The Godmother (39 page)

He pushed me away and held me in front of him. “Don't you dare, Tessa. This is no one's fault.” He knew me too well. “It was an accident. A terrible accident.”

“I don't know, Ben.”

“Of course it was. Tessa, stop it. Come on, let's go for that walk.”

He let go of me to push the pram out on to the pavement. I immediately missed the physical contact. We walked out to Holland Park Avenue, up the
hill and through the innocuous white stone wall of Holland Park. Within a few meters of leaving the gate behind us we were in a woodland labyrinth, surrounded by precocious squirrels and fat pigeons. A world away. This was the kind of setting I needed. It was time.

“Ben, you know what happened the other day, I need to talk to you about it.”

He stopped.

“Keep walking,” I said. “Or I may not get this out.”

“Get what out?”

“Keep walking!” I insisted. We started moving again, slowly. “I've been trying to tell myself we had an excuse—”

“We did,” said Ben, interrupting. “Our oldest friends had lost yet another baby; for a split second it was all about the four of us. It was late, we were emotional—”

“That's the thing, Ben, it wasn't about Al and Claudia. Not for me.”

“What?”

“It was about us.”

I put my hand to my chest to reassure it. I asked it not to panic. I asked it to continue calmly rising and falling, so that I could get the words out. “I adore you, Ben. OK?” I shrugged. The single biggest confession of my life was no confession at all. “I always have.”

“Me too.”

“I know. But I adore you too much.”

Ben stopped walking again and looked at me strangely. “What are you saying?”

What was I saying? I was trying to say those three little words, but I couldn't. “I'm saying that I value your friendship above all others, but the thing is, you're married, which is great. For you. But it doesn't work so well for me. I compare everyone to you and no one comes close. How could they? Our foundations are so deep and I don't have to wash the skid marks out of your boxers.”

“Excuse me?”

“Never mind, I know what I mean. The thing is,” I said, forging ahead, “I have to move on to a new plot, find someone to make some new foundations with. Or maybe not, maybe I won't find anyone. But I can't go on like this. I mustn't.” I kicked at some freshly fallen leaves. There. I'd said it.

Ben took my hand. “Are you saying what I think you're saying?”

“If you think I'm saying that I want to move house, no.” Big, deep breath. “But if you think I'm saying that I have imagined a life with you in another role, then yes.”

“But not a priest or an electrician, or a bus driv—”

“No. None of those.” It was all right to make light of this, but only if it was me, and only if it wasn't too light.

There was a lengthy pause after that.

“I didn't know.”

I found that hard to believe, but men are wired up differently, so anything was possible. “For a long time I didn't know myself. Or I pretended not to, I can't really remember. It's all been going on for such a long time, through most of which I've been having fun.”

“A lot of fun,” reiterated Ben. “You've never been anything but fun.”

“Have no fear, I shall be again.” I managed a smile. “But somewhere along the line I got tired of doing it all by myself. I got tired of being strong; of paying all the bills; of having to make all my own plans; of working; of living in London; of going on dates that came to nothing. I got tired of it all. I guess you became an easy option.” I looked at him. My breath left me. Damn those eyes. I had to see this through to the end. “Which was madness. Because you are not the easy option.”

“Is that why you took those pills?” asked Ben.

“How the hell do you know about that?”

“I have my sources.”

I frowned.

Ben shrugged. “You put the phone down on me then disappeared off the face of the earth. I didn't know what was going on. Eventually I went round to your flat. You weren't there, but Roman told me what had happened.”

“He shouldn't have done that.”

“He was worried too.”

“I had no idea how strong they were.”

“Maybe. But I would be worried if you took junior aspirin if it was with vodka.”

“A foolish oversight.”

“Do you promise me?”

“I promise.”

“It's just that everyone I know who's got into trouble with pills, took them with vodka.”

I thought about those innocuous miniatures strewn over Beatrix Potter characters, the bag of pills. Motherhood had not brought Helen the peace she craved. It was not the solution. If anything, having the twins had compounded all of Helen's insecurities and sent her spiraling out of control. I wanted so much for Helen's death to be an accident because then I could stop imagining Helen going into the nursery for the last time and kissing her children goodbye, knowing she was never going to see them again. I didn't want to think that my friend had sunk so low that she thought killing herself and her husband was the answer. “Ben, I haven't been having the best of times recently, but I promise you, it wasn't even an accident, it was nothing.”

He looked even more concerned now. “What do you mean, haven't been having the best of times?”

“I've been wasting so much time peering over the fence at you lot, wondering how the hell I can get over, that I've forgotten how to enjoy it over on my side. Life is pretty good over here; it has many, many advantages.”

“That's what I've been telling you,” said Ben. “We're the ones who are jealous of you, didn't you know that?”

I shook my head. I didn't believe him, of course. It was one of those perfect lies that Ben told me all the time to make me feel better about myself. Lies that a few days earlier I would have chosen to believe. But things were different now. A seismic shift had taken place. Helen's death had altered everything. I couldn't pretend to myself, or anyone else, that my view on life hadn't changed—suddenly, dramatically, changed for ever.

“Everything looks different from where I'm standing now and that is because of Helen. My only regret is that I didn't see it sooner.” I looked at Ben. “I honestly feel I've got her in here, a piece of her.” A pretty big piece, since there weren't a lot of people to share her memory with. “Ben, she had so much potential.” I felt the tears again—was it possible there were still more? “I don't want to be like that…”

“You're not.”

I rubbed my face with the palms of my hands.

“One of the headhunters I called to arrange an interview with asked me whether I would be interested in a posting abroad.”

“What did you say?”

“It doesn't matter now. It was this week, I missed it.”

“Tessa, you should have gone.”

“I couldn't. Until I know what's happening with the twins, I can't leave them.”

“They're not your sole responsibility,” said Ben.

“They are for the moment,” I insisted. “Until something better comes along.”

We walked along in silence for a while. “You'll rearrange the interview though, right? You know what the job market is like, the longer you stay out, the harder it is to get back in.”

I must do that, I reminded myself. I nodded then fussed with the blanket covering the sleeping babies.

“So what did you say about moving abroad?”

I'd said no, of course. But I wasn't so sure. I looked at Ben. I was free to go anywhere in the world. I looked back at the twins. Then again, maybe I wasn't. “I said I'd think about it. Forty is not as far off as I'd like. I've been doing the same thing for nearly twenty years. Twenty years, Ben! Where did that time go?”

“I don't know, Tessa, but I tell you one thing, it wouldn't have been nearly as much fun without you.”

There was that word again: fun…“Thank you,” I said. “But I don't think you really understand what I've been saying.”

“I do.”

“No, you don't.”

“I do, Tessa.”

“You don't. I'm not here just for you to have fun with!”

“But I don't have fun with anyone else.”

“Yes, you do! You have fun with Sasha.” I stressed her name. If I didn't get this point across we were back to the beginning and God might think I'd ducked again and kill off my mother. “I'm the one who doesn't have fun with anyone else, because I haven't got an anyone else.”

“We have a nice time, sure, but it isn't fun, fun, fun. It's talking about whether to have chicken or steak for dinner. It's about whether to take the promotion or move to Germany. It's life stuff. It isn't fun. You, on the other hand, have fun with everyone. Everyone adores you. Everyone who meets you adores you. You have more fun than anyone I know.”

“I'm not going to argue about who has more fun with whom. It's ridiculous. All I'm saying…”

“Yes?”

“All I'm saying is…”

“Yes?”

“What I'm trying to say is…”

“What?”

“I wish we'd stayed in that passageway.”

In Ben and Tessa speak, you can't get more clearer than that.

“Oh,” he said.

Oh, indeed.

I don't know what I'd been expecting from this monumental revelation, but “Oh,” followed by a swift departure through the woods, wasn't it. He had the decency to look at his watch first, then gawp at the time, and make the old excuse about a forgotten meeting. Before hugging me and telling me that I was the most precious thing to him, before hurrying off down one of Holland Park's many paths. But that was basically it. “Oh.” Followed by a swift departure. I had imagined so many variations, over so many years—how was it possible that I hadn't imagined that one? Surely the possibilities were finite. Surely I'd covered all angles. But no: “Oh” it was. “Oh,” indeed. I sat on a hard bench in the Zen garden and watched koi fish blow kisses at me. I concentrated on them for a minute or two, until the numbness I was feeling faded.

Now, of course, the truth was all too apparent. “Oh” was the only ending to this. What on earth was he going to say? Sorry? That was too patronizing. Me too, let's get married? No, because he was married to an amazing woman whom he adored. Me too, let's have an affair? No, because he was an amazing man married to an amazing woman whom he adored. The reality was that “Oh” was the only answer. I hadn't been dealing in reality, though; I'd been playing make-believe. The game had gone on for so long that I had lost my
grip on reality. I will forever be sorry that Helen had to die in order for me to realize that I'd been sleepwalking through life. When the twins started to stir, I stood up and began pushing them home. Feeding time at the zoo came round quickly. I increased my pace.

When I got home, I mean Helen's home, I recognized the shabby brown Volvo parked opposite. It was incongruous among the Cayennes and Range Rovers. There wasn't anyone in the world I was happier to see, except Helen, of course.

“Fran!”

“The housekeeper said you'd be back at 2:30, and you're bang on.”

“Amazing how quickly you get into a routine,” I replied, smiling down at the twins.

Francesca got out of the car and looked into the pram. “Wow, you forget how small they can be.”

“How dare you…These boys are enormous.”

Francesca looked at me, then hugged me. “You all right?”

My friend was dead, Cora was in hospital with pneumonia, Billy and I had fought and I'd just ended a twenty-year imaginary relationship. I rocked my hand back and forth. I was doing so-so. I waited for the lump to let go of my throat.

“How's Caspar?”

“He's OK for the moment. He wanted to come and see you, actually, make sure you're holding up.”

“Tell him I am. Just. I spoke to Nick, that feels like a long time ago. I'd only just heard.” I tried to clear my head of the memory. “How is he, you haven't…”

“Said anything?” Francesca shook her head. “No, but he's getting a bit freaked out by all the love notes I keep leaving him.”

I managed a weak smile. “And the girls?”

We walked back to her car to place the ticket on the dashboard. “Katie wanted a pair of knickers with cherries on the front. One had a bite out of it. She's still not speaking to me.” She shook her head. “If I'd known what I was letting myself in for…” She shook her head again. “Just as you get over one hurdle, another looms in front of you.” Francesca had been trying to cheer
me up and for a moment it had worked, but for some reason I found that last scenario really disturbing. Maybe that was her point. We ambled back to the house.

“You heard about Cora?” I asked.

“Poor Billy. I just popped by the hospital with some more expertly made cupcakes. She rang and told us what had happened.”

“I was an arsehole.”

“Huh?”

“We had a fight. She didn't tell you?”

“No. She just told me about the nightmare with Cora.”

I stared into the pram. Two moon faces peered back at me. I had a very new, very real litmus paper for life. Gone were the days of creating storms in teacups. Gone were the days of making mountains out of molehills. Amazing how unimportant many things had now become. “I went over there and like an idiot got all heavy about Christoph.”

“Probably not the best timing.”

“You think?” I started humping the pram up the steps.

“Do you want help?”

“Actually, I'm getting the hang of this monstrous thing.”

“So what happened with Billy?”

I gave her the quick version, without the usual Tessa King revisionism. I unbuckled the babies, handed Tommy over to Francesca and followed her downstairs with Bobby.