Someone to Watch Over Me (4 page)

It seemed to her now that the first years of her marriage were part of another lifetime. It wasn't that Rupert changed suddenly, it was more as if the bits of his personality that she had previously only noticed out of the corner of her eye came into sharper focus. Living together had been wonderful at first. She loved her grown-up home with its matching china and scatter cushions. She loved her job as a teacher at a local primary school, but most of all she loved being Rupert's wife. Molly had felt like the most blessed of people, hardly deserving of the good fortune that had been heaped upon her. Rupert seemed to make it his mission to anticipate her needs and make her happy. There would be gifts hidden around the house, loving notes pinned up on the fridge. He would administer back rubs and hot water bottles at the first sign of period pain. He would remember passing comments she had made about books and films, and bring them home for her. He put batteries in her bicycle lights, paper in her printer and credit on her phone, and made sure her bottle of Chanel No. 19 never ran dry. He even once hunted down an unusual oval blue button that had dropped off the cuff of a favourite dress, finding a replacement on an obscure website. She laughed at the thought of him searching the whole of the internet for a button, but he looked at her as if he was surprised by her levity.

‘You know I would do anything for you,' Rupert said, stroking her hair in that way he had; tugging slightly at the ends as if he was testing its strength.

They celebrated the first anniversary of their marriage by going back to their honeymoon hotel. Molly would have liked to have tried somewhere new but didn't want to raise churlish objections when Rupert had gone to the trouble of putting a copy of the menu from their very first meal, with flight details added, into the side pocket of her handbag. She found it at work when she was looking for her pen, and just for a moment, as she pulled it out and saw what it was, she felt breathless. She thought of him waiting for his opportunity. Waiting for her to go upstairs or out into the garden and then opening the bag, maybe looking through her things to see which would be the best place to leave it and then zipping the pocket up again quickly so that she would discover it later and think of him. If Molly was irked by the way it had all been decided without any consultation, she didn't show it, nor did she reveal her embarrassment when he caused a scene in the marbled hotel lobby on discovering that they had been put into a different room from the one they had stayed in before. Although the honeyed skin of the young receptionist flushed under the onslaught of Rupert's bad temper, she remained composed.

‘I'm sorry Sir, we cannot ask our other guests to move,' she said, biting down with small white teeth on her bottom lip.

‘I expressly asked for room number 8. I definitely put it in the email. Go and check. Go and check now.'

She checked and double checked and then a perfectly groomed young man tilted his head gravely at them and expressed the deepest of regret in impeccable English, but no amount of bluster from Rupert made the slightest bit of difference.

‘I'm so sorry, Sir; we only have the one room free. Would you like me to arrange for your bags to be taken up?'

As Rupert snatched the key from the receptionist, Molly saw the little purse of her lips and the quick glance she gave Molly before lowering her head, and she knew that the other woman felt sorry for her. You don't understand, she felt like saying, you don't know what he is really like, how he loves me. She was angry, and then regretful, that this place that had been so full of wonderful memories had been soured by this second visit.

Rupert remained cold and irritated throughout their evening meal, barely speaking despite her attempts at gaiety. She ate slivers of duck that were pinker than she liked, and he moved his sea bream around his plate and drank quickly, ordering another bottle of wine before he had finished the first. Because he wouldn't talk to her, Molly spent the time looking at the other diners and wondering about their stories. At the table opposite there was an older man with a breathtakingly beautiful young woman who twisted her great fall of hair around her hand as he showed her how to eat langoustine. Next to them there was a woman with her head wrapped in a silk scarf patterned with butterflies. She was with a young man who was unmistakably her son. They had the same awkward thinness and sharp, pink-tipped elbows resting on the table. It looked to Molly as if the woman had been crying. ‘What makes me sad,' Molly heard her say, ‘is the fact that I will never see them.' Her son looked as if he wished he were anywhere else but sitting in this dining room with its sconces and tablecloths and extra cutlery.

‘They'll probably be ugly sods,' he said, shielding his face with one hand.

‘Nonsense,' said the older woman, ‘they'll be beautiful,' and she smiled at a point behind his head as if she could see them in her mind's eye, lined up, lovely and gleaming for her inspection.

Back in their room Rupert stroked himself, then held her wrists tightly and came quickly into her as if he didn't care if she was there or not. She waited until she could hear from his breathing that he had fallen asleep and got up, as quietly as possible. She put on the same white cotton dressing gown that she remembered wearing on their honeymoon and pushed open the wide doors that led out onto the balcony. At some point in the evening it had rained and the air was fresh and smelt of quenched dust. Two hot air balloons moved through the sky slowly like oil in water.

The next morning his moodiness of the day before was forgotten and Rupert was back to his loving, attentive self. He ordered breakfast for them both and insisted that she sat in bed while he fed her small spoonfuls of yogurt. Afterwards he pulled her off the bed and pushed her against the wall and she wrapped her legs around his waist while he thrust hard into her until she cried out so loudly he had to put his hand over her mouth to stop the people in the next room from hearing. Fiercely private, he hated the thought that anyone else might know what they were doing. She stood in the shower whilst he knelt in front of her and washed slowly between her legs, his hands slippery with soap that smelt of honey, the warm water soothing against her back where the skin had been grazed by the uneven plaster on the wall. They went to Gubbio and took a swaying funicular up the mountain to the Abbey of Saint Ubaldo. She pretended that she was more scared than she really was of the sloping hillside beneath their caged feet so that he would hold her close and put his hand into her shirt to distract her, his clever fingers slipping through the cotton and plucking at her nipple. Above the Abbey, the evening landscape spread out, perfectly composed, just for them, and she wondered how she could ever think that she was anything other than completely happy.

Molly heard Max's feet padding across the landing floor and a quick glance at the clock showed that she had been lying in a stupor for some time. She felt a fizzing in her arms and hands that she recognised as a reaction to shock or fear; the unexpected lurch against her shoulder by a stranger on the edge of a train station platform, the sudden sound of beating wings rising up from a still hedgerow. The door creaked open and Max's head poked cautiously around the frame.

‘Are you awake yet?' he said hopefully, his teeth chattering, his arms clutching his chest. In reply, Molly pulled back the blankets and he ran and jumped into the warm patch by her side.

He wasn't in the sea. It was the first place Carrie looked, scanning the water for his head, looking out to the very edge of the horizon that suddenly seemed even further away than it had earlier in the day. She ran along the beach, occasionally stopping and asking people if they had seen a small boy in yellow shorts. They shook their heads and got up and looked around too. Most of them parents themselves, they knew from her face what she was feeling. They said things like; ‘He'll turn up,' and, ‘Where shall I say you are if I see him?' but she barely listened. She stumbled on the sand, breathless, desperate already. She saw the boy who had played with Charlie earlier walking back across the beach and she ran up to him. ‘Have you seen my boy?' she asked him. He shook his head and walked on, hands in the pockets of his shorts.

The tide had come in and the sun gleamed on the sea. The dazzling light and panic filled Carrie's head like static. She ran backwards and forwards, into the shallows and then up the beach again, searching the dunes for small hollows in which Charlie might be hiding. The desire to see the familiar shape of him was so intense it made her whimper. Maybe he was playing a game. She remembered how the year before he had crawled into a cupboard in a holiday caravan and fallen asleep. When they had found him he had a crescent-shaped mark across his cheek where his face had rested on the edge of a plate. He liked small spaces. Perhaps he had found his way into the old lookout post further along from where they had been sitting. Carrie ran to the concrete bunker and looked through the slotted aperture. At first she couldn't see anything but a small shape in the corner. Then her eyes grew accustomed to the dark and she saw it was nothing but a heap of abandoned clothes. She ran to where Damian was standing, still scanning the beach.

‘I can't find him,' said Carrie, grabbing Damian's arm and holding on to it.

‘Where did you last see him? How long ago?' asked Damian.

‘Where we were sitting. I'm not sure. Not long. I'm sure it hasn't been long.' She could barely talk.

‘I'd better go and tell the lifeguard. You stay here. You have to be here in case he comes back. It's alright. We'll find him. We'll find him, Carrie.'

Carrie stood and waited. She looked around her, turning from side to side. The empty world stretched out in front of her and she heard herself panting. Breath in, breath out. Where was he? Where was he? She picked up the fleece that Charlie had left half buried in the sand and held it to her face.

They sent two helicopters and little crowds gathered, thrilled by the glamour of impending disaster. ‘He's how old?' they asked, so that they could be part of the drama. They watched the boat go out with a kind of awe. Afterwards, when they got home, still sticky with salt and sand, they would talk about it in hushed tones with half an eye on their own, safe children and turn on the news, hoping for the end of the story. Some people stayed and organised themselves into lines and walked methodically across the dunes as far as the car park and then back again. Some of them had sticks, and Carrie thought suddenly of similar lines of people going across a moor, turning over the heather for clues. The boat moved slowly across the water as if it had all the time in the world.

It started to get dark, but Carrie still stood waiting on the beach. Damian wanted her to go into the lifeguard's hut and have a hot drink but she had to stay where Charlie could find her.

‘Come on, Carrie, there's nothing you can do …'

Someone had given her a coat to wear, but she was still shaking. She couldn't feel her body but it was moving strangely, as if she no longer had any control. He would come, if she waited long enough. He would surely come. It was inconceivable that he wouldn't. How could she leave this place without him? He would put his arms around her neck and she would lift him off the ground and hold him close and smell the salt on his warm skin.

The first day in the shop was a huge success. The story that Carrie had managed to muscle into the local paper and the fliers she and Jen had stuffed through countless letterboxes had done the trick and there had been a steady stream of customers, most of whom hadn't left without purchasing at least something. They had opened
Trove
at just the right time to catch the pre-Christmas buying frenzy. Carrie liked to think that it catered for all tastes; a necklace strung with silver filigree butterflies and seed pearls for the girl who had everything, or an old leather-bound volume of sea birds for the father who claimed not to want anything at all.

To Carrie's amazement, it turned out that Jen was an incredible salesperson. She might look as if she got herself dressed in the dark, but when it came to other people she knew exactly when to suggest a colourful accessory or to wait outside the changing room and turn disaster into triumph with the perfect garment for diminishing hips or emphasising lovely legs. ‘Everyone has something beautiful about them,' she announced grandly, the effect of her words in no way diminished by the mince pie crumbs that had attached themselves to her frontage. Carrie watched, amazed as she sold a vibrant red cloche hat to a timid-looking young girl in beige who left the shop grinning from ear to ear, ‘You look like a forties heroine, darling'; a cerise and black lace basque to a man who had come in looking for a bath set for his wife's birthday, ‘Lingerie, so much more adventurous don't you think?'; and a set of vintage cushions covered in blowsy cabbage roses to a woman who had described her house as minimalist. ‘There's only so much white a body can live with, after all.'

At around four o'clock, a group of carol singers from the local school gathered outside the shop, and Carrie and Jen propped open the door and stood on the step to hear a somewhat chaotic rendition of ‘Away in a Manger'.
The soft light cast by their lanterns gave their faces a radiance and a solemnity that was timeless. Except for the odd headphone wire that hung down from under their hats, they could have been children from any century. After they had finished, all fifteen of them shuffled in for mince pies and little star-shaped chocolates and then shuffled out again, being very careful not to knock into the glass baubles and candles that lined the shelves in the shop. Carrie put a ten-pound note in their bucket and they moved on up the road, lanterns swinging, pushing each other and giggling. Jen watched Carrie's face as she looked at the departing children.