He checks his mobile for messages before letting himself through the red door and into the dark hallway. Eleven missed calls. Three voicemails from Zoe, increasingly worried and exasperated. She gave up calling several hours ago.
He wonders where she is.
He turns off the phone, pockets it and steps further into the house, hangs his coat on the banister.
He doesn’t know what to do.
He trudges through to the kitchen and plugs the phone in to charge.
He goes upstairs to the bathroom. He cleans his teeth and washes his face. He looks at himself in the mirror, beaded with water, then goes downstairs and turns on the TV. He cycles through the channels three times, then turns it off.
He walks around the house turning lights on. Then he goes back to the kitchen, checks his phone, clears away Zoe’s breakfast things, puts the dishwasher on.
He opens the fridge and looks at their food, their bottled sauces, their fruit and milk and yogurt, displayed under surgically bright light. He stands in the cool breath long enough for the fridge to start beeping at him.
There’s a carton of milk in there, bought on Monday when the Lambert baby was still in her mother’s womb. And now the child lies with her parents on a slab. Their eyes are low and sly, the artfulness of the dead, as if they know something you don’t, something you’ll find out soon enough.
But the milk is still good enough to drink; he could make a cup of tea with it. He looks at the milk while the fridge beeps and he doesn’t hear the keys in the latch or the door open or Zoe set her bags down in the hallway. He doesn’t hear her walk down the hall and linger in the kitchen doorway.
She says, ‘You’re home.’
He ignores the redundancy. It’s just one of those things people say to one another. Most words people say to each other don’t mean what they seem to. Spoken words carry their real meaning like rats carry infected fleas.
‘I called about a hundred times,’ she says. ‘Your phone was off.’
‘If you leave your phone on, all it does is ring.’
The fridge is still beeping. He shuts the door. He thinks that if he could explain about the milk, then everything will be all right.
He says, ‘Did you see the news?’
Her lip trembles with fury. ‘Of course I saw the news. I’ve done nothing but talk about the fucking news all day. My mother called to talk about the news, and to ask if you were all right. The entire world’s talking about the news. The only person who hasn’t talked to me about the fucking news is you.’
He’s rocked by her ferocity. He swallows it and says, ‘Do you want a drink?’
‘No.’
Nor does Luther. He puts the kettle on.
She says, ‘There’s nice stuff in the tin.’
She means the tall tin of loose-leaf black tea; it’s the kind of thing she brings home from the farmer’s market.
She’ll take great pleasure in showing him these things, lifting them from shopping bags item by item. They linger in the kitchen – him drinking proper tea, Zoe drinking something herbal – and she talks him through the speciality bread, the organic meat, the spices and the wines and the organic vegetables, the rank boutique cheeses. She passes them to him for inspection. He comments on the leanness of the beef, the pleasing density of the bacon, the weight of the organic eggs, the tincture of the wine. He doesn’t have much of a palate, food is food, but he loves those Saturday afternoons in the summer and autumn, sitting here in the kitchen with his wife.
Later, if it’s a really good day he’ll sit reading while she cooks. She’s not a chatty chef; she likes to concentrate, empty her mind. She’s prepared and methodical, first laying out the ingredients strictly in accordance with the recipe.
Only when she knows she’s got everything she needs to hand does she begin to improvise. It’s from this improvisation that she takes real pleasure.
She doesn’t know it, but she talks to herself while she’s cooking, rehearsing work conversations through half-opened lips, observations related to the food, things to do with her working week. Working it all through.
He likes to hunch over his book, only pretending to read, listening. He loves her fiercely and acutely in those moments, running through her private thoughts and imaginary conflicts.
Later, she sips wine and flicks through the Saturday newspapers as he washes up. He doesn’t mind washing up. She’s told him more than once that washing up is in his nature.
Now the water in the kettle seethes and Zoe is looking at him with ice in her eyes. He’s worn out. A muscle in his upper arm twitches. He says, ‘I should have called.’
‘Yes, you should have called.’
‘I was—’
‘Busy?’
Yes
, he wants to say. I was
busy.
But he doesn’t. He says, ‘I’m sorry.’
She takes off her coat, finally. Hangs it over the back of a kitchen chair. Then she embraces him, puts her head onto his neck so he can smell her hair and her skin; even that she’s smoked a crafty cigarette today, probably guilt-ridden and scared on his behalf, pacing the forlorn smoking area outside Ford and Vargas. Calling him names under her breath, hating him because she was scared for him. The smell of that cigarette fills him with tenderness and regret.
‘I should have called,’ he says. ‘I should have. But I was caught up. It was pretty bad.’
‘Because it was a baby?’
Their eyes lock. ‘Babies are never easy.’
She squeezes past him, opens the fridge, takes out the wine.
‘I thought you didn’t want a drink.’
‘I changed my mind. I can do that. I can change my mind.’
She pours herself a glass.
He waits. Then he says, ‘What does that mean?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Nothing means nothing.’
‘Well, that did. That meant nothing.’
Acting on autopilot, she passes him the bottle with the cork half jammed back in the neck. He puts the bottle back in the fridge and slings the heavy door shut.
She gulps wine, then says, ‘We need to have a talk.’
‘We’re talking now.’
‘Not about this. About me and you.’
‘What about me and you?’
‘I think you know. In your heart, you have to know.’
‘Know
what
?’
‘John, seriously. Do you have any idea how much I hate this?’
‘Hate what, Zoe? I don’t know what we’re saying here.’
‘This marriage,’ she says.
His legs go weak.
He has to sit.
‘You mean being married to me.’
‘No. I mean . . . me and you together.’
‘I don’t understand. I don’t know what you’re saying.’
‘You do know what I’m saying. I’ve been saying it for years now. I’ve been saying it louder and louder.’
‘You’re really going to do this? Today?’
‘Seriously, John, when would you like me to say it?’
‘I don’t know. When the time’s better.’
‘And when’s that? Because I tell you, I’ve been trying. I’ve been trying and trying. And you just never listen. You turn your back on me, again and again.’
‘If this is about the leave of absence—’
‘Of course it’s not about the leave of sodding absence.’
‘I told you, I swear to God, I absolutely swear to God, I put in the request. Christ, I tried to get myself
fired
today.’
‘You don’t understand,’ she says. ‘You’re not listening. You never do. You think you do, but you don’t.’
‘Okay,’ he says. ‘I’m listening.’
‘The leave of absence wasn’t a request,’ she says. ‘It was an ultimatum.’
‘I don’t get you. I don’t understand.’
She laughs again, bitterly. ‘To see if you’d do what you promised, just once. And you couldn’t do it. You said you would, time and time again. But you never did. And finally, I decided: I’ll ask once more. And if he lies to me one more time, I’ll know that he always will. He’ll keep telling me what I want to hear, day after day, but they’re just words.’
He blinks in hurt. She pities him. She says, ‘Whatever you’re going to say, don’t say it. Because it’ll be a lie.’
She waits for him to answer. He massages his forehead with the heel of his hand. Takes a breath.
He says, ‘I know.’
She turns to him. ‘About what?’
‘The baby.’
‘What baby?’
‘Our baby.’
Luther gets up and goes to the fridge. He opens the ice tray, removes an ice cube. He rubs it over his forehead. Cold water drips down his shirt.
He shuts the fridge door. He’s shivering, trembling from his feet to his fingertips. He can hear the tremor in his voice. He hates it.
‘I found this little plastic cap,’ he says. ‘Behind the bin in the bathroom. I didn’t know what it was. I thought it was for a thermometer. But it wasn’t. And it worried me. It nagged at me, the way things do. At the time, I didn’t even know why. I should’ve just thrown it away. But it was bugging me. I carried it around in my pocket for like a week. And then for some reason, it clicked. I knew what it was. So I went to the chemist. Bought the three most popular home pregnancy testing kits. Sure enough. You bought the market leader. Very wise.’
She drains her wine. Pours another.
He says, ‘Was it mine?’
‘Of course it was yours.’ Clumsy with nerves, she knocks over the glass. They don’t speak while she gets a roll of kitchen paper and tears off a few sheets. ‘Christ, John. Why didn’t you
say
anything?’
‘I was waiting for you to tell me.’
She bites her lip, mops up the wine.
She drops the wine-soaked Kleenex in the pedal bin and leans her back against the worktop. She pulls back her hair, but can’t find anything to tie it with.
‘Shit,’ she says.
Luther’s in a kitchen chair, his elbows on his knees. He’s looking away from her at the interlocking geometric pattern of light and shadow on the kitchen floor; black, white, ten shades of grey. ‘So what happened?’
‘Nothing. I lost it.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘Why do you think? You were busy.’
He winces at her unexpected cruelty.
‘Look, there’s nothing to tell,’ she says. ‘I was pregnant, then I started to bleed and then I wasn’t pregnant. I spent the afternoon in hospital. You didn’t come home that night.’
‘I thought you’d had a termination.’
‘Why would you think that?’
‘Because you were pregnant and then you weren’t. And you didn’t tell me.’
‘You didn’t give me the chance.’
‘You never wanted them. Kids.’
‘Neither did you.’ She trails off. ‘Oh Jesus,’ she says. ‘The bear.’
She’s talking about the big, plush teddy bear she found sitting at the bottom of Luther’s wardrobe.
‘You told me that was for Rose’s granddaughter.’
‘What am I supposed to say?’ he says. ‘It’s for the baby you secretly had aborted?’
‘What did you do with it?’
‘I didn’t know what to do with it. I took it to Oxfam.’
She stands there.
He sits. Both of them look at the interlocking shadows on the floor.
‘God,’ she says. ‘What a mess.’
Luther laughs an empty laugh.
Zoe reaches for her coat.
He says, ‘Where are you going?’
‘I don’t know. Out.’
‘Are you coming home?’
‘I think it’s best if I don’t.’
‘So where will you sleep?’
‘At my mum’s, probably.’
There’s a tiny flex, a comma at one corner of her mouth, and he thinks she’s lying. But he doesn’t trust his judgement; he’s angry and tired and bereft. He may be seeing lies where there are none. And if he goes down that road now, then however bad it might be right now, it’ll only get worse.
He watches her put her coat on and smells cigarettes and knows she’s not going to her mum’s or to her sister’s or to her friend’s or to anywhere else he knows.
More than anything, what he wants is for Zoe to stay here, in this house, the house with the red door, the house with both their names on the title deeds, John and Zoe Luther.
How proud they’d been, the day they moved in. Their first real house, too big for just the two of them. The area was a bit rough, but it was up and coming and anyway who cared? Luther used to fantasize about being an old man, dying in the room upstairs; it would be a library by then, with leather armchairs. And he’d be the one to go first; she’d come in one morning with a cup of tea in a china cup and few biscuits on a plate and he’d be dead in his leather armchair with a book in his lap, a good book, much loved and well read.
And now she’s belting her coat, waiting for him to say something.
He says, ‘There’s no need for you to go anywhere.’
‘If I stay, we’ll fight.’
‘Look,’ he says, and he wonders if she can hear the desperation in his voice. ‘Look,’ he says again. ‘I’m not going to relax tonight. With all this, waiting for the phone to ring. I’m going to go mad if I hang around the house. So you stay here, okay? You stay here and I’ll go.’
He reads a flare of disappointment in her eyes. And there’s a dizzying lurch inside him to think that even now, at the teetering edge of their marriage, he’s disappointing her.
She stands with her coat buttoned and belted. And because of that, because she’s ready to walk out the door, he says it again, ‘I’ll go.’
She nods slowly, once. ‘Okay.’
He goes to the kitchen door. Hesitates. ‘Do you want me to call you? Let you know how it goes?’
She doesn’t answer. When he turns to ask again, she’s crying.
He doesn’t understand. He doesn’t know how to say the right thing.
He says, ‘Lock up properly. Lock the doors and windows.’
He steps outside. He shuts the kitchen door and walks away and is lost.
He thinks about dropping round to see Reed. But if he does, he might have to talk about it. And he doesn’t want to talk about it.
But he’s got to do something, he’s got to go somewhere. So he stops off to buy a bag of chips and goes to see Bill Tanner.
He’s holding the chips in soggy paper, smelling faintly of vinegar, when Bill opens the door and gives him a big, bright denture smile.
Luther knows something’s wrong.
He walks in, automatically ducks his head.
They eat chips out of the paper on the Formica table. Bill slathers his chips in brown sauce from a glass bottle. There are snotty clogs of sauce round the thread of the screw top.