The Simple Rules of Love

by Amanda Brookfield

  ‘Yes. In fact, I'm Cassie Harrison. His fiancée?’ Cassie was unnerved by the elder woman's still hostile gaze. ‘The fact is… Really, this is very difficult…’ At which point Stephen's father – unmistakable with the same high forehead and full lips, the identical wide brown eyes, the same long nose – nudged his way on to the doorstep.

  ‘She says she's Stephen's fiancée, exclaimed the woman, keeping her eyes on Cassie.

  ‘Well, I was…’ Cassie faltered, taking another step towards them, uncomfortably aware of how their square, heavy frames filled the doorway, as if they were determined to prevent her crossing the threshold. They looked older than she had expected, and also curiously similar, as some couples did after decades of shared living.

  ‘Well, he never told us, did he, Den?’

  ‘He never…’ Cassie left the sentence hanging. She gripped the strap of her handbag, trying to focus on why she had come. It didn't matter that Stephen had never mentioned her, she decided quickly. It was hardly surprising. He had lied about so much. It was one of the many reasons he had become unlovable. ‘Look, I'm sorry to barge in on you like this, but I'm afraid I have some very difficult news…’ They exchanged a glance, pressing their lips together and tightening their folded arms. ‘The fact is, I'm afraid something might have happened to Stephen.’

  ‘This morning?’ they exclaimed, eyes widening in alarm.

  ‘No, not this morning, no… I…’ Cassie looked up at the sky, considering the naivety with which she had set out on her mission. She had pictured tears, poignancy, anger, even, not an exchange so banal that it felt as if they were communicating in different languages. ‘No, earlier this week, when…’ Cassie stopped, not out of timidity but because their steely expressions had melted into smug amusement.

  ‘Here he comes now,’ chuckled Stephen's father, pointing over her shoulder, ‘and he looks in one piece to me.’

  Cassie turned slowly, aware of the need to keep her balance. Even so, the little garden with its low stone wall and single tired rosebush spun as if she was on a carousel. Stephen was walking down the street towards them, wearing his old jeans with the slit in the knee and the blue jumper she had bought him from a catalogue.

  ‘Oy, Stevie,’ the older man shouted, pointing at Cassie as if she was an interesting landmark, ‘this girl here says she's your fiancée.’

  Stephen stopped, but only briefly. He looked at Cassie and then at his parents, frowning. At the gate he paused again, but only to put his head on one side in such a perfect rendition of bafflement that Cassie almost believed in it. ‘Does she now?’ he said. ‘Well, that's odd, because I've never seen her in my life.’ He stared at her, so blankly, so clearly not looking, that for a moment Cassie even wondered if this show of amnesia was genuine, whether a strong drug or state of shock had induced it. But then there was a flicker – of pain or malice, she couldn't tell which – and she felt her hand leave her side, involuntarily, the palm ready to slam, with all the impact she could manage, across his cheek. He caught her wrist, so tightly that she gasped. Next to them his parents shuffled but said nothing. ‘You are clearly upset, Miss,’ said Stephen, ‘but I'm afraid we can't help you, can we, Mum and Dad?’

  They shook their heads, their faces as closed as masks. ‘We tried to tell her, Stevie,’ muttered his mother. ‘We tried to tell her she had the wrong house.’

  ‘The wrong house,’ repeated Stephen, releasing Cassie's wrist and stepping past her to herd his parents inside.

  November

  Two weeks after the explosions, the debris from the bombs had been cleared, exposing a dramatic tableau of blackened stone that rose in spikes and crags from the cratered ground, like the remains of a giant rotten tooth. The orange tape surrounding it, fluttering like striped bunting in the wintry breeze, seemed too flimsy and too festive for the containment of such ruin, as inappropriate as the steady stream of tourists wandering along its perimeters, pointing and clicking cameras under the watchful eyes of the policemen assigned to guard the site.

  Stephen, in London on a mission to retrieve his passport and laptop, could not resist taking a detour to see it for himself. He moved slowly along the line, between two Swedish girls, giggling and posing for snapshots with their phones, and a couple walking in more mute appreciation behind, so absorbed by the scene that one kept stepping on his heels. In spite of such irritations, Stephen found the dark, Gothic remains of charred stone both compelling and oddly comforting. The world had changed, the papers said, and how right they were.

  Arriving at the house that morning, checking for the absence of Cassie's car, he had been reminded of the vigilance with which he had watched his fiancée a few months, and a lifetime, before. To guard something one cared for had seemed so natural that Stephen still couldn't quite believe that, in the end, it had offered no protection against losing it. No one could have loved anything more absolutely or wanted to keep it so much. Yet it had not been enough. Cassie did not love him. She had said so, several times during the long, dreadful night after his birthday meal, each repetition landing like a hammer-blow on a spreading bruise.

  Cassie had been right to fear the set of his face as he left the house. Staggering towards the tube station, it had been all Stephen could do to remain upright. When his phone rang, pulsing in his breast pocket like a phoney heart, he had hurled it in the direction of a bin, not caring when it hit the ground and skidded several yards short. In his mind's eye he was already standing on the station platform by the dark mouth of the tunnel, waiting for the tingle of cold air on his scalp that would presage the approach of a train.

  He did not think of Pamela's brush with death, or Ed's disappearance, or even of Cassie. The task at hand was too huge, too in need of the self-focus that constitutes despair. It was several minutes before he realized that the platform was unusually full, that those pressing into his space by the tunnel entrance were as concerned as he was that nothing had yet emerged from its dark centre. A woman to his right asked if he knew the time. A man next to him had said it was eight o'clock and a bloody outrage. The whole network, a bloody outrage, he had repeated, looking at Stephen for support. Stephen had returned his gaze to the tunnel, doing his best to shut out the hubbub, willing himself to have the courage to let go when the moment came.

  He shuffled nearer the track, until the tips of his shoes were over the edge. I am dead anyway. I have lost her. I am nothing. He bent his knees slightly, aware, as he braced himself, of a rush of adrenaline so massive that he could have launched his body into the tunnel itself had he wanted. As he continued to wait, however, poised like a diver on the edge of a board, the adrenaline, with nowhere to go, seemed to turn against him, liquefying the muscles that, instants before, had felt so strong. Where was the train? He needed the fucking train now, before it was too late, before the moment – the sticking point – passed.

  ‘We are sorry to inform passengers that an incident at Charing Cross has caused serious delays to the Underground network.’

  The announcement burst through Stephen's concentration, bringing with it the groans of the waiting crowd and a renewed sense of his now shivering body, so feeble and debilitated that it felt as if he had annihilated himself anyway.

  Outside, the punching glare of the autumn sunlight made him weep. Turning his back on his street – on Cassie, on his life of the last seven years – he walked until his hips ached, stopping every so often to watch the events unfolding in the city over the rim of a beer glass. Only then, as a sense of the world returned, did it occur to Stephen that Cassie might wonder what had happened to him. A body on a track, credit cards handy for ID, would have left no room for doubt, but this new catastrophe, with all the talk of charred remains and dental records, was another matter. There was almost something fitting about it, he had decided, even then. Mayhem inside and out. People used such disasters all the time for their own purposes. When the towers went down, several bankrupts sank conveniently from view. After the Asian tsunami, the papers had been
full of grisly stories about paedophiles trawling the chaos for orphans. Atrocities threw up opportunities. Cassie was lost to him and he to her. Why not let her assume he had died? The more he thought about it, the more it seemed to Stephen that to allow such an assumption would be both apt and convenient. The idea of punishing her, too, was irresistible. He was suffering so much, why shouldn't she?

  When he had seen her on the doorstep at his parents' house a few days later, so drawn and pale, so uncertain, his conviction had faltered. Stephen had slowed his pace, needing time to think. He had never imagined she would look for him, least of all in a quarter he had so openly despised and from which he had spent two decades trying to escape. He could hardly believe he had come there himself, except that, given his desire to disappear, there had simply been nowhere else to go.

  But the panic lasted only a moment. He had resumed his casual pace, swinging his arms, tempted even to whistle. It didn't matter that Cassie was there or what she had said. His parents knew nothing, and such ignorance, Stephen had seen suddenly, offered protection. In responding to their inquiries with the announcement that he had never seen Cassie before, he had felt almost exultant. The statement felt so simple, so true. The woman with whom he had fallen so passionately in love had gone, eradicated by the loss of her capacity to reciprocate his feelings.

  His parents had asked no questions. He had known they wouldn't. When he had arrived without so much as a toothbrush earlier in the week they hadn't asked anything either, except how long he would be staying and whether he wanted beans or peas with his tea. They seemed to know that they had long since lost the right to ask how he felt about anything; poor recompense, perhaps, for the infliction of physical injury that had passed for parenting, yet it suited Stephen now. If any-thing, they were scared of him, these days, of the simmering anger in his moods, and the powerlessness inherent in their reluctance to know whence it came or where it might lead.

  Easing open the front door of the Camden house that morning, seeing the coatstand and the small, gilt-framed mirror, the still gleaming paintwork, Stephen had been half afraid of what he might do. He was, after all, his father's son: violence was in the vocabulary of his upbringing. It was tempting to give in to it. Yet to trash the place would somehow have been too obvious. To maintain the pretence of non-existence was far better, far more chilling too, if hurting Cassie remained his aim. So he had gone upstairs, trailing his fingers along the expensive silky wallpaper, climbing slowly because of the weight of his rucksack tugging on his shoulders. In his study, he had gathered up his things, pausing only to bid a silent farewell to the little tree – as bare as a birdcage – through the window overlooking the garden.

  Now, sick of the bombsite, Stephen elbowed his way out of the queue and jumped on to a bus. Forty minutes later he was settled in a corner seat on the Gatwick Express, his cap pulled over his face both to deter would-be conversationalists and in the hope that he might fall asleep. Instead, the past rushed at him from the dark: deserting Hull, his parents, Keith, he had done it all before. Starting over, finding a new context in which to exist – he knew the ropes. Only this time, Stephen consoled himself, he had money – enough not to care what Cassie chose to do with the house, which was in her name anyway – and a career. Jack Connolly, he had decided, would be seconded to a case in South or Central America, possibly even Cuba. Stephen could already picture his big-bellied hero in bright-coloured shirts and a Panama, switching his penchant for whisky and cigarettes to rum and cigars. And there would be women too, of course, full-figured, dark-eyed beauties, purring round his hero like cats, full of breathy hints and secrets.

  ‘Is this seat free?’

  Stephen pushed up the rim of his cap and nodded, glad, though he had tried to prevent it, of the intrusion.

  The woman gestured at the rucksack as she sat down opposite him. ‘Going anywhere nice?’

  Stephen noted that his new companion had an ugly beak of a nose but a good figure, displayed to striking effect in a tightly fitting pinstripe jacket and a skirt that made no secret of her long legs. Good ankles, too. Which was important, Stephen decided, taking off his hat and pressing it between his hands. ‘South America… or possibly Cuba. I'm a writer, you see, looking for inspiration.’

  ‘How wonderful.’ She dropped her briefcase on to the floor with a sigh. ‘I mean, what a great job, just to be able to go like that while the rest of us are stuck on our treadmills.’

  ‘I know. I'm very lucky.’ Stephen glanced out of the window, then back at the woman, preferring the beaky nose to the muted browns and greys of the countryside, stripped and ready for winter.

  Not many miles further south Ed was staring disconsolately at a similar landscape. In the seat next to him his father was driving in the most annoyingly snail-like fashion, offering a commentary on every touch of the gear-stick and passing road sign. They were in his mother's Mondeo on their way to see a lawyer in Chichester, an appointment Charlie had set up, then suggested they use the journey as a driving lesson. It was kind of him, too, of course – Ed hadn't needed his mother's beady look over the breakfast table to work that one out: his dad had taken the day off specially and spent a good part of the morning testing him on the manual, delighting in offering the most minor corrections to Ed's answers.

  ‘There's the blind spot, of course – have you learnt about that yet?’

  ‘Yes, I –’

  ‘Just over your right shoulder – bloody dangerous. You simply have to be aware of it whenever you're pulling out. The mirrors alone are not enough. And also – Ed, are you listening? When you do your test, you must exaggerate every single movemment – ham it up almost. Those buggers need to see that you're doing all you're supposed to be doing – a flick of the eyes isn't enough. I remember in my test…’

  Ed let his gaze drift back to the window. His father, he knew, was enjoying the occupation of an arena in which he could still exercise parental authority. Protected by the dos and don'ts of the Highway Code, he was puffing out his fatherly feathers with the sort of aplomb Ed hadn't seen for months. It was sad, but also kind of endearing. And it certainly beat the hell out of the still impossible thorny business of trying to discuss the future. Maisie and Clem's brave intervention – planned and plotted by the three of them – had so far produced no shift in his father's reasoning on any front. What his mother thought about it all remained a mystery. Since the run of family crises after the bombings, she had closed ranks with Charlie in a way that Ed suspected was good, but which left him longing for another chance to press his ear to a half-open door and glean some clue as to what was going on behind the scenes.

  Reporting by phone to his sisters, busy once more with the unfurling paths of their own lives (Maisie managing to meet the needs of both Julian and her history course, while Clem was through to a final interview for her press-officer job), Ed couldn't help but be gloomy. No change on the house front was bad, but Charlie taking Ed to see a lawyer was good, they had insisted, using such similar, determined exclamations of hope that Ed was reminded of how alike they were, like two halves of a sandwich, with him in the middle – squashed to death half the time, but glad of their protection. When they had left Ashley House Ed had felt desolate. They were texting him now, though, more than they ever had in the past – mostly in-jokes and nonsense, but each one washed over Ed with the reassuring warmth of conversation.

  ‘We should have done this before.’ Charlie had pulled into a lay-by and tugged up the handbrake.

  ‘What? Go driving together?’

  ‘No – well, that too, but the lawyer. I have to confess that I'd been relying on your uncle there.’

  A silence followed while father and son contemplated Peter, commuting regularly now to London, filling pockets of the house with his belongings and their once quiet mealtimes with the force of his conversation. Much to everyone's relief, Cassie had gone straight from Hull to Camden Town; but with the increasing likelihood of their own departure from Ashley House, and Pamela
sorting through boxes and cupboards in preparation for her move to Crayshott Manor, every aspect of home life was dominated by the disturbing shadows of upheaval.

  While drawing comfort from the support of his sisters and knowing that adult lives were in a state of turmoil that matched his own, Ed still ached with regret for the part he had played in the changes. The idea of leaving Ashley House remained abhorrent, especially since the new owner was to be his uncle. The guy had fucked up big-time. It didn't seem right to Ed that he should come out of it all with their house. Equally abhorrent was the notion of being forced to continue his education so that his parents could martyr themselves by paying Jessica to look after his child. But, above all, as January loomed, it was Jessica's due date that preoccupied Ed. The fact of fatherhood remained terrifying, no matter at how great a distance he assumed the role. It seemed incredible now that he could ever have imagined nine months as a long time for the evolution of a baby. All year the dreaded deadline had hurtled towards him, as if propelled by its own vicious momentum. Waking to the reality of it now – a little closer each morning – Ed felt increasingly as if he were staring down the barrel of a gun.

  ‘But Peter has worries enough of his own,’ muttered Charlie, switching off the engine and handing over the keys.

  ‘You could have left them in the ignition,’ Ed pointed out.

  ‘So I could…’ Charlie was distracted not by his son's logic but the recollection of the firm slap Peter had given the pile of estate agents' correspondence the night before. When, his brother wanted to know, would the house-hunting begin in earnest? There was no wedding to wait for now, only Ed's child and the start of the added financial difficulties that that would entail. Charlie had gripped the linings of his pockets, torn between outrage and sympathy. Peter, he knew, had just concluded yet another difficult conversation with the still intractable Helen and was seeking consolation. Though it was little discussed, the entire family knew that Charlie intended to stand by his decision about Ashley House. True, he and Serena were getting on a lot better, but he still feared it might only be a temporary reconciliation, wrought by the rediscovery of their sex life and having to deal with his siblings' plight. Meanwhile, Ed's baby continued to hang between them, a drain on the future stability of both their bank balance and their marriage. For, deep in his heart, Charlie still nurtured distrust of Serena's attitude to the predicament: from the start she had wanted the baby to be born. She might have worked hard to dress up her reasons as to why, but Charlie could not shake off the suspicion that, beneath it all, his wife was guided by her grief, all the more treacherous for her refusal to admit to it.