Chapter Fourteen
The wind thrashed her ponytail as she locked the car in the car park near Peterborough Cathedral. Diane wasn’t going to see Gareth today. She’d sent him a text message, feeling, as she laboriously worked through the txt talk guide helpfully supplied with her phone, that she was finally in the twenty-first century.
Will nt b able 2 visit u 2day, have 2 c Rowan. C u l8r.
No kisses, no Love Diane . She felt neither kissy nor lovey. Every fresh revelation forced her old feelings for her husband through the mincer. And now he’d manoeuvred to bring Bryony home, which — obviously — was wonderful, because, ever since Bryony left for the steamy heat of Brazil, Diane had carried an ache around that was both hollow and heavy. But she was under no illusions that he’d done it to ease Diane’s aches. Or even his own, although he missed Bryony, too.
No, he’d done it to make it more difficult for Diane to leave him.
And he wouldn’t want Diane to leave him in case she took half of his stash with her.
Bryony, a forgiving little soul, had been moved by her dad’s crocodile tears and intrigued by acquiring a grandfather and assorted other relatives. But it wasn’t quite the same for Diane.
She set out for Rowan’s shop in Rivergate Arcade, crossing at the lights into that segment of Bridge Street with a hundred other people.
Rowan Chater bought her garments for his idiosyncratic little shop, on what seemed a whimsical basis and with an air of doing her a kindness. She detested his condescension but income was income, so she’d put together a small collection of five pairs of decorated canvas trousers and ten colourful tops for the coming autumn season.
In the shop, Rowan, perched on a wooden stool behind the counter, was talking to an over made-up woman with a small child. ‘Oh, hullo,’ he drawled unenthusiastically, when he noticed Diane.
‘Hi.’ She gave what she hoped was a confident smile, hating having to hover with the heavy garments while he took his time nattering.
When woman and child finally left, Rowan gave a tiny sigh. Short stubble defined his jaw and head; he had seal-like eyes and a misleadingly sweet smile that he rarely bestowed upon Diane. His effete speech reminded her a little of Bryony, the way he emphasised at least one word in a sentence and used a final upward intonation as if statements were questions. ‘Shall I have a look?’ he suggested with the air of doing his good deed for the day.
Silently, slowly, he turned over each item. Diane ran her eyes over the racks, the torso mannequins, the garments hanging sideways with broomsticks through the sleeves.
None of her work, boasting the little label in the neck with DRJ embroidered in turquoise on a bright yellow ground, was currently displayed in the shop. She tried a bit of casual self-promotion. ‘The last batch all sold, did it?’
He turned another garment. ‘In the end.’
She subsided. She didn’t want to ferret for details only to find that he’d had to slash the price to get her stuff off his hands.
‘Mm,’ he conceded. ‘Good colour choices, anyway.’ He always seemed to have to cast about for some detail to praise. He folded back the final garment — a bronze linen tunic embroidered with a goldfish, bubbles rising in the form of clear washers. Sighed. Raised his eyebrows. Tapped his fingertips on the counter.
Diane held her breath.
‘Yes, OK,’ he agreed, eventually. ‘I can usually put a “Hand made” label on them and make them go. Send me an invoice.’ He wrote a figure on the back of a brown paper bag. He always did that, as if it might invoke bad luck to speak money aloud. It was exactly the same price per garment as the last lot. And several prior to that.
Diane bit down on her disappointment and the urge to point out the 70% mark up he put on the garments. The important thing was that Rowan was already writing a cheque.
‘Overheads are escalating,’ he mentioned, conversationally.
‘Mine, too.’ Perhaps she could find an outlet where the proprietor didn’t make her feel as if she ought to be so damned bloody grateful all the time. Cambridge, maybe? There was money, there.
To cheer herself up she found a coffee shop and ordered a cappuccino. It came in a glass cup with not enough sprinkles but she settled at a table near the window to savour it as she watched the people milling along Bridge Street.
An imperious series of beeps from her pocket almost made her drop the cup. She plucked out her phone. James mobile . After a bit of fumbling, she opened the text. Tamzin @ Nat?s . Need dinner companion 2nite. How u fixed?
Thoughtfully, she laid the phone on the table and returned to her coffee, staring out at mothers with buggies, lads in jeans that swung like satchels from skinny backsides. The planters that decorated the street were filled with the kind of geraniums you’re supposed to call pelargoniums, as jolly and scarlet as Bryony’s favourite nail varnish.
The phone beeped again. Diane wondered if she’d ever be the nonchalant phone user that everyone else above the age of six seemed to be. I promise 2 behave. Strictly no pouncing. Will pick u up@8 . She grinned and ordered another cappuccino. She always considered herself a strong woman but she discovered herself quite powerless to resist the idea of dinner with James, with his dark grey eyes and lightning smiles.
* * *
When Tamzin’s phone rang, the next morning, Dad showed on the screen. Tamzin rolled herself a little more tightly in the covers of Nat’s spare bed before she answered.
James sounded as if he’d been up for hours. Which he probably had. ‘I can drive you to Diane’s today, as it’s Saturday.’
Unfairly, she snapped, ‘Oh, Dad , I can drive myself. It’s a good day. You can’t be in control all the time.’ And she pressed ‘end call’ on her phone.
Then she felt mean. She wasn’t fair to him. She knew that. On bad days she wanted him to be the man with the answers even while she resented him for having them. But, on good days, she’d shoo him away.
Still, half-an-hour later, she was parking beside the hedge outside Diane’s redbrick house. She knew, now, to knock on the side door. It seemed better manners to go to the front door but it was swollen shut and if you rattled the pitted brass knocker Diane had to come out of the side door and find you, or shout directions through the letterbox.
‘Great to see you, Tamzin.’ Diane beamed as she opened the door. She glanced over Tamzin’s shoulder.
Tamzin giggled and gestured to the empty space behind her. ‘Look! No Dad.’
Diane’s eyes returned to Tamzin and she smiled. ‘So I see. It’s great you could make it. Let’s take some tea up to the workroom with us and we can start decorating your jeans.’
Tamzin whisked a bag from behind her back and flourished a pair of soft grey Levis. ‘I’m all ready.’
‘Wonderful — and don’t you look good, today? Your hair looks great with that pretty dress.’
Diane’s approval puffed Tamzin up. The blue cotton dress was one Alice had bought in an optimistic moment. The ruching that had given her an elephantine bum suited Tamzin’s snakey hips.
‘Oh. My. God.’ Tamzin paused on the threshold to Diane’s workroom. It was more of an Aladdin’s Cave than even on her last visit. ‘Diane, I want bling-bling buttons like those.’ She pointed at six bright, glass-encrusted buttons knotted together with wool and hooked over a nail in the wooden shelves that could have been the store of a giant magpie. Folded fabric, funny felty white stuff, braid in twenty colours, sequins, buttons, beads, buckles . . . It was a treasure trove.
‘You have those, if you want. Don’t think they’re right for either of the tops I’ve fitted you for, though. Maybe something darker?’ Diane looked at Tamzin with her head on one side. ‘Dusky red? That would suit you. Do you like zips? Or, I know!’ Diane seized a pad and scrabbled for a pencil. ‘How about, instead of a normal seam we have a run of clear circlets up the outside of the sleeve? They’ll go well with the buttons.’ She sketched rapidly, then turned the pad to Tamzin.
‘Oh, yay, that’ll look so cool!’ Tamzin paused. She checked her sleeves were rolled down. ‘You’ll see my arms between the circlets—’
‘Only on the outside, here, from your shoulder. That’ll be all right. And we could make this a bib neck, three buttons either side running vertically.’ She sketched again.
‘Brilliant. You’re so kind.’ Tamzin gazed at the drawing. Her throat was suddenly tight with tears.
Diane took the cream shirt from its hanger. ‘Kind! This is my business, Tamz. I send bills to Daddy. Now, you rootle through those shelves. There are catalogues on the bottom shelf, look through them, too.’
Willing the tears to subside, Tamzin examined tubes labelled bugle beads and seed beads , silver, gold, scarlet, black and some blue that shone purple depending which way you looked at them. Depression was shitty. Sometimes she was so sad that she couldn’t cry, descending instead into a bleak and frozen landscape where tears might’ve been a relief. But make her happy and she cried? Er, right . . .
She picked up a big black buckle that fastened with three circular plates like her old school belt, stroking the satin matt finish.
Behind her, the sewing machine began to chatter. She glanced around. Diane was absorbed, pale head bent over the cream shirt as it passed smoothly under the machine’s foot.
Hooks and eyes, poppers, Velcro dots, rings the colours of brass, pewter, silver, gold. Thin cord. Tamzin popped open an old circular biscuit tin and found a feast of embroidery silks, a hundred colours from the subtlest silvery blue to flaming scarlet and lime green. Broad black ribbon gleamed dully at her, and she put it aside with the buckle.
‘Got some stuff that appeals to you?’ Diane snapped off the threads and examined the stitching on the cuff.
‘These?’ Tamzin showed her the black buckle and the ribbon.
‘OK.’ Diane put the two things together on her work table. ‘Can you pass me that red tin? It’s filled with buckles.’ She flipped the top off and shook the contents. ‘What else do you like?’
Tamzin peered in, her reflection slithering around in the battered silver interior. ‘This . . . and this.’ A silver S buckle, a black one without a prong but with serrations at the sides, a buckle that looked like a flower with six petals and one with two prongs.
Diane picked up the original black buckle. ‘The obvious thing to do with this is to make a belt. Let me look for some webbing of some kind. The rest of the buckles can be threaded with ribbon and then fixed all over the jeans. The S should go in the small of your back, I think, and then down the side — Oh — here’s George.’
Tamzin followed her gaze out of the window to where a tall lad with a baseball cap was locking up a deep blue car outside. The cap hid his face. He turned, took two strides, hurdled the hedge and loped up the path.
Diane grinned. ‘You must meet George.’ She paused, wrinkling her forehead. ‘He’s your cousin. Or your half-cousin or half-second-cousin or something. Gareth is half-brother to both your mother and George’s father so you must be related, somehow.’ She beamed. ‘George is one of my favourite people.’
‘Oh.’ Tamzin felt suddenly flat. If Diane got chattering to this George about people Tamzin didn’t know, Tamzin would no longer have Diane’s attention. She glanced at her watch. ‘I’ll say hello before I leave.’
‘You’ll like George,’ said Diane, as if plucking Tamzin’s misgivings from the air. ‘Bryony adores him. They used to be in a band together, Jenneration. Do you like Indie Pop?’
‘Can’t bear it.’
She skulked downstairs behind Diane and hovered silently while Diane stood on her tiptoes to hug George. ‘You jumped my hedge.’
‘Gates are for boring dudes.’ George flipped off his baseball cap and threw it on the seat of a chair.
Tamzin felt her jaw drop.
George’s hair was the colour of a lion’s mane and clung around his head in quills, framing his eyes and pointing up his impressive cheekbones. Soft, youthful stubble defined the slant of his jaw. His eyes were brown-gold. They settled on Tamzin and she felt the tiny hairs on the back of her neck stand up.
Then his lips curved slowly. ‘All right?’
She felt herself flush but she managed the accepted response. ‘Not bad. You?’
‘Yeah. Good.’ His gaze remained on her.
She was glad all over again for Alice’s dress. And that she’d washed her hair.
Diane began to explain. ‘This is Tamzin, who—’
‘Yeah, I get who she is. I’m still trying to get my head round Uncle Gareth having, like, this whole other family, though. Amazin’.’
‘I’m still getting my head around it myself. Sit down, you two.’
Tamzin forgot all about leaving after saying hello and chose a kitchen chair. Presently, lunch was set before her and she didn’t even realise what she’d eaten until the soup bowl was empty and all that was left of her roll was crumbs. But, apparently, this had happened while George attempted to explain the Jenner family tree on the inside cover of Diane’s address book, and Tamzin put in the missing family on the other half of the page, beginning with Pops and ending with herself, Natalia and Alice.
‘So my grandmother was naughty with your grandfather,’ observed George.
Facing one another over the kitchen table they talked non-stop whilst Diane cleared up and reflected on how it would reduce James’s stress levels if Tamzin had more days like this.
Much of his conversation over dinner, last night, had revolved around Tamzin. Parent’s Disease. Diane understood. She’d spent so many anxious years on tenterhooks over Bryony’s health.
The restaurant James had chosen backed onto Stamford’s water meadows and from the rear terrace they’d watched the ducks flying circuits and coming in to land as the sky turned purple and dark pink. ‘When one of your children is ill it’s like a spiky burden you carry around with you,’ he’d said. ‘I think about Tamzin all the time. I expect I talk about her all the time.’ His dark grey eyes crinkled. ‘But you’ve seen her on a bad day.’
‘It’s such a shame for her — for you all. Hasn’t she worked or studied since she left uni two years ago?’
‘Some days she won’t get out of bed.’
‘But she has nothing to get out of bed for. I thought that one of the symptoms of depression is feeling purposeless — isn’t that aggravated by her genuinely not having a purpose?’
‘The therapist said occupation can help some people. But it’s a vicious circle. She couldn’t hold down a job or attend a college because she’s too ill.’
They’d talked for hours: how excited Diane was about Bryony coming home — perhaps as early as next week — and how proud James was of Natalia and Alice. ‘Especially of how good they are with their little sister . . . And now I’ve brought the conversation back around to Tamzin.’
He’d driven her home at a reasonable hour, the journey in the soft black night seeming woefully short. Diane felt the back seat like a spectre and she almost expected it to rear up behind her booming: ‘You can’t ignore what happened here!’
But she had tried her best to, even when James kissed her goodnight. It had begun as such a quick kiss — his lips brushing briefly over hers. But then he’d gathered her up against him and let the kiss deepen, slowwww downnnn, sending goosebumps straight down her back. He was so warm. Her fingers had tangled themselves in his hair and she hadn’t wanted the kiss to stop.
And all day she’d nursed the memory of the evening like a happy secret.
‘How about we go down to one of the village pubs? Fancy a swift half at The Dragon, Diane? Diane ?’
She jumped out of her daydream. ‘Not me today, George. Too much to do. I said I’d visit Gareth and I’ve just seen the time. Take Tamzin.’
‘Yeah, good one. OK?’ he said to Tamzin.
‘OK,’ she said, as if it didn’t matter one way or another.
‘So, are you into Indie pop?’
‘Oh, like, yeah,’ Tamzin breathed.
‘My band’s playing a gig on Friday. How about you come? We’re Jenneration.’
‘Could do. I’ll visit my mum in the afternoon then I’ll be free in the evening.’
George banged open the kitchen door. ‘So we could meet up for pizza, if you don’t mind hanging around while we sound check? See you, Diane.’
‘Bye, Diane. Yes, that would be OK. I’ll give you my mobile number and you can text me . . .’ The door shut behind them.
‘Bye, then.’ Diane plunged the plates into white, glistening suds, letting the tangy smell of Fairy Liquid rise around her in a cloud of steam. Maybe a little attention from a looker like George would do more for Tamzin than doctor’s pills.
It was brilliant to see Tamzin looking so much like a normal twenty-year old.
Even if it meant that Tamzin hadn’t needed James to accompany her to Diane’s house when, actually, Diane had been looking forward to seeing him. Even though she knew it was quite the wrong thing to do.