Eight Years of Trifles
The phone rang at half-past seven in the morning, just as Helen was standing at her cooker, watching water begin to boil in a battered saucepan. The cooker was ancient, gas-fuelled, with heavy iron grates coated in a stubborn layer of someone else’s grease she could never quite scrub away. Each morning, the grease reminded her that the flat wasnt really hers, that others had lived their lives here before her, with their own stews, their own habits.
She glanced at the screen. Katie.
Helen picked up.
“You still havent replied to his message,” her daughter said by way of hello.
“Good morning, Katie.”
“Mum, I mean it. He messaged me last night. Says youre ignoring him.”
The water boiled. Helen switched off the gas and tossed in a budget tea bagnothing fancy, just the sort that comes in boxes of forty. She used to drink only loose Ceylon tea that David bought from a little shop in Marylebone.
“Let him say what he likes,” Helen answered.
“Mum, do you have any idea what youre doing? You live in that dingy flat in Holloway, probably crawling with mice, all alone, youre nearly sixty”
“Im fifty-eight.”
“Thats almost sixty! And you left a decent bloke, a flat in central London, a normal life. For what?”
Helen looked out. The sky was grey, November and washed out, a sycamore tree stripped of its leaves, the battered yellowed brick of the next building. Somewhere down below, a bus rumbled past. The street was lined with old tram tracks that clattered so loudly her first nights here, she couldnt sleep.
Now she barely noticed.
“Katie, Im running late for work.”
“You never want to talk about it properly!”
“I do. Just not now. Could you come round Saturday? Ill make some soup.”
“Im not setting foot in your little den.”
A den. So even Katie used that word now. Probably picked up from her aunt, Tamara.
“Alright,” Helen replied calmly. “Another time.”
“Mum”
“Katie, I love you. I have to go.”
She set the phone on the table. Picked up the saucepan, poured tea into a tall, heavy glass shed found among the other peoples things in the cupboard. The glass was the real sort, hefty, ridgedshe hadnt seen ones like it for at least thirty years. She took a sip. The tea was hot, a little bitter, with a faint papery taste from the bag.
She drank it standing up, looking out at the old tree.
Then she dressed and went outside.
***
The communal hallway smelt of damp and cats. Somewhere on the third floor lived a tomcat shed never seen, but often heard at night. There was no lift. Four flights down, past battered postboxes missing their fronts, past a childs neglected sledge, lingering since last winter.
It was barely five degrees out. Helen buttoned her coat and set off for the Tube. She still hadnt quite found her bearings in Holloway, even after six monthsshe still sometimes got lost in backstreets. Finsbury Park, Highbury, Tufnell Park. The roads out here were wider, quieter, lined with trees. The people hurried, eyes averted, just as they did everywhere in London, but here there was none of that sharpsuited, frantic energy that had always got on her nerves in the centre.
She bought kefir and half a loaf at the corner shop. The cashier, a young woman with too much green eyeshadow, didnt even look up. Helen counted out her change in pounds, packed her shopping, and left.
The Tube was warm and loud. She stood, clutching a rail, thinking about work. Yesterday she and her colleague Michael had finished the first set of measured drawings, and today, shed have to tackle the basement support, which looked as if it was held together by little more than a miracle and some handwaving from the nineteenth century.
The building was an old townhouse in Hackney. Small, late eighteenth centurymain house, two wings, and an unrecognisable old coach house that had been battered and rebuilt so often, no one could tell what it once was. Owners had come and gone; after the war, the council used it for storage, then it sat abandoned for two decades. Now, finally, money had been found, people wanted to turn it into a cultural centre, and a project team was pulled together. Helen was lead conservation architect. Michael handled the engineering.
This was real work. Not like the tiny flat redesigns shed picked up in the David years just to keep herself busythis was the real thing, big and tangled with history.
***
Michael was already at the house when she arrived, rooted to the middle of the ground floor in his scruffy grey jacket, tape measure in hand, peering upward.
“Morning,” Helen called as she entered.
“Look at this,” he said, pointing to a corner where the plaster had fallen away, showing rough brick underneath. “I think Ive worked out why the ceilings sagged. Therebeams cracked right across. This isnt a repair job, its a replacement.”
“Cracked or split along the grain?”
“Come, Ill show you.”
They went up to the first floor on a staircase that had already been propped up, but still creaked with every step. Helen clung to the rail and took in the dry, musty tang of aged wood, dust, and something else she didnt know how to namea whiff of the past, of lives that drifted through and vanished into these walls.
Shed always loved that smell.
Michael showed her the beam. She knelt, switched on her torch, traced the line of the split.
“Its mechanical,” she said. “See the direction? Something heavy was up here once.”
“Machinery, maybe.”
“Or several. It was a storehouse, remember.”
Michael crouched next to her, both of them studying the wood. The wind blew in through an empty window.
“Sowe swap it out,” he said.
“We do. Using the proper old method. Ive found the original spec at Kewa good, slow-grown homegrown pine.”
“Finding the right timber now”
“Well manage. Theres a supplier in Hertfordshire, used them on a job in Bloomsbury. Ill call.”
Michael nodded, got up, brushed off his knees. He was tall, slightly stooping, with the habit of listening with his head bowed just a bit, like a man habitually deep in his own thoughts. But it was misleading: he listened closely, answered carefully, and never interrupted. Helen had grown used to it and quietly treasured it.
“Tea?” he offered. “Ive got a flask.”
“God, yes.”
They stepped into the corridor where Michael had set down his bag. He handed out two plastic cups and poured.
“You seem very together today,” he remarked, leaving it unfinished.
“Do I?”
“Yeah. Its usually after youve had an early call. Daughter or your sister?”
She smiled.
“Spot on.”
He didnt pry. Just handed her the cup.
She took it. Good teanot from a bag.
***
Shed seen her sister Tamara on Sunday. Tamara had arrived unannounced, ringing up from the street: “Open up, Ive brought cake.” Helen let her in.
Tamara was three years older, lived in Acton with her husband Brian, worked as an accountant for a builder, and her worldview had a stability that nothing could budge. She made a show of inspecting the flat, and Helen read instantly the familiar mixture of pity and triumph on her face.
“God,” said Tamara. “Is this a bathroom or an airing cupboard?”
“Bathroom,” Helen replied.
“Tiles are cracked.”
“Did you bring cake?”
“I did.” Tamara took it to the kitchen, placed it on the table, gave the place another once-over. “Come on, Helen, explain. Central London flat, three rooms, parquet floors, high ceilings, financially secure mandid he hit you?”
“No.”
“Was he unfaithful?”
“I cant say. Maybe. Didnt matter any more.”
“Then why? What made you leave? Youre mad at your age, do you realise?”
Helen fetched plates.
“Tamara, dont start.”
“Start what? Im your sister! Am I meant to sit quietly? Katies calling in tears. He rings to see if I know anything. Hes not a bad chap, you know.”
“He is, for someone else. Cut the cake.”
“You always do this. ‘Cut the cake.’ Never talk properly.”
“I am. Ive told you, more than once.”
“Youve said nothing. ‘I wasnt happy.’ Nobodys happy all the time. Do you think I dont have bad days with Brian? But Im not legging it off to a bedsit in North London.”
“Its not a bedsit. I live alone here.”
“Alone!” Tamara threw up her hands. “Fifty-eight, alone in this hovel, making pennies, and you think its fine?”
Helen looked across at her sister. Tamara sat opposite, solid, kindly, in her perennial beige jumper, her face a picture of genuine bewilderment and affection. She truly didnt get itand Helen couldnt even be angry.
“Tam,” Helen said softly.
“Youll fall apart without me, silly,” Tamara said with mock severity.
Helen shook her head. “Ill fall apartbut in my own way.”
Tamara gaped. “Say what now?”
“Nothing. Doesnt matter.” Helen started to cut the cake. “Whats in this?”
“Cabbage,” said Tamara, still eyeing her doubtfully. “Helen, are you alright? Are you seeing anyone to talk to?”
“Yes. I am.”
“And?”
“Says Im making good decisions.”
“Of course they do. Thats what youre paying for.”
They sat, drinking tea and eating. Tamara jabbered on about Brians back giving him grief, about the neighbours new dog barking. Helen listened. Outside, dusk crept in, the sky a dim violet behind the empty tree.
Tamara paused in the doorway before leaving.
“You really ought to drop him a line,” she said, softly. “Hes worried.”
“Ill think about it,” Helen replied.
She knew she wouldnt.
***
Helen and David had lived together for eight years. Not marriedhe had principles about bureaucracy, which should have told her a lot, but it dawned on her too late.
The first couple of years were different. Or so she thought. He took her to restaurants, theatres; they travelled to Florence and Prague. He told her she was clever, she had taste. Then it started to changeslowly, imperceptibly, like a hairline fracture in an old wall.
It began with little things. One night she wore her favourite green dress to his office do, and he glanced at her in the hall: “Are you sure?” That was all. Just, “are you sure?” She changed. Put on something black.
Then came the remarksabout her cooking, about how she talked to his friends, about how much effort she put into work with such meagre outcome. The last he said in a gentle, reasonable tone, as if he were doing her a favour pointing out the obvious.
“Helen, restoration isnt a field you can build a life from. Its a dead end for people with no ambition.”
“Ive got ambition.”
Hed only smile. “Youre a decent specialist, thats all. Average. Not everyone needs to be outstanding, you know.”
She had no answer. She stayed silent, moved to another room and sat, staring at the wall, wondering why someones kindly words made her feel so wretched.
He never shouted. Never laid a hand on her. Instead, he quietly, methodically convinced her that without him, she was nothing. Her career was silly, her friends boring, her tastes provincial. She owed him for being with her at all.
Shed make boeuf bourguignon and fret over the seasoning. Shed call friends and wonder if it was too often. Shed go to business meetings wondering if she should tone herself down. That relentless inner voice always second-guessing, always seeking permissionsounded just like him.
Then there was that evening.
They had dinner at his friendsMark and Natalie, a plush flat near Regents Park. The talk had turned to a new block of flats; Helen commented calmly about the design, said the façade was weak, a typical developer shortcut. David looked across the table, his familiar, knowing smile in place.
“Helens the expert,” he told Mark. “Still, theres practical people and theres theorists. Helens more of the latter. She hasnt worked on anything big in years.”
An awkward silence followed. Natalie looked at Helen. Mark took a sip of wine.
Helen smiled, finished dinner, drank wine, kept up the chat. Ordered a cab home. As they drove, David chattered on about Marks business. She watched Londons lights blur past and thought one clear thought: I cant do this anymore.
Not “hes a bad man.” Not “Im miserable.” Just: I cant go on.
She left three months later. Found this flat in Holloway. Moved her things in two car loads while David was away for work. She left her keys and a note on the kitchen table with a single word: “Sorry.”
She never knew quite why she wrote it.
***
November in Holloway was its own thing. The park was close, and in the evenings, coming home, shed sometimes take the long route, winding past old oaks and bare sycamores. The leaves were down, the paths sodden, her steps squelchingbut it was quiet, and Helen breathed in the damp, earthy air as if it contained something essential.
At home it was chilly. The ancient radiators either roasted or stood coldthe heating in these old buildings was always unpredictable. The kitchen tap dripped. Shed called her landlord a few times; hed promised a plumber, but nobody came.
Helen bought a rubber washer at B&Q and fixed it herself. It took forty minutes, two broken nails, and a choice word shouted when the spanner slipped and her elbow banged the pipe. She stood up, wiped her hands, turned on the tap. The water ran smooth, no more drip.
A silly kind of pride, but genuine.
In the evenings shed work at the kitchen table. Shed spread drawings out, switch on her old desk lamp with its green glass shadeone shed picked up at a car boot sale in the nineties. David hated that lamp, said it ruined the décor. At his place it lived in a cupboard. Now it sat on her desk.
Progress on the house was slow, as it always is with old properties. First you measured, then trawled the archives, then surveyed the damage, then drew up ideas. Helen liked the process for its honestytheres no faking with old buildings. A wall stands or it doesnt. Bricks are living or dead. The past is either there, or invented.
Shed found some old records for the house at the London Metropolitan Archive. Nineteenth century, it belonged to a merchant named Bennett, then passed to his daughter who turned it into a sort of small school. Later it was council storage. Bennetts daughter was Mary. In one faded photo Helen found, there was a woman, fiftyish, back straight, looking straight into the lens as if she knew something the photographer didnt.
Helen gazed at that picture for a long while.
Then she put it aside and got on with her drawings.
***
One day Michael asked how she ended up in conservation.
They sat in his car, warming up before a drive to the record office. Outside, small, tentative flakes of the first snow of winter drifted past the windscreen.
“I did new builds in the nineties,” Helen said. “Flats, offices. It paid well, loads of work. Then, out of the blue, I visited a friend on a tiny church restoration job in Surrey. Just tagged along. That was it.”
“That was what?”
“I knew I wanted to do this instead. It felt more important.”
He sat quietly.
“Thats rare,” he said. “Knowing what matters to you.”
“Did you?”
“Took me ages. Did what seemed sensible for years. Then stopped.”
She looked at him. He stared out, watching snow gather on the wipers.
“And now?”
He nodded towards the house, invisible from here. “This, I suppose. Suits me fine.”
The car was warm, and smelt comfortingly of leather and the coffee he drank from a battered mug every morning.
They drove on to the records office.
***
David appeared on Wednesday.
She wasnt expecting him. He rang the bell at eight, just as she sat over her plans, eating Greek yoghurt straight from the tub. The bell was the standard, three-chime thing every front door round here had.
She opened, thinking it was the landlord or a neighbour.
David stood on the landing, wrapped in his cashmere overcoat, holding a small bunch of chrysanthemums. Shed never liked chrysanthemums. Hed never remembered, not once in eight years.
“Hello,” he offered.
She hesitated, just looking at him.
“How did you get my address?”
“Through Katie.”
So it was Katie. Helen tucked this away for later.
“What do you want?” she said.
“To talk.” He gave a slight smilethe one she knew too well. “Arent you going to let me in?”
She thought for a moment, then stepped aside.
He walked in, took in the tiny hallway, peeling wallpaper, the crooked coat hook, her boots by the door.
“So youre living here,” he said. Not as a question.
“I am.”
“Helen” He reached for her hand. She withdrew. He wasnt offended, just shifted the flowers to the other hand. “Listen. I know you needed time. But its been six months. Surely thats enough.”
“Enough of what?”
“Of being alone. Of a break. Whatever it is.” He wandered into the kitchen, examined her plans on the table. “Are you working?”
“I am.”
“On what?”
“Restoration job in Hackney.”
“Good.” He said it patronisingly, that same familiar tone. “Its probably good for you.”
“For the building, too. Eighteenth-century manor.”
He put the chrysanthemums on the table, right over her drafts. She shifted them aside.
“Helen,” he said, “do you realise what youre doing? Living” he gestured, “like this.”
“I know exactly where I live.”
“I want you to come back.”
She looked at him. Objectively, he was an attractive mansixty-five, but looked younger, well-kept, tall. His coat hung elegantly.
“Why?” she asked.
He fluttered, unprepared. “What do you mean, why?”
“You want me back. Why?”
“I I miss you.”
“What, exactly?”
He looked weary, shifting into a kind of frustrated patience she knew all too well.
“You. As a person. Eight years together.”
“I remember.”
“And just like that, its over? You just left?”
“I didnt just get up and leave.” Helen crossed her arms. She was in an old jumper and jeansnothing like what he expected from her. “Id been leaving for eight years. You just never noticed.”
“I dont understand.”
“I know.”
“Explain.”
“I have. Many times.” Her voice was even. She was surprised by her own calmsix months ago shed have either been crying or apologising. “Do you remember that night at Mark and Natalies?”
“Which night?”
“When you said I was a theorist. That Id done nothing big for years. In front of your friends.”
He thought for a second.
“I was only joking. At least, Im sure I was.”
“Maybe. But it was one of many jokes. I remember every one.”
“Youre too sensitive.”
“Perhaps.”
“I meant no insult.”
“Fair,” she said. “Didnt stop it hurting, though.”
“Over nothing.”
“Over eight years of nothings.”
He was silent. He looked around the kitchen again: at the heavy glass by the stove, at the old desk lamp with the green shade.
“And youre happy here?” he asked doubtfully.
Helen considered. Not for him, for herself.
“Sometimes. Its hard, it gets lonely, and the heatings useless. But yes, Im better here than there.”
“Its an illusion.”
“Maybe. But its mine.”
He reached for his coat, glanced at her. Something flickereda hint of real feeling there, nothing businesslike or patronising.
“Im not a stranger to you.”
“No,” Helen said. “Youre not. But youre not mine anymore, either. You should go home, David.”
He lingered, then walked out to the hallway. Put on his coat. Opened the door.
“Youll regret this,” he said.
Not as a threatalmost kindly.
“Maybe,” she replied.
The door shut. Helen stood there, hand on the painted wood, staring at the scuffed peep-hole. Then she returned to the kitchen, put the chrysanthemums in a jar, added water. Flowers are flowersshe couldnt bring herself to bin them.
She sat down to her plans.
A bus rattled past outside, once, then again, then faded.
She realised shed stopped noticing the sound as an intrusion.
***
The project presentation was scheduled for the second week of December. It was just a proposal, but the client wanted the big picture: what would be restored, what replaced, and why. Helen spent serious days preparing. Michael did too. In the evenings theyd phone, talking through the details, sometimes arguing.
Once, he suggested something about the basement beams, and she disagreed, and they locked horns for forty minutesuntil it turned out they were both right, just seeing it from different angles: she was focused on the look, he on the structural logic.
“Youre tough,” he said afterwards, without a trace of criticism.
“At work.”
“Its good to be tough at work.”
That was all. Nothing sentimental.
She ended the call, surprised to realise she was smiling.
***
Three days before the meeting, Katie called. Not in the morning, in the evening.
“Mum,” she said, voice changed, softer. “Can I come over?”
“Course you can.”
Katie turned up with a bottle of wine, the look of someone whod made her mind up about something, but couldnt put it into words. She looked more and more like Helen had at her agesame cheekbones, same hands. Thirty-two now, working as a designer, living with her boyfriend in Clapham.
They sat at the kitchen table. Helen poured the wine into regular glassesshe only had one wine glass, reserved for guests; Katie said a glass was fine.
“Did he phone after he saw you?” Katie asked.
“No. Just sends texts, here and there.”
“What does he say?”
“This and that. I dont always respond.”
Katie twisted her glass.
“Mum, I gave him your address. Are you cross?”
“No.”
“I thought I didnt know what I was thinking, really. That maybe youd talk and”
“We did.”
“And?”
“And nothing. He left.”
Katie was quiet, staring at her wine.
“Mum, Ive been on his side, all this time. You know that?”
“I know.”
“I kept telling myself you just needed to come back to normal life. I felt sorry for him; he seemed solost, lonely.”
“Hes good at that.”
“Yeah.” Katie glanced up. “I got it the other day. He called me after he left you, and saidI cant even repeat it. He said youd always been a bit away with the fairies. He said he put up with you. That really, hed done you a favour for eight years.”
Helen nodded.
“Thats him all over.”
“Mum.” For the first time in ages, Katie looked at her without a trace of that mild contempt. “Were you really unhappy?”
“Very.”
“Why didnt you tell me?”
Helen shrugged.
“Because I couldnt have put it into words. When nobodys beating you or throwing you out, its hard to explain, especially to a daughter who barely saw him except at his best.”
Katie stood, walked round and hugged her tightlysuddenly and fiercely. Helen didnt know what to do, then hugged back. Katies hair smelt of her favourite pear shampooa scent shed loved since she was a teenager.
“Youre not daft,” Katie whispered into her shoulder. “Auntie Tams wrong.”
Helen laughed, quietly.
“Thats good to know.”
They finished the wine. Katie looked over the plans, quizzed her about the house project. Helen explained, showed her Mary Bennetts photo. “She looks like you,” Katie said. Helen looked at it again. Maybe.
Katie left at half eleven, promising to visit again next Saturday.
Helen washed up. Put away plans. Stood at the window.
The buses had stopped for the night. The courtyard below was quiet, blue with streetlamp glow. Only one window in the block opposite was lit, a figure moving about.
She thought about calling Michael to discuss a detail about the basement, but decided to leave it until morning.
***
The presentation took place in a well-lit conference room at the project firms office. The client was all business, accompanied by a team of lawyers and a heritage consultant whose questions were exacting. Helen answered. Michael added his points. When they asked about the timescales for replacing the beams, she was upfront: if they sourced timber on time, theyd make the schedule; if not, itd slip by three weeks. The consultant frowned. Helen added, “Better I tell you now than explain delays later.”
He nodded. For some reason, that seemed to win more points than anything.
Afterwards, they stood in the hall. Michael fiddled with his files.
“I think theyll sign off,” he said.
“I think so too.”
He looked at her. The hallway thrummed with people in and out, holding files.
“Shall we grab dinner?” he asked. “Theres a half-decent place round the corner. Might as well mark the occasion.”
She looked at himsomething different there.
“Id like that,” she said.
Together, they walked through Decembers London, through Hackney, streetlights catching on the old stone ledges, thin snow whitening the roofs. Michael walked beside her, head inclined in his usual thoughtful way. They didnt discuss anything earth-shattering. Just timber supplies, the consultants fussiness (a good thing), how the city grew dark too early in winter.
The café they found was small, dim, with heavy drapes and wooden tables. They ordered something hot, a glass of red each. Conversation meanderedwork, the city, how it was changing, books, this and that. Helen realised she wasnt bothering with the time.
As they got up to leave, Michael held her coat for her. An ordinary gesture, nothing more. Or maybe it was, in a gentle, unhurried way.
Outside, he said, “Im glad we work together.”
“So am I,” she replied.
They walked off through the snowy citythen split for their trains on different lines.
