Lifesaver (35 page)

‘Have you got many lines?’

‘Quite a few,’ I said, fiddling with the pepper pot. ‘It’s weird, having to learn lines again.’

‘If you ever want me to test you, just shout,’ he said, deftly shovelling rice and snow peas into his mouth with chopsticks, without dropping a single grain. Adam and I had used forks the night before. Much simpler.

‘Oh…thanks. But don’t worry. I’m better just locking myself away and doing it while you’re out at work.’

‘That sounds distinctly dodgy,’ Ken grinned. ‘Wouldn’t want to hear that sentence taken out of context!’

To my annoyance, I blushed. Then I began to stress about scripts. Surely Ken would expect to see them lying about the place at home? How could I be learning lines with nothing to learn them from?

‘On second thoughts,’ I said slowly. ‘Lil offered to let me use her house if I ever wanted some space to learn my words. You know how lovely her living room is, overlooking the garden. I might take her up on it. I think it’ll be good for she and I to spend more time together, even if I’m just sitting reading. And in a way I’d prefer not to bring my scripts home with me. If I leave them all her place, I won’t be tempted to walk around at home with my nose stuck in them the whole time.’

‘Good idea,’ Ken said. ‘I don’t want to be a script widower.’ I felt like asking how he’d even notice, since he was never there, but I desisted.

‘Here, have you tried this salmon?’ I asked instead. ‘It’s lovely.’

A mental picture of Adam and I kissing on the rocks the previous night sprang unbidden into my mind, and I shuddered with guilty pleasure.

‘What’s the matter—ghost walk over your grave?’ said Ken, stuffing a large chunk of salmon into his mouth.

I nodded, still thinking of Adam’s hands on my freezing backside. And wondering how soon I could see him and Max again.

‘I can’t do any of the things I wanted to,’ moaned Vicky. We were standing in the foyer of the Ivy Beauty Spa, perusing the list of treatments which a white-coated receptionist had handed us. It was almost two months since the grey day by the pool with Max and Adam, when Vicky had rung me to arrange the spa trip, but in the end it had taken that long to settle on a date and get it booked. I’d pretended it was hard to fit it in around my filming schedule, but really I hadn’t wanted to tear myself away from Adam and Max for a single day more than I had to. Adam and I were a couple, I thought with wonderment, in what, to all intents and purposes, was a ‘real’ relationship, and I missed Max and him badly whenever I had to come home to Ken.

‘It’s not fair. I can just about put up with not drinking or smoking, but when I can’t even do healthy things like have sunbeds and detoxing body wraps…well, I mean, what’s the point?’

I thought I’d better not tell her what the point of being pregnant was, not if she didn’t already know. ‘Sunbeds aren’t exactly healthy,’ I replied instead.

‘They are,’ she said. ‘They make you feel good, and look good; therefore they’re healthy.’

‘They make you feel sweaty and claustrophobic, and give you skin cancer,’ I said.

Vicky sniffed. ‘Spoilsport.’

‘I was trying to make you feel better about not having one.’

‘Whatever. So what are you going to do?’

I hadn’t much fancied the detoxing seaweed body wrap which Vicky had proposed we both have, before she’d been informed that her pregnancy precluded her from it; but her attitude annoyed me. Yes, I wanted to build bridges with her, but I wasn’t going to let her trample all over me all day with her hard-done by attitude. However she felt about it, she was carrying a small miracle inside her, and if all she could do was whinge about it, I wasn’t sure that I could stomach it.

‘I think I’ll do the seaweed thing anyway. You don’t mind going for a swim or something while I do that, do you?’

Vicky rolled her eyes and looked sulky. ‘Suppose not.’

In the end she plumped for an eyelash tint and a manicure and pedicure, while I went for the body wrap and an Indian head massage. We were handed fat white robes, tied into soft square parcels with their own belts, and sent off to get changed.

As we undressed, I glanced at her body. It had been years since I’d seen her without her clothes on, probably not since before Pat was born. She’d always been so slim—not skinny, like me, but with gentle firm curves I’d coveted. Now her curves had softened into upholstery, and her bottom had taken on a distinct shelf-like appearance. Although her pregnancy was showing, her belly was not yet taut again. It was at that stage where it could have been mistaken for over-indulgence, or weak abs.

She caught me peeking at her. ‘Don’t look at my horrible body,’ she said, yanking on the towelling gown and tying the belt briskly round her middle.

‘It’s not horrible,’ I replied, pulling on my own gown.

‘It is. It’s revolting, and I hate every inch of it. I’ve even got fat on my back now, under my bra strap.’

‘Honestly, Vicky, you’ve got a lovely body. You’re just pregnant, that’s all.’

She snorted. ‘Just think what sort of state it’ll be in after this one pops out.’

After this one pops out.
She had no idea how I envied her confidence in the reproductive process.

‘Well, I’d still rather have your body than mine. At least it’s feminine. I still look like a boy. No wonder I always have to play the principal male lead in panto.’

‘So? That’s good, isn’t it? I’ll only be good for the back end of the horse after this.’

I turned away from her and dropped a pound coin into a locker, feeling my heart sink into my spa-issue white slippers. If the day was going to consist of Vicky bemoaning her lot, I thought miserably, I was going to wish I’d never bothered. I could have been in Gillingsbury, helping Max’s class make rice krispie cakes at their weekly cooking morning.

But she perked up, once we’d had our complimentary half-hour massage and were lying side by side in a room full of sun loungers, with a plastic cup of lemon-flavoured water to sip from, and cold wet cotton wool pads on our eyelids. A motherly white-uniformed lady had pulled tucked thick striped duvets over us, and left us with piles of
Hello
and
OK!
to read. Which was somewhat problematic, with the cotton wool pads in place.

‘Mmm. I could get used to this,’ said Vicky.

‘Weird, though, isn’t it—being tucked up in bed by woman in a white coat. When were you last tucked in by anyone?’

‘Shhhh,’ said the only other occupant of the room. Vicky and I removed an eyepad each and glared at her, an elderly lady with a perm so stiff that the curls didn’t appear to be flattened by her lying on her back. But she had her own pads on, and didn’t notice.

‘It’s not a bleedin’ library,’ said Vicky loudly.

I giggled, and the lady tutted. Fortunately the door opened and the attendant called, ‘Mrs. Turner? Time for your next treatment.’

‘Good thing too,’ said Mrs. Turner sniffily. ‘It’s not exactly
relaxing
in here with all this noise.’

She bustled out, like Margaret Thatcher in a bathrobe. Before the door had quite closed behind her Vicky called, ‘Yeah, bye then, Mrs. Turnip. Hope you’re next treatment’s a colonic irrigation, you old battle-axe.’

We collapsed into childish laughter, and I thought, no, this was a good idea after all. All Vicky needed was to get away from her life for a while; to have a chance to lighten up.

I supposed that was what I’d been doing too, with Adam and Max. Although I was getting so used to it, that it was beginning to feel as if my life in London with Ken was my non-routine life, and not the other way around…/p>

‘Vicky,’ I said, sitting up and discarding the cotton wool pads. They had lost their chill, and felt soft and compact, moulded to the curve of my eyelids. ‘I’ve got something to tell you.’

She sat up too, alarmed by my tone. Her pads fell off, scales from her eyes; although I wasn’t sure that I wanted her to have a Damascene level of revelation, at least not about my life.

‘What?’

But I wasn’t able to do it. I’d left it too long. The secret was stuck inside me, like a clogged-up pipe, or it could simply have been that I couldn’t face her outrage at not having been told sooner. I bottled out.

‘I’m…I’m…not very happy with Ken at the moment,’ I blurted. It was true, I thought; it must be true, otherwise I’d never have allowed myself to get into this situation with Adam.

‘Any particular reason?’

I lay back on the paper-draped pillow and stared at the fake ivy wreathed around the pillar in the centre of the octagonal-shaped room.

‘The usual. Him playing too much tennis, working too hard, never talking about anything other than work. Even our social life, such as it is, is work-related—you know, dinners with artists or managers, gigs, showcases.’

‘But it would be worse if he was unemployed. At least he earns a really good salary. And you always used to like all that socialising with bands and stuff.’

‘I know. I just…ell…hings change. I don’t want to spend my whole life being a useful executive wife.’

‘Why don’t you take up tennis?’

I snorted. ‘Oh for heaven’s sake, Vicky, that’s the sort of thing my mother would have said. It would take me years to get up to Ken’s standard. Besides, I hate it. I hate playing with Ken, because he looks bored after about two minutes, and then starts sighing whenever I hit the ball out of the court—which is all the time.’

‘Are you trying for another baby?’

Vicky hadn’t looked at me when she said that. She’d been flipping through the pages of
Hello
, pages turning in a blur of fake tans, bleached teeth and ostentatious interior design; too fast for her to take any of it in. Which was how I knew she was paying attention to my answer.

‘No. We aren’t even sleeping together.’

‘What—not at all?’

‘We haven’t done, for months. He leaves so early and gets in so late. Plays tennis all weekend. Even if we wanted to, we don’t get the chance. In fact, he’s not even -’

I was going to say “able to”, but then I thought how mortified Ken would have been if he knew I was discussing his sexual problems with my girlfriends. ‘…that bothered about it,’ I said instead.

‘But don’t you want to get pregnant?’

Vicky discarded the magazine and rolled on to her side. I turned onto mine, too, so we were facing one another, eye to eye, under our duvets like third formers at boarding school, whispering after lights out.

‘No. Yes. Yes. But it’s complicated. I’m…’m afraid to. And so’s Ken.’

Vicky reached out and took my hand. It felt so good to confide in her again. ‘Of course you’re scared, who wouldn’t be? Is there someone you could talk to about it; a counsellor, I mean? What about that woman you saw before?’

I shook my head. I didn’t want to talk to anyone about it, because there was no-one to whom I could tell the whole truth. I suddenly felt entirely alone.

‘At least talk to Ken,’ said Vicky. ‘He’d make time for you if you needed to, I’m sure he would. He adores you.’

Tears welled in my eyes. I thought of Max playing in the garden on his climbing frame, hanging upside down by his knees from the top bar, his manic laugh shrill in the air as he swayed back and forth. Beneath him, the lawn was patchy and scuffed from too much running around on, too many games of football. The grass in Ken’s and my back garden was thick and lush, threaded with weeds, untouched.

Then I thought of Adam the night before, making love to me with such tenderness that I could have just died with pleasure. His weight on top of me, the way he spread my legs with his knees, looking into my eyes the whole the time with his unwavering blue gaze. Adam adored me, too.

‘I think it might be too late for Ken and I,’ I said, vocalising for the first time the small thought which had been curled up, dormant, in my brain for some weeks.

The door opened, and our ‘nurse’ appeared. ‘Mrs. Sozi, it’s time for your next treatment.’

‘Don’t say things like that, please,’ Vicky whispered as I pulled back my duvet and stood up, dazed at what I’d just admitted. ‘You and Ken are made for each other. I’m sure you can sort it out…isten, we’ll talk more later, OK? Come and find me when you’ve finished your wrap.’

I smiled at her, taking comfort from our friendship; from the fact that the circle had turned and she was now trying to help me. Even if I wasn’t sure that she was right, it felt good to at least begin to unburden myself.

‘See you later then,’ I said, allowing myself to be guided out of the room, down a corridor, and into a smaller treatment room, where I was greeted by another pert employee. There was something vaguely akin to
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
about this place, I thought: all the Nurse Ratched leading us about, as submissive as sheep in our woolly white gowns, stripping off—for that was what I’d just been told to do—lying down, getting up, resting, stretching… thought I might need a day’s rest to recover from the experience. Still, at least Vicky and I were talking.

Talking about the fact that Ken and I were falling apart.

‘Pop these on for me,’ said my latest tormentor, handing me a very small, very ugly pair of bunchy paper knickers. Her name tag read ‘Marie-Rose’, and she was far too young to be bossing me around. ‘I’m just going to measure you up, so we can see how many inches you’ve lost at the end of it.’

I hadn’t thought I needed to lose inches, but as I stood there facing a full-length mirror, in extremely unattractive disposable underwear, with a twelve-year old beauty therapist drawing lines on me in black marker pen: biceps, waist, thighs, hips, knees; measuring me with a tape measure at the site of the black lines, then recording her ‘findings’ in a notepad - I did think, well, maybe I could do with tightening up. I’d never quite lost the saggy skin on my stomach. When I bent over, it concertinaed into fussy little creases which had never used to be there. I felt like a side of beef waiting to be carved.

It was easier to focus on my body than to think about the future. At that moment I wouldn’t have cared if my entire body had been creased up and as baggy as a Shi-tzu puppy, if only someone could have told me what to do; how it would all sort itself out without anyone getting hurt.