Chapter 7 #3
Her plan had been to find a job in Bath, once her dad had secured a role, and then on that fateful day, Big Joe chatted to the man in charge, the young, flashy Finn McCarrick, construction company owner, he had noticed her, and her life changed instantly.
She’d sat in the front of the van shyly eyeing the young man in his sharp suit, who happened to be looking over her dad’s shoulder and straight into her eyes, nodding distractedly as if, while giving Big Joe’s request only the smallest of considerations, he had his mind on a bigger prize.
She smiled at him, and just like that, all her plans went out of the window and she began to walk a different path.
It was hard to believe that was so long ago. Her dad had thought it wonderful that a man in Finn McCarrick’s position was interested in his daughter. Gran, however, had offered stark words of warning that were still imprinted in her mind: ‘You’ll be better off sticking to your own kind.’
‘I want to find a career,’ she’d enthused to Finn after only a few weeks of dating. ‘I think I might try to get into nursing, I’ve always fancied that.’
‘You won’t have time for a career!’ Finn had chuckled dismissively. ‘You’ll have the wedding to plan and the renovations of the house to oversee and then who knows’ – he had run his fingers over her stomach – ‘maybe a baby to look after?’
Her face had blushed at the prospect. And she’d felt a mixture of guilt and sheer joy knowing the kind of life she could have with a man like Finn.
‘You are more valuable to me at home.’ He had kissed her firmly on the cheek.
What about what was more valuable to me, Finn? Again she shook her head, thinking of how quickly, with the implicit trust of youth and in the first throes of love, she had capitulated, believing that a man like Finn McCarrick, an older man, a successful man, must know best.
The four of them ate fish and chips out of the paper with their fingers.
Nina tried to enjoy her food, but she was painfully aware that she’d spent twenty precious pounds on it.
Connor left half of his fish and she found herself calculating in her mind just how much that waste had cost her.
She made a resolution to shop first thing and buy smartly, avoiding spur-of-the-moment takeaways in the future that had cost so dear.
An image of the jam-packed freezer in The Tynings floated into her mind.
I need to get a job, tomorrow. I need a job . . .
After dinner, Nina paced between the cold rooms that carried the scents and echoes of the previous tenants.
She pulled their bed linen from the suitcases and made the beds.
She put the laundry hamper under the sink in the bathroom, and the two bar stools against the narrow counter-top in the kitchen.
She arranged her toiletries on the pale wood bookshelves in the corner of the main bedroom and put the boys’ suitcases and boxes in their room, awaiting their attention.
‘I know this is not what you planned, but it’s nice to have you back,’ Tiggy offered as she prepared to leave. Nina bit her lip to stop herself from ruining the moment with the fact that she wasn’t staying; that this was temporary.
Nina closed the door behind her sister and walked down to the bedroom.
Her eyes roamed over the saggy double bed that had been her great-aunt’s.
She plugged in her bedside lamp and put her clothes in the walnut-veneered wardrobe, placing two more boxes of her possessions in the corner of the room.
She would sort them another time. Nina couldn’t remember coming into this bedroom as a child, but clearly recalled her aunt leaving the cold sitting room to come and delve into a cupboard in here, returning with a vivid patchwork quilt to throw over Nina’s chilly legs, snuggling her to bring warmth.
It had felt lovely. Aunty Mary told her that the different fabrics had belonged to members of her dad’s family, an aunt’s favourite apron and a cousin’s bridesmaid dress, amongst other things.
It was the first time she remembered being aware that half of her blood was from her dad’s family here in Southampton.
Prior to this, she could only see herself as Danish, where her mamma had come from. Funny, that.
Fatigue now pawed at her senses; she was sorely tempted to submit to it, but wanted to check on the boys before climbing into the lopsided bed.
Hovering on the landing outside the boys’ room, she spied through the small opening and listened to Declan’s chatter. ‘I think I saw a sign for a zoo on the way here. We could go and visit it, couldn’t we?’
Nina saw Connor on the top bunk, facing towards the window and ignoring his brother.
Declan persevered with another topic. ‘I liked the fish and chips. It reminded me of going to the seaside with Daddy and eating them in the car and that time he threw chips out of the window and the seagulls swooped down and caught them before they hit the ground, do you remember? I thought they were going to come in the car. I was really scared.’
Nina pushed open the door and smiled at her son, ‘I remember that, Dec, and Daddy said their squawks were gull-speak for “Too much salt! Too much salt!”’ She did her best gull-speak.
She heard Connor’s sigh of irritation.
The bedroom was long and narrow with no furniture other than the bunk beds that, sadly, were too long to fit widthways in the room, which would have given the whole place a more spacious feel.
Declan pulled out his jeans, hoodies and sports kit from his bag and looked around at the bare walls. ‘Where can I hang my clothes?’
‘You can’t. There’s no wardrobe.’ Connor growled his irritation from the top bunk, keen to point out yet another shortcoming.
Nina closed her eyes briefly; every disgruntled, negative observation caused the knot of stress in her gut to tighten.
She thought back to when she had shared a room with Tiggy in circumstances not dissimilar to this.
‘I can show you a neat trick.’ She went into the sitting room to fetch a bunch of clothes hangers.
She came back and popped Declan’s hoodie on a hanger and then hung it from the base of Connor’s bed so it hung down over the end of Declan’s.
‘Look, if we put all your clothes along here like this, when you climb in, it’s like having a cosy curtain that hides you and keeps you snug. ’
Declan smiled and proceeded to hang up his clothes. ‘This is a bit like when you built me a wigwam out of clothes in the garden in the south of France, isn’t it, Mum? And Connor found a toad in his wash bag.’
‘Yes, my darling, it’s a bit like that.’ Nina took a crumb of hope from the fact that no matter what happened, her boys had had a short lifetime of wonderful experiences, enough to stave off the darker moments of want, something that she knew would have made her own childhood easier to bear, had she been able to dip into a pocketful of glorious memories.
She wished she had more memories like this of her own mum, wished that she hadn’t been so young when she’d lost her; at three, she was too young to properly know how to store a lot of memories and was far too busy learning about the world.
Curiously, she recalled the feel of her mother holding her, wrapping her in love, but couldn’t remember the exact colour of her hair.
She could remember the deep earthy scent of the wood smoke that filled their little home in Frederiksberg, but wouldn’t have been able to pinpoint it easily on a map.
In her mind, it made her mum a shadowy figure, a presence rather than a real person.
‘Are you going to be okay tonight?’ she asked.
‘Yes,’ Declan responded.
Her heart flexed with love for her baby, who was showing maturity beyond his years. ‘Well, I’m next door if you need me. Just the other side of the wall.’ She looked up towards the top bunk. ‘Night-night, Connor.’ She reached up and patted his back.
He ignored her. She could feel the tension coming off him in waves.
Nina stood at the sitting-room door, taking a second to reacquaint herself with the shape and layout of the room.
It was rectangular with a defunct brown-glazed tiled fireplace in the centre of the main wall, and alcoves either side of it.
Tall metal-framed doors opened out onto a Juliet balcony that she vaguely remembered being open in the summers of her youth.
They were now covered with old-fashioned lacy net curtains that were very worn, stained in places and frayed in others.
The carpet was yellow, red and brown, a hideous pattern of swirls and loops that reminded her of the ketchup and mustard mess that was left on plates after a crowded hot-dog supper.
It felt sticky underfoot and was so full of nylon that her hair stood up with static.
The wallpaper was smooth and could best be described as oatmeal in colour with a slight sheen to it.
Two bare light bulbs hung at either end of the room, casting noose-like shadows on the walls.
Sadly, the kitchen was just as she had remembered: a chunk of the sitting room that had been commandeered decades ago for the purpose, with a stud wall separating a six-foot square space that housed a cooker, fridge, a sink and a couple of loose-doored cupboards, all of which had seen better days, but were nonetheless functional.
The red linoleum floor was also the original, and she pictured her little feet standing on it, waiting for the treat of a boiled sweet to be placed in her hand, a little gift of sugar that meant so much in a world of deprivation.
Closing the door, she made her way along the dark hallway and into the bedroom, where she stood at the window, squashed between the wall and the bed.
Her sobs came in great gulping bursts. She felt like she was drowning.
‘What’s happened to us? I’m here with the kids in this cold, miserable place and it’s happened so fast I can’t think straight.
’ She sniffed and wiped her eyes on her sleeve.
‘I have been so bloody stupid. In the early days I let you bulldoze me, never questioned anything because I wanted to believe you, wanted the life you promised. But that set a pattern, didn’t it?
And that suggests I wasn’t smart enough to see it happening.
And I don’t want to be that person,’ she whispered, taking a breath and lifting her head to look out at the street beyond the window. ‘I don’t.’
Her eyes took in the neon sign outside the window that flashed the word ‘OPEN’ as cars and delivery motorbikes whizzed by.
The pink-haired woman, now baby-less, hurried along the pavement with a holdall under her arm.
The thrum and squeak of engines and brakes drifted in, along with music from stereos and shouts from further down the street.
After the silence and peace of The Tynings, she found the noise deafening and knew the boys must too.
The thought fuelled her next bout of tears.
Nina let the thin, dusty lace curtain fall over the glass and stared ahead, exhausted at the end of the long and trying day. She shivered in the cold, but knew that with her brain whirring and filled with distress, sleep was not going to come easy.