Separate Beds (8 page)

‘Sure.’

As he advanced slowly into the room, Emily regarded him with some anxiety and a great deal of painful love. He looked thinner and had shed the vitality that had been so much part of him.

‘Can I sit down?’

Emily pointed to the bed. Tom hitched up his cords and sat on the extreme edge. ‘Sorry to be so formal but I want a little word.’ He pushed a hand awkwardly through his hair. ‘I’ll come to the point.’ He paused. ‘Money. I’m afraid we’re going to have to make changes.’ She studied his downturned face. ‘I hate this, Ems. I wanted very much to give you a chance … I believed it was important. Still do. But it’s not going to be possible.’

Emily sat down in her chair and folded her hands in a manner she hoped hid
her
savage heart and any incipient rebellion and conveyed maturity. ‘You want to stop my allowance.’

‘Don’t want to, Emily. Have to.’

Rising to an occasion was always exhilarating – the source of a serotonin lift and a moral tick. ‘I was going to suggest it, Dad.’ This was untrue but her father was not to know that. ‘It’s only right and you’re not to worry about it.’

She went and sat beside him, gazing lovingly into the blue eyes. He was down and beaten, and she couldn’t bear it and ached to protect him. ‘I’m so sorry, Dad, that this has happened. You don’t deserve it.’

‘Little Mouse,’ he said, using the old name, and leaned against her. At that moment, Emily understood that the transition between the all-powerful parent to the one who needed your protection could happen in the blink of an eye – and when it was least expected.

Her father sighed. ‘It was a nice experiment, Emily. I’m pleased you got a bit of time … Most people don’t. Incidentally, those who are jealous are the nastiest critics but never pay any attention to them.’ He leaped up to the
window and stared out at the jiggery-pokery, greeneryyallery jumble of pots, gnomes and trellis in the neighbour’s garden, which Emily knew so well. ‘Of course, you can live here, that goes without saying, but I’m afraid your mother and I will have to ask for a contribution to the bills.’

Emily had the curious sensation that she was moving in slow motion. She bent to retrieve a minute piece of fluff from the carpet and dropped it into the bin. She was tasting the bitterness of a lost opportunity – which she had taken for granted and was now to be snatched away.

‘Just one other thing …’ Her father turned round to face her. ‘Keep an eye on your mother, will you? She’s been used to a certain … standard of living. It might be difficult … you know.’ He smiled uncertainly at Emily, and his eyes creased at the corners. ‘She misses your sister. I know this is unlikely … but if you ever
did
hear from her, you would tell us? You wouldn’t keep it secret?’

Always Mia, thought Emily. Old/young, male/female, Mia had only to fix those eyes on a listener and describe how she had rescued a tortoise – ‘such a darling torty’ – from cruel youths who had dropped it into the canal. Or she was starting a campaign to save the poor pigs/chickens from the wicked conditions in which they were kept. Or babies in Africa were dying from malaria and all for the want of a mosquito net … and everyone fell in love with her and reached for their chequebooks.

‘Of course I’d tell you.’

Chapter Six

Sadie was right. Be strong. If at this particular juncture it seemed a bit ambitious it was, at the very least, a useful ambition on which to attach an anchor.
Think robust
.
Think survival
.

The morning after Tom had told her his news, she had been up very early. Down in the kitchen, she discovered a half-drunk mug of tea and a slice of toast with only one bite out of it, but Tom was nowhere to be seen. After a search, she tracked him down in the cellar.

According to local lore, an ancient rivulet ran under the street. As a consequence, the cellar smelt damp, musty and – as Annie always fancied – shrouded in time and decay. Whitewash peeled off the walls, the beaten-earth floor was cold and unforgiving, and the space was stuffed with empty bottles, rubbish, abandoned packing cases and racks of Tom’s wine.

Looking cold and exhausted, Tom was stacking boxes in a corner.

‘Tom, what are you doing down here?’

He did not look round. ‘I need to make space for my office stuff that’s being sent over.’

‘There isn’t room. Anyway, won’t it spoil? You know, get mouldy?’

He turned round and knocked a couple of empty Kilner jars poised precariously on a makeshift shelf. Grabbing at
them, he said, ‘You won’t want it in the house. You’d hate it.’ He shoved the jars back on the shelf. ‘Whatever else is going to happen, I wanted to spare you that.’

‘Tom.’ She stuffed her hands into her jeans pockets. ‘It isn’t your fault.’

‘Isn’t it?’ His voice warned her not to trespass too far on his feelings. ‘It’s me they’re getting rid of. Oh, I know they dressed it up about splitting the job. But it’s true.’ He looked away. ‘I can read them.’

‘Even so.’

He heaved the final box on to the top of the stack. ‘Nice to know you don’t blame me for that as well as everything else.’ The dirt trapped between the boxes made a grinding sound. ‘Nice to think you don’t plan to crow over me.’

She flushed. ‘That was uncalled-for.’

‘Was it?’

‘Stop it.’ Annie knew he was lashing out because he was in anguish. All the same. ‘We have to talk properly. About what to do. You know …’

‘So you can make a list? Let me see … at the top. “Reassure Tom that he’s not a failure” … Or “Remember to take the old boy to the knackers’ yard”.’

‘Tom, that doesn’t help.’ Impatient with her own verbal inadequacies, she shrugged helplessly. ‘It’s claustrophobic down here.’

Tom wiped his dirty fingers on a handkerchief. ‘Yes, yes. Talk we must. But I can’t think straight at the moment.’

‘OK. OK.’ She had to give him space. She was
willing
to give him space.

‘You don’t understand, the job was my life.’ His admission
was shocking and she knew it had only been forced from him by desperation.

‘I know,’ Annie said.
I know
. ‘And I do understand. I promise I do.’

He tapped his head. ‘You do there,’ he said. ‘But here?’ He tapped his chest.

She responded passionately: ‘Tom, don’t.’ He glanced up at her through narrowed lids. ‘I know that look. It means you don’t want anyone to know how deep … how deep it goes.’ She reached over and touched one of the unstable Kilner jars with a fingertip. ‘But it’s permissible to feel like that.’

He swung away from her. ‘Am I so transparent? Yes, yes, of course I am. But, Annie …’ Over his shoulder he sent her the ghost of a grin. ‘But, yes … I
am
hurt. Hurting. I feel like … like someone has taken a knife to my guts.’ Again he turned away. ‘I want to kill them.’

She stared at the jars masked in their grime.
Did I really once make raspberry jam? Did Tom once have his job?
‘Tom, let’s put your things somewhere else. This is not the place.’

He was bitter, very bitter. ‘Why not here, Annie? Bury ’em. Like I’m buried.’

His misery was like a cloud of stinging insects whirling through the rank, confined cellar and it made Annie feel breathless. ‘Come upstairs. I’ll make the coffee.’

‘You go. I’ll finish stacking.’

Annie paused at the top of the steps and called down, ‘You will get another job. Wait and see.’

He didn’t answer.

In the days that followed, Annie left for St Brigid’s at the usual time, abandoning Tom to work through his address
book and sound out his contacts. In the evenings, he reported that, so far, there was nothing doing.

That week had turned into the next and dwindled to the weekend.

Saturday morning. After an uneasy night, Annie emerged from her bedroom and almost collided with Tom. On impulse, she pulled him into the privacy of her room and shut the door.

‘What on earth …?’

Tentatively, she touched his cheek – a gesture that felt odd and out of practice. ‘You must talk to me, Tom. I mean … if you need to?’

‘I’m doing my best.’

‘We’re not good at talking.’

‘Why tell me that?’

‘You must say what you feel. I’ll listen.’ She fixed her gaze on him. ‘Tom, you might like to. You might
need
to.’

He looked amazed. ‘No, I might not.’

OK. She was wasting her breath and took refuge in pulling back the curtains. The rings clanked and rattled on the rod and daylight flooded in. ‘But I wanted to say that I am here.’

Tom acted as if he hadn’t heard anything she’d said and inspected a photograph on Annie’s dressing-table. It showed Jake and Jocasta wrapped up in outdoor things with Maisie, bundled up like a tiny fat dormouse, between them. ‘Didn’t know you had this.’

‘Taken at Christmas.’

‘Jocasta doesn’t look that happy.’

‘What do you mean?’ Annie peered over his shoulder.

‘What I said. Jocasta looks unhappy.’

‘You mean, she isn’t grinning like a maniac?’

Tom replaced the photograph and moved towards the door. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘Tom …’

But he had vanished and she had no option but to follow him downstairs.

As she entered the kitchen, he held up a sheet of paper. ‘What’s this?’

‘Shopping list.’

‘“Micro-economic management”,’ Tom read out, ‘divided into two sections. “Family economies” and “Me”.’ He looked up. ‘That’s honest, at least. What comes under the first?’

‘Easier to say what doesn’t. Organic steak, blueberries and quilted loo paper, that’s what. It’s Raspo from now on.’

‘And “Me”?’

‘Me’ was more problematic. Of course she could find economies on a list that included hair, facials, waxing and manicures, but not without a pang. Clothes were not so vexed, for Annie had retreated into her blouses, black office skirts and trousers some time ago.

She cut a slice off the loaf and dropped it into the toaster. ‘Your mother always said you have to make do with what Mother Nature saw fit to allocate. So, it looks like I’ll be giving Mother Nature a go.’

The toaster emitted a clicking noise, which didn’t bode well for its general health. ‘Should we talk about money?’ Her lips were suddenly dry. ‘Go over the figures again? We haven’t got very far.’

‘Yup. We’d better.’ Tom poured cereal into a bowl.

‘Did you talk to Emily?’ Annie asked eventually.

‘Yes.’ Tom was even more clipped.

‘And?’

‘As you might expect, Emily understood. She’s a good girl.’

She placed the toast in front of Tom. ‘You must eat.’ She watched him play with the cereal. ‘What are you going to do today?’

‘Unpack the stuff from the office.’ Pause. ‘Actually, I thought the shed might be better. I might tackle clearing it out. It hasn’t been touched for years.’ He roused himself visibly to ask. ‘And you?’

‘Oh, shopping as usual,’ she said, through gritted teeth.

Instead of saying, ‘I’ll give you a hand,’ which would have been really very helpful, Tom said, ‘OK, I’ll be here when you get back.’

A little later, Annie threw the shopping bags into the back seat of the car and drove off. The radio crackled with predictions of financial Armageddon. Annie listened and thought,
It’ll be over soon, surely
. Then she changed her mind:
Perhaps it won’t
. A banking expert came on to talk about what happened when a bank went bust, and she found herself shivering because it all seemed too close to home.

Outgoings versus income? There was not going to be much competition as to which was greater. Maynard Keynes advocated spending your way out of recession but most of the Nicholson reserves of wealth (which had never been that great) had been expended before the axes of redundancy and economic uncertainties had fallen.

Think of Christmas only a few weeks back. Blush pink roses (‘flown in’ – so the upmarket supermarket label had read – ‘from Kenya’) for the table decoration. Expertly picked, they had looked magical with tiny white lights woven around ivy at the base of the vase – Annie’s homage to the old masters. There had been almonds from Jordan, ginger
from Indonesia and chocolates from Belgium. The bronze-fleshed turkey had been hand-reared and exuded (in theory anyway) a fragrance of the wild herbs that had been mixed into its feed. The Christmas cake had been made with bitter black cherries, doused with vintage brandy and hand-painted with holly and ivy motifs. Et cetera. Et cetera.

Tom had said, ‘You’re so good at detail, Annie.’ But she was pretty sure it had not been a compliment.

Annie checked the rear-view mirror before turning left into the supermarket car park.

‘Micro-economic management’ went her notes.

(1)
No ready-made meals
.

The aisles groaned with French cheeses, fine wines, expensive meat and vegetables. List in hand, Annie cruised up and down, searching out the unfamiliar nooks and aisles that housed the store-brand and economy products. She even hunted in the reduced-price section, which she usually avoided because it was wrong to snaffle up things for which you could afford to pay full price when others couldn’t.

As her hand hovered over a bottle of half-price bleach, Annie had the odd notion that her brain was changing. Make do and mend … The message shot down the neural pathways. She snatched up the bleach and slotted it into her basket.

(2)
Have list and do not deviate from it
.

Wrapped in a pale pink pashmina, the woman in front of her was executing the Supermarket Manoeuvre. Arm out, sweep products smoothly into trolley, move on. Arm
out … It was a highly trained performance and had taken years of practice.

Yet another ultra-thin woman halted in front of the Without section and netted gluten-free bread, lactose-free biscuits and dairy-free cheese. Not losing a beat, she moved on.

Sadie was a great believer in mental reprogramming. She was always rabbiting on about it. OK, Sadie, she thought, a trifle grimly. This previously careless (meaning, without care) happy shopper must undergo metamorphosis into a careful, prudent one.