Chapter 11
“It really is a beautiful house,” Shelley says, looking over my shoulder.
I’ve been unable to think about anything else except Saint Helen’s ever since Sunday, poring over the photos I took on my third walk-round.
Right now, though, I’m dressed for my date at the ballet, in a blue silk dress and strappy sandals, with my hair up and dangly earrings.
It feels weird, midafternoon, but we’ve got to get to Glasgow and have our dinner before the curtain.
“And we’re behind you all the way, Lindsay,” says John.
He is over in the house on a tea break instead of boiling the kettle in the Portakabin.
I think he wants to inspect the man who’s coming to collect me.
It’s part caveman but part sweet too, so I haven’t said anything. He leans back in his chair, stretching.
I glance round at Shelley, who lets go of the back of my chair and turns away.
“I’m going to ask again,” I say. “Why have you two changed your tune?”
“Do you really want to talk about it right now?” says John.
“Jesus,” says Shelley. She’s working at the sink now, rinsing little lettuces under the tap.
“Seriously,” I go on. “You were dead set against me moving and now you’re all for it. What changed?”
“Nothing,” John spits out between clenched teeth.
Shelley snorts and finally turns to look at me again. She’s wiping her hands on a towel and she screws it up into a knot and lobs it into the open door of the washing machine before she speaks. “We’re worr—”
A small moan escapes me.
“So we thought,” Shelley says instead, “that we should keep you here and look after you, but then we realised that maybe space and quiet would help. That maybe being here was part of the . . . And the boys are a lot.”
“Help with what?” I say. “I’m fine.” Shelley gives me a long, considering look.
“Grieving is work and I’m doing it. I loved Kai and grief is the bill to be paid.
I’m paying it.” She opens her mouth to argue and I decide to save her the trouble.
“I’m aware of the irony,” I say. “Talking about grief and love and Kai while I’m all dolled up for a date, but see? I’m going on a date. I’m fine.”
“It’s more than grief though, isn’t it?” Shelley says. John shifts in his seat.
“Because I misheard something, while I was clattering downstairs and opening a door? Big deal.” This is pure bravado because the North Wind thing is still raw enough to make me feel sick when I think about it.
“It’s more than that one time and more than that one thing too, though,” says John. “It’s the memory stuff.” I freeze. “The forgetting folk. The imagining things. The not recognising—”
“But I didn’t tell you any of tha—” I blurt out.
“You didn’t have to tell us,” Shelley says. “We’ve seen it. And we’re worried about you.”
“Oh, you’re worried about me?” I say, and even to myself I sound untethered. “Why didn’t you tell me?” But the sarcasm is laid on top of a jolt of shock and fear. They’ve seen it?
“Enough,” says John, but he’s smiling at his wife. I don’t understand why. Maybe that’s the whole point of what Shelley’s getting at. Maybe I should. What exactly have they seen? I thought I was hiding everything.
“I agree,” I say. “Enough. If grief and stress are sending me doolally, talking about it’s not going to help. Free fridge?” I add, nodding at the boxes. I want to prove I can remember things just fine, but I know my voice is still strained.
Shelley nods. “If you did buy that house,” she says, “and you weren’t going to use the greenhouse, John could dismantle— Yes, I know, John, but for me though!”
John has just flinched because he, like my dad before him, has a blanket veto on greenhouses. They’re too fiddly and too unlikely to survive intact. I’m so grateful to be back on solid ground with them, understanding the argument, that I blurt out: “Or you could have the use of it where it is.”
“Yep,” says John. “Much better idea to leave it where it is.” A look passes between them and, just like that, I’m lost again.
“Okay,” I say. “Okay, maybe I do need to talk about it. I admit it. I thought I recognised a couple of people, and I didn’t recognise someone.
And I’ve been having really weird dreams and sometimes, even when I’m awake, it’s like I’m not quite .
. .” Then I hear a car come in and park in the No Customers spaces reserved for family.
I don’t know if it’s a relief but it’s certainly a reprieve.
“Don’t go to the door,” says John, actually putting a hand on my arm. “I want to see if he comes and knocks or sits and toots.”
After a silent moment, we all hear a rap at the kitchen door, and the three of us let a laugh go.
I leap up to answer and there is David Minto, with his grey hair newly washed and brushed straight back, his face looking raw from a second shave.
He’s wearing a dark-blue silk shirt that matches my dress or as near as damn it.
“Gosh,” he says. “You look incredible.”
I was braced for him to cast an eye at the yard or the house, the bikes and boards abandoned on the step, Shelley’s weird new gong and her Leave Us Alone doormat, but he’s only got eyes for me.
“Ready?” he says, but he’s got one more hoop to jump through.
I pick up my bag with my cardigan through the straps. “David,” I say, stepping to the side, “this is my brother John and his wife Shelley. This is David Minto.”
John wipes his hand on his overalls to get rid of some crisps dust before shaking. Shelley holds hers up to show the soil from the lettuces. David steps back. But he’s laughing, not judging.
“Have her home before midnight and no funny business,” John says.
“Oh my sides,” I tell him, pressing a hand to my ribs. “You’re hysterical.”
Then we make our escape.
“Sorry about that,” I say when we’re in the car and he’s reversing, neatly and without any fuss, back out through the gates.
“I don’t blame him,” says David. “I wish I’d had a big sister shaking a stick to ward off trouble when I was a newly divorced babe in the wood.”
“I’m thirty-six,” I say, laughing. I wanted to get that in quick to see if I can find out how old he is. Not that it matters, for one date. It’s not as if—
But then his words hit me: when I was newly divorced. Is it possible that I didn’t tell him why I’m not still with Kai?
“You okay?” he asks, and I think I must have been quiet for a while.
“I need to clear something up.”
Then it’s his turn to be quiet for a while. I don’t know how long him and Aileen have been divorced but he’s obviously not recovered enough for another knock, no matter how small.
“My husband—his name was Kai—isn’t my ex-husband. He’s my late husband.”
“Oh God,” he says. Then, “I’m sorry.” Then, “How long—?”
I know he’s asking when Kai died but I can’t face what he’s going to think of me if I answer so I cut in as if it was a different question. “Ten years,” I say. “Eight married, but we knew within weeks, and the rest of the first two years was just planning and working out the logistics. Ten years.”
“I can’t imagine,” he says. “Well, I can imagine. I did imagine Aileen wrapping her car round a tree or getting knifed by a mugger, but I’m assuming you loved your husband so I can’t really imagine.”
I’m too stunned by this answer to say anything for a while. When I look over at the driver’s seat, his brows are drawn up and his mouth’s turned down. He sees me looking. “I can’t believe I just said that,” he murmurs. “Do you want me to turn the car round?”
“What?” I yelp. “No! Are you kidding? You just said something I haven’t heard ten thousand times already.
That’s a miracle.” I’m still watching him and the side of his mouth nearest to me quirks up a little.
“And you know what else?” I’ve found the guts to continue.
“I did love him, but it’s still complicated.
Because the thing no one got was that I knew it was coming for two long years and did so much advance grieving and sorting that, when it finally happened, after I’d slept for a week, I was so relieved for him—but a tiny bit for me too—that, after I did the wiped out bit, I’ve kind of fast-tracked through some of the stages to get to tonight.
That bothers some people, let me tell you. ”
“What people?” David says. “Unless they were his other wives, they had the right to tell you exactly bugger all.”
Now I’m smiling too. “He died a bit over three months ago,” I say. “Do you want to turn the car round?”
“Are you kidding? I’ve got a table at La Bruyère d’étaine.
And an Uber booked to get us to the Tramway after.
” He takes his eyes off the road to see if I’m laughing, then he gets serious.
“Bad joke,” he says. “I mean, are you kidding? I’ve just said no one knows better than you what stage you’re at. Certainly not me.”
I sit back in my seat. “What’s La Bruyère d’étaine?”
La Bruyère d’étaine, it turns out when we get there, is a posh, celebrity-chef kind of place where you’re more likely to find beetroot in the ice cream than the soup, and no way is the carpaccio anything to do with beef.
Its other feature, at least tonight, is that they play reservation roulette, and ours has rolled right off the table.
David does his best, trying to walk the line between kicking enough arse to get us our dinner while not being rude to staff, which everyone knows is death to a first date, until I put my hand on his arm and say, “Let’s go somewhere else, eh? I’m starving.”
But it’s central Glasgow on a sunny Thursday night at the end of the month. Which is how we end up in a plastic booth at the Blue Lagoon, looking at each other over the ketchup bottle, waiting for the waitress to come and ask us if we want haddock and chips or haddock and chips.
“Stop beating yourself up,” I say. “I saw some of the food in that other place and I’d have ended up getting a bag of chips to eat in the taxi anyway.”