The Telephone Box Library

by Rachael Lucas

  A falling out with the friends, or a no-show? He should have asked who she was meeting and where exactly they were going. The tug-of-war between letting her grow up and giving her freedom, balanced with the need to keep her safe and make sure she wasn’t getting into trouble or turning out like her mother – it was so bloody hard. Sam ran a hand across his jaw, feeling the tension of his muscles beneath the stubble – he really ought to shave more often. And try meditation or something. He pushed the trolley back into place and drove back to the shopping centre, feeling puzzled.

  ‘Hi, darling.’ Don’t ask questions, the parenting books said. Let them open up and tell you what they’re feeling. He flicked a glance at Freya, but her face was giving nothing away as she pulled open the door.

  ‘Hi.’ She got in, slumped down in her chair, and pulled her hood over her face despite the warmth of the afternoon. She slouched sideways against the window and he headed back towards home, turning on the radio to break the ominous silence.

  ‘Bad shopping day?’

  He’d waited five minutes before asking. That seemed like enough time.

  ‘Don’t.’

  She looked down at her phone, scrolling endlessly.

  ‘You’ll get carsick if you do that. You know you can’t look at stuff when the car is moving.’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  After a moment, he noticed, she shoved the phone back in her pocket.

  They waited in a huge queue of weekend traffic. The radio burbled on a stream of mindless chatter. A red kite flew overhead, hovering for a moment over the long grass beside the hard shoulder before shooting downwards like an arrow, certain of its prey. He wished he was as certain. Right now he felt completely hopeless – out of his depth, but with a vague, gnawing worry that something was definitely not right.

  Maybe he’d ask Lucy what she thought. He could pop over later, just see if she had any advice; or would she think he was being a pain? Why the hell was he agonizing over this? He’d been friends with Mel for years, and never thought for a second about spending time with her. He glanced up, seeing the golden arches of McDonald’s coming into sight.

  ‘D’you want McDinner?’ That was guaranteed to put a smile on Freya’s face, no matter what the cause of her grouchiness.

  She shrugged her small shoulders, still gazing out of the window. ‘If you like.’

  He sighed and flicked on the indicator, pulling in.

  Freya sat looking at her phone while she ate her burger, and couldn’t be jollied into conversation. Sam watched the traffic flying past on the dual carriageway and wondered how he’d somehow managed to screw things up. He’d managed almost fourteen years of getting it right and now – God, he was catastrophizing.

  When they got home, Freya slunk into her room without saying a word to him. He was slightly mollified to see that she beckoned the dogs to follow her. She hadn’t gone off them, at least.

  You about?

  He fired off a text to Mel, glancing up at the clock on the kitchen wall. He looked in the fridge, realizing he should have gone shopping. There wasn’t even any milk for coffee. All that was in there was half a bottle of Fanta, a dubious-looking piece of parmesan and some wilting greens. Unless he was mistaken, Freya was going to emerge in about half an hour exclaiming she was starving despite having eaten a burger and chips, and complaining that there was never anything to eat in this place. He’d have to pop to the shops.

  Mel’s reply came back immediately: Kettle’s on. Come round and save me from accounts.

  ‘I’m just going to nip over to Mel’s for a coffee.’ He paused for a second. The old Freya would have leapt up, hugged him, told him she was coming too, and skipped out of the front door, the dogs swirling round her feet. Now he expected, and received, silence. She didn’t even look up from her phone. Sighing, Sam headed for the door, grabbing his coat off the peg and reaching for the dog leads.

  ‘I’m coming,’ a voice came from behind him as he opened the door, pulling his keys from his pocket. He spun round to see Freya, hair now tied up off her face in a complicated sort of heap. She was holding her phone, and she smiled at him as if she’d forgotten why she’d been in such a mood.

  ‘Oh hello,’ he said, teasing her. ‘Nice to see you back.’ For a second he wondered if he’d pushed it too far, too fast, but she grinned at him, her little heart-shaped face lighting up. She looked like her old self again. God, hormones were complicated.

  ‘You ready, then?’ Freya grabbed an apple from the fruit bowl and strode past him, leaving him open-mouthed, still holding the door.

  As soon as they walked into the doggy, messy jumble of Mel’s cottage Freya disappeared upstairs, thumping two steps at a time, and a moment later there were shrieks, followed by deafeningly loud music.

  ‘It’s like living with a bloody tornado.’ Mel picked up the kitchen broom and banged the handle hard on the ceiling. Cammie was clearly back from visiting her dad. A moment later the music volume dropped to a slightly less volcanic level.

  ‘I got into this because I wanted to train dogs, not do bloody paperwork.’ Mel made an open-handed gesture, indicating the kitchen table. It was covered in untidy heaps of paper, unopened envelopes and a shoe box full of receipts. A pristine file sat in a wrapper, unopened. ‘I’ve got a delinquent Jack Russell in the utility room who’s determined to make his presence felt, and I’ve got a one-to-one lesson at six.’

  ‘Why don’t you just hire an accountant?’

  ‘Wouldn’t that cost a fortune? I’ll end up spending all my bloody profits.’

  She raked a hand through her long, streaky hair, flipping it over from one side of her face to land on the other, then tucked it behind her ears.

  ‘Honestly, use mine. All I do is gather up all the receipts and stuff and hand it over. I mean, can you imagine me doing accounts?’

  Mel snorted with laughter. ‘Definitely not. Dyslexia and all this –’ she picked up the papers, shoving them to one side and making space for him to sit down – ‘would be a nightmare.’

  ‘How’s Camille?’

  ‘Fine. Why’d you ask?’ Mel opened the fridge, pulled out a carton of milk and made two instant coffees, handing one over. The mug was chipped, and said PET PROFESSIONAL PREMIUM INSURANCE on the side. Catching him looking, she grinned. ‘Dishwasher’s dirty. We’re down to the dodgy old mugs from the dog shows. Sorry.’

  He shook his head, laughing. Mel lived in a state of happy chaos. It was a constant source of amazement to him that every morning, from this place of muddle, doggy footprints and general untidiness, Camille emerged, sleek and polished with not a perfectly curled hair out of place. She was the absolute opposite of her mother in every way but in personality – in that way, the two of them were alike. Easy-going, peaceable and the sort of people you could sit with in an amicable silence without feeling the need to talk. He sipped his coffee and rubbed the head of a huge, lumbering Labradoodle.

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘That’s Bert. I’m dog-sitting him for a week while his mum has an op. He’s adorable, isn’t he?’

  ‘Gorgeous.’

  Bert looked up at Sam with huge chocolate-drop eyes and wagged his tail, hoping for more attention.

  ‘So why are you asking about Frey? What’s she up to?’

  ‘I wasn’t. I asked about Camille.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Mel raised a knowing eyebrow. ‘I know. That’s shorthand for “do you know anything I don’t”, and something’s going on. What is it?’

  ‘She’s just gone – weird.’

  The eyebrows raised in unison this time.

  ‘I dunno. It’s like she’s taken some sort of pill and transformed from lovely, easy-going Freya into this sullen, silent creature. I’m worried something’s up.’

  ‘You mean like something at school?’

  ‘Maybe.’ He bit his lip. ‘I dunno. Something weird happened. She was all set for a day out shopping, then we got there and the next thing I got a “come and get me asap”
message.’

  ‘Maybe she’s had a falling out with someone?’ Mel frowned. ‘I’ll ask Cammie if she’s heard anything.’

  ‘Or maybe it’s online stuff? They’re never off their bloody phones.’

  ‘I’ll check with Cam. See what she says.’

  ‘Don’t make it obvious.’

  Mel rolled her eyes and pulled a face. ‘Duh. I’m hardly going to go in there with my big size eights and demand to know what the story is.’

  ‘Yeah. Sorry.’

  ‘Any other news from the village gossip machine? I have to confess, I removed myself from the village group chat because the eighteen million messages a day about the library were sending me over the edge.’

  ‘Shush,’ he laughed. ‘Freya is really into the idea. Right now that’s such a bloody miracle, I’m just delighted to have her take an interest in something. And she’s been making plans for it with Lucy.’

  Mel’s smile curved around the edge of her mug and she looked at him, her eyes narrowing slightly. ‘And how is Lucy?’

  ‘Shut up, you.’ He shook his head.

  Mel raised an eyebrow and said nothing more.

  ‘Here you are, Hame.’ Lucy passed him a chew from the cupboard and watched him beetling off through the archway into the sitting room of the cottage. He gave a gruff little noise of pleasure as he hopped up onto the sofa and got to work. Lucy decided to reward herself with a glass of rosé to celebrate having done the washing and tidied the kitchen. The cottage looked particularly pretty in the slanting evening light. She poured herself a glass and set it on the worktop.

  ‘Hang on,’ she said, realizing that talking to a dog was probably the first sign of madness, ‘I’m going to get my book and then I’ll come back down.’

  Halfway up the stairs, she heard a loud bang and some muffled swearing. A split second later, Hamish hurtled to the front door of the cottage, barking loudly. She peered out of the window and down the street. Everything was peaceful – cars parked as normal outside the houses, a couple taking an evening stroll. And then there was another crash, and a familiar voice said ‘Oh, bloody hell.’

  She hid a smile behind her fingers as she looked across to the village green, where a very large Sam was struggling with a wooden shelf in the doorway of the very small telephone box.

  She went downstairs, picked up her glass, and slipped on her flip-flops. Hamish followed, barking self-righteously.

  ‘Do you need a hand?’

  ‘Bollocks.’ Hearing her voice, Sam banged his head as he stood up.

  Lucy pressed her lips together, trying not to laugh.

  ‘Sorry. I thought I’d just take an hour to measure up these offcuts for the shelves, and then I thought seeing as I had the right sizes, I might just fit one in and see how it looked, only it’s so bloody fiddly trying to get down there in that tiny space when . . .’ He looked at her for a moment, sizing her up ‘Actually, you could give me a hand, if you don’t mind.’

  ‘Not at all.’

  ‘I just need you to – I’ll have to hold your wine, I’m afraid,’ he said, taking it from her hand. He gave a self-deprecating smile as their eyes met. ‘If you could just get in the phone box and –’

  He leaned close to her, his bare arm grazing across hers as he pointed to the space where the middle shelf would fit. There were two metal brackets already in place.

  ‘I need you to bend down and screw it in from underneath. I’ve tried, but my hands are too big. It’s really fiddly.’

  ‘No problem.’ Lucy swapped him the wine glass for the screwdriver. ‘I haven’t drunk from it yet – you can have it if you like.’

  He pretended to mop his brow, pushing his untidy dark locks back from his forehead. ‘I can’t tell you how much I need this.’ He took a swig from the glass. ‘I’ll have to owe you one.’

  ‘Deal.’ Lucy bent down into the tiny space and peered into the corner, fastening the screw in place.

  ‘Here’s the other one.’ He put another screw in her hand. When she’d fastened it and stood upright, brushing concrete dust from her knees, he looked at her and smiled.

  ‘It’s going to look pretty good, isn’t it?’ He shifted from one foot to the other. ‘I feel bad now, I’ve got your wine.’

  ‘Have you much more to do?’ She looked inside the empty telephone box, still holding the heavy door open with one hand.

  He shook his head. ‘Just wanted to get an idea of how the shelves would look – I need to get the rest of the wood sanded down and varnished and I’ll put it in at the weekend. I’m glad you came over, though. I wanted to ask you a question.’ He pushed up the sleeves of his shirt, rubbing a hand down his arm. She looked at him expectantly.

  ‘It’s just—’

  Hamish, who had been bumbling around the village green investigating numerous exciting smells, suddenly came to life. He hurtled along the path towards a late-evening jogger, ears pricked and tail rigid.

  ‘Hamish!’ Lucy grabbed him by the collar. ‘I’d better get him back. If you’re not busy –’ she said it in a rush, before she chickened out – ‘you could come and share the wine with me?’

  ‘I’d love that.’

  He picked up his toolkit and carried it across the road to her cottage. ‘Of course if the village gossip network sees us, we’ll have caused a major scandal,’ he said, pretending to look both ways as if checking for spies.

  ‘I’m game if you are,’ said Lucy. She opened the cottage door and headed for the kitchen, pouring herself another glass and topping up his.

  He leaned down, scratching Hamish behind the ears. Hamish rolled over, exposing his tummy, asking for a tickle.

  ‘Hamish, you are ridiculous.’ Lucy passed him the glass. ‘I just always feel a bit weird about drinking on my own.’

  ‘Well, I can help with that.’

  Lucy picked up the bottle of rosé. ‘D’you want to come into the garden?’

  He followed her outside and they sat down on the little metal patio set, facing each other. Hamish scuttled around, sniffing things. The borders of the little cottage garden were full of huge, brightly coloured gladioli, standing tall over mounds of geraniums and delphiniums. The ox-eye daisies were past their best now, their leaves grey-green and their flowers a papery beige, curling away from autumn’s arrival. Hamish pottered over to the wooden hedgehog house and lifted his leg.

  ‘Oh God, I’m so sorry, your lovely hedgehog house.’

  ‘Don’t worry. I don’t know if you’ve ever come into contact with a hedgehog, but they absolutely reek. They won’t even notice, if you get any. They don’t hibernate yet. I hope we get some, for Bunty’s sake.’

  ‘Oh, Bunty and her animals.’ She smiled, cupping her glass.

  ‘Have you seen any bats yet?’ He looked up at the evening sky, which was a hazy pale pink. Summer was slipping out of reach, and autumn was creeping in.

  ‘Bats?’ She looked up at the sky. A strand of hair fell over her face and for a moment he longed to reach over and tuck it behind her ear.

  He cleared his throat. ‘From spring, you’ll start to see them swooping round in the evenings. As soon as – ow –’ he swatted at his leg as a mosquito bit. ‘I was going to say, as soon as the evening light dips and the flying creatures come out to play. Or to eat, in that one’s case.’

  ‘I’ve never seen a bat. I think living in the city, I’ve missed all that stuff.’

  ‘You get them in the city too. They’re everywhere. But there are loads round here. You could come on the bat walk next week if you like, and I’ll show you them?’

  ‘The bat walk. Do we do the bat signal to get them to appear?’

  ‘No, we just head up to the woods by the allotment at dusk. Make sure you wear some insect repellent, or you’ll be bitten to pieces.’

  ‘Not by bats?’

  ‘No, by bugs. It’s a bit of a village tradition. It started off as a fundraiser for something or other, then it just turned into one of those things we do. This place is f
ull of them. Bunty always comes.’

  ‘That would be lovely.’ She sipped her wine and looked at him, smiling. There was a silence. He couldn’t think of what to say, and she shifted in her seat.

  ‘Are you –’

  ‘Did you –’

  They both laughed.

  ‘We keep doing that. You go first,’ she said.

  ‘You’re the expert on teenagers. I wondered if I could ask what you thought about this. I took Freya to town this afternoon and she was all set for meeting up with friends, but half an hour later she wanted me to pick her up. Then she was sullen and grumpy all the way home. I’ve left her round at Mel’s place, hoping she might be able to get some sense out of her.’

  Lucy looked away, feeling awkward.

  ‘She’s just that age where they’re realizing they’re separate from you. Like toddlers, when they start having tantrums. It’s the same thing all over again – at this age, they’re testing the boundaries. Seeing what they can do, trying out being grown-ups.’

  ‘You don’t think there’s anything going on?’

  ‘I think . . .’ Lucy frowned for a second, and then picked at the label of the wine bottle. It came away cleanly, and she rolled it up into a tiny tube and fiddled with it as she spoke. ‘I think you need to have a chat with her. Make sure she knows you’re there for her, whatever she’s feeling.’

  ‘She knows that.’

  ‘I think she probably needs to hear it over and over again. It won’t do any harm.’

  ‘It’s bloody hard work bringing up a daughter without her mum around. Sometimes I wonder if I’m enough – if she wishes Stella was part of her life. And then I feel sick at the thought of it.’

  Lucy flattened the wine label out on the table and scrutinized it intently before she spoke.

  ‘Maybe you need to have a chat with her about how she feels about that.’

  Sam swallowed a mouthful of wine. He liked to think that he and Freya had a pretty open, honest relationship. She knew her mum wasn’t around, and they muddled along happily enough without her. If he was honest with himself, he was quite happy with it like that. The prospect of Stella being anywhere near them was something he didn’t know how to handle. He’d worked so hard to make up for Freya being abandoned, and he wasn’t willing to take the risk of that happening again.