Just the Way You Are Read online

  Gemma had been checking her phone during the day for a message from Thomas, but it was conspicuous by its absence. Part of her wanted to hear from him, but equally she wanted to forget about him. The young literary agent had thrown herself into her work and was more determined than ever to find something special from the slush pile and build up her list of authors.

  After work Gemma had gone to the cinema with Abbie. Gemma won the argument in wanting to see a mindless thriller, as opposed to a romantic comedy. The last thing she wanted to see were loving couples living happily ever after. That evening Gemma had told Abbie about her time with Thomas – and their kiss.

  “At best it seems that he treated you – and his wife – badly. He’s no better than Oliver, your sister’s boyfriend, by the sounds of it,” Abbie argued, wanting to convey to her friend how she was better off without the would-be cheater in her life.

  “No, it wasn’t like that. He’s not like that… I don’t think she makes him happy anymore.” Gemma had spent part of the day internally condemning Thomas but she now felt compelled to defend him. Is there still a chance?

  “She’s his wife. It’s not her job to make him happy, especially if they’ve been married for more than a year,” Abbie said, only half in jest.

  But I could make him happy…

  “I really like him… He makes me laugh.”

  “It also seems that he makes you cry Gem. I think you need to find out if he likes you as much as you like him. You also need to know how much he likes his wife.”

  He said that he’s still in love with her.

  Abbie had done her best that night to take her friend’s mind off Thomas, or argue that he was more Wickham than Darcy. But she failed. The following day, sensing how sad and distracted Gemma still was, Abbie had taken her friend out shopping. But, rather than taking in the clothes in the shop windows, Gemma had spent more of the afternoon gazing at her ghostly, singleton, reflection in the glass. And she kept thinking of him.

  He’s special.

  “Oh, he was no one. Just a client, from the agency. Nothing happened,” Gemma casually explained to her mother, waving her hand dismissively. “Victoria is just being dramatic, as usual.”

  “And how was your sister?” Margaret Miller always appeared interested and smiled when she, or anyone else, mentioned her beautiful and successful eldest daughter.

  She was jealous for once – from not being able to come to dinner after the party… And you should have seen her face when I received the invite.

  “Oh, she was fine. I think she may have been a little disappointed that she couldn’t come to supper after the event. But she seemed to enjoy herself… She looked great and was the belle of the ball, as usual.”

  But I turned the head of a handsome, bestselling novelist.

  “And how was Oliver?” Margaret asked nonchalantly, filling Gemma’s glass up with some homemade elderflower wine which she inflicted upon every guest that visited the house. Perhaps, even more than Victoria, she believed that Oliver would soon leave his wife for her daughter. She believed it because she wanted to believe it. She wanted Victoria to be settled and happy. Margaret also wanted grandchildren. All of her friends had them now – and talked about them. She felt like she was outside of the club. It was unlikely that her youngest daughter would have children soon either, she often lamented to herself and sighed.

  “He was fine too. He knew plenty of people at the party.”

  I also noticed that plenty of women turned his head when Victoria wasn’t looking.

  Mother and daughter continued to have lunch together. They talked about Gemma’s work, the weather (how the sun brought out Gemma’s freckles, a comment mother made to daughter every June), which spring bulbs were now flowering in the garden – and that the next door neighbours were building a conservatory without official planning permission. Gemma thanked her mum for lunch and complimented her on the homemade blackberry cheesecake dessert, although she couldn’t quite bring herself to say anything nice about the elderflower wine.

  Gemma felt decidedly bored at times giving the same answers to the same questions that her mother had asked on previous visits. But the conversation was not half as torturous as Gemma imagined it might have been on the train down. She loved her mother dearly and appreciated the sacrifices she had made for her, financially and otherwise, over the years. In devoting so much time to her and her sister when younger her mother had little time or energy to build more of a life for herself. As much as Gemma loved and was grateful for her mother she was also conscious that she didn’t want to turn out like her.

  “Now let me see if I can crowbar your father out from his chair and get him to come out. He’s watching the cricket of course. I’ll need something stronger than this elderflower wine to tempt him out here however, I suspect,” Margaret said, silently praying that her husband hadn’t had too much drink already.

  Richard Miller’s red-rimmed eyes softened and lit up on coming outside, smiling at his daughter and seeing the bottle of vintage port on the table. A shock of grey hair sat on his head. The odd spindly grey hair also sprouted from his nose and ears. He looked old – and often felt old – but the sight of the bottle of port and his daughter livened up his wizened expression. Despite the fine weather the former civil engineer wore a hole-filled jumper, his “lucky” jumper (which he ritually wore whenever he sat in his chair at home and watched England play a Test). Aside from drinking and reading military history Richard Miller’s greatest joy was watching cricket, whether on TV or visiting the Oval to see his beloved Surrey play.

  Gemma smiled back at her father. Richard Miller hadn’t always been there for his daughter when he was younger, partly because of his work and partly because he was determined to have a life and interests outside the sphere of his family. He cultivated an old-fashioned view that his job was to provide for his family but that it was largely the province of his wife to bring up their daughters. Gemma had thought her father cold and distant when she was younger and slightly resented the way he treated her mother. He also seemingly devoted more time to Victoria than herself. She thought him an old-fashioned Victorian patriarch. Her father’s love and time were in short supply, which made them more valuable commodities. Despite her occasional antagonism towards her father, Gemma still wanted to please and impress him. Her feelings had thawed as she got older and Gemma liked to think she understood her enigmatic father more nowadays. He was darkly funny and clever, if a little too cynical and sardonic at times. His wife often called him a “curmudgeon” or an “old goat” – and not always in jest. Richard Miller was far from sociable or talkative but when he spoke people listened. Gemma believed that he spent so much time on his own because he genuinely liked his own company – and genuinely disliked other people’s. The “old goat” was capable of coming out with the odd shocking, politically incorrect comment but he would never reveal whether he was being wholly serious or not. “I enjoy offending people, especially those who like to be offended.” Gemma had long concluded that when people thought her father was being serious then he was just amusing himself – and when they thought he was joking then he was making a sage, pointed comment.

  “Rain stop play?” Gemma remarked.

  Richard Miller nodded.

  “Yes. And I noted that your mother finally cleared away her abominable elderflower wine. So I thought you might like to suffer my company out here for a bit.” He poured out a generous measure of port for himself and sat down, humming or grunting as he did so. “Your mother mentioned that you saw Victoria and that dolt, Oliver, in the week. What do you think of him? And be honest.”

  “He smiles too much,” Gemma said, adapting a quote from Austen and curtailing some of the harsher thoughts she harboured towards the lawyer.

  “Aye, he’s a vain as an actress. The fellow is all cock and no balls, from what I can discern,” Richard Miller gruffly remarked, screwing up his already wrinkled face in disapproval. “He’s married, but your sister thinks it
will all be fine. Either he’ll stick with his wife, or it’ll be a messy divorce. She’ll leave him penniless and drained of any will to remarry. Ironically he’ll become the victim of his brethren – shyster lawyers. They’re the only ones who’ll come out of the divorce settlement happy. Or he could suffer a worse fate. He could remain married to his current wife. A fate worse than death, which will only be cured by dying. Or her demise. He’s damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t. I just don’t want him damning your sister too.”

  “She could get lucky and they work things out. You’ve remained happily married to Mum all these years,” Gemma said, amused by her father’s comments rather than depressed by them.

  “Well, we’ve remained married. Habit makes more converts than reason, to quote Thomas Paine. I’m also far too mean to want to pay for lawyers like Oliver, in regards to getting divorced. I’d rather burn my money or, more wasteful still, give it to the blasted EU,” Richard Miller said with the hint of a wry smile on his expression. Gemma was long used to her mother being the butt of her father’s dry humour.

  “Would you not like to see me married one day? Or is being a spinster worse than a fate that’s a fate worse than death?” Gemma asked, a wry smile on her face too.

  “I want to see you content. I’m just not certain that marriage and contentment are one and the same thing. But I’m loth to give you any advice. You’ll be too proud and spirited, like some conceited pseudo-suffragette, and ignore it. Or, worse, I’d be worried that you heed what I say and I’ll help ruin your life that way. But you’ve got a sensible head on your shoulders Gemma. Instead of taking in any advice I might have you should be giving it out, to your sister. She may listen to you. Ever since you stopped looking up to her as a teenager she’s wanted to win your approval.”

  “Victoria thinks well enough of herself for the both of us,” Gemma said tartly, topping up her glass with some white wine that her mother had brought out for her after disappearing back into the house before her father joined her.

  “Your sister may surprise you one day. And you shouldn’t be too hard on her. Well at least not all of the time – that’s my job… Believe it or not but she doesn’t have too many friends, especially female friends. To quote H.L. Mencken: What’s the definition of a misogynist? A man who hates women as much as they hate one another.”

  Gemma grinned. Years ago the feminist inside of her would have taken umbrage at such a comment. But now the feminist could laugh at certain aspects of feminism. Gemma had long since traded her sense of sorority for a sense of humour – and she was happier and wiser for it.

  Richard Miller leaned back on his chair towards the door to assess whether play had resumed in the cricket. Realising it was still raining, from listening to the commentary on the television, he turned his attention back to his daughter.

  “So what kind of a man should the Miller girls look for?” Gemma playfully asked, half joking and half in earnest. She had done a terrible job of finding Mr Right. Her father might be able to offer her some luck or wisdom.

  “Hmm, that’s difficult. Your Jane Austen said that ‘Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance’ and I’m not sure I can strongly disagree with her… Most men are either bastards or womanish, as we well know. Firstly pick someone who isn’t already married. He should have a working knowledge of Shakespeare. He should be decent and do more good than ill throughout the day. I’d personally prefer it if he enjoyed cricket, but it’s not all about making me happy. We both know, Gemma, that that’s a thankless task. So to sum up, find someone who will make you breakfast in the morning and who’ll make you laugh at night.”

  “And do you ever make Mum breakfast in the morning?” Gemma said, knowing how averse her father was to cooking anything other than steak (for himself).

  “No. But nobody’s perfect. Yet perhaps I should make more of an effort to cook for your mother, as my attempts would doubtless make her laugh of an evening. Or, even more likely, they’d cause her to be ill,” Richard Miller said, with a glint in his eye. Either he was enjoying his own joke, or the port.

  16.

  Patches of countryside and suburbia flitted past Gemma’s eyes as she travelled back to Battersea. Yet it was not just the speed of the train that caused the world outside to seem a blur.

  In the end Thomas will make me cry more than make me laugh… If I’m going to think of myself as being decent and trying to do more good than ill then I shouldn’t get involved in the break-up of somebody’s marriage… I can’t even be sure if he hasn’t got children… It’s over… At least it could have been worse. I could have spent the night with him… I want to be somebody’s wife, not mistress…

  Gemma’s train of thought was temporarily derailed as a few messages came through on her phone. The first was a joke from Daniel, the kind he used to forward on when they were dating. The jokes would be mildly offensive or, worse, unfunny. The second message was from Abbie, saying that she was on a date and probably wouldn’t be home this evening so Gemma shouldn’t cook anything for her. The third message was from her mother.

  Great to see you today darling. Was lovely catching up. Your father loved seeing you too. Visit again soon. Love Mum x

  Gemma had promised her mum – and herself – as she was leaving that she would come down again by the end of the month. And for once she meant it. She would also chat to Victoria so they could schedule things to all have lunch together. It seemed that her sister regularly visited their parents and consciously helped fill the void in her mother’s life.

  Gemma’s phone lit up as well to indicate that she had received a number of emails. Part of her still wished that one of the messages would be from Thomas. But it wasn’t to be the case. She sighed.

  As well as thinking about Thomas – and deliberately trying not to think about him – Gemma spared a thought or two for her father. She realised that he had barely changed over the years. But she had changed towards him. Her hackles no longer went up when her father said something politically incorrect or downright offensive (which even the Guardian reader in her had to admit also contained a grain of truth). She no longer told herself, as she had done so repeatedly as a teenager, that her father wanted a son instead of a second daughter. Or that he favoured his glamorous eldest daughter over his bookish youngest one.

  Gemma felt quite sorry for her father. There were times when he couldn’t have been altogether happy living with her mother. She could be overbearing, or vacuous. She didn’t always understand his sense of humour or moods. They had little in common, aside from their daughters, and with the best will in the world Gemma could not call her mother her father’s intellectual equal. Richard Miller had made sacrifices too for his family. Yet to Gemma’s knowledge her father had remained faithful to his mother over the years. There were times when he could be sweet and generous towards her also, like chinks of light shining in between the bars of a prison window. His bark is worse than his bite. Gemma came to an epiphany, between Kingston and Wimbledon, that her father was an admirable man. She then recalled part of the conversation she had had with him that afternoon. Gemma had asked her father which quality she should value most in a prospective husband. Given her father’s reticence about sharing his feelings or personal experiences Gemma had framed the conversation as a philosophical debate almost, arguing that the most important thing was for a partner to be loving. Richard Miller had taken another mouthful of his port and pensively paused, before answering.

  “Rather than ‘loving’ Gemma, make sure that he’s good. Because, if good, he’ll be worth loving.”

  The old man’s face had wrinkled with fondness rather than disgruntlement, as he hoped that his daughter would find someone at least half deserving of her.

  A group of fresh-faced middle-class skateboarders got on the train, attempting to be street, as they headed for the skate park on the Southbank. Gemma put on her headphones, quite rightly choosing to listen to the music of Billy Joel – instead of a conversation about L
ily Allen and Banksy.

  Gemma wryly smiled to herself, imagining what her father would have thought of the “delinquents” were she with him. She recalled their scene together, just before she had left to go home. As was her custom when visiting the family home Gemma checked out her father’s study, which doubled-up as his library. For trade and personal reasons she was interested in what he was reading. As usual her father’s study could use a visit from a vacuum and feather duster, but her mother gave the room a wide berth nowadays, fearing her husband’s wrath if she put a book back in the wrong place. Instead of polish Gemma’s nostrils drew in the smell of mustiness mixed with red wine. But also the smell of books. Lots of them. Pristine hardbacks, leather bound classics, curled-up paperbacks. Novels, biographies, history books, cricket books. It was her father who had first helped foster a love of reading in Gemma. He encouraged her to read Dickens, Dostoyevsky and Austen. If Gemma could have only cultivated a love of reading military history too then Victoria might have been the one to think that she was her father’s least favoured daughter.

  As her eyes scanned along the spines of the titles along the shelves one title jumped out and her heart skipped a beat. An Honourable Man by Thomas Silver. It was the one book of his which she hadn’t read. She plucked the hardback book from the shelf and brushed her hand across the faded cover. Far more than the image on the front, a black and white photo of a watchtower and wire fence, Gemma examined the author photo on the back flyleaf. She smirked, seeing a younger version of the author. There was a strong glint in his eye, borne from a love of life, a love of someone else or the gratitude of finally becoming a novelist. His hair was glossier, his eyes seemed brighter. His life was half in front of him, instead of half behind him. Gemma gazed fondly at the photo. She soon appeared melancholy however, sad because life had now cut worry lines into his kind and beautiful face and sad for herself, because she had lost him just as she had found him.