Tess
Tess put off going to Iris’s house until she couldn’t avoid it any longer. Holly insisted on going with her. It was the first weekend of half-term, so there was no marking or planning to do, she said. Dulcie was on a school trip to the Berlin Wall. ‘Nothing compared to the cold war she’s fighting at school,’ Holly had grumbled, but Dulcie had insisted on going.
‘I’m coming. It’s going to make you sad. So you’re not going on your own. Besides, it’ll take my mind off worrying whether she’s miserable or not. All that no one to sit with on the coach bull. Anyway, you’re not lifting boxes and climbing around on loft ladders without me. No argument.’
‘God. Poor Dulcie. I probably won’t do any of that this time. And I don’t think there even is a loft. It’s more so I can see what’s what. Make an inventory.’
It was clear to her that the house would need to be sold. And emptied before that. There didn’t seem any point in delaying the inevitable. It was like pretending Iris would be coming home. And she wouldn’t.
So some stuff needed to be sold. God knows what it was worth – Tess was no expert. Some given away. And, the worst of all, Iris’s personal possessions sifted through.
And there was only her to take responsibility for it. She’d told Donna she was going. There’d been a long pause. Donna hadn’t looked at her, and so Tess couldn’t read her expression. She’d blurted out into the silence that Holly was going too, and then Donna had turned her face towards her, and she still couldn’t really read the expression, but she’d smiled her acceptance, and said something about catching up with her VAT returns, and needing to book up some appointments, and the moment had passed.
She was glad, of course, to have Holly with her.
The drive down was slow and wet. Holly’s Toyota was about the same age as her daughter, with about a trillion miles on the clock and a tape deck, on which Holly played ancient tapes she kept in a black vinyl case under the back seat. She had pretty much the whole Now That’s What I Call Music back catalogue (although she’d stopped buying them when they were only produced on CD. The noughties were both a mystery and an anathema to her, to Dulcie’s despair) and a weakness for nineties hits, which she still liked to raucously sing along to, holding an imaginary hairbrush up to her mouth when she wasn’t changing gear or indicating. It was impossible not to succumb. By the time they were halfway down the A303, Tess was singing a duet with her to All Saints’ ‘Never Ever’.
‘God. I could do with a pair of baggy combats right about now …’ Tess pulled her sweater up and undid the button of her jeans. Things were getting tight. These were her fat jeans.
‘I hear you. Me too. Mine are actual buns, though, as opposed to buns in the oven.’ Holly giggled. ‘Not as acceptable at all.’
This was their first reference of the day to the baby. Tess loved Holly for not going on about it, for giving her the space and time she needed.
Holly’s phone pinged with a WhatsApp message. ‘Check that, will you? It’ll be Dulcie.’
Tess rummaged around in Holly’s capacious handbag for the phone and squinted to read the message.
All okay. Dreading today. Sachsenhausen. Feeling sad already.
‘Oh God. Ask her who she’s sharing with.’
Tess duly typed in the question, then held the phone in her hand to await a response.
‘Is that a concentration camp?’
Holly nodded.
‘God.’
Ping. ‘What’s she said?’
‘Give me a minute …’ Holly was wound tighter than usual.
‘Ella. It’s fine.’
‘Who’s Ella?’
‘I have no idea. Not one of “the gang”.’ Holly made angry air quotes with her free hand.
‘Well, that’s just as well, maybe?’
‘Maybe. You can’t get much from an instant message, can you?’
‘Don’t worry. She’ll be fine. It’s just a couple of days.’
‘I hope you’re right.’
‘She’s made of stern stuff, my god-daughter.’
‘I used to think so. I’m not so sure now. You get enough knocks, it gets harder to get up …’
‘You think it’s serious?’
Holly shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Can’t those things just blow over? I mean, you remember girls. Depressingly similar to women, now you come to think of it. We were them. Remember Malice?’
Holly grimaced. ‘God. Yes. You had me, though.’
‘That’s true. Thank God for you.’
Tess typed. ‘I’ll tell her we love her.’ She pinged the message back. ‘With emoticons.’
The house was cold; the thermostat was turned down low. Tess wondered if Iris had been keeping it like that. It was a horrible thought. Post was thick on the mat – they’d had to push hard to open the door. More had been picked up previously, and was piled on the hall table, unread.
Holly put the kettle on while Tess looked through the post for anything that needed answering, although it was mostly fliers and pizza menus. The doorbell rang. It was Carol, Iris’s neighbour. Tess didn’t know her well – she had only moved in several years ago – but Carol had been the one to call the ambulance when Iris had become so ill. She’d come now to check on Tess, when she’d heard the car, she said. She came in, and accepted Holly’s offer of a cup of tea. The sitting room was neat and tidy – the cushions on the sofa all straight, the remote control next to an old copy of the Radio Times.
‘I turned the heating down – I wasn’t sure how long she’d be gone, you see, and I know the bills are monstrous at the best of times. Didn’t seem to be any point heating an empty house. I didn’t want you to think she sat in the cold – I made sure she didn’t.’
‘You’ve been so kind, Carol.’ Tess wanted to cry. Hormones.
The woman shook her head, dismissing the thanks. ‘She’s a lovely woman. I was glad to look out for her.’
Holly came through with some tea on Iris’s old tin tray.
Carol said she was very sorry to hear that Iris wouldn’t be back, but Tess could hear the relief in her voice, and she understood it.
She knew that in the weeks – maybe months – before the chest infection, Iris had been getting worse – two or three times she’d locked herself out, and once Carol had found her in the front garden in her nightdress, looking for something, and talking about the lavender that hadn’t grown there for years.
Carol had a husband and two teenage sons of her own. She must have viewed Iris’s increasingly unpredictable behaviour with some fear. She barely knew Donna, and she understood that Tess was at least a couple of hours away, with a job and a life of her own. When she called, after each incident, there was apology in her voice. She always said, ‘I’m not complaining, I just thought you ought to know …’
She hugged Tess when she left – a quick and shy embrace. ‘Please give her my love. I know … I know she may not know me, but, like I said, she was a lovely lady.’
Tess hated being here without Iris. All the life the house once had seemed drained from it. She had more memories in this home than anywhere else – all vivid, happy, colourful. It had been her safe space and her happy place. Where she had felt most loved, and understood. That was all gone, with Iris. Without her warmth, it looked sad. She thought she might cry.
Holly put an arm around her shoulder. ‘Get a grip,’ she said gently. ‘Let’s get on with what we came for, hey? You list, I’ll write.’