The Turning Tide (11 page)

And she was sure she could never go home again. She had broken the first rule of the streets. The most important one.

The last time she had seen her first love was in the dock as he was sentenced. She had never known him to be scared of anything. When the judge read his whole life sentence, the barest quiver of fear started to darken his eyes. He looked at her and he mouthed something silently, but she had no idea what he was trying to tell her.

Then the court officers crowded round. They bundled him out to a van while paparazzi tried to throw themselves in its path. Erykah wrote him three letters in that first week. All three were returned, unopened.

On the first day back at uni after the trial she was called up to the Dean’s office for an academic review. Her sinking heart told her something was up. The pink-faced Dean waved his hands in the air, talking around what he was trying to say. It was all academic integrity this, reputation of the university that. In other words: you are not worth protecting. We don’t see you as one of us. She felt the expectation, the assumption, even, that she would do what he felt was the right thing.

The right thing being: jump before you’re pushed.

Fine then. She showed them by running away faster than they could throw her out. Would a white student have faced the same pressure? She couldn’t say. Did it matter? By the time the lightweight four she had been training with rowed in the Games in Atlanta, Erykah was already married and settled down with Rab.

The group of rowing coaches was as pale and male as the Dean’s office had been that day. Erykah searched Dom’s face for a sign. ‘This isn’t going to be a problem, is it?’

Dom frowned, the gurning of a man who was trying gravitas on to see if it fitted. His finger rested on the front page as if it might draw some wisdom from there. The headline was so clunky, ugly. Spelling out a final judgment in large bold type to readers whose only interest in the news was finding out who was being torn down today.

‘Erykah, you have to try to see this from my point of view,’ he said. ‘More importantly, from the club’s. The association has already been on the phone. They suggested mandatory testing. As head coach, this puts me in a bad position. I don’t want to lose the respect of my crews over this, and certainly not the association’s.’

So he had no idea how people already saw him. The truth was that the club succeeded in spite of, not because of, Dom’s leadership. Every year the number of high performance rowers dropped as talented oarsmen defected to other clubs. One junior had left rowing altogether for track cycling, and was already being tipped for the next Olympics. The more he stuffed the club’s coaching staff with school chums and college mates, the worse things got.

‘This isn’t just old news, Dom, it’s archaeology,’ she said.

‘I can’t believe it.’ Dom shook his head. ‘All this time, living under a pseudonym, right under our own noses—’

‘Pseudonym? Are you joking? It’s not like I went out and bought a fake passport or something. I got married. Rikki is an old nickname. Surely even you understand that,
Dominic
.’

His long face was still pulled into the kind of sorry-not-sorry look beloved of late night news interviewers and public schoolboys who were secretly gleeful that they were about to ruin your day. ‘I’m meant to be the face of this club, Erykah. How do you think this makes me look?’

Who the fuck cares how you look, you polished turd. ‘I’m no criminal, Dom, which you would know if you read the article.’

‘It must be a terrible situation for you, yes,’ Dom said and spread his palms open. A gesture of trust. He’d probably read it in a book somewhere. ‘Having your past brought up like this. But that doesn’t mean it should become our problem at the club. At the least, you should have told us about your dark secret before it came out.’

‘She
is
a fucking dark secret, chum,’ one of Dom’s friends offered in a stage whisper.

‘Oh, you did not just say that,’ Erykah growled.

The young man looked at her, red patches rising on his milky cheeks. ‘Excuse me?’ It was confrontational, not apologetic.

‘You heard me,’ Erykah said. ‘Cretinous toad.’

‘There’s no need to be so aggressive,’ Dom said.

It took Erykah a moment to parse that he was talking to her, not his friend in the rugby top. ‘Aggressive?’ Erykah said. ‘
I’m
the one who is being aggressive? Anyone else would have turned this room upside down after a crack like that. Any of the men’s squad marched in here for twenty-year-old tabloid stories, you’d hear the shouting all the way down to the Tideway.’

‘Enough,’ Dom said. ‘We have to think about the club here.’

Erykah set her jaw. ‘If a statement of court records is what they want, then fine,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to jeopardise our boat.’

‘It’s, um, beyond that point now,’ Dom said. ‘If it was a matter of you supplying some documentation, sure, fine . . . but it’s not just the crime angle. You are associated with known drug dealers. That starts to bring all kinds of questions to the table.’

‘
Was
associated,’ Erykah said. ‘Twenty years ago. Dom, do you really think I’m on drugs? As my coach, seriously, do you think that? You want a piss test?’ She could hear her own voice, the anger in it. And it was still only a fraction of the anger she was feeling. ‘Fine, I’ll do it here. Now. He was dealing cocaine, for God’s sake. It isn’t even a performance-enhancing drug,’ she said. ‘If you tested the whole squad you would pick up loads of people who wouldn’t pass. And you know what? I would not be one of them.’

‘Yes, well, that’s the problem. We don’t want the whole squad tested. The men’s eight are aiming at Nat Champs this year, and the men’s lightweight pair are in the middle of squad trials. If we aren’t seen to be strong on this, it could affect everyone.’

‘Are you saying . . . ? Wait, no, I don’t want to know,’ she said. If the squad were juicing that was none of her business.

Dom’s expression revealed nothing. ‘Twelve months. Consider it a sabbatical. We’ll review your case and decide if you can rejoin the club next year.’

‘You have to be fucking kidding me.’

‘There’s no need for that kind of language,’ Dom said, as if he was a schoolteacher and she a child. ‘Hand over the admin details for the website and your membership card before this gets ugly.’

Erykah turned towards Nicole, who cut her eyes away. So she wasn’t going to stick up for her either. Probably hoping to distance herself and try to save the rest of her season, whether she had Erykah in her boat or not.

An image flashed behind her eyes. The key in the locker. Her heart lurched in her chest.

Erykah took a deep, deliberate breath. Do not lose it in front of these jerks. They are not worth it. ‘You do know, I assume,’ she said, throwing her voice as low as she could, ‘that I could get out a chequebook and buy this entire club right now?’ She watched the expressions on their faces turn to shock. ‘Fire all of you.’ She looked around the room, as if assessing the club’s value. ‘Turn it into a fitness studio. Or better yet, a women only rowing club.’

Their mouths opened and closed like fish gasping on the beach. It had never crossed their minds before that not only could she have power over them, but that she might use it.

‘But I’m not going to do that,’ she said.
Jump before you’re pushed.
Her arms dropped to her side and she raised her chin. ‘We’re done here. Take your year suspension and shove it up your arse.’ She turned and reached for the door.

‘Don’t be difficult.’ Dom‘s voice struggled to regain some of its former haughtiness. ‘Are you sure you want to burn this bridge?’

Erykah looked back over her shoulder. ‘Who needs bridges?’ she said. ‘Baby, I can swim.’

She walked along the river towpath slowly, in case anyone came after her. No one did. Not Nicole, not anyone. The river was quiet, all the rowers and clubs were off the water for the night. Spiders wove slow webs in the gaps between iron fence posts, setting their traps for insects drawn by artificial night-time light.

The reaction of Dom and his friends to finding out about her past upset her, but it didn’t surprise her. She had learned a long time ago that people had an infinite capacity for judging others based on little – or even no – information. Of course people like them would not want her anywhere near the club, they hardly tolerated people like her under normal circumstances. This was just a convenient excuse to do something they probably wanted to do all along.

She felt bad about indulging this bitter line of thought, but then she remembered how even Nicole hadn’t stood up to them, and felt a whole lot worse. The same woman who, less than a week ago, was begging her to run away and start a new life. When it really mattered, even she could not tell those pricks where to get off. Not that it would have changed much, but Nicole could have risked it, and probably not been thrown out of the club. She could have said something and didn’t. Maybe that was payback for not turning up on Valentine’s Night.

Erykah unlatched the garden gate and came in through the French doors. The sound of the shutting door was muffled by noise from the television. Rab was in the front room eating a Chinese takeaway and watching television.

She shed her jacket and bag on a chair. Rab’s eyes detached from the television screen and followed her progress around the house like a dog watching its owner. She didn’t trust this. She preferred the silent stand-off, the cool silence they had achieved after many unhappy years together, weaving their separate corridors through the house like ant tunnels that never crossed. This time last year it would have been her eating a takeaway and watching trash TV. This time last week, even.

She leaned in the doorway of the front room until he turned to the television again. Those fucking men. Those stupid, privileged, fucking men. Why did she have to explain herself to them? And why hadn’t Nicole said something? Fuck it. Fuck them.

But at least she had walked. They wanted her to beg, to simper and whine and plead for a place next year. She wasn’t going to be that woman. She had the satisfaction of having done that much. Except she was still coming home to Rab, who was, if anything, a poor imitation of those twats at the club. They were – she shuddered to think, but it was true – the kind of person he aspired to be.

‘How was your day,’ she said finally.

‘Good,’ he said. The old reliable lie.

So she was stuck with him for now. There were so many moments when she should have left her husband but hadn’t. She would argue with herself, beat herself up about it, but she never walked. Even after she found out about the cheating.

It wasn’t anything obvious. Working in the City, it was easy for Rab to explain away late drinks with clients, or claim he had pulled an all-nighter and slept at his desk. No evidence as such and lying had always come as easily to his lips – easier, even – than the truth. Rather, it was a way he would be with her. More irritable, shorter. She could imagine who they might be: a parade of interns, ripe with redbrick freshness. The affairs always ended quickly enough, probably whoever he charmed into an affair wouldn’t fall for his lies for long. And she would know it was over when he bought home flowers ‘no reason, just because I love my wife.’ Always red roses. The closest he would come to an apology.

It hurt. And a divorce would have been easy enough with no children. But she weighed the pain and embarrassment against what Rab had done for her. He’d taken her out of the spotlight as he promised. He’d put a roof over her head, one that wasn’t conditional on benefits cheques arriving on time or hustling cash on the streets. If he didn’t make her feel loved, she at least felt looked after.

Maybe that was why she had never wanted children. Because it could all have come crumbling down at any time. That was what she told herself. And it was an adequate explanation. But families raised children happily and successfully even without money. Perhaps closer to the truth, something she would only have admitted quietly and when no one else was in danger of hearing, she feared she wouldn’t have known the right way for a mother to love a child. And over the years, as Rab’s love slipped away, she knew that whatever she could muster would not have been enough.

Instead, she poured her passion into the club. It became the centre of her life. After a few years she probably could have tried to find work, but there was always some reason not to, because of training, because of Nat Champs, because of head season, because of Henley. A few more years after that and the gap in her CV started to look more as if it was planned than accidental. In snug little Molesey, plenty of wives were doing much the same.

So many nights in bed she would lay a hand on the middle of his back, hoping for him, willing him to turn around and hold her and tell her that her loved her. For him to say that they would start trying to work things out again. That he would start trying full stop. That the lies would stop. He didn’t do any of those things. He did nothing at all.

A week ago all she wanted was to leave that sterile, passionless existence behind. Now she would give anything for it to be back the way it was before. Erykah thought about the key Nicole had given her for Valentine’s Day, still tucked away at the boathouse. She hadn’t even had time to empty her locker. There was a feeling in her chest like heartburn.

Erykah crossed to the walnut drinks cupboard. The soft click of a hidden catch was such a comforting sound. She reached to the back for the 1991 single cask Glendronach. She loosened the cork stopper from the bottle and breathed in a heady mixed aroma like coffee beans, dried fruit and something darker, almost like rubber. It was a drop not to be fucked with. She poured two fat glugs of the reddish liquor into heavy bottomed crystal glasses. Erykah swallowed hers in a single gulp, waved the other glass in her husband’s direction. He shook his head. She swirled the second and took a sip.

Rab watched her put the stopper back in the bottle and shut the cupboard. ‘Are you OK?’

Erykah sat down. The square crystal glass rested in the palm of her hand, heavy and solid. ‘Not really,’ she said. ‘I’ve quit the boat club.’ Another mouthful. She let the liquid sit on her tongue, fill her nose and head with the effervescent alcohol lightness.