Relative Love (70 page)

‘Yes, it is, and you need to get dressed.’

‘I
am
dressed.’ Chloë, puce from her exertions and feeling they hadn’t received quite the praise they deserved, sat upright and folded her arms.

‘You’re not going out in that.’

‘Why not?’

‘You’ll be too cold.’

‘Shan’t.’

‘Oh, Chloë, don’t start.’ Helen had stacked the breakfast plates and stepped round her daughter
en route
to the dishwasher. ‘If you want new ballet shoes, you dress sensibly. It’s as simple as that.’

She busied herself in the kitchen, thinking all the while that it wasn’t as simple as that at all because Chloë catching pneumonia in a tutu was a more attractive prospect than Chloë sulking all afternoon from the torture of being forced to wear sensible clothes. On first being told about the imminence of a new sibling her daughter had been as excited as Helen could remember seeing her. ‘If we’re going to have a baby I don’t want a dog,’ she had shrieked, much to the amusement of the rest of them. For a few days her behaviour had been so transformed that Helen had begun to believe it might be permanent. She wanted to pat Helen’s stomach, to press her ear to it, to be told time and time again that she would be required to help with everything, from bathing and feeding to nappy-changing and pushing the pram in the park. ‘It won’t last,’ Kay had warned, and she was right. Impatient with her playmates’ lack of sustained interest in the subject (Chloë had announced the pregnancy to the class in spite of being told not to) and the
slowness
of the process (five months felt to her at eight like an eternity) Chloë had gradually slipped back into her old ways – sunshine one minute, storms the next. Above all, she must hold firm, Helen warned herself now, going back into the conservatory where Chloë was lying on her stomach sobbing pitifully, her tutu springing like flower petals from her hips. ‘Chloë …’

‘I – won’t – be – cold. I won’t, I won’t, I won’t.’

‘Okay, but you’re wearing a coat,’ Helen snapped. She stepped back over her daughter and out into the hall. Trudging upstairs to run her bath, the small new weight of her baby pressing inside, all the old doubts about her capacity to
enjoy
being a mother crowded back in on her. Instead of savouring her bath, she splashed in and out of it, desperate to get out of the house and spill her woes to Kay, who, though they saw each other less often these days, remained a beacon of compassion and reassurance.

‘I was mad to keep this baby, mad to let Peter give up on Ashley House, mad to think to anything would ever
change
,’ she wailed, as they strolled along the river after their pizza lunch.

Kay, who had recently discovered that something less desirable than a foetus was growing in her own womb, put a motherly arm round Helen’s shoulders. ‘Everything has already changed. You feel like this now, but you won’t later on – by this evening, probably. The truth of one’s emotions moves around. You’re doing the right thing, every instinct in your body tells you so. Which doesn’t mean it’s not difficult. Like Peter with this house business – it
feels
right, which isn’t to say it’s not the most enormous sacrifice. In fact, just for the record, I think your husband is being bloody marvellous.’

‘He is, isn’t he?’ Helen smiled, then broke off to exclaim at the antics of her daughter, who had abandoned her anorak and was performing pirouettes along the riverbank. ‘Look at her, she’s impossible – and right on the edge near those swans. They’ll attack, won’t they? Don’t swans attack?’

Kay laughed. ‘Only if they feel threatened and they look quite happy to me. As does Chloë. I’m sorry I didn’t bring Toffee to entertain her but, as you know, he’s not at his best in shops and restaurants.’ She paused, then added, ‘Chloë, believe me, will always be fine. Difficult, but fine. You can only do your best, you know, Helen, you should be satisfied with that.’

‘Thanks, Kay. As ever, I don’t know where I’d be without you.’

‘You’d be precisely where you are now,’ said Kay firmly, leading the way to a bench and sitting down. She had recently had a haircut, reducing the strands of scarlet to dramatic fiery tips. She wrapped a strand absently round one finger. Helen would, of course, want to know that she was ill. But the fact remained that Kay didn’t want to tell her. It had been hard enough telling her own children. Besides, there was no need. She was going away anyway. She let a few moments pass before saying as much out loud.

‘Going away? Where for heaven’s sake?’

‘France. My ex has died and – somewhat astonishingly – left me a house. It’s in the south, just outside Montpellier. One of my daughters has settled not far away in Cap d’Agde. I, too, need a change, Helen,’ she added quietly. ‘Time to move on.’ She folded her hands in her lap, while her gaze shifted to the swans who were gliding downstream. ‘I can afford to retire now,’ she added, by way of further explanation, omitting the other immense consideration, which was a desire to go through the indignities of her illness, which was terminal, in private.

‘Oh, Kay, I’m pleased for you, of course, if it’s what you want but …’ Helen’s gaze followed her friend’s, tracking the elegant bobbing of the birds, moving effortlessly towards the bend in the river. ‘I shall bloody well miss you, though. I mean, this year you’ve seen me through so much, I can’t imagine how …’

‘You, too, will be fine,’ said Kay quietly, patting her hand and then, somewhat abruptly, getting up from the bench.

‘Well, can we come and stay?’ Helen asked, almost indignant.

‘Of course you may.’ Kay glanced at her, a shadow of wistfulness passing across her round, cheery face. ‘But I don’t think you will.’

‘We’ll see about that, shall we?’ retorted Helen, going to pick up Chloë’s coat and shouting to her daughter that they were going home.

During the journey back to Barnes they spoke little, Kay because there was nothing more she wanted to say and Helen because she was torn between upset and a sort of outrage. Friendships didn’t just end because of geography, did they? But there was something so very final about the way Kay had handled the delivery of her news, as if she was withdrawing already, as if she had decided that their brief but curiously intense acquaintance was at the beginning of its end. She remembered in the same instant what Kay had said early on, about people appearing as they were needed, about patterns and synchronicity. Maybe they would visit her in France. But Kay was right: it would be hard, with a newborn and work and Peter almost certainly – understandably – not wanting to go.

‘When are you off, then?’ she asked, as casually as she could, as they were getting out of the car.

‘Next week.’

‘Next week? God, that’s so soon.’

‘I’ve rented the house to a young family – a barrister, actually, though she doesn’t work. They seem very nice. Better still, their rent will provide me with an income.’

‘Great.’ Helen felt desperately awkward, as if she was trying to hold on to something that hadn’t really existed. ‘Well, anyway, we’ll see you, obviously, before you go.’

‘Oh, yes. I’ll pop in and say a proper goodbye,’ Kay assured her, then turned and hurried across the street, her flame-tipped hair bouncing on her shoulders.

As the house came in sight Elizabeth slowed her pace. It was odd to come to Guildford by train, to arrive on foot in her own street instead of by car, as if she were a mere visitor. Which she was now, she reminded herself, pausing to absorb that the drive was empty and the house therefore unoccupied. She had her keys, but would it be right to use them? Maybe it would get things off on the wrong foot if Colin returned to find her scouring bookshelves and CD collections. They were supposed to be meeting to talk through various difficulties the lawyers were having, but she had brought an empty suitcase to collect a few things. A larger scale division of possessions was something to be organised for the future, they had agreed, with, in Elizabeth’s case, a self-hire van and the strong arms of a friend, or possibly one of her brothers.

She walked up to the front gate and stopped, staring ahead at the white stucco walls, the black beams and window frames, trying to summon some recollection of how she had felt arriving at this same spot with Colin and the estate agent who had shown them round. Roland, she remembered, had been in a carrier on her back, squirming and snuffling with a bad cold. She had been more concerned with quietening him than appraising the merits of the house. Colin had taken charge, exclaiming in satisfaction at the spacious built-in units, the luxury of four bedrooms, the size of the garage. Out in the garden she had set Roland on the grass where he had crawled happily for a few minutes, offering her a much-needed breather from the relentless business of motherly consolation. To one side of the scrubby lawn there was a single small tree, a John Downey apple, as Pamela had subsequently informed them on the first of her infrequent visits. Roland had made his way towards it, then levered himself upright, lunging happily at the clusters of white blossom and looking for a few minutes so idyllically content that Elizabeth had decided, irrationally, that the house was meant for them. Anything that could make her distressed, whingeing child happy could make her happy too. Then Roland had tried to stuff the blossom into his little scarlet mouth and she had had to prise him away, shattering the moment but not her conviction in its significance.

Elizabeth checked her watch, then tried the key. There was still five minutes to go until the time they had agreed. Next door she saw the curtain twitch and her neighbour’s head bob out of sight. She shuddered, thinking with longing of the barn where there was nothing to watch over her but the homely rooftops of Ashley House and the jigsaw of green and brown countryside sloping towards the Downs, as soft and velvet in the October sunshine as new carpet.

Once inside the hall the sheer familiarity of her surroundings – the carriage clock on the table, the scuff-marks on the skirting-board by the stairs, the brown stain on the floor by the sitting-room door – was somehow shocking. This is my home, she thought, I didn’t have to leave it. It took a few minutes for this idea to dissolve, minutes in which Elizabeth silently toured each room, absorbing the fact that in spite of the myriad traces of her former occupancy, the house had, during the course of her absence, become an alien place. Nothing had been moved or rearranged – the picture of the poppy field, the fridge magnets, the position of the kettle, the limescale stain under the dripping tap – all was just as she had left it. And yet everything was
different. Different and empty. Because, mused Elizabeth, picking up an ornamental jug and putting it down again, she no longer felt any emotional connection to the place. The signposts of her old life were all still there, but they had lost their power over her and therefore their meaning. But there was something else too, Elizabeth noticed, something that had contributed to her instant and overpowering sense of estrangement. The
smell
. The entire place
smelt
different. Alien. Just like other people’s houses sometimes did when one opened the door to be greeted by that unfathomable olfactory cocktail of general living, evident to all but its perpetrators. Elizabeth was so struck by the observation that she began to explore each room with new purpose, sniffing the air like a dog. Upstairs, maybe because of its hotel orderliness, the scent seemed, if anything, stronger, especially in the main bedroom and bathroom. She was standing in the doorway to the
en suite
, staring at the plump creaseless duvet covering the bed and the gleaming basin taps, still pondering the matter, when she heard the slam of the front door.

‘I’m up here,’ she called at once, feeling like a burglar.

‘Are you? I see.’ She could hear the indignation in his voice and in the thump of his footsteps on the stairs.

‘Sorry, I was early.’ She started towards him as he appeared in the bedroom doorway and then stopped, at a loss as to how they should greet each other. Colin, too, looked lost. And somewhat anxious, she realised, studying his expression as his eyes glanced from her face to the room and back again. Almost as if he thought she might have taken something, stolen a march on the grim business of dividing their possessions. ‘I haven’t —’

‘Downstairs. Last night I made a start with some boxes – I’ll show you now.’ He turned to go and Elizabeth was on the point of following when it dawned on her – some sixth sense, connected, she thought, looking back on the moment later, to all the feelings that had assailed her since entering the house – that he wanted to get her out of the room. That he didn’t
like
her being in the bedroom.

‘You’re still seeing her, aren’t you?’ she said quietly, not moving. ‘You’ve been seeing her all along, haven’t you?’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. Now, do you want to look at this stuff or not?’

‘It doesn’t matter, it really doesn’t. It makes no difference. I would just like to know.’

Colin leant against the doorway, folding his arms and sighing in an exaggerated show of weariness, as if being forced to deal with something tiresome and trivial. ‘Seeing who exactly?’

‘Oh, Colin,’ Elizabeth whispered, giddy with the power of not caring – of being beyond his capacity to hurt her. ‘The truth matters. Though you may choose not to tell it to me, it
matters
and I know it anyway.’

He rolled his eyes. ‘Are you going to talk nonsense all morning?’ Nonchalant and sneering as he intended the remark to be, there was a tremor in his voice as he said it. A tremor that Elizabeth heard and Colin knew she had heard. Unacknowledged, the veracity of Elizabeth’s accusation therefore reverberated round the room like the clang of a bell. So deafeningly that Elizabeth felt no need to pursue the matter, settling instead for the implicit power it gave her as they embarked on the labour of negotiation. By the end of the morning he had agreed to everything their lawyers had been arguing about, including raising her monthly allowance from three hundred pounds to four and putting the house on the market before Christmas instead of waiting until the spring.