Short Story: Cuckoo

Short Story: Cuckoo

I stood between the patio doors and watched the sun begin to set. The garden always looked its best at this time, bathed in the glow of the last warm light of the day. I couldn’t count the number of times that I’d sat at these doors and watched the day slowly draw to its close. But now was the last time I would ever do it.

The living room was bare now. All the furniture had been packed away or sold. The carpet was gone – I couldn’t remember which one of us was going to have it. What had been my home for twenty years was now just an empty shell. I closed the patio doors, turned off the light and walked through to join the removal men who were drinking tea in the kitchen.

‘All done then?’ Lizzie handed me a cup.

‘No. No tea, thanks. I think I’ve had enough tea for a lifetime. Yes everything’s done. Everything’s packed away and on the lorries.’

‘Sad to see it so empty.’

‘It is, isn’t it? Still. Had to be done. Anyway, this house was always too big for us. You should see the heating bills.’

‘I have.’ She was smiling now. ‘Still, worth a few shivers to live in a place like this.’

‘Yes it was. I think a flat is going to take some getting used to.’

‘You’ll miss the garden.’

‘I’ll miss it all, Lizzie, I really will.’

Lizzie had never made a secret of how much she liked the house. She lived on a small close of modern houses off the same road and whenever we got together, it was always in my house, in my kitchen. She had central heating, but I had the range. There was no comparison.

Lizzie and I seemed to hit it off from the start. The day she and Derek moved in, I invited them over for some tea– when was it? – ten years ago. At first I was almost embarrassed by the way she talked about our place. From the moment she stepped over the threshold she was off: ‘What a lovely garden! What a fabulous kitchen! So much space. Such nice furniture.’ It used to make me feel bad – they weren’t that well off then and I’m sure they were stretched to the limit to buy the place they had.

But I soon got used to the flattery. Lizzie always seemed to be praising some aspect of our life or other. Every day she would compliment me in some way: how good I looked for my age, how tastefully the house was decorated, how professional the garden looked and how we ought to open it for people to look around. Then she’d tell me how clever I was to have picked Roy and to have held onto him for so long. At that time, things were going pretty well for us. The children were quite happy and still living at home and Roy’s business was doing exceptionally well.

I did try to return her compliments but I got the feeling she didn’t want that. In any case, she’d always find a way of turning it around so I became the beneficiary. She just seemed to like telling people what she admired about them. Roy used to say there was shrewdness, perhaps even slyness, in her but I never saw any evidence of it. Roy was always suspicious of people. Even people as nice and genuine as Lizzie.

It was ironic really because all the time Lizzie held us in such high regard for our perfect life, family and home, huge cracks began to open in the façade of our lives. Because almost from the moment she first appeared, my family began to fall apart..

I suppose the first sign that things were changing was when Ben left home. He’d been trying for jobs locally after he’d left university but few people he contacted even bothered to reply. Lizzie often used to bring in the post in the morning and she’d walk into the kitchen shaking her head when, once again, there was nothing for Ben. So he tried further afield and eventually got a job in the city. He moved out into some horrible shared flat and the house suddenly seemed big and empty. It was as if a part of our happiness left with Ben.

A few months later, Roy lost a big contract he was depending on and, in a matter of weeks, our financial position changed from comfortable to precarious. Lizzie was devastated. Derek worked for the firm that failed to renew the contract but, as she said, it was all in another department and entirely out of his hands. It was just money and money had never been the most important thing in our lives. We disappeared from a few Christmas card lists and a few dinner parties had to make do without our not-very-sparkling company. But these did not involve people who mattered to us. Real friends don’t notice what car you’re driving or how big the diamonds are in your necklace.

At least I had Lizzie. I don’t know how I’d’ve got through it all without her. She was there every day, listening patiently to my moans and groans about how unfair it all was. I could say anything I liked to her and by the time she’d left I always seemed to feel a bit better about things, to have found some hope to hang on to. And I needed that hope because things just kept on getting worse.

We found a sachet of white powder in one of the drawers in Josh’s, my youngest son’s, room. I showed it to Lizzie. She wasn’t sure but she thought it might be something like cocaine. Roy and I were horrified but we calmed ourselves down and waited for him to come home so we could talk it through. Lizzie said the best thing was to discuss it like adults.

Of course instead of the sensible adult discussion, we had a blazing row, with Josh denying all knowledge of the stuff and being furious that we could accuse him of such a thing. Roy, who it must be said, wasn’t handling anything particularly well at the time, just seemed to lose control completely and I thought he was going to hit Josh. In the end Josh stormed out of the house. As he did, he shouted something about the drugs probably belonging to ‘that tart’.

I was so shocked and upset that I couldn’t really absorb what he’d said.

‘What tart? What is he talking about?’ As I spoke these words to Roy, a great chill went down my spine. I looked at the man I’d been married to for twenty years and found myself looking at a complete stranger. I knew in an instant that my marriage was over.

I didn’t say much and couldn’t wait to get everyone out of the house so I could talk to Lizzie. It turned out that she too had had her suspicions and had hoped above hope that she had got it all wrong. Lizzie and Derek had had a party a few months before when I’d been away looking after my mother. The tart – whose name turned out to be Deborah – had turned up with a friend of a friend. Somehow she and Roy got talking. Lizzie hadn’t taken much notice at the time. If she’d realised what sort of woman this Deborah was she would have made an effort to intervene. She just assumed that Roy would see her for what she was. She’d have thought no more about it but then Derek had seen them together in the pub a few days later. She’d been hoping all along it was a coincidence.

In one night it seemed I’d lost a son and a husband. Of course, it wasn’t quite as drastic as that. Josh didn’t go very far. He stayed with a friend for a while and Roy and I kept up the pretence of our marriage for a while but once it became clear we’d have to sell the house, there was never any doubt that we would have to find our own places to live and restart our lives apart.

We auctioned the house. The price we got wasn’t particularly brilliant. It’s always the same, isn’t it; the more desperate you are to sell, the more difficult it becomes and there was some sort of rumour about subsidence. Nothing substantial but enough to scare off some potential bidders so we had no choice, in the circumstances, but to go for the highest bid at the time. We never found out who bought the place - the bid came from a solicitor acting for an unknown client. But it didn’t matter. As long as his money was good, that was all we were concerned with now.

I looked at Lizzie sipping her tea in my empty kitchen.

‘I only hope we haven’t lumbered you with a horrible neighbour,’ I said.

‘Oh you mustn’t worry about that,’ she said. ‘I mean we’ve put up with you all these years.’

I looked at her for a second and then realised that she was joking. I wasn’t much good at picking up jokes these days. There didn’t seem to be much to laugh about anymore.

‘I suppose I’ll be off then,’ I said. ‘Nothing to keep me here.’ I looked round at my house one last time. How could such things happen? It just didn’t seem fair.

‘Oh, I almost forgot. I must write down my address. You will come and see me, won’t you, Lizzie, once I get settled in?’ I found a piece of paper, scrawled down my new address and phone number and handed it to her.

‘Don’t say anything,’ I said. ‘You’ll just start me off. I’ve done enough crying. No more tears now.’

I smiled, gave her a hug and climbed into my car. I didn’t look back, but as I approached the junction I remembered a house plant I’d left in the hallway. I’d been nurturing the thing for years without much success. I thought it might thrive in the new flat.

I turned around and parked in the driveway, but as I approached the door I realised I had left my last key inside the house in the hallway. I was about to finally give up on that silly houseplant when I heard the faint sound of a radio coming from inside the house. There was somebody there. I rang the doorbell.

After a few seconds the door opened. It was Lizzie. I couldn’t understand what she was doing there, in my house, but the really weird thing was the way she just stared at me. She didn’t smile or even acknowledge me. She just stared. And then very slowly, very deliberately she closed the door in my face.