The Family Remains(8)

She ignores the rust stains in the sinks and the toilet bowls, the green water marks around the bath taps, the missing pane of stained glass covered over with brown chipboard in the laundry cupboard. She will happily pay a million pounds for a house that is scuffed up and kicked about, for dirty carpets and broken windows and a trampoline with moss growing on it. She will pay anything to put walls around the small family that she has brought up on streets, on beaches, on sofas, in temporary accommodation – and, for the first few years of Marco’s life, in the home of an abuser.

Once the tour is over she walks back to her car and takes the particulars from Max, shakes his hand again and bids him farewell. She places the papers on the passenger seat, then puts Henry’s address into Google Maps. But before she pulls away, she types a quick text to Libby:

Just seen the house in Burrow’s End. It’s perfect. Going to make an offer. Eek!

Then she sets the phone into its holder and pulls away, watching her house in the rear-view mirror until it’s completely swallowed up by trees.





7




October 2016


Later that night Rachel worded her reply to Michael Rimmer. She was not entirely sober, but neither was she too drunk to negotiate her keyboard.

Dear Michael,

It was MOST surprising to find your message in my email. MOST surprising INDEED. But not unpleasant or unwelcome. And thank you for your kind words about my designs. For context and colour, I live in an apartment overlooking the canal, on the way towards King’s Cross. I live alone. I have no pets. I drink and sometimes I smoke. Yes, I am Bridget Jones, thank you so much for asking.

I’d love to take you out carousing in the area. Here’s my mobile number – send me a text when you’re free and we’ll hatch a plan.

Yours,

Rachel



She read it through just once, before pressing send and propelling it forcefully, wantonly, thoughtlessly into the universe, where it would change the course of her life in ways that she could not possibly have imagined.

A reply from Michael was waiting for her when she awoke the next day. It was almost midday. She’d missed a yoga class. She always missed her yoga class. She’d booked and prepaid for twelve classes eight weeks ago and thus far had been to only two. She grabbed her phone and tugged out the charging cable, switched it on, and there he was. Michael Rimmer, the man she’d rashly invited into her life the night before with a bottle of wine, a vodka shot and a small bowl of stuffed olives inside her.

Hello Rachel!

So good to hear back from you! And I think you can probably guess that Bridget Jones is just about my dream woman, so we’re good there. I’m flying in on the 8th, so how about meeting up one night that week? I’ll text you when I’m here. And I am so looking forward to spending some time with you. Truly.

Yours,

Michael



Rachel sighed. Was she having second thoughts? Not quite. Maybe a thought and a half. But still, the 8th was ten days away. Michael Rimmer might have died by then. She might have died by then. His plane might come down over the Atlantic. No point stressing about it. No point worrying. If Michael Rimmer was meant to be, then Michael Rimmer would be.

Ten days later, a text arrived:

Hi! Rachel! It’s Michael Rimmer! I just got into London. How are you fixed for tomorrow night?

Rachel felt her insides jolt. She hadn’t heard a word from Michael Rimmer since he’d replied to her drunken email. She’d been chatting to a guy on Tinder, a bit younger than her, but quite mature. Charlie. A medical supplies courier. Lived in south-east London somewhere. God knows. South-east London was a mystery to Rachel. But they’d been chatting quite intensely. They’d covered family and dreams and ambitions and regrets, even a smattering of politics. But Charlie still hadn’t asked to meet her and, frankly, Rachel was too long in the tooth to sit around waiting for boys called Charlie to suggest getting together for a drink. And there was Michael Rimmer, brazenly elbowing his way to the front of the queue with his four-sentence text message, straight down to business in a way that suggested to Rachel that she might be having sex by this time tomorrow. And she really wanted to be having sex by this time tomorrow.

She scrolled through her camera roll to find the photo of Michael Rimmer she’d screenshot after he’d first written to her, the one where he was holding champagne, looking well fed and self-possessed. She zoomed it open with her fingers and rolled the image around the screen awhile, imagining him.

Then she switched screens to his text message and typed in fast:

Yes. Sure. Come to mine, we’ll head out from here.

Michael Rimmer appeared in her doorway at 7 p.m. the following evening, glowing with a tan from a country where it was still summer. He had flowers. He had champagne. She put the flowers in water and the champagne in the fridge and took him out for cocktails because if they opened the champagne now they’d be having sex within twenty minutes and she wanted to enjoy the lingering experience of a proper date, the building up of unbearable sexual tension, before they crossed that line.

He was more handsome than she recalled. Less basic. He wore a pale blue shirt and jeans and trainers. He smelled of clothes just taken out of a suitcase and a light aftershave cologne that Rachel couldn’t identify. He held doors for her and pulled out chairs for her in a way that Charlie the medical supplies courier would have been very unlikely to have done.