The Sleeper (3 page)

‘I used to keep a diary,’ I tell her. ‘Back when my life was interesting. You can’t reread a diary, though, can you? Not without cringing mightily. But your work must be satisfying, in a way?’

‘Yeah. Some days. You have to get in the right frame of mind. I have the radio on all the time, BBC 6, so there’s music going constantly, but also – and this is a key thing for me – my boyfriend’s around too. Laurie. He works from home as well, so there’s just enough company. We both like the music. It’s a cosy little world. You could say boring, but it suits me.’

I hand her a glass of Prosecco. ‘Cheers,’ I say.

‘Cheers,’ she responds.

I sip the drink, and in that instant I know that I could become dependent on alcohol too easily. It would be so logical, to slip into a habit of drinking every afternoon.

‘So it’s just the two of you?’ I say. ‘Like us. Sam and me.’

‘Yes,’ she says. ‘You get pulled into your own little world, don’t you?’

‘Do you find it gets stifling?’

‘I think I’m a hermit at heart, and Laurie is more so. Me and him and the cats. It’s not for everyone, but it works for us. If I’d been born in a different era, I’d have been great as a nun in a closed order, or a wild woman living in a cave on a mountainside.’

‘You live in your cave in Budock.’

‘I do.’

‘But not on your own.’

‘No.’

‘How many cats?’

‘Just two.’ She looks at me. ‘Did you think I was going to say eighteen?’

‘I wondered.’

‘Happily things haven’t got to that point. Desdemona and Ophelia. Our tragic heroines. They like a bit of drama. That’s enough for me.’

Sam clumps into the room.

‘Afternoon, ladies!’ His plain white T-shirt is sticking sweatily to him. Only Sam would wear a plain white T-shirt. It worked on John Travolta back in the day, but on my husband it signals a lack of imagination.

‘Sam.’ I stand up and put a hand on his arm. I often, I realise with a flash of insight, put a hand on his arm. It is a way of showing willing, as far as contact is concerned, while keeping it as minimal as possible. ‘Sam, this is Iris. Iris, my husband, Sam.’

He reaches out to shake her hand, but she stands up and kisses him on the cheek.

‘You two met on the boat,’ he tells her. ‘Lara said. You’re hitting the stuff with the bubbles, I see!’

Iris is making a polite reply of some sort when I hear my mobile ringing. Its old-fashioned ringtone cuts through the air, and I run towards it. My phone rarely rings.

I look at the name on the screen. Then I snatch it up and run outside on to the balcony. My heart is pumping.

‘Leon.’ I close the door firmly behind me. The air is cold but crisp. ‘How are you?’

‘Lara,’ says my godfather, the man who knows me properly. ‘Skip the small talk. Are you sure this is what you want?’

He has got it. I know it from his tone.

‘Yes. Please, Leon. I have to. I can’t carry on like this.’

I stare at Sam, watch him take a nervous sip from my glass, cut himself an enormous slice of cake. He sits down and visibly racks his brains for questions to ask the strange woman at his dining table. I wish he wouldn’t resent her presence quite so obviously.

‘Then I’ve got something for you.’

‘Tell me,’ I say.

As I stare out at a purplish cloud advancing visibly up the estuary, he starts to speak, and a future begins to unfurl.

chapter two

I practise saying it, locked in the bathroom.

‘I’ve got a job,’ I tell my reflection. I like the feel of it in my mouth. I can barely conceive of the potential it holds. I hate the way Sam is going to react.

I need to tell him now. He knows I’m jumpy about something. He knew from the moment I finished speaking to Leon, went back to the table and drained my Prosecco in one gulp.

‘What’s up, Lara?’ he keeps asking, and I say ‘nothing’, with one of my big shiny smiles.

‘I’ve got a job.’ I say it again, to my reflection. She looks sombre as she says the words, but her eyes are alight with the whole new world that is revealing itself before her. I make her practise saying it properly. Having a job is a good thing. I force myself to add the salient part: ‘I’ve got a job, and it’s in London.’

‘Lara?’

I flush the loo, as cover, and pin up a couple of stray strands of hair. Iris has gone home. She went suddenly, when I whispered to her that I had to tell Sam something. She probably thinks I’m pregnant: I will fix that later.

‘Coming!’ I call.

I have a job, and it’s in London. The reality of that is astonishing.

I am a Londoner and I am craving it. I was born there, and I grew up there. Sam and I met there, and we lived there for three years, before deciding in a sudden flurry that the reason I was not getting pregnant was because we were spending hours every day on the Tube. It was, we reasoned, the environment, rather than us. It was all the other people, pushing and shoving and hurrying us along. It was the lipstick and the shopping and the pollution, the buses that chugged past our Battersea bedroom with all the people on the top deck at eye level looking in, the dashes into Sainsbury’s Local to grab dinner on the way home, the fact that walking round the park was nice, but it was no substitute for getting out of town.

And there was, of course, the old cliché: as Londoners, we rarely went to the theatre, the galleries, the museums.

Now that we live in Cornwall, a trip to the capital would be a treat: we haven’t been for a year and a half. It is intoxicating, full of possibilities. There are so many possibilities there for me, now. I am consumed with them.

The move was, naturally, his idea. One Sunday morning, he came downstairs, wearing pyjama bottoms and one of his many white T-shirts, and found me poring over a piece of work.

‘What time did you get up?’ he asked, moving blearily towards the coffee machine.

‘I don’t know.’ I remember making an effort to focus on him, to smile. ‘Five-ish I think. I’ve done loads. I’m nearly finished.’

‘Oh, Lara.’

I turned to look at him. He had his back to me as he poured himself a cup of lukewarm coffee. I loved working early in the mornings. He never understood that. I told him and told him but he always looked at me knowingly, and assumed I was putting on a brave face.

‘What?’ I made an effort and pushed my work away. He came and sat at the table with me. I picked up my coffee, even though it was cold, and cradled it for a vestige of comfort.

‘Lara,’ he said again. His face was crumpled with sleep. ‘This is no good. You know? If we’re going to start a family, if it’s going to happen for us, and it is. It’s only been a few months. We need to lead less stressful lives. We need to get out of London. There’s a job advertised that I could go for.’

I sighed. Sam had always had a tendency to come up with grand schemes, and this, as far as I could see, was another.

‘What’s the job?’ I was expecting it to be something dull, in Hampshire or Surrey.

He smiled.

‘It’s at a luxury yacht builders, in Falmouth. I’ve been reading up on Falmouth. It would be a great place to live. Absolutely perfect for a family.’

I laughed at that. ‘Right. We’ll go and live in Falmouth. Just like that. Where is Falmouth, anyway? Devon? What will I do?’

He got up and came to stand behind my chair. He leaned down and encircled me with his arms.

‘Cornwall,’ he said, into my hair. ‘And you, my darling, will have a baby.’

‘Sure,’ I said lightly. ‘You get the job, then. And we’ll give it a go.’

I did not expect for one second that it would actually happen, as smoothly as if it had been preordained, or I would have been less flippant. Sam was offered the job, and we moved here. The shipbuilders wanted him to start as soon as possible, and within no time we sold our house (luckily for us, at the top of the market, though at the time it seemed as though prices were going to stay on the upward trajectory for ever), left our London jobs and drove west. When we reached the west, we drove west some more, and after that, we carried on driving west. Eventually, twenty or so miles short of the furthest possible westerly point, we parked outside our new house and started our new life.

I like life in Cornwall, in lots of ways. I love Falmouth. If I had a family and a job to keep my brain working, I could be content here. There are beaches and fields, woods and little shops. You can catch a train to bigger places, easily. I often quite like the feeling of being remote from most of the rest of the country. It is not Falmouth that’s remote, it’s everything else.

However, being here, just me and Sam, without a baby, without any close friends, without a job, is no good at all. Now we are closer to forty than we are to thirty, and I am not living like this indefinitely. Falmouth is fine. I am fine. Sam and I, wherever we were, would not, any longer, be fine.

He is upstairs, because our house is upside down, built on the side of a hill. I find him in the kitchen, washing up Prosecco glasses and cake plates.

‘Hey,’ he says. ‘There you are.’

‘We didn’t finish that bottle.’ I take it out of the fridge and hold it up to the light. ‘Let’s do it. Go on.’

His laugh is slightly nervous. ‘It’s not even five o’clock, Lara, and you’ve already had plenty. Seriously?’

‘Yes. Come on. I’ll dry those glasses. Here you go.’

‘What’s the matter?’

I was going to sit him down and tell him carefully, but in the event I just blurt it out.

‘Leon phoned earlier,’ I tell him. ‘You know that. While Iris was here. Sam, I’ve been offered a job. In London, working with Sally’s company. Doing exactly what I used to do. They’ve asked me to come on board for a development project in Southwark. Changing old warehouses into flats, retail, all the stuff I used to do. I’ll be the development manager, and do my old job, essentially. All they’ve done is buy the site. The rest of it – team, designs, all the political stuff with making it happen – will be mine. Everything I’m good at. It’ll be a six-month contract. Short-term.’

I stop, look at him, and wait.

‘No way.’

I knew it. ‘Think about it, Sam. The money is going to be amazing. Six months. It’s not for ever.’

‘But it’s in London. I can’t leave my job. So we can’t go and live in London for half a year, can we?’

I gulp down a bubbly mouthful: it tastes thin and metallic.

‘You can’t leave your job,’ I agree, sounding like the most reasonable woman in the world. ‘But I can commute. I’ll stay at Olivia’s or with my parents. There’s a train. A night train. I could catch it up there on a Sunday night and come home on a Friday night. We’ll have a brilliant time at the weekends.’

‘No.’ His voice is flat. ‘Lara, that’s just not an option. We moved out of London to get away from all that. We’re going to adopt. You’re not going back to the rat race. Why on earth do they want you to turn your life upside down to do that, rather than use one of the thousands of qualified people in London who could do the job? You say that it’s everything you’re good at, but actually that stuff is what you
used to be
good at. We’ve moved on from those days, thank God.’

It is important, I feel, that he does not realise how this makes me feel.

‘I want to do it.’ I keep my voice flat calm. ‘I miss using my brain, Sam. I failed at having a baby. This is something I know I can do. I
am
still good at my job. I can’t get work down here. I want to work. And, the main thing is this: we can come out of that half-year with our debts paid off.’

I am going to take that job, even if I have to leave him. I am hot with guilt at this secret. I almost hope he says no. Then I will get to leave.

‘Oh, Lara.’ When he says that, my victory is tangible.

I knock my drink back. He does the same. He looks at me with mournful eyes. I have disappointed him, again. Outside, the sun glints off the water. Two pigeons land on the balcony railing. The crane swings around, carrying a huge square container bearing who knows what off the deck of a massive ship that has come from who knows where.

In the early hours of the morning, as the world outside is just starting to stir, I snap wide awake. Sam is turned towards me, snoring gently, his face pink and creased from the pillow.

I am going to London. My life will be busy. I will be on the move constantly. It will not, in any sense, be the easy option. I will have to work like I used to work, and after my years outside the workforce I’ll need to prove myself. Going to London will mean throwing myself into being a professional woman again; it will mean looking immaculate, being poised and confident, working with plans and with people. My job will be to make things happen. All of this feels, from this distance, like diving into a refreshing pool on a hot day.

The birds outside are making such a racket that I cannot believe that he, and everyone else, is sleeping through it. The sun creeps around the edge of the blind and lights the room perfectly.

Our bedroom is small. You have to squeeze past the bed to get to the cupboard. We were going to extend the whole of the downstairs of this topsy-turvy house, when we had a family. This room would have become bigger, and there would have been paraphernalia. I know exactly what it would have involved, because we used to talk about it all the time. We read books and planned what was going to go where. There would have been a Moses basket, a changing table. The changing table would have had a shelf under it, and on the shelf would have been a little pile of folded Babygros and tiny cardigans.

Sam wanted a baby because he’s a normal human being. I wanted a baby because it felt like the best chance I was going to get, now, of loving someone passionately and all-consumingly.

I stare at him asleep in the soft morning light. This is so intimate that I feel I shouldn’t be doing it, but I prop myself on my elbow and carry on. He is vulnerable, unconscious, and I remind myself to think only kind thoughts since he is unaware of me.

He will be asleep in this bed on his own six nights a week for six months. After that, surely, we will know what to do.

If I left, I tell him silently, you would meet someone else in no time. You would meet the kind of woman you need. You might end up having a child with her, because there is nothing wrong with your sperm count. There is nothing wrong with any of my bits either, supposedly. It simply never happened.