Every Vow You Break (8 page)

So when Lara heard about the council job, she jumped at it. The pay, while not riches, covered the bills, and the hours were perfect: nine thirty until three, five days a week. She could leave the house to Marcus, and nothing would fall apart if he had to go away for work. She applied for the job and got it, despite feeling she was somehow bluffing her way in.

And, she wondered as she arranged Marcus’s clothes on the shelf above Jack’s things, where had that got her? Not very far.

She hung up his one good shirt, a Paul Smith number she had bought him the previous Christmas. It was beautiful: blue with tiny pink flowers on it. But she couldn’t look at it without remembering how annoyed he had been at how much he thought she had spent on it. His estimate, as it happened, was well below the mark.

It had taken her one week to realise that in working for the council she had dug herself into a graveyard of ambition. Her office was full of people who liked an easy life: any display of spark was met with mistrust. And she had no respect whatsoever for her team leader, a vacillating man in his early forties who didn’t have it in him to make a single decision.

But she stuck with it because it fitted her life. And when Jack – as Marcus said, her
happy
accident – came along, the council’s maternity policies proved to be munificent. When he was six months old, she secured a place in the subsidised workplace nursery and returned to work. It all seemed so effortless that her new plan of giving up her tenured, risen-through-the-pay scales status and going back to freelancing looked bonkers.

But something had to change. She was bored. So bored she sometimes felt like screaming. When she first married Marcus, she had imagined she would lead a life of bohemian glamour. Now she found herself a local government employee with a pension plan and a weekly time sheet.

She knew that, older and wiser, she could now make a business work. In a few years’ time she would have her own office – a modern affair, she imagined, of taut steel wire banisters and pale oak – and two or three employees working on contracts with those mysterious blue chip companies that paid so well.

The deal she had struck with herself after the abortion was that if there were not going to be any more babies, there would be a career. If her marriage was going to survive after all these years, she had to make herself happy again.

She sat down on the squeaky bed and finally got her own few things out of the suitcase. What had she been thinking when she packed? Besides her running gear and the clothes she had worn on the journey, she had one pair of olive linen trousers, a green sleeveless top, two T-shirts, an inky tunic, a black jersey Boden thing and a pink floral dress she had bought years ago in a slim phase and hoped still fitted her. There were not enough clothes there, not really for a whole summer.

Wondering what she was going to wear to the barbecue, she eyed the pink dress. Before she let herself have a chance to think about it, she had peeled off her clothes and slipped it over her head. It was low cut, with a slightly structured front section that laced up like a corset. Smoothing down the front, she looked at herself in the worn, full-length mirror someone had propped up against the wall thinking, no doubt, that no actor’s bedroom is complete without one.

She was pleased to see that the dress fitted. Her breasts were still quite large from her recent pregnancy, giving her something of a cleavage. She turned for a side view, breathing in as much as she thought she could manage for the whole evening. It wasn’t too bad. She decided that this dress would be her outfit for the night, worn with her denim jacket and her black pashmina.

She was still looking at herself when she heard the staircase rumble under Marcus’s heavy step.

‘So the big ’uns have taken the little ’un off to the playground, or something,’ he said.

‘Great.’

‘Can we get the suitcases off the bed?’ he said. ‘I’ve got my lines to do and there’s nowhere else for me to go.’

Lara thought of the big, empty house, about how many perfect line-learning nooks and crannies there were.

‘Don’t you want to wait until you’ve done the read-through before you learn them?’ she said. ‘You’ve always said that’s the best way.’

‘Best way unless you’ve got the fuck-off lead part,’ Marcus said, smiling and pushing the suitcases on to the floor. Then he stopped and looked at Lara. ‘What’s that you’ve got on? Did you buy it?’

‘It’s ancient. What do you think?’ She breathed in and held her arms out.

Marcus looked her up and down.

‘Yes,’ he said in his slightly strangled acting voice.

‘You don’t like it, do you?’

‘I do,’ he said.

‘What’s the matter with it?’ She wished he was a better actor.

‘Don’t be angry with me.’

‘I won’t be angry with you if you tell me the truth,’ she said.

‘OK. Well, you look a little, well, bulgy in it.’

‘Bulgy?’

‘Um yes.’

Lara paused for a second and took a sideways glance in the mirror, catching herself unawares, not pulling in.

It’s true, she thought, her spirits plummeting.

‘Thank you for your honesty.’

‘No look. It’s lovely. It really is.’

Lara pulled the pink floral dress off and, hung it up at the far end of a rail running down one side of the eaves room, where it would stay all summer. She walked naked back into the bedroom holding the black jersey thing Johnnie Boden promised would flatter any shape. Marcus was already lying on the bed, studying his script. He didn’t look up at her.

She slipped the jersey thing on.

‘How about this?’ she said. ‘With my amber beads?’

Marcus sighed and raised his eyes. ‘What? Oh yes, that’s a lot better,’ he said. Then, pointedly, he returned to his script.

‘Right,’ Lara said, taking off the dress and hanging it up again. ‘Well. I’m going to have a shower, then I’m going to get on for a bit.’

‘Great,’ he said.

‘We’ll leave for the show at about four thirty, then?’

‘OK, babe. Could I just get on with this?’ He gestured to his script.

‘Fine,’ she said. And, picking up her laptop, she went out of the door, pulling it tight shut behind her.

‘THIS HEAT IS DISGUSTING,’ BELLA SAID, AS SHE, OLLY AND JACK
dangled on the school playground swings.

The wooded hills beyond the perimeter of the playground made Bella feel tiny, encircled in their vast shawl of greenery. They were different to the South Downs back home, those long ridges of chalky grassland that spelled a welcome when she returned from a trip, filling her with freshness and possibility.

These New York hills were something altogether different. They hemmed her in, as if they were sucking the breath from her and transpiring it as yet more wetness in the awful, muggy heat of the late July afternoon.

These New York hills made her feel watched.

A trickle of sweat worked its way down the hollow of her back.

‘Ugh.’ She shuddered.

‘Push!’ Jack commanded from his own swing.

‘Your turn, Olly,’ Bella said.

‘But …’

‘Just do it.’ She pulled back and swung herself up, pointing her feet in front of her, silhouetting them against the hazy sun.

‘Shitting hell,’ Olly said. But he got up and pushed until Jack was giggling and soaring, his small legs catching the arc of each upward swing at the same time as Bella, so they hung together for a second each time in the dense air.

Bella and Olly had reached something of a truce since the day before – a practical step based on the fact that they were rather thrown together on Trout Island. In their usual manner, no words had been spoken about this – the ability to communicate silently with one another being one of the more socially acceptable aspects of their connection.

‘Looks like we’ve got company,’ Olly said, nodding over to the trees by the graveyard. Bella squinted across the shimmering tarmac and saw three boys, a little older than Olly and herself, leaning on a couple of shady headstones, swigging from bottles of Bud and passing a smoke around. One of them pushed a basketball from hand to hand, rolling it along the dirt.

‘Mmmmmmm … Reefer …’ Olly said, sniffing the air like a tracker dog.

‘Calm down, drug fiend,’ Bella said. ‘Do you think they’re OK? They look a bit sketchy to me.’ The boys were dressed almost identically in dirty baggy T-shirts, massive shorts and baseball caps. Despite the beating, sweltering sun, all three had preternaturally pale, malnourished skin. And they were eyeing Bella, Olly and Jack like a pack of territorial mongrels.

‘Are you worried we’ve taken over their “turf”?’ Olly teased. ‘Do you think it’s going to be Sharks and Jets or Crips and Bloods?’

‘They might have guns,’ Bella said, trying not to move her mouth too much in case her lips could be read.

‘I doubt it. Look at them. They’re just a bunch of yokels,’ he said. ‘Observe and learn.’ He gave Jack one last big push and wandered over the playground, hands in pockets, towards the boys.

‘Olly!’ Bella said. But it was useless trying to stop him. Olly just did things like that. He had no sense, and no reserve. Usually, though, he had charm enough to wangle himself out of the sticky spots this approach got him into. Their father had a similar way with him, but it tended to be so unctuous it embarrassed his offspring. They also got very peeved that the same delightfulness was rarely on display once the family doors were shut and there was no outside audience for it. With Olly, Bella thought, it was more ingrained, more in his bones than merely manufactured for public show.

Being the opposite of her brother in this way, Bella at once admired and was exasperated by his get-up-and-go. Sometimes it also made her feel like a complete mouse.

‘What a moron,’ she said to Jack, who giggled. But she had to admit she was impressed as Olly shook each of the boys’ hands, introducing himself and pointing out his sister and brother over by the swings. Then he selected a gravestone to sit on and accepted a beer and a toke on the joint.

‘For Christ’s sake,’ Bella said.

‘Christ sake,’ Jack echoed, shaking his head in imitation of his big sister.

‘Well, that’s the last bit of help I’m going to be getting from Olly this afternoon,’ she said. ‘Do you want a lolly?’

‘Lolly!’ Jack replied, nodding vigorously.

Bella slipped off her swing and lifted Jack from his.

‘Hey sis, you off?’ Olly yelled across the playground.

‘What does it look like?’ she called back. She heard the other boys snigger. ‘Don’t forget Dad wants you home by four,’ she added, hoping to bring him down a peg or two.

‘Whatever,’ Olly said. The sniggering grew into laughter and they all high-fived him.

How on earth does he do it? Bella thought, bending to retrieve Jack’s buggy.

They crossed the road and went past the theatre building. The doors were closed, but Bella could hear show music from within. Someone – it had to be James – shouted ‘AND one and two and three AND one.’ Then he clapped his hands and yelled, ‘No, no, NO!’

A large version of the awful poster for the musical had been pasted on a board outside. Bella looked at her watch. She had kept it on British time, so she had to do a couple of calculations before she worked out they had exactly two hours before the show began.

‘Sounds like a bag of shite,’ she said to Jack.

‘Bag of shite,’ he giggled.

‘Wash your mouth out young man. Do you want to get into the buggy?’

‘No,’ Jack said. ‘I want my lolly.’

So, very slowly, stopping to inspect every ant and cricket that crossed their path, they headed off in search of a lolly. They reached Main Street, which was, as ever, deserted. To their left stood a small fire station. Bella wondered if its proximity to the theatre had anything to do with the choice of subject matter for the musical. It was staffed, a sign proclaimed, by volunteers drawn from the Trout Island Community, although there didn’t appear to be anyone around at the moment. So when the siren went off for real, Bella imagined, people would pour out of all the houses, pulling on yellow coats and hats, slinging their axes and life-saving equipment over their shoulders, like in a movie.

Despite the lack of cars on the road, Bella decided to cross at what looked like a zebra crossing in front of a clapboard church whose noticeboard proclaimed in stuck-on plastic letters:
For the road to heaven, turn right and go straight
.

Yeah, right, Bella thought, taking Jack’s hand and stepping off the kerb. Out of the blue, a dun-coloured car appeared on the road. Perhaps it was because it was a similar colour to the tarmac or perhaps it was because she hadn’t heard the engine over the ever-present electric hum of the cicadas, but Bella just didn’t see it until she and Jack were on the road. Confident it would stop – she was on a zebra crossing – she carried on leading Jack across, but the driver blasted the horn and sped straight at them, showing no sign of slowing down. Bella only just managed to snatch Jack out of its path.

The driver – invisible behind tinted glass – let the car window down just enough to stick an arm out, extend a middle finger and yell ‘Asshole!’ before roaring away. It was a gravelly voice, one that had no doubt seen too many cigarettes, but it was unmistakably the voice of a woman.

‘Blimey,’ Bella said. ‘You OK, Jack?’

Jack nodded, speechless.

‘Perhaps the zebra crossings aren’t the same here as back home.’

Looking both ways this time, she led him across the road and they mounted the steps to the steep pavement some five feet higher than the other side.

The path was uneven and cracked, pushed up by roots from giant trees in the front gardens lining the road. Bella was glad Jack had decided to walk and she didn’t have to negotiate this surface with the buggy. She held tightly on to him in case he toppled over.

They went on, past the library and a couple of junk shops, including one that seemed to have some interesting old clothes in it. Bella noted it for a future visit, perhaps with her mother. Another, shoddier shop had a badly painted sign declaring it to be a ‘Consignment Store’, whatever that was. On its veranda was a selection of sit-in toddler toys, a grubby playpen and a forlorn Wendy house, so old and scruffy they didn’t divert Jack for one second from his lolly quest.