A Perfect Life (19 page)

Ruby's eyes, Jem's eyes, but not Foss's eyes, stare at her, waiting for her to sort it out. Waiting for her to fix the fault line in the afternoon. If only she could. Angel wants to scream and thump her fists against someone's chest. Her fingernails dig into her palms and she wants the pain because it is real, an effect of something she is doing. Foss not being here cannot be real.

The children are still looking at her, expecting something of her. What can she give them? She hasn't got Foss. Into her mind comes an image of a top hat, and herself pulling him out of it by the ears like a white rabbit.

‘Oh. With me? No, he's not with me – I haven't seen him, I fell asleep – I don't know when I – FOSS-.-.-.-FOSS!' Fear cannot be contained for a moment more, it is rushing and physical, a torrent bearing Angel away. She can't keep still, she needs to move, pitching herself somewhere in futile defence.

She runs past the children towards the creek, scanning the horizon wildly. ‘I should never have fallen
asleep. How did I do that? Why did I do that? What have I done? He must be nearby, he must be nearby.'

Running, stopping, running again, the panic inescapable. Red panic, burning in her eyes and ears, releasing a racing torrent of blood through all her veins, starting, jolting immediately to a halt, stopping, piling up, jamming, arresting every thought, anger growling low like an engine, action snarled up and slowed to nothing, overheating, not moving. Feeling sick with the relentless unending ‘stoppedness'. If Angel could scream she would. Her mouth open, a creaking whisper emerges.

‘Foss! Where are you?'

The marshes stretch in every direction, empty but filling up with water as the tide creeps in. The mud expanse in front of Angel is wet now, pitted with greasy dark puddles, and as in a nightmare, the day becomes threatening, the light flat and the mud oozing, silent and unyielding. She is afraid to shout again, afraid not to receive a reply.

‘Let's ask St Anthony,' suggests Ruby, a mobile phone in her hand.

‘Are you going to call him?'

Ruby raises her eyebrows and gives her mother a look reserved for idiots. ‘Oh yeah, Mum, like you can actually ring saints up. How would I know his number? I am not God.'

Playground tears spring to Angel's eyes. Ruby is working something out.

‘Mummy, how much will you give St Anthony for finding Foss?' Ruby doesn't notice Angel crying; her
head is bent over the phone. ‘I'm doing it on the phone calculator because I will give him two pounds thirty-seven which is all my money and Jem says he will give a fiver,' she says. ‘So how much will you give, Mum, then we can pray?'

‘Um, fifty.' Christ, was that the best she could do?

‘OK, that's five. And two pounds thirty-seven, and fifty – Mummy, is that fifty pounds or fifty pence?' Ruby, frowning, is at Angel's side. She tugs her mother's sweater, and does not let go. Angel closes her own hand over Ruby's and squeezes the warm fist curled in her palm.

The next hour exists beyond time. Injected with determination Angel runs, her feet echoing on the slapping mud, sound ringing around the marsh as if it is encased in tin. Her breath is rough and painful, and a musty taste of foreboding sits at the base of her throat. She pushes it down and runs, her footprints marking her jagged progress to and fro across the marsh like a damaged heartbeat on a screen. Her mud-caked feet ache as she hits into razor shells and pebbles and her muscles tremble uncontrollably when she pauses, panting. Jem catches up with her. He flips open his phone, squinting at the screen.

‘Shit, Dad hasn't called back,' he mumbles, throwing himself down on the bouncy sea lavender, his palms on his face blanking out the sky. Taking his hands away he sits up and looks at Angel.

‘Mum, this is pointless, we should call someone. Get them to send a helicopter or the police. I can't get Dad, I've left so many messages on his mobile, and I
think Gosha must be on the Internet, because the home phone goes straight to answerphone. We have to let someone know.'

Angel shakes her head, crouching next to him.

‘No, he must be here. We'll find him in a minute. Children muck around like this all the time. Think how many times I've lost any of you.'

‘But Mum, we've been looking for an hour and we don't know how long he was gone before that.'

Ruby is a curve of dejection sitting on a plastic box by the creek. ‘I prayed to St Anthony so hard. I even told him Dad would do a credit card thing when we get home. Mummy, I'm hungry, and I want to go home. I want Foss and I want to go home. Please.'

She begins to sob huge heart-wrenched gulps. Angel put her arms around her and Ruby is spindly and fragile like a bird.

‘I think you're right, Jem, we had better call some help.' Almost gagging, Angel holds tighter on to Ruby. This cannot be happening, it just can't. But it is.

‘OK.' All emotion leaves Jem's face, and he lights a cigarette as he waits for his call to be answered. Watching him, with the flashing sunlight behind him making her squint, Angel notices that he is different. The square of his shoulder hunched as he smokes and talks, is an echo of Nick long ago.

When does an encounter become a fling, a fling an affair, an affair a relationship? When Nick called Jeannie Gildoff this morning and asked her to meet him for lunch here at the motel, were his motives the same as they are now? Over the years they have had the occasional shag. Usually in London, when Jeannie is shopping or getting her hair done and Nick is on his way somewhere. They meet to fuck, and both of them have known that is as far as it goes. Or it always has been. This, though, could be different. For a start they are not in London, they are in the bedroom Nick is living in while his marriage shifts and cracks, perhaps irrevocably. And all the occasional shags add up in the end to something more. Or they don't. Jeannie is neat when she walks into his room; a mint-green handbag swings on her arm, she is wearing a red dress, her hair is flicked up at the ends. She smiles nervously, Nick takes in narrow ankles, black soft leather moccasin shoes and a cardigan swinging on
her shoulders. Today she reminds him of someone, and as he kisses her cheek he remembers who it is.

‘You look like Olivia Newton John in
Grease
,' he volunteers. ‘Before she was corrupted.' Instead of stepping away from her, he moves closer, holds her waist and kisses her mouth. She tastes of coffee and biscuits.

‘Seems pretty appropriate,' she replies when they stop kissing, and moves back, sliding her cardigan off. Her bare arms are brown and slim. No one has been in this room with Nick before; her presence is exciting, her whole posture, straight and supple, indicates strength and he always finds her cool exterior erotic.

‘OK, Nick, what's going on? Did you get Peter's message about tennis this afternoon?'

‘Yeah, I asked Coral to be my partner. I'd like to play you, Jeannie.' Nick slouches against the wall, looking at her, giving nothing away because he doesn't know what he is thinking himself.

‘What do you actually want from me?' A sweep of black liner on Jeannie's eyelids contributes to Nick's sense that she is from another age. He wonders if she is wearing one of those satin all-in-one underthings called a kitten or a teddy or some such small cuddly name. He is not certain he wants her enough to go through with this today. The potential for complication is huge. And today of all days, when he has said he is going home to discuss whether or not he is really splitting up with Angel. He is unable to deal with reality right now; he knows that is why he called Jeannie. What he wants from her is oblivion.

Jeannie walks over to the window, tapping her fingers
against her still-folded arms. She has freckles on her throat and the curve of her lower back flows into her rounded high arse. Oh, what the hell. He moves behind her, splaying his hands on her hips, sliding them round over her dress on to the flat of her stomach. She sighs, he whispers into her neck, ‘Sex would be nice,' as she arches her head back and pulls in her stomach. He moves his hand further down, pulls up her skirt along her thigh and reaches between her legs. She has no knickers on.

‘Sex would be fine,' she whispers back as his fingers slide up inside her. He is still behind her, his erection pressing against her. He unzips his trousers and groans; the fabric of her dress is cool and sensuous against his skin. She tries to turn round in his arms, but he wants her from behind.

‘Stay there, I'm going to make you come,' he breathes, biting her shoulder, one hand still moving, rubbing her between her legs, the other on her breast, stroking her through the thin fabric of the dress. No bra either. This is fantastic, just fantastic. Jeannie is trembling; he runs his tongue along her jaw, she bites her lip and groans, rears her arse towards him. He pushes her forward so her arms rest on the window sill and light falls in stripes through the blinds. Nick lifts the skirt of her dress up, closes his eyes and pulls her on to him, both hands on her waist, as he slams his cock deep inside her and holds her on him as she comes. She wriggles, gasping, and he fucks her, his rhythm fast, the sensation of her climax pulsing against him exciting, bringing him to sudden, intense orgasm.

* * *

Six missed calls from Jem's phone to his make Nick feel hunted and guilty when he picks up the messages after a game of tennis with Coral. Since this morning, when he had to listen to a message recording an argument between Foss and Ruby over a pair of swimming goggles, he has dodged family calls. They are at the beach with Angel, he will see them later, and he will deal with them then. Not now. Jeannie and Peter cancelled in the end. Jeannie, brisk and to the point, called an hour after she left the motel and said, ‘I don't want to play tennis with you today, so I told Peter we'd take a rain check. See you around, Nick.' Nick was intensely relieved. He likes risk, but a game of tennis with a woman whose smell is still on him and her husband, is to Nick's mind more or less perverted. Anyway, he doesn't know what his next move is with Jeannie, though she is a great lay. In the end, he plays singles with Coral. He thrashes her. He is feeling great, pumped full of testosterone, sex and success as they walk home from the village court.

He will talk to Angel; maybe there is a chance that they will iron out the problems and he will have his life back. Extra-marital sex? Well, maybe he will stop that. It might be enough to take Angel to a few new places and seduce her. The motel room would be a good place to start. Lost in thought, he is surprised to be home already when they walk in through the gate. Coral turns to face him, a challenge glinting in her eye.

‘Nick, I've decided I'm telling Jem and the others that you're not my dad. It's not up to you and Mum, it's up to me, and I'm going to tell them today.'

Nick's instant thought is, Bloody typical of Coral to muscle in and take over as the big story of the day, and his next thought, hard on the heels of that one, is, Good, that will take the limelight off me and Angel.

‘If that's what you want to do, you have every right to do it,' he says to her. ‘But just out of interest, why now?'

Coral blinks, and waits, shifting uncertainly, twirling her tennis racquet. She looks at him, measuring him up for a moment.

‘I have had enough of the lies in this family,' she says, flouncing up the drive, making it clear the conversation is over.

Nick finally listens to the last of Jem's messages, the first to beep into his phone, at about five in the evening. Foss has been missing for two hours, but Nick is unaware of this and unable to detect the level of anxiety in Jem's brief words.

‘Dad, we've lost Foss. We need you to come now.'

Another bloody mini-drama like Coral's. Not that Coral doesn't have a point, but why now? There have been eighteen years available for this. Dismissing her from his thoughts for the time being, and Jem for that matter, Nick decides to have a shower. He does not listen to the previous five messages.

As it turns out, it is the best thing he could possibly do. By the time he has shaved and changed, and is just walking out of the house to his car, Angel and the children are back. They look terrible. Foss and Ruby are crying, Jem is white and silent, Angel gets out of the car without even turning the engine off and lifts Foss out of the back.

‘What on earth has happened?' Nick doesn't know who he is asking; his heart is thudding, all of them are here, no one is bleeding, but a lot is wrong.

‘What happened to Foss?'

Angel looks at him and says shortly, ‘Can we take him in first?'

Foss is black from head to toe, though tears have cleaned small white paths on his face. Nick slowly begins to realise that the drama was real. He feels equal measures of sympathy for Angel and inadequacy in himself. He should have known. Poor Angel. Christ, if only he had known.

‘I'm going to give him a bath and put him to bed.' Angel's voice is tired and soft. To Nick, it burns like a brand on his conscience and the pain makes him angry. He tries to open the doors into the house for her, but she has done it already, kicking hard with her bare foot, and she starts up the stairs, murmuring to Foss, kissing his mud-caked hair.

Nick goes back out to the car, unease creeping closer, making his skin crawl.

‘What's happening?' he says again. He can hear Coral upstairs with Angel; her voice floats out of the bedroom window.

‘Oh my God,' she says. ‘Oh Mum.'

Ruby doesn't run to Nick like she usually does when he has been away; she remains in her car seat, uncharacteristically wearing her seat belt, with tears coursing down her face. Jem gets out and slams his door, raising pink-rimmed eyes to meet Nick's for a second. Nick tries to win a smile.

‘Whatever has happened to you lot? You look like you've been to war. I'm not even getting a look in!'

Jem glares, but his voice does not match the anger in his eyes; it is flat and wiped out like Angel's.