The Lie of You: I Will Have What Is Mine (21 page)

We drank our tea.

‘It’s clear to me she wants to sabotage your relationship. She found out about you and that’s why she got the job there,’ Jennie said.

‘You mean she’s been stalking me?’

‘Yes, that’s exactly what I mean.’

‘Bloody hell! I’ve felt uneasy about her for quite a while, especially about the way she is around Philip.’

‘I think she’s very jealous of you. Some women won’t let go. It must have been horrible for Markus knowing she was working with you. Now at least it’s out in the open and you can talk about it.’

The tea was strongly fragrant and the biscuits light and citrusy and they did make me feel a bit better.

‘They looked so in love in that photo.’

‘They were very young,’ Jennie said.

‘And I’ll never have that with him.’

‘You’ve got something else.’

‘We’ve got a baby we both adore. I was crazy about him when I met him and really happy. It’s changed since Billy was born. We’re just not that comfortable with each other. They looked comfortable together in that picture, like they fitted each other.’

‘It’s very early days to be giving up on this relationship. Don’t let her ruin your marriage. He’s worth fighting for.’

Jennie looked at me with such affection and patted my hand encouragingly. She was remembering my troubles with Eddie, I’m sure. She wanted my marriage to work out.

‘I don’t want us to break up. I really don’t. But he can’t have these secrets from me. On our way down here he suddenly said he wanted us to leave London and come and live in Cornwall! Out of the blue it was. He said he felt trapped in London.’

‘She’s making him feel trapped,’ Jennie said.

After lunch I took Billy to a playground Jennie had told me about. It was one of those days when it’s sunny one moment and cloudy the next. The play park was full of young mums and their children. It was such a normal everyday scene yet I felt alienated from it. I was wondering how many years Heja had been with Markus. When had they split up? When he came to London? I parked the buggy by the sandpit and took Billy’s shoes and socks off and sat him in the sand. He was happy enough wriggling his toes and grabbing handfuls of sand. I showed him how to fill a bucket. I turned it upside down and made a small castle and Billy squealed with delight and squashed the castle. A toddler sitting nearby picked up a handful of sand and threw it at Billy.

‘
No
, Johnnie. That’s naughty,’ his mother said.

The toddler did it again. This time some of the sand landed in Billy’s hair and I shook the sand out and checked his eyes.

‘I said
no
, Johnnie.’ His mother slapped his hands quite hard and the toddler started to cry. I didn’t like her doing that.

‘I don’t think he meant any harm,’ I said, trying to placate her.

She threw me a contemptuous look then picked him up roughly and marched him over to the swings. Just then I saw Tina from the café by the park gates. She was standing talking to a dark-haired young man who had to be Rory’s dad. He had the same cherubic features and curly dark hair as his son. They were having an argument. He was trying to convince her of something and she kept shaking her head angrily. Rory was in his buggy, cramming some plastic toy in his mouth and watching his warring parents with huge round eyes. The young man turned and walked away fast. Her shoulders slumped, then she bent down and took the toy out of Rory’s mouth and wiped his face gently. She saw me and I waved at her.

She walked over slowly with Rory.

‘Hello again,’ I said.

‘Hi,’ she said.

She took Rory out of the buggy and took his sandals off. I noticed that he was very smartly dressed again, this time in matching yellow shorts and T-shirt.

‘He loves this sandpit,’ she said dully.

She sat on the wall next to me. I made another sandcastle for the two of them to squash.

‘Do you mind if I have a ciggie? I’ll blow the smoke the other way. I don’t usually smoke anywhere near him, it’s just I do need a ciggie.’

‘Not a problem,’ I said. ‘In fact, can I have one?’

‘Course...’

She reached for the cigarettes, offered and lit mine and then lit her own and inhaled deeply.

‘I gave up when I got pregnant. Then I started again. I don’t smoke in the house with the baby,’ she said.

I hadn’t smoked since Eddie but I enjoyed that cigarette. It seemed to calm us both as we watched our babies.

‘That was Sean, Rory’s dad.’

‘He looks so like him.’

‘I know.’

She inhaled deeply on her cigarette again.

‘He loves Rory. It’s just he finds it too much, being a dad at his age.’

‘Do you live together?’

‘At the moment we do, at my mum’s. He’ll be off before the summer’s out. He’s got the travelling bug bad.’

‘That’s tough on you.’

‘He says we should go with him, to Thailand. Find bar work out there. But he’s not thinking straight. I know it’s no good Rory being moved from pillar to post. He needs a routine.’

‘That’s true enough.’

‘Part of me really wants to go.’

‘I saw you were reading
The Beach
.’

‘Yeah, we’d all like to escape. But life’s not like that, is it?’

‘Not for mothers,’ I said.

When I left I gave Tina my email address and told her to keep in touch. Here was this nineteen-year-old girl about to be left on her own in Newlyn with a one-year-old baby and probably very little money. I could see that she was a very good mum to her little boy. She made me realize what a privileged life I had.

I walked back to Jennie’s and saw Markus’s Saab parked in Church Road and my heart lurched hard. The car was quite muddy and one of Billy’s soft toys lay on the back seat. Where had he been? He was standing in Jennie’s front room, looking out. As soon as he saw me he came out and knelt by Billy, unstrapped him and hugged him close.

‘It’s time to go home, Kathy,’ he said in his stern voice. ‘Pack your things and I’ll drive us home.’

‘Not so fast,’ I said. ‘We need to talk.’

‘Not here. Not in front of your aunt. We can go back to the hotel.’

‘No. I need answers, Markus, and I need them now.’

I took Billy from him, went into the house and asked Jennie if she would look after him. Markus was pacing up and down the front path.

‘We can walk down to the seafront,’ I said.

When we were some way from Jennie’s house I burst out, ‘How could you not tell me about Heja?’

‘Hear me out,’ he said. ‘When I came out of the pool and you were gone I thought you and Billy had fallen over the cliff! That cliff has a sheer drop. I knew no one could get out alive if they fell there. I scrambled down and climbed over the rocks for ages. Then I climbed up again and walked and walked, looking for you both. Then I walked back to Botallack and thought you must be there, in the car with Billy. No sign of you. You had
no
right to take him away like that, without giving me any explanation. I was very frightened.’

‘Don’t you dare try to put me in the wrong! I had just found out that you and Heja were lovers.’

‘Were lovers. Past tense.’

‘You lied to me.’

‘I didn’t tell you about her.’

‘Why the hell not?’

‘It ended years ago. It was a bad ending. I was shocked when you told me she’d joined your magazine.’

‘That’s exactly when you should have told me.’

‘I couldn’t bring myself to talk about it.’

‘Why not? I needed to know.’

‘I couldn’t understand why she was at your magazine. It was strange and worrying. Heja is very possessive. You were pregnant and needed calm. I decided it was best to say nothing.’

‘Of course it wasn’t! I’ve never understood why you won’t talk about your past. How can we have anything real if there are all these secrets between us?’

My voice was rising, I knew. He, on the other hand, seemed to be getting calmer, colder and more rational.

‘I don’t agree. I’m sure you have secrets from me, Kathy. Being married doesn’t mean we have to share every thought, every impulse. That would be so oppressive.’

‘Don’t twist my words. Something as big as this, a major relationship in your life, and she turns up at
my
work! Can’t you see that by saying nothing you were being disloyal to me?’

‘It was over long ago, seven years ago. If I’d told you about it there would have been all kinds of trouble. I knew it would come out at some point.’

We had reached the seafront and I had to ask the question that was making me feel ill, that had kept me awake that long night in Jennie’s back bedroom. I had to ask, yet I dreaded his answer.

‘Have you seen her? Since she’s been in London?’

Markus stood still and looked out at the sea. He would not look at me.

‘Have you?’

‘I’ve seen her three times. I drove to London yesterday and told her I won’t see her again.’

‘Three times since we’ve been together?’

‘Yes.’

‘You bastard!’

Tears came now, hot seething jealous tears that brought no relief. I forgot all my resolutions. I forgot my own behaviour with Hector. I wanted to wrench every last detail from him about his meetings with her.

‘When did you see her?’

‘She called me when you were in Lisbon.’

‘Oh, yes, perfect timing. And you just fell in with her plans. Did you sleep with her?’

‘Don’t demean yourself, Kathy.’

‘Why won’t you answer me?’

‘Because I won’t let you, or anyone, tyrannize me. We’re not manacled together. I’m with you and you’re with me out of choice. And we’re only going to stay together as long as we both choose to.’

At that very moment Tina’s image came into my mind. I saw her standing in the park, arguing with Sean with her thin little shoulders hunched and despairing. She knew the way it was. She had no illusions about what was owed to her. I am the naive one, expecting things to be better than they are.

I’m tired yet I cannot sleep. Markus must have got up even earlier as his side of the bed is cold. Last night, in our own bed, I lay facing his back and thought, How can a back express such hostility? It was as if there was this vast space between us and I couldn’t move my hand to touch his back or stroke his neck. I lay there thinking, If I can only reach out and touch him tenderly on his neck it will be all right and he’ll turn round and hug me and we’ll make love. The sex will be angry at first and passionate and then healing. My arm would not move. I was frozen with my resentment against him. When you’re lying next to someone and you are become like stone, the night is very long and dark and lonely.

I got up and dressed myself in jeans and a shirt. Markus was working in his room, apparently absorbed in his drawings. I dressed Billy and gave him breakfast and told Markus we were going for a walk in the park. He nodded but said nothing to me. Billy was cheerful, talking in his baby language to the little row of figures I’ve fixed across the front of his buggy and twisting them with his chubby little fingers. One block away from the flat I called her on my mobile. I found myself grimacing as I heard her cut-glass tones.

‘Hello...’

‘It’s Kathy. I think we need to meet and talk, outside the office.’

‘Why? Are you planning to dismiss me?’

‘This is not about work.’

‘Then I am not obliged to meet with you.’

‘I didn’t say you were obliged. I said I think we should meet, before I come back to work on Monday.’

There was quite a pause and then she said, ‘Very well. I suggest we meet at the Royal Institute of British Architecture. There is a coffee shop there.’

‘I know it. I’ll see you there in one hour,’ I said.

‘Yes,’ she said, clicking her phone off.

Then I called Fran and asked her if she would babysit Billy for the morning.

‘I thought you were away till Sunday?’

‘We had to come back early.’

‘That’s a shame. You needed that break.’

‘Something cropped up. Could you look after Billy for a couple of hours?’

‘I’ve got the plumber coming to do my overflow. I’ve got to stay in till he comes. Could you bring Billy here? I’d be happy to have him here, if that’s all right with you?’

‘Thanks a million, Fran. I’ll bring him straight over.’

I used to enjoy going to the RIBA building in Portland Place, it was one of my places. Before I had Billy I would go to the exhibitions there, have a coffee, buy books and postcards. Today as I walked up Portland Place I passed an old man mopping the stone steps of the Institute of Physics. There was steam coming from his bucket and that pungent smell of bleach in soapy water. As I got to the building I saw a young Chinese woman sitting on her own on a mat she had spread on the pavement. She was wearing a yellow sweatshirt that said
Truthfulness, Compassion, Forbearance
in black letters on the back. She was a Falun Gong supporter and she held her palms open and concentrated her energy on the Chinese Embassy opposite. I looked at the Embassy, which seemed like all the others in this exclusive road, except that it had a huge communications aerial on its roof. The young woman gazed at the building with a determined expression on her face. Her placard told of the torture and death of Falun Gong members. She watched them and were they watching her?

The glass engraved doors were heavy against my hand and I walked across the marble floor to the stairs, saying, ‘Truthfulness, Compassion, Forbearance’ – I said it like a mantra as I mounted the stairs. Heja was already seated at a table at the far end of the coffee-shop, immaculate as ever and paler than usual. She hardly acknowledged me as I approached the table. I was looking at her differently, imposing the photograph of the radiant young woman on to this older, sophisticated woman. The radiance has gone. She made no greeting as I sat down and I made myself speak calmly to her. I was the editor and she was a member of my team.

‘Hello, Heja, thank you for agreeing to meet. This is a difficult situation for us both.’

Heja looked over my shoulder at the waitress who was coming to our table. I ordered a cappuccino. She ordered lime flower tea.