Face the Wind and Fly (23 page)

His head came up. ‘Are you?’

‘If you want.’ She turned to Peter. ‘You may not have heard, Peter, but my employers are currently considering my position. I reacted a little too strongly to the eco protest at Bonny Brae Woods for their taste.’

The admission took courage, but she could not hide in her kitchen for ever.

Peter grinned. ‘Their loss, Kate.’ He shovelled a forkful of lasagne into his mouth and when he’d finished chewing he said, ‘Ever thought of setting up as a consultant?’

‘Consultant? Me?’

She’d been on a corporate ladder all her working life and it had always been her goal to reach the top. Junior engineer, senior engineer, head of engineering, director – with all the side roles necessary for experience along the way.

‘More freedom. And almost certainly more money.’

‘I’d never thought about it.’

‘Where in France?’ Ninian said. ‘And would Dad come too?’

Her impulsive effort to take the heat off Ninian and Alice was threatening to take on a new dimension and beginning to look expensive besides. She hadn’t considered the practicalities of the suggestion and already she could see difficulties. ‘We’ll talk about it later, Ninian.’

‘When you and Alice get married,’ Elliott said, his face a mask of seriousness, ‘and I’m best man, I shall reveal all your deadliest secrets.’

‘
Elliott!
’ Helena protested, laughing.

‘Beast!’ Alice said, and threw a piece of garlic bread at her brother.

‘You’re a radge, Banksy,’ Ninian said, shoving his tormentor half off his stool.

‘Pax!’ called Peter and every member of the Banks family instantly stopped what they were doing and raised two fingers in a V peace sign.

‘Family tradition,’ Helena explained as Kate gawped at them all. ‘Necessary to restore order. Now, it
will
be peace or no pudding, okay?’

‘What’s for pud?’ Elliott asked.

‘Crumble and ice cream.’

‘Okay then.’ He made a zipping sign over his mouth, but still could not resist giving Ninian a playful half shove in retaliation.

Kate almost forgot about Andrew. As she and Ninian waved their goodbyes some time later, her mood could hardly have been more in contrast with how she’d been feeling when Helena had called earlier.

It lasted all the way home and until she walked in the front door and saw Andrew’s silhouette against the living room window, backlit by the light of the moon through the glass. She knew at once that something was wrong.

Chapter Twenty-four

‘Go to bed,’ Kate said quietly to Ninian. ‘It was a good evening.’

He stared at her, then at Andrew. He opened his mouth to say something, but she pulled him close, quickly, and hugged him. ‘We’ll talk tomorrow, Ninian. Go to bed, okay? Love you.’

‘You too.’

It was more than he’d given her for many months and it made her emotional again. She managed to smile, though, and turned him towards the stairs. This time, he went up obediently.

She went into the sitting room and closed the door behind her. Down in the garden she could see the willows swaying in the breeze and a gleam, in the bright light of the moon, of the burn as it fell over the stones. Familiar sights in familiar terrain, and yet she knew that the landscape she was entering now was unmapped.

‘Andrew?’

He stirred and his head turned towards her. ‘Where have you been?’

‘With Ninian. We had supper with Peter and Helena Banks. Have you been back long?’

‘Some time.’

Kate moved into the room, reluctantly, and sank into the armchair opposite Andrew. The silence was broken only by the faint sounds, overhead, of Ninian dropping shoes and opening drawers, and by the quiet gear change of the fridge in the kitchen as it kicked into a new chill cycle.

She waited silently, not knowing what to say.

‘Were we like this, Kate?’ he said at last. ‘Was it like this for Val?’

She started to shiver, though she still had on her jacket.

‘Sophie’s compelling, you know. She makes me feel young again.’

He was playing with an ornament he had picked up from the side table next to his chair, the netsuke mouse he’d given Kate way back, before they were married.

Gifts.

Gifts and guilt.

Flowers from a forecourt.

The suffragette brooch, tucked away in a drawer in the bedroom.

Perfume brought back from a promotional tour in America.

A dozen other small gifts, produced randomly, but each time after some absence or other.

Had the netsuke been a guilt gift, even way back then, in the sunrise glory of their romance? Had it been offered by way of atonement? Had all the other little presents? And why had this thought never occurred to her before?

‘I don’t mean to hurt you, Kate.’

The cruellest thrust of all.
I don’t mean to hurt you – but I’m going to.

‘Can we talk about this? Properly, I mean.’

‘I thought we were talking properly.’

‘I won’t let this happen. We have spent fifteen years of our lives building something together. We have a family. We have Ninian.’

‘I had Harry.’

‘And look what he went through,’ she flashed back at him, then bit her lip. She would not stoop to using all the weapons in the armoury. ‘Tell me,’ she said carefully, ‘what Sophie means to you.’

He drew a deep, shuddering breath. ‘Innocence. Vulnerability. Youth. She needs me in all the ways you don’t.’

Innocent? Kate almost laughed aloud, but she bit her lip again instead. Pulling the scales away from Andrew’s eyes might prove impossible, she had to find other paths to a solution. ‘She is half your age, Andrew. She is almost a child still.’

‘Do you think I haven’t thought about that?’

‘When you are eighty years old she will only be the age you are now.’

‘She has thought about it too.’

‘Will you have children?’

‘She would like children.’

Her shivering became almost impossible to control. ‘This ever more complicated family of yours, Andrew, how will it work?’

‘It will work because I want it to work. It must be made to work.’

‘You’re so
selfish
!’ she cried, wondering how she could not have seen it before.

‘And you’re so righteous. You’ve never done anything impulsive or fun in your life.’

Kate’s chin came up at the insult. ‘Except fall in love with you, you mean? Anyway, you’re wrong. I slept with Ibsen Brown.’

An abyss opened at their feet and her words plummeted into it, spoken and therefore irretrievable. She stared at Andrew, her eyes wide with horror at her confession. She had never before understood the word thunderstruck, but his face perfectly expressed it now.

‘You ... did ... what?’

There was no going back. ‘It just happened. It didn’t mean anything.’

‘Didn’t mean anything? Isn’t that rather a cliché?’

It was. And worse, it wasn’t even true, because in the indigo world where she and Ibsen had joined themselves, body and soul, it had actually meant a very great deal to her. At the time. This was a reflection she could hardly share with Andrew, though, so she said, ‘Andrew, we’re not talking about one quick intimacy here, are we? We’re talking about something on a different scale altogether, something it might be rather harder to forgive, or forget.’

He was still fiddling with the netsuke and for some reason it was really irritating her.

‘Will you put that thing
down
, Andrew. Please.’

He thumped it onto the table with a crash that made her wince. She was fond of that mouse, guilt gift or no, and she would be sorry to see it broken. ‘Jesus Christ, Kate, I didn’t think you’d do a thing like that.’

‘No? It’s all right for you to have a full-on affair, but my one brief encounter is to be judged differently?’ She was trying not to raise her voice. She didn’t want this kind of row with Andrew, and she didn’t want Ninian to hear them arguing.

He stood up. ‘It shows, doesn’t it, that we’ve come to the end of our road together.’

‘No.’ She jumped to her feet and glowered up at him. ‘It shows we have to address some problems we have between us. That’s what we committed to, isn’t it? For better and for worse? No-one ever said it would be easy and I’ll be the first to admit I should have paid more attention to my marriage, but you’re wrong. You’re absolutely wrong. Running off to Sophie isn’t going to solve the problem you’ve got.’

‘And exactly what problem is that?’

She said wearily, ‘There’s no such thing as eternal youth. You certainly won’t find it by looking for new flesh to caress. Whatever you think you have with Sophie – don’t you see? It will still be pots and pans and dirty dishes, and you can add in nappies and broken nights too, if she gets her way? It’s not love. It’s—’

‘Don’t try to tell me what it is. You have no idea.’

‘Oh, I think I do, Andrew. I think I have a very good idea indeed.’

Outside, the wind was getting up and the moon had slid behind a cloud, so that she could barely see Andrew’s face at all. All at once, she felt desperately weary, so tired that the bones in her body felt as though they were disintegrating. She had no spirit left to fight.

‘Go, then,’ she said. ‘Go to her if you must. But you must be the one to explain to Ninian.’

A little to her surprise, he baulked at that. It offered them a chink of hope, though she knew it might be only the smallest of respites. Their marriage was caught in a spider’s web, trussed up with a thread that was at once strong and extremely fragile. Andrew began to wilt, and spent even longer closeted in his room. She could hear the soft clack clack clack of his keyboard keys followed by pauses so long that she wanted to scream,
Write! Write, damn you!

There was little else for her to do. She had finished painting the kitchen – and made a good job of it – but she rather regretted redecorating it at all. She missed the scuff mark by the back door and the greasy area above the cooker because these were chapters in their life here.

She longed to go to the community garden, but the digging was finished and the fund-raising team was at work and besides, autumn was turning into winter and now was not the time to do anything in the garden.

She missed Ibsen, but she had no excuse, now, to contact him.

Ninian escaped the house whenever he could and Kate knew that he was spending a great deal of time over at the Banks’s. Striking up a relationship with the twin sister of your best friend must pose its own complications, she reflected, but she was pleased for him – and more relieved than she could say that he seemed to have stopped consorting with Stephen Cousins.

One day, Mark Matthews called. ‘This is strictly off the record, Kate,’ he said, ‘but I wanted you to know that I believe we were wrong to put you in charge of the Summerfield project.’

‘I see.’

‘The senior team believed that it would be a strength, but I recognise now that it put you under intolerable pressures.’

‘Yes.’

‘And besides—’

‘Yes?’

‘Jack Bailey has explained about the confusion over the access road. That it was his error, not yours.’

‘That’s good news.’

‘Of course, it still leaves the matter of the incident at the eco protest.’

‘Yes. It still leaves that.’

‘But there is a growing recognition that you were under undue pressure and that this was the company’s fault, not your own.

‘I’m grateful to the company.’

‘You’ve probably already heard that there will be a disciplinary hearing?  The investigator reckons he’ll be finished taking all the evidence in two or three weeks. Sorry it’s taking so long - fixing diaries, getting people together, you know what it’s like.’

‘I know,’ said Kate, who had almost forgotten about diary hell.

‘I shouldn’t be telling you this, but I think things will go in your favour. I expect you’ll be reinstated.’

‘Who is running the project now?’ Kate asked, though she knew the answer already.

‘Jack. Don’t worry, if the hearing goes in your favour, you’ll be put back in charge of Summerfield.’

‘I guess if I’m reinstated,’ she said with heavy emphasis, ‘that will be my right.’

‘Don’t be so prickly. I had no alternative other than to suspend you, you know that, but I’m on your side.’

‘I know, Mark. I’m grateful.’

Under undue pressure? Whatever pressure she had been under then, she was considerably more weighed down now. Andrew’s refusal to talk to Ninian had placed them into stalemate. Harry would be the last person on earth she would take into any kind of confidence, so she had become completely isolated. Willow Corner had become her world.

The evening after Mark called, it occurred to Kate that she had not seen Charlotte for some weeks. In fact, she’d seen more of her when she was a full-time working mother than she did now that she was at home. Why hadn’t she called? She picked up the phone.

‘Charlotte? It’s Kate.’

There was an infinitesimal pause before she said, ‘Hi! How are you?’

‘Still in disgrace.’

‘Poor you. I’m sorry.’

‘I thought we could go for a drink.’

‘Mike’s away at the moment.’

‘Then I’ll come round there.’

Again there was the tiniest of pauses. ‘I’m a little busy, Kate.’

In her state of disconnection, the easiest thing would have been to have put the phone down and pick up another thriller, but Charlotte was her oldest friend, so she persisted. ‘What’s wrong, Char?’

‘Nothing. Why do you ask?’

‘You’re being very peculiar.’

‘Really? Do you think so? I’m just—’ She seemed to be floundering. ‘It’s difficult, Kate,’ she came up with eventually. ‘With Dad and everything. I need to support him and you’re—’

‘Suspended,’ Kate said dryly.

‘—on the other side,’ Charlotte ended feebly.

‘I can’t believe there’s anything you can be so busy with that you can’t spare time to sort out a problem with an old friend. I’ll bring a bottle round and be with you in ten minutes. Okay?’

‘Kate, I told you, I’m—’

‘Rather busy. Yes, you said.’ Kate hated defeat. ‘But I miss you, Char, and I know you. Something’s wrong and we need to talk about it.’

She heard Charlotte’s sigh and was resigned to another knock-back. ‘You’re right,’ Charlotte said surprising her. ‘Okay then, come on round.’

‘Good.’

Kate dropped the phone back on its cradle and marched to Andrew’s study. ‘I’m nipping round to see Charlotte,’ she said, ‘so if you want to talk to Sophie, now would be a good time.’

She couldn’t be bothered waiting to unpick his reaction. Ninian was out, Charlotte was in, and she had found a spark of resolve. She needed to know what was bugging Charlotte, because right now she could do with a bit of support and she wasn’t getting any. She pulled a bottle of wine out of the fridge and marched out of the kitchen door and down the side path to the gate.

‘Have I done something? Is it my fault?’ Kate thrust the bottle into Charlotte’s hands.

‘Oh hell, Kate,’ Charlotte grimaced, ‘you don’t change, do you? You never did know when to call time.’

‘Time on what?’

Charlotte went to the cupboard in the kitchen, pulled out two glasses. ‘Thanks for the wine. I suppose we’d better go and get comfortable.’

In the front room she flicked a switch and the fire flared into life. She eyed Kate warily. ‘So.’

Kate said, ‘Remember when you burst into my room at uni. It was my very first day. You were a skinny will-o-the-wisp, all cheekbones and flying blonde hair. “I’m Charlotte,” you announced, ‘”and I’m next door.’” Kate was looking at the pale gold liquid in her glass, but she was seeing the young Charlotte’s greeny-gold eyes. ‘Then you said, “I can tell we’re going to be friends.” Just like that.’

‘We’ve shared a lot of fun, haven’t we? Tribulations and tears, too.’

‘We got legless together—’

‘Shared clothes, even though you’re taller than me—’

They both fell silent, remembering. They’d lusted over men, too, and swapped unrepeatable tales of intimacies. For a while Kate had dated Mike Proctor, before they’d parted amicably and Charlotte had swooped on him with glee. ‘If you’ve really finished with him, Katie-K,’ she’d said delightedly, ‘would you mind if I had a pop? He’s so
sweet
.’

‘I know you almost as well as I know myself. At least, I thought I did.’

‘Don’t, Kate—’

‘Maybe even better, because right now, I’m not convinced that I know what I want from life at all.’

Charlotte didn’t answer. After a few minutes she said, ‘So what’s new?’

‘Oh, you know, still out of work and stuck at home.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Are you?’