two broke? Armageddon? I had blurted – which had led to two hours of frosty silence on your part.
It was this thought that lifted my mouth into a bittersweet smile as I pulled on the loft hatch handle and jimmied the ladder down.
I heard the front door open and close just as I was halfway inside the dark space, my feet still on the top rung.
‘Grandad?’
‘Up here,’ I called, patting my way towards the dusty light switch, fingers brushing up against cobwebs.
I could hear Lottie moving up the stairs and tried to twist around to poke my head back through the hole.
She was already lurching forward, one hand on the ladder, a worried expression on her face as she stared up at me. ‘Christ, Grandad, get down, don’t fall. I can get up there. What do you need? You shouldn’t be—’
‘It’s all right, it’s all right. I need a muffin tray. It’s very important,’ I found myself saying, stepping into the attic. It was boiling in the narrow space. I dipped my head so as not to hit it on a beam.
‘Not breaking a leg is important,’ Lottie chastised, following me up the ladder with a tut. She stood next to me, her heels kicked off below, her stockinged feet making marks in the dust. ‘What did you say you need?’ she asked, glancing around at the myriad of boxes, bags, suitcases, broken lamps and more.
‘Muffin tray.’
Lottie frowned. ‘What does it look like?’
‘A tray that can fit muffins in.’
‘Right,’ Lottie said, stepping forward and staring down at a nearby box labelled ‘Hats’. ‘Probably not it,’ she said astutely.
‘There’s a box of kitchen stuff somewhere,’ I said, taking in the numerous items we had dumped here over the years, things we couldn’t bear to be parted with or things we didn’t know what to do with any more. Amazing how it built up.
‘Here,’ Lottie said from behind me, opening up a box filled with redundant saucepans, cheese graters and the blessed muffin tray.
‘Excellent.’ I took it from her with a smile, excited to start on the banana muffins.
She was about to walk back across to the ladder when she paused by another box, labelled ‘Photos’. Sinking to her knees she bent over and looked inside, pulling out a stack of albums: burgundy, navy blue, a couple of photographs escaping the pages.
‘Oh look,’ she said, opening up the first one and seeing the date in the corner, ‘it’s Dad and you.’ She grinned at the picture of Simon and me, a photo taken on a family holiday to Croyde when Simon must have been about five or six. Her face fell a fraction as she traced it with a finger.
‘He’ll be over again before we know it,’ I said in a faux-cheerful voice, not fooling either of us. Simon was a workaholic, stuck to his desk in Singapore: annual visits weren’t always guaranteed.
‘Absolutely,’ Lottie said, going along with the lie. She turned to the next album quickly, less keen to look at photographs of her father.
‘God, these are from 1964,’ she said, pulling out a photograph of a group round a long dining table. ‘Grandad, snazzy shirt,’ she said, holding up the photo of me dressed in a lurid purple and orange swirled shirt I had loved.
‘That was in the flat I owned before we were married,’ I said.
‘Ah, look at Grandma. God, she looks amazing. Who’s that sitting next to her?’
Glancing at it I felt the old envy rise to the surface. ‘Trevor,’ I sniffed. ‘First boyfriend of your grandmother. She insisted they stay friends.’
‘Jealous much?’ Lottie giggled, studying the photo. ‘He’s quite devil-may-care, isn’t he? With all that facial hair.’
‘Hiding a weak chin,’ I mumbled.
Lottie laughed and nudged me and we both stared at the picture of your younger self. I had always been jealous of anyone who had known you before I did. Now, though, I could just take in your long neck, your hair cut into a dramatic bob, your wide mouth open in a laugh, the light in your eyes. You were beautiful, Cora, through and through. I hope I told you that enough; I’m sure I didn’t.
In the photograph we were all playing cards. Remembering those nights, long dinner parties with someone on the upright piano and others playing estimation whist, reminded me of the good times we had had when courting. ‘Your grandmother was a whiz at card games.’