The Reading Group Part 30

x.x.x.

He waited ten minutes before he picked up the phone. Long enough to calm down, although he had wanted to run out of the door to her as soon as he'd read the letter. There was no question of making her suffer. Idiot that he was, he felt the pain he had inflicted on her ten times over.

'h.e.l.lo?'

'Harriet?'

'Tim. h.e.l.lo.' So much hope in her voice. Hope and fear.

'How are you?'

'Hungover as h.e.l.l, thank you. I had a big night with Rob. How are you?'

'Much the same, except without the alcohol, I think.'

'I got your letter.' Harriet didn't say anything. 'We need to talk.' Was he being deliberately ambiguous? He didn't know. He didn't want to do this over the phone. He wanted to see her, hold her.

'I know. Do you want me to come to you?'

'No. I'll come home.' He had said it. Home. It felt good.

'You're coming home?'

Her voice made him want to cry. She wanted him home. 'I'll come home to talk, Harriet.'

She was eager to please now. 'Okay, okay tonight?'

'Actually I haven't got too much on today, so I can probably get away this afternoon.'

'Great. I'll see you, then.' A pause. 'Do you want to see the kids?'

'Just you for now, if that's okay. Can you get Nicole to have them, or something? They won't help, will they?'

'No, no, of course. I'll talk to Nic I'm sure it'll be fine.'

'Okay, then. See you later.'

'See you later. Thanks... for calling.' Strangely formal.

Two people put down phones and sat back in their chairs to wait for their hearts to stop pounding tattoos in their chests.

Harriet She hadn't seen him for days. Weeks. She knew exactly: twenty-three days. She had only heard his voice on the telephone. Twenty-three days. Five hundred and fifty-two hours. She'd never done daft things like that about him before, counting days or hours. Like riding past his house even though it was off your route. Doodling what your married name would be. Mr and Mrs Tim Fraser. Mrs Tim Fraser. Harriet Fraser. Hadn't kept his love letters, or the Post-its on the fridge that said, 'I love you.' Now after a stupid twenty-three days without him, she couldn't remember why not. She had never wanted someone so much as she did him, now. Physically. She ached, actually ached for him.

Would he have his suitcase with him? Could she dare to hope that he was going to give her another chance? Or was he coming to tell her, face to face, that he wasn't coming back? She knew there wasn't anyone else, that there never had been. But maybe this time away from her had shown him the possibility of a life with another person. She was frightened. Scarlett O'Hara was back in her waking dreams again running back to Rhett after Melanie died only to hear that he'd given up on her. But this wasn't a film. This was her life.

The kids were at Nicole's. She hadn't told them anything because she didn't know what to tell them. The house was quiet without them, and unfeasibly tidy. She had only showered an hour ago. She'd spent all morning with her hair up in one of Chloe's elastics, with a pink felt bunny on it, and her pyjamas on, cleaning the house. She'd changed the sheets on the bed, (which weren't even beginning to be smelly yet), ironing the 100 per cent cotton Deschamp set they'd been given as a wedding present that had only been on the bed once before being eschewed for the crease-free poly-cotton John Lewis ones that gave you static shock if you moved too vigorously. She'd wiped down the tacky shelves in the fridge, even dared to put in a bottle of champagne to chill. Was she an idiot to plan for the best-case scenario? She'd hovered and dusted, and arranged fresh flowers in what she hoped was a vaguely Nicole way in the big gla.s.s vase. She'd swept out the fireplace and laid a new fire, properly, instead of just shoving the Sunday Times Culture section at the bottom under a ma.s.sive log and hoping for the best when you poked the lit match into it. Consequently, it had been burning for an hour or so, now, which was fifty minutes longer than her efforts usually lasted. Everywhere looked very unnatural.

She heard his car on the driveway, and ran up to the half-landing, where she could see it from behind the blind. He looked nervous. Stood by the car for a few moments, looking at the house. No case. She stood back against the wall, away from the window. Her heart sank to the pit of her stomach. Then she heard the doorbell. He wasn't using his key. He wasn't even treating this place like his home, let alone planning to come back to it. She wanted to hide under one of the beds, like Chloe would have done. She couldn't bear having to go through with it now. Sit on the sofa while he told her it was over, that he was leaving her. She didn't want to hear it.

Her tread was heavy on each stair as she went down. She stood behind the door as she opened it, suddenly shy. Nothing. She put her head round it, but he wasn't on the doorstep.

She heard the boot slam, and then he was there, with his suit-carrier in one hand, and a beautiful bunch, tied with raffia and woven with eucalyptus leaves, of yellow roses. Yellow roses.

And then she didn't have to hear anything. And she didn't have to say anything. They had both done enough talking for now to each other, to Rob and Nicole, and to themselves. This was just about instinct, and certainty, and, maybe for the first time ever about balance. He knew it, and she knew it. The see-saw of their life had found its equilibrium. He put down the case and the flowers, kicked the door shut and then he was on her. Kissing her mouth, her face and her neck, tangling his fingers in her hair, and pulling at the b.u.t.tons of her s.h.i.+rt with one hand, pus.h.i.+ng into her bra. They backed into the sofa, and fell down on it. Harriet pushed up his sweater, feeling his warm skin. He pulled up her skirt, and they kicked off his trousers together. He was inside her straight away, oh, so easily, one arm tight under her hips, the other at her b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

And because she wasn't thinking about anyone or anything else, and because that dishonesty didn't make her close her eyes, she could watch him love her, and want her, and feel her. And know that he could see, in her eyes, all of those things. It was the best feeling.

'My G.o.d!' That was the first thing either of them said. And that was simultaneous too.

'My sentiments exactly.'

'Why hasn't it always been like that?'

'Do you think it was the sofa?' He was still on top of her, still inside her.

'Well, if it was, I'm never going to do it in bed again ever.' They laughed.

'Ooh, ow, get off me. You're too heavy to laugh on top of me.' She couldn't breathe.

He flipped her over, without separating their flesh, so that they lay side by side on the cus.h.i.+ons, with Harriet coc.o.o.ned against the back. 'Better?'

'Better.' She kissed him once, a slow, gentle kiss on his top lip. 'Best.' They stayed there for a long time, next to the fire. It felt like a film. She didn't remember it feeling like a film before. It started to get dark. Tim pulled a blanket from the arm of the sofa over them.

'I thought I never fell in love with you. I think that was it.'

'Thanks a lot. Now you tell me.'

She pulled gently at his chest hair. 'I'm trying to explain. Ssh. I sort of rolled into it, so I had a softer landing, and I never realised where I was...'

He was laughing at her now, silently.

'And I think I was looking for...'

'Harry?'

'Yeah.'

'Shut up.' He slid down so that their faces were level. Her expression was momentarily indignant. 'Actually,' his lips were on hers, and his hand slid slowly down her back, 'I think I'm going to have to make you shut up...'

Susan 'Christ, it's chilly in here.'

'Hang on, I'll put the gas fire on.'

'I'll draw the curtains. It's almost dark anyway.'

Margaret and Susan busied themselves warming the house. Alice hadn't lived there since the spring, and its heart had gone cold.

Ten minutes later, with the lights on and the fire flaring artificial orange and red, the room was brighter, but the task ahead was still daunting, and Susan's companion still frosty.

'Did you not think you should have done some of this back in the summer after she'd moved out?'

'I didn't like to, not when Mum was still alive. It would have felt like a violation, going through her stuff. I think I would have kept wanting to ask her what she wanted to do with things too hard. Maybe I thought she might come back one day.'

Margaret conceded, grudgingly. 'It's going to be a nightmare now.'

Susan was determinedly bright. 'It won't be too bad. Mum didn't have a great deal of stuff.'

They looked around. Some of the furniture made Susan ache. The highly polished gate-leg table at which she had eaten a thousand meals; the gay figurines in evening dress that had been on the mantelpiece for ever; the brown b.u.t.ton-back sofa she and Roger used to hold hands on. All those memories. 'Well, this stuff might be worth something. Although G.o.d knows to whom. It's pretty hideous.'

Susan was glad Margaret was here. She didn't want to wallow, and she didn't think that was likely while her cyn ical, unsentimental sister was on the rampage. It almost made her smile. And she did have a point. Alice's interior design was circa mid-1960s.

'Okay, furniture to the house-clearers, most of the kitchen contents too, although I might have a quick look through. You should, too, in case there's anything you want to take.'

Margaret snorted, but half smiled.

'She didn't have any jewellery to speak of, apart from her wedding ring and her watch, but we'll have a look. Her clothes are probably for the charity-shop, aren't they?'

'Well, you're too big and I'm too stylish for most of them, so yes, I think Oxfam it is.'

Was it possible that Margaret was being playful? Susan wondered. A crying Margaret was one thing to get used to; a joking one was another. 'You're so rude.'

'Do you deny the charge?'

'No,' she laughed, gesturing at her frame, 'but you're still so rude.'

'It's the Aussie way, Suze. Tell it like it is.'

'The paperwork is going to be the real job. Mum never threw stuff like that away. It was almost like she was frightened of authority, like she hung on to stuff for security.'

'It's probably mostly rubbish. That won't take long.'

It took ages. It was, as Margaret had predicted, mostly out of date and irrelevant, and filed in three or four big cardboard boxes in the wardrobe in the spare room. The two women sat, legs apart, on the floor, leaning against the bed with a big black rubbish sack at either side of them. What took the time was the lovely stuff, the bits that brought their mother back to life.

Margaret found the bill for their parents' honeymoon. They'd stayed at a little hotel in Bournemouth for two nights; that would have been all they could afford. The bill showed that they'd had hot milk and biscuits sent up on their wedding night.

'What about the champagne? Surely a port and lemon, at least.'

'It's the sweetest thing I ever read. Can't you just picture the two of them, feeling strange in a hotel it was probably the first one either of them went to wanting some hot milk?'

'Last of the red-hot lovers, Dad must have been! How they ever managed to have a honeymoon baby I'll never know.'

'Maggie! You don't have to be drunk, you know.'

'But it helps! Boom boom!' Margaret smacked her thigh lightly.

There were some photos, too, of the honeymoon, just three or four. Their father sitting on a towel on the sand, looking sleepy and happy and eating sweets from a paper bag.

'That's right. Dad and his sweet tooth I remember Mum telling us they took sweets off rationing just as they got married. Dad said it was a wedding present from the government. Do you remember?'

'Yeah!' Margaret was nodding and smiling.

She'd kept all their school reports, too. Susan's final one said that she 'possesses great skill in domestic areas' ('Charming! You'd get into huge amounts of trouble if you said that now about a girl. What a nerve!') and Margaret's 'that for someone who has so little ambition, it is unsurprising that she has achieved so little'. ('Fair cop. I did sod all at school.') 'I need a drink.' Margaret stood up and stretched her arms above her head. 'Would Mum have anything drinkable in, or shall we go to the pub? I'm quite hungry, actually. Do you fancy grabbing something to eat?'

'Are you giving up already?'

'Already? We've been here for hours!' Susan looked at her watch. Margaret was right: it was seven thirty. Now that she thought about it, she was hungry. 'Mmm. Okay. I didn't realise it was so late.' She looked at the boxes still left to sort. 'Didn't think it would take so long.'

'It's nice though, isn't it, in a way?'

Susan looked at her sister. 'Yes, it is. It makes the real Mum feel closer again, doesn't it?' She leant on the contents of the box, to help herself up. The pile slithered under her hand, and she lost her footing. A letter fell out on to the floor, and she bent to pick it up. On the envelope, Alice had written, in her old-fas.h.i.+oned, even hand, 'For Margaret and Susan. To be read after my death' and she had signed it, formally.

'Hang on, Maggie. Look at this.' Susan handed the envelope to her sister. 'It must be instructions for what to do with some of this gear, I suppose.' It was fat. They sat down on the edge of the bed together, and pulled out a long letter, handwritten, from their mother. She'd never seen so much of her mother's neat handwriting in one place before. They read it together, although Margaret was faster. Susan read every word slowly, almost moving her lips in time.

15 March 1986.

Dear Margaret and Susan.

If you have found this letter, then I'm gone. Maybe I should have had something so important lodged with a solicitor, instead of tucked away, but this is a secret I've held so close to my chest for so long that I can't give it up easily. I hope you are reading it together, although I don't know how likely that is, with the directions you've both taken. I've often wondered whether I should ever tell you. Your dad said not, said there was nothing to be gained from you knowing, but I think I would have wanted to know. There've been times in your lives when I've ached to tell you, but something I don't know what always made me hold it back. I know I'm a coward, leaving you to find it out after I'm gone.

Today is the thirtieth anniversary of my sister Dorothy's death. She was killed in a car accident, run over. She never had a mark on her face, that was the funny thing, but it killed her anyway. She looked like she was asleep, not dead. I never talked about her when you were growing up, I know, but I loved Dorothy more than anyone. She was a couple of years older than me, and she was so beautiful, always laughing and joking. She was the sort of person people just wanted to be around, but she always chose me, even though I was younger and quieter. I still miss her every day, especially this one day in the year.

Dorothy was your mum, Susan. There isn't really any other way to say it, except straight out. I'm sorry you never knew her, I truly am. I ought to explain to you how it happened, and say that I am sorry that I won't be around to give you answers to all of your questions.

Dorothy got pregnant, and she wasn't married. Things were very different then. They make it look all romantic in films, but the reality was nothing like that. She couldn't tell our parents. They'd have had nothing to do with her. Not unless she got married to the father sharpish, and took a few weeks off her dates. They had homes for girls like that, in those days, and they'd have put her in there and then when the baby was born they'd have taken it away. I never knew who your father was, Susan. She wouldn't tell even me. My guess is that he was someone she loved, because Dorothy wasn't a bad girl, really, and that he turned out not to love her. He must have refused to marry her, scarpered when he found out she was pregnant. I don't know, I'm afraid. Maybe she would have told me eventually, if she hadn't died.

Anyway, she ran away, basically. She went up north, to Manchester, and got herself a job in the bus station, and told them her husband had been killed. She had some savings from her job down here. Not much, though, so I'm not sure how she managed. I sent her bits and bobs when I could. I was the only one who knew where she'd gone. I went with her to Woolworths, before she caught the coach up there, to buy a wedding ring for her. She wrote to me, told me how she was getting on. I only saw her once, after you were born, Susan. I had Margaret by then, of course; there's only eleven months between you. I felt so guilty. Me pregnant at home, excited and happy, with a husband, a good man, to share it with. And Dorothy up there all alone. She brought you down, Susan, to see me. She loved you so very much. She had no money to speak of, but you were beautifully turned out, and you were such a pretty thing. I think she'd have been a brilliant mum. We went for tea at a Lyons Corner House with you girls. Margaret was just about up and walking, I remember, into everything. That's when she asked me. She gripped my hand tightly and said to me, 'You promise me that if anything happens to me, you'll look after my Susan. You're all she's got, apart from me.' I said I would, of course. But she kept asking me, made me say that I promised. I didn't think about it. You don't, do you, when you're young? You think you and everyone you love are going to live for ever.

She died three weeks later. I got a message from her landlady. I couldn't believe it, that Dorothy, the most alive person I'd ever known, could be dead.

Your dad was wonderful. He never once complained, even though you were another mouth to feed, and there was a whole load of lies to tell. He never once told me I couldn't do it. He knew how much I loved her, you see. He knew I had no choice.

You were only five weeks old when you came to live with us, Susan. She hadn't even registered your birth that's why me and your dad are on your birth certificate. As if she knew she wouldn't keep you for long. We didn't see much of my parents then, and Jonathan's were both dead, so we just said you'd come along early, and got on with things. I don't suppose you could get away with that sort of thing these days social services and the police and everyone, they'd be involved. We managed it, though. And from that day you've been our daughter, not only to the outside world but to both of us too. We've loved you just as much as if you were. Just as much as Margaret. Maybe I loved you so much that's why I didn't tell you about your other mum, your real mum.

If I've made a mess of things, then I'm sorry. I don't think I've done everything right, but I've done my best. My best by Dorothy, and my best by you two girls. I'm so proud of both of you. I hope that telling you is the right thing to do now. I love you, my girls, and I hope we meet again some day.

Your loving Mother.

Margaret had slipped her hand down to grip Susan's tightly. Neither of them said anything. As she finished each page, Susan laid it neatly, face down, on her knees. She put down the last, and was still.

'Christ!' Margaret said. Susan didn't answer. When Margaret stood up, she let the letter slide on to the floor and curled up against the peach satin of the counterpane. She hugged her knees to her chest, and lay there, still, staring at nothing. Margaret was frightened. 'Susan? Sis? Talk to me?' Susan just shook her head. When she got no other response Margaret said, 'I'm calling Roger.'

Susan heard her sister's voice, from downstairs. She couldn't make out the words, but she could hear the urgency.