Lifesaver (28 page)

Holly had worn that exact same expression for the last ten of her twenty-seven minutes of life. Once her face had un-squinched from the bumpy ride, and the creases began to smooth themselves out. It was so unfair. Just when she’d started to relax and look around her, it had been time to leave again.

‘Isn’t she gorgeous?’ persisted Pamela. I managed a nod before shoving the photograph into Ralph’s hands. If anything, he was even less happy than I’d been about seeing the baby pics. He and Margie were hissing at one another under their breath, and he passed the photograph on to her, upside down. She didn’t look at it either, handing it wordlessly to Mitch on her right.

I downed the remainder of my wine and poured myself another glass. There was no white left, so I switched to red, although I rarely drank red wine. Adam was still being batted like a conversational tennis ball between Serena and Pamela, who were discussing yoga positions. Nobody was talking to me at all. At least the photos had stopped coming round though, which was a relief.

I put my elbows on the table and entertained myself by gazing vaguely at the ceiling. Dozens of empty wine bottles, the Mediterranean sort with their own wicker half-baskets woven to their bottoms, were strung from faux fishing nets on the ceiling. I imagined them breaking loose and crashing down on the heads of the diners, like so many small lethal glass bombs. If I could have aimed them—I saw myself huddled in the doorway with a little remote detonator - I’d have taken out Mitch and Pamela for starters. Then everyone else, one by one, until it was just Adam and I left, when we could finally be alone to talk about Max and gaze into one another’s eyes…

‘What do
you
do to relax, Anna?’ Adam was speaking to me. I jerked into an upright position and leaned back in my chair to reply, because Pamela wasn’t moving a muscle to allow Adam to talk around her. Adam leaned back too, and we exchanged what I construed as another secretive smile. I willed him to wink at me, so I could be sure that we were complicit in the understanding of the grimness of the evening thus far, but there was just the smile, too ambivalent for me to be certain that we were sharing anything at the exclusion of everyone else.

‘I suppose it depends. I like to run. I find that very relaxing. I don’t do yoga anymore, although sometime I stand on my head, and that helps too. Or else the usual, you know; TV, a good book, a bubble bath. Why? What about you?’

Adam considered. ‘Play my guitar, usually. Listen to music. And reading to Max is very relaxing.’

‘How is he?’ Max’s name was an automatic trigger for me to ask how he was—I was pretty sure I’d done it on many occasions.

‘Fine, thanks.’

Pamela deliberately leaned her broad shoulders back in her chair, blocking Adam’s view of me. We both moved forwards, but she wasn’t having that either. She leaned forwards too, turning her back on me. I noticed the way her polyester dress stretched tight across her torso. She looked like a ready meal cooked under plastic film, when it comes out of the microwave with steam straining taut against the plastic. I imagined taking my fork and popping the polyester, to see if she’d collapse and subside with a puff and a whine. She was talking about Max, too, in that proprietorial manner she’d used on me that time at the college.

‘Oh Adam, he’s ever so well at the moment, isn’t he, bless him? Little poppet! That day I looked after him he had so much energy; racing around the art room, he was. I let him use the potter’s wheel and, gracious, wasn’t he covered in clay when I brought him home! I did so enjoy giving him a bath. He had me playing all sorts of games with me: I had to be the teacher, teaching my class to be mermaids and mermen by pouring special magic water onto their feet, so we had to fill up that tupperware pot and pour it on his feet—wasn’t it funny, Adam?’

Jealousy wrapped clingy green tentacles around my throat, and for a second I wondered if she and Adam could be an item. No, I decided, surely not. I was pretty sure that what I was witnessing was merely a show of defiance for my benefit, as the interloper who’d gatecrashed her cosy scene. After all, if it was that obvious to me that Adam liked me, it was probably obvious to Pamela too.

But I couldn’t stop wondering if
I’d
ever get the chance to play mermaids in the bath with Max. I could think of nothing I’d like more.

We fought our way through a mountain of tepid linguine each, apart from Mitch, who had a steak. The pasta had been the recommended special, but there’d been nothing very special about it, other than the quantity and the astonishing
froidure
of the dill sauce in which it was smothered. After four more bottles of wine, the dynamic at the table changed.

Ralph had clearly done something to make Margie seriously unhappy , because she was now sitting with her back to him, flirting with Mitch, much to Mitch’s delight. Ralph was attempting to retaliate by gazing deep into my eyes and telling me all about his replacement windows and his ex-wife’s ingrowing toenails. Fascinating. Thankfully for me, Margie soon had enough of Mitch, and decided that she wished to make Ralph suffer a little more, so she tapped him on the shoulder - more of a vicious poke, really—and I was only too happy to relinquish him back to the clutches of their domestic.

Adam had extricated himself from the Serena-Pamela brackets, and was occupying the empty chair next to Mitch; crikey, I thought with pleasure, he must have been desperate to escape the harpies if he’d prefer to sit with Mitch. I couldn’t hear what they were talking about, but I deduced that it was probably something to do with the mosaic panel, from the way in which both men were painting enthusiastic shapes in the air with their hands.

Pamela and Serena were talking to one another through gritted teeth about Adam, dropping his name so often that it was black and blue. Two more bad cases of mentionitis, I decided. I’d forgotten that Pamela was one of those women who adhered to the principle ‘why just say it once when you could repeat it six times?’ and was telling Serena, ad infinitum, how highly praised Adam’s still life class of the previous year had been.

‘Oh, it was ever so good. Everyone said he’s so good at explaining things. “My flowers were so lifelike”, they said. They all thought it was really good. Really good. Everyone in the class thought it was ever so good.’

I turned back in the direction of Ralph and Margie, figuring that, even though Ralph was a bore, at least he only said things once. But they had their heads together, like two fighting rams, and were embroiled in their dispute.

After another brief, heated exchange, Ralph pushed his chair back and strode across the restaurant towards the toilets, his face like thunder. Margie wore a ‘don’t talk to me’ expression, so I gazed across the table at Adam, watching him as he was deep in conversation. I wondered exactly what it was about him that women seemed to find so attractive. Some people just had that.

Dad’s friend Greg, my first lover, had been like that too, only more louche. Despite the twenty-five year age gap, all my school friends had been jealous as hell that he and I were an item. Not that I’d confided in many of them, though, what with Greg being married. But it was hard not to boast about the gorgeous blond man who looked like David Soul, and who bought me expensive presents, real perfume and genuine silver jewellery. Hard not to be flattered, when he ran his hands over my bottom and actually moaned out loud. I remembered the time he’d come to wait for me outside the school grounds—I’d told him to meet me by the fence at the back of the playing field, along which ran a lane next to some allotments. I didn’t recall telling him that I had hockey as my final lesson that day, but maybe I had, because he turned up early. When I’d jogged over to him in my short sleeved Aertex shirt and pleated mini games skirt, the look on his face was one of pure unadulterated pain. Nobody had ever looked at me with such lust, not before or since. I saw the bulge in his Lees from fifty paces. He’d had to turn and walk briskly away—not easy, in his condition—before the PE teacher called the police and had him arrested for loitering.

‘What are you smiling at, Anna?’ called Mitch, and he and Adam both looked expectantly across the table at me.

‘Um. Oh, well, nothing really. Just remembering my PE lessons at school, for some reason. And yes, Mitch, before you ask, we did wear short skirts. Ours were bottle green, with hideous thick matching bottle-green PE knickers. They bore more resemblance to nappy wrappers than lingerie.’

I’d only mentioned the knickers because the image it created in my head was so unappealing that I thought it would cut Mitch off in his burgeoning fantasy—but I was being naïve. The look on his face wasn’t far off the one on Greg’s which I’d just been recalling.

‘Bet you looked really tasty,’ he said dreamily, stroking his chin.

‘No,’ I replied shortly. ‘I didn’t. Is anyone having dessert? I see they do tiramisu.’
Make it stop,
I begged silently to the heavens.

Adam looked at his watch. ‘I’ve got a feeling there’s going to be some live music in here later. Might be worth hanging on for.’

Somehow I doubted it. I was getting itchy with boredom. I’d hardly spoken to Adam at all, and I felt a pang of loss that I’d turned down a holiday in Ibiza for this very average meal with a bunch of people with whom I had nothing at all in common. I’d thrown away the chance of some rare quality time with my husband, not to mention the chance of catching up with my brother, who I hadn’t seen for months. I could have waited, I thought. Max would still have been there when I got back.

I quelled the urge to admit defeat and go back to the flat. Whatever else I might have been, I was determined. There was no way I was going to go through all this and not end up as bosom buddies with that child, I thought. No way, and especially not after giving up my holiday with Ken for it. The thought of Max asleep under his castle duvet in the flickering pink light of the magic lantern in his room filled me with renewed resolve. If I could just get Adam to invite me back for a coffee, I’d be able to nip upstairs under the pretext of using the loo, and feast my eyes on Max. Kids were amazing when they were asleep; otherworldly and flawless. Even Crystal looked like an angel, snoring away on her princess pillow.

Margie had stopped looking quite so aggressive, and the corners of her mouth had drooped as she lit a cigarette, without asking if anyone minded.

‘Are you all right, Margie?’ I asked, topping up her glass and moving my head away to avoid her exhaled smoke.

She turned, and I saw that her eyes were brimming with tears.

‘What’s up? Is it Ralph? He’s been a long time in the loo, hasn’t he?’

‘That bastard,’ she managed, from between clenched teeth. ‘He’s not coming back. And he’s left me to pay his share of the bill.’

‘What were you rowing about? If it’s not too nosy of me to ask?’

‘Actually I don’t mind if you ask. We were fighting because of his wife.’

‘His ex-wife?’

‘That’s what I thought—his
ex-
wife.’

And her ingrowing toenails, I thought. ‘You don’t mean they’re still together?’

She crumpled. ‘We have been seeing each other for two months now, and all the time he says, I just live in the spare room because I can’t afford to move out. We are getting divorced. We don’t love each other anymore.’

‘And?’

‘They do love each other!’ She actually thumped the table with her fist. By now, the rest of the table had abandoned their dessert menus, and was looking on with great interest.

‘I’m really sorry—poor you. But how do you know? Did he tell you?’

‘He told me that he does love me but that he loves her too, and he can’t leave her because she’d be too upset. They don’t have sex anymore, you see. I think that is why he loves me.’

‘But that’s awful.’ I felt utterly indignant. What a low-life, to use poor Margie like that! And what about Ralph’s unfortunate wife? I was tempted to blurt out that Ralph’s shorts were repugnant, and that he was a misogynistic two-timing bore they’d both be much better off without.

‘I think I will go home too,’ Margie said eventually, in her precise Dutch accent. ‘I am tired. Maybe I will feel better in the morning.’

‘I expect so,’ I said sympathetically. ‘I hope it all works out for you.’

She handed fifty pounds across the table to Adam. ‘I hope that will be enough for us both. Let me know if it isn’t.’

‘Sure. Thanks, Margie. Take care. How are you getting home?’

‘I walk. I live close to here, it’s no problem. Five minutes.’

‘Would you like me to see you home safely?’ Adam asked.

‘Thank you, Adam, but it’s not necessary. I will be fine.’

When Margie had left, I said to Serena, ‘So, are your kids with a babysitter tonight, or is your husband looking after them?’

She gave me a hard stare, presumably for bringing up her husband in front of Adam. As if she was trying to pretend to him that she didn’t have one, I thought with hilarity—until I remembered my own, far more radical, deception.

‘My husband is.’

‘Oh. And is he expecting you back at any particular time?’ I fished.

‘He does allow me to have a social life, you know,’ she said, pretending to be joking, but with a knife-edge of steel in her voice.

‘Gosh, it’s actually quite late, isn’t it?’ I said, looking at my watch. ‘What about you, Adam—who’s looking after Max tonight?’

Adam looked at his watch, faintly puzzled. ‘It’s not that late. It’s only ten thirty. I’ve got a neighbour’s teenage daughter in, and because it’s not a school night she doesn’t mind what time I get home, within reason of course. It’s all the more money for her, and she only lives four doors away.’

‘Oh look,’ said Mitch, pointing towards the restaurant door. ‘This must be the entertainment.’

A tall, skinny woman with a crooked blonde curly wig on had entered, carrying a small battered amp, a boombox, and a microphone stand, which she set up in the corner near the restaurant’s fireplace. She removed her beige mac to reveal a tight bodice and checked dirndl skirt, and straightened her wig. She looked like a man in drag.