Miss You (40 page)

‘I work in Human Resources now,’ I said. ‘At Waitrose.’

‘That’s a good company that,’ said Dave.

Which is what everyone said, except Leo, who couldn’t understand why I would want to work in a shop, although technically, since my promotion I wasn’t
in
the shop any more,
but upstairs. Being from the academic world, Leo didn’t understand how difficult it was to get a good job, any job, in the middle of a world recession. When we’d advertised for a
shelf-filler recently, we’d got seventy applications for the one post. And you’d have thought we were looking for the chief executive from the interviewing process the candidates had to
go through, like building a tower from spaghetti and marshmallows, saying what they’d be if they were a food, that sort of thing.

‘I’m head of department,’ I said.

‘You’ll be managing the store next,’ said Doll.

I suddenly remembered how nice it was when somebody thought you were clever.

They were both smiling at me.

‘Look, I’d better run. I’m going to watch Hope sing.’

‘Say hello from me,’ Dave said.

‘I will. She’d like that.’

‘You should let us know when she’s singing again,’ said Doll.

‘It’s just the karaoke.’

‘We’d like to see her, wouldn’t we, Dave?’

‘We would,’ he said, going inside and leaving us to say our goodbyes, as if he’d sensed I was starting to feel a bit awkward with all those ‘we’s.

Doll gave me another really tight hug.

‘Good luck!’ she said. ‘I’ll call you tomorrow, shall I? See how it went?’

‘Yeah, speak tomorrow,’ I said, same as we used to.

I pushed open the pub door just in time to see Hope being led onto the stage by my dad, who’d always fancied himself as a bit of a Louis Walsh, not knowing the rumours
about him being gay, obviously.

‘Now, listen up,’ Dad said, tapping the mic. ‘Because this here girl’s got a voice. Her name is Hope Costello and you heard it here first!’

Hope stood there. Anne had loaned her a black dress with three-quarter sleeves, which Hope had chosen to accessorize with a maroon hoody from Gap and trainers. Holding the mic, she looked
straight ahead, which happened to be directly at me, but I don’t think she could see me through the nerves.

The intro to ‘Crazy’ started playing. Hope missed the first cue. A sigh of sympathetic embarrassment rippled round the room. My hands were clenched by my sides, my heart beating
really fast, and inside my head, my voice was urging her,
Come on, come on, Hope, please, you can do it!

Shutting her eyes, as if to block out the crowd, Hope came in for the second verse on exactly the right note.

If you’d closed your eyes, you’d have thought you were in the room with Patsy Cline herself. I think Martin must have picked the song. Country’s probably the nearest thing you
get to classical on a karaoke machine. He certainly knew what suited her voice.

When Hope sang the final line and stepped back from the mic for the last few bars of instrumental, there was a stunned silence for about a millisecond. And then the roof came off.

A month later, Hope told me she wanted to move into Martin’s flat above the shop. I don’t think it occurred to either of them that I would feel anything about it.
Hope had never done sad, lonely or totally-at-a-loss.

I didn’t know how to approach Hope about the nature of their relationship. Neither of them seemed very interested in physical contact, but who knows what goes on behind closed doors? Hope
had never liked ‘the kissy stuff’. If you hugged her, she’d stand stiff as a board, enduring it until you’d finished. Over the years, whenever I’d tried to initiate
chats about reproduction or contraception, Hope informed me that they’d done it in Personal, Health and Social.

I’d been putting off the inevitable talk we’d have to have about genetic testing as well, assuming the right moment would emerge, maybe when I decided to have the surgery myself,
because Hope wasn’t very good with hypotheticals. Now, anxious not to be accused of letting her down again, I took her to see the nice female GP and sat outside while she explained about the
reasons for being on the Pill, and was relieved when she came out holding a prescription.

‘Do you take these Pills, Tree?’

‘Yes.’

‘It’s a good idea if you’re not ready to look after a baby.’

‘Yes.’

It was about as close to a woman-to-woman chat as we ever got.

The great thing about Martin is that he never saw Hope as being any different from anyone else. As Doll said, he’s probably on the spectrum himself. Maybe we all are, to
an extent. Isn’t that what ‘spectrum’ means?

Neither of them knew about the tenancy of our council house, of course. Dad wasn’t prepared to remain liable for the rent when it was just me there. Why should he? I was a grown woman
earning wages, and it was about time I sorted out my own living arrangements. I did hang on as long as I could, just because Hope was such a creature of habit, I was worried she wouldn’t
adjust to everything being different. But, as she said, whenever we met for a milkshake on the seafront together, ‘It’s much more convenient for work.’

Martin’s flat extended over all three floors above the shop. The loft was a music room, with a big window looking out over the rooftops towards the sea. If you walked down the High Street
in the evenings, when it was quiet because the shops were all closed, you could sometimes hear them up there with Martin playing the piano and Hope singing. Occasionally, you’d hear laughter
too, if Martin hit a wrong chord, or Hope forgot the words, and then they’d start up again.

It certainly sounded like they were happy.

Not that I was stalking Hope, or anything. It’s just tough to stop worrying, when you’ve worried for so long. Maybe it was me who’d become the creature of habit?

My salary stretched to renting a one-bedroom flat, with its own little garden. I wanted a bit of outside space because of Leo’s dog, Ebony, an old black Labrador who
sometimes came to the hut with us. Being honest, I did assume that once I had a place of my own, we would spend some of our time there, but I wasn’t necessarily thinking that Leo and I would
set up home together. Or perhaps I’m kidding myself, and that’s why I asked him with me to IKEA, although I said it was about having the car to bring stuff back. I could tell straight
away that he wasn’t keen on the idea and the Friday before, he called and asked me to meet him in Whitstable. I had a sense that something was wrong, but as I hurried along the concrete path
by the beach and saw the door of the hut open, my heartbeat quickened with excitement, as it always did, at the prospect of seeing him.

The woman’s hair was long, dark and streaked with grey. She was wearing one of those quilted cotton jackets made out of Indian fabric in a pink-and-orange pattern, a smart-casual bohemian
kind of look. I couldn’t help noticing, because she’d kicked off her orange Birkenstocks, that her toenails were painted the exact same deep pink colour of the jacket, which made me
wonder, fleetingly, if she was one of Doll’s customers. There was something about the outfit that said two words, ‘middle class’.

‘You must be Tess,’ she said, looking up at me standing on the path.

I almost said, ‘Teresa’, because I didn’t know her, and, as far as I was concerned, she was sitting in
my
chair.

‘I don’t understand,’ I said.

‘Oh, I think you do. All good things must come to an end as I’m sure your mother told you!’

‘My mother’s dead,’ I said. ‘And she never said that in her life.’

The supercilious mask slipped.

‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ she said.

‘That’s OK. You had no way of knowing.’

She looked different from the way I had imagined his wife. I’d always clothed her in a dark suit with a round-neck jersey top in a muted colour. The only brightness I’d granted was a
silk scarf. My version of her wore shoes with a bit of a heel that tapped as she hurried down the university corridors to her next lecture.

‘You’re not the first, you know,’ she said. ‘I don’t suppose he told you that he had to resign from the university after his last conquest complained of sexual
harassment.’

‘This isn’t sexual harassment!’ I said.

She gave me a wry smile. ‘I don’t know what it is you all see in him!’

‘Why are you with him then?’ I countered.

She sighed, wearily, just like Leo did when I said something that displayed my lack of education.

‘Leonard and I have been together nearly forty years,’ she said. ‘We’re old mates. We enjoy each other’s company.’

‘Leonard?’ I echoed.

‘Oh, he’s not doing that
Leo
thing again, is he?’ She chuckled. ‘I don’t know why he thinks Leo is any better.’

I did. Leo sounded like a writer. It was the name on his novel. Leo sounded like it was short for Leopold or Leonardo or something. Not Leonard. Leonard just sounded like a bloke in the pub, or
someone who played bowls in a flat white cap, someone old.

It was beginning to drizzle.

‘Does he know you’re here?’ I asked.

She stared at me.

‘You’re sweet, you really are. I should have insisted he did his own dirty work.’

‘I’m not sweet,’ I said.

But then I couldn’t think how to prove it, short of smashing the coffee mugs or throwing pebbles at her, so I just stood there, with scenes from our affair flashing through my mind.

‘You
told
him to take me out!’ I said.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘The ticket you couldn’t use, for the National Theatre.
Much Ado about Nothing
. . .’

Still, she looked blank.

‘When we got stuck in London in the snow,’ I added, trying to jog her memory.

‘Oh, it’s been
that
long, has it?’

Now she was the one looking ruffled. I was stung with momentary guilt for dumping him in it with her. How was I supposed to know what story he’d told?

‘Why now?’ I heard myself asking.

‘It’s only natural for someone of your age to want children . . .’

‘But I don’t!’

Leo knew that, didn’t he? Hadn’t the decision I was going to have to make about surgery been hanging over us all this time? Didn’t it contribute to the exquisite poignancy that
laced the silences after sex? Weren’t we in a metaphorical ‘Pending’ tray waiting till one of us had the courage to face dealing with the inevitable? Surely he hadn’t
forgotten the first time we talked, properly talked? Surely I hadn’t been alone in thinking that was the bond that made our love uniquely profound?

It was raining now, drenching my hair and soaking through my uniform blouse to my skin.

‘You were asking him to choose,’ Leo’s wife said. ‘Like most men, he’s lazy. It’s too much effort even to think about leaving his nice comfortable house.
However much he likes to think he’s still an Angry Young Man, he’s got used to his en-suite bathroom and the four-star hotels his wife pays for. He’s not going to go back to
camping and bedsits at sixty-one, is he?’

‘Sixty-one?’

A small smile played around her lips.

‘Why are you telling me?’ I asked, still clinging to the mad hope that this wasn’t actually happening. Perhaps he didn’t know she was here? Perhaps it was her attempt to
break us up, which would actually backfire as soon as he arrived? I glanced over my shoulder. There was no sign of him.

‘So long, Tess,’ he’d said on the phone. He’d never used that expression before.

‘For your information,’ I said, trying to hold myself with dignity, ‘I never asked him to choose. He’s invented that.’

‘Well, he is a writer,’ she said.

I suddenly realized why the situation I was in, standing there in front of her with the rain plastering my hair to my forehead and dripping down my face, felt so weird but somehow familiar. In
Leo’s novel,
Of Academic Interest
, there was a scene where the main character’s wife tells a female student that the affair is over, except it’s not a fisherman’s
hut, it’s a gazebo at a faculty garden party.

Writers see everything that happens as material.

‘What a fucking coward!’ said Doll.

‘I’m as angry with myself as I am with him,’ I told her.

How could I have been so stupid? He’d told me his favourite novel in English was
The End of the Affair
. Shouldn’t I have known, from that and everything else I’d ever
read, that things never turn out well for adulteresses?

‘And now I’ve got nothing,’ I said.

‘You could see it like that,’ Doll said. ‘Or you could make it the opportunity to do what you’ve always wanted.’

Nash was always on some dietary fad or other and she said I was the only person in the world who could make lentils delicious, so lunch at our house had become a regular
event.

‘You should go on
Masterchef
,’ she said, ever eager to plot a new career for me.

‘Do people really do that?’

‘I was joking!’

Nash was finding it difficult to get work herself. She’d commanded such a huge salary in America that the roles that might now be big enough for her seemed few and far between. I think she
was probably difficult to work with because she was always saying outrageous things about other actors. She enjoyed gossiping to someone who was completely outside her world and had nobody to tell.
I learned more about her encounters with men than I wanted to know or she should have told me. ‘Too much information?’ was one of her favourite phrases.

Occasionally in the afternoons, after I’d picked Flora up from school, Nash would accompany us to Kensington Gardens, where we’d sit on a bench chatting while the girls played in the
Peter Pan park.

One Friday, an argument between my children broke out on the pirate ship.

Flora was always Wendy, while Bella took the role of Michael, who needed Wendy to look after him. Usually, the arrangement worked very well. But this time Bella had decided she wanted to be
Tinkerbell.

‘Well, I’m sorry, but you can’t!’ Flora told her, crisply, sounding uncomfortably like Charlotte.