Come Away With Me

by Sara MacDonald

  I call out ‘Tom’ before I even know I’m going to.

  He turns and I run towards him. He scoops me up and turns in a circle with me. Then we just stand holding each other for a moment.

  ‘Please take care,’ I say again. I let him go and he walks quickly through the gate. This time I notice his step has a little bounce to it.

  SEVEN

  February 2006

  ‘You look happy today!’ Adam said, grinning at his mother as she jumped out of the train.

  ‘How do I normally look?’

  ‘Stressed, Mum! You’re usually in your own little world of work, for at least an hour or so.’

  Ruth felt a pang. So this was how she was. She bleeped the car doors open and when they were inside she said, ‘It was extraordinary. I met someone on the train I haven’t seen for nearly fourteen years. It was weird, Adam, we were best friends at school.’

  ‘Cool,’ Adam said. ‘You recognised each other then?’

  Ruth shot him a look. ‘I’m not that old! Actually, Jenny looked more or less as she always did, except…’

  She concentrated on backing out of the car space.

  ‘Except, what?’

  ‘She was sad. She’d lost her lovely bounce. I was stupid. I was so excited about seeing her that I didn’t pick it up, just prattled on asking about her life and then she told me. Six months ago her husband was killed in a road accident.’

  Adam turned to her. ‘Poor woman.’

  ‘Yes. She’s in Birmingham on her own so I’m going to ring her tomorrow. I would have asked her to stay but Peter’s back tonight and he’s going to be tired.’

  ‘Are we going to the airport to meet him?’

  ‘No, he’s on a later flight. He said he’d get a taxi home.’

  ‘We are still going to Cornwall for half-term?’

  ‘Of course we are.’ Ruth concentrated on the traffic. ‘How was your day?’

  ‘OK,’ Adam said. ‘Is Peter coming to the cottage with us? It’s more fun if I’ve got someone to birdwatch with.’

  ‘I hope so, Adam, but…’

  ‘I know, Mum! Like, why do I have to have workaholic parents?’

  He grinned at her to take away the sting, but the familiar guilt was back. She and Peter did work long hours and Adam was on his own too much. Occasionally he brought a friend home, sometimes he went to a friend’s house, but it was not the same as having someone there when he got in from school.

  The irony was not lost on Ruth. Her aunt had always been the one to be there for him after school when he was small. After that, he had almost always been picked up by someone else or come home to an empty house. The difference was that until his secondary school he had been happy and had loads of friends. Now, they appeared to have dwindled to two or three ostracised loners who had been pushed together.

  She thought suddenly of Peter’s wistful voice. ‘Wouldn’t it be great to have another child in the house? I think Adam would like that too. Will you think about it, Ruth?’

  Ruth didn’t need to think about it. She didn’t want any more children. It had taken her years to get where she was. She loved working and she had no intention of giving up. Bringing up Adam had been too hard, even with help. She never wanted to have to juggle work, a baby and guilt again. In a few years Adam would be at university. She couldn’t start all over again. She just couldn’t.

  Adam had taken her silence as hurt. ‘I was only joking, Mum. You worry too much. Most of my friends’ mothers work long hours too. It’s cool.’

  Yes, but most of Adam’s friends’ mothers worked because they had to, not because they wanted to.

  Peter had not been impressed by the huge comprehensive that had been their only choice in the area. He had wanted to pay for Adam to go to a private school. Ruth had refused on the grounds she did not believe in private education. But she knew it was really about whether she and Peter stayed together long-term. If they ever split up she could not have afforded school fees on her own and it would have been cruel to have to pull Adam out of private education. Ruth was not quite so sure she would refuse again. Adam said little, but was obviously fairly miserable at school.

  She drove up their leafy road of Victorian terraces and parked. For once there was an empty space outside the house. Adam leapt out and ran up the steps, unlocking the front door and leaving it open for her.

  As she walked in and hung up her coat Ruth had an image of Jenny, childless, entering a house where her husband was never going to move through the rooms again. Sadness shot through her. She remembered running, screaming with laughter, with a small curly-haired girl across the sands at St Ives towards the Browns’ house with its windows facing Porthmeor beach and the harbour, and her abiding image was of Jenny’s happiness, her security in childhood, in life.

  If this tragedy had happened to me I might have been expecting it. Even as a child, Ruth had never trusted happiness. It could be wiped off her face in an instant. She had learnt not to show it. All pleasures had to be hidden or hugged secretly to her. She would compose her face on her way down the hill from the Browns’ house so that when she walked through the door of her own home her puritan parents would see no traces of joy left on it.

  She composed her features into that blank expression she recognised sometimes in children in the supermarket. The closed-in, shut-off features of a child shouted at or slapped too often. Children who knew they could never do anything right and tried to melt into the shadows.

  Her own parents’ relief that Ruth was out of the house so often and not under their feet making dust did not prevent their jealousy of people who might bring her happiness.

  Adam was making toast and humming over his bird magazines. ‘Are you thinking of the woman you met on the train, Mum?’ he asked Ruth suddenly.

  ‘Yes.’ Ruth sat down opposite him, and he cut his toast and Marmite and handed her a piece.

  ‘How did you lose touch?’

  ‘My fault. I never wrote to her when I left Cornwall for Arran. I hurt her a lot. I realised that today.’

  ‘Only today, Mum?’

  Ruth met his eyes. She had given Adam the edited version of her early life. ‘I thought Jenny would forget me pretty quickly. She had three sisters and one brother. We were good friends, but she had a large family…’

  ‘But friends are different,’ Adam said firmly. ‘Friends are people you make on your own, that are separate from family. They see you in another way. So you become different with them and it’s the same for them. Friends are important.’

  Ruth stared at him. You learnt new things about your children all the time. Adam was right. He was his own person, not just the person she knew, but another boy she didn’t know; a person who acted in a different way when he was not with his mother.

  He said now, with butter on his chin, ‘Did you explain about your parents, about Auntie Vi looking after you? About me?’

  ‘A little. I didn’t have time to tell her everything,’ Ruth said carefully, as Adam watched her across the table. ‘But she knew your grandparents and what they were like.’

  The phone went and Adam dashed for it. It was Peter. His flight had been delayed. As Ruth listened to them chatting happily she thought with a pang, I take Peter and the life I have here for granted.

  At seventeen you believed that your dreams might come true. At thirty you tried not to have any illusions; yet the essence of some impossible hope lived insistently on. Somewhere out there was an exciting shadowy figure who could provide all emotional and sexual succour; a soulmate. Him.

  She did love Peter, they were good friends, but her heart did not leap at his touch. She was not in love with him. He had always known that and Ruth knew she should never have let him persuade her he could change it.

  Adam handed her the phone. Ruth listened to his voice, warm and loving and glad to be coming home, and she saw in a flash of familiar angst how little it took to please or make him happy. She understood herself. Childhood had taught her she must onl
y ever rely on herself, never let anyone hurt her again, and the result of that was her inability to commit wholly to a relationship. It was a self-destruct button. Peter loved her and Adam unconditionally. What more could she ask? What more could she want?

  Look at Jenny, for God’s sake. Look at Jenny.

  EIGHT

  I took a taxi to my hotel to drop off my case. I ordered coffee and a sandwich I could not eat. I got under a power shower. I let the water pour over me and I blanked my mind of all thought in order to get through the afternoon.

  I walked to my first meeting. Danielle had done most of the hard selling and the buyers for the department store seemed keen to have both our designs selling on separate fashion floors. Our clothes were quite different. Danielle’s work was fairly conventional and classic, the exact opposite of her character. She designed for the slightly older woman. The cut and shape of her work was stunning, with each piece having a small quirky difference that marked out her labels.

  My work was mostly for the boutique and high street. I designed for the trendy fashion-conscious twenty-year-olds and my clothes were not meant to last more than a season. I did the bags and belts, the shrugs and the sandals. If I had a gift, it was for sensing what trend was coming next.

  Coffee kept me going, but the afternoon seemed endless as the buyers poured through my sample books and decided on exactly what and how many different designs they wanted.

  It was dark when I emerged into the street; that horrible lonely time when all the lights have sprung on and people are hurrying home. A light rain was falling. I got a taxi to my hotel with the familiar sick remembrance of loss churning in my stomach. It felt as if a huge wave continually hovered over my head, waiting to swamp me. I wondered if the loneliness would ever turn into anything I could endure.

  I kicked off my shoes as soon as I got into my room and ran a hot bath. I went to the mini bar and pulled out a small bottle of wine, switched on the six o’clock news as background and took the wine into the bathroom. I closed my eyes and soaked, closed my mind.

  The wine acted like a sleeping pill. It was still early, but I climbed gratefully into bed.

  Snapshots of Tom filled the dark. They seemed to surround me, come from everywhere. Tom throwing his head back, flicking his hair out of his eyes to a backdrop of sea. Tom running across a rugby field, his legs pumping, clutching the ball. Turning to look at me in the garden in London, eyes half closed in a glance that made my heart turn over. Tom in uniform, leaning against a palm tree, blinking from some hot, unknown country.

  Had it been a trick of the light, an illusion on that station as I looked at Ruth’s boy? For a second I had seen Tom so clearly. A younger, childlike Tom. Was it wishful thinking? The sort of boy Tom must have been before I knew him. Was it just a mirage conjured by my tired mind, like an oasis in a desert?

  A frightening enervation crept over me like a shroud. Why was I here in Birmingham? What was the point when I didn’t care about anything? I searched for a purpose that would give value to what I was doing and could find none as I lay under the cold hotel duvet.

  After a while the telephone started to ring persistently, at intervals. I left it. I let it ring on and after a while it stopped. People passed my bedroom door, laughing, talking and going down to dinner. I lay in an anonymous room, disconnected, floating.

  Then I thought of Flo alone in the London house worrying about me. I switched on the bedside light and rang her. I tried to keep my voice light and cheerful. I talked business, talked up my day.

  But Flo knew me too well. ‘Oh, Jen, you sound so tired. Come home. It’s all too soon. Just come home.’

  Night came behind the curtains. Car lights passed across the windows and over the walls and ceiling, and I watched the moving lights, mesmerised by their changing patterns. The hotel became still, the traffic outside subsided.

  If only I could wish myself backwards to treasure every second that I had in that life I had lost. I fell into a strange half-sleep of feverish dreams and woke early in the morning with a raging thirst. I got up dizzily to put the kettle on and then sat drinking tea until I felt better.

  I saw a white envelope had been pushed under the door:

  Mrs Holland, we note you are not answering your telephone and trust all is well. A Miss Florence Kingsley has rung twice this evening. A Mrs Ruth Hallam also rang more than once and appeared somewhat concerned. She asks that you return her call.

  I took my tea back to bed. The boy on the platform remained absolutely clear in my head. I saw his fair hair flopping over his eyes, his profile sweet, snub-nosed, not yet entirely awkward in adolescence. Fawn anorak over navy blazer. Black trousers, blue-and-red school holdall. I saw him dart forward towards Ruth, his face lighting up.

  I jumped out of bed and showered, got dressed and took the lift down to the foyer. I ordered a taxi from reception. As I waited I took the crumpled envelope from the pocket of my bag and smoothed out Ruth’s address.

  She lived in the suburbs. Eventually the taxi turned into a wide, tree-lined road of large Victorian terraced houses. I made the driver slow down while I looked at the house numbers. When I found Ruth’s house I asked him to park a little further back on the opposite side of the road. The driver impassively picked up his newspaper. I sat and waited. I did not know what I was waiting for.

  At five to eight a dark man came down the steps of the house and started up his car. After a few minutes he hooted a couple of times on his horn and the boy, Adam, came flying out with his clothes askew, eating toast. Ruth appeared at the top of the steps and, smiling, waved down at them both, calling something to the boy I could not hear.

  A sudden, unfathomable anger with Ruth came flying out of nowhere.

  I stared at the boy with toast in his mouth. My eyes were pulled to him like a magnet. My heart hammered painfully. I was not mistaken. He was a small, immature version of Tom. He got into the car and he and the man waved at Ruth, then she went back inside and shut her front door.

  He and Ruth have each other, I thought. They have each other.

  The car passed my taxi and I saw the boy briefly, talking animatedly, tucking in his shirt and reaching for his seat belt. I stared after them long after they had disappeared.

  The taxi driver lowered his paper. ‘Are you intending to stay here all day, miss?’

  ‘No. Take me back to the hotel, please.’ I clutched my shaking hands and he gave me an odd look, then turned and drove off.

  Back at the hotel I picked up my list of appointments. It was hard to focus. I could not drag my mind away from the image of the laughing boy. I had not imagined his likeness to Tom. I wasn’t mad. It was there and blindingly obvious. How old would he be? How old?

  I must concentrate on my day or I would go under. I was unsure when I last ate so I rang room service for croissants and coffee. Afterwards I felt better, picked up the phone and rang Flo. I told her I was fine and we talked briefly about the day’s appointments.

  My first was at nine forty-five. As the hotel was fairly central to the shopping malls I walked. It was a bright-blue-sky day. The city was busy and still smelt of last night’s rain. I walked with the flow of people jostling and hurrying to work. I enjoyed a feeling of anonymity in a place I did not know.

  I walked around a new expensive complex of tiny exclusive clothes shops before I went inside to gauge their approximate customer age and income. I compared their prices. I thought Danielle was probably right. They might be interested in my designs, certainly my belts and bags. I had brought a substantial cross-section of sketches and photographs and samples. I just had to make good, to get the orders for us.

  The owner of the first shop was around my age and friendly but astute. Over coffee she looked through our portfolio again and ordered deftly and without hesitation. She knew exactly what would sell and kept away from Danielle’s tailored and more expensive designs. ‘We’re a throwaway society and shops like mine obviously have to compete with the chain stores. I have to jud
ge it finely and select clothes that will appeal to the young professionals who need to go upmarket, but still look cool. My first order will be cautious, just to see how we go, but your belts and bags…I’ll order as many as you can give me. They’ll go like hot cakes.’

  I took a large order and moved out again into sunlight. As each of the trendy shops in the new mall wanted to market different fashions I also did well with Danielle’s tailored designs, especially her deceptively casual summer skirts and skimpy silk T-shirts.

  I had to meet a buyer for lunch in one of the big Fayad stores and I thought of Ruth. I got a taxi, as I suddenly felt faint and hot. This buyer was not the easiest and Danielle had always dealt with her. She seemed faintly annoyed that I was here and not Danielle. For a second tiredness overtook me and I was tempted to wrong-foot her by telling her why our normal routine had been shot to pieces.

  After a lunch I couldn’t eat, we moved round the various fashion departments that marketed our different labels. The buyer went through what had sold well and what had stayed on the rails, and I made notes.

  Thankfully, she had another meeting and went off, leaving me with her assistant, who was easier to get on with. I began to feel odd and disembodied but I made myself concentrate for another hour.

  She gave me a large order for my belts and bags. We were going to be pushed to deliver on time. I suddenly felt faint and dizzy again. The woman glanced at me anxiously, got me a chair and sent someone to find a glass of water. I apologised profusely and she told me there was a lot of flu about.

  I sipped the water and when the dizziness passed I went to the lavatory and looked at myself in the mirror. I saw that my face was flushed and drawn. I felt feverish. I looked a hundred, like a wraith, as if my face belonged to someone else.

  Someone ordered me a taxi back to the hotel. I realised my symptoms were physical, not psychosomatic, as I had a raging temperature. I rang and excused myself from the rest of my afternoon appointments. I ordered a bottle of water and some fruit juice, and I was just going to crawl into bed when there was a knock on my door.