‘Don’t worry,’ said Ruth, picking up Betty. ‘Have you had a good day?’
‘It’s been great,’ said Betty. ‘Aggie took us to the park after school and I played on the slide with Megan.’
Ruth shot a glance at Agatha. It rang a bell but not loud enough.
‘You know, that girl in her class who wasn’t being too nice,’ said Aggie.
‘Oh God, yes, of course. Shit, I was going to speak to her mother, wasn’t I.’
‘Don’t worry, I did,’ said Aggie. ‘She was really nice and Betty’s going there for tea next week. I think it’ll all blow over.’
Ruth was gripped by panic as the young girl in front of her dealt with their life. The ground shifted beneath her and her breath came short and sharp. ‘I should have done that,’ she managed to say.
Aggie blushed. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, it’s just I was there, I didn’t realise . . . ’
Ruth sat in the chair by the window, Betty on her lap and her breathing slowed. Aggie was of course right. She had just been there. Ruth had to stop doing this to herself, she had to stop thinking that only she could handle everything, that it was only the right thing if she was in control. ‘It’s okay,’ she said. ‘Thanks.’
‘I was wondering if it might have had some bearing on her not sleeping,’ said Aggie now. ‘You know, being scared at school isn’t the best way to sleep well at night.’
Ruth was filled with love for Aggie, it was as if she had a light shining around her. ‘I expect you’re right, again,’ she said. She leant forward with her piece of paper. ‘Anyway, I’ve got your list.’
Agatha had seen the panic in Ruth’s face when she’d told her about Megan, but the woman was so daffy she didn’t deserve to be spared her own failings. She looked at the scruffy piece of paper Ruth had given her with names and numbers scrawled across it. Only a couple had ticks next to them. ‘I’ve put the amount of people coming next to each person. As you can see, I haven’t managed to get hold of everyone, but at least you’ll know what to expect if everyone comes, which they won’t, of course.’
Why ‘of course’? wondered Agatha. What would stop you coming to a child’s birthday party anyway? Her mother had never got it together to give Agatha a proper party. There’d been a celebration on the day, a few children and friends of their parents all holding paper cups filled with warm liquids and eating sandwiches which had been made too early and left uncovered so they tasted slightly stale. Mum, Louise had shouted in the middle of one of these tepid affairs, Agatha says you’ve got her a pony and you’re keeping it at the stables in Langley and I’m never allowed to see it or touch it and anyway that’s not fair ’cause you wouldn’t even get me a rabbit for my birthday. Agatha had watched her mother’s smile go from real to frozen without really changing. My goodness, that’s generous, Aunt Kate had said. A pony, Agatha, what a lucky girl. And then her mother had laughed. Can we talk about this later please, Louise, she’d said, much too gaily.
If everyone came to Hal’s party there would be thirty-one guests, twenty-one adults and ten children. There would be no warm liquids, stale sandwiches or make-believe presents. I had to lie, she’d shouted at her mother later, because what you gave me was so rubbish. You’re just ungrateful, her mother had shouted back; we do our best, your dad and I, we do our best. Well, try harder, Agatha had wanted to say, because your best sure isn’t good enough.
Ruth moved next to her and stroked Hal’s face. ‘And how are you, sweetie?’
Agatha could feel Hal flinch. ‘He’s fine, a bit sleepy, it’s been a busy day.’
‘What are you planning for the party? Can I help?’
‘Oh no, no, you’re fine,’ answered Agatha, the very thought of Ruth’s help making her feel sick. ‘It’s nothing special. Well, of course, it’ll be special, but you know, I’m not planning anything over the top.’
Ruth looked at her for a beat too long and Agatha felt her cheeks growing hot. ‘Okay, well, don’t go mad and wear yourself out, Aggie. We really appreciate this, you know, you’ve been amazing.’
Hal wouldn’t let Ruth take him to bed so she went up with only Betty and for a moment Agatha felt sorry for the woman. To be so inept that even your nearly three-year-old son sees you for what you are must be heartbreaking. She smoothed Hal’s hair against his perfect head and hugged him closer to her chest. Slowly a kernel of an idea was forming itself in her heart.
Christian tried very hard to work out what he wanted, but nothing concrete formed in his mind. He thought about calling Toby a couple of times but not only did his Facebook status crushingly reveal that he was in Ibiza, he realised that he didn’t want to hear what Toby would say. Instead he sent him a message about Hal’s party, as Ruth kept badgering him to do. He’d be back on Friday. Maybe they could find a quiet corner and Christian could ask his advice. After that there was no one. He had drifted from all his university friends and now if they did go out with other couples it was mainly just the husbands of women whom Ruth knew. His brother lived in Australia and they knew precisely nothing about each other’s lives. And his father was ex-army, poker straight, eminently shockable and of the put-up-and-shut-up generation.
Really it had always been Ruth. Ruth had been his best friend for as long as he’d known her. She was quick and bright and funny and knew him better than he knew himself. He longed for her now so he could ask her advice. But she’d got lost along the way. It was like he’d been on a long car journey with all the windows open, so that his head felt full and his ears buzzed with unrecognisable sounds. And yet she was still indefatigably there. Christian could feel her presence in a way he had never felt anybody else. She seemed so physical and solid next to him it gave him a rush of comfort, as though she had a force field around her which was strong enough for both of them.
Christian wondered if this was what love is. The basic knowledge that someone was looking out for you, that there was one person out there in this sea of bodies who understood what you meant and why you had said it. Who wasn’t scared to shout at you, who loved you enough to be bothered to try and change you. Christian remembered one of the very few times he had been rude to his mother, a woman who was so steely as to appear cold. Why are you always so mean to me, you’re always getting at me, he’d wailed at her, aged ten, maybe eleven. And he had been shocked by her answer as she’d turned from the stove, steam reddening her cheeks and moistening her eyes. I am mean because I love you so much. The easy option would be for me to let you eat with your mouth open or not say thank you, because then we wouldn’t have a row and my life would be peaceful. But I tell you these things to help you in the world, because people who eat with their mouths open or forget to say thank you are never much liked. And I want you to be liked. I love you and I want the best for you. He wasn’t sure if Ruth still cared that much about him.
Christian knew that he wanted to be liked and loved, probably by as many people as possible, but mainly and most importantly by Ruth and his children. But it was so hard to let go of everything else, to admit to yourself that you were never going to be more than you.
Ideas were forming round Christian, not so as he could grab them yet, but he felt their presence. Then Sarah called him two days after she’d walked away from him in the park. She sounded tearful and asked him to meet her after work and he couldn’t refuse because he’d asked exactly the same of her only days before. The water from the lake flooded back but this time he was sitting at his desk and soon it had covered his head.
He rang Ruth at work to say Giles had asked him to take his place at a boring function. Okay, Ruth said, what do you think we should get Hal for his birthday? I don’t know, Christian had answered, I wouldn’t bother, he’s still very little and he’ll get heaps from everyone else. That’s nice, Ruth replied, too busy to even consider your son’s birthday. You will be able to come, won’t you? I mean, you won’t suddenly have some important function you have to attend because you are of course so important. And then she’d put the phone down
and Christian couldn’t face ringing her back.
Sarah was sitting outside the pub when he arrived, a faceless one this time that neither of them had been to before. He thought he saw one of Ruth’s friends at the next table and his heart leapt in his chest like a demented rabbit. He went inside to get them a drink and tried not to think about Sarah sniffling at their table.
‘D’you want one?’ she asked, her hand shaking as she lit her cigarette.
Christian shook his head. ‘I’m sorry I said all that to you last time,’ said Sarah. ‘I don’t know what came over me. Sometimes you make me so angry, I just want to give you a taste of your own medicine.’
‘Please don’t apologise. The truth is that both you and Ruth are way too good for me.’
Sarah drew deeply on the cigarette. ‘I don’t really blame you. I mean, what could you have done, left your wife when she was about to give birth?’
‘I could have not got into it in the first place. We could have been more careful. I could have been more careful.’
‘Because then you could have walked away, right?’
‘No. No, that’s not what I meant.’
‘What was it anyway?’
Someone was surely going to save him. ‘What was what?’
‘Us. You know, what was I to you? Be honest, if I was just a cheap fuck, you can say it.’
The words made him physically recoil, like she’d hit him. ‘It was never that straightforward, Sarah. I didn’t get into it thinking I was going to leave Ruth, but it became more than it should have been. Christ, I don’t really know.’
‘Why did you choose Ruth?’ And she said it so bluntly he momentarily thought he must have misheard.
‘Oh God.’ The need to run made his legs twitch under the table.
‘No, Christian, God can’t help you now,’ said Sarah, her eyes shrinking to half their size. Christian wondered if she might be mad. He decided the quicker he answered her questions the quicker he could leave.
‘I chose Ruth because she’s my wife and she was about to have my child and,’ he didn’t know if he should go on, but something about this young girl sitting here judging his relationship made him feel angry, ‘and because I love her. You know, we fight and often we don’t understand each other, but I do love her.’ And the presence of the words given life by his warm breath momentarily comforted Christian, made him sure of his choice. But Sarah looked shattered. Christian worried he had broken her. ‘I’m sorry, you asked, that’s the truth.’
‘You wouldn’t know the truth if it fucking hit you, Christian. Did you ever give me a moment’s thought?’
‘Of course I did. I do. That’s why I rang. I’ll never be able to say sorry enough for what happened, but what’s the point of this?’
Sarah picked up her glass and for a second Christian thought she was going to throw it at him. He saw it leave her hands and felt the thin shards break the skin on his face. He wondered how he would explain it to Ruth. But she put it back on the table without drinking. ‘The point of this is that it’s my turn.’
‘Your turn? Your turn for what?’
‘Don’t play thick, Christian, it doesn’t suit you. It’s my turn for you.’
Christian wondered if he had entered some parallel universe where people bargained with each other’s lives as though they were pieces on a chessboard. But Sarah looked serious. ‘What are you talking about? It doesn’t work that way.’
‘You had your chance, Christian. I killed our baby for you. You’re not going to get away with this again.’
‘Get away with what? We haven’t done anything.’
‘Oh, and Ruth would see it that way, of course.’
His head was spinning, he couldn’t see clearly, like some cliché. ‘What are you saying?’
‘I’m saying it’s game over. She’s not going to forgive you again.’
‘So, let me get this straight. You think you can blackmail me into being with you? Sounds like a healthy start to a relationship.’
Sarah laughed and this time she did sound mad. ‘A healthy relationship? Yeah right, like anyone’s got one of those.’
Christian had a migraine about once a year and he knew what was coming when the sweat started to trickle down his back and he got flashes at the corner of his vision. He had to get to a dark room and lie very still with lots of strong painkillers inside him that would do nothing more than take the edge off a pain so intense he felt sure it was going to kill him. ‘I’m going to go now,’ he said. ‘This is mad and I have to get home.’ He stood up and Sarah grabbed at his leg.
‘Please, don’t leave me. Come home with me tonight. Just one night, I didn’t mean all that stuff about telling Ruth.’
Soon he was going to be sick. ‘Sarah, I’ve got to go. I don’t feel good. We’ll talk later in the week. I promise.’ It was as easy as breathing.
‘Really? Will you call me tomorrow?’
A clamp had fastened itself around his head, squeezing his brain out the top, shooting arrows across his shoulders. ‘Yes, I will.’ He stumbled out of the pub, simply grateful to be released, unable to focus on anything other than his need to get home. He began trying to flag down a taxi, longing for the moment when he could sit in the back and count down the minutes until it might start to get a little better.
Agatha ordered the food on Tesco Direct; it had made shopping a whole lot easier since Ruth had showed her the password, and she absolutely never bought anything that wasn’t to be used by the family. Some nannies would get themselves their own shower gel or their favourite biscuits or little things like that, but Agatha would never steal from anyone.
Except that one time, of course, and that had been a necessity, so you couldn’t call it stealing. The way Agatha saw it, she had been at war, and what’s that saying, something like anything goes in love and war. Yes, it had been more a case of survival.
Agatha had been fourteen when she’d realised that she had to get away from the vileness of Harry and the apathy of her family else she would either die or kill someone. Either way, her life would be over and that seemed unfair, considering she wasn’t the one who’d done anything wrong. She’d worked out by then that what Harry did to her was wrong. And not only wrong in that it made her feel ill and sick, but literally wrong in the eyes of the law. Somehow though she had never been able to communicate this to Harry himself. It was true that their meetings had become far less regular and they often went for months without seeing each other, but if ever he did get her on his own, it didn’t take him long to get her naked and vulnerable.
One of the things Agatha hated most about herself was that she never screamed or lashed out or told him to fuck off, that she was going to call the police. He constantly rendered her speechless and powerless, every time took her right back to the first time and for the minutes that it took, she was once again nothing more than a shaking nine-year-old, not even sure if this was just another awful part of growing up.
He rolled off her and said, ‘My God, girly, I think we’re getting somewhere, I’d hazard a guess you enjoyed that.’ And all in a flash she had seen her future, she had realised that she would never be free of him unless he died or she got too far away for him to ever find her again. Because if at this point right now she was unable to set him straight, then when would the time ever come? She might be able to limit his chances to twice a year, but the fact that he was always there, leering over her shoulder like a character from a Grimm fairy tale made it impossible for her to get on with anything else. It had taken eighteen months’ planning and much pilfering from her mother’s purse to save enough to leave, but days after her sixteenth birthday she’d left home and never gone back.
It had been so easy to watch herself walk away, to real-ise that she was going to do it at last. Her parents didn’t know whether she was alive or dead and sometimes she imagined ringing them and explaining everything. But what was everything? Where did it start, had it even ended? She wondered now if she would ever tell them, if
she saw them again, or if the tale had got somehow lost in the tunnels of time. Either way, she could never forgive them. They’d had the most precious thing in the world, a child, and they’d let their own neuroses and bad temper and stupidity get in the way of keeping that child safe.
Ruth reminded Agatha a lot of her own mother. They weren’t bad women and they loved their children, but they didn’t seem to realise that wasn’t enough. Betty, Agatha had decided, would be fine. She was just like Louise, all pretty and headstrong and opinionated. She would definitely shout and when she did Ruth would do her best to make everything better. But Hal. Little Hal. He would never shout in a million years and Agatha shuddered when she thought of all the things that could happen to him.
Hal had kept quiet and nobody had fed him. Can you imagine that? If anyone ever found out and asked her why she had done it, that would be the first thing she would say. They just stuffed bottles into his mouth because he didn’t ask for food and that was the easiest option. Yes, she imagined saying, it was shocking. I don’t know what would have happened if I hadn’t come along.
Hal now ate eggs, cheese, cake and those organic puffs that all the mothers in the park seemed so fond of, as well as everything else that Agatha had already got him to try. In fact, he was pretty much eating like a normal three-year-old now, except of course for the fact that you had to mash everything up because his mouth was so unused to chewing. It had become a bit of a trial in the evening, waiting for moments when no one was looking and sneaking him food. So far Agatha had told him that they were saving his eating as a big surprise for his party, but with the day now only forty-eight small hours away, anxiety was taking hold of her. Hal had become too much her own to share him with anyone else. Hal would soon eat something in front of one of his parents and then they would know his secret and he would become theirs again. The thought made her contract inside herself so her stomach felt squeezed.
When Ruth arrived at work on Thursday morning everyone except Sally was huddled round Bev the Fashion Editor’s desk. They were all crying, some more overtly than others.
Everything and Nothing Page 12
