For she thought she had rights to him, this character, who had either subsumed bad Amber or was functioning in parallel with her. Either way mature, reformed, dutiful Amber Fraser had been shoved unceremoniously to the back of the line.
She’d lost her voice, if not her mind.
Chapter 23
Christy, September 2013
She next saw Rob Whalen a few days later when he joined Steph and her in the queue for coffee at the patisserie on the Parade. It was the first time Christy had set foot in the place – so high-end was it that its confections were displayed behind glass like jewellery, their prices withheld – though she had dreamed of it daily. Now that two interviews had been scheduled for the coming weeks, she was becoming a little more blasé about squandering funds on treats; one of the jobs was a position identical to her old one in an agency she was fairly certain Amber Fraser had never worked. The promised September upturn was materializing at last.
Conversely, Joe had become more fretful about their finances – more fretful in general. Sporadic complaints about sleeping poorly had become constant claims of chronic insomnia, in spite of those punishing hours that would fell an ox, and he seemed able to lose consciousness only at weekends. Awake, he had the eyes of a fugitive, the scent of stress on his skin.
‘If you saw my income and billings for last month, you’d never sleep again,’ he’d told her that morning, and there was a tremor in his voice that was not only new but foreign to his character.
This was more than complaint, it was anguish, and no wonder: he was enduring his epic working weeks with fewer hours’ rest than the new parents next door. (Every so often Christy would catch Matilda’s cry on the breeze and would jerk towards it in some unstoppable primordial reflex.)
‘I’m sure it must feel like that for everyone,’ she soothed.
‘Everyone who’s fucking up, yes.’
Privately, Christy wondered if part of the problem might be that all the time Joe had been working towards making partner, he had been thinking of it as an end in itself, giving scant consideration to what came after, rather as Steph had said she’d fixated with such single-mindedness on the birth of Matilda that she’d neglected to consider the part that followed. A child’s whole life. A man’s whole career.
But how easy it was to spot the fatal flaw when you were the observer – and an unemployed one at that. All the months Joe had urged her to enjoy her enforced leisure, and she had not been able to; now she seemed finally capable of relaxation, he was suffering.
‘It hasn’t even been six months, Joe. I think you should give it a year before you start worrying about your billings,’ she told him, careful not to betray her own distress at his needing her to hold him like a child. In her arms he felt soft-bodied, out of condition; she could not remember when he had last exercised or even strolled around the park to breathe fresh air. ‘Then we’ll decide what to do,’ she added, with a bravery she only half felt. If they had to sell up after a year then so be it, she thought, it would be no less precipitous than the Frasers’ departure. ‘This isn’t a prison sentence, you can get out.’
‘Can I? How?’
But she had no answer ready and he’d left for work with the air of a condemned man.
It was a beautiful translucent early-September afternoon, a belated bolt of summer just as the city had thought itself finished with the season, and she, Steph and Rob took one of the tables on the pavement to drink their coffees. It was purely coincidence of course, but Christy couldn’t help noticing that the giver of new life, Steph, sat in the sunlight while Lime Park’s very own Antichrist chose a seat deep in shadow. She pulled her chair marginally closer to Steph’s to share the light.
‘Well, this beats the slave pits, eh?’ Rob smirked.
(Slave pits! When poor Joe talked of lawyers being sent home at daybreak, a taxi waiting while they showered and changed, ready to return them to the office to start the cycle all over again.)
Far from re-entering the fugue that had led her to his door the previous week in an intrusion she now lamented, she was this time self-conscious, careful of every word that passed her lips, and happy to let Steph fill any silences with her observations about Lime Park and its denizens, her good-natured gripes about sleep deprivation and breast-feeding. She wished, however, that Steph had complimented her on her new hair before they ran into Rob.
Instead, Steph slid her sunglasses down her nose with some theatricality as she demanded, ‘When did you decide to turn Titian, Christy?’
‘I’m not sure you can call it Titian,’ Christy said. ‘But it’s true I dabbled in home-colouring a few nights ago. It’s a russet glaze, apparently. It will wash out,’ she added, almost in apology.
‘It’s worked really well on the highlights, hasn’t it? What does Joe think?’
‘Oh, he likes it.’ Christy could not bring herself to admit that Joe had noticed neither the reddened hair nor the faint orange stain on her pillow. The ‘glaze’ she’d used was by no means the costliest on the market.
‘How about you, Rob?’ Steph said, her tone as teasing as a sibling’s. Her easy confidence with him continued to impress Christy. ‘Do you like a redhead? Oh, hang on, your girlfriend’s blonde, isn’t she?’
‘She is,’ Rob agreed, and Christy noticed he did not object this time to the reference to Pippa (what were his rules? They were unfathomable). ‘I’m not so sure about redheads,’ he added. ‘They say Eve was one, don’t they? Not to be trusted.’
‘But we can trust Christy,’ Steph giggled, and to stop herself from blushing Christy fixed her gaze on a tray of chocolate meringues visible through the window. Given the funds and five minutes of solitude, she’d eat the whole lot, she was sure of it. She’d eat the portions of every Amber Fraser in the city.
It was then that Matilda began gently to fuss, and Steph took her to the bathroom to change her, leaving Christy and Rob alone. What to talk about? Her next session at St Luke’s was not till the following day, so she couldn’t fall back on that; to mention Joe’s misery would be disloyal; and she dared not ask him anything about his life for fear of blundering once more into territory deemed off-limits. And so they sat sipping their coffee, talking mostly of coffee. Rob was something of a geek, it transpired, with opinions on the relative merits of Javanese- and Costa Rican-grown beans, the role of milk. (The role of milk! When Joe couldn’t tell her whether he had eaten that day or not; when no matter how late he came home he couldn’t go to bed before filling a wine glass large enough for a trifle; when he’d almost wept one night to discover there was no alcohol in the house.)
There was a sudden hush on the Parade as the traffic was held at a red light at exactly the moment the pavements happened to clear of pedestrians. The sun was lower in the sky, its late-season light soft and gauzy – it didn’t feel at all like London – and all at once Christy was flooded with a sense of natural passing, of survival.
‘I do love it here,’ she told Rob, surprising herself with the confidence. ‘I always thought the most important thing about a place was the people who live there, but I’m starting to think that might not be true. The place is enough.’
‘The most important thing about a place is what happens there,’ Rob said. ‘Steph, for instance, she’ll always know Lime Park as the place her children were born.’
Christy nodded, couldn’t help wishing he’d given any other example but that. How would she remember Lime Park? Where her children could not be born because their parents had bitten off more than they could chew? ‘In that case, I don’t think I know this place properly yet,’ she said, reconsidering. ‘Because nothing has happened. Nothing at all.’
Rob was looking at her more closely, as if she’d finally said something – thought something – that interested him, and she felt herself take intense pleasure in this. (And her husband, the man who kept her life afloat while believing himself drowning, what would he make of that pleasure? It was the kind that could fracture a marriage, break a man a
s badly as any workload, and she knew she must never take it again.)
When Steph returned, she laughed at their solemn expressions. ‘Is he complaining that I talked him into minding Matilda for five minutes the other day when I went out to pick up a package from the post office?’
‘No, how did it go?’ Christy asked.
Rob grinned. ‘It was terrifying.’
(Terrifying: just the word Joe had used to describe his work situation.)
‘But we all have to face our fears sooner or later,’ he added, looking once more at Christy.
‘What fears?’ Steph asked, chuckling. ‘Believe me, Christy, when you’ve looked childbirth in the eye, there’s nothing left to fear.’
There was no reasonable response to this, and in any case Christy was saved from making one by the rising commotion of noise and energy on the Parade, the thickened flows of traffic and pedestrians that signalled the arrival of three-thirty and school pick-up. She realized she had missed the rhythms of it over the August holidays.
‘Isn’t that Caroline and her kids?’ Steph said, squinting into the sun. ‘I haven’t seen them since they came back from France.’
She and Christy called hello to a Caroline Sellers who appeared to be both a different colour (burnt-flesh) and dress size (one, perhaps two, larger) than she’d been before the break. She waved merrily back before taking a child by each hand and striding towards them.
‘Christy, Steph, it’s been ages!’ Such was the angle of her approach, she did not see the third of their group until she stood right in front of the table, but when she did, her expression hardened instantly.
‘Caroline,’ Rob said. His tone was not quite curt enough to alert Steph, but for Christy, his keenest of students, the hostility was plain.
‘Well, if it isn’t just like the old days,’ Caroline said, and though she could only have been addressing him, she did not actually look directly at him. Her face was set in grim disapproval, as if she’d caught the three of them doing something so unspeakable, gesture alone was going to have to suffice.
Christy wondered how long Caroline was prepared to stand there, her dim view of their gathering palpable enough that even Steph had noticed and begun casting quizzical glances at her table-mates.
‘Time for our doctor’s appointment,’ she said, tucking Matilda into her sling and zipping up a bag so voluminous you could emigrate with it. ‘I’ll see you all soon. Bye, Caroline. Welcome back.’
‘Bye,’ Caroline said mechanically, and at the sight of the vacated seat her daughter immediately began agitating for a treat.
‘Would you like to join us?’ Christy said. ‘Shall I find chairs for the kids?’
Caroline handed her purse to her daughter. ‘Rosie, take Lucas inside and choose yourselves something. Remember to say please and thank you.’
Christy had a strong suspicion she was banishing the children in order to make some unpleasant announcement out of their earshot, and she braced herself accordingly.
‘Take my seat,’ Rob offered Caroline, draining his coffee and rising to his feet. ‘I’m heading off as well.’
Caroline said nothing, expressing in mood alone that she would rather throw herself under a passing bus than allow any part of her body to enter space previously occupied by his. She pointedly took Steph’s seat instead.
‘Oh, and Caroline,’ Rob said, his tone insolent.
She raised her eyebrows in query.
‘It’s nothing like the old days, believe me.’
And Caroline glared at him in fury, obviously longing to lash out but succeeding – just – in controlling herself.
With a last glance at Christy (was there a note of warning in it?), Rob strolled off.
‘Are you all right?’ she asked Caroline, who was peering through the shop window to check the length of the queue; Rosie and Lucas, at its tail, would have to wait at least five minutes to be served.
Caroline turned to face her, eyes dark with consternation. ‘Did I really just see that? You were having coffee with him?’
And it returned then to Christy in its original intensity: the intrigue she had been so stirred by, the antipathy towards Rob that she had begun to doubt during the empty month of August, Rob’s bêtes noires absent all.
‘Well, with Steph really, but we bumped into each other and he joined us for a few minutes.’ She tried not to sound apologetic for switching sides – after all, how could you take sides when you didn’t know what the argument was?
‘I thought you said you loathed him?’ Caroline said, less in accusation than concern.
She’d remembered the exact verb, Christy thought. ‘Maybe I overreacted. Whatever’s gone on in the past, I think he deserves a second chance. We do all live side by side, and it would be a lot less awkward if we just got on, don’t you think?’
Caroline plainly did not think. ‘Well, there’ve obviously been some changes while we’ve been away.’ She left Christy under no illusion that she regarded these changes as deeply unwelcome. ‘Your hair, it’s gone red.’ She said this as if pointing out something Christy might not care to know but really ought, like having a stain down her front or toilet paper stuck to the bottom of her shoe.
‘It’s just a glaze,’ Christy said.
‘A glaze?’
‘You know, like you might put on a roast chicken. Or carrots.’
‘I see.’ Caroline did not crack a smile at this attempt to lighten the mood, and under her continued scrutiny Christy began to sweat.
‘Look, there’s no need to worry, Caroline, honestly. I’ve just got to know Rob a bit better, that’s all. It was horrible to feel like I had an enemy next door. I’m relieved to discover this other version of him.’
‘Version,’ Caroline repeated, as if the word crystallized the issue, defined the fault that had previously been indefinable. ‘Well, I’d be very careful about this one if I were you.’
‘Careful about what, exactly? I assume this is about the mysterious thing no one will talk about. He doesn’t want to either, you know. So that’s something you agree on, at least.’
Caroline clutched at the straps of her handbag, as if it were in danger of being snatched. ‘You’ve actually asked him … ?’ She didn’t finish the thought, adding in an urgent undertone, ‘I wouldn’t do that if I were you. Seriously, Christy, I can’t say any more, but if you’re going to be friends with him, please promise me you’ll look out for yourself.’
They stared at each other.
The children returned from inside with their selections. ‘Mummy,’ Rosie said, edging onto Caroline’s knees and slotting the coins of her change between her mother’s fingers, ‘I chose a cinnamon bun and Lucas has got a cookie with Smarties on it. Can we eat them now?’
‘Of course you can, sweetie, but don’t get any on your uniform, OK? I really need to get the kids back,’ Caroline told Christy. ‘Amelia will be home soon.’
‘I’ll walk with you,’ Christy said. ‘You must tell me how she’s getting on in her first week at senior school. Does she walk or get the bus?’ The elder Sellers girl’s new school was in the same neighbourhood as St Luke’s, and Christy had seen the girls the previous week in their black blazers and rolled-up skirts, their serious little confabs at the bus stop about what could only be minor scrapes next to the heart-stopping crises of adulthood.
‘No,’ said Caroline. ‘A few of us on the street have put together a rota for driving them.’
‘The bus isn’t safe?’ Even Christy knew that secondary-school children made their own way to and from school; surely it was overprotective to chauffeur them so short a distance? But she knew better than to voice this opinion and jeopardize the good feeling so diligently built with Caroline.
An account of the Sellerses’ glorious four weeks in France sustained them for the stroll home, only the pinched skin between Caroline’s brows belying her earlier chagrin. For her part, Christy told her about the bank holiday weekend in East Sussex, Joe’s work stresses.
‘I don’t think we’ve ever needed a change of scene more,’ she said, as they reached their houses.
‘I know the feeling,’ Caroline said. ‘I’ve only been back five minutes and I already feel ready to leave again.’
It was only after they’d parted that this last remark stirred a memory in Christy, one she was aware had floated close to the surface before, but remained inaccessible. That was right: it was something Steph, in their first conversation over the garden fence, had reported Caroline as having said: If it weren’t for the great schools, they’d have moved on by now.
That was how much Caroline Sellers ‘loathed’ Rob Whalen. She loathed him as much, perhaps, as had the two sets of neighbours who had moved on – the two who had not shared her use for Lime Park’s outstanding schools.
Caroline was not the only one to voice concern that Christy was on coffee-slurping terms with Rob Whalen: there were also, apparently, objections on the part of his girlfriend. These she discovered only by accident, or rather by eavesdropping, old habits having died hard – and in brazen disregard of those avowals she’d made to her new friend about minding her own business.
She didn’t mind admitting that she’d become quite fascinated by Pippa. That seductive drape of smooth blonde hair over her bare right shoulder (always the right one, never the left); the painstaking grooming that spoke of a strict desire to please; the slowing of her step as she approached the gate to number 38, followed by a visible, almost therapeutic, bout of deep breathing: what was she preparing herself for?
Hi you, he’d said, and those words, leavened with lust, had lingered in Christy’s imagination rather longer than was decent. She supposed it was because Rob and Pippa were unlike any other couple on the street: not only were they younger and electrically attracted, there was also something oddly clandestine about them. Other than the occasion when he’d chased after her and seized her arm, Christy had never seen them together in public, their meetings apparently confined to his flat. Pippa arrived and then Pippa left, a girlfriend who was not exactly kept hidden, but not exalted from the rooftops either. Rob had not even wanted her name known, presumably because it elicited reactions like the one from Caroline: She must be crazy if she’s still hanging around.
The Sudden Departure of the Frasers Page 28