Barefoot in the Dark

by Lynne Barrett-Lee

  ‘What? Whoseson?’

  ‘The ref’s son!’

  ‘What?That boy? That Oliver boy?’

  Tom spread his hands in his lap. ‘Yes! Exactly, Mum!’

  Oh, brilliant. Brilliant, thought Hope.

  It wasn’t, she told herself, that she’d engineered it. Not really. It was just that she had found the fixture list and happened to notice that Tom’s team were playing the Cougars, and it didn’t take a great deal to persuade Iain that as she was going to be in the area anyway, it made sense for her to take Tom. That was all. Just one of those things you do on the spur of the moment. OK, on the spur of Friday evening, which was the spur of the moment in Iain’s organisational terms.

  Who was she kidding? In all her adult life, Hope had never, not once, found herself so utterly preoccupied with a man. With Iain, well, in the early days there’d been moments, of course, but that felt different to this. This was more complex. Less comfortable. This unmanageable mania was consuming almost all her waking thoughts. So, no. Not spur of the moment at all. Spur of a moment two weeks and five days back when a man called Jack Valentine had pressed his mouth against hers. It hadn’t even been a proper kiss, not really. Even so, the mere thought of it, along with the pictures that, as a result, kept suggesting themselves to her, made her light-headed with lust. She felt drenched in it, trapped in its velvety tentacles, and so intoxicating, so compelling, so heady was the feeling, that it actually made her very frightened.

  Yet on she’d trolled. On with her scheming and dreaming, as if someone else altogether was now running her life. Chloe, conveniently, was at a friend’s for a sleepover, and off she’d gone, head over her bloody Cinderella heels.

  She’d known he would be there, of course. The first rule in the management of a crush, Hope had reluctantly conceded, was that all reason must be abandoned on the altar of desire. So yes, of course he’d be there, inconceivable that he’d not be – bounding about the place, all tracksuited and trainered, all smiling enthusiasm and skill. And he had been. Though she’d not seen him at first. The pitches were a good way from the car park, so she’d dropped Tom off and gone back to park the car, and they were already playing by the time she’d trudged back. She’d huddled at the back of the knot of chilly parents, content to enjoy the experience of just seeing him and looking forward to saying hello at half time.

  But now this. This shame. Let down by her own son. She could just about cope with the fact of his outburst, but this subsidiary bombshell that Oliver wasn’t just any old Oliver, but Oliver Valentine… well… it was too much. Horror upon horror. What would he think of her?

  ‘Right,’ she said, decided, once Tom had showered and calmed down and thought he’d slunk off and got away with it. ‘Two apologies are in order. One, I apologise for coming on the pitch and shouting at you. It was wrong of me and embarrassing for you and I won’t do it again, OK? And two, I want you to go up to your room and write a letter of apology to Mr Valentine, and you can come with me to deliver it later on, when I go to pick up my suit from the dry cleaners.’

  Tom looked horrified. ‘What?’

  ‘You heard. You will write a letter of apology and you will come with me to deliver it.’

  ‘What, to him? What, personally?’

  ‘Yes, young man,’ she said sternly, in her don’t-mess-with-me voice. ‘Personally, Thomas. To him.’

  So he did. They picked up a box of Roses from the supermarket, and then drove on to Jack’s house. She knew where it was because she had all his details in her handbag. He’d scribbled his home address and phone number on the back of his card when he’d taken her out to dinner. Just in case, he’d said. Just in case you need to get hold of me for anything.

  And now, as she stood in his porch, ringing the doorbell, the ‘anything’ felt particularly ill-judged and stupid, and her feet felt spectacularly, cringe-makingly cold.

  It was important that Tom do the right thing. Of course it was. But right now? In the form of this impulsive madness? Coming round here and turning up on his doorstep? When she could have sent it, or given it to him when she next saw him, or had Tom go round on his bike or something and drop it through the letterbox… she didn’t want to examine her motives, for she knew they were agents of a whole other preoccupation.

  Some time passed. She hadn’t heard the bell ring inside, and there was no indication of life beyond the frosted glass panel in the door.

  ‘They’re probably out,’ observed Tom, looking hopeful.

  Hope cupped her hand around her eye and peered through the glass. A dark shape was growing inside now, coming down the stairs.

  ‘Ah,’ said Hope.

  ‘Oh,’ said Tom.

  Jack Valentine then appeared at the door. He was barefoot, wearing very little clothing. A pair of shorts – boxer shorts, even – she didn’t like to look too closely – and a T-Shirt that said ‘Real Men Don’t Ask For Directions’ on the front. He looked slightly crumpled. Like he’d recently been asleep.

  ‘Goodness!’ he said, looking shocked. ‘Well, hello!’

  Hope smiled cheerily at him, wishing she could simply disappear or explode.

  ‘We’re sorry to bother you,’ she said. ‘But Tom wanted to – well –’ She nudged Tom and he proffered the envelope. ‘We came – Tomcame – to apologise.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Jack Valentine again, smiling at Hope as he took the letter. ‘Oh, right. But you really didn’t have to do that.’ He smiled at Tom now. ‘I know it was an accident. These things happen. Heat of the moment and all that.’

  Lots of things happened in the heat of the moment. Not all of them necessarily good. Hope swallowed. ‘That’s very gracious of you. How’s Oliver’s eye?’

  ‘It’s fine. A little bruised, but no permanent damage.’ He opened the door wider. ‘Why don’t you come up and say hello?’

  ‘You’re not in the middle of anything, are you? I should have called, I know, but I thought, well… as we were passing anyway… and, well, Tom –’

  Hope fell silent, feeling more than ever like this had been a very bad idea. ‘No, no,’ he said. ‘Not long home from work, actually. Watching TV. Nothing special.’ He glanced at the chocolates clasped in Tom’s other hand. ‘Well? Are you going to come in?’ He stood aside and waved an arm towards the stairs.

  Hope stayed on the doorstep. Tom, beside her, continued to look down at his feet.

  ‘I don’t want to intrude or anything.’

  ‘You’re not. Not at all. Come on in.’ He held the door open wider still, while Hope and Tom filed past him. ‘Up the stairs,’ he said, shutting the front door.

  It was an old house, the hall wallpapered in violent floral swirls. Down the hallway, two further doors were both closed. A copy of the local newsletter lay unopened on a spindly hall table, next to a spider plant sitting in a tide-marked saucer. Hope headed up the stairs, Tom’s footfalls heavy behind her.

  At the top, eighteen inches of brick-red carpet led to another door, which was ajar. Clearly the door to Jack’s flat. It had a Yale lock on it.

  ‘Go on. Go on in,’ he called up from behind them. The landing continued, only now it was more correctly another hall. There was a phone on the floor and a phone book beside it. And there were two black and white photos of football teams on the wall. Teenagers. But not his. These were a generation or two older. She hovered while Jack shut the door behind them.

  ‘My dad,’ he said proudly, pointing to the first one. ‘He played for the Portsmouth under twenty-ones.’ He pointed out a slight boy with the same grin Jack had.

  ‘And this one?’

  ‘Ah. That’s me. I’m afraid I wasn’t quite so talented as a player. That’s just the local team. But I’m kind of hoping these things skip a generation – you know, like twins do? And that Ollie’ll be doing it for me instead. I’m working on him.’ He grinned. ‘Anyway, come on in.’

  Through the far door, Hope could see a teenage boy hunched over a computer at a small gate-leg table. He g
lanced up as they entered.

  ‘Ollie, look who’s here. And bearing chocolates, no less! D’you want to go on in, Tom?’

  Tom looked like he’d rather have a six-inch nail drilled through his toe without anaesthetic and Hope wondered again quite what it was that had possessed her to frogmarch him round here. But he stepped forward anyway. There was little else for him to do.

  ‘Peace offering,’ quipped Jack, clearly also a bit lost for words. ‘Hey! There’s a thought! Are you genned up with this Legend of Mir game, Tom?’ He followed Tom into the living room and ushered him across to the computer, where sounds of distant carnage intermittently cawed from the screen. Oliver looked embarrassed. Hope could see Tom nod.

  ‘Ollie’s obsessed with it, aren’t you, mate?’ He turned back to Hope. ‘What’s new, eh?’ he added knowingly. Hope didn’t know. She didn’t have a computer right now. A source of much scowling resentment at home. Jack turned around and grabbed another chair from the other side of the table. ‘Here, Tom. Have a seat. Ollie’ll be glad of some intelligent discussion about it, I’m sure.’

  ‘Er… right,’ said Tom, sitting down, and placing the box of Roses at the side of the desk.

  Ollie turned to face him, reaching for the chocolates as he did so. ‘You on this?’

  ‘At my dad’s.’

  ‘What level you on?’

  ‘Twenty-three.’

  Oliver offered Tom a chocolate. ‘ Twenty-three?’ He looked awed.

  So that was all right, then.

  ‘Well,’ said Jack, once the boys were installed in front of the monitor. ‘Whatever they say about the anti-social nature of computer games, I think we pulled off a social coup there, don’t you? Cup of tea? Coffee or something? Drink?’ He was standing close enough to her that she could smell him. A woody smell. Pungent. Aftershave or shower gel, she supposed. The hair on his neck looked slightly damp.

  She shook her head. ‘No, no,’ she replied quickly. ‘I really don’t want to impose. I just – Tom just – well, we wanted to apologise, that was all. I couldn’t leave it. His behaviour was unforgivable this morning, and –’

  ‘No problem,’ said Jack graciously. ‘Happens all the time, believe me.’ He nodded towards the boys. ‘Thanks for the chocolates,’ he said, smiling at her. ‘My favourites.’

  ‘I’m sure they’re not.’

  Jack Valentine placed a hand on each hip and studied her. He seemed entirely unconcerned at his state of undress. ‘Go on. At least have a cup of tea or something, now you’re here.’

  He led her through to a little kitchen. It was only slightly wider than the hallway, with a couple of take-away containers on the worktop and two plates sitting in the sink. Like the rest of the flat it was painted white over the wallpaper, only in here the paper was woodchip, and the units were all beige with a leather-look finish. The floor was chipped cork tiles. It was, Hope thought, grim.

  Jack bent down and fished two mugs out of a cupboard. Hope couldn’t help noticing there was little else in there. And the handle was coming off. She hovered by the worktop self-consciously.

  Jack glanced across at her. ‘Here,’ he said, pulling a stool from under the end of it. ‘Sit down.’

  She felt uncomfortable seeing him here, in this place. Profoundly uncomfortable. As if she had strayed into a part of his life that she had no business to. It was so not what she had expected. She was embarrassed by the sight of his smeary washing-up-liquid bottle, by the little memo board on the fridge saying ‘coffee’ and ‘ beans’, by the pair of grey socks that were lying on the floor in the corner, by the crocheted tea cosy, the Indian take-away calendar on the wall. The peeling paintwork. The cheap, aged furniture. She was embarrassed for him. It hadn’t been like this for Iain. How was it like this for Jack? She was desperate to know. But couldn’t bring herself to ask.

  ‘Quite the bachelor pad,’ she found herself saying instead. Saying very jovially, barely even as she’d thought it, as if her subconscious mind simply had to acknowledge it. He turned around, a chrome caddy of tea bags in his hand.

  ‘As shit-holes go, it’s pretty top notch,’ he said, his expression mock-serious. ‘I had to beat off hordes to get it, you know.’ He plopped tea bags into the mugs and reached for a large chrome kettle. ‘You know what they say. Location, location, location.’ He grinned. ‘It’s near the pub.’ He seemed entirely unconcerned.

  Hope smiled too, her disquiet now stilled. ‘Where did you live before?’

  ‘Oh, not far. Roath.’

  ‘Well, I never! I used to live there. Well, near there.’ How had she never seen him before? ‘You rent this place, do you?’ He couldn’t have bought it. Surely. He nodded.

  ‘I had a place lined up to buy before Christmas, but it fell through at the last minute.’ He picked up a tea towel from the work top and folded it over the handle on the oven door. ‘So it was either rent somewhere quick or unpack and stay in the spare room a bit longer.’ He grinned at her wryly. ‘I chose the shit-hole. Wouldn’t you?’

  Hope nodded, remembering. ‘I guess I would. We – my ex-husband and I – decided to sell our house. We had to live together while we waited for it all to go through. He wouldn’t go. It was horrible.’

  ‘You could have made him.’

  ‘So everybody told me at the time. But it’s never that simple, is it? It was –’ she shrugged. ‘Sensible. Rather than him have to move twice.’

  The kettle boiled, and Jack poured water into the mugs.

  ‘Lucky him, then!’ he said cheerfully.

  Yes, thought Hope, looking through to the airless little living room, with its threadbare sofa, its hideous chintzy cushions, its tired brown carpet. Lucky him.

  ‘Your wife kept the house, then?’

  Jack nodded. ‘She didn’t want to move. And she’s got a pretty well-paid job, so she was quite happy to take on half the mortgage.’

  ‘But what about you? I mean, if you’re still paying for it, don’t you get a share in it?’

  ‘Oh, I will eventually.’ He stirred the tea bags around in the mugs. ‘I’ll start looking for a place in the spring, I guess. I’m in the middle of a lot of stuff at the moment. No rush.’

  Hope nodded. ‘Seems a bit unfair, though. I mean, you having to live here, while –’

  ‘Believe me, I’m not complaining. You could put me in a cardboard box and I’d be happy. I’m just glad that it’s over. That I’m out of it. Free.’

  Hope watched while he fished out the tea bags, and then stirred in milk. His profile, she saw, as if noticing for the first time, was angular, Roman. The sort you might describe as heroic. He’d have to be, she thought, living here.

  She accepted the mug he passed her. ‘And in your bachelor pad,’ she said.

  ‘You said it! No, I’m quite happy to let the dust settle. See how things pan out. I don’t want to commit myself to too much else right now, but I’ve got some irons in the fire workwise… so we’ll see.’

  ‘That sounds exciting. What sort of irons? On the radio?’

  He shook his head. ‘TV. But it’s early days. Like I say, we’ll see.’

  She sipped the tea. It was Earl Grey, which surprised her. ‘Wow. Quite the Renaissance man.’

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘You. Your life sounds so exciting compared to mine.’

  He blew steam from his mug.

  ‘You know what?’ he said, meeting her gaze and holding it. ‘It certainly has its moments.’

  They stayed for over an hour.

  Poor Jack Valentine, she thought, as she and Tom pulled out into the road and drove away while he waved. He’d made the flat cosy enough, but it was still pretty dismal. It seemed so unfair. He was, thought Hope, as they drove off down the street, such a very nice man. So much not what she’d originally thought. She wondered what kind of woman he’d been married to. It was hard to reconcile the person she had just been with, with the idea of a wife playing fast and loose. What was wrong with him, she wondered? What was the
hidden character defect that would make a sane woman want to leave someone like him? But thinking that made her realise that perhaps, even at this very moment, he might be wondering that very thing about her. Divorce. Such an ugly word. Full of uncomfortable implications. That was the greatest tragedy of divorce, she decided. The nagging unease that there had to be something not quite right about a person to make another person want to leave them. Try as she might, she couldn’t get past the feeling that there must have been something very wrong with her for Iain to have had all the affairs that he did.

  She pushed the thought away angrily. There was nothing wrong with her. Nothing whatsoever. She’d just had the misfortune to have married a man for whom fidelity in marriage was an optional extra. And then the even greater misfortune of not having realised this until she’d produced two children and was effectively pinioned to her position in the triad. Leaving Iain then had simply not been an option, however much society might have had it that it was. She had no job, no money, no financial security, no pension, no nothing. And two children to consider. No. All she’d had in any real quantity was a feeling of stultifying fear. So she’d practised forgiveness. She’d been great at forgiveness. And Iain, who didn’t want to leave her in any case, had been good at reassuring her that he wouldn’t do it again. He loved her. It didn’t mean anything. It reallydidn’t mean anything. He just couldn’t help himself sometimes. He loved her. Yes, yes, he knew he’d done it before. But he wouldn’t do it again. He promised.

  The change, when it came, had been a revelation to Hope. When it dawned on her that she didn’t need to feel scared any more. The children were older, she was working part-time, and Madeleine, dear Madeleine, had given her the belief that she couldhave a different future. It was easy after that. Painful, but still easy. As with childbirth, the light at the end of the tunnel went a long way towards dulling the pain.

  Well, she was free now, and could count her blessings on all ten fingers, while Iain could get on and count his regrets. Not, she was sure, that he had very many. But that was fine, too. She’d got past all that now. She could allow him some happiness. This, to her mind, and to her quiet relief, had turned out to be the greatest freedom of all.