The Dream House (6 page)

‘At least when we get a place of our own it should be big enough for them to visit,’ said Kate, as the car gathered speed and made it through the workmen’s green light, just in time. ‘Maybe they’ll be more relaxed then. They could come for Christmas. Just think, real old-fashioned country Christmases in our country home!’

‘Yes, it’ll be their turn to sit in the motorway traffic,’ muttered Simon, but Kate pretended not to hear. Her mind was drifting back.

‘There’s no place like home.‘ Even nowadays, when she watched
The Wizard of Oz
with Sam and Daisy, snuggled up on the sofa, Kate always mouthed the words with Judy Garland, tears in her eyes, just as there had been when she first saw the film as a lonely twelve year old at boarding school.

I’ve never really had a proper home, she thought to herself now. In truth, her family had always moved around. Her father had been in the army, stationed first in Hong Kong then, briefly, West Germany, before several stints in the Middle East sandwiched with short periods in the South of England. Sometimes they had lived in officers’ family accommodation, at other times, as in West Germany, the Carters had rented a furnished house near the barracks. In the Middle East, they had to live in a compound with the rest of the ex-pat families. Kate remembered always living with other people’s furniture, other people’s choice of décor. Often, her mother did not bother to unpack all their toys, ornaments and books – all the personal things that made a house into a home. What was the point? It would all have to be packed up again before too long so they could move on to the next place.

At one stage, during a visit back to England, her parents had bought a house in Kent as an investment and to make sure they had somewhere to call home when Major Carter’s career in the forces was over. They rarely lived in this Sevenoaks house during subsequent visits, because it was leased out to tenants most of the time.

At the age of eleven, Kate and her thirteen-year-old sister Nicola were dispatched to boarding school in Sussex, usually flying out to join their parents in the holidays, wherever they were, and spending many half-terms or the occasional free weekend with their paternal grandmother in her small terraced house in Hastings. The girls had loved those brief holidays by the seaside. Old Mrs Carter, their only surviving grandparent, had been ailing even then, but she was warm and caring, especially towards Kate, and she wrote regularly to the girls at school and sent them little presents. She had died just before Kate met Simon and Kate still missed her.

Major Carter retired from active service in 1984, when the girls were eighteen and sixteen and he still had a good ten years’ working life in him. Nicola went off to Cambridge. The girls’ holidays were now spent in the Sevenoaks house, which badly needed renovation after years of tenants had made their mark, and Desmond Carter got on the train to London every weekday morning to go to a desk job in the Ministry of Defence. His particular experience in the Middle East made him a valuable consultant and he quickly became absorbed in his job, often working long hours. But then came the tragedy of Nicola’s death and everybody’s life was turned upside down. It wasn’t long afterwards that the Carters sold the Sevenoaks house they had waited so many years to call home but which was now tainted with tragedy. It was while they were packing up to move that Kate’s father drove her up to York where, still dazed with grief, she was due to read English at university. Never again did she call her parents’ house ‘home’.

Simon had turned off the main road now and they were following a winding back route that took them to Epsom High Street, then up a long hill lined with large detached houses to the Downs.

Barbara and Desmond Carter now lived in a Charles Church mock-Tudor development by Epsom Downs station. One of the three spare bedrooms stood cold and empty, the second, the guest room, briefly Kate’s bedroom during holidays from university, was hardly used. The boxroom held Des’s golf clubs, his regimental memorabilia and his car magazines, none of which Barbara liked cluttering up downstairs.

The car slowed down as they passed the golf course where Desmond played regularly. Barbara kept herself to herself, walking the couple’s two miniature long-haired daschunds on the Downs, playing the occasional hand of bridge with some other forces wives locally and driving into Epsom when she fancied a wander round the shopping centre or a visit to the hairdresser. To Kate it seemed an immensely depressing life, but she recognized it was all her parents, still bound up with grief, seemed able to manage.

Simon swung the car into the Carters’ housing estate. They were twenty minutes late and Kate felt the usual miasma of misery descend. They passed a dozen ideal homes with immaculate front gardens, the dads washing their cars or tending the lawns and, as the Hutchinsons’ Audi rolled onto the drive beside the Carters’ polished black Rover, Kate saw Barbara’s pale face waiting anxiously at the window, saw her turn to call Desmond, and the front door open. The family marched up the path with red tulips standing to attention on either side.

‘You were late. We were starting to worry,’ said Desmond as he unlocked the drinks cabinet. In the sparsely furnished living room, where Desmond waged perpetual battle against dog hair, the grown-ups perched on the stiff-backed suite and sipped at little glasses of sherry. Major Carter watched his wife anxiously as, having drunk her sherry in two mouthfuls, she wandered over for a replenishment.

Sam and Daisy had retreated to one corner, by the upright piano that Kate and Nicola used to play, but which was never opened now, the dogs to another. The children were nervous of the snapping tendencies of Ringo and Benjy, who in turn, disliked the sudden, unpredictable movements of young children. There was nothing to play with at the Carters’ house, so Kate had brought a couple of boxes of toys and games to keep the children amused.

‘I’d better see to the chicken,’ said Barbara, gulping down her second sherry. Her husband eased the glass out of her hand as she got up. Kate followed her into the kitchen.

‘I just got one of those ready-stuffed ones from Sainsbury’s,’ said Barbara, a touch too brightly. ‘They seem to be all right. There are some roast potatoes in the top drawer of the freezer. Oh, and some peas somewhere. I can’t . . .’ She stopped, looking confused.

‘I’m sure it will all be fine, Mum,’ Kate said, tying a plastic apron over her skirt and blouse and setting about the task of Sunday lunch. Her mother leaned against the cabinets, playing with her necklace and looking lost and faraway. Kate noticed a cut-glass tumbler over by the sink and wondered whether, if she picked it up, it would smell of gin.

I’ll wait till lunch is over before I say anything about our plans, she decided. Instead, in between shoving a tray of frozen potatoes in the oven, whisking up a packet of bread sauce and unwrapping the supermarket apple crumble waiting on the side, she asked her mother whether she was sleeping any better, about Desmond’s back trouble and how his sister Maggie seemed when she came last week.

Barbara, small, thin, but still elegant, her chin-length hair expertly tinted and coiffed in the 1960s ends-turned-out style that she’d always worn, politely answered each question in a toneless voice, only showing some animation when telling Kate about the problem of Travellers camping on the Downs. It was a relief when they could all move into the dining room and watch Desmond carefully carve the chicken.

‘How’s the house then?’ Desmond asked Simon as he lowered himself into his chair, unfurled his cloth napkin, and gave the signal to eat. ‘All shipshape?’ Desmond always asked his son-in-law this question but today, instead of the usual, ‘Fine, actually, Desmond. We had the gutters cleaned last week but the porch needs retiling,’ Simon looked over at Kate, who was cutting up Sam’s meat, and nodded, raising his eyebrows.

Kate put down her knife and fork and took a deep breath. ‘We’re planning to move, actually, Dad.’ She looked anxiously at her mother, who had been picking at a potato with her fork and glancing at Daisy, as if trying to think of something to ask the little girl. Barbara looked up at Kate, her face suddenly full of alarm.

Kate went on to explain that they were moving to Suffolk. Her father looked puzzled for a moment, then nodded. ‘Nice part of the world, if I remember. But what d’you want to go there for?’

Kate stabbed at a piece of chicken and summoned the courage to continue. ‘Simon’s mother lives there. She’s got a cottage large enough for us to stay in while we look for somewhere of our own. Simon will still work in the City but look for something nearby. It would be a new start for us, and it would help Joyce now she’s on her own. You remember we thought she might have had a small stroke last year? She’s recovered completely, but Simon would like to be nearby in case anything happens.’

In fact, Simon had never said anything about being anxious for Joyce’s health, but Kate instinctively felt that her parents would be reassured by being given a practical reason rather than any heavy emotional language about needing somewhere to call home or having more precious time with the children. Kate’s parents didn’t do emotion. They didn’t really do children either, and Kate had always been determined to bring up her children completely differently from the way she and Nicola had been raised.

‘I don’t know why you protect them so much,’ said Simon once when her mother had forgotten Daisy’s birthday for the second year running, despite Kate having reminded her twice. ‘They were terrible parents. They should never have had children. And now they’re hopeless grandparents.’

‘But they’re so vulnerable, Simon. They’ve been hurt by everything – losing Nicola, Mum’s problems. It would be like kicking them in the teeth to criticize them.’

‘Yeah, I know, but I hate seeing you tie yourself up in nervous knots trying to defend them. Oh, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t complain. After all, Dad could be pretty annoying sometimes with his lecturing.’

The time her parents’ remoteness had come home to Kate hardest of all had been when Daisy was born. Joyce had immediately got the next train from Diss, her bags full of newly knitted cardigans, bootees and little hats, and had bedded down in the Hutchinsons’ house for a fortnight, directing operations with Simon fetching and carrying while Kate struggled to tend to the needs of a tiny baby who wouldn’t suck. Desmond and Barbara visited twice during this period, staying precisely one hour each time. The second time, towards the end of the visit, Barbara had inexplicably burst into tears. Desmond, his own eyes rheumy, whispered stiffly to Kate that ‘the old girl’ found the baby brought back difficult memories and gently steered Barbara out of the front door. That time, Kate had cried herself into such a state that Simon, alarmed, called the doctor.

After the metallic-tasting apple crumble, the adults cleared the table and Desmond banged about in the kitchen, inexpertly loading the dishwasher and making a pot of tea. Her mother had vanished somewhere and Kate went into the living room where Simon was on the floor preventing violence breaking out over Snakes and Ladders. She sat down next to the mahogany bookcase, with its ranks of photographs. There was a single picture of Daisy and Sam taken by her friend Claire the summer before, and a small wedding portrait of Kate and Simon. But the other dozen photographs, not to mention the three framed enlargements on the wall above the piano, were all of the same girl, a pretty, laughing, blue-eyed brunette – a little like Kate but not Kate. There she was, full of life, her sister Nicola – as a jolly sun-hatted baby sitting in her pram, playing in a sandpit at three, in school uniform with a thick navy Alice band at twelve, in a white confirmation dress at fourteen, gorgeous in midnight-blue taffeta at nineteen . . . when the photographs stopped.

As familiar as the pain from an old war wound came that double stab of jealousy and guilt. Jealousy that her parents’ attention was still, after all these years, focused on Nicola. Guilt that it was Nicola who had died, not Kate. Nicola, whom Kate still firmly believed, everyone had loved best.

When she and her sister were very young, they had had a series of nannies, mostly local women with little English, in whichever country the Carters were living in at the time. The girls only saw their parents for a small part of every day. Barbara, nervous when handling small children, usually found some secretarial or voluntary work deliberately, to take her out of the house, and then there was a range of mess events and bridge parties in the evenings.

Nicola didn’t seem affected by this mild form of neglect that constituted the traditional English officer-class way of bringing up children. She was naturally bubbly, charming, self-possessed, and the obvious favourite of the nannies. Kate, on the other hand, everyone dismissed as quiet and stubborn. She badly needed cuddles and reassurance, which she didn’t get – except from her big sister. Nicky always guarded Kate. There was one famous incident in Hong Kong, when the amah had slapped Kate hard after accusing the five-year-old girl of stealing from her. Nicola had jumped up and slapped the woman back, then lectured her like a grown-up, threatening her with the sack. The money was later found to have been taken by a visiting child, but Missy Nicola was held in awe after this and Kate loved her for it. And hated herself for still being jealous of her sister.

One thing she found increasingly difficult to cope with was that, whatever she tried to do, Nicola unwittingly took the limelight. Their mother was no more affectionate to Nicola than to Kate, but Kate could see that at least Nicola made some impact on Barbara. Barbara would encourage her to try new things – to ride her bike, play the piano, take ballet lessons, go out with friends. She never showed the same interest in Kate, rarely praised her when she practised hard at the piano and passed her exams ahead of Nicola.

When the girls both went away to boarding school, again, it was Nicola whom everyone liked best. ‘Nicky, would you like to take the lead part in the play?’ ‘Nicola, we need you on the lacrosse team.’ ‘Nicky, will you come and stay with us at half-term?’ At first Kate trailed around after her sister, trying desperately hard to get into a school team, writing to her parents that it wasn’t fair that Nicola should go to stay with friends and not her. But after a while, she learned to avoid pain by avoiding Nicola. She made her own friends, but their interests were less high profile – writing for the school magazine, listening to music, outings with the Natural History Club. But still envy twisted inside, though she knew Nicola was hurt by her behaviour. For Kate, though, keeping away from her sister was a survival technique. She loved her sister – indeed, along with the rest of the school, how could she not? But Nicola’s continued to be the name on everyone’s lips. Nicola became deputy head girl, while Kate didn’t even get to be prefect. Nicola won a place at Cambridge . . . Kate was advised not to apply.