Separate Beds
Authors: Elizabeth Buchan
PENGUIN BOOKS
Separate Beds
PRAISE FOR ELIZABETH BUCHAN
‘Deliciously told, with characters you warm to at once, and I loved every page’
Daily Mail
‘A thoughtful, clever examination of a marriage – and a life – at the crossroads’
Sunday Mirror
‘Wise and sharp in equal proportion, and absolutely compelling reading’ Penny Vincenzi
‘For women of all ages, a poignant, unforgettable novel’
You magazine
‘A finely written, highly intelligent romance’
Mail on Sunday
‘Buchan deftly juggles multiple characters and plots in a perceptive analysis of contemporary life’
Independent on Sunday
‘Enthralling, sophisticated storytelling’
Woman & Home
‘Shafts of wit and wisdom that lift the novel above the commonplace’
Sunday Times
‘An excellent story … strong imaginative power … wonderful atmosphere’ Joanna Trollope
‘A wry, poignant look at love and grief ’
Easy Living
Also by Elizabeth Buchan
Beatrix Potter: The Story of the Creator of Peter Rabbit
Daughters of the Storm
Light of the Moon
Perfect Love
Against Her Nature
Consider the Lily
Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman
Secrets of the Heart
The Good Wife
That Certain Age
The Second Wife
Separate Beds
ELIZABETH BUCHAN
PENGUIN BOOKS
PENGUIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA
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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
First published 2010
Copyright © Elizabeth Buchan, 2010
All rights reserved
The moral right of the author has been asserted
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
ISBN: 978-0-141-94438-8
‘This bed thy centre is, these walls, thy sphere’
John Donne
For Annabel
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Zosia said to Annie, ‘I’m glad you got home before I left.’
Annie dumped a whole lot of Christmas shopping on the table and ran her fingers through her hair. Bad-hair day. Very bad-hair day. ‘So am I. Are you in a hurry? Would you like a glass of wine?’
There were just the two of them in the kitchen and the house was quiet and dark. Zosia always turned the lights off as she worked through the rooms. When Annie commented on this thrift, she had replied, ‘We must not waste,’ for the deprivations of Zosia’s upbringing were lodged deep in her.
Annie retrieved a half-drunk bottle of excellent claret left over from the previous evening and gave her a glass.
Zosia took a mouthful and leaned back in the chair. ‘Very nice, Annie.’
‘Here, look …’ Annie burrowed in a bag and shook out an expensive man’s sweater. ‘That’s for Tom. Unimaginative, I know, but I haven’t a clue what he wants these days. And here …’ She produced a leather notebook. ‘That’s for Emily. I’ve still got to get Jake and Jocasta’s. But look at these …’ She waved a box of Christmas lights, plugged them in and, razzle-dazzle, hoop-la, a river of brilliance looped over the table.
‘Beautiful, Annie.’ Zosia closed her eyes. ‘You always make everything so.’
Warm, sparkling clean, filled with things that made life easy and convenient … the house that had everything
.
Not really, thought Annie, and the old feelings tore at her chest. This place will never be beautiful while we are as we are.
Remember …
The front door opened and closed. ‘Mia …’ She uttered the name she had called so many times since her daughter had left. Her voice quivered with pain and anticipation. ‘Mia, is that you?’
‘It’s only me.’ It was Tom and he refused to meet Annie’s eye.
Mia had been gone for a couple of weeks and a silence had fallen over the family. Tom had promised to go up to Manchester to try to make contact at the university to which Mia had almost certainly returned as she had every intention of finishing her degree. But, by the look of him, he hadn’t done any such thing. ‘Sorry,’ he confessed. ‘Something came up at work.’
He was lying. What Tom should have said was: I didn’t want to go and look for Mia because I feel so awful/ashamed/angry … you could take your pick as to the explanation. Actually, if Annie knew anything about her husband all of them applied.
‘So, work came before your daughter.’ Annie plucked at a lock of her hair and the anguish turned to aggression. ‘As always, Tom.’
‘Don’t start.’ He shrugged.
At that moment, Annie hated him more than she had ever hated anyone. It was a new emotion and its intensity
was akin to love. She also hated herself because this would never have happened if she and Tom had been cleverer and clearer about their marriage. ‘If you won’t go, I’ll go.’
‘She won’t see you, Annie.’
‘How do you know?’
He looked at her oddly. ‘You accuse me of not knowing my children. But I do know Mia. She won’t see you …’
Tom had been right. That had been then and Mia still had not come home, or phoned. She had written just once.
She had been gone for almost five years.
Come home. Please
…
Annie draped the lights artistically over her handbag and smiled at Zosia. ‘I’m not telling you what I’ve got for you.’
Zosia pointed to the diamond ring on Annie’s finger. ‘Do you want me to clean it before I go?’
Her mother’s ring (and her grandmother’s before that): hugely valuable but, more than that, part of Annie and irreplaceable. Zosia enjoyed handling it and she loved to please Annie, who slid it off her finger. ‘Go on, then.’
Zosia buffed away and Annie watched her affectionately. ‘Did I ever tell you Emily stole it? She must have been six or seven. There was such a fuss and everyone was pulling out drawers and upending the rubbish. I was so angry when she owned up. Poor little girl was shaking. But Tom talked to her. Tom was – is – always so good with her, and Emily confessed between sobs she thought I was going to give the ring to Mia.’
Zosia slid it back across the table. ‘But it’s true you can only give it to one of them.’
Annie said, ‘We couldn’t help laughing at Emily, which
was unfair on her and made her cross. At the time it was funny.’ She stopped herself and Zosia laid a hand on hers. After a moment, Annie asked, ‘So, have you booked the ticket?’
‘Yes. I will be gone for Christmas and New Year, as you said I could.’
‘Good.’
Zosia raised her eyes to Annie. ‘You are very kind to pay for the ticket. I am grateful.’
The two women smiled at each other. They went way back – to the day Zosia had turned up on the doorstep in answer to Annie’s advert for a cleaner and someone to help with the school runs – and were friends. It was a friendship springing out of a mutual empathy and a willingness to listen. ‘Careful,’ Tom had warned. ‘You’re Zosia’s employer.’
‘It’s nothing,’ said Annie, as the phone rang. ‘I want you to know how much I owe you. We owe you. For one thing …’ Annie sounded a touch wry ‘… I love talking to you.’ She picked up the phone. ‘Tom?’ She listened. ‘Oh, OK. Fine. See you.’ She replaced the receiver.
She poured more wine for Zosia. ‘That was Tom. Not coming home till late. Last-minute dinner with someone from the Foreign Office.’ After a minute, she added, ‘It’s been ages since Tom and I had supper together.’ A moment of further reflection ‘It happens in the run-up to Christmas. That’s the World Service for you … all the media, I imagine.’
‘Of course,’ said Zosia.
They exchanged a look.
Annie knew what Zosia would have liked to say: ‘Tom spends more time than he should on his work and has done
for years.’ And it was true that, since Mia had stormed out, things had been bad, really bad. But not bad enough for them to fold entirely.
At seven o’clock, Zosia leaped to her feet and declared she must go. Annie knew she liked to be home in time to phone her mother in Warsaw. At the door, Annie kissed her cheek fondly and said, ‘See you next week.’
The door clicked shut and the house was still. If only, Annie thought. If only …
if only
… So many things. If Tom hadn’t taken Mia’s room, I could sit in there for a bit and think about her. But Tom now occupied the room – usurper by default.
She wandered back into the kitchen, drank the rest of her wine and observed the Christmas lights still draped in a starry Milky Way over her handbag. After a while, she reached for the pile of post Zosia had placed on the table and slit open the top envelope.
A plain card stamped with the House of Commons insignia was from Sadie who had written ‘love from Us’ and underlined ‘love’. A further note on the left-hand side of the card revealed penitence: ‘Sorry about this.’ And ‘PS Yup, Christmas
is
designed to torture women. PPS Give Tom a kiss from me.’
‘Wretch,’ murmured Annie. How often did she and Sadie speak? Practically every day. Had they sworn not to send each other Christmas cards? Yes. But the (sweetly duplicitous) joke was that Annie had already posted hers to Sadie. ‘Sorry about this,’ she had written on the left-hand side of the card – and inserted a handwritten piece of paper: ‘Dearest Sadie. You make me laugh so much. Try not to kill Andrew over the holiday.’
Each knew exactly what the other was driving at. It had been obvious from the moment they’d met a decade since when Sadie had turned up with Andrew on an MP’s fact-finding hospital visit to St Brigid’s. Having negotiated the arid patch between her second and third marriages, during which she had fled to England from the US, Sadie brimmed with thankfulness and relief. Annie was more or less coasting through her marriage and worried that her responses to life had become muted. Yet, they recognized each other as cut from the same cloth. True, if she and Tom had still been talking, really talking, really in tune with each other, and Sadie had been as settled as she was now, the quality and energy of their friendship might have been less intense. For a start, there would have been less necessity for the deep trawl of each other’s thoughts and minds.