Believing the Lie (16 page)

“I’m sorry,” he said. “The last way on earth I want you to feel is like a baby machine. Or whatever.”

“I am trying,” she said. “The vitamins. All the pills. My temperature. My diet. Whatever will make it easier, possible…” She stopped because she’d begun to weep. She used her arm to brush the tears from her face.

“Allie…” He came to her, turned her to him.

They stood together, in each other’s arms. One minute, two. At last he said, “Just to hold you like this, I feel a kind of awe. D’you know how lucky a man I am?
I
know it, Allie.”

She nodded and he released her. He cupped her face in his hands and studied it in that way of his that always made her feel that the thousand truths she had hidden from him were there, openly displayed, and he was reading them all. But he made no mention of anything but, “Forgive me?”

“Of course. And I will do as you ask. Just not quite yet. Please, Nicky. Let us wait a few more months.”

He nodded. Then he grinned and said, “Meantime, we’ll give those swimmers some exercise, all right? Firm up their sense of direction?”

She smiled in turn. “We can do that.”

“Good. Now tell me why you’re chopping a mountain of onions, because my eyes are stinging like the devil. What’re you making?”

She observed the pile she’d created. “I have no idea.”

He chuckled. “Madwoman.” He walked over to the day’s post, which was in a neat pile near the kitchen phone. He said, “Did you speak with that bloke about restoring the stained glass?”

She had, she told him. He thought he could match the glass in the other windows in the main hall, but it would take some doing. He could either take the original out for a while or he could bring glass to them, but in either case, it would be expensive. Did Nicky want…?

Their conversation found its way back to normalcy: compromise reached and tension gone. They went on to other matters that concerned them till Nicholas found the phone message that Alatea had forgotten she’d written, so intent had she been on getting past babies, doctors in Lancaster, and what Nicholas wanted and expected of her.

“What’s this, then?” he said, holding up the paper she’d torn from a notebook earlier in the day.

“Ah. You’ve had a call. A television film is being made and a woman phoned. She would like to speak with you about it. She is a…I think she called it a scout of research, something like that.”

He frowned. “What kind of film?”

“Alternative treatments for drug addiction. This is a documentary, she said. Interviews with addicts and doctors and social workers. The involvement of a film crew and someone with them—a celebrity? a presenter? I do not know—to ask the questions. I told her it is not likely you would be interested, but—”

“Why?”

“What?”

“Why’d you tell her that?”

She went for one of her cookbooks. Nicholas had created for her
a recessed shelf for them above the cooker hob, and she grabbed one at random, wondering what she could possibly do with three onions chopped into tiny bits. She said, “This sort of thing…this is what feeds the ego, Nicky. We have talked about that, you and I. It cannot be good, because of where it leads. Because of all the things you must guard against.”

“Right. Right. But it’s not about me, Allie.” He looked again at the paper he held. “Where’s she from? Where’re the filmmakers from?”

“I did not ask. I did not think…” She looked at the cover of the cookbook she was holding. She gathered her thoughts, considered her approach. She said, “Nicky, you must take care with this sort of thing. You always said that your part is quiet. Behind the scenes. This is best.”

“Raising money to keep the project going is best,” he countered. “This could be what we need to make that happen.”

“And when it does not?”

“Why d’you say that?”

“The other thing…that newspaperman who was here so many times…what came of that? Nothing. And all the hours you spent with him, the talking, the walking round, the working at the pele tower with him, and what then? More nothing. He promises a story and what comes of his promise? Nothing. I do not wish to see the disappointment in your face,” she told him. Because of where it might lead was what he would add in his own head. But that could not be helped.

His expression changed, but not to hardness. Rather, he seemed to glow at her and the source of the glow was his love. He said, “Darling Allie, you’re not to worry. I do know what’s at risk for me every day.” He picked up the phone but didn’t punch in the number. “This isn’t about ego. This is about saving lives, like mine was saved.”

“You always have claimed I saved your life.”

“No,” he replied. “You made it worth living. I’d like to see what this is about”—he gestured with the phone—“but I won’t do it without your agreement.”

She saw no other way. He was asking very little. After all that he had given to her, there seemed no course available but to say, “All right, then, Nicky. If you will have a care.”

“Brilliant,” he replied. He looked at the paper and punched in the number. As he did so, he said to Alatea, “What’s the surname, Allie? I can’t read your writing.”

She came to look over his shoulder at what she’d written. “St. James,” she said.

GREAT URSWICK
CUMBRIA

When the gates of Margaret Fox School opened, Manette Fairclough McGhie sighed in relief. She’d thought there was a very good chance that Niamh Cresswell wouldn’t have phoned the school to inform them that her son would be fetched on this day by someone not on the previously approved list. It would have been exactly like Niamh to have done so. Niamh knew that Manette had been close to Ian, which in Niamh’s eyes made Manette a postdivorce enemy. But it seemed that Ian’s former wife had decided that the convenience of having an additional someone willing to fetch her son outweighed her need to avenge all putative sins committed against her. She’d said, “I’ll let Gracie know. She’ll be upset if Tim doesn’t show up at his regular time,” and this made Manette feel that she ought to be taking Gracie as well as Tim, but it was Tim she wanted to see today, Tim whose face at his father’s funeral still haunted Manette’s nights. This would be her tenth attempt to get through to her cousin Ian’s son. She’d tried at the reception immediately following the funeral. She’d tried with phone calls. She’d tried by e-mail. And now she was going for the direct approach. Tim could hardly avoid her if she had him in the car.

She’d left work early, stopping by Freddie’s office to tell him she’d see him at home. “I’m fetching Tim,” she said. “Thought he might like to spend the evening with us. Dinner and a DVD. You know.
Perhaps stay the night?” Freddie’s reply had somewhat surprised her. Instead of an absent-minded, “Oh, right, Manette,” her erstwhile partner in life had turned the red of a very bad sunburn and said, “Oh yes. As to that…,” and after a bit of uncharacteristic stumbling round, had gone on with, “I’ve a date, actually, Manette.”

She’d said, “Oh,” and tried to hide her surprise.

He’d hurried on with, “I rather thought it was time. I probably should have told you before now, but I didn’t quite know how to put it.”

Manette didn’t like the way she felt about this, but she forced a smile and said, “Oh. Lovely, Freddie. Anyone I know?”

“No, no. Of course not. Just someone…”

“How’d you meet?”

He moved back from his desk. On the monitor behind him, she could see a graph and she wondered what he was working on. Profits and losses, probably. He was also due to analyse wages and benefits. And there was the not small matter of formally going through the books following Ian’s death. When on earth had Freddie even found the time to meet someone? she wondered. He said, “Actually, I’d rather not talk about it. It feels a bit uncomfortable.”

“Oh. Right.” Manette nodded. He was watching her earnestly to gauge her reaction so she was careful to give him a cheerful one. “P’rhaps you c’n bring her by, then. I’ll want to see if I approve. You don’t want to make a second mistake.”

“You weren’t a mistake,” he told her.

“Ah. Thanks for saying that.” She fished in her bag and brought out her car keys. She said brightly, “Still my best friend, then?”

“Still and always,” he replied.

What he didn’t say was what she knew: that they couldn’t go on forever as they were, divorced but housemates, everything the same in their lives save where they slept and with whom they made love. What remained was the deep friendship that had always existed between them, which was, at the end, the root of the problem. She’d often thought since the day they’d agreed to divorce that things might have been different had they been able to have children together, that their relationship wouldn’t have deteriorated to the
point of their dinnertime conversation being all about the benefits of a self-cleaning and self-deodorising lavatory and how to market it. One couldn’t go on like that indefinitely without waking up one morning and wondering where the magic had gone. A friendly divorce seemed the best solution.

Well, she’d known Freddie would find someone else eventually. She intended to do the same herself. She just hadn’t thought it would happen so quickly. Now she wondered if the truth was that she just hadn’t thought it would happen at all.

She eased her car through the gates of Margaret Fox School. She’d not been here before, but Niamh had told her where Tim would be waiting. There was a supervised holding area near the administration building, Tim’s mother had said. Manette’s name would be on a list matching to Tim’s name. She was to take her identification with her. A passport was best if she had one. There would be no quibbling over that.

She found Tim easily enough since the lane into the school led directly to the administration building, with the classrooms and dormitories forming a quadrangle behind it. Her cousin’s son was hunched on a bench with a rucksack at his feet. He was doing what, in Manette’s experience, most teenagers did with their free time these days. He was texting someone.

She pulled up to the kerb, but he didn’t look up, so intent was he upon what he was doing. This gave her the chance to observe him and she did so, reflecting not for the first time upon the extremes to which Tim went in order to hide his resemblance to his father. Like Ian, he’d been late to puberty, and he still hadn’t gone through a growth spurt. So he was small for his age, and out of his school uniform, he would look even smaller. For then he donned clothes so baggy that they draped upon him, and even the baseball caps he favoured were too large. They covered his hair, which he’d not cut in ages and which he allowed to hang in his eyes. He would want, of course, to hide those eyes most of all. For like his father’s, they were large and brown and limpid and they served perfectly well as those metaphorical windows to the soul.

Manette could see he was scowling. Something wasn’t right with
whoever was texting in reply to Tim. As she watched, he lifted his hand and tore at his fingers. He bit down so hard that she winced at the sight. She got out of the car quickly and called his name. He looked up. For a moment his face showed surprise—Manette wanted to call it delighted surprise, but she didn’t dare go that far—but then his features settled into the scowl again. He didn’t move from the bench.

She said, “Hey, Buster, come on. I’m your lift today. I need help with something and you’re my man.”

He said sullenly, “I got somewhere to go,” and went back to texting, or perhaps pretending to.

She replied, “Well, I don’t know how else you’re going to get there ’cause I’m the only one with wheels that you’re going to see.”

“Where’s bloody Kaveh, then?”

“What’s Kaveh got to do with it?”

Tim looked up from his mobile. Manette saw him huff. It was a derisive exhalation of breath intended to convey his judgement of her. It said
stupid cow
without saying
stupid cow.
Fourteen-year-old boys were nothing if not transparent.

“Come on, Tim,” she said. “Let’s go. The school’s not about to let anyone else fetch you today now your mum’s rung them.”

He would know the drill. Further recalcitrance was pointless. He muttered, shoved himself to his feet, and slouched over to the car, dragging his rucksack behind him. He threw himself into the passenger seat with enough force to rock the car on its wheels. She said, “Steady on,” and then, “Seat belt, please,” and she waited for him to cooperate.

She felt for Tim. He’d taken too many punches. He’d been the worst possible age for his father to have walked out on the family for any reason. To have had his father walk out on the family for another man had thrown his entire world off its axis. What was he meant to do and how was he meant to understand his own dawning sexuality in such a situation? It was no wonder to Manette that Tim’s behaviour had altered on the edge of a knife, propelling him from his comprehensive into the cloistered safety of a school for the disturbed. He
was
disturbed. In his position who wouldn’t be?

She made a careful turn into the road outside the school gates, and she said to Tim, “CDs in the glove box. Why don’t you find us something?”

“Won’t have anything I like.” He turned a shoulder to her and stared out of the window.

“Bet I do. Have a look, Buster.”

“I got to meet someone,” he told her. “I said.”

“Who?”

“Someone.”

“Your mum know about this?”

That derisive huff of breath again. He muttered something and when she asked him to repeat it, he said, “Nothing. Forget it,” and he watched the scenery.

There was little enough of it and certainly nothing to fascinate in this part of the county. For outside of Ulverston and heading south to Great Urswick the land was open and rolling, farmland separated from the road by hedges and limestone walls, pastures in which the ubiquitous sheep grazed, and the occasional woodland of alders and paper birches.

It wasn’t a long drive. Manette’s home in Great Urswick was closer to Margaret Fox School than the homes of any of Tim’s other relatives. It was, she thought not for the first time, the most logical place for Tim to reside during the school terms, and she’d mentioned this to both Ian and Niamh shortly after they’d enrolled the boy there. But Niamh wouldn’t hear of it. There was Gracie to consider. It would devastate her to be without her brother in the after-school hours. Manette had reckoned that there was more to the matter than Gracie’s devastation, but she had not pressed it. She would, she’d decided, see the boy when she could.