Coming Home (10 page)

The truth was, Mum wasn’t coping at all. I hadn’t told anyone about what had really happened with Dingbat: all I said was, ‘He got out; he died.’ Then, last week Mum had gone to the supermarket in her pyjamas. They were red-and-white checked and Mum had matched them with red high heels and a pillar-box red lipstick. She’d stood in the hall, finalising her shopping list with her basket over her arm and I’d thought she was doing it for a joke; trying to be funny; trying to cheer me up. My heart had filled with love and I’d laughed
.

‘What’s so funny?’ she’d snapped
.

I should have spotted the warning tone in her voice, but I was still laughing. I’d thought the joke was still going
.

‘You’re going to the shops in your pyjamas!’ I’d giggled
.
Already I was imagining telling my friends about it. My mum was the funny one!

‘They are NOT my pyjamas!’

I froze
.

‘This is my suit! I am wearing a SUIT!’ she’d shouted. She’d jabbed at her lips, kicked a foot out at me. ‘See? I am wearing lipstick! I am wearing RED SHOES! Don’t you know what a SUIT looks like?’

She’d kicked hard at the stair I was sitting on and left, slamming the front door so hard behind her that the hall had seemed to reverberate for minutes
.

I was upstairs when she’d come back with the shopping. I heard her put it away in the kitchen then go into her bedroom. When I went down for lunch she was wearing a dress and her lipstick had gone
.

‘What would you like for lunch?’ she’d asked, smiling at me as if nothing was wrong
.

‘She sometimes wears her pyjamas to the High Street,’ I told Miss Dawson
.

E
ven through my eyelids, I could tell that it was sunny when I woke the next morning, remnants of the anxiety of my dream still coursing through my veins. Lying motionless, not daring to move after the skinful of gin I’d drunk the night before, I felt gently around inside my head for signs of the hangover I knew I deserved, and was both relieved and grateful to discover that I’d been spared.

The sound of music drifted up from downstairs. An uplifting piano concerto on the radio—Mozart, maybe. I lay in bed, letting the waves of sound wash over me. The music stopped abruptly and restarted a few bars back and I realised that it wasn’t the radio at all: Mum was actually playing the piano downstairs. It had been so long since I’d last heard her play that I’d almost forgotten that she did. The piano in the corner of the dining room had long been buried under a collection of dusty knick-knacks, photographs and old sheet music.

Dust particles pirouetted in the sunshine as I entered the dining room. Mum’s fingers danced over the keys as she strained forward to read the music. I stood and listened for a minute; I hadn’t seen her looking so alive in years; her
body moved with the music and the word ‘graceful’ came to mind. When Mum realised I was standing there, she broke off, flexing her wrists and bending back her fingers.

‘Wow,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘Impressed! I didn’t know you could still play.’

Mum smiled. ‘Still got it!’ she said. ‘I should do it more often.’

I remembered childhood evenings, sing-songs around the piano. ‘Dad loved it when you played.’

‘I know …’ said Mum. ‘Anyway. Sleep well?’

‘Yes. You?’

‘Oh … you know.’ She shrugged and turned back to her music while I fixed myself some breakfast. Mum absently played a few scales and their arpeggios, smiling to herself as she got each one right.

‘G major. Oh. I have an appointment to see the new house again this afternoon,’ she said, her fingers fluttering over the keys. ‘A major. Would you like to come? Or have you got something else planned? B major.’

‘Have you heard back from the estate agent yet?’ I asked.

‘Not yet, but he said he might hear today. C-sharp major. I can’t believe I still remember all these!’

‘So there’s still time to back out?’

‘Why would I want to back out? It’s the perfect house for me, and just around the corner.’ She played the arpeggios as chords. The sound of the last chord fell away and I didn’t fill the silence.

‘It’s what your father wanted, too.’

I sighed. ‘Sure. If you want me to, I’ll come.’

‘Thank you. If you like it, there’s no reason why I shouldn’t go ahead and buy it. There’s no chain and Dad had worked out the finances …’

‘Oh really? Had he put the money aside?’

Mum shot me a look over her glasses, her fingers still holding the chord for D-sharp major. Evie Stealthy Stevens, I was not. ‘As I said last time you asked: no. But the point is that this house is smaller, so we—’ she rolled her eyes upwards laughing a little at her mistake ‘—I would be able to free up a bit more capital. I think it’s really exciting. I can’t wait to move. F-sharp major. That was always my favourite.’

I decided to spend the morning in the attic.

Three and a half hours later, I straightened up as far as I could under the eaves of the attic and rubbed the small of my back with a grubby hand, surveying my work. I’d managed to get rid of all the empty boxes and all the old suitcases that were broken or falling apart with age. Mum now had a respectable collection of usable cases and in-flight trolley-bags in different sizes, every single one of which could be seen in public.

I’d also managed to get through a few boxes of junk but, as I got further into the boxes, I was finding it increasingly hard to know what to do with the stuff. I rolled one of Graham’s shiny little Matchbox cars to and fro across my grimy palm, remembering the intricate cities we’d built with cardboard roads and shoebox car parks. Clem’s voice echoed in my head: ‘Who can afford to store memories?’ she’d said
when she left Dubai, selling what she could and giving the rest to me. ‘Clear the old; make space for the new.’

Sighing, I put the car back in the box with all its playmates. For now, I’d shove all the things I wasn’t sure about into a corner. Maybe the new house would have at least a small attic.

The phone rang in the hall below.

‘Darling!’ Mum’s voice floated up from the bottom of the ladder. ‘It’s
Luca
!
Luca Rossi
!’ His name was stage-whispered to indicate the significance of being phoned by an ex-almost-fiancé. I heard the drama, the matchmaker in her voice:
Ooh … Evie could do worse than Luca. He’s handsome, nice family, would be a good bet
… ‘Can you come down? Or shall I ask him to call back?’

‘Coming!’ I shouted, slithering down the ladder and landing heavily as I missed the bottom step. ‘Don’t get ideas,’ I whispered to Mum as I took the phone from her. ‘It’s not like that … Hello?’

‘Hi, Evie.’ I turned my back on Mum, seventeen again, Luca’s voice transporting me to the long evenings I’d spent curling the phone wire around my finger as the two of us had run up his parents’ phone bill chatting about nothing. ‘I saw your message on Facebook,’ Luca said. ‘I was going to ask you for a coffee but, well, I suppose we’ve missed the boat now it’s nearly midday. But are you free for lunch? Could I tempt you with a bit of … oooh … Pizza Express?’

Aside from the curry place, a Chinese and a clutch of fastfood joints, there wasn’t a lot of choice in Woodside—and I was hungry. Because it hadn’t been there ten years ago,
we had no ‘date’ memories from Pizza Express, no history to hang over us.

‘Sure,’ I said. We agreed to meet in half an hour.

W
hile I’d hurried up Mum’s road towards the High Street, my steps slowed as I approached Pizza Express. Shyness gnawed at my confidence and I felt inelegant, inarticulate, flumpy with awkwardness. What would I say to Luca? Was I kidding myself to think we could ever be more than Facebook friends? The whole ‘Luca and Evie’ thing was water under a bridge so distant I’d forgotten what it looked like but, if we were to forge some sort of adult friendship—which, given my lack of other friends, would be nice—I needed to let Luca know how sorry I was for rejecting him so coldly; it was something I still felt guilty about. He was probably too much of a gentleman to bring it up, but I couldn’t let it stay unsaid. I suppose what I was looking for was his forgiveness. This lunch would be a good place to start, but the thought of how he’d take my apology made me nervous.

I had to pass the restaurant’s window before I got to the door and I could see Luca already there at a table, his back to the glass, and busy with his phone. His profile was familiar yet firmer, filled out, more mature. It was peculiar to see the
older Luca; as a teenager I’d tried to imagine what he might look like as a man—and here he was. Better.

The restaurant, only a few tables taken, smelled of fried garlic. The warmth of the central heating hit me as I entered and, in the open kitchen, the chef sang a few bars of music, his voice bass, vibrato. I paused, tossed my hair back, took a deep breath and marched up to Luca’s table. A glass of white wine and a jug of water stood alongside the menu.

‘Hey, stranger,’ I said, brusquer than I’d intended. ‘Morning. Or is it afternoon?’

‘Evie,’ said Luca, standing up to greet me. He was wearing blue jeans and a sweater, a brown leather jacket slung over the back of his chair. He looked amazing, but I couldn’t tell if he’d made an effort because I had no reference point on which to base it. I didn’t know how Luca dressed these days. Personally, I’d put a lot of effort into trying to look effortless.

A slight touch of cheek to cheek; the ghost of an air-kiss; the scent of cologne on warm, clean skin.

‘Same hair,’ Luca said, as he sat back down. ‘Very Kate Middleton.’

I laughed and patted my hair, realising that it did look almost exactly the same as it had when we’d been at school. ‘
Now
it’s the same hair,’ I said. ‘But in the last ten years it’s gone full circle. Short, bobbed, highlights, lowlights, long—blonde, even.’ I remembered how Luca had always said he liked the combination of dark hair and blue eyes.

‘Suits you like this.’

‘Thanks.’ There was a short silence. ‘You look, um, the
same, too,’ I said. It wasn’t strictly true: he did and he didn’t, but the silence was awkward and I needed to fill it.

‘Thanks,’ said Luca. ‘I think.’ He gave a short little laugh. ‘I didn’t know what you’d want so I didn’t order a drink for you. I hope you don’t mind.’ Luca nodded toward his wine glass. ‘And, just for the record, this isn’t the first time I’ve had pizza and wine for breakfast—and neither will it be the last.’

‘Wine would be great,’ I said. ‘Just what I need. I’m sure the sun’s over the yardarm in Dubai.’

‘Really?’ he asked, looking at his watch. It must only be, what, four-thirty there?’

‘We have low yardarms in Dubai.’ I looked at Luca from under my lashes and we both laughed. He ordered a bottle of wine and another glass.

‘So how’s your mum?’ he asked.

‘Oh, you know. It’s early days …’ I paused and then remembered I could actually talk to Luca about her. He would understand. ‘I don’t know what to expect. She seems all right sometimes, and then she does something really unexpected. I don’t know what’s normal.’

I took a slug of wine and exhaled deeply as it hit my bloodstream. My muscles softened and I leaned back in my chair, realising that my shoulders had been hunched all morning.

‘The dad of one of my colleagues died,’ said Luca. ‘I remember him saying his mum was all over the place for a while, you know, losing things, being scatty and distracted. Once he found her glasses in the microwave. Stuff like that?’

I frowned. ‘Not really.’

‘Does she cry?’

‘I haven’t seen her cry.’

‘It’ll come. It takes time for them to process this stuff. It’s not been long, has it? A week?’

‘Less than. It was Friday night.’

‘Well. Give her time. It’ll take her at least six months to get used to the idea, probably longer.’

But Graham’s accident complicates everything, I thought. This is not a normal situation. ‘So far she seems to be taking it well,’ I said. ‘She seems quite together. Organised, like, she’s got everything under control. She even went out for dinner last night. With a man.’

Luca raised an eyebrow. I mirrored it and nodded, half a laugh escaping with my breath.

‘I thought so, too. It’s odd, isn’t it? He’s only been gone five days.’

‘When you put it like that, yes. But would she have done that anyway? If your dad was still alive? He was away a lot, wasn’t he? She must have friends?’

‘Oh I guess. I don’t know. But shouldn’t there be like a mourning period, or something?’

Luca took a sip of wine. I could see he didn’t know what to say. But he didn’t have to say anything; I could see that it wasn’t just me who thought it was a bit odd.

‘She’s also put in an offer on a house.’

Luca’s eyes widened. ‘Wow. That’s big. And sudden? She’s lived there all your life, right?’

‘Yeah. Thirty years. But she says the house is too big, and
that she and Dad were planning the move. Apparently, she put in the offer the day before he died. But surely she can retract it now? It’s not binding, is it? Until it’s been accepted and everything? The last thing she needs now is to move house. Isn’t moving house right up there, along with death of a spouse, as one of life’s most stressful events?’ I paused. ‘Or am I being unreasonable?’

‘I don’t know what to say,’ said Luca. ‘If they were planning to move before your dad … you know … then maybe it’s not as sudden as it seems? Maybe it’ll give her something to focus on. Like, a sense of purpose?’

‘Yeah … maybe.’

We sipped our drinks.

‘So how long are you here for?’ he asked eventually.

‘I’m here for the funeral, which is on Friday. And Mum’s asked me to help her clear out the attic ready for a potential move. After that, I haven’t really thought. My boss said to take as long as I needed, but I can’t be here forever, really. I don’t think he meant “stick around for three months”.’ I wished I had a sibling to help me keep an eye on Mum and simultaneously squashed the thought. ‘Anyway, how are you?’