In the Company of Strangers.

Liz Byrski.

About In the Company of Strangers.

Ruby and Cat's friendship was forged on an English dock-side sixty years ago when, as terrified children, they were shipped off to Australia. It was a friendship that was supposed to last a lifetime but when news of Cat's death reaches Ruby in London, it comes after years of estrangement.

Declan too has drifted away from Cat but is forced back to her lavender farm, Benson's Reach, by the terms of her will. He turns to his troubled friend Alice, who is desperate for a refuge.

Can the magic of Benson's Reach triumph over the hurt of the past? Or is Cat's duty-laden legacy simply too much for Ruby and Declan to keep alive?

'Byrski's strength is to give us insight and empathy into the psychology of her characters'

WEEKEND AUSTRALIAN.

'[Byrski] radiates the same sense of purpose and possibility her novels impart'

COURIER MAIL.

For my family Neil, Mark, Sarah, Bill, Jamie, Sam and Ashley with love uby is in the kitchen when the mail arrives. She is sitting at the table in her winter dressing gown and tartan Marks and Spencer pyjamas, and although she hears the clatter of the postman pushing letters through the slot and the soft thwack as they land on the doormat she stays just where she is. Her usual enthusiasm for the mail is the stuff of legend and her staff frequently tease her about it. Sometimes she thinks it's the first step in role reversal, they're preparing to become the elders of the tribe when she starts to lose it. Not that she minds this, in fact she finds it quite endearing and plays up to it by deliberately demonstrating other eccentricities on which they can pounce with glee. As she has no intention of declining into dementia for a long time yet, and hopefully never, she sees no harm in indulging the younger generation with some amus.e.m.e.nt at her expense. She does have a childlike enthusiasm for the mail; where others dread crippling power bills, parking fines, requests for donations or news of death and destruction, Ruby antic.i.p.ates good news of old friends, fresh connections and interesting possibilities.

There is a moment of silence after the mail drops, then a ring at the bell. Jim, who has been delivering the mail for decades, always rings to let her know the post has arrived, but still she doesn't get up.

It's pleasant here at the kitchen table with the comforting heat of the Aga on her back, her feet encased in ugg boots. Ugg, Ruby thinks, is a good name because despite the warmth and comfort they are fiendishly ugly, and have a worrying look of slovenliness about them, but now they seem to have become a fashion item. Not long ago, as she thumbed through h.e.l.lo magazine while getting her hair trimmed, she'd come across a photograph of two pale, waif-like models with straggly hair wearing floaty cheesecloth dresses with ugg boots.

'How ridiculous!' Ruby had said, holding up the magazine so that Amanda, the hairdresser, could see it. 'If it's hot enough to wear cheesecloth it's too hot for fur boots.'

'That's the fashion these days,' Amanda had said. 'Ugg boots with cheesecloth, army boots with florals and frills. That's fashion for you, Rube. Madonna, Elle McPherson, they're all doing it.'

'We'll they're both old enough to know better,' Ruby had replied. 'Madonna well what can I say? Fashion has always made fools of women if you ask me.'

But it's not just comfort that keeps Ruby from the mail this morning, it's her list, the secret list that might invite rather more affectionate teasing than she would enjoy. Apparently it's called a bucket list, lord knows where that came from, some film, she thinks, but she likes the idea of setting priorities. This morning, woken early by a dream in which she was chasing her mother along a railway line, Ruby had failed to get back to sleep. The dream had left her puzzled and anxious did it mean she was about to meet up with her mother beyond the grave? Not wanting to dwell on that thought she'd got out of bed, donned the dressing gown and ugg boots and had come downstairs to the warmth of the kitchen. And while she'd waited for the water to boil Ruby had fished the list out from its hiding place in the drawer of the kitchen table. It is not an inspiring doc.u.ment and from time to time she speculates on how much more interesting the bucket lists of some contemporaries whom she admires might be: Vanessa Redgrave, Tariq Ali, Germaine Greer, Tony Benn, Margaret Drabble would doubtless be more inspiring.

The bell rings again.

'All right, Jim, I heard you the first time,' she calls, but now there is a third ring and she gets up and pads irritably to the front door and opens it to discover that it is not Jim but some new postman aged about twelve, his nose and cheeks glowing shiny red from the freezing wind, holding a receipt book and a pen.

'Sorry,' he says. 'Put it through the door and then remembered I need a signature. It's special delivery overseas.'

'What is?'

He points to a bulky manila package lying on the floor. 'That one. Special delivery for Dame Ruby Medway, can you sign for her?'

Ruby resists the urge to claim her rightful t.i.tle. Tartan pyjamas and ugg boots could be misleading. He probably thinks dames drift around in lacy negligees and have their mail delivered on a silver tray by a butler.

'I don't suppose she'll mind,' she says instead, and scrawls her name in his book. 'Where's Jim?'

'Jamaica,' the man-boy says, tucking the book into his pocket.

'Jamaica?'

'His kids give 'im and the missus two weeks there for their fortieth anniversary. Lucky b.u.g.g.e.r.'

'Lucky b.u.g.g.e.r indeed.'

'On me way then. That's special delivery, mind,' the postman says, pointing to the manila envelope. 'Better give it to Dame what's-her-name soon as possible.' And he is off down the steps into the freezing February morning, where the rain turns to ice on the pavement.

Back in the kitchen Ruby dumps the mail on the table and returns to her list. There's something significant about writing a list of things to do it seems to const.i.tute some sort of commitment. The list is pretty dog-eared now, littered with cryptic comments and crossings out: 1. Write a history of the Foundation.

2. Get the conservatory built (ring Barry re tradesmen etc).

3. Travel on the Orient Express.

4. Make amends to anyone I've hurt (too many not generous enough).

5. Make love to someone twenty years younger than me (pretty unlikely due to lack of opportunity).

6. Visit Cat (do I really mean this?).

The trouble with a bucket list is that it has to be open-ended; one might have one day left or ten, a year or ten, or maybe even thirty. That would make her ninety-nine, so that's probably overdoing the optimism. And should it be prioritised bearing in mind that certain things need to be done while one is still physically fit or rather on the grounds of pa.s.sion and enthusiasm? For example should items 3 and 5 become 1 and 2? The trouble with thinking about it is that it suddenly becomes complicated. Keep it simple is what she would say to anyone else but Ruby's never been good at taking her own advice.

It's another half-hour before she finally starts to shuffle through the mail: an invitation to the opening of an exhibition by an artist with whom she had a brief and torrid affair in the eighties, a message from Readers Digest full of stamps that you peel off and stick in various places on a form for the promise of a prize, a postcard from a friend on holiday in Greece, the latest edition of a quarterly journal, and the special delivery envelope, which has an Australian stamp. Cat? It reminds her that she owes Catherine an email and has done for two maybe even three months. Pushing aside the other mail Ruby sees that the envelope bears the stamp of a solicitor in Busselton, and she slips a kitchen knife under the flap and draws out the contents with a sense of foreboding.

A small cream envelope with her name scrawled across it in Catherine's characteristically bold hand slips from between the pages of folded doc.u.ments. Cautiously Ruby puts it to one side and flattens the papers onto the table. The letter regrets to inform, it provides facts followed by instructions. Everything she needs to know and to do, it tells her, is detailed in the attached schedule which is included along with a copy of Mrs Benson's will, and a personal letter from the deceased. It offers condolences and requests a prompt reply.

Ruby reads the letter twice and sits there, staring at the small envelope, realising that although Catherine's writing is still easily recognisable it is also somewhat changed: the letters look wobbly, they have odd tails hanging off them as though the hand that formed them couldn't stop in the required places. It looks, Ruby thinks, like the writing of a very old, frail person, not like that of a robust, outspoken woman only a year older than Ruby herself. It is the writing of someone who is was severely diminished, and the thought catches her in the chest and she presses a hand over her mouth, takes a deep breath and opens the letter.

Dearest Ruby, it begins.

By the time you get this I will have gone to G.o.d or, more likely, to the other bloke. I know you'll be angry or hurt or both that I didn't tell you what was happening, but what would you have done except worry and feel you should try to get here to see me? Well, selfishly I didn't want that. Oh I wanted you to visit, and I've been trying to persuade you to do that for years but you kept finding excuses not to. But when I got sick I wanted there to be someone who couldn't see what was happening, someone with whom I could be in denial. So now I have the satisfaction of knowing someone will remember me as I was before I started to look like a bald and withered stranger.

I've left it too late to say all I wanted to say except that you are my oldest and dearest friend, a far better friend than I deserved. It's nearly fifteen years since we met up again and even then the past still haunted us, but the gift of rediscovering you has been one of the greatest joys of getting old. Apologies for the past are useless and self-indulgent; you know I am more than just grateful for your forgiveness.

I have made a will that asks more of you than one would normally ask of a friend. Harry's nephew, Declan, inherits almost half of Benson's Reach but I've left you a controlling interest. Since I got sick I've let things go and someone needs to get it back to its best. I'm not sure Declan can do that alone. He's an odd bod indecisive, can't hold on to relationships, a bit of a lost soul, but he has a good heart and fine mind when he bothers to use it. Perhaps this is the challenge he needs. In the long term you and he can decide what should happen but please, Ruby, give it a year. Do this for me, for us, for the past and what we once shared.

I wish we had met to say goodbye. Take care, Rube, make the most of what's left, every precious minute of it.

My love, always and ever.

Cat.

Ruby stares at the letter and wonders why she isn't crying, why the threat of that first sob has dissipated, why not a single tear is sliding down her cheek. It contains too much, she thinks, too much of the past, too many complex and conflicting emotions; it's an ending which both robs and liberates. Theirs was an old but severely tested friendship that had begun in childhood and was shattered years later leaving them estranged for more than two decades, until the day Catherine turned up here, in London, on Ruby's doorstep, wanting to repair the breach. When she'd left two weeks later to return to Australia, Catherine clearly felt she'd achieved her aim but for Ruby the situation had been more complex. She was prepared to resume contact, but she had been unable, or perhaps unwilling, to give more than that. In the past fifteen years she had disclosed little of her own life, sending just one letter or email for every three or four of Catherine's, which she had read with detachment. Now Cat is gone, and with her that connection made by two terrified children on the crowded dockside more than sixty years ago. Did they ever talk about that moment, Ruby wonders now, about how their eyes locked, each recognising the fear in the other? Two little girls torn from their roots about to be herded like cattle onto a ship that would take them to a country they couldn't even imagine. Ruby had seen a girl a little taller than herself, wearing a double-breasted tweed coat with round leather b.u.t.tons and a velvet collar, very much like her own. A girl with her hair in two long plaits holding a small brown leather suitcase, and she knew that the girl's whole life was in that suitcase just as her own life was contained in the coa.r.s.e canvas holdall that hung over her own shoulder.

'Keep calm now. Two at a time,' the man had said, as the lines of children pushed towards the gangplank.

The girl squeezed through the crowd towards Ruby. 'We could go together if you like,' she'd said, holding out a woollen-gloved hand. 'I'm Catherine.' The label on her coat said Catherine Rogers London to Fremantle.

Gripping hands, they were carried along in the throng of children, some crying, some struggling, others, like her and Cat, silent and terrified as they reached the deck.

'Cheer up,' said a man in a dog collar, his nose blue with cold. 'Jesus loves you and you're going to the sunshine.'

And Cat gripped Ruby's hand harder as the ship's hooter fired a triumphant blast into the dank London air.

Ruby reads the letter again and pulls her bucket list across the table towards her. Pen in hand she pauses briefly and then strikes out the last item. 'Too late now,' she murmurs, 'too d.a.m.n late.' It's more than a year since she compiled it, and almost fifteen since she promised Cat she would visit, a promise which at the time she'd had no intention of keeping.

It's much later that evening when Jessica turns up, sweeping into the house in a cloud of cold evening air, tiny snowflakes melting across the shoulders of the black velvet vintage coat she bought last week in Camden Pa.s.sage.

'Sorry,' she says, shaking snow from her hair. 'Really sorry, it was one of those days. Are you okay?'

'I'm fine,' Ruby says, hugging her, knowing that she looks anything but that she looks, in fact, as though someone has punched her in the face. 'Well, as fine as could be expected.'

Jessica hugs her again. 'I'm so sorry, it's very sad. Why didn't she tell you? You'd have gone over, wouldn't you?'

Ruby shrugs. 'She wanted there to be someone who didn't know, someone she could pretend with that it wasn't happening and that was me. So, if it helped . . . well, that's a good thing, isn't it?'

Jessica unwinds the scarf from her neck, and unb.u.t.tons her coat. 'I guess. So what have you decided?'

'I've booked a flight for a fortnight today,' Ruby says, urging Jessica into the warmth of the kitchen. 'Drink? I've just opened a bottle of red.' And she pours some into a gla.s.s and hands it to her.

'You didn't go all the time she was alive, but you're going now now that she's dead?' Jessica takes the gla.s.s and leans against the front of the Aga. 'I don't-'

Ruby holds up a hand. 'No. I will explain, but not now, not yet. It's a very long story and I'm not ready to tell it yet. But I'm going now because it feels right. I need to look at the place, see what's happening, meet Declan. And I need to be there for . . .' she hesitates '. . . emotional reasons as well. You can cope with everything here, can't you? You practically run it all anyway but we can get some help in for you.'

'Of course I can cope. You must go, you've been saying for years that you would and now . . .'

'Yes, yes, I should have gone after she came here but it all seemed . . . oh, I don't know . . . too much baggage, I suppose. Anyway I'm going now.'

'Will you be okay?'

'Of course, I'm a tough old bird as you well know.'

'I could come with you if you want. We could get Amy back to run things, or there are other possibilities.'

'Thanks, that's lovely of you, but it's not necessary, I'll be fine. Besides, I think I need to do this alone. So I might be gone for a while, a month, maybe two.'

Jessica nods, and gives her a long look. 'Of course, but you don't need to worry about anything here.'

'You're such a blessing, Jess, and very efficient. The Foundation would have ground to a halt by now without your taking on so much.'

'And twenty years ago I would have ground to a halt without you and the Foundation helping me.'

'I suspect you would have survived without us, one of the few who might, but a lot wouldn't. It's such a fundamental thing, isn't it, providing a safe place to leave a child in a crisis, or even just to go to work?' Ruby crosses to the Aga, lifts the lid on a pot of soup, gives it a stir and turns back to Jessica. 'You know, back in the seventies when it all got going, I honestly believed that twenty-four-hour childcare was just around the corner and every woman would have access to it, but here we are more than thirty years on and we're still only scratching the surface. When you see how desperate women are . . . oh well, you've heard me say this a thousand times, you know it all . . . better than I do, but at least we've made a difference, and you, Jess, are a tower of strength.'

'And you're a handy old dame with a cliche,' Jessica says, raising her gla.s.s. 'Anyway, here's to your friend Catherine, and to what's it called? Benson's . . . Benson's Reach. After all, it's not every day you inherit fifty-five per cent of a . . . well I'm not sure what it is, really.'

'About thirty hectares of land almost three hundred kilometres south of Perth, with eight rammed-earth, self-catering holiday cottages, a lavender and berry farm, gift shop and cafe. And what used to be a rather lovely old house, all a bit run down by now, I suspect.'

Jessica raises her eyebrows, as well as her gla.s.s. 'As I said to Benson's Reach, and whatever you decide for it. This Declan won't know what's. .h.i.t him. Have you ever met him?'

'Once donkey's years ago. He'd have been about seven or eight at the time, I think. Nice kid, reddish hair and freckles. He was running around, arms outstretched, being an aeroplane. Crop dusting, he said. I thought that was sweet and preferable to wanting to be a fighter pilot. But I've really got no idea what I'm walking into.' She turns to the stove. 'Anyway, I hope you're staying to eat. I've made minestrone and got some of that olive bread from the Italian baker.'

'Of course I'm staying,' Jessica says, pulling out a chair and sitting down at the table. 'If you're buzzing off to Australia and leaving me in charge there's stuff we need to sort out. Besides, I'm starving, so bring it on.'

esley, sitting on the bed, her open laptop resting on her outstretched legs, leans back against the cushions and listens to the silence. She's never thought much about silence in the past. She's appreciated periods of it, but never considered the nature of it. With Gordon at work and the kids at school there had been peaceful oases of silence during the day, and if she woke in the night it was to the rea.s.suring silence of people sleeping three kids, the dog, even Simon's goldfish was probably asleep. But it's not night-time, it's midday, mid-week; the kids have long gone adults now, with homes and silences of their own and here she is, hiding in the bedroom, and downstairs Gordon is doing whatever it is he does these days creating this silence which is neither peaceful nor companionable. It pulsates with resentment and disappointment, with confusion and frustration, and it's suffocating her.

What is he doing down there? What is the matter with him? It was his choice, after all, it's not as though she pushed him into it. 'Life's too short,' he'd said early last year, just after his sixty-sixth birthday. 'Time to stop, make the most of what's left, do all the things we said we'd do.' And so he stopped. He wound up everything at the office, retired and stayed home. But it's not like other times when he was at home weekends, holidays. No, this is different, this is something else. Gordon retired is something else: a strange, constant and intrusive presence, expecting things meals, ideas, attention, answers, company all of it from her. It is so unfair. Lesley sees her own life disappearing in front of her, day by irritating day.

She had made that life for herself in order to cope with his life, his obsession with work, the long days, the late nights, the weekend teambuilding, the work-related travel. She learned to accommodate it; he was, after all, a good husband and father, outstandingly good at his job, a generous provider. 'Be thankful,' she'd told herself when the kids were small, 'and be realistic. Get used to it.' She was, she did, and unlike some she could mention she didn't whinge about it, didn't nag or plead for him to change she got a part time job as receptionist in the local dental surgery, she got on with her life, let Gordon get on with his, and for decades it had been fine. Fine when the house was full of children, then teenagers, then young adults. Fine when the place was littered with footy gear, ballet shoes, dirty washing, homework, smelly socks, scrunchies, boyfriends, girlfriends, appallingly loud music, and hormone charged mood swings. It was exhausting, entertaining, wonderfully rea.s.suring and annoying but it worked well and kept working. Even when the kids had gone it kept working, because Gordon kept working.

It was a good life, and getting better: tennis, lunches, Thai cookery cla.s.ses, then yoga, occasionally helping out in a friend's boutique. There was time for herself, the house to herself, freedom to come and go as she pleased. No questions, no demands and no expectations only one other person's needs and timetable to cater for. And then Gordon retired.

They'd talked about it, of course, but a long time ago, years ago when it was far enough away to seem unreal. How nice, they'd told each other, the house to themselves, time to do all the things they couldn't do with the kids around. Travel, take up hobbies, maybe buy a boat, relax, smell the roses. 'Bulls.h.i.t!' Lesley hisses under her breath. It's like childbirth. No one ever tells you how truly horrendous it is because if they did the human race would die out. And no one ever tells you how crushing it is when your husband retires because, if they did, marital homicides would wipe out the male of the species when they reached sixty-five.

Lesley adjusts her cushions and tilts her head back against the wall, thinking about her parents, about the depressing little house near the railway line where she'd spent her childhood and where her mother still lives. In those days it was always too hot or too cold, too damp or draughty, the outside dunny full of spiders, mice and the occasional stray cat. It's better now, of course. Her mother, Dolly, was always on at her father about it and while he was still working they made some improvements: put on a proper bathroom and an inside toilet, had it rewired, modernised the kitchen. But it was only when Bert retired in '81 that all the other things that her mother wanted finally got done.

'At last,' Lesley remembers Dolly saying. 'Well, there'll be no sitting about all day watching the telly and reading the sports news, I've told your father, I've got plans for him, big plans.'

Well they weren't actually very big plans for a man like Bert Stanhope, who'd no time for sitting around and had been waiting for years for the day he could unleash his inner DIY ambitions. Within the first month of his retirement he had started knocking down old walls and building new ones and then came plastering and painting, some skylights, a covered deck, and the carport was replaced with a brick garage and adjacent shed. And he still managed to fit in bowls, RSL meetings, and delivering meals on wheels.

'He was a good man, your father,' Dolly Stanhope had said to her daughters as they waited for the funeral cars to arrive twenty years later. 'Never idle. Always had something on the go. Made a lovely home for us in the end a home any woman would be proud of.'

At the time, standing in the duck egg blue room with its frills and chintzes, its dozens of ornaments and framed photographs, and a print of 'The Shearers' over the modernised fireplace where the faux embers of the gas heater flickered in winter, Lesley had rolled her eyes and exchanged knowing looks with Gordon and her sister, Helen. They had listened to this recital more times than they could count in the week since Bert's death.

'He did the garden too, Dolly,' Gordon had said, grinning at Lesley, 'don't forget the garden.'

'I'd never forget the garden,' Dolly had said, drawing herself up to her rather unimpressive full height and crossing to the window. 'Look at that vegetable patch, and the fishpond, built that himself, fountain and everything. A good husband and father, the best.' And she'd allowed Lesley to take her arm and steer her out and down the path.

'What a shame she never told Dad all that while he was alive,' Lesley had whispered to her sister as Gordon helped Dolly into the back seat. 'Most of the time she just nagged him stupid.'

'Oh I don't know,' Helen had said. 'I think she probably did. It was their way of being together Mum nagging, Dad pretending to be henpecked. But they loved each other, to the last. Some couples don't make it that far.'

Lesley has thought about that in the intervening years, thought about the sort of relationships that hold people together. Some of their friends had broken up after years together and she'd wondered why. What could happen in your fifties or sixties to make you want to change everything after decades together? Surely people knew each other well enough by then to be able to work things out? Her parents had frequently driven Lesley mindless with boredom but she loved them dearly. She admired their restrained affection, their mutual trust, tolerance and tenacity, but she had wanted more for herself, more of everything. More money, more fun, more pa.s.sion, more choices, more children, more stylish and luxurious surroundings, more satisfying and interesting things to do, more freedom and independence than her mother. Most of all she'd wanted the safety net that money provided. Bert and Dolly had struggled when Lesley and Helen were young. There had been lots of darning, the turning of frayed collars, and of sheets sides to middle. Their school shoes had been resoled and heeled while their friends were getting new ones, there was rarely any money for school outings, and food had been wholesome but plain. It wasn't exactly hardship but Lesley knew that her parents had struggled to make ends meet, and it was only once she and Helen had left home that there was something left over for things Dolly wanted for herself. Her mother's example had instilled prudence; Lesley knew the value of money and she wasn't going to settle for anything less than a solid and secure financial future.

She'd had a few fairly uninspiring boyfriends by the time she met Gordon at a Sunday cricket match where she was helping with the afternoon teas. She was twenty-one, working at the city council, and had just been promoted from the typing pool to secretary to one of the managers. Gordon was twenty-nine, a geologist with a budding career in a mining company. He looked dashing in his cricket whites and racked up a respectable score for the local team. Lesley liked him; he seemed thoughtful, not brash and noisy like some of the other players, a bit serious maybe even a bit too serious. She plied him with tea and scones, and by the end of the afternoon he'd asked her to go to the cinema with him the following week. More than halfway through Play Misty For Me he'd reached out to hold her hand, and soon his warm thigh was pressed against hers and his arm moved along the back of the seat. She'd thought he was a bit slow getting around to kissing her, leaving it until close to the end of the film, but perhaps that was a good thing. He was courteous and cautious and a pretty good kisser. A year later they were married and Lesley got what she wanted got it in spades, really. Gordon moved rapidly up the corporate ladder as the mining company spread its operations around the country and overseas. And she loved him; she had loved him from the start. He was reliable, uncomplicated and she'd trusted him.

'Straight down the line,' Bert had said in his speech at their wedding. 'A real gentleman. Couldn't ask for a better husband for my girl.'

No one, including Lesley, had doubted that at least not until recently; but now as she sits here, listening to the silence, mulling over the past, Lesley wonders how it ended up like this. What is she expected to do when, after thirty-five years of marriage, of intimacy and distance, of fights and making up, of shared responsibilities, joys, satisfactions, pleasures and disappointments, she finds she is living with a stranger, an alien s.p.a.ce invader who wants to suck her dry, monitor her movements, be part of everything she does. What shall we do today? Where are you going? When will you be back? What time is lunch? What are you reading? Have you seen my gla.s.ses? Shall I come with you? Shall we go there together? And her answers are always the same and always wrong. And so there is the silence, this burdensome, highly charged, suffocating silence. Does Gordon honestly think that because he's retired from his life she's going to do the same to keep him company?

This room, which used to be Sandi's and which Lesley has commandeered as her 'study', is now her refuge. Gordon has always had a study to retreat to, but some flash of insight had inspired her to claim this room once Sandi left home. There's the bed that she's dressed up with cushions like a sofa, her yoga mat, her books, a CD player, tennis cups, pictures, her laptop. The only place in the house which is hers alone, the only thing that has helped her to retain her sanity over the last year.

'He's driving me to distraction,' Lesley had told her tennis partner when they were sitting on the shady deck of the tennis club a couple of weeks ago (no, Gordon, you can't come to tennis with us, find your own friend to play with). 'It's like he's always there, waiting around every corner, occupying the whole house and wanting something from me.'