Afterwife (21 page)

The scrabble of small feet. And Freddie was there, panting at her side. He stood a few feet from the grave, uncertainly, gripping his bunch of white posies tightly.

“I’ve put my chocolates there.” Jenny smiled, reading his apprehension, trying to coax him forward.

“Happy birthday, Mummy,” he said quietly, putting the flowers on the grave and then leaping back to avoid being grabbed by a ghost. He reached for Jenny’s hand. It felt hot, tight and small in hers. She squeezed it, feeling a rare sense of peace and a warm fuzzy feeling that wasn’t unlike happiness. Absurd, considering. She was pleased that she’d agreed to come to the cemetery today. She’d made excuses when Ollie first asked, not wanting to intrude, wanting to maintain some distance. But then she thought about it for all of two seconds and knew that if she didn’t go and visit with Ollie and Freddie on Sophie’s birthday she’d regret it forever. She wasn’t sure why. She just knew she had to be here. She’d been at every one of Sophie’s birthdays since she was twenty.

It barely seemed like yesterday that she, Sam, Ollie and Soph had celebrated Sophie’s thirty-fifth. They’d gone to Odette’s in Primrose Hill, got hammered and eaten scallops and then propped up the bar until late, trying not to rubberneck Jude Law sitting at an adjacent table, their discretion failing spectacularly. Sophie had been in a particularly loud, silly mood. She’d put the pink flower from the table vase behind her ear and stabbed herself in the foot with her own stiletto, drawing blood. Ollie gave her a fireman’s lift to the taxi, making Jude Law smile.

Ollie appeared, carrying a bunch of yellow roses. She stood back respectfully as he kissed the gravestone. “Happy birthday, darling,” he muttered and the love in his voice seemed to vibrate in the warm spring air. He put an arm over Freddie’s shoulder and they stood there together in silence, a column of sunshine breaking through the thick canopy, united in missing her. It wasn’t like she was part of the
family or anything. And yet today, for some odd reason, more than ever before, she felt she was.

“Can I see the grave with the sleeping dog on it now?” Freddie pulled away from them and hurtled down the path.

Ollie stared at the gravestone, his face unreadable, lost in private thoughts. “Gone five months.”

“I can’t believe it either.”

“Sometimes I can’t remember what she looks like, Jenny.” He turned to her and his eyes were very dark, all pupil. “I have to get out photos. Other times it’s like she just popped out to get some milk. And it’s like I’m waiting for her to come home. I still get bits of her, Jen. Every day some crappy catalog drops on the mat.” He smiled. “It’s like the car’s braked but all this stuff from the roof box is still flying forward.”

She laughed.

“Oh, Sophie,” he said, shaking his head again, as if still disbelieving that she could have done anything so stupid as step out in front of a bus on Regent Street.

“Should I give you a minute?”

“No,” he said firmly, turning to face her, his face alive and motile again, as if snapping back from the past to the present. “I’ve hardly seen you since Cecille arrived.” His eyes were sharply shadowed by their brows in the sunlight, making them hard to read. “Have I pissed you off in some way?”

“No.” Mortified that he should think that. “Not at all.”

“What, then?”

“Nothing, Ollie.” She shuffled her feet under his long, hot gaze. This wasn’t the time. “I’ll check in on Freddie.” She turned to walk through the shrub-shaded path, sat down on the loyal stone dog, worrying that she’d ballsed the trip up in some indefinable way. “You alright, Freddie?”

He looked solemn, stroked the dog’s cold ears. “Don’t like it here, Jenny.”

“Why don’t you like it?”

“Makes Daddy sad. I don’t like Daddy sad.”

“Oh, Freddie. You are such a sweet, kind boy.” She kissed him on his warm forehead. And they sat in silence for a few moments, watching a large glossy black beetle lumber its way over the sticks and bubbles of moss and leaves on the ground. “Daddy won’t always be sad, you know.”

Freddie said nothing and stared glumly ahead.

“He’ll always love Mummy but he won’t always be sad.”

“Good.” He prodded the beetle gently with a stick. “Sad is boring.”

“I guess it is.” But if sad was so boring, why was she beginning to find this all, in some weird, black way, the most exciting time of her life? In some way she didn’t quite understand she suddenly realized that she’d never felt more alive. Not able to compute the contradiction, she closed her eyes, pressed her fingers into the lids hard. God, it was all so fucked up.

“You don’t come over so much anymore,” said Freddie, staring at her accusingly.

“You’ve got Cecille now,” she said, twisting with guilt. Freddie was the last person in the world she wanted to upset.

“Will you still come and visit us when you get married?”

“You bet!” Jenny pulled him toward her in a hug and glanced up at Ollie, who was sitting now on the grave, arms locked around his knees, staring into the shaded tangle of trees, a silhouette against the gravestone. Would there ever be a time he wouldn’t be framed by that gravestone? she wondered.

“I’m worried about the wedding.”

“Oh, no! Worried? Why, Fred?”

“Ludo says I’m going to look really silly and that he was a page boy once and had to wear a sailor’s suit,” he said solemnly.

Jenny laughed. “No sailor’s suit, promise. You can wear what you want.”

He grinned. “I can wear my Superman T-shirt?”

She hesitated. Oh, to hell with Sam’s mother. “Yeah. You can wear what you want.”

He slumped against her, leaning into her body. “Will there be dancing? Like
Strictly
?”

“Definitely.”

Freddie kicked out his feet in his khaki Crocs. “And will I be allowed to have fun?”

Jenny was puzzled. “You’re always allowed to have fun.”

“I feel like I’m not allowed to have fun.”

“Who said that? Did Cecille say that?” She wasn’t sure about Cecille now. Not now that Cecille had something over her. And she would never forget that piercing look she gave her beside the chest of drawers. Yes, she should have gone for Magda, that pale, studious one with the specs.

“No.” He shrugged. “It’s just that I feel bad when I’m happy because Mummy is dead and that means I shouldn’t be happy.”

“Oh, Fred. You mustn’t feel bad for being happy. Mummy always wanted you to be happy, didn’t she?” She pulled him toward her tighter. “She’d be so proud of you being happy.”

Freddie was breathily noisily and Jenny could tell that he was trying not to cry.

Jenny pointed at the ground. “Hey, look, that beetle’s carrying a leaf now. Ninja beetle.”

They watched the beetle with its leafy burden scurry into a hole in the soil. “Daddy doesn’t like Sam,” he said matter-of-factly, not looking up.

“Sorry?” Jenny couldn’t quite believe what he’d said. The hairs on her arms prickled.

“Daddy doesn’t like Sam.”

“I’m sure he does, Freddie.”

“I know that he doesn’t.” He picked a large white flower and rolled the stem between his fingers.

She glanced up sharply at Ollie, a dark figure in his battered Barbour. Surely Freddie was wrong. But then why had he said it?

As if sensing her gaze, Ollie stood up and walked toward them, brushing flakes of green moss off his trousers. “Pizza?”

Freddie jumped up. “Pizza!”

They retraced their steps through the sun-dappled avenues of tombs in silence. A man in green overalls passed them with a wheelbarrow full of small chunks of broken stone. He stopped. “Ah, you mustn’t pick the flowers, lad,” he said, looking at the plucked flower in Freddie’s hand.

“Sorry.” Freddie looked down at his offending hand, bit his lip. He hated being told off by strangers.

“Eh, it’s alright.” The gardener looked at Jenny and winked. “You just make sure you give it to your pretty mum, eh?”

In her horror she stepped backward, the heel of her shoe catching on the crumbling stonework of Edward Ebenezer Stewart’s final resting place. Her ankle turned and she slipped and she dropped her handbag. The tableau froze. Her on the old grave. Tampax and phone and chewing gum rolling out of her handbag. A sharp pain in her ankle. She shut her eyes, wishing that the grave would open up and she could just sink into its dank depths until the awful moment passed. This not being an option, she scrambled back to the ground, noting with renewed mortification that Freddie had picked up the Tampax and was examining it carefully as if it were a rare albino beetle. She snatched it off him and shoved it back into her handbag.

“You alright, love?” asked the gardener, smirking.

“Fine!” She determinedly carried on walking, knees stinging. Freddie ran on ahead of them now. “God, I’m sorry,” she said stiffly, mortified, unable to look at Ollie.

Ollie stopped. “Jenny. You don’t need to apologize for anything.” He put his hands firmly on her shoulders, demanding that she look at him. She looked at him and saw that his lovely dark eyes were creased with repressed laughter. Clearly, he found the idea that she might get mistaken for his wife hilariously funny.

She was a joke.

I
’m getting restless. The house is swelling with the unseasonal heat. I can hear minute cracks spidering inside the bricks, Muswell Hill’s clay soil beneath the house’s foundations contracting, hardening, threatening number thirty-three with subsidence problems. Freddie is outdoors a lot now, stretching, strengthening those skinny, bendy limbs, jumping, naked but for his white pants, ya-ya-yahooing, throwing himself off that trampoline so that he’s a flying wild-haired angel cut out of north London’s paddling pool sky.

Cecille is watching Freddie, enjoying him, laughing, her river of brown hair flicky and sheeny in the sunlight. She is wearing a denim miniskirt that shows off her slim brown legs. It did not travel over from France with her and it bears the Topshop label, like so many of her new purchases. The French square’s pressed navy sweater hasn’t made an appearance for a while, I realize. She slings her weight lazily to one hip, a new feline sexuality about her I’ve never noticed before. She yawns, tired because she and Ollie were up last night until one in the morning drinking beers in the garden, beneath the
warm black sky and the stars sharp as cookie cutters. Yeah, I’m jealous.

So I catch a thermal down the hill, buffeting over the cool air that hangs above the black, still spots of Hampstead ponds, through the nitrate fug of Camden to check in on Jenny. Well, Sam actually. I’m still trying to get to the bottom of this Dominique business that’s been rumbling for weeks. Who the hell is she? And what’s she got to do with
Tash
, of all bloody people? Jenny’s wedding date is rushing toward us all now. I need to find out.

Jenny needs to find out, even if she doesn’t know it yet.

I enter through the open balcony window of Sam and Jenny’s apartment. Bingo! Jenny isn’t at home. Sam is. But who is this powdering her nose in the marble bathroom? Oh, damn, his mother, Penelope, the battle-axe from Sussex with the overactive salivary glands. She spits when she talks and little strings of saliva link her upper and lower teeth like a brace when she smiles. She creates a dust bowl of perfume wherever she goes too. The perfume is so strong and pervasive, as if it’s made of those nanoparticles that are so small they can pierce the epidermis. She should only be allowed in well-ventilated areas.

“Her phone’s still on answer?” Penelope says tersely, applying a layer of powder to her face thick as pollen. “Surely she knows I’m here to discuss the floral arrangements.”

Sam pushes up his shirtsleeve and glances at his Rolex. “Give her a minute, Mum. She’s probably just caught in traffic.”

“I’m not even going to ask where she is, Sam,” Penelope sniffs. Which is her way of asking.

“She’s not in Muswell Hill, actually. She’s having her roots done.”

“Thank goodness.” She laughs shrilly. “Not like her.”

What a cow! I think we can safely declare Penelope to be the mother-in-law from hell.

“We’re going to a party tonight.”

Penelope sits down at the kitchen table, spreading her hands on the surface so that the veins pop out like pipes. She examines her manicure in loaded silence. “That’s nice.”

“What?” says Sam.

“Nothing.”

“Come on, Mum. I know that face.”

“I’m concerned about Jenny. Very concerned, Sammy.” She spits a fine coat of drizzle on her son’s hand. “She’s not playing ball on the wedding. Everyone’s waiting for her to get back to them. It’s not like she’s not had many offers of help. Did I tell you that Clarissa Ridgemont’s daughter has offered to give her a free makeup session? She’s waiting for a yea or a nay too.” She shakes her head. “It just looks like bad manners, I’m afraid.”

“I’ll talk to her,” Sam says wearily.

Penelope gives him one of those scrutinizing looks that only mothers give. “Is everything okay between you, darling?”

“Yes, yes, of course.” He is a man who could lie to anyone, including his mother.

“It’s just…” Penelope looks down at her hands.

“What?” He slams down his coffee cup. “What, Mum?” He turns the tables nimbly, so that his disloyalty is now hers.

“I feel you should both be more excited, that’s all,” she says, picking her words carefully, like the flowers in her front garden. “I remember when your father and I got married, gosh, I was hopelessly beside myself, I really was!” She swivels her gold wedding band around her fat pink finger. She’s going to get buried with that ring. “And your sister. Pip was like one of those gypsy brides, wasn’t she? You know, the ones on telly.”

“Jenny’s best friend has just died, Mum.”

“It was some time ago now.”

“Try telling her that.”

They sit in silence for a few moments. The traffic hoots outside.
There is the rhythmic drum of a police chopper, flying above the houses. “I thought the point of having the wedding this summer was to start a new chapter.” She won’t let this go.

“It is.” He looks down at the table, like he can’t look his mother in the eye either.

“The funny thing is, Sam, Jenny doesn’t look like a woman about to get married. She looks…” Penelope hesitates. “I don’t know, fevered.”