After the Party

by Lisa Jewell

  She smiled to herself. It was almost as if the machinery knew.

  Unexpected was an understatement.

  Chapter 13

  Ralph spent his last day in California on the beach. Alone. Smith would be joining him here at four o’clock, after his last appointment of the day. But for the next four hours it would be just him, a beach towel, a book and the sand. Ralph felt slightly self-conscious as he sat there, his pale English body glowing like a silver-birch in a forest of glossy teak.

  Ralph sat for a while, his arms wrapped around his knees, and stared into the ocean. It glittered beneath the midday sun as if it had been laced with fairy lights. In the distance he saw small white boats and the trailed foam of jet skis. To his left was the Santa Monica pier, gaudy and loud, even from this distance. He contemplated the last six days. He remembered his thoughts before leaving home, what felt like a month ago now, how little he knew about Smith and his lifestyle, how hard he’d found it to imagine being right here. And now here he was, on the beach, a person in Santa Monica, a person who had been here, who knew it, who could navigate their way round town, who could picture the inside of Smith’s apartment, who had felt the rhythm of his days, been inside his car, got to know his girlfriend, eaten from his fridge. The experience was complete. The nebulous concept was now fully upholstered. And what could he take from these strangely peaceful, uneventful few days?

  Well, for a start he could go home safe in the knowledge that the only thing now keeping the long and unillustrious connection between himself and Smith alive was purely that – the sheer length of their association. There was the fact of Ralph’s state of semi-conflicted fatherhood and Smith’s state of happy and enduring childlessness. And there was the fact that Smith and he simply didn’t have much to say to each other, a state that is fine when sharing a home, but awkwardly jarring when trying to socialise, and Ralph knew that things would settle back into the pattern of occasional two-line e-mails about nothing in particular the moment he returned to English soil.

  But this trip had never been about him and Smith having a Good Time Together, this trip had been about something much more tenuous than that. It had been about finding answers and even before that it had been about finding questions, because before he got here he really had had no idea at all what it was that he needed to know.

  For a moment on Tuesday night he’d thought he’d found what he needed. He’d thought it was Rosey. He’d thought that if he could make a beautiful young woman with creative rather than reproductive preoccupations fall in love with him, if he could be set free to start life over again with someone fresh and sharp and bright and cool, someone like Jem used to be, then maybe he would remember what it was all about. But that had been a red herring. He had very strong feelings for Rosey. He wanted to have sex with Rosey. If he was going to run away and have an adventure and leave all his commitments behind then Rosey would be just the woman to do it with. She was beautiful and bright and fresh, and all those other things, but she wasn’t the mother of his children. Ralph didn’t need another woman, he just needed to work out how to make the one he already had like him again. And now, he knew how to do it.

  He hadn’t spoken to Jem since their fractious phone conversation on Wednesday morning. When he was awake she was either asleep or looking after children, and trying to talk to Jem about anything of any importance when there were children in the room with her was completely impossible. And besides, this was not a conversation he wanted to have on the phone from five and a half thousand miles away, this was a conversation for the two of them on Saturday night, face to face over the kitchen table and possibly a bottle of wine.

  The day passed dreamily for Ralph. He knew it would be a very long time indeed before he could sit on a beach alone again. He read his book, he lay on his back in the sun, letting the hot beach play its auditory tricks with the sounds around him, the hazy drone of strangers’ words, the dreamy hum of traffic on the road behind him, the occasional shard of laughter or the horn of a car.

  At four o’clock Smith joined him and they passed the early evening in gentle talk, about nothing in particular. Rosey didn’t join them that last night. She was out with friends, and Ralph was glad. He wanted to keep his head clear on this, his last night away from home. He wanted to empty his head of everything except his determination to make things better at home. He felt alive and clean, he felt ready to do whatever it took to be a better husband and a better father.

  They moved from the beach to a casual beach bar where they sat with their shoes full of sand and their skin sticky with the last application of sunscreen. Ralph’s face felt tight and rough, his hair felt like straw, and for the first time since he’d arrived six days ago, Ralph felt completely relaxed with Smith.

  ‘You should marry that girl,’ he said, a propos of nothing much.

  ‘What? Rosey?’

  ‘Yeah, you should marry her. If you don’t, someone else will.’

  ‘Nah,’ said Smith, turning a beer mat round on the tabletop against its edges. ‘She’s not the marrying type.’

  ‘I wouldn’t be so sure,’ said Ralph.

  Smith threw him a puzzled look. ‘Oh, yeah,’ he said, ‘and what have you two been talking about behind my back?’

  ‘Nothing much,’ said Ralph. ‘I just don’t think she’s as unconventional as you think she is. I think,’ he continued, ‘it’s all a bit of an act. That’s all.’

  ‘Well,’ said Smith, letting the beer mat drop to the table and lacing his fingers behind his head. ‘I am most certainly not the marrying type, so that kind of puts an end to that. And anyway, you’re a fine one to talk – what about you? And Jem?’

  Ralph smiled. ‘I think that bringing two children into the world is quite enough of a commitment to be going on with, but you never know, maybe one day …’

  Smith studied him for a moment. ‘Don’t you ever worry?’ he began.

  ‘Worry about what?’

  ‘I don’t know. You’re not married. She’s a good-looking woman. Don’t you ever worry she might, you know …?’

  ‘What – Jem?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Ralph almost snorted. ‘No way!’ he said. ‘She doesn’t even want to have sex with me, let alone someone else. Besides, she’s stuck at home all day with two kids. The only people she sees outside the home are her sister, her gay boss and Karl Kasparov. Even if she wanted to …’ he shrugged, conclusively.

  ‘You need to sort that sex thing out,’ said Smith.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Ralph, squinting across the beach into the brilliant gold of the lowering sun. ‘Yeah,’ he said again. ‘Lots of things to sort out when I get back. Loads of stuff to do. But thanks,’ he held his beer bottle out to Smith, ‘thanks for letting me take some time out, thanks for giving me some space to breathe. It’s been really … useful.’

  Smith smiled at him, slightly sceptically. ‘Glad to have been of service,’ he said. ‘And next time you should bring Jem. And the kids.’

  Ralph laughed out loud. ‘Yeah, right,’ he said. ‘You’d love that!’

  ‘Why not?’ said Smith, simply. ‘Just because I don’t want kids of my own, doesn’t mean I don’t want to meet yours.’

  ‘Seriously, mate,’ Ralph continued, ‘your lifestyle, and my kids …’ He drew his finger across his throat. ‘Not a match made in heaven. But next time you come home, come over. You can see them in their own environment.’

  Smith smiled. ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘I’d like that. That’d be good.’

  They both leaned back then, their beers held in their laps, their faces lit by the evening sun, two decent men, no longer best mates, but at peace with themselves and with each other for the first time in eleven years.

  And tomorrow, Ralph’s life would start afresh.

  Chapter 14

  Hours before this perfect Californian moment, and over five thousand miles away, Jem had not been giving much thought to tomorrow. Her thoughts were mainly of the next few hours, specificall
y between now (5.55 p.m.) and then (roughly 8 p.m.? Possibly even later).

  She had had second, third and fourth thoughts about this arrangement from the moment Joel had replied in the affirmative to her text message fifteen minutes after she’d sent it.

  She dressed herself carefully in clothes that said, ‘Just because I’ve invited you here under the dark cover of night it does not necessarily mean that I wish to have extra-marital adventures with you,’ but would also make him hope that she did. She chose a loose grey tunic, thick black tights and her rip-off Uggs. She looked cute, not foxy. And everyone knew that there was not a man alive who found Ugg boots sexually alluring.

  Her hair, on the other hand, she paid more attention to. She pulled it back to reveal the nape of her neck and then plucked curls from the bun with her fingertips, and it was while she was standing in the hallway, distractedly pulling curls from her bun with her fingertips that it occurred to her that maybe she was insane.

  Really.

  Was this the behaviour of a sound-minded woman? She had only just given birth. She was sharing her bed every night with a tiny suckling babe. She hadn’t had sex with her partner for eight months. And her stomach turned into a tongue when she leaned over.

  The only rational explanation for any of it was that she was mad. She contemplated herself in the mirror. Did she look mad? She looked tired, but that was normal these days. And she looked pale, but it was April and her skin had not seen the sun for seven months. Her hair looked reasonably controlled. She was dressed in a very pared-down restrained style. She had no food on her, no holes in her tights. She stared deeply into the green-grey strata of her irises. Was there a sign there? Was there an answer in there to the imminent arrival at her own home of a strange man the night before the arrival home of her long-term partner? No, there were no answers in there, just a soft, faded sadness, just a slightly confused woman looking back at her, wondering what the hell she thought she was doing.

  She sighed and was about to head towards the kitchen when her phone rang. She picked it up from the hall table and read the ID. It was Karl. So typical of him to phone her exactly one minute before the official end of the working week. She was tempted to let it ring through to voicemail, but then remembered that Karl never left answerphone messages.

  ‘Karl,’ she said, smiling at her own reflection in the mirror as if she were smiling at her client.

  ‘Miss Duck. I’ve had a beer and it’s decided me.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’

  ‘Yes. I’m going to frigging well do it.’

  Jem watched her face burst into a sunbeam of pure delight. ‘Yes!’ she said, punching the air with a fist.

  ‘I thought that’d make you happy.’

  ‘God, yes, Karl, that really has. That’s brilliant. And I think absolutely the right decision. Not just financially, although obviously, that’ll be a boon, but for you, for your career. Well done!’

  She heard him laugh wryly. ‘I’m still not convinced about any of it, I’ll tell you that, and Christ, if they try and make me eat anything that some animal has shat out of I’ll be out of there in a flash, but yeah, what the heck, it’s a free holiday. And they usually put someone easy on the eye in there, don’t they?’

  ‘They do, Karl,’ smiled Jem, little knowing as she said it how the words would come back to haunt her, ‘they do. So I can phone them, then? Tell them you’re a yes?’

  ‘You can do that, Miss Duck. Yes you can. And now you can relax and enjoy your weekend.’

  Jem smiled ironically at her reflection. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘yes. I will. You too. And I’ll speak to you next week after I’ve told the ITV people.’

  ‘That’ll be grand. I’ll speak to you then.’

  And then the line went dead.

  Jem smiled and then broke into a spontaneous and rather peculiar happy dance. Scarlett watched her with concern from the kitchen doorway. ‘What are you doing?’ she asked in horror.

  ‘I’m dancing!’ she replied. ‘Because I’m happy!’

  ‘I don’t like it,’ said Scarlett.

  Jem laughed. ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because I don’t. It makes me feel wrong. When’s Daddy coming home? I want Daddy to come home. Then you won’t do funny laughing and dancing any more.’

  Jem laughed again, amused by her daughter and her buttoned-up persona but slightly saddened by her inadvertent declaration of the poignant truth of the thing.

  ‘Come on,’ she said to Scarlett, ‘let’s go and put some crisps in bowls for our guests.’

  But as she said it the doorbell rang and there was a shadow through the dimpled glass of the door and the sound of excitable girl-child from somewhere out of sight and they were here, their guests, the next paragraph in this slightly odd chapter of her life.

  Joel smiled at her diffidently in the doorway. ‘I thought, curry, it should really be beer,’ he began, handing her a thin blue carrier, ‘but then I thought, wine is a nicer thing to bring to a person’s home. So I brought both.’

  She took the bags from him and let him in, helping him with Jessica’s coat, taking his jacket, hanging them against her own family’s coats on the coat pegs behind the door.

  ‘Nice road you live on,’ he said, rubbing his cold hands together.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘we like it. Come in, come in.’

  Jem had expressed three bottles of milk so would not need to breastfeed Blake until at least tomorrow morning. Jem was not a big fan of expressing (it made her feel like something very slightly less than human, somewhere between woman and cow) and Blake was not a big fan of being bottle-fed. It was not a perfect arrangement and Jem had felt guilty for a moment about making her infant son suckle from a rubber teat just so that she could let her hair down with a man who wasn’t his father, but then she’d thought about Ralph, his week of lie-ins and days on the beach, his nights out drinking freely and staying out late, and stopped feeling guilty immediately.

  ‘Can I get you a beer?’ she said, emptying Joel’s bag of bottled Becks and £8.99 Chablis into the fridge.

  ‘That would be great, thank you.’

  She opened two Tiger beers and handed one to him.

  The radio in the kitchen was tuned to Xfm which was playing something bouncy and feelgood by Jack Johnson, and there was still some early spring sunshine left in the sky, and the window was open a crack to let the curry smells out. Smith the cat lay curled up on the sofa and in this light, with that soundtrack, with a cold beer in her hand and good news still lifting her spirits, Jem felt something like youthful euphoria pass through her like a seltzer. Yes, she thought to herself, yes, this is all right. This is good. I am glad he came. I am glad he is here. She smiled and lifted her beer bottle to his. ‘Cheers,’ she said.

  ‘Cheers,’ he said. ‘Thank you for having us.’

  ‘It’s a pleasure,’ she said. ‘And I hope you don’t mind but I got a bit inspired in the new and improved Sainsbury’s and thought I’d cook rather than order out. Are you OK with Thai food?’

  ‘I love Thai food,’ he smiled.

  ‘Great! And what about Jessica?’

  ‘Oh, she’s eaten already.’ He leaned down and smiled at her and she smiled back. ‘Hey,’ he said, ‘why don’t you go and say hello to Scarlett?’

  She looked up at him and smiled again. ‘OK,’ she said, losing her uncharacteristic shyness and bouncing over to where Scarlett was still skulking in the corner.

  Jem watched as they bonded gently over the cat, both taking it in turns to stroke him very slowly and very seriously.

  ‘So,’ said Joel, turning back to Jem, who was slicing up chicken breasts into thin slivers. ‘You must be looking forward to seeing your partner tomorrow then?’

  Jem smiled grimly. ‘Yes and no,’ she said. She didn’t look up to see how he’d responded to this admission, carried on slicing the pink meat. Realising that she didn’t have a clue how to explain her response to Joel she softened. ‘No,’ she smiled, ‘I am looking forward to
seeing him. Definitely. It’s been a good week, but it’s a bit lonely, you know. Well,’ she said, slightly apologetically, ‘obviously …’

  ‘Yes, I think I know what you mean.’ He laughed. ‘It is lonely living alone, even when you have a child. Lonelier in a way, because you can’t get out and find some life to live, you know. You’re tied to your child, tied to your home, tied to the routines. And you’re just desperate for an adult to have a conversation with, even if it’s only about getting the drains cleared. You’re lucky,’ he said, ‘lucky to have built-in company.’

  Jem poured some crisps into a bowl and boiled the kettle for the rice.

  ‘So,’ said Joel. ‘This is a very nice house you have here.’ He glanced around. ‘Ralph is not your typical impoverished artist in a draughty garret then?’

  Jem smiled. ‘Not quite. He was when I met him, and quite literally, in fact. He spent two weeks living in an unheated studio in east London, finished twenty paintings, came home emaciated and feverish. Which of course makes him sound like some kind of tortured genius. Which he isn’t. He was just … in love.’

  ‘With you?’

  ‘Yes. With me. Ha.’

  ‘Wow,’ said Joel, ‘that’s quite something. What girl could resist?’

  ‘Quite,’ said Jem. ‘I could not. I knew nothing about it until the day the exhibition opened, and there I was, in a room in Notting Hill, surrounded by paintings of myself.’

  ‘Seriously? He locked himself in a garret for two weeks to paint you? Exclusively?’

  ‘Uh-huh. It seems unthinkable now. It seems so long ago, another world, another lifetime, and of course children bring so much to your life, so much joy, so much magic, but they take stuff away too. They take that away, you know, that passion that you had for each other. That madness. It’s like, before the kids were born, the worst thing I could possibly imagine happening to me would have been losing Ralph, you know, getting that phonecall in the night, the knock at the door: “We’re so sorry, it’s your partner, he’s been knocked down, there was nothing we could do …” Just the thought of it,’ she shuddered. ‘And then you have a baby and suddenly you think, Christ, there is something much much worse than losing Ralph. My sister said to me, before I had Scarlett, she said: you know once you have a baby, Ralph won’t be your baby any more? And I said: rubbish, he’ll always be my baby. And she shook her head, very slowly, said: no, he won’t. And she was right. It really is just a matter of him having to look after himself now. It’s not my job any more. And I think he hates me for it.’ She looked up at Joel and smiled sadly. ‘Sorry,’ she said, ‘way too much information.’