The Great Escape

by Fiona Gibson

  ‘When’s it got to be finished by?’ Josh asks.

  ‘There’s no deadline,’ Hannah says, ‘but he arrives a couple of days before the wedding. My plan is to have it all finished by then.’

  ‘That’s not long, is it?’ Josh wonders aloud.

  Hannah smiles, taking her sketchpad and pencils out of her bag and perching on the arm of the putty-coloured sofa. ‘Between the three of us,’ she murmurs, already seeing wavering stripes, like ribbons around the window, ‘I’m sure we can do it.’

  ‘Of course we can,’ Daisy says with a grin.

  Josh looms over Hannah, his glance flicking from the open page in her pad to the elegant window she’s sketching. ‘What’s Felix like anyway?’ he asks.

  ‘I think you’ll like him,’ she says. ‘You’ll meet him at the wedding. He’s funny and there’s something about him …’

  ‘You’re good at drawing,’ Daisy observes.

  ‘Thanks, but this is just a scribble really.’

  ‘What d’you mean, there’s something about him?’ Josh asks.

  ‘I don’t know how to explain it,’ Hannah says, sketching the individual panes, the hazy outlines of the trees and the neat brick terraces beyond. ‘I suppose he’s just good at bringing people together.’

  SIXTY-NINE

  Spike knows he should be grateful that Charlie and his girlfriend Toni have taken him in, but at forty-eight he feels he really shouldn’t be lying on a sofa bed in someone else’s living room, awake at 4.47 am, with the next day stretching bleakly before him. Pulling the duvet around his shoulders, he pads over to the computer at the desk in the corner and turns it on.

  Spike isn’t sure about the etiquette of using Charlie and Toni’s PC but at this ungodly hour he doesn’t really care. He opens a new Word document and starts to type.

  Darling Lou,

  I know you’ve told me not to phone or come round so I’m writing this instead. Well, typing actually – you know how terrible my handwriting is. What can I say, darling? I’ve let you down, not just recently but for years, by not supporting you and seeing you trying so hard and taking that crappy job … what can I do to make it up to you? I love you, Lou. You’re my soulmate … Spike stops, picturing Lou rolling her eyes at that. He erases it and writes: You’re everything to me. The most beautiful, talented girl I’ve ever known. Please, Lou, let’s sort this out. I’ll change. We’ll get a better flat and you won’t have to pick out nappies from the ballpool or come home stinking of chips. Not that I ever thought you stank. And I need to sort myself out, I realise that, and be a proper boyfriend – maybe we should get married. What do you think? And have a baby? I’ve never felt ready for parenthood but now I know how selfish I’ve been. I realise you’re not getting any younger …

  No, God, he can’t put that. If you want a baby I’m happy to start trying right now. No! That makes it sound like he’s expecting to walk back in and jump her bones. He pauses, his brain whirling, wishing there was a guitar here so he could at least put all of this into a song instead, he’s better at that than writing letters … Taking a deep breath, and wondering if Charlie and Toni have any wine in the fridge, he signs off: I love you, Lou-Lou, please never doubt that. Spike xx.

  He takes a moment to steady his breath, then switches on the printer which sounds horribly loud and rattly in the middle of the night as his letter scrolls through. Spike peers at it, trying to reassure himself that he doesn’t need reading glasses – it’s just the font, that’s all. He should have used a bigger font.

  He rereads it with difficulty, folds it in half and wonders how he’ll ask Charlie for an envelope without arousing suspicion. Then he turns back to the computer, opens a new document and starts to type:

  Donald Wren: Curriculum Vitae

  SEVENTY

  It’s a fine, dry Tuesday morning and Sadie is out on her bike. She doesn’t cycle the way Hannah does. She’s not a daredevil city cyclist, zipping between traffic and haring around roundabouts without flinching. She prefers a more sedate approach, taking in her surroundings and rarely breaking into a sweat. Perhaps, she thinks, this is what living in the country is all about.

  Passing the small row of shops – the Spar, post office and a curious place that sells everything from kites to reconditioned sewing machines – Sadie heads for the park. She hadn’t planned to go any further, but she won’t get this chance very often – Barney is working from home today and has persuaded her to go out for an hour or so. She leaves the park, following the steep, curving hill out of the village, then turns off along a narrow path still mulchy from last autumn’s leaves.

  Hissingham Woods, the sign reads, with a picture of an acorn. Public right of way. All these months they’ve lived here, although she’s known roughly where the woods are, she’s never got around to finding her way into them. Sadie breathes in the rich, damp scent of foliage, making a mental note to bring Barney and the babies here. Since Glasgow, Sadie has no longer felt trapped in a fug of motherhood. While she’d expected to miss her boys, she’d been unprepared for the gnawing ache of longing which had engulfed her as the train had approached King’s Cross, growing even more intense as she’d caught the local train to Little Hissingham. The difference now is that she knows it’s possible to physically separate herself from them, that Barney is a perfectly capable father who can cope admirably when she’s not around.

  She cycles on, following the path deeper into the woods until it opens out into a glade – a perfect picnic spot, the kind of place she’d imagined they’d come to all the time when they moved to the country. She and Barney tend to take the children out in shifts – her on weekdays, him at weekends. Well, that should change, she decides. They should all hang out together as much as they can.

  Sadie stops and lays her bike on its side, finding a place to sit. As she pokes a finger into the back of her trainer to rub a sore spot – a minor injury from dancing in heels – something catches her eye in the grass.

  It’s a tiny shoe in soft, biscuit-coloured leather. Dylan’s shoe, bought by Sadie’s parents – one of the many parcels they’d arrived with when they’d shown up in hospital after the birth. It’s slightly flattened and damp, she notices, slipping it into her pocket. She brushes grass from her jeans and picks up her bike, feeling uneasy now. As she cycles home, no longer noticing the smells and sounds of the woods, a single thought turns over and over in her head: Barney said he’d taken the boys to the park. He never said anything about the woods.

  Letting herself into the house, Sadie can hear Barney and the boys in the living room. Instead of popping her head round the door, she wheels her bike through to the back of the house and into the garden shed. She props it against the wall and takes a deep breath. ‘You’re going to turn into a shed man,’ she’d teased Barney when they’d bought this place.

  ‘What do men do in sheds anyway?’ he’d asked.

  ‘They tinker,’ she’d said. ‘You’re going to be a tinkering shed man.’ Sadie doesn’t know how long she’s been standing here, but she knows it’s too long to appear normal. Aware of her thudding heart, she rehearses her opening line: ‘Look what I found in the woods.’ You said you took the boys to the park. You never said anything about the woods …

  She heads indoors, gripping the baby shoe tightly. As she enters the living room, her boys gaze up delightedly from the rug. She turns to Barney and opens her mouth, then freezes. ‘You got a text,’ he says coldly, striding towards her with her phone in his hand. ‘Here, you’d better read it.’

  With a frown, Sadie takes it from him and peers, wordlessly, at the message on display: GREAT TO MEET YOU SADIE. HOPE TO REPEAT SOMETIME? ANDREW X

  SEVENTY-ONE

  ‘Have you done any bar work before?’ asks Ben, the manager of Bar Circa, in the side room reserved for private parties.

  Lou pauses, then decides to be honest. ‘Not since I was a student. I worked in a club for a few months in Glasgow – that’s where I studied – and for the past year or so I
’ve been at Let’s Bounce.’

  ‘The soft play centre?’ Ben’s eyebrows shoot up in amusement.

  ‘That’s right,’ Lou says, surprised that she hasn’t had to explain what it is.

  He laughs. ‘I’ve got a two-year-old, took him there a couple of times …’

  ‘Very brave,’ Lou says with a smile.

  ‘So what d’you do there?’

  ‘Um, pretty much everything. Work in the café, supervise the play area, clear up, just throw myself into the general mayhem really …’

  ‘I can imagine. To be honest, I don’t know how you can stand it …’

  She chuckles, warming to this engaging, amiable young man. ‘I think I’ve stood it for long enough, actually. That’s why I’m here.’

  He nods understandingly. ‘So how did you end up working there?’

  ‘Needs must,’ she says quickly. ‘I’m actually a jeweller. I was doing pretty well before the recession, but a few independent shops closed and I just wasn’t selling enough. I had to find something else …’

  ‘And you’re thinking of leaving Let’s Bounce?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ she declares. ‘You see, working here would be perfect. Your ad said you were looking for someone for evening shifts …’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘And what I really need to do is free up my days so I can focus on …’ She hesitates, unsure of how to phrase it without putting down bar work.

  ‘Focus on what you really want to do?’ Ben suggests.

  ‘That’s right.’

  He smiles. ‘That makes sense. If you’re at the play centre five days a week …’

  ‘Six actually,’ she corrects him.

  ‘Wow. Well, no wonder you want to refocus.’

  Lou grins broadly; that’s it exactly. She is refocusing. How did Johnny put it when he called her to wish her luck? You’re focusing on what’s important, Lou. Yes, I know you might not want to work in a bar forever, but you’re right – it could be the perfect solution for now. No, I don’t think you’re crazy. That’s the last thing I’d ever think of you … And she’d headed off to work as if on a cloud, feeling freer than she could ever remember.

  ‘If you can cope with Let’s Bounce,’ Ben remarks, ‘I’m sure you could deal with even the rowdiest Friday night crowd here.’

  ‘I’m sure I could,’ Lou says firmly, glimpsing the clock on the wall behind him, realising her lunch break should have finished ten minutes ago and that Dave will be asking Steph what on earth she – loyal, dependable Lou – is playing at.

  As Ben tells her about the shift patterns and the others on his team, Lou knows he’s going to offer her a job. She knows, too, that the first person she’ll phone as she leaves the bar on this sunny Tuesday is Johnny, who’s eagerly waiting for her call, and that she’ll walk back, in no particular hurry, to Let’s Bounce. There, she will pull that despised garment from her bag and hand it to Dave, who’ll be amazed when she tells him she’s leaving. She doesn’t care that it’s going to be tough, or that she might find herself stalking the orange sticker girl in the supermarket for a little longer.

  Lou doesn’t care because she is dizzy with excitement at the thought of Johnny arriving in London for Hannah’s wedding – and she knows that she will never wear a brown tabard in her life again.

  SEVENTY-TWO

  Three days, Spike has been back. Three days of living with Charlie, and Charlie’s brittle girlfriend Toni with her Pre-Raphaelite hair and silvery cat and inability to walk into a room without pausing to straighten something. On this drizzly Tuesday morning, Spike calculates that he has called Lou thirty-four times – sometimes landline, sometimes mobile, always getting her chirpy answerphone voice. He’s even tried calling Let’s Bounce and, to add insult to injury, got an answerphone message there too, telling him about opening hours.

  Now, with Charlie and Toni at work, he is alone in their flat. Lou has forbidden him from turning up at home, grudgingly suggesting that he collects his stuff once his new bank cards arrive, his old ones having being lost along with his wallet. He must then post his key back through the letterbox, and all of this must take place while she’s away at Hannah’s wedding. So, although Charlie and Toni have saved Spike from homelessness, he knows that, at some point very soon, he’ll have to find somewhere to live. He’ll also have to find a way to pay Charlie back the £100 he’s lent him to tide him over. All he has on him is the small rucksack he’d taken to Glasgow containing his toothbrush, razor and a spare set of clothes. A fuzz of anxiety starts to bear down on top of his head, and to distract himself he heads into town.

  Sound Shack is busy for a weekday. Spike’s guitar is still there, no longer in the window but on the wall, with a slight price reduction, he notices. In case Rick thinks he’s still mourning the thing, and has come in on a kind of pilgrimage, he feigns interest in a hefty book of Leonard Cohen songs. The shop door opens, and as he looks up, Spike’s breath catches in his throat. Astrid. No, not Astrid, but a girl who looks so uncannily like her his heart jolts alarmingly.

  Spike stands, clutching the book, as she wanders over to look at the guitars on the wall. As she moves from one to the next, he focuses on her bottom; the most exquisite bottom he’s seen in a long time, snugly encased in dark jeans. Spike feels a shiver of desire. A girl who looks like Astrid, but is also into music; he can barely imagine anything closer to perfection.

  Conscious of not wanting to stare, he replaces the book in the rack, pulls out a collection of Bob Dylan songs and tries to appear fascinated by it. But his eyes keep flicking up again, and when he sees the girl studying his guitar, he can’t stop himself.

  It’s a sign.

  ‘That’s a nice guitar,’ he says casually.

  She turns and looks at him, frowning slightly. ‘Mmmm.’

  Mmmm? Is that all she can say? ‘Er, it used to be mine,’ he adds with a self-deprecating laugh, conscious of Rick studying him intently from behind the counter.

  ‘Really?’ she says with mild interest.

  Spike shrugs. ‘Needed the cash.’ Hell, why did he say that? Now he sounds like a loser. ‘And I guess you can only play one guitar at a time,’ he says, finishing with a ridiculous guffaw.

  ‘Yeah, I suppose so.’ She turns back to the instrument and bites her bottom lip.

  Why is she making it so difficult for him? Then Spike realises. Of course – it’s what happened sometimes during his brief period of being famous, in the days of eager girls in dressing rooms and George with the purring Merc. Sometimes, instead of fawning over Spike and asking him to sign various body parts, a girl would put on the aloof act – a sort of, ‘Yeah, of course I know who you are, but I’m damned if I’m going to let on.’ It worked too. Spike was always lured by the frosty ones. Well, Spike can play that game too. With a shrug, he mooches away and studies a keyboard whilst still keeping the girl in his vision. She’s now making for the door. Spike frowns, realising he’s still gripping the Bob Dylan book, and that he’s bent the cover and will have to slip it back into the rack before Rick notices. The girl doesn’t look back as she opens the door. He waits for her to turn round, to crack a smile and admit that she knew who he was all along. But she doesn’t even acknowledge him as she leaves the shop.

  Spike stands there, oblivious to Rick’s concerned frown and a group of teenage boys who are clearly whispering something derogatory about him. He stares at the door, realising he has to stop this right now – this waiting for that girl to come back in, waiting for Lou to forgive him, waiting for his life to somehow, miraculously, fix itself. He needs to get away from all of this – to escape from a life of waiting and start doing something instead. With a start, he knows exactly what he must do.

  He’ll go back to Charlie and Toni’s and collect the letter he wrote for Lou, and he’ll creep round to the flat and post it through the door. Then he’ll spend the rest of the money Charlie lent him on a return train ticket to Ayr, and he’ll go the sheltered bungalow to spend time with
his parents before it’s too late. Then, as he walks with them on the blustery beach, he’ll figure out what the hell to do with the rest of his life.

  SEVENTY-THREE

  ‘You kissed him? You kissed this … Andrew?’

  Sadie nods mutely in the middle of their living room where her children are now playing beneath their activity arch. ‘You got off your face and snogged someone?’

  ‘Yes,’ she whispers. ‘At least that’s what Hannah and Sadie said. I’m sorry, Barney. I had these cocktails, they went straight to my head. It’s all fuzzy and I can’t remember …’

  ‘Did you do anything else?’ he snaps.

  ‘No! Of course not …’ She tails off, realising this is the first time she’s ever seen Barney this angry.

  ‘I knew something had happened,’ he mutters, his dark eyes boring into hers across the room. ‘You’ve been different since you came back …’

  ‘Look, I said I’m sorry, you can’t imagine how much I wish it hadn’t happened. But if it means anything, and I’m not trying to make excuses …’ She glances down at their children, wishing with all her heart that a magic nanny would appear and whisk them out of the room. ‘If it means anything,’ she continues shakily, ‘it was the first time I’d done anything on my own since having the boys and I think it went to my head.’

  ‘It obviously did,’ he says gruffly.

  ‘I’m sorry, Barney.’ Blinking away the tears that have started to form – she will not let the children see her cry – she pulls out the baby shoe from her pocket. ‘I found this,’ she adds in a whisper.

  ‘Did you? Where?’

  ‘In the woods …’

  ‘The woods?’ he repeats, eyebrows shooting upwards.

  Sadie studies his face, then glances down to see Milo peering at his reflection in the dangling mirror. When she looks back at her husband she doesn’t see caring Barney who tries to do the right thing, or even furious Barney, confronting her about kissing a man in a bar. He looks trapped and scared as she calmly asks, ‘How did Dylan’s shoe get in the woods?’