4
Packing Up
When the big oak front door was safely closed and locked behind me, I leaned against it for a moment with my eyes shut, trying to remember how to breathe normally.
And when I finally opened them, I saw the place with new eyes: no longer as my home, just one more temporary resting place on the rootless journey that was my life.
The house was furnished in an eclectic mix of Victorian mahogany furniture Dan had inherited from his parents and a few quirky modern pieces and junk shop finds we’d bought together. Most of my personal possessions were either in the kitchen, or the small boxroom I used for my writing and illustrating, but a few treasures were dotted about the rest of the house: the portrait of me painted by my father, a box made of shells, a small Venetian mirror, a good rug in colours muted by age that I’d once impulse-bought in an auction in Cornwall …
I fetched down a stack of cardboard cartons from the attic that were still marked in my own hand from the move up to Scotland: kitchen equipment, books, clothes, bedding, art materials …
The doorbell rang later, but I didn’t answer it in case it was Tanya Carter. But whoever it was persisted, so I put my head into the hall to listen. It fell suddenly silent, then the letter box clattered and the familiar voice of the café manageress called, ‘Alice, are you there? It’s me, Jen.’
She looked relieved when I opened the door.
‘Thank goodness – I could see all the lights on, so when you didn’t answer I was starting to get worried.’
‘I thought you might be that woman,’ I said, not able to bring myself to call her Dan’s wife. ‘What happened to her?’
‘Well, I think she was bruised by the table, but she was screaming blue murder when she got up, so we knew she was OK, really,’ she said, following me into the kitchen and looking at a half-packed box into which I was stashing my favourite utensils. ‘There’s nothing wrong with her lungs, that’s for sure.’
‘Do you know who she is?’ I asked, wrapping up a glass lemon squeezer and then putting it inside the blue-glazed interior of a Mason Cash mixing bowl, along with a kitchen timer shaped like a hen and a few other small items.
‘Yes, I overheard what she was saying – in fact, half the people in the café did, because she’s a bit shrill, isn’t she? She threatened to report you for assault, but we told her she’d only got what was coming to her … and then Col said she’d need witnesses and he was sure no one there had seen a thing. Most of the customers were locals or Dan’s friends.’
‘That must have cheered her up,’ I said, my hands automatically continuing with the wrapping and packing.
‘She quietened down when she realized she wasn’t getting any sympathy and went away, but she said she’d be back as soon as she’d sorted things out with the solicitor.’
‘So … she’s not intending to go to the funeral tomorrow?’ I asked, wrapping newspaper round my set of good kitchen knives and putting them in the box, one at a time.
‘No, I don’t think even she had the brass for that. She said she was off back down south, she’d forgotten how freezing cold it was up here and how much she’d hated living in Scotland. And …’
She paused, clearly uncertain how to put what she wanted to say. ‘Alice, we’re all really sorry about what’s happened. We know Dan loved you and how good you were for him, grounding him and making the café so popular.’
‘He wasn’t grounded enough to get a divorce,’ I said, slightly bitterly.
‘You know Dan – he would have meant to, he was just so laid-back he never got round to it.’
‘Well, it’s too late now,’ I said. ‘I’ll be packed and gone, right after the funeral.’
‘But shouldn’t you speak to the solicitor first? Surely you’re entitled to something, after all the work you’ve put in on the house and the café?’
‘The solicitor just rang me, to warn me that Tanya Carter might appear – and she will get everything. He suggested I check Dan’s papers again, in case there’s another will, but what’s the point when I know very well he won’t even have given it a thought.’
‘I’d double-check anyway,’ she said, ‘and surely you don’t have to pack up and go straight away?’
‘Perhaps not, but I can’t bear to be here any more, and the sooner I find a new job and somewhere to live, the better. You can carry on managing the café, meanwhile, can’t you? It’s a good business, so when she gets probate and puts it up for sale, someone will snap it up and, if they’ve got any sense, you and the other staff with it.’
‘I can keep it going, but it won’t be the same. No one can bake the way you can, for a start. One climber said the thought of your syrup sponge pudding and custard had kept him going through a snowstorm on Everest.’
‘Dan said much the same,’ I said, tears suddenly smarting in my eyes. ‘And that my chocolate fudge cake was to die for …’
I looked down and realized I was now trying to cram a milk jug into an overflowing box. Only part of my brain was doing rational things, while the rest was desperate to retreat somewhere dark, and howl.
‘Look, why don’t you come and stay with me and Mum for a bit?’ Jen suggested, just as she had after we’d heard the terrible news about Dan.
‘You’re very kind, but I feel I’d like to get right away. I’ll phone my friend Edie in a bit – you know, the one with the guesthouse? She called me after she saw the news and invited me over there for a change of scene after the funeral was over. She can probably put me up until I find another job.’
Back where I started, skivvying for others in a kitchen somewhere – up the ladder and down the snake. The chimera of marrying and having children and a forever home of my own shivered and vanished into the air.
Whatever I wrote in my stories, in real life Princess Alice was destined never to have her happy-ever-after ending.
I said so to Lola when she called me, as she’d done every day since I’d had the news about Dan.
‘I shouldn’t say that, when you haven’t either,’ I said contritely, for Lola had been suddenly widowed two years ago and had moved back to her parents’ smallholding, with her three children.
She’d been absolutely devastated by the suddenness of her loss and I’d spent as much time as I could in London, supporting her through the funeral and helping her to pack up afterwards.
‘But your situation is entirely different: I found and married my soul mate and we had our happy-ever-after, even if the after didn’t last as long as we’d hoped,’ she assured me.
Then she urged me again to go and stay with them, even though the cottage was now bursting at the seams with people, until the annexe they were building was finished. But going back to Shrewsbury, even though the Wicked Witch had long decamped to London, would have been even more of a return full circle.
You know those metal bangles made out of a snake eating its own tail? Well, I felt just like one of those.
I left phoning Edie until early next morning and by then I’d searched Dan’s papers again for a will I knew didn’t exist. His idea of filing had been to shove everything into the big roll-top desk in the corner of the sitting room and his long-suffering accountant would come over once a year and stuff it all into a box and take it away to sort, so that narrowed down the search area.
I had trouble getting out the words, because my throat felt as if something had been tied tightly round it – my heartstrings, possibly – but once Edie had grasped the situation she offered me one of her three guest chalets for as long as I needed it.
‘There’s one in need of a bit of renovation that I will nae get round to till next year, so I’ll not be losing money by it,’ she said, businesslike as ever.
‘But I could rent it – I’ve got savings,’ I suggested, for Lola had been wrong about the market for adult fairy tales. A year earlier I’d put a novel and a couple of my novella-length stories out as e-books, with my own artwork for the covers, and the sales had been quite good. I’d bought a nice new laptop on the proceeds.
‘You’ll do no such thing!’ Edie declared. Then she added, ‘You know, you were lucky that woman didn’t press charges for assault; she sounds the type.’
‘She might have done, if Jen and the other staff hadn’t told her they would swear they never saw any assault if she tried it,’ I said. ‘I can’t imagine how Dan came to marry her in the first place … or why he never told me he wasn’t divorced.’
‘He was a nice man, but a feckless creature when it came to anything other than climbing mountains,’ she observed. ‘Like that Robbie you used to know down in Cornwall – sweet nature, but never quite made the leap into adulthood.’
‘I suppose you’re right,’ I said. ‘Though it turns out that Dan wasn’t totally feckless, because I’ve just found a life insurance policy … and it named me as the beneficiary. I think when he signed up for this documentary he must have had to have it.’
‘Oh? That’s something then, at least. How much was it for?’ she asked, very brisk and practical.
‘I don’t know. I don’t suppose it’s a lot,’ I said disinterestedly. ‘I’ll read the documents later when I can think straight. I’ve packed them with my stuff.’
He’d probably had the insurance forced on him, but at least he’d cared what happened to me enough to name me. He really had loved me and this must have been what he meant when he said he’d see me right if anything happened to him.
I could feel grief poised to spring out of me like an unloosed jack-in-the-box, but crammed the lid firmly back down.
‘Shall I come over and pick you up?’ Edie offered.
‘No, I know you’re busy and I think the old car has one journey left in her before she needs some urgent mega repairs. I’ve got everything packed so I can load it up and drive over early this evening, after the funeral tea at the café. I – I’d just finished doing the baking for that when his wife turned up. I was going to cut the sandwiches and leave them in the fridge under a damp tea towel, but Jen said she’d make them this morning, instead.’
My mind seemed to run automatically along catering lines, even at a time like this.
‘That old car of yours should have been scrapped long since,’ Edie said.
‘I can’t bear to, I’m attached to it after all these years. I’m sure it can be fixed and it’s so old, it’s probably collectable.’
‘Only to someone really keen on rust, and hand-painted flower-power bodywork,’ she observed drily. Then she offered to come and support me through the funeral, but I knew she was busy in the guesthouse, so I assured her I’d be among friends.
And I was. So many of Dan’s climbing companions and local friends had turned out that the little church was packed, and so too was Climber’s Café when we all adjourned there afterwards.
Mr Blackwell, Dan’s solicitor, had put in an appearance, which was kind of him, and he apologized for the way things had been left, even though it was hardly his fault. For some reason, I’d expected him to be tall, desiccated and remote, but in fact he was the exact opposite: small, plump and friendly in an avuncular kind of way. I found myself talking to him as if I’d known him for ever.
‘There was no sign of another will, but I did find an insurance policy,’ I told him. ‘I think it must have been something to do with that documentary he was making and it names me as sole beneficiary.’
‘If it actually names you then Tanya Carter has no claim on it,’ Mr Blackwell observed.
‘It did, though I can’t say I really took in much beyond that, and I’ve packed it up with my papers now,’ I said. ‘Edie – the old friend I’m going to be staying with – said she would go over it with me later.’
‘Let me know if you need my assistance with that, or anything else. I’ll be happy to help,’ he said kindly, before shaking my hand and driving off in a sporty little red car. I’d had him down as a sedate dark saloon kind of guy.
When the other mourners began to depart – or decamp to the pub to make a night of it, in the case of some of Dan’s climbing friends – I left Jen and the others clearing up while I went to pack my worldly belongings into the Beetle. I must have had more than when I arrived, because everything only just fitted in, even utilizing the passenger seat and footwell. Then I popped back to the café, as I’d promised, to say goodbye.
The staff were all waiting for me and I think they knew I’d never go back there again, because they’d clubbed together to buy me an antique Cairngorm brooch.
I’d been holding it together fairly well until then, but their kindness nearly cracked the shell over the heaving sea of emotions beneath. I stood, swallowing hard and blinking back tears as Jen pinned the brooch to my moss-green hand-knitted jumper, one of Edie’s creations, and kissed my cheek.
A fine, pervasive rain was falling as I waved once out of the car window and then drove away, my vision blurred and a thumping in my head that beat in time to the windscreen wipers.
I felt pulled tight, almost at breaking point. I wanted to close a door on everything, including thought, to be alone and silently scream like that Munch painting.
The car valiantly hauled and wheezed and clanked itself over the hills to where Edie’s Victorian guesthouse stood on its plateau overlooking a small loch. But that last pull up the drive to the sweep of gravel at the front proved too much and as I came to a halt, the Beetle made a most horrible noise and died on the spot.
I wasn’t just having that sort of day – I was having that sort of life.
The cook, William, came out to help me carry my things to the chalet from the defunct car. The three wooden lodges were set back among a stand of pine trees and mine was the furthest from the house, shabby but cosy, with a bedroom, fake log fire (Edie prudently didn’t trust her guests with logs and firelighters) and a small kitchen area for any cooking, though most guests took their meals in the main house.
He didn’t linger, since he had dinner for the guests to prepare, but said Edie would be down shortly, when she got back from the cash and carry.
Left alone, I just sat down and listened to the wooden building ticking gently, the thumping of my heart and the ringing in my ears, some of which was possibly due to a lack of eating and drinking.
After a while I stirred myself to get out my overnight things and put the kettle on. There was one of Edie’s welcome packs in the kitchen area, with the basic necessities for drinks and breakfast in it.
I made coffee as soon as she arrived and she switched on the log-effect fire, causing the room to suddenly look a lot cosier, even though I’d started to feel as if I’d never be warm again.
I apologized about the heap of junk in the car park.
‘It’s all right, I’ve already rung the local garage to come and take it away tomorrow,’ she said. ‘Don’t worry your wee head about it.’
‘Can you give them my mobile number, so they can tell me what’s wrong with it?’
‘I think it might be past fixing,’ she suggested.
I must have looked upset, because she amended quickly, ‘but I’ll ask them to do their best and they’ll let you know when they’ve had a look at it.’
She’d brought a wide, squat Thermos of stew and some fresh bread rolls. ‘I thought you wouldn’t feel like coming up to the house for dinner after the day you’ve had.’
‘No – you’re very kind,’ I told her. ‘I just want to be alone for a bit, because I feel so overwhelmed by everything that’s happened. I can’t seem to take it all in.’
‘Well, we’ll talk in the morning,’ she said, getting up. ‘Now, mind you eat some of that good stew that William sent down for you, or his feelings will be hurt. Are you sure you wouldn’t like me to pop back later, after dinner – or you come and spend the first night in the house?’
I shook my head. ‘I’ll eat and then go straight to bed,’ I assured her.
And I did try to eat but my throat closed up, so I abandoned the attempt and crawled into bed. I’d thought I’d never fall asleep again, but the moment I lay down I sank fathoms deep into welcoming darkness, too far for dreams or nightmares to catch me.