Someone to Watch Over Me (9 page)

‘Charlie, of course,' said Max in his ‘doh, don't you know' voice.

Molly sat down next her son and pulled him close to her. She knew that children often had imaginary friends, particularly only children like Max, but she thought it was odd the way her son had fixated on a child he had only met once. She couldn't help worrying that what had happened with Rupert had damaged him in some way, made him odd and unreachable. Maybe she should try working fewer hours and spend more time with him.

‘Why do you talk to Charlie?' she asked. ‘You can always come and talk to Mummy if you get lonely.'

‘Charlie knows what I mean,' said Max, and then, seeing something in his mother's face, said hastily, ‘You know what I mean too, it's just that Charlie is the same as me.'

Molly thought back to that day on the beach that had started so happily and ended so terribly. Max had been around five years old. It was during a period with Rupert when, although things were going relatively well, he often needed time away from Max's chatter, so she had taken him off to the beach. It had been a perfect day until the boy had gone missing. Although Max had played with him, she couldn't really remember what he had looked like, but his mother's face was still vivid in her mind. Molly didn't think she would ever forget the other woman's expression when she had run up to her on the beach, panting with the effort and with fear. Her eyes had been dark in her white face and her body tight and set, as if readying itself for what was to come. At the time Molly had felt bad that she had not stayed on the beach and helped to look for the boy, but she had had a desperate, uncontrollable desire to get away from there and to take Max somewhere safe. Max himself had seemed to be unaware of what was happening, but a couple of months after the incident she had been astonished when he asked her about it.

‘The mum on the beach didn't find her boy, did she?' he asked one night as she was putting him to bed.

‘I don't know, darling,' she had said tucking him in tightly, the way he liked. Although she did know. It had been in the paper and on the news for a while and she had followed the story without really wanting to.

Max got up from the floor and stretched. Molly looked up at him.

‘Would you like to talk about what happened with your dad, Max?' she asked.

‘No,' said Max, and his face had that blank, shut-down look he always got when his father was mentioned. She had tried several times to initiate conversations about Rupert but Max always changed the subject. She didn't blame him, since she didn't really want to talk about it either. Just the thought of her husband filled her with a terrible sense of shame.

The first time that Rupert hit Molly she was so astonished that she didn't feel the pain of the blow. Rupert had been working hard and the little time they had together was dominated by rows and tension. It seemed to Molly that the slightest thing she did would make her husband angry. Everything from leaving a fork in the sink to Molly spending ten minutes longer than the allotted hour at the supermarket provoked raging outbursts, followed by prolonged, punishing periods when he would say nothing to her at all. Max, who had turned four and had just started reception class, was old enough to be puzzled by his father's erratic behaviour; sometimes smothering him in kisses and bringing home outlandishly expensive toys, then becoming impatient at the slightest noise his son made. Some days, just the sight of Max bouncing on a sofa or running down the hall would be enough to send Rupert into a black, terrifying rage. Once, Molly found Max under the bed in his room. He was hiding because he had knocked the wastepaper basket over in his father's study and he was scared about what Rupert would say.

Molly thought that some Cretan sun and a fortnight together might help Rupert to relax; they hadn't had a holiday abroad since Max had been born. She attributed a lot of Rupert's moods to the fact that he had mentioned potential redundancies at work. He was clearly stressed by the idea that even if he kept his job he was going to have to do more work to cover the gaps.

‘Where did you get the money?' he asked, looking away from the picture of the villa she was trying to show him and continuing to cut his toast into four neat squares.

‘I sold a couple of paintings and I have been putting a little money aside every month,' she explained. ‘It will be lovely, it's a bit inland, but has a pool and we can hire a car.'

‘We can't go,' he said. ‘Get the money back. I can't get the time off work.'

But by the evening he had changed his mind and came back from work with a guidebook of Crete. He sat showing the pictures to Max and marking certain pages by bending the corners.

‘Look, Knossos,' Rupert said. ‘That's where King Minos imprisoned the Minotaur. It was his child but it was born half cow and half human.'

‘Is it still alive?' asked Max. Molly laughed more loudly than his question warranted because she was so relieved that Rupert had agreed that they could go after all.

The villa was beautiful and overlooked the White Mountains and a sliver of sea. During the day the three of them explored hot hillsides thick with ancient stones and thyme and then swam in a warm, wavy sea. Each evening they ate bread and salad on their veranda, watching the headlights flickering on and off as the cars rounded the bends in the narrow road that snaked below them. They went out on a snorkelling boat to a place where the sea was such a deep blue you felt you could cut a slice of it. Max was scared to jump out of the boat at first, but Rupert managed to persuade him into his arms. He held him in the water and pulled the mask over his eyes and nose. Father and son swam holding hands, their flippered feet moving in unison. Later Max wouldn't stop talking about the new place he had discovered.

‘It's just like our world,' he said, eyes shining. ‘It's got hills and valleys and trees and everything, but it's underwater and it's secret. It slides away downwards under you and makes you feel dizzy.'

Molly bought him his own snorkelling mask and he spent the rest of the holiday with it clamped to his face, only peeling it off to eat and drink, his skin water drenched and his face marked around the eyes with the ridges left by the rubber. On the last whole day of their holiday they went into Hania and wandered around the shops in the narrow lanes close to the harbour. Rupert bought Molly some earrings in the shape of tiny mermaids. They sat at a café with cane chairs and a raffia awning and watched the silver fish moving quickly in thick clumps through the water.

In the evening they finished the last of their bottle of supermarket ouzo. Max had gone to sleep, hot and open mouthed, his snorkelling mask packed away in his red suitcase along with a sea urchin shell wrapped in layers of toilet paper. Molly had found Rupert standing looking at his sleeping son. ‘He's great, isn't he?' he said turning to her, and she saw he had tears on his face. He spread the mosquito net carefully so that it covered Max's feet.

‘I'm so lucky to have you both,' he said, and Molly felt that maybe it would be alright between them after all. Maybe their little family had a chance. Maybe they could even think again about having another child. She stroked her husband's face and led him out to the pool. He pulled the cushions off the sun loungers and they lay down together. He began at her feet, and worked his way slowly up her body. He made her wait even though she was arching against him. She held his thick, dark cock in her hand and rubbed it against the inside of her thigh. He took her breast into his mouth and worked at her nipples with his dry, rough tongue, and still he took his time, pushing into her a little way and then out, holding her head in both his hands, watching the way her mouth moved. Afterwards they swam naked, the water on her body making Molly feel free and young again, and then sat close together wrapped in towels looking across the mountainside. There was a smell of jasmine and chlorine.

‘Will you be sorry to go home? Are you dreading work?' she asked.

He turned to look at her and smiled.

‘I'm not going back to my job. I handed in my notice five weeks ago,' he said. ‘I'm having some time off. I've gone off accountancy. I think I'll try something else.'

Below them Georgioupolis, the small seaside resort three kilometres away, illuminated suddenly as if one giant switch had been turned on. She felt a chill even though her body was full of sun.

‘When did you decide to do this?' she asked. ‘How will we manage?'

Rupert pushed her aside as he got up.

‘I knew you would be negative about it,' he said. ‘That's why I didn't tell you.'

‘I'm just surprised, that's all,' she replied.

Rupert stood with his back to her looking out across the hillside.

‘Darling?' she said, getting up and walking towards him. ‘Don't be upset, we'll work something out. You'll find something else. I just wish you'd said something …'

Without warning, he turned and lashed out at her with his fist. The blow was so hard she fell to the ground. For a moment she thought that she had been hit by something else; it seemed impossible that her husband had just struck her. And then she looked at his face and saw something that might have been triumph, a kind of glittering pleasure, and believed it.

Carrie and Jen spent the days leading up to Christmas getting ready for the sale. They knew that the things that glittered so brightly prior to the festive season would suddenly look tawdry as soon as the day itself was over, so in an attempt to counteract this post-holiday slump Carrie had ordered a lot of new merchandise that she thought would reflect the optimism and good intentions that the New Year brought with it. She had discovered a line of sportswear that would surely provoke even the most inactive to get physical. Made from soft towelling that bore no resemblance to the scratchy dressing gowns Carrie remembered from her youth, the retro-looking tops and jogging bottoms came in pastel hues. She was also expecting some bright gym bags with locker tokens attached, matching water bottles and some impractical but fetching sports shoes with wedge heels. For the less active, there were some journals and diaries covered in a selection of beautiful vintage floral fabrics.

Carrie was marking down a basket of glass baubles and remembering that her mother was due to arrive in less than five hours, when the doorbell went and Peter Fletcher walked in holding a parcel wrapped in silver paper and topped with a huge purple bow.

‘I couldn't let Christmas go by without seeing you,' he said, and gave her a hug. They had shared so much that Carrie always felt comfortable with him. He was one of the few people in her life with whom she didn't have to pretend.

‘Can the shop spare you for long enough for some lunch?' he enquired and she thought that he looked tired.

‘Are you OK, Peter?' she asked, knowing that it was a stupid question. Christmas is always the hardest time of year for people who have lost children. Everywhere you looked there were reminders of the years you had been unthinkingly lucky to have your child and a warning of all the years without them to come.

‘Not really,' he said.

Jen was only too happy to have an excuse to stop tidying up the stockroom and marking down the sale merchandise and she came downstairs to look after the shop while Carrie was out. She gave Carrie a sly dig in the ribs as she put on her coat and gave her lips a quick gloss with raspberry-flavoured balm.

‘What?' demanded Carrie, knowing only too well that Jen, with her mania for match-making, already had her signed, sealed and delivered into the arms of the widower, whose loss rendered him deeply romantic in Jen's eyes.

‘He's keen. Mark my words he's keen,' she whispered, ‘I think he's put on his best jumper.'

‘Don't be daft,' said Carrie, shooting her friend a warning look through the window as she and Peter set off down the road.

They secured a table in the corner of the local bistro that was tucked conveniently in a cul-de-sac behind
Trove.
They both ordered bowls of bean and chestnut soup with slices of brown bread and butter.

‘I can't stop thinking about them,' said Peter suddenly. ‘They're around every corner.'

Carrie knew from experience that she didn't need to reply. It was enough that she was there listening.

‘And the actual day. I've not moved on like they say I should have by now. I play it and replay it in my head. The hospital, the way they were.'

Carrie placed her hand over Peter's and he clutched it.

‘Sorry. I'm sorry.'

‘Don't be,' she said.

She let him talk and they drank a bottle of wine and on the street outside the shop he held her very tightly. Carrie could see Jen through the shop window, capering to and fro like a mischievous, although rather hefty elf.

‘Listen,' said Peter, ‘I was wondering if you would like to come for dinner … I thought about inviting a few people from the old group, you know. Say if you don't fancy it.'

‘That would be nice,' smiled Carrie. ‘Ring me after Christmas. We'll talk.' She stood for a while on the pavement outside the shop and watched him walk away with the slight stoop that was characteristic of him. She wondered fleetingly whether grief had actually changed his posture for good. Perhaps in the days before she knew him he had walked straight as a die. Perhaps there was something about her too now, something visible, that allowed people to see that she was grieving.

Jen followed Carrie into the back room while she hung up her coat and scarf. She wanted details.

‘What did he say? Did he admit his passion?' Jen asked gleefully, running feta-smeared fingers through her hair. She had eaten her Greek salad baguette on the move. Despite Carrie's frequent admonishments she had a tendency to touch the merchandise with greasy fingers.