Chapter Seven
‘You’re kidding?’ Annie’s jaw dropped open.
‘Seriously? You’re Frank’s Gracie?’ She shook her head, her expression suggesting she wouldn’t have been more surprised if Grace said she was married to King Charles himself.
Her mouth snapped shut and she slapped herself on the thigh.
‘I should have twigged when I heard your name. What a dozy mare I am. It’s so lovely to meet you, Gracie. Why didn’t you say?’
Grace’s heart flipped when she heard Frank’s pet name for her coming out of Annie’s mouth.
Of course he would have referred to her as Gracie.
He always did. ‘I don’t know. I suppose it’s because this was Frank’s domain, I didn’t want to come in and introduce myself as if I was significant.
I mean, other than him telling me about what he was reading, and him being out every other Wednesday, it wasn’t anything to do with me.
’ That wasn’t the whole story and the shame of it burned inside her.
‘I hear you,’ said Annie. ‘When I first got together with my Jack, I tried to show an interest in his five-aside, you know, asking who was on the team, whether they won and all that. After about twenty-seven million years of asking what they talked about in the pub after the game and being told, “not much”, you give up, don’t you? ’
‘You’ve been together twenty-seven-million years?’ said Grace. ‘Impressive.’
‘Ha, feels like it,’ said Annie, but her nose crinkled in a way that suggested she wasn’t complaining.
‘And he doesn’t play football anymore, so …
’ Her voice trailed off. Her gaze followed a car flashing its full beam to allow a bus out of the side road, then turned back to Grace.
‘Come back in. I’ll introduce you to everyone properly.
They’ll be chuffed to bits when we tell them who you are. ’
Grace shook her head. ‘I don’t think—’
‘Please. Come in. Honestly, your Frank meant a lot to us. We would have all come to the funeral, but we get why you kept it to family only, obviously.’ Annie spoke quickly, as if scared she’d said the wrong thing.
The image of Frank’s coffin disappearing behind the curtain in the crematorium scored across Grace’s brain. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you wanted … That whole time went by in a blur to be honest. I wasn’t thinking.’
Annie held out her hand. ‘No, don’t apologize. I wasn’t complaining. I’m not saying you did anything wrong.’ She shook her head. ‘Me and my big mouth.’
‘It’s fine, really.’
They sat in awkward silence. Eventually Annie stood. ‘Come inside. They’d love to meet you. I still can’t believe you’re Frank’s Gracie.’
‘Another time, perhaps,’ said Grace, standing and looking up at Annie’s kind face.
‘Crush looked like she needed her quiet time this evening. I don’t want to intrude on that.
’ She meant it. Crush had been so welcoming, but that liquid look in her eyes stayed with Grace and she didn’t want to interrupt whatever solace she got from her quiet reading time.
‘But you’ll come next time?’
Grace hesitated. She wasn’t the kind of person who made promises and didn’t keep them. ‘Let me think about it,’ she said. ‘It was lovely to meet you, Annie.’ She held out her hand and Annie took it in both of hers.
‘And you. Frank talked about you so fondly. I’m so glad we got to meet.’
The warmth of Annie’s hand remained on her skin as she walked back home, even as she wiped away the tears which fell onto her cheeks.
***
The following evening Grace was delighted when Jude called in on his way back from work. This time she had something new to talk about.
‘How was book club?’ he said, using the toes of one foot to prise the enormous trainer off the other in the porch.
She watched him closely, trying to see if she could detect anything different about him now he was taking the stimulant medication.
He wasn’t moving any quicker. His speech seemed fine.
She looked into his eyes, but couldn’t detect if his pupils were distended because of his dark irises.
‘I was expecting more people, it’s a small gathering. I felt a bit self-conscious.’
Jude looked at her quizzically. ‘Really? There were loads of people there when I went with Grandpa. Fifteen, maybe twenty.’
‘The woman who runs it did say numbers were depleted. That’s a shame.’ She thought about how Frank would feel about his beloved book club diminishing. The thought was too sad to dwell on. ‘I’ve got a bone to pick with you,’ she said. ‘You didn’t tell me it was a silent book club.’
‘What do you mean?’ He followed her through to the kitchen. She lifted a mug from the cupboard and waved it at him. He nodded yes.
Grace dropped a teabag into the mug and held it under the hot water tap on the granite island.
‘Exactly what I said,’ she raised her voice as boiling water gurgled into the mug.
‘If I’d known I’d have to sit in the room I used to work in, in silence while everyone read their own books, I might have given it a miss. ’
‘What did you think happened at a book club?’
She stirred the teabag in the mug, took it out, then poured in a drop of milk. ‘I thought they’d be discussing a book they’d chosen before. I expected to sit and listen to people talking about a novel, then be given the title of the book I had to read for next time.’
Jude scrunched his face. ‘Why?’
‘Because that’s what book clubs do.’ It wasn’t like Jude to be intentionally exasperating. She put a coaster on the table in the glass extension and the mug on top.
‘Do they?’ Jude sat down, his brow knitted.
‘Yes, Jude.’
He shrugged. ‘I’m hardly an aficionado, am I? I’ve only been to that one, and that’s what they did there, so I thought that’s how they all operated.’
Grace put her glass of water on a coaster and let out a sigh. She sat next to Jude. ‘Right. So you weren’t hoodwinking me?’
‘No, I wasn’t. You’re forgetting,’ he said, ‘I couldn’t read fluently until I was about eight. I’m not exactly likely to have joined every book club going, am I?’
‘Hey now, everyone learns at a different pace,’ said Grace, immediately feeling like she needed to defend him, even against himself.
Those early years at school were so tough for her lovely boy.
He was articulate and had a brilliant vocabulary, but at the time, for reasons neither they nor his teachers understood, his reading was delayed and his written work never demonstrated his obvious intelligence.
Every time Grace thought of the occasions she’d been frustrated when she showed Jude a word on one page and he couldn’t recognize it on the next, her insides shrivelled with shame.
‘And look at you now, with a first-class honours degree.’ She shimmied her hands.
Jude laughed. ‘A first? Me? It’s not like anyone in this family ever mentions it.’
‘Let us show off. We’re proud of you.’ Grace recalled Frank’s face when Jude came to tell them about his results.
She thought he might actually explode with pride.
Frank was the one who’d persuaded Paz that Jude would flourish at the sixth form college specializing in media and creative arts, rather than doing the A levels his father thought were necessary.
And Frank had been right. As soon as Jude was out of what Frank called ‘the sausage factory’ of the traditional education system, where a lot of exams rewarded memory rather than skills, Jude flew.
He made a small group of friends who were as quirky and unconventional as him, got a distinction in his extended diploma, and went on to thrive at the University of the Arts in London. ‘And you read loads now, don’t you?’
‘That reminds me.’ Jude dipped his hand into one of the many pockets in his baggy trousers and pulled out the copy of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest he’d borrowed. ‘Have you read this?’
‘No. Is it good?’
‘Yeah. It’s brilliant. I watched the film last week.
I read this straight afterwards because I wanted to see how it deals with what it means to be sane, or insane, and who gets to make the decisions on that.
I did the same with Shutter Island the week before, ’cos I want to see how books and films portray mental health issues, and what the film makers leave in or take out, the way the visual interpretation is different to the written one.
I’ve been reading loads of online articles about it.
Mum reckons it’s my new hyper-focus.’ He laughed.
‘She’s using all the ADHD jargon now. It’s hilarious. I swear she gets it all from TikTok.’
‘TikTok. Is your mum on that? It doesn’t sound like her usual cup of tea.
’ It also didn’t sound like the ideal place to be getting information on a medical condition.
Perhaps that’s why everyone thought they had ADHD these days, because platforms like TikTok were promoting it for likes, or whatever they got from it. It was all a mystery to Grace.
‘She tries to fudge it by saying, “I read an article that said people with ADHD often blah, blah, blah,”’ he mimicked Rosie’s tone perfectly, ‘but she doesn’t realize the algorithm is feeding me all the same stuff, and she’s obviously saving them to favourites because she’s repeating it word for word. ’
‘What’s this hyper-focus thing, then? Doesn’t the AD in ADHD stand for attention deficit?’ It seemed wrong to be saying that to Jude. He didn’t have a single deficit as far as she was concerned and she didn’t like that the diagnosis gave him a reason to think he did.
‘It’s basically going down a rabbit hole. It could be getting really into work, or being so focused on a hobby it becomes all-consuming.’ He laughed. ‘There’s no deficit to my attention if it’s something I’m interested in.’
Then surely he didn’t have ADHD? She wanted to question the credentials of Jude’s psychiatrist, and whether they got paid extra for a positive diagnosis, but didn’t want to appear cynical.
‘Isn’t that just the way some people are?
’ said Grace. The world had gone mad. ‘Your grandpa used to be a lot like that. He’d be reading a book when I went out to an auction, and he’d be in the same chair in exactly the same position when I got back.
He’d be so engrossed, he’d forget to eat. Honestly. You are two peas in a pod.’
‘Everybody who saw us said the same.’ Jude patted his twists and laughed.
Physically, other than their height, Jude and Frank were poles apart.
Until his early sixties, Frank had poker-straight, jet-black hair, blue eyes and the fair skin of his Irish parents.
Jude’s skin was brown and his eyes soft and dark.
He sipped his tea, looking at Grace over the top of his mug.
‘I’m sorry you didn’t enjoy the book club.
When I went, I thought they were a nice set of people. That Crush woman is cool.’
‘She is,’ said Grace. She surveyed the garden in the fading light, remembering the welcoming smiles of the people in Books En Parade.
The solar lights strung between the trees at the end of the lawn gave off a soft glow.
‘Did you meet a woman called Annie?’ She’d thought a lot about Annie since the evening before.
The warmth in her eyes, her unusual smile and the way she’d held Grace’s hand in both of hers had stayed with her.
‘Tall woman? Yeah, she was nice. There was an old guy with no hair and a cute Balinese cat too. Were they there?’
‘They were. The cat belongs to him, then? I thought it lived at the shop. He had exceptionally shiny shoes. I wonder if he was in the military.’
‘He carries the cat around with him in a cat-bag thing.’ Jude put down his mug. ‘Look at you, all curious.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You want to know their stories, don’t you?’ He nudged her gently. ‘Admit it. You know Grandpa liked them, and now you’ve had a bit of a peek, you want to know more. It’s human nature, isn’t it, to be curious about other people’s lives?’
Grace considered Jude’s words. Perhaps she was curious.
In her past life, she’d been more fascinated by the history of inanimate things, but maybe that was because she had all the human interaction she needed with Frank and her small family.
Now, everything was different and she realized that maybe she did want to know more about the people she’d briefly met last night.
‘Why don’t you give it another try?’ said Jude.
‘I don’t know. The shop … it feels so strange being back there.’
‘Only because you haven’t got used to the way it is now yet. You can’t live in the past, not if it stops you from doing something in the present.’
She smiled at her lovely boy. ‘When did you get so wise?’
‘Not sure you’d be saying that if you saw me trying to remember where I’d left my Oyster card this morning, or my phone or keys …’ He grinned at her. ‘Go back to the book club. I think you want to.’
To her surprise, maybe he was right.