Deuce

by Jen Silver

  “I joined the Zoological Society and I’m a volunteer seal-stranding watcher.” Jay stood and placed another log on the fire. “It was another way of staying connected to you. That’s why I kept this cottage too. Although if you want to stay here now, I guess that makes me homeless.”

  “You have the mews house in London, though.”

  “I did. But I signed it over to Josh last week.”

  Charley sighed. “You really have done everything for our child. Other than giving birth, I’ve provided nothing to Josh’s life. I admit I was surprised to learn you hadn’t continued your tennis career. I thought you would have given the baby up. With me out of the way, your path to fame and fortune was clear.”

  Twenty-five years earlier, Jay’s temper would have flared up at such a comment. Now she just shook her head sadly. “You never did quite believe I was committed to sharing a family life with you. For the first year of your disappearance, I was a basket case. Looking after the baby was the only thing that kept me from walking into the sea. Dougie was a big support too.”

  The sound of a car stopping outside the cottage heralded the return of Josh and Konrad. She stood and walked out of the conservatory to meet them. When Charley followed, Jay hoped their talk had helped her to see Josh in a different light, clearing the way to acceptance.

  PART FOUR

  Chapter Seventeen

  Konrad is full to bursting with all the things they saw at the sanctuary. It sounds like it has grown tremendously from when I last went. Josh hangs back while Konnie assaults me with his news. I smile and open my arms. His hesitant steps towards me cut through my defenses. When he reaches my side, I envelop him in a hug.

  “I’m sorry,” I whisper. This seems inadequate. How can I make up for lost time? For not being there for the many significant moments in his life…first tentative steps across a room, learning new words, first day at school…all those firsts.

  I don’t know how long we stand there, embracing. His heart beats against my chest. My own hammers loudly in my ears. When we finally pull back to look at each other, Josh’s tears mirror mine.

  Nothing I can say will change the fact I’ve missed out on doing all the things a mother does for her child. When I gave birth to Tess, I knew I wasn’t ready to be a parent. The second time around, carrying a baby I wanted to share with my partner, it felt right. I know I thought then that even if Jay didn’t stay with me, I could bring up the child myself. I was stronger in every way. I think now that maybe I was wrong.

  †

  “Tess!”

  She squinted through sleep-heavy eyes to see Donna perched on the edge of her bed.

  “What? What time is it?”

  “Eight o’clock.”

  Relief swept through Tess. She’d slept through the night for the first time since the accident. But the doctor at the hospital had told her parents to keep an eye on her to make sure she didn’t sleep too long. Which was why Donna was sitting on her bed now.

  “It’s still early. Do I have to get up?” Tess knew she sounded like a petulant teen.

  “No. But you might want to. Alice phoned.”

  Tess struggled to open her eyes fully. “She did?”

  “Yes. And even though she thinks you’re a self-obsessed moron—her words, not mine—she wants to talk to you.”

  “Oh.” Tess sat up, releasing her grip on the duvet before remembering she was naked.

  “Take it easy, Tiger. After we’ve had breakfast, I’ll drive you over.” Donna winked at her from the doorway. “You might want to take a shower.”

  Tess sniffed an armpit. Not too bad. Only when she was standing under the spray did the realisation hit that Donna was hinting she might get lucky. Buoyed by this thought, she soaped herself rigorously. Had Alice already forgiven her?

  †

  The scene in the living room was everything Jay had envisaged over the years, a dream come to life. Charley was there, playing with Ritchie, looking on while Josh and Konrad played a third game of chess. The decider. Konrad had surprised Josh with his skill. Many years had passed since Jay had been able to beat Josh.

  Charley’s eyes met hers from across the room. She was looking more like the woman Jay remembered. The times they spent at the cottage were amongst her most treasured memories. She hoped this was what Charley was thinking of now, recalling the all-consuming nature of their relationship. Something she had taken for granted with the assumption Charley would always be there for her. Jay thought she could have it all, enjoying the high life while on tour, secure in the knowledge Charley was waiting for her back home.

  During the intense hours of despair when news first came of the disappearance of the RV Caspian, Jay thought it was divine punishment for betraying Charley’s trust. The times she gave in to momentary lusts, using someone else’s body to fend off lonely nights in yet another city far from home. Charley had never challenged her about those affairs, if they could even be called that.

  A ringtone intruded on the peaceful scene. Josh didn’t react, and it took Jay a moment to realise it was hers. She plucked her phone out of her pocket and looked at the screen.

  “I’ll take this in the kitchen.”

  Hilde’s voice came through loud and clear when she accepted the call.

  “Is Charlotte there?”

  “Yes.”

  “I need to speak with her immediately. Her son has disappeared in Copenhagen.”

  “Yes. Well, he’s here.”

  “What? How can he be there?”

  “He somehow managed to get here on his own.” Jay wasn’t sure how much she could say without getting him into trouble.

  “He’s entered the country illegally, you mean?” Hilde wasn’t taken in.

  “I suppose he has. But I’m sure you can fix it. After all, your people in Denmark managed to lose him, which could be embarrassing, a minor in their care. Perhaps he travelled on an emergency diplomatic visa in order to be reunited with his mother.”

  Jay held her breath, hoping she hadn’t pushed it too far with this outrageous suggestion.

  “I will have to discuss it with my superiors. But I suppose that could be a solution. May I speak with Charlotte now?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  Jay couldn’t hear the other side of the conversation carried out in a language she didn’t understand, but Charley was smiling when she ended the call and handed the phone back.

  “Is it going to be okay?”

  “Yes, I think so. But they want me to go back to give an interview. I’m not sure I’m ready for that.”

  The phone vibrated in Jay’s hand with another incoming call.

  “I’m popular this evening.” She accepted the call. “Hi, Mo.”

  †

  Tess hoped Alice was alone as she entered the flat. She didn’t feel up to facing a tag team if her sister was still there. Deirdre wasn’t her biggest fan at the best of times.

  “Hello!”

  “In the kitchen.”

  Alice was standing by the counter, pouring coffee into two mugs. “Deirdre just left. She wanted to stay, but I told her that screaming at you wasn’t going to be helpful.”

  “Thanks.” Tess took a mug and sat at the table. A packet of her favourite biscuits was sitting unopened close to hand. It looked like a peace offering.

  Alice faced her, sitting back, letting the arm in the sling rest against her stomach.

  Tess took this as her cue to speak up. “I’m sorry. I know I can keep saying that but it’s not going to make any difference to the fact I acted like an idiot and almost killed us both.”

  “I was going to say the same. I shouldn’t have grabbed the wheel.”

  They sat looking at each other in silence until Alice said, “Are you going to open those? It’s kind of hard one-handed.”

  Tess ripped the packet open and held it out. After they’d eaten two biscuits each and drunk most of their coffee, she felt brave enough to ask, “Can I come back?”

  “Yes.�
�

  “Good. I know they liked having me there, but I think I’m cramping their style?”

  “Your parents still have sex?”

  “Yeah. They even hold hands when they go for a walk.”

  “Weird.”

  Tess shoved another biscuit in her mouth. She had a feeling Alice wanted to tell her something. She finished chewing.

  “What is it? Or do I have to finish all of these before you tell me?”

  “I put my application in.”

  “Oh.”

  Alice reached across the table with her good arm. “I know you’re not happy about it, but I really want to do this. My supervisor thinks it’s the right move for me. I’ll get all the training for dealing with incidents.”

  “That’s what worries me. At the moment, you don’t have to get involved. You just call a proper policeman.”

  “You’ll like the uniform.”

  “I like the current one.”

  “Oh, come on. I just look like a traffic warden. And most of the time, walking around, that’s what I feel like too.”

  “You look like a sexy traffic warden, though.”

  “You have sexy thoughts about traffic wardens? That’s even weirder than your parents having sex at their age.”

  “And your parents don’t?”

  “No. They gave up after Deirdre was born.”

  “Understandable. Your sister’s a walking advert for contraception.”

  Alice didn’t respond to Tess’s joke. Instead, she leant forward and asked, “How’s your head?”

  “Fine. My neck and shoulders still feel very stiff, but I haven’t got whiplash and the doctor said the stiffness will wear off. Everything got jarred with the impact.”

  “I know. I’m feeling the same. But some mutual massage might help.”

  Tess homed in on Alice’s body language. It was an invitation she hadn’t expected. After the initial thaw, she thought they would have to wade through some piles of slush before reaching solid ground in their relationship.

  “Are you taking special medication?” Tess asked.

  “You think I need to be on drugs to want your hands on my body?”

  The teasing tone was all Tess needed to know the offer was genuine. She stood and walked around the table. Alice met her and they hugged awkwardly.

  “Undressing one-handed must be difficult.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “I can help you with that.”

  “I hoped you would.”

  Tess took her good hand and led the way into their bedroom. After she removed the sling, Alice’s pyjamas came off easily, but when Tess saw the livid bruise covering most of her left side, she broke down in tears.

  “Al. I’m so, so sorry.”

  “Don’t be. We’re both alive. Hurry up and get naked.”

  Tess dried her tears on the front of her top as she pulled it over her head. She finished undressing herself quickly and lay down next to Alice. The sensation of skin on skin was intoxicating. Mindful of the cast, Tess enjoyed the first taste of Alice’s lips before slipping her tongue in. She let her hand roam down to take hold of a breast, and the moan escaping from her lover’s throat was enough to release any remaining inhibitions in her mind. Tess gave herself to the pleasurable task of making love.

  Chapter Eighteen

  I lie in bed staring at the wooden beams. Jay is sleeping on the sofa, which she assured me was comfortable enough. Dougie always sleeps there when he visits. I try to imagine them as a family unit. Dougie and Jay acting as surrogate parents to my child. But they are the only parents he has known.

  Having spent the evening with him, talking and laughing, I’m seeing Josh as he wants to be seen. He carries it off well. The little girl he once was is no longer evident.

  I want to stay here, feeling safe and out of the public eye. But Hilde made it clear I have to return to London. They want me to give an interview. Jay agrees. I asked if I would be able to meet the interviewer beforehand and Jay assured me Mo would find out who was available and make the arrangements. If possible, she could try to get a presenter who was “on our bus.” A phrase I had forgotten. Jay had to explain what it meant.

  But then Jay asked if I was still a lesbian, if Konrad was fathered in the usual way. We sat down in the kitchen and I told her the story.

  The man who found me washed up on the sand like a beached seal was a fisherman. He took me to his house and brought me back to life. When he realised I had no memory of who I was or how I got there, he named me Katrin. Later I took his surname, Nielsen. He introduced me as his wife. I think the villagers thought he’d bought me. Although I didn’t stand out as different. Celtic ancestry is common amongst the native islanders.

  Jay asked why he didn’t alert the authorities. He must have realised I didn’t just wash up on the shore like a stranded seal. I have no good answer for that. My recollection of that time is vague. I couldn’t even speak for several months. With little else cluttering up my mind, I absorbed the language, and when I did eventually start speaking, it was in Faroese.

  Of course, once I had sufficiently recovered, he expected me to fulfil wifely duties. I didn’t mind cooking and cleaning, but having sex with him was an ordeal. Luckily he did spend weeks away on deep-sea-fishing trawlers. And on one occasion, he didn’t come back. There were many nights with Thorin where I wished for death, my own as well as his. I knew no life before him and couldn’t envision a way to escape.

  The ship’s owners said he got caught up in some netting and drowned. There were rumours, though, that he was pushed. I gathered he was as popular with the crew as he was around the village. Which is why they thought I was a mail-order bride. No other woman would have him.

  I had been living with him for two years by then, so the locals had accepted me as his wife. I received a sum of money as compensation for his death.

  I was happy enough living on my own, relieved not to have to endure Thorin’s unwelcome sexual advances. Maybe I was starting to come back to myself in those years.

  Daily chores mostly consisted of cleaning and gutting the previous night’s catch, digging up potatoes, or the job I most dreaded…butchering sheep and preparing strips of wind-dried mutton.

  When the village council decided to open a library, I offered to manage it, which gave me a few days respite each month from the messier food-related tasks. The library was nothing fancy, just an unused farm building that was crudely converted to hold a few shelves’ worth of books. They couldn’t afford a computerised system, so I catalogued the books on a card index.

  Our village wasn’t on the regular tourist route for the island, but we did get a few summer visitors. Konrad’s father was one of these. He arrived on a wet and windy day and had taken shelter in my drying shed. It was clear he couldn’t carry on with his coastal walk until the winds died down, so I offered him a bed for the night. I hadn’t intended that to be my own bed. But we sat up drinking and talking. In the morning, bright sunshine greeted us. We had breakfast together, then he thanked me and walked away.

  What Thorin hadn’t succeeded in doing in over two years, this stranger accomplished in one night. I didn’t even know his full name. I’d mostly forgotten about him by the time I realised I was pregnant. When Konrad first asked about his father, I told him the truth. A passing tourist called Jim. He may have been American or Canadian. My knowledge of the English language was as rudimentary as most of the other villagers’. Jim and I had communicated mainly with a combination of mime and the few common words we shared.

  Although telling Jay all this explained Konrad’s conception, it didn’t answer her question. During my time on the island, I was identified as Thorin’s wife, Thorin’s widow, Konrad’s mother. Had I felt any stirrings of attraction to any of the women there? Some of them became friends. But that was all.

  Lying in bed in the cottage, thinking of my reaction to Jay taking off her shirt to show me her tattoos, I wonder if I ever was truly a lesbian. The only woman I had ever
been in love with was sleeping in the next room.

  †

  Making up the sofa bed, Jay wondered if it was as comfortable as Dougie claimed. She thought he was likely being kind. His nomadic life on the oilrigs and petroleum-producing sites around the world meant he was used to sleeping in all kinds of rough-and-ready accommodation.

  The mattress was softer than she liked, but it would be fine for one night. Ritchie claimed a spot near her feet, having tramped up and down to find the perfect place. He usually slept with Josh at the mews house, but the narrow bunk bed at the cottage wasn’t to his liking. If Josh rolled over in his sleep Ritchie was dumped on the floor.

  The day had turned out better than she’d expected on the drive up from London. Her fears of the night before had been allayed with Charley’s gradual thawing and finally an acceptance of Josh. Although Charley had opened up, telling her a bit about her life on the island, Jay knew there was more work to do if they were to regain any level of intimacy.

  Jay didn’t think Charley was ready for that, any more than she was ready to face the press. Hilde’s phone call, followed by Mo’s, had burst the bubble of contentment she thought Charley had started to experience during this time at the cottage. A short evening of playing happy families couldn’t protect her from the publicity storm awaiting her.

  She had been through so much. Maybe Charley thought she could slip quietly back into her old life without any fuss. That might have been possible even twenty years earlier, but technology had pushed global communication far beyond what Charley had known in the mid-nineteen-nineties.

  Jay sat up, disturbing Ritchie, who grumbled softly before settling back to sleep again. They should talk to Tess. What was the point of having a journalist in the family if you couldn’t call on them in an hour of need?