Separate Lives (28 page)

“That's a lovely picture of you and Grandpa.” I picked up the photograph. It was indeed lovely, taken by Alex, under a willow, on, I now recalled, a pleasant summer's Sunday at Careless.

“Daddy gave it to me.”

“Yes. That was a good idea of Daddy's.” I wiped away a tear. And another. “Would you like me to stay with you until you get to sleep? Would that help?”

“Yes, that would help.”

And so I lay close to my daughter, in her white princess bed with her teddies still ranged at the foot, and I stared at a picture of Cheryl Cole on the wall and realized I hadn't done this in . . . so long. How long? A year? And as my beautiful daughter closed her eyes and I felt her relax and her breathing deepen as she succumbed to sleep, I
saw that she was probably just a few months away from putting her teddies in a cupboard and adding a picture of Justin Bieber to her wall. And the thought made my solar plexus heave, and I wanted to squeeze her very tight and apologize for everything. Not least for failing to give her the childhood she deserved, which was always meant to have been nothing less than perfect, whatever “perfect” was.

In the event, the journey to Suffolk the following Friday was conducted in almost total silence. A heavy sort of silence. Lula was playing Angry Birds on my new iPad; Chuck was asleep. It was almost as if nothing had changed since the last time we'd made this journey together, as a family—and yet of course almost everything had. We still stopped for coffee and a wee at 11:30 a.m., out of habit, I think, rather than any particular need.

Once again we were the last to arrive in Suffolk, albeit this time at the church, St. Mary's, which was less than a quarter of a mile from Careless. And this time too, of course, there was no Nigel to greet us at the door with his usual brusque but heartfelt platitudes. Instead, a hearse containing Nigel's flower-laden coffin was already parked outside the lych-gate. If I had been dreading all of this before, the sight of the Fox family exacerbated my fear far more than I'd anticipated. And as for the sight of Will . . .

I had of course seen Will quite recently, after Guy and Lisa's wedding, when he had called and, against all expectations, driven straight down to Random, arriving on the Dream Home's doorstep just before midnight. Until he'd actually appeared, I hadn't really believed he would, but there he was, still suited and booted and buttonholed,
smiling a tentative smile—for Will anyway, “tentative” not really being part of his emotional repertoire.

“Susie . . .”

“Will. You came.”

“I said I would. Did you really think I'd change my mind?”

“No. I don't know. Maybe. Why did you come?”

“Because I had to.”

“OK.”

“Beautiful house, Susie.”

“Beautiful house, yes. But ‘inside every dream home a heartache,' to sort-of quote Bryan Ferry.”

“Come on. Come here.” And Will enveloped me in a hug, which, inevitably, went on for too long. And which, just as inevitably, I didn't want to end. And nor, it seemed, did he. Later—after a conversation which, aside from his observations about The Wedding (“Lisa looked beautiful, Guy was on cloud nine; I've never seen him so chilled. And you would have been so proud of Lula . . .”) surprised and disarmed me at every turn, leaving me with more questions than answers—Will went to use the bathroom while I sat in the living room, head teeming with thoughts. Can = worms. And when he returned:

“Susie. The mirror. You still have the mirror.”

“Of course I still have the mirror. Why wouldn't I? Quite aside from being the most flattering mirror in the world, it's one of my favorite things.”

“Yeah, there's no reason why you shouldn't have it; of course there isn't. Maybe I just assumed you wouldn't.”

“Why? You know how much I love it.”

But more to the point, why was Will talking about the bloody mirror when there were so many other more important things to discuss?

“I don't know. But seeing it just now took me to . . . another place.”

“William Through the Looking Glass?”

“Yeah, something like that. Anyway, forget it.”

So I did. And then we made love on the sofa—fast, guilty, passionate love—and afterward I cried and Will held me so tenderly that instead of stemming the flow of tears it just exacerbated them. Neither of us said a word until the moment—and it was a long moment—passed. Even then, we didn't say much. Had I written a screenplay for the scene this would have been the point where Will and I declared our undying love, but this was far from being a ninety-minute rom-com. Our emotional business was, for both of us, obviously unfinished but without the benefit of a script it was obvious that neither of us had a clue where we should go from here. Anyway, at about 3 a.m., Will finally left and I went and sat in our—Alex's—east-facing kitchen and drank more wine, waiting for the sound of seagulls and the first streaks of sunrise.

And now, a mere fortnight later, here was Will at his father's funeral, wearing his dress uniform and radiating an aura of being in charge. And next to him, leaning on his arm, was Joan, looking suddenly less like the all-powerful matriarch than a small, pale, frail, elderly widow, an effect set off by the stark simplicity and elegance of her black shift dress, gray pashmina and a pill box hat.

And here too were Guy and Lisa, holding hands, tanned but drawn-looking, and Isobel, doing the time-honored maternal wet hankie routine as she removed smudges from Jack's cheeks. And then there were the children and assorted relatives and friends of the family . . . and everybody looked over as we arrived and then everybody looked away from
me, or straight through me, and turned their attention to Alex and our children, while I hovered, uncertain of the etiquette, a few feet behind as they all hugged and kissed. I wanted to run but I was rooted to the spot. I felt a bit like Sarah Ferguson must have done when first confronted by the royal family post toe-sucking.

Eventually somebody had to acknowledge me. To my surprise it wasn't Will—not straight away—but Joan, who walked forward and kissed me lightly on both cheeks and said:

“Thank you for coming, Susie. I know Nigel would have wanted you to be here.”

“Thank you, Joan. And I'm so very, very sorry. It seems terribly unfair . . .”

Joan nodded and gave a wan half-smile: “It is. But then life very often is unfair, isn't it?”

And she moved back to lean against Will—how I yearned to be able to do that—who, in turn, reached out and squeezed my upper arm, very gently, and perhaps for slightly too long. I felt that everybody was watching this, though of course they probably weren't—and if they were, it was a perfectly normal thing to do under the circumstances, wasn't it?

“Mummy, I need a
poo
,” said Chuck, perfectly on cue. As I led him into the adjacent church hall, exceptionally relieved to be released, I kissed him gratefully. He looked pretty surprised to be kissed for wanting a poo.

The service was long, but not unbearably so, and moving. All the Fox offspring read or said something. Alex was up first, reminiscing touchingly and amusingly about Nigel reading
The Chronicles of Narnia
to him and Guy at bedtime; Isobel spoke of the bond between her father and his only
daughter; Guy read an excerpt from P.G. Wodehouse—Nigel's favorite author—and Will read Ralph Waldo Emerson's “Concord Hymn,” which (and I had never known this until now, and it seemed about a decade too late) was apparently Nigel's favorite poem. It floored us all.

After an intimate address by Nigel's longstanding friend, the Rev. Brian Bostock (who—another revelation—had not only christened all the junior Foxes but had also officiated at the wedding of Will and the sainted Marianne), we moved outside for the “Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust” part of the proceedings. It was immediately obvious there wasn't enough room for everyone around the grave, so I nudged Alex, placed a child's hand in each of his, and sloped round the back of the church for a fag. After a cigarette-free past five years, I'd started smoking again just last week. It was a temporary lapse, I'd promised myself. But I hadn't given myself a deadline to stop, either.

When it was all over, I left with the children as discreetly as possible. But then nobody was looking anyway. The children were quiet as I three-point-turned the old Audi, which I noticed was suddenly looking a bit past its sell-by. I supposed I'd have to leave it with Alex and buy something for myself soon—an oddly exhausting thought, all things considered. How did one buy cars anyway?

Whatever. As I glanced in the rearview mirror, I could see Will assisting Joan over the churchyard stile as the Fox posse made their way back across the single field that now separated Nigel from Careless. It was ineffably sad, but for some reason I still couldn't cry. Instead, I parked in a lay-by and handed out sandwiches, crisps and fruit to the kids, making a point of not complaining when the backseat started to resemble a
favela
.

And on the drive home—disrespectfully to the memory of Nigel, who I seemed to be having trouble realizing was actually dead—all I could think about was Will. In his uniform, the description “dashing” didn't even come close and it disturbed me that the sight of my nearly brother-in-law grieving in a pair of super-shiny Oxfords, air force blue kit and hat, sent tiny shivers up my spine. He looked like he'd been sketched for the cover of a 1960s Mills & Boon, entitled
The Sky's The Limit
 . . .

Despite his pain, dashing RAF Officer Will Fox had never looked more handsome than he did on that summer's day . . . a beautiful day but for the fact that it was also his father's funeral.

While his frail widowed mother leaned on him for support during the interment, and as the Reverend Bostock intoned the lines “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust . . . ,” Will allowed himself the very briefest of guilty glances over his shoulder, catching sight of his secret, forbidden lover, Susannah—his own brother's wife . . .

This was a 1960s Mills & Boon, after all . . .

. . . who was standing some way behind the crowd of mourners, leaning against a tree and dabbing her eyes with a monogrammed handkerchief. She had never looked more lovely than she did at this moment, thought Will. And in many ways, more than he cared to count, she had never been further from him than she was now—the time, he realized with a start, when he needed her the most . . .

For God's sake, woman—get a grip.

The next few weeks of cohabitating with Alex was like living with an acquaintance. If he had been hard to communicate with before Nigel died, he was virtually impossible to get to now. I tried to reach out occasionally, attempted to talk, but he invariably brushed me off. Any conversations we did end up having were conducted in the style of an
oddly formal and old-fashioned sort of meeting, papers and lists spread out on the kitchen table, discussing finances, “arrangements” and all the tedious minutiae that inevitably comes with disentangling a relationship, and in a peculiarly stilted and overly polite fashion. We were, by now, leading almost entirely separate lives.

Some things were, of course, made easier by Nigel's abrupt departure. There was a legacy, and even after death duties it was a larger one than Alex had expected—enough for him to buy me out of the house without having to secure a mortgage, plus a bit left over for the proverbial “rainy days.” But having the financial pressure lifted didn't appear to alter Alex's mood, set to a semi-permanent “morose.” He spent even longer alone in his office, more time wielding drills to no particular effect and he was out as many evenings as he was in. Eventually I stopped asking where he was going.

I decided there was no point in waiting for the estate to be settled—it would take a few months—so after we'd consulted separate solicitors and drawn up an agreement that he would buy me out at the current market value, I decided to start hunting for a house. Not to buy—I wasn't yet ready for that—but to rent for a year or two while I worked out what would be best for me and the kids. Would I stay in Random in the long term, or head home, back up the Highway from Hell?

My heart told me to run, but my head said “stay.” If I left it would be too much for the kids and they'd be too far from Alex . . . and then the decision was effectively made for me when I started looking at property on the internet and learned that, in the areas I would want to live in London, I could probably afford a two-bedroom garret. Though
a fan of apartments, the journey from the Dream Home to a small London flat was just a bit too far. For the moment we'd clearly be staying put in Random, but where?

After a few days of desultory searching on the web, I registered with a couple of the better agents in the area and though neither currently had anything that was right for us—a lot of soulless executive homes in neat cul-de-sacs on the outskirts of town, or dinky holiday rentals that were too small to swing a hamster—three days after I'd registered I got a call from Karen at Stopp & Stiff, known locally as Stop 'n' Sniff, because you make your own pun-fun in a small town.

“Hi Susie, something's just come on—literally this morning—that might interest you. I know you said you weren't particularly sold on the Old Town, but there's something about this place I think you might like . . .”

Carpe the bloody diem: she was right, I wasn't convinced by the Old Town—more because of the lack of parking than the preponderance of ye olde beamage—but I viewed the house with Karen that afternoon, just before the school run.

It wasn't remotely what I'd been looking for. In fact, being a tall thin house on a steeply winding street with a suntrap courtyard garden, it was pretty much the opposite—but I loved it. Unfurnished, there were four bedrooms, two singles for the kids, a surprisingly spacious “master” with an en-suite shower, a tongue-and-grooved family bathroom and another little room with sea views tucked in the eaves that could easily be an office. Downstairs there were two square receptions and a surprisingly large basement kitchen. It was immaculate, too, painted in whites and pale gray, with stripped and painted floors and plantation shutters. French doors opened out on to a walled courtyard, which was on
two levels. A fig tree climbed one wall; clematis crawled up another. It was so obviously loved that this had to have been somebody's own Dream Home. Karen read my mind.