Life Begins (2 page)

‘Yes.
Absolutely. Of course. Goodbye then, Mr… er…’ Charlotte could feel her cheeks burning. She had forgotten how to
be
, she reflected helplessly. These days, words and responses seemed to ricochet out of her of their own accord. She didn’t miss Martin – how could she miss the source of so much unhappiness? – but was increasingly aware that having a husband, no matter how unsatisfactory, had provided some sort of essential
ballast
to her personality. Without it she was freer but also, still, until she got properly used to it, somewhat unbalanced, rootless.

‘Porter. Like the beer.’

‘Pardon?’ Charlotte reached across him to release the catch on the front door.

‘My name is Porter,’ he repeated frostily, leaning out of her way. ‘It’s an old word for beer.’

‘Is it? Right… Mr Porter, of course, I remember now… Oh, I say… wow…’ she exclaimed, momentarily forgetting her embarrassment as he pulled a scarlet woollen pom-pom hat from his overcoat pocket and pulled it low over his forehead and ears. The general impression was not flattering. ‘That’s quite a hat.’

‘Rose – my daughter – gave it to me for Christmas,’ he muttered, his sallow face creasing into a flinch of a smile. ‘But there’s no room for pride when it comes to love, is there?’

‘No, indeed,’ Charlotte murmured, and fell against the wall with a groan of relief after she had closed the door.

The Asian girl – by far the prettiest of Tim Croft’s minions, with a silky curtain of yet black hair and large feline eyes – had a vase of roses parked next to her computer, twelve blood-red beauties with thick green stems and thorns as sharp as knives. Seeing them and the girl’s glow of happiness, Charlotte experienced a moment of wonderment that anyone could ever be so naïve as to take any aspect of giving and receiving Valentines seriously. Just you wait, she wanted to say. Just you wait and see where those roses can lead.

Tim Croft, warmly effusive as always, swept her into his office, poured her a cup of coffee and put on a good show of concern at her account of the viewing with Mr Porter. ‘Not the easiest customer,’ he said, rubbing the neat semicircle of a beard that ran along his jaw-line. ‘The wife died apparently. Ovarian cancer – caught very late. Diagnosis to death in three weeks.’ He clicked his fingers.

‘Died.’
Charlotte clapped both hands to her mouth. ‘I assumed, when he said he was on his own…’

‘Tragic, of course, but there we are.’ Tim cleared his throat twice in succession. ‘The good news is I’ve had a call this morning from a Mrs Burgess who’s keen for an appointment to view your property next week.’

‘Oh good,’ Charlotte muttered, her mind still locked on to an image of the hapless widowed Mr Porter cringing under the force of her over-familiar chatter about the burdens of life and single parenthood.

Tim Croft’s big-knuckled fingers were flying over the keys of his computer. ‘Shall I offer her Thursday afternoon, say three p.m.? You don’t give Ravens Books your services on a Thursday afternoon, do you?’ he added, his voice softer
and more
knowing
, as if he rather relished the fact that months of failing to sell her house meant he had an intimate knowledge of her weekly routines. ‘Don’t despair, Charlotte,’ he went on jovially. ‘Everybody gets there in the end.’

Where? Charlotte wondered, nodding and smiling as she pushed away her coffee cup. Where did everybody get to? And how did they know when they had got there? ‘Thursday, three p.m., Mrs Burgess. Thanks, Tim. And I’ve been thinking about the asking price – perhaps I could take a bit off, but not too much or I won’t be able to afford to move. Things are
so
expensive by the park.’ She blinked at him, feeling suddenly in the mood for one of his boosting monologues about the market and things going up and down and possibly even repeating the stuff about getting there in the end.

‘Aha.’ Tim, never one to disappoint, patted the side of his nose. ‘I’ve had word, unofficially, that there’s something within your range on Chalkdown Road. A stone’s throw from the park, not in the toast-rack – it could be just what you’re looking for. The vendors have been advertising privately but I’m going to see what I can do.’

‘Wonderful, that sounds really promising. Thanks, Tim. Do keep me posted, won’t you?’ On her feet, ready to leave, Charlotte held out her hand, which Tim shook, but then, to her puzzlement, did not immediately release.

‘Charlotte, I was wondering… forgive me if…’

He had lowered his voice so much that she had to lean across the desk to hear.

‘Only I just thought…’ he glanced warily in the direction of his colleagues ‘… it might be nice to… meet up… for a drink or something. Not tonight, obviously – I’m sure you’re busy tonight, of all nights – but perhaps next week some time, or the one after that?’

‘A drink?’ Charlotte whispered, casting a wary glance over her own shoulder as she eased her hand free. ‘A
drink
?’

Tim laughed, tugging nervously at the point of his chin where the hairs were longest.
‘Yes
, you know, traditionally presented in a glass… sometimes with the accompaniment of food.’

‘Oh, my goodness…’

‘Not tonight, obviously,’ he repeated, patting the springy top of his wiry brown hair and gazing out of his office window, as if considering the logistical possibilities of diving over the filing cabinet and hurling himself through the pane.

The answer had to be no, of course. The man was her estate agent. While having vowed to girlfriends that, when ready, she would play the field with gusto – have some fun after all the years of discontent – it had never occurred to Charlotte to imagine the solidly built, square-faced Tim Croft as a target. He had a beard. She didn’t like beards.

But it had been a Valentine’s Day with no cards, she reminded herself, and she had her decree nisi safely stowed in the bulging beige file labelled
Divorce
, and maybe the still elusive urge to launch herself into the alien business of having a good time required a bit of a kick-start. And then there was the inescapable fact of feeling sorry for Tim – desperately sorry, with all the twitchy looks out of the window, the terror of rejection flashing like a red light. So, while still thinking,
No
, Charlotte muttered instead that she was out of practice with baby-sitters and that this might prove a problem since Sam, at twelve, still needed considerable supervision through the travails of homework, supper and being persuaded into bed.

‘My neighbour’s sixteen-year-old is always up for baby-sitting jobs,’ Tim gushed, forgetting to keep his voice down and eliciting a raised eyebrow from the Asian girl. ‘She’s
called Jessica,’ he continued, with a little less exuberance, ‘mad about children. I could give her a call. How about eight o’clock next Wednesday? Just to talk houses, if you like, over a drink instead of this filthy coffee.’ He grinned, tugging his chin again, his eyes pleading.

Charlotte agreed, then spent the rest of the afternoon regretting it. By the time the tall black gates of St Leonard’s came into view, pointing like a line of gleaming black weaponry towards the washed-out February sky, she had hatched and abandoned several elaborate pretexts to cancel. It was almost a relief to have the usual hunt for a parking space – scouring for gaps between driveways and double yellow lines – to distract her. By the time she found one the sun was already a sinking silver disc – more of a moon than a star. Watching it from the warm cocoon of the Volkswagen, aware of a subtle slide in her spirits, Charlotte hurriedly switched off the engine and stepped out into the raw chill of the afternoon.

‘You can’t park there. Your bumper’s right over the end of my drive.’

‘Is it?’ Charlotte looked over the shoulder of her accuser, a jowly-faced man in a beret, seeing nothing but the unwashed hump of the Volkswagen. ‘But I thought I –’

‘There’s a white line,’ snarled the man, flecks of spittle gathering in the corners of his mouth. ‘There’s a white line and you’ve crossed it.’

Down the street a crowd of parents had now gathered in front of the gates. Charlotte could see Theresa in her funny hat with the ear-flaps talking animatedly to Naomi, whose twin three-year-old boys were tugging at her arms. ‘I’m only collecting my son, I won’t be a moment.’ She cast the man an imploring look, hoping that his obviously advanced age might make him more likely to succumb to the dubious
faded charms of a pallid thirty-nine-year-old with violet smudges under her eyes and messy auburn hair, which had begun the day as a bun but was now bursting out as a makeshift ponytail.

‘If you don’t move, I’m phoning the police. We’re fed up with it, I tell you,
fed up.
Every bloody day it’s the same. Useless bloody women parking your huge bloody vehicles across our driveways…’ He paused, perhaps at the realization that the Volkswagen did not match this insult, or perhaps because tears were pouring down Charlotte’s face.

Appalled by herself, swiping furiously at her cheeks, Charlotte ducked away and stabbed blindly at the door with the car key.

‘Five minutes, then,’ the man snapped, backing off and shaking his head. ‘And I’d better not find you here tomorrow.’

Sam was easy to spot – face masked behind his flopping shock of white-blond hair, shoelaces and shirt tail trailing, his rucksack bumping along the Tarmac like a recalcitrant pet on a lead. Several classmates were horsing round alongside, towering above him as they all seemed to now, their pubescent bodies ripe and thick for manhood. Sam, with his waif-like smallness and stick-thin arms and legs, cruelly in evidence thanks to a wayward decision that morning to wear shorts, seemed more closely related to the skinniest of the girls.

‘Sam!’ Charlotte hurried towards the gates, blinking away the ridiculous tears. He hung back, inspecting something on the sole of his shoe while George, unmistakably Theresa’s son with his thick dark curls and round ruddy-cheeked face, bowled out of the group for brief but enthusiastic entrapment in his mother’s arms.

‘Mah-jong, my place, a week next Friday,’ yelled Theresa,
dodging the lollipop lady as they set off towards the mud-spattered Volvo on the opposite side of the road, where the bobbing, pig-tailed head of her youngest was visible through the passenger window.

‘I don’t know how she does it,’ said Naomi, strolling over with the twins, who were now hanging from their sister Pattie – she had been in the same class as Sam since nursery school but these days turned up her nose at play dates with boys in favour of closed-door consultations with girlfriends. ‘Four children, four schools. The woman’s mad.’ Charlotte nodded and smiled at this well-worn line of commentary. They all admired Theresa – organized, cheerful, self-deprecating, with a high-powered medical consultant of a husband who was often away presenting papers at important conferences. She would claim she wasn’t coping but managed to cope superbly all the same. With the friendships between their children wavering, it had been Theresa’s idea that the mums should keep seeing each other anyway over games of mah-jong (she had no time to read a book a month, she said, and abhorred bridge). Sporadic, enjoyable, the sessions had started at about the same time as Charlotte’s marriage had entered its death throes, and proved nothing short of a lifeline. The warmth of her friends’ support had been like oxygen, giving her the strength to plunge back into the awful disintegration going on at home.

‘I thought Theresa had decorators in,’ remarked Naomi, making a desultory attempt to pull the twins off their sister.

‘She does, but they’ll be gone by then.’

‘Leave Pattie
alone
,’ Naomi shouted, in a gunfire explosion of impatience that had the desired effect, before turning back to Charlotte and saying, in the mildest voice, ‘Jo’s asked me to pick up Ellie because the au pair’s sick. Have you seen her?’

Charlotte scanned the thinning group of children. Josephine Burrows, a marketing executive with three offspring and a history of problematic home-help, made up the fourth of their close-knit group. Ellie was her youngest; two elder brothers got themselves to and from a school in Wimbledon by bus. ‘Hey, that’s her there, isn’t it? On that wall, reading.’

‘Reading.
Do you hear that, Pattie, she’s
reading,
without being asked.’ Naomi glared at her daughter, before switching her attention back to Charlotte. ‘Hey, are you all right?’

‘Yes
, fine, absolutely fine.’

Naomi cast her a quizzical look. ‘Martin hasn’t been renegotiating Sam’s weekends again, has he?’

‘No… in fact, this morning the decree nisi came through. At last.’ She punched the air.

‘So why the long face?’

‘Oh, I don’t know – hormones possibly, and not selling the house… and, just maybe, accepting a
date
with my
estate agent.
I tried to refuse,’ Charlotte wailed, ‘but it came out wrong.’

Naomi was guffawing in a manner endearingly at odds with her petite frame and delicate features. ‘Well, I think that’s great. So long as it’s not the fat old one, but the nice youngish one with short hair and he’s not married.’

‘Of course he’s not married,’ Charlotte put in a little sharply. ‘I’m hardly likely to play that game, am I?’

‘Nope, I guess you’re not,’ agreed Naomi, still laughing. ‘And don’t worry about the house – they always sell in the end. Remember it took Graham and me eighteen months to get shot of our first place in Milton Keynes? The market had nose-dived and refused to come up again, but here we are, safe and sound, in sunny Wandsworth. Now, I’d better retrieve Ellie and get this lot home.’ She gestured with
sudden weariness at her twins, who were playing a vicious game of tug-of-war with a pencil case. ‘You said you were going to have a good time, remember?’ she added, perhaps still not convinced by the expression on Charlotte’s face. ‘That you were just going to go with the flow,
enjoy
yourself. It’s been months now and you were so unhappy… Do you remember that, Charlotte? How unhappily married you were?’

There was a trace of impatience in her voice; enough for Charlotte to roll her eyes, say, ‘Of course,’ and signal to Sam that it was time to head for the car. She felt impatient with herself too. The turning point she had longed for had arrived that morning and here she was already finding reasons to be blue.