Runaways

by Carolyn McCrae

From basking in the warm glow of Ted’s approval I felt that I was letting him down, not quite measuring up to some invisible standard that he had expected of me. “I don’t think it’s fair to blame him for that.”

  “I wasn’t. I was blaming Holly.”

  “That isn’t exactly logical either.”

  “What are you worrying about, Annie?” Maureen noticed the change in my mood.

  “I’m not sure.”

  “You don’t want to look after them, you’ve made that very clear. Allow Charles to judge what will be good for them. He’s known them longer and better than anyone.” There was a criticism in her voice that I couldn’t help reacting to.

  “Meaning I should know them better?”

  I don’t know why I seemed to be heading for an argument. It was almost as if I was watching myself winding myself up to say things I didn’t mean just to get some reaction. I have no idea why I was doing it.

  “No one is condemning you.”

  “Yes you are! You both are! ”

  “We’re just trying to do what’s best for everyone.”

  “Because I’ve made such a mess of everything!”

  “No. Because there are problems to be solved.” I could see both Maureen and Ted exchanging glances of exasperation as Maureen spoke harshly. “That is something you have never been good at recognising, other people’s problems.”

  Something from a conversation with Maureen came to mind “Nothing has changed, Ted’s still in the Wirral, I’m still here.” The things in Maureen’s life that had always made her sad… her failure to have the child of the man she loved… It was all so obvious. Maureen was in love with Ted.

  There was nothing I could do to stop myself. “You’re saying I’ve failed. You’re saying I’ve let everyone down. Well I don’t want Linda looking after my children. I don’t want her anywhere near them.”

  “Susannah…” Ted was looking at me with such disappointment. I couldn’t stand any more and got up.

  “I don’t want to talk about it any more. I’m going to bed.”

  “I’m sorry you feel this way. We’ll talk about it in the morning. Perhaps, when you’ve had a few minutes mature,” Maureen emphasised the word and I felt again like a child being told off for something I didn’t do. “mature,” she repeated sounding so like her sister, my step-mother, I couldn’t bear it, “reflection you may realise how like the old Susannah you are being, and how unlike the new Annie.” She was enjoying making the most of my stupidity.

  I could have realised how silly I was being, I could have relaxed, apologised and sat down again, the atmosphere restored to conviviality, my relationship with Ted not soured.

  I could have. I didn’t.

  I walked out of the room and went to bed. As I left there was a look of smug satisfaction on Maureen’s face as she turned to pour Ted another cup of coffee.

  The next morning at breakfast Ted asked, in a very formal way, whether I had slept well and whether I had had a chance to think about whether I would help Linda. Maureen busied herself at the Aga.

  “Thanks, not really, I’m sorry about last night. I must have been tired, there’s so much to think about, so many decisions to be made.”

  “Apology accepted but it’s a shame we couldn’t talk about it last night, there isn’t much time to get everything sorted out and the extra hours would have been useful.” Ted’s disapproval and disappointment were manifest in the lack of warmth in his voice.

  “Have you changed your mind about the children?” Maureen seemed equally distant. It was as if they were ganging up on me.

  “Do I have a choice?” I couldn’t help the reluctance in my voice, my determination to be generous and co-operative evaporating with every word Maureen spoke.

  “Of course you do, though I can’t think of one that would solve so many problems.” Maureen smiled at Ted. She seemed to want to try to smooth the atmosphere but only succeeded in making me feel less part of the arrangement. It seemed as though they were combined together against me. “I do think you could be more gracious about it.”

  I ate my toast and drank my coffee whilst Maureen and Ted talked about other things.

  “We’d better be going. There’s a busy day ahead.” Ted stacked the plates and carried them to the sink.

  I realised he was offering an olive branch so I grabbed the drying up cloth and stood next to him as he washed and I dried. It reminded me of the times we had performed the same, and the reverse, roles whilst I had lived with him after Joe had died and when we were both looking after my mother. But there was something dividing us now that there hadn’t been the day before.

  I couldn’t help feeling that something important had been lost.

  “Have you had a chance to think sensibly about Linda?” He asked with little preamble as he manoeuvred the car through the narrow streets of the village towards the main road.

  I had thought most of the night about it and could think of no good reason to object. I hadn’t meant to make such a fuss the night before, it was just that they had really annoyed me and words I didn’t mean came out of my mouth. I had done that all the time when arguing with Carl, I would get myself into a position and just carry on as if it wasn’t me doing the talking. I would say things I knew to be best left unsaid. It was probably a brilliant idea that the children, especially Josie, would get a mother figure in their lives and I realised that would never be me. I just didn’t like it that Ted and Maureen knew that too.

  “I’m really sorry about last night. I don’t know why I was so silly. It’s a brilliant idea. It’ll be the best thing for the children, and for Charles.” I tried to recover some of the ground I had lost with Ted. I so wanted him to think well of me.

  “I’m glad you’ve come round to the idea. We wouldn’t have done it without your approval you know. Despite everything you are their mother.”

  This time I didn’t rise to the implied criticism. Perhaps it was that Maureen wasn’t there revelling in my discomfort.

  “I’m more worried about what you expect me to do down here. You’ll have to tell me everything that needs doing. I’ll get it all done, Ted, you can rely on me.”

  “I know, but sometimes you do make it rather difficult. In that you are just like your mother.”

  He reached over and patted my hand. Perhaps we were friends again.

  As we entered the office the door was unlocked, the lights on and there was the clatter of the printer.

  “You look dreadful.” I couldn’t help the exclamation. Linda did, indeed, look tired and drawn.

  “Thanks.”

  “Let me get you some coffee.”

  “God no! I’ve had so much bloody coffee my blood must be brown.”

  “Have you been here all night?”

  “I said I’d get this stuff done.” She indicated the envelope Jonathan had given me the previous lunchtime.

  “You’ve done it?”

  “Of course.”

  “But there was a couple of days work there.”

  “It’s surprising how much you can get done when the phone isn’t ringing and you’re not worried about what everyone else is up to.” She was trying to sound cheerful. “I quite enjoyed it.”

  “I can’t ring him now and tell him it’s done, he’ll expect this service all the time.”

  “I thought it was only a one off.”

  “It is, but there’ll be amendments.” I hastily added ‘his not yours’ when I saw the look on her face as she tore the paper out of the printer and began splitting the long continuous sheet into separate pages.

  Ted came in from the kitchen with the coffee.

  “Come on girls, time to sit down and make some plans. Are you up to it Linda?”

  She nodded. “As ready as I’ll ever be.”

  We sat whilst Ted talked and I made lists. We had another mug of coffee as I made notes around all the items on those lists. By lunchtime we had the next three weeks mapped out, what had to be done and when. And I would be on my
own. Ted had to go to London the next day and Linda had only two days to pack up her home and move to her new life.

  Chapter Twenty

  There seemed to be a great deal to do in the winding up of a business but none of it was difficult, it would just need method and organisation. I did all that was required in the next three weeks which I spent either in the office or with Jonathan.

  I had met him, as arranged, for lunch on that first Wednesday and he had given the work hardly a glance. “Come on, I can look at that later, let’s have a drink.”

  After lunch he did talk very briefly about the work. “It looks good, you’ve done a great job but I will need to look at it.” I didn’t correct his assumption that it was I who had done the work. “Can you come back tomorrow to pick up my changes?”

  After that I had to meet him again to give him back the corrected sheets.

  “Back to London for a day or two.” He answered when I asked what he was going to do at the weekend. “But I’ll be back next Tuesday. Lunch?”

  I had been wondering why he only ever asked me to lunch and not after work in the evening.

  “Sorry, Tuesday I’ve got appointments during the day.” I tried to manoeuvre an evening date. Linda and Ted had left for the north and I was left with Maureen who seemed to have changed since Ted’s visit. It was like living with my step-mother and I didn’t enjoy it. “How about after work? Are you still staying at that pub? I could come round and meet you there.”

  “A bit risky isn’t it? My territory and that sort of thing? You never know what might happen.”

  He was being very obvious, but then so, I suppose, was I.

  Despite it being my second wedding Jonathan wanted to make it a really big event.

  He drew up a guest list that seemed to comprise mostly his family and colleagues at work, none of whom I knew.

  “I’m not sure they would enjoy the day.” He argued when I gave him a list of people I wanted to invite. “It certainly won’t be a suitable event for children.”

  I had told him very early on in our relationship that I had children from my first marriage. ‘They don’t live with me.’ I had said, rather defensively. ‘Then we don’t need to worry about them do we?’ he had answered without looking up from reading his paper.

  “It’s not an event it’s my wedding.” He ignored my objections. “What about other members of my family, my friends?”

  “I don’t think so. You always said you had no friends and you don’t get on with your family do you? No? Then we won’t invite any of them.”

  “But …”

  “No buts Susannah.” He had decided ‘Susannah’ had more style than ‘Annie’.

  “My side of the church is going to be very empty.”

  He didn’t pick up on the doubt in my voice. “Richard and Nicholas are ushers, they’ll distribute people evenly, regardless of whether they’re ‘yours’ or ‘mine’.” He was adamant and there were times when he used a tone of voice I could just not argue with.

  “There won’t be any of ‘mine’ will there?” I muttered under my breath.

  All the arrangements for the ceremony were out of my hands. We had to have the marriage ceremony itself in a Register Office but Jonathan planned a big blessing ceremony in a fashionable central London church.

  “I’m not having my family come half way round the world simply to stand in a dingy office for ten minutes.”

  “Well they don’t have to come half way round the world do they?” I asked, perhaps unwisely.

  He gave me a withering look. “Of course they’ll come to my wedding. It would look very odd if they didn’t”

  “But no one in my family is invited.”

  “That’s different.” I thought at the time he meant that my parents were dead but as the wedding approached and I saw what it was turning into I realised he saw it as his wedding. He was on view to his work colleagues and superiors. I was simply a necessary extra.

  I took no part in the decision of venue for the reception. The wife of a friend of his was a barrister and had agreed to sponsor Jonathan to have his reception in Middle Temple. I had soon learned that there was never anything unostentatious or cheap about Jonathan.

  “Just sort out some wonderful outfits and leave the rest to me.” He had said when I had asked what he was planning, who was going to pay for it and whether I would have any say at all in the arrangements for my wedding day. He did, after something of a discussion, allow me to choose which theatre we all went to on the evening after the Register Office ceremony.

  He didn’t even let me in on the secret of where he was taking me for our honeymoon.

  “You’ve got to tell me or I won’t know what to take with me.”

  “OK it’ll be hot. You’ll need formal clothes and casual ones. A bit of everything really.”

  “That’s no good! That tells me nothing at all.” I tried to get him to tell me where we were going but he was adamant.

  “It’s a surprise. You’ll love it.”

  It was when he said that the solution was for me to only bring underwear, he would organise everything else, that I began to feel I was losing control not only of my wedding but of my whole life.

  There were times when I thought, perhaps, I had made a mistake when I had accepted Jonathan’s proposal.

  It had all happened so fast. It was after only a couple of meetings that we were taking every opportunity to make love, on the office floor, in his car in pub car parks, and, as it grew warmer, on a blanket on the ground in the woods that surrounded the mill.

  “Is that it then?” I had asked, trying not to sound too unhappy when, on the last Friday in March, he said he wasn’t coming back to Kent the next week and he had told me what I already knew, that I would have no reason to return to Sevenoaks anyway.

  “Between us? It’s certainly the end of the beginning, not necessarily the beginning of the end.”

  “You’re teasing me. I don’t like that.”

  “Well, you could marry me?”

  It had been as casual as that, and I had answered in the same tone “I could, couldn’t I?”

  From then on it was out of my hands.

  I had told Maureen the week after the proposal as I packed my bags to move out. Her reaction was ambiguous.

  “If you’re sure this is the right thing to do then I’m happy for you but you hardly know the man. Bring him here for dinner. Let me meet him.”

  “I’ll try.” I didn’t hold up much hope that Jonathan would want to spend an evening with Maureen.

  “I’ll ask him.”

  “It shouldn’t be a question of having to ask him, Annie dear, you should be able to tell him that it is expected of him and he should want to know the people who are important to you.”

  I did ask him and he was dismissive. ‘What on earth would we talk about?’ he had said ‘I don’t know her.’ When I countered that he expected me to talk to all his colleagues and friends, people I didn’t know, he just said that that was different.

  “It’s difficult, Maureen, he works such long hours and he’s so busy.” I gave the only excuse I could think of when I telephoned.

  “He would make the time if he wanted to.” She answered coldly.

  “It isn’t like that.” I replied in rather feeble fashion.

  “Well I hope you’ll be very happy.” She seemed doubtful but perhaps a little relieved that she had done her duty and I was off her hands.

  I suppose he had swept me off my feet. He showed me a lifestyle I had never dreamed existed. Dinner parties, theatre, shopping on his credit card, all became quite normal. It took very little time for me to get very used to not having to worry about money or what to do in the evenings. Through the summer of 1983 as all the arrangements that had to be made were being made by other people my job was to be where and when Jonathan needed me to socialise with his colleagues, to have sex with and, very soon, to clean his flat and do his ironing. My promise to David, again, forgotten as I lived my busy l
ife. In any case apart from Ramesh’s treatment of Linda I had heard of nothing that could possibly be considered a threat to anyone in the family.

  The wedding date was set for my 37th birthday, the 1st September.

  I thought back to some of my birthdays and could think of none that had been particularly happy. There had been my second birthday party when everyone had caught Whooping Cough and Max’s daughter had died. All the way through my childhood it had marked the end of summer and the beginning of school. Seven years earlier, my 30th birthday, had been full of the hope that Carl and I would be together and we would enjoy our family life in Cambridge but that hadn’t been the best thing I had ever done. Now I was marrying Jonathan. Was that going to be just as stupid an idea? I was beginning to think so but, again, I had painted myself into a corner. So many arrangements had been made, so many people were committed to long journeys, it would be impossible to pull out now. And anyway. I loved Jonathan. Didn’t I.

  My job was to be Jonathan’s wife, my career was to support his.

  On the frequent occasions he was away working in America or Newcastle or Blackpool one or other of his colleagues would come round every evening to take me out to dinner, or to the theatre. He said he didn’t want me to be lonely but I began to think he just wanted to know what I was doing at all times. I lost contact, again, with all the people who should have mattered in my life.

  I spent the days shopping, whiling away the hours in a health club or at the hairdresser with the wives and girlfriends of Jonathan’s colleagues. I became one of those women I had always previously despised ‘a lady who lunched’.

  If anything my doubts increased as the wedding approached, I couldn’t call it off this late, could I? His family’s tickets were booked, all the arrangements were in place.

  There was only one place I could have run and that was to Maureen and I didn’t think I would have much of a welcome if I turned up with my tail between my legs saying I had made a dreadful mistake. Again.

  Perhaps I should have done.

  Somehow I got through the two wedding days, the Register Office on the last day of August and then the big ceremony the next day. I hated every minute of both days. They were not what I would have chosen if I had been given any say whatsoever