Plan B (2 page)

Geoff, on the other hand, was perpetually jolly but spent as much time as possible shut away in his study. He left all the decisions to his wife and provided a benevolent presence when required.

‘
Bon voyage
,’ he said now. ‘Look, Emma. If this doesn’t work out, you can always come back.
You
bought that pile out there, so that means someone else would too. There’s always a place for you and Alice here in sunny Holloway.’ I heard Christa say something in the background. ‘Matt, too,’ he added.

None of my family would ever have said they didn’t like Matt. Matt was charming and chatty, and everyone in the world got on with him. But three months earlier, Matt and I had invited Christa and Geoff and my cousins Bella and Charlotte to Brighton for the weekend, and had told them about our plans.

‘Wow,’ said Bella. ‘France. Fantastic! Lucky you. Living the dream, hey?’

‘Will you have a pool?’ Charlotte had demanded. ‘Lots of spare rooms? Hey, will you have one of those brilliant Frenchwomen as a cleaner – the ones in the print overalls?’

She, Bella and Matt had all roared with laughter. I had noticed Christa and Geoff both staring at me.

‘Emma?’ Geoff had said. ‘You don’t seem excited.’

I assured Geoff that I would come back to Holloway any time I needed to, though I knew I wouldn’t. I hung up the phone and looked around. With the furniture gone, every mark on the cream walls was noticeable. There were rectangles where pictures had hung, and a surprising number of pencilled scribbles at Alice’s height. I wondered how she had made them without my noticing.

If things didn’t work out for us all in France, I knew we would come straight back to Brighton. I could not have lived in London again. I didn’t even like visiting any more. It unnerved me. It was bad for me.

I had left London when I was twenty-four. I was scared there. Something strange had started happening to me. My anxiety was spinning out of control. I had a reasonably well-paid job working for a charity, and I enjoyed what I did – essentially, creating order from chaos – but away from my desk, I could barely function. On the way to work I worried that the tube might break down and make me late, or that I would get stuck in a tunnel in the dark, squashed up against invisible strangers. If I was out after dark, as I inevitably was when I left work in the winter, I was perpetually on guard against being mugged. It had never happened. If I passed a man or a group of men on the street, I crossed the road as a precautionary measure. However, if any of them were black, I was terrified that crossing the road made me racist, so instead I would walk past, trying to look confident, while my heart pounded and my muscles tensed, ready to run.

Every day, I would get home from work and bolt the door behind me. I shared a flat with my cousin, Charlotte, who had the opposite attitude to life to my own. Charlotte and I had never been best friends. I had adored Bella from an early age, but Charlotte thought I was dull and I thought she was reckless to the point of stupidity. During those London years, I lay awake in bed until three in the morning, waiting for the sound of her key in the lock. Often she had company. I waited until the footsteps, the giggling, and often the sex noises had died away, and then I would pad out of my room to double lock the door and put the chain on. Occasionally I would bump into a conquest outside the bathroom and would exchange embarrassed greetings. Charlotte’s conquests seemed extremely random.

Charlotte had long, platinum-blonde hair and a skinny body, and she hated being seen with me and Bella because, as she used to say, ‘One look at you two and they know I’m not a natural blonde.’

‘Most of them probably find out soon enough,’ Bella would reply, and they would laugh while I struggled to get the joke.

London had been too much for me. I hated seeing so many homeless people. I could not give money to all of them, but I felt I ought to. I particularly hated seeing homeless women; I
had
given money to all of them, and I still did, because it turned out that the homelessness problem was nearly as bad in Brighton. I continued to worry about Charlotte. She was single and I knew she still enjoyed indiscriminate sex. These days she was a struggling actress, so I worried, as well, about her precarious financial situation. I worried about my younger cousin, Greg. He was away travelling. The fact that I could not imagine the dangers he was facing in Cambodia made it easier, in a way, but the nagging fear never went away. Greg was the baby of our family, and all of us felt protective of him. I thought this might have been a factor in the development of his habit of boarding a long-haul flight whenever he had the chance.

In London, I began to be scared by my own neuroses. The fears spiralled: I became scared of being scared, and my world started to close in on me. I realised that I was not rational, that I was infuriating Charlotte and worrying Christa.

Brighton was the perfect compromise. As soon as I arrived here, I calmed down. I came to Brighton shortly before everyone else in London decided to do the same, and I managed to buy my little house for £90,000. It had seemed like a lot, but I’d had a deposit saved up and the mortgage was relatively small. I still commuted up, until I had Alice, but my office was near Farringdon station, so I could take the Thameslink train almost to the door. I never had to go on the tube or fight through the crowds. I felt safe again. After my maternity leave, I resigned and took a part-time job with a small charity here. I walked to work and dropped Alice at nursery on the way.

Life in the middle of Brighton was easy. It was convenient. I knew that everything I needed was within walking distance. There was a Marks and Spencer’s food store at the station, two minutes’ walk away, and it was open for all my waking hours. I could always nip out to buy milk, or a pizza for dinner, or chocolate. I bought my paper from a newsagent up the hill. Two minutes away, in the North Laine, there was a fine array of cafés and restaurants, and friendly, non-chain shops. There were parks and playgrounds, children’s music, painting and yoga groups. Walking along the seafront made me happy, whatever the weather. In many ways I preferred it out of season, when the sky was slaty grey and the sea its mirror. Alice would rush up and down the esplanade and I would watch her. She threw stones into the sea while I held her hand. Matt and I took her to the pier and indulged her obsession with one particular ride where she rode a Barbie motorbike. There were very few people around on a Sunday morning in winter. I liked that.

I stepped outside and sat back down on the wall. It was getting colder, and I hugged myself to keep warm. I watched Matt emerging from the house bearing one end of a box of books. I knew we had packed some of them too full, so they would be really heavy. Matt was smiling under the pressure.

That was the main reason I liked Brighton. I liked it because I had met Matt here, four years ago. Meeting him had demonstrated to me that my decision to move here had been absolutely the right one. We were introduced in a café by a university acquaintance I had never imagined I would see again, and from that day on he had been the centre of my life. I imagined the way I would be now had I stayed in London. A life without Matt, a world without Alice. It was impossible. Matt still worked in London, and usually stayed overnight for at least half of the week, but when he was with us, we were a perfect unit, and when he was away, we looked forward to his return. I never took him for granted. On days when he managed to work at home, I loved listening to him on the phone, or typing on his laptop, in the little study at the back of the house. ‘Smith here,’ he would always say on the phone. It was one of his idiosyncrasies.

And today, I was leaving. In France, our nearest shop was going to be ten kilometres away. Everything would shut down for lunch. Every café would be smoky. Even though I had once spoken fluent French, I would struggle to communicate. I would be acutely and constantly aware of being an outsider. Matt would still be working in London for most of the week, so now he would be five hundred miles away from me, rather than fifty. I liked France for holidays. I would never have considered it as a potential home. Not even after watching umpteen thousand documentaries about people moving there.

Matt sat down next to me, on the wall. His eyes were shining and his face was flushed.

‘All done,’ he announced.

‘All done?’ I echoed. I looked up. One of the men closed the back of the lorry while the engine revved impatiently. Then he leapt into the front passenger seat and slammed the door behind him. We watched the truck pulling out and driving down the street.

I looked at Matt. He was happy in a genuine, straightforward way. Everything about him was glowing. I realised that he really was delighted to be making this move. I had assumed that his enthusiasm was exaggerated to counter my reluctance, but now I saw that it was not. Even now, sitting on a low wall next to the empty shell that had been the home we had shared, even now, when we could barely imagine the day-to-day reality of the life that lay before us, Matt had no doubts.

‘Christa on the phone?’ he asked. I nodded. ‘Am I still the bogeyman?’

‘Of course you’re not.’

‘Dragging their poor helpless little girl across the sea, away from them?’

‘It’s not like that,’ I said weakly. ‘Not at all.’

Matt was going to stand out in France. He looked English. I didn’t; I could easily pass for French and so could Alice. We were short and dark. Matt was tall and thin. His hair was dirty blond, like straw that has been in a barn for a while, and in the sun he turned a deep pink even when he was wearing factor fifty. Matt had a kind face; an open face. I always knew what he was thinking. He was charismatic, larger than life. I often wondered what he was doing with me. I knew I was no great catch; and yet he cherished me. I knew that he was selfish, but I never criticised him for it, never mentioned it, because I was so grateful that he had decided to spend his life with me. I was annoyed that Christa and Geoff had made their feelings plain to Matt. I didn’t want him to hold that against me.

‘You’re happy,’ I observed.

He draped an arm over my shoulders. ‘Emma,’ he said. ‘Of course I am.’ His blue eyes crinkled as he smiled down. ‘We’re embarking on an enormous adventure. I know you’re not excited about it, but you will be.’

I leaned on him and tried to imagine it. I was desolate. I searched for something positive to say. I did not want Matt to see the depths of my desolation. No one saw my depths. I didn’t want to see them myself.

‘It’s a leap of faith,’ I told him, eventually, with a small smile. He grinned back.

‘Something like this is always a leap of faith.’

‘It doesn’t appear to be for you.’

He kissed the top of my head. ‘I do know that it’s different for me,’ he conceded. ‘I’m going to be commuting every week. Half my life will still be in London. Much easier to deal with.’ He pulled back and looked into my eyes, and I caught my breath at the effect he had on me.

‘That,’ I told him, ‘is the first time you’ve admitted it.’

‘I know. Sorry. I admit it now. I keep my job, I go on planes twice a week, I have the best of all possible worlds.’

‘I’ll work in London,’ I told him suddenly, desperately, and I meant it. I could live in London again if I had to. I could stay with Christa and Geoff. ‘You stay in the middle of nowhere with Alice every day, and I’ll work to support us all.’ I looked into his smiling eyes. He did not even consider that I might be serious. He knew I would hate to be back in London, that I didn’t enjoy flying, that I had never spent a night of my daughter’s life away from her. And I would have hated it, but it was infinitely more appealing than the alternative.

‘I had a dream that we had dinner with Bill and Hillary Clinton,’ he said, changing the subject suddenly with transparent desperation. ‘That has to be a good omen, doesn’t it?’

‘Was Hillary going to run for president?’

‘Yes. That was why we were having dinner with them.’

‘If she was seeking our campaign advice, that’s probably a good omen.’

We were interrupted by Anne. She strolled across the road and sat on my other side.

‘So you’re off?’ she asked, looking at the lorry, which had paused at the Give Way sign at the end of the street, and was indicating right. Anne was a lovely woman, an artist who seemed to do ceaseless voluntary work. She was small and blonde and the corners of her mouth were always twitching into a smile.

‘Looks that way,’ Matt agreed.

I assumed my best cheerful look, for her benefit. ‘You will come and see us, won’t you?’ This had become my mantra, lately. I was desperate for friends to visit. The thought of familiar people coming to see us, of our life in France being a kind of extended holiday for friends and family, made it all seem bearable. I could imagine myself as a useful hostess.

‘Of course we will,’ she said warmly. ‘You lucky things. We adore France. We’ll be thinking of you out there in the sunshine.’

‘I’m sure you’ll have plenty of sun here, too,’ I told her, looking up at the deep blue of the sky. ‘You’ll have to let us know what the new people are like,’ I added. I was slightly jealous of the people who had bought my house. I didn’t want Anne and the other neighbours to like them better than they had liked us.

I kissed her goodbye.

‘Oooh, two cheeks,’ she said. ‘
Très français!
’

Matt shepherded me into our car, which he had filled to the brim with stuff, leaving only Alice’s car seat empty. I was grateful that he had done it all, that I did not have to go back into the empty house. He dropped the keys through the letter box. I slammed the passenger door. Matt started the engine and looked at me. He raised his eyebrows, smiled, leaned over and kissed me. I did my best to look brave. I had no other option.

A few other neighbours came out as we pulled away, and we opened our windows and waved until we had turned the corner. We were going to stop at the nursery and pick Alice up, and then we were driving to Newhaven.

I swallowed hard and concentrated on thinking about the journey. I did my best not to consider what might await me at the end of it.