These Days of Ours (36 page)

‘It’s time to stop all this,’ said Kate. As she drew breath to go on, Becca interrupted.

‘I agree,’ she said.

Mouth partly open, Kate regarded Becca, saying, ‘You do?’

‘Yes. You’re right. I wish you weren’t, but it’s too late for you and Charlie. There’d be too many . . . what’s that word you always use?’

‘Casualties.’

‘Exactly. Charlie and Anna seem to be making a go of it. You need to break free of his testicles.’

‘You mean tentacles. At least, I hope you do.’

‘Yes, them. The great KateandCharlie show is finally at an end and thank God!’

Kate imagined a striped marquee fluttering inwards and collapsing. Becca’s capitulation after decades as Head Cheerleader gave Kate nothing to push against, nobody to argue with. The idea
of herself and Charlie as a viable, achievable partnership must stand on its own merits and she found herself scrabbling to remember what they were. Remove the devil’s advocate and the case
collapsed. ‘Indeed,’ she murmured, ‘
thank God.
’ It did feel refreshing. Or was that health-giving breeze a touch frosty?

‘That’s why you should reply to his letter.’

‘Which . . .’ Kate was befuddled for a moment. ‘Do you mean the original note he sent me, the one you—’

‘Yes, yes, the one I hung on to,’ said Becca peevishly, as if it was time everybody got over this infinitesimal moral slip of hers. ‘Answer it fully and frankly, telling
Charlie how you felt, how you
feel
.’

‘How is that letting go?’

‘Because, silly, you won’t send it.’ Becca tossed her hair, pleased with herself. ‘You just let it all out. Get it all said once and for all. Don’t make your mind
up right now. Just think about it.’ Becca looked down at her nails, turning her hand over, then lifted her head. ‘OK. Enough thinking time.’

‘It does make sense.’ Kate felt herself slump. ‘Therapists suggest this kind of thing, don’t they? Writing out your feelings but not sending them.’ Song stirred, a
baby dream forcing a clogged sound from her. ‘She’ll need changing soon.’

‘When she does,’ said Becca, sternly, ‘we’ll change her. Stop thinking about Song for a couple of minutes and focus on yourself.’

Words, phrases, images that had been walled up alive clamoured to be free. It would be purging. It would be a full stop. It would be right and proper to finally speak the truth without fear of
repercussion. Kate could talk frankly on the subject that had towered above her since her teens, without the need to obfuscate or double talk. ‘Paper, Becca!’ she hissed. ‘And a
pen!’

It took five minutes. Kate wrote as if possessed, the pen careering away from her across the lined notepad. Finished, she went limp. The words had come from everywhere, from her brain, her
heart, from her subconscious. Inside she was washed clean. She was empty, but she was clean.

‘Can I read it out to you?’ It seemed wrong that the letter would reach nobody’s ears at all.

Becca nodded.

‘Dear Charlie,’ said Kate, from her seat on the hard chair, in a nice clear ‘reading’ voice she hadn’t used since school.

‘Thank you for your letter. I’m sorry for taking twenty years to reply but there were a few problems with the delivery service. When the letter was handed back to you by Becca, in
1995, I had never seen it. The only letter I read was your second one – which Becca
did
deliver – telling me it was all over between us. Next time, Charlie, put a stamp on an
envelope and pop it in a post box.

‘I eventually read the lovely words you wrote to me in 2009. They set me on fire. They made me want to jump out of my seat and run through the streets until I found you. But I
didn’t. I just reread it over and over, relieved that I hadn’t been wrong about us, that we had shared a great love.

‘It was too late to wave the letter and shout
Stop the game!
A piece of paper, tatty and old, couldn’t change the facts. You were a father, and a divorcee in the first throes
of a new relationship which, we all knew, was going to be an important one. There was Flo to consider.

‘And me. I couldn’t have coped with a rejection, Charlie. So I slunk away, clutching your words to my heart. I could recite it now. Don’t worry, I won’t. It warms me to
think you once felt that way about me, that I inspired such love.

‘Because I still feel that way.’

Kate felt a tear make its way down her cheek. She didn’t wipe it away. It was part of the letter.

‘Oh Kate . . .’ murmured Becca.

‘It’s time to be honest. I love you, Charlie Garland. I can’t see that ever ending. You told me you loved me at my fifth birthday party; do you remember? And do you remember
how I pushed your face in the cake? I only did that because I was embarrassed and confused. Plus I was five: five year olds are like that. But the truth is I loved you back, even then. I could
sense you were different. That you weren’t going to grow up a copy of anybody. That you knew what it meant to suffer. And that it had made you kind, instead of beastly.

‘So I’ve been constant, in my own quiet way, behind the scenes. Loving you and loving you and loving you. And wanting you so badly that sometimes the need would bring me to my knees
in the midst of an ordinary day.

‘So, to recap. We loved each other when we were five. We broke up when we were nineteen. We moved on, as they say. But I still love you, Charlie.’

Kate hesitated. She hadn’t got any further with her thinking. It felt both forbidden and liberating to air these taboo feelings. Loving Charlie wasn’t a crime, even though it felt
that way sometimes. Perhaps this exercise would help her to derive some warmth from that love, even if she’d stopped hoping it could be reciprocated. ‘So, um,’ she continued,
‘best wishes, Kate kiss kiss kiss.’ She laughed and Becca laughed and Song’s nappy emitted an un-spellable noise.

The ruse of writing a response to Charlie had worked like a charm. Perhaps Becca was a witch. Kate, struggling out of a black taxi with Song and all the attendant paraphernalia
(babies travel in full pomp like Tudor monarchs), felt as if her soul had gone through the delicates cycle in her washing machine.

More than that, Kate felt open. Her love for Charlie hadn’t diminished, but it had found its place. She could see past him now –
because I have to!
– and the fortress
walls had crumbled to dust and the view was breathtaking.

The view, right then, was Mum and Mary, bearing down on her from the steps of the Yellow Hand Gallery.

‘Isn’t it grand?’ Mum was overawed by the black doors and the brass knobs and the marble steps.

‘Tickets,’ said Mary, handing Mum her invitation. She’d taken over Dad’s responsibility for all things practical. ‘But first . . .’ She looked pleadingly at
Kate.

‘Here she is.’ Kate handed over Song, who had a sneaky preference for Mary.
Sensible girl
, thought Kate. The baby’s two grandmothers doted on Song, but it was Mary who
volunteered to babysit, and mopped up regurgitated dindins as readily as she sang nursery rhymes. ‘Quite a crowd.’ Kate looked around her, at the chatting knots of people filing in, at
the banner above the door. ‘
BLOKE
,’ she read aloud, with a smile. She still hated that title.

‘We saw Angus go in just now,’ said Mum. ‘We could have all gone in together if you weren’t late.’

‘Kate’s not late, dear,’ said Mary. ‘We were early.’

‘Same difference.’

‘Yoo hoo!’ Aunty Marjorie bore down on them, shampoo-and-set bristling with excitement. Uncle Hugh brought up the rear, as ever; Kate noticed a stoop to his shoulders she
hadn’t spotted before and felt a stab of pain. At some point these members of her personal cast list would leave the stage.
Have I ever told Uncle Hugh I love him?
It wasn’t a
throbbing, purple love; it was a quiet steady affection made up of nine parts proximity and one part appreciation. Hugh was a good, old-fashioned man. She remembered the fifty pence pieces he used
to slip her. ‘For sweets!’ he’d wink. Impulsively, Kate reached up and kissed her uncle on the cheek.

He looked surprised. And touched. She was glad she’d done it. He held out his arm and she took it to mount the steps.

‘This music is too bloody loud,’ was Mum’s opening gambit as she swiped a glass from a passing waiter. At odds with the Regency exterior, the gallery’s interior was an
austere cube. Charlie’s face, ten feet tall, covered a projector screen. ‘I can see right up his nose,’ said Mum.

They found Becca ‘testing’ the buffet, bouncing on vertiginous heels. ‘This is a big night,’ she said. ‘Big.
Big
.’ She seemed more flustered than the
occasion merited, and Kate gave her a searching look, which was ignored.

‘Dad’s nervous,’ said Flo. ‘He’s gone all sweaty.’

‘Nice.’ Kate hugged the girl, who seemed to have borrowed some nerves from Charlie. ‘Do you think you’ll write books like your dad when you grow up?’

As Flo nodded, liking the comparison, Becca said, ‘She’ll be a top model.’

‘No I won’t,’ said Flo. ‘Unless I model
brains
.’

A tide of incomers filled the room. Anna, leading a gaggle of stork-legged friends, waved in their direction. She’d never cultivated Charlie’s circle.
Thank God
, thought Kate.
She wasn’t sure how much Anna knew. There was a possibility she saw Kate not as Valued Old Chum but as Rapacious Hag Who Seduced My Boyfriend the Night I Moved in with Him.

The ‘temporary’ living arrangement had endured. The bathroom had been painted purple and its cupboards stuffed with toners, BB creams, hydrating serums and all the apparatus of the
beauty black arts.

‘That Anna’s pissed already,’ said Becca.

Kate looked deliberately at the glass in Becca’s hand. ‘Is that your first?’

‘That’s different. Listen!’ Becca put her head close to Kate’s. ‘You know how you forgave me? About not handing the note to Charlie?’

‘Yes,’ said Kate slowly.

‘You didn’t use up all your forgiveness, did you? There’s some left, isn’t there?’

‘What have you said to Anna?’

Charlie joined them just as Becca opened and closed her mouth wordlessly like a landed carp. Turning to him, Becca launched into an extended gush about his genius, his success, his tie.

As jittery as a bridegroom, Charlie was in modish black from head to toe. Sleek, sketchy, there was no quibbling about how good he looked, but Kate hid a smile at the artful tailoring of his
outfit. Heads swivelled as he greeted her, his hair newly styled and held with product.

‘This,’ said Charlie, careful to focus on the two women and block out the interest being shown in him, ‘is the exact opposite of writing a novel. You spend years and years in
solitary confinement and then they make you come to
this
.’

‘Your overnight success has taken two decades,’ said Kate.

‘True,’ laughed Charlie. And there it was. That hateful transparent plane of civility that had slid into place between them every time they’d spoken since ‘that’
night. Charlie was punctilious about observing the rules of friendship, but his behaviour lacked the warmth that made friendship worthwhile.

‘I keep having this dream,’ said Charlie, ‘about making my speech.’ He held up a disintegrating piece of paper. ‘Everyone points and laughs and it turns out that
they’re not publishing my book at all. It’s a massive practical joke. Anna says I’m pathetic and she’s right.’

Kate looked at Becca. They’d both noticed how his hands trembled.

Seeing Song in Mary’s arms, Charlie asked the little child, ‘Is that a new dress for the party?’ He took delivery of Song and his shaking stopped. ‘Thanks for coming,
Mary. Cath.’ Kisses. Arm squeezes. This landmark night was flying by.

‘It’s your night. Make the most of it,’ said Kate, hating the polite smile he gave her in answer.

There were still emails, just fewer of them, and not so rambling. Kate and Charlie saw each other on the treadmill of family gatherings:
do other clans celebrate
everything
the way we
do?

Song was now the nucleus of these parties, the small, selfpossessed, farting heart of it all. Charlie’s relationship with Song was solid, but there was something robotic about his dealings
with her mother. The vitality of true connection was missing.

This rupture didn’t have the texture of their other ups and downs, which had only needed time to heal. This was complete, condemning Kate to a cordial purgatory.

‘She wants a book!’ laughed Charlie as Song lunged at a pile of hardbacks.

‘No, Charlie,’ said Mum, disapproving. ‘She won’t be able to hold it.’

‘Let her have one,’ said Charlie as Song sucked the binding of
BLOKE
. ‘Song can do whatever she wants.’

‘Hear hear!’ said Kate, the phrase dwindling on her lips as Charlie evaded eye contact, making himself smaller, as if trying to erase himself in her presence.

‘Girl power!’ said Flo. From her, the saying felt right: it had nothing to do with the right to wear a short skirt past fifty and everything to do with equality.

‘Where are your shoes, darling?’

At Charlie’s question they all looked down at Flo’s bare feet. ‘Mum chose horrific tarty shoes for me to wear,’ said Flo. ‘I said no way.’

‘So I end up carrying them,’ said Becca, moving away to snaffle a bruschetta.

As Becca moved, Flo moved, keeping the distance between them constant. She needed her mum, the woman she fought on every detail no matter how trivial. Their bond was strong; no need for it to be
pretty.

The screen brightened, music played, heads turned upwards to an image of
BLOKE
’s cover. High above them, Leon gave a thumbs up from his precarious eyrie in the rigging.

A voice boomed, and the image on the screen changed. An
Ah!
of recognition floated from the couple of hundred assembled book lovers/canapé fans as the head and shoulders of a
well-known author appeared. ‘This book doesn’t read like a debut,’ he began, earnest, confident.

Mum was disgruntled. ‘Why amn’t I on first?’

A glittering woman with a waist Song could have fitted her hands around grasped Charlie’s arm. ‘
Love
the book.’