Singled Out (11 page)

Realizing that he was transgressing the rules of flippancy that governed their relationship, he added, ‘Not of course that I'm saying the recreational bit isn't
good
. Dear oh dear,
so
good, so
very
good. Maybe you should try it with another woman, Laura …? Maybe that's what's been wrong with your sex life all these years.'

As Tom leeched on to the teat of the bottle she offered him, Laura asked mildly, ‘What makes you think there has been anything wrong with my sex life?'

‘Simply that it doesn't seem to be terribly
active
.'

She too took refuge in flippancy. ‘Pretty unusual to be very active in the week after you've given birth.'

‘Yes, but I mean generally … Considering how attractive you are, it's amazing how few boyfriends you've had.'

‘I am still technically married.'

‘Yes, but …'

‘Maybe I'm just too picky,' she said lightly. ‘Maybe now I've tried living on my own for a while, I realize how little I need a man around cluttering up my space.'

‘Hm, maybe that's it. And probably it's an absolutely
ideal
situation … so long as you can do without sex for long periods.'

‘You have no idea how long I go without sex. You know nothing about my sex life, Rob.'

‘No …' he agreed, ‘except I definitely know that you had a bit nine months ago …'

If this had been a cue to confess the identity of Tom's father, Laura ignored it. ‘Certainly did,' she said, shifting the baby in her arms and removing the bottle as he let out a little choking sound. She sat the floppy body up and patted its tiny rounded back. Tom let out a little cough and a posset of milk slipped down his chin. Laura wiped it with a muslin nappy and resettled him with the bottle in his mouth.

‘Rob …' she began slowly. ‘There
is
something I'd like you to do for me now …'

‘Yes. Anything, my love. Anything you ask.' A sudden thought gave him pause. Raising his hands to his face in a gesture of mock-panic, he shrieked, ‘Oh my
God
! You don't want me to change his nappy, do you?'

Tom stirred uneasily at the noise. ‘Ssh,' said Laura. ‘No, Rob. What I want you to do is … I'm not religious … I probably won't ever have Tom christened, but nonetheless … I'd really like it if you'd agree to be a kind of godfather for him.'

Rob's hands flickered up to his face again in a parody of Miss World-winning surprise. ‘
Moi
?'

‘Oui. Toi.'

‘Oh, but come
on
. I thought godparents were meant to take on the moral guardianship of their charges, point them in the way of the Lord and all that. I'm honestly not sure that I'm qualified.'

‘Seem perfectly qualified to me.'

‘But don't godfathers also take their godsons off to brothels to get them sexually initiated … or have I got that wrong? I mean, just
imagine
what kind of sexual practices I might initiate young Tom into.'

Laura was not put off. ‘Please. I want you to agree to do it.'

Rob fluttered his eyelashes and again escaped into facetiousness. ‘Well, if I say yes straight away, you're going to think I'm
easy
, aren't you?'

‘No. Go on. Please will you? Please, be Tom's unofficial godfather.'

For a moment he mimed indecision, then conceded, ‘All right, you've talked me into it.'

And Laura could see from his face how much her request had meant to him.

‘Don't you want to hold him?' asked Laura.

‘No.' Kent sat on a metal-framed hospital chair, the rigidity of his body signalling his unease. He looked more rectangular than ever in a dark grey suit. His hands clasped a rolled-up
Evening Standard
between his knees. The dull eyes were wrinkled about with exhaustion.

‘But you must get to know him, Kent. There's no way you're going to avoid seeing a lot of him in the future, so you'd better come to terms with that.'

‘What do you mean – see a lot of him?'

‘Well, he's part of me now. If you see me, you'll see Tom. You know, on family occasions.' Kent let out a little grunt of annoyance. ‘What's the matter?'

‘It's just to hear you talk of “family occasions” … as if it were normal … as if we were part of a normal family that could have “family occasions”.'

‘Kent …' She wanted to reach out and touch him, pass on her new serenity, stroke his arm, melt away some of the tension inside. But touching didn't come within the agreement of their relationship. ‘Kent, don't you understand, that was all in the past. It really is possible to put the whole business behind us. Now that he … our father's dead.' It annoyed her that she still stumbled on mentioning their father's name. ‘We really can change, Kent. Tom's part of that change for me. He's going to grow up surrounded by love, I'll see to that. It really will be different for Tom.'

Her brother made no response. ‘If only I could make you understand, Kent, how different
I
feel now I've got him. Cleansed almost, as though my childhood really has been purged away. It could work for you too. If you met someone you liked, if you just trusted yourself, then you could start a family and –'

‘Shut up!' he said, surprisingly harsh. Then, covering the lapse, he went on, ‘I'm sorry. I'm tired.'

‘But it could work for you.'

‘No. We've been through this many times. All right, I'm prepared to believe it's the right thing for you, Laura. I just know it isn't for me.'

‘But why?'

‘Because … I feel it's still in me … the capacity for violence is still …'

Laura tried to help as his words trickled away. ‘You mean – “bad blood will out”?'

‘If you like. Patterns repeat themselves.'

‘But don't you see? You dilute the bad blood. You start afresh.' She indicated Tom, nuzzled sleepily content against her breast. ‘I mean, look at him. Can you see any evil in that? He's starting afresh. He has the potential to become anything, everything.'

The seriousness of their conversation was unsettling Kent. He didn't like getting into discussions of the past; he preferred their talk to remain uncontroversially bland or, if topics of that kind ran out, he favoured silence.

Kent rose to his feet and banged the rolled up
Evening Standard
against his thigh. ‘I'm sorry. I'm not very good company this evening.' This was an incongruous apology from someone who appeared never to have attempted to be good company. ‘Had a hell of a few days.'

‘Work?'

He nodded. ‘Haven't been to bed for the last two nights. Our investigations were really getting close and then …' he sighed with exasperation ‘… it all got fucked up.'

‘Can you tell me about it?'

‘Don't see why not. The case is over – though not in the way any of us wanted it to be over.'

‘What happened?'

Kent sank back on to his chair, drained of all energy. For once, he was prepared to talk about work, and doing so seemed to relax him. Laura comforted herself that preoccupation with an investigation probably explained her brother's lack of response to his nephew.

‘You remember the Melanie Harris case? Strangling in a car park in Paddington – last October?' Laura nodded. ‘Well, we'd been following up all kinds of leads, kept going cold, kept looking as if we'd never get anywhere on it.

‘Then, suddenly, couple of weeks ago, we got something. Hot. Real definite proof of who we were after. Witnesses who'd seen him round the relevant place at the relevant time. We'd got a name at least – we knew who we were after. Been tracking him down for the last week … finally got him and pulled him in for questioning. We were so close and …' he sighed in exasperation ‘… now we'll never be able to prove it. We know it was him, but we'll never be able to prove it … so the case'll just be closed. God, it's so fucking annoying when you put in all the hard graft and don't get a result!'

‘But why haven't you got a result? What happened?'

‘Only bloody topped himself, didn't he?'

Kent unfurled his
Evening Standard
and spread it out on the bed so that an edge just touched Tom. Laura followed her brother's pointing finger. She was vaguely aware of a headline reading, ‘
MAN FOUND HANGED IN POLICE CELL
', but it wasn't the words that grabbed her attention. It was the photograph. A head and shoulders studio portrait. Unmistakably of the man she had met in a bar the previous October. Tom's father.

Laura Fisher pushed the greying hair back from her temple and tried to focus her mind on what the prospective parliamentary candidate was saying. The trouble was he had one of those voices, like a weatherman's or a financial analyst's, which discouraged attention. The words were clear, but delivered in such a way that their meaning soon got lost as the listener's mind glazed over. He was, in short, boring.

Still, it was because he was boring that he was in the Lewthwaite Studios that morning. He was paying to make himself less boring, and thus in theory to enhance his chances of selection as candidate by his local Conservative Association. Laura's private view was that it would take a total charisma transplant to make him suitable for any kind of public office, but it wasn't her job to say that. Her job was to encourage him to come back and pay for more training sessions. It was early days for the studios and every little helped.

Realizing that he had stopped talking, she put down the talkback key and said, ‘Yes, there's something coming there, but it still sounds as though you're reading it.'

He was aggrieved. ‘But I'm not reading it.'

‘I know that. I know it's entirely spontaneous. What we've got to work on now is making it
sound
entirely spontaneous.' Before he could speak to defend himself, she rose from her upholstered swivel chair. ‘I'll come through into the studio.'

The complex still smelt new, even though its conversion had been completed nearly five months before. Laura breathed a cocktail of paint, sawdust and freshly laid carpet as she pushed through the soundproof doors into the studio.

The building was a converted warehouse, formerly Lewthwaite & Sons, in St George's Road, within walking distance of Laura's house at the edge of Brandon Hill Park. Though the exterior of the studios remained shabby, inside everywhere looked good. The dominant colours were a kind of French navy and paler shades of blue, carried through from the walls to the tweedy upholstery of the easy-chairs and low sofas. Tables, shelves and surfaces were all painted matt black. ‘No Smoking' stickers were much in evidence. Carefully chosen prints hung on the walls. Looking that good had not been cheap.

Nor had the equipment which was essential to give the studios any chance against the competition. There were plenty of other television and audio facilities round Bristol, and profit margins had to be tightly trimmed for Lewthwaite Studios to be in with a chance.

Staff were another expense. Andy the editor was the only full-timer, but others came and went according to bookings of the facilities. Fortunately there was no lack of freelancers around in Bristol, particularly since the BBC had cut their television commitment in the region.

The project had been funded fifty per cent from Laura and Rob's savings, twenty-five per cent from a second mortgage on her house, and topped up by a bank loan. The finances just about worked, so long as all the facilities were fully booked most of the time. But the recession in the television industry following the cynical Thatcherite distribution of ITV franchises meant that there were a lot of other set-ups offering production facilities at bargain basement prices.

Laura knew it would be tough – and Rob's illness didn't help – but she reckoned she would survive. She was prepared to be flexible and explore alternative uses for her studios. The four-day television production courses she'd organized had been encouragingly oversubscribed, bearing out the old truism that when there are no jobs, there's never any shortage of hopefuls willing to pay to train for them. The courses were a part of the business she intended to develop further.

She knew she was putting her own career on hold, but she also knew it made economic sense. Nobody was now commissioning the kind of large-scale documentaries for which she had made her name and won BAFTA awards. Maybe the climate would improve, but till it did, she was in with a much better chance than her many former colleagues in the industry who had no work and no prospects. Her prudence in financial matters had paid off. Though some friends had accused her of being pussyfooted, Laura Fisher had always known that the only possible basis for life as a single woman was unchallengeable financial independence.

And the outgoings would diminish in time. Already she was finding having Tom at university cheaper than having him at boarding school. Everything else would get better too. For a long time Laura Fisher had trained her mind to exclude negative thoughts.

The prospective parliamentary candidate looked up pathetically as she came into the studio. ‘I wasn't reading it, really,' he protested.

‘I know you weren't, but you still sounded as though you'd learnt it by heart.'

‘Well, I had, I suppose, in a way. I mean, the statistics – you know, about what happened when we pulled out of the ERM – well, it wouldn't do if I got those wrong, would it?'

‘No, obviously. But what you've got to do is make the things you've learnt off by heart sound as if you've just thought of them.'

‘Oh.' He looked pessimistic. ‘I don't think I'd be any good at that. I'm the sort of person who always does a lot of research and briefing before I go into a meeting or anything. I don't like presenting ideas as though I've just thought of them.'