this were a movie, Alice could see herself sitting alone at this table, a solitary figure as the end credits rolled and cinema goers were left bereft of their happy ending. Maybe it was melodramatic to cast herself as the crazy cat lady already given that she was still shy of her thirtieth birthday, but some days she really did just want to give it all up and go and sit in the attic in her wedding dress until the cobwebs choked her.
Picking listlessly at the pasta, Alice’s gaze slid to the unopened pile of bills. Ignoring them wasn’t helping, she knew that. She’d eat this cardboard dinner, and then she’d be brave and open them, because just the sight of them was making her feel ill and that was no way to go on. Flicking the TV on for dinner company proved little solace. EastEnders blared from BBC1, all garish lipstick and shouty arguments in the Queen Vic, and Alice had a self-imposed ban on Central in case Brad and Felicity unexpectedly appeared and scorched her eyeballs out with their passionate on-screen clinches. That left her with a straight choice between a nature documentary about hedgehogs or yet another re-run of The Good Life. She went for the latter, and ended up thinking how lovely Tom was to Barbara even though they didn’t have two pennies to rub together, and remembering how much happier she and Brad had been before he got famous and switched his wellington boots for Armani ones.
Pushing her dinner away and pulling her wine towards her, Alice laid her head on the table and allowed herself to indulge in a few tears. And then she poured a second glass of wine and cried some more; bigger, snottier, shoulder-shaking sobs that made her knock her drink back too quickly and refill her glass for a third, ill-advised time. Within the hour she was at her own pity party for one, which frankly beat the pants off her lonely, sober dinner for one, or at least it did for the glorious half an hour when she turned the radio up loud and wailed along to any sad song she could find on the dial.
When the bottle was finally as empty as her stomach, Alice flopped back into the chair again, her cheek on the dining table, her eyes closed because all she could see when they were open was that humungous, frightening pile of bills again. If I close my eyes, it might disappear, she thought. She’d heard all about positive thinking from Hazel down at the cottages. Maybe if she wished really, really hard, they’d be gone when she opened her eyes. Alice tried. She really did give it her very best shot, which only served to make it an all crushing blow when she opened her eyes and found the pile of bills still there, even bigger than when she’d closed her eyes, if that was even possible.
Any traces of wine-fuelled high spirits abandoned her there on her kitchen table, as did her resolution that she could find a way to hold onto her beloved manor.
As she fell into a heavy, troubled sleep she thought for the second time that day of the Airstream in the garden. Only this time, she saw herself living in it on a muddy campsite like a scene from My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding, and all of her new gypsy friends coming out with sticks and big growly dogs to defend her whenever Brad the terrible turned up in his Range Rover and poncey Armani boots.
‘I’m going to live in the caravan.’
Niamh looked at Alice as if she’d just said she was planning to fly to the moon and should be back in time for lunch. Alice just nodded, her eyes trained on the edge of the woodland and the caravan that lay beyond.
‘It came to me yesterday after you left.’
Niamh frowned. ‘I only cancelled your newspapers, Alice, not your whole life. Have you had a knock on the head?’
‘I’m serious, Niamh. I thought about it all day yesterday and it might just work.’
It was more of an economy with the truth than an actual lie. She hadn’t thought of it yesterday, she’d thought of it at about four o’ clock that morning as she’d peeled her cheek from the dining table and made her way blearily up to bed. Her dreams had been full of the Airstream, muddled and messed up, but they’d sown the seed of a more plausible idea that had gripped her from the moment she’d properly woken up.
Pluto dropped his ball at Niamh’s feet and she picked it up and hurled it across the grass. ‘You’re going to have to spell this out. I’m not seeing how you moving into the caravan will help.’
‘Because if I live in the caravan, I can rent the house out to someone else to pay the mortgage.’
Niamh paused. ‘Are you allowed to do that?’
A frown creased Alice’s brow. ‘Why wouldn’t I be?’
‘I don’t know … I just thought there were rules around that sort of stuff.’
Alice chewed her lip. ‘Then I’ll get it sorted so I can. I mean it, Niamh. This is the only way I can think of not to let Borne Manor go completely, or at least until I’m ready to leave on my own terms, rather than because of Felicity bloody Shaw.’
Niamh fell silent for a moment and then reached down and felt around on the ground behind the bench. When she straightened she held a half-empty bottle of rum in her hand, the emergency supply they kept there for extra cold winter mornings or moments of dire need. Moving from the grandeur and luxury of Borne Manor into a caravan that probably wasn’t even watertight definitely fell into the latter category. Tipping a good snifter into each of their coffee mugs, she clanked her cup against Alice’s.
‘Let’s drink these then and go and view your new home.’
‘It’s … it’s …’ Niamh paused, stepping into the caravan behind Alice ten minutes later. It had taken almost five minutes to prise the door open, and the first thing that hit them was the pungent smell of damp when a hard tug had finally wrenched it from its seal.
‘It’s kind of cute?’ Alice finished for her, seeing the same battered wooden interior as Niamh, though through more rose-tinted glasses. ‘Let’s open the windows, get rid of the damp smell. It’ll be fine once it’s aired.’
‘You think?’ Niamh’s gaze swept from the lumpy double bed at one end of the caravan to the threadbare seating at the other, taking in the tatty kitchenette and holey lino on the way. ‘Is there a bathroom?’
Alice stepped along the central aisle and they both reached for a wall to steady themselves as the caravan lurched downwards at one end.
‘Oops! Legs must need putting down.’ Alice smiled nervously. ‘The bathroom’s in there,’ she added, waving an expansive hand towards a slim door beside the bed. ‘There’s a loo and everything.’
She looked back over her shoulder at her friend’s doubtful expression. ‘Don’t pull that face. Work with me here, I need your vision. You’re an artist; can’t you see it as a blank canvas ready to be made gorgeous?’ She ran her hand over the faded wooden kitchen cupboard. ‘A rub down here, a lick of varnish there … some pretty curtains maybe?’
Alice watched Niamh study the interior, silently willing her to see beyond the shabbiness. Slowly, her friend began to nod.
‘Yes? You see it?’ Alice took Niamh’s fledgling encouragement and ran with it. ‘I looked on the net today, you should see some of the vintage Airstream makeovers I’ve found. It might be a bit of an ugly duckling now, but it’s got potential, and that’s the main thing, isn’t it?’ Alice needed Niamh to share her vision; not least because she couldn’t sew so much as a button on while Niamh could operate her state of the art sewing machine with her eyes closed.
‘It’s an old girl, but she’s got good bone structure, so just maybe,’ Niamh said, ever cautious.
Alice
