A Hidden Life

by Adele Geras

  ‘Well, no, as a matter of fact.’ Justin pushed the hair out of his eyes and leaned back in his chair so that he was balanced on its back legs. Nessa wondered how long Phyl would last before she asked him to stop doing that. During their childhood it had been one of her more predictable exhortations and the ghost of if you can’t sit properly at the table, then please just leave and go to your room was practically visible, floating over them all. Nessa caught her stepmother’s eye and wondered if she could see it too. Obviously not, as she looked away at once and went on eating without much enthusiasm.

  ‘I haven’t thought about dividing it up. Of course not. D’you think I’m mad? I’m going to live there and I’m going to do great things, you see.’ Justin was smiling now. I’m very sorry that Nessa is pissed off and it’s bloody awful that Lou’s been cut out altogether, but hey, that’s none of my doing so I don’t see why I’m the one that’s got to be punished for it.’

  ‘What about you, Nessa?’ Matt looked at her.

  ‘What about me? What have I got to do with anything? It seems that Justin’s made up his mind and if he won’t listen to reason then we’re stymied.’

  ‘I get it.’ Justin’s face was going red. ‘What you think, and what Dad thinks, is reason and what I think is crap. Is that it?’ He never could argue calmly. He always lost it, Nessa thought, mentally patting herself on the back for at least staying cool during an argument.

  ‘That’s just typical,’ he continued. ‘It’s what you’ve always done, Nessa, our whole life. You just sit there looking superior and as if you don’t care and you do … I know you do. It’s eating you up, the fact that I’ve got the house and you haven’t. And if you ask me, that’s not fair. Anyone would think she’d cut you off without a farthing the way you’re carrying on. You always do carry on, though, don’t you? Nothing’s ever good enough.’

  ‘For heaven’s sake, Justin. You’re acting like a child. In fact, that’s your problem.’ Nessa leaned towards her brother to make her point more forcefully. ‘You’ve never grown up!’

  ‘Enough of that!’ Phyl spoke for the first time since the beginning of the meal, sounding exactly as she used to long ago when she was settling stupid disputes between the two of them. ‘Both of you are behaving like kids, and you aren’t the ones who are hard done by, either of you. Why isn’t Lou making a fuss? She’s the one with grounds for complaint, I’d have thought.’

  ‘Sorry, Phyl,’ said Nessa.

  ‘Yeah, sorry …’ said Justin, and his sister heard him putting a smile into his voice and saw the effort it took to transfer the smile to his face. Still, you had to hand it to him, he was good at pretending. Everyone else, Nessa felt sure, would be thinking sweetness and light had been restored, but she could tell that Justin was still fuming and what’s more, longing to be out of there. Well, welcome to the club, little brother, she told herself. I can’t wait to get home either.

  ‘That’s okay,’ said Phyl to both of them. She put her knife and fork down neatly on her plate. With a smile that Nessa recognized, the one that said this is my loving and motherly smile but you’re not deceived, are you? she said: ‘But Justin does have a point, Nessa. Constance left you a very large sum of money from shares and so forth. I think it’s a little – well, I don’t think Justin’s the only one who should consider dividing his inheritance more equally between the three of you. Gareth and you both earn good money and I’m sure Lou’s needs—’

  ‘I haven’t got any needs, Mum,’ said Lou, interrupting Phyl just in time. If she hadn’t spoken, Nessa was all ready to let rip. How dare Phyl? How dare her stepmother suggest that she divide her money when Justin was sitting on something that was worth so very much more?

  ‘I don’t see why either of us should make amends for Lou not getting on with Constance,’ she said, feeling faintly guilty because part of her recognized that what Phyl said was sort of true. Matt had brought the pudding to the table and served it while Phyl was speaking. Nessa now took a big bite of apple cake in a manner she hoped looked nonchalant. She spoke again, trying to sound a little more conciliatory, ‘It’s not really our business.’

  Lou glared at her. ‘No it isn’t. You’re right, Nessa. I’m quite capable of looking after myself and I’d rather starve than take a penny from either of you, ta very much. Constance didn’t like me, and I think I know why, though that doesn’t matter now. In any case, you can both relax. I’m very grateful for your help, Mum and Dad, and I couldn’t have managed without you this last year or so, but it’s not always going to be like that. I can earn a living and I will, too. And till I do, I’ll manage, even if I’m not exactly rolling in it just at the moment. I don’t care. I’m not accepting charity from Nessa and Justin.’

  ‘Good on you, Lou!’ said Justin. ‘And I bet you will make a huge success of your life, too! I have faith – every faith – in your talent and character.’

  ‘Yes, me too,’ said Nessa, wondering whether the others had heard the relief in Justin’s voice. Yet she rather doubted that Lou was ever going to have a brilliant career, poor thing. She hadn’t even finished her course at uni and now, with a small child, there was little chance of that. Still, you had to admire her bravery. Nessa smiled at Lou and said, ‘I think you’re being really noble, Lou, honestly, and I hope it all works out. You do know, don’t you, that you can always rely on me for help? You must come down and stay with us any time. Whenever – whenever – you feel you need to get away from London. I mean it. Truly.’

  ‘Ta, Ness,’ Lou said. ‘When my hovel gets to be too much for me, you mean. That’s kind of you. I might take you up on it.’

  Nessa smiled and privately hoped it wouldn’t be too soon or too often. She didn’t think Lou would be rushing down to see them much, if at all, but she’d made the gesture so honour was restored. Justin, she reflected, hadn’t made any such remark. Matt still looked pissed off. He obviously had no intention of leaving things where they were. There’d be letters going back and forth, emails, phone calls, and nothing would make any difference. Everyone would remain in exactly the same position as they were before. This meal had turned out to be precisely what Nessa had predicted: a total waste of time. She’d driven for half an hour to get here and now she’d have to drive half an hour to get home. Pointless and stupid.

  She looked across at her brother and wanted, as she so often did, to smack him across his smug face. He was helping himself to the cream Phyl had provided to go with the apple cake and looking as though he’d like to jump into the jug and swim about in it. Bathing in cream would be, Nessa felt sure, no more than he thought he deserved. Well, I’ve not finished with him. She decided to talk to Justin on his own very soon. He probably wouldn’t change his tune but she wasn’t quite ready to give up just yet.

  *

  ‘I could have done the night shift,’ Phyl said. She’d come into Poppy’s room while Lou was changing her daughter’s nappy. It was two o’clock in the morning. Nessa and Justin had both driven off after the meal and the house seemed to settle into a kind of peace as soon as they’d gone. Phyl went on, ‘In fact, if Poppy wakes up again, I’ll do it. You go to bed now and sleep in in the morning, too – you don’t have to rush off first thing, do you?’

  ‘That’s nice of you, Mum,’ said Lou, fastening the sticky tapes of the nappy across Poppy’s stomach and replacing her feet in the baby sleeping bag. ‘I’ll take you up on that offer. Ta.’

  ‘D’you want to go off to bed now and let me take over?’

  ‘No, that’s okay. Next time’ll do fine.’ She picked Poppy up and held her close. ‘She usually sleeps much better than this. It’s the strange cot. She’s not used to it.’ The fragrance of clean baby skin and Johnson’s baby wipes that filled her nostrils made her weak with a mixture of love and fear … the old fear that somehow she wasn’t going to be up to it, wouldn’t be able to do everything she was supposed to do in the way it was meant to be done and then … what then? Poppy would suffer.

  ‘You know
…’ Mum sounded tentative. She was whispering so quietly because of Poppy that Lou could hardly hear her.

  ‘What?’

  ‘We could look after her for a bit – just for a few weeks. To give you a break. I’d love it, Lou, honestly. I’m sure your dad would too. We’d take such good care of her. You wouldn’t have to worry about her for a single second. And you could come and see her every weekend. Think about it, please, Lou. Think carefully. You look washed out, darling. I hope you don’t mind me saying so, but it’s true. This – this row about Constance and the will is the last straw, right? After – well, after everything else.’

  Lou rocked backwards and forwards in a motion that she hoped very much would lull Poppy back into a deep sleep. She thought: I can just give her to Mum. I can leave Poppy here. I don’t have to get up in the night. I don’t have to take her to nursery. I can save some money. I don’t have to have her in the flat. For a second, an image of how peaceful everything would be without a baby around swam in front of Lou’s eyes and she found herself longing for it – longing for silence and freedom from worry and the permission to be completely selfish that vanished the minute you had a child. Mum was offering her a kind of salvation and she opened her mouth to say yes, of course. Take her. I’ll see her when she’s five … and was then overcome by a wave of guilt so strong that tears sprang into her eyes. How could she think like that? What kind of monster mother was she? Anyone would think she didn’t love Poppy. But I do. God, I do. I can’t. I can’t let her be here when I’m in London. I’d be thinking about her all the time. It’s not as though I’ve got a proper job that takes me out of the house or that I need to be doing. I can’t be reading things for Cinnamon Hill more than a couple of days a week.

  ‘I will think about it, Mum,’ she said, and Phyl nodded and slipped out of the room. Lou held her breath as she leaned forward to put Poppy back into the cot, doing the mental crossing of fingers, praying that the transition from warm arms to cool, flat sheets wouldn’t wake her daughter. It sometimes did, but tonight Lou was lucky and tiptoed out of the room and along the corridor to her own bedroom. Mum was right to call this the night shift – that was just what she felt like – a worker coming off shift, lighthearted and carefree. Mum would be dealing with anything else that Poppy did tonight, and early tomorrow. Bliss …

  Lou closed her bedroom door and sat on the edge of her bed, knowing it would take her ages to get back to sleep. It always did when she had to get up fori Poppy. At least tonight there was something to look at. Dad had put two big boxes of Grandad’s papers on the desk for her to take back with her tomorrow. She was eager to see whether John Barrington sl made notes or kept a diary. Boxes of papers – there was probably nothing important or interesting among them, but just the phrase made Lou feel interested and excited. And she wanted to know more about how he came to write Blind Moon and what he might have thought about it, and the kind of reception it had when it was published. Perhaps she was on the point of finding out something amazing and even if she didn’t, simply knowing what was there would bring him closer to her. His handwriting – small, beautiful, carefully made, right-sloping letters, always in black ink – would be a powerful reminder of him, and his words would make him alive for her again for a little while. There might also be letters from other people. What she’d probably find was bank statements and lists and boring stuff of every imaginable kind, but as long as the papers remained unread, they were full of possibilities.

  When Lou had volunteered to take the boxes back to London, her father was obviously very relieved. In answer to her mother’s queries about where on earth she was going to store them, she’d said there was lots of space, which was a lie. The boxes would end up under her bed. But Dad was going to drive her home. If Poppy stays here, Lou thought, then the car won’t be full of all her stuff and the boxes could sit on the back seat all by themselves. Does that mean I’ve decided about leaving Poppy? It must do, but I haven’t even thought about it yet.

  Lou listened to the silence. Poppy’s asleep, she thought. She must be by now, or she’d have called out, cried, or shouted for me to come back. Okay, so what about Mum’s offer? She sighed and wondered whether she could really walk out of this house tomorrow and leave Poppy behind. Of course I can, she thought. Mum would be so happy. But maybe I’m deluding myself. It’s not true that I’m only doing it because Mum wants it so much – a favour to her, giving her something she’s longed for ever since Poppy was born. I’m doing it for me too. So that I can be on my own, doing what I want to do and nothing else. How selfish is that? Am I really such a terrible mother? No, she decided. There really is a good reason for it and it would make Mum so happy. Surely that had to outweigh the feelings of guilt that she found so hard to shake off.

  Lou went to the window and looked out at the back lawn, shadowy in the dark but with the dim light of a half-moon outlining the tips of the shrubs with silver and making mysterious her mother’s neat but rather uninspired garden. The prospect of empty days and days ahead of her … she found it hard to imagine. She took a deep breath. Grandad’s book might be a film, she thought. As soon as this occurred to her, she felt a little dizzy, as though she’d come to the edge of a high cliff and looked over into a kind of void. But she couldn’t stop thinking about what a great film Blind Moon would make, if only someone wrote it who knew what they were doing.

  The longer she worked at Cinnamon Hill, the more strongly she believed that the script was the single most important component of a movie. You could cover up for a weak one with any number of special effects, or photographic dazzle; you could employ the very best actors and directors, but when push came to shove, what made the difference between the flashy and mediocre and the lasting and good was the story and the way it was told. Harry … he could do it. Or Martyn Westord, who’d written the most moving script Lou had read since she’d started working as a reader. Any number of other people came into her mind who might be ready and willing to take on Grandad’s book and make something of it. And I could sell them the rights, she thought. I could make some money from it and that’d be one in the eye for Constance.

  Then she sat down on the bed again, knocked back by a thought so startling that she had to catch her breath and think it over to herself a couple more times, testing it for madness, recklessness and general lunacy. No, the more she repeated it, the better it seemed to her. It was crazy perhaps, but when she thought it, she could feel excitement rising in her. She spoke the thought aloud, to test it in the air, to see whether it sounded like the ravings of a woman who was suffering from too little sleep.

  ‘I’ll do it myself,’ she said. She said it again, slightly differently this time: I’m going to write the screenplay for Blind Moon.’ Silently, she vowed not to tell a single soul. Because what if she couldn’t do it after all? What if she failed? She knew she wouldn’t be able to bear it if Mum and Dad and Nessa, and maybe Harry and other people at Cinnamon Hill, were all hanging on to see how she was progressing. Asking questions, or deliberately not asking questions. For the first time since Ray threw her out, Lou felt unalloyed happiness; a pure elation unmixed with any other emotion that you don’t usually get to enjoy after you’ve stopped being a kid. Everything was going to work out. It was pure accident that Mum had offered to take Poppy on the same night that she herself had made such a momentous decision, but somehow Lou couldn’t help feeling everything was being organized: being arranged so that she could do what she wanted to do, for the first time in a long time.

  And Grandad’s boxes would now be research. I’ll only have a quick look, she told herself, just to see what’s there and then I’ll go to sleep. She picked out a notebook that was right on top and opened it.

  *

  Matt looked across the kitchen at his wife, who was sitting next to the high chair and spooning beige puddingy goo into Poppy’s open mouth. This high chair lived normally in the box room on the attic floor. It had been used for Tamsin and now he brought it down every time Poppy
came to visit. It was wooden and well made, and they’d bought it when Lou was born. Matt was concentrating on the chair in an attempt to calm down. He knew that if he began to argue now, while Poppy was being fed, Phyl would refuse to answer. It was one of her iron rules: no fighting in front of children. He wasn’t altogether sure about how he felt at the prospect of Poppy’s stay. He had no idea of how long she’d be with them, but it was sure to be a few weeks at least. Matt thought the world of Poppy and was happy to have her to stay for a bit, but he also felt a little miffed that this had been decided without so much as a word of consultation with him. He listened to the babble of grandmotherly noise and chat that was coming out of Phyl’s mouth in an unending stream. Was it going to be like this every day? And at night – and in the middle of the night? He liked to think of himself as a good grandfather, but that didn’t mean that he was willing to relinquish his rights to a bit of peace and quiet altogether.

  ‘I can see you’re cross,’ said Phyl, over her shoulder at him, with a smile that he knew was meant to disarm him. ‘You don’t have to try and hide it. I’m sorry. I am sorry, really, not to have asked you what you think, but I knew you’d agree. We both know how hard things are for Lou. She’s trying to make a go of her career and she finds it difficult. Mothering, I mean. Not everyone’s cut out for it and you don’t know till you have a child what kind of parent you’re going to be, do you? You should have seen her last night. She looked half dead. Pale and with shadows under her eyes. I hate seeing her like that.’

  ‘I’d hate to see you like that,’ Matt said, spreading marmalade on his toast. ‘And that’s how you’re going to be, Phyl. What about your work? What about that? And our lives? Our sleep? Have you given any thought to how the house will have to be reorganized?’

  ‘I have. It’s not so much, when you think about it. We’ll childproof it in the way we used to for Tamsin. I’ve got stair gates, a cot, a high chair, and Poppy’s as good as gold. Aren’t you, pet? As good as gold?’