by Rebecca Reid
‘I know you’re scared to tell him about everything that happened. But you should do it. It made us closer when you told me. Right?’
Poppy pulled herself up to her full height and steadied herself. ‘Gee, this isn’t a negotiation. You know I want all of that stuff left in the past. I’m not talking to him about it. And much as I love you, we don’t have to prove our relationship to you.’
‘Look, babe, I’m just saying that whole deal thing is fucked up, it’s not normal …’
‘I know it’s not normal. But we’re not pretending to be normal. We’re doing things differently and if that makes us happy then that’s our business. OK?’
‘But—’
Poppy forced the words out of her mouth. ‘Gina, I’m not asking. I need you to drop this. I love you and I want you to stay but if you think this is a car crash or you don’t like Drew then there’s no point in you being here.’ She wanted to keep talking, to say that Gina was her best friend, that she needed her now more than ever. She wanted to remind her that she’d seen Gina through a dozen horrific relationships. There was the time that Gina had been dating her dealer and he’d locked both Poppy and Gina in his car outside his tower block for three hours because Gina had pissed him off. She hadn’t even broken up with him for that. Poppy had gone to the clinic with Gina after the same boyfriend had given her chlamydia three different times. She’d once taken all of the Winterson kids as well as the Henderson children to the park in the pouring rain for four hours, just so that Gina could spend a morning in bed with the Italian guy from Pret she’d fallen in love with, before he went back to Naples.
Poppy wanted to throw every stupid choice and poorly thought through plan back in Gina’s face, to rub it in that she was a million miles from healthy herself. But that wasn’t the deal. That wasn’t how friends treated each other, and with Drew gone, all alone in this place, she needed Gina. ‘I want you to stay,’ she said instead. ‘But you have to stop bringing up the past and you have to get on board with me and Drew.’
Gina nodded. ‘OK.’ Maybe Gina had got there by herself. ‘So, what’s the plan?’
‘Plan?’
‘You’ve got that face on that you get when you’re about to try and get kids enthusiastic about baking.’
Poppy smiled. ‘I was wondering whether you’d be up for a bit of a project.’
‘Project?’
‘You know how I said I thought the house was the problem? I thought maybe we could do it up while Drew is away. Before all his friends come to stay.’
Gina smiled. ‘You’re not seriously saying you think we can do this in five days?’
‘Oh come on.’
‘Five days? Have you seen the size of this place?’
‘I know, I know,’ Poppy said. ‘But think how fun it’ll be. Like Changing Rooms.’
‘All right,’ said Gina, with a half-sigh, half-laugh. ‘I’ll go put my cute but wholesome painting outfit on and you go get the car keys. We need to shop.’
BEFORE
Arriving at Côte Rouge was always the same. Just when whoever was driving felt like their ankle was going to split, and it was getting dark, and it wasn’t possible to keep going for another moment, the tiny drive opened up in the hedge, and everything sounded different. The wheels of the car were gentle and soft on the grass, and sitting there on the cliff, all white and higgledy and perfect, was the house. Just as it had been when they had left it the year before. The sun would be slipping down behind the hills, the stones hot from the day, and the air scented with flowers and sun. The children would struggle out of the car, rubbing their eyes and whining about being tired and hungry, their legs funny after sitting down for so long. But underneath all of it was a sense of relief. Of coming home.
Caroline and Jim had first come here almost two decades ago, before they were married. It belonged to a friend of a friend’s grandparents, who rented it to them for a fraction of the market price because they left it tidy and recommended it to everyone they knew. The first time they had come here, they’d made love in every single room, on the itchy carpet of the living room, on the rickety hob in the kitchen, and dozens of times by the pool. They had come back on their honeymoon. They had conceived Jack here, and Caroline was almost sure Grace too.
Dragging a suitcase from the boot of the car, she looked over to see Poppy’s face. The pink-orange light clashed with her hair a little, and she looked tired from the drive, a mark from where she had been resting her head on the window indented on her cheek.
‘Are you OK?’ she called over.
Poppy gave her an enormous smile. ‘I can’t believe it,’ she said. ‘It’s incredible.’
Her enthusiasm was contagious. ‘I know,’ Caroline replied. ‘Every time we come, I can’t quite believe my luck.’
The children had followed Jim inside. Lights were flickering on, illuminating the stone windowsills. ‘I should go and put Grace down,’ said Poppy.
‘I’ll do it,’ offered Caroline. ‘You’re on holiday.’
Poppy laughed. ‘I’m here to help.’
‘If I don’t see you lying by that pool at least four hours a day, I’m going to be extremely disappointed.’
‘I want to help. It’s easier with more of you.’
‘It certainly is,’ said Caroline. Poppy had no idea how much easier. She clearly didn’t know the effect that she’d had. The countertops weren’t sticky and they didn’t constantly run out of milk or juice. But it was more than that. Anyone could have done that. It was like the three of them were a team, taking it in turns to do the hard parts, and getting to enjoy the fun bits. Caroline had found herself playing a lengthy game of Operation with Jack, all on his own. How long had it been since she had just spent time with her son? It felt as if the previous fourteen years had consisted exclusively of trying to get Jack either to do something, or to stop doing something. But Poppy had changed that. The children didn’t feel short-changed hanging out with her; they didn’t feel fobbed off.
Caroline stretched upwards. Her jeans had dug into her waist, making red grooves in her skin, and her feet felt caged in her Converse, sweaty and trapped.
‘Let’s go in,’ she said, taking a last sweep of the view.
‘It’s hard to stop looking,’ said Poppy.
‘Yes,’ said Caroline. ‘It really is.’
CHAPTER 23
‘OK, thaaanks,’ said Gina, hanging up the phone. ‘They’re sending two painters, a tiler and a carpenter tomorrow.’
‘Amazing! You are literally the most persuasive person who has ever lived.’
‘What can I say?’ Gina laughed, clearly feeling pleased with her achievements. She swiped at the display on the car, a little screen where a radio would have been on a normal car. ‘This thing is smarter than I am,’ she muttered, but after a minute she managed it, and music sprang from the speakers all around them. Poppy indicated and pulled out on to the main road, a long clear sweep of tarmac slicing through the green hills. She pushed her foot towards the floor, feeling the acceleration and the music and the sunshine through the windows. ‘Fuck yes,’ shouted Gina as their speed climbed.
It was just like it used to be, when Poppy and her friends would pile into the back of someone’s borrowed Nova and speed down the roads by the sea, going faster and faster with music as loud as it would go, warping the speaker. Someone would always have a cigarette on the go, ash flying everywhere in the wind. It would be impossible to hear anyone, so it didn’t matter how badly you sang or if you didn’t know the right words.
She was older now. And she did know the words. The car was worth twenty times what the Nova had been, and she was old enough to think that driving after three cans of White Strike was madness. But still, it was the same feeling of euphoria.
The back of the car was full, a tangle of stuff. They’d started at John Lewis, working from the ground up. New pots, pans, cutlery, glasses, everything really. Then towels. Tablecloths. Bed linen. Everything anyone could need for a bathro
om. New bins, coat hangers, laundry baskets. They’d loaded everything that would fit into the car, and the rest was being delivered tomorrow because Gina had sweet-talked the man behind the counter and Poppy had agreed to take out a store card. Tomorrow would bring new bed frames: a huge pale blue wooden one for their bedroom, a sleigh bed for the Green Room and a bright yellow metal-framed one for the Blue Room, which Gina had talked her into. They had chosen a beautiful wooden table with benches for the kitchen, and an enormous round dining table and chairs for the dining room. ‘It can be extended to seat up to fourteen,’ the saleswoman had said sweetly. Poppy had tried to ignore the thought that she didn’t have fourteen people to invite to dinner.
A small part of her was worried about how much she had spent. She’d used the credit card for most of it, putting a few bits on the newly minted store card. The first time she had run the card through the reader she had expected some kind of alarm to go off, for someone to realize that she was an imposter. But all that happened was a smiling woman saying, ‘Thank you for your custom, Mrs Spencer,’ as Poppy looked down at the receipt. She had never spent an amount of money with a comma in it before.
‘Are you OK?’ Gina had asked her. ‘You look like you’ve been smacked in the back of the head with one of the new Le Creuset pots.’
‘Fine,’ Poppy had said. ‘Just … fucking hell, that was a lot of money.’
Gina had laughed. ‘You’re rich now. Embrace it. I know I would.’
Maybe she’d followed the advice, or maybe the guilt had worn off, but as she changed lanes, flicking her eyes back to check the road behind her, she felt a warm glow. In the boot of the car was a whole new world. Things that were going to transform the house from a museum to someone else’s family to her own. Hers and Drew’s. He would be pleased, she told herself. How could he not be?
CHAPTER 24
After five days of decorating, Poppy ached in places she’d never been aware of having before, and the skin on her hands was so dry that they rasped when she rubbed them together. But the house had become beautiful. It was like one of those makeover films, the ones where they picked someone quite attractive with some easily fixed flaws and then made them perfect. Thursday House was the architectural equivalent of a stunning girl with glasses and frizzy hair. Everything Gina and Poppy did made the house more and more gorgeous.
They had started in the hall. That was where the house started, they reasoned, so that was the place to begin. On a complete hunch, egged on by Gina and encouraged by what she had read online about the house and the period it was built, Poppy had pulled up a floorboard. Lo and behold, underneath them was the most incredible floor she had ever seen. Cerulean blue tiles, studded with gold painted stars. She had summoned a nice floor specialist from the internet, who turned up with his enormous teenage son and pulled the rest of the boards up. ‘They’re odd boards,’ he had said as he wrenched them up. ‘Most of ’em come up easy, but it’s like these ones are fighting back!’
The words had sent a shiver of fear through Poppy, but she had ignored it. The new floor was beautiful, and seeing the crumbling brown floorboards sitting in the skip outside gave her a feeling of triumph.
The floor was so beautiful that the walls shouldn’t be over the top, they had agreed. So they had been painted the most delicate (expensive – Gina insisted paint should be expensive) shade of pale grey. Then, flush from their success with the floor, they pulled the carpet off the huge staircase and found that underneath it was a beautiful yellow stone, just like the outside of the house. ‘That’ll be a fucking nightmare when you have kids,’ Gina had said.
The drawing room was repainted, the ancient furniture steam-cleaned and anything ugly or uncomfortable swapped for something soft and luxurious.
Gina had taken to the redecoration like nothing Poppy had ever seen before. She’d be up by seven, dressed in a tiny T-shirt which the team of workmen seemed to appreciate and pulling wallpaper off the walls or chucking almost anything that came with the house in the skip. ‘Don’t you think we should keep that?’ Poppy asked as Gina carried a rolled-up rug to the skip.
‘Why, do you like it?’
‘Well, no.’
‘Then why would we keep it?’
‘It might be valuable.’
‘What, like you don’t have enough money?’ Gina laughed.
‘It’s not that …’ Poppy trailed off.
‘I’d have been so good at being rich,’ said Gina, throwing the rug into the skip. ‘Maybe it should have been me.’
The kitchen was the most exciting part. Poppy had the stone floors sandblasted, the cabinets stripped and painted the palest butter yellow, and the overhead beams whitewashed. The Aga stayed put, in pride of place, but she indulged in a microwave, an enormous eight-slice toaster ‘for when we have guests’ and an American fridge the size of a wardrobe. She put a new sofa under the window, covered in cushions and blankets, and the beautiful new table sat at the far end, by the French windows which led out on to the terrace.
Upstairs, aware that time wasn’t on their side, they prioritized the main guest bedrooms and the bathroom. ‘I promise we’ll do your room next,’ Poppy had said to Gina. If Gina was annoyed about her room being left untouched, she hadn’t said anything. But then they’d both been too busy to do much other than sing along to the Hits of the Noughties on the iPod speaker and labour on any part of the project that didn’t need the skills of the army of professionals. Poppy was nervous of trying anything, remembering her experience with the lampshade. But Gina had tied her hair back, picked up a brush and slapped a bold shade of mustard on the walls of the Yellow Room. And while pots of paint seemed to tip over more often than felt normal, and doors tended to slam without any explanation, it was working. Gina was winning.
Watching Gina attack the house emboldened Poppy, so after a couple of days of standing on the sidelines watching the others, she braced herself to pull the wallpaper off the dining-room wall. She peeled back the sheets and smiled to see wobbly childish writing on the wall. ‘Simon & William were here’, it read.
Who had Simon and William been, and how long ago had they been allowed to pencil on the walls before the paper went on? She had no idea how old the wallpaper was. It could have been decades ago, centuries even. Perhaps there were documents which came with the house, which told its story? She made a mental note to ask Drew when he came home.
Knowing her limitations, Poppy had hired someone to do the Blue Room in a graphic blue and copper paper which cost more than a day’s pay as a nanny for just one roll. She did, however, paint her and Drew’s room. All of the rest of the house had been decorated for other people. She wanted to do something just for them, something physical. So she put out dust sheets, opened the windows and started painting, determinedly covering the walls with the palest of rose pinks. It was her house. Her bedroom. She was going to make it feel like her home.
CHAPTER 25
Poppy tried to sit up, but her bones seemed ten times their usual weight. She blinked, trying to unstick her eyelids and slowly dragged herself up. She was on the floor, the carpet underneath her fingers. She looked around, trying to work out what time it was, and how she had ended up on the floor. Gina was standing over her, fanning her with a magazine. ‘You passed out, you tit,’ said Gina, offering a hand to pull Poppy up. ‘Lucky you didn’t fall off the ladder. Looks like you got dizzy and lay down before it really hit you. Why didn’t you open the windows?’
‘I did.’
Gina arched an eyebrow. ‘You didn’t. They’re all closed.’
‘I had them open,’ Poppy said. Her head was heavy and her neck ached. ‘How could they have closed?’
‘They must have blown shut.’
‘My head hurts.’
‘Yeah, no wonder, you’ve inhaled more paint fumes than my brothers did when we were teenagers. Do you want me to help you finish?’
Poppy staggered to her feet and headed towards the stairs.
‘Where are you
going?’ came Gina’s voice from behind her.
‘I don’t want to be here.’
‘Here? What the fuck are you talking about?’
‘This house. Gina, I had the windows open. I did. Look, I know this sounds mental but I think they closed themselves.’
Gina calmly led Poppy into the kitchen where she put the kettle on and made two large cups of tea. Every time Poppy tried to start talking again, Gina hushed her. Eventually, once the tea was gone, Gina took both of Poppy’s hands and looked her in the eyes.
‘You think those windows closed themselves?’
Poppy nodded. ‘It’s not just that. It’s loads of stuff. Like when I tried to change that lightbulb. And the bath overflowing when I know I turned the taps off. The first day we arrived here a mirror fell off the wall. You don’t think that’s weird?’
‘So, what, the house is haunted?’
Poppy shook her head.
‘Then what?’
‘Not haunted. It’s not like that. It’s like …’ She trailed off. ‘It’s like it doesn’t want me here.’
To her surprise, Gina didn’t laugh in her face or tell her that she was going mad. ‘OK,’ she said. ‘Why not?’
Poppy couldn’t meet Gina’s eyes. ‘I don’t know. Because I’m not good enough? Not that type of person? It’s all so weird. The family who lived here before just disappearing and leaving all their stuff …’ She paused. ‘I don’t think it’s a happy place. And I don’t think it wants me here.’
‘Well, maybe you have to show it who’s boss.’
‘I don’t think I can.’
‘Of course you can. You’re not seriously going to let a load of stone and wood tell you what you can and can’t do?’ Gina got up, pulling herself to full height. ‘Tell the house it’s not the boss of you.’
