by Tina Seskis
PART TWO
THE MIDDLE
2001
23
ALEX
He spotted her across the fug of the canteen, and he realised he hadn’t seen her in years. He’d just endured yet another gruelling shift, where he’d been told to go fuck himself by a pair of youths on a moped, and then had found an old woman dead in her chair in the freezing cold, and it had made him sad that no one had visited her, or known, and that it had taken the smell emanating from under her door to finally make someone raise the alarm, but that was just how things were at the dawn of the twenty-first century. He was so dead on his feet he’d come in to grab a coffee before heading home. Seeing his old boss perked him up, though.
‘Well, hello stranger,’ Alex said, tapping her on the shoulder.
Manisha turned and flashed those extraordinary brown eyes at him. Her skin had lost the deep gleam of youth, but she was still slim, still looked younger than her years. She was wearing black bootleg jeans and a neat red cardigan, and there was his answer to what she looked like out of uniform. She seemed taller now, but he realised she must be wearing heels. It seemed she hadn’t lost her appetite for police canteen food, though, as a huge slimy-looking portion of shepherd’s pie was plonked on her plate, alongside some yellowing peas. Hollow legs, she’d always used to joke when people asked her where she put it.
‘Well, I never! Alex Moffatt!’ she said, her Leeds accent as strong as ever. ‘The only copper I know who married his crime victim.’
‘Ha, that’s one way of putting it,’ he said.
‘How are you? Still with the blonde goddess?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘In fact, we’ve got two kids now. You?’
‘Nah, no kids,’ she said. ‘But I finally caved in and got married.’
Alex was uncertain how to respond. ‘It’s OK, pet,’ Manisha said. ‘I love him now.’ She winked.
‘So, what are you up to?’ he said.
‘I’m in SO15. You?’
Alex felt deflated suddenly. How come Manisha had done so well, made it into such a great unit, and he was still stuck in Response? Why did Manisha have what it took, and yet he didn’t? He might have managed to snare Eleanor, but his domestic happiness didn’t seem to have helped his career any. Where was he going wrong?
‘Well, I’m still working on team at the moment,’ he managed, at last. ‘Looking for openings . . .’ He felt his eyes prick alarmingly, and he coughed, wiped his nose, reminded himself that he was pleased for Manisha. She’d been a good boss, as well as a good laugh, unlike some of the other tossers who’d moved ahead of him. She’d held her own in a culture that had threatened prejudice against her in nearly every way. She’d supported him when he’d asked her to, and in fact was almost certainly partly responsible for the fact that Eleanor was now his wife. Good for her.
‘Look,’ Manisha was saying now, as she picked up a muffin and added it to her tray. ‘We might be looking for new people. I can’t promise, pet, but seeing as a) you caught that little stalker bastard and b) you’re the subject of one of my very favourite dinner-party stories, why don’t you give me a call in a few days?’
Alex nodded, took down Manisha’s number, said goodbye . . . and as he left the canteen, he turned and watched her move along the line, tiny and Asian and female, and reminded himself that if she could do it, well, then, sure as hell so could he.
24
PAUL
Even though the evening sun was divine, and the air was wondrously hot still, and there was a low babble of kids laughing, and the sound of ball against willow, and one of the fellow dads was telling a pretty entertaining joke, none of it could distract Paul from his perpetual trepidation. Even as he watched his seven-year-old son tearing across the grass grinning, waving a bat, he was waiting for the next transgression. ‘Mischievous, my arse,’ he’d said to Christie, when they’d last discussed it. ‘He’s a little fucker,’ and he’d only been half-joking. Christie had pretended to be outraged, but in truth she could barely control their youngest child either.
Paul sighed, took a sip from his bottle of beer and wondered why fatherhood was so sodding hard. He and Christie had come a long way from those very early days with Daisy, when Christie had post-natal depression (as it had turned out), and he’d secretly been so terrified of the whole concept of parenthood he’d acted like a bloody robot. Fortunately Christie’s meltdown, when she’d assumed that just because he’d got trashed at a work do and failed to call her meant that of course he must have slept with someone, had been the catalyst for them to finally be honest with each other, albeit loudly enough for the neighbours to hear. He couldn’t believe it when she’d told him she didn’t trust him because of what some mad old psychic had said. He’d expected such lunacy from Alice, of course, but he’d had no idea that Christie would pay any attention to that stuff. And the irony was that the reason he’d got so utterly, spectacularly shitfaced was because he’d been so euphoric about realising he loved his daughter. Apparently his rendition of ‘YMCA’ had been awesome. The Sales Director had never been so impressed with him. It had helped his career no end. Even helped him get a relocation to London.
Paul snorted at the joke’s final punchline and turned away from the pitch, just in time to pretend that he hadn’t seen Jake jostle another little boy to the ground. He knew if Christie were here she would have gone over and helped the other boy up, but he felt too embarrassed. Unfortunately though, Christie hadn’t come with him to the cricket club, even though he’d asked her, even though plenty of the other mothers came and sat on the terrace drinking wine. Paul wasn’t daft. He knew Christie had stayed home because she was trying to facilitate his and Jake’s bonding, and although he appreciated her efforts, it didn’t seem to be working. Good God, he thought wryly, she’d need to try harder than that. Father-and-son trip to the moon, perhaps?
Paul wiped his forehead with the back of his hand, and when he brought it down and looked at it, the skin was slick and sweat-smeared. He was still surprised at how much hotter it felt down south. He glanced over at Jake, who seemed more interested in picking up the stumps and running around with them on his head than even attempting to field, and Paul could sense the other parents’ disapprobation. He himself had been so sporty at that age, and yet Jake seemed to have no real interest in any sports – and had two left feet, to boot. Christie would chide Paul for being so hard on Jake, saying he was still only seven and that everyone was different anyway. Paul knew she was right, but still, it didn’t make it any easier to witness.
Paul excused himself and walked a little way around the pitch, parallel to the boundary rope, and sat on his own, away from the other parents. His bottle of beer was nearly empty now, disgustingly warm and glycerine-thick. The evening sun was tilting dangerously, and Paul was sitting in the full glare of it, and the grass appeared to be on the cusp of turning from the lush emerald green that only lawns in England seemed to manage, to the scorched hot earth of the African savannah, almost in front of his eyes. He debated whether he should simply take Jake home, as it was apparent that he wasn’t having any fun either now, perhaps because the coach was finding it hard to hide his annoyance at Jake’s almost-constant misdemeanours. Paul watched tight-mouthed as Jake deliberately threw the ball in completely the wrong direction, so it careered across the grass towards Paul, rather than towards Jake’s partner. As the coach yelled at the little boy, Paul’s heart went out to Jake, despite himself. How did some men manage such effortless father-son bonding? Where was he going wrong? Or was it inevitable, considering his own upbringing? Or was it simply Jake’s character, the type of person he was destined to be?
When the ball came skidding his way yet again Paul suppressed a sigh. He stood up and retrieved it, tossed it gently back towards Jake, who ran over and gamely picked it up, thank goodness, and sprinted obediently towards the coach. And then Jake stopped, looked over his shoulder to give Paul his most insolent grin, before throwing the ball, as hard as he could and
uncharacteristically accurately, at the coach’s groin.
25
ELEANOR
It was funny how people hardly ever spotted that Eleanor was American any more. She had lived in London for so many years that she no longer said ‘gas station’, or ‘garbage’, or ‘gumboots’, and her accent was so soft now that people often missed it. She’d lost her archetypal cheerleader look too. The passing of time, coupled with motherhood, had changed her shape, and her hair had darkened to a dirty blonde which she wore in a simple shoulder-length bob. She knew she wasn’t quite the beauty she once had been, but she was happy with how she looked. And so when Alex wound her up at times, hinting that she should lose some weight, she’d just tell him to bog off (now there was a phrase she’d never heard before London!) and mind his own business. Sometimes she suspected that he’d always thought of her as some kind of trophy, and maybe that was part of why she didn’t make more effort. It annoyed her. After all, she accepted him exactly as he was, and he should do the same with her too. Plus she’d given him two beautiful children, so he should be grateful!
As Eleanor came downstairs to make breakfast she reminded herself that she loved Alex, even if she didn’t get to see him as much these days. He was happier at work again at last, having just got a new job in intelligence, and she was pleased for him – even if he did need to work longer and more irregular shifts than he used to. Before, the pattern had been a clockwork combination of early, late and night shifts that she’d written into her diary months in advance – but in this new job Alex never knew when he’d be called in. She’d got used to it now, though, and it was fine. He’d been passed over for promotion a few times over the years, and she knew it had got to him, although he’d tried to hide it from her. It was funny how he was quite secretive like that, as though he couldn’t stand for his pride to be hurt, and she knew underneath the bravado his ego was as fragile as hers had once been. But she guessed it was hardly surprising, after his upbringing, and she thought again how devastating it must have been for him to have been put into care by his own father. She didn’t really know how Alex felt about any of it though, as he never talked about it. In fact he seemed to regret ever having told her – as if, through her knowing, his mask had slipped somehow. She’d felt so sad for him.
And so now Eleanor was thrilled for Alex that he’d got this new job, even if he couldn’t tell her anything about it. She used to love hearing the tales from when he still worked in the response team, answering an unsavoury smorgasbord of 999 calls throughout the estates of Camden or Kentish Town, or occasionally from one of the enormous homes in Hampstead. There had been extraordinary stories of her husband barging into dark houses, not knowing who was in there or what weapons they had; or talking down suicidal people from the local bridge; or being handcuffed to a ranting stab victim in hospital who’d been arrested for GBH himself. But the tales she’d found hardest to hear were the ones of domestics amongst couples who lived in the most appalling of circumstances, of babies covered in their own faeces crawling on the floor, having just witnessed their mother’s head being smashed against the wall by her boyfriend. Eleanor had longed to be able to go round and sweep those infants up and rescue them. Even having had babies of her own hadn’t ever taken away that feeling. It was the powerlessness that got to her, and deep regret that this was these children’s lot in life – and so perhaps Alex was right when he said that it was better he couldn’t tell her anything at all these days, as there were stories far worse than that in his new unit. Eleanor couldn’t bear to even imagine.
Eleanor checked in the fridge and realised that there was no milk. Bloody Alex, she thought. He was always coming in at odd hours and demolishing the contents of the fridge.
‘Mummy,’ came a voice from upstairs. Brianna. ‘Mummmmy!’
‘I can’t hear you, sweetie,’ Eleanor yelled back, and turned the radio up a notch. Soon she heard the thud-thud of little feet on the staircase.
‘I said, where are my ballet shoes?’ Her seven-year-old spoke with an English accent that verged on plummy, especially when she was cross, like now. Alex spoke with a neutral accent, one of those where you don’t even know where someone is from, so Christ knows where Brianna had learned to speak like that. She was such a confident little madam, a star in the making perhaps, whereas Eleanor had been so timid at that age. When she visualised herself walking into that police station all those years ago it almost felt as if she were seeing a different girl, in an entirely other world, and it was hard to connect the two. It was one of those extraordinary stories, where the likelihood of meeting her husband had been so remote, it still felt incredible that she had. She tried to trace the story back to the source, to the moment that changed everything, and decided it had started with her father. If he hadn’t forcibly sent her to summer camp, for her increasingly wild-child behaviour in New York, she would never have graduated through to become a team leader years later. She would never have met Rufus. She would never have ended up alone and heartbroken in London. And she would certainly never have got a job as a live-in au pair with the Davenports, nor met their sicko neighbour, who entirely by accident had led her to her future husband.
As Eleanor made herself peanut butter and jelly on toast, she smiled at how some old habits die hard. She sat down at the breakfast bar, where the sun poured through the glass rooflight above her, and it was such a relief to see blue sky for a change. Her mind was drifting today, maybe because her father had called last night to tell her that her grandfather had died, peacefully, in a nursing home in Connecticut – and it seemed to Eleanor now that life carried on, and the passing of time was inexorable and inevitable, until death claimed us all. And although she was sad for her grandpa, the natural deaths of relatives felt like yardsticks in the snow, of where along the line your own life had got to, how much further you still had to travel.
Eleanor took a sip of the black tea she’d made herself and almost spat it out. It was no good. She’d have to go out to get milk. She couldn’t survive without a morning cup of tea these days, and that made her truly British in her book. But at least the rain had stopped now. The kids would be fine for five minutes.
As Eleanor came out of the house and walked the fifty yards up the street to the local shop, the air felt clean and fresh, and the springtime sunshine was warm on her back. That feeling. The first time the sun has any heat to it. The promise of what is to come over the next several months, despite the inability to ever take the weather for granted in this most unreliable of climates. There was something irresistible about it, about never knowing what each day, or even hour, would bring, meteorologically at least. She entered the shop and picked up a large plastic bottle of semi-skimmed milk. Her heart was still buzzing as she put it down to pay.
‘Morning, Eleanor,’ said the shopkeeper, looking up from the Turkish newspaper he was reading. ‘How are you today?’
‘Oh, I’m good, thanks, Hassan.’ Eleanor loved the fact that he knew her name, and she knew his, that even though she lived in inner London there was a community here, one she and Alex and the kids were firmly a part of. It reminded her of how her own upbringing might have been, if it hadn’t been sawn in two. After the divorce she’d become a mere chattel, ferried back and forth between the rural idyll of Maine and the manic streets of Manhattan. She had become two girls, in two lives, like those twins in The Parent Trap. She was amazed she was still sane. She was doing her best to give her own kids the stability she’d missed out on, and even if Alex’s erratic shift pattern meant that Brianna and Mason never knew when he would be at home, at least they had both their parents together still. Yes, Eleanor thought, as she turned into her street of Victorian terraces in various states of renovation or dilapidation, England had worked out well for her. It was ho—
Eleanor halted both her thoughts and her body as she saw him – there, right there, directly across the street from her – for the first time in nearly a decade. And although at first she thought she might have been
mistaken, she knew that she wasn’t, and she felt her heart turn itself to fire, and then to ice, as the sun went in.
26
PAUL
On the way back from the cricket club Jake was unrepentant, and that was the thing with him, that he could never be told. Paul had been spilling with fury that Jake was capable of such spitefulness. Sometimes he wished he didn’t have to deal with it, and the car was too hot, and his nerves were frazzled. As if on cue to aggravate him further, Jake began to wail.
‘Just shut up, Jake,’ he said.
Jake stopped. ‘I’m going to tell Mummy you said that,’ he sniffed, and then he continued crying again, even harder.
‘Feel free, Jakey,’ Paul said. ‘Feel free.’ He turned into their road and pulled up outside their house, too fast, scraping the wheels of his beloved BMW against the pavement as he parked. He cursed, then jumped out of the car and yanked open the rear door. He unfastened Jake’s seatbelt and hauled him out of his child seat.
‘Owww,’ said Jake.
‘Owww nothing,’ said Paul. ‘I didn’t even touch you.’
‘I hate you,’ said Jake.
‘No, you don’t,’ said Paul. He screwed up every last bit of his resolve. ‘You love me, and I love you. I just won’t tolerate this behaviour.’
‘I don’t love you. I hate you,’ Jake persisted.
‘What’s going on?’ said Christie, appearing at the door. She’d obviously just got out of the shower, and her hair was wet, sleeked back from her smooth, even forehead. She was wearing a short brown-and-white-striped T-shirt dress, and she looked great. She would look good in anything, Paul thought. It was something about her body’s bone structure, the way she carried herself. Her feet were bare, brown, divine.
