Separate Beds (14 page)

‘Does anyone know?’

‘No.’

Shameful as it was, Emily felt satisfaction that Jake had come to her first. ‘How’s Maisie?’

‘She’s been a bit difficult, which is not surprising. Babies sense upheaval.’

‘I suppose Lin can help.’

There was a silence. ‘That’s another thing. Lin is going.’

‘Why?’

‘I’m having to let her go.’

‘Jake – then what? It sounds bad.’

‘It is. Money.’

‘Business bad?’

She heard him sigh. ‘Might be.’

She collected her wits. An unfamiliar, complicated scene was opening up and even she – the writer in the garret with her head (metaphorically speaking) wrapped in a towel – understood that childcare would be vital to allow the pieces of Jake’s life to fall into place. ‘Jake, don’t make decisions before you’ve thought them through. OK? Look, I can come over and we’ll talk.’

‘Thanks.’

She could tell he was grateful for the support and discretion. Again, the feeling of warm satisfaction. Instead of being the ignored non-twin, she was contributing. She pressed on: ‘But, you know, you can’t keep this quiet for much longer.’

‘No. I need a bit more time.’

‘You can trust me.’

‘I know I can.’

Emily smiled. Then, in view of the gravity of Jake’s news, she wiped it from her face.

Jake and Mia. Mia and Jake. Throughout her growing up, they had been indisputably glamorous, their unity impenetrable and exclusive. Their faces turned away from their younger sister.

How you saw your childhood was important. Correction: how you
perceived
your childhood was important. She had been ever hopeful that the twins would include her.
Let’s ask Emily
, she willed them to say.
She’ll know what to do
. But they never did. Instead, dreaming of the day when she would feel less puny and inadequate, she was left with her nose pressed to the pane. Hence she had learned that she could never compete with Jake’s effortless cool and the Mia who made people laugh and their spirits rise at the sight of her. However magical and powerful Emily might wish to be, a triumvirate would never happen.

There was no option left but to go her own way and that was when she discovered the sustenance to be found in books – every book she could lay hands on whether she made sense of it or not. It was thus she stumbled across Martin Heidegger, the philosopher, whose writings were well-nigh impenetrable to Emily, except in one crucial aspect. He had written of his lonely, neglected childhood and Emily shuddered with empathy. He was the ‘boy who plunged himself into dusty old books’. She was the girl who was doing the same. He ‘felt himself to be king among the many books he didn’t understand, but each one of which he knew and reverently loved’. And it was true of her.

Emily Brontë had also written: ‘I’ll walk where my own nature might be leading.’ This Emily also understood – and although she could not consider her habitual hikes to the library the stuff of a truly subversive secret life, the fact that she felt she had one gave her a sense of purpose.

When Emily was eighteen, Mia had taken herself out of the picture, which was terrible. Then again – if Emily was truthful – perhaps it hadn’t been so terrible for her. At the
time, Emily had been horrified and fascinated by the family scenes.

… ‘Em, I’m going. For good.’ Throwing things into a bag. Jeans, boots, hairbrush …

Still shaking from witnessing the row between Mia and the parents, Emily sat down with a clunk on Mia’s bed: ‘You can’t.’

‘Watch me.’

‘But why?’

‘Because Dad is such a hypocrite. And Mum is the same. Anyway, this is a horrible family. All mucked up…’

‘But you don’t abandon a family because they aren’t perfect.’

‘I do,’ said Mia …

If it hadn’t been before, and instinct informed Emily that it wasn’t that mucked up but just averagely and depressingly dysfunctional, the family certainly was after Mia had left. Jake acted as though a stake had been driven through his chest … Her mother … her mother had wept unceasingly and her father had disappeared into the office and not emerged for weeks. It was the non-unity of her parents that brought her up short, and a chilly realization spiked her comfortable assumptions. When had that happened? When had they become so distant from each other? But that, she concluded, was the trouble with childhood and adolescence. The ongoing struggle to grow up had been so all-consuming that she had nothing left for anyone else.

‘Remember the nice moments,’ she wrote in her notebook. The
rare
nice moments. ‘In the car on the way to Scotland. Three over-excited, high-decibel-emitting children. The mother driven to threaten, “You know, children,
I can do quiet and menacing very, very well.” At the wheel, the father laughing so hard he was forced to stop the car. “You crack me up,” he told her. “Quiet and menacing!” He swivelled round to face the enthralled audience on the back seat. “Children, which is the biggest whopper?” Afterwards he kissed the mother: “Never change. ”’

Why would Mia wish to abandon what had made her? ‘It’s because I’m different,’ she had declared, with tears running angrily down her cheeks. ‘I don’t want to think like you all. I don’t want to be what you are’ …

Tomorrow Emily had a second interview with Condor Oil, the first having been a preliminary sort-out. Preparing methodically as usual, she laid out her clothes and checked over the portfolio. The tasks were quiet ones, requiring little effort, soothing in their everydayness. As she patted and folded, she prepared herself to step out of one role into another. The mundane. Was it friend or enemy to the writer? All too often the mixing up of dreams with real life resulted in conflict and thwarted desire – which was the stuff of fiction.

She stopped herself. That kind of speculation was now redundant.

Drifting into sleep, a series of highly coloured imaginings of Jocasta and Noah-the-top-American-banker invaded her mind. Of course, what her sister-in-law had done was not unknown, but its impact would upset the Nicholsons. Not least, it shattered the picture of the successful, principled,
happy
Jake. The Jake who pronounced (helped, it must be said, by having a high-earning wife) that he didn’t care much about money, and people ought to
make
more things. The Jake who said it was rubbish that children and work could not be balanced.

That Jake was the person who had reassured Emily that he had never hated anyone in his life, that people were essentially good and principled, and who loved passionately and successfully. She had breathed in the clear, positive message:
no hatred
.

The image despoiled, she mourned it.

She turned over and faced the window. Keeping Jake’s secret from her parents would require deception, which was new to her. Intriguing? Yes.

Deception
. Does it rot the soul? Or introduce a thrilling element into the everyday?

Stop it, she scolded herself.

As her body gradually softened and relaxed, she pictured a dark blue sky fretted with pulsating stars. As she watched with her mind’s eye, a world haloed by a rose-pink light mounted into that blue velvet. It was a fresh and beautiful sight and, gazing on it, Emily was gripped by a yearning for passion, for deep-seated, committed love – and for the story of her life to begin.

‘OK,’ he practised aloud. ‘It’s like this.’

My wife so despised me and thought so little of her daughter that she’s fled to the other end of the earth
.

No, that wasn’t right.

Jocasta has left me for another man and another continent. Thank God, she has also left me with our daughter and, not so good, the mortgage
.

No.

It was a sensible, mature, mutual decision between consenting adults
…

Better.

Jake needed to get the story straight before he unleashed
his news on the parents. Maisie in his arms, he roamed the house while he worked on it. (A story that, thus far, had culminated with Jake phoning Jocasta as she was about to board the plane to New York and informing her that she was both wicked and wrong.)

Fact: Jocasta had gone, it was late on Saturday afternoon and the house felt as empty as a nuclear wasteland. He slotted Maisie into her bouncy chair in the kitchen and sat down with paper and pencil.

While Maisie cooed and batted her arms about like a tiny nestling, Jake made lists of figures, added and subtracted.

Mortgage? He had not recognized the Jocasta who admitted: ‘I don’t deserve the house, Jake. But you’ll have to take on the mortgage eventually.’

Childcare? Living expenses? Projected income? All the practical considerations that did not come easily to him.

How come a baby who ate practically nothing managed to use so many nappies? Why did the manufacturers of baby food make the pots either too large or too small? These considerations had existed previously and, of course, he had dealt with them. But they had not impinged on him in this leaden, despairing manner. Now they would – continuously. He checked off the next couple of weeks in the workshop’s order book. Not good. A ripple of panic went through him.

The bell startled him.

Wrapped in a capacious, belted macintosh, Emily stood on the doorstep. ‘I thought I’d better come over.’

For a magic moment, Jake imagined it was Mia who somehow, miraculously, had intuited that he was in trouble – and felt ashamed that he minded it was only Emily. ‘You look like a spy or a flasher.’

Emily put her arms around him and held him tight. ‘I would have come at once if you’d told me. You must feel awful.’ Suddenly, his disappointment vanished, and he felt so grateful for Emily’s support. He buried his head in his sister’s shoulder and closed his eyes. The scents of camomile shampoo and clean hair took him back to a more innocent time.

He ushered her into the kitchen. She threw off the flasher’s mac, revealing a tiny skirt and thick black tights, and swooped down on Maisie. ‘Hallo, Birdie.’ She made the silly face that adults did with babies. She looked up at Jake. ‘Is she doing all right?’

Jake filled kettle. ‘A bit restive and grizzly at night. She’s looking for Jocasta.’

Emily’s voice wavered. ‘It’s not
fair
on Maisie. Have you really got rid of Lin?’

‘I had to,’ he said.

Emily asked the obvious: ‘How do you work?’

‘That’s another thing.’

‘Oh, God,’ said Emily.

Jake felt his grimmest yet. He slapped the lid on to the kettle, switched it on and began, half-heartedly, to tackle the backlog of washing-up. Every nerve and bone in his body seemed to hurt and a ravening sensation opened in his stomach, as if he hadn’t eaten for days. At the same time, the idea of food was repugnant.

Emily continued to coo at Maisie. A delighted Maisie shrieked back. Jake slotted a washed plate into the rack.

‘You didn’t say anything to the parents?’

‘Jake, you’ve got to tell them some time.’

‘I know,’ he said irritably. ‘I
know
.’ Then he heard himself say something pretty stupid: ‘It’s partly the parents’ fault.’

She sent him a reflective look. ‘I don’t think you mean that.’

‘If I hadn’t got so used to their lacklustre marriage, where they hang together by the skin of their teeth for no good reason other than inertia, I might … Oh, I don’t know. Forget I said it … It’s my fault I didn’t recognize the signs.’

Emily demanded, ‘Tell me. What signs?’

‘Don’t go using me as material for a novel. OK?’

‘Unfair.’

‘Not as unfair as being left by your wife.’

She had the grace to look away. ‘Actually, I’m job-hunting. The novel will have to wait.’ She extracted Maisie from the bouncy chair and settled her on her lap. ‘Apart from anything else, you’re in a panic. And that I do recognize from Mum and Dad who’ve been panicking massively. Did you know Mum sold her ring to pay for the new cooker?’

‘No, I didn’t.’ Jake chucked teabags into two mugs and poured hot water over them. ‘I’m sorry. And I’m sorry about the writing.’

She shrugged and ran a hand through her hair – reminding him of their father. ‘Needs must.’ Her smile was a trifle grim. ‘But we have to stick together, don’t we?’ She re-inserted Maisie’s foot into her sock, which had fallen off. ‘God, this is grubby. When did you last do the laundry?’

Faint stirrings of hysteria threatened to back up in Jake. Get a grip, he instructed himself. ‘I have no idea.’

Emily got to her feet and handed Maisie to him. ‘OK. Time for a bit of organization.’

Jake was grateful, very grateful, to Emily, who should not have felt she had to give up her Saturday evening to run around after him. She should have been out on the town with Tod – although the way in which she referred to the nice but
fey Tod did not indicate that she considered it a sacrifice. She was also very practical and a considerable amount of cleaning and tidying was accomplished in a astonishingly short time. In addition, after rummaging in various cupboards she produced spaghetti with tomato sauce.

At the moment, his responses were pretty dulled and selfish but he could not have failed to be struck by her obvious wish to help or by the slight aura of sadness and anxiety that hung over her.

He roused himself sufficiently to ask, ‘Everything all right with you?’

She grimaced. ‘It’s a bit difficult at home. You know Dad. Really, really gutted.’

When she left he kissed her and swore to himself he would remember that she had come to his rescue. Then he forgot about Emily, and fell into a sleeping-waking pattern during which Jocasta came and went.

You’ve no money
, a voice said in his sleeping ear.
But you do have a baby and a mortgage
. And again:
You’ll get into debt
.

‘We will stick together,’ Emily had promised.

At least she understood what human beings should do for each other, and what they needed.

Guiltily he remembered the texture of the dry soil and thick laurel leaves in Battersea Park where he and Mia had grubbed out dens designed to keep Emily out. Guiltily he remembered her cries of distress, their relentless policy of exclusion, and the lengths to which they had gone to upset her, which was easy for she had been small and slow to grow. ‘That child was starved in the womb,’ his father used to joke, which distressed his mother and angered Jake. How dare his father be so unfeeling and tactless and hurtful when Mum
did so much for everyone? Unlike Tom, who was never much around. After one of their stupid wrangles over Jake’s refusal to take politics at A level, he accused his father, ‘Bet you’re nicer to the people in the office than you are to us.’