Chapter Nineteen #4
Then one evening, as he dropped me off, he asked, “Aren’t you going to invite me in?”
No, that was not part of my plan; I’d been daydreaming that he’d invite me to Langley Hall, rather than this way round.
I’d even kept ￡10 tucked away in case he was going to charge me an entrance fee.
I couldn’t let him in to see the dead cooker, the burnt curtains, and the charring on the wall.
He’d see the washing draped around the house, dripping wet, because I had made the decision to only use the machine for special occasions.
He would see all my stuff taking over the house.
He might look in the cupboards and find that they were nearly bare.
“Early start,” I said.
“I thought you were on the late shift tomorrow?”
“I’m hoping to pick up some overtime. They said they’d phone me, I have to be ready.”
He looked skeptical. “Just for five minutes?”
What were we going to do for five minutes? “Do you need the loo?” I asked, and I realized my mistake as he nodded.
“OK, then.” I bit the bullet and led him up the garden path.
I unlocked the door, holding my breath, half expecting my possessions to be waiting, ready to tumble out and engulf us.
We’d be found in the morning, buried under the avalanche.
But nothing fell and James didn’t bat an eyelid at the mountain of clothes heaped on the end of the banister, both mine and my mother’s, or the shoes around the door and halfway along the hall, not all pairs, or the tower of post on the side table, or the childhood toys balanced on the radiator.
“Which way?” he asked. “For the toilet?”
“Up the stairs, straight ahead of you.” There was also one downstairs, but the approach to that would’ve given him a view into the kitchen.
And off he went. As soon as I heard the bathroom door shut, I took my shoes off and hurried up after him to make sure all the doors up there were closed.
I didn’t want him peering inside to see the bombsite that was now my room or the spare bed with the broken frame.
Then I tiptoed back down and did the same downstairs. I waited for him at the front door.
“Coffee?” he asked coming down the stairs, and my heart sank.
“This way,” I said. I led him into the lounge, cleared a space for him to sit on one of the comfier parts of the sofa and went to make coffee, closing the door firmly as I left the room. I was poking around in the cupboard under the worktop when:
“Do you think I should buy a BMW?” James asked from behind me.
“Ow!” I jumped and banged my head on the cupboard doorframe. I turned as gracefully as I could. He was looking at the charred corpse of the cooker and the surrounding wall.
“I’m not going to keep the chauffeur service, I like driving. Have you had an accident?”
“Small one,” I said.
“Does the oven still work?”
“I never used it anyway.”
“I’ve got a plasterer doing some work at the moment,” James said. “He’s free tomorrow afternoon; he can soon have that wall ready for a lick of paint. Do you need any help with the drinks?”
We went into the front room. I put a CD on and we chatted until the music stopped, the lights went out, and I heard, from the kitchen, the hum of the fridge go silent.
“Fuse?” James asked. But no, my utilities were on a prepayment meter.
“There are candles somewhere,” I said. “Or I can put it on emergency credit. My card’s in my bag. If I can find it.”
“Leave it,” he said. “Who needs lights anyway? The sun will be up in the morning.” And after all, there was nothing in the fridge, now that I’d used the last of the milk.
In the moonlight that shone through the window, I saw him put his mug on the floor, then he moved forward and did the same with mine.
He took my hands and pulled me toward him.
As we kissed, he put his arms around me and pulled me closer and down.
And I followed, trying to pretend there wasn’t a hairbrush digging into my back.
***
The next day, the plasterer came and plastered the wall.
A few days later, once it had dried, a decorator came and refreshed my kitchen with a layer of magnolia paint.
The day after that, a new cooker and sink arrived, with an electrician and a plumber to connect them up, and the old one was carted away. All paid for.
For the first time since my mum passed, I enjoyed being in the house. I felt accepted, I felt safe. I felt hope.
James and I began to meet whenever we could. We took walks through the countryside, we went for long lunches in neighboring villages—not Great Beadington—we took selfies at Stonehenge, we downed shots in the King’s Head.
There was an incident with my car, and it ended up in a ditch.
I had no insurance because I hadn’t taken it for its mandatory annual roadworthiness check—double saving.
Plus, I already had nine points on my license, the speedometer tended to stick, and I wasn’t sure how I was going to explain it all to the authorities.
I thought it was the end of driving for me, but when I told James he just laughed.
He had my car taken away, and a few days later he was helping me choose a new one.
He told me I was worth the money, he told me I was priceless. He told me I was all he thought about all day. It had been a long time since anyone other than my mum thought about me at all.
One day, we were sitting on a bench beneath a tree when James suddenly “Eek!”-ed and leaped to his feet.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, racing to help.
“It’s a… It’s a… It’s a…” He held out his hand to show me a tiny money spider running across it. “I don’t like spiders,” he gibbered. “Can you get it off me?” And that was the moment I fell in love. At least I thought I did.