‘You wanted to tell her to stop her grandmother from going home,’ Yaz says in the background.

‘Yes! Leena. Your grandmother can’t go home yet. It’s so good for her, being here in London. I’ve seen her every day this last month and honestly, the transformation – she’s blossoming. She’s smiling ten times more. Last week I walked in and she and Fitz were dancing together to “Good Vibrations”.’

My spare hand goes to my heart. The image of Grandma and Fitz dancing together is almost as cute as the picture of baby Vanessa that Yaz just sent me.

‘You know she’s dating an actor? And she’s got us all turning the downstairs area of the building into this community space?’ Martha continues.

‘Seriously? The area with the miscellaneously stained sofas?’ And then, processing: ‘Is the actor called Tod? She won’t tell me a thing about her love life, it’s infuriating!’

‘You are her granddaughter, Leena. She’s not going to want to keep you up to speed on her sex life.’

‘Sex?’ I say, pressing a hand to my chest. ‘Oh, my God, weird weird weird.’

Martha laughs. ‘She’s having an amazing time here, and she’s working on this new project – a social club for elderly people in Shoreditch.’

‘There are elderly people in Shoreditch?’

‘Right? Who knew! Anyway, she’s only just getting it off the ground, and she’s so excited about it. You need to let her finish what she’s started.’

I think of Basil, how he laughed about Grandma’s projects never going anywhere, and I feel suddenly and very fiercely proud of my grandmother. This project sounds amazing. I love that she’s not given up on the idea of making a difference, not even after decades of men like Basil and Grandpa Wade putting her down.

‘It’s talking to your mum that’s got her thinking she has to come home,’ Martha says. ‘Something about an argument?’

‘Ah.’

‘Tell Eileen you’ll sort things with your mum and I bet she’ll stay here. And it’d be good for you, too, sweetheart. Talking to your mum, I mean.’

I pick up the cleaning cloth again and scrub hard at the hob. ‘Last time we talked it ended in this horrible fight.’ I bite my lip. ‘I feel awful about it.’

‘Say that, then,’ Martha says gently. ‘Tell your mum that.’

‘When I’m with her, all the feelings, the memories of Carla dying – it’s like getting bloody bulldozed.’

‘Say that, too,’ Martha tells me. ‘Come on. You all need to start talking.’

‘Grandma’s been wanting me to talk to Mum about my feelings for months,’ I admit.

‘And when is your grandmother ever wrong? We’ve all fallen madly in love with Eileen, you know, Fitz included,’ Martha says. ‘I’m thinking about getting one of those wristbands people wore in the nineties, except mine’ll say, What Would Eileen Cotton Do?’

*

I take a long walk after Martha’s phone call, following a route I sometimes run. I notice so much more at this pace: how many greens there are here, all different; how beautifully those drystone walls are built, the stones slotted in like jigsaw pieces. How a sheep’s resting face looks kind of accusatory.

Eventually, after ten unpleasant kilometres of thinking time, I call my mother from a tree stump beside a stream. It’s about the most restful and idyllic setting imaginable, which feels necessary for what promises to be an extremely difficult conversation.

‘Leena?’

‘Hi, Mum.’

I close my eyes for a moment as the emotions come. It’s a bit easier this time, though, now I’m braced for them – they own me a little less.

‘Grandma wants to come back to Hamleigh.’

‘Leena, I’m so sorry,’ Mum says quickly, ‘I didn’t tell her to – I really didn’t. I texted her yesterday evening and said she should stay in London, I promise you I did. I just had a moment of weakness when I called her, and she decided …’

‘It’s OK, Mum. I’m not angry.’

There’s silence.

‘OK. I am angry.’ I kick a stone with the toe of my running shoe so it skitters into the stream. ‘I guess you figured that out.’

‘We should have talked about all this properly sooner. I suppose I thought you’d come to understand, as time passed, but … I only supported Carla in what she chose, Leena. You know if she’d wanted to try another operation or round of chemotherapy or anything, I would have supported that, too. But she didn’t want that, love.’

My eyes begin to ache, a sure sign tears are coming. I suppose I know what she’s saying is true, really. It’s just …

‘It’s easier to be angry than sad, sometimes,’ Mum says, and it’s exactly the thought I was trying to form, and so Mum-like of her to know it. ‘And it’s easier to be angry with me than with Carla, I imagine.’

‘Well,’ I say, rather tearfully. ‘Carla’s dead, so I can’t yell at her.’

‘Really?’ Mum says. ‘I do, sometimes.’

That startles a wet half-laugh out of me.

‘I think she’d be a bit offended to think you were refusing to yell at her, just because she died,’ Mum goes on mildly. ‘You know how big she was on treating everyone equally.’

I laugh again. I watch a twig caught behind a rock, fluttering in the flow of the stream, and think of playing Pooh Sticks with Carla and Grandma as a child, how cross I’d feel if my stick got stuck.

‘I’m sorry for calling your grandma,’ Mum says quietly. ‘It was just a wobble. Sometimes I feel very … alone.’

I swallow. ‘You’re not alone, Ma.’

‘I’ll call her again,’ Mum says after a while. ‘I’ll tell her to stay in London. I’ll tell her I want you to stay and I won’t have it any other way.’

‘Thank you.’

‘I do want you to stay, you know, more than anything, actually. It wasn’t about that. It was just about needing – needing my mother.’

I watch the water churn. ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Yes, I can understand that.’

22

Eileen

I have to say, working with Fitz on the Silver Shoreditchers’ space is making me see the man in a whole new light. He’s working peculiar hours in his latest job – a concierge at some fancy hotel – but whenever he’s home, he’s down here painting something or hunched at his laptop reading about setting up charitable organisations on the Internet. He’s handling all the Silver Shoreditchers’ administration – he’s even made some posters for the club, with a little logo. It’s wonderful. I’ve been on at him for weeks about being more proactive in his career ambitions, but, if I’m honest, I’m a little shocked he’s got all this in him.

‘There!’ he says, standing back from where he’s just hung a large picture on the wall.

‘Wonderful,’ I say. ‘The perfect finishing touch!’

The picture is an enlarged black-and-white photograph of the building from the 1950s, when it still operated as a printworks. There’s a collection of people gathered outside, talking and smoking, their collars turned up against the wind. It’s a reminder that this place isn’t just a collection of individual homes, it’s one building, too, with a history of its own.