The House of New Beginnings

MEMO

To: All staff

From: Anthony Gillespie

RE: Sunset Years Befriending Project

Please ensure all forms have been completed and returned to ME by the end of the week. Remember to include full details of your ‘befriendee’ for our records. If you don’t have a suitable candidate, please make that clear on your form and we will assign you one accordingly.

Come on, people! It’s for the community! It’s going to be a beautiful thing!

A beautiful thing, indeed, give me strength, thought Charlotte, pulling a face as she read the email. She hadn’t filled in her form yet, though, having been too shy to broach the subject with Margot over tea on Saturday afternoon. She still wasn’t convinced her older neighbour needed befriending anyway, when her social life seemed way more active than Charlotte’s. Plus Margot was definitely not helpless and feeble. Once she’d finished talking about dying, she’d proceeded to grill Charlotte with all sorts of questions about her job and her upbringing, with unnervingly keen interest. ‘And there is no husband? No handsome lover keeping you warm in the night, non?’ Margot had asked, with a twitch of her perfectly plucked eyebrows.

‘Um . . . non, I mean no,’ Charlotte had mumbled. ‘Not any more, anyway.’ That was the moment she had drained her teacup hastily, swallowed back the last crumbs of her lilac macaron and got up to leave before Margot could lean forward and delve any deeper. ‘Well, it’s been lovely,’ she’d said, feeling her cheeks turn pink. Margot must think her terribly drab, she fretted, when the older woman’s favoured conversational topics consisted of love, death and passion. Meanwhile Charlotte was as dry as an old stick with nothing to say for herself, other than boring on about the intricacies of life in a conveyancing department, if only to avoid the subject turning back to more personal matters.

Her hostess had excellent manners, though, kissing her on both cheeks as she left and then doing that odd, rather embarrassing thing of foraging in her purse for a pound coin again, which she presented to Charlotte, in the manner of a generous benefactress. ‘There’s really no need,’ Charlotte said weakly.

‘Please, I insist,’ Margot said. ‘It has been delightful to speak with you. Now, what was it you tell me last time? That you would spend the money wisely?’

Charlotte blushed again. ‘It’s what my grandmother always used to say when she gave me money at Christmas,’ she explained.

Margot’s eyes had twinkled. ‘I see. Very sensible,’ she said. ‘Well, I am glad to make a wise new friend. You are welcome here any time.’

Welcome any time, Charlotte thought now, spinning a paperclip around between her finger and thumb as she read the email again. Margot had said it. And maybe her neighbour was merely being polite but if Charlotte had to befriend an elderly person for the company community project, then didn’t they say that charity began at home? Where better than her own apartment block?

With this in mind, Charlotte made a detour to Julien Plumart, the patisserie favoured by Margot, after work that day. Having deliberated for some time over the pastel-streaked meringues in the window, she decided to buy a selection of dainty lemon and raspberry tartlets packaged carefully in a white cardboard box, and knocked on Margot’s door with them once back in Dukes Square.

Margot answered the door wearing a charcoal woollen dress with a scarlet scarf knotted around her throat, and reading glasses perched on her nose. ‘But what a surprise!’ she exclaimed, seeing Charlotte with the patisserie box. ‘You must come in. I was just pouring a martini and about to have a cigarette out of the window. Please, do not tell that awful Angela woman. But is there anything nicer than a cigarette with a martini on a Monday evening?’

Margot laughed. ‘Is okay. You do not need to pretend. I am a bad old lady, you are a good young girl. Do not let me correct you.’

‘Corrupt me? I’ll try not to,’ Charlotte said. ‘Hello, anyway,’ she went on shyly. ‘These are for you, to say thank you for Saturday. It was lovely to chat.’

‘My favourite!’ Margot said, accepting the box. ‘That is so kind. Are you sure I cannot mix you a martini? Or I have some very fine absinthe . . .’

‘Thanks, but no, I . . . I have things to do,’ Charlotte said. Yeah, a microwave bolognaise to heat up and a crazy schedule on the housework front. It’s all go round my place, you know! ‘But . . . Well . . . I was wondering.’ Spit it out, she ordered herself. ‘The company I work for, they’re starting a community project. Befriending the—’ She stopped just in time before she said the word ‘elderly’. Margot Favager might refer to herself as an old lady but that didn’t necessarily mean anyone else was permitted to. ‘– the community,’ she said after a small pause, ‘where we sign up to visit people, help with chores, whatever they might need doing . . .’

‘Chores – like running errands. Going shopping for you, or helping with the cleaning. Well. That is, if you want to be my . . . person. Befriendee.’ Charlotte blushed, hoping she hadn’t just insulted the woman. She had made it sound so formal, so unfriendly, in fact. Besides, Margot’s flat had been pristine the other day, she clearly had no trouble keeping the place clean. ‘Or we could just drink tea and chat, of course,’ she added in a rush.

‘Ahh,’ said Margot, her face clearing, ‘it is a charity thing for lonely people? Helping unhappy old ladies?’ She pursed her lips. ‘But I am not lonely. Or unhappy.’

‘No. Of course you’re not.’ Of the two of them, Margot was definitely not the lonely one. ‘And I didn’t mean to suggest for a second that . . .’

‘You are taking pity on a dying old woman who drinks too much, that is it? Holding my hand across the street – you think I need this help?’ Margot’s voice rose with each question and Charlotte’s face flamed.

‘‘No! Not at all!’ she cried wretchedly, wishing she’d never asked. Why had she even thought it was a good idea? She was so clumsy, so blundering! And now Margot, the one person in Brighton who’d been kind to her, who’d welcomed her into her home, was annoyed, her feelings hurt. ‘Listen, it doesn’t matter, it was just a thought,’ she babbled, stricken. ‘Really, I’m sorry I even men—’

But Margot was patting her arm and roaring with laughter all of a sudden. ‘Ahh, Charlotte, I am teasing you. I am joking you,’ she said. Oh, thank goodness, thank goodness, thank goodness. ‘That would be very nice. I will send you on a chore every week to buy us more pastries and some gin, hein? And then we will talk and enjoy yourselves. Yes?’

‘Yes.’ Charlotte bit her lip, feeling chastened. Well, that had put her in her place. That had told her. ‘Thank you, that would be lovely,’ she said quietly. ‘Does Friday afternoon suit you? You could come to my flat if you’d rather, or—’

‘I would love you to be my guest. Friday afternoon. It will be like our club. And we can make the world right.’

‘Yes,’ Charlotte said again. She didn’t bother to correct the idiom. ‘We can make the world right.’

Monday night meant window cleaning, hoovering and laundry sorting. A busy way to start the week. After the bolognaise dinner (very good, thank you, Waitrose), she got stuck into the hoovering. The flat was so small, it never took her that long unfortunately. (Occasionally, if she was having a really bad day, she might go over it twice, just to eat into the empty evening.) Often as she pushed the nozzle around, she found herself wishing she had endless rooms, several flights of stairs, a hallway that was longer than two whole metres to get stuck into. It was the same with the laundry – the meagre load of washing never took much time to sort through. She thought of her friends with kids who would moan unthinkingly about all their domestic chores. The laundry! they would sigh, comically clapping a hand to their heads as if it was just too much to bear. The mess! Like they knew what it was to suffer. Like they had a clue! Charlotte would have willingly scaled mountains of stinking laundry every night for the rest of her life without a single complaint if it meant she could have kept Kate. If she could be hanging clean wet sleepsuits on a radiator right now, shaking out tiny pairs of striped tights and baby vests.

She had kept just one little sleepsuit, a soft white one with a sweet hedgehog print on the chest. It had been too big for Kate, her legs only reaching halfway down the insides, the sleeves needing to be bunched up and rolled over at the cuffs in order to let the baby’s tiny pink starfish hands emerge. Don’t think about her, Charlotte. Don’t go there.

With one last savage sweep of the hallway, she switched off the Hoover and it sighed into silence. Only seven-thirty and there were hours of evening left; she’d have to spin out the window cleaning, she decided. Scrub them with soapy water and then polish with vinegar for extra sparkle. Wasn’t scrunched-up newspaper meant to be good for cleaning windows? Maybe she would give that a try, kill some extra time. Oh, but who cared, though? she thought in a sudden rush of anguish, her hands tightly curled into fists. Who cared? Why was she even bothering about her bloody windows, what was the point?

She ran into her bedroom, unable to hold out any longer, wrenching open her wardrobe doors and pulling out all the clean jumpers and hoodies she kept there, to find buried underneath her precious treasures, the only mementos of Kate. The sleepsuit, the photographs, the white plastic nameband she’d worn around her tiny wrist at the hospital . . . She tried to ration looking at these things as if too much exposure would somehow lessen them of their worth, reduce their specialness. But sometimes, like now, she just wanted to pore over the photographs, to press the soft hedgehog sleepsuit against her face, and . . .

Her hands were lifting off the lid of the box – I can’t bear it, I can’t bear it – when she heard a knock at her front door. ‘Charlotte?’ came a voice, followed by a second knock.

Charlotte jumped at the interruption. She had barely had a single visitor in the time that she’d been here, other than the postman now and then, or someone ringing the buzzer wanting Jo downstairs. With a last look at the box, she replaced it and gulped in a few calming breaths, before going out to the hall. ‘Um . . . yes?’ she called. The voice didn’t sound like Margot, so it couldn’t be her. And yet she didn’t know anybody else in Brighton, other than people at work, and they didn’t have her address. Well, the HR department did, she supposed, her mind racing ahead frenziedly. Was she in trouble for something? Maybe they had noticed that she never seemed to sign up for staff karaoke evenings or the bowling night that some keen person in Accounts had organized. What if it was the boss, Stella, come to have a little Buck your ideas up, love kind of chat in private?

Georgie. From next door. The twenty-something girl with the red skirt and northern accent who’d complimented Charlotte on her shoes. ‘Oh,’ she said dumbly, then gathered her wits and unlatched the security chain. ‘Hi,’ she said, answering the door and hoping she didn’t look too crazed. Hey, don’t mind me, I was just about to start sobbing over a shoebox. Like you do!

‘Hello again.’ Georgie was in jeans today with a pink halter-neck top and dangly gold earrings, her blonde hair up in a messy ponytail. ‘Sorry to bother you. It’s just . . . Well, the thing is, I’ve been given these tickets for a roller disco night in Saltdean. I’ve got to write about it for this local magazine.’

Charlotte blinked. As conversational openers went, this was a new one on her. ‘That’s . . . nice?’ she ventured, unsure what else to say.

‘And I was hoping Simon would come with me – my boyfriend.’ A fleeting expression of exasperation crossed Georgie’s face. ‘But he’s not keen. Or rather, he said “Over my dead body will I put on a pair of flaming roller skates.”’ She spoke in a gruff overly northern accent to make her point.

Charlotte said nothing but had a horrible feeling that she knew where the conversation might be heading.

‘So I was wondering,’ Georgie went on hopefully, ‘if you might like to come along instead. Neighbours’ night out? It could be a laugh.’

‘Oh,’ said Charlotte again. Roller skating? She hadn’t strapped on a pair of skates since she was a teenager. She thought of whirling around the old roller rink in Newbury, hand in hand with her best friend Shelley, their hair streaming out behind them. Then she thought of her unfit thirty-eight-year-old self and the unworn new trainers still virgin white, and how lately she’d started making little ‘Oof’ noises whenever she got up from a chair. ‘Well, I’m not sure . . .’

Georgie bit her lip. ‘Right, I’m going to be honest with you, cards on the table now, because the thing is, I don’t actually know anyone else in Brighton,’ she confessed. ‘We’ve only just moved in and my mates are all miles away. I just thought . . . I mean, it would be good to get to know each other, wouldn’t it? And . . .’

She had such wide blue eyes, Georgie, and there was such hope shining from them. Charlotte had to look away. She did not want to go to a roller disco, she reminded herself. She was an adult woman and it was perfectly acceptable to say no. Anyway, she still had the windows to clean yet, didn’t she? ‘I’m a bit busy right now,’ she said weakly in the end.

‘Oh, I don’t mean now,’ Georgie said at once. ‘I’ve got free tickets either tomorrow or Wednesday, whichever suits you best. I can drive us there and back. And if it’s shit we can always sneak off and just go to the pub instead. What do you say?’

Charlotte could feel her resistance crumbling. She was rubbish at saying no to people, that was the problem, especially when they were standing right in front of her wheedling and pleading and giving her full puppy-dog eyes. It was probably why charity fundraisers always made a beeline for her in the street because they could tell she was a soft touch.

‘I . . .’ she said. Again came that memory of how it had felt as a teenager to whizz along on eight spinning wheels, fast and free. And then Margot’s voice was echoing in her head: A new friend, how delightful! ‘I suppose I could do tomorrow,’ she found herself saying faintly. Tuesday was always a bit light on the housework front anyway, she often ended up watching natural history documentaries or doing the Sudoku in the newspaper to avoid the tempting siren of the shoebox of Kate photos. Look at the way she’d fallen apart tonight, on the verge of losing it completely before Georgie’s knock on the door. Whereas if she was out of the flat altogether . . .

‘Tomorrow would be brilliant,’ Georgie said, pouncing on her capitulation. ‘Oh, thanks, Charlotte, that would be fab, I really appreciate it. Shall I knock for you around seven?’

‘Okay,’ Charlotte said, wondering what the hell she had just agreed to. A roller disco, with her neighbour who must be ten years younger than her? Had that actually just happened? She must have lost the plot, she thought as they said goodbye and she shut the door. Then she leaned against the wall for a few moments, feeling as if her common sense had just been hijacked. Maybe she would have to come down with some terrible food poisoning tomorrow, she thought worriedly. Maybe she would just silently lock her front door and pretend to be dead.

Still, looking on the bright side – her recent moment of utter despair had now slipped noiselessly away, a small pebble sinking down to the depths of the ocean. Returning to her wardrobe, she piled the jumpers and hoodies back in the place above the shoebox and closed the doors, will-power restored once more. There, she thought, her hands lingering for a moment on the wooden panels. All at rest.

And so it was that not twenty-four hours later, Charlotte found herself snapping down the catches on a pair of hired roller boots at the side of a chalk-smelling leisure centre hall, while speakers overhead boomed out ‘Boogie Wonderland’ and lights flashed red, green, blue around her. She still wasn’t quite able to believe she was actually there. Work had been a bit crap earlier – she was wrangling with an over-zealous solicitor who wanted her clients to take out indemnity insurance about the use of a shared alleyway behind their hundred-year-old house (ridiculous!) and then she’d spent forty minutes on the phone to a particularly needy client who had insisted on Charlotte’s help as she filled in her property information form, line by line. Charlotte, increasingly impatient, had found herself absent-mindedly doodling skates on the corner of her notepad. Then – the weirdest thing – she had finished the call and refreshed her emails to see that her long-lost friend Shelley, she of the teenage roller rink days, had sent Charlotte a friend request on a social networking site out of the blue. It was as if Fate was giving her a big old nudge and telling her what to do.

Thanks to Fate – and the pleading face of her neighbour – here she was anyway, freckled with flecks of coloured light from the spinning disco ball suspended from the centre of the ceiling, and several scary miles from her comfort zone. She hoped this wasn’t about to be an enormous mistake that she’d live to regret. She hoped that she would actually live long enough to regret anything. She’d seen Casualty enough times to know that a terrible accident could happen anywhere, especially if each of your feet was strapped to a set of spinning wheels.

‘Wooo!’ bellowed a DJ, punching the air in time to the music, as the skaters twirled and gyrated below, and Charlotte and Georgie finished fastening their boots. ‘Let me hear you singing along!’

‘Oh my God,’ Georgie laughed, dumping her coat and bag on a plastic seat and levering herself up on the skates. ‘This is nuts. Some people are taking this way too seriously. Look at that guy in the white jeans and trilby! He’s so getting a mention in my write-up.’

Charlotte gingerly stood, clinging to the back of another seat while she found her centre of gravity, then gazed out at the mass of skaters. Ahh, him: white jeans, burgundy trilby and a glittering silver waistcoat . . . with his bare muscled chest and shoulders proudly on display. His skin was already glistening with sweat, or maybe he had oiled it especially for the occasion. Other skaters were working an Eighties look in neon headbands, black mesh vests and legwarmers. There were quite a few pairs of hot-pants too, especially on the men. Oh Lord. Why had she allowed herself to be talked into this?

‘I can’t help feeling a bit under-dressed,’ she murmured, gazing down at her jeans and the long-sleeved blue Gap top she had on. Nobody was wearing helmets either, although some people had wrist and knee-guards. Weren’t these people worried about head injuries? Had they never watched a hospital drama series on TV? ‘Blimey, look at him, old Adonis over there, skimming about with all that hair.’

They both stared as a tall, handsome man skated past, his hair like a luxuriant lion’s mane around his face, his body toned perfection in Lycra cycling shorts and a designer T-shirt. Then they made simultaneous ‘Ewww’ noises as they saw him skate directly behind three women in succession, pinching one’s bum, grabbing another by the waist, and then twerking horribly around the third. ‘Grim. Definitely stay away from that creep,’ Georgie said. Like Charlotte, she was also wearing jeans but with a turquoise T-shirt that had silver appliqué stars, and she’d put her blonde hair up in bunches so she looked slightly more the part, at least. ‘Shall we join the throng?’ she went on. ‘I might need to hold hands for the first spin round, if that’s okay. Last time I had a pair of these on, I was about fourteen, and loads fitter.’

‘Same,’ Charlotte confessed. Clinging to each other, they inched forward and onto the smooth polished floor with little squeals of trepidation. ‘I can’t believe I’m doing this,’ she gasped over the pounding beat of Lady Marmalade. The ping of her microwave and the comforting rumble of a David Attenborough narrated documentary seemed very far away, practically on another planet all of a sudden.

‘Nor me,’ Georgie giggled, her free arm windmilling as they set off. ‘Whooaaaa! Shit, man. This is hard.’

Georgie was right, it was hard, but already the technique was starting to come back to Charlotte. Once upon a time, she and Shelley had gone every week to the roller rink, with too much blusher and their hair coated in copious amounts of sticky spray, strawberry bubblegum nonchalantly chomped as they whizzed around, eyeing up the boys. Concentrating fiercely now, teeth gritted, her body seemed to remember what to do: sliding her feet forward and slightly out like a duck, knees bent, hips building a rhythm as she glided slowly along on her left foot then her right. Within minutes she was experiencing a cautious sense of gathering euphoria; the dizzy light-headed conviction, as they spun around a corner together, hands still tightly locked, that she might not be about to die after all.

‘So tell me about the magazine,’ she said breathlessly as they completed their first circuit and high-fived in triumph. Then they set off again, a smidge faster this time. ‘You’re a journalist, are you?’

‘A novice journalist,’ Georgie replied, skidding a little as a more experienced skater sailed by them, pelvis twisting fluidly to the music. ‘Whoa,’ she yelped again, struggling to regain her balance before tumbling to the ground, where she sat, rubbing her elbow and laughing, until Charlotte pulled her back up. ‘Ow. As much a novice writer as I am a skater,’ she said. ‘Thanks.’

Off they went again, gingerly at first and then lengthening their strides with increasing confidence. ‘This is good,’ Charlotte said as they picked up speed. She could feel a joyful emotion rising inside her. Hey, Shelley, you’ll never guess what I’m doing. Hey, Mum, I went out the other night. To an actual roller disco! ‘We’re not bad, are we?’ she asked as they navigated a corner with aplomb. Some might even say flair.

‘We have totally nailed this,’ Georgie agreed, just as she swerved to avoid a man in a diamanté-adorned Stetson and promptly clattered over again. ‘Whoops. Ow. Pride goes before a broken wrist, as they say.’

‘You okay, love?’ asked the man, reaching down to haul her up. He was wearing a neon pink vest and mirror shades and shorts so tiny they were practically indecent.

‘Thanks,’ said Georgie. ‘We’re new here. As you can probably tell from my pratfalls.’

He clapped her on the back. ‘Welcome to the gang. Oh, TUNE!’ he cried, speeding off, bum wiggling as the song changed to ‘Yes Sir, I Can Boogie’.

Georgie grinned at Charlotte. ‘Do you know what, I’m a bit in love with Brighton,’ she said. ‘I mean . . . Look at that guy. Look at this whole place. There’s no way anything like this would happen in Stonefield, where I grew up. No way. And it’s ace!’ She gripped Charlotte’s hand a little tighter as they swirled around the bend. ‘No doubt I’ll be back in my old life by Christmas and this will all seem like a weird dream.’

Charlotte laughed. There was something vaguely dreamlike about being here, she agreed: the rushing neon-dressed skaters around them, the thumping disco beat, the spinning of wheels underfoot, building up speed, their hair flying out behind them. ‘The weirdest,’ she agreed. ‘And do you know what’s really weird? I’m actually quite enjoying myself too.’

By nine-thirty, their legs had turned to jelly and the two of them limped to the side and removed their skates, fingers trembling from the exertion. Before this, Charlotte could have counted on one hand the number of times she had done any form of exercise since Kate was born – scrub that, she could have counted on a closed fist. None. No times. No exercise. Until tonight when she’d used all sorts of muscles she’d completely forgotten about. And . . . whoa. Here came the endorphins, bustling through her bloodstream like a parade of cheerleaders shaking pom-poms. It felt good. Really bloody good. Actually, she’d go as far as to say that it felt epic.

As well as burning all those calories – she had so earned her next box of chocolate eclairs, she realized happily – she and Georgie had chatted and laughed the whole evening and it had been fine. Fun, actually. Spinning around a roller disco dancefloor meant there was never any danger of the conversation turning heavy or sombre: Georgie had told Charlotte about being here for six months with her boyfriend and writing for the magazine, and Charlotte . . . Well, Charlotte had mainly listened, to be fair, and hadn’t really said much about herself, but she’d ventured the odd titbit of information in return: how she’d met Margot upstairs in the flats and how her old skating buddy had contacted her out of the blue just that day. Nothing major. Easy-going chat. But even that was a novelty, she realized. Georgie was like the naughty little sister she’d never had.

Once back in their ordinary shoes – goodness, it felt so strange to walk again, after all that skating – Georgie suggested driving back into town and going for a drink before they called it a night. Charlotte was now feeling so uncharacteristically upbeat and – yes, she would go as far as to use the word ‘kick-ass’ – that she agreed immediately. And so it was that twenty minutes later, they were settling down in a corner of the Hare and Lion, a rather dingy old boozer that didn’t care how sweaty-faced its clients were, with a gin and tonic each, and after a single sip, Charlotte could feel herself getting pleasantly swimmy. ‘Thank you,’ she said shyly to Georgie. ‘Thanks for asking me along this evening. It’s ages since I went out. I really enjoyed it.’

‘Oh, Charlotte, thanks for coming!’ Georgie exclaimed. ‘I would have been bricking it, going there on my own, you did me a massive favour. And I could tell you didn’t really want to at first and were just being kind to me, so double thanks. You rock.’

‘Don’t argue!’ Georgie ordered, holding up a finger, then took a long slurp of her drink. ‘God, I needed that. I’m knackered! It was fun though, wasn’t it, in a slightly mad sort of way.’

‘It was great,’ Charlotte said, surprising herself. She wasn’t even being polite, for once. While whizzing around the roller rink, she had felt young again, free, happy. How often did that happen? ‘You’ll have to let me know when your writeup comes out so I can read it. Are you going to mention the conga at the end?’

‘Too right I am. And the limbo bit. Oh, and wasn’t it brilliant when those two women did their dance-off? I loved them! Didn’t you just want to become their new best friend and hang out with them forever?’

‘I’m worried already that I won’t have enough space to fit everything in,’ Georgie said happily, ‘which is the best kind of problem to have.’ She raised her glass. ‘Cheers, anyway. To roller discos and all who sparkle there. To us!’

‘Cheers!’ They toasted one another. ‘Where do you think you’ll go next week?’ Charlotte asked. ‘People make suggestions, is that right, and then what? Is there a vote, or will your editor just pick somewhere?’

‘I reckon she’ll pick,’ Georgie said, fishing the lemon slice from her drink and sucking it. ‘Knowing her, she’ll go with the wildest suggestion of all, so . . .’ She held up crossed fingers and pulled a face. ‘I could be heading off anywhere. To any mad Brightonian thing – and after tonight, I get the feeling that there are some pretty wild ones around. What have I let myself in for?’

Charlotte smiled. There was something immensely likeable about Georgie, she thought – she was just straightforward and nice and upfront. No side. No corners either. And she was brave, as well, putting herself out there for the public’s entertainment in such a way. Charlotte would never have had the bottle. ‘Maybe I should flood the office with ideas of things that you might actually want to do,’ she suggested now. ‘Like wine-tastings and spa-testings and dinner at fabulous new restaurants . . .’

‘Yes!’ cried Georgie, with a laugh. ‘Charlotte, you’re a bloody genius, that’s a great idea.’ She grinned. ‘And I tell you what, you get first dibs on any of the good ones, as my partner in crime. Do we have a deal?’