HER DREAM HOUSE
“Muuuum!!!” Della put her fingers in her ears and leant towards her computer screen, where Chapter Seven blinked back at her. She always ignored the first morning call from her youngest – she knew there would be more. “Have you got any clean shirts?”
“MUUUM!” More insistent this time and from the top of the stairs. Over the years, Della had developed skills of echo-location, like a whale, so she knew where her babies were calling her from.
“Mother!” On Charlie’s third call, and now with Jay having opened the study door to stand there dressinggown-hood up, eating a bowl of cereal, Della lost her cool. “For God’s sake!” she got up and pushed past Jay. “You know this is my time for writing, what is it with you two?”
Della had had the boys in her twenties, and given all her love, time and energy to them. Now at 43, she’d decided it was time for her, and was on the cusp of achieving her dream of being published. She’d been commissioned to write a book called ‘Raising a Feminist Son’, the irony of which, was a daily battle to ignore.
“I can’t find a clean shirt!” Charlie again. His tone couldn’t have been more panicky if he’d just broken his leg. “Charlie, you’re 16,” said Della, exasperated, marching up the stairs. “Why do I have to do everything?”
Tony came out of the bathroom then, suit on, ready for work. “It’s because you keep doing everything,” he said, “You’re too nice.” Two weeks, thought Della, two weeks and then you’re on your own! She passed Charlie a shirt, then, as if reading her mind, Tony kissed her. “Never mind, Del,” he said. “Not long now.”
It had been her birthday present from Tony: six months living on her own in Bluebell Cottage so that she could finish the book, a present their friends thought typically barmy, but she couldn’t wait. Della had dreamt of living in this archetypal English cottage at the edge of their local woods, for years, almost as long as she’d dreamt of one day having days on end, of peace and quiet.
Della woke on moving day at 5am, her stomach churning with excitement. This was the dream situation: she could still see Jay and Charlie, but for six months she wouldn’t have to make tea/wash shirts/defuse rows/ be a taxi driver.
Tony helped her move in, and after a cup of tea in her kitchen, they hugged on her front path. “Tell me” said Della. “Do you mind this? Really?”
“No. I mean, clearly everything will go tits up without you, but this book, this house, it’s your dream.”
After unpacking that evening, she poured herself a glass of wine and sat in the garden. A wood pigeon cooed somewhere. Apart from that, silence. Ahead of her stretched endless woodland and endless days in which to write. That night she dreamt of Charlie in crisis: no clean shirts. She woke early, and on autopilot reached for her phone. I’ll just call the boys before school, she thought. But there was no reception and a momentary pang of panic, and something else – something she couldn’t quite put her finger on – gripped her. She got up and, putting on her dressing gown, wafted down the sunlit stairs. She made herself a cup of tea, then, taking her notebook, so she could start planning her day, and her phone, she padded down to the far end of the garden, hoping there might be reception there. The grass was cool and dewy beneath her bare feet. She stopped halfway, took out her phone from her dressing gown pocket, and looked at it. Then, pausing for a second, to lift her face to the sun, she switched it off.
Katy Regan was born and brought up in Morecambe, expelled from primary school, and went to stage school with Victoria Beckham. Little Big Man (Mantle) is her fifth novel, and her simple pleasure is: “Bike rides along the canal to the pub with friends of a summer’s eve, cheeky half a lager or two, then ride home.”