by Sarah Rayne
‘You’re very good,’ she says, patting his arm, ‘but you could really do without that other man.’
Xavier pulls himself away.
‘I try to keep it pretty quiet.’
‘I’m not an idiot. I thought I recognized your voice the first time, even, but I couldn’t place it.’
Xavier gets up from the sofa, the booze heavy in his head.
Pippa is still talking.
‘I couldn’t believe it! Me sister’s dying of jealousy!’
‘What? Why?’
‘What do you mean, why? You’re famous!’
‘I’m not famous.’
‘Well, you’re on the radio.’
Xavier’s heart is beating too quickly. He feels horribly out of sorts.
‘Is that why you wanted to – to do this?’
The remark dies nastily in the space between them.
Pippa looks at him, affronted.
‘Is that really what you think?’
Xavier is tongue-tied. Pippa, briskly, pulls the striped top over her head, dusts imaginary dirt off her jeans, reaches for her shoes.
‘I didn’t mean . . .’
‘It’s OK. Look, I have to get going. Thanks for the takeaway.’
‘Let me – let me get you a cab, then. It’s late.’ Xavier looks for his phone.
‘Don’t be silly.’
She walks past him in the doorway, where they breathe the same patch of tense air for a second before she strides away, hoisting her jeans up. She goes into the study, where the blue-and-yellow laundry bag has been waiting sentry-like, and he hears the ominously decisive sound of the zip.
Attempting to compose himself, Xavier goes after her.
‘I’ve not even paid you.’
‘You think you have to pay me?’
‘I mean . . . you did the, the bathroom, you did all that stuff while I was getting the food. You were working.’
‘I was working, yes, but then it became something else, didn’t it?’ She speaks with no bitterness now, just a quiet disappointment. ‘Never mind.’
He puts out his arms and they hug, but as stiffly, all of a sudden, as two distant relatives parting after a trying family occasion. As he did after the brief tryst with Gemma, the Australian girl, some weeks ago, Xavier feels dizzied by the way the poles of joyous intimacy and mild distaste sit so closely together, can be visited within moments of one another.
He walks her out to the stairs, the mood between them still ambiguous, questions outnumbering answers. But as they’re halfway out of the door, there is another sudden, startling noise from Tamara’s upstairs – a crash of timber as if a desk has been violently overturned – then more: muffled angry voices, thuds, what sounds like whimpering, frantic footsteps, then nothing. They hold their breath, waiting for someone to come down from the flat, or for something more to happen, at least, but there is nothing. They look at each other. Xavier feels colour come pouring into his cheeks; he avoids Pippa’s eye.
Pippa doesn’t need to say anything, but, as usual, she does.
‘So, I take it you didn’t investigate what’s going on up there?’
‘No,’ says Xavier, ‘no, I didn’t, and I didn’t help the lady downstairs, I didn’t do anything. You’re right, I’m selfish.’
‘I’m not looking for you to say you’re selfish, I’m just wondering how you can just let things like that happen without getting involved.’
‘It’s not really anything to do with you, Pippa.’
‘I know, Xavier.’ The exchange of names is icy. ‘I just . . . well, never mind.’
‘No, go on, say it.’
‘Well, it just seems a bit odd that you can be there on your show giving out all this nice advice, and being Mr Helpful and Reassuring, and you’re always there as a shoulder to cry on and whatnot, but then in your actual life you just kind of turn a blind eye.’
‘You don’t know anything about me.’ How did it get to this, this pointless bickering? Xavier wonders helplessly.
‘I didn’t say I was an expert.’ Pippa’s accent, exaggerated by the rising temperature, claws harshly at the word.
She is propelled by a fast, unruly series of emotions: indignation at being spoken to like some sort of clingy fan, embarrassment at having said too much, as usual, and lost her dignity; weary anger at the fact that everything always has to be about Wendy, or her mam, or at any rate, someone other than herself. And then, seeping into the cracks between these bricks, a slow, gooey disdain for this man who sits in his radio studio, dispensing his bits of advice, comes back to his nice flat, can afford to wave money at a woman to make his bed and put bleach in his fucking toilet, who clearly can’t imagine what it’s actually like to have the sort of problems he smugly counsels people on. Or the sort of problems Pippa herself has: surviving with no money, making fifty calls a day to ask people if they need a cleaner, propping up her sister, talking her mother down, falling asleep with her clothes on.
‘I just think it’s a bit, it’s a bit convenient to be always on the radio saying it’s good to talk about what’s on your mind and all that, and then just shutting yourself away—’
‘I’ve told you, I don’t butt in, because—’
‘Yes, because you think everything just happens of its own accord. Well, like I say, that’s convenient.’
‘Do you want to know something!’
Xavier doesn’t recognize himself; he might be watching this scene from somewhere outside his body. He corners Pippa, thrusts out a finger, trembling slightly.
‘Do you know what! I used to get involved in every bloody thing in the world! And everything went fucking wrong!’
There is a long silence after these melodramatic words: they could hardly be expected to provoke anything else. Xavier knows that they will have heard him downstairs, he could have woken Jamie. He tries to modulate his voice, but it wavers up and down, out of his control like a kite tossed in the elements.
‘So don’t ever come in here again and tell me that I should be running round doing people favours. Because the less I’m involved, trust me, the better.’
‘I’ll not come in here and tell you anything,’ Pippa says quietly.
Xavier watches, aghast at himself, as she leaves. He still thinks she might come back, that they can somehow reset this awful, messy conversation, but after a pause that raises hopes for a moment, the front door clicks into place below.
Xavier finds a bottle of vodka he’d forgotten he had, in one of the cupboards Pippa reorganized, and sits on the sofa with the TV on. He drinks straight from the bottle, taking a grim pleasure in the three-second lag between swallowing and the burn in his throat. The takeaway cartons are still on the table, the air still smells of Pippa. He moves into the bedroom, leaving the late-night news to report breathlessly to itself: GIRLS WERE IMPRISONED IN INHUMAN CONDITIONS, EMIRATES JET MAKES EMERGENCY LANDING. He drinks until he can almost believe that tonight went perfectly, consoling himself with the thought that he didn’t, at mild provocation, break his vow to never talk about what happened with Michael, and then drinks some more until his mushy brain can almost be persuaded to confirm that it never happened at all, that it’s still six years ago and there is still everything to play for.
VII
Xavier sleeps until three the following afternoon – or lies in bed, at least. Each time he regains consciousness, all he wants is to lose it again. He hears or senses the day going by, like music played in a distant room: Mel taking the squawking Jamie somewhere, footsteps on the stairs around lunchtime, and then the distinctive, heavy silence of the Sunday afternoon outside. The Bayham Road traffic is just a trickle of cars taking couples to pub lunches, or families to early-year picnics provoked by the long-awaited sun.
Eventually he sits up in bed, throws the covers aside and begins to review the events of last night. I fucked everything up, Xavier thinks. For a second all he wants is to call Matilda, or Bec and Russell, just to hear one of those familiar voices, even if they onl
y describe what they can see around them, what they’ve been up to. But it’s night in Australia. Matilda is dancing with her fiancé in Kings Cross, Sydney. Bec and Russell, exhausted as usual, are asleep.
Xavier takes a few exploratory steps to the bathroom, but his head feels as if it is being squeezed in a giant fist, and the floor and walls play maliciously with his eyes, refusing to stay solid or static. I’m still drunk, he thinks, Christ, I drank so much. This memory leads back to the others, to the awful exchange by the door, and further back to the sequence of events which brought him here, which made him withdraw from the world to the extent he has, and made him shout, absurdly, at Pippa, for saying things which were probably true.
Xavier feels sick. He manages to find his phone in the lounge, on the floor by the sofa. The whole room, with its sauce-stained takeaway debris and disrupted cushions, with traces of Pippa on the furniture and her accelerated breaths still in the air, is infused with a regretful ambience, a sad nostalgia for what briefly happened there. Don’t be stupid, Xavier thinks, toughen up, get a grip, for Christ’s sake. It takes him three tries to find Murray’s number on his mobile.
‘Xav? I was going to call you in a couple of hours – I’ve got a zinger of an idea for tonight, basically we get them to call in to evict people from the TV, like, you can choose one person to banish for ever to—’
‘Murray, I’m not well. I’m not going to be able to do it tonight.’
This knocks the words out of Murray for a few moments. Xavier has never cried off once in these five years.
‘I’ve got some sort of virus or something. Sick.’
‘Wer, wer, wer, wer,’ Murray begins, but he fails to come to an agreement with the word. ‘So have you told . . .?’
‘I’m going to call Roland now. They’ll get one of those guys to cover.’
‘OK.’ Murray still sounds shocked. ‘Wer, well, I hope you feel better by tomorrow. Big week of shows coming up.’
There’s no reason why this week is ‘bigger’ than any other, but Xavier lets it pass; he wants to end the conversation and be asleep again. ‘I’ll be fine. I’ll be fine. How was last night?’
‘All right.’
Xavier can picture Murray’s wry face, can almost see him run his hands through the tangle of his hair.
‘I nearly went home with this Polish girl. She was hot, you wouldn’t believe. But I’d misread her body language. So in the end, well, she went home and I went home, but not together.’
Xavier calls his boss, Roland, who is also surprised, but accommodating. As soon as this conversation is over, Xavier makes his way back to bed, but the phone cries for attention.
It’s Murray. Xavier sighs deeply, but picks up the call.
‘Listen, I’ve been thinking. Could you put a word in for me to – to do the show flying solo tonight?’
‘Solo . . .? What, you want to present it? Just on your own?’
Murray’s tone is beseeching.
‘Xavier, I’ve . . . I’ve been there a lot longer than you and mer, mer, most people. Everyone else gets a shot at presenting. Because of the, because of the stammer and everything it’s a lot harder for me. If someone came in your place, I don’t know how well I’d click with them.’
‘It’s only one night, Murray.’
‘Still, though.’
Xavier sighs inwardly at Murray’s request. He knows it’s partly inspired by Murray’s ill-founded belief that he might be able to impress their superiors and improve his stock at the station with a blinding performance; and there’s little he can do to cure his friend of that idea. But it’s also partly the case, just as Murray said, that a newcomer might not make allowances for the stammer, he might go away and tell people about the co-presenter who can’t say anything funny, who can’t actually say much at all. This thought is enough to prod Xavier into making the call.
Roland is sceptical.
‘We had Murray do a couple on his own years ago, when Malcolm couldn’t make it, and they were a disaster. I mean, that was why you ended up taking over from him in the first place.’
‘He’s got a lot better.’
‘What, he can finish words now?’
Xavier is silent.
Roland apologizes.
‘He’s just not very . . . look, Xavier, I love Murray and you love Murray, he’s wonderful, but he’s just not very . . . he’s not exactly what they call a safe pair of hands when it comes to presenting.’
‘He won’t let you down. Give him one go. I’ll be back tomorrow, anyway.’
His boss reluctantly agrees. Murray is grateful and excited. He texts Xavier with an idea for a way to explain his absence, some nonsense whereby he pretends Xavier’s been kidnapped, as an ongoing comic riff, but Xavier advises against it. Murray sends four or five more texts as the afternoon fades to a clear evening, running this or that idea past his collaborator. Xavier replies helpfully each time he drifts into awareness, out of the time-free, amorphous blur where he spends the hours from five to ten o’clock.
In what would normally be the hours of making final preparations for the show, having dinner perhaps, waiting for Murray to pick him up in the car, Xavier, less groggy now, puts on a coat and leaves his flat, with no particular destination in mind.
Three minutes from 11 Bayham Road is a series of steps half-obscured from the street by shrubbery, which lead onto a long stretch of woodland. The path through the woods extends a mile and a half to Highgate and beyond. It’s part of a little-known green ring which slices through the city, behind and between people’s homes, over bridges and round the back of main roads, a parallel London full of dog-walkers, joggers, cyclists and petty criminals. Normally Xavier would think twice about strolling along this route at night, but at the moment he’s not even thinking once about anything.
Xavier walks. It’s a mild night, with a large moon hanging over the woods. Around the fringes of its light, undergrowth rustles as creatures scamper away from Xavier’s lone footsteps. It’s only now he realizes that he has been damming a rush of memories for years with a force of will he was only partly aware of. As he walks on into the dark, over a muddy track dotted with clumps of nettles, the memories begin to rise up within him.
He heads back the way he came and gets home at a quarter to three. The show will be in its late stages, but Xavier has no desire to check how it’s going. He fills the kettle and makes a cup of tea in a new-looking mug. Sitting in the study, with a single lamp facing the wall to provide a patch of light, Xavier allows himself to retrieve from the vault the full memory of 11 July 2003.
Bec and Russell’s cherished ambition to have a baby eluded them until it became more like an insuperable task than a dream; and of course, the more everyone else waited for an announcement, the worse things became. When it was well known that they’d been trying, without success, for three years, the subject became a sticky one. More and more often Chris found the usually unflappable Bec confiding her worries to him.
‘What if we’re just not able to do it? What if there’s something wrong, Chris?’
‘Well, you’ve had tests, haven’t you?’
‘Yes. They can’t see anything wrong. But some people, it just never happens . . .’
Chris didn’t say, ‘You have plenty of time,’ or, ‘You’re only twenty-seven,’ or the other inadequate things that people were saying with the best of intentions. He gripped her hand and told her to keep going and not to panic. At parties, he ensured that jokes were put down, conversation was steered the other way. The gang of four closed ranks.
When at last Bec broke the news of her pregnancy at York Minster, the collective relief powered a six-month euphoria. Jokes were back on: new jokes about what would happen if the baby was ugly, what if it became a serial killer; stupid suggestions for names, comically awful childcare books from the fifties bought in second-hand shops. It went without saying that Chris and Matilda would be godparents, and, to all intents and purposes, aunt and uncle. It had begun to feel, a
s Matilda said one night, as if it were their baby on the way.
What became the worst night of Chris’s life had begun with him doing them a favour. The gang of four had tickets to see a famous rock band in the Vodafone Arena: Bec had got them months before Michael existed properly, when he was only a prospect. Now Michael was two months old, a placid baby who was starting to smile like his father. The concert that evening would be the first time Bec and Russell had been out since the birth. Bec was taking a few days off from breastfeeding, so there was technically no need for her to stay at Michael’s side; everyone agreed she deserved a break, just for a couple of hours, the strain of recent weeks was obvious.
Everything was planned, but a babysitter couldn’t be found.
At first when Chris volunteered to stay behind, Matilda was aghast.
‘These are $60 tickets!’
‘We can sell it. We’ll get a lot more than that, in fact. You can be a scalper for the night.’
‘But I want you to be there.’
‘I know, but Bec needs to get out. You’ve seen her.’
Matilda kissed him.
‘You’re amazing, you know that?’
‘I couldn’t agree more.’
Chris was given a set of instructions, but really, what was there to do? Be stationed somewhere near the baby, who’d be sleeping in Bec and Russell’s room. If he starts crying, go and pick him up, give him a bottle, just hold him, he’ll be straight back off. Always lie him on his back, but you’re not an idiot. You shouldn’t have to change him.
‘I can if it comes to it,’ said Chris proudly; he’d done this once already, in week three, when Bec was asleep and Russell seemingly catatonic with fatigue. Matilda and Chris were hardly away from the new parents in the first fortnight or so, fetching, buying, doing errands of every kind.
‘If he really starts crying, text me, all right?’
‘He will not text you,’ said Russell, whisking the mobile out of Bec’s hand. ‘You’ll be back here before the first bloody song. You need a break.’