Real Life

The car’s suspension groaned as he sat down in the passenger seat.

“Hi Grandpa, how did it go?”

He grumbled without trying to form words. The little black book was tucked into the tight fist of his left hand. He kept his eyes fixed forward, but could feel Julia’s gaze resting on the notebook. A question was forming in her mouth, he could tell, but it would be unlike her to simply come out and ask; so, to keep the secret safe, he offered nothing.

They pulled away from the solicitor’s office. A small, ugly dog of indeterminate breed stared at him until they were out of sight; its beady black eyes rimmed with inexplicably pink fur.

“Mum and I are bringing over a lasagne later. She thought it’d be nice for us to have a family meal.”

The last family meal they’d had was just a few nights ago. He felt as though Julia and her mother were compensating for something. Or perhaps expecting some compensation. His grip tightened around the book. A golden ‘I’ on the spine marked the book as Ingrid’s.

He hadn’t seen Ingrid in over 30 years. It had been a brief extramarital affair consisting of a series of extended work trips across the pond on his part and a whirlwind of all-expenses-paid weekends on hers. It had ended with the usual unfulfilled ultimatums. He hadn’t thought he’d hear from her again; which, he supposed, had turned out to be accurate. But he certainly hadn’t expected to hear from her posthumously either.

$20,000. His mind involuntarily did the approximate maths as soon as he’d heard the figure. A lingering symptom of his accountancy days. £14,500 or thereabouts. Exchange rates were fickle, money decreased in value, pennies and pounds were spent.

He could still picture her vividly.

A forty-six-year-old woman of both extraordinary energy and extraordinary blonde hair. The messy tips had been fried by the constant bleaching, but Ingrid painted on her make-up with a fine brush. The precision of her hand had held his attention on many an evening while they prepared to dine out at some fancy Manhattan establishment. Ingrid’s choice. He wondered how many hours of his life he had spent watching that brush, and whether it had been a good use of his time. The book in his lap suggested it had been.

“You do still like lasagne, don’t you?” Julia asked. Her knuckles were turning white against the steering wheel. His silence was making her stressed.

He nodded and offered an unstable smile. They were just a few minutes from his house; if he could manage to get through them, then he’d have a few hours to himself to dip his toes into that murky pool of unanswered questions.

What could he do with £14,500?

Julia’s car made an uncomfortable crunching sound as it flew over a speed-bump. The hazard lights popped on of their own accord, and Julia frantically scrabbled to turn them off. It took three tries on the flashing button. “Sorry,” she started, “I’d replace this old thing if I wasn’t saving up.” She seized the opportunity to break the silence and launched into the complete proposed chronology of her career plans once she’d saved up enough to go to university. He made sure he nodded and smiled in all the right places, but sweat prickled on his forehead and his hands clammed up as he considered plans of his own.

He’d wanted to visit France for some years now. The food wasn’t really to his taste, and he’d heard horrible things about the Parisians, but there was something about it that attracted him. Ingrid had been so in love with the idea of France, possibly due to its being the origin of the fine wines that had caused the veiny-pink blush on the end of her nose. The only conversation of theirs that he reliably remembered – and he did think of it often – was had at the top of the Statue of Liberty. A peace-keeping gift from France to the US, Ingrid had informed him, her eyes a little hazy from her morning mimosas and a smudge of red lipstick on her front teeth.

“I’ve heard France is just marvellous. I’d love to go.”

“Then I’ll take you. As soon as I’m done here.”

“Would you really? Wouldn’t that be romantic.”

Of course, he’d never taken her. They’d parted ways just a week later; after, for the fourth time in their fourteen months together, he’d refused to leave his marriage. His wife, incidentally, had died just five years later.

Car tyres connected with the gravel of his driveway loudly enough to pull him out of his daydream. Julia was rounding up her unwritten life story.

Dandelions were creeping up through the gaps between the concrete slabs of the pathway and the geraniums needed trimming back. Come to think of it, the front door needed a lick of paint. The lace curtains in the lounge window were looking grey and tatty, and the glass panes needed a good clean. Every time his daughter came to visit, she pointed out that his wobbly front step was an accident waiting to happen.

£14,500 could disappear right here, before he even made it across the threshold, let alone the English Channel.

Julia had relaxed, he could see. Listening to the sound of her own voice had calmed her nerves enough for her to ask, “so what’s in the book?”

He looked down at it; the weathered, thumbed pages, the few scratches on the black leather cover. He shrugged, a half-lie: “poetry.”

Julia nodded, apparently relieved to have gotten one word out of him, though she didn’t seem to comprehend what he’d said or she would have delved a little deeper with her questioning. Her lips stretched into a tight, close-lipped smile. “You know,” she asked, though it was not a question, “you can be more vocal about how you feel, if you want to?”

He nodded.

“There’s nothing you can’t tell us.” She popped open her door and jogged around to help him out of his seat. Her arm hooked under his elbow and he used her weight to heave himself to his feet. “Perhaps we can chat it through over lasagne later?”

He could think of nothing worse; but still, he nodded in agreement.

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Please note that all spelling and grammar is in line with English (UK) guidelines.