15
Over the river. ON TOWARDS the dry ski slope.Up into fourth gear at the Royal Oak. Muscle memory kicked in. Signal in plenty of time for the right turn.Easy round the blind corner.
The house was on the far side of the town. She’d had neither cause nor desire to go back but rooting through the storage locker, binning the past, she’d decided it was time to lay this ghost. Eleven on a Wednesday morning. Not a soul to be seen. She parked the car a little way from the house and sauntered along, hoping to look like a stranger to any nosey parker peeping from behind a net curtain. Nothing to do with that poor woman whose husband had landed her in huge debt and then chickened out and killed himself.
But sauntering around, pretending to be someone else, wasn’t going to lay any ghosts. In twenty years of living here, she had never sauntered along these tree-lined pavements. Hurrying to work or to collect Naomi from school, dashing to the supermarket or to pick up Sam from the office, every moment had been purposeful. Increasing her pace, she crossed to the opposite side of the road where her angle of vision was less acute and she could get a better view of the house.
The weeping willow had gone. And the honeysuckle she’d spent so long training along the fence. The windows, obscured by ruched blinds, looked like so many sightless eyes. ‘Victorian’ coach lamps – polished and perfect – guarded the front door. The lawn had been replaced by slabs – too pale and regular to be real stone. Two cars were parked on the slabs, a third on the drive, making the front garden look like a used car lot. Less than a year ago, she had been living happily here and now, through no fault of her own, her beautiful home was occupied by Philistines.
She hadn’t married a gambler, she was sure of that. When it all came out, it was clear that Sam’s gambling spree had been fast and furious – a matter of months from start to finish. He’d cancelled payments, withdrawn savings, forged her signature on documents and she’d suspected nothing. Covert, ruthless, unrelenting. (MI5 would have employed him in a flash.) Ten days after the truth had come out, he’d driven at full tilt into the stanchion of a bridge on the M1. If he’d intended her to get his life insurance money, he shouldn’t have cancelled the payments. There had been no need for any of it – it wasn’t as if they were short of money. No one – the medics, his employer, the bank – could offer an explanation. The best Doctor Tate could come up with was that some kind of chemical reaction had tripped a switch in his brain leaving her to agonise over it until it had drained her dry and left her incapable of functioning.
No one had ever asked what had happened to Sam’s ashes and it wasn’t something she was keen to reveal. It would have been judged the act of an unhinged woman but it had done her more good than a dozen sessions with a mealy mouthed counsellor. When Bing came along, her memories had started re-shaping themselves. Sam was becoming less of a villain, more of a victim. This had to be good for her and for Naomi who had loved her father so dearly. Poor Sam.
‘Mrs Siskin?’
The voice came from behind her and she turned to see a postman loping towards her, his bulky satchel banging against his thigh.
‘Phil?’ she said.
Phil – if she’d ever known his surname, she’d forgotten it – had played a pivotal role in the Siskin tragedy. Bankruptcy coupled with death spawned a startling volume of mail and this outsider, barely recognisable but for his fluorescent vest and red bag, had delivered it to her door. She’d been too zonked out on pills to take account of the discomfort he must have felt, asking her to sign for those menacing envelopes. (They always required proof of receipt.) It can’t have been pleasant, turning up, day after day, with the next instalment of bad news. When she finally surfaced, the poor man had behaved as though everything were normal, and for that she was grateful to him.
‘How are you keeping?’ he said.
‘I’m well, thank you, Phil.’
‘And your daughter? You’ve got two grandchildren if I remember rightly. One of each, isn’t it?’
In his stint as their postman, they must have chatted. He must have mentioned his family or his football team or his dog. Yet she couldn’t summon up one single fact and she felt a little ashamed.
‘What a good memory you have. Yes, they’re fine, thanks. In fact I’m living with them at the moment but I’m moving in a few weeks. To be near my parents.’
‘Well, I hope everything works out well for you,’ he said, his concerned tone suggesting he knew that what she’d told him was only part of the story.
She would have liked to know what he thought of the new people. Had they given him a Christmas box? (Sam used to give him ten pounds and bottle of whisky.) Ask and he would think her even more of a sad case than he already did. Instead she offered him her hand. ‘Good to see you. Take care.’
His hand was warm, the skin on his palm dry and rough. All those letters. All those frosty mornings. 
‘You too, Mrs Siskin,’ he said.
On her way home, she stopped at the coffee shop where she and her colleagues used to meet in the holidays. How or why the ritual had evolved, she couldn’t remember. They saw enough of each other in term time. The café was outside the school’s catchment area, but occasionally pupils would come in, take one look at their teachers and leave. They’d rung last summer to remind her of the standing arrangement, saying they’d love her to join them – if she felt up to it. And once, Naomi must have taken the children somewhere, she’d got as far as parking the car before realising she couldn’t go through with it.
She stationed herself at a corner table where she could watch the comings and goings. The March sun filtering through the window. The fragrance of coffee. The clatter of cups and the hum of voices. Yes. She was glad she’d made this pilgrimage. Had she been facing a non-future, she wouldn’t have summoned up the courage.
The coffee had always been excellent here and she ordered a flat white and an almond croissant. The waitress smiled. ‘We haven’t seen you for a while,’ she said. ‘Have you moved?’
This woman must have served hundreds – thousands – of customers since Miriam was last here but she was accustomed to being recognised, something she put down to her white hair and dark eyebrows.
‘Yes,’ she said (almost true). ‘I happened to be nearby so I thought I’d call in for old times’ sake.’
Bing established that AAA Storage had a depot not far from his house. He said he would gladly pay for her possessions to be relocated. It was a tempting offer but a fresh start called for a clean slate. She’d got rid of a lot of furniture, keeping only a selection of smaller pieces to furnish the modest flat she’d imagined buying. Now everything had changed. Bing’s house had that student-cum-motel aesthetic. She had nothing against Ikea but shouldn’t a man his age aspire to furniture with a pronounceable name? He took her gentle criticism in good part, agreeing that, where possible, they would replace his MDF with her solid wood. (Naomi had second dibs and the remainder went to the Salvation Army.) When she was nearly done, in the far corner of the locker she came across a sealed cardboard box. When she ripped off the tape and pulled back the flaps, she discovered a motley assortment of odds and ends which, in the nightmare of the move, she must have shoved into the box and proceeded to forget. Knitting patterns. A hot water bottle. A chipped bowl. A pack of pens. Half-burned tea lights. All went into a black bag. And at the very bottom was the folder containing the beginnings of the novel she’d always promised herself she would write.
She wondered whether Naomi’s enthusiasm for her leaving was linked to David’s more frequent visits. If they were seriously thinking of giving it another go, they would stand a better chance if mother/mother-in-law weren’t hovering on the touchline.
‘What will you do with yourself all day in your new home?’ David said. He’d called to return the waterproof Max had left in his car. Naomi was at the dentist’s, the children in the living room arguing and playing Scrabble. ‘Will you go back to teaching?’
‘Not sure they’d have me,’ she said.
‘Tutoring? It’s a growth industry.’
‘Perhaps.’
Callum had asked the same question and the matter had been much on her mind. She would need something to occupy herself and to generate an income. Fail to do so and she might find that she’d swapped child care for geriatric care – not a happy prospect.
Max rushed into the kitchen. ‘What’s ectoplasm, Dad?’
David screwed up his face, struggling to rustle up a plausible definition.
Max beat him to it. ‘Rosa says it’s like frogspawn but without the black dots, and it comes out of dead people’s mouths. But that’s not right is it?’ He turned to Miriam. ‘Can we have a something to eat?’
She took four Bourbon biscuits from the packet. ‘Four divided by two is…?’
‘Two,’ he said, carefully placing two biscuits in each pocket of his hoodie. ‘I love you, Gamma.’ Grabbing her hand, he kissed it then flitted back to Rosa with his haul.
‘The kids are going to miss you something rotten,’ David said. ‘We all are.’
Tears welled and she turned away. ‘Come on. It’s not as if I’m emigrating.’
‘But you can’t deny things will be very different for them.’
‘For me too,’ she said. She’d not always enjoyed playing the role of factotum but the strengthened bond with her grandchildren compensated for its drudgery. Being here, helping her daughter, had given her a purpose when there might easily (and dangerously) have been none. ‘D’you think I’m crazy, David?’
‘Heavens, no. You’re not crazy, you’re brave. Everyone deserves their chance of happiness but you need guts to grab it when it comes along. I’ve only met Paul a few times but it’s obvious he worships you. He seems like a really nice guy.’
‘Everyone thought Sam was a really nice guy,’ she murmured, ‘and look how that panned out.’
‘Poor Sam. I know what he did was unforgiveable—’
‘It was.’
‘—but he was always warm towards me. Supportive, too. I don’t know whether you were aware of this but after Naomi and I separated, he used to phone every few weeks to check how I was doing.’
Another secret Sam hadn’t seen fit to share.
‘He, we – were – are very fond of you,’ she said. ‘Sorry. The past year has played havoc with my tenses, and my pronouns.’
‘We – I – have the same problem,’ he said. ‘So tell me, does Paul have a family?’
She gave him the run down on Bing’s ex-wife, children and new grandson, sticking to facts, not mentioning their hostility towards her.
‘Now I come to think of it,’ he said, ‘Naomi said something about organising a get together before you move. A chance for the families to get to know each other.’
Surprise must have shown on her face because he slapped a hand to his forehead. ‘Bugger. It’s meant to be a surprise, isn’t it?’
Naomi’s proficiency with social media would make tracking down Bing’s children a piece of cake. A click here, a swipe there, and she’d know all about Leon and Camille and Pascale; a few more and she’d be jabbering away to them, assuming they couldn’t wait to unite in one big happy family.
Miriam told Bing what was afoot. ‘It’s sweet of her to want to do this but I’ll have to find a way of putting her off the idea. I can’t tell her your children aren’t as thrilled with the situation as she is. It might set her against them forever.’
The matter was taken out of her hands when David confessed to Naomi that he’d let the cat out of the bag.
‘How could he be so dense, Mum?’ Naomi said.
‘Don’t take it out on him. Besides, you know how I hate surprises.’
‘That’s as maybe but you can’t carry on as if nothing is happening. What you two are about to do is a big deal.’
She groped for a plausible excuse to deflect Naomi from her ill-judged plan. ‘The thing is… the thing is, Paul and I are going away.’ She embroidered the fiction. ‘A sort of non-honeymoon.’
Naomi took the bait. ‘Where? Somewhere romantic?
‘That would be telling.’ Her daughter’s expression softened and Miriam pushed home her advantage. ‘We need time to ourselves. Without interruptions.’ She flashed her eyes, hinting at bedroom romps. ‘We’ll have a party later, when things have settled down.’
She almost believed it.
She and Bing spoke twice a day, if not more. Her phone pinged constantly announcing yet another incoming text. It was fun. She loved the breathless, adolescent frivolity of reclaiming the years they’d spent apart. Back then, spontaneity hadn’t been an option. A phone call – if it were to be private – meant walking to a public phone box with a handful of heavy pennies. Mail depended on stamps and collection times. Had tap-of-a-screen communications been around forty years ago, their story might have had a different outcome.
Next time they spoke, she told him how she’d wriggled out of the party.
‘Actually I like the idea of a non-honeymoon,’ he said. ‘Let’s do it. Where d’you fancy? Paris? Rome? We’ll have to go somewhere or we’ll be rumbled.’
She pictured him, sprawled on the sofa, shoes kicked off, tie askew, bushed after a day of demanding patients. ‘Let’s not tangle with airports,’ she said. ‘How about York? Or Chester? Somewhere half-timbered. With log fires and wonky glass in the windows.’
They ended up in a seventeenth-century inn in Ludlow. Besides wonky glass and pungent, snapping log fires, The Crown boasted a no-nonsense cook who served the best roast lamb Miriam had ever tasted. It rained and blew a gale but they had waterproofs and walking boots, and a selection of reading matter. They found a jigsaw in the bottom of the wardrobe (Holbein’s Henry VIII, missing only two pieces). There was no Wi-Fi and only patchy mobile service, and they became happily and passionately detached from the world. Their room couldn’t have been more different from Bing’s teenage bedroom yet it held the same enchantment and, over a bottle of wine in front of the fire, they concluded that, by simply being together, they created magic.
Miriam felt her life was near perfect, and yet without intending to, she had become a keeper of secrets. Standing as they were on the threshold of a brave new life, this didn’t seem quite right. Bing had never asked about the circumstances surrounding Sam’s accident, or why she was living with Naomi, or what precisely she did at the college. She’d never quizzed him as to what had gone wrong between him and Eloise. Come to that, Naomi had never asked where her father’s ashes had ended up.
And there was Danny. Two weeks ago, she’d written to fill him in on Bing and their plans for the future. She reminded him of that day he’d sat on her bed insisting she should always be true to herself and said he should be happy for her because she was doing exactly that. The scuffed envelope, flap now edged with particles of dust, was still in her handbag, another secret yet to be revealed. It wasn’t that she feared his reaction to her news but what if he failed to reply? She would be worried sick that something awful had happened to him. There was a more selfish reason too. If he knew she was blissfully happy and living within a mile of their parents, he would be off the hook once and for all.
After dinner they ventured out for a walk. The rain had blown over and the air smelled of wood smoke. A near-full moon floated above the tree tops and they strolled, arm in arm, following the line of the town walls, dipping in and out of the moon shadows.
‘Just think,’ he said, ‘we’ll be able to do this every evening, for the rest of our lives.’
‘But we won’t, will we?’
He stopped in his tracks. ‘You don’t think we’ll stay together?’
‘No. Yes. Of course we will. But we mustn’t ever allow ourselves to get in a rut. I don’t want us to end up like Mum and Dad.’
‘How d’you see us then?’
‘Doing new things – going new places. Remember how we used to lie in your room, daydreaming about the future.’ She paused. ‘You’ve never asked about my years with Sam. Aren’t you curious?’
‘I don’t care to think about it. In fact, as far as I’m concerned, it never happened.’
‘I fear you’re making a huge mistake. Secrets are dangerous.’ She pictured the trite slogan painted on driftwood, dangling from a door handle. ‘There’s no escaping the fact that we have our own histories and we should have faced up to that months ago.’
‘Other people might do that,’ he said, ‘but can’t we make our own rules? Dwelling on the past is only going to—’
She kissed him into silence, nudging him towards a grassy area where the pavement widened. They sat on a bench, his arm around her shoulder, his warmth seeping through her coat. ‘I’ve a suggestion to make,’ she said. ‘Why don’t we both write everything down? Set out a timeline. A potted history.’ His resistance was tangible yet she pushed on. ‘Facts. No analysis. Just a page. I’ll give you mine, you give me yours. We’ll lock them away in a safe place, to be read if we feel the need.’
‘You want us to write a PowerPoint presentation?’
She laughed. ‘If you like. I don’t want to make a big deal of this but I know the harm secrets can do. It’d be an insurance policy against…’ Against what, she couldn’t say but suddenly it seemed vital it be done.
‘If you ask me it’d be more like boring holes in a perfectly watertight boat,’ he said, ‘but if it’s that important to you…’
They used stationery from the hotel folder, the embossed crown at the top of the sheet fixing forever where the enterprise had taken place. She left him in the room and headed off along the creaky landing to the alcove at the top of the stairs. An hour ago, the task had seemed straightforward but it took several attempts before she achieved the objectivity she was after. When she returned to the room, Bing was lying on the bed, a sealed envelope with her name on it propped against his reading lamp.
Moat sent her a few lines (soft pencil, on grainy watercolour paper) wishing her an ‘interesting’ future and thanking her for the part she’d played in what he was coming to think might be his ‘most successful’ painting. The students presented her with a book of Hockney portraits, its flyleaf animated by their signatures – orchestrated, she assumed by, Callum. A final lunch with him – not sandwiches in his room but moussaka at the Greek restaurant behind the college. They drank too much and became sentimental. She thanked him for the chance to reinvent herself. He said she was brave and beautiful. She told him how lucky his wife was. When she started wondering whether he was a good lover, she knew it was time to say goodbye.
Her last week at Naomi’s was occupied with packing and making removal arrangements. Notifying banks and building societies and everyone else who needed to know her new address, took forever. Getting through – in every sense – to HMRC and the DWP was indescribably frustrating. No matter when she phoned, a smug voice announced they were ‘experiencing a high volume of calls’ and to call back later. Better still, do… whatever it was, online which naturally involved yet another password. (To hell with security, she listed passwords in an A6 notebook which she kept in her washbag.) Whilst she was on this secretarial jag, she rewrote and posted her letter to Danny, keeping it snappy and unapologetic, giving him the facts and (yet again) her email address, insisting he ‘get in touch immediately’.
Rosa and Max quibbled and quarrelled non-stop. They refused to do their homework and, when she badgered them, they deliberately made a hash of it. They pestered for treats and sobbed for no reason. She knew why they were behaving this way. She felt cranky and weepy too, and did all she could to keep confrontations to a minimum.
Bing, on the other hand, was persistently upbeat, like a vicar at a funeral who insists the dear departed is ‘moving on to a better place’. Her feelings on leaving Naomi’s were never going to be clear-cut, couldn’t he see that? This little family, this house, had provided sanctuary when she was at her most vulnerable. Without doubt, she was doing the right thing yet it didn’t rule out the occasional jitters – even the temptation to bolt.
Saturday came. Bing had offered to drive down and give her a hand but she’d dissuaded him, saying he’d be more useful at his end, directing the removal men (which was true). She’d hoped this last breakfast with the children would be like any other morning but David turned up to say goodbye which further intensified emotions. Rosa – in tears – took herself off to her bedroom, and Max came near to hysterics when the removal men began loading her possessions into the high-sided van. The only thing to do was get in the car and drive.
Before she’d gone far, a headache settled at the base of her skull. She pulled in at a petrol station, and swallowed a couple of Paracetamol. Wandering over to the picnic area, she sat at one of the shabby tables, checking her phone. The log showed a couple of missed calls from Bing and a text saying he’d booked a table at a restaurant for this evening. When she rang, his line was busy and she left a message telling him not to worry, she’d stopped for a coffee and should be with him in a couple of hours.
Next she texted Naomi, apologising for leaving so abruptly and saying she hoped the children were okay. A text pinged straight back. They’d already perked up. She and David were taking them swimming then to Pizza Express for lunch. Clearly Naomi and David were making progress which had to be good news. And yet she couldn’t help feeling a little miffed that the children had recovered so quickly.
There was a whiff of diesel fuel in the air but the sun was breaking through and the shrubs around the garage forecourt were budding up, hinting at spring. The van would be well ahead of her, hauling her bits and pieces towards her new life. It was time to be on her way.