Truly Madly Guilty

  'Well,' said Erika, considering. 'I don't know if that's entirely -'

  'But you and me, we expect the worst!' said Oliver. 'We've got low expectations. We're tough. We can handle stuff!'

  'Can we?' said Erika. She didn't know if she should remind him that she was in therapy.

  'Everybody wants the babies,' said Oliver, ignoring her. 'The cute little babies. But what they really need is foster parents for the older kids. The angry ones. The broken ones.' He stopped and suddenly he seemed to lose confidence. He picked up his superfood smoothie. 'I just thought ... well, I thought maybe we could consider it because maybe we'd have an understanding, or at least an inkling, of what those kids are going through.' He sucked on his straw. She could see the harbour reflected in his sunglasses.

  Erika ate her salad and thought of Clementine's parents. She saw Pam making up the stretcher bed for her to stay the night, yet again, flicking her wrists so that the crisp, white sheets floated in the air: the beautiful, clean fragrance of bleach was still Erika's favourite smell in the world. She saw Clementine's dad, sitting in the passenger seat of his car while Erika sat in the driver's seat for the first time. He showed her how to put her hands at 'a quarter to three' on the steering wheel. 'Everyone else says ten to two,' he said. 'But everyone else is wrong.' She still drove with her hands at a quarter to three.

  What was that phrase people used? Pay it forward.

  'So let's say we do it,' said Erika. 'We take on one of these broken kids.'

  Oliver looked up. 'Let's say we do.'

  'According to this article, it's going to be terrible.'

  'That's what it says,' agreed Oliver. 'Traumatic. Stressful. Awful. We might fall in love with a kid who ends up going back to a biological parent. We might have a kid with terrible behavioural issues. We might find our relationship is tested in ways we could never imagine.'

  Erika wiped her mouth with her napkin and stretched her arms high above her head. The sun warmed the top of her scalp, giving her a sensation of molten warmth.

  'Or it might be great,' she said.

  'Yeah,' said Oliver. He smiled. 'I think it might be great.'

  chapter eighty-six 'Do you want distracting talk?' said Sam as he drove her into the city. 'Or calming silence?'

  'I don't know,' said Clementine. 'I can't decide.'

  It was a little after ten on a Saturday morning. Her audition wasn't until two. The ten minutes past ten leaving time had been calculated to take into account anything that could possibly go wrong.

  'I can drive myself,' Clementine had told Sam last night.

  'What are you talking about?' said Sam. 'I always drive you to your auditions.'

  She thought with mild surprise, So we're still us then? Maybe they were, although they still went off each night to sleep in separate rooms.

  Something had changed over the last week since the first aid course; nothing dramatic, in fact the opposite. It was as though a feeling of utter mundanity had settled upon them, like the start of a new season, fresh and familiar all at once. All the anger and recriminations had gone, drained away. It reminded Clementine of that feeling when you were recovering from being ill, when the symptoms were gone but you still felt light-headed and peculiar.

  The girls were with Clementine's parents today and they were both in fine form. Holly had come home from school yesterday with a Merit Certificate for Excellent Behaviour in Class, which Clementine suspected was really a Merit Certificate for No Longer Behaving Like a Crazy Person in Class. 'The old Holly is back,' her teacher had told Clementine in the playground, and she'd done a little 'Phew!' swipe of the back of her hand across her forehead, which made Clementine think that Holly's behaviour at school must have been much worse than she or Sam had been made aware.

  Ruby had said Whisk could stay home today and have a little rest. She appeared to be losing interest in Whisk. Clementine could already see how poor Whisk was going to slip unobtrusively from their lives, like friends sometimes did.

  'Okay, so there's no need to panic because we've allowed enough time for exactly this possibility,' said Sam, as the traffic on the bridge came to a stop and a neon sign flashed in urgent red letters: INCIDENT AHEAD. EXPECT DELAYS.

  Clementine breathed in deeply through her nostrils and out through her mouth.

  'I'm fine,' she said. 'I'm not thrilled, but I'm fine.'

  Sam held out his palms as if in meditation. 'We are Zen masters.'

  Clementine studied the crisp white curves of the Opera House's sails against the blue sky. Thankfully the Opera House was one of the venues where she knew she'd be given her own warm-up room, and she wouldn't have to share with other cellists, or worse, talk to the chatty ones. There were plenty of dressing-rooms available, some with harbour views. It would be a comfortable, pleasant process. Her audition would be in the rarefied atmosphere of the concert hall.

  She looked back at the road. The traffic inched forward past two cars with crushed bonnets. There were police and an ambulance with the back doors open, and a man in a suit sat on the kerb with his head in his hands.

  'Erika said something the other day and it sort of stuck with me,' said Clementine. She hadn't been planning to say this but all of a sudden she was saying it, as if she'd been subconsciously planning it.

  'What's that?' said Sam warily.

  'She said, "I choose my marriage."'

  'She chooses her marriage. What does that mean?' said Sam. 'That doesn't make sense. She chooses her marriage over what?'

  'I think it does make sense,' said Clementine. 'It's about making a choice to make your marriage your priority, to, kind of, put that at the top of the page, as your mission statement or something.'

  'Clementine Hart, are you actually using soulless corporate jargon right now?' said Sam.

  'Be quiet. I just want to take this opportunity to say ...'

  Sam snorted. 'Now you sound like your mother making one of her speeches.'

  'I want to take this opportunity to say that I choose my marriage too.'

  'Um ... thanks?'

  Clementine spoke rapidly. 'So, if, for example, having a third child is your heart's desire, then that's something we need to at least talk about. I can't just ignore it, or hope you'll forget about it, which was what I was doing, to be honest. I know when I asked you a couple of weeks ago you said you didn't want another child, but that was when you were still ... or when we were both still, kind of ...'

  'Crazy,' finished Sam for her. 'Do you want another child?' he said.

  'I really don't,' said Clementine. 'But if you really do, then we need to talk about it.'

  'What? And then we work out whether I want a baby more than you don't want a baby?' said Sam.

  'Exactly,' said Clementine. 'I think that's exactly what we do.'

  'I did want a third child,' said Sam. 'But now, well, it's just not something I'm thinking about right now.'

  'I know,' said Clementine. 'I know. But we could, we might, one day, not forget, of course, but we might forgive. We might forgive ourselves. Anyway, I don't know why I brought that up today. It's not like we even ...'

  Have sex anymore. Sleep in the same bed. Say 'I love you' anymore.

  'I guess I just thought I should put that on the table,' she said.

  'Consider it tabled,' said Sam.

  'Great.'

  'You know what my heart's desire is right now?' said Sam.

  'What?'

  'It's for you to get this job.'

  'Right,' said Clementine.

  'I don't want you going onto that stage thinking about babies. I want you thinking about whatever it is you need to think about, intonation, pitch, tempo, whatever those nancy-boy ex-boyfriends of yours would have told you to think about.'

  'Well, I'll do my best,' said Clementine. She said softly, 'You're a good man, Samuel.'

  'I know I am. Eat your banana,' said Sam.

  'No,' said Clementine.

  'You sound just like your daughter.'

  'W
hich one?'

  'Both of them, actually.'

  The traffic was moving freely now.

  After a moment Sam cleared his throat and said, 'I'd like to take this opportunity to say that I choose my marriage too.'

  'Oh yes, and what does that mean?'

  'I have no idea. I just wanted to make my position clear.'

  'Maybe it means you don't want to sleep in the study anymore,' suggested Clementine, her eyes on the road ahead.

  'Maybe it does,' said Sam.

  Clementine studied his profile. 'Would you like to come back?'

  'I'd like to come back,' said Sam. He looked over his shoulder to change lanes. 'From wherever the hell I've been.'

  'Well,' said Clementine. 'You're very welcome to submit an application.'

  'I could audition,' he said. 'I have some smooth moves.' He paused. 'You could be blindfolded. We'll make it a blind audition so there is no possibility of bias.'

  She could feel a wild, raw sense of happiness growing within her. It was just silly, cheesy, flirty talk, but it was their silly, cheesy, flirty talk. She already knew how it would be tonight: the sweet familiarity and the sharp clean edges because of what they'd nearly lost. She didn't know how close their marriage had got to hitting that iceberg - close enough to feel its icy shadow - but they'd missed it.

  'Yeah, I choose my marriage.' Sam swung the car to the right. 'And I also temporarily choose this illegal bus lane because I am one crazy motherfucker.'

  Clementine reached into her bag, took out her banana and peeled it.

  'You'll get a ticket,' she said as she took a mouthful and waited for those natural beta-blockers to take effect, and it must have been a really good season for bananas because it was the best banana she'd ever tasted.

  chapter eighty-seven

  At half past three they finally called for her.

  She walked down the strip of carpet with her cello and bow to the lonely chair. She blinked in the bright, hot, white light. A woman coughed behind the black screen and it sounded a little like Ainsley.

  Clementine sat. She embraced her cello. She nodded at her pianist. He smiled. She'd hired her own pianist to accompany her. Grant Morton was a grandfatherly man who lived alone with an adult daughter with Down syndrome. His wife had died the day after her fiftieth birthday, only last year, but he still had the sweetest smile of anyone she knew, and she'd been so glad he was available, because she wanted to start her audition with that sweet smile.

  She was conscious of her heart beating rapidly as she tuned, but it wasn't racing out of control. She breathed and put her hand to the tiny metallic stickers stuck on the collar of her shirt.

  'This is for good luck for your audition,' Holly had said when they were leaving today and she'd carefully put a purple butterfly sticker on her mother's shirt and then, with great, grown-up ceremony, she had kissed Clementine on the cheek.

  'I want good luck too!' Ruby had yelled, as if good luck was a treat being handed out by Clementine, and she'd copied everything her sister had done, except her sticker was a yellow smiley face, and her kiss was very wet and peanut-buttery. Clementine could still feel its sticky imprint on her cheek.

  She took one deep breath and looked at the music on her stand.

  It was all there within her. The hours and hours of early morning practice, the listening to recordings, the dozens of tiny technical decisions she'd settled upon.

  She saw her little girls running about under the fairy lights, Vid throwing back his head and laughing, the chair lying on its side, Oliver's locked hands over Ruby's chest, the black shadow of the helicopter, her mother's enraged face close to hers. She saw her sixteen-year-old self standing up and walking off the stage. She saw a boy in a badly fitting tuxedo watch her pack away her cello and say, 'I bet you wish you chose the flute.' She saw the look of disbelief on Erika's face when Clementine first sat down opposite her in the playground.

  She remembered Marianne saying, 'Don't just play for them, perform.'

  She remembered Hu saying, 'You have to find the balance. It's like you're walking a tightrope between technique and music.'

  She remembered Ainsley saying, 'Yes, but at some point you just have to let go.'

  She lifted her bow. She let go.

  chapter eighty-eight

  The night of the barbeque

  Pam and Martin pulled up in front of Erika and Oliver's neat-looking little bungalow.

  'Holly might be asleep by now,' said Pam to her husband. It was nearly nine o'clock.

  'Might be,' said Martin. 'Might not be.'

  'That must be where it happened,' said Pam. She pointed at the big house next door with dislike. All those turrets and curlicues and spires. She'd always thought it was a fussy, show-offy sort of house.

  'Where what happened?' said Martin blankly.

  Sometimes she could swear he had early onset dementia.

  'Where the accident happened,' said Pam. 'They were at the neighbours' house. They don't even know them that well, apparently.'

  'Oh,' said Martin. He looked away from the house and undid his seatbelt. 'Right.'

  They got out of the car and walked up the paved pathway with its neatly trimmed edges.

  'How do you feel?' she said to Martin.

  'What? Me? I feel fine.'

  'I'm just making sure you don't have chest pains or anything, because it's times like this that people our age unexpectedly drop dead.'

  'I don't have chest pains,' said Martin. 'Do you have chest pains? You're a person of our age too.'

  'I play tennis three times a week,' said Pam primly.

  'I'm more worried about our son-in-law dropping dead of a heart attack,' said Martin, shoving his hands in his pockets. 'He looked terrible.'

  He was right, Sam had looked absolutely terrible at the hospital. It didn't seem possible that one event could have such a profound physical effect on a person. They'd seen Sam just yesterday, when he'd dropped by to help Martin move out their old washing machine, and he'd been in great form, chatting about Clementine's audition, some plan he had to help her get over her nerves, excited about his new job, but tonight he'd looked like he'd been rescued from somewhere, like those people you saw on the news wrapped in silver blankets, with red-rimmed eyes and a ghost-white pallor. He was in terrible shock, of course.

  'You were very rough on Clementine,' said Martin mildly as Pam pressed the doorbell and they heard its distant chime.

  'She should have been watching Ruby,' said Pam.

  'For Christ's sake, it could have happened to anyone,' said Martin.

  Not me, thought Pam.

  'And they both should have been watching,' said Martin. 'They made a mistake and they very nearly paid a terrible price. People make mistakes.'

  'Well, I know that.' But in Pam's eyes it was Clementine's mistake. That's why she was battling this terrible, unmotherly sense of rage towards her beloved daughter. She knew it would eventually recede, she sure hoped it would, and that she'd probably feel just awful about the way she'd spoken to her at the hospital, but for now she still felt very, very angry. It was the mother's job to watch her child. Forget feminism. Forget all that. Pam would scream about equal pay from the rooftops, but every woman knew you couldn't rely on a man to watch the children in a social situation. It was scientifically proven they couldn't do two things at the same time!

  Clementine had always been too prepared to rely on Sam, but just because she was a musician, a creative person, an 'artist', didn't give her the right to relinquish her responsibilities as a mother. Her job as a mother came first.

  Sometimes Clementine got the identical distracted, dreamy expression on her face as Pam's dad used to get at the dinner table while Pam was trying to tell him something, and she wouldn't even have finished the sentence before he'd wandered off. He might have been Ernest bloody Hemingway for all Pam cared. All that time he'd spent writing that novel no one would ever read, ignoring his children, locking himself away in his study, when he could have
been living. 'It could have been a masterpiece,' Clementine always said, as if it was a tragedy, as if that was the point, when it wasn't the point: the point was that Pam never got a father and Pam would have quite liked a father. Just every now and then.

  What good did it do Ruby if her mother was the best cellist in the world? Clementine should have been watching. She should have been listening. She should have been concentrating on her child.

  Of course, Clementine's music had nothing to do with what happened today. She did know that.

  If Ruby didn't make it through the night, if she suffered some sort of long-term damage to her health, Pam didn't know what she'd do with all this anger. She'd have to find the strength to put it aside to be there for Clementine. Pam put her hand to her chest. Ruby was stable, she reminded herself. That rosy little plump-cheeked face. Those wicked slanting cat-like eyes.

  'Pam?' said Martin.

  'What?' she snapped. He was studying her closely.

  'You look like you're having a heart attack.'

  'Well, I'm not, thank you very much, I'm perfectly -' The door swung open and Oliver stood there, wearing tracksuit bottoms and a T-shirt.

  'Hello, Oliver.' Pam hadn't seen him in casual clothes before. Normally he wore a nice checked shirt tucked into trousers. Pam had met him on so many occasions over the years, but she'd never really got to know him that well. He was always so complimentary about Pam's signature dish, her carrot and walnut cake. (He seemed to have got it into his head that the cake was sugar-free, which was not the case, but she didn't bother to correct him; he was so skinny, a bit of sugar wouldn't hurt him.)

  'Holly is just through here watching a movie,' said Oliver. 'She would have been very welcome to stay the night with us, of course.' He said this sadly.

  'Oh, she would have loved that, Oliver,' said Pam. 'But we were all fighting over her, you see, it's a distraction from our worry over Ruby.'

  'I understand you were the hero of the day,' said Martin, and he held out his hand to Oliver.

  Oliver went to take Martin's hand. 'I don't know about -' But to Pam's surprise her husband changed his mind about shaking hands at the last moment and instead threw his arms around Oliver in an awkward hug, thumping him on the back, probably much too hard.