Life Begins

Amanda Brookfield was born in 1960 and educated at University College, Oxford. She began her career working in advertising and then as a freelance journalist in Argentina. Her twelve previous novels include
Marriage Games, Relative Love
and
The Simple Rules of Love
. She is married with two sons and lives in London.

I sit where only the tips of the waves can reach, slapping my palms at the foamy water. The sand is gritty between my toes, the ties of my sun bonnet tight under my chin. Big hands scoop me high. My father’s face is close, leathered and smiling, his blue eyes sharp against his tan. When he throws me I laugh, safe in the knowledge that I shall be caught. My mother sits reading in a deckchair, her slender white freckled limbs neatly circled by the protective shadow of a large wooden parasol. She wears a blue sarong and matching headscarf, from which one wild curl of auburn hair has broken free to bounce across her forehead. As I shriek she peers over the black ridge of her sunglasses and smiles, her lacquered eyelashes blinking in the glare.

Charlotte unlocked the door and pushed, with some difficulty, against the pile of morning post lodged on the mat. As she did so her neighbour emerged from his own front door wearing his faded tartan dressing-gown and the backless leather slippers that exposed the yellow crusts of his heels. ‘Happy Valentine’s, my dear,’ he barked, bending down to swap the empty milk bottle in his hands for the full one parked next to his recycling box. He straightened and clutched his back with a grimace.

‘Thanks, Mr Beasley, same to you.’

‘Young Sam well, is he?’

‘Oh, yes, thanks… I’ve just taken him to school.’ Charlotte, now riffling through the mail, cast a doubtful glance at the Volkswagen, which sat like a large frosted tea-cake next to the for-sale sign stapled to her gatepost. Late as
usual for her twelve-year-old’s school run, she had hurled the contents of the kettle at the front and rear windscreens, only to have to chisel most of the ice off with her fingernails as the water instantly froze. Sam had watched her stony-eyed from the front seat, resting his chin on the top of his rucksack. The car had refused to start on the first three attempts, then performed its new clunking noise, the one that hadn’t yet lasted quite long enough to warrant further investigation, as they approached the roundabout.

‘I expect you’ll have a few cards in there.’ Mr Beasley nodded towards her hands, showing off his yellowing teeth as he grinned.

‘I doubt it.’ Charlotte smiled. Her neighbour meant well, she knew. In the ten months since Martin’s departure, each week had been peppered with similar efforts at communication. But it was a raw morning to be lingering on the doorstep and, of course, there weren’t any cards. There hadn’t been a home-made offering of gluey glittered hearts from Sam that year either, which was entirely understandable and healthy, given her son’s advanced age, but it had caused her a moment’s lament all the same.

‘Sold the house yet?’ Mr Beasley rasped, just as she was edging inside.

‘No – but there’s someone coming to look this morning. Any minute now, in fact…’ Charlotte glanced pointedly at her watch.

‘Been a while, hasn’t it?’

‘A few months, yes.’

‘And you’ve not found anywhere to go yet, have you?’

‘No, Mr Beasley, I haven’t.’

‘I’ve forgotten, what was it you were looking for?’

‘I –’ Charlotte broke off, distracted by the envelope uppermost in her hand, brown, with a court stamp. ‘Something
smaller, a little cheaper, a lot nearer the park,’ she muttered, delivering a summary of the brief she had given Tim Croft the estate agent eight months before. Under her anorak her heart was pumping fast – relief, joy, a million things. It was the decree nisi – it had to be. She felt as if she had been pushing at a huge heavy door that had at last given way – no more hideous haggling over numbers, what she spent at the hairdresser or in department stores; no more miserable sessions with her pocket calculator and a pile of bills. It was all over at last. She was free.

Mr Beasley was sucking in his cheeks and shaking his lugubrious unshaven old face at the dank February sky. ‘The park… Oh, they’re pricy, those are, even the poky ones.’

‘Really? Well, I’m hopeful,
very
hopeful.’ Rejoicing now, because of the brown envelope, Charlotte clasped the pile of post to her chest and escaped inside.

There was still a palpable quietness about the place without Martin, almost as if her refusal to mourn the demise of their unhappy union meant some spirit of the house was doing it for her. In her wilder moments Charlotte even wondered if this was why it was proving so hard to sell. At other, saner, times it seemed grossly unfair that while Martin and his adulterous love, Cindy, could spread their wings in their new spacious riverside house in Rotherhithe, she was left trying to sell a property that seemed, no matter how many vases of fresh flowers she arranged around it, to exude something akin to an atmosphere of bereavement.

She took her time with the brown envelope – made herself a cup of coffee, found a biscuit, relished the moment. And once the document was in her hand she made herself read it, every word, skimming none of the jargon or small-print, forcing herself to recall the sourness of the final months and the sly anonymous note that had finally provided the
nudge – the courage – to put an end to the misery for good.
Your husband is seeing someone else, from a well-wisher.
Even at the time Charlotte had felt a sort of sick triumph – all the years of disintegrating affection, the needling suspicion, Martin’s denials – and there at last, in ten words, was the verification, permission to give up, as official as the stamped document cradled in her hands.

And now a house viewing – the first in five weeks. It was going to be a lucky day, Charlotte decided, flying with something like exultation round the ground-floor rooms, shuffling papers into tidy piles and scooping up the random items that had found their way into inappropriate places: a wet towel, a phone charger, two odd clean socks. Arms full, she set off up the stairs, musing on the curious business of inviting strangers into one’s home, the compulsion it induced to present an image of perfection where none existed.

Arriving on the threshold of Sam’s bedroom on the top floor, she forgot all such notions and swore out loud. Drawers and cupboards spewed their contents like escaping entrails. Scattered across the floor, transforming the carpet into some sort of imploding mosaic, were the entire contents of the crate of Lego that had for months – or was it years? – been gathering dust under the bed. Strewn among this were his once treasured miniature Subbuteo figures, unsheathed CDs, sweet wrappers, a bowl encrusted with flakes of cereal, a plastic boomerang and a range of torn comics and magazines.

Charlotte gripped her bundle, fighting a host of familiar emotions – irritation, resentment, resignation, despair – and beneath that a guilty sense of responsibility. What sort of man would this boy of hers make, she feared suddenly, what sort of partner, husband? She was still standing in
the doorway, frozen with doubt and foreboding, when the doorbell rang.

‘Sorry, I’m early.’ The man, who had thick dark hair, peppered with grey at the sideboards, and a large nose, visibly red with cold, extended a hand that gripped hers too firmly to suggest genuine penitence.

‘That’s fine… don’t worry… Come in.’ Charlotte managed a handshake through the tangled flex of the phone charger. ‘Though you’ve caught me slightly on the hop, I’m afraid, no baking bread or fresh coffee to win you over. You’ll have to take things as you find them.’ She deposited her bundle on the hall chair, inwardly scolding herself for managing to sound – a mere two seconds into the process – so apologetic, so
desperate.
‘Shall we start with the kitchen?’

‘Fine. Whatever suits.’ He hadn’t even smiled when she said the thing about the bread and the coffee and now he was peering at the hall ceiling, right at the spot where Martin’s overflowing bath had yellowed the paintwork two years before. They should have had it replastered, repainted, of course, like the damp above the back door and the delta of hairline cracks that had appeared round the ceiling rose in the sitting room after Sam and six friends had performed gymnastics at a birthday sleepover. The house, Charlotte saw, with sudden, horrible clarity, was a testimony to the failure of her marriage, and not just for its subtle emptiness. It was like the proverbial millstone: ugly, heavy, holding her down. The sooner she was shot of it the better. She glanced again at her prospective viewer – visibly nervy, arms pinned stiffly behind his back – wondering if he would soften up at a hint that she would be prepared to accept something below the asking price. Tim Croft had been implying she should do as much for weeks.

In the kitchen she talked fast – too fast – about the
waste-disposal unit and how the sun lit the back of the house. Her visitor cast a doubtful glance at the garden, then at his watch. ‘You could nose around on your own if you’d prefer,’ Charlotte offered casually, leaning against the kitchen table, which wobbled because the bit of paper keeping it steady had, as usual, worked its way free. ‘It requires a bit of attention, I know, a lick of paint and so on.’ Stop trying so hard, she scolded herself, cocking her head, crossing her arms and then, for good measure, her ankles.

‘Thank you, but… well, to be perfectly frank, I can see already that this isn’t quite what I’m looking for.’

Charlotte clung to her elbows. ‘Oh dear. Never mind…’

‘I’m on my own, you see – that is, I have a daughter and don’t really have time for a house that needs anything doing to it, even a lick of paint. Also, from what the agent said, I’d thought it would be near enough to her school for her to walk. She’s just started at St Leonard’s and I have to get to work and the traffic round here is so bad…’

Charlotte pushed herself off the table and held up her hands to forestall the embarrassment of any further apologies or explanations. ‘Please, I know
exactly
where you’re coming from. My son is at St Leonard’s too, and I can tell you the school run is a pig from here – not as the crow flies, of course, which is where the
A–Z
can be so deceiving but with three main roads to get across…’ She shook her head in a show of ruefulness. ‘If that’s a priority then you would, in all honesty, be mad to buy this house. In fact, leave now,’ she joked, pointing towards the door. ‘I command it.’

‘Er… right.’ He offered her a doubtful smile and backed into the hall.

‘I’m on my own too,’ Charlotte found herself saying, as she trotted after him. ‘Wasn’t the plan… but life has a knack of not turning out quite as one expects, doesn’t it?
You sort of look back at where you started, then at where you’ve arrived and think,
Yikes
, how did
that
happen? Like examining the lives of two quite unrelated people or –’ She stopped at last, halted by the pained expression on his face and the speed with which he was doing up the buttons of his smart charcoal grey overcoat.

‘Well, thank you, Mrs Turner. I’m most sorry to have put you to the inconvenience – you might tell your agents to be a little clearer about the details next time.’