They didn’t see Zoe again until two years later, when Richard spotted her in a cafe on Broadway Market. He’d been surprised when Eleanor suggested they take the girls to the lido; they didn’t often come back to London Fields now.
Richard saw her first: she was with a man, sitting on stools at a counter facing the window. He almost didn’t recognize her. She still had too much hair, but it was piled on top of her head now, as though she were an actress in a nineteenth-century drama, and although she was still in jeans, she was wearing them with a shirt buttoned up to the top and she looked smarter than she had when she lived with them at Litchfield Road. There was something off about the outfit – sort of frumpy – that Richard identified as a ‘look’, just not one he could interpret. She seemed bigger as well: her face was fuller and she was taking up more space. She and the man were totally absorbed in each other, obviously thrilled by one another’s company. At one point, it had made Richard jealous, seeing couples like that. It didn’t any more.
He pretended he hadn’t seen her. He got the cake and coffees, hoping Eleanor wouldn’t catch sight of her, but just as they were about to leave, Eleanor said, ‘Richard, look, it’s Zoe.’
‘What? Oh God, so it is.’
‘We should go and say hi.’
‘Oh, please don’t, love. Come on, don’t start all that again,’ he said, but Eleanor was already on her feet. He stayed with the children and watched the women talk. Zoe looked delighted to see her and there was genuine warmth on Eleanor’s face too.
They had finally sold Litchfield Road, to an older couple who had grown-up children and were retiring. Richard was privately astonished that there were people who downsized to a four-bedroom house in London Fields, though he was overcome with relief to have an offer. ‘We need a project,’ the woman had said, running her hands over the green walls.
As soon as the sale went through, they bought a new build further east. Eleanor refused to live anywhere built more than a few years ago and anyway, they would have had to move too far out of London to afford another Victorian property. She had chosen the area, arranged the viewings, organized the money, and insisted the house was the right choice. Richard hated the idea at first, but not having to think about property any more became increasingly seductive. They agreed they would move again in a year if they didn’t like it.
But watching Isobel and Rosie run around the garden, eating their tea in the kitchen, he began to slowly enjoy the house. The space was unremarkable, but it belonged to them, something, he realized in retrospect, he’d never felt at Litchfield Road. He started gathering evidence that their area was gentrifying: he kept an eye on the brands in the corner shops and researched proposed transport developments. He started to get interested in minimalism and Frank Lloyd Wright and would eagerly tell people that he thought Victorian architecture was ‘a bit twiddly and twee’.
He had given up his MA after they’d left the house. He couldn’t bear to go back to work full-time, so for now, he spent two days with Isobel, and Rosie when she wasn’t at school. At first, the days were long and hard, punctuated by terror and dogged with a feeling of inadequacy. But as he got better at it and more comfortable, he started to see how rewarding it could be. Eleanor worked full-time now and he took a perverse satisfaction in translating Isobel’s words to her or being able to say, ‘Oh, she’s been doing that for weeks,’ when Eleanor was surprised by something Isobel could do. They agreed that it wouldn’t go on forever, just until he worked out what he wanted to do – at the moment, the thing that would complete him was still elusive.
It was such a relief to see Eleanor happier. Perhaps this was it after all – Eleanor, Rosie and Isobel, their ordinary house, his ordinary job – perhaps he didn’t need anything else. It would just flare up at unpredictable times – a conversation with Dominic about managing his team, a visit from his parents. He’d be walking the children home from Rosie’s school, thinking about what he might do next, and he’d suddenly be floored by the terror of not making any impact on the world. He didn’t know whether to nurture this burst of feeling, treat it as a call to action, or suppress it. And then it would pass. You could almost get used to it.
Eleanor came back to the table, a little shaken.
‘Was that OK? How was Zoe?’ Richard asked.
Eleanor told him that the man she was with was called Joe and he was an artist. Zoe was living on a houseboat in Clapton and working part-time for an art school as their ‘communication officer’. Eleanor and Richard briefly discussed what that might be.
They started to pack up. Eleanor picked up the drawings Rosie had done on the pieces of scrap paper he’d brought, and put them in her handbag; Richard corralled the crumbs on the table and deposited them on the plates, and hooked the sugar lump Rosie had just started to suck out of her mouth. When they were a safe distance from the cafe, they talked about how different Zoe looked. Richard said he thought she’d put on weight.
‘I think it’s just that she looks happy,’ Eleanor said.
*
Later that day, Richard told Eleanor he was going for a run and found himself on the Overground in his running kit, his rucksack at his feet, on his way back to Litchfield Road. It was the third time he’d been back since they moved.
The first time, the couple were taking the house apart, just as he’d wanted to. Zoe’s basement was a shell. There was a skip outside, filled with doors, wallpaper, carpet. The second time, he’d seen workmen knocking through the partition between the living room and the kitchen, and tried to remember if that had been in his plan. He watched them carry the double doors of the kitchen out to the skip, a curious mix of feelings brewing.
This time, the house was complete. There was a burgeoning rosebush in the area outside Zoe’s room. The front door had been replaced and was painted an elegant navy; Richard thought he could identify the exact shade. He peered through the basement window. There was a long dining table, a kitchen island and huge glass doors leading out to the garden at the back. It was still and peaceful.
Richard felt a small ache – perhaps they could have made the house work after all – but the feeling was dim, and more importantly, it was survivable. The life he was living now was not what he would have planned or imagined but he was inhabiting it at least. He picked up his rucksack and ran towards London Fields.