Before I Knew You
PENGUIN BOOKS
Before I Knew You
Praise for Amanda Brookfield:
‘Few contemporary British novelists writing today explore the messy tangles of close human relationships with quite such warm perceptiveness as Brookfield’ Daily Mirror
‘Amanda Brookfield could lead the women’s novel a few steps further out of its cultural ghetto’ Sunday Telegraph
‘The novel walks a line between comedy and wrenching sadness. It is fluently written and its depiction of domestic chaos … is all too recognizable’ Sunday Times
‘What is refreshing here is the author’s conspicuous sanity and her sharp line in defence of reason … It could be sentimental, but it isn’t’ Guardian
‘Intelligent and perceptive’ Sainsbury’s Magazine
‘This book, about deep and complex family love from this accomplished author, is told with true passion’ Family Circle
‘Through her characters, Brookfield skilfully illuminates the relationships, dilemmas and compromises that define so many lives’ Sunday Express
‘I savoured every second of this deeply satisfying book. Amanda Brookfield goes from strength to strength’ Patricia Scanlan
‘Charming and enjoyable’ Best
‘Penetrating insights into the ordinary female condition’ Women’s Own
‘A confident narrative voice’ Daily Telegraph
‘Perfect for curling up on the sofa’ Candis
‘Absorbing’ Bella
‘Incisive writing from a fine novelist’ Choice Magazine
Before I Knew You
AMANDA BROOKFIELD
PENGUIN BOOKS
PENGUIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R ORL, England
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA
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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R ORL, England
www.penguin.com
First published 2011
Copyright © Amanda Brookfield, 2010
All rights reserved
The moral right of the author has been asserted
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
ISBN: 978-0-141-96354-9
For Gilly
‘The past is consumed in the present and the present is living only because it brings forth the future’
James Joyce
Table of Contents
PART ONE
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
PART TWO
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
PART THREE
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Acknowledgements
PART ONE
1
The plane remained motionless while its engines roared, being tested, Sophie hoped, for their ability to perform with similar conviction once airborne. Peering through her scratched porthole, she studied the overcast skies of Heathrow, wondering how the Stapletons would feel, landing amid such gloom when they had left behind a heat wave. The entire east coast of America was simmering at only just below 40°C, Andrew had exclaimed over the paper that morning, delivering the information, as he did most things these days, trivial or otherwise, in a tone that demanded some visible effort on her part at celebration.
Sophie had done her best to oblige, rolling her eyes in a show of happy wonderment, suppressing a strong desire to remind her husband of the propensity of his pale, gingery-blond-haired skin to blister and blotch, and an even stronger urge to slice through his newspaper with her toast knife and say she did not wish to holiday anywhere that year, let alone swap houses with some people from Connecticut for four weeks, three of which would be without their children. But Andrew had looked so pleased – so relieved – that she had held the smile in place, clung to it much as she might have a cliff edge in the dark, telling herself that if he couldn’t see the effort then she should be able to overlook it too.
Of course, Andrew was as apprehensive as she was, Sophie reminded herself – about the heat, about New York, about the whole madcap scheme. It had been the brainchild of his old friend and erstwhile best man, Geoffrey Hooper, who had for years lived on the Upper East Side with his wife Ann.
I recently met with this really nice English guy, William Stapleton – in asset management with Latouche – who was lamenting the cost and difficulty of finding a short let on a decent family home in south-west London. He got married last year to an American and has a beautiful property in Connecticut, but is looking for a base in your neck of the woods for August so he can see something of his kids from his first marriage – they live with the first wife in Richmond … Hey, pal, I hope you’re following this … The point is, the man needs to spend a few weeks in west London and you and Sophie need to visit America before your Zimmer frames stop you getting on a plane. So it occurred to me that if you guys simply traded properties for, say, a month this summer everybody would be happy! Well, Ann and I certainly would!
We have always understood why the pair of you might be reluctant to spend time cooped up with us on Manhattan, but Darien is beautiful – right on the coast, so picturesque and rural, but with easy access to New York. William and Beth’s house (we visited a couple of Sundays ago) is colonial style, close to Pear Tree Point, with views over Scott’s Pond … better than any hotel and, of course, totally FREE! There would be no end of activities if you wanted them – water sports, great walks in the nature preserves, tennis, golf. I swear you and the girls would have a ball. Oh, yes, and the joys of NY await you too – great food, fabulous museums, Broadway – Ann and I would so love to show you around. William and Beth have already said they’re game if you are. Let me know SOON so we can iron out details. Best, Geoff
The email, printed out by Andrew, had sat next to the telephone in the kitchen for a couple of weeks, gathering dust and splashes of juice and coffee. Every time Sophie glimpsed it she felt a twist of irritation, both for the unappealing invitation it contained and the careless Americanisms woven through the prose. Geoff had been born in Bristol and acquired a blue for cricket at Cambridge. He’d had an edge of old-fashioned Queen’s English to his voice that Sophie had once, briefly, found rather enticin
g. Before retraining as a barrister in his late twenties he had eked out as pauper-like an existence as theirs had been in those days, freelancing in orchestras while Ann worked in a clothes shop. Now he settled disputes between wealthy divorcing couples and said pal …
Sophie had been lost to such uncharitable thoughts one evening when Andrew had snatched the email from under her nose, saying, ‘I’ll tell him no.’ He had begun, slowly, to tear the piece of paper in two while Sophie watched – momentarily glad and then suddenly afraid that he might be ripping up something infinitely more irrevocable than a tatty piece of A4.
‘Let’s say yes,’ she had murmured, reaching out a hand to stop him. ‘A holiday in America. Say yes,’ she had repeated, taking a step backwards as an indication that this spurt of positive energy did not extend to taking command of organizing the project. ‘Like he says, we’ll probably love it.’
As the aeroplane gathered speed down the runway, pressing her into her seat, Sophie’s thoughts drifted back wistfully to the easy harmony of their holiday the previous summer: two weeks in Italy – Naples, Positano, Pompeii – sun, sea and Roman ruins, ingredients to keep all the various ages and temperaments of her family happy. For the start of that journey she had sat between the girls, gripping their slim, nail-bitten fingers as the concrete complex of Gatwick shrank to a blur, seeking to ease her own customary terrors about air travel rather than those of her daughters. It had even – perhaps morbidly – occurred to her that it wouldn’t be a bad moment to die, with all four of them side by side, chain-linked, Andrew included, thanks to Milly thoughtfully reaching across the aisle for her father’s hand as the plane’s snout lifted towards the sky.
Andrew’s hand was inches from Sophie’s now yet she felt no inclination to reach for it. Olivia and Milly were on tour with the London Youth Orchestra, first violin and cello. At the tender ages of seventeen and fifteen respectively, Andrew had been talking to them a lot recently about how to prepare for and what to expect from music college – especially Olivia, whose application to the Royal College of Music and a clutch of the best conservatoires would be submitted that autumn.
Sophie swallowed, wanting both her offspring so badly that all the recently acquired teenage carapaces – the flouncing, the moodiness, the closed doors and antisocial whirring of laptops – seemed too minor even to consider forgiving. She conjured a fond image of Olivia, her violin pinioned under her chin, all flashing elbows and arms and hips as she played, like a sapling in a high wind. Milly, in spite of being younger and the more volatile character, tended to fold herself round her cello as if it literally grew out of her, bowing with smooth, fluid movements as the soft gingery-gold streams of her hair swung across the struts. She was the more restful to watch – and the better musician, Andrew had occasionally, in hushed tones, confided, in spite of both girls’ history of excellent grades. The tour was the opportunity of a lifetime – Munich, Vienna, Salzburg … and several other places that Sophie could not remember.
‘Poor Stapletons,’ she murmured, pressing her fingers to her popping ears as the plane continued to rise steeply and the lacklustre sky began to seep flecks of rain.
‘Poor?’
‘Getting this weather, and our Volvo and grotty carpets and a weedy garden and Barnes traffic and a view of the river only if you climb onto the window-sill in the top bedroom and crane your neck round the tree that probably caused the massive crack in the cellar.’
‘When you’ve quite finished …’
‘I only meant that from those pictures they sent it’s pretty clear who’s getting the better deal – detached, double garage, set in all that unspoilt land. A place like that would cost millions over here.’
‘A place like that doesn’t exist over here – at least, not in south-west London.’ Andrew pulled out his briefcase from under his seat, riffling through it for the score to the German Requiem, to which he had somewhat rashly committed the school choir and orchestra for the following term. He wasn’t remotely in the mood for work but needed to put up some sort of barrier around himself – against Sophie’s relentless gloom, against his own doubts about swapping homes, running riot now that they were actually on their way. He had to fence some of that out or he couldn’t think straight.
He thumbed through the Brahms gently, fondly. He had conducted it only once, some twenty years before, during his Cambridge days. The pencil marks were faded but Andrew could still remember, with painful precision, the exuberance with which he had inscribed them, all the certainty and hope of being twenty and talented, the future unfurling at his command, as lush and promising as a red carpet. ‘And our house is ideal for them, Geoff said,’ he burst out, his invisible fence collapsing. ‘Being near the first wife and all that stuff, remember? So the man can see his sons? And the garden isn’t full of weeds because I paid that overpriced idiot a small fortune to weed it and the Volvo has never been so clean and you can see the river from our bathroom window without craning your neck at all. And –’ Andrew jammed his pencil between his teeth in a bid to stop the flow, fearful of what might come out.
An air stewardess with gummy scarlet lips handed them each a menu. Andrew slipped his into the back of the score, letting the anger unfurl inside his head instead. Sophie had seen a doctor, had blood tests, been checked for MS, early menopause and a host of other delights. A brief dalliance with antidepressants had made no difference, she claimed, other than an upset stomach. Six months, it had been now. Six months since January and the break-in, which obviously hadn’t helped, and Andrew had been as patient as he could about factoring that in. But patience, like everything, had limits, and lately, lying awake in the dark as she turned her back on him again, he had felt as if his skin was being stretched to the point of rupture; that one more moment of putting up with the dazed looks and the gloominess, he would split open like some dried-out, over-tightened drum.
Sophie, sensing the vibrations of his exasperation, its proximity to anger, pretended to study the in-flight menu: boeuf bourguignon or fillet of salmon with dill, broccoli florets, potatoes dauphinoise, a selection of French cheeses, tarte au citron, filter coffee and mint chocolate … Such idiotic jargon, such a silly printed card, when everybody knew it would be the usual reheated mulch in plastic tubs, lukewarm, too salty, too sweet, too …
Sophie took a deep breath. The negativity, it had to stop. She must try, like Andrew did, like Andrew wanted. ‘I’ll have the salmon, I think. What about you?’ She did her best to sound interested, as if she didn’t already know that he would choose the beef.
Before Andrew could answer, the plane lurched, sending his briefcase – spilling papers – sliding off his lap. Sophie dived forwards to catch it, lunging with the same deft reflex with which she had once fielded a priceless vase, toppled by her own careless elbow in an antiques shop, and Milly, rolling off a nappy mat towards a stone-tiled floor.
‘Thanks, Soph.’
Their eyes caught, a brief involuntary connection no less intense for its mutual acknowledgement of the distance between them and their powerlessness in the face of it. Sophie was the first to blink and look away. A new wave of dread for Darien, Connecticut, New York – wherever the hell it was – swept over her. Four weeks in the home of strangers: it would be like putting bare feet into someone else’s still warm shoes, enduring the ugly sensation of the ridges worn by their toes. Sophie shuddered.
Yet it was true that she dreaded most things, these days. And there was something to admire in the dogged determination with which Andrew had taken charge of the project – not just booking gardeners, but amending car-insurance policies, sorting key collection … all this when he was both deputy head and head of music in a large, demanding private London school, keeping on top of admin by the seat of his pants, resorting to charm whenever his shortcomings as an organizer threatened to let him down. He was a singer who had given up singing, Sophie reminded herself, a composer who had no time to compose. They had met when she was a minion behind the scenes at a musi
c festival in Winchester, modelling part-time, drifting after having dropped out of a degree in English at Reading. Andrew had anchored her, pronounced her his muse.
‘Andrew, darling …’ The endearment felt false, but she pressed on. ‘I know I’m hard work at the moment, but I promise you I’m fighting it … whatever it turns out to be. It’s so difficult to describe … just not feeling right … If it continues, I’ll have more tests, I promise.’
Andrew sighed, spreading his hand over hers. ‘Good girl, that’s the spirit.’ The tone was back in his voice, the one she hated – the show of kindness but so laced with impatience that it only left her feeling worse.
Sophie extricated her fingers and returned her attention to the porthole, seeing again the young man who had broken into their back garden in January, the unmistakable beauty of his creamy mixed-race skin, the ugly stains on his clothes, the darting dark eyes and a mouth so full-lipped that even in the midst of all the trauma she had sensed the conscious effort to keep it closed, to hide from public view the bright inner wetness of his gums. She traced her finger down the rivulets streaking the outside of the window. In the end nothing bad had happened, as Andrew was so fond of reminding her. A boy with a knife, stealing cash, scared off by a siren. And yet something nearly happening could be just as bad, she reasoned. Like catching Milly that time, inches from the hard-tiled bathroom floor. Afterwards Sophie had found herself struggling for breath and weeping, in spite of her daughter’s soft, precious head being safely cradled in her palms.
The stewardess arrived to retrieve her menu cards and take their order. The image of Milly as a baby, of the January intruder, receded, leaving Sophie only with the now familiar hollowness of being too exhausted to care. And that was because she was ill, she consoled herself, with one of those viruses too cunning and invisible to be awarded the honour of a name. Rest, the doctor said, regular meals, lots of sleep, no stress. And she had been doing her best to obey – it was months since she had given up the part-time teaching of English A-level re-sits that passed for a career, and here she was jetting off on a whole month’s holiday. What more could she do? Sophie closed her eyes.