Something weird had happened to James. His jeans were fine – jeans were jeans, after all – but his T-shirt looked terrible, faded and sad, and now he was rummaging through the few bits of clothing he kept at his dad’s, which wasn’t much.
He wasn’t one to think about clothes normally. He just grabbed the nearest thing and that was that – if it was clean, comfy and fairy plain, then it did its job. But not now on this hazy Saturday afternoon, the last day of July. Right now, he was giving his attire serious thought, and he seemed to be incapable of making a simple decision.
‘James?’ Kenny called through from the living room. ‘Something’s up with my heating again.’
‘What’s wrong with it?’ James was in his room, with the door ajar. He could hear his dad clonking about in the kitchen, muttering and swearing occasionally. Although certainly forgetful and prone to bouts of confusion, he was still managing okay with Rikke’s daily visits and James making his weekly trips over. These days, James enjoyed his trips – looked forward to them, even, if Lucy was going to be around. They hung out in her garden mostly, drinking coffee and chatting, doing a few jobs together if something needed attention. He found it incredibly soothing and enjoyable – but he wasn’t soothed now.
‘It’s gone off!’ Kenny announced accusingly, as if James might have been tampering with it.
James had whipped off the substandard T-shirt. Now he was pulling on a cotton shirt he’d found in a drawer and must have left here ages ago. It was burgundy with a tiny black check – was that too much, he wondered, for the occasion? Christ, he’d have to iron it. Did his dad still possess a working iron?
‘James!’
‘You don’t need the heating on now,’ he called back. ‘It’s summer. It’s a lovely day out there.’
He looked down at the shirt, wondering now if he’d be too hot in this, or look overdressed – but then it was only a shirt and jeans, he was hardly talking a dinner jacket, and actually it didn’t look too creased, not when it was on …
‘There’s no hot water,’ his father yelled. ‘That’s what I’m trying to tell you …’ With the shirt unbuttoned James strode through to the kitchen where his father was holding a hand under the running tap. ‘It’s stone cold,’ he announced. ‘Something’s broken. We’re going to have to get a man.’ He turned and stared at his son. ‘Where are you going?’
‘Um, just a little gathering,’ James replied. ‘I told you about it, remember? I’ll only be out for a couple of hours.’
His father narrowed his eyes. ‘With your shirt open?’
James exhaled loudly and tested the water with his hand; as his father had reported, it was freezing. He checked the main switch. ‘Dad, you’ve turned off the main heating control again. Please just leave it alone …’
‘I never touched it!’
James flicked the switch on and waited a few moments until the low rumble of the boiler could be heard. ‘That’s it back on now.’ He started to button up his shirt and sensed his father’s bemused gaze upon him.
‘So … where did you say you’re going?’
How old did his dad think he was? Nine? ‘Just to a thing in the village, Dad.’
‘Can I come?’
He pushed back his hair and studied his father’s eager face, the small, intense brown eyes that still glinted with mischief, the pink mouth only just visible through the greying beard. ‘It’s a children’s birthday party,’ James said, smiling now. ‘It’ll be games and cakes and tons of kids charging around …’
His father smirked. ‘You’re going to a kids’ party?’
‘Yes, Dad.’
He chuckled and, with the hot water issue miraculously rectified, sauntered back to the living room. ‘Right, I see. The way you’ve been acting, I thought you were going on a date.’
Every children’s party they’d hosted at Rosemary Cottage had been blessed with brilliant weather, and today, Marnie’s tenth birthday, was no exception. The sky was a wash of turquoise, the freshly cut lawn bathed in sunshine. Lucy was grateful for that. Having a pile of children running about, playing games and enjoying a sprawling picnic was so much easier outside than everyone being in the house. It wasn’t that she was madly house-proud by nature, but she had B&B guests due later (having checked her bank account, she had decided she couldn’t really afford to turn down a booking just because it was her daughter’s birthday).
Lucy’s friends had turned up to help: Carys and Jodie – known as the most glamorous mum at the school gates, and never un-manicured – plus several others whom she had got to know through their children. Other mothers were great, she reflected, at running indoors to fetch a fresh jug of juice without being asked. They gathered up discarded paper plates, handed out cake, administered plasters to cut knees, found someone’s lost bangle and rallied children around for a game – women were brilliant. But it wasn’t just the mums who had made the party such a success. James had proved invaluable too, noticing that Bramble had disappeared through the bars of the gate and run off in pursuit, as well as fetching and carrying to and from the kitchen virtually all afternoon.
Towards the end of the party, Sam found a dead mouse by the shed. The younger ones gathered around him in fascination and disgust as he held it in his hand. ‘Will your mum let you keep it?’ came Noah’s voice.
‘Probably not,’ Sam said.
‘It’s perfect,’ Josh marvelled. ‘Looks like it could be alive!’
‘Yeah,’ Sam said, ignoring Lucy as she called over for him to throw it back into the undergrowth. The children continued to study the mouse. Next thing she knew, James had gone over and spoken to the boys. A small hole was dug by the fence, and the mouse placed in it, and everyone seemed satisfied with that.
He looked so smart today, Lucy reflected. The fact that he had opted for a shirt rather than a T-shirt struck her as particularly endearing. He’d had a haircut, too, in the week since she’d last seen him. He hadn’t seemed to mind that, by the end of the party, his shirt had been daubed with ice cream (an overexcited Josh had collided with him whilst clutching a cone).
She had told him about her mother flouncing off home a couple of days previously, and that Ivan’s parents hadn’t sent Marnie anything in time for her birthday. ‘I think she still had a pretty good time,’ he remarked as they cleared up together. Once he’d gone, she did a final spruce-up of the downstairs rooms, in preparation for her guests’ arrival. And here they came now: a retired head teacher called Moira with a wiry yoga body, who enthused madly over the house and garden, and her rather shy-seeming, bald and bespectacled husband, Jeremy.
‘We’ve had my daughter’s birthday party today,’ Lucy told them, as she spotted a deflated balloon lying on the stairs on the way to show them to their room.
‘You must be a powerhouse of energy,’ Moira remarked.
‘I don’t know about that.’ She smiled. ‘But my children are having a friend each to sleep over tonight. I’ve asked them to be especially quiet, but if you’re disturbed at all, please let me know. I mean, don’t think twice about it.’
‘I’m sure we won’t be,’ Jeremy said warmly. ‘It’s a family home. We expected there to be people around.’
‘And we’ve just driven up from Kent,’ Moira added, ‘so we’ll be out like lights tonight.’
The party crowd had long gone now, apart from Amber and Noah, the designated sleepover friends, so Lucy spruced up the flowers throughout the house and set the breakfast table for her guests. Her mother called, ostensibly to ask how the party had gone, but really, Lucy suspected, to smooth the waters between them. ‘They had a lovely time,’ she said. ‘Thanks for the money towards the keyboard. Marnie really loves it.’
‘Oh, that’s good,’ her mother said. ‘I’m sorry I wasn’t there to help today.’
‘There were plenty of adults,’ Lucy said. ‘Most of the mums stayed, actually. And James came too—’
‘James?’ her mother repeated.
‘Yes, Mum.’ Now Lucy regretted mentioning his name.
‘Does he have children, then?’
Lucy set a tiny vase of honeysuckle flowers on the breakfast table. ‘Yes, he has a son called Spike.’
‘That’s a funny name!’
Lucy cleared her throat. ‘I think it’s sweet actually. It’s unusual. It has character …’
‘You could say that.’
‘Mum!’
A small pause. ‘So, how does Spike get along with Marnie and Sam?’
‘Erm, they haven’t met yet.’ Lucy frowned, wondering why her mother was probing her in this way. She never quizzed her about her women friends in the village. Should she feel guilty for some reason?
‘Will they?’ her mum asked.
‘Will they what, Mum?’ Exasperation was beginning to rise in Lucy’s chest. She wanted to end this conversation and go to bed. She didn’t remember their relationship being anything like as prickly as this when Ivan was still alive; these days, they seemed to be permanently about to teeter over into some kind of row.
‘Meet. Will your children meet Spike?’
‘I don’t know!’ Lucy exclaimed. ‘I expect so, yes, when he comes over to visit sometime—’
‘Well, anyway,’ her mother cut in, ‘I’m glad all went well today.’ She coughed dryly. ‘And Tilly’s fine now, in case you were wondering.’
‘I meant to ask,’ Lucy said quickly. ‘So, was it just a stomach bug?’
‘Something like that. We had to buy this special bland tinned food – it’s ten pounds a can – and of course your father made a big fuss about the expense, wanted to keep her on plain boiled rice for a few more days, but you know how that bungs her up …’
‘I do indeed,’ Lucy said gravely. ‘Anyway, Mum, thanks again for the money towards the present and all the little gifts you left for Marnie. She loved them all. She’ll be sending you a note …’
‘Oh, that’s okay, love.’
Her stomach twisted with guilt now. ‘And, um … I’m sorry for what happened when you were here. With Sam, I mean.’
‘Don’t worry about that. He was just upset.’ There was still a briskness to her tone, but at least they were communicating more normally.
They said goodnight, and Lucy watched TV for an hour or so but couldn’t settle to anything. She hardly watched it at all these days. She and Ivan had had their shows they loved, the off-beat comedies and Scandi dramas, but she would never have dreamed of continuing to watch them on her own. She would never know how these lengthy dramas would end and she no longer cared. There were so many activities she associated with Ivan; even watching TV came under that category. Not walking, though, or collecting all those natural things, the bits of bark and dried berries and feathers. That was something she and the children had learned to love without him. Damn her mother, throwing away Sam’s museum …
Guilt needled at her again, and she quickly pushed it away.
At eleven-thirty Lucy made a mug of tea and took it upstairs, the Spike issue turning over in her mind. She would love to meet him, and in fact she was intrigued as to how he and her children would get along. She knew James brought him over occasionally to see his granddad, but she’d either been busy, or away at her parents’, on his last couple of visits. But James had mooted that he’d like her to meet him, and she hoped it would happen soon.
All was quiet as Lucy made her way along the landing to the main bathroom. As she passed Sam’s room, she heard Noah’s voice: ‘What d’you think’ll happen to that dead mouse?’
‘It’ll rot away, I ’spose,’ Sam replied.
Lucy looked down. A chink of light shone from beneath the bedroom door; torches were on, even though the boys had been asked to go to sleep an hour ago. But they were having a sleepover, and only talking in murmurs – her guests were at the other end of the house – so she wasn’t going to nag at them now.
‘Yeah,’ Noah said. ‘The flesh’ll decay – the fur and insides and all that. Bugs’ll eat it. That’s what happened to Benjy before we got Bramble. He got buried in the garden and rotted away.’
‘Aw,’ Sam murmured.
‘It’s natural,’ Noah went on. ‘They go back into the ground and that helps other things grow, like fertiliser. When we’d buried Benjy I wanted to see what he was like after, I dunno, a year or something. But Mum said no, he’d just be a skeleton and it’d be horrible.’ The boys fell silent. Lucy was standing there with a hand on the bathroom door handle, knowing she shouldn’t be listening in.
Then: ‘Did your dad get buried?’
Oh, Christ …
‘No, he wasn’t buried,’ Sam replied carefully. ‘He was cremated.’
‘What’s that?’
Her back teeth were jammed together now, and she felt oddly weightless.
‘It means the person gets burned,’ Sam said matter-of-factly.
‘Oh.’ A pause while Noah digested this. ‘D’you think that’s better?’
‘Better than what?’
‘Being buried.’
‘Um …’ Another lull. ‘I think cremation’s better,’ Sam said finally, ‘’cause if you’re buried you need space for the coffin, and if you’re cremated you turn into dust that goes in a little pot.’
Lucy braced herself for the next question, which she was certain would be: Is your dad in a little pot? Yes, he was – on a shelf in her bedroom. But it wasn’t.
‘Has your mum got a boyfriend?’ Noah asked.
She inhaled sharply and touched her face. Her cheek felt warm and tight from the sun; she’d been so busy ensuring that the kids applied sunscreen, she’d forgotten to put any on herself.
‘Uh?’ Sam sounded surprised.
‘The man who helped us bury the mouse. Is that her boyfriend?’
Lucy placed a hand on the cold porcelain bathroom door handle. It was clearly an innocent line of questioning, with no other intent than mild curiosity. She knew what kids were like. But was that what people thought of her – that she and James were more than platonic friends? When her mother had hinted at the idea, she’d convinced herself that no one else would see it that way. But perhaps they did. Maybe gossip was flying around: Her husband’s only been gone for eighteen months and she’s seeing someone already …
Was she being talked about like this – not by Carys, or the other mums she knew well, but by peripheral people? This was a village, after all, and she was a single woman now, and James was a single man. People liked to talk, and it was likely that they had put two and two together …
‘I’m sure they’re keeping a dossier on us, Luce,’ Ivan had said once. ‘They seem terribly interested in what we’re up to around here.’ An hour ago she’d felt happy that Marnie’s party had gone so well, and lucky to have so many lovely supportive friends, and now she felt … well, Lucy didn’t know what she felt as she shut the bathroom door and perched on the edge of the bath.
Putting her head in her hands, she groaned audibly as she exhaled. She didn’t hear Sam say, ‘Don’t be stupid, Noah. That really is stupid. James isn’t her boyfriend – he’s just her friend.’