A/N:
[1] This chapter is rated T.
Hope you enjoy!
vi.
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I don't want anything more than to see your face when you open the door. You'll make me beans on toast and a nice cup of tea and we'll get a Chinese, and watch TV. Tomorrow, we'll take the dog for a walk, and in the afternoon, maybe we'll talk. I'll be exhausted so I'll probably sleep and we'll get a Chinese, and watch TV. I know it doesn't seem so fair, but I'll send you a postcard when I get there.
Chinese – Lily Allen
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And the truth is, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, Martha Costello has never been really good at making decisions.
She's good at making professional judgment calls. They're different. There are facts and data to lean on, and the years of experience to back it up. It's GBH, not attempted murder. It's assisted suicide, not murder. It's free, not guilty.
Yet, she kept a baby because she couldn't make the appointment. She turned Clive down because she couldn't make time to think about it. She made it to Heathrow because she stepped in front of a crowd and couldn't tell them who she was.
Martha's not very good at making decisions because she likes to be sure, and there's never a way to be sure, so she waits until the facts change, until the lines become harder, until decisions make themselves. When she broke up with Sean and a bus almost killed the both of them, he showed up on her doorstep a few days later, always seemed to make his way back into her life like a boomerang; the further she attempted to throw him away, the harder he seemed to hit back.
'Okay, look,' he said; her university bags were packed in the trunk of her father's old car. She'd just argued with her mother, had made it out of the house for some fresh air. 'I'll come with you to Manchester.'
There was a pause in his words; he held her gaze for a moment, until she looked away.
'If that's what you want.'
They went for coffee. Martha paid the bill (had taken on a loan to pay for uni, might as well spend the money, she thought, and not be indebted to him), looked at Sean from where she sat, nervously biting her lip. There were tears, in his voice, in his eyes; he fiddled with a napkin and abruptly stopped, hands flat against the table, staring into her eyes.
'I love you,' he said, chased her gaze when she tried to look down, away from him. He sounded scared, vulnerable, alone. 'Fuck, Mar, I –' he breathed, took her hand in his, like something (anything) to hang onto. In the end, she didn't say no (couldn't say no), couldn't break his heart. 'Give us another chance. Please.'
Three years later, when she left for London and still couldn't decide (their on and off relationship was mostly off, by then; she didn't think there would be any harm – how naive), Martha just slipped away from his life while he was on holiday in Magaluf with his mates, changed her number and told herself that it wasn't her fault, that Shoe Lane had made an offer she couldn't refuse, that it wasn't her decision, simply just fate.
"You're going to have to make a decision, there, Marth," Clive says, now, and she does what she does best: runs, stalls, hopes the problem will solve itself.
.
Initially, she's in Bolton for a few days. See her mum, breathe the Northern air. Martha gets there late afternoon, a scarf wrapped tight around her neck despite the high temperatures, carefully positioned to hide the fleeting marks Clive's mouth left, there, the night before. 'Hickeys, really?' she raised an eyebrow at him this morning, trying to assess the damage in her bathroom mirror, bending over him as he brushed his teeth in her sink. 'I'm going to my mother's, Clive.'
He simply smirked in response; Martha rolled her eyes. 'Didn't hear you complaining last night,' he said in lieu of an explanation and sadly escaped the room before she had time to reach and hit the side of his arm.
When she gets to Bolton, though, there's sense of familiarity, of belonging, in her old home, whatever the hell that means. That's good, because she's tired of London, of busy avenues and fake human interactions, of the Airbnb listing her new neighbours have turned the flat next to hers into. Here, she knows the kids that hang around the corner of her mum's street. Here, she shares an understanding with them, as a matter of fact, an understanding that dates back from two years ago, when one of them got arrested on some nonsensical drug possession charge at the airport in Stansted and Martha agreed to drag herself to youth court one very early morning to run his apparently usual coppers-fitted-me-up-wasn't-me-wasn't-there defence and make sure he didn't go home with more than a few hours of community service on his sentence. Martha's reminded of it as soon as she arrives at her mum's: in exchange, they've agreed to let her park her car in front of the house without trying to nick it.
"Hi, Miss!" they chant at her as she gets out of the car, opening the trunk to get her suitcase out.
The terraced house in front of them hasn't changed much since her mum and dad moved in, when Martha was about five. The same stairs come up to the porch, the same bricks make up the wall that she used to climb on as a teenager, gripping at the drain pipe for balance, trying to get home in the middle of the night. The paint on the door is old, red, cracked; her dad used to repaint it every few years or so, she remembers, arguing that the manual work helped clear his mind. At some point, of course, his mind stopped needing clearing, and the paint began to gradually wash off. Martha doesn't think her mum's ever had it done since.
Glancing at the kids at the corner, Martha nods back, smiles politely and balances her handbag over her shoulder before standing in front of the trunk, about to reach for the handle of her suitcase. One of the boys runs to her help, lifting the heavy weight in one swift motion and walking it up to her mother's doorstep. "Ah, thanks, Jamie," Martha smiles when he drops it up the stairs, turning around to lock the car with a beep.
Mo, she remembers, was her client. Good kid, tough circumstances. Jamie was the so-called 'boss,' - if such a word can be used with reference to a seventeen-year-old who orders his friends around all day, smoking weed and making half-hearted attempts at nicking cars. She can't seem to recall the name of the third one (Liam? Cian? Something Irish).
"Reckon she's still at Tesco," Jamie mumbles in a very characteristic northern twang, eyeing the house, stepping away from the front door, shaking Martha out of her thoughts. D. & M. Costello, she reads, absentmindedly, on the tag under the doorbell. "You got the keys?" he asks. "I can crack it open for you, you know? If you don't want to wait."
Martha takes a tad too long to respond, her tired brain trying to process the information. A laugh eventually escapes her lips, shaking her head. "I'm good, thanks," she informs him, reaching under the flowerpot on the windowsill. It occurs to her that showing him where her mum hides the spare keys might not be the smartest of things to do, but then he apparently doesn't need them to open the door, so - she makes a mental note to tell her mum to get a better lock, next time.
Jamie shrugs, jumping the few stairs down and running back to Mo as Martha steps in.
Inside, it smells like her parents. Like the polish her mum uses on the wood of the cupboards, like the potatoes that roasted in the oven whenever her dad decided he was going to make 'something proper,' spending hours moving around the kitchen, ranting at Margaret Thatcher's voice on the BBC. Her mum always hated cooking. She used to have this camera, though, one of the old ones you'd need to hold still for a good minute for the photograph to take; she'd creep on Martha and her dad on certain nights, catching stills of the both of them watching football on the telly. She'd have the pictures developed and framed, or just stuck them around the house everywhere. On the furniture in the hallway, on the wall in the living room, on the nightstand in her bedroom. Martha thinks of the photographs she has at work, wonders if maybe that's why she keeps them. Billy smiling on her desk, her dad in the corner, and Clive - an old photo that Alan took of them as pupils tucked between credit card receipts in her wallet. Her mum has lots of pictures of them, with Dad and Martha's own tiny, pale frame smiling between her parents. Martha was always a quiet kid, she remembers, in school, keeping to herself, her hair so blond it was almost white, skin pearly and soft, washed by the rain.
She drags her suitcase up the two flights of stairs to her old bedroom and sits on the bed; the sheets are flowery – white with pink roses on top – her mum got them when she was in school in an attempt to make the room look a bit "girlier". It looks like she hasn't had the heart to take Ian Curtis' poster off the wall, though, and as Martha eyes it, it feels like he's staring right back at her, leaning against the bricks of a building, smoking a cigarette. It makes her long for a fag.
She's about to use the old trick with her window to climb onto the roof and satisfy her brain's need for a rush of nicotine when she hears her mum's voice calling her out from the hallway.
"Mar? You home?"
"Yeah!" she shouts back, sighing, putting the cigarettes away. "Up here!"
.
It's hard to explain why the time flies. It's hard to explain why she doesn't leave. Her mum asks, the first night, offering beans on toast and a cup of tea: "How long will you be staying, honey?"
Martha looks around the living room, nervously crosses and uncrosses her arms. "A week or two? Don't have much on at work at the moment."
Her mother nods, silent. "Great," she says, quick, faking a smile that doesn't reach her eyes. Sometimes, Martha forgets that her mother knows her. Knows from a single look thrown in her direction that something is off, though she won't ever actually acknowledge it or indulge Martha's self-pity. Her mother figures her daughter needs an occupation, something to fill her mind, something to do. "You can help with the house, then," she adds, hand gentle and warm against Martha's shoulder.
The house, Martha found out about it a few weeks ago. Threw a tantrum in the wake of a phone call she got from the real estate agent, the door banging on her way back into the office. 'My mum's moving,' she told Clive, eyes furious as she stood in the middle of the room, hands set on her hips.
He barely looked up, she remembers, buried deep into whatever he was reading at the time. 'What do you mean moving?'
'She met this guy, couple years ago,' Martha went on, trying to suppress a roll of her eyes. 'She's selling the house, moving in with him. Didn't tell me, had to wait for the fucking real estate agent to phone and ask if I was interested in buying it to find out.'
Clive finally did look up at that; his voice sounding like all of this was a completely foreign world to him. How could her mum not tell her about the house? Martha thought. How could she - 'Oh,' he said. 'How do you feel about it?'
It's funny, how naturally she burst out laughing, back then, shook her head at him. 'How do I feel about buying property in Bolton? Not interested.'
He sighed, crossing his arms and throwing her a look. 'No, I mean, how do you feel about her moving in with someone else?'
Well, she thought, she's an adult, now, she's almost thirty-nine years old (the big four-oh just around the corner), and she knows how she should feel about it: detached, cool, aware of the fact that this isn't her life, anymore. But then, the thing is: her parents are still her parents. And, yeah, there was and is still a part of her that feels uneasy about her mum falling in love with someone else, just like another part of her feels uneasy about the house drowning under her dad's memorabilia.
Martha got caught up in her own thoughts, then, lost her words. Clive went on, probably figured he wasn't going to get an answer from her. 'What's he like anyway? The guy?'
'Don't know,' she shrugged, sipping her coffee, sitting against the edge of her desk. 'She met him online, he's from Bury. Never met him myself.'
'That's a bit weird, no?'
Yes, she thought, thinking of Billy's rows with Harriet, of Clive's silk party. 'Everything's a bit weird, right now, though, isn't it?'
Her mum's project took a little bit of a delay, partly due to the fact that according to Silvia-the-real-estate-agent, she wanted substantially more money for the house that what would ever be on the table, but here, they are, now, ready to put out the ad. Her mother has made plans, Martha realises, a lot of plans (she's always been good at that, hasn't she?) and "Silvia's coming 'round again the Thursday after next," she says. "Can you be here to show her in?" and: "We're going to have to sort your room and the spare bed so that everything looks good, eh? For when the photographer comes take the pictures."
Martha sits, listens, and at least, it's something to do, isn't it?
.
Over the next few weeks, apart from the particular brand of chaos that stems from the house sale, Martha's days are quiet. Not uneventful, per se, but filled with light details that don't bear consequences. Comfortable, slow moments that make life look like it could be forever.
On Monday, she runs into her friend Jo, two beautiful red-headed kids in tow, and schedules catch-up drinks over the weekend. 'Are you sure you can get someone to look after them?' Martha asks as they watch Lila and Tim play chase running up to their house. 'I can come over to yours if that's easier?'
'Nah,' Jo laughs. Tim very narrowly misses the brick wall at the end of his run; Martha's friend squints and raises a curious eyebrow at the boy but he seems to be okay (or at least, isn't crying loud enough that either of them can hear). 'They have a father, I'm told, let him be of some use.'
On Wednesday, Martha waits until her mum leaves for work and buys flowers from the shop at the corner of the street, lays them down at the cemetery, her shoes wet with the morning dew. She remembers Billy, the week her father died, and the way he insisted she went home, his gaze hard and uncompromising. 'I'm fine,' she argued as he followed her into her room, slamming a hand on the binder she was trying to open.
'Miss –' he shot back with a sigh; she didn't let him finish.
'I need to be working, Billy,' she said, glancing away. Clive looked up, then, met her eyes.
'Leave it, Billy,' he said, before looking back down at the paperwork on his desk.
.
On Thursday, she accompanies her mother to the market, picks strawberries and peaches to eat on the rare occasion where the sun hits the back garden. As it happens, autumn has rolled around quickly, around here; suddenly it's the end of August, sixteen degrees and rainy again, as though the last month never even happened. Martha's not complaining, prefers the chill they get over here to the stiffness of the air back in London. Mum vaguely talks about how things have been, lately, about her upcoming retirement plans and Martha lies through her teeth about work, doesn't really know how to explain when the news about Sean don't seem to have reached this side of Bolton, yet. It's an easy enough fiction to narrate.
.
Clive doesn't call. It may be a consequence of the distance that's been imposed upon them or simply a result of the night he spent with her (perhaps the discussion they had in the morning), but he doesn't even text, either.
It's time to think. The more time passes, the more Martha feels that she needs to escape and leave, actually, leave Clive and Chambers and the memories attached to everything that's happened these past few months, as if trapped in a situation where the only way up is out. When she closes her eyes, sometimes, she feels his skin against hers, still, fingertips wandering up her sides, sometimes it's a dream and she makes herself snap out of it, remembers he put a knife in her back, too.
They've tried this. Tried it (them) for fifteen years, beforehand, and the fact that she feels comfortable in his arms, sometimes, doesn't seem to solve any of their bigger issues. It's just that, she tells herself. What she felt, what she feels, it's the force of habit.
Still, though, when she does meet up for drinks with Jo, later over the weekend, and after about an hour's worth of updates on her kids – the red-headed ones from before - and Bolton gossip that makes Martha feel somewhat uncomfortable ('Have you heard he's in jail?' Jo says, then: 'well, you must have, being in London and all that –' Martha doesn't know how, exactly, Jo isn't aware of the extent to which she has indeed heard that he's in jail, now – guilty, she hears, over and over again in her head – but obviously does not attempt to correct her), Jo asks, sipping on her wine: "So, how long are you staying?"
Her friend's hair is pulled back into a ponytail, tonight, black strands falling past the base of her neck. Jo used to own this gorgeous red, back in the day, the same shade as her kids, Martha remembers, wonders why she keeps dying it black, now. "I'm not sure," Martha says, drinks a sip of her G&T. The wine has always been kind of bad at their local, to tell the truth, but for some unknown reason, they just kind of keep going and opt for spirits instead.
She was supposed to leave tomorrow but her mum's gone on a weekend trip with her new beau and well, at least there's work to do around the house in the meantime, it keeps Martha's mind busy.
"Couple of weeks, maybe," she adds, thinking that surely, another seven days away from her responsibilities can't hurt her more than, well, anything else that's hurt her in the past couple of months.
"Fab," Jo smiles, says, clinking her empty glass against Martha's and ordering them both another round. For some reason, it always feels to Martha that there's more gin than tonic, in these glasses. "I mean, you must be entitled to some time off every once in a while, aren't you? I feel like I haven't seen you in ages!"
Martha doesn't really feel like educating Jo (again) on the unspoken burdens of self-employment so until they get their drinks, she just kind of holds back a laugh and listens to her friend complain about her own employer's lack of understanding of the struggles of working women, working mothers and, more broadly, feminism.
It's another while before Jo stops ranting about men, in general, and her husband, in particular ("I mean, I love him to death but if you asked him where the hoover was around the house, I'm not even sure he wouldn't confuse that with the ironing board"), another while before she turns around and asks Martha the one question she always asks once they've had the appropriate amounts of alcohol poured into their systems (Jo is smart, never asks before the short interlude that usually separates drink number three from drink number four). "So, Martha, dear, have you been seeing anybody interesting, lately?"
As is always the case, Martha laughs, smile enigmatic, and drinks. It's funny, really: she's always been okay with telling Jo all about the one-night stands and the other fleeting flings (when they talked about the Lieutenant Colonel, a couple years ago, Jo was horrified. 'Oh. My. God.' she said. 'Mar, you totally should have gone for that, what is wrong with you?') but somehow, Martha never really tells her about the important stuff. Not since Sean.
Martha lets out a short sigh, then, toying with her glass, and shakes her head no. Jo smiles in response, drinks and takes a deep breath, like someone who has a plan and cannot wait to share it. "So, look, I don't want to force you into anything, but since you're here for a while, I do have someone who might want to buy you a drink…"
Ah, well, then, of course, Martha laughs, rolling her eyes, signalling the waiter for another round. "God, I really don't need you to hook me up with some random -"
Jo interrupts. It's almost funny, how adamant she is about it, but then Martha has only ever really known her to be adamant about everything, to tell the truth. That's one thing the two of them have always had in common. "He's not some random bloke, alright?" her friend insists, fingertips tapping the countertop between them. "He was in school with us, a couple years older, name's Ian Witton." Martha briefly considers it, doesn't really ring any bells. "Accountant. Recently divorced," Jo points out, her gold painted plastic bracelets clinking against the counter. A group of young people are drunkenly talking (shouting) over the music a few tables down; Martha and Jo have to raise their voices, in tune with everybody else. Some guy tried to buy them drinks a while back, but Martha thinks Jo's wedding ring scared him away. "Reasonably handsome, all his hair left," Jo adds and Martha bursts out laughing again as the bartender slides another glass of clear liquid in her hands. She nurses it, takes a sip.
"Yeah?" she asks playfully, glancing at Jo. "What does that hide?"
"Oh, come on! I say it's a professional bias that you think everyone's got something to hide. He's a nice bloke, he's not broke, and I've heard he'd love to catch up with you."
Martha shakes her head, swallowing the house's infamous G&T. She's on her fourth glass now so there's a nice buzz going on in her head; it makes her feel slightly giddy. She reaches for her phone, wanting to text Clive (bad idea, the alarm bells ring in her head), but realises Jo's eyes are still set on her so she puts it down, pretending she was just checking the time.
"Thanks for the consideration," she tells Jo, smiling. "But I'm good."
"Oh, come on!" her friend says, again, louder than last time. The two men at the bar a couple of stools down quickly glance at them, she lowers her voice. It's her phrase, Martha's noticed, she uses it a lot (oh, come on.) "You're single, almost forty – I know, me too," she adds, when Martha opens her mouth to protest. "Look, you don't have to marry him, alright? Just go in for a bit of fun, will you?" she asks, low, like they're putting together a secret ploy. "And tell me all about it, so I can live vicariously through you. It's not like I'm getting that much action with Michael on that front –" Jo says and immediately blushes, biting her lip and rapidly glancing away as Martha laughs. Jo's always been a bit shy, Martha smiles, remembering. "It's not that –" Jo speaks, quick. "I mean, I love Michael, but we've been married ten years, now, so, you know…"
Well, Martha doesn't, really, but pretends she does, can imagine it at least. Maybe that's what she should have aimed for all along. A dog, kids, a husband, a house in the countryside. "Sorry," she shakes her head at Jo, smiling. "I can't."
"Oh, come on!" Again. "Have a little consideration for –"
But, suddenly, Jo trails off. Looks at her. Really looks at her. Looks at her phone and back to her.
"Oh. My. God," she says, mouthing every word, like she did when she was fifteen. She really hasn't changed much. It's almost refreshing, when Martha's just been feeling like she's aged a hundred years, lately. "You lied. You are seeing someone," she adds and Martha's look focuses on the wood of the counter, taking a big swig of her gin.
"No," she says. Half-truths, again.
"Please," Jo stresses, downing the last inch of her drink. "It's written all over your face."
"It's complicated," Martha counters, concedes, drinks.
Later, the question falls off Jo's lips like the easiest thing in the world, as their waiter brings the bill. "Do you love him?" she asks, and Martha focuses her stare on the lines of 'G&T- standard' items listed on the small piece of paper in front of her, types in the pin to her debit card, not wanting to think about what that headache's going to feel like, tomorrow.
"We've been best friends for the last fifteen years, of course, I love him," she answers, walking a very, very tight rope. It's true: she loves Clive, of course, she does.
Jo rolls her eyes, slurs a little in her speech, presses. "That wasn't what I meant, doesn't answer my question."
Martha smiles. "Well, you should ask better questions, then."
"Oh, don't go all barrister, er, barrister-y on me," Jo instructs, her chocolate brown eyes set on Martha's. "Do you love him as in -" she starts, looking around, trying to think of an analogy. Her drunken brain seems to give up. "Oh, you know what I mean," she sighs, staring at Martha.
Martha laughs, picking up her bag from over the back of her stool. The Earth spins; she might want to cab the way home.
And, of course, she knows what Jo means. 'It's apparently like wanting to see someone else open a Christmas present more than you want to open your own,' Martha heard an American bloke say, once, as he sat on a bar stool next to her, deep in conversation with another girl. She had curly brown hair, Martha remembers, and eyes bright enough to light up the room. At the time, she remembers looking over at him and thinking he looked like he was quoting somebody else.
"Well, that's not what you asked, Joanne," Martha laughs, bumping her shoulder against her friend's. Jo hates her full name, she knows, shakes her head, rolls her eyes. "So, that's all you're getting."
"Oh, come on!" Jo shouts at Martha's back, again, laughing, chasing after her as they exit the bar.
.
Silvia-the-real-estate-agent comes to the house a few days later, to talk over tea. Her skin is dark and her clothes much too bright for a place this far from the equator. She seems kind, though, and that's a quality you don't see in a lot of people, these days. "I know this is a bit odd," the woman says, looking at the documentation she laid out on the kitchen countertop. "Considering you probably know this house better than anyone but I just, you know, wanted to give you all the information you might need. Have you talked to your mother about this?"
"I'm still not really sure, so –"
"Okay, well, here's what I can tell you," Silvia says, starts. Over the next half hour, they go over the house and the tiles Martha would need to get fixed on the roof and the taxes she might end up having to pay and: "Look, I'm not going to lie to you, I've had a couple interested last week, but they said they have to talk with the bank about their mortgage, so they'll get back to me in a couple of weeks. I guess that's how much time you have to decide," Silvia tells Martha, drinking a last gulp of tea.
"Okay," Martha nods. "Thank you."
.
She's not thinking of buying the house. She is thinking of buying the house. She's not thinking of buying the house. She is thinking of buying the house.
It's just that: the last couple of weeks have been peaceful. Martha likes peaceful, carefree. A thought reaches her brain that maybe she doesn't need to go as far as Bali to rebuild her life from scratch, maybe she can settle down, here, and be forgotten. She'll have a dog and a garden, open a pub with decent wine. She'll get weekly drinks with Jo, grow old in the house she grew up in, never see the inside of a courtroom again. If you discount her mother (who gets on Martha's nerves on a daily basis), there's actually nothing wrong with living a quiet life, up here. Even with paying back the mortgage on her London flat, she'd still have leftover money to do a bit of work on her parents' house, if she did decide to live there. Everything here is cheaper. From the drinks to the groceries, to the real estate. And mostly, it's just calm, stress-free.
As she embarks onto week three of her stay in Bolton, Martha realises that she just finds it impossible to leave.
.
Chambers call, one afternoon. On her mother's landline, which Martha thinks is a bit weird, but then she also guesses she hasn't been particularly bothered to look at her phone lately, so.
She recognises Bethany's voice coming through the receiver and greets her, quickly moving from the living room to the kitchen for a bit of privacy. Martha's mum has been incredibly invested in watching reruns of some sort of serialized singing competition on the telly and Martha gets a murderous side glare every time she dares interrupt with the most subtle of sounds. Whatshisface is currently performing a painfully off-key rendition of Don't Look Back in Anger (Sally can, indeed, really wait) that can still be heard past the living room doors so in the end, Martha steps out in the garden to take the call.
"Sorry, Bethany," she says, finally speaking at a normal volume. "What's up?"
"Miss, I, um," the girl starts, pausing for words. She sounds nervous; Martha frowns. "Mr Reader said, er, that you wouldn't be back – at least not for a while, and um, the new tenants – he, um - I was asked to, um, clear your desk –"
Bethany, Martha thinks, clearly expects a reaction, a word, a shout, in regards to this. There's a short pause, in her hesitant speech, a pause longer than the other pauses, as though she sort of assumes Martha will suddenly get enraged, drive down two hundred miles and storm back into Chambers, demanding an explanation. It's funny really, because in Martha's brain, it was just kind of expected. She did tell Clive that she wouldn't come back, after all, so why would Chambers not also choose to move on? It's logical, it makes sense, and she's got her own separate life, now, and the house that she might buy and the pub that she might open, and frankly, the fact that they're clearing her desk really shouldn't tear Martha's heart apart the way it does, now.
She stays silent, though, doesn't know what she could say, either way, and waits for Bethany to go on. "Anyway, er, Miss, there's this, um, plant – I think it's a bamboo actually – it's looking pretty dead, to be honest but I just didn't know –" the girl rambles on, stops; Martha laughs.
"Yeah, you can throw that out," she says, smiling sympathetically into the phone – a client gave it to her once, she recalls, kept adding water to it and the poor thing just kept dying away.
Bethany enquires about a couple more items that Martha frankly didn't even remember she still owned; it gets less awkward, after a while. Her tea's gone cold from the wind in the garden that keeps sending shivers down her spine.
"Just out of curiosity," Martha asks, eventually. "How many boxes do you have?"
Her hand runs over the back of her neck as she listens to the girl speak. "Um, just a couple boxes, Miss. Mister Reader's offered to keep them, until you, um, decide what to do."
Martha appreciates the tactfulness with which Bethany dances around the subject (the girl's always been smart, after all), but still tries not to think too much about what it might mean. Fifteen years of her life coming down to a couple of boxes Clive promises to safe keep until she gets back – if she ever comes back, her brain amends - and a dead plant.
"Is Mr Reader in?" Martha asks, biting her lip, missing the sound of his voice against her ear. It's selfish, really, she shouldn't call him until she's made a proper decision, but -
"Yes, Miss, but I think he's in a meeting; do you want me to go and –"
"No," Martha interrupts, smiling and shaking her head. "That's all right, don't worry," she adds. "Thank you, Bethany."
.
She admits to her mum that she's going to stay a little while longer over dinner the next day, Chinese takeaway steaming from the flower-patterned dish coming straight out of the microwave. Martha gauges her reaction, the wood of the dinner table standing between them. She used to walk out of here pretty often, Martha remembers, when she was young and angry, slammed the door at her father, furious about her grades.
"You don't look surprised," Martha observes, pushing food around her plate. Her mother cuts a bit of meat with her knife and chews, nodding to herself.
"You never show up here without a reason, Mar, and it's not Christmas for another six months." Her mother says, matter-of-fact, like it is a non-event, or maybe something she expected to happen way before it did. It makes Martha sad, in a way, seeing how remote from home her life now is. "I'd just like to know what this is about, this time, because with the wine you've been drinking, I can already tell you're not pregnant."
Her mum's always known how to poke the most tender spots – that's where Martha gets that particular skill from, after all – but it's never nice to be on the receiving end of the stick. Martha stays silent for a bit, downs her drink. "No, I'm not," she agrees.
.
It's an extra few days before she eventually makes it to Manchester, had to stay at the house while they had a couple more viewings – nothing conclusive and Silvia still hasn't heard from the other potential buyers but when Martha does make it to the city, she's surprised by how well she still knows the roads and by how little things have changed, overall. She knocks on an office door, lets herself in when she hears the voice on the other side say: "Come in." Everything in the space is exactly as she remembers it, all wood and old furniture, and random memorabilia crammed into a room the size of a shoebox, her eyes never knowing where to look. Thomas Evershed stands up as soon as he spots her, beams and walks across towards her.
"Martha Costello, here in Manchester!" he says, looking like he can't quite believe his eyes. "And she's even learnt to knock on doors!" he jokes, extending a friendly hand to shake hers. They've caught up a handful of times over the years, at the odd crim conference and bar gatherings, but it's been a while since Martha's last seen her old professor. A couple of years, maybe three, she remembers he sent her a congratulating note when she got silk.
"I'm visiting family," she simplifies, smiling back. He hasn't changed much, really, tall, older and still somewhat charming. His trademark long, grey hair is pulled back in a tight ponytail behind his head; Martha's always wondered if he already had it before she met him, during his days at the bar, and how that blended in with the rigorous dress code.
She eyes him as he releases her hand and takes a step back, notices the coat on his shoulders, bag packed. "Oh, you were leaving, I'm sorry –" she starts but sees him wave a dismissive hand at her, moving around his office to gather his belongings.
"Oh, don't be stupid, I was but I'm not anymore. Let's get out of here and get coffee and a snack, though, I'm starving."
They head to a Starbucks a couple of streets down (a grande Americano for her, two sugars; a chocolate muffin and a venti soy mocha – two shots, only – for him, with extra peppermint on top) and fall into an easy, comfortable conversation as they wait for their drinks. He offers her a bit of the muffin; she declines.
"I was sorry to hear about Billy," he says as they settle down, holding his coffee close to his lips. She's careful to take the lid off hers before taking a sip, recalling that one time when she got what felt like third degree burns on her tongue for a good week. "I was at the wake, thought I'd see you."
"I was late," she explains. A true affirmation, technically, though the causation link she's suggesting between those two elements isn't. She was late, and also didn't even go in.
"I heard you left Shoe Lane," Evershed adds, eyeing her reaction across the table. Martha holds his gaze.
"News travels fast," she observes, taking a sip.
"Ah, the bar's grapevine does wonders."
The truth is: it kind of is why she came to him, and maybe he knows that, already. It takes her a good half hour to get through everything: Sean, Billy, her application to be Head of Chambers, the shift in Shoe Lane's work; but it feels good to tell someone else about it. Someone who doesn't know, wasn't there, but still understands her world, what it means to hold this kind of job, to say your work is your life like that's not necessarily a bad thing. She's never seen him as a mentor, not really – he never taught her anything apart from bits of property law that she never managed to either understand or genuinely care about – but he did see her, once upon a time, in a classroom filled with a hundred other students and believed in her. The last time she saw him in London, he was the first to tell her to apply for silk.
'I'm too young,' she told him, laughing, over drinks somewhere that wasn't just around the corner.
'So, what? Try it this time around. If it doesn't work, you'll try again later.'
'I –'
"So, you're here for guidance," he points out, now, interrupts the recollection. She's tempted to deny it, tell him that it's more complicated than that, that she needed to talk to a neutral party but –
"I suppose," Martha says, after a beat. "Yes. I mean, you've been there before: left the bar, went on to do something else. How did that happen?"
When he speaks, Evershed talks about things she recognises, understands, but hasn't quite ever felt, yet. He talks about putting in too many hours into something he didn't really care about anymore, about defending client after client and feeling stuck getting people out of jail only for them to get caught again for the same shit just months later. Strangely, Martha finds herself disagreeing with him. Wanting to say that they really are, helping people. That she really did care about her clients, no matter how screwed up they were, that she feels angrier at how pointless the system is than at her clients for committing second offences. That, and the fact that she's never really been convinced that putting ninety per cent of the people who are currently in jail in jail has ever provided any positive change in society.
"You should speak to my students," Evershed says, smiling, gauging her reaction. Martha raises an eyebrow, wonders what she could possibly have to say to a bunch of twenty-year olds taking law at university. She's always liked having a pupil, has always known that much, but that's not because she thinks she has some sort of invaluable, original wisdom to pass on. It's just that she selfishly likes their enthusiasm and showing them around her world. She's never been that interested in the law as a scientific subject, has never seen herself buried in hundreds of years' worth of precedent to review. She likes the law as a dirty brick wall to break apart. "Come on," he presses, though, smiling at her. "I'm teaching a summer class on the Theory of Court Practice, you should come."
"They show up over the summer to learn about the theory of court practice?" Martha laughs, shaking her head.
Evershed chuckles at her. "As strange as it may seem, they do. They're either very dedicated or really need the pass grade, I don't know."
Martha laughs with him, catches herself nodding. "I'll think about it."
.
And, three days later, fifteen minutes in and she already knows what he did, there. She gets it now, looking at the students, answering their questions about work and life, and her opinions on the criminal justice system, and what innocent until proven guilty really means, in the grand scheme of things. He did the same thing fifteen years ago, saw her speak unprepared, countering his points in a classroom – now, in a Starbucks - and saw something that she didn't.
The questions? They're not all passionate inquiries about the law and the criminal bar, and great principles. One of the kids asks about the money and the big criminal cases that attract the spotlights. Another one asks about how to get tenancy at Shoe Lane and gets laughs from the entire class. Work-life balance at the bar is also a big one and: "I'd love to tell you it's getting somewhere," she tells the girl in question – it's always girls, of course, asking these things, and that makes Martha angry. "I do wish it was, believe me. But then I really don't know many women in silk, right now, who aren't married to their jobs."
"And you never wanted anything else?" The kid follows up. Martha doesn't know her name - only knows her by the fact that she's wearing a very bright, orange summer dress with electric blue straps draping her shoulders - but really wishes she did.
"No," she says, genuinely, honestly, because she didn't. Never dreamed of it, the big white weddings and the kids around her ankles, school choirs and Christmas parties, a house in the suburbs. Anything else got thrown upon her lap, once, and then taken away, but Martha sees it as something that happened rather than as something she ever wished to happen. She was happy. With work, with Shoe Lane – family.
So, no, they're not all passionate questions about the law and the criminal bar, and great principles, but some of them are. They ask about the racial make-up of the jail population, and about whether she thinks prison sentences are effective, and when she mentions that a) she doesn't prosecute and b) doesn't do rape, she gets a lot of questions about that, as well. And, sure, she gets the usual 'how can you defend them?' but it comes from a place of interest and need for advice rather than from a place of disgust. Martha finds herself smiling, most of the time, as she speaks.
In the end, she gets a round of applause she doesn't really think she deserves, exchanges a bit of small talk with Evershed as she watches the students pack their stuff, some of them lingering, she knows, probably to ask her more questions they didn't want to ask in front of everybody else. Martha stays an extra half hour and tries to answer all of them to the best of her ability.
So, yeah, she smiles to herself as she talks to a blue-haired girl who's worried about her background and about her grades, and about her nerves not being strong enough for crim, when Martha asked Evershed for guidance, a couple days ago, and he wasn't particularly forthcoming, she thought she shouldn't have asked, felt stupid for asking, for thinking that a single person she hadn't seen in years was ever going to hand her the solution to all her problems. Yet, now, she knows what he's done, there.
The students don't all ask passionate questions about the law and the criminal bar, and great principles because they're not all passionate about the law and the criminal bar, and great principles.
They're not. But she is. Still is. Feels the passion rising within her every time she talks about her work and in a single afternoon, Evershed's just shown Martha what she's been refusing to see since the night after Sean's trial: she still cares. Really, truly cares
Frankly, she's not quite sure what to do with that, yet.
.
Soon enough, another weekend rolls around and that Sunday, Roy sits with Martha and her mum at lunch. "It's nice for you to meet him, isn't it?" her mother whispers into Martha's ear as the boyfriend navigates expertly between different pieces of furniture to set the chicken dish her mum's spent hours working on, on the table. Martha's been careful enough to take sufficient notice of his face, at this stage, that she thinks she'd be able to recognize him if necessary, which, by all standards, is already an improvement. He's tall, bald, casually touches her mother's shoulder.
"So, Martha, how long are you staying here in Bolton?" he asks with a polite smile, once everyone's settled down and started eating. "It must be one of the nice things about being self-employed, isn't it? Being able to take time off whenever you please?"
And, look, it's not that Martha doesn't like him, per se. It's just that he's the kind of person who thinks that longer prison sentences make people less likely to reiterate their offenses (jails having turned into five-star hotels to 'these kids' who just don't want to go ahead and find 'real' work – he thinks the army would do them some good) and that the death penalty must have surely deterred some of those psychopaths from acting on their impulses, back then, doesn't she think?
It's funny, really, because they're sitting at the very table where Martha and her parents used to have their Sunday family lunches, and Martha can't count the number of times when she stormed off over rows about her grades, her friends, and politics. It's not that her family were ever conservatives, of course, but she's just always been the most passionate speaker in the room. Martha's not fifteen, anymore, so she doesn't storm off on bloody Roy just yet, simply chooses to respectfully disagree, and manages to only get a tiny bit snappy when he decides to cut her off mid-sentence for the third time in a row. They're both respectful of each other but Martha can't say she doesn't notice the tense smile on her mother's face when she announces dessert, visibly relieved to be able to change the subject. Mum looks happier when she's around him, though, Martha notices.
Later, she hears his car pull out of the driveway and kills her cigarette against the brick wall before her mum makes it back up the stairs and into Martha's old bedroom, stepping out through the window onto the roof. She's never quite understood why, exactly, but the people who built this house up put it together in a way that made the neighbour's flat roof accessible from Martha's window on the top floor, if only you were brave enough to step over the small gap in between. She used to play up here, sometimes, trying to stay out as long as she possibly could, fighting off the evening chill. Then, she would have Sean over as well, until the passionate snogging sessions turned into more dramatic arguing ones and Martha had to put an end to it. Luckily for them, Mr and Mrs Clifford who lived next door were both too old and too deaf to ever hear anything. Martha's mum sits down next to her, the warmth of her body familiar by her side.
"You didn't have to get argumentative with him," she states, setting the tone, her blue eyes focused on her daughter's. When she was younger, Martha remembers, her mum had this really long, soft, straight blonde hair that went down to her lower back, flowed graciously over her shoulders. She never quite knew what to do with Martha's messy curls. After Dad passed away, Mum cut her hair short, though, and that was that, really.
"I wasn't being argumentative, I was –"
Her mother cuts Martha off with a laugh, shaking her head like she always did whenever she'd catch her sneaking back into the house in the middle of the night. 'We were studying,' Martha would say – we: Sean and her. Always Sean. Her mum would laugh and shake her head at her, standing in the doorway in the dark.
'You've got your father's brains,' she'd say, extending her hand and confiscating Martha's keys. 'But I'm not stupid, either.'
"It's funny," her mum says, now, after a beat, fingers joining on top of her knees. Her nails are long and painted with a French manicure in immaculate shades of pink and white, in a way that Martha has never been able to maintain hers. "I always wonder if you'd have gone into this job if it weren't for Dad and the way he was with you," she stops, glancing at Martha. "He was always pushing, and pushing, and pushing every time you two had a conversation. Loved playing devil's advocate to everything you said like it was a game I could never understand between the both of you."
Yeah, Martha thinks, nodding. It was. She knew it at the time, even through her angry, angst-filled teenage years. Countless times, she'd spend weeks refusing to utter a single word to her mother, but never, ever stopped talking to him. They'd have endless, pointless arguments over anything and everything, over football line ups and whether or not her room needed tidying, and after her mum would forcibly separate them calling bedtime, he'd slip back in with her to continue the conversation where they'd left it off, talking and debating until the wee hours of the morning. When the cells in his brain turned into jelly and his stare went blank, they moved him to the guest room on the ground floor, because they could lock the door from the outside and make sure he wouldn't go wandering off in the middle night. Martha would sneak down to him and sit by the side of his bed, holding his hand. He'd smile and say: 'Mar.'
"He loved you so much," her mum adds, now, quietly, a cold gust of wind sending goose bumps to her shoulders.
Martha nods, smiles as she feels her mum's hand against her leg. "I know."
Shutting her eyes for a bit, feeling the breeze against her skin, Martha listens to the distant hum of the cars in the background, the loud sounds of laughter rising out of the teenagers living on the ground floor next door, their short skirts and hoop earrings hidden under the trees of their backyard. She likes it here, likes Bolton. It's easy, familiar; she likes Jamie, and Mo, and the old ladies who've lived here eighty years and used to work at the mills, their tired fingers waving at her as they pass each other in the street. Martha likes it like a foreign place, she thinks, like that old seaside house you rent out every summer, build a lifetime's worth of sweet childhood memories in, but that ages without you for another fifty-one weeks of the year.
"Silvia called," her mum says, eventually. Martha looks up. "The couple we talked about? They got their mortgage. We're signing at the end of the month."
When her mum had told her about them, a few days back, she sounded excited, thrilled, happy; Martha pretended she didn't already know. She guesses that's what Silvia had wanted to talk about, then: Martha missed a few calls, days ago, didn't bother returning them.
Her mum is silent for long while, watching her. "What are you doing here, Martha?" she finally asks, her head tilting to face her daughter's.
Martha thinks about it - thinks about it for a long moment, like she always does. "I quit work," she finally admits, looking down at her hands. Should have said it sooner, maybe, just couldn't find the words. She looks at her mother now, and: "Again," Martha observes, sighing after she stays silent for a bit. "You don't look surprised."
A smile moves the corner of her mum's lips. "Again, you never come here without a reason."
Martha's mouth twists uncomfortably, fingers anxiously tapping the fabric of her jeans. She'd waited twelve weeks, for fuck's sake, had waited until they told her it was safe. It took her another two weeks to tell her mother she'd lost it, didn't quite know what the words were.
"What happened?" her mum asks, now, about work, and it feels different and similar at the same time.
"It all got to be a bit too much."
"Was it about Sean?"
Martha looks up quickly, frowns, startled, thought her mum didn't –
"I'm not stupid," she adds, with a smile. "I read the papers, Martha."
Instinctively, Martha feels the need to defend herself, defend him. "I couldn't not help, Mum. He's innocent, I couldn't just leave him –"
"Honey, that boy –"
Martha sighs, thinks: don't. Shakes her head and refuses to look into her mother's eyes, closes the discussion, fiddles with her fingers, wishes she could light a cigarette. "It wasn't just him, anyway. It was – I lost someone, in Chambers. Cancer. He mattered to me," she pauses, bites her lip. "It changed a lot of things. At work and outside."
And the truth is: there are many things that Martha Costello doesn't tell her mother. Every time she goes home, for instance, she constantly chews mint gums and puts on perfume so that her mother doesn't find out about the smoking, doesn't tell her about the cases she loses or the death threats she gets from angry clients because she doesn't want her to get worried. Everything's fine, Martha always says, just like she did, again, a few weeks ago, when she called home from her bedroom while Clive watched the telly in the living, after he brought her home and mended her wounds and promised that the assault really wasn't her fault. Under the shower, Martha set the water so hot it almost burnt her skin, trying to get rid of the nightmares that clogged her brain. 'I just wanted to see how you were, actually,' she told her mum on the phone, faking a smile, quickly wiping tears off her cheeks. What happened in that bar that night following their argument is a secret that'll die with Clive, Martha thinks.
"I'm sorry," her mum says, now, nodding. There's empathy in her voice and after all, Martha guesses, she of all people would know what loss means. "You know, I never asked because it didn't feel like I should, after you lost it, but was he, er, is that why he mattered to you, because –"
Of course, Martha bursts out laughing at that, something real and loud, a strand of hair falling over her face. "Billy? God, no," she says and a sigh of relief escapes her mother's lips. It's funny actually, her mum's the second person who's insinuated she was sleeping with Billy since he died; Martha wonders what that says about human nature's belief in platonic friendships. "No, no, he was just – a very close friend. Someone I cared about," she quickly adds, clarifying.
"Okay," her mum says, nodding. She waits a bit, until Martha looks up, until the appropriate amount of time has passed before it becomes acceptable to push again. "That's sad, darling, but it doesn't tell us what you're going to do about your life, now, does it?"
I don't fucking know, Mum, Martha wants to say, really, looking down at her knees. "I love the law," she tells her, instead, but: "I feel like I've burnt a lot of bridges, I can't go back," she sighs. "I don't even want to."
Her mum shrugs, like the most natural thing in the world. "So?" she says. "You'll go back to London, find somewhere else."
Martha sighs, shakes her head. Hears Billy again as he said: 'Shoe lane is -.' "It's not that simple," Martha starts, thinks. "The bar's all about loyalty and Shoe Lane's always been family."
She only realises what she said a bit too late, when she glances at her mum and sees the hurt look on her face. Martha opens her mouth to amend her words, say she didn't mean it like that, but - "There's work family and then there's real family, Martha," her mother says, tone curt and abrupt. "You know, again, I never asked but, you've never thought of, er, trying again, after – with whoever it was, I mean -"
Martha raises an eyebrow at her mum's uncomfortable sigh, smiles. If there's one thing she's really never thought about, actually, it's that. "No," she says shaking her head. When her mum looks surprised, she explains: "It's complicated."
"Everything always is with you, isn't it?"
A quiet sigh escapes Martha's lips as she looks away and down to the garden of their house, the Hortensia her mum planted in bushes in the back. Martha misses home, sometimes, misses her Dad, and the novelty of clear blue skies and climbing trees. She thinks of Jo, though, and Jamie, and even Evershed, how different their lives are from hers. Martha doesn't like the things that happened in her life, recently, but it doesn't mean she doesn't like her life, generally.
She could say it. Could say: I want to buy the house, I want to move back here, but for some reason, just like she couldn't ask Billy to book another appointment to terminate her pregnancy, or just like she couldn't say the words back to Clive at his silk party, the decision feels already made, there, as a result of her inability to take action. Martha used to think of it as the easy way out, saw waiting for time to pass and make the hard decisions on her behalf as a weakness, but maybe that's not what it is, really, maybe there's a different kind of power in simply accepting to stand by.
"You need to go home, Martha," her mother says. "You know that, right?" and when Martha hears "home," she hears "London" and it's funny, really, how clearly and instinctively she seems to know that, where her heart is. Martha knows why her mum is moving, deep down, knows it isn't as much about Roy as it is about this place not really being entirely hers either, anymore. "I mean, I love it when you're here," her mother says, smiles. "And with the move and everything, I really hope you stay until Sunday but – this isn't your life. It's not what you want, what you've always wanted. Whatever you do, I don't want you to come back. We've both already left this behind."
Martha's eyes shut at that, for a second. She guesses her mum's right, doesn't quite know what she wants, anymore, but being here is not it. Martha's always been content, here, and has always wanted more than that. For some reason, complicated has always drawn her to the moon and back.
When her mum heads back inside after the landline goes off and she runs to catch it (landline equals telemarketer in Martha's mind so she rarely ever answers, but supposes you never really know), Martha takes her phone in her hand, fingers hovering over the glass screen.
Hey, she writes, text filling out the blank space below the older blue and grey bubbles they've exchanged. They date back from over three weeks ago, feel like a million years ago, really. I'll be home Sunday.
It's a good five minutes after she hits send when her phone chirps again. She holds her breath sliding the message open: it's a face, a yellow face with a smile and eyes in the shape of circumflex accents, cheeks red. It's that, and okay, Clive says.
[1] Comme Un Boomerang by Serge Gainsbourg (but I really like the Etienne Daho/Dani version)
[2] Reverse by Gabrielle Aplin