‘Emma was nothing but a PA, Luke. A fucking PA. You never should have married her.’ Sara was vehemently protective of him, which Luke found reassuring. ‘I should have stopped you.’
Emma wasn’t clever, which made her easier initially. Luke concentrated on his Internet business. His luxury goods website was the first of its kind and had set him up for life. He came home late every night and had a delicious meal. Emma was a great cook and she created a stylish, modern home. She loved shopping and decorating. He loved that, having grown up in a disorganised house. And he wanted to force himself to move on from Connie. Even now, Connie unnerved and unbalanced him. He couldn’t help visualising pulling off those tight white jeans. Those narrow hips flaunting her long slender legs.
He was profoundly in love with Connie though he never told her, a fact that haunted him long into his marriage to Emma. Yet after three years together, Connie unceremoniously left him for Julian, marrying him soon after. She hurt him more than he thought it was possible. Since then, he avoided educated women, convinced unintelligent women were less likely to cause him pain and demand emotional commitment that he didn’t have it in him to give any more.
Luke knew he was awkward with most women – Connie was the exception. He might have blamed his parents. They didn’t share confidences. The silence between them wasn’t obvious to Luke until he was married to a woman who never stopped talking and interpreting sinister motive into his every move. He had yearned for the simplicity of his own family life on Dartmoor when, during the relentless farm day, which steamrollered over every summer holiday, he had been able to retreat to his attic room.
It was there he had taught himself how to use a computer, eventually how to programme it. When he went back home now, it was a relief: his bedroom had remained the same: his LEGO stuck with Blu-Tack; his athletics shields old-fashioned and dusty; his posters of Debbie Harry wallpapering the sloping dormer ceilings of the loft conversion his father had built. Whether his parents had left it out of laziness or as a shrine to their only son, he would never know. Emma would have re-decorated to erase his early life, before she was in it.
The sky was starting to blush. Through the dawn grey light, an outline of hills was gently forming. Luke was drawn back to Sara’s other slurred comment. ‘You do know that I always thought you and Connie would get married?’ Sara’s hand slapped the mahogany bar. ‘You don’t mind me saying that, do you, Luke?’
He wondered why Sara had the need to spell out the painful fact. Sara had been more aggressive than usual. It must be coming down from this Jade Sutton case. It was a big deal. Luke couldn’t imagine sparring in court. After his divorce, he did everything to avoid confrontation.
Last night he was upset. He had stuttered that Connie was part of a past life he barely remembered. He wished he had the temperament to bang the bar, but he wasn’t that kind of man.
Luke struggled to breathe evenly and lift his sledging feet. He gave in to wondering whether Sara was right. Would Connie have married him, if she hadn’t met Julian? He never understood why Julian, whose stomach shaped his shirts, got away with his affairs. It made him hate Julian with an even greater passion.
The last time he skulked out – another fictitious meeting – to meet up with Sara, she blurted that she had seen Connie with a very good-looking civil barrister in the bar at the Athenaeum. At an hour when Connie was normally with her army of kids. Connie was having an affair, she pronounced.
Luke felt a crazy tug of jealousy. Not that he wished he was Julian. Definitely not. He was financially dependent on Connie’s inheritance. Luke’s only comfort was that he could divorce Emma and afford custody of his children, making sure that they were properly cared for while he was at work, though in the holidays, he largely worked from home. It was his own business and he wasn’t going to miss out on his children’s childhood.
The sun was stretching up and Luke started sweating. He had been mistaken about Emma. She had been a far greater challenge than Connie ever was. Initially unbothered by his reserve, Emma and her effervescence had helped him to navigate the emotional minefield of other relationships, more than Connie, who had been almost as private as Luke. He had believed that he had found a woman who truly loved him.
After Finn was born, Emma ballooned. Her thirty extra pounds made her aggressive and critical. He hadn’t been able to do anything right. All he wanted was a night out with friends occasionally. Not much to ask. But she waged war against him going out with anyone, male or female. She hated Connie, Lizzie and Sara. She insisted that they looked down on her. Perhaps they did. She slagged off their clothes, their taste, their homes, their behaviour. Luke took to seeing Matt and Sara covertly. Then he stopped seeing all his other friends. It was easier to stay at home.
Still Emma wasn’t happy. She fought over everything: maddened by his silent shrugs, she resorted to throwing things, often heavy, breakable things. He was too ashamed to tell anyone that Emma hit him. He went to casualty many times. At the hospital they asked, of course. What could he say? My wife hits me. Sara would have been outraged. You let the bloody PA hit you? Hit her back. Luke never did. He hadn’t got it in him to hit anyone.
Luke finally left her, taking the children with him. Emma’s violence meant there was no question of her getting custody of the children. And Luke couldn’t risk it – even though she had never hit them. Yet. Though no one except Luke’s lawyer knew about Emma’s abuse. And he had to absorb the unspoken disapproval of his parents and all their friends, accepting that he might lose Matt and Connie. Matt viciously said he was worse than his ex-wife. How could anyone take a mother’s children away from her? What could Luke do? He could never tell anyone the truth. He never would.
He sighed and slowed down as the track wound round towards a small cluster of pale grey functional bungalows flanked by safari vehicles. Emma cornered him and he gave into her. That hurt. It all hurt, if he was honest. He had been destroyed by her. He had Finn and Ella. Yet she shipwrecked them. They were lost and incomplete.
He was jogging, barely faster than a walk, hoping he wouldn’t face the embarrassment of bumping into Gus, when his left ankle gave way. It slid feebly sideways down an aardvark hole. Luke lurched, madly jerking his arms. Desperate not to fall, he fell awkwardly, agedly. The shock made him shake. His chest was screaming. He lay, face smothered by warm sand, afraid to move, terrified he was injured. He didn’t budge. He gingerly lifted himself into a low crouch, hips down. He waited for a stab of certain pain. There was none. He stood up with bent knees. Was his left ankle hurt? Slightly. He felt a stiffness, which could be from lack of sleep. Maybe the after-effects of the flight.
And yet. His body was strong. He would get back into his stride, shake off this feeble morning-after lethargy. His legs started to loosen up, despite the fall. Luke sped up a little as he spotted Gae. Running was the answer. Running from middle age and its total lack of room for manoeuvre. Running marked the freedom for him to start again. As his body performed, the truth dawned on Luke. He loved his children and every moment of their time together. They had a great relationship. But his marriage had masticated him, vomiting out his remains.
He needed to concentrate on himself, not to mention his health. Get back out into the world. Luke glanced at his watch. He had twenty minutes – he would whip into the gym for a few stretches on one of those black mats. He ran straight past the pool to avoid being dragged in by the others for a coffee and doubtless more food. He walked the last few yards past the thatched fence into the oval enclosure that held the one-room gym and massage area.
Kimberley, the girl who had greeted them at the airstrip, was bent over a massage bed on the grass to the right of the gym. Wind chimes rang in the tree above her head. She was covering a blue leather bed with two pristine white towels. Her calves were slender and brown under her white uniform. He could see the outline of her narrow hips inside her dress. Kimberley immediately unfolded her body and turned towards him with a whitened, uncomplicated smi
le, which propelled her full, young face towards him. ‘Morning, Luke. Good run?’
Easy and warm with possibility, Luke thought. Could this be the answer?
Chapter 7
Connie watched Luke running past the bar where they were meeting without looking in her direction. Even from a distance, he appeared angst-ridden. She wanted to ask him about his divorce and why he had taken the children away from Emma. She disapproved of the way he had behaved. It was out of character. He never did anything to hurt anyone, Connie thought, even when she deserved it.
She reached to pour another coffee from the flask positioned on the bar. She felt horrendous. She never drank more than half a glass – she wasn’t relaxed enough at the kind of events Julian endlessly circled in London. The buzz of being with her true friends in Gae made her overeager to reach for her glass. When Julian and Connie swayed back to their house, she was desperate to get horizontal and sleep. She stripped off her clothes and left them in the cone shape they made on the rug beside their bed. She struggled to find the opening to the mosquito net. She lay down flat on her back, her body spinning on a roundabout with her head tipped back to feel the breeze. She heard Julian on the phone in the sitting room, but it didn’t matter. For once, she was drunk and truly happy.
‘Connie, darling, are you awake?’
‘Mmm…’
‘It was really fun tonight,’ he bent down to whisper in her ear. ‘The whole holiday was a stroke of genius. Well done you.’ He kissed her on the lips. ‘Sleep well.’
There was no sign of Sara, who was sleeping, according to Lizzie, who appeared wearing her sunglasses, before removing them dramatically to display weeping, red-rimmed eyes. Gus pronounced it was hay fever caused by the flowering Kalahari sour grass. The lemon scent of these swaying, hip-height grasses had been fragrant in the air. Gus went in search of another guide, who had wrap-around sunglasses that would seal Lizzie’s eyes from the pollen adrift in the air.
Connie was shifting off the bar stool to wake Sara, when Matt sidled in on his own. She automatically asked about Katherine, sensing the answer was going to be another knock to their first early morning drive.
Matt looked forlorn. ‘She’s not going to make it, I’m afraid. She needs to rest.’
She made a soothing sound that stuck somewhere deep in her dry throat. She touched Matt’s arm, because she couldn’t come up with anything more concrete.
‘Phantom pregnancy?’ Sara appeared in ivory thick-rimmed Chanel sunglasses and a khaki safari dress with a narrow cream belt. She was clutching a thick olive wrap.
How could Sara be so sharp after a late night? Connie wondered. Matt paled, running his fingers through the front of his thick hair. ‘A migraine. It’s the stress of it all…’
‘Migraine?’ Sara snapped back. ‘What – not a common headache?’
‘Are we a woman down?’ Julian interjected from the other side of the bar, where he had been hunched over his BlackBerry. He was checking it out here more than he usually did, or maybe she was more conscious of it on holiday. ‘Has delicate Katherine abandoned us for the comfort of the chaise longue?’
This morning was going to be challenging. They would be tetchy, snapping at each other until their hangovers lifted. She could predict it as surely as she could her children fighting the morning after a late night.
Luke strode up to the bar in a grey tracksuit. ‘Morning all.’ He looked buoyant. Connie wondered what had changed in the last ten minutes. He reached for the water jug, poured a glass right to the rim, and drank it in one continuous gulp.
Julian lifted his head up from his BlackBerry, ‘Have you already been self-flagellating on the perambulator?’
‘I love it,’ Sara laughed. ‘I must write that down.’
Connie gave a compromising smile, hoping that Luke didn’t notice.
‘I was out running in the bush.’ There was no mistaking the uncertainty in Luke’s voice.
Kimberley, the girl who had met them at the airstrip, appeared in a doorway. She stood, legs slightly too far apart. They politely stopped talking. Sara eyed her critically over the edge of her coffee cup. Julian was staring at her.
‘Luke, I’ve got a slot at 10.30. Doesn’t that work for you? You’ll be back by then, eh?’
‘Perfect. Thanks Kimberley.’
She smiled for too long as women did in front of Luke, before turning back outside. Connie couldn’t believe it. She swivelled away from Luke.
Connie could hear Luke nervously swing from foot to foot, banging his trainers together with each move ‘I’m having a massage. I’ve been working out too much. My muscles are stiff. It’s all there is to it.’
‘Not the only thing that’s going to be stiff,’ Julian said.
Connie turned away from them. Her mind was empty.
‘Julian, for God’s sake,’ Matt grimaced. ‘There are ladies present.’
Sara snapped in. ‘What? Matt, give us a break. We’re not in corsets. I represent men who nail their victims to floorboards for fun.’
Julian flashed his eyes. He was loving every minute. Intrigue, political or sexual, brought his world alive. ‘Isn’t there an unspoken gentleman’s agreement not to fuck the staff?’
Connie was more upset by Luke than she was by Julian. Why did he never speak up? There was a pause in the conversation that held like a long inhale in her yoga class.
‘Luke, take some advice from your uncle Julian, Kimbo looks a little tame to me.’
Connie dreaded what was to follow. She had to stop herself from reaching for Luke’s hand.
‘The perfect night is more Pippa Middleton and Keira Knightley. With Tracy Emin in there, to spice it up.’
Connie closed her eyes. She would have laid her head on her forearms, but she didn’t want to draw attention to herself. There was a heavy inevitability to her marriage. She could feel Luke moving instinctively closer to her.
Connie was drawn reluctantly back to last week.
Nothing extraordinary. An intimate evening for about fifty in Winfield House, the Georgian red-brick American ambassador’s residence inside Regent’s Park. A cursory stop at the security gate, invitation and passport shown, down the short drive to the front door straight to the guiding arm of an elegant fixer. She led them into an eighteenth-century French panelled drawing room towards the jovial midwestern ambassador and his skinny, vivacious wife. Introductions. Julian got straight into politics with the ambassador, no small talk required. Connie’s role was to instantly find common ground, which could be hard despite what Sara might think. She commented on the ambassador’s wife’s beautiful grey sequin dress. She always searched for a genuine compliment, it was her shortcut to getting on with anyone. She was in: the ambassador’s wife had a new grandchild. She loved London. Did she know that Barbara Hutton had built Winfield House and had given it to the American state for the price of a dollar? How fascinating. When another member of the Cabinet arrived, the ambassador moved on. They did too – moving systematically round. It was what they did.
After forty minutes, Julian suggested they leave. A curvaceous columnist from the Daily Mail, as recklessly ambitious as the smirk under her neon red lipstick, tottered over, squeezing her plunging V-neck stretch dress between Julian and Connie. No ceremony: flattering chat, a few raucous jokes and straight to intimacy without paying even two hundred pounds to pass Go. She pressed her heavy left breast on to Julian’s right arm. He pressed it back. His eyes danced. He knocked into a passing waiter; he forgot he had said they should leave. He forgot Connie.
She played her own game many times. How long could she stick it out before she left? At Winfield House, it was thirty-two minutes. A personal best.
Of course she knew that she was being publicly humiliated.
It had never mattered as much as it did right now.
Gus re-emerged with wraparound glasses for Lizzie. As they collected their shawls and scarves, an arm squeezed her, gathering her up. ‘Good morning, sweetheart.’ Dan’s face
was awash with warmth and concern. It was too much. Connie wanted to push him away. ‘You know, I woke up feeling awful. I never asked about the children. How is my god-daughter?’
Connie’s upper lip twitched. The sheer comfort of her children. Leo, Lou, Flora and Hector.
It had rained relentlessly last weekend in Adderbury. On Sunday afternoon, they set up a Risk game on the low table in front of their fireplace. Julian built a great fire – a ritual that delighted him. Flora and Leo masterminded toasting hot cross buns on skewers, while Hector dripped marshmallows into the hearth. Flora lay with her arms outstretched on the rug in front of the fire, her hot pink hoodie almost covering her golden ringlets. Connie made a vast pot of tea.
They squatted around the coffee table. The cards Leo dealt himself made him certain to take Africa, which the whole Emmerson clan evangelically believed guaranteed winning the game.
‘Are you sure you didn’t cheat?’ Hector complained.
‘Excuse me, babe-teeno,’ Leo played pompous with Hector, only half as a joke. ‘You offend my honour. I don’t need to cheat to win.’
Julian groaned as soon as their soldiers were arranged. ‘I’m going to get murdered by my first-born son. Oedipus.’
‘Dad, I have a name, remember you had me christened? Hello, I’m Leo.’
‘I hate your mock-defeatist charade, Dad,’ Lou turned on Julian, ‘It means you are going try harder to win.’
‘Lou, you, Dad or Leo always win. I don’t know what you are complaining about,’ Hector moaned.
‘Oh Hector, I’m sorry,’ Julian said giving him a large bear hug. ‘You know we can’t let you win. Then you would really hate us.’
Flora murmured, ‘You are all obsessed about winning. It’s really not what life’s about, you know.’
Lou piped back, ‘Flo, our resident love-and-peace peddler.’
‘What about a hot cross bun?’ Connie suggested.
The Art of Unpacking Your Life Page 6