“Sorry, I didn’t even know you were up, it’s still early and the kids weren’t awake so…”
“It was rude,” Louise says, turning her back on him and pulling her dressing gown around her tightly. “I should have at least said good morning to him.”
“All right.” Adam sits on the bottom step, picking at the square of carpet Matthew pulled up and frayed the other day. “It’s not a big deal, Louise, I don’t think Jarvis minded.” He pulls his running shoes off and walks into the kitchen, putting his arms around her waist from behind as she puts the kettle on, listening to the sound of the kids playing happily in the living room.
“Aren’t you going to ask me how it was?” he says.
“How was it?” she says.
Adam presses himself up against her and squeezes her buttocks. “Awful,” he says, thrusting into her. “And good. I dunno, I’m unfit, but I think I’ll give it a go. Might sign up for a 10K or something – if I’ve got something to aim for?” He hates himself for phrasing that as a question and not telling her that’s what he’s going to do. He still can’t break the insecurity growing inside him, he’s still waiting for her to explain where she’s been, why she went away to a ‘conference’ they both know didn’t exist.
“No,” he says, breaking away from their embrace. “I am going to sign up for a race. And I’m going to train for it. Jarvis said he’d write me a plan and I’m going to take him up on it.”
“Okay,” Louise says, turning around again to finish making her coffee. “I think it’s a good idea, I’m pleased. Now you’d better go and have a shower, you’re all sweaty.”
When Adam gets out of the shower, he can hear Louise and the kids laughing downstairs. Nothing normally makes her laugh out loud like that, not even the children. He hasn’t heard her so happy in years – not since before the kids were born if he’s honest. Wherever she went on her ‘conference’, it did her good and that’s enough for Adam.
“All right, I’d better go, Louise,” he hears another voice say. “Tell Adam well done.”
Oh, she’s not laughing with the kids. She’s laughing with Jarvis.
“Jarvis?” Adam calls down the stairs, putting his towel around his waist and tucking it in to keep it up. “You’ve got nerve. I can hardly walk up here.”
Adam walks halfway down the stairs and leans over the bannister.
“Oh shut up.” Jarvis walks out through the kitchen door where he’s been standing chatting to Louise. “You barely ran a mile.”
“Got to start somewhere, haven’t I,” Adam replies.
“So you still up for it then?”
“Yeah, yeah I am,” he says. “And thanks. I really appreciate it.”
“No worries,” Jarvis says, Louise hovering behind him, looking at Adam as if she’s a bit irritated he’s interrupted them. “I’ve never had a running buddy before, it’ll be fun.”
“Right,” Adam says, glancing down at his half-naked body. “I’d better get dressed. See you later on for dinner, yeah?”
“Yup,” Jarvis says, heading towards the front door.
“You don’t have to go,” Adam hears Louise say, following after him.
“No, things to do before tonight,” he says. “Bye, Matthew, bye, Maria,” he calls into the living room. Adam walks back upstairs and back into the bathroom to shave and brush his teeth. As he stares at himself in the bathroom mirror, he analyses his face, trying to be as objective as possible. Okay, he could go to the dentist more often, but his teeth aren’t terrible. He probably should have had a brace when he was younger, but they aren’t too crooked. His nose isn’t big, isn’t small. Average, he supposes. That’s how he always feels about himself in general – he’s average. Middle of the road. Dull, even. But he doesn’t think he’s alone, that’s the lot of many people isn’t it? The proletariat, the 2.2’s, the ‘everyman’. But he’s never wanted that for himself. As he examines the bags under his eyes, he wonders what he does want for himself. It’s been so long since he thought about it, he doesn’t have a clue but now he’s excited, he sees it as a challenge. What does he want?
He grins in the mirror, a proper, can’t hold it back, spontaneous grin. He’s excited by the prospect of finding out what he wants and then working out how to achieve it. Why not? You only get one life, if Tom taught him anything it was that. He hears the door slam downstairs and shouts down to Louise.
“That Jarvis going?”
“Yeah,” she calls back up. “He’ll be back round about half seven. You want a coffee?”
“Yeah, ta,” he shouts down. “Just going to have a shave, won’t be a minute.”
“Okay,” Louise says comfortably, like she feels happy and relaxed as well. “I thought later I might pop into town, get some new clothes and the food for tonight.”
“Yeah,” he says, still studying his face intently in the mirror as he smears shaving cream onto his cheeks. Somewhere in the back of his mind, hidden deeply and expertly and irretrievably, a dark thought lurks. He’s not stupid, he sees how Louise looks at Jarvis. And now she wants new clothes before he comes over for dinner. But fancying someone isn’t a crime, is it? And Adam feels Jarvis is a positive force in their lives. Everything feels like it’s turning around since they met him. Louise is happier and more engaged with their marriage and whatever was going on with her seems to be in the past. Things are going to be okay, he’s sure. Whatever darkness was appearing in their marriage is lifting and maybe that’s down to Jarvis. Adam can see a whole new lease of life waiting for them, like a new skin, glinting in the sunlight, pale and unblemished, waiting for them to grab it and try it on and run with it, bursting with light.
Chapter Fifteen
For years their bedroom has been shrouded in darkness – the curtains are always drawn and the room has been in constant shadow, a navy-blue hue of depression. It’s only now that Louise wonders why they never let any light into their bedroom. Is it a subconscious manifestation of their growing marital unease? Do their permanently closed curtains belie a sickness in their relationship?
She walks over and pulls the cord to open the curtains wide, squinting as the sunlight hits painted walls that have forgotten how to shine. She refuses to accept that anything is inevitable. She and Adam have been having sex again, good sex, like it was years ago before they got so jaded with each other. Okay, so it’s fuelled by her growing obsess…her growing interest in Jarvis. But so what? Women are allowed fantasies. It’s not like she’s doing anything about it, she’s not doing anything wrong, apart from thinking about him while squatting over the power shower head or pleasuring herself as she watches him from the upstairs window in the café.
The point is, she hasn’t done anything with Jarvis and things are already better with Adam. So why shouldn’t she have a crush? Why shouldn’t she feel like an excitable teenager again? She’s allowed some happiness, after all. She’s allowed to feel isn’t she? Life isn’t all about being something for someone else, she’s allowed feelings of her own, she’s allowed to explore her own emotional landscape.
She smiles as she walks out of their bedroom, the sunlight on her back. Things are going to be okay, she thinks to herself. Adam’s parents have got the kids for the night; they picked them up earlier and mercifully only stayed for a cup of tea before taking the kids off with them. Adam is now downstairs watching some sport or other on the TV – she often thinks he doesn’t even care what sport it is, he’ll watch anything. Today, she doesn’t begrudge him it. After all, he went running with Jarvis this morning and Jarvis is coming over for dinner tonight. Jarvis. Jarvis, Jarvis, Jarvis. He seems to get her, to be interested in her. He’s always asking about her life, who she is, her past, her family. He cares about what’s made her her. How often do you meet a friend like that? Friend. Sometimes, she can even lie to herself that it’s all she wants from him, that she’s not craving anything else. Except her body tells a different story. The warmness, the washing machine in her womb, the heat she has for him, the literal, body encompass
ing heat… God, she can’t remember the last time someone’s mere presence made her feel like that.
Louise walks downstairs and grabs her handbag and some bags for life from under the stairs cupboard.
“Will you stop bringing bags for life home,” Adam said to her once, only half joking. “We won’t be able to get in the cupboard for them soon. You’re supposed to take them with you when you go shopping, not buy new ones each time you go to fill the house with.” He wasn’t wrong, of course. Louise definitely has a ‘bag for life’ problem. She’s surprised there aren’t help groups for it – people who forget to take theirs to the supermarket but are too middle-class and British and embarrassed to use the normal supermarket ones, so they buy a whole new set every time they shop.
My name’s Louise and I’m a bag-for-life-o-holic. This week, I bought 17 bags for life. We can’t use the back room downstairs anymore because it’s full of ‘bags for life’.
“I’m going to town to get food for tonight,” she calls to Adam as she opens the front door. “Maybe a new outfit. Shouldn’t be too long.”
“Okay, love,” he calls after her absently. Louise stands on the doorstep and stares at the sky, the trees, the sunshine. Grinning to herself, she can’t help feeling life is pretty good at the moment – it’s been a long time since she has felt this content.
* * *
As Louise arrives at the high street, she begins to walk towards Waitrose. Tonight feels like a Waitrose kind of evening. Not Sainsbury’s, not Tesco and heaven forbid she ever set foot in an Asda. Jarvis’s first meal at the Gaddis house has Waitrose written all over it. She might even use a papaya in her dessert, although she doesn’t know what to do with papayas at all. If she’s honest, she doesn’t even know what one looks like. As she walks towards the entrance, she hears a couple of familiar voices.
“Oh, Alice,” Imogen is saying, “your dad worked in a factory, he was hardly devout.”
“But,” Alice replies, “I’m worried he’ll think I’m losing my faith…” Alice starts.
“Oh, he thinks God is a vaguely attractive concept at best, stop worrying. Nobody who is C of E cares anymore…”
Alice is about to respond when she sees Louise and shouts, “Louise, oh Louise,” and grabs Louise’s arm. “Imogen and I were saying how much we are looking forward to tonight.”
A jolt of horrific realisation runs through Louise’s system. Imogen and Alice are coming to dinner tonight – how could I have forgotten, how could I possibly have forgotten?
* * *
Imogen isn’t a ‘healthy’ friend for Louise to have, but that’s a pattern Louise seems determined to repeat time and again. At school, after years of bullying, she’d still desperately wanted to fit in, to belong somewhere. She’d wanted to be liked. At school, the girl everyone wanted to be friends with was Narinda Kildare, the girl Louise had made an enemy of by not inviting her to her non-existent birthday party. But as they reached their teenage years, Louise had been invited to join the ‘gang’ led by Narinda, hanging around on the corner of the high street. They smoked, they wore too much makeup and they contemplated what they might try to steal.
That first night, with butterflies in her stomach, Louise had stood on the cold high street and wondered what on earth she was doing there. Why was she still so desperate to be friends with this girl she couldn’t stand? These were the girls that had made her school life hell. They’d stolen her lunch, covered her in ketchup and told everyone she’d let Adam Granger finger her by the beech tree outside School Hut Three even though she hadn’t.
Every time Narinda spoke, Louise wanted to lash out and slap her. Yet still she wanted inclusion. Still she wanted to be liked and accepted by them and they’d asked her to come and join them. She had to be friends with them, it would have been social suicide to refuse. Besides, there was only space in the gang because Susie Freeman got kicked out for talking to Andrea Barton, who Narinda didn’t like. Louise had spent the next two years hanging around the Narinda’s gang, constantly in fear of the next put down or, worse, being told she couldn’t hang around with them anymore.
* * *
Years later, Louise is making the same mistake, becoming friends with a woman like Imogen. It’s almost as if Louise cut off Narinda’s head and it grew back with Imogen’s face on it. And now she’s coming to dinner with Jarvis.
God, Louise, why does this shit happen to you?
Because you deserve it, her inner self replies before she can supress it. She hasn’t listened to that voice for a long, long time. The negative one, the one that tells her it was her fault her babysitter killed herself or that her mother left or her father and Tom died. Intellectually, she knows none of these things are her fault, but emotionally, she finds it harder to believe. Humans like to find patterns in things, no matter how random or unconnected. And she’s the pattern behind everything; she’s the common link, the survivor, the one left behind. But she’s grown stronger over the years – she’s married, has two children. She runs her own business, she’s a strong, successful woman and she’s never depended on anyone. Not even Adam. She’s not sure she’s ever acknowledged that before. She doesn’t rely on Adam for anything, not emotionally, not financially, not physically even, not anymore. He’s just there, living alongside her. She relies on him to help bring the kids up, she supposes. But the point is, she’s strong. She can cope with anything, even this. It’s just a dinner party.
“Alice is worried her dad won’t like her new boyfriend because he’s an atheist,” Imogen is saying, ignoring anything Alice says and pursing her lips.
It’s a dinner party, it’s nothing, calm down, Louise. Breathe.
“Where did you get this from?” Imogen continues seamlessly, touching Louise’s blouse sleeve. She isn’t being supportive, it’s not like she’s asking because she wants to go and get one herself. It’s more of a dismissive comment. What she’s saying is it’s too cheap or it’s last season or something substandard in one way or another. It’s a comment designed to create a hierarchy with Imogen firmly at the top, like everything that comes out of her mouth.
Louise hates women who say they don’t get on with other women. Like: “Women are always moaning and bitching about each other, I haven’t got time for that. I like being around blokes, they’re easier, what you see is what you get,” or, “Women don’t like me. I don’t know if they’re jealous of they think their boyfriends are going to fancy me, but…” or, worse, “I’m a man’s woman, I like to flirt, I like to feel wanted. I don’t want to sit there and talk about babies and shopping and who’s going to win America’s Next Top Model.”
To Louise, it seems these women have a weird sort of misogynistic tendency, like they hate their own sex so much they can’t bear to be around it. It’s like these women don’t understand they’re women too – that women, like men, come in all shapes and sizes, each with their own personalities, baggage and ways of dealing with the world. How can a woman happily band all the rest of her own gender into one simple, sweeping, non-statement so easily? That said, when she’s in Imogen’s company, Louise understands it. And in all honesty, she does more naturally gravitate towards male company, she can’t deny it, but she doesn’t dislike women. She does, however, dislike her ‘friend’ Imogen. They’ve been friends – frenemies, she supposes – for years now, not just Imogen, but a gang of them, once ten strong, are now down to Imogen, Alice and Louise who stayed in touch after their children were born. They’d started doing dinner parties at each other’s houses once a month on a rotation, and meeting for lunch at least once every couple of weeks. The trouble is, Imogen reminds Louise too much of the Narinda Kildares and Sally Duncans at school. Bullies, inflating their own self-worth by diminishing that of those around them. But given her confidence in other areas, she can’t explain why she lacks the willpower to tell her what she thinks. Instead, she’s ended up in this faux friendship that makes her feel bad about herself.
Imogen is the kind of person who preys o
n the things that are nice about people and does everything in her power to make them feel bad and insecure. It’s like that’s the only way Imogen herself can feel happy. Like a slow poison, she plants an observation here, a ‘helpful’ comment there, a bit of advice, quietly delivered so nobody else can hear…until the person in question begins to doubt everything about who they are and how they do things and then they try to alter their behaviour accordingly, damaging the things people love about them in the process.
For example, when Alice met her new boyfriend in the café the other week:
“I’m so glad we’re friends, Louise,” Imogen said, looking over Louise’s shoulder, studying Alice, who was chatting to a good-looking stranger she’d bumped into. Louise knew Imogen was already bristling and jealous, despite the fact she was happily married. Alice was a single mum and was desperate to meet someone. For once, shy Alice hadn’t flinched away as a seemingly eligible guy had struck up a conversation with her as she ordered a coffee after lunch. Louise had glanced over and smiled, trying to offer Alice some confidence and affirmation. Imogen, on the other hand, had scoured the scene, picking it apart, cataloguing Alice and the man’s behaviour so she could give her friend some ‘friendly advice’ later on.
“You’re glad we’re friends?” Louise had said, slightly taken aback.
“Yes.” Imogen smiled, flicking her eye contact for a moment. “Although, you’re too nice, Louise. I always say it. I mean, look at you with Alice, giving her encouraging glances, but it’s not what a true friend would do.”
“I’m not sure I understand you? He looks nice, she could do with some luck.”
“Oh, Louise, you’re not a people person are you, you don’t pick up on the signals. He’s clearly a control freak, there’s no way a nice guy would be interested in Alice. She’s got no confidence, has she? Nobody could put up with that, not in the long run. I’m not being horrible, you know how much I love Alice. But she can be so…I don’t know, insipid sometimes, can’t she?”
Beat the Rain Page 14