Still Me
Page 52
18
Neither Sam nor my parents had expected to see me so for the next two days it was easy to hide in the flat and pretend I wasn’t there. I wasn’t ready to see anyone. I wasn’t ready to speak to anyone. When Sam texted I ignored it, reasoning that he would believe I was running around like a headless chicken back in New York. I found myself gazing repeatedly at his two messages – What do you fancy doing Christmas Eve? Church service? Or too tired? and Are we seeing each other Boxing Day? – and I would marvel that this man, this most straightforward and honourable of men, had acquired such a blatant ability to lie to me.
For those two days I painted on a smile while Thom was in the flat, folding away the sofa-bed as he chatted over breakfast and disappearing into the shower. The moment he had gone I would return to the sofa and lie there, gazing up at the ceiling, tears trickling from the corners of my eyes, or coldly mulling over the many ways I appeared to have got it all wrong.
Had I leapt head first into a relationship with Sam because I was still grieving Will? Had I ever really known him at all? We see what we want to see, after all, especially when blinded by physical attraction. Had he done what he did because of Josh? Because of Agnes’s pregnancy test? Did there even have to be a reason? I no longer trusted my own judgement enough to tell.
For once, Treena didn’t badger me to get up or do something constructive. She shook her head, disbelieving, and cursed Sam out of Thom’s earshot. Even in the depths of my misery I was left mulling over Eddie’s apparent ability to instil in my sister something resembling empathy.
She didn’t once say it wasn’t a huge surprise, given I was living so many thousands of miles away, or that I must have done something to push him into Katie Ingram’s arms, or that any of this was inevitable. She listened when I told her the events that had led up to that night, she made sure I ate, washed and got dressed. And although she wasn’t much of a drinker, she brought home two bottles of wine and said she thought I was allowed a couple of days of wallowing (but added that if I was sick I had to clear it up myself).
By the time Christmas Eve arrived, I had grown a hard shell, a carapace. I felt like an ice statue. At some point, I realized, I was going to have to speak to him, but I wasn’t ready yet. I wasn’t sure I ever would be.
‘What will you do?’ said Treena, sitting on the loo while I had a bath. She wasn’t seeing Eddie until Christmas Day, and was painting her toenails a pale pink in preparation, although she wouldn’t admit as much. Out in the living room Thom had the television turned up to deafening volume and was leaping on and off the sofa in a pre-Christmas frenzy.
‘I was thinking I might just tell him I missed the flight. And that we’d speak after Christmas.’
She pulled a face. ‘You don’t just want to speak to him? He’s not going to believe that.’
‘I don’t really care what he believes right now. I just want to have Christmas with my family and no drama.’ I sank under the water so that I couldn’t hear Treena shouting at Thom to turn the sound down.
He didn’t believe me. His text message said: What? How could you miss the flight?
– I just did, I typed. I’ll see you Boxing Day.
I observed too late I hadn’t put any kisses on it. There was a long silence, and then a single word in response: Okay.
Treena drove us to Stortfold, Thom bouncing in the rear seat for the full hour and a half it took us to get there. We listened to Christmas carols on the radio and spoke little. We were a mile out of town when I thanked her for her consideration, and she whispered that it wasn’t for me: Eddie hadn’t actually met Mum and Dad either so she was feeling nauseous at the thought of Christmas Day.
‘It’ll be fine,’ I told her. The smile she flashed me wasn’t very convincing.
‘C’mon. They liked that accountant bloke you dated earlier this year. And to be honest, Treen, you’ve been single so long I think you could probably bring home anyone who wasn’t Attila the Hun right now and they’d be delighted.’
‘Well, that theory is about to be tested.’
We pulled up before I could say any more and I checked my eyes, which were still pea-sized from the amount of crying I’d done, and climbed out of the car. My mother burst out of the front door and ran down the path, like a sprinter off the starting blocks. She threw her arms around me, holding me so tightly I could feel her heart thumping.
‘Look at you!’ she exclaimed, holding me at arms’ length before pulling me in again. She pushed a lock of hair from my face and turned to my father, who stood on the step, his arms crossed, beaming. ‘How wonderful you look! Bernard! See how grand she looks! Oh, we’ve missed you so much! Have you lost weight? You look like you’ve lost weight. You look tired. You need to eat something. Come indoors. I’ll bet they didn’t give you breakfast on that plane. I’ve heard it’s all powdered egg anyhow.’
She hugged Thom, and before my father could step forward, she grabbed my bags and marched back up the path, beckoning us all to follow.
‘Hello, sweetheart,’ said Dad, softly, and I stepped into his arms. As they closed around me, I finally allowed myself to exhale.
Granddad hadn’t made it as far as the step. He had had another small stroke, Mum whispered, and now had trouble standing up or walking, so spent most of his daylight hours in the upright chair in the living room. (‘We didn’t want to worry you.’) He was dressed smartly in a shirt and pullover in honour of the occasion and smiled lopsidedly when I walked in. He held up a shaking hand and I hugged him, noting with some distant part of me how much smaller he seemed.
But, then, everything seemed smaller. My parents’ house, with its twenty-year-old wallpaper, its artwork chosen less for aesthetic reasons than because it had been given by someone nice or covered certain dents in the wall, its sagging three-piece suite, its tiny dining area, where the chairs hit the wall if you pushed them back too far, and a ceiling light that started only a few inches above my father’s head. I found myself comparing it distantly to the grand apartment with its acres of polished floors, its huge, ornate ceilings, the clamorous sweep of Manhattan outside our door. I had thought I might feel comforted at being home.
Instead I felt untethered, as if suddenly it occurred to me that, at the moment, I belonged in neither place.
We ate a light supper of roast beef, potatoes, Yorkshire puddings and trifle, just a little something Mum had ‘knocked together’ before tomorrow’s main event. Dad was keeping the turkey in the shed as it wouldn’t fit in the fridge and went out to check every half an hour that it hadn’t fallen into the clutches of Houdini, next door’s cat. Mum gave us a rundown on the various tragedies that had befallen our neighbours: ‘Well, of course, that was before Andrew’s shingles. He showed me his stomach – put me quite off my Weetabix – and I’ve told Dymphna she needs to put those feet up before the baby’s born. Honestly, her varicose veins are like a B-road map of the Chilterns. Did I tell you Mrs Kemp’s father died? He’s the one did four years for armed robbery before they discovered it had been that bloke from the post office who had the same hair plugs.’ Mum rattled on.
It was only when she was clearing the plates that Dad leant over to me and said, ‘Would you believe she’s nervous?’
‘Nervous of what?’
‘You. All your achievements. She was half afraid you wouldn’t want to come back here. That you’d spend Christmas with your fella and head straight back to New York.’
‘Why would I want to do that?’
He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. She thought you might have outgrown us. I told her she was being daft. Don’t take that the wrong way, love. She’s bloody proud of you. She prints out all your pictures and puts them in a scrapbook and bores the neighbours rigid showing them off. To be honest, she bores me rigid, and I’m related to you.’ He grinned and squeezed my shoulder.
I felt briefly ashamed at how much time I’d intended spending at Sam’s. I’d planned to leave Mum to handle all the Christmas stuff, my family and Granddad, like I always did.
I left Treena and Thom with Dad and took the rest of the plates through to the kitchen where Mum and I washed up in companionable silence for a while. She turned to me. ‘You do look tired, love. Have you the jetlag?’
Neither Sam nor my parents had expected to see me so for the next two days it was easy to hide in the flat and pretend I wasn’t there. I wasn’t ready to see anyone. I wasn’t ready to speak to anyone. When Sam texted I ignored it, reasoning that he would believe I was running around like a headless chicken back in New York. I found myself gazing repeatedly at his two messages – What do you fancy doing Christmas Eve? Church service? Or too tired? and Are we seeing each other Boxing Day? – and I would marvel that this man, this most straightforward and honourable of men, had acquired such a blatant ability to lie to me.
For those two days I painted on a smile while Thom was in the flat, folding away the sofa-bed as he chatted over breakfast and disappearing into the shower. The moment he had gone I would return to the sofa and lie there, gazing up at the ceiling, tears trickling from the corners of my eyes, or coldly mulling over the many ways I appeared to have got it all wrong.
Had I leapt head first into a relationship with Sam because I was still grieving Will? Had I ever really known him at all? We see what we want to see, after all, especially when blinded by physical attraction. Had he done what he did because of Josh? Because of Agnes’s pregnancy test? Did there even have to be a reason? I no longer trusted my own judgement enough to tell.
For once, Treena didn’t badger me to get up or do something constructive. She shook her head, disbelieving, and cursed Sam out of Thom’s earshot. Even in the depths of my misery I was left mulling over Eddie’s apparent ability to instil in my sister something resembling empathy.
She didn’t once say it wasn’t a huge surprise, given I was living so many thousands of miles away, or that I must have done something to push him into Katie Ingram’s arms, or that any of this was inevitable. She listened when I told her the events that had led up to that night, she made sure I ate, washed and got dressed. And although she wasn’t much of a drinker, she brought home two bottles of wine and said she thought I was allowed a couple of days of wallowing (but added that if I was sick I had to clear it up myself).
By the time Christmas Eve arrived, I had grown a hard shell, a carapace. I felt like an ice statue. At some point, I realized, I was going to have to speak to him, but I wasn’t ready yet. I wasn’t sure I ever would be.
‘What will you do?’ said Treena, sitting on the loo while I had a bath. She wasn’t seeing Eddie until Christmas Day, and was painting her toenails a pale pink in preparation, although she wouldn’t admit as much. Out in the living room Thom had the television turned up to deafening volume and was leaping on and off the sofa in a pre-Christmas frenzy.
‘I was thinking I might just tell him I missed the flight. And that we’d speak after Christmas.’
She pulled a face. ‘You don’t just want to speak to him? He’s not going to believe that.’
‘I don’t really care what he believes right now. I just want to have Christmas with my family and no drama.’ I sank under the water so that I couldn’t hear Treena shouting at Thom to turn the sound down.
He didn’t believe me. His text message said: What? How could you miss the flight?
– I just did, I typed. I’ll see you Boxing Day.
I observed too late I hadn’t put any kisses on it. There was a long silence, and then a single word in response: Okay.
Treena drove us to Stortfold, Thom bouncing in the rear seat for the full hour and a half it took us to get there. We listened to Christmas carols on the radio and spoke little. We were a mile out of town when I thanked her for her consideration, and she whispered that it wasn’t for me: Eddie hadn’t actually met Mum and Dad either so she was feeling nauseous at the thought of Christmas Day.
‘It’ll be fine,’ I told her. The smile she flashed me wasn’t very convincing.
‘C’mon. They liked that accountant bloke you dated earlier this year. And to be honest, Treen, you’ve been single so long I think you could probably bring home anyone who wasn’t Attila the Hun right now and they’d be delighted.’
‘Well, that theory is about to be tested.’
We pulled up before I could say any more and I checked my eyes, which were still pea-sized from the amount of crying I’d done, and climbed out of the car. My mother burst out of the front door and ran down the path, like a sprinter off the starting blocks. She threw her arms around me, holding me so tightly I could feel her heart thumping.
‘Look at you!’ she exclaimed, holding me at arms’ length before pulling me in again. She pushed a lock of hair from my face and turned to my father, who stood on the step, his arms crossed, beaming. ‘How wonderful you look! Bernard! See how grand she looks! Oh, we’ve missed you so much! Have you lost weight? You look like you’ve lost weight. You look tired. You need to eat something. Come indoors. I’ll bet they didn’t give you breakfast on that plane. I’ve heard it’s all powdered egg anyhow.’
She hugged Thom, and before my father could step forward, she grabbed my bags and marched back up the path, beckoning us all to follow.
‘Hello, sweetheart,’ said Dad, softly, and I stepped into his arms. As they closed around me, I finally allowed myself to exhale.
Granddad hadn’t made it as far as the step. He had had another small stroke, Mum whispered, and now had trouble standing up or walking, so spent most of his daylight hours in the upright chair in the living room. (‘We didn’t want to worry you.’) He was dressed smartly in a shirt and pullover in honour of the occasion and smiled lopsidedly when I walked in. He held up a shaking hand and I hugged him, noting with some distant part of me how much smaller he seemed.
But, then, everything seemed smaller. My parents’ house, with its twenty-year-old wallpaper, its artwork chosen less for aesthetic reasons than because it had been given by someone nice or covered certain dents in the wall, its sagging three-piece suite, its tiny dining area, where the chairs hit the wall if you pushed them back too far, and a ceiling light that started only a few inches above my father’s head. I found myself comparing it distantly to the grand apartment with its acres of polished floors, its huge, ornate ceilings, the clamorous sweep of Manhattan outside our door. I had thought I might feel comforted at being home.
Instead I felt untethered, as if suddenly it occurred to me that, at the moment, I belonged in neither place.
We ate a light supper of roast beef, potatoes, Yorkshire puddings and trifle, just a little something Mum had ‘knocked together’ before tomorrow’s main event. Dad was keeping the turkey in the shed as it wouldn’t fit in the fridge and went out to check every half an hour that it hadn’t fallen into the clutches of Houdini, next door’s cat. Mum gave us a rundown on the various tragedies that had befallen our neighbours: ‘Well, of course, that was before Andrew’s shingles. He showed me his stomach – put me quite off my Weetabix – and I’ve told Dymphna she needs to put those feet up before the baby’s born. Honestly, her varicose veins are like a B-road map of the Chilterns. Did I tell you Mrs Kemp’s father died? He’s the one did four years for armed robbery before they discovered it had been that bloke from the post office who had the same hair plugs.’ Mum rattled on.
It was only when she was clearing the plates that Dad leant over to me and said, ‘Would you believe she’s nervous?’
‘Nervous of what?’
‘You. All your achievements. She was half afraid you wouldn’t want to come back here. That you’d spend Christmas with your fella and head straight back to New York.’
‘Why would I want to do that?’
He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. She thought you might have outgrown us. I told her she was being daft. Don’t take that the wrong way, love. She’s bloody proud of you. She prints out all your pictures and puts them in a scrapbook and bores the neighbours rigid showing them off. To be honest, she bores me rigid, and I’m related to you.’ He grinned and squeezed my shoulder.
I felt briefly ashamed at how much time I’d intended spending at Sam’s. I’d planned to leave Mum to handle all the Christmas stuff, my family and Granddad, like I always did.
I left Treena and Thom with Dad and took the rest of the plates through to the kitchen where Mum and I washed up in companionable silence for a while. She turned to me. ‘You do look tired, love. Have you the jetlag?’
