Kitabı oku: «The Summer We Danced»

Two

After that lovely little episode, I really didn’t want to leave the house. I’d have much rather hidden myself away under my fleecy blanket on the sofa and watched one of the DVDs Roberta had bought me for Christmas than have family round for a big New Year’s Day lunch.

Okay, okay … I knew the cat hadn’t actually opened up an Amazon account and ordered me a couple of Hollywood’s golden oldies, but there’d been precious little else under the tree this year, just a lovely scarf from my older sister, Candace.

It probably didn’t help that I’d put the scraggy little fir in exactly the same spot Mum and Dad had always had a tree when the cottage had been our family home. Present-day reality was competing hard with memories of so many happy Christmases here, filled with both laughter and bickering. Now Mum and Dad were gone the house seemed far too quiet, even if I chattered away to Roberta as I tried to reacclimatise to seeing the cottage not as just ‘Mum and Dad’s’ but as my new home.

I sighed. When I’d dreamed of how my life would turn out when I’d been younger, this was so not what I’d been expecting. I’d always had some half-conscious idea that by the grand old age of thirty-seven my life would be like a John Lewis Christmas ad—perfect and stylish, grown-up and full of warmth. But instead of the loving husband and cheekily cute children I’d imagined, I was all on my own, only a cat and a few presents I’d wrapped myself in cheap Rudolph paper to keep me company. I’d even had to fill my own stocking (mostly with chocolate, save for a wrinkled satsuma I’d nicked from the fruit bowl) and put it at the end of my own bed.

I stared at the gaping hole under my Christmas tree. It seemed to grow bigger and darker the more I looked at it.

Ed had always been terrible with money but good with presents. There’d been an explosion of badly-wrapped parcels under our tree when we’d been married. Things he’d splashed out on that we probably couldn’t afford, not on a musician’s pay, anyway. I allowed myself to miss that, at least, even if I’d forbidden myself from missing the man himself any more.

My ex had been the lead singer of a band called The Shamed, who’d had one big hit and a couple of not-so-huge ones back in the early noughties. They’d been making an okay living, though, doing gigs all over the UK, especially on the university circuit.

But then a contestant on X Factor had covered one of their songs, leading to a flurry of iTunes sales and things had started to change. Ed, who’d never let common sense get in the way of his career planning, had started dreaming of bigger record deals and arena tours. He’d even boasted about pinching Take That’s comeback crown. So when the opportunity to do a late-night reality show on a minor-league cable station had come his way it had been too much to resist.

He’d spent almost three months locked up in a house that looked like a mini-version of Ikea—without the nice meatballs—battling it out with other D-list celebs for the grand prize of … well, not a ton of money, that was for sure … but, for the lure of resurrecting his profile and the band’s career.

And it had worked, thanks to an infatuation with a glamour model almost half his age. The story had made the front pages of the tabloids and internet gossip columns. Thanks to his new-found notoriety, the band had signed with a new record company and were planning a greatest hits album. Ed had got everything he’d ever wanted. It didn’t seem fair.

I sighed. That was it. I couldn’t stand staring at the tree any longer. It was coming down this evening when my sister and her family had gone home. I had to leave the past behind, stop dwelling on what couldn’t be changed and move forward.

Speaking of moving forward, it was probably time I got both myself and the house ready …

I spotted Roberta, stretched lazily out on the sofa with her eyes half-closed, and felt a stab of jealousy, but I still rubbed her tummy before I jogged up to my bedroom to get dressed.

I opened my wardrobe and sighed. I didn’t even bother perusing the left end of the rail, clothes from before the divorce: colourful, pretty and way, way too small. Instead I stared at the right-hand side of my wardrobe, where there were flowing fabrics, dark tones and a healthy amount of elastic. My ‘wardrobe of doom’, as I’d christened it because, basically, anything from it would be a good fashion choice for the Grim Reaper.

I pulled a pair of charcoal trousers from a hanger and reached for one of my ubiquitous black tops, then ran downstairs to do some last-minute tidying.

Just as I stuffed a pair of socks I’d found behind the sofa into the sideboard, the doorbell rang. I headed for the door, and on a last-moment impulse, I grabbed the scarf Candy had given me for Christmas and looped it round my neck. It provided just the right splash of colour to my black-and-grey combo, the soft pinks and neutral tones complementing it perfectly. How did she do that? If I didn’t know better I’d swear my sister had rigged the house we’d inherited from our parents with secret video cameras.

I pasted on a wide, I’m-happy-to-see-you smile, and swung the door open so enthusiastically that the wreath tied to the knocker bounced a couple of times. Standing on the step was Candy, flanked by her husband, Mike, and my niece and nephews.

My sister threw her arms around me. ‘Happy New Year!’ she said, squeezing hard, then pulled back to look at me. ‘You look nice today. Love the scarf,’ she added, with a knowing glint in her eye.

Candy, as usual, was dressed down but elegant in shades of taupe and grey, chunky silver jewellery on her fingers and at her throat. You’d never guess that she’d had three kids in the last eight years. She didn’t look any bigger than she had back in her twenties. Sometimes I tried to get cross that she’d sucked up all the skinny genes before I’d been born, but I could never manage it. Besides, as I kept chanting to myself every time I looked in the mirror, you don’t need to be skinny to be happy, right?

‘Happy New Year,’ I replied, maybe not quite as brightly. I attempted to hug my nephews—Callum, eight, and Noah, four—but they raced past my legs and into the house, probably in search of Roberta, who, most sensibly, had hidden herself in the airing cupboard as soon as she’d heard the doorbell ring.

Mike, who was carrying both a cool bag and a cardboard box full of food and drink, leaned in to kiss me on the cheek as he passed by me on his way to the kitchen, and my niece Honey (six going on sixteen) presented her cheek for me to peck as she swept past in her pink satin dress and tiara.

I closed the door and followed Mike and Candy through into the kitchen—still the well-constructed but rather orange pine units my dad had installed in the eighties—and found them unpacking enough food for a small army. Candy had made a huge lasagne and a sliced-tomato salad, and she was giving brisk instructions to Mike to turn the oven on to warm the nibbles and ciabatta. All I’d had to do was provide some wine and tiramisu, the one dessert I was capable of making without disaster.

I knew Candy’s famous lasagne was full of pancetta, cream and three kinds of Italian cheese, and I promised myself I’d only have half a portion. Which I did. It was the second helping and the generous plate of tiramisu that really blew all my good intentions out of the water.

After lunch, Mike suggested taking the kids over the village green to blow off some steam. He picked up a football and the boys cheered but Honey folded her arms and looked down at her glistening party dress, which she had insisted on putting on in honour of a visit to her favourite (and only) auntie. ‘Don’t worry, sweetie,’ Candy said, smoothing down her daughter’s dark hair. ‘You can stay behind with me and Pippa if you like.’

Honey liked, so when the whirlwind of male energy had gathered up its coats and gloves, wellies and footballs and slammed the door behind itself, Honey skipped off to see if I’d missed any of the chocolate decorations on the Christmas tree (fat chance!), while Candy got us both a nice glass of red.

We walked into the living room, where Honey had already dived under the tree to begin her search. Once again, just the sight of the blowsy floral wallpaper, the tree in the corner, all Mum’s Christmas decorations hanging just where she would have put them, hit me in the chest.

‘It’s weird, isn’t it?’ Candy said quietly beside me. ‘Them not being here. I mean, I know it’s been five years, but this is actually the first Christmas we’ve had here since …’

‘Since Dad died,’ I finished for her. We both stood there for a few seconds and then Candy wandered over to the fireplace, which had always been my favourite bit of the room. It was a Victorian cast-iron one and I’d actually made the effort to sweep out the grate and light a proper fire there this morning, exactly as my mum would have done.

I plopped down at one end of the large, squashy sofa and picked up one of her tapestried cushions, hugging it to my middle. I was becoming an expert in using soft furnishings to disguise the bulges that appeared every time I sat down.

‘At least Christmas in the village is lovely,’ Candy continued. ‘What with all the lights and the carol singing and the primary school nativity. I didn’t realise how lucky I was to have grown up with it until I’d moved away. And it must have been a great way to bump into old friends! Who have you run into since you’ve been back?’

‘Erm,’ I muttered. ‘I think a lot of people have moved away.’

An outright lie. Or, at the very least, a guess. The truth was that I had no idea who still lived here and who didn’t, because apart from going to work, I’d pretty much kept myself to myself.

If I’d been able to afford it, I’d have gone somewhere completely new. Maybe even a different country. But I hadn’t had much choice. Once our divorce was final, Ed and I had decided to put the flat we’d owned in North London on the market. Ed had already moved out—gone to live with the Tart—and I hadn’t wanted to stay behind alone in the home we’d once shared, surrounded by a lot of empty space and stale memories, so I’d come back to the village of Elmhurst, slap-bang in the commuter belt of north-west Kent, the place where I’d grown up and gone to school, where I’d learned to drive and had fallen in love for the first time.

Candy walked across the room and perused the sad little row of five Christmas cards standing guard on the mantle. When she got to the largest and most glitzy one, she paused, frowned, then picked it up and turned round to look at me.

‘Ed sent you a Christmas card? I can’t believe it!’ She stared down at it, read it again, her expression darkening.

‘Don’t be like that,’ I said, hugging my cushion gently. ‘He was just trying to be nice.’

Candy humphed loudly.

‘Just because he fell in love with … her … doesn’t mean he stopped caring about me,’ I said. ‘I know he feels terrible about how things worked out.’

This time Candy didn’t just humph, she snorted. ‘Tell me you’re not still in love with him.’

I looked away. ‘I’m not. I mean, not in the same way.’

She just stared at me. ‘After everything he did to you on that stupid TV show! You need to move on, Pip.’

‘I know,’ I said, nodding, and then I said it again, more firmly this time. ‘I’m trying. But think about how you’d feel if this happened to you and Mike … Even if you were hurt … devastated, even … you couldn’t just flick a switch and feel nothing. It takes time.’ I felt the tears begin to sting in my nostrils. ‘You need to give me more time.’

Candy put the card back on the mantelpiece and folded her arms. I could tell she wanted to go all Big Sister on me and throw it in the fire, but she resisted. I loved her just a little bit more than I already did when she changed the subject.

‘Did the last tenants leave it in an okay state?’ she asked as she plopped on to the other end of the sofa. ‘I know you had to move in quite quickly.’

I nodded. ‘They were a lovely family. It’s probably dirtier now than it was when they left.’

Candy, not wishing to incriminate herself, didn’t comment.

‘Thanks again,’ I said, ‘for agreeing to let me move in here. I won’t stay here forever. Just until I work out what I’m doing next.’

‘You needed somewhere to go once you sold the flat, and we had an empty house. It’s what families do for each other.’ She frowned. ‘And I’m really sorry.’

‘What on earth for? You’ve been more than generous. You won’t even accept the full rent from me.’

She sighed as she stared at the Christmas tree, which wobbled slightly as her daughter manoeuvred under its bottom branches. ‘For leaving you here all alone this Christmas. I didn’t realise how hard it must have been for you until just now.’

‘It was okay,’ I said, although it really hadn’t been, but none of it had been Candy’s fault.

‘You know what Mike’s mum and dad are like,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘A total nightmare. I don’t know how they stayed married for twenty years before going their separate ways. We have to have a strict rota for his parents and their respective partners for Christmases, and we’ve learned the hard way that veering from it only causes upset.’

‘It’s okay,’ I said again. ‘I was fine on my own.’

Candy sighed. ‘To be totally honest, I’d have much rather spent it with you. We trundled off down to Mike’s dad’s farmhouse, where his step-mum cooked a vegetarian nut thing that the kids refused to eat and, frankly, I didn’t blame them. It tasted like manure.’

I chuckled into my big wine glass.

‘I feel as if I should make it up to you.’

Ah, that was what the overcatering and the three bottles of prosecco had been about. Candy was feeling guilty.

I called for Honey, who was still convinced there was a reward for an intrepid and tenacious treasure hunter, and her pink satin bottom reversed from under the drooping branches of the Christmas tree. I smiled at her. ‘Pass me that little red present bag, will you, darling?’

Honey did as she was asked, then clambered on to the sofa and sat down, half on me and half on the cushion next door, and looked longingly inside the bag. ‘Is that for me?’

I smiled, remembering the bootful of colourful packages I’d delivered to her house the week before Christmas. ‘I think you’ve had plenty of presents from me already, don’t you?’

Honey batted her eyelids innocently.

‘No presents for you, I’m afraid,’ I told her. ‘It’s mine. Just a DVD, and I was thinking that if your mum really wanted to make it up to me for deserting me at Christmas—’ I paused to give Candy a meaningful look ‘—she could watch it with me. It’s miserable watching your favourite films on your own.’

Honey perked up instantly and peered into the bag. ‘Dessert?’ she asked, a longing tone in her voice. Surprising, since she’d already wolfed down a massive bowl of my tiramisu.

I laughed. ‘No, I meant “desert” not “dessert”! It means that …’ I faltered as Candy started to snicker beside me. ‘Oh, never mind what it means …’ I said, giving my sister a sharp look. ‘What it boils down to is there’s nothing to eat in there.’

Honey’s face fell.

‘Sorry, chicken. But what we do have is one of the most iconic Hollywood musicals ever made.’

Honey’s expression brightened considerably. ‘Frozen?’ she asked, with hushed reverence.

‘Top Hat,’ I corrected her firmly. ‘The songs are way better.’

The look of disbelief Honey gave me could only have come from a princess-in-training who spent hours each week in her bedroom in the midst of a swirling, imaginary snowstorm, perfecting the dramatic high notes of ‘Let It Go’.

Okay, maybe I wasn’t going to win this argument, even if I was clearly in the right. However, I had another ace up my sleeve. ‘The dresses are just as pretty,’ I added. ‘You wait and see.’

Honey looked sceptical, but she always loved the idea of doing ‘grown-up stuff’ with her mum and Auntie Pippa, so she wedged herself between Candy and I, folded her arms and stared at the blank television set, ready to be proved wrong.