Going Home (21 page)

‘No, not particularly,’ I said, lying.

‘The heating’s terrible at the moment, I’m afraid. The whole thing is.’ She sighed, and I followed her gaze to where the daffodils sprang out of the edge of the lawn, beside the kitchen garden. ‘Still…’

An afternoon gloom settled in the room, and outside the bare soil of the garden beds was black, empty, crowding in on the view. We sat in near silence for the rest of the meal.

After lunch, Kate went back to her cottage, Dad lit a fire, and Mum put on some music. Then we went into the kitchen to clear up.

‘So, next weekend,’ Mum said, ‘Tom and Jess are coming, and Chin, of course. No Gibbo, unfortunately – he’s away teaching a course.’

‘Teaching?’ I said, almost dropping a plate in amazement.

‘Absolutely,’ Mum said, with pride. ‘It’s a woodwork workshop. The basics of carpentry, that sort of thing.’

‘Well I never,’ I said. ‘I think he’d be a great teacher, though, don’t you?’

‘That’s the funny thing,’ said Dad, coming in with some logs. ‘I wouldn’t trust him to walk upstairs without falling over, but I’d trust him any day with a jigsaw and a power drill.’

‘Deffo,’ I said.

‘Your mother wants him to build some cupboards in the new place,’ Dad said. ‘I think it’s a good idea, don’t you? He’s made some beautiful things.’

‘Oh,’ I said, hating yet another mention of the bungalow. ‘I don’t know. You should wait till you’re in there and think about it then.’

‘Maybe,’ Dad said.

‘But we know what we want,’ said Mum, wiping down the surfaces with a cloth. ‘Budge over, Lizzy.’

‘You won’t properly till you’re in there. Perhaps you should leave it a while.’

‘We know what we want,’ Mum repeated, running the tap. ‘Something simple, clean, no hassle. A back door that doesn’t swell every winter for starters.’

‘A roof that doesn’t leak,’ said Dad, putting coffee into the cafetière.

‘A bath that isn’t a hundred years old and takes over an hour to fill,’ Mum said.

‘Well, you won’t have any of that stuff in the bungalow, will you?’ I said.

‘No,’ said Mum. ‘We won’t.’

You are my parents, I thought, and you are perfectly willing, happy even, to give up this house, sell it for reasons I don’t understand, and move on without a backward glance.

‘It’s just,’ Mum said, ‘that sometimes I think it might be a good idea for all of us not to have this house any more.’

‘You’re wrong,’ I said, with a lump in my throat. ‘Don’t say that.’

Dad poured water over the coffee. Mum folded up the tea-towels and slid them neatly into the rail of the Aga. ‘We didn’t choose to leave, Lizzy,’ she said eventually. ‘We’re making the best of it. We don’t have much choice.’ She moved towards me. ‘It’ll all be OK, you know, because we’ve still got each other, and our girls, haven’t we?’ She hugged me. ‘That’s what’s important, isn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ I said, tears springing to my eyes. ‘That’s what’s important.’ I squeezed her hard.

‘The house isn’t part of us, and we’ll be fine without it. But when I think about leaving the place, where you grew up, and your dad and Tony, Mike and Chin – and their dad and Uncle Charles before them, and before them…Oh dear.’ she wiped her nose on one of the tea-towels. ‘Brrraaah,’ she said. ‘Sometimes it makes me a bit sad.’

‘Oh, Suzy,’ Dad said, putting his arm round her and kissing the top of her head. ‘Come on, old girl. Where are those chocs Miles brought the other day?’

Mum looked about her. ‘Damn, I just saw them – I’m sure.’

‘Miles?’ I said.

‘Yes,’ Mum said. ‘He was down seeing Alice. She gave your father some chocolates as a thank you – he helped her start her car a couple of weeks ago. Miles dropped them off.’

‘Ah,’ I said, pleased. ‘I saw him last week. How was he?’

‘Oh, ever so well,’ Mum said, sloshing milk into her coffee. ‘He’s nice, isn’t he? So easy to talk to. And so funny.’

‘Yes, he is,’ I said, eyeing the chocolates.

‘He was telling us about that friend of yours from work,’
Mum said. ‘He did a hilarious impression of him. What’s his name?’

‘Ash?’ I said.

‘No…’ Mum rubbed her forehead. ‘Weird name. Something to do with porous rocks.’

‘No,’ Dad said patiently. ‘You’re thinking of jade. It’s not a porous rock, anyway. His name was Jaden.’

‘Oh, God!’ I said, laughing. ‘
Jaden.
Oh, Mum.’

‘Where’s he from?’ Mum said. ‘Such a strange name.’

‘California, actually,’ I said.

‘And he’s a friend from work?’ Mum said curiously.

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Lizzy?’ Mum said, ultra-cautiously. ‘Ooh. Right.’

‘No, Mum,’ I said. ‘Don’t get all excited. He’s – well, Jaden. How do I describe him?’ Jaden is a gorgeous, funny, kind, intelligent man with whom I have a close, companionable friendship. Oh, and he’s great in the sack too. But, before you get too excited, he is also a tanned, slightly camp, intense, beansprout-lovin’ freak of whom I am fond but no more than that. However, I didn’t think that was the best way to put it.

‘He’s…well…’ I paused. ‘He’s someone to get you through the long winter months.’ Perhaps that wasn’t either.

‘Ah,’ said Dad, who looked as if he’d been forced to sit among a studio audience and watch a taping of
Trisha.

‘Right, then,’ said Mum, wearing an expression that said more than I had thought it might. ‘He sounds nice.’

‘He is,’ I said. ‘He’s great. Mad, though. He’s going back to LA soon – I’m going to miss him.’

‘Well, you’ll see him if you go over there, won’t you?’ said Mum, who wasn’t really listening now, having become distracted by the little plant on her side table.

‘I will,’ I said. ‘What was Miles saying about him?’

‘Oh, he was just quite funny about him. He sounded quite…Californian,’ Mum said.

What’s wrong with that? I wondered. Bloody sight better to be ‘Californian’ and get things done than mouldering around all day moaning about how awful everything is and letting things fester. I felt a sudden rush of loyalty to Jaden and the slices of lemon he kept in a labelled Tupperware box in his man-bag, so he could have one in some hot water whenever he felt his system needed cleansing. The thing is, I always used to think hot water with lemon was a complete waste of time – why drink it when you could have wine? – but actually it’s rather refreshing. And that was symbolic of Jaden, in a way. Good grief, listen to me.

‘Lovely coffee, darling,’ Mum said, wiggling her toes in front of the fire.

‘Have a choc,’ Dad said, handing me the box. He picked up the bellows.

‘Hey, they work!’ I said, pleased. The bellows had been temperamental for about two years, since Mike had used them at Kate’s birthday dinner to see if you could blow up a balloon with them then stepped on them by mistake.

‘Actually,’ Dad said, ‘Miles mended them last week. Brilliant idea. He used a furniture tack to keep the flap section in place. I don’t know where he got it from, but well done him. They work like a charm, now. He was funny about it. I’d thought we were having a pretty good chat, but he got all embarrassed that he’d helped, didn’t want to outstay his welcome, and practically ran out to the car.’

‘Ah, bless him,’ I said. ‘He’s always been a bit like that. Don’t worry.’

‘But he couldn’t have been more helpful,’ Mum said. ‘It was nice to see him. He’s been a good friend, hasn’t he?’

‘Yes, he has,’ I said.

I could see Mum’s eyes were starting to close, so I said in a rush, ‘Mike still doesn’t know where Rosalie is, then?’

‘No, no idea,’ Mum murmured. Dad rocked back on his
heels and stood up. ‘We might have seen the last of her. Terrible shame, because I was starting to like the idea of her. But no.

I think in Mike’s book it goes under the heading “The Ones Who Got Away”. Silly man.’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Do we have the full story yet?’

Mum darted a look at me, and then at Dad, but he had sunk into his chair and was already asleep.

It was awful saying goodbye to the house, and to Mum and Dad, early on that Monday morning, climbing into Mum’s battered old estate and being flung out unceremoniously at the station as she was late for work, to have to squeeze up next to a man who smelt of stale beer all the way back to London. But I’d be home again on Saturday – and now that I knew I could go back, and that it wasn’t too awful, other things fell into place. For the first time since Christmas, I felt as if my life wasn’t standing still any more.

I’d caught such a ferociously early train that I got to the office at an unheard-of hour. I stopped off at Luigi’s to pick up two lattes, one for Ash, one for me, and as I stood in the queue I ran over the checklist in my head of the various things I had to do that day. Work was a bit of a nightmare at the moment, and the thought of running away to LA grew more appealing with every minute. The location for our biggest project of the year,
The Diary of Lady Mary Chartley
, had fallen through.

It was going to be an amazing film, the true story of a girl from an aristocratic family who had an idyllic, sheltered life before the First World War and then watches as
an entire generation of the young men she has known is wiped out. Eventually, this girl, who’s never known anything more distressing than a buckle falling off her shoe, goes to France to be a nurse. Not a dry eye in the house. Lily was bouncing off every wall in our office as this was a huge deal for us and it was supposed to start shooting in a few weeks’ time. It was our big boss Paul’s grand passion, and now it looked like it might come to nothing. The Americans were getting involved and even Lily’s new best friend Fran was pissed off. So I was keeping my head down, trying to get on with things and avoiding Lily as much as I could.

But as I was pulling up the blinds on Monday morning and realizing I was so early that the children in the school opposite were still in the playground, Lily rushed in to our office, looking ashen.

‘Lizzy! Oh, God, Lizzy, what a nightmare. I hate Americans, did you know that?’

‘You
are
American,’ I said, turning on my computer.

‘No, I’m not,’ Lily said in outrage. ‘My father was. Pennsylvania Dutch. My mother’s from Ireland. And Jamaica.’

‘Wow,’ I said.

‘Wow nothing,’ Lily said, flinging herself into her chair and typing something, fingers racing furiously across the keyboard. ‘Anyway, I hate them. That Fran’s a witch – did you know that?’

‘I thought she was your new best friend,’ I said, spreading Marmite on my toast from Luigi’s.

Lily ignored me. ‘And if bloody Paul rings me once again from his frigging breakdown centre and starts yelling about
Lady Mary
I’m going to scream. He can shove it. It’s a stupid film! They don’t know what they’re doing. They don’t understand this kind of film. It’s not freaking
Miss Congeniality
, for God’s sake.’

‘Righty-ho,’ I said. ‘It kind of is
Miss Congeniality
, though, isn’t it?’

‘Don’t be stupid, Lizzy,’ Lily snapped. She said, as though reciting something, ‘It’s a beautifully paced, moving story about the tragedy of war.’

‘But it’s not, though,’ I said, settling in for the long haul. ‘It’s got a bit of Sandra Bullock in it. Come on, Lily.’

‘No, it hasn’t!’ Lily yelled. ‘Have you actually read it? It’s so moving! She’s so great!’

‘Yes, she is,’ I said, ‘but she’s a young girl, having a good time until war breaks out. She kisses boys! She steals a brooch from her horrible aunt! She’s a real person! And if you make it into some worthy do-gooding film with loads of sub-RSC faces in it it’ll play for two weeks at the Curzon Soho, then disappear without trace.’

Lily glared at me, then smiled. ‘You’re wrong.’

‘I’m right,’ I said. ‘You know I’m right. You need a Hollywood star in it, you really do. It’s got to be relevant to people today otherwise they won’t go and see it.’

‘True.’ Lily sighed. ‘True. God! Fuck – what if you’re right? Can you call Nicole Hegerty this afternoon and schedule a call about it all? She likes you. Horrible woman.’

‘She’s not horrible. She’s just different from you, Lily. A bit.’

The famous Nicole Hegerty wasn’t actually that bad. Granted, she was scary, but she got the job done and she treated you with respect, which is more than a lot of film people do.

Lily drank some coffee. ‘Have you looked at the job spec for that LA job I sent you?’

‘No,’ I said, keeping my eyes on the screen and typing fast. ‘I’m not interested. Sorry, Lily.’

‘You’re making a mistake,’ Lily said. ‘For me, mainly. How much better would my life be if you went? So much
better.’ She paused. ‘Hey, do one thing for me, will you, sweetheart?’

‘Yep,’ I said. I didn’t look round but I stopped typing.

‘Just think about it, will you? It’s a real job. I don’t think you get that. Someone’s going to take it. If it’s not you they’ll get someone else in to do it. Just have one last think about it, OK? It’d be perfect for you. That’s all.’

‘Why, though?’ I said. ‘Are you trying to get rid of me?’

Lily patted my knee. ‘You’re good, Lizzy, really good. I don’t want to lose you. But you need some perspective at the moment. You need to look around you a bit more if you’re going to make it to the next level.’ She whirled round in her chair and started typing again.

‘Right,’ I said. I took a sip of my coffee. ‘Er, what do you mean, perspective?’

Lily carried on typing. ‘Look, Lizzy, you’re a talented girl and I know you’ve had a hard time lately. This is your chance to wipe the slate clean. I know you can do this job. And the timing’s perfect. You’ve had your eye off the ball a bit recently, haven’t you?’ She paused at her screen. ‘You haven’t done anything wrong. I’m just saying – go to LA, prove how great you are to me and everyone else. Get back in the game.’

Lily never has a go. She’s not one of those bosses who likes pretending to be friends, then behaves like a total bitch. Or one of those bosses who doesn’t care whom they trample on to get their way. She’s a great nipper of problems in the bud. If she’s not happy about something, she’ll usually find some way to sort it out before it becomes a problem. I glanced at her gratefully. ‘Thanks, Lily,’ I said, and got up to take Ash his coffee.

‘Sure, whatever,’ she said, waggling her head. ‘Off you go, then.’

I looked at the job spec, as she’d asked. And I liked the sound of it. I thought about it. And I knew who I wanted to talk it over with. I hadn’t seen Jaden since before all this began, only once at the office since the dinner party, but we’d spoken on the phone several times, and he’d said he’d cook me supper on Wednesday. I’d eaten at his place once before, with some other friends from work, as I knew his food was almost inedible, I had a sandwich in the office at about tea-time. At the end of the day I paused only to take off my elasticated M&S support pants in the loo and put on my best black lacy ones. I left the office as it was starting to get dark, throwing a casual lie at Ash that I was going to meet some old friends in a pub.

He regarded me with an expression of bewilderment. ‘Have a good evening, then. With your friends. Who are old. In a pub.’

‘Thanks, Ash. See you tomorrow.’

Ash sighed, and went back to his computer.

Whether he felt pity for me in general, or because he thought I was way off with Jaden, I have no idea. I think the truth is closer to his belief that Jaden and I were wasting time with each other when we could have been out sourcing potential life-partners and planning joint mortgages.

He is also a fanatical film buff, so that lunchtime, while we were sitting in his office eating sandwiches, I’d tried a different tack. ‘Have you seen
The Philadelphia Story
?’ I said, opening my apple juice.

‘Of course,’ Ash said.

‘He’s James Stewart in that,’ I said, taking a swig. ‘Jaden is, I mean. He’s the sexy reporter bloke who gets Tracy Lord all in a lather. But she knows it’s just a bit of fun.’

‘And who are you?’ Ash said, interested.

‘I’m Tracy Lord,’ I said, affronted. ‘Obviously.’

‘Oh, right,’ Ash said. ‘Really?’

‘Yes!’ I said.

‘Who’s Cary Grant, then?’ ‘What?’ I said. ‘Where?’

‘In your version of it,’ Ash said. He drummed his pencil on his desk. ‘Who’s Cary Grant?’

‘Good question,’ I said. ‘It’s not Jaden, though.’

‘I’m bloody glad you realize that, at any rate,’ Ash said.

However, after supper, as I surveyed the orange sitting room of Jaden’s nightmarish, rather than retro, seventies-throwback flat, I asked myself why I was always so rude about him when he wasn’t there. I rolled back on his bean-bag and nursed a glass of wine, while he grabbed some fruit from the kitchen. Perhaps it was that the idea of Jaden is much more ridiculous than the actuality. In real life he’s…nice. He’s so calm and mad in his own way that I could be exactly who I wanted to be with him, so I was actually just myself, no games.

I’d been right about the food. There were beans, each the size of a small purse, as a starter, then beansprouts in some weird tomato and peanut dressing for the main course. It tasted like horse bedding. I shuddered at the memory and downed some more wine.

My host reappeared with some lychees and sat down next to me. ‘Sorry about the bean-bags,’ he said, for the second time that evening. (Apart from a TV/video and a stereo system, the bean-bags, three chairs and a table comprised the furniture in Jaden’s sitting room.) ‘My flatmates really love them. I’m not so sure.’

‘Where are they tonight?’ I said.

‘At a party for some guy they know. On a boat. It’s highly probable they won’t be back tonight. Anyway,’ he peeled a lychee and handed it to me, ‘thanks for coming here. I know you don’t like it.’

‘It’s not that,’ I said. ‘It’s just a bit…studenty. Maybe. But it’s nice.’

‘Yeah. I know what you mean,’ Jaden said reasonably. ‘In the place I’ve got in LA, I can drive to the ocean in five minutes, and I can see three palm trees out of my bedroom window.’

‘Nice,’ I said enviously. I could see brick wall and Paddington Green Police Station from my flat. I had a sudden vision of waking up, opening my window and looking out over the Californian hills to the bright blue sea.

Jaden handed me some more lychees. ‘So, you went home,’ he said conversationally.

‘Yup,’ I said.

‘And how was it?’

‘It was fine. It was…great, actually.’

‘I guess it must have been kind of depressing, though. Like if you make doing something into a big deal, whether it’s good or bad, it’s always a let-down when it finally happens.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘You’re right.’

‘Good to be at home where you belong, though, right?’

‘Oh, yes,’ I said confidently. ‘It’s just—’

‘What?’ Jaden said, busying himself with another lychee.

I remembered how overwhelming it had been to step through the front door, to stand there and know I was home again. But…‘It’s funny,’ I said. ‘I always feel safe there, I’m always hoping I can go back there. But…it’s just something my mum said. In the kitchen. I’ve been thinking it’s so important, Keeper House, being at home. And, actually, it’s not. Is it?’

I was thinking of Mike, alone in Rosalie’s flat, wondering where she was. Not knowing she was with David, in an anti-Walter pressurized environment, a bit like a can of antifreeze, actually. I was thinking of Mum and Dad, making
the best of a bad deal and looking for the good points in their new home, of Tom, working himself far too hard. I wanted them to be happy – we didn’t have to have the house for that. I didn’t have to be there to feel at home. And I didn’t have to have home to help me do things. Perhaps it was the opposite.

‘It’s not important, no,’ said Jaden. ‘My sister lives in Houston, Mom lives in Colorado, Dad lives in Michigan, I live in California, and we take it in turns to spend Thanksgiving at each other’s houses.’

‘Really?’ I said, intrigued.

‘Well, not Dad so much since he married Kelly,’ Jaden said. ‘’Cause she’s not something my mom’s particularly thankful for.’ He smiled. ‘But when we’re all together, we’re…together. You know? And I’m happy about it. I go back to Colorado, where I grew up, mountains, snow all year round, and I love it. I feel at home at my mom’s, I see my old friends, I go places I used to go on my trail bike. OK? And then I get home to LA. I’m by the ocean, I can do my yoga, I can walk on the beach, make miso soup and do all that other crap you think is kinda funny.’

‘Yes, that’s exactly it,’ I said. ‘Completely. That was what it was like this weekend, I suppose.’

‘Anyway, about that,’ said Jaden, sliding the smooth burgundy lychee stone out between his lips and putting it into the bowl at his feet. He wiped his fingers carefully on a piece of tissue, and turned round on the bean-bag to face me. This took more shuffling than one would have thought, so we were both giggling when he’d finished.

‘OK, hear me out, QE Three,’ Jaden said, picking up another lychee and running a nail over the spiky shell. ‘You know I’m going back next month?’

‘Three weeks’ time, yes?’ I said.

Jaden nodded. ‘I booked my ticket yesterday, and it cost,
like, nothing. And that got me thinking, and then I just thought, Lily’s offered her that job so why don’t I ask Lizzy properly to come and stay with me there?’

I was nodding politely and thinking how nice it would be for this Lizzy person to go to LA with Jaden, when I suddenly realized he was talking about
me.
‘You mean
me
come and live in LA with you?’

‘Why not?’

‘But…what? To
live
there?’

‘Yeah.’

‘What? No,’ I said. I struggled on my bean-bag, suddenly finding it constricting rather than relaxing and cheerful, and stood up.

Jaden got up too. He took my hands and turned me to face him. ‘Hey, calm down,’ he said.

‘I am calm,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry, Jaden, it’s a great idea, and I know I’ve been thinking about it, but it isn’t going to happen.’

‘Let me finish,’ said Jaden, his eyes twinkling. ‘I’ve started this all wrong. I don’t want you to move to LA to be
with
me, that’s not what I’m trying to say.’