We All Live Here

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-eight

Eleanor is packing in the swift, hyper-efficient way that she always packs: clothes rolled up in dry-cleaner’s plastic covers, still on their hangers, to be pulled out and hung straight up in whatever locations she moves to, two pairs of flat shoes in shoe bags, a small bag of toiletries, all placed in the small case with the precision of a Japanese puzzle, and two enormous wheeled cases full of makeup. It would take Lila four hours to pack what Eleanor packs in twenty minutes. Years of practice, Eleanor always says cheerfully. She is off to Paris at four thirty the following morning for a six-week film shoot, and is brisk, focused, and a tiny bit distant, as she always is when she’s about to head off on location.

“Well, I think it’s great,” she says, folding seven pairs of knickers and two bras into tissue paper.

“You do? Why tissue paper?”

“It’s expensive lingerie. I don’t want it touching anything else. Can you get me a toothpaste out of the bathroom cabinet?”

Lila goes to fetch it and hands her the tube. It’s the same brand that Gene advertised not so long ago. She finds this faintly irritating, as if Gene has somehow got his tendrils into Eleanor too. “I told Jensen I’d missed him. And I did give him a massive apology.”

Eleanor pulls a face. “I guess that’s a start. But you’ll have to do more than that. This is your time to have grown-up relationships, open communication.” She closes her suitcase with a grunt and straightens. “Seriously. He’s a good, straightforward man. Be good and straightforward back.”

“Should I tell him what happened with Gabriel Mallory? Maybe I should.”

Eleanor frowns, and lugs her suitcase toward the door. She stops and considers this for a minute. “I don’t know. One massive lapse in judgment could probably be put down to misfortune. Two looks like…carelessness.”

“In other words I’m the dickhead.”

“You could be. I think you’re going to have to judge that one for yourself. But, hey, it’s lovely news! The only decent man in the whole of London is back!”

“And you’re going to Paris!”

“To eat a ton of cheese and be flirted with inappropriately by French crew!”

“Living the dream, El.” Lila hugs her friend fiercely. “Don’t you dare decide to do an Eat Pray Love and not come back. You know I make terrible choices when you’re not around.” She’s joking, but there’s always an undercurrent of fear. Lila is not sure she would know who she was without Eleanor around. It’s a constant revelation to her, the way these friendships become more important the older they get.

“You’ll have to grow up one day, you know.”

“I will when you will.”

“When you put it like that…”

···

Lila returns from Eleanor’s flat to find Jane waiting on her front step, her long gray hair floating around her face in the gusty wind. She meets Lila with a beatific smile. She has come, she says, for Gene’s things.

“Is he with you?” Lila opens the front door, shooing Truant inside.

“He has been. But Elijah—my partner—is growing a little weary of his energy, and I’ve told him he has to make alternative arrangements.”

“So you’ve come to ask if I’ll take him back.”

“No, no, Lila. I’ve merely come to pick up two boxes of his. He says they’re clearly marked. Could you show me where I might find the attic?”

Jane’s serenity could be marketed and bottled. Lila cannot imagine any world event that would prompt more than a head tilt and a faint smile as Jane considered the implications. She does something called holistic massage, which apparently takes in the emotional and spiritual concerns of the client, and she takes care, she says, to stay contained, and not absorb other people’s energy. “It would be overwhelming,” she says, in the calm tones of one who is never remotely overwhelmed.

Lila pulls down the loft ladder and climbs up first, peering down to the end of the attic. There are only two boxes marked GENE still here; he must have taken the others when he left. She hauls them to the loft hatch and passes them out to Jane. “I think that’s it,” she says, as she makes her way back down the ladder.

She helps Jane carry the boxes to her car, placing them in the boot. They are bulkier than they are heavy. And now there is no remnant of either of her fathers left in her house. It’s almost as if they have never been here at all. She resists the urge to ask how Gene is, what he is doing, but Jane tells her unprompted that Gene has been invited to take part in a Comic Con. She says the words carefully, enunciating each syllable, as if it is something strange and exotic. There has been retrospective interest in Captain Troy Strang and the cast of Star Squadron Zero— one of the streaming services has announced it will be broadcasting series one to three—and he is attending the fan convention in a couple of weeks to meet viewers and sign autographs. Apparently the queues go around the block. Lila wonders briefly if they do or if this is another of Gene’s embellishments. And then she wonders if there even is a Comic Con.

“Thank you, Lila. Shall I give him your love? I know he’d love to see you.”

Lila closes the boot. “No. Thanks, anyway.”

Jane straightens and gazes at Lila. It is a slightly unnerving experience, like having someone see right through you. She smiles. “Don’t be too hard on him. He loves you. And he really did love your mother.”

“He had a funny way of showing it.”

“Lila, we all like to think we know everything about our parents, but we don’t. Your father learned a lot of lessons too late. Certainly too late for him and me, but I retain a great deal of fondness for him. He is a good person.”

Lila fights the urge to roll her eyes. “Maybe. But he doesn’t deserve to stay here, Jane. Not with us.”

Jane stands very still for a moment, perhaps considering this. “One of the things I come up against often in my practice is the notion of forgiveness. Do you want to repeat the mistakes your parents made? Holding on to your grievances for the rest of your life? Or do you want to put that burden down?”

“Jane, with respect—”

“Oh, don’t use that phrase. ‘With respect’ is what people say when they’re spiky and defensive.”

“Well, maybe I am spiky and defensive when it comes to my father. You don’t know him like I know him.”

“Darling girl, I lived with him on and off for fifteen years. That’s probably more time than you spent with him. And I’m going to tell you something. You do not know what happened between him and your mother. Casual infidelity I could have let go. The degree to which he was in love with her, I couldn’t.” As Lila struggles to make sense of what Jane is saying, she adds: “Your mother was not a fragile flower, nor was she easily bidden to do anything she didn’t want to do. She was a strong woman and she had agency. She made her own decisions.” She holds up a long, strong finger. “And before you say it, that doesn’t make her a terrible person either. Life is long and complicated, Lila, and we all make mistakes. What matters is what we do beyond them. But if you’re going to hold up your mother and your father as villains of the piece it will be misguided and it is ultimately you who will suffer.”

“So you just forgave him. For shagging my mother.”

“Of course. I chose not to be romantically involved with him anymore, but I will always be fond of him, and glad that we’re in each other’s lives. Have you never made a mistake?”

Lila thinks about Jensen, about the awful discarded chapter. Jane seems to note her flicker of uncertainty. “Well, I hope, if you have, that you were forgiven. I hope the person understood that you’re only human. You can hang on to anger and bitterness your whole life. But all you really do is prolong your own pain. Just think about it. Put that burden down. For you and your daughters.”

Lila accepts the kiss that Jane plants on her cheek. She smells of lavender and patchouli.

“It was lovely seeing you, Lila. Love to the girls too.”

Lila waits until she has started the car. “He’s still not coming back here,” she calls, as Jane pulls out of the driveway. “Definitely not.”

Jane smiles back, one hand lifted in a cheerful wave, so that Lila is unsure whether she heard her. The wave would probably have been the same either way.

···

Lila is moving furniture when Anoushka calls. She has decided a new start is needed, that perhaps moving the sofa and the easy chairs will disguise what is missing, and the rooms will look intentionally minimalist or, at least, better for the estate agent, once the house goes on the market. She has puffed and tugged the furniture from one end of the room to the other, has dug an old vase and jug out of one of the removal boxes in the garage that was never unpacked, and placed them artfully on the kitchen surfaces to hide the absence of Bill’s things. She has moved rugs and rehung pictures. She keeps telling herself that a house is just bricks and mortar. She will create a new home wherever they end up. They will be fine by themselves.

She is so busy dragging the television cabinet round to the far wall that she almost misses the call, and answers it breathless and a little sweaty.

“Darling. Have you got a minute?”

“Anoushka! Sure!” Lila glances up in the wall mirror and sees that she has a black smudge on her face. She rubs at it.

“I’ve had an idea. Just had a meeting with a new client—very successful actress. She wants to do a memoir. There’s a huge appetite for memoir right now, especially the really spicy ones. I think it will be marvelous.” She lets this dangle.

“I thought I’d already explained the reasons I can’t do a memoir.”

“Not your own, darling. I thought you could be her ghost.”

“Her what?”

“Her ghost. She can’t write for toffee. She tells you the stories, you turn it all into a wonderful book. We know you can write, and you’re a marvel at shaping anecdotes. And I think it would be great fun—she’s a namedropper nonpareil .”

When Lila doesn’t say anything, Anoushka adds: “It doesn’t pay fantastically, I mean not like your advance for the other thing. There would be no royalties. But we can use the success of The Rebuild to demand a written credit. Some people quite like that, you know, especially if the writer has a bit of prestige. I think we could negotiate a fairly decent standalone sum.”

“I would write someone else’s memoir?”

“Exactly! It would keep you in the game until you know what you want to do next, and keep you employed for a few months. And if it does well, you’ll be in demand for more of them. A nice little money-spinner and your personal life doesn’t have to be anywhere near it. Shall I put your name forward?”

“Is she nice?”

“Darling, she doesn’t have to be nice. She’s a hoot. It’s all good material.”

This is Anoushka-speak for She is an absolute nightmare.

“Who is it?”

Anoushka whispers the name of a well-known soap actress, whose battles with alcohol and tempestuous relationships have been well documented in the tabloid press. You would not believe the sexual escapades, Anoushka says, in a voice that could be conveying shock or awed admiration, it is not clear which. She mutters something about Saudi princes, something else about an A-list movie star, and possibly the words “guinea pig.”

“Uhh…maybe,” says Lila, uncertainly, having decided not to ask for clarification. “I guess you could put my name forward. I’ll think about it.”

“Good-oh! I’ll get on to her agent.”

Lila thinks about the ghostwriting for the rest of the day while she’s sorting out the house. She looks up a few interviews with the actress. The subtext of each is absolute car-crash . She tells the girls when they get home and they express mild interest, distracted by their various electronic devices, in the way that they usually do about her writing projects. But when she asks them over supper what they think about possibly moving house, their response is immediate and dramatic.

“Why? I don’t want to move.” Violet’s eyes widen and she drops the iPad onto the table.

“I just thought…well, now that Bill has gone back to his house, and Gene has…Gene’s going to be working elsewhere, maybe we could buy a smaller house. It would be more economical. And easier to look after. You know how things are always going wrong here.”

“But where would we go?”

“We’d stay in the area, just get somewhere a little smaller. Maybe three bedrooms instead of five. Maybe something modern.”

They glance at each other swiftly and Lila is not sure what passes between them. “It would be a nice change?” she says gamely.

“I like our house,” says Violet.

“I don’t want to go anywhere else,” says Celie, scowling. “This is our home.”

“I don’t want any more change,” says Violet. “There’s been too much change.”

Her voice wobbles and she looks so close to tears that Lila backs down, says it was just an idea, hugs her daughter and says it’s fine, it’s all fine, that they’ll stay, that nothing is going to change.

And when Anoushka calls the next day to say the actress is absolutely delighted, that The Rebuild is one of her favorite books, and she would love to meet Lila to discuss it next week, Lila says, with as much enthusiasm as she can muster, that she’s delighted too.

Right now, the girls’ stability is the most important thing. The actress doesn’t have to be nice. And hopes she misheard the thing about the guinea pig.