The Decision (84 page)

‘Her pulse is very fast,’ said Sarah. ‘He said to take her to casualty if she was any worse. And I think she is. Margaret, what do you think?’

‘I do think she’s dehydrated,’ said Margaret. But I don’t actually think it’s at a danger level.’

‘How are we supposed to know when it is?’ said Matt. ‘And anyway, I thought you were a nurse?’

‘No,’ said Margaret patiently, ‘I’m not.’

‘Well, you’ve got the job under false pretences then. I remember seeing on your application that you were a nursery nurse.’

‘Mr Shaw, that is not quite correct. I did a nursing course, which is not the same thing as being a medical nurse, I do assure you.’ She smiled at him; anyone else would have hit him, Sarah thought. Emmie was breathing very fast, she was very pale, and she was whimpering now and saying she had a headache. It was very frightening.

‘I’m getting the bloody doctor back,’ said Matt, ‘make him earn his keep. How dare he bugger off home, when a child’s so ill, it’s bloody outrageous.’

The sex was wonderful; Eliza was quite shocked at herself. Transformed as she was into a shrieking, shouting harpy, clawing, biting, laughing, crying, her long legs wrapped round Rob, her back arched, her head thrown back, her entire body consumed by her orgasm, making her body sing as she thought it had quite forgotten.

And as she came down, slowly, sweetly, exhaustedly, as she pushed back her damp hair, and smiled rather shakily into Rob’s eyes, he smiled back at her with a certain triumph.

‘I told you we’d have fun,’ he said.

Matt came back into the room.

‘He’s on his way. Bloody irresponsible, he should never have left. He says he’ll come down to the hospital with us—’

‘That’s kind,’ said Sarah.

‘Not at all, it’s his job.’

Sarah didn’t like to say that in sixty years of being a patient and the mother of patients, she had never known a doctor agree to a second house call in one night and then to accompany a patient to hospital. ‘Er – Matt. I think perhaps we should ring Eliza. Don’t you?’

‘Why?’ he asked and his expression was so filled with distaste for the notion Sarah was shocked. ‘She can’t get here; she’s five hundred bloody miles away.’

‘Yes, but – if Emmie’s really ill …’

‘Emmie is really ill. There’s no if about it. And her mother should be here. But she bloody isn’t and ringing her up isn’t going to help. So—’

There was a ring at the door; it was the doctor.

He came in, looked at Emmie, said he thought she was no worse, possibly a little better, but that she should be taken to hospital just the same.

‘Let’s not take any chances.’

‘Of course we’re not taking any bloody chances,’ said Matt. ‘I’ll carry her, you can drive, doctor. You two,’ he turned to Sarah and Margaret, ‘you can come if you want to.’

They both said they would come.

Matt bent down and picked up the half-sleeping Emmie, enfolding her in the bedclothes; there was such tenderness, such care in the gesture, Sarah felt tears in her eyes. What a mass of contradictions he was, this husband of Eliza’s; she saw suddenly and for the first time what difficulties Eliza must face, living with him, probably on a daily basis, his bad temper, his abruptness, his near-rudeness indeed, his perfectionism – and his adoration of this precious only child.

They went downstairs slowly; Emmie’s small face had been more peaceful, but suddenly and without warning, she woke up, frowned and said, ‘Mummy, I want Mummy.’

‘Mummy’s not here, darling,’ said Sarah gently, smoothing her hair back, ‘she’s away, don’t you remember, she’ll be home tomorrow.’

‘I want Mummy, I want to see Mummy, I want to talk to Mummy, please, please—’

She was becoming agitated now, her breath faster still; Sarah looked at Matt over her head.

‘We could ring Eliza,’ she said. ‘If Emmie is getting so upset, maybe talking to her might help.’

‘I don’t see why,’ said Matt shortly, but the doctor turned and said, ‘I think that’s a good idea, the child’s agitated which doesn’t help and we won’t be able to call Mrs Shaw from the hospital. Another five minutes won’t make any difference.’

‘OK,’ said Matt. He sank down on the hall chair, holding Emmie against his chest. ‘We’re going to call Mummy, sweetheart, you can speak to her on the phone. Would that be nice?’

Emmie nodded listlessly; he dialled the number; they all sat there, watching him; heard the phone being answered the other end.

‘Crathie Hotel.’

‘Mrs Shaw please,’ he said. ‘Room – what’s her room?’

‘Twenty-one,’ said Sarah. ‘Room twenty-one.’

‘Room twenty-one please,’ said Matt into the phone.

‘I need to pee,’ said Eliza, surfacing from her deep, sweet, post-coital slumbers, ‘and maybe you should go back to your room. Rob? Rob, wake up—’

‘Yeah, yeah, OK, in a minute, go and have your pee—’

Faintly embarrassed, which was absurd, Eliza reflected, given her behaviour an hour earlier, she pulled the thick door of the bathroom firmly shut.

So she didn’t hear the phone ringing; if she had she would have told Rob not to do what he did instinctively, half-asleep as he still was, not to pick it up, not to hold it groggily to his ear and not, when asked who the hell he was, to say ‘oh shit’ and then ‘oh fuck’ very loudly indeed.

It had come on a day she was at home. Not working. Well, obviously, otherwise it couldn’t have been accomplished.

A lovely early summer day. They were going to Summercourt at the weekend. Emmie was with a friend for tea.

She’d made some soup for supper; she’d sorted the laundry; she’d tidied Emmie’s toy cupboard.

She couldn’t be faulted. Not today anyway.

There was a knock at the door. That would be Harrods.

It wasn’t.

‘Mrs Shaw? Mrs Elizabeth Shaw?’

‘Yes. That’s me.’

‘I have got some papers for you.’

‘Papers?’

‘Yes. Please look through them and then sign the acknowledgement where indicated.’

‘What sort of papers?’

‘You have to look at them yourself.’

She took the package he was holding out to her. A large white envelope.

She ripped it open, pulled a sheaf of papers out. Glanced at the top sheet, perfect typing on very white paper.

Didn’t take in the words. Not really. Clearly a mistake. Looked at the man, puzzled; he had turned away, was studying the street.

Looked again. The words hadn’t changed.

Divorce Petition.

Divorce? Petition? No. Couldn’t be.

‘In the matter of the Petition of Matthew Peter Shaw,’ it said and underneath that, ‘and Elizabeth Sarah Shaw.’

He couldn’t have sent this. He couldn’t. No matter what. Not without – without …

She looked again.

Divorce Petition, it said, issued by Morris and Foster. Solicitors for the petitioner. She felt dizzy suddenly, walked backwards into the house, sank onto the hall chair.

The man realised she had gone in, stepped forward, put his foot in the door.

She stared up at him.

‘Please look through all the papers,’ he said, ‘and then, as I said, sign this acknowledgement.’

‘What?’

‘Look at all the papers, please.’

Page two was worse.

‘This petition is issued by’ (it said) ‘Matthew Peter Shaw (the Petitioner). The other party to the marriage is Elizabeth Sarah Shaw (the Respondent)’.

It went on. Four pages in endless repetitive legal language. Ending with something called the Prayer. That ‘the said marriage may be dissolved’.

And then – beneath that, unspeakable. Obscene. Terrifying.

‘That custody of the child may be granted.’

Custody? CUSTODY!

She shut her eyes. Opened them again. Someone was shouting, shouting Emmie’s name and crying at the same time.

It was her.

The worst thing was the fear. The fear of moving on, moving on from the present where at least the territory was familiar, the misery recognisable, into a future where nothing was even imaginable. He had clung to what he had, what he knew, foolishly, desperately and for a long time; but he had come to feel it held nothing for him, had no more to give him.

He would wake at two in the morning, sweating, sleep lost, with only the endless awful repetitive questions in his head: what had happened, how had it started, could it have been stopped? While knowing it couldn’t. Not now, not ever. His marriage was over, and he wept many of those mornings, heavy, heart-racking tears as again and again he forced himself to face it.

For, he felt, Eliza had not only betrayed him sexually, and undermined him professionally, she had mocked him, belittled him and ignored his most fundamental beliefs. It was too late, far too late, for any kind of reconciliation; he was in another country altogether, a strange, hostile, lonely place, where happiness had died finally and love was an almost laughable memory.

He would have given all that he had to have stepped out of it again, that country, to be back where he knew who he was and what he was doing, where he felt strong and confident and generous, rather than weak and timorous and bitter. But there was no way back. And of all the things Eliza had taken from him, his sense of self was the greatest. He had lost not only Eliza but the person he had thought himself to be.

He had left only Emmie, dear to him beyond anything, and it was Emmie now he had to keep, somehow, safe and for himself.

In that thought there was comfort: and there was also revenge. The greatest revenge he could imagine.

‘I would say you’re pretty sure to get a divorce on grounds of adultery. But whether you’ll get custody of the child is quite another. I should advise you now, Mr Shaw, it will be a very dirty nasty battle and one I’m not at all sure you could win.’

Ivor Lewis looked at Matt across his large desk; he was larger than life, six foot two, sixteen stone of aggression; grammar school and redbrick university, expensive, and reputedly unbeatable in the divorce courts. For this reason alone, Matt was shaken by his last statement. He had assumed Lewis would tell him there would be no difficulty in what he wanted to do.

‘Why do you say that?’ he said.

‘Because your daughter is six years old; a judge would have a natural sympathy for that fact alone, and the great natural empathy between a mother and her young child. Who will care for her? Do you propose to give up your job?’

‘No, of course not,’ said Matt.

‘Well, then to me that implies nannies. An absentee parent.’

‘She’s looked after by a nanny now. Against my wishes.’

‘So why suddenly the change? Why does a nanny’s care become acceptable? Does the nanny work full time?’

‘Well – no. Two days a week.’

‘Mr Shaw, I’m afraid that’s not even a comparable situation, as a judge would see it. You, quite clearly, would be leaving her in the care of someone five days a week. Do you work a nine-to-five day?’

‘No,’ said Matt, irritable at Lewis’s apparent lack of understanding of the professional world. ‘Of course not. I run a huge business, I work all the hours God sends—’

‘OK. Would you be prepared to work a nine-to-five day in future?’

‘Absolutely not. It would be impossible.’

‘In that case – I don’t think you’ve a very good chance of getting past the first post.’

‘Look,’ said Matt. ‘There’s something here I don’t think you understand. My wife isn’t a fit mother to that child. She does a lot of things that I’m very unhappy about. If you can’t help me then I’ll find someone who will. Because, believe me, I have to get Emmie in my care.’

‘Or out of your wife’s?’ Lewis looked at Matt very directly. ‘Will you be acting in the child’s interest, or against your wife’s? In other words, is this ambition primarily driven by a desire for revenge? Because, believe me, that child will suffer, if things get nasty. And they will. She’s old enough to understand what Mummy and Daddy are doing to one another. And to her. She could even be questioned by the judge himself, I’ve known it happen.’

‘Questioned?’

‘Yes. “Who would you prefer to live with, Mummy or Daddy?” Not publicly. He would take her to a private room. But he would ask her a lot of questions. Very difficult questions, for such a young child.’

‘I wouldn’t allow it.’

‘You would have to. Would you really be prepared to put your daughter through that?’

Matt stared at Ivor Lewis and Ivor Lewis stared back. Then Matt said, ‘As I see it, I don’t have an option.’

‘All right.’ Ivor Lewis pulled a sheet of paper towards him and picked up the sharpest pencil Matt had ever seen. He smiled at Matt suddenly, a carefully conspiratorial smile.