The Lost Guide To Life And Love Part 24

Suddenly it was dark and Bill was making up food parcels for Ram and Elsie, Liz and Declan.

'Look, we're closed till New Year's Eve. You might as well take all this stuff,' he said. And I realised that Bill knew they relied on the free meals they had at the bistro and a week without them would be tricky. He'd also ordered taxis to take them home.

Then there was just Bill and Mum and me. It seemed very quiet after all the laughter earlier. Bill was ripping open the paper from the sloe gin and chocolates.

'Wonderful!' he said, kissing my cheek. 'Just the thing to warm a cold winter's night. Now, I'll just get your presents.'

Then Mum said, quite tentatively for her, 'I have a present for you, but it's back at the flat. I thought you might come back with us.'

'Why, yes. Of course. Marvellous,' said Bill, looking stunned. 'What a good idea. Yes. I'd love to. I'll just get a few things...call a taxi...'

He rushed around in chaotic fas.h.i.+on, talking to himself, looking for things, picking them up, putting them down. He went into the kitchen and produced another ma.s.sive food parcel, while my mother watched on, amused. Finally, the three of us were in a taxi going back to Mum's flat.

As soon as we were in and settled, he handed me my presents-some perfume, a selection of offbeat travel books and a pair of silly slippers like spotty ladybirds. I sprayed some of the perfume, which was wonderful, enthused over the books and popped my feet in the ladybirds and admired them prodigiously.

'You can't be too grown up, you know,' said Bill. 'It's not good for you,' as I gave him a thank you kiss.

Then Mum went to the Christmas tree and produced a long box, which I had presumed was an emergency box of chocolates in case anyone unexpected turned up. But now I could see it was heavier. She handed it to Bill, who unwrapped it eagerly.

'A chess set!'

'You used to play. I remember you used to play in the old days.' Mum looked uncertain.

But Bill had opened the box and was looking at the pieces. They were made of heavy solid gla.s.s, beautifully smooth shapes, wonderful to look at, even if you didn't play chess. They caught the reflection of the Christmas tree lights and bounced them back so that the room was filled with warm, dancing colours.

'There's a wonderful little shop just near the physio's. When I saw that I just thought of you. And it's a thank you, too, for all that you've done while I've been crippled. I don't know that I could have coped without you. I didn't realise...'

Her voice tailed off. She looked at Bill hopelessly and I'd never seen her look so vulnerable. This was Frankie Flint somehow lost for words.

'Thank you,'said Bill, kissing my mother gently, 'it's beautiful.' In exchange he handed over an envelope. My heart sank. Oh no, I thought. Just when my mother has let her emotions show, revealed a bit of herself and actually admitted she has feelings, then Bill was going to reciprocate with a Marks and Sparks voucher. Please no. Let it at least be Waterstone's...

Mum was opening the envelope, her face clearly prepared to say a kind, polite 'How nice.' But instead she gasped, looked up at Bill and then back at the paper in her hands.

'I hear,' said Bill, gruffly, 'that the Zanzibar suns.h.i.+ne is just the thing for newly mended ankles.'

'Zanzibar!' I squawked. 'Are you going to Zanzibar?'

'If your mother would like to,' said Bill diffidently. 'I can always cancel.'

'No! I mean yes!' said Mum quickly. 'Bill, I would love to go to Zanzibar. With you.'

At which point I began to believe in Christmas angels and It's A Wonderful Life's Clarence getting his wings. And almost expected Tinkerbell to waft in on a cloud of fairy dust. My mother loving to go on holiday? She hates holidays. From the time I was old enough to go with school or with friends, we have never had more than a weekend break in Paris or Rome together-which I always felt she was doing strictly for my educational benefit.

But here she was, next to the Christmas tree, gazing at Bill and agreeing to go to Zanzibar with him. Maybe we'd all had much too much champagne. Maybe my mother had been s.n.a.t.c.hed by aliens.

'It's for the middle of January,' Bill was saying anxiously. 'I thought it would do you good before you got back to work properly.' He looked straight at my mother and grinned. 'Are you really coming? Do you want to? Are you sure?'

'Yes, yes and yes,' replied my mother.

I must have been standing there with my jaw dropping open, because Mum looked at me and said, 'I've been doing a lot of thinking while I've been hopping around. Life's too short to waste. You can't dwell on the past; you have to make the most of now. Seize the day. Carpe diem. I'm just so lucky to have had a second chance, and even luckier that Bill never gave up on me. G.o.d knows he was ent.i.tled to.' She turned to Bill. 'Thank you for looking after me these past months, but more than that, thank you for looking after me all these years-even, especially when I didn't want you to. Thank you for never giving up.

'I'm just glad you kept coming back. Zanzibar sounds wonderful.'

'Champagne!' said Bill, as he hugged my mother and then me, kissing us both. 'We must have champagne!'

'Well actually,' said my mother, 'what I'd really love is a cup of tea.'

Next day the fog had lifted as if by magic. The sky was a sharp cold blue and a film of ice covered the water b.u.t.ts. Matilda stretched up to grab the was.h.i.+ng line as the wind snapped it up out of her reach. After days of the damp and dark, this dry wind was just what they needed, cold as it was. The children played out in the yard, wrapped up, rosy-cheeked, happily chipping the ice off puddles.

Someone was walking down the track. Matilda looked intently, hopefully, but could soon see it was one of the Calverts who lived in the chaos of the midden-like houses of Bottom Row. This time Calvert didn't look as though he were begging favours, wheedling food for his children. Instead he looked jaunty, as though he'd had too long in The Miners' Arms.

'Morning, missus,' he said, touching his cap with mock politeness.

She nodded at him, curtly.

'So you won't be having your photographs taken no more then,' he said.

'Will I not?'

Her hand shook as she pegged a thin blanket on the line, refusing to look at Danny Calvert, though she knew he was standing there, hands in his pockets, rocking on his heels, full of himself. She was glad of the battle with the wind, the line, the blanket, the clothes pegs.

'You see, yesterday,' he said, with an air of great importance, 'yesterday I was working for the coroner.'

The coroner...The end of the blanket whipped out of her hand. She groped after it, resisting the urge to turn round and demand the information from Calvert. The coroner. Please, G.o.d. No...

'In the fog, must have been the night before last. Photographic man and his pony and trap went straight over Skutterskelf Edge. Reckoned they'd been there all night. Old Richards had to shoot the pony. Photographer was already dead though. Jim Dinsdale and me got him back up, took him to the Black Bull. He's laid out there now, in the outhouse. Got the cart and pony up too. Cart's not much good for else but firewood. But the coroner gave us some money for our trouble, from the public purse, he said.'

Dan Calvert told his story with a particular relish. 'The photographer took a picture once of our Billy and granddad cutting peat. But he took lots of you, didn't he, missus? Well, he won't be coming back no more, that's for sure.'

Matilda fastened the flapping blanket onto the line. Her heart felt as cold as her frozen hands. But she would not let anyone see. Ever.

'He was a good man, Danny Calvert,' she said turning round. 'And if you've not drunk all the coroner's money away, be sure you give some to your Mary so your bairns don't go hungry again.'

One of the grandchildren had fallen and was screaming. She turned back to the yard to pick him up, her long hair falling in its plait over her shoulder. She tried not to think of the photographer lying cold at the bottom of Skutterskelf Edge with the ruins of his cart and cameras scattered around him. All night, in the fog.

She tried not to think of his kindness or the solidness of his presence in her small house. Of the sense of possibilities...

Now he would never know that she had changed her mind; that she wanted to be his wife. They had never got their second chance. Too late.

Work. There was always work. Plenty of that to distract her. She set her shoulders as she carried her grandson back into the house and took up her many tasks. When she saw the pack of ribbons sitting on the shelf, for one moment she was tempted to hurl them in the fire, let the flames destroy them as her hopes had been destroyed. But even as she went to throw them, she stopped, wrapped them carefully back up in the tissue paper and pushed them to the back of a drawer. Waste not, want not. Some day someone might need those ribbons.

Chapter Thirty-One.

Carefully, I filled in all the s.p.a.ce on one side of the card with little stick men waving flags and sort of jumping up and down. Lots of little speech bubbles too, saying 'Hooray!' or '2-1'.

Yes, Shadwell had won a match, their first since Halloween, and it was now late January. I'd been trying to do some work on the computer, but I kept clicking on to the sports sites to keep track of the match. I was excited enough when I thought it was going to be a draw, but when Clayton scored the winning goal, I cheered out loud. And now I was sending him another postcard. The last.

I'd sent him a card after every match since the day I'd been to see him. As he wouldn't talk to me, it was the only way I could get through to him, to try somehow to keep him going. I'd drawn little stick figures, with mottoes-that 'Keep on keeping on' when they'd managed a draw, or 'Nil illegitimus carborundum,' when they'd lost again. Now they'd won, he wouldn't need that any more.

I drew carefully, trying to make each little figure slightly different, trying to fit in as many as I could. On the radio, there was a phone-in about the match. Yes, I was listening to a football phone-in. Sad or what? Even though Shadwell had won, the fans weren't happy. They knew that the top players were all likely to be sold. JoJo was, as Nell predicted, already off to Paris St.-Germain. The players involved in the rape allegations had had their charges dropped and were off to Middlesbrough and Hull. Sandro was probably going to either Chelsea or Manchester United. Becca said that Sandro didn't know yet, but I knew she was just pleased he was still going to be in England. 'It's all agents talking to agents. I don't understand it and I'm not sure Sandro does,' she'd said when I'd spoken to her the night before.

As for Clayton, the fans on the phone-in seemed certain he was going to follow in the path of David Beckham and go to one of the American clubs. Lots of money and glamour for his last year or two at the top. I wondered if he'd like that. It would be very filmstarry and probably a lot more fun than turning out with whoever was going to be left at Shadwell.

'Turn up with your boots and you'll get a game, there'll be so few players left,' said one caller. Another urged the club to give up, go into administration, accept the ten-point penalty and relegation and start again from the lower league.

'It's too late now. Why prolong the agony?' he asked, which seemed a bit defeatist. But probably realistic.

But Clayton didn't think it was too late. He was still trying hard.

Mum and Bill were having a good time in Zanzibar. I had the texts and the pictures to prove it. That broken ankle-or something-certainly seemed to have changed Mum's outlook. I picked up my phone and clicked again on the picture she'd sent: the two of them sitting at a cafe table in the suns.h.i.+ne, the sea a vivid blue behind them. I remembered that photo of my parents and me and my little brother all those years ago and I felt a small pang for the father I could hardly remember and a huge rush of relief that my mother and Bill could be so happy.

Becca had got her website up and running. While her arm had been strapped up, she'd thought up all sorts of new designs and got her mum, her aunties and her cousins to knit them for her as she couldn't wait to see them. Now she had a team of knitters, a real cottage industry, and the scarves were flying out-helped by Matty being pictured wearing one. Never hurts to have a top model looking stunning in something you've made.

As for Matty, she was bubbling over. She and Dexter had bought the old chapel and she was spending nearly as much time up at Hartstone as she was in London-with the exception of work in enviable places such as New Zealand. Dexter had a.s.sembled a team of architects and designers and was just waiting for the official planning permission to come through before getting on with it. Matt and Dexter had spent days together sorting out just what they wanted in it and how it could be done, discussing, arguing, laughing.

'It's great,' said Becca. 'He's going round with this huge grin on his face. All he talks about is Matty and the chapel gallery. And all Matt talks about is the chapel gallery and Dexter. She's been in love with him since she was about twelve years old. She was devastated when he got married. But it's fantastic that they've got a second chance, isn't it?'

'Fantastic,' I agreed, thinking about Matt and Dexter, Mum and Bill, and wondering if I would ever get a second chance. But it was too late for me and Clayton. Much too late.

Finally, I couldn't fit a single more matchstick figure onto the postcard. The effect looked quite good, though-a whole crowd of cheering fans.

I looked at my drawing on the postcard. If I wrote Clayton's address quite small, I could put more of the cheering figures spilling onto that side of the card too. I carried on, drawing carefully, reluctant to finish it, reluctant to let him go.

There, that was it. I couldn't squash another figure on anywhere. I stuck a stamp on it and went straight round to the postbox to send it off.

That was me done with Clayton Silver. The End.

I went back to my flat and made myself a bacon sandwich-all in the line of work. I was well on with the database of small producers for Frankie's. I was really enjoying creating it, even though it was hard work. Every specialist sausage maker or cake or biscuit baker recommended another two or three. I talked to people who ran farm shops and farmers' markets and food fairs. There was so much going on. I already had plans about which producers I could go and visit. In the meantime, I was having a very jolly time ordering samples for taste tests. Chill boxes of goodies kept turning up at the flat. The bacon had been that morning's delivery. It had real flavour, didn't shrink when you cooked it and grilled to the most delicious crispness. Who needs gourmet meals when you can have the perfect bacon sandwich? There was some lemon cake too, for pudding. I could smell the tantalizing, sharp tang of the lemons. Purely research, you understand. I was actually knee deep in notes as well as crumbs and I wanted to get the first draft of a plan ready by the time Mum came back from Zanzibar.

A few months ago the mere idea would have sent me into a panic, but now I knew I could do it. I'd stayed in the cottage on Hartstone Edge on my own. I'd got help for Alessandro and Becca when the car crashed. I could do things, I realised. I could do things. I settled down to work.

A few evenings later I was testing chocolate made by two former archaeologists living in the Yorks.h.i.+re Dales-rich and dark and flavoured with ginger, strong coffee or the wonderful light taste of fresh raspberries-when Matt rang.

'You stay in too much,' she said. 'I'm going to a fish-and-chip-shop opening tonight. Do you want to come?'

'A fish-and-chip-shop opening?' I said, licking the last of the chocolate crumbs off my fingers. The raspberry version had been particularly good.

'Yeah. Well, very upmarket fish and chips, of course. Terry Wotsisname-one of those c.o.c.kney geezer actors-reckons we're all getting too into foreign food so wants to restore the good old British chippie.'

'No, I don't think so, Matt, but thanks. I'm not sure it's my sort of thing.'

'Yes it is,' said Matt firmly, 'most definitely. No excuses. Trust me. Anyway, it's food, isn't it? It might give you an idea for a feature. And I promise not to go on too much about the chapel gallery, though I must tell you about Dexter's latest idea. He's only-no, I'll tell you when I see you. Anyway, fish and chips might be fun. Wear jeans.'

And she was gone. Matt was right. It was better than working all the time. Or even eating chocolate. And Matt was a force of nature, anyway.

So I dug out my favourite jeans, a pair of boots, a bright stripy top and my gold bracelet from Sandro's mum. I wondered who was wearing the wonderful silver and amber necklace now, but that was nothing to do with me any more. There was a ring at the bell. I ran downstairs and got into the back of Matty's car.

We were stuck at traffic lights for ages. While her driver drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, Matty was telling me the latest about the plans for the chapel. It all had to go to a planning committee.

'Dexter's got a brilliant architect on it, so we're sure the council will agree. It will have to be better than letting it sit empty and fall down. The survey was good. Structurally it's pretty sound. Most of the damage is just cosmetic and it shouldn't take us long...Tilly, are you listening?'

'Yes, of course.' Matty followed my gaze. We were stuck outside a newsagent. An old newspaper bill said, 'Quicksilver works magic for Shadwell.'

'I wonder how he is,' I said. 'The last time I saw him, he looked dreadful. Ill, tired, defeated. I misjudged him, you know. I got it all wrong about him walking off from his son.'

'I know.'

'You know?'

'Yes. I've been asking round. There was no truth in it at all. The woman was as mad as a fish and as sly as a snake. Now there's an interesting animal. No, Clayton Silver might be a typical flash footballer, but he didn't abandon any son.'

'No. I got it totally wrong. He's not even a flash footballer. I just decided that he was and then made everything he said and did fit. By the time I realised I'd got it all wrong, it was too late. I tried to tell him. But it was no good. The damage was done.'

I felt sad and wistful for what might have been. But Matty was having none of that. 'Oh, it's never too late,' she said cheerfully. 'Look, I thought it was too late when Dexter went off to Manchester and got married when I was sixteen. And he hadn't even registered that I existed, except as a kid who followed him around. End of the world, I was sure. But it wasn't, was it? Because there he is, back at Hartstone, just older and wiser.'

'Old and wise enough to realise he needs a successful model as business partner and maybe something more?'

'Precisely,' said Matt, smiling happily. 'So who knows? Even Clayton Silver might get old and wise one day. Even you...'

I was just trying to work out what she meant when the car stopped and she leapt out. She was wearing a pair of impossibly skinny jeans that looked as though they'd been sprayed on, plus little boots with heels so high they must have taken her to well over six foot six. I ambled in behind her, knowing no one would notice me in her shadow.

Fish and chip shop? This place was so far up itself that...no, let's not go there. There was lots of champagne, of course. And the fish and chips were served in tiny little cones wrapped in newspaper. But not any old newspaper. Oh no. This was specially printed newspaper full of splendid reviews of all the shows that Terry, the c.o.c.kney geezer owner, had been in. Very authentic. They do that all the time down the Mile End Road. The vinegar was balsamic. The mushy peas were tiny, minted and pureed, and the tomato ketchup was handmade, organic, sun-blushed, probably made by the light of a waxing moon by a score of young virgins-but, frankly, it didn't taste as good as Heinz's. OK, the fish was good, very good-tiny little pieces in the lightest of tempura batter. But in portions the size of a fingernail.

Even so, at least half the guests weren't eating anything. I swear one of the skinniest actresses I've ever seen spent all evening with the same chip, holding it seductively against her bottom lip while she fluttered her eyelashes alluringly at anyone who mattered.

There was lots of air-kissing and screeching. And people taking pictures. I loved the way Matty looked as though she were too busy talking to people to take any notice of the camera, but I also noticed that she seemed to know just when a camera was near and very subtly pose for it. That's what made her good, I suppose. Among the other guests were restaurant reviewers, actresses, and lots of people who were famous on account of being well known. It was all quite fun to watch.

I tucked myself in a corner that was out of the way but from which I could see the main room. I had my little cone of chips-about five of them-and was just stabbing the last one into the remains of the tomato sauce when I had that funny feeling you get when you know someone's looking at you. I looked up.

There, on the other side of the room, under a picture of a lobster, was Clayton.

My insides lurched. He was gazing at me through the crowd of minor celebs. Just looking. There seemed to be no expression on his face at all.

He'd been the last person I expected to see. Yet, on reflection, it was the sort of event he was quite likely to be at. Wasn't he a friend of the c.o.c.kney actor who owned it? Vague memories surfaced of them both in Shadwell scarves.

And then suddenly it dawned on me. Matt knew! She'd known he would be here. That's why she was determined to get me here too. She knew I'd got it wrong about Clayton and was trying to put it right. I looked around the room in a panic for her. She seemed to have vanished. But Clayton was still watching me.

Suddenly all those little cards I'd sent him seemed ridiculous. Pathetic. Why on earth had I done that? I remembered how cold he'd been with me when I'd gone round to his house, the disdain he'd shown me. Well, he wasn't going to get a chance to do that again. No way.

I crumpled up my empty chips cone and placed it on one of the counters that was Formica pretending to be marble. Though, actually, knowing this place, it was probably marble pretending to be Formica. I slid round behind a group of men who were either rugby players or club bouncers-in any case nice and big and solid. From there I thought I might be able to work my way behind a group of vaguely familiar blondes and out into the street.