One Moment, One Morning (3 page)

‘Where are you going?’ Lou asks.

‘I work in Chelsea. My meeting is at the office. You?’

‘I’m on my way to Hammersmith.’ There is a moment’s silence. ‘I’m a youth worker,’ Lou adds.

‘Ah,’ Anna nods.

Though she loves her job, Lou is conscious her profession is not particularly glamorous or well remunerated. Whilst she has no idea exactly what this woman who works off the King’s Road does, she supposes it’s far more high-flying, and somehow wants her approval. But she doesn’t get the chance to elaborate on why she does what she does because next Anna swivels her hips and tucks her left foot under her, so as to face Lou as fully as possible.

‘So tell me,’ she urges. ‘What happened on the train?’

Lou recounts the events as best she can remember.

‘There simply wasn’t time for anyone to resuscitate him,’ Lou finishes. ‘The nurses were there in next to no time, and they tried . . . God knows they tried.’ She shivers, recollecting. ‘But it was over so fast. One minute he was drinking his coffee, the next, so it seems – gone.’

‘The poor woman he was with!’ Anna says, aghast. ‘Just imagine that, leaving for work with your husband, thinking it was just a normal day, and then suddenly he keels over and dies. Right beside you. Oh, I
really
feel sorry for her.’

*     *     *

‘So do you live in Brighton too, then?’ asks Lou, once they’re on the motorway. The driver puts his foot down and soon they’re doing a steady seventy miles per hour. Gorse bushes just beginning to bud yellow flash by on the embankment.

‘Yes.’

‘Where are you?’

‘Seven Dials. You know it?’

‘Of course,’ retorts Lou. ‘I’ve lived in Brighton for nearly ten years.’

‘Ah, well.’ This makes it worthwhile to be more precise. ‘I’m on Charminster Street.’ Lou looks blank. ‘Between Old Shoreham Road and Dyke Road.’

‘Oh, yeah!’ Lou exclaims. ‘Lovely little white Victorian houses, office block at the end of the street.’

‘That’s it. It’s a bit scruffy, but I like it.’

‘Is it just you?’

She sounds genuinely interested and Anna sees her glance at her finger – presumably to check if she is married. How funny, Anna thinks, we’re both looking for signals, assessing. Nonetheless, she pauses. It is not a subject on which she likes to be drawn. ‘Um, no . . . I live with my partner.’

Lou picks up her cue, and changes the subject. ‘So, do you always work in London?’

‘Mostly, yes. You?’

‘Four days a week. I wouldn’t want to commute the full five.’

‘No, it does get tiring.’ Anna experiences a flush of resentment: if Steve earned more, she wouldn’t need to travel so much. But she doesn’t say this. Instead she takes a deep breath and says, more positively: ‘I love being in Brighton though. So it is worth it.’ She smiles, thinking affectionately of the terraced home she has put so much time and energy into decorating, with its patio garden and views out over the Downs. Then there is her handful of close friends conveniently nearby; the Lanes, jostling with one-off shops and equally eclectic people; the steep shingle of the beach and beyond it, the sea . . . That, perhaps above all else, makes the commute worthwhile: the grey, the green and the blue of it; the crashing, the calm and the choppiness of it; the never-the-same-two-days-in-a-row of it: ah, the sea . . .

Lou interrupts her thoughts. ‘I like being in Brighton too.’

‘So where are you in Kemptown?’ Anna asks. ‘I do hope you’re not going to tell me you’ve got a whole house on the seafront there!’ She is joking, of course: the Regency houses overlooking the beach in Kemptown are huge. Not merely that, they are magnificent; elegant cream stucco frontages, giant windows rising floor to ceiling, rooms of breathtaking proportions with marble fireplaces and elaborate plaster cornices – to own a whole one would be a dream.

Lou laughs. ‘Hardly. I live in a little attic flat – it’s not much bigger than a studio really.’

Something about the way she uses ‘I’, not ‘we’, suggests Lou is living alone. Anna clarifies, ‘So I presume you don’t share?’

Lou laughs again. She has an infectious laugh: deep, throaty, uninhibited. ‘God no, there’s barely room to swing a cat.’

‘And where is it, if you don’t mind my asking?’

‘On Magdalene Street.’

‘Ooh. Does that mean you can see the sea?’

‘Yes, from the living-room bay, down the bottom of the road. I think estate agents call it “an oblique sea view”. And I’ve got a tiny roof terrace where you can see the sea
and
the pier.’

‘How lovely.’ Anna is wistful. She has always fantasized about having her own garret. Fleetingly, she imagines a different life for herself: one where she doesn’t have so many commitments; where there is no mortgage to pay, no Steve, and she is free to pursue her own creativity . . .

Enough of that: she can’t change it, and anyway, she wants to know more about Lou. ‘It must be great for nightlife round there,’ she says, hoping to prompt revelations. Lou lives in the heart of Brighton’s gay district and there are dozens of pubs and clubs at hand where Anna imagines all sorts of exciting things happen.

‘Sometimes a bit
too
good,’ replies Lou. ‘It can get a bit noisy.’

That’s a bit tame, thinks Anna. She’d wanted tales of wild drug-taking and lesbian threesomes. If her own existence is circumscribed these days, she can at least live vicariously. Then again, if there are interesting aspects to Lou’s life, she is hardly likely to confess all to a stranger in a taxi.

*     *     *

Half an hour into the journey, Lou has decided that Anna seems OK, but is still unsure if they have much in common. Lou is a good judge of character on the whole; years of working as a counsellor have honed an innate skill, so she tends to assess individuals well. She is perhaps less shrewd when it comes to judging women she fancies, when sexual attraction can get in the way. But she has seen many straight women – and men too, come to that – make poor judgements when lust muddies perception, so at least she is not alone.

Anyhow, Anna is clearly straight, and not Lou’s type physically. Nonetheless, she is intrigued. She loves nothing more than delving into people’s psyches; it is the same curiosity that has her watching strangers on the train, mapping out lives for them, piecing together the evidence. And it is also what drives her professionally; she loves getting to the bottom of what makes complex – though often tragically self-destructive – young people tick.

In spite of Anna’s polished exterior, which suggests a more materialistic bent than Lou herself, Lou reckons there might be more to her than her travelling companion’s unruffled presentation suggests. There have been little signals, along the way. She has made no mention of any offspring, and most women would do, given the nature of the conversation they have been having about their respective homes. So Lou reckons she doesn’t have children, which is relatively unusual for a woman of her age. But more interesting is the way Anna hesitated before mentioning her partner; Lou reckons there is a story there. She is quick to pick up when someone is hiding something – not least because in certain situations, she does it herself. Plus there is the way Anna is sensitive to the needs of others, even when she is taking control. They did what Anna wanted ultimately, after all, yet she offered to pay Lou’s share. It hints at a sharp mind and a complex character, and Lou’s curiosity is piqued.

I wonder, she muses, as they pull off the M23 and onto the dual carriageway into the drab outskirts of Coulsdon, whether we’ll ever see each other after today? She’s used to journeying up to London on her own in the morning, using the space to gather her thoughts. Still, it would be nice to have someone to chat to from time to time, when she is in the mood. Maybe, if Anna is on the seven forty-four as often as she says she is, they will see each other on board. That said, it is a long train and always packed with people. Being on it at the same time is no guarantee their paths will cross again.

Karen is standing in a car park. Exactly how she has got here or how long she has been here, she is not sure. It is only when, fingers trembling, she tries to light a cigarette that she realizes it is raining. The white paper becomes peppered with droplets that expand and turn it soggy. She looks up; grey clouds skid across the sky. She tilts her head right back. Her face is rapidly covered in water. She should be able to feel it, cool and wet on her skin, but she can’t. She opens her mouth to see if she can taste it, but though her mouth fills with raindrops, she can’t. She is shivering, but she can’t sense the cold.

She tries to locate herself. A large sign, white type out of blue, announces:

ROYAL SUSSEX COUNTY HOSPITAL

Seems to make some kind of sense. What is she supposed to do now?

Simon is dead.

Dead.

Even though she repeats the word to herself, even though she has seen him die, right in front of her, it is not real. Even though she has watched as two nurses tried to revive him on a train and some paramedics tried to shock his heart into working – they tried again and again, and in the ambulance too. Even though a doctor confirmed he was dead a few minutes ago and recorded the time of death; it is still not real, not at all.

They let her be with Simon in A&E – there were tubes everywhere. Now they are moving him to the mortuary – to the viewing room, apparently, where they’ve suggested she might like to spend some more time with his body. But she wanted a cigarette, first, so somehow she has ended up out here, bewildered, numb.

‘Numb.’

She repeats this word too, aloud this time. She has a weird recollection. Don’t they say that feeling numb is the first stage of grief?

She supposes she ought to do something about the children. What time is it? Where are they? Ah, yes, of course, today they are with the childminder: Tracy.

Tracy’s number, yes, right – it is on her mobile.

Oh dear, it is raining; so it is, of course. She had best move out of the rain; her phone will get wet.

Karen sees there is a big glass awning at the entrance to the hospital, a few paces away. There are people beneath it, chatting. She joins them. Briefly, now she is under cover, she is conscious she is drenched. Her fringe is sticking to her forehead in rats’ tails and there are rivulets of cold water running down the back of her neck; even her suede pumps are soaked – how horrible.

She gets the phone out of her Liberty-print shopper – the bag she uses to carry paperwork when she has it, and which today also contains the March issue of
Good Housekeeping
, her purse, lipstick and a comb, a bottle of water and her cigarettes. Her mobile, a basic model with a worn leather case, which her children have covered in ghastly sparkly stickers, has Tracy’s number listed in the address book. She is sure there’s a quicker way to find it – speed dial or something – but can’t remember how it works. So she scrolls down the alphabetic list and is just about to press the green button and dial when she stops.

What on earth is she doing? What is she planning to say? ‘Luke, Molly, Daddy’s dead. Come to the hospital and see the body’? They’re five and
three
, for God’s sake. They won’t understand. She doesn’t understand.

Jesus.
Jesus.

No, what Karen needs is to speak to her friend, her best friend.
She
will know what to do: she always does. This is one number she knows automatically without having to think. Fingers still shaking, Karen punches in the digits.

*     *     *

Not far from Clapham Junction, the taxi is stuck in traffic. The driver has made excellent time up the M23, wound through the depressing suburban sprawl of Croydon, Norbury and Streatham at an impressive rate despite dozens of sets of lights, but so far it has taken them about twenty minutes to get down St John’s Hill.

Anna is just beginning to feel twinges of impatience, when there is a vibrating against her hip: her phone. Soon it is ringing increasingly loudly from the depths of her snakeskin bag. She rummages around. Damn – where is it? Finally she feels smooth metal and pulls out a neat, clam-shaped device.

Hurriedly she flicks it open, knowing she only has seconds before voicemail clicks in.

‘Hiya!’ she says, happy to see the name that comes up on the screen.

‘Anna?’ checks a voice, thin, plaintive.

‘Yes, it’s me. That you?’

The voice on the other end cracks. ‘Yes.’

It sounds as if there is something the matter. ‘Hey, hey,’ says Anna, adopting a gentler tone and leaning into the mouthpiece to make herself heard. ‘What’s happened?’

‘It’s – it’s – Simon.’ The voice – so familiar to Anna – is strangely small.

‘What about him?’ Anna is confused.

‘He’s—’ There is a pause. A long pause.

‘What?’
Anna is insistent – now she is worried.

‘He’s . . .’ Then everything rushes through Anna’s head at once. She has a terrible premonition: she knows what’s coming next, but it can’t be, no, it can’t – then, finally, dreadfully, confirmation; the word is there, out, in the cab, real. ‘. . . dead.’