Life Begins (7 page)

‘Oh, absolutely fine, thanks – a bit of a hard week at the office. Crazy markets – nobody can read them at the moment. Thank God it’s Friday. Hey, sweetheart, nice to see you.’ She patted Sam’s head, offering Charlotte the torchbeam of a smile with which she had managed every one of their encounters: fierce, sharp, bright, there was never any way round it other than retreat.

‘Bye, Sam, be good.’ Charlotte ruffled his hair and called, ‘See you Sunday night,’ as he ran off. Then she confided to Cindy, in a much quieter voice, that she needed a word with Martin some time over the weekend.

‘You can call any time you want, you know that, Charlotte.’

‘Yes… I… of course. Thanks.’

‘But I’ll tell him if you like.’

Charlotte blinked in the glare of the smile as a dizzying, violent sense of usurpation took hold. This woman had had an affair with her husband and now was sharing his bed permanently and playing mother to
her
child. She had trampled upon the fragile, threadbare remains of her and Martin’s happiness by making herself available to him. And now here they were with their Toytown house and matching cars, playing at happy families, while she grappled with
the vile realities of money, houses, parenting… It was intolerable. Martin always said to consult him about everything to do with Sam but he certainly didn’t make it easy. Drop-offs and pick-ups were never a good time to talk and on the phone he either sounded rushed and distant or old enmity crept into the conversation, steering them off course.

But having managed a civil farewell, the feeling passed, like a bout of nausea, leaving only pity; Cindy was welcome to Martin, and he to her. Their marriage had been a limping, draining thing. She was well out of it,
well out.

She had reached the bottom of the drive when Martin’s black BMW swung into sight. ‘Hey.’ He got out quickly, pulling his briefcase after him and running one hand through his hair as he always did when agitated.

‘Hello.’

‘You’ve dropped him off, then?’

‘Yes, just now. I’m in a hurry I – I’m going to Theresa’s.’

‘Fine. See you Sunday, then.’

They were standing several feet apart, Martin at one end of his car and Charlotte taking small steps backwards towards hers. His hair, youthfully fair still, was visibly thinning and in retreat from his forehead, yet physically he looked in better shape than he had for years, his suit trousers hanging loosely off his hips, his upper body exuding poise and strength that seemed new.

‘It might be a bit earlier than usual – I hope that’s okay. Say, four o’clock?’ he added.

Charlotte bit her lip, weighing up the easy option of agreeing against a small inner shout of protest at being taken for granted. She was visiting her mother on Sunday. The early drop-back would mean rushing home from Kent, having to make sure there was something sensible for Sam’s tea. ‘May I ask why?’

She saw him tense, a visible bracing of his entire body, as if he was preparing to maintain his balance against the approach of a large wave or a violent gust of wind. ‘Cindy and I have joined a choir. The rehearsal time is five o’clock on Sunday. I need to drop Sam and get back here so as not to be late.’

Charlotte couldn’t stifle a snort of disbelief.
‘You –
a
choir
?’

‘Just tell me if that’s okay,’ Martin muttered, hugging his briefcase, almost bashful, as if he, too, somewhere deep inside, recognized the incongruity of the old Martin whom she had known so well – obstinate lover of punk rock and Led Zeppelin – offering the services of his scratchy bass to the classical formality of a choir. ‘Can I deliver Sam back at four o’clock on Sunday or not?’ He clenched his jaw, casting a wistful glance at the illuminated window from where Cindy had offered a stagy wave to acknowledge his arrival, then disappeared.

‘Yes
, yes, I suppose so,’ Charlotte conceded, incredulity giving way to weariness. ‘Four o’clock. I’ll be there. I’m having lunch with Mum that day – probably be glad of an excuse to get away,’ she admitted ruefully.

‘I see… Well, thanks.’

‘But I do need to talk to you,’ she called, as he turned for the house, the worries about Sam rushing back at her, together with a dim terror at the prospect of daring to ask to borrow money.

Martin set down his briefcase on the doorstep and folded his arms. ‘I thought you were in a hurry.’ Cindy, studiously not looking out of the window, had stepped back into the frame of the kitchen. Next to her Charlotte could just make out the dishevelled top of Sam’s head and then one of her son’s stubby chewed-nail hands, stained with some felt-pen doodle, pointing at something.

‘I am. I meant tomorrow – on the phone. It’s to do with Sam.’

‘Well, I assumed that. Why can’t you tell me now, for heaven’s sake?’ A fine rain had started, more like a floating mist, its droplets glittering as they caught the sheets of light streaming from the house. Martin stepped back under the protection of his porch.

Charlotte put her handbag over her head and ducked towards her car. ‘Not now, there isn’t time.’

‘Charlotte.’ The syllables flew through the wet air like missiles, sharp and angry. ‘If it’s important tell me now, for fuck’s sake.’

Charlotte flinched, remembering all the bad stuff – suspicion, hostility, the desire to be free. ‘Tomorrow, Martin. I’ll call you.’

A moment later Martin appeared on the illuminated stage of the kitchen, an arm round Cindy’s smooth white shoulders, a hand ruffling the soft straw tangle of Sam’s head. Man, woman and child: the perfect human triangle. But not perfect, Charlotte hastily reminded herself, turning the ignition once and then a second time to get the engine going, because Sam wasn’t their child, Cindy looked drained and Martin would tire of her one day – if he hadn’t already.

En route
to Theresa’s, she stopped at the off-licence in the high street. Emerging with a bottle of rioja, she caught sight of a familiar figure in a bright red bobble hat on the pavement opposite. A tall skinny girl with frizzy orange hair walked at his heels, shoulders hunched inside a school blazer that was several sizes too large. Edging back into the traffic a few minutes later, Charlotte spotted the pair again, getting into a silver Mercedes. They were laughing about something this time, with such gusto that she found herself pondering what it would have been like if Martin had died instead of
being unfaithful, whether the end of a marriage was easier to accept with death as its instigator instead of human failing.

There was a full moon that night, large and melon-yellow, hanging so low over the skyline that George, studying it through the upper pane of the bathroom window, imagined it cartwheeling across the treetops like a giant Frisbee. He had been commanded to wash by his mother, who had an uncanny knack of keeping track of such things even when she appeared to be paying no attention. Not a shower, a
bath
, she had said, as if she knew about his secret trick of running taps and splashing water on his hair when time was short or he wasn’t in the mood. He hadn’t been in the mood that night, but she had bustled into the bathroom before he had had time to lock the door, set the taps running and tipped in so much of her special bubble bath that when he got in a great shelf of foam spilled over the end on to the floor.

It was nice now, though, George had to admit, lying among the suds, safe from the annoyance of his younger siblings and the awful hubbub of his mother’s dinner-party preparations. Pattie’s mum, Naomi, had already arrived and was sitting on the sofa with a glass of wine, which George had been instructed to pour for her while his mother frisked his little brothers for mah-jong tiles. They were in bed now upstairs, on pain of death not to wake Matty, who had bawled so loudly during her nit-check that she had actually puked up some of her tea. Alfie had squatted down in fascination to point out the undigested baked beans to his brothers (Matty hadn’t liked the curry), which had been gross but also sort of interesting until their mother had said if they liked peering at it so much they could jolly well clear it up.

George had sought refuge in trumpet practice, working at it far longer than he really wanted to out of fear that his mother might carry out the threat. When she had slipped into the room he pretended not to notice and restarted his piece even though it had gone really well the first time. But instead of talking about the puke, or his wrong notes, she had said, in her softest, nicest voice, that she was sorry if she had been on his case about the music exam and would he like her to organize a sleepover for the following Friday to celebrate it being over and what about Sam?

It had gone a bit wrong after that because George had said no – not to the idea of having a friend over but to Sam. At which point the motherly niceness had turned into a lecture on what Sam was going through and supporting friends in times of need, to the point at which George had wanted to say that if she was so keen on Sam Turner why didn’t she invite him over herself? He hadn’t, of course – answering back was never a good idea with his mother – and then he had been let off the hook by the doorbell and the business of helping with the wine.

It wasn’t fair, though, George mused now, sucking the sodden flannel noisily through his braced teeth, that his mum should try to make him feel bad about whom he chose as a friend. Sam had been okay once – way back – during the days when anybody played with anybody. But nobody liked him much any more. He had become a sad show-off, all the more annoying because he had nothing to show off about: how much his dad earned, what phone he was going to get, scores in computer games – who cared? And it was probably lies anyway. So what if his parents were getting divorced? It wasn’t like he was the first kid it had happened to. Rose, the new girl in their class, had had a mother who
died.
Now that, in George’s opinion, was far more dramatic
and impressive. If Theresa had said to be nice to Rose Porter he would probably have done his best, because the thought of losing his own mother, for all her bossiness and cunning, was so impossible to contemplate that he actually felt a little sick just trying.

As it happened, the motherless Rose didn’t seem to need much looking after. She was one of those scary girls, who sat in the front row and shot her hand up to answer everything and buried her nose in a book at breaktime. She was as tall as several of the boys in their class, with carrot-coloured bird’s-nest hair, skin as white as sunblock and blue eyes that stared so hard you felt she was seeing through you to something on the other side. Instructed to partner Sam for an exercise in Drama that morning (a stupid exercise where one person had to be a tree and the other the wind), she had looked so fierce and towering, so scornful of Sam’s puffing efforts round her stick-like outstretched arms, that George had felt almost sorry for his erstwhile friend.

But not sorry enough, George vowed, slopping more water on to the floor as he scrambled out of the bath, to invite the irritating loser over for the precious treat of a Friday-night tea.

Downstairs in the sitting room Naomi had been joined by Josephine, whose stylishly cropped blonde hair was dark and damp from having been caught in the rain, but who looked immaculate nonetheless in a navy trouser suit and high heels. ‘Theresa bustled between them, setting out bowls of vegetable crisps, offering top-ups of wine and checking the card table, which had been unfolded from its usual storage behind the piano and set up in preparation for the evening game. Safely retrieved from her sons’ pockets, all the mah-jong tiles were now neatly arranged in the two-tiered
square required to start the proceedings. Sitting in the middle, like two loose teeth, were the faded misshapen dice that had come with the mah-jong set (acquired on a whim at a car-boot sale a few years before), with a small booklet of instructions, held together by Sellotape so old it had dulled to a dirty brown and lost most of its stick. Naomi, left alone with her glass of wine for long enough to be driven to picking up the little booklet and studying it, warned her friends now that she fully intended going for one of the more high-scoring difficult hands.

Josephine groaned. ‘I can never remember them. I get my winds and my dragons muddled and some of those bamboos are just like flowers.’

‘It’s like cards, Jo – different suits, extra points for winds and dragons – and we
must
do the North Wind thing this time, Theresa.’

‘What thing is that?’ asked Theresa, absently, more concerned for the curry, which was showing severe signs of dehydration, while the rice, being kept warm in the top oven, was starting to look clumped and sticky.

‘I don’t get the North Wind thing,’ complained Josephine, stretching out her long legs and settling back with obvious relish into the deep folds of the sofa, hands and wine glass resting on her stomach. With a reputation among her management-consultant employers for being keenly intelligent, ruthless, inexhaustible, she found such evenings particularly relaxing. As her friends well knew, she didn’t really care a jot about the North Wind or whether she muddled bamboos and flowers. Before mah-jong she had been a member of a book club but had found it too much like hard work: fierce, often intellectually frustrated women holding forth, fighting to have nonsense opinions heard and respected – as if it
mattered.
She read Dick Francis, these
days, or fluffy stories about women who shopped and had a lot of sex. I’ve always thought the South Wind should be more important than the North, anyway. Because it’s nicer, more
clement…
Oh, I could so do with some now.’ She sighed, pulling a face. ‘March is so long and hateful, with Christmas a distant memory and still months and months until the summer hols. I’m pushing hard for an Easter trip somewhere but Paul says he can’t get the time off.’

‘Paul always says that and then you persuade him,’ said Theresa, smoothly, glancing at the clock and wondering what could have happened to Charlotte.

‘Graham’s got a conference in Dubai this summer,’ said Naomi, crossing to the mantelpiece to study Martin and Cindy’s invitation, which, thanks to the distraction of her various domestic dramas, Theresa had forgotten to hide. ‘He’s going to try and fix it so I can go too.’