The Secrets We Left Behind (12 page)

‘I wasn’t, I . . .’ But she stopped because her mum was crying again.

‘Jo?’ Eve’s voice broke in and rescued her from the memory.

‘Sorry, I was miles away.’

She followed Eve up two flights of stairs and along a dingy passageway where the plaster was bulging in some places and coming off the walls in others. Most of the rooms on the
top floor were unused. In one, there was nothing but a dressmaker’s dummy and a grubby brown armchair with straw spilling out of a tear in the seat, in another, a couple of empty suitcases
and some boxes of old toys. ‘Oh wow.’ Jo walked across the room. ‘Spirograph, Monopoly, Beetle Drive – I used to have all these.’ She rummaged in the box. ‘Oh
look, a Tressy Doll!’ She fished the doll out, pressed the burton in its back and tugged on a section of hair, which then lengthened, appearing to ‘grow’ from the top of its head
as if by magic. She remembered the advert on television:
Tressy from Ideal; her hair grows!
Granny Pawley had bought it for her that first Christmas after her dad left, the one where her mum
hardly stopped crying. Jo had been thrilled with the doll, especially as it came with its own brush, comb and curlers. But when she showed her mum how the hair could change from a neat bob to
flowing tresses at the press of a button, her mum had wrinkled her nose. ‘Ugh. Take it away, Jo-Jo, it’s creepy.’

‘This is my work room.’ Eve opened the door to a large room with two tall, uncurtained windows that let in lots of light. ‘It’s where I make my jewellery and suchlike
– things we can sell at markets and summer fayres – brings a bit of money in.’

Along the wall under the windows were two pasting tables set up as a work bench and a pain-spattered step-stool. This was a treasure trove; there were different types of crystals, shells, bits
of coloured glass, beads, feathers, squares of leather, paints, dyes, glues – Jo had never seen anything like it. She took a piece of clear crystal and held it up to the light, then she
sported some coloured feathers. She picked one up and brushed its soft fronds against her cheek. ‘What are these for?’

‘I’m making a dream-catcher,’ Eve said. ‘It’s nearly finished – look.’

It was a beautiful thing, a tea-plate-sized wooden hoop with an intricate network of purple threads woven across it like a spider’s web and decorated with tiny silver beads that caught the
light; red and purple gull’s feathers hung down on silver cords, weighted with more silver beads at the end. ‘Tell you what, you can have this one when it’s finished, if you
like.’

‘Really? Wow, thanks.’

She followed Eve back along the passage past a miniature flight of five stairs leading to a little square door, which led to a storage cupboard. On the next floor down, Eve pointed to various
doors. ’Bathroom on the left. A bit ancient but everything works. We use an immersion heater for hot water, but it’s expensive, so we try to be careful. That’s my and
Scott’s room, and the one right at the end next to the stairs, that’s the thinking room – it’s got windows all round and you can see the sea. And this’ – she
flung open the door to an enormous, high-ceilinged, bay-windowed room – ‘is yours.’

She felt a twinge of disappointment. The floor was strewn with empty beer cans and newspapers – mainly the
Hastings Observer
and the
Sun. A
grubby orange sleeping bag had
been thrown across a couple of wooden pallets; next to it was an overflowing pub ashtray. The room smelt faintly of feet.

‘Oh my giddy aunt,’ Eve said, ‘I completely forgot. We had another friend staying recently, and I haven’t been in here since he left. Elliot – he’s an actor.
An absolute sweetie but a filthy pig to have around the house. He got a part in
Z Cars.’

Something about the way Eve talked made Jo smile. She hadn’t heard anyone talking about giddy aunts since Granny Pawley caught her trying to hide the cat under the bedclothes. Eve was
smiling too, but quizzically, as though waiting for Jo to explain, but she couldn’t. Eve was just. . . funny. The room, though; the room was disgusting. Could she realistically tolerate
living in this smelly, male-haunted space? But there was something about the way Eve said
another
friend that made her feel comfortable, as though she already belonged here.

‘It’s a good house.’ Eve moved around the room, stuffing papers and beer cans into a black rubbish sack. ‘But the neighbours are a bit square – they called the police when
they saw us moving in, so we keep ourselves to ourselves now. The police got in touch with the owner, so he knows we’re here, and he said that, as long as we look after the place and
don’t cause any trouble, we can stay until he’s ready to sell it.’

‘When do you think he’ll want to sell it?’ Jo was already worrying about when she might have to leave.

‘I don’t know. He’s got a few other houses, I think, and he lives abroad now anyway, so he’s not in a hurry. He’d have to do it up and sort out the damp in the
basement, and that’ll cost a fortune so it’ll probably be yonks before he gets round to it. And all the time we’re living here, it’s being heated and no one’s going to
break in and mess the place up.’

It was lovely listening to Eve talk, no matter what she was saying. She had the sort of voice that was so clear you could hear every single, separate word. Jo had a sudden flash of memory: her
mum, back in the days when she still laughed and sang, sitting at the piano wearing a pale lemon jumper and with a matching cardigan slung over her shoulders. They’d been to the pictures to
see
The Sound of Music,
and now her mum kept singing all the songs. ’Come on, Joanna-Pianna,’ she said, pearly-pink-tipped fingers poised over the keys. ’Let’s see
what we can do.
Let’s start at the very beginning,
she sang, trying to sound like Julie Andrews.
A very good place to start..
.’

Once more, it struck Jo painfully and powerfully that she would never hear her mother’s voice again, ever. How
could
that be possible?

‘Right, that’s a bit more like it.’ Eve tied up the rubbish bag she’d just filled and surveyed the room. ‘Mind you . . .’ She picked up the sleeping bag
between her thumb and forefinger and held it away from her like it was covered in dog shit. ‘You absolutely can’t sleep in this. There’s a clean one in our room, and extra
blankets, too. You’ll be snug as a bug in a rug.’

Jo smiled. Every time Eve opened her mouth, she reminded Jo of her mum or of Granny Pawley.

‘At some point we’ll need to talk about practical matters, of course.’

‘I don’t have much money left, but I’m sure I can get a job soon. I —’

‘Tomorrow.’ Eve waved her hands around as if she was shooing the words out of the window. ‘We’ll talk about the boring part tomorrow. Scott’ll be back later.
He’s working in the hotels at the moment – kitchen porter. He started training as a teacher but he’s a musician really, so he’s concentrating on that now. He does a bit of
busking and he’s got a couple of gigs over the weekend. Once the summer comes, the busking goes really well, and there are the summer fayres, too, so there are plenty of ways to make a few
pounds.’ She started to walk towards the door. ‘Come and talk to me while I make us some dinner.’

The kitchen was enormous with a rickety wooden table in the middle. A floor-to-ceiling cupboard in one alcove was painted a pale yellowy-brown, like the Wimpy Bar French mustard that Rob said
was really cat poo. The tiles behind the sink were a similar colour and mostly cracked or broken, as were those in the large recess cut into the chimney breast. ‘Did this use to be a
fireplace?’ Jo looked up at the brickwork. ‘It’s bigger than me!’

‘Probably. Humungous, isn’t it? Makes a brilliant cooking area.’

On one side, tucked into the recess, was a red-topped Formica table with two rusty-looking Baby Belling cookers resting on it; on the other, an enamel-topped table served as a work surface.
There was an old leatherette armchair to the side of the fireplace and a couple of fire-side chairs on the opposite wall near another Calor gas heater. The room reminded her of Granny
Pawley’s dinette. She settled herself in the armchair and watched while Eve took tomatoes, onions and mushrooms from a cardboard box under one of the tables, and then set to work chopping and
slicing. Jo was mesmerised as she watched Eve deftly peeling the onions and then chopping them in no time before starting on the mushrooms, and lastly the tomatoes. It was as though there was no
effort involved; it would have taken Jo ages to do the same thing, but Eve just made a few smooth, graceful movements and, bingo, the job was done. Eve opened the window. ‘Here.’ She
tossed Jo the pack of Cheddar cheese she’d taken from the windowsill. ‘You could grate that and open a tin of beans if you like. We haven’t got a fridge yet, but it doesn’t
matter this time of year. I’m sure we’ll find one before the weather turns warmer.’

While Jo grated the cheese, she watched as Eve fried the onions, mushrooms and tomatoes and tipped them into a pie dish. Then she whisked up the eggs and poured them in as well, sprinkled cheese
over the top and put the whole thing in the Baby Belling. ‘There,’ she said. ‘An oven omelette. Stick those beans in a pan and then we can relax.’ Jo emptied the beans into a
saucepan and was about to throw the can away when Eve grabbed it and peered inside. ‘Wait,’ she said. Then she nodded. ‘Oh, that’s okay. You have to leave at least three
beans in the tin, you know. One would be lonely, and two might fight. So it must be three.’ She looked up at Jo and grinned. ‘Always three.’

After they’d eaten, Jo borrowed Eve’s key and popped out for cigarettes. She could smell the sea and, although it was almost dark now, she had a sudden yearning to
see and hear the waves, so she took a detour along the coast road where the wind coming in off the Channel made it feel even colder. A few spots of rain hit her face. Hastings was very different to
Newquay. It was a pebble beach for a start, and it sloped down to the sea in stages, like shelves. The beach in Newquay was sandy and flat and wide, whereas this was divided by wooden groynes at
regular intervals all the way along to the pier, giving the impression of many smaller beaches.

With no distinguishable horizon to break up the grey, the vastness of sea and sky was magnified, and as she looked at the pier in the distance, she began to feel the sadness swell inside her
again. The lights on the pier should have cheered her, but although they looked quite festive, she found her eye drawn downwards, away from the flashing lights and the promise of fun and good
times, down beneath the creaking boards to the darker underside of the ageing structure, where the rusty, barnacle-covered supports stood resolutely in the cold water, forgotten and unnoticed.

She looked at her watch. She hadn’t thought about her mum or about home for almost three hours. Home; she must stop thinking like that. Aware of a powerful need to be inside, in a room
where there was someone she knew, she headed to the newsagent’s, bought ten No 6, then began to make her way back up the hill towards the house.

She could see a light on in the sitting room, and as soon as she went in, she could smell the Calor gas. A man was standing in front of the heater with his back to her. He was wearing a black
top hat and a long black cape which made her think of the Dracula films. His hair was black too, and he’d tied it into a ponytail with a band of plaited leather. He turned to face her.
‘I’m Scott,’ he said, removing the hat, which had a red-silk flower tucked into the rim, and then the cape. ‘Sorry about the get-up. It’s my busking uniform – adds a
bit of theatre.’ Underneath the cape, he was wearing ragged-looking black jeans and a Bob Dylan T-shirt with an ice-blue denim shirt open over the top. ‘I’m guessing you’re
Jo.’ He sat down on the settee, stretched his long legs out in front of him and began rolling a joint. He looked up at her and smiled. His skin was pale but with an olive tinge to it that
suggested it would go very brown in the summer, and his nose was too long and slightly twisted, but he was nice-looking in a poetic, hippyish sort of way. A tiny black beard sat in the middle of
his chin and his eyes were bright blue, like cornflowers, and all the more striking because of his raven-black hair, which, he explained later, was something to do with his ancestry – his
father was half-Chinese on his mother’s side, whereas his mum was a typical English rose.

He licked along the edge of the Rizla and carefully sealed the joint, then held it up in front of his face as though admiring it. ‘I deserve this, man.’ He placed the joint between
his teeth and reached into each of his front jeans pockets, then started feeling around the back.

‘Here,’ Jo said, offering her lighter.

‘Cheers.’ He leaned forward and, rather than taking the lighter from her, looked at her pointedly until she flicked it into life. He used his hand to steady hers and she noticed the
fine black hairs on the backs of his fingers, which smelled of tobacco and very faintly of lemons.

‘Coffee, Jo?’ Eve called from the kitchen.

‘Could I have tea, please?’ she called back.

Scott smiled. ‘Polite. That’s nice, man.’ He nodded slowly. He moved a several-days-old copy of the
Guardian,
a pouch of Old Holborn and a pack of Rizlas off the settee
and parted the cushion beside him. ‘Come and sit down.’

Was he flirting with her? A strand of greasy hair fell over her eye and she tucked it quickly behind her ear. There was something about him that made her feel shy and silly and very conscious of
how she looked. But he was Eve’s boyfriend.

When Eve came into the room, Scott’s attention turned entirely to her, and his features seemed to relax and soften as he looked at her. Maybe he hadn’t been flirting after all. He
smiled at Eve and thanked her when she handed him a plate of food – the last of the baked omelette, which she served cold with salad. When she went to the fireplace to start laying a fire, he
stopped her. ‘Leave it, Evie. You’re tired, man; I’ll do it when I’ve had this.’ And when Eve smiled back at him, Jo noticed, she somehow looked even prettier. This
was a couple who were in love, Jo realised. There hadn’t been this sort of love between her parents, not even when she was little, and seeing it now filled her with a sort of sweet sadness.
On the one hand, it was strangely comforting to watch them exchanging glances, nods and smiles as they talked, and she loved how proud they were of each other:
Scott’s a brilliant
guitarist and you should hear the songs he writes; Eve’s so talented, she can make beautiful objects out of anything, even bits of old junk . . .
On the other hand there was something about
their closeness that induced in her a piercing loneliness she hadn’t been aware of before.