Ashley and Cara were sitting at the boardroom table in the office. In front of them was an open laptop, and on the screen was Grace, slightly fuzzily holding up a huge jug in the studio at the factory.
‘This is the party pitcher for the Balloons and Bunting range. Or at least, it’s the prototype. I think the handle needs to be broader, and the spout less pinched.’
Ashley leant forward. ‘It looks fine.’
‘I think I should make the balloons bigger—’
‘I can’t bear it,’ Cara said. ‘That I won’t be here to see it launched.’
Grace put the pitcher on the table beside her and looked towards her camera. She said, ‘Of course you’ll be there. You’re not going to Australia, you’re going a mile up the road.’
‘Exactly,’ Ashley said. She had had another new haircut, a sort of feathery bob.
Cara said, impatiently, ‘You know what I mean.’
‘Nonsense,’ Grace said. Her voice sounded uncharacteristically confident. ‘We’ll tell you whatever you want to know. And then when we need rebranding in a few years’ time, you can do it for us. For nothing.’
Ashley said, ‘We’re inundated with applications for our jobs here.’
‘I bet,’ said Grace.
‘People are so well qualified. Almost over-qualified.’
‘What does Ma think?’
Cara and Ashley looked at each other.
‘We haven’t asked her,’ Ashley said.
‘Haven’t you?’
‘Of course, we will …’
Grace leant towards the screen. She said confidentially, ‘I think she might sell the Parlour House.’
‘What?’
‘She just came out with it. She just said to me that she had had a bit of a wake-up call, partly about Pa and partly about her own need to see things a bit differently. She said all these houses and flats just suddenly looked like a metaphor for what was the matter and why she and Pa weren’t doing very well together, and that what had seemed so important looked a bit daft instead.’
‘But I thought it was about this creative-vision thing—’
‘It was.’
‘I thought she couldn’t have the ideas that were so central to the company if she didn’t have somewhere of her own to be, and think, and all that.’
Grace leant closer still, so that her face was distorted and her eyes grew huge as plates. ‘Maybe I’m going to have the ideas from now on. Maybe, even if she can’t quite say so yet, she sort of senses that there’s going to be a bit of a change.’
The others leant forward too.
‘Gracie! Have you talked to her?’
‘In a roundabout way.’
‘What happened? What did she say?’
‘Which was?’
‘I – sort of lost my temper.’
‘Wow.’
‘What did you say?’
Grace pushed her hair back. She said, ‘I kind of told her to get a grip. I said look at what’s happened – Morris arriving, Cara and Dan going, Pa finding a new lease of life – look at all that and wake up, stop eluding everyone and refusing to be pinned down or ever there, while insisting on having control of everything. You can’t do it, I said, any more than you can stop Ashley wanting to do Dan’s job her way, or me wanting more control up here. We are all moving on, we are all changing places. And you’ve got to stop wanting nothing to change unless you say so, and look at your own life, look at your marriage, take in the fact that you are actually not even going to have a home. You’ve got to be a person, not just a business obsessive. You’ve got to set us all free, like you’ve always been.’
There was a short, stunned silence.
Then Ashley said again, admiringly, ‘Wow.’
‘Ten out of ten, Gracie,’ said Cara.
‘Yes. Well.’
‘Did she yell at you?’
‘No. No, actually, she didn’t. She went very quiet. Then she said Maisie had given her a painting she’d done at school. It was completely black, Ma said. All over. Maisie said it was a picture of what was under her bed. Ma said she would treasure it.’
The other two were laughing. Cara said, ‘Didn’t she say anything about what you’d said?’
‘Not then. But this morning, she told me she was getting the Parlour House valued. Which I took as a roundabout way of letting me know she’d heard me.’
‘You’re very patient. I’d have asked her outright.’
‘I didn’t have the heart,’ Grace said. ‘Ash, that’s cool hair.’
Ashley tossed her head slightly. She said airily, ‘Commercial Director hair?’
Grace gave a little whoop.
‘Will you miss me?’ Cara demanded.
‘Nah.’
‘You must be joking—’
‘Dan is so happy.’
‘You will be.’
‘I couldn’t stand to stay. But—’
‘It’ll give you a chance to like Ma again,’ Grace said.
‘It’ll free me,’ Cara said. ‘Agreed.’
Grace glanced at her watch. ‘Gotta go, chickens.’
‘Have you? Where?’
Grace pulled back slightly from the camera. She said casually, ‘Oh, boots.’
‘Boots?’
‘Walking boots.’
‘But you never walk. You’re as bad as Ma.’
‘I’m starting,’ Grace said. ‘Peak District. Saturday.’
‘Not Jeff—’
‘No, Car. Not Jeff. Promise. Never Jeff again.’
‘Who then?’
‘A friend.’
‘A boyfriend?’
‘A friend,’ Grace said, ‘who is a man. As it happens.’
‘Not Neil—’
‘Why not Neil?’
Ashley said, ‘Could you think of Neil as a boyfriend?’
Grace had moved away from her screen to collect items from the table in the studio and was dropping them into her bag. She called, ‘He’s a friend I can talk to about all the things I’d like to do with the company, bounce all my ideas off – like importing bedlinen from Spain and toiletries from France—’
‘Ma will have a fit.’
‘About Neil?’
‘About imports.’
Grace turned to the camera. She sang, ‘There may be trouble ahead.’
‘You mean it!’
‘I do,’ Grace said.
‘Walking the hills of Derbyshire with Neil Dundas!’
Grace slung her bag on her shoulder. She bent towards the camera again and blew her sisters a kiss. ‘I mean a lot of things,’ she said. And switched off her screen.
Morris put down a thick white cup of coffee and a granola square on a blue paper napkin in front of Susie. She looked at the granola square. She said uncertainly, not wishing to sound rude, ‘Thank you, but I’m not really hungry.’
He lowered himself into an adjacent chair at the café table. ‘I didn’t think you would be, Susan. But it’ll give you something to do, I thought, breaking it into pieces.’
‘Goodness,’ she said, trying to laugh, ‘is it going to be that awkward?’
He gave her a surprisingly level look. Then he pushed the mug of teaspoons on the table towards her. ‘Sugar?’
‘No, thank you.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I didn’t think you’d take sugar, either.’
‘Is this some kind of test? Or game?’
He shook his head. Then he smiled at her. ‘No,’ he said.
Susie picked up her coffee cup with both hands. She said, looking at it rather than at Morris, ‘Do you realize that this coffee is the first thing you have ever given me in my life?’
He didn’t flinch. He said gravely, ‘I hope it’s the first of many.’
Susie took a sip. Then she said, ‘When you asked me to meet you here, I thought perhaps – perhaps you wanted to say sorry.’
Morris sighed. He said, ‘Is that what you want?’
‘I’d like it to be what you wanted.’
‘Well,’ he said, ‘if you want the honest truth, Susan, I’d rather use my energies getting things right now, rather than weeping and wailing about a past I can’t change.’
Susie felt a peculiar and unforeseen stab of affection. She said tolerantly, surprising herself, ‘You’re a shocker.’
‘I might be. But it doesn’t stop me from seeing how hard it is for you to watch those girls of yours doing exactly what you’ve brought them up to do, without maybe understanding the consequences of what you were doing to them all those years.’
Susie gave a little start. She opened her mouth to contradict him, and then closed it again. Morris reached out a hand, briefly gripped her nearest wrist and took his hand away again. He said, ‘I’ve never been much of a one for running races – I don’t need to tell you that – but I’d imagine that being out in front for years and years doesn’t actually prepare you very well for having your own daughters drawing level. And then maybe pulling away from you.’
Susie said in a low voice, ‘I am really, really proud of them.’
‘I know you are.’
‘Really proud.’
‘You may not want to hear this from me,’ Morris said, ‘but I feel the same way about you.’
‘Please don’t.’
‘And I can see that it’s lonely.’
‘It’s not lonely!’ Susie said with energy. ‘It’s liberating!’
Morris indicated the granola square. ‘Why don’t you eat some flapjack?’
‘I’ll take it back for Freddy, then,’ Morris said mildly. ‘Freddy’s a cookie monster.’
Susie pushed the paper napkin towards him. She said in a rush, ‘You’re right.’
‘I don’t need to be right, Susan. I just need to be allowed to make a start.’
She nodded.
‘I can’t change the past,’ Morris said again. ‘But maybe I can help you from missing out on things you can’t have a second chance at, now.’
‘I know.’
He gave a little chuckle. He said, ‘I thought you might flare up at me there.’
She shook her head. She said sadly, ‘I don’t want to.’
‘Drink your coffee.’
She picked her cup up again, obediently. She said, almost shyly, ‘What – what was my mother like?’
Morris gave a little sigh. ‘Sweet,’ he said. ‘Innocent.’
‘Childlike?’
He nodded.
‘Am I like her?’
‘Well,’ he said, ‘Grace has got her hair.’
‘You heard what I asked.’
Morris sighed. ‘I see something of her in you. I see it in Cara. I see it in Maisie.’
‘Why d’you say it like that?’
‘The truth is, Susan,’ he said, ‘I don’t want to see anything or anyone – even you yourself – standing in the way of your being happy. Seems to me that you’ve inherited some good, but a bit of bad, like we all have. But you’ve done something I never did – and I’ve suffered for it – and that’s choose a good partner and have a family. I want to see you look around you. I want you to see what you’ve got now, instead of always what you might have. I don’t want to see you wasting what you’ve got.’
She put her cup down again. ‘Am I?’
‘You don’t need to be told a thing like that.’
Susie looked away from him across the café. She said, ‘I’ve come so far. So far. You wouldn’t believe how far. All those years of mistakes and negotiations, all the battles while I learned the lessons of doing business, all the recovering from bad advice, all the litigation with rivals who’d spied on me, all the training of people, the girls—’
‘I don’t doubt it.’
Susie gave a rueful little laugh. She said, ‘I sort of feel I have to wear the scars. I feel that the company is my – validation.’
‘What about the girls?’
‘What about them?’
‘They’re your validation, Susan.’
She regarded him.
He said gently, ‘They’re not your rivals.’
‘I never thought—’
He reached out a second time to hold her wrist, and kept his hand there. She didn’t take hers away. He said, ‘Those girls of yours have got to learn, just as you had to learn.’
‘But I’ve sheltered them.’
‘Not any more, you shouldn’t.’
She looked down at her hand in his grip. She said, half laughing again, ‘I didn’t think you knew anything about anything.’
Morris let go of her wrist, and wrapped the paper napkin round the granola square before he put it in his pocket. He said amiably, ‘Nor did I.’
‘I thought you didn’t know how not to be a burden.’
Morris stood up a little stiffly. He said, ‘Now that’s the last thing I want to be.’ He glanced down at her. ‘Get up, Susan. We’re starting as we mean to go on. Time to collect Maisie.’
‘I don’t think,’ Jasper said to the estate agent, his phone in the hand not holding a vodka and tonic, ‘that I’m sure enough about that flat to make an offer, after all.’
The agent, ten miles away across London, in Hoxton, did her professional best not to sound exasperated. ‘I thought that the third viewing—’
‘So did I,’ Jasper said.
‘It’s a great location. And, I have to tell you, a very fair price.’
Jasper took a sip of his drink. Susie, he reflected, would not have needed a shot of vodka before she made a difficult phone call. He said, sounding lame even to himself, ‘I’m sure.’
‘Well,’ the agent said, gathering up her energies for a renewed assault, ‘as it happens, I’ve got several other properties newly on the market, one-bedroom flats that meet all your specifications, even if they don’t all have the view or the ceiling height of—’
‘No, thank you,’ Jasper said.
‘Excuse me?’
‘I said,’ Jasper said, with elaborate courtesy, ‘no, thank you. I don’t think I’ll be looking for a flat. Not any more.’
‘But I thought,’ the agent said, sounding seriously unsettled, ‘that you wanted a studio flat within walking distance of your music studio.’
‘I did.’
‘May I ask, did the lease on the studio fall through?’
‘Oh no,’ Jasper said. ‘Why should it?’
‘I was under the impression that you—’
‘So was I,’ Jasper said. He smiled into the telephone. ‘I read myself wrong. I’m sorry to have wasted your time.’
‘Not wasted, I’m sure,’ the agent said bravely.
Jasper took another mouthful of his drink. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I’m not going to be buying in your area, after all. So if that counts as wasting your time, I’m very sorry.’
The agent cleared her throat. He could tell that she was trying not to compute the hours she had spent on him which had, just now, come to nothing, nor to anticipate exactly how she would tell the vendor that his prospective buyer had just pulled out, for no reason he cared to specify.
‘Perhaps,’ the agent said a little tensely, and as if reading his thoughts, ‘you would like to explain to me why a flat that fulfils every criteria you insisted on is suddenly no longer what you want?’
Jasper smiled into the telephone. He said warmly, ‘No, I wouldn’t, I’m afraid.’
‘I see.’
‘I wouldn’t expect you to see, either. It must be maddening when people behave like I am, but there it is.’
‘Is that your final word?’
‘Yes,’ Jasper said. ‘Yes, it is. Sorry again.’
There was silence on the other end of the line.
Jasper took the phone away from his ear and looked at the screen. ‘Call ended,’ it said firmly. The agent had rung off without saying goodbye, without ending the weeks of their weirdly close relationship with even the anodyne platitudes of good wishes for the future. How very – peaceful.
Jasper dropped his phone into his pocket. He felt elated at having extricated himself from a complicated situation without having to ask for help to do so. It was a good feeling, strengthening. It almost merited celebrating with a second vodka and tonic, but on reflection he would save that second drink to have with Susie when she joined him, as she had promised.
‘Are you working tonight?’ she’d said, ringing from her office earlier that day. ‘Could we perhaps have a drink together, at least? And not at home.’
No, he’d said, he wasn’t working. He would be on Saturday, though, if she’d like to come to the gig?
‘Yes,’ she’d said.
‘You don’t sound very certain.’
‘I’m – not very certain if you want me there.’
‘Oh, I do.’
‘Do you?’
‘Yes,’ Jasper had said.
He looked across the pub now towards the half-glazed door to the street. Susie would soon come through it, and then he could tell her about his conversation with the estate agent. In fact, he could make quite a funny story about his conversation with the estate agent. He smiled down into his glass. What was that French phrase about having a parting shot through the staircase just as you left someone you’d had – or almost had – a row with? Something about un esprit de l’escalier. Susie would remember. And perhaps he could then tell her what he now wished he’d said at the end of his conversation with the estate agent from Hoxton, which was, ‘The thing is, I’m not looking for a property on my own any more.’ And then he would have laughed, in a jolly, we-blokes-are-so-hopeless kind of way, before adding, ‘You sometimes need to go down the wrong path a bit, before you find the right one. Don’t you think?’
The estate agent probably wouldn’t have had a clue what he was on about. She’d have just thought that he was mad as well as being, as a potential client, bad. But it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter at all what the estate agent from Hoxton thought. All that mattered, really, was that Susie understood what he meant, what he was driving at. What he had determined about their future together. And she would. He was certain of that. She would.