Stop the Clock (12 page)

Ridiculous. It was a late period, that was the way to think of it, an escalation of hormones.

She rummaged in the chest of drawers for an old T-shirt and one of her looser pairs of jeans, pulled them on and opened up the wardrobe. She was a hoarder of clothes as well as of books and papers and photos, and it was beginning to look like a badly organized archive. There was plenty there that she hadn’t worn much lately – particularly among the going-out clothes, the sheer or shiny or brightly coloured tops and the short skirts and trousers from previous seasons.

There was the vampy stuff, too, a legacy of her relationship with Justin. Sooner or later she would have to have a clearout. She couldn’t think of another living soul in whose company it might be possible to wear leather hotpants, or a bustier, or an elasticated minidress that squeezed and squashed her into shape with all the efficacy of an old-fashioned girdle.

The top shelf of the wardrobe was given over to hats. The Ascot fascinator, the classic straw boater for Henley, and an array of others that she thought of as her disguise hats, used for her trips to Justin’s flat in Pimlico: the fur-trapper, the big knitted beret, the baker boy cap, the fedora.

There had been a time, years ago now, when Justin had been willing to come to her place. She’d made quite an effort to clean and tidy back then, and had bought a wrought-iron, king-sized bedstead that cost much more than she could afford, imagining it was the sort of thing a proper scarlet woman would recline on in order to ensnare her lover. She’d even gone to the trouble of getting a new cooker installed, so she could prepare seductive feasts. But then he had decided that regular visits were too risky, someone might recognize him, and it would be better by far for her to go discreetly to the studio he referred to as his bachelor pad, and cook dinner for him there. And so she had resigned herself to spending her evenings at home alone, and sleeping without companionship in the new hard, cold and spiky bed.

It had been all the excuse she needed to let things slide. Nobody else ever came round; when your friends were coupled up, and particularly when they had children, it was automatically assumed that they would be the hosts and you would be the visitor. And it hadn’t been difficult to dissuade her parents from coming? why on earth would they battle through the traffic to get to Clapham when she was more than happy to head west, away from central London, and visit them
in Barnes? Anyway, she worked long hours . . . liked to keep fit . . . and, until very recently, had gone out a lot. She didn’t have time to nest.

She moved the Stetson sunhat to one side and took out the old wooden box that was hiding behind it.

The box had been made by a long-dead relative to store needlework, but it didn’t quite have the status of a family heirloom – it had been kept, not because it was valued for itself, but because it had a scrap of her father’s Great-Aunt Win’s handwriting glued to the inside of one of the inner lids, and that made it too personal to throw out.

Tina had found it in the loft as a teenager, and her mother had been surprised that she wanted it, but happy for her to keep it. Tina liked it precisely because of that hidden remainder of Winifred Fox. She’d been attracted to concealed mementoes and secret messages even then – had bought, second-hand, a heart-shaped, empty locket, before realizing she didn’t have a photo to put in it; kept a diary that opened with a key, and stored the diary, not quite in plain view, but on the bookshelf, inside the pages of the
Children’s Encyclopaedia
, while the key was in her jewellery box, with the cross she didn’t wear.

The lid of Great-Aunt Win’s box depicted a ship at sea, picked out in intricate marquetry, though the wood was so dark and scratched it was difficult to make it out. Inside was a top layer of small, individual compartments, each lined with red velvet and fitted with its own carefully wrought lid. Some still contained ancient
cotton reels, buttons and embroidery silks, none of which had been touched for decades.

She lifted out the lid of the central compartment. On the reverse Great-Aunt Win had stuck a strip of paper, now brown with age, on which she had written, in spindly, copperplate handwriting, her name, the date – 1875 – and a declaration:
Made by I alone
.

Underneath was the pay-as-you-go mobile phone Justin had given Tina a year earlier, when he’d decided it was too risky to keep on contacting her on a number that someone might be able to trace. She still kept this phone switched on and charged up, and occasionally checked for messages. But he hadn’t called.

She put the phone away and lifted out the whole top layer.

The body of the box was tightly packed with letters; mixed in with them were the dried heads of half a dozen red roses that he had sent her after their first date. The petals were drier now than paper, the colour of old blood.

Then she had carefully hung them upside down so they would keep their shape. Now she thought: Only six?

She picked out an envelope at random. She didn’t know quite what she was looking for. Well, she did. It was the sign-off:
love . . .

At first he had written to her often, but as time went on and he became more nervous about exposure he’d increasingly relied on the phone. Still, it had always reassured her to look back, to be able to hold something his hand had touched, to have something of him to keep.

She had looked in the box whenever she’d doubted him; as she grew older and began not only to realize that he really was never going to leave his wife, but also to suspect that his insistence on caution was just a means of maintaining control, his letters had restored her faith in him. And she had looked again when the strategies and ruses that were once heart-rending and thrilling in equal measure had become first a drag, and then habit and routine.

His handwriting was beautiful, of course.

Dear Vixen,

There’s no point being alive if you’re not prepared to take risks. Calculated risks, by all means, but still, what’s the point of anything if there’s nothing worth taking chances for?

Well, he would say that. Wouldn’t he?

But there was no way she could keep this baby. Was there?

She put the letter back into its envelope and tucked it away – gently, as if putting something to sleep – replaced the top layer, put the box back in the top of the wardrobe and went upstairs. It was time to eat, whether she felt like it or not.

Usually she treated cooking for herself as a worthwhile investment in her wellbeing. After all, she needed to maintain her health and energy levels in order to perform well at work. But ever since she’d seen the blue line come up on the pregnancy test – and then on the next one, and the one after that – she hadn’t felt like
bothering with her favourite recipes. So it had been noodles, pizza, takeout all the way, fast food, stodge that would satisfy her hunger.

She’d let her exercise schedule lapse, too. Normally she swam three times a week, religiously, literally religiously, given that she’d become a keen competitive swimmer at about the same time she’d experienced a slow dawning of scepticism, a gradual awakening into what she thought of as reason, though her mother regarded it as a foolish, self-spiting rebellion, a wilful rejection of the self-evident truth of Father, Son and Holy Ghost. (Her father, more subtle about these things, said only that if Tina was ever sorry about turning her back on the Church, it would probably be too late.)

Swimming hadn’t been thought much of at St Birinus – too individualistic, apart from relay races. Hockey was the sport in which excellence was most highly prized – team-spirited, and potentially punitive to boot. Still, Tina had scored a couple of trophies, and she’d kept up the habit when she left home for university and stopped going to Mass. What she liked most about it was how, after fifty lengths, you were conscious only of your body, and when you got out, you felt as clean and clear as if you’d just been forgiven.

It wasn’t just her good habits she’d given up since she’d found out she was pregnant; she’d been giving her vices a miss, too. She’d had to chuck out the best part of a bottle of white because it had been in the fridge too long, and even smoking had lost its appeal.

While her pasta was simmering she wandered over to the framed photo montage displayed on the chimney
breast, composed of old pictures of her friends. Right in the middle was the one of her with Lucy and Natalie on the beach on New Year’s Eve, 1999, all fresh-faced and hopeful. There was no sign of the typical posed group photo awkwardness. They were huddling together for the photo as if they were happy to be close to each other.

Beneath the photo montage, standing on the mantelpiece, was the ormolu carriage clock her parents had given her as a housewarming present, quietly and relentlessly keeping time.

What was it she had said that night?

‘This time ten years from now I want to have my own newspaper column, with a nice big picture byline.’

And Lucy had said, ‘A job can’t love you back.’

The phone rang and she rushed to pick it up, thinking it might be Natalie, then realized too late that it was her mother.

‘Hello, darling, I didn’t think I’d catch you!’ Cecily exclaimed. ‘Are you all set for Saturday? We’re both very much looking forward to seeing you.’

Tina responded with brittle civility, and made an excuse to get off the phone as soon as she decently could.

After she’d wound up the call she turned off the pasta, rolled herself a cigarette and climbed out of one of the dormer windows on to her unofficial balcony, the narrow ledge between the roof and the parapet wall.

It was quite safe; the parapet wall was chest-height, just right to lean on as you lit up and looked out pensively across the rooftops of Clapham towards the green rim of Battersea Park. You couldn’t fall. Well,
you could, but you’d have to be very reckless, or very determined, which would make it a jump, wouldn’t it?

She lit her cigarette. But the smoke didn’t taste right, and as she stubbed it out she realized it was because she was ashamed.

She finally heard from Natalie the following morning, when she checked her mobile in the taxi on the way to the clinic, and saw that she had a new text message.

Matilda Rose Carswell arrived safely at the South London Hospital on Friday 8 May, 8 pounds 1 oz. We’re all home now and doing well. Love Natalie, Richard and Matilda xxx

Tina was about to attempt to compose a congratulatory reply when she realized they were nearly there. The message would have to wait. She put the phone back in her bag and directed the taxi driver to a side road off Brixton Hill.

She’d been so nervous about getting snarled up in traffic and missing the appointment that she now had three-quarters of an hour to kill before her appointment. She could, of course, pass the time in the waiting room . . . but she hated the thought of sitting with a group of other equally miserable women, trying not to meet their eyes, knowing only too well what they were all there for.

Teenagers, students, married mums who’d slipped up, girls who would be getting on a plane back to Ireland as soon as they were able . . . She had no doubt that there would be all sorts, all ages, all backgrounds, and just as she would be briefly distracted from her own plight by wondering about theirs, they, too, might
spare a moment to speculate why a woman in young middle age, who looked healthy and not too badly off, would choose to terminate a pregnancy, even if she didn’t have a ring on her finger to legitimize it.

She paid and got out. She didn’t allow herself to hesitate as the taxi drove off, but set off straight away in the direction of the main thoroughfare, even though she didn’t quite know what she was going to do next.

The area was still familiar from the time she’d spent living nearby, first with Natalie and Lucy, then with Natalie alone, and then with Natalie and Hannah. It was a network of Victorian terraces that estate agents referred to as ‘Brixton Village’. Back then it had been relatively cheap, and also had the advantage of being completely unlike anywhere else Tina had ever lived.

She cringed at the memory of the three of them attempting to limbo dance at the Pineapple Bar, while the otherwise black clientele turned an indulgent blind eye, tolerant of their small white incursion. They had been like tourists in the middle of an illuminating but occasionally threatening adventure, trekking down the hill together each weekday morning to catch the tube, past the thin prostitute on the corner, who always asked if they could spare a cigarette and then listlessly looked away when they refused. Behind her was the big church with the red neon cross and the sign: ‘God so loved Brixton He gave His only son’, illustrated with a hand-drawn Jesus, his arms emphatically outstretched.

The next landmark had been the clinic. Once they’d seen a thin man with a dark beard down on his knees in the driveway, praying, with a rosary in his fingers. Tina
had been infuriated, as if his presence was a personal attack. There was just so much else to pray about if you were the praying type: what about the yellow incident signs? The hooker? But still, the sight of him had made her feel oddly guilty.

She could perhaps have tried to book herself in elsewhere, but this was close, and they’d been able to fit her in on a day Jeremy, her boss, was willing for her to have off, so . . . Anyway, it didn’t really matter where she had it done. She just had to get it over with.

She should go to a café. There was one on Brixton Hill they’d always favoured, with a Spanish name, or perhaps it was Portuguese. The scene of many morning-after fry-ups –perhaps it was still there?

On the way she witnessed an altercation. A young black woman was sitting on the ledge of an open first-storey window, her back to the road, as music pumped out from inside the room. An older black woman stopped to berate her: ‘What you think you doing with your backside hanging out into the street like that! You ought to be ashamed of yourself!’ The younger woman showed no sign of taking any notice and the older woman showed no sign of giving up. Tina skirted round them, kept her head down, and kept moving (
don’t get involved, stay out of it, stay out of everything
).