All That Was Lost Read online

‘Fine.’ He could hear the irritation. He could imagine her whirring through the counselling sessions in her head. Leo needs to work to be more open. Marianne needs to work at not pressuring Leo to discuss emotions before he’s ready. Everyone was working on something. ‘Grace phoned this evening.’

  Leo relaxed. They could talk about Grace in safety. Beautiful Grace. His children were the best thing, by far, that Leo had ever done. ‘How was she?’

  Marnie laughed. ‘She was Grace. She’s fine. She thinks we should be giving her more money.’

  They talked for a couple more stilted minutes before hanging up. Leo followed the conversation with a quick message on his agent’s voicemail. If he was treating this as work, he really ought to go back in and watch the rest of the show. There was pub across the street. He succumbed to temptation.

  Inside, he sipped his pint in a quiet corner. It was too quiet. He should have gone back to the theatre where there were enough people to drown out the silence between his ears. Everywhere was quiet these days. His parents’ house was abandoned since his mum and dad had gone within a few months of each other. Home was him and Marnie, no Grace or Oliver to yell at for wasting water and talking on the phone too long. Just him and Marnie being polite to one another. They never used to be polite. He remembered Marnie when he first met her. She’d been wearing a mint, green jumpsuit and bright blue mascara. When he’d found out her name was Marianne, he’d thought of Marianne Faithful and Marie-Antoinette. She’d bullied him into introducing her to his mate, on the grounds that she fancied him more and Leo was a stupid name. There’d been nothing quiet about her. She’d been loud and colourful and gloriously, infectiously rude.

  Leo was at the bottom of his third pint by the time the audience came out of the theatre across the street. He watched the people bustle away. He wondered if they’d found what they’d been looking for. Eventually there was only one person left. Leo recognised her as the woman with the departed Pekinese. She stood for a long time outside the theatre, staring back at the building as if she was expecting something to happen. Nothing did.

  Chapter 2

  Louise decided to make a cup of tea. She couldn’t quite remember when making and drinking a cup of tea became a distinct activity to which she felt able to allocate an identifiable chunk of her day, but it was now, and she felt a stab of relief knowing that the next twenty-five minutes were accounted for and she would never have to live through them again.

  She stood and walked to the kitchen. Standing up and walking to the kitchen – that in itself had filled nearly thirty seconds. Filling the kettle – another thirty seconds. While the kettle boiled, Louise leaned on the worktop and simply allowed the time to meander by.

  She put a teabag in her mug and added milk, and then water. That was the order she always did it, but she suspected it might be wrong. She carried her tea back to the lounge, turning her head to one side as she passed a particular door in the hallway. Louise didn’t allow herself to open that door during the daytime. She went in once first thing in the morning, and once before bed, but her rules for herself were clear: Not During The Daytime. She didn’t count the afternoons spent weeping on the floor next to the bed. And she hadn’t done that today. Not yet.

  The letter box clicked and she heard the free paper drop onto the floor. She could look at that while she drank her tea. If she waited until her tea was finished that would be another whole section of the day accounted for though. Louise decided to wait.

  She sat on the chair in the corner of the lounge. It was an old chair, faded from years sitting in front of the window, with one wobbly leg at the back. It used to be purple but now the arms were yellowed. She looked at the fabric and wondered when that happened. Gradually, she supposed, not a definite instant change, not one moment when everything splintered and the following moment was unrecognisable from everything that came before.

  She could sit on the sofa. It was more comfortable. You could see the telly better. You could stretch out. There was only her here. No one would mind if she stretched out and took up all the space on the settee. No one would moan at her lack of consideration. No one would tap her feet to make her budge up. Louise never sat on the sofa.

  She sipped her tea and let the minutes slip by. She glanced at the clock on the shelf, out of habit rather than intent. The ticking had reminded Louise how slowly the time was passing, so she’d taken the batteries out weeks ago. She looked around the rest of the room. Familiarity made it hard to take in, but she had a sense that the room had changed. There were no shoes lying on the floor, no iPod discarded on the arm of the sofa. The remote controls were lined up neatly on the coffee table, rather than tossed wherever they landed and left to burrow their way under cushions or magazines. The room looked greyer than she felt it should, less inhabited, less alive.

  Louise finished her tea in silence. She carried her mug to the kitchen and washed it under the tap. She walked to the hallway, steering her gaze away from that door, and picked up the paper from the mat. She carried it back to her chair in the living room, and turned the pages in front of her eyes. Louise tried not to read too much. The free paper was useful because it filled a period of time, and it was mainly innocuous fodder. Shops closing; other shops opening; ring roads being discussed, delayed and debated. Nothing that mattered. Sometimes, too much thinking could be dangerous. Just after it happened, she’d accidentally read a story about two teenage boys who were killed by a speeding driver. They’d printed a picture of one of their mums, a tired-looking Asian woman clutching her new baby. Louise shouldn’t have read that. Other people’s anguish didn’t make her sad anymore, but she’d felt anger rising, as if they had no right to try to bring their suffering into her bubble. Louise’s suffering should have been enough for a whole town, a whole country, a whole world.

  She turned to the jobs page, and looked at what was available. Louise used to have a job, in the chip shop at the bottom of the estate. She’d quite liked it. There were always people around to talk to, and she’d been able to bring chips home for Kyle. She’d had the idea of doing deliveries to the sheltered flats, because the old folk didn’t like to come out in an evening. It’d brought Alan a lot of extra regular trade on the quiet weekday evenings, and he’d put an extra fifty quid in her pay to say thank you. Louise had quit her job three months ago. Or maybe she hadn’t quit. She didn’t think she’d been sacked. She didn’t go there anymore, anyway.

  Maybe she should look for a new job. That would probably make her mum and Mrs Hardiman, who lived next door, and Sukjinder, in the Spar shop, happy. Mrs Hardiman kept telling her she was looking brighter. Probably getting a job would help maintain that illusion. Louise knew it was an illusion. She knew that however much she managed to get out, and put make-up on, and even look for a new job, she’d still be grey inside. She was going to be grey inside for ever.

  Other people didn’t tell her she was looking brighter. Kyle’s dad had been round twice since it happened, which was twice more than in the previous five years. He hadn’t said anything much at all, but he’d wanted to fuck her. She remembered reading, a long time ago, that some people in her situation found themselves feeling incredibly horny, like their body was trying to overcome the numbness by making them feel something else. Louise didn’t understand that. She was feeling every single second passing as a stab into her guts. She didn’t have the space to feel anything else. She’d told Kyle’s dad to sling his hook.

  Even though her mum told her she was looking well, Louise could look into her mum’s eyes and see that they both knew that it was a lie. She kept popping around though, every day to start with, and even now at least twice a week, and she put the kettle on, and they sat in silence, with her mum’s hand clasped over Louise’s, in what Louise supposed must be solidarity. When Mum said anything, it usually started, ‘I can’t imagine…’, which was true at least, but still meaningless. Louise couldn’t remember her mother holding onto her hand before. She assumed she must have, when Louise was tiny, to cross the road or keep her close. When she tried to think of holding hands, her head filled with Kyle’s sticky toddler fingers held tightly in her grip.

  Louise turned back to the jobs page. Care home worker? She could remember being taken to visit her grandmother in her care home, when Louise was a little girl. They seemed like places where death was always close. No.

  Administrative assistant? Louise could manage Facebook and email and eBay on the computer, but that was about it. They wanted typing and spreadsheets. No.

  Louise closed the jobs section and went on to the Local Events. There was a psychic appearing at the Alexandria. Louise looked at the clock. It hadn’t moved on, but she thought it might be afternoon by now. She folded the paper and took it with her into Kyle’s room, where she sat on the floor and read for a moment. Then she stood up, opened the wardrobe and took out an oversized hoodie. She pulled it over her head and wrapped her arms around herself in an imitation of a cuddle. She sat back down on the floor and waited for the crying to begin.

  Chapter 3

  ‘Are you quite sure about this, Miss Leigh?’

  Patrice nodded. Barney was fussing again. It was tiresome at the best of times, let alone now. She pursed her lips. ‘Just bring him up. And some tea. We should offer him tea.’

  That gave her a few minutes alone at least, while Barney went downstairs, found this journalist that had been talked about and brought him back up. This book was something she’d wanted to do. It had been there in the plan Georgios had written with her in one of his last lucid moments. Legacy. That had been the word he’d used. Patrice took her seat in the tiny lounge area that meant the hotel got away with terming her room a suite, rather than simply another room. The hotel was the best the town could offer, and it wasn’t so much bad, as simply forgettable. Patrice settled back and took four deep breaths.

  There was a sharp rap at the door. Show time. ‘Come in.’

  Barney came in followed by a stranger. Patrice stood to greet him. ‘You’re Mr Cousins.’

  He hesitated, stumbling slightly over the words. ‘L… Leo.’

  She nodded. ‘And I’m Patrice Leigh. Which of course you know. Call me Patrice.’

  The man swallowed. Patrice held the frown she was feeling back from her face. He seemed nervous. Why on earth would he be nervous? She’d been told that he’d worked on books with footballers and one of those glamour model reality TV people. Something didn’t seem quite right. Patrice filed the thought away for later. For now, she needed to put him at ease. She glanced around the room. Barney was fussing around with some poor room service attendant in the doorway. That would do. ‘For goodness sake, leave it on the table.’

  Barney took the tray from the waiter and placed it on the table between Patrice and the journalist. Patrice waved him away. ‘I’m sure we can manage.’

  She leaned forward and started pouring the tea as Barney backed out of the room. As the door clicked behind him she caught Leo’s eye. ‘What do you make of him, Leo?’

  ‘Barney?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Leo accepted a cup of tea and paused. ‘He seems efficient.’

  Patrice smiled. ‘The Third Reich were efficient. What else?’

  Another pause. ‘Maybe a little dull.’

  That was more like it. Patrice laughed one of her earthy throaty laughs, and clapped Leo on the leg. ‘He is, isn’t he? I’m wondering about letting him go.’ She snapped her hand up to her mouth and gasped. ‘Sorry. Shouldn’t have said that.’ Share a confidence or ask for help with a problem to build rapport. Patrice sat back in her seat and sipped her tea. Time to get down to business then. ‘So you’re the one who’s going to tell my life story?’

  ‘That’s the idea.’

  ‘And how do you do this?’

  ‘Well, it’s partly up to you. Normally I’d do interviews over a couple of weeks, and then go away and write a draft, and then come back for follow-up interviews to fill in any gaps.’

  He continued straight away. ‘Of course you have final approval on the manuscript.’

  Patrice scolded herself. The doubt must have shown on her face. That wouldn’t do; she was used to being more careful than that. But he thought it was concern about the content not the timescale. That was manageable. ‘Very well then. Where shall we start?’

  ‘Well, erm… the beginning.’

  Patrice forced herself not to bristle. It looked like she was going to be taking charge of this as well. ‘The beginning of what? My birth? My first experience with the spirit world?’

  ‘Yes. That. Tell me about your first psychic experience.’

  He didn’t actually draw air quotes around the word psychic but Patrice could hear them sitting there in his tone of voice. ‘You’re a sceptic?’

  ‘I wouldn’t say…’

  She held up a hand to wave away his discomfort. This was familiar ground. ‘Scepticism is fine.’ She took a sip from her tea – milky with two sugars. ‘Scepticism is sensible. There are a lot of charlatans. If something looks too good to be true, any sane person would be sceptical.’

  She watched Leo jot down response on his pad. ‘Okay then. Let’s start with your first psychic experience.’

  A rather obvious place to start, Patrice thought, but at least they were getting going. She allowed her gaze to wander slightly to the side of Leo’s head, and let the tiniest of sighs escape her lips. This was a story well-crafted by telling and retelling, her own little quirks and foibles layered over the bones that Georgios had come up with nearly fifty years before. ‘It was all through my grandmother. My mother’s mother. She was the only person I knew in my family who had the gift. My mother had no abilities.’ She shifted her gaze to meet Leo’s. ‘That’s not unusual. You hear of these things skipping generations and suchlike. Anyway my grandmother was married to my grandfather for many years, but he died before I was born. The war. I never met him, but one day I was at my grandmother’s house and I saw, quite clearly, just as I see you now, a man standing in her hallway.’

  ‘Were you scared?’

  Patrice shook her head, picturing the scene she was conjuring as she spoke. ‘Why would I be? He wasn’t brandishing an axe or anything. And it was a different time. Neighbours often popped by, delivery boys from the grocer. My grandmother had a man who came and worked in the garden. I assumed he was someone like that. Anyway he didn’t say anything to me, nor I to him, and I went through to the back room to ask my grandmother who the man was.’ Patrice glanced away into the middle distance. ‘I’ll never forget her reaction. She was doing her knitting and the whole thing, needles, yarn and everything just dropped out of her hands. She jumped to her feet and rushed into the hallway, and she started shouting at the man. I followed right behind. I must only have been about four or five.’

  Patrice watched her interviewer closely. She’d read an article by Michael Parkinson once, where he’d said he could always spot the moment where a celebrity really engaged with an interview question – the change in their expression, the shift of their body, the rise in their tone – there was always something. Leo leaned forward. ‘Go on.’

  A smile broke across Patrice’s face. ‘I remember him staring at me and then staring at her and muttering that he didn’t know I could see him. He’d never really left her, you see. They were very lucky. They found the right person, but then when he died he couldn’t move on, so he stayed hanging about the house. Getting under her feet, my grandmother used to say.’

  Leo checked the light on his recorder and nodded. ‘Did you tell anyone else? Your parents – what did they make of your gift?’

  Patrice closed the smile down. She never really talked about her parents in interviews. That was going to be difficult in an autobiography. She stuck to the script. Brief, but not evasive. ‘My parents never really understood my gift. I mean, I can see it from my mother’s point of view. She’d had my grandmother talking about spirits that my mother couldn’t see for years. The last thing she must have wanted was her own daughter going the same way.’ She leaned back in her seat and folded her hands on her lap. Closed body language to close down a conversation.

  ‘I’d really like to hear more about your parents.’

  Oh. ‘Well, there’s really not much to tell.’

  ‘Anything at all?’ His fingers tapped against his pad, and for a second his leg twitched before he stamped his heel down on to the floor. He was anxious about something.

  ‘Why so interested in my parents? There’s really not much to tell.’

  ‘Well, for the book.’

  The book? Of course for the book.

  ‘Anything you can think of might be useful. The more detail I’ve got the better.’

  ‘I don’t know. My father was a pharmacist. My mother was a housewife. They were very normal sorts of people.’

  Leo didn’t respond for a second. ‘I’m sorry, Miss Leigh. Er… you look tired.’

  ‘I’m fine.’ Was she?

  ‘Well, I didn’t really expect to make a proper start today to be honest. Maybe we should arrange to meet up regularly for the next couple of weeks and take it from there.’

  Patrice nodded without making eye contact. ‘Barney manages my diary. He’ll be…’ She flicked her eyes around the room. ‘He’ll be somewhere.’

  Leo showed himself out, and Patrice sat back in her chair. She could go and lie on the bed. She could let herself drift away, but she wouldn’t. Not yet. She had a show to prepare for, people coming expecting her to raise the dead, and she always gave the people what they wanted. It was what she did. It was who she was.

  Chapter 4

  Louise was standing outside the supermarket. It was the big supermarket, which meant that she had to walk into town and then get a bus to come here, but it was better than going into Sukjinder’s on the estate. People knew her there and they asked questions and offered sympathy. Here she was anonymous. Here she could stop in the middle of the frozen pizza aisle and think about the way that Kyle would painstakingly pick the peppers off his pepperoni feast but complain when she bought any other kind. When she stopped and stared at the frozen pizzas in Sukjinder’s, someone would come and see if she was okay. She preferred to be places where no one cared.