The House of Memories (25 page)

From: Charlie Baum
To: undisclosed recipients
Subject: It’s Been a Noisy Week in Boston

The latest report from the Baum trenches is as follows:

Sophie (11): Sophie has two soccer coaches, Jenny and Rick. She sent Rick a card for his birthday, on which she wrote: “You are my favorite coach.” I explained that it was nice to have a favorite coach, but that Jenny, her other coach, might be hurt if she was to see the card. Sophie nodded wisely, picked up her pencil and wrote on the bottom, “Don’t show Jenny.”

Ed (8): Lucy and I were talking about our next-door neighbor’s new daughter being adopted. Ed overheard. “That little girl’s a doctor? Wow! She’s only six years old!”

Reilly (6): Doing sums. “Dad, twelve is a dozen.”

“Yes, it is,” I said.

Pause while he finishes another sum.

“Dad, you know how twelve is a dozen?”

“Yes?”

“Well, what is nine?”

Good point.

Tim (4): In the car with me. He puts his fingers and thumbs together to make a triangle.

“Look, Dad,” he says. “A triangle.”

“Mmm,” I say.

“An isosceles triangle,” he adds.

I nearly crash the car.

Lucy (36): Long days on the road may be coming to an end. Interesting office-based job has come up in her company. She’s applying. I’m wishing and hoping and thinking and praying, channeling my inner Dusty Springfield.

Charlie (36): A glorious moment at this week’s weigh-in. I’d lost four kilos! In one week! Very cruel of Lucy to remind me that Tim had dropped the scales into the bath.

Snip the cat (kitten age): Days of cuteness short-lived. Life of a small bird in our garden nearly short-lived. Snip now wearing a bell around her neck that wouldn’t look out of place on an alpine cow. (I’ve told her it’s her German heritage.)

Until next time, everyone please stay sane.

Charlie xx

From: Charlie Baum
To: Lucy Baum
Subject: re: New Job????

Yes, of course you should apply for it.

Yes, of course you will get it.

Yes, it would change everything—yes, for the better.

Not that I want to change anything.

I am the luckiest man in the world as it is.

C xx

From: Charlie Baum
To: Lucas Fox
Subject: re: Jess

No, I don’t think so. Haven’t heard from her for a few days but I looked her up on Facebook. She seems to be busy sightseeing and using exclamation marks. Dad told me he’s loaded up her credit card so I’d say she’s also going to see every musical London has to offer. Don’t worry. Chances are slim she and Ella will run into each other.

C

From: Charlie Baum
To: Aidan O’Hanlon
Subject: (no subject)

Hope all is okay. Have left a couple of messages for you at home and work. Would be good to talk.

C

From: Charlie Baum
To: Walter Baum
Subject: Meredith

Is Meredith okay? Watched the latest video link of her on that chat show and barely recognized her.

From: Charlie Baum
To: Ella O’Hanlon
Subject: You

You’ve gone quiet on me. All okay over there?

D
ear Diary,

Hi, it’s Jess!

I’m not going to talk about what is happening here in London because it’s too awful. Instead, I am going to work on the chapters about my childhood.

I have to just say one thing first. I hope I haven’t made a big mistake, but the more I thought about what Zach said, about me not really being independent while Mum and Dad are paying for me here, the more I realized he was right. Once I thought that, I couldn’t stop thinking about the other comments those people in my dance classes had made. That I was only here because my parents were rich and paying my way. And then I couldn’t stop thinking about what Mum and Dad had done—not told me about the TV show, basically shipping me off to London, out of the way—and I got so mad, it was like a storm in my head, and I did a stupid thing. I cut up the credit card Dad gave me. The one I could use as a credit card and a cash card. And I did it before I looked in my purse and I only have one hundred pounds left in there. I should have taken some money out before I cut up the card. It was so stupid of me. What on earth can I do now??? It’s not as if I can ring Dad up and say, “I’m going to stand on my own two feet but before I do, can you give me another few hundred pounds?”

I’ve just rung downstairs and the receptionist said she’s very sorry but she can’t extend my room booking without authorization from the credit-card holder who originally made the reservation. Which is Dad. Who I am not talking to. Which means that in one day’s time I won’t have anywhere to live and I haven’t got any money. I am really scared.

I’ll write about my childhood instead.

I was born on 5 April 1989, to a mother called Meredith Baum and a father called Walter Baum. Dad is German by birth but has lived in Australia for nearly forty years. I have a half sister called Ella, from my mother’s first marriage, and a half brother called Charlie, from my father’s first marriage. Ella is eleven years older than me, and Charlie is thirteen years older than me.

I am going to write this next bit honestly. When the time comes to publish my autobiography I will probably have to edit out a lot of this so that no one’s feelings get hurt, but I have resolved to make the first draft as honest as I can. So here goes. . . .

I had a very happy childhood. I knew from the moment I was born (well, as much as I can remember of it) that I was very loved and also very wanted. To this day, my mum and dad are the most in-love couple I have ever met. They are very affectionate with each other, and while I don’t know all the details of their first marriages, it’s pretty clear from what they have both hinted that things weren’t good for either of them, which makes sense, of course; otherwise why would they have got divorced? Mum and Dad met in very romantic circumstances, in a garden center of all places (and
baum
is German for tree, how cool is that!!), fell in love instantly and were married within a year. I came along soon after—I was always an impatient child, Mum said!!!

We lived in Melbourne in a very nice house in Richmond, which is a cosmopolitan inner-eastern suburb. Mum looked after me while Dad worked full-time but I can honestly say that I never felt he was an absent father. He was always there for me and to this day is very generous and loving.

My half sister Ella and my half brother Charlie were always very nice to me.

My half sister Ella and my half brother Charlie were very welcoming and were the best big brother and sister any little girl could have.

Charlie tried his best but I know my half sister Ella always hated me.

I will have to edit this out at the end but for now I am going to write down the truth. For as long as I can remember, it was always the two of them against me. There was a big age difference, but I can remember so clearly wanting to do things with them and them always saying, “No, Jess, leave us alone. No, Jess, you’re too young.” It was just as well I liked to spend time in my own company, practicing my dancing and singing, or I would have been a very lonely and sad little girl. The two of them were always giggling and whispering to each other, and if Mum and Dad asked them to include me, they would say no at first, or if they did eventually say yes, they would make such a fuss that it wasn’t fun anymore. Mum noticed. It was hard not to, but even if she pleaded with them to be kind to me, often they still wouldn’t be and I would feel very left out.

“They’re just a bit jealous of you,” Mum would say to me sometimes, and I didn’t understand when I was young but now that I have met a lot of other kids who have divorced parents and stepsiblings or half siblings, I understand that it can be tricky to feel like you only half belong to a family, whereas for me I was always with my mum
and
my dad and I knew they loved each other and me, so that was a very secure environment to grow up in.

Ella’s biological dad is dead. (He died in a plane accident in Canada when I was just a baby so I never met him.) Mum said he was nice at first but very argumentative in the latter years of their marriage. Charlie’s mum, Dad’s first wife, was mentally unstable and went back to Germany after their divorce and there was hardly any contact, and then she died the year Charlie turned sixteen. I never met her either. He and Dad went back for the funeral, which must have been very difficult, I suppose, even though Charlie didn’t really ever know his mother and in a way he was abandoned by her. I have to try to be understanding of Charlie and Ella, only having one parent each, even if sometimes I think they are the ones who should be more understanding of me, as the youngest in the family.

It’s like when I started in a new school after we moved from Richmond to a bigger house in Malvern. By the time I started in the middle of the first term, all the kids had already made friends and it took me ages, nearly a week, to make some really good friends. It was the same for me in my family, if you look at it. By the time I was born, Ella and Charlie had been brother and sister for more than a year and had all sorts of in-jokes and so I had to try to break into that, which was tricky when I was only just born and couldn’t even speak yet!

I can’t write about them anymore. I can’t stop thinking about what I should do next here in London. I should just say sorry to Mum and Dad, and ask Dad to send me a new credit card and book me in for another week here. But I’m too angry at them. I really am. I’m angry and hurt.

I’ll ask Ben for help. He might let me sleep at his flat even for a few nights, until I get a job somewhere. I might have been a bit optimistic that I would get a part in a musical so soon.

I can’t sleep now. I have to be so careful not to start worrying too much because when I do, everything I’ve been taught by my counselor seems to fall away and all I do is go over that terrible day again and again, and all I seem to be able to feel is Felix, the weight of him in my arms, and how it felt to have his hand in mine and then that horrible moment when he started to slip and I saw it. It was as if I knew something really bad was going to happen and I couldn’t stop it and I screamed and I screamed and I heard it. I heard the noise when his head hit the rock. I never told Ella or Aidan that—how could I?—but I heard it that day and I’ve remembered it so many times since, and if I could give him my life, if I could swap it, I would. I would do whatever I could to fix that day. He was such a beautiful baby. He wasn’t a baby, he was a little boy. He called me Ess. He didn’t seem to be able to say the letter
J
yet, even though he was a really good talker for his age. It used to make me laugh so much. When he’d see me he’d hold up his arms and shout, “Ess! Ess!” So I called him Elix. His favorite game was peekaboo. He could play it for hours and he would get this sort of gurgling laugh when I played it with him and it was impossible not to laugh too.

I still can’t understand it. How can God let something like that happen? I’m not sure I even believe in God anyway. No proper god would let a little boy die.

I wish I hadn’t started remembering it all. Not when I’m here on my own like this. Once I begin thinking about it, it’s really hard to stop, and all the bad thoughts come rushing at me again. Mum always helps me when it happens at home. She holds me tight until I feel better, and she says the same things. “It was a terrible accident, Jessie, an accident,” and I know that, but even knowing it doesn’t ever help, not really. I just keep thinking about the day it happened, and the days afterward. It all becomes a big horrible blur in my head. I just remember crying so much and wanting to see Ella but she wouldn’t see me. Of course I can’t blame her, but she still won’t see me or talk to me. She never will and I just have to come to terms with that, my counselor said. I did see Aidan. He came to the hotel the next day. I was in shock, I know I was, and he came into our room and he hugged me and he said, “It was an accident, Jess. I know it was an accident,” and I cried and he cried so much, both of us, and I asked him if Ella was coming too and he said no. I saw her at the funeral but she wouldn’t look at me. I don’t know if she saw anyone that day. I watched her. I was watching her in the hope that she would turn around even for a second and see me and I could say sorry to her, but she didn’t turn. She just stared straight ahead the whole time. I could hear her crying. I’ve never heard anything like it. Dad took me outside, before they carried Felix’s coffin out of the church, but I still saw Ella stand up and really start to cry and then she—

I’m sorry. I have to stop now.

I
hadn’t read Aidan’s letter.

I’d had it for twenty-four hours. The envelope was still unopened.

Aidan hadn’t written to me or e-mailed me in months. I’d wanted it that way. I’d needed it to be that way. But now he had written again, out of the blue. Why? I’d been awake most of last night thinking about it. I’d thought about it all day today. I knew I couldn’t open it without preparing myself as much as possible. His letter could only be about one of two things, I’d finally decided.

It would be about Felix. About the anniversary that was now just days away. I tried to picture what Aidan might have written.

Ella, I know that next week is Felix’s twenty-month anniversary—

The idea of it being an important date had come from Mum. Someone in the early days had tried to give her some solace by saying the pain became more bearable once you passed the anniversary of the age the child was when he or she died. It had seemed impossible to me at the time. It still was. How could the pain ever be bearable? But for Mum especially, it had become a summit we needed to reach. Mum had told Charlie about it too. He’d mentioned it to me himself. Had she talked about it with Aidan as well? Was that why he was writing? To say that he too was thinking of that date?

Or was he writing about something else?

Something quite different?

Ella, I’ve met someone else. I want a divorce.

All day, my mind had flicked from one possibility to the other. I wasn’t ready to read either of them. Not yet. I’d open his letter tomorrow. Yes. Tomorrow. For now, not knowing what it said was easier to deal with than knowing.

Distract.

Observe.

It was ten o’clock at night. I was in my bedroom. There was nothing in here for me to do. It was already spotlessly tidy. It was too late to go downstairs and start cooking or cleaning. I turned on my laptop instead. I hadn’t checked my e-mail for a few days. There were two new ones from Charlie, one of his family reports and one asking how I was, saying that I’d gone quiet.

I’d e-mail him now. Nighttime in London was the afternoon in Boston. It was coming up to what he called Hell Hour, feeding time at the family zoo. There was no way he’d be online at the moment, but I had an urge to talk to him.

I quickly wrote an e-mail. I didn’t mention Aidan’s letter.

Sorry for silence. News in brief: Henrietta wants me to get Lucas to sell house. She and her husband are divorcing. She wants to move to France with Lucas. Needs house money to fund new setup.

I sent it.

A moment later, there was a reply from him.

WTF??

I typed back quickly.
How can you be online now? Isn’t it Hell Hour?

Forget Hell Hour. Am in Hell on Earth aka neigh- bor’s child’s birthday party. Am barricaded in laun- dry with my iPhone. Sound of multiple hot dogs being devoured frightening to the human ear. Of course Lucas won’t sell. He loves the house. Anyway, it’s your inheritance. Tell her to keep her dirty mitts off it.

Before I had a chance to write back, another one arrived from him.
Did you say Horrid Henrietta said she needs the money? Maybe she’s the thief??

Very funny,
I wrote.

I’m not joking.

Stop it, Charlie.

I’m NOT joking. Back soon. Wailing child banging on door.

It wasn’t Henrietta I wanted to talk to Charlie about. Now was a good time to ask him. He was online. He could write straight back. I wrote the e-mail.

Charlie, I know that Aidan is in Washington. Have you seen him?

I deleted it. I tried again.

Charlie, have you had any contact with Aidan recently? Lucas told me

I deleted that too. Just say it, I told myself. Just ask him.

Charlie, do you know if Aidan is seeing anyone? If he is, is it serious?

I deleted that as well.

Another e-mail came in from him before I had a chance to write a fourth version.

COULD it be Henrietta?? She’s often in the houses too, isn’t she? Maybe she’s like those movie stars who shoplift for kicks. Not sure how you’ll break that news to Lucas though . . .

I wrote straight back. I still didn’t mention Aidan.

Of course it’s not Henrietta. She’s too busy researching French properties to be a thief.

I hope you’re right. Yikes, sound of breaking window outside. Better go. C x

Charlie might have gone off-line again, but he had planted a seed. Could it be Henrietta?

Could
it?

Of course it couldn’t, I told myself. Just because she was planning to leave her husband and set up house with Lucas and didn’t have any money of her own but urgently needed lots of it and had plenty of access to those houses . . . It didn’t mean anything. It couldn’t be her.

I returned to my e-mail, scrolling down through the in-box. Amid the spam, there was one from my mother. She’d written twice since I’d told her I was in London, cheerful e-mail messages thanking me for letting her know where I was, telling me a couple of stories from her filming days, an update on Walter’s plans for his new garden. I expected more of the same this time.

My breath caught as I read it.

Darling Ella,

You are always in our thoughts, I hope you know that, but especially so this month. It is barely possi- ble that Felix has been gone from us for almost twenty months. I thought you might like to know we are having a mass said for his anniversary. I hope you don’t mind. I haven’t converted, I promise, but it gives me great peace.

Love from Walter and from me, darling.

Mum xxx

I wrote back immediately.

Dear Mum and Walter,

Thank you very much. That means a lot.

E xxx

I blinked back sudden tears. As I sat there, another e-mail came in from the
MerryMakers
address. An answer from her already? It was barely seven a.m. in Australia. I clicked it open. It wasn’t from her personally, but from her production team. A link to an interview Mum had done on one of the main TV channels. I read the accompanying note, working my way through the exclamation marks that littered any message from the
MerryMakers
team. They were especially excited this time. An interview like this was a big step, I knew. There wasn’t usually much crossover between cable TV stars and what people thought of as “real” network television.

I opened the link and pressed play. The clip began. The tanned host began his introduction, calling her “Australia’s wackiest mum,” “the kooky cook,” “the madcap, mischievous mistress of the mixing bowl and masterchef of mirth, Merry of
MerryMakers
herself!”

Mum appeared at the top of some flimsy-looking stairs and practically ran down. How she managed it in high shoes and a short skirt, I didn’t know. Her hair was styled into bouncy blond curls. She was wearing her usual bright colors. She sat down and waved enthusiastically at the camera. The interview began.

At first I thought there was something wrong with the connection. I stopped it, started again. I put it in wide screen, then back to small. I wasn’t mistaken. Something was definitely different about her. It wasn’t what she was saying. She was being as funny as ever. She sang as well as ever too, bursting into a chorus of “Food, Glorious Food” midinterview. She crossed the studio and did a demonstration at a mini kitchen setup. Her cooking was as chaotic as ever. What was different was her face, I realized. Mum had had Botox. A lot of Botox.

I was shocked. Why on earth would she have done that? Everyone knew she was in her fifties. She’d never hidden her age. It was part of her appeal. I was sad and disappointed all at once. I started to write her an e-mail, not editing myself, telling the truth.

Mum, please tell me I’m imagining it? Botox?? I’ve just seen you on that chat show and you were brilliant but your forehead didn’t move once. You were beautiful the way you were. That’s why everyone loves you, because you are yourself. You won’t seem like my mum if you don’t look like my mum. I really wish you hadn’t done it.

I couldn’t send it, of course. I was thirty-four years old, not fourteen. If she wanted to have full-scale plastic surgery, then that was her choice, whether I liked it or not. I pressed delete. I looked again. I’d pressed send. I tried to stop it but I was too late. My e-mail was on its way to Australia.

I hurriedly wrote another one.
Mum, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to send that.

I checked a minute later. No answer yet. I pressed refresh. Still no answer.

I rang her instead. It was the first time I’d rung her in over a year. She answered immediately.

“Ella! Darling, what time is it there? How are you? Is everything all right?”

“Mum, I’m fine. I’m sorry to worry you. I’m ringing about my e-mail. I shouldn’t have sent it—”

“The one saying thank you? I just got it. Thank you, darling. I’m so glad you didn’t mind me having the mass said for Felix. I wasn’t sure if it was my place—”

“Your place?”

“You know, whether it should be me who has the mass said—”

“But Felix was your grandson. Of course you can have a mass said for him.”

“Are you sure? I just didn’t know if I should have checked with you beforehand.” Before I had a chance to answer, she spoke again. “Oh, another e-mail from you. You have been busy. Isn’t the world amazing? I’m talking to you on the phone and getting e-mail from you on my laptop, all at once.” There was a moment’s silence as she read it and then I heard her laughing. “Is this the one you shouldn’t have sent? Your e-mail about the Botox?”

“Mum, I’m sorry. It’s none of my business. I—”

She laughed again. “Oh, don’t worry, Ella. Everyone has told me off about that. Walter is horrified. I’ll let it ooze out or wear off or whatever it does. And I won’t do it again, I promise. It’s hideous. I look the same no matter how I feel. What was I thinking? But don’t you worry about me and my silly Botox. How are
you
, darling? How is London?”

“It’s still very cold. It snowed last week. Just a few flakes, but—”

“I know! Jess was so excited to see it. She rang especially to say—” She stopped abruptly.

“Mum?”

“I’d better go, darling. I’m late for the studio. Thanks so much for ringing. It’s wonderful to hear your voice.”

“Mum, please wait. Did you say Jess—”

She’d hung up. When I rang again she didn’t answer. I didn’t leave a message. I didn’t call again. Instead, I did something I hadn’t done in a long time. I went onto Facebook.

I’d banned myself from looking at it. Now, despite a voice telling me not to, I keyed in Jess’s name. I knew there wouldn’t be any privacy measures in place.

Her page appeared. She had updated it in the past week. There were dozens of photographs with dozens of exclamation-mark-laden captions. Jess in front of Buckingham Palace. Jess beside a black taxi. Jess in front of the London Eye, the Houses of Parliament, a red phone box. Jess in the West End, pointing up at the billboards of different theaters.

Jess was in London. And by the look of the photos, she was having the time of her life.