We walked through the parks near to me, both of us quiet. Phil was preoccupied, not his normal ebullient self, and when I asked how things were since moving out he just shrugged and said ‘pretty crap’. After a while he seemed to shake himself out of this mood. He asked me about London, and who it was I’d met up with yesterday, and for a moment I considered telling him everything. My hands balled into fists and squeezed tight, but then slowly loosened again as I discarded the idea, like a piece of litter discreetly thrown down. I said it was an old school-friend, Maggie, I called her, and Phil said nothing, just nodded.
‘I’m sorry it got in the way of this weekend,’ I said.
‘Yeah.’
Juno was running back and forth in front of us, fetching sticks with the energy of a puppy although she was now quite middle-aged. If I tried taking the stick she played tug of war with it, holding on firmly with her whiskery jaw, a little excited growl at the back of her throat, but each time Phil took it she let go straight away and stood panting for the next throw, the next mad dash into undergrowth.
‘She’s forgotten who I am,’ I said.
Phil said, ‘She’s not the only one,’ but then took my hand to lessen his words. ‘She’s been a bit neglected. The girls take her out but only round the block. No one seems to be up for long walks.’
Just before we reached Forge Dam we bumped into some friends of his. They’d clearly heard that he and Sue had split up. They looked embarrassed, not knowing what to say in front of ‘the other woman’, darting sideways glances at me. When Phil said, ‘This is Beth,’ they nodded and said hello stiffly. That was all he said, about me.
‘That woman wanted to stab me in the eyes.’
‘No, it’s me she’d like to kill. She’s just too bloody polite to say it.’
He was walking furiously, eyes fixed on the ground, and I pulled on his arm and said that it would be okay once people knew the truth, when they knew the break-up wasn’t just about him.
‘Not Sharon. She was Sue’s friend first.’
And that was when he came to an abrupt halt and told me that Sue had asked him to reconsider, to think about staying. Not to live as they were, but to try and mend the marriage, to live together properly. As I watched him speaking a light flashed on in my head:
so I was right
.
‘And you?’ I asked.
He couldn’t say. He didn’t know. I could see the blankness on his face, the sheer not knowing. He said maybe in the end it would be easier because the pain he was causing everyone was immense, and what for? He’d pictured us together, he said, and now he didn’t have a picture of anything. The lies I’d told and the things I knew tethered my tongue. I stared down at leaves helicoptered up by a sudden gust of wind.
‘I can’t give you what you want, Phil,’ I said.
And as he turned away from me there was this hard ball of fear inside, not knowing what I’d be left with once all this was over.
I have done this, I have done this, I have done this
. All the way home, in the awkward and empty silence between us, those words ran like rats through my head.
*
On Monday, after very little sleep, I caught the train to London. By mid-afternoon I was at my hotel, a slightly shabby old-fashioned sort of place; last week’s Ibis was fully booked, due to some conference or other in the area. My room was on the third floor, small but adequate. It smelt of air-freshener with a slight underlay of drains. Drawing the net curtain aside, I could see out onto a flat grey roof-space that housed a cluster of scruffy pigeons, all huddling and jostling for prime position on top of the air vent, whose throbbing beat of exhaled air would no doubt provide background music to my night’s sleep. Above its funnel lay a crenellated wall, above that a thin strip of London’s eclectic skyline, and finally an expanse of perfectly blue sky.
The first thing I did was switch on my laptop and email Celia, the real Celia, cursing my not having somehow obtained Alex’s mobile number. I pleaded with her to contact Alex and ask her to ring me, loading it with a small white lie — that there was something important I forgot to say — hoping it would hook her in. Then I settled down to some last-minute work for tomorrow. At six o’clock I went out to get a pub meal, and then back to the hotel. At half-past seven my phone rang, showing number unknown.
‘Hi, Beth.’
Was there a note of relief in Alex’s voice, as though glad of an excuse to talk again?
‘Hi. Thanks for ringing.’
I hesitated, not knowing how to work round to this; there didn’t seem to be a subtle way to get to the point.
‘You had something—’
‘I wanted to—’
We both stopped. ‘Go on,’ Alex said.
‘I know about Jamie.’
I sensed rather than heard her intake of breath.
‘Have you spoken to Fitz?’
When I said no because I thought I might kill him she asked where I was and if she could come round. Everything seemed to be happening at speed now. That was what I was thinking as I closed down my laptop, showered and changed, and cleared a pile of papers from the only chair in the room. It was as though I’d wound up time and was only just keeping up with it, and as if to prove this I saw I had two missed calls from Fitz — must have been while I was in the shower — and then a text.
We need to talk
My thumb slid over and over
reply
before I actually hit it.
Sorry. Not now.
When?
I’ll call
I wanted to scream. The urge was so strong that I picked up a cushion from the bed and bit it, like a crazy person. It was at this moment that Reception rang to tell me Celia Beaumont was downstairs.
*
‘You’ve been on Facebook,’ she said, as soon as she was settled in the chair. ‘I thought you might. You looked sort of suspicious.’
I shook my head. ‘Not how you think. I didn’t think of that.’
‘What, then?’
‘I thought maybe Jamie was Pete’s.’
Alex laughed, then looked at me doubtfully.
‘You are joking.’
I reminded her of the time in Wales, and how she’d wanted to tell me something, watching her brow furrow as she tried to work it out. ‘I don’t know… Hang on. Yes, I do. Pete was going to take me to Paris. He’d promised but he said don’t tell anyone because he didn’t want it to look like he’d got money. That’s all it was!’
‘Christ, Alex!’ For a moment I forgot about the fact of Jamie. ‘You mean Pete had money all the time! Why was he scrounging off Jenny?’
‘No.’ She started to explain, slowly. ‘He didn’t have money. But he knew that if he got money to pay those shits off he had a huge stash of weed to sell. And then he was going to get out of all that and we could go to Paris.’
Now I was totally confused. ‘But you said the weed had gone. Been taken. If you remember, Alex, that’s precisely what we quarrelled about.’
She looked uncomfortable. ‘Look, Pete was playing all sorts of games. He wanted out, but the people he was buying from were criminals, Beth. Pete had made some mistakes and owed them money. He was afraid they might even be following us and turn up at the farm after we’d left, so he laid a trail that made it look as though he hadn’t got it. He didn’t quite trust the person we were staying with either, so we phoned you to keep up the pretence that it was stolen.’
I shook my head, trying to follow all this.
‘So you made it look bad for me and Fitz and if those thugs turned up we’d be the ones to get beaten up?’
‘No! Of course not! We just wanted it to look like Pete didn’t have it and needed money to pay them off. And that’s what you’d tell them.’
‘But, Alex, why didn’t he just give them the weed, if that would have got them off his back?’
‘Because he knew he’d make more selling it than he owed. And that’s what we were going to live on, in Paris, in some commune or other.’
‘But you never went.’
‘No. Things fell apart quite quickly after that.’ She stared blankly out of the window for a moment, then shivered. ‘It was horrible. I didn’t really know what was happening but he couldn’t get the money. We didn’t even have enough to get to Paris and lie low. He contacted someone, did a deal that he’d pay them by the end of the week but there was no way he could, so we hid out at his mate’s for a while — that’s where we went the night my mother turned up.’ I nodded. ‘Fitz told you. What else did he tell you?’
‘That Pete went downhill fast.’
‘His mate got him sucked into heroin. He was going down into some sort of, I don’t know, some really dark place, and I knew I didn’t want to follow. At the time I was working in a Wimpy bar — I’d made a few friends there. I moved in with one of them, a girl I knew wouldn’t give me away.’
I’d been sitting on the edge of the bed while we talked. Now I got up and went to the window, where I watched two pigeons squawking over a scrap of crust.
All those multiple layers of deceit; then and now. Or was it just different levels of truth, choosing what to believe and how to behave in order to survive? Alex’s needs were always complicated, so why shouldn’t her truths be? I thought of Phil and me, and what we’d let ourselves believe. I thought of how I’d kept telling myself that Kirsty couldn’t love Fitz the same way I had..
‘Beth?’ I turned. Alex looked tired, her dark eyes hooded. ‘You asked why I never contacted you. Can you see now how that just felt impossible? There was too much to apologise for. I couldn’t even imagine where to start. And then after Fitz…’ Her head went down. She was staring at her clasped hands, the thumbs revolving round and round. I knew she wanted me to forgive her but just now my heart felt like a small hard stone.
‘Not to mention Jamie,’ I said. ‘Which, funnily enough, no one did. Not you, not Fitz, not Dan. You all hid it so well. Fitz even said he doesn’t have children.’
Alex looked up. ‘Beth — Fitz doesn’t know.’
A siren screamed outside on the street. In the corridor there were loud voices and then a door further down opened and shut. I was having trouble understanding.
‘But…you told me — you said he sees his father sometimes. That’s what you said, Alex.’
‘Oh, that. Yes, well, it’s what I say. It sounds better than he’s never met his father.’
I was reeling, struck dumb, and the silence lasted for some time.
‘Have you got anything to drink in here, Beth?’
I crossed to the phone and rang the bar, asked for two double gin and tonics to be sent up. Alex went into the bathroom and was in there for some minutes, so I kept myself occupied by unpacking clothes until she came out. The drinks arrived; for a while we sat without talking, until I couldn’t bear the silence.
‘Don’t you think they deserve to know?’
Alex shook her head, sipped her drink.
‘Jamie is spectacularly uninterested. Adrian’s been his dad and I think he doesn’t want to upset him.’
‘What about Fitz?’
She looked up sharply. ‘I can’t.’ I stared hard at her, but she shook her head. ‘It would open everything up, Beth.’
‘Too right.’
‘Look. This is how it is. Adrian and Jamie both think that I have no contact with Jamie’s dad.’
‘Well, you don’t.’
‘No, I mean, I’ve let them think it was a one-night stand. If they discovered that it’s someone I actually knew, that I could have easily told him…’
I heard my voice, harsh and critical. ‘They wouldn’t be too happy with you. And Fitz as well, if he found out he has a son he’s never seen.’ I saw Alex’s mouth quiver. I felt nothing, seeing only too well where this was going. I was to be sworn to secrecy. Again. Another bit of her life that I mustn’t betray.
*
5
th
July 2013
I went to see my mother. She seemed to be the only one I could face, which was appropriate, as the last time I came unstuck it was she who’d made me get out of bed, and wash, and eat.
*
The final week in London had passed mechanically, just work and the hotel room. I didn’t see Alex again and it was doubtful now that I would. I was glad I hadn’t told her about the night with Fitz, especially when after the first few attempts he gave up calling and texting. As the silence between us grew I had to admit to myself that his wanting to talk would have been to say, ‘Let’s stop now,’ not, ‘Where do we go from here?’ The idea of that sat hard with me, a dull ache in my chest, but at least it stopped me agonising over what I knew about Jamie. If I was no longer involved it wasn’t my business. Sod them. This was the perfect excuse to go home and have nothing more to do with any of it, have no one accuse me of betrayal, or collusion. It was their mess and they were welcome to it. I sent Fitz a text saying I was busy, that I’d be going home in a few days, and that I’d call some time to let him know how things had gone with Alex. I thought that was suitably vague, and imagined his face blurring with relief when he read it.
I tried to believe it was all for the best that both relationships had sunk as quickly as they’d resurfaced, but still I dreaded the following week’s leave that would give me too much time alone.
There were things in place for the first weekend. I got to meet Sean’s girlfriend, Monique, a chatty, confident girl with good English, whose enthusiasm washed over everything and left me to simply respond in an easy, friendly way. We were joined on Sunday by my sister Karen and family, up from Birmingham for our mother’s birthday, a day that floated by in a warm haze of laughter and alcohol. I told myself this was going to be easy; all I had to do was look as if I was enjoying myself, and I would.
On Monday Sean and Monique went off on a camping holiday. That same day Linda flew to Turkey. We had shut our virtual office for a week and Linda made me promise to take time off.
‘Don’t answer the phone and don’t look at emails — they’re all being auto-replied and people can wait,’ she said — as though she were the boss, I teased.
But I hadn’t needed to be told because now that everyone had gone I began to shut down, along with the office. I stayed hermit-like inside the house, and without work the routines that normally cemented my life started to chip off, fall away. I had a long list of things I needed to get done: quotes from plumbers, a service on the car, decorating, gardening, friends I’d promised to catch up with. I did none of them. I got up later and later each day; I gave up TV, and radio; I gave up eating, more or less, and then…gave up doing. It was quite amazing how little I could do in one day. Washing up one plate, one mug and one glass might last half a morning; staring out of a window could go on for hours; sitting on a garden bench in the sun might take up an entire afternoon. I just wound down, not as in relaxing but as in stopping. Nothing was required of me, or punctured the little bubble I was in; I heard from no one. Not from Phil, or Fitz, or Alex, or from any of the friends who’d got used to me working away and waited for me to contact them. One evening, sitting in the garden with a large glass of wine, I remembered how easily Alex’s disappearance had become forgotten at school, like a mark in the sand, washed over by other, more juicy bits of gossip. Now I was being erased.