by AJ Taft
“Thanks,” Lily says, shaking her head as her grandmother offers her a mince pie.
“Are they here?” calls a voice from the hall.
“That’ll be your granddad,” says Alice. She raises her voice, “In the kitchen.”
A tall, handsome man with white hair and eyes that are bright blue enters the room, carrying two large bags of shopping. He puts the shopping on the counter and places a hand on Lily’s shoulder. The heat sinks into Lily’s body. “It’s been a long time,” he says. “You probably don’t remember.”
Lily wrinkles her nose. He tightens his grip on her shoulder and pulls her into his chest, patting her back so hard she fears it may break.
“Did you remember the cream?” asks Alice, spreading the contents of the shopping bags over the worktops.
Arthur breaks his hold on Lily, stepping back to smile at her. “They’d sold out. Can’t think why so many people are buying cream, what with it being Christmas and all.”
“Oh, that’s just typical. Right, everybody out of the kitchen,” says Alice, just as David joins them, “too many people. Front room everybody. There’s a fire lit. David, will you bring another basket of logs?”
David mutters something under his breath and leads the exodus from the kitchen. He heads for the back door as the others wander through to the front room.
“And how are you feeling, little one?” Arthur asks Fiona, as he unbuttons his coat.
“Well, I’m still a bit upset no one told me…”
“Aye, well if there’s one thing I’ve learnt in this life, it’s not to get involved when there’s women on the warpath. What’s that saying? Hell hath no fury? Hell, they got that right.”
The light from the fire is reflected in the glass baubles on the Christmas tree, like fairy lights. Fiona picks up a photograph from the mantelpiece; it’s of her grandmother, twenty years younger, holding a bundle of blanket. A scrap of red face can just be seen emerging from its swaddling, jaws wide. “I’ve not seen this before.”
Alice wipes her hands on her apron. “That was the only time I ever saw Lily.”
“So why didn’t anyone keep in touch with her?” asks Fiona, putting into words the question that’s plagued Lily all her life.
“It was difficult. Pam moved without telling anyone. We weren’t close.”
“One way of putting it,” says Arthur from his armchair by the fire.
“They were a different class to us, that’s all,” says Alice. “I think it’s fair to say, Lily, that when your mum and David married, most folks weren’t particularly pleased with the match. I think your grandfather, your mum’s dad, wanted more for her.”
“More money you mean,” Arthur grumbles.
“Your gran had a bit of a soft spot for David. But then he packed in a perfectly good apprenticeship and started up with his music business,” Alice raises her eyebrows.
“No one understood what he was playing at, still don’t,” says Arthur. “He was making a good wage.”
“And then David, well, then it happened.” Alice stresses the word ‘it’, “That was the end of it. All bloody hell broke loose. I think they thought we were all as bad as each other…”
At that moment, David comes into the room, carrying a basket of logs. “What?”
“Nothing,” says Lily.
David kneels at the fire, adding half a dozen logs to it, stoking the wood until big orange flames start to lick up the side.
“I’ve got you a present,” says Alice, walking over to the sideboard. She hands Lily a long slender package.
Lily opens it to reveal a brass coloured toasting fork. Her eyebrows knot as she looks across to her grandmother. “Thank you.”
“It’s tradition,” says Fiona, as she takes another toasting fork from the side of the fireplace, its prongs blackened from years of use. She pulls a small footstool in front of the hearth, and then another one for Lily. Her grandmother hands her a packet of marshmallows and the two girls sit in front of the fire, watching their marshmallows turn to blobs before adding them to their hot chocolate.
“So what’s the plan for you all?” asks Alice. “Will you be going back to Leeds, Lily?”
“I don’t know.” Lily stares into the flames, mesmerised. It takes a moment for her to realise people are waiting for her to expand. “The only reason I went to poly was because I was desperate to leave home. I don’t know what made me pick politics. It’s not like I want to be a politician or anything.”
“Thank goodness for that,” says Arthur. “Bunch of self-serving, power mad hypocrites, every last one of them. Not interested in the working man.”
“Everything’s changed,” says Lily, as she tears her gaze from the fireplace and looks up at her grandparents. “Don’t think I’m relying on you or anything. It’s been great to meet you all, but even if I never saw any of you again, I’m different now. And I want to do something different.”
Her grandmother strokes Lily’s cheek. “Well, don’t think you’re going to get rid of any of us in a hurry,” she says. “What about you, Fiona?”
“I can’t live with Mum on my own,” says Fiona quickly. David opens his mouth to argue but Fiona raises her voice and continues. “Come on, Daddy. You know I might as well be living on my own. She’s never there. I’d have to do all my own cooking.”
“You will have to come to some arrangement with her, Fiona,” says David. “She is your mother.”
“I know. I’m just not going to live with her that’s all. I want to live with Dad and Lily,” she says as the turns to her grandmother.
Her father snorts.
“Why not? It could work.”
Everyone in the room looks at David. He takes his handkerchief from his pocket and cleans his glasses. “There’s nothing I would like more,” he begins. Fiona shrieks with excitement but he holds up his hand. “But, let’s not get carried away. We haven’t got anywhere to live and it could take a long time to arrange somewhere. I’ll have to look into it. And in the meantime, Fiona, you have exams to think about. This is a very important year.”
Fiona shakes her head and stands up, toasting fork clenched by her side. “I’m not going back home. No way.”
David looks exasperated, “Fiona…”
“I don’t even want to do my exams. I hate school.”
“What if Ruth calms down and decides she can make room for Lily?” says Alice, standing up to place herself between her youngest granddaughter and her son.
David shakes his head quickly, indicating the subject is closed.
“Well if you’re not going back, you can’t expect me to either.” Fiona shakes off his arm and puts her hand on her hips.
“It seems simple to me,” says Alice. “You must all stay here until you get something set up.”
“Thanks Mum. That’s a very kind offer, but it might take months for me to organise…”
“That doesn’t matter.”
“You don’t have the room.”
“Oh silly me,” says Alice, lifting her hands off her lap. “How we managed to raise three children here, I simply can’t imagine.”
“I may not even be able to get a big enough mortgage.”
“We’ll manage,” says Alice. “Please. It would make me, it would make us both so happy, wouldn’t it Arthur?”
Arthur lowers his newspaper and nods his head. “You’d be like a breath of fresh air.”
“We could get twin beds in the spare room. I’ll clear out the study. No one ever uses it.”
David shakes his head. “It’s too much to ask.”
“Can’t you see what it would mean to us? We’ve never had the chance to know Lily. Stop being so bloody selfish.”
David looks over to Lily. “What do you think about all this?”
Lily can’t stop a grin from stretching itself across her face. “I think it would be great.”
David holds up his arms in defeat. “Well, if you two can put up with sharing a room and not tearing each other�
�s hair out, then why not? Obviously, we’ll have to clear it with your mother.”
Fiona runs across to him and throws herself at him, knocking him back into the settee.
Chapter 42
The 11th of January falls on a Friday. Lily tiptoes across the bedroom. It’s so dark that even though the distance between the two single beds is less than six feet, negotiating the obstacle course of discarded clothes, shoes, the flex of the hair dryer, bottles of nail varnish and other debris is almost impossible. She stands on a plastic hair slide and shouts out in pain. Fiona wakes up.
“What are you doing?” she mumbles sleepily.
“Happy Birthday, sweet sixteen!” says Lily, rubbing her foot. “I was trying to surprise you.” She puts the present she was carrying onto Fiona’s single bed and pulls back the curtains. Daylight shows what she was up against. “Maybe we should tidy up a bit.”
Fiona lifts her head up off the pillow to look at her present. “I’m not tidying up on my birthday. It’s a special occasion. Means no chores.”
“I thought you doing chores would make it a special occasion,” says Lily, only half joking. She hasn’t seen the floor of their room since David built the flat pack single beds two weeks ago. Lily’s used to mess, but only her own mess. She’s never shared a room before. In fact when she was a child she had the whole top floor of the house to herself, as her mother got too fat to climb the stairs. The cramped quarters of her grandparents’ house are taking some getting used to. “What time’s Stuart coming?”
“He said he’d meet me after school. Do you want to come?”
Lily shakes her head. “No, I promised Gran I’d take Tess for a walk. What time do you think he’ll go?”
“You can’t just avoid him.”
“I don’t want to see him today, that’s all. Open your present.”
“I told Mum we’d go there for tea,” says Fiona. “She’s actually finishing work early. So you’re safe, he won’t be coming here.” Fiona sits up and pulls the present onto her knee. “Mmm, heavy,” she says, nodding appreciatively.
Tess scrabbles down the side of the hill, chasing after the scent of rabbit. Lily follows a few hundred yards behind, turning away from the lake and into a section of the park she hasn’t been to before. By the time she catches up with Tess, they’ve left the park, over a small bridge over the river and onto a cobbled road Lily hasn’t seen before. She’s just about to turn round and go back, when she notices one of the houses has a ‘To Let’ sign in the garden. It’s a small, stone built cottage, with a small dormer window in the roof. All the curtains are drawn and there’s no car outside, so Lily walks down the drive and round the side of the house. A long, narrow garden backs down onto the woods. At the end closest to the house is a tumbling down garage, and what may have been an outside toilet. Lily turns to face the back of the house and sees old wooden French doors, in need of a coat of paint, which lead onto a small stone patio. She walks back to the front of the house and commits the name of the letting agent to memory. “Jarvis and Jones,” she recites to herself all the way home.
When the details for Fern Cottage arrive in the post the next day, Lily is on her own in the house. Fiona had rung last night to say she and Stuart were staying over at Ruth’s house. She’d sounded quite touched at the lengths her mother had gone to to celebrate her birthday. Apparently, she’d taken them both out to the poshest restaurant in Skipton and told them they could order anything they liked, much to Fiona’s delight. So Lily had had her first night sleeping alone since Boxing Day. Bizarrely, after feeling desperate for her own space, she’d hardly slept at all. Kept waking up drenched in cold sweat and not knowing where she was. Awful dreams where she was paralysed, or in a coffin being buried alive.
David had gone round to Newlands first thing in the morning, possibly sensing the thaw in relations, and hoping it might be a good time to sort out a few issues. Lily had overhead one telephone conversation a few days ago, where she’d gathered that if David didn’t return the ransom money by the end of the day, Ruth would involve the police. He’d disappeared with the suitcase less than half an hour later.
Alice and Arthur had left after breakfast to visit friends over in Gargrave. Lily spends most of the day smoking cigarettes in the tiny back garden and burying the stubs in the rosebeds. When David turns up, in the late afternoon, Lily waves the prospectus at him almost as soon as he steps through the door. “Look at this.”
David takes it out of her hands and opens the page.
“What do you think?” asks Lily.
David nods his head as he reads the particulars. Since Ruth demanded the return of the ransom money, it makes sense to rent somewhere. A teacher’s salary doesn’t go far, particularly when you have a daughter used to the finer things in life, like tennis lessons and skiing holidays. Ruth made it quite clear that she wasn’t going to be funding their new abode. At least Lily doesn’t expect much. “It looks good. Give them a ring, let’s go and see it.”
Lily’s heart is beating too fast as she rings the agents. “It’s still available,” she shouts from the hall as she puts the phone down. She comes back into the kitchen. “I said we’d meet them there Monday, after school. Where’s Fiona?”
“She’s spending the day with Stuart and her mother. Apparently Ruth is taking them to London to see Starlight Express, as a birthday treat.” His tone is peevish.
“We could get a video,” suggests Lily, anxious to offset his loss. “Gran and Granddad won’t be back til late. Or we could go to a show. I’ll pay.” Her overdraft might just stretch to it.
David smiles and puts his arm loosely round her shoulders. “A video tape will be just fine. So long as you promise not to get Dirty Dancing.”
They meet outside Fern Cottage at 4 o’clock on Monday. Lily walks round with Alice and Arthur and Tess. David had offered to pick Fiona up from her school on his way from his, but Fiona insisted on getting a taxi so she wouldn’t be late. The cottage is unfurnished and could kindly be described as ‘old-fashioned’. With the five of them, the estate agent and the dog, it feels like it’s bursting at the seams, but it has three bedrooms on the first floor and a room in the attic, which Lily falls in love with. They sign the lease on the spot. David pays the deposit. “I’ll get a job,” offers Lily, in a moment of rashness. “I’ll pay my share of the rent.”
“Well, we’re alright for the moment,” says David. “You need to take some time to figure out what you want to do.”
“The first thing I need to do is go back to Accrington,” says Lily. “I have to hand the keys back, sort out a few things.”
“I’ll come with you,” says Fiona.
“You can’t, Fi. You’ve got school,” says David, as he walks round the front room checking for electric sockets.
“School’s boring.”
“Thanks, but it’s something I need to do it on my own,” says Lily.
“How long will you stay?” asks Fiona.
“Don’t know. A few days; there’s a lot to do. I might go to Leeds as well, clear up there.”
“Well, if you need anything,” says David, “just ring.”
Two days later, Lily pushes open the front door of her mother’s council house and steps over the stack of mail that’s built up in the hallway. She closes the door and drops her bag on the floor. The house smells of stale fish and chips, joss sticks and that other lingering smell that Lily doesn’t like to think about. It’s so cold Lily can see her breath. She picks up the stack of mail and goes into the front room. Fiona’s school blazer is still on the bed and the newspaper fish and chip wrappings from that first night are screwed up on the floor. The room looks like someone just ran out of the back door, which of course they did, a month ago. She’s travelled so far in a month, Lily doesn’t recognise these reminders of her past life. Strands of Fiona’s hair still lie on the floor. Lily can’t remember what she looked like before they cut her hair off. That gawky schoolgirl they spent so much time stalking never seemed to
materialise. It’s impossible to equate her with the Fiona she knows now.
Lily puts the tokens she stopped off at the SPAR to buy, into the electric meter. The bulb in the ceiling lights up and the fridge starts to hum. There’s no point getting the gas reconnected but she’s going to freeze her ass off while she’s here.
She takes the stack of letters into the kitchen, opens all the ones addressed to her mother or ‘the occupier’, and sorts them into two piles on the worktop. There are three letters addressed to her, which she puts to one side, unopened. One of the two piles she picks up and drops into the half full bin liner, that’s lying against the back door. The smell makes her recoil. She ties the bag and puts it outside the back door.
Once she’s made herself a cup of tea, she writes to all her mother’s creditors, her fingers blue gripped around the pen, before turning her attention to her own post. A card from Aunt Edie, a letter from Leeds Polytechnic, asking whether she intends to return to her course, and a letter from a firm of solicitors asking her to contact them, ‘with regards to her mother’s estate’.
Lily lifts the receiver but there’s no dial tone. She puts her coat on and walks to the phone box at the edge of the estate. She rings Aunt Edie first, and after apologising for disappearing, arranges to go round for tea. Next she rings the solicitors and speaks to an elderly-sounding receptionist, and makes an appointment for Monday morning. Then she walks back to the house, grabs the roll of bin liners she bought from the SPAR and heads for the loft. She’s guessing David has no use for a pair of beige chinos with the crotch missing.
As she picks up a copy of Brave New World a photograph slips from its pages and flutters to the floor. Lily picks it up and sees her parents sitting on a scooter, David at the front, wearing a thin black tie and a shiny grey suit, his hair spiked, while Lily’s mum peers out behind him, her arms wrapped tightly around his waist, wearing a helmet and a broad grin. Lily puts the photograph in her pocket and scoops everything else into the bin liners.
