The arguments ebbed and surged until, like a gunshot in the dark, Charlotte had cried, ‘Stop,’ and banged the wall. Inches apart, all three had held their breath. Then, in the thick, dreadful, quiet darkness Jean had felt Reggie’s hand touch hers. A minute later the hand was moving down her arm, her belly, her leg, with more explicit purpose, but with such urgent tenderness, too, as if, beneath the mechanics of that tireless appetite, there lay some passion after all.
Chapter Seventeen
By the time Martin and Sam pulled into the Rotherhithe cul-de-sac the following Friday evening, grass and concrete alike were glistening under the full force of the beaming sun following another afternoon of downpours. Informed during the course of the journey that he was to have a half-sibling and that, with Cindy still fragile and tired, he was to spend the next thirty-six hours being quiet and undemanding, it was not with the best of spirits that Sam lugged his rucksack upstairs. There were dubious smells coming from the kitchen, which turned out to be fish – three grey ones lying side by side in a pan, their dead, cloudy eyes fixed on the swirls of steam floating round the ceiling.
For a change and because it’s healthy, Cindy said, when he went in to say hello, like she knew it was a rubbish meal even before she had served it.
‘Can I go out on my bike?’
‘After supper, I should think, if the rain stays away, if Dad agrees.’
‘Agrees to what? Hmm, something smells good.’ Martin bounced into the kitchen and slipped his arms round Cindy’s waist, fondly cupping the new thicker waistline camouflaged by her apron.
Sam looked away quickly. Without his briefing in the car he wouldn’t have noticed Cindy was any fatter, let alone pregnant. He had wanted a brother or sister once, but presented with the reality of it – and in this split version of a family too – he wasn’t at all sure. He would still be number one, his dad had said, which had only got him thinking of George’s siblings and how not one of them was ever number one, not really. ‘I want to go out on my bike after supper.’
‘I want never gets,’ Martin murmured, ‘and it’ll be dark soon.’
‘I said he could,’ Cindy put in, making a special face at Sam. ‘It won’t be dark for a while yet. We’re eating early because I am, as usual these days–’ she made another, different, special face, this time for his father ‘– starving.’
‘And I’ve got lights,’ Sam added, brightening at the sight of mashed potato.
‘Assaulted on all sides,’ pronounced Martin, in a tone of happy defeat. He let go of Cindy and advanced on Sam instead, holding his fists up like a boxer spoiling for a fight. Sam ducked and made a run for the door, only to be swung off his feet and over his father’s shoulder.
‘Not so big yet, are you?’ Martin growled, while Cindy tutted happily, rolled her eyes and drained the peas, and Sam, making a show of wriggling resistance, wondered when, if ever, a boy could announce that the time of genuinely enjoying such games had passed.
The fish weren’t quite as horrible as Sam had anticipated, especially after he had been allowed to fetch the ketchup. He ate fast, keeping an eye on the slits of blue sky through the kitchen blinds, while his dad and Cindy talked about things to do with work, then ticket sales for their concert, occasionally putting questions his way, but really obviously, like they felt they had to try to make him feel included.
When he was ready to go, his dad, merrier still with a glass of wine in hand, rapped his helmet, told him to stay in the compound, not to run over any old ladies and be home the moment it got dark.
Sam let his bike roll down the slope of the hard-standing, then pedalled slowly round the mini roundabout a few times, wishing he had thought to bring his mobile. He and Rose had recently exchanged telephone numbers – at last! – and he wanted badly to tell her about Cindy having a baby. She would, as usual, know how he felt without him having to explain. She was amazing like that – just getting things – like knowing, since the evident failure of their desperate little scheme, to leave the repellent subject of his mother’s love life entirely alone. And wanting to stay just as friends – he was sure she knew that, felt it too – in spite of the stupid playground taunts.
The wheels of the bike made a lovely swishing sound on the wet Tarmac. Sam speeded up towards two fat pigeons scrapping over a crust, getting a lovely rush of power when they took off in fright. One day he would have a motorbike, he decided, pedalling as fast as he could now, away from the little roundabout and across the junction that led towards the compound entrance.
‘Mah-jong. I’m afraid it’s off.’ Theresa’s voice was crisp, unreadable. ‘There’s been something of a domestic crisis.’
Charlotte slowly put down her knife and reached for a tissue to wipe the onion tears out of her eyes. Her hair, wet still from a bath – a lovely long indulgent soak with the radio parked on the stool next to her – suddenly felt unpleasantly cold. ‘Oh, no, Theresa… I’m so sorry.’
‘It’s Naomi,’ Theresa said hurriedly, sufficiently aware of her friend’s train of thought for a touch of embarrassment to creep into her tone.
‘Naomi?’ Charlotte sank into a chair, hoping she didn’t sound too relieved. Why, what’s happened?’
‘She’s just pitched up on Jo’s doorstep in floods of tears with all three children in tow. Apparently she and Graham had some sort of row and he hit her – or tried to. She ducked and his fist landed on the wall… Can you imagine?’
Through the tone of appalled sympathy Theresa sounded almost excited. And no wonder, Charlotte mused. Not getting on with Henry must seem mild in comparison to such horrors.
Theresa, expounding on the grave revelations about their friend’s life, was growing earnest and faintly hysterical. ‘Admittedly she seemed a bit dazed when she came to tea – that time before Easter when the twins ran riot. She was definitely not quite on-the-ball… But I’d never have guessed anything was that wrong. And neither did Jo, who – let’s face it – is the one to whom she has always been closest. And now it’s come to this terrible head, and with Naomi’s parents in France and that one sister who travels all the time she couldn’t think where else to go. Jo says she’s been trying to phone you about it this evening but there was no answer.’
‘I probably had the taps running – I got drenched again on a walk with the dog. Christ, poor Naomi… I can’t believe it, although I suppose it shows –’
‘What? What does it show?’
‘That… well, that there’s always the other life.’
‘Other life?’
‘The one we try not to reveal to each other,’ Charlotte murmured, thinking – inconveniently, selfishly – of Dominic in the restaurant the previous week; how her stomach had knotted every time he tipped his head towards his dining companion, how she had wanted to look every time he laughed. ‘The one we keep in our heads.’
‘Ah, yes…’ Theresa muttered, her own thoughts also skipping from Naomi to her own situation. The only ‘other life’ she felt capable of caring about was her world with Henry; a lost world that she wanted back so badly she had gone straight to the fridge after Jo’s call to see if she could rustle up something surprising for supper, freshly determined to restore full domestic harmony in her household by whatever means at her disposal, no matter how pitiful or old-fashioned. Hopes thus raised, she had been standing, packet of frozen prawns in hand, when Henry called to remind her that he was delivering a lecture, didn’t need feeding and wouldn’t be back till after nine. ‘Well, my head doesn’t contain a life so much as a big ridiculous mess – as I’m afraid you now know only too well.’
‘How can we help?’ Charlotte was determined to stick to the matter in hand.
Theresa sighed. ‘I don’t think we can do anything, at least not for the time being. Jo seems to have everything under control. She’s putting Naomi and the twins in the loft conversion and Pattie with one of the girls. Paul’s going to talk to Graham. She’s calling me tomorrow. You hadn’t started cooking, I hope?’
Charlotte eyed her chopped onions, sitting in a pool of oil in the frying-pan. ‘Not really, though I need to anyway, of course, for Eve.’
‘Ah, Eve, I’d completely forgotten. Well, have a great time.’
‘Theresa?’
‘Yes.’
‘Eve… she – she’ll never be a friend like you.’
‘Thank you, Charlotte. What a lovely thing to say… Thank you.’
‘I mean it.’
‘Me too… and our lunch,’ Theresa blurted. ‘I’m sorry we haven’t really talked since. I’ve been putting it off, to be honest – I felt such a dope. But the fact is, you were great – couldn’t have been greater – about everything. And what you told me,’ she rushed on, ‘about your father not being your father… I didn’t really know what to say. As you gathered, I had other things on my mind. But what I really think is that getting the whole truth is always good in the end. I mean, the worst thing in a life is feeling something’s wrong and not knowing what it is, don’t you agree?’
‘Absolutely. The whole truth – we need it.’ Honesty had levels, Charlotte reminded herself firmly, putting down the phone. Life was full of grey splodges. One had to clutch at what few certainties one could. Theresa and Henry were meant to be together and she had been right to do everything within her power to ensure that. Naomi’s woes sounded terrible but would get sorted with time, just as her own had done. And as for the Dominic thing, it would no doubt wear off, gutter without the hope of reciprocity, like any flame deprived of oxygen. Her hand shook a little as she returned her attention to the onions. Shock on Naomi’s account, of course, she told herself, stirring hard as the oil warmed and gleamed.
Eve wasn’t sure what she had been expecting. Grey hairs, a middle-age spread, eyes pouched with suffering? Out of respect for Charlotte she had avoided not only the high street but also quizzing Tim on the subject. The poor woman had been through a lot, after all, if their recent burst of transatlantic email correspondence had been anything to go by: a divorce, money worries, Sam’s bout of unhappiness in school – it had been quite a catalogue of woes. Long before the Tim thing, responding with news of her booming mailorder business, her satisfying personal life, her love of all things American, Eve had at times experienced the occasional unfamiliar stirring of compassion for her old friend.
‘Charlotte!’
‘Eve!’
There was an instant – as quick as a camera click – of mutual sizing up before they fell into each other’s arms. ‘Trust you to be in the thick of it and still look like Nicole bloody Kidman,’ Eve accused, smiling hard while inside there stirred the old wariness of being outclassed, overshadowed. ‘And where is darling Sammy?’ she exclaimed, pushing the feeling to one side and casting an anxious glance at Jasper, who was making small leaping efforts to join in the celebrations. ‘I’ve bought him something horribly complicated to build – advanced Lego. You even need batteries.’
‘How lovely,’ Charlotte murmured, easily forgiving the inappropriate gift (how could Eve possibly know that Sam’s dusty box of Lego had been the only thing with which he had gladly parted company during her recent clear-out?), and (slightly less easily) suppressing the urge to insist that ‘Sammy’ was not an acceptable option in the repertoire of possible abbreviations of her son’s name.
The sheer oddity of having Eve on her doorstep was even more overwhelming than Charlotte had anticipated. She looked so exactly as she remembered her, yet not so. The dusty brown hair was still shoulder-length, still with a straight, girlish fringe, but had been streaked with blonde and gold and, instead of hanging in its old limp way, seemed to bounce off her head and neck as if it had an energy supply all of its own. More striking still was how the full, matronly figure, once shyly camouflaged under smock dresses and baggy dungarees, was now being shown off in a close-fitting skirt and a low-cut top, flaunting the large, shapely assets that the young Eve – usually amid groans and much tugging in front of mirrors – had laboured to conceal.
‘You look amazing,’ Charlotte cried, grabbing the dog, whose attentions, she could see, were not appreciated, and noticing as she bent down the extravagant soft suede of Eve’s high-heeled shoes. ‘Fantastic – you look fantastic.’ Pushing the door further open, she stepped back to make room for her guest and a large wheeled suitcase to enter the hall. ‘Sorry about the dog – it’s my mother’s. And Sam is at Martin’s but only till tomorrow – and I’m afraid there’s been a change of plan on the mah-jong front,’ she gabbled, not knowing which subject to address first. ‘There’s been a bit of a drama, but come in, come in… I’ll explain everything later. Oh, Evie, it is rather incredible to see you after all this time.’
‘You too, and isn’t this heavenly?’ Eve gushed, parking her case at the bottom of the stairs and darting in and out of rooms in a show of enthusiasm designed to mask a reflex of distaste at the homely, faded furnishings and visibly scarred cream walls. It made her long to show Charlotte her sitting room in Boston, with its peachy silk scatter cushions that matched the ties on her curtains, and the milky carpet of such deep pile that, three years after its purchase, she still asked each and every visitor to take their shoes off at the door; a house-rule that often caused irritation, but which always ended up breaking the ice, even with dour-faced customers, like the grumpy Mexican who had come to spray the drains for cockroaches and ended up staying for a mug of iced tea, flashing two highways of cobbled gold every time he smiled.
‘It’s not remotely heavenly,’ Charlotte corrected her cheerfully. ‘It all needs a face-lift. I’ve got a decorator lined up but he’s running late on another job – usual story. Oh, how kind,’ she exclaimed, as Eve whisked a bottle of wine out of her shoulder bag.
While her host went in search of a corkscrew, Eve quietly rejoiced that the hideous mah-jong had been called off. And Sam not being there was a blessing too. Polite chit-chat with housewives, playing the adoring godmother were challenges at which she knew she could excel, but not nearly as appealing as rolling up her sleeves for a proper chinwag. She had another bottle in her suitcase, but would keep that for later, when the juices were really flowing and they’d reached that lovely stage of not counting glasses, by which time – she sincerely hoped – Charlotte might have dropped some of the stiff, wide-eyed, rabbit-in-headlights look and begun to let her hair down in a manner that bore some relation to the glorious auburn stuff still cascading off her head.
‘I’ll need to smoke, I’m afraid,’ she confessed, when Charlotte returned with a corkscrew and two glasses. ‘I know everyone’s giving up, these days, but I’ve never been one to swim with the tide. I’ll go outside, of course,’ she added, with a brisk glance at the evening sky, darkening to purple ink through the sitting-room window. ‘You’ve been off the weed for years, I presume?’
‘A while, yes,’ Charlotte admitted, dismissing a mild temptation to mention the recent near-relapse behind the church in Chalkdown Road. She wondered suddenly how Dominic had viewed the episode and her heart lurched. While she had imagined closeness – some sort of meaningful connection – with him there had clearly been nothing of the sort. Kindness, politeness, leading to an offer of dinner, that was all. And amid the jollity of the meal the brother had been noticeably cool, she remembered now, nothing like the warm, joking creature who had welcomed her on the doorstep when she dropped Sam off before Easter.
‘Er… going outside would be best,’ she ventured, brought back to the present by the sight of Eve blithely settling into a chair and lighting up. Where was the Eve who did swim with the tide? she marvelled. The Eve who used to fuss at her about lung cancer, who preferred comfortable clothes instead of five-inch heels and tops a size too small. The Eve, more pertinently, who would have offered to help with preparations for supper instead of standing next to the kitchen door, ineffectually puffing smoke in the direction of the garden while offering a running commentary about the joys of life on the East Coast.
‘I’d like to freshen up,’ she said, as Char
lotte was draining a saucepan of easy-cook rice. ‘I’ll find my way. Won’t be a tick.’ The thump of the suitcase on the stairs followed, then everything went very quiet. After a few minutes, Charlotte placed lids on the dishes of hot food and went into the hall. Peering up the stairs, she could see the door of the spare room had been left ajar. She was on the point of calling, when Eve’s muffled voice drifted out on to the landing, interlaced with bubbles of laughter. So she was on the phone, talking to a man by the sound of it. Charlotte smiled to herself as she retreated. Good for Eve. Without the consolation of motherhood, having someone would be all the more important. Without Sam, for instance… Charlotte looked back up the stairs as the door to the spare room swung open and Eve emerged on to the landing, her hair even more buoyant from a recent brushing and her lips softened with a fresh layer of pink.
‘Hey!’ Eve pulled an arm from behind her back to reveal another bottle of wine. ‘Shiraz – always good after a merlot, – don’t you think? New World, of course. I love the New World. And look what else I found!’ She waved her other hand. ‘Talk about a grisly memento, Charlotte darling… From a well-wisher. How sick is that?’
Charlotte folded her arms, trying to keep her smile in place, fighting an absurd, dim sense of violation. She had expected to get on to the subject of divorcing – of Martin – of course, but not so early, or in a manner that made her feel so uncomfortable, so… hijacked. ‘I’d forgotten it was in there. I –’
‘And who was this well-wisher, that’s what I’d like to know?’
‘Me too. I mean, I – I never found out.’
Eve fell against the banisters with a theatrical gasp.
‘I kept it because it was what ended us,’ said Charlotte, simply. ‘Martin and I, that thing you’re holding is what brought it – finally – to an end.’
Eve was advancing down the stairs now, shaking her head. ‘Are you serious? This?’ She dangled the note between two fingers. ‘This was why you let him go? Didn’t it make you want to fight to keep him? Martin. Martin. You let him go for this?’
Life Begins Page 31
