Читать книгу To My Best Friends - Sam Baker - Страница 14

Chapter Nine

Seven fifty-five p.m. Mona glanced at her mobile, double-checked the clock on her DVD and sighed. Whichever clock she looked at it was still seven fifty-five.

She wasn’t sure which made her more tense: the fact Neil said he’d phone between seven and eight, and it was now precariously close to being clear that call was not going to come at all (oh, there’d be a good reason, there always was); or that in five minutes Jo would be knocking on David’s front door and doing what they’d all reluctantly agreed had to be done. Asking him the big questions. Had he had a letter too? If so, what did his say? Had he been in on this crazy plan all along? And if not, what was he going to do about it now he did know?

‘Daniel!’ Mona yelled. ‘Have you done your maths homework?’

Silence. If you could call the drone of computer-generated gunfire and the grinding gears of video-game tanks, silence.

‘Daniel!’

Silence, literal this time.

‘What?’

‘Homework? Have you done it?’

‘Yes, Mum. Ages ago.’

‘When, ages ago?’

Dan, all five foot ten and counting, filled the doorway. The flat was too small for them now. Too small for him, certainly. Barely fourteen and already four inches taller than Mona. Every inch his father’s son. Physically, at least.

‘After tea and before now. Maths and physics. Do you want to see it?’

It was a dare, not a question. He knew she wouldn’t; especially not physics. English or history she might have taken him up on. Funny how his homework was never English or history.

She shook her head and watched his back – spookily familiar and scarily alien – return to his boxroom.

Once Coronation Street was finished, Lizzie dabbled with a documentary about obese babies on Channel 4 and now she was trying to care about University Challenge.

When Jo first volunteered to talk to David, Lizzie had to admit she’d been relieved. But now . . . she felt . . . what did she feel? Guilty, she supposed, for copping out. But also a bit excluded. This affected her too. All right, so Nicci had left her a patch of land (albeit right outside David’s kitchen window). But still, it wasn’t the same. The others had been left people.

‘Picasso,’ Lizzie guessed. Just as the boy onscreen said, ‘Van Gogh.’

‘No, it’s Picasso.’

Lizzie high-fived the air. Still got it.

No matter how many times Lizzie looked at her mobile, balanced on the arm of the sofa, it refused to ring. Jo should be there by now. She’d promised to call as soon as she could, but that might not be for ages.

Idly, Lizzie flicked through the channels, ending back at University Challenge.

Gerry had gone straight to squash from a late meeting; he wouldn’t be back until gone ten, maybe eleven. Perhaps if she texted Jo now she could go with her, be her wing woman. Lizzie could be at David’s in ten minutes if she left now. Snatching up her mobile, she found Jo’s number and clumsily typed, Want some moral support? She pressed Send, before she could think better of it.

Eight ten p.m.

David wouldn’t mind Jo being ten minutes late. Since Jo hadn’t warned him she was coming, he wouldn’t even know. She hadn’t told him because that way she could still chicken out. And he couldn’t pretend it wasn’t convenient.

She’d come straight from Capsule Wardrobe’s offices, taking advantage of Parents’ Evening at Si’s school to get in some extra hours. She was knackered, and worried about last month’s profits. The new season had been in full swing for two months now, but business was still slow. Part of her wanted to put it down to the weather, but who was she kidding? They’d had a sub-zero spring before; it hadn’t affected sales then.

Smoothing down her sweater dress and tucking the hems of her skinny jeans into her ankle boots, Jo tried to gauge her reflection in the door’s glass panel. Her hair had been thrown into a ponytail hours ago, her roots were long overdue and, apart from red lipstick reapplied in the rear-view mirror two minutes earlier, her makeup hadn’t been retouched since breakfast. She knew she didn’t look great.

It was now or never, she decided. Do it, or go home and beat yourself up for the rest of the evening. As she raised her hand to ring David’s old-fashioned bell, Jo felt her mobile vibrate in her pocket. Damn. She was tempted to ignore it, but just in case it was Si she turned away from the front door and checked her screen.

Want some moral support?

Jo sighed. She didn’t know which was worse, Mona not attempting to disguise her relief when Jo volunteered, or Lizzie’s indecision. Come or don’t come, she had wanted to say, but make your bloody mind up. The fact was, Lizzie didn’t want to be there. She just didn’t want to not be there either.

It had to be a charity, the local MP canvassing or a neighbour looking for a lost cat/apologising for noisy teenagers/ wanting to borrow a parking permit. Nobody else knocked unannounced at quarter-past eight on a Monday night around here. If he ignored them, David decided, they’d probably go away. He couldn’t be bothered with being neigh-bourly tonight. It had been one of those days. Another one of those days. He just wanted to sit in the dark and wait for it to end.

The doorbell rang again. Its ancient chords hitting precisely the right note to pierce his low-level headache. Another ring like that and the girls would be awake.

‘Fuck off,’ David groaned aloud.

Could his day get any worse? The girls had taken for ever to go down tonight, demanding story after story and then complaining in unison that he didn’t do the voices the way Mummy did.

To which there was no answer. Parent fail.

David knew they weren’t saying it to hurt him. They weren’t even three years old, for God’s sake. And they were hurting too. They didn’t understand where Mummy had gone. Even though, as coached by the child psychologist his mother had insisted he consult (‘She’s an expert on child bereavement, you’re not’), he’d taken Harrie and Charlie to the funeral. And, to be honest, he didn’t understand why Mummy had gone away either.

The bell rang again. Whoever it was had no plans to go away. It was a miracle it hadn’t woken Charlie and Harrie already.

‘All right,’ he muttered as he dragged himself from the kitchen table. ‘You win. I’m coming.’

‘Look, just—’

David was in full flight as he flung open the front door. He stopped, as if looking for someone else behind Jo. ‘Jo . . . I . . . you didn’t . . . I wasn’t expecting you.’

He didn’t exactly look thrilled to see her.

From the far end of the hall she could hear the low buzz of voices competing for airspace. Someone in the kitchen. She strained to hear . . . someone in the living room, too.

‘I’m sorry,’ Jo said. ‘I haven’t seen you for a week or so. I dropped by on the off-chance. I should have called first, to check you didn’t have visitors.’

‘Visitors? I don’t . . . ?’

Pushing gently past him, Jo went to investigate. The door to the living room was open and a documentary was on the TV. In the kitchen a poet was saying something she clearly thought profound on Radio Four. An iPod played softly from the dining table.

The kitchen was a mess again. One of the spotlights over the sink had blown since her last visit. It looked like the washing-up hadn’t been done in days. And there were still bunches of dead flowers from relatives David claimed not even to know on the windowsill.

‘Oh God.’ She turned to him. She wanted to take him in her arms and hug him, but everything about his manner said no.

‘That bad?’ she said.

‘Worse.’

Shoulders sagging, David shoved his hands in his pockets. He looked about twelve. Boyishly handsome, utterly lost. There was a splosh of wine on the front of his work shirt. It didn’t look recent.

‘I can’t stand the silence,’ he said finally. ‘Before Nicci . . . when she was here, her constant racket used to drive me nuts, all the music and chat – you lot always here, and when you weren’t you were constantly on the phone. Never a moment’s peace, never just us. You have no idea how hard it was to get that woman on her own. But now . . .’ he shrugged, looking helpless. His eyes brimmed, the long lashes that Jo had always thought wasted on a man, glistened. ‘Now I can’t stand it, Jo.’

‘You should get an au pair.’ It sounded pointless even to her.

‘A what?’

She could see David thinking, How did we get from there to here?

‘I just mean it might help having another person around. With the girls, I mean, and . . .’ Jo couldn’t help glancing at the washing-up, a pile of clothes sprawling on the floor by the washing machine . . .

‘You mean the mess?’ He forced a grin. ‘I have a cleaner. I just gave her a few weeks off. I couldn’t, you know, cope with all her . . .’ he grimaced, ‘. . . sympathy. The nanny’s bad enough.’

Jo nodded, waited for him to continue.

‘I don’t think I could stand having someone around full time,’ David said eventually. ‘An au pair, I mean. Living here, with us. Not yet, anyway. It would be too much.’

‘Tea?’ Jo waved the kettle at him. ‘Or something stronger?’

David grimaced again. ‘Better be tea. I already tried something stronger. It just gave me a headache.’

The phone rang just as the kettle began to boil. Instinctively, Jo reached for it, as if it were her own. Sorry, she mouthed, seeing the expression that flashed across David’s face, and held it out to him.

He shook his head.

‘Hello?’ she said, and paused. ‘Hello? Hello?

No one there,’ she shrugged a few seconds later. ‘Must have been a wrong number.

‘That’s odd,’ David said. ‘Had a few of those lately. Wonder if it’s a call centre or there’s a problem at the exchange. Anyway,’ he added, watching her move around his kitchen as if it were her own, ‘I’m guessing you didn’t just drop in on the off-chance. What is this? Project check-up on David? Or something else?’

‘Does it matter?’ Jo said.

David said nothing. Instead he waited for her to turn to look at him. He’d been wondering when she’d come. And he’d known it would be her. Jo was the doer, the efficient one. Lizzie was too beaten down by that idiot she’d married to volunteer for a confrontation. And Mona – the bolter, his mother called her – she’d run to the other side of the world to get away from her family, and then run all the way back to get away from her cheating husband. And poor Dan, the evidence of that marriage, had packed his little rucksack and come with her.

No, when it happened, it was always going to be Jo.

‘You do know, don’t you?’ Jo said, after she’d dragged out the tea-making as long as possible.

Know what? David wanted to say. But he didn’t have the energy.

‘Of course I know.’

Even as he felt his anger rising, he tried to suppress it. This wasn’t Jo’s fault. There was no way she’d have come up with a stunt like this: four letters; life divided like a pie. No, there was only one person who could have come up with this.

Of course, Jo had been enabling Nicci for years. So had he. Every little thing Nicci wanted to do he’d tried to help her with, from the moment he’d fallen for the peroxide pixie.

‘What?’ Jo asked.

David shook his head. ‘Nothing.’ How did you explain your heart just twisted?

Nicci hadn’t been peroxide for a decade now, more, but the memory of that meeting was burnt in his brain. That was how he thought of her. Even now he felt bad about using Lizzie as an in. But from the moment Nicci had walked into the party, he’d known – like in some dodgy rom-com – she was his one, and he would do anything to get her.

‘David?’ Jo was standing in front of him. ‘Are you OK? I mean, I know you’re not . . .’

‘I’m fine,’ he said. ‘Just thinking.’

‘So did she tell you about the letters?’ Jo ventured. ‘Consult you, I mean?’

‘You mean, did I choose Mona?’ Amongst the confusion and disgust, despite himself David could feel his fury take hold.

Jo stepped backwards. It was instinctive; she couldn’t help it. ‘I’ll take that as a no.’ Her voice was full of sympathy.

‘I’m sorry . . . I didn’t mean . . .’ David’s anger was gone. Dragging out a chair, he slumped at the kitchen table, his head in his hands. ‘No, Jo, she didn’t tell me. She didn’t consult me. She left me two letters. The first was instructions for delivering your letters; the second, to be read after I had, told me what she’d done. That she’d planned my future for me. Because she didn’t trust me to do it myself. Like an idiot, I did what she asked, it didn’t occur to me not to.’

‘It wasn’t like that,’ Jo said. ‘I’m sure it wasn’t. Nicci adored you. She loved us all. She was just worried what would happen when she . . . when we found ourselves where we are now.’

‘Maybe,’ said David, hoping he could keep the bitterness from his voice. ‘Or maybe Nicci just wanted to make sure we did it her way.’

Perhaps he should have been the one who went to the bereavement counsellor. Were you allowed to be furious with your wife for dying on you? She’d wanted the house, she’d wanted children, she’d wanted the business, she’d wanted their life. Then she’d left it. Was he allowed to be angry about that? Because he was. So gut-wrenchingly furious that thinking about it brought tears flooding to the surface.

‘She left my garden to Lizzie, my children to you, and me – her husband – to Mona. What the fuck, Jo? I mean, seriously, what the fuck was she thinking?’

Pulling out the end of a bench, Jo sat next to him and slid her arm around his shoulders. And felt, rather than heard, him begin to sob. She didn’t know what to say. So she held him tight and let him slip down and weep against her.

The house was quiet now, but alive with sound the way old houses are: pipes creaking as they heated and cooled, floor-boards moaning with memories of past footsteps. Jo had circled the house, turning off the countless lights and electrical appliances, before returning to the kitchen to collect her bag.

‘Will you start coming back now?’ said David. ‘The three of you? And Si, and Gerry, and Dan? You still eat Sunday lunch, don’t you?’

‘Wild horses wouldn’t keep us away,’ Jo said. ‘Except maybe Mona.’

She smiled, to show she was joking, and he forced a laugh.

Now she’d gone, David punched 1471 for the fifth time in as many days, only to be greeted with the same message: number withheld. Despite what he’d said earlier, David didn’t think it was a call centre or a fault on the line, not really. In his darkest nights he’d started to fear Nicci had been keeping more from him than he’d realised. That she’d even – he could hardly bring himself to think it – been having an affair. No, he knew she wouldn’t do that. Not his Nicci.

In an attempt to calm his brain, David made himself sit and listen to the quiet. Many, many times he’d yearned for this silence. Well, now you’ve got it, he thought. This is it. Better start getting used to it.

Outside next-door’s tabby tortured the last drop of life from a small undeserving rodent, a car passed the end of the road, music so loud he could almost hear the words, teenagers shouted abuse as they made their way home from the town centre. He forced himself to listen to it all.

Floodlights came on suddenly, triggered by a small creature using his garden as a shortcut. Almost April, and still the soil was cold and bare, the grass straggly, beds bedraggled and neglected, the remnants of last autumn’s leaves rotting where they’d fallen. It had been this way for months.

When the lights turned themselves off again two minutes later, he was grateful. It had been like looking inside himself, and finding nothing there.