A Family Man

  A Family Man

  Amanda Brookfield

  For John and Sue

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  A Letter to the Reader

  More from Amanda Brookfield

  About the Author

  About Boldwood Books

  1

  2001

  Released from the nose-to-tail traffic which had persisted since the Isle of Dogs, the taxi accelerated noisily across Tower Bridge. Matt sank farther into the beaten leather seat, tightening his grip round the edges of his briefcase. Although it was only 2.30, the afternoon had already been sucked of light, surrendering to the drabness of a January dusk. Through the smeary window there was nothing to see but a canvas of greys, an almost seamless sweep embracing the band of river water, city buildings and the thick umbrella of cloud overhead. Against such a backdrop, the huge steely wings of the bridge looked faintly unreal, like cardboard cut-outs stuck on for dramatic effect.

  Glancing at his watch, Matt swore quietly. ‘It’s quicker if you cut left at these lights,’ he called, sliding his briefcase on to the seat beside him and leaning forward with both elbows pressed to his knees.

  The taxi turned off the Kennington Road with a lurch, flinging its passenger sideways and causing the briefcase to shoot on to the floor.

  ‘Just here will do fine,’ said Matt a minute later, judging from the traffic that it would be quicker to walk the last few hundred yards. He handed over seventeen pounds, tapping his fingers impatiently while the driver wrote out a receipt. By the time he turned down the cul-de-sac that housed the red-bricked horror of a Gothic church in which his son attended nursery school, it was spitting with rain.

  On the church steps, next to the billboard saying, ‘Bright Sparks Montessori’, a couple of mothers were chatting while their children played tag on the steps. Relieved not to have missed the collection process entirely, Matt increased his stride to a trot, the tails of his long dark overcoat flapping round his shins. Joshua was standing in the doorway, his hand slotted firmly in that of the school’s head teacher, Miss Harris. She was talking earnestly to a woman with a baby in a sling, her billowing flowery skirt exposing thick tights and wide knees. Joshua’s new blue anorak was buttoned up to his chin, it’s too-large hood pulled so thoroughly over his head that all Matt could make out of his face was the lower part of his nose and his mouth.

  ‘Josh,’ Matt called, all his irritation at having the Friday school pick- up so suddenly thrust upon him dissolving at the sight of his four-year-old son, so small beside the wide woman and the vast spires of the church looming behind. ‘Josh,’ he called again, more urgently, feeling a knot at the back of his throat at the realisation that the brown eyes peering from under the blue hood were looking for Kath and had yet made no connection to the man in the overcoat jogging towards the church gates.

  Miss Harris spotted him first. ‘Ah, Mr Webster, here we are at last.’

  ‘Sorry I’m late.’ Matt bent to scoop Josh and a creation of egg-box and yoghurt cartons into his arms. ‘And how are you, little man?’

  ‘I made a ship.’

  ‘A ship? Fantastic.’

  ‘Where’s Mummy?’

  ‘At the supermarket, I think. She asked me to get you for once. Let’s go.’

  ‘Oh, and Mr Webster…’ Miss Harris had almost closed the door

  when her ruddy-cheeked face appeared back round the side of it. ‘The parents meeting is now at eleven next Friday, not ten, as I told Mrs Webster. I hope that’s still convenient.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure it is – I’ll tell Kath.’ Having got to the bottom of the steps, Matt set Joshua down on the ground.

  ‘Come on, then.’ He held out his hand. ‘Where’s the car?’

  ‘It’s at home, or maybe with Mummy. So Daddy and Josh have to walk.’

  ‘Car,’ Josh wailed, hurling the word from the back of his throat with all the volume and energy which had made parenthood – the first twelve months in particular – enough of an ordeal for neither Matt nor Kath yet to feel tempted to repeat the experience. ‘Want Mummy,’ he sobbed. With theatrically perfect timing the specking rain chose that moment not only to transform itself into fat wet dollops, but also to adjust the angle of its fall from a gentle vertical trickle to a slanting barrage of what felt like vindictive ferocity.

  Matt opened his mouth to say ‘Fucking hell’ only to remember that his son had reached an age where mimicry of adults was a prime pastime. ‘Come on, let’s run,’ he suggested instead, squatting in as friendly a manner as he could manage, given the inclemency of the weather, his rising ill temper and the already visibly drooping egg-boxes in his arms. ‘Please, Josh,’ he begged, inwardly cursing Kath for the unprecedented act of commanding him south of the river on a Friday afternoon, when he had planned to catch up on his paperwork and go straight to the theatre from the office.

  Joshua paused, merely, as it turned out, to summon extra breath before raising the pitch of his protest to new heights. Matt cast an anxious glance up at the church, fearful that Miss Harris or one of her band of pretty young assistants might be judging this spectacle of failing parental control through a slit in the door.

  ‘Now calm down,’ he commanded, exasperation making it impossible to sound calm himself. ‘Okay, then, Dad will run.’ He crammed the artwork into his briefcase, hoiked his son back up into his arms and set off at a gallop for home, gritting his teeth against the awkwardness of his load. Only at the sight of their three-bedroomed terraced home, set in the middle of a long line of Georgian houses in various states of repair and dilapidation, did Matt slow his pace. By which time his eyes were so full of rain he could hardly see and Joshua was jigging round his hips with all the glee of a jockey approaching a finishing post.

  ‘There now, not so bad, was it?’ Breathing heavily, Matt leaned against the door to recover while Joshua shouted through the letterbox. When there was no response, Matt found his own keys and let them in.

  Given their dripping state, it seemed a reasonable idea to have a bath. Josh, used to having to wait until after tea for this most precious time of day, was so excited at the news that he rushed upstairs still in his coat and muddy shoes. Dropping his keys on to the hall table, Matt slung his coat over one of the two laden hooks wedged behind the door, frowning absently at the amount of clobber apparently required by a family of three. He felt a familiar stab of longing for the early echo of emptiness when he and Kath had moved in five years before, when their possessions were too few to fill every room, when the paint smelt fresh and the stripped floorboards gleamed with varnish. Coming from a cramped flat in Shepherd’s Bush, the Kennington house had felt huge, full of possibilities, a wonderful blank sheet waiting to have its identity splashed upon it. That
such an identity was to include a child had come as something of a surprise. Only four months after moving in, Kath, who hadn’t had periods since an anorexic phase in her teens, and who had feared that recent bouts of exhaustion and nausea might be heralding the onset of ME, discovered instead that she was twelve weeks pregnant. The clutter had started then, with the investment in Moses baskets, breast pumps and prams – a mere taster for the paraphernalia of toddlerhood and all the more sophisticated gadgets of the fully mobile child. Matt had waved gleeful farewells at stair gates and baby walkers only to find them replaced by trikes, trucks and large items of plastic weaponry.

  Finding nothing of interest among the morning’s post, Matt dropped the envelopes back on to the hall table next to a vase of weary-looking flowers. He stretched and yawned deeply, running both hands back through his wet hair. Momentarily forgetting his excursion to the barber’s that morning, he was surprised to feel how little there was to get hold of, and stooped to reassure himself of his appearance in the hall mirror. Kath would like it, he was sure. She had a thing about short hair on men, particularly men with slightly receding hairlines and not as much to boast about on top as they would have liked. It made him look older, but more sophisticated too, more modern even, he decided, flexing his eyebrows and noting with mild surprise that the brightness of his eyes betrayed none of the exhaustion he felt inside. Before turning away, he cast a scowl of dissatisfaction at the rest of his reflection, thinking, as he always did, that being in proportion was at least some consolation for never having quite reached the magic milestone of six foot. Kath in heels was easily as tall as him. But then Kath was a particularly tall lady, eyes level with his chin even in her bare feet.

  Upstairs, promising tap noises had been superseded by an ominous silence. Arriving out of breath at the bathroom door, Matt was relieved to find his son neither imperilled nor visibly wetter than before, but sitting on the white-tiled bathroom floor tugging crossly at the zipper on his coat.

  Next to him the bath was full but by no means overflowing.

  ‘Good boy, well done.’ Matt knelt down and tried to intervene with the zip, which had caught a wedge of material in its teeth.

  ‘Josh do it.’

  ‘But Daddy can —’

  ‘Josh do it.’

  ‘Fine. Josh do it.’ Matt sighed and began peeling off his own clothes,

  dropping them into a heap behind the door and then crossing to the loo to pee.

  * * *

  ‘Daddy’s willy,’ remarked his son, pointing.

  ‘Yes, which, like Daddy, is getting in the bath. But not Josh because he won’t let Daddy help with his clothes.’ Seeing this observation induce a distinct tremble in the lower lip, Matt executed a comical jumping entry into the water by way of encouragement and diversion. A moment later he was back out again, skidding on the wet tiles and emitting a string of unfatherly profanities. Joshua, who assumed such eccentric behaviour to be all part of the afternoon’s entertainment, clapped in appreciation.

  ‘It’s cold, Josh … cold … bloody icy … bloody hell.’

  ‘Mummy says only touch the green one.’

  ‘Yes, well … quite right. Mummy is quite right, of course.’ Matt put the toilet seat down and sat with a towel round his shoulders, gloomily contemplating the mercurial challenge of seeing to the needs of a small child. Tiny slugs of mud had worked their way out of the ridges in the soles of Joshua’s desert boots, converting the white-tiled floor to a sea of smeary brown. Having successfully removed the anorak, his son was grappling with the double knots on his shoes, his breathing heavy with concentration. Taking in the scene, Matt felt a rush of longing for Kath, for her power to impose domestic order, for permission to be released back into the infinitely more manageable world of his career. He was covering Noël Coward’s Private Lives that evening, a star-studded revival which promised to be as pleasurable to watch as it would be to write about. The theatre’s press agent, an American called Beth Durant, had agreed to meet him in the bar before the start with a view to discussing a feature interview with the actress playing the part of Amanda. If it came off it would be Matt’s first brush with true celebrity, a real feather in the cap, both for the paper and his own career. The actress, a twenty-eight-year-old RADA-trained Hollywood success story called Andrea Beauchamp, was blessed not only with considerable talent but also with the kind of private life to set the heart of any journalist ticking with expectation.

  Seeing Joshua now beginning to sob with impatience over his footwear, Matt dangled his wristwatch – a much-prized toy – by way of a diversionary peace offering. ‘You do this, Dad does your clothes, okay? And we’ll have bubbles,’ he added, turning the hot tap on full and tipping in several capfuls of the green slimy substance in which Kath liked to soak herself.

  Half an hour later Matt took some satisfaction in propping a somewhat perfumed but pleasingly spruce child among the sofa cushions, together with a bag of crisps and the console for their old video player. Joshua pounced on it with his usual dexterity, eighteen months of nursery school having done little to encourage similar proficiency with anything in a pencil case. Particularly favoured was the rewind button, used to watch clips that he liked especially, sometimes four or five times on the trot. While mildly disturbed by the habit, Kath and Matt had long since given up trying to put a stop to it, not only to avoid tantrums, but because it converted a measly twenty-minute cartoon into an entertainment of feature- length proportions.

  Upstairs Matt made a desultory attempt to clean up the mess in the bathroom, wiping his already damp chinos and shirt across the smeared floor before stuffing them into the laundry basket for Kath to deal with the following day. Pulling on the clean-ish set of clothes draped over his bedroom chair, he headed down to the kitchen, where he made a cup of coffee and reached for the phone.

  ‘Gemma, it’s me. The message from Kath – she didn’t happen to say when she would be home, did she?’

  ‘No, don’t think so. Just for you to pick up Josh because she was going out.’

  ‘Going out?’

  ‘That’s what she said.’ ‘Right. Thanks.’

  ‘Is there a problem?’

  ‘No, not at all. She’s probably on a foray to Tesco’s and got snarled up in rush-hour traffic. See you Monday. Have a good weekend.’ Matt slammed the receiver down, wishing for by no means the first time that Kath would set aside her obstinacy about getting a mobile phone. Everyone had them these days, but then his wife always had been one for swimming against the tide. He wallowed in annoyance for a few minutes before wondering if perhaps he should be worried instead. What if she had been in a crash? Or been mugged? An image of Kath lying knifed in a gutter flickered and died. More likely she was with Louise, he decided angrily, reaching for the address book to look up the number of Kath’s oldest friend, who was married to a consultant and lived in Camberwell.

  ‘Hello?’ The voice sounded hesitant and rather young. ‘Is Louise there, please?’

  ‘She out. Au pair is speaking.’

  ‘Do you know where she has gone?’ Matt delivered the question with exaggerated slowness, drumming his fingers on the wall next to the phone.

  ‘Is drink with friend.’

  ‘Ah. Which friend? Do you know which friend?’ ‘Which friend.’

  ‘The friend is called Kath?’ ‘I think yes.’

  ‘Thank you very much. Sorry to have troubled you.’ Reassured, Matt checked the kitchen clock, glad to see that there was still a good hour to go before he needed to think about getting himself back across the river into town.

  2

  Seated in the Aldwych a couple of hours later, Matt was reminded of why he had allowed his once broad journalistic interests to be streamlined into the narrow, less lucrative field of theatre criticism. The production was even better than he had dared to expect, the set subtly inventive, the actors skilfully directed to inject fresh layers of modern nuances into even the most familiar lines. While not as outrageously bea
utiful as her publicity photographs suggested, Andrea Beauchamp was undeniably compelling, showing an impeccable precision in her timing and quite unafraid to use the silence between the words as much as the words themselves. The unmistakable aura of sexual confidence shadowed every gesture, every arch of the slim neck, every blink of the large kohl-rimmed eyes. Pitifully unprofessional though it was, the thought of talking in person to such a creature made his heart pound.

  Leaning forward slightly, he cast a glance at the strong profile of the press agent, Beth Durant, seated a few yards to his right, a forty-something blonde with big hair and a soft voice. While producing no concrete results, their talk before the start of the play had gone well.

  ‘Andrea likes to limit her media exposure to a minimum, as I’m sure you are aware,’ she had said, eyeing him steadily over the rim of her glass of mineral water, the unhurried drawl of her West Coast accent adding to the impression of a woman in no rush to compromise.

  ‘Of course. But I gather that she is keen to help promote the success of the play, and also to remind us all of her formidable abilities as an actress– not that I would want to put down any of her achievements at the box- office.’

  Beth laughed. ‘No, you wouldn’t want to do that, Mr Webster. Nor will she be willing to comment on the recent events in her private life in any depth – the split with her partner, the rift with her father, all that stuff.’