The same child was crossing and uncrossing his gangly legs beside her now, chewing with energy at a stick of gum that had been unwrapped as they were leaving the house. If she cried he would be appalled. Charlotte blinked, briefly clearing her vision, only to see a bird – of all things – a small brown one, perched on the crumbled stone nose of the angel at the top of the pillar nearest to her, cocking its head at the wall of music like a seasoned critic. The tears, instead of receding, gathered force. It was too much to contain – the little bird, the feelings, the memories, the threads of music thickening, soaring, merging, parting… Blinking furiously, her throat bursting, Charlotte plunged a hand into her bag in search of a tissue only to find herself pulling out the crumpled piece of paper she had hastily stuffed out of sight on the occasion of her unsatisfactory reunion with Eve. Your husband…well-wisher…
The jolt saw off the tears. The stupid thing had been hanging around for far too long, Charlotte thought, like a vile smell, a memory of bad luck, threatening always to drag her back, drag her down. She had the answers that mattered. She had done what she could to put things right in the lives of people for whom she cared. She had as much control over her own existence as anyone could hope for, especially now with a mass of money safely stowed in a building society and an updated version of her CV delivered to an employment agency that boasted imaginative placements for part-timers. She had even written to Dominic Porter, informing him of her decision to leave at the same time as her current employers, citing a desire for change and other platitudes designed to protect the inconvenient confusion of her true feelings.
Charlotte looked about her, dry-eyed now, wanting only to dispose of the sad, rumpled piece of paper. Even holding it felt horrible. Unwittingly, her gaze caught Henry’s. He was seated in a side aisle next to Theresa. There was a second – of gratitude, regret, relief? It was hard to be sure. Henry looked away first, swivelling to face the front, slipping his arm protectively along the back of the pew behind Theresa, who sat erect, eyes closed, nodding in a manner suggestive of quiet ecstasy. Charlotte returned her attention to the top of the pillar, but the bird had gone and the angel looked like a stone carving with a broken nose.
Feeling a tug on her sleeve, she turned sideways to find Sam pointing, with a theatrically pained expression, at his mouthful of stale gum. Without a qualm Charlotte held out the note for him to spit it into, then settled back to enjoy the music, absently kneading gum and paper into a tight ball, ready for dropping into a bin during the interval.
‘I thought there would be an interval.’
‘It would have broken the spell, I suppose. Wonderful, wasn’t it?’
‘Exquisite. Aren’t you staying for a drink? There’s champagne and nibbles. Henry’s promised to come back laden. I’m on this new diet – soup and vegetables – but one night off won’t do any harm.’ Theresa paused for breath. Part of her wanted badly to say that she – that they – were happy, but another, wiser, part knew that Charlotte could see this truth for herself and that such a delicate tendril as personal happiness was best left for private savouring rather than public declamation. She had taken it for granted once, felt impregnable, complacent, not recognized that the key to the treasuring of contentment was the knowledge that it could be snatched away. ‘Go on – one glass. I’ll signal to Henry.’
‘No, Theresa, really. I’ve loved it but I’m not going to hang around. I’ve delivered Sam to Martin – they’re taking him out for a meal and hanging on to him. I kind of feel I’ve done my bit, to be honest.’
‘You have,’ Theresa cried, kissing her, ‘you so absolutely have. And it’s bloody well done, as far as I’m concerned, the way you’ve brought it all round, made sure everyone’s getting on. To think how it used to be…’
‘I know.’ Charlotte gave a pointed jangle of her car keys. Theresa meant well and she did indeed feel quite proud of how she had managed, but it was catching up with her now… blossoming Cindy, beaming Martin. To behave well on such an occasion was the least she could do for him but, still, she wasn’t up to a moment more.
‘But your birthday,’ Theresa shrieked, grabbing Charlotte’s elbow as she tried to set off through the crowd thronging round the tables of food and drink. ‘We still haven’t decided what you’re going to do.’
‘But I have, actually,’ Charlotte admitted with a smile. ‘An unexpected thing. Two tickets to go ballooning in West Sussex. I’m taking Sam. It’s all I want, honestly,’ she added, as concern broke through Theresa’s look of surprise.
‘Well, that’s lovely, of course. Goodness, how did you come by those?’
Charlotte chuckled. ‘Would you believe it – Tim Croft, of all people! Apparently he bought them when he still had hopes of winning my heart – before Eve won his. He scribbled me this note, saying they were destined to be mine and I should consider them a thank-you for Eve. Remember? I told you about the Eve business,’ she prompted, as Theresa continued to shake her head in wonderment.
‘Yes, yes, you did. Well, goodness, I suppose that is a treat of sorts. Ballooning!’
‘Sam’s thrilled at the idea.’
‘I bet he is but, still, it doesn’t seem –’
‘Theresa, I’m fine,’ Charlotte assured her, with some urgency, since Henry was visible now, twisting through the merry-makers with a plate of food balanced on two flutes of champagne. Worse, the sister, Lu, was right behind him, heading their way purposefully. Charlotte knew her flagging courage certainly didn’t extend that far.
With a hasty kiss of farewell, she set off in the opposite direction, choosing a more circuitous route to the exit that involved crossing through the choir stalls behind the altar. Among them – empty, smelling strongly of polish and incense – Charlotte paused to enjoy the reverential hush of the church, the worn stone floor, the crests and names of their benefactors carved into the seats. But then the clack of approaching heels broke the spell and she hurried on, ducking through the archway that led to the less congested side of the church and turning left towards its large wooden doors. The clacking heels stopped in the same instant, as Cindy’s sister blocked her way.
‘Charlotte – I wanted to say thank you for coming.’ The mushroom outfit had long floating sleeves, which she tweaked nervously as she spoke.
‘Not at all.’ Charlotte managed a smile and stepped past her. Snapshots of the débâcle in the supermarket were going off like fireworks, flushing her cheeks as she relived the humiliation. Thank God she’d moved on from all of that. The incident was just another tiny fragment of the past now, one of many stepping-stones on a difficult journey, not forgotten but despatched as certainly as the sticky gobbet of gum and paper she had dropped into a rubbish box next to the drinks table.
‘I wanted you to know –’
‘Thanks, Lu. Yes. I’ve really got to go.’ Charlotte quickened her pace, her own heels clip-clopping on the hard, uneven tiles.
‘– that it was me,’ Lu blurted, running after her. ‘The well-wisher. It was me. Cindy doesn’t know. I did it because she was so unhappy – and from what I could gather you were too. All three of you, trapped by misery. I – I thought it needed… something.’
It was a few moments before Charlotte, frozen mid-escape, could bring herself to turn round. Lu was peering out through the long silky slats of her fringe, clearly terrified. ‘Something,’ she mumbled again, flapping the wispy material dangling from her arms, then clasping her elbows.
‘You had no right,’ Charlotte managed at last, her voice a whisper.
‘I know.’ Lu, fidgeting less, held her gaze now, glints of defiance in the big blue eyes. ‘Mum had just died, Cindy was so unhappy – all of you so unhappy – but Martin wouldn’t leave or commit properly or… So I did what I did. I honestly believe it would have happened anyway, that I just speeded everything up.’
‘Speeded everything up?’
Lu dropped her eyes. ‘I know that sounds terrible. What I did was terrible and it’s been eating away at me, b
ut then Cinds said you’d met someone and I was so glad because I thought you must be happier too, that it was working out. But in the supermarket café I saw that, happy or not, it was still eating away at you, too – the not knowing. I mean, thinking it was Cinds of all people. And ever since I’ve had this burning need to confess, to say sorry…’ Lu fiddled with the strap of her bag, looking, though Charlotte was loath to acknowledge it, genuinely distraught.
‘You can’t be sorry for something with such a happy outcome, surely,’ she pointed out bitterly.
Lu sighed, pushing at the floppy blonde fringe, which fell straight back into her eyes. ‘But for whatever you’ve been through – I can’t pretend to know – I’m sorry.’
‘Well, thank you.’
‘Charlotte, would you mind… not telling her – not telling Cindy, please?’
Charlotte gave a barely perceptible nod as she strode away. She kept her back stiff and walked tall, communicating all the things that it seemed to her Lu deserved to see – affront, pride, anger. But once outside the church she let her shoulders drop and breathed deeply. So there it was, the last answer, the one that didn’t matter, the one that had never mattered. One day, soon, she would admit as much to Lu. The marriage had died anyway, by her hand and Martin’s. They were happier now, all three of them – four if you counted Sam. And how could one not count Sam? Charlotte scolded herself, smiling as she strolled the last few yards to the car.
‘There!’ Dominic cried, unclasping his seatbelt and lunging forwards to point as the cabbie swung into the street at last. ‘There!’
‘I thought you said it was a church you were after, mate.’
‘It is – it was – but we’re too late and I need to speak to that woman.’
‘Oh, do you now?’ the cabbie chuckled, entirely unsurprised to find that this irritating and most unfortunate of customers should turn out to be on some do-or-die mission involving the opposite sex. ‘Oy, and I need paying,’ he called, with altogether less good humour as Dominic hurled himself out of the cab and sprinted with cartoon-like urgency – jacket and arms flapping – towards the black Volkswagen edging out of its parking space. When he returned to the window a few minutes later, he was breathless, sweating, his dark hair wild. ‘She says she’ll wait.’
‘Well, that’s a relief for both of us, mate, but I’m afraid the grand reckoning still comes to forty-five pounds – a lot, I know, but we had that trip to the garage for petrol, didn’t we? And the wait while we realized your problems went beyond an empty tank and then the call when you found your AA membership had run out.’
Dominic plucked three twenty-pound notes out of his wallet, not listening. He didn’t need the cabbie to tell him it had been a hell of an evening. Sitting in the tail-back on to Wandsworth Bridge, after Benedict had arrived so late for baby-sitting, then the fiasco with the car breaking down, he had begun to feel like some desperate salmon attempting to hurl itself up a waterfall when all he had wanted was to attend a charity concert, to get there on time, in a modestly presentable state, early enough to find a friendly face to sit next to… But no, that wasn’t quite true, Dominic corrected himself, making a desultory attempt to impose some order on his hair as he approached the Volkswagen. There was one face he had had especially in mind, a not particularly friendly one.
He walked slowly, aware of the cabbie watching and that he seemed to make a habit of approaching Charlotte when she was in her own famously temperamental vehicle. ‘Thanks so much for waiting. I just wanted a quick word.’ He squatted on the pavement next to the open window.
She frowned. ‘You do know the concert’s over, don’t you? It began at seven.’
‘Sadly, yes, I am aware of that fact. I’ve had something of an epic journey.’
‘But there are drinks going on inside.’
‘That’s splendid news, but I don’t want a drink.’
‘I assume you got my letter,’ she cut in, folding her arms, every last trace of friendliness gone.
‘Indeed I did.’ Dominic flexed his legs into a half-standing position. His knees were cramping and it had been deluded, he realized, to have hoped for the conversation to play out with any of the smoothness he had imagined during the countless silent rehearsals in his head.
‘Are you all right?’ She stuck her head further out of the window and peered with something like concern at his legs.
‘My knees hurt.’
‘Oh dear, I–’
‘My knees hurt and lately I’ve been arguing with my brother, which I never do. Ever.’
‘Benedict?’
‘The same. Look, there isn’t a chance you could give me a lift home, is there?’
Charlotte let out an incredulous laugh. ‘But you’ve only just got here.’
‘I know. The entire evening has been a catastrophe. But I wanted to talk to you anyway.’
‘Well, I suppose so.’ She leant across the passenger seat and flicked up the lock, dismissively, angrily even, or so it seemed to Dominic, busy thinking of black-widow spiders and webs and others of his brother’s graphic warnings as he levered his long legs into the car. Buckled in next to her, such doubts worsened to total speechlessness. Charlotte drove in equal silence, flexing her eyebrows, before enquiring at last, with some savagery, what had caused the brotherly disagreement.
‘You,’ Dominic muttered.
‘Me?’ She performed an unorthodox version of an emergency stop, slung him a look of horror, then ground her way noisily back up through the gears, delivering, as both her sentences and the Volkswagen gathered speed, a heated defence of her threat to buy the bookshop lease and the decision to resign that had supplanted it. ‘I haven’t got a head for figures and of course you were right – the last thing I want is a job that stops me being there for Sam. But,’ she added viciously, ‘I also have enough pride to want to walk before I’m pushed.’
‘Yes, I was going to try to get rid of you,’ Dominic admitted quietly.
She slapped the steering-wheel, seeming more triumphant than insulted. ‘Good. I’m glad we’ve got that out in the open. And was that the happy news you didn’t quite deliver at the sports day?’
‘Yup.’
‘Fine. Excellent. So we’re all clear. And has Benedict been trying to argue you out of it?’ she continued, cautious curiosity breaking through the bravado.
‘No, on the contrary. Benedict thinks I should avoid contact with you at all costs.’
Charlotte swerved into a bus stop, pulled up the handbrake and folded her arms. ‘I think maybe you should get out and find yourself another taxi. Which might seem harsh, but this conversation doesn’t seem to be going anywhere good and I don’t need it, I really don’t.’
Dominic sat very still. He was aware that he was making a mess of things, but that was because he knew he was standing on the edge again – the invisible edge of wanting something so badly that any movement felt like a risk of disappointment, of pain. ‘I think Benedict’s wrong,’ he said at last, turning in his seat so he could look at her properly, the palest pinpoint freckles dotting her nose, the neat, obstinate chin, the wispy flames of hair curling under her earlobes. ‘Charlotte, I want you to reconsider your idea to purchase the lease,’ he blurted, ‘not as sole owner but with me. Fifty-fifty. I think we’d make a good team. I am good at figures, and you’d be the expert on stock, not to mention customers. We could share the workload, both have time for our children – and, er, there’s a bus coming, one of those long bendy ones.’ He pointed at the glare of headlights in the rear-view mirror. A bus?’ he repeated, when she failed to move or even look at him. ‘Okay, forget the bus. What about my proposition? What do you think?’
‘I think, no,’ said Charlotte, in a small voice. ‘Impossible. No.’ She shook her head, slowly, marvelling at how heavy a head could be when forced to move against its natural inclination. ‘Thanks, but no,’ she repeated, louder, staring straight ahead, as if transfixed by the flecks of dead insects spattering the windscreen.
‘Reasons?’
‘Lots.’
‘I see. Right. Well, it was worth a shot.’ Dominic slapped his thighs and reached for the door handle. ‘I’ll find my own way home, then, as you so sweetly suggested.’
Half out of the door he hesitated, secretly astonished she wasn’t leaping to rescind his banishment from the car, out of neighbourly decency if nothing else, what with it being late and the bus hissing inches from her bumper, like a beast bent upon revenge.
Many hours later, wide-eyed, sleepless, Charlotte was still taking herself through every moment, studying it with the forensic intensity of a detective searching for a clue in a sequence of mysterious events. Had Dominic seen the reluctance in the slow, sad swivel of her head? Was that why he had taken so long to cross the road, making sure she had time to notice the street into which he disappeared? And as for her, what exactly had prompted the deft, traffic-stopping, highly uncharacteristic three-point turn that took her past the no-entry sign and into the alley down which he was supposedly attempting to escape? It certainly hadn’t felt like courage at that stage, merely foolhardiness, and perhaps, lurking deep beneath that, a small urgent pulse not to let this moment – of all moments in her life – go by without as good an articulation of the truth as she could manage. Perhaps Lu had inspired her, or the heartening truce between the Curtises, or the thwarted attempt at a confession from her dying father? For it was all there surely, each turning point in a life being the product of the trillion moments that had gone before.
When Charlotte caught up with him, Dominic kept walking, forcing her to kerb-crawl. ‘You’ve just broken the law,’ he shouted, when she wound down the window. ‘This area is heaving with cameras too – you might go to jail. Licence suspension at the very least.’ He kicked a stone. ‘Or harassment. Perhaps I could get you for that.’
‘Dominic.’ It was hard to project her voice and drive at the same time. ‘Your proposition, the answer is still no, but it’s not what you think. The reasons… they’re not what you think.’
Life Begins Page 36
