After the Party (38 page)

“So,” continued Lucas, his voice sounding a change of tone. “You and my dad. What's the story there?”

“Oh. God,” Jem began, glad in a way that he'd brought up the subject to take them away from small talk. “Honestly, I have no idea. I was—clearly—somewhat the worse for wear that night, but me and your dad, honestly, nothing, a strange thing, a strange relationship.”

“Oh, yeah, in what way?” He ran his fingers across his naked scalp, dislodging a few lingering dewdrops of pool water.

“Oh, I don't know. We knew each other by sight, I was fascinated by him, fascinated I think by this man who looked after his child alone, without a woman, probably because at the time my own partner was leaving me to do everything and I suppose I found him, you know . . .”

“Impressive?”

“Yeah, I guess. And my partner went away for a week and I sort of tried to get to know your dad a bit better and, well, I possibly pushed it a bit far.”

“Yeah, you had him over for dinner, right?”

“Oh. He told you?”

“Yeah. Not in detail, particularly, just that he was getting mixed messages off you.”

Jem nodded and picked at a loose thread on her towel. “It was a bit like that, yes, and then I saw him a few weeks later and, well, he basically verbally abused me.” She turned to look at Lucas, to watch his reaction, but there wasn't one, just an imperceptible nod of his head.

“Hmm,” he said.

“Hmm what?” asked Jem.

“Well, yeah, my dad's got his issues. You know.”

“You mean his ex?”

“Well, yeah, his ex is one of them. But, well, he's got his demons too.”

Jem looked at him inquiringly.

“Drugs. You know?”

“Your dad takes drugs?”

“No, he used to. Not anymore, of course. He hasn't touched them since Jessica was born.”

“What sort of drugs?”

“Well, the hard stuff. Smack.”

Jem blinked and held her breath for a second. She was blind-sided by the revelation. “Your dad was a junkie?”

“Yeah.” Lucas nodded. “It was bad. I didn't see him for years. My mum wouldn't let me and besides, he wasn't really that interested, you know; he was only interested in the stuff. But then Paulette got pregnant and he totally turned himself around. Methadone at first and then he was one hundred percent clean by the time Jessie was born. But every day's a struggle, he still goes to meetings.”

“Ah, right, at that community center on Maygrove Road?”

“Yeah, that's right. How did you know?”

“ 'Cause my sister lives at the top of that road, you know, in that old pub.”

“Yeah, I don't know the road. I've never been there. Just know that that's where he goes for his meetings. Three times a week, every week. But he was a user for five years, and, well, he's still not really the same as he was before. He's got this
dark
side now. He's very cynical and untrusting. And I think that you were the first person in a long time he let into his life. I think”—he rolled a piece of gravel around beneath his fingertips—“and don't quote me on this, but I think he thought you were like him, you know, I think he thought you were lonely. And then it turned out that you weren't. You were just . . . bored.”

Jem nodded, not sure how to respond. She felt horrible. Even
more guilty than before, now she knew a bit more about Joel's past. She wondered if Lucas judged her for her behavior. “Yeah,” she said, “I didn't handle the whole situation very well. I was in a strange place at the time. I was a bit lost. A bit confused. And I was definitely partly to blame. Well, more than partly . . .”

“But still, that's not an excuse for him to lay into you the way you say he did. But yeah, my dad, he's a really good bloke, a really amazing dad, but just a bit screwed up about the rest of humanity.”

“It feels like,” Jem began cautiously, “it feels like he's got a bit of a chip on his shoulder?”

Lucas smiled sadly. “Yeah,” he agreed, “that about sums it up. But don't let that put you off him. As long as you're straight up with him, he'll be a good person to know. But if you send him mixed messages, like you did? Well, you've seen what can happen.”

They both turned then to watch the two girls in the shallow end of the pool. “So, you're babysitting today, are you?”

“Yeah, all week actually. My dad's got a freelance contract, deadline's next Wednesday. I've got a bit of time off from college so I said I'd take Jessica for a few hours a day. Not that it's a hardship. She's a really easy little girl. And with the weather like this”—he spread his hands—“well, it's like a little mini-holiday.”

Jem kept waiting for Lucas to go back to the other side of the pool, to find some reason not to sit with her anymore. But he didn't, and as lunchtime turned into teatime they sat and chatted and they shared their picnics with each other and the girls. Jem batted away every attempt Lucas made to flirt with her. He was that kind of man, she could tell, a man who loved women, a man who could not resist the temptation to flirt. She didn't take
it personally. Some men were just programmed that way. But she enjoyed his company nonetheless. He was lighthearted and easy to talk to. He was refreshing.

They met up again the following week. It wasn't scheduled or premeditated, it just so happened that London was hot and they both had children to entertain, and where better to entertain children in hot London than in an outdoor pool? Jem arrived every day at twelve thirty with her children and a picnic and a bikini under her sundress. Lucas was already there, in his sludge-green shorts, his silky toast-colored skin growing browner by the day, and he would, invariably, the moment he saw Jem arrive, pick up his towel and his bag and join her in the shade. They talked about life and love and children and families and London and books and dogs and the North. They discussed his degree (he was studying for a master's in applied science) and her career (he'd never heard of Karl Kasparov) and they talked about the upcoming wedding (that's so cool, he'd said, that's exactly the way I'd like to get married, quick and cheap, and then blow the rest on a honeymoon). It was remarkable to Jem that she had found so much to talk about with a man who was so much younger than she, and she found herself looking forward to the daily trek to the park in the midday heat, Blake's stroller loaded down with towels and toys and snacks, Lucas's warm welcoming smile as she appeared from around the corner, more than she cared to admit.

And then suddenly it was Thursday and the skies filled with black and the rain came and the pool was just a distant memory, and anyway, Jessica was back with her dad and Lucas was back at college and this tiny, magical little window in Jem's long London summer was slammed shut in front of her very eyes, with nothing to remind her of it but the pale outline of her bikini marked out in triangular white across her breasts.

•  •  •

Destiny. Jem believed in destiny. But she questioned it more and more these days. She'd read too much into the coincidences that had led to her bumping again and again into Joel back in the cooler days of spring. She'd believed that it meant something. But now, in retrospect, it was clear that it had meant nothing. Just two people in the same locale with children of the same age. Destined, maybe, just to be slightly unconventional friends. That was all. And now there was Lucas. What a strange and twisted journey he had taken toward this point in her life. Born twenty-four years ago in another part of the country, chanced upon meandering home through south London at three in the morning with his father, and then placed right opposite her in the pool during four of the only hot days that June would have to offer this year. How much attention should Jem pay to encounters of this kind? What did it all mean? She was getting married next month. On paper and in essence, everything at home was fine. Ralph worked, he ran, he helped with the kids' tea, he cleared away after breakfast, he emptied the dishwasher, he picked up abandoned shoes and water beakers, he took responsibility for his children and the upkeep of his home and he was, in many ways, utterly beyond reproach. He was everything that Jem had wanted him to be for the past four years. But something had changed. Something wasn't right. Jem wasn't entirely sure what it was. It was something about Ralph, about his smile, his demeanor. He seemed, well, fake was the only way she could think of to describe it, as though he were pretending to like her. He was clearly very happy with his home life and his children, and seemed to be enjoying his work, but whenever he looked at Jem, it was as if he wasn't seeing her anymore.

Fate had thrown a man called Joel at her and all it had proved was that she wanted to be with Ralph. And now fate had thrown
this man at her. A completely different man. Lucas. And what would his role turn out to be? Would she ever see him again? Did she
want
to see him again? Was he another ego boost or was he something more significant than that? Was Lucas, in fact, the answer to the question she'd asked herself all those months ago:
what happens next?

O
n Saturday Jem, Ralph and the children went for lunch at the Prince Regent, a pub that Ralph had a few years earlier declared to be the “only decent thing about this fucking shithole.” It was a big Victorian pub, set on an unprepossessing corner on Herne Hill, and it was the very essence of a gastropub, full of chesterfields and newspapers and children.

Ralph came back from the bar with a pint of Kronenbourg for himself, a large glass of white wine for Jem and a cranberry juice with a lime-green straw in it for Scarlett.

“I want a pink straw!” she complained immediately.

“They only have lime-green straws,” Ralph replied patiently.

“But I don't like green.”

He sighed. “You used to like green.”

“Yes, but I don't anymore! I only like pink!”

“Well then, you are welcome to walk down the road and see if you can find another pub that does supply pink straws.” He pointed his thumb at the pub door.

Scarlett flumped backward into her chair and pushed the offending glass away disdainfully.

Jem looked at her diva daughter and raised her eyebrows. Blake started wriggling then in his high chair and making the
squawking sounds that were the precursor, they had both come to learn, of a full-blown scream.

Jem quickly plucked him from his high chair and placed him on her lap.

Ralph frowned at her. “See,” he said, “it's a short hop from that,” he pointed at Blake, “to that.” He pointed at the sulking Scarlett, still eyeing her lime straw furiously.

“I'm not going to leave him in his high chair screaming,” Jem replied. “It's not fair on everyone else in here.”

“But he wasn't screaming, he was just moaning. We could have tried to distract him.”

Jem grimaced at him. In the past she'd have been able to silence him with squinted eyes and words to the effect that he had no right to criticize her parenting techniques as he was not responsible in any practical or logistical way for the parenting of his children. But that was no longer the case and for the sake of a harmonious meal she smiled tightly and said nothing.

She stared at the top of Ralph's head as he perused the menu. From this angle there was little to differentiate him from Lucas. From this angle they were very similar with their neat clipped heads of dark hair. But when he looked up the difference was startling. Instead of Lucas's soft uncomplicated gaze, there was Ralph's blank smile. Instead of a ready joke and some simple banter there were barbed comments and objections coiled up like snakes.

And that was when it hit Jem. All these weeks, ever since that sleepless night when she'd roamed around her house in the dark, looking for answers to awful questions, she'd been trying to recapture the soft, flighty girl in the photograph taken almost exactly eleven years ago to the day, but she hadn't realized until now that Ralph had been most of the reason for her feeling that
way. It was all about him and the way he looked at her. It was about the way he made her feel like a queen and a princess and a mate and a mucker, and the best and most incredible girl in all the world. That was why she'd looked like that, because of
him
. And where was he? Where was that attentive, doe-eyed boy who blushed at the merest glimpse of her? He said he wanted to marry her, but he didn't act as if he wanted to marry her. He acted as if he were simply letting life take him to its inevitable conclusion.

I don't know you anymore, she thought to herself, and as soon as the thought was in her head she'd shaken it loose again. It didn't bear contemplating. She was marrying this man in two weeks.

She drank her chilled wine faster than she'd intended and was drunk immediately, as her stomach was, as ever, empty.

She went to the bar to place their food order and to replenish her wineglass and when she came back Ralph said: “What did you order?”

“Soup,” she said.

“And what else?”

“Nothing,” she said.

He gave her one of his new pious smiles.

“What?” she said.

“You're not eating enough,” he said. “You're too thin.”

“I am not too thin!” she exclaimed.

“Yes,” he said, “you are. And it's not good for you to drink on an empty stomach. At least have some bread.”

“I don't want any bread.”

Ralph tutted. “It's not good for you,” he said again, and Jem wanted to huff and say: what are you, my
father
? But instead she just ignored him and took another swig of wine. Very soon the day lost its hard edges and Jem lost her residual annoyance and
life took on the honey-hued tones of another life and another time. Wine could do that, Jem had found. Especially on an empty stomach. Before long they were relaxed again and Scarlett was happily sipping her pink cranberry through her lime straw and Blake was chewing ciabatta and Ralph and Jem were conversing nicely about wedding plans and it seemed to Jem that if a stranger were to walk in now and look at the family on the right he would think, oh, how lovely, two cute children, trendy dad, happy mum, how very civilized. But even as they sat there Jem knew it was all a mirage, fleeting and wine-fueled.