known. I wasn’t like the one she went out with before me. Her previous boyfriend. I wasn’t a dashing young suitor racing back from Stratford after playing the Prince to rave reviews. I was from a different West End – chasing after glue sniffers and bag snatchers and mouthy drunks waving around traffic bollards so that PC Keith Rooney could give them a slap and tell them to stop being naughty. I was a big, uncomplicated man with a broken hooter who had no fear of the physical world. And that was what she liked about me. That meat-and-potatoes dependability – something that might have put off other girls. Women, I mean. She knew I would never stop loving her. She knew that it wouldn’t even occur to me, that I would always be sort of grateful, because she was so clearly out of my league. Men, especially, looked at us. And the look they gave said, Wow, if the bar is set so low… And then I would stare at them and they would turn away. Because they noticed something about me. It wasn’t a cop thing. It wasn’t my size. It wasn’t even the fact that I tried to carry myself like my father. They sensed they were stepping on sacred ground. Because she was everything to me. And so they took a step back.
It might have been different if her parents hadn’t died in a car crash when she was twelve years old. They were on their way to pick her up from the airport after a school ski trip – seven days of laughter falling over on some Frenchmountain – on a road slick with rain, ploughing into the back of a lorry stopped in the fast lane with a flat tyre.
If they had lived…
But they didn’t.
And you never really appreciate the other side of glamour, the quiet comforts of home and family, until life has taken them all away from you.
‘Have you got my book?’ Lara’s grandmother said, as I helped her from her bed to her chair. When she said book she meant magazine , and by that she meant her favourite TV listings supplement.
‘Right here, Nan,’ Lara said, and she placed it on her lap, already opened at today’s page, with her selected TV programmes circled in red, like fences around her loneliness. Lara sat on the bed and smiled. ‘Anything good on this afternoon?’
‘ An American in Paris ,’ Nan said, her watery blue eyes gleaming behind her glasses.
Lara was interested. She wasn’t just being polite. ‘Gene Kelly and – who?’ she said.
‘Leslie Caron,’ said Nan, smoothing the TV listings page with her hands. ‘And music by Gershwin.’ She nodded emphatically. ‘I like him, Gershwin,’ she said, as if George Gershwin was a promising newcomer and her tip for the top.
Lara and Nan smiled at each other, their mouths almost watering at the thought of An American in Paris . It still mattered to my wife, the dancing. It never went away. The dancing never goes away. It had always been more than her livelihood. After she lost her first family, and before she got her second family, the dancing was her life. And she got that from Nan. She hadn’t just taken the young Lara to lessons
59and auditions, the way her mother had. Nan had shown Lara that you could get lost in it – just lose yourself in the dancing, if that was what you wanted, or needed. And for years, that was exactly what she needed.
Twice a week she went to see Nan in the Autumn Grove. Usually not with me. She felt it should have been more often. I watched Lara settling the old lady in front of the TV, getting her a drink, holding the glass as she took a tiny, sparrow-like sip, and I saw how much my wife loved her. It wasn’t just the normal love that you feel for a grandmother. Nan had done so much. She was one of those special grandparents who brings up two generations. Nan had not brought Lara up all the way, but as much as anyone. As much as her parents, she always said.
What happened to Lara’s mother and father is surprisingly common. I have met a few people who lost both their parents in a car crash. Married couples travel
It might have been different if her parents hadn’t died in a car crash when she was twelve years old. They were on their way to pick her up from the airport after a school ski trip – seven days of laughter falling over on some Frenchmountain – on a road slick with rain, ploughing into the back of a lorry stopped in the fast lane with a flat tyre.
If they had lived…
But they didn’t.
And you never really appreciate the other side of glamour, the quiet comforts of home and family, until life has taken them all away from you.
‘Have you got my book?’ Lara’s grandmother said, as I helped her from her bed to her chair. When she said book she meant magazine , and by that she meant her favourite TV listings supplement.
‘Right here, Nan,’ Lara said, and she placed it on her lap, already opened at today’s page, with her selected TV programmes circled in red, like fences around her loneliness. Lara sat on the bed and smiled. ‘Anything good on this afternoon?’
‘ An American in Paris ,’ Nan said, her watery blue eyes gleaming behind her glasses.
Lara was interested. She wasn’t just being polite. ‘Gene Kelly and – who?’ she said.
‘Leslie Caron,’ said Nan, smoothing the TV listings page with her hands. ‘And music by Gershwin.’ She nodded emphatically. ‘I like him, Gershwin,’ she said, as if George Gershwin was a promising newcomer and her tip for the top.
Lara and Nan smiled at each other, their mouths almost watering at the thought of An American in Paris . It still mattered to my wife, the dancing. It never went away. The dancing never goes away. It had always been more than her livelihood. After she lost her first family, and before she got her second family, the dancing was her life. And she got that from Nan. She hadn’t just taken the young Lara to lessons
59and auditions, the way her mother had. Nan had shown Lara that you could get lost in it – just lose yourself in the dancing, if that was what you wanted, or needed. And for years, that was exactly what she needed.
Twice a week she went to see Nan in the Autumn Grove. Usually not with me. She felt it should have been more often. I watched Lara settling the old lady in front of the TV, getting her a drink, holding the glass as she took a tiny, sparrow-like sip, and I saw how much my wife loved her. It wasn’t just the normal love that you feel for a grandmother. Nan had done so much. She was one of those special grandparents who brings up two generations. Nan had not brought Lara up all the way, but as much as anyone. As much as her parents, she always said.
What happened to Lara’s mother and father is surprisingly common. I have met a few people who lost both their parents in a car crash. Married couples travel
Similar Books
