by kendra Smith
‘Hey, Dad.’ Jake stood awkwardly in the doorway.
‘Jake! Come here and give me a hug!’
He was over in a shot, and then, somehow as Victoria cleared away the coffee cups and stood with her back to the sink watching them, Jake and James were play-wrestling on the floor. This is what I want. She wandered over to them. ‘Careful, he’s only sixteen!’
‘Yeah, with muscles,’ mumbled James from under Jake’s arm.
Izzy was sitting at the table. She’d poured out two orange juices and pushed a glass over to Jake. ‘Hey, loser brother, here’s some juice.’ She grinned. ‘C’mon. Truce?’ Picking up her glass, she nodded at Victoria’s laptop. ‘Mum, what’s this? You doing this anti-bullying thing? Melanie was talking about it at school.’
Melanie was one of Izzy’s new friends. She was a sweet girl, Victoria had met her on a few occasions, and they had had her round for a sleepover. That was exhausting. The girls had stayed up till 4 a.m. chatting, even when Victoria banged on the wall. But she was happy to encourage the friendship. Melanie’s skills were being able to find Domino’s pizza offers where others failed, and she was not into competitive one-upmanship the way Bella had been.
‘Maybe. Possibly with your dad.’ She held her breath.
James and Jake stopped wrestling on the floor.
‘What about the swimming?’ Izzy said, screwing her eyes up at Victoria. ‘You sure, Mum? What about—’
Victoria nodded vigorously. ‘I’ll be fine.’ There was a memory lodged somewhere that was niggling her.
James sat down and drained his coffee cup, then placed it back on the table. ‘I could ask work if they’ll sponsor us – they should donate a reasonable amount.’
Us.
Victoria stared at James’s mug. It lived at the back of the cupboard and was slightly chipped but she couldn’t bear to throw it out. Here was a memory she did remember. Jake had decorated it at one of those Pottery Café’s when he’d been about four. It was for Father’s Day and Jake had decreed that ‘Daddy likes dinosaurs’. The mug had been plastered in sponge imprints of various dinosaurs with ‘Happy Father’s Day’ written in very wobbly letters across the base. He took a deep breath. ‘I’m in,’ announced James. ‘If we both get some sponsorship then we could raise some decent money for the school’s anti-bullying campaign. I think that’s important. What do you think Izzy?’
‘Cool,’ she said, smiling. ‘Me and Jake will watch, won’t we?’
Jake stuffed two brownies into his mouth at the same time and nodded vigorously, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
‘Right,’ said James, scraping his chair back, then he turned to Victoria. ‘Tomorrow at 7 a.m.? At the school running track?’ he said breezily, heading for the kitchen door. ‘I’d warm up a bit first.’ She nodded, too overwhelmed to say anything. Was this a date?
‘Let’s go, you two,’ James shouted to the twins, holding onto the kitchen door handle. And then it was a flurry of phone-grabbing and hoodie-finding as they headed off with James to find yet more pizza. After the din of banging doors, shouts of ‘where are my other trainers?’ and the crunch of tyres on gravel, the kitchen fell silent, leaving Victoria alone with her thoughts.
40 Lulu
‘How could you, Louise, Lulu – whatever bloody name you want to be called?’ Simon’s running his hands through his hair and scowling at me. We’re in his kitchen. He’s leaning against the sink. He looks pasty and his eyes are red. He is scratching his hands intermittently, probably the eczema has flared up. I feel a stab of guilt. He told me once, it does that when he’s stressed. I’m sitting at the stainless-steel table. There’s a wooden planter on the table housing a raspberry-pink hyacinth with fluffy green moss spread out over the base. The perfume is pungent and heady and it’s making me feel queasy. Sun streams in from the enormous Victorian sash windows, across the table, and the ruby in my engagement ring sparkles.
The ring is sitting next to the hyacinth.
I feel exasperated. But it’s not his fault. How can he know what’s going on in my mind if I haven’t even told him? If I haven’t even admitted it to myself yet?
I didn’t want to face Simon but knew I had to. I spent a lot of time on the train journey back here chewing it all over and knew he needed a decent explanation. We’d been corresponding by short messages. He asked about Izzy. Then he sent me a curt message when I was at Dad’s saying that he’d packed up my few things that I had at his place – my toothbrush, a few dressing gowns and my favourite mug (‘the lumpy one’; it’s one which Izzy made me at nursery, which he’s always hated) – and put everything in a box and said he’d appreciate it if I could collect them. As I stood on the porch a moment ago, I studied the box lying out in the cold. Our relationship, reduced to a cardboard box.
‘Look, Simon, it’s all my fault.’
‘You’re damn right it’s all your fault.’
I pick up the ring and then put it back down again. ‘Sorry.’
He spins round, walks toward the kettle and flicks it on angrily. Now he’s slamming two cups down on the kitchen surface. ‘My mother is beside herself.’
I grimace. ‘I’m really, really sorry.’ And I am, I am sorry for the hurt I’ve caused. ‘I’ll pay for my half of the wedding, I swear.’
Simon turns to face me; his cheeks are pink and the redness has reached the tip of his ears. He pulls his shoulders back. ‘It’s not about the money, Lulu. I mean, I thought we were going to spend our lives together, I had it all planned out.’
‘But that’s just the problem, Simon.’
He glares at me, lips pursed.
‘The planning, your planning—’ I continue.
‘But I thought you liked that, you told me you didn’t know who you were anymore and that you liked the security I brought. Those were your words.’
I bite my lip. Had I said all that? Maybe I’d said it when I was drunk, hiding from the truth. I don’t know. I suppose some of it is true. ‘I did want security, I do want a plan, Simon. But maybe not always your plan.’ I don’t expand. How can I tell him it’s just that I don’t want that plan to be with him? ‘I had lost my way, that’s true. But I don’t feel so lost anymore. I’ve done a lot of thinking up at my dad’s, it’s cleared my head a bit. I’ve spent hours on the Dales with Pickle on long walks just chewing things over. How much I was drinking, my future, I want to sort it all out.’
He puts his arms out and leans backwards on the kitchen counter, and tilts his head back, as if he’s summing me up. ‘Well, good for you. I wish you’d done your thinking before you agreed to marry me.’
It’s a fair point.
‘Do you know how mortified I was, standing there in the chapel?’
I meet his eye. ‘Listen, could you sit down? There’s something I need to explain, something that should hopefully make you understand – well, everything,’ I say softly. He brings the coffee over and sits down opposite me, arms folded. I need to tell him about it. About how I want to get over it and get back on stage and prove to everyone that I can do it, and about how I’ve come to be so messed up and why the safety net of marriage made sense – but my rehearsed explanation is cut short.
‘It’s all me, me, me, isn’t it, with you?’ he says pulling back his chair. He folds his legs over each other and sighs. ‘Do you ever think about anyone else? Good God. Anyone would think that you’d had the memory issues, that you’d lost your mind, not your sister.’
I’m speechless. I’d planned to tell him everything, to make him understand, but I just can’t. I look out the window and can just make out a foal in the fields in the distance, huddled close to its mum. My throat catches.
‘And what about Markie?’ He says his name as if it’s poison.
I shrug. ‘He’s with someone else, so Victoria tells me.’
‘Lost your chance there, didn’t you?’
In all the months I’ve known Simon, and despite the fact that I truly deserve the blame for what’s h
appened, I have never put him down as spiteful. My mouth falls open. I look at him sitting across from me in an ironed shirt, gold cufflinks shining and I look at his mouth twisting and turning with words of hate for me, and I notice how beady his eyes are and that they’re staring right at me. A tiny bit of spit escapes from his mouth as he’s talking. ‘Are you listening?
‘My mother warned me, you know,’ he says flicking some imaginary dust off the table with his hand and his cufflinks clink on the surface. ‘Said I could do better than you. What did she say? Oh yes, said you were the flighty type. “Cheap”, I think she said when she first met you.’ He pauses. ‘And I defended you. Shouldn’t have bothered.’
I wipe my cheeks with the back of my hand. I know he’s hurt, but I can’t explain anything to him now. It’s not worth it. How can I empty out my soul into this sea of hatred? ‘I needed some space,’ I say instead. ‘Need to figure things out.’ That much, at least, is true.
‘You can have all the space you want, Lulu. Now get out.’ He pushes his chair back as if he’s about to get up, ready for battle. But he doesn’t deserve to know the truth. And with that last comment, I slide the ring across the table towards him, stand up and leave.
41 Victoria
God, it was freezing. It might have been May, but at seven in the morning Victoria pulled her fleece down over her bum and stamped her feet to keep warm. She was standing on the edge of the school’s running track. How she had managed to drag herself away from under her warm duvet on a Sunday morning was anybody’s guess. She rubbed her hands together and waited as James fiddled with his GoFit watch. Didn’t the God of Sunday say it belonged to either lazy sex – no hope there – lounging around in PJs, or reading the papers in bed with a croissant and decent coffee?
‘Right. We’ll calculate how long it takes you to run a lap, then we can see how much progress you need to make so you can keep up with me on the actual run.’
‘I’ll be fine,’ she said indignantly.
‘Let’s start slowly – OK? You don’t want to do too much too soon. Especially in your condition.’
My condition? A little voice told her that James was just being practical in light of her ribs, but another, more competitive one, the one that wanted to get back to normal, was saying: you can do this. James took off round the track. She started to shuffle slowly. She was halfway round the first half lap and she was taking deep lungfuls of air. Good God, this was hard. Her breath clouded around her face in the freezing air and when she breathed in, the cold air was sharp in her throat making her cough. She kept putting one foot in front of the other, even though her legs were beginning to hurt, and her tits were killing her – despite the two sports bras she’d worn. Just a few more paces to go. There! She’d done it. James was waiting for her with his hands on his hips. He glanced at his watch.
‘Well done. Ready for the next lap?’ Next lap?
She nodded because she couldn’t actually speak. Then she gulped some air. ‘OK! How many laps are we doing today?’
‘Just five – so one kilometre. It’s a third of what we have to do on the day.’
A third? Vicky didn’t think she could do one more lap, never mind five. What on earth had she been thinking? But she had to do it, to prove to Izzy – to James, but, especially, to herself that she could. And she was with him. They were together.
James had already started off, jogging at quite a pace. There was no way she was going to catch up with him, at one point he seemed to be racing round a corner. For goodness’ sake! Then he slowed down, sped up again. When he got to the finish line he looked back at her and grinned. He was watching her suffer, but it was a grin nonetheless.
‘Alright?’ He bent over with one leg stretched out in front of him, stretching his hamstrings, as she panted towards the white line.
She rested her hands on her kneecaps and inhaled the cold air. In and out. Steady. Finally, she raised her head up, sweat building on her forehead despite the chilly morning. ‘Yup. I’m alright,’ she managed, standing straighter now. ‘Again?’ Where had those words come from? She must be insane.
‘Fine. I think you should just do a fast walk this time – OK?’
She glared at him, then gave a brief nod. He was off, jogging in front of her. She glanced at his broad back, at him effortlessly pounding along the rusty-coloured running track and swore under her breath. It was easy for him. Do this for Izzy, she reminded herself. She kept going, striding this time, reminding herself to breathe. Keep going. All that mattered was that she finished this lap, she’d suggested it after all. Her lower back was aching, her chest tight, but she took a long inhale in, then out, kept on walking briskly to the finish line.
‘Not bad.’ James stood, not a drop of sweat on him. ‘Why don’t you sit down,’ he carried on gently. He nodded to a bench by the pavilion. ‘Looks like you could do with a break.’ She screwed up her eyes. The sun was glinting across the dewy grass and she could just make out a wooden bench in the distance. ‘I’ll keep going; I won’t be long,’ he said, holding his hand up to shield his eyes from the sun. Then, he crossed over his arms and yanked off his outer running top. She caught a glimpse of his firm torso, it was so normal, yet so intimate. She looked away.
‘Vicky?’ He was staring straight at her. She caught his eye and smiled at him, but he just nodded and set off. He was running faster now, without her, following the white lines, his tall, athletic body making it look easy, striding purposefully along the track. It took her back to that video, watching him with the twins when they were tiny. Her James. She sat down on the grass and hugged her knees to her chest, listening to the sound of birdsong and took in the sweet smell of newly cut grass.
‘I think we did OK out there.’ Victoria was sitting next to James in his car, in the queue for the carwash. James had handed her a coffee. ‘That’s a proper one,’ he’d said. ‘No soy muck.’ And grinned. It had been his idea to head here after the run. She had other ideas about how to spend the rest of Sunday morning, and it hadn’t involved mechanical car cleaning, but she didn’t protest. She stole a glance at him. His muscular legs were encased in running shorts, the smell of sweat mixed with his aftershave mingling in the air. His smell. She imagined reaching out squeezing his thigh. No, Vicky, that won’t do, a voice said.
James was humming as they inched forward towards the mouth of the carwash, keeping the car within the metal parallel lines. She always found it so hard to do that; once, she’d actually got out of the car to check that she was within the lines and the machine had actually started. She’d been soaked. Now, the fluffy black brushes whooshed towards them, swallowing them up like the mouth of a hungry hairy caterpillar. She laughed out loud.
‘What?’
‘Oh, nothing. I’m just imagining that we’re being swallowed by a huge prehistoric caterpillar.’
James looked across at her, his eyebrows knitted together. ‘Been watching Jurassic Park again? I think that you need to go back for another MRI scan!’ Then he glanced at her. ‘Sorry, God sorry, Vicky, it was a joke, I didn’t mean—’
‘It’s alright, it’s alright. This keeps happening, one minute I’m fine, next I can’t remember things and next, I’m gabbling about caterpillars.’
‘Patience, remember, that’s what the consultant said.’ He took a sip of his coffee, then placed it on the dashboard; steam rose from it and spread across the windscreen.
‘I know, but—’ she faltered. ‘I can’t help thinking about how things were, six years ago, I mean, when I woke up in hospital, from the crash, it felt like it was six years ago, to me, anyway – and yet so much has changed.’
‘We’ve been through this, Vicky.’
‘I know, but I was so hopeful in hospital. I was so perplexed why you didn’t come running to my side.’ She glanced over at him but he was looking the other way. ‘Why did we let it change, James? What went wrong?’ She stared at the soap bubbles on the windscreen, the mist on the inside and listened to the clatter of the brushes be
ating at the car.
‘Life just got in the way. We let things slip.’ He let out a long breath. ‘We lost sight of each other, I think. You put the twins first,’ he carried on, ‘over our marriage sometimes. I put my work first and I was away a lot. When I got back home, though, I felt like I was just another place setting at the table, Vicky. You never really asked how I was. I know it was hard, but you forgot I was a person, a man, your husband. The one you used to write notes to in his lunchbox – remember?’
Of course she remembered that memory, and she was so glad he did too. ‘I do remember that, but maybe, well, maybe I forgot some things James.’
‘Like me,’ he whispered.
‘And I felt the same, James. Forgotten.’
They fell silent.
‘And then of course – you know,’ he picked up his cup and took a sip as the foam from the brushes obliterated the view from the side windows.
‘The baby.’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you blame me?’
‘Victoria. How can I blame you?’ He moved his arm, and for a split second Victoria thought he was going to hold her hand.
‘I mean for even trying to have another baby. For, I don’t know, what it did to us. I can remember bits, some bits before and then the tears, the—’ She had wanted to say ‘your coldness’ but she didn’t want to spoil this cocoon. It wasn’t exactly romantic, sitting in the car with a coffee – but at least they were alone. Because even if he’d taken her home, there would have been a work call interrupting them, or Izzy breezing in wondering where she’d left her make-up or Jake barging in to ask if he could order pizza, like now. She absent-mindedly drew a heart shape on the mist on the inside of her window with her finger.
‘I remember feeling guilty that I wanted another one, we already had two, but that longing was there.’
James looked over at her but said nothing for a while.
‘Me too – I mean about the longing,’ he finally said. He took a gulp of coffee, placed the lid back on it and clamped it firmly in the cup holder. ‘We both wanted another one, Vicky. It was when the twins were about nine, Lulu had them for the weekend so we could get away – remember? Anyway, we went to the Lake District – we walked, went to some cosy pubs, we talked, we stayed in that dreadful hotel with the creaky floorboards,’ he laughed, ‘—remember, the Windermere Inn? That’s when we decided to try for another baby, over dinner that night – in fact, you said she was conceived that evening.’ He looked at her from under his eyelashes.