In the room next door the hairdryer went on, and when he took the tea in neither of the women looked up. Belle still had her eyes closed and he hoped she hadn’t fallen asleep. He put the Coronation tray on the coffee table and walked past the photographs on the sideboard, as alarmed as he always was at how prolific they made his life seem. They were nearly all of him, Linda and Jessica. The only one Belle had of herself was of her and her first husband, Linda’s father, who had drowned in the sea while home on leave at the end of the war. This was the first thing Belle ever told him. Then she said that Eric had never been able to make her laugh while he was alive, but talking about his death always set her off.
There were no photographs of her and Jim, her second husband, or even just of Jim. When he died all the money from the sale of the hotel went to Brighton Cricket Club, who got a new clubhouse and practice wickets built with it.
Joe looked at a photograph of himself as a grown man then looked away. The hairdryer cut out.
Belle’s hand went up to her hair and Lenny unhooked the mirror from the chimney breast.
‘Isn’t it nice? Won’t last, but isn’t it nice?’
‘Won’t last if you keep touching it and messing it up. Here.’ Lenny took a can of spray out of the case on the table and covered Belle’s head in it.
The spray hung heavily in the heated air.
‘You staying for tea?’ Belle asked her.
‘I should go. I’ve got Mrs Jenkins in Flat Four to do, and she’s going out tonight.’
‘Jenkins is always going out,’ Belle grumbled. ‘Probably goes out more than you do, and she’s not “Mrs”. Never got married – whatever she says. Pour her a cup, Joe.’
‘Milk? Sugar?’ he asked.
‘Both,’ Lenny said, packing away the hairdryer, scissors, spray and rollers into the case.
‘How many?’
‘How many what?’
‘Sugars.’
‘Three. Please.’
‘How many sugars’ll you have, Joe, now she’s not here to tell you off?’
He smiled, but didn’t put any in his cup.
‘Go on, just have one.’ Belle turned to Lenny. ‘He used to have sugar with some tea in it when I first knew him. Won’t let you have sugar no more, will she?’
‘Linda’s just looking after me.’
‘That’s what she calls it, is it?’
Joe paused then dropped a spoonful of sugar into his tea. ‘Look what you made me do, Belle.’
Belle smiled, pleased at her son-in-law’s dissent.
Lenny, moving about rhythmically in the corner of the room, didn’t look up.
‘Joe’s been at the Britannia Kitchens roadshow at the Brighton Centre. His company had a stand there.’
Lenny looked up, taking in the suit. ‘That’s what you do, then?’
‘Course it’s what he does, I told you.’
‘What?’ Joe said to Lenny, over Belle’s head.
‘Build kitchens?’
‘He doesn’t build kitchens, he sells them, but that isn’t what Joe does.’ Belle slurped her tea and started on the biscuits. A flake of chocolate melted in the corner of her mouth and ran in a rivulet down one of the wrinkles there. ‘Joe makes money.’
‘I’m a carpenter,’ he cut in. ‘By trade, I’m a carpenter.’ Why did he think this sounded better than making money?
‘Was a carpenter.’ Belle wasn’t having any of it. ‘Now you just make money. Got a whole office full of people working for you. Joe’s got his own company.’
‘I’m a carpenter by trade. My dad was a carpenter.’ If Lenny didn’t look up or say something soon, he thought he was going to explode. ‘I’m from Brighton,’ he yelled. ‘Brighton born and bred.’
Lenny turned her back on him and clicked the clasps on the case shut.
‘Cassidy Street. Right there on Cassidy Street.’ He gestured blindly at the net curtains as if his entire past lay just beyond them.
‘Calm down, Joe,’ Belle said, leaning forward to pour herself another cup of tea and farting. ‘You’ve earned the money. No need to be ashamed of it.’
Lenny drank her tea in one go and at last turned to look at him. ‘What makes you think I’m from Brighton?’
‘I don’t know, I …’
‘You think I’m from Brighton?’
Belle started rattling the biscuit tin. ‘These’ll melt if we don’t eat them. What’d you put them so near the fire for, Joe? Look at this!’ She held up her hands, covered in chocolate, for him to look at. ‘Look at this, Joe. Why’d you get the chocolate ones out? It’s a bloody sauna in here with the gas on and you know what I’m like with the chocolate ones.’ She let out another fart. ‘I’ll sit here and eat them all. Why’d you get these ones out?’
‘I don’t know.’
Belle was disappearing out of earshot.
‘Turn the heating down, Joe. Have a fiddle with the thermostat or something, there’s bloody chocolate everywhere.’
‘Skirton Street,’ Lenny said.
‘What?’ Joe couldn’t hear. The flat was suddenly made of chocolate and it was melting.
‘I grew up on Skirton Street. The one after Cassidy.’ She was smiling.
Lenny the hairdresser was smiling.
‘The thermostat, Joe. Just behind the microwave.’
‘Skirton Street. I know Skirton Street,’ he said to Lenny.
‘There you go then,’ she said, walking past him into the kitchenette and re-emerging with the carpet sweeper.
‘Don’t know why you put the microwave there,’ Belle said to Joe, ‘I can’t get to the thermostat.’
‘All right, Belle, I’ll sort it out.’
‘It’s just behind the microwave.’
He went into the kitchenette and found the thermostat, which was above the sink. When he went back into the living room, Lenny was gone. ‘Where did the hairdresser go?’
‘Don’t know why you put the microwave there.’ Belle shook her head. ‘Didn’t you get me any tissue, then? I’m covered in bloody chocolate.’
Joe went back into the kitchenette and pressed his knuckles into the sink rim, letting his head drop between his shoulders. After a few minutes he grabbed the kitchen roll off the windowsill and went back into the living room.
‘Pass me that.’ Belle flicked her eyes over him, her hands full of kitchen roll. ‘You should phone Linda or I’ll be getting into trouble for keeping you here.’
He stood there watching the kitchen roll moving in her hands, the rings and liver spots suddenly intensely familiar.
‘I’ll be getting into trouble,’ she said again.
He