Falling Off Air (10 page)

It was Adam. Why hadn't I anticipated exactly this? I cannot say. Except, perhaps, that I had erected such substantial barriers
in my head against him that I had assumed they had actual physical existence. Somewhere deep in my psyche I must have thought
he could not actually get close to me, not to my head, not to my body.

“Hi,” he said. “Are you talking to me?”

He smiled and it was a smile from the bedroom and the breakfast table. My heart twisted. That smile would warm my lonely hours.
The kids would love that smile. He would seduce me. All over again. He would let me down. All over again. This time he would
let us all down.

“In principle,” I said slowly, “but actually I have nothing to say to you.”

For an instant his smile faded, and I could see that behind it he was nervous. That was fine by me. Let him surfer. He cleared
his throat.

“How are Hannah and William?”

I raised my eyebrows in mock surprise.

“You know their names.”

He had the grace to look sheepish.

“Suzette told me.”

I nodded. I couldn't help noticing that heads were turning, that people were watching. Too many people knew our history for
this to be between the two of us. Suddenly I needed it to end. I turned to walk away, but he grabbed my arm and didn't let
go. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Jane step toward us, but I shook my head.

“I've been thinking,” he said, moving closer, lowering his voice. “I was a jerk …”

He still had my arm, and he held up his other hand to fend off my interruption. I could smell his soap. I could smell booze
too, and guessed he'd been drinking for a couple of hours already. He looked thicker around his chin, almost jowly, and right
at that moment he was displaying none of his old devil-may-care charm.

“I'm not saying we can go back,” he hurried on. “I'm just saying could I see them sometime, could I help out, maybe financially?
I feel bad …”

“Too late,” I hissed back at him, my face burning. I twisted my arm out of his grip.

“Oh for God's sake, Robin, they're my children as much as yours.” He was getting angry now, moving his weight from foot to
foot, his face too near to mine, and with a broadcaster's voice any whisper is a stage whisper. Everyone was getting this
loud and clear. “You can't keep them all to yourself forever. I just didn't want the whole domestic deal.”

I wanted to hit him then, or shout at him—something about domestic deals and love, and how one didn't work without the other—but
I didn't, because even in the white hot fury of the moment I was too ashamed of my own bitterness to share it with the world.
That was for his ears only. That was for later. Right now I just needed to shut him up.

“Adam,” my voice was barely under control, but I leaned in close so that the material of his suit brushed against my skin.
I put my hand on his shoulder and spoke in his ear. “I want to talk to you too. I want to talk to you about Paula Carmichael
and why my name and the names of my children are in her little book, and then perhaps you can explain it all to the police.”

He stepped back from me as though I'd slapped him, his face white, eyes wide. Then he turned on his heel and was gone.

Y
OU'RE going to hate this,” Jane warned me on the phone the next morning. “I'm only telling you because someone's got to, and
you'd rather it was me.”

It was Sunday lunchtime, and Jane was calling from Quentin Browne's flat, where she was reading the newspapers over eggs and
bacon. She didn't volunteer that they'd only just got up, but I could tell from her tone of voice. Quentin had picked up an
award for some news story or other, and there's nothing like a prize to tickle a man's fancy.

“Okay.”

“Are you sitting down?” I was standing by the breakfast table. The children had just finished eating and we were having a
competition to see whether I could clean up the floor before they ate all the bits off it.

“Just get on with it.” I knew I was being short with her, but we weren't all languishing in a postcoital haze.

“Okay. I'm reading the diary section of the
Chronicle.
Here goes. ‘At a glittering awards ceremony at the Grosvenor House Hotel last night, broadcaster Adam Wills picked up the
Nice Try award for romantic melodrama. The great and good of broadcasting were treated to the spectacle of Wills chasing after
his old flame, award-winning producer Robin Ballantyne, and practically throwing himself at her feet. Ballantyne, who had
two children by Wills and is said to be deeply bitter about Wills's failings as a provider, gave him the brush-off and left
him looking distinctly silly. After hounding him for money for the past year, it seems she is now the one playing hard to
get.’ That's it.”

For an instant I was speechless, and then it burst out of me, “Playing hard to get?” I was furious. “Hounding him for money?
Where did this come from?”

“It didn't come from anywhere.” Jane sounded taken aback. She tried to calm me. “They've just invented it. You know how these
things work.”

“I've never asked him for a penny,” I ranted on. “I don't want a … a provider. I …” but I couldn't carry on.

“Robin, this is just silly. I didn't mean to upset you. You should be laughing …”

“Why, Jane, are you laughing?” I snarled and hung up.

I rang the
Chronicle
then and demanded to speak to the editor and told him that I'd sue him for libel unless he printed a retraction. I should
have known better. It's a new newspaper and it sells itself as the prime purveyor of political and media gossip in the capital.
It is written in tabloid style but it gets most things at least broadly right, so that what starts out as gossip in the
Chronicle
is often picked up by the heavyweight papers. Its circulation has boomed because it appeals across the board, and because
no one can afford to dismiss it.

“A retraction of what?” he challenged me. “He chased after you, you gave him the brush-off. Dozens of people were watching.”

“I've never asked him for a penny.”

“We only have your word for that.”

“So whose word do you have for what you wrote?”

He almost laughed in my face then, and told me I couldn't expect him to say who his “news sources” were, but that if I wanted
to put my own side of the story in his newspaper, he'd be happy to print it.

I wanted to scream at him, but I'd already made things bad enough, so I hung up instead.

The day passed in a blue cloud of depression and the children caught wind of it and whined. Nothing would please them, and
to tell the truth I was only partly with them. I made sure they were fed and clean and clothed, I even tried to entertain
them, but my thoughts were in another place, with Adam. I thought I'd got rid of him for good and now he was insinuating himself
back into my life, even into my dreams.

After our public row at the Grosvenor House Hotel I had left, waving away Terry's offer of a lift, just climbing into a taxi
and going. I needed to be on my own, and for once I didn't care about the fare. I paid Erica and sent her home, very pissed
off. She'd just been settling into a video and was looking at another three good earning hours ahead of her. While she was
putting her coat on and phoning for a taxi I bent and kissed the twins, almost hoping one of them would wake up and I'd have
to cuddle them back to sleep. When Erica was gone I went back downstairs and switched on the television. I watched mind-numbing
shows until midnight, then forced myself to turn it off and go to bed. I read myself to sleep with the light on. I did all
I could, all in all, to stop myself thinking about Adam while I was conscious. Then, the moment sleep hit, I dreamed about
him.

You can't repeat a dream and have it make sense, but this one had woken me at four with the deepest feeling both of sadness
and of foreboding, as though my subconscious was not only chewing over the past but preparing me for something monstrous to
come. In my dream Adam and I lay together, naked, and I could feel his skin, his arms around me, his long legs tangled around
mine, his warm breath on my neck. I had come home, I was at peace and yet, somehow, I was outside my dream. I say this because
I was capable of identifying this sense of peace, and because I felt a deep sense of loss and betrayal because I knew that
this sense of peace was a false one. In the dream, I moved in the bed and bumped into another body, a lifeless dried-up thing,
naked too, and sexless. I screamed, and Adam reached toward me, but instead of drawing me to him he shoved me away and off
the bed. Then I was standing, looking down, and Adam reached out to the naked sexless thing and caressed it, and it seemed
to come alive at his touch, its wizened hand stretched out to Adam. Its eyes opened and it laughed at me, mouth wide and toothless,
blood seeping from its gums. I awoke then, feeling physically sick. I sat on the edge of the bed for several minutes, my head
hanging down, then I switched on the light, went to the bathroom, and doused my face in cold water. I looked in the mirror,
and for an instant I saw the creature looking back at me. I shook my head, and stared into the mirror again, gazing into my
own eyes, dissolving into myself.

“Get a grip,” I muttered and turned away.

I went for a walk on Wimbledon Common with my mother. It was cold, as promised, and it seemed colder still in contrast to
the heat of the past few days. The children were wrapped up like Michelin men, two sets of eyes peeping out from between scarves
and hats. Ma was horrified that I had so much as caught sight of Adam. The fact that we'd exchanged words positively distressed
her. When she heard what I was thinking, she looked as though she were about to explode.

“But you're doing so well without him, Robin,” she protested. “You don't really think you need him, do you?”

“I don't need him and I don't want him, but I can't just think of myself. The children are going to need some sort of father
figure …”

“For what? What could he possibly provide that you can't?”

“William will need a role model,” I said vaguely. “Hannah …” In truth, I wasn't quite sure what it was that they would miss,
since I'd had no father myself after the age of four, but Tanya's Patrick seemed to do a good job of it, in between working
night and day to stave off bankruptcy. I tried again. “Look. I need to go back to work. My savings are gone, we have to live,
and if I'm going to work I need other people to help me out. I'm going to need nurseries, babysitters, and that's all going
to cost money too. Maybe I have to say okay, I give in, you can help me out.”

“Adam Wills babysitting?” My mother's voice was filled with scorn.

“Ma, I cannot do it all.” I was getting angry. My mother's face was set and pained.

“I did,” she said.

“That's just not true.” I didn't pause to think, just leapt right in. “We had aunts and uncles coming out of our ears.”

She was pushing the double stroller uphill, her shoulders hunched over with the effort and also, it seemed to me, with hurt.

“Ma, I'm not criticizing you, and I'm not belittling what you did, but it's different now.”

Uncle William, my cousin Hannah, these were the names that came to me when the nurse bent over me and placed a baby on each
arm, asking me what I was going to call them. There were half a dozen names—Katherine, Donald, Meredith—that would have done
just as well. My mother's older siblings and their offspring had been my extended family. A couple of my cousins had found
work in Croydon. The better-heeled were now in Surrey and Sussex. There was no one left in Streatham except my mother. We
all kept in touch, but the bond that was so strong and proud when we were young was now stretched and weakened by distance
and time. It was only at Christmas that we managed to get together.

We paced on in silence, keeping to open patches of ground, aware that the light was fading fast.

“I thought I'd brought you up to be self-sufficient,” my mother said eventually, her tone at once disappointed and disapproving.
I bit back a reply and continued to walk in silence, but my mother couldn't let it be.