The Forever Girl (16 page)

“I’m quite the cook these days,” he said. “Not that I’m boasting. It’s just that necessity is the mother of invention.”

“I’m sorry.”

He smiled. “Oh, I don’t say that out of self-pity. I actually rather like it. If you look in the kitchen you’ll see all my books. Delia. Jamie. All those people.”

“I’m impressed.”

He moved towards the door. “Come through when you’ve unpacked. I only have to heat it up.”

Standing in the doorway, for a moment it seemed that he was going to say something else, but he did not. She looked at him expectantly, and it seemed to her that in their exchange of glances, at one time both uncertain and regretful, was the whole history of what had happened between them.

She unpacked, throwing her clothes into a drawer that she now remembered clearing, years earlier, for visitors; little thinking then that she would be a visitor in her own house. That was the most painful thing about separation, she felt: the ending of the very small things, the ordinary sharing, the unspoken reliance; removing one’s toothbrush from the bathroom was as big a step, in a way, as making an appointment with the divorce lawyer.

She went into the bathroom that led off the bedroom. There was a slight smell of mustiness about it – inevitable in that climate, when towels became fusty within hours of going on the rail. But he had put a small bag of lavender on a dish, and she picked this up and smelled it, holding the muslin to her cheek. He had remembered that she loved lavender, and the thought that he had done this, had bothered himself, touched her.

She had thought about it before, of course; had entertained the possibility that she could fall in love with him again – as
suddenly, perhaps, as she had fallen out of love with him. People did that, sometimes going to the extent of remarrying the person whom they had already divorced. She had met a couple like that – an elderly couple from Savanna who spent several months of each year in Cayman; he had divorced her in order to go off with a younger woman. The younger woman had treated him badly, leaving him for a youthful band instructor. He had waited a few months and then gone round to see her to propose marriage again, and she had said yes; an example of forgiveness, she had decided, when it would have been so much easier to crow, to enjoy the
Schadenfreude
that such a situation could provoke.

She looked in the bathroom mirror. What exactly was one entitled to expect from life? Romance that could last a lifetime, or, at best, the comfort of friendship with a chosen person? Had she been naïve, she wondered, to imagine that she should have remained in love with David rather than just to have lived with him in reasonable comity? Husbands and wives did not stare fondly into one another’s eyes; that required mystery and a sense of wonderment at the other, which surely could not last very long. And she knew – as everybody did – that you had to accept that marriage could not be a fairy story, that you could not go through life feeling as if you have just had a glass of champagne, that all you could hope for was a sort of unchallenging companionship – an understanding not to judge each other too harshly.

Yet even that required a form of belief in the other, and that could be so quickly ruined by the wrong words, by an expressed doubt, an act of disloyalty, that would weaken the pact that you both wanted to exist. It was rather like saying that you do not believe in God; God can be a fine pretence, can give all the comfort that you need, until you doubt his presence; and with
that you find that he is indeed not there.

She turned away from the mirror. She would try.

She started to leave the room, but stopped. She closed her eyes. Standing below the air conditioning vent, the cool air blew directly on her skin. And she thought: insecurity. He had brought it up when they had been talking about over-eating but now she was going over it in her mind and realising that if she went back to David it might just be because she felt at some subconscious level that this was where her best chance of security lay. She needed him because he had the money and paid for everything.

She opened her eyes again and started to make her way to the kitchen, where she heard the sounds of his preparing whatever it was he was heating up for her.

“Bouillabaisse,” he announced. “Made with red snapper.”

“And …”

“And conch.”

She raised a hand to her lips in a gesture of gastronomic anticipation. She did not carry it through, as she felt the tears well in her eyes. How stupid of me to cry, she thought; how stupid.

“Onions,” she stuttered.

But he knew that it was not the onions that she could see he had been cutting that were making her cry, but memories. He put an arm around her; and this was the first proper touch of him for years.

“Start again?”

She was unprepared for this. The move, she had thought, would come from her, not from him, and now she felt gratitude, sheer gratitude, that he had chosen to make it so easy for her. She
moved against him, into his embrace. Three years, she thought, of pointless misunderstanding and separation are coming to an end in a simple touch. There had been no elaborate discussion, no rehearsal of pros and cons, and she felt that she was falling into this decision without thinking things through. But she had had enough; she had had enough of loneliness; as he had, too, she imagined.

He kissed her, and she wondered whether she really still liked it. She remembered what a friend had said to her at high school, all those years ago:
if you wouldn’t use a boy’s toothbrush – and you wouldn’t, would you? – then why kiss him?
The things people say can ruin the things we would otherwise like to do, and kissing – or the prospect of kissing – had never seemed the same to her after that. She had forgotten what it was like to be this close to him; it was familiar and yet unfamiliar; she had become used to his separateness and had not given thought to the physical.
Perhaps I have shrivelled within me. Perhaps I can’t
. “Tonight?” he said. “Or you can wait if you like. You mustn’t feel under pressure.”

She said that this was not the way she felt. “I feel so silly crying like this. This was not the way it was meant to be.”

“But it is,” he said.

His embrace turned into a playful hug, and then they broke apart, each as surprised as the other by what had happened. “Are they both asleep?” he asked, nodding in the direction of the bedrooms along the corridor.

She said she thought they were.

“Clover’s very excited,” he said.

She nodded. “There’s a reason for that.”

He looked at her enquiringly.

“She wants to see that boy,” she said. She looked at him hesitantly. “James. He’s the reason.”

“Ah.”

“Yes. I fear she’s in for a disappointment. These teenage romances … Particularly one-sided ones.”

“Poor girl.”

“We want to protect them, don’t we? We want to protect them from the pain that we know is coming their way, but what can one do?”

He shrugged. “We can warn them. We can tell them the truth.”

“That won’t work,” she said. “You think you know what the truth is at sixteen. All other versions of it are wrong.”

“Just like us?”

“Yes. Just like we did at that age.”

He sighed. “My little girl … thinking about other men.”

She laughed, and she realised that this was the first time she had laughed in his company for more than three years. He seemed to sense this too, and he grinned at her. She thought: he’s changed, and of course I can fall in love with him again, or at least fall in friendship, if there is such a thing.

18

Clover saw Ted before she saw James. She had gone with her mother to the supermarket – an everyday trip but one that, after three years’ interruption, was like performing once more an important ritual of childhood. It was exactly the same as she remembered it – the car park with its hotly contested shady spots; the line of shopping carts along the front of the building; the cool exhaled breath of the air conditioning as the automatic doors parted to admit you. The smell was familiar too: the ripe, sweet smell of the fruit at the entrance, and then the piquant notes from the trays of ready-made dishes. The man at the fish counter was the same man whom she had last seen standing there three years ago; his white straw hat at the same angle and the apron with his embroidered name and the printed picture of a jumping marlin. The same tired woman was spraying water over the salad vegetables and she glanced at Clover and then looked at her again before deciding that she recognised her, and nodded.

Ted was standing at the section where magazines were displayed. He was reading something about cars and he looked up and smiled broadly at Clover.

“Clove,” he said. “It’s you, isn’t it?”

“Yes, me.”

He put the magazine down. “It’s great to see you.”

“And you.”

“I mean it,” he said.

“I know you do.”

They looked at one another awkwardly before she broke the ice. “I’m here with my mother. Shop, shop, shop.”

“Me too.”

She looked over her shoulder. “We could go and have a coffee round the corner. They’re going to take ages.”

“Yes, they always do.”

In the coffee bar, the awkwardness that Ted had shown seemed to melt away. He told her about the school he was at – an international school in Wales – and asked her about Strathearn.

“You haven’t changed,” he said.

“Nor you.” That was not true, she thought, but she said it nonetheless. Ted had changed; his face was thinner, she thought, and that slightly puppyish look he had at twelve was no longer there.

“But I hope I have,” he said.

“Then you have.”

Their order of coffee arrived.

“What are you going to do?” he asked.

“Now?”

“No. While you’re here. For the next two weeks.”

‘Three.” She paused. He was watching her. “Nothing much. Chill, I suppose.”

“There’s going to be a party.”

She caught her breath, but tried not to look interested. “It’s that time of year.”

“James is having one.”

He was watching for her reaction, and she could not help herself blushing. He’ll be able to tell, she thought.

“Yes?”

“Yes, the day after tomorrow.” Ted paused. “Would you like to come?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. He hasn’t invited me.”

“Oh, that doesn’t matter. Nobody’s being invited as such. All
his friends can come.”

“I’ll have to think.”

Ted sipped at his coffee. “I hate this stuff,” he said. “I’ve never liked coffee. I only drink it because everybody else does.”

She stared at him. “You don’t have to be the same as everybody else.”

He wiped cappuccino foam from his lips. “I know.”

“Just be yourself. It’s easier.”

“Yeah, sure. Is that what you do?”

She did not answer.

“You like him, don’t you?”

She affected ignorance. “Who?”

“James.”

“He’s all right.”

Ted smiled. “No, it’s more than that. You really like him, don’t you?”

She turned the questioning back to him. “Well, what about you? You like him, too. You really like him.”

He stiffened. “He’s a friend. I like my friends.”

“But some more than others.”

“Sure. Who doesn’t?”

He was watching her warily. She had strayed into something she had not expected, and her instinct was to move away. “I might come to the party,” she said. “Will you tell him?”

“What?”

“That I’m coming.”

He shrugged. “It’ll be fine. I don’t need to tell him … but I will, if you like.” He paused, as if weighing up whether to continue. “By the way, you know how people can’t stand other people?”

She said nothing. Was he going to say that James could not stand her?

“Your mother,” he went on. “Your mother and James’s mother. Don’t go there.”

She looked at him wide-eyed. “What do you mean?”

He seemed to be enjoying himself now. “You remember years ago? You remember how when we were kids we played at being detectives, or whatever. We took photographs at the tennis club.”

“Sort of,” she said. “It wasn’t my idea – it was James’s. He liked to do that sort of thing.”

“Maybe, but he took them of your mother talking to his dad. And he made some sort of note about their meeting one another. Kids’ stuff.”

She remained silent.

“James’s mother found them – the photographs. She thought that it showed that your mother and James’s father were … you know … seeing one another.”

She felt a sudden coldness within her. “Oh.”

“James told me,” Ted continued. “He said that his folks had a major row. Big time.”

She could only think to say that it was not true.

“I know,” said Ted. “Adults get it seriously wrong sometimes. But the point is that she hates your mother.”

Clover struggled to control herself. “I don’t care.” She did.

“I don’t think she hates you, though,” said Ted. “What your mother does has nothing to do with you.”

“She didn’t do anything.”

“I’m not saying she did. All I’m saying is that if she did something, then it wouldn’t be your fault. You see the difference?”

She nodded. She felt miserable.

“James doesn’t hold it against you,” Ted went on. “He’s cool with what happened. I suppose he’s more embarrassed than anything.” He paused. “He likes you, you know.”

She struggled to control herself. She wanted to ask him what James had said; she wanted to hear the exact words. But she did not want Ted to know how desperately she wanted this knowledge.

“I’m not saying that he’s
keen
on you,” Ted said. “Not in
that
way.”

She bit her lip. She tried to laugh. “I didn’t think you meant that.”

“He’s got a girlfriend, you see.”

Now she lost the battle to remain aloof, and Ted noticed. “I can tell you’re upset,” he said. “Sorry about that. It must be tough if you’re really keen on somebody … and they don’t notice you.”

She tried to look scornful. “I’m not
really keen
on anybody. I don’t care.”