The Perfect Girlfriend(7)

‘I remarried.’

I don’t know what to say to that. On birthday cards, his only attempts at contact, he’d always written: To Dear Lily-flower.

‘Elizabeth Juliette Magnolia,’ he smiles at his own out-of-date joke.

He always said if it had been up to him, I’d have been an Imogen, but my mother had been insistent. Whilst people in the eighties and nineties had tight perms, shoulder pads and embraced consumerism, my mother decided to remain in the sixties and seventies. Flowers. The Beatles. Parties. Drugs. Drink. Fun, fun, fun. My father was a long-distance lorry driver and my mother’s ‘excuse’ was that she didn’t feel comfortable being the only adult in the house. She’d conjured up a fear of murderers and burglars forming an orderly queue outside the front door the moment he left for work.

My father taps his watch. ‘I have to go. Train to catch. Let’s not be strangers. I’m even on email now. I’ll write it down. Maybe you can come and visit sometime?’

‘Maybe.’ Unlikely.

‘I do think of her and him, you know . . .’

‘Goodbye,’ I say.

He hesitates. For a dreadful moment I think he is going to try to hug me, but he doesn’t.

‘Goodbye, Lily-flower.’

I turn back to the room full of strangers. Amy had offered to come, but old habits die hard; I’d never been at ease mixing family and friends.

‘I hope you’re going to stick around for a few more days,’ says Barbara. ‘You need to help sort out the house.’

She doesn’t add that it’s the least I can do. Surprisingly, my mother has left a will. With her skewed logic, she probably thought it would make amends for the past. I’m now the proud, sole owner of Sweet Pea Cottage.

‘I’m going to stay there tonight.’

‘Alone?’

‘Alone.’

‘Goodbye, Babs. Lovely spread,’ says a tall, thin man clutching a walking stick.

‘Bye. You look after yourself,’ says another woman, touching my aunt’s arm briefly before grabbing her coat.

Everyone trickles away. The kitchen is spotless due to the numerous offers of help. Everyone likes a job when the alternative is making small talk with people you don’t really know, about a dead person you knew even less.

‘Are you quite sure?’ asks Barbara as I pack my bag, ready for the short walk to Sweet Pea Cottage.

I wave a small torch – the one work suggested we buy for use in the crew bunk area. ‘Totally. See you in the morning.’

My sympathy reserves are dry and I crave solitude. Besides, I’m in the right kind of mood to face ghosts.

My footsteps echo on the road and then the path. I take out my old keys, inhale deeply and turn the lock. The wooden door creaks. It always has, but it’s only noticeable now that the house is silent.

The early years were filled with people. They were just there; hanging around, laughing. I remember a lot of laughter. Raucous, drunk, giggly. That’s what I remember the most. And debates. My mother got it into her head that what was wrong with the world was that people no longer expressed themselves.

‘Tony Blair does,’ someone had said.

‘Princess Diana did,’ another voice had chipped in. ‘And look what her death did. It freed people up to openly express their emotions.’

The more alcohol infused their brains with notions, the louder the debates became, against an eclectic mix of music. I learned how to make myself invisible. Nothing like a kid to put the dampener on fun. It was different for my two-year-old brother, though. When chatting about him with others, the adjectives my mother used were ‘cute’, ‘funny’ or ‘adorable’, whereas I was ‘quiet’, ‘moody’ and ‘unaffectionate’.

During the latter years at home, once the constant stream of visitors had stopped, my mother had usually been asleep by late afternoon. The TV or radio, sometimes simultaneously, were left blaring. I’d turn down the sound and I’d take off her shoes and cover her with a blanket. Once I’d put Will to bed, I’d sit in an armchair, reading or making up stories and plays.

Now a clock ticks. I’ve always hated the sound, even before ‘the Incident’, as everyone referred to it later. Four-year-old William Florian Jasmin grins at me from the mantelpiece. He’d have been called Nicholas if my dad had been allowed his way. Six years younger than me, he’d had an inbuilt talent for charming people. All now irrelevant, dead information.

I head for the shiny wooden drinks cabinet. A bottle of gin sits among a random selection of alcohol. Surprisingly, it is nearly full. I open the fridge, not quite sure what to expect. Among the ready meals, some onions and three wizened apples, are six cans of tonic. No lemons or limes. Inside the freezer compartment, there are several trays of ice. Clutching my mother’s favourite drink, I go upstairs. The clink of an ice cube makes me jump as I push open her bedroom door, inhaling cold and damp.

I step in. Floorboards creak in familiar places. I pull open a wardrobe door and am hit by my mother’s signature perfume. Opium. I hate perfumes that scream of camouflage, to hide odours like drink and neglect. I shiver at the memory and look behind, half-expecting to see Amelia carrying her drinks up the stairs on a doily-lined tray in an attempt to make addiction respectable. I can smell smoke even though no one has smoked in this house for years.