Lifesaver (21 page)

Once they were out of sight, though, the spell was suddenly broken. I was alone in this strange narrow house with fingerprints on the wallpaper and greying skirting boards, Van Morrison in the background and the glare of a computer screen accusing me of thinking about infidelity. It was nice to have felt that I belonged here, but I didn’t.

But if I left now, I agonized, when would I be allowed back? Max might ask after me for a time, then pretty soon he’d forget me, once he was back in a term-time routine of packed lunches and skinned knees, friends to play with and friends to fall out with. Adam might say, remember that nice lady Anna who cooked us supper that time? Max’s brow would furrow. No-oo, he’d reply. I don’t remember.

I paced up and down the front room in a state of mind which, if not quite a panic, was a definite funk. Decisiveness never had been my strong point—my dad used to call me Little Miss Ditherer—but I really couldn’t decide what to do. Then I began to worry that Adam would hear me wearing tracks through his carpet, so I made myself stand still, and distracted myself by having a good nose around the room instead.

Photographs of Max, some with Adam, some on his own, dotted the built-in shelves on either side of a drab tiled fireplace. There was a small snap of a much younger Max, bald, and looking heartbreakingly unwell, with the stick limbs and translucent skin of the child invalid. He lay, half-smiling, in the arms of a woman whom I assumed was the absentee mother. Her beaming face seemed at odds with Max’s obvious frailty. She was quite pretty, despite being slightly moonfaced and soft under the jaw—one of those women who knew that their smile was their best asset. I could hear Adam’s voice in my head, besotted with her when they first met: “You have such a beautiful smile.”

‘You ain’t all that,’ I muttered at her photograph. ‘And where the hell are you now? Don’t you think your son needs you?’

Still, I thought. Her absence was what made my presence possible, so I ought to have been thankful to her.

I tilted my head to one side to read the spines of the books on the lower shelves. They were an eclectic mixture of titles, the vast majority of which made me feel ill-educated and inferior: Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Goethe, Kundera. I searched in vain for something to identify with, a Marian Keyes or a Stephen King, but the closest Adam came to contemporary fiction was a copy of Joseph O’Connor’s
Inishowen
. I was impressed. There were a lot of spiritual-sounding books too, confirming my suspicions about Adam’s hippie origins: Thomas Moore’s
Care of the Soul
; Rudoph Steiner’s
Understanding Angels
, Parkers’Astrology. What with Van banging on in the background, I realized that the house reminded me overwhelmingly of a step up from a student room in a hall of residence in the late Seventies: the batik hangings and tie-dye cushions, tatty philosophy and un-hoovered carpet, potted cactuses, Van Morrison and—I checked—other hippie staples such as the Doobie Brothers, Little Feat and The Byrds on the CD shelf.

I was slightly ashamed that my reaction was so snobbish, a sort of ‘so this is how the other half lives.’ Wealth had crept up on Ken and I, measured by his regular bonuses and promotions, and a percentage of royalty points on a pop album which had gone several times platinum two years previously. Our houses, although we hadn’t done much with them, had become larger and larger, in better and better areas. When we socialised, we did so with people of our own social status or higher, I’d sort of forgotten that not everybody had such a comfortable lifestyle: two cars, a cab account, thinking nothing of spending over ninety pounds on a dinner for two, or five grand on a fortnight in the Caribbean. Although the chance would be a fine thing, I thought wistfully. We had the wherewithal for a lounger by a turquoise pool somewhere tropical, but Ken never seemed able to take enough time off to make it worth the effort of going. He just proudly showed me his payslips instead, and talked about his bonuses as fondly as if they were his offspring, as if that ought to make up for it.

It struck me suddenly that I would have swapped my life and all its material trappings in a heartbeat, for this scruffy little house with Max in it. Money couldn’t buy what I wanted most.

Upstairs a toilet flushed, Max giggled, and footsteps pounded along a hallway and into a room over my head. I heard the squeak of bedsprings and the sound of curtains being drawn. Adam’s voice, soothing but firm, then quiet. I strained to hear more, but could make out nothing further than the low hum of reading.

To distract me from the envy I felt that it wasn’t me reading to Max, I delved into my bag and extracted my mobile. Switching it on, I saw that there was a text message from Ken:
HOPE YOU WON’T BE TOO LATE. WILL BE HOME WHEN YOU GET IN COS I’VE GOT A SURPRISE FOR YOU! LOVE YOU XXX

Guilt washed over me, bathing me in its sickly green light until I felt like I was drowning. The message made up my mind for me: I had to go. I had to get home to my husband before things got out of hand, Max or no Max. I shoved the phone back in my bag, and looked around for something to write a note to Adam on. If I saw him, I wouldn’t be able to leave.

At that moment, I heard a tread on the stairs.

‘Sorry, Anna, to put this on you, but do you think you could pop up here for a minute? Max wants to show you something.’

My head blocked out Adam’s voice. My head made for the door, took out my car keys and left without another word. My head knew it was for the best. My head was on the road home - before it realized that my body had bounded two by two up the stairs and was squeezing past Adam in the hallway to end up standing by Max’s bed.

‘Guess what I can do, Anna? I forgot to show you earlier. Listen -’ Max was lying with his head on the pillow, in Bob the Builder pyjamas, looking utterly angelic. He put his finger into his mouth, inflated his cheek, and made several enthusiastic ‘pop goes the weasel’ sounds by yanking the finger out again. ‘That’s brilliant. I couldn’t do that until I was much older than you are.’

‘And listen, I can do this too—‘ He clicked his fingers as if summoning a waiter. Then he popped his mouth again.

I laughed. ‘Fantastic. Thank you for showing me. And now I think you’d better go to sleep—shall I turn out the light for you?’

‘Yes please. But leave the door open ‘cos I’m afraid of the dark.’

‘OK. Goodnight, Max.’

‘Goodnight.’ He rolled over onto his side, clutching a stuffed tiger under his armpit, and twiddling a strand of hair between his fingers. I was itching to stroke his head, but made myself stand my ground. I shouldn’t even have gone up there. I took one last long look at him and his bedroom—he had a dragon and a castle appliquéd on his duvet cover, with a prince and princess on the pillowcase - and wished him fairytale dreams. I couldn’t resist folding his clothes and placing them in a pile on top of the nearest available surface, which was the keyboard of a small brightly-coloured kiddie synthesizer, and then I lined his scattered shoes up in a pair, before treading heavy-hearted out of the clouds and down the stairs. Back towards my boring, childless, meaningless life.

Adam had gone down ahead of me. As I’d suspected he might, he had hastily turned off the overhead lights and opened another bottle of wine. He’d also lit some twisty beeswax candles, which were spitting quietly but audibly over the sound of the music (Lowell George now, instead of Van). He’d placed the wine on a coffee table in front of the sofa where he sat, trying to look casual. I imagined him running around like a maniac in the two minutes before I’d followed him downstairs, trying to set the scene and yet look calm and cool when I arrived. It didn’t fool me for a moment, and my heart went out to him.

He
had
seen my offer to cook supper as a come-on, and because we’d got on so well, it would have been only natural to snuggle into the candlelit sofa, not touching but chatting more intimately, on a first date all the more exciting for its spontaneity and unbidden surprise. I realized how much I missed that first-date thing. I knew it was wrong, and unspeakably dangerous, but I wanted it to feel like a first date.

‘I love this song,’ I said when “Twenty Million Things To Do” came on. ‘It’s Lowell George, isn’t it? I don’t have this record but always wanted to get it, just for this track.’

Adam beamed. ‘I’m very impressed you recognised it. Little Feat are my all-time favourite band.’ He hesitated. ‘Would you like another glass of wine?’ He held the bottle poised over my empty glass, as if demonstrating the heavy air of suspense in the room.

I wanted to stay so badly. The heady combination of being rescued; cooking for Max; and two glasses of wine had given the evening a rose-coloured hue, and Adam’s obvious attraction to me was in turn attracting me to him. There was something so inviting about him; his warmth and openness, unthreatening bulk and soft edges. And he’d smelled so damn nice, too, when I passed him on the way into Max’s room. He was growing on me, like honeysuckle.

‘OK. Thanks. I’d love another glass,’ I said. ‘But just a small one—I don’t want to be over the limit, and I mustn’t get a cab home, I’m going to need the car tomorrow morning.’

I sat down, bracing myself for the inevitable questions that I knew would come once we really got talking. It was fair enough, I thought: I’d thus far steered conversation away from any mention of my personal life, and it would begin to seem as if I was being deliberately obtuse if I continued to avoid Adam’s enquiries. Which of course I was…But on balance it seemed better to tell a few mild lies than to come over like some sort of International Woman of Mystery. I didn’t want him to start suspecting that I was on the FBI’s Most Wanted list, or anything.

‘So you aren’t working at the moment?’

I took a sip of the good, cold wine. Must remember to drink a lot of water before I left, I told myself.

‘No. I haven’t done for a while, actually—a combination of wanting some time off, and not getting the right job. I’m kind of over rep—all that travelling—so I’ve been holding out for a TV gig. Actually, I’m waiting to hear about an audition I had a week or so ago, for a west country cable soap. I’m hoping I get it.’ Well, I
had
been hoping, until I heard that I hadn’t got it…never mind. Adam didn’t need to know that.

‘And what brings you to Gillingsbury?’

I hesitated. ‘Oh, you know, no particular reason. I’ve always really liked the countryside round here. I just wanted to get out of London and live somewhere a bit more rural.’

He nodded. ‘You…live on your own over in Wealton?’

Since it was an imaginary house, I felt justified in filling it with as few or many imaginary inhabitants as I liked. I toyed with the idea of saying that I did have a partner, but the naked vulnerability in Adam’s eyes stopped me. I might never have seen Max again if Adam thought I was already in a relationship.

‘Yes. Young, free and single, that’s me.’ Oh, this was terrible. I wasn’t sure what I felt worse about: lying; raising Adam’s hopes; or being there with him when I ought to have been at home with Ken. I tried to temper the statement, but it came out laboured and unconvincing:

‘I just wanted a bit of a break from relationships, really. You know, time out, and all that. I think everyone should be single for a while, after a long relationship.’

I made a long-suffering, ‘please don’t ask me anything more, it’s too painful’ face, and it seemed to do the trick. Adam, looking somewhat crestfallen, didn’t pursue it.

‘So, tell me about your family. Are your parents still alive?’ he said instead. That was an easier one, I thought, relieved.

‘No. My dad died when I was eighteen—heart attack… I had to swallow the memory, hard, like a sharp corner of a nut that wouldn’t go down. ‘…and Mum died when I was older. Cancer,’ I rushed on, not wanting his condolences. I wanted to carry on talking about them, because I was on much less shaky ground. Those facts were immutable; a non-flexible history which couldn’t be rewritten like I’d been rewriting my own.

‘I’ve got one brother, Olly. He works at John Lewis. We get on fine, but I don’t see much of him.’

‘And how did you get into acting?’

I relaxed. Another easy one. ‘I caught the acting bug from my mother, I suppose; she was a leading light in the Harpenden Am-Dram society. My parents met there, actually. Dad couldn’t act or sing, but he said he just joined to meet girls. He always got the very minor ‘second spear carrier’ type parts. He used to admire Mum from the back of the stage - she’d be up there, giving her all to whatever role it was. She loved it.’

I sighed. It seemed like such a lifetime ago. ‘She wasn’t all that keen on
me
going into the theatre though. Said it would be far better as a hobby, and that I’d spend most of my time out of work.’

‘And do you?’

‘Yes,’ I said sheepishly, and we laughed.

At the time, though, I’d been a lot less acquiescent.

‘How do you know? I might be really famous,’ I’d replied defiantly, Mum’s resistance merely strengthening my own resolve. She had been funny like that—one minute building me up and praising me, the next, dooming all my ventures to failure, constantly changing her mind and blowing hot and cold. She’d done the same with Olly. When he first came out as gay, the year before she died, she’d been speechless with horror for a week; but after that had flirted madly with Olly’s first boyfriend (or rather, the first one we’d been allowed to meet), and had begun to boast about it to her Am-Dram friends. None of
their
children were anything nearly as exotic as homosexual. The most glamorous thing that had ever happened to any of their dreary offspring had been when Harold and Minty Handy’s daughter Joy got a job on the Estee Lauder counter at Debenhams.

‘Poor Mum. I still miss her,’ I said. It was true; although I’d never missed her as much as I missed the steady constant presence of my father, with his quiet humour and warm hugs.

‘She used to be quite disparaging to Dad really, putting him down for what were his strengths: traditional family values, stoicism, hard work - but she was devastated when he died. Olly and I had her down for husband number two within three years, but she never married again. She had lots of dates, though, and enjoyed telling us about them afterwards, you know,’ - I waved my wineglass in the air and affected a very luvvie voice - ‘
“Oh darlings, he was simply ghastly! Said he liked theatre but didn’t know his Ibsen from his elbow! And he let his tie go in the soup!’
”