Everything and Nothing

by Araminta Hall

  Toby rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand. Christian wanted another cigarette. ‘Look, it’s not like she didn’t know what she was doing. It was shit, but shit happens. People have miscarriages every day. I can’t believe that three years on she’s still upset about it. My guess is that she’s seen a chance and decided to take it. And you, my friend, should politely decline.’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t think she’s like that.’

  ‘You don’t want to think she’s like that.’

  Christian didn’t know what he thought. It was possible Toby was right. ‘Do you sometimes wonder if you are who you really are?’

  ‘No. Yes.’

  Christian felt angry, not necessarily with Toby, but he was there. ‘You don’t understand.’

  ‘Please, don’t start telling me how hard married life is. All that shitty love, friendship and children.’

  Christian squeezed his hand round his glass. ‘No sex, constant rows, massive mortgage.’

  ‘It’s not that bad.’

  ‘What, and I suppose you’d swap your life for mine at the drop of a hat?’

  ‘I’m not saying that, I’m just saying that Ruth and the kids are fantastic and sometimes I leave your house and feel a bit, I don’t know, empty.’ Christian laughed. ‘Look, I’m not trying to say that my life’s crap and all I’ve ever wanted is to settle down, but from where I’m sitting, yours doesn’t look too bad either.’

  Christian sat back. He felt battered. How could he and Toby be the same age, from the same background and yet at such different points in their lives? Everywhere there were all these choices, how could you possibly ever tell if you’d made the right one? ‘D’you want another?’

  ‘No, I’ve got to go.’ Toby stood up. ‘You were like this at school, always worried that so and so was doing better than you, or that the party you didn’t go to was the best of the year. No one has it all. We’re grown-ups now and grown-ups have it hard. None of us are out there having non-stop fun, in fact most of us are lucky if we’re having even a bit of fun. I’d cancel Sarah and take Ruth out for dinner.’

  Agatha had wanted to get Hal at least interested in the concept of eating before Ruth took him to see the stupid nutritionist on Friday. But half-term had been so busy with the vegetable garden and the trip to the museum and swimming that she hadn’t done anything. Still, she doubted the doctor would have much effect anyway.

  Ruth looked drawn and tired when she came down for breakfast on Friday, casual in jeans and a shirt, but she made a great play about how excited she was to have the day off. Agatha could have told her this was a stupid thing to say and, sure enough, Betty’s lips were trembling over her Rice Pops.

  ‘I want to come, Mummy.’

  ‘But it’ll be so boring. Hal and I are only going to the doctor’s.’

  ‘I like the doctor’s.’

  ‘No, you don’t.’

  ‘I do.’

  Betty was crying now, working her way up to full-blown hysterics. ‘It’s not fair. Hal gets to spend a whole day with you. I never spend a day with you.’

  Ruth put down her cup of coffee and for a moment Agatha wondered if she was going to cry. ‘I’m sure Aggie’s got something great planned for the two of you today.’

  ‘I don’t want Aggie. I want you.’ Agatha told herself not to be offended by this as children always said things they didn’t mean. She started to load the dishwasher and, even with her back turned, felt the atmosphere shift. Ruth was about to capitulate. As far as Agatha could see, situations like this were yet another reason not to work after you had children; you felt so guilty you never said no and your kids knew they could get away with anything if they moaned enough. If Ruth had been the one planting vegetables and looking at dinosaurs and marvelling at two strokes of doggy paddle swum without armbands she would now be able to say no.

  Betty’s screaming was becoming incessant, drilling into all of their heads, so that even Hal had covered his ears.

  ‘Okay, okay,’ Ruth shouted over the maelstrom. ‘All right, you win, come with us.’ Betty immediately stopped crying and climbed onto her mother’s lap, planning their day with intricate precision.

  Ruth looked over her head to Agatha. ‘You could probably do with a day off, Aggie. And it would be lovely to spend some time with them both. We could go and have lunch in Hyde Park after the appointment, feed the ducks maybe.’

  ‘I’ll make supper for when you get back.’ Agatha grabbed at strands of usefulness.

  ‘No, please, I insist. Take the day, go and meet some friends. You’ve been working like a Trojan since you got here, you must think we’re slave drivers.’

  Agatha smiled, but she felt like crying. She had begun to allow herself to believe that the Donaldsons weren’t ever going to notice that she never seemed to want a day off, never got a phone call, never met anyone. Now she would have to go through all the stupid pretence again of getting another mobile so she could ring herself, only to go and sit on her own in cinemas.

  It wasn’t that Agatha had never had friends. She’d had a couple of serious and intense relationships, friendships which she’d thought were the answer to her prayers and would never end. But she had always misjudged the other girls; they never understood her like she thought they had.

  The best friend she’d ever had was a girl called Laura who she’d met at the cleaning agency she’d joined when she’d first got to London. From the moment she’d seen her in that spick and span offi ce in Kensington she’d known they’d be friends for ever. There was something so sophisticated about her blonde highlighted hair and upturned collar and cut-glass accent that made Agatha want to possess her like some fabulous vase you’d put on a high shelf and never get down.

  Agatha had managed to refine her Northern drawl in the time it took to cross the offi ce and even she was impressed with the sound that came out of her mouth. She had steeled herself to seem super confident and gave a convincing story about needing money to fund her trip to Argentina which she was planning for the second half of her gap year. And wouldn’t you know it, but Laura was also working for gap-year travel, except she was going to America. And with friends.

  It was easy to find excuses to go into the office and even easier to make Laura laugh or exclaim over their similarities, when really you could read so much about a person just by looking at what book they were reading or what they ate for lunch or the magazine they read. Pride and Prejudice, Pret’s no-bread tuna sandwich and Heat, respectively.

  Agatha’s mother and father were cruising in the Bahamas and her brother was at St Andrews and never came home. Agatha hated going to their house in Oxford without them and so she was sleeping on a friend’s floor while earning some money. She would love to ask Laura round, but her friend’s mother had depression and spent most of the time in bed and was really funny about dirt, so she couldn’t risk it. In fact, she confided to Laura over coffee one day, her friend was starting to irritate her as she had a new boyfriend and seemed to have forgotten about everyone else’s existence. Which was such a bummer as almost all her other friends were away.

  Tell me about it, Laura had said, this summer was turning out to be so tedious she half wished she was going to Bristol in September. Bristol, that’s funny, I’m off to Exeter, which is quite nearby, said Agatha. And at that moment she believed whole-heartedly that by next September she might have got herself into that very university because, when she stopped to think about it, that was what she had wanted to do all along.

  Laura knew interesting people and went to amazing places and she started taking Agatha. Agatha was aware that to fit in properly she was going to have to be fun and available and always say the right thing. The problem was that it soon became clear that saying the right thing was knowing all the other people they were always talking about. Laura and her friends seemed to begin every conversation with the words, Do you know . . . or, As Connie was saying . . . or, When I was last at Tom’s cottage . . . These phantom presences began to
loom large around Agatha, they even invaded her dreams. It grew tiresome not knowing anybody and Agatha could feel people begin to lose interest in her as she showed her ignorance again and again. And it was almost like she was getting to know them all anyway, they all sounded the same and none of them ever materialised. So, one night, when maybe she’d had one glass of Chardonnay too many, she was amazed to find out that she did know Vicky, Vicky from Hammersmith who had been travelling round Europe all summer and whose parents lived in Hertfordshire. With the long blonde hair and amazing body, yes, how weird.

  Except, wouldn’t you know it, bloody Vicky turned up a week later, all bronzed and amazing, exactly as everyone had said. And she didn’t know Agatha from Adam, had never even seen her. It was awful as Agatha had spent a whole evening telling anyone who would listen about their family holidays to Cornwall and their shared love of three-day eventing. Laura stopped calling after that.

  It reminded Agatha of Sandra at school who had stopped talking to her when she’d asked Agatha’s mum if she really did know Billie Piper. Her mother hadn’t even known who Billie Piper was, which just about summed up the stupid woman. But even after she was found out, Agatha had wanted to scream that she did know her. She had read every single word ever written about her, she had followed her since before she was properly famous, certainly before stupid Sandra had heard of her. And then she’d had to listen to Sandra going on about Billie’s eating disorder in the playground and she’d felt like she had to put her straight or hit her. But nobody would listen, so she’d said that Billie’s mum was her mum’s best friend and she’d known Billie since they were babies and she didn’t have anorexia. And, you know what, even now she would be hard pushed to admit that it wasn’t true.

  Ruth began the day out with her children so positively. It had been a good idea of Betty’s and Ruth was ashamed she hadn’t thought of it herself. Unusually the monotony of grey which seemed to always sit over their heads had been replaced by a perfect sun resplendent in a baby blue sky. If you ignored the fact that they had to begin the day with a visit to a £120-an-hour nutritionist because her son wouldn’t eat, you could imagine it was going to be perfect. And Ruth was going to make it perfect. She might have missed the vegetable garden, but surely special times could be found in lots of places.

  On the way to the tube she thought it wise to remind Betty where they were going. ‘You know you have to be really, really good in the doctor’s office, don’t you?’

  ‘Of course I do, Mummy.’

  ‘You have to sit completely still and let me talk to him. Do you understand? Absolutely no funny business. Because it’s very important that Mummy gets to hear everything he says. And then we can go to the park and if you’ve been an extra good girl I’ll get you the biggest ice cream you’ve ever seen.’

  Ruth always got a stab of anxiety going into the tube with her children. She ran through countless scenarios where a terrorist would let off a bomb or both her children would try to jump in front of a tube at the same time or someone would snatch Betty but to get her back she would have to leave Hal alone. Plus of course all the usual problems, like the fact that hardly any of the stations had lifts and no one ever helped with the buggy. She tried to visualise Christian in his day to calm these anxieties and then laughed at herself. It was odd how he still remained her constant, like a talisman that could be worried in her pocket.

  The tube roared into the station with a rush of warm air which made Ruth want to shut her eyes and pretend she was standing on an African plain. The platform felt old and worn beneath her feet and there was an awful lot of day to get through before they could make their way back to this station. She worried that time with her children always going to be like this, a series of events that needed to be got through before you could legitimately put them to bed.

  ‘Come on,’ she was shouting now, pulling Betty onto the tube and in the process squeezing her hand too hard against the metal buggy handle and making her cry.

  ‘My Brat,’ screamed Betty as the doors whipped shut.

  Ruth spun round in time to see the grotesque plastic doll fall under the train.

  ‘We’re going to kill my Brat,’ wailed Betty as the train crunched off.

  ‘Don’t worry, sweetheart, I’ll get you another one,’ said Ruth, secretly pleased because those dolls could give women a complex all on their own and yet Ruth was sure she’d read they were the bestselling toys out there. They made Barbie and Sindy look like nuns, with their ridiculously provocative bodies that could only have been dreamt up by a fetishist. And their facial features were no more than an advert for plastic surgery, not to mention their clothes, which would make a street-walker blush. One day she would muster the energy to explain to Betty why it was neither clever nor cool to own such toys, why being a woman was about so much more than how you looked, why . . . God, she couldn’t think straight against the unrelenting screech of Betty’s hysterics.

  Christian knew Toby was right about Sarah, but he’d also known that he would find it impossible not to meet her for lunch. He arrived first at the Italian restaurant a few roads away from his office and chose a table at the back. The table was too small and intimate, with its depressing red-and-white checked plastic tablecloth and obligatory vase of breadsticks. Ruth would laugh at the framed photo of the Pope above the entrance to the toilets; he could imagine her saying that it didn’t bode well for the food.

  Sarah was an acceptable ten minutes late but she arrived looking embarrassed and flustered. She turned to the side as she squeezed into her seat opposite him and he could see how much weight she had lost, she almost looked like one of those models in Ruth’s magazine. Today she was wearing black trousers with a black T-shirt and a leopard-print scarf tied round her neck. Her once blonde hair hung loose around her shoulders and there was only the faintest trace of make-up on her eyes. He knew it was wrong to find her as attractive as he did.

  ‘I’m sorry to have called,’ she said immediately. ‘But it was all too weird.’

  ‘No, it’s nice. It was the right thing to do.’ Christian pointed to the bottle of wine he wanted, it seemed unlikely that he could get through this without alcohol.

  Sarah was nervous, he realised; she kept on re-adjusting her scarf and he noticed the red rash creeping up under her chin like some sort of rampant ivy.

  ‘Anyway,’ she said, breaking a breadstick but not eating it, ‘new job?’

  ‘Yeah, I’ve been there nearly two years now.’

  ‘And it’s okay?’

  ‘Well, you know, as okay as jobs ever are.’

  ‘But you’ve done well.’

  Christian tried to hear a note of sarcasm in her voice, but couldn’t find it there. He nodded and knew that he had to return like some semi-pro tennis player. ‘And what about you, what have you been up to?’

  ‘Well, I’ve mainly been living in Australia.’ She looked down and crumbled more of the breadstick. Their wine arrived and Christian poured them both a glass.

  ‘Australia. Wow.’ He wanted to leave. He had always hated anyone who went to Australia for anything other than a holiday.

  ‘Yeah, it was great.’ He could tell she wanted to say something and so he let the silence build. Sarah tucked her hair behind her ears incessantly. ‘After the, you know, miscarriage, I went back to my mum and dad’s for a while and then I thought, fuck it, I’m going to get on a plane, and I ended up in Sydney and I met someone and stayed for two years.’

  Christian liked the sound of someone, it had been foolish to imagine she’d been pining after him. ‘Great. Did you work?’

  ‘Only bar work and stuff. It’s much easier to get by over there.’

  Sarah chatted on about the weather and the standard of living and the beaches, stuff Christian had heard countless times before. It seemed implausible that he had nearly left Ruth for this woman. With the flip of a dice life took you on the oddest ride, up some ladders, down too many snakes. He could have had a whole life with Sarah, they’d
have a two-year-old by now, probably living in some tiny flat somewhere because he had to give most of his money to Ruth, who would legitimately hate him. She could have even met someone else and he would feel lonely and jaded because of course most of their friends and relatives would have sided with her. He’d have two children he hardly knew, one who he’d never lived with, and he would have to take them on terrible days out to the zoo where they would all feel like crying. And then when Betty got older she would say to her future boyfriends that she didn’t trust men much because her father had got some girl pregnant when she was three and left her mother to bring her and Hal up alone.

  And nothing would have been different with Sarah. He could see that as clear as the sun shining through the window from the street. They would have spent the past two years arguing about whose turn it was to take out the rubbish, or why he watched so much football, or who was more tired. It was sad to realise that no one was unique and who you ended up with was more down to circumstances than design. He longed to be at home, sitting on one of the uncomfortable sofas he always teased Ruth for buying only because they’d looked good, with Betty and Hal fighting and him and Ruth looking at each other and feeling for one tiny second like they were in complete agreement.

  ‘So what did you have?’

  Christian hadn’t been paying enough attention to what Sarah had been saying. His pasta was offputting; there was too much of it in too small a plate, making it seem sticky when really it was perfectly well cooked. ‘Sorry, what did I have what?’

  ‘Boy or girl?

  The question was appalling to him and Christian couldn’t imagine why she would want to know. ‘Oh, right. Sorry. Boy.’

  ‘To go with your girl. How perfect.’ The sarcasm was there this time. Should he apologise? Should he bring up everything that had gone on? Was that what she was expecting? He felt weary, it all seemed so pointless, nothing was going to be changed by ranting and raving, but maybe she needed to get something off her chest. Sarah, however, seemed to have had second thoughts and now she smiled. ‘Sorry, I am pleased for you.’