A Home for Broken Hearts, page 4
‘One down, two to go,’ Hannah went on. ‘You should ask around too, Ellie, but in the meantime I could draft an ad for Time Out?’
‘I don’t know, I’m not sure – that really would be a stranger,’ Ellen said uncertainly, the fleeting memory of a summer morning fading rapidly.
‘I’ll put my email and number on it so you won’t have to deal with it, and I promise I’ll weed out all the weirdos, right after I’ve dated them. Let’s see … “Rooms to let. Well-located shared house. Must be a non-smoker. No pets.” Perfect. I’ll just log on to their website and … there – that’s that posted. I’ll pay for it on my credit card – you can pay me back when the rent starts to roll in, along with the money for the skiing trip.’
Ellen blinked. ‘Hannah! But I haven’t asked you to lend me any money for Charlie’s trip – wait – how do you even know about it?’
‘Charlie called me a couple of days ago and asked me if I’d spot him the cash. Of course I said yes, after I’d talked it over with you, obviously. So when do you need it? I could write you a cheque now if you like.’ Hannah smiled brightly, clearly feeling she was on a roll in her new position as Lady Bountiful. ‘You don’t mind, do you, Ellie? After the year he’s had a change of scenery, a chance to spread his wings a bit will do him the world of good, won’t it? And it’s not as if I’m giving you the money, just lending it – that’s all.’
Ellen felt outmanoeuvred. Since Nick, Hannah had gone out of her way to form a special relationship with her nephew. She had always been mildly fond of him but now he had become the official apple of her eye, and Charlie loved it, he loved the outings, shopping trips and visits to the cinema. He loved his cool aunt, and much as it rankled with Ellen that he was so comfortable with her sister, it had never occurred to her that he might take matters into his own hands and call Hannah and ask her for money himself. Ellen was so used to knowing every aspect of her little boy’s life, it came as a shock to realise that he had a world outside hers. Furthermore, she had unconsciously been glad to have a reason not to let him go so far away with the school, a reason other than the one that really unsettled her, the idea of him out there, vulnerable and unprotected.
‘I’m not sure if he’s ready to be so far from home …’ Ellen began.
‘It must be a worry for you, to let him go,’ Hannah said. ‘But you need to, Ellie. Now is exactly the time when he should be spreading his wings, finding out more about the world. We’d hate what happened to change him, wouldn’t we? To take away his joy of life.’
‘Are you saying that’s what I do? Take the joy away?’ Ellen was offended.
‘No, no! I’m saying that you are still grieving, it’s not been a year yet. It wouldn’t hurt to let Charlie have a break from that – it’s not until next February anyway, is it, this trip – so let’s just agree that I’ll lend you the money, you’ll pay me back and see how you feel about it nearer the time. How’s that?’
Ellen had nodded, mute.
‘So anyway you’d better get that room sorted out. Today’s … Wednesday and Sabine is arriving Friday – so that gives you two days to get ready.’
‘She’s coming already? Hannah, that’s too soon. I haven’t had time to think about it, to even discuss with Charlie what he thinks about strangers living in the house. Not all of us live our lives at high speed, you know.’
‘You can say that again.’ Hannah pursed her lips as she studied Ellen’s face for a moment, her expression opaque. ‘Ellie, time has run out for you – there aren’t any more opportunities for faffing. If I know one thing it’s when to take action, and now is that time. Besides, what is there to discuss? You’re out of options. Charles will understand that, he’s a bright boy. I could talk to him if you like?’
‘No, no – I’ll talk to him about it when he gets back from school.’
‘OK, well, you do that – and with a bit of luck we’ll have all your spare rooms occupied before you know it.’
‘Good morning, I’m Sabine Neumann.’ Ellen looked somewhat taken aback at the perfectly manicured hand that was extended towards her. Sabine Neumann was not at all what she had pictured. To her shame she had expected the German business-woman to be rather mannish, with short hair and a very firm manner, somewhere in her fifties. First impressions could not have been more different.
Sabine was about Ellen’s age, with long blonde hair spiralling over her shoulders in a natural corkscrew curl. She had a bright smile and blue eyes that seemed literally to sparkle. Instead of the dour business suit that Ellen had expected she was wearing a white shirt over faded jeans, finished off with a pair of red Converse shoes. It was an outfit that Ellen could never picture herself in, not outlandish or over the top but confident, stylish.
‘Welcome, Sabine,’ Ellen said, feeling suddenly dowdy and mannish herself. ‘Please come in. I hope that everything here is to your liking. I’ve never had lodgers before, this is quite new to me. I don’t really know the etiquette but I hope if there is something that I’m not getting right you will tell me.’
‘OK, I will,’ Sabine agreed, with barely a trace of an accent, looking around the sunlit hallway. ‘Your house is lovely, it’s very Victorian – just how I pictured it.’
‘Thank you,’ Ellen said, casting an eye over the restored oak boards that glowed a deep gold in the morning sun, and the pale green and cream paint that Nick had chosen for this space, which made it such a warm and inviting entrance. They had spent an age touring reclamation yards to find the perfect lighting, settling eventually on a modest little crystal chandelier. Ellen noticed it needed dusting as she glanced up at it, picturing Nick on his stepladder, swearing as he wrangled with it, the beams of sunlight captured by its glass drops dancing on the floor and walls.
‘And this is your family?’ Sabine had wandered over to where a photograph of Ellen, Nick and Charlie hung on the wall. It had been taken a few months before Nick’s accident, and had been Nick’s idea. He had come home one day and told Ellen they should make a record of their family, something permanent they would be able to look back on, so that whatever might change in the future they’d always remember how things had been. Ellen remembered feeling rather puzzled, and she’d asked him if there was anything wrong, anything he was worried about. But he’d just laughed and ruffled her hair in that way he’d taken to doing and told her not to be so foolish, that real life was nothing like those books she was so obsessed with, stuffed with tragedy and intrigue. He’d found a photographer he’d liked and she came to the house, decking out their seldom-used living room with white sheets and throw cushions. Ellen remembered how Nick and Charlie had had to make her laugh to get her to loosen up after the photographer had shown them the first digital images on her laptop. Nick had joked that it was like having his photo taken with a maiden aunt. They had told her stupid jokes until finally Ellen had forgotten the camera was there at all, and now there they were, the three of them. That single moment captured them lounging back on the sofa, arms around necks, legs intertwined, laughing.
‘You are very lucky to have such a wonderful family,’ Sabine observed.
‘I, well – yes, I was – I am.’ Ellen fought that familiar prick of tears behind her eyes. ‘Nick, my husband, died last year in a traffic accident. It’s just me and Charlie now – hence the lodgers.’
Sabine nodded.
‘I’m sorry. My husband is not dead,’ she informed Ellen, her pretty mouth forming a thin line. ‘My husband is in Berlin, I’ve left him. I couldn’t stand looking at him for another second more, the lying, whoring piece of shit. It’s not fair, is it? If my husband was dead I wouldn’t mind but you – you loved yours and now you’ve lost him. Life isn’t fair.’ Sabine shrugged as if she’d just missed a bus she wasn’t especially bothered about catching, and put one foot on the bottom stair. ‘So now, perhaps I might see the room?’
The phone was ringing as Ellen left Sabine unpacking her bags, and she prayed it was not Hannah with news of another enforced lodger.
She was still trying to adjust to having one stranger moving into her house and into her life, passing comment on her photos, telling Ellen about her own private life. Hannah, Hitesh, her mother – everyone kept on telling her that she had to get used to the fact that her life had changed now, but Ellen found it hard. It was painful for her to accept that it had to change quite as much as it had.
Sabine was right, it wasn’t fair. If Nick hadn’t decided on a whim to borrow his friend’s Lotus and take it for a spin down some quiet country roads after a late pub lunch, if he’d hadn’t exceeded the speed limit by nearly double, if he’d thought just for one second about … Ellen halted that train of thought before it could develop any further, consumed with guilt that she could allow herself to even begin to feel angry with her husband. Nick would never have left her and Charlie in this kind of mess on purpose. He didn’t set out on that summer day to kill himself purely to inconvenience her. He loved her like no man ever had or ever would again. And Nick had been an adventurer, an explorer – the kind of man to seize the day and wring every ounce of life out of it, reluctant to waste any precious seconds on sleep. That was what Ellen had loved about him first, his drive, his passion. That, and the fact that when she was around him, for the first time in her life she felt vibrant, a three-dimensional being of flesh and blood finally present in the world that Nick embraced so readily – she felt alive. It was a feeling that she hadn’t been able to recreate since the moment she had discovered Nick was dead.
Biting her lip, Ellen quietened the same circle of thoughts that constantly rotated around her head and picked up the phone.
‘Ellen, good, you’re in.’ Her boss Simon’s voice sounded on the other end of the line, deep and melodious. Ellen breathed a sigh of relief. Simon was one of the few people who would not be demanding she took some kind of action, who would not persist in telling her where she was going wrong. If anything, with a little bit of luck he’d have something nice for her to work on – preferably the next instalment of The Sword Erect, as she’d almost finished the pages she already had.
‘Hello, Simon.’ Ellen’s voice was warm. ‘I’m in and I’ve just greeted my first lodger.’
‘Ah yes, you told me about your new career as a landlady in your last email. In fact in a roundabout way it’s sort of my reason for ringing today.’
‘Really?’ Ellen was puzzled. ‘Why, do you need a room?’
‘No, no, my dear – I’ll get to that in a minute. First off tell me all about your first lodger.’ Simon had evidently decided to put whatever request he had for her on hold for the minute. That was the other thing Ellen liked about him: while Hannah seemed to feel that it was her duty to talk at her and boss her around, Simon, a man she rarely spoke to and saw even less, actually seemed interested in her and how she was coping. He was one of the few people who ever asked her how she was. Sometimes Ellen didn’t want to answer. Sometimes she hated the fact that he asked, but at the same time she appreciated it too.
‘She’s nice, I think.’ Ellen pondered the ten or so minutes that she had spent so far in Sabine’s company. ‘She seems it, anyway, and she is happy with the room as far as I can tell. It’s just strange, you know – different.’
‘I know, Ellen, it must be hard for you,’ Simon said, his voice softening. ‘I’d hate to share my flat with anyone but Tibalt.’ Simon referred to his ancient and grizzled cocker spaniel, who accompanied him every day to the Cherished Desires offices on Fulham Palace Road and lay all day under his desk emitting foul smells and loud snores. Simon was more devoted to him than any human, at least that Ellen knew of.
‘Oh well, no – not that hard. And it’s money, isn’t it, money to keep this house going and disrupt Charlie as little as possible – talking of which, do you have any more of the new Allegra Howard for me? It’s not like you to give me a book in dribs and drabs.’
‘Not quite, I have something a little better.’ Simon sounded hesitant. ‘Ellen, I have Allegra Howard herself for you, if you will have her, that is.’
‘I beg your pardon?’ Ellen asked him, glancing up at the ceiling at the sound of furniture being dragged across the floor.
‘Allegra – she’s in a pickle, and she needs a fair maid to come to her rescue. I immediately thought of you, the fairest maid I know.’
‘Me – but how could I ever help Allegra Howard?’
‘Well, you know those dreadful spring floods they had a while back in Gloucestershire?’
‘Oh yes, they were awful,’ Ellen said, thinking of the pictures on the TV news of houses half filled with water, a teddy bear floating down what once had been a quiet avenue. Practically the whole of Tewkesbury was under water.
‘Well, Allegra’s seventeenth-century manor house took the brunt of it. It’s going to take months to restore it just to a fit enough state for her to live in at all, and apparently her insurance company aren’t keen to keep putting her up in the five-star hotels she been staying in. Allegra point-blank refuses to go anywhere near anything as unsavoury as a caravan or a strange rented house so I was thinking about what you said – how you mentioned that you were looking for tenants. I wondered if you’d have Allegra as one.’
‘Me, have Allegra Howard staying here? Simon, I can’t possibly.’ Ellen pressed the palm of her hand to her chest, feeling her heart rate accelerate beneath her fingertips. It was a curious sensation. She’d read so many of Allegra’s books over the years that she felt as if she knew the woman, and oddly as if Allegra knew her too, more intimately than perhaps anyone else. She could hardly believe she’d heard Simon correctly.
‘Please, Ellen, she really needs somewhere nice and homely to stay while she tries to finish The Sword Erect. All of the drama has rather blocked her creative flow, she’s lost her confidence a little and she needs someone to boost her up. I can’t think of anyone better to take her in than you, the very person who loves and understands her books so well.’
‘Allegra Howard in my third bedroom, Simon! You’ve been here – she needs to stay somewhere much better than a shabby old house in Hammersmith – besides, you said she wouldn’t touch a rental!’
‘That’s where you’re wrong, my angel. And your home is anything but a strange and unwelcoming rented house. Your shabby, old, beautiful, much-loved home is exactly what she does need, the poor old duck. And you wouldn’t just be her landlady. As you know, the latest book is set in the English Civil War and Allegra needs a bit of extra help – a research assistant if you like. To find contemporary local maps, brush up on the history – that sort of thing. Allegra’s never been one to let facts get in the way of a good story, but our readers do like things to be at least a little accurate. Her last PA left because of … artistic differences, so the position is happily vacant. Besides, Allegra will only write in pen – lilac-inked fountain pen to be precise. One of your jobs would be to type up her work into electronic format. Just imagine – you’d be the first person in creation to read the new Allegra Howard! And she’d pay you – it wouldn’t be a huge amount but it would double your rental income from her and I could top it up by a few quid – it would be worth it, you’d be saving my life.’
Ellen felt her heart pounding in her chest. In truth there was nothing she could imagine enjoying more than helping the great Allegra Howard with her latest work of genius. But could she do it, could she really?
She was certainly capable of helping research the background of the novel, after all, she had a First in English History – even if the only thing she’d used it for in the last ten years was to subtly point out some of the more glaring historical errors in Allegra’s books. She was a competent typist and her job as a freelance copy-editor (might as well be ‘free’ lance, Hannah persisted in teasing her) meant she was well versed in punctuation and grammar – something else that Allegra seemed to find rather tiresome.
But this would be the Allegra Howard – the woman who had supplied Ellen with the alternative universe that she had so happily inhabited for the last few years, even before Nick had left her so suddenly. Allegra who created the heroines that Ellen loved to transform into for the few precious hours she spent immersed in those sheets of paper. Allegra who fashioned the kinds of manly, magnetic heroes that Ellen was ashamed to admit she frequently imagined making love to her with the same fiery passion that they lavished upon the shapely young maidens who populated Allegra’s books. Quite often, on a quiet after-noon when Charlie was at school and Nick was safely at work, Ellen would find herself quite caught up in the moment as one of Allegra’s rakes urgently pinned some feisty young woman to perhaps a ship’s mast, or tree trunk, or, in one of Ellen’s favourite books, The Stallion Rampant, a horse’s back, and unable to contain his desire for her lovely body a second longer, would rip her clothes from her. Whipped into a frenzy by the exquisite sight of her naked breasts he would take her, his manhood searching deep within her, finding that sweet sacred spot, so at last she would come to know the true delight of physical love and be prepared to fall in love with him, if not at that exact moment then at least three or four ravishes later. After reading a scene like that, sometimes while reading a scene like that, Ellen would feel compelled to find her own sweet sacred spot and imagine that it was her full pert breasts that the hero’s lips were so firmly latched on to and her slender yet shapely hips that he gripped with his powerful hands as he entered her again. And again. And again.
The physical side of her life with Nick had been lovely, but it had been tender and sweet rather than satisfying – he was always so gentle with her, as if she were made of cut glass and might shatter in his arms. Over the last year she had spent many a night muffling her tears in her pillow as she grieved over the loss of the intimacy that they had shared. But the orgasms that Ellen had had with Allegra Howard’s heroes were more passionate and intense than any she had known, even with Nick. And Ellen was not at all sure she could look in the eye the woman who had fuelled her fantasy sex life for so long. The idea seemed impossible, almost like meeting God and letting him know what you thought of Creation.
