“Will you look after the shop if I decide to go on holiday?” she says. “Seeing as you haven’t got a job now.”
Thanks for reminding me, Jemma. “Yes. Of course I will.”
“Good.”
“When are you going?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where are you thinking of?”
“What’s this, Alicia?” she snaps. “The Spanish Inquisition?”
So, he’s married and they’re waiting to see when they can get rid of his wife. What’s new? I make my excuses and prepare to leave, and my sister takes our grandmother’s scarf as if it is an old dishrag and says she’ll look at it, but I suspect it won’t be this millennium.
I rush out as slowly as I can, promising to send Jem a postcard, but I expect I will exact a minor spite and won’t. But then I’ll probably buy her something nice when I get back to make up for it.
I fly back across London, careless of the lurking speed cameras, and can feel myself race into the gravel drive, so sit and make myself count to ten when I pull up in the drive. The gravel always heralds an entrance, but no one comes to greet me. Not even Elliott.
When I have served my patience penance, I find the kitchen is deserted, apart from the dirty pizza plates, and the ice cream is out on the table, melting. And when I go into the lounge I find out why.
Christian is fast asleep, stretched out on the sofa. Elliott is wedged along the length of his body, sucking contentedly on his thumb. Thomas is flat out on the rug in front of the fire, head resting on a cushion. And Tanya is flaked out in the armchair, showing an alarming amount of leg. I have never seen my children in this soporific state on a Sunday afternoon. Normally they are bounding around with energy like a pack of caged tigers. Some tired old film, possibly the original version of The Thomas Crown Affair, is playing away to itself on the television with the sound off. I tiptoe into the room, and they are blissfully, peacefully unaware of my presence. My heart lurches, and I’m not sure if it’s for the family I have lost or for the one that I have just found.
CHAPTER 55
As is fitting for a holiday, we left a bog standard British battleship-gray sky behind at the purgatory known as Gatwick Airport, and now the sun is so sharp and clear and white it hurts your eyes to look at it directly; instead you have to squint behind your sunglasses and peer at it through knitted eyelashes. I never knew the color blue could be like this; it’s deep and pure and totally unbroken.
I am lying on a strip of sand twenty-five meters wide and a hundred meters long and as flat as the proverbial pancake. That’s all. This is Veligandu, which means, romantically, “spit of sand.” It is one of about a zillion similar spits of sand that make up the islands of the Maldives—somewhere I’d never actually heard of until Christian booked the tickets. Beyond the precarious coral reef which bounds our particular spit of sand, the ocean plunges violently to unmeasured fathoms that reach down farther than the height of our tallest mountains. So, in effect, I am lying on a spit of sand as high as a sea-locked Everest. It is a very strange feeling for a number of reasons.
One: even the slightest spitefulness from the ocean would obliterate this tiny scrap of laid-back civilization. Even a hint of a wave would cover the lot, sucking it back into the depths of the Indian Ocean forever, and it is far too beautiful for me to want that to happen. And I’m sure Airtours wouldn’t be too happy either. I think the thing that hurts most is that it’s a horrible reminder that something so solid, so necessary, so abiding, something that other people depend on, can be swept away in an instant by nothing more sinister than a change in the wind. But I’m not going to think about my marriage. I’m here for the sole purpose of not thinking about my marriage.
Two: this is the first holiday I’ve ever been on without my children, which means I can relax on said sand safe in the knowledge that I’m not about to be buried up to my neck in it. I’ve never been particularly fond of sand, but then I’ve really only experienced heavy, wet, orange British sand. Sand that sticks damply to your skin, dyeing it brown and working its way inside your sandwiches, doing goodness knows what to your digestive system. This sand is fine white powder, as alluring and narcotic as cocaine. It trails through your fingers leaving no trace and, despite the supreme effort of the scorching sun, holds no heat. If you didn’t like sand, this would, undoubtedly, be the wrong place to be. There are no floors in the casual arrangement of thatched buildings that calls itself the hotel, just more sand. Large crabs meander aimlessly through the dining room, and no one, not even me, which is amazing, takes the slightest bit of notice.
This is not a children’s holiday. Elliott would be climbing the walls, if there were any, within ten minutes. There are no chirpy T-shirted happy club leaders, no water slides, no themed swimming pools, no water sports, no Frisbees, no Ping-Pong tables, no age 10–14’s disco, no hut selling overpriced Wall’s ice cream. Christian is the only person here under the age of thirty. This is the sort of holiday only couples do. Couples with plenty of cash because they have no children. Happy couples. Imagine being stuck on a spit of sand for a fortnight with someone you couldn’t stand.
Three: I can’t believe that Christian and I are here. We have left behind the stress and strain of London, Ed, Kath Brown, my sister, the lovely pouting Rebecca, the drizzle, the fumes, the bills and absolutely everything else. We are here in a blissful little cocoon that nothing—apart from unprecedented torrential rain—could spoil. For the first time in a long time, possibly my entire life, I am relaxed down to my bones. The heat has seared its way through my skin and muscles and is turning my hard, brittle skeleton to soft, melting wax. No doubt I’ll pay for it in years to come with an excess of sun-induced wrinkles, but I’ll just slap on some more anti-aging cream and consider it a price worth paying. Right now the sun seems unfeasibly kind and comforting. It is baking me back to health. My stomach isn’t cramped into a knot as it has been since the first time I said hello to Christian. I really had no idea quite how stretched I’d become, and now that I’ve got off the giddy treadmill of my life, I wonder how I will ever get back on again.
There’s only a handful of people here, scattered about in wooden water bungalows that jut out into the sea beyond the confines of the sand on twiggy stilts. Some are honeymoon couples, possibly vampiric, who have not yet ventured out into the cruel light of day. Fancy coming all this way and staying indoors. Or am I missing the point?
I have brought six books with me and have read none. Jemma would be very pleased about this, and you might understand why when I share a couple of the titles with you. How To Drive Your Man Wild in Bed. My favorite thing when I was married was to remark to Ed how the ceiling needed painting. I can quite categorically state that that never failed to drive him wild. Well, I was usually in the right position to notice it! And that alone will tell you that we probably needed help. And, anyway, I wouldn’t dare suggest to Christian that the ceiling needed painting—God only knows what we’d end up with.
Another one is called How To Make Anyone Like You—which I’m really struggling with, because I’m not even sure I like myself much at the moment. They should produce these books with plain brown covers. They’re all a bit too relentlessly cheerful and citrus in hue, which means that anyone within a half-mile radius can read the title and know that you are a sad sack, racked with insecurities. It’s not what you might call typical holiday reading matter either, is it? The urge to improve oneself shouldn’t extend into holiday periods. That’s the two weeks of the year when you should be happy to be a sun-lounger potato and turn yourself into a lush (old-fashioned meaning) on bright blue cocktails with matching parasols and indulge yourself heartily from the calorie and botulism buffet. I should have gone out and bought something slushy by one of these trendy young authors with names like Charlotte, Clare or Camelia.
I have given up pretending to read; the light is too bright and I’ve spent my time staring at the infinitesimal swell of the sea, which is making me as drowsy as about t
en Valiums.
Last night we sat on the beach, alone, holding hands, and watched the sun sink down beneath the sea. Dolphins swam across the horizon, silhouetted in the golden-orange light, leaping playfully as if they hadn’t a care in the world. No wonder they always look like they’re smiling—they don’t have mortgages or school fees or high blood pressure or cellulite or Decree Absolutes. And I wonder if they realize how hard it is for us humans just to cope with existing, and why, after the age of ten, we somehow lose the urge to leap playfully.
As the sun set, it left a warm, comforting glow that spread across the surface of the ocean, familiar and soothing, and as I looked behind me the moon was already out, sharp, crescent-shaped, a slashed sliver of silver thread in a vast expanse of mysterious, unfathomable inky blackness. The stars twinkled, tantalizing, alluring, sparkling on the water like white diamonds scattered on plush black velvet. And I was torn. I didn’t know which way to turn. What drew me most—the soft safety of the setting sun or the clear, rising newness of the moon and stars? If I could only look at one for the rest of my life, which would I be most willing to sacrifice?
Propping myself up on my elbows, I cup my face in my hands and look out to the sea, which is blue, beguiling and unthreatening, and as hard as I try to decide, I still don’t know which I’d choose.
Christian is snorkeling. That boy—man—has more energy than is good for him. The word “tired” just doesn’t cross his brain. I can just see the silver tip of his blowpipe glinting in the join between the turquoise of the sea and the azure sky. His fins are paddling lazily in the water and he’s wearing a T-shirt, because I didn’t want his back to get burned. He says I speak to him like a four-year-old, but then, at times, he can be as petulant as anyone I’ve come across—including Elliott. And I worry about him like he’s a child—is he too hot, too cold, has he had enough to eat, has he put plenty of sunscreen on his beautiful delicate skin? It’s only at night when we are alone in the seething warmth of our bungalow and he is moving above me in the dark and I can’t see the youthful, exuberant light on his face that he is all man to me, my lover and only my lover.
Christian pads out of the sea and flops down on the beach next to me. “The water is so warm, Ali,” he says breathlessly. “It’s like being in a bath.”
I pass him a towel and he puts it down without using it. “Have you ever made love in the sea?”
I think I can quite safely say that I haven’t, but then all our holidays have been in Cornwall or Devon, which somehow doesn’t have the same appeal. And the kids might have objected to waiting on the beach. “No,” I say.
Christian rolls over and kisses my feet. “I think it’s something we have to correct.” His eyes twinkle and in this revealing light they are an indeterminate blue-gray, the color of the horizon where the sea meets the sky. I still have trouble believing that he loves me.
Some people are naturally charismatic. Princess Diana was. So is Jeffrey Archer. I met him once. You’ll just have to take my word for it. Christian is too. He has an energy that radiates into a room the minute he walks in. It flows from him and draws people to him like iron filings to a strong magnet. They cleave to him, want to spend time with him. And he’s not aware of it yet—I don’t think. The worst thing about charismatic people is that once they realize they’re charismatic they manipulate their attraction, and I hope Christian doesn’t learn to do it, because it will make him a lesser man.
He leans against my sun lounger and rests his head back on my thigh, while I stroke his hair. We are becoming very comfortable with each other. I couldn’t sleep when we were first together because I didn’t know how to curl round him. I don’t remember if it was ever like that with Ed, because we had fitted together so well for so long. Christian’s hair used to tickle my nose and his arm was too heavy across my body and the rhythm of his breathing was all wrong and there were very interesting parts of his body which didn’t seem to need sleep at all. Now we sleep easily, slotted together like spoons, and I’m not sure if I should view this as progress.
“Come and swim,” he murmurs.
It’s a good idea. I’m probably just about done to medium rare, and the sea may well sizzle on my skin. I turn toward Christian, and he reaches up and strokes my face. His cheeks glow pink and his eyelashes are damp and dark. The sun has bleached his hair and he looks like he’s just stepped out of a glossy magazine. “Do you love me?” he asks.
I do. My heart is melting, like my bones and probably my brain. “Yes,” I say. “I love you.”
“Good.” Christian jumps up and grins. “Last one in the water’s a sissy,” he says and sets off down the beach.
I race after him, knocking How To Make Anyone Like You to the sand, and we cannon into the water, our joyous shrieking loud in the sunny silence. Christian surfaces from the sea just behind me, giggling and splashing. He wraps his arms round me and his lips, wet and salty, find mine and he pulls me down onto him; slowly, slowly we surrender to each other, sinking deep, deep beneath the waves. And I wonder at this moment, which will stay with me forever, whether it is possible to die of happiness.
CHAPTER 56
Ed was standing at the window in the study, looking out over the front garden. The rain had slicked the road until it was as shiny as PVC and had transformed their plain gravel drive into a carpet of polished semiprecious stones. The leaves of the laurel hedge were lush green and glossy and bowed their heads with the weight of the torrential water, tossing the raindrops from side to side in the steady wind.
It was a fairly ordinary family house, but it represented nearly twenty years of steady slog and it mattered an awful lot to him now he seemed about to let it all go. He wondered what would happen when he went to the States. It would be nice if he could afford to run a home here and in downtown Beverly Hills, but the practicalities of it weren’t that easy. Would Ali move back in here so that the children would have somewhere to come back to during the holidays? But then, when they weren’t here, she’d rattle around like a lonely little pea in a pod all by herself. And there was one thing for certain: no way was Mr. Christian Trendy Bastard ever going to set foot in here on a permanent basis—or he’d do so over Ed’s dead body.
He hadn’t yet told the children, or Ali come to that, of his plan to transport them to the other side of the world so that he could realize his ambition of once again being involved in big budget, box-office, blockbusting movies—but he was sure they would understand. It was just that they’d had so much upheaval recently and so much to cope with that he was trying to find the right time to introduce the subject. Nor had he discussed with Orla what the living arrangements would be. Would they live separately to start with and then move in together, or did she envisage them as one big happy family from day one? She hadn’t even met the kids properly yet—supposing they didn’t get on? Orla didn’t strike him as particularly maternal, so perhaps it would be better if he and the kids had their own place. He didn’t even know if she had somewhere to live over there, but she looked like the sort that would. Ed nodded to himself. It was something they needed to talk about. That and a shitload of other stuff too.
Their relationship, if you could call it that, had been weird since they’d got back from “the weekend” in Bath. Orla had taken it that there was a tacit acceptance that they were now a couple, doing and talking about coupley things, mixed with a shy standoff at work, where they did and talked about worky things. Orla said “we” a lot. Trevor had noticed. He hadn’t mentioned anything, but Ed was aware that his colleague had stopped calling her Orla the ’Orrible, the Ogre, Cruella De Vil and “that stuck-up old cow.” So Ed gathered that it was common knowledge among the staff at Wavelength that “something was going on” between them.
Ed sipped his whisky. He was celebrating his one night of freedom in the time-honored male way by getting slowly but surely drunk. He’d thought about asking Neil over and making a session of it, but solitude was such a rare commodity now that he had decided to bask i
n it a little before getting down to the dirty task of some serious thinking. It also crossed his mind that he should have been wanting Orla to come over, but he let the thought tiptoe through from one side to the other without stopping to examine it.
Sinking down into the sofa, Ed patted the cushions with a proprietorial air. Elliott was spending the night with his quiet friend who looked like the Milky Bar kid, and whose name Ed could never remember. Thomas was away at a swimming gala with the school and would be back tomorrow. Tanya had also taken the opportunity to go out with one of her friends, Michaela, and Ed had tried to ignore the fact they had both gone out in the pouring rain with bare legs, high heels and skirts the size of cat flaps. She wouldn’t be coming home until morning, and he hoped it wasn’t the start of a future trend.
Ed was on his third tumbler of whisky. They had closely followed his three glasses of particularly fine Bordeaux that he’d consumed with his Tesco frozen lasagna, microwaved jacket potato and an entire packet of Jaffa Cakes, all of which he would work off with Neil if they ever got round to playing squash this week. Ed picked the newspaper up and glanced blearily at the television pages—Coronation Street, The Bill and Peak Practice—and put it back down again. He would stick with Dvorak’s Symphony No. 9 for the time being.
The doorbell rang and Ed sighed, hoping it wasn’t the Avon lady. It was horrible to keep having to explain to various women collecting or distributing catalogs that Ali wasn’t here anymore. He padded to the door and flicked the outside light on. Nicola Jones was standing outside in the rain getting very wet.
Nicola sniffed a raindrop away from the end of her nose. “Can I come in?”
“Of course. Of course.” Ed stood aside. She came in and dripped on the hall carpet. “You’re wet,” he said.
“I’ve been walking.”