by Carmen Reid
‘Yes,’ Annie assured her, ‘we’re fine. It was . . .’ she paused, ‘I think it was a good thing to do. The children got a lot out of it.’
‘Oh Annie, I’m sorry,’ Fern sympathized.
‘How are you? What are you phoning me for at three p.m. on a Saturday anyway?’ Annie wondered.
‘I’ve just seen Gray,’ Fern told her, ‘but now maybe isn’t the time to tell you about this . . .’ She paused.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Do you know where he is?’ Fern asked her.
‘Not really. He said he was having a quiet day at home – and he might go out later. Why? Where have you seen him?’
‘Well, maybe you should phone him up, sweetheart. See if he tells you that he’s in a cosy little booth at Le Pont d’Or having a three-course meal and two bottles of wine with his . . .’ Annie could hear the irritation in Fern’s voice now, ‘. . . wife, Marilyn,’ she added.
‘Really??!’ Annie could hardly believe it. ‘You’ve just seen them there?’
‘Yes. Went in to meet Netty for a lunchtime special – that’s all I can afford in Le Pont d’Or – and only when I was leaving did I see them. I’d love to be mistaken . . . and maybe there’s a completely innocent reason for it . . . but she was giggling and they looked a little too happy.’
As soon as her mother’s call was over, Annie dialed Gray’s number. It was fine to meet your ex-wife and be civil, but a three-course lunch with wine, giggling and looking too happy… that was something else altogether.
‘Hi!’
‘Hi!’
‘How’s it going?’ he wanted to know. ‘Where did you rush off to? Is everything OK with Owen?’
He sounded so concerned that for a moment she thought her mother must have been wrong. Gray was surely at home, waiting for her to call him. She felt a pang of guilt that she hadn’t phoned him earlier, he must have been worrying about them.
‘Everything’s fine. Really. Are you still at home?’ she asked.
‘No. I couldn’t face the tidying up so I headed into town.’
‘Southend?’ she asked.
‘Yeah . . . I gave John a call and we met up for lunch.’
‘John?’
‘You know, yachtie John. We had a bit of a blowout at the Pont d’Or. Very nice it was too. I’m just heading out of the Gents to settle the bill.’
‘Great . . . Sorry, babes, I’ve got to go . . .’ was all Annie could manage in response to this. ‘Speak to you later.’
‘When do you think you’ll be back?’ he asked.
‘Sorry, no idea yet. OK.’ She hung up abruptly.
And now he had made things even worse by lying to her.
She opened the make-up section of her handbag, took out her hairbrush and a new lipstick.
After brushing carefully through her wet hair, she tied it up tightly and took several minutes to apply the lipstick perfectly. She needed the morale boost.
Unfortunately, she had to pull her soggy walking boots back on and the wet cagoule because the stair-rod rain had not eased.
Out on the camp-site field she located Ed’s tent, which had been pulled back to rights, and guessed that her children were inside with him.
Opening the tent flap, she saw the three of them sitting on rolled sleeping bags, backs hunched against the nylon sides, listening to the pelt of rain. She crawled in, trying to avoid putting her hand into the wet mud on the crackling plastic floor of the tent.
‘Pull up a sleeping bag.’ Ed moved from his seat and sat on the floor, so Annie inched in a crouching position over to the bag and perched her bum on it, grateful for the slight warmth it radiated.
Casting a glance round at the quiet, thoughtful faces surrounding her, she raised her voice to be heard above the drumming raindrops to say: ‘Well, here we are. Everyone OK?’
When they all nodded, she couldn’t help adding, ‘This is fun, isn’t it? I hadn’t realized how much fun camping could be.’
Although Lana and Owen giggled, Ed was the first to speak. ‘Owen, do you want to do another night under canvas?’ he asked. ‘Or should we think about packing up and doing this another time when it’s not so wet? Totally up to you,’ he added.
‘Let’s go,’ Owen decided.
Then Ed made an unexpected offer: ‘Can I make you all supper tonight? At my place. Yes? Why not?’ He waved away Annie’s protests, although she was wondering whether she could face going back to Gray tonight . . . having to have the row about his Lana accusations and his expensive lunch, on top of the day she’d already had.
‘It’s the least I can do, honestly. No trouble at all,’ Ed was insisting. ‘Well, I’ll have to do something with all the beans I bought for this trip.’
Annie hoped this was a joke.
Cross-legged on the floor, Annie was contemplating her row of letters with as much concentration as she could manage with a fourth glass of wine in her hand. KLJWKIU. Impossible. The sadistic Scrabble sack had landed her with a hand that couldn’t be played.
Ed had somehow managed to cram them all into his tiny kitchen and feed them, even though Annie had stood in the cat’s bowl this time, cat food had stuck to her socks and the fresh pair Ed had brought her turned out to have an enormous hole at the toe, but she’d decided not to cause him further agitation, because the catering hadn’t been going well.
The potatoes baked in the microwave had taken a surprisingly long time.
‘I’m just used to making one,’ Ed had flustered. ‘I forgot it would take four times as long.’
When they were finally served up, they were tough, dry and chewy and they came with baked beans, grated bright orange cheddar cheese and, inexplicably, tinned sardines.
But Annie and her children were so starvingly hungry after the walk, the rain and the long drive back that they ate everything and scraped their plates, causing Ed to scratch his head, look around his cupboards for something else then declare he was going to make scones. Annie had been sceptical, expecting little cremated lumps of flour and fat to emerge from his decrepit oven. But instead they came out beautifully and Ed was totally redeemed.
After dinner, he’d opened wine and settled them all into his sitting room, stoking up the fire which the damp and chilly May evening seemed to require.
Annie glanced at her row of letters again despondently, then looked up to see Owen laying the word ‘zenith’ down right across the triple letter and triple word score boxes, earning himself about 1,000 points.
‘Owen!’ she groaned. ‘You don’t even know what zenith means.’
‘A summit or peak. Just like the one we reached today,’ came Owen’s reply, a little thickly, as he tried to talk through a mouthful of chocolate biscuits he’d just scooped from the dish on the low table they were playing at.
‘Are you trying to argue with my budding Junior Scrabble champion here?’ Ed asked, as he coolly placed three tiles down, extending two words and creating a third, collecting about 10,000 points in the process.
‘We never play Scrabble,’ she said, as if that wasn’t obvious from her pathetic three-letter offerings so far. ‘How did you learn to play, Owen?’
‘Ed’s Scrabble club at school,’ came the short, chocolatey response.
‘Wednesday lunchtimes,’ Ed explained. ‘He’s never mentioned it?!’
Annie gave a little shrug, which was meant to convey: Boys? What can you do?
‘I am constantly asking Owen about school,’ she explained, ‘but I probably only know about fifteen per cent of what goes on there.’
‘It’s best that way, believe me,’ came Lana’s comment from the sofa. At Annie’s insistence, Lana had had a private, slightly shamefaced conversation in the kitchen with Ed, in which she’d explained enough about the missing funds and what she would do to get them back for Ed to feel relieved that he didn’t have to take the matter up officially.
Lana had opted out of the Scrabble – ‘No, not exactly my thing’ – and was now rummaging through a
pile of heavy books stacked up against the sofa.
‘Those are my sister’s,’ Ed explained. ‘She used to be into all sorts of arty stuff. But I seem to have landed up with most of it.’
This wasn’t really a surprise. Ed’s flat was the kind of place where stuff landed, never to escape again.
‘Where does your sister live?’ Annie asked, curious to learn a little more.
‘In London,’ came the response, but perhaps because Ed was focused on the Scrabble, no further information was offered.
‘But you didn’t grow up in London, did you?’ she prompted, noticing S and T on the board and putting her new tiles in front to make the word ‘resist’. But this only netted her about eight points.
‘Mum, that is feeble,’ Owen didn’t spare her.
‘No, no, we grew up all over the place. Dad was in the army,’ came Ed’s reply to her question. ‘Home sweet home for me was boarding school . . . seriously!’ he added when she laughed.
Scooping up a big handful of biscuits, he told them how he was sent to boarding school the week after his seventh birthday: ‘Seems so barbaric now, but that was the norm, all the army kids went. We left on the plane together, went off to our various schools, then met up again on the plane home at the end of term.’
When they all looked at him with various shades of surprise, he added: ‘I don’t really remember being homesick . . . Maybe I was too young. But my mum was totally traumatized. Especially later. When Hannah’s son, Sid, started school Mum kept telling me, “I sent you away, when you were hardly any older than him. There should have been a law against it!” She thinks I’m institutionalized.’
‘What do you mean?’ Annie was smiling, sure he was joking about this.
‘I’ve never really left school. I’ve been teaching at boarding schools most of my adult life. St Vincent’s is a real departure, believe me. I have my own home . . . well, Mum’s old home. I have to cook for myself and clean . . . well, in my own way . . . Believe me, these are big steps! I mean,’ he went on, ‘I have tried to break free before. For a year or two I was in this travelling band . . .’
Owen looked up at him with something approaching awe.
‘But I don’t know, I think I must have missed the custard and steamed pudding too much. Come September, I feel a real longing for the smell of fresh radiator paint and newly kicked-up rugby pitches. Sad.’ He shook his head at himself. ‘Very sad, but true.’
‘But you’re getting over it?’ she reminded him.
‘Trying to. There’s something so appealing about boarding schools though. Especially the remote ones. I’ve worked in schools in the middle of nowhere, so you’re in this hermetically sealed little community. You don’t have to worry about all the things other people have to worry about. The bell rings, the next part of the day arrives, meals are served on the dot . . .’
‘Clearly a big attraction,’ Annie teased.
‘You never have to shop for anything, ever. There are cupboards all over the school with everything you need: food, stationery.’
‘Clothes?’ she wondered.
‘You can always raid the lost property box – find an old rugby shirt.’
‘This is really explaining a lot about you.’ Annie was smiling at him over her wine glass. ‘What about your dad?’ She wondered.
‘My poor old dad got himself killed. Occupational hazard of being in the army, obviously.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ Annie offered.
‘I was just about to sit my O levels. My sister and I flew out to my mum, then after a few days we flew back to school again and life carried on as normal. See, that’s the thing about boarding schools – these enormous shocks can happen, but you’re totally buffered. My daily life was just the same as if nothing had happened.’
‘Not very healthy,’ Lana informed him.
‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘Maybe that’s why Mum dying was such a . . . blow . . . I had some catching up to do.’
With these words, Annie, who’d previously found the mess, clutter and chaos of Ed’s home so irritating and proof that he was hopelessly stuck in a groove, suddenly felt some real understanding and sympathy for what he was going through.
When she took herself off to his bathroom, which had one of those highly unsatisfactory electric shower over the bath arrangements, she saw a bar of soap on the sink, worn down to a sliver hardly bigger than a thumbnail. Presumably this was the kind of thing Ed would have found in one of those cupboards at boarding school.
Now she felt a pang of protectiveness towards him.
Back in the sitting room, when she settled down to her tiles again, she found that Ed had switched seats. He’d come down off the sofa and had pulled up an old corduroy beanbag next to her cushion.
‘You’re wasting your time trying to cheat off me,’ she teased.
‘Who says I need to cheat?’ he asked, tipping his tiles out into his hand and using them to change her ‘resist’ into ‘irresistible’.
He caught her eye and gave such a tiny quirk with his eyebrow that she wasn’t sure if she’d seen it or not.
Two more rounds of the game were played, with Owen and Ed in an increasingly vicious and competitive battle, while Annie trailed hundreds of points behind. Secretly she was bursting with pride at her son. When did he get so clever? she wondered. Clearly, his many hours spent watching Countdown had paid off.
Ed seemed to be trying to lose, as his final offerings – ‘dreamy’ and ‘date’ – didn’t seem up to his usual standard at all.
Suddenly a shrill alarm clock sounded in the room and Ed leapt up to his feet.
‘Is that your bedtime bell, Ed?’ Lana asked, which made them all laugh.
‘No, no . . . got to let the cats out,’ Ed explained, clearly embarrassed he’d been so startled.
When they laughed even more at his explanation, he felt he had to elaborate: ‘If I’m playing the guitar or something, hours can go by and they’ve not been out and—’
‘Don’t cats let themselves out? Haven’t you got a cat flap?’ Owen wanted to know.
‘Oh no, not my cats, they’re too lazy. I have to chase them out,’ he confided. ‘So . . . you’re all heading back to Essex now?’ he asked when Annie saw to her surprise that it was close to midnight and announced that they really would have to go, although she was tired and too cosy and comfortable here.
‘No. Not after this much wine,’ she reminded him. ‘We’re going to stay with Connor. I spoke to him earlier.’ And now she was going to have to turn her attention to the difficult phone call ahead of her. Already there were voicemail messages and five missed calls from Gray.
Chapter Thirty-one
Hector in love (with Connor):
Organic cords (Howies)
Eco-slogan T-shirt (Howies)
Two-strap vegan sandals (Birkenstock)
Sheer black net boxers (La Redoute)
Est. cost: £180
‘Darlings, isn’t it a wonderful evening!’
The following morning, Annie left her children in Connor’s care and drove alone to Essex through quiet Sunday morning traffic to face Gray.
All the way there, she convinced herself it wouldn’t be a big problem . . . it wouldn’t be so hard. But on arrival at Gray’s house, at the sight of his tragically apologetic face at the opened front door, she realized nothing about this would be easy.
Gray kissed her gently on the cheek, touching her shoulder as he did, and showed her in. He’d been tidying, that was obvious. The sitting room had been almost restored to the immaculate minimalism of her first visit, apart from a few packing cases tucked away into the corners.
Immediately he offered coffee and she followed him through into the kitchen, where the taps gleamed and surfaces sparkled in a way they’d never done while she was in residence.
While the coffee was brewing he began with a string of apologies.
He was sorry he’d been so grumpy and difficult to live with . . . he was finding it hard to
adjust to having so many people living in his home, but he promised he was getting used to the idea and he was enjoying so much about it: ‘honestly’, he assured her.
‘I found the Valium,’ Gray told her, embarrassed now, ‘under a pile of stuff in the sitting room. I must have put them down . . . then something went on top . . . then something else. Anyway, I owe Lana an apology.’
‘You do,’ Annie agreed. ‘A big one. You can’t go around making accusations like that. You have to tread carefully with children, build up their confidence and their trust, not take great swipes at them like that.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ he sighed. The sound of coffee trickling into his dainty white cups began.
‘I’m going to do much better at all of this, I promise you,’ he said and squeezed her hands.
Now Annie’s big decision to say goodbye, pack up some of their things and leave him wasn’t so easy. It didn’t feel so clear-cut. He wasn’t a bad person. He saw what had gone wrong, didn’t he? And he wanted to try for them. This was a man who had a lot to offer.
She looked out through the windows into the big garden, where green branches were swaying in the gentle breeze, and she imagined Lana on a sun-lounger reading, Owen digging up earth to conduct a biological experiment. In London, they didn’t even have a garden. They had window boxes and trips to the park.
Gray set her coffee before her and poured in just the right amount of milk without asking, which struck her as a caring action.
Then he turned and opened a cupboard, but instead of bringing out a packet of biscuits, he came back with a small leather-covered box, which he held out to her. No prizes for guessing what was in there, she told herself, taking a deep and steadying breath.
Wordlessly, she took the box from him and carefully opened the lid.
From the dark velvet bed inside, a bright white diamond – oval, maquise cut, she recognized – shone back at her. At least one carat, she estimated, maybe even 1.2. Very, very white and clear. She couldn’t help but turn the box slightly to catch the light and make the surface sparkle.
