‘What’s under here?’ asked Lorcan, lifting one edge of the sheet. ‘That’s one way to ignore cracks in the . . . Oh. Sorry.’
‘Take it down,’ said Juliet bravely. ‘It’s got to come off sometime.’
‘Are you sure?’ Lorcan looked at her, checking her reaction. ‘I feel like I’m coming here in hobnailed boots.’
She nodded, and slowly, he pulled out the drawing pins she’d hammered in with a book, and the sheet fell away to reveal the jumbled frames, grouped into a haphazard mass of memories, the quick heads-squeezed-together, arm’s-length snaps formalised in gilt frames like butterflies. Ben’s easy-going smile never changing, though his blond mop of hair went from streaky surfer to cropped to the last, almost grown-up style. Juliet never really looked at herself, but now she saw herself through Lorcan’s eyes; she started off as a baby-faced teenager, all apple cheeks and home henna jobs, but by the end her face had sharpened into adulthood, and her mousey curls were more or less tamed.
What didn’t change was the connection between her and Ben in every shot, even when they weren’t looking at each other. They were always touching – their hands, their foreheads, their shoulders.
‘That’s a grand wall of photographs,’ said Lorcan. ‘They must go back a bit. Is that Glastonbury you’re at there?’ He pointed to the top one: her and Ben with stupid jester hats and blissed-out expressions.
‘Yes, our first holiday away, after our A-levels.’ First holiday, first camping, first serious bout of cystitis. Trampled grass, Jack Daniel’s and supermarket cola, early-morning hangover sex, all leaping out at her from their heavy-lidded eyes.
Juliet ran a hand over her mouth. She’d told the same stories to so many people – how they met, how he’d proposed – that it had stopped meaning very much. But now, in this room, telling them to a stranger who’d only know what she described, she felt weak. How could you sum up a marriage in a few words?
You couldn’t, she decided.
‘Um, basically, I don’t think there’s anything wrong in here. It just needs sloshing with new paint.’
‘Well . . .’ Lorcan pulled a face, his wide mouth stretching in apology, and pointed to the wall behind the fireplace.
‘What?’ She was already turning to show him the main spare room.
‘There’s that crack?’
Juliet had to step into the room to see what he was talking about, but when she looked, she could see it: a crack running from the side of the fireplace, up the flue and across the ceiling. Why hadn’t she seen that before? Had it always been there? Had it happened recently?
‘Oh . . . shit.’
‘Might be nothing,’ said Lorcan. ‘Old houses are full of cracked plaster. They shift about in cold weather, you know. But you should get it checked out – wouldn’t want to find out it’s something serious.’
‘Like?’
He paused. ‘Well, subsidence? Damp?’
Juliet’s heart sank. That was something else she didn’t need, discovering that the surveyor had missed some mineshaft under the house, or something.
‘I’m sure it’s just cosmetic,’ said Lorcan, reassuringly. ‘Only it’s best not to ignore cracks and hope they’ll go away. In my experience, at least.’
Juliet raised her chin at him. ‘Still think this is a happy house, or are you changing your mind?’
‘Course not,’ said Lorcan, retreating to the landing. ‘It’s a good family house – look at all this space . . .’
She winced. ‘Not that I need it now.’
‘That doesn’t change the house,’ he said evenly.
‘Spare room,’ said Juliet, flicking her hand towards the bedroom opposite. ‘Spare spare room over there. And . . .’ The little room tucked in between the bathroom and the airing cupboard was going to be the nursery, though she and Ben hadn’t actually said that aloud. Warm and cosy, more like a nest than a room.
‘Dressing room?’ offered Lorcan. ‘You could knock through and make an en suite if you wanted. A wet room? Emer’s desperate for a wet room. Although the state Salvador leaves the bathroom in, you’d think she had one already.’
‘I might think about that,’ said Juliet. She peered at his notebook, now several pages in, all covered with his neat handwriting and sketches. For some reason she hadn’t expected a builder’s notes to be so precise. ‘God, it’s mounting up.’
‘Sure, it’s not.’ Lorcan paused. ‘OK, it is. But that’s what you get for buying a four-bed Victorian house. It’s not an overnighter.’
‘How long?’
‘I’ve barely looked at the downstairs yet . . .’
‘How long? Be honest.’
Lorcan gave her a level look, and his eyes weren’t flirtatious now. They were serious, as if he understood the vulnerable position she was in. ‘Six months? That’s if you can keep your eye on what’s going on, or not. Builders have a habit of taking on a couple of jobs at once and overlapping them.’
Juliet’s heart sank. That would take until Christmas, if she started it tomorrow. Way beyond the one year deadline that dominated her thoughts like a finishing line.
The thought of having anyone in her house for more than an hour made her feel crotchety. Six months would drive her absolutely insane. For one mad second she fantasised about handing her mum the keys and what was left of Ben’s life insurance to pay the builders, then buying one of those round-the-world tickets, but that would mean leaving Ben. And Minton. And Time Team. And all the other tiny anchors keeping her from whirling off into the darkness.
‘Were you hoping I’d say three weeks?’ he enquired. ‘Because I think you’ve been watching a bit too much daytime telly.’
‘Why do you keep going on about daytime telly?’ demanded Juliet defensively. ‘I don’t spend my whole life watching daytime bloody television.’
‘That’s not what your mam says.’ He was smiling gently, but the words cut Juliet with an unexpected sharpness. ‘She says you can predict the actual sale prices on Bargain Hunt before the auctioneer comes on.’
‘That was one programme. One lucky guess. And my mother has no idea what I need to do to get through the . . .’ Juliet heard her voice rising, along with the pounding in her chest.
She closed her eyes and tried to find Ben’s voice. Deep breath. One thing at a time.
That’s what had got her through the funeral, the floating weeks after: fixing on one thing at a time. If everyone was going to be on her case now about the unfinished house, then fine. It could be another handrail to lead her through these weird, empty days until she felt ready to face the world again. She’d just have to do it exactly the way Ben would have wanted, right down to the old brass door handles he’d got so excited about.
When she opened her eyes, Lorcan was rubbing his forehead with his long fingers. ‘I just keep saying the wrong thing to you,’ he groaned.
Juliet considered playing her widow card and flouncing downstairs, but she felt unexpectedly sorry for him. He’d only repeated what her mother had said, probably thinking it was a family joke. Her mum had been right; the fuses incident aside, he was a nice guy. He hadn’t sucked his teeth once, and when his phone had rung, he’d left it in his back pocket.
‘Sorry,’ she said, with a burst of honesty. ‘Sometimes I think I’m fine, and then I realise I’m not.’
‘I know,’ he said, as if he understood. ‘It’s not easy.’
Juliet didn’t want the conversation to go any further in that direction. The prospect of digging into the house was more than enough to deal with. ‘OK, so that’s upstairs. Downstairs is a bit more complicated . . .’
Lorcan and Juliet made their way around the ground floor as he talked her through the options she had, and she nodded and concentrated, forcing herself to ask questions at first, but then realising they were coming of their own accord.
The more Lorcan talked, sweeping his hand around to describe hidden lighting or paint effects, the easier he made it sound, and Juliet was surprised to find her
self wishing some of it was done already.
‘. . . Yeah, sure we can put blinds in here,’ he was saying, then cocked his head. ‘Is that your doorbell?’
‘I can’t hear anything.’
Minton could. He’d stopped following them and was staring towards the front door, his white ears cocked.
Then the doorbell rang, a long peal like someone leaning on it.
‘Excuse me,’ said Juliet, and went down the hall.
When she opened the front door, the two little girls from next door stood on the step, grass seeds and dead petals in their tangled mops of copper hair.
It was the first time Juliet had seen the twins up close; she had no idea how old they were – seven? Eight? How could you tell if you didn’t have kids? – but they looked practically identical, only one had a Led Zeppelin T-shirt over her gypsy skirt, and the other had Bad Company. Both had round blue eyes that blinked from behind gold-rimmed glasses.
‘Is Lorcan there, please?’ said one in a pretty sing-song accent that was half Irish, half London.
‘Yes, he’s . . .’ Juliet found herself in the unfamiliar position of being unsettled by someone who only came up to her waist. ‘I’ll just . . .’
Lorcan appeared behind her. ‘What do you two holy terrors want now?’
‘Mum says can you come home, please – she’s a jar she needs opening,’ said the Led Zeppelin girl.
‘Tell her to bang it on the side of the counter,’ said Lorcan.
‘She’s done that. She says she fecking nearly broke the counter.’
Lorcan turned to Juliet and looked apologetic. ‘I’m sorry, would you excuse me for—’ Then he frowned and turned back to the girls. ‘Roisin! Don’t say “fecking”!’
Roisin’s porcelain brow wrinkled. ‘I could say worse. I could say—’
Lorcan waggled a finger and made a scary face. Roisin didn’t seem very scared.
‘She could say “bleeding”,’ said the other.
Roisin looked at her sister, as scandalised as a Mother Superior, but not as convincing. ‘Florrie!’
She turned back to Lorcan with a coy look that seemed to have been learned from someone much older. ‘Aren’t you going to introduce us?’
‘Juliet, I can only apologise.’ Lorcan raised his hands. ‘This is Roisin Kelly, the one with the language, and this is Florrie Kelly, with the . . . What is that, Florrie?’
‘A mouse.’ Florrie held up the furry object she’d got out of her skirt pocket and showed its pink nose to Lorcan. ‘I found him in the garden.’
Minton let out a sharp bark and would have jerked forward if Juliet hadn’t grabbed on to his collar and lifted him off the ground. Tucked under her arm, he wriggled crossly.
‘Put that away,’ said Lorcan. ‘Before he gets eaten.’
‘Will you come and open this fecking jar, Lorcan?’ repeated Roisin. ‘Because we won’t get any lunch if you don’t. It’s pesto.’
Juliet checked her watch. Half twelve. She’d missed everything up to Bargain Hunt. The morning had gone by really quickly.
‘Do you want to come with me and see Emer’s bathroom?’ he asked. ‘I could show you better than I can describe it.’
‘Lorcan . . .’ The little girl tugged his T-shirt.
‘No, it’s OK,’ said Juliet. ‘I’ve . . . I’ve got to take Minton out.’
It was true, but as she said it, she felt a glimmer of something that she couldn’t entirely put her finger on.
It was only when Juliet was halfway round the park that she let herself admit the truth: actually, despite the noise and the bad start with Lorcan, she wanted to go next door, but for the first time in years she felt shy.
Chapter 8
When Louise and Juliet were teenagers, Juliet used to bounce into Louise’s room while she was doing her homework and get her to score her in magazine quizzes – the sort that told you what your Dating Style was, or which Friends character you were most like. Juliet had a sneaky habit of changing her answers, mid-stream, if she thought she was headed in a direction she didn’t fancy, but Louise was hardline.
Juliet, being pretty straightforward and guileless, loved being told what she was ‘really’ like, although Louise could have told her without ringing a, b or c. Juliet was simply the nicest person she’d ever met. A typical Cancerian, as the magazines would say; the colour yellow; a Labradoodle.
Louise, on the other hand, didn’t bother with the quizzes because she knew exactly what she thought about everything from nuclear power to adultery, via the Euro and reality television, thanks to six years on the school debating team. She’d applied the same (typical Virgo; navy blue; horse) analysis to herself and she knew what she was, flaws and all. Methodical, hard-working, predictable, groomed. She’d never be popular or cutely tousled, like Juliet, but Louise was happy with the certainties in her life. Her ambition was to be as happily married as her mum, but with an interesting job, like her dad.
Nothing much changed in the intervening years: she found a career that ticked all her ‘need for neatness’ boxes, and a husband who made her melt inside in a surprisingly messy way, but who liked a clean bath as much as she did.
But that was before Toby was born. In the space of two years, things had happened that cracked every assumption she had. The truth slowly dawning on Louise was that, these days, she didn’t really know what sort of woman she was at all any more.
The changes had started as soon as the second blue line appeared on the test, just two months after she and Peter had decided that they’d done all the holidays they wanted and were ready for a baby. Louise had assumed she’d feel serene, but actually she’d felt panicky. While Peter was still hugging her and crying, Louise could feel herself becoming someone new, herself and someone else at the same time, someone vitally important, and yet secondary to the life splitting and reforming inside her.
She’d tried to explain the strange dislocation to Peter, but he just said, ‘You’ll always be first to me,’ which wasn’t the point.
It didn’t help that her pregnancy coincided with Techmate’s breakthrough sale to a bigger software company, and Peter had gone from being a designer to a company director overnight, and nearly doubled his hours at work. He’d made it to both scans, where he’d spent more time looking at the ultrasound machines than at Toby, but the deal had reached a tricky stage around the time of the delivery, and then in the weeks that followed, Peter’s paternity leave was cut so short that he sometimes called her Jason by mistake as he fell into bed, earplugs in.
Louise didn’t like to confess that she found one day alone with Toby more stressful and frustrating than a whole week in court. If it hadn’t been for the NCT group, Louise thought she’d have gone mad altogether. They’d stayed in contact after the babies were born, carrying on meeting up mainly as an excuse to get out of the house, and those post-baby NCT lunches had been fun. Apart from Organic Karen, who argued with everyone, including the surgeon performing her C-section, the group turned out to be a really nice, normal bunch of women,.
Rachel ran the rescue centre, an ex-Londoner who wore wellies and Chanel nail varnish and still seemed surprised to be a mother. Paula was a physio at the private hospital, whose fourth girl was born the same day as Toby and who had them all doing pelvic-floor exercises; and Susie was a stay-at-home mum with the miracle baby and only half a Fallopian tube.
And Michael, that rare thing – the NCT dad. At first he’d been there with his partner, Anna, but increasingly Anna hadn’t come. She’d seemed stressed and didn’t join in with the groans about stomachs like pizza dough and sleep deprivation. Louise envied Anna at first, for having a man who’d make time to come along, but her eagle eyes spotted the cracks in the body language before their baby was even born; they barely touched when they were there together, and she was always complaining about him when they were apart. That surprised Louise: Michael seemed like a very hands-on father, always making his baby girl laugh. He made her laugh too, with his confident, se
lf-deprecating jokes. And most flattering of all, he didn’t just talk to her about Calpol.
One day, on their way out of the coffee shop, she’d asked casually, ‘How’s Anna? We never see her,’ and he’d looked strained, but had said, ‘She’s fine. But we’ve split up. We’re going to co-parent.’
‘But you can’t leave us!’ Louise had blurted out, then blushed at the way it had come out. ‘Sorry, what a selfish reaction! I mean, I’m really sorry . . .’
Michael had looked at her. ‘I won’t be leaving you lot,’ he’d said. ‘Where else would I find out where to get the best nipple cream?’
That had been a while ago. They didn’t refer to Anna in the group, and treated Michael more like one of the mums, albeit taller and better at collapsing a buggy with a single kick.
But Louise didn’t think of him like that at all; to her, Michael was a lifeline to the old Louise, who had opinions about Virginia Woolf, not Gina Ford. The conversation they had on the way back through the park after lunch slowly became the highlight of her monotonous week, and she stored up all the funny observations and questions that Peter didn’t bother to listen to in the hour or so of sentient non-baby-tending time they shared at the end of the day.
All he ever wanted to talk about when he came home was Toby. Which, much as she adored her beautiful boy, was the only thing Louise didn’t want to talk about.
It was on one of those walks back from lunch that Louise had told Michael about the cherry tree saplings Ben had dropped in the previous day, and his plan to grow them for her sister.
‘That’s such a romantic idea,’ he’d said at once, without prompting. ‘And it’s like love, isn’t it, coming and going. Flowering, then lying dormant, then flowering again.’
‘I’d rather have an evergreen, if you’re going to be metaphorical about it,’ she’d replied. ‘Not flashy, but year-round. No dead bits.’