Separate Beds (48 page)

She phoned Tom but his mobile was switched off. Instead, she flipped down the speed dial and rang Sadie. ‘You’ll never guess what I’ve just done.’

‘Let me see. What choices do I have? I could waste the equivalent of six months in guessing or you could tell me.’

‘Flash danced in a station.’

Sadie hooted. ‘There’s hope … there’s hope.’

‘Well, actually, I think there is,’ said Annie.

She wondered what Jake and Emily were up to. Had Emily finished packing – and what was the latest on the divorce? Life Lesson 110. Children discard their parents,
and she must get used to being … not exactly last but fourth or fifth in the line when they had news to tell.

What was Mia doing?

A little stiff from the dancing, she paused on the front step to find her key. The door opened.

‘Thought it was you,’ said Tom. He drew her inside and kissed her. ‘You’re late. What have you been doing?’

‘Flash dancing, as it happens.’ She enjoyed the expression on his face. ‘Actually, I need to change. Got a bit hot.’

‘Hot,’ he murmured, following her up the stairs. ‘We like hot.’

He banged the bedroom shut behind him. ‘Are you going to take off your clothes, Mrs Nicholson?’

‘Guess.’ Annie dangled her skirt from a finger in a manner that would have done credit to a world-class stripper. ‘Will that do?’

‘I can’t tell until you’ve taken more off.’

Annie shrugged off the incredibly expensive T-shirt. ‘You look pleased with yourself.’

‘Signed the contract.’

He
was
pleased and happy. How like him. Now that he was back in harness, Tom could allow himself to be himself and she was delighted for him.

‘I need to get closer to inspect the situation.’

She shot a look at him from under her lashes. ‘I need a shower.’

‘I definitely agree.’

She headed into the bathroom and Tom followed her.

‘What are you doing?’

‘What do you think?’

‘On reflection, I think you’re nuzzling my neck.’

‘Good guess. Next question.’

‘What are you planning to do after that?’

‘This.’ His hand snaked around her back and undid her bra. ‘Now what?’

‘I was going to run the water until it was hot.’

‘Can’t afford it,’ he said flatly and, pushing her up against the tiles, kissed her throat. ‘Micro-economy. Are you wearing the same perfume I gave you – oh, years ago?’

‘I am.’

‘Good. Cost a king’s ransom.’

Annie turned her head and found his ear and bit it. He yelped – but with approval.

With a hand, she grasped his hair and forced his face up so that he was looking into her eyes. ‘I have to learn you all over again,’ she said. ‘And I might as well do it properly.’

‘The world has changed. It’s all changed. It’ll be difficult.’ He smiled, and his transformation from the man whom she had once loved, then hated and now discovered she loved again was complete.

‘Are we going to stay in here?’ she asked – not unreasonably.

Reason? What was reason?

‘One thing, Tom.’

‘Stop talking, Annie.’

‘Tom …’

‘
What?
’

‘We’ll look for Mia?’

Pause. ‘Yes. Yes, we will.’

Half an hour later, Annie struggled into a pair of jeans and a sweater and ran downstairs. Hermione was sitting in the kitchen talking to Jake, who was describing Maisie’s first sentence. Annie reminded herself that she must cut up
Hermione’s supper before giving it to her. She had also promised to wash her mother-in-law’s hair after supper.

Annie bent down and kissed Hermione. It seemed the thing to do when one’s heart had been, for a transcendental second, fresh minted. Then she reached down and kissed Rollo too.

‘Hallo, Mum.’ Jake sent her one of his heartbreaking smiles.

‘You look … happy?’ Nowadays, Annie was sparing in how she used the word.

‘Not happy, exactly,’ said the careful Jake. ‘But there is news.’

The baby alarm chose to broadcast Maisie’s sneeze.

‘And?’

‘Much of it was Dad’s doing,’ said Jake. ‘He found out about it. By using a psychiatrist like Reginald Brown, we gave ourselves an advantage. He’s known to favour fathers. He’s sent in a report to the court recommending that Jocasta should not be allowed to take Maisie out of the country, but she should come over regularly and that a visiting schedule is worked out. Apparently, he was of the opinion that Jocasta’s lot ran a very unattractive case … falling over themselves to cite how many houses and material advantages they could give Maisie. And, apparently, this particular judge always listens to the psychiatrist’s report.’

Annie sat down. ‘So, we’ll see.’

‘No. There’s more. Jocasta has formerly notified the court that she’s given up her claim to take Maisie permanently. She’s prepared to accept Reginald Brown’s recommendations.’

Annie looked deep into her son’s face. ‘I’m so glad,’ she said. ‘So very glad for you.’

Emily clattered in her clogs down the stairs and into the kitchen. ‘If I paid you,’ said Jake, ‘would you get rid of them?’

‘I’ll consider it when you’ve paid me.’

‘Do you think I’m a complete idiot?’

‘I do.’

‘Packed?’ asked Annie.

‘Sort of.’ Emily smiled at her mother – and, suddenly, Annie saw the woman Emily would become. ‘Here.’ She unpinned Leonardo’s angel from the noticeboard and closed her daughter’s hands over it. ‘You must take this. He’ll guard you.’ She paused. ‘He’ll keep tight my other daughter.’

‘Oh, Mum.’

The doorbell rang. Rollo gave tongue. Holding the angel, Emily twirled around and said she would get it. She disappeared into the hall. There was a silence, a muffled shriek – and Emily called out, ‘Mum, Dad, I think you should come.’

Annie stepped into the hall just as Tom emerged from their bedroom. For ever after, she remembered the sound of the door banging shut behind him. At that crucial moment she glanced up – and noted that she and Tom were frozen in roughly similar poses.

He looked down at Annie. She looked up at him. A little while earlier, he had cupped her head in his hands.
Hallo, Annie
.

She turned back to the front door and Rollo danced underfoot like a dervish.

A small, thin figure stood on the step, clasping a canvas shoulder bag.

Mia.

Acknowledgements

As always, I owe to many much gratitude. To my editors, Louise Moore, and her Penguin team in the UK, and Kendra Harpster, and the Viking team in the US, thank you. Brilliant and patient, they are the best. My agent, Mark Lucas, is my veritable rock. Many thanks are also owed to Peta Nightingale, Kate Burke, Clare Ledingham and, for her expert help, Frances Hughes. Any mistakes are mine. As always, I rely totally on the incomparable Hazel Orme. Life would not be worth living and novels not worth writing without the support of friends and they certainly did not fail me. Thank you, Fanny Blake, Margot Chaundler, Marika Cobbold, Natasha Cooper, Shirley Eskapa, Belle Grey, William Gill, Alastair Lack, Vanessa Hannam and Pamela Norris and everyone else who has been forced to listen to the groans. My sisters Alison Souter and Rosie Hobhouse did sterling work, too, on the support front. But, as always, Benjie, Adam and Eleanor bore the brunt. Without them, nothing would be possible.

Elizabeth Buchan

talks exclusively about her life

as a writer, and answers

questions on
Separate Beds

Author photo by Ian Philpott

BECOMING A WRITER

Looking back, I think I always wanted to be a writer without knowing it. A rather solitary child, I read voraciously for solace and to escape. I scribbled down notes about what I had read and what it had meant to me. As a small child, I loved stories of wild animals, and very often ended up sobbing when something terrible happened to them (which it usually did). I can also remember the Famous Five and the sense of galloping excitement I got as I was precipitated into their adventures. Luckily, as a teenager, I was much more ambitious, and made myself read history and biography as well as fiction. It did not take long to learn from my reading of biography that I was incurably nosy about other people’s lives. My responses – being enraptured, sometimes puzzled or shocked, or just plain swept away – to the treasure chest in the local library that I plundered on a daily basis were, I am sure, a subconscious preparation for a writing life.

In my late twenties, I began to realize that there was something niggling at the back of my mind, a desire that I could not quite pin down. At the time I was working at Penguin Books as a blurb writer, which turned out to be just the right nursery slope for the apprentice novelist. Part of my job was to read through the Penguin list – from classics to cookery books, and political polemics to poetry. It was a free education for which they paid me. All the same, I sensed I was marking the time, but I also had small children and it was difficult enough to pack everything into a day. However, it was the stuffed-day conundrum that provided the answer because I finally realized there was never going to be a right time to write. Thus the only thing to do was to get on with it.

In general, I wanted to write the books I loved to read. I wanted to be educated and provoked, I wanted to be made to think and to be entertained in the wildest possible sense and I wanted to laugh and, sometimes, to cry. If I could achieve some of those things in my own writing, I would be happy. Between that ambition and the blank page which now faced me, there was a considerable mountain to climb. Not least was the task of developing the writer’s muscles – technical skill, confidence, stubbornness and the ability to concentrate. The learning curve was steep. Writing, in my case at least, proved hard work, but the process was full of surprises and never-ending interest.

MY LIFE AS A WRITER

The early days of my writing career were exacting. I got up very early in the morning to write one page before the children woke up and I went off to work. In the evenings, after the children were in bed, I wrote one more page. Eleven novels later, my working life is less penitential, and I look back and wonder how I did it, but at the time it seemed the only way. I calculated that if I wrote one page it would turn into two, and two would turn into four, and so on. That tiny, daily progression was an optimistic and thrilling one, and made the difficult schedule worthwhile.

Where I write is very important to me. I have a little eyrie at the top of my house that once used to be a baby’s room. Up there, I’m surrounded by a haphazard pile of books and papers. I usually have about thirty to fifty reference books in easy reach for any one book that I’m writing and every so often I’ll pick one out to check a fact or a date. From the window, I look down on to my terraced London garden and every twenty minutes or so (the limit of my concentration span) I look up and out at a motley garden theatre below – squirrels, foxes and jays all competing for territory – and I am constantly haring downstairs to rescue frogs from the jaws of my two cats.

Routine is very important to me too. Most days, I get up early, feed the cats, make breakfast and take it to the spare room so I don’t wake my husband. Breakfast in bed is my great luxury. The cats come up and settle either side of me and I read the newspaper. I’m usually in my office by about 8.30 a.m. where I work until lunchtime. Often I get tempted out to lunch but if I’m in the last stages of a book I work through the day. To limber up for the day’s writing, I will read through my most recently written chapter, tweaking sentences and correcting words or phrases. This gets me back into the flow of the book before I start the proper writing.

I always write three drafts of each novel. I use the first to work out its structure or scaffolding – theme, plot and narrative. The second is for constructing the muscles, by which I mean the characters’ motivations and psychology. By the time I reach the third draft, I really know the novel and I am writing from a position of strength which allows me to work in all sorts of subtleties, resonances and ironies that were not there in my first draft. Instead of adding or amending the previous draft, I usually write from scratch so in total I rewrite a novel three times.

Separate Beds

1) Where did the idea for
Separate Beds
come from?

Recently, there has been a lot of discussion about the family – what is happening to it? Is it changing? Do people still think of the family as important? Coinciding with this ongoing debate was a financial crisis that has – literally – shaken the world. It seemed obvious that what was happening in the financial markets was, as night follows day, going to affect ordinary men and women and, by extension, their families. In a flash,
Separate Beds
arrived in my head.

2) You often write about contemporary life. What are the themes that will strike a chord with readers of
Separate Beds
as it is published in the current economic climate?