Lifesaver (23 page)

‘I’m not sure that I can come,’ I interrupted, wincing at the shocked expression on Ken’s face. He was unaccustomed to having people not fitting in with his plans.

‘What do you mean? How many times in the last six months have you said you were desperate to get away for a bit, and how often have you said how much you missed your brother? I thought you’d be delighted.’

I thought of Max, fast asleep under his castle duvet. ‘Things have changed.’

‘What things?’

I looked around our kitchen. Nothing in
here
had changed. There were no finger-painted masterpieces stuck to the fridge door, no primary-coloured plastic beakers upended on the draining boards, no splodges of dried Weetabix spackling the counters. How could I tell Ken without hurting him?

But there was no way I was going to miss the night out with Adam, not just when we were beginning to get closer. I had to see him, so we could firm up the next outing with Max.

‘
What
things have changed?’ Ken repeated, through a clenched jaw. ‘I went to a lot of trouble to organise this, you know. I mean, it’s not like booking a bloody package holiday: I had to write to your brother care of that PO Box number—perish the thought that he might have a mobile that works - and then wait for him to ring me at the office, then make sure he knew somewhere decent for us to stay, then book the flights…

I was only half listening. Of course, I had to go to Ibiza; see Olly, chill out with Ken. I was sure I could come up with some excuse to placate Adam. He wasn’t going to ban me from ever seeing Max again just because I couldn’t make one night out with the mosaic team, was he? It was so sweet of Ken to go to all that trouble.

Ken had turned away from me and was pouring himself a glass of apple juice from the fridge. I could see from the set of his shoulders that he was furious with me.

‘Ken—’ I began, touching his damp back tentatively. ‘I’m sorry.’ As I stared at the black hairs on his neck, where the ends of his short haircut tapered down into stubble, I realized that if I went to Ibiza, I wouldn’t see Max for over a fortnight. By the time I got back, it would be September; he’d have started his new term, and opportunities to spend time with him would be curtailed even further. I felt an almost physical longing to be with him, to feast my eyes on his thin, delicate limbs and to bask in his smile. It felt like an addiction. Now I’d spent time with him, I wanted to spend
more
time. And with Adam, too… I remembered that hug, and goosebumps broke out down the backs of my arms and legs.

‘I can’t come,’ I blurted, surprising myself almost as much as I was about to surprise Ken, ‘because I got that job on the cable soap. Remember, that audition I had?’

Ken wheeled around, slamming his glass on the counter and grabbing the sides of my arms. ‘You got the job?’ he said incredulously, his entire face lighting up. ‘You really got it? When I thought Fenella hadn’t been in touch, I assumed that you were out of the running. Why didn’t you tell me you’d been called back? I suppose you were worried that it might be tempting fate, I know you—isn’t that right?’

I nodded, thinking that maybe it was less of a lie if it wasn’t spoken aloud, and tried to look as pleased as he did.

‘You’ll be working again! Oh, babe, that’s such wonderful news. And it starts filming that soon?’ His face clouded. ‘So you’ll be away for - how many days a week?’

‘I’m not sure yet,’ I said, staring at the floor. I’d never lied to Ken before, and it was making me feel nauseous, especially in the light of having so recently denied I was even married to him. ‘Maybe three or four. But it won’t make that much difference to us, will it? I mean, most nights I’m in bed before you even get home. And we’ll just have to make more of our weekends.’ I felt terrible, sure that he’d be able to tell I was lying.

He nodded and hugged me, whirling me around the kitchen; a reluctant dance partner, without sequins. He was sweaty and slightly odorous, but I had never minded the smell of Ken’s sweat. ‘Oh, you’re such a dark horse. I’m so proud of you.’

‘I’m sorry about the holiday.’

‘Don’t worry. I booked the tickets on airmiles, so we haven’t lost any money. I’m sure there’s time to cancel the hotel without having to pay the whole cost. Your brother’ll be disappointed, but I’m sure he’ll understand when you tell him the reason. We’ll go later in the year, shall we, when you’ve been on the show long enough to ask for some leave. Maybe you can get Fenella to write two weeks’ holiday before Christmas into your contract. Darling, I’m so pleased for you!’

‘Thank you—I don’t deserve you,’ I said with feeling, giving him a hug, sweat and all. He kissed the top of my head.

‘It’s just what you needed—and it might be the start of big things happening for your career, don’t you think?’

‘Well,’ I said modestly, thinking in for a penny… ‘They’ve got this really hot director on board. He’s the one who did that brilliant TV ad for John Lewis, remember? Fenella said that everyone’s raving about him.’

‘So will I be able to watch you on cable then?’

If I pretended I was playing a role, the lying did become easier. Slightly easier. I couldn’t go back now.

‘I don’t think so, no. I’m pretty sure it’s just regional. Anyway, hot director or no hot director, it’ll probably be lame as hell. You know what cable soaps are like: all shaky walls and no budget. And it goes out early afternoons.’

‘What’s the salary?’

‘Um. Fifty-three grand, I think.’ No worries there—all my acting earnings (though they’d barely crawled into five figures for the past ten years) went into my own account. All I’d have to do is to intercept the bank statements, which was easy when Ken was never home at the same time as the postman’s deliveries.

‘Fantastic! That’ll boost our savings. You know, you should buy yourself a new car. It’s about time we upgraded that old banger of yours.’

I nodded and gulped, feeling as if I was digging a hole in the sand for myself. At the moment it was fine, cool and damp on my hot skin, but I knew that sooner or later the hole would feel oppressive, cold and wet; I’d want to get out, but the walls would start crumbling…

Then I thought of Max, and felt a shift to pure joy, because I’d just granted myself an unconditional license to spend as much time with him as Adam would permit. All I’d need to do was to tell Adam the same lie, and then neither Adam nor Ken would question my extended absences. Lying was a state of mind, like confidence, I decided. You just had to brazen it out, and not show any lack of conviction.

There was absolutely no point in worrying about the consequences until—unless - I had to. As long as I kept things chaste with Adam, then even if I did have to come clean to Ken one day, I was sure Ken would understand. Maybe we would end up buying a second home in Gillingsbury for real. By that time, I’d be good enough friends with Adam that he’d have ceased to see me as a potential girlfriend. Adam and Ken could become friends. Maybe Adam would let us take Max on holiday…

‘Have you told Vicky yet?’

Vicky. I wondered how she was. Perhaps it was a good thing we weren’t currently speaking. Of all the people to fool, Vicky would be the hardest. Ken didn’t
expect
me to lie to him, Adam didn’t know me well enough to be able to tell, but Vicky would know instantly.

‘No. We’ve fallen out, remember?’

‘You should make up. She’ll be so pleased for you.’

I sighed. ‘I don’t think she will be. She’s so hating being stuck at home with the kids, I think that me telling her I’d landed a big role in a soap, even a crappy cable one, will only make her feel worse.’

‘Well, it’s up to you, of course. But life’s too short for you two not to be friends.’

Ken disengaged himself from me and dashed over to the wine rack in the dining room. ‘This calls for a celebration!’ he said, brandishing a dusty bottle of champagne. ‘Stick this in the freezer for twenty minutes while I go and have a quick shower, then we’ll crack it, shall we? It’s that one we’ve been saving for a special occasion.’

He thrust it at me and disappeared, bouncing up the stairs with more enthusiasm than I’d seen in him for months.

I felt horrible—and then I looked at the label on the champagne. It was vintage Moet, the bottle we’d been given when we got married, that we always said we’d save for a
really
special occasion. Birthdays, anniversaries and Christmases had all passed, but nothing had seemed important enough. At least not until I’d been in my fifth month of pregnancy, when we finally began to relax and believe that we were in the clear; that this one was a keeper. At nine months, I’d waddled over to the wine rack, retrieved the bottle and put it in the fridge to chill. While the hired birthing pool was being filled in the front room, I remembered like a snapshot Ken carefully setting out two champagne flutes on a tray, all ready for us to celebrate.

What I couldn’t recall was who had taken the bottle out of the fridge again, put it back unopened at the bottom of the wine rack, and returned the glasses to the cupboard. Somebody must have done it. Maybe it had even been me.

I slumped down on the stool in the kitchen, still cradling the bottle to my chest. Perhaps it was my sweat-soaked guilty fingertips, or perhaps it was the memory of that terrible day; but before I knew it, the champagne had slipped from my grasp and crashed onto the terracotta tiled floor, smashing dramatically. It frothed uncontrollably at my feet, bubbling in and out of the shards of glass on the floor, while I continued to sit there, frozen with horror that I’d been reduced to telling such a whopping lie to my husband. When Ken rushed back into the kitchen to see what was going on, he assumed that the tears on my face were sorrow at the loss of our precious bottle.

In the midst of all the confusion of broken glass and a kitchen floor suddenly alive and moving with the tiny sibilant hiss of popping bubbles, we heard a knock at the front door.

‘Now what?’ said Ken, tipping a dustpan full of shards of green glass into the bin, as I mopped my tears and the champagne off the floor. ‘It’s bloody nine thirty at night,’ he muttered, swiping a hand through his damp hair and making it stand up in spikes as he stomped towards the door.

‘Oh, hello,’ I heard him say, hardly more enthusiastically, to the visitor. ‘We’ve had a bit of a disaster in the kitchen, but do come in.’

I hastily checked my reflection in the door of the microwave, to make sure I didn’t have mascara all down my face.

‘It’s Peter,’ Ken announced from the kitchen doorway, failing to sound even vaguely pleased.

‘Peter? Hello. Come in. Is everything…ll right?’

Peter sidled over to a dry section of kitchen floor, looking even sweatier than Ken did, although he wasn’t dressed for any kind of sport, and, indeed, the only exercise to my knowledge in which he ever participated was that of raising a pint glass to his mouth. Vicky used to refer proudly to him as her ‘bit of rough’, and he certainly did have that big muscled, square-jawed thing going on, which, in combination with his considerably thick midriff and bushy red hair made him, in my opinion, look weird and menacing. On the odd occasion I’d seen him cradling Pat, he looked like a bouncer ejecting a small troublemaker from a toddler’s disco.

Physical appearance aside, though, I knew that he loved Vicky, and that was what was important. I just wished I could find a polite way to tell him that the best way to express his love for her would be to go to the pub less, and get up in the night with Pat more. But the pub was his priority. Especially when they were showing the footie on Sky in there.

Vicky and I had hooted with laughter when she’d first related the story to me of a conversation they’d once had in the pub, in the early days of their courtship. Peter had been totally besotted with Vicky, unable to believe his good fortune - to the extent that he’d even voluntarily sat with his back to the big screen during the match. ‘I can’t think about
anything
other than you,’ he’d declaimed dramatically, and then, with precision comedic timing, had leaped out of his seat, wheeled around, punched the air, and, along with the other thirty males in the pub, screamed ‘
GOAL!
’

I uncapped him a bottle of Becks and handed it to him without asking. It was strange seeing him without Vicky.

‘Thanks,’ he said, eyeing me and the wet floor with considerable suspicion.

‘What happened here?’

‘Anna’s got a new job!’ Ken said, squeezing me round the waist. ‘We were about to celebrate, only the champagne went for a burton. Let’s open some wine instead, Annie, shall we?’ He reached two large wineglasses down from the cupboard and uncorked a bottle of white which had been resident in the fridge door.

‘Congratulations,’ said Peter, not asking what the job was. ‘You don’t seem very happy about it.’ He leaned against the kitchen counter and I got an uncomfortable feeling in my throat.

‘So, how’s Vicky?’ I asked, as heartily as I could.

‘That’s why I’m here.’

‘Really?’

Ken made a face at me from behind Peter’s back, crossing his eyes and pretending to strangle himself. ‘I’ve just run a bath, so if you’ll excuse me for a few minutes, I’ll go and jump in it,’ he said to Peter. ‘I’ve been playing tennis, and I’m heinously sweaty.’ He was out of the room and up the stairs, carrying his wineglass, before either of us could reply. For somebody who dealt with enormous crises every day at work, he was astonishingly adept at running away from them at home.

‘You’d better come through and sit down,’ I said reluctantly, dropping a dry tea towel on the floor to soak up the rest of the mess. The champagne was already beginning to smell sour, and if I stopped for a second to think about what was represented by the broken glass and pale amber liquid, tears prickled at the back of my eyes again. However reluctant I was to talk to Shock-Headed Peter about Vicky, it was at least a welcome diversion from the pain of that shattered bottle and its shattered dreams. Not to mention all the lies.

I led him into the living room, where he sat down self-consciously in the centre of the sofa, feet together, as if I were about to interview him for a job. I felt suddenly sorry for him. He had a brow-beaten, defeated look; and I wasn’t surprised—I knew from past experience what Vicky was like when she was depressed.