‘Hello?’
‘Natalie! You’re there!’ Tina exclaimed. ‘I was doing this article and it made me think of you and I just had to call. How are you? Is everything all right?’
‘If you’re phoning to see if I’ve had it yet, the answer’s no,’ Natalie said.
‘Oh well, I’m sure it won’t be long . . . I didn’t wake you up, did I?’
Natalie sighed. ‘You did,’ she said, ‘but never mind. How are you? Did you have a nice birthday?’
‘Actually, it was pretty crap,’ Tina said. ‘I ended up staying in and watching telly.’
‘You should have come round,’ Natalie said, ‘we could have watched it together. So have you made peace with Lucy yet?’
‘Er, no.’ Tina had half hoped that Lucy might get in touch on her birthday, but she hadn’t. ‘Why is it up to me, anyway?’
Natalie sighed. ‘Aren’t we a bit old for all this? You’ve been friends since 1995. Don’t you think you should try and sort it out?’
‘I will, I will. I’ve just been kind of busy, what with one thing and another.’
‘Oh yeah, the new man. How’s that going?’
‘Badly,’ Tina said. ‘I think he likes someone else.’
‘And you like him?’
‘Well . . .’
‘Do you?’
‘He’s not bad-looking,’ Tina conceded. ‘But he has a horrible brown jacket.’
‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, that’s hardly a deal-breaker. Learn to love it, or buy him a new one for Christmas. Have you tried actually talking to him?’
‘I think it might be too late.’
‘Tina, I’m the one who’s too late,’ Natalie said. ‘If I haven’t gone into labour by the middle of next week, I have to go into hospital to talk about being induced, which is not how I wanted this to turn out. They’ll let me go a fortnight late, and then that’s it.’ She sighed. ‘Anyway. I’d better let you go.’
And then she was gone. It was unlike her to be so terse, but perhaps this was a good sign. Perhaps she had somehow acquired extra reserves of feistiness that would help her get through the approaching ordeal, and emerge restored to her usual gentle, mild-mannered self.
Tina was about to close her personal organizer and put it away when it occurred to her that she might have forgotten something. Something important.
She turned to the diary section and flicked back to the end of March: 20 March was marked by a small red cross. The next week, there had been various evening engagements: the launch of the Dunmore Gallery summer season; the opening night of that Rattigan revival; cocktails in the Oxo Tower with a bunch of telly people.
28 March: Natalie – what a disaster that had turned out to be. 30 March: G. Diary code for the Grandee – Justin. Their last night – an awful, lacklustre conclusion to so many years of hopeful anticipation . . .
The entry for 3 April said: hygienist 8.00 a.m. She distinctly remembered that her gums had still been tender as she sat nursing her gin and tonic in a corner of the Queen’s Head after work, and looked up to see Dan coming towards her.
27 April: her birthday. A Monday. She’d planned a quiet drink with an actress friend, but had been stood up – something to do with a shoot for a toothpaste commercial overrunning.
Today’s date was 29 April. Which meant she was nearly two weeks late.
Someone cleared his throat, and she looked up from the incriminating diary pages to see Jeremy, the opinion and comment editor and her boss, wearing an unnatural smile and reaching across her desk to present her with a small envelope.
Jeremy was a little terrier of a man who compensated for his lack of stature by barking at people as frequently and aggressively as possible. When she first started working for him Tina had been continually on edge, but she’d come to realize that he was quick to move on and growl at the next hapless passer-by, and there was something to be said for having a boss with a short attention span, who didn’t always hang on to your mistakes.
It was Justin who’d advised her on how to handle Jeremy – someone like that may be tough on you, but if you give him what he wants he’ll probably end up being your biggest fan – and this had turned out to be true; it was Jeremy who had swung it for her to finally get her own column.
‘My goodness! Is it presentation time already?’ she said, taking the card and opening it. A couple of M&S gift tokens fell out.
‘Yes, I’ve got a meeting at one, so I thought we’d better get on with it,’ Jeremy said. ‘Congratulations, Tina. You’ve got through a whole ten years without taking maternity leave. Long may it continue!’
Tina opened her card and glanced through the signatures. There it was, Dan’s spiky scrawl, so different to Justin’s well-formed copperplate: Here’s to another ten years, I hope they bring you the happiness you deserve.
What was that supposed to mean? She had been happy. Still was, come to that. She loved her job – she loved pretty much everything about it. The access; the right to ask questions; the urgency of having a deadline, and the relief after meeting it; the kick of seeing her name in print; the surprising insights into what other lives were like. More than that, she loved the feel and smell of newsprint, and the satisfaction of contributing to something bigger and louder than she was. Why, then, did it suddenly seem as if all this was not enough – too transitory, too ephemeral? An assembly of people who came and went, creating tomorrow’s fish and chip paper, the day after’s unsearched-for internet archive . . .
She looked beyond Jeremy to where Dan and Julia were standing in the space between the news and features sections, apparently oblivious to everyone else. They were laughing about something, and Julia was pressing her body towards Dan, and his arms were reaching for her as if opening up for an embrace.
‘When you’re ready, Tina,’ Jeremy said, ‘let’s go, shall we?’
Other colleagues were already mustering behind him: Anthea Trask, freshly lipsticked, smiling brightly; Monty Delamere, the pot-bellied, whiskery parliamentary sketch writer, who’d put his hand on Tina’s knee in the taxi after her first Post Christmas party, but had taken it in entirely good spirits when she’d turned him down; that week’s work experience, bright-eyed, bushy-tailed and eager to please.
Tina closed her personal organizer and forced a smile.
‘Sure,’ she said. ‘Time to get out of here.’
4
The haunted house
A MONTH HAD passed since Lucy had kicked Adam and Hannah out of the house, and so far she had managed to avoid telling anyone what had happened. She’d headed off potentially awkward questions from the school-gate mums, who were best placed to notice that something was up, by telling them that Adam had been seconded to another office and was away a lot. She had also said that Hannah had moved on. She had avoided mentioning Hannah and Adam in close succession; she didn’t want anyone to make a connection between their disappearances.
She was still wearing her wedding and engagement rings. It felt too weird without them on.
If she’d revealed even a fraction of the truth, the reaction would have been overwhelmingly sympathetic. But she wasn’t ready yet to lay herself open to others’ attempts to comfort her. It wasn’t so much that she wanted to keep up appearances, more that she was terrified of what would become of her if she let them go.
Everything had become unreal; it was as if she had turned into a ghost, and nobody else had noticed yet. Force of habit kept her moving, and her shadowy half-life was both less vivid and less painful than being fully alive.
She had decided to ignore other, older friends for the time being, and had even managed not to give away anything to her mother. This was quite an achievement, given that Hannah had pitched up on Ellen’s doorstep, and Ellen plainly smelt a rat. Her father was at a safe distance in Spain, and wouldn’t expect to hear from her until Christmas.
There were no relatives on Adam’s side of the family to worry about. Adam was an only child, and had lost his mother when he was twenty; h
is father had survived her long enough to hold both his grandchildren, but had passed away soon after Clemmie was born.
She would never forget the look on Adam’s face when he first told her about his mother, and the cancer that had killed her. Was it their second date, or perhaps their third? It had certainly been the moment when she had known for sure that she was going to fall in love with him.
It was much harder, now, for her to feel sorry for him; she could no longer trust him to let her make it up to him. She didn’t want to tell anyone, ever, what had happened between him and Hannah. However, she knew that there were two people who were owed some kind of an explanation, and who needed it sooner than later.
Her daughters.
And so, when Adam rang one school-day afternoon, she steeled herself to broach the subject.
They were going to have to make it official.
They started with a brief discussion about money. He was still paying the mortgage and household bills; she wanted instead to receive a fixed sum as maintenance each month, and have their family solicitors draw up a formal separation arrangement on her behalf. He said, ‘If that’s what you want.’
Then he said he had to go away on a business trip over the weekend, and would it be possible for him to see the girls tomorrow evening instead?
‘That’s fine,’ she said, ‘a bit short notice, but still, it’s fine. They’ll look forward to it.’
Something stopped her from adding, ‘They miss you,’ though this was unquestionably true.
Clemmie, who had always been outspoken, had become downright stroppy – burst into loud tears at the least provocation, and kept having nightmares. Lottie had gone the other way, and was quieter and paler and more withdrawn than ever.
Instead she said, ‘We need to talk to them.’
‘Oh . . .’ He swallowed. ‘Do we? What do you think we should say?’
‘We have to tell them you’re not coming back. As far as they’re aware, you’ve just been staying somewhere else for a while. They need to know it’s permanent.’
‘Do you really need me there to tell them that?’ he said.
‘Yes, I do. We need to do it together.’
‘If you say so. Sounds like something out of one of your parenting books,’ he said.
‘It has to be done. We can’t put it off any longer,’ she told him, but he had already hung up.
After she’d taken the girls to school the next day she finally finished packing up Hannah’s stuff.
There wasn’t all that much to get rid of, when it came down to it. CDs and skinny jeans showing varying degrees of wear and tear; bedding; a poster of some unhealthy-looking pop star. Hannah wasn’t one to set much store by owning things – she’d always spent all her money on going out.
She couldn’t help but pick up traces of Hannah’s smell: damp denim and smoke and beer, suggestive of all the nights Hannah had walked back in the rain from the station after a night out.
Adam still had a number of shirts hanging up next to her dresses, a squash racket in the under-the-stairs cupboard, a Brand Director of the Year award on the bookcase in the sitting room. But Hannah had been completely purged.
She had told the girls that Hannah had moved in with Ellen, to keep her company. Something about the way she’d said it must have put them off asking any questions. Perhaps she should have arranged some kind of farewell . . . but no. Children needed their fathers, but plenty of people never saw their aunts.
She loaded Hannah’s things into the car and drove across London to her mother’s.
‘She’s not here, you know,’ Ellen said as Lucy dumped the first box in the grimy hallway. ‘She’s at work.’
‘I know,’ Lucy said.
She went back out to the car. Ellen didn’t move to help. When Lucy came back in Ellen had folded her arms and looked displeased. She was wearing a man’s denim shirt, slightly stained, over grey sweatpants, and her long raggedy hair, which had once been golden blonde but was now rough and grey, hung in loose drifts over her shoulders.
‘What if she doesn’t want all this stuff?’ Ellen asked.
‘Then she can throw it away,’ Lucy said, dumping a bin bag on the box and turning to go back outside.
‘Are you going to come in properly and sit down?’ Ellen asked as she came back in with another bin bag.
‘Can’t, I’m sorry,’ said Lucy. ‘I’ve got to be at the school gate at three.’
Which was true. She also couldn’t face the old photos of herself and Hannah beaming for the camera.
‘It’s been a while,’ Ellen said. ‘How are the girls?’
Ellen had never been the sort of grandmother who babysits on a regular basis, nor yet a spoiler, armed with sweets. Her interaction with the girls was always muted when she was on Lucy’s territory, but on the rare occasions when Lucy brought the girls to the flat Ellen became bolder, barking out questions about school and friends and favourite games.
The girls seemed to accept Ellen’s foibles – her domestic sluttishness, her strange mix of aggression and defensiveness, the smell of gin that sometimes clung to her; they always seemed more pleased than not to see her. And why not? She was the only grandmother they had.
‘Why don’t you come round on Sunday?’ Lucy said. ‘I can pick you up and drop you back if you like. We’re free all day.’
She would tell her then. With the girls out of earshot, but still around. That way, Ellen wouldn’t be able to probe too deeply.
‘That’s a possibility, I suppose,’ Ellen said. ‘Will Adam be there?’
‘Er, no. He’ll be away. He’s been away a lot lately.’
‘I know he doesn’t want to see me,’ Ellen said. ‘You don’t need to try and hide it.’
Lucy decided not to respond to this either. She came back from the car with the last of Hannah’s things: her guitar.
‘I do hope she’s not going to try and play that thing while she’s here,’ Ellen said. ‘She’s a rather selfish girl, isn’t she? To be honest, Lucy, I don’t know how you stood it for so long.’
‘She has her moments,’ Lucy said.
Clemmie and Lottie had always loved listening to Hannah play. She put down the guitar next to everything else.
Ellen said, ‘When are you going to tell me what’s going on?’
‘Ask Hannah,’ Lucy said. ‘Would eleven o’clock be OK to pick you up on Sunday?’
‘I suppose I’ll have to tell Hannah to keep out of your way when you come,’ Ellen said.
‘She will,’ Lucy said, and made good her escape.
She got back just in time for the school pick-up. Back home, once she’d given the girls a snack and encouraged them to change out of their uniforms and into something nice, somehow it was already early evening and Adam was on the doorstep.
She let him in and ushered the girls into the living room, and made a start on the sad little routine she’d been thinking about for weeks: ‘Your dad and I have something to tell you . . .’
There: she’d finally said it. She saw straight away that they knew exactly what was coming. They looked scared, and Adam did too – he’d gone thin and hollow-looking, the way he always did when he was anxious, and his hands were trembling slightly.
She made it through the rest of her speech by staring at the pattern on the Turkish rug.
‘Daddy’s not going to live with us any more. He’s going to see you most weekends, though, and we still both love you very much. We’re just not such good friends with each other as we used to be.’
Adam made a slightly strangled, choking noise, and then managed to say, ‘And you can call me. Anytime you like. I’ll call you straight back, so it won’t be on Mummy’s phone bill.’
Lucy mustered the courage to look up and saw that Clemmie was furious.
‘This is your fault!’ she shouted at Lucy through a storm of tears. ‘For being so mean. And saying no all the time!’
When Lucy tried to approach her she flinched away and removed herself to
a spot in the middle of the rug, where she continued to sob remorselessly.
Adam said, in a low voice, ‘I’m not sure this has helped anything. I’m meant to be taking them out for a meal now. How’s that going to work?’
But Lottie went over to Clemmie and settled next to her, and Clemmie relented and allowed Lottie to hold her.
Seeing them together, the older child comforting the younger, Lucy was reminded of herself, at Lottie’s age, stepping over Ellen’s supine body as she crossed the landing to get Hannah out of her cot and change her. How Hannah had been screaming, soaking wet, red in the face with fury . . . and then, as soon as Lucy had taken charge of her, her crying had stilled, and she had clung to her as if she never wanted to let go.
That night she couldn’t sleep, and finally dozed off near dawn. She got back from the school drop-off the next morning to find that Hannah had called and left a message.
‘Lucy, it’s me . . . You have to know. Mum’s had a stroke – I found her this morning. She’s still alive, but we don’t know how bad it is. I’m at Penge Hospital with her now. Please come as soon as you can.’
She’s still alive. Did that mean she could die?
Lucy’s legs went weak and she found herself sitting at the kitchen table. Resting on the surface in front of her were both her hands, still clutching the phone: square, capable, practical hands, unmanicured, made for doing. Hands she’d inherited from her mother.
She had spent most of her adult life trying both to impress Ellen and to be different from her in every possible way. If she lost her, how on earth would she know who to be?
Her engagement ring caught the light and the diamond glinted.
The symbol of for ever. But all you could really lay claim to was now . . .
And then, somehow, she was moving again, returning the phone to its cradle on the dresser, gathering up handbag and keys, locking up, going out to start the car.
She had to get to Ellen as fast as she could. She mustn’t be too late.
The hospital was a warren of a place, a long, low, irregular structure that could never have been planned, but must have just been added to, bit by bit, over the years. There was scaffolding up in the reception area, and as she skirted round it someone called out, ‘Can I help you?’
Stop the Clock Page 6