She must have fallen asleep. When she woke, a song was playing on the stereo that was so dirge-like that Sara thought it must be on at the wrong speed. Lou was swaying to it in a trance-like state. Gavin was still slumped on the sofa, studying the album cover, but Neil was sitting on the edge of the Eames chair, hands clasped around one raised knee, studying Lou beadily, as if she were of intense sociological interest. Sara had the distinct impression that she had missed something.
“Hello,” he said at last, sliding his eyes over to her. “Okay?”
“I’m fine,” she replied, touchily.
“Maybe we should think about going.”
“What time is it?” she asked.
Neil shrugged. “Late.”
“Well…” Sara struggled to her feet. Her face felt hot; her extremities cold. The fire was almost out. “Thanks for a really great day, guys.”
Despite all the intimacy, the silences, the sharing, she felt suddenly shy.
Lou, eyes still glazed, secret smile, swayed over to her and draped her arms around Sara’s neck. Sara succumbed awkwardly to the rocking motion of Lou’s dance and then, when the moment felt right, extricated herself.
“See you, Gav,” she said, and he moved his head in a small gesture that seemed, to Sara, fraught with meaning.
“Great!” Neil said, “Great times.”
They paused briefly, in the doorway, then, remembering that Lou and Gavin didn’t observe the normal protocols, they let themselves out into the chilly night.
10
The last things Sara saw as she closed the blinds that night were the calico linings of Carol’s John Lewis curtains drawn against her like a reprimand. She was pretty much resigned, after that night’s fiasco, to being struck off Carol’s Christmas-card list. She could try to make amends, she supposed, go round with some peace offering and apologise, but she’d only end up getting herself in more trouble. At some point Carol would try to draw her into a bitch-fest about the state of Lou and Gavin’s front garden or their children’s manners, and Sara would have to tell her to get a life, which wouldn’t serve community relations any better than the gradual drifting apart that now seemed inevitable. Nevertheless, as the first pink streaks of dawn rent the sky behind Carol’s chimney pots, Sara felt a vague pang of loss.
Lou had become Sara’s more-or-less constant companion now and, really, the sort of things they did together were much more her. Carol had been great at getting that hot ticket for the Donmar Warehouse, but she always made such a business of how much you owed her and what time the last train left Charing Cross, that it felt like an outing with the Girl Guides. Lou managed to conjure fun out of the very air. One night they’d go to a local gig in a grungy pub, another to a poetry reading on the South Bank. At weekends, while Neil and Gavin took the boys for a kick about, Lou bundled Zuley in her buggy and the three of them went rummaging through vintage shops in Brick Lane, where Sara marvelled at Lou’s knack of turning up the one Biba dress among the racks of tat. She couldn’t have been doing so badly herself, though, because Neil had commented approvingly that Lou had had a positive influence on her sense of style, a back-handed compliment that she was inclined to accept.
Even the weekly Thursday evening trip to the leisure centre for the boys’ Taekwondo class had been converted by Lou into an opportunity for female bonding and beautification. In the old days, Sara used to sit in the café with a cappuccino and the Guardian crossword, but now that Dash and Arlo had joined the class Lou had other ideas. First the two women powered up and down the fast lane of the swimming pool, Lou striking out with a stylish crawl, Sara flailing along in her wake. Then, after thirty lung-busting lengths, they would repair to the sauna, where the dim lighting and lingering scent of eucalyptus created an air of intimacy.
“I love this part,” Sara had said on their last visit, sinking with relief onto the slatted bench. Lou climbed nimbly onto the hotter, higher tier, crossed her legs and closed her eyes. Sara cast an envious glance at Lou’s physique. Her thighs were taut and firm and even the unforgiving Lycra of her Speedo swimsuit couldn’t quite disguise the fullness of her breasts. Somehow Sara’s own hibiscus-print two-piece felt fussy and middle-aged by comparison. She measured a handful of flesh on either side of her waist and sighed.
“You look great!” said Lou, without opening her eyes. “I wish I could get away with a bikini.”
“Oh behave!” said Sara. “You’re skinny as anything.”
“I know, but I’ve got stretch-marks.”
“They’re nothing to be ashamed of,” said Sara. “I’ve got a couple myself.”
“I bet you don’t look like the bloody A to Z.”
“I’m sure Gav doesn’t mind.”
“Gav’s weird,” Lou smirked, “he actually likes them. Once, when we were making love, he said they reminded him of those channels you get on the beach; you know, where the water runs down to the sea.”
“That’s so beautiful,” said Sara.
“He’s always had a bit of an Earth Mother thing. Couldn’t get enough of me when I was pregnant.”
Sara tried for a smile.
“Which was fine by me, because I was a total shag-bag from day one. You’d think nature would lower your libido once you’re knocked up.”
Sara shrugged, unwilling to confess that in her case, nature had done just that. She had felt too sick for the first three months, too breathless for the next five and for the last one, the taut dome of her belly had repelled all advances like an over-inflated spacehopper. The sauna door creaked open and a stout West Indian woman plonked herself down next to Sara.
“You know at the end of the pregnancy, when the colostrum starts to come in, ready for breastfeeding?” Lou gave Sara a significant look.
Sara widened her eyes to indicate that she had caught Lou’s meaning and no further elucidation was necessary.
“I know I shouldn’t have let him,” Lou grinned, apparently impervious to the fact they now had company, “but oh my God!”
Sara smiled nervously and threw a propitiatory glance at the woman.
“He developed quite a taste for it,” Lou said. She leaned down and added, in a resounding whisper, “Comes to something when it takes you longer to wean your husband than your kid!”
Sara groaned.
“I’m joking,” Lou wiped away a trickle of sweat from her cleavage. “Sort of joking!”
Their companion wrung out a wet flannel and slapped it on her head in disgust.
“I wonder what the time is,” Sara said, half standing to get a look at the poolside clock. “It’s quarter-past. We should probably make a move. The boys’ll be wondering where we are.”
“Oh, just five more minutes,” begged Lou. “This’ll be our last chance to hang out for a couple of weeks.”
“Why?” said Sara.
“I start filming Monday.”
“Oh.”
“I know,” said Lou, “I can’t believe it either.”
Lou’s nocturnal working habits and the fact that Gavin’s job occupied so much physical and psychological space in the house, had allowed Sara to forget, for practical purposes, that Lou was a filmmaker. The topic seldom came up for discussion. Lou liked to grow her ideas, like mushrooms, in the dark, and ever since Sara had been politely rebuffed when she’d offered to read Lou’s script, she had been too daunted even to enquire how things were going. Only the bluish circles beneath her friend’s eyes and her occasional disappearance to take a mysterious phone call had betokened a woman with more on her mind than packed lunches and overdue library books.
“So you’ve got everything lined up? The cast and crew and… whatever?”
Lou gave her a funny look.
“Of course you have,” Sara shook her head at her own foolishness. “Where actually is it? The shoot?”
“Well, it’s set in London, but my DP’s Belgian and the only way he can fit it in is if we shoot it there. He’s found a great location though, so no one will know the dif
ference.”
Sara opened her mouth to ask what a DP was, but thought better of it. Filmmaking seemed to be a milieu in which it was very easy to put one’s foot in it. Better to wait until the film was in the can and then offer a thoughtful response.
“Well, I’m here,” she said, screwing the lid onto her miniature bottle of spring water, and standing up, “if Gavin needs any help, I mean. Not here, obviously. There. Next door. Or I will be. You know, in case he… well, he’ll have his hands full, won’t he?”
And then Lou was gone and Sara pined for her; physically pined, in a way she hadn’t done for anyone since Amanda Durham, her best friend in Top Juniors had gone to stay with her father in Calgary for three weeks. But at least in Amanda’s case there had been a farewell sleepover to soften the blow, when they had gorged on Minstrels and listened to Duran Duran and Amanda had rehearsed ways in which to torment her new Canadian half-sister. In Lou’s case, there was no such send-off and Sara couldn’t help feeling a little sidelined in the rush to creativity. She was sure there was no slight intended; she knew Lou and Gavin well enough now to see that they flew by the seat of their pants and that sometimes the basic courtesies of suburban life got forgotten. Why else would Lou have allowed her film crew to park their transit van outside Sara and Neil’s house, so that they had to ferry their big Friday night shop a full twenty yards to their own front door? Why else, when Sara and Neil stopped on the pavement, straining under the weight of multiple carrier bags, and waited for Lou to introduce them to her variously pierced and tattooed co-workers, would she merely offer a distracted, “Hi,” before returning to check her inventory with said workers? Why else would she fail to acknowledge, even by text message, the good luck card that Sara had handmade for her by Photoshopping Lou’s face onto a picture of Alfred Hitchcock, brandishing his trademark cigar? “HOPE IT GOES WITHOUT A ‘HITCH’!” she had written inside, and then posted it through the letterbox, rather than risk disturbing Lou in some late-night conflab. Later, she worried that the card had been crass. Maybe Lou hated Hitchcock and had perceived some unintended comparison with his work.
Hurrying alongside Gavin on the first school day of Lou’s absence, Sara’s nervous prattle failed to elicit much response. After a prolonged silence, during which he steered the buggy grimly up and down kerbs, the children surging around him like a pack of Huskies, she had a stab at what she thought the problem might be.
“Missing Lou?”
He gave her an odd look.
“Sorry. Silly question. Of course you are. Never mind. Two weeks will go in a flash.”
“No, I’m sorry,” he said, smiling at her, “I’m being an arsehole. And to be honest, it’s not so much that I’m missing her, it’s more that I’m stuffed without her.”
Sara shot him an inquisitive glance.
“Don’t get me wrong,” he said quickly, “I’m all for it; the film, obviously. I’m just really up against it myself at the moment. And I could definitely have done without her volunteering me for this Year Six art project.”
“Oh dear – is that this week?”
Gavin mimed holding a pistol to his head and pulling the trigger.
“Great for Year Six though,” said Sara, “getting to meet a real artist.”
“A real artist!” Gavin emitted a scornful puff of vapour into the cold air.
“What do they want you to do?”
“All I know is that it’s got to tie in with the Picasso exhibition they’re going to on Friday.”
“Oh, are you going to that? Me too,” said Sara happily. “Seriously though, this week, if there’s anything I can do.”
“How’s your fibreglass sheathing?”
“Not what it once was,” Sara laughed. “No, I meant domestically. If you need me to have the kids over, or anything.”
“You’re sweet, but Lou’d kill me if I took you away from your novel. Bad enough that I’ve squashed her creativity; I don’t want to turn into some sexist parasite that exploits all the women for miles around…”
“Is that what she thinks?” Sara pricked up her ears. “That you squash her creativity?”
“Nah, not really,” said Gavin, “it’s just difficult, two artists living together. They don’t recommend it in the guidebooks.”
“Don’t they?” Sara said, before she noticed the look on Gavin’s face, and swiped his arm playfully.
“She never gives the impression that she’s anything other than a 100 percent supportive of you,” she said.
“No, she is. She is. I’m incredibly lucky, don’t get me wrong. She’s completely in tune with me. Understands what I’m trying to say before I know myself. And she guards me from the vampires.”
“The vampires?”
“Oh, you know, all the people who want a piece of you. The ones who think that your work speaks to them and them alone.”
Sara wondered whether she fell into that category.
“I would have thought it was nice to make that connection with people,” she said.
“It is,” he said, “it is nice. But sometimes those people don’t know where the boundaries are.”
Sara instinctively took her hand off the handle of the buggy and put a bit of space between herself and Gavin.
“But you know,” he went on, “Lou’s got to do her thing as well, obviously, and then we’ve got three incredibly gifted, idiosyncratic kids who also need room to flourish, and sometimes you just think, Jesus! I can’t breathe, you know? That’s why I look at you and Neil and think it must be lovely to have the balance that you guys have.”
“The balance?” said Sara.
“Yeah, you know. He’s doing his breadwinner thing, and you’ve got the domestic front covered, but you’re also doing a bit of writing; plus, you had the good sense to stop at two kids and, yes, I’ll come clean and admit that sometimes I envy you.”
“Hmmm,” said Sara, doubtfully, “I’m not sure we’re quite as yin and yang as you think. Sometimes it feels more chalk and cheese, to be honest.”
“Well, you seem like a pretty good fit from where I’m standing,” he said.
Sara gave him a strained smile.
The boys had already assimilated themselves into the free-form, fifteen-a-side, multi-racial football game that will dominate the playground of any inner-city primary school from which it hasn’t been banned in the interests of health and safety.
“Okay then,” said Gavin, brushing Sara’s cheek with his “catch you later,” and he pushed the buggy towards the gaggle of younger, more raucous mothers, of whom Mandy, Zuley’s childminder, was one. Sara stood watching from a distance, as the women flocked round Gavin, the childminder signalling her superiority in the pecking order by pawing his arm and baying with red-lipsticked laughter at everything he said. She didn’t know how the woman had the brass neck, really. It should have been obvious that Gav was way out of her league. You couldn’t fault his manners, though – it was to his credit that he played along with such good grace.
After a minute, she remembered that there was no point waiting for Gavin, because he was staying on to do his Picasso thing, so she made her way towards the school gate again. It was a short walk, but a lonely one. A couple of months ago, it would have taken her a good ten minutes to cover the same ground. Any one of five or six women wearing a Uniqlo puffa jacket or pastel duffel coat might have stopped her for a chat, or to invite Caleb or Patrick for tea. But most of her friends had bailed out along with Carol and Celia, and the ones who hadn’t were career women, who would be halfway to the station by now, too busy checking their emails to notice that the once-desirable school to which they had chosen to send their luckless offspring, was in terminal decline.
11
“Do you think our relationship has balance?”
Sara stood in front of the mirror, massaging moisturiser into her neck.
Neil looked up, the light from the laptop glinting off his reading glasses.
“I don’t know what you mean,” he said.
“I mean, are we two halves of a whole?”
“We bring different things to the table,” he said hopefully.
She frowned at him.
“Are you going to put that thing away?”
“Are you going to stop asking cryptic questions?”
He flipped the computer shut and took off his glasses.
She got into bed, feeling surprisingly shy. It was as if her non sequitur had somehow brought sex onto the agenda. Perhaps sensing her unease, Neil put a comradely arm around her and she relaxed a little. She tried again.
“Do you think marriage should be, you know, something that works, somewhere in the background, so everyone can get on with what they’re doing?”
He was stroking her shoulder and it was getting on her nerves.
“Or should it be this big difficult, passionate thing with… Can you not do that please?”
“Sorry.”
“There’s some quote I read once that said it should be full of mud and stars and love and hate or something like that.”
“I don’t think there should be hate, ideally.”
Sara sighed and slid down the bed, out of his embrace.
He slid down next to her and patted her upper arm in a conciliatory way.
“I’m sorry, Sar, I’m just not really getting you. Try me again.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“I love you,” he offered tentatively, “if that helps.”
Sara was, by now, aware that she had developed a crush on Gavin. It was a banal and tawdry impulse on her part, but it wasn’t shame that prevented her, when having sex with Neil that night, from closing her eyes and pretending she was with her best friend’s husband – it was the impossibility of suspending her disbelief. Neil was not an ungenerous lover and there was nothing wrong with his technique. Whole minutes would be allocated to Sara’s gratification, the focus of attention shifting by subtle degrees, towards her clitoris, which Neil had learned to massage not from above, with his fingertips, which tended to set her teeth on edge, but from below, with the heel of his hand, whilst kneeling dutifully between her splayed legs. In this way, nine times out of ten, she could be guaranteed an orgasm of satisfactory depth and intensity, before Neil moved on to the main business of the evening.
The People at Number 9 Page 9