He should have been glad that there was no morning-after row, but all Leo felt was an overwhelming sense that once again, he’d spectacularly fucked up. Maybe a quick and painless death might be preferable to always disappointing anyone who got too close to him.
Death didn’t come. Instead, when Leo stepped out onto the corridor again, it was at the same moment that Rose was walking past. She stopped and turned to face him. Leo stood there and wished he could shrink away to nothing so that all that was left of him was a small pile of soiled clothes that Lydia could give to the gardener to incinerate.
Rose was wearing all black and dark glasses. This morning, she was utterly terrifying. Leo was sure that if she took off her shades she could turn him to stone with her ice-blue glare.
‘Hey, Rose,’ he said as brightly as he could, like it was business as usual. ‘About last night. If I disturbed you… we disturbed you…’ Leo scratched his head. ‘We had a bit of a domestic. Me and Jane. So, yeah. Sorry.’ His tongue had swollen to twice its normal size and he had to squeeze the words past their impediment. He smiled cringingly and still Rose stood there, silent, unmoved.
‘I really am sorry. Not just for last night, but, you know, everything.’ Leo said it again, not just for Rose’s benefit as she stood there still absolutely frozen, but because if he said it often enough and loud enough, then maybe it would stick. ‘Not going to happen again, I promise.’
Rose stepped past him and walked away, as if she hadn’t even seen him or heard a single word.
He turned and watched her walk, her stride as strong and sure as it ever was, then she reached the stairs and was gone.
How many times had Leo walked away from old girlfriends? Girls who thought they were The One until they found out that Leo was screwing someone else behind their backs? He’d crossed over countless roads to avoid countless friends he owed money to. Ducked into fast food joints and drugstores and once even a beauty parlour to avoid someone who wanted to give him a hard time. He’d never thought about how it would make that person feel. Now he knew. You felt like a ghost. Like your words were nothing more than the meaningless movement of teeth and tongue and breath. Like you weren’t even there. Then he thought about that one time in Sydney, walking through Bondi Park, nowhere to duck and cover, so he’d walked right past his own flesh…
Leo heard the click of the front door. Rose must have left for the office. She was in her eighties. Dying, so she said, and she was going to the office when it was all Leo could do to shower, shave with dangerously shaking hands, then stumble down to the kitchen.
Lydia was sitting on one of the stools around the central island, laptop open as she consulted her big kitchen diary.
‘I’m sorry,’ Leo said, because when you’d said it once, the next time you said it, it hardly took any effort at all. ‘So sorry about last night, Lydia. About waking you and Frank up like that. I was a total arsehole. Please say we’re cool.’ He smiled and the cut above his eye pulled and throbbed. ‘How about I put the kettle on and you find me some ibuprofen and maybe make me your famous scrambled eggs?’
Lydia checked something in her diary, tapped at her keyboard. Then she looked up. Leo wished that she hadn’t.
‘I don’t forgive you.’
He waited for her to say something else, to qualify it, though it wasn’t like he needed any clarification, but she sat there, chin now resting on her hands, her normally good-natured face set in hard, uncomfortable lines.
‘Come on, Liddy, I’ve said I’m sorry,’ he said falteringly, on unsteady ground now. ‘I mean it. Rose isn’t speaking to me. Jane’s left me. Don’t you stick the knife in too.’
Lydia stared off to the left, then turned back to him as if she’d come to some long drawn-out decision. ‘I’ve spoken to Frank. He agrees. I should never have asked you to come home.’
She sounded like her mind was made up and there was nothing he could say in his defence. ‘Look, I know I can be a bit of a dick. I’m trying to change that.’
‘No, you’re not. Not even a little. I thought we could be a team. Be there for Rose because she should have her family with her right now and you used to be her family.’ Her voice was tightening and she was staring off to the left again, because she was close to tears and Leo knew that if Lydia started crying, then he would too.
‘I still am,’ he said a little desperately. ‘I still could be.’
‘No. You can’t.’ Lydia got up from the stool.
‘When Rose gets back, I’ll apologise properly, explain to her…’
Lydia walked over to where Leo standing in the doorway and looked up at him. ‘You disturbed her last night. Twice.’ Her eyes were moistening now and she blinked rapidly. ‘You can’t be here. You’re no good. I can give you some money, if you need it, but there’s absolutely no point in you staying.’
By now he should have been used to his failure to live up to the very low expectations that people had of him. ‘I can help,’ he whispered. ‘I will help. I’ll change. This is the kick up the arse that I need. You have to believe me, Liddy.’
‘I’ve heard you make this speech so many times,’ She gently touched the cut on his face. ‘As soon as you’ve had a few drinks, it will all be forgotten. And what about Jane? She tore out of here without even a goodbye. Had a car waiting for her. You buggered that up, didn’t you?’
‘Oh God, don’t even ask. I’ve screwed up everything.’ Leo would have given anything to sink to the floor and hide his face. Turning over a new leaf wasn’t meant to be this hard. ‘I’ll sort things out with Rose and you won’t even know I’m here. I won’t be any trouble.’
‘It’s a bit late for that,’ Lydia muttered, but Leo thought she might be wavering, wondered how he could press home his advantage, when there was a knock at the back door.
They both turned, eager for the distraction. It was Mark, Lydia’s son-in-law, though he’d only been Lydia’s daughter’s boyfriend back when Leo had first known him. He looked older, crew-cut streaked with grey, but when he saw Leo standing there he grinned and he was instantly the same cocky lad that Leo had got into all kinds of scrapes with.
‘Hello, mate. Heard you were back.’ Mark was obviously still working on the maintenance team because he was wearing paint-encrusted coveralls and stayed by the door so he wouldn’t track dirt on Lydia’s gleaming slate tiles. ‘Also heard you’d got married. She do that to you, then?’
Of all his current woes, the cut on his cheek was the least of it. ‘Something like that, yeah. How are you? Still working for the firm, right? Is Bill still in charge?’
‘No, he retired a couple of years ago. I’m the boss these days.’ Mark pretended to puff up his pigeon chest. ‘I run a tight ship. No slacking on the job any more.’
Back in the old days, Leo had sometimes gone out with the maintenance team. There had been games of football in the vast empty rooms of Rose’s properties. Long lunches at the nearest greasy spoon while they debated the finer points of Saturday’s big match and even longer evenings in the pub drinking pints and playing pool. But he’d also learned how to plaster, rewire a circuit board and countless other real-world skills that had always come in handy when he was between commissions. Sometimes it seemed as if most of his adult life had been spent between commissions, like an actor who only rested.
Mark was now asking Lydia if she and Frank were coming over for Sunday lunch. There were children, Lydia’s grandchildren; she was beaming as Mark showed her a photo on his phone. ‘Wait until I tell Rose that they’re dressing up as suffragettes for Halloween,’ she said as Leo turned away and started rummaging through the well-stocked fridge.
He’d grabbed everything he needed for a fried egg sandwich when inspiration struck. There might just be a way to start to make amends. With Rose. With Lydia. A tiny step in the right direction. ‘Mark, don’t suppose you need a spare pair of hands on the work crew, do you?’
‘Maybe.’ Mark cocked his head. ‘We are a couple of lads down. Are you u
p to putting in some hard graft or would the shock kill you?’
Lydia was leaning against the island, arms folded. ‘It might do,’ she said tartly. ‘If the hangover doesn’t get him first.’
‘Probably a bit rusty,’ Leo admitted. ‘But I’m game, if you’ll have me.’
He’d missed those months when slapping paint on a wall had been more enjoyable than applying it to a canvas and every Friday afternoon he’d got a little brown envelope full of banknotes that he’d earned.
‘All right. I’ll give you a day’s trial.’ Mark glanced at Lydia, who nodded.
‘I don’t care what you do with him,’ she said. ‘Just get him out of my hair.’
18
Jane had booked a room in a small boutique hotel in Mayfair that she’d stayed in before when she’d needed a bolthole, somewhere to lick wounds that wouldn’t stop stinging. As soon as she was shown to her room, and the door closed behind her with a soft, discreet click, she sank down on the bed, heavy shoulders bowed.
‘You are not a bad person,’ she said out loud. The comforting words of her tired old mantra. ‘Bad things have happened to you; they’ve shaped you into what you are.’
But who was she? She wasn’t Andrew’s Janey Monroe. Or Leo’s Jane Hurst. After all these years, it was time to simply be Jane again.
The name still fitted her as perfectly as it had done when she’d first chosen it.
She’d been with Charles a year by then. They’d progressed beyond trips to the supermarket. He took her to art galleries, museums, the theatre. Charles especially loved to take her to restaurants and steer her through menus full of dishes spelt out in words that she was still learning how to read. In all that time he still never touched her and Jane was finally starting to believe he never would.
Then one Sunday after lunch, Charles had sat her down. ‘You don’t have to tell me who you are or where you’re from,’ he’d said, because Charles’s particular and beautiful gift had always been for providing the solution, rather than focusing on the problem. ‘But you don’t have a name. You need a name. You need documents. A person can’t exist without documents.’
‘I don’t have a name,’ she’d said, because she’d cast it off as soon as she’d jumped on that train and would never sound it out again. ‘And I don’t have no documents.’
‘Any documents. You don’t have any documents,’ Charles had corrected her gently and at first he’d thought she was lying when she said that she didn’t know her exact date of birth. Then when it became clear that she was telling the truth and that she’d never even had a single birthday with cards and presents and blowing out the candles and making a wish, that she’d been only fifteen when he’d met her on that train, was only sixteen now though she felt older than the hills, he’d slid off the kitchen stool, walked into the downstairs cloakroom and hadn’t come out for some time.
‘Give me a rough idea of what your date and place of birth might be and I’ll put someone on the trail,’ he’d said when he emerged, his face red, eyes redder. ‘How odd that we’ve managed all this time without you having a name. What would you like me to call you?’
After watching Gentlemen Prefer Blondes every afternoon for a week, she chose Jane.
Jane Audrey Monroe. Audrey, because Audrey Hepburn taught her how to speak like a lady. Monroe, because Marilyn knew how to make people treat her like a goddess. And Jane, because Jane Russell didn’t take shit from no one. Anyone. She didn’t take shit from anyone.
Charles was pleased. ‘I like Jane,’ he said when he produced the forms she needed to fill in to become a new person. ‘It’s a good honest name.’
People always thought they knew where they were with a Jane. Janes were a blank canvas; they could be anything anyone wanted them to be. And a Jane had no qualms about walking into a hotel bar at noon all by herself in a long-sleeved, high-necked Alexander McQueen black jersey dress. Hair twisted up in a chignon. Make-up minimal. She took a seat at a table tucked away in the corner.
Jane was going to drink one glass of champagne, though she’d vowed never to drink again, to mark the end of this chapter of her life. To toast the future, however uncertain it might be.
She looked around the room. It was very muted – pale grey and dark wood, everything softly curved, reassuringly expensive. The other patrons were male apart from one forlorn-looking middle-aged woman who sat with an elderly man and resolutely stared out of the window as he read the Financial Times .
Jane tried to catch the eye of the waiter but he was already bearing down on her with a glass of champagne. He discreetly offered her a business card as he placed the slender flute on the table in front of her. ‘From the gentleman at the bar,’ he murmured.
Jane didn’t even deign to look at the card. ‘Tell him thank you, but I’m waiting for someone.’
She still drank his champagne, though. It was raining outside, fat drops coursing down the window, the room reflected back at her so she could watch the man in the corner leave the bar.
He hadn’t been gone two minutes when the waiter brought over another glass of champagne, another business card from an overweight, balding man a few tables along. Jane sent both champagne and business card back. He got up, brushed the waiter aside, mouthed the word ‘bitch’ at Jane as he shot her a furious, spiteful glance.
Five minutes after that, yet another glass of champagne, but no business card this time, just a note. You’re too beautiful to be on your own. I’d love to join you for a drink .
Jane couldn’t see her benefactor. ‘He’s round the corner,’ the waiter said when she asked him. ‘Looks all right. Not old. Think he’s Russian. Ordered a one-and-a-half-grand bottle of champagne, then asked me to bring you a glass. What do you want me to tell him?’
It seemed easy but actually it was the hardest way for a girl to earn her fortune. She couldn’t go back to this.
Jane stood up. ‘Tell him thanks awfully, but no thanks,’ she said, then walked out of the bar.
Leo had thrown up on the way to the flat in Chelsea where Mark and his crew were working. Then he could do nothing but fetch and carry very slowly while the others carefully took down a sagging ceiling, making sure not to damage the cornicing.
At five, he got the bus back to Kensington and loitered in the square. Not wanting to face Rose or Lydia, but knowing that he had to. As he dithered, a taxi pulled up almost alongside him, he glimpsed honey-blonde hair and as he crept closer, the driver got out, opened the boot and hefted out a familiar suitcase.
‘What the hell are you doing here?’ he asked Jane, as she opened the door in time for Leo to hand her out of the cab. ‘I thought you’d gone, that you’d left me.’
‘Change of plan, darling.’ She stood on the pavement next to him, suitcase by her side. Their own version of groundhog day. Only the rain was new. Jane looked up at Leo from under her lashes. He looked down at her. Her bottom lip was trembling. It could have been the cold or it might have been because she was remembering last night…
‘I’m sorry, Jane.’ Leo was getting so much better at saying it. ‘Sorry about coming home in that state and I’m so sorry that I said all those terrible things but you have to know I wasn’t going to hurt you when I came towards you. Everything had got out of hand and I thought that if I could hold you, connect with —’
He stopped when Jane put her hand on his arm, in much the same way as he’d tried to touch her the night before. ‘I know, darling,’ she said softly. ‘I’m sorry too. I overreacted. I don’t usually make a habit of hitting people with heavy objects. Is your face very sore?’
‘Yeah, but I’ve had worse,’ Leo said quickly before they could get sidetracked. ‘You really don’t have anything to be sorry about. It was me, wasn’t it? Off my head again and all grabby hands and I scared you. That’s what I feel really bad about – that I made you so frightened.’
Jane smiled and shook her head. ‘Darling, it was late, I was tired, you caught me off guard. I wouldn’t say I was scared
so much as I just got a bad attack of déjà vu.’
‘Someone hurt you before?’ It didn’t make Leo feel the least bit better, but even more wretched that Jane, who barely came up to his chin and had to weigh half of what he did, had suffered at the hands of another man. ‘Did I trigger some —’
‘Look, you’ve said you’re sorry, I’ve said I’m sorry, we’re both sorry.’ Jane gave his arm another squeeze. ‘All the sorries have been said, darling. Let’s just move on, shall we?’
Leo had expected to fight much harder for forgiveness. It was a relief that he didn’t have to. ‘Fine by me. So, now you can get on with telling me why you came back.’
‘Well, darling,’ she said slowly. ‘The thing is that we are married, you and I, and it does rather complicate things. And I had a life with my ex and now he’s gone and I don’t know who I am without him, where I should be, what to do next. So, I thought that maybe we should just stay married for a while and see where we end up.’ Jane’s bottom lip trembled again and it seemed to Leo that she’d angled her head in the perfect position to allow a raindrop to cling to her eyelashes then begin a slow descent down her cheek.
After the Last Dance Page 19