by Amanda Coe
When Louise wheeled Holly back, she asked to be left in the chair. Jamie was working his way through a packet of Nice biscuits he’d found on the bedside table. She saw that they would be okay without her for a few hours. In fact, they would enjoy it. She asked Jamie if she could have a word and nodded him out of his chair.
‘What is it?’ Holly wanted to know beadily, but Louise took him all the way to the nurse’s station, out of earshot.
‘Don’t let her have your phone,’ she told him.
She could see the surprise hit his face, but she knew Holly would try it on. Only a couple of days after she was out of intensive care, Louise had caught her, woozy from the drugs and with half her body in traction, trying to fumble the phone out of Louise’s bag on the bed where she had left it on a trip to the coffee machine. To call him, of course. It was like getting her off smack. Since then, Louise had been careful. It was a mercy that Holly’s body was healing, but there was still a battle to be fought, which was why she was particularly keen to talk to Kamila.
Jamie seemed to accept her command about not letting his sister near his phone. He’d always said that Louise could have gone to the police, with Holly’s age and what that man had done—Louise could never bring herself to think he had a name—but she couldn’t see the point if Holly still wanted to be with him. Holly might be underage but she’d never cooperate in any way, and it would just turn her further against her, if that was possible. And nearer to him, probably. Thinking about it, Louise grabbed at the corner of a larger understanding, that loving him was a way of hating Louise. Holly was too young to know that. Some people stayed too young the whole of their whole lives.
It was a beautiful day now, hot for early spring, the rain steaming off the roads and pavements as Louise drove herself back from the hospital. She’d told Jamie that she’d come back for him. It was ridiculous, really, not talking to Kamila on her mobile, but on the one occasion they’d tried it before, when Holly’s consultant had rearranged an appointment at the last minute and she and Kamila ended up having a session with Louise sitting in the hospital car park, Kamila had found it hard to make contact. It made sense, that being in the house and calling from the phone that Mum had used for so many years allowed Kamila access to the vibrations she needed to do her work. Still, it was an unusual time for their call. Kamila preferred to work in the evenings, even late into the night; she said contact was always clearer the closer the material world was to sleep. But she had been firm that the only time possible today was early afternoon, between one and three.
The house felt empty when Louise opened the back door, which usually meant Patrick was asleep. Checking the momentum that followed the shove of effort needed to budge the misaligned wood, she nearly ran into a large cube in the middle of the kitchen floor, swaddled in bubble wrap and packing tape. The invoice papers stuck to the top of it told her that it was a dishwasher, and that Mia had signed for the delivery before she left for London. Stepping around it, Louise made herself a cup of tea and moved into the hall. She was in good time.
‘This is Kamila.’
It was the way Kamila always answered, her accent crystalline and precise, her voice young, but today she sounded a little breathless, as though she’d had to hurry to pick up the phone. Just as they were about to get going properly, she excused herself—‘Excuse me, Louise, I am so sorry’—and muffled the phone to have an unflustered yet still disconcerting exchange in her own language with someone else in the room. It was possible that she was asking them to leave. A child, perhaps? Louise had never considered where Kamila might live, or in what circumstances; the immateriality of her voice made it easy to think that, like the voices she was attuned to, she inhabited the ether. Forced to imagine her at all, Louise envisaged a kind of greeting-card sprite, inhabiting a pastel glade that owed nothing to nature.
Kamila’s voice returned, in the usual brightly lulling tones. ‘We are ready to begin. What questions do you have today, Louise?’
It was always such a relief, talking to her. Louise quickly got on to Jamie, and what she’d said to him about not letting Holly have his mobile, and her worry about Holly trying to run off again with that bastard the minute they were back in Leeds. As she always did, Kamila asked her to close her eyes, and then what colours she saw.
‘Blue.’
‘Light blue or dark?’
‘Darkish. Not really dark. Sort of a royal blue, if you know what I mean.’
Kamila maintained her silence.
‘Like the colour of school uniforms. Holly’s school jumper, at their old school. The primary they both went to.’
‘She is going back to school soon?’
‘Not soon, but I’ve spoken to them. Probably not till after the summer holidays now.’
Another silence. ‘I can feel the colours changing,’ said Kamila.
Louise saw the veil of blue lighten. ‘It’s more yellow.’
‘Yes, yellow. She’s here with us. Sara. She wants you to know she loves you.’
‘I love her too.’
‘She knows this.’
However many times Louise heard it, it always made her cry.
It was a good session, the contact clearer than they’d had in weeks. At the end of the hour, after they’d arranged their next conversation, Louise wished Kamila a nice evening.
‘I hope so,’ she said. ‘My boyfriend is taking me to the Bon Jovi concert!’
She sounded excited. ‘Oh, well, have a lovely time,’ said Louise. She forgave Kamila this small transgression into her private life, although she hoped it was a one-off. After Mum’s communication, nothing was going to tarnish her good mood. It made all the difference in the world to her, to be so close at last.
For A Special Daughter
With Loving Thoughts on Your Birthday
To Louise,
On your special day
This comes to say
How much you’re cherished
And how much pride is felt
Having a daughter
As special as you.
Lots of love from Mum and Patrick. xx oo
Ps. Hope you can buy yourself something nice with enclosed!
WITH LOUISE’S DEPARTURE finally imminent, Mia was finding it hard to make any kind of social effort, or to pretend that her presence was anything but a nuisance. She was getting messier, for one thing. Each evening, Mia made collections of the objects Louise left around the house during the day and piled them neatly outside her door: reading glasses, mobile, cardigans, used tissues, puzzle magazines. She couldn’t quite bring herself to include the dirtied mugs and plates that Louise and her son left scattered around, so she stacked these significantly short of the recently acquired dishwasher, trusting the message was clear.
As with any domestic matter, when Mia had spoken to Patrick about ordering the dishwasher, she may as well have been tweaking his earlobes or performing some similar act of low-level, meaningless provocation, which he manfully refused to rise to. After a few similar interchanges, Mia decided to take his irritated forbearance as a sanction for all aspects of her improvements scheme. From then on, when she needed Patrick’s signature, she just presented the form or document without the aggravation of an explanation. He always signed. Mia had been slightly surprised, herself, that the bank had been willing to give him such a chunky loan for the kitchen renovation, but the house was worth a lot. ‘Owner occupier’ she had ticked on Patrick’s behalf, when given the option on the forms. As for the credit cards, since she tended to use them over the phone, she didn’t even need to trouble Patrick for a signature.
The dishwasher was a boon, and when the building foreman, Andy, came to talk to Mia about the work, he reassured her that they could leave it where it was for most of the duration. ‘No problem’ seemed to be his motto, dismissively tapping the surfaces and cabinets soon to be ripped out and replaced, breezily consigning them to history. It was nice to have a burst of energy in the house. Patrick had been ill; not seriousl
y, but his mornings were starting towards lunchtime and he had a new cough in his repertoire that came in harsh volleys he had to suspend speaking or moving to withstand. Since the cough also troubled him at night, Mia had moved out again, not back to the den, but to one of the disused bedrooms at the end of the top corridor. Andy had said it would be no problem to install a new radiator in there, and that his crew could do it before they got going on the kitchen. He was as good as his word. Mia cleaned the room comprehensively, painted it in a week’s worth of evenings, and had a new bed delivered, charged to one of the new cards. If Patrick had bothered to ask about the scheme, she would have offered her justification that he needed a guest room for all the visitors they seemed to be having, now that Louise occupied the spare room proper. He didn’t ask.
Even after one night, Mia thought of the room as her own. Its deep casement looked over the back of the house, to the sea. Although she rarely looked out of the window, she cherished the idea of it. She Instagrammed a phone shot of the view. After all that rain, the weather had turned freakishly warm, with steady sun gilding unseasonably decorous waves.
Just before eight on the builders’ first day, Mia was at the door to welcome them, hopeful that Patrick wouldn’t be disturbed, given his habitual deep sleep and the fact that his bedroom sat over the opposite side of the house. At the sight of the van she felt nervously excited, as though complicit in a small crime. She offered cups of tea, but Andy and his assembly of silent, fleece-wearing men were already sipping from lidded paper cups of their own. She left them to it. Less than five minutes later, Louise barged her bedroom door so hard that the knob dented the new paintwork.
‘What’s going on?’
Mia looked up from her laptop, where she was trying to source a cheap version of shelving she had admired on the walls of a converted Belgian orphanage in ELLE Decoration.
‘They’re working on the kitchen.’
Louise’s breath came deeply, wheezing. ‘Working?’
Not for the first time, Mia was tempted to announce her engagement.
‘It should have been ripped out twenty years ago. It’s totally had it.’ From downstairs, a woody wrenching underlined Mia’s point. Louise took a step back, hanging on to the door, banjaxed. Mia’s presence on the night of Holly’s accident had led her to believe that Mia was an ally, an article of good faith she still clung to in spite of the deterioration of Mia’s tone.
‘Does Nigel know?’
‘Why would he?’
Mia decided to ring him first. She didn’t think there was much chance of Nigel backing Louise against her. But his mobile and his work number both went straight to voicemail. Louise was probably down the corridor, blocking the lines. Mia hovered in her doorway and listened. Louise was talking, all right, but she was talking to Jamie; Mia could hear his responses, measured and brief against his mother’s flow of agitation. He wasn’t a talker; that seemed to run in the family. Patrick talked for all of them. Had that been true for Sara as well? Mia dismissed the question. Louise’s ridiculous communion with the spirit world was a Pandora’s box left temptingly open. She refused to succumb to curiosity: it would mean Louise had won something. If she could just hang on for a few more days, Louise would be gone and Mia could have everything she wanted.
Self-consciously casual, Mia left her room. Patrick’s bedroom door was still closed, its scuffed wood incommunicative. Increasingly, when she’d left him for any length of time, the thought came to her: what if he were dead? Her pulse tripped as she opened the door. Patrick, on the side of the bed, paused in putting on his socks. His feet dangled a bathetic few centimetres from the floor, one socked, the other naked and veined. Unusually, Mia went to him and dropped a kiss on his head. He held her to him, warm and animal with his recent sleep. Alive, then.
‘You’re the world to me, darling girl.’
This meant it was going to be one of his good days; the builders couldn’t have woken him. He looked at her, up and down. Mia had come to understand what the phrase ‘drinking in’ meant as a way of looking—the thirsty progress of Patrick’s eyes, relieving a basic need.
‘You’re man’s answer to God,’ he said. ‘You’re all there is.’ The hairs that poked from his unbuttoned pyjama top were grey and wiry. She settled them with her palm as a fusillade of coughing overtook him. If he died and they weren’t married, she’d be left with nothing. She didn’t want much, she really didn’t.
‘I’ll bring your tea.’
Mia had moved the kettle, toaster and relevant supplies into Patrick’s study. While she was jiggling toast free from the ejecting mechanism, Jamie sidled round the door. Talking to her didn’t come easily, Mia saw; even the rims of his ears were a hot red. For the first time, she saw a resemblance to Nigel. He was Jamie’s uncle, after all.
‘Mum’s a bit upset.’
Mia waited for Jamie to say more, but that seemed to be as much as he could muster. She put the slices on to the plate and cymballed her palms free of crumbs.
‘When isn’t she upset?’
Eyes widening with surprise, Jamie grinned. Mia smiled back.
‘It’s just—anything to do with her mum, you know. It upsets her.’
‘What does the kitchen have to do with her mum?’
He shrugged, on the spot.
‘Would you like some toast? Sorry, I should have thought . . .’
He considered the offer as though it gave him pain.
‘Go on, then.’
Mia knew from her years in Newcastle that northern people always met hospitable gestures as though they were doing you a favour. She proffered Jamie the plate and put in another couple of slices for Patrick as Jamie mortared cold chippings of butter on to his toast. Despite the sunshine outside, the study remained inhospitably cool.
‘I know it’s a bit inconvenient, but it’ll only be a couple of weeks. It’s not like they’re tearing the place down—it’s a few units, for God’s sake.’
Jamie stood, and munched.
‘Nothing to do with me, is it.’
Thank God for that. She made him a coffee along with Patrick’s. He blushed again when he took it. It wasn’t a particular blush, she could see; he was just shy.
‘I’m off soon.’
Like a tap with a slow drip, Jamie’s speech seemed to take a while to gather in him before it could be expressed.
‘Into t’army. Basic training, like.’
‘Your mum hadn’t said,’ said Mia, as though she and Louise chatted about these things.
‘She dun’t know.’
Mia was surprised by his confiding in her. But who else did he have to tell, apart from Patrick? Maybe he had told him already. A couple of times she had been surprised to find the two of them in apparently easy conversation about football. They had that in common, as well as cricket, racing, snooker and Formula One. Since Jamie’s arrival, Patrick had been enticed to watch more of these than ever on the TV in the den, at all hours.
Jamie slurped coffee. ‘I’ll tell her, like. Working up to it. She’ll feel better about stuff once she’s got Holly from the hospital.’
Mia picked up the breakfast things for Patrick, leaving Jamie to it. She half-expected to see Louise in the hall as she passed through, receiving confidences from the Other Side, but there was no sign of her. As Mia reached the stairs, the phone rang baldly. Backtracking, she picked it up and answered. There was a small, charged hesitation before an elderly woman’s voice said, ‘Oh, hello, I was hoping to speak with Patrick.’ The voice was lush, burred with nicotine. Mia suppressed a small surge of fright.
‘Who shall I say is calling?’
‘Dodie Shad.’
Not Sara then, of course not. Mia asked the woman to hold the line. Phone calls for Patrick were rare enough for her to feel curious and slightly excited on his behalf. When he heard who it was, he gave a quavering, matter-of-fact sigh and stumped downstairs, as though people were beleaguering him by phone every minute of the day. Mia lingered on the landing.
‘Dodie.’
Patrick’s hand stole to his forelock, and he instantly became more robust, even dashing. She couldn’t infer much of the conversation, as Dodie appeared to be doing most of the talking. ‘Cradle-snatching,’ Patrick agreed at one point, which Mia assumed alluded to her. The conversation lasted for less than five minutes. Replacing the receiver, Patrick headed for his study without turning back. She had to scuttle after him with the cooling coffee and cold toast. He received them neutrally and took them to his desk. Jamie had cleared out, leaving his mug neatly on his empty plate, by the kettle.
‘So?’
Patrick glared. ‘Is there any marmalade?’
She brought it for him. Through the crunching, Patrick told Mia that Dodie and her husband, Lucas, would be staying the following night, on their way to a literary event in Padstow. This was something they had done occasionally when Sara was alive, although not for a number of years. Mia stared at him as he dropped a crust to his plate. At some point she had imagined entertaining in the house, drifting from one streamlined surface to the other as she assembled an effortless meal, sharing a bottle of champagne with her guests. But now was definitely not that point.
‘We don’t have a kitchen!’
‘We’ll go out. They’ll pay, since we’re putting them up. Although Lucas can be tight as fucking arseholes.’
Mia made a booking for a bistro in Newquay. She found it online when the restaurant Patrick mentioned as the place he and Sara always went to with Dodie and Lucas turned out to have gone bust in 2003. On the assumption the Shads shared Patrick’s conservatism, she chose somewhere she hoped would be similar in atmosphere and menu to their extinct regular, and booked a table for four. She bought gin and lemons and minibar cans of tonic, and proper whisky instead of Patrick’s own-brand stuff, hiding it among the cereal packets so that he wouldn’t start the bottle before the visitors arrived. She stowed a bag of ice cubes in the stranded freezer. As a final gesture, she picked the tulips and grape hyacinths that bloomed randomly in the garden and arranged them in vases. Opening the windows of the damp drawing room to the welcome spring heat, Mia felt her keenest pleasure: life as magazine shoot. Mia likes to brighten the eighteenth-century drawing room with flowers from the garden. She Instagrammed a shot of the flowers, her face a blur behind them.
