The Anniversary

by Hilary Boyd

  She heard Iain chuckle. ‘Ooh, I can see the knives are out.’

  Letting out a long sigh, she said, ‘I’m being unfair. Eve loves spending time with him and so does Arthur. But I got a ticking off tonight. I’ve got to be nicer to her dad.’

  ‘Were you not being nice?’

  ‘I didn’t think so. But it’s hard, Iain, being around him after all this time. I really wasn’t nasty, I just didn’t know what to say to the man. And Eve said I was stressing her out.’

  ‘Oh dear. But he’s not around much, is he? I thought he lived in London with what’s-her-name.’

  ‘Lisa. He does, but he also rents a cottage down the road. Jack always loathed the country. I didn’t think he’d be down here much. Especially now he’s got this luscious new young wife.’

  ‘Is she “luscious”?’

  ‘Incredibly so. Doesn’t say a lot, but she looks properly buffed and filled and perfect.’

  ‘Now, now. I’m beginning to see what Eve means.’ Both of them began to giggle. ‘I’m looking forward to coming down and witnessing the fireworks,’ he added.

  ‘Well, come soon. Otherwise I’ll be up before the beak for murdering my dear ex in the billiard room with a piece of lead piping.’

  ‘Wow, do they have a billiard room?’

  ‘Idiot,’ Stella said, before saying goodnight.

  14

  Jack waited downstairs for Lisa to get ready. He had no particular desire to go out this evening, having been to more than a few book launches in his time. He would much rather snug in with a takeaway Indian from the brilliant Sitara on Holloway Road and finish watching that documentary series on Hitler. It wasn’t particularly good – in that it wasn’t telling him much he didn’t already know – but it was still a subject that never failed to fascinate him.

  Lisa, though, was looking forward to the launch. The cookbook was a compilation of recipes by an ex-cabinet minister who’d worked for WHO. The shoutline being: ‘Third World recipes for healthy eating’, which Jack thought pretty crass, as a fair majority of the people these dishes were supposed to represent were certainly not healthy and could very well be starving to death. But it was for charity, so he would be nice.

  He heard Lisa’s heels tapping carefully on the stairs before she emerged into the sitting room, dressed to kill. A black Bardot dress – which clung to her slim figure, exposing her perfectly tanned shoulders and the tops of her breasts – was accompanied by vertiginously heeled silver sandals and a silver-tasselled clutch bag. There were soft waves in her long blonde hair, soot-black bat-wing eyelashes and vibrant carmine lips giving definition to her prettiness.

  ‘Wow!’ Jack said, moving to embrace her, only to be batted away before he got close. ‘You look amazing.’

  ‘Don’t muss me,’ she said, her expression carefully lifeless, as if by smiling the entire structure might collapse.

  ‘We’d better get a taxi,’ he said, realizing there was no way his wife was even going to reach the Tube station, let alone get on a train, in those shoes. For a moment his thoughts flashed unwillingly to Stella. She had been so beautiful, but she never bothered a great deal about her appearance and would have laughed at the death-trap heels upon which Lisa insisted. But Jack’s heart went out to his current wife. Unlike Stella, he knew she wasn’t comfortable with the power-milieu that was Jack’s stamping ground, and the dazzling visuals were probably a defence against her nerves. Despite the war paint, Lisa looked suddenly young and rather vulnerable.

  The launch was predictable. Packed into the back of a cramped West London bookshop, it was boiling hot and jammed with sweating bodies drinking warm Prosecco. He knew some of the guests, but they were mostly fellow journalists and barely a single face for Lisa to ogle at.

  He’d decided to make a quick escape, take his wife somewhere for a nice dinner, when a glass was tinkled insistently and the sleek, tailored ex-cabinet minister, his dark hair quiffed and gelled as if he were twenty-five, not fifty, began a pompous speech about single-handedly saving the West from disease with his new take on ‘plant-based’ recipes.

  You try eating ‘plant-based’ cassava root every bloody night of your life, you smug twat, Jack thought, forced to stay where he was but desperately in need of some fresh air. He tuned out, his gaze idly scanning the faces gathered in front of the politician. Lisa was across the room, standing next to a muscled hunk to whom she’d been chatting animatedly before the speech, but Jack’s eye was caught by a beautifully coiffured mane of white hair and a stylish red dress. The woman was in profile, her attention all on the speaker, but she was somehow familiar. Wracking his overheated brain, Jack couldn’t think where he knew her from, because he did know her, of that he was certain.

  Then she turned. Giovanna. It was Giovanna Morrison. She must be in her seventies, he thought. But she looked just as beautiful as she had that summer day in her dramatic yellow sundress. Jack had not seen her or Henry since his son’s funeral.

  He froze, his heart thumping wildly in his chest, sweat pouring down his back. He wanted to run, but he was trapped in the midst of the hot, immobile crowd.

  Don’t look over, please don’t look over, he whispered silently to himself. But it was as if his vehement plea actually drew her eyes towards him, which widened in puzzlement, then surprise, then creased into a hesitant smile of recognition.

  Giovanna gave a small wave of her hand. Jack did the same in return. He hoped she would leave it at that, but as soon as the speeches came to an end, she began to make her way towards him, politely excusing herself as she pushed through the other guests.

  ‘Jack, how wonderful,’ she said, reaching up to kiss him lightly on both cheeks, then taking both his hands in hers. Her huge dark eyes gazed at him, full of kindness.

  Jack didn’t know how to respond. He had blamed the Morrisons back then. He had blamed everyone, of course – he didn’t discriminate. But he had openly accused Henry and Giovanna of negligence. He’d held them responsible for his son’s death because of that small, unnoticed die-back in their yew hedge. He had apologized, later, retracted his accusation in a letter, but part of him still felt guilty for his unwarranted attack on the couple.

  ‘Giovanna,’ he said, trying to smile. ‘Great to see you. Is Henry here?’

  Her gaze faltered. ‘You didn’t hear then … He died last year.’

  ‘Oh … God, I’m so sorry.’

  Suddenly Lisa was by his side. ‘Giovanna, may I introduce my wife, Lisa. Lisa, this is Giovanna Morrison. We go way back.’

  Without turning a hair – she’d been, after all, a politician’s wife for forty years – Giovanna took Lisa’s hand and shook it warmly.

  ‘We ought to go,’ Jack said, feeling that if he didn’t get out this very minute he would stop breathing. He grabbed his wife’s arm and held her tightly. ‘Great to see you,’ he added, his words curdling with insincerity in the hot air.

  ‘Jack,’ he heard Giovanna’s voice as he turned towards the door to the street. He swivelled back reluctantly, letting go of Lisa, and his gaze met hers. She didn’t speak. He felt tears pricking behind his eyes, but could not find the strength to move.

  ‘It was good to see you, too,’ she said at last, and Jack let out a long trembling breath of relief.

  ‘Who was the woman in the red dress?’ Lisa asked much later, when they were sitting in the back of a taxi on the way home after a Japanese meal. She was leaning against him, drunk on a fair bit of sake and no longer worried about her dress or her make-up getting mussed.

  ‘Oh, someone I used to know a long time ago.’

  ‘Yeah, you said. But who is she?’

  ‘She used to be the editor of one of the Sunday mags.’

  ‘Really? So did you work for her?’

  ‘No, I did a profile on her husband. Henry was an MP.’

  Lisa fell silent. ‘Did you fall out?’

  Jack jerked upright. Lisa didn’t always display a huge amount of perception, but occasionally she surpris
ed him.

  ‘Fall out? No, why do you ask?’

  ‘Oh, nothing. You just seemed a bit strange with each other.’

  She gazed up at him in the dark interior of the taxi. ‘Did you have an affair with her, then?’

  Jack laughed. ‘God, no.’

  ‘She must have been gorgeous when she was younger.’

  ‘She was. Still is. But I didn’t have an affair with her.’

  Lisa sighed patiently. ‘I don’t mind if you did, Jack. It was before my time.’

  There were times, and this was one, when it hit Jack that great tracts of his life had passed before he met Lisa, and he wondered if she would ever, through no fault of her own, be able to catch up to any realistic understanding of him. He felt suddenly and unreasonably angry with her.

  ‘I didn’t have a fucking affair with Giovanna Morrison. OK?’

  Lisa stiffened and drew back, sliding as far away from him as was possible on the cab seat, her head turned deliberately to look out of the window, her bare shoulders rigid with indignation.

  Jack should have been contrite, but he found he didn’t care if she was angry with him. He almost welcomed it because it meant she would stop asking questions. Questions that might stir up things he would rather not think about.

  A tense silence reigned, but he scarcely noticed. Now it was too late, he found he regretted not talking more to Giovanna – although it was neither the time, nor the place. Since that day, over a week ago, when he had stopped his car by the Kent house, he had been assailed by an urgent need that was slowly beginning to drive him crazy. It bubbled up inside when he was least expecting it, like the lava in an erupting volcano – burning, crimson, lethal – searing his insides, rattling his nerves, his thoughts, his sleep: he needed to talk about Jonny.

  But there was no one with whom he could. He had hoped Stella might be that person. In fact, he had been counting on her. She was the obvious choice, the one who would sympathize most. He wouldn’t have to explain anything to her. Her arrival at Eve’s house for the summer felt like destiny – not least because it coincided with what would have been Jonny’s thirtieth birthday next month. Since witnessing Stella’s reaction when he brought up the subject, however, he’d had to accept that she was not prepared to join in.

  For decades now, his strategy – if you could call it that – for dealing with his grief, was to ignore it. Pretend it didn’t exist. He told himself he had put it behind him. With the constant maelstrom of work, it hadn’t been so hard. Occasionally a memory would ambush him, alone in a hotel room in some nameless city, and he would cry himself to sleep with the help of the minibar. But mostly it worked – until his recent retirement, that is. Then suddenly the blockade he’d erected fell away. Now he had time to remember Jonny …

  Sitting alone in darkness in the Queen’s Park house, Lisa persuaded to bed long ago, Jack felt as if he were being strangled by his unspoken thoughts. And as his breath caught in his throat, he felt a thud in his chest, then his heart begin to race as if he’d just run fast uphill. He immediately recognized another attack of atrial fibrillation, but he welcomed the strange feeling of disconnection the irregular heartbeat incurred. It took him temporarily away from himself and his thoughts.

  15

  Eve let out a long groan and leaned her head back against the passenger seat of her mum’s car.

  ‘Sweetheart,’ Stella reached over and took her hand, squeezing it tight, ‘you mustn’t worry. The doctor said things were fine.’

  Eve pulled sharply away. She couldn’t deal with her mother’s platitudes. ‘No, she didn’t, Mum. She said it was still marginal. That means the placenta hasn’t budged, a bit of it’s still across my cervix.’

  ‘Yes, but she said there was still time.’

  Eve knew her mother meant well, but it wasn’t her baby who was threatened with a premature birth.

  ‘I’ll be in my third trimester next week. If it hasn’t moved by then, then it’s probably not going to. They always tell you not to worry, but I’ve been Googling it and—’

  ‘Yes,’ her mum interrupted, ‘but we’re not there yet. And you haven’t had any bleeding.’

  ‘No, but—’

  Stella’s look was firm. ‘Exactly.’

  But Eve couldn’t stop worrying to order. She felt overwhelmed by the responsibility of this baby. Without Eric, it was totally on her shoulders.

  ‘It’s all right, Mumma.’ Arthur’s voice echoed her mother’s from the back seat and Eve took a deep breath. She swallowed hard and put on her brightest smile, twisting as best she could to stroke his knee, picking up his bare foot – he’d kicked off his yellow Crocs as soon as they got into the car – and giving it a squeeze.

  ‘Mummy’s fine, darling. I just don’t like hospitals much.’

  ‘I don’t like ’opitals too,’ he said, then put his thumb in his mouth.

  ‘Yeah,’ Eve said, ‘I’m OK, I suppose.’ She tried to be strong, later, when she talked to Eric. She’d made a vow when he left for the Antarctic that she wouldn’t whinge on, burden him with her problems, knowing how much he would worry. There was nothing he could do to help, anyway, stuck on the other side of the world. Nothing he could do even if he were here by her side, in fact. But the scan that morning had unsettled her and there was a catch in her voice which he must have heard.

  ‘Hey, sweetheart,’ Eric said. ‘What is it? What’s the matter?’

  ‘Oh, nothing.’ She tried to laugh, picturing her husband, his dark, serious eyes, the muscular fineness of his limbs, the way he would reach out to her in the night, his long fingers tentative in their caress.

  She’d never met anyone like Eric before that shameful night on the bridge. All her friends from the children’s charity and the pub where she’d worked after leaving school had been louder, edgier, more self-centred – rebellious in thought and deed. Which suited Eve. She had joined in the drunken evenings, lain about on endless tatty sofas playing video games, smoked a lot of dope, had impromptu – mostly unmemorable – sex. And then one evening, crossing Southwark Bridge on the way home to South London, after a drunken evening at some random’s flat in Fenchurch Street, Eve, who had eschewed public transport home because she felt sick, threw up. She’d had the foresight to lean over the green-and-gold-painted parapet, but the wind had blown the vomit back through the gaps and spattered her jeans.

  Miserable, she had stood there, back against the parapet, vowing never to drink alcohol again, when this tall, thin man with rimless glasses and a black daypack slung over his shoulders had approached her. Used to brushing off advances from a lifetime in the city, Eve had turned away, waiting for him to pass. But he did not.

  ‘Are you all right?’ he said, voice low and standing at a respectful distance.

  Eve had nodded, not replying.

  ‘Sure? You don’t look very well.’

  His gross understatement had made Eve – still quite drunk – laugh out loud. She was covered in vomit, panda-eyed with tears and smudged mascara, white as a sheet, red hair a tangled mess. There was probably snot too, if he looked closely enough. Basically she was a sight, and no, not looking well at all.

  ‘You could say that,’ she replied, glancing up at the man’s face and finding the kindest, most beautiful eyes she had ever seen.

  He – Eric, as it turned out – had walked her home, made sure she was safe, hadn’t taken advantage beyond a cup of coffee, which he’d made. Later, he told Eve he’d fallen in love with her the second he clapped eyes on her dishevelled figure standing alone on the bridge.

  Eve had never dated a scientist before. Never even met one, as far as she was aware. Nor someone so serious, so passionate and directed about their work … And so kind. Eric paid attention to her, really listened, as if she were some sort of exotic creature. Not like those half-cut bozos with whom she normally hung out. Because he had never met someone like Eve before, either, he said.

  ‘You sound miserable.’ She heard the worry in Eric’s voice
, now. ‘Is Arthur all right … And the baby?’

  ‘All fine. Just pregnancy blues, I expect.’ She paused. ‘And having Mum here is a mixed blessing.’

  ‘How so?’

  Guilt wracked her that her husband didn’t know about the placenta praevia. Until today, Eve had kept telling herself that it would resolve itself – the doctor had insisted that 90 per cent of the time it did – so there would be no need to worry Eric unnecessarily. But if the next scan were the same, she would have to. He had to be home in time for the birth. She pushed her urgent desire to blurt the whole thing out to the back of her throat and tried to concentrate on the conversation.

  Independence was a habit with Eve, one of which she was barely aware. Ever since she could remember, she had existed in a mostly man-free environment. Her mother, taught by her grandmother, knew perfectly well how to change a fuse, a tyre, run a house, earn a living. Her father was like an optional extra in her childhood. And part of her persisted in tarring Eric with the same brush. She loved him with all her heart, but she told herself she didn’t need him in order to survive.

  ‘I think she’s sort of enjoying it,’ she said to Eric now. ‘She’s been fantastic with Arthur, taught him loads of games and songs. That’s what comes of having a grandma who does kids’ TV.’

  Eric laughed. ‘Yeah, it’s great she wants to be so involved. We weren’t sure she would.’

  She laughed too. He was trying to be tactful about her mum, who scared him to death with her piercing looks and rigorous questioning. He always worried he wasn’t coming up to scratch, despite Eve insisting he was the very best-case husband scenario as far as Stella was concerned – although given the shabby bunch of men Eve had trailed home with in the past that wasn’t much of a compliment.

  ‘So is there a “but”?’ Eric knew her too well.

  ‘Well, yeah … Mum and Dad. In the same room. Dad being try-hard friendly. Mum doing the silent thing. Or being snippy.’