Separate Beds (47 page)

‘Church?’ Since the accident, Hermione was noticeably more confused about some things.

‘You used to go regularly.’

‘That was at my church. This one is among … alien thorns.’

Emily piped up. ‘Alien corn, I think you mean.’

Tom threw her the watch-how-you-go look. ‘Corn or thorns, isn’t God there?’

‘I’m not sure that was the point, Dad,’ Emily murmured.

‘Alien porn or corn,’ Jake muttered audibly into Emily’s ear, and she smothered a giggle. He looked at his father, raised a hand of surrender. ‘Sorry, Dad.’

‘Shut up, you two,’ Tom said, with a grin.

Emily got up to turn down the gas. Jake fiddled with the baby alarm and glottal noises filtered into the kitchen.

‘If you wanted to take me anywhere, Tom, you could take me to visit my friend Sheila at the home.’ Also since her illness, Hermione’s voice had developed a waver. ‘She said she’d love to see me.’

Emily nudged Tom and he rolled his eyes. ‘OK, Hermione, I’ll take you down there. We’ll look at the diaries.’

There was a tiny pause and Tom knew what everyone was thinking: what does he
have
in his diary? But that didn’t matter any more. He was way past that.

‘By the way …’ Jake jabbed a finger at the corner where the pink doll’s cradle had now migrated. ‘Where did you find it?’

‘In the attic. I knew I’d put it up there,’ Tom replied. ‘I thought if you, we, finished it, Maisie could have it.’

‘Grief,’ exclaimed Jake. ‘That old thing? I suppose so.’

But Tom could tell that Jake was really, really pleased – and that pleased him more than he could say.

A little later, Annie arrived home and drifted into the kitchen. Chin in hands, she sat with drooping eyelids at the table, her skin transparent with fatigue. ‘Thanks, Tom,’ she said gratefully, as he chopped and cooked vegetables and served up the macaroni.

He had just sat down when Hermione said, ‘Tom, I would love a little tomato ketchup.’ As he heaved himself to his feet, she added, ‘Do you know? I don’t think I’ve seen anyone all day.’

This was becoming quite a theme.

‘Not quite fair, is it, Hermione?’ he replied, in his most reasonable manner. ‘I gave you lunch before I went out.’

‘No need to look like that, dear,’ she said.

Annie reached out a hand. ‘Hermione, are you very unhappy here?’

Rollo snuffled about under the table, and Emily said, ‘This dog is a dustbin.’

Hermione grabbed Annie’s hand like a drowning woman. ‘I hope you don’t ever have to be in my position.’

Tom’s composure cracked. ‘You’re given the best we can manage, Hermione. I even moved out of my bloody bedroom to accommodate you.’

A sudden dense embarrassment seized everyone, and Tom cursed silently. Hermione dropped a piece of bread down to Rollo, Annie turned away and Jake and Emily looked everywhere but at their father.

Jake jumped to his feet and created a kerfuffle in clearing the plates. ‘Coffee, anyone?’

Tom observed Annie make a huge effort. ‘We love having
you here, Hermione, and you must tell us if there’s anything we can do to make you more comfortable,’ she said, and stroked Hermione’s hand.

In penance, Tom made the coffee and offered a cup to his mother. ‘If you had the choice, Hermione, would you like to go back to the home?’

Several expressions chased across his mother’s face, and he couldn’t make sense of any of them, except for an angry despair – and that did not augur well or solve the problem.

She thrust the coffee cup towards Annie. ‘Dear, I think this coffee is a little bit cold,’ she said.

‘I’m going upstairs to pack,’ said Emily. ‘Thanks for supper.’

‘Just a moment, Emily,’ Tom said. ‘I’d like to say something to you all. I have an announcement.’

Obligingly, Emily hovered by the door. Jake leaned against the sink. Annie sat up upright. Hermione cupped a hand around her coffee. ‘Well,’ she asked, ‘what is it, dear?’

He savoured the moment, allowing his pleasure and pride to spill out. ‘I’ve got a job,’ he said. ‘Carbon Trust. Two days a week, which means there will be plenty of time for other things, important things, if you like, but it’s a good job.’ He paused. ‘Two days a week is what I wanted.’

The hubbub that ensued was worth a lot. In fact, almost everything.

‘Hermione didn’t answer the question,’ Tom said to Annie, as they lay in bed. ‘About whether she wanted to stay here or not.’

‘We’re going to have to think about her.’ Annie was drowsy. ‘I’m not sure she’s settling long-term. I’ll have to try to introduce her to some people. But who?’

‘I’ll help,’ said Tom. ‘She’s my mother. By the way, have you seen Zosia lately?’

‘We had coffee last week and caught up with each other’s news.’

‘Still friends?’

‘Sure.’

‘Annie,’ he said, ‘I found your accounts book.’ Beside him, he felt her stiffen. ‘You’ve sold your jewellery because of my debts? You shouldn’t have done.’

She turned her head to look at him and her hair spilled across the pillow. ‘Who’s to say what I do or don’t do?’

Tom propped himself up on an elbow and looked down at her. ‘It’s almost the worst thing. You did it because of me and I feel so guilty.’

She smiled sleepily. ‘Tom. All of us are guilty of a lot of things. Go to sleep.’

He reached over and snapped off his bedside light.
All of us are guilty
‘Annie …’

There was no answer. She had neither condemned nor forgiven him – a fluid state of affairs that, he supposed, was true of most situations. He would have liked Annie to stretch out a hand to him and tell him she didn’t care a toss about her jewellery. But that would not have been quite the truth. He would have liked some kind of physical contact where he could have made absolutely clear the depth of his regret.

But he would content himself with a warm bed, the slight suggestion of scented fabric conditioner emanating from her nightdress, the tangled skeins of her hair on the pillow.

Annie gave a soft snuffle as she slipped into sleep and Tom grinned up into the dark.

There had been Annie in the beginning: thin, perpetually surprised that anyone should take notice of her, curious, tentative. Annie post-partum: taking command, busy, whippet thin, twenty-four-hour mother. The Annie of the last few years: grieving, holding down her job, remote. Hating him. Blaming him.

But wasn’t hate good? It indicated strong feelings had survived.

Another snuffle, and Annie rolled over, reached for the light and snapped it back on.

He sat up. ‘What are you doing?’

She blinked up at him. ‘I wanted to check out your face.’

‘For God’s sake, you see it all the time.’

She caught her bottom lip between her teeth, hauled herself up the pillows, folded her arms across her breasts – and laughed. ‘Tom, you’ve got a job. It’s the best thing … and I wanted to take a second look at that very smug expression.’

It was one of the sweetest things she had ever said. Tom gazed at the white neck and the tangled hair, the slope of shoulder and outline of breast under the white cotton. She was so far away, yet closer than anyone. Closer than anyone would ever be. Tenderness gushed through him. ‘Go to sleep. You’ve got a big meeting tomorrow.’

She touched his chin with a finger. ‘Never so peacefully.’

Chapter Twenty-eight

Curious how it was possible to live more than one life at the same time. While Annie went through the motions – job, house, accounts, rejoicing at Tom’s job with the Carbon Trust (part-time, mind you, but strategic and managerial), she reprised the past and rehearsed a future. House emptying? Could they afford to put Hermione back in the home? Where would Jake fetch up? He was making noises about moving out in the not-so-distant future.

Annie’s life had been unremarkable, ordinary – she would never argue otherwise and its ordinariness was precious. But the past months had triggered reminders of the time when she had lived closer to the emotional bone – the time when she had expected
so much
, and yearned to touch the heights.

It was as if a huge wooden spoon had dipped into her head and was stirring it up. She rubbed the place on her finger where her mother’s ring used to sit.
Sufficient unto the day … Seize the day
… She remembered the old truisms and helpful clichés her mother had trotted out. She had had a great capacity for living in the present, which her daughter decided she must emulate.

As a young woman, Annie had believed there had to be some sort of explanation for existence, some significance attached to it. There had to be a force pulling the strands
together. These days, she didn’t consider the subject much at all, and perhaps it was time she did.

The wooden spoon was doing its work pretty thoroughly. It mixed up many recollections. Tom in the beginning: raven-haired, outrageous, strong. Tom after the children arrived: very busy being the BBC stalwart, increasingly preoccupied, a touch smug, not at ease with his son and daughters, mainly because he didn’t know them very well. Switch to Tom of the past few months: wounded, bitter, trying not to be. Almost broken.

But not.

A Midlands landscape rushed past the train window and the mutter of voices, phone calls and movement ebbed and flowed inside.

Sarah looked up from the armful of papers spread out across the table. In one of his periodic managerial fits, Chuck had packed them off to a one-day Department of Health course in Birmingham and they were on their way back.

‘Useless, wasn’t it?’ Annie concluded. ‘Except for the last speaker who was good.’

Sarah shrugged. ‘Do I care? Yes, I do. I do, Annie. Promise.’

‘Do you think we contribute at all? Are we any help to society?’

Coming at the end of a long day, it was not the first question that Sarah wished to address. ‘If you mean does our work, which is basically a series of hand-to-hand combats with medical staff, mean anything more than hand-to-hand combat, no.’

Annie laughed. ‘Go back to your newspaper.’

Large bureaucracies were designed to kill clear,
unconstrained thinking stone dead and, guess what, Annie had devoted her working life to one.

…‘Pessimist,’ Tom had accused her.

‘Have you ever worked in a large bureaucracy?’

He had frowned. ‘As it happens, yes.’

‘Chicken feed,’ she had teased. ‘The BBC isn’t even a footnote on the NHS …’

From now on, she was going to refuse, absolutely refuse, to get bogged down in the metaphysics of her work life. Life was complicated enough. It was best to leave it to beings like the angel on the kitchen noticeboard – a heavenly post-boy emerging out of Leonardo’s shadows bearing with him all sorts of invitations and promises, which you could take note of or not.

The train drew into the station. Stepping out, Annie inhaled the familiar coffee-cum-overheated-pastry smell of a British station. Sarah hopped out behind her and they threaded their way on to the concourse. Annie turned to say goodbye and jumped as the Tannoy boomed: ‘“Let’s start at the very beginning …”’ and the unmistakable voice of Julie Andrews soared above the hubbub.

‘Good grief!’ For once that was all Sarah could manage.

In the middle of the concourse a man in chinos and trainers threw out his hands and turned in time to the music. A girl with blue hair mimicked him. Two others in footless tights and plimsolls were sucked like atoms to the nucleus. They, too, threw up their arms and fell into step. Within half a minute, sixty or so were dancing. They were serious in their movements, intent but also smiling.

‘That’s rehearsed,’ said Sarah, fingers clenching and unclenching on her shoulder strap.

The man beside Annie hoisted his small boy on to his shoulders and the crowd that had gathered behind them swept the two women towards the dancers.

‘“Doh …”’ sang Julie.

The notes ricocheted around Annie’s head and, deep in her bones, she felt something shift.

Julie’s voice soared higher.

The dancers swirled round as one and, as they did so, a youth with Rasta hair and leathers grabbed Annie. ‘Look after my bags,’ she shrieked at an open-mouthed Sarah.

‘“Ray …”’

She was singing of sun … warm, bright sun

Round Annie went. Hands up, arms windmilling, feet clicking and sliding over the concourse, pushed and willingly pulled by a leathered Prince Charming.
What am I doing?
She whirled past an elderly couple doing a brisk waltz and past a girl with her school satchel on her back kicking her legs up as if there would be no tomorrow.

‘“Me …”’

What name did one call oneself?

My name is Annie
.

And as the song progressed, the music prised up the claws of the succubus of bitterness and regret so long dug into her back. It grew to be less and less burdensome,
weightless
, until it rolled off and away, to leave her leaf-light and cleansed.

Reborn?

Once again, she was the Annie who had danced with Tom and stolen home in a white and violet dawn. Once again she was dancing in the alpine meadows above Salzburg and at the beginning of the journey.

Remade?

Not quite. She was breathless and the protest from her pelvic floor reminded her that she had given birth to three babies. But, in that last moment of free-fall, she had shaken free of the shackles that bound her to float on a thermal of excitement and hope.

‘And
what
was all that about?’ Sarah handed back her bags when, as quickly as it had cohered, the dance and the dancers melted back into the crowd of commuters and passengers.

Between pants, Annie managed a grin. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘But it was marvellous.’

It was dark as she emerged from the Tube station. As she headed home, lights were switched on, looping a necklace of brilliance along the streets like Christmas lights. Each one sheltered a melting, radiant centre that pierced her vision. Piles of leaves in the gutter shuffled and whispered in draughts created by traffic. The cold on her cheeks felt as crisp as baked salt and yet the warmth from her body was lazily languorous. Now she felt hungry – and crazily expectant.