‘You’ll look after them for me, won’t you?’ she’d asked, her voice uncharacteristically soft.
‘Of course I will,’ I’d replied.
‘Good. Because I trust you, Amelia.’
She hadn’t told me then that the effects of the chemotherapy were so serious she’d decided not to return to work, but Lewis Garrett had let us know they’d be interviewing for a new Head of English.
‘The best thing you can do for Mrs Humphries,’ I said, looking at the small group of seventeen- and eighteen-year-olds milling by my desk, ‘is work hard, and get the results you deserve. If Mrs Humphries isn’t able to come back, then I’ll be here to help you do that.’
‘Cool,’ Eloise said, her tone melancholy. ‘You’re all right, Miss Grey.’ She turned to the other students. ‘C’mon. Let’s go.’
The teenagers left the room, subdued. I put their exam papers into my bag ready to mark at home that night.
Carly put her head round the door of my empty classroom. ‘Fancy a drink, Amelia? Gorgeous hot evening out there. A few of us are heading over to the Kings Arms.’
‘I’d love to.’ I checked the time. ‘But I promised Jack dinner tonight. Plus I’ve got a lot of marking to do.’
‘You sure?’ Carly asked, one eyebrow raised.
‘Next time.’
*
Half an hour later, I was back at our flat. I turned the key in the lock and noticed a new graffittied tag along the top of our front door, in black marker pen. I’d have to get the paintbrushes out again.
Jack and I lived three floors up in an ex-local authority block a stone’s throw from Broadway Market in east London. It was near to friends, handy for both our jobs, and over time we’d warmed to the area. At weekends we’d have coffee or brunch nearby, or go for a walk along the canal to Victoria Park. My best friend from university, Sunita, and her husband, Nico, were practically neighbours, and Carly was only a bus ride away. But the graffiti, and the constant noise, had started to wear both of us down and it felt like time to move on. We had put the flat on the market a couple of months before, but the response had been underwhelming – just one offer under the asking price so far. The search for somewhere new was proving just as tricky: while we’d had a mortgage agreed in principle, we’d yet to find a place we liked that was within our budget.
I put my bag down in the hallway and walked to the kitchen, passing framed stills from Jack’s first feature-length animation project, Pupz, the story of a Labrador who has a litter of robot puppies. He’d studied animation at college, and after a couple of years interning at an animation studio he’d been given a permanent job and from there had started coming up with his own project ideas. Pupz had been Jack’s career high to date – three years in the making and a hit at the box office in both Britain and the US. Since then, project commissions had slowed a bit, and at the start of the year he’d hit a creative block he hadn’t quite worked past yet – but he was on the cusp of coming up with something good, I knew it.
I fed Dexter and sat down at the kitchen table to mark exam papers. It was eight when Jack arrived home after football. His T-shirt and hair were ruffled, and there was colour in his cheeks.
‘Good game?’ I asked.
‘Yes. Great, thanks.’ He came over to give me a kiss.
‘Hey, sweaty,’ I said, pushing him away playfully.
‘All right, all right – I’ll jump in the shower to freshen up.’
‘Cool. I’ll get dinner on the go.’
When Jack came out of the shower, we sat down to eat the pasta salad I’d prepared.
‘Nico seems excited,’ he said, starting to eat. ‘He tells me he’s been painting the nursery. They’ve gone for yellow, given they don’t know the baby’s sex yet.’
‘This is what you guys talk about at football?’ I asked, smiling.
‘Not always. But this is kind of a big deal, isn’t it?’
Sunita and Nico were more than just close friends of ours – they were the reason Jack and I were together. At Sunita’s twenty-first birthday party, in our final year of uni at Manchester, she’d pointed Jack out to me, across the room, downing vodka jellies and shouting to a friend above the sound of the music. ‘Check out Nico’s friend from home,’ she’d whispered. ‘Hot, funny – and single.’
At that moment Jack had turned and looked at me, a smile in his brown eyes. After kissing a dozen frogs in the union bar, I knew him right away – Jack was the one.
Eight years on, Sunita and Nico’s lives were changing.
‘Four months, right?’
‘Yeah, mid-September.’
‘I’m seeing Suni tomorrow actually, with Carly. We’re going for a few drinks at the Florence.’
‘Big night out?’ Jack joked.
‘I wish,’ I said, laughing. ‘We’re doing the quiz. But it’ll be good to catch up with her.’
‘Give her my love, will you?’
After dinner Jack and I migrated to the living room with bowls of ice cream, and Jack switched the TV on. When I’d finished my dessert I lay down so my head was resting on his lap, my feet hanging over the end of our sofa.
‘You know what I noticed earlier?’ I asked, as Jack idly played with my hair, one eye on the news. ‘When I’m in the kitchen, I can touch both walls with my hands at the same time.’
‘Uh-huh,’ Jack murmured.
‘And I’ve tried it before in the bathroom – I can do it there, too.’
‘Nice trick,’ he said, without looking down at me.
I wasn’t showing off some kind of physical feat. Sadly, there was nothing elegant and long-limbed about me – I’m shorter than average, and look tiny next to Jack. But in this flat, I was starting to feel like an overgrown Alice.
‘Do you think anyone’s ever going to want to buy it?’
‘Of course they will.’ Jack lowered the volume on the TV, and I moved so I was sitting up on the sofa, facing him. ‘We’ve had that one offer in already. I’m sure it’s just a matter of time until we get a higher one.’
I looked around the room at our belongings crammed onto shelves and into corners – my sewing machine and teapot collection, a row of orange Penguin classics lined up against the skirtingboard, Jack’s Mac and A2 portfolio of stills and animation storyboards. Boxes we’d never unpacked because there wasn’t anywhere to store the contents, my set of Russian dolls balanced precariously on the mantelpiece next to our framed wedding photo.
‘You’re right,’ I said. ‘I’m being impatient. But looking round those places in Stoke Newington last weekend … they were so much nicer.’
‘They were also out of our price range.’
The noise of men shouting drifted up from across the road, coarse and hostile.
‘I know.’ I thought regretfully of the gorgeous period features and bay windows, the friendly residential streets. All we really needed was a place with a second room big enough for me to set up my sewing machine and for Jack to work from home occasionally, but right now that seemed out of reach. Even if I got a promotion, and we made money on our current flat, we wouldn’t get much more than we had now.
‘It’s not so bad living here with me, is it?’ Jack said.
‘It’s not terrible, I’ll admit. In fact, sometimes I almost like it.’ I ran my hand over his jaw, pausing when my fingers met his lips. He pretended to bite them, making me laugh. He drew me towards him for a kiss.
*
That night the air was so dense and humid that even with all the windows open there wasn’t any breeze. At pub kicking-out time, the chatter of drunken revellers dashed any hopes of sleep I’d had, and each time I changed position I felt more uncomfortable. Just after midnight, I got out of bed quietly – it was no small feat doing that when our double bed was wedged up against the wall, but I’d perfected a move and Jack barely stirred. A glass of water. That would help.
I went into the kitchen, filled a glass from the tap, and closed the window. On the wall was our house calendar,
and I saw Jack had ringed a date in a few weeks’ time and drawn a big red balloon next to it – my thirtieth birthday.
It reminded me of the list Carly had mentioned earlier that day – would I have kept it? I went into the living room and looked under the sofa, one of our few storage areas. I pulled out a blue shoebox and opened it, sifting through the teenage diaries and letters. There it was at the bottom, a sheet of lined pink paper folded in half.
Amelia’s Things to Do Before She’s 30
It was in Carly’s writing, not mine. That summery day, after a jug of Pimms in Victoria Park, we’d talked through our goals and then written down each other’s.
1. Swim with dolphins, I read. 2. Learn to rollerblade. I smiled. I’d done both of them – the first on our honeymoon in California, one of my favourite memories.
I scanned the other wishes – hopes of learning languages and mastering Photoshop – to the bottom, the final point, number twenty. It wasn’t the usual stuff of these lists, but it was a genuine dream I’d had since I was a little girl living in south London, where sirens were more common than birdsong. It was a place I’d read about in books and seen on TV, with green fields and roaring fires:
20 Live in the country.
Chapter 2
13B Addison Road
For Sale
One-bedroom flat in the dynamic environs of Broadway Market, Hackney. Double bedroom, modern living room, kitchen and bathroom. This ex-local authority property would make an ideal first purchase.
Saturday, 4 May
I woke up to the sound of the market traders setting up in the street outside. They chatted to each other, raising their voices over the scrape of metal on metal as they put their stalls together. Jack was still dozing by my side.
Sunlight filtered in through the metal blinds on our bedroom windows, and Dexter was mewing in my face, eyes wide. It couldn’t have been much later than seven. I fed the cat, made a cup of coffee and got back under the sheets, propping myself up on cushions and switching on my iPad. My finger hovered in its familiar location, over the Rightmove app.
What was I really searching for? Live in the country, that was what I’d written down.
Perhaps we’d been restricting ourselves, only searching in London. It’s not like either of us were looking for nightlife on our doorstep any more.
I changed the key terms, and widened my search area to take in areas outside the city. Jack stirred a little by my side, sleepily putting his hand on my leg and leaving it there. I smiled at the comfort of his touch, and instinctively covered his hand with mine. Maybe he was right: the summer break would give me some perspective and make everything seem rosier. But in the meantime, there was no harm in looking around, was there?
I dragged my finger across images of thatched cottages and Tudor-style buildings nestled in the green expanses of Kent and Surrey – gardens with rose bushes and jasmine, oak-beamed bathrooms with white fluffy towels, and kitchens bright with country-floral fabrics.
I clicked on one of the images to enlarge it. It showed a thatched cottage in Chilham – it looked like a lovely village, with a castle off the main square, a teashop and a pub – the White Horse. There was a train station nearby, so Jack and I would still be able to commute to our jobs. An extra hour or so on the train wouldn’t seem like much if it meant waking up to birds singing, and being able to relax on deckchairs in a spacious garden in the summer-time.
Jack snuggled closer to me, his face relaxed. He looked content. I hoped he wouldn’t wake up. Here I was, dreaming out a future for the two of us, without having discussed it with him. He turned on his side and started to snore gently, and I looked back at the iPad and checked the details of two cottages in Kent, not far from where my mum had retired to recently.
It wouldn’t take long to drive down and have a little look, would it?
*
‘Kent?’ Jack asked, over a breakfast of eggs Benedict later that morning.
‘Yes, there were a couple of cottages that looked good. I thought it would give us an idea of what’s out there.’ I sipped at my orange juice.
‘Not really,’ Jack said, his brow creased. ‘I feel like we’re pretty settled in London.’
‘I know. I did too. But you should see what our money could get us that bit further out. For the price of this flat we could have a whole house of our own. We’d be within commutable distance, so it wouldn’t have to affect our work – a bit of extra time on the train to read the paper or catch up on emails, that’s all. And we’d have a little haven to go back to at the end of the day.’
Jack toyed with the eggs on his plate. ‘But our friends are here in Hackney. Our lives are here.’
‘We’d still see everyone – I’m sure they’d come and visit.’ Over Jack’s shoulder I caught sight of the calendar, the circled date that was silently nudging me along, insisting on change.
‘I’m not against it, it just seems a bit sudden,’ Jack said, putting down his fork. ‘I know your work’s been tough lately, but … Amelia, is this about you turning thirty?’
‘No. No, of course it isn’t.’
Jack raised an eyebrow.
‘Really, I swear. We used to talk about it before we got married, don’t you remember? Living somewhere more chilled-out, where we could go for long walks at the weekend. Get a dog.’
‘I was thinking years down the line though. And anyway, that was before we got Dexter.’ Jack glanced over at the worktop, where our tabby was currently prowling. ‘He might have some strong feelings about that. I don’t know, Amelia. My commute is long enough as it is.’
‘But that’s on the tube. The train would be far more peaceful, and I think they’re upgrading the rail links in Kent at the moment. You’ve been talking about wanting to work from home more – if we moved we’d have space for you to do that.’
I could see Jack was mulling the idea over.
‘Imagine it, Jack. Our own cottage, with a garden. A proper living room, with an open fire! Somewhere we could toast chestnuts, marshmallows. Drinking wine with friends when they came to stay.’
For a moment it looked as if he might be softening to the idea.
This was my chance. I had to try. I took a deep breath.
‘Jack, if you tell me now that you hate the idea, that nothing about it appeals to you, then I promise I’ll forget all about it.’
Jack looked at me. I waited for him to tell me I was being impractical. A dreamer.
But slowly, a smile began to spread across his face.
‘I don’t see the harm in setting up a few viewings.’
*
That evening, Carly, Sunita and I were at our local, the Florence, tucked away at a table in the corner.
‘That’s John Travolta.’ Sunita pushed her heavy-framed black glasses back on her nose. ‘I’m sure of it.’ She pointed animatedly at the cropped corner of a dark stubbled face on our quiz answer sheet.
‘Sure, sure?’ Carly said sceptically. ‘Or sure like you were the last time, when we put down Justin Bieber and it turned out to be Tony Blair?’
‘One hundred per—’ Sunita stopped mid-sentence and put a hand on her baby bump, flinching a little. ‘Yikes, it kicked me right up under the ribs that time.’ Her expression swiftly changed to a smile.
‘Want to feel?’ she asked me and Carly. Putting down her pen, Carly rested her hand on the place where Sunita’s growing baby was moving.
‘Ha!’ she said, her eyes lighting up as her hand moved. ‘An elbow or something. How does it feel for you?’
‘A bit weird, but lovely too. It makes it seem more real. I think even Nico believes it’s happening now.’
I thought back to what Nico had been like when the three of us were at uni together. Always the first in the union bar and the last out, usually in fancy dress – a hula skirt or a Mexican wrestling mask, or with a stethoscope slung round his neck. Meeting Sunita had calmed him down a bit, but he was still a big kid at heart, something that being the owner of
a Go-Kart track had allowed him to hang on to, and it still wasn’t easy to picture him in charge of a small human being’s welfare.
‘Five months down the line, still four to go,’ Carly said.
‘It’s gone so quickly,’ I added. ‘It feels like a few minutes ago that you guys announced it.’
‘Back then I thought no one could be more shell-shocked than we were,’ Sunita said, ‘until I saw the way you lot reacted. Never thought one split condom could affect my friends so much.’
‘It was a bit of a wake-up call. I think we all feel like we have to be grown-ups now,’ Carly added.
‘Come off it. It’s me and Nico who’ve had to sell on our Glastonbury tickets and keep the cash for our buggy fund, not you guys. You’re all still free to party.’
Carly and I exchanged glances. ‘Doesn’t happen much any more though, does it?’ I said.
Gareth, the pub landlord, took the microphone. ‘Ladies and gents, that’s the end of the picture round. Swap your sheets with the table next to you for marking.’
‘Oh balls,’ Carly said. ‘We haven’t even got them all down yet. Jessie J for this one, right?’ She hurriedly scrawled the remaining five names on the lines in blue biro.
I smiled at the old men at the table adjacent to ours and swapped our sheet for theirs.
‘No cheating,’ a man in a flat cap warned me mock-sternly.
‘I’m a teacher. Very trustworthy and experienced with a red pen.’
I took a sip of my beer and relaxed for a moment in the familiar buzz of the pub.
‘How’s school for you two at the moment?’ Sunita asked.
‘Two weeks till half term,’ Carly and I answered in unison, looking at each other and letting out a similarly weary laugh.
Amelia Grey's Fireside Dream Page 2
