“No she didn’t say anything to me at all. She was singing to the radio most of the way home, and texting Chris, who was apparently at some family do with his wife, poor chap. It was Jess that was asking me what was going on. So what is it? Maddie looked as if she’d seen a ghost.”
I rolled my glass between my hands, staring at the bubbles, watching them burst and disappear, like our fantasies.
“There was something, but it’s over. Nothing major and it never gets mentioned. So much water under the bridge.”
Maya looked at me quizzically. “No more details?”
“Nothing else. I don’t want to bring things back into the present that are safely buried in the past. Best way of doing that is not talking about them.”
“If you say so,” she said, looking a bit unconvinced.
“So, what about the mystery man? How did it all go? Are you going to see him again?”
My phone was face down on the table. It would buzz if there was a message.
“Yes, I’m definitely going to see him again, but work is very busy this week, so not sure when it’s going to happen.”
“Yours or his?”
“Mine, and I think his too.” It occurred to me that we hadn’t talked much about the routine of his daily grind. I knew about the business itself, but not about his role in it. I had a vision of him going round cracking the whip until his team of lackeys were sweating blood.
“How is Simon?” I asked.
“Oh I have no idea. I barely see him these days.”
“Is he seeing someone else?”
“I wish he was, and then he’d leave us in peace at least.”
“You don’t mean that Maya.”
“No I don’t really mean it. I mean, I don’t know how I’d actually feel if someone else was managing to enjoy him, bring out the best in him, you know?”
“I know exactly what you mean.” When Adam found his first girlfriend after we split up, I was consumed with an irreconcilable jealousy that I couldn’t comprehend, until someone pointed out to me you think she is succeeding where you failed and that was it. I had to fight that feeling for a long time. Eventually I replaced it with something like Adam and I have had the best we could have out of each other. There is nothing left. We tried everything. But the voice telling me that she has won and I have lost is ringing loud and clear in my head. Maya read my mind.
“Is Adam seeing anyone at the moment?”
“Yes, someone from the shopping channel. Sells Liz Earle stuff. Stunning, young, skinny, you name it, she’s got it.”
“I like Liz Earle. Can she get me some?”
I raised my eyebrows. “No, probably not, Maya. Please can you get some freebies for my ex-wife’s friend. Can you see him saying that? Can you see me asking him to?”
“Well, at least you’ve both got someone. That’s good. Makes things a bit more equal.”
“Yes, although I’d rather it was more relaxed than some sort of game of catch-up.”
“How is Adam, in himself I mean?”
“He’s doing okay. I think. I mean, it’s a good sign he has a girlfriend I suppose, and his work is going well. I suppose when you think about what he went through, it’s amazing how he’s turned things around.”
“How do you actually feel about him seeing other people now?”
She was direct and that was a reason I liked her. There was no skirting around an issue, and she had a knack of pulling needles out of haystacks – in this case a needle I thought was safely hidden in the straw forever.
“It’s fine. I’m happy for him. He deserves it.”
“Really?” She looked concerned. “Not sure anyone really means that stuff.”
My hands were shaking slightly, and I reached for a cushion to clasp in front of me. “Of course. We spent enough years trying to make things work. Time to let someone else have a go.”
“It sounds like you’re trying to get the lid off a jam jar.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I do. I totally do. I’ve definitely had all there is to have from Simon. Just wish he’d go and let someone have a go at taking his lid off.”
“You don’t mean that. You just said, nobody actually does mean it.”
We shared a thoughtful silence.
“I’d probably miss him. Do you miss Adam?”
“I miss the Adam from before.”
“Before the darkness….”
“Before the darkness. Although I mainly remember the darkness, and the lead-up, when the lights were dimming and I knew it was coming.”
The lights began dimming many months before they were finally extinguished. Adam would leave the house early in the morning and return exhausted after the children had gone to bed. I would be waiting, hot dinner on the stove, the lounge lit by soft lamplight, a bottle of wine and two glasses laid out on the granite worktop of our extended kitchen. Look at this, it all said, look at this and love it and love me and do this for me too.
Sometimes he came home an hour or so earlier, but only to rush out again to a meeting of school governors or the parish council. If the children asked, I’d tell them what a difficult job he had and that things wouldn’t always be like that. Left on my own I would roam my unappreciated surroundings, unable to justify my sadness, when after all he was doing all this for us. He had told me that enough times, sometimes when he leapt out of bed at the first stroke of the alarm. More often than not, I had been lying awake for hours, hoping for the warmth of his arms around me, loving words to remind me who I was to him. But none came.
“This isn’t the time or the place”, he reprimanded me one morning when I let the tears come. But he never offered me another time or place. He became gradually colder, more disconnected. Sometimes, on a Friday night he might suggest we go to the pub for a drink and I would glimpse the real him, the warm, confident, funny man I’d met at the office Christmas panto, the man who’d made me feel I was the luckiest, safest, most loved girl in the world. Then a weekend packed with children’s activities and DIY would put paid to any suggestion of change.
The change came in a way nobody had predicted, when we were on holiday in France. A panic attack in a market square, followed by others, followed by a series of medical investigations for epilepsy and other rational explanations for the way Adam’s mind had exploded. He didn’t know if his thoughts were about real events or imagined. He lived in a constant state of fear, uncertainty and déjà vu, and the angry distant man became almost overnight, a small frightened boy. Meanwhile ten-year-old Josh found himself stepping in to fill the giant shoes of a father he had only just started getting to know.
Maya had witnessed this from a distance, as an almost neighbour with an impressively practical attitude to life. She had looked after our children while we attended medical appointments, while I visited Adam in hospital. She invited us over for lunch with Simon and their family, keeping our lives going as if nothing had happened, doing everything to reassure our children that they were safe and had support. Her own problems with her marriage, her job, her kids, were put on a shelf, to be dusted off and dealt with when we had gone home.
“You were so good to us you know.” I said, remembering this. “I don’t think you realise how good.”
“Don’t be silly. You’d have done the same. You might have to, if I have to live with Simon much longer. I’ll be in the madhouse too.”
“I hope it doesn’t come to that,” I smiled.
“You’ve done a good job Rach. You had to run everything, take over being Daddy as well as Mummy. It can’t have been easy with all that responsibility and all the worry about the kids and going to work every day. And the kids have done so well too. Anna loves uni, and Sadie has taken over the eldest-daughter-at-home role like a total natural.”
“And the eldest daughter’s bedroom.” It was like a coronation – Anna has gone off to uni, long live her successor in the ensuite... But who could blame her? Rights and privileges are hard won in families, and oft
en unfairly dished out by exhausted parents who are most likely to give in on a first come first served basis. When we first moved to New Malden, Sadie stood in front of me articulating an expertly crafted argument as to why she should be allocated her room of choice, leaving Josh raising his eyes heavenwards and slumping onto the sofa while the decision was made without him. Missing out on her top choice by a small margin to her older sister, who was mid-A levels at the time, Sadie nonetheless secured the promise of a smooth handover scheduled for the very second Anna had left the building on her way to university.
“You’ve made it so lovely for them. Look at your house. It’s warm, it’s welcoming. It’s like you’ve just stepped into the breach and not only kept everything going but made it ten times better. It’s so full of colour and warmth.”
It was true, the place was cosy enough, and the décor eclectic. Random glass jars of lentils and rice lined the shelves alongside chipped Le Creuset pots and vintage cake tins from flea-markets. A tall vase of dusty artificial gladioli stood in front of the fireplace mirror, while an improbably hardy basil plant adorned the windowsill above the sink. The sagging wine rack stored not only a fine collection of Lidl Sauvignon Blanc but old Evian bottles, double concentrate orange squash and vestiges of last summer’s Pimms. Blackening bananas hung from a hook above a large bowl of shiny apples which hid some more haggard ones underneath. This was me, a bunch of mixed up stuff that somehow worked. Maya read my mind.
“You’ve made this yours. You’ve sorted it. Against all odds, when you think about it. You took over running this family and it’s been a fantastic success.”
I had done some taking over before, first of all in my parents’ separation twenty-five years earlier. When Dad left, Mum collapsed, both mentally and physically, leaving me and my brother in charge of everything, including her job. I stepped in to take over her evening class at Brookfields College, teaching law to trainee accountants, and that was where I got my first taste of the world of education. But it wasn’t till my early forties that, after failing as a solicitor (my view, probably not a complete fail, but not a massive success) I embarked on a teacher training course. I eventually found my niche in private tuition where, as an overloaded single parent, I found a way of managing the kids and the house (and the dog, let’s not forget her) at the same time as earning enough to keep the whole thing rolling along. After his breakdown, the job Adam found when poverty drove him back into the workplace paid a fraction of his salary from the wonder years, so his ability to help out was limited. I needed to earn money.
What I loved most about teaching children was doing everything possible to inspire them before they became disappointed with the world and started working / self-medicating their way into comfortable oblivion. My aspirations for teaching mirrored my expectations in the rest of my life. I was obsessed with getting the best out of everyone.
I just needed to control my instinct to rehabilitate the entire male population, one at a time.
Harry had been in rehab fifteen years before I met him. He had been open during our conversations about being addicted to crack cocaine in a former life as a city trader. I didn’t question it, because why would you make that up? But then why would you make up being a psychopath? He was in the Priory with Robbie Williams. We were the solicitor and the crack addict, like one of Aesop’s fables, or a modern-day DH Lawrence novel. I was doing what I did best, search and rescue.
“So how did you leave it with Harry?”
“I don’t know. We didn’t really agree anything.”
“But you’re going to see him again?”
“Yes, definitely, although…” I felt a momentary rush of fear hit my stomach, like when the swinging boat goes down, and down, and half your insides seem to get left behind at the top.
“What? You’ve zoned out. What is it?”
“Nothing. It’s probably nothing.”
“It’s never nothing, Rach, you know that.”
As I waved her off into the night, Maya threw me a thumbs-up over her shoulder. Her bike wobbled for a second before she got her balance back and disappeared out of sight, and I thought that was a lot like life.
Chapter 10
The notary thing
Life took hold over the next few days, as lesson gave way to lesson which in turn gave way to a few precious minutes where I tried to cobble something together for dinner. The children were back and were making their presence felt. With Anna away at university, the weekly menu had changed overnight from a vegan-friendly feast of grains, pulses and vegetables to the polar opposite in nutritional terms, as the younger siblings celebrated with sausages and burgers the departure of their health-conscious sister. A few delicious days off-duty had made my daily ritual that much harsher. Cosmo was extra-energetic after his stay with Adam who had probably over-exercised him, raising the bar for me on my return. There was too much to do and to think about. My brain struggled to cooperate. I made a mental note to avoid alcohol for a few days, but only a mental one, because I knew myself too well.
Sadie was full of excitement as usual about the school musical. I rationalised that in the first year of sixth form, she could be allowed a little leeway, and if her grades were suffering slightly, at least she was in a state of joy about something. We all deserved that. It was Wednesday and we were sitting together at the kitchen table, chatting about this and that member of the cast, how many costume changes there were.
“You won’t believe how hot it is when I have to wear all the costumes at once in the first scene.”
“I can imagine.”
The nightclub outfit, then the nun’s habit, the work outfit…” She broke off. “You okay Mum?”
“Yes, why?”
“Don’t know, just asking.”
“I’m fine, just wondering how Josh is getting on.”
Her brother was at his third cadet camp that year. It was becoming an obsession.
“He’s fine. It’s his favourite thing in the world. What are you worried about?”
“Not worried. Sorry. Just feeling thoughtful.” I shook myself out of reverie and back into reality. Sadie needed listening to more than I needed to overthink my life.
“Anyway, so like I was saying, I have to wear this fur coat on top of the whole work outfit….”
The the phone rang. I glanced down at it then apologetically back at Sadie, who scraped her chair back and clunked her plate noisily into the sink. I stepped outside, sank into the swing seat on the terrace and listened to his voice.
“You okay babe?”
“All the better for hearing you. How are you?”
“I’m good. All good. I was thinking about Spain, you know I have to go and do the notary thing.”
With all the goings on I had forgotten about that. He had to sign over his apartment in Javea to avoid Spanish inheritance tax. Sensible and underhand at the same time, he was a clearly a man of many disguises, but shared his plans with me as if I was on his team, privy to the master strategy.
“Oh yes, I remember.”
“So, I was wondering, when are you free to go out there with me?”
My heart soared and fluttered. I jumped up and headed back into the kitchen where I flicked through my diary. The pages were crammed with crossings out, urgent shopping lists, students changing slots, birthday reminders and red circles round the days I was not going to either smoke or drink a drop of wine, the mental notes having been ignored so far.
“How about the first of June?”
He booked the tickets while I was on the phone to him. I was expecting to have to give my passport details, but he just wanted the spelling of my middle name, and to confirm my date of birth. I waited on the line while he completed the booking, business class, British Airways, civilised flight times… His generosity was boundless, it seemed.
His real name, he admitted at some point around then, was Jonathan. His mum called him Jonathan. Harry was a nickname from childhood. Flash Harry, I thought. That works. Dirty Harry.
That didn't sound so good.
He told me about his flat, where we’d go, who I’d meet, what we’d do. It would be hot by then. Cocktails at Sammy’s bar in the old town, stargazing from his roof terrace, dinner on a friend’s yacht. I was dizzy with excitement.
Sadie had gone upstairs. Alone in the kitchen now, I sat back down and tried to digest it all. Could this really be happening to me? Was he real? Was this it?
My lessons went better than ever that week. I felt on top of the world and at the top of my game, approved of, valued, needed. Someone was making plans for me, for us, buying me a holiday. This was surely love in its most magical form.
I asked Harry to send me the email confirmation and he agreed but I never saw it. I reminded him once, dressing it up as “so I have something to look forward to” and got a curt “what’s your problem baby?” in response, so I decided to leave it, labelling it as an exercise in letting go of control. I ought to trust him. You can’t go anywhere in a relationship without trust. He’s even said it himself. “Trust me baby” and as a gesture of defiance against the box-ticker that I was, and in a bid to rid myself of the control freak label, I threw caution to the wind and left him at the helm.
Chapter 11
Nicky
Harry called me the next Friday night, just as I was on my way out to a school reunion. I picked up a note of jealousy in his parting words “have fun with your friends”.
In the bright lights of the restaurant, glasses clinked and the girls asked about my romantic adventures. Everything sounded plausible when I retold it, so with every new get-together I became more entrenched in the story, telling it as if it was my own, explaining how the Seatseller app worked, why it was such an innovation, how it was going to transform the whole anti-terror struggle.
People want to put you in a relationship box – So, are you in one or not? And now that I was in one, that took me off the worry list for a bit, and they didn’t need much more detail.
The Delusionist Page 7
