by Fanny Blake
Looking over Oliver’s shoulder to the wall behind him, she could see one of the large picture frames that, over the years, she’d filled with collages of family photos and hung all over the house. A grinning Matt stared out at her, snapped just after he’d triumphed with a winning goal in a school football match. Higher in the frame was Emma, two years older with a pretty, elfin face, her grip tight round Bonkers, her silver-grey flop-eared rabbit. She seemed to be looking straight at Ellen as if she was trying to say something to her. Ellen strengthened her resolve. ‘You don’t know them.’
‘I feel as if I do. You’ve told me so much about them. Everything you’ve said makes me sure we’ll get on.’ He clicked the middle and thumb nails on his right hand, again and again.
‘But coming back to find your mother has moved a strange man into your home is a lot to take on board. They’ve been used to everything being the way it’s been for so long that they’re bound to resent you at first. Surely you see that.’
‘Of course. But they’ll get over it and be pleased to see you happy again. Think of that.’
‘Not to mention the discovery that their mother’s enjoying a sex life all of a sudden! I should think they’ll be horrified, poor things.’ Ellen laughed. ‘But, most importantly, I don’t want them to think they’ve lost me to someone else. They’ve lost one parent – that’s enough. If we’re going to be together for ever, I want it all to be right from the start.’
But Oliver was not going to give in that easily. They carried on the discussion over the mushroom omelettes, the apple pie, the washing-up, the coffee. They took their mugs to the end of the garden where they sat in the near-dark on the bench, the summer smell of other people’s barbecues drifting round them as they tried to reach a resolution that suited them both. Lights from neighbouring windows cast a glow over the gardens while the sound of voices travelled across fences with the last gasps of barbecue smoke. Over the previous years, Ellen had always drawn comfort from the proximity of her neighbours but now she wished they would hurry inside so she and Oliver could have the night to themselves.
They talked round and round in circles, until finally she invoked the one person she had hoped not to involve. ‘I have to do this for Simon. I have to make sure that Em and Matt understand that I’m not writing him out of their lives or them out of mine. I know he’d want me to be happy but he’d want them to be happy too, so I’ve got to do this in the way I think will make that happen.’
They sat for a moment, neither speaking. Then Oliver took her hand and kissed it, pulling her towards him until she leaned against his chest, feeling the steady beat of his heart.
‘I think you’re the most wonderful selfless person I’ve ever met.’ He bent to kiss the top of her head.
‘I’m just their mother, that’s all. I—’
‘Sssh!’ He stopped her saying any more. ‘OK. I’ll do whatever you want.’ He ruffled her hair.
‘You will?’ His sudden agreement shocked her.
‘Yes.’ He took a deep breath. ‘I don’t want to, but I will.’
‘Thank you so, so much.’ She sat up to face him, taking both his hands in hers. ‘Where will you go?’ Now she was anxious at the idea of being separated from him again.
‘I’ve no idea.’
‘But you must have. What have you done with all the stuff you must have brought back from France?’ She pulled her pashmina tighter round her shoulders, aware of a chill in the night breeze.
‘I’ve stored it all at a friend’s place near Cardiff. Yes, I could go there.’
‘Near Cardiff! You never said.’
‘You never asked and it didn’t seem important.’
‘But you must have friends in London?’ This wasn’t what Ellen had imagined at all. She had imagined him nearby, in easy reach, so that he could call in regularly and gradually become more of a fixture in their lives without the children really noticing.
‘None. Not close enough to bum a bed from anyway – and I couldn’t afford a hotel, not for that length of time. No. I’ll have to see if Dan and Alice can have me for a few months. Do you think that’ll be long enough to sort this out?’
Long enough? It sounded like a lifetime.
‘But how will we see you, if you’re living there? When will we see you?’
‘It’s only a couple of hours on the train. Ellen, this is what you wanted. Remember?’
‘But I hadn’t imagined you quite so far away. I’d thought of you sneaking out in the early morning before the children were up. That kind of thing,’ she said, her cheeks burning.
‘I’d rent somewhere nearer, but my funds are limited and without a job . . .’
She thought of the clothes that he’d bought, guilty that he’d spent so much on her. ‘Haven’t you had any luck at all?’ She knew how he spent his days while she was at the gallery, trawling through the jobs-vacant sites online and riffling through the papers, ringing the bigger galleries. He was doing his best.
‘Nothing concrete. But I’m hoping it won’t be long. I’ve got a couple of possibilities lined up. Once I’ve got an income again, things will be different, I promise.’ He kissed her again, taking away her breath and her impulse to ask what the possibilities were.
‘I can’t bear to think of you so far away. There must be a better solution. Isn’t there any way of borrowing some money till you set yourself up?’
‘Who’s going to lend money to someone with no obvious means of repaying it and no guarantees? Unless . . .’
She could barely see his face now the lights from the surrounding houses were going out one by one. She responded to the touch of his hand by moving closer to him. Sitting with his arm around her, their bodies tight against one another, Ellen felt she had never been more at one with another person. Even Simon. She shuddered.
‘Unless what?’
‘There’s only one solution that I can think of.’ She felt his body tense, his arm tighten round her. ‘But I can hardly bring myself to ask.’
He didn’t need to say more. A silence fell between them as the night grew darker.
*
‘You’ll never guess what she’s done now!’ Bea’s shriek of indignation almost burst Kate’s eardrum. She held the phone away from her ear.
‘What?’
‘She’s only agreed to pay rent on a studio flat for Oliver until he gets a job. “It should only be for a month or two.”’ This last was said in a shrill imitation of Ellen’s own justification to Bea only a couple of hours earlier. ‘He hasn’t got any money and otherwise he’d have to move out of London. Or so he says.’
On her screen, Kate saw there were no patients waiting. Her morning so far had been routine, filled with the usual minor ailments and one or two ‘worried well’. She was glad of a break. Holding her phone between her shoulder and her ear, she began to straighten her room, hiding the carrier-bag of allotment vegetables given by a grateful patient, replacing the paper sheeting on the bed, pulling back the curtain surrounding it and putting away the toys that the last child had slung about in boredom while she was examining his mother. ‘Where?’ She held one of Sam’s long-ago discarded plastic Ninja Turtles, turning it over in her hand and remembering those days when he was a small boy and would play with nothing else.
‘I don’t know where. Somewhere near Ellen, I suppose. There wouldn’t be much point otherwise. I just can’t believe she’d be so rash.’
‘Why are you so against the idea? Mightn’t this be the best way to get what she wants?’ She sat behind her desk, picking up her pale-blue cardigan, which she’d knocked off the chair-back, and glanced at the photograph of the view from the Tuscan villa she and Paul had rented two years earlier. Looking at the rolling vineyards, distant orchards, terracotta-roofed farmhouses and yew trees standing sentinel around a distant monastery gave her the sense of relaxation she remembered from that time spent together. On her desk calendar, a caravan of camels and white-clad nomads crossed the shadowy red dunes of the Sahara. B
etween them they did the trick of distancing her from her immediate surroundings, reminding her there was another very different world out there. Feeling better, she turned her full attention to the conversation.
‘But she’s only known him a few weeks. She knows nothing about him.’ Bea sounded full of righteous anger.
‘And neither do we.’
‘You’re always so damn reasonable.’
Kate could sense Bea’s indignation waning. ‘And you’re always so quick to judge.’
‘I know, I know. But, really . . . How do we know he’ll pay her back?’
‘You’ve read too many novels!’ Kate had always thought that Bea’s imagination was fuelled by what she did for a living. Her own attitude was much more practical. ‘Of course we don’t. But she’s a grown-up and we have to trust that she knows what she’s doing. And we should give him the benefit of the doubt – at least until we’ve met him.’
‘But all this is so out of character. I don’t want her to get hurt.’
‘Neither do I. But paying someone’s rent for a few months isn’t the worst thing that could happen.’ Kate sat in her surgery day in day out, listening to people talk about their lives, about the sometimes bizarre and extreme things that some of them experienced. She had learned long ago never to be shocked by anything. Life had a way of throwing up the unexpected. That was what happened and you just had to get on with it. There was no point in overreacting.
‘What’s she paying with, though? The gallery can’t be bringing in that much. And she needs what she’s got for the kids.’
‘No idea. I don’t mind asking her when I next see her, though.’ Kate straightened her papers and popped her pens into the holder at the back of the desk. ‘I expect she’s got a bit stashed away from Simon’s life insurance or something. Rainy-day money. What better way to use it?’
‘You sound as if you approve.’ Bea seemed quite taken aback.
‘I don’t disapprove, I’ll say that. Besides, it’s all so romantic. Don’t tell me you wouldn’t give your eye-teeth to be in her shoes.’
Bea said nothing. Regretting her tactlessness, Kate attempted to smooth things over. ‘Oh, Bea, I’m sorry – but you know what I mean. I’m as glad for her as I would be for you in the same situation.’
‘You’re right. If I’m honest, I suppose I am a bit jealous. Why is it that I don’t get lucky? It’s not as if I wasn’t making the effort.’
‘Perhaps you’re trying too hard. I don’t know.’ Kate’s attention was taken by her screen alerting her to the fact that four patients were waiting. ‘Bea, I’m sorry. I’m going to have to dash. Let’s talk about this when we’ve got some time.’
‘OK. Don’t worry. I’ve got a meeting to go to in a minute anyway. I know you’re right. I’ll send the jury out again and won’t decide on anything until there’s more evidence. Fair?’
‘Fair.’
As she put down the phone, Kate couldn’t help think how lucky she was to have found two such good friends who understood each other so well. Despite the odd up and down in their history, there was always one of them who could see sense. Pleased by the turn in Ellen’s fortunes at last, she didn’t want anything to spoil it, least of all by Bea being over-protective or jealous. She would do what she could to stop that happening. If only Bea could meet someone for herself, perhaps she’d back off Ellen and leave her to make her own mistakes. Surely one of the agencies she’d applied to would throw up someone suitable soon.
Chapter 11
Bea had been waiting for her appointment for just over half an hour. Her long-time principled allegiance to the NHS was being tested to its limits. Half a manuscript lay unread on her lap. She found it impossible to concentrate as women came and sat down or were called and disappeared down a narrow corridor where she could see a line of white doors, each with a red light that lit up when the room was occupied. She’d given up trying to puzzle out how the system worked. She had heard one of the nurses explain that, unusually, there was more than one clinic running today, which was why people who had come in after her had been seen ages ago while others who had been there when she arrived were still waiting.
She looked around her. The faded lino was the colour of dried blood. Below the thick green line painted all the way around the room at elbow height, the institutional cream walls were smeared black where chair backs had dragged along them. Above the line, one or two mass-produced exotic landscapes hung dusty and squint. In one corner, a TV was bracketed high on the wall, the sound not loud enough to hear but not quiet enough to ignore. Thin cotton curtains, too short for the grimy sash windows, blew in the breeze made by a fan putting up a futile struggle to circulate some air. The blue and red chair seats were worn and grubby. Everywhere, signs announced the department’s imminent move to a spanking new building: presumably the reason why this waiting room had been allowed to languish, Bea thought crossly. Behind the large semi-circular desk by the door, one nurse sat almost hidden behind a tower of files that she was gradually dismantling, overlapping them on the desktop, apparently to put them in some sort of order, with frequent tuts that could be heard across the room. A receptionist worked beside her, presumably unable to help thanks to her nails, which were long, lacquered works of art.
Bea got up yet again to go to the Ladies and sat there trying to breathe through the pain low in her stomach and the excruciating burning sensation that came as she tried to pee.
‘Bastard!’ she muttered, coming out of the cubicle and taking a plastic cup of water from the dispenser. Wash an infection through – isn’t that what you were meant to do? Two days and God only knew how many gallons didn’t seem to be doing the trick.
Back in the waiting room, she sat feeling angry with herself. A week after their encounter, having geared her mind up to forgetting Tony Castle, it looked as if that was not going to happen – or not yet, at least. Thank you, Tony! How could she have got herself into this situation? How many times had she embarked on the condom conversation with Ben, only to be told he knew it all? As did she. Unprotected sex leads to unwanted pregnancy or the GUM clinic – and to prove it here she was.
‘Mrs Wilde.’
An unsmiling nurse stood, thin blue file clutched to her bosom, waiting. At last. Bea followed her along the corridor into a small room where an equally serious young woman sat bent over a desk. She looked up as Bea sat down. Kind, bespectacled eyes stared out of an exhausted face. She mustered a wan smile.
‘I’m Dr McKay. What seems to be the problem?’ She toyed with her red biro, seesawing it between the thumb and forefinger of her right hand.
As Bea explained her symptoms, the doctor’s intent gaze didn’t leave her face. Under such close scrutiny, she found herself stumbling over her explanation, embarrassed and furious with herself and with Tony. Dr McKay said nothing until she finished, then was sympathy itself.
‘I’m sorry but I have to ask everyone these questions . . .’ she began, before rifling through Bea’s recent sex life – or lack thereof.
Bea was surprised to find that under these circumstances talking about what came naturally came quite unnaturally. Matters she would joke about with Kate or Ellen assumed a more sobering significance. She felt a sadder, more inadequate person than her usual robust self. No, she didn’t have a regular partner; no, she hadn’t had sex for some time (yes, some years) before this last episode; no, she couldn’t exactly remember when; and no, she knew almost nothing about her most recent partner or, more worrying, about his own sexual history, recent or past.
‘Hop onto the couch and I’ll take some swabs.’ Brisk and matter-of-fact, the doctor wasn’t judging her for being so inept on the condom front. But lying there, eyes shut, legs apart, took Bea back to the last time she’d been in the same position. How very different she’d felt then. How short the journey from ecstasy to embarrassment.
‘It’s probably trichomoniasis.’ That was reassuring. At least it was nothing worse. ‘We should get the results within half an hou
r and I’ll give you some antibiotics. There’s no need to be embarrassed, Mrs Wilde. Relax.’
‘I’m not embarrassed exactly. Just kicking myself for letting it happen.’
‘You’d be surprised at the number of women over forty we get in here with similar problems. It’s more and more common. They think they can’t get pregnant but they forget about things like this.’
Knowing she was in good company didn’t make Bea feel any better.
Three-quarters of an hour later, the result was confirmed, the antibiotics prescribed, advice on the use of condoms dished out and Bea was back on the street, breathing in the exhaust of real life. She remembered the doctor’s advice: ‘Even if the symptoms disappear quickly, you should still avoid having sex for a week.’ That was a laugh. Avoid sex? She was never going to have it again. Not for a bit anyway. Well, not unless she got very lucky indeed. More worrying was the insistence that she should tell her ‘partner’ that he must be a carrier. She’d finessed the part where she should have admitted to knowing him for only half a day by adding a couple of extra dates. Dr McKay didn’t need to know that even if Bea wanted to she had no idea how to get in touch with Tony Castle except through Let’s Have Lunch.
She checked her mobile to confirm that she was running late. Stopping only to get her prescription en route, she rushed to the office where she had a twelve-thirty meeting with Adam. She arrived too hot and bothered to go straight in so decided to be five minutes late, having straightened herself out in the Ladies, then dipped into her office to get the papers she needed. When she knocked on his door, he opened it, obviously about to go out.
‘I’m so sorry, Adam. I had a meeting outside the office and I’ve rushed back as fast as I could but the traffic . . .’
‘Don’t worry.’ He straightened his pink and charcoal-grey striped tie before slipping on his tailored dove-grey suit jacket.
Don’t worry and a smile. Had the man had a personality transplant? Bea stepped back to let him pass. ‘Shall we rearrange for this afternoon?’