by Tess Stimson
The party’s in full swing when I get to the house. Sam’s parents are in Morocco for Easter and have left her eighteen-year-old brother in charge, though obviously I didn’t tell Mum that or she’d have, like, seriously flipped. Someone tweeted about the party, and now there’s like a thousand people here. Some of them are a lot older than us. Nearly everyone’s drinking and smoking, and for a moment I feel kind of freaked out.
‘Aggs! Over here!’
Mica waves to me from the end of the terrace. I force myself to look bored as I walk over, like I come to this kind of party all the time. She hands me a plastic cup filled with some kind of home-made punch, and I knock some back, even though it tastes disgusting. There’s nothing else on offer, and anyway I don’t want to look lame.
‘You see the hot guy in the Low Water T?’ she whispers. ‘He’s totally eyeing you up right now.’
‘Low Water suck,’ I say without looking round.
‘Seriously, Aggs, he’s super-cute and he’s been staring at you for, like, five minutes already.’
‘Whatevs. Is Harry here yet?’
She shrugs. ‘Inside.’
I finish the punch and then feel sick and wish I hadn’t. ‘I’m going to find him.’
‘I don’t know what you see in him,’ Mica says crossly. ‘He’s just a kid. The guy in the Low Water T has his own car – I saw him parking it. I bet he’d take us out in it if you asked!’
Sometimes I wonder why I bother with Mica. She’s been my BFF since nursery school, but she can be super-annoying sometimes. I like Harry. OK, he’s kind of weird, and he dresses a bit EMO, but he’s cool really. His mum died when he was a kid and his dad acts like he doesn’t exist. He says he lets people think he might top himself any minute because it keeps them from bothering him. Maybe I should try acting suicidal. Might get Mum off my back.
It’s totally dark and smoky inside the house. They’re playing some kind of indie music so loud it’s just, like, noise, and I can smell grass. I check out the rooms downstairs for Harry, then go upstairs. The nearest bedroom is locked, but voices are coming from the second, so I crack the door. A guy is standing by the bed with his pants down. Between his legs, a girl is sucking on his dick like it’s an ice-lolly while he tells her she’s a dirty bitch, over and over.
‘Hey, baby,’ the guy says, leering at me. ‘You want some? Plenty to go round.’
I give him the finger and slam the door. I’m not a kid, I know about blow-jobs and a lot of other kinky stuff that wasn’t in our Sex Ed classes, but seriously, he pees out of that thing, and if my brother is anything to go by, he probably has a shower, like, once a month. How can she put it in her mouth?
I finally track Harry down outside, sitting alone on a low wall a little way from the house. As I go over to join him, I pass Mica deep in a clinch with the Low Water guy.
‘How’s it going?’ I ask, sitting down next to him.
He shrugs. Harry doesn’t talk much. It’s one of the reasons I like him.
‘I was looking for you,’ I say. ‘I thought you were inside.’
Harry shrugs again. Then he reaches under his parka and pulls out two cans of ginger ale and hands one to me.
‘Cool. Thanks.’
For a long while, we just sit in the dark and look out across the downs. I remember coming out to a place near here last summer with Mum for a picnic, before things got all weird between us. We often used to go for drives and not talk and it’d be nice, instead of strained and tense like it is now. These days, she’s so stressed about her job and Gran and money and all that other stuff with Dad, she never has time to just hang out with me.
‘Have you told your mum yet?’ Harry asks suddenly.
It’s like he’s read my mind. ‘No. I will, though. I just . . . you know. Need to wait for the right time.’
He nods. ‘She’s all right, your mum.’
Harry’s the only person I’ve told about the paper I found on the floor of Mum and Dad’s bedroom last week. It probably fell out of Dad’s jeans or something. I don’t know whether to give it to Mum or just put it back where I found it. I really wish I’d never read it. There are some things about your parents you just don’t need to know. Harry says I’ve got to tell her, or at least leave it somewhere she’ll see it. It’s too big for me to hide, he says. Mum needs to be told. But things have only just started to get back to normal at home. Mum and Dad think I don’t know why she’s been crying so much lately, but I do. I’m a kid, not a moron. I can see what’s happening under my own roof.
As it gets later, more people start arriving, friends of Sam’s brother, and they’re standing around smoking weed and drinking vodka and jeering, and it’s getting a bit freaky, so Harry and I go inside to find Mica and the others. The other girls don’t normally bother with Harry, but I make it clear he’s with me, so they stay off his case. Mica even offers him a beer, which he doesn’t take, but that’s, like, a serious breakthrough. Sam takes us down to the games room in the basement, and we play a few games of foosball and basically just hang out and chill.
I’m curled up in a massive beanbag next to Harry and kind of falling asleep when I hear shouting upstairs. I sit bolt upright and check my mobile. Shit. It’s after midnight. My mother must be going mental.
‘Agness Forrest! Where the hell are you?’
I’m already halfway up the basement stairs, but there’s no stopping my mother.
‘Do you have any idea what time it is?’ she yells. ‘I’ve been sitting in the car for thirty-five minutes waiting for you to come out, because I didn’t want to come in and embarrass you in front of all your friends! Thirty-five minutes! D’you think I’ve nothing better to do than sit around half the night waiting for you?’
Everyone is watching. I totally want the floor to open up and swallow me. She’s only ruined my entire life! I’ll never be able to face anyone again. I just want to die!
My face burns as I push my way through the sniggering crowd towards the door, and my eyes sting with tears of humiliation and rage. I hate her! Why do I have to have such a bitch for a mother? I wish I was an orphan!
I’ll never forgive her for this, never!
Kate
No mother abandons her family because her teenage daughter is thoughtless and selfish, even if the girl plays you off against her father with Machiavellian expertise. If that were the case, every child in the world would grow up motherless.
I’m not abandoning my family, or Agness, for that matter. I’m just taking a day or two to regroup.
A day or two? Absolutely not. I’ll be on the first flight home.
Another day or two won’t hurt. I’ll be home by the end of the week. They won’t even have time to miss me.
Footsteps echo on the outside staircase and I put down the photo of Agness and quickly knot the belt of my borrowed bathrobe. A moment later, the wooden door latch clicks up and Julia reverses into the room bearing a breakfast tray laden with fresh bread, olives, ripe tomatoes and hunks of fresh parmesan cheese.
‘You didn’t have to do this,’ I exclaim.
She sets the tray on the dresser and flings open the peeling blue shutters, flooding the narrow whitewashed room with sunlight. ‘You didn’t eat a thing after you arrived last night, and I know what plane food is like.’
I’m surprised to find I’m suddenly ravenous. ‘Are these tomatoes from the garden?’
‘And the olives.’ She perches on the edge of the high single bed and picks up the creased school photo I’ve left on the side table. ‘Is this your daughter?’
‘Agness,’ I mumble through a mouthful of fresh bread.
‘Agness, of course. She’s changed so much. I’d never have recognized her.’
‘Well, she was two the last time you saw her,’ I point out.
Julia returns my smile and hands me back the photograph. ‘What’s she like now?’
I brush the crumbs from my fingers and tuck the picture carefully into my purse. If Julia had asked me that que
stion a year ago, my answer would have come easily. Bright, hardworking, full of enthusiasm, happy. As generous with her affections as her smiles. A child-woman with pictures of Robert Pattinson on the walls and rows of teddy-bears on her bed. She likes pink and Mamma Mia! and writing plays and performing all the parts for us. She spent six months nagging me to let her get her ears pierced, and when I finally agreed to it for her thirteenth birthday, held my hand as we went into the jeweller’s to choose the small sapphire studs we’d decided on. Even though she’s a Daddy’s girl, she’s also my best friend.
Now, I find myself searching for the right words. How to explain to Julia the overnight loss, as painful as bereavement, of the sweet-natured, affectionate daughter I cherished for thirteen years? I barely recognize the sullen stranger who’s taken her place. The daughter I knew would never have told me she hates me, or despised me for working to put a roof over her head. She wouldn’t have deliberately pitted her parents against each other, or made me feel like an unwelcome stranger in my own home. She wouldn’t have set out to goad me, to turn everything I hold dear on its head out of spite.
I know it will pass, of course. It’s her hormones; just a phase. She’ll grow out of it as surely as she used to grow out of her clothes. In the meantime, I have to carry on biting my tongue when she comes downstairs looking like a cross between a ghoul and a hooker and tell myself she doesn’t mean it when she says she wishes she’d never been born.
‘She’s a teenager,’ I sigh. ‘It’s curable.’
Julia throws me a sharp look but leaves it there for now. ‘How did you sleep?’ she asks. ‘I’d have given you back your old room, but it’s full of my canvases.’
‘Don’t be silly. I’m fine here.’ I hesitate, fiddling with the bowl of olives. ‘Look. Ned hasn’t called, has he?’
I can’t help feeling an irrational wave of disappointment when she shakes her head.
‘Did you really not give him a clue you were leaving?’ she asks curiously.
‘I didn’t plan any of this,’ I say defensively.
She smiles. ‘Well. I doubt he’d think to look here.’
‘Last night, when you said you were expecting me, I thought he must’ve called you. I was terrified he was already on his way.’
‘I told you. I meant it in a general sense, not a literal one. I’ve known for years things weren’t right between you and Ned. It was only a matter of time before you ended up here.’ She gets to her feet. ‘If it’s all right with you, I’ll leave you to it. Alessio’s waiting for me in my studio now. I need to show him some rough sketches so he can give them the OK.’
‘Alessio?’ I ask sharply.
‘Oh yes. Of course. I’d forgotten about that. Yes, Alessio Ricci. He’s mellowed since he got married,’ she adds. ‘He and his wife moved back to the village after their first son was born, to be near his parents. They’ve got three boys now, I think.’
I absorb this. It doesn’t hurt. It’s been nearly twenty years, after all, and it was a summer romance, not Hepburn and Tracy. But I feel a brief pang of pity for my heartbroken twenty-one-year-old self.
‘Alessio opened up an office in the village a couple of years ago,’ Julia adds. ‘He commissioned some artistic renderings of a development he was working on and came to me. We’ve worked together quite a few times since then. You’ll probably run into him if you hang around.’
I’ll need something new to wear, I think instantly and chide myself for it.
‘What about you?’ I ask, quickly changing the subject. ‘Ever come close to settling down?’
‘Not at the moment. It took me a while to get over you, but I managed it,’ she teases with a graceful smile. ‘I lived with a man, Marcello, for nine years, but we split up eighteen months ago.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be. He wanted kids, and I didn’t.’ Julia opens the stiff wooden bedroom door and starts down the external staircase. ‘Take your time,’ she calls. ‘I’ll be in the studio if you need me.’
I finish my breakfast, mopping up the last olive with a piece of bread, and stack the empty dishes neatly on the tray. Gathering my crumpled clothes from yesterday and the towel Julia has left out for me, I’m about to go downstairs to the bathroom when my phone beeps on the dresser.
I freeze, my stomach alive with butterflies. I haven’t yet heard from Ned, but it’s only a matter of time before the bomb drops. I’ve already had four increasingly irate emails from Paul Forde; I haven’t dared listen to his voicemails. I urgently need to call him back and tell him I’m taking a few unscheduled personal days before my career detonates in my face. He won’t like it, though I suppose it’s marginally preferable to my vanishing off the face of the earth without a word. But somehow I can’t bring myself to do it. It’s as if making contact with the outside world will somehow open a portal through which I can be reached and yanked back to the chaos. I can feel my throat closing and my chest tightening at the thought.
My mobile beeps again. Gingerly I pick it up and check the incoming number as it goes to voicemail. It’s not Ned, of course, but another message from Paul. Stupid of me to think my husband would actually miss me. Clearly that’s not going to happen until he runs out of beer or feels randy again.
I give myself a mental shake. I should be relieved that I haven’t sparked a panic at home, not piqued that my absence hasn’t been noticed. I’ll send Ned a quick text later, and with any luck I’ll be back in London in a few hours, before he’s any the wiser.
Surely the whole point of leaving was to make him wiser?
This isn’t some sort of childish game. I didn’t leave to prove a point.
Then why did you leave?
I deliberately leave my phone on the dresser and go down to the small bath house set a few metres behind the main cottage. Like my bedroom, it’s as simple and ascetic as a nun’s cell, the plain white walls unadorned apart from a carved wooden crucifix and an icon of the Virgin Mary. Julia never used to be religious; perhaps they came with the house.
The shower is no more than a high tap over the stained claw-foot tub. There’s no curtain, and I quickly discover it’s not necessary as I struggle to rinse shampoo from my hair in the feeble trickle of tepid water the tap produces. I’d forgotten the inadequacies of Italian bathrooms. Hard to believe this is the same country that had perfected aqueducts and under-floor heating while the inhabitants of Albion were still squatting round campfires and daubing themselves with woad.
When I dress, I feel instantly grimy and dishevelled again in yesterday’s clothes. My knickers haven’t quite dried after I rinsed them out, and my wool suit, appropriate for a cold, rainy spring day in London, is far too heavy for Rome. I wish I had time to buy a clean shirt to travel home in. Julia’s clothes are several sizes too small for me to borrow, even if she had anything remotely suitable for me to wear back to work. I do my best to make myself presentable using the few bits of make-up rattling around in the bottom of my handbag, then take the tray down to the kitchen, where I find Julia cranking the handle of an old-fashioned coffee grinder.
‘Espresso?’ she shouts over the noise.
I clear a space on the counter for the breakfast tray with one hand, scattering several skinny cats who’ve been lolling on the work surface, then pull out a rush-seated kitchen chair, dislodging yet another offended feline. ‘Tea, if you have it.’
She finishes grinding. ‘This is Italy, Kate, not Tunbridge Wells.’
‘Espresso, then.’ I smile as a tiny ginger kitten leaps onto my lap and starts kneading my thighs. ‘Has Alessio gone?’
‘He was sorry to miss you, but he had a meeting. He’ll be back on Friday, if you’re still around.’
She boils some coffee on the ancient enamel stove and then puts the dented iron coffee pot and a couple of cups on a small tray. She leads the way to a shady cobbled courtyard at the back of the cottage, bounded on two sides by the kitchen and bath house, and on the other two by high, dense hedges. I scoop up the
ginger kitten and follow her. The courtyard is much smaller than I remember, overgrown with bougainvillea and lilacs, their heady scents filling the small space. We settle in a pair of wrought-iron chairs beneath vines already laden with tiny grapes. An old grey-muzzled black Labrador resting in the shade stirs briefly and then rests its heavy head back on its paws.
I sip my espresso, the tension in my body easing as the kitten settles himself in my lap. For a few moments I’m Kate Drayton again, single and carefree: no ties, no responsibilities. I have all the time in the world for espresso and olives from the garden and soaking up the mellow, gold-washed sunshine. For the moment, however long it lasts, I don’t have to answer to anyone.
‘Now,’ Julia says gently. ‘I think it’s time you told me what’s happened, don’t you?’
The day before
Eleanor
I stand at the turn of the staircase, carefully holding on to the banister. I don’t like to take matters into my hands like this, but Katherine’s left me no choice. There’s really only so much of Lindsay one can take. If Katherine were a good daughter, I wouldn’t have to go to such extraordinary lengths. She has no one but herself to blame.
Lindsay was James’s favourite child, but never mine. Frankly, my younger daughter bores me to death; she hasn’t half Katherine’s brains, and none of her spunk. She scraped through teacher-training college, and then took a job teaching at a third-rate public school (arranged by James not long before he died). Even at this she failed, getting pregnant by a married teacher before being summarily dumped by the lover and then fired by the school for bringing its name into disrepute. I was rather sorry James didn’t live long enough to see that.
But Lindsay is malleable and obedient, so I make the best of things. I stay at her dreary council flat when the loneliness overwhelms me because it’s better than rattling around my own home alone. Unlike Kate, she doesn’t complain she’s too busy when I ask her to take me to the dentist or drive me to bridge, and she cooks the kind of plain, wholesome food I like. But I don’t appreciate having to share a bathroom with a seven-year-old boy who seems incapable of aiming into the lavatory and leaves Lego all over the floor for me to step on in my bare feet. Lindsay has no concept of discipline; her son is utterly unruly. And she’s so desperately needy. Dealing with her constant desire for attention is quite draining. It’s as if I don’t count at all. Life is so much more congenial at Katherine’s. Particularly as she’s so rarely there.
