Unlike a Virgin (33 page)

‘It wasn’t helped by a visit from a young man from SJS Construction. He made the old chap look like Ghandi.’

‘Jesus! What happened?’

‘Len wasn’t doing well, as you know, and then the other morning a young man came round to try to persuade us to sell the grave again. Blackmail, I’d call it. I’d better get back to him, I just didn’t want you to worry.’

‘What’s it like at St Mary’s for him?’

‘Oh, you know, it’s a big, busy city hospital.’ She offers a resigned smile. ‘It’s fine.’

She comes towards me and we hug.

‘Will I see you here next week?’

‘I’ll try, but don’t be worried if I’m not.’

‘OK. Bye. Send Len my love.’

I watch her as she walks away.

‘Joan!’

She turns.

‘Joan, maybe you should take the money the construction company is offering and go to Dorset with Len. That’s where he should be, in the fresh air, with the sea views. That’s what your mum would want. And my dad, I know, and Alfred with his syphilis here. I’ll tell Mum to take the money, too.’

She stares through me for what seems like a lifetime.

‘I couldn’t do that to you.’

‘But I’d like you to. These bastards have ruined enough, so we may as well take their money.’

‘Let me think about it, Grace. Thank you.’

I thought fighting the graveyard was a no-brainer. Destroying part of the graveyard was wrong. Saving it was right. Surely? But now look. If I’d just let Mum take the money she wouldn’t be in this state, and Len only started to get ill because of the stress of it all. Maybe I’d have been able to keep the baby, too, if I hadn’t run around that night trying to get that money. I was the catalyst for this disaster. Me. Maybe the SJS Construction man was right and I’ve been selfish.

I park outside the flat. I’m going to lie in bed for the rest of the day. Mum wanted to stay with me. She found strength neither of us knew she had today by coming to the hospital and being so calm and caring. I didn’t like to say ‘no’ to her, but I just need to be on my own for a little while, away from people, away from any chance of me causing yet more disaster. I need a little time on my own to grieve and then I’ll get up and write my new five year plan. I’ll really do it this
time and I’ll stick to it – I’m determined to feel the control I used to have over my life. It will all be well again soon. It will.

I unlock my front door and push it open, bending down to pick up today’s pile of free pamphlets and dump them straight in the recycling.

‘Grace!’ It’s Anton running out of the pub. ‘How are you?’ he mouths. He’s crossing the road, holding a large brown envelope. I smile to see him.

‘Grace!’ calls another voice to the side of me.

I know the voice, but it can’t be who it sounds like. I turn to my right. It is him. Danny Saunders steps out of the chippy holding an open bag of chips with a battered sausage laid on the top and comes towards me.

Anton freezes in the middle of the street.

‘Anton!’ I scream, because a car is coming. Anton shakes himself and races across the remainder of the road towards me.

‘All right, mate,’ says Danny and offers him a chip. Anton ignores the offer.

‘These are for you, Grace. I had copies done. I thought you’d like them. They’re the photos we spoke about. I was just checking you were OK.’

‘Thank you, Anton,’ I say, but my voice is tiny.

‘I’d best be getting back,’ he says and crosses back to the pub.

I turn to face Danny, who offers me a chip. I don’t even bother to shake my head. I can’t think of a single word I want to say to him.

‘How are you?’

I shake my head. Where do I start?

‘I mean, have you got morning sickness and stuff? You look the same. Bit tired maybe. I know how you feel. My flight got in this morning and I haven’t slept.’

I feel nothing. I thought that if Danny came back I’d beg him to stay or I’d be angry, furious at him for the way he left, but as it is there’s nothing. Just disbelief. Disbelief at the nothingness. Ten years and now diddly-squat.

‘We need to talk, Grace, about the baby, money and stuff. Mum says we should start talking about things now. That’s why I came back, to do it face to face. I fly back tomorrow. I just got a long weekend break. So …’ he picks up the battered sausage, then drops it again. It must be hot.

‘So …’ I say finally.

‘Do you want to talk inside or in the pub. If we go over there I’ll have to finish my chips first.’

I shrug.

‘I’m really sorry about, you know, how I went. I, you know … I was really upset, too. I just, um … Canada’s great, Grace. You ought to go. Really big portions and you don’t have to show your ticket on the tube.’

‘I lost the baby last night.’

‘You what?’

‘Don’t ask me to say it again.’

‘Oh, did you have a whatsit. Abortion. I thought you might.’

‘No, I had a miscarriage, last night.’

‘Oh, right,’ he says and he leaves his chips alone for the first time in our exchange. ‘Well.’ He sighs. ‘It’s probably for the best, isn’t it?’

I don’t answer.

Another sigh. ‘Listen, I’ll be off, Grace. I don’t think you want me here. I mean, I’ll stay for a while if you want me to. Do you?’

‘No. Just go, Dan.’

‘Hey, Mildred,’ I say, stepping on her, but then I stop suddenly and peer down at the gravestone. ‘Have you been scrubbed?’

I walk into Mum’s house. I’ve had twenty-four hours on my own, but I feel so empty I think it might be better to have someone there. Wendy offered, but actually I’d prefer to be here with Mum. I hope she doesn’t mind.

‘Mum! Mum!’ I call, but then I stop again. ‘Whoa! What did you do with all the stuff that was in the hall?’

‘Oh, hello,’ my mum says, walking out of the kitchen and closing the door behind her.

‘What the …?’ I’m speechless. I hold my arms out wide and slowly spin 360 degrees. ‘Where’s all the stuff gone?’

‘I had a bit of a tidy.’

‘A
bit!
Even demolition clearance would have called that a big job.’

‘How are you feeling, love?’ She walks towards me and strokes my arm.

‘Sad.’

She nods as though she knows.

‘Can we drink gin?’ I ask, leading her into the kitchen. ‘Ah!’ I cry as I open the kitchen door.

The evil SJS Construction man is sitting at Mum’s kitchen table. I blink at the scene. He’s wearing a pressed shirt and she’s laid out biscuits on a plate. They’re proper biscuits, luxury, chunky cookie-type things that look well over a hundred calories each. The only biscuits I’ve ever seen in this house are Jaffa Cakes, because they’re only forty-six calories each. And the biscuits are on a plate! The few times we’ve had Jaffa Cakes they’ve always been fished straight out of the packet. Never on a plate. I can’t take it all in. A teapot stands next to the plate of biscuits. I didn’t even know we had a teapot. We’re a dunk-in-the-bag household, always have been. All this suggests that this is an arranged tea.

He stands.

‘Grace, a pleasure.’ He holds out a big, rough hand. ‘I’m John, I don’t think I’ve ever introduced myself properly.’ I think about Len in the hospital and Dad’s grave and I shake my head at his hand. Then I leave the room and walk upstairs. I want my childhood diary. I want to read about a time when I was happy, because I’m certainly not happy now. I find it in my bedside cupboard and take it downstairs, I’m passing the kitchen on the way to the front door, when I hear SJS Construction man say, ‘He sounded Italian to you? So we have a smooth-talking Italian man in expensive shoes and two thugs, but nothing more.’

I hover in the hallway for a moment, wondering whether or not to leave. Then I decide to quickly poke my head round the kitchen door and ask them what they’re talking about.

‘Oh, I’m sorry, Grace,’ SJS man says, standing up again when he sees me. ‘I was trying to see if I could get a handle on this loan shark your mother had dealings with.’

‘I was just telling John that he looked a bit like that chap off the telly.’ She tuts. ‘What’s his name?’ She giggles like a girl. She’s got the hots for SJS Construction man. I’m sure of it. ‘Oh, you know, um, er, ooh,’ she whitters and blushes. See! She’s lost it completely in his presence. ‘He looked like the one Jordan got together with on that jungle programme. He looked like him.’

I feel my eyes getting wider and wider as mum’s words sink in.

‘An Italian man who looks like Peter Andre?’

‘Peter Andre! Thank you, Grace.’ My mum giggles again in Evil John’s direction. But he’s looking at me now. He’s noticed something in my expression.

‘Do you think you’ve come into contact with him?’ he asks.

I stand still in the doorway and put my hands over my face.

‘What was his name?’ I gasp behind my hands.

‘Laurence,’ my mum says.

‘Oh,’ I say. I’d thought it was my Italian client, Ricardo, for a moment then. I thought I’d led the swindler right to my mother’s door. At least that’s one disaster I wasn’t personally responsible for.

‘Laurence Olivier he was called. His mother was British and she loved the actor apparently.’

‘Say that again.’

‘His mum loved Laurence Olivier, so he was named after him. You remember him? Old actor?’

‘Oh, Mum.’

‘Grace, what’s the matter?’

‘He’s my client. He told me he was called Ricardo – or Richard – Burton because his mum loved the actor. He was charming. Oh God, I’m so sorry.’

‘I don’t understand. Did you tell him to offer me a loan?’

‘No, but I … God, I told him you had money troubles.’

‘Oh, Grace. Why on earth … ?’

‘Oh, God. I’m so sorry! John, when you came to see Mum about the graveyard situation, she was upset when you left and she called me. But Richard – Olivier whatever-he’s-called – was with me. I was helping him find some bloody house for his mother and his “seester”. Anyway, on the way to the viewing I dropped in here, and I left him in the car as I ran in to see Mum. When I got back in the car, I was really flustered and I spoke to him about it. He asked me how much the house was worth and stuff. Oh, God!’

‘Oh, Grace, it’s not your fault. I took the loan because I was too pathetic to walk half a mile to the bank. That’s what’s done it.’

‘Rosemary, don’t blame yourself. You have kept this house together all on your own,’ he says, touching her on the shoulder. And she smiles and suddenly I remember the mysterious fresh flowers and the mown lawn and my mother dressing sexily, and I seriously wonder whether something is going on between them.

‘Oh, God, but he took me out for dinner. I told him much more than I ever usually tell people, and all because he was from Rome.’

‘Where did you have dinner?’

‘At The Paradise.’

‘Did he pay? This is a long shot, but did he pay by credit card by any chance?’

‘Um, I can’t remember. Yes. YES! He did and he seemed freaked out by it, actually.’

‘Right, Grace, perhaps you could come with me. They should have the credit card receipt. And perhaps he gave you a telephone number?’

‘Funnily enough, he didn’t, and he’s completely disappeared since. I’ve been cursing myself for that.’

‘Don’t curse yourself, these people are pros. Right, Grace, take me to Paradise. Oh good grief,’ he says. ‘I didn’t mean it like that.’

My mother, of course, thinks this is the funniest thing she’s ever heard.

‘Until tomorrow,’ John says, and he bows his head, takes my mum’s hand and kisses it.

My mother giggles for too long and then fiddles with her hair.

I just can’t make sense of it at all. I would have loved that baby so much. Why did it have to happen? Why? That’s all I seem to be asking myself at the moment. Why? Why? Why? There’s an ache inside of me that knows the answer: You didn’t want the child at first, it says. You didn’t deserve it.

I need something good to cling to, but they’re thin on the ground at the moment. All I can think of is that The Paradise had a credit card receipt of Ricardo’s. That will have to do for the time being.

‘Grace,’ Wendy calls from her desk. ‘Can I have a word?’

It’s just the two of us.

‘Hmm,’ I say, staring sadly at the computer screen.

‘Um, it’s quite important,’ says Wendy.

‘Wha—?’ I look up and Wendy’s face looks worried.

‘Oh, no. What have I done?’ I ask anxiously.

‘Nothing. Why do you say that?’

‘I feel like a walking curse at the moment. I just thought I might have ruined your life in someway accidentally.’

‘Grace. No. You make my life better. That’s why this it’s so hard.’

‘Oh my God, Anton’s getting married.’

‘No! Are you still pining for Anton?’