Separate Beds (2 page)

Annie worked through the rest of the cards, placing to one side those that could be pinned to a ribbon and hung in the sitting room and, on a separate pile, those that required a response.

‘Give Tom a kiss from me.’

Annie frowned. She recollected a fleeting and careful meeting of their mouths on Tom’s last birthday. Well meant. Dutiful even, but nothing more. (‘I am drunk on you,’ he had once said, after kissing her.) But since then?

She opened the final card, which was large and expensive-looking, and the angel from Leonardo da Vinci’s
The Virgin of the Rocks
winged into the kitchen. Characteristically shadowed in the artist’s unmistakable manner, typically mysterious, heavy-lidded, yearning, he was both messenger and guardian, carrying secrets he would never tell.

Something about him – a sadness, a darkness, loss –
spoke to Annie as she sat on in the empty house in which there was no Tom, no Jake or Emily. No Mia.

No one.

Traditionally, May weddings are unlucky but Tom and Annie didn’t care about superstition and went ahead. Ignoring superstition was part and parcel of their supremely assured, unencumbered-by-the-past generation’s behaviour. They told themselves that they were obliged to cut through the taboos of the past – so a May wedding it was. (Anyway, it turned out to be cheaper than one in June.)

In the early days, Tom might well have said on coming home: ‘Tell me everything about your day.’ In the early days, Annie almost certainly would have been agog to know what was going on in the World Service and why. As the young wife and then new mother, she remained utterly convinced of the importance of Tom’s work. This belief did not waver even when he began to come home later and later – until she realized that she was not coping very well. ‘I’m not a piece of elastic,’ she warned him. ‘Sooner or later I’ll snap.’

Tom replied, ‘I promise – I promise to do more.’

He had observed his vow as best he could. Battling with his schedules, he had pitched up at the Nativity play featuring the twins as Mary and Joseph, sat beside Annie, held her hand and almost wept with pride – which made Annie’s knees go weak with love for him. ‘Thank God I didn’t miss seeing them, Annie.’ He got to the interviews with the head teacher, who wanted to discuss why it might be that Emily had taken to hiding in the lavatories over break, and to the
regular gritty exchanges with Jake’s science and maths teachers and, praise be, kept his temper.

All noted and applauded. Yes.
Yes
. That was what Annie had asked of Tom and he had made heroic efforts to oblige: ‘Of course I want to be there for the children.’ All the same, as Tom rose in the hierarchy, she sensed the balance shifting and his withdrawal into a place where she and the children were unwelcome. Little by little. So imperceptible that, to begin with, Annie didn’t spot it. ‘You are my life, Annie.’ ‘And you are mine, Tom.’ Poetry and the moonlight had to fade, was fading, did fade – ‘How do I love thee, Annie? Let me count the ways.’ But this was to open a door into a cold, barren place.

She took to observing herself critically in the mirror – were her eyes growing dull, and what had happened to her arms? – then gave up eating butter during the week. Wonderful, delicious butter – bad. Horrible, oily, non-transgressive substitute – good. Who was kidding whom? Even if (by some glorious witchery) her arms became as toned as Madonna’s, she knew she was missing the point. The early accord struck at the beginning of their marriage was fading.

‘What sort of life is this?’ she had asked, when Tom took to going into the office on Saturday mornings after the twins had left primary school. On that occasion he had grabbed her around the waist and drew her close.

‘Ours,’ he had replied. ‘What sort of question is that, silly?’ His hand tightened. ‘Annie, I can’t afford not to be there. Can you see that? Do you understand?’

‘I do. And I don’t.’

‘I love my job. Please, Annie, support me, and one day I’ll do the same for you.’

‘I want to you to be happy,’ she told him, searching his face for the key to draw him back. ‘I want you to succeed.’ But he was looking through and beyond her, down the street and into the office where, for the time being, the greater part of him wished to be. He threw out a decoy: ‘Annie, I love you. Truly.’ Annie had no doubt that he meant what he said. But the nuances were shifting, for she understood instinctively that Tom didn’t mean it in the way he used to.

The ironies were not lost on her. (Neither, to be fair, were they lost on Tom.) What she had first so admired in him – the consuming, passionate commitment to his work – had ended up stealing a march on them. It had been like travelling with the dearest and most trusted of companions who, having agreed on the pace, the distance and the final destination, had run on ahead. Without reaching out a hand. Without warning.

How does one mourn something that is not technically broken? She posed the question to herself over the years, searched for the answer and, at times, experienced a sinking sense of loss and panic – because there was a difference between being married and being together. She could not quite believe that the silence and the space opening up between them were happening. She could not quite believe that she and Tom might fail.

Then Tom missed Jake’s big sixth-form match. ‘How could you? How
could
you?’ Annie raged at him. He was angry with himself and bluffed, ‘I have to network. Everyone does.’ By that stage Annie had her job at St Brigid’s Hospital and longed to say, ‘And I don’t?’ But it was too crude a response to their current predicament, a combination of
raising children and working – and, working herself, she understood only too well the forces that pulled a parent this way and that. ‘We have to do better,’ she told Tom. ‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘We must.’

‘I wish, Tom …’

It was yet another Saturday morning and Tom was heading for the door. ‘You wish what?’

‘That we – or the children at least – were as important as your work.’ Thickly spreading a tuna-and-mayo (forbidden) mixture on ciabatta, tucking bottles of raspberry smoothie and water into the cool-bag to assemble a picnic. They were going to Thorpe Park to terrify themselves on roller-coasters (‘Mum will wimp out’), eat candy floss and other dietetically unsound delights, and the children had been heading towards excited hysteria – until Tom had announced he couldn’t make it after all. A silence fell, as thick as the tuna-and-mayo sludge slapped between the bread, and he felt it. Oh, yes, Tom felt it. He hovered in the doorway. ‘Stop it, Annie. Stop making trouble for me.’ She bit back the words
But aren’t you making trouble for yourself?

As it turned out, he had been.

In the still, dark, quiet house, Annie applied lipstick in the mirror and smoothed down her hair. It made her feel better. She ran her finger around the edge of her lip to tidy it up … and her hand froze. An excited, radiant face was reflected back. It was hers … but not hers, for it belonged to the past. In its grey eyes and yearning expression could be read an anticipation of life, a dreamy confidence that all
would be well. This was the girl who had looked up from her book to watch Tom talking to his mother, or to snatch a glimpse of Tom reading, or to tease him with lascivious glances over a table while they ate the meal – shepherd’s pie, stew, fishcakes – she had prepared. This was the girl who had in all innocence imagined that, with sufficient energy and good intentions, life could be manipulated for the good of everyone.

In that prelapsarian age, she and Tom had watched over the other with the careful attention of guardian angels, had listened to each other’s heartbeat with a sense of astonishment – and sometimes panicked because a heart’s beat was so fragile. Then the pulse had fluttered because existence was a wonderful, radiant thing – so much so that sometimes, when she thought about it, it made her cry.

In the sitting room, she pinned the angel card to the ribbon with the others, stepped back and waited for someone to come home.

Chapter Two

In February, Tom arrived home from work as a troubled national bank was finally taken into state ownership and, in tandem with the sepulchral-toned newsreader on the radio, announced, ‘It’s possible we’re in for a recession.’

Annie switched off the radio. For some days now she had been listening to reports – US sub-prime problems, the January slump in the UK stock market etc., etc.: money traders were predicting a global downturn and a fall in interest rates. ‘I wouldn’t have known.’

‘Very funny.’

He frowned and turned away. She frowned and turned away, but not before noticing that Tom had a pallor – almost unearthly – which had not been there when he had left that morning.

He asked, ‘Supper when?’

‘Fifteen minutes or so.’

He fidgeted with the evening paper. ‘Good day?’ He dredged the question out of a diminishing stockpile of good manners, and without enthusiasm.

‘We’ve got through.’

‘So you did.’

The radio pattered on with its story of economic upheavals. Outside a car horn hooted rudely.

Tom searched in the wine rack and alighted on the bottle of red that Annie knew he had been saving for a celebration.
Immersed in thought and still worryingly pale, he poured out a measure, swirled it around the glass, took a mouthful and swallowed it. Then he recollected his wife. ‘Sorry, would you like one?’

Annie accepted it, the glass chilly between her fingers. ‘Actually, someone died today who shouldn’t have,’ she admitted. Now senior manager at St Brigid’s, she encountered death most days. Of course, any unexpected death was awful and regretted, but this one would be a source of trouble.

Tom appeared to be struggling with a strong emotion, but he managed to say politely, ‘I’m sorry.’

It was then Annie realized that something was wrong, really wrong. ‘Tom, what’s up?’ She placed an experimental hand on his arm.

‘
Nothing
.’

‘OK. OK.’ She stepped back and, after a moment, continued: ‘There’s bound to be lawyers in. Possibly a court case. The patient was admitted with pains in his stomach but was left on a gurney in the corridor in A and E and died between checks.’ She felt the throb of anxiety and sorrow for the people who would be grieving. ‘It’s pretty dreadful.’

With an effort Tom said, ‘I’m sorry … It will mean trouble for you all.’

Mollified by his attempt to sympathize, she said, ‘Yes. It will.’

She hoicked the remains of a ready-made
coq au vin
, a packet of mange-tout and early Jersey Royals out of the fridge and set about making supper. No longer much of a cook, she had become adept at the on-line delivery system. ‘Tom, he was only thirty-two. That’s barely time to breathe.’

Imagine if it was Jake or Emily. Or … Mia. What would she do? In a way, she did know. Quite literally, she would not be able to live if something happened to them. That thought was inadmissible, too. She plucked a kitchen knife from the wooden block and reached for the packet of mange-tout.

She was expecting Tom to respond for he held strong views on the National Health Service and, occasionally, they had talked over the way it was going. Then she noticed he had refilled his glass pretty smartish. ‘Tom, are you sure nothing’s wrong?’

He refused to meet her gaze. ‘Yes … no. It’s fine. See you in a minute.’ He gathered up glass, bottle and briefcase and headed into the hall.

She heard his heavy tread up the stairs and the snap of his bedroom door shutting. She picked up the mange-tout and slashed open the plastic covering.

… ‘Dear Annie,’ read the note that had arrived in her university pigeon-hole. ‘Please don’t come to Redpath’s lecture on Thursday as I won’t be able to concentrate. I am sick with longing for you and I have to get my essay written on whatever the old poseur is sounding off about otherwise they will chuck me out.’ It was signed: ‘An Admirer’, and included the PS ‘A clue … (reasonably) tall, dark and handsome.’

Of course she had hastened to the lecture hall, sat in the hushed and stuffy auditorium and listened without understanding a word to Redpath striving to communicate the mysteries of semiotics. Prickles ran up her neck and her skin felt on fire. At the finish, she swivelled around – and encountered a locked-on, intense blue gaze.

Tom was (1) tall – OK, reasonably tall, (2) dark, (3) not so much handsome as a rogue with raven’s plumage, which was much, much better. Even if his appearance hadn’t unearthed a mysterious need in her, of which until then she had been ignorant, she would have fallen for his energy. And his humour.

‘You’re so beautiful,’ he told her, many times, and for those opening months in their relationship she was led to believe that she was a unique blend of Helen of Troy, Cleopatra and Marilyn Monroe. Her skin glowed, her waist shrank to a tiny circle and she lost all desire for food and possessions.

Prince Tom Charming shook her awake, proffered a key to an exciting life – and then kissed her. It was a fairytale, she confided to her older sister, Lydia. Without knowing, she had been waiting for Tom Charming.

Shortly after they graduated, Tom walked into a job at the BBC World Service. Shortly after that, he arrived at Annie’s flat with a bunch of red roses, so dark they were almost black, and begged her to marry him.

‘So, what did you say?’ asked Lydia, when Annie rang her.

‘What do you think …?’

She and Tom ate the supermarket-confected
coq au vin
in silence. These days, eating in silence was not unusual. Neither was it hostile. Just neutral. Actually, Annie found it useful because, after a day of talking and organizing, it gave her time to think.

She speared a piece of chicken on her fork, slathered it in the wine sauce and placed in her mouth. Tuesday
tomorrow … and she and the team would have to face the aftermath of the patient’s death. Again the throb of anxiety and sorrow. Dead or alive, the search for a child could never cease. Never. You caught the back of their head in a crowd, their ghostly presence at the Christmas table, an echo of their voice in the garden. Deliberately, she concentrated on other things. The little toe on her right foot was sore. Shoes too small? She had been seduced by the linen sheets she had spotted in the boutique off Bond Street. The colour of Devon cream, they had the smoothest of weaves and a thread count off the register … Write a shopping list … What about the evening dance class she was toying with?