The Way Back Home

by Freya North

  ‘Am I stupid? Someone breaks into my house and I’m too polite to rifle through their things to find out who they are?’

  Still, he couldn’t bring himself to open the case or holdall and it never crossed his mind to switch on the iPad. He looked in at Jed’s old room and the bathroom. No further signs in either. He went through to the ballroom and saw the windows were open. Had someone seriously climbed up to the balcony to let themselves in? If so, it can’t have been anyone who knew him very well. He went through to his bedroom. Who’s been sleeping in my bed? But there was nobody there. He sat on the sofa and waited. What else could he do?

  As Oriana breezed her shopping trolley up and down the aisles, she wondered about Jed and what he liked to eat. Apart from beer, blackened bananas, stale cheese and off milk. She thought back to all the delicious dishes Jette had made, the spectacular Danish feast on Christmas Eve of roast pork followed by their traditional massive trough of risalamande. Invariably, everyone was too full to really want any rich rice pudding but nevertheless they always wielded their spoons as though it was war and gobbled it down praying for someone to find the whole almond as soon as possible. Oriana found it one year and won the marzipan pig. She’d eaten her prize there and then, fearing it wouldn’t taste quite the same away from Jette’s incomparable domain. Once back home, though, she had thrown up spectacularly. Which Christmas had that been? How old was she then? She remembered that only her father was there so her mother had already gone. But both boys had been there too. It was coming back to her – there’d been laughter and togetherness that evening; even her father was amiably chatting about Cocteau and Picasso and Ivon Hitchens having a model who’d once posed for Matisse. She’d sat by Jed who’d squeezed her hand under the table and all the while she’d looked over at Malachy, on tenterhooks for the electrifying moments when their eyes might bore into each other. It struck her that it was the last Christmas. Before it happened. The last Christmas that they were as they were, all together.

  Oriana found herself standing stock-still in the personal hygiene aisle of Sainsbury’s, absent-mindedly staring at condoms. She shook the assault of memories from her head and moved on, selecting toothpaste and loo roll and shower gel and shampoo-conditioner. As she continued to fill the trolley, she thought about the night ahead, of tucking down in Jed’s old room, a stone’s throw from her childhood home, spitting distance from her father. It would be decidedly strange. Maybe she should buy some sleep aid. But she chose to add two bottles of red to the trolley instead. Perhaps being drunk was the better option.

  ‘I really have to get a job,’ she winced under her breath, pushing her credit card into the reader. But she didn’t begrudge spending her dwindling funds on resuscitating Jette’s kitchen.

  Malachy heard the door open. He remained where he was, sitting on the sofa. He hadn’t moved. There were no lights on and it was almost dusk now. Whoever it was wouldn’t know that he was there. He wondered what to do next. And whether it was up to him to do anything at all. Maybe he should stay right here – just as his father had, stern and displeased, on that sole occasion when a teenage Malachy had returned three hours late and blind drunk.

  Lights went on. The person went out again, then returned and did this twice more. They weren’t venturing beyond the kitchen. Cupboards were being opened and closed. Malachy could hear the jostle of shopping bags, the clunk of them being brought in, plonked down, unpacked. He’d never ordered a supermarket home delivery. In fact, he mostly avoided supermarkets. What the fuck? Enough. He was waiting no longer. He slipped his eyepatch back down and ventured out of the ballroom to find out just who was in his home.

  Oriana froze at the sound of footsteps. She had assumed Jed wasn’t back from work yet. Frantically, she looked around and felt dismayed – she’d wanted everything neatly put away and supper cooking for when he arrived back. The place looked ransacked. Quickly, she brushed her fingers through her hair, gave her cheeks a little pinch, cleared her throat and prepared to trill ta-da!

  Malachy?

  Oriana?

  Here?

  What are you doing here?

  Malachy couldn’t actually say anything. He was flummoxed and surprised and delighted and irked and the emotions blended into a swirl of dumbfoundedness that rendered him unable to blink or think, to swallow or speak. Synapses and nerve endings flared inside him, yet he was incapable of twitching a muscle.

  Oriana, in comparison, was in full flight mode and she gasped, staggering backwards and crashing into the stove.

  ‘What are you doing here!’

  It was her visible shock that released Malachy’s vocal paralysis, even if he was still stuck motionless in the doorway.

  ‘I think it’s me who should be asking you that,’ he said.

  ‘I’m just waiting for Jed – I’ve done some shopping.’

  Wildly, Oriana gestured around the kitchen before her arms dropped to her sides, leaden. Her face was flushed and her eyes couldn’t stay still.

  ‘Jed’s coming here?’ Malachy took his phone out of his back pocket and checked the messages. Nothing. He hadn’t heard a word from Jed since the weekend they’d both seen Oriana almost a month ago.

  ‘Yes?’ She wondered why Malachy looked so surprised.

  ‘That’s odd,’ said Malachy. ‘He didn’t say.’

  ‘Does he have to?’ Oriana asked, relaxing a little at Malachy’s bewilderment, even glancing in a bag on the table to check if the contents needed to go in the freezer.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘I mean – was he expecting you?’

  ‘Jed? Expecting me?’

  ‘Yes – was he expecting you to be here too, then?’

  Malachy frowned, tipped his head and regarded the surreal scene playing out in front of him. Oriana was in his kitchen and as confusing as everything else was, the fact remained that Oriana was actually right here – in his kitchen. Though bizarre, there was nothing wrong with that. Now as then, whenever Malachy saw Oriana, he was helpless not to soften and that was not a bad feeling to have.

  ‘I live here,’ he said. Oriana was in his kitchen with bags of shopping. Those were her things out there in the hallway. Jed was some abstract part of the equation but he wasn’t here now and for the time being he didn’t matter. It was as perfect as it was peculiar. It was irrelevant what any of it meant and that nothing made sense. Just imagine that all of this is quite normal. Go with it. See where it takes you. Oriana’s here.

  ‘I live here,’ he told her again. Now able to move, he stepped towards her, so close that the fabric on their sleeves brushed. Malachy looked into a bag. Pistachio nuts. Sun-dried tomatoes. Fresh garlic and chillis. Olive oil. An aubergine. He looked at Oriana; she was so close he could count every eyelash.

  ‘I live here,’ he said a third time. ‘Not Jed.’

  He shrugged. He started to unpack the items and put them away into the cupboards of his kitchen. He was naming them under his breath as he did so, just as Jette used to do.

  It made no sense. Oriana sat down heavily and stared at the surface of the kitchen table, her hands in her lap, shoulders a little hunched. The teacup was there from earlier, from when she’d first arrived, when it had still been Jed’s home, when everything seemed simple and straightforward and all she had to do was nip out to the shops and make a nice supper for them both. Malachy had put the rest of the shopping away. Now he was holding up one of the bottles of wine and proffering it to her; his expression a gentle question mark. Oriana nodded. He poured two glasses.

  ‘Pistachio?’

  He opened the packet but she just continued to gawp.

  ‘I prefer cashews myself,’ he continued blithely. ‘Though actually, with red wine, I favour the classic, ready-salted crisp. But I don’t think you bought any.’

  How could he banter as if there was nothing out of the ordinary about Oriana stocking his cupboards? It did strike him as decidedly odd that he could feel so calm, so light, about her being here. Oriana, howeve
r, was so bewildered she could not theorize, she could only run through known facts out loud.

  ‘When I came, a month ago, Jed was here,’ she explained slowly. ‘He was on the balcony, I was on the lawn and he came down to see me.’ She paused and racked her mind for precise memories. ‘He did not say that he did not live here.’

  Malachy thought about it. ‘Did he say I lived here?’

  Oriana frowned, trying to remember. The cacophony of the current jumble rendered the conversation with Jed so faint, she could barely make out even the gist of what had been said. It seemed as distant a part of her past as any.

  ‘He did not say that you didn’t.’

  Malachy nodded. It made sense to him. The triumvirate of Jed, Oriana, Malachy – why should the years have resolved the complexity?

  ‘Is he coming here – to collect me?’

  To Malachy, she suddenly looked like a child left behind, forgotten, at the end of the school day. And then he remembered how she had indeed been that child on more than one occasion. I’m just going to collect Oriana, his mother would say, putting down the telephone. Robin must be busy with his painting.

  Malachy looked at her today. ‘I don’t know if Jed’s coming,’ he said. ‘I haven’t heard from him.’ He paused. ‘Shall we call him?’

  ‘Call Jed?’ Oriana said.

  ‘Yes – we can phone him right now.’

  They looked at each other. They could indeed phone Jed. It would be easy enough to do so, logical even. And Jed would breeze through the confusion and call himself a stupid bastard and say I’ll be right over! crack open the beers! And he’d come and take her away.

  Oriana and Malachy glanced into their wineglasses and then returned their gaze to each other. For all they knew, he was already on his way. If that was the case, then they had only the loaded moments from now until then. Why hasten them with phone calls? Why, after all these years and all that had gone before and all that had happened, why would they cut short this sacred portion of time that was being gifted to them? Why consign the present to the past? Why not just sit awhile with each other in the kitchen and just be?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  ‘Did you come in through the window, by the way?’

  ‘Of course I didn’t come in through the window. I used the front door.’

  Oriana’s indignance made Malachy laugh.

  ‘What’s so funny?’ she asked, curious but not offended, not really.

  ‘The funny thing is, you didn’t even make my list of possible intruders,’ Malachy said. ‘The fact that it might be you never crossed my mind.’

  ‘I told Jed that I’d be here tomorrow – that I’d have Cat’s car. I assumed he wouldn’t mind me dropping stuff off earlier, you see.’

  ‘But he doesn’t live here.’

  ‘I didn’t know that. He didn’t say.’ Oriana paused and helped herself to more wine. She looked over at Malachy who was making patterns out of pistachio shells. She didn’t speak for a while. ‘Where does he live?’

  ‘Sheffield.’

  Sheffield. I’m going to live in Sheffield. Stainless steel and the Supertram. Joe Cocker and Jarvis Cocker. A. S. Byatt and Malcolm Bradbury. Heaven 17 and the Human League. ABC and the Arctic Monkeys. The Full Monty and The History Boys. And Meadowhall. Sheffield Hallam and Sheffield Wednesday. And Hillsborough. Hi, I’m Oriana Taylor – I live in Sheffield.

  ‘It was a peculiar concept – that I was coming back here to Windward to live. But to think I’m going to live in Sheffield –’ She paused, trying to absorb this huge new fact. Reluctantly, she conceded that, however bizarre the thought of living in Sheffield, ultimately it was far more plausible than Windward. Windward, from where she’d run away so often, the home she’d ultimately been banished from, the one place she’d never expected to return to.

  ‘Are we going to eat?’ said Malachy, gently butting into her runaway train of thought. ‘I can cook, you know.’

  Oriana brought herself back into the kitchen. For however long this evening might last, she was here, at the Bedwells’, alone with Malachy.

  ‘Sour milk, manky cheese and beer?’ she said. ‘That won’t get you onto MasterChef.’

  Malachy flicked a pistachio shell right at her. She giggled. It was good to hear. Her face was bright and he could barely look.

  ‘I will cook,’ she said. ‘It’s the least I can do.’

  ‘Can I help, at least?’

  ‘I’m good,’ she said. ‘It’s all under control.’ Just then, the meal was about the only thing in her life to be so.

  ‘I’ll just take a quick shower then.’ Malachy made to leave the kitchen, stopped at the doorway and turned to face her. ‘OK?’ It had nothing to do with the shower.

  ‘OK,’ she nodded; a distracted smile.

  ‘You OK?’ he persevered, the chosen phrase, his tone of voice, the way he looked at her, rocketing both of them back to years ago.

  She thought about it. ‘Me OK.’

  Alone in the kitchen Oriana knew it was useless trying to compute the last hour into any kind of logic. At some point, Jed would come. Explanations, reasons, excuses, whatever. And then he’d be taking her to Sheffield to live. She could no longer remember whether the point had been to stay at Windward, or whether it had been to stay with Jed, or whether it had been not to contact Malachy, or whether it had been simply to leave Ben and Cat’s. As complicated as all of it should have been, it wasn’t. Standing in Jette’s kitchen with the comfort of so much that was remembered, and with Malachy’s quiet calmness washing over her, Oriana discovered how this sudden and extreme disorder was not cacophonous but just a sweetly melodic middle eight in the strange song that was her life. A hiatus. An intermission. The bridge that would link yesterday to tomorrow.

  The New and the Now. Those words had been Jette’s mantra and here was Oriana standing in her kitchen, embracing them for all their permutations. She had a meal to prepare and Jette’s culinary skills to channel and, just then, Oriana felt suddenly so safe that she soared.

  Thank you, Jette, for your home within my home – now, as much as then. For the example you set and the love you gave. I’ve thought of you often. I am sorry.

  ‘Need any help?’ Malachy was back. Jeans and a Ramones T-shirt and the moccasin slippers, his hair a little damp.

  Oriana handed Malachy a replenished glass of wine. ‘No, thank you,’ she said. ‘Everything is under control.’

  Penne with aubergine, roasted peppers, garlic, lemon juice and one finely chopped, red-hot bird’s-eye chilli. As she checked the sauce, she found herself wondering if Malachy would be wearing his eyepatch were she not here. She wasn’t ready to confront the alternative and she wasn’t ready to ask him.

  ‘It smells great,’ he said, peering over her shoulder and into the pan.

  ‘Thank you,’ Oriana said, ducking away to search unnecessarily in the utensils pot because she couldn’t breathe with Malachy so close.

  ‘OK – so I am going to pop in on Robin now,’ he said.

  Oriana stopped her rifling.

  ‘I look in on him most days,’ Malachy explained to the back of the statue that she’d become. ‘For his pills. And oxtail soup.’

  The sauce was making a sound similar to bubbling volcanic mud.

  ‘Does he know you’re here?’ Malachy asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘That’s fine,’ Malachy said. ‘I won’t be long.’ And just before he left, he laid his hand on her shoulder. ‘I understand.’

  And Oriana knew that he did.

  Malachy ate fast. Her father’s undeniable proximity had curdled with the scent of the cooking and quite taken away Oriana’s appetite, but she forked single penne slowly into her mouth to be sociable. Malachy was already helping himself to seconds.

  ‘What do you usually eat?’ Oriana asked him. ‘When you’re on your own. Just manky cheese?’

  He shrugged. ‘Mostly I just grab something on my way home and eat it on my lap as I drive.’

&nbs
p; ‘Like what?’

  ‘Sandwich?’

  ‘For your tea?’

  ‘Sausage roll?’ Malachy said. ‘Sometimes I pop into Sainsbury’s and buy a hot rotisserie chicken.’

  ‘And you eat that in your car? As you drive?’

  Of course he didn’t. But he was amused that Oriana was so appalled at the concept. He was happy to find how naturally it came to take advantage of her gullibility. He always used to do this for his own amusement and, despite her protestations, she always loved it, they both knew that. ‘It comes in a useful polystyrene box,’ he teased her. ‘Sometimes I go for noodles, though. Those come in a cardboard container. It’s only fractionally messier.’ He looked at her. She appeared horrified. ‘Finger food,’ he shrugged. ‘Saves on washing-up. This is the first time I’ve used cutlery in ages.’

  ‘Malachy,’ she said and she shook her head. She wanted to ask him, why aren’t you married? Why don’t you have someone here for you? Why are you all alone at Windward eating from boxes with your fingers? How long has it been thus?

  ‘Oriana,’ he said. ‘I’m joking.’

  She thought, you could always bloody do that. Tease me, wind me up to the point of roaring frustration but then always placate me and make me laugh.

  ‘Are you vegetarian still?’

  ‘God, no,’ she said.

  ‘My mum worried about you when you were – she said alfalfa was for livestock.’

  Oriana laughed. ‘I remember that! She said something about lettuce being for rabbits. And you said I was practising to be a Bunny Girl and your mum cuffed you and I had no idea why.’

  ‘I was hoping you wouldn’t remember that,’ said Malachy.

  ‘I’ve been remembering so much,’ said Oriana quietly. ‘Things I didn’t even realize I’d forgotten.’