Half Broken Things

May

It was all very difficult for a time. As I said, there was a patch when I could not be sure how many days passed. And it hardly mattered except that our supplies, which were low, dwindled to nothing without anyone noticing. Or it’s possible we noticed but just could not consider it important. So by the time Michael took matters in hand it was serious. The only thing we had plenty of was wine (although even the cellar was looking rather emptier than at the beginning). That, and unhappiness. Unhappiness was everywhere in layers, layers all the same colour folded and unfolded over and around us; we carried wads of it everywhere, we left it in every room and then it came flapping after us. I neglected the housework, I will admit, and so after a while I thought I could actually see it, this unhappiness everywhere- it had come to look the same as the coating of dust that flattened all the surfaces.

But things did get better, starting with some very practical developments. I date it from the day after the one when Steph had not been home for lunch and Michael and I, saying nothing, had sat over bowls of some awful stuff we were trying to call soup. Michael’s silence was kind, as is everything about Michael, and afterwards he shooed me off upstairs for a lie-down. The next morning I decided I would stay in bed. Michael brought me up a cup of tea and said he’d be back later and not to worry. What I did not find out until later that day was that he and Steph had both gone out. If I had known, I wonder if I would have worried (even worrying was beginning to require more energy than I could find). How that day passed I still do not know. I had gone beyond being hungry so it wasn’t that, though at the back of my mind I was aware that this was the fifth or possibly the sixth day when there literally was not enough to go round. We had got to the stage of eating rhubarb from the garden, without sugar because there wasn’t any, and there’s a limit to how much of that a stomach will stand. We had all but finished the potatoes, and there was scarcely another thing except for a tin of anchovies and some dried chestnuts, nor any money to buy anything until my next salary was paid. Steph and Michael for a time had been as unable to care about this as I was, but they kept turning the study upside down looking for a way out of our problem. Michael in particular got to know all about the investments and so on but there was no way of getting ready cash. So nothing more came of that, except that Michael and Steph fell out. That was to do with hunger, I’m sure.

Anyway, it crossed my mind that day that perhaps if I kept upstairs in bed and out of the way, Michael and Steph would not feel bad about dividing what there was between the two of them. I felt that perhaps I was the problem. I was dragging them down with me. I was an old woman and the time had come to relinquish my hold. A bleak idea on the face of it, but I swear that just the thought of their survival filled me with joy, even then. I was hopeful, even as I lay there (as I thought dying) that with me out of the way they would find some way to manage. After all, they had done well over getting the oil; that had gone without a hitch and Michael had even managed to relight the Aga without any trouble. My mind wandered in and out of all the things we’d done and said we would do, until I was a little confused between what had really happened here and what had not.

So by the time it came to afternoon on this day, I’d dropped off to sleep again and was dreaming about food. Surprisingly, not so much the taste of it in my mouth as the sight of it being prepared, and the smells, the savoury air of a good kitchen. The relish of those sensations is not just the prospect of eating but also the homeliness of a prosperous, well-ordered house and somebody generous-spirited at the stove. It makes me happy again to think of it. So in this dream I could see and smell food, and it’s not true that a starving man dreams of a feast. What I could smell was toast. Plain, simple, lovely toast. And then I realised I was awake and Michael was at the foot of my bed. My first thought was oh, my goodness, has the day gone by already, and here’s me still in bed and I haven’t managed to do a thing.

So there he was, Michael, and he was holding a tray with a pot of tea, some toast and scrambled eggs, which he knew I was very fond of, and some black grapes, and chocolates. Actually, very expensive chocolates. And from his face I could tell there was nothing to worry about. He’d got hold of money from somewhere, he said, plenty to keep us going. He sat on the chair over by the window while I ate (I’m afraid I did bolt it all down, rather). He said nothing, just looked out across the courtyard and down the drive, and refused to taste the grapes.

I’m not stupid. I was still eating when I said, what did you sell to buy all this? Must be quite a bit, I said, and just to show him I wasn’t cross with him, or even in the least upset, I smiled. So then he told me about the books and fans and bits of china and all of it, and he was surprised at how little I cared. I was surprised myself. All I said was that they were only things, not even in perfect condition. I was thinking to myself that I could always doctor the inventory if the need arose (which I didn’t anticipate) until I remembered that I’d burned the inventory months ago. So there wasn’t even that to worry about. Then he looked out of the window again and said he could see Steph coming, and he would walk down the drive to meet her. Now that did surprise me, because I didn’t know she had gone out, and I said so. Michael just gave me a look and said no, he would explain, and everything would work out. I wasn’t sure he meant it. But already I felt much better so I got up and went downstairs.

That day, looking out of Jean’s bedroom window while she ate, Michael watched Steph in the distance bending into the wind on her way up the drive, just as she had done the day before. Once again he felt that she was escaping danger by a hair’s breadth; by the merest chance she was being delivered back to him rather than borne away and destroyed. She was oblivious, of course, like a sleepwalker gliding across a motorway. He watched her with growing anger, feeling that he had been dangerously inattentive. How could he have allowed her to go off like that in the first place? If she had no sense of danger, then clearly it was up to him to have it for her, and he should have been more insistent. He had almost forgotten that when he had told her that morning about the risks she was taking she had seemed not so much to disagree with what he was saying as simply not to be hearing him at all.

They had sat at the kitchen table over mugs of tea and all the time that he was talking, she had appeared to be waiting. And then, without the least hostility, she had patiently drained her mug and declared that she must be off, just as if he had never opened his mouth. Michael had set about adding water to the teapot to get another cup out of it for Jean, feeling so angry and miserable that his hands shook. He had calmed himself down so that he could take Jean her tea without her seeing the state he was in, but he need not have worried. She had been so dopey- just sleepy, Michael tried to tell himself- that she would not have noticed anyway. Back downstairs again he realised that he would have to get a grip on himself if he were to accomplish the tasks he had set himself for the day. He had no choice but to concentrate on those. It was not possible to deal with so many dangers all together; selling the stuff that he had already put in the van, getting cash and buying food were as much as he could cope with. In fact, an agenda of such complexity and risk was beginning to fill him with the kind of depression that in the old days would have immobilised him for a week. Because it was risky: driving the untaxed, uninsured, un-MOT’d van into Bath, selling to Mr David, shopping openly with a large sum of cash. Any one or all of them could go wrong. If something did, if the van were spotted, if Mr David (always of uncertain temper and sometimes malicious) screwed him over, then Michael’s entire new life would fold in upon itself and disappear.

Michael had never developed the habit of anticipating too closely the consequences of his actions, beyond taking the usual steps to avoid immediate chaos. He had never been convinced that anything he might do could be important enough to have consequences that would matter that much. That had changed. With the knowledge that he now had something worth keeping came a huge fear that he might lose it. He saw that what he was about to do might destroy everything, but he was also looking straight into the blank fact that he had no other options. His existence, and Steph’s and Jean’s, were at risk anyway, endangered by a simple lack of money. He could not make them safe from that without first exposing them all to other risks, and he would have to concentrate. It would not be his fault if, while he was fending off one danger, Steph was out God knows where creating others. He would deal with her next.

So when he saw Steph trudging along, head down (her mood never was reflected in the way she walked, it was always the same slow tread, hands in pockets) he thought, here it comes, the next thing. She was still making her way up between the fields. The sight of her alone, not yet within the boundary of the garden, appalled him. He watched from the window, timing it carefully until Jean had finished eating. Then, anxious not to hurry or show his fear, he took the tray and reassured Jean that everything was fine. He clattered downstairs and ran outside, his panic rising.

Steph might be making her way back, but he was not fooled. She was shaking herself loose, moving beyond and away from them. What was wrong with her, that she needed to go outside, to mix with other people? What was wrong with him, that he was tolerating it? Was she blind? As long as they lived quietly, keeping themselves to themselves, there would be no need for actual secrecy, certainly nothing as blatant as outright lying. But if other people came poking in, if other people were actually being encouraged, how long before certain things came out? God knows what she might already have told them, these people she was ‘working’ for. And who, anyway, were they? He suspected that not only did she not really know, she was so blind and trusting that she did not even recognise the importance of knowing.

She had no right to spoil everything like this. He marched down the drive to meet her. As he drew closer he broke into a run, shouting, and the noise shook a few birds out of the trees at the far side of the paddock. Steph stopped, looked up and watched them rise and fly off, in that moment realising that Michael would reach the point where she was standing within the next ten seconds, and that he was probably going to hit her. She lowered her head and waited for it to happen so that it would be over. She had no firm opinion on the matter, but it had come as a slight surprise that he was turning out to be the same as the others, after all.

Out of breath and half-sobbing, Michael grabbed her by the arms. His voice was a thin wail. ‘Jesus Christ! Isn’t it enough for you! Isn’t it enough? Don’t you see you’ll ruin it? Look at me! What’s the matter with you?’

But Steph barely raised her head.

‘What’s the matter with you! Isn’t it enough, all of us here together?’

Steph tried to pull away for a moment and then, throwing him a look of puzzlement, she cried, ‘Together? All of us? Oh sure, all of us, minus Miranda!’

Surely he would hit her now, after a remark like that.

‘Miranda’s dead,’ she said, ‘in case you’d forgotten.’

He was bound to hit her now. But Michael let go of her and wiped a hand over his face. ‘Oh, look, I only meant- Steph…’

He raised his arms as if to hug her, saw her face, and dropped them again.

‘Oh, Christ. Look- Steph, it’s… look, I know, I know. I do, honest.’

Without saying more, Steph walked on. Michael followed a few steps behind. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘it’s not all bad. I mean I’ve sorted the money. I’ve done it. We’re OK. Come on.’ He pulled at her arm and drew level. She shook herself free, but walked along beside him, at least.

‘Steph, listen, you don’t have to. You don’t have to, there’s enough money now,’ he said. ‘Please. Please don’t go back.’

‘But it’s not just the money.’ She stopped again, turned to him and shook her head. ‘It’s Charlie.’ Other words of explanation were stranded in her mouth. Her face crumpled, because she could tell from his eyes that Michael was not, after all, going to hit her, and never had been. He was frightened, that was all. But she could not help that, not now that there was Charlie. She turned away, sobbing.

‘You wait! Just wait, Michael, you’ll see!’

Then she spun past him and ran the rest of the way back to the house, where Jean was already in the kitchen wondering which of three massive joints of meat to put in the oven for supper. Steph flung herself at her and wrapped her arms round her neck.

Michael hovered in the doorway. Jean looked carefully at him over Steph’s shoulder as she patted Steph’s heaving back. She was feeling rather unsteady on her legs and Steph had nearly knocked her over, but she would have to find the strength from somewhere. Taking a deep breath, she said, ‘Oh, Michael dear. I think a drink’s called for. Would you, dear? Then we’ll all settle down and talk things over.’

And then there was Charlie. Suddenly, there he was. From that day onwards, he was ours. It was all Steph’s doing, the clever girl, and she was proud of herself for doing it, and quite right too. I was with her over Charlie right from the start, without even having to think about it. It was in her face, for one thing. The necessity of it, I mean. Charlie was, purely and simply, a necessity. He still is. When she burst into the kitchen that day, there was, I don’t know, a very important look on her face, I can’t describe it any other way. She was in need of something- exactly what, of course, I didn’t know just that minute- but she was in very serious need. I still cannot see that there is anything extreme in the idea that people should have what they need, particularly if they have had to go without it for most of their lives.

That same evening we managed to settle Michael down about it all. You know, it is amazing how much more amenable people are when they have been properly fed. I wonder less, now, at Mother’s permanent irascibility when I was growing up, remembering what we ate in that house! Mother’s meals were not just unappetising, they seemed to take more out of you than they put in. We would rise from the table debilitated, thwarted and restless; afterwards I would wash up and clear away but I could never wipe the surfaces clean of my disappointment.

So over dinner, together Steph and I persuaded Michael about Charlie. Because of course the minute she told me about her job, I saw it as clearly as she did. She began to explain it to me when we were doing the potatoes and beans together in the kitchen, while Michael was in the cellar deciding on something to go with the beef. I still feel some pride in the way I took control that evening, weak though I was myself. Because they needed me; my two young people were quite ragged with tiredness and hunger and with this matter of Charlie, so I kept them both busy and away from each other until we were at table. The little jobs I set them to were those pleasant tasks that fill the hungry waiting time and slowly transform a dining room while the cooking proceeds: replacing candles, setting out the beautiful claret glasses and the silver (we always used the dining room in the evenings, but did so that night with special ceremony), decanting the wine. I sent Steph out to pick flowers for the table and she, bless her, came back with hedgerow flowers: some late primroses, buttercups and campion. She wasn’t sure if she was meant to pick the garden flowers, she said. I point this out because that’s the sort of girl she is. Not greedy. Not inclined to assume that things are hers for the taking. But if it’s a question of necessity, well, that puts a different complexion on it. Anyway, by the time we sat down to dinner the tension had almost gone; by then we could think of little else but the food. And afterwards, such a happy atmosphere, it’s funny how you remember the details.

I have thought about this since I began to cook, and I believe that it is very much underestimated, the effect of food on one’s outlook. I do not mean just being hungry or not. I mean the very things we eat. That night we ate red meat, a great deal of it. I roasted a sirloin of beef. To begin with, the smell of rich meat like that belongs in a house like this. It made us feel optimistic and at home, although we were too hungry to feel quite happy until after we had eaten. We were so hungry that we could not wait, not with the smell of it tormenting us, so we ate our meat very, very rare. And that sort of food makes one courageous, even slightly bolshy. Perhaps it’s the blood or the chewing, something metallic that sharpens the air, an edge of steel, but that beef did something for us that another dish (poached salmon, say, just as nutritious, and delicious too) would not have done. Not an obvious summer dish, a sirloin of beef, but it was exactly what we all needed; it resisted just a little against our teeth before melting down our throats, it was so sustaining and rich, and the potatoes and vegetables were so sweet.

So, I agreed with Steph that Michael was worrying unnecessarily, because of course there would be no question of her spending her days apart from us, going off to that house in the village and staying there all day with the baby. I knew that without having to be told. She would bring Charlie here. His mother already thought she was some sort of genius with children after just one day. I gathered that Sally was getting her head round (Steph’s phrase!) the idea of going back to that job of hers, and Charlie had already slept right through the night, for the first time, the night after Steph’s very first visit. So in Sally’s eyes Steph could do no wrong, right from the off. We didn’t see a problem with her agreeing that Steph could bring him to the manor. We’d win her over with the thought of all that space, the gardens, and the pool (where of course Steph would not let go of him for so much as a second). She’d probably go along with it. And if she didn’t, how would she even know? Steph could get him back to Sally’s in good time, if need be, at the end of each day. A detail.

Bit by bit our confidence soaked into Michael, so that by the end of dinner he was as full of it as if he had mopped it up himself along with the juices on his plate. Afterwards we sat outside with glasses of brandy to watch the sunset from the terrace that faces west. It must have been the first time we had all sat there together, for we had not had many fine evenings. This was a perfect one, full of contentment, the sun such an improbable, huge, burning orange, the pinks and blues in the sky so painted-looking. Such a hazy evening sky seems to hold neither air nor colour but is like pure, liquid light just melting over empty land. Steph said it was like a Turner. She and Michael were sitting quite cuddled up by then, all happy. It did us all good to be sitting together looking outwards, beyond the boundary of our own place.

I began to wonder what we had been so frightened of. I was beginning to think we’d been a bit over the top, with all this keeping ourselves so apart, even being frightened about Michael going shopping. I said so, and it turned out they had been thinking much the same. After all, as Michael said, his trip to Bath had gone off perfectly. Steph pointed out that she had taken herself off to the village and come back not just unharmed but actually bringing us a baby boy. I said I did not want to be furtive about everything, it made me feel as if I were doing something wrong. Perhaps we did not have to be quite so cautious. Private, yes, and discreet- we were not about to fling the doors open to all and sundry- but if we were sensible and clever about it, there was no reason why we shouldn’t be a little more relaxed. Life would continue just as before. It was Steph who said oh, but it’ll be even better than before. And we agreed.

Michael had brought back a vanload of food and over the next week or so we all grew strong again. But in no time at all the need for money reared its ugly head again. We weren’t hungry any more, but we found there were other things we needed. Steph admitted that she couldn’t bear her clothes (the things she had from my wardrobe were, in truth, much too old for her, and she was tired of borrowing Michael’s shirts). She wanted to make herself something to wear, she said, and it wouldn’t be expensive. That’s fair enough, she’s young, and these things matter especially if you’re pretty, as Steph is. Her shape had changed, so she needed things that were looser. She had noticed that we had lots and lots of white sheets made of real linen, scores more than we ever used, and white linen would be just right for summer clothes and she knew how to make what she wanted. She didn’t even need a pattern, she said, just thread and a few buttons and a sewing machine.

Well, we hunted high and low for a sewing machine, even in the attics, but there wasn’t one. I thought it odd, but there you are. Although our money situation was much better, with what Steph was earning and with my rise in salary, we still did not have the wherewithal for big purchases like that. Never mind then, Steph said, but we could tell she was disappointed, and it was such a modest request. So Michael and I surprised her. One day when she thought he had just gone shopping for food, he came back with her sewing machine. I had told him, you see, to take a pretty little brocade-covered button back chair from one of the other bedrooms, and a pair of watercolours of Venice, and get what he could for them. It’s marvellous, our sewing machine. You can even do embroidery on it. Steph was delighted and said she would learn how to sew CHARLIE in big letters, and customise all his T-shirts, but in fact she’s never got round to it. But she set to work on the linen sheets while I minded Charlie. (Charlie, even if I say so myself, took to me from the start, and even though I couldn’t feed him myself, he was very happy in my care.) Steph worked quickly, so that after only a day or two she had made some pairs of pyjama-like trousers and simple tops, a wrap-round skirt and some dresses. Everything was loose and summery, draping and elegant, in simple shapes and layers that allowed her to move easily and gracefully. Michael could hardly take his eyes off her. But she only wore her linen clothes here, never to fetch and return Charlie. She wore a sort of uniform of navy trousers and floral blouses for going outside.

Steph got used to arriving at Sally’s to find both her and Charlie in a state of fractious semi-undress. During the first week she had walked into the house each day eating a bar of chocolate that she bought from the village shop on her way past. (She very soon got, with her chocolate and her change, a ‘you all right, then?’ from the man in the shop, whose name was Bill. And as a regular customer she was no longer invited to buy the bargain tent, which was still for sale.) But very soon Steph sensed that her chocolate-stopped mouth diminished her authority in Sally’s eyes and, more importantly, she realised that authority over Sally was going to be the key to success. So she left the chocolate in her pocket for later and walked in smiling, pulling Charlie from Sally’s hip or lifting him from whichever location he had been dumped in while Sally tried to organise herself. Without speaking, she would fill and switch on the kettle, and then she would track down whatever it was that Sally was at that moment most frantic about not having immediately to hand: often her keys, the briefcase, her diary, a pair of tights, her other shoe. On bad days, it could be her first cup of coffee, the vital papers she had been working on last night, a tampon, and once, a new bottle of shampoo (it being, apparently, a surprise to the dripping, naked Sally that the bottle she had finished the day before and left in the shower was still empty the next). Then Steph would shoo Sally upstairs (or better, out of the door, on days when she was halfway ready to leave on time) and settle in a kitchen chair to feed Charlie, always ready to whisk him away from the breast and plug his astonished mouth with the bottle if she heard Sally begin her clattering and swearing descent down the uncarpeted stairs. When the door had finally closed behind her, Steph would keep the smile on her face until she heard Sally’s car start up and drive away.

At the end of the day Steph would be waiting, still smiling, when Sally banged in shouting that she was bloody knackered, dumping her briefcase, bag, keys and usually also carrier bags of shopping in the hall, and walking out of her shoes on the way into the kitchen. Charlie would be bathed, in a clean sleep suit, and fed; Steph always placed an empty, apparently drained bottle of formula on the table next to her elbow. Steph would rise, sit Sally down, deliver Charlie into her lap, make her a cup of coffee and, because Sally usually asked her to, pour her a glass of wine as well. If not actually asleep, Charlie would be sleepy enough not to mind how his mother’s arrival shattered the peace, and would drop off gratifyingly in her arms.

Steph was pleased that she did not have to say very much at the end of the day, beyond confirming that Charlie had been ‘absolutely fine’. In between slurps of coffee and wine, Sally would talk as if she had been forcibly gagged for hours, throwing out what sounded to Steph quite manic and incomprehensible details of the day’s confrontations: with colleagues, clients, pedestrians, idiots in shops, but also with machinery- chiefly computers and telephones- as well as the traffic and the weather. Although neither of them realised it, it was Steph’s very stillness that stimulated Sally into such torrents of speech. Because just in case there were something judgmental in Steph’s silence, Sally filled it with authoritative babble about how impossible life was and how she was managing to overcome its many obstacles. It sounded simply like an impassioned and colourful account of Sally’s heroic daily struggle with a world hostile to intelligent, well-qualified lone mothers, but the implication was that this was a struggle that a humble childminder knew little of and would be unequal to, and so had no cause to be smug about. Into her patronising commentary Sally continued to drop expletives and throwaway revelations so personal that Steph was further robbed of any power to reply. But Steph, though she did not become more talkative, grew not to mind. Sally seemed to speak this way to other people too, she learned, when Sally, answering the telephone and blaring down it (obviously in reply to a polite enquiry about how she was), gave more information about her cystitis than Steph could imagine anyone would need to know, then returned to the kitchen and reported that that had been her father-in-law, miserable uptight bugger.

It was while we were turning the place upside down looking for a sewing machine that Michael came across the silver picture frames that I’d torn the photographs out of in January. After I’d burned the pictures I’d put the frames away and hardly thought of them. He said we ought to have some of our own family pictures, and of course he was right. So he sold more of the old books and bought a digital camera. I had no idea what was meant by digital (I still don’t) but Michael laughed and said it was all done by computers and that he didn’t even need film! Sure enough he spent a couple of sunny afternoons taking pictures and he actually developed them in the study. I’d always thought you needed a dark-room. Michael did explain- he said he was new to it himself but if you spend a bit of time on a computer it’s amazing how fast you pick it up and in any case the computer tells you what buttons to press half the time- but the details escape me. I’ll never understand it. There were some lovely shots of Charlie and Steph, the garden, and even some not bad ones of me. You don’t notice how you change until you see a photo of yourself, do you? All that hair I have now! It has grown bushy as well as white and thick, but I fancy it suits me. When I noticed my hair in those photos I thought back to that night in the cellar and the label on the wine bottle, and saw how far I had come in a few months. Steph had taken some pictures of Michael, too; so we are all there, somewhere or other; the pictures are all still here, in their frames, all over the house. Steph and I had great fun trimming them for the frames and sticking them up all round the place. The very best one of Charlie was too big for any of the frames, though. That’s the one that’s still on the door of the fridge, under a toy magnet shaped like a carrot that Michael picked up at the garden centre.

Oh, yes- the garden centre. Well, I had begun to think seriously again about a tree for Miranda’s grave. In fact that was another thing. It became easier to talk of Miranda. We all learned how, even Steph, we helped each other, persevering even when it was difficult. Not that we can ever speak of her casually or without longing, even to this day. Still when her name is mentioned, more often than not one or another of us weeps. But there is a certain sweetness in that. We learned to speak of her often, always fondly and sadly, and one day I told them about my idea of a tree. They both said very firmly that I should have it. There was a rather florid Edwardian dinner service that we none of us cared for and agreed we could spare. We never used it, preferring the very thin, plain white porcelain. So I got my tree. I sent Michael off to the garden centre with careful instructions and he brought back a very large magnolia that we planted all together.

Michael had been amazed by the garden centre. It turned out he had never been to one before (well, why would he, with no garden?) and it was a revelation, all those tender shoots, just waiting to be put in the ground and allowed to thrive. He thought he would like to plant a proper vegetable garden. Everything he needed was there, he would only have to buy the seedlings and put them in. I can see it now, how his face was shining. He was already taking a pride in this garden, which existed at that point only in his mind. It was yet to be planted, but just the idea of keeping us supplied with fruit and vegetables for the summer made him proud. I at once encouraged it, so he picked out some more things we could do without (I left it to him this time to choose what- I knew he would be sensible). I believe it was more furniture from the bedrooms. He filled the walled garden with row upon row of fresh, bright little plants, and he tended them every day. There was no end to the care he took with them, and he kept the lawns cut and the flowerbeds tidy, too. We were all in a kind of heaven- not sitting about on clouds, you understand, but busy doing things that made us happy.

I do not think we were ever afraid that it might not last, but perhaps we were half-expecting that somebody would come and try to spoil it. I do know that we acted extremely quickly to stop Shelley.

The weather grew warmer. One morning Sally told Steph, unnecessarily, to be sure to put on Charlie’s sunblock, which Steph took as approval in principle that she might take Charlie out and about in the pushchair. That evening Steph told Sally that she had taken Charlie up to the manor to ‘meet my aunt’, omitting to mention that Charlie had, in fact, spent every single day there so far. The following day, Steph made a point of saying that she had taken Charlie there again and that he had enjoyed the walk up the drive, and she brought back a lemon cake for Sally ‘with best wishes from my aunt. She’s great at cakes’. After that Steph filled a vase with buttercups that, she explained, Charlie had been charmed to see growing in one of the manor paddocks. The next day she reported how ‘my aunt’ had been reading his baby books with him. Then Steph had a brainwave.

The following day, instead of taking Charlie up to the manor, she got Michael to come down to the house after Sally had left. Together they blitzed the place, resisting the temptation to throw most of Sally’s junk away, instead cleaning round it and tidying it into more rational arrangements. That evening Sally arrived home not just to the silent, smiling Steph and a bathed, fed and sweet-tempered Charlie, but also to a pine-scented and gleaming house. It was still cluttered, but there were at least enough clean surfaces to allow her to walk in and put her things down without having to move other things first, and then find places (by shifting other things) for those things she had picked up in order to make room for the things she had come home with. She seemed slightly confused by the tidiness, but grateful. She even offered Steph a glass of wine but Steph, anxious to get home and feeling fairly sure that she was unlikely to enjoy the Cфtes du Rhфne that Sally was uncorking, declined, and slipped off.

‘Sally,’ Steph said the next morning, ‘you don’t mind me taking Charlie up to the manor, do you? I thought it’d be nice to have him up there and save messing up the house. Now it’s all nice, shame to get it all, you know.’

‘No, I don’t mind, you take him, it’s fine,’ Sally said, slightly absently, looking round the kitchen. The wine bottle she had emptied the night before stood on the draining board. ‘But he does live here. I mean I’m really grateful, but we don’t want things so perfect we can’t touch them, do we? I’m not bringing him up in a bloody sterile environment, after all. Am I?’ She began picking through a basket of onions to find her car keys. ‘Maybe I should pop up there one day, you know, just to see he’s settled. I’d like to meet your aunt, anyway.’

Steph had been expecting this. I’m going to check up on where he is all day and who he’s with is what you really mean, she thought. Jean had suggested that any half-normal mother would want to do that.

‘Oh, yeah, right,’ she said. ‘My aunt was saying she’d like to meet you, meet Charlie’s mum. She said suppose you take us up there in the car one morning and drop us off, on your way to work?’

‘Well, we could do. It’s in the other direction. We’d have to be out of here half an hour earlier,’ Sally said, her interest waning.

‘OK. I’ll tell her you’ll be up tomorrow then, OK?’

‘What? Oh fine, yes, tell her that’s fine.’

‘Glad you like the spring-clean, anyway. Nice to have it a bit clearer, isn’t it?’

‘Oh yes, but I mean in a way, now it is a bit better, it seems a shame not to be here a bit more.’

‘Oh no, of course, I didn’t mean-’ Was it all going to backfire? Steph thought fast, and delivered her masterstroke. ‘It’s just- well, I think Charlie likes to see new faces. You know. He likes my auntie. He gets tons of attention up there, you see.’

‘Oh, yes, yes. Oh, where are my keys? Steph, have you seen my fucking keys?’

‘Here they are. Anyway, I think the stimulation’s really good for him. You know, especially when he doesn’t see very much of you. You know, when he doesn’t see you all day. And with him being an only.’

The next day Sally drove them up to the manor, cursing at the early start. Jean came out to meet them in the drive, shook hands with Sally and invited her in. Sally refused coffee, spent all of five minutes in the kitchen where one end had already been transformed into Charlie’s play area, smiled and said she must be off. Jean saw her back to her car, chatting amiably. When she returned, she and Steph exchanged a look. Jean put plates to warm and made a pot of coffee while Steph, with Charlie on her hip, laid the table. After another minute or two, just to be cautious in case Sally came roaring back up the drive for any reason, they called to Michael, who had been waiting upstairs, and then they sat down to the breakfast that Jean had ready in the oven. That was all it took.

I’ve gone woefully off the point, because looking back a few pages I see I didn’t get to the end of the Mr Hapgood story. He took Father’s clock away and stored it at the back of the shop. He reported that he had found out that it was a Vulliamy clock of 1788. Unfortunately, however, it had only a number (169) rather than the maker’s signature, indicating that it wasn’t among his best work. He showed me all this, how the number 169 wasn’t engraved on the backplate along with a signature like the finest examples, but punch struck on the reverse of the brass bob at the base of the pendulum, somewhere inconspicuous. It would have been signed if it had been a superior clock, he said, but it was still an attractive piece and could be worth as much as Ј150. It seemed an awful lot for a clock, I said. But inside I was thinking it didn’t sound like enough to go to university for three years. I hoped I was wrong. I hadn’t looked into it. Although Mother had rallied, a little- she had been up and about quite a bit in fact, supervising the people putting in her downstairs bathroom- it still hadn’t seemed the right time to raise it with her, the question of me leaving home. Did I say, it was always difficult to talk in that house? It was no easier with Father gone. With him gone there were no more kind little blinks or never-mind looks between us when Mother’s back was turned. So I didn’t broach the subject.

Mr Hapgood went on to say that it was very important to find the right buyer. Why didn’t I ask what he meant? I don’t know why, except that he made it sound as if I should already know, or as if there were a sort of buyer who was ‘right’ in some way over and above wanting the clock and having the money for it. He said that even though he himself wasn’t in the ‘mainstream antiques business’ I had done the right thing in coming to him, because he would see me right. For a start I wouldn’t be having to pay an ‘extortionate dealer’s premium’. I didn’t ask what that meant, either. But it might take a little while to find ‘the right buyer’, however, and he suggested that I pop in once or twice a week to see if there was any progress to report.

So I did. I must have been living in some fug that stopped me barely noticing, let alone minding, that there at the back of the shop, in the drowsy oil-stove heat, he always had more tea for me than progress to report, and soon a lot more cuddles than tea, and before long he said we were very good at comforting each other and cheering each other up, and could get even better. Soon enough his hands had been everywhere and I was confused by the way he seemed both a little impatient if I showed any reluctance, but at the same time pleased with me. He was gradual, and clever with his hands. So by the time he took my hand and put it down his trousers and made me keep it there, I was at the very least curious. And on the day he unbuttoned himself and showed me everything, I was almost as ready as he was to go (as he said, brandishing it) the whole hog. The whole hog did not take long, and was carried out in silence except for the creaking of the rickety old sofa. I remember thinking it was the sofa that was taking the brunt, because I felt in a curious way rather out of it and at a distance. Then Mr Hapgood was saying I should be on my way and I remember the slipperiness and the smell like raw potato that I thought was me, so that I was embarrassed and only too ready to go.

These days it would be called abuse, of course. But it was what he did later that still seems to me infinitely worse.

In the third week of May Michael unlocked the door at the back of the low stone pavilion by the pool. Old, trapped summer air poured out, peppery and slightly damp. White cotton curtains had been drawn against the French windows on the far side, so he crossed the room through the milky light and pulled them apart, finding the material just slightly tacky under his fingers. A few dead flies stuck in old webs in the curtain folds spun with the sudden movement; one or two fell and clicked faintly on the floor. He opened the French windows, strolled out onto the stone terrace, from which shallow blue steps led down into the water, and made his way to the end of the pool. Slowly he turned the handle at one end of the horizontal spindle that stretched the width of the poolside, and wound in the winter cover. After its last edge had been pulled free and was hanging dripping from the spindle, Michael crouched down and dipped his hand in the water. It was extremely cold, and the level of the water was lower than he expected, but he was surprised at how clean it looked.

Turning back on his bare feet, he could feel as soon as he reentered the pavilion that the sun was already striking the terracotta tiles of the floor and stirring up the faint reek of warming earth. Michael’s body tingled as he breathed it in. He liked the way the smell seemed to come to him almost through the soles of his feet. It was both fresh and fertile, so new, and made him think of earthy things that were workaday and practical, the slap of water over clay, human sweat, and the later, sweet baking of the sun on bricks and tiles. Yet the smell carried in it also a dank note, a threat from the sour underground it came from. Heavily and inexpressibly ancient, it was also lifeless, and although dead, it was at the same time so darkly erotic that Michael felt simultaneously animated and destabilised. It was not an unpleasant feeling. He smiled, thinking of Steph, picturing her unpeeled from her solid nursing bra and engrossed in the steady nursing of Charlie. She had become capable and authoritative on every practical detail of childcare and breastfeeding but if, when Charlie was nuzzled up and sucking from her, her attention would wander, a look of such distant, private sensuality would come over her face that Michael would find himself staring like a voyeur. Watching her made him feel quite helplessly joyful, as well as aroused. She did not seem to mind.

But the matter in hand was to get the pool working, and first he had to locate the machinery. He was hopeful that there would be some sort of instruction book that would tell him what to do, but if there wasn’t he had another idea. It would be well within his capabilities to ring up a pool maintenance outfit, posing as Oliver Standish-Cave of course, and get somebody round to do it for him. The idea rather appealed to him, in fact he had already rehearsed the mock-exasperation he would express at being ‘just hopeless I’m afraid’ at this kind of thing himself, and ‘a bit too snowed under to see to it personally’. But both Jean and Steph had looked worried when he had suggested it, and it would be, he had to admit, intensely satisfying to manage such an unfamiliar job by himself. He could see the admiration in their eyes already. He had discovered since coming here not just that he had a definite practical streak but that there was pleasure in having something to accomplish; he liked having a few projects on the go. So although his mind was quite ready to take him off further into his reverie, perhaps to the mental picture of Steph and Charlie naked in the water together, he turned his attention back to the place where he was standing.

Most of the room had been made into a space for lounging around in and was furnished in a kind of green and faded English garden style that he imagined Jean would like. Steph would like it less; perhaps once she had finished the nursery mural (she had said this morning that it would be ready by the end of the day, and was up there now painting, while Jean looked after Charlie) she might fancy doing something here. Something to do with water would be better than these white walls with prints of ferns, he thought, looking round at the bamboo sofas with their white and green cushions.

Against one wall, set into a long, white-painted kitchen unit, stood a sink with worktops on each side. A row of glass-fronted cupboards, containing nothing but ice buckets and tumblers, was fixed along the wall above. On either side of the cupboards were two identical doors. Through one he found a large, neglected bathroom with corroded taps and chilly white tiles covering the floor and walls. The other door led into a bare, stone room like a scullery where the pool machinery was installed. Here, on a shelf next to several tubs and bags of chemical-looking cleaners, Michael found what he was looking for: a damp notebook with the words Pool Maintenance Checklist on it, and a colour brochure entitled Enjoy Your Pool. He picked them up, returned to the green and white room, stretched himself out along one of the sofas and began to read.

It turned out to be quite complicated, but with the book in his hand Michael eventually identified the pump, filters, motors and heater. He cleared out the valves and pump head, charged the filters with water, primed the filter pump and checked for leaks. Back outside he re-installed the water surface skimmer baskets and, following the measurements prescribed, gave the water a dose of chlorine. Then he tested and adjusted the alkalinity and calcium levels. He felt like Einstein.

It was while he was hosing down the paving round the pool that he heard a shout from Jean. Looking up, he saw that she was approaching across the grass, moving as fast as she could, and if she had not been holding Charlie she would have been waving her arms. Her hair had shaken free of its clasp and the few clumps of it that Charlie had not managed to grasp in his fists flew out behind her. Her usual serenity had vanished, not a vestige of poise remained; she was jabbering and distraught- only a few jerking steps away, it seemed to Michael, from complete breakdown. Just then Charlie, jiggled almost insensible by the dash across from the house, got enough breath back to start up with a high-pitched, bewildered bleating. Michael dropped the hose, turned off the tap on the wall and strode towards them across the grass. He took Charlie from her a little roughly, which upset him even more. He pulled round from Michael’s arms and stretched back to Jean, wailing louder. His confused eyes scanned the space around and behind, looking for Steph, and then he arched his back and screamed. His brown arms pumped up and down in rage. Jean was shouting incoherently above him, but Michael was too busy struggling to get a better hold of the writhing Charlie and keep his face clear of his waving fists to hear what she was saying.

But how, he was managing to wonder, how had this happened? Two minutes ago he had been calmly working on the pool. He had left Jean a little over two hours ago, baking bread in the kitchen while Charlie gurgled and watched her from his reclining seat, happily flinging his rabbit to the floor from time to time. Steph had been painting upstairs and presumably still was; she would be up a ladder, humming to herself and too far away to hear that once again their peace had been obliterated. How? What had gone wrong this time? Why could they not be left alone?

‘Come on, sit down. Sit here on the grass and tell me what’s the matter,’ he said, in his most coping voice, pulling her down. He set Charlie gently on the grass and Charlie, perhaps bamboozled by being plonked in yet another unexpected location, stopped crying and stared up at the sky instead.

‘What’s up, then?’ Michael was managing to sound calm, but oddly, he realised that he was not just putting on the right voice, it actually was his voice, and he really did feel the way he sounded. Jean needed him to be this way. Whatever the matter was, he would put it right for her.

Jean was rocking to and fro on the grass. ‘I’ve just had a call. From Town and Country, the agency, the house sitting people.’ She raised frantic eyes to Michael. ‘I don’t know what to do! Shelley’s coming. Shelley, she runs the agency, she says she’s on her way. Here! I couldn’t stop her!’ She buried her face in her hands and moaned. Charlie, kicking on the grass, gurgled and gave a short wail.

‘Oh, Christ. Christ, when?’

‘Now! In about an hour. She phoned from the car- she said she wrote and gave me the date and to tell her if there was any problem with it. She said, “Well, Jean, since you didn’t object I assumed it was fine, and now I’ve scheduled it in”!’

‘But did she? Write and give you the date?’

Jean burst into loud sobs. ‘I don’t know! You know what we’re like! We don’t bother with the post anymore, it’s never for us. I ignore it, I just shove it in the library desk, I hardly look at it!’

‘Oh Christ.’ Michael got to his feet and stood looking round wildly.

‘Michael, I tried to stop her, I really did. I said I’d be out, but she just said that’s why she was ringing, to make sure I’d be here. Oh, Michael!’

‘But why? Did you ask her why she’s coming?’

‘I couldn’t! She’s so definite and so, I don’t know, so official. I couldn’t exactly demand to know. I did say, oh you’ve never done that before, visited when I’m doing an assignment, and she said it was a new company policy, it was all in the letter. Oh Michael, I don’t believe her! She knows! She knows, and she’s coming to spoil everything! She’ll ruin everything!’

‘Oh no, she won’t,’ Michael said quietly. He took a few steps away, leaving Jean sitting on the grass. He had to think. Crying softly, Jean collected her hair and twisted it anxiously into a tight bundle at the back of her head. Then she picked Charlie up from the grass and rocked him gently as his little voice creaked in unconvincing half-complaint.

Michael turned away, trying to think, but found himself considering the house, wondering for one wild second if it might be looking back at him. It never changed in itself, but he liked the way it wore the changing colours of the light so transparently, remaining always the same behind them however varying the cloaks of certain times of the day or year. Though the hours and seasons changed, the light this summer must be the same as in summers past, and come the next one after this, it would be no different. In the early afternoon in summertime, the same warming light would glow on these walls, always like this.

Now the sun was slanting across the stone tiles of the roof and glancing off the glass of the upper windows. Light fell and dappled the wall behind the wisteria whose boughs hung in their motionless, frozen writhing as they had done for hundreds of years. Perhaps in the droop of the leaves there was a touch of complacency that flowers would come again next year and every year after that, and that time would bleach the colour from them by such tiny degrees that the blossom would not so much lose its purple as grow graciously towards whiteness, as if acquiring dust. And while the wisteria would flower with or without Michael’s attention, he felt that his admiration was somehow necessary; it was as if he were being shown some important small treasure that lay in the scooped palm of the house, something fragile and elusive in this play of light and shadow on flowers and leaves, of summer sunlight on stone. He must not neglect the privilege.

It seemed that with the same slow, quiet skill of insinuation that bound the wisteria to its walls, this house had woven itself in and among them- Jean, Steph, himself, even Charlie- had gathered them all in towards itself and to one another, and it seemed also that whole centuries of summers and winters were caught in along with them, trapped, stilled, and kept tight in its web. The house seemed to be saying, do not struggle, and do not move from here. Every important thing that ever was, or could be, is here. Like you, it is held in the very stone, it lies under the brushstrokes of the pictures on the walls, it sits on the pages of books and is woven in with every thread. It grows in the garden, is warmed in the sunlight, rests in the darkness. Stay.

Of course. How could he ever have doubted it? He returned across the grass and crouched down next to Jean. She looked up. Her eyes were still frantic.

‘Michael?’

Michael said, ‘Shelley- she can’t know. How could she? Tell me exactly what she said.’

‘She said they were introducing Management Visits. A friendly drop-in, she said, just to see there are no problems.’

She began to cry again. Michael got up, swung Charlie up into his arms and helped Jean to her feet.

‘Oh Michael, what are we going to do?’

‘You’re not to worry. We’ll do whatever we have to.’ He looked back at the house. ‘We’re staying.’

Jean came out from the back of the house at the sound of Shelley’s car on the gravel, patting her tidied hair and intending to give the impression that she knew her place and never used the front door. She had an idea that Shelley would notice and appreciate that sort of observance. But all of Shelley’s attention was concentrated on heaving herself out of the hot car. She moved with a sense of grievance, as if she were being made to carry a weight that she considered privately was heavier than anything she should reasonably be expected to shift. As she straightened up, puffing herself into composure, she took in the courtyard, stables, outbuildings and the front of the house. She gave a breathy whistle.

‘Oo-ooh. Well Jean, you’ve landed on your feet here, haven’t you?’ she said. She made a face. ‘Look at all this. Just your thing, I should say. Very cut above.’

Jean winced as her words rang round and bounced off the walls of the courtyard. She had forgotten how loud Shelley’s voice was.

‘I didn’t get a chance to tell you,’ she said, ‘on the phone. There are other people here. I tried to tell you on the phone but I didn’t get a chance and then all of a sudden you’d gone. The owner’s cousin’s here.’

‘Oh? Nothing was said about that.’ Shelley drew herself up. ‘In fact, Jean, nothing’s been said, period. You’re meant to ring in once a month.’

‘No, well,’ Jean said.

‘Slipping down on the details, we don’t like it.’

‘Yes, but-’

‘No way do I like slipping down on the details, Jean. Not in this company. You’re getting paid to take sole responsibility, and now you’re saying- oh sugar.’ A rising burble of Yankee Doodle Dandy was sounding from inside her bag. She fumbled and found the mobile phone and began to prod at it with fingers too large for the tiny keys.

‘It’s the office.’ Shelley cast her eyes heavenwards. Jean took her chance to wander off a distance while Shelley shouted at the caller. The ringing of the mobile phone was silently noted by each of them as proof of a slight superiority over the other.

Shelley rang off, turned to Jean and made another face. ‘Sorry about that! Sometimes they do need to access me. Technology!’

Jean had stooped to pull at a few weeds among the catmint and pansies that grew in one of the stone troughs on the edge of the gravel. She jammed the small green clump into her dress pocket. How stupid of her. Had it looked proprietorial, lifting weeds like that?

‘Oh, never mind. It doesn’t matter to me, I assure you.’

‘It was just the office. They needed my input on a decision.’

‘I see. Do you want to come in?’ Jean set off to lead the way round to the back.

‘So who did you say was here?’

‘The owner’s cousin, that’s all. It doesn’t make any difference. I’m still doing the job. I’m still house sitting, they’re just relations, they’re just staying for a while. It doesn’t bother me, them being here. In fact, I quite like the company.’ She wondered if she were saying too much. Where on earth was Michael?

Just then he called out from behind them and they turned to see him appear from the front door. He sauntered out of the house towards them, his arms folded. He was wearing old khaki shorts and a soft, floppy shirt and sandals. He had tipped his tattered straw hat back on his head but it was still obvious that he needed a haircut. His dark hair gleamed blue-black in the sun and his fringe flopped in his eyes. Pushing his hair away with one hand he beamed a friendly, nonchalant smile and advanced, extending one hand.

‘Well, gosh, how do you do? Umm- Michael Standish-Cave,’ he said slowly, with what Jean thought was unnecessary languor. ‘You’re the famous Shelley from the agency, I gather? Down for a visit? Good for you!’

‘I, er… the agency, we weren’t aware that there would be any other occupants in residence during the agreed period. Our client-’

‘Oh, um, yes, occupants in residence,’ Michael said, carelessly amused. ‘Good old Oliver. He came up trumps, and thank God, quite frankly. I’m his cousin, by the way. On our fathers’ side, obviously.’

‘Mr Standish-Cave hadn’t made us aware-’

‘No, of course, well, we weren’t aware ourselves. We did just rather descend, I’m afraid, Oliver said not to hesitate. We’re between flats, actually. I knew Oliver’s place was empty so I just rang him up. I admit I was rather relying on him to come to the rescue, don’t know what else we’d have done quite frankly. He said oh, go straight on down and make yourselves at home, only for God’s sake ring the house sitter first and tell her you’re coming or she’ll have a fit!’

He turned and laughed at Jean, who laughed decorously in reply. ‘I must say it’s grand to be out of town in the summer! And she took it jolly well, didn’t you, an invasion of Standish-Caves!’ He turned to Shelley. ‘She’s doing an awfully good job, you know.’

‘An invasion?’

But Michael had started to lead the way down the path between the rose beds and Jean rather delicately dropped back and allowed him to. He was striding along rather fast now. Behind Jean, Shelley struggled along last with a lumpy shoulder bag on one arm and a ladylike black briefcase in the other. There was another volley of Yankee Doodle Dandy, which Shelley this time silenced with a couple of exasperated stabs. Jean turned and watched her. She was wearing low-fronted black shoes with heels like short pencils, which gave the impression that her thick legs ended in hooves. With each step her foot sank deep into the gravel, so she was taking dainty little steps, as if doing so would somehow make her lighter. The effect was of a cow trying to tiptoe.

‘An invasion? I mean, Jean, she- How many are there, here, I mean?’

Michael turned and walked backwards without slowing down, as he called back to her, now several yards behind, ‘Oh, just the three! My missus, and Charlie, that’s the son and heir, five months. But we’ll be gone in another week. I say, you’re not wearing the right shoes for the country, are you? Poor you!’

He stopped and waited with his hands on his hips, grinning. ‘Course, we wouldn’t have been stuck in the first place without a roof over our heads but God, decorators! They’re on another planet, aren’t they? Three weeks behind already. Here we are!’ He was steering Shelley through the back door into the kitchen. ‘Gosh, you do look hot!’ he beamed.

Jean silently filled the kettle, watching Shelley out of the corner of her eye. Michael was right. Shelley’s suit was made of something that sparkled very slightly in the sun and was of a light sage green colour. Two thick slices of dark green, like watermelon skins, grinned beneath her armpits. With a tinkle of her bracelet she lifted one hand to move her frizzy hair, which today was sticking to her scalp like clumps of damp wire. Her round face had started to ooze like a carelessly kept cheese. Jean disliked Shelley enough to feel a sharp and unworthy pleasure that she looked such a mess. In fact, it was more than that, Jean realised, with a slight shock, as she set about making tea. Her pleasure stemmed not just from Shelley’s wrecked appearance but from watching her in the role of underdog. Michael had taken up his customary place with his back to the Aga, where he stood with his hands on the rail.

‘Do sit down, Kell- er… Shelley,’ he said graciously, gesturing to a chair.

Shelley sat down, confused. She had stepped out of her car very clear about who was in charge. Of course the owner could invite whomsoever he pleased to use his house in his absence, but the balance was upset. He was under no obligation to do so, but Mr Standish-Cave had not had the courtesy to inform Town and Country that his cousin and family would be appearing out of the blue, and Shelley felt undermined. ‘She’s doing an awfully good job, you know.’ That was plain cheeky. It was her place, not his (cousin or not), to comment on how well Jean was fulfilling her duties. This cousin was behaving almost as if he owned the place, and while everyone seemed quite clear that he did not, he had been invited to treat it as if he did, and by the owner. Did that amount to much the same thing? It was confusing.

Shelley looked up at him, his lanky, relaxed body towering above her, and an affable, head-of-household grin on his face. He was being friendly, of course, but she knew that sort of friendliness. He was as status-conscious as she was, friendly only for as long as it cost him no effort. They both knew that at any moment he could decide that it no longer amused him to be charming to her, and could switch the tone of their exchanges to one as if between employer and employee. And Management Visit or not, employees cannot insist on making tours of their employers’ premises. Shelley tightened her mouth and breathed noisily through her nose. Jean was no help. True to character, she was flitting about in the background setting out cups and saucers with that sly smile of hers. Jean was either slow and superior in an unassuming way, or unassuming in a slow and superior way; Shelley had never quite decided which. But now that she looked at her properly, she could see that Jean had changed. Shelley reached into her bag for her inhaler and took several puffs.

Jean said, ‘So, these spot checks you’re doing. They’re a new thing, are they?’

‘Management Visits,’ Shelley corrected her. ‘You’ve grown your hair, haven’t you? I knew there was something different about you.’

As she expected it to, this caused Jean a little embarrassment. She was the sort of tight old spinster who would always prefer not to have any attention drawn to herself, least of all if it concerned her appearance, and Shelley was the sort of person who made a point of ignoring such outdated and inexplicable preferences. Nonetheless there was something different about Jean. ‘Or is it your dress? Nice to have a change from separates. It’s not Marks, is it? Very unusual colour. I’ve never had you down as a yellow person.’

‘It’s not yellow,’ Jean said, weak with offence, ‘it’s old gold.’ She lifted a hand to her throat. ‘l don’t wear it very often, only in this weather…’

Just then Michael lunged forward from his station in front of the Aga. With a terrifying cry of ’Haaaaaa!’ he dived towards them and banged his hand down hard on the table, just inches from Shelley’s elbow. The table shuddered. Shelley’s hands flew up to her face and for a moment both women stared at him, wide-eyed and speechless.

‘Gosh, close thing. That,’ he said cheerfully, ‘was an earwig. Making a beeline for your sleeve, Shelley. Lucky I saw it!’ He dusted his hands together and returned to the Aga rail.

‘I gather they can give quite a nasty nip,’ said Jean, smooth and smiling now. Clever Michael. She poured out three cups of tea and pushed one across the table to Shelley. ‘It must have been hiding in the roses.’

‘I hate the fuckers, don’t you?’ Michael asked, conversationally.

‘Ugh. Yuck,’ Shelley said, in Jean’s direction. She realised that she could not openly complain about being ‘subjected’ to ‘language’, and was pretending instead not to have heard him. She took a sip of her tea, noting with dismay that it was Earl Grey, and looked with suspicion at the jug of roses on the table. They were already overblown and Michael’s sudden mad attack had caused several of the heavy-headed flowers to moult even more petals onto the table. The drooping, denuded remains in the jug were now surrounded by a moat of curling, pink and yellow velvet discs.

‘That’s the trouble with garden flowers. You end up bringing in all sorts,’ she asserted.

‘Jean does all the flowers,’ Michael said. ‘Don’t you, Jean? Jean, is there any of your cinnamon and honey cake left? She makes the most marvellous cinnamon and honey cake, you know.’

‘Oh, really? Not for me,’ Shelley said, ‘thank you very much.’ She gave a professional cough, signalling that she was ready to start ignoring Michael. Quite where she stood in relation to him she could not work out, but she was a busy woman with a job to do and she would not be deflected from it any longer. She cleared her throat again, and reached down for her briefcase.

‘Jean, there’s a short questionnaire I’m required to go through with you, it won’t take long. This is your opportunity to voice any issues or concerns.’

‘Issues and concerns? Wouldn’t I just have told you if I’d had any?’ Jean asked mildly. ‘Issues and concerns?’ She repeated the words with suspicion. ‘I haven’t got any, anyway. Everything’s going fine.’

‘I’ll say!’ Michael chimed in. He had found the tin with Jean’s cake in it and cut off a large lump. ‘Sure I can’t tempt you?’ he offered Shelley, lifting up his fistful of cake and pointing to it with the other hand.

Shelley smiled and shook her head. Because she had scoffed a Kit Kat in the car this morning, she had skipped lunch and was now starving, but she always felt it looked better to refuse anything offered between meals. Looking back at Jean, she said, ‘But it can be useful, can’t it, to identify issues and concerns in the first place? That’s good management practice, pure and simple.’

She had arranged a stapled sheaf of papers in front of her. Next to that she placed her mobile telephone and personal organiser. She now popped the top off a pen.

‘Now there was that breakage for a start, wasn’t there? You never did supply the details, Jean, though I do remember we asked. So if you’d just get the inventory, we can action that one, for a start.’ She smiled efficiently.

Jean’s mind swam. ‘I kept the bits,’ she said, hopelessly, ‘it was a teapot.’

‘That’s no good,’ Shelley said, busy filling in boxes on her form. ‘I need to work off the inventory, so if you can just get your copy.’ She looked up. ‘You do have the paperwork, don’t you?’

‘Oh well, of course. Somewhere, though I can’t quite think…’

There had been no time, in the alarming hour between Shelley’s telephone call and her arrival, to work out quite what they would do or say if the question of the inventory came up. They had torn around tidying up, removing their group photographs in the silver frames, the funny pictures and messages on the front of the fridge, trying to make the house look less relaxed and lived-in. They had decided that whatever else happened Shelley must not be allowed upstairs. The smell of fresh paint from the nursery that was obvious even on the landing would be difficult to explain; temporary house guests do not usually embark on redecorating, particularly when their hosts are absent. But Michael had been quite bumptious by then.

‘Oh well, if we have to, we’ll just wing it!’ he had told Jean. ‘Just stay in character. Remember, you’re the house sitter, me and Steph and Charlie are Oliver’s relations. Just hang on to that and stay in character. And wing it!’

That was all very well. But how was she to stay in character and wing it when she actually was the house sitter, one who had filled the house with her own family? And burned the inventory, emptied the freezer, altered whole tracts of the garden, moved into the best rooms, purloined clothes, destroyed photographs, sold furniture and artefacts? It sounded quite unreal, put like that, not at all an accurate way of describing what she had done, but that was how somebody like Shelley would look at it.

‘Jean? The inventory? You’re not saying you’ve lost it, are you?’

Jean felt as if her brain were melting. She shot a look at Michael, who grinned at her. ‘Oh, mea culpa, I expect! Blame us!’ he told Shelley, suddenly. ‘I’m afraid we’ve rather turned the place upside down, descending out of the blue. I have made it clear that Jean’s not here to clear up after us, haven’t I, Jean, so things are not as pristine as they were. It was hunky-dory when we arrived. Sorry!’

He moved over to the teapot and refilled Shelley’s half-empty cup. ‘Tell you what though, I did shift a load of papers upstairs. Didn’t I, Jean? Let me see if it’s there. Shan’t be a tick.’ He loped happily from the room.

His absence hung awkwardly between the two women. Jean got up and wandered over to the window. There seemed to be not a single safe thing to say. She grasped for a remark that would be in character. ‘They’re pretty, aren’t they, these windows, with the lavender growing in the border there, just outside, underneath?’ she offered. ‘It’s a lovely kitchen, don’t you think?’

‘You sound well at home,’ Shelley said, flatly. ‘I’ll say that.’

‘Oh, no, you just notice things after a while,’ Jean said, backtracking. She felt like screaming at the woman. ‘I just mean, the flowers. That’s honeysuckle growing through that tree, for instance.’

Shelley did not reply. Just then Michael reappeared, followed by a shyly smiling Steph, dressed from top to toe in white. Her hair hung like long, gleaming cornstalks and Charlie’s fingers turned and twisted in its thickness as he stared round. His skin was the same colour as Steph’s, a mixture of gold and milk, and their faces wore the same sleep-soothed shine. Jean, for a moment until she remembered herself, looked at them with unguarded adoration.

‘Hello! Charlie’s come to say hello!’ Steph trilled. She stepped forward and shook Charlie’s forearm in the air. ‘Charlie says hello!’

Shelley had no option but to lift her hand and give a tinkling wave back, with a sort of Watch with Mother smile. ‘Hello, Charlie!’ she said. Jean did the same.

‘No sign, I’m afraid,’ Michael was saying, scratching the back of his head. ‘Bloody paperwork, never where you think it is. Know it’s there somewhere, but need to have a bloody good look. Sorry!’

But Shelley was not listening. Steph had advanced towards her with Charlie, who had given a sudden beam and stretched his arms out towards her. He was now being settled in Shelley’s lap and Shelley was taking off in an unselfconscious flight of rapture. It was not clear to whom she was speaking, Charlie, his parents, or herself, but she was making kissing faces and letting loose with a burble of words and noises of admiration. Charlie gazed up at her, impassive and open-mouthed. A bead of saliva that had been gathering on his bottom lip fell onto the back of her hand. She did not even notice.

It was Charlie who saved us. I never would have taken Shelley for the type to go helpless over babies, but once she’d got Charlie on her lap I knew we would be all right. I apologised nicely about the inventory again and Michael kept butting in saying the fault was his; between us we bored Shelley into the ground over the inventory until she said it wouldn’t matter. She was hardly listening. By then Charlie was smiling and laughing up at her and she was completely taken up with talking to him and shaking his bunny rabbit at him. We just bombarded her- Charlie with his giggles, I with cup after cup of tea, Michael with all sorts of banter to show what a scatty but charming sort he was. Steph just sat nearby looking luminous and drinking up the compliments about Charlie. Michael offered to check over the house himself with the inventory, when he found it, and report anything amiss direct to her in Stockport. Shelley said that would be fine.

I suppose Michael simply wore her out with protestations about what a good job I was doing and how he had said so to Oliver on the telephone. Now that was an awkward moment, because Shelley was a bit surprised at that. For a minute I thought we’d gone too far. But it was just that the agency had been instructed not to contact ‘Oliver’ (as Shelley was now calling him, even though she had never met him) unless there was some dire emergency. He did not wish to be disturbed, apparently. Oh, but of course the family keeps in touch, Michael said, so barefaced I could have blushed for him. So when he finally pulled her off to see the swimming pool nobody even remembered she was supposed to be here on this stupid ‘Management Visit’ and she’d long since lost any hope of seeing over the house. But by then she didn’t really care. After all, she had satisfied herself that the place was still standing.

I point this out because even though I’ve never been a fan of Shelley’s I don’t think the agency can be blamed for anything, except for trying to get rid of me before I was ready.

Charlie grew fractious just in time. First he got a little cranky, and then he twisted in Shelley’s arms until Steph took him firmly, settled herself back in her chair and flipped out one enormous blue-veined breast. Shelley at once turned her startled eyes away, embarrassed at being embarrassed. Nobody else was.

‘More tea?’ Jean asked, cupping her hand round the pot and frowning. She glanced at the clock. ‘You’ve got a bit of a journey, haven’t you?’ she said pleasantly.

‘Yes, poor you,’ Steph murmured, smiling down at Charlie, who was slapping and guzzling happily.

‘I usually go round and close the windows about now,’ Jean went on. ‘So if you’ll excuse me-’

Shelley said quickly, ‘Oh, perhaps I ought to come with you, normally I would, you see, on a normal Management Visit, if there was just the house sitter in residence. If you don’t mind, I could just go round-’

‘Oh, don’t! We’d die of embarrassment, wouldn’t we?’ Michael almost shouted. ‘If we’d known you were coming, of course it would be different. We wouldn’t have dreamt of letting you see what utter piggies we are, we’d have had a proper tidy round. I’m sure you understand. But with babies, well, they do rather take over, it’s a bit messy. But I’d hate you to see.’

‘Oh, well, of course I wouldn’t like to intrude, but-’

‘And anyway you know Jean’s marvellous, don’t you. She keeps us in order, doesn’t let us get away with too much. Eh, Jean?’ He almost leered at her before turning back to Shelley. ‘Come with me and see the pool,’ he commanded, in a new onslaught of friendliness. ‘For a bit of fresh air, before you’re all cooped up in the car. Haven’t got a cozzie with you by any chance- no, too bad! Still, you could always have a paddle!’

Shelley was torn; reluctant to follow the striding Michael outside and God knew where, in the wrong shoes, but pleased to have a reason to get away from the spectacle of Charlie feeding. ‘Oh, well, I suppose. Just for a minute, then,’ she said, with a careful smile. Michael was already at the door.

Fifteen minutes later they all trooped out to see her off, Charlie now latched to Steph’s other breast, Michael once again wearing his straw hat at a silly angle. Jean was careful to stand a way off from them, and lifted a hand once at the departing car with a courteous but disinterested wave. They watched until after the car had gone from sight, and stayed listening until long after the noise of the engine had died in the evening air. The returning silence seemed newly their own after Shelley’s cooing baby voices, her noisy breathing and her Yankee Doodle Dandy telephone.

‘Party time,’ Michael said, under his breath.

Well, we did go a bit daft after that, I will admit. It was late for Steph to be taking Charlie home, so Michael drove them down to the edge of the village and Steph walked him in the pushchair from there. She wanted to arrive on foot, thinking that Sally might already be home (she wasn’t). She knew she would go berserk if she saw them and found out that Charlie had been travelling in her arms in the front of the van, not in a proper car seat, and of course on top of that Sally knew nothing of Michael’s existence. Do you begin to see the trouble we took to keep everybody happy?

It happened to be Steph’s payday, and when she met up with Michael again they went off to Corsham and bought a Chinese takeaway. They had decided between them, the sweethearts, that I had had too demanding a day to cook that night! In fact they bought so much food that the man taking the order threw in free Cokes and prawn crackers, a calendar and a bottle of soy sauce. It felt like a sort of approval. They came back giggling. Then Michael said the occasion called for something special and got four bottles of champagne up from the cellar. I don’t have a good memory for the names of wines, because we tried so many. But Steph stuck a candle in one of the empties from that night and it’s been on the table ever since, so I know that it was a 1988 Krug, which Michael would insist is marvellous. It wasn’t the ideal thing with sweet and sour though, and I think it was the combination of the two, plus the release of all the tension, that caused me to be ill so suddenly that evening. I would like it to be understood that afterwards I made every effort with the carpet. By the way, the rings on the dining table date from that evening too. There was such an air of celebration we didn’t even notice how much soy sauce was escaping down the side of the bottle. Actually, when we did, it didn’t seem to matter. After all, it’s only a table, Michael said, and I recall that that led on to us talking about possessions in general, and how it is that the objects that bear the marks of events in our lives are always the ones most precious to us. There was general agreement on this point.