Life Begins (20 page)

Every so often the wind actually rocked the car. Charlotte found her hands leaping to the anchorage of the steering-wheel, as if she was trying to control her little vehicle in full flight instead of it being parked tight up against the kerbstone, with the engine off and the street empty. She felt secure under its domed roof, with the thump of the wind outside, and not too cold, even though the heating was off and there was a small hissing noise where air was pumping through the tiny crack at the top of the back window that didn’t close properly. And it was quite nice to watch the way the trees writhed, to witness but not suffer the violence of tossing branches, cartwheeling dustbin lids and the two cones, which had been
marking some hazard in the pavement but were now on their sides, rolling against the fence of the derelict church.

The last of the light was fading fast. The bloody remains of the sun streaked the sky above the slate tops of the houses and the flailing trees.

I am in a bubble, Charlotte thought, in my bubble car. Nothing can touch me. I am alone, but safe. Up ahead the yellow jasmine tumbling along the wall fronting the cottage had been joined by other dots of colour: candy pink roses and something blue – irises, or were they stocks? Could one stalk a house? Charlotte wondered. Was that what she was doing – trying to stay close to something loved but unattainable? She had taken her own house off the market now, left a message with the pretty Indian girl to pass on to Tim. It was a defeat, of course, the dreadful quibbling Mrs Burgess with her shopping list of faults, the limitations on her budget, the pain of falling for things one could not have, Sam’s crushing lack of enthusiasm. She had surrendered at last, held up her hands, given in.

Tim had left her a message in return.
I am so sorry. Please call at once – any time – if you change your mind.
About the house business, of course, but Charlotte knew that he meant the other thing too, the thing that had ended on the night of the dinner, when the ghost of Martin… no – she corrected her thoughts – when the ghost of her
love
for Martin, known, remembered, but
not felt
for two decades, had risen out of the soft red cushions and smothered her to the point of screaming. She had screamed, hadn’t she? There had been a noise certainly, sudden, shrill, nerve-jangling, like a screech of brakes. And Tim, sheeny-faced, heavy, grunting, pushing, lost in the final thrall of his climax, had pulled out in the same instant, spilling his cum half on her belly and half among the crumpled folds of her skirt.

Some deep, reflexive female part of her had felt violated. But it wasn’t rape, of course. Charlotte knew that. In her newly discovered exuberant state she had led him that far, taken him, poor man, to the point of no return, never imagining that her own point of no return lay coiled inside, behind the new hope and the trying and the wine.

‘Christ, Charlotte, what did I…? Did I hurt… did I…?’ In different circumstances – in the absence, for instance, of the image of her twenty-year-old self, with her soon-to-be fiancé poised over her, inside her, ready to explode with love as well as physical desire – she might have pitied Tim enough to pat his beefy knee and murmur platitudes, allow some salvaging of his devastated dignity and pride. But Charlotte had been too devastated herself, too mown down by the onrush of the past, the living memory of what it had been to love –
really
to love – to be able to muster anything beyond a whimper. Tim had clutched at his belt buckle and scrabbled for a box of tissues, pulling out three at once, then dabbing at her stomach like someone attending in panic to a wound.

After that they had sat, like the strangers they were, waiting for her cab, lost in different mute incomprehension. When the cab was late, requiring a second phone call, drawing out the agony, Tim, stammering, had released the bad news about the Stowes’ decision, saying it looked like they had had someone lined up for a private sale all along. He had meant to tell her before but hadn’t wanted to ruin the evening, but now the evening was ruined anyway. He had done his best, he was sorry, there would be other houses, of course… other vendors, purchasers. He had gathered a bit of steam then, spurred on, perhaps, by the familiar solidity of the jargon of his trade, something to cling to amid the wreckage.

At home she had found Jessica asleep on the sofa, her laptop open, her books strewn across the carpet. Embarrassed to be woken, the girl scrambled for her possessions and shot off into the night on her bicycle, the rear light bouncing as she rode the bumps. Charlotte, her head icily – terrifyingly – clear, had gone straight from the doorstep to Sam’s bedroom. He, too, was asleep, mouth open, showing the strong, even line of teeth that looked curiously manly against the still childish lips and the little-boy peachiness of his skin. She knelt by the bed and moved a single hair off his forehead, lifting it between her forefinger and thumb and placing it on his head, his lovely head with the new, ridiculously long, messy fringe and the geometrical precision of the crown, so many thousands of strands, such a miraculously perfect interlocking circle.

Charlotte wanted, more than anything, to crawl in next to him, under the duvet of swarming superheroes. But she could smell the wine on her breath and skin, and Tim, she could smell him – his citrus aftershave, his sweat, his seed. In her shock-induced state of heightened sobriety, she fully recognized the dubiousness of any instinct to reach for Sam. The abyss that had opened up under her that night was hers and hers alone. It had been waiting for her, she realized, yawning and invisible, behind the years of complaint, the wifely railing, the recent superficial efforts to pick up the pieces, the claims of desire for independence. She had loved Martin
so much.
She had forgotten. She had wanted to forget. The trigger for such feelings could never be packaged in bottles. He had been her belief system, her
world.
She didn’t want Martin back but that lost faith was something to mourn indeed. Did he feel the same thing now with Cindy? Charlotte wondered. Did feeling it twice make it any less real? Was love only an act of imagination
anyway, a willingness to believe? Without that what was there?

Charlotte stared hard at the sweet sleeping face of her son – the product of honest passion and yet from the first so much simpler than that, so unbreakable, as easy to respond to as a smile and a thousand times deeper. When had the trouble started? The distance, the distrust, the resentment – had it been after Sam or before? And who
had
written that note? Who had wanted so badly to bring their miserable struggle to an end?

The little car rocked again, backwards and forwards this time, as if some giant malevolent hand was gripping the back bumper and trying to tip it on to its nose. Charlotte tried not to think of everyone at the party – Sam, Theresa and Henry, Naomi, Jo, Paul, Graham, all of them – except her. She tried not to think of Martin,
moving on
with Cindy, going through the ritual of opening up their home, inviting people in, heralding, sealing their public partnership, even though, she recalled, there might already be problems there too, cracks behind the scenes. Hah! Cracks – hah! But even her vitriol felt half-hearted. Vitriol took energy and she had none.

Sickened, a little hungry, Charlotte decided it was time to end her pathetic vigil and head home. She would dig out the treacherous note, she decided fiercely, some resolve returning, have another proper look, burn it, even. But as she reached for the ignition a fresh patch of colour rose above the clumps of flowers outside the cottage. Brilliant red… the pom-pom hat – again. The horrible hat, and a matching scarf, too, this time, blowing round his neck like a noose. Charlotte gawped: Dominic Porter was on the doorstep, shaking Mrs Stowe’s hand –
shaking Mrs Stowe’s hand.

Her next thought was flight. He mustn’t see her. This horrible, hateful, gaunt-faced man, with his equally hateful daughter, criss-crossing her and Sam’s path like a pair of bullying incubi. He
mustn’t.
Indifference, defiance, friendliness – whatever might be called for during the course of an encounter, she couldn’t manage it, not now, she just couldn’t.

She turned the key. The engine made its grating sound, its special dreadful sound, reserved for late mornings, late afternoons, as if the only cue required was a sense of urgency in her fluttering fingers. Charlotte tried again, twisting the key viciously, only to produce a grinding sound even worse than the first, like metal striking metal.

Dominic’s mind was on fixtures and fittings, on the persistent serendipity of connections (the Stowes knowing Benedict, who had mentioned his need for a house), and whether it was too late in the day to call his solicitor to discuss exchanging and completing on the same date. It was the stalling scrape of the Volkswagen engine that caught his attention. Even then, when he turned in search of its source, it was not Charlotte Turner he first saw behind the wheel of the little black car but the blurred image of his fiery-haired wife: Maggie in her old black Mini, crooning at it, coaxing it to start, as she did with anything uncooperative, regardless of whether it happened to be a person or a machine.

Except it wasn’t Maggie, of course: the hair was longer, smoother, closer to chestnut than red, and the eyes were green instead of blue and there were no freckles to speak of and this woman was much slimmer too, with the hips of a boy and long, agile fingers that looked designed to curl round flutes or whip up and down piano keys. Dominic had no need to approach the car to contemplate these details.
He had studied Charlotte Turner closely, not just in the grim circumstance of Miss Brigstock’s office but before that, in the narrow confines of her front hall and the kitchen with the south-facing garden and the waste-disposal unit built into the sink, warning himself even then against the private pitiful indulgence of being drawn to a woman with red hair.

‘Having trouble?’ He lowered his head, mildly put out that she did not immediately wind down the window, this woman whose son had briefly traumatized his daughter (though Rose seemed far from traumatized now) and whose plight he could easily have chosen to ignore, given the number of important phone calls he had to make and that he had promised Rose spaghetti Bolognese and had yet to purchase the ingredients.

‘It does this.’

She had lowered the window, but only halfway, as if fearful of contamination, from the violent weather, Dominic assumed, rather than him. ‘I’m parked back there. I’ve got jump leads.’

‘No need.’ She tried the engine again, visibly gritting her teeth as it delivered another cacophonic response. ‘It does this,’ she repeated, with evident mounting desperation. ‘Sometimes, if I wait, give it a moment… please, don’t concern yourself. If the worst comes to the worst, I’m a member of the AA.’

‘Ah. Right-ho. The fourth emergency service. Excellent.’ Dominic straightened, baffled more than hurt that she should give his Good Samaritan act such short shrift. Sam had been horrible to Rose, hadn’t he? The woman should be on her
knees.
And she didn’t look anything like Maggie, he decided in the same instant, not a trace,
nil.
And Maggie would never in a million years have been so hostile to an offer of help. Never. ‘See you, then,’ he muttered, backing
away from the car, a small part of him reluctant still to admit defeat. Was he that ghastly?

‘Excuse me… I hope you don’t mind my asking…’ She had wound the window right down now and was projecting her mouth out of it. Her face, Dominic noticed, was not pale so much as white – white as the startling teeth – and her eyes, though electric green, were pink-rimmed, like Rose’s when she was on the verge of tears. Her voice was firm enough, though, shooting at him across the whirr of the wind. ‘But I couldn’t help noticing that you came out of number forty-two and it made me wonder… Do you know Mrs Stowe? I mean, obviously you do, only…’

Dominic stepped back towards the car, tucking his hands into his pockets. ‘Yes – at least, my brother does. Mrs Stowe’s daughter is an actor and so is he. They were in something together last year. It’s thanks to that that I’m buying the place – been on the cards for weeks now but we’re finally there.’ He took his hands out of his pockets and rubbed them together. ‘They’ve just kindly agreed to move out before Easter so I don’t have to renew my lease. It’s a private sale,’ he added, driven to add the clarification by the expression on Charlotte’s face, as she ducked her head back into the car. Like a tortoise withdrawing, Dominic decided, studying her.

‘I know – I knew it was for sale. I wanted to buy it.’ She stared at the windscreen.

Dominic hesitated, absorbing the implications of this. One finger, seeking warmth in the corner of his coat pocket, had found a hole, a bad hole, big enough to lose keys through as well as pound coins. Maggie would have seen to it in an instant – anything to do with thread and needles, wool and homecrafts, she had been a wizard. And cooking, she had loved that too, to the point sometimes where he
had had to insist on taking a turn, reminding her that food preparation was as much of a passion of his as aeroplanes and that getting the short straw on doing the dishes every night simply wasn’t fair. Arguments – who would have thought one could miss them? ‘How unfortunate… I… It’s a delightful house.’

Yes
, yes, it’s
lovely.
I wanted it very much. Except it was out of my price range and only shown to me unofficially, and almost certainly shouldn’t have been by the sound of things… I mean, I knew about the possibility of a private sale but had no idea they already had someone in mind.’ Charlotte twisted the key again and the Volkswagen chortled smoothly into action, as it tended to when she was drained of hope.

Dominic bent closer to the window, raising his voice against the engine, resenting the certain impression that he was being told off. ‘Look, I’m sorry, okay?’

‘No, I am,’ she shouted back. ‘I shouldn’t have said anything. It doesn’t matter.’ She offered him a broad, rueful grin, displaying the extraordinary teeth. ‘Good luck with it all.’

‘There are always other houses…’ he began.