Sophie frowned, trying to take herself back to the course she had chosen and why. ‘I suppose different couples can cope with different things,’ she ventured at length. ‘Andrew and I had been so rocky and things were going so well …’
‘And as for that woman and those emails,’ Zoë exclaimed, remembering the Beth Stapleton part of the story, ‘she’s clearly certifiable. Ignore her. I mean, what’s the worst that can happen?’
‘Exactly, that’s what I keep telling myself.’
‘This woman of Pete’s,’ Zoë blurted, lighting a cigarette the moment they were outside and sucking hard, ‘it was Karen. That’s why they didn’t come to your thing. Sorry.’
‘Oh, God, I’m the one who’s sorry,’ Sophie gasped, putting an arm round her friend. ‘I had no idea …’
‘Of course you didn’t. How could you? And, like I said, we’re fine now.’ Zoë drew on her cigarette so hard she made a popping noise with her lips. ‘I’ve told him, one more stunt like that and I’ll chop his bollocks off – lob them over the garden fence like that other, even madder American woman … What was she called?’
Sophie giggled. ‘I know the one you mean, but if I recall correctly it was a different part of his genitalia and afterwards he had a surgical replacement of such impressive proportions that he was able to put it to lucrative use by becoming a porn star.’
‘No? Fantastic.’ Zoë clapped her hands, all the moroseness gone. ‘God, human nature – you couldn’t make it up, could you? Oh, Sophie, I love our lunches. Don’t let’s give them up, ever, okay?’
‘Okay.’
‘And you’re all right, are you, you and Andrew?’
‘Brilliant. It turned into a great holiday. There was just that little bit of it when I was an idiot. I want to forget about the whole thing, to be honest – just get on with my life with Andrew, the life we had before I let everything get on top of me.’
‘Yeah, why would any wife want to go to the bother of learning to put up with a whole new set of annoying male habits?’ Zoë joked, pulling another of her funny faces as she stamped on the stub of her cigarette. ‘Farts, belches, smelly socks – best to stick with the ones you know, that’s what I say.’ She lit another cigarette straight away, batting at the smoke as they kissed goodbye.
Sophie walked home, feeling fortunate on her own behalf and sad on Zoë’s. Her old friend’s sense of humour might still be wonderfully intact, but she was a far cry from the somewhat dreamy woman who had boasted of shared marital ideals and Pete’s parenting skills a decade before, during the days of pre-school and pushchairs in the park. And yet the pair had seemed so close during her and Andrew’s September dinner party, almost irritatingly so – eye-contact, arm-touching, laughing at each other’s stories. But, then, a marriage was such a house of a thing, Sophie reflected affectionately, pausing outside her own front door: no one but the occupants really knew what went on inside.
As she stepped into the hall she was assailed by the strains of piano-playing, followed closely by a muted, less obviously tuneful noise floating from the direction of Olivia’s bedroom. She found Andrew in the dining room, cocooned in his big silver headphones and conducting vigorously in front of a large book propped open on a music stand. When Sophie tapped him on the shoulder he spun round with visible irritation.
‘Sorry … just wanted you to know I’m back. Goodness …’ She put her hands to ears, rolling her eyes to the ceiling as a louder, different rhythmic pounding started up overhead. ‘If Mrs Hemmel hasn’t complained yet, she soon will … not that any single member of this household would hear the doorbell or the phone.’ She laughed, stepping closer to offer her lips for a kiss and giving a playful tug to the wire sprouting out of the headphones.
Andrew smiled, looking sheepish, but also – she could tell from the speed with which he pecked her forehead – quite keen to be left alone. ‘Good lunch? How was Zoë?’
‘Great, thanks … At least … Yes, fine.’ Sophie suppressed an urge to elaborate, out of a mix of loyalty to her friend and it obviously not being a good moment to talk. She squinted at the open pages of the score on the stand instead, the dense layers of dots and stalks, a foreign language, even after twenty years. ‘You’ve been practising so much. This week is supposed to be a holiday, remember? You and Milly, you’re like a pair of whirling dervishes at the moment – music, music, music.’
Andrew placed himself between her and the stand, pressing one hand protectively against the open pages. ‘Rachmaninov’s Vespers. I’m trying to work out if the choir are up to it.’ He slotted the headphones back over his ears and then pointed his baton at the ceiling, asking in the too-loud voice of one who cannot hear, ‘Please have a word with Olivia. She’s been locked in there for hours with Clare and some boy, playing that hateful noise. It’s not fair on Milly, it really isn’t.’
Sophie put her head round the music-room door before going upstairs. ‘All right, sweetheart?’
Milly, seated at the piano, her fingers flying, turned her head briefly and with an irritation so visible, so reminiscent of her father, that Sophie couldn’t help smiling. ‘What?’
‘Nothing. Sorry to disturb.’ Sophie closed the door softly and then paused as the music – Bach, of course (she had learnt that much over the years because Bach was Milly’s favourite and the tune was something knitted and tricky and fast) – gathered momentum. What wasn’t in doubt was that Milly’s skill was extraordinary and growing by the week. Normally, the piano got short shrift when it came to practice, the cello being her first love, but throughout that autumn she had been giving it just as much attention, to the point where even Olivia had remarked on the fact. ‘Bloody hell – she’s better than me now,’ she had observed grudgingly, adding for her father’s benefit, ‘and don’t tell me she deserves it because I know that already.’
Sophie rapped twice on Olivia’s bedroom door and leant against the wall to wait.
‘Yes?’ Olivia’s head appeared a moment later.
‘The music, darling, I’m afraid it’s too loud. Both Dad and Milly are trying to practise.’
Olivia groaned. ‘We’d just finished anyway.’ She opened the door wider, revealing her friend, Clare, sprawled on the bed, and a boy with messy dark curly hair sitting cross-legged on the floor. He had a small gold ring stapled through one eyebrow and was dressed in a black T-shirt and low-slung skin-tight jeans that accentuated his long legs and narrow hips.
Sophie smiled at them both, before letting her eyes rest on Clare. ‘Hi there.’
‘Hi, Mrs Chapman.’ Clare waved, then caught the boy’s eye, looking as if she was trying not to laugh.
‘And that’s Harry,’ said Olivia, pointing at her other visitor, who grinned and nodded and then, rather touchingly, clambered to his feet to shake Sophie’s hand. Standing up it was even clearer how stick-thin he was and how pale, seen close to, with patches of unhealthy-looking red bumps across his chin and round his nose. ‘Harry has his own band. We were listening to the demo.’
‘Gosh – congratulations.’
‘Thanks.’ Harry grinned, revealing a flash of disarming adult charm, before shaking the heavy, overgrown locks of hair back over his eyes. ‘Better make a move.’ He bounced on the balls of his feet, looking first at Olivia and then Clare, who sprang obediently off the bed.
Sophie watched through the window as Olivia saw them out. It took a while, the trio hovering by the gate, saying she knew not what to each other, but laughing a lot, especially Clare, who showed off her even teeth and flicked her auburn hair whenever the Harry boy looked her way. He seemed not to notice, fidgeting constantly, crossing and uncrossing his arms, kicking the toe of his shoe at the pavement, rolling a cigarette, which he smoked with a vigorous nonchalance, holding it between his thumb and first two fingers, crinkling his eyes like a seasoned old man against the smoke. Watching him, Sophie found herself wondering who might have replaced the percussion in her daughter’s affections, hoping, ungenerously, that it was a creature
rather more wholesome, and altogether less reminiscent of the occasional sorry soul expelled by Gareth for manifest use of illegal substances.
As the three hugged their farewells at last, displaying the physical closeness in which both her children seemed to indulge effortlessly with all their teenage friends, Sophie ducked out of sight and hurried to the kitchen to see if anything resembling an evening meal might be scrambled from the scanty contents of the fridge.
‘That was Harry-as-in-Stapleton, by the way,’ volunteered Olivia, breezily, hoisting herself to sit on the kitchen table and plucking the last apple from the fruit bowl, which she began to eat – as always – in small circular bites starting from the stalk.
‘You mean …?’
‘Doh … yes, as in the ones who spent August in this very house.’ Olivia continued to nibble, swinging her legs, looking pleased with herself. ‘Is that funny or what? He’s got his own flat,’ she continued with evident admiration, ‘or, at least, he’s sharing a place with a couple of the other band members so that they can concentrate on their music.’
‘Blimey. He looked so young. I wonder what his parents think.’
‘His mum is cool about it and he’s not speaking to his dad.’
‘Oh dear.’
‘Why “oh dear”?’ she sneered. ‘It’s called “real life”, Mum, get over it.’
‘I’ll do my best,’ retorted Sophie, drily, too eager for more information to risk the obvious, alienating, route of a reprimand. ‘So how did you come across him then, if you don’t mind my asking?’
‘A gig … at this place we went to after Clare’s eighteenth.’
‘And are they any good, do you think, his band, whatever they’re called?’
‘The Skunks?’ Olivia screwed up her nose, as if this was the first time she had given the matter serious thought. ‘I’m not sure, to be honest, but, yeah, I guess they have potential.’
‘Who has potential?’ boomed Andrew, striding into the kitchen from a run-through that had clearly gone well, the headphones still bouncing round his neck.
‘No one,’ Olivia trilled, shooting a look at her mother as she slipped off the table and back upstairs, the half-eaten apple pinioned between her teeth.
Not the progeny of Beth Stapleton but of the ex-wife, Sophie reminded herself, absently dropping items into a supermarket trolley half an hour later, the fridge having proved empty beyond the wildest reaches of her creativity. And that one of her girls should come across one of the Stapleton boys was hardly a massive coincidence either, since Richmond was only a couple of miles downriver. On being told of it, Andrew had been only mildly interested, reserving his energies for some jaw-clenched criticism once Olivia was out of earshot, both for what he had been forced to hear of the band’s demo and his impression of Harry Stapleton in general from a brief conversation before the three had disappeared upstairs. What did such ‘friends’ suggest about Olivia’s blossoming powers of judgement? he wanted to know, adding darkly that it took only one kid to go off the rails for the rest to follow like lemmings.
Sophie had pooh-poohed his fears, but as her trolley filled, she found herself resolving to keep the closest possible eye on the situation. Harry Stapleton was interesting, clearly, a little wild and dangerous – hardly surprising, then, that Olivia should enjoy being drawn into his circle, especially given the amusingly star-struck state of her best friend. But he was also, plainly – as Andrew had so delighted in pointing out – no role model. But Olivia, surely, would know that, Sophie reasoned, just as she would know that, having won her mother’s faith and support, it would be unconscionable to adopt any sort of behaviour that would let her down.
But what she really didn’t like, Sophie acknowledged, still mulling the matter over as she loaded her purchases into several splitting, overstretched plastic bags at the checkout (having forgotten, as usual, to bring her robust ‘green’ ones), was the sense that the appearance of Harry Stapleton in their lives brought his stepmother back into the frame too, just when Sophie had been doing such a good job of forgetting her. Minutely, remotely, like a blip on the edge of a radar screen – the woman lived thousands of miles way, after all – but for Sophie it was an unsettling reminder of how, thanks to the house-swap, the worlds of their two families would never again be absolutely distinct. There was an overlap now and always would be, like a Venn diagram – two immutable circles, sharing a slice of grey.
14
After much debate with himself, and against the advice of his wife, William had decided to keep his November visit to the UK a surprise. There was, he knew, a certain element of indulgence to the decision (the hero’s welcome he would receive from Alfie, for starters), but there were other, more worthy reasons too, like not wanting to get Susan het up or put any pressure on his parents or – more importantly – on Harry, whose continuing hurtful silence strongly suggested that the child would grab any chance of ducking out of a face-to-face.
It was to be the briefest of visits too: Friday to Monday night, back on Tuesday, in time for a gritty-eyed day in the office and the arrival of his mother-in-law for Thanksgiving. All that week Beth had been immersed in shopping lists and recipes: an infallible version of a pumpkin pie (nutmeg, cloves, cinnamon and ginger, apparently) had been secured from one of her Pilates friends; cookbooks lay open round the kitchen, at pages detailing the intricacies of cranberry sauce, chestnut stuffing and the secrets of a perfectly roasted turkey. When William had pointed out – with somewhat acerbic incredulity – that there were still seven days to go, and all for an event scheduled that year to comprise a grand total of three attendees, only one of whom was noted for his large appetite, Beth had pouted like a little girl, asking what was so wrong about wanting everything perfect and why didn’t he run along to England and leave her to get on with it?
And Thanksgiving was, without doubt, the best festival of the American year, William reflected, experiencing a pang of remorse for how quick he had been to put his wife on the spot, seeking to burst the bubble of her enthusiasm rather than enjoy it. What had got into him? An excuse for time off, a get-together over fabulous food, breaking up the dankness of November, all without the cumbersome attachment of presents or religious overtones. Judging from the dilapidated look of the street along which his taxi was crawling, he would be more than ready to embrace every aspect of such festivities by the time he flew home.
‘You did say the Royal,’ said the cabbie, glancing doubtfully at the sign of washed-out lettering dangling from the pockmarked wall of the building behind his smartly dressed passenger.
‘Yes, indeed.’ William peeled two twenties and a fiver out of his wallet, resisting the urge to explain himself further. The hotel was a lot seedier than the photograph on the Internet had suggested but, really, it hardly mattered, given the priority of keeping the trip cheap and needing nothing more than a pillow upon which to lay his head. Most importantly, he was a stone’s throw from Harry and only a fifteen-minute walk from Richmond.
And there was something faintly exotic about the sheer anonymity of it, William told himself, glancing up and down the dark street after the taxi had sped away, glad that he hadn’t caved in to the temptation of phoning his parents, who would worry and want explanations and possibly even stress themselves with a rushed train journey south, all for a snatched meal and little possibility of reassurance. He was here to sort Harry out and nothing more. He had spent most of the flight planning what to say, how to win the boy round, now that enough weeks had passed for him to be certain that the letter, along with every other of his efforts since the end of the summer, had failed.
Led down a series of narrow, ill-lit corridors by the hotel’s unsmiling, greasy-haired owner, William’s spirits dipped. Stains of damp bubbled out of the walls and the air was layered with the stench of gas and cooked food. His room turned out to be a cubby-hole, the bed jammed between a shower box and a wardrobe sporting a splintered groove from collisions with the handle of the main door. On the plus side,
it was warm, thanks to an electric radiator plugged in under the window, and when William gingerly checked under the bedspread there was no doubt that the linen was fresh. The mattress was thin and the pillow stuffed with what felt like foam rubber, but what could one expect for thirty-three pounds fifty?
William dropped his bag, kicked off his shoes and fired the TV remote at the television, which flickered obligingly into action. Stretching out as comfortably as he could, he channel-flicked several times through the various late-night options before settling on Stephen Fry being wry and self-deprecating from the corner of a deep leather sofa. William blinked sleepily. It was eleven fifteen local time, barely cocktail hour in New York, yet he felt he could sleep for years. There was no question of being hungry either, since he had snacked at Newark airport and eaten twice on the plane.
His mind obligingly withdrew from his surroundings, but then refused to shut down. Images and thoughts shuttled back and forth between his temples: of the continuing ardour in Beth’s lovemaking – legs locked round his waist, her eyes wild, her tongue flicking between her lips as she came – as if intensity alone would be enough to ensure their new goal of conceiving a child; of Alfie during their most recent and not entirely satisfactory Skype session the previous weekend, his eyes large behind his new fashionable square glasses, a distinct teenage surliness starting to sour his tone – French is gay, so why should I care if I get a C?; of Ed Burke during the meeting that had been postponed so many times William had begun to wonder if it would ever happen … I’m speaking to you as a friend, Will. Three months’ pay, another for every year worked – as voluntary severance packages go, it ain’t half bad. I’m not saying you should offer yourself, only that you should know what’s on the table …
A low-pitched loud vibrating noise had started up through the wall next to the bed. Hoover? Boiler? Shower pump? William opened his eyes. Stephen Fry had been replaced by an unfamiliar face, saying things he now couldn’t even hear. He thought about calling Beth, but that would have been a challenge too, given the noise. Air, that was what he needed – preferably laced with nicotine, he decided grimly, reaching for his coat and giving the thin partition wall a mighty thump as he left the room.
Before I Knew You Page 21