Seeing Other People (11 page)

To be fair to me it had seemed like the right thing to say at the time, and appeared to satisfy Jack’s morbid curiosity but it had obviously been percolating away in that brain of his ever since. I rubbed Jack’s head affectionately, hoping that in the future he might focus his energies on Pokémon cards rather than existential philosophy.

‘The thing is, son, the important part of what I told you was the word: “eventually”. Do you know what eventually means? It means one day way, way in the future but not right now. So while you were right in the sense that one day Kayleigh Sanderson will die, chances are it won’t be for a very, very long time, so long in fact that it’s probably not even worth mentioning it, all right?’

Nodding half-heartedly, Jack looked at me as if about to make a point of clarification but thankfully before he could the bell for the end of the junior school day rang releasing a deluge of rough and tumble pre-teens out of the main school entrance.

In contrast to Jack, Rosie’s response to my presence at pick-up time was typically muted: meandering through the playground chatting animatedly to her best friend Carly she had scanned the adult faces for her mum, spotted me and without a hint of surprise casually strolled over.

The first sentence out of her mouth was: ‘Where’s Mum?’ And the second, ‘I’m starving. Have you got any food?’

‘Well hello to you too.’

Rosie sniffed haughtily and made a big show of waving goodbye to Carly. ‘Dad’s being a pain,’ she called and then pulled a face – eyes crossed and tongue out – to illustrate exactly how much of a pain I was being. ‘I’ll text you later, OK?’

Carly giggled and waved goodbye. Given that from my experience there were very few moments in the day when they weren’t communicating with each other in some fashion I wondered what they could possibly have left to say.

‘So where is Mum then?’

‘Granddad’s not well,’ interjected Jack, thoroughly pleased to know something that his sister didn’t. ‘Mum’s gone to look after him.’

‘How long will she be gone for?’

‘I don’t know. A day or two maybe.’

Rosie wrinkled her nose. ‘I’ll text her and find out.’

‘No you won’t. She’s got a lot on her plate right now. She said she’ll call this evening and you can ask her whatever you want then. But in the meantime no texts, understand?’

Rosie nodded reluctantly, signalling thankfully that she knew the difference between the kind of no that could be ignored and the one that would result in her phone being taken away if she even thought about disregarding it.

‘Right.’ I sighed – this day had gone on for far too long and I couldn’t believe how much of it was left before it would officially be over. ‘Let’s go home.’

I made the kids a tea of pasta with a green salad, which Jack point blank refused to touch. I didn’t have it in me to make him eat it but neither did I have it in me to contravene Penny’s wishes (‘The kids eat what we put on their plates and that’s that,’) and so I compromised by allowing Jack to make such a mess of his plate that the majority of the salad ended up on the floor, thereby saving us both from doing the wrong thing where Penny was concerned.

Penny phoned after tea but didn’t say more than a handful of words to me. All she wanted was to speak to the kids and so while she did that I busied myself in the kitchen. Afterwards as I took Jack upstairs for his usual bedtime routine I asked how he thought Mummy sounded but he just looked at me, puzzled. ‘She sounded like Mummy. How else would she sound?’

Downstairs in the living room Rosie was doing her own thing, which seemed to consist of watching TV with the sound off, texting her friends and listening to music all at the same time, and once Jack was in bed I sat her down and attempted to help her with her homework. It was multiplying decimal fractions, something I hadn’t encountered for the best part of twenty-two years. Between us both it took half an hour and a search on Google to answer the first question, and a further forty minutes for the next three by which time we both decided to call it a day.

After making the kids’ sandwiches, and ironing their uniforms I settled down in front of the TV but couldn’t concentrate on anything and so ended up going to bed. The next morning I called in sick again, partly because I needed to be around for the kids but mostly because I couldn’t escape the fear that were Penny to arrive home unexpectedly she would interpret my absence as a sign that I didn’t care. Anyway, I decided, if my hallucination had been a sign of anything it was that I needed to keep calm and I wasn’t going to get much of that at work.

Three days into my sick leave and desperate to offer the kids something other than pasta for tea I’d ventured out to the supermarket to stock up with supplies and when I returned the first thing I saw in the hallway were Penny’s silver glittery Converses at the bottom of the stairs. I called out to her but there was no response so I searched the house until I found her loading clothes straight from her suitcase into the washing machine.

‘When did you get back?’

‘About twenty minutes ago. Did you go shopping?’

‘I thought it best to get a few things in. Is that OK?’

She said nothing.

‘How are your folks?’

‘Fine, though I really wish you hadn’t told the kids Grandpa was ill. Poor Tony didn’t know what they were on about.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I replied, ‘I just thought—’

‘I know,’ said Penny. ‘It’s fine.’

I poured myself a glass of water from the bottle in the fridge door and stood closer to her. ‘The kids have really missed you. This morning they could barely bring themselves to talk about anything other than when you’d be back. You are back, aren’t you?’

Penny closed the door of the washing machine and turned the dial to start the programme. The kitchen filled with the sound of water flooding into the machine’s stainless steel drum.

‘I’ve been doing a lot of thinking,’ she said, looking up at me.

I took her hand. ‘Pen, I want you to know that I’ll do whatever it takes to make this right. You name it and I’ll do it, no questions asked. I love you. You and the kids are my world and I don’t ever want to be without you.’

‘Do you really mean what you’ve just said?’

‘Of course I do,’ I said quickly, fearing that the opportunity to make amends might pass before I’d had time to respond. ‘I absolutely meant every word. Whatever it is you want, it’s yours.’

Penny took her hand from mine. ‘Then I want you to move out. You’ve screwed everything up, Joe, you really have, and right now what I need, what this family needs, is for you to go.’

This wasn’t exactly what I’d been hoping for. My every instinct told me that if I left it might prove impossible to return. Perhaps I could talk her round and make her see the impracticality of her request. ‘I get that you’re upset, Pen, I really do, but you’re not really thinking this through are you? I mean how long are we talking about here? What would we tell the kids?’

‘I’ll deal with them,’ said Penny. ‘They’ll be fine.’

‘But if I went that wouldn’t be us saying it’s over would it? Penny, I—’

The hardness of the look she cast in my direction cut me off completely. Wordless though it was, it spoke volumes about my inability to keep promises made even a few breaths ago.

‘Tell the kids I love them,’ I replied, ‘and tell them that I’ll speak to them soon.’

11

It was hard to describe with any degree of accuracy the multitude of feelings that manifested themselves as I stood looking up at the faded, peeling façade of the St Joseph’s Guest House. Suffice it to say that none of them were good. From the outside alone it was clear that this was the kind of place where hope came to die and the interior with its sticky lino, yellowing paintwork, and strange aroma, only confirmed what I already suspected. I booked in for a night (my mind balked at the idea that I might be there any longer) and was shown to a dingy single room with access to a shared bathroom with the added benefit of breathtaking views of the Old Kent Road.

I packed with a surprising efficiency for someone who didn’t know where he was going or how long he was going to be away. In fact I was almost proud of how well I’d done the job until, of course, I remembered that I wasn’t going on a last-minute trip halfway around the world for a celebrity interview but rather was leaving the home I’d lived in with my wife for the past ten years all because I screwed up in the biggest way possible.

Hideous though the B&B was, the truth of the matter was that my sleeping options were limited. My parents divorced when I was nineteen and my dad died five years later. Mum was still in Swindon but I couldn’t stay there for any significant period of time without driving us both up the wall, and although my brother Jim and I got on well, he was in Bristol which wasn’t exactly within commuting distance. As for friends, most had long since moved out of London to the commuter belt with their families and even if any had been up for having a thirty-eight-year old man sleeping on their sofa for an indeterminate amount of time, I wasn’t sure I could stand the pitying looks that would almost certainly follow. I would never have had this problem twenty years ago and even five years ago it might have been OK to knock on a mate’s door and say that you’d been kicked out by your girlfriend. But now all the girlfriends were wives, and all the wives mothers, and no one really wants a reminder of how wrong life can get turning up in a sleeping bag on their living-room floor.

That evening as I heard the sound of the occupant of the room next to mine coughing loudly through the paper-thin walls I called Penny’s phone, hoping to find out from her when I’d be able to speak to the kids. The only thing was, Penny didn’t answer her phone, Rosie did. ‘Dad! It’s you! I can’t believe you’re in China! You sound like you’re just down the road! Why have they sent you there?’

China? For a moment I thought it was just Rosie having a laugh but then I remembered the situation at hand. Penny had clearly had to do some quick thinking to explain my absence and in her anger she had sent me as far away as she could. Working quickly, I raked through the far reaches of my memory for an excuse that sounded sufficiently plausible. Film premieres sounded too exciting. A political investigation too dull. Finally I found it. A small article I’d done on the British Council a few years ago.

‘I’m covering an arts festival. They’ve gathered together groups of British writers, actors and artists and they’re working with their Chinese counterparts to make something new.’

‘A bit like an exchange trip?’

‘Pretty much.’

‘Cool.’

‘So when are you back?’

‘I’m not sure. The festival goes on for a month but I’m hoping to be back before the week’s out.’

We talked some more about my trip and Rosie asked a thousand and one questions about China, the answers to which I could only hope she didn’t choose to verify via the internet. It was so good to hear her voice. I know it hadn’t even been a day but I already missed her.

She asked if she should put Jack on the line but as much as I wanted to speak to him I needed to talk to Penny more.

‘Can you put Mum on?’

‘OK. Love you, Dad.’

‘Love you too, sweetie.’

A short pause, then Penny’s voice.

‘Hi.’

‘How are you?’

‘OK. I’m sorry about before. Rosie must have heard my phone, saw who it was and was so eager to talk to you that she didn’t bother telling me.’

‘It did throw me a little . . . well, that and the fact that you’ve sent me to China.’

‘Would you have preferred me to tell them the truth?’

‘No, of course not, it’s just . . . I don’t know. I’m checking in, that’s all. I need to know everyone’s all right.’

‘They’re both fine.’

‘And you?’

‘I’m not doing this. If you want to speak to the kids speak to the kids but leave me out of it.’

She called for Jack and the next thing I knew he was on the line.

‘Daddy!’

‘Hey, son! You OK?’

‘Yes, thank you. What time is it in China? Is it night-time?’

I had no idea. I took a guess. ‘Yes it is.’

Jack let out a victorious roar. ‘I told Rosie it would be night-time and I was right! What are the people you’re with like? Are they nice?’

Showing a knack for comic timing hitherto unknown, the man in the room next to mine produced one of his most bronchial coughs yet.

‘They’re lovely,’ I replied. ‘Couldn’t be better.’

We talked about his day at school, his excitement about his friend Alex’s upcoming birthday and why he didn’t like girls. ‘They don’t like to play fighting games,’ he explained, ‘and they’re always trying to kiss me.’

‘Don’t worry about it. Mummy’s a girl and we both think she’s brilliant, don’t we?’

‘Yes,’ said Jack, yawning. ‘Mummy is brilliant.’

‘You sound shattered. You need to go to bed, sweetheart, so I’m going to say goodnight now. Love you very much.’

‘Love you too. Do you want to say goodnight to Mummy?’

‘Yes, please,’ I replied and there was silence for a few moments before he came back on the line.