Finding Grace(6)

My husband was a sucker for an underdog. According to his mother, Nadine, he’d always been the same. Good-looking, tall and sporty at his all-boys grammar school, he liked to take the new starters who were finding life difficult under his wing. Nadine once proudly told me, not long after we met, how Blake would occasionally wade in to disputes at school in order to protect the more vulnerable boys.

‘He could’ve made their lives a misery and joined in with the bullying, but that’s just not Blake’s way. He’s the last of a dying breed; a true gentleman,’ Nadine boasted, stroking his hair in a proprietorial way.

He was still the same now; got a real pleasure out of putting right injustices and helping people who found it difficult to stand up for themselves. Councillor Blake Sullivan.

It was an admirable quality most of the time, but at other times it could grate. We, his family, needed him too, and I’d have liked him to focus a bit more on us. On me.

Jeffery Bonser was our middle-aged neighbour. When we moved into our semi-detached house on Violet Road three years ago, he’d just lost his mum.

He became really awkward about the shared driveway at first, insisting on putting out the bins at the end when we were out at work, so we couldn’t get our car back on without having to move them. And he’d play what he told Blake was his mum’s favourite Frank Sinatra album on full blast upstairs, often until midnight, in the room right next to Grace’s bedroom.

‘He’s just hurting from his mum dying,’ Blake had insisted, making me feel like a witch when I suggested contacting the antisocial-behaviour department at the local council. ‘Cut him a bit of slack, can’t you? I think his heart’s in the right place, under the prickly exterior.’

More like weird exterior, I thought at the time.

But Blake had other ideas about how to get Jeffery onside.

‘He reminds me of some of the boys at school,’ he told me. ‘They’d purposely get into trouble over the silliest things. It’s a cry for attention really. He’s lonely, Luce. That’s all it is.’

Over time, he casually befriended the man, spending a few minutes chatting at the fence when he got home from work and Jeffery just happened to be out in the front yet again.

I heard him asking Jeffery’s advice on what to do with the overgrown garden, even though we’d discussed plans to pave over the patchy square of grass and straggly borders, favouring the easy option to keep it neat.

Then one day, it occurred to me that the bins were no longer blocking the driveway and the Sinatra had stopped.

Now, our neighbour seemed to see my husband as a true friend and often popped around for a chat with him… often at the most inconvenient times.

As if he could feel our eyes on him, Jeffery looked over now from where he stood by the riding school office and raised his hand. We both waved back.

‘Our girl is loving the attention.’ Blake nodded towards Grace, who had just embarked on her third loop around the practice field. The horses seem to have speeded up to a canter now. ‘I’m so glad everyone got here despite the bad weather.’

There had been a light covering of snow over the last couple of days. We lived three miles from the city, and the weather never got too extreme here, but some of Grace’s party guests had travelled down from north Nottinghamshire, where it could become pretty bleak at this time of year, and Blake’s parents had come all the way up from London, where they claimed to have had a good covering of the white stuff overnight. Yesterday it was touch and go whether they’d get here.

‘You’ll just need to put your big coat on to survive up north, Mum,’ Blake had joked on the phone.

‘I’m especially glad your parents managed to get here,’ I said archly and he shot me a stern look, tempered by a little amused twitch at the corner of his mouth.

‘Luciee…’ He elongated my name, admonishing me playfully. ‘Be nice!’

I widened my eyes and took another sip of hot chocolate. ‘I’ll have you know, I’m on my best behaviour. Seriously, though, I am glad they could make it, for Grace’s sake.’

‘Me too. I’m hoping it might encourage them to visit us a bit more.’

‘Steady on. You’ll be asking your mother to approve of my parenting skills next,’ I sniped cheekily.

Right on cue, Blake’s mother turned from her place at the splintering wooden fence and gingerly picked her way over to us, mindful of the mud spattering her glossy black court shoes.

‘It’s such a sweet little gathering, Lucie,’ Nadine said in the west London accent she’d adopted within weeks of leaving Nottingham six years ago when Colm, Blake’s father, retired. ‘Did I tell you that Liberty rides, too? The stables near their home in Kensington are enormous, four times the size of this place. Prince Charles actually visited them a few years ago, you know.’

‘Yes, I think you might have mentioned it once or twice, Nadine,’ I said, feeling Blake’s elbow nudge gently into my side. ‘Sadly, we don’t have anything remotely as grand around here, but Grace loves to ride anyway.’

Nadine nodded and glanced back towards the field, smiling affectionately at Grace. ‘Liberty has to have all the matching gear, you know. Pink this, sparkly that, whereas dear Grace, well, she seems happy to wear anything at all!’

Liberty was her other granddaughter; the daughter of Chester, Blake’s brother, and his wife Aisha. It was fairly obvious that Nadine saw a lot more of Chester’s family than she saw of us.