When I Find You

by Emma Curtis

  ‘Does David talk to you?’ Felicity asks. They are having lunch: soup and salad, healthy and delicious, with glasses of organic juice.

  Rebecca dabs her lips with a snowy napkin and holds her gaze. ‘What do you mean, talk to me? We talk all the time.’

  ‘I don’t mean about work, I mean about personal stuff, about life.’

  ‘Oh. Not much. To be frank, the company sucks up everything. We don’t sit in his office putting the world to rights.’ She smiles. ‘We used to, of course, but he has you for that now.’

  Felicity falls silent. Rebecca breathes lightly, trying to ignore the flutter under her ribcage. Was that patronizing? Yes, it was, disgustingly so. This time, however, Felicity doesn’t pull her up on it.

  ‘Is everything OK at home?’ she asks.

  Felicity’s eyes swim with tears. ‘I haven’t told anyone this.’

  Rebecca waits.

  ‘We haven’t had sex since I found out I was pregnant with Daisy. It’s been eighteen months.’

  ‘Ah. Have you talked to him about it?’

  Felicity shakes her head.

  ‘Oh, come on, don’t worry. I’m sure it’s perfectly normal. You have three children and a busy life. That stuff can get set aside. Or so I’ve heard. Are you still sleeping in the same bedroom?’

  ‘Yes, but he comes to bed so late. And even if I attempt anything he just kisses me and rolls over. It’s awful. I think he might be having an affair.’

  Rebecca laughs. She hopes it doesn’t sound as false to Felicity as it does to her. ‘David does nothing but work. When on earth would he have time?’

  Felicity plays with her food, pushing it around the plate with her fork. ‘You know what he’s like. If there was someone he wanted, he would make the time. Is there … do you know anyone at Gunner Munro that might be …’

  ‘No,’ Rebecca says. Her voice is firm, confident, betraying nothing. ‘Absolutely not.’

  ‘Only, I was watching Laura Maguire at Guy’s funeral. I thought maybe …’ She bites her lip. ‘I even asked her if she wanted a lift back with us, so that I could see how they were together.’

  ‘Well, that’s nuts. Of course he isn’t having an affair with Laura. She’s given her notice anyway.’

  ‘Really? David hasn’t said anything.’

  ‘I expect that’s because he hasn’t given her a second thought. Felicity, he loves you. You’ve gone off track because you’ve had three babies in quick succession. Maybe he needs to be reminded that you’re a woman, not just a mother.’

  Felicity wipes her eyes with her napkin. ‘I shouldn’t have allowed him into the delivery room. He’s so squeamish. It was probably that, that put him off.’

  ‘If you saw something bloody being ripped out of your husband’s arse, wouldn’t you be put off for a while?’

  Felicity stares at her, appalled, then dissolves into laughter, giggling so hard that she starts hiccuping. Rebecca laughs with her, signalling the waitress over and asking for a glass of water.

  ‘That’s better,’ she says.

  Seven years is a long time to keep a secret. She feels as though things are beginning to bubble to the surface and it’s taking more energy and resources to keep the lid from blowing off the pan. This is so difficult. She can dehumanize Felicity when she doesn’t see her, but this laughing, moist-eyed woman reminds her so much of their younger, naughtier days, it makes her feel a complete bitch.

  She brushes her hair and coils it up. It feels oily from the massage. Felicity does the same, smiling at her in the mirror. It’s time to go. She is relieved it’s over. Close contact with Felicity has to be rationed. A day of lying through her teeth has left her emotionally wrung out.

  ‘What are you doing tomorrow?’ Felicity asks.

  Her heart drops. ‘Catching up with today.’

  ‘Could you do me a huge favour and come with us to Tony and Georgie’s?’

  It’s the last thing she expected. ‘Why would you want me there?’

  ‘Because it would help to have someone who hasn’t seen them in months; to see the difference. To see what they’re like and back me up. David wants me to help out, but I can’t. It’s just too much with everything I’ve got on. It’s not that I don’t care, it’s just that I’ve got the kids, and the dog and God knows what else.’

  Rebecca decides not to point out that she has a part-time nanny, a cleaner and a gardener. ‘I don’t think …’

  ‘Please. It would be fun to have you along. David would like it.’

  She laughs. ‘David sees me every day.’

  ‘At work. This’ll be different. It’ll be like old times.’

  What makes her agree, isn’t altruism, it’s the idea of seeing for herself the stresses on David. She’s curious about his home life, about his relationship with Felicity. Being at the same dinner parties or formal events gives her frustratingly little insight.

  Rebecca doesn’t want to come back to Constable Lane, but Felicity insists that the boys will be disappointed. Spike and Buzz aren’t bothered in the slightest; they are cosily ensconced in front of Despicable Me with their father. David lifts a hand and waves without looking round, then peels the boys’ arms from around his neck, their fluffy-socked feet from his lap, and joins them in the hall. To Rebecca it feels as though he doesn’t want her to come in any further.

  Their gazes clash and Rebecca feels an atmospheric shift, experiencing the sensation a little like the Northern Lights, swirling currents of colour between them. The colours are dark this evening, with wisps of yellow and white. She marvels that Felicity is so unaware. This is the woman who thought she could work out whether Laura and David were involved by sitting in the car with them for an hour.

  ‘You got away early,’ Felicity says.

  ‘I wanted to see you two gorgeous ladies after your day out, so I brought my work home. Daisy’s in bed. Colleen left half an hour ago. Everyone’s been fed and bathed.’

  ‘Well, I’m not stopping. I’ve got a ton of messages to deal with.’

  ‘Have a glass of wine first,’ Felicity says. ‘What time is our reservation, darling?’

  ‘Not till eight. I thought you might want a bath after all your exertions.’ He kisses her cheek. ‘You’re both glowing.’

  Felicity winds her arm around David’s waist and smiles at Rebecca. It’s a smile of conspiracy. A smile that says that, despite her revelation, she wants her friend to know that there is still love between them.

  ‘To be honest, all I want to do is fall asleep,’ Rebecca responds. ‘The therapies have left me feeling like warm mud. You two have fun tonight. I’ll see you in the morning.’

  David flicks her a look of surprise.

  ‘Rebecca’s coming with us tomorrow, darling,’ Felicity says. ‘She said she needed some country air.’

  He looks even more surprised, but he doesn’t argue, and she leaves them and walks back to Belsize Park. She often thinks she ought to move further away, maybe into Kensington. She can sometimes feel like a limpet, glued to David’s hull, and that is not an ideal way to live.

  She re-examines the day, particularly the conversation about David. That had come a little too close to the bone. Of course, David had told her he and Felicity weren’t having sex any more but hearing it from Felicity’s lips and seeing her eyes redden and shimmer with tears, hadn’t made her happy. It had made her feel guilty and grubby. And who did Felicity really suspect? Was the mention of Laura disingenuous after all? Had it been an oblique warning? Had she been saying, I know it’s you, I’m giving you a chance to back off? Has she asked her tomorrow so that she can watch how they behave together?

  Would Felicity talk to him? Would she have the courage to sit him down and ask him point-blank why he didn’t want to touch her? And what would he say if she did? She imagines the conversation.

  Because I am sexually fixated on another woman. Because you can’t even begin to imagine what I want, and I don’t want to have to explain it to you.

  S
he laughs out loud, imagining Felicity walking into a sex shop, perhaps passing it several times first, and asking tentatively, blushingly, for a pair of handcuffs and some crotchless knickers, and speaking so quietly that she has to be asked to repeat her request. Then standing in front of David, looking a little pathetic. She winces. What a mean-spirited thought to have. She isn’t a bad person; not really. It gets to her sometimes, that’s all.

  She presses her hand to her belly. Another month, another agonizing stretch of acute anticipation. She has never liked leaving things to chance. It’s a ridiculous way to live your life.

  27

  Rebecca

  ‘HELLO, GEORGIE-PORGIE,’ DAVID says, picking his frail grandmother up off her feet and turning a half-circle before putting her down. ‘You are looking utterly adorable.’

  Georgie Gunner is eighty-seven and far from adorable in Rebecca’s book. Rebecca sees herself as compassionate, but she has never liked Georgie. Tony is easy, a charmer like David and, even at ninety-two, one for the ladies. Georgie grumbles at David and then walks off down the garden to join Tony without acknowledging either her or Felicity.

  ‘Shall I make us all some tea?’ Rebecca offers, because she needs something to do. She wrinkles her nose at the sticky surfaces, the stained mugs. She doesn’t like to touch anything, let alone eat off the china.

  Felicity takes a cake out of a Tupperware box and sets it on to a plate. The boys are in the garden with their great-grandparents, wrapped up like Eskimos and trampling Tony’s vegetable patch, looking for signs of growth and, she suspects, worms. Felicity has left Daisy sound asleep in her car seat in the front room. Rebecca wonders what the baby will think when she wakes up and sees all those china figurines staring down at her.

  ‘I don’t know what the hell the cleaner does when she’s here,’ Felicity says, opening the fridge and inspecting the contents, taking out mouldy cheese, jars of furry jam and a pair of underpants wrapped round something hard and round. It turns out to be a potato.

  Rebecca laughs. ‘Something to do with Tony’s veg patch?’

  ‘Perhaps he’s nurturing a new variety.’

  ‘Royal Pants?’

  Felicity smiles and pops the eggs one by one into a bowl of cold water. Every single one of them floats to the top. She throws them away, pushing them down into the bin with a wooden spoon and covering the evidence with an old carrier bag.

  Rebecca fills the kettle, switches it on then walks outside through the conservatory, clapping her arms around her body to keep herself warm, puffing out great breaths of mist.

  She tries to spare her boots by keeping to the trodden path, but the toes are dark with wet by the time she gets to the veg patch.

  ‘Who are you?’ Georgie asks suspiciously.

  ‘It’s Rebecca,’ she says. ‘Felicity’s friend.’

  Georgie peers at her as she brushes earth from her gloved hands. ‘I get muddled these days. Felicity’s the wife, isn’t she? The tricky one.’

  ‘Yes.’ Rebecca bends to pet the dog, hiding her response. ‘Tea and cake in a minute, boys. Do you want to go and wash your hands?’

  ‘Cake!’ Spike yells, dropping the trowel and springing up, Pebbles scampering after him.

  Buzz carefully pats down the mound he’s made around a leafless twig and wipes his hands on his jeans.

  ‘What are you planting?’

  He blasts her with David’s smile, knowing he’ll be forgiven for getting filthy. ‘It’s not for planting. It’s where I put the dead beetle. One of his legs camed off. It wasn’t me. Grandpa said it was probably a bird.’

  The boys take Georgie’s hands, touchingly protective around her, while Tony gives Rebecca his arm as they walk back up the garden to the house. Felicity brings the tea into the conservatory, setting it down on the wicker and glass table, and then perches on the edge of one of the uncomfortable matching chairs. David brings the baby in in her car seat, still sound asleep, slumped in a position that looks acutely uncomfortable to Rebecca, her cheek on her shoulder, her chubby fingers splayed over the buckle. The boys take ancient puzzles out of the toy cupboard and scatter the pieces on to the floor. Spike has chosen Animals of the Rainforest, Buzz, a map of a long-ago Europe in which Yugoslavia and the Berlin Wall still exist.

  Rebecca studies this Victorian picture of family life with detachment. As Felicity turns her back on her to pour the tea, she catches David’s eye and he winks. She imagines him sitting on the floor with the same puzzles, a lost boy growing up with a missing generation. Tony and Georgie did well by him, but they were in their fifties when their daughter and her husband died, leaving them in charge of a hyperactive little boy. It can’t have been easy.

  David’s gaze sharpens as he holds hers. He was as much bemused by Felicity’s insistence that she come as she was.

  ‘So, Felicity,’ Georgie says, with a malicious gleam in her eye. ‘What’s this?’ She holds out her hand and uncurls her fingers. An egg quivers on her palm.

  Felicity reddens. ‘It’s off, Georgie. I tested it.’

  ‘It’s perfectly good. I had one of them this morning.’

  ‘Georgie,’ Felicity says gently. ‘I don’t think you did. Maybe it was last week.’

  ‘Lissy sweetheart,’ David says. ‘I don’t think it’s worth making a big deal out of. Georgie, why don’t you give me the egg? We brought some groceries with us, so you’ve got plenty of fresh food.’

  Georgie glowers at him. Tony says, ‘Now, my dear,’ and his wife lobs the egg straight at the fireplace, where it smashes against the surround and dribbles, wetly, on to the brown-tiled hearth. Tony bursts out laughing, then stops abruptly.

  Spike and Buzz sit frozen over their puzzles, Daisy’s arms jerk upwards and she bursts into tears.

  ‘Cake, anyone?’ Felicity asks, arching an eyebrow at Rebecca, a What did I tell you? expression on her face.

  ‘Bitch,’ Georgie says.

  ‘Now dear, that’s enough,’ Tony says, planting his hands on the armrests of his chair and elevating himself a little, as if he might have to leap between the two of them. ‘Rebecca didn’t deserve that.’

  ‘Felicity,’ Felicity says through her teeth.

  ‘Rebecca is Daddy’s friend, Grandpa,’ Spike says. ‘Rebecca has black hair and Mummy has yellow hair.’

  Felicity hands round slices of Victoria sponge and they sit with their plates on their knees trying to make conversation. Rebecca watches David. She has to admire his patience, but he treats Georgie and Tony like children. And not like his own kids, but as though he is the grandparent and can hand them back at six p.m. and put his feet up. But it isn’t like that. From the state of the house, it’s clear that systems are breaking down. Buzz has already demanded to know who the nappies in the bathroom are for and Felicity had to explain that they weren’t nappies, they were incontinence pads and that when you got old sometimes things stopped working as they ought. Buzz had wrinkled his freckled nose.

  When Rebecca first met David’s grandparents, Georgie had been in her late seventies and sharp as a tack, Tony eighty-three and as fit and spry as a fifty-year-old. Georgie was the jealous type and they had never hit it off. Same with her relationship with her long-suffering granddaughter-in-law. Georgie thought David could have done better. And not only that; in her view, Felicity had stolen him away from her. Felicity had told her all this on their wedding day and it was a favourite topic of conversation between them; the undermining that went on, the words whispered in David’s ear, the comments to her boys. The passive-aggressive behaviour. Rebecca doubted Georgie would have the slightest idea what passive-aggressive meant, but, according to Felicity, she had fulfilled the ten thousand hours that supposedly made you an expert in your chosen field. Mind you, Felicity should know.

  Before they leave, David has a quick look around the house, taking Daisy with him, kissing her pink cheeks and tickling her.

  ‘Who’s my oochy-coochy girl?’ he says and blows a raspberry on his daughter’s flesh. S
he squeals with laughter.

  ‘I would like him to be home more, obviously, but at least he tries to be a good father when he is,’ Felicity says, as she packs up the puzzles. She straightens up and looks Rebecca in the eye. ‘You know, what I said about an affair, I was just having a moment.’

  ‘That’s so you, though, isn’t it? Always searching for the means to hurt yourself and rustling up your own weapons when you can’t find any to hand.’

  ‘Oh,’ Felicity says, surprised.

  Rebecca comes out of the bathroom and stands at the top of the stairs. She had been holding on, because she didn’t fancy using the loo, but in the end, they were taking so long that she had to submit to need. It wasn’t too bad in the end, probably because the cleaner uses it herself. She shouldn’t be angry with David, but she is. He has enjoyed having both women with him, showing off because he craves female adulation, grubbing round his hen house for proof of love.

  David and Felicity come in from putting the children and the dog in the car. She is about to run down when David speaks.

  ‘Perhaps you could pop in once or twice during the week,’ he says.

  ‘No, I could not,’ Felicity says. ‘You’ll have to talk to the carers again, David.’

  ‘I only meant this week.’

  ‘Yes, and that would lead to two weeks, and then three, and before you know it, I’ll be made to feel terrible if I don’t go. And why should I come here and be insulted by Georgie and called Rebecca by Tony? I’m not doing it. And that’s that.’