by Freya North
‘I have to go,’ she told Zac.
‘When are you back?’ he asked.
‘Tomorrow evening or Monday morning, I’m not sure yet.’
‘Shall we do things next week, then?’ he asked. Pip looked nonplussed. ‘You know, things,’ Zac said, ‘heavy petting, break-dancing, go to the movies, not listen to any opera?’
Pip couldn’t answer. She was out of her depth utterly. She observed a twitch of bemusement flicker across his face. Somewhere, lurking deep inside her, a very quiet voice that she couldn’t quite hear, asked her if she wasn’t slightly mad.
Look at him!
Remember it all!
Kind and lovely and fun and compatible!
Zac filled her coffee cup again. She didn’t want to be charmed by the fact that he’d decanted the milk into a ceramic jug. ‘Nothing heavy,’ he attempted. ‘You know – just hang out together a bit. A bit more. A bit more often.’
‘I can’t,’ she suddenly declared. ‘Timing – everything. I just can’t, Zac. Please understand.’
Zac regarded her directly. Her brow was twitching this way and that in a rather unbecoming manner. Her gaze seemed shifty but dulled. She was all closed off and her body seemed spiky and hard – a far cry from the soft and welcoming haven it had been just hours before.
Not again, he thought.
‘Understand what?’ he asked.
‘You’re great, sex was good,’ Pip said in a rather patronizing tone she didn’t really mean but simply couldn’t help, ‘but I was in love with Caleb.’ Zac analysed his fingernails while she spoke. Pip couldn’t begin to analyse her bizarre declaration. Zac hadn’t expected the twinge of jealousy, the pang of insecurity. He hoped it didn’t register on his face. Fingernails. Keep looking. ‘I mean, maybe we should just be friends.’ Pip was staggered that she should use a clichéd phrase she had always loathed. Zac had stretched out his fingers and was tracing the veins on his left hand. ‘Friends who fucked,’ Pip dared, demonstratively using the past tense. ‘No hard feelings, hey?’ She put her hand on his arm.
He knew her words well, he’d used them himself on a fair few occasions. They didn’t have a very nice ring to them. There was an ugliness to the sound of it all, a pervasive ugliness smearing grubbiness over last night, over waking this morning; a sudden and surprising ugliness to Pip which contradicted all he’d believed her to be.
‘You know what,’ Zac said, standing suddenly though it caused juice to splash over the linen and the milk to spill over the tray, ‘that’s just cool with me.’ Pip was still beneath the duvet and wondered whether she should make a move to clear up the mess. After all, directly or otherwise, the mess was of her making. ‘In fact, I should be the one to apologize. I guess I took advantage of you,’ Zac declared, hands on hips, eyes dark, ‘when I found you in tears and then got you hammered the other night.’ Pip glanced up at him. This she wasn’t expecting. ‘And I guess it’s only logical that you’d be on the rebound yourself,’ he persisted, his voice and gaze cool. Her lips parted. She’d really quite like to defend herself. ‘So sure, let’s be friends – whatever,’ Zac shrugged. ‘It’s great that you’re cool about the sex thing,’ he reasoned, his slate-grey eyes flat but penetrating. ‘As you say, no big deal.’
Pip nodded, feeling she might well burst into tears with the weight of it all; instead, she swallowed and quickly declared to herself, ‘Well! What a bastard!’
It felt as though there was a tangle of cold, wet spaghetti muddling her mind and clogging her conscience. Her intestines felt knotted and twisted and seething, like a can of worms. ‘May I take a shower?’ she asked.
‘Sure,’ Zac shrugged, already making his way out of the bedroom.
No Psycho shower curtain. Just a scarlet and violet striped panel protecting the sunshine yellow lino flooring from the oversized, ceiling-mounted shower rose. It was gorgeous, like being in a tropical downpour. Aveda body cleanser and a loofah. Thick towels the colour of lemon meringue pie. It seemed a travesty to put on her knickers from last night, despite turning them inside out in a bid for added freshness. Momentarily, Pip was saddened by the symmetry of using Zac’s toothbrush. The bristles were hard and her gums bled.
Fully dressed, she hovered in Zac’s bathroom. She wanted to go. She wished none of this had happened – not the fun nor the frolics, nor her misgivings, nor her stupid declaration of indifference, certainly not her feelings otherwise. She felt rooted to the spot, scared to face him again, dreading returning to the outside world; to her beloved Derbyshire where she’d be helpless not to confront the meaning of her actions and, of course, the neuroses that instigated them. To say nothing of the energy required to sort out Cat, sort out Fen, sort out Django.
She had to go. It must be appearing odd that she’d spent so much time in the bathroom long after she’d had a shower and cleaned her teeth. Gingerly, she opened the door. Zac’s linen had been changed. There wasn’t a crumb to be seen. She walked softly through to his living-room. Immaculate. No sign of the beer bottles or scrunched-up Doritos packets or the stacks of 45s and piles of 33s. In fact, no sign of Zac either. She glanced over to the galley kitchen. Clean and sparkling. No one there.
‘Zac?’ she called quietly. Silence. Then she saw a note on the footstool of the Eames.
Gone to pick up Tom
Have fun with your mum
See you around. ZH
It was the worst confrontation of all. Far worse than if Zac had still been there. She didn’t reread it. She hurried from the flat. Rushed to the tube, and belted home. Packed. Hurtled back to the tube and headed for King’s Cross St Pancras. The train was at the platform. She jumped on and ran through the carriages. She felt sick from the physical exertion, but at least it took her mind off feeling sick from all the bullshit. All the while, racketing round her head she was yelling at herself.
‘My mum? My fucking mum?’
TWENTY-TWO
Zac was really quite taken aback. Bloody offended, actually. If truth be told, it hurt. He felt a fool. He had been taken advantage of. There was no denying it. He stopped momentarily to contemplate whether this was how those four or five girls (How many had there been? How awful not to quite remember) had felt who’d been no more than one-night stands to him. Well, he wasn’t going to compromise his self-respect. It wasn’t as if he actually needed Pip in his life, anyway. And right from the start, if he was honest, hadn’t he thought her a little on the odd side of eccentric? Sure, all was fun and feisty at the moment, but the likelihood was that if anything had developed beyond a fling, she’d soon have irritated him supremely. Wouldn’t she? She and he were hardly the stuff of a worthwhile relationship or potential long-term couple.
Anyway, he had so much else in his life, he really had no need of Pip McCabe; he’d hardly notice her absence. No question about it. Nothing more to discuss. Nothing to rue or misconstrue. Certainly nothing to regret. Nor even much to remember, actually, come to think of it. Not that he was going to expend any further time or energy thinking of it. Nothing to think about.
When Zac saw his little boy, he hugged him very close and breathed in the incomparable scent emanating from the top of his head. Zac believed it to be a secret bar-code of sorts, a gift to a parent.
‘Legoland?’ Tom whispered, expectation dancing across his eyes.
‘Yes, please!’ Zac responded.
‘Bye, Billy,’ Tom waved from the pavement, ‘bye, Auntie Ruthie – thanks for having me.’
Billy and his mum waved. Tom and Zac waved back.
Ruth went through to the kitchen and rustled up lunch for her son and husband.
‘Zac not coming in?’ his brother asked, putting his hands at his wife’s waist and nuzzling her neck.
‘Off to Legoland,’ Ruth said.
‘Wonder how his hot date went,’ Jim mused, not that he was particularly interested in his wife’s in-depth analysis on such subjects, nor really in his brother’s love life itself.
‘I wonder,’ was all
Ruth said. Jim wandered off to play PlayStation with Billy.
Ruth dried her hands and folded and re-folded the tea towel. It had been odd. Zac certainly hadn’t emanated the glow of a well-laid man. No sparkle, no depth to his surface smile.
He might as well have painted it on, Ruth thought.
TWENTY-THREE
‘I know that your mother ran off with a cowboy from Denver,’ Django McCabe reasons with his youngest niece, ‘but you chasing through France after a bunch of boys on bikes – well, isn’t that taking the family tradition to new extremes?’
The McCabe sisters are back home in Derbyshire once more. Though they don’t mean to undermine their uncle, Pip and Fen are persuading Cat, for the umpteenth time, that a coveted position in the press corps of the Tour de France will provide a fantastic chance both to heal her broken heart and further her budding career as a sports journalist. The girls and their uncle are in the garden, a haven of neat lawn, mature shrubbery and a veritable arboretum on the edge of untamed Farleymoor. They are lolling about being a family – an unconventional one, perhaps, but solid, close and open. Fen is lounging under the cedar tree, day-dreaming, as is her wont. A tyre on a rope still dangles from the sturdy old branches, though it is only ever Pip who swings from it now. Cat prefers her tyres by the pair and nicely balanced on a titanium bike. Usually, she’s hurling her mountain bike over the moors, but today, she’s opting for a sedentary afternoon in the garden. While Fen prefers to use the garden to sit and think, or lounge and listen, Pip is usually flic-flaccing its breadth, cartwheeling its length or scaling its heights by squirming up the rope and dangling upside down by just one limb before leaping effortlessly to the ground, landing with a somersault, then righting herself to hold a pose, motionless and triumphant. Just as her training on the trapeze had taught her. Just as watching Olga Korbut when she was young had inspired her.
Today, though, with Fen reclining peacefully under the boughs, Pip allows her sister safety and space and perfects a run of flic-flacs across the lawn instead.
‘I don’t know, Django,’ she protests in Cat’s defence, slightly breathless. ‘Think of all that Lycra,’ she says, as if it is a concept universally appealing, ‘lashings of it! And a squadron of shiny thighs!’ It is an image that does little for Pip but she knows that her lovelorn sister needs all possible bolstering if she is going to cope in France for a month, fighting for scoops in the press corps. Pip is happy to provide support. She does it so well. It’s her self-imposed duty. It’s her role. It takes her mind off things. She has responsibilities, thank God. After all, their mother did run off with a cowboy from Denver when they were small.
Django and Pip stay up after Fen and Cat have gone to bed. They’re sipping Cointreau and eating After Eights which have passed their sell-by date but still taste good enough. They are happily ensconced in the main sitting-room – a room whose name the family changes according to time of day or season. This afternoon, they would have referred to it as the Library. Once the weather is cold enough for a fire to be lit, it becomes the Snug. On summer afternoons, it is the Quiet Room. In mornings, it is the Morning Room. When the girls were young and naughty, it was Downstairs. At the moment, it is the Drawing-room, on account of it serving as an excellent backdrop to conversation, After Eights and Cointreau.
‘I’m worried about Fenella and Catriona,’ Django confides, using their names in full for emphasis, though the twitching of his eyebrows and lowering of his voice would have sufficed.
‘Oh, you needn’t be,’ Pip says breezily, both to mask her own concerns for both sisters and to hide the fact that her personal life, too, is in a state of chaos. She doesn’t want Django to worry. In stature and personality he may well appear robust, and his demeanour is as colourful as his original Pucci print shirts and paisley neckerchiefs, but Pip is also aware that he is approaching his sixty-ninth birthday, after all, and feels it her duty to allay his fears. She seeks to reassure him by making light of it all. ‘You leave it to me, old man,’ she laughs. ‘I’ll make sure there’s laughter in their lives and food in their fridges.’
‘Of course, Cat is better off without him,’ Django reasons, instantly comforted by Pip’s assurances, ‘but she is just so miserable. It pains me to see her hurting so. Can she truly cope in France?’
‘She’ll bounce back,’ Pip says, nudging her shoulder against Django’s. ‘France is a good idea.’
Django raises his eyes heavenwards. ‘If anything, I’m slightly more concerned about Fen.’ He strokes his sideburns, thinking quietly to himself that he must remember to dye them to match his hair, which he did himself last week with a preparation appetizingly called ‘Fingerlickin’ Fudge’. ‘Cat rids herself of one knave, and Fen takes on two at once,’ he ponders, silently reminding himself to tint his eyebrows, too. ‘Where’s the sense in that? The logic?’ He glugs his Cointreau. ‘The morality?’ He’s suddenly aware how his consternation might seem hypocritical in the light of his well-publicized and colourful past.
‘You can talk!’ Pip protests, right on cue. ‘O Squire of the Swinging Sixties and High Priest of Hippydom!’
‘But you see,’ Django says, because the liqueur has suddenly made him lucid and alert to the situation, ‘although I did most certainly gad about during the 1960s – and a fair part of the 1970s, too – it was all conducted in context. It was what people did. We had no hindsight to guide us. It was, we thought, the way to go – burn the bras, ban the bomb, smoke the weed, take the trip, share the love. But you see, our mistakes, the diseases we contracted, the brain cells we damaged, the emotional price we paid – and some are still paying off – this is the legacy we hand down to you.’
‘You mean the “been there, seen it, done it” mentality?’ Pip interjects. ‘That we should learn from your findings?’
‘Yes,’ says Django. ‘Fenella oughtn’t to fiddle with two chaps at the same time. It’ll end in tears. It’s just not wholesome.’ Django looks forlorn.
‘Django, you misunderstand – we’re not talking gang-bangs here,’ Pip says, trying to lighten the tone by lowering it. Django gives her a disparaging look but replenishes her Cointreau anyway. ‘Fen simply can’t decide between two men – one’s rich, one’s poor; one’s town, one’s country; one’s young and one’s old.’
‘Old?’ Django barks, as if he’ll challenge the cad to a duel.
Pip says she thinks he’s fiftyish. She can see that her uncle is relieved to retain ultimate seniority – that if needs be, Fen’s older beau is still young enough for Django to scold.
Though Pip feels it wise to reserve her judgement in front of Django, deep down she finds Fen’s situation somewhat distasteful and Cat’s circumstance truly upsetting.
I fear that it won’t be long before I see Fen in the kind of state Cat is in now.
‘If Fenella isn’t careful,’ Django warns, ‘she’ll be in Cat’s current pickle.’
Pip just sips her liqueur. She doesn’t want to respond.
The whole thing is giving me a headache. Though I think I understand their situations, it doesn’t mean I have to empathize. Yet it’s not like either sister is particularly wayward or morally inept. Cat is sweet and kind and had the terrible misfortune to pick a bad card – none of us saw it coming. Fen is quite refined and reserved in many ways, hadn’t had a boyfriend in years and – I don’t know – two came along at once. She has high standards; I guess she wants to make sure she chooses the very best.
‘And you, Philippa, anyone on your horizon?’ Django enquires, offering After Eights to facilitate revelations.
Pip settles back into the sofa. It seems to have an innate recollection of her shape and weight, appearing to both suck her in and support her. She sips her Cointreau and fixes a demure half-smile across her lips; pretending, relatively convincingly, that she’s relaxed and content and happy to savour another chocolate, thank you very much, before answering.
Anyone on my horizon? A shit who took me for a ride – and a great bloke who
I’ve treated shittily. I guess you could say Cat doesn’t have the monopoly on shits. And it isn’t just Fen who’s been juggling two blokes. I oughtn’t to be quite so quick to judge if I haven’t practised what I preach.
‘God, no!’ Pip responds casually instead, having licked her lips and neatly folded the After Eight wrappers. ‘You know how I don’t need a man in my life,’ she waves her hands as if wafting away the issue. ‘Everything’s cool. Hunky-dory. Fine and dandy. A-OK. All is well.’ In the light of Django’s reaction to her sisters’ state of affairs, she’s quite unnerved to see by his brow rubbing that her answer isn’t satisfactory. ‘You needn’t worry about me!’ she perseveres, a little too keenly. Still he looks perplexed. ‘There’s no way I’ll give you and my sisters any cause for concern, any excuse for gossip over too much Cointreau and half a box of After Eights late at night! I’m perfectly happy and very healthy – I don’t need a man and I don’t need money.’
‘But Philippa, my dear, it’s not what you need that is the issue. Wouldn’t you rather like a little of each?’
It’s on the tip of Pip’s tongue to tell her uncle in no uncertain terms of her pension and savings plan and her vibrator, so as to silence him. She’d quite like to stomp from the room muttering ‘Give me a fucking break.’ But of course she does nothing of the sort, nor says anything that comes close. Far too risky to reveal even a glimpse of her recent past. No point anyway, it is her past, after all.
‘I’m not bothered,’ Pip says instead, very lightly.
‘Beware complacency!’ Django warns.
‘I’m not complacent,’ Pip assures him, ‘I’m happy as I am. Honestly. Anyway, I’m far too busy. Life is good.’ She doesn’t want to talk any more. She’s gone from defending her sisters, so her uncle doesn’t worry, to justifying her own choices so her uncle doesn’t worry. She pretends the drink has gone to her head and she tells Django she’ll take some fresh air before turning in. He lets her go. He has no choice, really.
