Rise and Fall of a Domestic Diva (22 page)

Martin rang on the doorbell to No. 236, noting with interest the security camera trained on him from the corner of the porch. He smiled up at it, then peered through the diamondpatterned glass panel in the front door.

From inside the house he heard laughter. It was Martina’s laughter; he recognised it from the countless times he’d made her laugh. The thought of the television making her laugh in that way made him profoundly jealous. He rang the doorbell again and this time the laughter stopped.

Martina answered the door, a relaxed, low-level smile on her face that anticipated the return of Harriet and Miles. Her face changed when she saw Martin standing there. It didn’t drop; it just changed.

Martin wasn’t Harriet and Miles.

‘What do you want?’ she whispered, angry with him for being so offensively out of context. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘You weren’t answering my calls.’

‘I forgot to charge my phone.’

He nodded, aware that his mouth was open as he stared at her, dressed in leggings, her Will Smith T-shirt and an absurd pair of slippers that made her look as if she was
wearing a pair of rabbits on her feet. ‘I thought maybe you weren’t answering on purpose.’

‘I wouldn’t do that,’ she said, still angry.

He believed her.

She never said anything she didn’t mean.

She looked over his shoulder, distracted by someone passing in the street behind. Then she folded her arms across herself. ‘I’m working.’

‘I didn’t know you were working.’

‘I didn’t know you needed to know when I was working.’

He smiled. ‘Neither did I.’

‘So, how did you know where I was?’

‘Can I come in?’

‘No. How did you know where I was?’

‘I asked your employers.’

‘Shit.’ Her breath smelt faintly of what seemed to be her staple dietstock cubes crumbled into boiling water. ‘You’ve got to go.’

She was terrified of Harriet and Miles Burgess returning home and finding him standing on their doorstep. Plus, right then all she wanted to do was go back inside, sit on the sofa and finish watching
Men in Black
.

He nodded slowly in agreement. It was the first time he’d stopped to think all day. He’d been trying her phone on and off since about eleven o’clock that morning. By seven, he was falling to pieces in the toilets on the second floor of their building in Canary Wharf and realising that whatever line he’d been messing around near for the past nine months, he’d now crossed it. Two months ago, if pushed, he could have stopped it all, but he knew now that he’d gone beyond that pointfar enough beyond it to knock on Evie and Joel’s front door and ask them the whereabouts of their au pair.

He’d been amazed when Martina actually turned up that first time, at the Hilton near Tower Bridge.

They’d arranged to meet at the bar, even though he’d already checked in to Room 212. He’d decided to spend the night there anywaywhether Martina turned up or not; whether she stayed or not.

She’d walked into the cream and grey bar at the Hilton looking younger than he remembered from the countless babysits and brief encountersand as if she was there for a job interview. The overall effect was one of neatness, but without the restraint or prudishness that usually comes with neatness because her neatness was born of pride. The tightly tied scarf that would have irritated him on just about every other woman he knew, left him feeling protective towards her.

For a long time he talked and she listened, laughing politely and taking the sort of sips from her Coca-Cola that a person takes when they’ve spent a lifetime having to make things last.

After a while, aware that he himself was becoming drunk, he even began to doubt whether she’d understood his invitation. Until she leant suddenly forwards, put her glass down carefully on the table and looked up at him. ‘I think you are a good man.’

Was this what she’d been trying to work out for the past couple of hours? What was it he’d done or said that could possibly have made her reach that conclusion?

She relaxed as soon as she said thisand started to talk.

She talked about herself without making it sound like she was talking about herself. Her mother was a doctoran ear, nose and throat specialistwho had once competed in the Winter Olympics. She was vague about her father and Martin thought he caught a whiff of something criminal. The person she was closest to was her grandmother, who’d brought up her and her two brothersshe told her grandmother everything.

Chocolate rice pudding, tarot cards and fishing made her happy. One of their first weekends away would be spent fishing in the River Tweed, but he didn’t know that then.

They went upstairs shortly after she’d informed him he was a good man.

Once upstairs, she was more interested in the interior of Room 212and the view, which wasn’t great because they’d been virtually fully booked when he made the reservationbut she didn’t comment on any of it. She just wandered calmly round in a way that made it impossible to know what she was thinking. When he got to know her better, he came to recognise these poised silences for what they wereMartina pausing before she made her mind up about something.

He was happy watching her pad round Room 212she’d insisted on taking her shoes off in the passage outside before coming into the roomin the sort of flesh-coloured stockings he remembered his mother wearing. The blue jumper she had on had been darned on the left elbow.

He took champagne out of the minibar and persuaded her to take a glass.

By the time they got round to making love, he wasn’t even sure he wanted to or needed to.

‘You never did this before,’ she said afterwards, getting out of bed, tidying the pillows and duvets and getting back in again, lying next to him.

He had done this before, but didn’t contradict her.

She seemed much more self-assured after making love, which had surprised him. Still the same strange mixture of urbane and naive, but without the nerves.

‘MeI do this before.’ She sighed. ‘A teacher, at college.’ When he didn’t respond to thisunsure whether he believed her or notshe said, ‘Do you feel guilty?’

‘I don’t know what I feel.’ He rolled up onto his elbow. ‘But I wanted this to happen. Have you got to get backtonight?’

She sat up. ‘You want me to leave?’ It was the first time her voice had betrayed anything close to an emotion.

‘No, no. I want you to stay. I just wasn’t sure what you’d said to…’ He tried to remember the name of the family Martina was working for.

‘They think I’m with my cousin.’

‘You’ve got a cousin here?’

Martina nodded. ‘She works for a family in Maida Vale who have very expensive shoes.’

Martin laughed. This was the sort of thing Toby would say, but the shoes clearly meant something to Martina.

Later on, one Saturday night, he showed up at the house in Maida Vale, uninvited. They ended up making love on the sofasomething that made Martina furious with him afterwards.

‘And the family you work forthey’re okay?’

‘They’re quite good.’

What did that mean? After a while he said, ‘You’re hungry? You want to order something?’

She shook her head.

As he got to know her better, he realised that she rarely ate.

‘You go now,’ she said, standing on the doorstep to No. 236.

He nodded. Then leant forward suddenly into the porch light and gave her a hard, angry kiss. ‘I can’t go on like this.’ He hadn’t meant to say that; he didn’t want to frighten her, but couldn’t stop himself. He had a sudden overwhelming feeling that time was running out. ‘Let’s go away. Tonight. Now. Marrakech. We don’t need to tell anyonewe can just go.’ He could hear how impossible it soundedas he was saying it.

She watched him, her face unreadable.

Marrakech receded; he collapsed in on himself. ‘I can’t go on like this,’ he said again.

He turned to go, and she didn’t stop him.

On June 15, the day of the PRC street party, the sun rose on Prendergast Road. It rose quickly, as though it had been given a tip-off about the day’s events and was keen to illuminate fully as many of them as possible, and soskipping dawnby seven o’clock was already letting out a flat white heat that soon evaporated the last of the night’s secretions.

A lone runner pounded up the street in an unrelenting, unforgiving, highly reflective white Lycraa mobile blind spot that had already caused an uninsured Toyota to crash into a motorcyclistwhich she’d bought from the local Triathlon shop. There wasn’t a convex or concave curve the white Lycra stretched over that couldn’t put its existence down to muscle and bone. Barely anything on Ros’s body shook as the soles of her feet hit the pavement.

David, the Down’s syndrome boy at No. 8, was out in the front garden hugging his loquat tree, about to start singing. Out the corner of her eye, Ros saw him wave, but she didn’t wave back. She made a mental note to speak to his parents and ensure that David was kept inside during the street party.

Then she turned up the volume on her iPod and started
to build up speed for the home stretchthe final two hundred metres of the five-kilometre run she did three times a week.

Today was
her
day.

She wasn’t going to think about St Anthony’s todayeither the Parents’ Evening on Monday or the appeal hearing on Wednesday. She was going to enjoy today.

She ran past Evie’s front garden. The olive tree, she noted, had been replaced by a fig. Evie’s curtains were still shut.

Harriet’s were open. Casper was sitting alone in a haze of blue light from the television, laughing.

Ros’s breathing was becoming laboured now and her lungs felt as though they were riddled with cracks, but she kept up the paceeven managing to draw level with a black cab that was making its way up Prendergast Road and now slowing down.

Her mother, Lauren, had driven up from Dorset on Thursday to help with Toby and Lola. She’d insisted, and there was no point putting her off. She was brilliant with Tobywho followed her everywherebut Ros didn’t know if she was up to Lauren right then and Lauren was the sort of person you had to feel up to, even if she was your mother. When she’d gone downstairs at 5.15 that morning, Lauren had been sitting at the kitchen table reading yesterday’s newspaper. Ros had left her with the balloon pump and instructions to make a start on the box of pink and black Carpe Diem balloons.

She came to a halt outside No. 188, arms and legs shaking, and cut out her iPod just as the black cab pulled in at the kerb. Her new breathing technique had enabled her to knock three minutes off her best time.

Panting, she watched Martin get out, pay the driver and amble, preoccupied, round the front of the cabsurprised to see his wife standing outside their house. The taxi pulled away. Martin turned and watched it go, still able to make
out the school photo of the driver’s daughter tacked to the dashboard.

When the taxi had gone, the morning fell silent again, and Ros and Martin stayed where they were, waiting.

Martin looked around him as if he’d been dropped at the wrong address, and Ros’s hand wrapped itself round the base of her throat, in an attempt to level out her breathing.

She realisedas they carried on standing there in the early morning sunshine not speakingthat she was surprised to see him. He’d said he was coming home for the party; he’d been expected, she just hadn’t anticipated him actually showing up.

Martin was staring at her, under the sway of a peculiar desire to ask Ros if she’d seen Ros anywhere.

Made uncomfortable by his stare, Ros checked her pedometer then clipped it back into the band round her arm.

He gave her a quick, empty smile and the next minuteabsurdlythey kissed each other once on the cheek, like colleagues who used to work together, meeting unexpectedly and discovering that they lived in the same neighbourhood.

Up closealbeit brieflyRos smelt smoke on Martin and the scent of bed linen she hadn’t washed, and that they hadn’t slept in together.

They let their hands drop, embarrassed.

Ros flicked some hair out of her eye in an unhabitually feminine way.

Martin had a pair of sunglasses in his hands she didn’t remember buying himand that he wouldn’t have bought himself. Martin never bought anything for himself.

‘You want to come in?’ she said at last, as he put the sunglasses on then took them off again.

Sighing, he followed her to the front door, watched her put the keys in the lock then followed her into the house.

They went into the kitchen, which was full of Carpe Diem balloonsand Lauren.

It was the first time Lauren had seen Martin this visit.

‘How’s it going?’ he said. He’d always found his mother-in-law hard work; this morning he could barely look at her.

‘It’s going fine, Martin.’ She paused before smiling.

‘They’re for the street party,’ Ros put in, noting Martin’s confusion as he took in the balloons, which she pushed through carefully to get to the kettle.

The balloon Lauren had just finished blowing up shot out of her hand, and all three of them watched it land, deflated, back on the table.

‘She was up at five,’ Lauren said, for no apparent reason, nodding her head pointedly at Ros.

Martin wasn’t sure how he was meant to respond to this so remained silent.

Ros, pouring the tea, was trying to remember how long ago it was that their life had fallen into this pattern of Martin staying in a friend’s empty flat in Old Street during the week, and coming home at weekends, because of the case.

To start with, the thought of the weekends spent together had got her through the weeks. Now, it was the thought of the weeks alone that got her through the weekends.

‘D’you want tea, Mum?’ she asked.

‘Leave it thereI’m coming to get myself some toast,’ Lauren said, shunting her chair back and wading carefully through the balloons. She stood by the sink, looking out at the back garden.

‘Well, look at that,’ she said to herself the next minute.

‘What am I meant to be looking at?’ Ros asked, blowing on her tea.

‘That ivy hanging over the wall thereit’s full of pigeons; full of them,’ Lauren said, sounding pleased.

‘It’s the berries, I suppose.’

‘Of course it’s the berries,’ her mother replied, sharp but not impatient. ‘I’ve just never seen so many in one place.’

Martin stayed where he was, watching the two women contemplate the pigeons. They looked like mother and daughtersomething he’d never felt about them before in all the years since he first met Ros; he just couldn’t work out what it was he had to do with either of them.

Lauren had her own life down in Dorset and, although she was often up in London for talks, conferences or exhibitions, she rarely arranged to meet up with them. They didn’t see her at all in the first two years of Toby’s life because Laurenas Ros explained when challengeddidn’t particularly like babies. Babies were one thing, at least, that Ros could do better than her mother. Toby started to see a lot more of her once he turned two, and he stayed down in Dorset with her for two weeks when Lola was born. Now Lauren was Toby’s favourite person. She sent him a letter every week and always included something she’d found on the beach. It was acknowledged, within the family, that Lauren and Toby had bonded.

Down in Dorset they could be busy together all afternoon, especially in the greenhouse or out in the vegetable patch. Toby loved helping in the seedbeds, crouching low with his hands in the mud, and Lauren and him mumbling to themselves. Then Lauren would stand up and stretch, check the position of the sun in the sky and shake her head, laughing. ‘Listen to uslike a couple of old women twittering on.’

Toby would grin back at her, pleased. He liked the idea of being a twittering old woman if it meant crouching in the mud with the sun on your back being allowed to talk to yourself without interruption.

Ros was terrified of her mother and that had never changed over the years. Apart from a couple of requests for money in the early years, which Lauren had always been obliging
about and always made clear were gifts, not loans, Ros made very few demands on her. She shared the good news with her and remained silent about any bad.

‘Why don’t you go take a shower? I’ll sort the children,’ Lauren said in the soft Canadian accent she’d never lost, while drawing a packet of cigarettes out of her back pocket.

Ros nodded and turned to Martin. ‘You want to come up and take a shower?’

Martin, too full of horror at the prospect of having to share a shower with his wife to reply, let his mouth fall loosely opensomething which had started to give him a double chin in the last six months or so.

‘Okaywell, I’ll go on up,’ Ros said at last. ‘They’re delivering the stalls in the next forty-five minutes. I’d better get on.’

Martin nodded, amazed that Ros didn’t comment on the fact that her mother had just drawn a crumpled packet of cigarettes out of her jeans pocket and was now proceeding to light one.

Martin couldn’t believe it.

Ros had gone up without a word and left her mother smoking in their kitchen.

Nobody was allowed to smoke inside No. 188 Prendergast Road; nobody was allowed to even smell of smoke inside No. 188 Prendergast Road. Those who did were sent into the garden.

And here was Lauren, smoking in their kitchen and flicking the ash into the sink.

God, he wasn’t even allowed to dream about smoking a cigarette. ‘D’you want an ashtray for that?’ he said, bitterly, as she tapped another sprinkling of ash into the sink.

‘You don’t have an ashtray,’ Lauren said, without turning round.

‘You’re rightwe don’t have an ashtray. Because nobody in the house smokes,’ he tried not to yell.

‘That’s right,’ she agreed.

‘Look, Lauren…’ At last she turned round. Was that a smile on her faceever so slight? Was Lauren
smiling
at him? ‘I don’t know what arrangement you’ve come to with Ros about this, but I—’

‘You what?’ she cut in. ‘You really think the nicotine from this cigarette’s going to cause more damage to this family than you are?
I don’t think so
.’

She exhaled deeply and turned away to pour herself a cup of tea, which she did with a steady hand.

Martin was transfixed by the steady handhe couldn’t have done a steady hand after saying something like that.

She stood with her cup of tea in one hand and cigarette in the other, staring out through the window againwithout the enjoyment of before when she’d seen all the pigeons in the ivy. ‘Why did you ever do it? You should never have done it.’

She kept her back turned to him as she said it.

Martin stared at her shoulder blades, which were pronounced, like Ros’s. Did she know? Had Ros found out about Martina? Had Ros told Lauren?

At last she turned round. ‘You’ve never made any effort to make this marriage work.’

She didn’t know about Martina.

‘I can’t help it,’ Martin said. It didn’t feel wrong saying it; he didn’t even feel particularly sorry. It suddenly occurred to him that he’d as good as told Lauren he was goingso why didn’t he? He hadn’t taken his jacket off or even put his bags down. He was ready to go. So what if he just went? What if he didn’t go upstairs and take a shower. What if he just turned round and walked out of the kitchen, down the corridor and out of the house?

‘This is your life,’ Lauren insisted quietly, but with just the right tone of command.

‘Well, I don’t want it,’ Martin said with an overwhelming sense of relief, beaming triumphantly at his mother-in-law, without a hint of malignancy. ‘I don’t want it.’

‘I’ve always hated you Martin,’ she said.

Ignoring thisit was only to be expected, and was no surprisehe continued to smile happily at her, and was on the verge of leaving when he heard somebody padding into the kitchen. Turning round, he saw his son standing there. He’d forgotten about the children.

‘You’re home,’ Toby observed flatly, staring at his father then past him. ‘Balloons.’

‘Hey there, Tobes,’ Martin said, lumpish, in his strained, fake-father voice, which sounded even more strained than usual right then because of the exchange between Lauren and him. ‘How’s school been?’ Every time he had contact with his son, he came out with a cliché along these lines.

Toby made the sort of response he often made when he didn’t like the turn a conversation took, or felt that a question was too direct and therefore, to him, confrontational: he quoted a sentenceor sometimes up to an entire paragraphfrom a current reading book.

Right then, he said, ‘Danger lurks behind every tree. God bless you, my child.’

Martin nodded as knowingly as he could, and smiled, aware that he was still poised to leave.

Toby didn’t smile back.

‘Mum’s crying,’ he announced.

Lauren put her cigarette down and stared at Martin.

Toby hadn’t meant it as a challenge, but the way Lauren was looking at him was turning it into one.

This was the moment; this was it.

He was standing between a woman he’d never particularly liked, in a kitchen he’d never particularly liked, with a son he didn’t know how to love. Upstairs there was a
woman he didn’t love, crying. None of it had to matter any more because he could just walk out. All he had to do was put one foot in front of the other and head for the front door.

If he didn’tif he went upstairs now insteadhe might never leave; this moment might never happen again and he couldn’t carry on standing here for ever.

He turned away from Lauren and his son and started to walk. He got as far as the fridge when the doorbell rangand stopped.

Lauren pushed past him and went to answer it.

He thoughtabsurdlythat it might be Martina.

It was the lorry delivering the scaffolding and awnings for the stall.

He heard Lauren talking to them, giving detailed instructions, aware that he was alone in the kitchen with his son. He turned to face Toby, who picked up a balloon, which popped mystifyingly almost as soon as he touched it.

Without knowing exactly how or why, Martin realised suddenly that the moment had passed.