The Switch(64)

*

I take a long walk after Martha’s phone call, following a route I sometimes run. I notice so much more at this pace: how many greens there are here, all different; how beautifully those drystone walls are built, the stones slotted in like jigsaw pieces. How a sheep’s resting face looks kind of accusatory.

Eventually, after ten unpleasant kilometres of thinking time, I call my mother from a tree stump beside a stream. It’s about the most restful and idyllic setting imaginable, which feels necessary for what promises to be an extremely difficult conversation.

‘Leena?’

‘Hi, Mum.’

I close my eyes for a moment as the emotions come. It’s a bit easier this time, though, now I’m braced for them – they own me a little less.

‘Grandma wants to come back to Hamleigh.’

‘Leena, I’m so sorry,’ Mum says quickly, ‘I didn’t tell her to – I really didn’t. I texted her yesterday evening and said she should stay in London, I promise you I did. I just had a moment of weakness when I called her, and she decided …’

‘It’s OK, Mum. I’m not angry.’

There’s silence.

‘OK. I am angry.’ I kick a stone with the toe of my running shoe so it skitters into the stream. ‘I guess you figured that out.’

‘We should have talked about all this properly sooner. I suppose I thought you’d come to understand, as time passed, but … I only supported Carla in what she chose, Leena. You know if she’d wanted to try another operation or round of chemotherapy or anything, I would have supported that, too. But she didn’t want that, love.’

My eyes begin to ache, a sure sign tears are coming. I suppose I know what she’s saying is true, really. It’s just …

‘It’s easier to be angry than sad, sometimes,’ Mum says, and it’s exactly the thought I was trying to form, and so Mum-like of her to know it. ‘And it’s easier to be angry with me than with Carla, I imagine.’

‘Well,’ I say, rather tearfully. ‘Carla’s dead, so I can’t yell at her.’

‘Really?’ Mum says. ‘I do, sometimes.’

That startles a wet half-laugh out of me.

‘I think she’d be a bit offended to think you were refusing to yell at her, just because she died,’ Mum goes on mildly. ‘You know how big she was on treating everyone equally.’

I laugh again. I watch a twig caught behind a rock, fluttering in the flow of the stream, and think of playing Pooh Sticks with Carla and Grandma as a child, how cross I’d feel if my stick got stuck.

‘I’m sorry for calling your grandma,’ Mum says quietly. ‘It was just a wobble. Sometimes I feel very … alone.’

I swallow. ‘You’re not alone, Ma.’

‘I’ll call her again,’ Mum says after a while. ‘I’ll tell her to stay in London. I’ll tell her I want you to stay and I won’t have it any other way.’

‘Thank you.’

‘I do want you to stay, you know, more than anything, actually. It wasn’t about that. It was just about needing – needing my mother.’

I watch the water churn. ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Yes, I can understand that.’





22


Eileen


I have to say, working with Fitz on the Silver Shoreditchers’ space is making me see the man in a whole new light. He’s working peculiar hours in his latest job – a concierge at some fancy hotel – but whenever he’s home, he’s down here painting something or hunched at his laptop reading about setting up charitable organisations on the Internet. He’s handling all the Silver Shoreditchers’ administration – he’s even made some posters for the club, with a little logo. It’s wonderful. I’ve been on at him for weeks about being more proactive in his career ambitions, but, if I’m honest, I’m a little shocked he’s got all this in him.

‘There!’ he says, standing back from where he’s just hung a large picture on the wall.

‘Wonderful,’ I say. ‘The perfect finishing touch!’

The picture is an enlarged black-and-white photograph of the building from the 1950s, when it still operated as a printworks. There’s a collection of people gathered outside, talking and smoking, their collars turned up against the wind. It’s a reminder that this place isn’t just a collection of individual homes, it’s one building, too, with a history of its own.

I smile, looking around the space we’ve created. It’s beautiful. There’s a rich red sofa facing those glorious windows, a long dining table pushed to the back of the space, and lots of small tables with charmingly mismatched chairs, ready and waiting to host dominoes and rummy.

I’m so glad I’m here to see this. And I’m even gladder that the reason I didn’t go home early is because Marian asked me not to. Hearing her say how much she needed this time with Leena, just the two of them … it was like something heavy lifting off my chest.

My phone rings. Fitz tracks it down and fishes it out of the side of the sofa. Betsy calling. Oh, damn, I meant to ring her. Until now I’ve called her every week – I just got rather distracted with all the renovating, and it slipped my mind.

‘Betsy, I’d just picked up my phone to call you, what a coincidence!’ I say as I answer, pulling a face to myself.