Stop the Clock (36 page)

‘A relationship that comes to an end is not necessarily a failure.’

‘It will be in their eyes.’

‘What about in your eyes?’

‘How can I?’ Natalie said. ‘How can I abandon my family just because I suddenly decide it was all a terrible mistake?’

‘Who says you have to abandon them?’

‘That’s how my parents will see it, however it turns out.’

‘And do you believe your relationship with Richard was a mistake?’

‘How can I think that when I wouldn’t have Matilda without it?’

‘If Matilda was an adult woman facing the same dilemma, what would you advise her to do?’

Natalie tucked her feet up on the chair, rested her forehead on her knees and clasped her arms round her legs. Then it occurred to her that it probably wasn’t very hygienic to put her shoes all over the furniture, and she unfolded herself.

‘I’d tell her that life is short, and happiness is worth hoping for.’

Louisa permitted her a small smile, and Natalie thought: So that’s it. I really am going to have to go.

She’d been loitering in the garden of Eden: orderly, circumscribed, obedient and unsatisfying. Now she was about to get herself thrown out.

She and Richard almost never ate together now; he had started having his evening meal in the canteen at the
office before putting in another couple of hours at his desk. That evening he got home around nine and came straight to the kitchen, where she was ironing a shirt ready for work the next day.

He asked her how it had gone, and she murmured something about how it had been interesting, but Louisa had suggested she avoid going into too much detail until Richard had been for his solo session and they were both on the counsellor’s couch together.

‘Did you tell Tina what you talked about with Louisa?’

‘She didn’t ask,’ Natalie said, quite truthfully. ‘I think she could see I was totally shellshocked.’

‘Ah well,’ Richard said, looking apprehensive. ‘My turn next.’

Then, to her surprise, he gave her a quick, awkward hug.

‘It was brave of you to go through with it,’ he said. ‘Look, maybe we haven’t made such a good couple. But if we do come unstuck, we’ll just have to make sure that we’re the best possible exes.’

Then his eyes started to tear up and he beat a retreat.

At lunchtime the next day Natalie went to the canteen with Hannah, Lucy’s little sister, who had fetched up in her department on a six-month admin contract. Natalie had never seen Hannah out of jeans and baggy jumpers, and it was interesting, even a little intimidating, to see her looking rangy and lean in an olive-green trouser suit.

But then Natalie told herself she couldn’t allow Hannah to give her an inferiority complex. This was
Hannah: chaotic, untidy, disorganized Hannah, whose love life Lucy always rolled her eyes over, who was perpetually short of cash, running out of Tampax and let go from her latest job. This was Hannah, who’d slept with her brother-in-law and broken up her sister’s marriage, and who was being very friendly to Natalie, but nervously so, as if she was either worried that Natalie knew and secretly loathed her, or didn’t know and might one day find out.

Then they began to talk about work, and Natalie was reminded of a different Hannah; the one who had stoically run round after Lucy’s children for all those years, who had helped to deal with A & E dashes and chicken pox and tantrums and tears and way too much laundry, and who, after each pointless one-night stand and dull clerical post, somehow picked herself up, carried on and started looking for the next one.

Natalie asked after Lucy and Hannah said, ‘I think she’s going to be all right. This new job seems to have boosted her confidence, and the girls have settled down.’ Then she added, without looking at Natalie, ‘I have to say, it’s a load off my mind.’

Natalie wondered if she should say that she knew what had happened with Adam, but wasn’t going to make an issue of it. She had decided that if Lucy had made her peace with Hannah, it was all right for her to be cordial too; it was really none of her business. But then Hannah started to talk about something else, and the moment passed.

They talked briefly about TV, and films, and places to eat – Natalie, whose experience of the outside world
had been somewhat limited since she had Matilda, had few insights to offer about anything other than what was on the box, but it was pleasant to chat about things that she imagined she might, one day, be able to explore. Hannah spoke as if she half expected anything she volunteered to be pounced on and corrected. Her ruthless self-deprecation, hesitation and willingness to please were eerily familiar, and it took Natalie a while to work out that this was because all these qualities reminded her of herself.

Did being put upon make you more sensitive to other people’s needs? It was good to talk with someone she could trust not to comment on the weight she had lost, or to ask her when she was going to have another child. Probably comments about her figure were intended to be flattering, and asking her about extending her family was a sort of veiled compliment too, since it demonstrated a benign assumption that she was sufficiently motherly to wish to repeat the experience of giving birth. But no: why give people the benefit of the doubt? Such remarks just compared you to the way onlookers thought you ought to be. It was enough to prompt you to get very, very fat indeed, and have your tubes tied.

Anyway, the conversation flowed readily enough, which was encouraging, because Natalie had been worried that she would find herself out of practice at this sort of casual chatting after all the months at home with a baby, especially as her recent exchanges with Louisa Mead and with Richard were still so fresh in her mind. She wouldn’t have been surprised to find herself
staring at someone with her mouth slightly open and nothing coming out but drool, like an old woman on the edge of decay.

It was partly because she wanted to avoid this sort of drying up that she jumped in as soon as there was a natural pause, a possible end point, and remarked that she really ought to be getting back to her desk.

‘Oh, really?’ Hannah said. ‘But you’ve only taken half an hour.’

‘Yes, well, I’ve got lots to get through, you know, lots to catch up on.’

‘Lucy says you’re much too conscientious,’ Hannah said. ‘Can I tempt you to come out for a walk? It’s a beautiful day. I’m going to go down to the river.’

Natalie was about to say no, maybe another time; she couldn’t have pinpointed exactly what it was that changed her mind. It wasn’t really that she thought Hannah was attractive, and admired the sleek olive-green trouser suit, though those things didn’t hurt. It wasn’t even that she had, in the course of the last half-hour, come to think of Hannah as someone she could enjoy spending time with, and allow herself to like.

No; it was really the mention of the beautiful day, the river and the walk that clinched it. Natalie had come to think of walking as something she did to shed pounds and occupy Matilda; strolling and chatting with a friend was a luxury from a previous era. And she remembered of old that one of the things she had always liked about the offices of the Department for Children, Schools and Families was its closeness to the Thames.

In the oppressive, overcrowded city, which Natalie
had lately come to think her mother was right about, the river was always escaping. Sooner or later, the sluggish but indomitable water would make its way out past the Thames Barrier and eventually disperse into the sea. Seagulls would wheel above it, and holidaymakers would photograph it, and watch the water shift and retreat and meet the horizon, and be gratefully reminded of their own insignificance, and the compensatory pleasure of having a companion with whom to stroll on the beach.

TINA GOT THE
phone call she’d been dreading? the one that cast doubt over the security of her job? just after coming back from the park with William on one of the first sunny days of spring. She had even noticed a few belated daffodils coming up, and after the long dark winter the unfamiliar brightness was a boon she knew better than to take for granted, a permission to walk into a benign and generous future, in which people strolled and smiled rather than keeping their heads down out of the wind and scurrying past.

This new mood of optimism lasted just long enough for Tina to get home, take William’s coat off and lay him down under his baby gym. Then the phone rang. The caller display said:
Work
.

She picked up immediately, thinking that it might be Dan. He was able to call her more openly from the office now that they’d agreed it was all right for their colleagues to know he was William’s father, a disclosure
which Dan said had been, just as he’d predicted, a ten-minute wonder, with half their colleagues claiming they’d guessed months ago, and most of the rest indifferent, apart from a small minority who had clapped Dan on the back as if he’d just scored one for the team. (Tina hadn’t welcomed this detail.)

But instead of Dan saying, ‘So how’s my babymother today, and how’s my boy?’ she got Jeremy saying, ‘What do you want first, the bad news or the bad news?’

‘How lovely to hear from you. I’m very well, thank you, and you?’

‘We’ve taken an editorial decision to bring the Vixen Letters to an end. Now, don’t sulk. All columns die a death sooner or later. It’s inevitable. Part of the natural order of things. This one you’ve just filed is going to be the last one. Send me a paragraph to add on at the end. Wind it up. Say thank you and goodbye. Over and out.’

‘This is a surprise,’ Tina said. ‘You seemed to be happy with the way the column was going.’

‘I was, but right now it’s not going anywhere. You’re scraping the barrel, Tina. Let me remind you of the original brief. You were meant to be writing about being single and childless and thirty-five, right? Well, you’re not any more, are you? I can tell you’re trying not to whinge, but, honestly, sleepless nights, nappies, struggling on, who cares? There’s no story there. No drama. No news. It’s just drudgery. So that’s Bad News Part One. You ready for Part Two?’

‘Go for it.’ Tina’s voice came out as a strangled croak.

‘I need you to come in. Monday morning, eleven o’clock. We need to talk about your future in the
department. Now don’t get your knickers in a twist, cos we’re going through this with everybody. Voluntary redundancy programme. Aim is to reduce headcount by a fifth.’

Tina cleared her throat. ‘Somebody saw year end looming and panicked about the figures?’

‘What can I say, Tina? It’s not my idea. I’m just implementing the latest directive from the bean counters. I’m not happy about it either, believe me.’

Tina thought this was probably true; Jeremy didn’t have any qualms about wielding the hatchet for his own reasons – if someone screwed up a few times too often, say, or just wasn’t up to scratch? but he wouldn’t like doing it to order, and he would not be pleased about his kingdom shrinking. Fewer underlings equalled reduced power.

‘Monday at eleven it is, then,’ she said.

‘Looking forward to it.’

He hung up, and Tina put the phone back and allowed herself to cry.

She’d known, in principle, when she’d started the Vixen Letters that one day she would finish, just as she’d known, on the first day she’d walked into the offices of the
Post
, that one day she would pass the other way through the revolving doors and never return . . . and the first time she and Justin had gone up to a hotel room, it had occurred to her that there would be a final rendezvous too.

You couldn’t let the inevitability of last spoil the sweetness of first, or put you off, or deter you. You could usually forget the conclusion altogether if the
beginning was sufficiently seductive. But oh Lord, sometimes, when the ending came into view, it seemed like one hell of a price to pay.

But feeling sorry for herself wasn’t going to help. She needed to work out whom to ask to look after William on Monday morning.

She balked at asking her mother, because she didn’t want to have to lie, and she didn’t want to tell the truth either. Up until now, she’d been able to square up to Cecily with her head more or less held high. She kept telling herself, I’ll show them. It’s all going to turn out fine. I don’t need a husband to help me raise this baby, I can support him, I have a job. But if she lost her job, her situation would begin to look as unfortunate in her own eyes as it already did to her parents.

She decided to call Natalie, though she couldn’t remember whether Natalie worked Mondays or not. As she explained what had happened she was aware that her voice was high and breathless, not far off hysterical.

‘OK, Tina, deep breaths,’ Natalie told her. ‘Really – don’t sweat it. You’ll be fine. Bring him round on Monday morning. I’ll be here, and hopefully out of my pyjamas.’

‘Thank you,’ Tina said. ‘So . . . are you all right?’

There was a short, enigmatic silence, and then Natalie said, ‘Everything seems to be shifting, and I don’t know what’s going to happen when it settles. I know that sounds evasive, but I can’t really say much more right now.’

‘So if I were to ask you if you and Richard are breaking up, you’d say you couldn’t tell me?’

‘That’s about right, yes.’

‘You sound as if you’ve made your peace with it anyway, whatever it is that’s happening, or however it’s going to turn out.’

‘I don’t know about that. Things seem a bit clearer, maybe. Though possibly only to me.’

They said goodbye, and Tina went over to the photo montage mounted above the mantelpiece and looked for Richard. There he was, in his wedding suit on the steps outside Marylebone Register Office, next to Natalie in her cream lace prom dress, both laughing as they were pelted with confetti.

She had known Richard almost as long as she’d known Natalie; they had always seemed so well suited. And yet now it turned out that they had been fundamentally incompatible from the start.

And as for Lucy and Adam, their wedding had been a much more traditional affair, complete with the big white dress, the July drizzle, the chilly church, the even chillier marquee in the grounds of a country house hotel, and the drunken and marginally inappropriate best man’s speech.