Making Hay

by Veronica Henry

  There was nothing she could do now. The car was packed up, the new tenants for their house were arriving tomorrow. If she changed her mind, there was nowhere they could go. So she steeled herself, promised to ring as soon as they got there and slid into the front seat. And once Barney had started up the engine, and they’d roared off down the road, and the farewell party became tiny little figures waving frantically in the rear-view mirror, Suzanna felt excited again. If she could have chosen a destiny for her and Barney, surely this was it?

  Fickle April had arranged a bitter wind and relentless drizzle that was in total contrast to the sunshine they had left behind in Twickenham as Suzanna and Barney drove into the empty car park of the Honeycote Arms. It looked most unwelcoming. The faded sign swung in the breeze and seemed almost to mock them; the boarded-up windows glared out. The stone had none of the warmth they remembered from their visit; the paintwork seemed to have peeled away in the intervening weeks. The gate to the garden swung back and forth on rusty hinges; the garden itself was muddy and overgrown, with a broken-down set of swings that screamed litigation, a few empty metal bins and some rotting garden chairs. Suzanna looked at Barney and shivered. It was almost like something out of a horror film. She expected a hunched figure to appear from somewhere with a warning not to stray off the path.

  At three o’clock, as arranged, Keith Sherwyn arrived with the keys, and gave them a warm welcome along with a hamper of Cotswold goodies. But he didn’t want to get down to business – he wanted them to spend the afternoon on their own, getting their bearings, settling in.

  ‘There’s time enough for business tomorrow. We’re meeting at the brewery at ten, if that’s OK? The builders should be here at eight, ready to start ripping out the interior.’

  He smiled warmly at the pair of them.

  ‘I can’t tell you how excited we all are. I hope you feel the same. I know it looks a bit grim at the moment… but then the weather’s not doing us any favours.’

  Moments later he was gone. Barney and Suzanna looked at each other, then back at the pub. Neither of them wanted to voice to the other what they were thinking.

  The Honeycote Arms was a two-storey building, wider than it was high, and only one room deep. At right angles to the main body of the pub ran a large games room. Housing a skittle alley, pool tables and dartboards, it formed an L-shape into which further parking was tucked around the back, flanked by an assortment of ramshackle outbuildings. The bed and breakfast accommodation was over the pub itself – four bedrooms, two with en suite shower, the others sharing a bathroom. The staff accommodation was over the games room, and comprised a tiny kitchen and three bedrooms, with a private snug area downstairs. Oozing potential, one might say. Although at the moment it just looked ripe for demolition. An empty crisp packet scudded across the car park, driven by a bitchy little breeze.

  Barney tried to inject some enthusiasm into his voice.

  ‘Well, shall we go and have a look inside?’

  Inside, the empty pub looked even less inviting. The Bradleys had been winding it down when they had visited, but there had been some feeling that there was life within the walls. Now all the furniture had gone, it looked neglected and shabby. The air smelled of stale beer, cigarettes and chip fat. Barney swallowed hard. How could they ever have thought they could turn this around? It was beyond hope. Dark, dingy and dismal.

  They had four weeks to work their magic. Four weeks and a tight budget.

  To his amazement, Suzanna didn’t seem phased. She was pulling up the carpet, which was so rotten in places from years of spilt drinks that it disintegrated in her hands. She smiled up at him with glee.

  ‘Flagstones underneath. I thought so. They must have been mad to cover these up!’

  The toilets were a nightmare. They needed condemning. Ghastly formica cubicles, the floors and walls covered in cigarette burns. Cracked sinks. Stained floor tiles. Barney reckoned sorting them out could take up most of their budget. You had to have decent loos these days. People might not mind things being a bit rough round the edges, but not when it came to toilets.

  He didn’t even want to go into the kitchen. He knew without looking that it would be covered in a thick layer of grease. It was beyond filthy. For the first time Suzanna looked daunted.

  ‘Shit. That’s going to take more than a squirt of Mr Muscle.’

  She pulled open a cupboard door and it came off in her hand. She looked at Barney and started to laugh.

  ‘What have we done?’

  Barney didn’t really think it was all that funny, but if Suzanna was prepared to put a brave face on it, he decided to go along with it. Hesitantly, they ventured upstairs. Neither of them had paid much attention to the living accommodation on their visits.

  It was hideous. The Bradleys had obviously let their Alsatian sleep in their bedroom, as there was a thick coating of dog hairs, and deep scratches on the door. The furniture was beyond salvage – fit only for the bonfire. Suzanna took one look at the bed and shuddered.

  They’d insisted on staying at the pub, even though Keith had offered them B&B accommodation elsewhere while the renovations were taking place. But Barney didn’t see the point in spending unnecessary money, and he wanted to be on site. Suzanna had agreed with him. But now, as the light faded and the single naked bulb swung over their heads, the peeling wallpaper and worn carpet seemed squalid.

  ‘Bed bugs,’ said Suzanna.

  ‘Don’t!’ said Barney, who’d actually been wondering about mice. They looked in the other bedrooms, which had belonged to the Bradleys’ children, Kelly and Rick. Kelly’s was tiny, but seemed to have been decorated more recently. Although it was predominantly pink, with a shaggy acrylic carpet, it seemed cleaner than the master bedroom, and they decided to squat in there for the time being.

  They went down to the car to get their things. Suzanna opened the boot and was puzzled to find two large shoeboxes on top of their luggage, one tied with a pink ribbon, the other with a blue. She certainly hadn’t put them there.

  Puzzled, she and Barney ripped them open. Inside they found a pair of Hunter wellies each, in the appropriate size. Suzanna smiled: the gesture had Sybilla written all over it. Suddenly, it occurred to her just what they were leaving behind. People who understood them, people who knew them; people who cared. People who knew their shoe sizes, for God’s sake…

  Here, they were all on their own.

  Down the road at Tinker’s Barn, having spent their last night in Evesham, Ginny and the twins had scrubbed and polished frantically all morning while their worldly goods lay waiting to be unpacked, before Ginny deemed the house fit for habitation. They had then argued for the rest of the afternoon about what should go where, and the sad conclusion by six o’clock was that there wasn’t nearly enough room for any of it. Battered boxes of clothes were piled up on the landing as the wardrobe space was minimal. The twins were bickering: Ginny could hear that Sasha was tired and on the verge of tears, which meant she became incredibly spiteful.

  She decided to make an early supper with the few groceries she’d brought with them. She’d tried to empty out her cupboards completely at the old house – there was no point in transporting things unnecessarily. And there was something quite therapeutic about the thought of restocking all the kitchen cupboards. So her basic ingredients were pretty uninspiring. She made spaghetti with a tin of chopped tomatoes, a tin of tuna and a tin of sweetcorn thrown in. Not particularly edifying, but Ginny had had rather a lot on her plate this weekend.

  ‘Is this organic?’ Kitty poked suspiciously at her sauce.

  ‘No, it isn’t. We can’t afford organic any more. We’ve been relegated to the world of blue and white stripes: Tesco’s value for money. If you want organic, you’ll have to get out there and dig yourself a garden.’

  Kitty looked mortified, whether because she was risking slow poisoning by pesticides or because her mother had been uncharacteristically sharp, she didn’t know. Ginny was instantly sorry, and smi
led round brightly as she tried to sprinkle Parmesan on her pasta. A solid block of dried cheese thumped vainly against the lid. Ginny put the drum down hastily before anyone started examining the sell-by date.

  ‘Shall we explore the village later?’

  Sasha looked up witheringly.

  ‘What, in the pitch dark? Anyway, what are you expecting to find, exactly? Fatboy Slim hosting an all-nighter? I can tell you exactly what there’ll be. A post office that doesn’t even sell Tampax – the one thing we’re likely to run out of. And a pub full of sad, pissed old farmers. And that’ll be it.’

  Sasha shoved her plate out of the way, got up and stomped out of the room. Kitty looked at her mum, rolling her eyes at her sister’s outburst.

  ‘She’s such a bitch.’

  ‘She’s upset. She’s bound to be. We all are, I’m sure.’

  ‘I don’t know why you’re so reasonable, Mum. I don’t know why you give her the benefit of the doubt. You’re too nice.’

  Which was why her husband had left her, thought Ginny. She’d been a total doormat, made it easy for him. Maybe it was time to get tough. Only she didn’t have a clue how. And with who? She couldn’t start on her daughters. They’d had just as hard a time as she had. If not worse.

  Despite being technically identical, the twins were quite different. With their high cheekbones and their dainty noses and their wide grey eyes, they looked like little kittens. The only superficial difference was their hair. They each had corkscrew ringlets, white blonde at birth that had now, sadly Ginny thought, darkened to a tawny brown. But while Kitty revelled in the abandon of her curls, leaving them wild and loose past her shoulders, or twisted into a big clip on the top of her head, Sasha utterly loathed them, and spent fortunes and hours straightening her hair with any number of conditioners and de-frizzers and medieval-looking instruments of torture until it was dead, Jennifer-Aniston straight.

  Personality-wise, however, they were living proof that horoscopes were total bollocks. In their dress alone, they were poles apart. Kitty’s look was grungy, eclectic, eccentric and exotic – she usually wore things she’d customized herself. She was never happier than when scrabbling through jumble sales where she’d manage to find the dinkiest pink woolly cardigan on to which she’d sew big silver star buttons, or an army jacket which she’d embellish with scraps of lace and glittery gold ricrac. Sasha, on the other hand, wouldn’t touch second-hand clothes with a barge pole – everything had to be pristine, up to the minute and preferably designer. She spent as much on magazines as Kitty spent on clothes, and moaned for hours about what she couldn’t afford.

  And while Kitty was easygoing and supportive, Sasha was highly strung and demanding, and Ginny found herself wishing, only slightly and very occasionally, that Sasha had chosen to live with David. Ginny once, in absolute desperation, told her that she loved her very much but sometimes found it very hard to like her. And Sasha just shrugged and said that was OK, she didn’t need to be liked, nobody got through this bitch of a life by being liked – did she, for example, think Madonna was liked…?

  As she gloomily stacked the barely-touched supper plates, then scraped the leftovers into the bin, Ginny realized that the twins were obviously taking the upheaval harder than she thought. After all, it was the first time they’d moved. They’d lived in the big Victorian semi in Evesham all of their life, and although it hadn’t been luxurious it had been large, with plenty of room for them to have their friends back. It had always been a lively, happy house. Any hopes Ginny had of recreating that atmosphere here were rapidly diminishing. It wasn’t home, by any stretch of the imagination.

  She decided to have a bath. She tiptoed past the twins’ bedroom, where she could hear Sasha complaining and Kitty telling her to shut up. Ten minutes later, she was lying up to her neck in bubbles – thank God there was plenty of hot water – with Sasha’s Discman playing Led Zeppelin’s Greatest Hits to drown out the noise of their carping.

  Big mistake. Or, as Sasha would say, bi-i-i-i-ig mistake. By the time Robert Plant had started crooning that he was going to have to leave, there were big fat tears rolling down Ginny’s cheeks. She didn’t know if it was the pertinence of the lyrics that triggered her sobbing, or the memories the music unleashed: memories of her and David in their flat in Birmingham, where he was finishing his dental training and she was a nurse at the Queen Elizabeth hospital. The turntable was always spinning, music turned up full volume till the neighbours complained; friends spilled in and out; David cooked his special curries with a dentist’s precision and attention to detail, using mysterious spices and unrecognizable vegetables from the ethnic shops down the road. There was endless beer and wine and everyone danced and sang. Nothing really mattered back then, before they were married. They worked hard and they played hard.

  Real life had only kicked in once they had moved to Evesham, where David joined a practice and Ginny had the twins. The emergency hysterectomy when she began haemorrhaging after the birth had come as a shock, but they both agreed they should be grateful to have two beautiful daughters, and not to dwell on it. Ginny also felt that it had been a warning to her, that she should concentrate on her girls and not her career, and so they had agreed that she wouldn’t work again till the girls had grown up. Besides, David was going to need a lot of support, both moral and practical, as he wanted to start his own practice.

  So why had he chosen to leave her now, when she’d given him so much and given up so much? Had he deliberately waited for the moment when the twins had essentially reached adulthood, thinking that would somehow make it better for her? When in reality it made it so much worse. Because without David and the twins, she was nothing. And why had he left her? They had very rarely argued, because their roles were so defined – the edges of their responsibilities had never blurred; they were both happy with who and what they were and what they were supposed to be doing.

  After much internal agonizing and analysis, Ginny had decided it was because she was boring. She got through life by being efficient and organized. It wasn’t that she didn’t know how to have fun – she knew people enjoyed her company; she had a wry sense of humour and a caustic wit when she felt like it. But she was frighteningly sensible. She always had paracetamol and plasters in her handbag in case of an emergency. She took people’s car keys off them when they were too drunk to drive. David must have been bored to death. She tried to remember the last time she’d done anything spontaneous, out of the ordinary or naughty. Even her clothes were safe and dull. Jeans. Fleeces – grey or navy. She had some nice clothes for dressing up, but realized there was little occasion to do that. Should she really be blaming herself for that? What had been stopping David organizing a night out? They usually had friends over or went to their houses, where they all indulged in an Indian takeaway – David had long since given up showing off his culinary skills, complaining that you couldn’t get the ingredients in Evesham – with cans of beer for the blokes and cheap white wine for the women while the kids fought or sulked or listened to loud music upstairs.

  Ginny gritted her teeth. Don’t look back. Look forward. She could do what the bloody hell she liked from this day on. She turned off the Discman, wiped away her tears, turned the hot tap back on to heat up the water and concentrated on making a list: a list that would make her life bearable and give her back a sense of self.

  NUMBER ONE: Get a dog. She had always wanted a dog. Had always had one when she was growing up. But once she’d got married, it was out of the question. David was allergic to them, he said. Badly allergic. He only had to sit in the same room as a dog and his eyes puffed out and his skin came out in hives. Ginny had never actually seen any evidence of this, but a dog had been a complete no-no for the last twenty years. Now she could have one – hell, she could have a hundred and one if she wanted. It had been the first thing she’d checked on the lease of the barn, that pets were allowed. They were. She was off to the NCDL as soon as was feasible. Apart from anything, three women living alone
needed some sort of protection, even if it was just a warning bark when a stranger came to the door. She’d sleep easier in her bed with a dog roaming round.

  NUMBER TWO: Get a job. Money was the last reason. Although it was a pretty good one. She didn’t want to spoil the twins, but there were things they needed, things she couldn’t afford at the moment, and some extra cash would mean she could give them those things without feeling resentful, without feeling that it was her having to make sacrifices in order to provide for them. No, the main reason for getting a job was because she wanted to feel like a person in her own right again. She’d adored nursing and been bloody good at it, and she’d enjoyed the life. But she didn’t think she wanted to go back to that now. It was too big a commitment, even with the twins the age they were. She certainly didn’t want to work nights. And things had changed. Morale had plummeted. Conditions in nursing were at best frustrating, at worst impossible. She didn’t need to feel any more undervalued than she already did. If it was an ego boost she was looking for, nursing was probably the last thing she should consider. So what instead? Ginny didn’t have a clue. Perhaps she’d look in the local paper. That would give her an idea of what to aspire to.

  NUMBER THREE (and this was the most scary): Get a bloke. A chap. An escort. A companion. Ginny realized that she’d never been without a man in her life since she was fourteen. She’d had her first serious boyfriend then. It wasn’t that she was sexually precocious, just mature for her age. And she liked the company of men, liked the deal that went with a partnership. And she utterly loathed her own company. She’d always waited anxiously for the sound of David’s key in the lock, had welcomed him eagerly at six, seven, eight o’clock, whenever he’d got home, so she could talk to him, compare notes on the day, debate what to watch on television. To Ginny, life was for sharing. There was absolutely no point in seeing a film on your own, eating a meal on your own, going to bed on your own… Not that she was a raving sex maniac. But she’d found over the past couple of months that there was nothing bigger than a double bed with one person in it.