Chloe was standing by a wall, resting her head in her hands, as though in prayer. Immediately he tried to retreat, but she had heard a sound and looked up. Her cheeks were flushed; her blue eyes fierce with some emotion he couldn’t fathom. For a few moments they gazed at one another in silence—then Hugh, tritely, raised his glass.
‘Cheers. Here’s to …’ He shrugged.
‘A happy holiday?’ Hugh flinched at Chloe’s sarcastic voice.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘A happy holiday. Why not?’
‘Fine,’ said Chloe. ‘A happy holiday.’
Hugh took another sip of his gin and tonic. But it tasted wrong out here, sharp and discordant. He should have been drinking a soft red wine.
‘Why did you lie?’ he said abruptly. ‘Why did you pretend we haven’t met?’
There was silence, and Chloe pushed her hands through her wispy, wavy hair. She looked tense, he suddenly thought. Tense and exhausted.
‘I’ve come away with my family for a break,’ she said, looking up. ‘To get away from it all. To forget about all our troubles and … and find ourselves again. To be alone. As a family.’
‘What troubles?’ Hugh put his drink down and took a step forward. ‘Is something wrong?’
‘It doesn’t matter what troubles,’ said Chloe curtly. ‘They’re nothing to do with you. The point is—’ She broke off and closed her eyes. ‘The point is, Philip and I—and the boys, for that matter—we need this time. We need it. And I don’t want any complicating factors getting in the way.’ She opened her eyes. ‘Especially not some … crappy, meaningless little fling.’ Hugh stared at her.
‘You thought it was meaningless.’
‘Not at the time, no.’ Chloe’s face hardened slightly. ‘But time teaches you what was actually important—and what wasn’t. Time teaches you a lot of things. Don’t you think?’
There was a still, taut pause. A drooping white flower behind Chloe’s head swayed a little in the breeze, then, as Hugh watched, silently discarded a petal. He followed its path with his eyes; watched it land on the darkening ground.
‘I never had a chance to explain myself properly,’ he said, looking up, aware that his voice sounded awkward. ‘I … I always felt bad.’
‘You made yourself perfectly clear, Hugh.’ Chloe’s voice was light and scathing. ‘Crystal clear, in fact. And it’s really not important now.’ Hugh opened his mouth to reply, and she raised a hand to halt him. ‘Just … let’s just you do your thing, and we’ll do our thing. All right? And maybe this will work out.’
‘I’d really like to talk,’ said Hugh. ‘I’d really like to have a chance to—’
‘Yes well, I’d like a lot of things,’ said Chloe, cutting him off. And before he could reply she walked away, leaving him alone in the evening twilight.
CHAPTER FIVE
The next morning, Hugh felt bleary and exhausted. He had found a bottle of Rioja the night before which he had proceeded almost singlehandedly to consume, telling himself he was on holiday. Now he lay on a recliner, a sunhat over his face, flinching every time a pinprick of light found its way through the mesh onto his closed eyelids. As though from a distance he could hear Amanda’s voice, and occasionally Jenna’s in reply.
‘Remember to put sun cream on the girls’ necks,’ she was saying. ‘And the backs of their legs.’
‘Sure.’
‘And the soles of their feet.’
‘Already done.’
‘Are you sure?’ Hugh was vaguely aware of Amanda sitting up on the recliner next to him. ‘I don’t want to take any risks.’
‘Mrs Stratton—’ Jenna’s voice sounded deliberately controlled. ‘One thing I do know about is the dangers of the sun. I’m not about to take any risks either.’
‘Good. Well.’ There was a pause, then Amanda lay back down on her recliner. ‘So,’ she said in a low voice to Hugh. ‘No sign of them yet.’
‘Who?’ murmured Hugh without opening his eyes.
‘Them. The others. I have to say, I’ve no idea how it’s all going to work out.’
Hugh removed his hat. Squinting in the sun, he struggled to a sitting position and looked at Amanda. ‘What do you mean, “work out”?’ he said. ‘Here’s the pool, here are the chairs, there’s the sun …’
‘I just mean …’ Amanda frowned slightly. ‘It might be awkward.’
‘I don’t see why,’ said Hugh, watching as Jenna led Octavia and Beatrice down the shallow steps into the pool. ‘I spoke to …’ He paused. ‘To Chloe. The wife.’ He looked at Amanda. ‘Last night, when you were bathing the girls.’
‘Really? What did she say?’
‘They want to do their own thing as much as us. There’s no reason why we should get in each other’s way.’
‘We got in each other’s way last night, didn’t we?’ said Amanda tightly. ‘Last night was a bloody fiasco!’
Hugh shrugged and lay down again, closing his eyes. He had not been present in the kitchen the night before; had not witnessed the incident Amanda was referring to. Philip and Jenna had apparently each begun preparing supper for their respective families with their eye on the same chicken. At some point they had discovered this fact. (Had they reached for the chicken at the same time? Hugh now wondered. Had their hands collided around its neck? Or had it been more a slow, dawning realization?) As far as he could make out, Philip had immediately offered to find a substitute for his own dish and Jenna had gratefully thanked him.
Hardly a fiasco, in his eyes. But Amanda had taken this little event as confirmation that the entire holiday was to be ruined—indeed, had already been ruined. As they had eaten their supper in the dining room (Philip and Chloe had taken theirs outside to the terrace), she had repeated this opinion over and over in different variations, until Hugh could bear no more. He had retired to the balcony of their bedroom with his bottle of wine and had slowly drunk it down, until the sky was dark overhead. When he had come inside, Amanda was in bed, already asleep in front of a cable mini-series.
‘Here we go.’ Amanda’s low voice interrupted his thoughts. ‘Here they come.’ She raised her voice. ‘Morning!’
‘Morning,’ Hugh heard Philip reply.
‘Lovely day,’ came Chloe’s voice.
‘Isn’t it?’ said Amanda brightly. ‘Absolutely stunning weather.’
There was silence, and Amanda lay down again.
‘At least they aren’t trying to chuck us off our sun-beds,’ she said in an undertone to Hugh. ‘Not yet, anyway.’ There was a pause, filled by the creaking of her recliner as she found a comfortable sunbathing position, reached for her headphones and put them on. A moment later, she removed them and looked up. ‘Hugh?’
‘Mmm?’
‘Can you pass me my Factor Eight?’
Hugh opened his eyes and sat up and froze. Across the pool, with her back to him, Chloe was unbuttoning her old cotton dress. As it fell from her body, pooling on the ground, Hugh gazed, transfixed. She was wearing an old-fashioned rose-patterned swimsuit, and her fair hair was caught back in a single flower. Her legs were pale and slender; her shoulders fragile and vulnerable, like a child’s. As she turned round, he couldn’t prevent his eyes from running up her body to the faintest glimpse of white breast.
‘Hugh?’ Beside him Amanda began to sit up; at the same time, Chloe looked across the pool, directly at him. As her eyes met his, Hugh felt a shocking stab of desire. Of guilt. The two seemed almost to be the same thing. Quickly he turned away.
‘Here you are,’ he said, reaching randomly for a bottle and passing it to Amanda.
‘That isn’t Factor Eight!’ she said, impatiently. ‘The big bottle.’
‘Right.’ Hugh scrabbled for the correct bottle, thrust it at his wife, and lay down again, his heart thumping. He couldn’t rid his mind of Chloe’s face, of her searing, slightly contemptuous blue eyes. Of course she knew what he was thinking. Chloe had always known exactly what he was thinking.
They had met fifteen years
ago at an undergraduate party in London; a party full of economics and medical students, held in a shared flat in Stockwell. Gerard had been invited along as a friend of one of the economists—and, being Gerard, he had brought along a large uninvited crowd from his history of art degree course at the Courtauld. One of those was Chloe.
Looking back, it seemed to Hugh that he had fallen in love with her straight away. She had been wearing a dress with a slightly quaint look to it, which set her apart from the others. They had begun talking about paintings, about which Hugh knew very little, and had somehow moved on to period costume—about which Hugh knew even less. Then, as an aside, Chloe had revealed that she herself had designed and made the dress she was wearing.
‘I don’t believe you,’ Hugh had said, fuelled by several glasses of wine, and anxious to move the conversation away from nineteenth-century buttonhooks. ‘Prove it to me.’
‘All right, then,’ Chloe had said, laughing slightly. She had reached down and lifted up the hem of her dress. ‘Look at this seam. Look at the stitches. I put in every one of them by hand.’
Hugh had looked obediently—but had not seen a single stitch. He had caught a glimpse of Chloe’s slender legs, encased in sheer stockings, and had felt a startling, overwhelming desire for her. He had taken a swig of wine, trying to regain his composure, then looked cautiously into her eyes, expecting indifference, even antagonism. Instead, he had seen cool blue awareness. Chloe had known exactly what he wanted. She had wanted it herself.
Later that night, in his Kilburn bedroom, she had forced him to peel her dress off in slow motion, pausing long enough for her to show him each handstitched seam in turn. By the time the dress was fully off, he’d wanted her more than he’d ever wanted any woman in his life.
They had lain afterwards in silence. Hugh had already been thinking ahead to the next morning; to how he might extricate himself from spending the entire day in her company. When she had murmured something and got out of bed he had barely noticed. It was only when she was half dressed that he had realized, with a pang of genuine shock, that she was preparing to leave.
‘I have to get back,’ she’d said, and given him a soft kiss on his brow. ‘But maybe we can see each other again.’ As she’d closed the door behind her, Hugh had realized, rather to his chagrin, that this was the first time he’d been the one left behind in an empty bed while his partner made excuses. To his faint surprise, he didn’t like it.
The next time they’d met, she had left his bed in the same way—and the next. After a couple of weeks he’d casually asked why—and she’d said something about the aunt she lived with on the outskirts of London being a fussy type. She had never explained further; never changed the pattern. In those three summer months—which had otherwise been pretty well perfect—she had not once spent an entire night with him. Eventually he had abandoned all pride; had pleaded with her to sleep for a night with him. ‘I want to see what you look like when you wake up,’ he’d said, laughing a little to hide the fact that he was speaking the truth. She had not relented. The temptation, he now saw, must have been huge—but she had resolutely refused to weaken. If he closed his eyes now, he could still recall the rustle of her jeans; the hiss of a cotton shirt; the clinking of a belt buckle. The sounds of her silently pulling her clothes on in the darkness and disappearing to the place where he was never invited.
She looked so slight; so elfin. But Chloe was one of the strongest people he had ever known. Even at the time, he had appreciated it. It had been around then that one of his friends from school had been killed, abroad, in a mountaineering accident. Gregory hadn’t been the closest of friends—but the shock had hit Hugh hard. He had never encountered death before, and had been frightened at the strength of his own reaction. After the initial shock, a depression had set in which lasted for weeks. Chloe had sat with him hour after hour, listening, counselling, soothing him. She was never hurried, never impatient; was always full of a grounded, measured sense. He still missed that sense; that strength. He’d never had to explain himself to her: she’d always understood the way his mind was working. She had seemed to understand him better than he understood himself.
Hugh had emerged from that black, grief-stricken period full of a new vigour. He had felt determined to grab his life while he still had it, and make it something. To win success; to make money; to achieve all that he could. He had begun to look at high-flying careers, to send off for glossy corporate brochures and visit the London University careers office.
At about the same time as he was attending milk rounds and meeting with recruitment consultants, Chloe had begun, for the first time, to mention her home life. To refer to her aunt and her young school-age cousins. And to someone called Sam, whom she was keen for him to meet.
He still remembered that day with cold clarity. The journey to the outskirts of London. The walk along identically neat suburban streets. They had stopped at a small, mock-Tudor house, Chloe had shyly opened the door and ushered him in.Shrinking slightly from the domestic scenario, he had nevertheless smiled back encouragingly, stepped into the narrow hallway and into the front room. There he had stopped in surprise. Sitting on the carpet was a baby, grinning up at him.
Gamely, he had smiled back, thinking the infant to be some nephew, some friend’s child. Nothing to do with Chloe. Not Chloe, who was twenty years old; who still looked like a child herself. He’d turned to make some flippant remark—and had seen her face suffused with love.
‘He likes you.’ She’d gone over and picked the baby up and brought him over. ‘Say hello to Hugh, Sam.’ Hugh had stared, bewildered, at the baby’s cheerful face—and gradually, like a stone falling through water, the appalling truth had sunk in.
He still remembered the choking panic he’d felt. The anger; the betrayal at her trickery. He’d sat drinking tea, a smile plastered on his face, making conversation with the aunt, fielding her hopeful questions as best he could. But his mind was far away, planning his escape. He could no longer look at Chloe without feeling a sick fury. How could she have spoiled everything like this? How could she have a baby?
Later, she had drawn him aside to explain everything. As the aunt clattered crockery in the kitchen she had explained her diffidence at introducing anyone to Sam; her agonizing over when to tell him; her decision to postpone the moment until he had recovered more from Gregory’s death. ‘I thought if I told you I had a baby, you wouldn’t be interested,’ she’d said. ‘But when you met him and saw how lovely he was …’ She’d broken off, her cheeks flushed softly with emotion, and Hugh had nodded, his face frozen.
Swiftly she had given him the bare facts of Sam’s conception. Her affair with a tutor much older, her naivety, her painful decision to keep the child. Hugh had barely listened to a word.
The next day he had left the country. He had travelled alone to Corfu on a last-minute package deal and had sat on the beach, staring blackly into the sea, hating her. For he still wanted her. He still craved her. But he couldn’t have her. He couldn’t have a baby in his life. She should have known that, he’d thought with a hot resentment, burying his baking head in his hands. Everything had been so perfect—and now she had ruined it.
He had sat for two weeks, every day growing more tanned and more determined. He would not throw his life away on another man’s child. He would not be tempted into making some rash gesture which later he would regret. Instead, he would pursue the goals he had set himself; the high-flying solo path that was meant for him. He would have the life he wanted.
When he returned, there had been too many messages from Chloe to count. He had ignored them all, filled in application forms for graduate positions in all the big management consultancy firms, and begun term. When he heard her voice on his answer machine, or saw her handwriting on the doormat, he would feel an ache in his chest. But he schooled himself to ignore it, to carry on regardless—and after a while it had lessened. Gradually Chloe’s messages had become fewer—and then shorter. And eventually they ha
d stopped altogether, like a child upstairs crying itself to sleep.
Hugh shifted uncomfortably on his recliner and opened one eye. Chloe was lying down; he couldn’t see her face. Philip was sitting up, though, and under the pretext of reaching for his newspaper, Hugh surveyed him. He wasn’t bad looking, in an untidy sort of way, he thought grudgingly. But his face was pale and stubbled, and creased in a frown. He was staring into the middle distance, apparently oblivious of Hugh, of Chloe; of everything.
‘Dad?’
Philip’s head jerked up—and, with it, so did Hugh’s. Sam was loping towards the swimming pool, a badminton racquet in his hand. He surveyed the area, taking in Hugh’s presence without interest. As their eyes met, Hugh stared back at him, feeling an absurd swell of emotion. That baby, sitting on that suburban carpet years ago, was now this tall, good-looking young man. He felt a ludicrous desire to go over to the boy and tell him, I knew you before you were even one year old.
But Sam had already turned to his father. His stepfather, Hugh corrected himself.
‘Dad, we want to play badminton.’
‘Well, play badminton, then,’ said Philip.
‘Yeah, but the net keeps falling over.’
‘Have you anchored it properly?’ Sam shrugged, with a supreme lack of interest, and reached for a can of Coke on the ground. ‘Lazy blighter,’ said Philip. ‘I suppose you want me to set it up for you?’
‘Yeah.’
Philip shook his head and looked at Chloe, raising a faint smile.
‘Do we believe this boy’s idleness?’
‘Bone idle,’ said Sam with satisfaction. ‘That’s me.’ He took a swig of Coke and as he did so, met Hugh’s eyes across the pool.
Immediately, Hugh looked away, feeling like an intruder. Like an eavesdropper, listening in on their family life.
‘Give me a moment,’ said Philip. ‘Go on, I’ll be along in a sec.’
‘We’re in the field,’ said Sam, and pointed. ‘Over there behind the trees.’