The Betrayal (17 page)

P
lus Beauty Expo is
, as its name suggests, all about beauty.
From lip gloss to collagen, contour creams to liposuction, face masks to face lifts, we can have it all as we battle with free radicals and the unrelenting grind of time.
I’d hoped to meet Ali while I’m in London but she’s in Manchester for the weekend at a Stanislavski workshop.
At least I’ll have a chance to see Stuart.
The last time we met he was about to undergo his chemo and I feel guilty that I haven’t been back since.
He sounded strong and positive when I rang to tell him I’d be in London.
He’s making an excellent recovery and has finished all his treatments.

Jessica and Liam work with me on the
Lustrous
stand.
I distribute free copies of the magazine and speak to potential customers about the advantages of advertising with us.
By the end of two days walking the long halls and talking about
Lustrous
it’s a relief to take a taxi to Canary Wharf where Stuart is waiting for me.
I glide smoothly upwards in a tower of glass and steel to the seventh floor.

Stuart holds my hands in a hard clasp of welcome.
I’m conscious of their structure, of sharp bones beneath the flesh.
He’s always carried weight, solid flesh not flab, but he’s thinner now and it suits him.
He’s my godfather, my only link with my mother and I always feel a startling jolt of recognition when I see his angular cheekbones, the gap between his two front teeth, his warm, welcoming smile.

‘Tell me about everything.’
He opens a bottle of wine and pours a glass, hands it to me.
A pot of lamb ragú simmers on the cooker.
‘I’m still trying to get used to the idea of you and Jake separating.
Of all the couples I know who are on the verge of divorce and, believe me, I know many, you two are the last couple I expected to break up.
I always thought you were joined at the hip.’

‘At least we’re young enough not to need hip replacements,’ I joke and he smiles warily.

‘How are you managing under the circumstances?’
he asks.
‘Is it difficult living under the same roof with Jake?
A clean break would be that much easier.’

I agree it’s not an ideal solution.
I don’t want to think about the nights I wait for Jake to come home or the envy I feel but must control because that was never part of the deal we made.

‘What about you?’
I steer the conversation towards Stuart.
His hair has thinned and turned completely grey since we last met.
His face, I realise, is thin, not lean, and the skin under his neck sags, as if unable to cope with a sudden weight loss.
‘Have you finished all your treatment?’

‘All done and dusted,’ he says.
‘I’m heading to Alaska in August.’

He specialises in industrial photography and I assume this is another commission, an oil refinery, perhaps, or a coal mine.

‘Not this time,’ he says.
‘I’ve retired.
This is all about ice.’

Photographing ice is Stuart’s hobby.
Icicles hanging from eaves, ice cubes clinking in a glass, glaciers, icebergs, frozen cobwebs suspended between the stems of flowers.
Ice has brought him to the summit of mountains, the Arctic Circle and up close to garden hedges.
Now, he’s chartered a boat for August and intends to sail along the Southeast coast of Alaska.

‘How long will you be away?’
I ask.

‘I haven’t booked my return flight.
It all depends…’

‘On what?’

He swerves away from the question and finds a map, spreads it over the table.
He runs his finger along the Alaskan coast line, touching Juneau, Skagway, Sitka, Glacier Bay.
He names inlets, coves, islands, bays, straits.

‘The owner of the boat will come with me,’ he says.
‘Daveth Carew has been conducting tours since he was a teenager.
He knows the coast like the back of his hand.’

When the sailing is done Stuart will move inland to photograph the Juneau icefield.
He needs someone to look after him.
He never married.
No woman would put up with his erratic lifestyle, he said when I asked him once.
Always on the go, travelling here, there and everywhere.
I think of Max Moylan.
The same nomadic lifestyle and the toll it took on his marriage.
But Max needed women, unlike Stuart who always found contentment in his own company.

‘Would you consider coming with me?’
he asks.

‘
Me
?’
For an instant I think he’s joking but his expression tells me otherwise.

He laughs at my astonishment then stops abruptly, as if the sound has become unfamiliar.
‘Don’t look so astonished.
I’m said I’m going to Alaska, not Mars.
You’ve as much as admitted that you and Jake are living in an impossible situation.’

‘But I know nothing about boats.
I’d be a hindrance more than anything else on a trip like that.’

‘I wouldn’t ask you if that’s what I thought,’ he replies.
‘This is a chance to do something different.
Don’t give me your answer until you’ve had time to seriously consider my proposal.’

‘You could easily get someone with more experience.’

‘I could,’ he admits.
‘But you’re the closest I’ve ever come to having a child of my own.’
For the first time I hear emotion in his voice, a quiver he’s unable to disguise.
‘Life is short, Nadine, and we allow so much of it to slip through our fingers.
It would give us time to get to know each other a little better.’

I walk to the window and look down upon the city.
Rooftops shimmer in the stillness of high places.
It’s still bright outside and sun is a translucent disc, barely visible in the hazed London air.
He’s offered me an escape route, but is sailing in treacherous seas with two men, one a stranger, the answer to my problems?
Of course not… but what have I to lose?
A domineering mother-in-law whose unbending attitude is never going to soften, a scattered family, a job that bores me and Jake… with his inscrutable gaze and secrets.
The silence of vast empty spaces instead of the constant thud of music from his apartment when he’s there.
The pressure of unasked questions when he’s not.

Stuart is knowledgeable and confident but there is a manic edge to his enthusiasm that worries me.
Is he oblivious of the fact that gale force winds can whip without warning and change everything?
The urge to ring Jake and discuss this preposterous proposal with him comes and goes.
I’ll make up my own mind.
By the time the elevator stops at ground level I know the answer.
Madness.
No way will I even consider it.

E
leanor opened
the front door to Apartment 2 with her own key.
It annoyed Jake that she could enter his apartment without knocking but he could hardly object when Sea Aster was her property.
He swivelled his shoulders to loosen them and laid his guitar aside.
He had been so engrossed in his music that the morning had slipped by unnoticed and Eleanor’s visit had been forgotten.

She entered the breakfast room and surveyed the beer bottles arranged in a semi-circle on the bay windowsill.
Band practice had ended late last night.
Afterwards, they had ordered pizzas and opened a few beers.

‘That brings me back to your youth,’ she said.
‘I feel quite nostalgic looking at the chaos of your life.’

‘I’ve been up since eight working on a new song,’ Jake protested.
It should not have sounded like an apology but it did.

‘A
new
song.’
Her eyebrows lifted.
‘Wouldn’t it be a better idea to look for a
new
job.’

‘I have a job.
I’m playing professionally as a session musician and teaching guitar in HiNotes.’

She impatiently swept his excuses aside.
‘Did you follow up on that contact number I gave you?’

‘I told you, I’m not interested in a retraining course.
I’m reforming the band – ’

She lowered herself into an armchair, her face settling into the obdurate lines he knew so well.
‘For goodness sake, Jake!
You’re not a teenager any more, so stop behaving like one.’

‘I’m
not
behaving – ’

‘Perhaps you’ve forgotten how I was pilloried by the media the last time you were in that band.
I still shudder when I remember that dreadful publicity… the time you urinated on stage.’

‘That was lime juice… a syringe… illusion.’

‘And when you ended up in jail… those dreadful Satanic lyrics.’

He almost laughed out loud, remembering.
‘
When fucked about by Mum and Dad, Fuck them back and be as bad
…’ The passion with which he sang those lyrics.
A defiant pastiche on Philip Larkin’s ‘This Be The Verse’, it caused a riot when the guards invaded the club where Shard were playing and arrested them under some obscure obscenity act.
The media loved the story.
Talk radio had lit up with parents protesting, demanding that Shard be banned from ever appearing in public again.
Jake was back on stage the following week, the toned-down version rippling with subtle undertones that created even more impact among his fans.
How could he have known that a year later he too would be struggling with the reality of being a parent?

‘We’ve calmed down a lot since then,’ he assured her.
‘We’re middle-aged, for goodness sake.
Anyway, who’s going to drag that up again?’

‘The media have long knives and even longer memories.’

‘I can’t be responsible for your reputation.’

‘But you can protect it by accepting my invitation to the conference.’

‘What conference?’

‘Didn’t you read my email?
I sent it to you last week.’

‘I don’t remember receiving it.’

‘That’s probably because you never checked.
This conference is important.
We’ve a number of influential guests from abroad speaking at it.
When I deliver the keynote address, I want you and Nadine there supporting me.’

‘In other words, you’d like us on our feet for the spontaneous ovation.’

‘If a spontaneous ovation occurs then, yes.’
Irony was lost on Eleanor.

‘We won’t be there.
It’s too hypocritical.’

She was on her feet before he finished, flushed and angrier than he had seen her for a long time.
‘Is this how you thank me?’
she demanded.
‘I came to your assistance when you needed my help.
I gave you and your wife a roof over your heads when you were homeless and broke.
The least you can do is support me on one of the most important days of my life.’
She pressed her hand against her heart and exhaled heavily.
‘Have you any idea of the effect your decision has had on me?
Sleepless nights, palpitations, anxiety.
I’m terrified the members of the party will find out about you and Nadine.
Our core values are based around the sacredness of the marriage vow.’

‘They won’t.’

‘Please, Jake, I need my family around me.
Be there for my speech, that’s all I’m asking.’

‘I’ll talk to Nadine,’ he promised.

‘She’s already responded to my email.
I didn’t like her tone.
I’m sure you can persuade her to change her mind.’

No sense trying to work after she left.
Her visit had drained his creativity.
What was the catalyst that drove her to devote her life to a single issue?
Why not take on the health service, bankers, political corruption, land speculators?
Why not protect stray dogs, endangered snails, battery hens, exhausted foxes?
Why the determination to impose her idealised view of family values on society?

He was convinced that early widowhood had left her with a romanticised belief that the bloom never faded from a marriage.
Her years with Adam Saunders were the happiest of her life, she claimed.
He died from a brain haemorrhage when Jake was eight.
His strongest memory of that time was the hush that descended over the house when the music stopped.
His father used to play the piano in the evenings when he came home from work and Jake’s favourite memory was his manic imitation of Jerry Lee Lewis.
Eleanor, unable to look at the piano without crying, sold it shortly after his death and joined First Affiliation.
Jake had filled that silent space with his own music, distancing himself from her disapproval with small acts of rebellion that led eventually to Shard and all that post-punk aggression played out on stage.

He showered after she left and headed to HiNotes.
Susanna kept increasing his classes and he was teaching guitar three afternoons a week.
He dropped a note about the conference through Nadine’s letterbox.

Karin had tickets for an outdoor film screening in Meeting House Square.
HiNotes was only a short distance from the square and she was waiting for him when he arrived.
After the screening, they walked through Temple Bar.
They stopped to buy ice cream and listen to buskers.
Her heels were high, treacherous on the cobblestones, he thought, but she walked gracefully, her arm lightly linked in his.
He still found it difficult to be with her in public.

What if Nadine saw them together?
She could be out with friends from the magazine, sitting by a restaurant window watching the crowds passing by.
What would she say… do… should such an encounter occur?
Would she feel betrayed?
And, if so, why?
Broken friendships happened all the time.
Ali’s childhood had been dominated by the drama of fallouts and make-ups.
Karin had given him a glimpse of the fractures that had ended their friendship.
A summer of discontent, spoiled by their infatuation with the singer in the band.
He had laughed self-consciously when she hinted that he was the reason for the jealously that had pulsed between them.
Was it that memory that had caused Nadine’s face to flush with such unguarded animosity the night she discovered Karin’s business card?
Women.
Jake shook his head.
He would never understand the elephantine nature of their memory cells.

The following morning when he returned to Sea Aster Nadine had dropped her reply about Eleanor’s conference through his letterbox.
It consisted of two words, heavily underlined.
No way!