After Ever After (38 page)

As the Victorian train station looms nearer I find myself slowing down until eventually I stand stock-still by the canal lock situated across the road from its doors. The water has been let out of the lock and now there’s a deep, maybe twenty-foot, drop down into damp darkness. I move closer to the edge and peer down into the gloom. Really I should be racing to that train that’s just pulling in, I should be running. That’s why, after all, I’ve found my best underwear, even an underwired bra, and poured myself into it. That’s why I’ve washed and brushed my hair and put on a bit of make-up and my best top. Because all through the preparations I have pictured Fergus’s face when he sees me standing there in his office, when he sees for himself how much I love him and want him, and then maybe we can have sex on his desk again and everything can get back to normal and before I knew it there would be weeds in the garden and the plants would all have died.

But there’s something that’s stopping my feet in my tracks on the wrong side of the road and at the far side of the canal just looking at the station instead of going to it.

‘Want to go somewhere?’ The intrusion makes me jump and I stumble forward and am forced to fling out my arms to steady myself. Gareth’s fingers circle the top of my arm and he pulls me away from the lock’s edge.

‘Fuck, Gareth! I’m really sick of you creeping up on me,’ I say angrily, my heart thundering in my chest. I pull my arm out of his grip and rub away the red fingermarks.

‘Didn’t you hear anything I said to you?’ I ask him, trying desperately to slow my breathing down. Now that he’s here suddenly in front of me, I’m finding it hard to decide if he’s the real Gareth or the fantasy version or both.

‘Yeah, I heard what you said, but, well, I’m not the sort of person to give up easily, and I don’t think you really want me to give up. Haven’t you been thinking about me?’

I look away from him and into the sun. ‘No,’ I lie. ‘Not in the least.’

‘Do you want to go somewhere?’ he says, his voice suddenly urgent. ‘It’s a lovely day?’ He smiles at me, tipping his head to one side, and the sun ignites the amber of his eyes into a molten gold. ‘Why don’t you let yourself just be free for once?’

I blink and shake my head.

‘What do you mean, Be Free? I am free.’

I think of all my obligations stacking up behind me like dominos ready to push me flat on my face, of my intended trip to London, and for a moment I wonder what if, when Fergus sees me standing in his office looking like mutton, he doesn’t laugh and fling his arms around me. What if his distaste is as clear as day and he turns his face away from me. Walks away from me.

As if he can read my thoughts one by one, Gareth’s smile stretches out and relaxes.

‘It means whatever you want me to mean. Come on, Kitty, for once give yourself a break from the treadmill of life and let yourself be free.’

The heat of the day seems to be emanating from the core of the earth and radiating up through my feet until it reaches my cheeks. Once, before I met Fergus, after the end of another affair, I walked to the edge of Tottenham Court Road, closed my eyes and stepped off the curb. I wasn’t suicidal, I wanted nothing more than to be alive, I just wanted to make sure that I should be. I wanted to let fate decide my future.

‘Okay,’ I say with the same kind of rush of fatalistic excitement. ‘Where are we going?’

If I closed my eyes right now I’d swear I was falling into the pitch-black bottom of the empty lock.

Gareth drives fast, and he doesn’t wear a seatbelt, and in the spirit of adventure neither do I. He’s wound down the window so that the blast of hot air and the rattle of the engine drown out any possibility of conversation as he drives me out of Berkhamsted and into the countryside. I lean back in the high seat of the van and enjoy the moment, enjoy the feeling of being somewhere in the world that only I know about. Not Fergus or Georgina or even Mr Crawley could find me now. For once I’m out of the tomb of that house with the wind in my hair and the sun on my skin. I’m free, free from thinking, free from caring, free from responsibility, if even just for an hour or so – free from the life that I love and that terrifies me. Just for an hour or so I can be a no one, an invisible being who doesn’t mean anything to anyone.

It doesn’t take long before we’re free of the main roads and speeding along the winding and largely empty single-track roads that weave in and out of the Chilterns. I lean out of the window as the view of the valley opens up before me. It’s beautiful, and even from here in the passenger seat of a stinking old van I feel as if I could be flying, dipping and hovering over the vast expanse of fields. In a year of living in Berkhamsted I have never been here, never had the chance. I’ve been either too tired or too sore or too busy catching up with all the things that spending every single day at home demands, and which take up too much time for me to have the weekends free. For the first time in almost half an hour Gareth rolls up his window, nodding at me to do the same, so that the radio phases gradually back in. He leans over and turns it down, sitting back in his seat and running his tongue over his dry lips. He seems as exhilarated as I am, and excited.

‘We’re going up the beacon. Have you heard of it?’ he asks me as he corners a bend, fear embracing aplomb. I laugh and grip hold of the dashboard. For some reason, right now the thought of just a slight thickness of glass between me and the world hurtling headlong into my face is appealing.

‘Oh yeah, I’ve wanted to come up for ages, bring E—’ I stop myself. I don’t want to think about Ella right now. I just want to think about me, be that nobody.

I catch Gareth smiling to himself, and he swings into an empty grass car park cut into the side of a hill, killing the ignition and leaping out of his seat in one easy movement. He’s leaning against the side waiting for me as I struggle to jump out gracefully.

‘It’s going to be a hot day, the first really hot one of the year.’ He looks at my pale skin with eyes almost as bright as the sun. ‘You’ll probably burn.’ He turns on his heel and I begin to follow him across a small road and then up to the top of the beacon.

‘What were you doing hanging round the canal anyhow?’ I ask him, for the first time wondering at the coincidence of bumping into him.

He laughs as he walks on ahead.

‘Well, the girl I was working for fired me and I’ve not got much on right now. I was going for a walk, and, before you say it, yes, it was a bit of a coincidence, wasn’t it? But only if you think coincidence is unusual. In fact coincidence is pretty much the governing law of the universe. If it wasn’t for a huge great big fucking coincidence we wouldn’t exist at all. None of us, I mean. I really don’t know why people get worked up over the idea, frankly. And anyway, I’ve always believed you can make things happen if you want them to. The power of positive thinking.’

He stops on a small chalk ridge ahead of me and holds out his hand. ‘Come on. Of course these are nothing compared to hills back home, those are real hills and mountains. When I was in the TA we climbed right up into the fog and the clouds until we had to feel our way down again with our fingertips. Fucking scary, but great too.’

He grips my fingers a little more tightly and I find myself returning the squeeze. Fucking scary, but great too.

We make the rest of the incline in silence until we reach the very top of the beacon. The hot wind whips my hair from my face and steals my breath as I look out at the vast flat plane of the valley beneath.

‘It’s beautiful,’ I say to Gareth, who is standing by my side with his hand on his hips.

‘Oh yeah, I knew you’d like it. This is what you’ve been needing, Kitty. Time to yourself, time to think about yourself.’ He pauses and seems to collect his thoughts. ‘I know you say you don’t want me, but I do wonder if you know what it is you do want? I mean, how can you, with your whole life piled on top of you like that. How can you even see past the end of your own nose.’ He smiles. ‘Even if it is a very nice and slightly sunburnt one.’

I laugh and shake my hair off my shoulders, feeling youthful and coquettish for a moment, like the person I used to be before Fergus, even if that person was lonely, scared and angry too.

‘There’s a dip in the hillside over there, it’ll shelter us from the wind and sun. We can sit and watch the view,’ Gareth says, leading me roughly over the turf until I’m half running over the peak of the beacon and a little way down the hillside to the dip he’s talking about.

‘Blimey, Julie Andrews eat your heart out!’ I collapse in breathless laughter. ‘Is this where you bring all your women?’ I hold my breath, only half teasing.

He shrugs and reclines into the stiff and bristling long-stemmed grass.

‘It’s where I come to think, work things out. It’s where I’ve brought you.’

I sit on the grass beside him and look out at the fields below, strung together in irregular patches of colour.

‘It’s hard to believe that real people live down there,’ I say, wondering at my own life, the life that I have left down there somewhere around the sharp curve of a country road. Silence drifts between us for a moment and I steal a sidelong glance at him. If he hadn’t turned up just when he did I’d be on that train by now. Actually I’d be on the tube. Maybe it’s like he said, maybe it’s the law of the universe. I steal a sideways glance at him. Maybe he knew where to find me, somehow maybe he’d planned it. I find the thought peculiarly chilling and I push it to the back of mind, preferring the empty optimism of happenstance.

‘Tell me your story,’ Gareth says, as if he wants me to stop thinking about where I could be and what he could be.

I turn my head sharply to examine him.

‘You know it: married, baby, house.’ I say the three words with an edge of guilt. Not one of them can possibly describe what my life means to me, but at this moment I don’t want that feeling, Gareth is right. The love I have for Fergus and Ella smothers me, obliterates me.

Gareth shakes his head and rolls on to his elbow to examine me.

‘No, that’s not your story. When I told you about my dad, you looked like you knew, like you had a story too. Like I said, everyone has a story, but you looked like yours was something important, something difficult and hard. I could see it in your eyes.’

He pauses and I consider his face, wondering if I should let him into my life. On that day he talked about beating up his dad I had wanted to be Kitty Kelly, happy wife and mother. Today I just want to be me, and this story is me, and if he can take this story then he can take me.

‘Okay, I’ll tell you, but listen. I have hardly told anyone this story and, well, it’s just for you, you’re not to tell anyone, okay?’

Gareth nods and sits up attentively, drawing his long legs up under his chin and crossing his arms over his knees. He looks at me and waits.

I look back then and I wait. I wait to see myself walking round the corner of Bethune Road on my way home from school. I’ve got my spring term uniform on, a pink gingham dress, and my satchel slaps against my hip as I avoid the cracks in the pavement, worried about breaking my mother’s back. It seems strange that back then I was allowed to walk home from school on my own, but we all did it, stopping at the lights on Stamford Hill, waiting for the rush of traffic to stop so we could cross. Sometimes, when I was on my own like on this afternoon, I’d feel like a queen, a special girl with the power to halt four lanes of traffic just for me. All over London things slowed down for my safe passage. Of course I remember the date exactly, but even if I couldn’t I would have known that it was late spring, early summer, because on the way down the tree-lined avenue I stop at each tree and jump as high as I can to snatch blossom from the low branches, making my mum a pink lace bouquet of flowers which she’ll put in a milk bottle and stand on the windowsill alongside the posies from yesterday and the day before. Rushing is something I don’t do, and I dawdle on the stairs, watching the kids from 22b playing hopscotch in the car park.

‘You want a game?’ Kelly Simms calls out to me.

‘Nah, better get back,’ I tell her, but I’m slow up the steps, letting my satchel slip gradually off my shoulder and down my arm until it bumps along after me, smacking against each concrete step. I am hoping the builder will be gone when I get in, because he’s been there both of the previous days and I haven’t liked him and his stupid jokes and impressions. He wanted to make Mum laugh all the time and he teased me about the flowers I brought her. Only me and Dad should be making my mum laugh, and I know that Mum loved the flowers because when she took each bunch from me she smiled and kissed my hair, saying, ‘I’m the luckiest mum in the world to have such a thoughtful girl.’

When I finally reached our door it was open a little, resting quietly on the latch. I pushed it open and stood in the hallway. The radio was on somewhere, playing Brotherhood of Man, ‘Save All Your Kisses For Me’.

‘Mum,’ I shout out much louder than the small flat merits. ‘Mum!’

I push open the bedroom door and stick my head round. Maybe she’s gone to sleep with the radio on again. Mum can do that. She can sleep through a herd of elephants, Dad says; it drives him mad. But the room is empty; the turquoise bedspread is still rumpled from this morning and the radio sits on it. An older child might have thought to turn it off, but I just turn on my heel and walk back out, still clutching my rapidly wilting spray of blossom. Mum’s not in the kitchen or the living room, the bathroom or my room. She must have gone next door to Mrs Anderton’s and left the door on the latch so I can get in. I have my own keys, but maybe she’s forgotten. I go to the kitchen, set the flowers on the counter and find the biscuit jar, take one biscuit out and replace the lid. Then I stand there for a moment and, shrugging, lift the whole jar down and take it with me into the living room. I switch on the TV; it’s
Scooby Doo
. I watch it for a while, kicking my feet restlessly against the base of the armchair and eating four biscuits in a continuous, mesmerised row. It turns out it was the caretaker in a mask –
again
. I sigh and switch the TV off, faintly angry with Mum for not being here to make me a drink and ask me how my day was. I jump out of the chair with the biscuit tin under my arm. If I put it back now she’ll never know and I can go and play hopscotch after all. It’s then that I hear a thud from Mum and Dad’s bedroom, followed by silence. I listen for a moment before I realise: the radio has stopped playing. I pad back to the bedroom door.