Separate Beds (33 page)

‘Tom. If you cause trouble …’ Annie pulled frantically at a curl. ‘Don’t you understand? You can’t.’

‘What?’

She squared up to him. ‘You can’t do it again.’

At a stroke, the air grew thick and poisoned. Words that had never been uttered trembled on the tips of their tongues. ‘
Meaning?
’ He couldn’t quite control his voice. ‘
Say
it.’ He ran his fingers through his hair. ‘Say what we never say.’

Annie broke the long, long, destructive silence. ‘Mia.’

‘Mia went because she was infatuated with a man who didn’t want anything to do with us. He told her we were smug and useless and bourgeois and she believed him.’ Pete’s lowering features flashed through Tom’s memory. ‘He was a sponger.’

‘Maybe.’

Tom struggled for control. ‘Not maybe. He was.’

‘You didn’t like him because he challenged you.’ She added quietly, which Tom found more devastating than hot temper, ‘You preached tolerance, Tom, but when it came to your daughter it was another matter. That’s what I couldn’t swallow. You disliked Pete for being different.’

‘Then why didn’t
you
make her stay? Why didn’t you speak up, Annie? Why didn’t you say I was a hypocrite?’

‘I’ve asked myself that a million times.’

They stared at each other, each blaming the other – as they had done for years.

‘Why didn’t you go after her, Tom?’

‘Because …’

Why? Why?

That night in the kitchen. Mia blazing. Pete hostile. Annie a long, long way from him in every respect. And he, Tom, exhausted and played out after hours in the office
.

Annie had gone chalk white and she looked deathly tired. ‘We should have talked about this long ago. I tried …’ She shrugged. ‘I know, I know, it sounds so simple and obvious but it’s none of those things. I did try but I was too angry with you. Then it all got set in stone.’

Second chances did not come very often. ‘If you must know …’ he began but, almost overpowered by the blackness and bleakness of the past, stuttered to a halt.
Second chance
. ‘How can I put this, how can I say this? I didn’t go after Mia because I was so … ashamed.’

There was a long pause. ‘Why didn’t you say?’

… Mia confronting him: hair roughly cropped, a contemptuous smile wrenching her mouth awry. ‘Basically, Dad, I hate everything you stand for …’

‘After all we’ve done for you?’

‘You’ve done me no favours, Dad. None at all.’

He relived the blow to his stomach, the sick feeling and the hurt …

‘I tried. But you weren’t listening, Annie.’

‘That’s true,’ she admitted.

‘Well, it certainly buggered up our … faltering marriage. And if I’d known …’ Tom sidestepped a felled magazine, cursed and threw it on to the pile. ‘If I’d known how things would go from bad to worse … But I always sort of hoped …’ He raised an eyebrow and quizzed her: ‘So why did you stay?’

‘We were married. There were the children. Emily was at a tricky stage.’ She recited the reasons like a school lesson.

Tom could not help wishing … Well, what, precisely?
That Annie could imply, even with the lightest of hints, that she had stayed because, despite everything, she loved him.

… ‘How can you say this, Mia?’

‘Easily. Listen again, Dad.’

‘No.’ Annie had tried to head him off. She had even interposed herself between him and Mia. ‘Tom, be careful what you say. Don’t, Tom … Don’t, Tom.’

Don’t, Tom
…

He hadn’t listened.

He remembered as yesterday the anger that had smashed through him, and the hurt inflicted by his daughter, whom he loved, which was a knife in his guts.

‘Then get out, Mia. Get out and never come back.’

She had taken him at his word, leaving the remaining occupants in the house to pick up the pieces. Separately, they had gone about their lives. They talked to each other. Of course. From time to time, they ate meals together, did things together, but the heart had gone out of the family. The heart had also stopped beating in their marriage …

Annie got up, crossed to the window and fiddled with the curtain tie-backs. ‘Mia will always haunt us.’ She sounded desolate. ‘Always. It’s what we are now. What we will be.’

‘Annie …’ Tom searched for the right way – for this was a moment to seize. He stood behind her. ‘Annie, I
know
it was my fault. I should never have said what I said.’

She didn’t reply immediately, but her hand clenched on the curtain.
Please
, he prayed.
Let the past go. Let something else take its place
. She turned round. ‘You’ve never admitted that before.’ With that, she pressed her forehead against his shoulder – and he experienced a cathartic sense of relief. ‘Never.’

He did not dare touch her back – for the moment was
too fragile to call it one way or the other. ‘Would you believe me if I told you I think of Mia every day?’

‘I wish I’d known.’

‘This sounds stupid … but I thought if you loved me you would know.’ Annie gave a tiny shrug but he pressed on: ‘It’s precisely because I made the mistake over Mia that we must act over Maisie.’

She looked up with grey eyes that already seemed to him lighter and clearer, and corrected him. ‘
We
’ – he noted the pronoun – ‘made the mistakes, Tom, OK? We can’t intervene between Maisie’s parents, and there’s the law to consider. We’ll back Jake to the hilt, but we mustn’t let him do anything he’ll regret.’

‘I like the “we”.’

‘Do you?’ The suggestion of a smile trembled on her lips. She looked around at the untidy, dusty room. ‘This place is a mess, Tom. Just like us.’

When he took her hand, she made to pull it away. ‘Annie, let me. Are we such a mess?’ Slowly, slowly, her hand relaxed into his.

‘Perhaps we can do something, Tom. We could look for her.’

‘We could.’ He lifted her hand and held it to his cheek.

‘Or …’ the grey eyes reflected years of distress ‘… maybe we have to accept Mia’s choice.’

There were two aspects to proximity. The one to which both had grown used – brushing up against the other most days but maintaining an icy separateness. Then there was this, thought Tom, when a touch on someone’s hand began to build a pathway into a heart and mind. ‘The one doesn’t exclude the other.’

‘You think so?’ There was a catch in her voice.

‘I do.’ He dropped her hand and began to gather up the newspapers. These he stacked in a pile and shovelled other papers into the bin.

She folded her hands across her chest. ‘Well, this
is
new.’

The exchange that had just taken place between them had been so momentous, so charged – too much to take in at once – and the atmosphere had changed to almost light-hearted. He could sense her astonishment:
Tom clearing up?

Annie pointed to an unharvested bit of paper on the floor and her eyes shone. ‘Actually, Tom, you’ve missed a bit.’

‘You wretch,’ he said – but he picked it up and dropped it into the bin. ‘About the dog …’ He took his revenge. ‘I vote it stays. It will keep Hermione amused and I know you won’t mind the late-night walks.’

‘Tom!’

‘Or the early-morning ones. You can fit it in before work. Easy.’

‘You utter devil,’ and, with that, Annie aimed a punch at his chest.

It was a hard one. Her fist pounded jarringly into his breastbone and sent a tingle through his flesh. But Tom didn’t mind in the least for it was the first time she had touched him with anything approaching passion in years.

Chapter Nineteen

First thing on Monday Jake hit the phone to Robin Tyler, his solicitor.

Having assumed that he had a reasonably straightforward divorce to handle, Robin registered concern on being told of Jocasta’s change of heart. ‘No need to panic,’ he cautioned, ‘but we will have to think this through carefully. As a matter of interest, does your wife have a work permit for the US? Are we sure that she’ll be allowed to remain?’

‘The bank’s sorted it.’ He tried not to sound angry and bitter and, because he was angry and bitter, didn’t succeed.

‘At least she hasn’t gone to Australia or the Far East,’ said Robin. ‘New York isn’t so far …’

‘Far enough.’

‘And things like term times roughly coincide with the UK for future visits et cetera.’

Jake blinked rapidly. ‘Isn’t that getting a little ahead of ourselves?’

‘You have to think about it,’ said Robin, ‘and I suggest you do. You are now entering a legal process and you have to be clear in your mind about your objectives. You wish to keep Maisie, but Jocasta will have to be granted her rights too. Obviously.’

‘Why’s she changed her mind?’ cried Jake.

‘That’s irrelevant,’ replied Robin, calmly. ‘Her initial actions of assigning you your daughter and handing over
the house were almost certainly motivated by guilt. Not uncommon but the law regards the guilt motive as suspect. It is not the best way to decide a child’s future. Almost certainly, there are going to be some adjustments.’

Jake finished the call with his head reeling and, having handed Maisie over to his father, went jogging. Sweat pouring, he pounded the flat, unforgiving pavements and tried to master his rage and lust for revenge. Their colonization of him felt like a sickness – intense and unignorable – which left him as winded as the run.

Back at number twenty-two, he deployed himself by checking up on Maisie’s clothes and nappies. Her cot sheet required changing so he fetched a clean one from the airing cupboard and eased it over the mattress.

How ignorant he had been – and still was. Adversity fouled up and poisoned the system, and he was the one who had put a premium on politeness, went to great lengths not to hurt other people, and tried always to empathize. Yet, at the first blast of difficulty, he found he no longer cared.

He longed to phone Mia and say:
Help me
. And she would respond in that breathy way of hers:
Tell me
.

Looking out over the London garden where the foxes and squirrels fought territorial battles among the hollyhocks and lavender bushes, he imagined relating the story to Mia and her saying something like
You must steel yourself. You’re up against the structures of capitalist society and she’s the one with money
.

But Mia had gone, deliberately wielding an axe to the ties that bound her to her twin – because, as she’d told him, with tears running down her face, ‘You would pull me back, Jake.’ Never before had they lived separately – even if they had been physically apart – and he felt the lack in every cell
of his body. She had warned him: ‘Don’t get in touch. It won’t do any good.’ At first he had rebelled and tried to contact her but Mia, deep in love with her new political beliefs and with Pete, had determinedly, bloody-mindedly, concealed all traces of her whereabouts.

Returning downstairs, Jake ran a hand along the banister and over the newel post.
That
never failed. Sure enough, the smooth, polished feel under his touch helped to ground him. ‘Where’s Maisie?’ he called.

‘I put her in the garden for a nap,’ Tom answered from the sitting room, where Jake discovered him. Surrounded by the latest Appointments sections of various papers, his father was at the makeshift desk with his head in his hands. The computer screen illuminated financial graphs with arrows in red and black.

Jake said. ‘Is everything OK, Dad?’

Tom started. A flash that could have been fear went across his features. ‘Sure.’ He avoided Jake’s eye.

Jake glanced at the Appointments. A couple of the boxes had black crosses scrawled at the corner. Another had been outlined with red slashes and he sniffed out the negative vibe. ‘Don’t worry.’ He prepared to retreat. ‘I can see you’re busy.’

Again the suggestion of fear and – even – panic. ‘Do you want something, Jake?’ He sounded clipped, almost antagonistic, and it was obvious he did not want Jake in the room.

And Jake thought:
Here we go again. Nothing’s changed
. He could almost taste his disappointment and, illogically, a sense of betrayal. ‘You look as though you’ve seen a ghost, Dad.’

Tom’s expression darkened. ‘Markets aren’t so good. That’s all.’

Silence.

‘I’ll leave you,’ said Jake, and headed for the door.

‘Jake. Stop. Sorry. What was it?’

‘I was going to ask for some advice.’

Tom’s tensed shoulders relaxed visibly. ‘My help?’

‘Yup.’

‘Oh, well, sure. What’s going on?’ Gesturing to the screen, Tom said, and he sounded strained, ‘Job-hunting. CV. I’m getting quite proficient in this game. But so far, no good.’

‘And the graphs, Dad?’

Tom glanced at the computer screen where a couple of indices had turned red. His jaw tightened. ‘Oh, those. Nothing much.’

‘Dad, are you up to something?’

Tom switched the screen off pretty smartish. ‘As I say, job-hunting. I’m yours, Tom. What can I do?’

Jake explained that some research was required, and could Tom help him?

Tom listened carefully to Jake’s précis of Robin Tyler’s advice. ‘I want you to know,’ he said, at the finish, ‘that I and your mother will do everything in our power to help you. I … we feel that you should always be fair, Jake, which is difficult, given the circumstances. I’m not sure what we may be up against. It may be a horrible battle – in fact, I’m pretty sure it will be – but I’ll be there.’ He was working himself up to a powerful manifesto and Jake began to feel marginally better. ‘We must find out everything we can.’

‘So I’m not alone,’ said Jake. ‘You’re on my side.’

‘What made you think I wouldn’t be?’ That was a loaded question. Tom had not been on Mia’s side but Jake wasn’t going to go into that now. He had Maisie to think about and he would need the new, fragile relationship with his father.

‘There’s a payback, though.’

Once upon a time Jake would have grinned. Now, weighed by heaviness and foreboding, he merely growled, ‘What?’

To Jake’s surprise, Tom got up and put an arm around him. ‘It’s OK. Nothing too terrible. Could you do a repair on the garden fork? I’ve tried, but it needs your expert eye. I’m going to dig up the bed at the end of the garden and grow vegetables.’