by Voss, Louise
He doesn’t say a word to me for the rest of the morning, remaining closeted with Anthea in their bedroom. Making love, probably, I conclude with a shudder, since the only time they do appear downstairs, he practically has to unpeel her from around his hairy neck.
I look up from the sofa, where I’ve been alternately dozing and aimlessly gazing at Eurosport, having blown out the training session. I’m too tired after my sleepless night.
‘Go on then, love, get the present,’ Dad instructs Anthea under his breath. Then he calls out, ‘Come into the kitchen, Rachel, we’ve got something for you.’
About time too, I think, uncurling myself and obediently following him into the kitchen, as Anthea retrieves a Boots carrier bag from the understairs cupboard. She hands it to Dad, before wrapping herself back around him.
‘Happy birthday, Rachel; it’s from both of us,’ Dad says, passing the bag over and pecking me on the cheek. Then he looks at his watch. ‘I’ve just got to pop out for a bit, to see Gordana. Our flight’s not till seven, is it, so if you book a cab for four-thirty, I’ll be back by then.’
I glance up, but when I see how stricken Anthea’s face is, I hastily look away, and peer instead inside the Boots bag. It contains a box with a picture of something resembling a very small handheld trouser press.
On closer inspection, it turns out to be a hair straightening device. What the hell is the point of that?
My hair is so curly that it would take hours to iron – when it’s tied up in a ponytail, I can barely stuff it through the gap at the back of my baseball cap. I can’t even be bothered to blow dry it, let alone straighten it.
I have to say it’s a source of huge annoyance to me, the way Anthea only ever gives me presents intended to alter my appearance in some way, as if publicly acknowledging that she doesn’t think I’m good enough the way I am. Last Christmas she gave me a book about how to apply make-up properly; the birthday before was a Swiss ball – the same as the one I use every single day in the gym already. Anthea even put a note on it: ‘These things are great for bums! ’ as if I didn’t know. There is absolutely nothing wrong with my backside, anyway, it’s just a bit wider than Anthea’s baggy narrow behind. Although I soon realized, however, that Anthea had actually bought that Swiss ball for herself. Less than a fortnight after my birthday, it disappeared into the spare room, where it has resided, next to the exercise bike, ever since.
‘Thanks for my present,’ I say to Anthea, since Dad has already left the room. Couldn’t you even be bothered to wrap it? I feel like adding.
‘You’re welcome. Those things are a godsend for someone like you. Once you’ve used them a couple of times you’ll never want to go back to that messy look. Make sure you let them heat up for at least twenty minutes first though.’
Whatever. I know that those tongs will never leave their packaging. Life is too short.
‘Want some soup?’
Anthea shook her head. ‘I couldn’t. After the night I’ve just had, I feel sick even thinking about food.’
Nothing new there then, I think. We sit at the kitchen table in silence, both staring at a vase full of fake flowers which Anthea insists on using as a table decoration: lurid and unrealistic blue fabric blooms which obscure the view of the person opposite. The petals, like most of the surfaces in our house, are covered with dust. The kitchen seems too big and empty without Dad’s huge presence in it. In addition to being enormous, he’s never still, constantly jiggling from foot to foot or fidgeting like a five-year-old needing the toilet. Mum used to say he made her feel seasick.
I notice that the table in the corner which usually houses our ancient Apple Mac is empty, although the printer is still there.
‘Where’s the computer?’ I ask.
Anthea blushes unexpectedly: a deep, mottled, unattractive flush which sweeps over her neck and face. ‘I – er – it was broken. I had to take it in to be repaired.’ She must have dropped something on it, the daft bat, I think with annoyance. I was planning to check my emails later to see if there was one from Mark. I wonder what Anthea managed to do to it, but since she is clearly embarrassed about it, I decide to let it go. Surely Mark will call me, anyway.
Anthea stands up. ‘Well, I’d better go and sort out some clean clothes for your father to take to Switzerland. I don’t think he should go, the way he is at the moment, but you know what he’s like….’
Anthea never thinks Dad should go anywhere. He’d be indoors twenty-four/seven if she had her way, just to keep him out of mischief. It must be awful, I think, to lack trust in your partner to that extent.
The telephone rings, and Anthea lunges frantically for it. She is undoubtedly behaving even more oddly than usual.
‘Hello? Oh. Right. Rachel, it’s for you,’ she says, her face impassive. She hands over the phone and goes back upstairs, her narrow shoulders fixed miserably up around her ears.
Please let it be Mark, I beg silently as I hold the phone to my ear – although I know it won’t be. Mark never calls me on the home phone in case Dad answers it. I’ve had my mobile in my pocket all morning, but there’s something wrong with it at the moment – it keeps switching itself off. Another thing I don’t have time to sort out.
‘Hiya, Rach, happy birthday, babes. And happy anniversary to us, too! Five glorious years of friendship …I’ll give you your prezzie later, OK?’
‘Hi, Kerry, thanks for the card. I know, five years… what would I do without you? What time are you getting to Zurich?’
‘I don’t know. Me and José aren’t on the same flight as you, are we?’
‘No. Ring me when you get to the hotel; Dad and I’ll be there about eight, their time.’
Kerry is hopelessly vague about her travel arrangements, frequently missing planes or else catching them by the skin of her teeth. Only José’s chivvying can ever galvanize her into action. I thinks it’s funny how somebody who is so incredibly speedy and agile on court is so infuriatingly sluggish in every other area of her life. Kerry’s blonde hair is often lank and greasy because she can’t be bothered to wash it more than once a week, and the only reason she isn’t on the same flight as us is because she left it so late to book the tickets that our flight was full.
Kerry Sutherland and I have been best friends since we were eighteen, bonding fast through dozens of tournaments around the world. We are so close now that she moved to live near me, so that José could coach her at Dad’s club too. But it says a lot about our lifestyle that we still hardly ever socialize with one another; and our personalities are very different. It’s definitely our careers which hold us together.
We first met at one of the more lucrative Futures tournaments. It was the only highlight of a truly horrible day for me: my eighteenth birthday, and I’d been knocked out in the first round, in a humiliating defeat by a Slovakian girl with dead eyes and a killer forehand. Dad barely spoke to me for the rest of the afternoon, not even when he handed me a small box containing my birthday gift (I’d hoped for a car, or at least some driving lessons, but it was a hideous ruby pendant thing with diamonds round the edges which had belonged to my great-grandmother. I’ve never worn it. And I still can’t drive).
We were about to leave the club, slinking out in disgrace, when a voice with a northern accent behind me said, ‘Hey, you’re Rachel Anderson, aren’t you?’
I swung around, banging my racket bag against the doorframe, and saw a familiar looking, tiny and compact girl of about my age, with four gold rings in each ear and white-blonde hair scraped into a high ponytail. She grinned at me and stuck out her hand.
‘I’m Kerry Sutherland, you beat me two years ago in the Nationals. You aced me five times – I never chuffin’ forgot it.’
‘Thanks,’ I said ungraciously, not wanting to talk to her. My eyes were swollen from crying in the toilets earlier, and I knew I looked a state. Dad tutted and sighed and inspected his watch, and at that moment I felt a flash of rage so pure and intense that I wanted to jab him in the throat
with the handle of my racket.
I turned my back on him. ‘I know who you are too,’
I said. ‘Everyone says how well you’ve done this year. Are you through to the second round?’
‘Yeah,’ she said nonchalantly. ‘Don’t suppose you’ve got time for a coffee, have you?’
I glanced back at Dad, fuming in the doorway. It was tempting, but he’d go ballistic if I made him wait.
‘Better not,’ I said, rolling my eyes and making a face at her that he couldn’t see. I hoisted my racket bag higher on my shoulder. ‘Next time?’
‘Definitely. When’s your next one?
‘Italy, in two weeks.’
‘Yeah, I’m down for that one too. Top. See you at the hotel. Arrivederci, or whatever they say over there.’ She raised her voice and gave a cocquettish wave: ‘Bye then, Mr Anderson! Take care now!’
Everyone, I reflected glumly, knew who my father was.
‘She was nice, wasn’t she, Dad?’ I asked in the car as we drove back home around the M25.
Dad grunted. ‘Dyke, I expect …I’ve told José we’ve got to work on that backhand volley this afternoon,’ he said, cutting in front of a large articulated lorry.
‘But it’s my birthday!’
‘So?’
Happy birthday, Rachel, I thought, as I sank back in the passenger seat.
At least one nice thing came out of that horrible day, I think to myself, and here she is, still on the end of the phone talking to me.
‘Let’s go out for a couple of drinks tonight in Zurich, shall we?’
‘I’m not drinking before a tournament.’
‘Oh, come on, Rach, two drinks – non-alcoholic if you want – won’t affect your performance, will it? We don’t have to be out late. It’s your birthday!’
‘Crap birthday it’s turned out to be,’ I say glumly as the whirring and moaning start up again over my head.
It sounds horribly self-pitying, but I can’t remember ever having a really great birthday. Even my twenty-first was a sombre affair, falling, as it did, during another tournament.
‘Why?’
‘Partly because I haven’t even heard from Mark. More because – Oh, look, I can’t go into it all now. It might be nothing, anyway. But I’ll tell you this evening. Please don’t make me drink, though.’
Chapter 10
Susie
In Dillons supermarket yesterday, I put an enormous carton of cranberry juice into my trolley. It was about a month after Billy had gone; the only evidence of him left in our house was a dusty sock I found under the bed, and his Dewars Grain and Feed baseball cap hanging in the coat cupboard. But the thing is, I don’t like cranberry juice at all (how can something with so much sugar in it still taste so bitter?), but I had picked it up out of habit, because Billy used to drink gallons of it. It hit me like a punch in the belly: I no longer needed to buy cranberry juice for my fiancé.
Shaking, I took out the carton again in the next aisle and left it next to the jars of babyfood. Then I gripped the handlebar of the trolley, holding it tight, bending forwards so my head almost touched it.
I was almost forty-five years old, and on my own. I’d somehow gone through one marriage, and a long term relationship I thought would be for keeps. How had it happened? I never thought Billy would leave me. He worshipped me. He told me he loved me, every day; he wrapped his wiry brown arms around my neck and nuzzled into me, and I was so used to his smell: sweat, pot, engine oil and something musky which was all his and which drove me mad with desire…Someone else was smelling that scent now. She had taken it away from me, without my permission. I reluctantly relived the moment that I found out, trapped in a looped screening of it inside my head. I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about it ever since it happened, only four weeks ago.
I’d gone into work in the morning in a light jacket because although autumnal and breezy, it was still pleasantly mild; but when I came out again at lunchtime to get a sandwich from the deli, the temperature had dropped by twenty degrees. Fall had blown in across the prairies early and bitten me, hard, squeezing the breath from me like a mean hug, beginning to freeze the earrings in my ears and cutting the circulation from my feet even though the deli was only a four block walk. I’d pushed open its heavy glass door and stepped into the warmth inside, the glasses I wore for work immediately steaming up from the lunchtime rush. Once I’d allowed my lenses to demist, I saw that black bean soup was on the specials board. I was just thinking I’d have that instead of my usual ham and provolone cheese, when I saw Billy’s back in the line, his narrow shoulders familiar in the too-big overalls he wore to work.
‘Hi, baby,’ I called, and Billy’s head whipped around as if my voice had fired a warning shot – which he probably thought it had. For once, his eyes hadn’t crinkled up with pleasure at the sight of me; rather, they’d opened wide in the sort of terror I’d reserve for seeing a seriously unpleasant kind of ghost. His hand kind of jerked by his side, and it was only as a delayed reaction that I realized it was because he’d been holding hands with the woman in the queue next to him. I felt momentarily puzzled: why was he holding hands with a stranger? Was she upset? Was this some sort of new law in the deli to engender sociability amongst the customers? Then the penny dropped, and when it did, I thought: what an unbelievable nerve. Nobody could do anything in this town without it being commented on, and yet Billy could openly hold hands with another woman and expect nothing to be said? Perhaps that was because everyone already did know. Perhaps I was the only person who didn’t?
The speckly lino floor began to rock and slide, and I had to sit down on one of the deli’s few spindly white chairs. They were metal, with a seat like a flattened colander. They never seemed to have quite enough legs, those chairs, and I gripped mine with both hands, willing myself not to topple over in it. I heard myself gasping for breath, as if I’d just gone back outside into the cold.
The woman with Billy remained faceless, then. Just a body; hands with which she’d appropriated my man.
I couldn’t speak, or look up from the floor, or do anything, for some time. Not Billy. Not with another woman – he wouldn’t. Surely he wouldn’t. But when he came and knelt down beside me, like a horrible parody of a proposal, the guilty expression on his face told me that he would, and had.
‘I was going to tell you …’ he said, and his voice tailed away in the lunchtime sandwich-production clatter and hum.
I wanted to feel rage; to smash my fist first into his face and then hers, but annoyingly, I didn’t. I just felt a rush of painful love, the sort of love you feel the second after your child is born; that hopeless, unconditional, hurting love. I hadn’t even known I possessed unconditional love for Billy before – what a time to find out. I’d thought my love for him was qualifiable, tempered and even, if I’m honest, diluted by the knowledge that he wasn’t Ivan. He wasn’t a successful, temperamental, beautiful man who everyone was in awe of; he was just good ol’ Billy. He wouldn’t treat me the way Ivan treated me. Perhaps that was why I didn’t even feel I had to marry him. I didn’t need to prove to anybody else that he was mine; he just was. He was my Billy.
Not any more.
‘I’ll go home and pack,’ he added nervously.
‘But I love you,’ I said, and immediately laughed, nervously and mirthlessly. Billy didn’t laugh, although I thought I saw pain flash across his face. It had been a kind of catchphrase of ours, a private joke: But I love you! We used it as sign-offs on letters and notes to one another, turning it into an acronym which became almost his name: B.I.L.Y. I’d say it to him at nights before we drifted off to sleep together: ‘B.I.L.Y., Billy,’ and he’d reply, ‘B.I.L.Y., Susie baby.’ I hadn’t meant to say it then, to tug at his heartstrings intentionally. It just came out, through the jumble of my confusion. ‘But I love you,’ with the subtext being, ‘so how can you possibly do this to me?’
Some time later – I don’t know how much later, or if Billy had left with the woman f
irst – I walked back to the office, this time not even feeling the bitter cold. My skin felt like latex, a protective sheath holding me together and stopping anything coming out. An icy wind had blown up, whirling funnels of dry orange and yellow leaves around in mini tornadoes on the sidewalk. I remember walking through them and thinking that everything in my world was moving now.
Carved pumpkins were already beginning to appear in shop doorways and windows, although Halloween was a few weeks away. By the time it came around they’d be collapsed and moulding, teeth turning black, and I’d be trying to get used to the fact that my lover was gone.
Back in the supermarket, I made my first decision: I had to leave town and do something different.
Radically different. Maybe even get a new career. I’d had enough of being a realtor, being polite and wearing a suit and trying to be competitive so that the other realtors in town didn’t despise me. It didn’t come easy to me, and I’d never quite fitted in. After years of having my British accent admired and commented on, it was no longer a novelty; rather, it was something which marked me out as different and foreign and possibly not to be trusted. Or maybe that was just my paranoia. But I had drifted back to Kansas after Ivan and I split up; drifted, then stayed because of Billy. I’d thought it was my home, I thought I had roots here, but now I wasn’t so sure. What I did know was that I didn’t want to drift anywhere any more. I wanted to settle down somewhere that I’d really belong.
I picked up a six pack of mineral water and gazed at the labels, all depicting their own little snow-capped mountain ranges, and something inside me twisted with yearning.
‘I could go skiing!’ I said out loud, transfixed by the thought of seeing mountains for real. I didn’t want to live there, but it might be a good temporary stop, to help me gather my thoughts and make my decision.
I could almost taste the freshness of the air, and savour the escape of being high above the clouds, away from the choking, biting cold of Kansas. I couldn’t believe that mountains could be any colder than these vast plains.