Every Vow You Break (23 page)

‘But then you’ll be bound to him for ever, and I’ll just be in the way,’ he said.

‘It could work …’ she said, fiddling with the beer mat, which she had peeled into thin, curled strips.

The bar seemed to be closing in on her; the dull tang of nicotine caught in her throat and made her feel sick.

‘I can’t do it,’ he said finally. ‘I can’t break up your family now there’s a baby to think about as well.’

‘No—’ she said, reaching again for his hand.

‘I’ll disappear,’ he said. ‘I’ll disappear, and you’ll never see nor hear from me again.’

During that evening, she had ill-advisedly drunk two pints of Guinness, and he more pints of Abbot than she could count. In the end, they found themselves walking along the river, away from the theatre, killing time until Marcus’s show finished; she had arranged to meet him after seeing Stephen to tell him she knew not what.

As they reached Shakespeare’s church, he stopped and drew her into the bushes, where they had an inglorious, weeping, farewell fuck. Afterwards she stood up and brushed the bits of old leaf and twig from her brown corduroy skirt – again, the details she could recall shocked her – and she railed at him, called him a coward, demanded that he stayed to fight for her, to love her. How on earth could he throw away what they had?

‘We belong to each other,’ she said.

‘I’m gone, Lara,’ he said, looking down, his palms spread upwards. Then he leaned towards her and kissed her one last time before disappearing into the shadows. Leaving her shafted in every way, in the dark, all alone, feeling like a part of her had been sliced away without anaesthetic.

If only his promise that she would never see him again had held fast. But after wresting him from the clutches of his RSC contract for ‘psychological reasons’, his impressive agent got him a job in a no-budget, quirky thriller set in the Shetlands. The film went on to become that year’s unexpected indie hit, winning the big prize at Sundance and launching the phenomenon of Stephen Molloy on to the world stage. And there he was, everywhere, in her face all the time.

Time passed though, and with it a measure of healing took place. She came to her senses a little. The twins, who taught her a new kind of love, kept her busy, too. She arrived at the conclusion that you win some and you lose some. Battling with the contradictory feelings of infatuation and exasperation her two babies inspired in her, she was usually too taken up to follow his all-too-public progress. And she convinced herself that, with his full and starry life, Stephen would have forgotten all about her anyway.

But his confession at the party, and now this photograph, made her realise that his departure must have been more painful for him than she had imagined. She wondered whether he had kept the photo to hand since they had parted in Stratford. Or had he just dug it out of a long-forgotten box in a corner of his attic once he knew she was here in the same town as him?

She looked back at the photograph of her young self, wondering what she would tell her if she had the opportunity.
Had
it been so awful, staying with Marcus? Her feelings about her husband ebbed and flowed, but wasn’t that normal? Sometimes she could persuade herself that she loved him. Others she would find herself daydreaming, plotting elaborate escape plans that shocked her with their detail. She would empty their bank account, disappear, reinvent herself and get a little job in a shop to pay the rent on a simple bedsit. Or she would engineer an affair with someone inconsequential, then make sure Marcus found her in flagrante, thereby putting the onus on him to eject her. She sometimes found herself casting around the bus on the way to work, looking for candidates. He’d do, she would think. She wondered sometimes how it would be if Marcus were suddenly to die – keeling over from a heart attack, perhaps, or in one of those planes that fell out of the sky. Would it be sorrow she felt? Or would it be relief?

She opened Stephen’s bedside drawer a little further to put the photograph away. But her hand was stayed by what she saw nestling there, only just visible under a pile of ironed linen handkerchiefs: the handle of a revolver.

Lara lifted the handkerchiefs to one side and bent to examine the gun, the first she had seen at such close quarters. Why would Stephen have it here, beside him in his bed? Perhaps this is what people did in America, especially if they lived too remotely for anyone to hear them scream, or so far from a police station that by the time the cops arrived, an intruder hell-bent on harming you would have been able to do whatever they pleased.

She touched the gun with the tip of her finger and shivered as she pushed out of her mind a picture of Marcus cowering in front of its barrel, flinching as it fired …

But this was rural Trout Island, where no one ever locked their door. Not downtown Detroit, or Chicago. Surely you didn’t need guns out here.

‘Lara?’ Marcus called up the stairs. ‘Are you OK up there?’

The sudden intrusion of her husband’s voice made her jump. She replaced the pile of handkerchiefs, put the photo back exactly as she found it, closed the drawer and picked up her dirty top, readying herself to go downstairs. She felt as if she had opened Pandora’s box.

‘Jesus, I thought you’d been eaten by a wild beast or something,’ Marcus said as she turned the corner of the staircase. He stood in the hallway with another full glass of red wine in his hand.

‘I’m fine,’ he said, seeing her glance at his drink. ‘The food’ll mop it up.’

‘Where is everyone?’

‘Stephen’s gone to help the kids. They’re complaining they can’t find any snakes.’

‘Is it safe?’ Lara said. ‘Should they be actively searching them out?’

‘He says there’s only one poisonous snake around here and even that doesn’t kill you. The copperhead or some such. Come on,’ he said. ‘He poured you another drink – over there, by the counter.’

Taking her wine, Lara followed Marcus on to the back deck, blinking in the light outside after the dark interior of the house. The back garden was an overgrown scrubby meadow ending in a hen house with a pile of logs neatly stacked up against it. Squatting by the side of the woodpile, Stephen and Olly poked at something with a stick. Bella hung back, holding on to Jack.

Lara noticed how Stephen took the same stance as her son. Mirroring, wasn’t it called? An attempt at winning someone over by making gestures similar to their own. It seemed to be working, too. Normally offhand and distant with adults, Olly was chatting with Stephen as if he were his best friend. Or perhaps it had more to do with the fact that, as the famous film star, Stephen had a better opportunity to win her son’s favour than most.

‘It slid in there, Mum.’ Bella winced. ‘It’s about a metre long and hideous …’

‘It’s not dangerous,’ Olly said.

‘Look!’ Stephen stepped backwards, away from the woodpile, brandishing the snake on the end of his stick. Curling itself up and lashing its head around wildly at whatever had dislodged it from its cool hiding place, the creature was every bit as long as Bella’s estimate. It looped up and off the stick and everyone jumped backwards.

‘Whoah,’ Olly said. And he and Stephen bent as one to watch the snake make its quicksilver retreat across the meadow, towards the trees.

‘Suits you,’ Stephen said to Lara as he straightened up, his hand resting on Olly’s shoulder.

‘What?’

‘The shirt. The colour’s really good on you.’

‘How much land have you got here, then?’ Marcus asked, looking around him. The meadow was about the size of a football pitch and beyond it thick forest rose on all sides. A couple of tracks, big enough for a suitably rugged vehicle, disappeared into the darkness of the trees.

‘Around five thousand acres,’ Stephen said. ‘Mostly forest. But if you go down thataway,’ he pointed to the track to their right, ‘I’ve got a pond that’s great for swimming and fishing. I’ll take you over there one day in the Wrangler. Or we can walk. It’s about a mile.’

‘I’d love to walk there,’ Lara said. ‘And swim.’

‘We’ll do it,’ Stephen said.

A rustle in the trees behind them made them all jump. Lara saw terror flash across Stephen’s face as he swung round to see what had made the noise.

‘Look, Jack, another deer!’ Bella said, pointing out the receding white rump. ‘And a baby deer.’

‘It’s called a fawn,’ Olly said.

‘Baby deer,’ Jack said firmly.

‘It’s just a deer, then,’ Stephen said to no one in particular. Only Lara seemed to read the relief in his remark. Then he turned and smiled at Marcus. ‘More wine?’

By the time they sat down to eat, the sun had gone down behind the wooded hill, spreading a spidery gloom over the house. Stephen switched the lights on low and lit candles around the table. Then he opened the windows to let the air, which was cooling with the approaching storm, circulate through the room. With it came a resinous smell from the heat-sweltered trees, giving the lofty space the feeling of a cathedral after the swinging of the censer. But the pressure in the atmosphere made Lara feel dizzy, as if she were about to implode.

Stephen served up the stew – venison, he said, that he had shot and prepared himself. Perhaps, Lara thought, that explained the gun, although wasn’t hunting more usually done with rifles? As they passed round the plates, the lights in the house flickered and somewhere, not too far in the distance, a deep roll of thunder rumbled, making the glasses on the table shiver.

‘Not long now,’ Stephen said.

‘What’s it like being so famous?’ Olly said, tucking into his stew.

‘Olly,’ Marcus said, accepting Stephen’s glass refill.

‘No, it’s a good question, Olly.’ Stephen sat down and rested his elbows on the table. ‘It’s not something I ever wanted or planned. It just sort of happened. As an actor, you tend to say yes when someone offers you work. You’re never really in control. And my work just took me in this direction. Of course, I’ve earned good money, and I can buy whatever comforts I could ever need in this world, but I’ve paid the price. So many things that you’re able to do are impossible for me now. For instance, I can’t just go out to the shops, or for a walk, or get on a plane. If you like, it’s a sort of gilded prison.’

‘It’s true. I never wanted the kind of fame you’ve got,’ Marcus agreed, spraying a fleck of half-chewed deer on to the table.

Liar, Lara thought. Being Stephen-Molloy-famous was exactly what Marcus had been after his entire professional life. He had positively bristled with pleasure when people stopped him in the street after the
EastEnders
part. He loved being pointed at by the general public.

‘I’m far happier as a jobbing actor,’ Marcus went on, shovelling in another mouthful of stew. He was slurring, running his words into each other as he did when headed towards the rollicking drunkenness he was capable of. Lara cursed. She should have known better than to assume he was going to be responsible. She had certainly drunk too much to drive, so now here they were, neither of them able to safely get their family back to their beds for the night. And with a storm on the way as well.

‘Listen,’ Stephen said, seeming to read her mind. ‘If you guys want, you can stay over. Make an evening of it. I’ve four guest rooms, and the beds are all made up. Driving down to Trout Island is hard enough in the daylight if you don’t know the way, but in the dark, in a storm – and this one is settling in for the night, according to the weather reports – it’s a recipe for endlessly circling round and round the mountain, before you even start to worry about trees being brought down.’ He stood up and got the wine bottle again.

‘I don’t know—’ Lara began.

‘That would be great!’ Olly said.

‘But—’ Bella said.

‘Cheers, mate,’ Marcus said, clapping his arm around Stephen, who was topping up his glass. ‘I’m a little over the limit already, if truth be told. And my call’s not till two.’

‘I need to be back by ten tomorrow morning,’ Bella whispered to Lara.

Stephen smiled at Marcus. ‘Don’t mention it. It’s just great to see you again. It can get pretty lonely hiding out here.’

‘Why?’ Lara asked Bella.

‘I’m meeting someone …’

‘Lara? What do you say?’

‘We’ll be back in time, I promise,’ Lara reassured her daughter. She thought about the dark, unmade roads between where they were now and the dusty, smelly house back in the village and felt relieved that they were going to stay put. She was aware that staying here, in Stephen’s home, was dicing with danger, putting herself in temptation’s way. But what could really happen with all her family around her?

‘Thank you Stephen,’ she said.

‘Good. That’s settled then. Seconds, anyone?’ Stephen said.

‘Yes please,’ Marcus said. ‘That was delicious.’

‘You did your GCSEs this year?’ Stephen asked the twins after he had served Marcus.

‘Yep. Just finished,’ Bella said.

‘And what next?’

‘Um, I’m off to college to do Art, Textiles and Photography.’

‘Good girl,’ he said.

‘She’s a proper little artist, our Bella,’ Marcus chipped in.

‘And what about you?’ Stephen turned to Olly.

‘I’m doing History, Politics and Economics.’

‘More of an academic, then?’ Stephen said.

‘Oxbridge material, he’s been told,
if
he sticks at it,’ Marcus said, messily tucking into his second plateful. A corona of red sauce bloomed around his plate.

‘So tell me where you stand on the government cuts,’ Stephen said, turning to Olly.

Stephen carried on, drawing the children out. Even Jack was quizzed about his favourite TV characters and was delighted when Stephen revealed that he was the voice of a cartoon robot he particularly liked.

‘If you come and visit me in LA I can take you on a tour of the studios where they make it,’ he said, and Jack clapped his hands with glee.

Lara didn’t think her children had ever talked so much at table. Usually people without children of their own didn’t really know how to address anyone under twenty, and those who were parents often seized the chance for adult conversation and ignored the kids. So Bella, Olly and Jack would sit silently eating and, at the earliest opportunity, they’d slope off. But not so here.