Miss You (37 page)

I ordered the play on Amazon and was dismayed by Jimmy Porter’s tirades.

‘Were you an Angry Young Man?’ I asked Leo.

‘I was a working-class Welsh boy who had stumbled over enemy lines into the territory of the middle classes,’ he replied. ‘I shared his existential despair.’

‘But you’re middle class now . . .’ I said.

‘You consider that an improvement, do you?’ He frowned at me, then suddenly laughed, flipping irritation to indulgence.

His unpredictability was exciting. I constantly felt as if I was tiptoeing along a tightrope of adoration in peril of plunging to disfavour, but I’d always known that real love would be
terrifying and precipitous. Weren’t all great love affairs, from
Doctor Zhivago
to
The English Patient
, about stolen moments of agonizing ecstasy? Wasn’t suffering what
the word ‘passion’ actually meant?

If Leo was a romantic hero from literature, he was Mr Rochester. Not just because of his age and marital status – not that his wife was insane or he locked her up, obviously – but
because there was a dark, brooding side to him. His creativity had been stifled by the compromises of work and family obligation. I told myself we were soulmates. Just as his love completed me,
mine would complete him. As Jane Eyre found, the challenge of cheering a troubled soul is compelling, each fleeting smile worth a hundred hours of a lesser suitor’s happiness.

One afternoon, when I’d worked the early shift, Leo drove me to Whitstable. We walked along the concrete path beside the beach. As the sun faded, the silver surface of the sea dulled to
pewter; the wind blowing across the water was bitterly cold.

‘Close your eyes,’ he suddenly ordered.

As his footsteps receded, I began to tremble with an irrational fear that he was going to abandon me there.

‘Don’t look!’

I heard metal scraping on metal, the click of a padlock, then footsteps returning towards me, a warm hand taking mine, and guiding me, still obediently blind.

‘Down these steps! Duck your head!’

A door closed behind us. Lobster pots and creosote and the stale, almost sweet, smell of damp towels.

‘You can look now.’

We were in a hut. Surrounded by boxes of books and bits of broken furniture, two canvas chairs and a table were set up with a candle, two stemmed glasses, a bottle of Rioja and a small dish of
almonds.

‘Bought this place with my first advance,’ Leo told me. ‘A space to write, you know? Never got round to doing it up. I’m told they’re worth a fortune now . .
.’

‘Do you write here?’ I asked.

‘Too bloody cold. But perhaps, now you’re here . . .’

I was overjoyed by the idea of being his muse. The wine was soft and warming, like blackberries in summer, the almonds sweet and salty. Leo took my hand and we climbed up a splintery ladder into
the cramped roof space where he undressed me carefully, staring at my pale skin in the light of the guttering candle, as I lay on the cold, damp mattress.

‘You are my odalisque,’ he whispered. ‘And now I’m going to fuck you so hard, you’ll feel me for days.’

He climbed on top of me, entering me straight away and riding me until our bodies smacked together with sweat and I was obliterated by his need. Spent and satiated, we flung apart, chests
heaving as we stared up at the bare wooden boards of the pitched roof. Then, he put an arm around me and drew me roughly against his chest, stroking my face with infinite tenderness.

When the candle died, we felt our way down the ladder, locked the door behind us, then stumbled back to his car in the darkness, my burning skin stinging in the freezing air.

They were forecasting snow on the radio.

From the moment I woke up, a sense of foreboding hung around me. I’d been up several times in the night because Bella was developing a cold – not a sniffle, but a chesty infection
that sent anguish through my body every time she coughed.

I dithered over my cereal. Charlotte had already gone to work, a piece of toast clamped between her teeth as she closed the front door. My mother was chatting to Flora at the kitchen table. I
went upstairs and took Bella’s temperature again, almost hoping it would be high enough to give me the excuse to stay off work, but it was only just above normal.

‘Make sure she gets lots of fluids,’ I told my mother, as I slid my thick winter coat on over my suit.

‘I have had two children of my own, you know.’ Her eyes stared blankly for just a moment, before she pulled herself back to the present.

‘Call me if she gets any worse, won’t you?’ I said, as I stepped out onto the gloomy Wandsworth street. The sky was ominously grey and overcast. ‘Perhaps Floss should
skip nursery today, so you don’t have to take Bella out in this?’

‘She’ll be perfectly all right,’ said my mother. ‘We don’t want to miss nursery school, do we, Flora?’

The traffic was lighter than usual, probably because of the weather warnings, so I arrived at work early, which made the morning drag with a seemingly endless procession of
young children with nasty coughs similar to my daughter’s. I gave the same advice about fluids and Calpol for a raised temperature, soothing words about viruses not responding to antibiotics
reiterated as reassurance to myself as much as to the mothers.

At lunchtime, the snow finally arrived, soft, thickly falling flakes bringing their own white light to the small square of garden outside my surgery window. I gazed out, in a trancelike memory
of the wonder I’d felt as a child, when the arrival of snow had presaged only fun. I imagined Flora’s delight at seeing it for the first time. At the weekend, we would build a snowman
together. Perhaps I should call in at Toys R Us on the way home and buy her a sledge? I pictured Flora and her little friends’ excited faces pressed against the window of the nursery school,
waiting to be let out onto a soft white carpet that crumped under the soles of their wellies. When my phone rang and it was the nursery, it felt almost as if I’d willed the call.

‘We were wondering if someone is coming to pick Flora up . . .’ the nursery teacher said.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘She’s been waiting twenty minutes.’

‘My mother’s probably stuck in the snow.’

My brain went straight into overdrive, picturing my mother slipping on an icy pavement and smashing her head. In the flurries outside my window, Ross’s face loomed, his teeth white, his
eyes hidden behind mirror ski goggles.

‘It’s not snowing here,’ said the teacher.

‘Have you called her?’

‘On the mobile and the landline, twice,’ she said.

I imagined my mother slumped on the kitchen floor in cardiac arrest.

Or perhaps Bella had taken a turn for the worse? Now I saw them sitting anxiously in the GP’s waiting room.

I knew I shouldn’t have come to work.

‘Could you possibly keep Flora there?’ I said, trying to control the whirr of hypotheses and think of a practical plan of action. ‘I’ll come as soon as I can.’

‘Flora can stay for the afternoon session if you like? We can give her lunch?’

I’d forgotten there was an afternoon session.

‘Yes! Good idea. Thank you. I’ll pick her up from that.’

I hung up and pressed the speed dial for home, my hand shaking. There was no reply.

The senior partner was eating a sandwich at her desk when I explained the situation to her, feeling like a truanting child in front of the headmistress.

‘Of course you can go, Angus,’ she said in a bored voice. ‘But it’ll probably be nothing. It usually is.’

My colleagues’ professional duty to assess what was in front of them coolly and without emotion seemed to permeate their personalities. Or maybe people who wanted to be GPs were just like
that naturally and I wasn’t made of the right stuff.

My mother’s car was still parked outside the house when I got back. The weather couldn’t seem to decide whether it was snowing or raining. When I opened the door,
the television was blaring so loudly, I wondered if the problem was simply that she hadn’t heard the telephone. Was she becoming deaf? Perhaps I should suggest a hearing test?

I found her in the front room, fast asleep, a glass of water balanced precariously on the arm of the chair. I switched off the television. Upstairs I found Bella in her cot, also sleeping. Her
forehead felt hot, but although I could still hear a slight rattle in her chest, her breathing was less shallow than it had been that morning. No one died. My heartbeat levelled as I walked back
downstairs to the kitchen.

I filled the kettle, alarmed to notice on the draining board an almost empty bottle of Tesco’s own-brand vodka.

Charlotte always bought Grey Goose.

An image of Charlotte pouring herself a vodka tonic, just a few days before, flitted across my mind.

‘Are you trying to tell me I’ve got a drink problem or something?’ she’d asked me.

‘What?’

‘Have you watered my vodka?’

‘Of course not!’

She’d sniffed the glass.

‘I’m sure it’s not as strong as it used to be!’

‘Perhaps you
have
got a problem, then!’ I said.

We’d laughed about it.

I stared at the vodka bottle, then remembered the glass on my mother’s chair. There had been occasions recently where her alcohol consumption had slightly concerned me. Three glasses of
champagne before Christmas lunch followed by wine during the meal and several refills of her brandy ‘nightcap’. I hadn’t said anything. It was Christmas, after all.

Surely she wasn’t drinking every day? Not during the day? Not while she was in charge of our children? Surely not when she was going to drive?

I picked up the bottle and walked back down the corridor to the front room.

My mother’s eyes opened slowly and locked onto the bottle in my hand.

‘Only the tiniest drop,’ she stammered, sitting up quickly, knocking the glass onto the floor. I picked it up and sniffed it.

‘I think it’s probably more than that,’ I said.

‘Helpss her ssleep,’ she said, slurring a little.

A beat. I realized she was talking about Bella.

Running back into the kitchen, I sniffed the half-empty baby’s bottle on the table and, unscrewing the teat, sipped a little of the fluid. Formula laced with alcohol. A baby white Russian.
No wonder she was sleeping so well!

My mother was behind me now, summoning excuses. ‘She gets herself so hot and bothered with all this crying!’

‘She’s a baby!’

‘You were the same, of course. Very colicky.’

‘Did you drug me then?’ I asked, expecting her to scoff at the suggestion.

‘A little bit of gas on occasion, when we lived above the surgery.’

‘Bloody hell! No wonder my head was in the clouds!’

My mother looked confused, as if she suddenly couldn’t compute why I was at home.

‘Can you tell me how much you’ve had today?’ I asked, trying to keep my voice level and doctorly.

‘Just a glass. No more than a unit or two.’

When you ask patients how much alcohol they drink, the ones with a problem always know the recommended quantities, and admit to just below that figure, casually, as if they’ve never really
given it a thought.

‘I don’t usually,’ my mother was saying. ‘Jussh today . . .’

She stared out of the window where snowflakes were now falling past the orange street lights.

‘Because of the snow?’ I asked.

She beamed an insanely gratified smile at me as if I’d finally understood her.

‘So, how many of these do you get through a week?’ I picked up the bottle, trying to keep my tone matter-of-fact.

‘One at the most,’ she said.

A glance at the ceiling.

‘I’ll just go and check on Bella, shall I?’ she said, but I was up the stairs before she’d got to the first step.

She had forgotten to lock the door to her bedroom. There were two empty vodka bottles in her suitcase. She’d arrived on Sunday evening. She was drinking half a bottle of vodka a day on top
of the wine she always had at dinner, and we hadn’t noticed.

Bella started coughing. I picked her up. Her nose was blocked with yellow gunk, and her nappy was full, but she didn’t seem any worse than she had that morning.

‘There she is, the little darling!’ said my mother as I brought her down, as if she’d already forgotten our race for the stairs. ‘I’ll just go and get Flora, shall
I?’

‘No!’

‘I’m fine to drive.’

‘Of course you’re not!’

I put Bella in a snowsuit and took her in the car with me.

Flora was thrilled to have done a whole day like the older children and was full of chatter about the snowman they’d built in the playground. I bought her a Happy Meal in the drive-thru
for being such a good girl, and sat in the stationary car, with the snow now falling thickly around us, wondering what on earth we were going to do.

Charlotte was already in a bad mood when she called because I hadn’t answered her texts about where we should meet before the show. We’d been invited to the
National Theatre by her head of department.

‘Something’s happened and I can’t come,’ I said.

‘But you know how important this is to me! Are the girls OK?’

‘They’re fine.’

‘So?’

‘I really can’t explain now. We’re all fine.’

‘Is Caroline there? Well, why on earth . . . ?’

‘Apologize on my behalf. Say I’ve got a cold, or something nastily contagious if it makes it better. Do you think you’ll be able to get home?’

‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ said Charlotte.

She arrived back, after midnight, slightly flushed and goading me about how marvellous the play was. She’d got a taxi on Waterloo Bridge with no trouble at all.

‘I don’t know what’s wrong with this bloody country,’ she said, slipping into bed beside me. ‘An inch of snow and everything stops. I mean, it’s not as if we
don’t get snow. London’s at the same latitude as Moscow, for God’s sake. In Switzerland, the snowploughs come out and everything goes on as usual. Sorry, did I wake you
up?’

‘No, I was awake. I wanted to explain.’

‘Explain’ was probably the wrong word to choose because it made me sound apologetic.