by S. J. Watson
He sounds disappointed, but I don’t know him well enough to probe further. Not really.
‘That’s good,’ I say. I grind my cigarette out.
‘Shall we go back in?’
‘Sure!’ He wipes his hands on his jeans, then stands up and holds out his hand for me to take. ‘Are you going to Carla’s party?’
I’d completely forgotten. Another colleague of Hugh’s, with a big house in Surrey, a large garden, a gas-fired barbecue. She throws a party every July and invites everyone. Last year had been fun, but now I’m not looking forward to it at all. I’m trapped, though; she sends the invites out in April. There’s no way we can get out of going.
‘I guess,’ I say, standing up. He smiles, and says he’s glad. It’s a fraction of a second before he lets go of my hand, not long enough to be sure it means anything at all. I’m not certain whether I’m holding on to him, or him to me.
They leave. Hugh goes into the kitchen, without saying a word. I follow him. He begins to tidy up, scraping each plate before rinsing it and putting it in the sink. He doesn’t smile, or even look at me as I speak.
‘What’s up with you?’
Still no eye contact. A plate clunks into the sink. Is this because I went outside to sit with Paddy?
‘It’s Connor,’ he says.
‘Connor?’ I pick up a cloth and begin to wipe down the worktop. ‘What about him? Are we still arguing because I said he could eat in his room?’
‘Among other things.’
I choose to ignore him. If he wants to bring anything else into this, then he’ll have to talk about it rather than make me guess.
‘He’s been really upset recently,’ I say instead. ‘I don’t think we should force him to do something he doesn’t want to do. I think we need to cut him some slack.’
He puts down the plate he’s holding and turns to face me. ‘Yes, well, I think we’ve been cutting him far too much slack lately. We shouldn’t indulge him. It’s really important we keep things normal, Julia.’
‘Meaning?’
He turns his palms upwards. ‘The grief counsellor said we mustn’t make too many allowances. He has to realize that life goes on.’
Life goes on? My anger ratchets up another notch. Life didn’t go on for Kate, did it? I take a deep breath. ‘I’m just worried about him.’
‘And I’m not? He comes in, smelling of cigarettes—’
‘Cigarettes?’
‘Hadn’t you noticed? On his clothes . . .’
I shake my head. I haven’t noticed any such thing. Either I’ve become neglectful, or Hugh is imagining things, and I suspect it’s the latter. ‘Maybe his friends smoke? Have you thought about that?’
His eyes narrow in accusation.
‘What next? Drinking?’
‘Hugh—’
‘Fighting at school—’
‘What?’
‘He told me. He got involved in some scrap.’
‘He told you?’
‘Yes. He was upset. He wouldn’t tell me what it was about, but it’s not like him, Julia. He’s never fought at school before.’
He’s never lost his mother before, I think, but I don’t say it.
‘Maybe we need to let him make his own mistakes? He has to grow up. He has to let off steam, especially given what’s happened.’
‘I just think we need to keep a closer eye on him.’
‘Me, you mean. You think I should be keeping a closer eye on him. You know, it seems to me that you’re a perfect father whenever it just involves playing chess or ordering takeaways when I go away. Yet whenever he needs some kind of discipline that’s suddenly my job?’ He ignores me. ‘Well?’
‘I don’t mean that. Look, I’m just not sure you’re—’
‘I’m what?’
I know exactly what he means. Setting a good example. This is about what happened in Paris.
‘I’m not sure you’re there for Connor at the moment like he might need you to be.’
I can’t help but laugh, but it’s a reflex. At some level he might be right.
‘Meaning what, exactly?’
He lowers his voice. ‘Julia, please calm down. Be reasonable.’
I go back to the table, to finish clearing it, to turn my back on him. It’s then that it happens. In front of me is the glass I’d been drinking from and as I pick it up a sudden and almost irresistible urge bubbles up from nowhere. I imagine filling it from the bottle of red wine they hadn’t quite finished, drinking it down. I can feel it, heavy in my mouth. I can taste it, peppery and warm. I want it, more than anything.
I hold the glass in my hand. I tell myself this is the first time since Paris, the first time I’ve even been tempted. It isn’t a relapse. It only means what I let it mean.
‘Julia?’
I ignore him. Ride it out, I tell myself. Ride it out. The desire will crest like an ocean wave and then subside. I just have to wait. Hugh is here, anyway, and whatever happens I won’t drink in front of him.
Yet I managed to drink in Paris, and that was weeks ago. I haven’t even been tempted since. Even if I were to drink now it wouldn’t have to signify the beginning of the end.
I think back to the programme. The first step. This isn’t something I can control; the fact I’ve gone for weeks without being tempted again doesn’t mean I’m over it. All control is an illusion.
I think of my sponsor, Rachel. ‘Addiction is a patient disease,’ she said to me, once. ‘It’ll wait for your whole life, if it has to. Never forget that.’
I haven’t, I tell myself. I won’t.
‘Julia?’ says Hugh. He sounds annoyed. I’ve missed something; he’s been talking to me.
I turn round. ‘Yes?’
‘I know he’s upset about his mother’s death—’
His choice of words stings, but my anger forces the desire to drink to slip down another notch.
‘He’s never thought of Kate as his mother.’
‘You know what I mean. Kate’s death is bound to bother him, but—’
‘But what?’
‘But he’s still not really talking about it, and I find that worrying. He should be, by now.’
His comment enrages me. ‘Has it ever occurred to you that it’s a process? There isn’t a timetable. Not everyone can deal with Kate’s death in the same way that you have.’
‘Meaning?’
‘It’s going to take Connor a good deal longer to get over Kate’s death than it’s taken you, that’s all.’
I think of what Adrienne has told me. ‘Don’t ever think Hugh doesn’t care. It’s just his prissiness. Grief is messy, and he doesn’t like mess. Plus, don’t forget he has to deal with life and death at work. All the time. It must harden you, a little bit.’
He looks shocked. ‘I’m not over her death. Kate and I were close once. I miss her, too. What makes you say that? It’s hurtful.’
‘Are you still talking to the Foreign Of
fice? Or are you leaving it all to me—?’
‘I talk to them all the time, Julia—’
‘You don’t think I should go online and look at the place she was killed—’
‘I just think you’re in a bad enough state as it is. You need to concentrate on Connor, on your work. On the future, not the past.’
‘What is that supposed to mean?’
He opens his mouth to speak, but then seems to think better of it. A moment later he turns and throws down the tea towel that he’d hooked over his shoulder.
‘Julia, I’m really worried about you.’
‘About me?’
‘Yes, believe it or not. I think you need to go and see somebody. You’re not coping. I’m going to Geneva on Monday and you’ll be here on your own—’
‘Oh, I’ll be fine,’ I say, but he’s still talking, he doesn’t seem to have heard me.
‘—and I just wish you’d at least consider going to see someone—’
My fury surges, doubled in strength. Something breaks. I can’t take it any more. ‘Oh, just piss off, Hugh.’ The glass I hadn’t realized I was still holding smashes on the floor. I don’t remember throwing it.
He takes a step towards me, then seems to think better of it and turns as if to leave. He’s finally angry, and so am I, and it almost feels better. It’s something other than numbness, or pain.
‘Where are you going?’
‘Out. I’m going for a walk. I need to cool off.’
He leaves. The whole house shudders, then falls silent, and I’m alone.
Chapter Eight
I sit on the edge of the bed for a while. I stroke the duvet cover. Egyptian cotton, duck-egg blue. Our bed, I think. What happened?
We bought it when we moved in here four years ago and it’s nothing particularly special. It’s a place we sleep, talk, read. Occasionally we make love, and when we do it’s still tender, slow. Enjoyable, usually, if not exciting.
Was it ever exciting? I think so, for a while, but the frenzy of a relationship’s early days is unsustainable; it has to burn out, become something else. It’s not his fault, or mine. It happens to everyone.
Maybe it happened sooner, with us. Hugh is the son of my father’s best friend; he’s known me since I was at school. Though he was older than me, we always got on, and as his father tried to look after mine, Hugh looked after me, and helped me to look after Kate. Our passion, when it eventually came, was muted. It was already accompanied by a history. Sometimes I think it’s as if we missed out a stage, as if we went from being friends straight to being companions.
I hear Hugh come back home. He goes into the living room. I stand up. I have to go downstairs, to talk to him, to sort things out. If I don’t he’ll sleep on the couch in his office and I’ll spend another night lying in bed, alone, trying to sleep while my brain fizzes with images, with thoughts that won’t subside. I’ll turn the events of the evening over and over, and always at the centre will be Kate. Walking down the alleyway, looking up to see a figure in the shadows in front of her, smiling a greeting but then, as she steps forward, he raises his hand and her smile turns to terror as she realizes that things have gone wrong, this time she’s made a mistake. The man she’s come to meet isn’t who she thought he was.
I know that if I were to close my eyes I’d see it, as clearly as if it were happening in front of me. A fist in the face, a booted foot. Why didn’t I know, somehow? That psychic connection I always thought we had; why did it let us down, when it really mattered? Was it severed when we took Connor? I’d see her blood, spilled on to the concrete. I’d see her nose, broken. I’d hear her cry out. I’d wonder if she knew, if she sensed this was it. I’d wonder how much pain there was. I’d wonder if she thought about me, and if so whether it was with love. I’d wonder if, at the end, she forgave me.
I go downstairs. ‘Hugh?’
He’s sitting in the living room with a glass of whisky. I sit down opposite him.
‘You should go to bed.’
‘I’m sorry.’
He looks at me, for the first time since I came into the room. He sighs, sips his whisky.
‘It hurts.’
‘I know.’
There’s nothing else to say. We go to bed.
In the morning I talk to Connor.
‘I don’t know what you heard last night,’ I say. ‘But your father and I love you very much.’
He’s sloshing milk into his cereal bowl and some spills on the table. I resist the urge to dab it dry. ‘I just heard you arguing.’
It feels like a slap. It’s the very opposite of what I want for my son, of what I promised Kate. Stability. Loving parents. A home free of conflict.
‘All couples argue. It’s normal.’
‘Are you going to split up?’
‘No! No, of course not.’
He goes back to his cereal. ‘What were you arguing about?’
I don’t want to tell him.
‘It’s difficult. The last few months have been tough. On all of us. With Auntie Kate, and everything.’ I know I’m stating the obvious, but it feels true, and necessary. A shadow crosses his face and for an instant I see how he’ll look when he’s much older, but then it passes, leaving a kind of sadness. I think he’s going to say something, but he doesn’t.
‘Do you miss her?’
He freezes, his spoon midway between the bowl and his mouth. He puts it back. Again he looks thoughtful, much older. For some reason he reminds me of Marcus – it’s the same expression he had when on those rare occasions he was worried or pensive – but then he speaks and becomes a teenager once again.
‘I don’t know.’ His face collapses, tears come. It’s unexpected and I’m swept to my feet in an urge to soothe and comfort.
‘It’s okay. Whatever you feel, or even if you don’t know, it’s okay.’
He hesitates. ‘I suppose I do miss her. A bit. Do you?’
‘Yes. Every day.’
‘I mean,’ he goes on, ‘we didn’t see her that often, but still . . .’
‘It’s different, isn’t it?’
‘Yes. When someone is alive you might not see them very much, but you know you can. If you want.’
‘Yes.’
‘And now I can’t.’
I remain silent. I want to give him the time to speak, but also I’m wondering whether he really had felt that he could see his mother. Hugh and I may have given him permission if he’d asked – to do that, to go and stay with her – but we had never really encouraged it. Maybe I was too frightened that she wouldn’t let him come back.
‘You know,’ I say eventually, ‘whatever you’re feeling, you can ask me about anything. Anything at all.’
Even though I mean it, my words sound hollow. Because the truth is, there are secrets, things I won’t tell him, even if he asks.
There’s a long pause, then he asks, ‘Do you think they’ll get them? The people who killed Kate.’
It stops me in my tracks. He hasn’t called her Auntie. I wonder if
it’s the first step on the path to calling her Mum. The air between us crackles.
‘I hope so, darling. But it’s difficult.’
There’s a silence between us.
‘Dad says she was a nice person who fell in with a bad crowd.’
I press some bread down into the toaster and look up. I smile. That’s exactly what Hugh used to think of me. A nice person, over-influenced by those around me. He would tell me, while I was in Berlin, ‘Look after yourself,’ he’d say, ‘We all miss you . . .’, and I knew he meant, Those people aren’t your friends. He was trying to save me, even then; I just wasn’t ready to be saved.
‘She was a really lovely person. Full stop.’
He hesitates.
‘So, why didn’t she want me?’
‘Connor,’ I begin. ‘It’s complicated—’
‘Dad says I shouldn’t worry about it. He says that Auntie Kate loved me very much but she wasn’t coping, that she couldn’t afford a baby, but you could, so it made sense.’
‘Well, that’s really a very simplistic way of looking at it . . .’
I wonder when Hugh’s been telling Connor all this. I didn’t even know they’d talked. I tell myself we need to make more of an effort, to be upfront with Connor, to be united. Like we’d decided years ago.
‘If you wanted children, why didn’t you have one?’
‘We couldn’t.’ I’m trying to keep my voice even; I don’t want it to crack, to betray how much loss I contain. ‘We’d been trying. For several years. But one of us . . .’ I stop. He doesn’t need the details. ‘We just couldn’t.’ It comes to me, then. The clinic: white walls and rubber floors, boxes spilling blue gloves, posters advertising helplines and charities that I knew I’d never call. I remember the stirrups, the cold metal between my legs. It felt like a punishment.
I realize I’ve still never told anyone about that, certainly not Hugh. He doesn’t know anything about that baby I could have had but didn’t.