The Visitors(20)

Cora clutched at her chest, her mouth forming a perfect O. ‘David, what a gentleman you are. Isn’t he, Holly?’

‘Yes,’ Holly agreed. ‘He certainly is.’

She watched as David found a sudden fascination with a fleck on his sleeve.

‘Actually, if you don’t mind, David,’ Cora said, ‘I could do with a chair bringing downstairs. It’s the one in the corner of Holly’s room. It really would be quite heavy for us girls to try and shift on our own.’

Holly grinned. She’d already got used to Cora’s everyday sexism. ‘I’ll make us all a drink, then.’

As she walked towards the kitchen, she became aware that David had followed her into the small hallway. He faltered at the bottom of the stairs.

‘Is it all right… I mean, to go into your room?’ His voice sounded scratchy in his throat and Holly watched as his fingers twisted against themselves.

‘It’s fine, David. I’m in the back bedroom, the one on the left,’ she said easily. ‘Cora insisted I take the room overlooking the garden. Now I feel like I’ve pinched her bed!’

‘Nonsense,’ Cora called from the other side of the door. ‘Since I’ve been on my own, I’ve slept in both rooms, depending how the mood takes me. I’m quite happy with the front bedroom for now.’

‘You just can’t tell some people, can you?’ Holly whispered, gently nudging David and grinning.

His arm jerked away from her as if she’d given him an electric shock.

‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to…’

But before she could finish her sentence, David had bounded up the stairs.





Chapter Fifteen





David





Upstairs, I stand frozen in the doorway of the back bedroom like an idiot.

Next to the window is the wooden dining chair that Mrs Barrett asked me to bring up here just a few months after her husband died.

Harold Barrett was a small, wiry man with a tight mouth and mean eyes.

In his fitter years he was a keen gardener, always preferring plants and the vegetable patch at the bottom of the yard to spending any time with the meek boy who watched him digging for hours from over next-door’s fence.

I remember waiting until he turned his back to shake the soil from a clutch of spindly carrots or similar, and then I’d seize my moment to dash into the house to see Mrs Barrett.

She used to bake a lot in those days, and there would always be something nice for me in one of her tins to have with a glass of juice.

‘Is he here again?’ Harold would grunt when he shuffled in from the garden, and Mrs Barrett would always answer him curtly whilst smiling at me, her mouth stretched almost too wide for her face.

‘Yes, he is here again, and I for one am pleased to see him. Even if nobody else is.’

Harold’s eyes would harden like little brown nuts and he’d shake his head and walk away without saying another word.

Despite Mrs Barrett’s assurances that I was most welcome, my guts would feel like mush inside. Her face said one thing, her words another… I felt uncomfortable but didn’t know why.

It was a feeling I’d learn to get used to with other people over the coming years.

When Harold died, I asked Mrs Barrett why she was moving the chair.

‘Well, I’ll be eating alone now, you see,’ she said, her dull eyes staring at the wall. ‘I’ve no use for two chairs any longer.’

That’s why I initially made the effort to pop round a bit more; for a chat, at least. To try to make Mrs Barrett’s brown eyes sparkle again. But nothing really worked. Still, I suppose it felt a bit like I was paying her back for all those times she’d been a friend to me during my difficult younger years when Father was trying to make me into the brusque, macho son he’d have much preferred.

Yet something about seeing her alone, getting older with the empty years stretching out in front of her, made my scalp tighten, and I found myself less and less keen to come around here.

But now that her new visitor – Holly – is here, the atmosphere in the house feels altogether different.

In a way, I’m glad the chair is coming downstairs again. It shows Mrs Barrett has someone to sit down with again.

It occurs to me that to get to the chair, I’ll have to walk past the end of the bed. I take a step inside the door and then see that there are garments strewn across the quilt, including a bra that looks as if it has been cast off with some urgency.

I’d never openly admit it, of course, but I’ve never actually touched a bra or even seen one up close except in a shop. You can’t linger in department stores to look at stuff like that, not when you’re a single man of a certain age, anyhow.

I’ve never been able to work out how, when the other customers and assistants don’t know you personally and can’t possibly know if you’re married or have a girlfriend, they somehow seem to know with an unspoken certainty that you have no business being near women’s underwear.

People look at me like I’m some kind of creep; a weirdo, one woman hissed as she brushed by me at the three-pairs-for-two knicker island in Debenhams.

I’m just curious, that’s all. I mean, there’s nothing sinister in wanting to have a look, is there? Although it’s probably that sort of curiosity that got me into so much trouble last time.