Life Begins (40 page)

Eve wasn’t sure what she had been expecting. Grey hairs, a middle-age spread, eyes pouched with suffering? Out of respect for Charlotte she had avoided not only the high street but also quizzing Tim on the subject. The poor woman had been through a lot, after all, if their recent burst of transatlantic email correspondence had been anything to go by: a divorce, money worries, Sam’s bout of unhappiness in school – it had been quite a catalogue of woes. Long before the Tim thing, responding with news of her booming mailorder business, her satisfying personal life, her love of all things American, Eve had at times experienced the occasional unfamiliar stirring of compassion for her old friend.

‘Charlotte!’

‘Eve!’

There was an instant – as quick as a camera click – of mutual sizing up before they fell into each other’s arms. ‘Trust you to be in the thick of it and still look like Nicole bloody Kidman,’ Eve accused, smiling hard while inside there stirred the old wariness of being outclassed, overshadowed. ‘And where is darling Sammy?’ she exclaimed, pushing the feeling to one side and casting an anxious glance at Jasper, who was making small leaping efforts to join in the celebrations. ‘I’ve bought him something horribly complicated to build – advanced Lego. You even need batteries.’

‘How lovely,’ Charlotte murmured, easily forgiving the inappropriate gift (how could Eve possibly know that Sam’s dusty box of Lego had been the only thing with which he had gladly parted company during her recent clear-out?), and (slightly less easily) suppressing the urge to insist that ‘Sammy’ was not an acceptable option in the repertoire of possible abbreviations of her son’s name.

The sheer oddity of having Eve on her doorstep was even more overwhelming than Charlotte had anticipated. She looked so exactly as she remembered her, yet not so. The dusty brown hair was still shoulder-length, still with a straight, girlish fringe, but had been streaked with blonde and gold and, instead of hanging in its old limp way, seemed to bounce off her head and neck as if it had an energy supply all of its own. More striking still was how the full, matronly figure, once shyly camouflaged under smock dresses and baggy dungarees, was now being shown off in a close-fitting skirt and a low-cut top, flaunting the large, shapely assets that the young Eve – usually amid groans and much tugging in front of mirrors – had laboured to conceal.

‘You look
amazing,
’ Charlotte cried, grabbing the dog, whose attentions, she could see, were not appreciated, and noticing as she bent down the extravagant soft suede of Eve’s high-heeled shoes. ‘Fantastic – you look fantastic.’ Pushing the door further open, she stepped back to make room for her guest and a large wheeled suitcase to enter the hall. ‘Sorry about the dog – it’s my mother’s. And Sam is at Martin’s but only till tomorrow – and I’m afraid there’s been a change of plan on the mah-jong front,’ she gabbled, not knowing which subject to address first. ‘There’s been a bit of a drama, but come in, come in… I’ll explain everything later. Oh, Evie, it is rather
incredible
to see you after all this time.’

‘You too, and isn’t this heavenly?’ Eve gushed, parking her case at the bottom of the stairs and darting in and out of rooms in a show of enthusiasm designed to mask a reflex of distaste at the homely, faded furnishings and visibly scarred cream walls. It made her long to show Charlotte her sitting room in Boston, with its peachy silk scatter cushions that matched the ties on her curtains, and the milky carpet of such deep pile that, three years after its purchase, she still asked each and every visitor to take their shoes off at the door; a house-rule that often caused irritation, but which always ended up breaking the ice, even with dour-faced customers, like the grumpy Mexican who had come to spray the drains for cockroaches and ended up staying for a mug of iced tea, flashing two highways of cobbled gold every time he smiled.

‘It’s not remotely heavenly,’ Charlotte corrected her cheerfully. ‘It all needs a face-lift. I’ve got a decorator lined up but he’s running late on another job – usual story. Oh, how kind,’ she exclaimed, as Eve whisked a bottle of wine out of her shoulder bag.

While her host went in search of a corkscrew, Eve quietly rejoiced that the hideous mah-jong had been called off. And Sam not being there was a blessing too. Polite chit-chat with housewives, playing the adoring godmother were challenges at which she knew she could excel, but not nearly as appealing as rolling up her sleeves for a proper chinwag. She had another bottle in her suitcase, but would keep that for later, when the juices were really flowing and they’d reached that lovely stage of not counting glasses, by which time – she sincerely hoped – Charlotte might have dropped some of the stiff, wide-eyed, rabbit-in-headlights look and begun to let her hair down in a manner that bore some relation to the glorious auburn stuff still cascading off her head.

‘I’ll need to smoke, I’m afraid,’ she confessed, when Charlotte returned with a corkscrew and two glasses. ‘I know everyone’s giving up, these days, but I’ve never been one to swim with the tide. I’ll go outside, of course,’ she added, with a brisk glance at the evening sky, darkening to purple ink through the sitting-room window. ‘You’ve been off the weed for years, I presume?’

‘A while, yes,’ Charlotte admitted, dismissing a mild temptation to mention the recent near-relapse behind the church in Chalkdown Road. She wondered suddenly how Dominic had viewed the episode and her heart lurched. While she had imagined closeness – some sort of meaningful connection – with him there had clearly been nothing of the sort. Kindness, politeness, leading to an offer of dinner, that was all. And amid the jollity of the meal the brother had been noticeably cool, she remembered now, nothing like the warm, joking creature who had welcomed her on the doorstep when she dropped Sam off before Easter.

‘Er… going outside
would
be best,’ she ventured, brought back to the present by the sight of Eve blithely settling into
a chair and lighting up. Where was the Eve who
did
swim with the tide? she marvelled. The Eve who used to fuss at
her
about lung cancer, who preferred comfortable clothes instead of five-inch heels and tops a size too small. The Eve, more pertinently, who would have offered to help with preparations for supper instead of standing next to the kitchen door, ineffectually puffing smoke in the direction of the garden while offering a running commentary about the joys of life on the East Coast.

‘I’d like to freshen up,’ she said, as Charlotte was draining a saucepan of easy-cook rice. ‘I’ll find my way. Won’t be a tick.’ The thump of the suitcase on the stairs followed, then everything went very quiet. After a few minutes, Charlotte placed lids on the dishes of hot food and went into the hall. Peering up the stairs, she could see the door of the spare room had been left ajar. She was on the point of calling, when Eve’s muffled voice drifted out on to the landing, interlaced with bubbles of laughter. So she was on the phone, talking to a man by the sound of it. Charlotte smiled to herself as she retreated. Good for Eve. Without the consolation of motherhood, having someone would be all the more important. Without Sam, for instance… Charlotte looked back up the stairs as the door to the spare room swung open and Eve emerged on to the landing, her hair even more buoyant from a recent brushing and her lips softened with a fresh layer of pink.

‘Hey!’ Eve pulled an arm from behind her back to reveal another bottle of wine. ‘Shiraz – always good after a merlot, – don’t you think? New World, of course. I
love
the New World. And look what else I found!’ She waved her other hand. ‘Talk about a grisly memento, Charlotte darling… From a
well-wisher.
How sick is that?’

Charlotte folded her arms, trying to keep her smile in
place, fighting an absurd, dim sense of violation. She had expected to get on to the subject of divorcing – of Martin – of course, but not so early, or in a manner that made her feel so uncomfortable, so… hijacked. ‘I’d forgotten it was in there. I –’

‘And who was this
well-wisher
, that’s what I’d like to know?’

‘Me too. I mean, I – I never found out.’

Eve fell against the banisters with a theatrical gasp.

‘I kept it because it was what ended us,’ said Charlotte, simply. ‘Martin and I, that thing you’re holding is what brought it – finally – to an end.’

Eve was advancing down the stairs now, shaking her head. ‘Are you serious? This?’ She dangled the note between two fingers. ‘This was why you let him go? Didn’t it make you want to
fight
to keep him? Martin.
Martin.
You let him go for
this
?’

Charlotte took a step backwards. It dawned on her that her guest was more than a little drunk. During the chainsmoking session standing at the kitchen door, she had got through most of the first bottle on her own. ‘Supper’s ready.’ Charlotte swiped the note out of Eve’s fingers and stuffed it into her handbag as she led the way to the kitchen. ‘It’s getting cold.’

Eve clung to the banister post for a few moments while her body swayed in search of equilibrium. She had meant to bring things to such a head, but not quite so quickly. Having got back in touch with Charlotte on a spurt of something like nostalgia, a desire to reconnect with her English roots, the news of the separation from Martin had sharpened her focus to the point where a face-to-face encounter had felt imperative. Orchestrating it had been the easy part, she saw now. How to play things with Charlotte actually within her grasp was going to be far harder. Already the note, peeking
out at her from the book in the bedside drawer, had almost fast-forwarded everything off course. Not to mention the wine, which – if she was honest with herself – had probably followed a little too closely upon the shots in her cup of tea and the vodka tonic that Tim had poured on his return from work, before pulling her skirt up and spinning her round to take her against his hall wall, knocking pictures and knick-knacks in his haste for release.

In the kitchen Charlotte was doling out spoonfuls of rice and runny mincemeat bobbing with kidney beans. ‘I didn’t know how much you wanted,’ she said briskly. ‘I hope that’s okay.’ She placed the steaming plate of food on one of the table mats, right next to a full glass of water. ‘Please, Eve…’ She gestured at the food – at the water. ‘Sit.’

‘I’ll fetch the corkscrew first, shall I?’ Eve tapped the shiraz bottle so that the rings on her fingers chimed against the glass. She didn’t look directly at Charlotte or at the place setting. The glass of water was like an order, and she didn’t take orders these days, not from anyone. ‘I think it got left in the sitting room.’ She could feel Charlotte’s eyes – still remarkable after all these years, still men-winning – boring between her shoulder-blades as she left the room. ‘In for a penny…’ she muttered, steadying herself with thoughts of Tim (talk about a piece of luck) as she gripped the bottle between her knees. The cork resisted, then popped free with a squeak and such force that an arc of red drops sprayed on to the carpet. The bubbles of liquid subsided into the mottled blue, leaving a line as visible as row of hammered nails. Eve wondered idly whether to drop to her knees and dab at them with a tissue. She hated mess, especially her own. But it was such a horrid old carpet, she reasoned, stepping back over the stains, lifting her pointy shoes very high and with great care, as if the barrier being crossed
for her return journey was far more impeding, far more treacherous than a few dribbles of wine.

Sam had no plan. One minute he was on the smooth new black-treacle surface of the compound’s network of roads, the next he was bumping along the dirty, heaving pavement that ran along the main road, keeping a wary eye out for old ladies, as his father had jokingly instructed. There were several as it happened, one with a stick, one in a motorized wheelchair and one funny tottering one who walked sideways and had long hairs sprouting out of her chin and who scared the life out of him by asking for help crossing the road. It wasn’t easy with the bike and the old biddy squeezing his arm while he pressed the pedestrian button. But once he had got her over and watched her scurrying crab-walk into the courtyard of a high-rise Sam felt pretty good, as if his small adventure had been fully justified.

He turned back for the lights, but the road was once again log-jammed, the vehicles bumper to bumper, hissing and roaring like a herd of jostling beasts. So Sam walked on a bit further, pushing the bike, keeping an eye open for a shop in which to blow the fifty-pence piece he could feel jumping around in his pocket. There were none on the main road, but spotting a Walls ice-cream sign down a side-street, he hopped back into his saddle and rode towards that instead. Hopes high, he arrived to find that the sign was a leftover prop of a disused garage. Two boys, one white, one black, who looked a few years older than him, were skateboarding round the forecourt, taking it in turns to try jumps on and off the elevations that had once housed the pumps. They wore tracksuit bottoms and vests that showed off the muscles in their arms. Their wheels rumbled like thunder on the ruptured concrete.

‘Hey, we got ourselves an audience, brother,’ shouted the tallest one, after a couple of minutes. He nodded in Sam’s direction. ‘Shall we charge him or what?’

Sam looked away but didn’t move. He could be quick on his bike, really quick. He felt angry, powerful. He had a mum who screwed other people’s dads and a dad making babies with a woman hot enough to be a model. These two might be older, taller, but they couldn’t touch him. And it felt cool too, to be perched in this strange place with the evening sun warm on the back of his neck, one foot on the pavement edge, ready at any instant he chose to push off. Both the boarders were good, but the smaller dark-skinned one was definitely the best, crouching low as he took off, then flinging out his arms like a ballet dancer as he nailed his landings.

‘Are you watching, or what?’

Sam shrugged.

‘Hey, brother, he thinks he can
watch
, man.’

Sam hesitated at this, not because the words themselves were more threatening but because they were directed over his right shoulder where he had registered no objects of interest beyond a couple of overflowing recycling containers. Turning slowly, like an animal taking stock of danger, he saw now that there were three other boys, emerging from between the two bins, scuffing heedlessly through the bottles and stray sheets of newspaper as if the debris was of no more consequence than water lapping at their ankles. Their arms hung a little away from their sides, like they fancied themselves as cowboys, ready for a race to a draw. Except there were no holsters, of course, or guns. And this wasn’t the Wild West, but Rotherhithe on a sunny May evening, with people streaming home from work just yards away and his dad and Cindy not much further off, snuggling on the
sofa, no doubt, making the most of not having him around.