A Hidden Life

by Adele Geras

  Poppy leaned out of her high chair and hit her grandmother on the wrist with a plastic spoon covered in goo. Phyl wiped it off nonchalantly and Matt winced.

  ‘This …’ he waved a hand to take in the high chair, Phyl still in her dressing gown, the baby now babbling more and more enthusiastically ‘… is how it’s going to be from now on, is it? Are you absolutely sure, Phyl? How are you going to like being stuck at home with a baby every single day?’

  ‘I’ll love it. So will you, whatever you say. And of course I can’t go back on what I said to Lou. She’s counting on us, Matt. It’s only to give her a short break. How can we fail her?’

  ‘Fail her?’ He couldn’t help his voice rising and Phyl frowned at him. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to shout, but honestly. I would never fail her. I’m happy to help her in any way I can. You know that. Financially and otherwise. Neither of us would do anything else and for as long as it’s necessary, obviously. Also, it’s not as though we’re not willing to lend a hand from time to time, but to take up the full-time care of a baby! That’s a bit different, Phyl, you have to admit. I think you’ve been a bit hasty, that’s all.’

  ‘Your mother did it. She looked after Nessa and Justin lots of the time. They were forever going up there and staying for weekends, and half the holidays as well. And Lou, too … she had the benefit of a grandmother.’

  ‘It was easier for my mother. She had a housekeeper. Miss Hardy had a whole squad of young women coming in to help with the housework. And as it turns out,’ Matt said, ‘her grandmother turned out to be a bit of liability, wouldn’t you say? Lou went up there for my father, not for Constance.’

  ‘But you know what I mean. I don’t want Poppy being – being distant from us. In the way that Tamsin is, for instance. We hardly ever see that child.’

  ‘No, well, you know Nessa. I think she’d bring her more often but she does have that business which takes up her time, it seems. I don’t see Lou keeping Poppy away from us … but this is a bit much, Phyl. Don’t you think it is? And’ – Matt felt quite proud of himself for thinking of this argument – ‘it’s surely not good for a young child to be away from her mother.’

  ‘Obviously it’s bad if you deprive a baby of love and care, put her in an institution or something. But a grandmother – and grandfather – are fine substitutes for a short while. Poppy won’t suffer. In fact, she’ll thrive. I’ll get her into a routine and she’ll have much more attention from me than she gets in that nursery, I’m quite sure. And it’s not just Poppy I’m thinking of, either. Having children means doing what you can for them when they need it, and Lou needs it. She needs the time to grow into motherhood. She has to get used to it slowly. Only a few months and then everything will be different.’

  ‘A few months? A few months?’

  ‘Keep your voice down, for heaven’s sake, Matt. You’ll scare the baby.’

  ‘On the contrary, she’s scaring me. But no …’ He stood up. ‘I’ve got to go. If you’re thinking of handing in your notice then one of us has got to earn a living.’

  ‘What do you mean … but no?’

  ‘I mean, not months, Phyl. No way. One month at most. I really don’t mean to be unkind, and you know how much I adore Poppy, but we do have our lives to lead as well, don’t we? Say goodbye to Lou from me. I’ll phone her from work. She’s already sleeping in, I see.’

  ‘We had a disturbed night,’ Phyl said.

  ‘And it’s not going to be the last, is it? God, Phyl, is this wise?’

  ‘As it’ll be me that’s getting up to see to Poppy at night and doing most of the childcare,’ she replied in a chilly voice, ‘I don’t see that you’ve got any reason to object.’

  Nothing to say to that, Matt thought, so he said nothing. The number of reasons to object was growing all the time. You thought you could do what you wanted when you wanted to: go off to Paris for the weekend, have friends overto to stay, lie around on Sunday doing nothing more taxing than reading the papers, and then out of the blue you had to take someone else into consideration, and someone, moreover, who needed looking after twenty-four hours a day.

  But. Being a lawyer, he was used to weighing up both sides of an argument. But – this was a baby you loved and cherished, and she was the daughter of your child whom you loved and cherished even more. And all that stuff about giving in notice and earning a living was nonsense. Phyl did enjoy working at the vet’s. She’d been there for years and liked Dr Hargreaves and the contact with the animals and their owners, but of course they had quite enough money to employ help if they needed it and there was the extra money he’d receive from his mother’s estate. He sighed. He’d have to put up with it, make the best of it, put a brave face on things, but he was a little pissed off. Annoyed. Phyl thought she knew what he felt about it but he could never tell her how he dreaded the coming weeks. And he couldn’t say anything or Lou would hear of it and he didn’t want that. There it was: the bottom line. He didn’t want to hurt Lou. Not ever, not in any way.

  He stood up, leaned over to kiss the top of Phyl’s head and left the room before she could say anything else. He heard her calling after him: ‘I’m not giving notice. Leave of absence. I’ll take leave of absence. They’ll have me back at work, I’m sure.’

  In the car on the way to work, Matt thought about what Phyl had said. Could you take leave of absence from a vet’s receptionist’s job? Probably not, but it was true that there were always young women eager to come and work near animals, so it wouldn’t be a problem to replace her for a bit.

  He parked the car and leaned over to the back seat to pick up his briefcase. A kind of weariness overcame him and he shut his eyes. It wasn’t just Poppy. It was everything. He genuinely loved his grandchild and he wasn’t even the kind of person who disliked babies in general. So why was he resisting this invasion? Because it will mean a loss of freedom, he told himself. And that’s why Lou needs us to do it. Her freedom was as important as theirs, he knew, but that meant also that his freedom – his and Phyl’s – was as important as Lou’s. Round and round …

  He turned his mind very deliberately to other things. He needed to stop thinking about his family in order to get through a day’s work.

  *

  ‘Have you remembered, Mum?’ Tamsin clutched her lunchbox to her chest as she got out of the car. She peered back into the window and Gareth took the opportunity to kiss his daughter. She accepted the kiss and returned it absent-mindedly. Nessa was pleased that their daughter never kissed her in that offhand manner and felt the warm glow that always came over her at the knowledge that she was the best-loved parent. Tamsin went on, ‘I’m going home with Bryony today.’

  ‘Yes, sweetie, I do remember. I’ll pick you up from Bryony’s about seven, okay?’

  ‘Yes, fine. Bye, Dad, bye, Mum.’ She was into the school gates without so much as a glance back at the car and Nessa felt proud for a moment, both of her independent daughter, who’d always been good at mixing and getting on with other children, and of herself. I was the one, she told herself, who made sure she was exposed to kids and other adults from a very early age. Tamsin was so pretty. Nessa prided herself on not being one of those mothers you met sometimes who believed blindly that their child was the most beautiful, the cleverest and the best but still, she couldn’t help feeling that Tamsin was outstanding in every possible way: a gifted gymnast and dancer and thoroughly delightful company. It wasn’t just her being a devoted mother either. Everyone agreed.

  Nessa always made a point of driving in a calm state of mind. It was hard sometimes, when there was so much in daily life that irritated her, and some things that made her seethe. Did anyone else seethe? She’d never asked her friends. They all grumbled in a mild way about their spouses and the strange things these flawed creatures had said and done but no one, she felt sure, wanted to take the AA roadmap and hit the person sitting next to them in the car about the ears as hard as possible. She turned to Gareth, whose own car was in for servicing and to
whom she was giving a lift as far as the station. A couple of days had gone by since the meal at her parents’ house and Justin was going to be hard to shift. She’d arranged to have lunch with him in Brighton next week, but she didn’t hold out much hope of any change of mind on his part.

  ‘What did you say?’ This was part of Nessa’s ‘being calm’ routine. Maybe what she’d just heard wouldn’t strike her as so stupid the second time round.

  ‘I said I thought Matt has a point. Justin too, come to that. We’ve got everything we want, haven’t we?’

  Nessa bit her lip hard to stop the expletive she’d have liked to utter. No, the remark was just as bad now she’d heard it twice. How to begin to answer? She recalled a newspaper article she’d read about a woman who managed to change her husband’s behaviour using methods employed by animal trainers. Worth a try. She decided to ignore Gareth’s remark and change the subject. That way, she’d keep her cool and he’d realize that what he’d just said was not what she wanted to hear. Apparently dolphins, baboons and other creatures knew that if you didn’t react you were not best pleased, but Nessa wasn’t convinced that her husband’s mental subtlety came anywhere near that of a dolphin. You also had to reward them for good behaviour, apparently and that, when Nessa came to think of it, was what she’d been doing with Gareth and sex – for the last couple of years, certainly. She never felt in the mood unless he’d done something that pleased her, and that seemed to be happening less and less. She said, ‘You’ll be back in time for supper, right?’

  ‘Yup.’ They were at the station.

  ‘Cheerio, then,’ Nessa said. ‘I may be quite late. Lots of spring weddings coming up and fortunately our flowers seem to be the thing everyone wants. But I’ll pick up Tamsin.’

  Gareth leaned back into the car and kissed the side of her head in a perfunctory manner before banging the passenger door shut. She watched him striding towards the ticket office: grey suit, mousey hair, very thick and sticking up a bit at the crown, and legs just that tiny bit too short – it wasn’t a package that made her heart beat faster. Ah, well …

  Her husband had blown it this morning, she thought, turning on to the main road that led to Mickey’s house and the Paper Roses office. He’d been trying to mollify her, cheer her up. Telling her nice things she ought to have been happy to hear, about how he was glad to be able to keep them both very nicely, thank you, even without Constance’s money and how there was even a prospect of promotion at work. And of course he was quite right. She knew it was greedy and unworthy to be so envious of Justin. The money from Constance’s estate would probably come to nearly £200,000. She had no right at all to be grumbling and she was well aware of that, but somehow couldn’t seem to help feeling a bit resentful.

  Gareth went off every day to a shiny glass and silver building in London to slave away in a high-powered insurance firm. Nessa knew very little about his work, but he did keep on telling her how well thought of he was and how terrifically they were doing and, especially, how much better they’d be doing in the future. They really didn’t, he’d announced as they were getting ready to leave, need a white elephant like Milthorpe House.

  It wasn’t the house, or the money – though both would have been nice and she’d have ditched their rather boring post-war detached with bog-standard garden for this particular white elephant any time – but the principle of the thing. It wasn’t fair and, if he thought she was going to take it lying down, he was wrong. How she’d longed for Gareth to say it’s monstrous. I’ll help you. We’ll fight Justin together. But such combative words weren’t in his repertoire. He was someone who really would do anything for a quiet life. She just couldn’t get her head round it. Never mind, there’d be a cup of coffee waiting for her at the office, and she could moan all she liked. Mickey was so good at listening. Gareth – they hadn’t made love now for more than three weeks. Was he picking up some kind of signal from her? She sighed. Maybe she ought to make an effort, but as soon as this thought came into her mind, it was followed by another: Why the hell should I be the one to make the effort? Why shouldn’t he? Oh, God, when did I become so dissatisfied? she asked herself. What’ll it take to make me feel happy again?

  Just as she was getting out of the car, her mobile phone rang. She fished around for it in her bag and flipped the lid open.

  ‘Hi, Gareth. What’s up?’

  ‘I think I left my mobile in your car. I’m calling from a phone box. Can you check? Maybe between our seats? Are you at your desk?’

  Sighing, Nessa peered into the space between the front seats.

  ‘No, you’re okay. I was just getting out. And it’s here.’

  ‘Thank the Lord. D’you – I mean, will you put it straight in your handbag, darling? Don’t want it going astray again, okay? And turn it off, right? Doesn’t need to be on if it’s not with me. I’ll take it back tonight, right?’

  ‘Fine. Gotta go.’

  ‘Thanks. Bye.’

  Nessa was just about to turn off Gareth’s phone and put it into her bag together with her own when it pinged. That, she thought, must be someone texting Gareth. For a second, she wondered whether to leave it, but she was too curious to do that. She clicked on the ‘read’ button and the name Melanie appeared in the middle of the lit-up blue square. Who the hell was Melanie? Nessa didn’t know anyone called that. It took her no time at all to decide to read the message. How dare Gareth get messages from women she didn’t know?

  After she’d read it, Nessa sat for a moment and wondered what she was feeling. Was it normal to react like this? I’ve just, she thought, found out that my husband may be unfaithful to me. I think that’s what this means. Perhaps it’s only a silly office flirtation – but perhaps not. I ought to feel sad. Or enraged. Or threatened – what if he decides he wants to divorce me? Or something … what’s the matter with me? She took a deep breath. The message had said fone me cant wait to see you again keep thinking about us xxx.

  Melanie’s texting skills obviously didn’t run to spelling, capital letters or punctuation. She was probably young. Nessa closed her eyes. Should she confront Gareth, tell him he’d been found out? Should she leave him? She had no intention of doing anything of the kind. If she’d inherited Milthorpe House, there might have been a slim possibility of her jettisoning all interest in her present home; but as things stood with Justin being so amazingly stubborn, she was damned if she was going to hasten her own impoverishment by cutting loose from Gareth. He had many faults, but being able to keep her in a way she considered no more than her due wasn’t one of them. Of course, with the money from Constance’s estate, she would be even better off than she was now, but much better to have more than less. She closed her husband’s phone and replaced it in her handbag. Then she shut the car door with rather more force than she normally used and made her way up the path to Mickey’s front door.

  ‘Hello, Nessa,’ said Mickey. ‘How’s things? Any word from Justin?’

  ‘I’m having lunch with him. See if he’ll listen to reason. He won’t, but I can yell at him when it’s just the two of us. We had to be all sweetness and light chez Dad and Phyl, of course.’

  ‘I’ll make you a coffee.’

  ‘Thanks, Mickey. I’m gasping.’

  Nessa sat at her desk, listening to Mickey running the tap, filling the kettle, getting the mugs ready. She felt light, as though part of her was floating somewhere near the ceiling. Disembodied. I’ve had a shock, she thought. Gareth and another woman … what did she feel about that? What would she do? Should she say something to Mickey? No, she thought. I won’t say anything for the moment. Not to anyone. I’ll keep this knowledge to myself. The phrase knowledge is power popped into her mind, flashing there like a neon sign. She stared down at her hands, resting on some files, and realized two things. First, she wasn’t surprised. Was that because she had a low opinion of men, or because she knew her husband? The latter, she felt. Gareth wouldn’t know how to resist some woman who’d decided to seduce him, but sh
e had to admit not many men would. He was a very long way from irresistible, but she remembered fancying him rotten once upon a time, and a part of her could still see the attraction for Melanie. The second thing she had become aware of was more shocking. She wasn’t particularly hurt or upset and that was bad enough. No, it was worse than that. She felt relieved, as though she’d been given a ‘get out of gaol free’ card. This Melanie, whoever she was (and Nessa made up her mind to go through the inbox on Gareth’s phone later and work her way through his desk at home to find out more if she could), was a kind of permit allowing Nessa to do whatever she wanted. If Gareth objected to anything, anything at all, she could say you’ve got no room to talk … you don’t love me. You’ve been unfaithful. It’s not, Nessa thought, as though I’ve got anything planned, but it’s good to know there’s something I can hold in reserve. She felt powerful, in control, and strangely excited. I’m not like other people, she thought, not for the first time. Anyone else would be in pieces and I’m … what? Quite looking forward to seeing what’s going to happen next.

  ‘Here you go.’ Mickey put the coffee cup down on the desk and then pulled up her own chair so that it was facing Nessa. She sat back and smiled, and Nessa admired the way she managed to be so stylish, even in casual clothes. Mickey’s hair was somewhere between red and blonde and she wore it in a kind of long crew-cut which made her features look delicate and fragile, rather than tough and masculine. She wore jeans which cost more than most people’s weekly grocery bill, and white shirts or T-shirts which were similarly expensive. One of her mottos was nothing but the best and she applied this rule to everything she possessed. She didn’t have very many things, but those she did own were always perfect examples of their kind. It was this perfectionism which Nessa valued when it came to business, and to find it in someone who was also friendly and funny and kind she regarded as a real blessing.