One Glass Is Never Enough

by Jane Wenham-Jones

  “I was worried. What’s the matter?”

  He didn’t reply. His face had a remote, haunted look – even the corners of his mouth seemed to be dragged down.

  “What’s happened?” She felt instantly guilty, as though she’d been caught out in a terrible deed, as though he’d found out something awful about her and was about to say that everything had changed. “Has something happened?” she asked again.

  He turned then and shook his head. “No,” he said, his voice sounding tired and beaten. “Nothing has happened – just me.”

  She sat on the arm of the chair, put an arm around him and hugged him, all her good spirits dwindled away to dismay. “I’ve been so longing to see you,” she said. “I’ve missed you.”

  He looked round at her. It was an expression she hadn’t seen before. “I’ve missed you too,” he said tonelessly.

  “Well, I’m here now,” she said, moving closer.

  He felt stiff and unyielding. “Not really,” he said.

  She moved round and knelt on the floor in front of him, looking up into his face. “I am – I am here. I’ve been thinking about you all the time, thinking about that night, knowing I just want to be with you.”

  Sam looked back at her. His eyes were sad. “Are you going to go home and pack your bags, then? Tell your husband it’s all over? That you’ve met someone else? That you want a divorce? I’m not asking you to,” he went on, as she hesitated. “I would never ask you to do that.”

  “So why…” She looked at him, confused.

  “I’ve been sitting here doing a lot of thinking. Feeling badly about what we did. Badly for you, for your husband. And for me. I promised myself I wouldn’t do that.”

  “I don’t regret it,” she said staunchly. “I think it was meant to be.”

  He gave a grim smile. “That’s something people come up with to excuse their shabby behaviour.”

  The nails from one of her hands dug into the palm of the other. “Do you think what we did was shabby?”

  He looked past her, out of the window. “I’m not very proud of it. Having sex with a married woman who’s in a highly emotional state and suffering from lack of sleep, when her husband’s away, in her husband’s house – does that sound like behaviour to take pride in, to you?”

  She grabbed at his arm and shook it. “It wasn’t like that! I wanted it – I made it happen. You wanted it too, didn’t you?” Even now the thought of his passion sent a shock of desire through her.

  He nodded. “Oh yes. I should have controlled myself. It always takes two.”

  There was something about the way he said it. Gaynor looked at him and things fell into place. “Did your wife have an affair?” she asked suddenly.

  He was silent for a moment. Then he reached for his tobacco. “I don’t know. Part of me hopes she did. That I wasn’t all she ever had. She threw out a lot of stuff before she died. Was very keen to clear everything up. Diaries, letters, cards. I don’t know. I saw one of them. It just had kisses inside. I don’t know who it was from. There was this black plastic sack full of rubbish waiting to go out. She’d tied the top up. I carried it downstairs to the bins outside the flats and I wanted to rip it open and take out all her papers and look for clues. But I couldn’t do that to her.”

  He stared bleakly in front of him. “Though I sometimes wonder what would have lasted longer – the guilt at betraying her trust like that, or the unanswered questions that eat me now.”

  Gaynor took his hand, moved by his expression, and tried to sound reassuring. “I think you’d have known if she was having a long-term thing. Perhaps it was just a harmless little flirtation at work or something. I think you do know when your partner has someone else.” Though did she? Sometimes she was convinced Victor was playing away. Other times, like last night, she wasn’t sure at all…

  Sam was talking again. “I don’t know – Eleanor had this sort of closed air about her. You never really knew what was going on with her. Even the kids will say that now. And yet she was a lovely mother to them – she’d hug them, laugh with them.”

  He looked away again. Gaynor couldn’t work out whether it was anger or tears he was controlling.

  “They’d all be laughing at something and I’d walk in and it would stop.” He shook his head. “Debra says it wasn’t like that but it was. Eleanor never laughed with me any more.”

  Gaynor said cautiously, “When did it start to go wrong?”

  She always felt intrusive questioning Sam, as though she were probing somewhere he didn’t want her touching, but she had a strong urge to hear more. A sense it was important. He turned and looked at her. His face had softened a little.

  “It wasn’t ever really right,” he said matter-of-factly. He pulled a cigarette paper from the packet. “She was a WPC when I met her. We were partnered. We got called out to a party where a kid had been abused. You couldn’t believe it. The bloke’s family stood around him, shielding him. He was drunk, they said. They offered it by way of an explanation. He was drunk so he tried to screw his six-year old niece.”

  He stopped and began to roll a cigarette. Gaynor sat quite still, stiff with horror.

  Sam went on in the same even voice. “Eleanor carried the child out while I arrested him. We couldn’t look at each other afterwards. Back at the station, my mate Terry was suspended for throwing the bloke’s hot tea in his crotch. I felt dreadful afterwards because I wished I’d done it…”

  The light was going. Sam stared out at the garden, his expression in shadow. Gaynor sat on the floor at his feet, laid her head against his legs, leant up and took his hand. He squeezed it briefly.

  “We shouldn’t have got married after that. We were both doing it for the wrong reasons. We both wanted it for what we thought it stood for but not for each other. We did it because the church had been booked and the cake iced and her mother would have been mortified if we hadn’t.”

  “Did Eleanor say that?”

  “No, Eleanor wouldn’t say that. Eleanor didn’t say much about anything.” He sighed. “She was a lovely mother and the best wife she knew how to be, bearing in mind she wasn’t in love with me.”

  Gaynor searched for something to say that would make it better. “Perhaps she was but she couldn’t show it.”

  He laughed without mirth. “Or perhaps she just wasn’t.”

  “I think,” he said later, as they sat quietly looking out at the blackness, “that she loved me in her way. She loved me as her husband, as the father of her children, as the provider, because that is what one does. She didn’t feel passion for me and – in fairness to her – why should she have done? After the first, short, desperate weeks, I didn’t feel it for her, either.”

  Gaynor realised she was holding her breath. She felt as if she had to keep very still, that now he had started telling her this, she must not move and interrupt it.

  “We ended up embarrassed for each other,” Sam was saying. “I think there were times when she would have liked me to take her in my arms, when perhaps she even wished we could make love, but by then she couldn’t approach me and I would never have made a move towards her, for fear of more rejection.”

  He looked down at Gaynor and she saw the pain on his face. “It was the thing that grieved me most at the end,” he said. “I did try and hold her then and I felt between us all that loss and remorse and regret.”

  Gaynor twisted round and put her arms around his knees, hugging them. “I want you to hold me, Sam.”

  He stroked her hair. “You belong to someone else.”

  “Someone who is unfaithful to me.”

  “You don’t know that yet.”

  “I’m going to find out.”

  “And then?”

  Gaynor sat back, throwing up her hands. “Tell him, leave him. I don’t know. I thought I’d feel bad the next morning but I didn’t. It felt right. It felt special. But…” She struggled to put into words how she felt – to even understand those feelings herself. “I’m confused ab
out Victor. I was quite sure he had someone else – well, I am sure. I think he has. So what can he expect from me?”

  Sam was silent.

  “And although he has just been nice to me today, he spends more time being awful and I can’t live like that. But then, when he is OK, I feel that I should...”

  Sam spoke quietly. “I’m not going to be a weapon. Not something you use to get even with your husband. My feelings are involved here, Gaynor. I don’t know what’s bloody hit me.”

  She looked at him desperately. “Please give me time to sort it out. Please do that. You said you loved me. You said it. Do you love me, Sam?”

  He leant down and pulled her up into the big chair with him, on to his lap, into his arms, held her against him.

  Her heart stilled. Brutus appeared on the arm of the chair and rubbed his face against Sam’s shoulder. She wished it could all stop here – that they could stay in this chair in front of this night-filled window, warm and safe, for ever.

  “Do you still love me, Sam?”

  He squeezed her tighter. “That is the problem. Yes, I do.”

  17. Vinho Verde

  A young wine and missing some body.

  “Who is it? Who’s doing this?” Sarah appeared to be trying to pulverise the answer-phone as Gaynor walked into Greens.

  “Not another one!” Gaynor dumped her handbag on the bar. “Play it to me!”

  “I can’t even understand it.” Sarah hit the Play button. “Just the usual stuff – you bitch, etc.”

  They both listened. It was more indistinct than the others. “You’re a fucking what?” Gaynor asked.

  Sarah shook her head. “Dunno. Lezzo?”

  Gaynor listened again. “Oh, could be. Well, it wouldn’t be the first time someone had assumed that, now, would it? I still want to know which one of us is with who. I think I fancy you more than Claire.” She grinned. “Or are we supposed to be a ménage à trois? I tell you, it’s some pervert who wants to watch…”

  Sarah glared. “It’s not funny.”

  “What happened to the police?”

  Sarah grimaced. “They’re looking into it. Which they were doing three weeks ago. I phoned BT again. They say all they can do is give the police the number again. And they still won’t give it to me!”

  She rummaged under the bar and extracted a packet of pain killers. “My head feels like it’s going to burst. I hate that kitchen – I fucking hate it. It’s all very well for Claire to have all these great ideas about lunchtime specials but who’s got to bloody cook them? It’s only omelettes and salads, she says. Omelettes are a pain in the arse when everyone wants them and Benjamin’s on salads and it takes him all bloody day.”

  “They are lovely, though,” said Gaynor. “That woman and her daughter who were in here yesterday said they’d never seen such beautiful –”

  “Yes,” Sarah interrupted, “but they were on holiday. Most of the people in here in the week have to go back to work in the afternoon. They can’t spend their entire lunch-hour waiting while Benjamin carves a water-lily from a radish!”

  Gaynor giggled. “Bless him.”

  “You wouldn’t say that if you were in the kitchen,” said Sarah darkly. “If you had twenty-seven meals to get out and his sole contribution was to colour-coordinate the veg.”

  “Can’t we get another chef to help out so you can be up here more?”

  “Claire says we can’t afford it yet,” said Sarah shortly. “Don’t think I haven’t tried.”

  “Can’t she do more down there?”

  Sarah shrugged. “She does what she can. She’s made all the desserts this week and she did all the finger food for that engagement party we had last Sunday. She can do the odd evening if I’ve prepared it all but I’m the one who’s supposed to be the trained chef.” She pulled a face. “I’d just forgotten how gruesome it can be!”

  She looked at her watch. “Paul’s due to pick the kids up at eleven. I hope he’s not late again. Charlie’s been dressed since six.”

  Sarah looked incredibly stressed out. Gaynor switched the coffee grinder on. She felt worried about her – the long hours she was working, her headaches, her worries about Paul letting the children down.

  “I’m sure he’ll be here and we’ll be able to get someone else to do the cooking soon, she said. “We must be doing OK – we’re pretty full every night, aren’t we?”

  “Yeah, I suppose. I really must pay more attention to the figures. I’ve just had so many other things to think about, I’ve left it all to Claire. I mean she’s so good at it.” Sarah ran a hand through her shock of hair. “I used to be a capable person,” she suddenly burst out. “I ran restaurants four times the size of this before I had the kids!”

  “I know.” Gaynor put down the coffee cups and gave her a hug. Sarah felt tense. “You are still capable. You’re the most capable person I know – you’ve just got a hell of a lot on.”

  Sarah sighed. “Yeah. Bit tired.”

  In a gesture of support, Gaynor peeled potatoes, while Sarah made up lasagnes and Benjamin fashioned carrot twirls. “Just fluted edges is fine,” Sarah said, “it’s much quicker.”

  “Presentation,” said Benjamin. “At college,” he told Gaynor, “I got full marks for my scalloped celeriac.”

  “Put them in a real kitchen,” growled Sarah, when he’d disappeared upstairs to oversee the flower arrangements, “and they wouldn’t last five minutes.”

  “Shall I go and open up?” Gaynor put the last of the vegetables in water and looked at the clock. “Where’s Claire, anyway?”

  “Not coming in till later. Got to take one of the dogs to the vet. Let’s just hope we’re not too busy.”

  Gaynor picked up a bunch of keys and headed for the stairs. Overhead a pair of feet ran across the floorboards. Moments later, Bel appeared in the doorway holding her doll Rosie by the hair. Sarah looked up from her chopping.

  “What’s the matter, darling?”

  Bel adopted a long-suffering expression. “Scarface has been sick on my bed,” she announced importantly. “Daddy’s not coming and Charlie has run away.”

  “Where’s he gone?” Sarah switched off the TV and pulled the headphones from Luke who was sprawled on the sofa with his CD walkman and the remote control.

  Luke shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “Couldn’t you have stopped him?”

  Luke sat up, sighing. “I didn’t know he was going, did I? I was talking to Dad and when I put the phone down, Bel said Charlie had gone. It’s not my fault,” he said belligerently. “How come you always blame me?”

  Sarah looked in their bedroom. Somebody could have died in there and you wouldn’t know. It was impossible, from the widespread chaos and week-old washing strewn on every available inch of floor space, to have any idea if Charlie had taken anything with him.

  “Why didn’t your father come, anyway?” she asked sharply.

  Luke lounged in the doorway. “He said he had to work.”

  Yeah, right, thought Sarah, as she dialled her mother’s number. Bloody Paul. Bel was young and accepting, Luke in teenage-slouch mode didn’t care much about anything, but Charlie… Charlie was the one who’d taken all this hard and he didn’t deserve it. Paul had lost sight of everything but his next high at the bookies. No wonder he’d called Luke’s mobile rather than her.

  She waited impatiently for her mother to answer the phone, steeling herself for the inevitable diatribe on Paul’s shortcomings. She hadn’t really expected Charlie to be there but anything was possible. She explained as briefly as she could, shaking her head at Gaynor as she listened to her mother’s response. “No? OK. No please, stay there. Just in case he comes to you…”

  “Where might he go?” Gaynor was putting her jacket on.

  “I don’t know.” Sarah was white. “I just don’t know.”

  Richard, who’d fortuitously wandered in, mid-crisis, was attempting to interrogate Luke. “How long ago did he leave?”

  Luke s
hrugged.

  “Think!” Sarah shrieked at him.

  “Bel came down about twenty minutes ago,” said Gaynor. “He can’t have gone far.”

  Richard picked up his keys. “I’ll go and get the car. Has he got any money with him?”

  Sarah shook her head. “I shouldn’t think so,”

  Gaynor squeezed her arm. “I’ll go and check the beach.”

  “What shall I do?” Benjamin enquired.

  “Hold the fort!” Gaynor called, as she headed for the door.

  Poor, poor Sarah, she thought as she ran along the jetty. She’d looked as if she was going to be sick. Gaynor shaded her eyes and scanned the curve of Viking Bay, hoping to see Charlie kicking a rock somewhere. The tide was going out – ropes and chains stretched beneath the stranded fishing boats on the glistening sand. In the distance a couple poked about in the whelk-encrusted pools and someone wandered along with a dog by the pastel-coloured beach huts, all boarded up for winter beneath the cliffs, but the figures were all too tall to be Charlie. The wind whipped her hair about as she gazed at the white undercliff in the distance, curving round towards Ramsgate. Nobody there.

  “It’s not that I think anything will happen to him wandering about Broadstairs,” Sarah had said, “but I worry about his state of mind. He’s been withdrawn lately – difficult, you know. He could do anything. Suppose,” she said, looking stricken, “he tries to find Paul. Suppose he tries to hitch a lift or something?”

  “He’s not that silly.” Gaynor had tried to be reassuring. But really she didn’t know anything about ten-year-old boys. Or have a clue what he might do.

  “He hasn’t caught a train,” said Richard, getting back into the car. The bloke thinks he’d have seen him and no kid on his own has bought a ticket in the last hour or so.”

  Sarah blew her nose. “Oh God, where is he? You know, if it was Luke I’d know where to look – he’d be at Tyrone’s house or at the skateboarding place or skulking round the arcade. But Charlie…”

  She shivered, pulling her coat around her, trying to block out the horrible visions that kept crowding into her mind.