Ten Years On (3 page)

‘You can still call me.’

‘It’s not the same. Oh bollocks, I don’t want you to go.’

‘Nor do I,’ I respond, thinking how much I’d taken for granted those nights when the two of us would meet after work, see a film, grab something to eat and laugh
about something funny that had happened during our day. On Friday nights, Olly, a couple of his friends, Kitty and I would go out clubbing, followed by lazy breakfasts on a Saturday morning. Often at weekends I’d persuade Olly to come to an art exhibition, and he’d take me to a music gig in the evening. Sunday mornings would be spent fooling around in bed, before dragging ourselves out for a long walk, followed by meeting friends in the pub for lunch. Olly loved Sunday roasts.

Life was simple back then.

‘If it gets too much, Becca, I’ll buy a blow-up mattress and you can move in with me. Deal?’

‘Deal.’

I’m going to miss all my friends, especially Kitty and my old university housemates, Sylvie and Jamie. Sylvie works in a creative marketing company and is currently playing with fire, dating her boss. Jamie runs his own video filming business, recording christenings and weddings. He’s a warm person; when I see him the sun comes out.

Sylvie, Jamie and Kitty helped me clear out the flat. I had been dreading touching Olly’s things. The paperwork strewn over his desk, his unfinished script, the framed photograph of the two of us on a beach in Cornwall … it was exactly how he’d left it.

Kitty was in charge. She works for a careers and education consultant in Piccadilly, specializing in difficult teenagers, but her true gift is her organizational skills. Olly and I used to laugh at the way she’d behave in a supermarket. Before we had even arrived she’d be visualizing the layout of each aisle. ‘I’ll do eggs, bread, milk; you do fruit, vegetables, cheese …’

‘I almost expect her to wear a stopwatch and blow a whistle too,’ Olly said.

In our flat, she made firm decisions, but at the same time was sensitive and didn’t rush me, especially when it came to going through Olly’s side of the wardrobe.

Each time I’d open a drawer or cupboard, I’d be haunted by a memory. Everything I touched had a story behind it. I could see the joy in Olly’s eyes when I’d given him his vintage record player last year. We’d seen it at an antiques fair in Brighton, and when Olly’s back was turned I’d taken the dealer’s business card. Olly used to play records while he was writing. Bob Dylan’s ‘Make You Feel My Love’ was one of our favourites. He’d played it on the piano at our wedding. His old and faithful tennis shoes reminded me of our holiday in Spain. Our villa had had two tennis courts right outside our apartment, but Olly had forgotten to pack his trainers so, determined to show off our (non-existent)
tennis skills to the other residents, we went on a mission to find a local sports shop and bought them.

Shaving foam in the bathroom made me remember teasing him: ‘Isn’t it time you joined the twenty-first century?’

His desk, by the window, reminded me of coming home late from work to find him writing, the dirty breakfast bowls and mugs still on the kitchen counter.

If I was in a bad mood I’d throw them loudly into the sink before saying, ‘When are you going to finish this book?’

If in a good mood I’d kiss his cheek, and try to persuade him to let me read a little. He’d promise I could when it was done, and I’d bite my tongue to stop myself from asking when that would be.

In the bottom drawer of his desk, I was shocked to see a couple of passport photographs of him and Joe pulling faces in the booth. There was also an old picture of the three of us at Kitty’s New Year’s Eve party ten or so years ago. I was in the middle, my arms around them both. Had Olly kept the photographs in the hopes that one day he and Joe might become friends again?

Later that night, Kitty, Sylvie, Jamie and I had discussed what to do with his piano, but by then I wasn’t thinking straight any more. I’d stored up my tears
throughout the day, been brave enough to hide them, but now that the packing was over and the flat looked so empty, it was all too real.

Finally we made the decision to donate it to a local community centre. I knew Olly would have liked that.

I wonder what he would make of me doing this. He used to say he could only manage Christmas with his own family if he took home a bottle of whisky and spent most of his time in his bedroom, drunk.

The last time I saw his parents was at the funeral. I remember Victor’s quietness, how slowly he had walked out of the church. I recall hugging Carolyn the morning before they returned to Northumberland. It was as if we were both holding on to a part of Olly, neither one of us wanting to let go. When I’d called to let her know I was pregnant, she was so quiet that I thought the line had gone dead. ‘You and Olly,’ she said at last, ‘are going to have a child?’

It felt as if we’d both been given a lifeline, a branch to hold on to in the storm. ‘I can hardly believe it myself, Carolyn, but it’s true. We’re having a baby.’

A road sign welcomes us to Hampshire. I haven’t lived at home since I was eighteen. How am I going to manage living under the same roof as Mum and Dad? What the hell
am
I going to do with myself?

I can’t live in our old flat, but I don’t want to be shipped home. I must be deranged! We need to turn round. It’s my parents’ home, their territory, I don’t belong there anymore …

‘Stop.’

‘What?’

‘Pull over.’

‘I can’t!’

‘Pull over!’ I screech now, when I see a sign for the service station.

Kitty steers the van off the motorway, swings into the car park and drives into the nearest parking space. I unbuckle my seat belt and wind down the window, feeling sick that I am letting my old life slip away.

I am sick.

‘Heavy night last night, was it, girls?’ says a man sauntering by.

We’re parked in front of an uninspiring patch of grass. It’s drizzling and we’re watching, in silence, a man out with his bulldog, smoking. When the dog cocks his sturdy leg against one corner of the litter bin, the man stubs his cigarette butt into the grass and moves on. ‘How are you feeling now?’ Kitty asks, handing me another bottle of water.

I stare ahead. ‘I’m pregnant, Kitty, homeless, no Olly. How am I going to manage?’

She looks away. She has no answers.

‘I’m up shit creek.’ It was one of Olly’s favourite phrases.

At last she turns to me, smiles helplessly. ‘Put it this way, things can only get better.’

And for the first time in many weeks, we laugh.

Kitty follows the exit sign to Winchester. My parents moved to St Cross when I was one and Mum was pregnant with Pippa, who lives twenty minutes down the road from Mum and Dad with her husband and their twins. St Cross is on the edge of Winchester, near the famous water meadows where Keats walked and created ‘Ode to Autumn’. Jane Austen is buried in Winchester Cathedral. The city is steeped in history.

Kitty and I went to the same school in St Cross. We reminisce about walking the headmistress’s pug, Bertie, through the meadows after school with Annie, one of our old school friends. We laugh, remembering how the three of us had all fancied fair-haired and blue-eyed Nick Parker. He had played Robin Hood in our school play and I was jealous because Annie played Maid Marian and got to kiss him. I played Friar Tuck.
Kitty was our director, bossing us about from the back of the stage.

As we turn into my parents’ driveway, the nerves kick in again.

‘Just remember, it’s not forever,’ Kitty says.

Mum appears from the back gate, somehow looking chic in beige gardening trousers, a summer blouse and soil-stained gloves, her dark blonde hair swept back in a navy spotted scarf. Audrey, their miniature wire-haired dachshund, barks ferociously until she realizes I’m not an intruder. ‘Hello, Audrey Hepburn,’ I smile, stroking her when she jumps up against my legs.

‘Come in, come in.’ Mum calls Dad. ‘We’ll unload later. I’ve put you in your old bedroom, Rebecca. Is that all right?’

I nod.

‘And Kitty can sleep in Pippa’s. Well done you. How was your journey?’ She hugs me, pulling away as she doesn’t want to get mud on my clothes.

Kitty tells her it was fine, the M3 was deserted. On the hall table is an answer machine, the red button flashing. ‘Darling, can you see who called?’ Mum asks when Dad appears from the sitting room.

Dad, fine grey wispy hair and dressed in linen trousers with a daring pink cardigan, gives me a warm
hug before going to the telephone, muttering that he never hears it these days.

‘Because you won’t wear your aid!’ Mum calls, making me think of Glitz.

‘You have one new message,’ the machine tells us, as Kitty and I follow Mum towards the kitchen, Mum bemoaning that my father is a stubborn old mule.

‘Hi, Mum, it’s me,’ a voice says.

It’s Pippa.

‘Got your message.
Of course
I’ll come over later. I’m not surprised you’re nervous. It’s a
huge
deal having her to stay.’

I freeze.

Mum turns, looks at the machine as if willing Pippa to leave it at that.

But Pippa continues. ‘I’m dreading it too, but I’ll be here to help you and Dad. We’ll get through this together. See you later. Love you.’

‘Well now!’ Mum whips off her gardening gloves, her skin flushed. ‘How about a nice cup of tea?’

I have barely strung two words together over supper. The salmon tastes heavy in my mouth. I can’t stop thinking about that message. Pippa and me, we’re not close. I didn’t get to know my sister growing up because
she played competitive tennis from the age of ten. At weekends and throughout the summer holidays, she and Mum travelled all across the country to take part in tournaments.

‘I’m only thin because I’m always rushing around,’ Pippa tells Kitty. ‘Oscar and Theo are hard work!’

Does Dad feel the same? Is he dreading having me to stay?

‘Love you,’ she had said at the end of the message, as casually as saying ‘bye’. I can’t remember the last time I said, ‘I love you’ to Mum. I used to say it as a child, especially when given second helpings of Angel Delight, but at some point I stopped. Why? Olly used to say it was simple. Mum invested more time in Pippa and we grew apart.

‘More wine?’ my father asks Kitty.

‘It’s delicious.’

‘Chilean.’

‘Don’t feed her at the table, Rebecca.’ Mum shoos Audrey back towards her basket.

Pippa places a hand over the rim of her glass. ‘Thinking of wine, I tell you who’s back in Winchester, Becca. Joe Lawson.’

I drop my knife. ‘Who?’

‘Joe Lawson.’

‘Sorry, what about him?’ I play with my napkin ring. It’s the same ring that I used to have as a child, engraved with my initials.

‘He’s opened this new wine bar in The Square – well, it’s not quite so new any more.’

My napkin ring is now spinning across the table.

‘Todd took some clients there the other day and was really impressed.’

Kitty catches the ring before it falls on to the floor.

‘Who’s Joe Lawson?’ Mum asks, clearing away my barely touched plate of food. I see her twenty years ago, towering above me as she said, ‘You will eat your peas, Rebecca, or no ice cream!’

Dad asks if anyone would like coffee.

‘You shouldn’t drink caffeine from midday onwards,’ Pippa points out, and for a second she looks just like Mum, except without the sprinkling of grey in her blonde hair.

‘Pah!’ he mutters. ‘Wasn’t Joe one of your old university friends, Rebecca?’

‘Um.’ I bite my fingernail.

‘Apparently you can hire out the cellar at this Maison Joe place,’ Pippa enthuses. ‘Todd thinks we should have our wedding anniversary party there.’

A silence descends across the table.

‘Excuse me.’ I scrape back my chair and leave the room.

‘Clever,’ I hear Kitty say to Pippa, her tone barbed.

Kitty sits at the end of my bed in her stripy pyjamas. ‘You never told Olly about Joe, did you?’

I shake my head, an uneasy feeling settling in my stomach.

‘Are you going to see him?’

‘I don’t know. I think I should.’ I’m not sure why we’re whispering, since Mum and Dad aren’t even on the same floor. Their room is on the floor below. ‘I wonder why he’s back.’

‘Didn’t his family live here or something?’

‘Yes, but he didn’t get on with his father at all.’

‘You’ll have to tell him about Olly,’ she says.

Guilt overwhelms me. She’s right. The one and only clear thought I had at the funeral was that Joe should be here, among his friends.

Kitty hugs her knees to her chest. ‘All that stuff that happened. It was a long time ago.’

‘Right.’ I nod vaguely.

‘Try not to worry, Becca.’ She gets up, saying it’s bedtime, but before she leaves the room she asks, ‘How do you feel about tomorrow?’

‘Tomorrow?’

‘Your scan.’

‘This baby doesn’t feel real,’ I confide, ashamed I’d forgotten. Nothing feels real any more. I still want to believe I’m going to wake up and see Olly lying next to me. I’ll feel his arms wrapped around my waist, he’ll kiss me, laugh and say I was sleep-talking throughout the night, that I must have had a terrible dream.

I toss and turn, nearly crash my head against the wall and fall out of my single bed.

Of all the people who could be here, back in Winchester, why does it have to be Joe? How am I going to tell him? Oh God, Olly, I’m so angry with you! How can I tell Joe? You were the one who always knew the right thing to say. Tears stream down my face. I’m so sad. I miss you. God, I miss you.

‘I’ll be home by six thirty,’ he’d said in his last message to me. ‘I’ll pick up some wine. Look, we need to talk.’ Did we need to talk about the flats I’d shown him, or was something else preying on his mind? I know I promised Kitty I’d let it go, but the more I think about the tone of his voice, the more I am convinced it wasn’t straightforward.

I take a deep breath.

Maybe I should just avoid Maison Joe altogether for the next six months? I can’t drink wine at the moment, so I have the perfect excuse not to go. Joe wouldn’t know. It’s the middle of June now. I could just hide undercover until I have the baby at Christmas?