Hush Hush (17 page)

‘What the ‒ !’
The bully looked up. His cronies ran in all directions, without even
bothering to see who’d chucked the egg.

‘Cowardly scum!’
hissed Angela, advancing on Torquemada, the ring-leader.

The boy jumped off Shane, who
glanced fleetingly up at Angela, then plonked his face straight back
in the sand. Angela didn’t care if she was embarrassing him or
not. She’d never been so grateful to be a tall woman, with hair
askew, raincoat flapping wildly, dander up.

‘Ever heard of the Geneva
Convention, you little horror!’ she screamed at the boy, one of
the locker-room jocks.

‘Y-you threw a rotten egg
at me.’ His bottom lip actually wobbled as egg yolk dripped
into his ear.

‘Ah, diddums. But then
again, how typical. Like all cowards and bullies, you’re a
chicken-hearted, worthless piece of scum, aren’t you?’
She grabbed him by his singlet and shook him.
‘
Aren’t
you?’

‘I’ll get my parents
on to you,’ he gasped.
‘
That’s
assault.’

‘You do that sunshine. And
I’ll raise enough of a stink to get you expelled from this
school, barred from every other one and thrown into borstal for a
short, sharp shock. Comprendez? Now get the hell out of my sight and
don’t you ever lay a finger on another kid again, unless you
reckon your vital organs would look better as accessories dangling
from a charm bracelet. Scram!’

He took off, boggle-eyed.

Shane mumbled into the sand.

‘Eh?’ Angela hauled
him upright, none too gently.

‘I said, thanks for
nothing. I have to go to this school.’

‘Can it, kiddo. I did the
suffering-in-silence bit at school, when I’d have given
anything for a tattooed parent wielding a bike chain to sort out the
bullies for me. No point in fighting your own battles when the odds
are stacked against you. I reckon that homicidal shithead got the
message.’

She stood back triumphantly,
folding her arms. God, it felt good to be alive.

Shane raised himself up on skinny
elbows.
‘
I suppose
you think we’ll bond for life now. I’ll see you in a new
light and become all respectful, like, until the day we all go and
live on Waltons’ mountain.’

‘Something like that,’
said Angela cheekily.

‘Dream
on. You’ve just stood on my glasses.’

Later that
evening, Conor rang to apologise.
‘
Something
came up I couldn’t get out of.’ He paused.
‘
I
hope you’ll overlook my rudeness.’

‘No problem,’
murmured Angela, gripping her mobile tightly, as if she could draw
him closer, rekindle that spark of intimacy on the sofa, find out
where the hell he’d been.

‘How’s Sadie?’

‘Oh, fine, thanks. Went
back to work yesterday.’

‘I hear you took part in
the egg-and-spoon race. I wish I’d seen that.’

‘I’m glad you
didn’t.’ What else had Shane told him?

‘Shane managed to break his
glasses during the long jump. He’s a bear with a sore head
because he can’t watch telly.’

‘Poor kid. He did well in
the event.’

‘I know. He didn’t
come last. I don’t give a stuff about having a sporty son,
frankly. I’d rather he was a short-sighted bookworm with
train-spotting tendencies. At least until he’s got some paper
qualifications.’

‘I agree.’

He was silent, very silent, down
the line. She tried to summon up his green eyes looking deeply into
hers, the way he’d said
‘
Please
relax’ as he touched her hands, even the grunting bluffness
that masked his shyness as he shoved freesias under her nose. But
without seeing his face and gauging his mood, she felt him slipping
away from her.

‘Goodnight then, Angela.
Speak to you soon.’

Her heart sank.
‘
Goodnight,
Conor.’

The airport cafeteria was empty, except for the
couple at the corner table.

Their
hands lay side by side on the small table, careful not to touch,
matching luggage stacked to one side.

Kate
glanced at Conor as she sipped her herbal tea. He was still
nice-looking, in an earthy sort of way. She’d give him that.

Conor
was doing his own surreptitious assessment of his table companion.
Still a stunner, all that red hair tumbling over her shoulders. Her
chin was tilted at a defiant angle, though. He wondered if that
presaged a few rattled saucers, tears before boarding. Well, he
wasn’t giving ground the minute she chucked a wobbly. Those
days were gone.

‘
Feeling
better?’ she murmured, as he drained his second coffee.

‘You might have given me
more notice! I’ve had to run out on Shane and his sports day
and tear across London to get here, in answer to the royal summons.’

‘I know. I’m sorry.
But it was worth hearing, wasn’t it? I’m deadly serious,
Conor. In two months, my contract will be up at work. And I want to
come back. I want to be near Shane, make it up to him. You may not
have noticed, but he’s starting to go off the rails a bit.’

‘And you would notice,
three thousand miles away!’ Conor flared up.

‘Look,’ conceded
Kate,
pushing her cup away
.
‘
You’re the
on-the-spot parent, doing a fantastic job. When I say he’s
going off the rails, it’s nothing as dramatic as that. But each
time he visits me in New York, he’s a little less his old,
sunny self. He’s watchful and sulky. I think he’s
desperately unhappy, and it’s our fault. I want to try and put
things right.’

Conor fiddled with a teaspoon.
‘F
or Shane’s
sake, right?’

‘And for my own, I suppose.
Making it up to Shane will chase away a few night-time demons.’
She wiped her mouth delicately on a triangle of serviette. A muscle
quivered on her cheek. Conor’s gaze narrowed. He knew that
twitch so well.
‘
There’s
no sinister third party, Conor. I haven’t met anyone in New
York. My therapist reckons it’ll be some time before I trust
men again. Perhaps never.’

Conor’s face hardened.

‘But Shane was telling me
on the phone, you have a new
‒
lady friend.’

Conor grunted, annoyed at his
irrational guilt. He was divorced from this beautiful, brittle woman
with the tremor in her hands and the unnatural lustre in her hazel
eyes. She had summoned him to Heathrow on a stopover flight from New
York to Helsinki, where her sister lived, teaching English. And he’d
come running like an eager puppy. A summons from Kate? It had to be
momentous. He’d been way off beam, expecting an announcement of
remarriage. To hell with that. She actually wanted to return to the
family fold
‒
strictly on her own terms, of course.

Playing for time, he told her,
‘
Shane is not going
off the rails. His grades are good, he doesn’t do drugs or
smoke behind the bike shed. And just because he’s a slow
starter with girls
‒
for which, personally, I’m grateful
‒
it doesn’t mean he’s gay, or an anorak. I was a late
developer, too.’

‘We both were. We helped
each other develop, remember?’

Conor looked into his cup. He
didn’t want a common point of reference, a litany of shared
memories beginning
‘
Do
you remember the time
…
?’
If love was a hard habit to break, infatuation had been harder. In
the weeks following Kate’s departure from 23 Pacelli Road, he’d
cold-turkeyed on the empty mattress in their bedroom, living on
toasted sandwiches and wishing he smoked, growing a beard behind
closed curtains, while Mrs Turner fed, placated and lied to Shane.

‘So who is your lady
friend?’ persisted Kate placidly.
‘
An
improvement on the awful-sounding Rosie, one hopes. Are you planning
to move her in, marry her?’

‘It’s in the early
stages.’ Possibly about to be strangled at birth.

‘I’ve never wanted
anything off you, Conor. No alimony, no settlements. I was pleased to
earn my own way. It saved my sanity. But I am asking for this ‒
to come back and live in my own home. Who helped you make it a home?’

‘You helped me pick out
curtains for the spare room,’ nit-picked Conor.

‘I’m warning you,
Conor!’ Her voice rose an octave and wobbled on the point of
dissolution.
‘
All
right, so the mortgage was in your name, and you always paid it, even
when I worked full-time before Shane came along. That was a mistake
on my part. But I put years of my life into that rotten house,
fortress McGinlay!’

She lowered her voice as the
woman wiping the coffee machine looked over with interest.
‘I
’ve
no desire for us to live as man and wife, Conor. That part is over.
But I want to do right by Shane, and Shane wants me to come back ‒’

Conor jumped.
‘
My
God, you’ve told him the idea has the green light? Before you
even met me to discuss it!’

‘I could hardly moot the
idea before I’d tested Shane’s reaction to it. We spoke
on the phone last week, and I threw it out as a theoretical
situation. He was receptive, as it happens. He didn’t stop
loving me just because you did.’

Her voice quivering on a sigh,
she looked away, offering a perfect profile. But it wasn’t as
perfect as she thought. Her complexion and chin had begun to thicken
and redden, in a slight but discernible coarseness.

Conor felt unbearably sad. He
also felt big and rough and peasanty, insensitive to her finely tuned
emotions. Just as she wanted him to feel. He clutched his chin,
rasping the shave-resistant stubble.
‘
How
could it ever work, Kate? You and me under the same roof again.’

She said quickly,
‘
It
could. We can give Shane the stability of two parents, without
expecting too much ‒ anything, really ‒ of each other.
You’d still have your life and I’d have mine. I’ll
tell you how.’

As she told him how, Conor’s
inner thermostat went from simmer to boil. He could hardly wait until
she’d finished.

‘You’re not bloody
serious?’ he thundered, then met her eye.
‘
You
are! You seriously think I’d desecrate my ‒ my
…’

‘Your real mistress?’
said Kate with precise coolness.
‘
The
only love of your life? Yes, that’s what I’m asking for,
because I’m entitled. Does your new woman know all about your
bricks-and-mortar and hardwood-floors fixation?’

Conor’s eyes bulged. His
eyebrows did a demented caterpillar dance.

Kate laughed delicately.
‘
Only
consider my proposal,’ she wound up.
‘
You’ve
got two months to wrestle with the pros and cons. Will you at least
do that? Consider it, hmm? You’ll soon realise how sensible it
is. Just think of Shane.’

Blood pounded behind his temples.
He longed to hurt and reject her. He longed to ignore his
much-vaunted
‘
responsibility’
to Shane. And he longed to take that beautiful neck between his hands
and squeeze tightly ‒ or rain down hungry, bruising kisses on
its creamy hollow, branding her soap-advert downiness with welts of
angry lust.

But he had to hand it to Kate ‒
she knew him so well! She knew his baser impulses were supremely
self-controlled. That he trusted himself much more than he’d
ever trusted her.

Glancing at her watch, she stood
up to signal that the meeting was over.

Conor rose slowly, as if backing
off from a guard dog.

‘Everything hinges on you
now, Conor. On whether you can find it in your heart to let bygones
be bygones.’

He grinned mirthlessly. Slick,
very slick! Pass him the sole responsibility as a test of his
magnanimity. And leave just a suggestion in the air of how Shane
would react, come the inevitable day when he learnt of Conor’s
choice.

‘What happens if I won’t
play ball?’ he asked.
‘
Will
you still come back to England when your contract’s up?’

She ruffled her hair wearily.
‘
I
haven’t thought that far ahead, because that would involve
solicitors, and I’m keen to avoid upsetting Shane. I’ve
every faith in you ‒ in us. Goodbye, Conor.’ She leant
forward on tiptoe to brush his stubble with her lips.
‘
You
can contact me back in New York, but don’t leave it too long,
hmm?’

‘See ya Kate.’ He
caught her on the corner of her mouth as it slid away. He tasted
peppermint lip balm.

She picked up her luggage. ‘I’ll
get you a trolley,’ he grunted.

‘No need.’

‘Beats me how they let you
on with that lot as hand luggage in the first place.’

‘It’s called an
allowance. People make them, you know.’

He
merely raised an eyebrow at that, and took her at her word, striding
from the caff without adding more of his own.

Conor took the Tube back into London, shaken and
perturbed. If he didn’t play ball, Kate would probably make his
life hell, perhaps even sue him for custody as an unfit father,
citing his frequent absences and twisting his petty liaison with
Rosie into a sordid affair. God, she’d been so careful to avoid
other relationships! The sainted mother, driven away in pursuit of
her sanity, pining for the son she’d had to leave as a lesser
of two evils. Planning, always, to return as soon as she could, once
the trauma of her mental collapse had passed.

Conor stood up to let a pregnant
woman have his seat. When she sat down, he realised that she was just
fat. Jamming his hands in his pockets, he leant against the carriage
door, reflecting that he always got the wrong end of the stick when
it came to women. Starting most spectacularly with Kate, the ex-love
of his life. A sensitive, gentle woman who’d survived a
tyrannical bully of a father with quiet courage. Or so it had seemed.