Life Begins (26 page)

Tim sank to his knees and riffled glumly through the pile of post on the doormat. All the envelopes were brown, but
the one uppermost, now bearing a faint imprint of the sole of his shoe, was particularly large and thick. Curious, Tim turned it over, only to find his spirits plummeting to a new low at recognition of the name of the company from which he had, with such buoyant hopes, purchased Charlotte’s fortieth birthday gift a few weeks and an eternity before. All those good intentions, all that money – the bitch! But there was no anger left to come, no petty spite, only a dizzying wave of recognition that it was over. It was over and it had never really begun. Acceptance, just like the stupid article in the waiting room had said.

Which meant his suffering wasn’t even original, Tim reflected grimly. It was just a feeling experienced by millions, a passing phase, suitable for packaging in glossy magazines. He prepared to tear the envelope in two, but hesitated, absently running his tongue along the familiar geography of his teeth, feeling for the gap. The temporary crown felt snug, solid. The throbbing was turning into a pleasant sort of prickle. The gift had cost a lot and the company might give him a refund. He slapped the envelope against his thigh as he got to his feet, scolding himself for so nearly losing focus, for almost allowing a woman to run rings round him when he had vowed never to do so again.

Keeping a wary eye open for police and cameras, Charlotte accelerated into the empty outer lane of the A20 until the speedometer needle was bouncing around ninety. The Volkswagen, thankfully, responded like a child to a treat, moving through its usual protesting coughs to a deep, steady purr.

The peculiar ordeal of posting Sam through the rose-fringed door of number forty-two Chalkdown Road was upon her still. Holstered and ready to fire with politeness
and gratitude, she had been disarmed to find herself greeted not by Dominic but by the famous actor brother, with his dashing, tousled hair and piercing hazelnut eyes. He appeared to be dressed for high summer, in bright pink flip-flops, baggy knee-length shorts and a crumpled T-shirt. There were even sunglasses on his head, perched elegantly among the dark, perfectly messed-up waves.

‘This is so kind.’

‘Not at all. With me as her only playmate, Rose was dying of boredom, weren’t you, Rosie?’ He patted his niece, who was hanging on to the edge of his T-shirt, holding an awkward pigeon-footed pose and staring at the floor.

Charlotte wondered for by no means the first time whether the whole dubious arrangement should be abandoned. After some understandable surprise and a brief muffled consultation with his daughter, Dominic had agreed readily that Sam should come and stay. But now the girl looked decidedly reluctant, while Sam was lurking behind a flourish of roses somewhere to her left. They had had a horrible journey too, of bad traffic and punishing silence – hers on account of worry and Sam’s, she presumed, because she had seen fit to reiterate her scolding for his jaunt to the beach.

‘Dom was supposed to be home all day but something blew up at the office. He said to apologize. Do you have time for tea?’

‘No, I–’

‘Coffee? Gin?’ Rose and Sam caught each other’s eye and giggled.

‘No, my mother… I…’

‘Of course –
Christ
, of course. I’m so sorry – your mother’s
accident.
’ Benedict slapped a palm to his forehead. ‘She’s in hospital, I gather?’

‘Yes, a broken wrist, bruising. It could have been a lot worse.’ Charlotte reached for Sam’s arm and tried to extract him from behind the briar, managing only to scatter a shower of dusky white petals across the doorstep. The giggle with Rose had been encouraging, though. ‘It won’t be for long, probably just a night, with it being Easter this weekend. I know it’s a terrible imposition. If, for some reason, I’m not back tomorrow then Sam’s father…’ Charlotte let the sentence hang as a gust of fresh annoyance at Martin’s lack of co-operation swept over her. Lack of flexibility, work first, no question of Cindy stepping in – some things never changed.

‘As long as you want, Dom said. Easter, Christmas, no worries. Hey, Sam, good to meet you,’ Benedict added easily, ducking round the flowers to make eye contact. ‘I hope you’re good with bonfires. Rosie and I have had a bit of a clear-out in the garden. Just a tiny fire, nothing to upset the neighbours… or your mum,’ he added, offering Charlotte a broad grin, followed by an imperceptible wink as Sam, clutching his overnight bag, shuffled through the door.

On any other day it might have been rather thrilling to exchange complicit looks with a handsome celebrity, even one occupying the house of her dreams, Charlotte mused, moving across into the slow lane so as not to miss the turning off the motorway. The day, with its unexpected twists, seemed to have gone on for ever. It felt like years since the débâcle with Henry in the cottage kitchen, the dreadful hope in his blinking owl-eyes, her even more dreadful urge to respond to it. It felt like years and yet her stomach still churned with shame. How stupid she had been in not recognizing the signs – so obvious in retrospect – seeing only Theresa’s husband, seeing
Henry
, for goodness’ sake, solid, married Henry, safe to accept lifts from and even flirt
with a little over a glass or two or on a country walk. Except not safe. Not safe at all. There were boundaries – she of all people knew that, she of all people should have been on the lookout for them.

Charlotte was well aware that the distressing news about her mother’s accident had been a tremendous help, not just in breaking the horror of the moment but also in seeing her through its aftermath. Although she would gladly have forgone the distraction of Sam’s walkabout, it had been a relief to have the phoning and packing to get on with, not to mention such a perfect pretext for early escape. What she was still agonizing over was the follow-up: what to
do
about what had happened. Henry, with what seemed to her to be sickening
male
predictability, had behaved like a shit, and part of her could not help thinking that this might be something Theresa had a right to know. She was so proud and strong, Theresa, the sort of woman who valued straight talking, who, having been presented with an unpalatable truth, would know exactly what to do with it.

It took some effort to shift the focus of her thoughts to her mother. In fact, Charlotte realized guiltily, shaking her purse for the right change for the machine in the hospital car park, thinking about her mother held very little appeal. She would be helpless, sorry for herself, with the bruising and the plaster. The situation was going to demand a show of daughterly bedside vigilance to which she would have felt unequal even without the horrors of the morning… horrors that had included – Charlotte froze, pound coin poised in the slot as her thoughts veered away from Jean yet again to the throwaway remark in Tim’s text. What would she do without her job? It would simply be too cruel to lose it now, just as she was getting the hang of things.

She was having a difficult day, she scolded herself, ramming
the coin home and striding back to place the ticket in the car. She would
not
let the hopelessness back in. Life was about difficult days. All she had to do was keep her head, deal with one problem at a time and the lovely new sense of direction would return. And right now the problem requiring her attention most urgently was her mother. A decent interval at her bedside, saying the right things, taking down a list of what she wanted from home, stocking up the fridge, checking the house was clean and tidy – yes, she could manage that. And she would speak to the nurses about follow-up care too, secure the relevant forms and information in case a home visit or two was called for when Jean was discharged.

By the hospital entrance there was a large, circular flowerbed, a floral soup of colours – sweet williams, pansies, busy lizzies, all pert and freshly bedded. Charlotte paused, breathing in the scents, trying to get herself in the right mood. Instead her mind swung back – with sudden, winding force – to the moment when Henry had charged at her with the phone on the doorstep of the cottage.
She’s dead
, Charlotte had thought.
She’s dead and this is how it feels and it’s not too bad, not too bad at all.
Absorbing the rest of Henry’s sentence, that Jean had suffered a fall rather than perished, Charlotte had been aware of a diabolical pulse of anti-climax.

Unnerved, she hurried to the gift shop to make amends. Twenty minutes later, she arrived at the entrance to the ward, armed with a bunch of carnations, a bag of seedless grapes and the most expensive box of chocolates she had been able to find.

‘Ah, Mrs Boot’s daughter,’ exclaimed the nurse, after she had introduced herself. ‘Lovely – I think they’re nearly ready for you. I’ll see if I can find Nurse Telson to give you a hand getting her to the car.’

‘To the car? But I thought –’

‘Fortunately the break isn’t nearly as bad as the doctor first feared. It’s her confidence that’s taken a knock more than anything. Seeing as there’s someone to look after her, we’re very happy for her to go home. Recovery is always quicker there – especially with a loved one around. Lucky thing,’ the nurse added, beaming. ‘In these situations you wouldn’t believe how many children just don’t want to know.’

‘Do you do an egg hunt, then?’

‘Always. Dad hides them. I’m not supposed to look but of course I try to. Each year he makes it harder and harder. Last time he’d stuck one into this hosepipe thing and I had to use a knife to get it out. There were twelve, but I’m only allowed to eat three a day, so it took four days, obviously.’

‘Obviously,’ Sam murmured, sending up a small urgent prayer for his granny to be sick enough and his father busy enough to keep him at the Porters’ through the weekend. Rose had a knack of making the simplest things good fun. Like building the den they were lying in now, nibbling biscuits, slumped among cushions like Roman emperors. He had said something about George’s useless map and the next thing he knew she was leaping around the house ordering him to grab cushions and sheets and tugging mattresses off beds. Their first couple of efforts hadn’t worked too well – collapsing walls, too many rooms – but they had simplified it into a brilliant space with two sections, so high in one bit that they could kneel upright without touching the sheet ceiling.

Sam had never met a girl who was into dens before. Pattie had only ever wanted to do drawings and watch TV. Secretly, he wondered if both of them shouldn’t have outgrown such hobbies. They were thirteen, after all. But
Rose, as he had already seen a million times, in her strong, nose-in-the-air solitariness at school, wasn’t the sort of girl who cared much about one was
supposed
to think or do. And Sam found it made him want to care less too. In the park that morning her dad had sat on a bench reading a newspaper while they played a game of spying on walkers, mostly from the branches of a large tree. She had produced a sugared ball of pink bubble gum, then a squashed cigarette, stolen, she claimed proudly, from a pack her uncle kept hidden in the inside pocket of his coat. ‘He’s trying to give up but just
can’t
,’ she had claimed, shaking her head as if it was something to be really sad about, then instructing Sam to cup his hands while she struck a match. The flame guttered madly, but Rose puffed till her lips squeaked and soon, amid much coughing and laughing, the cigarette tip was glowing and they were passing it between them. Afterwards they had a bubble-blowing competition, which Rose won by producing a massive wobbling orb that made her cross-eyed and bounced on her nose before exploding across her lips and cheeks, mixing pink flecks among the brown galaxies of her freckles.

How on earth did you kiss a girl? Sam wondered now, watching Rose shovel a fourth biscuit into her mouth and recalling, with some distaste, the cold soggy feel of her saliva on the cork tip of their shared cigarette. Lips, he could imagine, but tongues…
Eh-yew
, as Rose would say. No, Sam decided, definitely no. He tried to think about something else, only for a vivid flashback to swoop in from nowhere: the half-open kitchen door, George’s dad’s arms across his mother’s back, their faces close. He put his own biscuit back on the plate, feeling too hot, too horrible even to swallow.

‘What’s up?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Yes, there is. You look weird, like you’re going to puke.’

Sam breathed hard. ‘Can you keep a secret?’

Rose snorted, managing to communicate disdain as well as reassurance. ‘Of course.’

Sam crawled to the sheet hanging over the entrance to check they were alone, then scrambled into a cross-legged position facing her. Mumbling most of the words into his hands, he attempted to describe the obscenity he had witnessed in Suffolk, the one that had ruined the holiday far more than his granny belly-flopping on to the bathmat.

Rose, as he had anticipated correctly, didn’t laugh. She murmured, ‘Gross,’ several times, then refolded her skinny legs tidily and used both hands to push the springy corkscrew curls out of her eyes. ‘Problems always have solutions – that’s what Dad says.’

Sam nodded gloomily. The overhead sheet was starting to sag badly; bits of Rose’s hair were sticking to it as she talked. ‘I don’t suppose,’ she lowered her voice to a whisper and leant towards him, ‘there’s been anyone else your mum’s liked, has there?’

Sam nodded slowly, scowling at the recollection of the hairy-faced estate agent and the bouquet of flowers.

‘Tell me everything,’ she commanded, burrowing to find a pad of paper, then making notes, as if she was a detective in a TV show taking evidence.

Sam obeyed without hesitation, not just because Rose’s enthusiasm and confidence were catching but because, as far as their mattress and sheet edifice was concerned, they were clearly living on borrowed time.

It was odd being on the train during the afternoon, surrounded by returning shoppers and children instead of commuters
huddled behind free-sheets, clutching briefcases. It was also unpleasantly warm – the railway network’s heating system had not been adjusted to accommodate the strength of the afternoon sun, now firing directly along the train windows. Dominic loosened his tie, had another go at opening the window, then sat down again, offering a half-apologetic smile at the young woman opposite, who had several bulging shopping-bags and had watched his efforts to cool the carriage with what he had taken to be support. He tried broadening the smile but her face froze into a mask of wariness.