‘I’m sorry,’ Emily whispers, ‘I hope you recover soon.’ Mildred has started weeping, silent tears that she makes no effort to brush away. We are all reduced in the end, Emily thinks, one way or another. Back in the main corridor the Tube rumbles beneath her feet and through the linoleum floor. The signs for A & E are highlighted in neon yellow and she wonders how on earth she missed them the first time round. She spots Sam straightaway, with his sweaty windswept hair, right arm in a sling. He’s pale, his hair even brighter than usual. He leans into her hug and she strokes the back of his neck with her hand.
In the car he rests his head against the window and groans.
‘I’m such an idiot,’ he says, ‘I should have jumped out of the way of the ball. It was going too fast.’ Emily laughs.
‘You’re only human. We all make mistakes.’
At home she settles Sam on the sofa and goes into the garden with her mug of tea. Though it’s only May, the promise of summer hangs in the air, oppressive and thick. The pool, which is now fit for use, beckons tantalisingly. Five minutes later and she’s in, braced against the water as it envelops her. Shoulders down quickly. She remembers the drill. As a child she loved the trips to the seaside: the suck and pull of the tide against her sinking toes; the salty taste on her fingers and the promise of fish and chips after, the scent of vinegar lingering in her hair long after the gulls had eaten the last of her scraps. And now as she feels the drag of her body against the water and her heart quickens, she is decided: she will buy that cabin of her dreams. The boys will love it and she’ll use it more now that they are older. They can even take their girlfriends there. Finally she’ll have somewhere to make her mark, her own small dent. She swims until her feet are numb and her fingers blue.
Halfway up the ladder and reaching for her towel, she sees Ryan heading towards her, beer in hand.
‘How was it?’ he asks, nodding to the pool behind her.
‘Good,’ she answers, pulling her towel around her quickly, feeling exposed.
‘I can’t believe I haven’t tried it yet,’ he says.
‘Well, you know …’
‘I know, if I were here more then I would …’ She shoots him a look and he throws his free hand in the air. ‘I have a lot on at the moment, come on … How’s the patient doing?’
At that moment Sam appears at the glass doors, and Ryan kisses Emily’s cheek; ‘For the sake of appearances,’ he whispers. Emily recoils through icy skin. She loathes these false displays of public affection. Conversations are essential and bearable; around the boys they manage a sense of joviality. When she told him she’d booked the holiday he couldn’t even feign excitement. The sensation of his lips against her skin irritates her as if there are barbed thorns beneath her skin, their pointed tips pushing determinedly against her dermis from the inside.
‘Mum, what’s for dinner?’ Sam asks. Glad of the distraction, she walks barefoot back to the house. She hasn’t seen Tom come home, and putting down the saucepan, Emily goes upstairs to his room. The door is shut and she hears a giggle, then a laugh. Not Tom’s. She braces herself, then turns the handle and pushes the door open.
‘What happened to knocking before you enter?’ Tom says. Emily’s eyes adjust to the dimness of the room and makes out Tom sitting up in bed with no T-shirt on.
‘Do you have to live in darkness?’ Emily says, walking to the window and opening the blinds. She turns back towards the bed. The quilt beside Tom unfurls itself into the shape of a girl. In the bright light from the window Emily sees her blush, her dark hair hiding her eyes.
‘Mum, this is Ella; Ella, this is Mum.’
‘What happened to our rule about not closing doors when girls come round?’ she asks Tom. He stares at her in fury.
‘I’m sorry Mrs Bradshaw, it’s my fault. I suggested it.’ Ella sits up straighter and pulls the quilt up to her chin. She looks so young.
‘We’ll talk about it later, Tom. Get dressed,’ Emily says. ‘You should probably get yourself home, Ella.’ She always thought she’d be the liberal mum, the envy of her son’s friends with their conservative, stifling parents, but this is pushing it. Tom’s sixteen but Ella looks younger. Jesus Christ, she could get in trouble.
In the kitchen she washes her hands and feigns a lightness that she doesn’t feel. She’s made carbonara, Sam’s favourite, and he seems in good spirits if slightly high, the co-codamol doing its job. She hears the front door shut. Ryan raises his eyebrows at Tom’s absence and she ignores him.
‘Are you here tomorrow?’ she asks Ryan. ‘In the day, I mean?’ He nods. ‘Good, I have a lunch appointment but Sam needs keeping an eye on,’ she says. ‘I’ve said he can stay at home and revise and just go in for his exams next week.’
After dinner she goes back up to Tom’s bedroom. This time she knocks. He’s on his computer and refuses to meet her eyes.
‘We should talk about what happened,’ Emily says.
‘I’m not a kid, Mum,’ he says.
‘How old is Ella?’
‘Sixteen. What does it matter?’
‘Of course it matters. I can’t have this happening here, on my watch, do you understand?’
‘Is that all you care about, it being on your watch? How it will affect you?’ Tom says.
‘Are you using contraception?’ she asks. Tom drops his head into his hands.
‘We’re not idiots.’
‘Am I really such a selfish person, Tom?’ she asks. He doesn’t answer. She gives up.
Downstairs she opens her laptop. She sets filters on property websites, selecting her criteria – budget, location, sea view. There was one she fell in love with years ago. An old fisherman’s cottage in Dorset perched upon a rock, sea crashing below. ‘Think of the floods,’ Ryan had said. ‘Think of the storms,’ she’d replied, a flutter of excitement in her chest. Damn his opinions and her capacity to listen, empathy her greatest strength and flaw with its willingness to bend. Two bedrooms would be nice but one would be fine – the boys can sleep on the floor. She goes for function over design and soon has a shortlist of three for further consideration, all within a five-mile radius of each other, chain-free and looking for quick sales. Thumbing through her diary, she’s surprised how little is in there and remembers the days where she longed for some space between the lines. She could go down to Dorset at the weekend; the boys will be busy and Ryan’s away again. A road trip would be fun. She’ll book herself into a B & B for Saturday night and set off at dawn. She can already feel the coastal breeze against her skin.
The next morning she wakes to the sun on her face. Ryan has opened the window and birdsong filters in. He never usually opens the window at night; the caterwauling of urban foxes breaks through his sleep. He hates the cold in the winter and the pollen in the springtime that fluffs in his chest and throat. The arguments they’ve had about the window. He is still asleep beside her. He used to be a poor sleeper, his dreams punctuated by nightmares and his eyes snapping open at the slightest sound. Lately though, he sleeps deep and still. Turning back to the window, she closes her eyes and drifts in and out of consciousness.
She wakes again to the alarm clock screeching in her ear. Fumbling on her bedside table she knocks the clock to the ground where the back falls off, the batteries rolling across the floor. Showering quickly, she dresses for the day. She doesn’t want to look like she put too much thought into her outfit, so she settles on simple jeans and white shirt. Only she knows about the lacy underwear beneath and she considers briefly removing it for something plainer before chastising herself for even considering that it matters. No one will be seeing it, that’s for sure. The jeans hang a little looser than they did before. She scrunches her hair up into a knot and pushes her feet into her Converse. On her way out of the room she shakes Ryan awake. Tom’s door is closed and when she pushes it open his room is dark and smells of incense. She flicks open the blinds and opens the window wide and he stirs somewhere beneath his pile of covers.
‘Quick
, you’ll be late for school and you can’t afford to do that now.’ He’ll be lucky to pass his GCSEs at this rate. He mutters incoherently and she pulls his covers back; his hands bolt out and grab them, pulling them back up.
‘Leave me alone, I’m ill.’
‘Ill? Weed hangover more like.’
‘Mum …’
‘Get up, Tom,’ Emily says. As she closes his door behind her she hears him pulling himself heavily out of bed. Down in the kitchen Sam is already at the table eating cereal.
‘How are you feeling, love?’ she asks.
‘Sore but okay.’ Always a trooper, more straightforward than Tom by half.
‘Make sure you take your meds, okay?’
‘Do you think I can swim?’ Sam says. She looks at him.
‘Are you serious?’ He nods.
‘What do you think?’ she asks, putting water into the coffee machine. Why is it every time she wants a coffee the beans are out, the water is empty and the dregs compartment needs emptying? Walking to the fridge, she holds a glass under the ice-maker. A slow hissing sound escapes. Out of water too.
‘Morning.’ Ryan walks in wearing his dressing gown, towel around his neck.
‘That’s just cruel,’ Sam says as Ryan slides open the doors and disappears towards the pool.
‘You’ll be back in before you know it,’ Emily says, kissing Sam’s cheek. The rhythmic splashing of Ryan’s swimming starts up.
‘Mum, can you give me a lift?’ Tom emerges.
‘Jesus, you look rough,’ Sam says. Tom grabs a fistful of cereal and jams it into his mouth. ‘That’s mine.’ Sam grabs the cereal box with his good arm and waves it in the air.
‘Mum?’ Tom implores. Emily checks the time, she’s meeting Adeline at midday – why are there always delays when she has plans? She’s seeing their lunch as an opportunity to rebalance things, clear the air. They leave Sam in front of the Xbox and Ryan in the shower. Tom sits in grumpy silence beside her and when she pulls over he climbs out without kissing her goodbye.
‘Later,’ she calls to his receding back.
On the way home she picks up some fresh bread and cheese for Sam’s lunch. Pulling out of the parking bay, she notices smoke coming from the bonnet. Shit. Halfway home the power steering goes and just as she pulls into their drive the engine conks out. Rolling to a silent halt, she pulls the handbrake on. Just what she needs.
An hour later and the recovery men are on their way. She’ll have to take the bus to Peckham, where she and Adeline have agreed to meet. In his office Ryan lets off a sheen of good health; his skin glows and the room smells of mint shower gel.
‘You off?’ he asks.
She nods. ‘Remember to make Sam take his medication.’
‘He’s a big boy, Em.’ She glares at him. ‘Okay,’ he says, ‘got it.’
The bus is half empty, a blessing because the heat rises in waves off the pavement and folds its way through the bus, stifling her. She climbs to the top deck and systematically opens all the windows, the air cooling as they gather speed. She checks her lipstick in her mirror and twists the bracelet she is wearing. Pulling out a book, she shifts back in her chair and jams her knees against the back of the seat in front.
The café is easy to find, squeezed in between a bookshop and a dry cleaner. The tables outside on the pavement are empty and Emily walks hesitatingly inside, phone in one hand. An elderly man nurses a cappuccino in a corner and a harassed woman with toddler in tow sits near the back, patiently trying to eat her croissant with one hand while preventing the toddler from pulling her hair with the other. A faded painting of an olive grove hangs on the wall. Emily checks her watch. She’s perfectly on time. Back outside she chooses a table for two and orders a macchiato. Not that she needs any more caffeine charging through her blood. She sits on her hands to steady them. The minutes tick by slowly and she starts to worry. What if she’s forgotten or changed her mind? She should have texted to remind her. She reaches in her bag and pulls out her book again. Her eyes graze the pages as her hands turn them, but she can’t concentrate for the palpitating in her chest. Since the sportive she’s been overthinking things. Adeline’s texts have seemed distant, distracted. She’ll give it half an hour and then she’ll leave.
It’s her fault she’s in this position, friendless and desperate. All the years she’s given up to Ryan’s friends. The dinner parties she’s endured all blending into one long ghastly show of self-promotion. She berates her foolishness for going through the motions despite her better judgement. The last real friend she had was Charlotte and she didn’t even go to her funeral. Since then she’s had a handful of fleeting acquaintances no more memorable than the man she buys her newspaper from in the morning. Even her sister is fixed permanently at arm’s length. There’s something wrong with her, something that people can spot. An impermeable knot in her centre. Even Ryan has veered away. Not veered, been pushed. She drops the book on the table and puts her head in her hands. She’s such an idiot. All those years of convincing herself she was the ideal wife, playing the part. The perfect hostess, long-suffering dinner-circuit companion, selfless multitasking mother of two, patient and often solitary wife. Never once complaining about his trips away, their time apart.
The fleeting jumble of one-night stands, pleasurable for minutes but reduced to something shallow and dirty the moment she went home. Ryan always knew when she’d been with someone else, even when she stopped telling him, at his request. ‘You’re assuaging yourself of your guilt,’ he told her, ‘it’s selfish.’ So she wrapped herself in a cloak of secrets. She told herself that their marriage was better off for it, for her not needing him. Lies, she realises now, her independence a fabrication of her own invention; the other men a bid for attention; adoration for a moment better than none at all. How much braver it would have been to admit the truth, that she was scared he couldn’t love her in the way she needed.
Now he doesn’t need her and she has nothing to offer. Of course he will leave her for the other woman; it’s foolish to wait in hope. She feels the loosening of his ties to her, to them. Only a matter of time before he goes and does not return. All the things that cannot be undone.
‘Emily?’ Raising her face from her hands, she sees Adeline in front of her, a look of concern on her face.
‘Adeline.’ Emily stands and leans forward, kissing Adeline on each cheek awkwardly. She should have hugged her instead. Why does Adeline have this ability to unnerve her, to throw her off balance?
‘Sorry I’m late,’ Adeline says. ‘Timekeeping really isn’t my thing.’ Emily gestures to the chair opposite and dismisses her apology.
‘It’s not a hardship to sit and read,’ she says, waving her hand to get the attention of the waitress.
‘How are you finding it?’ Adeline asks, nodding at The Days of Abandonment as Emily returns it to her bag.
‘Heartbreaking, raw – have you read it?’
‘Didn’t appeal,’ Adeline says. ‘I like escapism.’ Emily smiles.
‘Nothing escapist about this story,’ she says. Adeline orders a coffee and puts her sunglasses on.
‘Glorious weather, don’t you think?’
‘Bit hot,’ Emily answers. ‘How’ve you been?’
‘I can’t believe we haven’t seen each other since the ride,’ Adeline says. ‘Crazy, isn’t it?’ Emily is flung straight back there into the changing room, the heat of it. Leaning forward, Adeline lowers her voice. ‘How’ve you been? You look different.’
‘Everything’s fine, I guess. And you?’
‘From the beginning, please, every sordid detail.’ Adeline grins and leans back in her chair, twirling a hair band around her fingers. Emily hesitates, unsure what she means.
‘Come on, spill. What’s going on with that student? I wanted to ask you before but I forgot.’
‘What?’
‘The hot one, from Dulwich Village.’ What does Adeline remember that she doesn’t?
‘Nothing, really. He’s just
got a crush on—’
‘Oh come on, I saw the chemistry between you.’ Emily blushes and feels sixteen again. She sees herself reflected in Adeline’s sunglasses. There’s a hint of a smile in Adeline’s tone. Emily feels mortified. First Leo and then the changing room, Adeline must think she is one hormonal mess. She clearly recognises Emily as a fraud, an imposter as both a wife and as a friend.
‘Nothing’s happened with Leo, but he wants it to.’ Adeline reaches out her hand and places it on Emily’s arm.
‘And you don’t?’
‘It’s complicated.’
‘It didn’t look like nothing, that night in Dulwich,’ Adeline says. Emily changes the subject.
‘Ryan’s buying a place with his lover. In Wales,’ Emily says. Adeline’s face arranges itself in shock and she digs her fingers into Emily’s wrist.
‘What a shit,’ Adeline says, at a loss for words. ‘How do you know?’
‘I saw something about a cottage, on the table. I shouldn’t have looked. I wouldn’t usually, but … it’s hard. I think Sam and Tom know something’s up. Tom’s stoned all the time and Sam seems needier than usual.’
‘They’re more resilient than you think, I mean, my God, if a shrink analysed my childhood I’d be in an institution,’ Adeline says.
‘The thing is,’ Emily says, ‘I was wondering whether you would have any idea … who it might be, I mean.’
‘You mean he hasn’t told you?’ Adeline says. She moves her hand back to her lap and shakes her head, rummaging in her bag for her phone, which has started ringing. ‘I wouldn’t have a clue, I don’t know him that well; he was just a colleague, you know.’
‘I wondered if you’d heard anything when you worked together … rumours, that sort of thing. I know he respects you,’ Emily says. Adeline’s phone beeps and she frowns and puts it on silent.
The Codes of Love Page 16
