Lucia Lemon sits at her desk, wrapped in a thick sweater over her oldest jeans. The Easter holidays ended three weeks ago and the month of May is here already, but the sun is refusing to come out this morning. The overcast sky matches Lucia’s mood perfectly. She looks down at the little dog at her feet, and sighs.
‘I’m so bored. There’s nothing new to do any more apart from my reading group on a Wednesday morning. And the bloody summer fair. Oh, Nigel, I’m absolutely furious with myself about that. Why didn’t I say no to organising the school fair? I don’t even work there now. I’m just a mug. I must be going around with a sign on my head saying sucker.’
Nigel seems as unimpressed as Lucia with this character assassination. He rolls onto his back and waits for her to tickle his tummy, then drifts off to sleep again with his paws still in the air.
‘I know how you feel. It’s a dull old life, this early-retirement lark, isn’t it?’ Lucia says. ‘Although I guess you can’t really call it retiring when you’re given the push.’
Outside the living room window, the garden stretches away, rambling and untidy. Lucia and Des don’t do much in the way of weeding and planting these days so nature has run riot in places, although their dutiful son Isaac makes a point of mowing the lawn once a week and keeping the patio clear of leaves and twigs so that his bird table and all the dangling containers for fat balls can be a neat focal point from his bedroom.
This is great in its way, but Isaac is only twenty one and he seems to have slipped into the role of a much older son looking after his ageing parents. Having their only child later rather than sooner in their marriage was a delight and a blessing after years and years of trying but surely by now he should be ready to branch out on his own more? That abortive university course has knocked his already fragile confidence completely for six. Lu wishes she could find out the real reason why he dropped out. She has a feeling a girl was involved but Isaac clams up if she ever tries to get to the bottom of why he came home so suddenly.
Lucia leans her chin on one hand and watches a blackbird helping himself to the mealworms Isaac put out before he cycled off to work early this morning. He never forgets. If he put as much effort into making friends as he does with feeding the birds, he might not spend so much time alone in his room, she reflects sadly, but friendships have always been hard for Isaac. Has she been wrong not to battle with her feelings about leaving her comfort zone for all these years? If she and Des had made more of an effort to get out there in the world, Isaac might not be so isolated now.
Hearing the throaty chug of the Skoda as it pulls onto the drive, Lucia gets up rather stiffly and makes her way into the hall. Des must be back from his trip to the supermarket. It’s his one concession to helping with the running of the house.
The front door crashes open and Des manages five steps along the hall before he drops a large crate at Lucia’s feet.
‘What on earth have you got there?’ Lucia asks, moving closer.
He straightens up and rubs his back. ‘I bumped into the delivery man as I got out of the car. There’s something else too.’
Lucia bends down to peer at the crate more closely. It’s made of light, unvarnished wood and is padlocked shut.
‘Is there a key?’
‘How do I know? I’m hoping it’s in the parcel that came with it. Here you go.’ Des kicks the front door closed behind him at last, shutting out the chilly blast, and hands over a bulky padded envelope. He shrugs off his waterproof, revealing a well-worn sweater that has somehow grown in the wash.
Lucia turns the package over, peering at the sender’s address on the back.
‘It’s from the people at Tommy’s old house. How weird. Bring it through to the kitchen, would you? It’s freezing out here.’
Giving the box one last look, Lu heads for the kitchen to put the kettle on. It’ll be her third cup of tea of the morning, but who cares? There’s not much else to do. If she was at work now, it’d be break time. They’d all be in the warm staffroom finishing up the Easter chocolate supplies and talking about going on diets next week. Being made redundant is taking some getting used to. She knows Des feels the same. At 63, he’s five years older than Lu. Des’s career was meant to take him right up to retirement. They’re just not ready for this.
‘It must be from Tommy. I wonder why he didn’t tell us to expect a delivery? Well, aren’t you going to open the parcel?’ her husband says, pulling up a chair at the kitchen table and shivering slightly.
Lucia puts the envelope on the table while she makes the tea, suddenly apprehensive. Why would Tommy go to all this trouble to send them something so substantial when he made such a big deal about dispatching everything unnecessary to the charity shop before he left his old home?
‘Can we have the heating on?’ she prevaricates.
‘You are joking, aren’t you? We said if we were both going to be at home permanently, we’d have to economize.’
Lucia sighs. ‘It’s just that I hadn’t realised how warm it was in school. You must feel the same, you just don’t want to admit it. If anything, your office was always too hot, you used to say.’
They grimace at each other over their steaming mugs of tea. The cat flap creaks open and a large fluffy creature eases its way in, placing each paw down very carefully as if the floor were made of ice.
‘Hello Petula,’ says Lucia, sighing as she sees the strange angle the cat’s paws seem to land at as she skids across the laminate floor.
‘The old girl’s made it home then,’ observes Des, leaning down to stroke the cat, who purrs and then nips him before going over the basket in the corner and flopping into it with a wheeze. ‘Every time she goes walkabout I half expect her not to come back,’ he says, rubbing his damaged hand. ‘This place is turning into a rest home for sad old pets and tatty furniture. Everything here’s seen better days. We need to declutter and decorate. We should smarten everywhere up now there’s more time.’
‘Well, we’ve got plenty of that now, haven’t we?’
‘Too right. Well, what are you waiting for? Go on, open Tommy’s parcel.’
Lucia decides to ignore the sharpness in Des’s voice and reaches for the package. It’s sealed with three layers of sticky tape but eventually she gets through the barrier and draws out an oblong parcel encased in bubble wrap. Underneath is a smaller envelope, this time white, and with the words A message from Tommy in purple letters across the front.
Wordlessly, Lucia slits open the flap and slides out a small key, her fingers closing around it as Des reaches for the package and rips off the bubble wrap, revealing a tiny black tape recorder. ‘I haven’t seen one of these since the eighties,’ he says, turning it over in his hands. ‘I used one for dictation in the days when I had a secretary. Before we were restructured and I had to type my own letters.’
‘Well, come on then, press play.’ Lucia has never had much patience, and watching her husband turn the machine over and over in his hands is making her want to scream very loudly. A lot of things are making her feel like that at the moment, now she thinks about it.
Des gives up on his examination of the Dictaphone and presses a button, adjusting the volume as the voice of his uncle booms out.
‘Well, hello, you unfortunate folks up there in the draughty Midlands. I’ll cut to the chase. You both think I’ve gone mad, don’t you? Shutting myself away in the depths of the countryside, with just a bunch of octogenarians for company, and selling Coronation Villa? I know you both loved the old family home.’
Lu hears the chink of crockery in the background and someone shouting about it being tea time. She hopes they’re making Tommy’s tea how he likes it. Imagine the luxury of having all your meals and drinks made for you while you relax in a sunlit conservatory. The brochure Tommy sent them when he moved in made the place look more like a five-star hotel than a retirement complex. She thinks about the tinned soup in the kitchen waiting to be opened. Vegetable. Des doesn’t like anything too fancy.
‘Right then, if you’re reading this, the new folk in Coronation Villa must have done their bit to spring my surprise. I asked them specifically to wait until I gave them the okay, to give me time to settle in here. Just to prove the point that I haven’t lost my marbles and I can still make decisions, I’ve decided to dish out some of your inheritance now, while you’re still young enough to enjoy it, because although I plan on living a good long time, there’s nothing much to spend all that lovely cash on here. So, my beloved relations, to that end, I’m giving twenty grand to Isaac. He still might not make it out of the nest, but at least he’ll have a bit of scope to get a decent car. And as for you two old stick-in-the-muds …’
Lucia opens her mouth to speak, eyes flashing but Des shushes her.
‘Exactly how long are you planning to moulder in that backwater? Oh, don’t get me wrong, as villages go, Chandlebury’s fine and dandy. Much too far from the sea, of course, but you can’t have everything. Anyway, it’s high time you branched out. Take Lucia somewhere exciting, Des. You don’t appreciate that gorgeous wife of yours enough, I’ve always said so.’
Des laughs. ‘Yeah, right.’
He sees Lu’s face flinch at the sarcasm-loaded words and backtracks hastily. ‘Only joking, love.’
Lucia blinks away sudden tears. She’s always laughed off Des’s digs about her appearance but since she lost her job, they’re not even mildly funny somehow. Des shrugs and rewinds the tape to catch the bit they’ve just missed. Tommy’s voice booms out again.
‘So in my humble opinion, you’re both way overdue a few adventures. For that reason, I’m giving you some of my spare dosh now, instead of after I’ve popped my clogs. Fifteen thousand quid between you. If you check your bank account and tell the lad to do the same, you’ll find it’s already safely in there. Now DO SOMETHING! You’ve worked hard all your lives. Get out there in the world and shake your tail feathers.
‘In the box, you’ll find my collection of photo albums. You’ll see that over the years, I’ve seen a heck of a lot of places and had shedloads of japes. Take a flip through and see if they inspire you. I really hope they will. Have some fun of your own, for pity’s sake, and then come down here to see me. I’ll get the bubbly in, plenty of it.’
There’s a crash in the background and a loud shriek.
‘Oh dear, the new girl in the kitchen’s not doing too well. I hope that wasn’t my second-best mug. There are two more things to mention. Des, I’d really appreciate it if you could check on my old mate Pete to see if he’s okay. He seemed a bit down when I last spoke to him. To be frank with you, in my mind that’s part of the deal. In return for this dollop of cash that I hope’s going to put a spring in your step, you have to go and see Pete. It’s only fair, right? Pay it forward?
‘Finally, there’s the other gift. Des will recognise it and he’ll explain why it’s important, Lu. I haven’t found it easy to give it to you both, but it’s the right time, I’m sure. And chaps, don’t over-think all this, like you usually do. Just go with the flow for once, okay? I’m presenting you with the gift of freedom.
‘Give the lovely Lu a kiss for me, Des. Bye for now, both.’