Life Begins (8 page)

‘With Pattie and the twins?’

‘I haven’t got that far.’

‘You never get to spend time with husbands at conferences, though,’ Theresa pointed out. ‘I know Graham’s banking, not medicine, but it’s all the same. You end up seeing more of the room-service boy than you do of your partner.’

‘Not always a bad thing,’ quipped Josephine, her brown eyes glinting.

They laughed, united in a gentle, effortless companionship that offered no real threats to husbands or room-service boys, but was instead a simple acknowledgement of the fact of being female and young enough still to lament some of the constraints of the marital state.

No longer an issue for Charlotte, however, Theresa mused, crossing to the window to peer out into the street, wondering if this was a fact over which, after a few more
swigs of wine, she might even be able to muster a frisson or two of jealousy. Bell-boys, estate agents – Charlotte, in her newly single state, could have her pick. Glancing down at her chest – a little too slack and ample since the children, but attractively displayed in a favourite blue lace-trimmed top – Theresa spent a moment trying to imagine the face of a nubile young man, as opposed to Henry, owl-eyed without his glasses, nuzzling at her cleavage. Then she thought of her stretchmarks, the large mole on her thigh that needed checking, the sag of flesh masking her hips, and the dear face of her husband came more clearly into focus. A stone overweight, aged thirty-eight, she was well past her physical best and any new lover would see that. Henry, on the other hand, she reflected happily, had known her at her best, just as she had known him before the glasses, the clicky knee and the tummy that swelled or shrank according to his level of self-discipline. For her there would always be that first enriching memory to fall back on – of the handsome, twinkly-eyed, newly qualified surgeon who had asked her to a rugby match and kissed her dry, freezing lips afterwards, saying now that he had found her he would never let her go.

‘We’ll have to start without Charlotte,’ she declared, dropping the curtain and turning back to the room.

‘Maybe she’s with her
new
man,’ suggested Josephine, casting a sideways glance at Naomi, normally her closest ally in the group.

‘Oh, but I think we should offer Charlotte nothing but encouragement,’ Naomi cried, releasing a snow-shower of glitter on to the carpet as she flapped the invitation. ‘It must be so hard, don’t you think, to feel any sort of confidence about
dating
when you’re nearly forty and you’ve been on the receiving end of such deception?’

Josephine rolled her eyes. ‘You mean Martin and
Cindy
?’

‘Of course.’ Naomi carefully put the invitation back in its place. ‘And the others. Remember, Charlotte thought there were others.’

For a few moments the three women fell silent, recalling the woeful tales of the Turner marriage, recounted with increasing bitterness and frequency as the years of their acquaintance with Charlotte had ticked by. Difficult, unloving, unfaithful – Josephine had quickly dubbed him Martin the Monster, and pioneered early efforts to get Charlotte to leave. But then Martin had finally pitched up for a school parents’ evening and she had found herself talking to a mild-mannered, good-looking man with anxious eyes and a ready smile. She had dropped the nickname overnight and, while remaining supportive, stopped trying to tell Charlotte what to do.

‘But Charlotte’s got her estate agent to look after her now, so she’s fine, isn’t she?’ pressed Josephine, as she took her place at the table, determined to get a rise on the subject from at least one of her companions. ‘And she’s beautiful,’ she exclaimed, with some exasperation when neither responded. ‘It wouldn’t be fair to look like that
and
be happy, would it, now?’

‘Jo, you’re horrible,’ said Naomi, amicably, sitting down next to her.

‘Let’s throw to settle who’s the North Wind,’ commanded Theresa, shooting both of them dark looks. ‘I’ll be me as well as Charlotte.’

With a precision that would have been impossible to orchestrate, Charlotte arrived on the step just as Henry was slotting his key into the front door. Thus unheralded, she had time, while easing off her coat, to hear her name being mentioned
through the half-open door of the sitting room. Henry, hearing it too, looked momentarily panic-stricken and barked an unnecessarily loud reprimand as George’s dark curly head bobbed through the banisters. ‘You should be in bed.’

George rolled his eyes, announcing, with some pride, ‘Look, Dad,’ and proceeding to push his tongue up over his upper lip until the tip made contact with his nose.

‘Does young Sam have such social graces, I wonder?’ asked Henry, grinning once his son had been ordered back to bed.

‘Not that particular one. But he used to be able to put both legs behind his head and do somersaults round the room.’

‘Blimey – how alarming.’ Henry chuckled, pushing open the sitting-room door. ‘Here we are, ladies, your missing member.’

There was a half-beat before the three women responded, like the pause before applause at an inconclusive conclusion of a performance. It was enough to confirm for Charlotte that she had indeed been the subject of conversation and to leave her with a dim, irrational sense of exclusion, which persisted in spite of the warm greetings that followed.

They had been talking about Tim, probably – understandably – and she was being over-sensitive, she reasoned, trying her best to enjoy the usual chaos of the game with collapsing walls and Josephine shrieking ‘pung’ every time she meant ‘cong’ and one of Theresa’s delicious curries to oil the wheels. And, of course, not having a husband did make her different, Charlotte reminded herself, wondering that it had taken so long for this feeling to dawn. Holding back on her own news, she tried to lose herself and the niggling sense of separation in the merry stream of anecdotes that bounced around the table. Only to find the feeling getting worse:
family life, family holidays, family tiffs, husbands this, husbands that. It was as if all three friends were speaking a different language.

She was rescued eventually by Theresa, who caught her gaze and held it, generously insisting that their Suffolk cottage (inherited a few years before from Henry’s parents) was at her and Sam’s disposal for an Easter as well as a summer break if they wanted it. Whereupon Naomi, having suggested they abandon the game and retreat to comfortable chairs, asked with touching concern how things were going with Tim.

‘We’ve only had the one date and it was a bit of a blur, to be honest,’ Charlotte admitted, basking in the warmth of the kindness, ashamed that she could ever have doubted it. ‘We went to this weird Spanish place and ate salted almonds and lots of little dishes of oily snacks. It was okay, I suppose, but then I let him kiss me in the car when we got home, which has made him think we’ve got a proper
thing
going and I tried today to tell him that we haven’t but now he’s gone and found me this totally perfect house in Chalkdown Road so I really don’t feel I can ditch him altogether.’

‘A house!’ exclaimed Theresa, over the laughter of the other two. ‘But that’s fantastic news. So long, I suppose, as you have a buyer for yours…’ She tailed off, glancing round the freshly painted walls and carefully selected furnishings of her sitting room, thinking how loath she would feel to part with it.

‘That’s the point. It looks as if I might have. She’s called Mrs Burgess and Tim’s sure she’s keen.’ Charlotte chattered on, loving the feeling of relaxing properly, of being part of the old circle at last. ‘It’s more a cottage than a house – there’s all this lovely jasmine in the front garden and a bedroom balcony and two dear little stained-glass windows in the hall. The owner said they might not go with Tim’s
agency, which would be bad for him but not the end of the world for me, now I know where it is and how much I like it. And it would be
so
good for Sam to have a fresh start. He’d be able to walk to school, of course, and we’d be so near the park I’ve been thinking we might even get a dog…’

‘Whoa there – a dog?’ cried Theresa, raising both arms to stop the flow. ‘But what about your job in the bookshop and keeping it entertained? Anyway, you hate dogs.’

‘Correction: I hate my mother’s dog for being dull and overfed and spoilt. And my job at Ravens is only part-time. And Sam has always wanted a dog. And at the moment Sam is –’ Charlotte stopped abruptly. She had drunk far too much, she realized, with some surprise, carefully setting down her wine glass. She had been on the verge, stupid goat that she was, of mentioning the very subject she had privately vowed to avoid. Miss Hornby had said they were on top of the situation. Martin would almost certainly agree with that view. The last thing she wanted was for these dear friends to think that, with clear water ahead of her, she was still finding cause to be unhappy; that with one major worry solved she was immediately on the track of another. And how would it sound, anyway, to tell the mothers of Pattie and George, Sam’s two oldest friends, that she suspected some sort of foul play? ‘Sam is still so… unsettled,’ she finished lamely, looking round for her handbag.

‘Sam will be all right,’ coaxed Theresa, gently. ‘He’s still… adjusting, that’s all.’

‘And children are
so
adaptable,’ put in Josephine, brightly, slipping her feet back into her shoes and nodding at Naomi, who had promised to give her a ride home.

‘Of course they are,’ echoed Naomi, unhooking her handbag from the back of her chair and standing up.

After their farewells, and having double-checked the state
of the downstairs loo before she allowed Charlotte to enter it, Theresa sought out her husband in the den.

‘I’m not asleep,’ he croaked, waggling the two feet she could see sticking up over the end of the sofa. ‘Is it safe to come out?’ He peered over the back in the manner of a soldier checking the edge of a trench.

‘Ssh,’ Theresa scolded fondly, pressing her fingers to her lips. ‘The others have gone but Charlotte is in the loo. I want to invite her to a Sunday lunch – her and Sam.’

‘Of course.’ Henry pushed his fingers up under his glasses and rubbed his eyes.

‘Because George and Sam appear to have fallen out and getting them over here might help sort it. And though Charlotte did her best tonight I think she’s pretty blue.’

‘You are the wise one, my love.’

‘Yes
, I am, and if you’re coming out of here before Charlotte leaves you might want to consider doing up your flies first. I relish any opportunity to ogle your Y-fronts, of course, but I’m not sure Charlotte would share my enthusiasm.’

A few yards away, sitting in the ill-lit cramped confines of the downstairs loo, her knees almost touching the door, Charlotte had to steady herself against the basin. The walls on both sides were crowded with framed collages of family snaps, cleverly spread like scattered playing cards to reveal toothless baby faces, tottering toddlers, Henry with a fatter face and thick sweeps of hair, Theresa laughing and pregnant in a Laura Ashley smock, pushing a buggy. The images shifted and blurred, pressing in on her. Struggling upright, she studied her reflection in the small mirror above the washbasin, pinching her cheeks and tugging at her lips in quiet despair at her pallor. ‘Like a ghoul,’ she hissed, grabbing the basin again as she swayed. ‘An ugly
ghoul
’.

Venturing back into the hall, she found Theresa and Henry standing with their arms loosely round each other’s waists, laughing about something. Speaking in a steady, careful voice, fighting a fresh, even worse bout of dizziness, she announced that she would like to pick up her car the next day and phone for a cab, if that was all right by them, if they had a number, though, of course, she could use her own phone. She plunged her hand into her bag, groping, finding only keys, the mirror, her purse, an unravelling tampon. Then the hall floor heaved and she had to reach out to steady herself again, knocking a print of bluebells that hung next to the stairs. ‘Sorry… I seem to be a little…’

‘Oh, poor you,’ cried Theresa, rushing over and pulling her into her arms.

Enfolded in the motherly softness of her friend’s embrace, Charlotte closed her eyes, for a moment so intensely at ease that she could have gone to sleep. When she opened them again the hall floor was rushing past, like a fast, dark river.

‘Poor thing,’ Theresa crooned, stroking Charlotte’s shoulder-blades with the same tenderness that had soothed away Matilda’s crying fit a few hours before. ‘You look worn out. But don’t bother with a taxi. Henry will drive you home, won’t you, Henry?’ She exchanged a glance with her husband over the top of Charlotte’s head, meeting his rolling eyes with a beseeching glare.

‘Of course.’ Henry adjusted the bluebells and reached for his coat.

A few minutes later Charlotte was hunched in the passenger seat of the Volvo, her feet wedged between a plastic bag bulging with library books and a pair of football boots shedding brittle clods of mud. ‘Sorry about this.’

‘No need.’

Charlotte hugged herself, rolling her neck from side to side in a bid to ease the throbbing in her head. ‘Are you going to it?’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘The party. Martin and Cindy’s party. Are you going? I saw the invite.’

‘Ah… that.’ Henry, as if in hope of escaping the unmistakable, incomprehensible danger of female emotion, accelerated through a red light.

‘Not that I mind,’ said Charlotte, stiffening as the pressure of the car’s sudden speed pushed her back into her seat. ‘I don’t mind in the least,’ she added, bursting into tears.

‘Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear… Charlotte.’ They were at another red light, impossible to jump this time.

‘Ignore me,’ Charlotte gasped, batting furiously at her streaming eyes. ‘I’ve been doing this sort of thing lately – not just when I’m drunk. It’s unspeakable. I have nothing to cry about –
nothing.
I’m almost forty, I’m a free woman, I should be able to control myself.’ She rocked backwards as Henry accelerated again, from a standstill this time. ‘Are you ever unhappy when you shouldn’t be, Henry?’ she sobbed, groping through the blur of her tears for a tissue and finding nothing but the tampon.