Quarter Past Two on a Wednesday Afternoon (11 page)

Gasping for breath, hooked out of her dream like a fish, she surfaced into her body, into her bed. Usually Martin’s sleeping warmth was close by; she could snuggle close and be calmed, even though he was quite unaware. Last night she reached out for him but found only the cool sheet, her hand sliding over the edge of the bed; she registered the shape of the wardrobe, the unfamiliar position of the window, and realized that she was in her old room at home. Her heart was thumping, the dream still vivid.

Rose had done this. Rose would never let go.

Letting herself into the flat, Anna thought of telling Martin her news. Now he’d approve of her; she’d go off to work every morning, and her salary would appear in the bank account every month. But she felt herself resisting. Had she bought herself a safety net, or was it, instead, a tightening mesh, strangling her when she tried to struggle free?

It was no good. Something was pushing her away from her own life. Happiness was on the other side of an invisible barrier. Even when it seemed within her grasp, it was only there to mock. Happiness was something other people could do.

He’d be late back, she remembered; she’d better do something about food. Meanwhile, another decision made itself, and Ruth was the person she chose to tell, on the phone.

‘I’m moving out of the flat. Martin and I are splitting up.’

She heard Ruth’s intake of breath; then, ‘What? You can’t mean that!’

‘I do.’

‘But why?’

Anna searched for a reason. ‘Things weren’t working out.’

‘But you seem – he seems – so, so—’

‘Don’t say happy. We’re not. I mean weren’t.’

‘When did this happen?’

‘It hasn’t, exactly. Not yet. I haven’t told him.’

A beat of silence, then Ruth said: ‘So it’s your idea, not his? Anna, whatever’s gone wrong, it can’t be that bad. Don’t do anything in a hurry. You’ll only regret it.’

‘But I am. I’m moving out.’ Anna felt obstinacy hardening inside her.

‘But why? You don’t mean – Is there someone else?’

‘No! I need to be by myself, not part of a couple.’

‘Oh, I meant— So, you’re saying you want to live on your own, find a place, but Martin doesn’t know? Have you done anything about it?’

‘No,’ Anna admitted. She had thought only as far as staying at home in Sevenoaks while she found somewhere to live; but that would seem like tamely giving in, becoming a teenager again. Also, it would mean telling her parents, a prospect she didn’t relish. And total immersion in her parents’ concerns and muddles would never help to clarify her thoughts.

‘You could stay here,’ Ruth said. ‘If it helps. Patrick’s room’s spare while he’s in Edinburgh. Don’t do anything drastic. Come and stay for a few days, or a week. Give yourself time to think.’

‘Are you serious, Ruth?’

‘Course I am.’

‘But – why?’

‘You’re helping me, aren’t you?’ said Ruth. ‘I can do this in return. It’d be an easy enough commute, wouldn’t it?’

‘Yes, straight in on the Central Line. When shall I come?’

‘Tomorrow, after work, if you like. But – think about it first. You might change your mind.’

‘I won’t,’ Anna said.

How quickly new plans were making themselves! It lent her a kind of recklessness. She would trust her instincts, see where they led. But this feeling of light delirium lasted only as long as it took to go into the bedroom and choose clothes to take to Ruth’s, packing them in her wheeled case. After all, she still hadn’t done anything for herself; she was simply falling in with another person’s suggestions.

‘Why the suitcase?’ Martin asked when he got in, and went into the bedroom to throw off his tie and jacket. ‘I thought you said your mum was OK?’

‘She is. But first I’ve got good news.’

She told him about her conversation with Sunila, the contract being drawn up. Martin looked delighted. ‘That’s brilliant – well done!’ He embraced her, kissing her ear; then, sensing resistance, looked into her face. ‘What made you decide?’

‘It seemed too good a chance to miss.’

He gave her an
isn’t that what I told you
look, but refrained from saying it. ‘We must celebrate. Dinner on Saturday? I’ll make a booking – where shall we go? You choose.’

‘Thanks, but …’

He looked puzzled now. ‘What’s up? The suitcase – where are you off to?’

‘I’m going to stay with Ruth.’

‘With
Ruth
,’ he repeated, incredulous. ‘Why? What’s going on?’

‘You needn’t make it sound like a conspiracy. She just … invited me to stay.’ Baulking now at telling him the rest, Anna despised her own cowardice.

‘You and Ruth aren’t exactly best friends. Why this, all of a sudden?’

‘I like her,’ Anna said defensively. ‘And she likes me. And I’m helping her.’

‘Helping how? I can’t see how, during the week. What’s the point of going there now?’

‘I think she needs the company, to be honest.’

‘Well, that sounds nice and cosy.’ Martin had turned away, reaching for a glass, taking a bottle out of the cupboard. ‘Fine, if that’s what you want.’

‘I wasn’t asking for permission,’ Anna said coldly.

‘No, obviously I’m the last person you’d think of considering.’ Martin clattered things about in the utensil drawer, looking for a corkscrew. ‘You keep telling me I don’t understand you, but if you don’t give me any help, what do you expect? How long’s this for?’

‘Till the weekend, at least. We’re doing more house-clearing on Saturday, and probably Sunday too.’

‘So you don’t want to go out on Saturday and now you’re busy on Sunday as well. You might have said.’

‘I just did say.’

In bed that night they turned away from each other, lying separate and apart. Anna stared into the darkness, irritated by the steadiness of Martin’s breathing.

On Tuesday evening, at Ruth’s, Anna unpacked her clothes in Patrick’s room. The walls were midnight blue, patched with posters of his favourite bands; books and CDs overflowed the shelves.

‘He’s phoned a couple of times from Edinburgh,’ Ruth had told her. ‘He’s thinking of working with a friend for a while, selling hi-fi systems.’

Anna hadn’t met Patrick often enough to feel at ease with him. Now that she was stockpiling grudges against Martin, it was convenient to add one that had nudged at her from time to time: his apparent reluctance to involve her with his sons, as if she were some passing girlfriend rather than his partner. Patrick had been sixteen when she first met Martin, old enough to have a pressing social life of his own, and to find excuses not to come with Liam on his regular visits. His wariness towards Anna, the new woman in his father’s life, had gradually been replaced, as he matured, by indifference that bordered on hostility. Anna tried not to feel intimidated by him. He had Martin’s good looks and dark colouring, and a smooth-skinned youthful sexuality that seemed to acknowledge Anna and simultaneously despise her.

She knew from Martin that Patrick had done barely enough work to avoid being thrown out of the sixth form at the selective school he and Liam attended. Having been marked out as academically gifted from an early age, he’d achieved disastrous results in his A-Levels – deliberately, as Martin saw it. When most of his year group had been busy with UCAS applications, he treated the whole business with open scorn; university didn’t appeal to him. Now, he was having what Ruth euphemistically called a gap year, again without much sense of purpose. While his peers set off on the Thailand–Australia–US trail, or for community projects in Africa or South America, Patrick had been filling his days with nothing very much, his evenings behind the bar at a local pub. When Martin fretted about his son’s indolence – incomprehensible to someone as work-driven as he was himself – Anna had taken the line, ‘He’s only eighteen. Plenty of time to find out what he wants to do.’

‘I wouldn’t mind, if he hadn’t squandered the last two years,’ Martin would argue. ‘He’s turning his back on all the chances he’s been given.’

‘At least he’s around. At least he phones you sometimes, tells you where he is.’

Martin didn’t get this reference. ‘Yes, when he wants money.’

Now, hanging her clothes in the limited space Ruth had cleared in Patrick’s wardrobe, Anna felt uneasy. It wasn’t like staying in a guest room; wasn’t neutral territory. It was stepping aside from her own life to invade Martin’s, the half where she had no part, no business to be prying. She should have said no to this, made her own arrangements. Maybe she’d only stay a night or two. But then what? She’d have to find herself a flat.

‘Anna!’ Ruth called up the stairs. ‘I’m opening a bottle of wine.’

They ate pasta with ham and mushrooms, and salad. With Liam there, the reason for Anna’s visit couldn’t be discussed, for which she was grateful. Liam didn’t remark on her presence, beyond asking, ‘Is Dad coming?’

‘No, darling, not today. Anna’s staying with us for a bit.’

Afterwards, when he’d gone into the sitting room to watch TV, Ruth made coffee. Now, Anna thought, there would be questions: questions she’d struggle to answer. But Ruth, instead, returned to the subject of Patrick.

‘Martin thinks I’m too soft with him – but, honestly, try telling an eighteen-year-old what to do! And Patrick can be so obstinate. Well, they both can. The more Martin tries to cajole or persuade him, even threaten, the more determined Pat is to do exactly as he likes.’

‘Who does he go around with?’

‘He’s made new friends at the pub – older boys, mainly – well, young men. Now he’s gone off to Scotland to be with this girl, Rhiannon. I’m not sure if she’s his girlfriend or just a friend.’

‘It doesn’t sound so terrible,’ Anna remarked. ‘It’s not what Martin wants for him, but Martin can’t run everyone’s life.’

Ruth looked at her; realizing that this could have come over as
Let’s talk about me
, Anna added, ‘Patrick’s sharp enough to find out what he wants, and find a way of doing it.’

‘Mm. I expect you’re right. I feel like a go-between, trying to keep the peace.’

Anna couldn’t stop herself from saying, ‘Why did you invite me to stay? I mean – you’ve got enough to think about.’

‘It was the obvious thing to do,’ Ruth said.

The winter of the year Rose disappeared, Grandad Skipton was diagnosed with a heart condition, and died at the start of December. It was such a strange and terrible Christmas, that first one, that Anna was glad when it was over, relieved when the school holidays ended. Rose had always made Christmas special, taking charge of the present-buying and the tree-decoration in a bossy way that Anna secretly rather liked. Without Rose, the prelude to Christmas was flat and ordinary, the festive days an ordeal.

But first there was Grandad’s funeral. Anna cried a little, awed by the occasion: the black clothes, the hushed voices, the solemn moment when the coffin was carried in. Grandad Skipton wasn’t her favourite grandfather; he had always appeared rather stern and forbidding, compared to Grandad Taverner with his jokes and cuddles and games of Scrabble and Monopoly.

By the graveside Anna’s mother stood arm in arm with Gran as if braced against an earth tremor, while the coffin was lowered into the ground. Anna watched at first in fascination and then in horror, as the realization struck her that death was final, that this was what it meant.
Rose, Rose …
Could Rose be dead,
really
dead, like Grandad? But what would be worse? Rose boxed into a coffin and buried under such a weight of earth as the heap that was ready to smother Grandad? Or Rose dead somewhere but yet to be found, floating in water, perhaps, or tangled in a ditch? That made Anna shiver, the thought of Rose with eyes open, dead staring eyes that would swim out of her dreams to stare and stare at her.

Anna’s mind clouded, and panic shivered through her. Tears rolled down her face; she thought she was crying soundlessly, but Dad had noticed and put his arm round her, holding her close.

‘I know, love. I know,’ he whispered. And maybe he did.

Cassandra knows that the others in the reception office at Meadowcroft think of her as prim, staying aloof from their gossip. She presents herself smartly, always in a skirt and jacket, with careful make-up, neat hair and discreet jewellery. She would never keep a patient waiting at the hatch while she finished a conversation, the way Pauline and Jilly sometimes do; she makes a point of getting there first, with a bright ‘Can I help you?’ in a way that reproaches the others. She answers the phone, deals with appointments and referrals, sends out reminders about vaccinations, health checks and prescription reviews. Over the years she’s been here, the doctors have got younger and younger; she and the other receptionists are old enough to be parents to some of the newer ones. That doesn’t deter Pauline and Jilly and the other part-timer, Louise, all well into their fifties, from making silly remarks about handsome Dr Sharp, the latest to join the practice. Lately their attention has switched to the new physiotherapist, who rents a treatment room in the annexe and sees private patients on three afternoons a week.