And not just any child, I remind myself. Her own two-year-old brother. Eleven is old enough to know what you’re doing. My best friend was a monster. My anger takes hold again and it’s a good feeling. A rush of energy that gives me strength.
‘Do you fancy grabbing a glass of wine later?’ I ask. ‘The old pub we used to go to?’ I haven’t been for a drink with Penny in ages – not since she decided to expand the business. She’s quite caustically funny after half a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc and I could use a good laugh.
‘Oh, I can’t.’ Her eyes slip away and discomfort radiates out from her. ‘I’ve still got so much to do.’
‘No problem.’ My smile is too wide. ‘It was only a thought.’
‘Another time?’
‘Sure. Whenever.’
She looks grateful I haven’t pushed it and I keep my walk confident as I leave her office and go back to my desk, my emotions simmering under the skin. I should have let Simon Manning take his business elsewhere. Ungrateful bitch. And fuck you, Lisa. Fuck you for swanning off and leaving me tarred with your guilt.
Richard’s hanging up the phone when I get home, and he does it a touch too quickly, as if he didn’t want me to see and hadn’t heard me coming in. His eyes are bright and he’s grinning. Handsome. I used to think it was wolfish, but now I see the hyena. Now he’s started to show me the hyena.
‘A new job?’ I ask. It’s delicate ground. Work has been thin, and that’s a generous view. The housing market has slowed and no one seems to need reputable builders any more. Of course I never paid any attention to what he was doing with money during the good times, and he failed to ever mention there were bad times until it had all got out of hand. It’s such a mess. Our marriage is showered in a confetti of final demands.
‘Something like that. Could be things are looking up!’ He winks at me. ‘Get your lippy on, lovely wife. Let’s go out to the Peking Palace.’
All I want to do is take my shoes off, drain some wine, go to bed and pass out, but I can see that’s not an option. He’s already pulling his jacket on.
‘We can walk down to the Navigation for a drink first. Make it a date night.’ He leans forward and kisses me. I don’t trust this good mood. I don’t trust it at all. He’s up to something. My nerves sing and my bruises throb in harmony as I follow him out and close the door. And it won’t end well.
31
AFTER
2001
His face is an outline in the darkness. They’re both hidden in the night, only the rustle of cotton sheet betraying their existence as she talks. She loves him, she knows that. He says he loves her. He says they’re going to be together forever. He takes care of her. He wants her to move in with him. Joanne is happy she has a boyfriend but says she should take it slowly. Be sure. Joanne wants her to keep her flat on for a little while, so there’s no pressure. Joanne says living together is a big step.
She still loves Joanne and can’t imagine life without her support but she wishes she’d stop treating her like a child. It’s true she’s only been with Jon for a few months but they’re inseparable and she’s a woman in her twenties. It sounds older than twenty-three. But still, twenty-three is hardly a baby.
Jon makes her laugh. No one has made her laugh like that since … well … since then. But her body is now made of different cells. She’s a different person. The sheets beneath her are damp, but with adult sweat, not shameful urine. This is her new life.
She leans back against the pillow, the world swimming a little. They’ve been drinking – him more than her – he drinks far more than her but that’s what men do, isn’t it? Get drunk? She likes it when his eyes are hazy and he looks at her with so much love and a big boyish grin on his face. In those moments she thinks she’ll explode with happiness. And sometimes, just sometimes, when they’re sitting together on her little sofa in front of some comedy film and eating sweet-and-sour pork and chicken chow mien and he apologises that they can’t afford to do more while she’s thinking she’s in heaven, sometimes, she can forget the secret she’s keeping from him. For so long she’s been worried about people knowing but now she feels she’ll burst if she doesn’t tell him. How can she say she loves him and not be honest? How can he be sure he loves her if he doesn’t know?
The dark shape of him moves beside her and he leans up to take a swallow of red wine from the tumbler by the bed. He holds it out to her and she does the same. It dries her mouth but it’s warm and makes her head sing. The buzz reminds her of before too. When she was a different person. She’s been thinking about the past far too much. Worrying at it like a tiny splinter under a nail that she can’t get out. But it’s always there, between them. Even here in the echoes of their love-making.
‘Jon,’ she starts, before hesitating. He tries to pull her back in to lie on his chest but she doesn’t want the reassuring beat of his heart right now. Not until she’s sure it belongs to her. ‘I have something to tell you.’ Her voice is disembodied, floating in the dark. His face is grainy and for once she’s glad of the thick curtains that block all brightness from the streetlamp outside. Normally, when she can’t sleep, the darkness chokes her, but tonight she’s using it as a comfort blanket to hide within.
‘You sound serious.’ He laughs a little but there’s an edge to it and she realises he thinks this is about them, that perhaps she’s done something, perhaps there’s another boy. It astounds her to think he could ever worry she’d leave him. She’ll love him until the day she dies.
‘It’s something I need you to know. But something you can never ever tell another person.’ He quietens, cowed by the seriousness of her words. ‘Do you promise?’ she asks.
‘Cross my heart and hope to die,’ he says. His words suck the life from her for a frozen moment as her nerves jangle and her palms sweat. Was this a bad omen? Him saying those words that have haunted her for so long? Should she say nothing? Joanne has told her to stay silent. Joanne said it was human nature to want to tell. People want to share things but some things you have to carry on your own. If at some point in the future they had a baby, apparently that would be different. Then, perhaps, he’d have to know. But then he’d also have a reason not to tell anyone else.
He’s waiting for her to say more and her mouth moves guppy-like, opening and closing silently. There will be a baby, so why not tell now? Babies are what happen in the world when a girl and a boy fall in love, and it’s not as if they’ve always been careful. She should have made sure they were careful, but she found herself not bothering. She knows what that means. There’s been far too much analysis over the years for her not to see her motivations clearly. She wants a baby. It’s a thought that both excites and terrifies her. The idea of it is too fragile and precious to examine.
She opens her mouth again, still wondering how to begin. Once upon a time? Turn it into a dark fairy tale? Try and frame it all in something sugar-coated? It’s a stupid thought. However she tells it, it will be shocking. He may never speak to her again. He may strangle her right here in their bed as so many strangers have said they’d like to do.
She will tell him. But she won’t talk about the actual event. She’s never talked about that. She can’t talk about that. She did it, what more is there to say? As it is, she starts with her name. Delivers the punchline first. Her cells might all be new but there has not been so much time passed that her real name isn’t at the very least a familiar ringing bell in people’s heads. A bogeyman to scare small children with. Be home for tea or Charlotte Nevill will get you.