She leaned in the doorway of the front room until he turned to the television again. Those fucking men. Those stupid, privileged, fucking men. Why did she have to explain herself to them? And why hadn’t Nicole said something? Fuck it. Fuck them.
But at least she had walked. They wanted her to beg, to simper and whine and plead for a place next year. She wasn’t going to be that woman. She had the satisfaction of having done that much. Except she was still coming home to Rab, who was, if anything, a poor imitation of those twats at the club. They were – she shuddered to think, but it was true – the kind of person he aspired to be.
‘How was your day,’ she said finally.
‘Good,’ he said. The old reliable lie.
So she was stuck with him for now. There were so many moments when she should have left her husband but hadn’t. She would argue with herself, beat herself up about it, but she never walked. Even after she found out about the cheating.
It wasn’t anything obvious. Working in the City, it was easy for Rab to explain away late drinks with clients, or claim he had pulled an all-nighter and slept at his desk. No evidence as such and lying had always come as easily to his lips – easier, even – than the truth. Rather, it was a way he would be with her. More irritable, shorter. She could imagine who they might be: a parade of interns, ripe with redbrick freshness. The affairs always ended quickly enough, probably whoever he charmed into an affair wouldn’t fall for his lies for long. And she would know it was over when he bought home flowers ‘no reason, just because I love my wife.’ Always red roses. The closest he would come to an apology.
It hurt. And a divorce would have been easy enough with no children. But she weighed the pain and embarrassment against what Rab had done for her. He’d taken her out of the spotlight as he promised. He’d put a roof over her head, one that wasn’t conditional on benefits cheques arriving on time or hustling cash on the streets. If he didn’t make her feel loved, she at least felt looked after.
Maybe that was why she had never wanted children. Because it could all have come crumbling down at any time. That was what she told herself. And it was an adequate explanation. But families raised children happily and successfully even without money. Perhaps closer to the truth, something she would only have admitted quietly and when no one else was in danger of hearing, she feared she wouldn’t have known the right way for a mother to love a child. And over the years, as Rab’s love slipped away, she knew that whatever she could muster would not have been enough.
Instead, she poured her passion into the club. It became the centre of her life. After a few years she probably could have tried to find work, but there was always some reason not to, because of training, because of Nat Champs, because of head season, because of Henley. A few more years after that and the gap in her CV started to look more as if it was planned than accidental. In snug little Molesey, plenty of wives were doing much the same.
So many nights in bed she would lay a hand on the middle of his back, hoping for him, willing him to turn around and hold her and tell her that her loved her. For him to say that they would start trying to work things out again. That he would start trying full stop. That the lies would stop. He didn’t do any of those things. He did nothing at all.
A week ago all she wanted was to leave that sterile, passionless existence behind. Now she would give anything for it to be back the way it was before. Erykah thought about the key Nicole had given her for Valentine’s Day, still tucked away at the boathouse. She hadn’t even had time to empty her locker. There was a feeling in her chest like heartburn.
Erykah crossed to the walnut drinks cupboard. The soft click of a hidden catch was such a comforting sound. She reached to the back for the 1991 single cask Glendronach. She loosened the cork stopper from the bottle and breathed in a heady mixed aroma like coffee beans, dried fruit and something darker, almost like rubber. It was a drop not to be fucked with. She poured two fat glugs of the reddish liquor into heavy bottomed crystal glasses. Erykah swallowed hers in a single gulp, waved the other glass in her husband’s direction. He shook his head. She swirled the second and took a sip.
Rab watched her put the stopper back in the bottle and shut the cupboard. ‘Are you OK?’
Erykah sat down. The square crystal glass rested in the palm of her hand, heavy and solid. ‘Not really,’ she said. ‘I’ve quit the boat club.’ Another mouthful. She let the liquid sit on her tongue, fill her nose and head with the effervescent alcohol lightness.
‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Why?’ She shook her head. There was only ever going to be one reason why. ‘Wow. I’m sorry,’ he said.
‘Thanks.’ She thought: if he follows this up with some shit about working harder or bootstraps I am straight up going to walk out.
‘I’ve been thinking we should talk about things,’ he said. ‘I was thinking . . . hoping . . . you might want to give us a second chance.’
Erykah turned to look at her husband. His face was expectant – he was not joking. Second chance? He expected her to forget about years of seething, of wretched disappointment, just because he asked?
‘I know it sounds crazy,’ he said. ‘And we’ve had our ups and downs.’
She snorted and looked down at the traces of golden liquid clinging to the glass in her hand. What a pat phrase to use for what for her had amounted to half a lifetime of anxiety and regret. ‘But maybe we can make this into something good,’ he went on. ‘Maybe we got this money for a reason. I mean, what’s to stop us leaving this behind? We could be on a plane tomorrow. Or a cruise ship. We could go anywhere – we should.’
She held his look for a long time. In his shallow way, he meant this. It wasn’t a joke. But so many years after she had given up hope? Far too little, much too late. ‘Rab, this is all too much for one week. We’ll talk another time. When the dust has settled,’ she said.
A look of surprise crossed his face. ‘Oh,’ he said. Deflated. She had never been the one to put him off before. They turned back to the dating programme. Bubbly girls giggled and pouted for the stubble-bearded man-boys in skinny jeans who crossed the stage. ‘Do you remember how we met?’
‘How could I forget,’ she said. ‘I’d been kicked out of uni and some friends dragged me to a singles night in Vauxhall to get my mind off things.’
‘I was working the bar,’ he said. ‘Still wondering whether I should take that job offer in the City or not—’
‘Wearing that stupid toga! Oh God,’ she said. She remembered the Gladiators theme bar and laughed. ‘I didn’t talk to anyone else all night.’ She was still smarting from the trial, not to mention the letters Grayson had returned. He asked her name, and she told him it was Erykah, not Rikki. Just in case he ran to the tabloids later. Apart from that taking the barman home hadn’t seemed like the worst decision in the world. He told her she was beautiful, she thought he was cute. He had to do the walk of shame in the same white sheet and gold sandals he had worn to work the night before.
Rab prised the whisky glass away from her and set it on the floor. He leaned forward and held her slim hands in his clammy ones. ‘Erykah, you’ve hardly changed in twenty years,’ he said. ‘You’re still as beautiful as you were the first time I saw you.’
‘Yeah, well,’ Erykah said. With little else to do in most of the last years, she had taken care of her looks. Most of the women at the rowing club were surprised she was old enough to be a veteran. She ate up their unspoken envy like it was lobster and caviar. After years of chewing over the remains of choices she wished she had taken and regretting the ones she did, this at least was some consolation.
‘I never regretted going home with you,’ he said.
Erykah cast an eye over her greyer, tired husband. She wasn’t sure she believed him. He’d taken her opening up about who she was and the trial in his stride, and for years, she was convinced that it didn’t matter to him at all. But later, over time, when the cr
acks started to show, she was less convinced. ‘Not so sure I would have stopped to talk to this guy here.’
She knew it was a lie even as she said it, though. For all his many faults he still had something she wanted. She could never put her finger on it exactly. His privilege, maybe? How easy things seemed to be for him without ever excelling? Looking back she couldn’t have said whether it was that she wanted him, or wanted to be him.
‘You have to stay with me. Jesus, Erykah – you know I would be lost without you.’ His hands gripped hers tighter. ‘I know you’ve been unhappy. You’re not thinking –you haven’t engaged a solicitor yet, have you?’
‘No, not yet,’ she said. Erykah felt the old conciliation welling up in spite of herself. And underneath it, something else, something new. It felt like maybe she was getting some kind of upper hand. Like maybe he needed her more than she needed him this time. ‘Rab, I need a fresh start. I have to get away from . . .’ she looked around the room, the sterile house that had been decorated in the best, blandest taste. ‘From all of this, money or no money. What we have now, this is killing me.’
‘Yes . . . yes,’ he said. His hands, still clamped over hers, were squeezing tight now. They slipped down to her wrists, holding her fast. ‘I can change,’ Rab said. ‘We can pack up and leave. Go for a year, for the rest of our lives. Please. We can leave tomorrow. Say you will.’
That bag in her room was still in the corner and half full of the clothes she had been going to run away with to Nicole’s. Erykah tried to wiggle her hands out of his, but he clutched harder.
‘Please, Rab,’ she said. ‘You’re hurting me.’
‘Just say we’ll leave tomorrow,’ he said. His eyes were intent, the irises a pinpoint. His hands cinched around the slender bones of her wrist. The pressure was too much to bear.
Erykah twisted her arms and tried to free herself but the more she twisted, the tighter he held her. ‘Stop it, Rab,’ she said. ‘I told you I need time to think.’ Her mouth went suddenly dry. This was not a conversation: this was . . . something else.
‘Say it.’
She was strong, as tall as he was, and in better shape. But almost all of her strength was in her lower body, and with him holding her arms what could she do? Standing up, maybe, she would have a chance in a fair fight against a man his size, or at least a chance to hit hard and then run away. The look in his eyes scared her. A fair fight was one thing; a crazed attack quite another. ‘Let me go,’ she said. ‘You’re frightening me.’
‘You’re my wife,’ he said. A look came over his face she had never seen before. It sent shivers down her spine. Rab stood up and hauled her body into a standing position. ‘And you are going to do what I say now.’
‘Let me go!’ Erykah shouted. She pulled the weight of his body in towards hers, sending him off balance and falling forward, then used the full weight of her body to push him away again as hard as she could.
The force of the push was enough to break his hold. He let go of her arms and flailed, toppling back onto the sofa. For a moment he lay there with his mouth open and said nothing. ‘Fuck’s sake Rab,’ she said, and rubbed the skin of each wrist in turn. The indentions left by his fingers were pink and white; they would bruise. But he was the one who started to cry. Rab turned his face in to the sofa and howled like a baby.
: 10 :
A Golf GTi undertook Seminole Billy on the M4 westbound and swerved across the lanes. Billy slammed on the brakes and felt the tyres struggle to grip at the wet surface. The banging in the boot started again. Billy’s passenger was not pleased with being thrown around in the back of the Merc in traffic, he guessed. Well, tough tits.
‘Next caller, Mia from Harpenden, you’re on the Stuebner Show – what’s your take on the grassroots boycotts taking hold in response to the Scottish referendum outcome?’
Seminole Billy steered a hard left as the GTi swung across the lanes again. Silver pendants dangling from his leather bracelets chimed against the steering wheel. There was a bump that sounded like someone kicking the back of the seat from the boot, and a rattle that might have been his passenger attempting to unlock it from the inside. Billy chuckled. Go ahead and try it, friend.
‘The thing is, I’m a mother, blessed with three darling children,’ a voice crackled over the radio. A kid screamed in the background. ‘If boycotting Scottish businesses shows our support for the Union, then so be it. What would my seven-year-old daughter want us to do? That’s what really matters.’
‘What about the businesses that say the boycott is ineffective and racist?’
‘I don’t know about racist, but I know what I feel. Coco, Jojo, be quiet! Your daddy is going to hear about this when he gets home . . . as a businessperson myself I know what I’m talking about.’
‘What business are you in, Mia?’
‘I run a blog from home, so I know about small business. They have to learn to take the rough with the smooth.’
‘Not retail, then?’ Diana Stuebner asked. ‘Blogging is not like the pressures of retail, wouldn’t you say?’
‘My site is a forum for mothers, much more than a business. It’s a community,’ Mia sniffed. ‘Real big society stuff. Can Scottish shop owners say that? They are a small fraction of the population and I feel they’ve been overrepresented in this debate. Mothers, on the other hand . . .’
The pounding in the back continued. Billy aimed the Merc at a pothole and gave his passenger a shake. A muffled protest emitted from behind the back seat. A smile creased Billy’s thin lips.
Seminole Billy’s mobile buzzed on the dashboard. He looped a hands-free set over his ear and answered the phone in his slow Florida drawl. ‘Speak.’
It was from his associate, travelling container class in the back. ‘Do you mind turning that down?’ Buster said from the boot. ‘I can’t hear myself think here. It’s all, wah wah my children this, wah wah Scotland that. That woman sounds like her fanny is lined with Cath Kidston.’
‘No can do, friend,’ Seminole Billy said. He loved talk radio and especially loved Diana Stuebner’s show. He made a point never to miss it. Her soothing voice was an oasis of calm in an otherwise fucked up world.
‘Aw c’mon. Can’t you put on an audiobook or something?’ Buster whined. ‘Tired of listening to this rubbish every d—’ Seminole Billy ended the call and turned the radio volume up to full. The phone started ringing again, so he switched it off.
Billy turned off the motorway. The battered Merc slowed to a crawl. His reptilian gaze crawled over each house in turn, the manicured green lawns and gravel drives. The house he was looking for had been all over the twenty-four-hour news channels during the weekend. It shouldn’t be hard to recognise. And yet every one of these places looked the same: big, rich, empty. Adverts for future break-ins.
Seminole Billy wouldn’t have lived in a place like that for anything in the world. They reminded him of the gated communities at home that had started cropping up about the time he moved away. People fell in love with Florida, with its beaches and weather, then put up walls to keep everyone else out of their space. Especially poor people. Those were the kind of places where a vigilante neighbourhood watch could shoot a black kid and straight up get away with it, just because someone thought he looked suspicious.
People were a mystery to him. If you lived in an area like this, it was because you already had money. Late model Beemers and Volvos littered the drives. Why would any of them be playing the lottery with money like that?
More to the point, why would any of them have made the deal they did with the folks who hired Seminole Billy? Must be some real debt beating down their shiny door. Maybe a gambling addiction, or an investment that hadn’t paid off. He had met a good few over the years, people who thought the charmed lives they led were the result of more than dumb luck, then blamed others when things started to go wrong. The kind of folks who were born on third b
ase and thought they hit a triple. They never knew how to quit when they were ahead.
That was fine with Billy. It was people like that who kept him in a job.
He spotted the house at the end of a cul-de-sac by the river. Exactly as it had looked on the news, apart from the press that had been hovering around a few days ago. No sign of the vultures now. Good.
Seminole Billy backed the Merc into the driveway and checked the coast was clear before popping the boot open.
‘Cheers, drive, I thought we’d never get here,’ Buster said. He unfolded his long limbs and climbed out, wiping sweat from his brow. Even with the friendly Bristolian accent, Buster came across as someone not to be fucked with. He was tall, with black ink tattoos covering much of his dark skin. Dreadlocks and a scar across his face – remnant of a prison fight – completed the look.
Seminole Billy, meanwhile, was a wiry middle-aged man with a weather-beaten face and deep creases around his eyes. His hair was greased back and he was dressed all in black like a preacher, with the custom silver tipped Tony Lama footwear he called his Getting Paid boots. ‘You complaining about the transport options?’
‘I swear you must have hit every pothole from Hammersmith on,’ Buster said.
‘You don’t say?’ Billy smirked. He took a last drag on his cigarette, burning it down to the filter, and stubbed the butt out under his heel. ‘And here I was trying to avoid them.’ Buster kissed his teeth and Billy recoiled. ‘Jesus, man. What did you have for breakfast this morning? You got breath that would knock a buzzard off a gut wagon.’
‘Goat roti,’ Buster said. ‘Place on Clapham High Street.’ He ran his tongue over his teeth and rolled his eyes in bliss. ‘Nowhere near as good as granny’s, but short of a ticket to Trini it’ll do.’
The Turning Tide Page 11