‘You won’t. Now go, for fuck sakes.’
‘I’m going.’ He glanced over her shoulder at the closed door. ‘Was that your daughter?’
‘Kyle. Get the fuck out of here.’
He put his hands up to placate her. ‘Don’t worry, I’m not here to ruin things. I promise.’ He started backing away down the path, stopped, strode up to her and kissed her on the cheek. ‘You’re even sexier in person, Beth. Come with me tomorrow.’
Beth closed the door behind her. Ruby hadn’t moved, and she didn’t look up when her mother walked past her and disappeared up the stairs.
Beth wondered what Tim would say if he knew about her other men. She leant back, recoiling from the phrase. Her other men. It made it sound so tawdry, so much worse than it was. People would draw conclusions. There had been four in total. Three before Kyle, and then Kyle, who was the fourth. She’d known him for six months. He was younger than her, good-looking, although not really her type, and already much richer than they’d ever be. He’d recently been to Monaco and tomorrow was going to Reykjavík, the capital of Iceland, with a population of 140,000. It’s famous for its nightlife, its volcanoes and hot springs. She’d looked it up. She imagined herself there, mixing with the young and the beautiful, being among them, almost being one of them, dancing her way back to their room in the small hours.
It was never a serious option. Reykjavík was just a case of ‘here’s what you might have won’. What did he do for work? He had told her, but she couldn’t recall. Where was he born, did he have any brothers or sisters, what had he wanted to be growing up? She knew none of this. But she preferred that. The less she knew, the less real he was. The truth was that, to her, he was simply that magic mirror on the wall telling her she was the most beautiful of them all. That’s all she ever wanted him to be. She knew very well that you went so far, playing these make-believe games, and then you went either no further or too far.
And yet. And yet she’d put the note and the boarding pass in her purse. And he’d been there, very much the real thing, just an hour ago.
Her other men. Until today she’d never met any of them, but it would make Tim so sad, if he knew. He used the same words to compliment her that they did, but they sounded different, domesticated, coming from him. How long had it been since they’d had sex? Weeks if not months. She told herself her lack of interest was because of Ruby. Before that it was because she was pregnant. She couldn’t remember what she’d told herself before that. Tim had been ever so patient at first. For longer than was reasonable he’d been ever so good about it. Then he’d started making grand romantic gestures. When that didn’t work he’d moved on to gestures that were more direct, even crudely, embarrassingly direct. Now he hardly made any gestures at all.
She got up and went to the window. On the pavement below a blackbird jerked its beak into an empty crisp packet before flapping away in search of richer pickings. Her phone buzzed again. She ignored it. There had been a time when each new message thrilled her, sent her scuttling to an isolated corner where she could indulge herself. Maybe there would be again. She touched her cheek where he’d kissed her. For now though, she wanted to pretend a little longer, that none of it was real, that he wasn’t real, that instead, again, exactly like before, it was only that longed-for mirror saying only the words she wanted to hear.
She heard him come in, panting and coughing as he took off his trainers by the door. She smelt his sweat and when he reached past her to turn the kettle on he put his other hand on her shoulder and squeezed, leaving a hot, damp patch on her dress. He retreated across the tiles and she felt him standing against the opposite wall looking at her. His presence there irritated her. She felt heavy and imagined her flanks hanging over her hips and widening her. She turned around and stared at his bare, almost hairless knees. The flight to Iceland was late afternoon. She could be in a hot spa with snowflakes in her hair in little more than twenty-four hours. Would she even be missed?
‘You look worried,’ Tim said to her.
She looked at him now, tried to name what she was feeling and failed. They had been married for six years but had been together ever since he was eight and she was the seven-year-old girl with the boy’s haircut who had moved in next door. She had seen him sitting on his front lawn that summer’s afternoon, his toy soldiers spread out on the grass, and had walked over there. For a few minutes they had assessed each other without looking directly at one another. Eventually he resumed his game, but silently now, more self-consciously, until, and she never understood why, she stuck out a foot and kicked his men to the ground. Her maturity had overtaken his in early adolescence, her boy’s haircut became a ponytail, and she waited two frustrating years before he caught up and kissed her underneath the trampoline. She wondered sometimes if it wasn’t just a trick of geography, their marriage, if she’d not have ended up with whichever boy had been sitting on the grass that day.
‘We should go away for the weekend,’ she said. ‘It would be good for us.’
‘That would be nice. Where?’
‘It doesn’t matter.’ She smiled in a way that she hoped would stir certain memories. ‘Amsterdam?’
‘I wish. But I’m not sure Ruby would appreciate it there.’
Her smile faded.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Tell me.’
‘Nothing. I just thought it would be nice if it was just the two of us. It’s been ages since we did anything together.’
‘You mean other than having a child?’
‘Yes. Other than that.’ The corner of the picture had come loose again. Why did he never notice things like that? Why was it always up to her? It was right there.
His face lit up. ‘We could all go camping! It would be cold, but it would be an adventure!’
She stared at him and realised he meant it seriously. Camping. From a dirty weekend in Amsterdam to that. How far apart they were sometimes. I’m not even a woman to you. ‘Maybe I’ll go to Iceland or something.’
‘What?’
‘You’ve got no idea, have you?’ She brushed past him. ‘It’s almost like you’re daring me.’
‘Daring you? What does that mean?’ Then, louder, to her retreating footsteps, ‘We’re not twenty anymore, Beth.’
‘No, we’re not,’ she shouted back. ‘And I’m glad you like my new dress.’ A door slammed. The house ringed with sudden silence.
CHAPTER FOUR
For nearly a decade Ben’s parents had ferried him all over the country. After so long each motorway now called to mind the images he’d looked at a thousand times – the adult shops out of place, the country lanes being overwhelmed by a bigger, busier world growing up around them, the lone houses atop hills. He’d grown up in the back seat of the car: he’d been the young boy asleep against the window who’d been carried up to bed in the early hours; the gangly-limbed thing with the breaking voice; the teenager watching the lights go by, thinking thoughts that shamed and delighted him. Sometimes he thought about his brother, who’d been dragged across the country with them until he was old enough to stay at home by himself. He wondered if Charlie, now twenty-three, had ever felt excluded.
‘Break a leg,’ he used to say to him before races. Ben didn’t blame him. The time and energy and money that his parents had devoted to their youngest son meant there was never much left over for their eldest. He must have resented it. But the reality was there was very little about Charlie for even the most even-minded parent to invest in. Sometime before his teens he had discovered a digital world that he preferred to the real one, and very quickly after that the person who was just starting to emerge vanished, replaced instead by a sullen, insular being who picked at his spots alone in his room. Who knew what he did up there, sitting on his bed with the curtains closed and a dozen different devices flashing around him day and night. Maybe he had become a millionaire on the stocks, maybe he was a poker shark or a porn addict. Maybe he was all these things or none of them. Ben hardly noticed when he went to university. And he certainly didn’t miss him.
It was different now that he had learned to drive. For the last few years he’d grown increasingly embarrassed to arrive at the track with his parents in tow. He was taller than his mother and stronger than his father. He’d walk in front or behind them, pretending to be alone, and then remain in the changing rooms a long time after his shower so there were fewer people to see them leave together. Eventually his parents began to withdraw. They no longer cheered loudly from the stands when he led down the straight, they kept their distance before races and waited for him in the car afterwards. Then one day his father handed him the keys and stood in the road with his mother watching him drive away. Ben had seen them in the rear-view mirror getting smaller and smaller.
Very soon after that their place in the car had been taken by Madeline. He remembered looking over at her beside him, her bare feet on the dashboard while the sun shone through the window onto her slender, freckled thighs. It had felt like crossing a threshold.
She only ever went to watch him run once. He pulled up outside her house early one morning and inwardly winced when she came out, looking the way she did. He was wearing a tracksuit, had been in bed by 10pm the night before and risen an hour earlier to breakfast on porridge and honey and sliced banana. She climbed into the car beside him and he could smell her immediately.
‘All set?’ he asked lightly. She ignored him. She lowered her seat and went straight to sleep. For the next three hours she hardly stirred. She reeked of alcohol and smoke and the T-shirt she was wearing was ripped down the side. He wasn’t sure if it was meant to look like that or not. He kept glancing at her, at her coloured hair, at the tattoos that snaked down both arms, and the bright streaks of make-up that distorted and buried her eyes. Hiding in plain sight, that’s what she was doing, he wasn’t completely stupid.
