Did The Earth Move? (6 page)

'And absolutely nothing changed between the two of you after marriage?'

'Hardly anything.'

'So something did?'

'My family started being nicer to him. They finally accepted Ryan as a permanent fixture. Is that so bad? And we argued more about housework. Otherwise, everything was exactly the same.'

'Hmmm.'

'I'm absolutely starving.'

They'd both begun to giggle.

'We've got the munchies. This is pathetic. If Anna gets out of bed and sees us like this, I'm going to be mortified.'

'It's organic, isn't it?' Jen had held up her stub. 'Well, that's fine. Let her try a puff. Might mellow her a bit. She's so uptight for a five-year-old.'

'Shut up!' Eve had given her a mock slap.

So Eve and Joseph split with bitter tears and a small removals van. She was distraught. He was distraught and so were all three children.

Denny shouted round the house and told his mother there had to be something wrong with her. Tom actually cried over it and Anna took weeks to comprehend that Daddy didn't live here any more and she wailed with distress when she was taken away to Manchester for the weekend, leaving Eve alone in her flat for what felt like the first time in her life. Unbearably alone. She'd gone out and got the two kittens that very first Saturday.

There had been brief, muddled reconciliations, including a final one when it had been agreed that Joseph would spend the three days of Christmas with them, for Anna's sake. Somehow wine, candlelight and the little girl's delight at having them both there together had led to tearful, nostalgic lovemaking in the bath with water splashing all over the floor and Anna's rubber ducks, boats and bath people falling on top of them. For a few hours they had felt happy and healed.

But he was seeing someone else by then, he'd moved out of London . . . and she felt far too defensive and protective of her hurt children to want to risk 'trying' any sort of relationship out again.

'This is all too complicated. I have no idea what I want and neither do you,' he'd told her, stroking her hair as he'd kissed her good night on the cheek and gone to sleep on the sofa.

For that one Christmas splashdown to have resulted in another pregnancy had felt like some appalling cosmic joke. She'd been 39, not the age when you expect your body to spring fertility surprises on you, and had left it till week 15 before breaking the news to Joseph. He'd offered to come back and they had spent a long, draining weekend talking terms. She'd somehow thought another baby might bring everything back to where it had once been – the perfection of life when Anna was tiny. But he'd not been prepared to give up the job or the Manchester commute.

'Not everything can stay the way it was, Eve. Just because we're changing doesn't mean it has to be for the worse,' he'd pleaded with her.

His final offer had been made on the phone, late at night, in tears and she'd turned him down, telling him no, it was over, despite the baby which she was determined to have.

'I'm never going to ask you again,' he'd shouted at her at the end of the call. 'Do you hear me, Eve? I'm not going to be the one who is ever,
ever
going to make the first move again. All you've ever done is shut me out. You never wanted to get married, maybe you never wanted me around. Maybe you prefer to be on your own with your children. Have you ever thought about that?'

She'd been too distraught to say anything.

'This is your last and final chance,' he'd warned, sobbing now. 'If you ever want me back again, you'll have to ask, I can't take this any more.'

Monday morning. Eve opened the door on her pokey office with a slightly heart-sinking feeling. No. The stack of files was still there where she'd left it on Friday. No paperwork pixies had been in at the weekend to go through it for her.

At least there was a square of sunlight on her desk and the smell of the hyacinths, which had opened up on her windowsill and were now drooping with thirst. It was the very start of April. She still had earth under her nails from a weekend of weeding and digging, planting and tending to seedlings. The daffodils were out, the tulips dotted all over were going to be colourful and the very first of her lettuces would almost be ready if she could just keep the slugs off them.

OK, but never mind all that. Here she was at work again, with a two-foot pile of case notes in front of her. But first she really had to water the plants, fill the kettle and consult with Liza and Jessie about a possible lunch venue.

Finally, unable to come up with any further distractions, she settled down to read the notes. Eve had been a supervisor of young offenders for the best part of fifteen years and there was very little wayward teens could come up with now that would take her by surprise.

So, these notes were all the usual stuff – poorly educated, badly parented kids getting into trouble. The same kind of trouble, the same kind of kids and it just seemed to happen over and over again. She saw the same names, the same faces and sometimes wondered if she was operating a dishearteningly revolving door service. But then, tucked in a bottom desk drawer were the reminder notes and sometimes even photos and letters from the ones who did get away. The ones who did learn something useful on community service or occupational therapy or who met someone new... or maybe, just maybe, took something she said or did for them to heart and got out, changed, stopped coming back for more.

Almost an hour of reading later and it was time for her first interviewee of the day, 19-year-old Darren Gilbert. Picked up by the police in a stolen car with a package of cocaine in the boot – nice.

He shuffled into her office, baseball hat jammed onto bald, shaven head. Hands shoved deep into pockets.

'Hello, Darren,' she said, but made it sound as headmistressy as possible. Even she thought he looked hard for a 19-year-old. He was wearing a tight red tracksuit top and baggy denim jeans that she recognized as some hip and culty label. Teenagers and their pathetic label fetishes! As if some label made you a better person or brought you closer to Posh and Becks. A metal ID bracelet and watch clanked together on his wrist.

He fell back into the chair, hoicked a heavily trainered foot up onto his knee and let it rest against the side of her desk, where she tried to ignore it.

So they did the interview, Eve making it clear she wasn't buying much of his 'just helping somebody out... didn't know the car was stolen' story.

'Has it ever occurred to you, Darren, that the owner of the "minicab" office is some hard nut drug dealer?'

'Nah,' he replied, but so unconvincingly she knew he'd already figured out exactly what was going on.

'You're just 19 and you're working for the kind of bloke who will probably send someone to put a bullet through your knees if you mess up. Nice one. And I don't think your mum is going to be too chuffed with you either, is she?' She'd read the case notes, she knew his mother was an A&E nurse.

Darren didn't say anything to this, but she had his full attention now, absolutely no doubt about it.

Then came the bit where she spelled out her rules and explained to Darren what he was going to have to do if he didn't want to spend time in jail in the future. She liked to use as many 'tough cop' phrases as possible because teenagers raised on a diet of gangster films seemed to respond to that: 'Show some respect', 'Are you the man?' All that kind of thing.

'Maybe we can even train you up to do something a little bit more useful,' she told him at the end of her spiel.

Darren was looking out of the window, so she couldn't read the expression on his face. But the ankle had come off the knee, the trainer off the edge of the table.
Oh, I'm really quite good at this,
she couldn't help thinking.

'OK,' she started to write in his file now, 'we have another appointment next week. In the meantime, lie low. If you're contacted by the cab office, tell them you're not going to get anyone into trouble, but you can't help them out any more.'

Darren had hardly slouched his way out of the office when there was a rap on the door and Lester, her boss, put his head round.

'Hello, Eve, have you got a few minutes for a chat?' he asked.

'Yeah sure,' she replied.

'Big news,' he said, closing the door behind him and sitting down at her desk.

'Good news or bad news?' she wondered.

'Oh good, very good.' He smiled at her, folded his hands together with the index fingers pointing up under his chin and challenged her to guess.

'We're all getting a six-week sabbatical to go on a team building course in Tuscany?'

'No.'

'No? Didn't think so somehow.'

'I've got a new job and I'm leaving in six months' time.'

'Oh God!' was all she could manage for a moment, because it was such a surprise, but then she rallied and added, 'Lester, that's great, fantastic – but how the hell are we going to manage without you?'

'Well...'

'And where are you going?' she interrupted.

'Out of London. I've finally found a nice little position doing this job in a bigger department in Ipswich. Trish's family is from round there, as you know, so we're going to sell up, buy a place out in the countryside, get some dogs, hopefully the kids will come and visit once in a while, but you know teenagers ...'

'Indeed I do. Personally and professionally.'

'They're not even teenagers any more,' he remembered. 'What's the term for moody young twenty-somethings?'

'Post-adolescents or "thresholders", that's very now.'

'Yeah, well...'

'That's great. I had no idea you were planning all this.'

'I don't tell you everything, Eve.' This said with a little smile, before he added, 'But I'm telling you ahead of everyone else because I'm going to recommend you for my job. What do you think of that?'

'What do I think of that?' she repeated. 'Now I really
am
surprised.'

Lester was a good man to work for: kind, fair, older, wiser. All the qualities you could have hoped for in a boss in this line of work. He was the reason she hadn't moved areas for an almost unheard-of amount of time. Well, that and the fact that she had never wanted much in the way of promotion. She'd been happy with her lot under Lester.

'You'd be really good,' he was telling her, leaning over the desk with enthusiasm. 'Everyone here trusts you and likes you. You'd be a very safe pair of hands and I know you'd like the pay rise. It doesn't have to be five long days a week, you could maybe do four longer days and a half-day on Friday, or something else like that. All sorts of things could work. You're the right person for the job. Make it work for you. I don't want them to have to go outside for someone else.'

They tossed it about a little longer and Eve promised to give it some thought. When he stood up to go, she stood up too.

'I'm going to really miss you, Lester,' she said.

'Likewise,' he answered and their eyes held for a moment over her desk.

'I don't want to make your life any more complicated than it already is,' he added, 'but maybe this would be good for you. You've seemed a bit... I don't know .. . unchallenged lately. Is that the right word? Maybe you need something to move forward in your life.'

'Maybe.' She held out a hand for him and he took it in a double-handed shake.

'Better let you get on,' he said, pointing at her desktop paper stack.

'Oh yes.' Bugger, now she wasn't going to enjoy lunch with the girls nearly so much. This was a secret she couldn't share with them yet.

And she'd been hoping to leave early because Jen was due for supper tonight, but the paperwork pile had to be diminished. She sat down and pulled open a fresh file.

By 10p.m. Eve was fading, but judging by the contents of the wine bottle between her and Jen on the garden table, the evening was still an hour or so away from being over.

'So,' Eve topped up their glasses, 'any improvement on . . .' her voice went down to a mock whisper: 'the sex problem?'

They both burst into cackles of laughter.

'No, no. Ryan still considers watching an episode of
Sex in the City
as foreplay,' Jen confided. 'No, I lie, he's got a new line: "Jen, I've taken out the rubbish"!'

Further giggles at this.

'At least he tries,' Eve told her. 'I don't think I could be bothered with sex.' Now why had she gone and said that? She often said it to Jen, but at the moment it wasn't true and anyway, it just invited trouble.

'So nothing to report on the vet front?' Jen was asking her. See? Now look what had happened.

'No, no ...' Eve was trying to hide behind her wine glass.

'Nothing at all?! Are you sure there isn't a thing you want to tell Auntie JenJen?'

'I quite like the vet... the vet may or may not like me . . . that is absolutely all. And I haven't seen him for ages,' she lied. She'd last seen him two weeks ago, but she'd turned down two recent requests for 'an appointment'.

'Do you really want to spend the rest of your life alone?' Jen was leaning back in her chair, warming up for their favourite debate.

'I'm not alone!' Eve replied. 'I'm not alone for one minute of the sodding day! Alone would make quite a nice change.'

'But your bed is cold and unshared,' Jen reminded her. 'Your children will grow up and move away and you'll die a lonely old maid, all withered up inside.'

Eve snorted at this. 'I have electrical appliances,' she said.

It was Jen's turn to snort. 'Oh please. That's not the same.'

'Definitely not! Oh anyway ... I couldn't fit a man in.' They both had to shriek at this.

'Into my schedule!' Eve explained. 'I've got kids, work, cooking, homework, cleaning, structured play, park time, paperwork, the older boys and all their stuff. There is no room in my life for a man needing sex and square dinners and patting and attention and weekends away and... all that stuff. And anyway,' Eve added, 'what would Anna and Robbie make of it all? No, no, no. I'm going to be celibate for years.'

'Well you're a sad old bag,' Jen said. 'But anyway, I don't believe you. Why do you still look so nice then, all highlighted and toned and dressed in girlie gear? If you really weren't interested you'd just frump out bigtime.'

'I'm a yummy mummy and anyway, I like to show you up.'

'Ha, ha.'

They both knew this was a joke because Jen was the most glamorous midwife this side of 40. She had made the decision many years ago that she might not be thin, but by God, was she sexy. This was a girl who could fill a pair of stretch bootlegs and a Wonderbra with plenty left to spare, and she was totally uninhibited about the overhang. 'Bloody body fascists,' she liked to shout out loud at adverts for Weight Watchers and the like.

Her hair was always a deep mahogany brown, usually bundled up, and she liked scoop-necked tops, blouses unbuttoned one notch too low and to ooze from tight skirts and jeans. Eve didn't think she'd seen Jen without make-up for about ten years now and it was always deep, dark lipstick and smouldering eye shadow. The one thing Jen couldn't have was the long, painted nails she would have loved. Nails didn't really work in her profession. 1 can't go poking people in the pudenda,' she'd say. The two of them couldn't really have looked more different – Jen, short, dark haired, curvy and glammed up; Eve, tallish, willowy, fair and
au naturel.
She was your 'slap of moisturizer for every day', lipgloss and blusher for an event' kind of woman. Her long, highlighted hair was her one beauty extravagance and even that was done at mates' rates by Harry, her friend as well as hairdresser.

'I'm up for a promotion at work,' she told Jen now, watching the candles she'd lit for their outdoor chat flicker in the breeze. 'A
big
promotion. The boss is leaving and he wants me to apply for his job.'

'Fantastic'

'Yeah but...'

'Yeah but... yeah but... I know what you're going to say you sad and over-anxious mother hen,' Jen teased. 'What about my kids? Who will meet them off the bus and cook them organic lentils?'

'God, I don't only eat lentils. Can we all get that straight?'

'OK.' Jen was a little taken aback by this outburst.

'Anyway, they're still really small, the little kids,' Eve protested. 'Robbie is two. And I worry about how I'll get all the mum stuff done on top of a big, scary job. I'm tired enough as it is. You know, being woken up too early, spending far too much of my life doing the domestic stuff instead of being down at the garden centre choosing new climbers.'

'You are so sad,' Jen told her.

There had been a burst of warm weather, so they'd decided to move their supper outside for the first time this year. And even though they were now in two jumpers each to keep out the chill, it was still wonderful to sit out and drink in the leafy dark, breathing in damp earth because Eve had been round with the hose.

'Maybe it would do you good, the new job,' Jen said.

'That's what Lester said,' Eve told her, feeling a little suspicious now. 'Why do I seem in need of being done good?'

'Well there's nothing much going on for you, is there?'

'Don't hold back, Jen, please.' She was a bit hurt now.

'Sorry. I just mean since you and Joseph broke up and Robbie was born, nothing has changed at all. And that's over two years ago now, isn't it?'

'What, you mean apart from having a new baby-toddler person to cope with?' Eve sounded a little snappy again and Jen thought she should probably leave it at that.

Eve felt rattled. Jen didn't know about the vet. No-one knew. Oh hell – what was there to know? A few afternoons of friendship sex wasn't exactly anything to report. Her friend was right: nothing had changed at all.