Life (46 page)

Spence disliked signing books. “I’m sure he will if you ask. It’s not really ultra violence, Rosey. There’s gory details, but it’s only in fun.”

“Whatever. I used to think Steven and Joe were aggressive because of the childhood they had before they came to us. But boys will be boys. I was
so
relieved to have a girl.”

If you put a child into frilly ankle socks at birth, thought Anna, by the time she’s three no one will ever know whether genetic predisposition or nurture made her turn out wet as a haddock’s bathing suit. She was still frightened of Rosey, so she held her tongue.

Rosey sighed. “I can’t imagine having only one child. Don’t you get broody?”

I have had two children, thought Anna. Ah, Lily Rose. Fleetingly, she contemplated explaining that they’d decided to stop at one because of environmental issues, but dismissed the idea. Rosey was one of those middle-class people who bitched about the monster size of the water bill and the annoying demise of cheap air travel, but if you talked about why this kind of thing was happening, or what the REAL problems were like, she thought you were insane.

“Well, maybe. A little.”

“You’re incredibly lucky, Anna. Spence is so lovely. I hear his publishers are pleased with him too. Or rather Wol hears; he goes to those parties.” Wol was something in publishing. Rosey was something in webcast tv, a designer of some kind. Anna had no idea of the details, these arts-degree things all looked the same to her… “Weird that his books ended up being illustrated by Charles Craft’s wife,” mused Rosey. “And I hear Charles is practically a billionaire. Ironic, when you think how you and he used to be the king and queen of Biols, long ago. How d’you get on with Meret?”

“She seems nice,” said Anna, reticently. “It must be tough, trying to work at home with three small children. I get the impression her live-in parents aren’t much help.”

“And she’s married to the world’s prize sexist pig, yeah… I wouldn’t feel too sorry for her, if I were you. I’m not defending Charles. It was a typical male trick: ditches his dull boffin girlfriend after she’s helped him to build the business, snags himself a foxy young trophy-wife. But I heard it was Meret who made the running: took out poor old Ilse like with a chainsaw. You must remember Ilse, Charles’s girlfriend back when you and him were quite close?”

Anna nodded, taking Rosey’s arch look with a straight face.

“Apparently she—Meret—went for work experience at Charles’s company, while she was at art college, designing GM seed packets or something. He fancied her, and they started dating. When he wouldn’t chuck Ilse, Meret went bananas. Got pregnant: he paid for an abortion. So she got pregnant again, practically before the bill for the first scrape came in, threw terrible scenes, threatened to kill herself, and poor old Charles surrendered. She chucked her course, he dumped Ilse, and gave Meret everything she wanted: the frock, the white Rolls, the whole vulgar works. She’s not such a helpless kitten.”

“I’m amazed the way you keep up,” said Anna, diplomatically. “I know nothing.”

Rosey heaved another sigh and gazed dreamily at a pot of sycamore leaves. “Don’t you sometimes wish you’d gone for the big frock and white Rolls, Anna? With Wol it was a registry office quickie. I hadn’t the heart for anything more, when it was because we had to, to get on the A list for adopting. With
Enrico
the whole thing was a fucking disaster—” Her lip curled, in savage scorn… A door banged. They heard Wol’s familiar, absurdly plummy voice: a diffident, precariously controlled yodel. “Hi Rosey? Upstairs or downstairs?” The snarl vanished. The matriarch’s whole demeanor became warm and relaxed and bright. “We’re down here, love!”

The train home was slow, plagued by mysterious halts and lame excuses. She had papers to read but found it impossible to concentrate. Swathes of new housing rolled by, sparsely interrupted by patches of fields and woods. A generation of little girls like Maggie Senoz had grown up and were living in the country, the way they’d always dreamed, with the natural consequence that there was not much countryside left. But it didn’t stop them. All the light-green families, like Anna and Spence and Jake, were digging their allotments, doctoring the cars they couldn’t bear to give up, under-occupying their big old houses. They knew they were making sod-all difference. But it didn’t stop them.

She thought of Marnie Choy in hospital: sitting by her bed, brightly smiling, a little over-made-up, saying cheerfully, “At least I won’t outlive Pongo and Bastie.” They were her cats. “I hated the thought of that.” They’d laughed and joked, the way you must, and then Marnie had said, suddenly, “Anna, I don’t know whether to face up to death now, or
then,
I mean, when it really starts happening.”

“I’d go for then,” said Anna, wondering if Marnie knew how close “then” was, and cravenly not daring to ask.

Marnie wasn’t going to be one of the many doomed victims whose survival had worried Lavinia Kent years ago. She had been karyotyped, and the results had been the worst possible: no gene-tinkering immunotherapy treatment was going to work. Nothing left to try but the harsh, ineffectual armory of the twentieth century… Marnie Choy would die, in months, maybe within weeks, the first of them to leave. It was a foretaste of the future. The dreaded phone calls that must come, one by one. This would be Anna’s role, to greet bad news with her mother’s voice, to visit the sick, to wonder when it was decent to give up the hopeful lying. This was the beginning of the down slope, when youth and strength must fail. Here is the turning point, and what have I achieved?

She thought of her father—foot soldier in the Volunteer Army, backbone of the nation—her father who had never known the luxury of a paying job since the day his business failed. She’d been in Manchester on the way to her conference and had spent an hour with him in the Oxfam shop, which he loved her to do. Often he put things aside for her. (Maggie was repulsed by the idea of second-hand clothes.) When they were little he had made their clothes; it was the way he could be a provider; and they had not been grateful. Little girls like to look the same as everyone else.

He had brought out a battered pale cardboard box and showed her, lifting layers of tissue from a deep crimson pleated skirt and shimmering beaded bodice, the most fabulous cocktail dress. “Wow, Daddy, is that what I think it is…?” “Yeah,” he breathed.
“It’s a Schiaparelli.”
Anna had thought the dress was one of his own, a rare original Richard Senoz, surfaced from lost time. She didn’t confess this, she’d have hated him to know she could no longer tell one of the great designers from another. “How it ended up in an Oxfam collection bin is a mystery. It’s a classic size 12, old money. It
should
fit you.” His swift, expert glance had measured Anna regretfully: “It won’t, not with those navvy shoulders: what do you young women want with them, you don’t earn your living breaking stones, do you? You had a lovely figure when you were twenty.”

The Schiaparelli would go to auction, it would be sold and the money spent succoring the poor… But how Daddy’s eyes had gleamed. She knew that shine, the love of the marvelous. She saw those eager, magpie eyes looking out of any mirror. The older you get, the easier it is to know yourself the present habitation of immortal, elemental spirits. So many subtle phrases of the DNA text pass unscathed through the mill of recombination. A turn of the head, a smile… She was father and mother and grandma Senoz, and all those others, further off. Her mother’s voice, her father’s eyes (and what nonsense this mingled inheritance makes of the battle of the sexes).

But Daddy’s bright-eyed lust for marvels was a warning. Watch out, Anna. Let that trait take over, you and Spence and Jake will be in the poverty pit for life… She must resist the siren call of Transferred Y. She must not
think
of talking to Nirmal. If there were any truth in Suri’s results, someone else would have been shouting about it by now. Forget it, forget it…The slow train fueled that terrible feeling of urgency, of chances missed and doors shutting, that had started to haunt her, clutching at her heart, making her feel old.

The next morning, a Saturday morning, miraculously none of the three of them had anything to do. Anna and Spence lay sleepily talking until, since Jake was deep in Saturday morning tv and they were safe from interruption, they moved into doing sex. Anna’s periods had been maliciously irregular since Jake was born. She was having some unscheduled bleeding and couldn’t be arsed to take out her tampon, so they did without penetration, but it was good. Anna went to check her email. Spence made tea, delivered a mug to Anna and retired to bed with his tax docs (staying in bed was his way of rewarding himself for this drear activity). She came back and burrowed into the crackling nest.

“How’s the Amoldovar kid?” asked Spence dryly. “Still packing his six-gun for you?”

“How did you know I had a message from Miguel?”

“You always do. Hey, Anna, look at this.
Shere Khan and the Coast of Coramandel
has sold twenty thousand copies in the UK pre-publication.”

“Is that good? You have to allow for returns, don’t you. Oh, I meant to tell you. Wol says, well, Rosey says that Wol says, that you are being mentioned at publishing parties.”

“My God. God bless the gallant captain and her crew!” His voice shook, between laughter and triumph. “I knew I was doing well. I hadn’t figured it out, in case… Holy shit, Anna, I’m making a living! We’re solvent! We can live without your salary this year, babe. Hey, hey, I’m the breadwinner! We are comfortably off!”

She stared at him, the duvet up to her shoulders, in wide-eyed stillness. “Then I am free,” says Anna, in such a strange tone you’d think she was about to spread wings and fly out of the window or disappear up the chimney like the king of the cats.

She made an appointment to see Nirmal. Although they worked together closely, this was still appropriate behavior. KM Nirmal’s office was as private as it had ever been. The door might be ajar, but you did not
pop in:
if you dared, you could forget whatever you’d
popped in
about; it was dead meat. She was going to lay her cards on the table, no tactics, no prevarication. The key is always frank… as Mr Frank N Furter used to say.