chapter thirty-seven
STUART, NINE YEARS EARLIER
By the end of that rst January, I am totally desperate to get out of Thornwood.
I have pruned the front garden, cooked a dozen nutritious meals, nursed Jessamine through a bad cold, walked Daisy to and from school numerous times, walked Hugo twice a day, and cleared up some outdoor areas that were frankly a health and safety hazard. I have kept Jessamine out of the pub and sober for almost a fortnight and I have kept on top of laundry, vacuuming, dusting, and cleaning. The house looks a lot more savory than when I rst arrived but it still freaks me out in some way I nd hard to articulate, and I feel claustrophobic and ready to make my break.
I get a text message from Drew at the squat in South End Green letting me know that his boy is nally heading back to uni on Saturday and that the room is all mine again. My heart sings when the message comes through. I punch the air and silently mouth the word “yes.” For some reason though I nd it hard to approach Jessamine with this news. I’m not sure why, but I can tell it won’t go down well, that she has grown used to having me around, having me in her bed —having, as she puts it, a man around the place, so I put it o and I put it o and soon it is Friday morning, and I still haven’t told her that I’m going home tomorrow. Instead, I nd more and more jobs to do. I poke my head around the door to Annie’s study, where she is usually tap-tapping away at an ancient laptop or listening to the radio on an old DAB set. I have grown into the rhythm
of bringing her coee (before midday) and tea (after midday), always in a cup and on a saucer with a thin biscuit on the side, always on a tray, and pretty much on the hour, every hour. If I am ve minutes late, she will appear at the kitchen entrance and say wearily, “I don’t suppose there’s any chance of a cup of tea, is there?” as if nobody had ever brought her a hot drink before.
“Sun’s out,” I say to her now. “I was thinking—the old jeep. Out front.
What’s the deal with that? Does it still run?”
She looks at me disdainfully. “I have absolutely no idea,” she says snily. “It was my husband’s.”
“Well,” I say, “I know my way around a car’s engine. I could take a look if you like, take it for a spin. If it’s still in working order you could maybe even think about selling it. I reckon it’s worth a bob or two.”
“Feel free,” she says with a dismissive twitch of her head. And then she tips her head slightly and says, “Any chance of a cup of tea?”
“Coming right up, Your Majesty,” I say, and go back to the kitchen.
I google the jeep and nd out that it is a 1967 Kaiser Jeep, a light American military truck, and what the hell it is doing in the front driveway of a cottage on Hampstead Heath is a total mystery to me. Apparently, it’s worth about ten K in good nick and I think surely that would be a positive note to go out on, freeing them up with some space in front of their home and a cash injection into their impecunious situation. I head into the garage, which is loaded up with boxes and crap: old ironing boards, headboards, children’s bikes, metal shelving, three broken vacuum cleaners. And there, on the far wall, the old man’s tools. I love tools. I really, really do, and I feel a brief surge of happiness as I pull open metal boxes, feel their ancient hinges give way, open up their insides to me, their piles of screws and nails and neat bundles of copper wire and bolts and wrenches and screwdrivers. Beautiful. There’s also some more heavy-duty stu in there: a jackhammer, a chain saw, bags of cement—the old man was clearly handy as hell.
I nd what I need and spend a joyful three hours under the bonnet of the jeep, before my stomach starts to rumble and I head indoors to wash my hands and make myself a sandwich.
Jessamine walks in a few minutes later and I take a deep breath. Now’s my moment, I decide. This is it.
“Listen,” I say. “I got a message from my place. My room’s come free again, and I can move back.” I don’t breathe for a moment, waiting for her to react.
“I don’t know what you mean,” she says blankly.
“My room. At the squat. The kid’s gone back to uni. It’s mine again.”
“Well, I don’t suppose you actually want a room in a squat anymore, do you?
Not when you’ve got this?” She passes her arm in an arc around the kitchen.
“That’s kind of not the point, Jess. This is your house. Your place. I have my own place, all my stu is there—my life is there.”
She folds her arms across her chest and blinks slowly at me. “Your life is here,” she says bluntly.
I sit back into the chair and fold my own arms, matching her body language.
“That’s sweet of you,” I say, “but this was only meant to be temporary, like you said.”
“No, not temporary. I didn’t say that. I said it would be an experiment.”
I bristle, knowing full well that she did not say that at all. “Well,” I say gently, “whatever we agreed, the fact of the matter is that I have to go back to the squat.
If I don’t go back, they’ll give my space to somebody else and then I’ll have nowhere to go.”
“You’ve got a million pounds, Stuart,” she says. “Of course you’ll have somewhere to go.”
I sigh. Why can’t I ever keep something back for myself? Why do I have to tell people everything? “I explained that,” I say. “It’s for my kids. Not for blowing on rent.”
“You don’t need to pay rent staying here.”
I sigh again. “Jessamine,” I say, “I like you. I like it here. I like helping out. I like being a part of your life, a part of Daisy’s life. But that’s all I can oer you. I can be a part of your life, but not the whole thing. I need my space. You know that.”
“I can’t believe you’re doing this to us. After everything we’ve done for you.”
Her face is set hard, showing those cruel edges to her expression that I have grown so used to.
“Oh, sorry,” I say facetiously. “I was under the impression that I had been doing things for you? Am I wrong?”
“You know that’s not what I meant, Stuart. I meant, letting you stay.”
“Well,” I say, “yes. And I am very grateful to you for that. But genuinely, I need to go back now. That doesn’t mean I won’t still be here a lot. I mean, I need to get that jeep xed and on the road, for a start. And I can help out with Daisy if you need me to. And the dog. I can still be your guy, you know. Just not your live-in guy.” I give her a goofy smile, hoping to warm up the chilly atmosphere.
“But we need you. We need a man around the place. Mum is so much easier to manage. Daisy is so much easier to manage. And I haven’t had a drink since you moved in!”
“I know,” I say, reaching for her hands and holding them inside my own. “I know, and I’m so, so proud of you, I really am. You’ve been amazing. Ten days, Jessamine, ten days without a drink! Which just shows how strong you are. And now you need to prove to yourself how strong you are by doing it alone.”
She snatches her hands away from me. “I can’t,” she says, pressing her sts against her mouth and staring at me beseechingly through wide eyes. “I can’t.”
“Yes,” I say softly. “Yes. You can.”
She shakes her head, a tiny twitching movement. “No,” she says. “I can’t.”
I sigh. “Jessamine, listen, I am here for you, OK? Any time you feel yourself slipping, call me—I’ll catch you. I can be like your AA sponsor? How about that? But I can’t live here. I need to go. OK?”
She shakes her head again but doesn’t say anything.
I take her hands in mine once more and squeeze them. “So, since it’s my last night tonight, how about I make us something really special to eat, and then we can put a lm on. I’ll get some popcorn, make a really nice night of it. OK?”
Again, she shakes her head and doesn’t say anything.
I pick up the remains of my sandwich and nish them quickly, put the plate in the dishwasher, and ick on the kettle to make Annie a cup of tea. When I turn round, Jessamine has left the room.
It takes two days after I move back to the squat for everything to come o its wheels, completely, horribly, sickeningly.
It’s three forty-ve on Monday afternoon when I get the call from Annie.
“Stuart. It’s Jessamine. She needs you. You have to come right now.”
I was in the middle of a haircut. The lady next door has male-pattern balding and likes to have hair cut by a man because they know how to deal with it. She’s a sweet woman; she gives me twenty-ve pounds and something she’s baked.
This time it’s a pair of vanilla cupcakes with rainbow-striped toppings.
“Annie,” I say, “I’m really sorry, I can’t come now. I’m busy.”
“She’s been arrested, Stuart.”
“What!” I walk away from the lady and toward the window.
“Arrested. Drunk and disorderly. She was causing a public nuisance, down the back of Heath Street.” Annie tuts and sighs. “I knew this would happen.”
“But where is she? Which station? Can you get her out?”
“I’m with Daisy. I had to collect her from school. I was hoping you could go and get her. They’ve taken her to Kentish Town.”
I sigh heavily. My heart feels like a rock in my chest, weighty and disproportionate. “Fine,” I say. “Give me some time to nish with my client and then I’ll head over.”
“Thank you, Stuart. She’ll be very glad to see you. As will I.”
Her skin is gray, there is vomit in her hair, her eyes are wild, and she has wet herself. “Jesus Christ, Jessamine,” I say as she walks into the front-desk area.
“Jesus actual Christ.”
“Fuck o,” she says. “Don’t say anything. This is all your fucking fault
anyway.”
“That,” I say, “is entirely untrue.”
“Just take me home. For fuck’s sake.”
I order an Uber, and we sit on a bench outside the station while we wait for
it.
“What were you drinking?”
“What do you think I was drinking?”
“But how much? And where?”
“Too much. And everywhere.”
“Fuck me, Jessamine, it’s Monday afternoon! I only said goodbye to you on Saturday. You were ne. What the fuck happened?”
She nails me with a narrow-eyed stare. “You left me. I told you not to, and you did.”
That’s when I feel it, pulling its many arms around me, tightening its grip all over me. My breathing becomes restricted and a sense of panic rushes through me. All my life I have been free to do whatever the damn hell I wanted. Nobody has ever asked me for more than I can give. Not my children, not my children’s mothers, not my family, not my friends, and certainly no woman I’ve ever been with. There’s always been this deep, beautiful level of respect and understanding between me and everyone I’ve ever loved or let into my life.
But now there is this woman who is sitting in her own urine, breathing stale vodka all over me and telling me in a voice that chills me to my very core that I am no longer allowed to be free. Or at least, that my freedom will be at her expense and that I cannot just pretend that none of this ever happened. It has happened and it is still happening and it will, I fear, continue to happen for a long time to come.
The Uber appears and I help Jessamine into it.
“She’s not feeling too good,” I tell the driver. “But she’ll be ne. I’ll give you a great tip. OK?”
I see him eye us both unhappily, but I also see his need for extra money override his distaste. “Fine,” he says. “But make sure she’s not sick, OK?”
“Scout’s honor,” I say, hoping for the best.
I spend the next couple of days at the cottage, tending to Jessamine’s two-day hangover, getting Daisy to school, doing laundry, walking the dog. Back to business as usual, in other words. But on Wednesday afternoon, after a morning spent tinkering with the jeep and folding sheets, I pick up my rucksack and stick my head around the door into Annie’s study. “I’m heading o now,” I say. “I’ll be back tomorrow to check in on her.”
Annie turns slowly and I see her purse her lips. “You’d better be,” she says.
I narrow my eyes at her and cock my head to one side. “What do you mean by that, Annie?” I ask.
“I mean that Jessamine is a girl who is used to getting exactly what she wants,
and for some reason she wants you.”
I look at her curiously.
“Her father,” she says, “my husband, he spoiled her. If she asked for it, she got it. He spoiled all of us. We didn’t have to think about anything, do anything, worry about anything. He was like a god to us. Do you understand? Like a god.
And we have never, ever recovered from losing him.”
A chill passes across the esh of my forearms and for a moment I don’t know
how to respond.
So, I deduce, Allen is dead.
I say, “I’m so sorry to hear that. And I know how you feel. My father was a wonderful man too and I miss him every day of my life. But, you know, we’re all grown-ups now. Life goes on—it sucks, but it goes on. And I do think that Jessamine is strong enough to deal with the real world. I really do. I mean, if she was strong enough to bring a child into this world, to raise a great girl like Daisy, then she’s strong enough to quit drinking, get a job, live a real life.”
I watch Annie’s face as I talk. It is impassive, unmoving, steely.
“Well,” she says crisply, when I nish talking. “I suppose you should go and say goodbye.”
She’s holding the blade of a small knife next to her wrist when I walk into her bedroom a moment later. She’s in a nightgown and thick socks, her hair is hanging loose on either side of her face, her eyes are wide, and her skin is pallid.
I see her press the blade of the knife harder against her pale esh. “Jesus Christ,” I say, leaping toward her.
“Get away from me,” she cries. “Just let me do it. I want to do it. I want to fucking die. And don’t pretend you care, because I know you don’t. You couldn’t give a shit about me. Everyone would be better o without me, and you know it.”
“Jessamine,” I say, softly, but with meaning. “Jessamine, please, just give me that knife. Nobody wants you to die. Nobody.”
“I thought,” she says breathlessly, “I thought you were dierent. I thought you cared. I thought maybe nally, finally, I’d met someone who wanted to take care of me, who enjoyed being with me. But no, you’re just like all of them.
Everyone leaves me! Nobody stays!”
A strand of spittle accompanies her enunciation of the word “stays” and lands on her chin. It sits there, refracting the weak January light from the east- facing window. Meanwhile, the blade is pressing ever deeper into the skin of her wrist, and I am stupeed into inaction. I don’t know what to do, what to say, I just know that I cannot bear to see her hurt herself.
And then I see a droplet of scarlet blood ooze from the underside of the blade, another and another. “I will stay!” I nd myself saying. “I will stay. Just please, please, Jessamine, drop that fucking knife! Jesus! Please!”
And she does; the knife falls to the oor with a soft clatter and she pulls her thin arms in toward herself, like broken wings, her furled sts against her chin, and she falls into my body, into my embrace, and I hold her for dear life, thinking: Fuck, what the hell have I done?
