A Place in the Country (31 page)

He was trying to kiss her but she pushed him away. “Get off,” she said, and saw his eyes widen with surprise.

“But you want it,” he said. “Girls always do.”

“Oh, bugger off,” she said, suddenly angry with him and herself. “Sorry,” she added as she hitched up her top and opened the door. “You got the wrong girl.”

She heard his sigh as she slammed the door behind her. She couldn't resist the slam. It made her knees stop shaking.

She caught Sarah looking at her as she hurried past and gave her a wobbly smile.

“Everything okay?” Sarah asked.

“Yeah. Sure. Right.”

Issy got herself together and went in search of Sammy who was dancing with a younger boy they both knew from school. She told herself she was okay now. I mean, whether she was
virgo intaco
(because of Lysander) was still a debate in her mind and Alex had been lovely really. It was
she
who wasn't ready for it, who didn't know how to deal with it, whether just to let it happen, let him touch her, get that great feeling when your whole body teetered on the brink … How was a girl supposed to know these things? Even if she was sixteen.

*   *   *

Cassandra and Henry
had left early, and were in Issy's room, he in one bed she in another, still awake.

Henry looked up from his book. It was
Game of Thrones;
he'd seen the TV series and enjoyed it so now he was reading the original.

“I don't like sleeping without you,” he said.

Cassandra checked the time. “The party'll go on for a bit yet,” she said, climbing out of her bed and into his. They were a tight fit in a single but that's the way they'd started their married life: little money, a rented flat, and a narrow bed that made lovemaking even easier. Henry slid his arm round her and she snuggled in, the way she had for all these years.

“I still fancy you, y'know,” she said, making him laugh.

“Thank God for that,” he said. “Anyway, why are you wearing that nightie.”

She glanced down at her white cotton nightshirt. “It's virginal,” she said with a mischievous grin. “Anyhow, I always wear a nightie.”

“No you do not. Not in France.” Henry laughed out loud now. “It must be something in the air there,” he said, kissing her.

 

chapter 73

It was one thirty
and the party was still going strong. Sitting outside on one of Jim's sofas that had been removed to make way for the dancers, with Jim's arm around her, Caroline leaned her head into his shoulder. “Don't these kids have homes to go to?” she asked, through the ongoing throb of music and the haze of (forbidden) cigarette smoke.

“As long as they don't set fire to the place I'm not complaining.” Jim pulled her closer, something Caroline decided she liked.

More than
liked
; she was enjoying having a man's arm around her; enjoying the girly feeling it gave her, like she was a teenager and not simply mother to one. Reminding herself quickly that a mother was
exactly
who she was and the reason she was here, she pulled away, sat up straighter and flicked back her hair.
Oh God, she'd done it again, the teenage hair flick!
When all she was, was a frustrated housewife making out with an attractive younger man on the sofa in the dark.
Making out?
Did she even
remember
how to do that anymore?

“Tell me about your husband,” Jim said, out of the blue it seemed to Caroline.

“What
exactly
do you want to know?” She wasn't sure how to answer. Should she just say
“oh, you know young love, all that, then he cheated on me, and well, y'know how it is.”
Or simply it wasn't any of his business.

“Why did you stay with him?”

Jim pulled her back and tucked her head into his shoulder again. She couldn't see his face, just feel the warmth of his body, his arm around her, his hand on her shoulder.

“I fell for James the moment I saw him,” she said, deciding to come clean. “I never could resist him, even when I found out about his mistress. He told me that the affair was over, it was all about me and him, the two of us again.”

“He must have been very charming.”

“You would have liked him. Everybody did. You couldn't
not
like James, he was so … so
engaging.
When you were with him he made you feel you were the only person in the world that mattered, the only woman he wanted to be with. And I loved him for that.”

“So, what happened, in the end?”

“He lied to me, kept on lying, I didn't know what was going on, couldn't understand why he was doing this. Of course I knew something was wrong, something more than a woman, though I didn't know anything about Melanie and Asia. I understand now he was under terrible financial pressure, bound to Gayle Lee Chen because she had brought underworld money into his business and then when that started to collapse, to save herself she threatened to lay the blame on James.

“Oddly,” she added, after thinking for a while, “James was a loyal man. He didn't love Gayle Lee; never had I suppose, certainly not the way he'd loved me, and the way he loved Asia's mother. Mark told me Gayle Lee must have thought he would betray her and that's why she killed him. And then … when the underworld turned on her … she simply disappeared.”

“You think she'll ever come back?”

“I don't see how she can, unless she reinvents herself.” She shrugged. “Anything is possible.”

“And you? Have you reinvented yourself?” Jim turned her face to his, took her chin in his hand.

“I hope so,” Caroline said softly.
“Oh, I hope so,”
she said again as his mouth took hers.

“Mom?
Mom
?” It was Issy, looking for her.

They leapt apart.

“Here I am.” Caroline got hastily up, smoothing down her skirt, rubbing her mouth on the back of her hand. “What's up?”

“Just that somebody's been sick all over Jim's bathroom floor.”

“Great,” she heard Jim say behind her. Then, philosophically. “Par for the course, I guess.”

The first of the take-home mini-buses lumbered round the corner into the stable yard.

“Oh, shit,” Caroline heard her daughter say. “
Already
?”

“It's two o'clock,” Caroline said, surprised it was so late, heading inside to organize the departure.

The strobe lights were out and young people sprawled everywhere in the gloom, now lit only by trailing strings of red, white, and blue twinkle lights. Caroline saw Lily curled on some boy's lap, quickly hauled her off.

Sarah, who was throwing plastic glasses and plates into a big black garbage bag, told Lily she'd better stop it.

“Get over here, Lily,” Sarah told her. “Or you'll end up in the same state I am.”

“Not me,” Lily said, pulling down her skirt and hitching up her top. “I just want to have a bit of fun.”

Don't we all,
thought Caroline, remembering.

The two girls at the door were doling out long lingering goodbye kisses to the boys when Georgki showed up in the Hummer.

“Who needs lift?” he asked, folding his arms and glaring at the crowd, scaring them half to death Caroline would bet. She'd also bet he'd been waiting round the corner for this very moment. Good-hearted Georgki, she gave him a smile of thanks.

“Mom.”

Issy had come to stand next to her. “Yes?”

“It was the best party ever.”

Caroline smiled and thanked God, one more time. “Of course it was,” she said.

 

chapter 74

Two days later
they were on a plane bound for Singapore. Asia had asked to sit by the window and after playing around with her food and playing games with Issy on her iPad, she had fallen asleep, stretched out and looking so tiny and skinny and vulnerable, Caroline knew she could never abandon her. In the space of just a few days Asia had become part of the family. It was up to Caroline to include her mother in that family too.

Issy's eyes were closed. “Mom?” she said.

Caroline looked at her. Issy didn't open her eyes.

“Yes?”

“Tell me about sex.”

Caroline gasped …
of all things! Of all times! All places!
What was she supposed to do? Issy had brushed her off when she'd mentioned sex before, told her she knew all about that, they'd had the talk at school and the demonstration with the cucumber and the condom. Of course Caroline had taken her to the gynecologist, made sure she was safe, just in case … she knew “in case” loomed as a possibility. But what on earth had made Issy think about sex now?

Could she possibly suspect something about her and Jim?
If so, how? Did she look different? Act different? She'd heard sex gave women a certain glow, an extra awareness of themselves, of their bodies. But she and Jim had not had sex.

“I know how it happens,” Issy said, and Caroline breathed a sigh of relief that at least she did not have to give a whispered lecture on a plane of exactly how the birds and the bees and probably teenagers too, actually did it.

“Right,” she said, and for the life of her couldn't think of another thing to say.

“I know how it
feels,
” Issy added, shocking her. “I mean I haven't done it, if that's what you're thinking.” She thought of Lysander and added, “Not that some people haven't tried, but you know, Mom, sometimes it's exciting. I
feel
it but I can't get my head around it. Is there something wrong with me?”

Wrong!
Everything was
right
! How to explain? Caroline searched her memories, recent and past and out of the blue came up with a quote that once upon a time when she too was young, had seemed to her to explain sex.

“It's all about falling in love,” she told Issy now. “A famous writer, his name is A. N. Wilson, once said that ‘falling in love is the greatest imaginative experience of which most human beings are capable.'”

“So you have to love somebody to have sex?”

Caroline wracked her brain some more for the right thing to say. “Sex is a wonderful emotion,” she said finally, hoping “emotion” was the correct word. “But you know Issy, sex can be really wonderful, when you're in love and in a relationship with a man you really care about. Then, it's a state of
being,
not just what you are
doing.
You can't even get close to the power of sex without your head—your
mind,
your other
emotions
being involved. Do you understand?”

“I think so. Is that what Daddy felt for Asia's mother then?”

“I hope so,” Caroline said, and realized that now truly she did.

“And the Hong Kong ice-woman?”

“I believe that was different. It was an obsession.”

“What about you and Dad?”

“For a long time it was wonderful,” Caroline said simply. “We were very much in love.”

Issy took her mother's hand and squeezed it. “I'm really glad you told me,” she said.

 

chapter 75

Mark was waiting
at Changi Airport when they emerged weary from immigration and customs, except for Asia who bounced out of there on stalklike little legs, all big eyes and big smiles that faded when Mark told her her mother was not there.

“She decided to wait at home for you,” he said. “She told me to tell you she has a surprise for you.”

He looked so good to Caroline, so familiar, big and burly and bearded, in a cream tropical-weight suit and even, for God's sake, a tie, though she'd bet it was ninety degrees outside and very probably raining.

“You never change,” she said.

“But you do.” Mark looked searchingly at her, saw a definite change; a softening, a lessening of tension, a womanly aura about her he hadn't seen in a long time.

“Where are we staying?” Caroline asked.

“My place, I thought it would be nicer for you than a hotel. We'll go there first, then we'll take Asia home.”

*   *   *

Mark's loft
was in the newly gentrified marina area with warehouses converted into boutiques, cafés and clubs and restaurants and apartments overlooking the river.

It was on the top floor, a tall, open space divided by opaque glass sliding screens. It was light, airy, and dramatic, sleek and modern with a steel kitchen that gleamed with the patina of the unused.

The guest room was stark like an illustration in an Italian décor magazine with a bathroom that was all white subway tiles and dark-tinted mirrors. Issy thought it was wonderful but Caroline found herself hoping that the beds, stretched tight with white sheets and hospital corners, were more comfortable than they looked. However, the shower's large raindrop head and the half a dozen other nozzles felt wonderful on her tired body, and fifteen minutes later, she and Issy emerged, airline grime removed, lotioned, scented, and refreshed.

Asia was waiting on the sofa, legs stuck out in front of her, watching TV. Caroline told Issy to give her a shower. She opened the child's suitcase and took out the new denim shorts she'd bought, and the pink T-shirt—Asia's favorite color. The flip-flops would have to do.

After the shower Issy brushed Asia's hair, braided it, and finished it off with an elastic band, though Asia told her disapprovingly her mother would have used a ribbon.

Caroline and Mark were drinking champagne over by the window, talking in low voices, so the two girls watched TV. It was in Mandarin, some of which Issy understood because, after all, she had been brought up in Singapore. Asia held Issy's hand.

“I don't know how to help Melanie,” Caroline said. “There is no money.”