Of all the emotions I felt as I walked into my new house, hope was the most unexpected. But there it was, against the backdrop of fresh paint, a fragment of belief that this time, in the first home I’d owned since it all went wrong, Daisy and I would know good times.
Of course, right behind hope was the familiar rush of caution – ‘Keep yourself to yourself’ – tagging along like a truculent toddler I’d been unable to shake off for the last sixteen years.
I glanced at Daisy, trying to read her face. I had no right to need anything from her. No right to expect excitement or gratitude. I was still willing her to show some enthusiasm, if only to dissolve the big knot of guilt sitting in my stomach like a doughnut I should never have eaten. She didn’t disappoint. Despite growing up with just me, my daughter had sidestepped my tendency to look backwards, to dwell, to live in the past. Instead she gathered herself in and headed towards the next thing with a quiet determination I hadn’t mastered at forty-three, let alone at seventeen.
As she stepped into the living room and whirled round and round, her olive skin standing out against the light walls, her dark hair swirling behind her, I managed not to suggest she took off her Dr. Martens. I itched to hurry out to the van to fetch the Hoover, to smooth out the pile in the carpet again, to keep our lives blank and uneventful.
Daisy picked up my phone from the windowsill and started taking photos. I longed to snatch it back, but I didn’t want to dampen her enthusiasm. She scowled as I said, ‘Don’t put anything on social media.’
‘I’m just sending a photo to Maddie. She wanted to see where I’d moved to.’
I made myself smile. ‘She’ll have to come and visit.’
Daisy shrugged as though she knew that the forward motion of the teenage world would wash the traces of her away within a matter of months. One hundred and twenty miles might as well be the other side of the world ‘in real life’.
I moved out of the shot and let her carry on. There wasn’t much in the empty room that would announce to all and sundry that we’d moved onto a brand-new estate built around an old hospital in Windlow. I hoped this move to Surrey would be the last time I’d have to pack up – and erase – our lives.
‘I could have an amazing party in here.’
I ignored the comment. Even if I could bear the thought of a gang of teenagers rampaging through the house, I hated the idea of a whole group of new people knowing where we lived.
Daisy rushed through to the kitchen to look out at the garden. ‘There’s room out there for one of those blow-up swimming pools. We might be able to get one cheap on eBay.’ Then she frowned and laughed at herself. ‘Not that I know anyone to invite round, obviously.’ She nearly kept the resentment out of her voice.
I was tempted to agree to anything she wanted, just so I could stop feeling so bad about dragging her to another town, away from her friends for the third time in her short life. Instead I promised myself that this time no one was going to hound me out.
I put on my cheeriest voice. ‘You’ll soon meet new people. I bet there’ll be loads of teenagers on this estate.’ I pointed through the double doors. ‘That girl in the house opposite looks about your age.’
Daisy raced through into the living room and hovered behind the curtain, peering at the driveway over the road. I stood back, not wanting to get a reputation as the community curtain twitcher. Naturally, the biggest house on the estate would have to have a conventional family set-up, like the Topsy and Tim books my mum used to read to Daisy when she was little. There they all were, Mum, Dad, son and daughter twisting into a back-breaking pose, all four of them laughing with their hands on the door handle while the daughter tried to capture them all in a selfie. The big sign that said ‘21 Parkview’ would probably be in the corner of that picture, for any casual Facebook observer to see. I couldn’t imagine living a life where it didn’t matter.
Daisy stopped me disappearing down those familiar, well-trodden routes that never led to a solution, by saying, ‘Shall we go over and say hello?’
I hoped she didn’t see me shudder. It was years since strangers had recognised me, horrified fascination passing over their faces before the most brazen dared to ask, ‘Aren’t you that woman who was in the newspaper?’ I still dreaded that flicker of puzzlement, followed by wary curiosity. ‘They won’t want us going over now. They’ll be getting on with their unpacking. We’d better make a start with ours if we’re not going to end up sleeping on a mattress on the floor. There’ll be time to introduce ourselves later.’
And with that, we went outside, where Jim and Darren, the blokes I’d found to bring us from Peterborough to our new home in a little market town in Surrey, were tag-teaming alternate scratches of man boobs and balls. Jim was muttering about his back already aching. ‘Hope you’re going to give us a hand up them stairs with that wardrobe. Mind you, looks a bit narrow at the top there. Going to be tight to turn.’
Darren nodded. ‘These new houses aren’t meant for big pieces of furniture like that,’ he said, his face arranging into some kind of satisfaction that I might end up with a pine wardrobe wedged between the banisters and the landing.
Over the road, my new neighbour let out a shriek of delight. ‘The kettle! Who wants a cuppa?’
I resisted shouting, ‘Me!’ as a team of professional movers made manoeuvring a solid oak table through her front door look like they were flipping a piece of balsa wood on its side.
I dragged my eyes back to the battered van and smiled. ‘Come on then. Let’s put our backs into it. You too, Daisy.’ I resisted the temptation to snap, ‘Put my phone down and grab the toaster!’
There was a waft of BO as Jim reached for the bin bag full of coats I’d grabbed off the pegs as we left our old house. A wave of loneliness washed over me at doing all of this on my own again. But nowhere near as acute as the day when my husband, Oskar, told me he was leaving to go and work with his cousin in Argentina ‘where I can start again and forget about all of this’.
Even if I moved to the furthest corner of Australia, I would never forget.
Every time I turned round to ask Jack where he thought we should put something, he was waving his hand in that ‘don’t bother me right now, big businessman on a very important call’ way of his. God forbid he should actually have a day off and help with something as mundane as sorting out the home we were going to live in. He’d done the grand gesture of organising a bouquet of roses to arrive mid-morning and clearly thought that was his contribution to proceedings.
‘Ollie, while Dad deals with his “urgent business”, could you just make sure all the boxes that say “spare room” go up to the top floor?’
‘Sure. My stuff’s going in the room at the front now, right?’
I frowned. ‘You’re having the bedroom overlooking the garden.’
‘Hannah says she wants it.’
I shook my head. ‘We sorted all of this out ages ago, when we first saw the house.’
Ollie shrugged. ‘She says because I’m away at university, she should have the biggest room.’
‘I thought we decided you’d probably look for a job in London next year and commute for a while?’
Was it so wrong to have a little jolt of joy at the thought of Ollie moving back home again, even though he’d be twenty-two by then and should be making his own way in life? The one person who sometimes managed to ask me, ‘And how was your day?’ Unlike Jack, who often came into the house still on the phone without making eye contact. Or Hannah, who frequently didn’t even bother with a greeting, just defaulted straight to ‘What’s for dinner?’ more often than not followed by a big sag, like she’d been punched in the stomach and a strangled ‘Again?’ as though I’d offered her dried yak in prune sauce.
Ollie became intent on peeling off a piece of brown tape from one of the boxes. ‘I might stay down Bath way if I can.’
I frowned at real life intruding on my fantasy. ‘I’m not messing about changing everything around now. Her room is only an alcove smaller anyway. Let’s stick with what we agreed and we can have another think next year when we see how the land lies. Where is Hannah?’ I asked.
‘She went out to explore.’
Scouting for boys in the neighbourhood more like. Little monkey. I crossed my fingers that the handsome bad boy didn’t live two doors down and hauled the ironing board into the utility room. Titch, our Great Dane, saw his moment to escape and barrelled past me. He barged into the removal man and nearly got squashed by an incoming sofa, causing a flurry of swear words. That would be the last cup of tea I’d be making for him. I was the only one allowed to drop an F-bomb in my house.
‘You’d better shut the dog up before he causes an accident.’
I raised my eyebrows. The removal man clearly didn’t understand that Titch was not a dog to be ‘shut up’. Titch thought he had superior rights to any of the humans in the family. I called Titch to me and he swaggered over, wagging his tail and managing to sweep one of the vases I’d unpacked onto the floor. Not that it was a great loss – definitely in the category of things I felt guilty about chucking out because it was a wedding present. Jack would never notice. Apart from the bowl from my Great-Aunt Sybil that had Jack and Gisela 7 October 1995 engraved on it, he’d struggle to point out another thing in the whole house we’d been given when we got married.
I shouted to Ollie. ‘Get Dad off the phone. And go and ask the removal men if they can see the box marked kitchen cleaning so I can get the dustpan and brush. If you see Hannah out there, ask her to come in. She can start putting the glasses away before Titch smashes anything else.’
Ollie wandered off outside, showing as much urgency as Titch on the way to the vets. Trust us to pick the hottest day of the year to move house. I was sweating already and I’d only opened a couple of boxes. I was conscious of the big wave of irritation filling the space where excitement had been, my illusion of the happy family working together to take responsibility for creating a home disappearing into mist. I glanced over the road at the woman at number seventeen. Her daughter was racing in and out, heaving boxes and grabbing hold of bits of furniture with a smile on her face. I’d obviously gone wrong somewhere. Hannah would be all sweetness and light when it came to choosing a sound system or wheedling a new TV out of Jack but doing the boring shit of unwrapping the crockery and running it all through the dishwasher, not a chance.
I started poking the bits of broken vase with my toe, peering through the front door to see if anyone, any of the three other people in my family, was actually going to put away so much as a fork.
When no one appeared, I stomped outside, doing that sweet ‘Are you winning?’ to the removal men who were having a fag break. I wondered how many houses they drove away from going, ‘I give that marriage six months’. Ollie was on the other side of the road – standing in an unnatural ‘biceps flexed’ pose – chatting to the girl at number seventeen. I hadn’t seen any evidence of a dad about, unless he was that bloke with the Black Sabbath T-shirt lifting the sofa.
Hannah was idling up the street, so I beckoned at her to hurry, which led to her throwing her hands up. ‘What?’ At the same time, Jack was waving the ‘five minutes’ fingers at me through the windscreen of his car.
Bugger the roses. Just get off the sodding phone.
Photos: All four smiling widely into the camera at the front door, Gisela’s face pressed against Jack’s.
Boxes stacked neatly in a white kitchen with gleaming grey granite and a huge bouquet of roses in the middle of the island next to a bottle of champagne.
Caption: So the day has finally arrived – we’re in our new home! Just a ‘few’ boxes to unpack, but at least the hubby remembered the essentials… roses and bubbly!!
#GottaLoveTheHusband #Newhome #Moving #Excited #FamilyAdventures
‘Breakfast in bed for the love of my life,’ Chris said as he walked in with a tray. ‘You need to go and check out that shower. Got much more power than the old one. Good choice to have two shower rooms instead of bathrooms.’ He passed me a glass and clinked it with his own. ‘Cheers. Here’s to us and our happy home.’
I refrained from asking which champagne he’d polluted with orange juice (please don’t let it be the vintage Henri Chauvet I’d stocked up with during my last trip) and ruffled his wet hair. Apart from a few tiny wrinkles around his eyes, he barely looked older at thirty-six than he did when we’d met at work a couple of years after I’d left university.
He took my glass from me and started kissing my neck. ‘Time to christen our new bedroom, I think.’
My eyes darted towards the landing. I couldn’t help it. Ever since we’d first seen the house on the plans, that little room across the corridor kept calling to me. The room that every time I walked past, I imagined with a frieze of sailing ships against pale green walls and one of those mobiles made from bamboo hanging from the ceiling. No bright primary-coloured plastic anywhere or stupid wind-up lamps blaring out a tinny ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’. Chris would never tolerate that. But maybe, eventually, he’d come to see that a four-bedroom house required more than just bookshelves of military history and a scattering of the latest chrome gadgets.
His hands pulled up my nightdress and he pushed himself against me.
I hesitated, allowing myself a second to luxuriate in the romanticism of explaining to a sandy-haired teenager, eighteen years from now: ‘You were our surprise house-warming present.’
Maybe this would be the opportunity I needed. I didn’t have to say anything. I could claim heat of the moment, my brain overwhelmed by the move. He obviously hadn’t remembered. I’d always despised women who shrugged off things, saying, ‘What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him.’ I didn’t want to be that wife. I didn’t want it to happen like this, by trickery.
I wriggled free. ‘Don’t forget I had the coil removed last week.’
Annoyance flashed across his face and he immediately swung his legs over the side of the bed. I pulled down my nightdress, feeling exposed and vulnerable. ‘Oh Christ, good job you’re on the ball. The Buck’s Fizz must have knocked the sense out of me. Any idea where the condoms are?’
I almost laughed at the frustration on Chris’s face. When I’d been dropping with exhaustion the night before, my hands sore and dry, irritated by all the paper and cardboard, he’d refused to go to bed. ‘I can’t get up tomorrow and come down to all this mess. I won’t be able to sleep.’ And now, although we knew where the tea strainer, garlic press and lemon squeezer were, neither of us recalled seeing the condoms.
In the end, we didn’t need them. Just as I was offering to nip down to the garage and see if there were any bathroom boxes left in there, tidied away last thing so they wouldn’t affront Chris’s eyes in the morning, a great racket broke out next door.
We looked at each other, trying to place the noise. I peeped through the bedroom curtains into the neighbour’s garden, where a man was filming his brood of children leaping onto the newly erected trampoline pushed right up against our fence. ‘It’s the kids next door.’
Chris rolled his eyes. ‘At 8.30 on a Saturday morning? They’d better not do that every weekend or we’re going to have words.’
I cuddled him from behind. ‘They’re just excited because it’s all new. The same as it is for us. They’ll settle down.’
‘We should have double-checked who was moving in next to us. If I’d have known there were four kids, I might have had second thoughts.’
I forced a smile into my voice. ‘These houses are built for families really though, aren’t they?’
He tensed as though he caught a hint of suggestion rather than mere statement. ‘No. They’re big houses with lots of space, but not everyone is going to use that for kids. It’s perfect for us – we’ve both got an office each and still have a guest room for our friends.’
Who no longer came to stay because they all had children. Even the best-behaved child couldn’t meet Chris’s standards for low decibels, scarcity of spillage and absence of interrupting. Coupled with his crinkled expression of bemusement that the parents thought he might be remotely interested in anything their child had to say, our Christmas card list was thinning out nicely. The only people likely to occupy our guest room were my mum and dad, and even their visits were few and far between. Though I couldn’t entirely blame Chris for getting fed up with my mother and her subtle hints: ‘Can’t believe you and Chris have been married ten years. And together for thirteen!’ ‘Thirty-seven next birthday, Sally!’ She might as well stand there making a pendulum movement with her arms.
Now wasn’t the moment for that battle. I gave Chris a hug. ‘We’re very lucky to be able to afford so much space.’
I’d have to be smart about this.
Photo: Two glasses of Buck’s Fizz, poached eggs and salmon on a tray, perched on a white linen duvet.
Caption: First morning in our new love nest!
#ForeverHome
Photo: Long dining table stacked with plates and glasses, with an enormous vase of lilies. Huge buckets filled with ice and beer. Wine fridge with all the gold tops of champagne lined up.
Caption: Gearing up for house-warming with all the new neighbours. Hope they don’t think we’re alcoholics!!!
#MeetTheNeighbours #LoveMyCommunity #Excited
With an hour and a half to go until everyone arrived, Jack emerged from his study with one eye still on his phone.
I stood with my arms folded. ‘Is there any day of the week where you could actually give your full attention to your family? I’m sure the caravan-rental business can survive without you for one weekend out of fifty-two.’
‘As you well know, it’s our busy time of year, so I’m always going to have to do a bit of troubleshooting at weekends. On the upside, Painted Wagon Holidays affords you a very nice standard of living, Gisela.’
Only the desire not to have a massive row just before our guests arrived stopped me responding to the family folklore that Jack worked his arse off while I booked pedicures and lunches out.
Jack’s face told me he knew he was lucky to get away with that. He put his phone in his pocket and said, ‘What do you want me to do?’
I was tempted to fling out my arm and point to the whole house, saying, ‘Pick a bloody job – any one’. Instead I settled for, ‘Just go and check that you cleaned the barbecue last time we used it.’ For a man who didn’t know the difference between a J-cloth and a duster, he was surprisingly precise – and possessive – about his barbecue, the twenty-first century equivalent of standing growling in front of a cave.
I’d just finished bleaching the loo when he came rushing back in. ‘I put the gas on to freshen up the grill and it’s run out. I’ll just nip down to the garage and see if they’ve got any canisters.’
My stress levels soared. Not only did we have forty people coming who would need more food than a few rocket leaves and a couple of slices of baguette, but I’d also been counting on Jack to give all the garden chairs and tables a good wipe down. Based on the women I’d met on the estate so far, I was pretty sure white jeans would be a popular choice. I contented myself with, ‘Be as quick as you can, I’m getting a bit nervous.’
He smiled and waved his hand at the dining room. ‘Looks lovely. You’ve done a great job. Anyway, if they don’t like us, we won’t invite them again.’
If they all had to charge down to the kebab shop later because the ‘barbecue’ failed to materialise, they probably wouldn’t rush to come again.
I shouted upstairs to Hannah and Ollie. ‘I need some help down here.’
Ollie appeared, in an ironed shirt and clean-shaven instead of the non-designer stubble he usually sported during the holidays.
‘You look smart.’
‘My girlfriend’s coming over. Thought I’d better make an effort.’ He looked down.
A herculean effort managed to push back the hurt he’d never mentioned a new girlfriend to me. Instead I raised my eyebrows, comedy fashion. ‘Well, aren’t we honoured? She must be something special if you’ve actually had a shave.’
He didn’t answer. ‘What was it you wanted help with?’
I handed him a bucket of hot soapy water and a cloth, all the time dancing between wanting to know more about the girlfriend he’d never mentioned before and wondering if she was ‘the one’ given Ollie’s bashful reaction. He’d rarely bothered to change out of his tracksuit bottoms before. I’d always been able to tease information out of him; I couldn’t let her arrive without knowing the basics. ‘So, go on then, what’s her name?’
Ollie smiled, the sort of smile that meant he was remembering things I really didn’t want to know about. A smile that excluded me from his life. ‘Natalie. Nat.’
The name conjured up someone small, slim and dark. A contrast to Ollie, who’d stayed incredibly blonde, like some Norwegian god. I told myself off for even imagining what a mixture of those colourings would look like in a child. ‘Have you got a photo?’
He did that shruggy ‘I don’t spend my time taking photos of her’ thing. ‘She’ll be here in an hour, then you can see her for yourself.’
I started decanting the mayonnaise into a pretty bowl. ‘I think it’s a bit rude if she gets here and we don’t know anything about her. Where did you meet her? Is she from your university?’
Ollie glanced down at his phone. His face softened, then he frowned up at me again. ‘Yeah, sort of.’ I waited, feeling curiosity puffing up inside me. He wrinkled his nose. ‘I met her this year in Bristol when I was doing my placement.’
‘How long have you been seeing the lovely Natalie, then? You kept that quiet.’
‘I knew you’d have hundreds of questions, so I thought I’d save myself the aggro. I’ve been seeing her for a few months, maybe four or five.’
I pretended not to hear the impatience in his voice and plugged on with my next question. ‘Do you think you’ll stay in touch when you go back to Bath for your final year?’ Before he could answer, I had another thought. ‘Have you sorted out a house yet? We haven’t paid a deposit or anything.’
‘I’m on it. Just working things out now.’
And with that, he sloshed off outside, dripping water through the kitchen.
As I followed in his wake with a cloth, I puzzled away over his reluctance, his hesitation to talk about her when he was clearly smitten. I felt the sting of sadness that he’d grown away from me. There’d been someone in his life for several months and he hadn’t even mentioned her. Someone else who’d be the keeper of his secrets, the worries he could never tell his friends for fear of appearing uncool, the person who noticed minor ailments and insisted he went to the doctor. She’d better be kind. If he met her on his placement, at least she was at university or work. I’d hate him to end up with someone directionless, bumbling through life with no real plan. Like me, at his age.
The excitement I’d felt about the party was in danger of seeping away. I grabbed my iPhone and flicked through to my ‘Happy times’ playlist with all the Dirty Dancing songs. I ran up to get Hannah, who was standing admiring herself in the mirror, dressed in a crop top and knickers. I used to have a stomach that flat. I did. Hipbones even. No amount of sticking my arse in the air at Body Balance would ever give me that taut smooth stomach again. I looked down at my boobs, which were ridiculously big for my small frame. A selling point about twenty years ago, now requiring a shopping trolley of their own.
‘Hannah, can you come down and give me a hand?’
‘I’m still getting dressed.’
‘You’ve had all morning to do that. Just come and put out some olives and cut the bread for me.’
Hannah looked at me as though I was the most tiresome creature on the planet. ‘I’ll be down in a sec.’ She paused. ‘Are you getting changed?’
‘No, I thought I’d wear this. Why?’
‘Isn’t it a bit frumpy?’
I looked down at my jeans and tunic top. ‘What about if I put some heels on?’
But Hannah was busy filling in her eyebrows, obsessing over the two hairs that grew in the opposite direction from the others. ‘You just look a bit old-fashioned, more like grandma.’
I marched out of her room to my wardrobe and started pulling out different tops. The jeans were new, those butt-lifting jeans for middle-aged women, which appeared in all the papers. They couldn’t be frumpy. I sieved through the options – the sheer top that was a bit transparent – not sure a glimpse of the thick-strapped scaffolding required to prevent a G-cup from free fall was going to improve anyone’s burger experience. The silky vest top. Ugh. My bingo wings were so bad everyone would be shouting out ‘Legs Eleven’ if I appeared in that. I wondered about getting Hannah to help me, then decided it was entirely possible that her advice would act like a pestle on the mortar of my self-esteem.
I went for a long-sleeved top with a fat-disguising frill down the front that finished below my bum. If only I’d known at Hannah’s age that I would never look better than I did then, that thirty years down the line I’d rate clothing not for its cutting-edge fashion but for its ability to skim the stomach.
I ran downstairs, whirling around, putting crisps into bowls, wishing Jack had bought something other than Pringles. How I missed my twenty-year-old self who swigged cranberry juice out of a carton then gargled in a slug of vodka, sunbathed half-naked, laughed long and loud and felt sorry for anyone who had a problem with my behaviour. Now I was worrying about what people would think of my crisps.
Thankfully, Jack came bowling in through the door, brandishing a couple of Calor gas canisters like hunting trophies. ‘We’re in luck!’ Relief Jack was going to take charge of the huge mound of meat rather than it becoming another job for me in an oven I hadn’t yet mastered outweighed my pissed-offness at the fact he was breezing in at the last minute. I didn’t have time to get any further because the doorbell went, ten minutes early.
‘I hate people who arrive early.’
Jack laughed. ‘Good job you’re so organised. Looking on the bright side, at least someone’s turned up.’
I arranged my face into one of welcome as I opened the door to a woman in her early thirties, who was so tall I found myself looking up at her. I stuck out my hand. There were a few families I hadn’t managed to speak to, so I’d popped a note through the door. ‘I’m Gisela. Are you the lady from number seven? Or number thirteen?’
She laughed, the big, confident laugh of someone who’d decided long ago that being several inches taller than the average woman was an advantage. ‘No, I’m not from number seven or number thirteen.’
I waited for her to say, ‘I live diagonally opposite – I’ve got the two little girls’ or ‘Number fifteen with the boy who’s always riding up and do. . .
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