‘So what was it like going back to Windy Close once you’d been at Greenham Common for a year?’ Charlotte asks Helen.
Luke’s in the kitchen reading one of the Sunday supplements. He’s wearing the same fleece and tracksuit bottoms he had on yesterday. But no space-suit today, thank God. Charlotte and Helen are standing by the sink, sipping tea and talking. Helen’s been describing how, after her degree, she desperately wanted to be ‘free’, and went travelling to India and then spent some time at Greenham Common. She bought this house from one of the Greenham women, a few years later, and her connection to Greenham was the reason for her wanting to settle in this area. She’s working as a therapist now.
‘It felt incredibly strange,’ Helen says. ‘I never felt comfortable there. It was too . . . I don’t know. Too trivial and money-obsessed and, well, too Essex for me.’
‘Why did you move there in the first place?’
She shrugs. ‘Doug liked it. He’s from Essex and he always wanted to move back there. One day he inherited some money; the next he started looking for jobs in the southeast. He spent the money on the house. He said we had to grow up.’
Charlotte raises her eyebrows. ‘Grow up?’
Helen laughs. ‘Yep. We were about your age at the time.’
‘God. That’s insane.’
‘I know. I was just starting a college course as well. I wasn’t quite ready to grow up and play house and worry what the neighbours thought. It was like living in a soap opera. I kept expecting people to come round with a casserole or a cake recipe or something. At that age I still wanted to smoke dope and listen to John Lennon.’
‘I suppose having a kid didn’t help?’
‘What, Julie? I wanted to take her to Greenham with me – in fact, I wanted to take her everywhere with me – but Doug said she couldn’t afford to miss all that school and I’d probably get into trouble for taking her away in the middle of a term and so on. Also, she wasn’t interested in any of that sort of thing. Do you know her name’s really Juliet? She shortened it to Julie when she was about eight because it was more normal. She always wanted normal clothes and to be just like everyone else. To be honest, we didn’t completely click when she was a child.’
‘Juliet?’ Charlotte says. Luke catches her eye. ‘Did you know this?’ she asks him.
He shakes his head. ‘Nope. Juliet? Huh.’
‘Does anyone get on with their kids, though?’ Charlotte asks Helen. ‘I mean, if you’re a – excuse the expression – hippy parent, in particular. Don’t all kids just want to be normal and embarrass you by wanting to go to McDonald’s and wear Adidas and listen to pop music?’
‘I don’t know,’ Helen says sadly. ‘I had friends who had great kids.’
‘And Julie wasn’t a great kid?’ Charlotte says. ‘I can’t believe that.’
Helen looks thoughtful. ‘It wasn’t just that,’ she says. ‘You know the most terrifying thing about having kids? It’s that you could fail, somehow, and lose them. And then one day it happens; you realise that your worst fear is coming true and you are losing your child because your relationship’s completely breaking down and you don’t know where it went wrong or how to put it back together again. How do you pick up the phone and talk to your daughter when you haven’t seen her for seven years? Especially when you feel like you’ve tried your best, and when she’d rather live with her father than with you, and she never makes contact. And then there was the Barcelona thing . . .’
‘The what?’
‘I arranged for us to go away on holiday – to Barcelona – after her exams. I was going to ask her to come and live with me here or at least use the time to explain to her that this could be her second home. I wanted to make the effort, to try to get to know her properly, because Julie’s not actually an easy person to know. But I was willing to try. She never turned up at the airport.’ Helen sighs. ‘She just couldn’t be bothered, so I gave up. I went to see her when she got her exam results but she wasn’t interested in me being there. By then I’d given up on her, to be honest. So I stayed for a cup of tea then came home.’
‘But . . .’ says Charlotte.
Luke’s quicker. ‘Hang on,’ he says. ‘That’s all complete rubbish.’
‘I’m sorry?’ says Helen. ‘What do you mean?’
‘The “Barcelona thing”. She actually came home in tears because she was scared of flying. She almost had a complete breakdown because of it. It hadn’t been the easiest year for her anyway – you leaving, her A levels and everything – and she couldn’t handle the train, and she definitely couldn’t handle the idea of going in a plane. I rang the airport. They said they’d make an announcement and get you to call me.’
‘Well, I never got that,’ Helen says.
‘It took her hours to get home because suddenly she couldn’t handle any motion at all. All she was saying when she came back was that she’d let you down. I think, to be honest, she thought you might come and see what was wrong with her . . .’
Helen frowns. ‘So she was trying to get my attention?’
‘No,’ Luke says. ‘It would have been nice for her to have it but she wasn’t trying to get it deliberately. She was very frightened.’
‘Of what? Trains? Flying? Why?’ Helen looks confused and upset.
‘Julie’s had a problem with travelling for ages,’ Charlotte says. ‘That’s why we came here on B-roads. It took absolutely hours. And it’s not just travelling – she’s scared of almost everything. Didn’t you even know that? Didn’t you care when she failed her A levels? It was really important to her that you cared but . . .’
Helen’s face hardens. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘Let me get this right. My daughter’s messed up and you’re both saying it’s my fault? I’m sorry. I don’t think either of you actually know what you’re talking about. I did care, and I do care, but when your daughter hates you, there’s not much you can do about it. Excuse me.’
She leaves the room. A few seconds later, Luke can hear her going up the stairs.
‘That went well,’ he says.
‘Oh, fuck it,’ Charlotte says. ‘What have we done?’
‘We?’
‘Shut up, Luke. Stop talking like you’re on TV.’
Charlotte leaves the kitchen and a few seconds later Luke hears her going up the stairs too. Is she going after Helen? What’s she going to say? Poor Julie, poor Helen. They’ve spent all this time thinking they don’t care about each other, but they do, surely? Luke thinks about his own mother. Is it better to care too much or too little? And who knows how much anybody really cares about anything anyway?
At about half past six, Julie comes back. David and Chantel aren’t with her.
‘You’ll never guess what,’ she says to Luke.
‘Are you speaking to me again?’
‘What? I was never not speaking to you, silly.’
‘But in the van. I was a dick to you.’
‘Yeah, you were. But that was yesterday.’
‘And?’
‘Well, it was yesterday. You didn’t mean it, did you?’
‘No. I, uh . . .’ Luke wants to tell Julie about South Mimms and how he felt but he gets the impression that something’s going on upstairs that’s more important than that.
‘You don’t need to explain,’ Julie says. ‘It’s OK.’
Luke smiles. ‘Thanks.’
‘There is one thing, though. It’s just . . . OK, look. It wasn’t so much the go-faster stuff that bothered me. It was the drinking and smoking, like you were trying to kill yourself.’
‘I wanted to escape.’
‘Yes, Luke, I think we all did.’ Julie frowns. She has an expression Luke hasn’t seen before. ‘You know, Chan and David and Leanne made you a space-suit, and we got a van, and Charlotte found you a healer and we’ve all gone to a hell of a lot of trouble to get you here. You don’t know what it was like last night, when we were trapped and we couldn’t find a way out of the floods. And I know you don’t like it and I know you want to go home but we’re all trying to help you. Before we left, you wanted to go out more than anything in the world. You wanted to be healed. Right? Now, I’m only going to say this once, Luke. Just be nice to everyone because we’re trying to help you, and in order to help you some of us are really doing things we’re not enjoying very much. For example, do you think I really wanted to come here? Just think about it. Anyway, lecture over.’ Julie smiles. ‘I’ve got some amazing news.’
‘Is that Julie?’ Charlotte shouts from upstairs.
‘Yeah,’ Julie calls back. ‘Hi, Charlotte. I’ve got some news.’
‘Can you come up here for a second?’
‘Why?’
‘Can you just come?’
‘You’d better go,’ says Luke.
Charlotte comes downstairs a few minutes later and puts the kettle on.
‘I think we’ll be making a move soon,’ she says.