Authors: Maeve Haran
Willing herself to get up, knowing that if she didn’t she might never get up again, she started to zip up David’s cases with unaccustomed violence. She loved the sound of zips
closing. Like something tearing.
For a moment she closed her eyes and imagined the sound of reasonable Liz Ward calmly tearing up every shred of clothing Britt Williams owned. It was a wonderful sound.
She’d read of discarded lovers who shredded their rival’s clothes and posted them through their letter box. How could anyone be so vindictive, she’d always wondered. Now she
knew.
She lifted the suitcases and started to carry them to the door. Halfway across the bedroom she noticed a photograph of herself and the children in a silver frame. Quickly she unzipped one of the
pockets and slipped it in. She’d like him at least to remember what he’d lost. What screwing Britt had cost him. And picking up the suitcases again she hoped he’d realize it
hadn’t been worth it.
‘Mummy, what are you doing with Daddy’s things?’
Liz whipped round when she heard Jamie’s voice. She hadn’t even heard them all come back in. And hadn’t she locked the door? Oh God she’d forgotten the door of the
en
suite
bathroom. Slowly she put down the suitcases and looked at him. None of her management training, nor her stand up battles with Conrad, nor her endless negotiations for money or airtime
had prepared her for this, the worst moment of her life.
‘Come and sit down, darling.’ She lifted him on to her knee and held him very tight. As she looked into his eyes, the wariness she found there almost made her break down.
You’re going to hurt me, aren’t you?
they seemed to say.
No matter how you beat about the bush that’s what it comes down to.
She had thought she would tell him the truth: that Mummy and Daddy didn’t love each other any more. But now she knew she couldn’t. He deserved better. He deserved a lie.
‘You know how busy Daddy is? Well he’s going away on business for a while, that’s why I’ve packed his cases.’
‘When will he be back?’
‘Not for a while, darling.’
‘How long?’
‘A few months. But it doesn’t mean he doesn’t love you, darling. Daddy loves you very very much.’
Jamie looked at her suspiciously: ‘Are you splitting up?’ Liz looked at him amazed. ‘Tom’s parents are splitting up, their nanny told Susie, and Katie’s parents
split up last term.’
God Almighty, what are we doing to our children, Liz asked herself, that they understand such things at five years old?
‘Yes, darling, we’re splitting up,’ and, unable to stop herself, she added, ‘for the moment.’
‘Is it because I left my Ghostbusters on the stairs this morning?’
‘No darling, it’s not because of you, I promise. It’s between Mummy and Daddy.’
Jamie looked at her disbelievingly as he slid off the bed and slipped quietly from the room.
A moment later he was back, his arms loaded with toys which he dumped carefully in her lap. ‘If I give all my Ghostbusters to Ben, will Daddy come back?’
Liz had to turn away to stop him seeing her tears. His Ghostbusters were his pride and joy. But how could she tell him that all the Ghostbusters in Hamleys wouldn’t bring Daddy home? Daddy
had a new toy now.
Britt stood open-mouthed as the taxi driver unloaded two huge suitcases, an overnight bag, an assortment of tennis and squash rackets, a standard lamp and an ancient moth-eaten
overcoat on to the deep pile of her new cream carpet and cheerily informed her that there was £22 to pay. For a moment she thought about sending it on to a hotel but she knew David well
enough to guess that, handled wrongly, he would go straight back to Liz. And although her intentions at the beginning of their affair had been strictly dishonourable, over the last few weeks
she’d grown fonder of him than of any other man she’d ever known.
Britt surveyed the vast pile of luggage and sat down in the hall next to it. God, what a mess! She couldn’t remember a worse day. She hadn’t meant to hurt Liz, and she certainly
hadn’t intended breaking up her marriage. She’d persuaded herself that a little fling Liz never found out about couldn’t do any real harm. Then she’d gone and fallen in
love, for Christ’s sake! With her best friend’s husband of all people. She. Who always played by the rules, even if the rules were her own and might not pass the tests of conventional
morality. But love made you careless. And it had made her break her first rule with married men: never eat in trendy restaurants and never, never ask them to stay overnight.
And this was the result.
Liz sat at the desk in their bedroom and stared into space. It was nine-thirty and she was exhausted. Jamie had cried himself to sleep at last and Daisy, picking up his mood
without understanding why, had refused to settle and wailed miserably until Liz finally rocked her to sleep ten minutes ago.
Now she was sitting with a large gin and tonic and a calculator working out their finances. She’d certainly picked her moment to leave Metro. Without her salary she had about eight
thousand pounds in savings. With the mortgage and bills on this place it wouldn’t last five minutes. So, should she get another job in television? No, that would mean it had all been for
nothing. Now it was more important than ever that they find a new life that was better than the old. Otherwise she would have lost David and her career and she still wouldn’t see her
children. She had to find a way of living on her savings till she knew what she was going to do.
She took a large gulp of G and T. Maybe she should bite the bullet and accept that now they wouldn’t be needing this huge place. But getting rid of it seemed somehow so final. And anyway
it wasn’t the answer to her immediate cash problems. Selling would take six months, maybe more. And it would need David’s agreement.
Of course, now that she’d left Metro she didn’t need to be in London at all. It was kind of Susie to offer to stay on but Liz could look after the kids herself. They’d need her
more than ever now that David had gone. And then the answer came to her. They’d go to the cottage! She’d be near her mother and Ginny. And the children loved it in Sussex. It would be
like going home.
It was the perfect solution. There was nothing to keep her here without her job or David. Besides, she needed to get away from the memories. Everything here reminded her of him. And there would
be one other advantage: she’d be miles away from the bitching and the gossip when London found to its delight that the perfect media marriage was in ruins.
For a moment she wondered how they would get on at Metro without her. Would Conrad have given the job to Claudia by now? They were probably out celebrating at The Groucho at this very moment.
Firmly she put the thought out of her mind.
She started to make a list of all the things they’d need. Now that she’d made up her mind, there was no point hanging around. They’d go tomorrow. She’d get away from
London where people shafted and screwed each other and start again. And this time she’d learn to be a real mother. Like Ginny.
‘Mum, have you packed my Zog, Evil Master of the Outreach?’
Liz tried not to lose her temper and unpacked the car for the third time. First Daisy had lost her precious blanket, then Liz had realized the map was under the suitcases. And now Zog. Secretly
she hoped he was lost for ever along with Thor, the Faceless One and Yag, Lord of all the Zoids. But just at the moment Jamie needed all the friends he could get.
She found Zog in the picnic basket and handed him over to Jamie. Suddenly the memory of David teasing him unmercifully leapt into her memory and almost started her crying again.
‘Playing with dolls at your age?’ David used to grin. ‘They’re not dolls!’ Jamie would scream, outraged at this assault on his five-year-old virility. ‘Of
course they’re dolls,’ David would laugh, ‘just like Daisy’s.’ And then seeing Jamie’s distress he would lift him up and hold him. ‘OK, old son, of course
they’re not dolls. Silly old Dad.’ And Jamie would put his arms round David and shake his head. ‘Silly old Dad,’ he’d shout, ‘Silly old Dad!’
She was suddenly glad to be getting away from this houseful of memories that now seemed so empty. It was funny, David was at work so much and away so often that foolishly she’d thought it
would lessen the impact of his departure. Instead it left a huge, gaping hole in their lives. Without his noisy games and relentless energy the whole house seemed in mourning.
But when the moment finally came to say goodbye to Susie, who would be packing her own bags and going off to stay with her parents until she started her new job in a few days’ time, Liz
felt the tears start up again. Mercifully it took all her concentration to inch her way past the mountain of stinking black rubbish bags spewing on to the pavement behind her and out of the parking
space in front of their home. Why hadn’t the dustmen been? Then she remembered they had. Some brave householder must have forgotten their Christmas tip last year and was still paying the
price ten months on.
And with Susie waving frantically at last they were away. As she drove through the midday streets, choked with traffic jams and aggressive drivers, she wondered what she’d miss about
London. The galleries? The theatre? The smart shops?
But she never went to galleries, never had time for theatres or wine bars after work and with children shopping for clothes was a dimly remembered dream. She worked. And she had kids. That was
it.
So what
did
people like her do in this exciting, stimulating city which was the art capital of the world, the hub of opera, of finance, the home of street fashion, the city where they
invented the punk?
They went to dinner with other people who had children too and complained about schools, and the standard of health care and litter on the streets, that’s what. In London, dinner party
conversation ranged daringly from private versus state education, through car theft and mugging to the relative merits of having a burglar alarm on the front of your house that everyone ignored,
including the burglar, to one that went off in the police station and everyone ignored there instead.
Once Liz had spent a full half-hour at a party engrossed in a conversation about Neighbourhood Watch with a man whose face she vaguely recognized, only to find later that he was a world-famous
writer all of whose books she’d actually read. ‘Oh God, what a waste,’ she’d cried to her hosts, ‘I could have talked to him about his novels.’
‘Don’t worry,’ said her friends, ‘he’s much more interested in talking about Neighbourhood Watch like everyone else.’
That was London for you.
And as she drove out through the dirty streets it was almost as though things had been arranged to make her leaving painless. A cute ten-year-old swore at his friend, over some imagined slight,
his face contorted with hate and rage; a young man in a fast car cut her up and, when she hooted in mild protest, rolled down his window and barraged her with a litany of four-letter words. On the
pavement she saw a skinhead walking a bulldog in a jewelled harness slavering and tugging to get at an old lady’s pet poodle. And she felt an unexpected relief that she was leaving the
city.
Once she’d loved the excitement and the buzz of urban life but now she realized she longed to kiss goodbye to the whole melting pot of crime and dirt, greed and tension. How could anyone
want to live here any more?
Go on, you old reactionary, her streak of honesty wasn’t letting her off the hook so easily. You’re just old and settled that’s all. You loved it once for the very things that
now you loathe, like a lover whose louche charms you fell for but now disapprove of. In six months you’ll be moaning how you can’t get avocados in the country and have to drive six
miles to Brighton to see a decent film!
But as they drove out of London towards Sussex, she felt the tension ease. In an hour they would reach Lewes and after that it would be country lanes.
As Jamie and Daisy slept Liz rolled down her window to let in the afternoon sunshine. She loved the slanting light of October and already the trees were turning. Every year she’d told
herself she’d come to the cottage for the autumn and watch the colours change and somehow they never had.
Beyond Lewes there was a junction, and as they turned right for Seamington she felt the excitement grow until it was almost physical. On either side of the narrow road the golden branches leaned
over the lane like welcoming arms. A girl on a pony clopping along in front of them waved a greeting. The brass cockerel on top of the little church’s steeple whirled in the wind, and the
clouds blew across the sun, turning the wide open fields of the Downs into patchwork. And she noticed with pleasure that the tea gardens hadn’t yet closed for winter.
And there it was at the far end of the village. Crossways. The flint and thatch cottage nestling in a fold of the Downs that her grandmother had lived in for the last years of her happy life,
and left to Liz, never knowing it would turn out to be the blessed bolt-hole that it was today.
As she unpacked the boot she stood and looked at it for a moment. She had always had a strong sense of fate. And standing in the shadow of this lovely, peaceful old house with its herbaceous
border of asters and bright chrysanthemums almost chocolate box in its beauty, she felt its calm reach out to her. And she knew that all this couldn’t be happening for nothing – losing
the job, losing David. It all had to mean something. As Jamie ran on ahead and she lifted the sleeping Daisy from her car seat she knew that this wasn’t the end of her old life as she had
felt in the depths of her misery. It was the beginning of a new one. It had to be.
‘Oh, for goodness’ sake Jamie! Stop whingeing and go and play with Sam next door!’
‘He’s not in.’
‘Play in the garden then.’
‘It’s raining.’
‘Well put your mac on!’ Liz tried to keep the exasperation out of her voice.
‘We left it in London.’
Liz put down the recipe for home-made steak-and-kidney pudding and picked him up, struck by a sudden pang of guilt. That was the tone she was supposed to have left in London along with the job
and the stress that went with it. Instead of which she was rapidly finding that motherhood was just as demanding as running a TV company. How
could
she snap at Jamie like that? He
wasn’t as happy down here as she’d hoped. She’d thought with Sam – the six-year-old friend he’d always loved playing with at weekends – next door and
Ginny’s son Ben only five minutes away that he’d settle down in no time. She was just going to have to be more patient. Very soon now his transfer to the village school would come
through and he’d be with Ben. Surely that would help.