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- Herausgeber: Orenda Books
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
The carefully ordered life of a middle-aged man falls apart when he is forced to return to his hometown to care for his elderly father, and meets a woman who has as many secrets as he does … A warmly funny, poignant, life-affirming novel about coming home and letting go. `A moving and emotional story told with warmth and humour … a book to curl up with and forget about the world´ Eleanor Ray `A novel so full of heart it will pull on your heartstrings and nestle itself into your soul´ Emma-Claire Wilson `Gentle, poignant and often witty … A beautifully written and intelligent novel about working out who and what really matters´ Susan Elliot Wright ______ What if halfway through your life was just the beginning? Robin Edmund Blake is halfway through his life. Born in 1986, when Halley's Comet crossed the sky, he is destined to go out with it, when it returns in 2061. Until that day, he can't die. He has proof. With his future mapped out in minute detail, a lucrative but increasingly dull job in the City of London, and Gemma to share his life with, Robin has a plan to be remembered forever. But when Robin's sick father has one accident too many, the plan starts to unravel. Robin must return home to the tiny seaside town of Eastgate, learn to care for the man who never really cared for him, and face the childhood ghosts he fled decades ago. Desperate to get his life back on schedule, he connects with fellow outsider Astrid. Brutally direct, sharp-witted and a professor at a nearby university, she's unlike anyone he's ever met. But Astrid is hiding something and someone from Robin. And he's hiding even more from her… For fans of Hazel Prior, Rachel Joyce and Jonas Jonasson ______ `Compassionate and insightful … the whole novel is imbued with warmth and humour´ Gill Paul `A funny, heart-warming and unpredictable story of old friendships, new connections and fresh perspectives. I laughed, cried, and loved every minute of the ride with Robin´ Penny Haw `A supremely entertaining novel about the surprises and cruelties life can have in store, peopled with characters who never feel less than real´ Polis Loizou `Heartfelt, heartbreaking but also joyful … a master storyteller´ Awais Khan Praise for Katie Allen `Heart-wrenching, warm and funny´ Guardian `Emotionally engaging, witty, clever and wonderfully satisfying´ Daily Express `Simultaneously devastating and hilarious´ Clare Allan `Heartbreaking, deeply moving and wonderfully witty´ Isabelle Broom `Darkly funny, yet poignant and moving´ Anna Bell `The writing reminded me of Eleanor Oliphant´ Becky Fleetwood `The perfect mix of clever, funny and intensely moving´ Cari Rosen
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TEAM ORENDA
PRAISE FOR HAPPY IS THE ONE
‘Gentle, poignant and often witty – a love story that’s also about loyalty, friendship, betrayal and forgiveness … A beautifully written and intelligent novel about working out who and what really matters’ Susan Elliot Wright
‘Katie Allen raises the bar once more with a novel so full of heart it will pull on your heartstrings and nestle itself into your soul. A truly accomplished and sparkling second novel’ Emma Claire Wilson
‘Katie Allen’s complex, relatable central character responds to tough emotional challenges –a sick elderly parent, a relationship breakup, and job loss – with chaotic indecision. Her storytelling is compassionate and insightful, and the whole novel is imbued with warmth and humour. I raced through it’ Gill Paul
‘Funny as well as heartbreaking, sharp as well as kind. Katie Allen has somehow created a supremely entertaining novel about the surprises and cruelties life can have in store, peopled with characters who – with all their quirks and particularities – feel never less than real’ Polis Loizou
‘Heartfelt, heartbreaking but also joyful, this novel should be required reading for our generation. Deftly plotted and populated with memorable characters, I didn’t want to say goodbye to it at all. Katie Allen is a master storyteller’ Awais Khan
‘A moving and emotional story told with warmth and humour. The concept is original, but the challenges the characters face are so relatable … a book to curl up with and forget about the world’ Eleanor Ray
‘A funny, heartwarming and unpredictable story of old friendships, new connections and fresh perspectives. I laughed, cried, and loved every minute of the ride with Robin’ Penny Haw
‘Beautifully written, funny, touching and unpredictable, HappyistheOneis a whip-smart novel about facing the truth, learning to let go, and the importance of old friendships and new perspectives. I loved Robin and his friends, and their story’ Penny Haw
‘Truly one of the most moving books I have ever read. I defy all who read it not to laugh out loud and shed a few tears’ Sally Boocock
PRAISEFORKATIEALLEN
‘A heart-wrenching, warm and funny debut’ Guardian
‘Emotionally engaging, witty, clever and wonderfully satisfying’ DailyExpress
‘Simultaneously devastating and hilarious’ Clare Allan
‘A moving, bittersweet, yet ultimately uplifting and most enjoyable novel’ Christina Banach
‘A heartbreaking, deeply moving and wonderfully witty tale, which celebrates all it means to be human’ Isabelle Broom
‘This beautifully written debut is sad, quirky and funny’ Madeleine Black
‘So affecting. Profoundly sad. Funny. I just loved it’ Louise Beech ‘Darkly funny, yet poignant and moving … Rachel’s quest to find out if everything happens for a reason is both heartbreaking and heartwarming’ Anna Bell
‘A triumph … a book of hope and ambition and making sense of the world, a tale of acting spontaneously, living in the moment and throwing caution to the wind’ Isabella May
‘A heart-wrenching, soul-lifting read about loss and redemption in unlikely places’ Eve Smith
‘Read it and weep but also, incredibly, find moments to laugh and to know there is life after death’ Julia Hobsbawm
‘A memorable, poetic read … The writing reminded me of Eleanor Oliphant’ Becky Fleetwood
Happy is the One
KATIE ALLEN
To Ralf, with thanks for the time passed, and the time yet to come. And to Naomi, with thanks for your belief, laughter and wisdom.
Contents
1.
Halfway
Here’s something I’ve always known: I will die on a Friday. Just like everyone knows their birthday, I know my last day. It’s Friday 29th July, 2061 and I’m almost halfway there. Thirty-seven years behind me, thirty-eight more to go. It’s great for planning.
2.
Toffee-free
Nothing, down to the tiniest detail of my angry, empty mouth, is going to plan.
I am eight miles from Eastgate, ten minutes to go, and my toffees have run out. I’m paid to count for a living but I didn’t count on this. Shrinkflation: a lazy word for a nefarious practice. Companies keep their prices the same and shrink their products. There’s been more of it these last few months. Half a centimetre off my favourite white chocolate, five grams less in a tuna can. And now the toffees. I thought I’d spaced them to last the whole way, but there were two fewer in the bag.
I need something in my mouth. I check every compartment. No chewing gum, no cough drops, no toffee. The final miles of my final journey to my childhood home will be made without toffee.
At the T-junction on Badger Hill, I break into a wistful tongue twister. ‘Toffee-free, toffee-free, toffee-free.’
Anything not to think about what awaits me.
3.
Is it always like this?
I’m here by accident. More precisely: accident, spinelessness and a social worker named Carol Coombs.
It started on Dad’s seventy-sixth birthday – a Sunday six weeks ago.
Gemma bought a cake from the expensive bakery by her nursery. I told her not to, that neither of us had bothered with birthday cakes since Mum.
‘But this could be his last chance,’ she replied.
We sat in Dad’s bungalow, windows open to let in the sea air and to let out the wafts of urine and pine air freshener. It’s the smells that assault me first when I walk in. Then the inescapable signs of his disease: grab rails around the doors, soiled bedding by the washing machine, the remains of pureed meals on the side, packets of tablets that do nothing more than make us feel we’re trying. The full sensory experience is completed by Dad’s laboured breathing, his sudden gasps and the constant noise of daytime TV.
But the birthday boy was on relatively good form that day. As Gemma opened the cake box, he managed a smile and even said, ‘Haaaa ssss.’
‘He means “Have some”,’ I said to Gemma. ‘Look how happy he is you bought a cake.’ I don’t mean to talk about Dad like he’s not there, but I do.
Gemma served thin slices, and I made the teas. As I stirred thickener into Dad’s, I pondered, as I always do, the mystery of why food is too lumpy but drinks are too thin. The cake was moist, an Armagnac-soaked chocolate sponge. I fed him tiny lumps from the tip of a teaspoon. But it sparked a coughing fit so violent that Gemma fled to the kitchen. She stayed there for the rest of the afternoon, ‘getting ahead on reports’. She filled pale-yellow sheets with neat turquoise handwriting and pictures of other people’s 3paint-splattered children while Dad and I watched an old black-and-white film. I finished his slice of cake and mine.
When the teatime carer arrived, Gemma and I set off back to London, kidding ourselves we’d make something of what remained of the summer evening.
We were minutes from home, crawling over Tower Bridge, when a paramedic called. Dad had banged his head climbing out of bed. He’d pressed his red button and they were taking him in.
‘He’s not supposed to climb out of bed. He’s not supposed to move anywhere without help,’ I told the paramedic.
‘I get it,’ he said.
I dropped Gemma, packed clothes and my laptop and drove back down the motorway.
I was intercepted at the geriatric ward by a nurse I’d met before. They’d checked Dad over, she said, nothing broken ‘this time’.
Dad is a repeat offender and I’m his feckless parole officer.
‘Sorry,’ I mumbled.
He was asleep. A thick dressing covered his cheekbone. I squeezed his hand and got nothing back, and so I crept away to sleep among piles of unwanted things in the bungalow’s spare room.
Early the next morning, I was back at the hospital, where a very young doctor told me he had ‘great news’. A year or so ago, that would have raised my hopes. ‘We’ve managed to get you a social-worker visit for this afternoon,’ the doctor continued.
‘That is great news,’ I said.
Exhausted from the effort of getting Dad out to the car and into the bungalow, we were asleep when Carol Coombs, the social worker, arrived. ‘Robin?’ she asked as I opened the door. ‘I knocked three times. You should fix the bell.’
‘We turn it off,’ I explained. 4
Louder than necessary, she called into the room behind me, ‘Hello Kenneth.’
‘He prefers Ken,’ I said, and she looked at the binder in her arms as if fact-checking me.
She declined a cup of tea, asked for an ‘upright chair’ and took three pens from her bag. ‘Is it always like this?’ she asked, rotating her head like an owl.
Her gaze fixed on the kitchen, where chocolate-smeared plates cluttered the table, and underpants and tea towels were heaped on top of the washing machine. Yes, it had mostly – if not always – been like this, I thought. It was Dad’s way of living. Disability had nothing to do with it.
Carol ran through a form in her binder, updating and amending answers from the last time someone took an interest in Dad’s condition, over a year ago. Was he still on solid foods? Was he still using a wheelchair? Were carers still coming twice a day?
‘Four times, now,’ I said.
‘Dad is seventy-five?’
‘Seventy-six,’ I said.
‘Still widowed?’
‘No, there was a resurrection.’
Carol Coombs looked up, clicked her pen and read on. ‘Incontinence issues?’
Then came the questions about funds for more carers, what did I know about homes, and did I really understand Dad’s condition?
‘Does anyone?’ I said. It seems to me they do not.
‘Because it’s only going to get trickier,’ said Carol Coombs.
Wrong word. Trickier is the zip on the jeans Gemma bought me. Dad will lose control over every bodily function until he can no longer breathe.
‘Harder,’ I said. ‘You mean harder.’
‘OK. Harder. And you need to face up to it. It’s dangerous for Dad to live here alone. I’m a bit surprised, if I’m honest.’ 5
I was grasping for words to defend myself with, when Dad made a whining sound he’d never made before. It was a whine that would have been a scream if we could only unmuffle his voice. His good arm jolted forwards, the other remained clasped against his body. The whine faded, and his head slumped, defeated. I looked at him, so trapped already. There was no way we were shoving him in a home.
‘I’ll move back,’ I said. ‘We’ll move down. I’ll do it.’
4.
Turning
And here I am, toffee-freely on my way to Eastgate
I touch the brake as I near The Anchor. No resistance. Brake pedals do that, a few loose millimetres before they get to work. It’s a safety feature, to nudge us to act sooner rather than later.
Before the bend, I press the pedal again, too hard this time. The car behind beeps.
I could have gone the long way round. But I need to make the bend ordinary. That’s the idea now I live here, to drive this way all the time. And one day, I’ll drive this way and won’t notice it. And I’ll say to Dad, ‘I went past Mum’s bend today without noticing.’ If he could talk, he’d say you can’t notice what you didn’t notice, but he’ll get it.
Gemma says that coming back will do the opposite of what I hope, and that I should ‘find someone to talk to.’
‘When we’re settled,’ I told her.
The plan has many steps before ‘settled’. First, I’ll sort out the spare room in the bungalow. Gemma will join me in four weeks when she’s handed over to the new head, packed up our last bits and put our bigger items in storage. Selling my London flat – even after paying off the mortgage – will leave us with a good budget for Eastgate’s housing market, and Gemma will look for 6somewhere to spend it: a place near the bungalow and the beach, and within the catchment area of Eastgate’s outstandinginfants’ school. Maybe there’ll be something left over for a wedding, if she changes her mind.
She’s setting herself a deadline of next summer to find a new job but if all ‘goes to plan’, she’ll be in no position to take it.
She’s adapted to this better than I expected – better than me. She tells all our friends it makes sense to move here. What’s a few months living with my dad and a couple years more popping by the bungalow in exchange for a family, she says. No one, including me, asks why procreation is geo-specific for her.
My own task is clear and pressing: to find a live-in carer for Dad. The women from the agency now come every few hours, but the cost is unsustainable. And the nights are a problem. Dad has coughing fits; he panics and presses his alarm. Carol Coombs the social worker says a live-in carer will solve all that, ‘If you’re lucky enough to afford one.’
I asked her to help me find one. ‘Not allowed,’ she said. ‘You’ll have to ask around.’
I have no one to ask. I’ve lost touch with everyone from school, I don’t know Dad’s neighbours, and the current carers say neither they nor anyone they know would want to live in.
Gemma says I should ask my colleagues for advice. But they’re all too young to have sick, widower parents. So am I.
My adverts online and in local newspapers have been a waste of money. The only people who respond won’t work weekends. As I’ve said to them, Dad is also disabled on Saturdays and Sundays. In the meantime, the live-in carer will be me, backed up by visits from agency carers. I’ll fit my work around Dad somehow. I’ve negotiated a remote-working trial with Fiona. Toffee misjudgements aside, they know they can’t afford to lose me. 7
I turn into Cherry Grove and my tyres quieten on the conspicuously smooth road. The estate is the first new development in Eastgate for decades. Dad’s is one of its ten or so bungalows, all with wraparound gardens too small for lawnmowers. There’s also a care home and an empty plot whose hoarding promises another care home is ComingSoon. The roads are named after trees – Dad’s is Sycamore Lane – but there are no actual trees. There was an article about it in the EastgateNewsletter. Tree roots, it said, would buckle the pavements and ‘impede rising wheelchair use’. The future is single-storeyed, tarmacked and best enjoyed seated.
Now I wish I’d never read about the trees. The air is getting thinner the closer I come to the bungalow. I turn the car around. I need to go to the sea first, look out, breathe in.
It’s a Monday in September; there should be loads of parking. But since my last visit to the seafront, Beachway has been painted with double yellow lines. The locals have finally won their battle. One of them has tied a triumphalist cardboard sign to a lamppost:
THELINESMEANYOUCAN’TPARKHERENOW
I park a few streets away and walk back to the beach and along the damp sand as far as the rocks. People here say they protect Eastgate. They use postcard words like ‘cove’ and ‘haven’. In reality, the rocks are black and sharp and enrage the sea. I touch one, turn and walk back the other way to where a river feeds the sea and hems in the other side of this tiny town.
The beach is empty except for a woman and a boy at the water’s edge, their trousers rolled up. The boy is almost as tall as her but so skinny it’s as if he’s only ever grown upwards and not out. He’s in school uniform; she is wearing an unnecessary sunhat. Short hair, a bright dyed red, shows under the rim. Gemma will start wearing unnecessary sunhats now we’re coastal people. She suits 8hats, but it will go on into October and then November, and I will have to decide whether to tell her it looks silly.
The red-haired woman turns round. She’s waving. She’s mistaken me for someone else, probably her husband. She isn’t that far away. Can’t she see I look nothing like her husband? He’ll be taller, most likely blonde and as slim as I used to be. Attractive people here stay so for longer – more time outdoors.
She’s waving again. I call to her, ‘Sorry! It’s not him. I’m not him.’ I walk closer.
‘Geoff?’ She uses her hand to shield her eyes from a sun that is behind her. Finally, she comes close enough. The boy stays back, drawing in the sand with a stick. ‘Oh,’ she says. ‘We were meeting someone.’
‘An optician?’
‘What?’ She un-scrunches her eyes. They’re a satisfying green, the kind that goes well with red hair.
‘It’s not me,’ I say. ‘I’m not meeting anyone. Just me and the sea.’
‘It’s on its way out,’ she says.
I hesitate. I hate correcting women, but tides are tides. ‘Actually, it’s on its way in.’
‘Oh, turning then. OK,’ she says, long O sounds.
I catch myself before I say, You’renotfromhere?I’ve been in Eastgate ten minutes and the xenophobia has already set in. Instead, I say, ‘Not yet. Not until five thirty-six.’
She looks past me and says, ‘There’s my appointment coming now.’ And she calls to the stocky man in shorts making his way down the steps. ‘Geoff, over here.’
Appointment’s a funny word, but otherwise her English was flawless. I can’t place her accent and after my near slip, it feels wrong to even think about where in Europe she might be from. If only there’d been a good way to ask, a way that told her I’m also an outsider. I should have started by telling her that on a clear day 9you can see all the way to France from this spot. She definitely wasn’t French, but she would have liked to know that.
5.
Start however you can
A small Kia is parked on the drive outside the bungalow. I’ll go in and introduce myself in a minute. Or maybe it’s a carer I already know. I need to catch the five o’clock news first. Someone’s been setting fire to celebrities’ cars and the police have promised an update.
The carer emerges as I’m getting out the car. She puts the front door key into the little safe box on the wall and only as she turns around does she notice me. She waves and I wave back.
‘Hi, I’m Robin. The son.’
‘Hi,’ she says. ‘Can you move back?’
‘Sorry?’
‘Your car. I won’t get round you.’
‘Sorry. Yes.’ I get back in, reverse, and she speeds off.
Not the best start, but not my fault. From what I can work out, the carers’ shifts are six hours’ pay for eight calls of forty-five minutes each. All travel is done on their own time. What’s even more sickening about the Staying Put agency is that it’s run by my old classmate Paul Rogers, a rugby player who never showed any flair for business studies nor understanding of demographics. Now he’s getting rich off the sweet cocktail of ageing homeowners and cheap labour.
‘I’m here, Dad,’ I announce from the front door. I knock my heels together and sand drops onto the mat.
The TV is playing to itself, quiet but not muted. Dad is in his chair. He’s thinner again. The flaps of skin around his neck are like the tree roots Gemma photographed from every angle at Angkor Wat. 10
‘There you are. Journey down was hard work. Need to unload the car, but let’s have a cup of tea first. Have you had the news on? He burned another one – Porsche, the guy off that morning show, on his drive, behind a locked gate, down the road from here.’ I babble and worry how much more there is to relay about the car arsonist. I need more topics. Time spent with Dad is time that needs scripting. ‘Anyway, good to see you, Dad. Exciting new chapter. And boys’ night every night, until Gemma gets here. I was thinking Chinese later, something with lots of sauce, or put yours in the blender.’ A liquefied version of normal.
The corners of his mouth twitch and I squeeze his hand. It’s the best his face will let him do. I watch him watch the TV and imagine what he’s saying in his head. It’ll be about the perfume advert that’s on, something that’d make us both laugh.
His speech has been eroding for years. First, the ends of words dissolved, then he tripped over the beginnings. Phone calls became impossible. Talking in person still worked, so I drove down more often. Then one Sunday, all words were gone. All we had left were sounds: a hiss for ‘yes’, a moan for ‘no’. Now he has a laminated card with the alphabet on a grid, and the words YES, NOand STOP. On good days, he points to the first letter of what he wants. Cfor chocolate mousse, Lfor lemon. Most days he manages a couple of yes or no questions. But stupidly, the YESand NOboxes are side by side and when the trembling is bad it’s impossible to know which he means. I’ll ask Gemma to bring her laminator and we’ll make a new card, but it’ll probably be too late. We’re always one step behind. The grab rails around the back door went in the week he could no longer stand. The phone with bigger buttons came when he could no longer talk. The adjustable chair arrived when he could no longer press buttons.
I go through to the kitchen, turn on the kettle and check my phone. Gemma must be busy; maybe she’s popped to her sister’s, or the shops. She didn’t mention anything. 11
I text her. Gotheresafely.XxThen another message. Weirdwithoutyou.And finally, a picture of the sea from earlier, edited to bring out the sunshine.
I wash, change and tuck in Dad then go to bed myself. I’ve set up a baby monitor between his room and mine to listen for coughing and calls for help. I don’t trust myself to wake so I’ve turned the volume to full. I lie still and listen to his uneven breathing and the rumble of his hospital bed. It’s designed to pump air around the mattress, shifting his weight to stop him getting sores. How frail we are that we can’t even lie still without disintegrating. I roll over.
There’s something unsafe about this room – myroom, I suppose. Cardboard boxes of junk line the walls and bulging bin bags are piled on top of them. In the dark, the bags look like an audience of dirty snowmen waiting for me to fall asleep. I will banish them in the morning. The bungalow has a small loft, and Eastgate has two charity shops, where they’ll be grateful for Mum’s little china and glass animals. Or maybe I should keep those. Her pupils used to buy them for her at Christmas and the end of summer term. What if they saw them for sale? Probably safe after two and a half decades.
I turn off the monitor when the early carer arrives. When I wake properly an hour or so later, the sun has defied the forecast and it calls me outside. The bags and boxes can wait.
The sunshine and my arrival are having a similar effect on Dad. He’s upright in his chair and more alert than he’s been for months. The carer has put him in a bright-blue shirt, fresh out the packaging with folds down the front.
‘All dressed up, Dad! We need to find you somewhere to go,’ I say. ‘How about a walk?’ I throw my arms out wide and realise again that the more his speech goes, the more inflated my gestures become. I’m turning into a kids’ TV presenter. ‘Ready to roll?’ I nod to the wheelchair. 12
On any other face, Dad’s look – mouth ajar, eyes scanning side to side – would be one of apprehension. But I’m getting better at reading him.
‘Great. Let’s go.’
I line up the wheelchair and lift him to standing. He’s lighter than the last time I tried. But he’s less cooperative. My requests – for him to swivel, shuffle, lean back – are all ignored and I have to twist him and place him in the wheelchair. Freezing, the specialist nurse called it, not Dad’s fault. I call it buffering, like old web pages.
We set off on a loop around the estate’s smooth pavements. It’s going well, so we venture onto the bumpier road, towards the sea.
‘We should write to the council, Dad,’ I say and push faster. ‘No point having big paths on the estate, then no pavements here. Makes you feel trapped.’ A car swerves past and the wheelchair shakes. ‘Madness. Someone’s going to get killed on this road.’ I stop my monologue. ‘Sorry, Dad. Not thinking. Anyway, they need a pavement. We’ll write to them.’
He makes a wet puff through his lips to join in, and I squeeze his shoulder.
All the usual ice-cream places on Beachway are closed.
‘The sun’s out, we’ve made it this far,’ I say. ‘What the hell, let’s go to the fancy bakers. They do ice-creams, don’t they?’
The woman behind the counter watches us struggle backwards through the door.
‘We’re here for ice-cream,’ I say.
‘Too early,’ she says.
I lean over the counter and whisper, ‘He hasn’t had one all summer, been housebound.’
She appears unmoved.
‘And we need a couple of loaves of sourdough,’ I add. That works.
With two ice-cream cones in one hand, I manoeuvre back out the door and across the road. I park the wheelchair looking out to the sea. 13
The breeze is warm and the beach is empty, except for a man with a large dog. I watch their tug of war with a ball on a rope and wonder if Gemma will change her mind on pets once we have more space.
The ice-cream cone is ideal for Dad. He holds it in his working hand, level with his mouth. I take a photo on my phone, wipe his chin and take another. As I look up, I see the woman from the bakery watching us through the glass door. I wave and she raises one hand.
That night in bed, I stare at the photo. My closing eyes blur away the wheelchair until Dad is floating on the seafront, ice-cream in his hand. The trick to caring is positivity and low expectations. We’ll be alright.
On day three, I find the leaflet from Carol the social worker and call the helpline.
A woman called Tanya answers. In a stab at anonymity, I tell her I’m called Rob. I explain that I’ve moved in with my dad, who was diagnosed six years ago. ‘It’s pretty advanced,’ I say.
‘That’s tough,’ says Tanya. ‘How’s it going?’
‘The practicalities are fine. He’s in a bungalow, and it’s well adapted, with a wet room, a hospital bed. We have some help from agency carers.’
‘Oh Rob, it sounds like you’ve got him a great set-up,’ she says, and I wish I’d used my real name.
‘It’s just the silence,’ I continue. ‘I run out of things to say, and he obviously can’t say anything. So we go for hours in silence and then we put on the TV, and that’s just a noisier silence.’
‘That’s poetic,’ says Tanya, and I wonder if this is a premium-rate call.
‘Thanks. It’s probably a stupid thing to call about – you’re probably there for feeding tubes and grab rails – but I wondered if you have any tips.’ 14
‘It comes up a lot, actually. Have you tried reminiscence?’ says Tanya.
‘Read about it.’ It’s a lie but I can’t ruin things now.
‘Well, it works for lots of families. You find an object, maybe a family album, a photo, a nice mug. Then you use that to reminisce. Stories it brings up, shared memories.’
‘Show and tell?’
‘Show and recall,’ says Tanya. ‘And don’t knock it until you’ve tried it. You don’t know where objects will take you. It’s good for you too. Practice at holding onto memories.’ I suppose in Tanya’s line of work they expect everyone to succumb to dementia.
‘Does it have to be about the past?’ I ask. ‘Can you talk about the object itself? You know, describe the mug?’
‘Oh. Is your dad blind?’
‘Err. No.’
‘I suppose you start however you can. Some people like to make some notes first,’ she says.
‘Notes. Got it.’ There’s a pause. ‘And thank you. I’ll make another donation online.’
‘It’s free,’ says Tanya, and then as if returning to a script, ‘but we do rely on donations.’
OBJECT: Baby book
DATE: April 1986
NOTES: ‘Show and recall.’ I’m sceptical. A memory cannot be shared.Butspeakingnotesareapparentlyhelpful.
Mum put this together the year I was born.Why is the cover navyblueandnotstandardbabyblue?Sofewphotos,theywereexpensivethen.Mumispermedandsmiling,Dadisnot.Buthe’syoung,39.Me in two years.
Mumgluedincards,manywithstorks.AuntieJoanna(who?),said,‘Hope he’s behaving.’ And there’s my wrist label: Baby Blake, born 7.05am,11April1986,male,8lb7oz.‘Largerthanaverage.’
Onthenextpage,shewrote,‘Welcome,RobinEdmundBlake.Thiswastheworldwhenyouarrived…’Therearenewspaperclippingsand musiccharts.(‘SpiritintheSky’.‘TheFinalCountdown’!)
Itwasayearofdisasters:SpaceShuttleChallenger.Chernobyl.Cliff Richard re-releasing ‘Living Doll’.
Mum made two double pages on ‘Halley’s Comet Returns’, articles from all the papers, including this, of course:
A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH
The return of Halley’s Comet calls to mind one of the quirkiest tales of American literary history: the birth and death of the great writer Mark Twain.
Born as Samuel Langhorne Clements as the comet appeared in 1835, Twain predicted he would die when it returned in 1910.
The Huckleberry Finn writer said in 1909: ‘I came in with Halley’s Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it. It will be the greatest disappointment of my life if I don’t go out with Halley’s Comet.’
Twain was spared the disappointment and departed this life as the comet passed in April 1910. 16
I’llshowDadthepictureofTwain,he’lllikethat.IdressedashimforBookDayonce.Mummadeawigofwildwhitehairfromwool.Ihadaglued-onmoustache,aborrowedbowtieandabitofhosepipeasacigar.
‘Twain, Born with the Comet’, says the newspaper caption.
‘Like you!’ Mum wrote underneath.
Like me.
Notes for Dad: Maradona’s Hand of God. Prince Andrew marries Fergie.Plansforachanneltunnel.
6.
Face to face
Gemma is a texter. Only a talker if you catch her walking somewhere. But mainly a texter, of messages she says she didn’tmeanlikethat. I’ve learned to text first, then call.
My latest such text is unanswered. I call anyway, as announced. It’s Gemma’s lunchtime. She’ll be on her way out for soup and a smoothie. So much liquid.
I speak into her voicemail, a bulging archive of my ill-timed affection. ‘Assume everything’s fine. I wasn’t really complaining when I called last night. Anyway, Dad’s having a good day. Loving that new shaver I ordered. He’s tired now, so I’m out exploring the joys of Eastgate. Thought I’d try that antiques shop, pick up something for the new place. Our new place. Can you even believe it? Try you later.’ I read somewhere that if you smile while leaving messages, they’re more effective. A woman coming towards me with a pushchair seems to think the smile is for her. She hurries away from me to the other pavement.
A bitter wind is coming off the sea, carrying wafts of Eastgate’s two kinds of fish: rotten and battered. A pink crisp bag stop-starts down the middle of the road like neon tumbleweed. The mother with the pushchair has stopped to talk on her phone, and her toddler is watching the bag’s dance, mirroring its movements with his little head. His arms join in and as he lifts them, the toy in his hand drops to the ground. He seems to call to his mother but she talks on then sets off. I call after her, ‘Excuse me!’ and I run across the road. She speeds up. I grab the toy, a grubby rabbit, and rush after her. ‘You dropped your rabbit,’ I say when I’m closer. She turns around. From her face, it seems I’ve gone from predator to hero.
‘Oh my God. Thank you so much. He can’t sleep without it,’ she says. 18
I hand her the rabbit. ‘It’s nothing.’
She presses it into her son’s hands. ‘Say “thank you” to the man for saving Wallaby.’
The toddler stares at me. As far as he’s concerned, I’m a stranger who was caught holding Wallaby and then called him Rabbit.
‘It’s nothing,’ I say again, rush back over the road and keep going.
The antiques shop is signposted by a giant wooden hand pointing to behind the cheaper fish shop. The hand’s fingers look swollen. They make me think of Danny. He had slim fingers but he was expert at drawing hands. He was in charge of all the hands in our comic books, most of the pictures really. My job was setting out the boxes with a ruler and writing the words into Danny’s speech bubbles. Sometimes there would be more boxes on the last page than we had story for, so we’d fill them with adverts for things we made up, like mail-order goldfish and re-usable bubble gum. ‘What if that happens to a person,’ Danny said once. ‘More boxes than story, years with nothing to do?’
‘It can’t happen to us,’ I remember saying. ‘Born with the comet, out with the comet.’
Funny what a person remembers, and what they don’t. Like how Danny and I lost touch. It was my twenty-third birthday when I realised it had happened, that from one birthday to the next we hadn’t been in touch. I don’t know why, or who let it happen, but it had been a whole year and the rift was too wide and too shameful to bridge. There’ve been a couple of times on visits to Eastgate when I thought I saw him from a distance. Each time, I managed to flee unseen. It’s only a matter of time before I bump into him now.
The shelves in the antiques shop are full of items that are supposed to look like they’ve been reclaimed from old railway stations: clocks with quaint names on their faces, posters for seaside trips, mirrors 19painted with words like Powder Room. I pick up a faux iron Toilets
sign. Made in China.
The garden gnomes display is more pleasing. The ones in traditional poses – fishing, hands on hips, gardening – are on the lower shelves. The ones on the higher shelves are mooning, flashing other body parts, or are in pairs, performing what you might call lewd acts. Whatever the gnomes are doing, solo or with a partner, they are all the same price: six pounds each, or two for ten pounds.
I step back for a clearer view and my heel lands on something soft. ‘Sorry!’ I hold my foot in the air. ‘Oh my God, sorry. Are you OK?’
The woman with the red hair wriggles her toes. ‘They’ll mend.’ She smiles and I breathe out too loudly. Slowly, I lower my foot.
Flipflops made sense when I saw her on the beach but now it’s almost autumn. Are they her only shoes? Her face shows no signs of serious pain, nor that she remembers me. I notice the tiniest of dents on the side of her nose – a hole for a stud.
‘You into little people?’ she asks.
‘What?’
She points at the lower shelves. ‘Garden people, Snow White?’
‘Gnomes?’
‘Ah, gnomes, yes, couldn’t find the word. Gnomes.’ She pats one on its pointy hat. ‘Are you here for gnomes?’
I reach behind me for something to hold on to. I’m not used to this kind of attention. ‘Oh gosh. No. Are youinto gnomes? I mean, buying a gnome?’
‘Here for a gift. Maybe a gnome could work.’ She looks up. ‘Maybe a naughty gnome.’ She winks, and I realise I have been wrong about everything, and that thirty-eight years ahead of schedule, I will die right here.
‘Which one would you want?’ she asks, eyes locked on the mooning gnome’s bum cheeks. I keep my own eyes on her unusually white teeth. She reaches up. If she strokes the varnished 20bottom, I will definitely die. The gnome is out of her reach. She turns back to me. ‘Any favourites?’
‘I don’t have a garden,’ I reply. It’s technically true. ‘And I better get on.’
‘Sure. Nice to see you again.’
‘Thanks.’ I can feel my face going red.
‘And I’ll see you again.’
She’s undoubtedly right. Eastgate is like a bumper-car ring, with less fun and more road rage.
The sound of her flipflops is uneven as she walks away. My armpits are sticky, things are going on down below and my trousers are all wrong for that. When she pauses, I turn and weave through tables and shelves. Was she flirting? Mocking me? This is why I need a wedding ring. Maybe they sell them here. What was her accent?
I end up in a corner full of things for luring and slaying animals: large hooks with bright feathers, brass gun cartridges, spiked iron contraptions primed to snap on a fox’s neck, or a customer’s hand. A sign says, LadiesHuntWhips. Another layer of sweat forms over my body. The redhead’s voice travels over from the till. She’s paying and leaving. Or she’s looking for something and they’ll send her my way. I edge towards the nearest shelf and hide my face. I’m level with a hunting horn: a dappled copper pipe looped round on itself. Grandad Jim had one like it to call me in from the bottom of the garden. I grab it and take the longest route I can to the till. She’s gone. No jokes about feeling horny. I’ll live.
In the universe, nothing is ever lost. It merely changes place or state. A guide at a planetarium told me that when I was little.
I think about this cosmic law as I move the bin bags onto my bed and rearrange the boxes along the wall.
My plan was to put the bags in the loft, but the hatch was jammed and I cut my hand going around the edge with a knife. 21The next-best option is to flatten as many bags as I can and fit them under my bed. I pile the remaining ones into a tower and wedge them in the corner behind some boxes. It’s all just temporary, as is my stay.
When I have more time, I’ll open a bag or two and find objects for the reminiscence plan. For now, there’s the bottom drawer of my chest. It came from my old bedroom, pre-loaded with memories: cinema tickets, certificates, Mum’s napkin ring. Something in there will be suitable for Dad.
It’s my third day of home working when an email arrives from Fiona saying she’s set up a Zoom call. She’ll want to check I’m not overloaded. I’m not. Work is slotting in well with bungalow life. Using observations from my first week with Dad, when I was nominally on leave, I made a schedule that allows for eight hours a day at my screen. I’m getting more done than I ever could in a shared office.
With ten minutes to go to the call, I search for the one shirt I’ve brought to Eastgate. I find it in my rucksack.
‘You have an iron, don’t you, Dad?’ I call into the lounge.
I go through and Dad points to NO–YES–NOon his alphabet grid. Then his finger creeps around the letters to spell something. Maybe ‘coffee’. Understandable, we were up twice in the night: once for a coughing fit, once for the loo.
‘The carer will be here soon, Dad. Big day at the office for me, call with the boss. You can have these back afterwards.’ I place the alphabet grid and his bell on the mantelpiece. ‘And we’ll have to turn the TV off.’
I give the shirt a good shake and change. I remove three mugs from my bedside table, take the hunting horn from its nail on the wall (Fiona is a vegetarian) and click on her meeting link. I have two minutes left to test out where to sit.
Whichever corner I move to, the bed is in the picture. The only 22other people with beds and desks in the same room are students and convicts. It’s a dry day, I could go into our little garden, but that would be flaunting my beach lifestyle.
I try cross-legged on the bed with the laptop angled upwards and the window behind me. My face is a dark blob. I’m lying back, reaching for the curtains when I hear, ‘Robin? Robin, what are you doing?’
I feel for the floor to push myself up to sitting. My head is too far over the edge of the bed. ‘Nothing,’ I call towards the laptop and roll onto my side.
Fiona is leaning towards her screen. ‘Are you in bed?’
‘Only superficially.’ I straighten.
‘But you are working today?’
‘Of course, of course. Just being silly.’
Fiona frowns. In the box next to her, my own face squirms.
‘I can’t really see you with the light behind you,’ she says.
‘Give me a jiffy.’ Why is screen me talking like that? I swivel on the bed. ‘Better?’
‘I suppose you’ve heard the rumours,’ she says. I haven’t but I nod. ‘I’m afraid they’re true. We’re having to lose ten to fifteen per cent.’
‘Of what?’
‘Headcount,’ she says.
‘OK.’
‘We’ve had to look at costs, what clients are telling us, what they want, who they want,’ she says.
Am I supposed to say something? Make a last-minute plea?
‘Robin, I’m afraid you are on our list.’ I know which one. ‘But the package we’ve put together is extremely generous. If you ask me, things can only get worse, and when they do, the package will be nothing like as good.’
‘Don’t you have to do this face to face?’
‘This is face to face,’ she says. 23
‘In person, I mean.’
‘You wanted remote working, Robin.’
I did. I’ve had two and a half days of it.
7.
Never for how long
Gemma arrives on the last day in September in bright sunshine.
She turned down my offer to drive up to London and collect her, saying she never has the chance to take trains. It gave me more time to clean the bungalow, buy tulips for our bedroom and put on the new sheets I bought. I went for yellow and bought an extra double sheet to cover the wall of boxes. I washed it all in lemon-scented detergent. Orange and red cushions are arriving tomorrow. My newfound capacity for such details is one of the many upsides to losing my job.
We’ll start with a picnic. I’ve bought food from the Marks & Spencer next to the station. It was a two-part job. First, I filled my basket with a mix of indulgent foods like sushi, chopped mango, profiteroles and olives. Then back at the car, squeezing it into the cool bag, I realised she’d think I was showing off, with foods Londoners think they can only get in London. So I went back for scotch eggs and cocktail sausages. Then down one side of the cool bag, I slid the printouts from the estate agent. Four houses, all detached and with gardens, all near the infants’ school, three of them within budget.
I’m oddly nervous. As her train pulls in – six minutes late – I check my reflection in a shop window. Four weeks with Dad have rounded my belly and my T-shirt clings where it shouldn’t. I’ll stay face on when Gemma comes along the platform. This must be the effect of her long absence. Maybe she’s feeling the same. Maybe she’s wearing a dress.
No dress. No suitcase either. I stretch myself as tall as I can to 24get her attention. I jab my finger towards the train door, mime carrying heavy cases, mouth, ‘Your case, you forgot your case.’ Gemma smiles back and pats her shoulder bag. As she crosses the barrier, she says, ‘We said I’d get a cab.’
I hold her tight. ‘I wanted to see you. And I’ve got a picnic – for the beach. Start off right.’ I squeeze harder. She’s finally here.
She pulls away. ‘OK.’
I reach to take her bag. ‘Are you sure that’s everything? Where’s your pillow?’ She made me take my pillow from London and said she’d bring hers, that we’d invested a lot of money in those memory foam pillows.
‘That’s everything,’ she says.
In the car, I put on the playlist I’ve prepared. ‘I called it R&GMusic,’ I say. ‘For—’
‘I get it,’ says Gemma.
We spread the food on an old raincoat from the boot because I forgot the picnic mat. We sit either side, non-touching distance, Gemma digging her feet into a mound of dry sand. Her toenails are painted cherry red. I’ll look online later for cherry-scented foot cream. She finds a clip in her bag and twists her hair into the messy but flattering style that suits her face. She goes back into her bag for sun cream.
‘Neither of us likes olives,’ she says as she rubs the cream into her neck.
‘I do. I’m growing up.’ I open the pack, put one in my mouth and leave it whole on my tongue while I reach for a tortilla chip. Mum always had a square of chocolate ready when she gave me medicine. Gemma stares. I bite down. The olive bursts and infuses every one of my tastebuds with bitter poison. I fumble with the lid of the dip, scoop with the tortilla chip and coat my tongue. Gemma smiles. I scoop again. ‘These ones taste funny,’ I say. ‘But the dip’s good.’
‘What’s left of it.’ 25
I know this game. She gives me clues (sentences so short they are barely there, eyes anywhere but on me), I ask what’s wrong, she tells me, I apologise and I’m safe again – until my next offence. It’s a life on probation, but at least there’s a pattern. And twice we’ve had what her magazines refer to as ‘make-up sex’.
Today, I don’t feel like apologising. She’s clearly hungry, and I’ve provided a vast picnic.
I throw an olive to a lurking seagull. Its friends arrive and I throw them another. They squawk as they fight over it. I take more olives, tear them into pieces and throw them in different directions until the scrum disentangles.
‘This isn’t right,’ Gemma says over the screeching.
‘They eat worse,’ I say. ‘One time, with my friend Danny, we saw them tear apart a rat. The gulls even picked out—’
‘We’re eating,’ Gemma interrupts, except she isn’t.
‘Change of subject: there’s a cinema opened on the way out of town. Or, I was waiting till later but…’ I reach into the cool bag.
‘I mean, this isn’t right. This.’ She holds out her hands over my spread of pomegranate seeds and chocolate almonds, sausages and sushi.
‘Do you think you’re just too hungry to decide?’ I leave the estate-agent printouts in the cool bag.
‘I ate on the train,’ she says, fiddling with the tiny star on her necklace.
‘Why didn’t you say?’
‘I tried to. You don’t listen.’
‘I can only listen to the things you say out loud.’
She frowns. ‘I was hoping we’d go for a walk.’ Her longest sentence yet.
She waits on the beach while I carry the picnic back to the car. I lift it into the boot then I lean against the tailgate and drink a can of flavoured water – I’m a boxer on the ropes, unready to be pinged back into the ring. 26
We walk along the water’s edge, away from the groups with beers, pizzas and illicit barbecues – people celebrating this unusually hot day on the brink of autumn, cramming in pleasures that will soon be out of reach.
Gemma and I did something similar before I left London. We took a day to check off all the things I’d been meaning to do in the nineteen years I’d lived there. We started with oozing raclette sandwiches from Borough Market, eating them in the queue for the Shard’s viewing platform. The queue moved fast, we swallowed without chewing and I felt sick in the lift. From seventy-two floors up, London looked bigger, not smaller. Its browns, greens and greys stretched in every direction, like an ugly rug with no edges. I pointed out landmarks with silly names and Gemma second-guessed me. ‘She’s right,’ an older man interrupted. ‘That’s the Cheesegrater, not the Walkie-Talkie.’ Gemma took selfies of us, stopping to wipe my cheek with a tissue. She always carries a full pack of tissues. Every photo had the Thames and its bridges as the backdrop. It was the same for every couple up there, everyone drawn to the water. In the afternoon we continued our homage to the river with a ferry roundtrip to Greenwich. Dinner was seafood on the terrace of a French restaurant that felt distinctly English. The day ended with something that wasn’t by Shakespeare at the Globe. All in all, the day met expectations and Eastgate’s coastal charm beckoned.
My phone buzzes in my pocket. I struggle one-handed to unwedge it, my shoes in the other hand. An unknown number.
‘You should answer,’ says Gemma.
It’s the estate agent, a slot has opened up to view the place with a double garage, can I and my ‘wife’ get there in the next half-hour? ‘I’ll have to let you know,’ I say.
‘A job?’ Gemma asks. I haven’t told her I’ve started the house hunt. She likes surprises.
‘On a Saturday?’ I reply. 27
‘Depends what sort of job you’ve been going for. Assuming you’ve gone for any.’
That’s it then. My joblessness, and that I haven’t called the man her sister says needs an accountant.
I kick away a breaking wave. ‘I told you. I’m taking some time.’
‘Why didn’t you fight back? You ask for remote to be a carer and they fire you. They can’t do that,’ she says.
‘I’m seeing it as a good thing, a chance to branch out in the time left.’
‘And you asked me to give up my job. Have you even done the numbers?’
‘Of course I have. We’re fine for six months, probably eight. The flat will sell for loads, and life’s cheaper here, you’ll see.’
‘I won’t.’
‘You will. I’ll make you a chart. Supermarkets, eating out, no Tube fares.’
She turns towards the sea. ‘I can’t live here.’
‘This is what you wanted.’
‘It’s what you wanted. You rushed me.’
‘But you’ve quit your job.’
‘I couldn’t,’ she says.
‘I don’t get it. You’re here, aren’t you?’
She doesn’t answer. She looks down at our feet, now covered by the tide. The whole sandbank we were on is submerged. There are shrieks behind us as a couple rescue flipflops from the water.
Gemma goes to touch my arm but pulls back. ‘Quick, we’ll get stuck,’ she says.
I run behind her, my jeans soaking up the sea. ‘Was it something I did wrong? Or didn’t do right? What do you need me to do? Tell me. This is where we do things better.’
‘It’s not an appraisal, Robin,’ she shouts back to me.
Out of the water, we slow to a walk. ‘Is it the bungalow? The smell?’ 28
Her face contorts as if she might throw up her train sandwich. ‘It’s no one thing,’ she says.
‘You can’t do this. You said that we’d work at life together. What about halfway? What you said?’
She’d called it my ‘urgency’. When I told her about the comet, she said all other men were drifting, but not me. I had ‘drive’. We’d just met, our work Christmas parties booked into the same bar and merging as the night went on. Drinks for my party were free, hers were not. We ordered prosecco by the bottle and went home together. It was Christmas 2019; I was forty-five per cent through. I told her that when we met again the next night for dinner.
‘Found you just in time,’ she said.
And now I’m halfway, and we have a plan together: a family, a house, a life lived fully. All while looking after Dad. In fact, Dad makes it better, or Eastgate does. She said that. The house will be bigger, the family will be happier. Why is she ruining it?
‘There’s a meteor shower in three weeks,’ I say, jogging to catch up with her. ‘Orionid. Pieces of the comet. Thought we could bring blankets down here, a flask, a better picnic.’
We’re back at the steps up to the road. She sits on the bottom one. Her sandals make a sharp thwack as she slaps them together. ‘You know,’ she begins. Another thwack. ‘I heard someone say that the thing that most draws you to a person, in the end, is the thing that drives you away.’ Thwack.
‘What does that mean?’
‘That some things start out exciting and then…’
‘So it is one thing. Something’s driving you away.’
‘Your bloody comet, Robin. I get it, with your mum and everything, but now look what it’s done.’ She glances back towards the town. ‘I can’t take it. All this pressure to make all your years perfect. All for you.’
‘For both of us. We have to do this together. I’m nothing when you’re not here.’ 29
‘Oh my God, that’s it.’ She presses her forehead into her knees.
I sit down next to her and she edges away. Behind us, a shutter clatters. It’ll be the chip shop opening for teatime. ‘How about some warm food?’ I try.
‘How many times, Robin? I’m not hungry. I don’t want your battered food. I want to go home.’
‘OK.’ I pull out the car keys.
‘Home home,’ she says. ‘I’ll get the bus to the station.’
‘You said you’d love me forever.’
‘I said I loved you. Never for how long.’
She’s walking down Beachway before I can get my shoes on.
‘Change of plan,’ I say to Dad when I return to the bungalow alone.
I unpack what remains of the food. ‘Salmon mousse here that might suit you,’ I call through to him. ‘Bought too—’
A car stops outside. The teatime carer. I can’t talk to her. I can’t talk to anyone. Why did I tell them Gemma was coming today?
I hide the cool bag under the table and flee through the back door.
I press my back against the wall. If I were a little taller, I’d be able to see up the hill to our old house from here. I climb onto Dad’s one garden chair and then onto the tiny table. Still can’t see it. I reach up and touch the bungalow’s roof. It’s flat on this side. I jump off the table, check the carer is nowhere near the kitchen window and lift the chair onto the table. There’s a wire running down the wall and I grip it as I climb up from the table onto the chair. My waist is almost level with the edge of the roof. All I have to do is lean forwards. As I do, the chair moves under my feet. I breathe deeply, wait for the shaking to stop. I try again, lunging further, scrambling faster and I’m on the roof.
There it is, the Wallmans Estate. GoingdowntheWallmans, people used to say, even though it was uphill from everywhere else. Grandad Jim said it was named after the builders. A father and 30
