31
Harriet heard Cal’s parents’ gas-guzzler leaving, and looked out of the window for their son. She saw Cal sat on the swing seat at the far end of the garden, lost in thought.
It was high time Cal discovered he shouldn’t chat shit in his enchanting shrubberies. Harriet was smarting too much to pretend she’d not heard what she’d heard. She still had the text in her phone, with a slimy kiss, telling her an outright lie. He needed to know he hadn’t fooled her.
‘Hi,’ Harriet said, as she walked towards him.
‘Hi. I’m meant to—’
‘I’ve overheard you slagging me off for things that aren’t my fault before and I didn’t say anything. This time it was too much,’ she interrupted. ‘I’m sorry you didn’t want me at that lunch, but it was hardly my fault. Your dad didn’t leave me much of a choice.’
‘What?’ Cal’s jaw fell. ‘I didn’t say I didn’t want you there.’
‘That’s exactly what you said. “She’s my lodger, it’s a business relationship”,’ Harriet quoted. ‘You’re so two-faced. “Don’t put me in the position of saying I wanted her to stay.” You weren’t in that position. I’d offered to go.’
‘No, wait – this is—’
‘I didn’t ask to be your pal, you’re the one who dragged me into things you were doing. I don’t know why you have this vanity about being liked by people who don’t mean anything to you. Popularity is your drug, isn’t it?’
Cal looked both shocked and crushed at this. Admittedly, Harriet hadn’t intended to deliver a wide-ranging character assassination based on partial information. Still, screw him.
‘Let’s be clear that I’m only here to pay rent until I go. You can knock the chummy “come out for an Aperol Spritz, babes” stuff on the head. Cheers.’
She needed a gesture that acted as a full stop, so turned and marched back to the house. Good grief, where had all THAT come from? Harriet sounded well Huddersfield. Cal leapt up and followed her, catching her arm to make her stop.
‘Harriet, Harriet! Wait. You don’t have the context. That conversation wasn’t about you.’
‘Pretty sure it was.’
‘It was the easiest way of phrasing “back off”. I was embarrassed about my dad’s behaviour around you today.’
Harriet frowned and twitched her arm out of his grasp.
‘Why? Your parents were being nice.’
‘My mum was being nice. My dad wasn’t only being nice …’ Cal paused. She saw a flush that she’d never seen before creep up his neck, one she had to admit, he couldn’t be faking. ‘He was hitting on you. It’s what he does.’
Cal’s expression was a rictus of embarrassment. Even when Kristina walked in, he’d never looked as rattled as he did now.
‘Hitting on me?’ Harriet snorted. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘Yeah, I know. The idea’s so ridiculous it wouldn’t even occur to you. Unfortunately, it’s never too ridiculous an idea for him.’
Harriet tried to make sense of this. She’d not got predatory vibes from Mr Clarke Senior. She supposed he was over-familiar and slightly too tactile, but men of his age sometimes were.
‘It wasn’t that I didn’t want you there. I love your company,’ Cal carried on. ‘I didn’t want to be let down by his behaviour and look like a dick in front of you. I was trying to point out he’d crossed a line of familiarity with you. With my mum there, I was hardly going to say, “stop fancying my friends”.’
‘Your mum seemed fine with it?’
‘My mum seeming fine with it is a whole different … part of why I had therapy.’
‘Oh,’ Harriet said. She’d not anticipated any of this response and couldn’t help but wonder if Cal was a master of nimble diversions. “‘Forced me to ask her to stay” still seemed pretty definitive. No one had a gun to your head to say that.’
‘I was pointing out he’d interfered, not that the outcome was unwelcome. I hate you thinking I’ve been two-faced. Of course you’re not business. We’ve become friends. I hope.’
Harriet said nothing. She wanted to believe Cal, but she’d been here before.
‘I also heard you telling Sam it was hell to have me move in.’
‘When?’
‘When I moved in. I will feel every second of having her …’ Harriet realised this sounded dubious, and lamely concluded, ‘… here.’
Cal’s mouth opened and then he allowed himself a smile.
‘Fuck’s sake, you’ve earwigged every last thing out here, haven’t you? Yes, I freaked out somewhat. I wasn’t to know I’d get on so well with you, at that point. I don’t recall you seeming overjoyed I was the homeowner either, Princess Pigtail.’
Harriet rewarded his risk at levity with a reluctant smile.
‘I didn’t get the feeling your dad was … hitting on me, as you put it.’
‘No. You wouldn’t. You know why?’
‘No?’
‘Because he’s extremely good at it.’
Harriet folded her arms and tried to decide whether she believed him. ‘I’ve got to get my head around this. Your dad is inappropriate with your friends? He’d never act on it though?’
‘Oh yes. He would.’
‘What!? Has he ever …?’
‘Slept with one of my friends? Yup.’
‘Oh my God.’
‘It’s not confined to my friends. It just isn’t boundaried before them either. You’ve heard of Médecins Sans Frontières, meet Andrew Sans Frontières.’
‘Haha. Woah.’
Harriet thought she was a woman of the world, but omnishagger sixty-year-old dads using their sons as an introductions service was new to her.
‘Would he think he could slide me his phone number during a family Sunday lunch?’
‘Oh, he’d not be that upfront and crass. At least I hope not. He doesn’t take risks like that; he mainly wanted an attractive woman to goggle at. He’s never “off”, if you know what I mean.’
‘And he actually did it with one of your mates??’
Cal exhaled. ‘The last thing I wanted to have to do is tell you the longer version and probably the last thing you want is the longer version, yet now I think we’re going to have to do the longer version. Take a seat? After the KitFitbit story I fear you’re going to think my life is a very black comedy.’
He ushered Harriet back to where he’d been.
‘If we’re going to start at the beginning regards my dad, it’s got to be my childhood terror of Halloween.’
‘Before you go on,’ Harriet said, ‘have you ever been to Portofino?’
Cal burst out laughing and Harriet laughed too. It washed away any remaining awkwardness between them.
‘Twat,’ Cal said. ‘Here’s me, about to lay myself totally bare before your pitiless gaze.’
Wait while I get my camera. Bloody hell, where did that thought come from? Cal must have superpowers, because with one thing and another, Harriet’s passion had been in deep freeze for some time. Yet here she was, pondering whether he looked as good out of clothes as he did in them, pondering it quite intently. She hoped her face remained impassive.
Cal continued: ‘I had a fear of Halloween, which everyone thought was funny when I was a little kid. When I got to my teens, I realised that little boys are allowed to gibber and cry at the sight of plastic skeletons and trick-or-treaters in hoods, but society judges grown men for that far more harshly. I honestly used to dread it though.’
‘Was it anything in particular?’
‘I didn’t think so at the time, it just seemed to be all the paraphernalia. I had some awful association with it, the way you can never eat a certain food once it’s given you poisoning. Aged about twenty-five, having to make up excuses to my then-girlfriend about why I nearly burst into tears when she thought it was funny to leap out from a cupboard on October thirty-first, while wearing a bed sheet …’
Harriet put a hand over her mouth to stifle a laugh and said: ‘Sorry.’
‘It is funny, I know. I went to counselling, as CBT wasn’t as much of a thing then. To my amazement, we discovered that I’ve been repressing a memory from when I was seven. Of a pumpkin lantern in the back of a static caravan.’ He paused. ‘The counsellor’s talking me through this and as we dissect the scene – I forbid you to laugh at this – we find that the caravan with the pumpkin is rocking.’
Harriet wince-laughed. ‘Yikes.’
‘Yeah, yikes. What I’ve blocked out is that when I was seven years old, my dad took me on a “camping holiday”, and instead we went to a caravan park where his then-mistress was also staying. He dumps me with board games and bags of Wotsits and spends the whole time at hers. On Halloween, I’d got nervous being by myself and gone wandering the site, looking for him. Obviously I was too young to understand the implications of any it. Why my dad disappeared for hours at a time, why there was a pleasant woman staying there who seemed to know him, and gave me sweets. Or why, on the way home, he wanted me to rehearse a story about the fishing we’d not done.’ Cal shook his head. ‘Looking at the pumpkin, I knew bad things were happening that I couldn’t give a name to. Therefore, the terrible associations. Unnamed fears are the worst fears, I think.’
He sighed, and Harriet committed that line to memory, for later examination.
‘By the age I was in counselling, I knew my dad was chronically faithless. Finding out I’d been directly exposed to it and used as an alibi, while he neglected me, gave me a whole new level of rage and disgust.’
Harriet grimaced. ‘That’s horrific. What if something had happened in the caravan he’d left a seven-year-old alone in?’
‘Oh totally. The revelation cured me of my pumpkin aversion, however. Carve all the gourds you want; I will not flinch.’
Harriet smiled and wondered at how much of the unruffled Cal she knew had been shaped by this. He’d seemed like someone very unfazed by life to her, until now.
‘Have you ever confronted him?’
‘Yes, we had a huge fight after he shagged my mate Lily when I was twenty, and didn’t speak for months. She was someone from a summer job in a pub I had. My dad gave her a lift home when she’d been round mine and wouldn’t you know it! He took ages. Turns out he’d had a “breakdown”. I waited up for him and when he gave me the AA callout spiel I said, oh they dispense Viagra now, do they. All hell broke loose. We had a gigantic row. I didn’t move home after university as a result.’
‘Did he deny it?’
‘Oh, of course. Then when I made other accusations, I got lots of deflecting. Lots of that’s not what happened and life is complicated and I don’t owe you an explanation of myself. He knows it’s indefensible, so you don’t get any sense out of him. Futile.’
‘I can’t believe he shagged a friend of yours! Ugh!’
‘It’s actually worse than that …’ Cal rubbed his temples. ‘I’m going to say this very fast so I’ve said it, and then we can never think about it again. I’d-slept-with-her-too aaaaaaargh.’
‘Oh, God!’ Harriet said.
But instead of it only being discomfiting to him, it landed entirely differently than Harriet expected: she got an undeniable pang of possessiveness at this information.
It was as if a mist had lifted and the last hour’s events revealed themselves fully to her: Harriet wasn’t simply offended on a point of honour to overhear Cal say he wanted her to go. It was personal. She’d, against sense and logic, developed some kind of feelings for him. What an idiot. She bloody knew that having a heartbreakingly handsome landlord would come to no good. She definitely had to move out soon, for the opposite reason he thought.
‘Don’t look at me like that,’ Cal said.
‘Like what?’ Harriet said, startled. She very much hoped her specific emotions weren’t on display.
‘Like you think I should be sheep-dipped in Swarfega.’
‘Ah, well,’ Harriet cleared her throat. ‘At least you went first?’
‘Argh. It’s not going to be the thing you think of when you think of me from now on, is it?’ Cal said, looking genuinely rather upset.
‘Definitely not,’ Harriet responded, unable to say that what she’d just learned about herself bothered her more.
‘Where is your mum in all this?’ Harriet asked, thinking they both needed to move on from Lily’s multi-layered psychological impact.
‘My mum ignores it. She pretends it’s not happening. She’s like Tom Jones’ wife, except my dad’s not sold a hundred million records. At least Melinda got the Los Angeles mansion out of it.’
‘Your poor mum.’
‘Yeah. He had a dalliance with one of her friends when we were young and I think there was a proper bust-up over that, otherwise it’s a blind eye. I don’t know what it is, if she won’t be alone? Self-esteem thing? I got quite furious with her in my angry young man years. I wanted to know why she’d not leave him or at least call him out on it. She said, “your father and I are happy” and I was blowing up some old indiscretion into more than it was. I said, “Oh come on, he’s been in more beds than a travelling mattress salesman and you know it.” She looked devastated by that. I felt like a complete shit. I added to her humiliation.’
‘You were saying it out of protectiveness.’
‘Yeah, but also frustration with her. Dad’s cheating meant he lost a lot of my respect. The ugly truth is, Harriet, Mum putting up with it lost a lot, too. I’d like to tell you I feel nothing but compassion and there’s no contempt, but it’d be a lie. I feel wracked with guilt about that, but I can’t make myself not feel it.’
Harriet nodded. Someone of Cal’s confidence and forward motion probably would find abject passivity a tough one to empathise with.
‘In many ways they’re happy, and we had a happy childhood. Erin, my sister, is much less bothered by it than I am. But it’s very much not an example of marriage I want to follow. It makes me sad.’
‘Are you worried you’ll turn into him?’
‘Oh, no. Not at all. I’ve never found fidelity difficult. I don’t think I’ve ever had his love of the chase.’
Also, I bet you’ve never had to chase.
Odd that in light of this, Cal gave Kit’s infidelity a pass. Unless …
‘What if you’re not like him, but you keep dating him?’
‘You what now?’
‘The Hot Thatchers. You’re replaying the dynamic, except you’re in your mum’s role. You’re being the version of your mum who would stand up for herself. I will tame this person!”
‘Hahahaha, oh God … There could be something in that. When Sam’s wondered about why I consistently pick nightmares, I always say, but you have to have a challenge. I’d be bored with a push-over.’
‘I don’t think “a challenge” and “remorselessly daunting” are the same thing,’ Harriet said. She liked the version of herself she was with him.
‘At the great age of thirty-three, with your help, I think I’ve finally worked that out.’
They smiled at each other, then both glanced away. Harriet went back to gazing at the butterflies in next door’s buddleia.
‘God, sorry. You were having a sunny Sunday with bouquets from your customers, and then the Clarkes crash into it.’
Cal looked authentically ashamed, but Harriet realised the highs and lows of the last few hours had been a fine distraction from the utter wtf-ness of Scott’s attack.
‘Hah. It’s fine.’
‘Nice necklace,’ Cal said, spotting the small key on the chain.
‘Thank you.’
‘Does the key fit any lock in particular?’
Bloody journalists. Harriet smiled. Nearly everyone figured it was merely decorative.
‘A jewellery box.’
‘Ah. Family diamonds?’
‘It contains a letter from my mum.’
Cal’s smile softened. ‘I can imagine that has extraordinary value. Much more so than stones.’
‘It does. Although I’ve never opened it. The letter, I mean, not the box. Obviously I opened that when I put it inside.’
She’d not told Jon this and she felt the betrayal in blurting it straight out to Cal. Jon had also directly asked, and Harriet had dissembled: ‘It’s private’.
Yet she knew why she’d told Cal, and never Jon. The stakes were lower. Jon would’ve demanded they read it together and when she’d declined, he’d have pecked at her over it, saying it was something she (they) had to do. Jon, she had come to realise, couldn’t help but make everything about him, even at moments when he thought he was being exceptionally caring.
‘You have a letter from your mum you’ve never read?’
‘Yes. My grandad gave it to me on my thirteenth birthday and somehow, I’ve never steeled myself. I know it sounds insane. Or heartless.’
‘It doesn’t sound that way.’
‘It became a “straight away or on my own deathbed” deal. It snowballed into this thing I couldn’t do. Now, the moment is never right.’
‘Are you worried about what it says?’
‘Not exactly. It’s just … I’ve built it up too much. I don’t know what I fear, really. Crying a lot, obviously. Missing her. Which I do anyway, always, at some level. In my head the letter needs to say everything and how can it, when I don’t even know what “everything” is? If it’s be polite to your grandparents and work hard in your exams, lots of love, I’ll be … I don’t know. And I’m reading it over twenty years late, which I know is awful.’
‘No, it’s not, stop beating yourself up about that. You were a kid. You were doing what felt right. How do you know if it’s the wrong decision, until the day you read it?’
‘Thanks.’
‘… What if it’s not what’s written in the letter that matters to you?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Until you’ve read it, there’s always one more thing to be said, something left between you.’
Harriet swallowed and felt something shift inside her. She knew this was true. It was powerful for someone else to say it.
She didn’t know she was crying until felt the tears drip off her chin.
‘Oh shit!’ Cal said, with the unmistakeable blind panic of a man who’s made a woman cry. He looked like he thought he was going to have to explain himself in his line manager’s office. ‘I didn’t want to upset you!’ He reached over and held her shoulder. The warmth of his reassurance steadied her and made her feel more vulnerable, at the same time.
Harriet said in a strangled voice: ‘It’s OK, it’s alright, honestly. You’re right. I’ve never admitted that to myself. It’s good to have someone else’s thoughts.’ She sat forward, on the pretence of digging for a tissue, but with the desired effect of dislodging his hand. She couldn’t cope with the flirt-jangles while crying.
‘Oh God, I feel absolutely awful,’ Cal said. ‘Trying to show off I’ve had counselling, after all your perceptive observations, and completely overdoing it.’
Harriet gasp-laughed, wiping the tears away. ‘It’s fine! I like having that insight. It makes me feel better. I’m saving it as our last thing.’
‘I’m sorry I’d never asked about your parents.’
‘Hah, don’t worry! Why would you?’
‘You were raised by your grandparents?’
‘Yes. They were a very characterful pair.’ She sniffed and laughed. She couldn’t do more agony, right now. ‘They did a great job in difficult circumstances.’
‘Evidently.’
All things considered, on a fraught day, Harriet decided to accept that with a ‘thank you’.
‘What were they called? Your parents, and your grandparents?’
Harriet paused. ‘That’s … that’s the kindest question.’
‘Is it? I thought I was being nosy.’
‘Yeah, it is. My mum and dad were Stephen and Rose, and my grandparents were Frank and Mary.’
They sat in a peaceable silence, underscored by a loud hover mower a few gardens away.
‘I know I’m a very shit Yoda, but about your letter. Let the time to read it, arrive. Maybe it’ll be the night before you get married or something. But it’ll come. You don’t need to force it.’
‘If you’re Yoda shouldn’t you say “come, it will”?’
‘I don’t want you to actually slap me.’
They laughed, as much in relief at moving on from the heavy stuff.
‘Thank you, Cal. That’s comforting. Except I’m never getting married.’
‘You and me both, sweetheart,’ Cal said. ‘I honestly can’t ever imagine feeling whatever I’d need to feel, to want to try that again.’
‘Exactly same.’
He held up his palm for her to high five. ‘Cup of tea?’
They got up, Cal stretched – Harriet sneaking a glimpse at the flat stomach revealed as his arms went over his head – and walked back into the house.
When they were in Zucco, and Cal was getting the bill, Sam had said to Harriet: ‘The thing about Cal, the big surprise, the plot twist is: he’s genuinely, incredibly nice. He can get anyone or anything he wants by batting those eyelashes and so you itch to hate him. People search for the lurking conceited arsehole or the dark side, or, in some cases, try to torture it out of him. It isn’t there.’
At the time, Harriet had said: ‘Right,’ and thought, what a bros before hoes, male-centric whitewash of a bride-ditcher.
As Cal filled the kettle over the sink, she had to admit every word might’ve been pure truth.
He was so superficially attractive that believing his fundamentals were rotten had been a helpful safeguard. She got out her phone and fired up Zoopla.