State We're In (46 page)

It was perfectly possible, even understandable, that at some point down the line he'd start to resent Jo's mother, and then that resentment might lead to hate. How long would it be before he hated Jo too? He imagined the moment. He and Jo would be married and they'd have the three kids she dreamt of, that he too would like. They'd be doing fine. Very happy. Then one day, not a remarkable day in any way, Clara would pop by to drop off some small, inconsequential but thoughtful treat for the children – a bag of Cherry Lips or Kola Kubes, perhaps – and she'd push open the back door, cheerfully yelling, ‘Yoo hoo.' But Dean wouldn't hear ‘Yoo hoo'; he'd hear the clunk of a door bashing against his dead mother's head. The thought made him sick.

But then he thought about Jo – her optimism, her thoughtfulness, her intelligence, her outstanding performance in bed – and he felt less lonely. Less unsure.

Almost comforted. Almost sure.

Could they make it work? Was this one of those sorts of moments? The moment before the leap into the deep choppy water or the dive out of the plane was always the most terrifying, but experience had shown him that it was also the moment ahead of the fabulous rush and the exquisite feeling of triumph.

He'd asked Clara where he'd find Jo. She'd beamed delightedly, assuming he'd made up his mind.

‘She's at home. In Wimbledon. Do you have the address?'

‘Yes, I do.'

‘Are you going to go to her?'

‘OK.'

‘OK?'

‘OK!' Dean suddenly saw the moment for what it was. It was one he had to seize. Without so much as a backward glance, he rushed out of the house.

The traffic was frustratingly slow. He sat nose to tail, crawling along the London streets. He wound down the window and tried to think whether he knew any short cuts. Down through Clerkenwell, Waterloo, Clapham and then on to Wimbledon would take about an hour. He wanted to get to Jo as quickly as he could, while he was this sure and this full. The important thing was not to let any doubts slide into his mind in the next hour. Not to dwell on the contrast between him and Jo but instead to concentrate on the things they had in common. He could just imagine her face when she opened the door to him.

He flicked on the radio for company. He found it interesting that it was a universal truth that rental cars were always tuned in to a local station, the sort that played retrospective music for middle-aged housewives and the retired. Dean hated the sort of tunes they played. He preferred to listen to Radio 1 so he could hear current tunes, or Radio 4 so he might learn what was going on in the world. He started to fiddle with the radio buttons to try and retune, but before he could successfully do so, he heard a blast of ‘There Must Be an Angel' by the Eurythmics. For a fraction of a second he smiled at the sunny thought that no one on earth could feel like this. He actually indulged in some pop culture cliché and thought that he, for the first time ever, understood the lyrics. Then he placed the song exactly and it started playing with his heart.

It had been
the
song of the summer of 1985, and just a few short chords brought the summer back to him. It was a typical British summer, in so much as there were cold, wet patches throughout May and June but finally, in July, Londoners enjoyed a few weeks of decent sunshine. It was around about then that the world became aware of Kelly LeBrock. She was the perfect woman as engineered by two geeks in the movie
Weird Science
. If ‘There Must Be an Angel' was the song of the summer of 1985, then she was the woman. She was the pin-up who made ice cream melt faster; girls wanted to be her, boys wanted to have her. She starred in all of Dean's pubescent fantasies; he remembered he'd had a poster of her up on his bedroom wall in the home, but some twat stole it, wanked on it then left the sticky mess under his pillow. Fourteen-year-old Dean could never feel the same way about Kelly LeBrock after that; she'd been ruined for him. It was around that time that some blokes started to wear tight trousers, frilly shirts, asymmetric haircuts and eyeliner. That was not a look that Dean experimented with; it wouldn't have been advisable in care. That sort of thing was judged severely. One lad made the mistake of playing a Culture Club cassette in the common room, and besides the fact that he could never again shower in peace, he was forever after known as ‘gay fucker'.

July 1985 was the month when Live Aid made a fortune for starving African kids and
Back to the Future
made a fortune for Hollywood executives. It was the month his mother had swallowed a bottle of sleeping pills, swilled down by a couple of bottles of vodka. Making it very hard for Dean to believe in angels.

C
lara went upstairs and repacked her case. She'd packed to leave Tim, unpacked at the spa, repacked and then unpacked once again at Lisa's. This time she knew she was packing for the final time. She was going home. Her marriage to Tim was not conventional, it was not what she'd imagined a marriage to be when she was a child, but it was enduring, worthwhile and loving. They had three children and three grandchildren together (she hoped there would be many more if Mark and Katie and Jo and – dare she say it, even to herself – Dean got busy). She and Tim had a history together. She wanted to go home to him. She could not dash there immediately; Jo and Dean needed some time to sort things out. She'd stay at Lisa's, make something nice for tea for her, Henry and the children. They could eat together, and then Clara would announce that her little break was over, that she'd thought it through and was returning to Tim. She'd go home at about nine o'clock. There would be champagne in the fridge – there always was – and she and Tim could at last celebrate their anniversary, while Dean and Jo would celebrate their fresh start.

It took all of Clara's self-control not to telephone Jo. She so wanted to put an end to her daughter's trauma and uncertainty, but she knew that a forewarning call would spoil the impact of Dean arriving on the step in person. Instead she spent the afternoon imagining her daughter's romantic reconciliation and making an organic beef lasagne. She did call Tim to tell him that she planned on coming home.

‘Well, that's wonderful news. I am glad.' She appreciated Tim's steely goodwill. Goodwill and manners helped in a marriage.

The dinner was cheerful. Lisa and Henry were able to be generous in their hospitality, knowing that their guest was about to leave. They were also delighted that Jo had finally found her happy ending, and grilled Clara for details about Dean. She told them that he was honourable, sincere and ‘wonderful to look at'. She didn't tell them that he was the son of the man she had once had an affair with; she would eventually, but there was a time and a place for everything, and tonight around the family's large wooden dining table was neither that time nor place.

When the taxi pulled up outside her home in Wimbledon, Clara took a deep breath and inhaled the scent of the garden buds and grass; how could she ever have thought of leaving this place? She was not surprised that there weren't any downstairs lights on at home. Tim's home office was at the back of the house, and it was very possible he was there, working, while he waited for her. She guessed that perhaps Jo and Dean had gone out for a bite to eat.

She pushed open the front door and allowed the space to settle around her. Home. She let out a contented sigh, slipped off her shoes and turned on the hall light.

‘Good lord, Joanna, you gave me a start.' Jo was sitting on the bottom stair, surrounded by darkness.

‘Sorry, Mum. I've been here for hours. I suppose it got dark around me. I didn't really notice.'

Clara was puzzled by the gloom in the hall and the desolation on Jo's face. ‘Where's Dean?' she asked.

‘Dean?' Jo was bewildered. ‘Dean's in America, Mum.'

‘No, he was here. Well, at Lisa's.'

‘When?'

‘This afternoon. He's here in England. He's come for you.' Clara beamed, thrilled to be the bearer of such wonderful news.

‘You met him?' Jo's tone did not match her mother's cheery one.

‘Yes. He's lovely.'

‘You know who he is then, I suppose,' her daughter said glumly.

‘Yes.' Clara felt mildly uncomfortable; it would take some getting used to, but she rallied. ‘And he knows who I am, but it's OK.' She sat down next to her daughter on the stairs. She considered putting her arm around her and giving her a congratulatory, celebratory squeeze, but she didn't. ‘He loves you.'

‘Did he say that?'

‘Well, not in so many words, but he was coming here to tell you. He did say that.'

‘He never came, Mum.' Bemused, Clara looked around the hall as though she was expecting him to suddenly materialise. ‘He would never be able to be happy with me, knowing about you and his father.'

‘But we talked about everything. He was reconciled to it.'

Jo too looked around the empty hallway. ‘Clearly not.'

J
o thought she was imagining it at first, but Dean was not a particularly common name, and it was all the more distinct for that. The woman sitting next to her on the park bench was repeatedly calling to her son.

‘Dean, be careful. You're going far too high on that swing.' Jo followed the direction of the woman's gaze and saw a boy, aged about six, swinging dangerously high but squealing with the joy of it.

Smiling at the coincidence, she turned to the anxious mother beside her. ‘My son is called Dean too.'

‘Really?' The woman's anxious face instantly transformed, and she beamed back. ‘Which is yours?' she asked. Jo pointed to her blond, curly-haired two-year-old son playing contentedly in the sandbox. She was aware that the box was probably used by all the neighbourhood's stray cats as a litter tray, but she didn't have the energy to deal with the issue at that moment. She rubbed her taut belly. ‘He looks significantly less of a handful than my Dean,' commented the other mum with a wry smile.

‘He has his moments,' laughed Jo. ‘But on the whole, yes, he is very good.'

‘And when are you due?' The woman nodded towards Jo's enormous belly.

‘Any minute.' Jo was amused by the return of the slightly anxious expression that this comment provoked. ‘Don't worry, I'm not having contractions or anything. When I say any minute, I mean in the next week or so.'

‘Have you thought of names for this one?'

‘It's a girl, and we're still deciding between Eva and Frances.'

‘Both are pretty.'

‘Thank you. I think we'll wait to see which she suits.' Jo thought that the conversation would probably come to a close now; it was a pleasant but unremarkable exchange, similar to dozens of conversations she'd had in various parks, cafés and soft play areas since she was first obviously pregnant. Women liked to chat about due dates and baby names. They both sat quietly and listened to children laughing and rowing, teasing and bossing one another as they climbed, swung and ran around the park. The sound of trainers and sandals scurrying across the tarmac and rubber created a pleasant rhythm.

‘How did you pick the name Dean? Did you have a choice of two then as well?' asked the mother of the older Dean.

‘No. He was always going to be Dean. He's named after an old friend of mine,' replied Jo.

‘My son is named after my brother.'

‘That's nice.' Jo paused. She wasn't sure what propelled her on. Maybe it was simply the lure of a coincidence – she was interested in the woman who had a child with the same name as hers – or maybe it was because the woman had a gentle, somehow familiar, open face that invited confidences; maybe it was simply Jo's hormones playing havoc with her common sense. Whatever the reason, she suddenly gushed, ‘Actually, Dean is named after the love of my life.' She allowed the huge phrase to slip out accompanied by a grin, which she hoped might mitigate some of the gravity of the confession. ‘Obviously, I haven't ever told my husband as much,' she laughed.

The woman smiled sympathetically. Most women had an understanding of that sort of thing. ‘So what happened to the love of your life?'

‘The usual, he dumped me. It was complicated. There was lots of baggage and it wasn't meant to be. It was the briefest of flings, really.' Jo felt she had to pull back from her large statement that Dean was the love of her life. It seemed disloyal to Andy to talk of Dean in that way; after all she'd only known Dean for four days, and she'd been married to Andy for four years now. Still, that was how she thought of him. Even now. The love of her life. ‘I've been with my husband for four years, and don't get me wrong, we are very much in love. We're very happy, but sometimes I do think back to Dean. Fondly. He was good for me.' She had not been able to resist calling her son after the man who had taught her to love, for real. The man who had helped her through the most brutal and embarrassing weekend of her life. The man who she had cried over for months and months. The one she had longed for for years.

The woman on the bench shifted; she rummaged in her handbag and pulled out some imperial mints. She offered one to Jo, who took it. At eight and a half months pregnant, Jo would eat anything anyone offered, even a dusty mint dredged up from a stranger's handbag. ‘Besides, if I hadn't met Dean, I'd never have met Andy. It's strange how things turn out.'

‘Were they friends?'

‘No, nothing like that. Dean was this very adventurous type. You know, always skiing, snorkelling or surfing. He thought I lacked interests, so he made me draw up a list of things I'd like to achieve in life. I met Andy on set.'

‘On set?'

‘Andy is an actor. I was an extra. So indirectly Dean is responsible for us meeting. He gave me a lot of confidence and direction. I've carried the list with me ever since. I've pretty much worked through the lot we drew up together and I've since added more.'