‘And so are you,’ Abe said. He kissed me for what seemed like a long time before he stopped and asked, ‘Shall we move somewhere?’
Was he suggesting we move from our standing position in front of the mantelpiece and sit on the sofa? Or was he suggesting we go to his bedroom? I’d glanced at it earlier on my way to the bathroom and taken in the neatly made double bed with the stack of books piled on the table beside it. A large abstract painting hung in the space above the headboard and there was an open-plan unit along the wall in which a row of shirts hung above drawers, which, I presumed, contained other clothes.
I’d looked at the bed, with its grey checked cover and woollen blanket folded across it. Did Abe sleep on one side or stretch out across it? Did he sit there and read late into the night, or wake up early and reach for a book? And could I imagine myself there with him? And, I wondered, wishing I had not, had Lynn ever slept there? Did she still, sometimes?
I had had friends who, in the throes of the bitterest divorce, still had sex. In a long marriage sex becomes as much of an addiction as it is a habit, and the fact that you can no longer stand the thought of sitting opposite someone at the dinner table, night in, night out, doesn’t mean you’re ready to forgo the intimacy of the bedroom.
‘Let’s sit down,’ I said, in response to Abe’s question, moving towards the sofa.
‘Are you all right?’ he asked, putting his arm around me and drawing me closer to him.
‘Yes.’ I relaxed as he kissed me and as I felt the warmth of his body moving closer to mine, but I tensed again when he began fumbling with my blouse, pulling it free from the hem of my trousers. ‘Not yet,’ I said.
‘Sorry.’ He smoothed the fabric back into place. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t mean to … It’s just …’
‘What?’ I knew, really, what he wasn’t saying.
‘You’re so lovely, Ivy.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I echoed his words, feeling guilty for not being able to respond to his desire, for not being able to give in to the desire I felt too. ‘I’m just not ready.’
‘Really, Ivy, please don’t be sorry,’ he said, sitting up straighter. ‘But can I ask you something?’ He took my hand, when he said this, and stroked it.
‘What?’
‘Will you tell me about your mother?’
I’d explained about her illness and its effect on the rest of the family but I hadn’t gone into any great detail.
‘How old were you when you first found out that something was wrong?’
‘She started to show symptoms when I was in my early teens but I didn’t find out what it was and how it might affect me until I was twenty.’
‘So you lived with the knowledge for most of your adult life,’ he said, stroking my fingers.
‘Yes,’ I said, enjoying the feeling that I could sit there and talk to this man who, a few months ago, I had not known existed.
I told him a lot about her illness, about the risk to me and my siblings, how living with the risk had affected each of us in different ways, and about how a lot of the decisions I had made in my life had not been entirely my own but swayed by the knowledge of the faulty gene that ran right through my mother’s side of the family.
I don’t know how long we sat there, holding hands and talking or if he felt, as I did afterwards, that the words we’d exchanged were more revealing of ourselves than anything else could have been, that what I had told him and his responses were as intimate and unguarded as any lovemaking.
‘I’m so glad I found you, Ivy,’ Abe said, a few weeks later, after an afternoon in town.
We’d been to the National Gallery to see Maggi Hambling’s Walls of Water: huge paintings of giant waves splashed over vast canvases. Abe had appeared utterly absorbed in them, and I took the opportunity to gaze at him, to take in every aspect of him, as he stood transfixed by them.
His face was strong, determined almost, but softened by the kindness of his eyes and the gentleness of his manner. Even though he was wrapped in the paintings, something in him sensed the presence of another and he moved aside a little, ceding his position directly in front of a canvas without taking his eyes off it. I found it hard to imagine Abe ever upsetting anyone, not intentionally, and even though I now knew more about his marriage and how much he had hurt his wife, I found it hard to hold it against him. After all, his crime had been to love another. It seems wrong that that simple fact can cause so much pain and suffering.
‘Okay?’ He caught me watching him and smiled. ‘They’re quite spectacular, aren’t they?’
‘Yes,’ I agreed.
We shared an attraction to water, although it manifested itself in different ways. Abe, who had worked as a fountain designer, liked to direct and manipulate it; I like to immerse myself in it. But one way or another, we never seemed to be far from water, and when we emerged from the gallery, it was into a sea of people rallying in support of the journalists killed at the Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris. Placards saying ‘Je Suis Charlie’ bobbed up and down above their heads, as we made our way around the periphery of the crowd and up St Martin’s Lane. I thought of Nathan, a man I had known briefly, for the first time in years, and something he’d said to me about how I’d never know what it felt like to be hated because of what you are.
I shivered, the way you do when a memory from a long-ago past resurfaces and Abe, noticing, took my hand and led me towards the fountain. ‘Here,’ he said, fumbling in his pocket and taking out a fifty-pence piece. ‘Make a wish.’
I looked at the coin. ‘It’s a swimming one, from the London Olympics.’
‘Then your wish has your name on it!’ He took another coin from his pocket and threw it into the fountain.
‘What did you wish?’ I asked him.
‘I didn’t,’ he said. ‘It was a thank-you throw.’
‘Who did you thank? And what for?’
‘Fate,’ he said, taking my hand again. ‘For throwing us into each other’s path. I’m so glad to have found you, Ivy.’
I squeezed his hand in return and tossed the swimmer on the face of the coin into the water at the foot of the bronze lion. I wish I could hold on to this feeling, I said silently to myself. I was happy, really happy, for the first time since Richard died, but a couple of things still unsettled me.
One was the existence of Abe’s wife.
I tried not to feel jealous when he said, ‘I’m going to the cinema with Lynn tomorrow evening,’ or ‘I’m going to be over at the house on Saturday. There’s a bit of DIY to do.’
‘Does she know about me?’ I’d asked him once, and had been surprised by his reply.
‘Yes. I told her I’d met someone special.’
‘And does she mind?’
‘I don’t think so.’ There was hesitancy in the way he said it, as if he suspected that she did.
I didn’t tell him I thought I might, if I was in her shoes. I wasn’t sure I would be generous enough to be entirely happy for him. If she’d not been able to forgive him for an affair that was now almost a decade old, would she forgive him for seeing someone else now? It might be irrational but people are irrational beings.
I was in town a week or so later. I had a meeting with a client who ran small-group historic-interest holidays aimed at the over-fifties. They were adding the area around Ancient Stagira in northern Greece, Aristotle’s stamping ground, to their portfolio and I would be handling the PR.
The meeting was at the Greek Tourist Office near Oxford Circus, and as I was a little early, I popped into a computer shop, thinking I might get a new keyboard as some of the keys on mine had begun to stick.
That was when I saw them: Abe, with a woman I knew, from the photographs I had seen, was Lynn. She was sitting in front of a desktop and Abe was leaning over her shoulder, while a shop assistant hovered beside them. ‘So can we get a FireWire, so I can transfer everything from her current computer to this one?’ Abe was asking.
They seemed so cosy, so like a couple who had been mar
ried for years, looking for a new computer together. I was about to turn around and walk out but the assistant had seen me. ‘Yes, we sell that too,’ he was saying to Abe but looking at me, causing them to turn.
‘Ivy!’ Abe sounded surprised. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I’m on my way to a meeting,’ I said, flustered. ‘I was a little early and I need a new keyboard.’
‘Ivy?’ Lynn said. ‘Ivy your friend?’
‘Yes, sorry.’ Abe shook his head and beckoned me over as Lynn stood up. ‘Ivy this is Lynn. Lynn, Ivy.’
‘It’s lovely to meet you,’ she said, extending a slim, manicured hand.
‘You too,’ I said, unsure.
‘I’ve heard a lot about you.’ Her demeanour was warm and friendly. ‘Abe said you work in travel?’
‘I do PR for a few travel companies,’ I said. ‘Not a lot of work, these days, but a few clients still use me.’
‘It sounds like a wonderful job,’ she said. ‘We’re just trying to get something for Ruby’s birthday. It’s her thirtieth so we thought we’d splash out a bit.’
Had Richard and I ever shopped for any of the children’s birthday presents together? I didn’t think so. We discussed them but I usually bought them, unless it was something sporty for Max or techie for either of them, when Richard bought them by himself.
‘When is it?’ I asked.
‘Next Tuesday,’ she replied, and I glanced briefly at Abe, who looked a little awkward. ‘But she’ll be at work so we’re taking her out for a meal on Sunday to celebrate and we need to get the present sorted by then.’
‘Of course,’ I said.
Abe hadn’t mentioned that when I’d asked if he’d like to go to the cinema on Sunday evening. There was a film I wanted to see at the local picture house. ‘Well, I should leave you to get on with it,’ I said, glancing at my watch. ‘I ought to be at my meeting.’
‘But your keyboard,’ Abe said.
‘I’ll have a look afterwards. I was really just killing time,’ I said. ‘Anyway, it was lovely to meet you, Lynn.’
‘You too,’ she said. ‘I don’t often get to meet Abe’s new friends.’
‘I’ll see you,’ I mumbled, to Abe, unsure what to say and put out by ‘new friends’. Were there a lot of them or was she stressing that that was all I was, all that was possible?
Seeing them together, caught up in the purchase of a computer, made me feel excluded. And I wasn’t sure if I was prepared to open myself further to someone who still had a life from which I would always be excluded.
Perhaps Abe guessed what I was thinking because a few days later he made an announcement and a suggestion. He said he thought it was time to tell his children about me and asked if I would meet them.
I hadn’t told mine, not yet. I wanted to be sure the relationship was going to last before I broached it with them. But if Abe wanted me to meet his, he must think there was a place for me in his life, even if I was finding it hard to envisage.
‘And what did your husband do?’
There appeared to be a subtext to the question, to almost everything Sam had said to me. He exuded hostility.
‘Richard specialized in designing building refits.’
‘He was a builder?’
‘An architect,’ I corrected him.
‘Richard’s firm designed the interiors for some of the suites in the Shard.’ Abe helped me out. ‘And Ivy has her own travel PR business.’ We were in a restaurant just off the Fulham Road, the Thai Brasserie.
‘A contradiction in terms,’ Abe had joked earlier, as we set out.
‘Ruby’s fairly level-headed,’ he’d told me. ‘But I never know quite what to expect from Sam. He was quite a volatile child. I’m never sure how he’s going to react to anything.’
‘You mean to me?’ I was nervous enough as it was.
‘To the idea of you,’ he said. ‘I’m sure, once he’s met you, he’ll like you. How could he not?’
Easily, it seemed.
‘And you met Dad on a park bench?’ Again, Sam’s tone was hostile.
‘Yes, by the river,’ I said. ‘It’s a spot we both like.’
I could understand why Sam was hostile, but it might have been easier, for all of us, if he’d tried to disguise it.
‘Dad said he went there after visiting Mum,’ Ruby said.
I hadn’t known Abe had seen his wife just before we met. Why would I? Why should he have told me? No reason at all. I mustn’t let it bother me.
‘There’s something about watching water that helps you accept the transience of life.’ I dared them to challenge me. ‘Whether it’s a river, or the tide coming in and out.’
‘That’s very poetic,’ Ruby said.
‘I’m not sure I’ve explained myself very well.’
She looked away.
‘I go there, to the place where I met your dad, because it helps me put my husband’s death into some sort of context.’
‘Ivy’s had a lot of difficulties in her life.’ Abe played the sympathy card, although I didn’t want to go into the details of my family history. They’d find out in time, if we had time. They didn’t need to know everything immediately.
‘Mum’s life hasn’t exactly been easy,’ Sam interjected.
‘I know that.’ I hoped acknowledging the situation might help.
‘Not since Dad left her. And before that.’
‘I know.’
‘And she’s had health problems since.’
‘I didn’t know that.’ I looked at Abe.
‘She had a stroke a few years ago,’ Abe said. ‘It was a very minor one. She wasn’t even sure she’d had it and it hasn’t affected her.’
‘But it scared her,’ Sam said.
‘To be fair, Dad was there for her,’ Ruby said.
‘He took her to hospital when she had all the tests. I remember because I’d have gone but I was stuck in Spain, after the volcanic-ash thing.’
‘Ivy’s aware of the situation between me and your mother,’ Abe said. ‘And I won’t ever not be there for her, or either of you.’
‘And that makes it better, does it?’
‘What?’ Abe tensed.
‘You two carrying on at your age.’
‘Sam.’ Abe banged his hand on the table, causing everyone to look at him, including diners at neighbouring tables.
‘What?’
‘That’s enough.’
‘It’s okay.’ I tried to play peacemaker.
‘It’s not,’ Abe said. ‘If he’s angry with me, that’s fine, but he has no right to be angry with you.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Sam said petulantly.
‘Would anyone like dessert?’ Ruby changed the subject.
‘Not for me,’ I said.
‘Are you sure, Ivy?’ She appeared to be trying to atone for her little brother’s behaviour. ‘You’ve not eaten a great deal.’
‘I might just have some coffee.’
Everyone passed on the pudding and ordered coffee.
We drank it, when it arrived, in an awkward silence.
‘I’ll hail a taxi and head home,’ I said to Abe, as we left the restaurant.
We were walking a little ahead of Sam and Ruby, who both planned to take buses in separate directions.
‘Are you sure you won’t come back with me?’ Abe asked.
‘I think it might be better …’ I lowered my voice and glanced over my shoulder ‘… if I go straight home.’
‘Not even for … a coffee? I’ll call you a cab afterwards?’
‘I just think it may be easier if I leave now and you three have time to talk.’ That wasn’t all of it. If I was finding it hard to see where I fitted in, given Abe’s continuing closeness to his wife, it was even harder now with his children’s attitude.
‘No. I’m not going to let them win.’ Abe said.
‘It’s not a question of winning –’ I stopped as Ruby drew level with us.
‘That was a lovely dinner, Dad,’ s
he said. ‘Sam and I thought we might have a drink before we go home.’ She nodded towards the pub at the end of the road, the Cock Inn. We’d passed it before and Abe had told me that it would once have been a venue for cock fighting and the colourful image of a comb-headed bird advertised this to illiterate locals.
‘So perhaps we should say goodbye now,’ Ruby was saying. ‘Unless you want to join us?’
‘No, we should be getting home.’ Abe had stressed ‘we’.
‘Okay. It was lovely to meet you, Ivy.’ She put out her hand and I shook it before she turned to kiss her father.
‘Good to put a face to the name,’ was the best Sam could muster. ‘Dad,’ was all he offered his father, with a brisk nod.
‘I’ll call you, Sam.’ Abe watched them walk away.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said to him.
‘What for?’ He started towards the Tube.
I caught up with him. ‘Won’t you wait while I find a cab?’
‘Are you sure you won’t come home with me?’
‘I can’t,’ I said. ‘Not now, not after that.’
We faced each other in the middle of the pavement.
‘They’re not normally like that,’ he said. ‘They’re normally so bright and friendly and engaging.’
‘I’m sure they are. It’s difficult for them.’
‘They’ll get used to it,’ Abe said. ‘It doesn’t have to change things between us.’
‘It’s a difficult situation. For everyone,’ I said.
He was silent for a while.
‘What do you want to do?’ I said, apropos his children.
‘I want you to come home with me,’ he said. ‘I know the evening didn’t turn out well and I’m sorry if it upset you. I’m upset too and I want you to come back with me. I want to try and make everything all right.’ He reached out and took my hand, pulling me a step closer to him.
I was so tempted. He was right that we were both upset. We could have looked after each other. Maybe it would have made things better. Maybe everything would have been all right, but something stopped me.
‘I’m sorry.’ I seemed to be saying that a lot. ‘I don’t think I can, not now, not tonight. I’m still too wound up.’
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