She leaned against the wall and wished herself in bed, and then Dan appeared with her coat.
‘Let me see you into a taxi,’ Dan said.
‘Oh no, I’ll be fine, I don’t want to take you away from the party.’
‘You’d be doing me a favour,’ he said. ‘Look, I’m really sorry. That was all I really wanted to say, and now I’ve got even more cause to say it.’
She gazed at him, took in the worried frown, the oh-so-trustworthy blue eyes, and suddenly thought: He really means it.
‘All right,’ she said, ‘then let’s go.’
As they walked out their arms somehow aligned so that his hand was just underneath her elbow, barely touching, but ready to catch her if she stumbled and fell. The warmth and hubbub of the party followed them down the corridor and out of the entrance into the night. They were leaving it in full swing.
Outside it was freezing; their breath hung and plumed in the air. But she barely had time to feel the cold before he spotted a black cab and stepped out into the road to flag it down. The cab did a U-turn and halted in front of her, and she got into the back seat and he shut the door. He stooped to smile at her and drum his fingers on the window and wave as the car moved away.
13
Moving on
ADAM HAD A girlfriend. Lucy suspected as much when she rang him one morning to confirm arrangements for dropping off the girls and heard what sounded suspiciously like a feminine giggle in the background. She told herself she was imagining things. But a fortnight later, he cancelled a day out with the children at short notice, pleading a dose of flu. She rang him the evening before he was next due to see them to check he was better, and then he broke it to her: he’d moved on.
He dropped it in at the end of the conversation, after the discussion about when he was coming (twelve noon, on the dot) and where he was taking them (for pizza). She checked whether he’d Amazoned the Christmas present suggestions she’d given him (he had), double-checked that he was still happy to see them on Boxing Day but not on Christmas Day itself (he was), and was about to ring off when Adam said, ‘Er, Lucy . . . there’s something you should know. I’m seeing someone.’
‘Really,’ she said.
‘I don’t think it’s serious,’ Adam said.
‘Then why are you telling me?’
‘Well, you know, I just . . . I didn’t want you to hear from someone else.’
‘Like who? It’s not as if we have any mutual friends any more. Your buddies aren’t exactly beating a path to my door to pass on the latest gossip.’
‘Oh come on, it’s not as if your mum friends have made any effort to stay in touch with me. And as for Tina and Natalie, I’ve known them for years, and neither of them have bothered to make contact.’
‘Yes, well, I imagine they have other priorities. So who is this person you’re seeing?’
‘She’s called Emily. She did TEFL with me, and she’s doing a bit of work at the language centre.’
‘So that’s why you haven’t gone abroad yet. I knew it. I knew you’d end up dating a student.’
‘Actually, she was one of the older ones on the course,’ Adam said, ‘and she’s a very nice person.’
‘Good for her,’ Lucy said. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’
She ended the call before he could come out with the line she could tell was on the way: ‘You know, if you two met under different circumstances, I think you’d get on . . .’
The girls were in bed, and the house seemed very quiet. She opened a bottle of wine and sat down in front of the television, but found it difficult to concentrate. She was plagued by the unkind questions that women whose husbands cheat on them are told to ask themselves: Could it have been my fault? What did I do wrong? Was there anything I could have done differently? The questions were much more obvious than the answers, and after she’d got through the wine she had to console herself by popping outside to finish off her pack of ten.
She came to with a start in the middle of the night, alone in the double bed, in sheets that were damp with sweat, although the air was cold.
‘Mummy! Mummy! Mummy!’
It was Clemmie. Another nightmare! Lucy turned on the light, hauled herself out of bed and rushed to offer comfort, banging her hip on the chest of drawers as she went past. Another bruise to add to the collection. She was covered in them, all at varying stages of repair; if she’d had a resident husband, she might have been taken for the victim of a brute.
Ellen had been the same. She was beginning to remind herself of Ellen more and more: puffy-faced, bitter, erratic, forgetful, emotional by night, irritable by day, and, every evening, always with a drink on the go.
Clemmie was sitting bolt upright, the whites of her eyes wide and round in the gloom. Lucy sat down next to her and pulled her into a hug; Clemmie was stiff but unresisting.
Lucy asked what the bad dream was about. Clemmie was initially reluctant, but after a bit of cajoling she murmured, ‘I dreamed you didn’t love me any more.’
‘What a silly dream! Of course I love you. Try to go back to sleep now.’
Lucy lay down and patted the space next to her. Clemmie snuggled back under the covers and rested her head on the pillow, her face up close to Lucy’s. Lucy reached out to stroke her hair. So soft! Being horizontal felt a bit better. Pounding headache, nausea . . . she really shouldn’t have finished the bottle.
‘Mummy,’ Clemmie murmured, ‘you know Grandma gave me that money for Christmas? Do you think I could use it to get a Talking Walking Pet Wolf?’
‘We’ll talk about it tomorrow, darling. Go to sleep now,’ Lucy said.
Ellen had refused Lucy’s offer to buy the girls presents on her behalf, and had rustled up a crumpled fiver for each granddaughter, posted to them right at the beginning of December in cards that must have been written for her by one of the nurses. But a fiver would not go far towards covering the cost of the animatronic wolfhound toy Clemmie had spotted advertised on TV, and had been pestering for since November.
Then Clemmie said, in a quite different tone of voice – wide awake, sharp, and rather critical: ‘Mummy, you smell funny.’
Lucy jerked upright.
Was it the booze Clemmie had noticed? Or the cigarette smoke?
‘Don’t be so rude, Clemency. I’ll see you in the morning.’
Ignoring Clemmie’s protests, she left the room, shut the door gently but firmly behind her, and went back to bed.
Four fifty a.m. In a little more than seven hours she’d come face to face with Adam. And she’d be looking knackered, hungover and haggard. It wouldn’t even be a battle. She was heading for wipeout.
At midday, bang on time, a sleek grey Mercedes pulled up outside the house with Adam in it. In the driving seat sat a young blonde woman Lucy had never seen before: Emily.
Emily glanced up at the house rather fearfully, as well she might, because Lucy, who had spotted her from an upstairs window, was already storming down the stairs like a Fury in pursuit of vengeance.
Lucy flung open the door just seconds after Adam had pressed the bell. He looked at her with mild astonishment. Had he had his teeth whitened? He certainly had a new hairstyle – was that gel in it? – and a new leather jacket. Oh God – his new woman had given him a youth-over.
‘What is that woman doing outside my house?’ Lucy hissed.
‘For God’s sake, Lucy, keep your hair on,’ Adam said. ‘What was I meant to do, drop her off round the corner so she could cower in a hedge and you wouldn’t have to see her? I did tell you about her.’
‘You didn’t tell me you were planning to invite her round to my house. You said you’d bonded because she was one of the older students on the course!’
‘She is. She’s twenty-six.’
Exactly the same age as Hannah.
‘You are just so fucking predictable!’
‘Lucy, calm down. You’re making a scene. It’s embarrassing.’
‘I take it that’s her car. Presumably
she’s got a rich daddy. Is that the attraction? She looks like a Sloane.’
‘Sloanes haven’t existed since 1988. You’re showing your age, sweetheart.’
He caught her hand before it slapped his face.
‘I wouldn’t do that if I were you. The children are watching.’
She looked over her shoulder and saw Lottie and Clemmie hovering shyly in the corridor.
Adam let go of her wrist.
‘You’d better borrow Clemmie’s booster seat,’ she said.
‘If you really think it’s necessary.’
‘I do.’
She clicked the key to unlock her car for him, then pulled the front door to, stepped back into the hallway, took Clemmie’s anorak off the banister and started helping her into it.
‘Daddy’s brought a special friend to meet you, isn’t that nice? Would you get your coat on, please, Lottie? Are you going to wear your boots? Clemmie, you can do those yourself, can’t you? Chop chop, Daddy’s waiting.’
She ushered them out and they trotted towards the car. Emily was standing next to it, watching Adam from a slight distance as he put the booster seat in the back. She had on a good quality coat. Navy blue, princess cut. Cashmere, probably.
Adam withdrew, looking flushed, and the girls climbed in.
‘I want them back by five,’ Lucy said. ‘And your friend had better drive carefully.’
She locked the car, went back into the house and shut the door. She heard the Mercedes slowly turning and pulling out on to the road. Then it was deathly quiet.
With the girls gone, the house was suddenly enormous, echoey and unreal. More than ever, it struck her as somewhere it would not be her luck to stay; it seemed as if it might vanish at any minute, like a mirage, or one of those folk-tale mansions that disappears when you make the wrong, morally faulty wish.
She was tempted to have a little hair of the dog, but no, it really was a bit too early. Instead she decided to pop out for more cigarettes. The walk, in the fresh, cold air, would do her good.
She made her way to the newsagent’s near the station. The Lemon Brasserie, where she and Adam had gone for most of their anniversary and Valentine’s dinners, was decked out with tinsel and fairy lights, and the shop windows displayed reindeers and Santas and spangly snowflakes. It was bitingly cold, but as she came out of the newsagent’s she saw three girls strolling along arm in arm, all dressed almost identically, and quite inadequately, in thin jackets, tiny skirts and stripy tights, accessorized with fur-trimmed Santa hats. They were loudly discussing a miscreant boyfriend.
‘You should dump him!’
‘I know, but I already got his present, and I don’t want to be on my own at Christmas.’
‘Oh come on, what better time to meet someone else? Get yourself under the mistletoe!’
She had to step out into the road to pass them. Yet she found them charming – they looked so united. Was that how she and Tina and Natalie had been, once upon a time: impervious to the elements and the world around them, confident in the belief that while men might come and go, they would always have each other for back-up?
In some ways, now that Natalie had a baby, and Tina had one on the way, she was closer to them than she had been for years. But while motherhood was now common ground, their experiences of love and marriage remained poles apart. How could Natalie, safely hitched to reliable Richard, understand what Lucy was going through? How could Tina, who was so self-contained, and seemed to be quite happy to live a life free of romantic entanglements?
Maybe it was unfair to hold their lack of understanding against them when Lucy hadn’t really tried to explain, hadn’t told them exactly what Adam and Hannah had done to her – but even if she did, even if she could bear to relate the story of her humiliation, they would never be able to return to the intimacy and frequent contact that had bonded their younger selves. They had children, which meant there would never be time. And, in the end, her friends could not give her what she was missing.
What was she going to do with herself till the girls got back? There was Christmas stuff she could be getting on with, but she really wasn’t in the mood. Usually she approached Christmas as a great labour of love: making the pudding and the cake and the pies; hunting down the right presents for everyone; dressing the tree with the treasured ornaments that hibernated all year round in the loft waiting for their brief, magical lease of life. But this year she was cutting back, doing less, paying lip service; it would look more or less like Christmas, but it wouldn’t be the same – it would never be the same.
No, she should check all the job sites she was registered with. And once she had got that out of the way, she would investigate setting herself up on Facebook. She had to face facts; she was lonely. Putting herself out there would take the edge off her isolation, remind her that she was not without connections, and give her the chance to present her life in a way that would come across as positive, even to herself.
She had a quick smoke in the garden, then trudged upstairs and settled down in front of the computer. Before getting started, she checked her email. Nothing – just a message from Hannah.
Mum seems happy with the Christmas plan, though she did ask if I’d drawn the short straw coming for both Christmas Eve and Boxing Day (!). She said that at least you taking her out on Christmas Day means she’s in with a chance of getting a meal that doesn’t taste of mush.
Everything is fine in the flat, the boiler is bearing up under the strain and I am managing to keep the dreaded black mould at bay. It would be lovely if you felt like popping round some time when you are over this way to visit Mum and then you can see for yourself.
Well . . . why not? But if she was going to finally meet Hannah, wouldn’t it be better to do it on her own territory?
Lucy replied to say that yes, she would like to have a look round the flat sometime. And in the meantime, she knew it was short notice, but what was Hannah doing the following day – would she like to come for Sunday lunch, and see the girls?
As she pressed send she couldn’t quite believe that she was able to contemplate with relative equanimity the idea of inviting Hannah back into her house. No, it was more than that. She was almost looking forward to seeing her.
When the girls got back from seeing their father Lottie was paler and quieter than usual, and Clemmie was demanding and fractious. By now Lucy was familiar with these reactions. Lottie would thaw out in a day or so, and Clemmie would have a big tantrum about something completely unrelated before reverting to her normal bouncy self.
The next morning Lottie stayed up in her room, probably writing in her secret diary (which Lucy had so far been very disciplined about not reading – she figured that Lottie needed a safe, private space in which to vent, and her schoolfriends, who were into pop and ponies, might not be mature enough to provide it). Clemmie slept in, and the first thing she said when she came downstairs was, ‘Emily said she’d take me to the hairdresser’s to get braids put in. Can I do that today?’
Lucy opened her mouth to speak and found herself clenching her fists. She forced herself to relax and took a deep breath.
It wasn’t Clemmie’s fault. It wouldn’t be right to take it out on her. She’d have to have a word with Adam about not letting Emily make promises she couldn’t keep – especially ones to do with hairstyles.
‘No, because Auntie Hannah’s coming for lunch,’ she said. ‘Won’t that be nice?’
She had the meal all planned: a bottle of decent white wine; a chicken to roast; and she’d make a trifle. You had to push the boat out for the return of the prodigal sister, and Lucy suspected there was nowhere else Hannah could get a decent home-cooked Sunday lunch.
The girls turned up their noses at Lucy’s trifle, predictably – Lucy was engaged in a constant battle with their stubborn preference for the pre-packaged. Lucy let them go off upstairs to play on the computer, and Hannah carried on gamely eating.
She was looking unfairly well: slim, but not gaunt, fresh-
faced, possibly even make-up free. That was what being twenty-six and childless did for you; you could just roll out of bed, shower, pull on jeans and a T-shirt and look, if not quite radiant, then at least relatively pretty, and certainly presentable.
Actually, in a way, Lucy could see why Adam had developed some kind of crush on her . . .
This thought led to a certain insincere rigidity in Lucy’s face as she returned from clearing their plates, and said to Hannah, ‘It’s so lovely to have you here.’
Hannah glanced at her nervously.
‘It’s nice to be here,’ she said.
‘I know the girls are pleased to see you,’ Lucy told her. ‘Also, I want you to know I really appreciate what you’ve done to fix up Mum’s flat, and keep an eye on her and everything.’
Hannah nodded, folded her arms, crossed her legs, pressed her lips together, stared at the tablecloth and waited. Perhaps this was how Hannah had presented herself at all the numerous interviews where she’d failed to land a permanent job? She looked as if she didn’t want any part of what was happening, or what might follow next.
It hadn’t occurred to Lucy before, but perhaps Hannah viewed the afternoon she’d taken off work back in the autumn to get Lottie from school, and the birthday party help, and even coming here today, as penance: acts of contrition that were necessary to redeem her guilt over having let Adam seduce her?
‘So how’s work, anyway?’ Lucy said. ‘Have they forgiven you for having to shoot off early that time?’
‘Oh, yeah, I’m somewhere else now. I’ve got an interview coming up for a six-month contract, though.’
‘Really, where’s that?’
‘Admin job. Department for Children, Schools and Families.’
‘You should get in touch with Natalie, ask her about it,’ Lucy said. ‘You know she works there.’
‘Oh, I expect I’ll manage,’ Hannah said.
‘No, seriously, you’ve got to make use of every possible advantage. She’s still on maternity leave, but she’s going back part-time in the spring. You should phone her. She won’t mind.’
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