The Child Inside (25 page)

I kneel down beside him and watch him as he sleeps. For these few moments before I must wake him, and before the daily hell of the morning breaks loose and he is ripped away from me, I can look upon him and I can love him, as I have always loved him. I can wallow in that love; I can steal it and feast upon it, before he sees me and pushes me away. These moments are mine. I look at him; I gorge myself. My beautiful, beautiful boy. I would never hurt him, never. I tell myself this, and guilt floods like cold water through my veins. Jono loves his father. He loves us both. When he was younger he used to come into our bed in the mornings; we’d hear the creaking of the door as he pushed it open and the soft pad of his feet upon the floor. Then nothing for a moment as he stood at the end of our bed, wondering if we were awake. And if we were, we’d pretend that we weren’t; we’d wait. And then we’d feel the duvet lifting off our feet as he climbed in and snuggled his way up the middle, coming to rest like a tight sausage between the two of us.

We were happy, weren’t we, the three of us? We were a family, however small. When Jono stopped coming into us like that, we felt his loss like a void. There was a gap in the bed that it seemed neither of us could cross.

I move closer to him now, and I feel his breath across my face as he exhales. I move a little closer still, and he opens his eyes suddenly and jolts as though shocked. Quickly his eyes come into focus and he pulls away from me.

‘What are you doing there?’ he demands.

‘It’s time to get up,’ I say.

He sticks out a childish hand to hit me away, and turns over. Slowly I stand up, and I lean over him, and as Andrew did to me, gently shake his shoulder.

‘Go away,’ he mumbles.

‘Come on, Jono, it’s time to get up.’

And again he says, ‘Go away.’

I time things, so that Andrew is going out of the door just as I come downstairs. The kettle is still warm and I make myself a coffee. And I think of Simon, sitting on the train up from Kingham, on the long, early Monday-morning commute from one life to another. I wonder how they part, he and his wife. By now they will be used to it; she probably doesn’t even get up to see him off. Perhaps he even leaves her sleeping in bed with a kiss, as Andrew used to me. Not for a moment do I think that Simon really loves his wife, nor she him. Otherwise how could they live apart as they do? At the very least they must have some arrangement, some blind eye to turn. I cannot be the first woman Simon has taken back to that flat, however much I’d like to think that I am. I try to detach myself, to think myself offhand, relaxed about it all. I remind myself what it was like back in that house in Oakley; how sex was passed around like an affectionate hug. It is only uptights like me who make such a big deal of it.

I try, but the truth is that I am still just as uptight as ever I was.

And now I picture Simon as I have come to know him; I picture him standing in front of that huge window in his flat, coffee cup or wine glass in hand, staring down at the vastness of the city below him. I picture the paleness of his skin with its smattering here and there of fine, blond hair; of the way the sinews in his arms stand out against his thinness. And of his laugh, which hides such a mass of insecurity, and of the easy, polished way that he talks. I think of these things and I love them because they remind me of another world, another time. But what do I really know of him apart from vague, broken memories? And what does he know of me? What could he ever know? We connect on such a loose, transient fantasy; that is all. But then I think of him hiding away those pictures of his sister, hiding them away from his mother – and from his wife, too, for all that I know. I think of the coldness there must have been in his life since Vanessa died.

And I think of the creeping, elusive coldness in mine.

Surely there is some necessary purpose in this? Call it fate, or whatever you will, but think back – think back to those months after Vanessa died, when I’d take the bus after college to Oakley and walk about the green and stare up at her house, willing,
willing
something to happen, for there to be some sign, some reason for me to have known her and loved her as I did . . . Surely, now, surely, this is it?

Trance-like, I set about preparing Jono’s breakfast things as I do every morning: his toast, his cereal, his milk. I put it all out on the table, and then I walk back out of the kitchen to call up the stairs, ‘Jono! Jono! Are you ready?’

And I wait for him. I hover in the kitchen in my bathrobe and I wait. And while I wait, a question strikes me suddenly, out of the blue: what difference would it make to Jono if I wasn’t here, waiting on him like this, day in, day out? And the answer is this: not much, probably. Not to Jono. The difference would all be to me.

‘What have you done with my PE shorts?’ he demands when at last he stomps his way into the kitchen.

‘Jono, I haven’t done anything with your PE shorts.’

‘Then why aren’t they in my bag?’

‘Perhaps you didn’t put them in your bag,’ I say.

‘I did,’ he wails, and he picks up a piece of toast and throws it down again. ‘They were in there yesterday.’

‘Perhaps you left them at school,’ I suggest.

And he replies, in a voice that tells me how stupid he thinks that I am, ‘How can I have left them at school when I didn’t even have PE yesterday?
Dub.’
And he takes a gulp of his drink and slams the cup back down, so that milk slops over the side and onto the table.

I feel my heartbeat, picking up its pace.

I glance at the clock.

‘Jono, you have less than five minutes before you have to leave. Please eat your breakfast. And if you can’t find your shorts, you’ll just have to take another pair for today.’

‘How can I take another pair? I don’t have another pair!’

A pair of your home shorts,’ I say, as steadily as I can.

He stares at me, his face stricken with panic and disbelief. ‘I can’t do that!’ he howls. ‘Everyone will laugh at me!’

I watch my son, as he hurries up the road, shoulders bent under the weight of his bag and the heavier weight of his woes. I see him struggle with his sports bag, and my heart aches for him, and for myself. I would go with him to the coach stop and help him with his bags, but of course that would not do. The net with which I would catch him is the net with which I trap us both, after all. And so I just stand there in the doorway, watching until he disappears from view.

And then I go back inside, take my phone from my bag, turn it on and wait.

To make less of a deal of the waiting, to have something to do, I go and have my shower. I time things: ten minutes in the shower; ten minutes to moisturize my face and my body, and to get dressed; ten minutes to dry my hair. Half an hour later I am still waiting. I make another coffee, and some toast, which I am unable to eat. By now, Simon will be in London. He will soon be pulling in to Paddington and crossing down to the Underground. He has had plenty of time to call me.

I walk about the house with my phone in my hand. Every time I pass the mirror in the hall I stop and look at myself and force myself to smile, to try and ease the stress and the tension from my face. And I speak to myself; I say,
Hi, Rachel here.
Or,
Hi, how are you?
I practise. I modulate my voice, lest my true feelings should come ripping through.

I need to be calm, at ease. I need to be
nice.

He will be at the office now. I will not wait any longer.

I call his mobile. He answers after three rings and says, ‘Rachel,
hi,’
as if everything is okay.

‘I was waiting for you to call me,’ I say as pleasantly as I can.

‘I’ve just got in,’ he says, as if that’s an excuse. ‘Now what can I do for you?’

I picture him, still warm from his wife and the comforts of his effortless weekend life, and jealousy needles its way over my skin.

‘I need to see you.’

‘Sure,’ he says. ‘Now let’s see . . .’ He pauses to check his diary, to find some little space in which to fit me in.

‘Today,’ I state.

‘Is everything all right, Rachel?’ he asks at last.

And I say, ‘No. I need to see you.’

‘I’ve got a meeting at eleven-thirty, but it should be fairly quick. I can meet you at the flat at one.’

‘Thank you,’ I say, and when I hang up the phone I look at myself in the mirror again. My face is taut and drawn, and again I force myself to smile. I wonder how I compare to her, his wife.

First, we have sex. That is, after all, why we are here.

But Simon doesn’t have long. He was nearly fifteen minutes late, and he has to be back for another meeting at two. He rolled himself gracefully away from me and went straight into the shower. And now I sit on his bed and watch him as he gets dressed to go back to work.

‘Did you have a busy weekend?’ I ask, but what I really want to know is why he didn’t call me.

‘Fairly,’ he says. ‘Charlotte’s got a new pony, and she wanted me to take her out on it. And friends of ours came down on Saturday and stayed over.’

Friends of ours.

Instantly I picture them, these friends who come down from London. I picture them with their loud voices and their kids of the same age; I see them all piling out of the car in their weekend clothes, so
glad
to have escaped out of town. I see how they kick off their shoes and curl up on the sofa; I hear their voices:
My God you’re so lucky to have all this. Don’t know how I’ll bear to go back. If only we weren’t so tied to the schools . . .
I see them rounding up the kids and the dogs for an amble across the fields after lunch, and what an enviable sight they would make together, these two families. But mostly I see them in the evening, gathered around the table over dinner once the kids are in bed. The candles are lit now; oh yes, there will be candles everywhere, warming the glow on their faces. And how they all talk now, the four of them, their voices growing ever louder on Simon’s good red wine; how they talk and how they laugh about the old days: so many old days, so much to share. For they will have known Simon and Isobel forever, these friends who came down for the weekend.

I watch Simon’s profile as he stands in front of the mirror to put on his tie. I watch the thinness and the deftness of his fingers as they thread the thin end of the tie through the loop and pull it straight; fingers that have been on me, exploring me. It is a thick, silk tie that matches exactly the line of violet threading down the stripe of his shirt. He’d have bought them together, to match. Probably he didn’t even have to go to the shop. Probably they arrived together, this shirt and this tie, in a carefully wrapped package along with several other coordinated shirts and ties, from some shop in Jermyn Street, where he has an account and where some assistant periodically pairs up a selection and sends them off to him. He would have these invisible people doing things for him like that, just as he has his housekeeper emptying his bins and seeing to his laundry; his housekeeper, whom he has never even met.

How remote it all is, his life. How untouchable.

Inside my heart there is a dull, persistent ache.

‘Quite a houseful then,’ I say, and I hear the sarcasm in my voice even if he doesn’t.

But I think that maybe he does hear it, because he doesn’t respond. He gives the knot of his tie one last little push, then checks his watch. ‘Rachel,’ he says. ‘I have to get back soon.’

‘We don’t even have time to talk.’ Suddenly my eyes are filling with tears. They come in a rush, spilling over fast, and I gather up a handful of his expensively covered duvet and wipe them away.

Simon sits down on the edge of the bed and looks at me. ‘What’s wrong?’ he asks and he reaches out a hand to find mine, buried in a clutch of his duvet. I am so aware of the neatness of him, the perfection of him, dressed and clean in his suit and his shirt and his tie, and of the rumpled mess of me.

‘My sister knows about us,’ I say.

His hand, although it stays holding mine, stiffens a little; I feel his fingers straighten against mine.

‘Does this matter?’ he asks carefully.

‘I don’t know.’ I use my other hand to wipe my face. I am still crying. I feel my cheeks and my eyes puffing up.

Simon looks away from me. He stares down at the duvet, a frown upon his face. Eventually he says, ‘I do not want to come between you and your family, Rachel. You know I wouldn’t want to do that.’

But I think that what he is really saying is,
And don’t you come between mine.

He looks back at me with gentle, concerned eyes, but his body is tense. He is aware of the watch on his wrist, silently marking time. He is aware of his need for an exit. I feel it in him; that metaphorical glance over the shoulder, the plan to run.

‘Of course,’ I manage to say, and I try to stop myself crying. I try to regain a little poise.

‘Will she tell your husband?’ he asks now, getting straight to the point.

‘I don’t know.’ My hand, clutching his, is hot. I feel his fingers try to ease away from my mine, but I do not let them go.

He sighs. ‘What do you want to do?’ he asks.

‘What do you mean,
What do I want to do?’
I wail. ‘I don’t want to do anything! Why? What do
you
want to do?’