Separate Beds (35 page)

Annie did her own check on the kitchen clock. ‘You know it’s changed times?’

‘I record it, dear, so I can watch it at its usual time. I’m too old to change my routine because of some thoughtless programmer. They never think, do they?’

Last thing before she went to bed, Annie looked in on the sleeping Hermione. ‘OK, Rollo will stay.’ She had laid down the house rules, knowing that she had little chance of being heeded. ‘But he’s not to go on the bed.
Any
bed.’

Wasted breath. Rollo was settled beside his new mistress who had backed up awkwardly against the wall, one arm encircling him like a lover. The little dog opened an eye, observed her calmly and went back to sleep.

At two a.m., Annie was ram-raided from unconsciousness into full alert in approximately five seconds flat. Who
had made the noise? Baby? Mother-in-law? Or now, for God’s sake, the dog?

She sat up. Tom was sleeping quietly and efficiently, a hand tucked under his chin. Again the noise came to her through the hush. Now it sounded like ‘Help’. Annie wasted no more time and shot across the landing to Hermione’s room.

Hermione lay on the floor with Rollo beside her. One arm was crumpled under her body, her left ankle was heavily bruised and swelling and she was groaning with pain.

‘I’m here, Hermione. Tell me where it hurts.’

Hermione’s face was white. She opened her eyes with difficulty. ‘Hurts,’ she whispered. ‘It hurts.’ Then she said, ‘Max?’

‘Hermione, it’s Annie. Can you move at all?’

Hermione didn’t respond.

Annie bent over and said very clearly, ‘I’m going to get help.’

In a trice, she was on her feet, in her room and shaking Tom awake. ‘Your mother has had an accident. Ring for the ambulance.’

Returning to Hermione, she snatched up a rug and tucked it round her. ‘What happened? Can you tell me?’

Hermione replied, with difficulty, ‘I tripped over Rollo. Leg. Arm. Hurt.’

‘You tripped over the dog?’

Hermione’s colour was now alarming. ‘Not Rollo’s fault.’

‘I know. Tom’s getting help. We’ll just wait quietly here.’

A fully dressed Tom stuck his head through the door but he didn’t come in, which didn’t surprise Annie. Tom was squeamish.

‘Ambulance on way,’ he said. ‘I’ll go and let them in.’

The commotion had woken Jake, who ran down from
his bedroom. ‘Oh, Lord,’ he said, sizing up the situation. ‘Poor Gran.’ He knelt beside her. ‘It’s all right, Gran. We’ll sort you out.’

Annie smiled at Jake gratefully. ‘You’d better alert Emily.’

Jake ducked his head. ‘Not sure she’s here, Mum.’ He shifted upright. ‘Why don’t I pack up some water and stuff? You’ll need it. You might be in for a long wait.’

He smiled reassuringly, and Annie felt a surge of love for her son. ‘Thanks, Jake,’ she called after him.

Hermione’s teeth had begun to chatter. She looked up into Annie’s face and Annie thought she knew what she was thinking. Was this only a small accident? Or was this a big moment of death? ‘You’ll be more comfortable very soon.’

‘Photo,’ Hermione managed. ‘Drawer.’

Which drawer? Annie finally lighted on the bedside table. On opening, it contained a prayer book, a Glacier mint, a pair of gloves and an envelope containing the photograph that Annie now knew was of the mysterious Max. ‘Do you want me to bring this with me?’

Hermione did not answer. She had shut her eyes and retreated into pain and shock.

Annie replaced the photo in the bedside drawer. She would deal with it another time.

The ambulance men arrived. Very soon, as Annie had promised, Hermione was lifted on to a stretcher and taken away.

At five past six in the morning, Annie let herself back into the house. She placed her keys in the bowl on the hall table and went into the kitchen. Sinking down on to a chair, she closed her eyes. Hermione’s left arm was broken and
required pinning and her ankle was also horribly wrenched. They were keeping her in hospital. ‘But there’s a hitch …’ The staff nurse in charge, who had recognized Annie, was a little embarrassed. ‘The orthopaedic wards are full and there won’t be a bed until morning.’

Tom elected to stay with Hermione in A and E. He pushed Annie gently towards the exit. ‘Go. You need some rest before work.’

How strange Annie felt. As if her heart was growing extra space. Various sensations – agreeable and disagreeable, admissible and inadmissible – were making themselves at home in it. Again, she heard Tom say, ‘Go home, Annie,’ and, then, she understood that, far from being static, her inner world was changing.

Bath, breakfast, change of clothes. Work.

There was a clatter of claws on the kitchen floor. Rollo.
Rollo?
Annie opened her eyes wearily. ‘I knew there was something I was forgetting,’ she said to the anxious dog. ‘I’ll have to take you out.’

In the park, summer had dried up swathes of the grass and cracked the soil under the shrubs. Annie wandered here and there while Rollo, who had no apparent wish to be independent, pottered ahead for five yards or so before halting and waiting for her to catch up.

It was so long since she had been out early. Remember coming home with Tom – before the children arrived – in hot summer dawns? Footsore from dancing. A little drunk, perhaps. So played out they couldn’t speak.

Despite her fatigue, Annie knew she would cope. She would have to cope with whatever was thrown at Tom and her.
We
will have to cope. Meanwhile the sun warmed her,
the comparative peace of the park had a beneficent effect and, unless she was dreaming, it looked very much as though Emily was heading along the path towards her.

As she might have predicted, her mother looked mighty disapproving. As if Annie wouldn’t have tales of her own. From time to time, Emily speculated about her parents before they had become parents and were still individuals. But not that often any more. It wasn’t that she was uninterested or unconcerned, but events in her own life were happening too fast and taking up too much time and energy.

A pigeon cooed in the tree, and was answered. It was a nice sound. Emily paused to observe a middle-aged woman on a bench, hands clutching a paperback, apparently, transfixed by its contents.

She hadn’t thought about her writing for weeks now, an omission that troubled her. There were shelves of novels about painfully thin clerks or teachers who had sacrificed their health and, sometimes, their lives to write. That was the point about writing. Like the Minotaur in his cave, hungry for the bull dancers, writing demanded sacrifice, the bloodier the better. Not so long ago, Emily would have willingly knelt down and bowed her head.

What the novels on the shelves failed to portray was the awkward (and complicated) position of the would-be writer who had been seduced … not exactly by prosperity but at least the prospect of earning a good living. And, if Emily was to be more precise, it wasn’t so much the
good
living but the
predictable
living. She was deeply mindful that she had a job and many others did not, and the solid clink of wages dropping into the bank account each month possessed an
affirmation she would not have believed possible. She had only to consider the lure of the black taffeta skirt with the bow on one hip (located on a Topshop pedi-conference with Katya), the blinis and sour cream lunch at Finzi’s, the weekend trip to Paris mooted by Dido and Carole at work – in fact, quite a few of life’s baubles (which had turned out to be doable on her wages) – to realize that the alternative had lost its allure.

In the distance, Rollo skirled around her mother. He was uttering half-baked barks designed to draw attention, to which Annie was not responding. She watched him dance around Annie’s legs, and her mother’s clumsy efforts to get out of his way.

All of a sudden, Emily felt very tired. She had been counting on sneaking back home unobserved, and she had also been counting on a little space to reflect, which was why she was walking across the park instead of taking the direct route from the bus stop.

She thought back.

‘
You’re doing fine.
’ Mike’s late-afternoon email pinged into Emily’s in-box. ‘
See me before leaving.
’

He was – she trusted – referring to the press release she had sent him in which, as instructed, she had striven to suggest the company’s overriding concern with climate issues without committing it to doing anything about them.

Anything in particular?
She hoped that the winged-back reply did not betray nervousness.

Who was it who got their fingers burned for being nosy?

No idea.

Ping.

Thought you were the literary one. Tell me something I should know.

Her cheeks burned and recklessness gripped her.

Poets are put on this earth to startle us out of our trance into an awareness of life … I can’t remember which poet said it or the exact words but I love the idea of the poet as Prince Charming, kissing us awake.

Oh, God, oh, God, she thought, after she had pressed the ‘send’ button. That was idiotic. And pretentious.
Cubed
.

There was an appreciable interval before the in-box pinged back.

Eh?

‘See me before leaving’ turned into a bottle of Pinot Grigio at the Rat and Fiddle where Mike praised her grasp on literature, which made Emily feel he viewed her as a creature from another element – a fish in an aquarium, say. It was a curious feeling. Over a second bottle, the seared salmon and sugar snaps, they discussed the firm, the office and their work. He was very much at ease and, in contrast to Tod’s comfortable shabbiness, immaculately clean and shiny.

Naturally, they talked about themselves a little.

‘Is there anyone special at the moment?’ Mike divided the remaining wine between their two glasses, apparently fascinated by the lace edging of her powder-blue camisole.

‘Yes and no.’

‘More yes than no? Or more no than yes?’

‘Does it matter?’

His shrewd, slightly hard gaze measured her. ‘Only you can decide.’

She dismissed any residual loyalty to Tod. Mike’s indifference to the latter’s existence suggested a thrilling liberty to which she could help herself.

And she did.

The episode had been thoroughly satisfactory … almost dusted with magic, and funny too. She thought how sweet it was that Mike’s bed was a single and they had been crammed together for the remainder of the night. ‘It does its job,’ he said, when she mentioned it.

Then she had spotted her mother in the park and a cloud whisked across her sunny recollections.

They met at the intersection of two paths where a big and ugly laurel partially obscured the path. She decided to be perfectly matter-of-fact. ‘Hi, Mum,’ she said. ‘You look exhausted. Why so early?’

Annie explained about the night’s events and that Hermione would be having an operation to pin her arm that morning. ‘It was small mayhem.’ She paused. ‘You were missed.’

Never apologize, never explain. ‘Oh, how awful. But she’ll be OK?’

‘Hopefully.’ Annie allowed a small sigh to escape. ‘She’ll need to be looked after when she gets home.’ She pointed at Rollo. ‘Wretched, wretched dog.’

Emily leaped to the defence. ‘You mustn’t blame him.’

A preoccupied Annie pulled back a lock of wavy hair. ‘No, of course not. But it’s going to be a bit of problem when your grandmother comes home.’

Entertaining a vague idea of ferrying meals upstairs on a tray and running an errand or two, Emily was taken aback when her mother continued, ‘Depending on the situation, I’ll look into nursing care, which will be expensive.’

‘Mum, you make it sound serious.’

Annie regarded her daughter thoughtfully. ‘It probably is.’

They fell into step, with Rollo busy sniffing about at their heels, and skirted the pond, which was of the London variety – greenish, dingy and scummy with additional detritus thrown into it. The water undulated with light and the day appeared to be a nice one.

‘Emily …’ her mother was looking the other way ‘… you are careful, aren’t you?’

The question was so loaded that it almost tipped over. The sun nipped behind a cloud and Emily lost some of her sang-froid, a blush creeping over her face. ‘Mum, none of your business.’ She lost the advantage by adding, ‘How do you know I wasn’t staying with a girlfriend?’

‘You could have been,’ said Annie, lightly, ‘but I’m guessing not.’

Emily neither confirmed nor denied.

Her mother went on, in a bright tone that set Emily’s teeth on edge, ‘It seems to me that we’ve been persuaded to spend more time choosing a pair of shoes than who we sleep with.’

‘Mum, you should listen to yourself.’

‘Don’t you – I mean, doesn’t anyone wish to give themselves the chance to … get to know someone first?’

‘How do you know I don’t know him?’

Annie’s lips twitched. ‘Well, do you?’

Before Emily could answer, Annie’s mobile shrilled and her hand dived into her pocket. ‘Tom … OK … She’s sleeping … G3 ward? Yes, I know it. Fine …’ Bye.’ She dropped the phone back into her pocket.

Emily felt the first faint throb of a headache. She was trying to remember if Mike had actually said they should
meet again out of the office. And what would happen in the office if it all went wrong?

Her mother smiled. ‘I’m not trying to interfere.’

Again the mobile interrupted them. This time it was Jake. ‘Thank you, Jake … No, Gran will not be coming home today so no need to get anything. Sweet of you to think about it. Thank you, Jake … Big kiss.’

Annie signed off tenderly and, because she was battling a combination of fatigue and headache, jealousy wrapped its knotty fingers around Emily.
Aha. Got you
, it hissed into her ear. Always, always, the twins were ahead of her, whatever she did, however tough she was on herself and however much she told herself that she didn’t mind. In fact, when she compared herself with the golden, gifted Jake and Mia, it was logical that her mother preferred them.