Thursdays in the Park (16 page)

The next thing she was aware of was the phone buzzing on the bedside table.

‘Jeanie?’ It was George.

‘Hi . . . hi, how’s it going?’

‘Did I wake you? Surely not, it’s gone nine.’ George sounded chirpy and robust.

‘No. I was just off to the shop,’ she lied. ‘Sorry, I was deep in thought.’

‘OK . . . We had a marvellous day yesterday: the weather’s perfect, a bit windy, but you’d expect that at Gleneagles, and guess what? I won . . . me and Roger won. Isn’t that fantastic? Danny was sick as a parrot, but serves him right. He can’t cheat with this lot, they’ve got his number. I rang you last night, but you didn’t answer.’

He was obviously waiting for an explanation, and Jeanie searched frantically for a plausible one. She couldn’t use Rita, as she and Bill were in Antigua for two weeks at their timeshare, and George knew this.

‘Jola and I went out for a drink after work. We’d had such a tough day and we both needed it.’ This was true, in part at least.

‘So what time did you get back? It must have been after eleven when I rang.’

‘No idea . . . we didn’t leave the shop till late.’ Jeanie was too tired to worry whether this lie would be sufficient to satisfy her husband. There was a pause at the other end of the line.

‘Oh . . . OK. It’s just you normally say if you’re going out.’

‘I said, it was a last-minute thing.’

‘I’m not getting at you. I was just a bit worried.’

Jeanie refused to reply to George’s lie.

‘Anyway,’ – his tone brightened – ‘we’re off out now. It’s clouded over, but the weather forecast says it’ll hold till tonight, so I hope they’re right.’

‘Don’t golfers play in force ten gales?’

She heard him laugh. ‘They do, all the time. But this one’d rather not. Bye, old girl, have a good day.’

‘You too.’

Perhaps because she wasn’t actually sitting opposite her husband, watching him eating his toast and marmalade and pushing his glasses up his nose, last night seemed far removed, separate from the reality of her marriage. And nothing about the day that followed seemed real either; she existed in a fog of tiredness and euphoria that left no room for guilt.

The deal was done: contracts on the Old Rectory had been exchanged. George had done it in record time, driven by Jeanie knew not what to get the house secured.

‘We must get this on the market.’ George was blinking over his breakfast cup at her. ‘Soon as.’

She nodded. ‘Have you decided on an agent?’

‘Oh, I think we’ll go with Savills; there isn’t a branch in Highgate, but there’s one in Hampstead. We need someone we can trust and I’ve never heard of half the ones on the hill.’

‘Up to you.’ She picked the edge off her wholewheat toast and crunched it slowly. She’d had no appetite for weeks now, but she’d always taken good nutrition extremely seriously and she knew she had to make an effort.

George had returned from Scotland triumphant. The weekend seemed to have sparked him up, given him energy he hadn’t had in years.
Was winning that important?
she
wondered. Since he’d got back she’d found herself able to go through the motions without a shred of irritation with her husband. His presence, so often recently a focus for her anger, no longer seemed to annoy her. In fact she felt strangely at peace. But then she wasn’t really attending to him.

‘Are you listening?’ she heard George asking impatiently.

She smiled. ‘Sorry, what did you say?’

‘I think you live on another planet sometimes,’ her husband accurately surmised. ‘I was saying I’ll make an appointment this week.’

‘Fine . . . you’re dealing with it, aren’t you?’

‘Yes, but it would be nice if you took an interest.’ He sounded uncharacteristically tetchy.

‘Well, I’m not very interested in selling this house, as you well know.’

George rolled his eyes skywards. ‘Not this again, Jeanie, please. We’ve done this, haven’t we?’

Jeanie couldn’t be bothered to answer, but George persisted.

‘You’re not going to cause trouble, are you?’

Jeanie looked up, surprised. ‘Trouble? What do you mean?’

George shrugged. ‘With the agents, or prospective buyers. . . being negative. It’s so easy to create the wrong atmosphere.’

‘I’m certainly not going to buy fresh flowers and roast coffee beans under the grill if that’s what you think, George, but I won’t stop you doing so if you think it’d help.’

‘Jeanie, please. What is wrong with you? I just don’t understand you these days. I know you weren’t keen on the move
at first, but you loved the house, I know you did. Do you have to keep on being so bolshie?’

‘It’s not worth talking to you, George, because you never listen to a word I say. Or take my opinion into account.’ The anger had gone out of her words; she knew she merely sounded tired.

George got up and came round behind her, patting her ineffectually on the back.

‘Come on, that’s not true and you know it. Of course I value your opinion, but you blow hot and cold. I don’t know where I am.’

She wanted to ask him when she had blown ‘hot’ on this project, but she knew it was pointless. Chanty had insisted that her father would never move if Jeanie didn’t want to, and she had talked to him, as Chanty had suggested, on the day he got back from the golf. She’d sat him down at the kitchen table and told him, in words of mostly one syllable, that she did not want to move to the country. She’d stated her case calmly, had taken his own position into account by suggesting they get a weekend cottage for now, and George had responded with the usual mantra: ‘You’ll like it when you get there; You loved the house; Chanty thinks it’s the right thing to do; You often don’t realize what’s best for you (but
I
do).’ (This last was couched in less inflammatory terms, but the gist was clear.) It was as if she hadn’t spoken.

She got up. ‘Do not mention the shop to Savills.’

‘Of course I won’t, the shop is yours.’ George must have seen the dangerous look in her eye, because his tone was
conciliatory. ‘But what
are
you going to do with it, Jeanie? You can’t run it from Somerset.’ The bullying tone was back in his voice, and Jeanie could take it no longer. Without saying a word she left the table, and the room.

Lying inert on the bed, she was beyond even crying. Rita’s words echoed in her head. Why didn’t she just leave George? For the first time Jeanie looked the possibility full in the face, instead of batting it away as she had done every time Rita confronted her. But her mind baulked at the suggestion: she found she was literally unable to place herself in this scenario. It wasn’t about specifics – although she could see her father rising from his grave in protest at the word ‘divorce’. It was less defined, more an amorphous, overwhelming presentiment of loss, such as she’d felt when Will died. And every cell in her body resisted that pain.

Thursdays were not the same any more. Jeanie continued to avoid Waterlow Park, not because she was frightened of Alex and Chanty seeing them together – Ray had told her he very rarely took Dylan on a Thursday any more – but because it reminded her of their days together, days when things had been so simple, so thrilling, when neither knew what could happen. But today Alex had specifically asked her to meet him there and take Ellie off his hands early. He was picking her up from nursery in Dartmouth Park, where she was staying three full mornings now, and he had to be in the West End by two.

The weather had swung again, and it was warm and sunny
– a perfect early-summer day. She and Jola had shut the shop for a stocktake that morning; Jeanie had been aware for a while that older stock was being wasted in the rush to get new stuff on to the shelves, but it had been too busy recently to monitor deliveries properly. Of course it had taken longer than either of them anticipated, and now she was late. She knew Alex would be champing at the bit to get going, and hoped he wouldn’t be nasty. Since the incident with Ray, he had been sheepish with her, careful not to antagonize. But she hadn’t forgiven him, and she kept their conversations short.

She arrived at the bottom of the hill where the old playground was, but couldn’t see either Ellie or Alex. She searched by the ducks, but there was no sign of them. Checking her phone, she saw he had left a message that she hadn’t heard amongst the traffic on Highgate Hill. He had taken Ellie up to the new play area.

Hot from her walk, Jeanie made her way slowly up the hill, but as she rounded the bend she was met by the most extraordinary sight. The playground was packed, children swarming all over the apparatus, mostly toddlers and the under-fives as the older ones were still in school, but in the centre of the playground stood Alex and Ray, face to face and shouting at each other. The other parents and nannies were pretending nothing was happening, but she could tell by their silence they were absorbing every word. Her first thought was that her son-in-law had somehow found out about her and Ray and was having it out with him. Her blood ran cold.

‘You’re a blasted idiot.’ Ray’s tone was cold and controlled. ‘This isn’t about me or you, you selfish moron, this is about your daughter’s life.’

Oh God, no, she thought, not this. Please don’t let it be about this.

Alex’s pretty-boy face was suffused with rage, his arms were planted firmly on his skinny hips and he was leaning in towards Ray as if he were about to hit him. Jeanie looked around for Ellie and saw her slumped, oddly quiet, by her father’s feet. She also noticed Dylan, hanging behind his grandfather, his eyes round with concern.

‘You butt out. This is nothing to do with you. This is my daughter and you have no right even to speak to me about her, let alone tell me how I should parent her. Fuck off, just fuck off out of here. Leave us alone.’

There was a shocked silence in the playground, even the children watching now to see what might happen.

‘What in God’s name are you two shouting about?’ Jeanie hissed as she drew level with them.

‘This bloody man is interfering in the way I look after my daughter,’ Alex huffed, immediately dropping his voice. ‘You tell him, he’s
your
friend. Tell him to bugger off and mind his own business.’ He passed his hand over his sweating forehead.

‘Hi, Jeanie.’ Ray looked as if he were trying hard to contain himself.

‘Will someone please tell me what this is about?’

‘Ellie took a fall off the log. I was right there and I heard
it. She hit the side of her head on the wooden stanchion as she went down and it was a nasty crack. She fell like a stone. I know she got up after a minute or so, but she looked dazed. She didn’t even cry.’

‘She’s perfectly all right: look at her, will you? Do you think I’d jeopardize my own daughter’s safety? She’s fine, she’s had a bump on the head, that’s all’ – he threw his arms wide to take in all the other children in the playground – ‘like most of this lot have every day.’

Ray turned to Jeanie, his face full of concern. ‘You didn’t hear it, it was a real crack and she fell so heavily. I don’t know if she was momentarily concussed, but even if she wasn’t, she should go and be checked out at A & E. I know a good fall from a bad one, it’s part of my work.’

Alex turned angrily away. ‘Oh la-di-da . . . for Christ’s sake, give it a rest. I am not taking my daughter to A & E over a small bump. They’ll think I’ve taken leave of my senses. Tell him, Jean, tell him how pathetic he’s sounding.’

Jeanie had bent down and taken a look at her granddaughter. Ellie smiled up at her wanly.

‘Hello, Gin . . . my did fall on wobby log and it was ouchy on here.’ She rubbed her hand on her temple, where there was already an incipient bruise. ‘Daddy bit silly cos he shout at Way.’

Jeanie knelt to kiss her. ‘Do you feel all right now, darling?’ She stroked the blonde head, her heart pounding at the thought that some harm might come to her.

‘Yers . . . but I did hurt my arm too . . . look, Gin.’

‘You’re OK now, aren’t you,’ Alex said soothingly, picking up his daughter and looking at the bruise. ‘You just bumped your head . . . silly Ell.’

Jeanie took a breath and wondered how best to get Alex on her side. ‘There aren’t necessarily any signs at first, Alex. If she hit her head hard she should see someone. They won’t think you’re mad, I promise. Remember, I was a nurse, and we were always happier to have a false alarm than see a child when they already had brain damage . . . or worse.’

Alex looked at her hard. ‘This is ridiculous. I have a meeting in town with a potential buyer, and it could be huge, and you’re telling me I have to go and sit in that filthy hospital and wait for four hours so that they can assure me my daughter is absolutely fine and I’ve wasted everyone’s time? That is soooo not going to happen.’ He glared at Jeanie. ‘You shouldn’t listen to this man. I’d have thought better of you.’

Jeanie thought quickly. ‘OK, you go, Alex. You’re right, you’ll be late.’

‘Hurray, some sense at last.’ She saw the smug look he shot at Ray, who kept silent as Alex handed Ellie over to her grandmother and slung his Eastpak over his shoulder with visible relief.

‘I’ll see you later, darling.’ He kissed his child on her nose, trying to make her laugh, but Ellie just stared silently at him. Jeanie could see a flash of doubt cross his face, but he was too wrapped up in his own triumph over Ray to back down now.

They watched as he strode down the hill.

‘Wait.’ She shot a warning glance at Ray, who was about to speak. Alex looked back uncertainly, but didn’t wave, and as soon as he was out of sight, she turned to Ray. ‘OK, let’s go.’

‘Come on, Dylan.’ Ray shepherded his grandson down the hill towards the east gate, following in Jeanie’s footsteps.

‘Where are we going, Grandpa?’

‘To the hospital to check that Ellie hasn’t hurt her head too badly.’ He turned to Jeanie. ‘Do you want me to carry her?’

Jeanie shook her head. ‘I’m OK.’

Before they were halfway down the hill, Ellie started to fall asleep on Jeanie’s shoulder.

‘Wake up, darling.’ She shook her gently. ‘Don’t go to sleep, now . . . come on, Ell . . .’ She brushed her cheek, talking to the child all the time. ‘Shall we sing? Come on, let’s sing. Sing a song of sixpence . . .’