Page 14 of We All Live Here
“Wouldn’t it be nice to have somewhere nice to sit and remember Grandma?”
“We could make a bench out of dried poo,” says Violet, and starts cackling. “And we could sit on it.”
“Vi, you’re disgusting.” Celie gets up and walks to the bin with her plate, shielding it so that nobody can see how much leftover food she is scraping away.
“I do have a rather nice wooden bench,” Bill continues gamely. “I made it three months after Francesca died. It’s a Lutyens bench. It’s oak, so it’s starting to weather nicely. I could bring it and put it in the corner by the lilac.”
“We have a lilac?” says Lila.
“It would be nice to get the borders under control. It’s a decent-sized garden. Maybe we could even do some raised beds at the end for vegetables.”
“Not courgettes,” says Violet, who is surreptitiously feeding bits of steamed chicken to Truant. “I hate courgettes.”
“I had a nice chat with Jensen. He lives at the end of the road at the other house. We had a walk around the place while you were with your accountant, Lila. He has all sorts of ideas as to how we could tidy things up a bit.”
“Jensen?”
“Landscape gardener. You met him last week. Apparently you didn’t like him looking at the tree. Very amusing, he found it.”
“I didn’t know who he was.”
“He’s very much in demand but he was very fond of your mother so he says he’ll squeeze us in as soon as possible.”
“Kind of him,” says Lila, who is wondering about cost per hour.
“And he’s very ecologically minded—lots of bee-friendly plants, climate-friendly planting, no harmful pesticides, and recycled materials where possible.”
“Butwheredoes he stand on poo benches?” asks Violet, her voice lifting.
Bill chooses not to hear. “Anyway. He’s coming back on Friday to have a chat. Best to get the ball rolling, yes?”
Lila does not want to think where this particular ball is rolling to. Over the past few weeks she has noticed that Bill, while never fully discussing his intentions, appears to be making his stay permanent. Unfamiliar items keep appearing in her house, already clumped with piles of boxes from the move that she still hasn’t had the energy to unpack, or things that the girls won’t find a home for but cannot be got rid of so sit in corners, gathering dust. In her hallway a child’s bike is propped against the wall. It’s too small for Violet, but when she raised the possibility of taking it to the charity shop, both girls wailed that it was part of their childhood and she feels too guilty about the way their family has been fractured to go against their wishes.
And against this already cluttered backdrop she has noticed new items, a collection of piano music, a cedar-wood table bearing a carved map of South America, Bill’s ancient stereo system and accompanying collection of 1970s classical LPs. When she poked her head around the spare-room door while Bill was out the previous week, she noticed that he had somehow moved in a whole mahogany wardrobe and its contents. It fills the alcove to the right of the fireplace, its frontage beautifully polished and glowing, reflecting light onto Bill’s geometrically made bed. Inside it a row of perfectly ironed shirts hung an exact inch apart. Her bathroom cupboard now has a whole row of neatly lined bottles and packets containing Bill’s medications, blood-thinners, anti-cholesterol, and heart pills, as well as an interminable array of vitamins and supplements.
Lila is not sure how she feels about this. She needs Bill here, she knows. The girls need an adult presence when she isn’t there, and with his quiet cleaning and cooking he keeps some semblance of order when she seems incapable of it. But living with Bill is sometimes like living in the midst of a quiet domestic rebuke, especially when she comes home to find the breakfast dishes not in the sink where she left them but washed and stacked neatly on the drainer, or the window of the wood-burner gleaming when it had previously been obscured by soot. Bill’s cooking, his tidying, his insistence on peace and order are a constant reminder that she is apparently unable to provide those things. And although she knows rationally that his activities are a help, some dark part of her feels them as a stinging reminder that she has failed.
She must have failed: otherwise Dan would have stayed.
“Anyway,” says Bill, as he starts to stack the dishwasher with plates he has already rinsed, “he’s coming along tomorrow to start planning his design. That’ll be nice, won’t it?”
•••
Celie has refusedto go to Dan’s house this week, so when he calls, Lila is half expecting a tirade about how she has poisoned the girls against him. But his voice is oddly hesitant, almost conciliatory.
“I can’t make her come, Dan,” she begins, but he cuts her off.
“It’s not actually that I wanted to talk about. Although obviously I would prefer it if she came. She is my daughter.”
“They don’t like not having their own rooms. Celie’s at that age…”
“This house is pretty small, Lils.”
Don’t call me Lils, she wants to say, but bites it back.
“Well. It matters more to Celie. That kind of thing. I’m just saying.” She wonders suddenly what will happen when the new baby arrives. Will there be any room for the girls at all? Seeing them off two nights a week is always bittersweet: yes, she wants them to have a relationshipwith their father, yes, it’s sometimes a relief to have a break from Celie’s mercurial moods and Violet’s endless, endless demands, but they are herbabiesand there is not a day that she feels ready to start a morning without them.
“I know. And I’m trying to work out how I can make room enough for everybody.” He doesn’t mention the baby, she notices. It’s always a vague reference. She wonders if he has misgivings about being a father again. She is dragged back to the conversation by his next sentence.
