Never Greener

by Ruth Jones

  On a whim, she picked up the phone and dialled the speaking clock, listening to it as she lay on her bed in the semi-darkness, a mixture of street lighting and moonshine streaming in through the dormer windows, illuminating the room. The automated voice of the clock lady, squeezed through the phone’s receiver, dutifully and politely measured out the time. ‘At the first stroke it will be twelve midnight precisely.’

  And bang on cue, the city soundscape erupted into muffled cheers, bursts of fireworks, both distant and nearby, and tuneless renditions of ‘Auld Lang Syne’. She replaced the receiver.

  The celebrations beyond the silent house carried on without her.

  ‘No looking back now,’ she whispered, caressing her warm tummy, kept cosy under brushed-cotton pyjamas.

  There’d been no choice in the end: she simply couldn’t do it. She couldn’t get rid of Callum’s baby, now kicking delightedly inside her.

  ‘Happy New Year, sweetheart,’ she said. And she closed her eyes.

  34

  Three hundred miles north-west of Coventry, Belinda had just settled Ailsa back to sleep. Ben and Cory had been in bed for hours, out for the count, despite the partying in the streets and houses around them.

  Portobello was no exception to the unique madness of Hogmanay and Belinda had long since learnt you couldn’t beat it, you just had to join it. As best you could with three children under the age of six and no other adult to help you celebrate. She didn’t really feel she was missing out – she’d never been a fan of New Year’s Eve. When she was eleven her grandmother had died on 31 December and she’d always associated it with sad times. Of course, things had been different when she got together with Callum – and she learnt to enjoy the two-day celebration as consummately as any self-respecting Scot. But tonight she longed for sleep, and the chance to put this particular year behind her.

  1985.

  The year of Live Aid, third-time motherhood, the discovery of her husband’s infidelity and the start of divorce proceedings. Fucking hell, who’d have thought? Watching Ailsa gently snuffling into much-needed sleep, Belinda felt safe, and loved – by her children, at least – but also very, very alone. And surprisingly homesick. She’d been thinking for some time about moving back to Wales, the comfort of being near her mum and her sister, her friends from school … but it wasn’t fair to uproot the children, and despite what she thought of Callum, she couldn’t separate him from his kids like that.

  She headed downstairs and poured herself a glass of champagne. Seemed a bit frivolous really, she’d probably only manage the one and chuck away the remainder. Sue and Jeff had given it to her after they’d tried persuading her to join them for New Year’s Eve – ‘Bring the kids, they can sleep over, it’ll be fun! We’re gonna play Twister!’ – but Belinda knew it would just remind her of the previous New Year’s Eve, when she and Callum had got drunk and stayed there into the wee small hours.

  It’d been a brilliant party, one of the best they’d ever known. And at a quarter to midnight, they’d sneaked into Sue and Jeff’s en-suite bathroom for a private celebration of their own – exceptionally passionate and unplanned sex on the double-sink unit, knocking night cream and toothpaste onto the black tiled floor and bringing the whole thing to a perfectly timed climax as the party-goers in the street counted down to midnight. ‘Five, four, three, two, one …’

  ‘Jesus! God!’ Callum seemed to come for ages.

  ‘Fuck, I love you, Callum!’ Belinda held onto him hard and they kissed each other with such loving ferocity they could barely breathe. Outside, the revellers were singing ‘Auld Lang Syne’ as Belinda and Callum untangled themselves from their clinch to survey the debris of bottles on the floor. Belinda started picking them up. Thankfully none had smashed.

  ‘Hey, leave that a minute. Come here.’ Callum pulled her into him again. ‘Happy New Year, Mrs MacGregor.’

  ‘1985. Ten years, Callum. Not bad going, eh?’ She rested her head on his shoulder and he quietly and uncharacteristically began serenading his wife, joining in with the singing outside.

  ‘And there’s a hand, my trusty friend,

  And gie’s a hand o’ thine …’

  Belinda found herself overcome with emotion, happy tears lolloping down her cheeks as she joined in with the song:

  ‘We’ll tak’ a cup o’ kindness yet,

  For the sake of auld lang syne.’

  That was the night Belinda fell pregnant with Ailsa.

  How could so much happen in a year, she wondered? How could their lives have changed so drastically, beyond all recognition? Belinda sipped her champagne and looked out of her living-room window.

  In any other circumstance, the coloured lights in the houses and gardens, the collection of illuminated Santas and reindeer and stars, transformed by a light dusting of snow, would have made the perfect Christmas-card scene. There was just one thing missing, she thought.

  The gentle tapping on the front door was a welcome distraction from her maudlin and melancholy mood. She didn’t really know who it might be – a merry neighbour, perhaps?

  She certainly wasn’t expecting to see him.

  Callum.

  Her heart lurched. It always did – it always would. And they stared at each other in silence.

  ‘I can’t do this, Bel.’

  He didn’t want champagne. He had nothing to celebrate. So she made him a cup of tea instead. The midnight countdown had passed unnoticed by both of them, the New Year being far from welcomed in. The scene couldn’t have been more different from the same time last year.

  Since Belinda had thrown him out, Callum had been living at Gary’s, who, in all fairness, had turned out to be a really good friend. He hadn’t judged, and he hadn’t taken sides – unlike Sue and Jeff, who didn’t hold back from telling Callum what a wanker he’d been.

  ‘That woman is worth a hundred of you!’ Sue had spat the words at him when she’d seen him one afternoon at the garage. And all Callum could do was agree.

  He’d lost weight, and lost his spark. Because he’d lost his wife.

  ‘She’s not dead, pal,’ Gary had tried to console him.

  ‘She may as well be.’

  He’d tried going back to work when it first happened. Attempting to normalize everything. But he was in denial. And the phone call from Kate that lunchtime had sent him spiralling downwards. It was the final straw. The ultimate manifestation of the wreckage he’d caused. Not one usually given to self-loathing, Callum plumbed depths of despair he hadn’t known existed as he sank lower and lower.

  School knew there’d been trouble at home, but, despite the conjecture flying around, none of Callum’s colleagues really knew what had gone on.

  ‘They’ll not get any details from me,’ Gary had told him. ‘’Cos it’s none of their fuckin’ business!’

  When Callum had moved his stuff into Gary’s, he’d been numb to his surroundings and could just as easily have moved into a dustbin. But gradually, as the weeks passed, he began to notice that Gary was quite domesticated. He was actually very tidy, in fact bordering on neurotic when it came to housework. The kids never came there to visit – both Belinda and Callum thought this would be disorientating for them. So they told Cory and Ben that Daddy was going to stay with his friend Gary for a while, but that he’d come to visit them every weekend.

  Callum lived for those weekends, though the first time he visited was a disaster: he was unshaven and shaking, wearing tracksuit bottoms and an old rugby shirt he’d not been out of for days, smelling of beer and takeaways and virtually unrecognizable. Belinda sent him packing after half an hour, telling him to sort himself out and come back when he was more together – ‘Don’t be turning up like a down-and-out and frightening the living daylights out of your kids. They don’t deserve that.’ As soon as she’d shut the door behind him, she broke down in silent tears and sank to the floor, horrified at what he’d become and desperate to make him better.

  After two weeks of Callum hardly speak
ing and seldom leaving his room, Gary decided it was time to intervene. He sat Callum down and asked him if he wanted his family back. Of course he did, what sort of question was that meant to be? In which case, Gary said in tough-love tones, it was time for Callum to get his arse in gear, get back to work, get back to life, get back to Belinda and the kids.

  And, miraculously, Callum listened. Listened to this hardened bachelor, who had no kids of his own and had never known the love of a good woman like Belinda, but who could still see the excruciating pain in which his friend was drowning.

  Callum returned to school, and started training again, eating properly and calling the children every day. The weekends were meticulously planned with a sensible balance of fun activities and quiet time, and whenever Belinda levelled any accusations at him or got irritated by him or let her justifiable anger get the better of her, he took it on the chin and continued to apologize.

  He offered to babysit whenever she wanted a night out – not that she felt much like socializing these days – and he did the shopping, even the housework during his weekend visits. He treated it all like an exam he had to pass – and not just scrape through, but pass with distinction. He would pay whatever price he had to pay to get his family back.

  And whenever Kate entered his head, he quickly deleted the image, banished and replaced her with images of Belinda in happier times.

  Christmas had been really hard. Belinda said he should come to the house mid morning to open presents – but he wouldn’t get to be Santa on Christmas Eve, she’d manage that by herself. When she told him this, it was like a punch to the stomach, but he took his punishment without complaint. ‘You can stay for lunch,’ she said, ‘and watch a film with the kids. But I’m having my friends round in the afternoon and I don’t want you here the same time.’

  Callum noticed their friends had now become Belinda’s friends. In only a matter of weeks. There were always going to be casualties when a couple split up, but Callum would have far more of them than Belinda – in fact, Belinda would have no casualties at all.

  So he’d done as he was told on Christmas Day and the kids were none the wiser, it seemed. Ben was maybe a little more confused than usual, but Belinda and Callum kept the mood so buoyant and friendly that the little soul was reassured all was well. He slept soundly that night.

  Unlike Callum, who returned to Gary’s empty house in the darkness of a Scottish Christmas afternoon. Gary had gone to his mother’s in Morningside and was not planning to return till Boxing Day. Callum cut a lonely and forlorn figure as he let himself in, sitting in the big chair in the living room and watching in silence as the Christmas tree lights flashed on. And off. And on. And off. He sat like that for hours, wondering whether his efforts were doing any good. He soon found out that they weren’t.

  On 29 December, Belinda told Callum she was planning to see a solicitor in the New Year, in order to start divorce proceedings. Her voice had broken when she said she’d be citing his infidelity as reason for the divorce, and that yes, she would be naming that disgusting little whore he’d had an affair with – she couldn’t bring herself to say Kate’s actual name.

  Callum tried to stay calm, but failed. He knew he didn’t deserve any sympathy, but divorce? What happened to second chances? Belinda just laughed in his face. And for the first time since that fateful night in November when both their worlds had fallen apart, Callum and Belinda had an argument. A full-blown, crockery-smashing, accusation-hurling row, with Callum once again pointing out that he’d chosen her, hadn’t he? He’d chosen Belinda – not Kate! To which Belinda once again expressed amazement that Callum should think she ought to be grateful for this!

  ‘Say thank you, Belinda! The nice husband has chosen the sad old wifey over the twenty-two-year-old sex-mad beauty. Aren’t you the lucky one!’

  Callum had, of course, told her she’d got it all wrong, that that’s not what he meant, but Belinda ignored him and the row ended with her screaming that she wished she’d never met him and couldn’t wait to be divorced so she could start her life all over again.

  She hadn’t meant a word of it, but it was too late, she’d said it now. The only thing she could be grateful for was the fact that the kids were over at Callum’s mother’s at the time, and oblivious to their parents’ massive fight.

  So now, forty-eight hours later, with 1986 only a few minutes old, Belinda and Callum sat in their kitchen, drinking tea in silence, sadly and pensively surveying the room where their marriage had been destroyed, with their three bonny bairns asleep upstairs.

  Belinda was the first to speak. ‘I’m so tired.’

  ‘Me too.’

  And they both tentatively dared to look up. Callum wished he knew how to play it, but he didn’t. ‘I swear to you, Bel, it was a stupid ego trip and nothing more.’

  Belinda remained impassive as he clumsily ploughed on, clutching at anything, any feeble straw of hope.

  ‘You are the only woman I ever, ever want to be with …’

  Belinda interrupted him. ‘And don’t tell me, It will never happen again – you’ve turned yourself into a cliché, Callum MacGregor.’

  ‘Belinda, I’m desperate. And I will do anything. Whatever it takes. You can hire a private detective to follow me round, I’ll wear one of those fucking prisoner’s tags so you can know where I am twenty-four seven – just please, please, can we try again?’

  She could hear the revelling continue in the street outside. Somewhere nearby, drunk and happy people were doing the conga. She sipped her tea. She knew so much depended on what she said next to this man who she had loved for over ten years, who was father to her three children, who knew her better than she knew herself, who really was her best friend and with whom she shared the same sense of humour; the man who could still, still, after all that he’d done, after all the pain he’d put her through, make her smile and make her feel safe. Was she being weak? A pathetic, feeble woman who couldn’t stand up for herself? She thought of all her girlfriends and what they would say if they were here now – ‘Don’t give in, Belinda! Don’t do it to yourself!’ But none of her girlfriends would ever know their relationship like she did. Or know how much more painful it would be to live without him, or how much misery she’d inflict on their kids by making their dad live somewhere else, or how heartbroken Callum was, living away from them all.

  No.

  Nobody would ever understand that.

  She sighed.

  ‘I’m not sleeping in the same bed as you, Callum. Not yet.’

  ‘Of course.’ He tried to suppress the joy surging up inside him, terrified she would change her mind if he came on too strong.

  ‘And if it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work. I can’t make any promises.’

  ‘No. But we can try?’

  ‘Yes. We can try.’

  And Callum gently took Belinda’s hand and she let him kiss it.

  ‘Thank you.’ He could barely speak.

  And unexpectedly, she found herself smiling at him. ‘Happy New Year,’ she whispered.

  2002

  35

  Kate looked out at the fields and sheep and trees hurtling past the train window at a hundred miles an hour, and smiled. These were the same dull fields and bored, bleak sheep and lifeless, leaf-shedding trees she’d looked at barely three days earlier, but now the sight of them filled her with joy. How different this journey was from the identical one she’d taken on Thursday. Even the stewed coffee tasted great. This time she was alone in the first-class carriage. No one to see her grinning like a novice drinker who’d just tried sherry for the first time. She stretched out in the capacious leather seat and hugged herself, relishing her delicious secret.

  Kate had, until a few days ago, been well practised in managing any thoughts of Callum MacGregor, keeping her promise to herself to shut him away in the cast-iron recess of unwanted memories, to be immediately banished if he should ever dare to wander audaciously into her occasionally unguarded mind. She’d succeede
d for the most part because of her uncrackable determination. The same determination that had got her where she was in her career made her strong and defended in other areas of her life, too. But it hadn’t always been easy to keep him at bay. The explosion of internet use in recent times had been a particular challenge. She knew it was an option to search for his name online, to sign up to Friends Reunited or some other digital means of communication and track him down. But she also knew that that way madness lay.

  It was self-preservation, of course. She’d had to learn to forget him, else she’d never have survived. But now, having seen Callum again just seventy-two hours earlier, it was glaringly obvious to her that this was all she’d been doing for all these years – surviving. Not living, just functioning, ticking along on automatic pilot since the night their affair had so brutally and irreversibly ended in 1985. And, to be honest, that strategy had worked perfectly well until now. She’d thrown herself into her career, thriving on the drive to succeed, to become more and more successful with every role she played, ruthless ambition filling the void inside her which she knew subconsciously was there, but which she never wished to acknowledge.

  Meeting Matt had been an oasis in the internal desert of her soul – this lovely quiet guy from the art shop, with his dry Yorkshire wit and Scandinavian looks, intelligent, softly spoken, self-assured, and astonishingly sexy – that first time, they’d stayed in bed for thirty-six hours! And yes, he was different from most guys she met; he didn’t have the annoying neediness and ego of all the actors she’d been involved with – or the directors, for that matter. And although he enjoyed her work, he wasn’t particularly interested in it. He liked Kate the person, not Kate the actress. He was cool, and funny, and gorgeous. And he was the only one – apart from Callum, of course – who’d come close to getting inside, scaling the walls that protected the true and secret Kate, peeping over the edge and momentarily glimpsing who she really was. But then she’d catch him looking in and shoot him back down again before he had the chance to get any closer. Kate loved Matt as best she could, but her best would never be one hundred per cent.