The Art of Unpacking Your Life (8 page)

Luke finally left her, taking the children with him. Emma's violence meant there was no question of her getting custody of the children. And Luke couldn't risk it – even though she had never hit them. Yet. Though no one except Luke's lawyer knew about Emma's abuse. And he had to absorb the unspoken disapproval of his parents and all their friends, accepting that he might lose Matt and Connie. Matt viciously said he was worse than his ex-wife. How could anyone take a mother's children away from her? What could Luke do? He could never tell anyone the truth. He never would.

He sighed and slowed down as the track wound round towards a small cluster of pale grey functional bungalows flanked by safari vehicles. Emma cornered him and he gave into her. That hurt. It all hurt, if he was honest. He had been destroyed by her. He had Finn and Ella. Yet she shipwrecked them. They were lost and incomplete.

He was jogging, barely faster than a walk, hoping he wouldn't face the embarrassment of bumping into Gus, when his left ankle gave way. It slid feebly sideways down an aardvark hole. Luke lurched, madly jerking his arms. Desperate not
to fall, he fell awkwardly, agedly. The shock made him shake. His chest was screaming. He lay, face smothered by warm sand, afraid to move, terrified he was injured. He didn't budge. He gingerly lifted himself into a low crouch, hips down. He waited for a stab of certain pain. There was none. He stood up with bent knees. Was his left ankle hurt? Slightly. He felt a stiffness, which could be from lack of sleep. Maybe the after-effects of the flight.

And yet. His body was strong. He would get back into his stride, shake off this feeble morning-after lethargy. His legs started to loosen up, despite the fall. Luke sped up a little as he spotted Gae. Running was the answer. Running from middle age and its total lack of room for manoeuvre. Running marked the freedom for him to start again. As his body performed, the truth dawned on Luke. He loved his children and every moment of their time together. They had a great relationship. But his marriage had masticated him, vomiting out his remains.

He needed to concentrate on himself, not to mention his health. Get back out into the world. Luke glanced at his watch. He had twenty minutes – he would whip into the gym for a few stretches on one of those black mats. He ran straight past the pool to avoid being dragged in by the others for a coffee and doubtless more food. He walked the last few yards past the thatched fence into the oval enclosure that held the one-room gym and massage area.

Kimberley, the girl who had greeted them at the airstrip, was bent over a massage bed on the grass to the right of the gym. Wind chimes rang in the tree above her head. She was covering a blue leather bed with two pristine white towels. Her calves were slender and brown under her white uniform. He could see the outline of
her narrow hips inside her dress. Kimberley immediately unfolded her body and turned towards him with a whitened, uncomplicated smile, which propelled her full, young face towards him. ‘Morning, Luke. Good run?'

Easy and warm with possibility, Luke thought. Could this be the answer?

Connie watched Luke running past the bar where they were meeting without looking in her direction. Even from a distance, he appeared angst-ridden. She wanted to ask him about his divorce and why he had taken the children away from Emma. She disapproved of the way he had behaved. It was out of character. He never did anything to hurt anyone, Connie thought, even when she deserved it.

She reached to pour another coffee from the flask positioned on the bar. She felt horrendous. She never drank more than half a glass – she wasn't relaxed enough at the kind of events Julian endlessly circled in London. The buzz of being with her true friends in Gae made her overeager to reach for her glass. When Julian and Connie swayed back to their house, she was desperate to get horizontal and sleep. She stripped off her clothes and left them in the cone shape they made on the rug beside their bed. She struggled to find the opening to the mosquito net. She lay down flat on her back, her body spinning on a roundabout with her head tipped back to feel the breeze. She heard Julian on the phone in the sitting room, but it didn't matter. For once, she was drunk and truly happy.

‘Connie, darling, are you awake?'

‘Mmm…'

‘It was really fun tonight,' he bent down to whisper in her ear. ‘The whole holiday was a stroke of genius. Well done you.' He kissed her on the lips. ‘Sleep well.'

There was no sign of Sara, who was sleeping, according to Lizzie, who appeared wearing her sunglasses, before removing them dramatically to display weeping, red-rimmed eyes. Gus pronounced it was hay fever caused by the flowering Kalahari sour grass. The lemon scent of these swaying, hip-height grasses had been fragrant in the air. Gus went in search of another guide, who had wrap-around sunglasses that would seal Lizzie's eyes from the pollen adrift in the air.

Connie was shifting off the bar stool to wake Sara, when Matt sidled in on his own. She automatically asked about Katherine, sensing the answer was going to be another knock to their first early morning drive.

Matt looked forlorn. ‘She's not going to make it, I'm afraid. She needs to rest.'

She made a soothing sound that stuck somewhere deep in her dry throat. She touched Matt's arm, because she couldn't come up with anything more concrete.

‘Phantom pregnancy?' Sara appeared in ivory thick-rimmed Chanel sunglasses and a khaki safari dress with a narrow cream belt. She was clutching a thick olive wrap.

How could Sara be so sharp after a late night? Connie wondered. Matt paled, running his fingers through the front of his thick hair. ‘A migraine. It's the stress of it all…'

‘Migraine?' Sara snapped back. ‘What – not a common headache?'

‘Are we a woman down?' Julian interjected from the other side of the bar, where he had been hunched over his BlackBerry. He was checking it out here more
than he usually did, or maybe she was more conscious of it on holiday. ‘Has delicate Katherine abandoned us for the comfort of the chaise longue?'

This morning was going to be challenging. They would be tetchy, snapping at each other until their hangovers lifted. She could predict it as surely as she could her children fighting the morning after a late night.

Luke strode up to the bar in a grey tracksuit. ‘Morning all.' He looked buoyant. Connie wondered what had changed in the last ten minutes. He reached for the water jug, poured a glass right to the rim, and drank it in one continuous gulp.

Julian lifted his head up from his BlackBerry, ‘Have you already been self-flagellating on the perambulator?'

‘I love it,' Sara laughed. ‘I must write that down.'

Connie gave a compromising smile, hoping that Luke didn't notice.

‘I was out running in the bush.' There was no mistaking the uncertainty in Luke's voice.

Kimberley, the girl who had met them at the airstrip, appeared in a doorway. She stood, legs slightly too far apart. They politely stopped talking. Sara eyed her critically over the edge of her coffee cup. Julian was staring at her.

‘Luke, I've got a slot at 10.30. Doesn't that work for you? You'll be back by then, eh?'

‘Perfect. Thanks Kimberley.'

She smiled for too long as women did in front of Luke, before turning back outside. Connie couldn't believe it. She swivelled away from Luke.

Connie could hear Luke nervously swing from foot to foot, banging his trainers together with each move ‘I'm having a massage. I've been working out too much. My muscles are stiff. It's all there is to it.'

‘Not the only thing that's going to be stiff,' Julian said.

Connie turned away from them. Her mind was empty.

‘Julian, for God's sake,' Matt grimaced. ‘There are ladies present.'

Sara snapped in. ‘What? Matt, give us a break. We're not in corsets. I represent men who nail their victims to floorboards for fun.'

Julian flashed his eyes. He was loving every minute. Intrigue, political or sexual, brought his world alive. ‘Isn't there an unspoken gentleman's agreement not to fuck the staff?'

Connie was more upset by Luke than she was by Julian. Why did he never speak up? There was a pause in the conversation that held like a long inhale in her yoga class.

‘Luke, take some advice from your uncle Julian, Kimbo looks a little tame to me.'

Connie dreaded what was to follow. She had to stop herself from reaching for Luke's hand.

‘The perfect night is more Pippa Middleton and Keira Knightley. With Tracy Emin in there, to spice it up.'

Connie closed her eyes. She would have laid her head on her forearms, but she didn't want to draw attention to herself. There was a heavy inevitability to her marriage. She could feel Luke moving instinctively closer to her.

Connie was drawn reluctantly back to last week.

Nothing extraordinary. An intimate evening for about fifty in Winfield House, the Georgian red-brick American ambassador's residence inside Regent's Park. A cursory stop at the security gate, invitation and passport shown, down the short drive to the front door straight to the guiding arm of an elegant fixer. She led them into an eighteenth-century French panelled drawing room towards the jovial midwestern ambassador and his skinny, vivacious wife. Introductions. Julian got straight into politics with the ambassador, no small talk required. Connie's role was to instantly find common ground, which could be hard despite what Sara might think. She commented on the ambassador's wife's beautiful grey sequin dress. She always searched for a genuine compliment, it was her shortcut to getting on with anyone. She was in: the ambassador's wife had a new grandchild. She loved London. Did she know that Barbara Hutton had built Winfield House and had given it to the American state for the price of a dollar? How fascinating. When another member of the Cabinet arrived, the ambassador moved on. They did too – moving systematically round. It was what they did.

After forty minutes, Julian suggested they leave. A curvaceous columnist from the
Daily Mail
, as recklessly ambitious as the smirk under her neon red lipstick, tottered over, squeezing her plunging V-neck stretch dress between Julian and Connie. No ceremony: flattering chat, a few raucous jokes and straight to intimacy without paying even two hundred pounds to pass Go. She pressed her heavy left breast on to
Julian's right arm. He pressed it back. His eyes danced. He knocked into a passing waiter; he forgot he had said they should leave. He forgot Connie.

She played her own game many times. How long could she stick it out before she left? At Winfield House, it was thirty-two minutes. A personal best.

Of course she knew that she was being publicly humiliated.

It had never mattered as much as it did right now.

Gus re-emerged with wraparound glasses for Lizzie. As they collected their shawls and scarves, an arm squeezed her, gathering her up. ‘Good morning, sweetheart.' Dan's face was awash with warmth and concern. It was too much. Connie wanted to push him away. ‘You know, I woke up feeling awful. I never asked about the children. How is my god-daughter?'

Connie's upper lip twitched. The sheer comfort of her children. Leo, Lou, Flora and Hector.

It had rained relentlessly last weekend in Adderbury. On Sunday afternoon, they set up a Risk game on the low table in front of their fireplace. Julian built a great fire – a ritual that delighted him. Flora and Leo masterminded toasting hot cross buns on skewers, while Hector dripped marshmallows into the hearth. Flora lay with her arms outstretched on the rug in front of the fire, her hot pink hoodie almost covering her golden ringlets. Connie made a vast pot of tea.

They squatted around the coffee table. The cards Leo dealt himself made him certain to take Africa, which the whole Emmerson clan evangelically believed guaranteed winning the game.

‘Are you sure you didn't cheat?' Hector complained.

‘Excuse me, babe-teeno,' Leo played pompous with Hector, only half as a joke. ‘You offend my honour. I don't need to cheat to win.'

Julian groaned as soon as their soldiers were arranged. ‘I'm going to get murdered by my first-born son. Oedipus.'

‘Dad, I have a name, remember you had me christened? Hello, I'm Leo.'

‘I hate your mock-defeatist charade, Dad,' Lou turned on Julian, ‘It means you are going try harder to win.'

‘Lou, you, Dad or Leo always win. I don't know what you are complaining about,' Hector moaned.

‘Oh Hector, I'm sorry,' Julian said giving him a large bear hug. ‘You know we can't let you win. Then you would really hate us.'

Flora murmured, ‘You are all obsessed about winning. It's really not what life's about, you know.'

Lou piped back, ‘Flo, our resident love-and-peace peddler.'

‘What about a hot cross bun?' Connie suggested.

Lou, Leo and Julian all simultaneously groaned. Flora and Hector giggled.

Julian smiled in Connie's direction. ‘LOL, Mum,' he said with an exaggerated teen drawl. ‘You always say don't niggle, have something to eat.'

‘Did you say tickling?' Hector asked with a gleam in his eyes, which had made Connie smile. He was eleven and alternated between boyish tumbles and teen strops, not sure where he belonged. Connie was always thankful when the boy returned.

Hector launched on Leo, who at seventeen was old enough to be childish, though, of course, he had a dig at Hector. ‘How old are you, Hector Emmerson? You are in long trousers, you cannot do this with dignity anymore,' said Leo, before he rolled out from under Hector and landed heavily on him to his half-screams, half-laughs. ‘You're going to crush me, you ape. Aah, Leo, you've eaten too much KFC this term.'

‘Excuse me, I am master of this universe and certainly the official tickle monster,' Julian lurched on his two boys.

Seconds later, Flora was on top of Julian trying to extricate him from the boys. Only Lou held back. There were howls of laughter and shrieks of half-pain.