‘That’s girl power,’ murmured Kate’s assistant.
Becca said, ‘Uncle John would be so proud of you.’
‘While he was alive I didn’t appreciate Jia Tang, how extraordinary her work is. I just went along with it because it made Dad happy. Now it’s part of my life. I’m helping them scrape together the dosh for a new play area.’
‘I’ll help!’ said Mum of Two.
Becca said, ‘Kate, you’ve done enough. They can’t expect any more from you.’
‘They don’t expect a thing.’ Like Mum, Becca distrusted Kate’s commitment to the orphanage, believing it to be an unhealthy manifestation of mourning. ‘How often can you feel like you’re making a genuine difference? When you see disaster and poverty and pain on the news, don’t you wish you could reach out and help in some small way? To say You’re not alone; I care?’
‘Calm down, cuz. You’re not saving the planet!’
When Kate’s assistant bridled, Kate quelled her with a look. Kate and Becca were as close as sisters, which meant that sometimes they were as rude as sisters.
Perversely (that could be Becca’s middle name) Becca had chosen to echo Mum’s attitude, treating Jia Tang as a rival, as if the love and care Kate showed Yulan House detracted somehow from what she gave to those closer to hand.
The promise Kate had made during the funeral, to hold Mum tight, had been kept. She was a dutiful daughter, calling her mother every day, visiting often, sharing the heavy lifting as Mum adjusted to life as a widow. Beyond a casual mention, they didn’t talk about Dad.
For proper, in-depth nostalgia, Kate went to Charlie, who was always ready to reminisce. The subject he avoided, with even more diligence than Mum avoided the subject of Dad, was the kiss.
The push-me-pull-you embrace on the bench outside the hospital had un-happened. They never mentioned it. It was the elephant in the room with them; it was the elephant that went horse riding with them.
During their cousinly heart-to-hearts, Becca would sometimes say, ‘I always expected Julian to cheat on you. I would have killed him with my bare hands if he did.’
There seemed to be a tacit agreement underpinning these chats that Charlie would never do anything so low as betray his wife. He was, apparently, above suspicion. Kate had turned that over in her mind as Becca castigated Julian. At times over the past year, Charlie had seemed ready to make a pronouncement, as if he was working himself up to proclaim something.
Spit it out! she’d silently beg. Tired of translating signals, of dissecting that one outbreak of physical action, Kate needed words from Charlie. Something to chew on. The naked truth without the dos and don’ts forced on them by their situation.
With the pathetic crumbs she had to go on, Kate veered from blushing at schoolgirlish notions that he could ever desire her to certainty that he loved her.
The obvious solution – to stop turning it over in her mind, to step away – was not open to her.
Speak to me, Charlie, she pleaded, even as he was speaking to her. I’m not fragile. I won’t break.
No declaration had been made. Charlie was the faithful man his wife believed him to be, and Kate admired him for that. That she wanted him, at some deep level that was impervious to common sense, was true; what was also true was that Kate needed all her loved ones to be safe and content. Or as much of either as is possible. She couldn’t build her own happiness on the broken backs of Becca and Flo. And neither could Charlie.
This was one of the many reasons Kate loved him.
Perversely was also her middle name.
The music was over. The house was dark, apart from the fairy lights doggedly sparkling in the kitchen. Having waved off her last guest, Kate returned to the kitchen table and Becca.
The leftovers of the party food looked irresistible, as leftovers do. ‘Mmm, salami,’ purred Kate, dropping a fat coin into her mouth.
‘It’s about babies really, isn’t it?’
‘What is?’ Kate reached for a gobbet of brie. ‘Star Trek? Algebra?’
Refusing to be deflected, Becca assumed her most sage expression and pointed at Kate with her glass. ‘Your obsession with Yulan House is about babies.’
‘I wouldn’t call it an obsession.’ Kate chased the last olive around the platter.
‘Babies. Babies. Babies.’ Becca leaned forward. ‘Be honest with me.’
‘I always am.’ 99.9 per cent of the time Kate was straight with Becca. Only one dark little closet was closed to her cousin, the one where she kept her feelings for Charlie. They were resilient little buggers, these feelings; locking them up hadn’t killed them off. They thrived on a starvation diet.
‘If you had a child of your own you wouldn’t have this urge to save the kiddiwinks of the world. You’d have more than enough to do, believe me.’ Becca made motherhood sound like endless toil, as if she was a sweatshop factory worker and not an indulged yummy mummy with a hands-on husband. ‘There are ways to have them on your own. You don’t need a man any more.’
‘So you’re saying I can’t attract a bloke?’ Kate savoured Becca’s consternation: to Becca this was the vilest of slurs. Kate measured her self-worth in other ways. Just as well, as I’m fairly certain I can’t attract a bloke. Her equipment was rusty.
‘You know that’s not what I meant. Any man would be lucky to have you,’ said Becca. ‘Especially now you’ve lost a bit of weight. But why would you want a man? We’ve agreed they’re all pigs.’
‘Have we? I don’t remember that vote.’
‘You’re telling me Julian isn’t a knob?’
‘I am telling you, hand on heart, that my husband is not a knob.’
‘Ex-husband.’ Becca pointed to the decree nisi she’d taped to the wall.
‘Nobody behaves well in a divorce. The process is too adversarial.’
‘Your divorce was more adversari-whatsit than most.’
‘This is old ground,’ said Kate.
‘Julian was greedy and nasty and he almost ruined you.’
It wasn’t Becca’s trademark hyperbole; trapped in the burning rubble of Ames Partners in Property, Julian had staked a claim on what he’d previously insisted was Kate’s money. Staring bankruptcy in the face, he clawed at Kate, exacting pound after pound of flesh. He’d been so determined, so brutal, so unlike his former incarnation that she entertained a dark suspicion that the serpentine deals collapsing all around him were less than lilywhite: the cash was desperately needed to plug up the holes and keep Julian out of jail.
She had never ring-fenced her income. The money was a by-product of Kate’s zeal, theirs to share. She’d offered it to Julian many times in the past, to bail them out before the debts became unwieldy.
The lawyer had called this ‘naive’. Kate called it . . . she had no word for it; it was simply what couples did, surely?
‘He’ll come for you like a rottweiler,’ said the lawyer.
‘We were married,’ Kate had said, wondering what had happened to the lawyer to make him so cynical. ‘It’s only money.’
The cynical lawyer had been proved right. Kate felt as if she’d been mugged. The girl in the dated wedding photographs was a foreigner.
Did I really believe it was forever?
Standing to put glasses in the dishwasher, Becca said, ‘This stunning house . . . I could weep.’
‘It’s not as if I’m homeless.’ Kate had politely declined Becca’s repeated offers to move into Dragonfly Cottage. The offers had been so frequent and so impassioned they’d begun to sound like threats. A bland rental round the corner had been secured. The furniture was headed for storage. Kate would miss her books.
‘Your new flat’s a shit hole. Julian has a lot to answer for.’
‘The divorce is finally over. That’s the main thing.’
When Becca, Mum and Aunty Marjorie got together they cackled like Macbeth’s witches, casting spells of female disgust and calling down calamitous revenge on Julian’s head.
‘I hope the r
est of his stupid hair falls out,’ said Becca, aiming an empty bottle at the swing topped bin.
‘Don’t!’ Kate never joined in with the witchy bitchery. Julian’s monstrous behaviour had only started after his attempts to haggle a trial reunion. His actions thereafter had been fuelled by pain. Kate had broken his heart, just as surely as Becca had wrenched off Action Man’s head. The tortuous divorce was one long scream of Why don’t you love me?
As an aficionado of how it feels to love the wrong person, Kate couldn’t hate Julian for what he’d done.
‘If he was even half a man,’ said Becca, ‘he’d have just walked away.’ Chin down, she was muttering like Kate remembered her doing when some kid at school had upset her. ‘They’re all vampires, every one of them, sucking the life out of us. Leave it long enough and they all betray us in the end.’ Becca sniffed. ‘The funny thing is, I’m not even angry about it.’
‘About what?’ Kate stacked the plates.
‘I keep thinking I’m angry, but I’m not. I’m scared.’
‘Of what?’ Kate looked up, engaged. Becca rarely admitted to fear.
Becca lifted her eyes to Kate’s. ‘My husband’s in love with somebody else.’
Kate felt the floor tilt. ‘What?’ she said stupidly. ‘Charlie wouldn’t . . .’
‘He bloody would and he bloody has.’
Later it would feel laughable that for a split second Kate thought Becca was referring to her. ‘How do you know? You do jump to conclusions, Becca.’
‘They’ve been at it like rabbits. There’s an email trail. Spare me the lecture about reading other people’s emails, Kate. If Charlie doesn’t want me to pry he shouldn’t have the dog’s name as his password.’
‘It’s a real affair?’
‘A real affair, with sex and hotels and quickies in the back of the car.’ Becca pulled a disgusted face. ‘Our car. The car I use to take Flo to soft play!’
‘Who is she?’
‘She’s the biggest slut in West Sussex. They met on a creative writing retreat. I told you that book was trouble! He starts every email with To my dark lady. So she’s got black hair, I guess. I haven’t seen a photo.’
‘That’s from Shakespeare.’
‘Him again,’ sighed Becca, as if Shakespeare was a nosey neighbour who kept popping in for a cup of tea.
‘Shakespeare dedicated his sonnets to the dark lady.’ Kate could quote the sonnets only because of eavesdropping on Charlie and Dad. ‘It’s not to do with the colour of her hair.’ Kate went no further. Becca wouldn’t want to hear that the dark lady was a complex, mysterious figure whose allure was powerful enough to enmesh poor Will even though he knew it was wrong to love her.
‘It’s a stupid name,’ said Becca, petulant.
‘Yeah.’ Kate thought it wildly romantic. She was sad, very sad, that she would live and die without a man ever calling her his dark lady. ‘Julian used to call me Boobalicious.’
Laughter broke over them like a wave. Heads back, cackling brazenly, they slapped the table.
‘Oh . . . oh,’ gasped Becca as they came down.
Wiping her eyes, Kate said, ‘What are you going to do?’
‘I’m going to kill him.’
‘No, really, what are you going to do?’
‘I’m really going to kill him.’
They laughed again, but without the same abandon.
‘I don’t have to do anything,’ said Becca. ‘According to the emails he’s going to leave me. Us. Me and Flo. Charlie doesn’t want us any more.’
Back to back in the big sleigh bed, Kate and Becca slept together as they had done so many times in their history.
‘It’ll all work out.’ Kate whispered the ever useful shibboleth as she turned out the lamp.
In her dream she walked down an endless corridor. She woke before it was light and watched the patterns made on the ceiling by the headlights of the occasional passing car.
That pregnant feeling, the sense that Charlie had something to divulge: Kate had been right about that. Her certainty that he was unable to betray his little family had been misplaced.
Plainly, Charlie was perfectly capable of loving another woman. He just wasn’t capable of loving Kate.
The shop, on the intersection of two narrow roads, was the cornerstone of Kate’s empire. Her first, her favourite, she’d come through its door as a Saturday girl in her early teens. The old shop had been chaotic and gloomy, with a stockroom that defied her efforts to streamline it. The day she bought it Kate had begun the process of ripping everything out, commissioning box shelving and painting everything a celestial white.
Called in at short notice to cover for her flu-stricken manager, Kate was enjoying a day behind the counter. Like the fond husband of a plastic surgery devotee, she remembered the shop’s original, more homely looks with fondness.
‘No, those don’t go there!’ Her temporary assistant was hopeless. Too short to reach the shelves and prone to tearing open whatever took her fancy. ‘Come and help me test these whistles, Flo!’
Flo’s emphatic advice was useful when customers dithered in Fancy Dress Corner. ‘Don’t be a princess,’ she said. ‘Princesses are sissies.’ In combat trews and a camouflage tee, Flo defied her mother’s attempts to pretty her up. Often mistaken for a boy, she liked her dark hair kept short, glossy as a surfacing seal.
The night before, Becca had come to Kate’s for supper, a weekly staple in their diaries. In between over the top compliments – ‘Kate, that lipstick gives you a mouth like Marilyn Monroe’ – and her usual carping – ‘When are you going to leave this blah rental and buy a proper home?’ – Becca had touched on a subject she returned to from time to time.
‘I’m going to tell him.’ She’d cut into her steak with gusto. ‘I am. I’m going to tell my sodding ex that Flo isn’t his.’
‘No, you’re not. You only say that after a few vinos.’
‘He should know. It’s only right.’
This high and mighty reasoning had been absent when Flo was conceived. ‘Today you had another row with Charlie, so you want to lash out. You know the person you’d hurt most is Flo, so you’re not going to do it.’ Kate had popped a chip into her mouth. ‘So let’s change the subject. Who’s in love with you this week?’
A fan of internet dating, Becca was evangelical about its delights. Not for Becca a toe in the water: she immersed herself up to her neck, seducing whoever took her fancy.
Such promiscuousness had gone down badly with the older generation. Kate’s mother declared it ‘a cry for help’, but Kate couldn’t perceive any sadness in Becca’s stream-of-consciousness tales of rumpy pumpy. It was obvious to Kate that Becca would return to Charlie in the blink of an eye, but her cousin was canny enough to accept that when such a mild mannered man reached the end of his generous tether there was no going back. So, instead, Becca went through males/25–50/gsoh like a hot knife through butter. Careful to keep her hectic love life from Flo, there were no gentlemen callers at home: Flo’s stability was a priority for both parents throughout and after the divorce.
‘I think I’ve found somebody,’ Becca had beamed. ‘He’s a cameraman. Works on some news programme, I think. I wasn’t listening. Too busy working out when to pounce. He’s nuts about me.’
‘Who isn’t?’
Becca assumed that birds sang in her honour. Perhaps, Kate had thought, they do.
Having both gone through the mill of divorce, the women’s recovery times differed. Kate had floundered longer in the initial stages of self-doubt, which included a conviction that cats (cats she did not yet own) would one day feast on her undiscovered corpse.
The emotional loneliness they both faced had nothing to do with the number of friends they could call on. The pursuit of love, of connection with a special ‘other’ was keenly felt even by Kate, who spelled romance with a small ‘r’.
The cameraman beau would be history next week. Entirely male in her approach to love and sex, Becca moved on s
peedily once she’d made a conquest.
By comparison, Kate was not merely female but Victorian female: she had at first regarded dating websites with spinsterish horror.
‘Charlie and Julian are sorted.’ Becca had typed in Kate’s profile, hands flying like a dressage pony’s hooves. ‘High time us girls were fixed up.’
Intentionally ignorant of any details about Julian’s new girlfriend, Kate was disconcerted by how much his newfound amour dented her pride.
From a new flame’s point of view, Julian was a keeper. Even during the divorce, when Kate could have papered her walls with legal demands, she’d never shaken the suspicion that life had handed her a diamond and she’d treated it like a rhinestone. If another woman could love Julian without wanting him to be somebody else entirely, he was indeed a gem.
Like Mum’s icon, the sad princess, there had been three people in Kate’s marriage.
Sometimes, when out shopping with Becca, or standing in line at the cinema, Kate fantasised about turning to her cousin and saying, ‘My enduring love for your ex-husband has blighted my life.’
In the here and now, the cheerful ding! of the shop door delivered a flustered Charlie. ‘Am I late?’ Full of sorries, he explained that his consultancy session had run on, and bent to catch his breath just as Flo launched herself at him.
Kate asked, ‘Did you leave your skateboard outside?’
‘Ha and also ha.’ Charlie grabbed his daughter and blew raspberries on her cheek. He had built up an immunity to Kate’s digs about his ‘second teen-hood’. The boyish blazer one size too small, the spotless trainers and the choppy haircut were red rags to a bull.
‘Where were you, Daddy?’
‘I was out working, sweetiepops.’
‘How was it?’ Kate picked up streamers and confetti that Flo had ‘tidied’. ‘Grim?’
‘I can’t complain. It pays the bills while I vomit out my book.’ Forced into media consultancy work by the demands of supporting two households, Charlie’s euphoria at nabbing a literary agent had been tempered by the flock of rejection letters. ‘Sometimes I don’t know if I’m a novelist who writes ads on the side, or an advertising consultant who writes novels on the side.’
These Days of Ours Page 15