a lot to us, Mum,” he said, softly.
Michael got up and opened his arms. Aaron rushed into them like he did when he was a little boy. Claire hugged him from behind, like a sandwich of parental love.
“Oh, I want a hug now!” Gideon, her baby, was trying to lighten the mood.
“Go on, then,” said Claire with a giggle. “Pile on.”
They all squeezed each other in a big family hug, arms weaving through arms, hands pushing down on backs. This was easier when they were little, thought Claire, but it sure feels nice now they are all grown.
“Right, now, Mum.” Jacob untangled himself. “And Dad. There’s something else we need to talk about.”
The boys’ faces dropped, as they all sat around the table.
“Is the apartment in Canary Wharf gone?” asked Jacob.
“Not yet,” Claire replied. “We told them we were looking for another buyer. They said they would give us a month and then put it back on the market, so it’s there waiting for us. Why?”
Elijah spoke for the first time, his voice cautious. “We think you deserve to get on with your lives. And we thought we could buy the house off you. The four of us, together, so you get to move on.”
“Hang on, what?” Michael was confused, and
so was Claire.
“We can do it up and sell it,” Jacob explained, while cleaning his glasses with the front tails of his shirt. “Which would actually be an investment opportunity for us. Aaron could stay here for a while and help out with the renovations. But we could buy it off you first, so you don’t lose your flat.”
“How would you even afford it?”
“Mum, you’ll be surprised to know some of us actually have quite good jobs,” Gideon said with a smile that was also a smirk. There was always a little tension with Gideon. He felt as though he had to prove himself, the youngest of a brood of impressive men.
“This is Gideon’s way of telling us his book is selling well.” Elijah came right back at him. He would step into the role of class clown when Gideon was unavailable. Also, he was right, Gideon’s book was selling well. He had written it in his spare evenings and weekends, edited it, proofread it, found an agent for it and sold it without saying a word to his mother. Claire’s books had sold millions of copies and had been translated into five languages, and yet her son had not felt the need to tell her he was writing a book. She knew she had no right to be angry about that. As a journalist, he had plenty of good material. Most importantly, he was forging his own path. He didn’t want to succeed because he was her son, he wanted to succeed because his book was interesting and well-written. Still, every time it was mentioned Claire felt a twinge of something resembling disappointment.
They all laughed at Elijah’s quip. Michael raised his hand. “We know you are, but this is still quite a lot of money.”
“Dad, for what this house will be worth after we renovate it, it will be a steal.” Gideon was excited.
“And what about Aaron’s refuge? What’s happening with that?” Claire asked.
