“The water rates, Queenie.” My granddad appeared behind me.
“Wilfred, leave her alone,” my grandmother shouted from the kitchen, forcing my granddad to shuffle back down the stairs. My grandparents might be getting older, but their hearing only seemed to be improving.
I lay on the floor of the spare room as I waited for water to fill the tub. I heard the familiar voice of John Holt start playing through the floor. He was my grandmother’s favorite reggae singer, and her preferred song of his was all about his broken heart. “If I’ve got to be strong, don’t you know I need your help to fight when you’re gone?” he sang.
“CAN YOU TURN THAT OFF, GRANDMA?” I shouted down. “YOU KNOW I AM STRUGGLING.” There was a long pause.
“Who yuh tink yuh talking to?” my grandmother shouted back. “Yuh tink say you can be DJ inna my house ’cause of a man?”
I undressed and climbed into the tub. I lay back and moved a hand across my stomach the way I’d done when I’d last had a bath. Tom wasn’t here this time, though. I didn’t know where he was. I stared at the ceiling and felt my chest tighten. The bathroom door opened and my grandmother burst in. I covered myself with the washcloth.
“Let me wash your back,” she said, grabbing the cloth and lathering it up with a bar of Imperial Leather that she must have bought reserves of in the sixties.
“No, no, I’m fine, I’m not a baby,” I said, covering myself with my hands.
“I washed your back when you were a baby and I’ll wash it now,” she said, tipping me forward until my forehead rested on my knees. I closed my eyes and let her scrub my skin.
“I’m no stranger to heartache, you know,” she told me. “You need to get over it, Queenie. Life goes on.”
“You’ve been with Granddad since you were fourteen,” I said. “If there’s anyone who has never known heartbreak, it’s you.”
She kissed her teeth. “You must think you know everything. Your granddad got me pregnant when I was fourteen. Not even Diana’s age!” Maggie’s teenage daughter. “Then he disappeared, and I was left in Jamaica with Maggie, living with Gran-Gran.” My grandmother paused. “I fell in love with a man. He was very kind to me. Always met me at the end of the lane and helped me to carry the sugarcane up to the house. Albert, his name was.”
She put the wet washcloth on her lap and watched as the water seeped into her apron. She started to wring her hands, her fingers settling on her wedding ring.
“Albert loved Maggie as much as he loved me. It was a secret, of course. He looked after us, for two years. I couldn’t tell Gran-Gran about him.” My grandmother laughed. “She almost killed me when I got pregnant, and I couldn’t shame her twice by bringing another man into the house. But Albert, he was everything. He was funny, he was generous, used to listen to me.” She paused to sigh heavily. “He gave me this necklace one day. He’d saved up for the gold, and he’d made it himself. A V, for Veronica. He was so proud to give it to me. Every day he waited at the end of the lane for me.”
“Well, what happened to him? And to the necklace? Also, have you seen Titanic? This sounds a lot li—”
“Your granddad came back. Turns out he’d been over here finding work, squatting in a bedsit in Mitcham and saving some money. He came to Gran-Gran’s house one night, told me that he was taking me and Maggie to London, and two days later we were on the plane. A year later I was pregnant with your mother.”
“And what happened to Albert?”
“I don’t know. I couldn’t ask anybody about him because nobody knew about us. So, you see. We all know heartbreak. We just have to learn to live with it.”
She lifted the cloth and carried on scrubbing my back, her movements softer than before.
* * *
I woke up in the middle of the night. I was half-asleep and I could see a man standing in the corner. I tried to shout, but nothing would come out. He was moving closer. I tried to shout again. “NO!” I finally screamed, falling out of the bed.
“Queenie?” My grandmother flew into the room, her nightie billowing behind her like a cape. “What is it? Wh’appen?”
“Sorry, it’s nothing. Nothing.” I climbed back into bed and put a hand to my chest. My heart was pounding.
“The nightmares,” she said knowingly. “Tek water.” She gestured to the glass by my bed, and shuffled back into her room. I couldn’t sleep, so checked my phone. Two texts from Darcy.
Darcy
Nosy man on floor hovering around your desk. Quite fit. Big glasses. Tweed jacket.
Darcy
Hold on is he Tweed Glasses??
* * *
I went to work the next day physically cleaner than I’d ever been. Brain still tired from eschewing thoughts of Ted, heart still sore every time I thought about Tom. How much more time did he need? How much time did I need? I was beginning to worry that if things didn’t go back to normal soon, my mind would go to places that I wouldn’t be able to retrieve it from. Anyway. I wouldn’t think about that. Surely, surely everything would be fine.
* * *
Later that week, when I made it to my desk by way of the cafeteria and the smoking area and before I could sit down, Gina came over to tell me that she’d been watching me and Darcy “gasbagging” from her office. I apologized and vowed (truthfully) to spend more time at my desk during working hours and less time literally everywhere else, pulled my chair out to sit down, and disrupted a parcel that fell on the floor.
I picked it up and opened it, pulling out a tartan scarf. I put it on and started to walk over to Darcy’s desk. Gina was coming toward me.
“No. Queenie. Back to your desk. Do something, please. You haven’t filed the weekend’s listings yet and it’s Friday, come on.” She turned me around by the shoulders and gently pushed me toward my section of the floor. “You can talk to her at lunchtime.” I dragged myself through the morning, and at 11:59 a.m. went over to Darcy.
“God, Gina is all over the place recently,” I bitched, feeling bad and obscenely hypocritical, given that I was even more all over the place. “One day she’s nice, the next she ignores me, today she’s having a go at me. I can’t keep up. Was it always this bad?”
“No,” Darcy confirmed. “I think she’s having some proble—”
“Oh!” I interrupted, fanning the scarf out around me and spinning around in a mock twirl. “Thank you for this!”
“For what?” Darcy asked.
“The scarf.”
“It’s nice. Looks almost exactly like the old one. But it’s not from me,” she said, standing up and rummaging around in her pockets.
“You were with me when I lost it, at the fireworks display.” My arms fell to my sides. Knowing I couldn’t afford to replace it myself, she probably didn’t want to make a big thing out of it.
“I know, but I didn’t buy you a new one. Should I have?” she asked, holding up her purse. “Lunch?”
* * *
I couldn’t bear to go home, so I left the office well after dark. As I walked to the bus stop, Ted fell in step with me. “Hey, you,” he said softly. “How’s it going?”
“Fine, thanks.” I carried on walking, still trying to avoid getting myself in a sticky situation. I’d already found myself in some very compromising positions of late.
“Fancy a drink?” he asked. “I’m on lates, popped out for a smoke. We could head across the road for a swift one?”
I wanted to go, but I also knew that going would make me want to kiss him. “No, I’ve got to get home!”
“Nice scarf, by the way. I knew it would suit you.” I stopped walking.
“This was you? Why did you—oh, thanks for that, I guess?” I said, surprised.
“Why are you so shocked?” Ted laughed.
“Just that nobody ever buys me anything, is all. And you . . . don’t know me well enough?”