Something to Hide (11 page)

Her brain's whirring. Is China to blame for this? For the death of her town with its boarded-up Main Street and its Walmart that's sucked the life out of the place, and its population of young men who've gone to war because there's nowhere else to go and who wake up in the night screaming and then beat the shit out of their kids? And so it goes round and round.

Mr Wang Lei stubs out his cigarette. ‘My grandmother had her feet bound so she could barely walk. I thought that was what happened when ladies grew old. My family were peasants, you see, and then … then Mao came to power. Dear Mrs Russell, you have no idea what freedom means.'

His words stir her. Nobody she knows talks about this sort of thing; Todd certainly doesn't. Nor does she, in fact. She's suddenly aware of all the countries in all the world, all the possibilities and languages, the cities she'll never see with their towers and minarets. It's bracing to have her mind opened up. She knows nothing about the Chinese but senses that their hardships were of a different order to hers. This man, however, has made a success of his life, jetting around the world and doing business in Africa, a continent as mysterious to her as China.

Warrior gazes past them with his drooping adult's mane. He now looks pitiful, like a child wearing a wig. That he never had the chance to grow up fills her with grief. Todd stopped Warrior's life to prove himself a man. She feels a surge of rage against her absent, stupid husband who she's betraying in such a spectacular fashion. Just for a moment,
she
seems the brave one. No man could comprehend the pain of childbirth. Even a soldier.

She's getting a little lost here and tries to concentrate. Mr Wang Lei is showing her photographs of his apartment in Bejing. She's astonished by its opulence – gold mirrors, white fur rugs, a balcony overlooking a hazy vista of skyscrapers. A room has been prepared for the baby; it's painted yellow, with stencils of tigers around the walls. He also shows her photographs of what he calls his holiday hideaway. It, too, is vast; her present home could fit into its galleried living room. He says it's near the Great Wall of China which can be seen from outer space.

He's certainly proud of his possessions. He tells her in detail about square footage and state-of-the-art sound systems. He also informs her that he owns a top-of-the-range Range Rover and Series-something BMW. She wonders if all Chinese are boastful or if such bragging is due to Mr Wang Lei's low sperm count. It's Warrior all over again. She wonders if he shot the antelopes whose heads adorn the walls of his palatial living room. Men are such pathetic creatures.

They're interrupted by a banging at the door. Her neighbour Carl stands there, holding a rifle. He's recently grown a beard and looks like a wild man of the woods.

‘Was that your car out there?' He turns to Mr Wang Lei. ‘Some kids have just driven it off. I took a shot at them but they'd gone.' He turns to Lorrie. ‘It was them Polaks from down the road.'

She ends up driving her Chinese visitor to the bus station. After a lengthy wait he leaves for San Antonio. Her apologies have been met with strained politeness, she has no idea what he's thinking. His face remains, as ever, bland. Inscrutable.

Bang goes his American Dream. He was appalled by her home and her neighbourhood. He's going to bail out and she'll never see him again. She'll give birth to a Chinese baby – that'll take some explaining!

But then don't all newborn babies look Chinese?

Driving home, Lorrie bursts into hysterical laughter. If only she could talk to someone! She feels she's going to explode.

She's late collecting her children. They're squabbling as usual; normality has returned. As Lorrie cooks them dinner, the afternoon's events assume the unreality of a dream. Despite the cigarette stub in the ashtray, it's hard to believe that Mr Wang Lei was sitting in her lounge.

She also feels lightheaded from her loss of appetite. Normally she would have been munching cookies during the afternoon – certainly during an afternoon so charged with tension. Inflamed by the smell of cooking, she would have been snacking on anything to hand whilst frying the chicken.

She's swallowed two capsules, that's why. Two 400mg capsules of Karpanol, twice a day.

Karpanol is her secret weapon against discovery. It's the reason she thinks she might get away with her wildly risky plan.

She discovered it on the internet. It's extracted from a plant called kar. According to the bottle, this is an appetite suppressant.
For anyone who struggles with hunger, cravings or portion size.
It's perfectly safe; there's no danger to a growing baby. It just mimics the effects of sugar, and stops the cravings. She's not stopped eating; she's just stopped stuffing her mouth all day.

That's the beauty of it. She's losing weight while gaining weight. So, as the months pass, nobody will notice the difference.

That's Lorrie's hope, and she's clinging to it for dear life.

The following Saturday she takes the kids shopping. Dean has already grown out of his school pants and needs a larger size. His weight is ballooning; she suspects he's missing his dad and is comfort-eating. Nowadays he's learnt to hide the wrappers; his stealth breaks her heart. There's no way she can mention a diet, however, not now he's older. For a mad moment she imagines slipping him a Karpanol.

The pants are dowdy – plus-sizes usually are. Dean wants to look cool, like the other kids. She searches the racks for hip, trendy pants, the sort she saw on the Big Kids website. Like the website itself, however, they don't exist.

It's still a mystery to her, how the website disappeared overnight. Did they go to all that trouble just to rob one person? Has it reappeared under another guise, inventing other products? Or was $48,000 enough for them – whoever they were – to retire to their dream home?

‘Mom, I'm hungry.' Angie tugs at her arm.

The Golden Gate is just across the parking lot. Its neon sign, portraying a pointy-roofed hut, stutters in the sunshine. They do a special offer for Saturday lunch so she takes the kids there.

The place is empty, though there are plenty of waiters. Lorrie feels, as always, that the staff only exist when a customer appears. Rather like that website, now she thinks of it.

She scans the waiters' faces. To be honest, she has never really looked at them before. Folks say that all Chinese look the same but that's not the case; it's just that people never see a bunch of them together. Though the waiters' faces are different, however, they all wear the expression with which she's become familiar: blankly polite. She has a crazy urge to tear off her clothes and see if they react.

‘Ugh! Gross!' Dean groans at the dishes as they are put down on the table. He's in a bad mood because he's been humiliated with the pants.

Lorrie shushes him. When the waiters have gone she points out the dishes one by one.
Kung pao ming har
(shrimp and peanuts),
chow mein
(noodles),
mu shu pork
(with egg and lily buds),
Yangchow fried rice
. ‘You liked them last time,' she says.

He refuses to eat with chopsticks. ‘No way!'

Angie tries to organize the chopsticks with her little fingers but they collapse. ‘Moron,' says Dean. Despite his sneers, he's shovelling it in with a fork and spoon. His eyes are tiny nowadays; beady, watchful eyes sunk into the pillows of his cheeks. ‘Dad says Chinks eat animal bottoms.'

Lorrie frowns at her son. ‘Your dad knows nothing.'

‘He does, so!'

‘And we don't call them Chinks.'

‘He says they eat their feet and their bottoms and their intestines.'

Angie spits out her food. ‘Ugh!'

‘Just eat it up.' She glares at them. ‘Both of you.'

‘And he says you get hungry again after two hours.'

Lorrie bursts out laughing. Not with Karpanol you don't. Her two children look at her curiously. Parents are strange and unpredictable creatures.

And the capsules are working! Lorrie eats a modest meal and even leaves some food on her plate. In the past, everything triggered her insatiable hunger – fear, happiness, tension, relief. It was an addiction, like smoking. She ate to give herself courage and she ate as a reward. She ate to stop herself thinking and she ate to sort out a problem. Throughout the day she was stuffing her face. Now she feels a secret satisfaction as, watched by the silent waiters, she lays down her chopsticks.

That night, when the kids have gone to bed, Lorrie opens the red silk book.

In it she writes:
Today baby had her first Chinese meal.

ANOTHER BLOG FROM
Bev.

Hi folks! Here's a picture of our latest baby – Delilah. Isn't she cute? When I found her she was covered in sores and her tail was chewed off but a little TLC has worked wonders and now she's become a right little madam. Sukie, our chief drama queen, is looking mighty miffed!

Talking of TLC, Jem gave yours truly a wonderful surprise last month. He's had to travel a lot recently, raising funds for his charity, and I've been on my ownsome. So imagine my surprise when he announced a romantic trip to celebrate our wedding anniversary (yes, that's 35 and counting!). Leaving my babies in the capable hands of Clarence, our houseboy, we flew to the five-star Talbot Game Lodge in Kenya where champagne and roses awaited us in our room. During the afternoon safari we spotted many animals including a large herd of giraffe. They're tall and beautiful and totally ignore us. ‘Just like the waiters at the Nairobi Sheraton,' Jem says. How we laughed!

After a pampering session in the spa (great massage!) we drank the champagne on our balcony. It overlooked a water hole where the elephants come at dusk. They really are majestic creatures. How anyone could shoot them is beyond my comprehension – it's THEY who should be shot!

Afterwards we had a delicious candlelit dinner and the rest is censored! All in all, the most wonderful mini-break. I really am the luckiest girl in the world!

‘She doesn't suspect anything?'

‘No.'

‘Are you sure?'

‘Yes.'

‘Sure?'

‘I do know her, Petra. She is my wife.'

This visit is different. Our larkiness is gone. We're both on edge and drinking heavily. Jeremy is consumed with guilt and has withdrawn into himself. I have to respect this because he has so much to lose.

For he's leaving Bev.

He's lost weight. He looks older and – not surprisingly – more stressed. It's a strange period. I feel both more intimate with him – we're actually snapping at each other, we're raw and exposed – and yet more sidelined. For I'm outside his world and it's utterly preoccupying him, as indeed it would. His marriage, his work, the country he loves – he's leaving all of it for me. By contrast, our love affair
is
my world, it floods every nook and cranny. There's such an imbalance; sometimes I wonder if our bond is too frail to support this huge sacrifice on his part. Will he start to resent me?

He senses this, I'm sure. At these moments he rallies and becomes his old self – funny, loving, large-spirited. And he does seem relieved to have made his decision. Now he's leaving his wife he talks about her with generosity and I love him for that. I, too, feel a certain tenderness towards my old friend who's so ignorant of what lies ahead. It's like seeing a car merrily bowling along in the other direction; you know that a pile-up awaits it and you want to flash your lights in warning.

No I don't. Anyone who posts those blogs deserves what's coming to them. And it's my turn. While Bev's been singing in harmony over the cooking pots for thirty-five years I've been deceived, frustrated, lonely. So terribly, terribly lonely. Married people have no idea.

This seems harsh but life is cruel. Read the papers. Look at your families. Look at the Palestinians. Jeremy has rescued me and I'll fight to the death to keep him.

Outside it's filthy weather, torrential rain and flooding. Autumn shouldn't be like this. It should be frosty mornings and conkers, the England that people dream about when they're sweltering in the tropics. I want England to look its best, so Jeremy will be eager to live here. This is stupid, I know – I should be enough of a draw. But I look at my ageing body, my breasts like spaniels' ears, and think, can he give it all up for this?

So when at last it's a fine day I suggest we go for a walk in the Cotswolds. Jeremy's a country boy and has been hankering after mud and brambles.

It's early November and the trees are bare. We tramp through a beech wood and up onto a hill. Jeremy's been here for three days now and we haven't talked about our plans, only that he'll come to live with me in London. The fresh air should be clearing our heads but my brain is whirring – how much of his stuff will he bring and where shall I put it? Will his demented mother just presume I'm Bev? What will it be like, living with a man again? Will Bev come to London and batter the door down? In a curious way I'm looking forward to Jeremy leaving so I can simply luxuriate in what's happening without any distractions, like a teenager dreamily in love.

‘We'll have to get Christmas over with,' he says. ‘Before I break the news.'

What time is the right time to break the news? There is no right time, of course. Something always happens to make it impossible to deliver the hammer blow. As we walk across the hill, scattering rabbits, I picture the scenarios. Bev will have a breast-cancer scare. Somebody will poison her dogs. Or maybe the opposite will be the case; things will be going so swimmingly that it will be equally impossible to clear his throat and say,
I'm leaving you.
I remember the bewilderment on my babies' faces when they had an injection – the trusting happiness changed to a howl of pain. How can anyone bear to do that to another human being?

‘What I'm going to do,' says Jeremy, ‘is to sort out my affairs before I tell her. The charity can run itself now, I've trained up my assistants. That's the point of it, that it becomes self-sufficient. I'll move some money into Beverley's bank account and get everything in place so she's well taken care of …' His voice fades away.
Taken care of
sounds chilling. It's just the opposite, of course. I'm suddenly, desperately sorry for Bev. What will she do? Come back to England?

And he seems quite breezy about giving up his grand passion, the project for which he quit his career. Is that because it's outweighed by his love for me? Of course I'm gratified, but it still makes me uneasy. Jeremy's always been impulsive, a loose cannon, but I'm worried that he's making a rash decision. What's he going to do with the rest of his life – retire? He's not the sort to take up sailing. Or, indeed, tramp around the Cotswolds, because now he says his knee's playing up and can we find a pub?

‘I want an old-fashioned, moribund one,' he says.

‘Oh God, like that restaurant?'

‘With an alcoholic publican, a couple of sheep-shaggers and some pork scratchings. Like they were in my youth.'

‘You won't find that in the Cotswolds, darling.' I call him
darling
now, it gives me a frisson. ‘We're in Range-Rovia.'

But we do. It must be the last ungastro'd pub in Oxfordshire. The only other customer is an old boy whose trousers are held up with baling twine. On the wall, a yellowing poster announces a gig by a Herman's Hermits tribute band, a group I saw in the original.

Jeremy and I sit in the corner nursing our pints. He likes to use that verb,
nursing,
in pubs. We talk about my son's family in Seattle, who I Skyped last week. Apparently the nanny had to take the day off because her horse was having an MRI scan. Jeremy's booming laugh makes the barman glance up from his newspaper. I'm deliriously happy. The stress has disappeared; I just want to sit here for ever, far away from the impending thunderstorm of grief and fury. I wonder how Jeremy's going to cope with it all.

The door opens and an elderly woman comes in. She has long grey hair tipped with brown where she dyed it long ago, and wears a boxy tartan coat. It reminds me of a coat Bev had in the seventies. She's followed by a small matted dog.

She stops and glares at Jeremy. ‘Don't I know you?'

‘I don't think so,' he says.

‘Not you!' She turns to me. ‘You. Do you know me?'

‘Do you know me?' I reply.

‘Don't tease me, I've just got up.' She turns to her dog. ‘Come here, Patsy!'

The dog takes no notice and starts sniffing a chair leg.

‘Patsy, come here!'

The dog pauses, then walks stiffly up to her.

‘Sit!' she snaps.

The dog doesn't move.

‘Stand!' she says.

The dog remains standing. She looks at us triumphantly and goes to the bar.

Jeremy returns to West Africa. It's quite different this time; I'm almost happy to see him go. ‘As Churchill said, this is the end of the beginning.' Jeremy kisses me and disappears into Departures.

Events are now in motion; the countdown has begun. He needs a couple of months to get through Christmas and to sort out his affairs. By late January he'll be home with me, for ever.

Over the next weeks Jeremy makes contact, but only intermittently. Much of the time he's away in the bush with the Kikanda, and can't get online. Though I'm thousands of miles away I can almost feel him dismantling his life. He's been on several trips to the capital city, Assenonga, to sort out his finances. God knows what he's telling Bev he's doing.

When I get his emails they're loving but distracted. This is hardly surprising. He must feel like a murderer, living with his unsuspecting victim who's cheerfully going about her business. I imagine him being his breezy self, lie upon lie streaming out of his mouth. It must break his heart.

Four parcels of his belongings have already arrived at my house. This is almost more thrilling than having the real man here; they're so mundane. It's going to happen. I carry them up to my bedroom and stack them against the wall so I can look at them in bed.

This helps to steady me because I'm having powerful, unsettling dreams. Christmas has come and gone. Outside it's stormy, the wildest January I can remember, and when I wake my heart is fluttering with nerves.

Though he's far away, Jeremy senses when I'm feeling insecure. He tells me how much he loves me, how I make him happier than he's ever been, how he's bought me a Christmas present and can't wait to give it to me. As his arrival draws nearer I can sense his mounting tension. He's booked a flight on 20 January. He plans to tell Bev the day before. Almost a worse betrayal, I imagine, is this dogged, meticulous planning of his departure down to the smallest detail – bank transfers and so on. He's being generous with her but I'm sure that won't help. However kindly and gently he breaks the news, it won't help. Nothing will. As a fellow woman I feel her pain like a knife in my guts. Sometimes I actually feel angry with Jeremy on her behalf, how perverse is that?

And I shall lose her for ever, of course. My oldest friend, my link with the past. Nobody else has been so constantly in my life. She's not my sort, as I've said, but our bond is deeper than that. She's more like the sister I never had – we may irritate the hell out of each other and have totally different values and tastes, but that's beside the point.

She'll be gone from my life. Worse than that, she'll be my bitterest enemy on earth. In the art room we jabbed our fingers with a lino-cutter and rubbed our blood together.
Blood-sisters
. She's capable of powerful love and powerful, all-consuming jealousy. She burnt Jeremy's photos, after all.
Now you'll love nobody but me.
God knows what she'll do when she finds out I've stolen her husband.

Still, it's a small price to pay.

Two weeks before his arrival Jeremy emails:
When this is all over, will you marry me?

Yes.

I spring-clean the house in readiness. I even scour the oven; I'm quite the little housewife. And I paint the bedroom – our bedroom – in Tuscan Red. I'm a slapdash painter but I hope Jeremy won't mind. I don't know how finickity he is; in fact I haven't a clue what he's like in a domestic setting. Bev and I were pretty slovenly but that was long ago, and besides, he was only a visitor. Is he neat? Messy? I'm launching into the unknown with a man who seems so familiar but in these ways he's a stranger. Only Bev knows what it's like to live with him.

Now it's happening I've told my close friends. Few of them knew Bev; even if they did, they haven't seen her for years, so there's no danger of the news reaching her. She's my past life, not the present one. I just love telling people and seeing their surprise; I love speaking Jeremy's name out loud, the three syllables rolling around my tongue. I'm touched by people's happiness on my behalf; they've seen me through so much misery but now they recognize the real thing. At my advanced age, I've joined the club of the loved.

I email my children. Skyping seems somehow too exposing; typing is easier. Sasha has always been the trickier one.
Jeremy!!!???
she writes.
That blast from the past? I didn't even know you liked him. Isn't he a Tory Boy?
Jack seems simply glad, but he's a chap and more straightforward.
I'm so happy for you, Mum. You deserve it.
He's probably pleased that he doesn't have to worry about me any more; I can sense his relief across the Atlantic.

Naked, I stand in the lamplight in my terracotta bedroom. The mirror reflects my ageing body. It's sinewy and lean, the breasts tragic flaps, the stomach puckered from childbearing. But it's loved. I have a man who will see it out. Death is less terrifying now I'm companioned on my journey. This sounds gloomy but it's not. My gratitude to Jeremy is beyond words. I certainly won't voice them, it's my secret and one has to keep certain things private – neediness, bikini-waxing, the fear of dying alone. The wonderful thing is I'm not alone any more, alive or dead. He'll soon be with me in bed, his arms around me.

I remember our times together. They're getting stale now, I've revisited them so often … our laughter in the moribund Italian restaurant, our train journey home from his mother, that moment in the empty basement when we first kissed. Our week in bed. He's been gone so long I have nothing else for nourishment but soon we'll have a whole life of such moments, how thrilling is that? I haven't bought underwear for years so I go to Fenwick's, which I'm glad to see still exists, and spend a fortune on silky knickers and bras. The ageing sales assistant is included in my love.