Paradise (5 page)

I WAKE
to the sound of rain against glass. Groaning inwardly I pull back thick chintz curtains — the old kind, not the shabby-chic ones I’ve seen in Luka’s Sunday supplements — and look down on a town bathed in gray, impossible to see where the granite terraces end and the mist begins. I know the sea is out there somewhere, beyond all this. Can hear its white noise against the harder drum of raindrops and thrum of traffic. But for now I may as well be back in Peckham, for all the hot sand, sun-bleached dreams I can touch.

I wonder if it ever stops here, the rain. The house seems steeped in damp: the windowsill ripe with a dark spattering of mold; that earthy smell in the cupboards. It’s cold, too, so that my breath fogs up in a cloud around my face, and when I pee, steam rises from the toilet bowl. I touch the wide, white-painted bathroom radiator. Nothing. The boiler is broken. Or the heating hasn’t clicked on yet. I try to remember last night. Was it like this when we got here? Or were we too distracted with newness to notice? I tread back along the sea-green soft corridor to my room to pull on yesterday’s tights and sweater. Then add a long, moth-eaten cardigan. One of Mum’s castoffs, Luka’s before that. Cass used to laugh at it. Said it looked like a dead man’s clothes, like something out of the Sally Army shop. Mum agreed. Said I should bin it; it was more hole than cardigan. But I defended it. Claimed it was vintage. And I guess it is, in a way. But that’s not why I love it. I pull it tight around me, wrapping myself in its thick, wool softness, and the smell of him and her. That’s what I’m holding on to. Not the thing. But what it means. What inhabits it.

When I get downstairs, Mum and Finn are up and eating breakfast. I watch as Finn bites into a doughnut, sugar coating his lips, grease and jam oozing down his fingers. The sentinel ketchup bottle has been joined by cartons of milk; pots of honey and lemon curd; a half-empty teacup; a pat of butter, its whiteness already plundered by a gouging knife and traces of something that looks like Marmite.

We’re the Railway Children,
I think. Finding only empty cupboards, then waking the next day to apple pie that has been missed in the dark of their arrival.

“Where was it?” I ask.

Finn makes a face. He answers, still chewing, “Duh. Like, in the shop.”

I look at Mum. She is wearing a dress, cut low, flakes of croissant decorating her chest.

“We went out exploring,” she says. “Found Aladdin’s Cave.”

“It’s actually called that,” Finn adds. “But the man doesn’t look like Aladdin; he looks like Fat Al from the corner shop.”

“They’ve got everything,” Mum says. “Croissants. Olives. Can you believe it? I never saw an olive until I moved to London, but now they’ve got jars of them.”

I click.

“You should have gone to the supermarket,” I say. “I bet it cost a ton.”

“Oh, lighten up, Billie.” Mum holds out a packet of chocolate croissants. “Go on.”

I shrug and sit down, pull open the cellophane. “Since when do we get this stuff for breakfast, anyway? What happened to toast and porridge?”

Mum smiles. “We’ll have fish and chips later. Cotton candy.”

“Can we?” Finn asks. “Really?”

“Yeah, ’course,” Mum replies. “We’re on holiday.”

But we’re not,
I think to myself. We’re not on holiday. This is it.

But thick dark chocolate coats the roof of my mouth and sugar rushes to my head, dizzying, drowning the thought, trapping it in its stickiness.
She’s happy now,
I think. Maybe that’s all there is to it. The now. Not what happened all those years ago. Not what will happen tomorrow, in two months, three.

And I bite down again, flooding myself with sweetness and light.

Afterward, Mum takes Finn to look at the sea. I say it’s too wet out. But really I’m scared of being disappointed. Scared the Atlantic won’t measure up to Cass’s turquoise-water-and-white-sand photographs. Instead I wash up. It was fine at home, leaving dirty dishes for a day or two. But here it feels odd, like we’re abusing someone, something. The house. Or Eleanor. I stack the plates back in the earth-damp cupboards, find a dish for the butter, a bin for the bread and the last of the pastries. Playing mother. I sing as I work, bits of stuff Luka played, CDs of Cass’s; keeping myself company. It’s not until I close the last cupboard door that I give in to the solitude and listen to the house. Its heaving silence, punctuated by the tick-tocking of the clock in the hall. Counting around the minutes in a place where time stands still.

I try to imagine Mum and Will running on this carpet, along these corridors. But I can’t. This isn’t a house for children. It’s a grown-up place. All polished mahogany, watercolors, brass door handles. Proper. So different from London. There we lived in a kind of organized chaos: every wall a different shade of red, every shelf sagging under the weight of books, every sill crowded with clay models and wire dolls and guitar picks. The flat was alive; it breathed with us, laughed with us. The walls here give nothing away. And I wonder if this suffocation that I feel is what Mum felt. And if that’s why we lived as we did. Because she could breathe at last. Do what she wanted. Maybe I’ll be different again. Minimalist or something. Mum says minimalists just have no imagination. But I think I’d like the space. The clean sharpness of corners.

My stomach swirls again; the insects are stretching their wings. Because I’m wondering now if Mr. Garroway will repaint. Blot us out with two tins of magnolia. Like we were never there. Wondering if that’s what Luka will find. Then I get this urge to phone home. Not the flat; I’m not that ghoulish, ringing to see if some stranger answers. But London, someone in London. Cass, I guess. Though she’s probably out. Up the main street with Stella, or down at Cinderella’s with Ash. Still, it’s worth a try. I can leave a message, leave our new number. Then I realize I don’t know our new number. Don’t even know if there’s a phone. I look around the drawing room — that’s what Mum called it; not
living room,
because there’s nothing alive about this place — but I can’t see anything. No silver plastic cordless handset. Not even one of those retro ones with the dials. It’s not in the kitchen either. Maybe there isn’t one at all. Maybe they cut themselves off completely. An island.

The insects flap now, slow beats, but quickening. I breathe harder, looking for something to calm them. And I find it. A flicker of memory of Luka with wire between his teeth and pliers in his hand. I go to the front door and find what I’m looking for. Phone cable. Held against the frame in neat plastic keepers. No trailing wires to trip over here. I follow the line down and along the hallway baseboards, trace its arc around the drawing-room door, then along the skirting again until it reaches its destination. An alcove. So small you might miss it at first. So dark it’s hard to make out the tall circular table, the Yellow Pages and directory on a shelf at knee height. But it’s there, and on the shining surface sits my treasure. A phone. Not cordless. But not old either. I pick up the receiver, half expecting it to be dead. But it isn’t. Mum must have arranged it when she moved her benefits, changed the electricity and gas. Putting Luka down as well. Because even if she doesn’t need his body in her bed, she needs his name for credit. The dial tone buzzes in my ear like a thousand bees. I’m about to key in Cass’s number when I notice the red light. Flicking on and off, on and off. Messages.

At first I wonder if it’s Luka. If maybe Mum’s passed the number on after all. But when I press
PLAY
I realize my mistake. They’re not for Mum. They’re for her mother.

There are two of them. The first, a woman, clear and clipped, reminding her about “Tuesday,” hoping she hasn’t forgotten, telling her to call back when she can. It could mean anything. A cup of tea. A bank raid. There are no other clues. No paper trail to reveal anything about her. The second is different. A man’s voice. Softer and tinged with West Country. And just one word. “Eleanor . . .” Then a click and dial tone. But that word.
It’s a question,
I think. “Eleanor?” Why just one word?
And why didn’t she erase the messages,
I think,
after she listened to them?
Unless she left them for a reason. To remind herself. Or someone else.

But then it hits me. A hard shot, and true, straight to the stomach. I’m so stupid. She never listened to them because she couldn’t. Because she was dead, crushed inside her car on a road miles from here. She never did call back about Tuesday. That man who said her name never heard her voice again. And I never heard it at all.

And I’m about to press
DELETE
when I remember something. If there are incoming messages, there must be an outgoing one. I press the button and pray to a God I don’t believe in that it’s not a generic American prerecord. I pray it’s real.

It is real. It is her voice. Eleanor’s. Cut glass slicing through the cold air; I can almost see her breath. “I’m not able to answer the phone, but please leave a message, and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”

It says nothing. And everything. That she lived alone. That she was rich. Educated. Privately maybe, her voice a mix of BBC and royal. Then I’m struck by how weird this is. That she is talking to me from the grave. And I remember when Dion Clark died. This boy in our class at school who got hit by the Number 12 on Walworth Road. Cass kept a message from him on her mobile for weeks. She kept playing it again and again. Crying over it. Even though he’d only kissed her once, then dumped her for Rae-Ann Jackson. Then her phone got nicked and he was gone, and some other kid has a dead person on their voicemail now.

I press
PLAY
again. “I’m not able to answer the phone, but please leave a message, and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.” And again. And again.
This is her,
I think. These are the only words I will ever hear her say. No telling me I’ve grown, no feigned shock at my outfits, no whispering she loves me. I press the button again. Addicted to the sound. To the sense of belonging and loss. I am so caught in it I miss the front door opening, the shaking of clothes, the kicking off of shoes. Before I have time to hide it, to press
PAUSE
, she’s right there behind me. Her face is pale, set. And in an instant I know what she’s going to do. But I still plead.

“Don’t.”

But she does. She clicks the buttons, all of them, again and again. Until the automatic American accent echoes along the hall. “Outgoing message deleted. All messages deleted.” Then she pulls the wire out of the wall socket.

“We need some peace,” she explains. “We’re on holiday.”

There it is again.

“Besides . . .” She shrugs. “Who’s going to call us?”

Luka,
I think. Nonno. Anyone. But I say nothing. Just wait for her to start humming again, to put the kettle on. Then I plug the phone back in.

HET RINGS
him late at night, when she knows her father will be asleep, and her mother too out of it to notice. Will is out. At Jonty’s, or more likely drinking at the Golden Fleece. Leaning against the wall, legs stretching out catlike across the hallway, she talks softly into the receiver.

His brother Jimmy answers, laughs when he hears her whispered “Tom?” but fetches him anyway, both of them only just back from the fairground, working the Tilt-A-Whirl and the win-a-goldfish stall.
Real jobs,
Het thinks. They’re not the Gypsies Will calls them. Or worse.

She hears the phone clatter, words exchanged. “Tom?” she says again, hesitant this time.

But it is him. His voice hushed, too, though he has no need; his mum gone, his dad in the pub till closing every night. Maybe it’s because of Jimmy being there. She knows what his brother thinks of her. That she is stuck-up. A student. Too good for them. Not like the town girls he goes with. Hair pulled back and tops pulled down.

“When can I see you?” he asks. “Can you come now?”

She shakes her head, forgetting he can’t see her; her salt-dirty hair curling tendrils around her tanned face. Her longing.

“Het?”

“I can’t,” she says aloud. “Not tonight.” Then she pauses, thinks, decides. “Tomorrow. At the pier at ten.”