Other People's Husbands (6 page)

backed, powerful throw. The sound of the window breaking was bliss. It took a luxuriously long time for the glass shards to tumble, to settle into the leaves of the herb plants along the ledge, and as the last silvery slivers tinkled into the sink Sara let go of a long-held breath, feeling the air cool across her overheated lips. Strangely, in the milliseconds before sense kicked back in and she realized what a crazy moment she'd had, a vision came to her of Marie trussed up tightly in her pink basque, tangled with a man on a starchy white hotel bed. But it wasn't Marie's secret lover Angus whom Sara had never met that appeared in the scene, but the friendly man from the pub. She didn't even know his name.

‘Mum!' Both girls shrieked at the same time. Sara looked at the broken glass as if she didn't quite recognize what it was, and then at Cassandra, who was wide-eyed and frightened, clutching Charlie tightly to her and with her hand across his head. For a moment, none of them moved; all three frozen in the shock of the moment. After the crash of the glass, the silence was heavy.

‘Stay there,' Pandora quietly ordered her sister. ‘You and Charlie stay right away from the glass.' She approached Sara silently, took her arm and led her to the table. ‘Mum, sit here, just keep still and quiet and don't move. Cass, go and get Dad, will you? I'll clear this lot up.'

‘OK. Is he in the studio?' Cassandra quickly strapped Charlie into his bouncy chair and opened the door.

‘No,' Sara told her, feeling flat and miserable. ‘He's out by the pool smoking one cigarette after another. He walked the dog, then came home in a funny mood and suddenly decided he was a smoker again.'

‘But it's been years . . . Oh never mind.' Pandora went to the fridge and took out a bottle of wine, poured a large glass for her mother and then pulled a dustpan and brush out from under the sink. ‘Most of the glass is outside in the garden,' she said. ‘That can wait till the morning.'

Sara sipped her wine cautiously. Maybe she shouldn't have any more, she thought. How much more crazy would she get if she drank too much of it? Pandora was being gentle, treating her as if she was suddenly ill. Perhaps she was. She felt stiff, tired and disgruntled.

‘Sara?' Conrad raced in through the door, followed by Cassandra.

‘Dad, mind the glass!'

He took no notice, crunching across it to get to Sara. ‘What's wrong? What happened?' He sat beside her and pulled her close against him.

Sara shrugged. ‘I broke a window.'

‘
You
broke a window? What, on purpose?' He looked amazed, delighted.

‘Dad, you sound, like,
proud
of her?' Cass looked confused.

‘Leave it, Cass.' Pandora abandoned the dustpan and hauled her sister through to the sitting room. ‘You know what they're like,' she said quietly. ‘Mum just totally lost it. He
is
proud of her. Look at them.'

‘Yuck,' Cassandra murmured, turning away from the sight of her parents wrapped around each other, apparently oblivious to anyone else and to the damage. Pandora sighed. Were neither of those two going to clear up the glass? And what about dinner?

‘And before you say anything, Sara my love, I know what this family gathering is all about, so I'll let you off the hook right now, even at the risk that you'll start hurling plates round the room. I really, truly don't
want
a birthday party,' Conrad announced as he poured cream on the lemon tart. ‘I know you've been revving up all through dinner to talk about it and it's very sweet of you all, but really, let's just not bother, shall we? I'd feel like a small child. And as my second childhood's rapidly approaching I really don't want to tempt fate by trying the feeling on for size.'

Conrad leaned back in his chair and smiled across the table at her. So good-looking he was still, craggy and arresting. Women still turned in the street to look at him. Unfair that, Sara thought. Why is it that men can be so beautiful in their later years with faces eroded like ancient cliffs, yet women, however copiously they religiously smother themselves with cosmetic protection, just look
worn
? Cheekbones – that was part of it. He'd got cheek-bones like Peter O'Toole's, whereas she, with her round face that had always been thought cute, would simply end up with her skin drooping off her like a bloodhound.

Sara's mind had been a total blank as they'd eaten, and she'd completely forgotten about Conrad's birthday. She'd been vaguely aware that he was twitchy and had a weird ‘elsewhere' sparkle in his eyes, but that wasn't particularly unusual. He'd been like that so often over the years. Sooner or later he'd come out with it, maybe an announcement that he'd been asked to paint Keira Knightley floating Ophelia-style beneath Hammersmith Bridge among urban-river flotsam. Or that he'd been offered a knighthood and was going to turn it down. She could wait.

Through the mists of her quasi-absence during this meal, she'd heard her voice talking to Cass about Charlie, sympathizing with Pandora about the gruesome backstage conditions at the very fancy restaurant she worked in, yet feeling completely disconnected. She'd kept glancing across at the kitchen window that was now all taped-up cardboard, and she'd wondered, with mild amazement, where that had come from, the wild urge to smash something? She was the calm hub of this family, the one who made it tick. A shrink would call her the ‘enabler' in the house. She was the keeper of the lists (birthday, Christmas, shopping, holiday plans and so on). She wasn't supposed to shatter.
Windows
weren't supposed to shatter.

Conrad was the one whose artistic mood swings took up the breathing space here. Usually, it was all about
him
. The girls seemed barely out of their teens and still brittle, testing the murky depths of life. Just now, shaken by their mother's explosion, Cass and Pandora were still being polite to each other, almost exaggeratedly sweet-natured, passing the salad down the table without being asked, collecting plates and putting them into the dishwasher as soundlessly as they could, as if frightened that a sudden noise would provoke another fit of mayhem. They needn't worry. She was over that now. The attention was on Conrad. It was all right – she was used to that and it felt comfortable.

‘Well, what
do
you want to do about your birthday then?' Sara eventually asked. ‘I mean it is a special one, surely? Shall we go away somewhere? All of us? Maybe Venice? We had such a blissful time there, I remember.'

Conrad pulled a face. ‘Absolutely
not
. I don't want to travel anywhere. I don't intend to go on a plane ever again.'

‘Now you're just being peevish. Spoiled, like a kid,' she told him.

‘Second childhood, bring it on!' he laughed, reaching across and taking her hand. ‘We can have temper tantrums together, now you've brought out your violent side. Only not abroad, if that's all right with you. Let's trash the UK.'

‘You can get to Venice by train. It's easy,' Cass pointed

out.

‘I still don't want to go. All those hours, too close to strangers. Almost worse than flying.' Conrad shuddered.

‘OK, well that's your choice made, but what about the rest of us? Does that mean you won't come away with me anywhere if it involves flying, ever again?' Sara asked.

‘Darling, you can find plenty of other people to travel the world with. Call on your stable of trusty men. Ask Will. If he'll go and see horror movies with you I'm sure he'd be up for weekend mini-breaks. And what about your oil-stained-mechanic admirer who supplies the veg boxes? He'd be handy for carrying your baggage.'

‘Why would I want to go anywhere with Stuart? I've never been further than the pub on the Green with him.' Was he losing his mind, she wondered? Where had this come from? ‘I barely know the guy. And Will's got Bruno to go on holiday with. I quite like travelling with you actually, Conrad. Sharing experiences, having conversations. All that. It's called a relationship.' Why was he being like this? Only a couple of hours ago he was murmuring comfort words into her hair.

‘But we've been just about everywhere we've really wanted to go by now, haven't we?' he said. ‘We can impose ourselves on your mad sister Lizzie in Cornwall if we want to get away. Or explore the outlying edges of this lovely British mainland. Why ask for the Maldives? We have Stonehenge! Get it? Good that, I thought!'

‘Hmm. Going all
New Voyager
on me isn't a top placatory tactic,' Sara warned him, taking up the long sharp knife from the cheese plate and waving it at him. Cass and Pandora backed away, nervously.

‘Mum . . . Just . . . like, put it down?' Pandora carefully took the knife from her mother's hand and placed it out of reach.

‘Well – he's annoying me, so childish!' Sara said. Conrad smiled at her, blew her a kiss. She tried
not
to smile back, though it was difficult. He was pouring more wine and looking too pleased with himself, knowing quite well he'd got round her, as ever. No party. No big-deal celebrations. That was fine, so long as that was what he really wanted.

‘You're as bad as each other, you two,' Cass told them, glancing at the taped-up window. It was one of very few ordinary, small-sized windows in this house of wall-sized safety glass and wood. It was lucky, Cass thought, that her mother hadn't gone mad with a sledgehammer and written off half the building. Perhaps that was next. Lucky she'd moved back in, really, as it looked like she wasn't the one most in need of supervision.

‘You're not just telling me you don't want to do anything special because I threw that stupid jar, are you?' Sara persisted. ‘Is it because you think a bit of organizing might send me right over the edge?'

‘No, Sara.' He sounded tired suddenly, she thought. ‘No, I really don't want any fuss. Please. Just . . . nothing.'

He was quite capable of being this insistent now, but when it came to the crunch he could well sulk and accuse them all of not caring. He was too used to her being the calming influence. Come to think of it, she probably did tend to treat him a bit like a child, second time around or not. Maybe she always had been the one who did the taking care of: fending off the persistent admiring women who couldn't believe a man as famously attractive as Conrad didn't want to take advantage of sexual offers. And then there were his clients . . . all those egos having their portraits painted. They always started out
thinking
they wanted the manic, quasi-abstract Blythe-Hamilton portraiture, but no one could accuse Conrad of being a flatterer when it came to paint. Somewhere deep down the subjects all preferred attractive to honest, or to down-right cruel, in some cases. She'd been the one on the end of the phone when they wanted to whine that Conrad hadn't stinted when it came to portraying their excess body fat or facial wrinkles.

The knife having been confiscated, Sara broke off a chunk of Yarg cheese with her fingers, leaving big untidy shards of it scattered on the plate. It didn't matter. It was just cheese. Lots of things didn't matter, possibly the least of them the sharing of aircraft space with a reluctant voyager.

‘It's fine about flying. And the train. And everything. It's up to you, darling. Suit yourself,' she told him.

He looked at her in surprise. ‘Don't you want to know what I
do
intend to do?'

She kissed him lightly as she passed him, on her way to make coffee. ‘No, not really. Now I know I don't have to organize anything, why don't you just surprise me?'

He looked slightly nervous at her unexpected abdication. ‘Oh all right, Sara. I'll do that. Just don't say I didn't warn you.'

‘Mum you are
so
brilliant. Are you really sure you don't mind? I mean, babies are quite hard work and every-thing . . .' Cassie was whirling round the kitchen, scattering crumbs from her croissant as she went from fridge to cupboard to kettle, creating maximum air turbulence out of a simple matter of making two mugs of tea.

Charlie sat on Sara's lap, trying hard to reach the bowl of gloopy baby cereal on the table. One fist had already been in it and he'd smeared creamy streaks across the glass tabletop, an activity that pleased him enormously and that he was eager to repeat. Sara tried to distract the baby from his mission, guiding another spoonful of the stuff (which smelled horribly like wallpaper paste) towards his mouth. He turned away, his big wide eyes fixed on his mother, who was now packing her laptop into her bag.

‘Of course I don't mind. We went through all this last night,' Sara said, with more conviction in her voice than in her head. ‘If you can't take care of him and you won't ask Paul, then aren't I the best person to have Charlie while you're at college? And it's not as if you have to be there all day every day. Don't worry about it, just go – it'll be fun for me!'

Well, how else would the girl be able to continue with her course? Whatever arrangement Cass eventually worked out with Charlie's father, she was still going to need plenty of backup. Guiltily, Sara now wondered if she should have been more persistent with her offers of help earlier. She'd tried, offering Cass some simple me-time, but Cass had usually turned her down. Perhaps if she hadn't, it wouldn't have come to this. If Cass hadn't been so determinedly independent and if Sara had insisted (for Cass's own good) on taking Charlie for a while on a proper regular basis from the start, she and Paul might still be together and coping well with their baby and with each other. As it was turning out, Sara was just glad Cass had chosen a university only thirty minutes' drive away, rather than Leeds, Liverpool or somewhere impossibly distant. What happened when things went wrong for those highflyers who'd picked US Ivy League universities? The ones who'd flown off full of brainy confidence but who ran into trouble somewhere along the line, simply because emotional trauma didn't stay out of your way on account of your IQ being in genius range. You could hardly keep whizzing across the Atlantic to hug a heartbroken daughter every time a relationship went into meltdown. By the time you rolled up to the campus with a box of extra-strength tissues and a comfort-size bar of Fruit and Nut, the girl would surely be about to leave for a party with an instant new love of her life and tell you it was OK, she was over it, but ta very much for the chocolate.