The Love of Her Life

Shoulders squared, Kate picked up the bags, and stood at the foot of the stairs up to the hallway of the flats. A bird called in a nearby tree, a large black car hummed next to her, its engine running, but otherwise it was silent.

It’s strange, the things that are stored in your brain, but that you haven’t thought about for years. The black front door of her old building was really heavy, on a spring. You had to wedge your body really firmly against the door to stop it clapping shut in your face; she forgot. It banged shut behind Kate, practically trapping her with its force, as she dragged her bags into the hallway and looked rather blankly around her, at the large, beige, sunny hall, quiet and dusty in the cool sunshine.

How she was going to get her huge suitcase upstairs? The thought of lugging it to the first floor, her body already bone-tired, made her feel rather blue. Impossible not to think about the first time she’d come here, with him, impossible not to think about how it had been, the day they’d moved in, over three years ago, in deepest winter. Then the pigeonholes had been over there; they’d moved around now. Kate peered inside the box marked Flat 4; two catalogues, five pizza delivery leaflets, four minicab cards, three Chinese takeaway menus, and a plethora of random letters addressed to assorted names she didn’t know, and some bills, addressed to her, greeted her. Flat 4’s pigeon-hole had obviously become the storage depot for everyone’s unwanted post; and Gemma the tenant had only moved out last week. Lovely.

Kate looked down at her bags, and decided she’d deal with the post later. She stuffed the letters back in their box and pulled her suitcases across the hall. She was not usually given to moments of girlish weakness, but she was suddenly overcome with fatigue. Up till now coming back to London had been anonymous, impersonal. The taxi driver, the man at customs, the lady on the passport desk; they didn’t know her. Now she was here and she was in the flat where people knew who she was. This was when it started to get … messy. Somewhere above her a door opened; she heard voices. Kate shrank back against the wall, like a prisoner on the run. Perhaps this was a mistake, a big mistake, perhaps she should just turn around and …

Suddenly there was a loud noise, a thudding sound, and boots on feet thumping across the landing, coming downstairs, several pairs of feet, she thought. Kate pushed her bag up into the nook by the bannisters and peered up. There was muffled cursing; they were obviously carrying something heavy, and she heard an old, familiar voice say,

‘Thank you. Thank you very much. I’ll see you later then.’

Kate peered up through the bannisters. There was a coffin coming down the stairs. A coffin. She blinked, and to her alarm an hysterical, horrifying urge to laugh bubbled up inside her, before she swallowed it down, frantically scrabbling to push her suitcase out of the way.

‘Can you open the door, Fred?’

‘No mate,’ Fred answered. ‘You’ve got the front, you take it.’

‘It’s heavy, remember?’

They were turning the last corner, outside her own flat, just appearing at the top of the stairs, and Kate called up,

‘I’m down here. I’ll hold the door open.’

‘She’s down there,’ said the other man. ‘There’s someone down there.’

‘Thanks love,’ Fred said. ‘We’ve got a coffin here, you know.’

‘Yes, a coffin,’ the other man added.

‘Yes,’ said Kate gravely, wondering if she were being filmed as an extra in a hidden-camera Pinter play. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll stay here.’

She leant against the door, holding it flat open, and frowned at the driver, who had left the engine running, which always annoyed her. Questions ran through her head. Who was it? What did you say in the way of pleasantries to undertakers? And how did you tell someone to turn their engine off without sounding self-righteous? She caught the thought escaping into the dim recesses of her mind that she didn’t think like this in New York.

It was, indeed, a coffin, sleek and brown, borne gently by its bearers to the bottom of the stairs, held only at a slight diagonal angle. She stared at it as they reached the bottom step and gingerly readjusted their load.

‘Been on holiday?’ Fred said politely. He nodded at her suitcase as they walked towards the front door.

‘I’ve been away,’ said Kate vaguely. ‘Just got back, yes. This is – er – sad.’ She gestured pathetically at the coffin. ‘Who – who is it?’

‘Old lady who lived upstairs. Had a husband. Nice fellow.’ Fred jerked his head up, indicating where in the labyrinthine view they might live. Kate followed his gaze.

They passed through the front door and left her standing there on the threshold.

‘Second floor?’ said Kate, her voice faint.

‘Yep,’ said Fred, nodding kindly at her.

‘Mrs – not Mrs Allan?’

‘Yes, love,’ he answered her. ‘Sorry. Not the best welcome back for you, is it now?’

Kate loved him then for apologizing, as if he were personally responsible for Mrs Allan’s death. She smiled at him and shook her head, as if to say please, don’t worry. She followed them onto the pavement as they slid the coffin gently into the hearse – she hadn’t realized it was a hearse.

‘There he is,’ one of them said under his breath to the other. ‘Ah,’ and they looked up. There in the window, two floors above Kate’s, an old face looked out through the glass. She recognized him then, of course she did – it was Mr Allan. Mr Allan pressed a hand to the glass, looking down at the street, his face impassive. He was much older than she remembered.

The car drove off. Kate raised a hand in greeting to Mr Allan, not sure whether to smile or not. Once again, she wasn’t sure what to do, how to behave. What did you yell up to a neighbour in circumstances like this? ‘Hiya! How are you! Haven’t seen you for ages! I know, I moved to New York. So, what’s new with you? Apart from your wife dying?’

She hadn’t spoken to them since she’d left. They’d written to her in New York. Kind, sweet Mrs Allan had sent her newspaper clippings, articles she thought she might like, but Kate hadn’t written back, and the communication had dried up. Mr Allan’s face now looked down at her, grey and yellow through the sun on the glass, and she waved again, uncertainty flowering within her, and looked around to realize she was standing on the pavement alone. She pointed in, towards the flats, as if to say I’m back, and looked up – but he had gone.

‘I’ll –’ she started to say out loud. I’ll see you later. Climbing up the steps, she shut the front door behind her, picked up her heavy bag and dragged it upstairs.

CHAPTER FOUR (#u1a88c0c4-05e2-5666-9ccb-685953012233)

The lock that clicked in the door, the floorboard in the hall with the big hole in it, where you could see the Victorian pipes underneath; the sunny little sitting room down the corridor with the bay windows, the radiator in a fretwork covered box. The bookshelves, still filled with her books, gaps where he had taken his books away – all these things, stored somewhere in her memory, forgotten till now. She didn’t remember leaving her flat for the last time. She remembered scenes within it, though. She remembered coming here for the first time with Sean, the first Christmas here … waking up on a Sunday morning, in bed together, the papers, friends for lunch … as Kate stood in the living room, keys in her hand, and looked around, she smiled grimly. Every bloody couple cliché under the sun, like an advert for a sofa workshop or a kitchen sale.

The recent tenant, Gemma, was about her age, and while she’d left everything pretty much as it should have been, for a furnished flat, she’d moved the armchairs around. Frowning, Kate pushed them back to where she’d had them before, one next to the sofa, the other in front of the window. She leant against the window sill and breathed in, memory flooding over her with the smell of wood, of lavender, of something indefinable, dusty, earthy, cosy, the smell of her flat.

Funny that it should be so comforting to be back here. Funny. She put the keys quietly down on the table, almost as if she were afraid of disturbing someone, and took off her coat, putting it gingerly on an armchair. She went into the kitchen, noting with pleasure that the pots and pans hanging on the hooks she’d so lovingly put up a couple of months before she’d gone were still there. On the tiny little balcony that led off the kitchen door, no more than doormat-size, really, she could see the thyme and rosemary were still going strong. She opened the door, pulling it slightly, remembering how it always used to stick.

There were people walking on the street outside; families pushing buggies, people chatting outside the little row of shops down the road. Kate craned her neck to watch them, to look down, over the wide boulevard of redbrick apartments lined with trees that were sprinkled with fat, green little buds. Beyond the shops was Lord’s cricket ground, a ten-minute walk, then Regent’s Park, the Zoo, the canal … down Maida Vale, which she could just see, was Edgware Road, leading into the park, to Mayfair, into town. All just outside. She could go out now, could be in any of those places, which she’d dreamt of over the past three years with increasing frequency. She could do that, she was back.

A loud noise from the bedroom made her jump. Kate turned and ran, relishing the size of the space that was her own, now, and she saw that her suitcase, which she’d leant against the wall, had fallen over, bringing down with it her telescope. She smiled at the sight of it, memory leading her back down a path. Her telescope! She hurried over to the corner of the room, straightening it out, setting it right again. How she had loved that bloody thing when she was a teenager. While Zoe and most of her other friends had been standing outside Tube stations of an evening with their waistbands rolled up and over, to shorten their skirts, ponytails high on their heads, usually to one side, smoking Silk Cut Menthols and chipping their nail polish, Kate had been – where? Yes, at home, looking through her telescope, high up in her attic bedroom, or curled up on her ancient patchwork bedspread, reading Gone with the Wind, or Forever Amber, or some yellowing Victoria Holt novel.

‘Hello old thing,’ she said to the telescope, stroking it gently, brushing the light film of dust from its casing. It had been so long since she’d looked through it. She caught herself, and the memory of her teenage self, and smiled, grinning widely at how touchingly and unintentionally hilarious she had probably been. Poor Dad, she thought, gazing away into nothing. What he had had to put up with, on his own, looking after this strange, solitary teenager, who didn’t understand why her mother had gone, who blamed herself for it more than anyone. Still partly did, though it was more than half her lifetime ago. Kate’s hand flew to her collarbone.

The reverberations from the suitcase crash had toppled over some photos on her bedroom shelves. Her parents on their wedding day, in black and white, her mother in a dark velvet mini-dress, almost painfully young and thin, her beautiful hair swinging about her shoulders, her father, so pleased with himself – and with his wife. They were clutching hands, so tightly that even through the years and the monochrome, you could see the whiteness of her mother’s knuckles.

It was stuff like that that got in the way, Kate thought, putting the picture back carefully on the shelf. Nice of Gemma to leave it out for her, but it was best put away, along with the marriage itself, and the photos next to it – her twenty-first birthday, taken by Zoe, her and Steve and Sean, hilariously awkward in suits, for some reason and – a sop to her new family – her stepmother and Dani, at Dani’s christening, nearly four years ago, her half-sister resplendent in a little gown and white hat embroidered with fabric flowers that made her look like an entrant in an Esther Williams look-alike competition.

Kate turned away from the photos, frowning. She felt out of kilter once again, remembering why she was here, and she went into the sitting room and picked up the phone, calling Lisa again.

‘Yes?’ Lisa answered immediately. ‘Hi, Kate.’ She added, more warmly, ‘How are you? Good flight? Everything … OK?’

‘It’s fine. How’s Dad?’ Kate said, running her fingers along the bookcase in the corner of the room, staring out of the window.

‘He’s OK. He’s having a nap,’ said Lisa. ‘He can’t wait to see you.’

‘Oh –’ Kate pursed her lips, shaking her head and looking down at the floor. ‘Oh. I can’t wait to see him. Lisa, can you give him my love? Is it OK if I come over now?’

‘Give it an hour or so, if that’s alright,’ said Lisa. ‘He’s still quite weak, Kate.’

Kate turned and looked back at the picture of her parents on the shelf behind her, perfectly still. She had spent the last three years with her mother, making up for lost time; she had always known though that once she came back here, everything that she had neglected would hit her, hard. It struck her now, that she had almost become too good at what she did: shutting out a whole area of her life. She had crossed the ocean and simply closed the door behind her on her life in London. As if, for the most part, it didn’t exist. As if she could.

She needed to keep moving, keep busy here. She’d go and get Mr Allan some flowers. Yes. She turned away from the telescope and the photos, and went into the sitting room again. She grabbed her bag and left the flat, running down to the shops on the corner of the road, marvelling at the price of a pint of Rachel’s Dairy Milk. She got some flowers, daffodils, bought the papers and some Marmite and some hummus and crisps. The old corner shop now sold posh President butter and had its own orange juicing machine.

Back again, as she unlocked the front door to the building, she realized how quiet it was. She climbed the stairs slowly, listening for sounds. There was nothing from upstairs, and she didn’t know whether to go up now or wait till later. When had Mrs Allan died? Was it too soon?

The phone was ringing as she unlocked the door to her flat again; she ran for it, but missed the call and she couldn’t work out who it was. But it reminded her who else she was here to see, as if she could have forgotten. Kate picked up her mobile, fingers toying over the keypad, and after a minute she shook her head. No, it would be too weird to speak to Zoe right now, after so long, to hear her voice – she could still hear her voice – when she was going to see her later. She texted instead: