Chapter Eleven
The graveyard was wonderful. Twisted old crab apple trees hunched over stones like elderly mourners, their leaves beginning to buckle under the weight of autumn. The monuments themselves were austere, the lettering proud of its basic hand-craftedness and the legends little more than curt dates and reminders that we’d all be dead, one day. Grass skirted the graves and bramble bushes coiled and buttressed around stones, trees and the chapel itself, providing a Sleeping Beauty- esque look to the pictures I took. I found myself relaxing more and more, talking sense into myself as I wandered around trying not to disturb anything in this almost breathless place. I was fine. Of course I was fine. It was men, they were the problem: Dan and our unpleasant break-up yet having to stay vaguely in touch until this book was done, meaning that the longed-for ‘clean break’ was going to be a while in coming; Alex and his guilt, his stress over doing the right thing; even bloody Light Bulb was male, although, apart from that relentless chain-stitched grin, I couldn’t really accuse him of anything.
By the time I drove back to Great Leys I was positively insouciant.
From: [email protected]
Subject: Are you free?
Hi Winter
I wondered if I could have the benefit of your experience on something? Well, not experience, exactly, not unless you’ve got half a dozen children you’re not admitting to! It’s to do with Scarl and this bullying thing going on at school, which seems to have escalated just recently. Lucy came over yesterday (she does pop over from time to time but don’t get the wrong impression, we’re just friends now) and she’s worried about Scarl and what’s going on. I really don’t want to try to cover it in an email, it doesn’t seem fair either to you or to Scarl, a little bit as though I’m talking about her behind her back — is that ridiculous? Anyway, if you’re free tomorrow, could you come here, sometime during school hours, yes, I know I said I didn’t want to talk about Scarl behind her back, but I can’t really talk about this with her in the room.
I really would just like another perspective on things, and there aren’t that many people who could give input. Mum can’t really get her head around any of this and I really just want to offload on someone neutral. Not that you’re neutral exactly, it’s weird but in my head I have you as sort of orange and flame and, yes, still Catwoman. So, like Catwoman if she was on fire, which, now I think of it, is a bloody stupid analogy and I’ll leave the creative writing to you. Don’t worry about emailing me back, I’ll be in all day tomorrow, just pop in and pour yourself a coffee and I’ll be round.
I really, truly appreciate everything you’ve done for us, Winter.
Alex
I didn’t really know how to feel. Alex seemed to like me. He kept on with this Catwoman thing until I’d had to Google her, never really having been much of a one for the comics or the films. I’d sort of imagined a woman who had loads of cats, and was ever-so-slightly amused, and a little bit shocked, to find pictures of a very slim woman in black Lycra. I hadn’t been that thin since I was about five and in something that body-hugging I’d probably look more like a shrink-wrapped egg-timer.
Which gave rise to an interesting question — well, interesting if you were me, anyway. Did Alex really like me or was he seeing me as something I wasn’t just because I was the first woman he’d met that he hadn’t grown up with? Because I liked Scarlet and was unaffected by the stammer? It was obvious that he and Lucy had had something going on, might even still have something, although two-timing anybody in a place the size — and with the gossip-quotient — of Great Leys was like walking down Oxford Street wearing a T-shirt that says ‘I’m Cheating’.
He didn’t really know all that much about me, other than what I’d told him the other night or he’d gleaned from Scarlet, he didn’t know my favourite music or authors or colour or food. Maybe he was trying to talk himself into liking me, because I was the nearest thing he thought he was likely to get to a girlfriend, and overlaying me with cartoon characters because it was easier to relate to me that way than in real life? I snuck another look at the Catwoman graphic on the computer, and then looked down at myself. Nope. Not even if there was a sudden Manga-attack and liposuction event would I ever have eyes that huge or a body that tiny.
And then I checked all the places online that Dan usually hung out. His Twitter profile had gone quiet, there was nothing on his Facebook page or his blog, since the last post. Nothing to indicate that he’d decided to come to Yorkshire, nothing that gave any hint as to his current state. Is he angry? I ran over his last string of messages. He doesn’t sound angry. He sounds regretful. Sad.
I shook my head and gritted my teeth. So he should, so he bloody should! But my heart wasn’t in it, although the hurt ran deeper than my heart; it was coursing through my entire circulatory system, lodging in my veins and winding tight silver coils through my arteries. I’d thought I was falling in love with Dan. What had started as a fun, light-hearted friendship had started to deepen. When we’d slept together for the first time he’d taken my hand and solemnly told me that it meant we were bound together for life by a memory. And he’d been right. Only now it was a memory I didn’t want any more, a memory that flashed through my head as I fell asleep or tried to concentrate on words. Dan kissing my neck, running those slim fingers over my cheekbones, fixing my eyes with his black gaze. Grinning that manic grin, tinged with something else, something softer, as he undressed me, so gently. Lifted me and lowered me onto the bed, pinned me there with words of beauty and kindness and whispered me into making love . . .
Thank God for the knock at the door. Otherwise I might have talked myself into messaging him, although I had no idea what I could possibly say. And besides, after all you went through, it would be disloyal to Daisy to have any contact with him again. She suffered too, the splashback of vitriol from his accusations and dislike; for all she told you to reach some closure, she wasn’t intending you to have that kind of contact, was she?
At the door stood Margaret, again, and Scarlet. Light Bulb was nowhere in evidence and Margaret looked a bit tense. ‘I’m sorry, Winter, but Scarlet wanted to say hello.’ She sighed an exaggerated sigh. ‘There, Scarlet, I told you Miss Gregory would be busy, she’s a writer and it’s not something you can just pick up and put down like a casserole you know. Now, just say hello and we’ll go back and you can have those fish fingers until Alex gets that wall up.’
Scarlet looked smaller than usual, somehow. She was wearing her school uniform dress, red checks like a blood-drawn chessboard, with a red sweatshirt over the top, heavily embellished with the school name and a logo that looked as though a graphic designer had gone a bit trigger-happy on a tree. Her grandmother was holding her hand as if it were sticky.
‘Why don’t I walk Scarlet home?’ I suggested, and watched her brighten. ‘And then you can get back to . . .’ I groped for inspiration, which Margaret’s knitted outfit wasn’t providing, unless she was off to trawl for cod.
Margaret’s face relaxed. She feels restricted by duty too, I noted. Trying to do the right thing, the required thing, having a life thrust upon her that she could never have imagined. ‘Well, I was going to drop in on Mr Park’s mother, who’s got a problem with legs, not her own legs, of course, these are china.’ Margaret was practically smiling now. ‘And I know Scarlet would love it.’
‘I would, I would! Please take me home, Winter, and then you can talk to Alex some more about building and cooking and things.’
So she was listening to us talking before she burst in. Good job you hadn’t got round to propositioning him then, but to hear her recap does make you sound like the world’s most boring conversationalist. Building and cooking, good grief, is that who you are now?
‘Come on then.’ I reached behind me into the room, which practically put my hand in the oven, grabbed my anorak and pulled it on. Margaret released her granddaughter into my care by passing her hand over, as though she was marrying us. I’d been right, it was sticky. ‘We’ll go straight over there and I’ll wait with you until Alex has finished whatever he’s doing.’
‘Alex made me leave Light Bulb at home today,’ Scarlet said, bobbing along beside me like an excited cork. ‘It’s only ’cos I hit Angel Williams, but Angel Williams hit me first, so it’s not fair that I had to not have Light Bulb when she never even had to not have pudding, is it?’
‘Well, it does sound a bit harsh.’ I pulled the door closed behind us. ‘But I suppose it rather depends on the pudding in question.’
‘Alex had to go into school this morning when he took me in, to talk about it,’ she said, confidentially. ‘Mr Moore let him sit in his office. I bet he didn’t give him a Polo, Mr Moore only gives Polos to people he likes.’
I zipped up my anorak. There were school mothers dotted randomly down the High Street, I wondered if they were a crack Fashion Squad waiting to put a hit on me. ‘Why doesn’t Mr Moore like Alex?’ I asked, trying not to squint evilly at School Mother Number One, a tight-jeaned WAGalike gazing in the window of the jewellers as we passed.
‘Mr Moore is Miss Charlton’s dad, and Miss Charlton used to go out with Alex but Alex went off her, and then Miss Charlton married a man who used to hit her so she came home and Mr Moore thinks that Alex thinks he’s too good for her,’ she said, with a vast amount of satisfaction.
Hm, Alex, are you playing us off against each other perhaps? ‘How do you know all that? Scarlet, do you listen at doors or something?’
A moment’s consideration, then she cast her eyes down and her warm hand clenched in mine. ‘A bit. Sometimes. But people will whisper and roll their eyes about and sigh and everything, as though I couldn’t possibly understand. They forget, I am eight.’
Maybe Alex and I were better off sticking to discussing cookery and buildings. This child knew far too much to be good for her.
Walking along with Scarlet, but without Light Bulb, felt strange. She kept hold of my hand, although she’d tug and leap about at the end of my arm like a small dog scenting strangers, and she kept up a running commentary about people, things, cars, the shops we were walking past. The constant chatter reminded me of Daisy when we’d been about ten or eleven and she was nervous about our impending move to the senior school. I’d looked forward to it, she’d dreaded it.
‘Is everything all right at school?’ I felt compelled to ask Scarlet.
Her little hand went limp against my fingers. ‘Yes, of course,’ she said, but her tone was dull. ‘Why wouldn’t it be?’ Her other hand flew up to her face and her thumb found her mouth, but she kept her eyes on the pavement in front of us.
‘You just reminded me of my sister then, when she was a bit worried about school,’ I said, trying to talk myself out of the hole I’d dug. ‘She was small for her age and she had a bit of a hard time.’ Maybe, if she’s being bullied, hearing that she’s not the only one will help her to open up.
‘Oh.’ She removed the thumb and looked up at me. Are you really suitable to be the person she talks to about this? Surely it would be better to be Alex or her teacher or almost anyone else, really. ‘But if you’re identical twins, why weren’t you both small?’ Oh all right then. We’ll drop that line of enquiry for now.
‘We were. But I was a bit more down to earth than Daisy. She used to burst into tears very easily.’
‘Oh.’ Another moment’s thumb-based thought, then, ‘Only babies cry.’
Oh, Scarlet, no. Grown women cry too. So hard that sometimes they feel as though it isn’t tears, it’s blood.
We got to the end of Stepford Street. I imagined the head of each School Mother turning on an immobile neck like something out of a horror film as we passed, but I refused to give them the satisfaction of taking any notice, and was very smugly glad to walk through the archway to the Old Mill as though I owned the place.
There was a whole gang of blokes taking down some scaffolding, a cement mixer rumbled in the middle of the yard and there was no sign of Alex. ‘Will you make me fish fingers?’ Scarlet led the way into the glass-fronted hall. ‘I’m quite hungry.’
I followed her up the stairs to the flat with a sense of dislocation. I’d come here to write my book, not act as a surrogate mother, but there was a lot about Scarlet that called out to me. Her bravery, even if she didn’t know that’s what it was, in the face of loss. Her hanging on to the memory of her mother through the medium of a cloth-headed horse, giving him life through sheer will and imagination, as though the power of her belief could somehow keep that connection to her parent alive. Poor little girl. Poor, lonely, emotionally-neglected little girl.
Once inside the flat Scarlet bounced to the freezer and produced a pack of fish fingers, then placed them expectantly beside the cooker, cocking her head to look at me, as though she was an exceptionally able dog. ‘I’m not allowed to turn on the oven, otherwise I’d cook them myself. I can cook already.’ And then bravado waning into realism, ‘Well, I can do cornflake cakes and toast. If Alex is there.’
‘Good for you.’ I read the instructions on the packet. Fish fingers weren’t really in my repertoire. ‘Okay, they’re in. Twenty minutes at 180 and brown. Should suit you down to the ground.’
Scarlet gave me a grin that told me she’d heard that bit of my conversation with Alex as well. ‘I have to go and change now. I’m not allowed to wear my uniform out of school, in case I tear anything.’
I nodded and she belted off down the corridor. The door to her room slammed in a much more definite way than it had the other night.
‘Oh, h-hello.’
I jumped. ‘What the hell is it with your family appearing unexpectedly? Have you got vampires in your genes or something?’
Alex smiled. ‘Yes. Th-they call us the Silent H-Hills. It’s a j-joke. Name of a c-computer game.’
‘It’s not a joke if you have to explain it, you know.’ But this was banter. It felt normal. It felt good. ‘I just put fish fingers in the oven and Scarlet is changing. I’ll be off now.’
Alex came further into the room. The baggy-necked red T-shirt was back in evidence again, smeared with what I hoped was wood stain, which also adorned his bare arms like a tribal tattoo, if the tribe in question was massively tree-based. ‘Oh, no, s-stay, please.’
Oh, no, I couldn’t possibly, I have to hurry back to the House of Tiny and imagine that my ex-boyfriend is stalking me. ‘Okay.’
Scarlet hurtled back into the room, carrying Light Bulb by the neck. ‘Hi, Alex. Winter brought me home because Granny was being boring. I’m going to do some jumping now until my fish fingers are done,’ and then she was gone, rattling down the stairs with the hobby horse hitting the wooden rails all the way down.
We waited until the echoes died away. ‘Why not have that talk now?’ I suggested. ‘It will save me coming over tomorrow.’
Alex made a down-turned mouth. ‘Th-that was going to be th-the high p-point of my day,’ he said. ‘I’d p-primed the coffee machine to ex-expect you.’
‘I’m not ruling it out, just saying that now would be good, if you want to offload and avoid a sleepless night.’ I sat down on the sofa and tucked my legs up. Yes. Comfortable. I feel comfortable. And safe. ‘Come on, Alex.’
He looked a lot more serious, suddenly. Less of the Greek god and a bit more like the businessman he must be, under all the stone dust and the stammer, to have a place like this. His eyes lost all the smiley lines and gained a serious darkness. ‘I f-feel it’s unfair to you. Y-you’re this lovely w-woman who’s just b-blown into our lives, so kind and . . .’ he tailed off, ‘but I need h-help. I c-can’t do this on my own.’
Oh God, I hope he’s not going to suggest that I become his nanny. Well, not his nanny, obviously, unless he’s into any of that really weird shit with nappies and breastfeeding . . . I found myself staring at him, wondering just what he was into, and then realising that he was still talking, ‘and I don’t know w-what to say to her. It’s g-got worse because she b-brought you into it, you know.’
And then, to make me feel even worse than a fantasy of Dan, he told me that Lucy had come to tell him there had been invitations being handed out at school yesterday. One of the children in Scarlet’s class was having a birthday party and every other child had been invited, except for Scarlet, and how, when Lucy had remonstrated with the invitation-giver, Scarlet had said that she didn’t mind, because her friend was a famous author and was coming for tea on that day, so she couldn’t go anyway.
Some children had taken exception to Scarlet claiming a Famous Friend that nobody had ever seen — obviously I hadn’t looked anything like famous when I’d collected her from school. Fame doesn’t wear an oversized anorak or grotty jog bottoms, which probably comes as a shock to J. K. Rowling, and a fight had ensued. Scarlet had, apparently, given as good as she got, but obviously it was a situation that couldn’t continue.
‘She h-has nightmares.’ Alex had flopped down on the sofa next to me. ‘D-dreams that I die and she’s on h-her own. And I d-dd . . .’ A resigned look and a shrug and he didn’t even bother to try to finish the sentence. The muscles around his jaw twitched with the unsaid.
I tipped my head forward and cupped my hands over my face. ‘You’re right,’ I said. ‘I came here to finish my book, not to get tied up in something that sounds like an episode of The Archers .’ Then I let my hands fall, turned to look into those grey eyes. ‘But I like you, I like Scarlet and I’m not particularly keen on any of those unnecessarily glittery mothers or their shiny nylon children, so I can at least try to fix this particular bit of your niece’s life.’
Alex relaxed, just a little. I saw his shoulders drop and a little hope creep into his weary face. ‘I l–like you too, if that helps.’ One hand crossed the cushion which lay between us and onto my lap, loosely covering my fingers with his own. ‘I r-really do.’
I turned my own hand so that it bowled upwards and curled into his rough palm. ‘I just don’t think I’d be any good for you. I’m not . . .’ Not so many things. Not ready to settle down in a small town, not keen on taking on a child, not quite ready yet to live this kind of life.
Not over Dan.
‘Not good at relationships,’ I finished, chickening out of a proper explanation.
‘You and D-Dan . . .’ Alex gently drew his fingers in, enclosing my hand completely. His skin was hard, calloused from a proper job, like the bark of a tree. ‘I understand, honestly I d-do. The way he b-behaved, the way he treated you and D-Daisy.’ He leaned a little further forward, so that our faces were very close. ‘I would never, never d-do that.’
Stone dust had fallen into the little lines around his mouth, decorating his stubble with sweat-beaded balls. His lips were still moving, soundlessly now, his grasp on my hand firming with every inch he leaned in and his breath, scented with coffee, played across my mouth, promising heat and yet raising chills down the back of my neck. Closer. I closed my eyes.
A microsecond of pressure, of warmth and moisture, and then the stairs let out their fanfare of rattling as Scarlet whirled her way back up and hit the door running. Alex and I jerked apart as though someone had electrified the sofa. ‘Is my tea ready yet?’
‘She’s got a spy camera in here. It’s the only explanation,’ I muttered to Alex out of the corner of my mouth, and he smiled back with his eyebrows raised in a rueful acknowledgement. The chills had migrated and joined the warmth that had spread upwards. Somewhere around my middle there was a minor hurricane taking place as I began to acknowledge this desperately sexy man as something more than just a shadow in a corner. Somebody real, not only a set of broad shoulders, an exquisitely well-formed backside and thighs like a set of architectural supports, but a breathing, feeling person with whom I may, just may , have some real kind of connection. If I wanted it.
‘I’ll see if it’s r-ready.’ He stood up and the space next to me felt like loneliness.
‘I’d better go.’
They both swung round. ‘Oh, can’t Winter have her tea with us, Alex? Winter, Alex has some proper food in the freezer, he likes that kind of chicken in that yellow stuff, you could both have that.’ And then, with a prescience that she’d so far failed to exhibit any signs of, ‘I can go and play outside again.’
I smiled. ‘Sorry, Scarlet, but your grandma has asked me to talk to her book group tomorrow, so I ought to do some preparation for that, check how many copies of Book of the Dead I’ve got hanging around, decide what to say and make sure I’ve got something clean to wear, that kind of thing.’
‘Oh.’ Scarlet jutted her lower lip at the plate of incipient brown Alex was preparing for her. ‘Well, I suppose that’s all right then.’
‘H-here. Tea. I’ll just show W-Winter out.’ Alex put the plate down on the counter and came with me to the door of the flat. Outside, on the landing, he put out a hand to stop me from walking straight down the stairs. ‘Hey.’
‘What?’
‘D-do you really think y-you can do something about the b-bullying?’
He was keeping me talking, I was fairly sure of that. Didn’t want to see me leave. ‘Not all of it, but maybe some. I’ll talk to the school.’
He walked in closer. ‘Th-thank you,’ he whispered, and that hurricane gained more storm force as he put fingers to the back of my neck and drew my mouth up to his, beginning a kiss that made my clothes feel too tight and massively too hot. When we finally stepped apart I felt like a ghost.
‘Wow.’
Another wide smile, a wink, and he stepped back inside the flat, closing the door gently and slowly on that gigantic grin. I stood and fanned myself for a moment before I set foot on the stairs and caused a conflagration.
‘Wow,’ I said again, to myself. ‘This just got complicated. ’