Present day
Lilly delved into the drawer in the kitchen and placed her hand towards the back. ‘Aha! I knew I had one.’
Pulling out the black marker pen, she handed it to Clodagh.
‘Thanks, Lilly, you’re a lifesaver. I’ve started putting a few things in boxes, toys Apollo doesn’t play with much, some winter clothes and things.’
‘Probably wise. I haven’t considered packing yet, still hoping my letter to the prime minister might make a difference.’ Lilly winked, trying to smother her rising sadness with a joviality she didn’t feel. A mask, no doubt.
‘How do you know it arrived safely?’
‘I don’t, but I have imagined it being delivered on a silver platter for them to read while they eat their scrambled eggs for breakfast, as if my letter describing my plight might take precedence over any other business they might be having to contend with.’
‘I’m sure you’re right. You will absolutely be a priority!’ Her lovely neighbour smiled with a twitch of concern in her eyes, suggesting she didn’t believe writing would make the slightest bit of difference.
Lilly chose not to share that this was actually how she had pictured it, the call to arms over breakfast, trying to manifest the moment while doing her best not to admit defeat.
Jake the journalist had not responded to her recent messages.
She wished she hadn’t given him such short shrift and hated how she was now having to rely on people who didn’t know her and who would, as she had hinted to Clodagh, no doubt have other more pressing things on their minds.
She could hardly stand to think about it, Clodagh packing up to leave, as no doubt would Mr Chaplin and the rest of her neighbours in the coming weeks.
It was happening, the thing she had dreaded, the thing she had half believed she could outrun, prevent; it was happening, and the feeling of impotence as her life shifted on its axis was almost paralysing.
She had no idea which avenue to turn down.
Denzel had always been a fighter, there for the underdog, and loved nothing more than a good legal tussle, yet even he had suggested she admit defeat before the starting pistol had fired, urging her to take the money and run.
The truth was she felt old; old, tired and out of ideas.
She hadn’t heard from Alfie since the day he’d taken her out on Lady Margery.
Joshua Vaughan, too, was conspicuous by his absence, probably because there was very little to be done or discussed at this point.
It was all down to lawyers and paperwork, no longer any need for the devious strong-arm tactics that required human-to-human interaction, nor the manipulation at which they had been so masterful.
Alfie’s words of explanation, his desire for a legacy, had sickened her a little; this need for a shiny tower at any cost meant he was not anyone she wanted to engage with.
No matter how good he had looked in his open-necked shirt, driving his fancy slipper launch up and down the river.
Wilkie popped into her thoughts. He, too, had looked good, a wolf in sheep’s clothing, and just about as dangerous.
‘How are you feeling about it all, Lilly?’
‘I think I’ve shifted from denial and am now edging towards resigned, but I am still far from happy and I’ve not given up just yet, I have a few irons in a few fires.’
‘I wish there was something I could do.’ Clodagh removed the scrunchie from her wrist and secured her trademark pineapple on the top of her head.
‘Me too.’
‘I got my assignment back from college. I got eighty-four per cent, which would be a first if it were being marked for my degree.’
‘Clodagh! That’s brilliant!’ It was wonderful to see the young woman succeeding.
‘My tutor has put me in touch with a sports clinic in Victoria and they’re going to offer me a placement, work experience kind of thing, and if they like me’ – she crossed her fingers – ‘it might lead to a job.’
‘It feels like everything is falling into place for you. Nothing short of what you deserve.’
‘I’ve never had anyone like you, Lilly.’
‘What do you mean?’ She gave the woman her full attention.
‘I mean, I’ve never had anyone look out for me or give a shit about me like you do.
’ Lilly knew enough about Clodagh’s mum for this to make sense, and was truly touched.
‘It’s had a huge impact on me and Apollo, more than you’ll ever know.
I was thinking about it this morning, and it’s the simple things that make a difference. ’
‘Like having someone to call on if you need a marker pen?’ Lilly smiled, feeling she needed to downplay the compliment to keep her own emotions in check, anxious as she was about fully lowering her emotional drawbridge.
It was easy to remember what it had felt like when she was small and, on the odd occasion when her mum had popped up, she had felt unable to touch her, in case Jeannie flinched or turned and walked away again, knowing that to feel physical rejection for the second time would be almost unbearable.
It was a fear that had put an impenetrable shield between them, one they never found a way to break through.
It would forever be a sadness, that lack of closeness, as Lilly did her best to navigate her mother’s rejection, right up until Jeannie had passed away.
Clodagh’s words, however, were also a balm of sorts, confirmation that Lilly might not have had a loving mum, but it seemed she was getting it right; instinctively offering this young girl help, a haven, love, in the way a mother might.
‘Yes, exactly like that.’ Clodagh smiled at her.
‘Because it’s not just about this pen’ – she waved the marker in the air – ‘it’s about the fact that whether I need a marker pen, advice or a shoulder to cry on, I’m comfortable enough to ask.
It’s about trust. It’s that feeling that Apollo and I are part of your life.
Like it’s more than just the two of us. I didn’t know what it felt like having someone watching out for you, someone with nothing to gain, who doesn’t want anything in return, who loves you just because . . .’
‘I do.’ Lilly managed to speak through a throat narrowed with emotion.
‘I do love you just because . . . Reckon that little Apollo has come along and stolen a big old chunk of my heart. You both have.’ There, she had done it, admitted to the way she felt, wary still after all these years on the planet of telling someone she loved them and then watching as they ran away, her mum, Wilkie . . .
‘Kennington’s not that far, not really, we’ll make it work, right?’
‘We will indeed!’ Lilly added with false brightness, hoping they could make it work and petrified that it may not. Who knew where she was going to end up?
‘I think about the day we met, when you told Apollo off and I nearly grabbed his arm and ran, I’m so glad we stayed and chatted. So grateful for you. We’re lucky really, aren’t we, Lilly?’ the young woman asked as she made her way along the hallway, no doubt to go and continue her packing.
‘We are’ – Lilly could only nod – ‘very, very lucky.’
With the front door closed on Clodagh it made Lilly wonder if maybe she should start the process of boxing up her possessions, torn between seeing it as an admission of defeat and yet feeling slightly panicked at how much there was to do in order to facilitate a move, should the worst happen.
She had already decided to store some of her favourite paintings in the basement of the gallery, where she knew they would be safe, only until she knew exactly where she would be hanging them next.
There had been one or two rental properties that she thought might do while she decided on something more permanent, and of course she could always go and stay with Norman and Glenda in New Cross – if Lilly promised not to kill her friend with an axe.
The key, she felt, was not to make a rash decision that she might live to regret, still ridiculously hoping beyond hope that she wouldn’t have to move at all.
With a sturdy cardboard box set on the floor, the large cupboard in her old bedroom, now her art studio, felt as good a place as any to start.
The right-hand door was already permanently ajar as it tried to contain the various items deemed too important to throw away.
Her gran’s old Singer sewing machine, probably a collector’s item now.
Board games in battered boxes that hadn’t seen the light of day since the 1980s, and amusingly, a stack of video tapes, mainly her dad’s old Westerns; she no longer had a machine on which to play them.
It was as she pulled the stack of tapes from the cupboard and placed them in the box, destined for a charity shop, that she saw the edge of white paper nestling against the back panel.
On her knees now, Lilly bent low and stuck her head into the dusty, musty confines.
Reaching in, she grabbed the paper, part of a bundle, and brought it out into the light.
She found it wasn’t in fact a sheet but rather an envelope, one of several all bound in the rough twine that her dad had used for everything from securing plants to wrapping presents.
It was a shallow bundle, one of maybe six letters, all addressed to her dad and in a script she recognised as her mother’s.
She let her fingers linger on the twine, knowing her dad was the person to have tied it, and that alone made it precious.
And to see her mother’s handwriting had a curious effect on her.
It was profoundly moving, this unique marker of the woman who had written her numerous Christmas and birthday cards.
And in the early years had scribbled shopping lists, the provisions from which she used to cook tea for Lilly and her dad, eggs, ham, butter, bread, milk, sugar .
. . normal mum stuff that had made Lilly feel like she had a normal mum.