‘She never sleeps,’ Beth said once.
‘Spirited,’ her mother said back with a chuckle.
‘But I’m just so exhausted all the time. It can’t be normal.’
‘You spoil her, that’s your problem.’ Beth was then reminded how much easier it was with disposable nappies, how convenient a microwave must be, and two cars, and online shopping.
‘It’s not as simple as that,’ she protested. ‘Doing things quicker doesn’t mean you have more time. It just means you have to do more things.’
Suddenly Beth’s father was booming at her. ‘I worked at the same place for fifty years.’ She could see him in that stiflingly hot room with the curtains that never opened, glaring at the phone as if it were an offensive object, sticking his chin out at it. ‘That was quite enough for me.’
‘It must be nice,’ she said to Tim afterwards, ‘just doodling away the last scraps of your existence without a care in the world.’ They had no idea how fast life had become, how tiring it was, how demanding. And why do the clothes they buy for Ruby never fit? And why are the toys they send always six months behind her development? They should know these things. Other grandparents knew these things.
‘It’s you and me against the world,’ Tim said. But Beth had never wanted it to be like that. She’d dreamed of big families, of long, loud Sunday lunches that gathered the clan. ‘Yes, but they’ve got to live their own lives,’ he argued, but that magnanimity was false too, was just an echo of something that had turned into resentment when he’d seen how their absence had affected his wife, how she viewed their leaving as rejection, even at her age, and how that rejection had manifested as spite directed, for the most part, and because he was the only one left, at him. So, the Friday evening calls. That’s all that remained.
‘They’ve shut themselves in,’ Beth said. ‘The world has shrunk around them. They think they’ve got a quiet life up there. They’re wrong. They’ve just got a small life.’
But this Friday evening was different. When Tim arrived home he found Beth and Ruby standing in the driveway waiting for him. At their feet were three packed bags. He sat in his car blinking at them. He was finding it increasingly difficult these days to follow things clearly. Some events raced past him and left him dizzy, others unfolded in slow motion and distorted, as though they were taking place underwater. His mind had started drifting. It wasn’t always clear if what he saw was real or only vaguely remembered. Suddenly Ruby broke away from her mother and ran to his window. He opened his door and she climbed onto his lap.
‘We’re going away, Daddy.’
He climbed out of the car but didn’t approach Beth, who was still staring at him from the doorstep. Her face was severe. It sharpened her features, aged her. She picked up a bag, it was his, and approached him carefully. When she was a yard away she held it up to him and he took it unthinkingly. Then she turned around and went to collect the other bags.
‘What’s going on?’ he asked.
She took the keys out of his hand. ‘Get in,’ she said. ‘I’m driving.’
He stood there still. Ruby was standing up in the driver’s seat. It was nearly dark. A cold wind had blown up during the day. There was rain in the air. Beth was in front of him again. Then her arms were around him.
‘You wanted to go camping, didn’t you?’ She leant in closer, so her lips were against his ear. ‘I know you think I’m a horrible person. I’m not though. I’m just sad.’
An hour later they were on the motorway. She was driving fast, away from the roundabout that bottlenecked the traffic, away from the flowers, now dead, in the bin and the answerphone that was at that very moment recording the slightly disgruntled voice of her mother. Night fell, slowly at first and then in a sudden rush. Cars disappeared behind their headlights. The landscape retreated into darkness. In the back Ruby was slumped forward in her seat, head flopping at a ghoulish angle. She tipped sideways, folding like a rag doll around the seat belt.
Tim turned his head on the headrest, saw his own reflection, ghostly and yellow, staring back at him.
‘Are we falling out of love?’ he asked. He was watching himself, searching his expression for signs that would tell him how he felt. His words floated in the trapped air of the car. So much hate for the ones we love. The phrase arrived unbidden in his thoughts and kept repeating. He couldn’t place it. He’d almost forgotten his own question when she answered angrily, almost accusingly.
‘Well, I still love you.’
Kate Bush, that was it, it was from a song. He remembered the album cover with her staring out of those large, dark eyes.
‘Am I too late?’ she asked.
Years ago, before Ruby, before everything that would come to matter to them, they’d spent a week at the campsite to which they were now returning. It had been summer then, and early one morning they swam out from the shore until they couldn’t touch the bottom. It had frightened and exhilarated them. They’d taken off their costumes and floated naked on their backs, letting the swell rock them gently up and down. Back on the beach, on the ribbed, hard sand, they touched each other in new ways while the tide broke on their legs and the seagulls squawked and swooped in pious disapproval. Tim remembered Beth’s pale thigh, how rough it felt with the sand stuck to it, he remembered the taste of salt and not knowing if it was the sea or if that was how a woman tasted, he remembered her warm mouth after the cold water.
He hadn’t answered Beth. Without looking he knew, in the way married couples know things about each other, that she was silently weeping. He reached across and put his hand on her leg. Beneath the denim a muscle flexed and then relaxed. ‘You’re not too late,’ he said.
That night, as Tim and Beth backed out of the tent, Ruby put a tiny paw on her mother’s arm.
‘I’m scared, Mummy,’ she said. ‘Can you read to me?’
It was very late, but Beth picked up the book of children’s stories and turned to her favourite, The Little Match Girl. She began to read.
‘Most terribly cold it was, it snowed, and it was nearly quite dark, and evening, the last evening of the year. In this cold and darkness there went along the street a poor little girl, bare-headed and with naked feet.’
‘How old is she, Mummy?’
‘I’m not sure. He doesn’t say. Probably not much older than you are.’
‘And so the little girl walked on her naked feet, which were quite red and blue with the cold…’
‘What’s her name?’
‘What do you want to call her?’
‘The snowflakes fell on her long fair hair, which hung in pretty curls over her neck. From all the windows the candles were gleaming, and it smelt so deliciously of roast goose.’
How many times had she read it, had Ruby heard it? She must know every line.
‘Oh, how much one little match might warm her. If she could only take one from the box and rub it against the wall and warm her hands. She drew one out… a warm, bright flame… she stretched out her feet to warm them too; then the little flame went out…’
‘This is a sad story, isn’t it, Mummy?’
‘Yes, honey, it’s quite sad. Shall I stop?’
