Players

by Karen Swan

  She was on page three before she realized that the train had actually stopped and she was in King’s Cross. The man in the trilby had long gone. She grabbed her empty Gladstone bag and smacked the paper down on the table. She didn’t need that trash.

  The lock was stiff, but, falling straight back into old habits, she pulled the door in a little, before turning the key. It gave easily then and she pushed heroically against the door and stumbled into the hall. The post was shin-deep. She sighed – another bad sign. Kate had volunteered to check the house weekly, forwarding bills and important-looking post to Tor in Burnham Market, but she clearly hadn’t been around for a while.

  Tor hadn’t heard from her. Nor had Cress. In fact, no one had. The fall-out from the revelation about Billy had been catastrophic. The Marfleets had separated immediately, with Kate apparently refusing to speak to Monty or try counselling. By the time Monty got back from Cornwall (she’d hijacked Harry’s chopper, much to his amusement), she’d shut the door on their marriage and moved into a hotel. He hadn’t seen her since.

  From what Cress had heard from Mark, he was in pieces, oscillating crazily between frantic anxiety about Kate, fury at Lily and James’s deception, and hesitant joy that Billy was his son. He’d taken some time off work to try to sort his head out, but Billy was already back at Wellington and refusing to take calls from anyone – including his mother – and Lily was equally uncommunicative. She was belligerently unrepentant that she had kept Monty so near and yet so far from his own son, and appeared to be oblivious to everyone’s distress, except her own.

  Tor had tried ringing countless times on Kate’s mobile but it always went to voicemail, and none of her messages were ever returned or acknowledged. Kate clearly felt Tor had sided with the Whites, despite her messages to the contrary. She had been found guilty by association.

  She didn’t know what to do. Kate was notorious for being in control, detached. She was scary at the best of times. Monty always used to joke that only the dumb psychopaths killed; the best ones became lawyers. But now that she’d cut herself loose from her old life – her childhood sweetheart, her old friends, her home – who knew what the rules were, or how best to approach her? Cress counselled giving her time and space, so they were giving that idea a trial run, but it was hard not to keep picking up the phone and leaving more plaintive messages.

  Tor stood in the hallway and looked around, feeling her family’s own distinctive smell creep around her like a shawl. A thick layer of dust had covered the radiator cover, and the Patek Philippe bowl on top sat like a modern day still-life, with crinkly, yellowing Waitrose receipts, some coppers and a spare set of keys for the Mini inside.

  Tor handled the keys of the car Hugh had died in. The car insurance money had come through the previous week – enough to help pay a year’s worth of school fees. Her mind had increasingly begun to wander to a return to London. She wasn’t sure she could carry on living in The Twittens, given the change in circumstances with the Marfleets.

  Monty had been very sweet, of course. When she’d spoken to him the previous week – checking how he was getting on – she’d raised moving out, but he had insisted their troubles had nothing to do with her (Kate obviously hadn’t mentioned finding Tor in bed with James) and that she must stay there as long as she liked.

  But she felt awkward. Her fling with James, if it ever got out, would be considered to compromise her loyalty. How could she accept their hospitality, knowing she’d bedded the man at the root of their break-up? It might have been different if Kate was talking to her, but given that the friendship appeared to be in meltdown, as well as the marriage, she didn’t want to cause yet further opprobrium.

  Anyway, the end was in sight for the Twittens project. Since returning from Cornwall, she’d cast James out of her thoughts by putting her head down and working like a demon, trying to finish the projects she’d started and mobilize some cashflow. She’d begun the Twittens job two and a half months ago, but her need to fill her head with something other than James White meant she’d achieved nearly as much in the last fortnight as she had over the entire summer. But with Marney now at school, Millie at nursery, Hen unofficial nanny to Oscar and her mobile switched off – enabling her to be as adept at avoiding James’s calls as Kate was at avoiding hers – all that remained now was to do the drawing room and kitchen. Once they were completed, it would be difficult to justify staying on.

  She walked down the hallway into the kitchen, trailing her hand – habitually – along the dado rail. The pictures of the children stuck with magnets to the fridge looked outdated already – they had grown up so quickly this summer, more quickly than they ever would again – and Tor ran her fingers over their glossy, chubby faces.

  She looked around her beloved old kitchen. The rainbow-striped oilcloth on the table hadn’t been wiped down properly and there were rings from where the girls’ smoothies had dripped; a bunch of ranunculus roses had dried in the vase, their fragile silhouettes only a breath away from collapsing into a powdery heap; some mismatched cups and two Marks & Spencer plates were still out on the draining board, and the girls’ drawings she’d sellotaped to the walls had begun to curl up at the bottom. Her eyes came to rest on the framed photo-collage of Tor and Hugh taken in those heady years before the children came along, when life was a constant stream of weddings and parties and lie-ins. They looked so young, so in love.

  She inhaled deeply at the scene. It was like being Goldilocks and walking into the bears’ house. Everything seemed . . . suspended. Not tidied away, or packed up. Just abandoned, as they waited for the porridge to cool.

  She went to the sink and let the water run for a minute or so, before filling up the kettle and making some black coffee. She usually liked it milky, but today it suited her black. She needed something bitter. Truth be told, she could have done with a straight whisky. A few drops scalded her hands and she realized they were shaking. She stood at the window and looked out to the garden. It was completely overgrown and the grass was practically knee-high, just as it had been at The Twittens when they first arrived. How quickly things revert to being wild, she thought to herself.

  She had felt the temptation herself – an irresistible pull to just let everything collapse into its feral state. But she couldn’t. Not with the children. Hugh might have died, but she didn’t have the time to fall apart. Not yet – anyway. She still had to do the weekly shopping, the nightly baths, find new schools and pay the bills. It wasn’t love that made her world go round. It was children.

  She sipped the coffee and went into the drawing room. Piles of unmade-up removal boxes stood propped against the wall. She hardly knew where to begin. She’d always known today was going to be tough. But this . . . this was worse than she’d thought. Stepping back into her old skin, even for just an afternoon, was stultifying.

  She had managed only three weeks here after Hugh’s death, before fleeing. Twenty-four days of lying in bed, not sleeping. Twenty-four days of sitting at the table, not eating; twenty-four days of shivering in cashmere in the heatwave. She had fled like an asylum seeker, looking for safety and refuge. And in Norfolk she had found it. The physical space she’d put between her family and her old life had been balm to their loss. It had been so much easier to start a new life than rebuild their old one. It had spared them the agony of constant stimulus, memories, reminders of Hugh.

  He was everywhere here. A pair of his shoes – the brown suede brogues – poked out from beneath the tapestried ottoman, his comb was on top of the mantelpiece, the drawings for the council offices he’d been looking through just before Cress’s party had been stacked on top of some of Marney’s comics.

  Tor dropped her head and tried to breathe through the pain of each and every stabbing reminder of this life interrupted. But it was no good. Bravery didn’t make her feel any better – only other people. She slid down the wall and began to cry.

  The tears were relentless, harsh and double-edged. They weren’t just for Hugh. S
he had come to accept his death. It didn’t surprise her any more. She didn’t expect to wake up and find him lying next to her, warm and floppy and a heavy hand across her hip. She had let him go.

  But not his words. That vicious showdown which should have been nothing more than a bad fight had become their swansong, superseding the whole nine years of happy marriage that went before it. His accusations that their happy family was a charade tainted their history, soured her memories and through his death had become the defining statement of their marriage. Their happiness had been real for her, but that didn’t seem to count. He had had the last words. They were the ones that stood.

  By the time her tears abated, her coffee was cold, but she had no stomach for it any more. Blankly, she started picking up the toys, collecting up the photos, gathering together the DVDs and packing away everything that had characterized their life there. The estate agent had said just to leave the bare bones – the furniture, cutlery, kitchen equipment and so on. They’d take a full inventory before the tenants arrived the following week. The new occupants had taken a yearlong let, but with a six-month break clause. Tor had insisted upon that. She wanted the freedom to pick up where they left off – just in case they ever could.

  She emptied the room and climbed the stairs, going through the children’s bedrooms, absorbing the love in them from the memory bank of bedtime cuddles, tickles on the changing mat, stories on the nursing chair. She sat in them for a long time, the sound of their giggles, the splashing at bathtime, the hushed lullabys and all the glorious noises that had filled this house and given it spirit, swimming in her head; all of it trying to be heard above the death mask of guilt and recriminations and accusations; trying to reassure her that they had been happy. He was wrong, he was wrong, he was wrong, he was wrong . . .

  Tor walked into the master bedroom and opened the wardrobes, packing everything into the hanging boxes the moving company had left out for her. She and Cress had co-rented a space in Big Yellow Storage together after all, and Cress had arranged to come over with the delivery men this afternoon to take it all away. Personally, Tor couldn’t see how there’d be any room for Cress’s stuff by the time she had finished packing up the house, but Cress was adamant she only really needed it for old paperwork and her Christmas stash (she’d already bought most of her presents, even though it was only the third week in September).

  Tor folded the flaps on the last of her boxes, and looked over at Hugh’s section. His shirts were still hanging, colour-coded, on the top rail; the ties dangling limply through the hangers. She started moving quickly, trying to stay ahead of her own emotions, folding his shirts, rolling his boxers and socks, and putting the shoes back in their dust bags – everything he hadn’t had a chance to take with him that last night – as though she was just packing for a holiday. But before she could catch herself, she sniffed at his jumpers, trying to capture his smell one last time. It had faded already. What she wouldn’t give to bottle his scent.

  Fat tears were still tumbling down her cheeks, but these ones were silent and better behaved. She came to the suits – that navy one which was always slightly too wide in the shoulder; the grey flannel with the pleated trousers she’d never liked; that ghastly chalk stripe that he’d bought in a sale and she’d banned him from ever wearing. And then she got to his dinner suit. It wasn’t bespoke, not as smart as James’s, not a midnight blue Savile Row cut, but a drabber off-the-rack black, which he had still always looked so handsome in; he was another man who’d worn black tie well. She thought about Oscar and decided to keep the DJ, along with Hugh’s favourite grey suit – his only made-to-measure – his cashmere-blend overcoat and a collection of seven-fold silk ties they’d bought in Venice before Marney was born.

  That was it. His essence, edited. This was what Oscar would have to remember his father by. Looking down at the paltry bag, she hoped it was enough. But how could it ever be? No matter how much her heart tried to convince her head, it still felt like her fault.

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Kate’s phone had stopped ringing but she was too happy to care. It had been four days now since Tor had left her last whining message, six since Cress’s. None from Lily or James, of course. And as for Monty, well – his calls, which had been every twenty minutes, had dropped back to twice a day. They all seemed to be getting the message, at last. You could train dogs faster, she’d laughed, with Harry.

  The past few weeks had been fabulous. They’d barely got out of bed. She had called in to the office and block-booked scores of off-site meetings with Mr Hunter. The other partners didn’t care – so long as she was billing him and keeping the star client happy.

  If only they knew, she thought to herself. He’s fucking delirious.

  She swung her legs out of bed and walked to the window. It was 10.40 a.m. and London was wide awake. The cabbies were honking their horns, red buses were belching out black fumes and everyone was busy, distracted, late, disengaged. She sighed with contentment at the scene of urban bliss beneath her. There wasn’t a buggy or bump in sight. She felt more relaxed than she had in years. How could it have taken her so long to realize that she was living the wrong life? Married to a man she should have left dumped as a teenager, a man whom Mother Nature had clearly been saying wasn’t her biological mate. And living on the fringes of Nappy Valley, overlooking all the other people who were living the life she should have had. How could Monty have been so insensitive keeping her there, so blind to her pain?

  She knew now that there was so much more to life than babies and coffee mornings. Harry had shown her that. He’d taken her into a London she didn’t even know existed. A London where a spontaneous supper was at San Lorenzo and a swim was at the RAC, where a morning’s sightseeing was in Getty’s helicopter (the only one licensed to fly over the City), and where the red-brick walls of the mansions in Holland Park camouflaged not just Old Masters but the hard-partying antics of the young elite.

  She’d met so many new people, made so many new friends – all of them in the papers, of course, and the partners were practically wetting themselves at the prospect of all the new business she was bringing their way, as she casually name-dropped in meetings. It wasn’t just her personal life in the ascendant. So too was her career. She’d never done less work in her life, but she was making the Old Boys motto work for her: it isn’t what you know, but who.

  No one knew anything of her marriage break-up, so they didn’t think too much about the change in her appearance – the mane lopped into a layered bob and the chic flowing Armani suits replaced by tight, tight Gucci.

  Harry had just adored taking her shopping. She had been his plaything out of bed, as well as in, letting him choose everything for her. It had been delicious relinquishing all control for once. His car had crawled along Sloane Street and they’d jumped out in dark glasses, making furtive fifty-yard dashes into Versace for bum-skimming babydolls, Alberta Ferretti for demure ‘work function’ chiffons, Gina for fuck-me boots and Dolce & Gabbana for corset dresses she could barely get on before he’d take them off her again. He’d made a private visit to Myla and come back with the sauciest demi-tasse bras, whalebone corsets and minuscule thongs she’d ever seen, and he’d even bought her a black satin French maid’s outfit, which, had Monty ever brought it home, she’d have knocked him out cold.

  Life had become a whirl of glamour and cocktails and whitened teeth and dirty sex. There were several parties a night, and they were all over each other behind closed doors, but in public the wall came down and she networked as his lawyer, taking great pains not to appear remotely intimate or personal. It didn’t take long for her to realize that the colder she was with him in public, the more it drove him wild. So it became their little game. Foreplay. To see them at some events was to think there was a cold war. But it was a different matter in the back of the car on the way home, and she’d given up worrying about what Christophe, his driver, saw. Harry had long paid him a fat bonus for his discretion.

  She
padded into the bathroom and turned on the shower, trying to push back down the wave of nausea that rose in her throat. Her body was dog-tired – bed wasn’t for sleeping in these days – and there was no doubt the hard partying was beginning to tell. It was getting harder and harder to get up in the mornings, and there were bags on the bags under her eyes.

  She was due in the office at eleven, but Harry had put her up in his club so she was only a two-minute walk away. She had loads of time to soak, recover and shake off last night, before facing the world for another day.

  She felt the hot water run over her face, over her shoulders and down her back, feeling the warmth spread around her body. She stayed under the hot stream for a luxuriant five extra minutes – today’s hangover was spectacularly bad – before turning the water off and wrapping the enormous bath sheet around her. She went over to the wardrobe and stood huddled in front of the groaning rails, feeling bewildered by the choice. She’d never thought the six-star lifestyle could be so exhausting. Where to start?

  It was 11.10 a.m. when she wiggled down the corridor in the Vivienne Westwood navy pinstripe hobble skirt.

  ‘Sorry, Camilla. Nightmare on the Northern Line again,’ she said briskly, putting her new chocolate crocodile Kelly on her secretary’s desk and picking up the files from her tray. ‘What’ve I got?’

  ‘A new client is waiting for you in the Red Room.’

  ‘Great, thanks. Send through some coffee, would you?’

  She unlocked her office door and put down her bag, pausing to give it an admiring stroke – Harry had leapfrogged the two-year waiting list in just four days – before picking up her laptop and walking slowly to the conference room. She just couldn’t move any faster in this skirt, dammit. God help her if there was a fire. She’d have to ask Nicholas Parker to give her a fireman’s lift out of the building.