The Child Inside

by Suzanne Bugler

  Late last night Simon sent me a text, saying simply, Thank you for your message. That is all. What am I to read into that?

  Now, having dealt with Janice, I sit here, still in my bathrobe, toying with the phone in my hand. I watch the minute hand on the clock above the door, as it ticks its way round. The washing machine quietly whines in the corner, and from somewhere, out in the street, I can hear the distant scream of a road drill. But it is my heart that I am aware of, thumping out its fear.

  Already I have texted Simon back. I reinforced my message: I’m sure everything will be fine.

  But how will it be fine?

  I saw it in Simon’s eyes: the instant pulling-back.

  And now I picture him again, fresh from his weekend with his wife, his children, his friends . . . I see them all; I see their clothes and the way that they move, so at ease, so sure of themselves as they tramp across the fields . . . and I see how they laugh together at jokes I will never share, and how they talk, so animatedly; those conversations of which I will never be a part.

  I see, and I am so bruised with longing and envy.

  The clock clicks to half-past nine.

  My grip on Simon is tenuous, but I cannot let it go. Without him what would I do? I see my life stretching ahead of me, vacuous, numb.

  I dial his number.

  When he answers I say, ‘Simon, I’m so sorry about yesterday. I think I was having a bit of a bad day.’ And I laugh, a quick, throwaway laugh, a roll-your-eyes oh-my-God-what-am-I-like? kind of laugh. Like a flash in my head I see Fay, curled up on the sofa in the den at the house in Oakley, her legs, clad in maroon woolly tights, drawn up so that her chin is on her knees. We were teasing her – I forget about what – and she slaps her hands across her face, hiding her eyes. Her thick brown hair falls forward, then she throws back her head, tossing her hair back again, smooth and luscious as chocolate. She takes her hands away from her face and spreads them at the sides of her head like starfish. Oh my God, what am I like? she squeals, her eyes sparkling like black jewels. And she laughs, that fast, infectious, runaway laugh.

  And here I am in my worn and stained bathrobe, copying her. I think what an actress I am and something splits inside my heart.

  ‘That’s okay,’ Simon says and I hear the ease slide back into his voice. ‘We all have bad days. But your sister—?’

  ‘I’ve spoken to her,’ I say quickly. ‘Really, it’s fine.’ And again I manage that laugh.

  ‘You’re sure?’ Simon asks, and his voice washes over me, warm, soothing.

  And I say, ‘I’m sure.’

  We arrange to meet the next day. The thought of it gets me through Sainsbury’s. It gets me through the washing, the tidying, the cooking. It gets me through the heartache of Jono’s bad mood when he comes in from school, and through the hours of waiting for Andrew to get in from work, and then avoiding him when he does.

  It gets me through the silence.

  We make love on the sofa this time. To be back in his bed, after last time, would be too awkward, too much a reminder of my little scene. Today I am on form. I did my hair, chose my clothes well. And when Simon started to say, Are you sure about—?’ I kissed him full on the mouth, stemming his words. And we did it fast and hard, blanking out any doubts.

  But afterwards, when we are lying there semi-naked, the demons start creeping back in.

  ‘What happened with you and Fay?’ I ask.

  And he says, ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘I was just thinking about her, that’s all.’ I keep my voice light and idle.

  Simon sighs. ‘I was young,’ he says. ‘Too young. And my mother . . . well . . . I told you about that.’

  ‘Do you ever keep in touch?’

  ‘No, sadly. We did for a while, but . . .’ Again he sighs. His arm is around my shoulder; absently he draws his fingers in a circle on my arm. ‘She was my last contact with Vanessa.’

  I hear the sadness in his voice, and jealousy for Fay snakes through me.

  ‘Until now,’ I say pointedly.

  He turns his head and kisses me. ‘Until now.’

  ‘What about your wife?’ I can’t stop myself from probing. ‘Where did you meet her?’

  ‘Isobel?’ he asks in surprise, as if it had slipped right out of his head that he’d even got a wife. ‘I’ve known Isobel for years. I met her through friends.’

  Friends.

  I lie still, staring out the window, at the clouds trekking fast across the cold March sky. The jealousy slithers, and tightens, and snares.

  ‘Does Isobel know about Vanessa?’ Isobel. Her name is alien, distasteful in my mouth.

  ‘Of course she does,’ he says. ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘Do you talk to her about Vanessa?’

  Simon’s hand, on my arm, stills. It is a while till he replies, as if he is carefully choosing his words.

  ‘Not really,’ he says at last. ‘Not any more.’

  ‘But you used to?’ I can’t stop myself. ‘Like you do with me?’

  Very slowly, Simon pulls away from me. And now he is looking at me intently, but I cannot look back. I am afraid to see the expression in his eyes. He says, ‘Isobel knows about Vanessa, but she didn’t know her. There is a difference.’

  ‘Does she know about me?’

  ‘No.’ He pulls right away now. He isn’t even touching me. ‘Rachel, what is this about?’

  But I can’t stop. ‘What would she do if she did know about me?’ I bite into my lip, bite so hard that I taste blood. Stop it, I am screaming in my head. Just stop it!

  Simon sighs. He sits forward now, resting his elbows on his thighs, dipping his head into his hands. ‘Do we have to talk about this?’ he asks.

  And I look at him. I look at the curve of his spine and the width of his shoulder blades, at his skin, so pale, stretched tight across muscle and bone.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say, and tears spring like needles into my eyes.

  He turns his head to look at me again, and this time I hold his gaze. What would I do if I never looked into those eyes again? I look into his eyes and I see my youth; I see myself at sixteen, walking into his house, walking into his world. I see his sister coming towards me, her eyes just like his, that clear, startling blue. Welcome, she is saying and for such a short, sweet time I see a life of unimaginable glory; I see the hope, the possibility that it could be mine.

  ‘What do you want, Rachel?’ Simon asks quietly.

  I try to smile, but my face won’t oblige. ‘What I want . . . What I want is to stay here forever.’ The words come out husky, and I swallow. I correct myself. ‘For one night. I want to stay here for one whole night.’

  ‘Well, I’m sure that can be arranged,’ Simon says. ‘I’m here during the week.’

  As if it was that straightforward. As if it should be enough for me that he is here during the week.

  NINETEEN

  Easter looms ahead now, with Jono off school for three whole weeks, and the thought of the long weekend to get through. Andrew will be at home for four days. We are to do family things: a visit to a museum, a walk in the country. Things that Jono will hate, though we convince ourselves we are doing them for him.

  Yet it is not the prospect of my Easter that gets me down, so much as the thought of Simon’s. He, of course, will be in Kingham for the long weekend, unwinding in the bosom of his family. There will be Easter-egg hunts, no doubt, and proper country walks. And there will be friends, of course, popping down, staying over; there are bound to be. For four days he will forget about me.

  I meet him on the Wednesday before Easter, when Jono is at a friend’s for the day, this friend being some boy called Luke whom he’s never mentioned before and who lives all the way out in Weybridge. I drive Jono over there; it takes us an hour to get through the traffic and to find the house, which is enormous, and set back on a dark, tree-shrouded road. I recognize Luke’s mother from Stephanie Rawlings’s class get-together back before Christmas, though she didn’t bothe
r to acknowledge me then. Now she greets me with a polite smile, but doesn’t ask me in.

  ‘Come back for him at four-thirty,’ she instructs me, as though I am a tradesman.

  Normally it would irritate me, this dismissal – this welcome for my son, but not for me, into the world beyond her heavy oak front door – but today I do not care. I am in a hurry anyway. I am going straight to Weybridge station to get the train to London; I have the train times, the platform number, all worked out.

  At first Simon didn’t think he could be free, but I pleaded with him. I said it’s so hard in the holidays, with Jono around; I can’t just come up at the drop of a hat. And this is the perfect opportunity, we can’t let it go. So he had to move meetings, cancel a lunch.

  ‘It was worth it, wasn’t it?’ I say now as we sit on his sofa eating the sashimi and hand-rolls that we had the sushi restaurant in the basement send up to us. I met him at London Bridge this time and walked with him back to the flat. It is a grey, damp day, but I was early; I had time to kill. And we made love as we always do – love? is it love? – and now we sit and we talk as we eat.

  ‘Wasn’t it?’ I say again. I am asking. I’m not sure.

  He is distracted. There is something on his mind, I can tell. I wonder if it is because I made him change his plans. I wonder if it is because of me.

  ‘Wasn’t what?’ he asks absently, biting into a shrimp roll.

  ‘Wasn’t it worth cancelling your lunch so that you could see me?’ I try to sound coy, as though I am merely teasing.

  ‘Yes,’ he says automatically. ‘Of course.’ But then he is silent again for a while, frowning at the view from the window as he eats.

  I pick at a piece of marinated tuna and try to pretend that everything is okay.

  After a while he says, ‘I’m going to Kew tonight. To see my mother.’

  ‘Oh,’ I say, and I wait for him to tell me more.

  ‘I try and see her every couple of weeks or so,’ he says, and I wonder why he has never mentioned this before. ‘It would be impossible if I was in Kingham all week, but while I’m here . . . Though I don’t know if there is very much point.’

  ‘Of course there is a point,’ I say.

  ‘She is never particularly pleased to see me.’

  He doesn’t look at me as he talks. He stares ahead out of that window; the cloud has thickened since this morning and London is weighed down now under a heavy blanket of drizzle. I try not to feel hurt that he hasn’t mentioned these visits to his mother before. I try not to take it personally. Of course he visits his mother.

  ‘I want to ask her to come for Easter, though I know that she won’t,’ he says and he kind of laughs then; a quick, humourless sigh of a laugh. ‘Isobel doesn’t want her to come anyway,’ he says, and I am alert to the bitterness in his voice, but who is the bitterness aimed at, his mother or his wife? ‘She says why should we bother with her when she’s so rude to Charlotte?’

  I watch him; I see his face so closed and guarded. He is fiddling with a little stick from the sushi, and it snaps now, between his fingers.

  ‘And I suppose Isobel is right,’ he says. Then, after a pause, ‘But she is my mother.’

  ‘Of course she is,’ I say indignantly. ‘And you’re all she’s got.’ I want to be different from Isobel – is that what drives me? Or is it the thought of Yolande Reiber, once so flamboyantly, confidently glamorous, and now so diminished and alone?

  ‘I’m all she’s got,’ Simon parrots back to me, his voice broken and sarcastic, like a boy repeating the punchline of a very bad joke. ‘She has three grandchildren, if she’d only care to acknowledge them.’

  I hate it when he talks like that. It makes me realize how little I know him. It makes me feel small.

  He sighs; he seems to sink into himself. I see our time together fizzling away; I see the threat of the long weekend.

  And I say, ‘I could come with you, if you like.’

  He turns to look at me, and his expression is so incredulous now that I have to backtrack.

  ‘I don’t mean to see your mother,’ I say, although I did mean that, actually. I meant that exactly, but I see from his face how unlikely he thinks such a suggestion to be; how wrong. ‘I mean I could meet you afterwards, in Kew. We could go for a drink or something. If that would help.’ And now I really feel stupid. He is still looking at me as if this is the most ridiculous idea. But then his face clears a little and he shrugs.

  ‘Okay,’ he says. ‘If you want.’ Which hardly amounts to enthusiasm.

  I feel like I put him on the spot. I feel as if he couldn’t say no, though in his head he is with Isobel; it is her opinion, and her judgement, that matters to him.

  I am back for Jono at four-thirty, as instructed. The rush hour is beginning already and he is quiet in the car as we crawl our way through the traffic back to Surbiton.

  ‘Have a good time?’ I ask.

  He grunts, his standard reply.

  I try again. ‘Would you like to have Luke back to our house next week?’

  ‘I can’t,’ Jono mutters, staring out the window. ‘He’s going to New York. Everyone’s going on holiday except me.’

  ‘Not everyone, surely,’ I say.

  ‘Yes,’ he snaps. ‘Everyone.’

  I look in the mirror at him and see his face so scrunched up with misery, and this after spending the day with a friend. I wonder what became of the sweet, happy little boy that he used to be, and my heart bleeds and tears. And I question the rightness of sending him to a school where everyone else has so much more than him, but where these people that he refers to as ‘everyone’ have become the norm. They are his norm, I realize, and we’ve made it that way. We shoved him among them, and now I can only watch as I see him measuring himself against them, and falling short. I do not know what to say to him. We drive the rest of the slow journey home in silence.

  I’ve planned to meet Simon in the pub by the station at nine-thirty, but I leave home much earlier than that. I phone Andrew at work and tell him I’m going to a last-minute mums’ get-together; I want to be gone before he gets in.

  ‘Really?’ Andrew says, and immediately I realize how unlikely it is that there would be any kind of class get-together in the school holidays, when he knows as well as I do that most of the others will be going away.

  I hesitate for a second. Just a second, but even so I could kick myself. Instead, I pinch my arm, digging my fingers in hard.

  ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘It’s Amy Lewis’s idea,’ as if that, somehow, is validation.

  ‘Right,’ he says. And then there is an awkward pause, in which I pinch my arm a little harder and rack my head for something more convincing to say. Then, ‘I’m surprised you’re going when you hated it so much last time,’ he says.

  ‘I still have to go,’ I reply. ‘I still have to make the effort.’

  I am in Kew soon after half-past eight. Simon, of course, will be coming by train. I wonder if he is here already or if I will see him, walking down the road to his mother’s house. I drive around the streets a while, then pull over on the main road just near the station approach, but a little way down past the crossing. There are double yellow lines on the road here and I am not meant to stop; I put my indicator on and keep the engine running and get my phone out, so that I can look as if I have stopped just for a moment to answer a call. Simon doesn’t know what car I have, and I am far enough away for him not to see me, I hope; I wouldn’t want him to think that I was watching out for him, that I was prying. The drizzle has turned to rain now and my view through the windscreen is obscured. I switch the windscreen wipers up a speed and tilt myself downwards, so that I can scan the people huddled under umbrellas, as intermittently they swarm away from the station approach and spread out to go their separate ways. I cannot see faces, but I would know Simon. I would know him by the way that he moves, and the cut of his clothes.

  For twenty minutes or so I loiter like this, with the engine running and the car steaming up, bu
t it seems that I have missed him. He must be at his mother’s already. Slowly I drive towards her house. I drive past it, and pull over just a little way down. The lights are on downstairs; there is no way of knowing for sure that Simon is in there, but of course he must be. Perhaps she has cooked him a meal, and now they are eating it. But then I think of her picking out her slices of ham at the deli, with that diamond ring conspicuous, heavy on her finger as she points and chooses. Mrs Reiber wouldn’t cook. Her kitchen looked as if it hadn’t been used in years. But I picture the two of them inside that house together, struggling to talk. I wonder if they are in the room at the front of the house, sitting on formal chairs, drinking tea from delicate, porcelain cups held on saucers. I try to imagine them there, and to imagine that room, its furniture, its shadows and corners, the way the lighting would yellow their faces. I take my foot off the brake and roll the car forward a little; I can see clearly the drawn curtains of that room, but no particular shadows beyond them, no sign of movement. But perhaps they are at the back of the house, in that small, strange room beyond the kitchen. I picture them cooped up in there, too close, too stifled by the tension of Simon’s anger, and his mother’s blank denial. I let myself dream and I picture myself in there too, sitting on that cracked leather sofa beside Simon. Please, Mrs Reiber, I am saying, you cannot deny your own daughter. You’re hurting yourself. You’re hurting your only son. And meekly she concedes. She softens before our eyes. I picture Simon smiling fondly at me as he squeezes my hand. I picture myself sorting it all out, necessary after all.

  I shouldn’t have come so early. It’s a long time to hide and wait and it’s cold in the car. The windows have steamed up again, and I turn the blower on full blast. At ten past nine I move away, and drive closer to the station in search of a parking place. At nine-thirty I walk into the pub and look around, but he isn’t there. The place is almost empty. I go back outside and stand under the doorway to shelter from the rain, and wait.

  As soon I see him I know it is a mistake. He is clearly tired and probably just wants to go home. I watch him walking towards me and I think what an effort you have to make when you are seeing someone new. He drags a smile onto his face and I fix one onto mine.