Strange Allure

by Susan Lewis

  Carla looked over at the door as someone knocked. Dully she got up to answer it. This time it was Greg.

  ‘Carla? Oh God!’ he cried, catching her as she staggered against him.

  ‘It’s OK. I’m OK,’ she breathed. Her face was ashen, her limbs were shaking. ‘I’m ready to go. I’ll get my bag.’

  She went into the bedroom, leaving her brother alone with Chrissie.

  ‘Hello,’ Chrissie said, using her fingers to wipe away the tears as she stood up.

  Greg’s face was pale, and his eyes were red. ‘Hello,’ he replied, awkwardly. Then almost as an afterthought, ‘Thanks for being here.’

  Chrissie was confused, but before she could speak Carla came out of the bedroom.

  ‘OK,’ she said to Greg.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Chrissie cried, belatedly realizing that something was very wrong with the way they were behaving.

  Carla looked at Greg. ‘You tell her,’ she said brokenly. ‘I’ll wait in the car.’

  As the door closed behind Carla, Chrissie turned in panic to Greg. ‘What?’ she cried. ‘What’s happened? Where are you taking her?’

  ‘There’s been an accident,’ Greg answered. ‘Our mother’s dead.’

  And now here she was, almost a year later, curled up on the sofa in her mother’s house with Eddie, still not knowing how she had managed to survive that terrible time. It was probably only thanks to her brothers, and Sonya, that she had. Left to herself … Well, she had a pretty good idea what she’d have done, because the pain had been so bad, and her mind so unstable, that for months either Mark or Sonya had stayed with her at the house, afraid to leave her alone.

  Tonight was the first time in a while that she had allowed herself to relive those final weeks of her relationship with Richard. In the early months she’d gone over it obsessively, searching for the signs she must have missed, the little nuances or hints that should have warned her what was coming, but she’d never found them, and nor could she now. Right up to the last she had believed utterly in his love, and a part of her, that poor, sad, deluded part that continued to long for him even now, still did. The last words he’d spoken to her, on the phone from Kosovo, were to tell her he’d be home in two days and that he couldn’t wait to see her. But of course the call hadn’t been from Kosovo, it had been from Zanzibar where he’d been with Chrissie. And he never did come back.

  It had taken months to make herself believe that the lies and deception were real. Day after day she called him on the phone, begging him, often hysterically, to come back to her. In the end he refused to speak to her any more, so in a crazed and desperate state she’d driven up to London and banged on their door, screaming and pleading with them to let her in. They must have called Greg, because her brother had come to get her, and take her back to the village.

  She hadn’t spoken to Richard since that terrible day, nor to Chrissie. The memory of it burned shamefully through her now, but there was no denying how desperately she longed to turn back the clock to a time when she still had her mother; when Chrissie was still her best friend, and Richard wasn’t the stranger he was now. She still woke in the night, convinced it was all a dream, but it took only seconds for the terrible truth to engulf her, and then all the bitter, unanswered questions, and raw, battered emotions would trap her in wakefulness till dawn. She thought she’d known him so well, but the man she knew would never have behaved the way he had. The man she loved would never have told such lies about rescuing a family in Kosovo; lies made obscene by how smoothly and movingly they’d been told. And his pretence of loving her – for that was all it could have been, a pretence – was so convincing it had never even occurred to her to doubt it. Yet all the time he was making love to her best friend. For how long, she still didn’t know, but it seemed that even as they were planning their future, he’d been planning another with Chrissie. How could he have done that? How could Chrissie? How had either of them faced her, or her family, knowing how treacherously they were betraying her? The pain, the grief, the loss, had all been so harsh they had practically driven her out of her mind, but in the end it was the betrayal that had almost destroyed her. The betrayal, and the dawning realization that the man she had loved so deeply, who she had truly believed was her soulmate, was nothing more than a coward and a liar, who had lacked even the courage to tell her himself that their relationship was over. At least Chrissie had been able to do that. But how she hated Chrissie now. How desperately she wanted to make her pay for getting herself pregnant by the man she knew Carla loved.

  Hugging Eddie closer, Carla buried her face in his fur, and let the tears flow. Dear Eddie, he was always there with his comfort, never complaining, no matter how wet she made him, or hard she squeezed. And her grip always got tighter when she thought of Chrissie. Apparently the shock of discovering that she’d told Carla about the baby just minutes after Carla had learned of her mother’s death, had almost caused Chrissie to miscarry. Carla could only feel it a shame that she hadn’t. She wished nothing good for Chrissie now, she wanted her to know only the pain and grief Carla had felt when she’d lost everything in the world that mattered.

  Trying to choke back the tears, she pulled Eddie in closer. The grim comfort of churning up the hatred was only ever short-lived, and as Eddie licked her face she thought of her mother, and how much she had adored this daft, beloved creature. Oh God, she missed her mother. How desperately she had needed her back then to help get her past all that horrible pain – but how desperately she had needed Chrissie and Richard too, to help her over the grief of her mother’s futile, senseless death. She’d been out walking Eddie, early in the morning, along a path they all knew well, and was only a few minutes from home. If it hadn’t been raining she might only have twisted her ankle, but because the ground at the edge of the bank was wet, it had given way as she fell, so she’d lost her balance and crashed down into the stream where she’d hit her head on a boulder. The blow had killed her outright.

  ‘Oh Mum,’ she sobbed. ‘Why, oh why, did it have to happen?’

  She didn’t remember much about the funeral now, probably because, as Sonya had told her later, she’d spent much of that time sedated. She didn’t know until a long time after that Richard and Chrissie hadn’t even sent their condolences. Under other circumstances they’d have been there, but as it stood they’d cut themselves out of her life completely. They were married now – Richard, who her mind and body still ached for, was married to her best friend. Oh God, oh God, how could she bear it? They lived in Chrissie’s flat in St John’s Wood. Chrissie had given birth to a baby girl earlier in the summer, but Carla didn’t know her name, nor did she want to. If she had cable or satellite TV, she’d probably see Richard on the American news from time to time, but she couldn’t afford either, and God knew it was bad enough watching any news and knowing he could be there, without the risk of actually seeing or hearing him. Mark and Greg had seen him though, on more than one occasion, for they’d taken charge of her affairs in a way that she had simply been incapable of at the time.

  Greg had really come through back then. It was a shame it hadn’t lasted and that he was now back under his dreadful wife’s thumb so that they hardly ever saw him again. But at the time of their mother’s death, when the three of them had needed to grieve together, he had been there. He’d also been the one to extricate Carla from the purchase of the flat in Chelsea, managing to get her entire deposit back, which he’d used to buy Chrissie out of the company. So now Carla owned There and Beyond, the first series of which had still to be transmitted, since no-one had completed the deal with Sky. But Greg and Mark had guessed that when the worst of it was over the programme could prove a lifeline for Carla, and in the event, they were probably right. At least it gave a focus to her days now, even though the very thought of returning to London filled her with such dread she never considered it for long.

  As for the flat she had shared with Richard, Mark and Sonya had organized the removal of all her possess
ions, bringing her clothes down to Somerset and putting everything else in storage. Carla had no idea if she’d ever be able to look at any of it again, certainly she wasn’t ready to yet. She’d thought she was, for days it had seemed as though she was getting close, but the email she’d received earlier had told her just how far that was from the truth.

  It was still there, on the computer, though she had no intention of re-reading it now. She didn’t need to, she could remember what it said. If she’d looked a little more closely at the sender’s address she’d have known right away that it was from Richard, for who else would use the screen name Micromegas, Voltaire’s classic piece on the smallness of man in the cosmic scale? Had she realized in time that the message was from him would she have deleted it? She’d like to think so, but knew she wouldn’t have. And now she had read it, it had opened up all the pain and hurt again, along with all the confusion and anger. But worse was finding out how deeply she still felt about a man who had deceived her so cruelly.

  ‘Dear Carla,’ he had written, ‘I hope you are well and recovering from the terrible loss of your mother. I think about you all the time, and both Chrissie and I miss you terribly. It’s because of that that we would like you to consider being godmother to our little baby girl, and that way come back into our lives. Quoi que vous fassiez, écrasez l’infâme, et aimez qui vous aime. Richard.’

  Voltaire again. Whatever you do, stamp out abuses, and love those who love you.

  Her heart caught on a fresh wave of pain. It was incredible, inconceivable that he could have written such a message. Stamp out the abuses! Be godmother to their daughter! That he could actually think she would do it was breathtaking in its delusion. He must have lost his mind – or he just didn’t have any idea of the extent to which he had hurt her. But how could he not know? He’d seen her pain, he’d heard it, he’d even been afraid to confront it. So how in God’s name did he have the audacity to contact her now, with insinuations that his treachery and her heartache were of no importance in the superior scheme of the universe? Stamp it all out and forget? Love those who loved her? Dear God in heaven, didn’t he understand the kind of damage he had caused? Was there no awareness of the hatred his duplicity had spawned?

  Yet even as the heat of all those bitter memories fermented and boiled in her veins, she was asking herself why they had felt it necessary to invite her back into their lives; what was missing for them that they thought they needed her now? And why had Richard found it necessary to convey his love?

  ‘Oh God, no, no, no,’ she cried, squeezing Eddie so tight that this time he squealed. ‘How could I even consider believing it after everything I’ve been through? Why would I even want to?’

  Forcing herself up, she went to lock the doors before going to bed. She was never afraid here, but the email had put her on edge and left her feeling, strangely, as though she wasn’t alone in the house. She was overemotional, of course, but knowing it was no comfort.

  As she went into the old-fashioned kitchen with its cracked-tile surfaces, big china sink and steamy niche windows, her heartbeat was cruel. Eddie was right behind her, seeming to sense he was needed, as she looked at the oak Welsh dresser where photographs of her mother, smiling and loving, looked back at her and brought tears to her eyes. Everything in her ached for her mother. The pain of her loss was so deep it hadn’t even begun to heal. She wondered if it ever would.

  She moved closer to the Aga for warmth and tried not to think of the fuel it needed – fuel she couldn’t afford. Pride wouldn’t allow her to admit how desperate she now was for money, not just for the programme she was trying so hard to resurrect, but to live. She’d been a long time without any kind of work that paid, and the small insurance policy that had matured on her mother’s death, which had been split between her and her brothers, had been used up months ago. Now all she had was the slim possibility of a cheque from Channel 4, from which the most she could pay herself as a producer was a couple of hundred pounds, plus the small sums she earned as a script-reader for Jed Forsyth, the director who’d helped out her and Chrissie by directing three episodes of Beyond’s first series, for next to no money.

  Meanwhile, her overdraft was well into five figures, the old Toyota she now drove needed a new gearbox, there was rain coming in through one of the kitchen windows, and if she didn’t pay the electricity bill by next Wednesday they were threatening to cut her off.

  Night after night she lay awake worrying. And that night proved no exception, for around one in the morning, after no more than two hours’ sleep, she was staring despairingly into the darkness. The sound of rain on the roof reminded her of the leaking window. She should go and stuff towels in the cracks, but it was cold and she didn’t want to get out of bed. She wanted to lie here and cry enough tears to bring her mother back. Her heart was full, and shuddering with its burden. Her nerves were tense and every sound was making her jump. Outside, at the end of the garden, she could hear the horse chestnuts creaking in a listless wind. An occasional spiky fruit plopped onto the roof of the shed. This was her home. Everything was the same as it always was, nothing had changed, except, since the message from Richard, everything was different, and for some reason she no longer felt safe. He and Chrissie were still out there somewhere, alive and in love, while she was here, hopelessly trapped in the pain of knowing how happy they were, and how afraid she was.

  Chrissie stood a few feet from the bath, gazing at the water as it gushed from the tap and turned the fizzing ball of salts to foam. She really had no idea if she had the energy to get in, but she was going to try. For her own sake, as well as Richard’s, because there was a chance the hot, scented water might soothe some of the tense exhaustion from her bones. She knew if she asked, Richard would come and bathe her, but would she be able to make love afterwards? Dimly she remembered that this was the point of her taking a bath, to wash away the smell of the baby, and to try to make herself attractive to her husband, whose patience surely had to be running out by now, though he was hiding it well.

  The baby was asleep at last, though there was no knowing for how long, and right at that moment Chrissie wouldn’t have minded it being for ever. Of course she didn’t mean that, but maybe if someone offered her the chance to sleep for ever, she’d take it. Never in her life had she known such tiredness. It crept through her body like a drug, turning her limbs to lead and her brain to dough. Ryan Isabel Mere, who on occasions gurgled and laughed like any other baby, sucked her toes, waggled her fingers, and flirted with her daddy, was, for her mummy, a monster from hell.

  That was how it felt when she refused to do anything but scream, morning, noon and night. Waaah! Waaah! Waaah! It seemed never to stop, and pushed Chrissie to the brink of madness. One day she was going to go over and it terrified her to think of what she might do. So far it was Ryan herself who kept pulling her back, by reminding her how cute and angelic and adorable she was when she finally settled against the breast and greedily sucked the milk she’d been refusing for hours. But what was going to happen if one day Ryan forgot to be adorable and just went on screaming? Chrissie supposed she just had to believe that the abrupt lapses into sweetness would keep on happening, even though she had no idea what suddenly changed inside Ryan, or what had caused all the screaming in the first place. She’d consulted untold doctors, health visitors, midwives, obstetricians, paediatricians and homeopaths, none of whom had considered there to be a problem, so all Chrissie could conclude was that somewhere, deep inside her baby’s subconscious, Ryan hated her.

  ‘Hey, what is it?’ Richard said, coming into the bathroom and finding her crying. She tried quickly to pull herself together, but when he took her in his arms and began to rock her, there was nothing she could do to stop the tears. He was so kind and patient, but how fed up he must be by now of finding her in this state. He never said so, but he had to be. Anyone would. The baby’s tantrums rarely seemed to bother him, but then he was away such a lot, and Ryan was never as bad with him.

 
‘I’m sorry,’ she sobbed. ‘I suppose I’m just tired.’ She lifted her head and gazed up into his gentle, worried eyes. ‘I wanted us to … It’s been so long.’ Then she broke down again. ‘I’m such a terrible wife, and a hopeless mother. I can’t get any of it right, and I love you both so much …’

  ‘Sssh,’ he soothed, pressing his lips to her hair. ‘We love you too. And there’s nothing terrible or hopeless about you. You’re doing a wonderful job, with both of us.’

  She clung to him tighter and wondered how much longer she could go on like this. When his arms were around her, and he was being as tender and loving as he was now, she felt stronger, more secure, and almost brave enough to ask him the terrible question that burned her heart with its silence. Would he give it up? Stop travelling to distant and dangerous places, so that she didn’t have to live half her life in terror of him never coming back? It was so awful, the waiting, the worrying, the constant dread of the phone ringing, then not ringing. And all the time Ryan screaming and crying in the background. How desperately she longed to ask, but what would she do if he said no?

  ‘Come on,’ he said, starting to untie her robe.

  When she was naked she felt glad of the steam, hoping it would blur the sagging heaviness of her belly, and the silvery puckering around her waist and thighs that was never going to go away. She’d always had such a perfect body, now it was pale, worn out and flabby. Her hair, too, had lost its bounce, and her once lovely shining blue eyes were bloodshot and shadowed almost beyond recognition. How could he desire her like this? What, in God’s name, kept him coming back? It had to be Ryan, because no man in his right mind would want her in this state.

  She was crying again, unable to stop.

  Lifting her in his arms he carried her to the bath and laid her gently down in the water. ‘It’s OK,’ he whispered, starting to sponge her. ‘Everything’s going to be OK.’