Eight Years of Nothing Much
The telephone rang at half past seven, just as Alice was squinting at a battered saucepan, watching bubbles form in the cloudy water. The cooker was old, gas, with cast iron grates slick with an anonymous grease that resisted every scrubbing. Every morning that grime whispered to her: not your flat, not your life, a borrowed stage once occupied by someone else’s Sunday roasts and childhood birthdays, each memento clinging to the walls.
She glanced at the display: Sophie.
Alice picked up.
You didnt answer him again, said her daughter, skipping any greeting.
Morning, Sophie love.
Mum, seriously. He messaged me last night. Says youre ignoring him.
Water boiled. Alice switched off the hob and dunked in a teabag. Discount, supermarket brand, the kind that comes in a job lot. Once she only drank loose-leaf Ceylon Charles always ordered it special from that place on Portobello Road.
He can say what he likes, Alice replied.
Mum, do you know what youre doing? Youre living in some dump in Peckham, probably got mice, youre completely alone, youll be sixty soon
Im fifty-eight.
Thats basically sixty! And you left a perfectly decent man, a lovely flat in Clerkenwell, a normal life. What for?
Alice stared through the window. The morning hung drab and ashen; a skeletal sycamore pointed at the sky, a patch of rain-bloated brickwork scabbed the neighbouring block. Somewhere below, a bus rumbled by. The old road made such a racket she hadnt slept for her first two nights.
Shed grown used to it.
Sophie, Im late for work.
You never want to talk about this sensibly!
I do, just not now, not like this. Can you come by on Saturday? Ill make a stew.
Im not setting foot in that hovel.
Hovel, again a shroud of scorn handed down, most likely from Aunt Margaret.
All right, Alice said simply. Well talk later then.
Mum
I love you, Sophie. Goodbye.
She set the phone on the table and poured the tea into a glass mug shed discovered in someone elses cupboard, among pans not her own. The mug was heavy, chunky, straight out of her nineties childhood. She sipped. The tea was sharp and papery, tasting faintly of the paper wrapping.
She drank standing at the window, staring at that tree.
And then dressed and left for the day.
***
The stairwell stank of damp and old cat. Someones pet lived somewhere up on the third floor unseen, but always yowling when the lights were off. There was no lift. Four flights down, past battered postboxes, past a sled lingering since last winter.
Outside, it was perhaps five degrees. Alice pulled her coat tight and walked to the tube. She hadnt mapped out Peckham yet: six months here, but the laneways still tangled her up. Camberwell, Nunhead, parks that seemed to double back on themselves. These streets werent like the Cityquieter, broader, flanked by ancient plane trees. People hurried past, heads down, skipping eye contact as in all London, but without the central mania that had always put Alice on edge.
She grabbed a bottle of milk and a half-loaf from the off-licence. The cashier, a girl her daughters age, wouldnt look up. Alice counted out coins, packed her bits and slipped away.
The Underground was warm, a pulse of announcements and movement. She stood, clutching the rail, thinking about the project. Yesterday she and George had finished the first block of measured drawings; today, shed have to sort out the cellars floor a miracle of Victorian construction barely clinging together.
The site was in Limehouse. Not grand: late-Georgian, four-square, with crumbling wings and a coach house that had been mangled by a centurys meddling. Families had come and gone; the council had once used it as storage, then let it rot. Twenty years abandoned, then money turned up, along with a dream to build a new arts centre, and an architectural team. Alice was lead conservation architect. George, her colleague, handled structural bits.
This was real work. Not the piddling flat refurbishments she did to stay afloat during her years with Charles, but solid, with history woven into its brick.
***
George was already onsite, standing in the echoing hall in his muddy parka, tape measure in hand, peering up at the ceiling.
Morning, Alice called, stepping in.
Look here, he said, pointing up at a patch where plaster had fallen away, bone showing through. Think Ive twigged why the ceilings gone. There see that split? The beams cracked the length of it. Its almost a replacement job.
Cracked or split with the grain?
Come up, Ill show you.
They climbed the staircase each step singing a tired note underfoot. Alices hands gripped the banister, nose filled with the dry, sweet scent of old wood, and something harder to name the smell of before, the left-behind. The smell of unshared secrets bled into walls.
Shed always loved that scent.
George pointed it out. Alice crouched, clicked a torch along the splinter.
Its cracked, not split, she told him. See the pattern? Mechanical damage. Something heavy sat here.
Agreed. A press, maybe.
Or a few presses. It was a warehouse in the eighties, wasnt it?
George crouched beside her, both of them peering in the draughty silence. Wind slurred at the window, glass long since lost.
So, we swap it, he said.
We swap it. But the same way they made the old one. Archive lists pine good pine.
Thatll be tricky to find.
Well find it. I know a yard up in Suffolk, supplied us on the church job in Islington. Ill ring them.
He nodded, pushing up. He was tall, a little stooped, with a habit of listening head down, always seeming lost in a private equation. It was misleading. He listened acutely, and never interrupted. After four months working together, Alice had come to rely on that.
Tea? he offered. Brought a flask.
God, yes.
They sipped in the corridor. Real leaf tea for once.
***
On Sunday, Margaret descended unannounced, ringing up, Let me in, Ive baked. Alice opened. Her sister was three years older, lived in Muswell Hill with engineering husband Edwin, and held her views with the sort of unassailable conviction only found in British aunts. She swept into the flat, scanned the place, a familiar blend of pity and triumph lighting her face.
Blimey, said Margaret. What was this, a broom cupboard?
The bathroom.
The tiles are all cracked, love.
You brought cake, right, Margaret?
I did. She put down the cake, gave the room another once-over. Alice, just tell me. Explain. You had a flat in Clerkenwell, three rooms, floorboards, a man with means. Did he hit you?
No.
Cheat?
Id stopped caring by then, maybe.
Then why? What on earth made you leave? Losing your senses in your dotage, dont you see it?
Alice fetched plates.
Give it a rest, will you?
Alice, Im your sister. If I cant say it, who will? Sophies in bits, Charles keeps phoning me, wants to know what happened. Hes a good man, by the way.
He is, agreed Alice. For someone else. Slice the cake, please.
Youre always like this. Just slice the cake. Never want to talk.
I talk. Ive explained. Several times.
You havent! I felt wretched. Everyone feels wretched. You think Im always happy with Edwin? I dont go running off to a bedsit at my age.
Its not a bedsit, I live alone here.
Alone! Margaret threw up her hands. Youre fifty-eight, alone in this dump, peanuts for a wage, and this is fine?
Alice looked at her sister: big, warm, hands forever fidgeting at her beige jumper, and an honest confusion on her face that rendered resentment impossible.
Maggie, Alice murmured. Without me youd be lost, daft thing, Margaret said.
Alice shook her head. Ill be lost, but properly.
Margaret stared. What are you on about?
Nothing. Just myself. Alice took the knife. What is it, cabbage?
Leek and onion. Margaret still eyed her. Alice, you all right up here? Seeing anyone?
I am.
And?
She thinks Im doing the right thing.
Theyd say that, love. Youre paying.
They sipped tea, ate the aromatic cake. Margaret grumbled about Edwins back, the dog next door that wouldnt stop barking. Alice listened as dusk pooled over the park; the window bled violet above the waving branches.
At the door, Margaret said, You could at least write to him. Hes only worried.
Maybe.
Alice knew she wouldnt.
***
She and Charles had lived together eight years. No rings: he was against paperwork, which, in hindsight, meant more than shed wanted to hear.
The first two years seemed different, she supposed. Hed taken her to plays and little bistros, weekends in France. Told her she was clever, admired her taste. Then, imperceptibly, things shifted, a hairline crack spreading in old plaster.
It began with small things. The night of his company do, she wore her best emerald dress, and in the hallway hed asked, Are you sure?
She changed.
Then came the comments her cooking, her chat with his mates, too much time spent on work that never led to anything. Always the same gentle, reasoned tone, as though highlighting the self-evident.
Alice, darling, you know conservation isnt the field for getting anywhere. No ambition in it.
I have ambitions.
Oh, sweetheart. Youre a good architect. A solid one. Thats not bad. Not everyones cut out to be remarkable, are they?
She let it slide, retreating to the boxroom and staring at the wall, cold and silent, gutted at the pain from someone who spoke so kindly.
He never shouted. Never hit. Instead, he chipped away, rebuilding her sense of self worth stone by stone in his own design. Her work was trivial, her friends boring, her taste parochial. She owed him for merely being there.
Shed fret over seasoning her stew, question if she rang friends too much, go into meetings nervous she was overstepping. His voice nested inside her a whispering shadow forever needing permission.
And then one evening.
They were with his friends James and Helen in their foliage-strangled flat on Hampstead Heath, talking, as people do, about new builds. Alice said, offhand, that a certain design was lazy, typical of developers cutting the architect. Calmly, to the point.
Charles grinned his familiar, inward smile.
Alice is a pro, he assured James, but you know, there are practical professionals and then the dreamers. Alice is more theorist, havent done anything serious for ages.
A seconds hush at the table. Helen glanced her way; James clinked his glass.
Alice smiled back, swallowed.
She finished her supper, sipped her wine, held her poise. Ordered a cab. All the way home Charles nattered about some deal of Jamess, and Alice stared at Londons gold-lit night, thinking: I cant anymore.
Not hes horrible. Not Im so unhappy. Just: I cant.
She left three months later. Hunted down this little flat in Peckham, moved things with two borrowed cars while Charles was on business in Edinburgh. Left the keys and a note on the kitchen table with just: Sorry.
Only later did she wonder why shed written it. Couldnt say.
***
November in Peckham breathed of something else. The park round the corner was always slick with spent leaf mould; after work, Alice would walk its curve, not straight home but deeper, losing herself among dripping trunks. It was quiet there. The hush, with its hint of mulch and rain-washed bark, felt necessary, like drinking some lost tonic.
At home, the old radiators cast iron and unpredictable either scorched her or left the place icy. The kitchen tap dripped endlessly. The landlord promised a plumber, but weeks passed.
Alice bought a washer and fixed it herself. Forty minutes, two broken nails, one not-for-polite-company word when the spanner slipped and banged her elbow. But water stopped dripping in a neat line, and she felt a ridiculous, solid pride.
Evenings, she spread her drawings on the kitchen table, switching on her battered green glass lamp from a Camden flea market hated by Charles, shoved in a cupboard for years, but now right at home.
The project in Limehouse lumbered along, as big jobs do: measurements, archives, scoping. Alice relished the deliberate pace no shortcuts, everything exposed. Walls hold or crumble; bricks tell you the truth, or theyre silent.
Shed dug up records in the London Metropolitan Archive. In the 1800s, the house had belonged to a Mr. Golding, then his daughter Lucy, who made it briefly a schoolhouse. Then war, then warehouse. There was a photo: Lucy Golding, fifty-ish, rigid-backed, gaze full of something the photographer would never know.
Alice stared at it for ages.
Then went back to her sketches.
***
George once asked her what drew her into conservation.
They were waiting in his battered Volvo, snow ghosting across the windscreen.
In the nineties, I did new builds, Alice said. Flats, office blocks. Paid well, busy work. Then a mate asked me to see a small chapel job in Sussex just for a look. That was it.
That was what?
Knew I wanted to do this instead. It felt important.
He considered, fingers around his coffee mug.
Not many find what matters to them, he said.
You did?
Took ages. Went through the motions for years. Finally had enough.
She watched him, his eyes jumping between whorls of snow.
And now?
Nows all this. He nodded towards their unseen project in the white-out. And thatll do.
The car was warm, smelling faintly of leather and coffee.
They drove on to the archive.
***
Charles arrived on Wednesday evening.
She hadnt expected him. The doorbell blared its plain two-note tune, and she was at the kitchen table, eating yogurt from the tub, pencil behind her ear. She assumed it was the landlord.
Charles stood on the worn landing, resplendent in tailored wool, holding a bunch of, of all things, chrysanthemums. She disliked chrysanthemums. Eight years and hed never noticed.
Hello, he said.
She didnt answer right away, just took in the scene.
How did you find the address?
Sophie.
So Sophie, then. Alice tucked that away for later.
What do you want? she asked.
To talk. His signature half-smile. Arent you going to invite me in?
She paused, then let him past.
He looked around the cramped hallway, examining the peeling paint, the coat peg drooping precariously, her mud-flecked boots by the mat.
So. You live here.
I do.
Alice He reached for her hand. She pulled it away. Unbothered, he swapped the flowers into his other hand. I understand needing time. But its been six months. That should be enough.
Enough of what?
Being, you know on your own. This little pause. Or whatever you call it. He wandered into the kitchen, peering at the careful rows of plans. Youre still working?
I am.
On what?
Restoration. A house in Limehouse.
Lovely. Good for you, he said, patronisingly. Itll do you good.
Its good for everyone. Eighteenth century, you know.
He set the flowers square on the table, right over her drawings. She moved them aside.
Alice, do you even know what youre doing? You live here. a small sweep of his hand, in this.
I know where I live.
I want you to come back.
She fixed him with a steady look. Charles was objectively attractive, well-preserved at sixty-five, effortlessly charming. The coat fit perfectly.
Why? she asked.
He hesitated. She could see hed not planned for the question.
What do you mean, why?
Why do you want me back? Specifically?
He blinked, lips flattening with that familiar, falsely patient annoyance.
I miss you. We were together for eight years.
I know.
So, thats it? All over, just like that?
It wasnt just like that. Alice folded her arms, still in slippers and old jeans, utterly unlike the Alice he remembered. I left over eight years. You didnt notice.
I dont understand.
I know you dont.
Explain.
Ive explained. She was surprised to hear how even she sounded. Six months ago, shed be crying or deflecting or apologising. Do you remember that night at James and Helens?
What night?
You called me a theorist. Said I hadnt done anything big for ages. In front of guests.
He frowned.
I was joking. I dont even remember, probably just teasing.
Maybe. But there were many jokes like that. And I remember every one of them.
Youre too sensitive.
Perhaps.
It wasnt meant to hurt.
Maybe not. But it did.
Over nothing.
Over eight years of nothing.
He looked round her tiny kitchen again, eyes pausing on the green lamp, the chipped mug.
And youre happy here? Really?
Alice considered, not for his sake but for her own.
Its up and down. Some days are hard. The radiators hardly work. But its better than there.
Thats an illusion.
Maybe. But its my illusion.
He pulled on his coat, pausing at the door, something flickering behind his eyes a rare, genuine thing.
Alice, Im not a stranger to you.
No, she agreed softly. Youre not. But youre not mine, either. Goodnight, Charles.
He hesitated, then left.
Youll regret this, he said from the landing.
Maybe, she replied.
Alice lingered, watching the doors diamond peephole glint. She put the chrysanthemums in an empty jar, filled it with water. Flowers, after all too sad to bin.
She bent back to her work.
A bus rattled past beneath the window. Once, and then again, and then none at all.
She realised she didnt find it intrusive anymore.
***
Presentation day was set for the second week of December. Just a first review the client wanted the broad strokes: what to keep, what to restore, what to make new and why. Alice prepared thoroughly. George worked on, too; their calls, all evening, spiralled into debate.
Once, over a contentious point about the ceiling, they argued for forty minutes, and ended up both right he thought structure, she thought appearance.
Youre tough, George said, not disapproving, simply observing.
At work.
At work, thats good.
And that was all. He left sentiment out of it.
She put down the phone. Found herself smiling.
***
Three days before the meeting, Sophie rang. Evening, not morning.
Mum, she said, her voice quieter. Different. Can I come round?
Come on over.
Sophie turned up with a bottle of red and the air of someone trying to arrange her thoughts into words. In the kitchen, Alice poured the wine into two mismatched mugs (her only wine glass reserved for guests, but Sophie didnt mind).
Did he call after he came here? asked Sophie.
No. The odd text.
What does he write?
Different things. I dont always reply.
Sophie twirled her mug.
Mum, I gave him your address. Are you angry?
No.
I thought well, I dont know what I thought. That you might talk, and
We talked.
And?
And that was that. He left.
Sophie was quiet. At last, she said, Mum, Ive been on his side, you do realise that?
I do.
I kept thinking you were just… in a mood. That youd go back to normal, whatever that is. I felt sorry for him, how lost he seemed.
Hes good at that.
Yeah. Sophie looked up. But after, when he called me he went on about how you were always a bit odd, that hed put up with you, really. Like it was a favour, those eight years.
Alice nodded.
Thats about the size of it.
Mum. Sophie met her eyes, seriousness settling. Did it feel bad?
Very.
Why didnt you tell me?
Alice thought for a moment.
I suppose because its difficult to put a name to. Nobody hit me, or threw me out, or cheated. Try explaining why that hurts. Especially to your daughter, who only saw him at his best.
Sophie stood, came round and hugged her sudden, tight. Alice stood frozen a second, then hugged back. Sophies hair smelled of pears, her favourite shampoo since she was small.
You arent silly, you know, Sophie mumbled. Aunt Margarets wrong.
Alice laughed under her breath.
Thats nice to hear.
They finished their wine. Sophie flicked through the blueprints and photographs. She looks like you, she said of Lucy Golding. Alice glanced again. Maybe.
Sophie left just before midnight, promising to visit next Saturday.
Alice washed up, stacked paperwork, stood a little by the cold glass.
No buses ran that late. The courtyard was a blue hush in the glow from a lonely lamppost. In a window across the way, a figure moved.
Alice thought she should ring George about that ceiling, but it was late shed call him in the morning.
***
The presentation was in the firms conference room. The client was serious: lawyers, a stern adviser on heritage. Questions were sharp, pointed. Alice answered all of them. George explained the structures. Once, asked about the timber delays, Alice said honestly: if they found the right wood in time, the timetable held; if not, add three weeks. The adviser frowned. Best you hear that now, she added, than after.
He nodded. Strangely, that seemed to please him.
Afterwards, George joined her outside, folder of plans in hand.
Think weve got it, he said.
I think so too.
He glanced at her. The corridor bustled with people and paperwork.
Fancy dinner? Theres a decent place near here. Should celebrate.
She looked at him.
Id like that.
They walked through Decembers London streetlamps glancing off old brick, snow drifting on the sills. George kept his head low, his usual thoughtful tilt. They talked not work alone, but of cities and books, of how London kept changing and dusk came too soon.
The restaurant was small and calm, with velvet curtains and polished tables. They ordered two hot mains and glasses of red. Conversation wandered work, streets, novels. She realised she didnt care about the time.
He held her coat a moment as she put it on. A simple act, quietly tender. She chose not to overthink it.
Outside, he smiled.
Im glad we work together, he said.
So am I, she told him.
They parted at the Underground, going in opposite directions, into the humming dark.
