After the Party (46 page)

It was Lucas.

“I just got your message,” he said. “You're back.”

“Yes,” said Jem, smoothing her hair away from her face, “yes. I'm back.”

•  •  •

Jem and Lucas slept together that night. They also slept together the following night. When she woke up on the third morning
and opened her eyes and looked at him, still half suspended inside her dreams and bleary-eyed, she thought for one bittersweet, twisted moment that he was Ralph. And for one bittersweet, twisted moment, her heart had leaped with joy and relief. On the third night she asked him to leave. She never saw him again.

A
funny thing happened to Jem toward the end of February. Scarlett was at nursery and Blake was asleep in his pram and she was on her way to have lunch with an old college friend in Battersea. She had not been to Battersea since the night all those months ago when she had tried so hard to reignite the pilot light of her bond with Ralph, the night she'd awoken to the fact that they were walking different paths. She felt sad wandering the streets that had once been their home at a time in her life when the possibility of this—separation from Ralph, prayer groups, split parenting—would have seemed preposterous. And it still did.

Jem had finally begun to reconcile herself to the presence of spirituality in Ralph's life. She'd let him take the children up to the moors with the man called Gil, whom he appeared to revere so much. Scarlett had come home full of talk of a scary lady with a pointy nose who'd told her off for walking on grass and banging her feet against table legs and saying the word “God” when she was frustrated. But she'd also come home glowing with a kind of a freshness and wholesomeness, like a child from another era. Sometimes Jem took a deliberate detour to the chapel on Underwood Street, usually with the children in tow, to light candles for Ralph's mum and the dead cat on Brixton Hill. She didn't pray but she did think about things in a calm and
meditative way, and really, she wondered, what was the difference anyway?

It just no longer seemed to make any sense, this trial separation. Now that the dust had settled Jem could look back on the last year of her life and see it as a series of separate and poignant moments rather than the blur of confusion, resentment and unhappiness that was how it had felt at the time. From this distance it was clear that she and Ralph had lost their way; after Blake was born, after they'd lost the baby, after Joel had made Jem doubt the very essence of her own true self, after Ralph had found some kind of peace and strength in a room full of prayer and, she now realized, after the first time she'd slept with Lucas that crazy night at the Hyde Park Hotel all those months earlier. So many moments, so many opportunities to make sense of it all and to find their way back onto the path they'd been sharing. But they'd missed each and every one of them.

She turned a corner toward Northcote Road and saw a familiar face. A woman, tanned to an improbable shade of toast, vanilla hair, long shapely legs, Prada sunglasses, a leather shopper hanging from the crook of her arm. She wore tight black jeans and a fitted sweater in pale apple green. The woman stopped when she saw Jem and squinted at her from beneath her oversized sunglasses. Jem squinted back at her. They both slowed their pace as they neared each other and then Jem remembered:
Cheri
.

The woman's face softened with recognition then too and she pulled her sunglasses from her face and smiled.

“Jem!” she cried.

“Cheri!” replied Jem.

“Wow,” said Cheri, “wow. I mean, I haven't seen you for, what, ten years, more?”

“More,” said Jem. “Eleven, probably.”

“Gosh, wow. You look great!”

Jem smiled. She considered the woman in front of her, still beautiful in her late thirties, still glamorous, but softer somehow, prettier. “So do you,” she said. “You look amazing.”

“And who is this?” She peered down into the stroller at the slumbering Blake.

“This is Blake,” said Jem, “my youngest.”

“Oh, he's divine,” Cheri said, smiling softly. “You've got more?”

“Yes, a little girl, Scarlett. She's at nursery.”

“Wow—two kids! That's brilliant. And is this . . . with . . . ?”

“Ralph?” Jem nodded. “Yes. I made these children with Ralph.” She smiled wryly, preparing herself for the next question.

“And how is he? How is Ralph?”

“Oh, he's fine. He's good. We're, er . . . well, we're having a trial separation.”

Cheri's face fell. “Oh, no!” she cried. “No. That's terrible.”

Jem threw her a look of surprise. She seemed genuinely distressed by this revelation.

“God, it's just, I know this sounds so silly, but that night, remember, that night at the gallery, when Ralph asked me to help get you two together, that was the most formative night of my life. I'd never really understood what love was before that night. I was lost, you know, going from one unsuitable man to the next, looking for some crap or other, I don't know, money, security, status, whatever. But after that night, seeing you two together, two people who were so obviously destined to be together. It changed me. It made me want what you had. Something real and meaningful and beautiful and . . .”

Jem was alarmed to see that a small tear was leaking from the side of Cheri's perfectly made-up eye.

“. . . well, I found someone. I did. Someone I'd known for years, but I'd discounted him for being too poor and too nice. And we made it work, we had a beautiful thing together. He was the love of my life. Really. My everything. And then, shit, sorry . . .” She wiped more tears from beneath her eyes. “It's been five years and I still can't talk about it, but he died. My David. He died in front of my very eyes. Some heart condition, undiagnosed, eating a tuna steak at the kitchen table one minute, dead the next.”

“Oh, my God, Cheri, I'm so sorry.” Jem put her hand against the soft wool of her expensive sweater. “I am so, so sorry. That's just awful.”

“Yeah, I know. And we never even got to have any babies. We were talking about it. I often think, if only we hadn't talked about it, if only we'd just done it, then at least I'd have something of him, you know, instead of nothing. So look, you and Ralph—why did you split up?”

Jem looked at her blankly, for a moment. Then she sighed. “A lot of different reasons,” she said, “nothing specific. Just the general stress of life, just growing apart, changing, I suppose.”

Cheri shook her head vehemently from side to side. “Don't get divorced,” she said. “Please don't. You two are so lucky to have found each other. Two lovely children. The rest of your lives together. Don't throw it away. Imagine,” she said, gripping Jem's hand with hers, “imagine if Ralph died. Imagine if there was no second chance. How would you feel?” she asked.
“How would you feel? 
”

Jem closed her eyes for a moment. She let the question sink in. And then she felt her answer begin to form. She smiled tightly at Cheri. She had no idea what to say.

Two Weeks Later

I
t is the morning after her visit to Ralph's flat, after Jem found the screwed-up love letter in the trash. Jem drops Scarlett at nursery and then comes straight back to Maygrove Road, walks past her sister's house, past the Maygrove Centre and on to the estate itself. She has left Blake with Lulu, who is going to take him to the skateboarding park, his new favorite place. Not that he is able to use a skateboard yet—he is only sixteen months—but he loves to sit in his buggy and watch the big boys swish and ricochet around the concrete. Ooh, he says, aaah, oh no!

Jem follows the signage until it takes her to a corner of the estate called Sunbury Terrace. Here there are ten or so houses on a crescent-shaped terrace. They are small and slightly unprepossessing, but less foreboding than the towers and blocks that surround them. She finds number fifteen and, unable to find a working doorbell, she clatters the letter box. The door is opened by a giant of a man in a rust-colored hooded sweatshirt and combat trousers. He is handsome and tanned and has a paintbrush in his hand.

“Yes?” he says. He has a bristly Scots accent.

“Hello.” Jem smiles. “Are you Gil?”

“Yes, I cannot deny it.”

“Oh. Good. I'm Jem. I'm—”

“Ralph's sweetheart.”

“Yes. Well, no, not—”

“Come in.” He holds the door ajar for her and ushers her into a small living room filled with interesting (though not entirely beautiful) antiques and pieces of slightly rough-and-ready art. “I was just washing my brushes, but now you're here I can take a break instead. Cup of tea?” He claps his large hands together and then cups them.

He is a very appealing person, physically. Everything about him looks clean and strong and healthy. All his proportions are right and in the places that he has aged he has done so very elegantly. Jem feels immediately comfortable in his company and says: “Yes, a cup of tea would be lovely, thank you.”

“So,” he calls from the tiny kitchen, “what brings you to my door?”

Jem gets to her feet and replies closer to the door, so that she doesn't have to shout. “Well,” she says, watching him pour a little too much full-fat milk into her tea, “it's Ralph. He was supposed to collect the children last Wednesday and he didn't. I spoke to him and he said he had to do something, but that he would be back the next Wednesday, i.e., yesterday, to collect them. But he didn't come again and I found a number for a woman called Sarah at his flat, and I spoke to her yesterday and she has no idea where he's gone, but she said that she'd spoken to you, that you'd been with him, that you might know where he is. I'm so, so worried about him. I'm so . . .” she stops, remembering Cheri's words in the street in Battersea. “I just really hoped you might have some idea where he might be.”

“Right, well, I can see why she'd have thought I'd have an idea about his whereabouts because actually I did spend most of last week with the boy.”

“You did?”

“Yes. Me and the boy went up to the moors. In Yorkshire. We went to paint.”

Jem nods and takes the steaming mug of too-milky tea from Gil's outstretched hands.

“Yes. The boy was in something of a bother. He came to me on that Wednesday night. I hadn't been expecting him. It was about six o'clock, I suppose . . . and he said—now let me think because I can see that this is important—that's right, he said it was your anniversary. He said that this day a number of years ago you and he shared your first kiss. And then he said that he couldn't face you, not today, not now. He asked me to come away with him, there and then. He waited a moment for me to pack some things in a bag and then he drove me, fast as you like, up to the moors. I heard him talking to you on the phone. I was concerned then. I could see that this was something out of the ordinary, that it'd have had you worried. But he calmed down once we were there. We found a B and B, we sat and prayed, and the next morning we got up early to paint. But we didn't do much in the way of talking. I could tell he didn't want to say anything so I just let him be. And then the boy said he needed to be home again, home to see his children. So we came back down that motorway, a little slower this time, and he dropped me off at home.”

“When was this?”

“Well, this would've been Saturday. This Saturday, just past.”

“And he said he was going to see his children?”

“Yes, he seemed quite frantic to see them. I would have vouched that he'd have been straight back around the corner to your place. That's the way it seemed.”

Jem shakes her head.

“Well, then”—the man called Gil licks his dry lips—“we've gone as far as we can down this road. Although . . .” He pauses.

“Yes?” she almost pleads. She is aching for Gil to tell her something that will quell this sick dread in her belly, to tell her that Ralph is not dead, that she has not
left it too late
.

“There was one thing. A phone call on the way back from Yorkshire. I thought it might be you at first, but from what little I could hear the accent sounded different. Australian. Or maybe even a true London cockney accent. But certainly, now I give it some thought, not your voice. And she was saying I can be there in ten minutes, and he was saying, no, not yet, I won't be home for at least an hour and he sounded a little surprised to hear from this woman. That's all I'll say.”

“Did he mention a name?”

Gil licks his lips again and squints. “Well, now, I . . . yes!” He slaps his palms against his combat trousers. “Rosey!”

And at the mention of the name Jem remembers vividly a moment in her fateful conversation with Ralph all those months ago, just before their ill-fated wedding. The beautiful blonde in the photo in his studio. Smith's ex. The Christian with the church that had turned her boyfriend into a man of faith. The woman he'd painted that beautiful portrait of. Rosey.

“Yes,” continues Gil, “that's what it was. Rosey. And all the while I just thought he was talking to you, I wasn't paying much attention. But he was talking to this Rosey woman. Yes. He was.” He pauses and looks at Jem with almond-shaped eyes of swimming-pool blue. “Does that help?” he says.

Jem shrugs. One door opens. Another slams in her face. “A little bit,” she says. “I'm not sure how much though, because this Rosey girl lives in America.”

“Ah, well, yes. That might well be a problem. Unless of course she is still here.”

Of course, thinks Jem, of course. The bracelet, the cheap pretty bracelet. It belongs to Rosey. Rosey has been in Ralph's bedroom. Rosey has been in Ralph's bed. She is a Christian. She sings in a band. She is beautiful. And it is clear now to Jem that wherever Ralph is, this girl is with him.