Chapter 24
24
I f you wait long enough.
Kay smiled. She was standing on the pavement outside her parents’ house, looking at the front border of their garden, at the triumphant crowd of blood-red lilies that filled it. They were vibrant blooms, that nevertheless disappeared every autumn for so long it was possible to forget they had ever existed. But they did, and every summer they came back, and with them memories of the spring her mother had planted them and yes, if you wait long enough the answer will come.
Where had she read that? It didn’t matter. What mattered was that it was true, because the answer to a question Alex had asked when he was no more than four years old, had finally arrived.
Where do people go when they die?
It had been the kind of fact-seeking missile of question only a small child can ask. She could still see his face, the way his tiny eyebrows had knitted together as she had tried and failed to provide an answer he might understand. But back in those days she had been learning too, how difficult it was going to be for him to negotiate a world that was not black and white. Perhaps, she was thinking now, instead of the muddled response about spirits and heaven she remembered giving, she should have just said, ‘let’s wait, shall we? Let’s wait and see where they go?’ Because twenty years later, here surely was the answer. They don’t go anywhere. As long as those lilies bloomed and she was here to remember the planting of them, how could the answer be anything else? Her mother was present: in spirit and in love. As long the wooden egg Alex had given to his grandmother still sat in the front room window (she could see it now), and Alex remembered the gifting of it, her mother hadn’t gone anywhere.
She walked up the short drive, stopping at the porch door to look back at the lilies, and as she looked it felt to Kay that this was the first time she had really noticed them. She couldn’t understand why. They were such a vivid colour. Shaking her head, she opened the door to the empty space where her mother’s wheelchair had been kept, the shelf where her mother’s coat had hung, the rack where her shoes had sat. And suddenly, her head felt too light, her legs loose as straw. Grief was an animal she was only just beginning to learn to live with. It could not be managed, or tamed. If, one day she thought she had it under control, another day it would jump out and claw her legs from under her. Like now. She reached for the handle of the front door, composing herself and, when she was ready pushed it open and stepped into a darkened hallway. ‘I’m here,’ she called. There was no answer; her shoulders slumped. Her father, she guessed, would be in his usual chair by the window, hands locked together, thumbs rubbing away, that bit smaller, that bit more withdrawn. ‘I’m here,’ she said, a little quieter and leaned around the door to the living room. He was in his usual chair, but his hands weren’t locked together. He had his phone at his ear, listening, smiling.
‘Just popping some shopping in.’ She held up a carrier bag.
Glancing over, he raised a hand in greeting and turned back.
Kay frowned. ‘I’ll put it in the kitchen?’
‘Did you really? What an extraordinary woman you are.’
‘I said,’ she repeated. ‘I’ll put it in the kitchen.’ Who was he talking to?
As he turned again, he placed a hand over his phone. ‘You’re early.’
‘Am I?’
‘I’m on the phone.’
‘I can see. And what followed was an extraordinary moment in which Kay stood in the open doorway waiting, until it became clear that her father was waiting too, for her to go. ‘I’ll leave you to it then,’ she mouthed and didn’t move.
He nodded. ‘Close the door a bit.’
Stunned, she pulled the door closed and stood looking at it.
‘You’re early.’ Craig glanced up. He was leaning against the counter, reading the cooking instructions on a ready meal.
‘So, I hear,’ Kay said and looked at the clock, narrowed her eyes and looked harder. It was five o’clock. She couldn’t make sense of it. Five o’clock was a part of the day that hadn’t really existed for the last thirty years, squashed as it had been between lesson-planning, marking, supermarket runs. It meant at least another two hours before she could sit down with Real Housewives. It meant that she’d reached the end of all the things she had to do today with time to spare. And although this adjustment always took some time at the beginning of the school holidays, the necessary slowing down of her days had been something she’d welcomed. A six-week respite from the hamster wheel. Only now it wasn’t a respite. Now it was forever. She bit down on her lip. All this time. How on earth was she going to fill it?
‘Five.’ She nodded, her chin lifting as she breathed in a familiar rich smell. ‘Who is Dad talking to?’ But she didn’t wait for an answer. ‘Is that what he’s having?’ she said, staring at the packet Craig held. ‘Chicken Tikka? Dad doesn’t eat Indian.’
‘He does now. He asked me to pick it up.’
‘Right then.’ She glanced at the bag she’d just dropped on the kitchen table. It was full of ready meals: fish pie, chicken pie, toad-in-the-hole. Her father’s usual fare.
Craig put the packet down. ‘I don’t know who he’s talking to, but it’s every day now.’
‘Every day?’ Kay looked back along the hallway, but even with elephant ears she wouldn’t have been able to hear. ‘Who is she?’
‘She?’ Craig arched his eyebrows. ‘You know more than me. Have you booked Cyprus?’
‘Not yet.’ And from along the hallway, she heard laugher. ‘Whoever it is, he obviously finds her amusing.’
Ignoring her, Craig took a fork and set about stabbing the plastic covering of the ready meal. ‘So, you haven’t booked Cyprus, and you’re probably bingeing on Real Housewives. ’
Kay smiled. ‘My retirement hasn’t even started, Craig. Not officially. Not until September.’
‘And I’m not going to let you become a recluse, Mrs B.’
‘I’m not going to ––’ But again she was interrupted by laughter. She turned to look. ‘You’ve really no idea?’
‘I’ve really no idea.’ He waved the fork. ‘Maybe your father has an admirer. One of the ladies I care for has a new boyfriend. She met him at her husband’s funeral.’
‘He’s eighty-six.’ Kay frowned. ‘And there were no single ladies at my mother’s funeral. Not that I remember anyway.’
‘And my lady is eighty-nine!’ He opened the microwave and threw the meal in. ‘Maybe he put himself on Tinder.’
‘He’s eighty-six, Craig.’
Fork in hand, Craig turned. ‘Is there an age limit?’
She opened her mouth, but nothing came out. Her father wouldn’t be on Tinder! That was the most ridiculous thing she’d heard. Not least because he could barely work his phone as it was, constantly archiving messages from the doctor and the bank, and then ringing her in a panic when he couldn’t find them. ‘No,’ she said and sat down. ‘I don’t suppose there is an age limit, considering I’m on it now.’
‘Tinder!’ Craig fell back against the counter, his hands covering his face. ‘Mrs B is on Tinder?’
‘Don’t laugh.’ Chin dipped, she ran her finger along the edge of the table. She felt exposed, as if he’d caught a glimpse of her in her underwear. ‘I was persuaded,’ she said. ‘That’s all.’
‘I’m not laughing.’ The smile dropped from Craig’s face. ‘I think it’s great,’ he said. ‘I really do. Have you met anyone? Can I see? You can’t give your number out, you know that …’
‘Stop!’ Kay raised her hand. ‘Just stop there. My friends set it up, and to be honest I haven’t even looked at it. I’m …’ She paused.
‘Scared?’
As she looked up, the smallest whisper of confirmation escaped her lips. Yes. Scared was exactly the right word for how she felt, and not for the first time she found herself amazed at the emotional intelligence of a young man who had gone through school failing almost every subject. ‘Well …’ But she didn’t know how to continue. To say she hadn’t looked wasn’t quite true. She had opened the app just once, done a tiny amount of scrolling before, very quickly, closing it again. The muscled angst of teenage memories had stopped her from doing anything as bold as sending someone a like. A like? When had she ever done that? She knew exactly when. Valentine’s Day 1983. She had sent an anonymous card to Stephen Webber, the class heartthrob on whom she’d had a secret and intense crush. That was the only time girls were allowed to do the choosing. Valentine’s Day and leap year. And it wasn’t a joke. It really was that these were the only times it had felt acceptable for a girl to make the move, and only then under the protection of anonymity. The few relationships she’d had before marrying Martin had all been instigated by the man. Boyfriends she had acquired because it had been betterto have a boyfriend, than not have a boyfriend. Because all her friends had boyfriends. Because it was expected that she have a boyfriend. And although there was no need to re-write history, and she had loved Martin, he had done the asking and she couldn’t help but wonder now how things might have turned out if … She took a deep breath in, her shoulders rising as she looked at Craig. If she hadn’t been so scared.
‘Maths used to scare me,’ Craig said, and shrugged.
‘I remember.’ Kay smiled. She did remember him, right at the back of her class, a look of utter bewilderment on his face every time she said the word, fraction.
‘But I can still remember what you said.’
‘Really? What did I say?’
‘You said that everyone finds everything hard, until they know what they’re doing. And that it’s difficult to like something, if you’re not very good at it.’
‘Did I?’ Kay nodded. He’d hit the nail on the head, or she had. She had no clue what she was doing, she wasn’t enjoying it, and she wasn’t even sure she wanted to be doing it.
Popping the meal onto a plate, and the plate onto a tray, Craig turned. ‘Let me get this to your dad and then I’ll make a cuppa and we’ll have a little Tinder lesson.’ He winked. ‘I’ll be teacher this time.’
‘That’s a no. You never give your phone number out, and if they ask for it straight away it’s a red flag.’ As he spoke, Craig made a square shape with his hands. Her father had been served his dinner and now here she was, roles reversed as Craig started his lesson in Tinder etiquette. ‘A big red flag,’ he repeated.
‘Good to know.’ Kay nodded. ‘Except flags tend to be rectangular.’
‘They can be octonotical for all it matters.’
‘Octagonal.’
‘Whatever it is!’ Craig frowned. ‘You don’t give your phone number out. This is serious Mrs B, there are some real looney-tunes out there. OK?’
‘OK,’ she repeated.
‘What about this one?’ Craig turned the phone. ‘Adam. He’s fifty-seven, he likes Netflix, sounds and football.’
‘What are sounds?’
‘A middle-aged way of saying music. Personally, I think he’s trying to be too cool.’
‘So, it’s a, no?’
‘It’s a no.’ Craig swiped left, and Adam disappeared. ‘Richard? He likes football, cycling, running and hiking.’
Kay shook her head. ‘I could never keep up. It’s exhausting just looking at his photos.’
‘John?’
‘Why on earth has he chosen that photo?’ She leaned forward to look closer at a profile picture that showed a heavy-set man striding out of the waves, a la Daniel Craig in James Bond.
Craig laughed. ‘Oh, you have so much to learn, Mrs B. That is very tame.’ And he swiped left. ‘How about Tony? He’s looking for that special someone.’
Again, she shook her head. She was just looking. Special was an adjective too far. Plus, Tony’s profile picture showed him clutching a cat. ‘Sorry,’ she mouthed to the cat, as Craig swiped left.
Handing her phone back, Craig stood up. ‘We’ll have to carry on tomorrow.’ he said. ‘I’m going to be late. My five-thirty is grumpy enough as it is.’
Distracted, Kay nodded. ‘This one is funny.’ She was reading the profile of someone who had called himself Goose.
‘Goose?’ Craig wrinkled his nose. ‘What kind of a name is that?’
‘Goose was the sidekick in Top Gun. I think he’s trying to …’ But before she could get any further Craig had leaned in.
‘Oh no!’ he said. ‘A definite, massive no! Anyone who’s anonymous is a big no. Swipe left.’
‘Really?’
‘You can’t see his face! He’s reading a book called ––’
‘ How to be an Extrovert, ’ Kay said. ‘I thought that was funny.’
‘Mrs B.’ Craig straightened up. ‘Why would anyone stay anonymous?’
She didn’t answer, watching instead as Craig rinsed his cup and put it in the dishwasher. There were, she knew, a myriad reasons why people stayed anonymous. Her thirteen-year-old-self would attest to that.
After saying goodbye to her father, she idled along the street toward her own house. Mid- July and the sun was high in the sky. She was reluctant to go home. What was there to go home to? Alex was out with his girlfriend again, and although the fact that he now had a social life, was, as Helen had said, brilliant, it was also a shock. One day it was her and Alex, trundling along together like a set of parallel lines, the next he’d taken a sudden detour. She’d looked up from her book one evening to find him gone. Or that’s how it felt.
Stopping outside her neighbours, the Khans’ house, she took her phone from her pocket and checked the time. What to do? The thought of going home to sit in an empty house on such a beautiful evening was intolerable. Forehead creased in thought, she sniffed the air. Someone was barbecuing and she knew it would be the Khans. They got their grill out on the first of April and didn’t put it away again until mid-November, and if she had the kind of extended family they had, she would do the same. She’d long since lost track of who was living in the house now, but there was never a shortage of comings and goings. The children had grown, but judging by the car park that was the front garden, all of them were still living there and all of them had cars. Mrs Khan’s mum had moved in a couple of years ago, and Mr Khan’s brother, who she knew by sight, was a frequent visitor. He had grown children as well and one of them must have a baby, because this summer she’d seen a pram parked by the front door. Either way, there would never be a shortage of company in that house and as Kay put her phone back, she allowed herself to drift into a fantasy world. A world in which she hadn’t got divorced and had instead gone on to have more children, who had also grown and settled nearby, who also came home frequently, off-loading tricycles on the front lawn and car-seats in the hallway. A world in which Martin’s family had stayed her family too. Thinking this she pressed her lips together. Divorce. The very word meant a turning apart, a parting of the ways. Not just the couple, not just the estate, but the families which the marriage had joined. Reaching the junction halfway along her road, she stopped at the kerb and looked up. Martin’s father had died last year. She’d sent flowers but she hadn’t gone to the funeral. At the time it hadn’t felt right, now it didn’t make sense. A man who, half a lifetime ago had welcomed her into his house with a plate of jolly rice and an insistence that she watch the Arsenal game with him. What friends they might have been had they stayed in touch. Stayed family. She should have gone. She should have thrown convention to the wind and just gone, and as she stood blinking, she didn’t know if it was the smoke from the Khans’ barbecue or the breeze in her eyes or the idea of her lonely house waiting.
She did another walk around the block. If there was no company at home, there might be company to be had on the street: a wave, a passing greeting. But the tables outside The Carpenter’s Arms , her local for so many years, were filled with people she didn’t recognise. Men who wore cricket shirts, Summit Electronics emblazoned across the front. She didn’t recognise the name of the sponsor either. Head down she gave up and walked home, stopping only to look across at the darkened windows of Mrs Newall’s bungalow. Mrs Newall, who had been her longest standing neighbour had also died last year, and Kay had gone to her funeral. Which is where she had met a daughter and son-in-law, she’d never seen before and why she recognised them a few weeks later carrying out box after box to a smart SUV. Including, she’d noticed, the leaf-blower Mrs Newall had bought, and which she’d used just once before she fell over, broke her hip and never really got up again. As the bungalow got cleared and put on the market, she’d seen the daughter and son-in-law more times than she ever had in all the years Mrs Newall had lived opposite. Then the For Sale sign went up and she never saw them again. A couple of weeks later a For Rent sign went up, and since then Kay had lost track of who did, or didn’t live there. A young man who left early and came back late, a couple in their thirties who never seemed to go anywhere and didn’t talk to anyone. Right now, it was empty and had been for a few weeks and it made her sad to see the garden so unkempt. She stood looking at the cluster of leaves under the Japanese maple tree, the limp gladioli Mrs Newall had been so assiduous with, supporting them with trellis and bamboo, talking and tending to them as if they were children.
Taking her keys out, she looked up at her own house. This was the house she had grown up in, the house she had moved back to after her divorce, when her parents had taken the bungalow at the end of the street, and she had needed to be close to them. Like, she had once thought, Alex would always need to be close to her. Unwilling to contemplate the idea that she might have been wrong, that her son was more than capable of the separation, that it might be something he was actively moving towards, she put the key in the door and turned the lock.
Inside on the kitchen table lay a package and a note from Alex.
This arrived. Out with … Eme …
The end was such a scrawl she still couldn’t make it out. Emmeline? Or EmmyLou?
Frowning, Kay turned the package over. The postmark was local, but it wasn’t her birthday, and she couldn’t think who would be sending her something. She tore it open and pulled out a white box, with stylish lettering.
Magic Wand.
Butterfly wings swirled; her knees went to water. Use it or lose it, Caro had said. But Caro had always had a gadget for everything: electric toothbrush, face massager. As if it were wired, Kay eased a hand into the envelope and pulled out another two small rectangular boxes, around which a piece of paper had been folded.
Dear Kay, (she read)
Estrogen cream, (topical HRT) and lubricant. Start with the lubricant. The topical HRT will take a few days, especially as yours is vacuum-packed!
Lots of love,
Helen and Caro xxx
PS. There are three settings on the vibrator, we recommend you start slowly, with number one.
PPS. We charged it for you.
Her hand went to her mouth, tears pricking at her eyes. What to do? What should she do?
The first thing she did was shut and lock the kitchen door. The second thing she did was take the vibrator out of its box, which proved difficult because her hands were shaking. Hands that had written out solutions to equations that had baffled her contemporaries at university, and impressed hundreds, probably thousands of teenagers, hands that had held and nursed another life, hands that had peeled and chopped a million carrots, that had combed the hair of a dying woman, that had comforted, nourished, educated, shook now at the sight of this small white torpedo? It was so ridiculous that she laughed, but still her hands shook and now her legs did too. She was all sorts of things, all at once. Terrified, excited, highly amused … alive!
She checked the lock first on the kitchen door, then the front door and carrying the three boxes as carefully as if they were tiny people she went upstairs and laid them on her bed.
When was the last time, Helen had asked.
I don’t remember, she had said.
But she did. Oh, she did. Two weeks before Martin had left. Maybe he hadn’t known he was leaving, but she had. So yes, she remembered everything. The hard curve of his shoulder, the warmth of his skin, the familiar smell of him. Everything. Sixteen years then. That was how long, and she had meant what she had said to Caro and Helen. No one was coming into her home, while Alex had been so young. Celibacy had been a choice, that had grown into a lifestyle that she wasn’t unhappy with. Then again, she wasn’t sure she could say she was particularly happy either. She walked over to her bedroom window and looked out. The lawn was empty, cleared of all the scattered motorcycle pieces she had become accustomed to. Alex had moved on, losing interest in his latest hobby as quickly as he had become obsessed. It was a strength and a weakness, this ability of his to turn a corner and put out of mind what he had left behind. And now she was thinking of Mrs Newall’s garden, last year’s Maple leaves turning a slow black. It was time. She had to make a change. She had to try.
She pulled the curtains closed, took her clothes off, put her bathrobe on and picked up the torpedo. Pressing the button, the vibrator buzzed instantly into life. Kay jumped, her hands clumsy as paddles as she scrambled to switch it off. God it was noisy! There was no way she could … If Alex was. … Chewing on her lip, she hurried down the stairs and shut both the kitchen curtains and the living room curtains.
‘OK,’ she said, as back upstairs she looked at herself in the wardrobe mirror. ‘You gave birth to a nine-pound baby Kay, you can do this.’
But youch! The lubricant was freezing, and sloppy and it was every awful smear examination she’d ever had. Sticky and naked, clutching her torpedo like an Olympic torch she wobbled across to the airing cupboard, found a towel and laid it across her sheet. And then she started.
Slowly, very, very slowly … and carefully, because she was terrified and tentative and tense. And it hurt. God, it hurt! It scraped and it was sore, but the vibration was gentle. With a little more lubricant, which didn’t feel so cold now, it began to feel something like OK. ‘You can do this,’ she whispered and eased it in further, and as she did her hips began to move. She pressed again, and the vibrations increased and because the soreness had subsided, she pressed a third time and the vibrations increased again, becoming powerfully insistent, setting in motion the beginning of a physical reaction that she remembered as if from a dream. A response that she couldn’t haven’t controlled, if she’d tried. She didn’t. She lay back, let her legs splay out and closed her eyes. It was pleasurable and it was easy and as the waves began, distant and small, her head tipped back, her arm splayed out and for the first time in sixteen years she surrendered herself to a pleasure she understood now was still a vital part of life.