Annie Stanley, All At Sea Read online

  I am an orphan.

  My dreams have been chaotic and strange: no foretaste of grief to come, no Kodachrome moments of a young Mum and Dad beside us at the seaside or round the dining table. That would make sense. Last night I dreamt I was living in a dystopian city which held a big parade to celebrate the vanquishing of an alien force. But the aliens hadn’t left. They were still there and I was the only one who knew.

  The front door clicks open and Kate enters, weighed down with Tesco bags and post from the communal hall. I wait for the almost imperceptible look of disapproval; I’d promised to be dressed when she returned. I might even have said I’d tidy up . . .

  Kate stomps past the sofa and dumps the shopping in the kitchen. ‘Sod it, I forgot kitchen towel. I’ll pop out later.’

  Cupboard doors thump open and closed. Cutlery is put away. A tap is turned on and plates immersed in sudsy water. Kate is also now an orphan, but her response is busy-ness and order. I hear her stop what she’s doing and take a deep breath to collect herself. Then she returns with two glasses of orange juice and perches on a vacant corner of sofa.

  ‘How long’s the dishwasher been out of action?’

  ‘Couple of weeks, a month maybe. It’s no biggie.’

  ‘It isn’t if you remember to wash up, Annie. You know? Hot water, little scratchy sponge to loosen the porridge and dried-on ketchup?’

  She kicks off her shoes and gets under the other end of the duvet, forcing me to shift my legs. We stare at the TV.

  We are both orphans.

  ‘Well, at least we know what we have to do, second time around,’ Kate says eventually.

  ‘Do we? Last time we had Dad. Plus Mum told us what she wanted. Which songs, which poems. Tell everyone to wear something red. Hey, d’you remember the Cousin From Tenby?’

  Kate only just manages not to spit orange juice across the duvet. A mash-up of grief and light relief catches us unawares and we laugh hysterically for a full minute.

  ‘Oh God, the Cousin From Tenby!’ Kate tries to recover herself. ‘Did we ever find out who she was?’

  ‘Dad claimed he knew her but he was on autopilot all day.’

  ‘And we didn’t defrost those sausage rolls properly and they were rock hard in the middle. But the Cousin From Tenby still ate about ten of them.’

  ‘Those bloody sausage rolls. Why did we buy so many?’

  ‘We must have known she was coming,’ Kate says and the hysteria returns.

  ‘Well, unless she’s in Dad’s address book, we don’t need to invite her again.’

  ‘She was pushing 90 six years ago. She’s probably dead.’

  Dead. She hears the word leave her mouth and it’s enough. Just before the tears come, typical Kate, she carefully puts her glass on a side table and finds a clean hanky.

  ‘I keep thinking, “I can’t believe it”,’ she sobs, in jerky gulps. ‘And then I think I can’t believe I’m thinking I can’t believe it because it’s such a bloody cliché. This time yesterday, he was alive. It isn’t even twenty-four hours, Annie.’

  I scoot along the sofa to put my arm round her. I may not have a functioning dishwasher and my flat is a tip. But I give good hug. At least I know how to do that.

  ‘Do you remember, after Mum died, how everyone asked how Dad was?’ I say. ‘And we’d reply that he was bearing up. “How’s your dad, how’s your dad?” No one ever asked how we were, Kate. It’s like we were, I don’t know, bystanders. Not daughters who’d just lost their mum.’

  Kate blows her nose and pushes stray fringe from her eyes. ‘Maybe at Dad’s funeral they’ll finally ask how we are.’

  ‘They bloody won’t! Not when there’s “poor Bev” to take care of. She’s been in our lives, what is it, four years, but she’ll be the star turn at Dad’s funeral, not us.’

  ‘I don’t want to be the star turn.’ Kate shrugs. ‘Whatever that is.’

  ‘Neither do I. But Bev? Seriously? I better be tranquillized or pissed to get through it without laying in to her.’

  Kate frowns. ‘You can’t, Annie. You’d feel awful afterwards. Everyone would.’

  I pad into the kitchen, returning with the two remaining teacakes. ‘She’ll have her fingerprints all over everything. It will be her day and we’ll get sidelined. You know we will.’

  ‘I don’t care.’

  ‘I do. And so do you.’

  Kate nods. Magnanimity’s overrated. ‘But she’ll have to respect our wishes for the funeral. We’re his next of kin.’

  ‘Exactly. It was her choice not to marry Dad. Which means we can do it our way.’

  ‘I don’t want to make waves, Annie. She and Dad were really happy and we didn’t expect that. We should be grown up about this and let her take charge of the day.’

  There is so much to do: registering the death, contacting the solicitor, undertakers, DVLA, electoral roll, passport office . . .

  Kate takes charge, I take instruction. In one packed day, we manage to tick seven and a half things off a list she’s drawn up with asterisks (urgent/less urgent) and two shades of highlighter pen (pink/Kate, green/Annie). Meanwhile Bev takes it upon herself to break the news to her own friends and family. It means she’s occupied and these are the people she and Dad socialized with as a couple: the local Ramblers, Terri and Bill from their walking holiday in Austria, the proprietor of their favourite curry house.

  Kate nips home to get her hair straighteners and a couple of changes of clothing; even though she doesn’t live far away, we soon realize we need to be together and she only makes a minor fuss about the thinness of my sofa-bed mattress. I’d forgotten how loudly she snores, through two walls and a closed door. I’m amazed that she can disengage her brain and nod off so swiftly. At the end of day two, we’re both in bed by ten. By quarter past, Kate’s honking like an adenoidal sea lion.

  And then the stream of unwanted, mostly trivial, thoughts invade my head, often returning for a second or third visit. All the things I need to do; all the things I should have done and didn’t or have done that I shouldn’t. Nothing important. That will come later.

  I lie board straight and wide awake, staring at the ceiling and tracking the occasional flash of car headlights that crosses the ceiling. Do I have black polish for my best shoes? . . . Who did the registrar remind me of? . . . Why does Kate wear contacts even though she hates them? . . . Cromarty.

  When Mum’s cancer returned, she insisted on getting a new cat. Flo had died a couple of years earlier of chronic flatulence and immense old age. A kitten would be a distraction from the terminal elephant in the room. Flo’s replacement, a long-haired piebald tabby, was almost certain to acquire a cutesy little boy’s name, if Mum had anything to with it: Benjy, Barney, Bobby. But Dad insisted that it was his turn to choose and she acquiesced. She must have known the cat would outlive her.

  Dad’s victory was hollow. All his suggestions were bad puns that no one laughed at: Clawed, Hairy Potter, Purr Favor. Defeated, he scanned his trusty Shipping Forecast tea towel for inspiration: Malin? Bailey? Fitzroy? He settled on Cromarty, where he and Mum had gone on their honeymoon.

  I adored Cromarty (more than I had Flo, although I never told Mum) and used to call him Monorail because of the way he straddled the back of the sofa to look out of the front window. He was unusually sociable for a male cat and was a huge comfort to Dad after Mum died.

  Bev wasn’t a cat person but, when she and Dad got together, Cromarty, now fully grown, was an integral part of the package. When they sold their separate homes and bought the bungalow, fitting a cat flap was Dad’s first job. On the rare occasions I visited, freaked to see furniture or saucepans I’d grown up with in this ugly, alien little house, Cromarty would seek me out. When I could locate no warm feelings for Bev, I could still give love to this daft, klutzy animal painfully kneading my lap.

  Cromarty hadn’t been old enough to appreciate the loss of Mum; he’d barely adjusted to replacing his own mother with these larger, fur-less parents. But Dad h
ad spoilt him rotten and the cat will definitely notice his sudden absence.

  Will Bev remember to feed and cuddle him? Will she know that the only way he’ll swallow worming tablets is encased in expensive Waitrose salmon pate? If Bev doesn’t care for or about Cromarty, might I have to adopt him? Great in theory but it’s patently obvious that I’m barely responsible for myself. And I’ve got no outside space. And, well, I just can’t.

  After two hours of failing to fall asleep, I give in and get up to make a cup of tea. Normally, when insomnia hits me, I spend an hour or two in front of Netflix, waking with a jolt at the dawn chorus and stumbling back to bed. But Kate is honking for England on the sofa bed, so that’s not an option.

  I rest my elbows on the worktop, waiting for the kettle to boil. I flick the radio on, hoping to catch the last gasp of the midnight news.

  As I dunk my tea bag and clock two new packets of Hobnobs (hurrah for Kate) in the cupboard, the Shipping Forecast kicks in. North Utsire, South Utsire, Dogger, Fisher, German Bight. And finally it hits me like a cold slap of sea water in the face.

  Dad is dead.

  I hadn’t found it in me to cry before. There were even times when I thought I wouldn’t need to, the way I’d cried for Mum. What did that mean? Didn’t I care enough? Was I now such a detached, callous cow that I’d become hardened to loss?

  This sudden wail of grief takes me by surprise . . . Portland, Plymouth, Lundy, Fastnet. It comes up from my belly and bursts from my lungs. It hurts . . . Shannon, Bailey, Rockall. As I try to control the jagged lurch of sobs, it dawns on me that every night after the midnight news, every morning at 05.20, this sing-songy, all too familiar, irritating mantra will remind me that Dad is gone.

  I hear a thump and ‘fuck’ from next door as Kate gets out of bed; she must have walked into the coffee table. I barely register her coming into the kitchen. She hugs me, crying in sympathy.

  I don’t need to explain myself. Faeroes, Fair Isle, South-East Iceland says it all.

  ‘Shall I turn it off?’ Kate asks gently.

  ‘No! He hasn’t got to Sandettie Light Vessel Automatic yet.’

  Kate parks me on the kitchen stool and makes the tea. The announcer runs through inshore waters . . . Cape Wrath, Rattray Head, Lyme Regis, Carlingford Lough, Ardnamurchan Point, and wishes his audience a peaceful night’s sleep.

  As soon as the first chord of ‘God Save the Queen’ strikes up, Kate turns off the radio. That’s the rule. Dad’s unconditional love of the Shipping Forecast was a constant, as was his disdain for the Royals.

  ‘Sandettie Light Vessel Automatic.’ Kate laughs. ‘I still don’t know what that is.’

  ‘I don’t suppose we need to.’

  We settle on my bed sipping tea, a pyjama party minus the party.

  ‘Bloody Shipping Forecast,’ she mutters. ‘Soundtrack to our lives.’

  ‘What was he like? Living his whole life in landlocked St Albans but he had to know if a storm was brewing off Selsey Bill.’

  ‘Once a sea cadet, always a sea cadet.’ She does her own approximation of a salute. ‘And always home from work by five to six, so he could catch it on Long Wave.’

  ‘Mum reckoned he listened to it to wind us up, because we hated it so much when we were kids. And then it just kind of stuck. Part of what glued us together as a family.’

  Kate nods. ‘Do you remember when we had friends for tea on a Saturday and we had to tell them to keep quiet while it was on? I know it scared off Michael Atkins. My first-ever boyfriend. God, I was so embarrassed.’

  ‘Shame it didn’t scare Bev off.’

  Kate doesn’t respond. We long ago agreed to be tolerant of her but Kate is better at this than me.

  Bev came into Dad’s life when he’d just about learned to get through each day without Mum. He’d got back into reading again, sometimes a book a day. He’d taken on an allotment and joined the Ramblers.

  Bev was a Rambler too; that’s how their friendship began. What upset Kate and me was when it rapidly became more than a friendship. We didn’t have to like her (we didn’t) to be distressed at how quickly she displaced Mum. That was Bev’s only crime. That and her fondness for little carved stone ornaments and parsley garnishes and turquoise as a default colour choice for everything. And Lionel Richie.

  ‘We need to cut her some slack,’ Kate says carefully, knowing this suggestion has sparked arguments in the past. ‘She’s lost him too.’

  ‘I know. How could I not know that, Kate?’

  ‘And, let’s be honest, it suited us that she was in Dad’s life. She looked after him so we didn’t have to. She went to the theatre with him. She cut his toenails. Bev being there meant we could stop worrying.’

  ‘I worried. Sometimes.’

  ‘Did you? Really? It wasn’t always obvious, Annie.’

  ‘I did. But I just had so much other stuff to deal with: work . . . missing Mum . . . Rob.’

  ‘He knows, right? You’ve told Rob about Dad.’

  I stare at the last cold mouthful of tea in my mug.

  Shit! Rob!

  Kate shakes her head in disbelief. ‘Oh Annie, that’s – that’s really – Dad loved Rob. Promise me you’ll tell him first thing tomorrow.’

  ‘Could you?’

  ‘Are you serious? You are, aren’t you? Jesus!’

  ‘I’ll take that as a no then.’

  Kate unfolds her long legs and gets off the bed. ‘First thing tomorrow. Promise me.’

  I nod. I will. At some point tomorrow. Definitely.

  ‘Right. I’ve got a 9 a.m. meeting. I need to sleep. Night-night, An-An.’

  ‘Sleep tight, Katkin.’

  Around half six, I get a sense of someone moving around in the kitchen and bathroom, slamming the front door and clacking down the lino-ed stairs. Kate will have found the coffee, bread and cereal because she lugged them home from Tesco. She’s already discovered the clogged shower head, the incapacitated dishwasher and the temperamental latch on the communal front door.

  Two hours later, an insistent ringing rouses me with a jolt. Doorbell. Probably the latest girlfriend of Tony in Flat 2 who’s always locking herself out. Or some poor harassed parcel delivery person needing to drop-&-go. Because I’m home so much these days, I sometimes think I could set up in business receiving neighbours’ shipments from Amazon and eBay. A tenner a parcel doesn’t seem unreasonable . . .

  The doorbell rings again. I get out of bed and tweak the blind. Waiting on the front step is Rob, with Josh slouched behind him fiddling with his phone. I scuff into some nearby sweatpants and pad downstairs to let them in.

  Rob looks ashen. He gives me a massive hug, then steps back so that Josh can hug me too. I had been intending to phone him. I really had. Bloody Kate must have got there first, convinced I wouldn’t follow through. Okay, it isn’t exclusively my news, but Rob’s my ex so I should have been trusted to tell him.

  I wave them into the living room. Kate has closed the sofa bed, re-scattered the cushions and thrown the throw. If it wasn’t for some neatly rolled bedding behind the armchair, it would be as if she was never here.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Annie,’ Rob says, sitting on the sofa and cocking his head for Josh to put his phone away and sit too. ‘It’s awful news. Just awful. Peter was a brilliant bloke.’

  I nod. It is. He was.

  ‘She shouldn’t have told you. I said I would.’

  ‘She was still in shock. Very emotional, losing her drift. She kept insisting that he’d want me to have his tools. But I really can’t get my head round that right now.’

  ‘His tools?’

  ‘So thoughtful of her. They made a great couple.’

  Finally. It makes sense. ‘Bev told you?’

  ‘She rang the morning after he died. She said she’d got to “F” in her address book and suddenly realized she’d rather talk to me. I won’t lie, I nearly lost it. Didn’t I, Josh?’

  Josh confirms with a grunt. His phone judders in his pocket. Maturely
he ignores it.

  ‘But I was going to tell you.’

  ‘Hey, it doesn’t matter now. Maybe she wanted to take the pressure off you.’

  ‘Why does everyone around here think I’m useless? That I’m incapable of doing stuff, handling stuff, behaving like a grown-up?’

  ‘I wish you had called me, lovely. I’d have been round like a shot.’

  ‘Kate’s been here. She’s running the show. And then Bev will take over and I can get back to my jet-set life.’

  ‘Jet-set. Right.’ Rob stands. ‘I’d love a cuppa. You too?’

  ‘And some toast? I haven’t eaten since yesterday morning.’

  Rob tuts and goes into the kitchen. ‘Got any unhealthy, sugar-laden drinks for Josh?’

  ‘Not for me thanks.’ Josh rolls his eyes. ‘Anyway, I’m meeting Rhys at half eleven. I just wanted to say, you know, I’m really sorry about your dad and everything.’

  I can’t deny I still miss Rob. You don’t just un-love someone. But Josh generates a different kind of love: the nearest I’ll ever come to being a mum. He has his dad’s tight curly reddish-blond hair and skinny frame. He definitely has his black-treacle eyes. He’s taking a while to outgrow the acne but he acts as if it isn’t there.

  ‘See you then, Miss Stanley. Bye Dad.’

  He gives me a wraparound hug, kisses the top of my head and leaves.

  ‘He wanted to come,’ Rob says from the kitchen doorway after we hear the front door slam. ‘He was asking me all the way here what was the right thing to say. Bless him, he was only 2 when my dad died. And his mum’s old man will still be out on the golf course long after the rest of us are worm food.’

  ‘How did Bev sound?’

  ‘When did you last speak to her?’

  ‘At the hospital. Kate has, though.’

  ‘We could pop round if you like. Maybe take her out for lunch.’

  ‘No! I can’t. Not yet.’ Suddenly I feel suffocated, cornered.

  ‘Fair enough, lovely. I could take you out for lunch though.’