Kate Lawson - Lessons in Love

‘He told me he was separated,’ Jane had said, while attacking a big bowl of nachos, sour cream and guacamole.

‘Shame that he hadn’t mentioned it to his wife.’

‘Oh, right, and you’re so successful with men. What about André?’

Her mother had sniffed and topped up their wine glasses. ‘Which of us truly knows our own minds at twenty? And he was terribly sweet.’

‘His mum came round to help collect his things when he moved out.’

‘Charming woman. I’ve still got one of his Airfix kits somewhere.’

‘And Geno? The transvestite kleptomaniac?’

‘That’s the trouble with you, Jane, you’ve always been so damned judgemental; he was lovely—fabulous taste in shoes, and look at the sitting room. I’d never have put those colours together. He still sends me letters from San Francisco. He’s in an open prison now, which is so much nicer for him. They let them shop on the Internet and everything. He bought the most fabulous ball gown on eBay—although the UV is playing havoc with his skin, apparently. I’ve been sending him Nivea.’

‘We are talking successful relationships here, Mum, not skin care. You know, years of fidelity, Mrs and Mrs Right wandering off arm in arm, sharing their golden years, shuffling round garden centres, blocking the roads with touring caravans. Happy ever after.’

Jane’s mum had sniffed. ‘At least my relationships are colourful. If you’re going to have your heart broken at least do it with some panache, some élan. It’s time you got a life.’

‘Mum, I’m twenty-seven. I’ve got a few good years left in me yet.’

‘Um, that’s what we all say,’ said her mum, topping up her wine glass again.

And so, for once Jane had taken her advice, sold her house, got a new job in a half-decent town, had a makeover at Curl Up and Dye, and voilà here she was, back to square one with a good haircut.

Within three months of moving to Buckbourne, billed as an up-and-coming market town on the edge of the fen by the estate agents, Steve Burney—six foot something, with broad shoulders and a big crinkly smile—had dropped into the library. He worked at County Hall in Human Resources and had come to check up on how she was settling in. Fifteen minutes later he asked her out for coffee and the rest was history.

She glanced up at the clock, trying to ignore the great raw pain in her chest: 11 days, 18 hours and 56 minutes of history. Apparently he was notorious, Lucy said.

‘Look, I’m really sorry to be the one who tells you this, Jane, but everybody knows about Steve,’ she’d explained, handing Jane a tissue. ‘Really.’

Today Jane and Steve had planned to have lunch at the pub in Holkham and then walk his Labrador, Sandy, on the beach to Wells. That was a proper relationship. Lunch, long walks, Labradors.

Jane sniffed back another volley of tears. Bastard. And then she turned the letter over and took another look at the address on the prize offer. It read: ‘Ms J. Mills, 9 Creswell Close.’

It was an easy mistake to make. Jane lived at 9 Creswell Road, which was about two miles away from Creswell Close, a new exclusive executive housing development being built right on the edge of town, in the mature park-lands surrounding Creswell House, and about two million miles away in terms of income and aspiration.

Creswell Close boasted elegant, architect-designed town houses, integral garages and individually landscaped gardens, solid granite worktops and en suite everything, while Creswell Road boasted about how hard it was and how it could burp the national anthem after eight pints of Stella, and had a man who slept in the end terrace, the burned-out one with boarded-up windows, who could be found most mornings eating out of wheelie bins.

Jane, totally house-detailed out, having gone round and round looking for somewhere to live on endless cold wet days the previous year, had bought number 9 after the man at the estate agents had bandied about words like ‘undiscovered treasure’, ‘colourful’, ‘bohemian’, ‘urban renewal’ and ‘ripe for gentrification’. Which her mum pointed out, after she’d exchanged contracts, meant shabby as hell and dirt cheap.

Even so, it all fitted in with her plan for a bright sparkly new life, although despite numerous attempts and an Arts Council grant to paint a mural on the bus shelter Creswell Road remained resolutely feral.

As had her life.

The house in Creswell Road and the job as community project development manager in the new regional library were meant to mark a brave bold new beginning, not another dead end.

Jane glanced out of the kitchen window across the towpath that backed on to Creswell Road. On the far side of the river, out beyond the galvanised iron railings topped with razor wire, and the skip full of brick rubble and shopping trolleys, lay the municipal playing fields, mature trees, the cricket pavilion—almost the open uninterrupted views promised on the estate agent’s brochure. The one notable interruption was Gladstone, the tramp who was currently sitting on her garden wall, humming a medley from Cats while unwrapping the ham roll Jane had left in tinfoil on the top of her wheelie bin for him. OK, so one could reason it only encouraged him to be feckless but it was so much less stressful than seeing him sift through the detritus of her life to find a square meal.

He’d already told her she ought to eat more fruit and vegetables. ‘Those ready meals, they’re all additives and E-numbers, you know. Tartrazine, monosodium glutamate,’ Gladstone lingered lovingly over the words like jewels in a box, ‘and Lord only knows what else they put in there. And you realise that that isn’t real meat, don’t you? They shape it out of all the stuff they scrape and blast off the carcasses with a power washer,’ he’d said cheerily one morning, as she passed him on the way to catch the bus to work. ‘Meat slurry.’

It had come to something when tramps commented on your dietary habits. Especially when they spent the rest of their time talking to God and any number of imaginary friends.

Jane glanced down at Ms J. Mills’ post. She could hardly just put it back in the post box now it had been opened, could she? How did that look? Maybe she ought to nip down to the post office and explain.

‘So, you’ve opened them all , have you?’ asked an imaginary clerk suspiciously. ‘Would you care to explain exactly why you did that? Make a habit of opening other people’s post, do you ?’ Jane turned the letters over; opening someone else’s mail was probably illegal as well.

Who was going to believe she had opened Ms J. Mills’ post by accident? There had to be—she counted—eight letters here. They’d take one look at the new credit card and assume Jane had already booked a holiday, bought a sofa and had her legs waxed.

The other Ms J. Mills was ex-directory, which really left only one option: Jane would have to drive over to Creswell Close to deliver the post herself. She would explain, and then grovel and laugh and make light of it—possibly.

‘You see, it was all just a silly mistake,’ she’d twitter in a gushy falsetto to a woman who looked uncannily like the clerk in her previous fantasy encounter. Jane paused; even her imagination was cutting corners. What hope was there?

She went upstairs, peeled off her jarmies, had a quick shower and slipped on jeans and a shirt. From the landing window Jane could see that Gladstone had already moved on to number 5. (The people at number 7 were away, possibly on holiday, possibly on remand. Jane had heard a lot of banging and shouting a few nights earlier but hadn’t liked to look.) Number 5 usually put out a couple of slices of fruit cake and an apple. Why Gladstone wasn’t the size of a barrage balloon God alone knew.