In the Company of Strangers

by Liz Byrski

  In 1971 Medway campaigned tirelessly against the decision by then Secretary of State for Education, Margaret Thatcher, to withdraw school milk from children over the age of seven. She was twice arrested for disturbing the peace and for damage to property for which she served a five-day sentence in Holloway Women’s Prison. In 1978 she started a ‘day home’ where single or deserted mothers could leave their babies, night or day, in times of crisis.

  ‘Free, twenty-four-hour childcare,’ Alice says aloud, exhaling slowly. ‘Brilliant.’

  Medway went on to open four more centres in the Greater London Area, and established the Child Rights Foundation. She also advised on the establishment of other centres throughout the country. During the years of the Thatcher Government (1979–1990) and the subsequent conservative Government under John Major (1990–1997) Medway continued her advocacy for underprivileged women and their children leading the fight for safe, reliable and affordable childcare, and for subsidised childcare for women on benefits, or low incomes.

  In 1998, she was appointed by the Blair Labour Government to head the controversial committee to determine the rights of children in Britain which resulted in the establishment of the Office of Children’s Rights. In 2000 she was made a Dame of the British Empire for services to women and children.

  There’s more, lots of it, but Alice is so gobsmacked by what she’s read so far that she stops, sitting back to think. She wants to print it out to read back at the cottage, but she doesn’t want to be caught in the act – not, of course, that they will be back anytime soon. Glancing up she sees Todd outside the workroom, laughing with Fleur, who is standing in the doorway. And as Alice watches he does a sort of hopping turn on his crutch and sets off down the slope towards the office. Alice feels a bolt of panic, clicks back to the home page, remembering as she does so that something in the computer stores the history of searches or websites visited – where is it? Her skin is prickling with tension. The last thing she wants is for Ruby to discover that someone has been doing a search on her. She’d be pretty sure to guess that it was her rather than Declan. ‘History’, she murmurs, ‘search history, how do I find it? Can I delete it?’ And she starts hitting various keys in panic. Todd adores the computer and has a habit of walking into the office and around the desk to look at the screen. A drop-down list of searches appears at the top of the screen, but she can’t get rid of it. And as she stares at it in dismay she sees something else, something far worse, a name, Alice Fletcher, her name, and below that the web link to the Prisoners Review Board of Western Australia and, worse still, the link to ‘Decisions of the Board’. She knows that website, it lists all the prisoners who have been granted or refused parole, the details of their sentences, reasons why parole was refused or granted.

  There is a knock at the door and she doesn’t answer. Someone has been searching for her and has found her. Not Declan, obviously he knows everything, but Ruby – it must be, can only be, Ruby. Alice closes her eyes, dizzy with panic.

  ‘Hi,’ Todd says, opening the office door and popping his head around it. ‘You said to come to the café this morning, but I was on my way and I saw you in here …’

  ‘Yes! Yes of course,’ Alice says in what seems to be a very loud voice which bears no resemblance to her own. ‘I … er … I wanted a hand in the kitchen. I’ll just close this …’ and she quickly closes everything that is open and then clicks ‘shut down’ just as Todd hops over behind the desk.

  ‘Oh,’ he says, ‘you logged off. I was just going to—’

  ‘Not now,’ Alice says, getting to her feet. ‘There’s stuff to do in the kitchen. And, Todd, you really shouldn’t do that, you know.’

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘Walk behind someone’s desk and look at the screen they’re working on. I know you don’t mean any harm, but it might be private. It’s a bit … well … intrusive.’

  He shrugs. ‘Sorry. Catherine always said to come around and help her. She was pretty hopeless with the computer. I didn’t mean …’

  ‘I know,’ Alice says, putting her hand on his arm in an attempt to calm herself as much as to reassure him. ‘But some people might not like it. It’s about privacy, confidentiality, you know … we have to respect that.’ And as she says it she feels herself to be both duplicitous and dishonest.

  ‘Come on,’ she says, ‘let’s get back to the café. I want you to taste test my chocolate and raspberry ice cream.’

  He pulls a face. ‘Oh well, if I really have to …’ then bursts into laughter. And Alice steers him out of the office and back towards the safety of the café kitchen.

  omething really weird has happened. Lesley’s phone hasn’t rung for several days. She barely noticed at first because she was so shocked by what she’d done, what it meant, and what would happen next that she could think of nothing else. But now she realises that the constant calls that had been so irritating have stopped. Why haven’t they called? What does it mean? Could they somehow know what she’s done? No, that’s ridiculous, there’s no way they could know, so has there been some sort of disaster at home? But no, if that were the case someone else would know and would have called. But of course some other people have called and she didn’t answer and hasn’t listened to the messages. Shocked by her ability to forget everything else in the heat of her anxiety about the night she spent with Declan, Lesley sits down on the steps of the balcony to listen to the messages.

  There are two from Stephanie about partnering her in a tennis tournament, three from other friends about various social events. And the final message is from her mother.

  ‘Well I’ve no idea what you’re doing down there, Lesley,’ Dolly says, a familiar tone of disapproval in her voice, ‘but Gordon says you won’t be back for a while. It doesn’t seem right to me, but I suppose you know best. Anyway, I still need you to take me out to find a new washing machine like you promised. You’ve obviously forgotten all about it and in the meantime I’m doing it all by hand. So please let me know when you’ll be back or I’ll just have to ask Karen to take me.’

  Lesley had completely forgotten, and while she knows there is no way Dolly would ask Karen to help her buy a washing machine the inference is clear – you are a failure as a daughter so I’ll have to ask my granddaughter. Dolly is great at generating guilt and it certainly works on Lesley now, but she is also relieved because the message was left earlier today and if there was anything wrong Dolly would have known about it. Even so the silence really is very odd and Lesley decides that the time has come for her to make a call and that Simon will probably be the easiest person to talk to.

  ‘Just checking to make sure everything’s okay up there,’ she says when he answers his mobile.

  ‘Yeah, fine,’ he says. ‘No dramas. How are you?’

  ‘Fine, yes,’ she says. Can he tell from the sound of her voice that she has been unfaithful to his father? ‘So everyone’s okay?’

  ‘Yeah. Lucy’s good, and the boys are great. Dad and I finished the tree house so they’re really over the moon about that.’

  ‘Lovely – they must be so excited. Have you heard from Sandi?’

  ‘Only on Facebook, she seems to be having a good time.’

  ‘And Karen? It’s just that I haven’t heard from anyone for a few days, so I got a bit worried.’

  ‘Oh well, Dad told us we should respect your space. He said you’d gone away for a complete break and it wasn’t fair for everyone to keep hassling you.’

  So now Lesley is relieved but guiltier than ever. ‘Oh, I see … that’s nice of him. All right then. Even Karen hasn’t rung.’

  ‘Of course not. You know Kaz, Dad’s word is law. She just keeps ringing me instead. Anyway, we should get together, all of us, when you get back. Well not Sandi obviously, but the rest of us. Lunch, a barbecue at our place.’

  ‘That would be lovely.’

  ‘I guess you’ll be back at the weekend, so let’s say Sunday.’

  Lesley hesitates, unable to come up with a
reason why she won’t be back by then. ‘It’s a date,’ she says, and hangs up feeling trapped. But it’s not over yet, there are still calls to make to her mother and Karen, and she takes a deep breath and steels herself. There is no doubt now that she will have to go back as promised, but what will she do when she gets there? She hasn’t resolved anything by being here, all she has done is divert herself with shopping for things she doesn’t want or need, often driving great distances to small galleries to find somewhere else to spend money. And now there is Declan, who is clearly much more than a diversion, and has the potential to change everything.

  It had been an odd sort of evening and at first he’d seemed a bit distant, defensive even – especially when she’d teased him about not drinking. Everybody drank, surely? But he’d made it clear that it was a no-go area. And he hadn’t liked it when she told him what Paula had said about Todd, nor when she had asked him about Alice. She’d been starting to feel quite uncomfortable but by the time they got to dessert he’d warmed up a bit.

  ‘It really helped talking to you that first day in the pub,’ he’d said. ‘Strangers don’t bring any baggage to what you say, and they can be dispassionate about a situation.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ she’d said, ‘although I guess we all take our own baggage with us wherever we go. I certainly brought mine with me to Benson’s Reach, as you now know. But I hope I’m more than just a stranger now.’

  ‘Yes, but you’re detached,’ he said. ‘Detached from me and from my situation, and you barely know the other people involved. You’re a detached observer. It doesn’t matter to you how things work out for me in all this.’

  She hadn’t actually liked all that detachment stuff because after three glasses of shiraz she was feeling quite attached. ‘Well it does matter to me,’ she’d said then, ‘because already I feel we’re like close friends.’

  He’d hesitated then, poured some mineral water into a tumbler. Loosen up and have a drink, for God’s sake, Lesley had thought then, and she had attempted to tip some wine into an empty wine glass for him but he’d covered it with his hand.

  ‘Well that’s a nice thought,’ he’d said, and he sounded a bit nervous, ‘but I think it takes more than a couple of conversations to become close friends.’

  It had felt like a rebuff, but she was determined not to let it upset her, and to simply press on until he seemed more at ease. ‘Well then, we’ll have to get to know each other even better, won’t we?’ she’d said.

  As she replays this conversation to herself Lesley feels deeply embarrassed. It sounds like the biggest come-on of all time, and at that moment she really wasn’t thinking of anything like that. She’d always been clumsy about flirting. What she had wanted was the comfort of being understood in what was really quite an intimate way but she had no idea how to convey that, so there she was, stuffing it up with almost everything she said. But she had blundered on, had another glass of wine and then a brandy, so that by the time they got up from the table she was feeling quite woozy.

  It was a beautiful night and they’d eaten on a glorious deck built out over a lake and around the trunk of a huge tree at the lake’s edge. Tiny white lights were draped through the tree’s branches and tea lights flickered in shaded glasses on the tables.

  ‘Do you want to have a walk around the lake before we go back?’ Declan had asked as they left the restaurant. She slipped her hand through his arm and they strolled in companionable silence towards a bridge that crossed the lake some distance away.

  She was relishing it all, the place, the atmosphere and the unusual experience of being out alone with a younger man. She could see herself as she hoped others might see her, as an attractive, even desirable, woman for whom anything might be possible. Were people looking at her? She has no idea now but at the time it felt that way. She was starring in her own movie in which the situation and the location and her own need had set the scene for what was to come. Home and all its problems had faded conveniently into the background.

  It was as they walked onto the bridge that it happened: she tripped, not deliberately, although she wonders now whether he might have thought so. He grasped her around the waist and stopped her from falling, but he didn’t let go immediately, and that’s when she did it. She leaned in closer and kissed him. It was, she thinks now, a Jane Austen moment, except that Jane would have had Declan kiss her, whereas what happened was that he’d pulled back in surprise. But then he’d tightened his grip and kissed her – quite nicely really. It was so long since she and Gordon had kissed other than in a light and friendly way that it felt just like the first kiss of her youth.

  Intoxicated by the situation, the kiss and, more significantly, too much alcohol, Lesley is vague about what happened next – how they got home, how they ended up in her cottage. But she does remember being glad that she’d worn the new underwear she’d bought in Busselton. It’s strange, she thinks, how dinner and the walking bit and the kiss are so clear but it goes a bit fuzzy after that. The effect of the brandy kicking in, she supposes. But she can also remember a blinding reality check about her body – at least ten years older than Declan’s, but it passed in a flash with the recognition that she was considerably fitter than him. And Declan’s body, heavy and pale, was so much younger than Gordon’s lean, muscular frame; comforting, like hugging a big soft toy.

  Later he’d told her that he hadn’t been with a woman for about four years, and she’d told him that she and Gordon hadn’t made love for at least two years, possibly more. It was only the next morning, when she woke – nauseous and with a pounding headache – that the reality of what she had done hit her. What was she thinking? But of course she hadn’t been thinking at all. How did she get through all the embarrassment of taking her clothes off with a comparative stranger? Well, she had the alcohol to thank for that. She had never been sexually adventurous, and it was the first time in the whole of their marriage she had been unfaithful to Gordon. It seems both a momentous event and a monstrous betrayal. She can’t begin to think what the consequences might be, but after three and a half decades of marriage betrayal must mean something significant.

  That first day in the pub, Declan had talked about the freedom of talking to strangers but Lesley sees now that it was far more than that. They had been drawn to each other in a very powerful way, so powerful that she had done something completely uncharacteristic. This is not just a one night stand; clearly she and Declan have feelings for each other. Guilt, fear, erotic memory and the thrill of new possibilities battle for her attention, leaving her drained and anxious. Since the morning, four days ago, when she woke to find Declan had gone she has been doing her utmost to pin him down to a time to meet, but so far he has eluded her, racing off to talk with contractors, or to sort things out with staff. Even when she has called him on the office phone he’s been too busy to talk. ‘Call me back then,’ she’s said, ‘you’ve got my mobile number, and text me yours.’ But he hasn’t called or texted and now her time is running out, she’s promised to be home for lunch with the family on Sunday. Failing to turn up will be pushing her luck too far.

  But home looms ominously as a place of reckoning. Gordon’s silence, the shared bed, his disapproval. And yet she really doesn’t want to hurt him, although of course she already has. He would be devastated if he knew about Declan. Will he know? Will he be able to tell immediately she looks him in the eye? Lesley buries her face in her hands, trying to make sense of what is happening. She feels sure now that she and Declan have been drawn together for a reason – to provide each other with the love and reassurance they both need. They reached out to each other and found something precious. Declan had felt it too or why would he have suggested the second lunch or dinner? What had seemed like distance in the early part of the evening was simply his effort to conceal his feelings, and his elusive behaviour now confirms that. The relief is enormous, the implications terrifying, the logistics impossible. What will they do?

  Lesley’s panic is rising, her he
ad spins, her face burns. She lies back on the bed reliving the evening time and time again, reliving their earlier meetings, searching for phrases, gestures, smiles, casual touching, and she finds them, plenty of them, which simply prove what she now believes. She’d thought that her decision to come to Benson’s Reach was random but she knows now that it was some sort of predestination. She came here because she was supposed to meet Declan. She wraps her arms around herself remembering the warmth and soft weight of his body, how cosy, how comfortable, how reassuring it was. She’s desperate now to see him, to talk to him, to tell him she feels just as he does, and that, she decides, is what she’s going to do and she’s going to do it right now.

  Todd is sitting at the bench in Fleur’s workroom reading some of the stuff that she has written for him about making the lavender products.

  ‘Seriously, Todd,’ Fleur says, bringing a tray of small purple glass pots and some taller plastic containers from the steriliser across to the bench. ‘You should ask them, ask Declan or Ruby. I’m not going to be here much longer and you can’t expect them to read your mind.’

  ‘They’d never let me,’ Todd says, watching as she begins to fill the pots with the lavender moisturiser. ‘They’d say it’s a job for a woman, not for a boy.’

  ‘Why isn’t it? What is there about this job that makes it only a woman’s job? Stop thinking about what your stupid mates would say and use your brain, which is pretty good if you give it a chance. Anyway, they couldn’t say that because it would be illegal. You can’t make jobs gender specific except in certain, very particular, situations, of which this is not one.’

  Todd grins, picking at the plaster on his ankle. It’s one of the things he likes best about Fleur, that she’s so fierce, and she does all that posh talk – ‘gender specific’, ‘of which this is not one’. No one else he knows talks like that.

  ‘If you stayed they might let me be, like, your assistant. You told Catherine you needed someone and she said she’d fix it.’