Out of My Depth (23 page)

Amanda shrugged. ‘I guess. I’m not exactly ready to take Dai home to Mum and Dad, so Julian’s useful cover. We see a film from time to time. Or he comes over for dinner. I think he’s probably gay and I think we’re each other’s disguises.’

Tamsin looked into her coffee cup. ‘Eee, look at that,’ she said, tipping it up to reveal previous drinkers’ brown rings below the level of her own liquid. ‘I knew they didn’t wash up properly here. Gross. Amanda, you’re so into Dai. You must realise how lucky you are. Jeez, look at the rest of us. Why don’t you just come out and let him be your boyfriend?’

Amanda smiled the secret smile which always infuriated Suzii; every time she saw it she felt her best friend slip a little further away.

‘I’m not ready to do that yet,’ Amanda said calmly. ‘All in good time. There’s a bit of a gulf between us, you know? Sure, we shag, but when that’s not happening, we don’t exactly have common ground.’

Suzii smiled, trying to imagine it. ‘What do you talk about when you’re not having sex?’

Amanda waved a hand, airily. ‘Oh, you know.’

‘No we don’t.’

‘Stuff.’

Tamsin leaned forward. ‘Amanda! Answer the question. What do you and Dai talk about, or do you sit in stony silence?’

‘Well.’ She took a deep breath. ‘OK. OK, I’ll tell you, but you must promise not to laugh.’ They all muttered and nodded their promises. ‘We talk about Neighbours. Neighbours is the biggest thing we have in common. We both watch it, so we talk about that. Once I went to his house and we watched it together.’

Tamsin laughed so loudly that the woman behind the counter popped her head into the back room to check that everything was all right.

‘Sorry,’ Tamsin told her, wiping a tear from her eye.

When she had retreated, Tamsin leaned forward to Amanda. ‘You mean to say,’ she spluttered, ‘that you and Dai are at it hammer and tongs, and when you’re not at it, you’re talking about Paul and Gail and their marriage of convenience? And Madge and Harold, and Mrs Mangel? Plain Jane Superbrain?’

Amanda giggled. ‘Uh-huh. He doesn’t reckon Paul and Gail are going to fall in love properly, but I say to him, come on! It’s obvious, isn’t it — they’ve been in love for ages, they just haven’t faced up to their feelings yet because they’re scared of the consequences.’

Suzii looked at her best friend. She had thought that if she lost her virginity to Jonathan, it would bring her and Amanda closer together. She had hoped it would bridge the gulf that had opened between them. That was mainly why she had done it. But now they were further apart than they had ever been. It had all been for nothing.

I drove Izzy and Sam to market, chatting in a brittle way, pointing out local landmarks, and hoping Izzy wouldn’t guess how much I wished I was alone. I longed to be alone, and at the same time I thought that if I was, I would probably cry.

Tamsin lived in Australia because of Amanda and me. Mrs Grey was dead, because of us. We had done it. I dreaded telling Tamsin, but I dreaded not telling her more. The years had evaporated. I felt it was yesterday.

‘Look,’ I said to Isabelle. ‘See that little church on the hill there? Actually you can hardly see it at this time of year because of all the vegetation.’

‘Oh yes,’ she said, craning politely.

‘It’s dedicated to Our Lady of Rugby, the virgin supporter of rugby teams from the Landes.’

‘How fabulous!’ She laughed. ‘That’s brilliant.’

‘It’s full of rugby shirts. We could call in on the way back. Depending how we’re doing for time.’

‘Great.’

I drove along, wishing all my friends away. I didn’t care that I had run my circuit three minutes faster than my previous personal best time. I didn’t care that I was wearing my expensive new dress and that I knew the shape of it flattered me. Everything that usually preoccupied me was abruptly revealed as trivial and narcissistic. I wished I cared more about important things, like we used to.

‘Do you still boycott Nestlé?’ I asked Izzy.

She smiled. ‘I did for ages. They raised the stakes when they introduced the Chunky KitKat. My resolve wavered.’

‘Crafty buggers.’

‘It’s big corporations. They play dirty. How about you?’

‘Actually, I think I more or less boycott them. Sometimes they slip things past me. You very rarely come up against a Chunky KitKat in France, so I don’t have that temptation.’

‘Oh, look at you. You could resist that temptation easily. I don’t even know if we’re still supposed to be boycotting them, are we?’

‘Not really sure if they’re worse than everyone else. But by avoiding Nestlé products, I don’t really think I’m exactly doing my bit. I know I ought to resolve to stop air travel, convert my car to run on sunflower oil, get the house solar-powered . . .’ I sighed. My burden of guilt about the world had been growing, lately. ‘But it’s so difficult. I mean, I could do all those things — apparently there’s a guy not far away who could sort my car out for me so it ran on biodiesel-but what the hell difference would it make? It would be a drop in the ocean. If I had a totally green lifestyle, all I would do is balance out one single person who drives an SUV and takes six long-haul flights a year . . . But I know that’s not a reason not to do it.’ I looked at Izzy, feeling pathetic. ‘Do you know what I mean?’

Manslaughter. We were drunk, but not that drunk. And then there was Sarah Saunders.

She smiled. ‘All too well, believe me. And when your . . . well, if you ever have a baby, there’s the thorny issue of nappies and the guilt of using disposables, versus the fact that cloth nappies gave Sammy a terrible rash. I suppose it’s a blessing in disguise that I never learned to drive.’ She laughed. ‘Heavily disguised, sometimes, when we’re stuck on a train going nowhere, trying to get him to Swindon station to be picked up by his dad.’

I looked at Izzy, refreshed at the normal nature of our conversation. ‘Remember when you first took your test?’ I asked her.

‘How could I forget that?’ We both laughed at the memory of her faked confidence beforehand, and the oceans of tears she had cried afterwards.

‘You knocked someone off a moped,’ I reminded her.

‘And he made me finish the test! The sadist.’

‘It’s good to see you,’ I told her.

‘You too. You know, you’re insane, hosting this weekend. It must be driving you demented.’

‘No!’ I said, brightly. ‘Not at all. It’s . . .’ The pretence was pointless. ‘It’s terrible. Completely different from how I imagined it. I can’t look at Tamsin. I’m so on edge. I’m going to tell her.’

‘I know. Don’t think about it till we can talk to Amanda.’

‘And Amanda’s a nightmare, isn’t she? Talk about a princess. And I’ve got this woman on at me, who I painted — it’s a long story. Basically, she says the guy who commissioned the portrait is stalking her, and he says he’s married to her and she’s having a breakdown. She called when we were eating last night, which is where Roman disappeared to. He spoke to her, and he says she was crying, saying she was scared, and that she sounded really scared. So Roman called the guy’s mobile, and he says his wife is deluded and psychotic. Paranoid schizophrenia. One of them is lying and for some reason they both like to talk to me about it.’ I sighed. I was due to phone Sarah when we got home, and I wasn’t looking forward to it.

‘Don’t answer the phone to either of them,’ Izzy said, sensibly. ‘You’ve done the portrait, right?’

‘Three of them.’

‘And been paid?’

‘Yes.’

‘So, they sound like trouble. Whatever’s going on, it’s got nothing to do with you. If he’s stalking her, the police are in a far better position than you are. Let them help her. I don’t mean to be unsympathetic to the poor woman, but please. Strike that from your list of problems.’

I managed a smile. ‘You’re right. It’s not my fault, is it?’

‘Hardly! Hey, Susie, what about you and Roman? He’s gorgeous. Do you think you’ll get married? Or anything?’

This was what I had missed. Ordinary friendship. ‘Well,’ I said to her. ‘We’ve talked about marriage and I think we probably will. I don’t want to do it for the hell of it, because you do hear about couples getting married when they’ve been together for years and then splitting up a month later, but yes, if he wanted to, I would too. He’s been married before, you know, and that made him a bit reticent.’ I sighed. ‘Izzy,’ I said. ‘I’m not pregnant. I know you thought I was but. . . I’m not. I just test myself from time to time, to check that I’m not broody.’

Izzy looked at me, then suddenly laughed. I joined in. Laughing felt good. In fact, it felt wonderful.

Patrick was strolling round the market by himself. The kids were tagging along with Izzy and Tamsin, for some reason. He supposed they just didn’t want to be seen with him, their boring, bald old dad.

It was fine by him. The bloody sun was probably hotter than yesterday, but he had his hat and his sunblock on, and he was sticking to the shade as much as possible. His head was throbbing, but he suspected that had nothing to do with the sun. He had taken his codeine; there was not a lot else he could do, now. It was funny to think how used he had become to his head hurting. There would be scans when he got home, but he couldn’t bring himself to think about that just now. They were in a biggish town quite a long way from Susie’s house. The streets were narrow, and they were all pedestrianised (parking had been a bugger). It was crowded. Small middle-aged women with determined faces were all around him. They shouldered past him to get to the courgettes, and he let them without complaint. He was working at a different pace, and he had nothing to buy but a few souvenirs, if he spotted anything.

It was strange, Patrick thought, that he spent quite a lot of time on his own, but it never felt like enough. He left the house, feeling pathetically liberated, early every morning. He resolutely spoke to nobody on the way to work, even though he saw the same faces on the train every day, had been seeing some of them for eight years. He sometimes left the office to get a sandwich at lunchtime, although, more often, he got supplies from the trolley that came past his open door every couple of hours. A bland ham sandwich, a packet of salt and vinegar crisps (crisps to be tucked into sandwich to perk it up), a Twix or Mars bar, a can of lemonade, and a coffee. He would take his paper out of his briefcase, divert his phone, and spend ten happy minutes savouring his bad food, and being alone. Of course, it wasn’t always possible, and he knew that he was regarded as quaint and out of touch for taking ten short minutes at his desk. His younger colleagues looked on him as an old man, even though he would be thirty-four in November. He knew that he acted like an old man. He even spoke like one. He was not quite sure when, or why, that had started happening. Every now and then someone would discover his age, and would be astonished at his youth. He thought of thirty-four as his biological age. His other age — his ‘adoptive’ age, he supposed — was mid-forties, at least. Somebody had once told him that everyone had their correct age, an age at which they suddenly felt comfortable in their body. Most people seemed to reach it at around twenty-eight, but he had definitely not caught up with himself yet. He had been looking forward to being in his forties for years.

He walked past a cheese stall and decided to ask the young lady’s advice about a cheese or two to take home. There was quite a crowd there, but he could wait. After this he would find a quiet café. The cheese stall was on the edge of a little square. Other stalls were round the edge, and in the middle there was a little square of green with flowers on it. The buildings that surrounded it were imposing grey edifices with little wrought-iron balconies, high up. He imagined himself inside one of those apartments, with a view over the small town. Just him.

The thing was, he was happily married, and he loved his kids. It was odd, this melancholy that had afflicted him recently. This yearning to get away from Clapham, from domesticity, from Amanda’s misery, from Jake and Freya’s complicated routines. Some days he thought he might just pack a bag and wander off. It wouldn’t be as dramatic as leaving his family. He wouldn’t be being a bastard — at least, he wouldn’t feel like one. He simply craved a little meander.

He took an assertive step forward in the cheese throng. Not that it did him much good. He was sick of this jolly, clueless persona he seemed to have adopted, but he had no idea who he would be without it. He was always aware of his duties as provider. He looked after the family, funded Amanda’s shopping, gym and car habits, paid extortionate school fees that were only going to get worse as the children got older, bankrolled so many varieties of extra tuition, dancing, music, sports, that he couldn’t keep up with them, and had no idea who did what beyond a vague feeling that the ballet bill probably didn’t concern Jakey. He didn’t have time to be anyone except the family banker. When they were on holiday, he always looked after the children to give Amanda a break, and that was fine. Sometimes he and Amanda would dump the kids with friends or family and have a little break together, but even then, it was all about money and status. Amanda became obsessed and stressed about where they were going for dinner and what she should wear. In Venice she had dragged him around every church on the list in her guidebook, when he would have preferred a leisurely stroll and a café. In Paris she had dragged him from Eiffel Tower to Louvre and from there to the most exclusive restaurant she could find. Their breaks were never about peace. Once, and only once, he had gingerly suggested a walking and camping holiday in Northumbria, or trip round the Cornish coastal path. He smiled to himself as he remembered her reaction.