Laying the Ghost (11 page)

Did he still look like that? she wondered now. Or had all his hair dropped out and his teeth gone manky and his beautiful long, gangly body filled out and bloated? She doubted it. He’d been quite vain – the first man she’d ever known who was confidently keen to dye his hair. During their time together he’d alternated between highlighted blond and a sort of sandy and scarlet combination, occasionally tinged with purple. Clothes-wise, he’d favoured soft, sensuous fabrics, Kensington Market velvets and silks, and he had an unfashionable lack of conscience
about
fur. His grandmother’s ancient mink lay across their bed and kept them warm when the heating failed in winter. When a girl from their course challenged him about it, he’d simply pointed out that the coat was well over fifty years old. How long did she think minks lived, even in the wild?

‘So what do you do next?’ Kate asked. ‘Have you run out of options yet?’

‘Well – not entirely. There’s the electoral roll. The only thing is, if you really want to look at it properly, you have to subscribe to something. I’m not sure about that.’

‘In case you get junk mail?’

‘No …’ Nell hesitated. ‘It’s – well, suppose he really minds me looking for him? I’m not sure I want him to know what lengths I’d go to. Suppose … suppose he decided I’d really invaded his privacy? I’d rather he just thought I’d accidentally come across him, somehow. If it went completely pear-shaped I don’t really want to leave a trail of how I found him.’

‘Wow! Is he likely to be that furious? Why? Did you two part on a really bum note?’

‘You could say that,’ Nell admitted. ‘The end wasn’t pretty. A lot got said …’

‘Oh but you weren’t much more than kids, really, were you? People get over things. No one can sulk for twenty years. Unless they’re …’

‘Exactly. Unless they’re a bit on the mad side. And we weren’t really kids. We’d been together close to five years – he was a couple of years older than me, as well. Maybe I’ll leave it. Give it a miss and let the past rest in peace. I just think … you know, like in Alcoholics Anonymous, where one of the steps is making amends?’

Kate laughed. ‘Well no, but let’s pretend I do. Have you got amends to make with Patrick?’

‘Probably. No. Oh I don’t know. I just wanted to see how he is, you know? Now that Alex has gone …’

‘Now that Alex has gone you could start it up all over again with Patrick. Don’t say that hasn’t crossed your mind. It’s written all over you.’

‘God, I don’t think that would happen! He’d probably take one look and think, wow, that was a lucky escape! But I can’t pretend I haven’t had the occasional fantasy that there we are, casually meeting in a pub for a friendly catch-up and it all ends up as passionate thrashing in a hotel room … Wouldn’t happen, though. It was way too much of a mess at the end for that.’

According to the Sunday morning TV news, New York was many feet deep in unexpected snow and the residents were warned to stay home in case of a sudden blizzard. A jogger had been found dead in Central Park, frozen solid as he leaned on a tree where he had stopped for a breather. He hadn’t been found for three days, having
been
mistaken for an expertly built snowman, and his relatives were choosing whom to sue.

‘That’ll be global warming,’ Mimi commented, wolfing down a bacon sandwich.

‘Will it?’ Nell asked as she poured the cat’s food into his bowl. ‘How does that work then? Shouldn’t they all be skipping about in light summer linens?’

‘No, Mum, it’s slippage of airstreams and stuff. We did it at school. You should learn about it.’

Where did teenagers get this superior tone from? Nell couldn’t imagine, even now, telling her mother she should learn about global warming, or indeed any other subject. Gillian would give her a look of total incredulity, as if Nell should wash out her mouth for even daring to suggest that her own mother hadn’t already learned (and in most cases dismissed as not relevant) absolutely all there was to know.

‘I’m sure you’re right. But then you’ve got to remember that when I was your age, we were being told another Ice Age would be well under way before our lifetime was out.’

‘Yeah well, that was then. The world’s changed. I wonder if Dad’s all right. I’ll email him and ask if he’s frozen into his apartment.’

Alex hadn’t taken his skiwear. He’d be wishing he had, Nell thought. There must be bags and bags of his stuff up in the loft. Perhaps in summer, she’d put some tables in the driveway and have a garage sale. No, what did
Americans
call it? Oh yes, a yard sale. She remembered being on Long Island with Alex many years ago, towards the end of summer. Driving through the village of Quogue in the Hamptons, they’d passed several season-end yard sale events – all the summer visitors flogging off surplus goods, presumably to each other. If she could have thought of a way of getting them home without the total price skyrocketing once freight was factored in, she’d have been tempted by a selection of fabulous Adirondack garden chairs. You couldn’t get those in the UK back then. She wondered if Alex would remember that holiday – it had been tagged on to one of his business trips. They had driven all over Long Island, taken the ferry back (passing a small fleet of nuclear submarines) to the mainland at New London and driven on up to Boston. He’d be vague about it by now, probably, working on replacing all their memories with new ones that he and Cherisse would make together. It was a sad thought, as if Nell was gradually being erased.

‘He might be stuck in the building, sixty floors up with a power cut and no lift and the windows getting icy on the inside,’ Mimi said.

Nell looked at the TV pictures of this scene of all-American doom and felt immediately cheered. Just imagine, she thought: Alex would get that grey, shivery look he always had in winter’s worst depths. His fingertips would go blue and stiff and he would have to ask Cherisse
to
open bottles and cans for him, a small taster for the care years down the line. And then she thought of Cherisse with her hair tongs, electric home-wax kit, nail buffer and facial sauna, all on the blink. She would feel the cold, too. She wouldn’t be able to drift around the flat, being seductively playful in a cute little vest and tiny knickers like something off a Häagen-Dazs ad.

Oh dear. Poor girl. Poor Alex. What a shame.

‘I nicked Mum’s Oyster card. I hope she doesn’t suddenly decide she needs it today. I don’t think she will cos Gran’s coming over,’ Mimi told Joel. She was supposed to be at Tess’s and now wondered why she hadn’t simply told the truth. She could probably have even borrowed the Oyster card if she’d asked in the right way. She had her own, for getting to school and out and around, but she didn’t want to use up all its credit on this trip to Paddington.

‘Didn’t you tell her where you were going?’ Joel asked.

Mimi shook her head, feeling a bit silly. They weren’t nine years old. Nor were they running away somewhere like a couple of people who weren’t supposed to meet. It was only a few hours out and not even at night, which was when all parents thought teenagers were going to have sex. But it was a date, an almost proper one. She couldn’t, if pushed, explain why she needed to keep it to herself for now, but it didn’t change the fact that she just did.

‘Why not? Does she mind you going out?’

‘Well … she sort of wanted me to be there to see Gran. I told her I had to go to Tess’s. She said Gran would be disappointed not to see me. She’s only coming up from near Guildford, though, and they’re meeting in Richmond for lunch, so it’s not as if it’s, like,
far
or a big deal. She comes up quite often.’ Mimi laughed. ‘And she doesn’t usually say when, just turns up. It drives Mum mad.’

‘So what did you say you needed to go to Tess’s for?’

‘Maths. And something about the play.’

‘Two excuses?’ Joel grinned at her. ‘Never make two excuses. It’s a sign that you’re lying.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘My dad’s a psychologist. His speciality is behaviour. I’d never get away with anything. Luckily I don’t need to, though; my folks are totally liberal. They just like honesty. Anything else is pretty much a free option.’

‘Wow.’ Mimi felt overawed by Joel already. He knew such a lot about such a lot. He knew about astronomy and had, while they waited at the bus stop, told her about red dwarfs and black holes – or at least as much as you could tell in ten minutes. And at the same time he knew stuff about ordinary things like bands and movies and well … just about everything. He’d told her he was a polymath, but she was going to have to look that one up when she got home. Just showed, she thought. You really couldn’t tell about people. He looked just like any other
sixteen-year-old
boy who likes music and football and a good time.

‘… the second station he built here. The first one was totally inadequate, with only four platforms. It didn’t even begin to compare with what was at Bristol at the other end of the line, and the London end needed to have at least the same grandeur …’ Mimi had, for a moment, lost the thread. They were now off the bus and walking alongside Paddington station to the steps down to the concourse.

‘So where was the first station then?’ she asked. She looked around her; there was no space for another, surely.

‘Round there, Bishops Bridge Road. A few years ago, when they were updating the roads, they dug up a hidden, original Brunel bridge. It’s still there, we’ll look on the way back. It’s hanging up above the road now, like art, which it is.’

Oh God. Was this what happened when you had a boyfriend? You had to be interested in all their stuff? Tess’s current boy-of-choice was obsessed with the Klaxons. Now
that
was easy. Not only were they easy to like but everything you needed to know was up there on YouTube and MySpace and other places. Once you’d seen a few videos, downloaded some songs, that was it really. You could read up a few interviews on the Internet and from then on in, talk the talk. With Joel, she was going to end up with a PhD in I.K. Brunel. And all because he’d mistakenly thought she was into engineering. Oh well. He
was
gorgeous. He had good manners (eeuw, did that sound like Gran?). He liked her and really, he was pretty interesting. Some people, lots of the boys they hung out with, they didn’t seem to care about anything much. They just laughed around the whole time and everything,
everything
was a joke except football. The Stuart twins kept bragging they were going to be rock stars, but couldn’t even play a note on a triangle. Joel could play guitar, piano and violin. And he was cute as well. If only he’d kiss her …

‘No Mimi? What a shame. I was looking forward to seeing her!’ Gillian Wilkinson kissed Nell and the two women left the station together. It was busy for a Sunday, which was too often the day when track repairs meant the trains were disrupted and few people chose to travel. The station teemed with determined shoppers, subdued morning-after teenagers and linked-up couples who looked barely awake. Nell had been surprised that Gillian wasn’t driving. Usually she scorned public transport, considering it an ill-mannered and unpleasant environment (why were people always eating? Who needs to slop coffee around on a short train ride?) and a poisonous pit of viruses, but who knew? Maybe her mother was having a carbon-footprint conscience moment.

‘Sorry, she had to go to her friend Tess’s. She muttered something about urgent maths.’ Nell felt slightly guilty, as
if
it was she, not Mimi, who had come up with the excuse. It wasn’t that she hadn’t believed Mimi was going to Tess’s, but maths had never figured as important enough in her life to come up as any kind of excuse for anything, so there must be some other reason. It probably involved a boy. Mimi would tell her, she assumed, one day, if there was anything she thought a mother needed to know.

‘It sounds to me like an excuse,’ Gillian said grumpily as the two of them walked over the railway bridge towards the town centre. ‘After you’ve had three daughters you can sniff out an untruth a mile away. Boys are so much more straightforward.’

‘Only until they become husbands.’ Nell giggled. ‘Then they make up for lost time.’

‘Not all of them,’ Gillian scolded, which was a bit rich from a woman whose husband had been a serial philanderer. Perhaps the guilt jewels really had been worth the hassle. ‘You’re just at the bitter and twisted stage. Wait till you find someone else, and don’t say you won’t, because I know you will in time. As long as you don’t let yourself go.’ She quickly looked Nell up and down to see if her roots were showing or if she’d clearly given up on slinky shoes. ‘Now where are we having lunch?’ she asked, and Nell presumed she’d passed inspection, although the triggered mention of lunch was possibly a clue that her mother had noticed she’d put on a few pounds. It obviously couldn’t be too disastrously
many,
though (so far …), as Gillian went on to say, ‘Because I’d like it to be somewhere with swift service: I want to go to Dickins and Jones after and buy something to wear for spring funerals. I’ve got one of the bridge club looking unlikely to last the month; you know, that widower at the rectory, moved in after your friend Marcus’s family moved away. Remember Marcus?’ She looked at Nell and smiled, knowingly. ‘Yes of course you do. You always remember your first.’

Nell briefly closed her eyes and started a one-to-ten count, praying for patience. Details of one’s daughter’s early (and blush-makingly hopeless) sex life were not something any mother should know about – and especially should not have been organized by her.

‘All that was a long, long time ago. Look – here’s the restaurant. You’ll like Lulu’s.’

‘Ah. Italian.’ Gillian hesitated, looked into the restaurant and sighed. ‘Oh well, I suppose one day with pasta won’t do any harm. I’m sure I’m developing a wheat intolerance. I’m at a delicate age. You won’t know what that’s like yet, but in a few years, when you start getting menopausal, well, I’ll tell you for now, and I’m doing you a favour, that’s only the start of it. The whole lot’s downhill from there.’

How very
not
cheering this was. Nell studied the menu and looked around for the waitress: she needed a drink, immediately. Would Mimi, in turn, find Nell such hard
work,
thirty years down the line? She did so hope not. The waitress, a sulky, grubby little girl with smeared eyeliner and huge earrings, who looked as if she’d only slept one hour out of the last twenty-four, came and took their order, writing everything down very, very slowly.