Lifesaver (15 page)

‘Well, I suppose you can’t tell him that you were in Gillingsbury at all then,’ Lil had said, contemplatively.

‘No, I can’t.’

‘Really though, he’s not all that likely to ask. You’re not doing anything wrong. And you are going back there, aren’t you, so you’d better get it straight in your own mind.’

I hadn’t been sure if I
was
going back, up to that point. But Lil said it as a statement, which, coming from her, turned it into an endorsement. I instantly forgot about Vicky’s pregnancy and even, briefly, my own childlessness, and began to look forward to it, as if her words were a licence to overlook the nascent deception already tiptoeing out of my conscience. ‘Yes. Tomorrow.’

Why not? I deserved a change of scene. And the sullen, closed-down expression on Vicky’s face, when I’d delivered her children back home again, made the idea of putting a hundred miles between us even more appealing.

By the time I reached the outskirts of Gillingsbury, negotiating the complex one-way system with a great deal more aplomb than on my first visit, I was glad to have arrived. My back felt stiff from hunching over the wheel, my eyes ached from the blur and wash of water in front of them, and I was fed up with Run DMC. Plus, I was hungry, and, for some reason, far more nervous than I’d been three days earlier. That last visit could have been a one-off, an experiment. This one was a premeditated conscious decision.

At least the parking wasn’t so difficult this time. Somebody had recently pulled out of one of the few non-restricted spaces on the road near Moose Hall, leaving a tender pale grey rectangle of dull tarmac on the shiny wet street. I reversed into it, not only with gratitude but with an irrational urge to keep the dry space protected by the underbelly of my own car.

The sign wasn’t outside the hall, and the door was closed. I panicked for a moment, and it struck me how disappointed I’d have been if the project had finished, or if nobody was there. But the paint-flaked door yielded when I turned its circular iron handle, and I walked in to find bright overhead lights illuminating the gloomy dusk inside the hall. The bad news, though, was that the place was was empty, apart from Serena striding towards me in a what looked like a child’s pink plastic mac, her wrists poking out of the sleeves, and her footsteps echoing on the dusty boards.

‘
Hello
again! I was just on my way out,’ she said, but nerves had dried my mouth and tightened my throat, and I began to cough. Once I started, I couldn’t stop, and within seconds I was doubled over, hacking. Thank goodness that had never happened to me on stage - yet. Vicky said she once farted audibly in the middle of a very moving soliloquy by her leading man when you could have heard a pin drop, at the Manchester Library Theatre…t felt strange to think of Vicky, here, where it was easy to pretend she didn’t even exist.

‘Perhaps you’d better wear a mask this time,’ called Serena, walking back to a table with a large bottle of Evian and some plastic glasses. She poured me a cupful of water and handed it to me.

‘Thanks,’ I croaked, drinking it down in one draught. A different and barely begun section of mural now sat on the trestle table in the middle, so I was reassured that at least the project hadn’t suddenly been completed. ‘Where is everybody?’

‘Not many showed up today. The rain puts them off, I think. Anyway, there were so few of us that we decided to go to the pub for lunch. Nobody’d made sandwiches. I just stayed behind to finish my wheelbarrow’ - she gesticulated vaguely towards the centre of the room—‘and I was about to lock up. Would you like to join us?’

‘Is that OK?’

‘Of course. Mitch will be delighted to see you again.’

My heart sank. Why Mitch? I contemplated finding an excuse to go and walk around the shops or something. The thought of being wedged into some red velour pub bench hell, as Mitch droned on to me for the next hour, was enough to bring me out in hives.

‘So, who else is there?’ I tried to sound casual.

‘Only Margie, Ralph and Adam today. Very poor turnout.’

I took a deep breath. ‘I’d love to come. Thanks.’ I’d just have to be tough with Mitch. And hope that Ralph wasn’t wearing his pornographic shorts.

The pub was just around the corner—luckily, since I hadn’t brought a coat and the rain had intensified. It was a large and sprawling whitewashed building with too many windows in odd places, like somebody had just stuck them on the outside as an afterthought: bays, dormers, skylights, sashes. A wonky sign above the porch announced The White Horse. Estab. 1595, before dripping water down my neck as I paused to hold the door open for Serena.

Inside, it had the chilly unwelcoming feel of a pub in summer daylight hours—like many old pubs, it was the sort of place shown to its best advantage by artificial light, a couple of roaring fires and lots of people rubbing shoulders at the bar. At lunchtime it just looked forlorn and neglected, and smelled faintly of cold ash, dampness, and spilled beer. I couldn’t see anybody else in there at all, but Serena led me with authority around a corner, and there they were, sitting at a large table in an alcove, all four of them attacking gargantuan ploughman's’. Ralph—who, I was relieved to notice was wearing long cotton trousers with unfashionably elasticated ankles—and Margie had their heads close together, deep in conversation, but they stopped talking when they saw us.

‘Sorry,’ said Adam when he saw Serena. ‘We were starving, so we went ahead. Oh, hello, Anna! How are you?’

‘Fine, thanks,’ I said, smiling back at him and wondering if Max had inherited those same startling eyes. ‘I hope it’s OK, me being here.’

‘Of course!’ they all chanted in unison. Mitch patted the seat next to him—it was indeed a red velour bench—but thankfully, so did Adam, and the seat next to him was an empty chair right on the other side of the table. I practically elbowed Serena out of my way in my haste to get to it, and she said, rather pointedly, ‘Who wants another drink?’

I felt slightly crushed, and stood up again. ‘No, please, let me get these in.’

‘No, it’s fine, I’m halfway there. What would you like?’

I dithered, then sat down. ‘Well, I’ll get the next round. Could I have a pint of bitter shandy please?’

‘Same for me’ said Adam, holding out his empty glass.

‘Snakebite, please Serena,’ said Mitch, wiping a few drops of liquid off his straggly moustache. I had to prevent myself rolling my eyes. Honestly, did people really still drink
snakebite
? I’d thought that had gone out with Iron Maiden and patchouli oil.

‘Orange juice for me, thank you Serena, and—another lager, Ralph?’ added Margie. ‘Hello Anna, it’s nice to see you again. So many people just show up once and never come back, even when they say they will.’ Then she turned back to Ralph, and continued the conversation they’d clearly been engrossed in before our arrival.

‘Aren’t you going to eat?’ asked Mitch, ripping off a huge, thick strip of ham, the sort of meat which made me quiver; purpley and raw-looking, with a trimming of white fat and some suspicious-looking veiny bits running through it.

‘This ham is delicious; here, try some.’ He thrust a wobbling forkful of it across the table towards my mouth, and I recoiled. I could just about cope with watching people eat that pink, thin-sliced processed stuff, but this was all far too hard-core.

‘No, thanks, I’m a vegetarian.’

Mitch rolled his eyes. ‘Vegetarian, schmegetarian—you wait till you taste this. That’ll get you off the veggie burgers for good.’

‘
No
, thank you,’ I said, a little more forcefully than I intended.

Adam looked up with interest. ‘Mitch, my friend, I didn’t notice you were eating meat. I thought you were a person of hippie principles?’

‘Macdonalds, man,’ mumbled Mitch through a mouthful of ham. ‘My downfall. I bloody love a Mackey D.’

‘Do you eat meat?’ I asked Adam. His ploughman's was a delicious-looking concoction of Brie, pickled onion and chutney, and my stomach rumbled audibly.

‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I’d better go and order some food in a minute, I’m starving.’ Just in time, I refrained from adding, ‘I had a long drive to get here.’ Whoops, I thought. Better be careful. It also suddenly occurred to me that at all costs I had to avoid Adam catching sight of any of my credit cards, my drivers’ license or my chequebook, all of which bore the name Anna Sozi.

‘Well, I’m not technically a veggie. More of a piscetarian who eats the odd bit of chicken.’

‘Which odd bit—its bollocks?’ said Mitch, throwing back his head and treating us all to a view of his scrawny, spotty neck as he barked with laughter at his own perceived hilarity. The man was a nightmare. And he had the longest hairs coming out of his nose that I’d ever seen on any creature that wasn’t a horse. Or maybe a walrus.

‘I never used to eat meat at all,’ Adam continued. ‘but I’ve got a little boy, and when he was younger he was …quite ill, and didn’t eat much.’

I forgot my hunger in an instant. I also forgot to breathe, and bit my lip so hard that I nearly drew blood. Max! Adam casually mentioning him like that suddenly made him more real to me than he had been up to that point, in Adam’s letter, or in Pamela Wilkins’ comments about him.

‘But he really liked chicken, so I started having it in the house and cooking it for him because there were so few things that he
would
eat. And then I discovered that I quite liked it too. But neither of us eat red meat.’

So Max liked chicken. I wondered how much of an accurate picture I could build of him, what sort of wobbly tower of gleaned titbits I could create without actually having met him. OK, so at the base of the tower we had the fact that his mother wasn’t around, and that he liked chicken. It was a start.

‘Is he all right now?’ I asked, forcing my voice to sound normal.

Adam’s face relaxed, his eyes crinkled, and I wanted to lean over, grab his cheeks between my two hands, and kiss him. ‘He’s
fine,
’ he said, with such pride that tears jumped into my own eyes.

‘That’s great,’ I said. ‘Really great.’ I stood up. ‘Better go and order my lunch.’

‘In fact,’ Adam continued, looking at a point over my right shoulder, ‘here he is; the man himself!’

I suddenly felt as if my body had suddenly turned into some kind of woollen garment which somebody was unravelling from the bottom, yanking an end of yarn at my heels that was travelling up my calves towards my knees, threatening to topple me. Turning slowly, I forced myself to start walking away from the table towards the bar. It would have looked odd, to sit back down again, and besides, I needed a minute to compose myself. I saw an elderly lady in an old-fashioned spotty rain hood holding a little boy by the hand, and the top of Max’s head; thin brown hair, thin arms in an old yellow Toy Story t-shirt and trainers which flashed red when he walked. I couldn’t bring myself to look at his face, not yet, because it was too overwhelming.

Adam called after me: ‘Anna, would you mind ordering an Appeltise and a cheese sandwich for Max, while you’re up there?’

I nodded and waved behind me, unable to turn back around, completely choked with my good fortune.

When I got back to the table the lady in the rain hat had gone. Max was sitting on a pulled-up stool, on the opposite side of Adam to my empty chair. He was leaning into Adam, who had one arm draped protectively around him, and the sight of them together made me panic all over again, not sure if I’d be able to go through with it…at least, not without appearing very strange indeed. It was just that I hadn’t expected to be meeting him for weeks, if not months—and yet here he was, on my second trip to Gillingsbury. Come on Anna, I thought fiercely. It’s a meant-to-be. Focus.

So I focussed on Max. As the adults talked across the top of him, his sleek caramel head was bent over a miniature racing car, the wheels of which he was spinning up and down his thin bare arm. His feet, looking big in the smart trainers, rested on the top rung of the stool. He had a vaguely pudding-bowl haircut, the sort that I’d seen quite a bit on small boys, and which seemed to be trendy again at the moment. His eyelashes were absurdly, ridiculously thick and black and, like Mitch’s nose - only for different reasons - didn’t quite seem to belong on his face. His expression was serious. He was utterly gorgeous.

I sat down, more nervous than my opening night as Asa in
Peer Gynt
at Salisbury Playhouse - walking on stage in front of a hushed and expectant full house was a doddle in comparison.

‘They’re bringing the food over in a minute. Here, this is for you,’ I said, sliding the glass of Appeltise across the table to Max.

‘Thank you,’ he said, shyly, looking up at me with enormous blue eyes. He was like some tragic little poppet in a Hollywood movie - I half expected Lassie to materialise at his side. It took me three attempts to swallow the lump in my throat.

‘This is my son Max,’ said Adam.

‘Hello Max. I’m Anna,’ I managed. ‘I came to help your dad with his mosaic project. Have you seen it?’

He nodded, flicking his eyes back down to the car. ‘Brum, brum,’ he said to himself. Then he parked the car on a beermat on the table and picked up his glass with an unsteady hand. The straw bobbed around in the bubbles of the drink, and it took him a couple of attempts to navigate it successfully into his mouth. He looked like a blind kitten nuzzling for milk, I thought sentimentally.

Get a grip, Anna.

‘Two hands, Max,’ said Adam, and he obeyed, finally negotiating the straw and taking a deep drink, the glass now firmly cupped in both palms.

‘It’s very fizzy,’ he whispered to Adam, wrinkling his nose.

Adam smiled at him. ‘Your sandwich’ll be here in a minute, darling. Did you have a nice time at Mrs. Evans’s this morning?’

He nodded. ‘Yeah. Only I don’t like her dog, and that other boy what was there didn’t want to play with me.’

‘Cameron?’

Another nod.

‘Oh, don’t worry about Cameron. You know that Mrs. Evans said he likes to play on his own sometimes.’

I followed this innocuous exchange with the sort of rapt attention I usually reserved for cliffhanger episodes of
Eastenders
. I couldn’t believe I was really there, listening to their conversation. Or that Max was really there, when he might well not have been.