One Moment, One Morning (17 page)

*     *     *

The door is double-locked when Anna gets back: Steve is not home. Moreover, he has not told her where he’s going, which means she knows exactly where he is. The pub. Probably the one down the road – not that it makes much difference. Odds are, this means trouble. If she is lucky she’ll get away with it – if he’s drunk enough to be near comatose when he returns, he’ll crash out on the sofa, snoring, fully clothed. More worrying is if he has drunk marginally less; then he’ll be lairy, energized, wanting to talk.

She is just unclipping her bra when the door slams. She pauses mid action, waiting to hear where he goes. Thump. Pause. Thump. Pause. Thump. Here he comes, up the stairs, footsteps so much heavier, more cumbersome than when he is sober.

Rapidly, she pulls on her nightdress – she is vulnerable enough, without being naked too.

Within moments he has flung open the bedroom door; the brass handle bangs against the wall, where there is already a dent in the plaster. Such force is unnecessary, but bevvied up, Steve can’t gauge his own strength.

He won’t start off angry, Anna knows that. She has been through this before; she has learnt the pattern. The descent is usually rapid, and there’s something so much worse about the fact she can feel it coming.

She is braced, every sinew in her arms rigid, legs taut; even her stomach muscles are tense. She knows what’s on its way: verbal abuse, fierce, vitriolic, self-righteous. Then again, maybe, for once, she’ll be lucky. Hasn’t she been through enough today? Doesn’t God, Steve, Fate, whoever, owe her this small favour? She’s drawn on so many emotional resources already with Karen. She hasn’t the strength for another ordeal. Maybe, just maybe, Steve will appreciate this.

Tentatively, persuasively, hoping to appeal to his better, sober, nature, she ventures, ‘I just got back from seeing Karen.’ She thinks the mention of her friend might jolt his memory and understanding.

‘Ah . . . right.’ Clearly he had forgotten. His visage clouds. It is astonishing how Steve’s features transform when he is intoxicated. Gone are the handsome proportions, the heroic cheekbones, the sensual yet masculine mouth, the kind, thoughtful eyes. Instead, his face seems soft, unformed, his lips full and blubbery, his eyes unfocused, misty, small. His body too, is different; his stance is less upright, his paunch more noticeable, his shoulders hunched.

He sits down on the bed, leaden, clumsy. But then he surprises her. Instead of inconsequential burble, followed by recriminations, accusations, criticism, he is quiet. His mouth is a cartoon of upset, an upside-down semicircle. Then his eyes spring giant drops. He is crying.

Anna is surprised, touched, and more than a little relieved. She sits down next to him. ‘What’s the matter?’

He wipes away the tears with the back of his fist, toddler-like. ‘I’m useless,’ he shrugs.

‘No, you’re not!’ she insists, indignant. However much she hates his excess drinking, she knows it stems from self-loathing.

‘I am,’ he retorts. ‘Look at me!’ He lifts his hands up, turns them this way then that, despairing. ‘Covered in paint. What am I? Just a bloody decorator.’

‘You’re a very good one,’ she says, and it’s true. Steve is a perfectionist. Yet he’s also a fast worker, a rare combination. Clients often ask him back and frequently recommend him to friends.

‘Yes, but . . . not a career, is it?’ Though addled with booze, he is strangely coherent, and, actually, right. His job doesn’t bother Anna – she is not the type of woman who likes to bask in the reflected glory of a successful man. But that is not the point. What matters is that he is not fulfilled by what he is doing; he considers himself too bright, worth more. ‘Simon had a career,’ he adds, his voice mournful.

He starts crying again, and although she has seen him weep before, Anna can’t get over how disconcerting it is to see a grown man shed tears. Then, finally, out it comes, the thought that’s troubling him through the fog of beer and spirits. He bangs his head with his fist. Hard. It must hurt. ‘It should have been me.’

‘Sorry?’ This is unexpected.

‘Me. ME!’ He thumps his chest, now furious. ‘It should have been me who died.’

‘Hey, hey, hey . . .’ Anna placates him, puts an arm around his shoulders. ‘Don’t be silly.’

‘That’s what you all want, isn’t it?’ He throws off her arm. The anger is mounting and turning outward; the direction Anna dreads.

‘What do you mean – what we all want?’ Though as she says it, she knows this is the wrong tack. Not that there is a right one.

‘You’d rather it had been me. You. Karen.’ He turns to her, eyes cold and narrowed, full of hatred.

‘No, we wouldn’t!’ This is ridiculous, and not a conversation she wants to have, particularly at this moment. It’s even more unnerving because his observation is accurate: he’s picked up on her own thoughts, earlier, and she’s filled with remorse for having contemplated such a thing, however briefly. But for Steve to pursue this tack is not constructive. It’s certainly not helping her – or him, come to that – feel better. This is what she can never get her head around: whatever is eating away at him, it is only made worse by alcohol; heightened rather than eased or numbed.

‘You’d rather I was dead.’

‘Stevie Babe.’ Anna’s voice is firm; she uses her nickname for him to further placate. ‘We would not. You’re being ridiculous.’

Then, curiously, as if God, or Fate, or whoever, has – belatedly – heard her plea, he seems to listen, to reflect. ‘Am I?’

‘Yes,’ she whispers.

‘Oh.’

‘I love you, babe.’

‘I love you too.’ And with that he propels himself – almost gracefully – lengthways onto the mattress. Within seconds he’s flaked out, snoring.

Tenderly, Anna pulls off his shoes, undoes his belt, eases his jeans down his legs. He rolls over, murmuring but not waking, as she pulls the duvet out from under him, then tucks him beneath. He’s still in his underpants, shirt and socks, but no matter.

Relieved, she sits back on her haunches.

In slumber, the warm arc of light from the bedside lamp casts Steve’s features differently again. The curl of his lips seems sweet and guileless; his eyelashes brush his cheeks angelically; she can see the glistening trail of tears on his cheek, like a small child who’s fallen asleep exhausted by his own outburst. Now she can see the boy that predated the man, when his rebellious spirit was innocent and playful, not damaging and self-destructive. She wonders when the balance shifted; when, like a see-saw, he tipped from merely being a naughty youngster – for she knows he was; he has told her – and became first troublesome, then troubled, and then turned to drink.

Nonetheless, she can smell the alcohol on him. It is not just on his breath; it emanates from every pore. It is vodka, she knows. Whoever said vodka was odourless, was wrong. It smells acrid, deadly, is redolent of clandestine binges and lies. She loathes it. It repulses her. She appreciates she likes a drink too; she shared a much-needed bottle with Karen earlier, for example. But Steve’s consumption is in a different league; she can stop when he can’t, because for him it serves a different purpose. Sometimes she wonders if it is obliteration not just of circumstance he is after, but of his whole personality.

Had she known this when she met him, would he be here now? She is unsure. It is like being tugged in half by two separate Steves. The seductive, capable, charming Steve – the sober Steve: and the hostile, resentful, offensive Steve – the drunken Steve, the addict. So she feels torn, beholden to him on the one hand, fearful of change on the other. She worries about what would happen if she were to finish it; and not just to him, but to her. He might go off the rails: she doesn’t want to be alone. She’s over forty; someone said a colleague was ‘past her sell-by date’ only today at the office, and Anna is a few years older. And she does love Steve; she even still fancies him. Irrationally, the chemistry between Anna and the sober Steve is electric. She loves the smell of that Steve, too. It turns her on, Steve’s natural scent: primal, delicious, other.

She smiles to herself, remembering.

*

‘Come and meet our painter,’ Karen says one afternoon when Anna pops round on the off-chance she is in. ‘I got his number from a woman in my post-natal class.’ She winks knowingly, and as she leads the way upstairs, mouths so he doesn’t overhear, ‘He’s gorgeous.’

Steve is standing at the window.

Painty cut-off jeans, big painty canvas trainers, painty T-shirt, painty arms, painty sun-bleached hair. He turns as they enter the room, brush of white emulsion poised.

‘Steven, this is my friend, Anna,’ Karen says.

‘Hello,’ he grins. ‘Nice to meet you.’ His voice is deep and attractive with an Antipodean twang; Anna wonders if he is Australian. Later she learns he is from a well-off family in New Zealand. ‘So you’re posh,’ she had observed. ‘You mean
for a painter
,’ he had said, and yes, in all honesty, she probably did mean that. Compared to decorators she has met in the past, he is distinctly well-to-do.

With hindsight she might have questioned why a man with relative social advantages ended up just doing odd jobs. But her initial take is just to note that he looks a few years younger than her and Karen, and assume he is still finding his feet, career-wise. She wonders if he is a writer or something artistic, decorating to earn extra cash. There are lots of creative people in Brighton; it wouldn’t be unusual.

‘Anna’s got loads of work she needs doing,’ says Karen.

Have I? thinks Anna. She’s just moved into her new house, true, but she’d been planning on doing it herself. ‘Ah, yes,’ she says, cottoning on. ‘Perhaps you could come round and give me a quote.’

‘I’d love to,’ he grins again, eyes full of mischief. Then he holds her gaze a second too long. Anna’s stomach lurches with excitement – the attraction is clearly mutual.

It is that simple. A quote leads to a drink that same evening – when, revealingly, he does
not
get drunk; obviously he is incredibly keen to impress her – which leads to a late-night dinner when she hardly eats anything because she is relishing their conversation; which leads to a night of ‘non-stop shagging’.

Or that’s how Karen puts it the next day.

‘It wasn’t like that,’ Anna protests.

‘Pardon me,’ Karen teases. ‘Making love.’

‘Ooh, no, not that either.’ Anna cringes. After just one encounter this sounds too serious, embarrassing.

Soon, however, they are making love, and within a few weeks he’s moved in with her.

*

Ah well, Anna thinks, edging under the duvet alongside him. Good times, bad times – aren’t all relationships like that? She is too tired to contemplate any further. Minutes later she, too, is asleep, more soundly than the night before, just plain worn out by emotion.

Lou is just locking up her bicycle when her phone bleeps, once, then again. She rummages in her rucksack and flips open the top.

You have 2 messages
, it says.

One is from Vic, the second from a number she does not recognize, so she opens Vic’s first.

You’re on, she reads. I’ve lured the wench to Brighton for you. Friday night out on the tiles, celebrate my birthday a bit early, crash at yours. Just promise you won’t do it with me in earshot. You owe me. Big style. V x

Lou laughs to herself. Vic is straight to the point as ever, and it hardly sounds as if she is intent on staying sober. But she does have a point about the smallness of the venue: Lou can hardly put her oldest friend in the bathroom to sleep. Never mind; that’s detail at this stage – she might not even fancy this woman, or vice versa. Nonetheless, the prospect of meeting her is exciting. Now she will invite Howie, too – it could be a really good evening. Lou slings her rucksack over her shoulder and makes her way rapidly across the station concourse, a decided spring in her step, reading the second message as she goes.

Hope this reaches you, it says. It’s Anna here. You on the 7.44 today? I’m middle carriage, just past the clock. Can give you that tenner.

Lou is pleased. She has been thinking about Anna, and Karen, her friend, and, buoyed by news of Sofia, feels like a chat. She hits the green phone symbol and soon hears ringing.