Maggie clucks around David, taking his coat, practically removing his shoes from his feet, and placing a glass of wine in his hand. I kneel in front of Johnny and take off his shoes and coat, placing them neatly in the hallway beside my handbag. I open his bag and get out four small wooden trains. Johnny hangs onto them, clutching two to his chest with his forearm with the other two in each hand, terrified to let them go.
We move slowly through the house, sitting in the ‘day room’ on stiff cane chairs, Johnny insisting on perching on my lap. Maggie has flown off to the kitchen, but a beeping now heralds her arrival back in front of us.
‘Dinner is served,’ she says grandly and ushers us through.
The imposing dining room is dark wood, reminiscent of an early 1900s cruise ship. Teak panelling covers the walls from floor to midway, accompanied by dark-brown window frames and red floral wallpaper. You can almost feel the room rocking and observe the icebergs as they pass by the window.
The furniture is equally drab – dark dining chairs and a glossed table, covered with a white tablecloth and delicate white crockery with dainty pink flowers round the edge. I know it’s Maggie’s ‘best’, and to my horror I see she has laid a small side plate on Johnny’s high chair. (Luckily she has allowed me the concession of providing Johnny with a suitable chair, and purchased him one from the most expensive of shops. It is polished wood and beautiful, more of a work of art than the old-style landscapes on the wall, with lots of nooks and crannies that are impossible to clean. Johnny and I would have been more than happy with the fourteen-quid one from IKEA, but for Maggie, moulded plastic was not meant to be.)
I gently extract the trains from Johnny’s hands and lift him up into his chair, simultaneously fastening his plastic bib round his neck and moving the plate out of his reach.
‘That’s okay, Maggie,’ I say quickly. ‘It’s probably best if he uses a plastic one.’
I reach into my bag to pull one out and David takes it from me. ‘The boy has to learn, Annie,’ he says, placing the crockery back in front of Johnny, who eyes it suspiciously.
‘But he’s only two!’
‘He’ll learn,’ he says sternly, and that’s that. Now the plastic orange plate has been removed, Maggie unfreezes from her spot and bustles into the kitchen, bringing out plates and bowls of steaming-hot food.
It does look amazing. David and Maggie chat, and Johnny eats his roast potatoes, after I quietly convince him they are chips. He eats a pea or two and tentatively chews on some chicken. I am enjoying my meal, miserably resolving to never attempt to make a roast ever again.
‘So I told him, do it now, or you’ll have no job to come back to,’ David finishes off.
‘Oh David!’ Maggie exclaims. ‘What did he do?’
‘He did it, of course, but I fired him anyway.’ David laughs, showing us the contents of his mouth, and Maggie laughs too.
‘You are wicked,’ she says. ‘But I guess you had to show him who’s boss.’
‘Exactly, Mother,’ says David, skewering another piece of chicken.
Johnny has stopped eating, having finished off his chips, and is looking at me with a mischievous expression. He moves his hand slowly, still fixing his gaze on mine, and I see him drop a piece of carrot on Maggie’s immaculate carpet. It lands with a quiet plop amongst a few others. He smiles at me, and I shake my head, giving him a hard stare. He reaches for another piece of carrot, his gaze never leaving mine.
‘Stop that!’
Johnny jumps as David thunders at him. He pauses with the carrot in his hand, weighing up the alternatives. But a two-year-old does not have a mortgage or a job to worry about, and doesn’t follow orders from CEOs whether they are his daddy or not. He drops the carrot on the floor.
‘How dare you,’ David roars, and stands up suddenly, flinging his chair backwards. Johnny stops still, hand outstretched, eyes wide. ‘You will not throw your food on the floor, you will not behave like this.’
Johnny starts to wail, his face turning red, mouth open wide, warming up into a proper scream.
‘You stupid child, what are you crying about?’ David shouts across the table.
‘David, he’s a baby.’ I reach out to Johnny, about to pick him up from his high chair.
‘Leave him alone,’ David bellows at me, and I freeze, my arms still outstretched. ‘He’s a big boy now, he needs to learn good manners.’
Johnny continues to wail, lifting his arms towards me.
‘Don’t touch him!’ David turns his attention back to his son. ‘You do not throw food on the floor, you hear me? Now apologise to your grandmother.’
Johnny cries harder, becoming hysterical. He hiccups, pauses for breath, then screams again, his face red and scrunched up, his hands in tiny fists.
‘He doesn’t understand, David, just leave him alone.’
‘Don’t you tell me what to do!’
With all the rebellion a two-year-old can muster, Johnny picks up the plate in front of him and throws it as hard as he can. It skids across the table at speed and flies off the far edge, smashing against the wall in a shower of discarded chicken and carrots. A parsnip bounces off the wall and lands squarely in the gravy boat, causing a splash of brown to spill onto the pristine tablecloth.
On seeing her best crockery shatter, Maggie joins in the wailing, high-pitched and shrill, her hands flying up to cover her face in horror.
In the silence that follows, I turn towards David with dread. His face is puce and I can see his body shaking. Never before has he been so blatantly disobeyed; never before has his authority been questioned with such defiance. Johnny is quiet, his face still red, with tears running down his cheeks. He wears the expression of someone who knows he has done badly wrong but doesn’t care, and is waiting to see what will happen next. In that moment, I am proud of my little boy.
Suddenly David flies round to Johnny’s side of the table, hooks his hands under Johnny’s arms and pulls him out of his chair, holding him out in front of him, his legs dangling in the air. Instantly I am up, and by his side.
‘David, put him down, please,’ I beg as David hollers and rants, barely centimetres away from Johnny’s face.
‘Don’t you dare do that ever again! Look what you’ve done!’ he shouts, turning Johnny round mid-air to point him towards the shattered plate. Johnny starts crying again, great piercing screams, barely taking time to draw breath, little legs pumping in the empty air.
‘David, put him down, please.’ I pull on his arm, and David responds by pushing out his elbow, meeting me squarely in the bridge of my nose. I collapse back into my chair, eyes streaming and nose spouting blood, chest thudding as Johnny continues to scream hysterically.
David pushes away from the table, still carrying Johnny at arm’s length. He marches out, depositing Johnny in the corridor, and closes the door on him. He walks back to the table, sits down and picks up his fork.
From behind the door, Johnny continues to scream, desperate emotional wails. The handle moves slightly, but he is too small to reach it properly. I imagine his little hands grasping at it as he tries to get back in to see his mummy, and tears roll down my cheeks and onto the napkin I am holding against my nose. I want to go to him; every inch of me wants to hold my little boy, to soothe him, to tell him everything will be okay.
I go to get up from the table.
‘Don’t you dare,’ David says calmly, fork speared with a piece of chicken halfway to his mouth. ‘You will not leave dinner before you have finished.’
I freeze, then slowly sit down and pick up my cutlery. I can still hear Johnny behind the door, the hysterical crying abating to quiet sobs. Something in David’s tone stops me and makes me worry about what would happen when we got home if I disobeyed him. My stomach tightens. I am desperate to go to my baby, to hold him in my arms, give him a hug, make everything better. Tears roll down my face as I force a piece of carrot into my mouth and make myself chew, swallowing hard. My nose is blocked, so breathing is diffi
cult; I eat with my mouth open.
I glance across to Maggie, who has got over the shock of seeing one of her prized possessions smashed to smithereens. She has calmly replaced her napkin on her lap and is carving up a green bean into three precise sections.
‘You boys,’ she tuts, with an indulgent giggle. ‘You boys and your tempers.’ And she shakes her head knowingly, as if David has stamped his foot or sworn out loud, rather than demonstrated out-of-control rage. She looks at me holding the napkin to my nose. ‘I’ll have to soak that for days to get the blood out,’ she remarks, under her breath. She picks up the green bean on her fork and puts it in her mouth, not touching the edge of her lipstick. I watch her chew it delicately as my stomach churns, refusing to digest the remaining peas and carrots on my plate. She places her knife and fork down together at the side of her plate.
‘Well, sorry about that,’ she says. ‘I think I rather overdid the carrots.’
‘Not at all, Mother,’ says David, calmly. ‘Everything was perfect.’
Outside the room my two-year-old son cries. I look over to the closed door. A small blue Thomas the Tank Engine train lies on its side, abandoned.
As soon as I have forced down the requisite number of carrots, I mutter my apologies, put down my knife and fork in an orderly manner on the prized plate and look to David. As he nods wordlessly in my direction, I rush out of the room. Out in the hallway, everything is quiet. I can’t see Johnny.
Bile rises to my mouth as I quickly rush from room to room, calling his name under my breath. In the day room I hear a small gulp, and stop, looking around.
I find Johnny behind the massive sofa, squished into a tiny corner. His back is to the wall and he is clutching Rabbit in one hand. In front of him are three small trains, lined up in a neat ordered row. His cheeks are red and flushed, wet with tears. He looks up as I get closer.
I edge towards him on my knees, jamming my body into the tiny space. I come to a stop in front of him, reaching over and picking him up, pulling him onto my lap. At first he resists, then he relaxes and curls up into a ball, his little arms finding a place round my middle, still clutching Rabbit.
I can hear David and Maggie talking in the dining room. Dull, calmed tones, discussing the weather or some other such banality. I put my face down to touch the top of Johnny’s head, and breathe in the smell of his hair. Warm and soft, the scent of baby shampoo and warm toddler.
Johnny looks up at me. ‘Where Thomas?’
I pull the little blue train out of my pocket and Johnny smiles, taking it from me and placing it in line with the other three. He taps them one by one.
‘James, Gordon, Memerly, Thomas,’ he says.
‘Emily,’ I say.
‘Memerly,’ he repeats, tapping the dark green one again.
I hear chairs being pulled out from the table and the clatter of plates as Maggie clears away.
‘Annie?’ I hear her call in her sing-song voice. ‘Johnny? Come and have some pudding.’
I look down to Johnny.
‘Cake?’ he asks, his big blue eyes hopeful.
‘I don’t know, sweetie, shall we go and find out?’
I gently stand up and hold my hand out to Johnny, who takes it, stopping along the corridor to carefully put his trains back next to his bag. He hesitates slightly at the door of the dining room, but at the thought of something sugary comes inside and allows himself to be lifted back into his high chair. He smiles at Maggie as she places a large chocolate cheesecake on the table.
I look at it. ‘There aren’t any nuts in this, are there, Maggie?’
She stops, knife in hand, and rolls her eyes at me. ‘No, Annie, no nuts.’ She laughs, a little tinkle, and glances at David. ‘And they said I was overprotective,’ she mutters, deliberately loud enough so I can hear.
I grit my teeth as she cuts a portion for Johnny and puts it in front of him.
‘Cake,’ he says, nodding, smiling at Maggie.
I am amazed at how resilient toddlers can be. One adult transgression, easily forgotten with a bit of chocolate. But how long until it sticks? I think. How long until he remembers?
The rest of the meal passes without incident. I remark profusely about the wonders of the chocolate cheesecake, albeit with a smaller slice. (‘Us girls need to keep our figures,’ Maggie says, doling out a massive portion to David and barely a few crumbs to her and me. I imagine her finishing off the remaining three-quarters after we leave, systematically vomiting it back up later into her pristine ceramic toilet.) Johnny eats his bowlful without a word, concentrating on getting it to his mouth as quickly as possible in time for seconds. We pack up our bits and pieces and climb back into the Beamer.
‘I know you think I’m mean,’ David says, ‘but you need to be strict with children. Show them good manners.’
I don’t reply. I don’t trust myself with the right response.
He pauses, leaning forward and negotiating a roundabout. ‘Father was never around, as you know; he was always at work and left looking after me to Mother. Mother was firm, but very fair. I knew if I misbehaved or didn’t eat my dinner it would be early to bed.’ He pauses again, turning right into our drive and causing a Ford Fiesta to beep. ‘Once, after a particularly bad day when I had thrown a toy at her, she took my teddy away.’ He laughs. ‘She snatched it out of my hands, found a pair of sewing scissors and shredded it into fur and stuffing. Right there in front of me.’ He shakes his head. ‘I never threw another toy. See, I can tell you that story now and there’s nothing wrong with me, is there?’
I shake my head, but David hasn’t waited for my answer, getting out and slamming the car door behind him. I sit with Johnny in the car for a moment, listening to the engine tick and Johnny’s steady breathing.
No, David, nothing wrong at all.
Part Two
13
Oh David, just how stupid do you think I am?
I had a job once, you remember. Where I thought and did and told other people what to think and do. I looked after the managing director, the woman in charge. I was busy and got paid money that I happily wasted on clothes and alcohol and cigarettes. Was I more of a person then in your eyes? Was I more attractive? In those days you treated me like someone to spar with, someone to have fun with. Now I simply do as you say.
But how stupid do you think I am? Or perhaps, how stupid are you? If you expect me to take your suits to the dry cleaner’s, don’t leave receipts for swanky restaurants in the pockets. At first I thought it was the receipt from when the two of us went; I recognised the pretentious French name and the logo on the top. But then I realised the date was wrong: it was only last week, Wednesday night, when you were staying over at the office. I gave it back to you – ‘I assume you need this to claim expenses from work?’ – and you didn’t even blink. Just laughed, and put it in your pocket. That’s when I knew for sure. Expenses for work go in the neat little zipped plastic pouch. All ironed out and ready to be compiled by your PA every week into a tidy claim of hundreds and hundreds for your boss to sign. Instead you screwed it up and asked me what was for dinner. Steak and chips, I replied, and you grunted in approval, eyes scrolling over your BlackBerry. You turned without a word, unlocked the door to your office and went into your private man cave.
I remembered the purple cufflinks, those strange tacky things I noticed when we went out for dinner. Were they a gift from some woman or other, the same woman that goes to fancy restaurants with my husband? I wondered what else was behind that locked door.
And today, I can’t resist. Johnny is having a nap, and I lurk outside, waiting for someone to catch me. I try the handle. Locked as I expected. I go up to my bedroom and grab a hairgrip, one of those little brown metal things with plastic on the ends, and bend one of the prongs up into a tiny L shape. Back downstairs, I listen again for a second, Johnny’s baby monitor silent next to me in the hallway. I crouch down and look into the keyhole, heart thumping. I know what I’m doing is crossing the line, deliberat
ely disobeying David. What do I expect to find in there? I know he’s being unfaithful, I just know, so what is this going to prove?
I poke the hairgrip into the keyhole and wiggle it around a bit, turning it to and fro and trying to force the tiny prong into some release mechanism I can neither see nor imagine. I can hear the grind of metal against metal. I drop it on the floor, swear under my breath and try again. My feet go numb so I shift my legs to sit more comfortably, now at eye level to the lock. I try the handle – still nothing. I twiddle some more, then drop the hairgrip again. The tips of my fingers are getting red and sore.
I look at it on the carpet in front of me. Both of the plastic bits have come off, probably lost forever in the mechanism of the lock. A small bit of mud lies next to it, and I pick it up and flick it away, mentally noting to run the vacuum cleaner round before David gets home.
I decide a change of implement might be in order and go into the kitchen to see what I can find. I return with a skewer, a screwdriver and a variety of old keys found in a drawer with broken pieces of Johnny’s toys, dead batteries and leftover screws from IKEA flat-packs. I try the keys first, desperately hoping David kept a spare, but none of them turn. I poke the skewer in, no use at all, and then look at the screwdriver. I could try and dismantle the door handle, but then I’d have to get it back together and I don’t fancy my chances. What would I tell David then? There is no excuse in the world to justify taking apart a whole door.
The Dream Wife Page 9
