Sleight of Hand (24 page)

“What do I care? Now. To macaroni cheese, or not to macaroni cheese. That is the question.”

“Oh yes,” I say, handing the joint back and standing. “Oh yes. Macaroni cheese indeed.”

Once I have eaten, Jenny heads upstairs to bed, and I sit and smoke one of her cigarettes and stare out at the shimmering sea and try to remember what was so wrong with Tom that I left him, and for that matter what was so right about Ricardo that I chose
him
. As time goes by, those memories are becoming less and less clear-cut. So much for absence making the heart grow fonder.

On Sunday, the sky and the sea are such a uniform grey that it's impossible to see where the one ends and the other begins. “It looks like someone has drawn a big grey curtain,” I comment over breakfast.

“Yeah, but I like it even when it's grey,” Jenny says.

After breakfast we walk about a mile to the east alternately looking at the sea and peering into people's living rooms, and then we walk most of the way back and decide to have lunch in the second pub, a far darker more traditional place, all red velour and carved wood.

“It's weird the way you change towns and suddenly you're going for walks and having pub lunches,” Jenny comments, sipping her Coke. “I mean, we do
have
pubs in Camberley. And there
are
places to walk.”

“It's because it's the seaside. It makes you think you're on holiday.”

“Well I like being on holiday,” Jenny says.

“What do
you
think Sarah?” I ask her.

She looks up from a plate of fish fingers which she is busy mashing up with tomato ketchup. “Very nice, thank-you very much,” she says, making us both laugh.

“Such a polite little girl.”

“Takes after her mother,” Jenny says.

When we finally step back outside, we realise that it has started to rain heavily. “Shit, when did that happen?” Jenny says.

“Shit?” I say. “Is that now on the acceptable word list?”

“No,” Jenny says. “It isn't.”

“Do you want to wait, or …”

“I don't think it's going to stop,” she says, pulling up Sarah's hood. “Anyway, it's not far. We can run for it.”

I move to the other side of Sarah so that we can each hold one of her hands, and then I count, “One, two, three, go!” and we run out into the rain and along the sodden tarmac, alternately running at Sarah's pace and suspending her between us for extra speed.

We burst through the door into the house in a big sodden, laughing huddle.

I bend down to unbutton Sarah's coat and I ask her if she is OK.

Her reply,
“Awesome,”
provokes a fresh round of laughter.

“I told you not to use that word,” Jenny laughingly scolds her.

The afternoon rain is constant and uninterrupted. It's the kind of day that usually drives me to distraction, but behind our glass wall, it doesn't feel so bad. Jenny digs through the record collection and chooses classical – first an irritatingly twiddly bit of Mozart, and then, rather aptly, Debussy's La Mer. I build Sarah a house of cushions to play in, and then for want of anything better to do, open my laptop and resume work on my translation.

Over breakfast on Monday morning, we decide to go to Eastbourne. I want to go back and look at my childhood home and Jenny to take Sarah along the pier.

But in the end, the truth is that neither of us want to move from the house. Its hold over us is almost magnetic, and so we simply read/play/translate all over again.

In the evening we bake potatoes in silver foil and prepare a big salad to accompany it, and then, as the sky flames red, we sit behind our window, coats at the ready, and wait for darkness to fall and the fireworks to begin.

I pour myself a glass of wine, and Jenny, who can't drink, vanishes occasionally around the side of the house to alternately smoke cigarettes or joints out of Sarah's sight.

“So no Tom then?” I ask finally, a question I have been scrupulously avoiding until it's too late to influence events.

“Well it doesn't look like it,” Jenny says, glancing at her wrist and then, realising that she doesn't have a watch, at her phone instead. “I can call him if you want.”

“Noooo,” I say. “Not on my behalf.”

“I didn't think so,” Jenny says, a lopsided grin on her face. “What
did
happen between you two?”

I tut and shake my head.

“Tell me,” she says. “I mean, if things are this awkward, maybe I
need
to know.”

“You don't,” I tell her.

“OK,” she says.
“Jesus.”

“He kissed me, OK?”

“He
kissed
you?”

“Yes. It was just a peck. But yes, he stole a kiss.”

“He
stole
it?”

“It means he did it without my perm …”

“I know what it means, it just sounds so … so
Brideshead,”
she says, slipping into a grin.

“It's not funny Jen,” I say. “It was very awkward.”

“I bet it was,” she says. Then she repeats again, in a whisper, “He
stole
a kiss.”

“Stop it,” I say. “I know you're stoned, but …”

She bites her lip and pushes her tongue into her cheek. “Sorry,” she says. “It's just …”

“Yes?”

“Well, it's ironical, I suppose.
Ironical?”

“I think plain old ironic does the trick. But why, anyway? Why ironic?”

“Well, Ricardo stole you … or you stole him … or whatever …”

“Your point being?”

“Well, now Tom's trying to steal you back. By
stealing
kisses.” She snorts again.

“Is he?” I ask. “Has he said something?”

“Lord no,” Jenny says. “In fact the only thing he said to me that was vaguely relationship related was how happy he is with Sven.”

“Sven?”

Jenny pulls a face. “Sorry. Oops. Yes, Sven the bodybuilder.”

“Sven?”

“He's Swedish, I think.” And then she snorts again. “I'm not supposed to mention him either.”

“Why?”

Jenny shrugs. “I don't know,” she says.

“And you will not discuss this with Tom, OK?”

“No. Absolutely no mention of the stealing of kisses,” she says.

“You're impossible.”

“Yeah. I know. Was it nice though? Was it a
nice
kiss?”

“I think you can probably deduce the answer to that if you think about it,” I say.

“Oh I can,” she says. “I hereby deduce that you liked it more than you're prepared to admit, but that you'll pretend to the death that you hated every minute of it.”

“Every minute?
It was a peck Jenny. It lasted an eighth of a second. We didn't
snog,”
I lie.

Thankfully, at that instant we're interrupted by the first flash of colour over Eastbourne pier.

“It's happening, quick,” Jenny says, just as the bang reaches us. She jumps up and pulls a startled Sarah through the roof of her makeshift house.

We button our coats and run out through the bay window and down over the gravel to the sea.

It's not a huge firework display, and the distance makes it even smaller, but symmetrically reflected in the oily surface of the sea, it is unreasonably beautiful.

I lift Sarah onto my shoulders.

“Beware,” Jenny sniggers in my ear. “She wet herself with excitement last year.”

“You have to go
oooh
when the rockets go up,” I tell Sarah, “And
ahhh
, when they explode. Like this … Ooooh. Ahhh!”

“Do you?” Jenny asks, sarcastically.

“That's what I was taught when I were a lad,” I say, for some reason in a mock west-country accent. “Many many years ago that were.”

And so, we stand, and the three of us shout, “Oooh, and Ahhh,” just like when I was a kid. The whole thing makes me feel so happy I'm almost in tears by the time it finishes.

When the climactic finale is over, I say softly, “God, I love fireworks.”

“Me too,” Jenny says beside me.

“Me too!” Sarah shouts, piercingly in my ear.

Because Jenny's voice was cracked, I turn to look at her and see that her eyes are watering. I put an arm around her shoulders and pull her towards me. “Ahh, you feeling all emotional?” I ask.

She wipes her face with her sleeve and slips an arm around my waist. “It's just so beautiful,” she says, her voice crumbling even further. “It makes me want to stick around so much it hurts, you know?”

I pull her tighter and say, “Well, call Susan. Maybe we can stay
another
day.”

Jenny pulls away. “That's not what I meant,” she says quietly, turning and heading back up the beach.

It takes me a moment to realise what she
did
mean.

I sigh sadly and watch for a moment as residents along the coast release their own straggly rockets into the air, and then I take a deep breath and remember that Sarah is still on my shoulders.

I jiggle her up and down and say, “So! Some baked potato for you?”

“Yesss!” she says.

“With or without alphabet spaghetti?”

“With!” she says, clasping my head so hard it hurts.

“OK. One, two, three … off we go!”

On Tuesday morning, Sarah wakes me up with her unique finger in the ear technique. I gasp and pull my head away. “Jesus! Don't
do
that,” I say, dragging myself from a rather sexy dream and struggling to focus on her grinning face.

“Mummy says she's ever getting up again.”

“What?”

“Mummy says she's ever getting up again,” Sarah repeats.

“Never.”

“Never ever.”

I blink repeatedly in an attempt at improving my grungy vision.

“She says she's going to stay in bed for ever and ever,” Sarah says.

I groan and roll onto my back so that I can look out at the view – this morning a vision of blue, wall to wall.

“Are we going home today?” Sarah asks.

“Yes. I'm afraid we are.”

It takes a while for me to get up, but I still beat Jenny to it. I make tea and set Sarah up with toast and orange juice, and then, seeing that it is now gone nine, I take Jenny's mug of tea upstairs.

The sun is illuminating her bed and she is propped up on pillows with her eyes closed. “Are you sunbathing or sleeping?” I ask in the doorway.

“Both,” she says. “How cool is that?”

“Sarah says you're not getting up, not never.”

“That is correct,” Jenny says, shielding her eyes and looking over at me. “I've decided to stay in bed for a year and eat toast. Call it a clinical trial if you want.”

“I think they've already tested that therapy,” I say, crossing the room and putting her tea down on the bedside cabinet. “They tried it in America a thousand times.”

“Does it cure cancer?” she asks.

“No, but they need a crane to get you out at the end.”

She shrugs and reaches for the tea. “Who cares?” she says.

“You remind me of …”

“Yes?”

“Never mind,” I say, retreating to the landing.

I had been about to say that she reminded me of Tom when we visited the gîte in Chateauneuf D'Entraunes. It had been impossible to get him out of bed on the last day as well. But considering everything that happened when we
did
get back from that trip, I decide that it's better not to continue.

I peer into the mouldy room and pull a face: it still smells pretty bad despite our bleaching attempts. And then I close the door and head back downstairs to where Sarah is still laboriously working her way through the same slice of toast.

Jenny finally manages to drag herself from her bed just before ten.

“The sun moved off the bed,” she explains. “The trial required constant sunlight, so …”

Despite the beautiful weather, we are all subdued as we collect our things from around the house and load up the car. No one puts any music on the
record deck this morning. I don't think any of the records are sad enough.

By the time I drive away – the two girls straining their necks to look back at the fading view – it feels like the end of something wonderful. It feels, in fact, like we're heading to another funeral.

As if to push the point home, Sarah asks, “Will Granny be there?”

“No darling, she won't,” Jenny replies, catching my eye and raising an eyebrow.

Silence reigns through most of the journey. Sarah sleeps in the back and Jenny stares from a side window and, I notice, wrings her hands together.

“Such a waste,” she says at one point.

“What's that?”

“This weather. Such a lovely day,” she says. “We should have stayed and driven home this evening.”

After the beach-house, the house in Camberley feels dark and oppressive.

Jenny parks Sarah in front of the television and heads outside for a cigarette whilst I make us all toasted cheese sandwiches. I am just serving these onto plates when the doorbell rings.

“Jenny, can you get that?” I call. “Front door.”

“So?” Susan asks a minute later, as she and Jenny enter the kitchen. “How was it?”

“Oh amazing,” Jenny says. “We loved it, didn't we.”

“Absolutely amazing,” I agree.

“The furniture's all a bit tacky,” Susan says, “We keep thinking about replacing it all, but it doesn't really matter for a holiday home, does it?”

“I loved all that actually,” I say. “The seventies is my favourite era. The records were great too.”

“Not
my
taste,” Susan says, “that's for sure. They all came with the house too. We bought it at the end of the eighties in an auction – Ted had a friend who was an auctioneer and he told us about it – it's pretty much as it was then. The owners went to Australia and decided not to come back, so they just sold the place and everything in it. It was almost like they were on the run or something. Still, it was a pretty good deal at the time.”