Chapter 25
TWENTY-FIVE
I still remember the day everything changed. I can picture it as clearly as if it were a movie or a dream I’d just woken from, before the images my mind generated had time to fade. Of course, at the time I didn’t see it as a seismic change – just an upsetting event, a blip that could be overcome with apologies, time, brushing beneath the carpet.
It was a Saturday morning in late July – one of the many days that were, in my memory at least, perfect: dry, sunny, still and happy. Luke and I were out in the garden, lying on the pair of deckchairs he’d recovered from a skip somewhere. Luke had his sketchpad on his knees and was drawing, from memory, a street scene – the bustling pavement of Brick Lane with its neon signs and crates of piled-up fruit and vegetables.
We’d placed the chairs on an island of cobblestones Orla had uncovered from the forest of weeds and brambles that had once filled the garden; she’d cleared some of the space, but not all of it, because she said that birds, bees and butterflies had thrived here for years and who was she to destroy their habitat?
Bees were everywhere that morning, I remember, rummaging and fumbling in the blackberry bushes whose fruit Orla had talked about making into jam come autumn. Her promise had made me happy – I’d imagined us having jam on our toast, jam on the scones Orla would teach me how to make. Next time, I’d be able to make them myself; in future years, I might even make the jam.
I was confident, on that summer Saturday, that there’d be a future for us all in the house. I had no reason not to be. But at the same time, I was entirely immersed in the present – the heat on my bare skin as I stretched out in my deckchair in my bikini, the hum of the bees going about their business, the heavy scent of honeysuckle hanging in the air.
And Luke, of course. Luke’s presence next to me, the occasional murmur of his voice over the music coming from Orla’s tape player, the sun glinting off the fuzz of hair on his chest, the shiver that ran through me when he reached out a finger to brush my thigh.
We must have missed the first knock on the front door, because when the second came it was loud, impatient, almost aggressive. Maud, who’d been snoozing on the hot bricks next to us, raised her head, startled.
‘Door,’ Luke observed sleepily. ‘I’ll get it.’
‘No, I’ll go.’ My feelings for him were at that early pitch of intensity where I wanted to give him everything, even the chance to lie in the sun for five minutes while I went inside. ‘I need a glass of water, anyway.’
I stood up, pulling Luke’s T-shirt on over my bikini, and hurried inside. The knock came again, even louder.
I opened the front door and saw a young man standing there, perspiring in the heat in his suit and tie.
‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘We were outside and we didn’t hear you knock at first.’
He didn’t acknowledge my apology. ‘May I ask if you’re the homeowner?’
I shook my head, eager to get rid of him and return to Luke. ‘Just a lodger.’
‘Then is your landlord home?’
‘Landlady,’ I corrected. ‘I’m not sure.’ I looked behind me, half-expecting Orla to materialise in the hallway behind me, although I hadn’t seen her all morning.
‘Would it be possible to go inside and check?’
Although he was perfectly polite, something about his manner annoyed me.
‘I don’t think she wants satellite TV or to change energy provider,’ I said. ‘If that’s why you’re here.’
‘It is not.’ He drew his shoulders back, pompous in spite of his sweating face. ‘I represent Digby Marchant real estate brokers. We’ve recently established an office in the area and are seeking to explore avenues of opportunity with potential vendors.’
An estate agent. That explained the suit – and the persistence. As far as I knew, Orla had no intention of putting the house on the market – even if it was in a saleable condition, which it wasn’t – but it wasn’t for me to decide. Anyway, Orla would be more likely to succeed in getting rid of him than I was.
‘Hold on,’ I said. ‘I’ll see if she’s in.’
He grunted a response and I turned back into the house. Orla might be up on the top floor; she’d been spending time there when the weather was dry, painting, because she said the light was better than anywhere else in the house, better even than her bedroom.
I ran upstairs, past the empty first floor and on up to the second. The doors to my bedroom, Luke’s and Beatrice’s were all closed. Orla’s was usually left ajar, so Maud could come and go as she pleased, but now it was closed too.
I knocked, but there was no reply.
‘Orla?’ I called, listening for the sound of footsteps coming from upstairs.
I listened but heard nothing.
Perhaps she was sleeping. I didn’t want to disturb her if she was having a rare lie-in or a mid-morning nap. Then I heard a sound from inside the room, like something heavy being pushed or dragged across the floor.
I knocked again, then pushed open the door.
Beatrice was there. She was crouched down by the neatly made bed, an unfastened suitcase in front of her, which she’d been in the act of pushing back beneath the bed.
Bizarrely, my first reaction was to smile at her. I didn’t even form the thought coherently, but I must have assumed that she’d overheard my conversation downstairs and come to look for Orla herself.
Almost immediately, I realised how absurd that was. Strange as she sometimes was, Beatrice would never have looked for our landlady under her bed – still less inside a suitcase that had been under it.
Even if the rational part of my mind hadn’t dismissed the idea, one look at Beatrice’s face would have done. She looked terrified. She looked embarrassed. She looked guilty as hell.
‘What the fuck are you doing?’ I heard myself burst out.
She sprang to her feet, kicking the suitcase under the bed. ‘What the fuck are you doing? Snooping around like that?’
‘Snooping? I wasn’t snooping. I was looking for Orla. I knocked. If anyone was snooping, it was you. What were you looking for?’
I was still too surprised to be properly angry – still anticipating that Beatrice would be able to explain her behaviour, that I had somehow made a mistake.
So the fury of her response blindsided me.
‘It’s none of your fucking business what I’m looking for.’ She stepped towards me, her face inches from mine. Her eyes were wide and her teeth literally bared, startling in the peachy smoothness of her face.
‘It is my—’ I began, then realised that, of course, it wasn’t. ‘You’ve got no business looking through Orla’s stuff.’
‘Right,’ she sneered. ‘Because you’re Orla’s – what? Her bodyguard? Her personal assistant? Her special pet? Only you get to decide what happens to her and her bedroom and her stuff?’
‘I didn’t decide anything,’ I said, bewildered. ‘No one has to decide that prying in someone’s personal things is wrong. It just is wrong.’
‘You think you’re so special, don’t you? With your sewing lessons and your paint roller and your boyfriend. I’ll tell you something right now, Livvie – you don’t own this house. You don’t now and you never will. You don’t get to make the rules here and tell me what I can and can’t do. All these months you’ve been acting like the queen fucking bee – you think I haven’t noticed?’
Unbidden, my mind flashed back to the actual bees I’d been watching just a few minutes ago, in the peaceful sunny garden where Luke was.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. I never said I owned the house, or Orla – or anything. I just live here, same as you. There are hardly any rules – you know that. But there’s just… I don’t know. Common decency.’
‘Common decency.’ She mocked my accent, making it sound prissy and uptight. ‘Is that what makes you use Orla like you’ve got some kind of right over her?’
‘Beatrice, you’re being daft. Of course I don’t do that – I don’t think that. I don’t understand why you’re so angry with me. I thought we were friends.’
She laughed – a hard, angry sound. ‘So did I. But I know better now. You’re just out for what you can get. Since you started fucking Luke and playing dressmakers with your precious Orla, you’ve barely bothered to speak to me.’
I felt my face flame. It wasn’t true – and yet, in a way, it was. Since before my first date with Luke – since going shopping with Orla, even before what had happened between Beatrice and Gary in the pub – I’d felt wary of Beatrice. Even though I’d barely acknowledged it even to myself, my growing relationship with Luke and my increasing fondness for Orla had allowed me to step back from her, and any gap I might have felt from doing that had closed over seamlessly.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, regretting it immediately. ‘I never meant to hurt your feelings. I want us to be friends – all of us.’
Again, I remembered the garden: how I’d allowed myself to imagine seasons and years elapsing in this house, everything peaceful, nothing changing.
‘If you want me to be your friend,’ Beatrice hissed, ‘you’ll stay out of my business. Got it?’
Before I could retaliate, saying again that it was Orla’s business she’d been prying in, I heard footsteps on the stairs. Orla’s tread was distinctive – brisk and light, always the tap of leather-soled shoes rather than the thump of trainers.
As if we were one person, Beatrice and I slipped out through the door and waited on the landing.
‘Girls.’ Orla rounded the corner of the first-floor landing and stood looking at us, perplexed. ‘Is everything all right?’
‘We were looking for you,’ Beatrice said.
‘There’s an estate agent downstairs who wants to speak to you,’ I explained.
But I realised that the man from Digby Marchant would have long since given up and continued to the next potential property listing. If he wanted to give Orla his sales pitch, he would have to try again another time. And Beatrice, by the simple use of that word ‘we’, had made me complicit in something – something harmful and wrong.
I knew, just as surely as Beatrice must have known, that I would never tell Orla what I’d seen that morning. I didn’t want to betray Beatrice and I didn’t want to hurt Orla, and therefore I would keep quiet.
Beatrice smiled and opened the door to her own bedroom, and I headed back to find Luke. As I turned to walk down the stairs, I saw Orla’s gaze moving from me to Beatrice, puzzled and worried.