“Can I at least ring you?” His smile has gone for the first time today and he is fiddling with my fingers.
“No.” I sound as if I mean it.
He makes a sad little tutting sound that sort of sums up everything we need to say. “Oh, Ali.” He brushes my hair away from my shoulders and touches his hot, moist lips to my cheek. I squeeze his hand and then let it go.
“Goodbye,” he says, and then turns and walks away.
I stand and watch him, pressing my lips together, savoring the sweet young taste of him, and wonder how I will manage without it for the rest of my life.
CHAPTER 17
Elliott sucked his thumb, curled up on Ed’s knee. He still looked very unhappy, but at least the tears had stopped, and all that remained were two gray tracks over his cheeks where they had dried. His eyes were rolling under the onslaught of emotionally drained sleep.
“Not long now, sweetheart.” Nicola smiled at him, crinkling her eyes as she did.
Nicola was deeply optimistic. It would be a long time. Ed had never been more sure of anything in his life. You only had to look at the people ahead of them in various states of dismemberment who had the resigned air of people for whom time was passing very slowly. Michelangelo could probably have given the Sistine Chapel another lick of paint in the time it took to get any action in hospital casualty departments these days. Elliott was way down the pecking order, as he wasn’t in any imminent danger of dropping dead, not that this seemed to worry the harried staff overly, and they’d been sitting here for hours already.
“It hurts,” Elliott complained. His arm was swollen to twice its normal size and was an alarming shade of scarlet.
“I know. Ssh, ssh.” Ed cuddled Elliott to him and kissed the top of his head. “I’m sorry about this, Nicola.”
“That’s okay. He took quite a tumble. I thought it best to bring him down here and let them X-ray it. I can’t tell whether it’s broken or not.”
They’d never been required to partake of the National Health Service, or lack of it, for Thomas or Tanya. Both had been remarkably accident-free zones. They even still had their appendix and tonsils. Elliott had broken the mold and was making up for it with all the fervor of a zealot. In his few short years he had fallen over, into or through every conceivable man-made or naturally occurring obstacle that he could find.
“It could just be badly sprained,” Ed said, aware that Elliott, despite his desire to be the most accident-prone person in the household, had not yet broken anything. Other than the things he fell over, into or through. “Thanks for bringing him down.”
“That’s okay. Really.”
Nicola was the sort of person you would want running your son’s nursery school, Ed decided. She was feminine and floaty in a wholesome way. Everything about her was gentle: Her eyes were soft gray and kind; she was slim, petite and delicate; her lips were pale seashell pink and she licked a tiny tip of her pink kitten tongue over them frequently. Her hair was white-blond with crinkly curls that might or might not have been natural and it hung below her shoulders in fine wisps. She had a cut-glass accent over-laid with sultry tones and a slightly breathy way of speaking as if she were about to gasp with pleasure. And you could never, ever imagine her lifting heavy weights or swearing or doing anything quite as sweaty as having sex. But then, Ed thought, you never could tell—she was probably the type who would wear Agent Provocateur frillies under her long floral dresses. All things considered and despite being a wonder with the children, Nicola Jones was definitely wasted on a bunch of four-year-olds. Elliott adored her, and Ed thought that even at his age he was showing rather good taste.
“I’m fine waiting here,” Ed said, breaking his fantasizing. “Do you need to be getting back?”
“No.” Nicola shook her mass of curls. “Barbara can lock up at the school. I’ll wait with you.” She smiled a sweet little smile, showing a row of pearly teeth. “If that’s okay with you, Mr. Kingston?”
“Ed, please.”
Nicola looked bashful. “Ed.” She swept her hair away from her face. Not in an irritated way, like Ali did, but in a slow and sensual movement which exposed her long, slender neck. “Did you manage to get hold of your wife?”
“No,” Ed said brusquely. He glanced at the red No Mobile Phones sign on the wall and eschewed the thought of going outside to try Alicia again and risk the ensuing wailing from a dislodged Elliott. “I can’t imagine where she’s got to.” Ed mentally acknowledged that Alicia would normally deal with whatever minor crises arose and that this was, in fact, the first time he’d been left, literally, holding the baby.
“I’m sure there’s a simple explanation,” Nicola reassured him. “Mrs. Kingston is normally so reliable.”
“Yes,” Ed said vaguely. Which was why her disappearance was even more worrying.
They both looked down at Elliott, who had fallen into an exhausted sleep, a frown creasing his brow.
“Elliott is a lovely child,” Nicola said.
Ed ruffled his son’s curls gently. “He has his moments.”
“He’s a pleasure to teach. I have quite a soft spot for him.”
“Do you have children of your own?” Ed asked.
“No.” Nicola swished her hair about, and there was the suggestion of a smile at her lips when she looked at him again. “Not yet. Mr. Right seems to be proving rather elusive.”
“Ah,” Ed said sympathetically.
“All the nice men seem to be married,” she continued, and a faint pink blush stained her cheeks. “It’s not very fashionable to adore children these days, is it?”
“Probably not,” Ed agreed. “Perhaps you shouldn’t mention it on a first date.”
Nicola laughed and it was as soft and gentle as the rest of her. “You’re very lucky.”
A lot of people had been pointing that out to him recently and, for some reason, it was starting to rankle.
“Having children must be so rewarding.”
“Financially draining is the predominant emotion,” Ed said with a smile. “But yes, it is on occasions, rewarding.”
He wondered whether he was one of those people who, given the chance to do it over again, would choose not to go down the fatherhood route. But then it was usually the woman who made all the choices in that area, and the men just went along. He’d never known any man to be governed by the same urges to procreate as women had. In their case all three children had been “accidents,” showing a carelessness in the contraceptive department that bordered on recklessness. Perhaps that’s where Elliott inherited his accident-prone nature from. Maybe it was just coming out in his genes in a different way. Ed wouldn’t be without any of them now. Of course not. Not even when Tanya was being the most obnoxious teenager on the planet. But sometimes he couldn’t help thinking, as much as he loved Ali, that he would be better off like Neil. Free, unfettered. Chasing bridesmaids to his heart’s content. But then Neil was looking to find a gorgeous, sexy bombshell who was ready to settle down and have babies. Why is it that we always want the exact opposite of what we’ve got?
Ed looked across at Nicola, who was gazing at Elliott in an adoring and concerned sort of way and stroking his chubby little leg as he slept. She was a soft, squishy petal in a world full of nasty, catchy thorns. Perhaps he should introduce Miss Nicola Jones to his brother. Ed pressed his lips together thoughtfully and rubbed absently at his chin. He’d had worse ideas.
CHAPTER 18
I’m standing outside Elliott’s school, and there are five minutes to go before they all fizz out of the door with the exuberance of champagne bubbles, chattering and giggling and all looking like they’ve been every which way through a hedge. The Sunny Smiles Pre-School Nursery provides a lovely introduction to the rigors of education in a huge white-painted house in another pretty leafy lane full, as the advertising brochure states, of sunny smiles. The inside is currently adorned with Pokémon characters, which I’m not sure I agree with. Try as I might, I can’t understand the attra
ction, and I’m just hoping they’ll pass quickly and the next trend will be more wholesome. Will my children remember this inarticulate, pointless gaggle of monsters with the fondness I hold for Stingray or Andy Pandy (who, when you come to think of it, wasn’t all that bright). I’ve heard the BBC are bringing back Basil Brush and Bill and Ben the Flower-Pot Men, which is a jolly good step in the right direction, if you ask me.
I’m taking this time to try to refocus my thoughts. For refocus, read, drag them screaming. As you might have gathered, I’m trying to stop thinking about Christian and concentrate instead on the choice between pizza or the ubiquitous chicken nuggets. Currently, it isn’t working. A clutch of other mothers arrive, issuing forth from BMWs and soft-top Mercedes in Gucci loafers, wellcut trousers and navy blazers—the standard uniform for ladies-who-do-lunch. They nod and smile and I nod and smile back, but I don’t want to be drawn into conversation today. I feel conspicuous in my glittery sweatshirt, and I want to be alone with my thoughts for the few moments I have left before I’m sucked back down into the crazy whirlpool that forms my life.
The crowd of knee-high hooligans are sprung from school and rush in all directions to their waiting parents. Elliott is always last. That child can talk for England. I thought it was mothers who were always chatting, leaving their offspring hanging around bored waiting for them to finish. With Elliott it is the other way round. His teacher, and owner of Sunny Smiles, Miss Jones, whom he adores, will probably be deaf by the time she’s forty, and it will be mainly down to Elliott.
The doors of the BMWs and the Mercs clunk expensively, shutting out the noise of the children inside. There’s still no sign of Elliott, so I wander toward the school with the hope of chivvying him up, otherwise Thomas and Tanya will be back at the house before us and even though they are older and have their own keys, I still like to be there when they come home. Call me old-fashioned, but that’s how it is.
Inside the school it is cool and airy. There’s always a sense of peace here, even when it’s crammed with children. Miss Jones runs a very tight ship, although we do pay handsomely for it. Barbara, her assistant, is tidying away some pencils, placing them methodically back into a box with all the colored tips facing the same way. Miss Jones doesn’t appear to be around, and neither does Elliott.
Barbara turns around when she hears me, and the smile of greeting on her face changes to an expression of concern. Instantly, I feel my insides turn cold.
“Mrs. Kingston.” Barbara puts down the pencils. “We’ve been trying to contact you all day.” They’re the words all mothers dread, aren’t they? And I think guiltily of the phone turned off and stuffed in the bottom of my handbag beneath a pile of snotty tissues. “Elliott’s had a little accident.”
Elliott’s always having accidents and I’m always there to look after him. I should be used to it by now, but this one grips me with the hand of terror. Barbara sees my shell-shocked face.
“Accident? What sort of accident?”
“He’s all right. Really,” she reassures me. “He fell off the climbing frame and landed badly on his arm. Nicola didn’t think he’d broken it, but she wanted to be sure. She took him down to the hospital.”
My hands are shaking, and Barbara clearly thinks I’m overreacting, which I probably am, but she doesn’t know the whole picture, does she? She doesn’t know what I’ve been doing. Not like you and I.
I start to back away toward the door.
Barbara follows me, now very concerned. “They’ll probably be back at home by now, I shouldn’t wonder. It’ll be all right, Mrs. Kingston.”
“I have to go,” I say, and my voice sounds like the voice of a madwoman. “I have to see my baby.”
“We managed to get hold of Mr. Kingston.” Barbara reaches out to touch my arm and thinks better of it.
“Ed?”
“He came out of work. He’ll be with Elliott and Nicola.” Now she clearly thinks I’m mad, because she’s speaking slowly at me. “At the hospital.”
Ed! Ed’s hopeless, I want to tell her. He can’t cope with any body fluids apart from his own, and even that’s debatable. One spot of blood and he passes out. He’s changed one nappy in his entire life, and he gagged so much that he was sick. I had more clearing up to do after my husband than the baby. I should be there, not Ed. Elliott will be howling the place down and Ed won’t have a clue what to do. He might be a whiz with cameras and videotape and techno stuff, but he goes completely to pieces when faced with a wailing child.
I back out of the room, leaving a bemused Barbara to return to her pencils, and I run, panting breathlessly, because the last time I did any running was at Thomas’s sports day last year in the mothers’ egg and spoon race. I run as fast as I can toward home to find out what disasters await me, and I know I am being punished for being the worst mother on the planet who, instead of knowing instinctively when my child needed me, had her head full of young boys with flat bellies and beautiful blond hair. This is payback time for my illicit pleasure, and I know that I will never, ever forgive myself for this.
CHAPTER 19
Christian was sitting with his feet on the kitchen table when Robbie came home from his shift at HMV. He was nursing a bottle of Budweiser and staring glumly into the garden.
Robbie threw his backpack on the table. “We haven’t been cut off, have we?”
Christian shook his head and drank deeply from his bottle.
His friend got a beer from the fridge and sat down in the chair opposite him. “What then?”
“Not now, Robbie.”
Robbie tipped his beer to his lips. “I’ve seen that face before.”
“You haven’t.”
Robbie held his bottle like a microphone and crooned, “No one knows the way you feel, when you’re young and so in love.”
“Fuck off,” Christian said. “The tune goes nothing like that, but you’re right—no one does know the way I feel.”
“Problems with Miss Beautiful Soul Mate?”
Christian sniffed and pouted miserably at the garden.
“The course of true love never runs smoothly,” Robbie said sympathetically.
“Not for me, it doesn’t,” Christian agreed.
Robbie pulled a packet of cigarettes from his pocket and offered one to Christian, who refused. “I thought you’d blown out the tourists at the market so you could spend the day together?” he said as he lit up.
“I did.”
“And?”
“We went to Kew Gardens.”
Robbie pulled a puzzled face. “Nice.”
“I thought it would be.”
“Why Kew Gardens?”
“I thought it would be romantic.”
“And was it?”
“Yes.” Christian fixed Robbie with a thoughtful stare. “It was perfect.”
“I feel at this point there must be a ‘but’ coming on…”
“But…” Christian sighed heavily. “There are complications.”
Robbie laughed. “There always are with you, mate.”
“No. This time there are real complications.”
Robbie blew out a stream of smoke. “Do you want to tell Uncle Robert?”
“Only if you promise not to laugh and not to breathe a word to Becs. She’d only take the piss, and I can’t cope with that now.”
“Promise.” Robbie held his hand to his heart.
Christian swigged his beer and then folded his arms across his chest, staring resolutely ahead. “For a start, she’s a lot older than me.”
Robbie pursed his lips. “Not an unusual concept these days. Quite the thing, in fact. There’s a lot to be said for older birds.” He sat upright. “She’s not sixty or anything, is she?”
Christian glared at him. “No. She’s thirty-something. But you wouldn’t think so. Really you wouldn’t.”
“So she’s old?”
“And she’s married.”
Robbie dragged on his cigarette. “Now this is starting to sound complicat
ed, Christian.”
“And she has three children.”
“Fuck,” Robbie said. “Haven’t they got a television?”
“And she doesn’t want to see me again.”
Robbie ground out his cigarette. “That sounds like a very sensible conclusion to me.”
“I can’t handle it, Robbie. This is the first time I’ve felt like this. I can’t just let her go. I’m crazy about her.”
“You’re crazy to get involved with her.”
“I know. I know. Logically I can work that all out. But she does weird things to me.”
Robbie’s eyes widened and he sat up. “Tell me more….”
Christian scowled. “Emotionally weird, not plastic toys weird.”
Robbie slumped down. “Oh.”
Christian bit his lower lip and looked up at his friend. “I don’t know what to do.”
Robbie shook his head. “Drop it, mate. You’re way out of your depth.”
“I don’t know if I can,” Christian admitted. “How can I make her love me?”
“You normally have trouble getting rid of them, Christian, not making them fall for you.”
“Bollocks.”
“We had three months of tearful telephone calls from that Tara Wotsit. You had to change your mobile phone number in the end. She was in a terrible state. And you wouldn’t even talk to her.”
“This is different. That was just a fling, and she knew it. This is love. For the first time. Real love.”
“You are in very dangerous territory, Christian.”
“I can’t help it. You can’t govern who you fall in love with.”
“Yes, you can.” Robbie wagged his beer bottle at him. “You can stop it now and walk away. Forget her. In a few weeks, a few days, maybe even a few hours, she’ll be history. A pleasant memory of what might have been if only she hadn’t been old, married and with three kids.”
“I don’t think so.”
Robbie finished his beer and put the bottle on the table with a decisive thunk. “Do you know what I think?”