One Moment, One Morning (39 page)

‘No.’

‘He might stay with the guy he works with sometimes, Mike, or something, I hope. I don’t even really want to speak to him. But I would like to know he is OK.’ She is torn. ‘I haven’t heard from him yet, this morning.’

‘Has he got his mobile with him?’

Anna recalls the ceaseless calls the night before. ‘Yes.’

‘I could ring him, if you like,’ offers Lou, unexpectedly.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Check he’s all right. I work at a hostel for the homeless, too. So if the worst comes to the worst, and he’s not with Mike or anyone, I could direct him there.’

Anna feels a mix of emotions: the idea of Steve in a hostel churns her up again inside. Nonetheless, she would like to know he is warm and cared for, however basically. It would be better than nothing. She can’t bear to think of him sleeping in a doorway for another night.

‘Would you mind?’

‘Of course not. I can withhold my number so he can’t ring me back. We’ll just check he’s OK.’

Anna wouldn’t want Lou to get embroiled in endless calls; she doesn’t want a mediator. But Lou has evidently experienced behaviour like Steve’s before – not that surprising, given her work – and thinks practically as well as generously.

Anna is grateful, especially when Lou is having such a difficult day herself.

Lou’s mother doesn’t know how lucky she is, thinks Anna, as she waits for Lou to call her with news. She shouldn’t give her daughter a hard time; she should be proud.

*     *     *     

No time like the present, thinks Lou. She doesn’t really know what she is going to say, but there is little point in rehearsal. She has been out for a while now, walking round the village green. Her mother will be wondering where she is.

To her relief, Steve answers straight away. ‘Hello?’

‘Oh, hi,’ she says, still gathering herself. ‘I, er, you don’t know me, but I’m Lou, a friend of Anna’s.’

‘Yes. She has mentioned you.’ Lou detects an Antipodean twang. ‘What do you want?’

‘I’m calling on her behalf. She just wants to know that you’re all right.’

‘I’m OK,’ he says. He doesn’t sound drunk, Lou concludes. Good. ‘Just a bit of a bad night. Is Anna all right?’ She hears his voice soften.

‘Yes, she seems to be.’ She cuts to it. ‘Where are you?’

‘At my mate Dave’s. He says I can stay here, just for a bit.’

Ah, so Anna was right. That is also good. To some degree, he is someone else’s problem now. But something in Lou doesn’t want to leave it right there: she wants to steer him, give him hope. Not for him and Anna, but for himself.

‘I’m glad to hear that,’ she says. Then she adds, ‘Look, Steve, you don’t know me, you can tell me to piss off, and you might never use it, or do anything, that’s up to you. I know you drink a lot – Anna has told me.’ She pauses, waiting. If he is going to do it, this is when he will put the phone down on her. But no, he is still there; she can hear him, breathing. So she continues, ‘In a bit, when I’ve looked it up, I’m going to text you a number. Some people that might be able to support you if you feel you want to stop. OK?’

‘Whatever,’ he says. Then adds, ‘Thank you.’

Lunch is served bang on one; in fact the carriage clock on the dining-room mantelpiece strikes just as they take their seats: Lou’s mother, Lou, Pat, Audrey; Georgia has left to cook for her own family.

Nonetheless, Lou’s mother has unfolded an extra leaf of the oak table in honour of Pat and Audrey. She has cooked roast beef for them, too; Lou, as usual, must make do with the vegetables.

‘Are you still one of those vegans, then?’ asks Pat.

‘Vegetarian,’ corrects Lou. ‘I eat dairy.’

‘Thought you’d have grown out of it by now,’ he says, carving the meat with relish. Blood oozes down the side of the joint and onto the platter. He scoops it into a spoon and covers his helping.

‘It’s not something you
grow out
of,’ Audrey corrects him. ‘It’s something you believe in.’ She smiles at Lou, to show she understands – sort of.

Lou nods, appreciative. She has long observed that Audrey is more liberal than her husband, and, come to that, her sister, Lou’s mother. Her mother is the one who has children and grandchildren, yet her sibling seems more, not less, in touch with the younger generation.

For a few moments the only sounds are the scrape of polished silver on bone china. Then Audrey attempts to make conversation. ‘So,’ she says innocently, ‘do you have a boyfriend at the moment, dear?’

Lou nearly drops her fork. She is not used to such direct questioning; her mother avoids it.

‘
I
think there was something going on between Lou and that man on the train,’ says Lou’s mother, arching an eyebrow. Evidently, with Audrey and Pat to back her, she is prepared to probe more deeply than usual.

Lou grates her teeth. ‘No,’ she insists, ‘there wasn’t.’

She looks down, concentrating on spearing a carrot. Really, this meal is unbelievably bland; she can’t even have gravy because it has been made with the fat of the meat.

‘It’s all right, dear, you can tell us,’ says Uncle Pat, with the same overly sympathetic note in his voice as Lou could hear in her mother’s yesterday.

But I can’t! Lou protests inwardly. That’s the whole point.

‘I don’t think she wants to talk about it,’ Audrey realizes. ‘Sorry, dear, I didn’t mean to intrude. It’s only you’re such a nice girl and—’

‘ – getting on a bit,’ says Uncle Pat, helpfully.

‘Pat!’ chides Audrey: ‘That wasn’t what I meant.’

‘I was married at twenty-one,’ Lou’s mother points out.

‘I know.’ Lou reaches for the mustard. She needs something to give this wretched food flavour.

‘And your sister was married at twenty-four.’

‘I know that too.’

‘So you don’t want to have babies, then?’ asks Uncle Pat.

Lou feels herself being stretched by this conversation, like the string of a kite being pulled by the wind.

‘I, er, don’t know,’ she mutters.

‘You’d make a lovely mother,’ says Audrey.

Lou knows she means it kindly, but honestly . . . Audrey might have made a lovely mother too, but Lou wouldn’t contemplate saying so. She has no idea why Audrey hasn’t had children – miscarriages, infertility, her husband’s impotence – any of these could be the reason why. There might be all sorts of nerves it could touch. Why can’t they leave her alone?

‘You know what? I don’t think I really want children,’ she says, hoping to shock them, just a little. It is not even completely true – the reality is she hasn’t found anyone she would consider co-parenting with. But at least it might stop them prying.

‘Oh,’ says Lou’s mother.

Lou can read the disappointment in her face. Yet why should she be so let down? Aren’t two grandchildren enough? This reminds Lou of the photographs, earlier, and she feels the string inside her tautening.

Maybe it’s because her mother sees herself reflected in Lou’s circumstance: they are both single women, living alone. And even though she won’t admit it, Lou’s mother is lonely, her existence so circumscribed that she cannot believe Lou’s life could be otherwise.

Lou shudders. She can’t have her mother believe they are alike, not for a second. They are different, totally different. She has to make it clear.

And then she thinks of Simon, and all that has happened in the last week, and how she only has one life, which she has to live well, or at least, as best, with as much integrity, as she can. She recalls her father’s plea to keep the truth from her mother, and, at last, she sees it for what it was.

Cowardice.

Well, her father might have spent his life avoiding confrontation with his wife, but it killed him and Lou is sure as hell not going to let it kill her. She realizes that if she carries on denying who she is, then she really might end up like her mother; suffocated. If not immediately, then eventually.

She cannot pretend any more.

Once she has acknowledged this, the string can no longer take the strain. It snaps.

And—

‘I’m gay,’ she says.

This time there is no television to drown them out; they are there, in the middle of the table. The two most powerful words she has ever spoken, eclipsing the overcooked vegetables, undercooked meat and rapidly congealing gravy.

*     *     *

Warmed-up pizza, bean salad, couscous: Karen gives the children, herself and her mother a lunch of leftovers from the day before. Then, while Molly is having a nap and Luke and her mother are quietly practising Luke’s handwriting together, she slips away to Anna’s.

The short walk is the first time she has been alone – completely alone – for days. She has always had people upstairs, in the room next door, somewhere near.

It is a miserable afternoon. It doesn’t warrant an umbrella or pulling up the hood of her anorak, but dampness hangs in the air, permeating her hair and clothes, sitting on her skin. In many ways it is a day like a thousand others, though as she walks she grows increasingly aware: today is different. It is the first day of her life fully, properly without Simon.

He is buried, gone.

As she passes white terraced house after white terraced house, some with peeling paint, some newly decorated, some with scaffolding, she is struck: not all, but so many of them, are family homes. Inside, behind their whitewashed exteriors, are people with partners, children. They will be laughing, playing, arguing, sulking, serving Sunday lunches, snoozing on the sofa.

It seems unreal that her world no longer mirrors theirs.

*     *     *

‘I knew it,’ says Uncle Pat.

‘If you knew it, how come you never asked me?’ Uncle Pat appears not to know how to answer, so Lou helps him. ‘Because you were afraid to, maybe?’

‘I, er, don’t know . . .’

‘Well, I think so,’ she says. ‘And who can blame you? I was frightened to say so myself. The truth is, you’ve all known for years, but never admitted it out loud.’

She looks at them each in turn. Aunt Audrey is studiously examining her plate; it seems Royal Doulton has never been so fascinating. Uncle Pat is watching her, head cocked to one side, as if unexpectedly confronted by a strange animal in a zoo and trying to appraise it. But it is her mother who Lou really wants to read, and can’t.

Her face is blank, expressionless.

‘You know what, Mum?’ she says. ‘I haven’t got a boyfriend not because I can’t get one, but because I don’t want one. I like women. At the end of the day, it is that simple. Dad knew and he asked me not to tell you. So I haven’t: not for all these years. I’ve protected you – kept it from you – because he was so worried it would upset you. In fact, he said it would destroy you. But I’m thirty-two, for fuck’s sake.’ She can see her mother recoil at her swearing, but Lou is no longer able to restrain herself. It must – she must – come out.

She turns to her uncle. ‘And you’re right, Uncle Pat, I
am
getting older.’ Then she says to her mother, ‘So what I’ve come to realize is that it’s all very well, protecting you, Mum, but what is protecting you doing to ME? If I carry on like this, living a lie, I’m the one that’s going to end up destroyed, eaten away. I’m telling you. I’m gay.

‘There’s no going back, no changing it, no “oh-she-just-hasn’t-met-the-right-man”. I am never going to be Georgia. I am never going to be married, with two point four children, live in a nice little house in the country, with a nice little husband, close to you. I am never going to drive a nice little Golf round Hitchin while my husband goes to work to pay for my frigging children’s clothes from Boden and my designer handbags like her. I don’t give a monkey’s for any of it.

‘I live in Brighton, where there are lots of other people just like me. I earn my own living. I have my own friends. And I’m going to sleep with women.’

She stops, breathes out, braces herself for the onslaught. Waits . . .

But instead, her mother just says, ‘Has everyone finished?’ and rises to her feet.

They pass their plates to her as implicitly requested, her mother collects them, and, without another word, she leaves the room.

The three of them sit there, awkwardly, Lou listening to the clock ticking on the mantelpiece, marking the passage of time.

Eventually, Audrey coughs, then says, ‘Well, then . . . Does that mean you’ve got a girlfriend, dear?’

Lou laughs, slightly manic. ‘No.’ Sofia comes to mind, but it is far, far too soon to give her that title, and anyway, Lou doesn’t want scrutiny about a specific relationship to add further heat to an already explosive situation.

Audrey smiles sympathetically and Lou feels that, ever so subtly, she is offering her support.

‘I’m not really seeing anyone,’ she volunteers.

She can feel Uncle Pat squirming, as if the very mention of her seeing a woman conjures up every kind of sexual freakery.

Lou returns her aunt’s smile, then takes a deep breath, reaches over, tips the remaining vegetables into one dish, places the empty container underneath, picks up the gravy boat and heads out into the kitchen.

Her mother is standing at the sink, elbow-deep in soap-suds.

Lou goes over to the draining board with the dishes.