The Way Home

Present day – aged 70

Lilly-Bob Cooper drew the curtains and smiled at the spring-blue morning light.

The surface of the water was calm, still like mirror glass, solid, as if she could walk right across it to where buildings lurked, and alleyways sat in shadow.

As was her habit that had become ritual, she lifted her hand in a wave to the bank on the opposite side of the river.

It was a fascination, even after all this time, how the wide stretch of water could present in this way, and in a matter of hours, in the face of a squall, might become agitated, pitted, catching raindrops like tiny bombs that dented and distorted; resounding with noise, a protest almost at the chaos on the surface.

Right now, however, it offered the perfect conditions for painting.

She felt the usual fizz of excitement at the prospect of setting up her easel.

With the sound of Debussy’s La Mer filling her apartment, she almost danced to the front door, lifting the hem of her teal silk caftan to reveal gold pumps, before stooping to pick up the mail from the welcome mat.

Her thick grey hair fell over her eyes, and she shook it from her face.

The usual fodder for the recycling bin: pizza flyer, a glossy brochure for a conservatory company, a letter marked ‘NHS’ which as ever sent a shiver of concern through her seventy-year-old bones.

NHS – something medical. She wasn’t very good with medical.

This she opened first, ripping the envelope and scanning the contents, which she read aloud.

‘We would like to invite you for a routine examination . . . Well, how lovely! I would of course be delighted to accept, rarely get asked anywhere nowadays. What should I wear, I wonder?’ She drummed her be-ringed fingers on her mouth, as if giving it real consideration.

She did this – chattered to herself for much of the day, even enjoyed the one-sided conversations.

She’d got used to it. It was just the way she was.

It was that or live large chunks of her life in silence, and that would never do.

Silence was, she felt, the gateway to loneliness.

Not to be confused with welcome moments of quiet contemplation or peaceful reflection in a hushed space, but the kind of silence that had sound, echoing all that was missing from her life.

The self-chatter and background music helped keep it at bay.

It was one thing being an older lady, but a lonely older lady?

No, that wasn’t for her. I mean what would follow, the acquisition of cats?

The second letter was in a brown envelope with the capitalised word ‘Urgent’ stamped on it in red.

‘Booo!’ she hissed as she pulled out the insubstantial sheet, her dad’s instruction loud and clear: Always booo before you open a brown envelope, just to let them know you’re on to them. Brown envelopes are never good news. Do not give them the upper hand!

‘Dear Mrs Cooper . . .’ She lowered the paper and gasped.

‘Flippin’ heck! I got married and didn’t even know it, congratulations to me!

I do hope he’s a nice fella, a handsome fella!

I wonder if I wore white?’ It made her laugh, the assumption, even in this day and age.

This letter, too, she scanned. ‘I am writing as a representative . . . this the fifth letter . . . blah-di-blah . . . the block . . .’ She looked over her shoulder and out of the kitchen window.

‘Block? Block! Urgh, we are not a block, we are a low-rise development! Nine apartments, over three floors, hardly a block! We are a bijou development! Not that this person, who no doubt wears a polo shirt to work, would know or care about the difference.’ She tutted, returning her attention to the letter.

‘The block’ – she pulled a face – ‘in which you reside is the subject of a regeneration order. Sounds fancy.’ She laughed.

‘. . . moved to suitable alternative accommodation, should you meet the criteria eligibility . . .’ Lilly sighed.

A letter sent to her in error. She would call them tomorrow.

Or maybe the day after that. Admin wasn’t really her thing, either.

The front door bell rang and her proximity to it made her jump.

‘Morning, darling!’ She stepped back to allow Clodagh entry and popped the mail bundle on to the hall table next to a bust of a woman’s head on which she had placed a crown of woven willow. ‘Did he go in okay?’

Clodagh, her twenty-seven-year-old neighbour and single mum to four-year-old Apollo, who lived in the flat above, sighed heavily.

This girl, her son and their visits could wrap even the gloomiest of days in sunshine.

Lilly treasured them, these interactions that made her feel part of the human race and not someone merely observing it from the wings.

They had opened up her horizon, allowed her to be part of a bigger conversation as she was given insights into their world.

Another vital facet to her life that helped keep the silence at bay.

Clodagh shook her head. ‘It was a crowbar kind of morning. They had to practically wrench him from me. He was crying, I was crying, and I remembered what you said, about giving him the exact number of hours and minutes until I was coming back to pick him up, in case it was a fear of abandonment that was upsetting him. It was all very fraught. I was shouting, It’s school, not prison!

Only six hours, which is actually three hundred and sixty minutes!

Apollo went crazy! I think three hundred and sixty of anything seems like a lot when you’re four. ’

‘Darling, it’s a lot when you’re seventy, if that thing is unanswered emails, dirty Martinis or press-ups.’

Clodagh nodded. ‘Yup. Anyway, Mrs McNally, the head teacher, was being stern, telling him not to cry and that he had lots to look forward to as today they were going to play with the dinosaurs—’

‘Real ones?’ she interrupted with enthusiasm, quite enamoured by the idea.

‘No, pl— plastic.’ Clodagh stared at her, as she was wont to do, still, despite being friends for over a year, a little unsure of her humour.

‘Anyway, Milar’s mum was tutting and shaking her head as if I was doing something wrong, or as if Apollo was.

That kind of disapproval just makes me feel worse.

Makes me drop things, lose my keys, and get my words flustered. ’

‘Of course it does. Would you like me to go and punch her?’

This time there was no mistaking the humour and Clodagh laughed loudly.

‘Yes. Yes, I would. I just find it so draining, Lilly, starting the day with this battle. It’s exhausting.’

‘I can only imagine. Tea?’

‘Please.’

As was their habit, the two made their way into the kitchen, where the square table sat pushed up against the wall, with a vast oil painting of a Renaissance nude hung over it.

The chap who had brought it from the gallery had, upon arrival, turned his nose up a little when she’d met him in the wide communal first-floor hallway.

She had watched as he took in the slightly fragrant stairwell of the 1950s interior.

The sweep of the elegant metal balustrade, an open design with a contemporary feel, metal Vs in a row that were currently a shade of pea soup.

She remembered them being black for most of their life, then blue, then orange, which became red and now this green. She rather liked it.

The polished concrete floor of the communal hallway was a myriad of colours, with tiny crushed stones and the odd sparkling crystal all uniquely captured, and it was just as vibrant as it had been on the day it was laid almost seventy years ago.

Lilly knew that if the man delivering the painting couldn’t see the beauty in the place, then it said a lot about him.

Her home: flat six, Waide House, on the east side of the building, middle floor of three, had a secret.

She liked to watch people’s faces as they walked in via her solid wood front door with its small rectangle of glass in the middle.

Took joy in studying them as they entered the surprisingly spacious square hallway where wooden doors led to two large bedrooms, the lounge, bathroom and kitchen.

The hall was a little dark when all the doors were closed, a little drab, maybe.

Here, too, the polished concrete floor that she so loved and the original wooden panelling that lined the walls, unchanged since her childhood.

She could guess what visitors were thinking, spacious but could do with brightening up, and it made her smile, as they missed the point entirely.

It was classical, of its time, untouched, and echoed loudly of the era in which it had been built.

Lilly was quite convinced that if you listened very carefully, you might be able to hear the craftsmen who had laid the floor, constructed the stairs, cut and fitted the wood, chatting during their tea break, discussing how they felt about the new prime minister, Mr Eden, rejoicing over Chelsea winning the league, and whether or not they were going to see that new film, The Dam Busters.

Some probably declining the outing, only ten years since their war had ended, unsure if they wanted the reminder . . .

Then came the good bit, the secret revealed, as visitors entered the generously proportioned rectangular lounge. Drawn like moths to a flame, walking quickly to the wide, wide window.

Wow!

Jesus!

Wowsers!

I did not expect that!

And she would smile a little smugly, knowing that Wow! Jesus! Wowsers! They had most definitely not expected that!

Yet there it was.

The river.

Old Mother Thames.

Flowing in all her glory.