A Perfect Husband

by Hilary Boyd

  They said goodbye, and Lily had a moment of sadness for the man who had so reminded her of Sara’s father. She stood against the warm stone, her phone still in her hand, looking out across the still water of the canal, and remembered the day she and Garret Tierney had met.

  It was the end-of-term show at Byam Shaw and she’d been hovering with her friends, nervously checking the reactions of the people peering at their work displayed on the walls. A noisy, swaggering group of men had appeared in the hall – clearly a little the worse for wear – and begun wandering around the exhibits, commenting loudly. Lily and her friends had rolled their eyes, knowing they were probably full-of-themselves medical students because one of them was Vicky’s brother – Vicky was an irritatingly pretty and even more annoyingly talented student with whom they all competed. Her brother, Richard, was a boisterous presence at pub outings.

  Then a tall, broad-shouldered member of the group had stopped in front of Lily’s pen-and-ink portraits – these were her first and she had been experimenting, not sure if the genre suited her style, if the colours were bold enough, if she should have made them bigger, used different paper, if, if, if . . . He had drawn closer, his nose only inches from her work, then grabbed his friend’s sleeve and brought him to look.

  ‘Hey, look at these, Raj. Grand, don’t you think?’ he’d said, his Irish voice warm and admiring. ‘I like them.’

  Lily, flustered and embarrassed, had held back until her friends pushed her forward and Garret swung round to greet her. He had been overwhelming. Handsome, laughing, his blue eyes gathering her up as if she already belonged to him. Her father and mother had arrived soon afterwards, and Garret had introduced himself, as if he’d been dating Lily for years. That was Garret all over. A man for whom confidence was a given, ‘no’ not even in his vocabulary.

  Now Lily’s heart lurched. Garret and his laughing eyes, the father of her children, the man with whom she’d thought she would spend the rest of her life. Her thoughts turned to Freddy, the disquiet she felt at his ongoing silence forcing her to draw a comparison between the two men. But remembering the genuine constancy of her first marriage, she wasn’t sure now she would exchange Garret’s almost presumptuous love with Freddy’s frailer, more sensitive version. His gaze might be less bold than Garret’s, his manner less confident against the gold standard of Mr Tierney. He was altogether a gentler person, his vulnerability, in the moments of reflection Lily sometimes caught, glaringly apparent. Still, the love in his eyes for her seemed disarmingly certain, perhaps more ardent than Garret’s had ever been. Brushing tears from her eyes, she put her phone away and walked the short distance to the boat.

  ‘Hey, Lily. Come on in.’ Seth extended his hand to guide her onto the boat. ‘Have you time for coffee? We could sit outside – it’s so beautiful.’

  They settled in the tatty canvas chairs Seth placed on the decking in the stern of the boat, and Lily accepted the cup of coffee he’d made for her, glad to be distracted from her troubling thoughts.

  ‘I’ve just got one of these pod machines,’ he said. ‘I resisted them for an age – it seems such a clinical way to make coffee. Is it okay?’ He glanced anxiously at her cup.

  ‘Perfect.’

  Neither spoke for a minute, but even though Lily was only meeting the doctor for the third time, the silence didn’t feel awkward. She supposed he was used to pockets of silence with his patients.

  ‘How did you get on?’ he asked.

  ‘All done. Some of the interviews are so absorbing it’s hard not to get involved. Should be an interesting book.’

  He pulled a wry face. ‘When I finally finish it. But things seem to get in the way, I find.’

  There was something so sad in his statement that she found herself asking, ‘What sort of things?’

  He shot her a surprised glance, and she immediately regretted her question. ‘I didn’t mean to pry.’

  For a moment he didn’t respond, his eyes looking out across the canal, blinking hard behind his glasses. ‘No . . . no, you’re not prying. I’m just not in the habit of talking about myself. We psychoanalysts make it a rule never to let the patients know anything about our private lives. The work is all about them.’ He smiled. ‘But then, you’re not a patient.’ Seth had taken a deep breath, turning a steady gaze on Lily as if determined to get through the embarrassment of disclosure. ‘My wife died three years ago. I haven’t dealt with it particularly well . . . I can’t seem to settle to anything.’ He raised his eyebrows briefly, blinked as he gave a small shrug.

  ‘I’m so sorry. I know how that feels,’ she said, adding quickly, ‘although it’s different for everyone, of course.’ She remembered all too well the friends who had assumed how she was feeling after Garret died. They were seldom accurate, grief being such a complicated thing.

  He looked puzzled. ‘Your husband died? I thought . . .’

  ‘My first husband, yes. Ten years ago.’ She told him, in a sentence, about Garret’s death, pared down to something almost manageable now. Almost.

  ‘Heavens.’ He shot her an apologetic glance. ‘Grief is so selfish. You think you’re the only person who’s ever felt this way, ever suffered so much.’

  She smiled. ‘Well, I suppose that’s true to a certain extent. The pain is the same but there are probably a million ways to feel it.’

  The silence was heavy as they both remembered. It had been bewildering as much as painful for Lily. She had felt completely untethered, unable to settle to anything, as if she’d forgotten how to do even the simplest of daily tasks. And throughout that hellish period she’d had the compelling need to cope, to find a way to make things right for the twins and tell her friends she was fine, really. A sudden image of Garret’s beautiful long-fingered surgeon’s hands, always scrubbed so clean and smelling of Betadine, sprang randomly to mind. She had loved his hands.

  ‘I didn’t deal with it well either,’ she said. ‘We don’t do death properly in this country.’

  He laughed. ‘I’m Jewish. Given half a chance we do death more than properly. Sitting shiva, it’s called. If done to the max we don’t shower or shave for seven days, or wear jewellery, have sex, work. We cover the mirrors and all our relatives come over with food and sit about crying with us. It’s very cathartic.’ He sighed. ‘But Anna wasn’t Jewish, and I’m not Orthodox. Anyway, I was so angry I refused all the help and comfort that was offered.’

  ‘How did she die?’

  She saw his face tense. ‘She fell down these concrete steps when we were on holiday and her leg got infected. Neither of us thought anything of it, but it wouldn’t heal. She ended up with septic shock. I was in Manchester at the time, at a conference. If I’d been there . . .’

  She didn’t state the obvious, that he couldn’t have known. She was sure everyone had said the same thing and obviously it hadn’t helped.

  Seth shook himself, picked up the cup he’d placed on the deck and pushed himself to his feet. Looking down at her, he said, ‘But you fell in love again. There is hope.’

  *

  Fired up by too much coffee from Seth’s swish pod machine earlier, Lily settled at the kitchen table, opened her laptop and loaded a new tape into the Dictaphone. She’d enjoyed her talk with the doctor. He was an interesting man. That he had been through a trauma similar to her own had created a welcome bond in Lily’s empty world. Yes, she was living with David and Helen, but neither really talked to her much: they were both so absorbed in their work, mostly silent over supper in the evenings. And the daily phone calls to the twins she had enjoyed in the past had dwindled to nothing. Sara is busy being in love, she kept telling herself. Dillon is still angry with me. They’ll come round. But it was painful, the distance that seemed to be opening up between her and her children. What felt worse was that she couldn’t summon enough energy to close the gap.

  She pressed ‘Play’ on the small machine and began t
o type. The voice, identified in Seth’s black biro italics as ‘Phil Hookem’, spoke low and very fast. Not one of Dr Kramer’s successes, by the sound of it, as Phil spent the first five minutes insisting, ‘Even you thought I was pretty sane, just having a bit of an episode. And you got me through it, I’ll admit that. But it was like you were a shoulder to cry on, somewhere safe I could come each week to offload, save Janey having to listen. I never got all this bollocks—’ He coughed, which was followed by an embarrassed ‘Excuse me, not bollocks, Doctor, but the going back to the past seemed a waste of time for both of us . . .’

  Lily’s neck began to ache. She was not taking her own advice about the separate keyboard and all the muscles in her shoulders were stiffening up with the daily hours in front of the computer. She went upstairs to lie flat for ten minutes and closed her eyes, but almost immediately she heard a strange noise that seemed to be coming from downstairs – a sort of scrabbling, as if someone were searching for something.

  Heart pounding, she tiptoed across the room and out to the head of the stairs. Silence. She knew it couldn’t be either David or Helen as her brother-in-law was in Buckingham, delivering a table to a client, and her sister had called her twenty minutes before and said she was sitting on a bench outside her office with a prawn sandwich.

  Telling herself she must have imagined it – this wasn’t her house, after all, so she didn’t know all its foibles – Lily continued downstairs, her feet bare and soundless. As she reached the hall and turned towards the kitchen, silence still prevailed and she laughed at herself, although instinct told her something was not right.

  The figure – thin, tall, wearing a long-sleeved faded yellow T-shirt and black jeans – had his back to her as he munched a biscuit from the open red and white tin canister. In his other hand he had a phone . . . her phone. She knew it by the distinctive sunglasses and blue palm tree on the cover that Freddy had bought her as a joke.

  ‘Hey!’

  The figure spun round, dropping the phone on the floor with a clunk.

  They stared at each other. Lily didn’t recognize him immediately. Her heart was banging so hard in her chest she felt almost faint.

  ‘Aunty Lily,’ Kit said, his voice sounding as shocked as she felt. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘I could ask you the same thing,’ she said, sitting down on a chair with relief. ‘You scared the life out of me.’

  ‘Thought the place would be empty,’ he said a trifle sullenly as he stood over by the kettle, shifting from foot to foot.

  Lily was horrified. The last time she’d seen her nephew was seven years ago, at her father’s funeral. At the time he’d been in rehab for a month and was looking pale but reasonably healthy, his manner thoughtful and sad – he had loved his grandfather.

  Today he was like a ghost of the beautiful curly-headed boy she remembered. His intelligent grey eyes were haunted, his skin pasty and scarred by acne, his blond hair lank with dirt as it fell around his neck. She watched him bend to pick up the mobile from the slate tiles and lay it on the table.

  ‘How did you get in?’

  He raised his eyebrows. ‘A key?’

  She was embarrassed. It was Kit’s house more than hers and she had no right to question him.

  ‘I’ll make some tea,’ she suggested, getting up. He didn’t refuse the offer, just stood there blinking rapidly and scratching a sore on the back of his hand.

  ‘Don’t tell Mum I came round,’ he said as she poured boiling water into two cups, pressed a spoon into the teabags, lifted them out and dropped them into the sink, then splashed milk into the brew.

  ‘Why not?’

  He moved away along the counter, as if he were scared to be too close.

  ‘What did you come for, if you knew no one would be home?’ Lily pushed his cup towards him across the work surface and went to sit down. ‘Sugar’s there.’

  Kit heaped two large spoonsful into his tea, stirring it vigorously, his actions nervy and quick.

  ‘Sit,’ she urged – he looked as if he might fall down at any moment. Kit hesitated, then dropped into a chair across from her. He didn’t look at her.

  ‘Why don’t you want Helen to know you came round?’ she asked again.

  When he still didn’t answer, she said, ‘Kit? Please, talk to me. You can stay here if you want.’

  His eyes, when he finally lifted them to hers, were glassy, as if he’d zoned out. It was a minute or two before he answered. ‘Don’t you know? I’m banned. Mum doesn’t want me here. It was Dad who gave me the key.’

  ‘So why did you come?’

  Kit fidgeted in the chair as he picked at a splinter of wood on the edge of the table. ‘No reason,’ he said after a minute, his face softening suddenly, offering a flash of the old Kit, the vulnerable child, not this edgy, sullen addict.

  Her heart broke for him. She reached across and laid her hand on his. For a second he let it rest there, then pulled his own away abruptly.

  ‘Do you need food?’ It was a pointless question, knowing what he’d really come for. Helen had told her that David dropped off food each week, although it didn’t look as if Kit ate any of it: he was skin and bone.

  He didn’t answer, his hollow eyes darting about the room. Had he been about to make off with my phone? she wondered.

  ‘I’m trying to get to Scotland, Aunty Lily,’ Kit said, getting up, fixing her with his nervy, blinking gaze, which seemed to be getting more anxious as the minutes ticked by in the quiet kitchen. ‘Kirsty – that’s my friend – her dad’s dying and she really needs to see him.’ He produced a charming smile, dragged up, Lily supposed, from some far-forgotten life. ‘We’ll take the bus, but neither of us has the money . . .’ His look became pleading. ‘She’ll be devastated if he dies without her saying goodbye.’

  Even delivered as it was, with a convincing desperation, Lily had lived in London too long to buy her nephew’s tale for a single second. She had been regularly stopped by the homeless addicts there, who’d spin her tragic stories about hostels to pay for, funerals and sick relatives in Scotland, coach journeys – always Scotland. A dying mum in Brighton, for instance, would elicit far less cash.

  She hesitated. Would it hurt, just this once? Kit was an addict. That wouldn’t change if she didn’t give him money. He’d just get it from somewhere else – maybe rob an old lady, break into a house, commit a criminal act. Wouldn’t it be better for the money to come from her?

  Kit saw her hesitation and drove home his advantage. ‘I know you think I’m spinning a line so I can get money for drugs. But I’m not using any more, I swear, Aunty Lily. I’m clean, look at me.’ He spread his arms wide as if this proved anything. ‘Me and Kirsty are off all that now.’ His accent had taken on the patois of the street, the educated grammar of the Oxford graduate long gone.

  Do I believe him? She had no idea what to look for. She knew there was something about pupils being pinpoint or dilated, but she couldn’t remember which it was, or whether the substance the person was taking made a difference. And, anyway, Kit kept shifting about and blinking so much that she wouldn’t have been able to check. He obviously wasn’t well, but couldn’t the nerviness and anxiety, the scarecrow looks, equally be a sign of withdrawal from drugs as of taking them? She dithered as her nephew watched her intently, wanting desperately to believe he was telling the truth . . . And coming to the conclusion, finally, that he was not.

  In the end, she didn’t have the heart to refuse the boy – man, in fact. Kit was now thirty-one, no longer a boy, although he didn’t seem to have grown up somehow. As if the drugs had arrested his development. But now, as he stood in front of her, he was also slightly frightening, the violent intensity of his gaze unnerving. She sensed he was on the edge and that the smallest thing could tip him over.

  ‘Hold on a sec,’ she said, and made her way into the hall, where her bag was hanging on
a coat hook by the front door. She took out forty pounds. Too much? Not enough? She folded the notes in half and went back into the kitchen, handing them to him.

  The relief on his face removed any doubt as to why he needed the money. Stuffing it into his back pocket and immediately glancing towards the door, her nephew was clearly anxious to get away now he had what he’d come for.

  ‘Thanks, thanks so much, Aunty Lily,’ he said quickly, and leaned forward reflexively to hug her, then apparently changed his mind. Up close he smelt rank with a sharp almost chemical odour coming off his body. ‘Please . . . please don’t tell them I’ve been here.’

  ‘Why not?’ She didn’t understand. If David had given him a key, why was it so imperative his parents didn’t know about his visit?

  ‘You won’t, will you?’

  ‘I can’t promise, Kit.’

  He stared at her for a moment, perhaps deciding whether it was worth a fight, then shrugged and turned away, hurrying towards the hall. She heard the front door bang behind him and let out a long sigh of relief.

  Chapter 32

  Helen could not believe what she was hearing. ‘You gave him money?’ It was after supper and she was exhausted after a long week. David was filling the dishwasher, getting a soap tablet from under the sink, placing it in the dispenser inside the machine’s door. She stared at her sister as Lily handed her a mug of tea. ‘Are you completely mad?’

  Lily did look sheepish. Give her that, Helen thought, as she watched her sister collect her own mug and go back to sit in her chair on the other side of the table.

  ‘I thought . . . He was very convincing. And I decided he was on drugs anyway, so perhaps it was better for me to give him a few quid than let him steal it from someone else.’

  David straightened up and Helen saw him staring at her sister, his mouth twisting as he picked up a tea towel and began to dry the glasses – the stems too long for the dishwasher.