I hold my tongue. So, it’s school Serena hated, not childhood. I can identify with her neglect and confusion. It’s the bearing five children I don’t understand.
‘So, how are we all?’ Bea towers over us. Her Amazonian clefs seem to be pointing at us. But before anyone can reply she has moved in a swirl of fabric to grasp Jenny by the shoulders. ‘You, child, are a delight to watch. Such a voice! With whom did you train?’
Jenny stutters a response.
‘But that’s impossible. Then you’re a real natural.’ And, having bestowed on Jenny the grace notes of her approbation, she turns on her kitten heels and bellows for Julian.
‘My word, Jenny,’ winks Harry, ‘you’re in there!’
*
Once inside our car, I kiss Matt. He smells of kebab, that faintly scandalous aroma of a man off the leash, left to his own culinary devices in the absence of his wife. Rex rang this evening, apparently, but I’m not interested. I urge Matt to just drive. He slips the car effortlessly into gear. ‘So, how was it? Has my wife won the starring role she deserves?’
‘Just drive,’ I repeat, my smile fading, my jaw tightening.
‘What’s up?’ he asks, reaching out to squeeze my knee.
‘I’m not sure,’ I say, and I begin to explain why I was late for the audition. How, as the friends had all shuffled out of Louisa’s room, I heard her voice whisper my name …
*
I turned round to find the poor girl beginning to cry again. I moved to the bedside table and plucked some tissues from a box.
‘Have you heard from Eddie?’ she asked in a small voice. I had to confess that I had not.
‘He shouldn’t have come,’ Louisa said, urgently.
‘Ed’s been here?’ I said. How on earth had he got past Panzer Prue?
Louisa grimaced. ‘Not Ed – Will.’ Then she seized my wrist in an unnerving show of strength. ‘It’s all my fault. Promise me, Amber, you won’t tell anyone. Not even my mother.’ Her large, green eyes were fierce and flinty. I could see no alternative but to agree. Louisa relaxed her grip.
‘They put a needle in my hand— I was exhausted, but they said— I was panicking, everyone was panicking, and the doctors— the doctors said, “I’m sorry Louisa, we have to get this baby out now”, and I didn’t want him to come out— but it was too late—’
I sat on the bed, stroking the girl’s forehead, just as I’d seen Prue doing. How pitifully pale she looked beneath the harsh fluorescent lights, wrapped in a thin nightie. And how large were the dark stains around her sockets.
‘—and then they put a mask on my face, and I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t see— and the doctors were shouting to get the others— and I thought I was going to die, I thought I was splitting in two, that I was going to die— and the morphine— and they said, “He’s got to come out now”, and I knew it was wrong – it is wrong, Amber, isn’t it? But there was nothing I could do—’
I shifted on the bed. I hadn’t a clue what to say. Maybe it was her drugs. ‘Nothing’s wrong, Lou. William’s in the best place, and so are you. You did brilliantly today! Matt told me—’
‘It’s all my fault. Oh Amber, help me. It’s all my fault,’ she wailed, gripping my arm even more tightly than before.
‘You’ve done nothing wrong,’ I murmured. Inside I felt a complete fraud. Louisa was now retching with sobs. I thought about alerting a member of staff.
‘I kept saying no, but no one would listen— they drugged me and there was nothing I could do— he should never have come out. I wish he’d died, it’s better that he dies. Please don’t tell anyone I said that, but it is. And it’s all my fault, I should never have kept this baby. I thought it would make Eddie come back— that he would want to see his own child—’
I felt a tremor ripple down my spine. It took me a moment to absorb this information. As I did so, my eyes rested on the forest of pastel cards propped on the cabinet. On the surface, the implication of Louisa’s confession was preposterous. Surely women today didn’t think that babies cement relationships? And yet here lay someone, of moderate intelligence one had thought, who had clearly assumed that they did.
‘And now I know Ed won’t ever come back— What can I do, Amber? Tell me what to do.’ Louisa must have seen the confusion on my face, for she continued, ‘I’ve always wanted to be like you—’ Louisa’s monologue had the whiff of what girls at school called a ‘pash’. ‘To be honest, you’re the only one of Eddie’s friends I ever liked. Or, rather, you’re the only one I thought liked me. I’m so much younger than all of you, and I was so desperate to be taken seriously. So when I realised I was expecting, I thought it would make me look grown-up.’ Louisa gulped for air. ‘I think that’s why Ed stopped me seeing you all once my pregnancy was confirmed. I hoped it was because he was concerned, didn’t want me overtired. But now I see it’s because he hates the way I’m now linked to him for ever.
‘I am so envious of you, Amber. You’re so lucky, and free. Your life is your own, you can do whatever you want. Me, I’ve just repeated my mother’s mistakes.’
At this, Louisa sank back into her pillow. I sat staring at my knees. Outside in the corridor, something large and metallic clattered to the floor; two members of staff roared with laughter. I felt waves of guilt at finding Louisa’s distress so reassuring. So it was true: not everyone wanted babies. Not even once they’d had them. And, even if Louisa’s gloom was short-lived and could be attributed to medication, or to the recent trauma of childbirth, or even to postnatal depression, which can be cured (see The Mother as Child: Psychiatric Treatment Options in the NHS for Post-partum Depression, by Dr Matt Bezeidenhout, London, 2000), still I felt as though I’d heard a door creak open which had been stuck for a very long time.
I leaned forward and hugged Louisa tightly in what I hoped was a suitably Prue-like posture. All the time, I wanted to prove myself worthy of her by conjuring up the perfect sentence to reassure her she was wrong.
Which was hard, because a part of me still believed she was right.
*
While I’ve been telling this story, Matt has listened carefully; as if hearing a case study for his finals viva. By the time I get to the end, we are parked outside our house in a resident’s bay. Matt reaches out and tucks a blade of two-toned hair behind my ear. I catch a whiff of onion.
‘Quite an eventful twenty-four hours,’ he murmurs.
I freeze, and feel hot all over at the same time. The memory of airline seat fabric scraping my knees is so sharp it seems to burn my skin. I touch the right one, expecting to feel the betraying ridges of a graze. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, your big meeting, William’s birth and now Louisa’s confession. Heavy stuff. Reckon we’re both knackered. Although I have to say it was fun to be back with the Obs and Gynae guys. I trained with Louisa’s consultant, you know. And there’s nothing like seeing a new life come into the world. One of life’s magical moments. Shame he’s so sick.’
‘Let’s go inside,’ I say, sharply, my knees trembling.
*
As I floss my teeth, I think about how life is all about choice. What on earth do you do if you suspect you’ve made the wrong choice? Or if the decisions you made were the right ones, but based on misconceptions?
Clearly some choices have minimal repercussions. Yesterday, I’d tried on a dress in a bare-bricked boutique on Mercer. The fabric was pink and delicate, with just the right amount of subtle support around the bodice. At today’s laughable exchange rate, it was a steal. But still my inner anorexic had balked at sartorial nourishment.
‘—and there was something about the cut’, I’d said to Matt earlier today, during my severely edited description of my trip to New York, ‘which made it far too baggy around the hips.’
‘Well, you don’t want that,’ he’d said, reasonably.
‘—and they said they could take it in, and add a few darts here,’ I’d said, gesturing to under the bustline, as if Matt even knew what
a dart was, ‘but I couldn’t see the point.’
‘Plus,’ I’d added, when my last comment had elicited no response, ‘the material was really light and floaty, and I know it’s been hot here, but it is nearly autumn—’
‘Sounds like you did the right thing in not getting it, then,’ had been Matt’s succinct reply.
There had been a woman in the Club lounge at JFK, reading a book, How To Bond With Your Child. In the next chair, her little girl, the mother in miniature right down to the pout, was refusing her Asian nanny’s attentions. All three were seeking consolation. And each one, I sensed, was destined for disappointment.
Now, dusk slips through the grass-weave blinds, bathing the walls in fractured light.
‘So, do you think I did the right thing, not getting that dress?’ I ask, as we brush our teeth.
‘What dress?’ says Matt, spitting out toothpaste and blood, a colour combination which somehow works for the picture on the tube, but which looks revolting spat into the basin.
‘The one in New York I told you about. The one I tried on.’
‘The floaty one?’
Very good, I think. ‘The floaty one.’
‘I thought you didn’t like it?’
‘I didn’t say I didn’t like it. I said it was too baggy around the hips.’ I yank out a long skein of dental floss before remembering that I’ve already flossed. I try to throw it away in the bin, but it wraps itself around my wrist.
I have to wait while Matt rinses and gargles (who gargles?) with mouthwash, a ritual in his night-time schedule as sacred as prayer. His cheeks fatten and wobble with the liquid inside them. Matt at his most Neanderthal, I think. ‘I said, I didn’t say I didn’t like it.’
He spits, and then turns on the tap to full force, sluices water around his mouth, before spitting again. Then he holds my gaze in the mirror. His voice is overly even. ‘I didn’t say that you’d said you didn’t like it. It was simply the impression I got after all your negative comments on the dress.’ He wipes his mouth dry before hurling the towel into the bath.
‘So, you think it wouldn’t look good on me?’
‘How the hell should I know? I didn’t see it.’
‘Because if that’s what you’re thinking—’
‘I’m not thinking anything. Why on earth didn’t you buy it?’ In the mugginess of the bathroom, his tanned brow is speckled with sweat.
‘Why do you think?’
Matt frowns, and mutters something I don’t catch. ‘Look, if this is about you fishing for reassurance that you’re worth spending money on, you’re out of luck. I’m not in the mood.’
‘I’m not fishing—’
‘Good, because I can’t quite see what buying expensive dresses—’
‘It wasn’t expensive.’
Matt exhales. ‘So, let’s get this straight. You find a great dress, which is cheap—’
‘It wasn’t cheap.’
‘Which isn’t cheap, but we could have afforded it, right?’
I nod.
‘And which is just your colour. And yet you don’t buy it. And you talk it down to me, and I agree – even though I couldn’t see then, and I still can’t see, what the hell it’s got to do with me – that you did the right thing, not buying it. And now I discover that actually, deep down, you really wanted the dress.’
I put my hands to my face. ‘I don’t know if I really wanted the dress, I just want to know whether you think I’ve done the right thing in not getting the dress.’
Matt coughs a laugh. ‘Right now? If not buying the dress has ruined my evening, then, OK, I think you made the wrong decision in not getting the dress. OK?’ He strides out of the bathroom, and turns on the television. A football commentator sounds like he’s having an orgasm.
I stare at myself in the mirror. Matt’s right: it’s been one hell of a twenty-four hours. The bags under my eyes are a pair of wrecking balls. In moving to the window to roll up the blind – the better to see these new facial deformities – I trip over the Perspex set of scales. I yelp with pain, and kick them back, which hurts my naked foot even more.
‘Now what?’ Matt yells over the climax. ‘Look, if this is still about the dress, go to fucking Harvey Nichols, or wherever, and buy the fucking dress tomorrow.’
What do you mean: Is this about the dress? I want to ask him. What else could I possibly be upset about? I stand in the doorway, rubbing my stinging foot. ‘I can’t buy it anywhere else,’ I say, tersely, and with exaggerated enunciation, as if to a difficult child. ‘It was a one-off piece, from a one-off boutique. New York was my only chance.’
Matt turns off the TV by remote control. ‘Oh, what, and I’m supposed to know that? That deep down you really wanted to buy that dress, despite giving me a very good impression of not wanting it?’ He snorts again. ‘Well, I took my cue from you. And you know what? You’re just furious with me because you’re furious with yourself for making a decision, and getting it wrong. And you’ve no one else to blame.’ He points the remote at the TV. ‘Any other decisions you’ve made in your life you want to blame me for?’
And then he switches on the TV once more. The football crowd sounds like it’s cheering, just for him.
Chapter Twenty-two
MATT ONCE SAVED my life. For our first Christmas together we holidayed in Cape Town, where the current is fickle, not to say treacherous. We borrowed the family apartment, and sunbathed by day. By night we sipped white wine on the balcony and watched sunsets. In between we giggled over the boys performing one-armed press-ups on the beach, and licked each other’s salty skin.
Matt swam like Dad, confident, absorbed. I stayed on the beach, tacked to the towel by a paste of suncream and sand. I would watch him until my eyes ached with the dazzle of sun on water. Deep down, I despised my own timidity.
So, one morning, I waded out behind him and pushed off as he did, mimicking his strong strokes. He was apparently reliving a bunker shot from a game with his father the day before, when he heard close behind him my panting and anxious giggles. Turning, he saw me, my hands little moles’ paws floundering in a doggy paddle, thrilled at how far I could swim.
The tide at that hour was shifting. No sooner had we set off to swim back to the beach when I was knocked by the rising swell and dragged under. Panic seized my limbs. My legs flailed in the waxy expanse of icy water. I shouted to Matt, but the wind stole my words. A merciless weight pressed in on my chest. I lacked the strength to scream louder. I couldn’t breathe. I needed to raise the alarm, but in heaving one arm out of the water I was sucked beneath the fold of another indifferent wave. Acrid salt water spurted up my nose. I barked several coughs, and my lungs burned. I gasped for air. And all the time Matt was swimming further and further away with every stroke.
What made him turn? When he did, his eyes registered the void where he thought I was. He scanned the sea and trod water, turning full circle in his search. I willed him to see me, but to my horror he now peered back towards the beach, assuming I was ahead of him. I swim like a stone, remember? Look this way. Then he turned one final time and glimpsed me as my weary limbs expired and I sank.
When he reached me, he told me to climb on his back. I thrashed out and grabbed his neck. But he soon realised that the current was too strong for him to swim for the two of us. Shocked by his twisting torso and urgent cries to let go, I released my grip and drifted beyond his reach. Suddenly, a wall of cold water smacked me in the face. I gagged and dipped out of sight. The gap between us widened. We were now both gasping, and it hurt our necks to keep heads above water.
Casting around for someone to shout to, Matt saw in the distance, in a parallel line further along in the sea, several bathers. They stood on what was obviously a sandbank, the water barely up to their stomachs. They had a Frisbee and were playing catch, blissfully ignorant of the drama behind them.
‘Not the beach,’ Matt yelled. ‘Aim for those people.’ By drifting east with the tide, we could conserve energy. Then he tu
rned on his back and swam, kicking fiercely with his legs as he gripped my exhausted arms, and tugged me to safety.
From the sandbank we walked back to shore as though drugged. Our aching thighs were weak and shaky, our calves stinging. We collapsed on the beach, lying there for several hours, wrapped in towels, holding each other tightly.
Chapter Twenty-three
THE DAY AFTER Louisa’s outburst and my row with Matt, I ring the vicar-cage doorbell. In one hand I hold a carrier bag containing a perfumed candle. I’ve seen them in the lifestyle pages of magazines, and have always wanted one. This morning seemed the perfect time to treat myself.
After a few minutes measuring out the doorstep in pigeon-steps, I walk round the block and push open the garden gate. There I find Dylan in discussions with his gardener – last-minute adjustments for the Harvest Festival fête. I loiter next to the wisteria, inhaling the smell of late-cut grass. When Dylan, who relishes using the Latin names for plants, becomes aware that I’m not a parishioner requiring edification, but a friend prone to mocking his pretensions, he ends the conversation with the hired help and holds out his arms.
‘Hey, what a lovely surprise. Are you playing hookie?’
‘Not quite,’ I say, adding that I’ve been made redundant. And now, as Dylan holds me, the tears well up which had remained loyally invisible during the morning meeting while the bailiffs took furniture, and while the policeman explained why Interpol is searching for Rex, who has gone AWOL in Spain with all the firm’s money.
‘Christ!’ Dylan kisses my wet cheek. ‘What about the famous guy you interviewed on Monday?’
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