Lifesaver (8 page)

Her foundations did indeed look extremely solid, although it seemed an odd thing for ‘people’ to say. I suspected that she had coined the phrase herself. I also felt like asking her why Wilf was an object of pity, but decided not to push my luck straight away. There were other, more pressing things I needed to know.

‘Right. Well, I’m a total beginner at art, but I quite fancy something practical—mosaics, maybe?‘ I had no idea what one might make out of mosaic. Lamp bases, perhaps, or maybe that was a bit ambitious. I quite liked the idea of smashing plates and reassembling them in different formations—there seemed something so gloriously pointless about it.

Pamela nodded vigorously. ‘Yes, yes, the mosaic courses here are excellent. Excellent. I mean, all the courses we offer are very good, but an outstanding teacher really makes all the difference.’

I felt strangely joyful. ‘What’s the teacher’s name?’

‘Adam Ferris.’

Questions bubbled up in my throat, and I had to swallow them firmly back down. There was no reason that the departmental secretary would know much about Adam’s private life. Still, there was no reason she wouldn’t, either.

‘Has he taught here for long?’

Pamela’s face lit up, and instantly I knew that she was exactly the right person to talk to about Adam. I sent a silent thank you winging its way to Auntie Lil—it could not have been easier.

‘Several years now, since his little boy was born—’

Bingo! She couldn’t wait to tell me, conspiracy was collecting in the corners of her mouth and in the sideways, excited look in her eyes. Maybe my naked need to know was dragging the information out of her, like a magnet’s pull.

‘How old’s his little boy?’ I asked innocently. Reel her in, Anna, I thought.

‘Nearly five now. Adam’s really been through it with him. Terrible time, he’s had. But he’s almost five now.’ She had the really irritating habit of repeating the same information in a slightly different way.

‘Why? Is he badly behaved or something?’

She looked shocked, as if I’d blasphemed. ‘Oh goodness no, he’s an angel. Angelic, he is. No—’ she lowered her voice. ‘He nearly died. He was in hospital for two years. Leukaemia, it was.’

I tutted. ‘That’s terrible. But he’s OK now?’

Pamela beamed. ‘Fit as a little fiddle. You’d never guess he’d been so ill.’

‘His poor parents,’ I said, hopefully.

Again, I hit the target, bullseye. As Pamela opened her mouth to spill the beans, I wondered if she was this indiscreet about the private lives of all the art faculty. But she must have realized the same thing at the same time, because her lips clamped shut again, and my window of opportunity closed.

‘So, anyway, I would thoroughly recommend the Beginners Mosaics class. Eleven until one o’clock on a Tuesday.’

‘Right,’ I said. ‘What kinds of things would we make?’

‘Whatever you like, really. Most students do small pieces at first: tiled photo frames or mirrors, or perhaps tissue boxes. Whatever you like.’

I could think of few items less appealing than a tiled tissue box. ‘
That’s
lovely,’ I said, pointing at a beautiful mosaic tabletop in the corner of the room. I hadn’t noticed it before, and walked over to examine it. It was circular, with symmetrical patterns of broken flowery china embedded in swirling, flowing lines which seemed almost fluid. The china was minty green and sugary pink on white, colours which would probably look horrible to eat one’s dinner from, but were fresh and vibrant when rearranged, like atoms, into different patterns.

‘I’d love to make something like that.’

Pamela frowned and shook her head. ‘We-ll, that’s a piece that one of our more advanced students has just completed. I think you’d have to talk to Adam about doing something so ambitious, I’m not sure whether he’d think it suitable for a beginner.’

‘I could ask him. Might there be a chance to speak to him before the start of the term? Are there spaces left on the beginners course?’

Pamela swayed across to a shelf at the side of the room, her hips grazing table edges as she passed them. She reminded me of the Queen of Hearts in
Alice in Wonderland
. She’d have looked perfectly natural with a large tricornered wimple affair strapped under her chin.

‘Yes, I think there are still a few spaces. And I’ll just have a look at the diary, to see when Adam’s next in. You could ring for a chat.’

‘I don’t suppose I could have his home number?’ Maybe Max would answer the phone, I thought longingly. But I’d pushed too far.

‘Oh no,’ Pamela said, in a more shocked tone than I felt strictly necessary. ‘We never give out staff telephone numbers. Now, let’s see..’ She flipped through the pages of a large desk diary, liberally smeared with dried clay thumbprints. ‘Adam, Adam, Adam.’ She said his name so tenderly that I almost laughed out loud. If this woman wasn’t in love with Adam Ferris, I’d eat that lump of plasticine on the table next to me.

‘Yes. He will be here doing some course preparation next Wednesday. Give him a ring on this number. I’ll tell him to expect your call, shall I?’

She waited, pen poised above the rectangle of diary space. For a moment, I couldn’t think what she was waiting for. ‘Could I have your name please?’

Panic. Name. I couldn’t say Anna Sozi, obviously…‘Anna Valentine,’ I said, giving my stage name, unable to prevent a deep blush spreading across my chest and up into my face. Some actress I was! But I’d be better prepared next time. I’d make up an address and give my mobile number and—

Wait a second, I thought.
Next
time? For the first time I realized that I was actually giving serious consideration to the possibility of enrolling on one of Adam’s courses. No matter that it was ninety miles from my house. That I was only doing it because I wanted to meet the tutor’s four year old son. That I couldn’t tell my husband otherwise he’d think I’d gone off my head. That I’d therefore have to lie about where I was going every Tuesday for weeks on end…

All I could think about was how excited Auntie Lil would be when I told her that I’d actually done it.

Getting home again took a lot longer. There must have been an accident on the motorway, because the London-bound traffic suddenly slowed to a five-mile an hour crawl, and I found myself stuck behind a Volvo estate with two bored children strapped into the rear-facing seats in the boot, making hideous faces at me out of the back window. It was remarkably difficult not to keep catching their eyes, since they were directly in my line of vision, so I tried to switch off, letting thoughts trail through my mind: what Max looked like; how Vicky would cope with another child; whether I’d ever get a job; whether I
wanted
a job; if Ken and I would ever have sex again…/span>

As I looked to my left—the children were now pointing at me and squealing with laughter—I noticed a road sign to village whose name sounded familiar. I couldn’t work out why for ages, until eventually I remembered that when we were first together, Ken had taken me to a hotel there.

He’d still been with Michelle then, his first wife. Michelle was his PA from his first Marketing Director job at Range Records. She was younger than him by six years: twenty two to his twenty eight. She’d wooed him and flattered him, even though for two years—by his own admission - he had treated her like dirt, dating other women but keeping her hanging on. Then something had changed. I still wasn’t sure what; maybe she’d just worn him down. She was American, and didn’t take no for an answer - whilst being sensible enough to realize that ultimatums would cut no ice with Ken. He didn’t like to be pressured.

They ended up getting married. She’d managed to persuade Ken that she would make the perfect wife for a career man such as himself; but within six months he said he realized it had been a mistake. She’d given up work the second he’d proposed, and seemed to do nothing but play tennis, spend his money, and try to organise his life the way she’d organised his appointment book when she worked for him. It was she who’d first got him into his tennis obsession—he probably only learned because he hated anyone being better than him at anything.

Michelle was there the first time Ken and I ever met. Vicky and I had both been in a production of Arthur Miller’s
All My Sons
in Reading, and Ken and Michelle had come for the weekend, visiting Ken’s mother. Michelle had talked Ken into coming to the theatre—I could just imagine the conversation: ‘We never do anything cultural!’,—and he had agreed. I grudgingly respected her for managing that, since Ken was just not a theatre sort of person. He still didn’t come to many of my productions.

It was the last night, and Vicky and I were in the bar afterwards with the rest of the cast. Ken and Michelle were sitting at a small table in the corner of the bar, her with her back to me.

‘Check him out, he’s gorgeous,’ said Vicky, nudging me and jerking her head in his direction. ‘Bet you I can pull him.’

I looked. He was lovely. ‘What’s your definition of “pull”? A date, a phone number, a snog?’ I asked. I knew she wasn’t serious—she and Peter had only recently got together, but there was nothing she loved more than a good old flirt. ‘Besides,’ I added, ‘he’s with that blonde woman.’

At that moment, Ken caught us staring at him. He looked straight at me, and even from across the bar I could see how thick his eyelashes were, that his hair was black and shiny as a top hat, and his skin the burnished brown of a conker. His features were perfect, apart from a smile-shaped scar which ran from the left corner of his mouth to under his cheek. It reminded me of the punctuation mark in an old-fashioned hymnbook, the one under the end of a line to tell you to keep singing without taking a breath. I was instantly dying to know how he’d got it, but managed to contain my curiosity until our second date. I was sure that everyone else always asked him about it, and I didn’t want to be like everyone else. (He was bitten by a Jack Russell dog when he was eight. He still hated Jack Russells, which was a shame, because they were about the only sort of dog I liked).

I smiled at him, and he smiled back. His smile made my stomach flip, and Vicky poked me with annoyance. ‘Oi! I saw him first.’

‘You’re spoken for,’ I said dreamily.

‘So is he, by the look of things,’ she commented, as Michelle got up and tottered out of the bar, heading for the Ladies.

Ken had immediately sauntered towards the bar, carrying their two empty glasses.

Vicky looked at my love-struck face and sighed. ‘Oh, go on then,’ she said grudgingly. ‘Your need is greater than mine.’

‘Well,’ I said, draining my own glass and standing up. ‘I
am
quite thirsty.’

I arrived next to him just as Crispin the barman took his order. Ken was the sort of person who always got served immediately.

‘Hello,’ he said, beaming at me again. ‘I’m Ken. You were brilliant. Can I buy you a drink?’

‘Thanks. I’m Anna. White wine please,’ I said, half to him and half to Crispin, who gave me an unsubtle wink. I took Ken’s outstretched hand and didn’t want to let it go again. His handshake was like a hug, the way he cradled and embraced my own hand.

‘Do you live in Reading?’ I managed, instantly cursing myself for asking such an inane question. I could see Crispin smirking as he poured out the drinks.

‘No. My mother does.’

‘Don’t tell me
that’s
your mother,’ I joked, jerking my head in the direction of the Ladies. ‘That would mean you’re actually about twelve.’ He laughed. ‘That’s my—um - wife,’ he said. ‘So I will completely understand if you tell me to get lost, but, are you ever in London? I’d like to take you for lunch.’

Just the way that he said ‘take you’ made me feel like all the muscles in my thighs had been removed. But—wife? The gorgeous ones were always married. Still, at least he hadn’t tried to pretend he was unattached.

‘And I suppose your wife doesn’t understand you,’ I said, swallowing my disappointment.

‘Too well,’ he replied, handing over the cash for the three drinks. ‘She understands me only too well.’

Arrogant swine, I thought, as I watched his ‘understanding’ wife fight her way back through the throng. She wore her matching gold handbag and high shoes like a protest; look at me, see how I glisten - no, I do, really. They were too old for her. She reminded me of a five year old dressing up in her mother’s clothes. Except that no five year old could ever apply lip pencil with such precision. I felt sorry for her.

‘Darling, I was just telling Anna how good we thought she was,’ he said, handing her one of the glasses of wine. Michelle regarded me with thinly veined suspicion.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘You were very good.’ Her American accent made her sound even more sarcastic than she intended, or so I believed. She was very beautiful, with an immaculate blonde bob and cheekbones you could grate cheese on, but her wrinkle-free eyes were cold. I disliked her immediately. ‘Thank you,’ I said, nodding politely.

Ken reached into his jacket pocket and extracted a business card, which he handed to me. ‘I don’t usually get involved in this sort of thing,’ he said, and for a second I wondered what he meant. ‘But I’m working with a new singer who’s about to make a video for his first single. It’s kind of country-rock, only more hip: the guy’s name is Dwight Unsworth. Baz Lurhmann is directing, as a favour. Anyway I happen to know they’re looking for an actress to play Dwight’s girlfriend in the video. They’ve got a very specific look in mind, and I know you’d be perfect for it. Call me if you’re interested, and I’ll pass on your name to Baz. Nice to have met you.’

There was that lovely warm hand again, briefly squeezing mine, and he was gone. Michelle, eyes narrowed, glanced back at me as she moved away behind him. Her expression was, very clearly, ‘try anything with him and you’re dead.’

I pushed my way back to Vicky, who had been trying to lipread the exchange.

‘Married?’

‘Oh yes. Also just asked me to lunch, and then if I’d like to star in a Baz Lurhmann rock video.’

Vicky snorted. ‘Yeah, right! While his wife was standing there? The nerve!’