The House of Secrets, page 6
‘Excuse me! But you’re being absolutely offensive,’ she’d squeaked at the same time that Cath had said in a furious voice, ‘Actually, my boyfriend’s black and even if he wasn’t, you are bang out of order.’
A minute later Zoe and Cath were standing by the side of the road, somewhere near the Welsh border, because the most racist taxi driver in the world had thrown them out of his cab.
As they tried to get a signal to phone one of the festival volunteers to deliver them to their hotel, they’d bonded over their current dire situation and once they were back in London and discovered that they both had boyfriends who worked in financial services and were obsessed with Arsenal and spending their Saturdays in second-hand record shops, their friendship was a done deal.
Eight years of Zoe and Cath going out and getting drunk together then nursing their hangovers with kill-or-cure fry-ups the next day. Of mini breaks to Paris, Berlin, Prague and New York. Of suffering the slings and arrows of bad book sales.
So, when Zoe needed near daily access to hot water, a Wi-Fi signal and a working kitchen, Cath hadn’t thought twice about offering up her facilities and Zoe had accepted with only the most token of protests.
Despite her friend’s love of karaoke, gin-based cocktails and jumpsuits, Zoe had always thought there was something quite Renaissance-like about Cath’s beauty; thick brown pre-Raphaelite curls, quite startling green eyes, the elegant sweep of her brow and cheekbones, but lately, she looked haunted and harried as months of worry had taken their toll.
Last summer, Cath’s father Clive, funny, clever Clive, had tripped over a wobbly paving slab and broken his hip. The accident had knocked the stuffing out of him; taken away his innate Cliveness. Before the accident, he’d swum three times a week, was a docent at Highgate Cemetery, a keen gardener and organised local history walks. But now after four months in hospital where he’d then caught a superbug that proved resistant to most antibiotics, Clive was diminished: timid and frail and glued to Homes Under the Hammer, when Zoe popped her head round the living room door to say hello.
So frail that Cath and her boyfriend Theo had rented out their flat in Finsbury Park and moved in with Clive because Cath’s older brother lived in Aberdeen, her older sister had emigrated to Australia and her younger brother spent his days in an anarcho-Marxist squat in Camberwell smoking skunk.
‘I think your dad seems a little brighter today,’ a freshly showered Zoe ventured, because this morning Clive had managed a smile when he’d greeted her.
‘I can’t see it myself,’ Cath said sourly as Zoe helped herself to toast. ‘He wasn’t like this when my mum died.’
Cath’s mother had died from a vicious form of bone cancer when Cath was still at university, long before she and Zoe had met, so Zoe didn’t know how Clive had coped back then. But she knew how he was now and how he’d been before.
‘He’s lost his confidence,’ she told Cath gently. ‘He’d been leading a really full, very busy life, just a few aches and pains occasionally, then suddenly he brushes up against his own mortality. That’s got to be scary, hasn’t it?’
Cath nodded. ‘I suppose.’ She sighed. ‘I just find it, him, the situation, frustrating.’
‘Is he doing his physio?’
‘Only when I stand over him and nag. I hate nagging but I do it all the time lately. I nag Theo. I nag both my brothers when I speak to them because would it kill either of them to visit? My inner voice has become shrill and hectoring. Ugh! Enough about me.’ Cath looked up from her coffee cup. ‘What about you, Zo? How are you?’
This was Zoe’s cue to rant about how it was impossible to work in a freezing cold house with builders hammering and drilling and singing along enthusiastically to Heart FM. Gavin was constantly knocking on the door of the back bedroom where Zoe lurked to update her on the latest live fuse they’d found sticking out of a wall or to ask her opinion on some topic of house repair that Zoe wasn’t qualified to have an opinion on.
But these were minor problems, compared to what Clive and Cath were going through. Compared to a lot of other people who didn’t have anywhere to live or anyone to love them. There were people facing terminal illness, life-limiting prognoses. People suffering from mental health issues. There were a lot of people, millions of them, far worse off than Zoe.
‘Well, at least Win and I have each other,’ she told Cath. ‘So, there’s that. Someone else to share the pain of splinters. It’s amazing how many splinters you get when you have the builders in.’
Cath pursed her lips, exhaled then closed her mouth. Twisted her lips again. ‘You know how I have this whole child-hating persona where I bitch about women pushing their Bugaboos three abreast along the pavement and I tut and roll my eyes if I hear children not using their indoor voices? But I hope you also know that if things had turned out differently, I would have been the proudest, most doting honorary aunt the world had ever seen and I’m absolutely here for you if you want to talk about the baby. You get that, right?’
Zoe nodded and she couldn’t do any more than that for a moment because there was a throbbing in her throat, a prickle behind her eyes… She swallowed hard. ‘I do get that and thank you, but honestly I… I… don’t even know how to talk about it or what I’d want to say.’ Unlike Cath, Zoe loved children – she made a living from writing children’s books so doing author events would have been challenging if she didn’t – but she’d been not quite ready yet on the having-a-baby front, while Win had been ambivalent. Zoe had known that at some point in the nearish future they were due a serious conversation about if and when they were going to start a family but now she wasn’t undecided so much as terrified, maybe even unable. ‘I didn’t even know I was pregnant so being sad feels a bit hypocritical.’
‘It’s OK to be sad though.’ Cath gestured at Zoe’s sketch pad, which should have been full of drawings for a new picture book proposal about Reggie, a hardened city mouse used to living on his wits and the mean streets, who ended up in the countryside only to be ostracised by the local field mice for his thuggish city ways.
Instead the pages were covered in sketches of a little boy with dark hair like Win’s, impossibly big eyes, fat cheeks made for being kissed.
‘It’s been two and a half months since it happened,’ Zoe said, closing her sketch pad. ‘I don’t know why I can’t just move on, stop dwelling over it. So, anyway… have you heard back from your agent yet?’
‘Has Win moved on, then?’ Cath persisted, because she was off her game lately and wasn’t picking up on the signal that Zoe had just sent out to indicate that the subject was no longer up for discussion.
‘Who knows? Mostly Win is obsessed with his day-to-day wall planner, which takes up the entire hall,’ Zoe said with great feeling, but not good feelings. ‘Gavin’s meant to place the right colour sticker on each task as he completes it and Win is forever fussing over the bloody thing and moving stickers and drawing pins around like some general planning military manoeuvres. It’s the only thing that’s occupying his mind at the moment.’
That wasn’t fair. Or strictly true. Guilt swept over Zoe like a prickly heat rash. ‘I shouldn’t be so mean. It’s good that Win’s on top of all the house stuff, but it’s been ages since we talked about anything that wasn’t house-related. Last night we talked about flaunching the chimney stacks.’
‘Sounds rude,’ Cath decided. ‘What’s flaunching?’
Zoe shrugged. ‘I’m still not entirely sure.’
‘All Theo and I talk about is my dad,’ Cath offered. ‘Last night we compared and contrasted various styles of stairlift. When did we become responsible adults?’
‘I don’t know, but I miss being irresponsible,’ Zoe said and then with great responsibility and not much enthusiasm, she reached for her sketch pad again. ‘Cath, we really need to stop talking and get working.’
At four, Zoe left Cath’s for the walk back up Muswell Hill Road (she was fast realising that there was no way to get anywhere in their new neighbourhood that didn’t involve a brutal uphill walk) but, as ever, the thought of the wall planner made her delay going home.
Sometimes she would go and work in the library, which was five minutes away from Elysian Place. It was warm and there was free Wi-Fi and a public toilet but the library was also a refuge for mothers and where there were mothers there were children, from impossibly small, tightly swaddled newborns to rambunctious toddlers who ran about shrieking and bashing each other over the head with soft toys.
Each childish yelp made something inside Zoe twist and ache and she’d have to pack up her papers and pens and leave.
She couldn’t bear the thought of the library today but walking home and taking the scenic route through Highgate Woods was never a chore. There were babies in Highgate Woods too but they tended to stay in their prams. And much better than babies were the dogs; from large, sleek red Vizslas to silly, curly cockerpoos and everything in between. Zoe had a particular tendresse for the dogs from the local animal shelter who were walked by volunteers, the dogs wearing blue tabards with ‘Adopt me!’ printed on them. They tended to be mostly Staffies who’d lunge at Zoe, only to bat their big square heads against her hand until she gave in and stroked them.
All the while, as she walked, her left hand kept returning to the pocket of her parka. Even with gloves on, Zoe could feel the round button against her fingertips. A red cherry button once attached to a tiny cardigan for a tiny baby. It must have fallen off the night that she and Win had unearthed the layette set in the suitcase at the back of the wardrobe.
The next morning, Zoe had spotted the button, red and faded, on the dusty floor. It was cracked and brittle, made before plastic was invented. She thought it was probably Bakelite. It was the sort of thing Win would know but she hadn’t told Win about the button; she didn’t want to talk about anything that would cause his face to grow tight and cold. So she’d put the button away, only to find that she had to keep checking on it; picking it up, turning it this way and that. Wondering who’d bought it and sewn it onto that tiny cardigan.
In the end, Zoe had painted the button with clear nail varnish to stop it cracking further and now it was always there in her pocket. Not a good luck charm, not when even the most abstract thought about babies, of what had been lost, made Zoe curse her own bad luck. She supposed the button was a worry bead, if anything. Something real that she could fuss at instead of the thing that gnawed at the inside of her head whenever she thought about it.
Zoe clasped her fingers around the button now as she arrived back at Elysian Place just as Gavin was packing up so he could give her a detailed progress report, which she’d then impart to Win.
‘It would be much easier if you both, oh, I don’t know, maybe called each other,’ she said to Gavin as he bombarded her with information about the party wall agreement.
‘Ah, no. You see, if I start speaking to Win about this, then we’ll stop speaking,’ Gavin said, which was cryptic but also the truth. Gavin and Win had stopped speaking for two months when Gavin had installed a new kitchen and bathroom in their old flat. They’d both promised that this time Gavin would communicate better and Win wouldn’t micromanage everything, but they’d broken those promises within a week. ‘Don’t worry about it, pet. This is the nature of house renovations. Things get much worse before they can get better.’
‘They’re not going to get much worse, are they?’ Zoe asked with a desperate note to her voice. ‘I thought they were already next-level worse. Peak worse.’
‘A few months from now, when this place is all shipshape, you’ll hardly remember what a shithole it was,’ Gavin said sagely and then he was gone.
8
Zoe
This was the hardest time. The two hours or so after the builders had left and before Win got home. The house was dark, full of shadows and strange noises. Things creaking and crackling, not the usual noises that Zoe was used to, like the gurgling of the hot water pipes as they still didn’t have any of them. It was also freezing – Zoe had to wear thermals, a onesie, a thick jumper, two pairs of socks, gloves and a Puffa jacket, which was fine as long as she didn’t need to move. She sat in her little makeshift office, which was a corner of the back bedroom, the only habitable room in the house, and really tried to sketch out the story of Reggie, the urban mouse, but it was no use. She was still drawing the face of the child that might have been hers. Not just hers. It would have been Win’s child too.
And like every evening when it got closer to the time that Win would come home, Zoe thought to herself, This will be the night that we talk about it. We have to talk about the baby, no matter how hard and painful it might get.
‘Zoe? Are you in?’
Zoe gave a start as she heard Win’s voice. Relief seeped through her, because so many evenings when she was expecting him, he’d ring to say he had to work late. She slowly uncurled limbs stiff with cold. Touched the button that now rested on the desk next to her pencil box. ‘I’m up here!’
‘Well, can you come down?’ Win sounded a little terse, which was usual these days.
There had to be enough money in the kitty that they could go out. There was a little Italian restaurant close by with communal seating, and a mid-week bowl-of-pasta-and-a-glass-of-wine special offer. They could go there, Zoe decided, ask for the quietest corner of the communal seating and begin to make sense of something that still felt utterly senseless.
‘Good day?’ she asked as she carefully picked her way down the stairs, because plastic sheeting on wooden stairs plus Ugg boots was a treacherous combination.
Win, still in his coat, was peering at his vast wall planner, a finger on that day’s date.
‘Why isn’t there a red sticker here?’
‘I have no idea,’ Zoe admitted cheerfully because she’d done enough moping and brooding today. Time to switch things up. ‘What do the red stickers mean again?’
‘Zo!’ Win squinted at his chart, his nose almost brushing against a little crop of blue stickers. Zoe had forgotten what the blue stickers signified too. ‘So, have they started on the plastering? Because it takes weeks to dry out properly.’
This was something that Zoe knew the answer to. ‘Gavin wanted to wait until the boiler had been installed. Said the plaster would dry quicker once the central heating was on,’ she said knowledgably, like her eyes hadn’t glazed over when Gavin had brought her up a mug of tea first thing that morning then stayed for a whole twenty minutes to talk about boilers. ‘But we can’t have central heating until they’ve managed to track down some valve-type things that are compatible with the radiators.’
One of the quirks of the house was that although it was unfurnished, undecorated, the original owners had seen fit to install cumbersome but now gloriously retro radiators in every room, which according to Gavin defied all the laws of modern central heating.
‘Jesus! How hard is it to find some valves?’ Win barked and he wasn’t barking at Zoe, he was barking at the situation, but she was the only person around to hear the peremptory pitch to his voice. ‘Please tell me that they’ve narrowed down the choice of boiler.’
‘I would if I could…’
‘Zoe, really! I need you to keep on top of all this.’ This time the barking was definitely directed at her. ‘I’m not asking you to project manage, as if, but I need you to pay attention when people, Gavin, tell you things.’
It was very hard to remember the Win she’d fallen in love with when the Win that she was currently living with was, well, so hard to live with.
‘I do listen,’ Zoe said evenly. ‘But daily boiler updates get a little wearing, especially when without a boiler it’s too bloody cold to think straight.’
Win shuffled a bit nearer to Zoe so they were eyeballing each other in the harsh glare of a naked bulb dangling down from the ceiling on a length of electrical cord. He pulled his hand free from one of his woolly gloves so he could trace her brow bone with the tip of his finger. They’d always used to kiss each other hello and goodbye and sometimes just for the hell of it but this was the first time he’d touched her since he got home. ‘You’re scrunched up,’ he said, because Zoe was frowning. She couldn’t help it and frowned even harder when Win’s finger made contact with the deep furrow between her eyes. ‘Sorry, I’m being a beast. Should I go out and come in again?’
‘There is a lot to feel beastly about,’ Zoe conceded. She took hold of Win’s sleeve so she could pull him to the stairs. ‘Let’s sit where we can see the wall planner and I’ll fill you in on the latest thrilling developments.’
They sat side by side on the stairs and Zoe very gently told Win that they now needed to install a ventilation unit in the bathroom for reasons unknown. Win groaned and asked how much.
‘Does it even matter at this point? I mean, what’s another five hundred pounds?’
‘Do you remember back when five hundred pounds bought nice things like a week’s holiday including flights and hotel transfers?’ Win leaned into Zoe, pressed his cold cheek against hers, so she was forced to twist away until she had the rough wall against her back.
