Authors: Lucy Atkins
Joe is on tiptoes, bouncing, eyes shining, as the three of them stand in the hall.
‘We went to the Science Museum and saw an IMAX movie about tornadoes,’ he says. ‘It was awesome.’ He sounds quite American. She smiles and hugs him tighter.
‘Then what did we do?’ David puts a hand on Joe’s head.
‘We had a foot-long hot dog on the beach!’
‘You didn’t?’ Tess feels the relief of Joe’s arms stretching to reach round her belly, his face against her side.
‘I ate the whole thing.’
‘You went to the beach? In November?’
‘And we had ice creams from this shop with a huge dancing cow.’
‘Lizzie’s, in Cambridge,’ David says. ‘Not a real cow. Best ice cream in Boston.’
‘Then we had room service in the hotel and watched a war movie called
Saving
. . . something . . . what was it, Dad?’
‘
Saving Private Ryan
.’
She is sure that
Saving Private Ryan
is completely unsuitable for a nine-year-old, but Joe is looking at David as if he is a god. She wishes she could protect him from the inevitable wrench of their separation. It is best not to think about that, or about the conflict zones David goes in and out of all the time. Today Joe’s eyes are bright, his cheeks pink. He looks better than he has in weeks – he looks like a normal, happy child as he unpeels himself from her, wanders into the living room, flops onto the sofa and turns on the Disney Channel.
The energy in the hall changes – she and David are now standing too close. She steps back.
‘Well, he was great.’ David hands over Joe’s backpack. ‘Though he’s bankrupted me.’ There is an awkward pause. ‘Actually, I meant to ask. Do you need me to pay some money into an American account? I know it’s been a while.’
‘No,’ she says. ‘If you’re going to contribute, just pay it into my British account.’
‘OK, right, will do, as soon as I get back. Sorry, you know what it’s like, setting up American bank accounts and all that crap . . .’ His eyes crease at the edges. She loved him once, in a calm and friendly fashion, but looking back they were never really going to make it. She never felt anything for David like the passion that she feels for Greg, or the deep-seated pull, the need, the sense of belonging. But equally, she never felt this unsettled with David. She never wondered what he was hiding and, even though he lied to her towards the end, they felt like lies of kindness rather than deceit. They both knew it was over by that time and they both wanted to minimize the hurt. She never felt afraid of David, even for a second.
‘So I should get going.’
‘Yes, sorry, we’ll see you in, what, two weeks?’ She goes and opens the front door for him.
‘Ah, yeah, I have to check that, actually. I may have to go away. I’m not sure yet, but I’ll look into it, we’ll work something out.’
‘OK, but what have you told Joe?’
‘I said I’d see him soon.’
‘I think he needs specifics, David. Right now, he really needs to know what’s happening.’ She grips the door frame.
‘Yes, yes, OK, don’t worry. I’ll email you the moment I’m sorted.’ He doesn’t go. ‘Are you OK, Tess?’
She lets go of the door frame and folds her arms around her belly, tugging her cardigan closed, pushing back her hair. ‘What? I’m fine.’
‘You just seem a bit, I don’t know – edgy? And you still don’t look very well. Is Greg here?’
‘He had to go into the hospital for a bit.’
‘On a Sunday afternoon? Is everything OK with you guys?’
‘Everything’s great, David.’
He holds up his hands. ‘OK. Sorry. None of my business, I get it.’
‘Look, really, it’s all fine. Greg and I had a lovely time in Marblehead. There’s nothing wrong. I’m just tired, that’s all; we only just got back ourselves. And I’m seven months pregnant, I’m allowed to be tired and grumpy.’
‘Fair enough.’ He steps out onto the porch, then stops, turns and looks back at her. ‘But take care of yourself, Tess, OK? If you need anything, anything at all, you can always call me, you know that, right?’
‘In Bahrain?’
He laughs. ‘Definitely not. I’m currently banned from Bahrain.’
When David has gone she goes upstairs to the bedroom and opens up their bags to sort the laundry. It is irritating that he picked up on her unease, and that instinct led him straight to the trouble spot. He knows her too well. She thinks about Greg’s lie in the café. She did not imagine it. He recognized Alex Kingman, she is certain of that.
After she threw up, they went back to the hotel and a profound tiredness hit her – she slept for several hours. At one point she surfaced, sweaty, thirsty, with a dead arm. It was getting dark already and as her eyes adjusted to the greyness she saw Greg in the chair by the desk. He wasn’t working. He was sitting very still, watching her. In the gloom his face was completely blank. She murmured hello, tried to sit up, rubbing her arm, but the pull of sleep was too powerful and she lay back down, feeling the darkness fold back over her.
When she woke it was early evening and Greg was gone. She found a note on the bedside table. ‘Gone for a run. Back in 30 mins.’ He had not put the time on it so she couldn’t tell when he’d left. She got up, went to the bathroom, washed, checked her phone, then sat on the bed and switched on the iPad. She was about to type ‘Alex Kingman’ into Google when the door burst open and Greg came in, pumped up and flushed from running.
‘Hey!’ he said. ‘You’re awake!’ His eyes were bright, his face taut, his movements jerky. He went straight to the bathroom. She shut down the iPad.
That evening, ravenous, they ate at a different restaurant, a place with linen napkins and charming college-student waiters. Greg behaved as if there had been no fainting, no lies, no strangers on the beach. He talked almost non-stop, telling her how he used to drive up to Maine when he was a medical student, how next summer he would like to take her and Joe cycling in Acadia National Park. He talked and talked, describing the park and its history: how, in the early 1900s, Rockefeller cut fifty miles of carriage trails into its wilderness. Joe, he said, would love it up there. After a while she put her hand on his and said, as calmly as she could, that they would have a six-month-old baby next summer. A cycling holiday might not be the best option.
But he started talking about skiing then: how New Hampshire was on the doorstep, he could take Joe up there one weekend, Joe should learn to ski – and she did not stop him because she knew that if he stopped talking then she would have to ask him about the man on the beach, or about Carlo Novak, and she did not want to, not yet. She did not want to tell him that she had opened his boxes. It seemed too unsafe to confess to this, when everything between them felt so off-kilter. And so they sat eating, and Greg talked, and the sea wind raged outside, muffled by the thick restaurant glass.
‘Honey?’ She jumps at the sound of his voice now, booming from the bottom of the stairs.
‘I thought you’d gone!’ He must have been hiding in the kitchen all that time, avoiding David.
‘No, no, I got waylaid by emails but I’m heading in now, for a couple of hours. That OK?’
She comes to the top of the stairs. He is putting on his coat, smiling up at her.
‘Don’t be too long.’
‘I won’t. I just have a couple of patients to check on, then we can have dinner, all three of us. Shall I pick up a takeout on the way home? Thai? Vietnamese? Sushi? Pizza?’
‘Pizza!’ Joe calls, from the sofa.
‘Pizza it is. Sloppy Giuseppe?’
She goes back into the bedroom and throws an armful of clothes down the laundry chute, then peels off her jeans and T-shirt. Her skin is creamy, but the livid stretch marks have crawled further up the tight mound and her belly button is knuckling out now, like a minuscule fist. She can hear Joe’s voice through the floorboards, saying something to Greg.
She hears footsteps and the door closing, as Greg goes down to the garage. She goes through to Joe’s room and empties his backpack on his bed, pulling out the dirty clothes. Through the window, she sees Greg’s car pull out of the drive, then slow. Helena is approaching the driver’s window, in running gear; she bends, waves, but Greg doesn’t stop. Helena watches his car disappear down towards the bigger road, then she turns and begins to run again.
She feels almost sad, suddenly, for Helena. She is clearly unhappy with her marriage, and, despite her successes – the Harvard Medical School degree, two businesses, her health-guru status – she is still grasping for something, someone, that can make her feel that she has really made it. It is no way to live.
She picks up her laptop from the bed and switches it on, but then she hears Joe calling, ‘Mum? Mum? Can I have a cookie?’ She puts away the laptop. She should not be up here with her computer; she needs to be with her son.
An hour later, Greg texts to say that he is caught up in something at the hospital, he will be more than an hour. So they order pizza themselves and curl up with a blanket over them. They watch
Toy Story 3
, then a couple of episodes of the Disney Channel shows Joe is addicted to – peopled entirely by cloned pseudo-adults – and then she runs him a bath. He is getting self-conscious now and will not let her be in the bathroom as he undresses so she has to hand him his pyjamas round the door. She looks at his stocky legs as he pulls them on, and she sees a bruise, near his hip. It is dark blue, with purplish edges, and it is big, the shape of a heel – or a fist.
She says nothing, just waits for him to clean his teeth, and then asks if he would like a story.
Joe still sleeps with the teddy bear David gave him when he was born. It is matted and grubby, never washed, and he uses it as a pillow. She sits on the edge of the mattress and lays a hand on his leg. He flinches.
‘Is your leg sore?’ she says.
‘No.’
‘I saw you have a really big bruise. Did something happen when you were with Dad?’
He widens his eyes, baffled. ‘No!’ Then he frowns. ‘Don’t watch me when I’m getting dressed.’
‘I wasn’t watching, I just glimpsed it, that’s all. How did you get it? Was it at school?’
He folds both arms over his eyes.
‘Did someone hurt you, Joey, on the leg?’
‘No.’
‘It’s a really big bruise.’
‘I banged my leg in PE.’
‘Love, if any kid is hurting you at school, you have to tell me because I can make it stop – I can talk to the teachers, without involving you at all.’
‘Nobody hurt me at school!’ His voice is high, trapped behind his arms.
She strokes his hair. ‘It’s OK,’ she whispers. ‘It’s OK.’
She will go and talk to the PE teacher first thing. She kisses him on the forehead. But there is another thought hunched at the back of her mind and she has to make herself examine it, even though it feels wrong to do so. Greg would never hurt Joe.
But he did hurt Joe. She remembers the bruises on Joe’s upper arm, Greg’s fingermarks in his soft flesh. He grabbed Joe and shook him, he terrified him. It is a sickening thought, but she knows that she has to keep steady and think it through. She cannot ignore it just because the answer is potentially monstrous.
So she forces herself to go through the process: the bruise on Joe’s leg is four or five days old and Greg has not been alone in the house with Joe for a week at least, maybe more. Greg could not have hurt him. She rests her hand on Joe’s head, feeling sullied by her own treacherous mind.
‘When’s Greg coming home?’ Joe mumbles, as if he has listened to her thoughts.
‘Really soon,’ she says. ‘Joey . . . if someone ever hurts you, whoever it is – at school, or even . . . or even at home – you must promise to tell me, OK? I am always on your side, always, always.’
‘When am I seeing Dad again?’
‘Two weeks’ time, I think. He’s going to call when he knows about his next trip.’
‘I want Dad.’ He turns over so his back is to her.
She strokes his shoulders in circles. ‘I know you do. You can call him tomorrow, when you get up. I know he misses you so much. But what I just said – about anyone ever hurting you. It’s my job to protect you.’
‘I want to see Dad right now.’
‘I know you do,’ she murmurs. ‘I know you miss him a lot, don’t you, and you had fun together this weekend. Sometimes the more you see someone, the more you miss them when they aren’t around.’
Joe does not move.
‘Joey,’ she says, ‘who gave you that big bruise?’
‘I already told you.’ His voice is muffled by his pillow. ‘PE.’
She picks up
Treasure Island
. ‘OK,’ she says, ‘let’s have that story now, shall we? They’re about to be ambushed by Silver and the pirates, remember? They’re outnumbered, they’ve made a barricade and they’re under attack.’
When Joe is still, his breathing heavy, she switches off his bedside light and goes to her room. She gets her laptop and sits on the bed, wrapped in a blanket. She types ‘Alex Kingman, Marblehead’ into Google.
‘I can’t sleep.’
She looks up, startled. She didn’t hear him cross the landing. He looks very pale and small in his Arsenal pyjamas. She was sure he was sleeping when she crept out, but he must have been faking. His eyes have big, dark circles under them and he looks cold.
‘Come on, come into the bed with me.’ She pushes aside the laptop and makes room for him. They both get under the duvet. She puts an arm around him.
‘I don’t want to go to school.’ His voice is small.
‘I know.’ She pulls him closer.
‘They all laughed at me on Wednesday when I cried.’
‘Oh, love. You cried? What happened?’
‘I didn’t want to cry but the tears just came out of my eyes and I couldn’t stop.’ He touches his eyes as if checking that they are not about to do it again.
‘What made you cry?’
‘They said I was dumb because I didn’t know the rules of this game they were playing. They all laughed at me and then I cried and they called me a baby.’
She strokes his hair off his face. ‘Did they kick you?’
Joe says nothing.
‘Love, if you tell me what happened, then I can help to sort this out. It doesn’t have to be like this, Joey. It’s not fair on you. Your teacher can sort this out easily.’