by Clare Boyd
‘I’m sorry.’
She didn’t know whether he was saying sorry for what he had said or what they had done.
A grumbling double-decker pulled up in front of them, looming over them, waiting.
‘It wasn’t your fault,’ she said, and she stepped onto the 107 to Archway.
In the weeks that followed, she had belittled the event, bracketed it, in disbelief that it had happened at all. And she had thrown all her energies into loving Robert.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Francesca
It had taken Alice and me five minutes to walk to Letworth Primary. I was chatting away to her, trying to cover my own nerves on her behalf.
For the second time, I checked my phone. John had not texted back. It was only half an hour since I had sent him the photograph of Alice in her new school uniform, ready for her first day at big school. The photograph had been designed as an icebreaker. So much had been said the other day. Too much, perhaps.
When we arrived at the school gates, the playground was filled with strange faces and unfamiliar smiles.
She was ushered into the reception class line by her new teacher, and her hand wriggled out of mine. Stony-faced and pale, Alice said, ‘Goodbye, Mummy,’ very formally.
I sped-walked towards home, away from the other mothers walking in the same direction, trying not to cry.
Just making it over the threshold of the cottage, I burst into tears.
The summer holidays had been six of the most intense, life-changing weeks of our lives since Robert’s death. In spite of how exhausting Alice had been at times, we had been a good team. Without her by my side, I didn’t know what to do with myself. There was a whole week to fill before my job started with Archie Parr at the paint shop.
I stood at the kitchen window and stared down towards the bottom of the garden.
Inside my shed there were stacks of boxes and bubble-wrapped furniture. None of which I had touched since the day we had moved in.
I made some tea and checked my phone. Still no text from John. I should have been happy. It was what I had wanted. I had told him I was with Paul.
Beyond the kitchen window, my shed rested quietly at the bottom of the garden, undemanding and patient.
There was no phone signal there.
No phone signal. Exactly what I needed to get thoughts of John out of my mind.
I dressed in my blue overalls that were marked with splashes of paint like a Pollack canvas and headed down to the bottom of the garden.
Inside, I breathed in deeply. The rush of paint fumes was an inhalation of joy, taking me back to happy times, to the period of my life when I had been independent and valued and free.
The first box was filled with sketches, a few of which I lingered over, and criticised. I had never wanted to exhibit or sell my pictures, as my peers at Goldsmiths had dreamt of doing. My pictures were quiet and unfashionable. Even if they had been outstanding, I doubt I would have any desire to sell them. They were for me. They represented a very private part of me.
One of my charcoal pictures, of the view from the top of Parliament Hill on Hampstead Heath, stopped me in my tracks. It was unfinished, small and drab, the one I had started after the argument with Robert about the party he had wanted me to go to.
I stacked the drawings and sketchbooks on the shelf and then opened the next box, and the next, and then snipped bubble-wrap away from my desk. It was time to set it up again.
The room of the shed looked cluttered and cosy, and it belonged to me. I had transformed it into my own space, in a way that I had been unable to do in the cottage.
Big tubs of paint were sitting at my feet. With a frisson of excitement, I prised open their lids. The vividness of the azure-blue filled my whole being with light and energy. The second tub was brown, earthy and rich. I pictured mixing it with white, yellows and reds until it was the dusky beige-pink of the dried hydrangeas on the bush outside the window. I opened the next one. It was white. I imagined swirling the blue into it, adding gloops with my wooden stick, stirring it like a witch until it was the colour of the sky.
The walls around me were white. I would paint them but I would not rush. I had to find the perfect shade for this peaceful space.
As I sat staring into space, there was a knock on the door. I jumped.
‘Hello?’
‘It’s me.’
‘John?’ I opened the door.
The elation I had remembered on his face a week ago was no longer there. He looked haggard. His stubble was as dark as his eye sockets.
We stood there staring at each other for a few seconds, which sent my heart pumping blood into my cheeks.
‘Your phone was out of signal and I was passing.’
‘How did you get in?’
‘You left your front door wide open.’
‘Oh.’ I grinned. ‘Whoops. Come in.’
He came in and tripped over a paint gun as he looked around. ‘It looks great in here.’
‘Almost there,’ I said, surveying my room, closing up the lids of the paint tubs.
He sat on one of the empty crates. And I sat on my desk stool.
The air between us was charged.
His feet in his desert boots tapped out a rhythm and his fingers were interlocked, as though in prayer, but his forefingers were pointing up, like the slide of a handgun, and he pressed them into his lips.
‘How was Alice this morning?’ he asked.
‘Very brave. Did you see the picture I sent?’
‘Beautiful.’ He smiled.
‘Everything okay?’
‘Sure.’
‘You sure you’re sure?’
‘Beatrice was a bit anxious today.’
‘She usually loves school, doesn’t she?’
‘Her new form teacher is called Miss Thorne and she said she’s like a big horrible thorn in her toe.’
I laughed. ‘It’s hard being four and so clever.’
His forefingers slid up the centre of his face, from his lips up to his forehead, between his eyebrows, where he leant into them.
‘Can I ask you something?’
‘Of course.’
There was a long pause.
‘Did Robert ever say anything about Mum and’ – he hesitated – ‘and other men?’
‘No,’ I said. This was not a lie. Paul had been the one to tell me the rumour of the affair and the absconding family.
He shifted uncomfortably on the box and it made a creaking sound.
‘I want you to be honest with me.’
‘I am being honest. What brought all this on?’ I asked, slightly alarmed, wondering if I should tell him what Paul had told me.
He stared at me, not speaking, as though weighing something up.
‘I remember this arsehole, Edward, calling the house a lot. Especially when Dad was away.’
‘Did you know him?’
‘He was a theatre director, I think. He lived in the village with his wife and they came to our parties. Mum would giggle when she was around him.’
‘Do you think she was having an affair with him?’
‘Hmm. Maybe.’
‘Did your dad know anything?’
‘I have no idea.’
‘He wouldn’t have stayed with her if he’d known, surely.’
‘I don’t know. He’s so hard to read.’
‘He puts up a very good front.’
‘I’m starting to wonder what’s behind that front.’
‘You might never know.’
John stood up suddenly. ‘That’s exactly it. My god!’ he cried, squeezing his head. ‘I might never know. All this stuff that is coming up, all these memories about Mum, and that guy, and this Seroquel thing. It’s driving me crazy. I don’t know what to do with it all.’
He plonked himself down again and, as he did so, the lid of the box collapsed in on itself and half of him disappeared to the bottom.
We both began to laugh and I yanked him out with one arm.
>
‘You really are a wally,’ I chortled.
Suddenly, we were standing face to face, close-up… too close-up.
‘And you really are beautiful,’ he said, tucking my hair behind my ear.
My whole body fired up as though he had switched me on. Before I could think, he was unbuttoning the front of my overalls and kissing my skin, down, down, further down, until he was clasping me around the hips and burying his face in my middle, where I could feel tears on his cheeks. I pulled his face to mine, and sank down next to him, kissing away his sadness. Unable to let go of each other, we frantically pushed the boxes aside and pulled the tarpaulin across the floor, hurriedly making room to lie down, as though the world might end at any minute. John’s touch was too electric, too mind-blowing to question, too right to ever be able to resist. He was hungry for me one minute and gentle the next, savouring every sensation and every part of me as we undressed. His body was lean and tanned and I should have been self-conscious to be naked in front of him, but I felt like the most beautiful woman alive. I felt like his whole world. How had I lived so long without this feeling?
But then his mother’s face came into my mind, and then his children’s smiles.
‘Stop,’ I said, twisting away.
John sat up. The back of his head; his vertebrae protruding.
I pulled an old dust sheet over my body.
‘We can’t do this again.’
‘We’ll always feel guilty, won’t we?’
‘And so we should.’ I began to dress. I felt despicable. I couldn’t believe how weak I was when it came to John. I couldn’t do this.
‘That first time. I…’
‘Let’s not go there,’ I interrupted.
‘I was out of order.’
‘We’ve both made so many mistakes.’
‘Don’t go yet, Fran,’ John said, pulling me back. ‘Please.’
I fell back, impotent.
We lay on our backs, staring at the ceiling, fully dressed again. John’s arms were behind his head, and his ankles were crossed. I had bunched up the dust sheet as a pillow. We began to talk, about Robert mainly. As the minutes turned to hours, we took turns to run into the house and bring back cups of tea and cheese sandwiches from the kitchen, like two teenagers hiding out in a secret woodland camp.
‘Sometimes I think it was a miracle that he survived as long as he did,’ John said.
‘That’s too convenient, to think like that.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘It lets us off the hook.’
‘But he never knew what happened between us.’
I clenched my teeth tightly together, grinding them together to stop myself from saying what I was really thinking.
‘How can you be so sure?’
‘He was too self-involved to notice anything.’
‘Don’t say that, John.’
‘Sorry. But I get so angry with him,’ John said, thumping the side of a cardboard box. ‘I wish he hadn’t died.’
As the time ticked by, the minutes edged closer and closer towards Alice’s school pick-up time. The thought of collecting Alice, of having to concentrate on what she needed, and ending this, whatever it was, sent a wave of misery crashing over me.
In John’s arms, another hour did not seem enough. When I considered the rest of the day without him a little part of my heart tore, and when I considered the rest of my life without him close to me like he was now, I wondered how long it would be before that tear became a ragged rip through my insides.
‘You’d better go,’ I declared abruptly, untangling myself from him. ‘I have to pick up Alice.’
He groaned, rolled over and buried his face in the tarpaulin. ‘I’d forgotten Alice’s pick-up was earlier than Bea’s. I thought we had another hour, at least.’
I sank back into his arms, sending away the fear of what was to come, knowing we could never do this again, deciding to enjoy the moment, eking out the final few minutes before Alice’s school day ended.
We walked back through the garden with flat, spiritless steps. But then I laughed out loud, unable to contain a sudden burst of happiness, and there was something in his general demeanour, when I said goodbye, that had shifted too. He had a new confidence. I had feared he might take this back home to Dilys, to confess everything.
He left the house first. The secrecy of our afternoon pricked at my conscience, but I couldn’t yet locate any regret.
On my way to Alice’s school, the guilt did not haunt me in the way I expected it might. The bliss, the rapture, and the sense of other-worldliness took over all of my senses. It felt as though a smile had passed all the way through my body, warming me with its healing powers.
But it didn’t last. When I returned home, unable to concentrate on Alice’s happy babblings about her day, the feelings of pleasure turned to jitters.
And then I did what I had vowed I would never do again.
From the bottom right-hand corner of my wardrobe, I took out the box that contained a few of Robert’s possessions. Most of his other things I had given away to the charity shop. If they held sentimental value, I had either put them in this box or given them to his family.
The box smelled of Robert, and I immediately felt heady and tearful. He came back to me in a rush of feeling. I sifted through some of my favourites, inhaling the smell of his flat cap, which he had always worn on set. After he had died, I had asked John if he wanted it, but he said he could never have brought himself to wear it. So, here it was, with the vague scent of his hair still embedded in its threads.
But I was not opening this box to be reminded of Robert; I was opening it to find a document. Buried under his Ingmar Bergman DVD collection, I pulled out a manila envelope that was stuffed with Robert’s school certificates and medical documents. I pulled out one letter, still in its white windowed envelope, and laid it on my knees. I did not need to read it again. I had read it over and over before, re-assessing its authenticity until the reality had sunk in.
It was time for John to see it. I knew that I wouldn’t even begin to consider a future with John until I had settled the past. Until he knew my secret. Until he knew why Robert had jumped. If he forgave me for that, then we might stand a chance.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Two years ago
Robert had left for Sanjeev’s to get his cigarettes.
‘He’ll be gone for hours.’ Francesca sighed.
‘He’s such a selfish prick sometimes,’ John said.
Francesca wanted to divert his anger, wanted to return to their original conversation, nervous of hearing further criticism of Robert from John.
‘I read your film script, too, you know,’ she confessed.
‘Really?’ John’s body language changed. He sat back, alert, putting both hands on the arms of his chair, perhaps clinging on for support, or ready to stand. ‘You never told me.’
‘It was brilliant. I couldn’t stop crying at the end,’ she admitted.
The script had been a dark, episodic, ensemble piece set in a small village, revolving around a woman whose young son walks in on her having sex with her lover. Previously sceptical that John had the skill to write from a female point of view, Francesca had been amazed by how he had climbed inside the woman’s head, and, seemingly, into hers, too, even though it was not Francesca’s story. After she had finished it, she regretted reading it. It had stayed with her, and she had not been able to look at John in the same way.
‘You really cried?’
‘I fell in love with all of them, and I couldn’t bear what happened to Freya. I wanted you to rewrite the ending just for me so that I could stop feeling so sad.’
John’s anger melted away from his face. He opened his mouth to speak, and then closed it again, studied some spilt grains of sugar on the table.
‘Sorry, I shouldn’t have said that,’ she said, blushing, and she stood up from the table so suddenly that she caught her foot on the chair leg. She stumbled, the chair cra
shing, cold coffee spilling from Robert’s cup.
The coffee seeped under her bare toes.
John leapt up and straightened the chair and she rubbed at the floor vigorously with an old, paint-spattered rag that had been drying on the radiator, scared to stop, scared to look up at him again.
‘Thank you for liking it,’ he said, bowing forward, taking her face in his hands, kissing her. She stood up and slipped in between his arms. The world stopped spinning. The inevitability of it. The wrongness. The rightness.
Ignoring the dangers of Robert’s return, or excited by the risk, John had lifted Fran onto the countertop and pushed up her summer dress. She had clasped him with her bare thighs. The pleasure was irrepressible, and she had cried out as she felt him inside her. Just once, before muffling her excitement in John’s shoulder, biting at his muscle, biting away the desire to let herself go completely.
Then, she had heard something, or someone, on the landing outside.
‘Shhh,’ she said, pulling away from him abruptly.
In a daze, she had gone to the door. The neighbour’s cat had scampered down the stairs. But she heard panting coming from further down the stairwell: a man panting, or was it an older woman’s wheeze? And then the front door to the street had banged shut.
When she returned to the kitchen, John had been gathering his coat and bag, to leave.
‘Did you see anyone?’ he whispered hoarsely.
‘It was the cat.’
‘Jesus. Thank god.’
Francesca didn’t want to mention the slam of the front door to the street. She was too scared to run down to see who it had been. If it had been Robert, she wanted to let him go.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
John
‘Daddy? Ask me my spellings,’ Olivia said. She was sitting curled up on the sofa next to John, her school books scattered around her and a clipboard on her lap, pen poised. Beatrice was at his feet, kneeling at the coffee table, painstakingly writing out a poem she was going to recite for a competition. Harry was at a friend’s house. They were a self-sufficient unit, the four of them; Dilys was not the central component of the children’s day. John was. How much difference would it make to them if he and Dilys split up? Being a single dad would not change his day-to-day life. Effectively, he was already a single dad.