Life Begins (34 page)

‘You’re thinking about her now,’ Benedict accused, wagging his finger. ‘You bloody are, aren’t you?’

‘No, dear Benedict, I’m thinking that if I don’t leave this
place in the next few minutes too much of the morning will have been eaten up for me to get down to Redhill aerodrome, take to the skies and be back again before Rosie gets home from school.’

‘Good. Excellent. Because…’ Benedict hesitated. They were out in the street now, squinting into the sunshine and Dominic was walking fast. ‘Because if you
had been
thinking of Mrs Charlotte Turner I would advise you not to.’

‘Benedict, for
Christ’s sake
!’ Dominic turned to face his brother, real despair in his voice.

‘No, Dom, hear me out,’ Benedict pleaded. ‘She might look single but she isn’t. She’s seeing someone – a
married
someone.’

‘And you would know,’ Dominic sneered, rolling his eyes.

‘Yes . .
.’ Benedict hesitated again. He didn’t like breaking confidences, but he liked even less the thought of his still fragile sibling getting hurt by some divorced siren who looked mellow enough on the outside but within whom there clearly lurked a ruthless capacity to snatch happiness without thought for the feelings of others. He sighed. ‘Rosie, as you know, tells me things.’

‘Yup. I’m aware of that.’ Dominic put his hands into his pockets and glanced up and down the street in a manner designed to communicate extreme impatience.

‘Well, apparently Charlotte’s having a thing with George’s father – you know George in their class, thick, tar-brush hair, very sporty. The mother looks nice – roundish figure, big hair. She and Charlotte are supposed to be best friends. The father is some kind of consultant, hearts or lungs, I can’t remember which. He was in Suffolk last week,’ Benedict pressed on, speaking urgently now in a bid to trigger some sign that Dominic was actually listening. ‘That, presumably, is why she and Sam went there. And there’s an
estate agent in the frame too, the one she fired for failing to sell her house. So stick with Petra,’ he advised, when still Dominic offered no response, ‘for everyone’s sake.’

‘And you,’ Dominic replied at last, poking Benedict in the chest with his index finger, ‘stick with getting yourself another big part before you get so sucked into playground tittle-tattle that you start believing it.’

‘I think it’s true, brother.’

Dominic flung open his arms. ‘It probably is but, as I have been
trying
to tell you, Charlotte Turner could shag every man in south London, married or otherwise, and I would not consider it any business of mine. Okay? As you know, I’m meeting your Polish
protégée
soon and intend to take full advantage of her. Okay? And one final thing. I love you dearly, as you know, and you have helped me all my life in ways too generous and numerous to count, but could you now, please, back off a little bit?’

‘Sure.’ Benedict, hurt at last, shuffled towards the kerb, shaking his head. ‘Whatever. Have a good fly,’ he muttered, then bolted across the road between cars, his fleece flapping round his waist.

‘And good luck this afternoon,’ Dominic called feebly, already cursing his loss of temper. Breaking into a jog for the rest of the journey home, he found himself cursing several other things as well, like the selfish imprudence of an otherwise intelligent, attractive woman, and his dear brother for knowing him so well.

‘Don’t be gloomy – the summer term’s always the most fun. Look, Jasper’s trying to cheer you up,’ Charlotte joked, as the dog, granted the treat of riding to school, performed a series of leaping attempts to lick Sam’s ears and chin. In her own heart something akin to the state of grace had returned,
thanks probably to the most extraordinary night’s sleep – deep, dreamless, energizing – almost as if her body had learnt some incredible new trick as physical and fabulous as flying or breathing under water. ‘Nobody likes going back to school, not even teachers. And Rose will be there, won’t she?’

Sam’s only response was a scowl of accusatory incomprehension. ‘I’m fine. School will be fine.’ He pushed the dog back on to his lap, making what she could see was a deliberate effort to look bored.

Wrong tack, Charlotte chided herself, returning her attention to the road and resolving not to let this new phase of filial hostility sour her own unexpected and wonderful peace of mind. The traffic was solid as usual, which meant there would be nowhere to park. The same problems, yet life was moving on in exactly the direction it should. Sam was entitled to mood-swings. He was a teenager, after all. She glanced across at the passenger seat noting, as if for the first time, the thickening features, the nose wider, longer, the jaw and cheekbones more prominent. He was going to be a good-looking man, she realized suddenly, like his father. When had that happened? Large blue eyes, floppy blond hair, slim hips and, most remarkable of all,
long
legs. That morning, between shooing Jasper in and out of the garden, helping find pencils, rubbers, ink cartridges, and getting herself ready for work, she had unpicked the hem of his school trousers and pressed an iron over them in an unsuccessful bid to extend their length to meet the edges of his shoes, which turned out to be too small as well, his big toes pushing visibly against the worn leather. ‘I’ll phone the school shop, get new trousers. And shoes, we’ll do those at the weekend.’

‘Yeah, you said.’

When Charlotte pulled over – double-parked, the hazard lights flashing – Sam got out of the car and strolled towards a cluster of children at the school gates without a backward glance, his bag dangling carelessly over one shoulder, his hand darting to adjust the complicated mess of his hair. Charlotte delayed moving on, straining to make out faces in the crowd, wondering – hoping – if one might be Rose’s. Rose, who had metamorphosed from venomous accuser to closest ally, who had burst out of shy silence at the dinner table the night before to deliver a hilarious rendition of an oak tree in a high wind; who, in spite of her stick-like physique, had consumed two heaped platefuls of the main course and pudding; who, without a trace of affectation, had hugged Charlotte’s dear, difficult, prickly son farewell in the manner of such honest and trusting friendship that Charlotte had wanted to hug her too, feeling for those few seconds that she could tolerate any amount of adolescent see-sawing in Sam’s affections if she knew he was so treasured in another quarter.

And then there was the other, now significant, aspect of Rose – the fact that she was the daughter of Dominic Porter, a man whose very name had once been sufficient to make Charlotte sick at heart, but who now, thanks to the unforeseeable and rather striking events of the previous evening, seemed to be occupying a rather more positive place in her thoughts. Indeed, waking up that morning from her delicious sleep, Dominic had been the first subject that sprang to mind. Several hours later he was still there, rather like a large object blocking a view, Charlotte decided now, something that had to be thought round, or taken into account, or heaved out of the way to get a clear picture of the other things requiring her attention.

He had been kind, that was why, she reasoned, scouring
a new group of children, joshing and ricocheting off each other as they moved along the pavement towards the entrance. He had been kind, and if she could only spot Rose among all the bobbing heads she might spot Dominic too and be able to thank him properly; with the counselling, kindness, food, wine, the exciting possibility of him buying the lease on the bookshop now that he no longer had a job in the City… there really was an awful lot to say. Recklessly having changed her mind about the invitation to dinner, giddy still with the shock – the relief – of disburdenment about her father, trying to see signs of affection in the blank looks she was receiving across the table from Sam, the previous evening hadn’t exactly seen her at her most articulate. But now she could tell him again – properly – how grateful she was, how utterly delighted at the prospect of the bookshop lease passing into safe hands. She might even confide how Dean and Jason had always run the place like two whispering old women, no canvassing of opinions, leaping on bad ideas. And then, if the moment felt right, she might venture to say that she had slept in a way that was entirely new and restorative, without the usual fitfulness and dreams of unanswered questions; and that while this was obviously connected to the momentous explanatory new light cast upon her past, she was certain that it was largely thanks to his patience and gentle wisdom that she had been able, so quickly, to process this new information to the point of peace rather than torment…

Charlotte jumped at the toot of a horn. It dawned on her in the same instant that Rose, newly resident in nearby Chalkdown Road, would require no parental accompaniment for the walk to school. Which meant there would be no Dominic to look out for that morning or any other. The same car horn sounded a second time, more briefly and
sharply. Turning towards its source, Charlotte found herself looking at Theresa, popping her head in and out of the window of the Volvo as it moved in the stream of traffic going in the opposite direction.

Theresa –
Henry –
the blood rushed to Charlotte’s face. Theresa was gesticulating, mouthing, her hair plastered across her face like netting. Charlotte’s lips felt too dry to smile. Her heart thumped. Henry had said something and Theresa was shrieking at her, obscenities, hatred. As the car drew parallel, she gingerly wound down the window.

‘Are you okay?’ Theresa hollered cheerfully, rolling her eyes in sympathetic horror when Jasper’s pointy little face and front paws appeared at the open window.

‘Yes –
oh, yes, thanks.’ Charlotte patted the dog’s head. ‘I’ve just got him till Mum’s better.’

‘Yikes – bad luck. I want us to have lunch this Friday – the one after is our mah-jong, isn’t it? Is that prodigal friend of yours still coming? Your bookshop’s up for sale – did you know?’ she shouted, as the traffic moved and she began to pull away.

Charlotte just had time to screech, a ‘Yes,’ before the flashing lights of a lorry forced her to rejoin the flow on her own side of the road. She turned off as soon as she could, cutting down the grid of residential streets that offered a circuitous but relatively peaceful route to the bookshop.

Of course Henry hadn’t said anything. He had been the guilty party, Charlotte reminded herself, reaching with some difficulty across the dramas of the intervening five days to a recollection of the embarrassing near-collision in the Suffolk kitchen. Her only crime had been to behave like a blind idiot. The once urgent compulsion to tell Theresa had grown distant too. Some truths were massive, and some were small, Charlotte reflected, slowing with impatience for the bumps,
then coming to a complete halt while a dustbin lorry spilt a team of whistling men into her path. In fact, she thought drumming her fingers on the steering-wheel, it was often how – when – truth was released that determined its significance.
A time to keep silence, and a time to speak.
Where had that come from?

Her mother had withheld information in a bid to protect her. It was entirely understandable, forgivable, not at all the same as lying, not remotely base. And she now wished to keep something from Theresa because she liked her too much to want to cause her unnecessary pain. Life, if looked at in the right way, could be so beautifully simple. The truth of Henry’s affections – or lack of them – would be apparent to Theresa in other ways that Charlotte had neither to know nor to worry about. In the meantime she would agree to lunch and be supportive in any manner Theresa required, happy in the knowledge that she would receive the same in return about her mother’s belated revelations, Dominic’s kindness, Sam’s sulkiness, mounting qualms about seeing Eve again and any other subject she chose to confide. They had been friends through thick and thin and never, Charlotte vowed, was she going to risk or take that for granted again.

Released by the rubbish truck at last, Charlotte arrived at the bookshop just as the man who had hammered a for-sale board into place was getting back into his van. Inside, Jason was waiting for her with crossed arms and a grave face, not about selling his livelihood, as it turned out, but on account of Dean, who was dying.

‘Lung cancer – six months, a year at most. We’re going to Spain,’ he said, before falling upon Charlotte with so much of his body weight that she had to stagger with him to a chair, as if he was the invalid rather than his friend.

∗

‘I think I hate her,’ Sam muttered, staring after the Volkswagen as it roared away.

‘Nothing’s happened, then?’

Sam shrugged. He liked the way Rose had come up to him from nowhere and was standing really close, not caring now about it being obvious they were friends. ‘I wouldn’t know, I suppose, would I? I mean, not yet anyway, not until he turns up in his fancy car again to take her out to dinner or something. But there she was just now, waving at George’s mum – like nothing was going on. It makes me sick…’ Sam broke off quickly as George ambled across the playground towards them.

‘Hey.’

‘Hey.’

‘Did you find the den?’

‘Yeah, I think so.’

‘Cool. Hey, Rose.’

‘Hello, George. What are you looking like that for?’

‘Like what?’

‘That stupid grin, that’s what.’

George sniggered. ‘You two, that’s what.’

‘Yeah, and what about it, Fat Face? You like Melanie Cooper and don’t deny it. You just can’t get her to like you.’

George had gone so very red that Sam, rather to his surprise, felt sorry for him. Rose, perhaps similarly moved, added much more kindly, ‘She does like you, actually, if you want to know.’

George’s colour deepened. ‘Does she?’ He looked incredulous and horrified in equal measure.

‘Does she really?’ Sam asked, as they walked away, inwardly vowing to warn George if this wasn’t the case. Seeing him again, remembering the fun of skating and the map for the den, which, in spite of failing, had been a truly decent
effort, it had come back to him in a rush just how well he and George had once got on. Nursery, primary, St Leonard’s – they had known each others for
ever.
If their parents behaved like idiots it was hardly their fault.