Lifesaver (31 page)

Ken said he felt hypnotized that day; that his sense of self had been lost, swallowed up by the moment. His marriage to Michelle had been a registry office do, so he professed that it felt like the first time for him too. The last one hadn’t counted, he said loyally. He said he knew all our friends and family were there, looking at us as we walked up and down the aisle, but none of the beaming faces even registered. I was the opposite: I’d carefully scanned all of them, analyzing where they had all chosen to sit, what they wore, how genuine their delight was. Checking that Michelle wasn’t bursting through the doors at the back, objecting in her high, brittle voice - even though she’d moved home to Canada and had herself remarried, it had still played at the back of my mind as a small, awful, possibility.

The newness of everything had been so joyful to me, in such an ancient church. The fresh film in the photographer’s camera; the budding lilies; the gloss of our rings; the ushers’ dazzling white shirts; Ken’s freshly washed hair. It had all shouted
new start
to me, new leaf, new life together. A new kind of pure joy. Mum had still been alive then, and both our mothers cried during the service. It had made me want to cry too when I thought about Dad, and how it ought to have been him walking me up the aisle, not my brother. Ken said he never noticed the weeping mums; nor the persistently whispering choirboy. Nor the moment when I signalled to the best man to bring us a hymn sheet, and he offered me a Polo mint instead.

Although neither of us recalled a single word of the vicar’s sermon, we’d both remembered his pre-marriage advice: always back each other up, never put the other one down in front of anyone else. Present a united front to the world. We did that for the first time, walking triumphantly back down the aisle and out of the church, man and wife. Me almost feeling like a mother already, picturing myself in a maternity smock before I was even out of the wedding dress. I knew we were going to make fantastic parents.

Later that day, at the party, I had got rather drunk and forgotten all the conversations that people had with me, like an infant who existed in the sensation of the moment; the stimulus of joy and contentment where specific instances are forgotten as soon as they were substituted for new ones. I’d hardly even spoken to Ken, although I kept my eye on him, only needing to see him to feel that joy.

I’d just felt joy in everything. In the mullioned windows of the reception venue, soaking it up through the diamonds of old glass until I thought they would pop out from the pressure, that there needed to be some release; joy hissing unseen through a vent at the unpicturesque rear of the building where the kitchen staff put out the trash. I wondered what the other guests had been thinking, whether they’d felt it too or were more cynical: ‘Ken’s got married again, then.’ But it had felt so strong to me, as though my every action were imbued with exhilaration. I felt it as we plunged the thick steel knife through the hard icing and soft yielding fruit cake; flowing out in the lost words of the speeches; even the triumphant victory of my pee when I’d hitched up my dress and rested my flushed forehead against the cool white wall of the Ladies toilet.

Afterward we had both agreed that the whole event had been a victory of some kind. As if we’d managed to pull off something extraordinary and unlikely. Real life, real emotion, I’d thought. I still thought.

I was getting used to my small flat. After just a couple of weeks I’d begun to wonder how Ken and I filled the space inside our big Victorian semi; why we’d thought we needed all those rooms full of things we didn’t need, or ever use: CDs we never listened to, bar a dozen or so favourites; DVDs still in their shrink-wrap; books we’d never read; kitchen cupboards full of unopened jars of things like capers and fruit in syrup. At least half of the clothes in our wardrobes were never worn, so why did we keep the rest? It was as though we’d stocked our house for another, imaginary couple, perhaps the people we wished we could be. Parents, who cooked, listened to music, and needed a variety of clothes to accommodate the variation of a day’s activities with children. The more I thought about it, the more unwitting artifice our relationship contained. Our home was like the set of a drama series about middle class thirty-somethings—we had all the requisite objects in the correct places: wellies, rollerblades and scooters in the garage, wine in the cellar, suitcases in the attic, garden tools in the shed—but the house itself was dead. I had a sudden urge to ring home and leave a message on the answerphone, just to animate, briefly, the hollow emptiness of the place.

I liked my new, small rooms. It was much easier to take two steps across the room to the bathroom, instead of having to walk down half a flight of stairs and along a long corridor; and to carry my tea from the kitchen to the living room was a matter of a mere five paces. It was a place small enough to contain my emotions, I realized, whereas at home they roamed unchecked and ghostly along the hallways and up the three flights of stairs, my misery drifting cobwebby off lampshades and picture rails. I briefly wondered if I could persuade Ken to move house, somewhere smaller and more rural—and then I laughed out loud. Ken couldn’t get around to changing the salt in the dishwasher, let alone moving house. And if we’d moved into the country, he’d have been gone for another two hours a day, commuting.

As I sat curled up in the flat’s one armchair, gazing out of the window at the ducks squabbling over some pretty indigestible-looking crusts being lobbed at them by a toddler, I thought about Adam. I oughtn’t to let him kiss me again, I thought. It wasn’t fair on him, or Ken; although I felt more guilty about using Adam to get to Max than I did about cheating on Ken. It wasn’t really cheating, I told myself. I wasn’t planning to have an affair…/p>

But then I remembered that kiss, and how Adam’s eyes had held mine, unwavering and clear blue, and the heat of his body pressing against me, and how his solidity had made me want to cling to him as if to a life-raft. He had something for me, I knew that, and I suspected it was more than just Max. But did I dare to try and find out what it was?

No, I mustn’t, I decided. I would apologize, say how much I liked him, but that I just wanted to be friends and it couldn’t happen again. I loved Ken. And I really liked Adam, too much to hurt him.

A loud beeping from the direction of my handbag made me jump. I uncurled myself from the armchair and retrieved my mobile, accidentally kicking over my quarter-f mug of tepid tea, which spilled in a grey puddle on the cream carpet. I mopped it up with a dishcloth in one hand, thinking how I’d done a lot of mopping up of late, and simultaneously opened my text message with the other hand.
‘MORNING MY DARLING,’
it said.
‘WILL RING YOU LATER. HOPE THE READ-THROUGHS ARE GOING WELL. IT’S V. HOT HERE. LOVE U, KEN XXX’

Read-throughs. I needed to get my act together a bit, I realized. People would soon start asking me about my part in the soap, and I didn’t even know what it was called. It was easy enough to be vague—all soap plot-lines were basically the same, featuring, at regular intervals, affairs, double-crossings, life-support machines and illegitimate babies—but I needed to be clear about certain basic facts in order to keep my story straight. Ken wasn’t a stickler for detail, but Adam might be, I thought. And I still had to tell Vicky and Lil, and my family. A prickle of discomfort went up my spine at the prospect of lying to all those closest to me—but then I thought, so what? I’m going swimming with Max later! I stopped worrying about the lies, and wondered instead whether I needed to shave my legs before meeting Adam and Max at the pool that afternoon. I glanced out of the window at the lowering grey clouds, hoping that the change in the weather wouldn’t mean our trip was off.

Lobbing the wet cloth into the sink—easy, from where I stood by the living room window—I picked up my notepad and pen. My hands now smelled like stale dishcloth; the scent of lies, I thought, deciding not to wash them. It was a smell I’d have to get used to, since it was going to be with me permanently. Better to think of it as something external.

What was a good name for a soap opera? I decided it would be less risky to invent one, then at least I’d have full poetic license to make up my own story-lines without fear of discovery. I didn’t recall telling anybody the title of the one I’d been for the real interview with;
Merryvale
. I ran through a mental list of suggestions, every one of which bore too much resemblance to existing series: I thought
Avondale
was good, until deciding it was too similar to
Emmerdale. Brewster Street
I liked, and
Walcot Square
, but I couldn’t use Street or Square, too reminiscent of Coronation and Albert. Crikey, this wasn’t easy. It had to be something good, though.

I picked up the salt cellar on the rickety folding dining table at which I sat, and ground some crystals onto the table, wetting my fingertip and licking them off. The salt tasted of dishcloth.
The Saltmine
, I thought. A riveting drama set around the famous salt mines of - where did salt come from? Or wait, what about
The Quarry
? It could be set on a housing estate built on an old quarry. I liked that. It was different. But then again, maybe it ought to have been something more forgettable. I didn’t
want
people to remember what it was called. In the end, I ditched
The Quarry
, threw the salt crystals over my left shoulder with my right hand, and settled for the real one,
Merryvale
. It was very unlikely that anyone I knew would see it, and if they did, I’d just say I got sacked early on and had been too embarrassed to admit it.

My mobile rang, and I was relieved to have the distraction from my burgeoning subterfuge.

‘Hello?’

‘Hi darling, it’s me.’ The line was crackly, and for a confused second I thought it was Adam. ‘Did you get my text?’

‘Oh, hi, baby. Yes, I did, thanks.’

‘Can you talk? You’re not in rehearsals are you?’

‘No, we don’t work on Sundays. I’m just hanging out in my room. There’s a duckpond outside and my landlady’s dog keeps running into it and scaring the ducks.’

‘So you must be quite far out of Bristol, then—it sounds villagey.’

‘Um. No, not really. I suppose it must have been a village at one time. It’s just a suburb now. So what have you been up to?’

‘The usual. Meeting rooms. Dinners. Too many drinks too late in the hotel bar.’

‘Who with?’ I checked myself; I had no right to speak with such a tone of suspicion in my voice.

‘Marcus Brittan, mostly. Tour manager for
The Cherries
.’ Ken laughed to himself.

‘What?’

‘Oh, nothing. Marcus has got some brilliant stories, that’s all. He used to work at the Mudd Club, you know, in New York in the early Eighties: they had all these road maps under perspex on the bar, and they used to snort lines of charlie along the freeways - apparently, newcomers used to be given LA to San Diego, which isn’t very far, but the regulars could go all the way from Denver to Chicago! I thought that was hilarious.’

‘Mmm,’ I said, wondering why my phone conversations with Ken were always like this. Why couldn’t we have talked about anything that mattered? Then it occurred to me that if
The Cherries’
tour manager was there, it also meant that the band themselves must have been around, plus that scraggy manager woman. I imagined them all in the hotel bar at three in the morning, knocking back tequilas and roaring with laughter at the idea of chopping out lines of coke along major north American highways. Could Ken resist the late-night pull of creamy brown skin, and a choice of three young girls who just wanted to be famous? I wasn’t sure that I could have done, in his shoes. Hell, I couldn’t even resist a portly bearded ceramics teacher with callouses on his hands.

‘So have you done your read-throughs yet?’

‘Yup. We did them yesterday. It went fine. I’ve got quite a few lines, so I need to get my head down today. Rehearsals start tomorrow.’

‘What’s your character like?’

‘Bit of a bimbo. I have to wear a red wig and high heels all the time, so I’m bound to trip over and sprain my ankle sooner or later.’

‘Nice cast?’

‘Yeah. I think so. A few luvvies, couple of old school guys who think they’re better than everyone else. Some precocious kids. The director’s OK though; very talented, I think.’

‘Not too fanciable, I hope.’

‘Gay. Naturally. Don’t worry, darling,’ I said with my fingers crossed. All of a sudden I missed him. I wished I’d gone to Ibiza with him after all. All we lacked was the chance to have fun together, I thought ruefully; but he had all his fun in hotel bars and fancy restaurants with other people.

‘Have you heard from Vicky?’

‘No.’ At least that much was true.

‘Going to call her?’

‘No.’

‘So when will you be home?’

‘Not till Thursday. But then I’m off till the following Tuesday.’ I remembered that Adam had mentioned taking Max away that weekend, to see his grandparents, so there was no point in me staying in Gillingsbury. ‘You’re around at the weekend, aren’t you?’

Ken hesitated. ‘Most of it. Don’t forget I’ve got that tennis tournament on the Saturday though, and a dinner afterwards.’

‘Can I come?’

Another, far too long, pause. ‘Sure.’

Well, sod you, I thought. Suddenly I felt totally alone, fallen between two stools, belonging nowhere. ‘Whatever.’

‘Don’t be like that. I said you could come.’

‘You don’t exactly sound thrilled at the prospect.’

‘Come on, Anna, let’s not argue. I know it’s hard, me being away. Tell you what, we’ll go out for dinner on the Friday night, shall we? And on Sunday let’s go to a film, and maybe lunch at the River Café.’

‘OK. I’m sorry. I miss you, that’s all.’

‘You too. Look, I’ve got to go - there’s someone at the door of my room.’

I wondered who. ‘Right then. Bye darling, call me tomorrow.’

‘Bye honey.’