His work shift finished for the day, Pete walked into the house he used to call home when he shared it with Tara and still, after six months, it felt noticeably different to all the times he’d walked into the house when Tara was alive but not in there. His dad’s neighbour, trying to be helpful, had said that Tara ‘would still be around’, hoping to give him comfort. But he’d never felt that. She had gone finally and forever, however much he had tried to convince himself she was just at the shops or at work. Sometimes it felt as if she had never even been there at all.
There were just his clothes in the wardrobe now, just his toiletries in the bathroom. He had taken the bulk of Tara’s things around to Bob and Pam Ollerton’s house for her sisters. Tara had been a shopaholic and had lots of beautiful clothes, jewellery and shoes, bags, boxes of unopened high-end toiletries and her family had been touched at the gesture. Pete thought it was right his wife’s possessions went to people she loved, to use, wear, treasure, rather than strangers to whom they would mean much less.
Outside the front door was a skip. Pete had started to strip the house because he couldn’t bear to live there any more and wanted to move. First step, decluttering; second, the For Sale sign. He didn’t want to carry on trying to convince himself that Tara was ‘out’ and would be back soon.
He’d missed calls on the home phone because there was a red spot of light flashing. He pressed the button and heard an automated voice saying, ‘You have three messages. Message one.’ ‘Pete, it’s your dad. Just ringing in to see how you are lad. Give me a call when you’ve time.’ He was just about to pick up the receiver when message two began. ‘Pete, it’s Bob. Ollerton. Pam and I are hoping you’re okay. Don’t be a stranger. You come and see us whenever you want, you know.’ Message three was someone with a foreign accent telling him that he needed to stump up some cash as his internet security had been compromised. He’d ring his father and father-in-law after he’d eaten, he decided. He didn’t even know if Bob was officially his father-in-law any more.
Pong, Pete’s old Siamese cat, padded down the stairs making disgruntled and off-the-scale miaow sounds, Siamese cat language for ‘where the hell have you been?’ He spent the hours when Pete was at work sleeping on his bed, where he hadn’t been allowed to sleep when Tara was alive because she said it was unhygienic. He occasionally ventured outside on warm days to sunbathe on the decking and wee on plants, but he was primarily an indoor cat. He wandered over to Pete and sat squarely in front of him, waiting to be picked up and worshipped. Pong had been his cat long before Tara had burst into his life. She hadn’t really seen the point in having a cat as a pet, a statement which had made Pete laugh because he could see she had a valid argument in a way. Pong didn’t give a lot back in return for free board and lodgings and when he sat on Pete’s lap it was so that he could be stroked, not to give comfort. Pong had never really acknowledged Tara’s presence, but he did allow her to feed him and pet him when she felt inclined to. Then Tara had died and Pong had made up for every point of his previous selfishness by just being there, a presence that saved the house from being a soulless vacuum.
Pete fed Pong, then showered, put on his tracksuit bottoms and T-shirt and looked in the fridge for something to eat. There was a lasagne in there, but he didn’t feel like it – for more than one reason. Tara had hated cooking, although she was a dab hand at putting a pre-cooked meal in the oven, but he loved bustling around the kitchen, experimenting with spices and putting his own twist on established recipes and sometimes (when he was alone) even pretended he was a TV chef being filmed while delivering a commentary, but he’d lost his appetite for it all since he became a widower. Widower: a word he had always associated with someone much older than thirty-two. He closed the fridge, opened the larder. He was deciding between a Pot Noodle and a tin of soup when the doorbell rang. He closed his eyes briefly, an unconscious gesture of not wanting to engage. He just wanted a quiet night in with the TV for company, Pong on his lap and a possible hunt through Rightmove for a flat for one, a place that fitted snugly around him and his cat, that didn’t leave lonely spaces. Then he heard the door open and a gruff male voice shouted.
‘It’s us, you in? Get the kettle on.’
Pete’s mood automatically swooped upwards like a fairground ride as his brother entered the kitchen, greeted him briefly in the way they’d done since they were kids, half-handshake, half-hug, right shoulders bouncing. Once upon a time they were mirror images of each other but these days, not quite so. Griff ‘The Griffalo’ had abandoned the razor and embraced his hirsuteness. He was also much more muscular than Pete. He weight-lifted for fun, having caught the gym bug in his teens. He’d run his own gym since he was twenty and when a personal trainer called Lucy who used to be in their class at school had arrived for a job interview, he’d given her the job and then made her his wife. She followed Griff into the kitchen and always looked tiny when placed next to him. She was petite and trim with dark rock-chick choppy hair and the prettiest smile on the planet.
‘Hello, Lucy,’ said Pete, giving her a full hug, no bouncy shoulder action.
‘Hello, darling,’ she replied. ‘How are you? Hello, Pong,’ she added when the cat started rubbing against her leg the way he never did to Tara.
‘Not bad,’ Pete answered her. Standard answer to a question asked too often but always kindly meant, he knew that. ‘So coffee for three then, is it? Sit yourselves down.’
‘Not interrupting you are we?’ asked Lucy. ‘We were just passing en route to the supermarket and saw you were home.’
‘You have eternal permission to interrupt me, Lucy,’ said Pete, meaning it. Lucy was as close to him as his brother was. He could never tire of their company.
‘So, what’s happening?’ said Griff, scraping the chair back from the kitchen table. He was incapable of doing things quietly, always had been. The much noisier of the two, bigger, louder, stronger. Everything ‘-er’.
‘Not much,’ said Pete, pulling three mugs out of the cupboard. One said ‘Pete – My One and Only Valentine’ on it. Something flicked his heart, like an elastic band pinging against thin skin.
‘Any funny work stories?’ asked Griff.
‘Not really.’
‘Juice not got his head stuck again?’ Everyone in the town knew Juice.
‘Not that I know of.’
‘I heard he was in the Trumpet for pelting the mayor with sausage rolls.’
‘Yep. A protest about Brexit, apparently.’ Pete pulled a ‘WTF?’ face.
‘Pass the biscuits while you relate said tale,’ said Griff.
‘I’ll get them.’ Lucy reached for the red tin that looked like a dustbin.
‘Nothing much more to tell. He asked the magistrate to take into consideration that they were veggie sausage rolls as the mayor and his missus are vegans. It wasn’t exactly a valid defence.’
‘Poor Juice,’ said Lucy, who recognised that there was a lost soul inside the laughing-stock he had become.
‘I still have no idea how he got his head in those bars in the playground. Not even you could have bent them,’ said Pete.
Griff beamed, lifted his arms into a pose, kissed his guns.
‘Oh, please,’ said Lucy with a tut.
‘But you’re okay, yeah?’ said Griff. Concern always there, threaded through his frivolity.
‘Okay as can be,’ came the reply as Pete stirred milk into the cups. He contemplated telling his brother about the meeting at the teashop he’d been to yesterday then thought better of it, especially as he wouldn’t be going again.
‘Any visitors recently?’ asked Griff. The word had a weight to it which Pete understood immediately and he gave his brother a glare of disapproval.
‘Sorry. Didn’t mean to ask that,’ said Griff, drawing even more attention to what he shouldn’t have said.
Lucy jumped straight on it. ‘What’s this?’
Pete brought all three mugs across together. He sat down then, opposite his brother.
‘Well?’ Lucy prompted. ‘Don’t you two dare keep secrets from me.’
‘Ria,’ said Griff, as if that explained everything. It didn’t.
‘What do you mean “Ria”? Do you mean Tara’s sister? That Ria? What about her?’
‘I’ve told you, haven’t I?’ said Griff.
‘Obviously not, or I’d know what you were talking about, you numpty,’ Lucy replied.
‘It’s probably nothing,’ said Pete.
‘It’s not nothing,’ said Griff.
‘Will one of you please tell me what is going on?’ Lucy growled.
‘Ria’s been bringing Pete food parcels,’ said Griff, stroking Pong, who had leapt upon the table now, sitting between his human aunt and uncle like a porcelain ornament.
‘And?’ The tilt of Lucy’s eyebrows implied that she needed more info to assess what that meant.
‘I’m not ungrateful, Luce,’ said Pete. ‘But . . .’ he scratched his head. ‘I might be wrong . . .’
‘You know you aren’t,’ said Griff.
‘I’m presuming you don’t mean the problem is the food,’ said Lucy.
‘It’s just a feeling. I don’t want you thinking I’m a prick,’ replied Pete.
‘I do that anyway,’ said Lucy. ‘Go on, tell me what you mean.’
Pete gave a resigned sigh before opening up the fridge, returning seconds later with a foil container. He ripped off the top and put it on the table.
‘Is that a heart?’ said Griff, peering at the sprinkle of herbs on the top of the lasagne.
‘It’s not an ink-blot test,’ said Lucy. She looked again. ‘Actually, you might be right, Griff. So what’s it all about then?’
‘About three months ago, Ria called in to see how I was,’ said Pete, putting the container back in the fridge. ‘I hadn’t seen her since the funeral. I opened the door and nearly dropped. She had one of Tara’s dresses on. And she was wearing Tara’s perfume. I took Tara’s stuff around to her parents’ house for Ria and Alana, so her turning up like that wasn’t too left field, even if it did give me a bit of a shock.’
‘Okay,’ said Lucy, in a tone that suggested she was processing all the information.
‘It’s only a feeling,’ Pete went on. Then he buried his head in his hands. ‘God, Luce, I really hope I’m wrong but I wonder if . . . I think Ria is . . . trying to get close to me. She’s been five times since, always with food, which is really nice of her, but . . .’ He made a sound of exasperation. ‘I know what you’re going to say—’
‘No you don’t,’ said Lucy, cutting him off. ‘She’s becoming “sticky”, is that what you mean?’
Pete’s head snapped up. He had expected Lucy, who was the epitome of common sense, to tell him his perspective was well off and not to be so stupid or ungrateful.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘That’s exactly it.’
‘Pretend you aren’t in,’ said Griff.
‘I don’t want to sit here hiding though, Griff,’ said Pete. ‘On Tuesday she was parked outside waiting for me to get home from work at half-eight in the morning. She was just passing on her way in to the salon, she said. She must have my shift patterns written down. She stayed nearly an hour and in the end I had to tell her I needed to get to bed because I’d had a hard night and was knackered.’
‘She didn’t offer to join you?’ said Griff.
Lucy smacked his arm. ‘That really isn’t helpful, Griff,’ she admonished him.
‘It was awkward as hell. Do I tell her not to come round? That would be rude, wouldn’t it? I’ve possibly got all this wrong.’
‘And you possibly haven’t,’ said Lucy. ‘I think you may have to . . . not be so nice, Pete, if this isn’t helping you. It might be that she feels close to you because you were close to her sister, but then again, maybe it’s more and I’m presuming you don’t want that.’
‘No I don’t,’ said Pete vehemently. ‘It would be like you and me getting together.’
‘Oh, cheers,’ said Lucy.
‘You know what I mean.’
Lucy’s hand cupped over Pete’s.
‘Yes of course I do. You have your own grief to deal with, Pete. You aren’t a plaster for anyone else’s.’
He looked down at Lucy’s hand and inadvertently compared it to Tara’s. His wife had tiny hands that she hated, so she always tried to make her fingers look longer with ridiculous-length nails.
‘Has Alana been to see you?’ asked Lucy, about Tara’s eldest sister.
‘Yes, a couple of times. And I didn’t feel awkward at all. She stayed for a coffee the first time, dropped off some photos she had of Tara the second time and invited me to go and see her and Rick whenever I wanted. And that was that.’
‘Nothing “sticky”,’ said Griff.
‘Not at all.’
‘Then be careful,’ said Lucy. ‘Maybe you have to be cruel to be kind. In a small measure. Though I can’t imagine you being in the slightest bit cruel.’
Her hand left Pete’s and he felt his skin chill. He missed someone touching him. Then again, he had begun to miss that long before Tara had died.
‘Change the subject. Brighten my day up, tell me how the tests are going,’ said Pete.
Lucy and Griff shifted in their seats, a synchronised movement.
‘Nothing to brighten up the day there, I’m afraid,’ said Lucy. ‘We’re just waiting to do more and then we have to wait for yet more results.’ She wasn’t on solid ground talking to Pete about babies.
‘Don’t keep me out of the details,’ said Pete, as if sensing this. ‘You telling me that I’m going to be an uncle would be the best news.’
‘You’ll be the first to know,’ said Griff and made a small growl of frustration in his throat. ‘I sometimes wonder if they know what they’re doing in that hospital, though. Loo still in the same place, is it?’
‘Last time I looked, it was.’
Griff left his seat, walked out of the kitchen door. There was something his brother wasn’t telling him, thought Pete. He didn’t press it because there was plenty he wasn’t telling his brother either.
‘I mean it, Luce, I don’t want you to keep me out of the loop because of what happened to me,’ Pete said, when he heard the door of the downstairs loo shut.
‘We’re trying not to get screwed up about it all the way some people do. If we can’t have kids, we can’t – it’s not a right. I know it’s me that’s the problem. My sisters have got six between them and my brother’s on to number four. I just know.’
‘You could try and adopt if the worst comes to the worst.’
‘I think we would. Nigel will make a lovely grandad, we can’t deny him that role,’ said Lucy, pushing out a smile.
Pete nodded. His dad would, she was right about that. He wasn’t so sure about his new partner Cora being a grandma, but she might surprise them all. Maybe a step-grandmother status might soften her or unpucker her face, as Griff so delicately put it.
‘He worries about you, your dad,’ said Lucy. ‘I’m telling tales but I overheard him talking to Griff about you last week. He’s torn between not wanting to be a helicopter parent and being concerned about you.’
‘I’ll go see him on my next day off,’ said Pete. He hadn’t seen his dad for a month, which was possibly the longest period apart they’d ever had. ‘I’ll be honest, Lucy, things that seemed so effortless before take stupid amounts of energy these days. And I include in that going to see my dad, which makes me sound like the totally shit son I am.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. You’ve had more than enough on your plate, but I know he’d be glad to see you. I also know that it’s not as easy as it used to be to call on him now that Cora is on the scene. She doesn’t exactly roll out the red carpet, does she?’
Griff returned, fingers crossed like a crucifix.
‘Did I hear you mention Elsa’s name?’ he asked and started to trill a very bad rendition of ‘Let it Go’ from Frozen.
‘Griff, behave yourself,’ said Lucy.
‘Frigid old bat, I can’t stand—’
‘Griff. Shut up.’
Griff threw his hands up in surrender. ‘The boss has spoken, so shut up I will. We’re going to the supermarket, if you want to tag along. We can shop for beans together. How exciting is that?’
‘Thanks, but I’m washing my hair,’ replied Pete.
Lucy drained her cup and took it over to the sink to swill.
‘I suppose we’d better shoot. Anything we can pick up for you and drop off?’
‘Want another lasagne?’ asked Griff.
‘Funny.’
Lucy leaned over Pete and gave him a kiss.
‘Don’t get up. Come and see us whenever you want,’ she said.
‘I will.’
‘Don’t make us come and fetch you,’ said Griff, thumping his brother on the arm.
‘Don’t nag him,’ said Lucy, ‘let me do that.’ She wagged her finger at Pete. ‘Remember what I said, don’t be a stranger.’
‘I totally promise.’
Pete picked up his mug and looked at the writing on it again. Tara had bought it for him the month after they had married, two years ago. When everything had been all right and life was about looking forward, planning, counting his blessings. When love had been two-way traffic.