by Lucy Diamond
There was the definite sound of footsteps climbing the stairs to the flat. ‘Is it David?’ Sally whispered, her eyes wide.
‘Must be,’ said Emma. Oh, help. She wished she hadn’t drunk so much so quickly now. They both stiffened as a key was put in the lock and turned.
Then the door opened and David walked in. ‘Hiya,’ he said. ‘Oh, Sal – hello. How are you?’
‘Great, thanks,’ Sally replied, leaping to her feet. ‘Just about to leave actually.’
Emma got up too, dazed by the unexpected appearance of her husband. ‘Hi,’ she said. Her mouth felt dry all of a sudden and her heart thudded.
‘No need to leave on my account, Sal,’ David began, but she brushed his comment aside.
‘Ah, cheers, but I promised Paul I wouldn’t be late.’ She held up her hands as if to say, What can you do? ‘I’ll just dial a cab, then I’ll leave you to it.’
Emma felt as if they were actors in a play as she went to embrace David. ‘You okay?’ she asked quietly.
‘Yeah,’ he said into her hair. ‘It’s good to be back.’ He held her tight for a long moment and she felt herself moulding to his shape. God, she had missed him. Just being held by him felt like such a treat.
‘Lovely to see you both,’ Sally said in the background. ‘I’m going to wait outside for the taxi, so …’
Emma disentangled herself from David and flung her arms around her friend. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘For everything. Let’s do this again soon. I’ve missed you.’
‘Me too,’ Sally said. ‘I’ll ring you. Bye, David.’
Emma shut the front door and they heard her clattering down the steps. Then came the bang of the outer door as she left the building. ‘So,’ Emma began, her breath catching at the enormity of the unsaid. ‘I guess we should talk.’
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Izzy was starting to wonder if she’d done the right thing, phoning Hugh to have a little word – especially as she hadn’t heard a thing from Alicia since then, despite the birthday cake and card, despite the Happy Birthday text. But really, what kind of friend would she have been if she’d turned a blind eye to Hugh’s dodgy secrets? A rubbish one, that’s what. ‘I’ll make it up to you,’ she had vowed to Alicia, back in the hospital, and she’d been looking for ways to repay her ever since. When she’d heard Hugh and David talking about this other woman Hugh had met up with, the opportunity to help her friend seemed to have presented itself to Izzy on a silver platter.
All the same, she dreaded to think what a hornets’ nest she might have stirred up.
She’d laid it on the line to him when she’d called – once she’d finally got Hugh on the phone, that was. It had been a nightmare, hunching over the Mulberry House reception phone when nobody was around, in order to call Alicia’s landline. And of course Alicia had picked up the call – twice – and Izzy had panicked and hung up, not wanting to be detected. If only she’d had Hugh’s mobile number, she could have avoided all the subterfuge, but she didn’t want to prompt questions from Charlie by asking for it.
Third time lucky anyway. He’d answered and she’d put it to him straight: tell Alicia what’s going on, or I will. Simple as that.
He hadn’t liked that very much, of course. His voice had changed from assured to shaky in a single heartbeat. ‘Is this a threat?’ he asked. ‘What … what do you know?’
What did she know? Not a lot. Enough, though. ‘I’m saying this as Alicia’s friend,’ she replied. ‘I’m not interested in the gory details, I just don’t want her to be hurt.’
‘Neither do I,’ he said sadly. She could practically hear him wringing his hands. Shouldn’t have cheated on her then, should you? she thought, hardening herself to his anguish. Alicia deserved better. ‘Well, that’s that then,’ he ended. ‘Goodbye.’
Since then Izzy had kept an ear out for news down the family grapevine, but nothing had been reported. Not a word. She really hoped she hadn’t completely ballsed this up. It had seemed the right thing to do, forcing Hugh to come clean – a show of solidarity with Alicia – but she couldn’t help wondering if she might actually have made things worse, not better. Should she have kept her mouth shut after all?
‘Were they there?’ she asked Charlie, when he came back from delivering the cake. ‘Is everything okay?’
‘They must be out somewhere,’ he replied. ‘I’ve got a spare key, so I left the cake on the kitchen table. Had to put it back together again after I dropped it on the front path, but …’
She laughed despite her anxiety. ‘You’re such a bad liar.’
He grinned. ‘Do you think I’d have dared show my face if I really had dropped it?’ he asked. ‘No, it’s fine. Survived the journey. Tasted lovely, too … You did say I could help myself to a slice, didn’t you?’
She threw a carrot at him. They were in Lilian’s kitchen, and Izzy had offered to make everyone lunch. ‘If I find out one crumb was missing …’
‘I love it when you’re angry,’ he teased, taking a bite out of the carrot. ‘Go on, start telling me off. Give me a proper bollocking.’
She laughed again. ‘Don’t tempt me, Charlie Jones. There are more carrots where that one came from, and I can think of plenty of uses for them, that’s all I’m saying.’
‘Kinky talk – even better,’ he said, dodging as she tried to cuff him. ‘This is like one of those hotlines, isn’t it, where I pay a premium-call rate and you start promising me carrots up the arse. Dirty girl. I love it.’
‘Ah, there you are, David,’ Eddie said, coming into the room just then.
Charlie turned round. ‘It’s me, Dad. David’s gone back to Bristol, remember?’
Eddie scratched his head. ‘Of course he has,’ he said after a moment. ‘I knew that. Have you seen my glasses anywhere?’
‘No, Dad,’ Charlie said.
‘I haven’t, either,’ Izzy said. ‘Can I make you a brew while you’re here, Eddie?’
He beamed at her. ‘Now you’re talking,’ he said. ‘You’re my kind of girl, you know. She’s my kind of girl, you know, Charlie.’
‘Oh, she’s mine too,’ Charlie said, grinning. ‘Make us one too while you’re at it, babe.’
Izzy rolled her eyes, but couldn’t help a flush of pleasure. My kind of girl, eh? Did he really mean that, or was he just messing about? She still couldn’t tell if he felt anything more for her than ‘just good friends’. ‘You take over with these carrots then,’ she told him. ‘Are you okay there, Eddie?’ she added, getting down some mugs. ‘Do you want to have a seat? This won’t take a minute.’
She’d been in the house less than a week and already adored big, gentle Eddie, as did the girls. He was so sweet and kind, softly spoken and mild-mannered, yet she’d seen the devoted way he looked at Lilian and his sons, and got a sense of the deep protective love he felt for them, like a daddy bear. Sure, he was in his sixties, with a paunch and greying hair, but she could just imagine him in his prime, squaring up to anyone who dared hurt a member of his family. She’d always wanted a dad.
There was this unspoken subject everyone was skirting round, though. Eddie was a frail old man, she thought, watching him lower himself carefully into a chair at the table, and age was creeping up on him, tapping on his rounded shoulder. He had started forgetting things – names, words, where he was going, what he was doing – and seemed to be in a fog for much of the time. So why was nobody acknowledging that there was a problem?
The kettle began hissing and Eddie turned his benevolent, guileless eyes around the room. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve seen my glasses anywhere, have you?’ he asked.
Izzy was getting more agile on her crutches every day, and, as the girls were happy to play in the garden for hours on end, she took it upon herself to start helping out around the main house. At first Lilian had shooed her away, refusing her offers of assistance. ‘You’re meant to be resting,’ she said in that brisk, clipped way of hers, but Izzy had insisted.
‘It’s the least I
can do,’ she argued. ‘Besides, I’m not very good at resting.’
This seemed to strike a chord. A lifelong grafter herself, Lilian could relate to such an admission. ‘Nor me,’ she admitted after a moment, then gave a nod of approval. ‘Well … if you’re sure, then I suppose I could use a hand here and there. Thank you.’
And so Izzy got stuck in. Although stairs were still difficult, she was able to hoover (slowly) the downstairs rooms, help out in the kitchen (such a lovely big kitchen!) and take bookings for new guests online or over the phone. She rather enjoyed being involved with the personal side of the business too, greeting the guests and answering their queries if Lilian was too busy. (Lilian was always too busy, poor woman, what with it being Easter and Eddie not being himself. She also had to do all the driving now, as the family had banned Eddie from the car, following an incident in the lane with a Renault Mégane.)
It wasn’t just the domestics that Izzy lent a hand with. Having seen Lilian struggle back with two enormous loads of groceries within the week, Izzy showed her how to order food online and have it delivered instead. It was clear that Lilian was extremely excited by this idea. ‘So I won’t have to go out and pick up the shopping myself?’ she asked several times before the first delivery. ‘Somebody will drive it all here for me?’
‘Yes, and they’ll bring the bags through to the kitchen if you want them to, as well,’ Izzy assured her. ‘All you have to do is put everything away. Simple as that.’
It was quite something, seeing Lilian’s expression when the delivery van arrived that first time, and the strapping young driver carried through all her bags of groceries. The novelty of such a thing made her face light up, like the sun coming out. ‘Thank you. This is wonderful!’ she said, rummaging through her purse for a tip.
‘You don’t have to do that,’ the driver laughed as she tried to press a pound coin into his hand. ‘Really, Mrs Jones – it’s just my job.’
‘Well, you must take a piece of cake then,’ she replied, wrapping up a slab of the lemon-drizzle cake she’d baked the day before. ‘No arguments!’
Since then, Lilian had made a shopping list every few days, and Izzy ordered it online for her. Within a matter of weeks she knew the names of all the drivers, whether or not they were married and how many children they had. She always had a treat ready for them, too. ‘If only you’d been doing this when my boys were little,’ she was fond of telling them. ‘The hours it would have saved me! Housewives these days don’t know they’re born, do they?’
In return for Izzy’s work, Lilian’s hard frostiness seemed to be thawing by the day. The Allertons now had an open invitation to every evening meal. Lilian didn’t bat an eyelid when Willow accidentally cracked the bathroom window with a spectacular overhead kick of the football. And Izzy noticed that treats were appearing in the shopping lists, especially for the girls – ice lollies, which Lilian would produce with a flourish on sunny days, and packets of lime and strawberry jelly that she made with them in rare quiet moments.
They liked her too. Willow presented Lilian with a little clay cat she had made at school the previous term, which now stood proudly on the dresser next to the big red teapot. Hazel was prone to giving her impromptu handstand and forward-roll displays in the kitchen, after Lilian once let slip that she’d loved gymnastics as a child. Lilian had even taught them a few tunes on the old piano, and the girls could often be heard bashing out ‘London’s Burning’ or ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star’ on there now.
It was funny how your first impression of someone could be so wrong. The battleaxe who’d all but shoved Izzy and her children off the premises that awful first afternoon seemed a completely different person now. Maybe Charlie had been right the whole time. Once you got to know her, his mum really was kind of okay.
Somehow or other the Easter holidays were almost over, and Izzy needed to start putting her life in order. She began by organizing someone to cover her ballet classes for the next six weeks, so as to keep them ticking along in her absence. The replacement she found, Ella, was newly qualified and full of enthusiasm. ‘I’m free all summer if you need me,’ she said, glancing down at Izzy’s cast.
Izzy wasn’t sure how to reply. She hoped to have made a full recovery by then, but it was difficult to predict. Charlie had taken her back to the fracture clinic for a follow-up X-ray and appointment, and the consultant had pronounced herself pleased with the healing process so far, but it was still early days. As for her other job, Margaret and the tea shop girls had sent flowers.
‘There’s a job here for you whenever you need it,’ Margaret said when Izzy phoned to thank her. She sounded awkward. ‘I’m just sorry I didn’t do more to help you when – you know – he turned up,’ she added in a rush. ‘It all happened so fast.’
‘Don’t worry,’ Izzy said. ‘Please. I don’t think anyone could have stopped him that day. I’m just grateful to be alive.’
She had to make her goodbyes and ring off quickly then, because her whole body had begun trembling from the flashback of that terrible day. Don’t cry, don’t cry, it’s okay. The shock was still catching up with her, reluctant to be shaken off. Every now and then she was slammed with the enormity of what had happened, then traumatized by imagining the terrible outcomes she had been spared. She was lucky not to have suffered brain damage, spinal injuries, a broken neck. I’m just grateful to be alive.
She gripped the handles of her crutches, trying to breathe normally as the panic attack rushed at her, like an enormous wave. She was okay. She had survived. They were here, safe at Mulberry House, and they would get through this as a family.
‘Is everything all right?’ Lilian asked, coming down the stairs just then with a bundle of washing. Izzy was sitting at the reception desk in the hallway, still immobile following the phone call.
She took a deep breath and pushed herself slowly to her feet. ‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘Just … having a moment.’
Lilian eyed her, with the measuring gaze of a woman who had seen it all before. ‘I think you’re overdoing it a bit,’ she pronounced eventually. ‘Go on, I can manage here today. You take it easy for a while, okay? Go and sit in the garden. I’ll bring you a cup of tea once I’ve got this lot in the machine.’
Izzy said nothing. She wasn’t good at taking it easy – but then she wasn’t much good for anything, in the state she was in right now.
‘No arguments,’ Lilian told her. ‘You look very pale. Go and get some sunshine and fresh air. It’s lovely out.’
Izzy knew when she was beaten. ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘I will, if you don’t mind. I’ve got some forms and stuff to go through about closing Gary’s bank account anyway, I can get on with those.’
‘The forms can wait; I’ll help you with them later. You just sit in the sun and rest.’
Sometimes it was nice to be told what to do, Izzy thought gratefully, swinging herself through the house on her crutches and outside to the patio. She never would have done this, left to her own devices; she would have busied herself with another chore, pushed herself along. Having someone order you to stop and take it easy was a total novelty – but one she rather liked.
A few minutes later Lilian bustled out with a tray of tea things and a magazine one of the guests had left behind. The girls were busy further down the garden making a den, birds swooped across the blue sky, and the sun felt warm on her skin. Izzy sat quietly for a moment, sipping her tea and letting her tired bones sink into the old wicker garden seat. This must be what it was like to have a mother, she realized after a while, being fussed over, and looked after. It felt good, really good.
The next day a letter arrived that changed everything. If Izzy had been feeling remotely together, she might have foreseen it, but she hadn’t. Hadn’t imagined in a million years that, as Gary’s wife (albeit estranged), she’d be in line for a massive life-insurance payment. He’d worked for an insurance company since leaving school, and one of the perks had been the most comprehensive personal-i
nsurance package available. The money hadn’t actually arrived yet – more forms to fill in and sign first, of course – but oh, my goodness. She was going to be rich. She, Isabel Allerton, wouldn’t have to worry about scraping together pennies for bills for a long while. She wouldn’t have to take back her dance classes if she didn’t feel like it, or work for the next few years, for that matter. For the first time ever she would be financially solvent, and needed never to rely on anyone else again.
And, of course, she realized dazedly, the flat in Manchester had her name on the mortgage too. Once she cleared it out and found someone who wanted to buy it, she’d be richer still. Admittedly, it wasn’t a palace – it was in a fairly rundown area of the city and wasn’t what you’d call pretty – but they’d bought it years ago for a bargain price and she knew the value had risen. Her head spun at the notion of all this money coming her way. In life, Gary might have cowed her and hurt her, but in death he had set her free. He’d given the girls the best kind of security too. She was already looking into investment funds for the pair of them, so that, come eighteen, they’d have a good start as young women. Unlike her, they’d have real choices in their hands. They could go to university if they wanted, they could travel the world. And in the meantime the three of them could have some corking holidays too – ones that needed passports and everything. Bring it on!
Before she could start flicking through holiday websites, though, there were still the practicalities of selling the flat to get through; a job she both dreaded and wanted to get over with. So when Charlie told her that he had the last three days of the week off work, and asked if they should set off on a road trip to Manchester, there was only one possible answer. Needs must, as her granny would have said. ‘Let’s do it,’ she replied.
He borrowed a six-seater van from a mate (Charlie had all sorts of useful mates, it was becoming clear) and off they went at the crack of dawn the following morning. It was a four-and-a-half-hour journey according to the satnav, but it turned out to be more like six hours on the road, after they’d stopped several times for food, coffee and loos. Still, the girls absolutely loved the novelty of being in a van, and Charlie proved to have a knack of tuning the radio to find the best driving songs. Plus, he was good company. Great company. She’d never spent so much time with someone who was just so easy to be with, who made her laugh so much. His stream of funny stories took the edge off her nerves all the way up the motorway. It was only as the signs for Manchester finally appeared that she began to feel a strange, anxious ache inside.
