The New Woman (3 page)

When the mower ran out of fuel I made a cup of tea, carried it out to the terrace and settled myself on the wooden bench. Honeysuckle grew in fragrant clusters up the old wall of the barn. A tendril dipped into my mug, but I didn’t mind. The air was rich with the scents of summer, intensified by wet. Life was good. School term had finished at last. I’d spent the afternoon in the garden, demob-happy amid peace and grass clippings.

Luke made the bench about twenty years ago, when the children were small. Sitting there, leaning against the wall, we could keep an eye on them without spoiling their fun. They and their gang built dens in the bushes beside the pond; we could hear giggling over naughty songs, and the war cries of pitched battles. Beyond the terrace, birds darted around the claret leaves of a maple. Charlotte’s tree. One day, we’d told each other as we tucked it into its bed of soil, it would be magnificent. Charlotte’s great-nephews and -nieces would hang their swings from its branches.

Luke had phoned from the train, to say that his conference was finished. He was cut off in mid-sentence—a tunnel, probably. He hadn’t called back, but I hadn’t really expected him to. He
hates public phone conversations, doesn’t like to draw attention to himself. All the same, something in his tone—a heaviness—unsettled me. I’d call ours a very happy marriage, but Luke hasn’t always been a very happy man.

Rubbish.
I shook myself, spilling tea.
Why should he be in trouble now?
Life couldn’t be better! The mortgage was paid off, the children safely launched into adulthood. We were planning a fabulous party, to celebrate thirty years of marriage. Best of all, he and I had organised three months’ leave next spring, to be spent in a villa in Tuscany. I told myself these things, and stubbornly ignored the grasping chill in my stomach.

All at once, the heavens opened in earnest. Drops were splashing into my mug. I gave up on the lawn and took refuge inside, slipping off grass-clogged shoes as I stepped through the folding doors into the kitchen. I tried Luke’s phone, hoping he might be at the flat by now, but got his voicemail. He was probably on the tube.

The air was warm despite the rain. If Luke had been home, we’d have shared a bottle of wine and sat out on the bench with an umbrella each. He always said we were like two old peasants in front of their log cabin. Never mind: I’d never been afraid of solitude, and tomorrow would come soon enough.

The sky darkened. The rain was relentless.

Kate

She couldn’t believe her eyes.

‘Bastard!’ she yelled, glaring at the screen. ‘You thieving, backstabbing prick.’

The cash-dispensing machine wasn’t offended. It asked her if she’d like another transaction. No, she told it, she didn’t want another frigging transaction, she wanted her money. Then it spat out her card.

There was some guy waiting in the queue behind her. She could hear him chuckling, and his face was reflected in the
screen. He had a ridiculous moustache. What was it with losers and moustaches?

‘Overdrawn, eh?’ he remarked, as though he and she were good mates.

Jerk alert.

‘Looks like you overdid the spending on your holiday,’ he said. ‘Too many piña coladas in nightclubs.’

‘Go stuff yourself.’

There was a wounded silence before he muttered, ‘No need to bite my head off.’

‘No need for you to be a patronising tosspot,’ she retorted, and stomped off to the luggage carousel, where she could see her backpack gliding through the rubber strips.

Moustachio had obviously used both his brain cells to think up an insult, because he sidled up to her as she was heading for customs. ‘Watch you don’t set off the metal detectors,’ he said narkily, ‘with all that hardware on your face.’

She didn’t have hardware on her face. She had one garnet stud in her nose. Just one. It was a lot less offensive than wearing half a hedgehog on your upper lip. She held up the middle finger of one hand. With the other, she was writing a text:

WTF happened to the bank account???

She sent this message while walking past the mirrored walls of customs. She imagined uniformed officers, rubber gloves at the ready, watching beadily. Or perhaps they weren’t; perhaps they were drinking coffee and playing cards while thousands of people streamed past, pulling suitcases stuffed full of heroin and exotic birds.

Owen’s response made her jaw drop.
Took your share of the rent
.

She stopped dead, firing off her reply.
Bollocks!! I haven’t been there for weeks.

U never gave notice so am entitled. I have ur stuff in bin bags. Pls collect asap as its in my way. Also extensive damage to my shirt. Vet bills. Welcome home BTW.

So. After two years, their grand love affair had come to this. It wasn’t so long ago that she and Owen couldn’t spend more than a night apart without phoning one another and babbling. They were like an old married couple—like Mum and Dad, come to think of it—until it all went wrong. She’d hoped to patch things up when she got home from Israel but, God almighty, she wanted to kill Owen now. She was thinking about exactly how much she’d like to kill him as her thumb hit the keys.

VET BILLS???

He was really enjoying himself.

Baffy got chicken bone from bin pierced gut infection almost died emergency surgery cost a fortune. Ur dog too remember?

Well, that was true. Sort of.

She was out, and into the arrivals hall. Not being met at Heathrow, she reflected bitterly, makes you feel like a spare prick at a wedding. Everyone else seemed to have fans yelling at them from the barriers. She was almost knocked over by a family who’d begun crying and throwing their arms around one another; then she had to step around a snogging couple.
Get a room
. It was like being an extra in the opening sequence of
Love Actually
.

She’d taken that flight, a day earlier than those of the others on the dig, because it got her home in time for Mathis and John’s party. She was regretting this decision as she headed for the train. She loved Mathis and John, and she loved a party, but she’d been sleeping in a tent for six weeks and had no clean clothes. It had been a long flight followed by an emptied bank account. The last thing she felt like doing was staying up all night, getting ratted, and passing out on a sofa among the empties.

She found a seat on the platform and perched like a turtle, her pack still on. Then she scrolled down to her father’s mobile number. It would do her good to moan about Owen, and Dad was the man for that. He and Kate had an ancient alliance. Dad could be counted on to toe the party line and agree that Owen was a sociopath. Her mother had a bad habit of demanding
details, maybe even—heaven forbid!—suggesting that Kate could be in the wrong.

‘This is Luke Livingstone’s phone. Press four if you would like to be put through to my direct line at Bannermans. Otherwise, do leave a message.
’

Kate smiled to herself. Lovely Dad, so courteous and gentle. Some of Kate’s friends found her father too reserved, but he wasn’t at all. Quite the opposite, when you were his daughter.

She rang home, hoping he would answer the phone.

‘Eilish here.’

Bugger.
‘Hi, Mum. Bit of a rush, I’m just—’

‘Darling! Where are you?’

‘Still at Heathrow.’

‘How was the dig?’

‘Fascinating. Hot. I’ve got hundreds of photos, I’ll bore you with them when I see you. Um . . . is Dad there?’

Kate could tell her mother was multi-tasking, filling the kettle, probably with the phone jammed under her chin. ‘He’s staying at the flat tonight,’ she said. ‘But I expect you’re rushing back to Owen, are you? Or did he meet you at the airport?’

Kate thought about Owen’s place, and the bin bags with her things stuffed into them. He’d be hanging around like a moray eel under a rock, waiting for her to turn up so that he could play mind games. Suddenly she wanted to be at home again, wearing fluffy socks, drinking tea in the kitchen with her mum and chortling at
Blackadder
with her dad.

‘Um . . .’ she said. ‘I might come home tomorrow. I have to be there Sunday anyway, don’t I, when we plant Grandad’s tree? I’ll just arrive a day early.’

‘Terrific! Wonderful! And Owen too?’

‘No.’

‘He’s very welcome.’

‘He can’t get away from work.’

Kate could hear her mother’s antennae whirling around. That woman had some weird telepathic gift. When Kate had first lit
up a cigarette, at the age of thirteen, she knew immediately. Kate had no idea how, because she’d gargled for about ten minutes with minty mouthwash, but Mum went ballistic and stopped her pocket money for a month. Her own father had died of lung cancer, so perhaps it was fair enough. When Kate was being bullied at school, she guessed that too, and went storming off to see the class teacher. It made things worse, but Kate appreciated her going into battle.

‘All well between you and Owen?’ Eilish asked now.

‘Sorry? The train’s coming in. Can’t hear a thing.’

Eilish started bellowing like a foghorn. ‘CAN . . . YOU . . . HEAR . . . ME . . . NOW?’

‘It’s no good, I’ve lost you. I’ll phone tomorrow. Bye, Mum.’

Bloody typical
, Kate thought sourly as she lurched down the carriage, smacking people in the face with her backpack.
Owen’s a saint in her eyes. He can do no wrong, even though he’s a total dildo.

It was her last coherent thought before she fell asleep with her head on the shoulder of the Japanese tourist in the next seat.

Three

Luke

Rumbling. A train, passing beneath my feet. The keys were cutting into my fist. They were my certainty, in the darkness and rain. I needed them because everything was ready in the flat. I wasn’t afraid of dying, you see. I was afraid of living.

I hadn’t got into that black cab. I’d let go of the door, stumbled out of the station and into the rain. Now I had no idea how long I’d been walking, and I didn’t care. What did time matter? I was non-existent in the bustle of humanity. I felt so much like a ghost that I accidentally collided with a group of city suits as they stood smoking, huddled under a dripping canopy outside one of the bars near the Barbican. Bless them, they were in a jovial weekend mood. They assumed I’d had one too many; they even offered me a cigarette.

Indecision was tearing at me. I would shatter Eilish by my death or by telling her the truth. Either way, I would lose her. There were no other options. You might find that impossible to understand, but, believe me, there were none. I had twisted and turned and come to this final, inescapable conclusion.

The pubs emptied; the traffic thinned. Blocked gutters became muddy streams through which I waded. People eyed me as I walked past, puzzled by my saturated clothes and aimlessness.
My overnight bag was slung over one shoulder, my briefcase in the other hand. They felt more and more heavy. I thought of dumping the overnight bag into a skip, but there were things in it that I didn’t want to be found. If I was going to end my life tonight, I must dispose of them more carefully.

It was long after midnight. There was a blister on my right heel, but I limped on. The night buses were carrying Friday-night revellers home, windscreen wipers flicking, when I turned into Thurso Lane.

Well done!
purred The Thought. Its voice was affectionate and understanding, as though coaxing a tired toddler on a long journey.
Nearly there. Soon you can put down those things you’ve been carrying. You can let go of the tree, at long last.

The rain was a torrent as I walked down the basement steps. I dropped my bags beside the dustbin. The security light flickered into life, glinting on falling drops. Water coursed down my face.

I fitted my keys into the locks. The bottom deadlock first, and then the Yale.

‘This is it,’ I said out loud.

I’d made my choice. I wouldn’t see how Kate’s life turned out, or Simon’s. I wouldn’t see my grandchildren grow up. I wouldn’t grow old with Eilish. Perhaps she’d be angry for the rest of her life, like the woman on the train. It was better than the alternative. Probably.

The Yale turned with a quiet click. The door gave way under the pressure of my hand. The security light went out.

Four

Eilish

After Kate rang off, I danced a little jig. Well! This sounded like very hopeful news. Luke and I disliked Owen more every time we saw him, though we made herculean efforts to hide the fact. There was something infuriating about the boy’s mousy nondescriptness. Kate was a free spirit and yet he tried to stifle her with his manipulative poor-me-I’ve-had-a-rough-childhood clinginess. He’d even brought a crazy little dog home from the RSPCA, in a blatant attempt to play mums and dads. Kate took the bait (‘He’s never had any happiness, Mum’) but Luke and I saw right through the ploy. Our abiding terror was that a real baby would be coming along next.

The whole thing was baffling. Ever since adolescence, Kate’s been a feminist of the old school. If Owen had been a rugby-playing banker with a square chin and a Range Rover, she wouldn’t have touched him with a barge pole. It seemed ironic that she’d let a needy, controlling boy rule her life just as surely as any bullying mobster.

I hummed a few bars of ‘Goodbye Yellow Brick Road’ as I tipped salad out of a bag and warmed up yesterday’s lasagne. Mm-
hm!
Owen was on his way out, all right. I couldn’t wait to tell Luke the glad tidings when he phoned.

But he didn’t phone. Every half-hour or so I tried his number, only to get voicemail. Maybe his battery was flat. His charger was here, in the kitchen.

After supper I opened my roll-top desk and designed the invitations for our party. By midnight I still hadn’t heard from Luke, so I turned in. I read for a while in bed, wearing the honey-coloured silk slip he gave me on our last anniversary. He actually bought it himself, in the lingerie department of House of Fraser. Now, that shows real courage! A lone man, an alien among all that underwiring and cleavage-boosting, tackling false-eyelashed assistants. He’d been so pleased with himself.