Love Always (29 page)

‘I heard you guys shouting last week,’ Ben says simply. He pushes himself off the table and stands up. ‘Didn’t Sherlock Holmes say when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?’

I smile at him. ‘That is correct. I just don’t know what the truth is . . . I feel like if I can only read the rest of it I’ll know. It’s like I’ve hit a brick wall.’

‘Sherlock Holmes is usually right,’ Ben says, brushing his hands together. ‘So what remains is, someone’s got the rest of it, and they don’t want anyone to see it, for whatever reason.’

It’s true, but strange to hear it out loud. ‘That’s probably right.’

‘It’s a mystery. It needs solving, and you shouldn’t be sitting here stewing about it.’ Ben sticks his hands in his pockets and pulls out a tenner. I watch him, smiling. ‘Let me take you for a drink,’ he says. ‘A nice lime cordial.’

I look at my watch. ‘But Ben, it’s not even five yet.’

‘Exactly,’ he says cheerily. ‘We’ll get a table at the pub.’ He sees my face. ‘Come on,’ he says. ‘Give yourself a break for once and stop worrying about everything. Let’s get a drink.’

Chapter Thirty-Two

We go to the Ten Bells, which is one of my favourite pubs. It’s on Commercial Street, in the shadow of Hawksmoor’s magnificent Christ Church, and features on the Jack the Ripper trail, tediously, because two of his victims are known to have drunk there. It’s been around since the 1700s and it’s always really busy, but unlike other pubs round here it’s not too touristy or full of City types, and there’s a good laid-back vibe. Perhaps it’s because the loos are absolutely disgusting. I think they do it deliberately. There is no way Fodors or Dorling Kindersley could recommend a pub with bathroom facilities like that. We manage to squeeze onto a sofa squashed in by the bar and I check my phone while Ben gets the drinks.

There’s a text from Oli.

Hi. Can I come and pick up more stuff tonight? 9ish? Be good to see you. Ox

Immediately I know if I don’t reply right away I won’t be able to think about anything else. It’s not that I’m obsessing over him, it’s just to keep myself sane. I text back.

Gone for drink with Ben so text me when you’re near. In Ten Bells.

I put my phone back on the table as Ben reappears. ‘Hey, thanks,’ I say, slightly too enthusiastically as I take my vodka, lime and soda off him. ‘This is great.’

He glances down at the phone. ‘It’s my pleasure. You need a night out I reckon. Tough couple of months.’

‘Maybe you’re right. A gin and tonic,’ I say, changing the subject. ‘Nice.’

He laughs. ‘You a fan of the gin and tonic then?’

‘You don’t see men drinking gin and tonic enough these days, in my opinion,’ I say. ‘It used to be a classy, Cary Grant-ish thing to do and now hardly anyone has one. They have
pints
all the time.’

Ben looks amused. ‘Glad you’re pleased.’

‘Well, I like a man who drinks gin and tonics,’ I say. ‘Do you now.’ Ben gesticulates to an imaginary person next to him. ‘Waiter! Four more gin and tonics here, please!’ The woman opposite looks at him as though he’s a lunatic.

I laugh: Ben is really funny. Then there’s an awkward silence, in amongst the noise and chatter of the pub. I start picking at a beer mat.

Ben watches me, and then he says, ‘So, tell me about it, then. The family stuff, I mean. What’s the deal with them?’

‘It’s a long story.’ I stare through the great glass windows of the pub, out at the church, at the traffic roaring down Commercial Street. It has started to drizzle, and the light is already fading. ‘It’s boring.’

‘It doesn’t sound boring,’ Ben says. ‘It sounds pretty interesting, if you ask me. Fire away. It’s a choice between this, doing my taxes, or watching the big match.’

‘Oh, what’s the big match?’ I ask. ‘Absolutely no idea. I was trying to sound blokeish. Actually, there’s a
Hi-de-Hi!
marathon on UK Gold I recorded last night.’

‘
Hi-de-Hi!
?’ I fall about with mirth. ‘You’re joking me.’

‘No, I’m not,’ Ben says. He is a bit red. ‘I love
Hi-de-Hi!
, it’s my secret shame.’

‘No, I love it too,’ I say. ‘Really love it.’ Ben is the only person I know who has a genuine penchant for cheesy British sitcoms. ‘I kind of love ’
Allo ’Allo!
, is that wrong?’

‘It’s sort of wrong, but I’m with you,’ Ben says. ‘You know, I went through a brief phase when I needed cheering up when I actually used to record
As Time Goes By
.’

‘No way.’ I stare at him. ‘Me too.’

He shakes my hand. ‘It is a fine programme. Nothing wrong with it at all in my opinion. Geoffrey Palmer is a comedy genius.’

I smile. ‘Well, great minds think alike.’ Then I ask, tentatively, ‘Do you also like
Just Good Friends
, with Paul Nicholas?’

Ben gazes at me. ‘Oh, Nat. You poor thing. No way.’

‘Oh, right.’ I am downcast. I actually have VHS tapes of it in one of the cupboards at home but I’m not going to say that now.

Ben shakes his head, more in sorrow than in anger. ‘There is a limit, you know.’

‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘Sorry.’

‘
Just Good Friends
? I thought you were a woman of taste.’ He exhales sadly. ‘Right, let’s move on. What were we discussing? Yes, what I’d be doing if I wasn’t here with you. So make it juicy. Tell me the secrets of your family, which I’m hoping are that you’re all half human half wolf, or you’ve got Jesus’s heart stored in a safe in the vaults of your ancestral home.’ He widens his eyes. ‘Latin quotation here. But I don’t know any.’

‘No, I’m afraid not,’ I say. ‘Although there is a Knights Templar society that meets regularly in the gazebo headed by Lord Lucan.’ He laughs politely and there’s a pause, during which I check my phone again and say, ‘So is the football on tonight, or not?’

He looks at me as though I’m insane, and he’s not wrong. ‘Er – like I just said. I don’t know. Yes? No? Probably?’

I can feel myself blushing, and it’s so embarrassing. I scratch my cheek. ‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘Just thinking Oli’ll probably be watching it if there’s some big football thing on.’ My voice is too high. ‘He might – he said he might pop over later, pick up some stuff.’

‘Oh, right,’ says Ben, and he looks out of the window as if he’s trying to spot him. ‘Have you seen him lately, then?’

‘No,’ I say, too quickly. ‘But it’s not a big deal. His things are all still in the flat. It’s fine if he picks them up. Just . . . I just was wondering.’ I stop. ‘Sorry,’ I say, sounding more normal. ‘It’s OK, it’s just everything’s still quite weird at the moment and when I hear from him—’

‘Yes,’ Ben says. ‘Nat, of course it is. I’m sorry.’ He pats my arm.

I have an overwhelming urge to put my hand on his, to feel human contact, but I stop and instead run my hands through my hair.

‘So shoot, Kapoor,’ Ben says, changing the subject. ‘Back to the diary. Tell me all about it, my creative colleague.’

So I tell him from the start. About going back to Summercove for Granny’s funeral, and being given the diary by Arvind, about Cecily – what I know about her, that is – and what Octavia told me about Mum; and I tell him about how I’ve tried to talk to Mum about it and how awful it ended up being, and when I get to that bit Ben whistles. ‘Wow,’ he says. ‘That’s a lot of stuff.’

‘I know,’ I say. ‘And what with me and Oli – I didn’t take it all in at the funeral. I was so worried, about Oli and the business.’ I pause. ‘It’s just now I’ve started really thinking about it all, and looking at – everything, I guess, and it’s driving me mad.’

‘Like what?’

‘Like . . .’ I am searching for the right way to describe it. ‘I spent every summer of my life in the house in Cornwall. Mum used to drop me off there as soon as the holidays began and go off somewhere afterwards. I loved it. It was where I thought of as home. But it’s where Cecily died. They were all there, that summer.’

‘Your gran dying, that must bring it to the surface,’ Ben says.

‘Well, yeah,’ I say. I pick at the beer mat again. ‘Arvind told me something, at the funeral. He said I looked just like Cecily. And it explained quite a lot. Why she was sometimes cold, off with me.’ I pile the shreds of cardboard into a pyramid. ‘I sometimes felt she didn’t want to be there at all, like she hated us all, she’d chosen the wrong life.’

Ben looks interested, and I am relieved; I don’t want to bore him. There’s a large part of me that thinks this is all in my head. ‘The wrong life? Why do you think that?’

‘Don’t know.’ I shrug. ‘I think it probably started after Cecily died, but who knows?’ I chew my lip, trying to explain. ‘I can’t explain it, but it was sort of like she was play-acting her own life a lot of the time.’

‘How?’

‘Like she was going through the motions,’ I say. ‘As if she stopped being herself when Cecily died, when she gave up painting. She stopped being that person, for whatever reason.’

‘That can’t have been easy for your mum, whatever the truth is.’ Ben stares into his pint.

‘Well, that’s true,’ I say. ‘And Archie’s done OK for himself. Mum hasn’t. She’s never quite worked out what to do with her life. If she hadn’t had an income from my grandparents, back in the day, she’d never have been able to survive.’ I give a short laugh. ‘Me either.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Granny and Arvind, they gave them both an allowance, when times were good,’ I say. ‘Not much, just enough to pay the rent. Archie used it to set up the car business, he provides fleets of cars for hotels and things, and he deals in classic cars too.’

‘Really? Wow.’

‘I know.’ I think back to Sunday lunch, the brand new kitchen, the warm under-floor heating, the comfort, the security of it all.

‘He’s done really well for himself. He sort of left them behind.’

‘What about your mum?’

‘Mum – well, I don’t know. She doesn’t really have a career or anything. I don’t know why.’

‘I thought she worked at some interiors shop,’ Ben says. ‘Well, yeah, but it doesn’t pay much. It’s in Chelsea, she knew the owner back in the good old days and she gets to hang out with posh, glamorous people all day and go on buying trips. Believe me, it’s never been enough.’ I don’t say what I want to, which is that one term at school she wouldn’t buy me new shoes, because she said my feet were growing too fast and I’d just need another pair in a few months. It sounds ridiculous when you say it out loud, but it was kind of normal back then. ‘I guess she’ll have some money from the sale of the house now,’ I say. ‘And she’s got the committee, too.’

‘What committee?’

I pull the invitation to the opening of the foundation out of my bag and show it to him. ‘Wow,’ he says. ‘That’s fast.’

‘That’s how she wanted it. Like she wanted people to remember her as soon as she’d gone. It’s weird, when she was alive she didn’t seem to care about all that, her reputation as a painter. Almost like, I’m dead now, you can start looking at me in the way I want.’ I shake my head. ‘That’s what my uncle said, too.’

‘Who’s on the committee?’

‘Louisa, Octavia’s mum. She and Mum aren’t exactly close.’ I pause and check my phone. Ben watches. ‘Me. And Guy.’

‘Guy?’

‘He’s the Bowler Hat’s brother.’ He looks blank. ‘Louisa’s brother-in-law. He’s a nice guy.’ I snort at this unintentional pun; Ben shakes his head. ‘And that’s it.’ I stop and raise my hands, to buy some time. Two girls behind us at the bar shriek with laughter, and I look over at them; they’re both in vintage pin-tucked shirts, jeans and boots, and one, who has her hair in a loose bun and wears an apple-green cardigan, has a beautiful gold necklace hung with about five different antique charms: a bird, a heart, a little apple. I take a mental picture of her.

Ben puts his drink down. ‘So, what about your mum? What are you going to say to her?’

I push the pieces of the beer mat away and turn to him, admiring again – as I do each time I look at him – the new, hair-free Ben. ‘Well, perhaps it’s the funeral, perhaps it’s everything with Oli, and trying to keep the business together, but I’ve sort of realised I can’t be that person in her life any longer. I just can’t do it.’ I raise my shoulders and drop them again. ‘She makes me . . . Agh. Never mind.’

‘Makes you feel what?’ Ben’s voice is soft and kind. I find myself struggling not to cry.

‘She makes me feel not very good about myself sometimes,’ I say in a soft whisper. ‘But that’s – that’s family, I suppose.’

‘No, Nat,’ Ben says gently. ‘It’s not. Not in that way.’

As I’m speaking, the iPhone buzzes and a text appears in a box, lighting up the screen. We both look down, force of habit.

Ben the beardy guy who fancies u?! Bell you laters. Ox

I snatch the phone up and shove it in my bag, but I know it’s too late, that Ben has seen it already. I gabble, to say anything, anything.

‘Anyway, I suppose, yeah. You start to realise you have to distance yourself sometimes, and that’s just the way it is, I guess.’

‘Yes,’ Ben says. ‘I think you do.’

I raise my head, look at him. Ben finishes his drink in one long gulp. ‘Ah, I’m going to get another drink,’ he says, standing up. A wave of embarrassment crashes over me. It’s really hot in here, crowded with a yeasty, hot, old-man smell, and suddenly I wish we hadn’t gone for a drink, that I was at home in my bedsocks on this cold night and didn’t have to wait for Oli to turn up, whenever that might be.

But when Ben comes back, carrying a pint this time, he looks thoughtful. He puts my drink and some crisps down on the table. ‘Hope you like bacon. Tania loathed bacon crisps, I haven’t had them for ages.’

‘That’s my favourite,’ I say, ripping into the bag. ‘Thanks. So . . .’ I eat a few more crisps, trying to sound casual, and I change the subject. ‘When we met in the coffee house that day a couple of weeks back, when Oli and I were . . . I didn’t know Tania wasn’t working with you any more. Why’s that?’

Ben looks blank. ‘We’re still working together.’

‘She said she wasn’t. I introduced her to Oli and said you were her boyfriend and you worked together and she said, Not any more.’

‘Oh,’ said Ben. ‘Bit of a misunderstanding then. She meant we’re not going out any more. We’re still working together, yeah.’