by Jenny Oliver
Billy made a face. ‘I don’t know, Miss.’
Hermione sniggered at the word Miss.
‘It’ll be OK and, if it’s not, it doesn’t matter.’
‘How very pragmatic you’re becoming,’ Hermione said, as she pulled up a stool and perched on the edge to watch.
‘Ready? Matt, music,’ Anna called.
‘He’s a delight, isn’t he?’ Hermione purred.
‘Shh, just watch.’ Anna said, really hoping that they would look amazing. But as the music blared out it seemed to catch them all off guard so they weren’t together when they started. Peter was one step behind the whole way through and, at one point, turned the wrong way into Lucy who gave him an angry shove. Billy, distracted by the pushing, launched into a backflip too early and thwacked his sister in the face. Lucy then stopped and shouted, ‘This is shit.’
‘Keep going,’ Anna urged, but they’d lost the timing and only got it back after Matt and Mary did their solo which Anna had a sneaking suspicion they’d been practising in private because they were much better than they had been and Mary could now hold his eye contact for almost the whole time.
When they finished, the group out of breath and dejected, pointing and blaming each other, Hermione leant over to Anna and whispered, ‘That was dreadful.’
A week ago, Anna would have agreed but now she felt herself bristle. ‘They’re getting there,’ she snapped and Hermione snorted into her G&T.
‘It’s fine, it’s fine.’ Anna turned to the group. ‘Don’t worry, you’re OK. It’s OK. You can’t expect to be perfect all the time. It’s going well.’
They all glared at her, panting and sweating.
‘I promise,’ she said. Then paused at the use of the word. Did she promise? And if she did, how much sway did her word hold nowadays? Even she knew she’d diluted its worth. ‘I promise it’ll be OK,’ she said again. ‘We’ll do it again tomorrow and the next day and the next until it’s perfect all the time. Yes?’
There was a varying degree of nodding as they dispersed to get their bags and disappeared out the hall.
Anna walked out with Hermione, pulling off her sweatshirt as they stepped into the square, the temperature warmer than it had been all day.
‘They can’t go on TV like that,’ Hermione said once they were outside.
Anna just shrugged. ‘Like I said, we’ll just make sure it’s perfect.’
‘You might have been good once, Anna Whitehall, but you’re not a magician.’
‘Thanks for the vote of confidence.’ Anna said as they sat down on a bench under a plane tree and Hermione poured her a gin and tonic, the ice cracking as the liquid bubbled over it.
‘I just think there are some things more worthy of your energies. For example, I went into your little shop this afternoon, very nice, I think you’ve done a marvellous job, that fat woman was telling me all about it.’
‘You think it looks good?’ Anna asked, more tentatively than she’d expected.
‘I even bought a lamp.’ Hermione nodded, taking a sip of her drink. ‘Hideous old thing with cherubs on the base but I think it’ll look very eclectic in my hallway. I saw one just like it in Elle Decor, but that one was two grand. I paid fourteen pounds fifty. And then I saw Seb as I was putting it in the car. Looked like he hadn’t slept for a week which, if he’s in the shed, I imagine he hasn’t. See, darling, that’s perhaps where you should be focusing your energies.’
Anna ran her tongue over her lips, ‘Hang on, you always go on about how boring he is with his rugby and PlayStation, how normal, and how I shouldn’t be marrying him.’
Hermione made a face. ‘Darling, I say everyone’s boring and normal. That’s my schtick. If I said people were nice, then I’d be boring.’
‘Oh no, don’t give me that. You’ve spent years chipping away about how you think I shouldn’t settle, should test all possible options, and whatnot,’ Anna swiped her hair out of her eyes.
‘Well OK, fine, yes, I admit I did think that, but you know I’m beginning to see the positives of settling. And actually I’ve been to two rugby games with Patrick and they weren’t too bad—’
‘Give me strength.’ Anna knocked back the rest of her drink and rummaged in the cooler for another can as she tried to rise above Hermione calling her dad Patrick.
‘Anna, don’t be upset about me and him.’
‘Hermione‒’ Anna turned her head to face her, ‘There is no you and him. You’re having sex. He doesn’t commit to anyone and neither do you. There is nothing there.’ She waved her hands in the air as if to emphasise the void. ‘Nothing. You’ll both get bored and, anyway, he’s my dad. It’s disgusting.’
Anna watched as Hermione lowered her eyes down towards her lap, examined her perfect nail varnish and swept a finger down the back of her beautifully moisturised hands, then rummaged in the cool bag without saying anything, just fussed around searching for her own second can.
Realising she had perhaps been a touch too harsh, Anna sat back and shut her eyes, hoping the subject might change if she didn’t say anything more and let the dappled early evening sun dance on her closed lids.
‘Do you know, my divorce was the worst few years of my life,’ she heard Hermione say into the silence. Trying not to let her shock at the fact Hermione had brought the subject up, Anna remained in exactly the same position, rigidly trying to look relaxed. ‘We were so goddamn horrible to each other,’ Hermione went on. ‘And I would look at him as we were arguing over tiny things and think, I think I used to love you. But it was like all memory of that had gone. And I’d wonder if I was lying. If I ever had loved him.
‘Sometimes I’d stare at our wedding photos and the look in my eye and I would try and see what I felt. I would see happiness but I couldn’t tell if I could see love.’ She snapped open the ring-pull of the gin and tonic and instead of pouring it over the ice in her glass, took a huge gulp straight from the can before saying, ‘It’s a terrible thing to realise that you’ve been lying to yourself. That you have the ability to be so wrong in the choices you make and that someone else has the ability to hide so fundamentally who they are until it’s too late. I was haunted by the bloody thought that, if I just keep going, it’d be OK.’ Hermione crossed one long leg over the other and looked out over the concourse, at the birds bathing in the fountain and a couple walking their dog. Anna stared straight ahead of her and watched as Rachel came out of the bakery and started to wind the awning in. ‘I just thought, week after week…’ Hermione sighed, ‘if I keep going, I can make it better.’
Anna rolled her head along the bench to look at Hermione, who had an expression of open vulnerability on her face that Anna had never seen before. She had never heard her talk about her divorce, in fact, as far as Anna knew, he’d just walked out one day and Hermione had gone to the Maldives to get over it and come back right as rain.
‘We had this almighty row over some Hungarian painted furniture,’ Hermione went on. ‘We’d seen it on our honeymoon and he’d bought it in this wild, extravagant gesture. There was a bed, a wardrobe and a bureau. Beautiful stuff. It was green and painted with tiny flowers, red and yellow, and beautiful. It must have been hours and hours of work. Well we never thought of shipping costs, which I ended up paying and were the bloody same price as the furniture.’ She took another gulp of her drink. ‘So when it came to dividing up our stuff he said it was all his ‒ he bought it. And I was like, fuck that. He’s not getting away with that, it’s in the country because of me. That was our greatest battle. Months we fought over it, it was like the War of the Roses, except we didn’t die at the end.’
‘I haven’t seen that film.’
‘Well,’ Hermione laughed. ‘Now you know what happens.’
‘Did you win?’ Anna asked. ‘Did you get the furniture?’
‘What do you think? Of course.’ She smirked, almost indignant, then said a little more quietly, ‘I just wanted you to know how bloody miserable it was. I don’t think I’ve ever to
ld anyone. And I suppose I’m telling you because I don’t want you to take this thing from me. I know he’s your dad, and it’s probably all midsummer madness but, at least, all his baggage is there for me to see! I’m having fun, Anna. Just let me have it for a bit.’
Anna bit the inside of her cheek, watched the people start to fade away in the square, the lights in the bakery flick off, the dog walkers disappear down the lane, and said, ‘It’s just why did it have to be my dad?’
‘I don’t know. Because we can’t help who we fall for?’ Hermione shrugged. ‘Anna, all that Hungarian furniture is in my garage. Has been for six years under tarpaulins. I can’t have it in the house. It just sits there, rotting probably. I think there might be mice in one of the wardrobe drawers. It was all such a waste of energy.’ She shook her head. ‘What I’m trying to say is, if you have something good you should fight for it. If it’s bad, give it the fuck away. Walk away. I wish now that I had just walked away.’
Anna thought about her weekly phone calls with the administrators of The Waldegrave, the angst and emotion they left burning inside her, the constant reminder of her fuck-up.
Were some mistakes just better left where they were made?
The idea of simply cutting that thread, letting the whole thing loose like a broken kite string, walking away rather than fighting, as Hermione said, held such unexpected appeal that she almost caught her breath.
‘And, as Philippe said, we can’t judge other people’s relationships ‒ yes, don’t look at me like that, I did listen and I took it in ‒ we have to live and let live. I shouldn’t have wound you up about Seb and I really hope one day you’ll be OK about me and Patrick. Christ, as you say, it’ll probably be over next week, but I’d really like us all to hang out. I think it could be fun. He misses you.’
Anna sighed and Hermione seemed to realise she was pushing that thread a little far. ‘Anna, if you look at Seb and you still love him and can see why you love him, then there’s a chance you’re about to throw something away that you won’t realise the value of till it’s gone.’
Hermione paused. Anna saw images of diamonds and precious jewels floating away on the same breeze that her broken kite was soaring away on, saw the little lines around Seb’s mouth when he smiled.
‘This is all very emotional for you, Hermione,’ she said in the end.
‘Well I know,’ Hermione guffawed, lounging back on the uncomfortable wooden slats. ‘As I said, it’s all midsummer madness. Maybe I’m in love.’
Anna coughed into her drink. Hermione raised a languid hand and fluffed her hair up, ‘Don’t waste it, darling, there’s only six more cans in the bag.’ She leant down and rummaged through the bag. ‘Oh and a bottle of Dom Perignon.’ She laughed, pulling out the champagne that dripped with bubbles of condensation. ‘We’re like your little teenagers, getting smashed in the park. Just much classier.’
‘And older,’ said Anna.
‘Would you go back to that age?’
‘Yes,’ she said, without hesitation. Yes she would go back and try it again, do it differently, work harder, hit the heady heights, take her bow of stardom but, just as she said it, so determinedly, she paused, confused. If she did it all again, achieved the dream, then she wouldn’t have anyone living in the shed who, as Hermione said, she wouldn’t have the chance to realise the value of until he had gone.
Chapter Fifteen
The front door was unlocked when Anna got home. She pushed it tentatively and shouted, ‘Hello?’ But there was no answer.
Getting a glass of water from the kitchen, she thought she heard noises upstairs. Glancing out to see if Seb was in the shed which, judging by its dark lifelessness he clearly wasn’t, she took some hesitant steps up to the upstairs landing. ‘Hello?’ she shouted again.
There was banging from the bedroom and she had a sudden vision of Seb in bed with Melissa Hope. Of him touching her skin and maybe her draping her arm protectively over him as they slept. The thought made her shudder, her shaky hand spilling some of the water in her glass on the carpet.
‘Hello?’ she whispered this time as she pushed the bedroom door open, her eyes half shut in anticipation of what she might see, of who she might see.
But the bed was as she had left it that morning, beautifully made with the flowery Zara Home sheets pulled back and the big peacock-patterned cushions she’d splurged on from Liberty propped up by the iron bedstead. The noise was coming from the bathroom. ‘Seb?’ She said, as she took a step forward and saw him bent over the bath, a wrench sticking out of his back pocket, Gap boxers revealing a bit of a builder’s bum, sweat down the back of his T-shirt, a tool-box open on the floor with the contents cascading out over her white fluffy bathmat. ‘Seb?’ she said again, a little louder, and this time he jumped back in surprise.
‘Shit, you scared me,’ he said, hand holding a power drill on his heart.
‘Sorry, I didn’t know you were here.’ Nor did she know that he owned a power drill. ‘Is that yours?’
He looked at the Black & Decker. ‘Yeah,’ he nodded. ‘I bought it today. I thought, you know, it was maybe the kind of thing that I would need. You know, in life.’
‘Right.’ She nodded, looking slightly confused around the bathroom that had been half covered with clear dust sheets.
‘I wanted to do the shower, you know. I thought you would need a shower,’ he said, looking away to point at the new taps and shower hose that he was fitting and the instructions crumpled out over the floor.
As she looked at him then, in his ripped T-shirt, slightly red cheeks, messed-up hair, dusty face and visible awkwardness, she realised that her image of him in bed with Melissa Hope had been completely wrong. There would have been no touching, just him probably staring up at the ceiling, desperate for somewhere to lie down, aware he’d made a terrible mistake and unable to go home.
‘It looks like a really good shower,’ she said.
‘Well, you know, just B&Q,’ Seb shrugged.
‘Still really good. Thank you.’
He looked back to his instructions and there was silence between them. Anna, resisting the urge to pull her bathmat out from under the tools, watched as he smoothed out the paper and rummaged for whatever was needed. ‘It’s been a nice day, hasn’t it?’ she said, gesturing out the porthole window next to the bath.
‘Yes. Nice now the weather’s broken a bit,’ Seb said without looking up. ‘I won’t be that much longer in here, I just have to tighten a couple of bits.’
‘Take all the time you like,’ she jumped in.
There was the silence again. She could hear birds singing outside and the low rumbling of an aeroplane.
Seb sat back on his heels, ‘My mum rang again about the wedding. What we’re doing.’
‘What did you tell her?’ Anna asked, holding her breath for his answer, as if they were deciding their future over veiled, polite chit-chat.
‘I said we were still undecided.’ He shrugged, and leant back over the bath to tighten the shower fittings.
‘Are you?’ she asked, turning away from him, picking at some cracked paint on the door frame. ‘Undecided?’
She heard him exhale. ‘I don’t know, Anna.’ He clanged around with the bathroom fittings, and then he paused. ‘It doesn’t feel like we’re a couple on the verge of getting married, does it? I don’t even know if we like each other any more.’
Anna stuck her finger under a flap of paint and flicked it up, watching it crack and fall to the floor. The birds carried on lightly chirping outside. She stared at the spot of dry wood she’d exposed. ‘I like you.’ She whispered, maybe too quietly.
He didn’t reply. Just busied himself pushing all his tools back into the box and closing the latches.
As he pushed himself up, he flicked on the tap and water gushed out of the shower head. ‘There you go, one shower. That should make your life a bit more enjoyable.’ He nodded.
‘It’s brilliant. Thank you.’ She gave a small smile. ‘Mr Mall
ory will be pretty pleased as well, you know, for the next tenants, it’ll add value.’ As she said it, she wished she hadn’t, wished that she’d just pretended that it was for them only, made no reference to their transience here, and just thanked him for the gesture of doing it for her.
Seb shrugged, flicking the tap off again. ‘I’d better go,’ he said, squeezing past where she was standing and out the door. She could smell his sweat and the familiar scent of Seb that reminded her of cosying up next to him and feeling like everything in her head was calm.
As he walked away, she thought of Hermione and the precious jewels scattering away on the breeze, the rubies, the diamonds, the emeralds just floating away out of reach. ‘You could…’ She swallowed. Say it, Anna. Swallow your pride, your poise and just say it. ‘You could stay for dinner if you like. I don’t know what it’ll be, nothing fancy. Just dinner. If you wanted?’ She hesitated, the sleeves of her tatty old sweatshirt pulled over her hands.
‘I don’t think so, Anna.’ Seb hoisted his tools up into his other hand. He paused and looked at her, then down at the carpet. ‘Nothing’s changed. Has it?’
She didn’t reply. She didn’t even really hear. For her the invitation to dinner was the equivalent of stripping naked and laying herself bare. It was her olive branch. She had opened herself up and been rebuffed. ‘Absolutely. You’re right, yes, nothing’s changed. It was just food, nothing more than that, but yeah I totally see how that might be misconstrued.’
‘Anna—’
‘No, seriously, thanks for the new shower, Seb. ’ She felt her cheeks start to flame, she was mortified. The house itself seemed to be mocking her with its twee, smug country cottage ways. ‘You know, actually, I think I might have left something at the erm…at the shop. So, yeah, I think I need to go and get it.’ She moved past him where he stood in the centre of the bedroom. ‘Feel free to use the kitchen and stuff. I’ll probably be a while.’
