Fran was standing by Sheila and Simon and their two kids. Sheila seemed more gargantuan than ever. She grew with every season. She said to Fran, “It’s like we should have little flags, shouldn’t we? It’s like royalty visiting!”
“Or a film star!” said Simon excitedly. “She’s like a bloody film star!”
This was the sentimentalised picture they all had of Liz. Through her absence and her coma it had hardened into legend. The Tiger Taxi door would be opened by a man in a suit. She would issue marvellously from its snug confines in a glittering evening gown. She’d be draped in fur, her jewels outrageous in the daytime, her golden hair beautifully coiffed.
“The door’s opening!” Sheila said. “Ah, look. She’s getting out by herself.”
Penny was standing to one side, looking concerned. Maybe Liz was determined to do things for herself. With that indomitable spirit she was set upon looking after herself. Bette Davis in Now, Voyager. Joan Crawford in Mildred Pierce.
The door opens, the crowd shrinks back, and Liz stands up in Phoenix Court, clutching her vanity case.
Penny takes her arm.
They walk slowly to their garden gate in the silence of the gathering. The neighbours meant to clap at this point, but they are silent, staring. Liz looks down. She wears a friendly smile, but she is adamant she won’t stop to speak. They pass the neighbours by.
“She’s...she’s…” This is Simon, standing next to Fran. He is the first to say anything. They watch the gate of number sixteen clash shut behind Liz and Penny. This is his cue to say, far too loudly, “She’s a bloke!”
Fran closes her eyes and stands stock still as the crowd gabbles away to itself.
Of course. Of course she’s a man.
Liz is in a blue tracksuit, possibly borrowed from Craig. She has none of her adornments. Her hair is short and grey. She is a thin, prematurely aged man in his forties. How delicate she looks, how frail but determined. How familiar and unfamiliar. And how unmistakably male without the frock and the wig.
Someone is laughing. Someone shouts something at the door of number sixteen as it closes on the crowd.
“Well,” says Big Sue. “I can’t...can you…?” She gapes at Fran.
Fran shrugs and smiles.
She wants to bang on their door and pledge her support. But maybe Penny and her mother need some time to themselves right now.
This was news to Nesta. It was news she thought Tom should hear. She went straight round Tom and Elsie’s house to tell them: all this time, Liz was a man.
Nesta had no idea what she thought about this. She skidded and slipped her way across the street. Her new baby was bundled up in her arms. She shushed it and tried to concentrate. She didn’t know what to think until she could tell Tom. Torn would know.
Maybe Liz had come back from the other side transformed. There could be something magical in this.
“You can’t come in.” Elsie has the door chain on. Her eyes look wild, her hair hangs in unwashed tatters. No one’s seen her for days.
Nesta stands on the doorstep and stares at her.
“But I’ve got news!” Nesta says. “I have to tell Tom.”
“Tom isn’t well,” says Elsie, and for the first time looks Nesta in the eye. She recoils from Nesta’s straightforward, unflinching stare.
“Has he been taken away again?” asks Nesta.
“N-no,” says Elsie. “I don’t mean in his head. I mean he has a cold.”
“Are you sure?” says Nesta.
“Yes!” Elsie looks like she might cry.
“If it’s only a cold, why can’t I come in?”
“Oh, Nesta. you just can’t. That’s all.”
“But it’s important!” Elsie sobs.
“All right, it’s his head — he’s gone funny again. You can’t see him because he’s lying depressed in his bed and he won’t get up.”
Nesta has to take this for an answer. She shuffles away.
Elsie goes up to see Tom, lying in his bed. She leans against the door frame. His pillows are pink and so are his sheets. This is the blood that is still damp. The older blood, the three-day-old blood, is brown, almost black. The room smells. It is claustrophobic, smelly, too hot. Just like the days when he used to lie, too fed up to greet the world.
Elsie worries about what she will do with him.
Craig calls.
“It’s me! I’m back!”
Three days after his return he sees fit to come and see his poor old mam. “You can’t come in,” she says tearfully through the gap in the front door. She won’t unlatch the door chain for anyone.
“Mam?”
The front door closes.
He’s been three days in bed with that Penny. She knows it. Can’t come and see his poor old mam. He’s been in bed with that Penny all this time. Making babies. The only consolation.
I suppose, Fran thought, Liz is a very special person. She must be. That’s why we all waited by her, for her, to see that she came back safe. She catches your eye and makes you want to know.
In that way Liz reminded Fran of the good-looking kids at school. The well-dressed ones, the cool, smart, popular kids. Fran thought about this, knowing that she herself was never that popular. She was never one for standing out in that way. Her life had been one of quiet effort, of carrying on. Of seeing things for what they were. If you stand out in a crowd, can you really do that? Can you still see things as they really are?
Fran watches her husband on the night he unveils his living-room fish pond. He gathers the four kids and Fran to watch.
It is in the corner of the room, covered in green tarpaulin. It has mirrors along the back, spotlights and fairy lights. She has to admit, he has done a professional-looking job on it. If you like that sort of thing, which Fran isn’t sure she does yet. She’ll do her nut if the fish
