Singled Out (16 page)

Laura had no idea whether there would still be any attraction, anything at all left between them. But equally she had no hesitation about her decision. As he had written in the letter, they had to find out. They could not go to their graves not knowing.

She rang him the morning she received his letter. They arranged to meet for lunch in Bristol the following Saturday.

Laura went through a lot of emotions in the intervening five days. As someone who had always prided herself on her control, she was annoyed by how much she vacillated. One moment she thought the idea of seeing Philip was totally ridiculous and could only end in embarrassment; then within seconds her mind had filled with visions of total romantic mushiness. This wasn't what Laura Fisher was meant to be like.

Maybe, she decided, it was hormonal. Her age. Perhaps, although the idea didn't appeal, she should go to the doctor and investigate HRT. That thought prompted another anxiety. Her periods were getting so unpredictable that they could also threaten the weekend's romantic dream scenario.

Laura felt an unfamiliar twitchiness during the week. Her concentration was bad. Just when she should be channelling all her energies into Lewthwaite Studios, those energies seemed diminished. She did television training sessions with a couple more would-be communicators; she had some preparatory meetings for a corporate video she was directing; but she felt lethargic, on automatic pilot. And she was afraid the clients noticed her ineffectuality.

She really must pull herself together. If Rob ever did emerge from hospital, it would still be a long time before he could be an equal partner in their enterprise. Laura was going to have to run the studios single-handed for a while yet.

The continued presence of Emily in the house didn't improve her mood. Though the girl kept talking about ‘my flat up in Clifton', she didn't show much sign of wanting to be there except to sleep. For her leisure hours she had apparently taken root in Laura's house. And her hostess, though she kept trying to make allowances, found the girl's ubiquity extremely irritating.

Laura couldn't understand why it wasn't equally irksome to Tom, but he seemed quite content to sit and listen while Emily made more of her unarguable pronouncements. Maybe it
was
love. Maybe giving up all his independence and initiative to a woman was all her son wanted from life.

Again Laura felt the pang of potential guilt. Was it really her fault? Had her dominant personality sapped Tom's will and left him prey to any other strong-minded woman who fancied annexing his personality?

‘We're getting closer,' Emily announced early on the Wednesday evening.

‘I beg your pardon?' Laura had just come in from a frustrating day in the studios, where there had been a series of crises which she hadn't controlled with her customary dynamism.

‘I said Tom and I are getting closer.'

Closer in a general sense or closer
to
something, Laura wondered, but Emily quickly amplified her meaning. ‘I'm going to cook dinner for Tom this evening at my flat up in Clifton,' she announced.

Laura couldn't help herself from saying, ‘Oh, what a good little
hausfrau
you are.' She refrained from adding, ‘About bloody time too. I'm sick to death of cooking meals for the two of you.'

But she had still said something to offend Emily's politically correct sensibilities. ‘No, actually, Laura, it's not the
hausfrau
syndrome. I don't feel any
obligation
to cook a meal for Tom; I
choose
to cook a meal for him.'

‘Well, lucky Tom.' Laura looked across at her son, sheepish on the sofa. Since he had met Emily, sheepishness was his habitual expression.

‘And Tom's going to stay over,' Emily went on, ‘so don't expect him back tonight.'

‘Fine,' said Laura, ‘though I would have thought you were capable of telling me that yourself, Tom.'

‘Well, yes, I …' A deep blush now overlaid his sheepish features.

‘We didn't want you to worry, so we thought it better to tell you,' said Emily, ‘and really, Laura, when two people are –' out came the crook-fingered quotes ‘– an “item”, it doesn't really matter which partner passes on relevant information, does it?'

Philip had used the word ‘partner' in his letter, Laura was reminded. To describe some conjectural rival for her affections. She felt a sudden urge to touch Philip, to know if his skin still made hers tauten with desire. She was being stupid, she must stop this dreadful mawkishness.

Then Laura realized what Emily was actually telling her. A statement was being made. Tonight was the night. Tonight Tom, having established his credentials as someone responsible in his attitude to their relationship, was going to be allowed the inestimable prize of safe sex with Emily.

Rather him than me, was Laura's first reaction. After that came a surge of anger, at the idea of this smug little girl moulding and manipulating her son as if he were just a cipher. Emily kept going on about the importance of treating people as people, but in practice her ambition seemed to be the total depersonalization of Tom.

Laura was angry enough to have said something, but another thought stopped her. Was she, after all, in any position to criticize Emily? Though for different reasons, that night in October 1973 she had treated Tom's father as an object rather than as a person.

‘Michael hasn't been in touch again?'

‘No.'

‘Good. I've tipped off a few people to keep an eye out for him. You should be all right.'

‘Are you saying that he's really dangerous?'

‘Yes,' said Kent, and turned his attention to his steak.

It was the Wednesday evening, one of their regular meetings. Always in the same Steak House. Kent retained his suspicion of ‘tarted-up' food. A plain medium-cooked sirloin steak with chips ‘and none of that garnish rubbish' was what he favoured. Laura usually had the same. The Steak House's attempts at more exotic dishes were unreliable.

She glanced across at her brother and suddenly realized how old he looked. Only fifty-two, but he could have been ten years more than that. He had thickened out, his neck now the same width as his face. The hair was grey, cut so short that it was hard to tell where he was balding. Looks apart, though, he had hardly changed at all. Still as impassive, still rigidly self-contained, still taciturn, but for Laura his company was still strangely relaxing. Kent was a rock that had always been part of her landscape.

‘Viv'll be relieved. Tom's got a girlfriend,' she announced.

‘Ah.' The usual even monosyllable, a reaction which gave no clue as to its nature. Kent could have been delighted at the news, furious, or completely indifferent. There was no way of telling. Not for the first time, Laura wondered what it would take to make her brother show an emotion. The last time she had seen Kent lose control, he had been about eleven. He had come in from school and found his father making love to her. No, ‘making love' was never the right expression for what that man did. ‘Abusing', that was the only word. Even now, over forty years later, Laura felt nauseous at the recollection.

It had been the first time. Not the first time her father had touched her like that, but the first time Kent had seen them together. His own abuse, Laura had gathered later – though Kent never actually talked about it – had already started before that.

The boy's reaction had been terrifying. Shouting, screaming, he had launched himself at their father and, for a moment, in spite of the disparity in their size, it had looked as if the boy might prevail. But, after the initial onslaught, superior strength and violence had ensured the predictable result.

Kent had been beaten unconscious. For once their father's middle-class caution had been forgotten. But of course it had to be kept secret. As ever, Mrs Fisher closed her mind and her suburban net curtains over the incident. Kent was kept away from school for three weeks until his bruises were no longer visible. When he went back, his teachers and class-mates commiserated about his mumps. That was the excuse for absence with which Richard Fisher had made his wife ring the school.

Thereafter, though Kent often fought to keep his father away from Laura, he never again shouted or screamed. He kept his thoughts bottled up; the only means he had of countering his father's attacks was matching, but inadequate, violence.

‘I'm afraid I don't like her,' Laura confessed. ‘The girlfriend. Emily. Maybe that's just a natural maternal reaction.'

Kent didn't offer an opinion on this. Laura tried to visualize what might be happening at that moment in the bedroom of a flat up in Clifton, but her imagination was unequal to the task. Strangely, the thought of Tom and Emily in bed together didn't disturb her at all. It just seemed rather incongruous.

‘Still, I suppose I should be glad,' she continued, accustomed to maintaining a monologue in Kent's presence. ‘At least it means the boy's normal, and that's a kind of relief.'

‘How do you mean?'

‘Well, given the circumstances of our upbringing … you know, our …' Once again, to her fury, she found she couldn't look at Kent as she said the word ‘…
father
, and so on, it's nice to know that it hasn't carried on into the next generation … I mean, if Tom's out there forming relationships … well, that's good, isn't it?'

‘Good to know someone in your bloody family can,' said Kent, atypically direct.

‘What do you mean?'

‘Well, come on, your track record's not that great, is it? Hardly a champion in the relationship stakes, are you?'

Laura was taken aback by this sudden offensive, but Kent had not finished with her yet. ‘Oh, you aspire to normality, you behave like there's nothing wrong with you, but deep down you're irretrievably damaged. You're incapable of sharing your life with someone else.'

‘Kent, being a couple is not the only possible way of getting through life. Has it occurred to you that my single state might be a positive choice on my part?'

‘That's just a sour grapes reaction.'

She was incensed. ‘Is it? I see. So everyone has to be half of a couple, do they? That's the rule? Sounds like a form of fascism to me.'

‘I'm not saying everyone should. I'm just saying that you'll never be able to.'

‘And you say this from the smugness of your marriage, do you – from the safety of the perfect relationship you have with Viv?' She had tried to keep the sneer out of her voice, but failed.

Kent coloured and said quietly, ‘Viv and me works. Neither of us has illusions about it. We just tick over.'

‘Well, perhaps I wouldn't be content with a relationship that just “ticked over”.'

‘So you've decided it's better not to have any relationships at all.'

‘No, Kent, you're wrong. I do have relationships. I have friends. I have Tom. I have Rob.'

‘Yes, your only close friend's a bloody wooftah. Everyone else you hold at arm's length. You've never got anywhere near to a real relationship.'

‘What do you mean by a “real relationship”?'

‘I mean the love thing, the sex thing between a man and a woman. You'll never have that. Our …' Even Kent couldn't bring himself to say the word. ‘
He
ruined the possibility of that for us.'

‘For
us
?'

‘For you, I mean. It's harder for women to get over that kind of thing. He ruined your chances of ever having a satisfactory relationship.'

‘No, he didn't.'

‘Well, come on then, Laura,' Kent almost jeered. ‘Give me a list of all the satisfactory relationships you've had. Where shall we start? Michael?'

‘No, not Michael.'

‘Who then? All right, you found a man to get you pregnant so's you could have Tom – does that one come under your definition of “a satisfactory relationship”?'

‘No.'

‘Which seems to prove my point.' Once again he spat out the words, ‘Irretrievably damaged!'

‘You don't know everything about my life, Kent …'

‘There's not a lot I don't know.'

‘You don't know that I have had a good relationship. A loving, fully sexual relationship.'

‘You're fantasizing. When could you possibly have had that and me not know about it?'

‘When I was in New Zealand.'

Kent looked thunderstruck, then disbelieving. ‘What – twenty-five years ago?'

‘Yes. I met a man there. It was everything a love affair should be.'

‘Then why didn't it last?'

‘Because he was married.'

‘Oh, how convenient.' His voice grew dismissive. ‘Sounds like a comfortable fiction to me, Laura. Stay with it if it helps you get through this shit-hole called life – so long as you don't expect me to believe there's a word of truth in any of it.'

‘There is more than a word of truth in it, Kent. The man exists. And in fact he's now in England. I'm going to see him on Saturday.'

All the colour drained from his cheeks as Kent stared at his sister in amazement.

She was at Lewthwaite Studios on the Thursday morning when the call came through from the university. Tom's tutor sounded diffident, uncomfortable, but also resentful. He was a serious academic, he didn't feel he should be having to deal with this kind of embarrassment.

‘Mrs Fisher …?' he began.

Laura had long since ceased to bother going through the ‘Actually it's Miss Fisher' routine and just said, ‘Yes'.

‘Mrs Fisher, we haven't actually met, but my name is Chris Gregory. I'm Tom's tutor.'

‘Oh yes, he's mentioned your name.'

‘Good. Erm … Well …' He dried up.

‘I'm sorry, I must ask you to make it quick, Mr Gregory. I am in the middle of a studio session.' She waved reassurance through the glass at the local councillor who vainly hoped her training course in on-camera technique would cure his stutter.