Chapter 38
Xavier
Isuck in a deep breath and ascend the final few steps.
Somehow, the scene that greets me is what I’ve been expecting and dreading in equal measure: a shabby kitchenette-cum-living room that could double as an Eastenders set.
Décor and fixtures that are every bit as old as that stair runner.
And the pièce de résistance: two teenage girls perched on a ratty sofa.
They’re both sporting pink stick-on patches under their eyes, and, most peculiarly, both appear to have sections of their hair wrapped around what I would swear are socks.
Aside from those oddities, they look like sweet little things.
Slight, with far darker hair than Ivy. They’re in matching pyjamas and robes under a big fleecy blanket—it’s bloody cold in here—and are utterly, staggeringly identical.
They gape at me with matching expressions of surprise.
‘This is my friend, Xav. And your mum’s asleep,’ Ivy says with a brightness her stepmother’s condition absolutely doesn’t warrant. ‘You can visit her at the weekend. Xav, this is Rose and Lily.’ She doesn’t indicate who is who, and I wonder if even she can tell.
‘Hello,’ I say with a wave so awkward I immediately cringe. ‘Hi there. How do you do?’
Silence. Then: ‘You sound exactly like Hugh Grant in Notting Hill,’ one of them says. Next to me, Ivy makes a small, broken sound.
‘Ha! Yes, well, that’s fair, I’m sure.’ Excellent. I am instantly reduced to the role of a bumbling Richard Curtis-esque caricature.
‘You should be in bed,’ Ivy breaks in. ‘It’s ten o’clock. You know the rules during the week.’
‘But we wanted to hear how Mum was,’ the same girl says.
‘Yeah. We were so worried.’ This from the other.
They both widen their eyes at the same time, and I see that they are huge and brown.
Perhaps Dawn has brown eyes. Their vocal and facial expressions strike me as decidedly disingenuous.
It seems highly likely they’re taking their older sister for a ride, and I have a murky memory of Flora doing much the same to all of us at their age.
I have no plans to go anywhere, so I go ahead and take off my coat.
‘Well,’ Ivy says, shooting an alarmed look at me, ‘she fractured her wrist, so it’s in a sling. And she got some bruising on her face, bless her. But she was asleep the whole time we were there, and she seemed really peaceful. So don’t you worry about her. She’s in good hands.’
That is categorically untrue, from what I’ve seen of that institution, but I hold my tongue.
Ivy stoops in front of one twin and then the other, cupping their faces and kissing the tops of their heads.
I take her in. She looks shattered, but not only that: she’s white as a sheet.
I wonder if she ate anything at the party.
I found the bowl food they served to be excellent, but her blood sugar is bottoming out, by the looks of things. I clear my throat.
‘How about you get the girls to bed and I can cook you something? Or order you a takeaway?’ I’d offer to slip out and grab something, but I’m not convinced she’d let me back in. She seems decidedly uneasy at my presence.
‘Is he staying?’ one of the twins asks Ivy, giving me some serious side-eye.
‘No. He’s going to go shortly.’
‘Actually, I’d like to stay. If it doesn’t make you two uncomfortable.’ I address this to the twins, having no intention of giving their sister the option.
They look at each other and shrug, which I take to mean that they have no opinions at all regarding my presence.
Excellent.
That’s settled, then.
‘I don’t think you should,’ Ivy whispers.
‘I’m staying as a friend. You’ve had a rough evening, and I’d like to look after you. Now, what would you like to eat? Did you eat anything at the party?’
I glance around the room. The kitchen area in the corner is tiny: a few cupboards, a fridge, a freestanding cooker and a small countertop separating it from the rest of the room.
Everything looks old. I assume their landlord isn’t big on reinvesting in his properties.
There’s a lot of mess, particularly around the twins, but it looks clean.
My guess would be that Ivy keeps this place spick and span and that the twins undo that at every opportunity.
She also, judging from the fact that it’s not much warmer in here than it is outside, keeps a close eye on the thermostat.
I also have questions about the stack of large cardboard boxes behind the sofa. Dawn’s personal effects, maybe?
But the thing that gets me more than anything else is the gangly fake Christmas tree in the corner.
From sparse branches hang a variety of mismatched ornaments, while a string of too-cold white LED lights flash listlessly.
I think of the Wentworth-laden festive scene in our orangery for that photoshoot.
Of the epic Christmas showcase at Selena’s family home and of our own tastefully abundant decorations at Belvedere, heavy on the fresh greenery.
Then I imagine Ivy and the twins putting up this little chap in the absence of any proper parental figure, and a pang of heartbreak hits me so hard, it’s a physical pain behind my ribs.
These two sweet girls have no father and a mother who is in the most agonising kind of limbo.
Meanwhile, Ivy’s in her mid-twenties and playing mum and dad to two teenagers: caring for them, and worrying about their bedtimes, and putting food on the table and a roof over their heads.
This flat may run far, far short of what I’d like for her, for them all, but Ivy is doing a stand-up job of keeping all her shit together for the good of her family.
These two are wholly dependent on her, and her stepmother only has Ivy to advocate for her.
The pressures coming at her from both sides are unthinkable.
I give thanks for my—hitherto self-serving—decision to compensate her well for teaching Flora the ways of this city.
While I refuse to entertain any thoughts about what she got up to at Alchemy, I assume the paycheque was decent.
God knows if she has any other source of income aside from us and the caff.
If her father had a Royal Mail pension, I can’t imagine it goes far these days.
At my food-related question, Ivy grimaces. ‘I’d kill for some beans on toast. I didn’t like the food at that party.’ She picks up the remote and turns the TV off, earning herself death stares from the twins. ‘Go on, go brush your teeth.’
‘But we haven’t had our hydrating patches on for twenty minutes yet,’ one of them protests.
‘Keep them on while you’re doing your teeth. Now, shoo. I’ll put the kettle on for your hot water bottles.’
I wait until the twins have extricated themselves from under their blanket with much drama and are stomping their way up the stairs to the next level before I walk over to Ivy and wrap my arms around her. She softens against me with a willingness that tells me just how defeated she is.
‘Here’s what’s going to happen. You’re going to go and put some pyjamas on. I’ll do the kettle. And if you have beans and bread in stock, then I think I can just about manage beans on toast without poisoning you.’
As I move about the small space, I find myself taking in every detail. Some of it is pure curiosity: even if Ivy has given herself over to me physically, she’s withheld a great deal about herself. I want to absorb as much information as possible about the life she’s kept hidden from me until now.
But I must admit that I find myself cataloguing, too, the scores of infinitesimal ways in which Ivy’s home, her familial situation, is getting under my skin.
Every detail, from the spotlessness of the fridge interior and its chores list—held in place by an ancient Reading Is Religion magnet—to the meagre selection of canned food in the cupboard and the threadbare nature of the tea towels hits me like a gut punch.
I cast an eye over the chores list. Tuesday: Clean black mould off windowsills - Rose
I don’t need more than a cursory look at the window sill over the sink area to know that Rose is not pulling her weight on that front. The mould’s insidious occupation of the sill is in full force.
In an ideal world, I’d clear them out of here right away.
This week. I’d move them into the Little Venice house, where the three of them could clatter around to their hearts’ content in warmth and safety.
Ivy is still getting changed for bed in the room off the living room, so I make it my business to locate the thermostat on the wall behind the TV.
Sixteen degrees. That’s properly fucking Baltic.
It’s her exhaustion and hunger that force me to focus on preparing supper.
I’m being ridiculous. This isn’t full-on deprivation.
I know that much. I’ve watched The Wire and, closer to home, seen the misery that comes from extreme poverty.
The girls looked well in themselves, from what I could tell.
Ivy is doing a far better job of keeping her family’s heads above water than many adults.
Still, the ache in my heart persists. This isn’t living; it’s surviving, and a soul as beautiful, as true, as Ivy’s shouldn’t be surviving. It should be soaring.
She should be soaring. Following her dreams. Nurturing her not-inconsiderable artistic talents. Not fucking rich guys to pay the rest or working downstairs on minimum wage by day while playing carer by night.
Oh, yes. I’m fully briefed on Dawn’s sundowning now, and what it’s costing Ivy on top of everything else.
The bottom line is that she won’t let this become my problem. I know it, just as I know she’s embarrassed that I’ve seen behind the hyper-independent, girl-about-town front she puts on.
The beans, Xavier.
The best thing you can do for her right now is make her some beans on fucking toast.