Relative Love (28 page)

Helen was surprised as always by the extent of Kay’s perception and her fearlessness in articulating it. ‘Yes, I suppose I was.’

‘Because of your niece.’

Helen sighed. ‘Dear little Tina. Yes, that’s true … although …’

‘Yes?’

‘Nothing, really … I was just going to say that, now I think about it, I had actually been a bit below par before Tina died – missing Theo and so on when I hadn’t really expected to, and all sorts of other unconnected things like Chloë being difficult and working too hard and —’

‘Nothing is unconnected,’ Kay interrupted, sliding deftly into a car-parking space and tugging up the handbrake. ‘Everything is connected. Absolutely everything.’

‘Is it?’ Helen glanced at her companion, impressed as always by her conviction.

‘Everything,’ Kay repeated, tipping out her purse in search of change for the meter. ‘How is your sister-in-law, by the way? How is she coping?’

Helen frowned, casting her mind back to the gruelling evening at the cinema when she had last seen Serena. ‘She’s … fragile, up and down, but then we all are. I mean, nothing feels quite the same as it did. It’s like the whole family has lost some sort of equilibrium. We’re all meeting for Easter this weekend and, frankly, I’m rather dreading it. Ashley House is lovely and huge and we usually all just relax there and get spoilt by Peter’s mother, who’s the most fabulous cook, but this time I know it will be different … difficult.’

Kay, who had been listening intently, closed her purse with a quiet snap. ‘A tragedy like that … it takes time … The ripples and repercussions will go on and on. In the meantime,’ she added lightly, ‘we’ve two hours before the shops close.’

‘Look, Kay, I know you’re trying to be kind, but I really don’t need to buy anything, least of all kitten heels or lingerie. Peter would be appalled.’

Kay raised one eyebrow. ‘Would he?’

‘Yes,’ replied Helen firmly, ‘but it is his fiftieth soon – we’re having quite a big do in the country at his parents’ house. You could perhaps help me choose something for that.’

‘Good. I saw some lovely eveningwear last week, strapless, low backs, just right for your slim figure. Look here,’ she added, seeing Helen’s expression, ‘you’re a gorgeous-looking woman in the prime of your life and the sooner you start recognising it the happier you will be. Before you know it you’ll be like me, HRT-dependent and sharing pillow-talk with a dog. It’s okay to
enjoy
yourself, Helen, it really is.’

Helen laughed uncertainly, and said she knew that perfectly well. Then she followed Kay into various shops and changing rooms, and purchased a blue silk evening dress with a back that plunged almost to the little V at the top of her bottom, and a pair of matching blue backless high-
heeled shoes. At the last minute she let Kay add a minuscule pair of blue silk knickers to the pile as well, with tiny satin bows front and back and about an inch of blue lace to cover her rear end. ‘I must be mad,’ she muttered, scribbling her signature under the huge total on the credit-card slip, then tucked the receipt into her purse. ‘I might just decide to bring them back,’ she warned Kay, as they left the shop in search of a cup of tea, and added, a little desperately, ‘I’m really not sure they’re
me
.’ Kay, who had treated herself to a huge turquoise bra for her ample chest and a voluminous silky black petticoat, merely smiled knowingly. ‘But, then, what’s “me”, Helen, other than whom you choose to be?’

Peter removed his wig and mopped his brow with his handkerchief, then refolded it into a careful square and slotted it back into his breast pocket. The rape trial, after all sorts of delays, had finally come to an end. They had won but it had been a close call. The girl, so brassy and defiant about her story, had got close to alienating the jury. He had seen it in their expressions and warned her accordingly. ‘Behave more like a victim,’ he had wanted to say, but didn’t because she had the sort of temperament that would probably have made her do precisely the opposite. Instead he said that she had to control her anger and win them round, that there were enough facts to speak for themselves and she should not let her emotions get in the way of them. Wary, her small, stony eyes narrowed permanently in resistance, she had more or less managed it. The jury, after a nerve-racking four hours, had found her assailant guilty. The judge had given him seven years and the girl had flung her arms round Peter like an exuberant child.

If only life had such obvious and satisfying conclusions, reflected Peter now, pulling a cigar out of a polished wooden box that he reserved for such occasions and leaning back in his leather chair to smoke it. Even when he lost a case there was a satisfying
shape
to the process, a sense, even in defeat, of closure. One could take a deep breath, dust one’s palms together and move on. But with things on the home front at the moment there was only a feeling of relentless collision, messy unravelling, as if they were all lurching from one mini-crisis to the next without a lucid view as to where on earth they were heading. Helen, normally so on top of things, was all over the place. Without Rika the house was messy. The ironing, at which the girl had been indisputably magnificent, was sitting in piles on the stairs. For the time being his shirts were being done at the dry-cleaner’s, which was better than nothing but still inconvenient because they needed collecting and Helen never seemed to have time. The Kay woman had offered to do it, but as far as Peter was concerned the less she did the better. There was something witchy about her, something he couldn’t put his finger on and which worried him all the more for apparently being so appealing to his wife. She seemed to be there now whenever he got home, all side by side and cosy with Helen, as if the pair of them were hatching some invisible conspiracy. It made him feel shut out, threatened, undermined.

Peter drew deeply on his cigar, letting the thick sweetness of the smoke curl round his tongue and teeth before blowing it out in a wavering grey stream. The sooner they found a proper replacement for Rika the better. Remembering that Helen had taken the day off to interview candidates, Peter phoned home, drumming his fingers impatiently on his desk when there was no reply. He tried Helen’s mobile but it was switched off. Wanting to share his victory with at least one member of his family, he phoned Charlie, only to be told that he was in a meeting. So he rang Ashley House instead, where he had an unsatisfactory conversation first with his mother, who was fussing and preoccupied about preparations for the arrival of the family for the
weekend, and then with his father, who rambled first about the roof, which had sprung a few leaks, and then about the high returns to be had in the reinsurance market in which his syndicates had lately invested heavily. Peter, in no mood to reiterate his much-repeated mantra that the sooner his father resigned as a Lloyds Name the better, let him talk, all the while puffing heavily on his cigar and musing upon recent returns on his own investments, which, thanks to an excellent stockbroker, were considerable. He was about to sign off when there was a lot of rustling followed by the indignant voice of his daughter.

‘Daddy, when are you and Mummy coming?’

‘Tomorrow, darling.’

‘Only Theo is being horrible.’

‘Why? What’s he doing?’

‘His stupid camera. He won’t turn it off even when I ask really nicely. And he keeps trying to film Samson so he’s run away and won’t come even though Granny has called him for his tea.’

‘Oh dear. Well, I’m sure that Samson will come when he’s hungry. And Theo’s only practising because he wants to be a film director when he grows up.’

‘Well, I think he’s stupid.’

‘Now, Chloë, that’s quite enough. You be a good girl for Granny and I’ll see you tomorrow.’

There was a long sigh, followed by the whisper, ‘I want Mummy.’

‘You’ll see Mummy tomorrow too.’

Peter put the phone down and tapped the ash off his cigar. He hadn’t eaten enough and the smoke was giving him a headache. He knew he should take the opportunity to have an early night but somehow he wasn’t in the mood for Helen, especially not if she had the witch in tow, which he suspected she would. He phoned the old colleague with whom he had had dinner the month before, who happened to be both female and highly entertaining, and asked if she was free for a drink as he had an improbable victory under his belt and no one immediately available with whom he could celebrate it.

‘Last-resort department, am I?’ she quipped.

Peter laughed, relaxing already. ‘I’m afraid you are, Hannah. I won’t keep you long. I’m just not quite ready to face the domestic scene.’

‘I know
exactly
what you mean,’ she replied smoothly. ‘And don’t think it gets any better when they leave school. We’ve got
four
extras camping with us at the moment, all between the ages of nineteen and twenty-one. It’s hell.’

‘Foxton’s wine bar in half an hour?’

‘I’ll be there.’

Serena had spent the afternoon doing … well, if she was honest with herself, doing nothing. Absolutely nothing. Fuck all. Sweet FA. The morning had been busy enough, cajoling the children into packing for the stay with their grandparents, making them a picnic for the journey, checking they had money, telephones, telephone numbers. She had been efficiency personified, issuing orders, herding them about the place like some kind of sergeant major, telling them to hurry when in fact it was she who was in a hurry, a hurry to be rid of them, to get out of Victoria station as fast as her legs could carry her. To be on her own. Don’t think, she had told herself, waving them on to the platform, then hurtling back through the crowds, keeping her eyes averted from the café where Ed had made Tina cry and life had felt normal. Arriving at the double yellow where she had parked the car, she had groaned with relief both at having made it out of
the station and at being on her own. Thank God, she thought, now I can do and be all that I need to do and be. With other people – whether her own children, or Charlie, or well-meaning friends – she felt constantly that she was holding herself in, keeping a lid on the tremendous, pushing pressure inside. And yet a moment later stabbing the key into the ignition, all the relief dissolved to a feeling of emptiness. A big nothing. But not nothing because it ached so.

The house was hollow and tidy. She folded laundry, patted cushions and made it tidier. She walked into the garden, picked up the plastic bucket over which Cassie had stepped four weeks before, and put it down again. She stared, arms akimbo, at the scruffy rectangle of grass, needing its first cut of the spring, at the rosebuds, out in such force that the flimsy branches of the bush trailed down to the path from the weight of the load, at the weeds tangled round the base of the shrubs. She was an impatient, over-hasty gardener, lacking the green-fingered skill of her mother-in-law yet keen enough on the results to have a go. The previous spring she had spent many happy hours in the garden with Tina, steering their ancient hand-mower round her daughter’s darting crawls, pausing to pull sprigs of grass from her ever-hungry mouth and prise clumps of mud from between her chubby fingers. Tina had loved the bucket, banging it like a drum with a stick, or tipping it, heedless of rain water and dirt, on to her lap or her head. The bucket had only made sense because of Tina. In fact, Serena realised, pulling her cardigan more tightly around her, all objects – the roses, the sky, the house, a pair of socks, everything – only had value because of the human emotions connected to them. Without her daughter, their poky London garden was just a strip of grass, as desolate and devoid of meaning as a disused playground. Seeing it look so lush and sprightly in the spring sunshine only made Serena feel worse, the sheer resilience of all the buds and green sprigs appearing, to her tender heart, merely accusatory and insouciant. Nature might plough on, sprouting again after the assaults of winter, she reflected wretchedly, but she couldn’t, she just couldn’t.

Desperate for the consolation of action – no matter how pointless – Serena took her handbag and walked towards Wimbledon high street. She could buy bread and put it in the deep freeze. Or butter. No one could ever have too much butter. Mocked by the fresh brightness of the day, the sun beaming like a great smiley face in the sky, Serena walked with her eyes on the pavement, seeking something blank and ugly to match her mood. In the little supermarket she took a plastic-wrapped sliced loaf off the shelf, not bothering to check whether it was brown or white, thin – or thick-sliced, and then a pack of butter. The young Asian girl at the checkout smiled at her and she smiled back, thinking, If only you knew, if only you knew. My smile is a lie. I am a lie. I look normal but I am not. I am a sham of a person, a collapsed, hopeless, unfunctioning thing, going through the motions.

Out in the street, squinting at the sun, which was low in the sky now but still as bright as a penny, she saw a woman she recognised; not a great friend, but quite a good one. They had met at the antenatal clinic when she was pregnant with Tina and stayed in touch. She had a boy called Robbie who had been to mini-gym with Tina, and Tumbletots, and toddler swimming classes at the leisure centre. Tina had been to his first birthday party and given him a fat truck with detachable wheels. Serena looked at the woman, bracing herself, ready with the usual replies. ‘Yes, okay, managing, thank you … other children fine …’ But the questions never came. The woman, who was called Brenda, dropped her eyes and hurried off in the opposite direction, dragging her little son after her. It was understandable, Serena knew. Cowardly, but understandable. Oh, and so cruel. Serena dropped her little white plastic bag of shopping and fled down the street, turning down a side road she didn’t know and then another and another, until she found herself outside a church, a big Victorian Gothic monstrosity, with dirty black walls
and rusting wrought-iron gates. The door will be locked, she told herself, because of vandals and shorter working weeks for priests. But it was open.

Inside, the air was chilly and damp. Instead of pews there were rows of chairs with little wooden pockets on the back for hymn books and orange kneelers slotted between their legs. Serena wasn’t religious. She had been confirmed mainly because she wanted to wear a pretty white dress and a real silver cross round her neck. Marrying in church had been grand and moving, but she would have been just as happy swapping rings with Charlie in a registry office. Attendance since then had comprised the Christmas family service at St Margaret’s, but really just for the fun of singing carols and forcing the children to think of something beyond the frenzy of tearing off wrapping-paper. At her mother’s funeral she had felt mostly relief – because the hideous suffering was over – but little compunction to analyse the possibility of the hereafter. Nor had the notion of a benign divinity shimmered at the funeral of her daughter. She had been both too focused on trying to control her own emotions and too wounded to seek solace from anyone, let alone a God in charge of some grand scheme that involved killing off toddlers. Efforts since then to imagine the reunion of these two lost loved ones in heaven had felt as pointless as a cynic trying to believe in a fairy tale. But now, she thought, now, she would give God a chance. Because she had stumbled upon a church. Because she could think of nowhere else to turn.