Everything changes but y.., p.1
Everything Changes But You, page 1
Contents
Before
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 Thirty-six
Chapter Thirty-seven
Chapter Thirty-eight
Chapter Thirty-nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-one
Chapter Forty-two
Chapter Forty-three
Chapter Forty-four
Chapter Forty-five
Chapter Forty-six
Chapter Forty-seven
Chapter Forty-eight
Chapter Forty-nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-one
Chapter Fifty-two
Chapter Fifty-three
Chapter Fifty-four
Chapter Fifty-five
Chapter Fifty-six
Chapter Fifty-seven
After
Acknowledgements
Also by Maggie Alderson
Maggie Alderson was born in London, brought up in Staffordshire and educated at the University of St Andrews. She has edited four magazines, including British ELLE, and worked on two newspapers, contributing to many more.
She has published four collections of her columns from Good Weekend magazine and her children’s book, Evangeline the Wish Keeper’s Helper, was short-listed for the 2012 Prime Minister’s Award.
She co-edited two anthologies of short stories in aid of the charity War Child and also In Bed With, a collection of erotic stories by well-known women writers. This is her seventh novel.
She is married, with one daughter, and lives by the sea – and virtually on Twitter @MaggieA
Also by Maggie Alderson
Pants on Fire
Mad About the Boy
Handbags and Gladrags
Cents and Sensibility
How to Break Your Own Heart
Shall We Dance?
For Katy and Lottie Watts
‘Are you sure you can leave all this behind?’ she asked him one last time, as they stood taking in the view across to the city from the balcony of their Potts Point apartment.
It was early evening and the bats were starting to fly east from the Botanic Gardens, but the sky over Sydney Harbour was still a vast intense blue. For a moment, Hannah thought to mention that the sky was never that colour in Hackney. And never that big. Most of the year the London sky sat on your head like a tight lid.
But they’d been over it all so many times she decided not to go into the details again. Their bags were packed, sitting ready in the hallway. Some large boxes had already gone on ahead as freight. They had an hour spare until they would need to leave for the airport and had come out for one last look at the city where they’d fallen in love. Then there would just be time for a final coffee at Fratelli Paradiso and that would be it. Goodbye Paradiso. Goodbye paradise.
As they stood looking at that view, so familiar yet suddenly as vivid again as the first time she’d seen it, three years before, when she’d come out to be beauty editor on the Australian edition of Glow magazine, Hannah knew they were both thinking the same thing.
There were the Bridge and the Opera House, so iconic, but as familiar to her now as her own front door. There was the CBD skyline, its unique shapes framed by a psychedelic Sydney sunset. Then her eyes panned down to the more personal landmarks. Harry’s Café de Wheels, where they would sneak off for a pie on a Sunday afternoon. The old wharf, now a swanky hotel where they’d once spent a crazy night after partying in the bar downstairs. Boy Charlton Pool where Matt swam every day and the Art Gallery which had been her brain-cooling haven on unbearably humid February weekends.
Such a beautiful city, with a character and energy all its own. Smart, cheeky, warm, irreverent, sexy. Just like the man standing next to her. Her gorgeous Australian husband, whom she’d persuaded to leave all this for some one-bedroom dump in London, which they hadn’t even found yet.
‘Of course I can leave it,’ said Matt, putting his arm round her. ‘I already gave up Bondi and moved to Potts Point for you, didn’t I? Moving to London is just a more extreme version of that. It’s an amazing place and much better for me professionally. I know too many people here; I need a challenge.’
He pulled her closer and kissed the top of her head.
‘And anyway,’ he continued, ‘what does it matter where we are on this big blue planet, as long as we’re together?’
She smiled at him.
‘You always have the right words, don’t you, Matt?’ she said, running her hand gently down his cheek.
‘I have my moments,’ he said. ‘I’m just waiting for some other people in the music business to appreciate them a bit more.’
‘It’ll happen,’ she said and meant it.
The moment she heard the third crash, Marguerite knew that Anthony was visiting. The first two crashes Charlie was more than capable of making on his own. He might have tripped over a dog, or missed his step with the ice tray somewhere between the fridge and the sofa. But as soon as she heard the third one, which sounded as though it had involved broken glass, she knew Anthony was there. It was only a matter of time until they started singing.
Sighing deeply, she wove the needle through the worked part of her needlepoint and gazed out through the open French windows at her garden, now coming gloriously into its May bloom.
She knew she should turn on a lamp to save her eyes, but couldn’t bear to; every second of the exquisitely fading light was to be savoured. And now bloody Anthony had to come along and ruin it.
How had he slipped past her? She hadn’t heard a car on the gravel, so it was a mystery how he’d got round the house and into Charlie’s ‘granny flat’, as he called it, at the back, before she could intervene. The last time he’d tried to make one of his surprise visits she’d sent him packing before Charlie had even known he was there.
Now she thought it was probably already too late to step in. They were in full flow and going over to try and stop them at this stage would only lead to a big scene. Charlie was just so impossible when he was drunk. Such a charming gentleman when sober, Sir Charles Berry-Downing QC, a silly childish idiot under the influence. It was almost as though he had to try and get it all out while he could, with the booze to blame afterwards.
She sighed again, remembering the first time she’d met Charlie’s new friend, Anthony, who she’d been hearing so much about: another bright apprentice barrister in neighbouring chambers.
One night, way back in the mid-1960s, before Hannah was born, she’d come home late from work at the museum to find the two of them in the drawing room of the flat in Cadogan Gardens, already well away, jackets and ties off, empty champagne bottles lying around. They’d been properly drunk all right, but such good company.
Anthony immediately filling a glass with champagne for her – and never letting it get empty. Stan Getz on the record player, Charlie dancing with a cigar clamped between his teeth, his arms around his own back, feeling himself up, slapping his own hand when it crept down to his bottom. So funny. Then more champagne and laughter and both of them taking turns to dance with her.
It had been binge-drinking, really, she understood that now, but it had seemed a joyful, carefree thing then, just laughing and dancing, being young and relishing life, until the champagne was all gone. Then Marguerite had made Welsh rarebit – amazing she hadn’t set the place on fire, more than a bit pie-eyed herself by then – and they’d sat around the kitchen table eating it and talking with great intensity about who knows what, but it had seemed very important at the time, until exhaustion set in.
Then Anthony had disappeared into the night, Charlie passed out on the sofa and Marguerite went to bed alone, for the first of so many times in her married life.
But those had been glorious days, when Charlie was still working his way up in the legal profession, with Anthony as his partner in crime, as he called him. The men who put the bar into barrister. They did drink far more than was good for them from the outset, but it had seemed innocent high jinks then, without any knock-over effects into their real lives, apart from the hangovers.
But gradually it had turned into this darker thing that made Charlie so impossible until he was sober again. It had happened gradually over the years, getting much worse when he retired to the country, far younger than he should have. Until finally, five years before, she’d had ask to him to go and live over in the granny flat – or clear off altogether.
; Should she have insisted on the latter? Had she been weak about that? For a moment she let her head, with its cloud of pale grey hair swept up in a French pleat, slump down – but only for a moment. Then she lifted it up sharply and after taking a deep breath in, pulled back her shoulders and set her expression. She hadn’t lived this long to be daunted by a pair of old drunks now.
It was a bore, though, she allowed herself to admit, as she closed and locked the French windows, then headed across the hall and along the kitchen passage to the back door.
She’d really thought that once she’d thrown Charlie out of the house – although only across the yard at the back to what had once been a coach house, admittedly – she wouldn’t have to endure this any more. He could binge-drink as much as he liked, as long as she didn’t have to witness it.
But Anthony’s presence always kicked things up several gears. After fifty years it was as though Charlie was still trying to prove he was as much of a player as his friend. She would happily have left them to it, but really didn’t feel like spending four hours in the waiting room at A & E, until Charlie could get something stitched up, or X-rayed. Not again.
‘Damned stupid child in an old man’s body,’ she muttered, taking her quilted gilet from a hook and shrugging it on.
Two black shapes came out of the darkness of the kitchen and rubbed their heads against her legs, as she slipped her feet out of house shoes and into gardening clogs.
‘Hello, you two,’ she said, fondling the Labradors’ silky black ears, ‘did I wake you up and it’s not even breakfast time? Well now you’re up, come and give me moral support while I sort out Daddy.’
But after setting out across the brick-laid yard, a sleepily wagging tail on either side of her, she came to an abrupt stop as a bottle sailed out of the brightly lit first-floor window of the granny flat and smashed on to the bricks just in front of her feet, the contents splashing her legs. The dogs immediately sprang to attention, barking at whatever had threatened them and their beloved pack leader.
‘Ssshhh, you two,’ said Marguerite, touching their heads reassuringly, ‘and sit. We don’t want those silly men to know we’re out here and I don’t want any cut paws either.’
With the dogs reluctantly sitting and growling quietly, she turned on the torch she kept in her pocket and saw that the courtyard was strewn with broken glass and running with red wine.
She was quite relieved to realise the crashing sounds she’d heard earlier hadn’t involved soft human tissue impacting with hard objects, and looked down again at the pieces of shattered glass lying all around, her eyes automatically starting to organise them into groups. Which shards would fit neatly together, how you would start to make the broken bottles whole again.
Marguerite had been putting broken things perfectly back together – porcelain, china, terracotta – for even longer than she’d been picking up the pieces after Charlie’s drinking binges. Her mind flitted to her studio and the piece she was looking forward to getting started on in daylight. A very pretty Coalport teapot, spout and handle broken off, lid lost, just the kind of challenge she loved. Not one of the priceless artefacts she still sometimes worked on for museums, but a domestic object with special meaning to its owner.
But then a burst of loud laughter from the granny flat window snapped her back to the moment and realising she was standing in a place of some danger, she grabbed the dogs by their collars, and hastened back towards the house.
She made the threshold just in time to avoid the flight and catastrophic landing of another bottle, followed by raucous cheers from the flat. After locking and bolting the door, she leaned back against it for a moment with her eyes closed, willing her heart rate to slow.
Then, after carefully checking eight paws for splinters of glass, she went up to bed and put her ear plugs in. A very happy black Labrador lying on either side of the bed next to her.
Hannah was driving the bus. That’s what her four-year-old son Hector called it every time he got to sit in his favourite spot: upstairs, front seat, right-hand side.
Hannah loved that seat too. Bowling along Old Street on the number 55, looking down on all the people scurrying out of the Tube, she felt as though she owned London. It was a small compensation for having to be on the bloody bus at all, when she would so much rather have stayed at home with her family.
She lifted up her phone to take a snap from that vantage point and texted it to Matt’s number:
Look Hector! Mummy’s driving the bus today! Put a red sticker on your bus chart xxxxxxxxxxx
As the phone confirmed the message had been sent she could picture him so clearly, still tucked up in the big bed with his dad and baby sister, where she’d left them. She felt every extra inch the bus moved her away from the three of them like a physical pain.
‘Go out and help save the women of Britain from bad eyeliner and last season’s nail polish,’ Matt had joked, as she’d stood in front of the wardrobe glumly deciding what to wear.
It had to be something pretty special that would segue from a day at her desk to that night’s important dinner with the big shots from French brand Nèriade, one of the most prestigious of all the beauty companies.
Hannah sighed, even as she picked out a gorgeous new Erdem dress she hadn’t worn yet, knowing she should be more geared up about it all. Nèriade was a key brand for ChicClick.com, the luxury online boutique where she was now beauty director, and she’d always had a great relationship with them in her Glow days.
But on top of not being home in time to put the kids to bed yet again, there was another thing that was making her feel less than excited about the evening ahead: none of her beauty writer pals would be there. It would just be her and her boss, Veronica – the website’s dynamic founder – with the Nèriade people at the dinner.
Beauty events used to be social outings for Hannah, but these days it was all business, with the trappings of conviviality pasted over the top. Gone were the days of giggling hysterically over several glasses of champagne too many, with the clan of beauty editors she’d known since they were all junior assistants together.
She’d quickly understood that in her new job she couldn’t afford to let wine loosen her lip when deals were being done, even if it was during a fabulous dinner by a celebrity chef.
So, following Veronica’s steely discipline, she’d learned to drink no more than one glass of wine through the meal, while appearing to partake enthusiastically of her corporate host’s generosity. The secret was to drink only tiny little sips of whatever wine was offered. It wasn’t a very relaxing way to spend an evening.
‘Hey, Matt,’ she called out, looking back at him and the kids snuggled up in bed together, reflected in her dressing table mirror, as she sat down to do her make-up, ‘what do you think is a good collective noun for beauty editors? A compact of beauty editors? A spritz of beauty editors?’
Matt paused from blowing raspberries on his daughter’s tummy and smiled at Hannah. He loved a word game. And Hannah thought a bit of light banter would help get her out of the morning funk she was sliding into.
‘A top note of beauty editors?’ he suggested. ‘A cliché of beauty editors? A freebie of beauty editors? A make-up bag of beauty editors?’
‘A bag of beauty editors,’ echoed Hector, always eager to join in, ‘a blag of beauty editors, a blag of blooty bleditors!’
He had no idea why both his parents immediately burst out laughing, but was thrilled just the same and beamed at them.
‘That’s great, Heccie,’ said Matt, ‘do you know what it means?’
‘Bag, blag, blaggety, blag, waggety, wag, maggoty, mag …’ Hector was now chanting, jumping up and down on the bed in a state of high excitement Hannah feared could only lead to tears, but he looked so happy doing it she didn’t say anything.
‘Actually, I think you had it right off the bat, Hanns,’ said Matt, putting out a hand to restrain Hector, whose jumping was now getting perilously close to his baby sister’s head. ‘Calm down, mate. A spritz of beauty editors nails it. Fragrant, delightful …’
‘But fundamentally lacking in substance?’ said Hannah, pressing her lips together after applying her lipstick. ‘Bit of a grump of a beauty editor for this one today, I’m afraid. I’ve got that dinner tonight, remember? A thrilling new development in the field of mascara – and, more importantly, how we can sell more of them …’
