Separate Beds (46 page)

‘What does Mum mean by “Moloch”, do you suppose?’

‘God knows.’

Jake said, ‘Good Lord, what’s that doing here?’ He was pointing to the sickly pink doll’s crib askew on top of a pile of ironed sheets on the table.

Emily glanced at it. ‘No idea.’

‘How funny.’ Jake ran a hand over it. ‘Dad must have found it somewhere. We made this together.’ He smiled. ‘Never finished it, though.’ He removed it to a safer perch. ‘Might have another go at it.’

Upstairs, Rollo was barking, which probably meant their grandmother was on the way down, and Emily stuck her head out of the kitchen door. ‘Can you manage, Gran?’

‘Wish Rollo would shut up – he’ll wake Maisie.’ Jake dabbed at a sodden patch of milk on his sleeve.

Emily busied herself with plates and cutlery but, actually, she wanted to take a deep breath and confess,
I’ve seen Mia
, and watch his reaction. In the old days she might have rushed in (and written up the results in her notebook) but now she was cautious. So much still lay in the balance, so much feeling, so much anguish, and the past year had taught her to respect prudence.

‘You know, Em, you shouldn’t worry if you’ve given up your ambitions temporarily.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘Nor you.’

Jake dabbed away ineffectually at his sleeve and, regarding him fondly, Emily felt a lump rise into her throat. She decided that she loved him more than she had ever done and Mia’s removal from the family had opened up a space into which she could step without any worry at all.

‘Here. Let me.’ Seizing a clean dishcloth, she set about sponging Maisie’s milk out of her brother’s sleeve.

Hermione appeared in the doorway, Rollo at her ankles.
‘Is it supper yet?’ Since she had lost the plaster cast, she had taken to hugging her injured arm close to her chest.

‘Hallo, Gran.’ Jake ushered Hermione into a chair. ‘Do you think you could stop Rollo barking at nights?’

Rollo’s claws clicked over the kitchen floor. ‘I don’t think so, dear, it’s his way of talking to me. Is supper on its way?’

Emily and Jake exchanged glances. ‘Not so long, Gran,’ said Emily.

Much later in bed, her clothes neatly folded away and her bag ready for the next day, Emily reflected on the hungers in life. Hunger for love … perhaps for power, certainly power to control your existence as much as possible … for fame … for fulfilment. And, yes, she wanted her life to be crowded with as much as she could fit into it.

The writing … the writing … it would wait. It would keep.

Then she thought of Mike … a bubble as light and joyous as a dandelion puff shimmered inside her and burst into a luminous shower.

‘There’s something I want to ask you,’ said Ruth.

‘Ask away.’ Jake was reading a note that had been shoved under the door of the workshop. ‘Give us a bell,’ it read in an unfamiliar hand, followed by a number. He threw it down on the bench and heaved up a box of the latest objects to arrive for repair. These included an electric lamp in the guise of a globe. If you twirled it, the continents glowed in turn. The non-continents didn’t seem to get a look-in.

‘You know you’re not here so much, these days …’ Ruth turned in a swirl of red ballerina skirt, which she had
teamed with a black satin blouse that had puff sleeves and huge buttons. She looked both striking and soft and, Jake concluded, shone with an inner purpose.

‘Aren’t I?’ Jake was startled and Ruth flushed bright red. ‘I certainly intend to be.’

The very idea of not having the workshop engendered powerful feelings of dislocation and was not to be thought of.

‘Oh.’

‘Well?’ He smiled encouragingly. ‘Go ahead.’

‘My dressmaking business. I told you my flat’s too small and I wondered if I could share this with you. I’d pay my way. I can’t afford much but I imagine it would help.’

Was he being doled out charity – which would be a new and embarrassing position to be in? ‘No need.’

‘That’s a yes?’

He had been meaning to say that he would like to think about it. ‘You’re welcome to a bit of space.’

Ruth sent him a straight look – and now there
was
a discernible hint of her charity. ‘Mustn’t confuse business with other things. So, shall we agree a figure?’

They haggled pleasurably. Stop being gallant, she admonished. You have to live. We’re friends, he argued. Friends don’t exploit other friends.

At that, she blushed again.

Jake asked her what her turnover was – he had never inquired before – and she named a sum that brought him up short. Ruth was making money. Not much, but more than him.

He made coffee for the two of them and asked her to tell him a bit more about the business. He leaned against the
bench and she swung up on to it, and they discussed design, materials and her perpetual hunt for old dress patterns.

‘I scale up the old patterns,’ she explained, in a businesslike manner that Jake found touching. ‘Women are bigger, these days, and I make sure I cater for the biggest. You lose half the market otherwise, and why should bigger women be made to feel like pariahs? It’s a waste of good curves.’

His gaze lingered on her waist. ‘If you say so.’

‘You can make fun …’ but she was smiling.

‘No,’ he said gently. ‘I won’t make fun. Although I wouldn’t mind a good laugh.’

She turned her face away. ‘The other day …’ she said. ‘You don’t have to …’

Jake moved closer. ‘Don’t have to what?’

‘Think that kissing me is a problem. Or that it meant anything.’

He frowned. ‘Didn’t it?’

Ruth searched Jake’s face. ‘Well, it did, actually.’

‘Ruth, I was kissing
you
.’

Any memories of Jocasta were knots in a rope belt pulled ever tighter round the waist, each jerk a reminder of failure and humiliation. He had got to know memory’s tricks. It lay in wait and sprang on him when he was at his most vulnerable or least wary. But getting wise to the tricks meant he could deal with them and, as he grew stronger and bolder, he planned to bury them as deep as he could dig. With Maisie or –
perish the thought
– without her, he would move on, toting the weight of experience and a new realism. That was the way it worked. Meeting Ruth’s searching gaze, he had the feeling that, despite her defensiveness, she understood.

He smiled wryly. ‘That’s it. Jocasta is finished.’

‘She didn’t have to marry,’ Ruth pointed out very gently. ‘Or have Maisie. Some of it she agreed to.’

‘True.’ Jake’s eyes narrowed.

‘One can brood too much. Nostalgia can fuzz things up.’

Jake’s interest sharpened. ‘You mean nostalgia is shortsighted? Or even blind?’

‘If you like. Something like that.’ She jumped down to the floor. ‘If we’re agreed, I’ll go and get some of my stuff and bring it over.’

‘I’ll help you.’

She considered the offer, then said, ‘OK.’

It didn’t take very long. While they relayed a sewing-machine, plastic storage boxes filled with thread and sewing accessories, a couple of wheeled racks with made-up stock and her precious pattern archive, Jake was set to wondering how Ruth, despite a certain vulnerability and her own grief, managed to be so grounded.

‘I’ve never asked about you,’ he said, guilty that he had been so self-obsessive over the past months. ‘You talked about your parents when you came to lunch that day.’

‘You know about me.’ Ruth smiled. ‘Matt’s gone. My parents live in Finchley and I hate the place. I set up my business a year ago. It was a struggle, but an optimistic one. The figures haven’t been bad either. The website is gathering traffic. If I get any bigger, I really will have to find an assistant.’

‘But
you
…’ Jake kidnapped a box from Ruth and set it down.

She turned on her heel, and the red skirt swirled. ‘This is me.’

They stood the machine as close to the window as pos sible without there being a danger of the sun damaging the materials. Jake liberated a couple of drawers and, while Ruth put her stuff in them, he phoned the number on the note.

‘Oh, hi, mate,’ said a strange voice. ‘I’m Warren. Word is that you’re a chippie and looking for work.’

‘That’s right.’

Warren explained that he had bought a block of flats around the corner that had been due for demolition and redevelopment as luxury apartments. ‘Credit crunch done for that, mate. So, all change on tactics. I’ve downgraded the operation and will do them up for renting. I need someone to supervise the carpentry and all that. It’s got to be cheap but look good, if you see what I mean.’

Jake did see what Warren meant. He saw it absolutely – as clear as day – and it was as far removed from his original ambition to create pieces with substance and inner life as it was possible to be.

‘Hard times,’ said Warren. ‘Can’t be choosy.’

Jake agreed to turn up for a site meeting the following morning.

‘All being well, I’ll need you on and off for around a year,’ said Warren, before the phone went down.

Can’t be choosy. Mustn’t be choosy. He had work. Right.
Grateful
. Would be able to pay legal fees, keep Maisie.
Right
.

Ruth moved around her allotted area, shutting and opening drawers, stacking industrial-sized reels of cotton on the shelves, building a mosaic of colour. With a frou-frou of material, she unleashed a waterfall of bright blue cotton, inspected it, folded it away and ticked it off in her notebook. Absorbed in her tasks, she took no notice of Jake.

Reapplying himself to the figures jotted down during his conversation with Warren, Jake began to flesh out rough costings for kitchen units and bathroom fittings.

He peered at Ruth. Settled at her stretch of the bench, she was occupied in threading the machine. He watched as she brushed back a strand of hair and tsked with her tongue as the thread failed to slot through the eyelets. Her movements were purposeful, but curiously peaceful, too, and contented.

He must have moved for Ruth looked up. Their eyes met in an extended question mark but also in the beginning of a conversation that would continue – and she was the first to look away and return to the task in hand.

The peacefulness and contentment had percolated through to Jake, and he went back to the costings.

Tom chucked the evening paper and the biography of Lincoln on to the desk by his computer. Nowadays he could truffle through the contents of the charity shop with the best of them. Even if the stuff smelt of dust and relegation, he was proud of his new-found skills.

The room was a mess that would send Annie up to Planet Despair. He couldn’t have that, so he plumped up cushions and whisked away piles of newspapers and several mugs. Then he fetched a duster and shimmied about around the lamps and the few ornaments Annie permitted in the room. She hated clutter – and he now understood why.

Next, he attacked the sofa, which displayed a suspicious-looking set of rough hairs at one end – he’d kill Rollo and stick him in a dog pie if he didn’t obey the rules.

It was only by chance that he discovered Annie’s account
books half shovelled under one end of the sofa. He picked them up and sat down to take a look.

Shopping and Expenses were all entered up and the numbers spent on them reasonably consistent. Travel varied, depending on what Annie was doing. But it was the ‘Me’ column that stopped him dead in his tracks. At the beginning of the year, the accounts registered some pretty hefty sums for hair, holidays and makeup. That was Annie. But as his finger moved down the months, it traced a story of abnegation as ‘Me’ dwindled into practically nothing.

The roll-call of thrift made Tom frown. What did her hair look like when he’d lost the job? If he was honest, he hadn’t registered what
she
looked like. After living a long time with someone, the outer appearance became not exactly unimportant but irrelevant. One only took note of it from time to time. Annie’s hair now? Tom frowned. It
seemed
longer, even less tamed. More to the point, he didn’t like to think of her without her hair appointments as he knew how much they mattered to her.

He rechecked the Input column. Annie had noted her salary to the last pence. The remainder of the column was blank. Output? The sale of her mother’s ring was recorded and, more recently, not huge but significant additional sums of money that helped to balance the books for the month. Puzzled, he searched further among the figures and realized that Annie, in the last month, had sold what remained of her jewellery. Items: garnet cross, pearl-drop earrings, a sapphire brooch, which (as if it helped the case) she had never liked.

Tom’s cheeks burned. Annie was selling her possessions, not to keep the household but to help him pay his losses.
His debt
. The poles between her husbandry and his recklessness had never appeared greater or more black and shameful.

Dustpan in hand, he got down on his knees and brushed away at more of Rollo’s hair. Exuding a faint whiff of dog, they adhered to the carpet nap with the obstinacy of their owner.

His marriage was never meant to be like this – the estrangement of a child, the end of a job, the coldness and misunderstanding.
Debt
. Neither was a self-imposed ban on trips to the hairdresser part of the master plan.

He had started out so convinced that things would fall into place, so sure that, in love and work, it took only goodwill, good communication and a strong overview to achieve success. Annie’s accounts, their secret revelations, and his joblessness indicated a different pattern.

A little later, he sought out Hermione.
You must talk to your mother more
, Annie had instructed before leaving for work.

‘Is there an agenda?’ he had asked.

‘No. But I think she’s struggling a bit. She hasn’t really settled since coming back from hospital. Haven’t you noticed she’s not eating much?’

Hermione’s eating habits had always been sparing. ‘She’s a one-biscuit person, yes.’

Annie grimaced. ‘Give me strength.’

Hermione had taken to sitting in the kitchen with whoever was making supper and he discovered her there with Jake and Emily. As he shoved a macaroni cheese into Moloch to heat up, he asked her, ‘Would you like me to take you to church this Sunday? You haven’t been for some time.’