‘North Sheen, of all the places,’ she huffed. ‘What sane person wants to live in North Sheen, I ask you?’
I knew it wasn’t a particular prejudice against North Sheen that was annoying Auntie Lyd; it was being forced to drive the car, which usually sat, immobile and gently rusting, outside her
house. Auntie Lyd preferred to travel everywhere by taxi – for convenience, she said, but I think also because most of the drivers fondly remembered her star turn as Destiny Devereux in the
eighties mini-series
Those Devereux Girls
, and often refused to charge her. The fact she had suggested driving the Travelling Skip at all showed how seriously she was taking my break-up with
Martin.
‘That’s not fair,’ I said, determined not to let her get to me. ‘North Sheen’s lovely, Auntie Lyd – you never even came and visited us there. It’s so
close to the river, and to Kew Gardens and—’
‘I don’t need to go there to know what I think of it,’ said Auntie Lyd. ‘Suburban. In London, but not on the tube. Puh, it’s neither fish nor fowl. What is the
point of living in this glorious city’ – Auntie Lyd waved her cigarette for emphasis, but we were still inching past Wandsworth’s distinctly inglorious Southside shopping mall,
which didn’t really serve her argument – ‘if you don’t take advantage of it?
‘And a new build, too,’ she sneered, curling her lip.
‘Auntie Lyd, don’t be such a snob,’ I protested hotly. Our spartan, new, fully insulated and double-glazed house may not have been the romantic tumbledown cottage of my
impractical dreams, but it was ours. Mine and Martin’s. It was home. People were what made a house a home. Probably Auntie Lyd had forgotten that, running her own home as a business for so
long.
‘Martin doesn’t have time to keep up with the maintenance an old house would need, he’s too busy at work. And so am I, actually.’
In truth busyness had very little to do with it. Martin didn’t agree with me that architectural quirks gave a place character. Where I saw the patina of the years, he saw the need for a
bottle of Cillit Bang. Where I saw original sash windows, he saw draughts and high heating bills. It had taken just one viewing of a Victorian terrace in Putney, with Martin whistling disapproval
through his teeth as he tapped walls and rattled window frames, to realize he would never be happy in an older house. I knew I could have tried harder to persuade him, but I also knew that if I
succeeded, every roof leak or plumbing issue that came up would be laid at my feet for ever more. It didn’t seem worth it. And when Martin found out there was an early-bird discount for
buying our home off-plan from the developers, my half-expressed arguments crumbled to dust.
The Travelling Skip lurched around the corner into the Marchmont estate. I know it sounds like something you might find on the pages of
Country House
, with stables and outbuildings and
perhaps even a tennis court, but in fact it was a curving cul-de-sac of self-contained three-bedroomed houses, each staring blankly at the others through its PVC windows. And since the closest
I’d ever been to owning a horse was riding a donkey on Salcombe Sands as a toddler, I can’t say I had ever found myself lamenting the lack of stabling options.
‘It’s this one here,’ I said. Our house was distinguished from the others by the pot of geraniums I’d put outside the front door, still just alive even in the depths of
winter. I convinced myself it was a sign. The geraniums had survived against the odds: there was still hope for our relationship. Auntie Lyd swung into the driveway and slammed on the brakes,
making us both lurch alarmingly towards the windscreen before being thrown back against the seats as the car came to a halt. She switched off the engine and released her seatbelt so she could turn
to face me.
‘These are perfectly nice houses,’ she said. ‘I’m not being a snob. But they’re perfectly nice houses for someone else. Not for Rory Carmichael.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean, who
are
you? Have you entirely forgotten?’
‘I’m – I’m . . .’ I wasn’t sure how to answer. I was Martin’s girlfriend, that’s who I was. I was half of MartinandRory. Without that to define
me, who was I?
‘I’ll tell you. You’re the niece who used to beg me to take her to the Victoria and Albert Museum when she visited London aged six. You’re the girl who preferred touring
the cathedral at Rouen to queuing up for ice creams with all the other thirteen-year-olds on the school French trip. You’re the girl who asked for membership to the National Trust for her
sixteenth birthday – I’m not saying I didn’t think it was strange, Rory, frankly I’d rather have bought you a crate of alcopops; but it was
you
.’
I sat silently biting my lip like a sulky teenager while Auntie Lyd ranted on. It was true that I’d always had a passion for old houses and history, even from when I was tiny. While other
girls were happy with the ersatz castles sold to them in cartoons, I longed for the real thing, poring over National Trust catalogues as if I might find the meaning of life hidden in the heavy
stone fireplace of a medieval manor. Being dragged across the country by my mother as she sought a fresh start with the end of every marriage – until she gave up on England entirely and moved
to Spain for love – had made me fascinated to the point of obsession with families who had lived in the same place for generations. I envied that certainty, that absolute knowledge of who you
were and where you belonged.
‘You’re the girl who got a first-class degree in History of Art and an offer for an MA at the Courtauld Institute – which I still think you were idiotic to turn down.
You’re the girl who spends her working life at
Country House
magazine writing about art and houses that are hundreds of years old—’
‘So I suppose you think we should have moved into a medieval castle?’ I muttered crossly, sinking lower into my seat as if I might be able to slip down and hide amongst the detritus
in the footwell.
‘Don’t be facetious, Rory,’ she said dismissively. ‘I am trying to ask why you – Rory Carmichael, who loves everything old, everything historic – why you ever
imagined you would be happy here?’
I looked at my hands in my lap. And then up to the bare new brick of the front porch. I’d been planning to grow ivy over it to soften the harsh, just-built corners. So it wasn’t the
house of my dreams aesthetically, but it represented so much more to me than architecture. We were putting down roots. In years to come we’d be saying, ‘We’re the Peters family,
from North Sheen,’ instead of ‘I’m Rory from – well, all over really, it’s complicated.’ That seemed worth a little sacrifice to me. I didn’t feel like
explaining all of this to Auntie Lyd – while Mum lurched from marriage to marriage, Aunty Lyd had never had a proper relationship for as long as I’d known her. She wouldn’t get
it.
‘I moved here because Martin wanted to,’ I said. ‘Because Martin wanted to and I love him, and because you have to compromise in a relationship. That’s how it
works.’
Auntie Lyd shook her head as she ground out her cigarette in the overflowing ashtray. She blew a stream of smoke towards the windscreen; it broke on the glass, spreading out tendrils that
obscured the house from view.
‘Compromise means meeting in the middle, Rory,’ she said, reaching to the back seat to pick up her handbag. ‘It doesn’t mean giving up your own identity so as to fit into
someone else’s life.’
She opened her door and brushed ash off her skirt on to the driveway. ‘In any case, they’ll only despise you for it in the end. Believe me.’
When I let us into the house, pushing open the insulation seal on the front door with a pop, it felt like my vision had shifted in the short time that I’d been staying at
my aunt’s. Instead of feeling welcomed by the home that I had shared with Martin for the last year, I saw everything as if through Auntie Lydia’s eyes. The posters in the hallway of
classic Ducati motorbikes (though a poster was the closest Martin had ever got to owning one; apparently the insurance premiums were prohibitively high). The expensive Gaggia espresso machine that
took up half the kitchen worktop – even though Auntie Lyd knew I didn’t drink coffee and never had. There was hardly a sign that I’d lived there until very recently. It
wasn’t that Martin had cleared away any indication that I had lived there; it was, I realized, that I had hardly allowed my presence to be felt in our home.
‘It’s freezing in here,’ said Auntie Lyd, wrapping her arms around herself and rubbing her hands up and down to warm up.
‘Martin doesn’t like having the heating on for more than an hour in the morning and an hour at night to take the chill off,’ I said, looking over to the hall thermostat, which
showed a chilly four degrees. ‘He says anything more is a waste of money. A jumper’s already paid for.’
‘How cosy,’ said Auntie Lyd, rolling her eyes. ‘Like a lovely welcoming fridge-freezer. Well, let’s get on with it then. Where shall we start?’
‘Er, the bedroom?’ I suggested. I thought starting with the most painful room would make the rest of it seem easier; like jumping straight into an icy pool rather than shivering
hesitantly on the edges.
‘Lead the way,’ she said, gesturing up the stairs.
As we climbed to the first floor I steeled myself for the task ahead. The bed that we’d shared. The book I’d been reading, and left face down on the bedside table. The wardrobe, full
of not just clothes but memories – the dress I was wearing when Martin had first spoken to me in the university library, the cardigan I’d had on when he asked me to move in with him,
the dressing gown in which I’d been dumped. I wasn’t sure how I was going to get through it without hysterics.
Pushing open the bedroom door, I clenched my teeth together. My heart fluttered in my ribcage as if I expected to see Martin kneeling on the carpet, contrite and begging for forgiveness.
Possibly offering marriage. Instead four cardboard boxes sat at the foot of the bed, sealed with brown tape and neatly labelled in Martin’s careful handwriting.
Clothing. Linen. Toiletries. Miscellaneous.
Auntie Lyd and I stared at them. The sum total of more than a decade, packed into just four boxes.
‘Well,’ Auntie Lyd said. ‘That makes things easier, I suppose.’ She rubbed my arm carefully, as if afraid I might drop to the beige carpet keening and wailing in grief.
To be honest, I thought I might. As much as I’d been dreading packing, somehow the sight of those boxes made me feel as if I’d been cheated of the whole experience of saying goodbye to
the life we’d had together. Although I couldn’t prove that he hadn’t shed a tear while sorting through my possessions, from here it seemed that Martin had packed everything up
with all the emotion and pathos of a paid-by-the-hour removals firm.
‘It’s probably a good idea for you to have a quick look around in case he’s missed anything,’ suggested Auntie Lyd.
‘He won’t have done,’ I said flatly. Martin’s ruthless organization had been one of the things that had attracted me to him. After my chaotic childhood with Mum, his
certain knowledge about how things should be done, his sheer reliability, had been as head-turningly attractive to me as a six-pack was to other girls.
‘Let’s have a look anyway,’ she insisted. ‘I’ll check the bedrooms, you take the bathroom.’
She pushed me gently but firmly towards the en suite. As I stepped into the bathroom, the heels of my boots ringing on the hard tiled floor, I heard Auntie Lyd slide open the mirrored doors of
the built-in wardrobe.
I looked around the room. There was nothing in here of mine. Nothing at all. I hadn’t expected there to be: Martin wasn’t dishonest;of course he’d return everything that
belonged to me. But there were some things here that didn’t look like they belonged to Martin either. A bottle of floral-scented pink shower gel, and one of Herbal Essences shampoo. I turned
my head towards the other side of the bathroom, slowly, as if expecting to see something truly repellent. And I did. An eyelash curler on top of the toilet. A packet of make-up-removing wipes
wedged down the side of the sink.
It says something about my state of mind at that moment that I had a wild flare of hope that these might perhaps be the possessions of Martin’s previously-unknown-to-me transvestite alter
ego. Surely I could deal with that? I was an accommodating sort of person; we could work it out. But angry suspicion was slowly replacing the sick feeling in the pit of my stomach.
‘Rory!’ exclaimed Auntie Lyd, as I stormed past her and ran down the stairs. ‘Where are you going?’
I furiously scanned the living room for more incriminating evidence, but everything was just as I’d left it: the huge flat-screen television crouched on the wall, its red standby light
winking malevolently. I switched it on just long enough to confirm that it kicked straight in to Sky Sports as usual. The kitchen, too, seemed clean. Until I opened the fridge. Inside were a
half-empty packet of fresh raspberries, two skinless chicken breast fillets and a carton of fat-free yogurt from Waitrose. I may as well have found Martin
in flagrante.
Left to shop for
himself, he would never venture further than the corner shop or the takeaway menu. These were the supermarket shopping choices of a female of the species.
Auntie Lyd was right. Even bloody Ticky Lytton-Finch was right. He had another woman.
It was a bit of a surprise to me to find that I genuinely wanted to talk about Martin to Ticky when I got into work. Perhaps it was because Auntie Lyd was being annoyingly
dismissive every time I tried to bring him into conversation. She held up a silencing finger whenever I mentioned his name; I would have got more sympathy from Mr Bits, her ancient marmalade cat.
And perhaps it was because I had realized, while gnashing my teeth and wailing into my pillow (thank goodness Auntie Lyd had given me one of the rooms at the very top of the house), that I appeared
to have very few friends left who were exclusively mine, rather than mine and Martin’s. I couldn’t call up Darren and Rebecca, or Anna and Max; for all I knew they were already
arranging cosy paired-up evenings with Martin and Whoever-she-was. I was outside of the couple zone for the first time in eleven years, and I couldn’t bear that any of them might see me
pressing my face up against the glass, pleading to be let back in. I’d called Mum in Spain, where she lived with Steve, husband number four, but she’d been busy heading out to a golf
lesson and hadn’t had time to chat for long. I had even been desperate enough to consider calling Dad, before realizing that it would alarm him too much if I deviated from our usual scheduled
calls at Christmas and birthdays only.