She said, staring at her lap, ‘D’you want us to stop?’
He glanced round.
‘No. Why should I?’
‘But you won’t live with me. You won’t let me live with you.’
‘That’s right.’
‘Suppose,’ Paula said, ‘suppose I can’t stand that?’
‘You’ll tell me.’
‘And if I did, what would you do?’
Very slowly, Jackson stood up. He looked down at her.
‘I’ll wait till that happens.’
‘Maybe it’s happening now—’
‘I’ll wait,’ Jackson said, ‘until it happens when you’re not upset.’
Paula thrust her clenched fists between her knees.
‘You are so frustrating. I’d like to hit you.’
‘Don’t,’ Jackson said.
There was a silence. Out of the corner of her eye, Paula could see his trousered leg, his hand hanging loosely. She felt suspended, poised on the edge of something, like those childhood holidays with her father on the north Cornish coast, standing in the sea with her surfboard poised, waiting for the next wave to rear and curl and crash-carry her back to the beach.
‘Can I ask you something?’ Paula said.
‘Of course,’ Jackson said.
His tone was friendly.
‘Has – has this got anything to do with Karen?’
There was a beat, and then Jackson said calmly, ‘Absolutely bloody nothing.’
‘You sure?’
‘Quite sure. This is me, babe. This is me. OK?’
‘Go away,’ Paula said tiredly.
‘Yup.’
‘Now.’
Jackson moved. He took a step closer and bent over Paula and dropped the lightest of kisses on the back of her bent neck.
‘See you,’ Jackson said. And then he picked up his jacket and went lightly across to the door and let himself out.
Paula stood up at once, picked up his glass and plate and marched to the kitchen with them. The clock on the wall above the fridge said eight-fifty-five.
Paula sat up slowly now, still clutching the cushion. She wondered why she wasn’t crying. She felt full of tears, full of the urge, the need, to cry, but she wasn’t crying. She stood up unsteadily. She had asked Jackson to live with her and he had turned her down. She had summoned all her courage in order to ask him and he had not, in any way, indicated that he had noticed this bravery, been aware what it had cost her. Perhaps that was because he really meant that he didn’t want it to end, that he – and somehow, she – could just go on dating and texting and talking on the phone and having sex and not knowing, not being sure, not advancing, for ever and ever.
Paula bent down and put the cushion back among the others. Then she carried her wine glass back to the kitchen sink, as she had done with Jackson’s. Then she went back into the sitting area and across the zebra rug to the dark space at the bottom of Toby’s ladder. She looked upwards. It was quite quiet and the only light was the tiny green eye of Toby’s computer monitor.
She leaned her hands on the sides of the ladder and craned upwards.
‘Toby?’
Silence. She pushed herself upright, and closed her eyes. It would be such a relief, such a comfort, such a validation of what she had tried to do, to be able to telephone someone, to ring Lindsay. But she could not, just now, ring Lindsay. And nor, for a whole host of different reasons, could she ring Karen or Blaise or Eleanor. She thought of Eleanor, Eleanor and Jules, the oddest of couples, and a pang of unbidden, unwanted, misplaced jealousy went through her like a cheesewire.
Oh God, Paula thought. Oh God. I’m going to cry.
Joel perched himself on the edge of Paula’s desk. He was carrying three flat cardboard boxes with ‘Lacquer tray – blk’ printed on white labels stuck to their sides. When Joel wanted to talk to Paula, he always came carrying something, so that she could never accuse him of stopping work to gossip.
Paula was gazing at her computer screen. On it was a printout of soft-furnishing stocks in the warehouse and it might as well have been the lyrics to a nursery rhyme for all the significance it had for her that morning. She was, she knew, just going through the motions, as she had with getting up and getting breakfast and getting Toby to school. She was not surprised to feel like this. Feeling like this was, after all, what happened when you had spent the whole night awake, gingerly probing to see how badly your heart was broken.
‘What?’ Paula said without inflection, staring at the screen.
‘I saw your friend Lindsay,’ Joel said.
‘Oh, good.’
Joel adjusted the boxes in his grasp a little.
‘Saturday night. I was out for a meal and so was she.’
Paula sighed.
‘I know.’
‘She looked good,’ Joel said. ‘Really good.’
‘Mmm.’
‘With,’ Joel said, his eye on Paula, ‘this gorgeous guy.’
‘And you’re the judge?’
‘Of guys, I am,’ Joel said. ‘And this one was really fit. A real loss to the cause.’
Paula said nothing. She kept her hands on the keyboard in case they shook, even a little.
‘And your friend Lindsay was having a lovely time. You could see that, right across the restaurant. Of course, she didn’t see me. Far too busy to see me.’
Paula said steadily, ‘I hope you were having a lovely time.’
Joel eased himself upright.
He said as usual, ‘You wouldn’t want to know about that.’
‘No, I wouldn’t.’
‘But I thought you’d like to know that your friend Lindsay had one hot date.’
‘Thank you, Joel.’
‘Any time, Paula, any time.’
He moved away from her desk and down the polished stairs to the shop floor. Paula listened to his light, designer-trainered tread, and then to him greeting a customer he’d found waiting, one of those women, no doubt, who had days to fill spending money someone else had earned. Paula gave her left wrist a light slap. It was mean to think that way, just as it was mean to react to the news of Lindsay’s happy evening with anything other than unaffected pleasure. But, Paula thought, bending forward as if to engage better with the information on the screen, disappointment makes us mean, disappointment in ourselves, disappointment, especially, in other people.
Joel’s feet came rapidly back up the stairs.
‘Can you come a minute?’
Paula looked up.
‘A problem?’
‘No,’ he said. He looked unnaturally alert. ‘No. Just someone to see you.’
‘A rep —’
‘No,’ Joel said. ‘Someone else. Come on.’
Paula stood up and reached for her jacket. It was all very well for Joel, in his trim black T-shirt and jeans, to dress informally for customers, but something in Paula wanted – needed – to assert her managerial status. She put on her jacket and found a lipgloss in the pocket.
‘It’s not a man,’ Joel said.
Paula ignored him. She dropped the lipgloss on her desk and went past him and down the stairs. At the far end of the main display space, contemplating a greenish lacquered cupboard, hinged and bound in brass, stood a small woman, in a long dark overcoat, with fair hair to her shoulders.
At the sound of Paula’s approach, she turned and waited until Paula was quite close, and then she said, ‘You won’t have been expecting me.’
Paula looked at her enquiringly.
The fair woman said composedly, ‘I’m Fiona.’
‘Fiona—’
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘Fiona. Gavin’s wife.’
‘Oh—’
‘You never thought you’d see me, did you?’
‘No, I—’
‘Well,’ Fiona said, ‘I decided just to come. I decided to grasp the nettle and come. I’ve wanted to kill you for years, but time changes most things, and now I rather want to kill Gavin. D’you know the feeling?’
<
br /> Paula nodded. She kept her gaze fixed on Fiona’s small, pretty, apparently unremarkable face.
‘This letter he’s sent you,’ Fiona said, ‘these threats. It’s all about him, as usual.’
Two other customers, a middle-aged man and a girl carrying a baby strapped to her front in a canvas sling, were walking slowly across the floor towards them. The man, although gazing at the objects as he passed them, had a piece of paper in his hand, and a piece of paper usually meant a specific request or complaint.
‘I’m so sorry,’ Paula said, ‘but I can’t talk now, I can’t—’
‘I didn’t mean you to,’ Fiona said. ‘I didn’t intend that. I just wanted to make a start. Break the ice.’
‘I can’t even react,’ Paula said, ‘I’m too—’
Fiona made a brusque little gesture. She put her hand in her coat pocket and pulled out a card. She held it out.
‘My mobile number.’
The middle-aged man was six feet away. He was looking directly at Paula.
Paula said uncertainly, ‘Thank you—’
‘Ring me.’
‘Excuse me,’ the man said, ‘but I was hoping to speak to the manager?’
Paula turned.
She said, in the voice she kept for customers who looked like trouble, ‘How may I help you, sir?’
Fiona didn’t move.
She raised her head, and very slightly her voice, and she said extremely clearly, ‘Look. We have something in common, don’t we? After all, we both fell for Gavin. Didn’t we?’
Chapter Eighteen
At first, Lindsay didn’t see Jules at the school gates. She was focused – as she always was, the dash from work to be punctual being regularly preoccupying – on being in place, and evidently waiting, by the time Noah drifted out in his panda backpack, usually holding some strange and fragile artefact he had made, in honour of a festival, or a religion, of which he had no concept except as yet another arbitrary punctuation mark in the inevitable sequence of his days. So she was startled, to the point of jumping a little and saying, ‘Oh!’ when Jules said, from only inches away, ‘It’s me.’
‘You shouldn’t have—’
‘What d’you want me to do?’ Jules demanded. ‘Wave a placard saying here I am, it’s Jules, remember me?’
‘No,’ Lindsay said crossly. ‘No. Course not. No, I just—’ She stopped and put her arms round Jules. ‘Course not,’ she said. ‘I’m glad to see you. Relieved.’ She tightened her arms. ‘Glad, Jules. Glad.’
‘OK,’ Jules said.
Lindsay let go. She held Jules at arm’s length and studied her.
‘Where’ve you been?’
‘You know where I’ve been.’
‘You look better.’
‘Fatter,’ Jules said. She pulled a face.
‘You could do with it, being fatter.’
‘Look who’s talking—’
‘I missed you,’ Lindsay said. ‘I know you’ve been OK with Eleanor. But I’ve missed you.’
Jules looked away, at the playground. Noah was coming towards them, very slowly, his anorak off one shoulder, towing his backpack.
‘Noah’s coming.’
Lindsay turned.
‘Look at him. Just look at him. In another world—’
‘What about your world?’
Lindsay smiled.
‘Good.’
‘So I hear.’
Lindsay said quickly, ‘It’s early days, Jules. I’m not keeping anything from you, I’m not hiding anything—’
‘Didn’t think you were.’
‘He’s lovely,’ Lindsay said.
‘He better be.’
Noah reached the school gate and the teacher, waiting to see him safely escorted home.
‘Goodbye, Noah.’
Noah looked up at her. He nodded.
She said again, ‘Goodbye, Noah. Goodbye, Mrs Brownhill.’
‘Bye,’ Noah said.
He moved forward and stopped in front of his mother and his aunt.
He glanced up at Jules.
‘You got your music?’
‘No,’ Jules said. ‘You want music?’
Noah nodded again.
Lindsay bent down to rearrange his anorak.
‘Isn’t it lovely to see Jules again?’
Noah thought.
He said, ‘I need to see a dinosaur.’
‘Well,’ Lindsay said, ‘not today. Another day we can see a dinosaur. After Legoland.’
‘You going to Legoland?’
Lindsay took Noah’s hand.
She said with a small air of pride, ‘Derek’s taking us to Legoland. On Saturday.’
Jules went round to the other side of Noah and took his other hand.
‘Can I come?’
‘To Legoland? With us?’
‘Yeah.’
‘D’you want to?’
‘Would I ask,’ Jules said, ‘if I didn’t?’
Lindsay gave Jules a quick look across Noah’s head.
‘What’s happened?’
Jules began to walk, pulling Noah and her sister along with her.
‘Nothing.’
‘Then why have you turned up all of a sudden, after all this time? Why d’you want to spend Saturday at Legoland with Derek and me and Noah?’
Jules walked on in silence.
‘Jules?’
‘Perhaps,’ Noah said, ‘there’ll be a dinosaur at Legoland.’
‘Jules?’
‘He didn’t mean it,’ Jules said.
They all paused at the edge of the pavement.
‘What?’
‘He didn’t mean it,’ Jules said again. ‘About the club.’
‘You mean Jackson?’
‘He didn’t mean to help me. It was just a line. He just shoots lines.’
‘But you didn’t believe him, you never really thought—’
They began to cross the road, linked together.
‘I did,’ Jules said. ‘I said I didn’t, but I did. I wanted to. I wanted someone to show me what to do next.’
‘Oh, Jules—’
‘It’s OK.’
Lindsay stopped walking. She disengaged Noah’s hand and transferred him to her far side so that she was in the centre. She took Jules’ hand and squeezed it.
‘What a rotten trick.’
‘I’m the fool,’ Jules said. ‘I should have known better.’
‘I don’t know,’ Lindsay said. ‘We can’t go round suspecting everyone. You have to hope, don’t you, that most people mean what they say? Maybe he even did, when he said it.’
‘You defending him?’
‘Well—’
‘Because of Paula? You still want to defend him because of her?’
Lindsay squeezed her hand again.
‘No. No, I don’t want to defend him. Even for Paula.’
‘Well,’ Jules said, ‘you’d be wasting your time.’
‘What?’
‘It’s over,’ Jules said. ‘Him and Paula.’
Lindsay stopped again.
‘Oh my God.’
‘He’s just doing the rounds. Coming on to Karen, sucking up to Blaise, leaving me to find out he’s not interested in buying a club, telling Paula he’s not moving in with her.’
Noah, at the end of the line, began to pull in a half-circle towards a nearby baker’s window. It was an old-fashioned baker’s, displaying glossy yellow and brown cakes and pastries, iced in blinding white.
‘Oh, poor Paula,’ Lindsay said. ‘Poor, poor Paula. Is she OK?’
‘Can I have one of those?’ Noah said.
‘I dunno—’ Jules said to her sister.
‘With the cherry?’
‘I feel awful,’ Lindsay said. ‘I feel terrible. I should have been there, I should have known. I should have been there, for both of you.’
‘Can I?’ Noah said. ‘Can I? Can I?’
Lindsay looked down. Noah’s finger was pressed against the glass, above a Bakewel
l tart the size of a saucer.
‘Can I?’
‘No,’ Lindsay said.
Karen switched off the computer. The heating in the office, programmed for a regular working day, had gone off some two hours ago, and she had been working in her padded jacket and the brightly coloured woven hat, made in the Andes, that Poppy had insisted she buy at the last school fund-raising sale. She had considered turning the override on the heating on again, but then something, no doubt due to the strained and unresolved difficulties between her and Blaise just now, had made her think again, and she had put her jacket on. Once, she thought, once upon a time, and not so long a time ago as all that, I would have defiantly done what made me comfortable. Today, defiance isn’t how I’m feeling. I don’t seem to have the energy – or the taste – for it.
She went round the small room ordering things, papers in wire baskets, clips and pens in pots, rubbish in the bin. On Blaise’s stretch of desk she left the usual plastic folders containing the week’s figures but without the usual review of the past week or projection for the next. Somehow, like defiance, she had no heart for it tonight. The past seemed oddly reproachful in its settledness: the future without much attraction, certainly not enough to contemplate it in terms of goals and targets. She gathered up her bags, her work bag and two unwieldy supermarket bags, one already pierced in several places by the corners of boxes inside, and gave a last look round. Then she closed the door, dialled the security code for the lock, and manoeuvred her burdens down to the street.
The queue at the bus stop looked as dispirited as she felt. Everyone seemed to be carrying too much and, regardless of that, still trying to read the evening paper by the light of the newsagent’s by the bus stop, or talk on the telephone. Karen leaned against the pavement ticket machine and felt the handles of the supermarket bags pull themselves into agonizing plastic strings against her fingers, and the strap of her work bag grind into her shoulder, and reflected that her immediate situation, there at the bus stop weighed down by bags, was a metaphor moment, a point of time that symbolized not just the major aspects of her life but the way they had come to oppress her and unbalance her and cause her to feel that, however hard she tried, however fast she ran, she was not capable of regaining even a measure of control.
The bus, when it came, was full. She stood on the lower deck, wedged in against a handrail. All the faces round her, in the harshly lit interior, looked as if painted by Toulouse-Lautrec in a seedy Parisian bar. Karen closed her eyes. The girls would be at home. So would Lucas. Lucas had agreed to collect the girls and to make supper for them. Then he was, he said, going back to his studio. It would have been much easier, Karen thought, if he had left for his studio before she got home, if she did not have to present herself to him in the stumbling, haphazard condition she presently found herself in. But he would be there, because the girls could not be left alone, and would be able, after years of practice, to read every nuance of her mood and she was going to have to endure, quite simply, letting him.
Friday Nights Page 26
