I Should Be So Lucky (8 page)

‘Hello, you. I saw your number come up on the phone – must have been an iffy signal so I thought I’d call you back. I was beginning to think you’d deleted me!’

Aagh! Gregory Fabian. She sat on the bed, naked, rather pointlessly crossing her legs and clutching the towel to her body.

‘No – not at all! Sorry, it’s just been a bit busy and stuff. Exams and all that, you know how it is.’ Oh, ridiculous: how could he possibly know? He had no idea what she did for a living. All he knew about her was that she couldn’t drive straight and that she had a barmy mother with daughter-control issues.

‘You’re a student?’ he asked.

‘No! I teach – at a cram— I mean a tutorial college.’

‘Crammer. We’re allowed to call it that, aren’t we?’ he said. ‘Is it Med and Gib?’

‘You know it?’

‘Not personally. A friend’s son was there a few years ago. They managed to haul him kicking and screaming through his A levels by the skin of his expensively straightened teeth. He’s an estate agent now.’ He
laughed
. She wasn’t sure how to respond, not knowing him well enough to guess whether he’d appreciate sympathy or (her preferred choice) a sardonic response such as ‘Aha, so there is a God!’

‘So … um …’ She stumbled along. ‘If it’s still all right, I was wondering about coming to see the nursery soon? Would that be OK?’

‘Yes – please do. Today? Now? Lunch?’ He seemed very enthusiastic – perhaps he was hoping she’d buy a whole border’s worth of herbaceous perennials.

It was just after 9 a.m. and there were no classes that day, although she intended to call in at Med and Gib briefly before lunch to find out the timings for her exam supervision duties. Her students had opted for study leave, which, in most of their cases, was an oxymoron if ever there was one. But this morning she’d arranged to call in on the rental agent and collect the keys to Bell Cottage, then go and have a quick look over the place while Rachel was at school.

Marco had sweetly offered to go with her and she’d accepted, not because the visit risked renewing old unhappiness – she could (at least, she’d thought she could, till the dream wrecked her sleep) deal with that – but because being a designer he had a fine eye for colour. He could be relied on to help with any new paint choices and steer her away from impulsive inclinations towards purple ceilings or an excess of gloomy taupe. Marco had a late-morning meeting in
Fulham
and couldn’t spare a lot of time, so perhaps she could do both – after all, they wouldn’t have to do more at the house than just check to see how clean it was and what needed fixing, replacing or painting. How long could that take, even allowing for a drop-in at the college?

‘Yes, OK – at about midday? Would that be all right? I just need to …’

‘… put some clothes on?’ He finished the sentence she’d had no intention of saying out loud.

‘
What
? How did you …?’

‘Oh God, I’m sorry!’ He sounded amused but flustered. ‘Sorry, I was just being flippant. I didn’t mean … Are you
really
not wearing anything? Aaagh! Sorry!’

‘It’s fine.’ She couldn’t help giggling. ‘No worries, I’ll see you later.’

He coughed and put on a mock-serious voice. ‘Absolutely. I’ll tidy the place up a bit and get the best roses stacked at the front to tempt you in and to grovel for your forgiveness for my untoward remarks. You know how to find us?’

‘I do – I Googled you, just quickly for the address.’

‘Great, see you in a while then. Just come into the office and ask for me if I’m not around, but I will be. Oh and, er … drive carefully.’

She could almost see his teasing smile. She was grinning broadly herself, she realized, as she clicked the phone off and caught sight of her flushed, beaming face
in
the bedroom mirror. Lucky nobody really
was
watching her make that call – naked, giggling: a touch of the Slightly Mad, possibly.

It felt strange to Viola to have the keys to Bell Cottage back on her keyring and, added to her others, feeling pleasingly heavy in her hand. It had been so long now since she had had the removal team in, swiftly packed up all but the most basic furniture and banished almost all of her and Rachel’s possessions to the Big Yellow storage lock-up. She’d walked away from the house without once looking back, not wanting her last impression of it to be the damaged magnolia tree with its clumsily taped-on photos of Rhys and the badly spelled messages of devotion pinned to the gate alongside rotting flowers sealed inside rain-spattered cellophane. It would all be all right, she told herself now as she turned the car into the avenue and drove past the church; whatever Kate and Miles thought about how and where she should live, it was definitely time to come back. It would all work out. And if it didn’t, they’d move.

Viola arrived before Marco, left the car in front of the garage in her old familiar parking spot, then stood on the path facing the central front door, staring at the outside of the building, taking in its familiar features, checking to see what had changed. Apart from a bit of recently flaking paint on the doorframe and the New Dawn rose that had grown so much that it now
smothered
the little porch roof and looked as if it was trying to force its way in through the bedroom windows, it was all just the same, just as she’d left it months ago.

Marco’s Mini whizzed into the driveway and stopped a millimetre short of the Polo’s bumper.

‘Perfect parking!’ he called to her as he climbed out. ‘How’s our lovely old gaff looking? Have you been inside yet?’

‘No, I’ve only just got here. I thought I’d wait for you.’

‘Yeah – I get it.’ He put an arm round her and gave her a squeeze. ‘Hard to face the memories? You could just put it on the market, you know. Come and live in Notting Hill near me and James?’

‘Notting Hill? Like I could afford to! No, sweet idea but I’m sure I can deal with the memories, because so very few are bad ones and I’m
not
going to let them crowd out the good stuff. Mostly, I still think of it as when you and I moved in here, which were the best times, the Rachel-as-a-baby times. Rhys made very little impression on it, really. Even when he
was
there I still thought of it as just mine and Rachel’s because he brought so little to it, apart from the crazy women knocking on the door and hoping he’d come out to play. I should have known that he wasn’t a keeper. Everyone warned me. Why didn’t I just live with him for a bit instead of getting married? It was his idea, you know. He seemed absolutely set on doing the family
thing
, had me totally convinced and yet he was trying to pull a waitress even on our honeymoon. What an idiot I was.’

‘Well, of course you were convinced – he wasn’t a top actor for nothing, was he? And we can all be idiots. Look at me: all those years denying I was gay just because my father thought all poofs should be lined up and shot. But then if I hadn’t, we wouldn’t have Rachel. Something good often comes out of the tricky stuff. Shall we go in? I’ll hold your hand.’

Viola opened the front door and stopped for a moment to sniff the air. It didn’t smell like her house, not at all.

‘Blimey, was she ever keen on vanilla!’ Marco wrinkled his nose. ‘She must have bought up a job lot of air freshener.’

‘Or candles. She looked like the candle sort,’ Viola said. ‘You know, late thirties and single, candles all round the bath, smelly gunk and rose petals in it, a big fat glass of Pino G and a book that isn’t too precious to matter if it falls in the water.’

‘Is that how you’re going to be now?’ Marco asked.

‘
Me?
With candles?’ she laughed. ‘Are you mad? I’d be sure to knock one over, set fire to the bath mat and end up naked on a ladder over some poor fireman’s shoulder, with all the neighbours watching.’

‘Yes, you’re probably not wrong there. But I’d pay
folding
money to see it. Your bum would look hot on YouTube.’

Viola left the front door open to waft in fresh air to replace the vanilla scent. Even that could have been worse – it could have been Rhys’s usual overdose of Calvin Klein. If that had been so ingrained into the carpet that she couldn’t
not
remember him every time she walked up the stairs, it would have been a no-brainer about selling the house.

The decor didn’t seem to have suffered since she and Rachel had last lived there. The creamy-yellow walls of the sunny double-aspect sitting room had a few faded patches where pictures could have been but, really, she could get away with not repainting it, although she decided she would, if only to freshen it up with a lighter, brighter version of the same colour. The kitchen looked as if it had hardly been used, and the giant pale pink fridge had been so thoroughly cleaned out that it looked in better condition than when she’d last used it herself.

‘Do you think she ever cooked?’ Marco asked, opening the door of the immaculate oven.

‘I’d say not. But it won’t stay like that for long, not with Rachel slamming pizzas in the way she does, straight on to the shelves and then leaving bits of crust behind so the house smells of burnt stuff and the bits never quite come off.’

‘She does that at ours too – James has bought her a
special
pizza-base gadget from his beloved Lakeland but she never uses it. Hey, though, your fridge – love the colour. But don’t you think this kitchen would look brilliant with
more
pink?’

‘Mmm. It would zazz it up a bit.
I
need zazzing, so I’ll go for whatever it takes to help. Maybe that wall behind the dresser.’ She pointed to it. ‘Shocking pink, or would that be too mad?’

‘Absolutely. It’ll show wonderfully through the open shelves. I’ll sort it for you, no worries. I’ve got a couple of tame scenery painters that we use on the sets. They’re always up for a bit of moonlighting and there’s not a lot of work on right now,’ Marco told her, making a note in his iPhone.

She came over to him and gave him a happy hug. ‘You are a such star, Marco, thanks so much for all this. You’d make a lovely husband. Well, you did, actually.’

‘Thank you, Vee. And you made a lovely wife. If it wasn’t for the elephant in the house that was wearing a tiara and Judy Garland’s ruby slippers, who knows where we’d be now?’

‘Well, you wouldn’t have James, and that would be a shame. He’s lovely too.’

‘We just need someone perfect for you,’ Marco said.

‘Oh, now please, don’t you start! I’ve already got Charlotte and Amanda on my case, deciding it’s time to put my team strip on and get back out on the pitch.’

‘Well … they’ve got a …’

‘No – enough! I’m not good at men and that’s that. I’ll take up embroidery and good works instead.’

‘Careful’, he warned her. ‘You’ll be getting cats next!’

Putting off the moment when she went upstairs and reclaimed her own bedroom, Viola unlocked and opened wide the big French doors at the back, realizing immediately that though the house was in pretty good condition, the same couldn’t be said for the garden.

‘Ye gods, it looks like the garden’s just one wild old meadow!’ she called to Marco, who was checking how easily movable the dresser was. ‘Marco, come out here and look at the state of it!’

The grass desperately needed cutting and was completely, though prettily, overgrown with daisies. The borders each side of the lawn had dandelions and buttercups crowding out the dahlias, lupins, evening primroses and verbena that she and Marco had planted so many years before and which had come up reliably and generously each summer since. Right now, they looked like they were struggling to hang on to their territory against invasion from rampant willowherb and ground elder.

‘No way am I coming out there! I’m not padding about in long damp grass in these new boots,’ Marco replied from the safety of the doorway.

‘You big wuss!’ She laughed, pushing back the cascade of clematis that tumbled down the fence. ‘How much damage would it do? Would a real cowboy throw
a
strop and refuse to get off his horse to lasso a steer because he’s
got new boots
and the prairie is a
bit damp
?’

‘But I’m an
urban
cowboy!’ he protested, venturing only as far as the edge of the paved terrace. Viola went back and joined him and together they checked over the herb patch which was overrun with rosemary, mint and marjoram, crowding everything else out. It would take a lot of effort, but in a week or so it would be the summer holidays. Work would then be only at the level of a couple of tutorials a week for the students whose parents decided that taking a preparatory run at the new school year with a few extra lessons would keep their children safely off the streets. Sorting the garden in a fully hands-on way would be a welcome project: an essential element to making the place
hers
again.

Reluctantly, as time was getting on, Viola closed the French doors, locked them and faced the moment of going upstairs, almost afraid to go into the room that had witnessed the last awful scene between her and Rhys. This was the big test: would she find that, after all, the place was for ever tainted by the memory, to the point where she couldn’t see a way to move on and enjoy life here again?

‘You OK?’ Marco asked, sensing a change of mood as they prepared to go upstairs.

‘Yes – I’m fine, thanks. I had a dream about the crash last night and it’s made me think about who he was with. What happened to her? Why did she never ever
turn
up? You’d think she would, one way or another. Maybe she has. I’ll never know, will I?’

Marco squeezed her hand. ‘No, you probably won’t, but it wouldn’t change anything if she did, would it? Don’t let a dream hold you back, Vee, don’t let
him
get in the way of the rest of your life.’

‘I know, I know. And I won’t. So …’ she rallied and smiled brightly, ‘let’s go and look. All of upstairs will need paint, just to colour away, you know – that last day. I can just about run to new carpets too, I think.’

‘I get it, I completely get it,’ Marco said, hugging her. ‘And you don’t have to live here at all, remember. Moving to somewhere else wouldn’t be that hard – all your stuff is in storage, everything tidied and ready to roll.’