The Sleeper (15 page)

He barely looks up. He is eating a pungent sandwich from a lunch box that he’s brought from home, and tapping at his laptop.

‘Sure,’ he says. ‘Whatever you need to do. As long as you’ll be back for the architects later. You’re right – get your teeth fixed up here, not down in Devon. Don’t want yokel teeth.’

‘Cornwall,’ I say, and I slip away to meet Leon for the quickest of lunches, and to tell him I am going to leave Sam.

We sit in one of those little cafés with wobbly metal tables and a deli counter, and drink coffee and water as we eat, because neither of us has time for a post-lunch caffeine hit, but we both need one. Leon looks at me over the top of his sandwich.

‘I can see that you need to do it, Lara,’ he says. ‘He’ll be fine, you know. As will you.’ I inhale deeply. This is the man who has bailed me out before, the only person I completely trust. ‘I’m not entirely sure,’ he adds, ‘what’s been holding you back.’

His voice is so familiar, so reassuring, that suddenly I feel ridiculous. I reach across the little table and take his hand, just for a second.

‘Thanks,’ I say quietly. Leon is a father figure in the most straightforward manner: he looks after me in a way my own parents never have. Since I’ve been an adult, there has been the finest thread of attraction there, never mentioned between us, and that adds an extra edge to it. It is the most subtle thing.

‘I’ll ruin his life,’ I say, with a sigh. ‘That’s been holding me back.’

Leon waves a hand, dismissing this fear.

‘Women love a man like Sam Finch. He’ll be swept off his feet by rescuers.’

I think about it. It is true. ‘But don’t dash into anything with Guy,’ Leon warns. ‘Seriously. Be by yourself for a while. Give yourself a chance. If he leaves his wife and children for you, your relationship will change completely. You’ll need to put the brakes on a little if you want any kind of long-term thing. Don’t you think?’

I shake my head. ‘The trouble is, I’m so wildly in love with him, I’m not sure I could cool it off. But anyway. I’m not going to make him do anything. I could never do that. I’m just going to see what he says when I tell him I’m leaving Sam. Maybe he’ll run for the hills.’

‘Maybe,’ Leon agrees, where I wanted him not to. ‘And if he does, Lara, you’ll be absolutely fine.’

I pretend to believe this.

After work on Friday, I walk quickly along Fleet Street to Covent Garden. The winter air is harsh and frozen on my cheeks, but the sun is shining, and everything is edged with ice. I adore London on a day like this. Cornwall is beautiful too, in its entirely other way, but I do not want to think about that yet.

Covent Garden is filled with people: they are in bars and restaurants and cafés, walking briskly down the street and ambling along looking at things and talking. The buzz is so strong you can almost feel it crackling in the air. This is what happens when the sun comes out, even in January. I try to smile, to look like a normal person.

Guy is already in the random bar he nominated for our pre-Paddington drink. It’s a half-seedy little place offering jugs of watery cocktails and endless happy hours. I see him at a table near the window as I approach, and almost run the last bit.

He has bought a bottle of Corona for each of us.

‘Hey, gorgeous,’ he says, and I stand next to him while he puts his arms around my waist and presses his head into me. I stroke his hair, which is more flecked with grey from this angle than it normally appears.

‘Hey.’

I sit opposite him.

‘Do we just drink alcohol all the time?’ I wonder. ‘Should we be worried?’

‘No. Well, yes. We drink alcohol all the time. But that’s because we go to work all day and home all weekend. We only have the evenings. Before I met you I’d rarely drink on a week night. But we only get utterly rat-arsed on Thursdays.’

‘That’s true. And on the train sometimes.’

He nods, his eyes crinkling. ‘And on the train sometimes. Yes. Now, next week I thought we could have a cinema week. You were saying how hard it is to get to the cinema in Cornwall. Well, it can be done, obviously, but one doesn’t really bother. What’s your schedule like? In my ideal world, we’d both be free in time to go to a screening at nine-ish, every night. Monday to Thursday. What do you think? We could see a bit of everything: a classic, an action film, a comedy, a romance.’

‘That would be lovely. I’m not sure. I wasn’t great at work today.’ In fact I had to make a gargantuan effort to get through the day and to give the usual impression of efficiency and attention to detail. ‘An absinthe hangover isn’t fabulously conducive to getting things done, it turns out.’

‘How about this: cinema without drinking? We take water and Coca-Cola and sweets in with us. Like kids. No boozing.’

I can barely focus on what he’s saying. I am too busy scanning the faces of every single person who passes outside. Because it is already dark, they are all lit by the creepy street lighting and everyone looks half sinister. A man is loitering opposite, wearing a strange lederhosen ensemble that either makes him a hapless tourist or achingly hip: I have no idea which.

‘Maybe,’ I say. The lederhosen man is holding a red rose. He is not looking at me. I cannot take my eyes off him.

‘Or we could hang out at the hotel every night.’

A woman walks up to him and he kisses her cheek and hands her the flower.

‘Now that would be wonderful,’ I say, as the two of them walk away hand in hand.

When someone does arrive, it turns out just to be my sister. I am almost glad to see her: her brand of trouble is so prosaic.

She is unmistakably pregnant now. As well as the bump, there is something different about her. The sharp contours of her face have softened.

‘Lara,’ she says, looking at me speculatively.

‘Olivia,’ I say. I try to smile. She looks from me to Guy and back again. She knows. ‘How are you? You’re looking great.’

‘Yeah. Thanks.’ She turns to Guy. ‘Hi. I’m Olivia. Lara’s sister.’

He is on his feet. ‘Hello, Olivia. How lovely to meet you. Lara’s talked about you. I’m Guy. A friend of Lara’s.’

‘Clearly. And I’m quite sure she’s talked about me.’

She is looking at me with a small smile. I should not have been so complacent as to think I could come for a pre-train beer in her neighbourhood. She lives minutes from this bar. Of course she’s here.

Silence hangs heavily for a while. I decide to do the right thing.

‘Hey, I’m sorry, you know,’ I tell her. ‘Really. I didn’t mean to storm away that night. I should have been in touch before now. I really can’t wait to meet the baby.’

‘That’s cool,’ she says lightly. ‘Give me a call, then. Right now I’m meeting a friend, but that would be nice. Ring me next week?’

‘I will. Thanks.’

And before I can say anything else, she has gone.

Guy is smiling.

‘Hey, I met your sister! She doesn’t look at all how I expected. Not remotely the woman I had in my head.’

I am barely listening. ‘Really? What did you expect? She’s going to tell everyone she saw me with a man. She knew at once. Definitely.’

‘Does it even matter?’ Guy asks.

‘Well, not really to me. Although I wouldn’t have chosen it. Actually, Guy. I wasn’t going to tell you this. But.’ I stop, and decide to continue. ‘I’ve decided to end things with Sam. I can’t carry on like this.’ I think of Leon’s words. ‘It’s not fair on him, because he has no idea. If he was single, there’d be loads of women swooping in to look after him. He deserves that. I can’t bear this secrecy and all the lying.’

‘Now,’ says Guy. ‘It’s strange you should say that, Wilberforce. Because, although my situation is more complicated, I’ve been having similar thoughts. How can I be this much of a shit? It’s going to be difficult, but I’m going to tell Di. Our relationship can’t last like this, yours and mine. I want to be with you, Wilberforce. That’s it. Everything else can work itself out. It’s monstrously selfish, but …’

‘I know.’

I can hardly speak. A future with Guy and me together officially and forever is opening out. It’s going to take some negotiating, but we will do it. We will make it work.

I want to tell someone, but there is nobody who will understand. Only Ellen and Leon know about us, and we will see Ellen on the train tonight. I take out my phone and type a quick text because I am desperate to share the news.

Leon. I can’t tell anyone else, but Guy’s just said he’s going to leave his wife. From Monday we’ll be together. Thank you for listening to me. This is going to be messy but it’s going to be amazing. Just wanted to tell you. Dinner next week with Guy and me? L xx

I rehearse my speech to Sam. I will tell him in the morning, as soon as I get home. Then, from tomorrow, my new life will begin.

chapter twelve

The station concourse is busy, as it always is. Guy and I negotiate the crowds, walking close together, shoulder to shoulder. I love the fact that everyone here is moving, even the people who are just standing and waiting. Paddington station is a place of transience: you come here, you wait for your train, or you run for it, and then you are en route to your real destination. Alternatively, you arrive here by train and go straight to the Tube or the taxi. It is a place for passing through. It would, I think, be strange to work here, odd to be one of the fixed points in the hubbub.

He stops and puts a hand on my shoulder.

‘Hey, Wilberforce. I have to pop in there. I’ll see you in the lounge.’

Guy is nodding towards the card shop, the place that used to be Paperchase. I know this means he has a birthday in the family, and decide not to enquire further. It doesn’t matter any more. I will meet his children at some point, try to build a relationship with them. Buy birthday cards.

‘Sure,’ I agree. He dodges off and I keep walking.

I should be used to Guy by now. We ought, by now, to have scratched below the gilded surface and confronted sordid reality. We should have woken up to ourselves and rushed, horrified, back to our spouses, thanking the universe for letting us get away with it. Because we haven’t done that, I think, knowing that it is simplistic, we belong together.

Our relationship has grown to fill all the space available for it. Guy has all but moved into my hotel room and we have both effectively been leading two lives. My relationship with him is the biggest, most amazing thing in my life.

I should never have married Sam. I did it because all I needed, back then, was security, a feeling that I was safe and that nothing devastating could ever happen to me again.

I have messed it all up. When I tried adventures, they went wrong. Now I have tried security, and that went wrong too. Both times I have ended up inflicting the horror on someone close to me. I need to leave Sam, for his sake and for mine.

I dream of next week. We will do what we have to do this weekend; and next week we will look at the future.

I wander along Platform 1, heading for the lounge.

I can free Sam to meet someone else: in my current position, that is the least nasty course of action. He would meet someone instantly. He would settle back down with a woman who appreciates him, and have babies this time. He would not spend all week waiting for me to come home, innocent of what I am really like.

The prospect is daunting. He will be devastated. I will only tell him about Guy if I have to.

I smile, while my stomach flips in terror and excitement.

When Guy touches my shoulder, I turn, but he is not there. Nobody is there. A train has just arrived on the platform, and people are surging off it, swarming past me. No one is still, and no one is near me. Yet I know that I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was warm, with a deliberate pressure, and then it was gone.

A family pass me, pulling huge suitcases and looking lost. Three young women with huge backpacks stride past deep in conversation in what is, I think, a Scandinavian language. People who have come straight from the office, in their work clothes, walk purposefully towards the taxi rank. Nobody has stopped. Nobody is interested in me.

I decide it was just someone brushing past: an accident. I am haunted by everything I did years ago, and I vow that on Monday I will tell Guy the whole story. I will even dig out my old, hidden diary this weekend, and let him read it for himself. Then we will be able to start a relationship with no enormous all-consuming secret. The thought is amazing.

I speed up my pace and go into the first-class lounge. I take two bottles of fizzy water, a couple of packs of biscuits, and I throw myself into a chair.

An hour later, as we leave the lounge to get on the train, which is waiting right outside, in its usual place on Platform 1, I hear someone calling something from the far end of the platform, and when I look up, towards the place where the station ends and the tracks go out westwards, I see a figure.

For half a second, I freeze. My blood thumps in my ears. My legs tense up, ready either to crumple or to run. I feel my face flush red before the blood drains out of it.

It is nobody I know, no one I recognise. It is just a person standing on a station. The night-time station smells of engines and mechanical things. The temperature must already be below freezing. I shiver in my coat, and close my eyes.

We sit on the train, at our usual table, and Guy goes to the bar for drinks and crisps. Ellen has invited a woman along from the lounge; she is an illustrator called Kerry who lives in Bodmin. I try hard to be bright and engaging, and Kerry is impressed by life on the Friday-night train. She tells us about her life, juggling a young family with work.

‘My parents have to come and stay when I need to go to London,’ she says, her cheeks dimpling as she sips her drink. She is wearing a thick mustard jumper and white flowers in her hair, which looks incongruous but somehow pleasing. ‘It needs ruthless organisation, but the moment I step on the train I’m a different person. I love it.’

‘Yes,’ I agree. I am staring at Guy, who is chatting to the barman. Kerry’s phone beeps, and she looks at it, then stands up.

‘I’m going to have to love you and leave you,’ she says. I never really know why people say that. It is an odd phrase. ‘I need to call home. I’ll be back in a little bit, though, all being well. Save my drink.’