by Sarah Bourne
He loved his car. The white-leather interior, the polished-wood trim, the way the safety belt hugged him into the seat before releasing a little. And the purr when he started the engine, the thrum of power under the bonnet as he pressed his foot on the accelerator. His only regret was that he couldn’t drive it as it deserved to be driven, not in England with its bloody stupid speed limits. He sat in the driver’s seat stroking the steering wheel, the smoothness of it reminding him of Paula’s taut skin – not that he’d been allowed to touch it. She’d made a grave mistake rebuffing his offer of help. Who did she think she was? She may be all Queen’s English in chambers, but he knew where she came from. He bet she was all glottal stops and dropped h’s as soon as she got home to Peckham or whatever dreary little suburb she lived in. He smiled to himself and drove out of the car park toward home.
Pulling onto the A5 he turned the music up and surrounded himself with the ‘Ride of the Valkyries’. It was stirring stuff. As he listened, he wondered what they would have chosen for him with their power over life and death: to live or to die? Not usually one to let chance decide anything for him, tonight he thought it might be a relief for someone else to take charge. He was tired of having to deal with family dramas, of Deidra being out of action, of having to take up the slack. A buxom Valkyrie, perhaps with Paula’s full sensuous lips and Margot’s smooth, round buttocks, could escort him to Valhalla where he would never have to do anything except eat and drink and shag nubile young women. He might have made the last bit up but it made the whole package sound quite appealing.
He went past his normal turn-off at Monks Way, preferring to stay on the A5 where he could keep his foot on the accelerator. It was a longer route to go through Old Stratford and back along Watling Street but he wasn’t in a hurry to get home. He briefly considered keeping going until the A5 joined the M1 and beyond, driving until he ran out of road and had to get a ferry to the islands off Scotland where he would rent a small cottage under a false name. Live a simple life fishing, walking, having a pint in the local pub in the evening.
He sighed and turned off towards home. Fishing, walking, making friends with the locals – none of it was him. It was too parochial. He was a man of the city. He may live in the country but he was alive in the city. No passive fisherman, he was a hunter, like his grandfather.
As he pulled into his drive and parked the car his phone rang. He glanced at the screen and declined the call. The last thing he needed was to talk to his daughter. As if it wasn’t bad enough having Liam a drug-addicted dropout, his daughter was a self-absorbed financial black hole. She never spoke to him unless it was to ask for money. He had no idea how a seventeen-year-old could spend so much when she was at boarding school all week and riding her bloody horse all weekend. How many pairs of shoes or new dresses did a girl need?
The rich smell of roast meat hit him as he opened the front door. Deidra came into the hall to greet him. He looked at his wife in her expensive clothes, well-groomed and coiffed as always, the only differences being the collar she had round her neck, the flat heels instead of her usual court shoes and the stick she’d been using since her accident. Lawrence hung his coat in the cloakroom and walked past her into the lounge.
‘Scotch?’ He waved the decanter at her.
She limped in and sat on the sofa. ‘Lovely,’ she said in her refined Home Counties voice. Not a glottal stop within miles. ‘How did the case conference go?’ she asked. Not, ‘How are you, did you have a good day?’ She didn’t care about him anymore, it was all about Liam.
Lawrence dropped two ice cubes into each glass and poured the drinks. He gave Deidra one and stood looking out the French doors into the darkening garden. He was aware of his wife’s impatience in spite of her stillness, her need to hear the details of their son’s mental health and immediate future. Not one to fidget. His wife was the epitome of good manners and forbearance.
‘Almost didn’t make it there in time. There was a suicide on the line this morning.’
Deidra’s hand went to her throat. ‘I heard. Nancy rang to tell me. Such a tragedy. We knew her – you met her once, too, although you probably don’t remember her. It was Judith Strasser, the woman who organised that fundraising dinner we went to towards the end of last year. You know, for the animal sanctuary. I used to meet her in town for coffee every so often.’
Lawrence’s hand shook as he lifted his glass to his mouth and downed his drink in one. He continued to look out into the garden. Judith Strasser. He wondered vaguely if ending their affair had anything to do with her decision to kill herself but put the idea out of his mind again quickly. They’d had a bit of fun but they were both grown-ups – she’d always known it was just a fling.
‘Poor woman,’ he said and turned to the table to refill his glass.
‘And what about Liam?’ Deidra asked.
‘He’s not coming home, if that’s what you were hoping to hear.’
Deidra let out a quiet sigh. ‘But is he well? Will they let him out of hospital soon?’
Lawrence turned to her, eyes hard. She wasn’t surprised. She must know about the girlfriend and hadn’t told him. She’d let him look a fool in front of the hospital staff. Well, what did it matter? What did they matter? He’d never see them again. Jaw clenched, he looked towards the garden again, watching the last of the day’s birds flying home to roost in the tall trees separating their house from the farm next door.
He heard her getting up and going into the kitchen, the smell of meat intensifying as she opened the door of the Aga. Usually he would offer to help. She never let him but it was one of the set pieces of their marriage – he offered to help, she said no, but thank you. Tonight he stayed quiet and poured himself another Scotch.
Over dinner she tried again. ‘Did he look well – physically, I mean?’
Lawrence wiped his mouth on his serviette, folded it and put it down next to his plate. ‘He looks like a dropout. Which is what he is. I’m going to suspend his allowance. Let him find a job and support himself, the ungrateful little prick.’
Deidra gasped. ‘That’s rather harsh, isn’t it? He needs us now more than ever.’
Lawrence looked at her and spoke in a hard voice. ‘As the doctor pointed out, he’s over eighteen. It’s time he was made to live with the consequences of his own choices. He’s on his own as far as I’m concerned.’
He rose and left the dining room but out in the hall he hesitated. He wasn’t interested in sitting in front of the television, he didn’t want to talk to his wife, he wasn’t ready for bed.
‘I’m going out,’ he called as he grabbed a jacket out of the cloakroom and banged the door behind him.
The A5 was almost empty. Most people were having their dinner, at home in their boxy, boring houses. He opened the throttle allowing the bike to accelerate slowly. Seventy, eighty, ninety. So smooth, so powerful.
He knew Deidra had only asked what any mother would and that he’d behaved badly. He thought about turning back and apologising to her but then he remembered she’d known about the girlfriend and had withheld the information from him. He gritted his teeth. What was wrong with her? She had everything she could want – he left her to make all the decisions about the family so she felt she had a useful role in life and she responded by keeping secrets. His whole family seemed to think of him as a bottomless wallet and nothing else. He nudged the bike up to a hundred.
The scenery flashed by in a dark blur. Out in the country now, no street lamps piercing the dark, only the headlights of a car occasionally causing him to narrow his eyes against the glare. But this was England and too soon he was slowing down on the approach to Towcester. He knew he should go back, but instead took the A43 towards Northampton and sped up again.
He didn’t want to think. He was tired of thinking. Tired of making decisions. Tired of working to make money for a family who showed no appreciation for his efforts. Let Liam starve, it would probably do him good. At least he wouldn’t be able to buy drugs if he
didn’t have any money. His daughter already had more clothes than she could wear in a lifetime. And Deidra – what did she have? A beautiful home, swimming pool, tennis court, horses, charity work. When did the wife he loved turn into a boring woman like his mother, going to town occasionally for an exhibition or a show but otherwise burying herself in the country like a mole? When had their marriage become empty of the passion and excitement that had been its hallmark in the early years? When had they last even laughed together?
The lights of Northampton rose before him. He slowed and turned off the main road, driving between high hedges where the approach of a car in the opposite direction was heralded by ghostly beams of light sweeping around the bends. The BMW surged beneath him like a living thing, straining to go faster but Lawrence kept now to a steady thirty miles per hour, the road familiar to him from the visits they’d made to the ‘big house’ when he was a child. And coming to the brow of a low hill, there it was before him. The house, the drive winding through trees and rhododendrons. He’d been so afraid of those bushes as a child, sure that bad men lurked in them ready to carry off small boys. He had no idea where the notion had come from but it had persisted in various forms and places. Fear. And shame because he wasn’t brave.
He stopped at the gates and stared up the drive, breathing heavily as if he’d run there rather than driven. He turned off the engine and sat looking at the house, remembering happy times as well as the childhood fears. His grandfather, the inventor, had been a scary old man, but when he was younger he’d been all right, and he’d liked his grandchildren when they were small. He would set treasure hunts for them in the grounds. The prize would be a cake or money. Once it was a stamp. Lawrence had won that time and been disappointed until his father told him it was a rare first edition and would one day be worth a lot of money. He still had it in the safe at home, although he had no idea if it really had any monetary value.
Thinking of his grandfather brought his thoughts once again to the suicide that morning. Judith. He’d liked her for a while. Longer than many of the women he had affairs with. She was uncomplicated, undemanding. What a waste of a life. And yet, what was he doing with his time on this earth? Working like a bloody Trojan. And what for? Was he happy? He closed his eyes and tried to relax as he straddled the bike.
Am I happy? It wasn’t something he ever thought about. What constituted happiness anyway – the fleeting glow after sex? No, it never lasted long enough and was often replaced by a profound sense of loneliness. It wasn’t love, it was just a physical need. He hadn’t felt close to Deidra for years, ever since the children came along; she was so focused on them there was no room for him anymore. So, winning a difficult case, being well regarded by one’s colleagues – was that what it was all about? He had always endeavoured to be top of his game, but did it make him happy? Were the endless hours of work and the energy required to stay at the top worth it? And what about the desperate fear he could lose it all? Suddenly everything he had based his life on felt hollow. Aware of his heart beating faster in his chest he forced himself to stay with the question. What gave a life meaning – success, status, love?
His eyes widened. Fear gripped him like a knife being driven into his guts. A piteous cry escaped his lips and he pulled his helmet off as he slumped forward over the handlebars. He held on to them for grim death – or was it dear life – tears now coursing down his cheeks unchecked. He was alone. That wasn’t new. But he was lonely, and that was. His life had become a long, narrow, empty path. He had loved his children when they were little, had at times resented the career that demanded so much of his time. As they got older he knew them less and when they were young teenagers and still at home, he would hear their gay chatter, their laughter, but when he entered the room it would cease, the conversation becoming stilted, formal, only to resume its lightness when he left. He hadn’t allowed it to bother him then but now it made him ache to turn back the clock and make it different. To be at home more, to listen to his children, to understand what made them tick.
And Deidra. When had they become so distant? When had they stopped taking delight in each other, calling during the day just to hear the other’s voice?
Slowly he wiped his eyes, sat up straighter, kicked the bike back into life and turned for home. He took the shorter route, by the A508, and felt the miles speed away.
Twenty minutes later he arrived home. The lights in the kitchen and lounge were out but Deidra had left the hall light on for him. Without taking off his jacket he took the stairs two at a time.
His wife was getting ready for bed, sitting in her negligée at her dressing table, taking off her jewellery. She turned when she heard him come in. Lawrence watched her looking at him out of the same blue eyes he’d fallen in love with. Her skin was still smooth and unblemished. Her red hair, thick and natural, fell in soft waves to her shoulders.
‘Deidra– I–’
‘What’s the matter, Lawrence? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’
Lawrence couldn’t find the words to express what he wanted to say. He was struck by a feeling. Several feelings. Fear that he was too late. Gratitude she was there at all. Love. Most of all, love.
‘An awful thing happened today and it’s made me realise a few things. Let’s go away somewhere,’ he said.
Deidra laughed. ‘What are you talking about? Aren’t we going to the house in France in a few weeks?’
‘I mean away away. Not France. Somewhere we’ve never been. For a long time. I want to see and do things I haven’t done before. I could retire and we could go off for a year – or more. The children are old enough now – they can have this house while we’re gone. We could swim with dolphins, or learn to paint, eat local food, drink terrible wine. Escape the drudgery. Live!’
Deidra was looking at him in quizzically as if assessing his mental capacity. ‘What’s brought this on?’
Lawrence sank onto the bed, letting out a sigh. Deidra wasn’t excited at the prospect. He felt a weight settling on him and anger starting to coil round his insides. Damn her.
He paused and reminded himself to use the technique he’d learned for dealing with bolshy witnesses. Unclenching his fists he pictured sending the anger back to the place it came from – a well of childhood shame and disappointments.
He looked at her again, tried to think of it from her perspective. Of course she wasn’t excited – this was all so new for her. He needed to convince her.
He smiled, looked her in the eye and blinked slowly. ‘I want to live before I die and I want you to be my companion. I’ve realised I haven’t always been the most attentive husband, but I do love you. I want things to be different from now on. I want to be different.’
She smiled. He loved her smile, the way it lit her up. She smiled with her whole face, not like some people whose smile didn’t reach their eyes.
‘So?’ he asked, holding out a hand to her, hope fluttering in his stomach making him feel as anxious as a teenager asking a girl out on a first date.
She took his hand in both of hers and Lawrence felt his heart lift and stretch to encompass long days and nights together, free of the past. He envisioned the light of southern France, the vibrant colours of India, the endless desert of Morocco. The feel of Deidra’s skin under his fingertips, the heady sweetness of her perfume, the way they used to give each other such pleasure.
He raised his eyebrows. ‘Well?’
‘Oh, Lawrence.’ She stopped. The smile faded and was replaced by a thoughtful look, her eyebrows drawing together, her lower lip slightly pouting.
‘Lawrence what?’ he asked.
‘We can’t just leave. Liam needs us. Charlotte’s doing her A levels next year. And anyway, I’m sorry, but I think we both know it’s too late for that, don’t we?’
Her response winded him like a punch in the stomach. The physical pain followed quickly by anger and shame. She was meant to be there for him, wasn’t that what their wedding vows had stated? For better, for worse, till
death do us part? He had allowed himself to be vulnerable and it had ended the way it always did; rejection, ridicule.
Deidra sighed and turned back to the mirror, started brushing her hair. He wanted to yank the hairbrush from her hand and thrash her with it, leave her begging for mercy.
Instead, he got up and left the bedroom without a word.
9
Trevor
It felt like his constant companion these days, the sensation in the pit of his stomach telling Trevor all was not well. He felt it now, on the train on the way to see his daughter, Felice. He couldn’t put a finger on it, but the last time they’d spoken he’d got that heavy feeling like something was being dragged through his guts that shouldn’t be there. It was a physical feeling but the cause, he knew, was not physical.
He loosened his collar and rubbed his sweaty palms together. The air conditioning had stopped working soon after the train stopped, adding to his anguish.
The woman sitting opposite him looked about as uncomfortable as he felt. She couldn’t settle to anything. Got out her Kindle. Put it away. Got out a notebook, wrote furiously for a while. Put it away. Fiddled in her pocket, pulled out a tube of lip balm and swiped it across her mouth, then proceeded to chew on her bottom lip like it was her last meal.
He lost himself in his thoughts again, trying to put a name to this feeling he had. Dread? Fear? Both of those but also something else. He felt threatened. He knew without a doubt his life was about to change, and not for the better. If he was honest with his daughter, he ran the risk of losing her. If not, he’d lose himself.
A gasp from the woman opposite drew him from his thoughts. She didn’t look well. She’d gone pale, even for a white person. He looked around but no one else seemed to have noticed so he did the only thing he could think of – he got his hanky out and tapped her on the hand, offering it to her when she opened her eyes. She took it, wiped her face and clasped it to her mouth. No way he wanted it back after that, so he told her to keep it. She seemed grateful but Trevor was even more thankful when she gathered herself and her belongings and left the carriage. He watched as she swayed along the aisle, relieved she’d gone. Probably a nice enough woman, but stakki.
