He was full of plans. So was Sheila. Karen went along with them, smiling at their enthusiasm, even as the endless winter passed and the days grew wetter and longer, and her body grew bigger and began to drag her down. She had no idea what the future might hold. She was too terrified to ask herself the question, so she avoided it from anyone else.
• • •
She had left Bill after Christmas. Since his father died he was a robot, a man who put on his overcoat every morning, went to his office, solved his patients’ problems, and in the evening came home and either went up to the house to be with his mother or sat in an armchair listening to old episodes of Hancock’s Half Hour and staring into space, square fingers drumming on the arms of the chair. She tried to help: she ran errands for Martha, she fielded calls, answered letters. But Lucy wasn’t talking to her, Florence had vanished off the face of the earth, and Cat was back in Paris. Karen was worried about Martha, more than merely concerned she wasn’t coping. There was something strange about her, about the language she used. Karen didn’t believe some of the things she said, didn’t think she was quite well.
She tried to talk to Bill, to ask him what he thought, what he wanted for tea, what he wanted to watch on TV, but every time he’d just say, “I don’t know, Karen. You do what you want.”
On New Year’s Eve he sat in front of the television, gin and tonic in hand, a plump quarter of lime trapped under the ice cubes. He always had lime, not lemon, just like Martha and David. It was a Winter thing; there was always a pile of jewellike limes in a brown glazed bowl on the table at Winterfold, even in the depths of winter. Karen stood behind him, twisting her fingers together over and over.
“Bill. Bill?”
He’d turned round, and she saw the tears in his eyes, the glazed expression. He hadn’t really been watching anything.
“Yes.” He’d cleared his throat and stood up, with the sofa between them.
“I think I should move out,” she’d said. “I just wondered what you think about it.” There was a pause and, because she was terrified of his answer, she rushed ahead and said, “I think we need some time apart. So you can work out what you feel about all of this. You’ve got so much to deal with at the moment.”
He’d shaken his head. “No, it’s not that, Karen.” He’d moved the empty glass onto the shelf, carefully. She loved how precise he was with everything, how neat and modest his movements were, how he inhabited his space so comfortably, how being with him was to feel safe and secure and . . .
Karen had put her hands in front of her eyes so he couldn’t see her tears.
He’d said gently, “I think you should move out because you have to work out what you want. I can’t make you happy, that’s clear. I loved you. If you want to go, I think it’s best you go. We got it wrong, didn’t we?” He’d looked up, his eyes puckering together, his mouth creased into an awkward smile. “It was always going to be a risk, wasn’t it? Suppose it was worth it. . . .” And then he’d come round the sofa and squeezed her arm. “Do you have somewhere to go?”
She’d gritted her teeth so he wouldn’t see how ill-prepared she was. She hadn’t booked a hotel, rung a friend—she had no friends here now, anyway. “Oh, yeah. I thought I’d . . . I’ll . . . Yes, I’m staying with a friend,” she lied.
“Really?” Bill picked up his keys. “Well, then,” he said quietly. “I’ll leave you alone to get your stuff together. I’ll go and see Ma.”
He’d stood a couple of meters from her and they’d nodded, trying to keep the conversation alive. The distance between them . . . Then Bill had pulled on his coat.
“We’ll talk soon, then. Let me know . . . how you are.”
And he went out, leaving her alone in the little house. Karen packed her bags, tears falling on the duvet cover. She could see every stepping-stone on the path that had taken her to this point, every wrong turn, every mistake. She was completely alone, and there were no fireworks that signified the end of her relationship with Bill. He’d made her chicken Kiev sandwiches. Suddenly that was all she could think about.
• • •
Joe met her at the end of the street and helped her with her bags. He didn’t ask any questions, but that first night, he gave up his bed for her.
“I’ll sleep in Jamie’s room. It’s absolutely fine.”
They were very formal with each other. “Thank you,” she’d said, looking at his short, curly hair, the dark hairs on his arms, his strong hands gripping her bag. Trying to remember how it felt to be naked with him, to feel him inside her. She couldn’t; she couldn’t remember it at all. “I won’t be here long. I’ll start looking for somewhere.”
He’d hung in the doorway. “Please, Karen. Stay as long as you want. I know it must be difficult for you. It’s my responsibility too.” Then he cleared his throat. “Isn’t it?”
“I suppose it must be,” she’d said. “All the evidence would suggest it is.”
Joe had swallowed, and for a split second he looked terrified. But it was so fleeting she might have missed it. He’d hugged the towel he was holding to his chest. “I love kids, Karen, you know that. I won’t let you down. I’ll be there, I promise.”
Four months ago. Karen heard the thundering footsteps on the stairs, and her heart lifted. “There he is,” Sheila said, smiling. “He’ll make it all all right, just you see if he doesn’t.”
“You’ve already done that, Sheila,” Karen said, raising her mug as Joe came in.
“Sheila! We got Brian to commit to becoming our supplier, and we’ll sell his meat through the pub.” Joe vaulted over the back of the sofa, landing next to Karen, who was jolted into the air, spilling her tea.
“Oh!” Karen mopped at her dripping lap.
He cupped his hand under her mug. “I’m so sorry, Karen. How are you?”
“I was tired, but that’s woken me up.” She smiled at him. “Let me get you a cup of tea.”
“I’ll get it,” he said, standing up again. “I can’t stay long.”
“I thought you weren’t working tonight?” She tried to keep the disappointment out of her voice. After all, they were merely flatmates, and he was absolutely adamant he was going to do right by her—they’d talked seriously about her buying the dilapidated cottage two doors down, Karen pulling up Excel spreadsheets on her laptop and tapping figures into her computer, going through the motions of some plan that, frankly, alternately depressed her and terrified her. All so that when the baby was born he could come and help most days, and even stay over there instead when Jamie was down—the cottage was bigger, it had a garden, and Jamie and this new little thing, his half brother or sister, would have room to grow.
When they sat on the sofa to watch TV on the rare evenings Joe spent in, there was at least two feet between them. They couldn’t ever agree on what to watch anyway. She liked documentaries about people with bodily disorders. He liked US TV series. He thought she was prurient for recording programs about men with engorged testicles or conjoined twins; she thought he was bloodthirsty for enjoying the spectacle of a fantasy king murdering a prostitute and someone being made to wear his own severed hand round his neck. She knew all this, but she couldn’t say it, couldn’t joke about it, the way she used to tease Bill about his love of Ealing comedies.
“I am working, I’m so sorry,” Joe said, peering through the hatch from the kitchen. “But I’m going to quickly make you some bubble and squeak on a tray. I brought most of the ingredients up with me. Sheila”—he threw her a balled-up wad of paper—“here’s the receipts for the fishmonger. He says we’re his best customer now. Can you do me a favor? Start running Karen a bath?”
Sheila unfolded the receipts and put them into her pocket, watching Joe affectionately. “Hot baths and tea on a tray? Ooh, you’re a lucky woman, Karen.”
Karen watched Joe’s head moving back and forth in the kitchen, and she felt the baby
move, shifting and sliding around inside her. All she could think of was that bubble and squeak was Bill’s favorite meal, the one he’d cook singing along to his northern soul albums in his tuneless, awkward bass.
“I must be, mustn’t I,” she said.
Cat
CAT HAD SOLD the red Lanvin shoes on eBay eventually, for one hundred euros. She had taken out a credit card too, and with that paid for the Eurostar for her and Luke to go back to Winterfold in early April to see her grandmother. They arrived very late on Friday, and the plan was to leave before lunch on Sunday.
Staring out of the train at the still-freezing English spring, she told herself that coming back was the right thing to do, though Gran had told her not to. Everything had changed, that day in November. So there was no point in fearing what might come, as she had always done: it had already happened. No point in hanging on to memories. No point in fearing a debt when the people who needed you needed you now.
That first night back she lay next to Luke on one of the high twin beds in Lucy’s room and wondered if she’d been right. Martha was sleeping in Cat’s room. Something about damp in her own room. Cat didn’t believe her. She’d said she had to go somewhere the next morning, to get some milk. When Cat asked her where, Martha had said, “Bristol.” Cat had laughed, thinking it was one of her grandmother’s impenetrable jokes, but she had been quite serious.
Everywhere she looked, the house seemed to be covered up, like shrouds over the dead. Curtains drawn. Dust on surfaces. Doors shut, locked. Shawls and blankets she’d never seen before covering chairs and sofas, and when Cat asked why, Martha said simply: “They’re dangerous. They can’t be touched.”
“Of course,” Cat said carefully, trying not to show Luke how much this scared her. It was because they were the pieces of furniture Southpaw had sat in, the things in the house he had used most frequently. His chair in the kitchen, a heavy oak thing with arms and carved feet: Martha said it had woodworm and might have to be thrown away.
On Saturday morning, they sat in silence, Luke pushing cereal around his bowl, Cat eating some toast, Martha quite still, staring at nothing, humming very slightly. It was a cruelly cold day. A gray sky, no sign of spring.
“I have to go in a minute. The traffic into Bristol will be poor.” Martha stood up.
“Bristol?” Cat had forgotten momentarily. She rubbed her eyes. “No, Gran. Don’t be . . .” She trailed off.
Her grandmother’s tone was even. As though Cat were being hysterical. “I need some milk, and I don’t get it from the shop anymore. Problems with supply.”
“Gran—you really don’t have to go into Bristol, honestly. I’ll walk into the village in a little bit, get some milk, some things for you.”
“No, thank you.” She collected the plates, though Cat and Luke hadn’t finished.
Luke climbed onto David’s chair, pulling an old green shawl to the floor. He rocked it back and forward, against the table.
“Luke, stop it,” Cat said.
Martha, at the sink, turned. “Don’t do that,” she said, but Luke ignored her. The old chair creaked as he teetered backward, his full weight on it.
Cat said, “Luke. Stop it now.”
“I want to sit in it,” said Luke. “I miss him. I miss Southpaw.”
Martha crossed the kitchen. Her expression remained unchanged. With one firm movement she grabbed Luke’s skinny arm and yanked him out of the chair. As if he were a rag doll. She staggered a little, catching the weight of him against her, and his legs flailed wildly in the air; then she let go, and Luke fell to the floor.
“I said, don’t do that.”
Luke lay crying on the floor, looking at his great-grandmother with a bewildered expression. Cat helped him up with one hand.
“Darling, she asked you to stop.” She hugged him close to her. “I’m sorry, Gran. He was cooped up in the train all yesterday, and now—”
“I don’t care.” Martha was facing away from them; she turned and draped the shawl over the chair again. “Perhaps you’d better go out now, then.”
• • •
Cat, who was used to being in control of everything, felt helpless. She couldn’t remember being at Winterfold and wanting to escape. She didn’t know how to talk to her grandmother. Lucy, with whom she spoke regularly on the phone now, had warned her, but Cat realized she hadn’t really grasped it.
They walked down the lane, Luke happy again, running in zigzags, Cat holding the list Martha had given her. It gave her a shock to see Gran’s strong, elegant, sloping handwriting again.
Milk
3 limes
3 potatoes
Bombay Sapphire gin. From the pub. Not from the post office. They only sell Gordon’s gin.
Pushing the scrap of paper into her pocket, Cat ran to catch up with Luke. She didn’t want to go into the pub. She didn’t want to see Joe. I mean, she’d tell herself when he came into her mind on those dark winter nights in Paris, lying in the chilly, tiny chambre de bonne in the Quai de Béthune, it’s almost comical—the first man I allow myself to like, the first man I kiss in years, about whom I think: For once, you might actually be a good guy, a nice man. . . . ha.
Compared to what had happened after that, she supposed her encounter with Joe was the light relief of the weekend. She was no judge of men, that was clear, and she thought she had probably had a lucky escape. Olivier, Joe—silver-tongued and black-hearted, both of them. And when she thought about his lips on hers, their bodies meeting in the chill damp, the way he’d pretended to understand, worming his way in, when Karen, his pregnant girlfriend, her aunt, was lying low at home less than a mile away . . . Cat, arriving at the village shop, shook her head, surprised at the power the thought of him still had, five months afterward, to make her this angry. She’d have to lie to Gran. Tell her the pub was all out of Bombay Sapphire.
• • •
After they’d done their shopping at the post office, Cat waved good-bye to Susan and chivvied Luke along the high street toward the playground. It occurred to her that by now, for all she knew, the Oak Tree was so famous there’d be hordes of people outside, food bloggers and critics and liggers waiting for Lily Allen or whoever it was who was supposed to love it there, and she was possessed by a curiosity to see how different it was now. On the pretext of looking at the new cul-de-sac of ugly executive houses that were being built right on the fields, she walked them briskly to the end of the high street; and as they passed, she glanced hurriedly in the windows of the Oak Tree. But it was late morning and the lights were still off, the stools and chairs on tables. No other signs of life. She glanced up at the rooms above the pub. Karen was living there with him now, she knew.
As they turned back and crossed the waterlogged village green toward the playground, Cat felt more cheerful. As if she’d exorcised some silly teenage crush, and now that it was over she could admit she’d liked him. She’d enjoyed kissing him. Joe Thorne was cute—he was handsome, funny, shy, he loved Game of Thrones, and he’d told her about The Gruffalo. So it turned out he was bad news. So what? He was just someone she’d kissed after a long day and too much wine. It was done now. She’d been living the life of a nun on an island the last few years. She needed more experiences like Joe.
“Mum, swing me?” Luke said, leaping up at her side, his face flushed with cold, his huge eyes imploring.
“Sure.” One of the many little pinpricks you felt about being a single parent was that there weren’t two of you to swing your child along on either side. So instead Cat did her special thing, which was to loop her arms under Luke’s shoulders and spin him around and around on the boggy grass till they were both dizzy and stumbling. She did it three or four times, then pretended to stop. “Okay, all done.”
“But that was hardly any spin! No! Again! More spin!” Luke laughed, jumping up and down, and she laughed back, the happiness at being alo
ne with him in this huge expanse of green, away from the dark dusty house, the feeling of fresh country air in her lungs, in his little lungs too, making her almost drunk with sensation.
“Okay. One more.”
“Okay! Okay! Okayokayokayokayokay!!” Luke shouted, bouncing up and down.
“Spin!” Cat shouted, staggering around in a crazy circle, as Luke’s shrieks of ecstatic excitement grew louder and louder, and the more they both laughed, the unsteadier she became, going faster and faster. Suddenly one of her wellingtons squelched, suctioned in by mud and water, and she began to topple. She slid to the ground, Luke on top of her.
“Oh, no,” she said. “I’m covered in mud.”
“Joe Thorne!” Luke screamed. “Mummy, it’s Joe, he hit me with the car!” He scrambled to his feet and pointed, as if seeing a miracle. “Mummy! He’s got a boy with him. A BOY!”
Luke broke out of Cat’s grasp and ran toward the two figures on the other side of the cricket field, his little legs drumming on the ground.
“Luke!” she shouted. “Come back.”
When she caught up with him, she was panting hard. “Hello,” she said, not looking at Joe. “Luke, you don’t ever run off like that, do you hear me?”
“I wanted to see Joe, Mummy, don’t be strange.” Luke was jumping up and down, almost beside himself to see not only Joe but a big boy as well. “Don’t you want to see him? Who are you? Who is this? Is his jacket blue or green? I can’t tell.”
Joe pushed the little boy forward. “This is Jamie. He’s five, Luke. Luke’s three, Jamie. He likes The Gruffalo too.”
Jamie nodded shyly. He had thick, curly blond hair, which hung like a messy halo around his head. His skin was dark caramel, his eyes a warm gray.
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