Separate Beds (37 page)

Annie rolled over and slid her feet to the floor. ‘Spare us, Jake.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘Oh, Lord, I must go and get a report I
have
to read before I go to bed.’

An unfazed Jake hooked his thumbs into his (Oxfam) waistcoat pockets. Annie reckoned it was a gesture adopted to give himself back some of the swagger Jocasta had stolen from him. ‘When you’re ready, Dad, could we have a quick word about Maisie?’

Annie was patting her hair back into order in front of the mirror.

‘Jake,’ Tom shrugged on his dressing-gown, ‘does the word “tact” figure at all in your vocabulary?’

‘Sorry.’ Jake was clearly not sorry and highly amused. ‘But I have to book Dad in for babysitting.’ His levity died. ‘I’ve been summoned by Jocasta to a meeting and I won’t be taking Maisie.’

Annie turned round. ‘Jake, Jocasta has a right to see her.’

His shoulders sagged. ‘This is with a mediator. To soften me up for the real proceedings. I expect she thinks she can win concessions right from the start.’

‘Oh, Jake.’ Annie gave him a hug. ‘I’m so sorry. Please don’t lose your temper or anything.’ She cupped his cheeks tenderly in her hands. ‘I mean it, darling, it’ll matter if you do.’

Jake topped Annie by a head but, to Tom, he appeared very lost and he hastened to say, ‘Don’t worry – I can look after Maisie, so take your time.’

Jake disappeared. Tom and Annie exchanged glances. All thoughts of sex were replaced by anxiety for their son. All the same, Tom held Annie close and dropped a light kiss on her mouth. ‘There.’

She halted in her exit from the room and touched her mouth with a finger. ‘That was nice.’ Then she hurried away.

In the old days at times of potential disaster, like the one facing him, Mia and he would have holed up somewhere and thrashed out the problem.

What do you think? Tell me what to do. How can I kill Jocasta?

As teenagers, they had formed a solid front against the world. United, they faced teachers, school bullies, rival gangs
from the neighbouring school and the tennis club, which they both loathed with a passion. And when Emily was being a pain it had got them through loathing
her
.

Mia’s sparkle and lightness had enchanted family and friends. It had also hoodwinked them for there was a blacker, astringent side to her, which only Jake knew because … well, simply because they were an extension of each other.

… ‘It’s no one’s business what I really feel, or what you feel,’ she had confided. They were smoking illicit roll-ups behind a lump of granite where they had taken shelter from the wind. ‘It’s no one’s business except ours, of course.’

Jake had laughed and squeezed her hand.

All around them fields were marked out by dry-stone walls that ran up the fells like fish spines. The wind blew about and over them. Their roll-ups spluttered. Mia shivered. ‘How does anyone survive up here?’

‘It’s Yorkshire, not the Arctic.’

Those were the days of plenty when the family had taken two holidays a year but their father had decreed that the second should be UK-based. It was good for his children to know something about their own country, he argued. ‘Purely,’ Mia pointed out, ‘so he could rabbit on to his work about his green credentials.’ This year they were staying near Haworth because Emily (and they were hating her on this holiday) wanted to visit the Brontës’ house. But the truth was, they yearned to be at home, or anywhere where they were not being urged into healthy activities by their father, who harried them from one end of the week to the other.

Mia had cast around the big horizon and moorland. In the distance, a kestrel swooped down over heather whose purple shades varied from vivid to pastel. Further in the
distance, the blades in a forest of wind turbines ground relentlessly. The contrast between ancient and modern was, to put it mildly, incongruous. ‘We’re here under false pretences,’ she remarked. ‘We don’t understand about this bit of England, any more than it understands about us.’ She had stubbed out the rollie, taking care to extinguish every spark. ‘Dad’s a pill …’

For his sake, the old Mia would have been quick to instigate a hate session for Jocasta. The old Mia would have spluttered with unholy joy at the notion that Jake had walked in on their parents at the wrong moment. How the new Mia would respond, he could not guess.

Instead, seeking solace before he went to bed, he knocked on Emily’s bedroom door. She was in her dressing-gown typing into her laptop. As ever her room was neat and smelt delicious.

He asked miserably, ‘How am I going to cope with the fight ahead?’

Emily jumped to her feet. ‘Jake … sit down.’

Keeping half an ear open for Maisie, Jake sat on the extreme edge of the bed. ‘I don’t know why I’m bothering you,’ he said. ‘Sorry.’

‘I’m here to listen,’ offered Emily eagerly. ‘And you will cope.’

‘I feel terrible,’ he heard himself confessing. ‘The ground has been cut away from under my feet.’

‘It has.’

Her apparent wish to hang on Jake’s every word was very soothing. ‘I was unprepared, Em. For real life, I suppose. When Mia went it took me a while to learn to cope. Then I met Jocasta and I couldn’t believe my luck … Mia or no
Mia, she was everything I wanted.’ He glanced down at his lap. ‘I really loved her. She was the moon and the stars, and that was the trouble. I had my head in the clouds.’

She clicked her tongue sympathetically. ‘Falling in love is such a
big
thing and one hopes for so much from it. One longs …’ she faltered. ‘One longs …’

‘Speaking from experience?’

Emily shook her head. ‘Not …’

‘Right. Remind me to remind you of this conversation.’

She sat down beside him and slid her arm around his shoulders. ‘I think we’re all unprepared until the bad things happen.’ She pulled him over to her and kissed him on the cheek. Rather sweetly and with authority. ‘If you keep your nerve, Jake, it will come good.’

He turned his head to look at this rather surprising Emily. ‘I hope you’re right.’

They talked over what was likely to happen, and how Jake was going to pay for the lawyers, and how Ruth had helped to bring him in quite a bit of work. ‘Ruth is lovely, Jake.’

‘Yes, she is.’ At the thought of Ruth, he felt more hopeful, better braced to face everything.

Emily returned to the subject of Mia. ‘Are you quite sure you don’t know where she is?’

‘No, I don’t.’

She looked at him steadily. ‘I find that so difficult to believe when you were such …
twins
.’

Jake shrugged. ‘When someone doesn’t
want
to be part of you any longer, it kills all that.’ He thought for a second. ‘I can’t tap into her any more. Nor she into me.’ He turned and looked at his other sister. ‘That left both of us free to make mistakes.’

Chapter Twenty-two

After she had stormed out of number twenty-two with Pete trailing behind, Mia had written to Jake: ‘Dad shocked me, Jake. He has shown how uncompromising he can be …’ which was precisely as Jake feared Jocasta would be when he faced her in the mediator’s office.

Robin Tyler’s advice had been: ‘Go and negotiate and see what you can get out of it while we work on the case.’ Jake had listened and acted on that advice. Not so long afterwards, he found himself sitting side by side with Jocasta in a carefully bland, neutral meeting room.

Jocasta had flown into London the previous evening and Jake marvelled at her composure. She was lithe and buffed, with no trace of jetlag, wearing a composed and, ominously, expectant expression. Jake searched her face for a hint of the past that they shared, some clue that would indicate that, once, they had been together. But there was nothing.

Pat Anderton, the mediator, was a lanky man with thinning brown hair who looked as though he could not tie up his own shoelaces. Careful. Jake issued himself the warning. It would be unwise to assume that this was the case. Jocasta would have made sure she hired the mediator equivalent of the Raptor.

Anderton launched in: ‘I am here as a completely neutral and non-directive presence.’ He indicated the paper in front of Jake. ‘In a while, I’ll be asking you to consider what’s on
the paper but first I wish to discuss the reasons why you are here today. Are you both ready?’

Jake glanced at Jocasta. She was staring with a fixed expression at Anderton. At his question, she nodded and pulled her skirt a little further over her knees.

‘First of all, let me establish that you are both anxious to have matters run smoothly.’ He looked from one to the other. ‘Good. Together you got married. Together you had your daughter. There is no reason why together you cannot manage a divorce amicably and reasonably. That is my first point. The second is that matters will only run smoothly if you consider carefully the areas of contention now and resolve how best to deal with them.’

Jake decided that he disliked Anderton more than anyone he could think of.

‘My third point. What most people don’t understand is that marriage is a legal process and so, too, is divorce. Divorce always has to go through the courts in one way or another, and there are procedures over which the parties involved have little influence. Once the procedure is under way, you will have limited control. In this case, Jake, your wife, the petitioner, has cited incompatibility and no common interests.’

The new dark Jake said, ‘I noticed there was no mention of adultery.’

Jocasta swallowed but her composure remained intact. ‘The adultery was irrelevant.’

‘My God,’ said Jake.

Anderton extracted a pair of glasses from his pocket. ‘I reiterate that it is best to try to discover now the areas on which you do agree, which you will then report back to your respective solicitors.’

Jocasta shot Jake a look as if to say: See how reasonable I’m being in consulting this man.

‘I understand,’ said Jake.

Anderton regarded him thoughtfully and Jake suddenly perceived the Raptor strolling into view. ‘Your wife, the petitioner, has given me the background, but I would like to hear your version of events as the respondent. When she left, she agreed at first to sign over the house and its contents to you. Since then, the position has changed and the courts will take note of your separate resources. It is noted that you always maintained separate finances and held nothing else in common.’

Jocasta nipped in: ‘Correct.’

‘The main considerations, however, are your daughter and her maintenance.’

Here Jake interjected: ‘My wife left Maisie to my care. She was quite clear that she did not wish to take her. I, on the other hand, want her.’

Anderton observed the notes in front of him. ‘I have to ask you both to think carefully. Is it possible that you could reach an agreement over this?’

Jocasta stared at the floor. Then she lifted her eyes to Jake’s. They contained an unmistakable light of battle, with no trace of shame or guilt.

‘Once you go through the door of a court, you will be at the mercy of what the judge decides.’ Anderton paused to allow this to sink in. Was he daunted? Was he haunted? If not he ought to be. What sort of person was it anyway who wished to dig around in other people’s marital traumas? Sniffing up the rankness. Measuring the poison. Lapping up the details.
Not adultery
.
Incompatibility and no common interests
. How inept language was. All the same, Pat Anderton knew what he was talking about. ‘You have no idea how devastating this can be for the party who feels they have lost out …’

Jake could not bear to look at him. Outside a horn blared and he focused on its discordance, and tried to still the judders of his heart. Even the merest hint of losing Maisie induced agony and almost murderous anger.

‘… I can’t tell you what to do, or advise a particular route. All I can do is encourage you to talk and to guide you gently towards a solution.’

Jocasta got to her feet. ‘OK. Back to the beginning. I’ll give you the house, Jake, if you let me have Maisie.’

‘A house in return for my daughter?’

Anderton’s intervention was practised and measured. ‘You should be aware that the term “custody” has been abolished in favour of “residence” orders, and emphasis is laid on the idea that each parent is equally responsible whichever the child may be residing with.’

‘Could you stop right there?’ said Jake.

‘I understand you are angry,’ said Anderton.

‘Shut up,’ said Jake.

He knew – he certainly knew now – that he had the fight of his life on his hands. The death of his passionate mistaken love had left him with a vacuum at his centre. Nature being what it was, the vacuum was quickly filled with other feelings, bitterness, hatred, anger being only fractions of the complexity of the emotions currently buffeting him. As much as anything, he would have to come to terms with the recently discovered vengeful aspects of his own nature.

Jocasta said, ‘Jake, be reasonable.’

‘You
left
her,’ he said, with such ferocity that it startled even him.

‘Jake.’ Jocasta had assumed her business voice. ‘You don’t have a job and, God knows, you hadn’t much of an income when you did. How are you going to look after Maisie?’

‘I’ll manage as I am managing.’

She looked so glossy, so organized, so – if it was pos sible – American. In the short time she had been away, Jocasta had sloughed her old identity and slid into a new one.

‘Jocasta?’

She flushed and, her composure slipping a trifle, she fiddled with the big bracelet cuff on her right arm.

‘It was the deal.’ Jake also rose to his feet and faced Jocasta. ‘You went and you left Maisie to me. You freed yourself up for what you wanted to be and to go … with Noah.’

‘I didn’t know … I hadn’t thought …’ She frowned. ‘I was trapped by you, Jake … so
needy
.’ She averted her face. ‘It drove me crazy at times. And I couldn’t bear all that sanctimonious stuff about how awful commerce was, and how you hated to conform like everyone else. How else did you think you were going to live?’

‘You never said.’

‘It should have been obvious.’