Life Begins

by Amanda Brookfield

  Life Begins

  Amanda Brookfield was born in 1960 and educated at University College, Oxford. She began her career working in advertising and then as a freelance journalist in Argentina. Her twelve previous novels include Marriage Games, Relative Love and The Simple Rules of Love. She is married with two sons and lives in London.

  Life Begins

  AMANDA BROOKFIELD

  MICHAEL JOSEPH

  an imprint of

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  MICHAEL JOSEPH

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

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  First published 2008

  1

  Copyright © Amanda Brookfield, 2008

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

  All rights reserved

  Without limiting the rights under copyright

  reserved above, no part of this publication may be

  reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system,

  or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical,

  photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior

  written permission of both the copyright owner and

  the above publisher of this book

  978-0-14-192652-0

  For Rod and Gyll

  Truth is rarely pure and never simple.

  Oscar Wilde

  Chapter One

  I sit where only the tips of the waves can reach, slapping my palms at the foamy water. The sand is gritty between my toes, the ties of my sun bonnet tight under my chin. Big hands scoop me high. My father’s face is close, leathered and smiling, his blue eyes sharp against his tan. When he throws me I laugh, safe in the knowledge that I shall be caught. My mother sits reading in a deckchair, her slender white freckled limbs neatly circled by the protective shadow of a large wooden parasol. She wears a blue sarong and matching headscarf, from which one wild curl of auburn hair has broken free to bounce across her forehead. As I shriek she peers over the black ridge of her sunglasses and smiles, her lacquered eyelashes blinking in the glare.

  Charlotte unlocked the door and pushed, with some difficulty, against the pile of morning post lodged on the mat. As she did so her neighbour emerged from his own front door wearing his faded tartan dressing-gown and the backless leather slippers that exposed the yellow crusts of his heels. ‘Happy Valentine’s, my dear,’ he barked, bending down to swap the empty milk bottle in his hands for the full one parked next to his recycling box. He straightened and clutched his back with a grimace.

  ‘Thanks, Mr Beasley, same to you.’

  ‘Young Sam well, is he?’

  ‘Oh, yes, thanks… I’ve just taken him to school.’ Charlotte, now riffling through the mail, cast a doubtful glance at the Volkswagen, which sat like a large frosted tea-cake next to the for-sale sign stapled to her gatepost. Late as usual for her twelve-year-old’s school run, she had hurled the contents of the kettle at the front and rear windscreens, only to have to chisel most of the ice off with her fingernails as the water instantly froze. Sam had watched her stony-eyed from the front seat, resting his chin on the top of his rucksack. The car had refused to start on the first three attempts, then performed its new clunking noise, the one that hadn’t yet lasted quite long enough to warrant further investigation, as they approached the roundabout.

  ‘I expect you’ll have a few cards in there.’ Mr Beasley nodded towards her hands, showing off his yellowing teeth as he grinned.

  ‘I doubt it.’ Charlotte smiled. Her neighbour meant well, she knew. In the ten months since Martin’s departure, each week had been peppered with similar efforts at communication. But it was a raw morning to be lingering on the doorstep and, of course, there weren’t any cards. There hadn’t been a home-made offering of gluey glittered hearts from Sam that year either, which was entirely understandable and healthy, given her son’s advanced age, but it had caused her a moment’s lament all the same.

  ‘Sold the house yet?’ Mr Beasley rasped, just as she was edging inside.

  ‘No – but there’s someone coming to look this morning. Any minute now, in fact…’ Charlotte glanced pointedly at her watch.

  ‘Been a while, hasn’t it?’

  ‘A few months, yes.’

  ‘And you’ve not found anywhere to go yet, have you?’

  ‘No, Mr Beasley, I haven’t.’

  ‘I’ve forgotten, what was it you were looking for?’

  ‘I –’ Charlotte broke off, distracted by the envelope uppermost in her hand, brown, with a court stamp. ‘Something smaller, a little cheaper, a lot nearer the park,’ she muttered, delivering a summary of the brief she had given Tim Croft the estate agent eight months before. Under her anorak her heart was pumping fast – relief, joy, a million things. It was the decree nisi – it had to be. She felt as if she had been pushing at a huge heavy door that had at last given way – no more hideous haggling over numbers, what she spent at the hairdresser or in department stores; no more miserable sessions with her pocket calculator and a pile of bills. It was all over at last. She was free.

  Mr Beasley was sucking in his cheeks and shaking his lugubrious unshaven old face at the dank February sky. ‘The park… Oh, they’re pricy, those are, even the poky ones.’

  ‘Really? Well, I’m hopeful, very hopeful.’ Rejoicing now, because of the brown envelope, Charlotte clasped the pile of post to her chest and escaped inside.

  There was still a palpable quietness about the place without Martin, almost as if her refusal to mourn the demise of their unhappy union meant some spirit of the house was doing it for her. In her wilder moments Charlotte even wondered if this was why it was proving so hard to sell. At other, saner, times it seemed grossly unfair that while Martin and his adulterous love, Cindy, could spread their wings in their new spacious riverside house in Rotherhithe, she was left trying to sell a property that seemed, no matter how many vases of fresh flowers she arranged around it, to exude something akin to an atmosphere of bereavement.

  She took her time with the brown envelope – made herself a cup of coffee, found a biscuit, relished the moment. And once the document was in her hand she made herself read it, every word, skimming none of the jargon or small-print, forcing herself to recall the sourness of the final months and the sly anonymous note that had finally provided the nudge – the courage – to put an end to the misery for good. Your husband is seeing someone else, from a well-wisher. Even at the time Charlotte had felt a sort of sick triumph – all the years of disintegrating affection, the needling suspicion, Martin’s denials – and there at last, in ten words, was the verification, permission to give up, as official as the stamped document cradled in her hands.

  And now a house viewing – the first in five weeks. It was g
oing to be a lucky day, Charlotte decided, flying with something like exultation round the ground-floor rooms, shuffling papers into tidy piles and scooping up the random items that had found their way into inappropriate places: a wet towel, a phone charger, two odd clean socks. Arms full, she set off up the stairs, musing on the curious business of inviting strangers into one’s home, the compulsion it induced to present an image of perfection where none existed.

  Arriving on the threshold of Sam’s bedroom on the top floor, she forgot all such notions and swore out loud. Drawers and cupboards spewed their contents like escaping entrails. Scattered across the floor, transforming the carpet into some sort of imploding mosaic, were the entire contents of the crate of Lego that had for months – or was it years? – been gathering dust under the bed. Strewn among this were his once treasured miniature Subbuteo figures, unsheathed CDs, sweet wrappers, a bowl encrusted with flakes of cereal, a plastic boomerang and a range of torn comics and magazines.

  Charlotte gripped her bundle, fighting a host of familiar emotions – irritation, resentment, resignation, despair – and beneath that a guilty sense of responsibility. What sort of man would this boy of hers make, she feared suddenly, what sort of partner, husband? She was still standing in the doorway, frozen with doubt and foreboding, when the doorbell rang.

  ‘Sorry, I’m early.’ The man, who had thick dark hair, peppered with grey at the sideboards, and a large nose, visibly red with cold, extended a hand that gripped hers too firmly to suggest genuine penitence.

  ‘That’s fine… don’t worry… Come in.’ Charlotte managed a handshake through the tangled flex of the phone charger. ‘Though you’ve caught me slightly on the hop, I’m afraid, no baking bread or fresh coffee to win you over. You’ll have to take things as you find them.’ She deposited her bundle on the hall chair, inwardly scolding herself for managing to sound – a mere two seconds into the process – so apologetic, so desperate. ‘Shall we start with the kitchen?’

  ‘Fine. Whatever suits.’ He hadn’t even smiled when she said the thing about the bread and the coffee and now he was peering at the hall ceiling, right at the spot where Martin’s overflowing bath had yellowed the paintwork two years before. They should have had it replastered, repainted, of course, like the damp above the back door and the delta of hairline cracks that had appeared round the ceiling rose in the sitting room after Sam and six friends had performed gymnastics at a birthday sleepover. The house, Charlotte saw, with sudden, horrible clarity, was a testimony to the failure of her marriage, and not just for its subtle emptiness. It was like the proverbial millstone: ugly, heavy, holding her down. The sooner she was shot of it the better. She glanced again at her prospective viewer – visibly nervy, arms pinned stiffly behind his back – wondering if he would soften up at a hint that she would be prepared to accept something below the asking price. Tim Croft had been implying she should do as much for weeks.

  In the kitchen she talked fast – too fast – about the waste-disposal unit and how the sun lit the back of the house. Her visitor cast a doubtful glance at the garden, then at his watch. ‘You could nose around on your own if you’d prefer,’ Charlotte offered casually, leaning against the kitchen table, which wobbled because the bit of paper keeping it steady had, as usual, worked its way free. ‘It requires a bit of attention, I know, a lick of paint and so on.’ Stop trying so hard, she scolded herself, cocking her head, crossing her arms and then, for good measure, her ankles.

  ‘Thank you, but… well, to be perfectly frank, I can see already that this isn’t quite what I’m looking for.’

  Charlotte clung to her elbows. ‘Oh dear. Never mind…’

  ‘I’m on my own, you see – that is, I have a daughter and don’t really have time for a house that needs anything doing to it, even a lick of paint. Also, from what the agent said, I’d thought it would be near enough to her school for her to walk. She’s just started at St Leonard’s and I have to get to work and the traffic round here is so bad…’

  Charlotte pushed herself off the table and held up her hands to forestall the embarrassment of any further apologies or explanations. ‘Please, I know exactly where you’re coming from. My son is at St Leonard’s too, and I can tell you the school run is a pig from here – not as the crow flies, of course, which is where the A–Z can be so deceiving but with three main roads to get across…’ She shook her head in a show of ruefulness. ‘If that’s a priority then you would, in all honesty, be mad to buy this house. In fact, leave now,’ she joked, pointing towards the door. ‘I command it.’

  ‘Er… right.’ He offered her a doubtful smile and backed into the hall.

  ‘I’m on my own too,’ Charlotte found herself saying, as she trotted after him. ‘Wasn’t the plan… but life has a knack of not turning out quite as one expects, doesn’t it? You sort of look back at where you started, then at where you’ve arrived and think, Yikes, how did that happen? Like examining the lives of two quite unrelated people or –’ She stopped at last, halted by the pained expression on his face and the speed with which he was doing up the buttons of his smart charcoal grey overcoat.

  ‘Well, thank you, Mrs Turner. I’m most sorry to have put you to the inconvenience – you might tell your agents to be a little clearer about the details next time.’

  ‘Yes. Absolutely. Of course. Goodbye then, Mr… er…’ Charlotte could feel her cheeks burning. She had forgotten how to be, she reflected helplessly. These days, words and responses seemed to ricochet out of her of their own accord. She didn’t miss Martin – how could she miss the source of so much unhappiness? – but was increasingly aware that having a husband, no matter how unsatisfactory, had provided some sort of essential ballast to her personality. Without it she was freer but also, still, until she got properly used to it, somewhat unbalanced, rootless.

  ‘Porter. Like the beer.’

  ‘Pardon?’ Charlotte reached across him to release the catch on the front door.

  ‘My name is Porter,’ he repeated frostily, leaning out of her way. ‘It’s an old word for beer.’

  ‘Is it? Right… Mr Porter, of course, I remember now… Oh, I say… wow…’ she exclaimed, momentarily forgetting her embarrassment as he pulled a scarlet woollen pom-pom hat from his overcoat pocket and pulled it low over his forehead and ears. The general impression was not flattering. ‘That’s quite a hat.’

  ‘Rose – my daughter – gave it to me for Christmas,’ he muttered, his sallow face creasing into a flinch of a smile. ‘But there’s no room for pride when it comes to love, is there?’

  ‘No, indeed,’ Charlotte murmured, and fell against the wall with a groan of relief after she had closed the door.

  The Asian girl – by far the prettiest of Tim Croft’s minions, with a silky curtain of yet black hair and large feline eyes – had a vase of roses parked next to her computer, twelve blood-red beauties with thick green stems and thorns as sharp as knives. Seeing them and the girl’s glow of happiness, Charlotte experienced a moment of wonderment that anyone could ever be so naïve as to take any aspect of giving and receiving Valentines seriously. Just you wait, she wanted to say. Just you wait and see where those roses can lead.

  Tim Croft, warmly effusive as always, swept her into his office, poured her a cup of coffee and put on a good show of concern at her account of the viewing with Mr Porter. ‘Not the easiest customer,’ he said, rubbing the neat semicircle of a beard that ran along his jaw-line. ‘The wife died apparently. Ovarian cancer – caught very late. Diagnosis to death in three weeks.’ He clicked his fingers.

  ‘Died.’ Charlotte clapped both hands to her mouth. ‘I assumed, when he said he was on his own…’

  ‘Tragic, of course, but there we are.’ Tim cleared his throat twice in succession. ‘The good news is I’ve had a call this morning from a Mrs Burgess who’s keen for an appointment to view your property next week.’

  ‘Oh good,’ Charlotte muttered, her mind still locked on to an image of the hapless widowed Mr Porter cring
ing under the force of her over-familiar chatter about the burdens of life and single parenthood.

  Tim Croft’s big-knuckled fingers were flying over the keys of his computer. ‘Shall I offer her Thursday afternoon, say three p.m.? You don’t give Ravens Books your services on a Thursday afternoon, do you?’ he added, his voice softer and more knowing, as if he rather relished the fact that months of failing to sell her house meant he had an intimate knowledge of her weekly routines. ‘Don’t despair, Charlotte,’ he went on jovially. ‘Everybody gets there in the end.’

  Where? Charlotte wondered, nodding and smiling as she pushed away her coffee cup. Where did everybody get to? And how did they know when they had got there? ‘Thursday, three p.m., Mrs Burgess. Thanks, Tim. And I’ve been thinking about the asking price – perhaps I could take a bit off, but not too much or I won’t be able to afford to move. Things are so expensive by the park.’ She blinked at him, feeling suddenly in the mood for one of his boosting monologues about the market and things going up and down and possibly even repeating the stuff about getting there in the end.

  ‘Aha.’ Tim, never one to disappoint, patted the side of his nose. ‘I’ve had word, unofficially, that there’s something within your range on Chalkdown Road. A stone’s throw from the park, not in the toast-rack – it could be just what you’re looking for. The vendors have been advertising privately but I’m going to see what I can do.’

  ‘Wonderful, that sounds really promising. Thanks, Tim. Do keep me posted, won’t you?’ On her feet, ready to leave, Charlotte held out her hand, which Tim shook, but then, to her puzzlement, did not immediately release.

  ‘Charlotte, I was wondering… forgive me if…’

  He had lowered his voice so much that she had to lean across the desk to hear.

  ‘Only I just thought…’ he glanced warily in the direction of his colleagues ‘… it might be nice to… meet up… for a drink or something. Not tonight, obviously – I’m sure you’re busy tonight, of all nights – but perhaps next week some time, or the one after that?’