‘Well if that’s true then it wasn’t a very kind thing to do.’
‘Why can’t I go to parties?’ Raffy looked pleadingly at her. ‘It’ssounfair…’
‘It’s really up to your dad, Raf. I’m afraid it’s not up to me.’
‘But it’s notfair. For Max’s birthday everyone went rock climbing. And they had ice cream. And I never get to go to anyone’s house either. I miss out onallthe fun.’
Raffy sighed loudly and crossed his arms in a huff. Helena didn’t know what to say. Her heart went out to him. If she had her way, he would go to every party, and have playdates at least once a week. She knew how important it was for children to develop their friendships outside school. But there wasn’t much she could do about it. Raising it with Noah had never worked in the past. She suspected that it was precisely because she had pushed it that he had imposed an outright ban on playdates in the first place. As she drove the last few miles home, she reminded herself there was no way she could tell Noah about her planned intervention at Margery’s. She knew he wouldn’t understand why she was getting involved, and to be quite honest she didn’t feel like explaining herself.
10
AFTER DROP-OFF ONTuesday Helena went to the library to pick up as many rolls of recycling bags as she could get her hands on. She also bought a boot load of cleaning products and bin liners. On Wednesday morning at 9.15 a.m. on the dot Helena rapped loudly on the door at Hazel Cottage. This time it was opened almost immediately by a much more cheerful looking Margery.
‘Morning Helena,’ she said, ‘I thought I’d wear an old shirt of Jeremy’s as a sort of pinny.’ A large pinstriped shirt was layered over some beige cotton trousers, sleeves gamely rolled up to the elbow. Her silvery-brown topknot was pinned into place and her heavy brow seemed notably less furrowed. She looked like she was ready to undertake the job in hand, for which Helena was extremely relieved. It would be a different story entirely if Margery had been reluctant to get stuck in to the clearing out process. Helena had done some research on the NHS website, and it seemed that there were much more worrying stages on the scale of hoarding; she hoped that a timely intervention would set Margery on the road to recovery of what, had it been left unchecked, could have become a disastrous situation.
‘Great idea! I’ve got a few things to get us started,’ Helena said as she placed an enormous cardboard box full of supplies on the doorstep. ‘We’ll soon have this place spick and span.’
‘Would you like a cup of tea before we begin?’ Margery asked.
‘I’d love one.’
Helena gratefully accepted the steaming mug. She had to admit she felt quite excited at the challenge of transforming the cottage into something habitable. It was nice to have something to dooutside of her own home for once. She missed working, and this was the first time she had been able to do something that even came close to it in years.
She pulled on a pair of Marigolds, giving some to Margery to do the same, and they set about sorting through the hall as their starting point. Luckily it was dry weather so they could haul out the contents and sort them on the grass in the front garden. They discussed the pros and cons of keeping hold of things ‘just in case,’ with Helena promising that anything Margery needed in future she would either be able to borrow from her or buy new. Margery accepted that she hadn’t ever looked at the old newspapers and was unlikely to do so, so they were all bagged up and put out for the recycling collection.
It was slow, sweaty work. The air was muggy and hot. Helena’s shorts and T-shirt were soon clinging to her body with perspiration. She put the seats down and filled her car with box after box of junk for the tip. It was a slow process, and they soon realised quite how long it was going to take.
By the end of Thursday, following several more trips to the local dump, they had cleared the hall and most of the sitting room, leaving dusty items of furniture and a sticky residue on the floorboards. Finally able to clean, on Friday Helena and Margery attacked the surfaces with vigour. Soon the hall, the sitting room and the downstairs loo were filled with the sweet smell of wood polish and the lemon scent of antibacterial surface cleaner. The freshly swept and mopped floor shone, and the vacuumed sofa appeared to have taken on a new lease of life after the cushions had been taken outside and beaten. Never had Helena felt such a sense of satisfaction: the look of incredulity on Margery’s face was all the reward she needed for her efforts. Her back ached but she was so pleased with the improvement that she didn’t mind.
She had been surprised how much she had enjoyed herself. It had been nice to spend time with Margery. They had chatted away as they worked, covering all sorts of topics including Margery’s childhood growing up in a rural village in Wales, her job workingas a singing teacher (Helena had been astonished to learn that Margery had once sung opera professionally) and her sister’s long and drawn-out battle with cancer. Margery was great company, a good conversationalist full of surprisingly astute observations and amusing anecdotes. Helena felt ashamed of herself for having judged Margery as seeming a bit odd. She realised just how much she missed having friends. She found herself looking forward to the following week when they had agreed to tackle the kitchen, the bathroom, and the bedrooms upstairs.
On Friday evening, she managed to shower and remove all traces of her hard day’s labour before Noah got home. As he ate the pan-fried seabass and asparagus with roasted vine tomatoes that she had prepared for his dinner, she was glad that he had no idea what she had been up to. It gave her a warped sense of satisfaction to know that she had done something he had expressly told her not to.
‘How was work?’ she asked as he topped up his glass yet again. He seemed to be drinking more and more these days.
‘Fucking awful,’ Noah groaned, scraping back his chair and massaging his temples. ‘The market better pick up soon.’
She switched off as he droned on about a disastrous client meeting, making a mental plan of action of how to tackle the kitchen at Margery’s the following week. ‘What’s for dessert?’ Noah asked, interrupting her stream of thought. ‘I’m still hungry.’
Helena went to decant some fresh strawberries into two bowls, wishing she could cover hers in cream and sugar like she had when she was little, knowing that if Noah wasn’t there that was exactly what she would do.
‘You didn’t pick up the landline earlier,’ Noah said, a statement laced with question.
‘Oh really?’ Helena asked, ‘I must have been working out.’ That wasn’t exactly a lie, she reasoned. Hauling boxes of junk all day was probably the equivalent of a couple of HIIT work outs. But seeing as Noah liked her to answer the phone within three rings, he must havebeen irked that she didn’t pick up at all. She made a mental note to keep her mobile within earshot at all times.
Later that evening, having cleaned up dinner and left Noah to finish the wine while she had a relaxing bath to soothe her aching muscles, Helena had just finished brushing her teeth when Noah came into the bathroom. His towel was slung around his hips, the deep diagonal grooves that cut across his abdomen and the shadows under each ridge of his torso looked even more pronounced than usual. Despite her tiredness her stomach lurched with lust at the sight of him. As he turned on the shower she slipped off her dressing gown and came up behind him. At the touch of her hand on his back he turned around, pulling her in and kissing her as the water sluiced over their skin. She couldn’t get enough of him, the more she had, the more she wanted, like the most intoxicating drug. She wrapped her legs around his waist as he picked her up, moving as one as the cool tiles pressed against her back and the water washed over their entwined bodies.
11
A WOOD PIGEONchanted its deep, rhythmic call from a nearby tree. Helena was sitting on the paved terrace at the top of the overgrown lawn in Margery’s garden. An admiral butterfly settled on her knee. Flashes of scarlet and black came and went with each beat of its paper-thin wings. Helena watched it, luxuriating in the feeling of the sun on her skin. She felt a prickle of intuition. Hadn’t her mother always told her she’d come back and visit as a butterfly when she was no longer bound by her physical body? Helena had always nodded along, even though she really didn’t believe in people receiving messages from ‘The Other Side’. She watched it, waiting for it to fly on, but it stayed. She nudged it with the tip of her little finger. It clung to its perch determinedly. She smiled and leant back carefully, so as not to disturb the butterfly. She so wanted to believe that this was her mother, sending her a sign.
She was suddenly eight years old, back in the pine kitchen of her childhood. Her mother standing behind her in her pale pink pinny with its faded patchwork quilting. Her warm, familiar hands clasped over her own small hands as they held the knife, guiding her as she cut out a small circle of sponge from the cupcakes they had baked, slicing it in half to make wings. She could smell it now, that buttery vanilla sweetness – the anticipation of the first taste still to come. Filling the hollow with buttercream, they dusted them with icing sugar before scattering them with sprinkles. Butterfly cakes, that’s what she’d called them. If only there was a way to turn back time, what she would give to relive that memory once more.
Margery called through the kitchen window, ‘Would you like some iced tea?’
The butterfly fluttered up to Helena’s shoulder. ‘Yes please!’ she said. It hovered in front of her, ‘Bye, Mum,’ she whispered, and it floated off, settling on a poppy in the flower bed. Helena thought back to the psychic who had known so much about her parents. Had she really been able to see them? Were they really just beyond her senses’ ability to perceive? When her father had died, her mother had found her sobbing in her room, writing a tear-stained letter asking him where he had gone. She had picked up the letter and explained that this world and the next are like two sides of the same sheet of paper. They were not two separate places, they were enmeshed, inseparable. ‘We are here,’ she had said, placing her hand over Helena’s writing, ‘and Dad is here,’ she had touched the back of the page. ‘The distance between us is incredibly thin, not miles or dimensions apart. The paper is like a veil, we can’t see him, but he’s still here, he’s just on the other side of our page.’ Even though she was usually a very practical person who dealt in facts and realities, Helena had found the thought so comforting. She still did.
Margery came out carrying a tray with two glasses. Helena made a mental note to mow the grass for her at some point. That had always been one of her jobs growing up, ever since her father had died.
