Then Maggie appeared behind her.
"What are you doing to the poor girl?" she said. "She doesn't speak Cantonese. She's from the mainland, you daft woman. She speaks Mandarin. She won't have a clue what you're going on about."
Tall, slim, public-school Hamish was an unlikely partner for Maggie. People had been saying so for the eighteen years they had been married. It was not just Maggie's height, the dark, earthy voluptuousness of her, against his insubstantial pallor, or the noisy, Chinese immediacy of her and her children's emotions, set against Hamish's northern European placidity. It was just that she seemed too much for him. Too much for almost anyone Kate could think of, come to that. She was too loud, too upfront. Too sure of herself. Kate was fairly sure she had not changed one iota since adolescence. It was why Hamish adored her.
Kate, on the other hand, had changed with practically every man she had ever been with. It was the changes they had wrought in her that had determined how far she fell for them. With Jim, she had been the young, hip parent, had enjoyed the loose, loving way with which he had treated both her and her daughter, the way that for the first time since Sabine's birth, she had not felt entirely defined by her status as "mummy." He had given her back some of her youth, she had thought at the time, lightened her up, enabled her to stop worrying. Taught her about sex. But then, when things had begun to go wrong, and she had begun to suspect, she had hated the person he made her become. Hated being that paranoid, unhappy wretch, begging for truth, desperately changing her appearance in an attempt to win back his attention from the unseen threat. And when he had finally gone, the sadness had been tinged with relief that she didn't have to be that person anymore.
When Geoff had moved in, she had been an older, wiser lover. She had not given as much to him, conscious of the need, this time, to hold something back. Yet he had given her everything. Everything he had, that is. With Geoff, she had become a grown-up. He had expanded her mind, talked to her about politics, and society, and made her look harder at the injustices of the world around her. If the comfort had outweighed the passion, then that had been fine, she had told herself. She was probably better with someone who kept her steady. With Geoff, she had learned to use her brain, and it had felt like growing up. And he had been so sweet with Sabine, never attempting to push himself on her, or play daddy, but simply providing her with this solid backdrop of love and wisdom.
But then, six years on, had come Justin. Justin, who had made her realize that there was a whole side of her that had lain dormant for years, and now insisted on bursting through to the fore. She was a sexual being, and he made her sexual, and once it had sprung forth, like a geyser, it refused to be subdued. No one had made her glow like he did; no one left her blushing, and walking giddily, like a drunk, at nine o'clock in the morning. No one had surrounded her with a virtual aura of sexuality, a fizzing cloak of pheromones, so that she found herself turning heads, drawing wolf whistles, even when dressed down. And she deserved it, didn't she? She had told herself, desperately trying to rationalize the hurt she was about to cause. She was allowed another chance? Why should she have to give up on romantic love at the age of thirty-five?
"Is this a thin-person conspiracy? While you've been sitting there dreaming, I've eaten nearly all the cheung fun." Maggie, perched against the sink unit of the kitchen, waved her chopsticks vigorously in front of Kate's nose. "Just because you can't tell the difference between Cantonese and Mandarin doesn't mean you're not allowed to eat the food."
"Sorry," said Kate, pushing at her lunch as it congealed in the bowl. She had thought she was hungry, but her appetite, so erratic of late, had chosen again to disappear.
"Oh, God. Not lovesick still. Not the can't-eat-a-thing stage at . . . What is it now? Three months?"
"I don't know what stage I'm at," said Kate, miserably. "Yes, I do. The guilty stage."
Maggie raised a carefully plucked eyebrow. When Kate had revealed she was leaving Geoff for Justin, she had expected that Maggie, who had known Geoff longer, would automatically take sides. But it hadn't happened; Maggie, perhaps fittingly for someone apparently able to hold two conflicting points of view at once, also appeared to have a capacity to retain dual loyalty.
"The guilty stage? Oh, don't be so wet. For God's sake. You're happy, aren't you? Justin's happy? Geoff is, let's be honest, hardly suicidal. Not the type, with all that psychiatric training. Probably giving himself a good therapeutic talking to even as we speak." She honked with laughter, sending a piece of noodle flying across the table.
"It's not Geoff. It's Sabine." Kate paused. "I'm wrecking her life."
Maggie took a last piece of paper-wrapped prawn, sighed deeply, and then pushed her bowl toward the overflowing sink.
"I see. So it's adolescent hell, is it? The girl-child giving you a hard time?"
"Not as such. To be honest, she hardly talks to me. But I can see it, written all over her face. She thinks I've ruined her whole life. And she hates me for sending her to stay at my mother's."
"Now, that you can't blame her for, if what you have told me is at all true. But as for ruining her life, don't be so melodramatic." She grinned at Kate. "Fine coming from me, I know. But come on, she's hardly an abused waif, is she?"
Kate gazed at her, desperate for reassurance.
Maggie held up one hand, and began ticking off her plump fingers.
"One: Is she clothed and fed? Yes. Too bloody well, if you ask me, all that ridiculous label stuff. Two: Have you ever brought anyone cruel into her life? No. All your men--well, both your live-in men--have absolutely adored her, not that the little madam has ever given them much back, bless her. Three: Was Geoff her real daddy? No, as she was at great pains to tell him on any possible occasion. Four: Will she leave home within the next few years and without a backward glance? Absolutely."
"Oh, well, that makes me feel a load better."
"Just being honest, darling. All I'm saying is that you worry too much. Sabine is about as well adjusted a teenager as you can cultivate around here. And I mean that in a positive way. She's bright, she's bolshie, and she doesn't take shit from anyone. You have no need to worry."
"But she doesn't talk to me anymore. She just stopped talking."
"She's just sixteen, for God's sake. I didn't speak to my parents for about four years, and there were two of them."
"But what if it's because of me? What if she keeps on hating me?"
"You wait till she wants a car. Or a deposit on her first flat. The love will return, believe me. The love will return."
Kate gazed out of the window at the gray frontages of Kingsland Road; the car stereo and hardware shops, the local cafes, grimy billboards and welfare offices that proved that no matter what the estate agents insisted, this "up and coming" area resolutely insisted on going no further. What made her think her daughter was going to be any better off in the cloistered, green acres of Kilcarrion? What good had they ever done her?
She toyed with a plump, pink prawn, pushing it on a solitary journey around the rim of her plate.
"Do you ever get bored of Hamish?"
She wasn't sure where the question had come from, but once it was out she realized she needed to know the answer. Maggie, her cup raised to her mouth, lowered it slowly and considered with equal levity her answer.
"Bored? Bored . . . I don't know if I get bored exactly. I sometimes want to throttle him. Will that do?"
"But what makes you stay together? You can't be happy all the time. Can you?" The last two words came out a little plaintively, so that Kate tried to turn them into a joke.
"Of course we're not happy all the time. No couple is happy all the time, and if anyone tells you they are, she's bloody lying. But you know that." Maggie frowned. "What is this, Kate? Honestly, sometimes you can sound like a fifteen-year-old talking about relationships."
"That's because I feel about as good at them as a fifteen-year-old. But what makes you stay together? What keeps you hanging around at the point at which
you want to disappear?" The point, she thought silently, at which I usually disappear?
"What keeps us together? Apart from the cost of a good divorce lawyer and the fact that our house has hardly risen in value in five years? Oh, and those evil trolls masquerading as our children? The truth, Kate? I don't honestly know. . . . Yes, I do. It's that despite being a complete arsehole sometimes, crap with money, frequently drunk, and frankly not a great shag apart from birthdays and special occasions, I genuinely can't imagine being with anyone else but Hamish. Does that help?"
"I've never been in a relationship where I haven't imagined being with someone else," confessed Kate, sadly.
"Oh, I'm not counting fantasizing about Robert Mitchum."
"Nor am I. Oh, God. Robert Mitchum?"
"I know," Maggie grinned. "He's my guilty secret. He just looked like he'd have been so stern, you know?"
"But I'm not counting sexual fantasies. I have always thought about being with someone else. I have crushes on other people and stuff."
"You are fifteen. I knew it."
"Oh, God, what's wrong with me? Why am I so bloody useless at relationships?" She hadn't actually meant to say it out loud.
Maggie began gathering up the empty bowls piled up on trays around the kitchen.
"Hate to say this, gorgeous, bearing in mind your current squeeze, and all that. But perhaps you just haven't met the right person."
Justin rang at a quarter to seven, shortly before Geoff was due to arrive. Kate was grateful for his call, grateful that over the tinny telephone line the sound of his voice could still flood her with warmth and longing, reassure her that her decision had been the right one. It had been rather unnerving, her conversation with Maggie, even if she had brought it all upon herself with her overly introspective mood. Now Justin, ringing unexpectedly, put it all right.
"I was thinking about you," he said. "And I just wanted to hear your voice."
"Oh, I'm so glad you did," she said, a little breathlessly. "I miss you so much."
His voice sounded a million miles away. "God, I wish you were here. I can't stop thinking about you."
She paused.
"How's everything--?"
"Where are you--?" They both began speaking simultaneously and then broke off, each unwilling to interrupt the other. "You first," said Kate, cursing the telephone system for the awkward time lags.
"Look, I can't talk long. I just wanted to say that I'll probably be back by the weekend. We've only got one more person to see, and then I'm hoping to leave the others here and get out on an early flight."
"Do you want me to meet you at the airport? Just ring when you've got your flight details."
"No, don't bother. I'm not a great fan of all that arrivals reunion stuff."
Kate tried to bite back her disappointment. She had had a sudden vision of them embracing in the middle of Heathrow, he dressed in dusty khaki, lines of exhaustion wiped from his face at the sight of her. For God's sake, she scolded herself. Maggie was right. You really are fifteen.
"I'll cook something nice then. For when you get back."
"You don't need to do that."
"I want to. I miss you."
"I just mean that I'm likely to be knackered, and filthy, and will probably head home first and sleep for twelve hours. I'll see you when I'm clean and rested. We'll go out somewhere fun."
Kate told him she would look forward to it, trying to hide the disappointment she felt at his lack of urgency. She wanted to see him as soon as he touched down; sweaty, exhausted, or whatever, she wanted to smother him in kisses, run him a hot bath, hand him glasses of wine as she listened to his tales of derring-do. Then feed him up with home cooking and watch him doze contentedly on her sofa. But then Justin wasn't really the dozing kind. In fact, she had a strong suspicion that Justin was somewhere not a million miles from hyperactive. He found it difficult to sit still anywhere; he fidgeted and tapped his fingers on his knees, rubbed at his sandy hair, and paced the room. She supposed it was what made him good at his job. Even in his sleep he flinched and murmured as if on some constant nocturnal trail.
Restless, Kate walked slowly up to her room, and stood, staring at herself in the long mirror on the door of the Edwardian wardrobe. What does he see in me? she thought, feeling suddenly vulnerable, at odds with herself. He could have anyone, and yet he picked me: a thirty-five-year-old woman with stretch marks and the definite beginnings of crows'-feet and hair that was, while luxuriant and red, apparently too long for her age, according to her daughter. A woman who, having missed out on her youth, had somehow never gotten to grips with fashion--not knowing where she quite fit in to it all. Sabine told her that the 1950s and 1960s second-hand clothes she got from the shop in Stoke Newington were "a joke"; but Kate had liked them, liked the good fabrics and the feeling of quality that she couldn't afford in a wardrobe of today. She had liked the fact that they separated her from all those thirty-five-year-old mums she saw at Sainsbury's. But now, laid under a sudden cloud of self-doubt, she wondered whether she simply looked odd, out of place. Will he go off me? she thought, peering at her reflection. He was the same age as she was, but his whole lifestyle was so transient, so free of responsibility, that it could have belonged to someone ten years younger. Would he ultimately want someone who shared that freedom?
Kate closed her wardrobe door, trying to displace the thoughts crowding into her head. She was just no good at being alone; it gave her much too much time to think, too much time to mull over everything. Too much of her happiness was dictated by her love life, that's what Maggie had said. She made herself too vulnerable that way. She had denied it, but had been notably unable to come up with reasons why Maggie was wrong. And Maggie had said what she did without knowing half of it: how Kate had spent a fortune on new bed linens because Justin had once remarked that he slept best on white Egyptian cotton; how she had turned down at least two well-paid commissions because she wasn't sure when he was getting back and didn't want to be working when he arrived; how she found it altogether too much effort to look nice when Justin wasn't here and had spent most of his absence in her black plastic reading glasses, a T-shirt, and a pair of pajama bottoms.
God, but she was no good at being alone. She would get a lodger. Or a dog. Or something. Anything to stop these depressive thoughts. Come on, she scolded herself. Geoff will be here soon. Straighten yourself up.
Glad of a reason to stop thinking, Kate brushed her hair, marveling at the tangles that could be caused by two days' neglect, applied her lipstick, and then, without thinking, applied perfume: Mitsouko, by Guerlain. Then stared in horror at the bottle; Geoff had bought her that perfume. Every Valentine's Day. It was his favorite. He might think she had changed her mind, that she wanted to win him back. Kate stared at her reflection, and then, after a moment's hesitation, took a tissue and rubbed off the lipstick. She did up the top button of her 1950s cream-silk blouse, and removing her contact lenses, put on her unflattering work glasses. Then she wiped at her neck with a handkerchief, trying to remove the scent. She had hurt him enough already; the last thing she wanted to do was unwittingly inflame his passion. With that in mind, a flat, aged, washed-out Kate, the kind she had just spent the last two hours fretting about, was the most thoughtful gift she could offer him.
He arrived late, which surprised her. Geoff was always punctual. It was one of his "things." She was almost grateful when the doorbell eventually rang; she had found herself seated in silence in the living room, staring as if for the first time at the gaps in the bookshelves and the spaces on the walls where his belongings had been. How would Sabine feel when she saw so many familiar things missing? Had she been attached to any of them? Had she even noticed any of them? How did you know what was going on in the mind of an enigma?
He looked, she noticed, as he walked in past her down the hall, a little better than the last time she had seen him. Less aged by it all. But perhaps that was no surprise; that had been moving day; the weeks since had been an ag
e for both of them.
He stood in the living room, a tall, slightly stooped man of fifty, apparently unsure whether to sit down. Suddenly, perversely glad to see him, Kate smiled nervously at him and gestured toward the sofa.
"Do you want a drink? Your stuff's upstairs but I know you've had a drive, and I don't want you to feel you have to head straight off again."
Geoff rubbed at the back of his salt-and-pepper hair, a gesture she had never seen before, and sat down tentatively.
"Actually, I only came from Islington. I'm headed back there, too."
Kate was sure he had said he was renting a place in Bromley, nearer the psychiatric hospital, but she said nothing. Innocent queries suddenly held the capacity to become loaded. It was none of her business anymore.
"Tea? Coffee? Red wine? There's a bottle open."
"Red would be great. Thanks."
She fussed with the bottle in the kitchen, marveling at how swiftly one's partner could metamorphose into a formal guest. When she handed his glass to him, she felt his eyes search her face, and it made her flush with unwelcome emotion.
"So, how are you?" he said. Which threw her somewhat, because she had expected to ask it of him.
"I'm--I'm fine," she said. "Doing okay."
"Is Sabine still at your mother's?"
"Yes. She didn't like it much to begin with, but she hasn't rung this week. With her I guess that's a good sign."
"No news is good news."
"Something like that."
"Give her my love. When you next speak to her."
She nodded. "Of course I will."
There was a lengthy pause. Kate noticed that the top button of her blouse had come undone, and wondered whether to do it up would look like she was making a point. She pulled her thick cardigan harder around her, hoping that would solve the problem.
"You've not got the heating on?" he said, looking around the room, as if suddenly noticing the cold.
"I've had a few problems with the boiler. The man's coming tomorrow," she lied.
"Is he any good? You don't want to have cowboys messing around--they can wreck the whole thing--electrics, plumbing, the lot."
"Oh, he's very good. Registered and everything."