Life Begins (21 page)

Charlotte shook her head, shoving the gearstick into first and glancing in her wing-mirror. ‘I’ve decided to stay where I am, make the best of what I’ve got.’ The grin was still there, but hanging on now, the lips tightening.

‘Great. Good luck with
that
,’ Dominic offered, feeling a little helpless now. ‘Good luck indeed,’ he murmured, as she raced off down the road.

For the walk back to his car the wind was directly against him, squeezing tears from his eyes and batting at the flaps of his coat. Divorced, with a difficult little boy and
quite
an attitude, he told himself, as the helplessness threatened to
bulge into sympathy. His thoughts shifted to the needy, embittered woman with whom he had briefly – unsatisfactorily – shared a bed: all that history, all that
baggage
when he had quite enough of his own to contend with; he wasn’t going to make that mistake again. Making the best of what one had wasn’t a bad adage, though, he decided, recalling Charlotte’s parting words as he slid behind the wheel of his own car. And he was certainly managing that now, with Rose so much more settled and the pair of them on the verge of making a new start in a house that had fallen into his lap like a gift – thanks to Benedict, dear Benedict, with his own complicated private life but a relentless ability to shine light into other people’s. It was also thanks to his wonderful, scheming brother that on top of this huge blessing he now had the clever, striking Polish girl more within his sights. She was called Petra and had recently left him a message about lunch, suggesting somewhere local as she was working out of studios in Battersea – if that wasn’t too inconvenient, if he had the time, if he would like to, some time in the next few weeks, or months, if he was busy. It had been a long message, suggesting, behind the too-long clauses, the stilted English, both an appealing uncertainty and real eagerness.

The prospect of following up on it was exciting, Dominic acknowledged happily, blowing on his frozen hands while the car heating got into its stride. He’d ask Benedict to recommend somewhere good locally. He’d look ahead in his office diary and find a quiet day, maybe arrange to work from home, pick Rose up from school, pin down the paperwork for the move… Yes, a good plan, something to get his teeth into. Dominic took a deep breath. Sometimes he was sure he forgot to breathe. He summoned an image of Petra’s fresh intelligent face, the silky bobbed hair, the
long legs; he
loved
long legs. ‘And it’s time to move on, my darling,’ he murmured, pausing for a last admiring look at his future home. ‘It really is.’

Sam folded the letter into a tight, fat square, pondering whether he was the only boy in the world to be spending the Easter holidays
missing
school. It would be impossible ever to admit to such a thing; almost as impossible as admitting that the person he had once been famous for hating had somehow –
how? –
morphed into a friendly pen-pal. Exchanging notes with the class weirdo – not only unpopular but a
girl–
he would be a laughing-stock.

Except the funny thing was, Sam had never felt less in danger of being a laughing-stock in all his life. With the Rose business – the
new
Rose business – and having to be on his best behaviour work-wise, he had stopped trying to hang out with George’s gang and detected, to his astonishment,
a new keenness on their part to hang out with him. It was insane, like getting something after – or
because –
you’d stopped wanting it. During the last week of term George had even hinted that, if there had been the remotest chance of wriggling out of a new plan of his mother’s to visit his granny in Cornwall, he would have welcomed an invitation to Suffolk. He had a kite in the attic there that he’d never flown, he said, and there was a place he wanted to show Sam among the dunes, perfect for a hideout. He had scribbled a map of it, with arrows and crosses, like directions to buried treasure.

Sam missed Rose’s notes and little pictures. But more than that he missed the thrill of their secret handovers, the looks over the top of books and behind people’s backs, the lovely warm feeling of having something going on that no one else knew about, not even Mr Dawson, to whom he had told all sorts of stuff but whom he didn’t have to see now, unless he wanted to.

Sam hovered on the landing, scared suddenly as to how his latest effort at written communication might be received. Rose’s last missive, slipped into his hands two weeks before, during the enforced tedium of a lost-property session on the last day of school, had ended, ‘see you next term’. Like she meant it to be just a
school
thing. And there had been no hint of exchanging mobile numbers either, which had been a bitter blow.

And now there was just the afternoon left and they were going to Suffolk, where his mum said mobiles didn’t work and posting a letter required a car journey. Sam leant over the banisters, craning his neck in a bid to establish Charlotte’s exact location. He had last seen her entering the spare bedroom on the first floor clutching a pagoda of empty cardboard boxes, but now the door was closed, and she was
kneeling on the wrong side of it, one hand rummaging in a dusty, battered suitcase, the other tucking strands of hair behind her ears, from where it immediately fell forwards again, dangling against her nose.

‘Hey, you,’ she said, not even looking up.

‘Hey.’

‘Have you done what I asked?’

‘Nearly,’ Sam lied, folding his fist tightly round the note. ‘Can I go to the shop to get some sweets?’

‘If you’ve sorted out your cupboard and packed, yes.’

Sam made a noise designed to sound like a yes, while not actually being one, so that, when accused later, he could deny having lied. Rather to his surprise it seemed to have worked because as he ventured down the stairs towards her she carried on talking, not about sorting his gear but about other tedious things she had already mentioned at least five times since breakfast.

We’ve got to leave early or we’ll get stuck in traffic. I’m sorry it’s only for four days, but I’ve got to get back to help out in the shop because of Dean still being so ill. And then not long after we get back your godmother’s coming to stay – did I tell you that?’

‘Yeah,
Eve
, who started sending you emails out of the blue and who I’ve never
met
because she lives in
Boston
,’ Sam chirruped, leaping on to the banister, bracing himself for the usual telling-off as he let go, but too keen for the thrill of the slide, not to mention the chance to whip an envelope out of the sideboard drawer while she was still upstairs.

‘And George’s dad has promised to drop by with the keys before we leave tomorrow,’ she continued, as if he hadn’t said anything and wasn’t riding the banisters, ‘which is so kind of him.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘And,
Sam . .
.’

Here it comes, he thought, in full flight now, a split
second from the tricky final leap on to the hall floor, skidding on the rug if he was clever. Here it comes.

‘While you’re at the corner shop could you buy some bread – sliced, brown, white, whatever you fancy having under your scrambled egg.’

‘Yeah, sure,’ Sam puffed, glancing back up the stairs in surprise. He had missed the pad of the hall carpet but landed safely on all fours. She was still on her knees bending over the suitcase, singing something softly as she took out clothes and papers and arranged them in piles. She had been at it for days now, like someone who
was
about to move house instead of one who had decided not to.

A few miles away Theresa was moving with rather more purpose between cupboards and a large suitcase that was filling fast. Dressing-gowns and slippers – the Cornwall house was draughty – toys and games in case it rained (it was
bound
to rain), wellingtons and macs, and at least one each of the various home-knit jumpers that had arrived in jiffy-bags during the course of the last year. Alfie and Jack would wear theirs, no problem, but George, at thirteen, was growing understandably resistant to sporting loopy-stitched, brightly coloured knitwear – even to please a grandparent whom he loved very dearly – while Matilda… Theresa sighed in fond despair at the thought of her six-year-old’s new, obstinate fashion-consciousness: since her release from the constraints of school uniform, she had taken to flinging clothes out of her chest of drawers each morning with the despairing petulance of a teenager. Only items that were pink or
glittered
were currently in favour; and since this basically limited her to her ballet outfit, and a couple of too-large garments from the dressing-up box, few mornings that holiday had passed without ructions.

Naomi, who had invited herself for tea, bringing the twins but not Pattie and staying well into the time Theresa had allocated for packing (she was leaving that night), had said it was mid-April, mostly sunny and so what if a child wore a tutu to the supermarket? Theresa had laughed and said so what indeed, apart from paedophiles and pneumonia and the fact that the tutu in question had a ‘handwash only’ label that added considerably to the already sizeable chore of family laundry.

And control, Theresa thought now, standing on the suitcase, which was too full. Not allowing tutus in the supermarket was part of keeping everything manageable, within the boundaries of a chaos she knew would swamp her if she let it, and, from the manner in which the twins had run riot during the course of the afternoon, appeared to be slightly in danger of overwhelming Naomi. Control. She would take it where she could, these days, she reflected grimly, kneeling on the lid and hissing curses as the contents bulged between the two sides of the zipper.

‘Need a hand by any chance?’

‘Henry… no, I mean yes – yes, please.’ She moved off the case and watched as her husband hoisted it on to their bed, using brute force to close the zip.

‘There we are. All set.’

‘All set. And you?’ Seven weeks and two days, she thought, seven weeks and two days since he has laid a hand on me. Lips, yes, in scattered pecks, before and after work, before and after sleep, avuncular, inadequate. And there had been no protestations about her going solo to Cornwall either, not one hint of a lament about considering or wishing he could abandon the wretched work blitz and come too. ‘Was Charlotte okay about you dropping the keys?’

‘Oh, yes, fine – absolutely fine. She thought it was hilarious that we’d all forgotten.’

Privately Theresa considered it ridiculously inept rather than funny on all their parts. Over a hasty sandwich lunch the week before, she had remembered to offer Charlotte advice on the final tricky leg of the journey, to apologize in advance for the idiosyncrasies of the boiler, but not once considered how her friend was supposed to get through the front door. Charlotte, busily cursing Dominic Porter for hijacking her perfect house and the increased demands imposed by her employer’s continuing ill health, hadn’t thought of it either. She had been full of a new, almost manic energy, babbling about moving on properly at last, about pieces falling into place, about her determination to make a go of staying where she was. She had been bullish, too, on the subject of the next mah-jong session, insisting she host it in spite of extensive redecorating plans and a possible clash with a visit from Sam’s long-lost godmother. She and Eve would play together, she said, so as not to muck up the numbers.

Theresa, who did not fancy the intrusion of an outsider into their comfortable little circle, unbalancing things, requiring politeness and effort, had momentarily caught herself missing the more familiar version of her friend: the one who needed constant support, counselling… pity. For years she had felt superior to Charlotte, she realized with some surprise – superior, smug,
happily married
, and she rather missed it.

It had been Henry who had first picked up on the omission of the keys, jangling his set in her face after Naomi had finally left, when Theresa was straining broccoli and wondering why she had committed herself to four hours of night driving when six, even in foul traffic the following day,
would probably be infinitely less stressful. ‘Doh…’ Henry had exclaimed, doing an imitation of George doing an imitation of Homer Simpson, his eyes twinkling with satisfaction at having been the one to spot the oversight. He had then speedily –
ebulliently
, or so it seemed to Theresa – volunteered to phone Charlotte to sort out a handover of the offending items the following morning. His own plans involved travelling up by train the day after that and staying on for a few days after the pair had returned to London. The entire family had been talked through it so often, with such conscientious attention to detail, that Theresa could have repeated most of her husband’s phrases on the subject verbatim… He was going to
hole up
in the granny conversion in order to
break the back
of his latest paper, finding energy and
inspiration
, as he
always
did, in the holiday landscape of his childhood.

‘Hilarious?’ repeated Theresa, dully, pushing the word out through her reverie and damning the generosity that had prompted her to offer Charlotte the cottage in the first place, allowing the whole ridiculous situation to arise.

‘In fact,’ continued Henry, lightly, keeping his back to her as he lifted the suitcase on to the floor, ‘Charlotte suggested that instead of waiting a day and taking the train, I drive down with her in the morning when I deliver the keys, which makes sense if you think about it.’