Ginger parked the car on Great-Aunt Grace’s drive, got out, admired the lawn which did not have a single daisy on it, and then rang the doorbell.
As usual, nobody replied. Being increasingly deaf, Grace tended to have the TV volume turned up to an eardrum-splitting level which only other deaf people could stand.
‘I don’t know how the dogs stick it,’ Mick said whenever he visited.
‘They’re deaf too,’ said Declan. ‘Or they are now.’
Grace had been the major female figure in Ginger’s life as a child and she had been wonderful, even if she had never been blessed with children herself.
When it came to picking up the Reilly kids from school or helping them with homework, Grace, recently widowed, had been there.
Ginger gave one more blast on the doorbell because she never wanted to startle Grace by turning up unannounced.
Cloud and Pepperpot, two overweight cockapoos, did not arrive at the door barking madly and when Ginger pushed open the letter box and yelled again, no furry friends leapt up to sniff hello.
She could hear loud TV blaring from the living room and reckoned it was the QVC jewellery show, Grace’s favourite.
Ginger got her house keys out of her bag and opened the door, feeling, as she always did, the fear that dear Grace would be laid out on the parquet flooring of the kitchen having had a heart attack.
Although, really, Ginger thought, as she shoved the door open and found herself standing in what was the only entirely clear area near the door, if her great-aunt was lying on the floor, it would be from being concussed by a falling box.
Grace was a hoarder. Not a common-or-garden person with a closet stuffed with too many pairs of shoes or handbags or sweatpants. No. Grace was a hoarder of epic proportions with added shopping-channel-aholism. When the fruits of her late-night shopping arrived, she got the postman or the delivery man to shove the box into the closest available space. Consequently, the entire downstairs was like the Argos warehouse with boxes everywhere, many of which were unopened.
Ginger worried desperately about her great-aunt, but nobody else seemed to: ‘She’s happy,’ Ginger’s dad said.
‘Ah, she likes a bit of shopping,’ said Declan.
‘Bit of shopping? It’s like a warehouse in there,’ protested Ginger. ‘Besides, the house could be falling around her with rot and she wouldn’t know.’
‘That house is in perfect condition, worth a fortune: three thousand square metres, gas heating and a conservatory, and not a speck of damp. Grace won’t let it rot and neither will I – I check on her, you know,’ Ginger’s father always said, upset at the thought that he would let his beloved aunt wither away in her home. She had helped him rear his children and he owed her forever for that. ‘And she has Esmerelda.’
‘Who is just as bad when it comes to shopping,’ sighed Ginger.
Grace’s husband, Arthur, had died over thirty years ago, when she was fifty-five. For years, Grace had steadfastly helped raise the Reilly children, gone out to see films and to restaurants, and generally socialised. But a bad fall at the age of eighty had made her more housebound, which was when she’d discovered internet and telly shopping and a whole new world opened up.
Because Grace Devaney never saw a fake gold pendant with matching earrings and bracelet that she didn’t like.
Now boxes, opened and unopened, covered the whole house and Ginger worried that emergency services wouldn’t be able to reach her great-aunt if she were ever ill.
‘Aunt Grace!’ yelled Ginger now.
Finally, someone answered.
‘Helloooo?’ said a voice and Esmerelda appeared at the top of the stairs. ‘I upstairs hoovering, I no hear you,’ said Esmerelda, who was a statuesque Romanian lady of incalculable age with jet-black hair and lively make-up, which featured much blue today. Esmerelda cooked, vacuumed between the boxes and, sadly, spurred Grace on in the purchase of electric fly swatters, non-slip wellington boots, sink plugs for travel in Africa and useful kitchen implements neither of them would ever use.
‘I just dropped in to say hello,’ said Ginger, smiling warmly. ‘How are you?’
‘No good, the arthritis. But we order new vitamins. They coming soon. Good for dogs too,’ said Esmerelda, pleased. She looked Ginger up and down. ‘There is new drug we see on telly – make the fat stick to it and not to you. Grace get it for you, no problem. You want?’
‘I’m good for now.’
Ginger was used to Esmerelda’s constant efforts to make her thin, and strangely, unlike if anyone else had suggested such a thing, it didn’t upset her. Esmerelda herself was built like a tank. She merely wanted Ginger thin enough to catch a man and then she could do what she wanted.
‘You no want, it your funeral.’ Esmerelda shrugged. ‘You never get married.’
‘I don’t want to get married,’ lied Ginger.
‘You marry girl if you want,’ Esmerelda pointed out. ‘All is good. Man, woman, love. Who cares if you the gay. All love.’
‘Ah no, I’m fine,’ said Ginger. Neither men nor women were interested in her, but there was no point explaining this to Esmerelda. Ginger retreated to the source of the noise.
As soon as she opened the living room door, two furry creatures threw themselves at her.
‘Hello pooches,’ said Ginger, hunkering down to pet the dogs.
‘Ginger, my dear, how lovely of you to visit,’ said Grace, like the Queen welcoming someone to Buckingham Palace instead of into a large room filled with leaning towers of Pisa of books and old newspapers with pages left opened because Grace wanted to reread them.
Grace herself was a stately woman with bouffant white hair and she wore a fair amount of her shopping-channel jewellery over a chiffon fuchsia blouse (‘on special offer with a pair of slacks!’) and an old cardigan that looked as if Ginger herself – who had no craft abilities whatsoever – had knitted it out of porridge.
‘Give me a kiss, dear,’ said Grace.
Ginger kissed her aunt, inhaling that familiar scent of Mitsouko. Beside them, a few boxes wobbled.
Ginger had to say something. It was a death trap, a death trap made up of clever kitchen implements and jewellery that Grace and Esmerelda would need four more necks each to ever wear.
Ginger rearranged the boxes.
‘You know I worry,’ she began.
‘Oh, stop, please,’ said Grace, but not unkindly. ‘Worrying never gets you anywhere. If I had done nothing but worry all those years ago, would I have survived without Arthur? No, I would not. I made a life for myself and I lived it to the full and that’s what you should do too, Ginger, and stop worrying about other people.’
Grace was into her stride now.
‘I’ll be fine. Myself and Esmerelda and the doggies are perfectly fine here. We have one of those things for putting out fires in the kitchen, you know,’ she added, delighted with herself. ‘I got it out of a catalogue from the weekend newspaper.’
‘There are too many things out of catalogues,’ said Ginger, ‘With this many boxes lying around, the place is a fire hazard. I bet you can’t find the fire extinguisher for a start, and the ambulance people would never be able to get to you if something happened.’
‘You got to me,’ said Grace, ever the debating expert.
‘I know,’ said Ginger, ‘but that’s because I know the pathway.’
Grace laughed. ‘It’s a bit like Indiana Jones in that lovely film,’ she said. ‘I did always like that Harrison Ford man. Very attractive. Still, how are you, seriously?’
She looked at her great-niece with those piercing blue eyes that hadn’t dimmed a bit ever since Ginger had known her. Grace might hoard like a maniac, but there was absolutely nothing wrong with her mental faculties.
‘Has Esmerelda been trying to tell you you should get a man again or go on a diet?’
Ginger laughed.
‘You know, she’s the only person who doesn’t upset you if they say that type of thing,’ said Grace, ‘and she only does it because she cares for you. But nobody has the right to tell you how to live your life, darling. Have a man, don’t have a man—’
‘She suggested “woman” this time,’ interrupted Ginger, grinning.
‘Oh, lovely,’ said Grace delightedly. ‘We could be thoroughly modern and you could have the wedding here. Is that it, because don’t think you can’t tell me because I’m old-fashioned. Rita up the road nearly had a heart attack when she heard her grandson was gay, silly old fossil. She’s a total hypochondriac and doesn’t have an open-minded bone in her body. I mean, who cares who anyone goes to bed with. It’s nobody else’s business—’
‘I’m not gay.’
‘It was just a thought,’ said Grace. ‘You could both wear white dress suits. I have just the necklaces . . .’ She sighed at the beauty of it all. ‘You’re quite sure?’ Grace asked beadily. ‘Because I could go down to Rita immediately and tell her. Invite her to the wedding too! What a hoot! And if she pretends to have a heart attack at an invitation to a lesbian wedding, then I’ll tell people about that fling she had with the window cleaner in the nineteen-seventies.’ Grace tapped the side of her nose. ‘I don’t forget these things.’
‘I don’t want anyone,’ said Ginger.
‘We all want someone,’ said Grace, suddenly sombre. ‘Like I wanted Arthur and he wanted me. Nobody wants to be alone, darling, and Esmerelda, in her beautifully blunt way, is just saying that. She thinks that if you are thin, a man will appear out of nowhere. Nothing is that simple. You need to feel wonderful about yourself and then it doesn’t matter what size, shape or sexuality you are. You’ll find the love of your life. The only thing you have to lose is your emotional baggage. Deal with growing up without your mother and learn that you are not what you weigh, sweetheart.’
For a moment, Ginger couldn’t speak.
Grace could always do this to her: say something so perfectly truthful and real that it reached right into her heart. But she was wrong, of course. If Ginger was thin, then maybe she might have a man. And she’d never known her mother in the first place.
‘Enough of the philosophy,’ Ginger said, composing herself and determined to change the subject. ‘I just dropped in to see how you were and to discuss what we talked about last time, which is possibly getting rid of some of the stuff . . .?’
At this, Grace looked a little bit shifty. ‘I’m not sure I want to get rid of things.’
‘You won’t be able to buy new things if you don’t get rid of some of the old things,’ wheedled Ginger. ‘There’s really no room for anything else . . .’
‘There’s room for jewellery.’
‘Jewellery is interesting but comes in small boxes. The hall is full of big boxes.’
‘Kitchen things,’ said Grace happily.
She had a terrible weakness for cooking gadgets: slicers, dicers, things that could make soup, things that neatly went into the fridge and made the soup for you. She had them all.
‘Esmerelda’s just as bad as me,’ Grace protested. ‘You want to see her here in the evenings pointing at things on the television, saying, “we want that”.’
‘I know,’ said Ginger, thinking the battle was almost won. ‘Perhaps I could come around soon and look at all the boxes of things you haven’t opened and perhaps consider selling them.’
She knew this was an enormous job. It would require a truck to get the older purchases to any charity shop decent enough to take them.
It was either that, or put half the house for sale on the internet, and Ginger quailed at the thought of photographing everything and trying to sell it online. But it had to be done.
‘I might be out, you know.’
‘No,’ said Ginger, ‘you can’t be out. Besides, I’m going to bring somebody with me,’ which was a total fib.
‘Really?’ said Grace, who loved a party. ‘A pal? Lovely. A man? Or someone to replace that horrible Liza. I heard about it, you know, but we won’t talk about it if it upsets you.’
Ginger shuddered at the memory. She should have known Grace would winkle the truth out of Mick and Zoe.
‘Sorry, pet,’ Grace said, reaching out to stroke Ginger’s hand with her own one with its manicured nails and papery thin skin. ‘Just be careful. You’re such a soft-hearted person and the Lizas of this world take advantage of you.’
‘Grace, you’re just saying that to get me off the point. We need to do this or a TV crew will be arriving from America saying they’re going to do an episode of Hoarders.’
‘No,’ said Grace. ‘I don’t want anyone tidying me up. I’m fine as I am.’
Ginger knew when Grace had put her foot down. She’d have to discuss the whole thing with her father and try to find a solution that way. ‘Fine,’ she said. ‘For now. I suppose I should make us tea?’
‘Ooh yes,’ said Grace, finding her glasses and peering at the on-screen TV guide. ‘They’re doing cosmetics next. Some dragon fruit thingamabob that makes you look much younger. It was on earlier only we missed the best bits. Esmerelda has decided she wants it.’
‘We must have it then,’ sighed Ginger.
She made tea and then sat with the two ladies and the dogs and watched as a wildly made-up woman extolled the virtues of dragon fruit lotions and potions with the aid of before and after pictures that looked heavily doctored.
While Esmerelda and Grace discussed whether it would be worth it or not, Ginger ate some biscuits – Grace always had the best chocolate ones – and thought of Grace’s comment about emotional baggage.
She had dealt with not having a mother. She’d dealt with it all her life, thank you very much. And as for saying she wasn’t the sum of her weight . . . well, Grace hadn’t been out in the world for a long time. The rules were different for bigger women: harder, more vicious, more cruel.
If Ginger could lose weight, she’d sort that out.
Guiltily, she put down the biscuit she’d just picked up. She had to start. Soon.
When she got home, her stomach was grumbling. A few chocolate biscuits did not a dinner make. She turned on the TV and went into the kitchen to pop a Lean Cuisine in the microwave. She was starting a diet, another one of the zillions she had secretly tried over the years, but this one was going to work because it was about time, she decided.
Time to change her life.
If her mother was alive, she’d have known how to diet and do stuff like that: the thought flew unbidden into her head. And just as quickly, she stamped it out.
No looking back and getting miserable. Not now, not ever. Her mother had been wonderful, or so Dad said, but she was in the past, killed in a horrific traffic accident when Ginger was a baby. Aunt Grace had been all for counselling when the three Reilly kids were in their teens:
‘Do you good. You have to let go of grief. Some things, we have to let go in life,’ she had said with the same imperiousness that would have made her a fabulous Roman empress.
‘We’re fine,’ Ginger said hurriedly in later years when Grace came back to the subject. Keep moving on – nothing to see here.
Declan and Mick remembered their mother, but Ginger had been too small when she’d died. She only had the photos to remember her mother by and she had enough complexes without adding to them. No thank you, she was doing fine.
There was only one thing Ginger wanted to let go of: her extra weight. If she got thin, everything would be fine.