Never Greener

by Ruth Jones

  ‘Thank God,’ she whispered to herself, wondering how best to wake him without giving him a cardiac arrest.

  On the floor next to the sofa was a near-empty bottle of Jack Daniel’s and an overflowing ashtray. She stepped back into the hallway and turned on the table lamp, gently illuminating the living room through the doorway.

  Still no movement. Just tiny breaths.

  She went over and sat on the sofa, reaching out for his hand, clammy and scared, and holding it tight.

  ‘Kate?’ he mumbled.

  ‘No, sweetheart, it’s me. It’s Hetty.’

  He turned and she took in the full picture of this broken man, silently cursing Kate Andrews for ever coming into his life.

  ‘Alright, mate! How you doing?’ he croaked, his voice ravaged by copious cigarettes.

  He clearly hadn’t shaved for days, his lips stained with stale red wine and whisky, saliva collecting at the edges of his mouth. He was in a T-shirt sporting remnants of his last takeaway, and his hair was greasy and lank.

  She’d never seen him look so dreadful. ‘I’m gonna run you a bath, petal.’

  That had been over six weeks ago now and she’d seen him every day since, their friendship once again made rock solid by what had happened. Understandably, the events of the reunion night had paled into insignificance.

  But one evening in January, Matt brought the subject up. Hetty was dropping him off after a session with Dervla, his therapist.

  ‘I won’t come in,’ she said. ‘But please take these bananas.’ Food was Hetty’s solution to most of life’s problems.

  He was still fragile, still finding it hard to talk much. ‘Dervla was asking me about sex tonight,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, heck!’ Hetty tried to make a joke to hide her discomfort. This wasn’t something she and Matt ever really discussed.

  ‘I used to have great sex with Kate … before it all, y’know, died away.’ He’d got a bit choked then, reliving his frustration and incomprehension at what had happened to him.

  Hetty stayed silent. She’d read in a Sunday magazine that depression could make people disinhibited. Just let him talk, she thought, cringing.

  ‘Dervla asked me about sex with other people. I think she was reminding me Kate wasn’t the only person in the world I could sleep with.’

  Hetty smiled.

  ‘I told her about Adam.’

  ‘Oh.’

  They both stared out of the car window, too embarrassed to make eye contact.

  ‘It was such a long time ago, Het. And it was all so weird. But I really liked it at the time. I’m sorry, but I must’ve done to keep going back.’

  They sat there in silence for a while longer, then Hetty said, ‘Yes, I really liked sex with Adam too.’

  They both contemplated this, and then she remembered something.

  ‘Except …’

  ‘What?’

  She was clearly embarrassed to ask and kept looking straight ahead. ‘Well y’know, when he … y’know.’ He looked at her and she shut her eyes, mouthing the word ‘came’.

  ‘This conversation’s not remotely awkward, is it?’ he joked.

  ‘Did he make a funny noise?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Like a sort of … lowing … y’know, like a cow … like …’ And with that, she went on to do the most extraordinarily accurate impression of Adam having an orgasm.

  ‘Gnnnnnnneeeeeeooooowwwwwwwwwrrrrrrrrrrrrraaaahhnnnnnnnnnnnnnng!’

  It seemed to last an age. And Matt just watched her the entire time, utterly mesmerized by her commitment to the performance. When she’d finished, there was a pause, and then he laughed so long it became infectious. Soon Hetty was joining in, until they both howled with such joy that their laughter tripped over the cliff edge of hysteria and transformed into sobs.

  Eventually, Matt caught his breath. ‘Oh Het,’ he said. ‘You are such a fucking tonic, you really are.’

  He thanked her for the lift and got out of the car. That night was the first proper night’s sleep he’d had in weeks.

  66

  Please mind the gap.

  The Tube was at Victoria – only a couple more stops to go. Kate had wanted him to get a cab there and back – ‘It’ll only take ten minutes!’ – but Callum already felt out of his depth with the cost of living in London. The last thing he wanted to do was waste money when he didn’t have to.

  Kate found his thriftiness endearing and frequently told him so. He said she was patronizing him just because he was almost a pensioner and she’d laughed. ‘You’re not ready for the scrapheap yet, MacGregor. We’ll get another eleven years out of you yet!’ And she’d cracked an imaginary whip.

  He’d been that day to meet the Head at a primary school in West Kensington. Christ, what a difference. In so many ways. He loved her open-mindedness, the diversity of the pupils and the resources available to them. He’d agreed to two weeks’ supply, though there was the possibility of the contract being extended. ‘Let’s just see how we get on,’ the Head said, her attitude and flexibility a million miles away from that of Brian Boyd at North Park Primary.

  They’d been in London for a month now, and although he wouldn’t say he was enjoying it, there were things about it he definitely liked. Travelling on the Tube was one of them.

  Kate thought this was insane – she never travelled on the Tube, citing claustrophobia, commuter body odour and recognition by fans as her three main reasons.

  But Callum loved its anonymity and the fact that nobody ever made eye contact. He subtly looked around him now, whilst pretending to read the Evening Standard. Several passengers were unashamedly carrying flowers that ranged from ostentatious bouquets to a single red rose in a box.

  Valentine’s Day.

  He and Belinda had always taken the mickey out of it. Occasionally she’d buy him some little chocolate hearts when she remembered, and he’d sometimes buy her a bunch of mass-produced roses. But both were dismayed by the money-spinning con it had turned into over the years. And now he couldn’t remember when they’d last sent each other anything to honour the patron saint of Love.

  Thinking of Belinda inevitably made him sad. They’d not spoken for weeks, apart from a brief conversation when he told her he was moving to London. She’d written down the address of the luxury apartment Kate’s director friend Milosz was lending them – ‘I don’t need to know any of that, Callum, just give me the address. Ailsa will want it.’ After taking down the details, she’d told him Ailsa wanted a word, and before she handed the phone over she said, ‘I feel so sorry for you, Callum.’ He knew it would be unwise to respond.

  When Ailsa came on the phone, she was sweet as ever – the only one in the family who could bear to speak to him – telling him she missed him and asking when he was next going to see her.

  This was his life now. Flipped upside down and smack on its face. A series of never-ending arrangements and rearrangements, of travel and logistics, of catch-up phone calls with Ailsa, of pretending that everything was fine and never discussing the undercurrent of sorrow they both felt and which threatened to pull them under at any given moment. Cory refused to speak to him at all, and Ben was still on his travels.

  And here he was, a former deputy head in Portobello, now grateful for any supply work that came his way. Kate would ask him daily if she was worth it. And daily he’d say that she was. Of course.

  When it first happened, the one saving grace was the Christmas holidays – at least he didn’t have to contend with going back to work for ten days, on top of everything else. At least they had space to organize and to think.

  Kate extended the booking at the hotel, and that became his home for the next three weeks. He’d stayed there that first night with Kate, both of them lying silent, holding onto each other after Belinda and Matt had long left, both in shock, both wondering what they were going to do.

  He’d waited twenty-four hours before calling Belinda. She sounded predictably terrible.

 
‘I need to get some things,’ he’d said, as gently as he could.

  ‘You can come over tomorrow morning at ten. I’ll go out for an hour.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘And Callum?’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘I do not want you here when I get back. I never want to see you again. D’you understand?’ Her voice broke on the last word, revealing the pain in which she was subsumed.

  ‘Of course.’

  Ailsa was there when he arrived. He could tell she’d been crying but was trying to keep up appearances – she gave him the biggest hug and told him she was missing him already and surely all that needed to happen was for him and Mum to sit down together and talk things through.

  ‘Joely Parks in my year, her parents got divorced, went to Relate and now they’re getting remarried!’ Ailsa’s sweetness made him want to cry and he didn’t dare speak.

  ‘Do you love her, Dad? – this Kate woman?’ She was brimming with hope that the answer would be ‘no’ and they could all get back to normality again.

  ‘Ails, it’s all so complicated,’ he’d said, avoiding the question. ‘And we all just need time to work out what to do.’ He sounded like a politician, practised in vagueness and dodging the point.

  He’d packed two bags – mainly clothes for school, and his training kit, shaving things, and a family photo in a frame, taken three Christmases ago. Ailsa had seen him pick it up and her heart gladdened – making her feel that a part of him wasn’t quite leaving them all behind.

  As promised he was gone within the hour, feeling nauseous when he left.

  When he’d started back at school for the Spring term, everyone had heard the news. Gossip travelled fast, especially when it came to other people’s personal tragedies, and Callum had found himself the focus of staffroom speculation.

  Brian Boyd asked to see him in his office during break time on the first day back.

  ‘Bit of a mess this, Callum, wouldn’t you say?’ He’d frowned at him over his half-moon specs.

  ‘Yeah. Look, it’ll all settle down. I know it will.’

  Brian sighed. He knew this didn’t bode well. He was also secretly smug that he’d seen the whole thing coming. He’d said to his wife when he heard, ‘I knew it! I knew there was something going on between them!’ But he showed none of his inner self-congratulation and remained stern with Callum.

  ‘The way I see it, you’re a good teacher and we don’t want to lose you. The parents love you and so do the kids. But something like this … She’s in the public eye, for Pete’s sake. If there’s any hassle from the press you’ll have to go. I’m sorry, but you’d leave me no choice.’

  Kate had talked of the press too, but Callum thought she was being melodramatic.

  ‘It won’t come to that, Brian,’ he said and got up to leave.

  When he was at the door, the Head added, ‘Oh, and Callum … for the record, I think you’re a damn fool. Belinda’s a good woman. A bloody good woman.’

  Callum nodded and said, ‘Yeah well, as you said, I’m a good teacher, Brian, and I do a good job. Your opinion of my wife is irrelevant, and my marriage is none of your bloody business.’

  And he left Brian Boyd silently fuming.

  ‘This is Embankment. Please change here for District, Northern and Bakerloo lines.’

  Callum stepped onto the platform and headed with the crowds towards the exit. The escalator ascended slowly, passing people coming down on the other side, all with their own agendas, he thought, each one with their own story to tell, their own secrets to keep, their own heartaches to hide.

  The night air outside was crisp with cold, exhaust-fume heavy and noisy with the London rush hour. He hesitated by a flower stall, tempted to buy Kate some token to mark Valentine’s Day, like so many other commuters. But then it struck him. He had no idea what she thought about Valentine’s Day. No idea whether she thought it a load of nonsense like Belinda did or whether she was a big romantic at heart, who’d be disappointed if he didn’t come home with at least a tatty-looking rose.

  In fact, it struck him there were so many things he didn’t really know about Kate.

  67

  Their paths hadn’t crossed that morning because she’d been picked up for filming long before Callum had surfaced.

  Kate had started work that week on Hunted, her new feature film. She was surprised by how remarkably calm she was, handling work on top of her domestic upheaval, but she’d told Callum that she was one hundred per cent committed to being with him, and that whatever life threw at her, she would rise to the challenge and never complain.

  Admittedly, she was glad things had turned out the way they had and that they were now living in London. She’d have made Edinburgh work if she’d had to, but London was going to be so much simpler all round. She even thought that in some weird way she was doing Belinda a favour. At least now there was no risk of her bumping into Callum by chance.

  The gossip at North Park Primary did die down within a couple of days and at first it looked as if things might return to normal – at least as far as work was concerned. Living in a hotel was a strange existence though – and at the end of their first week, Callum broached the subject of getting a flat.

  In Edinburgh.

  She hadn’t been totally against the idea – there were plenty of pluses, after all: she’d have her parents there for childcare and there were daily flights to London; even the train only took four and a half hours. So she began looking into local schools for Tallulah, darkly joking with Callum that maybe they should send her to North Park Primary.

  Callum didn’t find this amusing in the least. He already felt guilty enough about the disruption he was causing his own family, let alone this innocent five-year-old girl, whose teachers in Chiswick would soon be missing her when term began.

  Tallulah was getting used to living with Nannie and Grandy. Despite Yvonne’s horror at her daughter’s affair, she had only her granddaughter’s interests at heart and was happy for Tallulah to continue staying with them for the foreseeable. Whatever gave her the most stability.

  And Kate had been grateful for this. She knew she’d need to be back down in London soon for work and to fetch more stuff – after all, they’d only packed enough for a week over Christmas. She also knew it wasn’t fair on Matt for him to be living four hundred miles away from his daughter.

  But she also wanted to keep Callum happy, and for Callum to be able to keep working at North Park. So there was a dilemma. And she needed a solution. In the end, the matter was taken out of her hands.

  Since the evening of the revelation, Kate and Callum had spent their nights together at the hotel, with Kate returning to her parents’ home in the morning to be with Tallulah, trying to retain as much normality as possible.

  Christmas Day had been horrendous. Tallulah spent most of it crying, saying she wanted her daddy and refusing to open any presents, and try as they might to comfort her, she was utterly inconsolable.

  Kate left several messages on Matt’s voicemail. ‘I know you hate me and I know you’re beyond angry, but don’t do this to Tallulah. She needs to speak to her daddy on Christmas Day, for God’s sake!’

  But despite becoming more and more desperate with every plea, she still heard nothing back from Matt.

  Two days later, Kate realized she was going to have to enlist help from elsewhere. There was no answer from Hetty’s mobile, so she assumed Matt had told her what had happened and Hetty wanted nothing to do with her.

  The only other option was to call Sylvia, Matt’s mother. Once she’d got past the recriminations and disbelief, Sylvia agreed to go to the house and find out if Matt was there.

  It was New Year’s Eve before Kate finally spoke to Matt, encouraged by Hetty, who was by his side the whole time.

  Kate put Tallulah on the phone and Matt managed to keep it together long enough to tell his little girl that Daddy was fine and he’d had to go to the shop to sell some paintings.

  ‘But did y
ou see Father Christmas?’ she sniffled, and Matt had to fight hard to keep his voice from breaking.

  ‘Yes I did, sweetheart, and he told me he’d got you some lovely presents!’

  ‘I miss you, Daddy.’

  ‘And I miss you too, poppet.’

  When they’d finished talking and Kate came back on the phone, she suggested that it might be easier to communicate via email from now on. And warned him she was looking into sending Tallulah to school up in Edinburgh.

  Matt was too knocked by this shocking announcement to carry on talking and handed the phone to Hetty.

  ‘Kate, I think you must be having some kind of breakdown,’ she said. ‘To destroy all this … to just wreck people’s lives like this … it’s so brutal. And so sudden.’

  Kate sighed, strong in her conviction, utterly without self-reproach or remorse for what she’d done. ‘Hetty, I wouldn’t expect you to understand because you’ve never really had a relationship, have you, but Callum and I were always meant to be together, it’s just other things got in the way. So now we’re picking up where we left off. That’s all.’

  Hetty looked at Matt as he lit a cigarette, his head down, his hands shaking, and said, ‘Is that what Matt and Tallulah are to you now? Things that got in the way?’

  Kate sighed, losing her patience. ‘If you could just tell Matt I’ll email him.’

  ‘Yes, I will,’ Hetty replied. And then in a calm and level voice, added, ‘Oh, and Kate?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I think you’re a fucking bitch.’

  The following week, Callum kissed Kate goodbye in the hotel car park, before getting in his car and setting off for school.

  Fifty metres away, the rapid click of a long-lens camera captured the moment, before the photographer got in a car driven by his colleague and followed Callum all the way to North Park Primary.

  Fifteen minutes later, the driver, Melanie Stokes, a freelance tabloid journalist, had parked up and was on the phone to her editor.