We All Live Here

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Twenty-nine

For the next few days, Lila cannot clear her mind of the image of Bill’s ashen face, the way he seemed suddenly hollowed out, as if the one foundational thing that had been holding him up had collapsed, taking him with it. She feels his grief and shock as if it is her own. And it is her own because she keeps circling to the image of her mother, blithely flying off secretly to have sex with the one man she had sworn she would never see again. Francesca, who had seemingly held the world’s wisdom in her cheerful gray-ringleted head, had made the worst decision Lila could possibly imagine and she feels as if her own moral compass has disappeared with Bill’s.

Gene left. She had heard some movement in the house, heavy feet on stairs, a murmuring to the dog, but she had been crying too hard to pay much attention. She had emerged after an hour to find her study space cleared, the bed folded back into a sofa, a pile of sheets and pillows neatly folded at its side. She had gazed at the space where her father had been and felt absolutely nothing, except perhaps a nagging regret that she had ever been stupid enough to let him in again. When she had spied the Post-it note with I’m sorry on it, she had screwed it up in her fist and dropped it into the wastepaper basket.

···

Bill had declined to pick up her calls, sending a short text after the fourth: Darling girl, I know you mean well but I really just need to be alone right now.

But the following day—after a night of fitful, intermittent sleep—she had driven round there. The curtains of the bungalow were drawn and it had taken Bill ten minutes to answer the door. When he opened it, Lila had been shocked at his appearance: he had looked worse than he had when Francesca had died, grayer and more frail. The bungalow had held a chill atmosphere of emptiness, as if his presence were not enough to make it feel like a home again.

“Please come home,” she had said, placing her hand on his as they drank tea. “He’s gone now.”

“I can’t, darling. I need to sit and digest this by myself for a bit. I’ll come and get my things when I’m ready.”

Instead Penelope had come the following day for his medications. She had been glassy-eyed with sadness, as if it were she whose memories had been destroyed. “He’s so sad,” she said simply, clutching the bag of pills from his medicine cabinet. “I feel…helpless.” She had clutched Lila’s wrist with her thin hand, gazing at her mutely before she left.

Two days later he had arrived with an empty suitcase, and removed some of his clothes and personal items. He had rung on the doorbell, as if he were a visitor, and was scrupulously polite. Lila had thought he felt she was also to blame, even as she assured him that Gene was gone, that Bill’s place was here, that they needed him. “Mum really loved you, you know,” she had told him, as she sat on the bed while he packed carefully, folding each shirt with military precision. “Whatever stupid decision she made, you must know that.”

Bill had let out a long sigh and sat on the bed beside her. “That’s what makes it all so incomprehensible. She knew he was ridiculous. She knew he had been repeatedly unfaithful when they were together. The number of times we talked about him, how unreliable he was, how angry he made her…It just makes no sense to me that she would be sucked in by him again.”

He had grown silent. Then, “I had a feeling something was off. I’ve been remembering it, once I checked the dates. There was a period when she was a little distant. I couldn’t put my finger on it. I thought if I left her alone it would just…die down. She said she was going to stay with Dorothy in Nottingham for a few days. I didn’t think for a minute…” He tails off.

“So you just left her alone.”

“I—I’m not very good with emotional situations. I thought it was something she just needed to get out of her system. I didn’t realize it was… him .” His voice strains as he refers to Gene. He cannot say his name.

“I’m so sorry, Bill. But we still love you. We would love you to come home.”

“I think my home is back there,” he says quietly. And the words go through her like a knife.

About an hour after he left, she noticed that he had left behind the portrait of Francesca.

···

On Friday, she heads again to Bill’s. She decides to pop into the supermarket at the end of the road to get him some flowers, a kind of peace-offering, even if peace isn’t hers to offer. She strolls the aisles, then picks the nicest ones she can find that aren’t lilies—they have always been too funereal since her mother died: some stocks in a deep raspberry red. She scans the buckets, trying to find the best possible bunch, and then, on impulse, picks up a second, as if she can show him through sheer horticultural mass how much he means to her. When she looks up a woman is standing beside her, gazing at the tub of flowers as if she is working out which ones to take. Just as Lila registers this, she sees, beside the woman, Jensen, dressed in his work gear. Lila straightens and flushes, as if she has been caught doing something wrong.

“Hi,” she says, her mouth powdery and dry.

“Hello, Lila,” he says. He doesn’t smile.

“Oh, you ’re Lila.” She sees the woman reassess her, as if through a new prism. She has pale red hair, cut in a sleek bob, and is wearing a black polo-neck and white jeans. She has the air of someone who knows exactly who she is, and is unafraid of what anyone else may think that might be.

Lila glances at Jensen, who is carrying a small basket of shopping: she takes in red wine, salad, and a chicken, the kind of thing one might buy if one was preparing a nice dinner for two.

“How are you?” she says tentatively, trying to ignore the woman’s stare.

“Fine,” he says. His face is expressionless.

She cannot help herself. “I’m so sorry, Jensen,” she blurts out.

“Yes,” the woman says calmly, before Jensen can answer. “You should be. C’mon. We should head to the checkout.” As Lila watches, the woman takes Jensen’s elbow and they turn away from her to walk down the aisle.

···

The girls have been particularly fractious over dinner, arguing over a teddy bear, which, until Lila brought it down from the attic, neither had even remembered they owned. They are unimpressed by her attempt at supper (a chicken tray-bake she had retrieved twenty minutes too late from the oven) and furious when Lila tells them that Dan wants them to switch overnight days to Thursday this week (he has a work event and Marja is apparently not up to managing three children alone). She has told them that Bill is having a few days at the bungalow and that Gene is away for work. It is too much to explain the truth.

When Celie disappears upstairs to her room—complete with obligatory teenage door slam—and Violet settles herself in front of the iPad, Lila doesn’t have the energy to persuade them to stay. She cleans the kitchen, trying to keep her attention on a listless radio panel show, and walks Truant around the block. Finally, when Violet is in bed, she runs herself a bath and sinks into it gratefully. Then when she can bear the silence no longer, she calls Gabriel.

“Hey, Bella,” he says, picking up immediately. He sounds upbeat, as if he is glad to hear from her. “What’s going on?”

She wants to match his cheerfulness but, right now, it’s beyond her.

“I’m…I’m having a tricky time actually. Just thought it would be nice to hear a friendly voice.”

“What’s up?”

She tells him about the attic and the discovery of the letter. He listens carefully, then lets out a long sigh. “Oh, that’s tough.”

“I don’t know what to do about it.”

“I’m not sure there’s much you can do. You might just have to let your stepdad simmer down a bit. I’m sure he’ll come back when he’s ready.”

“You think?” She isn’t so sure. Bill hasn’t so much as dropped in since he picked up the suitcase of belongings.

“It’s pride. He’s suffered a blow to his ego. No matter how old he is that’s going to hurt, especially when that blow has come from your biological dad.”

Lila is not convinced that’s right. Bill’s pain seems so much more bone-deep than that. It isn’t just ego: she watched the very backbone of his life crumble in front of her. But it’s so nice to talk to Gabriel that she doesn’t challenge him. “So how are you?”

He tells her how busy he is at work—two huge new projects have come in—a respite center, and a house for a multi-millionaire who changes his mind daily on major decisions. He’s working at home this evening from his office at the end of the garden. His voice is cheerful, a little detached. It is, she thinks uncomfortably, a conversation he could be having with a work colleague.

“How’s Lennie?” she says.

“Fine. Very excited about this Peter Pan production. Though she’s pretty exhausted when she gets back from the rehearsals.”

They talk of school a little, and school plays they have starred in (he was a tree in Robin Hood ; she was a teapot in a compendium of nursery rhymes) and of television they have watched, and the water starts to go cold so she leans forward and turns on the hot tap.

“What are you doing?” he says.

“Oh. Just running the tap. The water’s gone a bit cold. I’m in the bath.”

“You’re in the bath.”

There is something contemplative in his voice, as if he’s considering this. It makes her laugh. “It’s my safe space.”

“I’m not sure I’d call it a safe space. Not if I was there, anyway.”

A flicker of something travels through her. “Oh, you’re dangerous in bathrooms, are you?” she says lightly.

“I’m dangerous in places where you’re naked.”

“That’s for sure.” She has a sudden memory of the two of them in his front room, the tangle of limbs, the urgency.

“You said we were going to do that again.” She keeps it light, flirtatious. His tone has made her a little reckless.

“We will. But in the meantime you should tell me more about what you’re doing in the bath.”

She is about to make a joke, but something in his voice stops her. “Uh…talking to you, clearly. And…” She swallows. “…thinking about you.”

“And what do you do when you think about me?”

His voice has lowered. It makes her feel faintly light-headed.

“You really want to know?”

“Yes.”

“You want to have that conversation?”

“I absolutely want to have that conversation.”

Lila has never had that conversation. The one time she had tried with Dan he had been at first disconcerted, and said she hadn’t sounded like her, and then when she had tried again, he’d joked that she sounded like a cheap porn movie. She had been so cross with him that she had never tried again.

“This is new,” she says carefully.

“I like new.”

So Lila has that conversation. She tells him in a low voice what she is doing. Or at least what her pretend self is doing, given that what she is actually doing is sitting in cooling bathwater and hoping desperately that neither of her girls is lurking outside the bathroom door. She is emboldened by the sound of his rapt attention, his lowered voice, his increasingly short answers, and lets her imagination run riot. When he tells her what he is doing she feels faintly giddy with power. It turns out it’s easier than she’d thought to do this. You simply have to forget everything else, to shed your self-consciousness, word by word, to close your eyes and inhabit this imaginary self, so much wilder and less inhibited than she actually is. It turns out the conversation is swift, and effective, and has a gratifying, audible end.

Lila lies in the bath, completely still, listening to the sound of his breathing.

“Are you okay?” she says, after a minute.

“I…am definitely okay,” he says. “That was…unexpected. But amazing. Thank you.”

“Thank you” is an odd response, but Lila decides that manners are always a good thing. She still feels giddy, unable to believe she was able to produce a response like that from saying a few words down a phone. She is shocked by the intimacy of it, the trust implicit in it. We just did that , a voice in her head keeps saying. We just did that thing .

“Did you get there?” he says.

“I did,” she lies. And he lets out a little hm , which might be satisfaction, or might just be him considering it.

“So when are we going to see each other?” she says, after a pause.

“Soon. Let me just get this nightmare week out of the way and we’ll find something nice to do.”

“Sounds good,” she says. “I could do with something to look forward to.”

And then Violet has opened the bathroom door and is standing there in her turquoise pajamas, her face clouded with crossness. “Mum, I really need a poo and Celie is in the other bathroom putting a stupid facemask on and she won’t come out.”

“I’d better go,” she says hurriedly, and tries to turn her flushed, slightly dreamy expression into something resembling maternal concern.