I liked having him at home too. A lot of things were still unsaid between us. I didn’t know whether he’d finished with Claire or not, but for the moment, it didn’t seem to matter. He was at home, or in the hospital, at my side or at Fran’s, all week. He seemed wrapped up in us, in his children. He seemed happier than he’d been for months. There was no obviously suspicious behavior. There was no sneaking out to buy lightbulbs.
Of course it was possible that, while Fran was in hospital, he had simply put the relationship on hold, and would pick it up with renewed vigor when she was out. I couldn’t put this thought entirely out of my mind. Particularly in view of the phone calls. Someone was definitely trying to get hold of him—or me—or both. Pete rang once without leaving a message. I knew it was him because I heard the sound of a buzz saw before he managed to hang up. But there were other calls too, which I didn’t think were him because the phone went dead when I picked it up. I dialed *69 but the caller had withheld their number. “God, kids,” Jake said the third time it happened. He was catching up on some paperwork at the kitchen table. “Haven’t they got anything better to do?”
“Or burglars,” I said thoughtfully.
“Nothing to burgle here,” he said absent-mindedly, head back down.
I still hadn’t dealt with Pete. I was dreading meeting him. I would have to confront my own foolishness as well as his possible anguish. I kept putting it off, and it became more and more difficult as the days went by. Not least because the last time I’d seen him, when he’d come around to the house, he’d seemed so keen. Letting him down was going to be hard. But it had to be done. Also, I still had his phone.
So on a Saturday morning, almost two weeks after the accident, I told Jake I had some things to do. He didn’t seem that bothered. His parents were coming around for coffee at 11:00 a.m. It wasn’t raining.
I drove to the other side of the common, along the row of beautiful Georgian houses. When I got to the flat, I sat outside for a minute or two. There were battalions of small boys playing soccer on the common. It was quite warm, but the sky hung low in a mottled panoply as if the world had a false ceiling, the boys’ cries bouncing off the clouds. The suburban idyll: grass and bare knees and fathers running up and down the touchline shouting, “Hoi, hoi. That’s it, that’s it. In. Go on. Through ball. Through ball. Hoi—aaaaaaa.”
I took Pete’s phone from the glove compartment, where I had put it for safekeeping, got out, and crossed the road, sticking my head between Pete’s van and a Mitsubishi Shogun, before I did so. The Mitsubishi looked familiar and there was a yapping and a mad scratching from its back windows, as a couple of Highland Terriers tried to scrabble through the glass at the sight of me. They looked familiar, as well, but I was too preoccupied to think anything of that then. The road was busy today—because of the soccer I supposed. There was a bus, a Hopper, revving noisily as it waited for the oncoming traffic to let it through, forced into single lane by the cars on the edge. The bus stop was right outside the house, and there were a couple of old men taking the weight off their feet and sitting on the step when I got there. The one who eased himself up to let me pass was wearing a stained tweed jacket and a spotted bow tie. They were remarking on each car as it went by. “Toyota: they make a good car,” the older man on the step was saying as I clambered through.
“Absolute bloody sods, the Japanese,” said the man in the bow tie. “Bloody awful what they did in the war. I couldn’t buy Japanese because of that. Sorry, dear.”
Once past, I paused for a moment and then I went up the steps. I’d go down later. I’d do this first. I had to see Claire. I had to talk to her. I rang the bell and waited, convinced she was out, clenching and unclenching my fists, my toes curled in my sneakers. And I heard footsteps, the jangle of the chain, and then there Claire was. In her pigeon robe with the lace thing underneath. Ten o’clock in the morning and still in bed.
“Oh,” she said.
Now she’d opened the door, my knees were trembling.
“Can I have a word?” I said, my voice unnaturally high.
“Er, yeh, hello, Maggie. Yes, come in.”
She went ahead into her flat, and I followed. The curtains were drawn in the sitting room and it smelled musty. There was an overflowing ashtray and red wine rings on the coffee table. A candle had been left lighted on the mantelpiece and had dripped down onto the slate hearth below, splattering wax like molten honey. There was a cloying sweetness in the air. Perfume and cigarettes and, to my nostrils, something danker, like other people’s husbands.
Claire had gone into another room. She came out again almost immediately. “How are you?” she said, closing the door behind her. “I haven’t seen you for ages. Not since the . . . er . . . swimming pool. It’s been a bit . . . hectic around here. Coffee?”
“Um, all right.” I felt my resolution weaken. She was on her way to the kitchen now, on the move as if to keep what I had to say at arm’s length. “It’ll have to be instant,” she called. “I’ve run out of real.”
She came back in after a bit and rooted around in the sofa next to me until she found a packet of cigarettes. She pulled one out, sat on the arm of a chair, and tucked her robe—pashmina, I decided then; it had to be a pashmina—around her knees. But not before I’d caught sight of a web of broken veins on the inside of her thigh, like river tributaries on an ordnance survey map. She wasn’t wearing make-up either, and close up she looked tired; there were shadows on each side of her mouth, dark smudges under her eyes. “So, what’s up?” she said.
I sat on my hands to stop them from trembling. “Look,” I began. I stopped.
She said, with a half smile, “I’m looking.”
I cleared my throat. “Look,” I said again. “This is awkward I’m sure for both of us. I expect your heart sank when you saw me at the door.”
“Not really,” she said. She was so cool I wanted to scream.
“It must have,” I continued. “You must know what I’ve come for. You must have some idea what I’ve come to tell you.”
Claire was smoking. “I have no idea,” she said. “Though when we met at the swimming pool I could tell you felt some anger toward me.”
“Of course, I feel anger,” I said. I was clenching a velvet cushion. “What do you expect?”
She was still smiling at me, her head politely cocked to one side. She was still smoking, but she seemed to be gripping the cigarette more tightly between her fingers. There was a click from the kitchen. She looked at the door and then back to me. “I’m just going to go and make the coffee,” she said, enunciating each word clearly.
When she got up, I got up too and followed her in. She had her back to me. “Fuck it,” I said. “I don’t want coffee.” The kitchen showed signs of a meal, only idly cleared away. There were dirty plates—two—still on the table, saucepans soaking greasily by the sink. I said, “I just want you to tell me something. I want you to tell me that you’re not going to try and see Jake again.”
“What?” she didn’t turn around. But she stopped what she was doing, which was pouring hot water into two old-fashioned Portmerion mugs, the kind with botanical prints on them. Her grandmother’s Portmerion. Even Claire’s china belonged to someone else.
“Yes, I know about it. I know about Jake and you. And I know something else too. It’s over. Okay? It’s over between you. You may think he loves you, but he doesn’t. I know he loves me. And I know he loves his children. And if you think for one minute that he’s going to leave us you’re very, very wrong. I will fight you all the way.” Even as I was talking, it struck me as odd how it’s in moments of crisis that one falls back most readily on clichés, as if to force unwieldy emotions into something manageable. Claire turned, making a noise in her throat, but I carried on. “I am not going to give him up. We belong together now. We’ve made something together and if you think otherwise, you’re . . .” I flailed for a moment, my arsenal of clichés temporarily exhausted, before I plucked another from the ether
, “absolute bloody sods.”
Claire was clearly fighting to control herself. I had gotten her. For the first time ever I had gotten to her. I had proved I wasn’t mousy Maggie—forever boxing in her shadow. I was a force to be reckoned with. She was biting the corner of her lip. “Maggie,” she began.
But I was unstoppable now, I had thirty years’ worth of things to say. “Of course men like Jake are going to fall for you,” I said, shaking my head. “You’re gorgeous and you always look fantastic—mind you, you should, you get enough sleep—and you’re out doing interesting things, you’ve got time to do them, and so you’ve got interesting things to talk about. But it’s not fair. It’s not an equal playing field. I’m boring and downtrodden because I look after children, Jake’s children. And I’ve got no conversation because I’ve given up my life to do that. Not to mention my nights and half my brain. But this is what most people’s lives are about. They’re not about meetings with agents and weekends in New York. They’re about getting through things and muddling on and finding shared pleasures in small things, like your child’s first word or a random unbroken night and graduating, maybe, to the odd weekend away. They’re about not getting on all of the time, and sometimes not getting on a lot of the time, but about growing old together, learning to fit together.”
Claire said, “Maggie. Stop. STOP. You’ve got it all wrong. I am not seeing Jake. I have never been seeing Jake. I’ve never had anything to do with Jake. Or not really. This is nothing to do with him. You’ve got it all wrong. You’ve got the wrong man.”
“What do you mean the wrong man?” I was gripping the back of a chair.
She was looking horrified and yet slightly amused at the same time. “Maggie. I don’t know where you’ve got this from. I am having an affair, yes. But not with Jake.”
“Who then?” I screeched, still disbelieving.
“With Ed.”
“ED?”
She had started giggling. “Sorry, sorry.” She straightened her face. “I know it’s not funny. It’s just your expression. Maggie, I’m so sorry. I don’t know how this has happened.”
I was staring at her. I could feel rushing in my ears. I was still holding onto the back of the chair, but to keep my balance now. I felt disbelief and confusion, something else glorious which must have been relief. “Ed?” I said again. “Ed Brady? I don’t believe you. You’re lying.”
She was grinning. “I’m not. He was here only a minute ago, and you could have seen him with your own eyes.” She looked at her watch. “He’ll be back in a couple of hours if you want to wait. Look, sit down.” She put her hand on my shoulder and guided me into the chair.
I said, “I don’t believe it.” Though I did now. There were just 100 things I didn’t believe, like how I’d gotten it all wrong. “How . . .” I began.
“I promise you, I’m telling the truth,” Claire said. “Why would I lie?”
I just stared at her. “I think you need that coffee,” she said. Claire tipped the mugs into the sink and began to reboil the kettle. She made a little “tum-ti-tum” sound as she did so. Normal service had resumed for Claire; a minor misunderstanding had been mopped up. But what was minor to her was monumental to me. I sat, still unable to move, at the table. I was running through everything in my mind—trying to adjust how I felt to this new information. There were fish leaping in my toes, but they hadn’t reached my head. How could I have been so wrong? How could I have misread the situation so badly? Or had I wanted to read things my way? Did this make things better? Or did it make them much, much worse? I realized I was crying. It must have been relief or shock or pity or guilt or all of those things. A couple of fat drops rolled down my face and fell on some documents next to the dirty plates in front of me. I put my palms up to my eyes and then used my sleeve to dab at the paper. I saw then that it was estate agent particulars. I picked the top one up: it was for a two-bedroom flat in Notting Hill.
“Are you moving?” I said.
“Well, Ed and I . . .”
“Ed and you?”
“Yes.” She brought the Portmerion over and sat down next to me. She passed mine over. Violets. Violets for . . .
I said, “But I don’t understand. I saw you together . . . I . . .”
A door slammed, and I didn’t finish. There was the sound of hurried footsteps and a voice, getting louder, calling, “Forgot my bloody squash kit! I’d forget my balls if . . .” and the door to the kitchen opened, and there was Ed.
“. . . if they weren’t in a bag,” he said dumbly, seeing me.
“Ed,” I said, getting up.
“Hello, Maggie.” He grimaced, then shrugged. “Caught in the act now, eh?”
“Ed,” I said again. Both my hands were clutching the top of my head, as if in a gesture of surrender.
He came around the table and kissed me on both cheeks as if we were at a cocktail party. “Lovely to see you,” he said. “I was so sorry to hear about Fran . . .”
I couldn’t concentrate on the small talk. I glanced at Claire and then back to him again, “Ed, I don’t understand.” I emitted a small high laugh. “You told me Claire was having an affair with Jake.”
“I told you what?” He pulled away.
“We talked. We had that conversation in Suffolk. About Claire and Jake.”
He looked over at Claire, who looked baffled. “There is no Claire and Jake. There’s only Claire and me.”
I rubbed my head. Could this be possible? “But you did. You were so sympathetic.”
“I was sympathetic? You were sympathetic. You encouraged me to pack my bags.”
“I did?”
“Yeah.” He was frowning at me as if I’d gone mad.
I turned to Claire. I realized I was supposed to be feeling embarrassed now, but I was still too bewildered. “I don’t understand. You knew all about Jake’s business trip—you knew about Kyushi. He knew all about what you were up to. I heard you on the phone to him arranging lunch. I followed you. I saw you together. I saw you embrace him.”
“You embraced him?” Ed said.
“I was trying to get back with you. I was desperate. He was being kind.”
“And what about all the other things?” I said. “All the coming round to our house, inviting us here, there, and everywhere. I won’t flatter myself that it was for my company.”
Claire had the grace then to look ashamed. “Yes, I know, I used you and I used Jake. I used him to get to Ed when Ed wouldn’t return my calls and when Ed’s secretary, who had been my ally, suddenly developed a conscience . . .”
“And Jake didn’t?”
“I don’t think he liked doing it.”
“Yes, well, I’m very grateful to him now,” Ed interrupted. “It was the right thing and I think he had my best interests at heart.”
“But not mine,” I said. “He didn’t tell me. If he’d told me, none of this would have happened.”
“I made him promise not to,” Ed said. “I was just so petrified that Pea would find out and . . . well then anyway, you told me you’d guessed. But Jake said you didn’t want to talk about it.”
“When? When did I say that?”
“In Suffolk. The night after the parlor game.”
“I didn’t want to talk about him and Claire,” I said.
“Not Jake,” Claire said again.
“Fuck,” I said. I put my forehead in the palms of my hands and kneaded it. I stared at the table through the crack between my arms, overwhelmed by my own foolishness. I could see the corner of the estate agents particulars. I picked them up again and held them out.
“Does Pea know?”
Ed said, “Yes. She does. She’s staying with a friend in Bath this weekend to think. She suspected something was up even before I told her. Actually—” He started laughing at the ludicrousness of what he was about to say, “she thought I was having an affair with you! In Suffolk, anyway. She said we kept sneaking off !”
I smiled. I said, “Yeah, well, stranger t
hings have happened.”
There was a pause. “So you’re leaving her?” I added.
Claire got up and was facing the sink. “Yes.” Ed’s face straightened. “Yes, this time I am.”
“Poor Pea.”
“Yes and no,” he said. “She’s angry with me now. But she’s always been angry with me. I was never quite what she wanted me to be, never successful enough or driven or whatever she would call it. I frustrated her. She thought she deserved more than me.”
“And what about . . .”
“Clarice. It’s awful. But I’ll see her all the time. I won’t let anything come between us. I . . . Actually,” he looked at his watch, “I said I’d ring at lunchtime. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll just go into the bedroom and do that.”
Claire turned back from the sink after he’d gone. “It’s not true that I only go after married men. There were only ever two. Marcus—who told me he was single when we met and was a disaster anyway, I don’t know what I was doing, talk about rebound—and Ed. I would be lying if I said I hadn’t known Ed was married. I knew right from the beginning. But we tried to stop it. And we split up for all that time . . . We did fight it.”
“But it was too strong for you?”
“Don’t be mean, Maggie.”
“Sorry. I’m still stinging from my own mistake, still wondering what I would think if it was me.”
Claire sighed. She twisted her hair and tucked it into the back of her robe. She did look thirty-six. A beautiful thirty-six, but thirty-six nonetheless. She was what she was. “He wasn’t happy, Maggie. I know some people think you should stay ‘for the children,’ but is that fair? Would you want to be Pea in those circumstances? Or Clarice? Knowing, or sensing at any rate, that your father had given everything up for you?”
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