Chapter 7
Now shave?
It eats at me all the way back to my car. He didn’t need to shave. His chin was fine. New shade? But I know sound and that first vowel wasn’t a thin high sound. It was rounded and mobile, a diphthong. And the final sound wasn’t a definite stop. It went on and faded.
I get in and put my seat belt on, then a horrible thought strikes me. What if I misheard, like I’ve been mis-seeing? What if the voice in the office said “All okay?” or “Who was that?” even?
What if trying to find Peggy at another home after this one brings another familiar face that shouldn’t be, more solid objects shimmering like underwater and, worst of all, sounds that don’t ring true in my ear?
Give it up, I tell myself. I’ve got Chloe.
And that receptionist at the estate agent’s looked like the book club type too.
And, once I’m not trying to stay out of Shelley’s way to make it less annoying that I’m in her house, I’ll have Shelley.
We could all get together once a week for dinner, like a family should.
I could watch the boys splashing around on the football field the odd Saturday if I really wanted to bed myself in.
She’s out on the front step as I pull into the yard, holding an enormous gold tray that bounces the sun back in my face, half blinding me.
God I hope she is. I hope I’m not imagining either the tray or the caveman club in her other hand.
Is that a shield? It’s too big and too round, surely.
But at least I know, as I walk towards her, that it’s really there.
“Bird scarer?” I say, guessing.
She’s hanging over the side railing now, trying to attach the disc to a set of hooks there.
“Gong,” she says. “Your brother never takes his phone with him when he’s away back there in the wilds and I’m sick of shouting for him.
” She lets the big brass tray go and it swings on the hooks, clanging against the brick base of the porch.
Once it’s still, Shelley squares up the club as if she’s taking a swing in a game of rounders and hits it smack in the middle.
The sound is deep and resonant and reverberates in waves, sending two wood pigeons up out of the sycamore tree, fussing and flapping.
“Wow,” I say. “That would make me take my phone.”
John steps out of the Portakabin. “We could have sold that,” he says.
“Jesus Christ, John,” I say, “you sound like Dad.”
“Worse things I could be,” he says, which is the kind of jet black joke that makes me feel as close to him as when we were children. No one else would get it except me. I grin so wide my cheeks hurt, but he only stares at me. “What you been up to, Linds?”
And just like that the gap between us is a mile wide again. “Why?”
“Why?” says Shelley. “For God’s sake, Lindsay, how many times do we need to tell you we’re worried about you?”
The honest answer would be “a few less than you have” so I say nothing.
“Only, tell us now if you’re already feeling as wobbly as you look,” Shelley says, “because Chloe’s on her way round and you’ll need all your strength to stand up to her.”
“I don’t want to stand up to her,” I say.
“It’s only a bit of fun.” John looks unconvinced.
“It’s no different from you finding me a car,” I tell him.
“If you can keep me from having to deal with car salesmen and Chloe can keep me away from estate agents—lucky me. I met a real weirdo of a one down in BofA yesterday.”
“What tinpot car dealer have you found in BofA, for God’s sake?” says John.
“Not a dealer,” I say. “A property centre and not tinpot either. He looks like a farmer and he knows you and Shelley. I even thought I recognised him. He didn’t recognise me, mind. Maybe he was all over me at a barn dance once and he was too blootered to remember. Anyway.”
John stares at me, saying nothing. And I can’t think of anything to say to him either.
“Go and have a lie-down till lunch,” Shelley says. “You look like you need it.”
I wish I could argue. Instead I go inside and upstairs to sit on Zak’s bed with the monsters.
I’ve got myself together by the time I hear John come in, and I go downstairs to the smell of Shelley’s homemade soup warming up in the big pot that’s been a mainstay of this kitchen since my mum’s day.
They’re standing together at the cooker, John’s arm round Shelley’s waist, her head on his shoulder.
“—brilliant as well as beautiful,” I catch him saying.
That’s why I should stick with the plan to find Peggy.
She’s alone, like me. That receptionist was definitely married and Chloe’s never single for long, or not unless she changed more than it seems in the years I didn’t see her.
I’m actually surprised she’s single now.
I push the door wider open and try to tread heavily so they hear me.
“So, Lindsay,” Shelley says, still stirring the soup, which is starting to splat and fart. “We’re agreed. You’re staying.”
“Are we?”
“Let’s agree now,” says John. “You need to take your time and make sure you choose wisely. You’ve had enough upset. And you’re not . . .”
“I’m not what?”
“Come on,” he says. “You know you’re not.”
“That smells . . .” I try to say good, to change the subject, but what it smells like is mutton fat.
My mum’s day indeed. She always made potato soup with a flank of mutton too.
I can still remember watching her lift the disc of fat off the top on the second day, knocking bits of carrot and turnip out of its underside before she threw it away.
Shelley ladles out three bowlfuls and sets mine down in front of me.
The disc of fat from this pot of soup is sitting on a square of kitchen roll and, as I watch, Shelley wads it up into a ball, then rolls it in a load of seeds she’s got spread on a plate. She plops the whole thing in a plastic bag and heads out to the scullery.
“What the hell?” I ask John. “Tell me that’s not for dinner.”
“She’s freezing it for the birds in the winter,” he says.
Shelley comes back in, massaging the fat into her hands. I suppose it must be good for the skin but, when she plonks a loaf of bread down on the table, I can’t take my eyes off the greasy fingerprints on the wrapper.
“Anyway,” she says, “Even if you were tip-top, this is your home. You’ve got as much right to live here as us. More maybe.” As if she didn’t just serve me first.
“Excuse me,” I blurt and I slip out of the kitchen before the tears can fall.
As the door is closing, I hear John growl, “What the fuck did you say that for?” But even this sign that it’s not all as rosy as they make out doesn’t help me.
I’m still hiding in the downstairs loo trying to get a hold of myself when I hear a car arriving and Chloe’s voice calling my name.
I should answer but for some reason I sit where I am, making a fan out of the end of the toilet paper, as I hear her come in and the three of them talking.
When curiosity gets the better of me, I stand and open the door a crack.
I used to be able to do it silently but I’ve lost the knack and there’s a sudden silence before the back door opens and closes.
I open the toilet door all the way and go back to the kitchen.
Shelley and Chloe are huddled together on the far side of the drive, close to the Portakabin steps, deep in discussion.
“What’s that all about?” I say.
John gives a theatrical sigh and rolls his eyes. “Some daft crap,” he says. “Shelley’ll set her straight.”
“Set Chloe straight?” I say. I lean over the sink and bang on the window, startling both of them. “I don’t need a keeper, John. I don’t need a minder. Chloe’s my oldest friend.”
“Just hear me out,” Chloe says, barging back in with Shelley on her heels.
She always did that: started in the middle of the conversation she’d been imagining before I got there.
She was the first person I knew to kick off with “So” like everyone does now.
She sat down next to me on the school bus and said, “So about the party.” Once, she got off a plane in Honolulu and said, “On the other hand, Lindsay, if I stay with him you could have a break.”
“I’m listening,” I tell her.
“The thing is, of course you should check the market and all that. Make no big decisions, blah blah blah—only there’s this one house . . .”
“Is there?” says John in a voice that could flash-freeze the sun. What is his problem?
“Chlo,” I say. “I’ve got no idea what you’re on about. Any of you.”
“I want to take you round it,” Chloe says.
“That was the idea,” I remind her.
“And I want you to stay here where you belong,” says John. “Until it’s the right time to move.”
They stare at each other. Mad as it sounds, I look to Shelley to give the casting vote. “So much drama,” she says. “It’s. A. House. You’re talking about moving house.”
“Oh Shelley, the Queen of Crime wrote a whole novel about folk moving into a house,” I say.
“You need to be here with your family,” says John. “We know what you need.”
“You’re getting a bit Handmaid’s Tale there, John,” Chloe says. “Speaking of books.”
I really need this to stop, even though I have no idea what it is, why they’re fighting. I need them to cut it out before the kitchen starts to flatten or I hear a phantom voice or—God forbid—one of them shows me that they can see any of that happening to me.
“What like of a house?” I ask Chloe.
She squeaks and leaps into my arms, whirling me round. “Couple of days to set it all up, Lindsay. That’s all.”
Of course that’s not all. She grills me in excruciating detail about what I need, what I want and what I hate, leaning over to dip a piece of bread into my soup while she texts herself the answers with her free hand.
John goes back to work, without another word, and Shelley retreats to the living room to iron in front of the telly, turned up loud to tune us out.