48. Something catastrophic – 2007
They were in the middle of a dinner party when Ursula’s phone rang.
She’d forgotten to turn it to silent again.
Anton flashed her a look that told her she’d be hearing more about this after their guests had gone.
For him it was the height of rudeness to have phones ringing at the dinner table when they were entertaining.
She let it ring out. A minute later, it rang again.
He gave her another look. Ursula turned away from him to one of the guests, a pompous man who was looking for someone to design a new office block. ‘Excuse me, I’ll just switch that off.’
She went over to the drawer where she kept the phone which was refusing to stop ringing. It was Solly. He never called, it was always her mum. She picked it up and shot past the dinner table before Anton had a chance to say anything.
‘Ursula, I’m calling about Gillian.’ Solly didn’t sound like his usual self. Something was definitely wrong.
‘What is it, what’s happened?’
‘She’s had an accident. The car. She’s…’ He was sobbing now, unable to get the words out.
‘She’s what? Solly, tell me. She’s what?’
‘She’s dead.’
Ursula opened her mouth but her brain wasn’t connecting so nothing came out.
The room suddenly became airless and bright.
She was floating in a bright, airless space.
Someone’s arms were beneath her. They were Anton’s.
He was holding her up. She wasn’t floating at all, she was fainting and he’d caught her before she hit the ground.
Andi was driving them to the hospital. Although how she managed to keep her mind on the road was anybody’s guess. Anton would have been best to do it but he was over the limit and Ursula had refused to wait until morning.
The journey was a blur. The hospital was a blur.
Everything was surrounded in a fog that was affecting Ursula’s senses.
Anton went to find someone to talk to about what had happened while she and Andi were led into the room where her mum’s body lay.
There were some cuts on her face but nothing that looked like it could have killed her.
Solly and Cass were either side of the bed, weeping.
Andi who had held it together all the way here was crying as well now.
Ursula wanted to cry too, but she was coated in a hard shell that was refusing to crack.
Anton came in. She searched his face for reassurance that she wasn’t some kind of degenerate who couldn’t weep for her dead mother, but his attention was on her mum’s lifeless body.
Then his eyes met hers and she saw the compassion she’d been looking for.
Love too. But it was all too brief, because now he was looking beyond her, at the woman whose tears for her oldest friend were limitless.
Cass was beyond noticing Anton was in the room but the sight of her jolted him.
He turned back to Ursula and the compassion was gone.
Solly got up and helped Ursula into his seat. She took her mum’s hand. It wasn’t frozen She’d expected it to be frozen. Perhaps they’d made a mistake. But no. She was kidding herself. Her mum was dead. She was gone forever.
There were so many people at the funeral that Ursula didn’t know.
Local people who’d befriended her mum and Solly in the five years they’d been living in Eastbourne.
Old friends from Birmingham too, and all of Solly’s family.
Andi had clung to Pab throughout the ceremony, her heart so obviously broken by the loss.
Cass was virtually catatonic and Ursula wasn’t much better.
Andi and Anton had gone home the day after their dash to the hospital, but she’d stayed with Solly, the two of them moving around the house like robots forcing themselves to get through to the next day.
For most of the reception, Pab and Anton were huddled in a corner like two plotting conspirators.
Andi was trying to bring Cass out of herself with little success, and Ursula did the one thing she was good at.
She talked to all the people she didn’t know.
Sometimes it was social chit chat and sometimes it was a story about her mum that she’d never heard.
Funny stories, charming stories, and stories about a woman who’d spent her life defying the odds in small ways.
When most of the guests had gone, she found a quiet place in the garden to sit and breathe and think about how she was never going to see her mum again, never going to hear her laugh, or tell her to keep going with her small acts of defiance.
‘Mind if I join you?’
She looked up and saw Solly standing over her. She moved along to make room for him. He sat down and wrapped his hand around hers. ‘How are you doing, my lovely?’
She shrugged. ‘Badly, I think. I can’t seem to let the grief out. I can feel it here inside, but it won’t come out. I bet they all think I’m a hard bitch. Not one tear.’
‘Who cares what anyone else thinks? It’s got nothing to do with them. We all deal with it in our own way.’
‘Will you look after Cass? She needs someone.’
‘Of course. Gillian would expect nothing else.’
‘And yourself. You’ll look after yourself, won’t you?’
He put his arm around her and kissed her head. ‘Don’t you worry about me and Cass. We’re a couple of old troopers. We’ll get by. But you will come and see us, won’t you? I know I’m not really your dad but you’re as precious to me as any of my girls.’
‘Yes I will. You’re precious to me too, Solly. As far as dads go, you’re the best.’
‘Well I don’t suppose I’ve got much competition there, have I? Listen, love, that grief will come out. Probably when you’re least expecting it. It might be a while but it will. I guarantee it.’
Anton appeared at the kitchen window. Wherever they went, he found a window to watch her from.
He’d be wanting to go back to Birmingham as soon as possible.
She didn’t want that. She wanted to stay here, amongst her mum’s things, but she knew that wasn’t going to help.
She was in limbo, drifting between longing and reality.
Anton would pull her back to reality whether she liked it or not.
Samuel would too. But his way would be kinder.
Solly nodded at the window. ‘He likes to be in control, doesn’t he?’
‘Yes, I suppose he does.’
‘You know what Gillian would say? Keep resisting.’
‘Small acts of defiance.’
‘Exactly. Anytime it gets too much, I want you to remember this will always be your home. She used to say you were a fighter in your own quiet way, you know.’ He squeezed her shoulders.
‘One other thing Gill used to say was that it was about time you started liking yourself a bit more, Ursula. She was always telling me you don’t love yourself enough. ’
Anton had travelled to Eastbourne in the Volvo.
She should have known it wouldn’t have occurred to him that it reminded her of death.
Then again, perhaps it had occurred to him.
It was hard to tell with Anton. In all the time they’d been together, she’d never really understood him.
Most likely, he’d never understood her either.
They were two polar opposites who’d entered into a contract that had somehow become a business partnership rather than a loving marriage.
But she had seen love in his eyes the night her mum died.
She knew from that one look that he did still love her.
It was a shame he was incapable of showing it.
She detested that about him. And yet she knew she couldn’t leave him.
Not yet. Because she needed him now more than ever with his control and his structure.
It was the only thing stopping her from finding some way to be with her mum again.
It had been a clear sunny day when they left Eastbourne but as soon as they got close to Birmingham, the grey skies appeared, as if the city had been waiting for her to darken its mood.
They’d driven home hardly speaking, except for Anton outlining his timetable for the week and the events he expected her to take part in.
He couldn’t even allow her a moment of grief before ramming his bloody schedules down her throat.
They passed through a rain shower that lifted by the time they reached the house.
Its white exterior glistened in a sudden burst of sunshine.
It always looked at its best in these conditions.
He stood in front of it like an artist admiring his own painting.
She unlocked the door, in no mood to join him, and went upstairs to get changed into her allotment clothes.
‘You’re going to the allotment?’ He sounded quite astounded.
‘Yes. It’s been neglected for a few weeks.’
‘Then another day won’t matter.’
‘I need something to do, Anton.’
‘I have things for you to do here.’
‘I don’t want that right now. I need to be there.’
‘To be with him, you mean.’
She took a sharp intake of breath. ‘There is no him. I only have friends there. Nothing else.’
He shook his head, his eyes narrowing into small slits. ‘Don’t lie to me. You don’t have the intellect for it. I know how you spend your nights there when I’m away. Yes, Ursula, I know all about you and Samuel Sweeting.’
‘You’re talking absolute rubbish, Anton. If you’ve had me watched, you’d know that.’
‘If that’s true it can only be because he doesn’t want you. And who can blame him? You were beautiful once, but that was a long time ago. You’ve lost your unique selling point, my dear. Your beauty was the only thing that was interesting about you.’
The words sliced into her and, just as they always did, made her shrink.
Maybe she was ugly, dull, and stupid. And maybe Samuel thought so too.
Maybe she should just stop fooling herself and give in.
But Samuel wasn’t like that, and if she gave in now, she was going against everything her mum had wanted for her.
She summoned up the courage to open the front door.
‘There is nothing going on between Samuel and me. He’s just a friend, like all the other friends I have there.
I go there because I like being with them.
Because they treat me with dignity and respect and not like some child who needs to be constantly monitored for bad behaviour. ’
He pushed the door shut and grabbed her arm. ‘Lies, all lies. You’re full of them. Depravity, secrets, and lies.’
‘Depravity? Will you just listen to yourself? I’m going out to see my friends, and if you can’t handle that then tough.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me about Cassandra?’
‘Because it was none of your business.’ She opened the door again and this time, he didn’t try to stop her.
She drove away, the sound of her heartbeat filling her ears.
She might well be ugly, dull, and stupid but she was also a fighter.
Hadn’t her mum said so? Yes, she needed Anton right now, but she’d just realised it wasn’t for the same reason she’d needed him before.
It wasn’t the lists, the structure, the control.
It was the fight against all of that, the fight against him that would save her this time.