Cupid's Way (22 page)

Evie groaned. She should have guessed her gran would be banging on the Zac drum again.

‘It would mean the world to me, Evie, to see you settled. And what better way to be settled than with one of our own? Maybe even living in our very street.’

‘It’s not going to happen, Gran,’ Evie said. ‘Give it up already.’

Mavis sat back with a huff and folded her arms across her chest. Evie reached over to take her hand but her gran snatched it away. Tim returned to their table, a slightly-built woman with tight brown curls following in his wake.

‘This is Linda Manners. Linda, these are my friends Evie and Mavis Stone.’

‘Pleased to meet you,’ the woman said with a deferential nod of her head. ‘I’m looking forward to helping you with your research.’

Evie said hello with extra brightness to make up for her gran’s sullen expression, and Tim pulled out his list of questions and offered it to the woman hopefully. She nodded her head, making her fringe bounce up and down on her forehead, then turned on her heel and strode away towards the far corner of the vast room. Tim sat back and laced his fingers together.

‘She had nice manners.’ Evie threw her gran a look. Mavis managed to hide her grin, but not before Evie had spotted it. Tim, not getting the joke at all, said,

‘She is very helpful. And she had the most amazing idea for Cupid’s Way.’

‘Oh?’ Evie stood up and took a position on the edge of the table, which had to be more comfortable than the metal chair. There was only one other person in the room – an overweight man with a ponytail, scribbling furiously on a large sheet of blue paper. ‘What kind of idea?’

‘A cooperative. They’re all the rage, apparently. The new hot topic.’

Evie blinked and looked around again. All the rage and hot topic were not the kind of words you expected to find bandied about in a place like this.

She said, ‘A cooperative? Like the Co-op?’

‘Not the place where you go shopping, no.’ Tim leaned forward and rubbed his hair, making it stand on end with static. ‘She was telling me about this Victorian terrace in Milton Keynes. Years ago the Development Corporation wanted to knock it down.’

‘Sounds familiar,’ Mavis put in morosely.

‘Anyway,’ Tim said, throwing Mavis a sympathetic glance, ‘the residents all got together and came up with the idea of a housing cooperative. They convinced the corporation to sell it to them and now they manage it as a sort of charity. Well, I’m hazy on the details to be honest, but Linda knows all about it.’

Evie pursed her lips. ‘It sounds really interesting. You know, I’ve always seen Cupid’s Way as a community, not just a street – like with the allotment that you’ve got going, and the idea you all had for getting Zac to do repairs to make up for being such a jerk.’

‘He was only trying to help,’ Mavis said, enunciating each word carefully.

‘It was my idea, actually,’ Tim said, trying to hide a bashful grin. ‘The Zac thing. But I’m afraid I wasn’t feeling very community-spirited when I suggested it. I was just bloody angry.’

‘Well, anyway. I think we could all get behind this cooperative thing, don’t you?’

Tim nodded eagerly, but Mavis stuck up her wrinkly hand.

‘Permission to speak, Captain?’

‘Permission granted.’ Evie smiled as her gran pulled herself to her feet and adopted the posture of a bolshy army cadet. Her smile slipped off her face, however, as soon as her gran spoke.

‘Sorry to be the one to point this out, but how the hell are we going to raise enough money to buy every house in Cupid’s Way? And even if we could, why would the council sell it to us instead? Do you really think a company as ruthless as Dynamite Construction is going to let that happen?’

*

Even though her gran had spoken the truth, Evie couldn’t get the idea of the cooperative out of her head. As soon as they got back to Cupid’s Way she pulled out her tablet computer and looked up “housing cooperative Milton Keynes”. It was just as Tim had described it, give or take a few details. Spencer Street – a gorgeous Victorian terrace made up of two rows of former railway houses – had been saved from demolition back in 1976. As she read, Evie became more and more excited. The similarities between the two sites were clear – they both had communal gardens, with Spencer Street’s also housing chickens and a duck pond and an organic vegetable plot. Both streets were founded on a strong sense of community spirit, with stunning architecture and quirky, cheerful colour provided by the independently-minded residents.

Evie devoured all the information she could find, only leaving the computer long enough to find a folder and paper in her still unpacked luggage. Immersed as she was in pictures of bunting-clad parties and cute little painted bench seats and window boxes, it took a while for the commotion downstairs to filter into her consciousness. When she heard the front door slam and footsteps stomping up the stairs, Evie finally looked up from her new project.

‘I’m not interested. I don’t even want to read it. Just leave me alone.’

This was clearly her gran talking, but her voice was unlike Evie had ever heard it before. She looked out into the narrow corridor. Mavis was slamming the door to the bedroom she and Frank shared, all but smashing him in the face with it as she did so. Frank recoiled, and when he turned and saw Evie his face was ashen.

‘Gramps, what’s going on?’

He shook his head and moved away, heading for the stairs. Evie followed him, sending a glance towards the bedroom where the sound of angry sobbing had started up behind them.

‘Leave her,’ Frank instructed. ‘You can’t talk to her when she’s like this. You have to let her calm down.’

Evie, having been in enough rows in her lifetime to know that sometimes being left to “calm down” was the last thing a woman wanted – and was more likely to interpret it as not caring than being given space – wrinkled her nose in confusion. Torn between wanting to quiz her granddad about the cause of the argument and wanting to go and comfort her sobbing gran, she hovered on the bottom step, unsure.

Frank left her there and escaped to the kitchen. Moments later Evie heard the back door close softly and knew the option to quiz her granddad had now been removed. Most likely he’d go for a walk to cool off, then do some vigorous digging in the allotment, before coming home with a box of chocolates and an apologetic smile. It had always been so, and Evie often envied her grandparents their easy way of bickering and making up.

She climbed the stairs and raised her hand to tentatively knock on her gran’s door.

‘Mmm … mmm,’ came the response, which Evie decided to interpret as ‘Come in.’

Expecting to see her gran huddled on the bed in a puddle of tears, Evie was surprised to find her sitting at a kidney-shaped dressing table rubbing thick white cream onto her face. She crossed the room and draped her arm around her gran’s thin shoulders, then looked into the mirror at their two faces side by side. Mavis grinned, her teeth looking oddly yellow against the bright white of the unctuous cream.

‘Gone off in a huff, has he? Never could stomach a row.’

Evie gave her gran an exasperated glare. She pulled up a stool covered in daisy-patterned fabric and perched by her side.

‘He seemed really upset, actually. And if anyone was huffing it was you.’

‘Na. He’s probably propping up the bar of the Dog and Bull right now as we speak, going on about “her indoors” being unreasonable. The manager of that old fleapit’s heard it all before.’

‘Were you?’ said Evie. ‘Being unreasonable, I mean?’

Mavis shrugged. She picked up a clod of cotton wool and began to wipe the cream off her face. ‘Probably. But that’s my prerogative. His job is to be the voice of reason, mine is to be emotional.’ She regarded Evie’s confused face and sighed. ‘Evie, you’re young and naive. You think love is all about passion and excitement, about finding someone attractive and having stuff in common and wanting to be together.’

Evie lowered her chin to her neck. ‘And you’re saying it isn’t?’

‘Well, a bit. Maybe. But in the main, when you’re married it’s more about finding roles you’re comfortable with and staying in them. Then each person feels safe and secure and knows what’s what. It’s when one of you steps out of your roles that the trouble starts. And that’s a fact.’

Evie considered this, watching her gran smooth another layer of cream onto her face. Without its covering of powdery make-up, Mavis’s skin actually looked younger and more vibrant. Or maybe that was just because she was taking off a layer of wrinkles with her vigorous scrubbing.

‘Okay,’ Mavis said, dabbing something blue and sweet-smelling in dots around her eyes, ‘let’s look at an example. Suppose a man has always taken on the role of the long-suffering husband. For years he’s rolled his eyes affectionately at all his wife’s little idiosyncrasies and patted her on the head and generally taken no notice at all.’

‘And she’s happy with this, is she? She doesn’t feel patronised at all?’

‘Go with me, Evie. I’m trying to make a point here. Okay, so one day the husband suddenly, with no warning, decides to change his role and become annoyed by his wife.’

‘Who is, let’s face it, kind of annoying,’ Evie put in.

Mavis nodded in concession. ‘Perhaps. But now she’s faced with how annoying she is, whereas before she’s been protected from it. For years and years and years. Now her husband tuts and huffs and gets irritated with her, and tells all their friends how dizzy and stupid she is, or how prickly and naggy. Their whole relationship falls apart.’

‘I’m guessing that where you’re going with this is that the fault of the falling apart thing lies with the person who changed. Am I right?’

‘Spot on,’ Mavis said. She reached for yet another pot of cream – this one bright green and not so sweet-smelling. ‘So, there you have it.’

Evie squeezed her brows together, trying to process what the hell her gran was trying to say.

‘Hold on now,’ she said slowly, ‘isn’t the real problem in their relationship the fact that the wife is dizzy and stupid, or indeed prickly and naggy?’

‘No!’ Mavis regarded Evie with narrowed eyes, her hand suspended mid-air with a dollop of green gloop on the end of one finger. ‘Have you been listening to a word I’ve said?’

‘Well, I’ve been listening to some words, but not many of them made sense,’ Evie said, grinning.

Mavis reached down and planted the gloop on the end of Evie’s nose. She said, ‘It will one day, my lovely. You mark my words.’

‘So, is this about what’s happened to you and Gramps?’ Evie got up from the low stool and stretching.

‘Oh, crikey, not at all.’

Evie stood off to the side and glared at her gran in confusion. The older woman was now reapplying her thick make-up in layers, and Evie wondered what the entire exercise had been for.

‘So …’ she said, shaking her head from side to side. ‘What exactly are we talking about here?’

‘Well, I don’t know,’ said Mavis, painting on an eyebrow with a thick brown crayon. ‘I had imagined you might be interested in why I was so upset. Did Frank not tell you about the letter?’

Sometimes, Evie thought as she settled herself down on her grandparents’ shiny satin bedspread, it was better to just listen and not ask any questions. She lay back and looked at the ceiling. Her gran finished her make-up and came over to sit on the pillow. Her voice was no longer blithe and airy.

‘We’ve had another letter from Dynamite Construction. They’ve increased their offer for the houses. Frank wants to sell up, Evie. And I just don’t know what I’m going to do.’

Chapter 20

Over the weekend the weather seemed to mirror the mood in Cupid’s Way. Low skies were weighted down with scudding clouds and a chilling wind blew the south gate entirely off its hinges. The incessant sheet of drizzle clearly wasn’t the only reason everyone stayed put in their own little houses, refusing even to pass the time of day. Evie worked on the allotment with Frank, planting carrots and parsnips and making bamboo wigwams for a purpose that would presumably become clear in time. Frank’s answers to her questions were short and delivered in a monotone that just about broke her heart. After a while, Evie gave up talking completely.

Every so often she’d look across at Sarah’s house and wonder whether she should knock. Or she’d turn her attention to the Peacocks’, trying to imagine the state of play in their three-into-one house. Zac passed by early on Sunday morning, carrying a bag of cement on his shoulder, and told Evie he was filling in the foundations at number six. Evie wondered again whether his mother knew anything about Zac’s antics with the Roman relics. When she mentioned the new offer letter, Zac clapped her on the back and told her not to worry.

‘Dynamite won’t be getting their hands on this place anytime soon,’ he said. ‘Don’t you worry.’

But Evie couldn’t help worrying, and now the very spirit seemed to have been sucked out of Cupid’s Way. Frank and Mavis still weren’t speaking, and twice Evie had seen Tim walk straight past Sarah’s house without even glancing in the direction of her front door. It was bad news all round.

By Monday morning she was desperate to find a way to bring them all together again. But when the opportunity came along, it wasn’t exactly what she had hoped for.

Or then again, maybe it was.

Cissy and Pip had called round early doors with a meat-free casserole – they’d been away for the weekend and wanted to thank Frank for keeping up with the digging. Evie filled them in on the latest developments, and told them about the idea for a cooperative, to which they responded with surprising enthusiasm.

‘I know someone who used to live in Spencer Street,’ Cissy said, beaming. ‘I’ll look her up, get the low-down.’

Evie was so relieved to find someone with a ready smile, she gave Cissy a hug. ‘Really? That’s fantastic. It looks like an amazing place.’

Cissy nodded, twirling her long blonde plait. ‘I remember her telling me she’d moved into this vegetarian community, it was a while back now. But she lived there for about two years. She loved it.’

‘I don’t think they have to be vegetarian,’ Evie said. ‘I mean, it won’t be a requirement if people want to live here. If we get the idea off the ground, that is.’