by Emily Barr
‘You might not want to.’
‘I will. I love you. Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds. That means I won’t stop loving you just because you stop loving me.’
He reaches out to me. I look at his hand. It is large and familiar. I know the squat shape of his nails, and the patterns of the hair on the bottom sections of his fingers.
My heart sinks. The familiarity of his strong hands gives me a moment of regret, then, at once, I am glad to be rid of him.
‘Go to Scotland,’ I tell him, ‘then we’ll see.’
I look up gratefully as Megan comes in with a glass of iced water and a cup of coffee. She has used one of her best cups, in rose-patterned china on a matching saucer. Jack looks at her, astonished, and takes one in each hand. The cup rattles loudly against the saucer.
‘I didn’t know if you took sugar or not,’ she says, smiling.
‘He takes one.’
‘I put some in the spoon, just in case.’
‘Thanks, Meg. I’ll stir it in. Don’t want him scalding himself.’
‘I’m fine!’
‘Of course you are.’ I make sure he’s looking at me. ‘Jack, I’m going to call a cab for you, OK? I’m going to give the driver our address and make sure he takes you to the door. Have you got your keys?’
‘Course I have, but I’m not ready to go home. I have lots more things to say to you. There’s a speech in here.’ He taps his head. ‘It’s foolproof. No woman who heard it could possibly turn me down. The boys said so.’
‘I’ll call,’ trills Megan, and she picks up the phone. While she speaks to the minicab operator, I sit close to Jack.
I want to ask him if he knows anything about the letters that keep turning up, but I’ll get no sense out of him tonight, and if he has been sending them, we need to have a serious discussion.
Meg puts the phone down. ‘Twenty minutes,’ she says. ‘Better drink that coffee.’
Jack obediently slurps it. ‘What have you got,’ he asks Megan, ‘that I haven’t?’ He stares, waiting for an answer. She shrugs.
‘My wife!’ he says loudly. ‘You’ve got my wife!’
‘Bloody hell, Jack.’ I have my head in my hands, and my hair flops over my face. ‘You are wasted.’
‘Remember something you used to say to me? No one ever says something drunk that they don’t mean. They lose their inhibitions, but they don’t make stuff up. So here’s something for you: I love you. I want us to have a baby. I really, really mean that, Evie, and I’ve never dared to say it to you before. A baby. Yours and mine. Please.’
There is a stunned pause. Megan stands up and yawns.
‘On that note,’ she says, ‘I think I’ll go to bed.’
As I climb under my lavender duvet, wearing my thick pyjamas, I realise how glad I am that Jack turned up in the state he did. If he’d dropped by on any pretext, sober and charming, I would probably have slept with him. He did us both an enormous favour by being drunk and obnoxious.
I see his Christmas present, still in its plastic bag, on my small table. I should have given it to him. I can’t post it, so I’ll have to give it to Kate next time I see her. In the end, I got him what I knew he wanted: an Xbox. He will not have much use for it in a Scottish temple.
I snuggle down, enjoying my haven. My room is clean and tidy and smells of moisturiser and hair products. It is a girl’s room. My cello stands guard behind the door. Jack is going away, but he still loves me. He will always be there if I need him. I drift off to sleep happy with the way I have handled him.
chapter five
December 20th
We have reserved seats on the train, which never solves the problem of how to travel in the week before Christmas with a cello. We got round it this time by arriving early and shoving it under the table before the people opposite arrived. They were not amused, but did not ask us to move it. Instead, they have demonstrated with rolled eyes, exaggerated huffs, and, for the woman nearest the aisle, legs ostentatiously stretched out into the gangway that they are displeased. This is easy to ignore. They look like a pair of middle-aged lesbians, and they also look as if they hate us.
I’m glad to be leaving London for a while. Dan called yesterday, and we giggled over the photographs of us together which were in all the red-top tabloids. He told me that his management rang him as soon as the papers were out, and told him to stay away from me.
‘They said I shouldn’t have a girlfriend,’ he told me. ‘If I have to be seen with a girl, it’s got to be someone young and sweet.’
‘I’m sweet,’ I told him, ‘and I’m not that old.’ I am, of course, in his eyes. He is still in his teens. Thirty must seem ancient to him. ‘Are you going to let them run your life, or do you want to meet up in the new year?’
‘Yes,’ he said at once, and we wished each other a Merry Christmas. I am still delighted with myself.
Megan and I drink enormous coffees that we bought on Paddington station, and share out sections of the paper.
‘Go on then,’ I say, looking up from the Guardian as we are pulling out of Paddington. Guardian readers are sadly unaware of my most recent conquest. ‘I’ve barely seen you since the other night. Tell me exactly what you thought of my disgraceful estranged husband.’
I glance at the women opposite, checking that they’re not undercover tabloid reporters or opportunistic celebrity-spotters who will secretly record this conversation. One is absorbed in a book called Learn To Do the Cryptic Crossword, while the other is writing a pile of Christmas cards, occasionally muttering under her breath when the motion of the train jolts her arm. I see, upside down, that she’s signing them ‘from Aggie and Maggie’.
Megan smiles into her coffee. ‘I can’t believe he’s your husband,’ she says tentatively.
‘Me neither. I look forward to the day I can call him my ex-husband.’
‘I mean, it’s so grown up to have a husband anyway. I can’t imagine that. And Jack and you. You’re so different.’ She laughs. ‘So very, very different. Almost as different as you and Dan Donovan.’
I look round. ‘Shhh. Jack’s not normally that bad,’ I tell her. ‘I wish I could have seen his face yesterday morning, when it all began to come flooding back to him.’
‘And when he saw those photos. I can see he could be quite cute though. If you caught him at a better moment. But I thought your husband would be a conductor or an artist or something.’ She nudges me in the ribs. ‘He wants you to have his baby!’
I sigh. ‘That’s the first time we’ve ever talked about children. When he’s roaring drunk and we’ve split up. Talk about a functional relationship.’
‘But Evie,’ she says, suddenly serious, ‘look at it this way. The way Jack behaved the other night. OK, it was annoying for you. It was hilarious for me but that’s beside the point. What I mean is, it shows he really cares about you. He’s cut up about you. And that means a lot. The kind of men I go out with, when we finish they sometimes don’t recognise me on the street. They just go from one little slip of a girl to the next. I suppose I’m trying to say that it proves you and Jack really have had something special, and that counts for something. It was a functional relationship. Like he says, he wouldn’t say he loves you if he didn’t mean it. However misguided he is, you have to appreciate that. Do you know what I mean?’
I might be imagining it, but I think I see the lesbians catching each other’s eyes. I don’t care if they’re listening.
‘I suppose I do, in a way,’ I tell Megan, trying to speak a little more quietly. ‘But I don’t feel anything for him any more. I suppose I had many motives for marrying him and none of them was true love. I was only twenty-two. I was very unhappy at the time and I thought marriage would make everything all right.’
Megan smiles. ‘And now you’re thirty and you know that it doesn’t work like that. That’s fine. All part of the process.’
I look at her. ‘You’re surprisingly wise for one so young. How old are you, a
nyway?’
‘Older than you think. Twenty-seven.’
‘Twenty-seven. That’s a nice age. I wish I was single and twenty-seven. Much better than being single and thirty. Still old enough for record companies to warn young boys off you, though.’
The train bumps to an abrupt halt, and Megan’s coffee spills on to her lap. ‘Flip!’ she exclaims, outraged. I glance across the table and see that Aggie or Maggie has inadvertently drawn a blue line across a card. I dread to think what fate has befallen the cryptic crossword.
‘Can I ask you something?’ I say, turning back to Megan. ‘Why do you never swear? Everyone else I know would have said shit then, or Oh, God at the very least.’
She looks at me. ‘Got a tissue?’ I hand one to her, and she dabs at her black trousers. ‘At least these won’t stain. I’m a convent girl. You clearly are not one yourself. I went to an evil school, and much as I don’t believe in any of it, and much as I never go to Mass, I just can’t do it. I can’t make myself swear. It was drummed into me too forcefully. Once a Catholic, always a Catholic.’
‘Really? Even though you don’t believe in God, you can’t swear?’
‘Nope. I can’t even say that, what you just said about God. I can only call myself an agnostic. I missed a family wedding last year because I would have had to have gone to confession beforehand so I could take Communion. I couldn’t bear that, so I pretended I was ill.’
‘You couldn’t just have had Communion without confession? No one would have known.’
‘No I couldn’t! God would have known, whether or not I believe in him. It’s pathetic. They really got my soul. My parents sold me to the nuns, except that they had to pay them to take me.’
The woman opposite, the one with the crossword book, looks up and gives Megan a warm smile. ‘Sounds extremely familiar,’ she says drily. ‘There’s a lot of us about. We must have a support group somewhere.’
I am longing to follow this conversation, but my phone rings, and when I see that it’s Kate I answer it. I turn to the window, because I don’t necessarily want Aggie and Maggie to hear me. The sky is overcast. The trees loom out of the greyness. There are fields and a few clusters of houses. The English winter is strangely atmospheric.
‘Hi, Kate!’ I say, chirpily. I can hear Megan and the woman chatting animatedly, swapping stories of evil nuns.
‘Hey,’ says Kate. ‘Where are you?’
‘Oh,’ I groan, ‘don’t make me say it. Please.’
‘What? Where?’
‘OK, you win. I’m on the train.’ I say it in an exaggerated whisper. We always laugh at people making this particular announcement loudly in crowded carriages. Kate giggles.
‘So, Jack was out with Ian two nights ago,’ she says. ‘I was well pissed off with them because we’re both supposed to be as healthy and organic as possible before our appointment, like when we were doing Natural Solutions, you remember, and it’s going to be hard enough over Christmas anyway without your husband dragging mine to the pub.’
‘My soon-to-be-ex-husband,’ I remind her. ‘Hello? Not responsible for his behaviour any more?’
‘Neither is he, by the sound of it. He is a very upset and embarrassed little boy. I gather he made quite a spectacle of himself. Was it as bad as he fears?’
‘Worse.’
‘He’s standing next to me now. I have a message for you, which is that he says he’s never going to be able to face you ever again.’
I brighten. ‘Is he really going to Scotland?’
‘He certainly is.’
‘Cool.’
Kate lowers her voice. ‘He was a bit upset to see you and that singer draped all over each other in the papers, Evie. The guys at his work showed them to him.’
‘That was nice of them.’
‘Yeah, well. It’s not your problem any more. What are you doing for New Year? Snogging Prince William? Or is he too old for you? Seducing Harry?’
‘I wish. Staying in Bristol. Haven’t seen the folks for ages. Do you two want to come down?’
‘Mmm. Just a sec.’ She goes off to confer, and as she picks the phone back up I hear Jack’s voice saying ‘Me too?’ forlornly.
‘No,’ Kate tells him. ‘That would be good, actually,’ she says to me. ‘I need a way to save Ian from excessive boozing. So we have to get out of London. Bristol would be great.’
The train plunges into a tunnel, and I am abruptly cut off.
‘Flip,’ I say experimentally. I see Meg and Aggie or Maggie looking at me, and laughing.
Megan’s parents are waiting on the platform. Her mother is tiny, with Meg’s waif-like figure but without her height. Her hair is sandy and flyaway. Megan was lucky to inherit her father’s dark, sleek locks. Meg’s mum looks at me shyly, a wary, feline smile playing around her lips. Her father is tall and slim and imposing. He has some high-powered job in business, and looks exactly like the sort of man who would own a beautiful flat in Notting Hill and live in a stately home in Somerset. His bearing is upright and he has an air of entitlement. He was born in the wrong era: he would have been perfect as, say, the Viceroy of India.
‘You’re Evie,’ he booms, with an arm on my shoulder. ‘It’s the cello. It gives you away.’
‘Yes,’ I tell him, ‘I am.’
‘Oliver Sinclair,’ he says. ‘My wife, Josie. Are you being met, Evie, or may we offer you a lift?’
I look at Megan, and back to her father. ‘I normally get a taxi,’ I tell him. ‘My mum’s so busy I don’t tell her what time I get in so she doesn’t feel she has to come and get me. I just turn up.’
‘Then you can turn up under the escort of Sinclair Cabs Inc. Firm established many years ago, at about the time this one started demanding to be taken into town to see her friends every Saturday morning. Specialists in ballet, tap, piano lessons. Cellos and extensive luggage no extra charge.’ He rolls his eyes conspiratorially.
I would rather take a real cab, but I don’t see how I could turn him down. ‘Have you got room for me and my bags and the cello?’ I ask, doubtfully.
‘We could fit all that in five times over. Come on then. Where to?’
Bristol is swarming with last-minute shoppers. Now that I have completed my shopping, I look at them condescendingly. I see Megan’s mother wincing as her father refuses to slow down for anybody. He drives a people carrier - he wasn’t joking about the space - and uses his superior horsepower to barge through clusters of pedestrians waiting for a gap in the traffic, or groups of girls stranded in the middle of the road, laden with bags from HMV and WHSmith. People scream as he almost clips them in passing, and jump out of his way, and he doesn’t seem to notice.
Josie is a different matter. She is nervous and quiet, and I keep catching her looking at me. When our eyes meet she looks away quickly. If I’d known I was to be scrutinised by my landlords I would have worn a skirt, not jeans.
‘Your parents must find it very busy, living in the middle of town,’ she says hesitantly, as we charge up Park Street.
‘Yes,’ I tell her. ‘Well, not really. What’s worse for them is being surrounded by students. Hardly any of the houses on their street are whole houses. After closing time, and then again at about two in the morning, it’s like Piccadilly Circus.’
‘They’re very close to the university, then?’
‘Yes,’ I say, ‘the Union’s almost behind their house.’ I wonder what else to say to her. I’m not sure how close Megan is to her parents, so I don’t know whether Josie knows about Jack, whether she’s sitting there desperate to ask me about him. I doubt they read the tabloids, so she probably doesn’t know much about my love life. ‘Left up here,’ I say to Oliver, leaning forward, ‘then follow the road up. It’s the blue house here, with the tree outside.’
‘Evie,’ he says as he opens the car door and gives a small bow, ‘it’s been a pleasure to meet you. We are delighted to have you as a tenant. My wife has been dining out on the reflected glory.’
‘D
ad!’ says Megan. ‘Shut up!’
‘It’s delightful to be there,’ I tell him. ‘I really mean that. Thanks for the lift. Meg, I’ll see you on Boxing Day, if that’s going to be OK?’
‘Sure. That’s all right, isn’t it?’ she asks her parents. ‘Evie’s parents are having a party.’
‘They always do. It’s a tradition. You are all welcome, of course. The more the merrier. Mum and Phil would love to meet you.’
Oliver and Josie exchange glances. ‘Thank you very much,’ says Oliver, as he places my cello reverently on the pavement. ‘We would be honoured.’
After I ring the doorbell, I look back and see the black people carrier still sitting by the kerb, with all three members of the Sinclair family staring at me. I suppose they’re making sure I get in safely. It freaks me out a little. I am thirty years old, and it is not, apparently, enough for them to deposit me on my mother’s doorstep. They have to make sure I’m not abducted before I make it through the door as well.
I hear footsteps and shouts from indoors and turn to give them a dismissive wave.
‘I hope that’s Evie!’ I hear Mum shouting. ‘Tess, let her in, would you?’
‘Yeah!’ shouts my half-sister, and her footsteps pound closer. ‘It is you, isn’t it?’ she calls.
‘It is me,’ I confirm.
She flings the door open, and I hear the car crunching into gear behind me. ‘Cool,’ she says.
I reach out for a hug, and she snuggles in close to me. Tessa is twelve, and generally looks younger, although today she is dressed like a sixteen-year-old prostitute, in a minuscule pink skirt, pink fishnet tights and a tight pink top with the word ‘Bitch’ written in glitter across where her breasts might one day grow.
‘What are you wearing?’ I ask, shocked. I hold her at arm’s length and look at her. ‘Did Mum buy you this stuff?’ It makes me think of my anonymous letter, and I shudder.
‘Do you like it? I tell you what I did, I got Mum to get me some clothes from Top Shop with my birthday money, then when I went to Broadmead with Cassie, we took them back and changed them. Mum went mental.’