People We Love

  PEOPLE WE LOVE

  Jenny Harper

  Her life is on hold – until an unlikely visitor climbs in through the kitchen window

  A year after her brother’s fatal accident, Lexie’s life seems to have reached a dead end. She is back home in small-town Hailesbank with her shell-shocked parents, treading softly around their fragile emotions.

  As the family business drifts into decline, Lexie’s passion for painting and for her one-time mentor Patrick have been buried as deep as her unexpressed grief, until the day her lunch is interrupted by a strange visitor in a bobble hat, dressing gown and bedroom slippers, who climbs through the window.

  Elderly Edith’s batty appearance conceals a secret and starts Lexie on a journey that gives her an inspirational artistic idea and rekindles her appetite for life. With friends in support and ex-lover Cameron seemingly ready to settle down, do love and laughter beckon after all?

  Acknowledgements

  In 2012 I happened to spot a feature in one of the newspaper colour supplements about refugees fleeing the Blue Nile state for the border with South Sudan. The article comprised mainly an extraordinary set of photographs by Shannon Jensen of hundreds of pairs of shoes worn by the refugees. The images of these battered and worn-out shoes, mismatched flip-flops and flimsy pumps were extraordinarily powerful and triggered the idea for People We Love. Thank you Shannon Jensen.

  Some years ago I read about an elderly woman who had been placed in a care home twelve miles from the village in which she had lived all her life. One day, she walked back and climbed in through her former kitchen window. She was in her eighties. This was also an extraordinary story, and I couldn’t help but speculate about the strength of the instincts that had driven her to make that walk.

  The shoes in the catalogue notes that appear at the beginning of each chapter in People We Love fall into four categories. They are based on either real characters from history, or on contemporary stories I have seen or read about. (A few relate to my own family!) A few are completely generic, chosen because the stories they tell fascinated me (the ‘concealment shoes’ in Chapter One, for example), or they relate to the main characters in my book: Lexie, Patrick, Pavel, Martha and Tom in particular. I hope they give you as much pleasure in the reading as I had in the researching and writing.

  One Note requires particular mention. In Chapter Twenty-six I describe handmade gentlemen’s shoes that belonged to Edwin Garrett. His widow, Elizabeth, wished them to be enjoyed and appreciated and they were given to the charity 500 miles, inspired by Olivia Giles. The last few chapters of this book were written in Elizabeth’s cliff-top retreat south of Aberdeen and I owe her huge thanks for her generosity in letting me use this facility.

  I came across Brian Ashbee’s essay, ‘Artbollocks’, and loved it. It first appeared in the April issue of Art Quarterly, 1999, and the full text can be found online.

  As usual, thanks are due to all my writing friends and supporters, without whose continued encouragement I might have given up. Particular thanks are due to Eileen Ramsay, Bill Daly and Jane Knights. The team at Accent Press has been terrific, and has done a magnificent job in turning my words into a book, with support all along the line.

  Finally, I received special support from my friend Dr Elizabeth Goring, a knowledgeable former museum curator, Mediterranean archaeologist and contemporary jewellery authority whose insight and perceptiveness, not to mention expertise in exhibition curation, proved invaluable. I am deeply indebted.

  Note: Hailesbank and The Heartlands

  The small market town of Hailesbank is born of my imagination, as are the surrounding villages of Forgie and Stoneyford and the council housing estate known as Summerfield, which together form The Heartlands. I have placed the area, in my mind, to the east of Scotland’s capital city, Edinburgh.

  The first mention of The Heartlands was made by Agrippus Centorius in AD77, not long after the Romans began their surge north in the hope of conquering this savage land. ‘This is a place of great beauty,’ wrote Agrippus, ‘and its wildness has clutched my heart.’ He makes several mentions thereafter of The Heartlands. There are still signs of Roman occupation in Hailesbank, which has great transport links to the south (and England) and the north, especially to Edinburgh, and its proximity to the sea and the (real) coastal town of Musselburgh made it a great place to settle. The Georgians and Victorians began to develop the small village, its clean air and glorious views, rich farming hinterland and great transport proving highly attractive.

  The River Hailes flows through the town. There is a Hailes Castle in East Lothian (it has not yet featured in my novels), but it sits on the Tyne.

  Hailesbank has a Town Hall and a high street, from which a number of ancient small lanes, or vennels, run down to the river, which once was the lifeblood of the town.

  In my novels, characters populate the shops, cafes and pubs in Hailesbank and the pretty adjoining village of Forgie, with Summerfield inhabitants providing another layer of social interaction.

  You can meet other inhabitants of the town and area in Face the Wind and Fly, Loving Susie and Maximum Exposure – with more titles to follow!

  JH

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter One

  Catalogue number 15: Child’s shoe. 16th-century? ‘Concealment shoe’. Found in rafters of agricultural worker’s cottage outside Hailesbank. Donors: Eric and Sheila Flint, Forgie. ‘Concealment shoes’ have been found concealed in wall cavities, chimneys, or among roof rafters of many old houses. They were thought to ward off evil.

  When Jamie was alive, Alexa Gordon wore hippy dresses in luminous colours and danced barefoot on the lawn at midnight.

  When Jamie was alive, they ate drizzle cake and made scones heaped high with cream and jam.

  When Jamie was alive, she had a future.

  And then it all changed.

  I don’t know what you thought you were doing, she said silently to her brother for the hundredth time, getting into that car that night. You might have accepted the risk for yourself. But you had no right at all to ruin everyone else’s lives.

  She looked down at the bowl in front of her. Breakfast cereal stared back, sodden and limp. She pushed the dish away.

  ‘You must eat, Alexa dear,’ her mother Martha said, capturing a stray grey lock that was hanging in front of her face and twisting it round her fingers.

  ‘Don’t fuss, Mum,’ Lexie answered without thinking.

  Martha bit her lip and hunched into herself as she pulled her tired-looking peach candlewick dressing gown closer round her thin frame.

  Idiot, Lexie chided herself. It’s the anniversary o
f Jamie’s death. Think before speaking, today of all days.

  The problem was that her mother’s tendency to fuss had become an obsession with her wellbeing. It was understandable, but sometimes hard to bear. Lexie looked down at her plate. She had barely touched the cereal.

  ‘It’s gone soggy,’ she said, trying to be conciliatory. ‘If I make toast, will you have some?’

  Concern could run both ways.

  She saw Martha’s mouth twitch at the corners. Whatever else she might be, her mother wasn’t stupid.

  ‘A little,’ Martha touched her hand lightly. ‘If you have time.’

  Lexie stood up and cleared her plate from the table. Living at Fernhill again was both strange and stiflingly familiar. She was thirty years old and once believed she could build a career as an artist. Now all she had to remember this by was a tattoo round her thumb and hair the colour of a scarlet ibis, plus a tendency to see everything in terms of how it might be captured on canvas.

  Thanks for nothing, Jamie—

  ‘Brown bread okay?’

  ‘Fine. Thank you.’

  She cut two slices and pushed them into the toaster. Outside the tall sash window, the garden was blanketed in an early morning mist. In the far corner, by the pergola, she could just see the blossom on the cherry tree, delicate and wraithlike.

  ‘I do appreciate this, Alexa. Your being here, I mean.’

  A blackbird took off from one of the branches and a small flurry of petals swirled softly towards the grass. Lexie pursed her lips. How could she fail to know this? Martha’s thanks were expressed ten times a day, their utterance a delicate trap. She was all her parents had left and she had to be there for them. This meant, she told herself, that she did not regret marching into Patrick Mulgrew’s gallery in Edinburgh a year ago and telling him she was withdrawing her exhibition.

  Even though it meant the end of their relationship as well.

  Her throat swelled with unshed tears and she had to summon all her willpower to push away the hurt she still felt at their separation. Thinking about Patrick wouldn’t do any good. Instead, she retrieved the toast and rearranged her face into her customary jaunty smile before she turned round.

  ‘I know you do. Come on, Mum. Let’s eat. Then I must get to work. I take it Dad left early?’

  She didn’t really need to ask. Where her mother was all dependence, Tom Gordon had turned into The Great Provider – strong, uncompromising and utterly resistant to any kind of conversation about his son.

  Martha’s eyes glazed over.

  Some family we’ve become, Lexie thought. Surely we weren’t always like this?

  ‘I’d better go, Mum. Dad’s called a special meeting.’

  ‘Please be tolerant, darling. I know he’s obsessive about the store, but it’s because he wants to show he loves us.’

  ‘I am tolerant. Most of the time, anyway.’

  She and her father were two of a kind in many ways. They certainly both threw themselves into work as a diversion.

  ‘Will you be all right? What are you going to do today?’

  Martha stood up. Her dressing gown hung off her body in loose, sad folds. Once she’d been a legal secretary – smart, efficient and very organised. Grief was eating her up.

  ‘I’m going,’ she said, ‘to do some gardening. I think.’

  Lexie found the shifts in her mother’s character profoundly unsettling. And now she had to prepare to be unsettled all over again, because her walk to work would take her past Patrick Mulgrew’s house.

  Ten minutes later, Lexie stepped through the front door of Fernhill and pulled it closed. It was eight thirty in the morning and she tried to leave the ache of loss behind her in the gloomy spaces that had once been filled with laughter. She tugged her old tweed jacket closer, glad of its warmth. There was no point in being bitter. It was a waste of time to think about the things that might have been.

  Despite the obvious truth of this, there was no way of avoiding Patrick’s house. It took seven minutes to cover the distance between Fernhill and The Gables. Seven minutes of separation. For a brief time she and Patrick had both found it amusing that he lived in Hailesbank near her parents while she lived in Edinburgh, near his gallery. They hadn’t been together long enough to change that.

  Three minutes. She reached the end of James Street and crossed onto Darnley Place. Patrick’s continued proximity was a fleabite that itched, she reminded herself, nothing more. She didn’t care about him now: she could never have sustained a relationship with Patrick because they were too different. The way she saw it, she put family first and Patrick thought only about profit. Better to find that out sooner rather than at some point in the future, when they might have become knotted together, like roots round a boulder, so that separating would tear at the fabric of life.

  Six minutes. Patrick owned a smart art gallery – or, to be more precise two, one in London and one in Edinburgh. People saw him as either discriminating and astute or snobbish and arrogant. Lexie lengthened her stride. She found it impossible to forget Patrick because everything that mattered to her was so tightly entwined with him: ambition, career, and passion. Was that why she’d loved him so much? In the short time they’d been together, he’d taken her heart, her body and her brain – the complete package – and made them all his.

  Seven minutes. There it was now, a million pounds’ worth of sandstone and lawn, the epitome of everything the man stood for – style, statement and substance. Crow-stepped gables, baronial turrets and an old Scots pine standing sentinel by the gate.

  Lexie glanced down at the tattoo round her thumb. ‘Artbollocks’ it read – an indelible statement of belief about art and honesty.

  ‘Why disfigure your beautiful hands like that?’ Patrick had once asked, tracing the letters with his long fingers as they’d lain limb to limb, half drugged by ardour.

  ‘So that I never forget,’ she’d answered fiercely, ‘about pretentiousness.’

  He’d lifted her thumb to his lips and kissed each letter, one at a time. Eleven feathery kisses.

  ‘You’re very different,’ he’d said, ‘but I think I might just be in love with you.’

  His car wasn’t there, she noted, which was a relief. They’d learned politeness this last year, but kept their distance. Too many words had been spoken that could never be unsaid. Still – he didn’t know it – but fending off the hurt she felt about their break-up was like rolling back the tide:­ impossible.

  By the time she arrived at the Thompson Memorial Park, the mist was beginning to lift and the park was already alive with its quota of elderly dog-walkers and mums with buggies. She glanced right – a habit she had developed – to catch a glimpse of the river as it flowed past the foot of Fisher’s Wynd. She found the water soothing and it worked its magic again this morning because at last she was able to put Patrick firmly out of her mind and focus on Jamie. This was his day, after all, and despite her anger about his death, he’d always be a part of her.

  Stay with me, bro.

  When she reached Kittle’s Lane she turned right, so that she’d pass Cobbles. If Pavel was in the shop already, she’d wave to him.

  Lexie adored Cobbles. She loved the jumble of antiques Pavel seemed able to conjure up from nowhere. Each object, however humble, had a story to tell. A stone hot water bottle shivered out a tale of freezing nights in icy beds; a moustache cup in fine porcelain whispered of male vanity; a carpet beater, twisted from rattan into a Celtic knot, hinted at the hard labour that housework once was. Most of all, Lexie loved the vintage clothes that peeked tantalisingly from cubbyholes or begged for attention from serried ranks of hangers on rails at the back of the shop. She was addicted to vintage.

  Half way down the lane, she spotted Pavel Skonieczna sashaying out of the shop. He placed his sandwich board on the pavement and stepped back to admire it, his hands wafting up to his mouth with characteristic grace. Cobbles, read the elegant copperplate script, Antiques and Collectibles. Lexie smiled. Pavel (
always dressed in vintage, always colourful) was the perfect advertisement for his own shop. Today he was smart in green tweed – his favourite suit – teamed with a mustard moleskin waistcoat and brown brogues.

  She speeded up. ‘Pavel! Hi!’

  Shoulders straightened and tweed turned. ‘Lexie. Darling. You’re early today.’

  Lexie grimaced. ‘I know. Dad’s called a staff meeting before we open.’

  Pavel shook his head. ‘You shouldn’t be working in that place. It’s not right for you.’

  Spot on, Pavel. Like trying to shove a jelly through a sieve and expecting it to come out whole on the other side.

  ‘I know. But what can I do?’

  ‘Stand up for yourself. You always used to. They use you.’

  ‘It’s not that simple.’

  She let her parents use her, because she had to. It was the only way she could think of to make things better. It was her way of helping herself as well.

  ‘You’re a good daughter.’

  Lexie hesitated. Pavel confided recently that his partner Guy had died some years ago and he’d moved to Hailesbank to escape the sad memories. His only family now was a snake of a sister who had disowned him and, because he never talked about it, Lexie guessed how much it hurt him.

  Pavel spared her the embarrassment of having to think about what to say.

  ‘Is it about that marketing plan?’

  ‘I expect so.’

  She’d spent the last month working with Neil Taylor, the assistant manager at her father’s furniture store, on a plan designed to drag the old family business protesting and spluttering into the twenty-first century. Or rather, Neil had been working on it, in his careful, business-like way, and she had been attempting to modernise the store by selecting more stylish stock and updating the layout. At least, that’s how she saw her role. Her father was proving resistant to change.

  ‘I’m a bit nervous, Pavel, to tell you the truth.’

  ‘Do you think he’ll veto it?’

  Lexie shrugged and pulled her jacket across her chest. The sun might be dappling the river already, but it hadn’t dropped in on Kittle’s Lane yet.