Head pounding, the edges of a migraine beginning, I squeezed my eyes closed and listened to the ringing. Someone picked up Luke’s work phone, the tail end of a throaty laughter choked down as a female voice said, ‘Blaze Designs, how can I help you?’
‘Oh, I . . . ’ My eyes flew open. The only female voice I’d been expecting was Sandra, the receptionist who came on the line if it went unanswered. In her early fifties with a mouse-like voice, she would always promise to tell Luke I’d called, and then she’d update me on the latest developments in the lives of any member of One Direction. She had a massive crush on Harry Styles, which she knew was unusual. This had come out unexpectedly at one of their Christmas parties and had really tickled me. We had got on ever since.
‘Is Luke there?’ I asked the stranger, wishing he had answered. His work landline was normally a reliable way to catch him.
‘Luke?’
‘Yes – Luke Winters.’
‘Oh, that Luke,’ the vaguely familiar voice tinkled with a small laugh. ‘And who shall I say is calling?’
‘It’s Lottie,’ I snapped, already losing patience. I just wanted him on the phone.
There was a long pause on the end of the line and I scraped the toe of my shoe along the bottom of the window, wiping a mark in the steam.
‘He left the office earlier, I’m afraid.’ I still couldn’t place the voice but then a picture floated into my head: long red hair, caramel eyes, smooth skin. In all the drama of the day I hadn’t thought about Storm. My hand clenched tighter on the phone, knuckles whitening. Why was she answering Luke’s work phone? Warming his desk while he was away from it?
‘Shall I get him to call you back when he’s around?’
‘Don’t trouble yourself,’ I said, hanging up with a stab of one finger. I flung the phone back in my handbag, not caring if I made the cracks any worse. I stayed brooding in the window of Starbucks, glaring at anyone who looked vaguely happy. One woman was holding a bag containing a new shoebox, a big smile splitting her pretty face. I hoped she got home, lost the left one, and when she found it had already bought a new pair and worn them.
Chapter 4
Love is something we don’t even know we are searching for
CLIVE, 82
‘I’ve got up to make her tea three times today, got down her mug, you know the one she likes, with the strange sheep that wears a tutu. I only remember after I’ve put the milk in. It just sits there. Such a waste,’ he said, wiping at one eye. He wasn’t really talking about tea.
We were at the kitchen table, Grandad in his usual wooden chair with the armrests, me opposite in the chair I always sat in when I came over. My eyes had darted to Grandma’s chair with the worn red cushion, indents on its surface.
‘I know I’ve had some time to get used to the idea but it’s still a shock, although you know your grandmother, organised to the end. She’s left me a list.’
I laughed in spite of myself, glad to see his mouth twitch into an almost-smile too.
Grandma had loved a list. She told me she used to write them out on the chalkboard for when Grandad would get home on a weekend, after he’d been working all week. ‘Paint front door, fix chest of drawers, take out bins.’ One time the list had been so long Grandad had simply added, ‘Build the Pyramids’, turned and left for the pub.
I realised I’d never been alone in the house with Grandad before. They had been such a duo, a pair. I stared round the kitchen, the tick of the clock on the wall louder, the buzz of the oven’s overhead fan, the gurgle of the boiler as the hot water kicked in. It seemed so much emptier. How could one missing person make this enormous difference?
I’d come over as soon as they’d let me out of court, still dressed in my sweaty work clothes, my briefcase jam-packed with the brief for the next day and my head crammed with everything I needed to do next. My best friend Amy had sent me a lovely message after Luke had called her postponing the wedding plans we’d had that night. I was shaping up to be the world’s worst bridesmaid. The moment I saw Grandad, though, I forgot about everything else, knew the whole day had been putting off this moment. His face was rumpled, eyes deadened, eyebrows drawn together in a permanent frown.
I reached a hand out and leant towards him. He smelt of ginger and coffee.
‘I’m sorry I couldn’t be here earlier. I hate that you had to do all this on your own.’
He picked up my hand and patted it. ‘I wasn’t on my own,’ Grandad said. ‘Luke was extremely helpful, and very kind.’
So that’s where Luke had been. He’d probably never gone into the office. He would have known I didn’t want Grandad to be alone. I felt a surge of love for my warmhearted boyfriend.
‘And my golfing gang, Arjun, Geoffrey and Howard, were here, and Auntie Sue would have stayed longer if I’d asked her but the poor woman is as crushed as I am and it wouldn’t have been good for either of us.’
Typical of Grandad to be thinking of others.
He got up and flicked on the kettle. ‘Was it an interesting case?’
‘Grandad, I’m not going to tell you about some guy who smashed someone so hard in the thigh with a chair leg he fractured his femur – allegedly. No court talk at all. I’m going to order us a Chinese takeaway. We’re going to eat it and we’re going to talk about Grandma.’
He nodded then and I was grateful to see the hint of relief cross his face. He seemed to have aged ten years in as many hours: his shoulders sagging, his feet shuffling as if he didn’t have the energy to lift them off the floor any more.
The Chinese arrived and I pretended not to notice Grandad picking around the food. Every now and again a sound from the house next door would make us both look up, as if we were expecting Grandma to emerge in the doorway, to cross the room and sit in her chair. She’d offer us cocoa that we’d both politely refuse (Grandma could burn most things) and things would just be . . . normal.
She didn’t appear, of course, and it still seemed a shock. She’d been seriously ill for a long while now, Grandad insisting on nursing her in the last few months. But even though she’d grown frailer, with longer pauses as she sought to catch her breath, grimacing at the rattle in her chest, she still had the same spirit and the same mind. She could still smash us both in a cryptic crossword or a game of backgammon. It seemed impossible that she wasn’t here. I felt a shiver run through me as I realised Grandad was now living on his own. For the first time in forty-four years, it was just him.
We talked about her then, Grandad telling me stories I’d heard before made all the more poignant because she wasn’t here now. The time she’d been pulled over by the police after singing opera in her car at a set of traffic lights (they believed she was screaming from some kind of abdominal pain); the time she’d insisted on making jam and had ended up in the hospital with third-degree burns on her hand; the time she toppled over the fence into next door’s garden after spying up a ladder because she thought her friend’s husband was having an affair (it was a female plumber fixing the sink in their en suite).
Our laughter filled the room. At one point I was clutching my side, both of us on the edge of hysteria, before tears leaked down my cheeks, my sobs stoppered by a handkerchief proffered by grandad. Grandad and Grandma’s house had been my home since I was seventeen. We still had Sunday lunches there, Luke and Grandad sneaking off to watch football as Grandma and I cleared up in the kitchen, listening to musical theatre soundtracks. Grandma loved to sing and whatever she lacked in pitch she more than made up for in enthusiasm.