by Tina Seskis
On impulse Eleanor carried on past the shops and continued walking, as if chasing the end of the rainbow, and it seemed it wasn’t only the sudden reappearance of Rufus that was unsettling her. It was the country’s ever-heightening security threat too, and this crazy weather, and her mind was refracting, streaming in and out of the past, bouncing between absent do-gooder husbands and cruel past lovers and evil murderous terrorists. She wished she could turn off her thoughts, but instead it felt like they were revving up, amplifying, and it was making her more anxious than she’d felt in ages. Even the humiliation she’d felt at being dumped by Rufus seemed fresh all over again.
Eleanor stopped and stared up at the sky. She’d been proud of herself, for coming through that. She’d been so lucky that Lizzie Davenport had taken a chance on her, as it could have all turned out so differently. Even now, despite the family having moved out to the country in recent years, she still sometimes saw Lizzie and the twins, who had turned from cheeky toddlers into young adults the Davenports could be proud of. ‘And you should be proud too,’ Lizzie often said to Eleanor. ‘You were marvellous with them.’ Despite the age gap, or perhaps because of it, Lizzie and Eleanor had remained friends, and in a way Lizzie had become the parent that Eleanor had never had. One who had been utterly consistent. Who was always there for her. Oliver, of course, had been another story, but even now Eleanor preferred not to think about that – or, perhaps more pertinently, about what Lizzie would do if she knew.
Eleanor’s phone rang, and when she saw who it was, she found herself hesitating before answering.
‘Hi, princess,’ said Alex. ‘How are you?’ Normally Eleanor liked that he still called her that, but today it made her feel awkward. Their joke had always been that she’d been the princess trapped in the tower, who’d been rescued by her knight in shining armour – or at least one in a policeman’s uniform. Having someone in authority who had looked out for her, who made her feel safe after her ordeal at the hands of Gavin Hewitson, had been a powerful thing. But she’d been good for Alex too, Eleanor reminded herself. In a way it felt as if they’d saved each other somehow, and maybe that was why it had worked between them. And yet . . . lately Eleanor had found herself wondering whether she and Alex would ever have got together without such an impetus, a thought she would swiftly bury.
‘I’m OK,’ she said now, to her husband.
‘What are you up to?’
She hesitated, tempted to be honest . . . and then at the last minute decided not to mention Rufus. ‘Just out with the dog getting milk, seeing as Mason’s drunk it all again. Like father, like son, huh?’ She laughed. ‘What about you? Taken out any terrorists or Russian spies this morning?’
‘Ha,’ said Alex, noncommittally. It had always been that way in this job, but it no longer annoyed her. In the beginning she’d tried to wheedle things out of him, had used every single one of her wifely charms, but he had argued, quite reasonably, that although he believed her now when she swore that she would never tell, what about if they split up because he ran off with another woman, or beat her up or something? She used to chastise him, retort that that wasn’t a very nice thing to say, but he’d insisted that it was true, and she supposed it was. A woman scorned and all that. And although she’d sworn that she wasn’t the vengeful type, he’d signed the Official Secrets Act, and so she’d had no choice but to accept it. (He hadn’t seemed to mind bending the rules to find out where Gavin Hewitson lived though, she’d thought as he’d lectured her, but had decided not to mention it.)
‘When are you coming home, Al?’ said Eleanor now.
‘I’m not sure, love.’ She could feel the tension in his voice. ‘It . . . it might be a week or so.’
‘Oh. OK.’ He’d never been away that long before. She wondered if he would be going abroad, to Turkey or Syria perhaps. She knew he carried his passport at all times, but he never said where he was.
‘Alex?’ she said.
‘Yes, sweetheart.’
‘Take care of yourself.’
‘I will, love,’ he replied. His voice was full of its usual tenderness, but there was tension too, and it made her feel bad that he was away working, putting himself at risk for the sake of the country, and she was planning a secret assignation with her ex-lover. She could hear the break in his voice as he added, ‘I promise.’
34
CHRISTIE
By the fourth time Christie tried to get through to her husband, her early annoyance had begun to tip over into genuine worry. Where the hell was Paul? Why couldn’t he ever bloody well answer the phone? Much as she loved her husband, he could be an airhead at times, and he’d get so caught up in whatever he was doing that she swore half the time he didn’t even notice the phone ringing. But she’d been trying to reach him for over an hour now, and something didn’t feel right. She’d originally wanted to talk to him about what to do about her poor father, who seemed frailer than ever today, and not quite with it, having deteriorated so fast since his wife’s death it was frightening to witness. Her father had always been such a smartly dressed man, but now he wore the same old pair of trousers and jumper over and over again, and when Christie had tried to challenge him on it, he’d bellowed that it was the outfit he’d last held his wife in, and so he’d damned well wear it for as long as he wanted, thank you very much. It was so odd to see him like this. He’d never been fiery before, had never even cussed, but now he seemed consumed with something unmanageable, and it broke Christie’s heart to see him so fragile and wretched. It was almost as distressing as watching her mother dying – and in many ways it felt as if she’d lost them both now. She would be the parent from now on, and it was a disquieting realisation.
‘How is Paul?’ her father said now, from his chair by the gas fire, as Christie hung up her phone yet again. A film of dust, interrupted only by footprints, coated the dark wooden floor, and yet whenever she tried to get the vacuum out, he’d get agitated and insist that he would do it later.
‘Oh, I don’t know, Dad. He won’t answer the phone, as usual. I should put a bloody bleeper round his neck.’
‘Hmmm,’ said her father, and Christie wondered what he meant by that. His voice had a lucid tone to it suddenly that she neither liked nor recognised. Yet now she came to think of it, Paul hadn’t seemed quite himself on the phone earlier. ‘Shifty’ was perhaps too strong a word, but there had been something he wasn’t telling her.
‘What’s wrong, Christie love?’ her father said. He struggled to his feet and shuffled towards her, and he had an old-man smell now, as though he never washed any more, and when he put his hand on her arm it was brown-spotted and wrinkled, and so much smaller than she remembered. He seemed to have been shrinking from the moment his wife had first fallen ill, and Christie wondered what he was doing for eating. It felt desperate, the thought that he might be starving himself to death, intentionally or otherwise. She wished she could simply take him with her back to Hertfordshire and be done with it, but she knew he’d refuse to come. This was his home, after all.
‘Nothing, Dad,’ she said. ‘It’s all fine.’
‘If only your mother were here,’ he said. ‘She’d know what to do.’ He took out his handkerchief, which was grey and stiff and unsavoury, and blew his nose noisily. As tears started streaming down his face, Christie realised that before her mother’s stroke, she’d never seen him cry. Not even once. And yet these days he seemed unable to stop. She wished now that she’d let Paul come with her, especially as Alice had bailed out anyway – saying her husband had the flu and that she didn’t want their father to catch it – but that was probably for the best anyway. Alice never had been able to handle the grittier parts of life. She preferred to exist in her midnight-blue astrological world, where the future was mapped out for her in the sun and the moon and the stars. And although Christie didn’t mind having to shoulder the burden, she didn’t know what to do, how to make her father feel better on her own. She stared at her mobile, cursed at the number of
times she’d rung Paul.
‘Christie, love, it’s OK,’ her father said now.
‘What’s OK?’
‘It’s OK.’ He stared at her, and dust swirled and settled on a memory, and it was as if he were communing what he wanted to say to her through the power of thought alone. Her father’s eyes were watery-grey and wise, and somehow she knew exactly what he was trying to tell her. It was about Paul. The blue glass bottles on the windowsill shone briefly through their layer of grime as the sun came out. Somewhere a dog exploded into a fit of hysterical yaps, too far away to dent the strange atmosphere of intimacy.
‘I worshipped your mother,’ he said now. ‘Worshipped her. Like Paul does you. And so he should.’
‘Oh, Dad.’ Christie’s heart was aching.
‘Go home to him, love.’ Her father’s voice sounded stronger now, full of purpose again. ‘He needs you. I’m just an old man. Nothing will bring your mother back, and that’s all that I want. Go home to Paul. And please, Christie, don’t feel guilty, love. About anything.’
35
PAUL
Insidiously or otherwise, anger had played a large part in Paul’s life. As he knelt in his neat, rodent-invaded loft, glaring at the leather suitcase he’d tried so hard to forget ever existed, the sound of the phone downstairs still ringing in his ears, he realised that this was the one secret he’d never confided in Christie about, nor confronted her with. He was surprised at how much it still hurt. Women were a mystery to him, and surely always would be. And despite the fact that he knew he’d always love Christie, regardless of what had happened in either of their pasts, this seriously pissed him off.
Paul continued to observe the suitcase, in the way you might study an old person to look for clues as to their health, or otherwise. The leather was ancient and battered, and he knew inside there were photos and letters and poems from a gorgeous young girl who’d once written with such promise and passion, and he’d found it hard to take that Christie had never written anything like that to him. And because he hadn’t ever told her he’d found the case, he’d never been able to discuss it with her, what it had meant – and maybe that was why his jealousy had grown over the years, expanded into the air around the secret, constricting it, threatening an explosion. He could have simply disposed of the suitcase of course, and then denied all knowledge if ever challenged, but he’d felt conflicted. The letters were too precious to throw away, and yet too torturous to keep. The photos had been unbearable to even look at. And so he’d compromised, had put the case back where he’d found it – but he’d never been able to fully forget about it. And now here it was again, and he couldn’t understand it. How had she managed it? How much deception was she capable of?
Paul took a deep breath and screwed up his eyes tight, so he couldn’t see the images that he knew were in the case, threatening to invade his brain – of her, naked and young and supple, with a boy with floppy hair, as if he were out of Brideshead Revisited, bare-chested, sleek, leaning over her—
Paul turned sharply away, and tried to think of other, less distressing things. Christie would get home from Worcestershire later, tired and sad, and the house would unexpectedly be all Christmassy, and she’d be thrilled by it, and there would be mulled wine on the go, and he’d cook her steak and chips, her favourite, and they’d watch a new episode of Peep Show he’d recorded, and that would cheer her up. And then in a couple of days the kids would be home from university, and that would buoy her yet further. He’d missed the children too, of course, but especially Daisy, and maybe that’s secretly how all fathers felt about their little girls.
Paul knew he was kidding himself. It seemed there was something about the loneliness of the house, the empty air in the rooms beneath him, that was making him feel like this. And yet he couldn’t deny that he’d never been as close to Jake as he was to Daisy. After all, Jake had never looked like him. He’d never been like him . . .
And now he could feel the doubts resurfacing, jabbing at him, tormenting him . . . and Paul knew he needed to get the hell out of this loft. Yet still he sat there, rooted to the spot, lost in the past, remembering how Christie had fallen pregnant soon after she’d gone to a Cambridge reunion. Maybe she still hadn’t trusted him back then, had been after revenge about his supposed infidelity. It wasn’t beyond the realms of possibility . . .
And now Paul felt racked with the desire to just know. It was as if all the stress of the past few months had caught up with him. Perhaps he should force himself to study the pictures, X-rated or not, try to spot the resemblance. And if there was a likeness, maybe he could then get a few strands of Jake’s hair, to make absolutely sure. There must be some kind of service he could find on the Internet.
Jesus Christ. He was being crazy. Stark raving bonkers. Paul knelt forward and punched his forehead, to get the demons out. It must be the suitcase that had unnerved him, on top of everything else. It had been a crap few months, but he didn’t know what to do to make anything better. It didn’t help that his own grieving was so far down the pecking order. Christie. Christie’s father. The kids. They’d lost a mother; a wife; a cherished grandmother. All Paul had lost was a mother-in-law, and you’re not meant to be sad about those. Paul had heard all the jokes. And yet he’d always had such a strong bond with Jean, and he missed her too. She’d been the mother he’d never had. And grief did funny things to people.
Paul shifted on his haunches, tried not to let it come, but as ever the memory invaded, with impunity, and he wished he could stop it. Unwillingly he pictured himself, back when he was five. Everything else was a blur, but that scene was still remarkably, traumatically, clear. He saw his pudding-bowl haircut, the mustard polo-neck jumper his mother had knitted for him but that was now on the small side. He could almost feel the wool rough against his skin, making his neck red raw where he couldn’t help but scratch it. He could see his father coming home from the hospital, the bulk of his car coat, the smell of cigarettes. The feeling of excitement turning to one of utter dread. Of being taken into the front room, where all the brass ornaments were, still highly polished back then. Of being lifted on to the high hard couch and told, quite matter-of-factly, that his mummy had died and wouldn’t be coming home, and neither would the baby for now. His father walking out of the room and disappearing upstairs, and it being rarely spoken of again. It seemed insane now, that Paul hadn’t even got to go to the funeral.
Paul wiped his nose, forced himself back to the present. His mother-in-law had died too now, and she’d been the one person who’d always championed Paul to Christie. Even in the middle of the worst ructions, she’d told her daughter in no uncertain terms that one drunken escapade at a work do didn’t mean he’d jumped into bed with someone else, no matter what some dodgy fortune teller had said. Paul was nothing like Christie’s ex, thank the Lord, Jean had said, before telling Christie to stop stropping around and just get on with it. Paul would always be grateful to Jean for that, for believing in him still.
Paul sat on his hands, to stop himself reaching forward and yanking the case open, searching for the photos that might prove or disprove his suspicions. He’d never seen his rival’s face – in the couple of photos he had looked at, it had been obscured in ways he’d rather not think about. He groaned then, a deep throaty agonising bestial call into the void. He needed to get a grip, gain some perspective.
Paul pushed the suitcase into the corner, unopened, and turned away from it. Now wasn’t the time to be thinking about Jake’s parentage. It was an outrageous suspicion anyway, one that would devastate both his wife and his son if they knew. Plus he needed to get on with trying to make the house nice for Christie. He adjusted his glasses, swallowed down the tense hard knot in his throat and started lugging the long oblong box that contained the Christmas tree across the breadth of the loft, towards the hatch.
36
CHRISTIE
It was only once she was on the M1 that Christie had finally managed to get through to Paul. She’d b
een deeply worried by then, as it was unlike him not to have got back to her for such a long period of time – but the initial relief that he was still alive had worn off now, and she was feeling unsettled again. She was sure there was something odd going on. He’d sounded out of breath and harried when he’d answered the home phone, just as she’d been about to hang up for the umpteenth time. Although over twenty years of marriage had put paid to Christie’s doubts that maybe he was off shagging the neighbour, his manner just now had made her uneasy. She’d tried her best to seem friendly and relaxed, had simply asked him what he was up to, but he’d definitely sounded shifty and defensive, as though he hadn’t wanted to talk to her, in case he gave something away. She wondered what it could be.
The traffic was sluggish, but there were no roadworks, no obvious signs of an accident. Sheer weight of traffic seemed to be the culprit, and the phrase made Christie picture obese cars with bulging tyres stuck in hot tarmac. She was bored, and sad, and worried about her father, who she was driving away from, leaving him bereaved and alone. And yet she was somehow serene too, as if she were floating above the motorway, looking down on all the stressed fed-up people who were trying to get home. She’d been up and down this motorway so many times of late, and its mood seemed to vary according to the time of day. In the mornings, there was a combustible mix of road users in various states of hurry, which resulted in a fractious atmosphere and a heightened chance of accidents. People stressed to the eyeballs that they were going to be late for something crucial – a meeting, or an interview perhaps – would huff and rev, chop lanes, drive far too close to each other, although Christie was sure it couldn’t make more than a few seconds of difference to the lengths of their journeys. And then there were those who seemed quite happy to be crawling along, perhaps listening to Radio 2, for as long as it took, because that was better than sitting at their desks in the jobs that made them miserable. Finally, there were the people for whom driving was simply their job: the long-distance lorries and National Express coaches, the parcel-delivery vans, all clogging up the lanes, like cholesterol. All of them heading staunchly in the same direction, yet each with a unique destination, their own story to tell.
