The Red House (24 page)

She looked at him, assessing whether this was just politeness.

Was Louisa doing it to spite him? Richard wondered. He forced himself to turn to Angela so that he did not have to watch the spectacle.
I have an apology to make
.

For what?
said Angela.

Last night. You asked me a medical question
. Should he explain how he knew?
You never told me that you’d had a miscarriage
.

Why should I have?
Did that sound harsh?

Objection sustained
. He took a spoonful of the treacle pudding. It was oddly dry. He rather wished he could mash it up with the vanilla ice cream like Benjy was doing.
But it’s still a problem for you
.

I talked to Louisa earlier. I’m not sure I can talk about it twice in one day
.

I understand
.

He and Louisa weren’t talking, were they. Angela could sense his sadness at being cut out of the loop.

He changed the subject.
I’m assuming you don’t have any photographs of Dad
.

I don’t have photographs of anything. Mum threw them all away. Or maybe they got carted off with everything else. I’m afraid I didn’t make a huge effort to hang on to stuff
.

I have three
.

Three what?

Photographs of Dad
, said Richard.
I’m no longer entirely sure how they came into my possession. I thought you might be interested. I should have brought them with me
.

A little explosion of what? Excitement? Pleasure? Fear? She is trying to imagine what the pictures might be like but panicking because she is unable to do this. Stems and slime, that empty doorway.

Remind me and I’ll post them to you next week. To be honest, I’m not terribly fond of them, but I’ve always been chary of throwing them away. This fear that he would be angry with me. Absurd, isn’t it
.

Throwing them away? Without telling her? She gets to her feet.
I’ve got to go and check on Daisy. See how she’s doing
.

Dirty orange streetlights in the not-yet-dawn as she walks across wet black tarmac of the Wheelan Centre car park. Wet air and
the clang of lockers, the flash of a blue verruca sock, pound in the slot, slam shut, key band twisted out. She walks through the footbath into the hard white light of the pool, pushing her hair up into the rubber swim hat and snapping it down over her ears. The shriek and whistle of that ringing echo. She spits into her goggles and licks the rubber seal before flipping the elastic over the back of her head and sitting the lenses just right over her eyes. She stands and stretches beside the stack of red polystyrene floats, arms over her head, fingers laced, palms toward the ceiling. The black second hand ticks on the big white clock.

Getting in is like sliding feetfirst through a ring of cold. She dips down into the blue silence, looking up the pool to where the deep end vanishes in the chlorine blur, the air a ceiling of mercury studded with the red balls of the lane ropes. Someone kicks off beside her, trailing bubbles like silver coins. She stands and reemerges into the noisy air. Sanderson is on the side wearing the world’s worst shell suit, mauve and blueberry, bright yellow whistle.
People, people
. He claps and the building claps back.
Eight lengths warm-up. Let’s wake those legs and arms
.

She pushes off, that first glide like slow flight, four butterfly legkicks, then she breaks the surface, right arm arcing over, breathing behind that little bow wave the head makes. One, two, left. One, two, right. She tumbles at the end, flipping the world like a pancake. And Lauren is swimming beside her, that long stroke, the dolphin ease of it. They tumble together and swim in perfect unison. She is a bird of prey now, swimming up into the blue distance of the valley. The green of Lauren’s Speedo. That tiny tractor. Tumble, push, glide. Four lengths, five. Still the muffled secrecy of underwater but they’re no longer swimming, or are they? The air is warm and she can hear traffic. Or surf, maybe? The smell of cocoa-butter sun cream. They’re on an island. Kings and their judgment far away. Lauren leans back and snaps her swim hat off, shaking her long red hair free. Freckles on her shoulders and blue veins so clear under the skin that you could trace them with your finger.

Hey
. Lauren turns and holds her eye.
Crazy hazy Daisy
.

Alex is alone in the kitchen standing over the kettle, waiting for it to boil, when Richard comes in and walks over. Richard is never easy to read but Alex knows instantly from his expression what he wants to talk about and how he feels about it. Richard halts and pauses briefly, like a conductor, baton suspended before the downstroke.
Stop flirting with my wife
.

I’m not flirting
.

Don’t lie to me
. Richard had expected Alex to crumble. He is surprised by his own anger.

I didn’t mean …
He had been concentrating on Louisa. I think you’re really sexy. It never occurred to him that Richard might have been listening.

I don’t give a damn what you meant or didn’t mean
. This in a forced whisper so that no one hears it in the dining room. Richard is frightening himself but there is a relief too which is blissful.
You’re flirting with my wife and you’re doing it in front of everyone and you’re making me look like an idiot
.

Richard’s hand is raised and for a second or two neither of them are sure whether this will become physical. Then Richard lowers his hand, takes a step back and breathes deeply several times. He looks like someone watching a horror film and perhaps this is precisely what he is seeing in his mind’s eye. He turns and leaves the room.

Alex is shaking. The memory of Callum’s leg being broken rears up.
Show some fucking respect
. The fear that Richard is going to come back into the kitchen carrying that length of scaffolding. Richard the doctor, his uncle, the admirable man. Fixed landscape turning into ebb and flow. Fear turning to anger. He marches out of the kitchen. If he bumps into Richard he really will punch him in the face and fuck the consequences, but only Mum and Dad are sitting in the dining room and Dad says,
Alex …?
and the ordinariness of this is enough to restore a kind of sanity.
Yeh. Sorry. I’m fine
. He goes out of the front door, closes it behind him and punches the stone wall hard so that all the knuckles on his right hand bleed.

When Angela got upstairs Daisy was already asleep, still clothed, white socks with grubby brown soles, holding a teddy bear Angela hadn’t seen for a long time.
The Art of Daily Prayer
and Neutrogena hand cream on the bedside table.
Let’s get you into bed or you’ll wake up freezing in the middle of the night
. She eased the duvet from beneath Daisy’s hips then turned her onto her back so she could unbutton her dirty jeans and slide them off, like she was five again. Flu, chicken pox. Daisy half woke and said something Angela couldn’t quite make out.
Almost done
. She flipped the duvet back over Daisy and straightened it.
There
. Daisy turned to face the wall. Angela sat on the chair opposite. She was ill, that was all. Dominic was being overdramatic, playing the old game, concocting a story that threw a little charmed circle around the two of them. That bear. Harry? Henry? She had to sew a leg back on after it was torn off in a fight, by Alex, presumably.

Was she warming to Louisa? Or did she just like taking sides? Was that little confession about Karen simply the price she had to pay to show her loyalty? It was a fault of hers, she knew, comfort in conflict, black and white, us and them, knowing where one stood, none of that muddy moral ambiguity. The relief at work when Helen finally slapped that boy in her class after years of just being a crap teacher.

Laughter downstairs and the chime of crockery. A brief Christmas feeling then a memory of sitting in her bedroom listening to Mum shouting in the lounge. Except it was Dad shouting, wasn’t it, his voice suddenly so clear after all these years. Why didn’t he come upstairs and say hello? Why was he so angry? She wanted to run downstairs and have him turn and see her and break into that big smile and sweep her off her feet.

Then she was back in the present again, Daisy’s hands moving as if she were fending someone off in a dream. Angela got to her feet and stood beside the bed. She touched the side of Daisy’s head and waited till she was calm again, then retucked the duvet and left the room, closing the door quietly behind her.

He was sitting on the edge of the bed. She was standing, leaning against the chest of drawers with her arms folded.
This is not about you, Richard
. She closed her eyes to regather her thoughts.
I don’t know who I am, sometimes. I’m not sure I’ve ever known. I’ve tried so hard to please other people, my parents, Craig, Melissa, you. I listen to your music, I go to your plays, I watch your films. And it’s not your fault. I chose to be the person who fits in with your life
.

Are you saying you don’t want to be married to me?

I’m saying …
What was she saying? She was saying, Let me think. She was saying, Give me space. Just for once she wasn’t rushing to reassure him. Perhaps he was right, perhaps she didn’t want to be married to him. She wanted to turn this extraordinary idea over in her hand, like a shell she’d found on the beach, run her fingers over it, knowing that she might very well simply put it down again.
I’m saying I need to get some sleep. I’m saying we both need to get some sleep
.

D
aisy put the milk back into the fridge, closed the door quietly and picked up the mug. When she turned to leave the kitchen, however, Melissa was standing in the doorway. Coffee slopped out of the mug onto the stone floor.
Please. I just …

Melissa refused to move, she pushed her hands deep into the pockets of her hoodie and rocked forward onto the balls of her feet as if this had to be squeezed out.
I’m sorry about yesterday
.