‘Thanks. That was the look I was going for.’
Naomi had returned, dragging Jason behind her. ‘OK, here’s Jason . . . Jay, don’t look like that. It’ll only take a second.’
Gina slipped out of the Wendy house and went to stand behind Nick. She watched as he arranged the Hewsons into the best position, charming a smile out of self-conscious Jason, making a properly funny photo with Jason and Naomi behind the pretty windows while Willow stood proudly by the door. There was something attractive about the skilful way he kept them chatting and moving to stop them doing any ‘photo faces’ – she noted the tiny twitch of satisfaction in his expression when they all laughed at the same time and his finger moved imperceptibly, catching it.
This is a memory they’ll talk about at Willow’s wedding, thought Gina, and something tugged inside her, a feeling she didn’t want to articulate because it was so unworthy.
That won’t be me. That’s going to be Stuart, and Bryony . . . and their own blonde child in the middle. Any other day, she would have been happy, genuinely happy that her friends were so blessed, so proud of their little girl. But today she couldn’t fight the weird sensation of being on the other side of a pane of glass, watching other people playing her part in her life, and feeling further and further away, floating above herself, detached from the whole thing.
But this is where it starts, she told herself. Who knows what happens next?
‘Gina?’ Nick was nudging her to go back to the playhouse, to join in.
It brought her back to herself, and she shook her head. Nick’s camera had a habit of catching something about her she wasn’t always aware of. She didn’t want to risk her own sadness showing through her photo smile.
But then Willow’s chubby hand stretched out towards her. ‘Auntie Gina!’ She couldn’t not go.
‘Auntie Gina made the house for you,’ said Naomi, as she arranged Gina in the centre of the photograph, on the little steps that led to the pink door. ‘Isn’t she clever?’
‘You made it?’ Willow looked awestruck.
‘No, well, I . . .’
‘Ssh.’
Gina felt herself being hugged and she smiled down at Willow, not at the camera.
Afterwards, Gina and Nick wandered back to the house for a cup of tea and a plate of food to eat in the garden. They sat on the wall next to Willow’s sandpit, well away from a heated discussion about Jason’s brother’s planning-permission woes.
‘Make sure Naomi gives you a copy of that photograph,’ said Nick, breaking his birthday cake into pieces. ‘It’s one for the album.’
‘I will.’ Gina gazed across at the playhouse-shed. ‘It was a lovely moment. Thanks for taking it for them.’
‘How’s your project coming on?’ he asked. ‘Your own happy moments?’
‘Are you thinking of my hundred things? I’ve got a list on the back wall of my flat – I’m up to thirty-nine.’ Gina stopped, then confessed, ‘To be honest, it’s kind of ground to a halt. It served its purpose while I was clearing things out, making me think about what I wanted in the flat, but I’m almost done now and I don’t want to be writing “medicine cabinet” next to, I dunno, “music”.’
‘Actually, I wasn’t thinking of that – more of those photos you showed me. The ones on your phone that you were going to print out.’ He gave her a stern look. ‘Have you? Or are you just filling up your phone with lots of cloud pics?’
Gina pretended to be outraged. ‘I’ve been busy. I don’t know if you’ve noticed but you now have eco-insulation in that roof of yours.’
‘I thought so,’ said Nick, and reached into his bag. ‘Have this.’ He handed her a carrier bag. In it was the Polaroid camera and some boxes of film.
‘I can’t take this – you need it.’
‘I’ve found something else that does the same thing. I think you’d get more out of it than me.’ He indicated the films. ‘Make it your project – instead of a hundred things, take a hundred moments that make you happy. There are exactly nine boxes there, so you’ve got room for a few mistakes, but not many. Good discipline.’
‘Thank you,’ said Gina. A faint teenage excitement buzzed in her chest. ‘You know, I’ve wanted one of these since I was thirteen.’
‘Why didn’t you get one?’
‘It was an expensive gimmick, apparently.’
Nick grinned. ‘Well, there you go. And here, I’ve got a couple to get you started. If you don’t mind?’
He passed her a couple of Polaroids: in the first, Gina was accepting a cup of imaginary tea from Willow in the Wendy house. A warm orange glow surrounded them, and Gina’s face was solemn, though her eyes sparkled above the cup.
The other photo was of her with Naomi, talking by the kitchen door. Gina hadn’t noticed Nick take it, possibly because she was giggling and so was Naomi – proper unself-conscious double-chinned giggling. Naomi’s hand rested on Gina’s upper arm, Gina’s head was tilted and her neck looked long and white against the red brick of the wall.
‘Have you been watching me?’ said Gina, surprised. Or flattered?
‘What do you take me for?’ Now Nick pretended to look affronted. ‘A paparazzo? No, you said you were wanted moments that made you happy, and I knew you wouldn’t be able to take photos of yourself so I took them for you. When I thought you looked happiest – with your best mate and your other little mate.’
Gina examined the white-framed images. The woman in her clothes didn’t look like her. Or, rather, it didn’t look like she usually looked in photos – a bit stiff, head held at an angle, shoulders hunched to hide her chest. In these, she seemed relaxed, longer somehow. Softer.
Maybe it was the old film: the photos could have come from a different time.
‘It doesn’t look like me.’
‘It does. You’re just one of those people who really change their expression when a camera comes out,’ Nick observed.
‘Am I?’
‘Yup. In fact, you change your expression when you think someone’s watching you, even when there isn’t a camera around.’
‘Doesn’t everyone?’
Nick held her gaze. His grey eyes were curious, but gentle, moving across her face, reading it. ‘Some people do it more than others.’
The moment stretched out between them, filled with the distant sounds of music coming from the kitchen, and pretend tea parties from the playhouse. Gina wondered if she should try to make her expression blank, but there didn’t seem any point. Nick, she guessed, could already see what was in her mind: it wasn’t so much that he was reading it as making her look at some of the thoughts she’d been trying to ignore.
He pressed his lips together, then said, ‘Gina, there’s—’ just as another voice, a worried female one, said, ‘Gina!’
Naomi was hurrying along the grass towards them, and Gina slid the photos into her back pocket. ‘What? Are we out of imaginary tea?’
‘I’m so sorry, I don’t know what to do.’ Naomi folded her arms, then unfolded them. She looked angry and anxious. ‘Stuart’s just turned up. His car’s outside. Jason told him not to come till five because you said you were going to leave by half four, but he’s here.’
Something cold gripped Gina inside. Focus, she told herself. Focus.
‘Did you invite both of them?’ she asked.
‘Of course not! Jason can invite Stuart if he has to but I’m not having . . .’ Naomi trailed away as she turned her head towards the house and saw something that made her stop.
Stuart had appeared at the back door: a handsome half-stranger in his casual weekend jeans, the new beard. The new leather jacket.
Gina closed her eyes and willed her face to remain still, like stone, so she could hide behind it. I don’t want to be a ghost in people’s lives, she thought, with sudden determination. Having to slip away when Stuart arrives, him having to wait until I’ve gone. This is my life too. I have to be here, I have to face him. Then I can go.
It’ll be awkward for him too
, she told herself. I need to be the one who’s gracious.
‘Gina, do you want a lift back?’ Nick jangled his keys. ‘I’m heading off now – Tony’s filled me in on summer houses. Got some editing to do.’
‘Oh . . . no,’ breathed Naomi, and Gina turned back to see something that made her stomach sink.
A young woman had appeared behind Stuart, clutching his hand in a proprietorial way. She was blonde, not particularly pretty, fit and tanned. But Gina wasn’t looking at her longer-than-average nose or the swallow tattoo on her wrist: her gaze was drawn by the stripy T-shirt that emphasised the small but definite shape of Stuart’s new life. Willow’s birthday cake repeated at the back of Gina’s throat, a sharp scratch of acid reflux.
The woman smiled hopefully, showing small, uneven teeth: it was a nervous smile, not a triumphant one, and Stuart started to smile too, but when he saw Gina’s expression, it froze on his face.
It’s over, Gina thought, as her chest filled with grief, but there was unexpected relief at the heart of it. She’d never have to wonder what it looked like again: Stuart and his new life without her. That was it. It had started: he was moving down a different path away from her.
Gina lifted her hand towards Stuart and Bryony and waved stiffly, forcing a smile to her face. Then she turned back to Nick, hoping the white noise inside her wasn’t too obvious to his sharp eyes. ‘A lift would be great,’ she said, in a voice that didn’t sound like her own, and she lifted her chin as she walked towards the garden gate, away from the house.
Chapter Seventeen
ITEM: a huge framed orange print of a Gone With the Wind movie poster, moved from Gina’s student set, to her first house share, then to the guest bedroom of Dryden Road
Little Mallow, October 2002
Gina is sitting outside the Athertons’ house in Janet’s Fiesta, watching the bay windows for signs of life. It’s hard to see much because the trees provide a barrier and the front garden is long. So far, she’s spotted a couple of shadows passing behind the curtains in the top left-hand bedroom but that’s enough to reassure her that someone is in.
She’s here because four weeks have passed without a single letter returned to her mother’s house. Janet’s pleased, but not for the same reason as Gina. No letters mean Kit’s maybe reading them, at last.
‘I hope this means you can draw a line,’ she observed, but when Gina opened her mouth to explain that, no, far from giving up, it was a very good sign, she had held up her hands. ‘We’ve all been through a nightmare, Georgina. But there comes a point when you have to get on with your life.’
Gina doesn’t see the point in trying to make her mother see that the life she wants is with Kit, and now that’s half gone, she’s stuck. Poor Terry is dead; Janet has no choice but to move on. But Kit isn’t. Kit’s still here. It’s too awful to say aloud, but it’s painfully clear to Gina that there’s a big difference.
Their shared grief hasn’t brought them closer. Just as Gina thinks there isn’t a comparison between their situations, Janet is livid at any suggestion that Gina’s loss is anything like hers.
Gina sits up in the car as the front door opens and Anita Atherton appears, in a calf-length grey dress covered with a long cardigan, a plaited leather belt slung around her narrow hips. Gina’s timidly impressed at how stylish she looks, even in the current circumstances. Her long hair’s swept into a bun, and she cuts a tall figure against the door, just as she did the first time Kit brought Gina home.
Anita pauses for a moment, then fixes her eyes on Gina, and starts marching across the garden.
She gets out of the car, wanting to meet her halfway, but Anita’s quicker: she’s at the gate before Gina can reach it, barring the way to the house. ‘What are you doing here?’ she hisses.
Gina summons up all her politeness and bravery. ‘I’ve come to see Kit.’
‘You’ve come to see Kit.’ The voice is neutral but there’s a fine sheen of anger shimmering around his mother, the way heat bends the air around a fire. ‘Why?’
‘To talk to him about my letters. I know he’s been reading them. He’s been getting them.’
‘And what makes you think that?’
‘Because . . . because I haven’t been getting them back.’ As she says it, Gina realises how flimsy her hopes are.
Anita gives a completely mirthless laugh. ‘Or have you considered that maybe I’ve had better things to do lately than return them to you?’
Gina is floundering, desperate to say the right thing. But she doesn’t know what the right thing is any more. Until this happened, she did. She had a good girl’s knack for pleasing but now everything she says seems to be wrong, and she desperately doesn’t want to offend this woman any more than she already has.
But he was mine too, she cries inside her head. My future. We should be in London right now. Or driving across America. Or swimming in Sydney.
The wind shivers through the trees around them, an early morning chill, and shakes some of the copper leaves from the branches. They float lazily down on an invisible breeze, all the time in the world.
Gina tries to make her face appealing. ‘Can’t I see him? Not even for ten minutes? Just to say—’
‘To say what?’
Sorry? I love you? I haven’t stopped thinking about you for a single hour of a single day?
Gina had prepared what she was going to say as she was driving there, but now she’s faced with Anita Atherton’s scorn, her impassioned speeches seem babyish, and she’s ashamed but still determined to battle on because with nothing to lose. she doesn’t care how stupid she looks.
‘To say that it doesn’t matter what . . . that I love him . . .’
Anita’s patience is running out. ‘I think that would be the absolute worst thing for everyone. I meant what I said at the hospital, Gina. It’s better this way.’
‘Then just tell me how he is!’ Gina begs. ‘Please. I need to know. Doesn’t he ask about me? Doesn’t he wonder why I’m not writing to him?’
It’s the not knowing that’s driving Gina mad. No one will tell her anything. She has no memory of the sequence of events that abruptly curtailed the happiest day of her life, and now she doesn’t even know what’s happened to Kit. She’s run through every possibility in her mind since the hospital: Kit partially paralysed but with the hope of recovery; Kit on crutches, learning to walk; and, her favourite, Kit still asleep like Sleeping Beauty, waiting for the torn muscles and nerves in his body to knit back together, to sit up in bed suddenly one day, right as rain. It does happen.
Gina swallows. What’s been tormenting her in the middle of the night is the idea that he might have no memory of her, of their cinematic, once-in-a-lifetime love – the favourite songs, the gigs, the in-jokes, the laughter in her car, the experimental spag-bol dinners, the skinny dipping, the midnight phone conversations, the happiest, best years of her life that only Kit knows. She can look at Kit in any state and still love him, as long as he can remember that. Without it, without him, they’re gone, and so is she, because Gina knows she’ll never be as happy again, not without him.
Anita stares at her, pitying, then reaches into the deep pocket of her cardigan and brings out four of Gina’s letters, held together with a red elastic post-office band. It bends them, creasing the paper as if they’re junk mail. ‘The reason you haven’t had your letters back is because we’ve been away.’ She sounds as if she’s said these words too many times now, to too many people. ‘We saw a specialist in California who works with spinal-cord injuries, and I’m pleased to say the signs are promising.’
‘He’s making a recovery?’
Anita’s face twists. ‘He’s never going to walk again, if that’s what you’re asking. He’s probably never going to live an independent life. He’s never going to dance, or play real tennis, or swim. All the things he loved doing most. But he’s alive.’
Gina didn’t even know Kit played real tennis.
She was one of the things he loved mo
st.
‘But hasn’t he asked about me at all?’ she blurts out, and is ashamed at once.
Anita’s shoulders rise up around her ears and her whole body tenses beneath the woollen clothes. She covers her face with her hands. Gina is left looking at the tight tendons of Anita’s neck, and the hands that have aged so fast, the skin crêping. Her rings have gone.
After only a moment the hands are lowered and Anita fixes her with a bitter look.
‘Please don’t! He’s important to me!’ Gina is forcing out the words through the ringing in her ears. ‘I know how you feel.’
‘How can you know how I feel? You don’t have the first idea. Not until you lose something precious to you, and even then I don’t know if you’d understand.’
Gina wants to say, Yes, I do. I lost my father. And my stepfather. And the love of my life. They’re dead, and Kit’s going to live. If she were older, more confident, she would say it but something in Anita’s face makes her feel small and the pain just backs up inside her.
‘It’s because of you that Kit’s where he is now.’ Anita pauses, to let the words sink in. ‘Don’t come here again. And please. No more letters. Get on with your life.’
Gina’s heart breaks inside her, a sharp, winding pain, and she can’t think of a single thing to say as Anita walks back up the path and closes the front door behind her.
Gina stands there. Because of me. All this is because of me.
Gina woke on the Sunday morning after Willow’s party with a headache.
It was raining outside, hard drops clattering loudly on the windows, but the headache was her own fault. After Nick had dropped her at home, Gina had tidied up two more boxes of junk, chucking out the entire contents without even looking at them, trying to avoid the mental image of pregnant Bryony, daddy Stuart, lonely old Gina. Meanwhile the knot in her stomach grew bigger and bigger until eventually she couldn’t ignore it. She’d drunk a bottle of wine and sobbed with frustration on the sofa while Buzz hid in his basket, then fallen into bed fully dressed at about ten.