‘When are they moving?’ I tried not to sound upset but I could hear the resentment in my voice.
‘At the beginning of the summer holidays. Maybe we could go and see them. Not this summer but another one. We could have a holiday.’
I didn’t want a holiday. I wanted the McFaddens to stay in Sussex. I didn’t want Abe to go. We’d be starting secondary school next year and there was the summer holidays before that. We had a plan to camp outside for the whole summer. I couldn’t envisage the next few months without Abe, let alone a lifetime.
‘I’m going to my room.’ I didn’t know what else to say.
‘Love,’ Mum said again, as I brushed past her and went upstairs.
Later Jon came up to me. I’d taken a pack of cards and was laying them on the carpet, ready to play solitaire. I tried not to think about what I’d been told, about the consequences. I wanted the feelings I’d begun to have to go away. If I didn’t think about it, maybe they would.
‘Here. Your share.’ He walked in, holding a saucer with a fifth of a Mars bar placed in the centre.
This was a treat. ‘A Mars a day helps you work, rest and play’ but no one in our house had ever eaten a whole bar. Occasionally, Mum bought one and cut it equally into five pieces. Sometimes she would forgo the treat and divide it into four. (Presented on a saucer, it was nouvelle cuisine ahead of its time.)
‘You know it’s not named after the planet?’ Dad said, every time.
We did, because he’d said it so often.
‘Everyone thinks it’s part of the space race chocolate collective. You know? Milk Way, Galaxy et cetera. But actually it bears the family name of the manufacturer, Forrest Mars.’
‘Really?’ We’d feign interest but were more interested in the morsel of chocolate on offer than the titbit of information.
‘And Trebor, as in Trebor mints, is Robert spelled backwards.’
‘Really?’ We’d heard that too.
Sometimes Jon would mimic Mum.
‘Déjà vu,’ he’d say, shaking his head to get rid of it the way she did.
‘It’s bad luck,’ Jon said now, sitting next to me and laying the sliver of confectionery between us.
‘You sound like Mum.’ Her at her most sympathetic.
Abe had remarked on this once, a few years before when he’d come to play after school and fallen roller-skating. He’d put out his hands to break the fall and bloodied them spectacularly.
‘Abe’s hurt his hands.’ I’d found my mother at the sink peeling potatoes.
‘Bad luck.’ She’d turned briefly to look. ‘Better go and wash them in the downstairs cloakroom.’ My mother never said ‘toilet’. She said it was common.
‘Your mum’s odd,’ Abe said, as he filled the sink and began soaping the blood from his hands.
‘I know.’
‘If my mum had been here she’d have come running and said something like “Oh dear! Oh, darling!” ’ He raised his voice to sound more like a woman. ‘But yours just says, “Bad luck!” ’
‘I know,’ I said now, to my brother, and began moving cards around.
‘It’s because of what happened,’ Jon said.
He was trying to be nice and trying to make me feel better but I wanted to be left alone.
‘Mum says Mrs McFadden will never get over it,’ he continued. ‘She says you never get over something like that.’
I ignored him, turning cards over, moving them around, placing them on top of others, so the lines shortened in places and lengthened in others.
‘You’ll get over it,’ he added.
‘Bloody hell.’ I raised my voice, angry, using the worst words I could think of.
People didn’t swear. They ‘cursed’, usually quietly under their breath, ‘Damnation’ or ‘Hell’s bells’. Very occasionally one of my parents would lose their temper and say, ‘Bloody hell.’
It was enough to shock Jon. ‘Ivy!’
‘Just leave me alone!’ I shouted, sweeping my arm across the cards and destroying the game.
‘I wanted to make sure you were all right.’
‘Bloody hell,’ I said to myself, as he got up and left the room.
I didn’t feel all right.
This was what loss felt like. It was normal. Time was a healer. Abe would become a distant memory. A good but distant memory.
I lay on my bed and looked at the mirror on the opposite wall. There was a mirror tile on the inside of the cupboard door too. The door was open and the mirror was aligned with the one on the wall, creating a series of endless reflections of my desk, with the red leather-bound copy of Gulliver’s Travels, which Abe had bought for me, in the centre, the chair, a jumble of clothes hanging over the back, and the doll’s house I was too old for but didn’t want to part with.
I liked that view. I often lay there, mesmerized by image after image going back beyond the actual mirror: endless copies of my bedroom, as far as the eye could see. I liked to imagine that those rooms were occupied by a slightly different version of me: an Ivy with different parents, other brothers and sisters, who went to other schools with different friends.
And now, as the tears I refused to shed in front of my mother started to flow, I tried to imagine that in one of those other reflected worlds, I’d meet Abe at another time and things would be different.
Epilogue: London 2032
Let your soul stand cool and composed before a million universes.
Walt Whitman, ‘Song of Myself’
I’m waiting for Lottie, Jon and Abe. I’m meeting them for lunch in Granary Square. It’s crowded in the sunshine and I’ve bagged a table outside but they’re late.
I’ve not been here for a while, and I’m amazed by how the trees along the approach to the square have grown. When they first developed the area, I remember that there were hoardings with trees painted on them lining what is now an avenue. I take great pleasure from the way the tiny saplings have grown into mature trees. From my table, I can see their tops swaying gently in the breeze, which occasionally blows droplets of water from the fountains in my direction, spritzing my face with a fine spray.
Lottie is late but I put this down to her having two small children. Jon is only three and Abe not yet one. I remember how hard it used to be to get out of the house when Max and she were tiny.
‘You don’t mind, do you?’ Lottie had asked anxiously, when Jon was born. ‘My naming him after Uncle Jon?’
‘Why would I mind? It’s a lovely thing to do.’
‘I just thought it might upset you, having to use his name all the time. Are you sure it doesn’t?’
‘It makes me happy,’ I told her. ‘It’s a continuation of the family. There’s little bits of Jon in little Jon. ‘
‘As long as you’re sure?’
‘Of course.’
I wondered, if the next baby had been a girl, whether she might have considered Janet and if I’d have found that strange. Perhaps the two names together again would have been too much. But Lottie’s baby was another boy, a strawberry blond, traces of my hair colour on his tiny head but not a real redhead, like myself and Connor, Max’s eldest son, my first grandchild.
‘We’re going to call him Abe,’ Lottie said, when I visited her in hospital.
‘Short for Abraham,’ Tim said, proudly.
‘That’s nice. I’ve never come across anyone called Abe – or Abraham. Only in the Bible.’
‘We wanted a name that was recognizable but not really popular,’ Lottie said. ‘I know it doesn’t have any resonance but we like it.’ She looked at me anxiously, as if it was important that I liked the name too.
‘It’s a lovely name. A lovely name for such a gorgeous baby.’
I imagine the gorgeous baby has held her up today, needing to be fed or changed or woken from a nap, when she was trying to get out of the house to meet me.
It’s the anniversary of Richard’s death and it was Lottie who suggested meeting for lunch and the location too. ‘Jon likes playing
in the fountains and there’s plenty of space outside for the buggy,’ she’d said to me on the phone. ‘Let’s go there. Lunch is on me.’
‘There’s no need,’ I said.
There is none. Treating my children and grandchildren is one of my greatest pleasures in life but I’m beginning to wonder what’s holding them up, as the waiter approaches me, for a second time, to ask if I’d like to order.
Once more, I tell him that I’m waiting for my daughter and her children to join me.
And then I see her, hurrying across the square, looking a little flustered. Jon is holding the handle of the buggy so that he is being half dragged along by the speed with which she’s pushing it.
Abe is all wide eyes and smile, to everyone and everything – even more so when he sees me. He’s one of the happiest children I think I’ve ever encountered.
‘I’m so sorry I’m late,’ Lottie says, slightly breathless. ‘I seem to have dropped my phone. I had it when I got off the Tube but Jon wanted a picture of himself in front of the fountains, and when I looked for it, it had gone.’
‘Do you want to go back and see if you can find it? I’ll look after the boys.’
‘I’ve already been,’ she says. ‘That’s why I’m late. I was already a little bit late anyway but I retraced my steps when I realized and couldn’t see it. It’s so annoying.’
‘Sit down, now that you’re here,’ I say. ‘Jon, do you want me to ask if they’ve got a high chair for you or are you going to sit on a big chair?’
‘I’m going to play in the fountain,’ he says.
‘Sit down for a bit, love,’ Lottie says. ‘We want to say hello to Granny and order some lunch. You can go and splash about in a bit.’
He climbs up on to the chair next to mine, kneeling so he’s better able to reach the table as Lottie unstraps Abe from the buggy. ‘Oh, Lord,’ she says. ‘He’s soaking. Sorry, Mum. I know I’m late and you’ve been waiting but I’ll just take him inside to change him.’
‘Don’t worry,’ I say. ‘I’ll be happy here with Jon.’
‘There was a dead bird in the kitchen this morning,’ Jon tells me, his eyes shining with the importance of it all.
‘Oh dear. Did the cat bring it in?’
‘No. It flew in the window and –’ Jon stops when he hears my phone ringing inside my bag. His ears are sharper than mine. ‘Granny, is that your phone?’
‘Oh, yes, but I don’t suppose it’s important.’ I take it out nevertheless, and look at the caller display. It’s Lottie’s number but obviously not Lottie calling.
‘Hello, Ivy speaking,’ I say.
‘Oh, hello, Ivy,’ a man says. His voice sounds remarkably familiar.
‘Who is it?’
‘I’m sorry, you don’t know me, but I’ve found a phone just outside the station. It wasn’t locked so I dialled “Mum”. I presume it must belong to one of your children.’
‘Yes. It’s my daughter’s. She thought she’d dropped it and went back to look but couldn’t find it. She’ll be relieved. Where are you now?’
‘I’m at the entrance to the Underground.’
‘My daughter’s just gone somewhere with her baby,’ I say, ‘but she won’t be long. Can I ask her to come and meet you when she gets back? I’m with my other grandson so that’s probably the quickest way, if you don’t mind waiting. Or you could hand it in at the station?’
‘Where are you?’ he asks.
‘We’re in Granary Square.’
‘I’ll pop it up,’ he says.
‘I don’t want to put you to any trouble.’
‘Really, it’s no trouble. There’s something I’d like to take a look at there anyway,’ he says. ‘I’ll call you again when I get there so that I can find you.’
‘That’s very kind.’
‘A nice man has found Mummy’s phone,’ I say to Jon.
‘Good I want to take a picture.’ He holds out his hand and takes an imaginary selfie as Lottie returns with a smiling, dry Abe.
‘Good news,’ I tell her. ‘Someone’s found your phone.’
‘Oh, great. Should I call them?’
‘He said he’d bring it up here,’ I say, and in my peripheral vision I catch sight of an elderly but sprightly man with a thick head of not entirely grey hair walking towards us.
‘Ivy?’ he asks.
‘Yes?’ I’m slightly confused.
‘I thought so,’ he says. ‘You said you had two grandchildren with you.’
‘Oh, I see,’ I said. ‘But how did you know my name?’
‘You said it when you answered the phone.’ He smiles and holds it out to us.
‘Of course,’ I say, as Lottie takes the phone from him.
‘Thank you so much,’ she says. ‘I think I must have dropped it when I was carrying the buggy up the stairs.’
‘Well, I’m glad you’ve got it back now.’ He nods, as if to conclude the exchange.
I don’t know what it is but something about him makes me want to detain him a little longer. ‘Thank you,’ I say. ‘It was really very kind of you to bring it up here as well. What is it you’re going to see? You said there was something you wanted to see in the square.’
‘It was only the fountain.’ He gestures towards the jets, which are sparkling in the sun.
‘I love the fountain,’ Jon announces.
‘Do you, young man?’ He raises his eyebrows, smiling. ‘I’m very glad.’
Then he moves a little closer and bends down so he’s at Jon’s level and points to the Granary building. ‘Do you know, the four blocks of jets are positioned so that it looks as if the four big windows of that building are being reflected down on to the ground?’
Jon looks a little baffled, and the phone finder shrugs, then turns to me. ‘I used to be a fountain designer,’ he says.
‘Really? How interesting.’ I look at the fountain, then at the man, who seems to know so much about it. ‘I’ve never met a fountain designer before.’
‘There aren’t that many of us.’ He gestures to the plumes of water. ‘Historically, fountains are an expression of life.’
‘Really?’
‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘I could go on for hours but I’ll leave you to your lunch.’ Then to Lottie, he says, ‘I’m glad I was able to return your phone to you.’
‘Why don’t you join us for lunch?’ Lottie says. ‘As a thank you.’
‘I don’t want to intrude.’
‘You wouldn’t be. We’d like it, wouldn’t we, Mum?’
‘Yes,’ I say. I’d like it very much if he joined us.
‘If you’re sure?’ he says.
‘I insist.’ I pull out a chair for him to sit down. ‘I’m Ivy, as you know, and this is Lottie, my daughter, and Jon and Abe.’
‘Abe? That’s an unusual name.’ He looks at Abe. ‘Hello, little fellow.’
Abe grins at the stranger.
‘It’s short for Abraham,’ Lottie says.
‘I know,’ he says. ‘I’ve just never met another Abe before.’
Lottie and I look at each other, not quite understanding.
‘I’m sorry. There I go again. I haven’t even introduced myself,’ he says. ‘I’m Abe too. Abe McFadden.’
THE BEGINNING
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MICHAEL JOSEPH
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Michael Joseph is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.
Firs
t published by Michael Joseph 2017
Copyright © Elizabeth Enfield, 2017
The moral right of the author has been asserted
Cover images: Paper © Getty Images; Scrabble letters © Alamy
ISBN: 978-0-718-18503-9
Ivy and Abe Page 31
