We all played dead in Daddy’s study until they’d gone, and after that Daddy took our au pair girl into town. When he came back, he said it wasOK, that he and the girl had reached an understanding, that the police wouldn’t be coming back.
But I think it rattled him.
For a year after that we didn’t have an au pair girl. For a year after that it was almost normal. Mummy and Daddy seemed happier. We had a cleaner who came twice a week and tidied up our mess. Daddy went out at night to meet girls in special places, and when I think about it, life could have gone on like that forever, until Daddy was too old to want to have sex anymore.
I think that would have been better all round than what actually happened.
What actually happened was that Claire Connolly walked into our garden one sunny June afternoon and destroyed all our lives forever.
chapter thirty-seven
STUART, NINE YEARS EARLIER
By the end of that first January, I am totally desperate to get out of Thornwood. I have pruned the front garden, cooked a dozen nutritious meals, nursed Jessamine through a bad cold, walked Daisy to and from school numerous times, walked Hugo twice a day, and cleared up some outdoor areas that were frankly a health and safety hazard. I have kept Jessamine out of the pub and sober for almost a fortnight and I have kept on top of laundry, vacuuming, dusting, and cleaning. The house looks a lot more savory than when I first arrived but it still freaks me out in some way I find hard to articulate, and I feel claustrophobic and ready to make my break.
I get a text message from Drew at the squat in South End Green letting me know that his boy is finally heading back to uni on Saturday and that the room is all mine again. My heart sings when the message comes through. I punch the air and silently mouth the word “yes.” For some reason though I find it hard to approach Jessamine with this news. I’m not sure why, but I can tell it won’t go down well, that she has grown used to having me around, having me in her bed—having, as she puts it, a man around the place, so I put it off and I put it off and soon it is Friday morning, and I still haven’t told her that I’m going home tomorrow. Instead,I find more and more jobs to do. I poke my head around the door to Annie’s study, where she is usually tap-tapping away at an ancient laptop or listening to the radio on an old DAB set. I have grown into the rhythm of bringing her coffee (before midday) and tea (after midday), always in a cup and on a saucer with a thin biscuit on the side, always on a tray, and pretty much on the hour, every hour. If I am five minutes late, she will appear at the kitchen entrance and say wearily, “I don’t suppose there’s any chance of a cup of tea, is there?” as if nobody had ever brought her a hot drink before.
“Sun’s out,” I say to her now. “I was thinking—the old jeep. Out front. What’s the deal with that? Does it still run?”
She looks at me disdainfully. “I have absolutely no idea,” she says sniffily. “It was my husband’s.”
“Well,” I say, “I know my way around a car’s engine. I could take a look if you like, take it for a spin. If it’s still in working order you could maybe even think about selling it. I reckon it’s worth a bob or two.”
“Feel free,” she says with a dismissive twitch of her head. And then she tips her head slightly and says, “Any chance of a cup of tea?”
“Coming right up, Your Majesty,” I say, and go back to the kitchen.
I google the jeep and find out that it is a 1967 Kaiser Jeep, a light American military truck, and what the hell it is doing in the front driveway of a cottage on Hampstead Heath is a total mystery to me. Apparently, it’s worth about ten K in good nick and I think surely that would be a positive note to go out on, freeing them up with some space in front of their home and a cash injection into their impecunious situation. I head into the garage, which is loaded up with boxes and crap: old ironing boards, headboards, children’s bikes, metal shelving, three broken vacuum cleaners. And there, on the far wall, the old man’s tools. I love tools. I really, really do, and I feel a brief surge of happiness as I pull open metal boxes, feel their ancient hinges give way, open up their insides to me, their piles of screws and nails and neat bundles of copper wire and bolts andwrenches and screwdrivers. Beautiful. There’s also some more heavy-duty stuff in there: a jackhammer, a chain saw, bags of cement—the old man was clearly handy as hell.
I find what I need and spend a joyful three hours under the bonnet of the jeep, before my stomach starts to rumble and I head indoors to wash my hands and make myself a sandwich.
Jessamine walks in a few minutes later and I take a deep breath. Now’s my moment, I decide. This is it.
“Listen,” I say. “I got a message from my place. My room’s come free again, and I can move back.” I don’t breathe for a moment, waiting for her to react.
“I don’t know what you mean,” she says blankly.
“My room. At the squat. The kid’s gone back to uni. It’s mine again.”
“Well, I don’t suppose you actually want a room in a squat anymore, do you? Not when you’ve got this?” She passes her arm in an arc around the kitchen.
“That’s kind of not the point, Jess. This is your house. Your place. I have my own place, all my stuff is there—my life is there.”
She folds her arms across her chest and blinks slowly at me. “Your life is here,” she says bluntly.
I sit back into the chair and fold my own arms, matching her body language. “That’s sweet of you,” I say, “but this was only meant to be temporary, like you said.”
“No, not temporary. I didn’t say that. I said it would be an experiment.”
I bristle, knowing full well that she did not say that at all. “Well,” I say gently, “whatever we agreed, the fact of the matter is that I have to go back to the squat. If I don’t go back, they’ll give my space to somebody else and then I’ll have nowhere to go.”
“You’ve got a million pounds, Stuart,” she says. “Of course you’ll have somewhere to go.”
I sigh. Why can’t I ever keep something back for myself? Why do I haveto tell people everything? “I explained that,” I say. “It’s for my kids. Not for blowing on rent.”
“You don’t need to pay rent staying here.”
I sigh again. “Jessamine,” I say, “I like you. I like it here. I like helping out. I like being a part of your life, a part of Daisy’s life. But that’s all I can offer you. I can be a part of your life, but not the whole thing. I need my space. You know that.”
