Tara tried to phone her brother again as she was getting ready for work the following morning. Ironically, despite Toby’s visibility on all major platforms in his capacity as a freelance lifestyle columnist/Influencer-with-a-capital-I/blogger/fringe social media personality, he was hard to get hold of in person. Maybe that was the point.
She scrolled through the Instagram photos of the restaurant opening that had alerted her to Toby’s presence online, and thus the consequent possibility that he had his phone in his hand. Tara needed to talk to him. Actual talking, not texts or likes. The brief period of renewed communication that had followed their mother’s sudden death had begun to peter out after a few weeks, but she was doing her best to maintain the momentum, even if it meant she was mainly chatting to herself.
Tara still felt Toby’s absence, even now. When she thought about their childhood, the world seemed several shades more colourful, and that wasn’t just nostalgia. It was Toby: his outlook and his outrageous humour and his wordless understanding of her. She knew why Toby had left – Longhampton was never going to be big enough for him – but it hurt that he’d left her behind too. It hurt so much that she’d never found the right words to tell him.
Tara sighed, listening to the long American rings at the other end. Toby, of course, would counter that there was nothing stopping her coming out to spend time with him. And he was right.
It was ten in Seattle, if he was at home. Not that late. Was he ignoring her? Tara buttered some toast and flicked on the coffee machine. Maybe he was posting from his laptop. Maybe his phone was in his bag.
There were at least two tricky conversations Tara needed to have with her brother, both related to Ruth’s will, neither of which she was looking forward to, but wouldn’t be able to avoid much longer. Ideally, they were face-to-face, in-person conversations, but Tara knew the chances of luring Toby back to Longhampton any time soon were low, unless she invented a new form of underwater yoga or launched a carbon-neutral noodle bar.
The call went to voicemail, and Tara hung up, feeling snubbed. Then she frowned and dialled again, using the time until the message kicked in to fork cat food into a porcelain bowl with Princess Paws written on it.
‘Hey, Toby, just me calling for a chat – I saw your restaurant post on Instagram. Looks amazing! Guess you’re too busy editing to pick up.’ Tara poured hot coffee into her travel mug. Anji at work was spearheading a ‘Ditch the Drive!’ campaign for June, so Tara had to park two streets away and pretend she’d brought coffee for the bus. She tucked the phone under her ear, and put the bowl of cat food down on the floor for Sybil.
There was no sign of the cat. Typical. Sybil had only been living with Tara for a matter of weeks, but she’d realized early on that she was a cat who liked to make an entrance.
‘Hope all’s good with you,’ she went on. ‘Still a bit damp here in Longhampton, but we’re getting back to normal. Listen, I’m calling because you and I need to talk about … hang on.’
Tara put the phone against her chest and shouted, ‘Sybil? Breakfast!’ towards the stairs. There was a worming tablet concealed in the pâté that she wanted to make sure was eaten before she left for work.
‘Sybil’s not my flatmate, by the way, she’s my boyfriend’s cat,’ she explained, as if Toby had asked. Tara liked referring to Phil as her boyfriend; she’d noticed he started fidgeting if she used it in his earshot, which was not a good sign. But asking her to look after his cat was definitely a step towards something more official than ‘man I see three/four times a month for fun times’. ‘I’m pet-sitting! Not sure how long for. Anyway …’
Tara turned back to the open kitchen and allowed herself a moment to admire the clear morning sunlight streaming on to the slate floor. The brass taps, the deep Belfast sink, the reclaimed French cupboards: it was perfect. She reminded herself that she probably shouldn’t get used to living in such a magazine dream of a house. Which was the whole point of the call to Toby.
‘So, yes, we need to talk about the house. The estate agent’s chasing me about putting it on the market. The thing is, Mum …’ Tara stopped just short, right on the edge of the cliff, unable to speak the awful words. If she could guess Toby’s reaction to Ruth’s bombshell then it’d be easier, but she no longer knew what was in her brother’s head. That in itself felt like an open wound.
I need to see his face, she thought. I need to see what he’s thinking.
‘To be honest, it’s a bit weird,’ she confessed instead. ‘When I walk around the house, I keep remembering things from when we were little, but none of it’s there. Nothing. I mean, I always knew Mum loved a makeover but this is forensic.’ Her eye fell on the spot by the kitchen door where their pencil-marked heights had level-pegged until their teens. Toby had cheated, levering his heels up the skirting board to edge ahead. Tara had let him. All now obliterated by Elephant’s Breath.
It had been there, hadn’t it?
Along with the scuffs where Toby dropped his bike in the hall. The back door that used to swell in wet weather, so you had to kick, then pull. The sticky clatter of the letterbox offering the daily hope of a letter. The house was the same, but every memory had been wiped away by Mum’s determined improvements.
Tara closed her eyes. ‘It’d be nice to … I don’t know, just remind myself that we did actually live here?’
She could hear the forced laughter in her own voice, and grimaced. Time to end the call before she said something embarrassing.
‘OK. Right, I’m off to work now but ring any time. If I’m in a session, just leave me a message, let me know when’s good to have a chat.’ She paused, fighting the urge to say, I deserve more than your Instagram followers. ‘Bye!’
She hung up.
On cue, Sybil slunk in from the tiled hallway, a black streak of disdain against Ruth’s neutral woodwork.
‘Morning!’ said Tara brightly, but got no response other than a dismissive flick of the tail as the cat sniffed the breakfast offering with suspicion. They both knew she would eat around the worming tablet.
Tara sighed, no longer up for that fight, and went back to her cold toast. There was, of course, one other person who could corroborate her childhood memories, but he was even more disconnected from Tara’s life than Toby. She wasn’t even sure how she’d get hold of him to ask.
Tara slid the photo out of her diary and stared at it, trying to superimpose the chaotic scene on the immaculate house around her.
It was a party sometime in the early nineties. She’d found the photograph in the pages of Delia Smith’s Christmas, one of the many cookery books she’d carted down to the charity shop. Mum was deep in her Liza Minnelli period (raven pixie-cut, sooty eyeliner and a ‘bold red lip’ working hard against a spangly blazer, rolled up to the elbows). Toby and Tara were centred, with matching bowl-cuts and non-matching T-shirts (The Clash for Toby, a ladybird for her), and between them, his hands on their small shoulders, was Dad. He was holding court in his velvet jacket, black hair smoothed in a slight quiff, smiling at the camera with a bonhomie that Tara remembered so clearly she could almost smell it: smoky Lagavulin and Eau d’Hadrian, and cedar balls from the wardrobe where the jacket hung in between parties.
That party had definitely happened. It had happened here, in the newly finished kitchen-diner – to celebrate the final work being completed. Keith’s first major renovation had transformed a standard post-war four-bed into a mid-century masterpiece of bold lines, Scandinavian wood, skilfully harnessed light and a seamless extension that led the eye out from the marble counters into the deep green of the garden, at the bottom of which rose Keith’s airy home studio, a pale ark of pine and glass amidst the trees. Two storeys: the upper floor flooded with light, perfect for inspiration; downstairs, perfect for escaping. It had been the start of an architecture career that had taken him away from Longhampton – and from them.
On the back, in her mum’s writing, was the date: 18 August 1992. Early in the evening, thought Tara, noting the untouched plate of salmon blinis and the relative absence of empty glasses on the table in front of them. She took a photo of it on her phone and sent it to Toby, hoping it might prompt a response.
Keith Hunter was now sixty-four, not the ambitious thirtysomething in the velvet jacket. The last time Tara had seen her dad in the flesh had been at her graduation, twelve years ago. The hair was still dark, the bold Elvis Costello glasses had been toned down to tortoiseshell frames, the confidence mellowed into assurance. She’d noticed then how her mum had watched him, eagle-eyed, and wondered if she was checking for signs of change the same way Tara was. She’d wondered if Mum still cared. He hadn’t brought a plus one, although Toby’s internet sleuthing unearthed an opera singer called Helen, and Mum had gone alone, and talked constantly about the joys of independence.
Dad put on a good show that day, Tara had to concede. Champagne, flowers, a certain energetic charisma that impressed her friends and tutors.
But after that, nearly nothing. Contact had faded into sporadic birthday and Christmas cards, and she’d been too proud, and too conscious of Ruth’s still touchy reaction to Dad’s name, to chase him. Occasionally, out of late-night curiosity, she’d search online to see what his architecture practice had built most recently. The tortoiseshell frames mutated into expensive rimless glasses, and slowly the flesh-and-blood man vanished behind press releases about hotels and urban developments. Eventually, Tara realized she didn’t actually want to know what sort of life her dad had created without her and Toby, and she stopped looking.
One strange phone call summed up everything Tara felt about her dad. Several years ago – after graduation, before Justin – Tara was on the train home from a weekend in Cornwall with a new boyfriend: their first weekend away which, she realized belatedly, contained every red flag that he wasn’t the Ideal Man she was trying to convince herself he was. She’d answered the withheld number, mainly because Hugh had been explaining cricket’s Duckworth–Lewis method for over twenty minutes, and when she’d heard her dad say, Hello, Taransay, the world had abruptly narrowed around her ear and his voice, as if they’d gone into a tunnel. He was ‘in Cyprus’ and didn’t seem to have phoned her for any reason in particular. He sounded a bit tipsy, but jolly, and then tearful. He’d said something about the sea, and asked her how she was doing without listening to her answer, and then they’d gone into a real tunnel and lost reception. No way to call back. She’d unpicked the conversation over and over afterwards – was the sea a metaphor? When he said he was well, did he really mean he had terminal cancer? – until it fell to pieces in her hands. Later, it had occurred to Tara that maybe her name was next to someone else’s in his contacts and he’d phoned her by accident, then decided to chat anyway.
Tara stared at the Hunters in the photograph as if it might contain clues as to why this little unit would only last a few more years. What did her dad look like now? Where did he live? Who did he love? What did he sound like? Who had he turned into – and would she, one day, see those changes creep over herself?
More than once, in the middle of the night, lying in her old room, Tara had wondered if she should make more effort to track her father down, now Mum wasn’t here to be hurt. But even as she was thinking it, Tara could hear Ruth’s voice in her head, reminding her gently not to rely on her dad, hinting at the efforts he could have made for her, but hadn’t. Mum’s own lifelong singleness was an unspoken reminder of how badly he’d broken her trust with his infidelities, his selfish ambitions. In terms of solid things to tether yourself to, Keith Hunter was about as useful as a marshmallow bollard.
Tara gave Toby another five minutes to respond to the photograph, but when he didn’t, she shouldered her bag, gave an unwilling Sybil a kiss goodbye, and left for work.
Tara power-walked into the Wellness Centre in her trainers, after parking her car in a discreet spot in nearby Coleridge Street, to find Jacqueline energetically plumping the rainbow cushions on the foyer chairs. It was the receptionist’s job but Jacqueline was obsessive about first impressions. Deflated cushions, in Jacqueline’s opinion, gave the wrong message to clients. Ditto wilting flowers.
She stopped as soon as Tara came in. ‘Tara! I was hoping to catch you – have you got a moment? In my office?’
‘Of course,’ said Tara, because it wasn’t really a question.
Jacqueline’s was the biggest office upstairs, the one with the three-window panoramic view of the high street and cathedral, as befitted her status as Centre Director. She was the first to admit her skills were more organizational than therapeutic; Jacqueline had retrained as a marriage guidance counsellor after taking early retirement as a primary school headteacher, and was the first point of contact for new clients. She had a habit of referring clients ‘sideways’ if her own brand of therapy (nodding, shortbread, ballroom dancing classes) wasn’t making headway, and ‘sideways’ normally meant ‘to Tara’. But for all her counselling shortcomings, Jacqueline was a very capable manager, always launching initiatives and awareness-raising efforts that kept them in the local paper. Most importantly, no one had her ability to prevent the various factions in the Centre passive-aggressively diagnosing each other to death in the office kitchen.
‘Tara, first things first,’ Jacqueline began, pulling out a purple biro and opening her to-do book, ‘we need to talk about the Summer Party. Can I pop you down for that lovely trifle of yours?’
Tara made a vague noise. The Centre held four seasonal get-togethers, normally good-natured affairs – apart from the Summer Party, which for some reason had a history of getting badly out of hand. Hero and her gang attributed it to the summer solstice.
‘Incidentally, we’ve decided – no party games.’ Jacqueline looked over her spectacles. ‘Not after what happened with the Mr and Mrs quiz last year.’
‘No,’ Tara agreed. ‘Poor Judith.’
‘Poor Roger, more like. And her a Freudian expert.’ Jacqueline made a face. ‘Anyway, Kemi’s suggested some gong therapy instead!’
‘Do I want to know what that entails?’
‘Apparently she’s got this gong, and it … vibrates while we, sort of … Anyway, she went on a course on the Isle of Wight at Easter and said it was very uplifting. Very spiritual. She says she can give us a gong bath after the buffet.’
‘That sounds … good for the digestion,’ was the best Tara could manage.
‘Well, quite. Now, our new colleague – lovely Dr David. He’s having some trouble arranging an external supervisor so I wondered if you could step in? Just until he finds a new one.’
Every counsellor in the Centre had regular meetings with another therapist to discuss their work and address any problems they were experiencing with their clients. Until the start of the year, Tara had supervised Kathleen, the therapist David had replaced; Kath was an experienced NLP therapist who never had any real problems to unpick, and their sessions had been a good excuse for some extended lunchtime shopping.
‘He’s terribly nice – you’ll get on like a house on fire. Oh, and you can start by giving him this.’ She handed Tara a card. ‘It’s a thank-you card, from Mrs Richardson.’
Tara blinked. ‘The Mrs Richardson?’
Mrs Richardson – no one was permitted to use her first name – had seen everyone in the Centre and tried every available therapy in the hope of curing her insomnia. Tara’s CBT approach hadn’t worked. Neither had Hero’s amethyst pillow crystal, Darren’s acupuncture, Lionel’s homeopathic sleep drops, or any of the others’ attempts to get her off to sleep.
‘She slept through the recycling lorry last week!’ Jacqueline was visibly impressed. ‘Says she’s a new woman.’
‘Wow,’ said Tara, with a twinge of envy. For both David’s success and also Mrs Richardson’s deep slumber. ‘I’ll drop it in.’
‘She actually called David a miracle worker.’ Jacqueline looked almost starstruck. ‘The last review she did of her treatment here was “unlikely to cause permanent damage”.’
Tara seized the moment. ‘One thing I meant to ask about … I noticed David with some clients who’d brought a dog with them?’
Jacqueline nodded, as if this was completely normal.
‘And … since when did we allow that?’ Jacqueline had made a huge fuss about Tara’s electric diffuser.
‘Oh, it’s a key element of his methodology. Animal-assisted therapy. I said we’d give it a month’s trial, with provisos, but so far the results seem to be speaking for themselves. Anyway,’ Jacqueline indicated her ringing phone with an apologetic shrug, before Tara could probe further, ‘here I am, holding you back!’
It was Tara’s cue to leave, and she took it.
David was scribbling furiously with a proper fountain pen when Tara knocked on his door and put her head round later that morning. He shouted, ‘Come in!’ but carried on scrawling notes, his brown hair falling into his face as his pen flew across the paper.
‘Sorry, forgive me. Have a seat. Just … one … second …’
Tara sat down on the chair next to the desk – not the couch; no therapist ever sat on the couch – and let her gaze roam around the room. A spider plant on a bookshelf filled with proper psychology textbooks, not He’s Just Not That Into You and It’s Called a Break-Up Because It’s Broken. A red oriental rug between the chairs, a brass lamp. Framed diplomas on the wall. The room looked as if it had belched out the previous therapist’s IKEA vibe and sided squarely with the original Victorian farmers. It even smelled more serious.
No, she corrected herself, her eye falling on the source of the leathery, library smell: it smelled of an expensive candle. Which she assumed, in turn, was to mask the aroma of the Border terrier that had just left, along with its owners.
‘Sorry about that.’ David clicked the lid on his pen with a snap, and looked up. The smile was mild and guarded at the same time. ‘How can I help?’
Something about the way he said it put her on the back foot. Wasn’t she meant to be helping him? ‘I thought I’d pop in and introduce myself. I’m Tara Hunter, relationship counselling and life coaching …’
‘I know!’ said David. ‘I’ve heard a lot about you. In your absence. All very complimentary!’
‘Great! Well. Jacqueline mentioned you were between supervisors, so if there’s anything I can help with, until you get sorted out …’
‘That’s very kind of you. Thank you.’ He smiled. Tara hesitated and smiled back. There was something off-puttingly familiar about David Dalloway. Had she met him somewhere? At a conference? But then he had the sort of face that felt familiar from period dramas: the chestnut fringe flopping into shrewd brown eyes, the fine-boned, slightly academic features. The crumpled linen jacket, hanging on the hat stand. Maybe not the lead detective, but certainly the honourable young sidekick who might have Seen Terrible Things in the war, and always had a clean handkerchief.
‘Good. Good. Oh, and Jacqueline asked me to give you this.’ She passed him the card, and pretended not to know who it was from as he opened it.
‘Ah! It’s from Bernadette.’ He propped the card up on the desk: it featured a snoozy Dachshund.
‘Bernadette?’
‘Bernadette Richardson?’
‘She was always very much Mrs Richardson to me,’ said Tara.
‘To be specific, it’s also from Frank. Her Dachshund.’ David raised his gaze to hers with a glance that might have been faux-serious or just serious. ‘Short for Frankfurter.’
‘Because he’s a sausage dog?’
‘Exactly.’
‘I didn’t even know she had a dog.’ The mysterious world of Mrs Richardson – Bernadette – was opening up in front of Tara. ‘Did she bring Frank to her sessions?’
‘He was the breakthrough.’
‘Really?’ Tara seized the chance. ‘So how does that work? Dogs in consultations? It’s not something I’ve come across before.’
David swung on his chair. ‘I’ve found that encouraging clients to bring their pets along can be useful. Breaks tension, encourages empathetic projection, promotes honesty, lowers cortisol … lots of recognized benefits. I can send you some links, if you like?’
‘Please do.’ It came out more accusatory than she’d intended.
He stopped swinging on his chair, and looked at her. ‘Do you have a pet, Tara?’
‘No. Well, yes. Sort of. A cat.’
David tilted his head, as if she’d said something intriguing, and Tara managed to stop any of the thoughts stumbling through her brain from escaping. Never say anything intriguing in front of a counsellor, unless you’re paying them. She didn’t want to get on to the messy topic of Phil with a trained professional.
When nothing was forthcoming, he went on. ‘Jacqueline and I agreed on extra cleaning and sessions in the meeting room if other clients had allergy concerns. To avoid triggering anyone with a phobia, pets enter through the side entrance, and there’s a marker on the appointment calendar to make everyone else aware there’s an animal in the building.’
Oh. The red dots on some of David’s appointments. Tara had assumed they meant … actually, she’d noticed they were there, assumed they were for something and then forgotten to ask what.
‘Sorry.’ This wasn’t making her look very on top of things. ‘I’m still working my way through my inbox.’
‘Of course, I hear you’ve been very busy. It’s unorthodox, I know. But it works for me. And I’m always happy to discuss it.’ He smiled, and Tara felt like a school sneak who’d been put in her place.
‘Of course! Great! So, about those supervisions. I don’t know if you want to put a date in the diary now,’ she said, in an effort to match David’s effortless professionalism. ‘Obviously you can cancel it if you find someone else, but …’
‘Your time is precious, I know.’ David had already got his diary out. It was a little leather one, with a tiny pencil slotted down the spine.
‘I didn’t mean …’ Tara started, then stopped herself. Her time was precious. ‘How about Wednesday?’