Chapter 11

Jess went down to breakfast the next day, following a delicious smell of bacon. However, she was slightly alarmed to see that Granny had brought Grandpa’s ashes down to the dining room with her. His urn was right there on the table, between the salt and pepper. Jess was speechless, and tried to concentrate on her cornflakes.

‘When I was about your age,’ said Mum, out of the blue, ‘I had a crush on somebody.’

‘For goodness’ sake, Mum!’ said Jess. ‘Keep these embarrassing confessions to yourself.’

‘I’m only mentioning it,’ her mum went on, ‘because it’s to do with the place we’re going to today.’

‘Who was it?’ asked Jess. ‘One of those sixties rock stars? A crinkly old Rolling Stone?’

‘No,’ said her mum. ‘It was a bit unusual, I suppose – because he’d been dead for forty years. And his name,’ she went on, with the shy but triumphant air of one confessing to a relationship with some kind of major celeb, ‘was Lawrence of Arabia.’

‘Who?’ asked Jess. She had sort of heard of him, but she wasn’t sure how.

‘There was that epic movie about him in the 1960s,’ said Mum. ‘They reissued it a couple of years ago. He was a great hero in Arabia, during the First World War. Then after the war, he came back and lived as a recluse in a tiny cottage called Cloud’s Hill tucked away in a corner of Dorset.’

Jess stopped listening. All she cared about was the next text from Fred. She couldn’t help torturing herself with the thought of him at that wedding, surrounded by low-budget cheerleaders. The fact that he had described them as cheerleaders had started to annoy her. Couldn’t he have said, ‘a pack of dogs’ or ‘a horde of hideous heifers’ just to reassure her – even if it wasn’t true?

‘I remember you had a poster of Lawrence of Arabia, pinned up on your wall,’ said Granny.

‘Did I?’ said Mum, sounding rather embarrassed. ‘Maybe. I don’t remember.’

‘Did you dream about marrying him, even though he was dead?’ asked Jess.

‘No, I didn’t fantasise about being married to him,’ said Mum. ‘I think I wanted to be Lawrence of Arabia. Anyway, enough of that.’ Mum whipped her napkin off her knee and wiped her mouth. She went off to pay the guesthouse bill, and soon they were on the road again, heading for Lawrence of Arabia’s cottage.

Jess couldn’t concentrate on Lawrence of Arabia. She could feel herself sinking into a horrific but somehow compulsive fantasy about Fred being a waiter with three gorgeous girls, all in short black skirts, competing for his attention. There would be a blonde called Grace, who would appeal to his higher nature. Jess was sure there would also be a dark girl with sultry lips called Selina. She would appeal to his baser instincts. And, worst of all, there would be a redhead called Charlie – such a sassy name for a girl – who was not particularly good-looking but had the most magnetic personality and the funniest gags. It was Charlie Jess was most afraid of.

‘He died a very tragic death.’ Her mum broke into the fantasy with yet another of her depressing asides. ‘Is it next left, Granny?’

‘No, next but one,’ said Granny, navigating with excitement. ‘By a phone box, according to the map. How did he die, dear? I can’t remember.’

‘He fell into a bowl of parsnip soup and was drowned?’ suggested Jess irritably.

‘No,’ said Mum, putting on a pious air. ‘It was tragic. He used to ride about on a motorbike. He swerved to avoid two errand boys, and went off the road and crashed. He never regained consciousness. I think he was in hospital for a few days, sort of hanging on. But he died.’

‘I wonder if he had one of those out-of-body experiences,’ mused Granny. ‘You read so much about them. A lot of people have had them. They’re lying on their hospital bed, and then suddenly they’re floating up by the ceiling and they hear a voice say – turn right by that chip shop, dear – “Your time has not yet come.”

‘Still,’ Granny went on, ‘at least he didn’t have a wife and family, so there wasn’t that immediate sort of family loss.’

‘The nation grieved,’ said Jess’s mum, in a pompous tone of voice, as if she were in the pulpit of a cathedral somewhere. ‘And one might say the fact that he wasn’t married with children was even more tragic.’ She sighed, as if she would have given anything to bear a glamorous son for Lawrence of Arabia, rather than a slightly stout and bad-tempered daughter for Tim Jordan.

Soon they arrived at Cloud’s Hill, and Jess clambered stoutly and bad-temperedly out of the car. This was a remote spot. Wind tossed the grass and leaves about in a rather haunted way. Jess’s mum looked up at the clouds, and a strange, dream-like expression came over her face.

‘Cloud’s Hill . . . I’ve wanted to come here for years and years, you’ve no idea,’ she murmured, and walked off to the entrance.

Cloud’s Hill was a weird, tiny house. There was no electricity. It was dark indoors, and plain, and it smelt peculiar.

‘I do think he might have got himself a decent sofa,’ said Granny. ‘I don’t like those chairs. It gives me backache just looking at them.’

‘To think that he actually sat there!’ said Jess’s mum, staring in fascination at the chair upon which Lawrence of Arabia’s charismatic buttocks had reposed. ‘I was crazy about him when I was young. It would have been much healthier if I’d had a proper boyfriend – one my own age.’

Wow, thought Jess, is Mum fishing? Does she maybe have a hunch that Fred and I are An Item? It would be so, so cool if Mum knew about Fred and approved and everything. Jess’s heart started to beat impossibly fast. She must say something. She knew Fred wanted her to tell her mum about him.

‘As a matter of fact,’ said Jess, in a casual, airy kind of way, ‘I’ve got a proper boyfriend – somebody my own age.’

Mum whirled round, her face transformed in an instant. Her blissful yearning for the spirit of Lawrence of Arabia was replaced by wide-eyed alarm and terror. As if she’d suddenly seen a snake in a flowerbed.

‘What?’ she hissed. ‘What’s all this? What on earth are you talking about?’

Oh no, thought Jess, I’ve blown it. In an instant the skittish, holiday-Mum had gone, and the anxious, disapproving old bat of normal everyday life was back in charge. Jess would have to blag her way out of this one.

‘Yeah,’ she went on, ‘haven’t I mentioned him? His name’s Siegfried de Montenegro and his family made a million out of marzipan. They live in a castle on a hill in Transylvania. We’re planning a December wedding and I’m going to have a troupe of vampires-in-honour, all in pink and white.’

Mum’s face cleared. She shook her head in some kind of disbelief, as if Jess had just made a very tasteless joke, and went back to ogling Lawrence of Arabia’s furniture. Phew! That had been a dodgy moment and no mistake.

Jess felt sad. If only her mum had said, ‘What, Fred? Perfect choice – I adore the lad. He can come round any time and I’ll make some jam tarts specially.’ But it didn’t seem as if she would be able to say that, ever. Jess and Fred would have to remain a secret for years and years and years. Till they were middle-aged – twenty-five, at least.

Jess completely switched off from her surroundings. She was oblivious to Cloud’s Hill. She was wondering what was going on at that wedding where Fred was being a waiter.