One Moment, One Morning (28 page)

‘Blimey – what a lot of food,’ Simon mutters. Evidently they are in the kitchen.

We should have hidden it, thinks Karen. He’s expecting them to have lunch with Alan’s family, but there’s far too much for eight. It’s clearly not a roast, either. But hopefully he won’t have time to think about that. Sure enough, in seconds, the back door opens and the two men pause on the threshold.

‘Karen?’ Simon says again. Before he can take in the throng before him, up they all jump.

‘
SURPRISE!
’ they yell in unison, pressing forward.

Bang! Bang! go the party poppers. Pop! goes the champagne. At once there are coloured streamers and overflowing plastic glasses, squealing children and laughing adults everywhere.

And, in the centre of the throng, Simon.

Looking at first stunned, then overwhelmed, then – Karen can tell – overjoyed.

‘Oh, my GOD!’ he is saying, his hand to his mouth to smother his emotion. ‘You shouldn’t have . . .’ Men are slapping his back, women are kissing his cheeks; he struggles to turn round and take in who is there. It’s almost everyone he knows: Alan’s wife, Françoise, with their teenage children; Tracy, who looks after Molly and Luke, and a couple of families from up the road. There is his mother, of course, and his school friend Pete, with his new girlfriend, Emily. There are several of his colleagues – his boss, Charles, has come all the way from Hampstead – and even his fellow footballers, who only just made it to the house before he and Alan got there; Alan was under strict instructions to pull in for petrol en route. And these are just the people to hand. She can see tears glistening in her husband’s eyes and he chokes, ‘You shouldn’t have.’

The children run towards him, released from their curfew. ‘Happy birthday, Daddy!’ they cry. Simon scoops them into a double hug; they are still small enough that he can lift them both in his arms.

Then more slowly, with measured steps, Karen comes forward. ‘Happy birthday, darling.’ She reaches round the children’s heads to kiss him. His lips are soft and warm, heat radiates from him; he is still sweaty from the game.

‘Wow.’ He shakes his head. ‘I can’t get over it. Really, I had no idea.’

‘You didn’t?’

‘Not a clue.’ He turns to Alan. ‘You sneaky bastard!’

‘Fifty.’ Alan raises a bottle of beer. ‘You didn’t think you’d get away with that scot-free?’

Simon shakes his head. ‘You knew all along.’

Alan grins. ‘Why do you think I said we couldn’t stop for a swifty?’

‘He
didn’t
want to!’ Karen chides.

Simon laughs. ‘I said
don’t
tell the wives.’

Karen reaches round his bottom, hugs him and the children tight. ‘Seriously,’ – she needs him to verify – ‘you don’t mind?’

‘No, no, it’s great. It must have taken heaps of planning. Whenever did you find the time?’ Again he pauses to take it in; he is calmer now. ‘I can’t get over it. Tell you what, though,’ – he puts the children down – ‘I
would
like a shower.’ Although he has removed his football boots and is in his sandals, he is still dressed in his red and white sweatshirt and shorts and his legs are very muddy.

‘Of course,’ nods Karen.

‘Here—’ Anna interrupts to hand him a glass of bubbly. ‘Take this with you.’

*

Karen looks round the kitchen. Who would have guessed, eighteen months back – whoever would have guessed – that the next time the surfaces would be covered in dishes prepared in her husband’s honour, it would be for his funeral?

She still can’t fully conceive of it. Back then, she had assumed that they had twenty more years together, minimum. Fifty-one is no age for anyone to die, but Simon –
her
Simon?

Fifty-one . . .

It’s all so unfair, so terribly, so dreadfully unfair.

Suddenly, Karen is overpowered by fury. And before she can stop herself, she picks up a plastic bowl, piled high with one of Steve’s lovingly prepared salads. She doesn’t pause to worry if she might break something or scare the children and Phyllis in the living room next door.

‘
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRGGGGHHHH!
‘ she roars, a banshee howl from the depths of her gut, and hurls the bowl across the room.

The container bounces off the far wall, splattering beans, sweetcorn and vinaigrette all over the paintwork, and lands, with a useless clatter, on the terracotta-tiled floor.

*   *   *

Lou is sitting in her favourite cafe, overlooking the beach, watching teenage boys skid pebbles into the sea. She ought to go home, shower for tonight, but she needs to clear her head, blow away the sense of other people’s tragedy that seems to cling to her. So she has come here, instead, a mug of tea on the table before her, steaming. The glittering and playful light of that morning has gone; the day is fading, fast. It has turned cloudy and chilly and windy, but a bright-yellow tarpaulin shelters her from the worst. Where the boys are playing close to the shore, the water is grey, tinged with orange from churned-up sand, and white horses run all the way to the horizon, a reminder of the power of the elements.

What a week, she thinks, and it is only Friday.

Simon’s death touched Lou. And now, there is Jim. How strange, how appallingly sad, that his ex-wife remarrying seems to have been the catalyst that drove him to it.

Lou exhales, slowly.

Her emotions are moving, colliding, re-settling as a result of events; intensifying the sense of her own mortality, making her question her life, how happy she is. And perhaps more than anything, what she feels most strongly as she sits, hands wrapped round her mug of tea, is loneliness.

She first touched on it the night before, that feeling, when she compared her own situation to Karen’s. And now, after this, with Jim, she feels it even more acutely: as she looks down at the pebbles in every shade and shape of brown and pink and beige, Simon’s death, Jim’s suicide, have made her feel gut-wrenchingly alone. Not just alone, but insignificant, as if she is just one tiny stone on an infinite swathe of shingle.

Shingle . . . Suddenly, she remembers: Tuesday. She casts her mind back to the day after Simon died. Wasn’t that when she saw an ambulance near here, by the pier? She was on her way to the station, cycling: she had to swerve . . . There was a body, being carried from the beach . . .

Christ, she wonders, was that Jim?

She puts her head in her hands.

Poor Jim. The cottage cheese man. The bin man. And to have walked into the sea: what a brutal, desolate way to go.

Lou wouldn’t have been in Jim’s head that day for the world.

By contrast, in a way, she almost envies Karen. Seeing Karen weep for Simon, hearing her talk of him, has made Lou all the more conscious that there is no one special in her life, that she has no partner. She might not be Jim, but still she has had no one to tell about what happened on the train the other morning. So far, other than Anna and Karen, no one she knows is aware that she has witnessed death, first-hand, that week. No one knows she has met with Karen, that they have talked, and Lou has tried to help. So she is carrying the experience on her own. And she is sick of it, having to bear everything alone. Absolutely sick of it. Will it always be this way?

Yet at once another emotion collides with this one: guilt. So she rebukes herself: how can she envy Karen? It is perverse of her, selfish. Her life, her problems, her loneliness; they are nothing, really. She is not homeless; she has not lost a partner. And if she is alone, then whose fault is it, whose decision, ultimately, other than hers?

*

‘You know your problem? You’re not out, Lou, that’s what it is.’

Opposite Lou, limbs tense with fury, chin up, defiant, is Fi, her girlfriend of nearly two years. They are standing in the kitchen of Lou’s attic flat, arguing. They are always rowing, but this is the worst yet; Lou can already tell that from here, there will be no going back.

‘I am,’ protests Lou.

‘No, you’re not. Not to your family.’

‘My sister knows.’

‘That’s easy. She’s our generation. What about your mum? Your aunt?’

‘Why is it such a big deal?’ Lou asks.

‘Because it’s
important
, Lou, that’s why. I know you think it doesn’t matter, but it does. It matters hugely, and the reason you don’t think it does is because you can’t face doing it.’

Ouch, that hurts. Because it’s true. Lou can’t face it, and Fi can’t understand why.

‘I’m fed up with it,’ says Fi. ‘Coming to stay with your mother, pretending. It’s not the separate bedrooms – Jeez, I can live without sex for a night or two. It’s the lies. “This is my
friend
Fi”’ – she mimics a pathetic voice. ‘It’s the evasive answers when your mother asks if there’s a man in your life. I’m not your friend; I’m your girlfriend, your lover. It’s ludicrous at your age, to be telling her otherwise. You’re over thirty years old.’

‘You don’t understand. She’s not like your parents. She’s not liberal and understanding. She doesn’t read the
Guardian
and live in Kentish Town and lecture in politics. She’s old-fashioned and prudish. She runs a B&B in Hertfordshire and reads the
Daily Mail
. She’d go ballistic.’

‘I know. I’ve seen what she’s like. I’ve frigging well met her. But that’s not the point. You’re making this issue all about her, but actually, it’s about you. You’re not being true to yourself, Lou, keeping it secret. Frankly, I don’t give a fuck about her.’ Fi shakes her head, despairing. ‘It’s you I give a fuck about. And so what if she goes ballistic? You’ll live through it.’

It’s at this moment, exactly, that Lou withdraws. She says nothing, just shrugs her shoulders. She knows Fi is driven nuts by the way she closes down; that, especially coming on top of her refusal to tell her mother, it will push Fi even further away. Fi has said countless times she can’t bear the way Lou does this, that it makes her feel shut out, rejected.

But Lou can’t explain; she cannot go there. It is too complicated, too fraught. It is to do with losing her father, this whole issue. And it is not only that she promised her Dad, when he died, not to tell her mother. It is also – more, maybe – Lou’s fear that if she does tell her, her mother will cut her off, and she’ll lose her mother too. Losing one parent was bad enough, but losing both – no matter what she thinks of her mother – Lou can’t face that. If she is forced to make a choice, and she does feel she is being forced, she would rather lose Fi, that is the truth of it.

Once more, Lou is by the ticket barriers on Brighton station, waiting, this time for Vic and Sofia. Her mood has lifted and she is more excited now: they are due any minute. Lou watches the platforms eagerly, not sure where the train will come in. In London – and every other place Lou has lived – trains always arrive on the same platform, day in, day out. But in Brighton, it seems far more ad hoc. It strikes her as appropriate, this lack of order and formality, as if irreverence has permeated the very infrastructure of the city. She imagines what consternation it would cause if trains to and from her hometown were to run like this. In Hitchin, everything is very orderly. Even the station flora and fauna are perfectly manicured all year round.

Lou sometimes indulges in a sort of ‘watched kettle never boils’ philosophy; she is superstitious that way. So she wanders into WHSmith nearby on the concourse, hoping it will precipitate the train’s arrival. The newsagent is crammed, but Lou doesn’t want to make a purchase; it’s distraction she is after: she’s trying not to admit it to herself, but she is nervous.

A train draws in, the doors open. Sure enough, there is her friend, striding down the platform, looking as incredible as ever. Vic is nearly six feet tall and part Jamaican. With a mass of frizzy shoulder-length hair and statuesque figure, she’d be striking in any event, but she never shies from creating an impression: today she is dressed in giant spike heels and a fake leopard-skin coat, wheeling a bright-red patent bag behind her.

Seconds later, Vic sees Lou, waves enthusiastically, and with confident strides cuts a swathe through the throng. Before Lou can quite work out what’s happening, she is being kissed on each cheek with a flamboyant ‘
Mwah!
Darling!
Mwah!
Darling!’ and left reeling by an astonishingly strong musk perfume. As Lou emerges from the leopard-skin embrace, she looks around and realizes Vic has no one in tow: she is alone.

‘Where’s Sofia?’ she asks. Perhaps she’s not coming. No, Vic wouldn’t do that to her, surely.

‘She ended up on a different train,’ breezes Vic. ‘I said I was meeting you here, she should be here any moment.’

Just then a voice over Lou’s shoulder interrupts. ‘Vic, hi. Lou, er . . . hello . . .’

Lou turns, takes in short dark tousled hair, deep brown eyes . . . Attraction hits her in the solar plexus. For Sofia is not merely pretty: she’s
lovely
, a gorgeous pixie, a girl Puck.

‘Lou, Sofia. Sofia, Lou.’

Wow, thinks Lou, but immediately wonders, what on earth is a girl like this doing, coming to meet me? She can hardly be short of offers.