by Voss, Louise
Not as bloody curious as I was, though.
Adam smiled, although he looked awkward and the smile didn’t crease his eyes. ‘Yes, I went with Mummy. It was a lovely evening. We had dinner first, at a Thai restaurant in Soho, and I tried to eat a banana leaf that turned out to be the wrapping for my dumplings, and not something you were meant to actually eat. It stuck in my throat and wouldn’t go down until the waitresses were on the verge of calling an ambulance—it was very embarrassing. But the show afterwards was fantastic…’
‘Where was I?’ Max was staring greedily at his father, and, although I could have been wrong, I got the impression that Adam’s wife wasn’t talked about all that often in their household. Maybe she’d run off with somebody else—surely, if it was him who’d strayed, he wouldn’t have sole custody of Max.
‘You weren’t even born yet, darling.’ Adam ruffled Max’s hair. ‘Have another sandwich, won’t you—you hardly had any breakfast.’ For a brief second he looked crushed and lonely. It was obvious that something bad had happened.
Mitch leaned over the table, picked up my left hand, and examined the four silver rings I wore, one on each finger. My guess was that his mind was still chugging along on a train of speculation about Adam’s marriage, for he suddenly said, ‘You married then, Anna?’
I resisted the impulse to snatch away my hand, and as I opened my mouth to say yes, my husband’s called Ken, something unexpected happened. In retrospect, I supposed it was because I’d been awash with such overpowering pity for Adam at the very point Mitch asked me the question - not that it was any excuse, and I’d be haunted to my deathbed by my traitorous words - but they just popped out. Once they were out, I couldn’t un-say them.
‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m not.’
Chapter 14
‘So how was your day?’ was Ken’s first question to me when he arrived in that night. It was reassuring to be back in the world of the givens: the scrunch of Ken’s key in the front door, the thud of his overnight bag hitting the hall floor, his footsteps seeking me out in my usual place at that time of the evening; socked feet up, in the corner of my beloved royal blue velvet sofa, watching television. A change might have been as good as a rest, but there was still a lot to be said for the comfort of routine. Even the sound of his mobile phone ringing—why did it always ring, the second he stepped through the door?—was welcome. Not as welcome as the way he switched the call off without answering it, though.
‘It was good, thanks. Yours?’
‘Not bad. Want a drink?’
‘Got one already.’ I waved my hand towards the half-full glass of wine on the floor next to me, but unfortunately Ken chose the same moment to lean towards me to give me an I’m-home kiss, and I accidentally swatted him in the face.
‘That’s a nice greeting,’ he said, backing off and rubbing his nose.
‘Sorry darling.’ I laughed at his rueful expression. ‘Come here.’
We kissed, and his arms encircled me, losing me in the scented remains of his day; the sweat of decisions, the recycled air of a plane’s cabin.
‘So what did you get up to today then? Been running?’
‘Not today… I took a deep breath. ‘Actually, you won’t believe it, but I’ve been helping make a mosaic mural!’
Ken raised his eyebrows. ‘Really? Where? How come?’
I twirled a strand of hair around my fingers and fixed my eyes on the television, trying to sound nonchalant. ‘It was a spur of the moment thing, really—I was just driving past this little hall and I saw a sign outside saying “Free Mosaic Workshop—No Experience Needed”, and I just thought, why not? You know I’m always banging on about wanting to do something creative. It turned out to be a community project, making a mural to go in an underpass by the station.’
Don’t ask me which station, or which hall, I prayed, although I’d have been very surprised if he had. Ken had never really been a stickler for details.
‘Wow,’ was all he said, sliding his arms out of his jacket and unlacing his shoes. ‘Did you enjoy it?’
I helped him pull off his shoes, and watched him un-stick his socks from his feet. My socks never stuck to my feet when I took off my shoes; nor did they smell of Marmite, like Ken’s did. Perhaps it was a guy thing, like the way his jeans always wore thin in exactly the same place: just inside and to the right of the crotch. I found it hugely endearing; knowing those secret inconsequential things about him that—hopefully—nobody else did. It was sort of like having a priest hole in your house, or a den in the garden. Although I supposed that I wouldn’t hear an estate agent boasting to a potential client that Ken’s socks stuck to his feet when he took off his shoes…/span>
‘Yeah. You know, I really did. I’m going to go back again. It was fun. I made a basket.’
‘Great,’ he said, kissing me again. ‘It’ll be good for you, getting involved with something like that. Can’t wait to see the end result!’
Hmm, I thought. That might not be happening any time soon, unless you find yourself driving past Gillingsbury station. And it was fairly unlikely that Planet Music would be holding their next conference at the Gillingsbury Travelodge.
‘I’ll get you a glass of wine,’ I said, unfolding my legs and standing up, feeling better for having unburdened myself without actually having had recourse to a lie.
I picked up Ken’s shoes and was about to turn towards the kitchen, when a trailer for a new series came on TV. A familiar face filled the screen.
‘Bloody hell, I don’t believe it.’ I froze in my tracks, pointing at it with the toe of one shoe. ‘It’s Rosemary Gregson.’
‘A major ten part drama based on the bestselling novel by Catherine Kirkbride,’ intoned the voiceover—funny how they never called them minor ten part dramas. Nothing ever changed—I still only had to look at Rosemary Gregson to want to punch her in the face.
‘Who’s Rosemary Gregson?’
I shook my head with incredulity. ‘She was in our class at Reading. Vicky and I privately voted her Least Likely to Succeed. I’ve never seen her in anything before so I thought we’d been proved right. To be honest, I thought she’d be a fat housewife with four kids by now. She’s got the voice of a guinea pig. We were convinced she must have been sleeping with one of the tutors to get on the course in the first place.’
‘The looks of a guinea pig too, in my opinion,’ Ken said loyally, although in fact Rosemary was quite pretty. She still had that English bloom, and short curly brown hair in the style of a young Elizabeth Taylor. At Reading she’d had the obligatory blonde Sloaney highlights—trying to model herself on Princess Di, as Vicky used to sneer.
‘I’ve got to ring Vicky,’ I said, dashing for the phone, without taking my eyes off the television set ‘… starring Rosemary Gregson as the eponymous Annabel…’
‘Aaargh, not the starring role! Say it ain’t so,’ I muttered, speed dialling Vicky’s number. She answered straight away.
‘Vic, it’s me—you’ll never guess who I’ve just seen on—‘
She stopped me mid-flow. ‘I don’t want to talk to you.’
‘What?’ It wasn’t that I’d forgotten about our disagreement, but in all the excitement of meeting Max, it had downgraded itself in my head to an emotional hiccup, a mere misunderstanding. I had assumed the same would go for Vicky.
I vaulted onto the offensive immediately. ‘Why—because you’re going ahead with the -’ Just in time, I realized that Ken was listening, and managed not to compound Vicky’s disapproval of me.
‘It’s none of your business.’
‘Oh come off it, Vicky. Don’t be like that.’ I made a face at Ken, left the room and took the phone upstairs, all rancourous thoughts of Rosemary Gregson having flown out of my head. ‘I thought you said you needed me?’
‘I did,’ said Vicky, bitterly. ‘I needed you to be supportive, not all judgemental and biased.’
I felt so hurt that I could barely breathe. There was a moment in time, an extended sec
ond which seemed to be flagged up, bookmarked like a screenplay with an adhesive neon arrow pointing to a crucial pause, where I could have smoothed things over, apologized—although for what, I thought angrily: for losing Holly, for the miscarriages, for my gut-wrenching desire not to see another human life wasted? - but that second hung heavily then dropped away, swinging down the phone line into infinity, and the balance of our friendship tipped.
‘Well, I’m sorry if I’m bloody biased,’ I hissed at her. ‘What do you expect? If you’re looking for me to sanction the act of you killing your unborn child just because you’re not getting your ten hours a night sleep, then I’m afraid you’re on your own.’
I instantly regretted saying it. True or not, they were cruel words and she treated them with the contempt they deserved, cutting me off immediately. I was left listening to the the static silence of terminated conversations all over the city, to everybody else’s dropped seconds. Then I threw the phone onto the bed, with so much force that it bounced off the duvet and hit the wall on the other side.
Ken found me lying on the bed staring at the ceiling, some fifteen minutes later. ‘What’s the matter? You and Vicky had a row?’
‘Oh Ken,’ I said, unable to stop my voice cracking. ‘I hate falling out with her.’
‘What were you rowing about?’ He sat down next to me, his weight on the mattress causing me to list slightly towards him, like gravity’s pull. I leaned my head on his lap and he stroked my hair.
‘Um…ell, just the kids, really. She—moans about them so much.’
I was so tempted to tell him the real reason, but I knew if I had, and she found out, that really would have been the end of our friendship. The secrets were already beginning to stack up, I thought, a messy growing pile of them, like unshuffled cards.
‘It’s hard for her, Annie. She gets no help from Peter, does she?’—Ken didn’t much like Peter either—‘Crystal’s a handful, and Pat doesn’t sleep properly and is always ill with something or other. No wonder she’s finding it a struggle.’
‘Well, nobody ever says it’s easy, do they? I mean, isn’t that just part of the deal - you put up with the drudgery of the first five years because you’ve got two gorgeous children, and then you forget about all the hassle, just like you forget about the pain of childbirth?’ I couldn’t keep the envy out of my voice.
‘That may well be true; but, easier said than done though, isn’t it?’
‘Whose side are you on?’ I demanded, moving my head away from his hand.
‘Chill out, Anna, I’m not taking Vicky’s side. I’m just saying that you seem to be pretty down on her, when she’s having a hard time.’
I rolled over, turning my back on him. You don’t know the half of it, I thought. Downstairs, his mobile rang again. ‘You told me you’d switched that off,’ I said accusingly. He didn’t reply. ‘Go on, you’d better answer it.’
He walked out and thumped down the stairs, and I punched the residual dreams out of my pillow with anger and frustration. Everything in my life suddenly seemed sour; bitter as lemons. Surely, on top of everything else, I wasn’t going to lose my best friend too?
I met Vicky at the interview day for the Reading University drama degree. It was only a couple of months before Dad died, and Greg and I were in the thick of our affair. But when I first saw Vicky, she was leaning against the wall outside the Ladies loo in the drama department, a deliciously gorgeous boy apparently licking her tonsils. The boy was grinding his crotch into Vicky’s, oblivious to the passers-by, as if they were alone in a forest clearing at midnight pressed against a tree, not in a college hallway in broad daylight. I’d gaped at them; at the boy’s curly blonde hair mingling with Vicky’s purple spiked affair. She wore torn fishnets, a denim mini, and a battered leather jacket which, I later discovered, said The Circle Jerks in wobbly white paint on the back.
I was glad then that I hadn’t allowed my mother to force me into my interview suit, a heinously unstylish affair consisting of a long, A-line skirt and equally frumpy boxy jacket, in what looked like blue curtain material. I felt square enough as it was, in my tight black woollen tube skirt and neat white blouse. I could have been mistaken for a stray waitress, had it not been for my trusty Doc Martens. I’d told Mum that I wouldn’t go to the interview unless I could wear them; and now I was unutterably relieved that I’d held out. Mine were only eight-hole black to Vicky’s sixteen hole burgundy, but at least they were Docs.
Vicky had come up for air and caught me staring. I blushed puce, for, as embarrassing as it was to admit it, watching them bumping and grinding right there in front of me was turning me on. I was mad about Greg, but suddenly I wished he was twenty years younger. Greg would never have snogged me in a public place. Even when we were alone, he spent most of his time looking nervously over his shoulder.
Lifting her right hand and forming a fist, Vicky made a triumphant gesture in my direction, beaming such a naughty, sweet beam at me that I couldn’t help laughing. The boy heard, wheeled around, then glared first at me, then at her.
‘What are you looking at?’ he said. Vicky and I both stared shamelessly at the lump in his drainpipe jeans, and cracked up.
He covered his crotch with his hand, and sloped off. ‘Catch you later. Maybe. Slag,’ he said, and vanished round the corner.
We fell about; my own laughter partly out of admiration for Vicky’s sheer chutzpah and blatant sauciness.
‘Is that your boyfriend?’ I asked.
She snorted again and wiped her eyes carefully, trying not to smudge the thick black Siouxsie Sioux kohl. ‘I wish! Sexy, wasn’t he? No, we just got chatting and I told him he could snog me if he wanted. Wasn’t sure if he’d take me up on it, but he did. So that was a good start to the day. He’s here for an interview for Chemical Engineering, but that’s all I know about him. Have I got any lippie left on?’
I inspected the faint pink residue on her lips. ‘No. I think he’s probably wearing most of it.’
She unzipped one of the pockets of her jacket and extracted a stub of scarlet lipstick, which she impressed me further by applying impeccably without needing recourse to a mirror.
‘Are you here for the drama interview?’ I asked her, and to my delight she nodded.
‘Yeah. You?’
‘Yeah. Twelve o’clock, isn’t it, that we’ve got to do our sketches?’
She nodded. ‘Fancy coming for a coffee and a fag first?’
I beamed, and away we went.
We’d been told to prepare a three minute sketch, using a prop, about anything we liked—a brief which was terrifying in its scope - although for some reason I hadn’t anticipated performing it in front of the assembled group of about thirty eighteen year olds. When I’d walked into the large rehearsal room, a couple of paces behind Vicky, my throat constricted at the sight of so many people, none of whom I had anything evident in common with, excepting age. I focussed instead on the flaky white emulsion of The Circle Jerks logo on Vicky’s back, allowing her to lead us to a space on the scratchy blue carpet tiles where we sat down. She hunched her shoulders and crossed her legs in front of her, apparently not caring that the gusset of her tights was in full view below the short denim mini. I’d wanted to sit cross-legged too, but when I attempted it, my tube skirt stretched out like a woollen roof between my knees, so I had to fold my legs awkwardly round to the side of me instead, which made my back hurt. Perhaps I wasn’t cut out for a career on the stage after all, I’d thought miserably. My small triumphs in the local drama club seemed provincial and paltry in the shadow of what, I was sure, was the cornucopia of raw talent around me.
There was a girl to our right in full Sloane uniform, all the requisite items present and correct: stripy shirt with collar turned up—check. Barbour—check. Thick navy velvet hairband in her shoulder-length wavy highlighted hair—check. Pearls—check. Navy pleated skirt—check. Pale pink lipstick—check. She knelt primly on the floor as if in the saddle, with a ramrod straight back and an
irritatingly expectant expression on her face. Even though nothing was happening, she had an open notebook on her lap and a Mont Blanc pen poised in her hand. Vicky and I took one look at her, rolled our eyes, and pointedly didn’t engage her in conversation even though she had no-one to talk to. We were a pair of bitches at that age.
Finally the interviews started. Vicky’s surname then had been Attwood, so she had to go first; and she set the benchmark sky-high. Her interview piece was everything I’d guessed it might be: hilarious, sharp, tragic, moving. It was about a girl who got pregnant and had the baby, and her struggle to adapt to the trials of teenage single motherhood, which she conveyed in three minutes, brilliantly, with just a baby’s dummy as her prop.
By the end of it, tears stood in my eyes and I clapped until my palms were sore, and it was clear that the tutors were equally impressed. Simon Maltby, a short, bearded earnest man who was the spit of the illustrated male in The Joys of Sex, only with spectacles, looked close to tears himself, and he and the other tutor (the implausible-named Elton Casagrande) nodded at one another until I thought their heads would fall off.
The next few pieces were instantly forgettable, mostly because I was distracted by the Sloane. Right from when Simon and Elton had stood up to welcome us, she had begun to take notes in an ostentatiously scratchy scribble which continued non-stop throughout the entire introduction and through everyone’s sketches. When the tutors called her name—it was Rosemary Gregson—Vicky had leaned over and offered to carry on writing notes for her while she did her sketch. It was a suggestion which Rosemary greeted with an icy glare of steely disdain, as if Vicky was a mongrel snapping round the heels of the thoroughbreds at the Hunt. (Ironic, really, since we later discovered that Rosemary had grown up in a small terraced house in Ruislip, and had probably never been hunting in her life).