Chapter Seven
Chapter Seven
The next day passes quickly. We move from a slow morning and a quiet lunch of bread and oil and orange slices to frantic packing and shouting across the halls. I sit in the living room drinking coffee in comfortable silence with Frannie’s mother and grandmother, having packed last night, while the rest of Frannie’s family scramble to get ready. It is a familiar experience, the commotion and movement around me while I have quietly already sorted myself out. Staying over at Frannie’s house I had always been ready for school or to go home first thing the next day while Frannie argued with her parents over what clothes were clean and where things were. From the outside, it might have seemed as though theirs was a disruptive home, full of conflict. But it was simply the chaos caused by a family entirely comfortable with one another, always happy to speak their minds, with parents who treated their children like people as complex as themselves.
By contrast, it might have looked as though my readiness and neatness were the product of a calm, quiet, harmonious home life. Even Frannie’s mother would point to me, standing with my school bag in hand, shoes on and standing by the door and say ‘Look, this is a child who was raised right.” Though, as I spent more and more time with the Flores family they understood that wasn’t the case.
I am travelling to the airport with Frannie, Theo, Nisha and Lila, taking the same flight as them this time. Before we wheel our suitcases down to the car parked at the hotel, I am wrapped in hugs from Frannie’s aunts and uncles and kissed on both cheeks by her parents.
‘Shall I walk you down?’ George says, ‘Nisha you’ve got suitcases and Lila to look after.’
‘She’s not a baby, she’s carrying her own bag.’ Nisha hugs him goodbye in a definitive way. ‘Just stay and make sure the rest of the family get on their flights, I’m not rebooking them.’
George shakes Theo’s hand, then pulls him into a hug, the two men laughing, then he picks up Lila swinging her around. I wait awkwardly as he turns to me. But he opens his arms and I step into them willingly.
‘Let’s not leave it so long next time,’ he says, his cheek against the top of my head.
‘Definitely.’ I say.
The hug lasts perhaps a beat longer than it should, though it feels like we’re stood together for an age and, when we part and I begin the walk down the cobbled streets of Mijas, I feel the press of his hands lingering where he touched the bare skin of my shoulder. As we cross the street and turn down the path I hear the wheels of Lila’s case pause behind me, and turn to see her staring back up the road. Camilo has come out of his house to watch us go, holding Paloma in his arms. Lila raises a small, shy hand to wave her goodbye, and Camilo fidgets with the cat, holding up a little grey paw and waving it back. Nisha calls Lila sharply and she turns again, resuming her walk, and I note the brightness in her eyes, the skip in her step as we walk away from the boy that has so clearly stolen her heart.
London is cold and wet when we return, the clear blue skies of the Spanish mountains replaced with thick sluggish clouds.
‘Welcome home.’ Theo shouts over the rain as we dash from the terminal to his car and stash the cases in his trunk, our thin, warm weather clothes soaking through in minutes. Theo drives us all out of the airport, himself and Nisha in the front with Frannie and I in the back with Lila between us. Lila is far less chatty this time, tired from the excitement but also, I sense, distracted by her thoughts. She gazes into space with a dreamy expression as, despite my protests, Theo drives me not to the train station as agreed, but all the way to my front door. I give each of them awkward hugs from where they’re sitting in the car and promise to meet them again before the wedding.
‘I mean it,’ Nisha says with a warning voice, ‘you’re not disappearing off again, not now we’ve got you back.’ I nod into her shoulder as I hug her, before taking my cases and wandering back up the drive of my home. Jay opens the door before I can ring the doorbell.
‘You’re home!’ he says, stepping back to allow me in, ‘we’ve missed you.’
‘We thought you might have caught a bit of a tan,’ Adam appraises me from further down the hall, ‘but you’ve just got pink shoulders.’
‘I don’t tan,’ I laugh, ‘I just go red.’
They’ve left the washing machine free for my clothes, and I note as I put away my toiletries and books that they’ve vacuumed my room and replaced the towels in my bathroom. They’ve bought me dinner from a local Japanese restaurant, a plate of gyozas and a tub of curry: chopped vegetables, chicken and rice in a glossy, spicy stew. We eat together at the kitchen table as I catch them up on my time in Mijas.
‘I had a cheeky look on Frannie’s Instagram,’ Jay says, ‘it looks gorgeous. I’ve put it down as a holiday destination for next year.’
‘It was beautiful,’ I say, ‘made all the better with the company. I’d forgotten how much I love Frannie’s family.’
‘And I have to ask, for my own intellectual curiosity,’ Adam pulls his phone from his pocket and taps on it a few times, ‘who is this?’
He turns the screen and I see a picture of George and I from the night before. We’re by the iron bench in the chapel garden, but it’s not a professional photo. When I look closer I see that it’s a photo shared on Frannie’s Instagram, one that she must have taken covertly while the photographer was guiding us into place. I can’t tell the exact moment it was taken, but we look as though we’re trying not to laugh, as though one of us has told the other a joke in a moment where we both need to be sombre.
‘That’s Frannie’s brother,’ I say, ‘when we had our photographs taken the photographer thought we were a couple. It was a bit awkward. I think this is the moment we’ve just realised.
‘Well he’s gorgeous,’ Adam says, ‘is he single?’
I shake my head.
‘How rubbish. Otherwise, I’d be telling you to call him.’
‘It’s okay, I’ve known him since I was a child, it would be strange. We’re almost family.’
‘Really? I thought you hadn’t seen Frannie’s family in years. Surely you’re different people now?’
‘I suppose we are,’ I let the sentence fade, unsure what to say. We are different people, but that doesn’t mean I can just forget what happened.
‘Speaking of family,’ Jay said, carefully, ‘your father called the landline.’
‘Oh.’
‘I told him you were away and that I’d tell you to call him back, but if you want I’ll just “forget” and pretend it didn’t happen.’
I think for a moment, weighing my options.
‘No, it’s fine. He’ll only call again. He’s very persistent when he wants something.’
‘Do you want to call him back on the landline? Or you can use one of our mobiles?’
‘I’ll use the landline, thanks.’
‘Whenever you’re up for it.’
I wait until the next day to call my father back. I have his number saved in my mobile, but I type the number into the handset of Jay and Adam’s home phone. The conversation is short.
‘We’ve been clearing out the attic and found some things from the old house,’ he says, ‘you need to take them to your mother.’
‘Can’t you just throw them away?’
‘You need to take them to her.’
I sigh. If I protest again he’ll say the same thing over and over until I’m worn down.
‘Fine. Where do you want to meet?’
‘I’ll meet you in the car park of that shopping centre near here. Where we met last time.’
‘Okay.’
‘Good.’
We agree on a day and time and he hangs up without saying goodbye.
‘How’s father of the year?’ Jay asks. Adam puts his hand on his husband’s arm as though admonishing him, though he too looks at me with concern.
‘He’s found some of my mum’s things in his garage. He wants me to collect them from him in a car park.’
‘He won’t even let you come over to his house? You have to arrange a neutral location like you’re handing over a hostage?’ I shrug, trying to my face with a smile that suggests what can you do?
Adam and Jay offer me their car to collect the things and take them to my mother.
‘Thank you, though I’ll need to try and find out where my mum is living now. She might have moved again.’
Whenever I talk about my family, Adam looks at me with sad eyes and his lips pressed together. He spends every Sunday afternoon on a video call with his large and joyful family who all adore him. His birthday every year involves cards piling up on the mat each morning and opening the door every twenty minutes to a new gift delivery. He is adored, unconditionally, by his family, in the same way Frannie and her siblings are, and cannot understand how someone could experience anything different.
Jay on the other hand understands only too well my experience of a more difficult family. His parents, unable to accept their son’s coming out, have cut him off completely. He stands out in their wedding photos, a shock of dark hair amid the ruddy, cheery complexions and coppery blondes of Adam and his enormous family. I remember the first time it struck me that there are no photos of Jay’s family anywhere in the house, although Adam’s photos line the walls. I wondered if I should have cried, or felt a strong surge of sympathy for him. Instead, I just felt a gentle tug of recognition, for an experience that was not quite the same, but in some ways parallel to my own.
A few days later I borrow their car and drive to the leafy suburb where my father lives with his wife and three children. I don’t know which house is theirs, but I take in the size of the homes as I pass through the streets, and huge front gardens filled with toys and trampolines, thinking about the sort of lives people must live in these places. I park on the agreed floor of the shopping centre car park and, as I get out, I see him immediately walking towards me, holding a large cardboard box as though it might ignite at any moment.
‘Hello,’ he says, briskly, and immediately holds out the box.
‘How are you?’ I ask, not reaching my hands out just yet. I know he feels uncomfortable around me, and it gives me a tiny, guilty shot of pleasure to draw out the experience.
‘Good, good,’ he says, casting around for something to say. ‘Job’s good, all the kids are good.’ He stops quickly, and I keep my face impassive as he looks embarrassed and stuck. He does not know if all of his kids are good, because he knows nothing about my life.
‘Glad to hear it,’ I say. I take pity and hold out my hands, which are quickly stuffed with the cardboard box. It’s been hastily taped shut.
‘What do your family think you’re doing?’ I ask. He shifts his feet.
‘I told them I found a family of dead mice in the garage, that I was taking them out to a local zoo for the snakes.’
I say nothing, just look at him. My ability to make him squirm just by existing in his eyeline used to make me feel ashamed. Now I don’t feel much of anything. We stand for a few moments before he clears his throat, says he has to be going, walks away and gets back in his car, leaving me standing holding his family of dead mice.
When I get home I attempt to call my mother. I ring twice and leave a message during the evening. I don’t want to open the box. I worry that if I open the box the belongings will somehow become my problem, and I’ll never be able to hand them over. I’ll be left with some sad remnants of my parent’s long-dead marriage that I can’t shift. My father’s new family don’t know he’s been married before, don’t know he has a daughter. As far as he is concerned his short-lived first marriage to my mother was a mistake, and I am the unfortunate consequence of his poor judgement.
I put the box under my bed and try to forget about it, tidying my room to take my mind off things. I go to place the French novel I am reading on my bedside table when something slips from the pages and onto the carpet. It’s a petal from the rose drink that I had in the cafe with George. It must have fallen from the table and into the book. I flip through to where it had been caught in the pages and see that it has been crushed slightly into the paper, just above a line that reads ”beautiful things should belong to beautiful souls”, leaving a pale pink mark like a tiny kiss.
Thinking of George I remember the photo Adam and Jay showed me of Frannie’s Instagram and I sit back on my bed, pulling my phone from where it sits charging, and bring up her account. She’s posted several photos of the holiday, and I swipe through looking for myself and, though reluctant to admit it to myself, looking for George. I linger on a lovely photo of Lila in a white sundress, and one of Nisha asleep in the sitting room, on the creaky armchair, her stern face so vulnerable in sleep. There are a few of me, one in which I’m talking animatedly to Frannie’s parents. It’s not a flattering photo, I look very pink and my face is in motion, but I’m surprised to see how lively I look, and how warmly they are smiling at me. I see the picture from the photoshoot, in which George and me are fighting off a laugh. And finally, there’s another, I almost don’t see myself in it at first. It’s a photo in which Frannie has captured the beautiful morning view of Mijas from the balcony of her grandparent’s house, the same balcony on which we had shared wine the night before. At first, I only notice the beautiful sky, the sweeping landscape, and then I see two figures in the distance walking up the hill towards the house. It takes me a moment to recognise myself and George, and to understand that we must be walking back from the coffee shop. I’m taken aback by the easy intimacy I see between us, despite the time we’d spent apart, despite how nervous I had felt around him. Our arms are almost touching and he’s looking down at me, as though listening to something I’m saying. I don’t remember anything we had said to one another as we walked back, it felt as though the conversation had flowed organically from us without either of us having to think.
I put my phone away, but spend the rest of the evening itching to look back at the photo. It seems silly and embarrassing, to the point where I leave my phone in a drawer to avoid the temptation. Later that evening I look again as I’m brushing my teeth, I open my phone and the screen is still on the photo, the two small figures of George and I in the distance. Slightly irritated at myself, reduced to staring at a photo like a smitten schoolgirl, I exit from it and find myself back on Frannie’s feed. With a jolt, I see there’s a new photo, one of Frannie, Theo and George out to dinner with a girl I don’t recognise, but realise must be George’s girlfriend Rowena. She is pretty and well-dressed, slim with short black hair and a dimpled smile.
Hating myself a little I open up her Instagram and am greeted with a gallery of a life being lived well. Music concerts and dinners in restaurants with high ceilings and stoneware plates. She often has her arm around George, or her mouth planted to the side of his cheek, and captions like low-key tapas with this one. I don’t know what I had expected. She seems like a nice person, far more sophisticated than I am, a fitting partner to someone like George. In a flash of mean-spiritedness, I try to discern if she’s older than I am, closer to George’s age, feeling that youth might be the only thing I could possibly have over her. But I can’t tell, and I feel guilty for thinking it in the first place. When I get into bed I find the urge to browse through George’s feed too tempting. I find him through Frannie’s followers. It’s a sparse account, rarely updated, with some coffees on tables, books and nice buildings in Europe, but he has the same picture of Mijas and the mountainside that Frannie posted, where he and I are just discernible on the landscape. The caption simply says Mijas is beautiful. I notice his girlfriend hasn’t liked the photo.
Without being able to stop myself, I wonder what this could mean. I tap my way back to Frannie’s Instagram page and look at the photo of them together. With a stirring in my chest, I wonder if George mentioned me too fondly or too often in the days after the trip, or if Rowena sees a look in his eyes in the photos that I don’t, a look of affection. The rising tide of excitement I feel at these possibilities is strange and unbidden. I had spent so long worried about seeing George again I hadn’t considered the possibility that I would still have all the same feelings I’d had when I was younger. But now I think of us together in the coffee shop in companionable silence, the walk back to the house, the brief moment when his hands closed around mine in the chapel garden as the sun gently slid out of sight behind the mountains, and the way he held me for just a moment longer than he should have when he said goodbye.
I feel in my mind the warmth of his fingers against the skin of my arm and realise all at once that I am in the same place I had been ten years ago. A lost girl, enchanted by someone she cannot have. I think of the line in the book where the rose petal had pressed pink against the page. I do not know if my soul is beautiful, but he is a beautiful thing.