Life Begins (25 page)

I roll away and close my eyes, blinking them open in an instant when the first snuffles come from the cot. Everything is as it should be, I tell myself. My world, since Martin entered it, is safe. And yet I am aware of a new alertness that has no connection to the patchy sleeping patterns of our child. It is an alertness to danger – of patterns repeating, of losing love, losing Martin.

∗

Sam ducked past the barn window, climbed over the gate he was supposed, always, to open and close, and picked up a hefty branch, which he thrashed as he walked. He felt bad about his granny, but probably not as bad as he guessed he was supposed to feel. A broken bone was serious, of course, but the fact that she had done it slipping as she got out of the bath conjured unwelcome images of her old-lady body, wobbling and slithery, sprawling on the tiled floor. He wasn’t sure he could have brought himself to touch her as Prue, the poor cleaning lady, had presumably had to while they waited for the ambulance.

Spotting a sturdier, leafless stick, Sam flung aside the branch and picked it up. It had an end as sharp as a tent pole and growths hanging off it like pendulous fat grey warts. Sam shook it and charged a squirrel, which scampered up a tree, causing two large black birds to erupt out of the branches in a frenzy of flapping that made him jump. ‘Fuck you,’ he shouted, pointing his mouth at the sky as the birds shrank to pinpricks. ‘Fucking fuck you.’

Sam knew he would have felt better about his granny (i.e. worse) if it hadn’t been for the other stuff, the stuff just before the phone call. His mum and George’s dad,
in each other’s arms.
If he hadn’t seen it through the open door of the kitchen with his own eyes he wouldn’t have believed it. In fact, even though he
had
seen it, Sam still couldn’t believe it. If such things could happen the world made no sense. If such things could happen, he wanted no part of them.

George’s map turned out to be pretty useless, arrows and curves supposedly indicating a big dip in the dunes near a broken tree; but there were several broken trees and loads and loads of dips. Sam searched for a bit, studying the map from different angles, wondering if he had got the sea muddled with the sky, until a woman in wellingtons, using
a ball-thrower for a muddy-legged Labrador, asked if he was lost and could she help. He shouted no and ran back the way he had come, then dived behind one of the steepest dunes when she wasn’t looking. Peeping out, Sam watched the waves pushing and pulling along the shore, leaving rings of foam and straggles of seaweed. He could still make out the clear double path of his footprints embedded along the edge of the water where the sand was heavy and damp. In contrast, the sand in the dunes was dry and silky cool, spilling into the indentations his body made the moment he shifted his weight.

After the woman and the dog had gone Sam rolled on to his back and swished his arms to make angel wings. Overhead the sky was like a domed ceiling, impossibly blue, impossibly huge. It’s just a planet, he told himself, with no god, no rules. It didn’t matter that he had divorcing parents and a mother who kissed other people’s fathers. It didn’t matter that his granny had flopped like a fish on a bathmat and that, with his dad too busy, apparently, to take him in, he would almost certainly end up enduring the horror of accompanying his mum to visit her in hospital.

‘If only Theresa was in London,’ Charlotte had wailed between phone calls, her mood of general despair worsened by having to hold the handset at odd angles to get a signal and the fact of his father’s work crisis. Sam, unable to imagine ever wanting to see George’s mum or George’s dad – especially not his dad – ever again, had chosen that moment to grab the hideout map and slip out of the back door.

He closed his eyes and pressed the back of his head into the sand. There was only one person he really felt like seeing, one impossible secret person who almost certainly hadn’t got his latest letter and who would probably laugh if he told
her what had happened. Sam opened his eyes and squinted as the sun slid out from behind a cloud and beamed into his face like a torch. He sat up, scratching the grit out of his hair. Rose wouldn’t laugh. He knew she wouldn’t because she wasn’t like other kids. She knew when things were serious, what could be made fun of and what couldn’t. Rose didn’t have to be told that life was shitty because she knew already.

When Sam arrived back at the edge of the field they were both there, hands cupped round their mouths, hollering his name. Hearing the terror in his mother’s voice, Sam broke into a run and waved his arms. A few minutes later she was clasping him and kissing him and calling him stupid and saying in a weird, strangled voice that they needed to pack up the car and get going.

George’s dad stood well back, with folded arms, shaking his head. When the three of them turned back for the house, he muttered, ‘Not your best move, mate. The tides round here are very dangerous.’

Sam shrugged and ran on ahead. When his mum caught up with him he said, speaking in a great rush for fear of losing courage, that he was really sorry about Granny’s accident and running off and he would of course come to the hospital if she wanted, but he had thought of someone else with whom he might be able to stay, given that George wasn’t around and his dad was too busy.

‘Really?’ She looked astonished and almost happy, as if the unexpectedness of such a thing had driven out the other worries of the day. ‘Who’s that, then?’

Sam mumbled Rose’s name, then said it louder, looking her right in the eye, daring her to laugh or refuse, feeling suddenly that his new knowledge of her awful, gross secret gave him power – the power of
not
caring.

‘Rose Porter
? But you… surely you…’

‘We’re friends now,’ Sam snapped. ‘Her dad might say no, but I’d like you to ask. I know they’re not going away because they were moving to that house, the one you liked.’

‘Yes… they were… Okay, then… Well, we can try, I suppose, if I can get hold of the phone number… Sam, darling, are you absolutely
sure
?’ Charlotte carried on staring at him, clearly amazed still, like she was seeing him for the first time and didn’t have a clue what else to say.

Tim’s morning had begun, unpromisingly, with a piece of tooth catapulting into the basin off the end of his toothbrush. Although the chip was small, the hole in his mouth felt, to the probing tip of his tongue, terrifyingly decrepit and huge. Tim had had fillings decompose on several occasions, but never a section of his own enamel, and could not help but regard the experience as a grim reminder that, no matter how hard he worked at the gym, no matter how solid a keyboard of abdominals emerged as a result, the next three decades would be about the creeping loss of physical resilience, teeth, hair, testosterone and all the other things that made life worth living.

With someone at his side to cosset him through such uncharacteristic troughs of pessimism and fan his ego with loads of rampant sex, he was sure he wouldn’t have felt so bad. But since the horrible anti-climax of his date with Charlotte, his personal life had deflated to the point of non-existence. Sitting alone with a can of beer on the sofa the previous evening, watching an episode of an American soap he had seen at least three times, surrounded by the usual domestic detritus of unwashed mugs, old newspapers and abandoned clothes too crumpled to wear but not yet worthy of the washing-machine, he had felt sufficiently misérable
to click on his laptop and tap ‘dating agencies’ into the Google search engine. Scores of possibilities had come up –
Perfect Partner, Lonely Hearts, Love4Life, Brief Encounters –
and although in the end male pride, coupled with a reluctance to part with several hundred pounds, had got the better of him, Tim had felt greatly reassured that such options were there, should he ever decide he
did
need them.

Everyone required safety-nets, he had comforted himself, snapping shut his laptop and embarking on a clear-up that included swishing a duster across the leopard print and then, with more tenderness, the mounted photo of Phoebe in the Caribbean. The picture had only retained its prominent position because its removal would have displayed an unsightly square of dirt; but it was, in fact, a bloody good shot, Tim had decided, leaning closer to admire the sharp focus of his ex-wife’s face and the handsome backdrop of emerald sea and azure sky. How was she
really
doing now, he had wondered, in Dorset with – according to various grapevine reports – a lawyer boyfriend, platinum highlights in her hair and weekend riding lessons? Was Phoebe happy enough not to need a safety-net? Did she miss him as he, in unguarded moments, missed her?

Queuing at the dentist’s reception desk, Tim’s thoughts reverted, accusingly, to Charlotte. Talk about a knee in the balls. Lover to rapist in one second – when all he had done was follow her signals. She hadn’t
said
as much, of course – mostly, from what he could recall, she had apologized – but Tim had seen it in her eyes, the accusing hurt, as if he’d stuck a knife into her instead of his dick. Angry at the memory – at being in thrall to it still – Tim flipped open one of the magazines lying on the waiting-room table:
‘DENIAL ANGER ACCEPTANCE – GETTING HER OUT OF YOUR SYSTEM’
.

‘Mr Croft, ah, yes, we’re squeezing you in. If you’d like to follow me, we need some forms filling in first.’ The young receptionist peered over her clipboard. Green eyes, Irish, creamy blonde hair – but flat-chested
and
an engagement ring. Tim, a little weary of his own relentless assessment of females, swallowed the quip he’d had ready about following her anywhere and stepped meekly past the other waiting patients.

He was fish-mouthed, jaw aching, palms damp, having a temporary crown glued into place when the jaunty ring-tone of his mobile broke through the hum of soporific tunes, which Tim had decided offered a sinister rather than soothing counterpoint to the experiences he was enduring in the sloping leather chair.

‘Just a minute or two and you’ll be able to answer that, Mr Croft.’

Tim released an agreeing groan that bore little correlation to his true state of wretchedness. The protective glasses that the nurse had slotted across his face were cutting into the top of his left ear. Novocaine always made him feel queasy, yet work was still manic and required him to be on top form. Worse, he knew of no woman who wished to spend time with him or to touch his body. A terrible tear squeezed out of the corner of Tim’s left eye, trickled down his cheekbone and into the corner of his mouth. He licked it away, steadying himself with the vicious reflection that a man with such cavernous nostrils might have thought twice before applying to dental school.

The phone, demoted to ‘vibrate mode’, buzzed again when he was struggling through numbed lips to rinse his mouth and then again when he was handing over his switch card and making an appointment to have the real crown installed. Not studying the list of missed calls until he got
back to his car, Tim let out an involuntary cry of triumphant delight on seeing that they were from Charlotte. But steady, he warned himself, winding down the car window before replying, and taking a breath as deep as those required for a length underwater at his gym’s Olympic pool.

‘Tim?’

‘I’ve been to the dentist,’ he managed, all vestiges of steadiness or calm dispersing at the familiar, attractive sound of Charlotte’s voice and the reminder that half his face and mouth were immobile.

‘Poor you, and I’m so sorry to be a bother but, Tim, I need your help. My mother has had a fall and is in hospital and it’s too complicated to explain why but I need Mrs Stowe’s phone number – that is, I need the number of the person now living in her house, Dominic Porter. You probably remember him – the widower who hated my place. Unbelievable that
he
should end up with Chalkdown, but there we are. Small world and all that, and although I was upset at first I really don’t care now. He might have changed the number, of course, but I’d like to try and you’re my only hope as I’m stuck in Suffolk without my address book or list of class phone numbers, although that wouldn’t have it anyway.’ She breathed at last. ‘So, Mrs Stowe’s number,
please
, Tim, it’s an emergency so
please
don’t say anything about it being unethical.’

A woman in crisis, and he almost without the wherewithal to utter consonants… Tim could see no option but to swallow his misery and comply. Pressing his fingers to his cheek in a bid to encourage the functioning of the muscles, he managed a response to the effect that he would check his contacts list and text her the number if he had it. There was a rushed ‘Thank you,’ and that was it. All over. No hope, no recrimination, no regret, nothing. Tim stared out
of his open window for several minutes, wondering if he might be sick.

The text took a little while to compose, not because Tim had any trouble finding or forwarding Mrs Stowe’s number but because he set about it with the intention of communicating a couple of things in addition to Charlotte’s request – like the untruth that he shared her evident indifference to their failed romance, and a calculatedly vengeful release of the recent rumour about the two puffs selling the bookshop. He might have no power over her heart, but he could put the wind up her at least. With the elder of the two reputed to have AIDS, the pair were said to be planning to cut their losses and retreat to their pad in Spain. Ravens Books would probably be replaced by a chic café, or one of those local branches of the major supermarkets. ‘Here is tel. Hope ur mum get better. Sorry to hear ur bkshop up 4 sale. Life mad busy. T.’

Not much more coherent than anything he could have managed out loud. Nonetheless Tim pressed ‘send’ with a certain vicious glee, then phoned Savitri to explain he was in no fit state to work and taking his heavy heart and throbbing mouth home. He would go to the gym, he decided grimly, lift his mood with endorphins, make eyes at the chubby receptionist with big tits and a laugh like a strangled donkey.

But as he closed his front door Tim had to steady himself against the wall. His mouth tingled and the root of his tooth was pulsing. He couldn’t exercise without some food and he couldn’t eat, not for several hours, the dentist had said, and then only on the other side of his mouth. Nothing tasted good on one side of the mouth, nothing.