Raking the Ashes (11 page)

She was triumphant. ‘Harry had forgotten. He looked under all the wrong flowerpots. I kept on telling him, “It’s that one, Harry,” but he wouldn’t listen. And I was right.’ She didn’t notice I was barely listening. ‘Look, Tilly. I’m making another glitter picture. It’s a princess.’

Across the top of her thick sheet of paper, she ran a
smear
of glue, then picked up her tiny tube of glitter and sprinkled on silver. Raising the edges, she tipped and blew until she had a shower of twinkling stardust across her painted navy sky. ‘Do you know what that is?’

‘Radioactive dust?’ I asked sourly, startling her mightily.

Out in the garden, Harry was lying backwards across the plank bottom of the plaited rope swing, letting it untwist. ‘The clouds are spinning, Tilly.’

He didn’t see my face because he was leaning back so far his hair brushed the ground. ‘Til, when you went off to big school, did they ever flush your head down the lavatory?’

New one on me. But, on the track of information myself, I thought it prudent to offer a soothing answer. ‘No. There was a good deal of talk about it in my primary school, but once we all moved up to secondary, nothing ever happened.’

Relieved, he hauled himself upright and smiled. I took a chance, and went fishing. ‘So, Harry, what do you think they’ll all decide today?’

‘Who?’

Was he just checking? ‘You know. Your mum and dad and Mrs Dee.’

‘Oh,
them
.’ He sighed. ‘It isn’t just Mrs Dee,’ he told me gravely. ‘It’s
all
the teachers. And I think they’ll
agree
that I’ll be better off at Park Place School than Wallace Secondary.’

‘Less head-flushing?’

He pouted. ‘And more exams. And horrid purple blazers. And sports all Saturday morning.’ He sighed. And it was only as an afterthought he tacked it on. ‘But Gran says that she thought the tennis courts were
brilliant
.’

I took it gently. After all, she might have simply seen a catalogue. ‘So Granny went round the school with your mother?’

‘And Dad.’

See? ‘And Dad.’ Say what you like about deciding not to care, these things will send their poisonous bubbles up through any coating of tranquillity, however well laid down. A fucking
nerve
, to fix a time when Granny – who was barely on the radar – could look around a school, but not take me, who had looked after them for five whole months, and given up the one room in the house I used to still call mine, and made such efforts to be good to them.

Good job that Harry was back to spinning, and didn’t see the look on my face. ‘Til? What’s insurance?’

God, what a question. ‘It’s just money you pay in, and the insurance company gives you a whole lot more back if something bad happens.’

‘What sort of something bad? Like someone dying?’

Even through my distraction, alarm bells rang. I did my best. ‘Yes, I suppose so.’ To make it clear he might be worrying in vain, I added, ‘Or the house burning down. Or the car crashing. Or stepping on your watch. Or losing your wallet.’

But he was on the ball, as usual. ‘Gran said to Mum, if they decide to send me to Park Place, she ought to think about taking out insurance for the school fees. And Mum snapped back at her and said, “I’m not dead yet, thanks! I think I’ll just take my chances.”’

‘Good on your mother,’ I said absently, still brooding on the fact that, yet again, I’d been left out of things.

Harry pulled himself upright to give me one of his searching looks. Then, falling back again, he launched into quite a long speech. ‘I
thought
you’d say that. You often stick up for Mum, don’t you, Tilly? Connor’s dad’s girlfriend is horrible about
his
mum. His dad says he’s to ignore it, and just not listen. But you quite like Mum, don’t you? She says you even told her you’d send Dad round to do the garden for her if she can’t manage. So you must like her a bit.’

‘Oh, yes. I have no problems with your mother.’

So what
should
I have said? The actual
truth
? That I had covered for the stupid cow through all her half-brained shiatsu and her reiki, her idiot zen, her numerology crap, her daft magnetic therapy and, for all I knew, classes in bloody runes. And in return, she
and
her unthinking ex-mate had fixed up to choose a school without the very person who would have to care for her son if (more than likely,
when
) her little cancer cells came back in force.

I really didn’t have a lot of choice. Harry was only twelve. How can you tell a boy that age that you wish
both
his bloody parents dead?

Sadly – you can’t.

BUT YOU CAN
brood. Brood on the reasons you might still be around. It clearly wasn’t anything to do with why women usually stay, grimly prepared to get less from a partnership simply because they need that partnership more. After all, it was my house. I had my freedom and a salary, and I can fix the washer. Someone like me had to think again. And think I did. I gave up idly blaming all those other things – the timelessness of sky and sea, Geoff’s kindness and caresses, even the tempting smell of casserole – for the fact that I stayed with a man I was coming to despise (and at times truly hated). Gradually I came round to facing the truth.

Living with Geoff suited me.

The thing is, I am not a nice person. (That, or I’m normal and no one else tells the truth.) Way back in
primary
school, I used to pray for the death of Ingrid Molloy. She was everything I longed to be: blond, sweet and clever. (It turned out I was clever too, but no one had realized.) So every night I lit the candle stub that I kept hidden, and prayed for Ingrid’s death. I didn’t pray to God. Even to me, that would have seemed a dreadful blasphemy. And I did not admit to myself I prayed to the Devil. But I’m not sure who else I might have thought would use his powers to make her drown, or eat a poisoned tart, or fall under the wheels of the school bus. Each morning I greeted Ingrid with a cheery smile, sat at the desk beside her, shared my sweets, joined in the games she played, and quite enjoyed her company.

The only thing was that I wanted her
gone
.

So maybe I have an inbuilt leaning to ambivalence. But Geoff did play his part. Oh, he was unfailingly charming and kind, still treating me each day as if I were a precious gift that had, by sheer good fortune, come to him. But underneath, with all his petty betrayals, all his small deceptions, you might have thought he was in two minds too, and deliberately seeding the weeds that would rise up and choke us.

Because, as months passed, it became more and more clear to me that there are real advantages in sharing life with someone so determinedly denying you the one thing you want. It makes you feel quite
justified
in being selfish back, and for someone like me, that is very much an asset. Doing exactly what I want has always come naturally. Indeed, I take it rather as a virtue, remembering with a shudder my Aunty Jean, who was forever twisting herself out of shape trying to do the very best by everyone and, under the strain of it, turning into a harpy. I think, too, of Ed’s former wife, who was continually asking visitors what they would like to do, or eat. ‘No, honestly. That’s fine by me. I would have chosen that too.’ Even in other people’s houses she was quite intolerable, responding to every single question with another. ‘So are you hungry yet, Alice?’ ‘How about you?’ ‘Would you care for a walk?’ ‘Is that what
you
feel like doing?’ Spending a weekend with Alice was like an endless round of Liars’ Dice, with all the polite fibs and the second-guessing – and with, as often as not, the creeping and dispiriting suspicion that no one in the room was either getting what they really wanted, or even the pale satisfaction of being sure that someone else was taking pleasure in their stead.

So there was something to be grateful for in facing facts. The woman Geoffrey loved was not the one who stood before him, flawed but real; it was some pedestal job, some figment of his boyish fantasies, unsuitable for grown-up life. Starved of the openness on which a relationship thrives, ours quietly shrivelled, till I was
having
more honest conversations with Donald in the company office than ever I had with Geoffrey. ‘Poor bloody bugger.’ Donald kept sticking up for him. ‘You should be glad you’ve got him.’ (Echoes of Ed.) And I would shrug, finding it hard to explain that in a way I was. And not just glad. Grateful. Because, as time passed, there was something more and more beguiling about being left to hide in silence and work. All the convenience of a second body in the house (‘Could you help with this ladder?’ ‘While you’re in town, would you pick up some milk?’) but none of the frustration and effort of engagement. Our conversations, which, when real, so often used to sour, now turned more easy and affectionate. I found it restful, and it made decisions easy. I did exactly as I chose, feeling no guilt, for after all a partner cannot cherry-pick their way through life. And since all Geoff’s decisions over the last few years had made it clear he gave me no real standing in Harry and Minna’s lives, I took it as fair dealing he couldn’t interfere in mine.

‘Off to North Africa? For three
months
? Tilly, can’t you say no?’

I made a face. ‘That might be difficult. I mean, there’s such a power struggle going on between the contractors and the service company. I’m sure as soon as it’s sorted they’ll stop squeezing my schedule. But in the meantime …’

‘There must be
someone
who could go instead.’

I shrugged. ‘I’m sorry. Right now, there just aren’t enough of us to pick and choose.’ He still looked doubtful, so I added airily, ‘You know – what with the cream-off of good engineers to all this new wind-farm technology.’

Bollocks on stilts, but he bought it. ‘You will be back in time for Christmas?’

‘Of course I will. Probably before, if all this spatting between the contractors stops.’ I gave him a smile. I felt quite sorry for him, knowing he would be lonely. He hardly saw the kids now. Each week they acted more and more offhand, constantly cancelling midweek visits – even whole weekends – because of things they wanted to do more: hanging around shopping malls, having sleepovers with friends, going on school trips to France. Whatever strides Harry made towards independence, Minna seemed almost instantly in his wake. It was as if the gap in age between the two of them was fading to nothing. And as time passed it somehow gradually became more and more difficult to stay plugged in to any of the small progressions of their lives: Harry’s first set of real exams; Minna’s attempts to get in the county swimming team. In the absence of regular updates, even the seemingly endless decisions about which subjects each child should study further and
which
should be dropped became hard to discuss. Soon, both had become so leggy, so forthright, so very independent, that it was difficult even to get them to phone when they weren’t going to make the effort to show up and sleep over.

‘You ought to be pleased,’ I tried to comfort Geoff. ‘It’s good they’re ready to stand on their own feet. This is the age when young people are supposed to break away and need their parents less.’

He looked so wistful. ‘Tilly, do you suppose, if you and I had had children …’

I can’t bear maudlin sentimentality. In the old days, I would have pulled him up with acid talk of living in Noddyland. Now, I used simple distraction. ‘How about trying bribery? Teenagers love showing off. Why don’t you invite them somewhere really special and tell them each can bring a friend?’

‘What sort of somewhere special?’

‘Tatiana’s? Or The Oyster Bed?’

He looked embarrassed. ‘As it happens, Til, I’m a bit short this month.’

‘I’ll pay.’

So that’s what we did. At least the two of them showed up. It worked a treat. Harry and Minna were all over their father, and more forthcoming than they’d been for as long as I could remember. Even the presence of the inarticulate and staring friends wasn’t
a
problem. So over the next couple of years we fell into the habit of dealing with the business of getting to see them by offering lunches or dinners out. After a while, I couldn’t help but notice that arrangements for any old pizza joint or cheap Mexican dive were as often as not cancelled. (‘Sorry, Dad. Something’s come up.’) It had to be fancy French restaurants. Smart Italian places. And it was in one of these, Giovanni’s, that one day I caught sight of Sol, a little older and a whole lot stockier after the missing years, lunching with two other men in the corner.

Our eyes met. Neither of us smiled or waved, making it clear, as Sol said afterwards, that both of us were in the market for a touch of discretion. I admit I had no real need to get up from my seat and go off to the Ladies. And it was no surprise to find him lurking in the vestibule when I came out.

‘Sol!’

‘Tilly! As lovely as ever.’ Taking my outstretched hand in both of his, he turned it over, bent to kiss the palm, then pressed into it one of his lavish business cards with raised gold lettering. ‘See you soon, sweetheart.’ He vanished into the men’s room.

I looked at the card. New office address, new phone number, and, when I turned it over, scribbled on the back: ‘Phone me.’

Was it so clear-cut that I would? To Sol, perhaps. As
for
myself, I went round and round the houses offering myself excuses. The conversation that I’d tried to have with Geoff about what should happen to his father’s house, now the old bugger had died. (‘I think I’ll take my time on this one, Tilly.’) The forceful attempt I’d made to get him to talk to the children when Frances’s cancer came back in force. (‘I think, what with their exams coming up, I’d rather leave it a while.’) Every attempt to live in the real world seemed strangled at birth. Why, only that morning Geoff had muttered, ‘Not the best day for a long lunch, as it happens. I’m a bit pushed,’ and I had answered cheerfully enough, ‘Well, if you want Harry and Minna to cry off, just send a message that we’ve switched the venue to Mexican Joe’s.’