Barefoot in the Dark (9 page)

‘They’re probably out,’ observed Tom, looking hopeful.

Hope cupped her hand around her eye and peered through the glass. A dark shape was growing inside now, coming down the stairs.

‘Ah,’ said Hope.

‘Oh,’ said Tom.

Jack Valentine then appeared at the door. He was barefoot, wearing very little clothing. A pair of shorts – boxer shorts, even – she didn’t like to look too closely – and a T-Shirt that said ‘Real Men Don’t Ask For Directions’ on the front. He looked slightly crumpled. Like he’d recently been asleep.

‘Goodness!’ he said, looking shocked. ‘Well, hello!’

Hope smiled cheerily at him, wishing she could simply disappear or explode.

‘We’re sorry to bother you,’ she said. ‘But Tom wanted to – well –’ She nudged Tom and he proffered the envelope. ‘We came –
Tom
came – to apologise.’

‘Oh,’ said Jack Valentine again, smiling at Hope as he took the letter. ‘Oh, right. But you really didn’t have to do that.’ He smiled at Tom now. ‘I know it was an accident. These things happen. Heat of the moment and all that.’

Lots of things happened in the heat of the moment. Not all of them necessarily good. Hope swallowed. ‘That’s very gracious of you. How’s Oliver’s eye?’

‘It’s fine. A little bruised, but no permanent damage.’ He opened the door wider. ‘Why don’t you come up and say hello?’

‘You’re not in the middle of anything, are you? I should have called, I know, but I thought, well… as we were passing anyway… and, well, Tom –’

Hope fell silent, feeling more than ever like this had been a very bad idea. ‘No, no,’ he said. ‘Not long home from work, actually. Watching TV. Nothing special.’ He glanced at the chocolates clasped in Tom’s other hand. ‘Well? Are you going to come in?’ He stood aside and waved an arm towards the stairs.

Hope stayed on the doorstep. Tom, beside her, continued to look down at his feet.

‘I don’t want to intrude or anything.’

‘You’re not. Not at all. Come on in.’ He held the door open wider still, while Hope and Tom filed past him. ‘Up the stairs,’ he said, shutting the front door.

It was an old house, the hall wallpapered in violent floral swirls. Down the hallway, two further doors were both closed. A copy of the local newsletter lay unopened on a spindly hall table, next to a spider plant sitting in a tide-marked saucer. Hope headed up the stairs, Tom’s footfalls heavy behind her.

At the top, eighteen inches of brick-red carpet led to another door, which was ajar. Clearly the door to Jack’s flat. It had a Yale lock on it.

‘Go on. Go on in,’ he called up from behind them. The landing continued, only now it was more correctly another hall. There was a phone on the floor and a phone book beside it. And there were two black and white photos of football teams on the wall. Teenagers. But not his. These were a generation or two older. She hovered while Jack shut the door behind them.

‘My dad,’ he said proudly, pointing to the first one. ‘He played for the Portsmouth under twenty-ones.’ He pointed out a slight boy with the same grin Jack had.

‘And this one?’

‘Ah. That’s me. I’m afraid I wasn’t quite so talented as a player. That’s just the local team. But I’m kind of hoping these things skip a generation – you know, like twins do? And that Ollie’ll be doing it for me instead. I’m working on him.’ He grinned. ‘Anyway, come on in.’

Through the far door, Hope could see a teenage boy hunched over a computer at a small gate-leg table. He glanced up as they entered.

‘Ollie, look who’s here. And bearing chocolates, no less! D’you want to go on in, Tom?’

Tom looked like he’d rather have a six-inch nail drilled through his toe without anaesthetic and Hope wondered again quite what it was that had possessed her to frogmarch him round here. But he stepped forward anyway. There was little else for him to do.

‘Peace offering,’ quipped Jack, clearly also a bit lost for words. ‘Hey! There’s a thought! Are you genned up with this Legend of Mir game, Tom?’ He followed Tom into the living room and ushered him across to the computer, where sounds of distant carnage intermittently cawed from the screen. Oliver looked embarrassed. Hope could see Tom nod.

‘Ollie’s obsessed with it, aren’t you, mate?’ He turned back to Hope. ‘What’s new, eh?’ he added knowingly. Hope didn’t know. She didn’t have a computer right now. A source of much scowling resentment at home. Jack turned around and grabbed another chair from the other side of the table. ‘Here, Tom. Have a seat. Ollie’ll be glad of some intelligent discussion about it, I’m sure.’

‘Er… right,’ said Tom, sitting down, and placing the box of Roses at the side of the desk.

Ollie turned to face him, reaching for the chocolates as he did so. ‘You on this?’

‘At my dad’s.’

‘What level you on?’

‘Twenty-three.’

Oliver offered Tom a chocolate. ‘ Twenty-
three
?’ He looked awed.

So that was all right, then.

‘Well,’ said Jack, once the boys were installed in front of the monitor. ‘Whatever they say about the anti-social nature of computer games, I think we pulled off a social coup there, don’t you? Cup of tea? Coffee or something? Drink?’ He was standing close enough to her that she could smell him. A woody smell. Pungent. Aftershave or shower gel, she supposed. The hair on his neck looked slightly damp.

She shook her head. ‘No, no,’ she replied quickly. ‘I really don’t want to impose. I just – Tom just – well, we wanted to apologise, that was all. I couldn’t leave it. His behaviour was unforgivable this morning, and –’

‘No problem,’ said Jack graciously. ‘Happens all the time, believe me.’ He nodded towards the boys. ‘Thanks for the chocolates,’ he said, smiling at her. ‘My favourites.’

‘I’m sure they’re not.’

Jack Valentine placed a hand on each hip and studied her. He seemed entirely unconcerned at his state of undress. ‘Go on. At least have a cup of tea or something, now you’re here.’

He led her through to a little kitchen. It was only slightly wider than the hallway, with a couple of take-away containers on the worktop and two plates sitting in the sink. Like the rest of the flat it was painted white over the wallpaper, only in here the paper was woodchip, and the units were all beige with a leather-look finish. The floor was chipped cork tiles. It was, Hope thought, grim.

Jack bent down and fished two mugs out of a cupboard. Hope couldn’t help noticing there was little else in there. And the handle was coming off. She hovered by the worktop self-consciously.

Jack glanced across at her. ‘Here,’ he said, pulling a stool from under the end of it. ‘Sit down.’

She felt uncomfortable seeing him here, in this place. Profoundly uncomfortable. As if she had strayed into a part of his life that she had no business to. It was so not what she had expected. She was embarrassed by the sight of his smeary washing-up-liquid bottle, by the little memo board on the fridge saying ‘coffee’ and ‘ beans’, by the pair of grey socks that were lying on the floor in the corner, by the crocheted tea cosy, the Indian take-away calendar on the wall. The peeling paintwork. The cheap, aged furniture. She was embarrassed for
him
. It hadn’t been like this for Iain. How was it like this for Jack? She was desperate to know. But couldn’t bring herself to ask.

‘Quite the bachelor pad,’ she found herself saying instead. Saying very jovially, barely even as she’d thought it, as if her subconscious mind simply had to acknowledge it. He turned around, a chrome caddy of tea bags in his hand.

‘As shit-holes go, it’s pretty top notch,’ he said, his expression mock-serious. ‘I had to beat off hordes to get it, you know.’ He plopped tea bags into the mugs and reached for a large chrome kettle. ‘You know what they say. Location, location, location.’ He grinned. ‘It’s near the pub.’ He seemed entirely unconcerned.

Hope smiled too, her disquiet now stilled. ‘Where did you live before?’

‘Oh, not far. Roath.’

‘Well, I never! I used to live there. Well, near there.’ How had she never seen him before? ‘You rent this place, do you?’ He couldn’t have bought it. Surely. He nodded.

‘I had a place lined up to buy before Christmas, but it fell through at the last minute.’ He picked up a tea towel from the work top and folded it over the handle on the oven door. ‘So it was either rent somewhere quick or unpack and stay in the spare room a bit longer.’ He grinned at her wryly. ‘I chose the shit-hole. Wouldn’t you?’

Hope nodded, remembering. ‘I guess I would. We – my ex-husband and I – decided to sell our house. We had to live together while we waited for it all to go through. He wouldn’t go. It was horrible.’

‘You could have made him.’

‘So everybody told me at the time. But it’s never that simple, is it? It was –’ she shrugged. ‘Sensible. Rather than him have to move twice.’

The kettle boiled, and Jack poured water into the mugs.

‘Lucky him, then!’ he said cheerfully.

Yes, thought Hope, looking through to the airless little living room, with its threadbare sofa, its hideous chintzy cushions, its tired brown carpet. Lucky him.

‘Your wife kept the house, then?’

Jack nodded. ‘She didn’t want to move. And she’s got a pretty well-paid job, so she was quite happy to take on half the mortgage.’

‘But what about you? I mean, if you’re still paying for it, don’t you get a share in it?’

‘Oh, I will eventually.’ He stirred the tea bags around in the mugs. ‘I’ll start looking for a place in the spring, I guess. I’m in the middle of a lot of stuff at the moment. No rush.’

Hope nodded. ‘Seems a bit unfair, though. I mean, you having to live here, while –’

‘Believe me, I’m not complaining. You could put me in a cardboard box and I’d be happy. I’m just glad that it’s over. That I’m out of it. Free.’

Hope watched while he fished out the tea bags, and then stirred in milk. His profile, she saw, as if noticing for the first time, was angular, Roman. The sort you might describe as heroic. He’d have to be, she thought, living here.

She accepted the mug he passed her. ‘And in your bachelor pad,’ she said.

‘You said it! No, I’m quite happy to let the dust settle. See how things pan out. I don’t want to commit myself to too much else right now, but I’ve got some irons in the fire workwise… so we’ll see.’

‘That sounds exciting. What sort of irons? On the radio?’

He shook his head. ‘TV. But it’s early days. Like I say, we’ll see.’

She sipped the tea. It was Earl Grey, which surprised her. ‘Wow. Quite the Renaissance man.’

‘Do what?’

‘You. Your life sounds so exciting compared to mine.’

He blew steam from his mug.

‘You know what?’ he said, meeting her gaze and holding it. ‘It certainly has its moments.’

They stayed for over an hour.

Poor Jack Valentine, she thought, as she and Tom pulled out into the road and drove away while he waved. He’d made the flat cosy enough, but it was still pretty dismal. It seemed so unfair. He was, thought Hope, as they drove off down the street, such a very nice man. So much not what she’d originally thought. She wondered what kind of woman he’d been married to. It was hard to reconcile the person she had just been with, with the idea of a wife playing fast and loose. What was wrong with him, she wondered? What was the hidden character defect that would make a sane woman want to leave someone like him? But thinking that made her realise that perhaps, even at this very moment, he might be wondering that very thing about her. Divorce. Such an ugly word. Full of uncomfortable implications. That was the greatest tragedy of divorce, she decided. The nagging unease that there had to be something not quite right about a person to make another person want to leave them. Try as she might, she couldn’t get past the feeling that there must have been something very wrong with her for Iain to have had all the affairs that he did.

She pushed the thought away angrily. There was nothing wrong with her. Nothing whatsoever. She’d just had the misfortune to have married a man for whom fidelity in marriage was an optional extra. And then the even greater misfortune of not having realised this until she’d produced two children and was effectively pinioned to her position in the triad. Leaving Iain then had simply not been an option, however much society might have had it that it was. She had no job, no money, no financial security, no pension, no nothing. And two children to consider. No. All she’d had in any real quantity was a feeling of stultifying fear. So she’d practised forgiveness. She’d been great at forgiveness. And Iain, who didn’t want to leave her in any case, had been good at reassuring her that he wouldn’t do it again. He loved her. It didn’t mean anything. It reallydidn’t mean anything. He just couldn’t help himself sometimes. He loved her. Yes, yes, he knew he’d done it before. But he wouldn’t do it again. He promised.

The change, when it came, had been a revelation to Hope. When it dawned on her that she didn’t need to feel scared any more. The children were older, she was working part-time, and Madeleine, dear Madeleine, had given her the belief that she
could
have a different future. It was easy after that. Painful, but still easy. As with childbirth, the light at the end of the tunnel went a long way towards dulling the pain.

Well, she was free now, and could count her blessings on all ten fingers, while Iain could get on and count his regrets. Not, she was sure, that he had very many. But that was fine, too. She’d got past all that now. She could allow him some happiness. This, to her mind, and to her quiet relief, had turned out to be the greatest freedom of all.

Chapter 10

But the trouble with freedom, Hope decided, was that there were only so many varieties of it that were actually life-enhancing. The freedom to eat crisps in bed was good. The freedom to watch ‘EastEnders’ without a disparaging commentary was even better. The freedom to do what she wanted when she wanted and with whom she wanted was not all it was cracked up to be.

Most freedoms, she decided, were not the holy grail they had seemed. They were simply manifestations of the fact that she had too many choices. The scary potentiality of her current state. The most fundamental of these was the freedom that was inherent in not being part of a couple, and while she was becoming perfectly used to, and even appreciative of, the many benefits of this particular state of affairs, it did not come without its downside. There was the sex, for a start. The freedom to moon about like some ditzy fifteen-year-old over a guy she hardly knew was becoming an unmanageable side-effect of that one. She picked up the half-finished cushion cover that had fallen on the floor beside the bed and wondered, not for the first time, if she was losing her senses. What was she doing? And had she really been up sewing so late? She couldn’t remember falling asleep. She shoved the cushion in with the others at the bottom of her wardrobe, and sighed. There was the love downside too. Hope didn’t want to head off down any love downsides right now, for sure – way too frightening – but on the other hand she had to dip her toe in the water sometime. Just as she couldn’t imagine celibacy as a life-style, she also couldn’t really see herself growing old without someone to grow old with. And now, as if to remind her, it was her first Valentine’s day as an officially single woman, and she was entirely without a Valentine.

Hopeful or actual. Paper or flesh.

But no. She was wrong. She’d got mail.

‘Oh God.’

‘Oh what?’

Hope’s mother had come early, to take Chloe to school, because Hope had to go to the printers before work to check the proofs for the race registration forms. She closed the card again quickly, wishing it would dematerialise in her hand.

‘Aha!’ said her mother, plucking the card from her fingers. ‘Would that be a Valentine card?’

Hope nodded. ‘I’m afraid so.’

‘How wonderful! A secret admirer!’ She opened the card again. ‘Oh, ho! Notso secret!’

‘Exactly,’ said Hope, dragging the brush through her hair and scowling at her reflection in the hall mirror. She should have expected it, shouldn’t she?

‘So who’s this Simon, then?’ asked her mother, putting the card on the hall table while she shrugged off her coat.

‘Simon Armitage. He works with me. He’s the accountant at Heartbeat.’ How could she face work today? Thank God she wasn’t going straight there. Her mother plopped her coat over the newel post and picked the card up again.

‘And?’

‘And what?’

‘What’s he like?’

‘Late thirties. Brown hair. A bit overweight. Wears sleeveless sweaters. Jolly. Unassuming –’

‘And is he nice?’

‘No! I mean, yes, he’s nice. He’s perfectly nice, Mother. But he’s not
nice
. Oh, God. What a pain.’

‘A pain? How can it be a pain?’

‘Because it is, believe me.’

‘Well, I think it’s sweet. Never look a gift horse in the mouth, my girl.’ Her mother narrowed her eyes, the better to train them on her soul. ‘Nothing from your Mr Valentine, then?’

Thinking about looking in Simon’s mouth made Hope feel quite queasy. Thinking about Jack Valentine made her feel altogether different. And nice though that was, she was beginning to wish that it didn’t, because it made her feel so anxious as well. But she couldn’t seem to help it. He kept invading her brain. She wished he’d phone her. When she’d seen him it seemed so, well, as if he might do. And yet he hadn’t. She frowned. ‘Mum, he is not
my
Mr Valentine.’

Her mother clucked dismissively. ‘You’d think with a name like that he’d send lots, wouldn’t you? I’ll bet he gets a fair few.’

‘I’m getting five, Gran.’ This was Chloe, who was still in her pyjamas and stumbling blearily down the stairs. Oh, to be nine again, thought Hope. To be nine and untroubled by the vicissitudes of love.

‘I don’t doubt that, young lady,’ said Hope’s mother, smiling. Hope glanced at her daughter and smiled too.

‘And just what makes you so sure about that?’

‘We did an arrangement,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t decide who I was going to send one to, so I told them all if they sent me one I’d send them one back.’

‘So you’re sending fiveValentines?’ said Hope’s mother. ‘You little minx, you!’

Chloe arrived at the foot of the stairs and accepted the kiss Hope planted on her forehead.

‘Oh, no,’ she said airily. ‘I just made that up.’

Hope wondered if there was enough time to change her top, belatedly recalling that Simon had commented on how much it suited her the last time she wore it. God. Signals. Signals. She mustn’t send him signals. Did she have anything shroud-like upstairs?

‘Like mother like daughter,’ said her mother, chuckling to herself as she followed Hope out to wave her off. ‘You were always a right one with the boys. Bees round a honey pot.’

‘Huh. Whereas now all I get are the drones.’ Which was unfair. There was nothing wrong with Simon. She just wanted to kill him, that was all.

‘There’s no need to be so testy, love. You got a Valentine’s card. You should think yourself lucky. I’ve not had one for twenty-two years.’

Hope went down to the car and got in, her day already altogether spoiled. She wasn’t feeling testy. Relieved, not testy.

She had so nearly sent Jack one. So verynearly. Well, thank God she hadn’t.

‘You have heaps, you bastard,’ Patti announced equably when Jack arrived at the studios. ‘
Heaps.’
She scratched her stomach. Today’s ring was green. Nestling in her flesh like the eye of a witch’s cat. ‘I only got seven,’ she went on. ‘And three of them are from that mad bloke in Neath. I thought the signal didn’t reach Neath, Hil.’

Jack sat down at his desk. Big bloody deal. He surveyed the pile of envelopes in front of him. Getting Valentine cards simply came with the territory. He opened the top one without interest.

“
To Jack
,” he read out. “
The knave of my heart.”

‘Do you think he’s a stalker?’ Patti interrupted him. ‘I mean, listen to this. “
Dearest Patti, will you come and pat me? Come sit on my lap and straddle my knees?
” – yuk! That’s a bit near the mark isn’t it? And look, the postmark’s Cardiff.’

Jack threw the card back on the pile. ‘You should be so lucky.’

Later, once the show was over and they’d written most of the links for the next day, Jack sat and went through his pile of cards more carefully. A pleasing thought had wormed its way into his mind. There might be. You never knew. He fished out the latest letter she’d sent him about the fun run and studied her signature. For all he knew, any one of these cards could be from Hope Shepherd. Since seeing her again, he’d been thinking about her, often, despite his determination not to. Had even been into Smith’s and looked at cards himself. But he hadn’t bought one. For one thing, he’d felt a prize prat – the place had been teeming with women – and, for another, he wouldn’t know what to put in it. Valentines cards were just a commercial cash-cow, strictly for adolescents and girls. He scanned the remaining envelopes for matches, but none looked hopeful and he put the letter back in his drawer, feeling stupid. If he wanted to let Hope Shepherd know he fancied her he had only to call her up and tell her, didn’t he? How many times had he asked himself that question and found himself groping for a sensible answer? There was the niceness thing, of course, but Jack was reluctantly beginning to visit the notion that perhaps that wasn’t all there was to it. Perhaps his reluctance was more about
him
. Perhaps his hypothetical shag ’em and leave ’em mentality was not, in reality, about seeing what was out there, but about avoiding any scrutiny of what was within.

Christ. How did he get to be someone who did all this prevaricating? He blamed Lydia, he decided. Utterly. You couldn’t go to bed with someone like Lydia for fifteen years without some residual damage to your sexual self-esteem. He wondered if perhaps she’d been dipped in liquid nitrogen at birth. He flicked through more envelopes. He was halfway down the pile when he noticed one with distinctive spiky handwriting. Allegra Staunton’s, in fact. She’d used an italic pen and chocolate-brown ink. Like she always did. Where did you buy chocolate-brown ink, for God’s sake? He opened it with some trepidation.

The card slid out easily – a stylish affair, hand-painted and assembled, by the looks of it. So very Allegra. There were no words on the front, just a collage thing – two hessian chillies, if he wasn’t mistaken.

Inside the card, it said very little. Just ‘
Jack – phwoarrrrrrr – Alleg
ra’.

She was, Jack reflected, slipping it safely away again, a very singular species of woman.

It had been a busy afternoon, and an even busier evening. Jack still had a couple of pre-records to get done, and the last of these had become a protracted affair, the production assistant, who had fixed the thing up for three, having failed to point out that the subject of his interview (a crumpled academic they generally consulted on all matters sociological) was not in Caerphilly, as she usually was, but on an ‘Emotional Intelligence at Work’ seminar in North Dakota. And therefore, when they’d first called her, asleep.

It was almost nine when he finally downed tools and made it home. There was another small pile of post for him on the hall table downstairs and, having got himself a beer, he went into the living room to go through it.

He was no longer thinking Valentine card at this point, and had no prior expectations when he opened the typewritten white envelope. He was surprised, therefore, to find a card inside. No hearts on this one, just a bunch of pink flowers.

Hope sprang eternal. Perhaps she was making a move after all.

He opened the card and his heart sank immediately.

‘
Dear Jack,

Just to let you know I’m thinking of you today.

Thanks for the happy times,

Lydia xx’

His first reaction was to laugh. The woman needed therapy. Or an Emotional Intelligence seminar. North Dakota would do the bitch nicely. His second was to feel really, physically, wall-punchingly angry. So much so that he was half out of his chair and heading for the phone before he stopped himself. Instead, he ripped the card neatly in two. And then four. And then eight. How dare she? How
dare
she! Patronising cow. He downed the rest of his beer in one swallow and stomped off to get another from the fridge.