One Moment, One Morning (38 page)

She returns to the bay, peeks between the gap in the curtains. If he’s still in the garden, she doesn’t want him to see her and cause another scene.

There’s no one there.

Then something catches her eye. In the doorway of the office building up the road are her blankets; she can’t see him, but from their rounded shape she deduces that Steve must be curled up underneath, asleep. It is where the homeless guy used to shelter: the man with the cottage-cheese sandwiches.

Karen stirs; someone is by her side in the bed.

Could it be?

It can’t be.

It isn’t.

It’s Luke. He sneaked in under the covers in the night; now it comes back to her.

Is every morning going to be like this? A punch to her stomach, every time she opens her eyes?

She closes her lids, in the hope it will all go away. Wraps herself tight round Luke; whether she is protecting him or he her, she doesn’t know. But he feels warm and soft, and, while he still slumbers, at peace. Maybe for a few fleeting moments, some of it will rub off on her.

*     *     *     

First thing on waking, Anna checks out of the window. Steve has gone from the doorway, taken the blankets with him. She pushes up the window, leans out, scans the road.

No sign.

She is still rattled by all that’s happened, but, ever practical, swiftly assesses. She can’t leave the house at the moment, lest he return. Steve has keys. So, before she does anything else, she must call a locksmith. She plugs in the landline phone once more and eventually gets through to one.

It transpires it will cost double because it is Sunday. ‘Can’t you wait till tomorrow?’ says the man. ‘If you’re in the house already?’

‘No,’ says Anna, baldly. Thus, within an hour, she is up, dressed, and watching a guy chisel away at the front door.

She is scared Steve will come back before the man has finished, but rather than sit around jigging her feet, she decides to put her agitation to good use. She gets a roll of bin bags from under the kitchen sink and takes them upstairs. There, she takes every item of his clothing from the hangers in the wardrobe and lays them out on the bed. Then, with a half-hearted attempt at folding, she places them one by one into the bags. Within twenty minutes she is done.

She is hunting for boxes for his books when she remembers: her mobile is still switched off. Perhaps she can risk turning it on. At least she can vet the calls. No sooner has it sounded its start-up jingle than it rings. She jumps, nervous.

It’s Karen.

‘Thank God! I’ve been trying to get through for
ages
.’

‘I’m sorry. I turned my mobile off. Why didn’t you try the landline?’

‘I tried last night. It just rang and rang. Then I tried again this morning and it was engaged. I thought there must be a fault on the line or something.’

‘No, I unplugged it. And then this morning I must have been on the phone to the locksmith.’

‘A locksmith? Why?’

‘Steve and I have split up.’ There seems little point in prefacing it.

‘Oh.’ The surprise in Karen’s voice is evident.

Anna waits for it to sink in.

‘Really?’ Karen asks, after a moment.

‘Yes.’ Anna knows that Karen is probably not saying too much, lest she change her mind in the near future. It’s always a hazard when couples part – declaring swift allegiances can easily backfire should they get back together. She wants to make it plain this is terminal. ‘We had a massive fight when we got in.’

‘God, I’m sorry.’

‘It’s not your fault.’

‘No, I suppose.’

‘He was being an absolute twat. I should be the one apologizing to you.’

‘It’s not your fault, either.’

But again Anna feels that it is. ‘I should have seen it coming.’

‘Anna, with Steve you can never see it coming. One minute he’s utterly charming, the next – well, I hope you don’t mind me saying this – but a, um, drunken bore.’

‘That’s putting it mildly.’

‘Last night he surpassed himself.’

‘You’re telling me!’ says Anna. ‘You didn’t see the worst of it. When he got back here he was awful.’

‘He didn’t hit you, did he?’

‘Not exactly . . .’ Then Anna laughs. ‘I think I probably hurt him more than he hurt me.’

‘Oh?’

‘I kicked him in the balls.’

‘Well done!’ applauds Karen, and finally Anna has a sense of how her friend truly feels about him. ‘Where is he now?’

‘I threw him out.’

‘What, this morning?’

‘No, last night.’

‘Ooh, dear, the poor bugger. It was a bit cold.’

‘I gave him some blankets.’

It is only as she is retelling this that Anna can see just how bizarre the whole experience has been. The mirror is shattering on her looking-glass world.

‘So now what?’

‘I’ve changed the locks.’

‘Bloody hell,’ Karen gasps. ‘You haven’t wasted much time.’

‘Only four years,’ observes Anna dryly.

‘Well, I am sorry,’ Karen repeats. ‘I did like him, in a way.’ Then she adds, ‘The sober him, anyway.’

‘That’s the problem: it’s only half of him.’

‘Mm . . .’ She can sense Karen thinking. ‘What are you doing today?’

‘Packing up his stuff mostly, I expect. Why?’

‘Mum offered to keep an eye on Molly and Luke for a bit, later. Shall I come round, lend you a hand?’

‘That’d be great,’ says Anna.

*     *     *     

It has been a long week and Lou needs to catch up on her sleep. This, together with the fact that it is Sunday, justifies her staying in bed an hour or so longer than usual. Half awake, half dozing, she listens to the sound of people moving about the house. The buzz of the water heater as her aunt takes a shower, the faint strain of classical music from the radio in the conservatory, the clink of dishes in the kitchen.

Eventually, she knows she can’t get away with it any longer: her mother will be pacing, keen for Lou to have breakfast. She throws back the bedcovers, pulls on her dressing gown and makes her way downstairs. She can hear voices: but it’s not Uncle Pat talking to her mother: her sister Georgia is here. Georgia often drops by at the weekend; she and her mother are in the kitchen.

‘Elliot is rather like your father,’ her mother is saying.

‘Do you think so? I thought he was more like Howard.’ Howard is Georgia’s husband, Elliot her son.

‘No, see here? His chin? That’s your father to a T.’

Lou frowns and pauses on the bottom stair. Damn Georgia, showing her mother the Christmas photos –
she
’d wanted to do that. She was the one who’d taken them, after all, and she is pleased with what she’d captured with her camera. She is disappointed at missing an opportunity to gain her mother’s praise. Then again, she should have known better than to send her sister a set: when it comes to snaps of her offspring, of course Georgia is going to want to show them off at the first opportunity. Lou tells herself not to be churlish and goes to join them.

‘Good morning,’ says her mother.

Lou takes a cup and saucer from the dresser, lifts the tea cosy, pours herself a cup of tea from the pot. She likes it strong but this is stewed and – she dips in her little finger – cold.

‘I think I’ll make a fresh one,’ she mutters.

‘Oh, yeah, sorry, we made that a while ago,’ says Georgia. ‘I get up so early, with the children. It’s automatic. I am jealous of you, able to sleep so late!’

Just for a split second Lou feels like saying, ‘No, you’re not.’ But instead she takes a seat next to them, reaches for the photos. Her nephew Elliot licking a spoon of cake mix with most of it around his mouth; Elliot taking his first bandy-legged steps; Elliot splashing in the bath – to be anything less than enthused would be horrid of her. Then there is her niece being breastfed; her niece’s face scrunched up and scowling; her niece grinning and playing with a rattle Lou herself gave her.

Lou adds milk to her tea and immerses herself in the moment, gazing and laughing and cooing along with her mother and sister, and she is pleased with the pictures after all, even though her mother doesn’t once say how good they are.

Then, as they come to the last one, Lou has an inexplicable rush of emotion. Suddenly, she feels like crying.

She gets up, walks to the window, trying to place what it is that has affected her so. Tears prick behind her eyes. Then the cause comes to her, as she brushes them away. It is envy. Not of her sister’s life: she wouldn’t want her marriage, or her house, or even, come to that, her children. But she does envy her sister’s relationship with their mother.

It seems so easy, so clean, so honest, in comparison with her own.

*     *     *     

Anna is midway through sealing up the third box of Steve’s books with a noisy length of gaffer tape, when her phone rings again.

It’s Lou. ‘Hi,’ she says. ‘This a good moment?’

This time, Anna feels more confident that it truly is OK to chat. The hurricane has passed. She is picking up the pieces, but not caught up as she was, mid whirl. ‘Yes.’

‘I just wondered how it went, yesterday.’

Where should I start? thinks Anna. It has been one almighty twenty-four hours. ‘The gathering back at Karen’s was wonderful. On the whole.’

‘I am so pleased.’

‘Where are you?’Anna wants to verify before she launches into the full version of events.

‘At my mother’s. Well, actually, I’ve come out to buy the papers. Wanted the excuse for a walk.’

As she says this Anna hears a car swish by. ‘You get there OK?’

‘Yeah, fine.’

Anna doesn’t know Lou that well yet, but nevertheless can detect an undertone to her voice; Lou does not sound fine, really. ‘Everything all right?’

Lou exhales. ‘I’m just having a shit time with my mother. She’s driving me insane.’

‘Ah.’ Anna just knows, from the way Lou says this, and from what she has intimated before, when they were out earlier in the week, that there is history there. ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’

‘Same old, same old, I guess. I didn’t really expect it to be otherwise. Still, sometimes you hope it will be different. You can’t help it.’

‘Yes. ’Anna thinks of Steve. How often did she hope against hope that he would be different, that he would change? She decides to confide. ‘Actually, Steve and I split up last night.’

‘Oh.’

Anna gives her a few seconds, as she did Karen.

‘That’s a shame,’ says Lou, eventually.

‘Do you think so?’ Anna is surprised Lou would feel this way. She wouldn’t have thought Lou would have judged them an ideal couple.

But Lou clarifies, ‘It’s always a shame, when people who care for each other split up. I got the sense you cared for him a lot.’

Considering how short a time they have known one another, Lou has her sussed. ‘I do, I did.’

‘But it’s awfully hard, living with an alcoholic, that I do appreciate.’

‘I just couldn’t do it any more.’ Anna looks round at all the boxes. It
is
a shame. There were things she and Steve had in common like this – reading – that she will miss dreadfully.

‘I did mean what I said though, you know, in the park.’

‘Oh?’

‘That you can’t sort it out for him, cure him.’

‘No.’

‘He’ll probably have to hit rock bottom, you know, before he does that. That’s what they say. In some ways you may have helped him, made him face it. With you there to support him, you were enabling him; he was bound to carry on drinking.’

Anna has heard this reasoning before, but not till this morning has it resonated with her so strongly. Steve at rock bottom; it is a tragic thought. She feels for him. ‘Do you think he’ll be all right?’ She wants Lou to say he will. She can’t take him back, she knows that; nonetheless she feels concerned for him, guilty. She has left him – or some might say he has left himself – with no home.

‘Probably,’ says Lou. ‘There is help there for him, if he seeks it out.’

‘You mean like Alcoholics Anonymous and so on?’

‘I do. Has he ever tried anything like that?’

‘No.’

‘You never know, he might do now. Meanwhile, has he somewhere to stay?’

‘I don’t know.’ Anna is frank. The guilt grows. She still feels responsible for him – she can’t shake that off overnight. But counter to this is another feeling, new, but she treasures it: a recognition she must, first and foremost, look after herself. ‘I don’t want him here,’ she reiterates.