Coming Home (7 page)

‘Thanks, darling,’ she said. ‘He’s really quite harmless. And it’s only a curry.’

‘A
nd how do you feel?’ Miss Dawson asked. ‘Are there times when you forget that Graham’s no longer here?’

How did she know? The headmistress must have told her about the day of the school photos. I wished the earth would swallow me up when I thought about that day
.

My teacher had been stressed. I could tell by the way she was rubbing her forehead and circling her fingers around her temples as she tried to mark our maths tests. Every now and then, her head would pop up. ‘Quiet!’ she’d say, but it was more of an exasperated sigh than an instruction
.

It had been a rainy morning and the class, like the weather, had been particularly disruptive—aside from the novelty of arriving at school in wellington boots for the first time that autumn, we’d all been excited because it was school-photo day, and that meant a break in routine; something different to working on our never-ending history projects
.

At 10 a.m., I’d asked my teacher if I could go for my photo
.

‘Sure,’ she’d said and there’d been a micro-pause as she’d struggled to remember my name. She was new and
she always got me mixed up with Emma. Then Adam had howled in pain and her attention had flipped to him and Jason, locked in a battle
.

I’d slipped quietly out of the classroom and headed for the main hall, my plimsolls squeaking with every step on the polished parquet flooring. I loved school-photo day. As we sat in the queue waiting our turn, I loved watching the smiles people put on for their minute in the spotlight; seeing how their faces changed for the camera
.

Outside the toilets, I’d hesitated then ducked in at the last minute. Although there wasn’t a lot of point in me trying to comb my wild hair—any contact between it and a brush generally earned me the nickname ‘Basil Brush’—I’d dampened my fingers and smoothed down the sides as best I could before heading to the hall. Mum would have never forgiven me for having messy hair in the school photo
.

The queue wound away from the main stage, the children waiting patiently on the floor in twos and threes. But I was alone. Something wasn’t right
.

Mrs Hopkins, the headmistress, had bustled towards me, her face creased with concern. ‘Evie, dear,’ she’d said, putting her hand on my arm. ‘Your class photo’s not till this afternoon.’ I stopped as it dawned on me what I’d done. ‘Let me take you back to your classroom,’ she’d said, gently taking my hand
.

Three months after my brother died, I’d turned up for the sibling photos. A week later, I’d been referred to Miss Dawson
.

‘There was only that one time at school,’ I told Miss Dawson. ‘And sometimes first thing in the morning when I wake up I forget for a minute and then it all comes back. That’s when I miss him the most.’

U
pstairs in my room, I sat at the desk at which I’d revised for my GSCEs and A levels and opened my old address book—somehow, in the rush to pack, I’d remembered to bring it with me. Mum had got me thinking about my old school friends and I wondered who, aside from Luca, was still around. My best friend from school certainly wasn’t—she’d met an Australian guy at university, married him and disappeared off to Australia as soon as she’d graduated. I’d been out to visit her once and she’d stopped off in Dubai for a couple of days, too—it was the type of friendship we could just pick up, no matter how many years went by.

My favourite person in the world lived in Warwick. Clem was the reason I’d moved to Dubai in the first place. Since we’d met on the Student Union dance floor doing our Gloria Gaynors to ‘I Will Survive’ at the Monday night disco, we’d been inseparable throughout university.

‘Promise me we won’t get sucked into corporate life,’ she’d said as we’d studied in her room for our third-year finals, the threat of real life hanging over us like a guillotine. ‘Let’s travel together, see the world.’

‘How?’ I’d asked. ‘We don’t have enough money for the launderette. How are we going to fly around the world?’

‘Easy. We get jobs that pay us to travel: we’ll be cabin crew or ski chalet girls. We’ll get jobs in a bar in Mykonos and party like Tom Cruise in
Cocktail.’

Huddled in duvets in digs lashed by the relentless rain of the Midlands, she’d dreamed up our plans for a life in the sun; I’d dreamed of a life away from the ruins of my family.

But things hadn’t worked out quite as planned. One night, when we’d both been unemployed for several months, we were sitting in a London wine bar making our Happy Hour drinks last as long as we could when Clem had dropped the bombshell.

‘So,’ she’d said, and I’d known at once it was bad news. Her energy was off-kilter and she’d been preoccupied all night. ‘There’s something I have to tell you.’

I’d stared at the nicks in the wooden table, wishing I could stop time right there, for I guessed what was coming. I arranged my face, made it smiley, before I looked up at her.

‘I’ve got a job in Dubai,’ she’d said. She was trying to break it to me gently but the luminosity of her face gave her away; she’d tried not to smile but I could tell she was fizzing with excitement. ‘I’m going to be a PR executive.’

I’d opened my mouth, but words wouldn’t form.

‘Evie, I have to go. It ticks all the boxes. Sun, sand, a good salary, an accommodation allowance—it’s even tax-free.’

I’d bobbed my head like a nodding dog. Of course she had to go. At last the words came out right, but the light had gone out of me. I’d wanted more than anything to be
going with her. She’d booked her one-way ticket, and I’d gone reluctantly back to job-hunting in London.

But, despite being unemployed, I hadn’t had time to feel lonely. While I’d been away studying, Mum had retreated from everyday life until she’d virtually become a recluse. She lived in a world she perceived to be fraught with danger. Once I was back from university, and with Dad away so much for work, I took the full brunt of this paranoia. I could understand Mum’s fear of me crossing the road; I could understand why she didn’t want me to own a bike. But everything else?

And now the fear was no longer just for me: it was for herself, too. Mum had let friendships lapse and she rarely went out—when she did, it was a small trip to the closest supermarket to buy groceries. Heaven help if anyone told her about Ocado. She was becoming a hermit and I worried about her. I knew that if I lived nearby it was a small jump till she became totally dependent on me. But we were both too young for that. Instead, I came up with a two-pronged plan of attack.

Part one: I was going to persuade Mum to take a job—it wouldn’t only get her out of the house and force her to interact with people, but it would, I hoped, help her get her confidence back. After she was established in a job I hoped she’d enjoy, I’d move on to part two: I was going to follow Clem to Dubai and force Mum to stand on her own two feet. This latter part of the plan I had no problem with—if necessary I’d scrape together enough money for a ticket, fly out on a tourist visa and look for a job while
I was out there. Clem’s Facebook updates showed me tantalising slices of life in Dubai and I yearned to be in the sunshine with her.

The former part of the plan, though, was more tricky. Aside from a secretarial job at the university where she’d met Dad, Mum had never really had a career. Working wasn’t in her mindset and Dad earned enough that there wasn’t really any financial pressure to motivate her.

I’d trawled through the local job ads, looked at cards stuck in newsagent windows and even went to the Job Centre once, but nothing I suggested took Mum’s fancy, even the job as assistant in the flower shop, which I’d thought would really appeal to her.

‘Oh, good God, no,’ she’d said, as if I’d suggested she retrain as an astronaut. ‘Have you any idea how cold it gets in that shop in winter? With those stone floors and all that water about? Oh no, darling, that’s not for me.’

Eventually, though, I’d secured her an interview at Woodside Hospital, to work as an admin assistant. Mum hadn’t been able to come up with an excuse not to go and that, as they say, was that. The job—keeping charge of a busy consultant—had, ultimately, been the making of her and, a couple of months later, I was on the plane to Dubai. Clem and I had proceeded to paint Dubai not just red but scarlet, indigo, magenta and fuschia.

For two single girls living together in a city that never sleeps, the phrase ‘burn the candle at both ends’ could never have been more appropriate. But then, at a ‘fondue and a bottle of white’ night, we’d got chatting to Patrick and
James, a couple of well-spoken guys who’d seemed a snip above the usual Dubai blokes.

We’d double-dated them for a while, then flat-swapped—me moving into James’s palatial villa, and Patrick moving in with Clem. Finally, a year later and thinking ourselves ever so very clever, we’d all got engaged and thrown a huge party in the lush gardens of The One&Only Royal Mirage Hotel.

But that’s where the similarities ended. While Clem and Patrick had got married, moved back to Warwick and had twins, James and I had staggered towards our bitter break-up—infidelity’s not a trait I look for in a husband. Clem was now the mistress of a quaint tea shop selling coffee, tea and cake to tourists up to see Warwick Castle while Patrick ran a successful pub. I knew Clem would be busy with the twins, but I sent her an SMS anyway.

That done, I logged onto Facebook on my iPad. After scrolling through the newsfeed, I sucked my cheeks in and typed ‘Luca Rossi’ into the search box.

He’d mentioned he was on Facebook—that meant it was OK to ‘friend’ him, didn’t it? It had been weird-in-a-nice-way to bump into Luca after so long. Just hearing his voice again had made me feel safe; it was as if he dropped an invisible cloak of protection over my shoulders. Luca was so different to the men I met in Dubai; so very, very different to the razzle-dazzling, lying, cheating James. Luca was what he was; there was no pretence, no show, and I liked that. He knew about Graham. He knew the scars that lay inside my heart. With Luca, I could be myself: no explanations.

‘To see what Luca Rossi shares with his friends, send
a Friend Request.’ I stared at the tiny picture of Luca that came up on the screen, my finger hesitating over the mouse. Would ‘friending’ him send the wrong signals? I was still reeling from my break-up with James, the word ‘rebound’ pulsing in my mind’s eye, and I didn’t want Luca to think I wanted anything more than a connection for old times’ sake.

But the pull of seeing someone who knew my past was too strong and I fired off the request, adding in a message: ‘It was great to see you. I’m around for a bit. Let me know if you fancy a coffee. Cheers, Evie.’ Just the thought of being Facebook friends with Luca made me smile. Although I was totally off men, he was different … I knew him. I knew his family, his background, his people. It wasn’t like he could spin a web of lies like James had.

James had dazzled me from the night we’d met—I’d never in my life come across anyone so handsome, so charming, so fearless and spontaneous. On our first date—the morning after we’d met in the wine bar—he’d taken me skydiving over Palm Jumeirah for goodness’ sake. He’d told me he dabbled in a bit of commodities trading but made most of his money working as an advisor to a Sheikh. New to Dubai and green as they come, I’d lapped it all up, naively believing that James really was ‘working on an important project at the palace’ when he was actually sleeping with Shelley or Susan or Tracey at their airline crew accommodation. Our engagement had come to an abrupt end when Shelley had bumped into us having a cosy dinner in the beach restaurant of the very hotel at which we’d got engaged.

‘What are you doing with my fiancé?’ she’d asked before
turning her fury on James. I liked to imagine someone had managed to retrieve both our engagement rings from the sea where we’d flung them. Now I shuddered thinking about that night.

I flicked once more through my address book, concluding that, after being away for so long, I had no real friends currently residing in Woodside. But I had one more thing to do. Opening my email, I looked up the address I had stored so recently.

‘Dear Miss Dawson,’ I typed. ‘It was lovely to speak to you today, and thank you for being so kind. As it happens, I am quite worried about Mum. She’s not herself (obviously)—she had a really bad reaction to a police car that went past with its sirens on, and now she’s told me she’s selling the house we’ve lived in all my life. Dad’s not been gone a few days. More seriously, though, she’s confused Dad’s death with Graham’s twice now. Once I could have overlooked, but twice? Is this to be expected? Should I try to get her to see you? Sorry to ask, but you’re the only person who knows all the background. With thanks and warm regards, Evie.’

I
t was a perilous climb up to the attic. Mum positioned the ladder as best she could, adjacent to the door, and held it steady, but I had to haul myself up a good foot between the top of the ladder and the floor of the attic, then transfer myself across sideways. Dignified it was not.

‘Right, are you up?’ she called, as I dusted myself off and felt around for a light switch. ‘If you’re OK up there I’ll just pop up to the High Street,’ she said. ‘Do you need anything?’

I said that I didn’t. I had mixed feelings about going through the attic and I was glad Mum wasn’t going to be hanging around at the bottom of the ladder, waiting to see what I found. I was curious to see what was up there but, like her, I was also slightly nervous of what I might find, of the memories that might resurface.

Easing myself along the ancient floor beams (I vaguely remembered Dad telling me as a child that I must stand only on the beams—was it true? I didn’t know), I looked around. The air smelled musty and particles of dust floated languidly in the yellow of the weak electric light.

Every available inch of floor space was choked with boxes. Empty ones, full ones, mysterious ones, labelled
ones. Toys, clothes, books, old computers, old stereos, speakers and suitcases. There was more than thirty years’ worth of family junk but, as I looked more closely, I realised there was at least some method to the madness: my old toys were grouped together, as were bunches of suitcases, boxes of clothes, hardware, empty boxes and other items. I realised I wasn’t going to be able to make a dent in the clearing today—once I’d had a good look around I’d hire a skip and blitz the whole place in a couple of sessions.