Chapter 9
NINE
The three of them sat together on the green velour sofa, empty breakfast bowls nestling on their laps.
Surprisingly, with this the only seating option, it was rare that the three sat like this, in a line, staring at the wall.
Usually one of the kids took his breakfast cereal to the bedroom, or hung around the fridge in case a milk top-up was required.
But it was cold out and sitting this way provided some measure of warmth.
Nina sipped her first tea of the day and felt a little cleansed after yesterday’s bout of exhaustive crying.
Both boys seemed to be in better moods, and the atmosphere was as pleasant as it had been in a while.
There was a hint of spring to the sunny February morning; it felt like a fresh start.
Just a few days before the next challenge: the boys starting at a new school.
‘I have to say that I know things are far from perfect, but right now I feel quite peaceful,’ she told the boys honestly.
A bus wheezed to a halt outside the window and the noise of random shouts filtered in.
‘Oh yes, because it’s so peaceful here, you weirdo,’ Connor joked.
Declan twisted on the sofa and placed his bare toes on her leg for added warmth.
‘Do you think it’s odd, Mum, that our house is empty, and there’s all that space with no one in it, and yet we are here squashed in like sardines in this little flat?’
She placed her free arm around his shoulders, unable to remember the last time the three had been happy to sit closely like this without one of them rushing off. It was nice. ‘I guess it is odd, darling, but there’s lots of things that are odd about our lives at the moment.’
Connor tipped his head back and stretched his legs out in front of him as he spoke to the ceiling. ‘I’ve had loads of messages from George and Charlie . . .’
She tried not to think of what would happen when the boys’ phone contracts, with all-you-could-eat data, expired.
‘. . . and I don’t reply because I don’t know what to say, don’t know what to tell them.
I don’t want them to know how rubbish it is.
’ He let his eyes sweep the room. ‘In some ways I wish they wouldn’t get in contact because I don’t want to know what they are up to and what they’ve got planned. It makes me feel like crap.’
‘I understand.’ She felt the same when she pictured their home with a new family roaming the empty rooms, discussing paint colours and deciding what furniture might suit the space.
‘But they are your friends, Connor, and you should keep in touch, even if it’s just the odd word or message, and when things are less raw, it will be easier to hear from them. ’
He shrugged, as if he only half believed her. ‘Maybe. They keep talking about the rugby training because they know that’s my thing.’
‘They probably think they are being kind, keeping you informed.’
Connor nodded. ‘I guess, but I wish they wouldn’t.’
She squeezed his arm.
‘And I wish I’d used the swimming pool more. I keep thinking about it. I thought it would always be there, and I couldn’t be bothered to go outside a lot of the time. God, I wish I’d had parties!’
‘You didn’t have enough friends to invite to a party,’ Declan quipped.
‘Thanks, Dec. You’re probably right though.’
Both boys laughed at the truth.
It was Declan’s turn. ‘I wish I’d rolled down the hill in the paddock from the top to the bottom. I wanted to put myself in a carpet and roll down it, but I never did.’
‘You are such a weirdo!’ Connor laughed.
‘Well, that’s both of us who have been labelled weirdos in the last few minutes,’ Nina protested mockingly.
‘Maybe he takes after you!’ Connor fired back.
‘Maybe he does.’ She kissed Declan’s head. ‘That wouldn’t be such a bad thing, would it, Dec?’
‘I’d rather take after Daddy. He could run really fast and he knew all the flags of the world,’ he whispered.
And just like that, the sledgehammer of grief shattered the chat, the joy, the normality, as Declan gulped on a sob.
She rubbed his toes and noted that Connor looked skyward and blinked repeatedly, trying to will away the tears.
Her heart flexed with love for her sons, and not for the first time she wished she could make it all go away.
It was a stark reminder of what lurked so close to the surface.
Nina knew that they, like her, not only wished that they could turn the clock back and use the swimming pool or roll down a hill, but that they could have one more night with the man they all missed, living that easy life.
She would like more than one night back; she would like years back, years when she would stand tall, recalibrate their relationship, get involved in the business, lose some of her fear and ask more questions, make her mark. Maybe then they would all be in a very different situation.
Later that afternoon Nina and Tiggy jumped off the bus and made their way into the centre of town.
The boys had been sent to the launderette.
Not only did Nina think it was good for them to be involved in chores, but it was good to get them out of the house.
It also meant she could turn off the fire and save money.
She and Tiggy walked side by side in silence.
They stopped outside the shop, recognisable by the three brass orbs hanging above the door.
It was the first time Nina had visited a pawnbroker and she already felt humiliated.
Even walking inside and facing the bearded man through the safety grille behind which he sat sent a wave of embarrassment over her.
She looked from side to side before closing the door behind her, but no one on the busy street gave her a second glance.
The chances of running into Kathy Topps or any of her peers here was next to nothing.
She recalled how she had judged the hopeless and hapless people that she had spied trudging into a similar establishment in Bath.
Maybe some of them had been far from hopeless and hapless; maybe they were just individuals who were a little down on their luck, whose lives had been thrown into disarray by events over which they had little or no control.
People like her.
‘Hello. How can I help you?’ The man sat forward on his stool.
At some level she had anticipated rolls of grubby banknotes, fat cigars, smoky corners and a set of knuckle-dusters sitting within his reach. This place was nothing like that; it was part bank, part junk shop, part jeweller’s, and his matter-of-fact approach and polite demeanour made things easier.
‘My sister would like to sell some items.’ Tiggy tapped the grille and nodded at him sternly. It made her smile, the fact that her big sister was looking out for her.
Nina stepped forward and gingerly removed the antique silver cigarette case from her handbag, along with Finn’s gold cufflink sets.
She placed them on the wooden surface, along with his Montblanc pen-and-pencil set.
She swallowed the wave of emotion at seeing these items from their home, things her husband had used in everyday life.
But that was the nature of hardship, she reminded herself; it left no room for sentiment.
She pushed them into the metal chute in front of him and watched them slide towards his outstretched fingers.
The man placed an eyeglass into his eye socket to appraise the markings on the antique silver cigarette case and weighed the items on his official-looking scale.
‘I have antique dealer friends who will take some of this from me, but not all of it.’ He removed his eyeglass and gave her a brief smile.
‘Some items are more commercial than the rest.’ He fingered the three sets of gold cufflinks and weighed them.
‘The price of gold is down slightly, there’s been a ten per cent drop in the last two months.
They will, however, fetch less if sold as scrap, so I would keep them in the window.
’ To hear him talk of market values again bolstered her faith in him and took away some of her discomfort.
He then scrutinised the Montblanc pen-and-pencil set, before twisting his head from side to side, as if adding up numbers in his head.
‘I can give you four hundred and forty for the lot.’
Nina blew out, feeling crushed to see Finn’s possessions reduced to nothing more than a number, and not a very big number at that.
‘Is that all?’ She did her best to keep her voice steady and remove the emotion, her fingers drumming lightly on the counter-top.
‘I don’t want to be rude, but it doesn’t seem like much.
I know what we paid for them and it was more than double that.
’ She did her best to keep the images from her mind, tried not to think of the items of value that Mackintosh and Vooght had spirited away into the depths of that dirty lorry.
She placed her hand on her waistband to try to soothe her anxious stomach.
‘I’m sorry.’ He gave a small, sincere smile and raised his palms. ‘I hear this every day, and believe me, I understand, but it’s the same as buying a brand new car.
The moment you drive it off the forecourt it goes down by at least twenty per cent – that’s without a mile on the clock.
’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘I can only give you a percentage of the resale value, plus a small amount of commission on top and that figure, in my opinion, is the market value.’
Nina nodded and fixed her eyes on the cufflinks that had sat next to her husband’s skin in a shirt he wore to go to work, when their life was very different, when she had been in the dark . . .
‘I’ll tell you what I can do.’ He sat back on his stool. ‘I can increase that by thirty – four hundred and seventy. That’s my final offer, and that is only because I am soft hearted and you seem like a very nice lady.’