I Should Be So Lucky Page 6

  ‘No, Viola, stop this. They’re right. I can’t sell it,’ Naomi said. ‘And I won’t. But will you all please stop talking about me as if I’m not here? I’m not a parcel, not a thing to be passed around and dealt with. Viola must go back to her own home, just as she’d always meant to, and I’ll carry on as I did before she came. I haven’t suddenly lost my marbles or the use of my limbs over the past year and I don’t want to talk about this. Next thing, you’ll have me in a home.’

  Kate and Miles laughed. ‘Absolutely not!’ Miles assured her. ‘There’s no question of a home, but we do feel …’

  ‘No, that’s enough!’ Naomi stopped him. She started getting to her feet, staggering slightly as the voluminous tablecloth tangled itself round her leg. ‘Marco – please will you take us home now?’

  Before they left, Viola went upstairs to the bathroom. Rachel was inside it so she went into Kate and Rob’s room to use their en-suite loo. The bedroom was looking showroom neat – no clothes and shoes lying around, no books open on the bedside table. Even Beano the poodle was tidily curled up and dozing in his basket. The double bed, though – Viola saw that it had only one pillow, centrally placed. A pink floral night-dress was poking out from beneath it. You could only conclude that Kate and Rob now occupied separate rooms. Kate’s usual collection of framed photos seemed to have gone from all the surfaces too, apart from a few on a table beside the bed. Viola picked up the nearest, surprised that it showed her own wedding, not Rob and Kate’s. It was a casual, happy shot of herself and Kate, both laughing, either side of Rhys, who had an arm round each of them. He was looking at Viola, grinning hugely, as if delighted (at least for that day) to have won her. She felt tears pricking at her eyes and put the photo down again quickly. He’d been a rat, for sure, but for a very brief blissful while, until he’d started to break out of the marriage cage, he’d been her rat.

  SIX

  VIOLA HADN’T HAD the Rhys dream for a while, but the night of the lunch at Kate’s it turned up in the early hours, leaving her wide awake too soon to get up but too late to get back to proper sleep. At first after the crash it had descended on her almost every broken, miserable night, but gradually it had slipped away, coming back only a couple of times in the past few months. Lately, she had almost dared to hope the dream had stopped for good, but obviously no such luck. She should never, she thought to herself as she turned the pillow to the cool side, have looked at that photo in Kate’s bedroom.

  The dream was pretty much identical each time. Viola was in the green Porsche with Rhys, screaming for him to stop as the car hurtled like a broken fairground ride towards a vast tree, one that seemed to be coming towards them, lurching out of the woods and over the edge of the roadside, deliberately aiming to smash into the speeding car. She could make out the intricate, twisted patterns of its bark; smell mushroomy old wood and feel the chill against her face from cold damp leaves, almost as if she were rolling on the woodland earth. Then instead of the expected impact she would be walking away from the crumpled, smoking car to join a waiting crowd of women, recognizing the faces of every one she’d ever known, from tiny girls at her first school, university mates, her barely remembered grandmother, her sister and mother, her daughter, her friends. And somewhere among this collection would be Rhys, completely unhurt, gloating and triumphant and smiling all around at these women, saying, ‘See? It was nothing.’ And they were all delighted and celebratory apart from furious, terrified Viola – the spoilsport, the bad fairy.

  In the first confused waking moments, Viola would still feel she was right there on the edge of the group, searching for the one face she didn’t know, the one who wasn’t there, who he’d been with when he died. And she was a hundred per cent sure he had been with someone – in real life, not in the dream. Whoever he was leaving her for, this suddenly discovered absolute unchallengeable love of his life, had been in that car. The police had thought so too. The crash had been on a remote road and the call to the emergency services had been from a distraught woman who wouldn’t give her name. If she’d been injured, she hadn’t hung about waiting for the ambulance. But it was no longer as if Viola really wanted to know about her – it wouldn’t change anything to be confronted with some random woman who had run away from her dead (or far, far worse, dying) lover. What kind of woman did that? A very young one? A terrified one? Someone astoundingly concussed? But it was no use speculating: whoever it was had faded back into whatever life she’d had pre-Rhys, just as Viola was trying to now. If only the dream would – please – leave her alone. She’d fight it off and try her absolute best to will it never to visit her again once she’d moved back home, she resolved as she got out of bed before it was light and went to make a cup of tea.

  He’d probably have forgotten all about her by now, Viola thought later as she clicked on Gregory Fabian’s number in her phone. She felt ridiculously nervous about calling him, ashamed that she’d left it so long. Good manners should have sent her visiting the Fabian Nursery well before this, to thank him properly for taking care of her and driving her home. She’d have gone on Sunday if it hadn’t been for the three-line whip of Kate’s lunch, though of course that would surely be any garden centre’s busiest day. Then, just before his phone could ring, she quickly switched hers off again, deciding that as she was still, post-shower, wrapped only in a not-quite-big-enough towel, she needed to be dressed in order to talk to him. Mad, she told herself as she rubbed her damp hair dry, he CANNOT see you. You DO NOT need to be fully clothed and with hair done and make-up on, just to fix up some simple visiting arrangement. But then, just as she’d dropped the towel and was about to put on her knickers, the phone rang.

  ‘Hello, you. I saw your number come up on the phone – must have been an iffy signal so I thought I’d call you back. I was beginning to think you’d deleted me!’

  Aagh! Gregory Fabian. She sat on the bed, naked, rather pointlessly crossing her legs and clutching the towel to her body.

  ‘No – not at all! Sorry, it’s just been a bit busy and stuff. Exams and all that, you know how it is.’ Oh, ridiculous: how could he possibly know? He had no idea what she did for a living. All he knew about her was that she couldn’t drive straight and that she had a barmy mother with daughter-control issues.

  ‘You’re a student?’ he asked.

  ‘No! I teach – at a cram— I mean a tutorial college.’

  ‘Crammer. We’re allowed to call it that, aren’t we?’ he said. ‘Is it Med and Gib?’

  ‘You know it?’

  ‘Not personally. A friend’s son was there a few years ago. They managed to haul him kicking and screaming through his A levels by the skin of his expensively straightened teeth. He’s an estate agent now.’ He laughed. She wasn’t sure how to respond, not knowing him well enough to guess whether he’d appreciate sympathy or (her preferred choice) a sardonic response such as ‘Aha, so there is a God!’

  ‘So … um …’ She stumbled along. ‘If it’s still all right, I was wondering about coming to see the nursery soon? Would that be OK?’

  ‘Yes – please do. Today? Now? Lunch?’ He seemed very enthusiastic – perhaps he was hoping she’d buy a whole border’s worth of herbaceous perennials.

  It was just after 9 a.m. and there were no classes that day, although she intended to call in at Med and Gib briefly before lunch to find out the timings for her exam supervision duties. Her students had opted for study leave, which, in most of their cases, was an oxymoron if ever there was one. But this morning she’d arranged to call in on the rental agent and collect the keys to Bell Cottage, then go and have a quick look over the place while Rachel was at school.

  Marco had sweetly offered to go with her and she’d accepted, not because the visit risked renewing old unhappiness – she could (at least, she’d thought she could, till the dream wrecked her sleep) deal with that – but because being a designer he had a fine eye for colour. He could be relied on to help with any new paint choices and steer her away from impulsive
inclinations towards purple ceilings or an excess of gloomy taupe. Marco had a late-morning meeting in Fulham and couldn’t spare a lot of time, so perhaps she could do both – after all, they wouldn’t have to do more at the house than just check to see how clean it was and what needed fixing, replacing or painting. How long could that take, even allowing for a drop-in at the college?

  ‘Yes, OK – at about midday? Would that be all right? I just need to …’

  ‘… put some clothes on?’ He finished the sentence she’d had no intention of saying out loud.

  ‘What? How did you …?’

  ‘Oh God, I’m sorry!’ He sounded amused but flustered. ‘Sorry, I was just being flippant. I didn’t mean … Are you really not wearing anything? Aaagh! Sorry!’

  ‘It’s fine.’ She couldn’t help giggling. ‘No worries, I’ll see you later.’

  He coughed and put on a mock-serious voice. ‘Absolutely. I’ll tidy the place up a bit and get the best roses stacked at the front to tempt you in and to grovel for your forgiveness for my untoward remarks. You know how to find us?’

  ‘I do – I Googled you, just quickly for the address.’

  ‘Great, see you in a while then. Just come into the office and ask for me if I’m not around, but I will be. Oh and, er … drive carefully.’

  She could almost see his teasing smile. She was grinning broadly herself, she realized, as she clicked the phone off and caught sight of her flushed, beaming face in the bedroom mirror. Lucky nobody really was watching her make that call – naked, giggling: a touch of the Slightly Mad, possibly.

  It felt strange to Viola to have the keys to Bell Cottage back on her keyring and, added to her others, feeling pleasingly heavy in her hand. It had been so long now since she had had the removal team in, swiftly packed up all but the most basic furniture and banished almost all of her and Rachel’s possessions to the Big Yellow storage lock-up. She’d walked away from the house without once looking back, not wanting her last impression of it to be the damaged magnolia tree with its clumsily taped-on photos of Rhys and the badly spelled messages of devotion pinned to the gate alongside rotting flowers sealed inside rain-spattered cellophane. It would all be all right, she told herself now as she turned the car into the avenue and drove past the church; whatever Kate and Miles thought about how and where she should live, it was definitely time to come back. It would all work out. And if it didn’t, they’d move.

  Viola arrived before Marco, left the car in front of the garage in her old familiar parking spot, then stood on the path facing the central front door, staring at the outside of the building, taking in its familiar features, checking to see what had changed. Apart from a bit of recently flaking paint on the doorframe and the New Dawn rose that had grown so much that it now smothered the little porch roof and looked as if it was trying to force its way in through the bedroom windows, it was all just the same, just as she’d left it months ago.

  Marco’s Mini whizzed into the driveway and stopped a millimetre short of the Polo’s bumper.

  ‘Perfect parking!’ he called to her as he climbed out. ‘How’s our lovely old gaff looking? Have you been inside yet?’

  ‘No, I’ve only just got here. I thought I’d wait for you.’

  ‘Yeah – I get it.’ He put an arm round her and gave her a squeeze. ‘Hard to face the memories? You could just put it on the market, you know. Come and live in Notting Hill near me and James?’

  ‘Notting Hill? Like I could afford to! No, sweet idea but I’m sure I can deal with the memories, because so very few are bad ones and I’m not going to let them crowd out the good stuff. Mostly, I still think of it as when you and I moved in here, which were the best times, the Rachel-as-a-baby times. Rhys made very little impression on it, really. Even when he was there I still thought of it as just mine and Rachel’s because he brought so little to it, apart from the crazy women knocking on the door and hoping he’d come out to play. I should have known that he wasn’t a keeper. Everyone warned me. Why didn’t I just live with him for a bit instead of getting married? It was his idea, you know. He seemed absolutely set on doing the family thing, had me totally convinced and yet he was trying to pull a waitress even on our honeymoon. What an idiot I was.’

  ‘Well, of course you were convinced – he wasn’t a top actor for nothing, was he? And we can all be idiots. Look at me: all those years denying I was gay just because my father thought all poofs should be lined up and shot. But then if I hadn’t, we wouldn’t have Rachel. Something good often comes out of the tricky stuff. Shall we go in? I’ll hold your hand.’

  Viola opened the front door and stopped for a moment to sniff the air. It didn’t smell like her house, not at all.

  ‘Blimey, was she ever keen on vanilla!’ Marco wrinkled his nose. ‘She must have bought up a job lot of air freshener.’

  ‘Or candles. She looked like the candle sort,’ Viola said. ‘You know, late thirties and single, candles all round the bath, smelly gunk and rose petals in it, a big fat glass of Pino G and a book that isn’t too precious to matter if it falls in the water.’

  ‘Is that how you’re going to be now?’ Marco asked.

  ‘Me? With candles?’ she laughed. ‘Are you mad? I’d be sure to knock one over, set fire to the bath mat and end up naked on a ladder over some poor fireman’s shoulder, with all the neighbours watching.’

  ‘Yes, you’re probably not wrong there. But I’d pay folding money to see it. Your bum would look hot on YouTube.’

  Viola left the front door open to waft in fresh air to replace the vanilla scent. Even that could have been worse – it could have been Rhys’s usual overdose of Calvin Klein. If that had been so ingrained into the carpet that she couldn’t not remember him every time she walked up the stairs, it would have been a no-brainer about selling the house.

  The decor didn’t seem to have suffered since she and Rachel had last lived there. The creamy-yellow walls of the sunny double-aspect sitting room had a few faded patches where pictures could have been but, really, she could get away with not repainting it, although she decided she would, if only to freshen it up with a lighter, brighter version of the same colour. The kitchen looked as if it had hardly been used, and the giant pale pink fridge had been so thoroughly cleaned out that it looked in better condition than when she’d last used it herself.

  ‘Do you think she ever cooked?’ Marco asked, opening the door of the immaculate oven.

  ‘I’d say not. But it won’t stay like that for long, not with Rachel slamming pizzas in the way she does, straight on to the shelves and then leaving bits of crust behind so the house smells of burnt stuff and the bits never quite come off.’

  ‘She does that at ours too – James has bought her a special pizza-base gadget from his beloved Lakeland but she never uses it. Hey, though, your fridge – love the colour. But don’t you think this kitchen would look brilliant with more pink?’

  ‘Mmm. It would zazz it up a bit. I need zazzing, so I’ll go for whatever it takes to help. Maybe that wall behind the dresser.’ She pointed to it. ‘Shocking pink, or would that be too mad?’

  ‘Absolutely. It’ll show wonderfully through the open shelves. I’ll sort it for you, no worries. I’ve got a couple of tame scenery painters that we use on the sets. They’re always up for a bit of moonlighting and there’s not a lot of work on right now,’ Marco told her, making a note in his iPhone.

  She came over to him and gave him a happy hug. ‘You are a such star, Marco, thanks so much for all this. You’d make a lovely husband. Well, you did, actually.’

  ‘Thank you, Vee. And you made a lovely wife. If it wasn’t for the elephant in the house that was wearing a tiara and Judy Garland’s ruby slippers, who knows where we’d be now?’

  ‘Well, you wouldn’t have James, and that would be a shame. He’s lovely too.’

  ‘We just need someone perfect for you,’ Marco said.

  ‘Oh, now please, don’t you start! I’ve already got Charlotte and Amanda on my case,
deciding it’s time to put my team strip on and get back out on the pitch.’

  ‘Well … they’ve got a …’

  ‘No – enough! I’m not good at men and that’s that. I’ll take up embroidery and good works instead.’

  ‘Careful’, he warned her. ‘You’ll be getting cats next!’

  Putting off the moment when she went upstairs and reclaimed her own bedroom, Viola unlocked and opened wide the big French doors at the back, realizing immediately that though the house was in pretty good condition, the same couldn’t be said for the garden.

  ‘Ye gods, it looks like the garden’s just one wild old meadow!’ she called to Marco, who was checking how easily movable the dresser was. ‘Marco, come out here and look at the state of it!’

  The grass desperately needed cutting and was completely, though prettily, overgrown with daisies. The borders each side of the lawn had dandelions and buttercups crowding out the dahlias, lupins, evening primroses and verbena that she and Marco had planted so many years before and which had come up reliably and generously each summer since. Right now, they looked like they were struggling to hang on to their territory against invasion from rampant willowherb and ground elder.

  ‘No way am I coming out there! I’m not padding about in long damp grass in these new boots,’ Marco replied from the safety of the doorway.

  ‘You big wuss!’ She laughed, pushing back the cascade of clematis that tumbled down the fence. ‘How much damage would it do? Would a real cowboy throw a strop and refuse to get off his horse to lasso a steer because he’s got new boots and the prairie is a bit damp?’

  ‘But I’m an urban cowboy!’ he protested, venturing only as far as the edge of the paved terrace. Viola went back and joined him and together they checked over the herb patch which was overrun with rosemary, mint and marjoram, crowding everything else out. It would take a lot of effort, but in a week or so it would be the summer holidays. Work would then be only at the level of a couple of tutorials a week for the students whose parents decided that taking a preparatory run at the new school year with a few extra lessons would keep their children safely off the streets. Sorting the garden in a fully hands-on way would be a welcome project: an essential element to making the place hers again.