Lifesaver (41 page)

Then Max appeared, laden down like a packhorse like all the other children, but distracted and too upset to even hopscotch down the painted snake. ‘Anna!’ he cried, hurling himself at me and breaking into tears. ‘Look!’ He yanked down his lower lip and showed me his bottom front tooth, which that morning had merely been wobbly, but was now hanging on by the thinnest of threads.

‘Miss Taylor wanted to pull it out, but I didn’t want her to,’ he wailed. I wrapped my arms around his thin body, almost glad of his tears so I had an excuse to hold him. There was a splodge of blue paint in his hair, yogurt on his tie, and his fingernails were black. I contemplated kidnapping him; running away somewhere with him and starting a new life. Just me and Max.

‘It just needs a little tiny twist, Max, and it’ll be out,’ I whispered. ‘Want me to do it for you?’

‘No,’ he said, wriggling away from my grasp. ‘Mummy can, when we get home.’

I released him. I knew I’d have to let him go some time. I prayed that nobody would speak to us on our way down the alley out of the school’s side entrance, walking at a snail’s pace behind a woman holding a staggering baby’s hand. I couldn’t even talk to Max, to ask him about his day as I usually did.

‘Anna, is it Friday?’

‘No, sweetie,’ I just about managed. ‘It’s Wednesday.’

‘Could we have Bun Day on Wednesday, just this once?’ he said hopefully, but without real conviction. We came out of the alley, and he hopped up on the low wall alongside the old people’s home, skipping along it with his arms outstretched like a tightrope walker. He seemed to have forgotten about his tooth again.

‘OK then. Just this once,’ I said, and he whooped with delight. ‘I want a gingerbread man!’

‘But what about your tooth, Max? You can’t bite into a gingerbread man!’

He was crestfallen. Then he stopped and faced me. Standing on the wall, he was almost at eye-level with me, and his serious expression was so like his father’s had been when Adam had faced me on the towpath less than an hour earlier, I caught my breath.

‘You can, then, Anna.’

‘I can what?’

‘Pull out my tooth. Go on. I won’t even cry—not if I can have a gingerbread man, and the tooth fairy comes.’ He thrust his open mouth at me, pushing the tooth forwards with his tongue.

I thought of a conversation I’d overheard at one of Ken’s work dinners a few months back. I’d been down the other end of the table, stuck with another executive wife and some radio plugger, not listening to what they’d been saying, but trying to tune into the conversation in which Ken and an attractive red-haired woman had been engrossed.

‘You just pinch it between your thumb and forefinger in a tissue, and twist it out,’ the woman had explained earnestly, and I had been desperate to know what she was talking about. Eventually I’d decided that she must, for some reason, have been explaining to him how to pull out a child’s milk tooth, and it had moved me. I knew it to be one of those nuggets of information I’d store up, and hope that I could use one day. Even though afterwards Ken had told me that what they’d actually been discussing was the way to stop lily pollen from staining everything– you pulled out the stamen - I still believed that I now knew the correct method of extracting a wobbly tooth.

Max’s tooth dangled in front of me. Taking a deep breath to try and dispel my queasiness, I reached into his mouth, grasped the tiny white square, and yanked. It felt like the most intimate thing I had ever done for anybody else. I felt a split-second’s resistance, and Max’s face turned pale. I held the tooth up, and blood began to flood into the space in his gum.

‘There it is! Your first ever tooth to come out—what a big brave boy!’

‘Anna, I’m BLEEDING!’ he moaned, clutching his mouth.

‘Spit it out, darling. Have a sip of water and spit that out too.’ Helping him off the low wall and handing him his water bottle, I instantly regretted my impromptu extraction. I didn’t even have a tissue, for heaven’s sake. I should at least have waited until we’d got home—although then Marilyn would have taken over. At least this way the moment had been mine. I would, forever, be the person who pulled out Max’s first tooth.

One of the passing mothers—Natalie’s - stopped. ‘Are you OK?’ she asked, more to me than to Max.

‘You wouldn’t have any tissues, would you? I’ve just pulled out his tooth, and it’s bleeding more than I thought it would,’ I said. Max had taken the tooth from me and was showing Natalie, who was duly awestruck.

‘Is that his first one to come out?’ asked Natalie’s mother, handing me a small pack of Kleenex. I couldn’t remember her name, and there didn’t seem much point in asking.

‘Yup,’ I said, beaming with as much pride as if the tooth fairy had left a pound under
my
pillow.

‘Ooh,’ she replied, ‘Isn’t that great? Natalie can’t
wait
to lose her teeth!’

I handed Max a tissue, and he dabbed at his gum, although it had already stopped bleeding. ‘Come on then, Maxie, let’s go and get a bun,’ I said. ‘Want me to look after your tooth till you get home?’

He passed it across to me like a jeweller handling a valuable diamond, and I wrapped the bloody stump of it in another tissue. ‘Thanks for the tissues,’ I said to Natalie’s mum, and she smiled cheerily.

‘No problem. Well done, Max,’ she said. ‘See you both tomorrow.’

Well, you won’t see
me
, I thought, plunged back into depression again as I watched her walk out of my life, with Natalie holding the handle of the buggy containing her baby brother. She had turned back into the enemy instead of a peer.

Max hammered with his fists on the front door of his house, calling through the low letterbox. ‘Mummy, Mu-ummy! Guess what?’ His voice was muffled because he’d stuck a soggy half of gingerbread man into his mouth to free up his hands.

But it was Adam who opened the door, and my heart still jumped when I saw him, familiar in his checked shirt and jeans, familiar in his crinkled eyes and the wide smile which was only there for Max’s benefit—it dropped from his mouth when he looked at me.

‘Where’s Mummy?’ Max pushed past him. ‘Anna, I need my You Know What, to show Mummy.’

‘She’s not here at the moment, sweetheart, she’s just gone to Tesco’s,’ said Adam.

His face fell, and he laid the mutilated trunk of the gingerbread man on the hall table, all interest in it lost.

‘Show Daddy instead,’ I said, passing the precious tissue over to him.

Max unwrapped it slowly, his big blue eyes anxiously scanning his father’s face, waiting for the appropriate reaction as each layer was drawn apart until the tiny tooth lay there.

‘Max! That’s never your…’ began Adam, switching his gaze from the grisly tooth to the gap in his son’s smile.

‘Anna pulled it out for me so I could eat my gingerbread man,’ Max beamed, and Adam hugged him. ‘Oh, Max, that’s so exciting! We’ll have to put it under your pillow for the tooth fairy, won’t we?’

‘It was only hanging on by a thread, and he did ask me to,’ I said, not wanting Adam to think I’d pinned Max down against his will, like some kind of re-enactment of the dentistry scene in
Marathon Man
.

‘If it’s OK with you, I’ll just nip upstairs. I’ve got a few bits and pieces to collect before I go,’ I added.

‘Why, where are you going, Anna?’ Max plucked at my arm, a slight tone of panic in his voice. He knew, I thought.

I crouched down to him. ‘Max. Now that your mummy’s back, there’s…well, there’s not really enough room for me to be here too.’

‘You could share my bedroom,’ he said, clinging to me. I hugged him back.

‘Thank you, darling, but that might not work out. You see, I’m moving out of my little flat, and back to -’ I nearly said ‘my old house,’ ‘back to where I used to live. But I’ll still be in touch, lots, I promise. I’ll write, and email, and talk to you on the telephone, and if Mummy and Daddy don’t mind, maybe we could go out together for the day sometimes? The zoo, or the park—or perhaps even a sleepover, when you’re on school holidays?’

I wouldn’t have to worry about what Ken thought about this—he’d probably be long gone by then.

‘You’re leaving?’ His face was desolate. ‘Anna, please don’t go!’

Adam turned away. I held Max to me, committing to memory the feel of his thin body against mine, in the same way I’d done with his father. I could not think of anything to say. After a few moments, I prised him gently away from me.

‘Want to help me get my things?’

‘No,’ he said, and ran away from me, up the stairs to his bedroom.

‘This is horrible,’ I muttered to Adam, but he’d walked away too, into the kitchen. Max’s door slammed, and I felt utterly alone.

Going into Adam’s bedroom was horrible, too. I’d spent so many nights there, was so familiar with its contents: the crooked Japanese print on the opposite wall which no-one ever straightened; the woodworm-pitted antique pine wardrobe. The powder blue walls which we’d painted ourselves. And now Marilyn’s nightdress was thrown casually on my pillow, and her unzipped suitcase oozed tights and tshirts across the floor. I felt angry, that Adam hadn’t sheltered me from those sights—it was one thing to hear that they were back together, but I didn’t want to see the evidence. As if he’d read my mind, he appeared in the doorway.

‘Sorry, Anna,’ he said. ‘It’s not like it looks—I’ve been sleeping on the sofa bed downstairs. I told her that I wouldn’t share a bed with her while I was still involved with you. It wouldn’t have been fair on either of you.’

‘I really hope you two will be happy together,’ I said, fishing my Timberlands out of the bottom of his wardrobe, still flaking dried mud from a walk in the country with him and Max. Even opening the wardrobe door felt intrusive. ‘You deserve to be happy.’ I did mean it, but I sounded totally insincere, as if I was just trying to overcompensate for what I’d said on the towpath.

Adam sat down on the bed. ‘Happy,’ he said. ‘I don’t know. Well. I suppose I could be happy, even when I feel like my heart belongs to someone else.’ He grabbed my hand and pulled me down next him. ‘Oh Anna, why did you - ?’

I burst into tears, still clutching my boots, rocking back and forwards with the pain of mistakes, of wrong decisions and regrets. ‘I’m sorry, I’m really really sorry.’

Adam stroked my hair. ‘Don’t cry.’ He pushed me gently down onto my back and kissed me, the mattress yielding under our weight. ‘One last kiss,’ he said, kissing away the tears which were dripping an uneven path into my ears.

Our tongues met, salty and passionate, and I felt a pang of indecision. Perhaps I ought to be fighting harder for him, begging him to give us a chance - but no, Adam wasn’t mine any longer. Or rather, never had been.

From Max’s bedroom came the sound of a tinny little keyboard, pre-programmed to play ‘She’ll be Coming Round the Mountain,’ very fast. I sat up, pushing Adam off me. I badly needed to blow my nose, and besides, if I’d stayed there kissing Adam, I knew I would just have wanted to take off all my clothes and get into bed with him. Then I’d never have left.

‘I think that’s everything,’ I said, picking up the boots, a jogging bra, and a British Airways travel kit which I’d kept in the bathroom. I noticed the boots’ treads had disgorged narrow rectangles of dried mud all over the carpet, and I churlishly hoped it would annoy Marilyn. ‘I’ll leave you Lil’s address, so if you find anything else, could you send it on?’

‘Sure,’ said Adam miserably, sitting up and running a hand through his hair.

I tucked my stuff under my arm, and plucked a tissue from the box on the mantelpiece. It felt wrong, like taking liberties in a stranger’s house. I blew my nose, and lobbed the tissue in the wastepaper basket. One of Max’s drawings was in there, scrunched up, and I felt angry with Marilyn. I’d never thrown away anything that Max drew or stuck or made, however cursory the effort had been—I had a thick folder of it all at the flat. The maps we’d done together when he got ill that time were my favourites, though. The ‘naps’.

‘Max,’ I called, outside his bedroom door. ‘I’m leaving now, darling. Will you come and kiss me goodbye?’

Hold it together, Anna, just for a while longer. I hoped my eyes weren’t red from the last fit of crying. There was silence in the room.

‘Max? Please?’ I didn’t feel I could enter. I was a stranger again.

I heard a shuffling from inside, then the drag of the door over the carpet. Max appeared, clutching Spesh under one arm and a football under the other. He hadn’t switched off his keyboard, for it was still parping an allegro version of ‘We Wish You A Merry Christmas’.

He thrust Spesh at me, his mouth turned down at the corners. I kissed the matted fur of Spesh’s nose. ‘Bye then, Spesh,’ I said, trying to be jolly. ‘Look after Max for me.’

‘No, Anna, you can keep him.’

My mouth fell open, and from inside Adam’s bedroom, I heard an exclamation of surprise. Adam appeared next to me. ‘You’re giving Spesh to Anna?’

‘I want her to have him, Daddy. He’s my most favourite thing, that’s why,’ said Max matter-of-factly, tears gleaming in his eyes.

‘I can’t,’ I said, trying to give him back. ‘Oh Max, not your Spesh.’

‘Don’t you like him?’

‘I love him. I love you. I—I know how precious he is to you, that’s all. You’d miss him so much!’

‘I’m going to miss you more, Anna,’ said Max, so grown up that I could picture him as an adult, same eyes, deep voice, bristles, big feet…reaking girls’ hearts left right and centre, just like my heart was breaking then.

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes. But I can visit him when I come for sleepovers, can’t I?’

‘Definitely.’ I looked at Adam for confirmation, and he nodded and ruffled Max’s hair. ‘Baby, that’s so kind of you. I’m sure Anna will love looking after Spesh.’

‘I’ll think of you every single time I look at him,’ I managed tight-throatedly. ‘Thank you so much.’

I dropped my little bundle of possessions on the carpet—now including Max’s treasured toy - knelt down, and Max ran into my arms. Once more, Adam walked away, and I thought, right, now I really do have to go. Stringing it out is just making it harder.