Relative Love (42 page)

‘Oh, hello there … Goodness …’ Elizabeth found it hard to conceal her surprise. Phyllis thrust out her hand, then withdrew it because Elizabeth was too laden to respond.

‘School politics,’ said Phyllis, rolling her eyes. She was dressed in her usual hippie style, in a long purple dress, with pendulous purple earrings and several silver bangles jangling round each wrist. ‘We had a talk.’

‘Really?’ Elizabeth glanced at Colin, seeking some evidence of annoyance that the last Sunday of half-term should have been so rudely disturbed. ‘Is something going on? Is it something serious?’

A pause followed, broken by Colin with a brittle laugh. ‘Oh, no, nothing serious – just this new directive from the head about how to handle the inspectors.’

‘But I thought they weren’t coming until the autumn,’ murmured Elizabeth, her arms aching too much now to care about school inspectors or being polite. She squeezed past them to get rid of her load. She slung Colin’s evening gear over the banisters and put down the bags. ‘I’m dying for a cup of tea. Would you like one, Phyllis?’ She delivered the invitation in as lukewarm a manner as she could, wanting to show Colin that she knew his patience would already have been tested sorely and that she was only going through the motions of civility.

‘I’ve had one, thanks. I was just going.’

‘Okay, fine. Good to see you.’ Feeling released from further duty, Elizabeth gave Phyllis a little wave and went into the kitchen to put the kettle on. Roland followed her, saying he was hungry. Elizabeth, humming as she ran the tap, said he couldn’t possibly be because he’d only just had a picnic lunch. Roland, feeling more bereft than ever without Boots to stroke and no one to play with, began to whimper. Elizabeth realised he was as tired as she was, put her arms round him and said he could choose two biscuits and eat them watching television. It was only as the front door slammed, as she was reaching for a clean mug from the cupboard, that she realised Phyllis had not had a cup of tea. The dishwasher was empty (Elizabeth had emptied it herself before they left for the party) and the shelf where they kept mugs was full. And the kettle, now she thought about it, had been both empty and stone-cold.

‘Well, she certainly got the message,’ she observed, when Colin returned from the hall.

‘Who? What message?’

‘Phyllis, realising she wasn’t exactly welcome. Mind you, what did she expect? Coming by like that on a Sunday – talk about not having a life. Poor you having to deal with it. Full marks for not giving her tea.’ Colin was standing with his back to her, facing the stove. She went to put her arms round him. ‘Sorry I went a bit overboard last night. Forgive me?’

‘Of course,’ he muttered, ‘it was nothing. Don’t worry about it.’ Behind them the kettle boiled.

‘I’d love a brew.’

‘I’ll do it.’ Elizabeth dropped her arms from his waist and went to fetch the teapot and a second mug. Colin settled with the papers at the kitchen table. She gave him his tea and took hers through to the drawing room where Roland was curled in a ball on the sofa. ‘All right?’

‘Why did Daddy’s friend come?’

‘Which friend was that?’ Elizabeth closed her eyes, as a sudden sleepiness washed over her.

‘The lady just now. Daddy was with her at Tesco’s. I saw them when I went to Jack’s.’ Elizabeth opened her eyes, very slowly. ‘Did you? When was that?’

‘When I went to Jack’s,’ repeated Roland, impatiently. ‘His mum took us shopping – for
ages
, so we hardly had any time to play. Can I have another biscuit?’

‘Go on, then.’

Elizabeth watched him trot back into the kitchen and then stared at her tea. It was nothing, of course. Some simple explanation. No point in saying anything. No point in rocking the boat. She drained her mug, swallowing a few loose tea leaves, then studied the little sludge of black remains in the bottom. Somewhere they had a strainer but she seldom bothered to use it. If tea leaves told the future, hers, she decided, looked pretty murky. She set the mug on a coaster and went upstairs to unpack, taking all the bags and clothes from the hall with her. Phyllis McGill at Tesco’s with Colin. It didn’t make sense. Roland had to have been mistaken. She was on the point of hanging Colin’s white tie and tails suit in the wardrobe when she realised they needed to be returned to the hire shop and took them into the spare room instead out of harm’s way. The bed was a little messy, the duvet all dimpled and the counterpane at an odd angle, barely
covering the pillows. Elizabeth hung Colin’s evening wear over the back of a chair and set about straightening it, wondering vaguely when Roland had had the time to sneak in for a forbidden romp. She had changed the sheets on Friday and left the room in pristine condition. She was sure of it.

She would have forgotten the matter in an instant … had she not felt something under her shoe. Something hard and round. A bracelet. A bangle. Half under the bed. A silver bangle, with a small purple stone in the middle. She picked it up and sat on the edge of the bed, turning it round and round in her hands, groping, even as the truth dawned on her, for a version of events that would explain it all away. But there was too much – Tesco’s, rushing home early, a cold kettle, a rumpled bed, a bangle – there was simply too much. The purple stone blurred before Elizabeth’s eyes. In the spare room, alone with this new knowledge, she felt utterly marooned, not just in her home but in life. When she looked back, the jigsaw of clues, dropped like a trail of litter through the preceding months, was sickening in its obviousness. And how easy she had made it for Colin, scrabbling for approval and affection, interpreting his paucity of warmth as a sign of her own failings. How well – how pathetically well – she had played the role of the duped wife. Elizabeth’s self-disgust was so strong that for a moment she almost retched at the physical taste of it, rising like bile at the back of her throat. Of course Colin didn’t love her: she was unlovable; dull, worthless and unlovable. Of course Phyllis McGill, even with her loud voice and sanctimonious ideals, was a better bet. She wore purple and had a throaty laugh. She was feisty, successful, more attractive in every way.

Elizabeth lay back on the bed and pulled the counterpane right up over her face like a shroud. Under the warm darkness of its protection she felt calmer. It was a relief in a way to have the truth – shelved, sidelined, excused for so long – exposed. Her husband did not love her. He did not respect her. There it was. Out at last, as solid and irrefutable as stone. The only really bad thing was that irrefutable truths needed to be acted upon. Elizabeth’s gradual recognition of this made her quail almost more than any other aspect of her predicament. For there was no hiding now, no protecting shield of ignorance. A reaction was required. Something bold. She moaned softly, pulling the counterpane into an even tighter cocoon around herself, wishing the flimsy fabric had some power to keep the world at bay.

On the Friday afternoon after Peter’s party Stephen patted his completed manuscript into a tidy pile and left his flat to go shopping. Cassie had agreed, after some cajoling, to come round at six o’clock. He knew exactly what he wanted to buy (champagne, flowers, smoked salmon, wholemeal bread and a lemon) but with the state of his finances it wasn’t going to be easy. For the last couple of months he had been living off a diet of sliced plastic bread, cheese and baked beans, with the occasional bottle of plonk thrown in as a treat. His overdraft was massive and even paying the minimum on his credit cards was getting hard. He had kept his bank quiet with reassurances that a hefty cheque from his publishers was just round the corner. Which, as of today, Stephen reflected excitedly, it really was. On delivery of the manuscript he would get three thousand pounds, which, while not exactly hefty, would at least clear his debts. Six months later, when the book got published, he would receive another cheque for a similar amount. All he had to do in the meantime was find a part-time job – writing freelance articles maybe, or possibly offering private English lessons to foreign students.

Stephen whistled as he walked, fiddling with the loose change in his shorts pocket and wondering which credit card to try in the supermarket. Having recently suffered the ignominy of
having a card rejected (in the off-licence the week before, trying to buy crisps and two measly cans of beer), he had no desire to repeat the exercise. But he didn’t want to hold back either. Cassie deserved the best – absolutely the best – and he wanted to give it to her. In addition to which, Stephen reminded himself, his hand hovering between the cheaper tail-pieces and the beautifully packaged tawny-pink slabs of Scottish salmon (‘Organically cured’), he was celebrating. He had worked like a fiend for weeks, ever since he had called at Cassie’s flat with her great-aunt’s letters, impelled by a new and indescribably joyous hope. Such a simple thing, hope, but so all-embracingly powerful and impossible to manufacture. ‘I’ve found a muse,’ he had confessed to his editor at their last meeting, patting his briefcase, even though it contained nothing but a newspaper and a Mars Bar. ‘There’s no stopping me now.’

‘That’s good to know, Stephen, because we’re scheduling your book for the coming spring. March, probably. If it’s not going to be ready it would be far better if you told us now.’ The editor twiddled a pencil. ‘A muse, you say, that’s interesting. Though I’ve always assumed such things to be the territory of poets rather than biographers.’

‘I’ve been writing a bit of poetry too, as it happens,’ Stephen had blurted, ‘nothing too polished yet, though I was thinking that maybe, one day, I might put together a collection.’

‘Really?’ The editor had raised one of his thick dark eyebrows in a show of decidedly muted interest. ‘Not something we do a lot of, I’m afraid. Not much money in it either, of course.’

‘Of course.’ Rebuffed, Stephen, had returned the conversation to his unsung war heroes, cursing his weakness in even mentioning the poems, which were all about Cassie and love and therefore very private. He might show them to Cassie one day, though, he decided now, pushing his trolley, which contained a lemon and a pack of organic smoked salmon, in the direction of the drinks aisle. There were several brands of champagne, ranging from Own Label (£12.99) to a vintage Moët et Chandon (£39.99). Stephen deliberated for a good ten minutes, wondering whether to forget the flowers in favour of the more expensive bottle, but in the end getting both the Moët and a bunch of red carnations from the stalls by the entrance. What the hell? he told himself, whisking out his Visa card for the cashier and saying a brief prayer as she slid it through her machine.

Half an hour later he was safely at home with his purchases, fussing round the flat like an old woman, adjusting pictures and ornaments, wanting everything to be perfect. He opened all the windows, too, wishing the day wasn’t quite so hot and thinking longingly of the ceiling fans he had had in his apartment in Quito. He had spent many a humid night lying on his back with his hands under his head staring up at their big, mesmerising blades, soothed as much by their soft whir as the kiss of cool air across his naked body. With such accoutrements his cramped flat in Hackney might have feigned some glamour, a little romance, even. Instead of looking like the hot shoebox it was, filled now (thanks to the open windows) with the drone of traffic and the stench of car fumes.

With two hours to go Stephen showered and changed into clean jeans and a fresh T-shirt. He shaved carefully, checked his nostrils and ears for rogue hairs and his teeth for flecks of food. He cut up the lemon, spread the bread with butter and slabs of salmon, then wedged the whole lot into the fridge on top of the champagne. The flowers, which he had been planning to present to her, looked so wilted that he propped them in a bowl of water, then decided to arrange them in a vase. Since he only possessed one and it was very small, the result was far from satisfactory.

When the doorbell rang his heart stopped, then pumped furiously, sending tremors down his arms and legs. He rubbed the clamminess from his hands, wished there was time to change into another fresher T-shirt, and raced down the stairs to the door. The buzzer release sometimes
didn’t work and he had no intention of risking it now. And suddenly there she was, all sunny-haired and smiling, framed in the dingy doorway in a sleeveless pink cotton dress and strappy white shoes.

‘Great,’ he said, beaming so broadly he could hardly get the word out. He would have kissed her, but she thrust out her hand, cool against his hot palm.

‘We could go out,’ she said.

‘Oh, no … I’ve got in a bit of stuff. And I wanted to show you the manuscript,’ Stephen stammered, appalled at such an early potential derailing of his plans. Stuffy shoebox that it was, he still felt a burning need to introduce Cassie to his home. Not just so that she could begin to know him better, but because he wanted to see her in his space, to imprint the reality of her – so long confined to his mind – upon his everyday existence.

Cassie followed him up the stairs with a heavy heart. After the heat of the June sunshine the stairwell, with its whitewashed brick walls and concrete floor, felt so chilled that she shivered in her thin dress and was almost pleased when they stepped into the greenhouse warmth of the flat. A moment later, however, with the door closed behind them, her unease returned. It was quite the smallest living space she had ever seen. It made her own flat look like a mansion. The kitchen was merely a corner of the sitting room, its one counter within reach of the sofa. A TV was wedged on one side of a gas fire and a desk on the other, but at an awkward jutting angle because it didn’t quite fit the slot. There was no obvious surface for eating off, other than a knee-high tray-sized table in front of the sofa, on which, Cassie noticed, her gloom thickening, had been set a bottle of champagne and two wine glasses. A half-open door beside the sofa revealed a cupboard of a bedroom, swamped by a double bed, and a narrow chest of drawers. Shirts and trousers hung along the dado rail, dangling among a hotchpotch of pictures and ethnic hangings. The walls of the kitchen and sitting area were just as crowded, with several loaded bookshelves, framed prints and a couple of large canvases depicting cave-painting-style beasts in a panoply of colours. The effect, for Cassie at least, was to make an already tight space feel tighter. Instinctively she edged towards the largest of the open windows, fanning herself with the palm of her hand. ‘Quite a view you’ve got up here.’