Before I Knew You Read online

  Life had got complicated again, William reflected bitterly, slumping down the following morning on the crest of the hill that reduced the valley to a green fold in the earth, containing homes no bigger than scattered pebbles and a glassy slit of a river, which from this distance appeared to run an inch from his parents’ front door instead of a good mile. Sheep dotted the surrounding fields with all the simple innocence of a child’s collage of cotton-wool buds on green felt. Overhead, cartoon-warship clouds patrolled the skies, the sun bobbing between their steely prows like a perky buoy flashing its brilliant light.

  ‘Hey, Dad, check this out.’

  William turned in time to see Alfie swinging at a tatty tennis ball with an old putter of his grandfather’s that he had brought along for the walk. The ball sailed high and veered left on a gust of wind, landing among some yellow speckled gorse clumped round a lone tree, billowing on the sky-line like a schooner in full sail. Alfie didn’t see the wild beauty of the place, William knew, just as he hadn’t at that age. It was simply somewhere in which it was easy to be happy, somewhere open and large enough to swallow all the noise and energy he could hurl into it.

  ‘Nice shot!’ William waved, then returned his attention to the view, thinking wistfully of days when how far one could hit a ball had meant the world, when staring at the dots of human occupation of a valley would not have prompted yearnings for a similar distancing perspective on his own life. Getting to know Beth had been close to retrieving some of that innocence, William saw now; falling in love – the delight of finding that he still could – had made the world seem so splendid again, so easy to forgive and believe in. Buying the Darien house had stretched his finances to the hilt, but it had been worth it for the sheer pleasure of Beth’s pleasure, making her wildest dream come true, she had said more times than he could count, always adding that it was only their shared occupation of it that made the dream complete.

  But since they had come to England there was no denying that some of that splendour had been stripped away. Beth might have been a fresh start in one sense, but the last few weeks had woken William up to the fact that she could not be kept separate from all that had gone before, no matter how much either of them wished it to be so. The past might seem to slide out of view, but it was always there, always knitted to the present, whether that involved Harry screwing up his exams, Susan (unbelievably, in the midst of this new crisis) angling for more money, or Henrietta gate-crashing the dinner table, making eyes over a glass or three under the mistaken apprehension that a limping, glum-faced wife was sufficient pretext for persuading William to re-enact some old times.

  Once, not that long ago, it might even have been fun to confess rather than lie about the very brief, indisputably desperate, pre- and post-Susan phases that had encompassed shagging his childhood playmate – invariably when they had both had too much to drink and usually (at least on William’s part) to sobering disappointment. The ability to rugby-tackle sheep for dipping had proved no qualification either for erotic athletics between the sheets or interesting pillow-talk afterwards. Of equal disappointment had been the discovery of just how quickly Henrietta’s trademark show of feisty, cheery independence collapsed under the joint assault of alcohol and intimacy, exposing a sobbing neediness that William had found as repellent as it was pitiful.

  In her current frame of mind William knew that Beth would have been unlikely to see the funny side of such admissions. Indeed, her resentful dislike of Henrietta during the course of dinner the previous evening had been palpable almost to the point of embarrassment – even after he had whispered heartfelt apologies for the row about Harry. She was clearly (in spite of denying it) itching to turn her back on England and the whole house-swapping project. And William could hardly blame her: what with her ankle injury, Susan playing hard-ball and the shenanigans over Harry, their supposed holiday had been bumpy enough to make life back in Connecticut look even rosier than when they had left it. Thinking of Darien now, he couldn’t conjure any memory of stress other than friendly tussles about which steak house to choose for a night out and whether to rent two movies from Netflicks or three.

  Only a fool wouldn’t yearn to return to such simple pleasures. Yet such a long spell in England had also served to remind William just how fond he still was of his homeland: cricket, pubs, real beer, the option of TV without adverts, not to mention the undulating countryside, spread beneath his feet that morning like a glorious feast. But the real, crucial tie, surpassing all such superficial pleasures, was of course his sons. To have the chance to spend so much time with them had been as wonderful as it was unprecedented: he had managed two straight weeks before, but never four, and never in such logistically trouble-free circumstances. The thought of that ending, of stepping back into a flimsy, intermittent pattern of emails and often unsatisfactory phone calls, especially with the unresolved issues now surrounding Harry, was like a knife slicing through his heart.

  ‘Guess who!’

  William jumped as a pair of muddy palms was clamped over his eyes. ‘Tiger Woods? A member of the SAS? An annoying thirteen-year-old trying to give a parent a heart-attack?’ William spun round, grabbing his youngest under his protuberant, boyish ribs and wrestling him onto his back on the ground where he pinned him under one knee. ‘Surrender?’

  Alfie jerked his head from side to side, his glasses jiggling, helpless with giggles.

  ‘Surrender?’ William repeated, but hoarsely this time for his attention had drifted to the freckles on his son’s nose, the wisp of down on the upper lip, the new band of muscles under the ribcage. Only the arms and legs were still childishly skinny, as well as being endearingly criss-crossed with evidence of a good summer holiday – scratches, grazes, dirt, interspersed with clusters of mosquito bites. ‘My God, your glasses are filthy,’ William muttered, amazed that the eyes regarding him through such grimy lenses could still manage to be such a mischievous, heartbreaking blue.

  ‘But I don’t surrender,’ prompted Alfie, sensing that some vital impetus to the game was in danger of being lost.

  ‘Then you shall die,’ William snarled obligingly, flipping him onto his stomach and starting a session of merciless tickling that ended only when an accidental elbow caught his cheekbone.

  Afterwards they lay side by side on their backs in the grass, watching the warships, which had spread and thickened into continents.

  ‘I don’t want you to go back to America, Dad. I like it better when you’re here.’

  ‘I’m not going for ages yet.’

  ‘Eight days. You’re going in eight days.’

  ‘To a huge house with a huge garden that you’re going to visit in the Christmas holidays and every holidays after that.’ William held his breath, hoping that Alfie wouldn’t look sideways and see the rogue tear that had trickled out of the corner of his eye and down his temple. George, Harry – the idiot – he could manage, but not this, not this.

  ‘When we come out to stay, we won’t have to call her “Mummy”, will we?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Never?’

  ‘Never ever ever.’

  ‘And are you going to get a swimming-pool built, like you said?’

  ‘Too bloody right I am.’ William sat up, delivering a playful finger-poke into the gap between Alfie’s shorts and T-shirt. ‘Okay?’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Good. Well, I’m glad we’ve got that settled.’ William got to his feet, blinking away a swarm of unhelpful images of the figures on his recent credit-card statements. His end-of-year bonus should set things straight, as it always did, but in the meantime things were tight, as he had tried, with mounting exasperation, to explain to Susan. ‘Come on, mate, we should be getting back.’

  ‘Maybe not yet … Look.’ Alfie pointed down the hill.

  ‘Blimey …’ William put his hand to his eyes, squinting as the sun burst through one of the sky’s now thinning plates of cloud. Beth was making her way towards them, thrashing through the clump
s of sharp-bladed grass and thistles with the aid of his father’s walking-stick. William’s heart swelled. It was a hell of a walk, even for someone fully fit. He had forgotten how resilient she was, how keen to bounce back. ‘Hey, Beth … Beth.’ He swung both arms above his head, but she kept on climbing, hauling herself with long, lop-sided strides, barely glancing up. ‘Wow.’ William grinned, reaching out to ruffle more chaos into Alfie’s haystack hair. ‘We could roll to meet her. What about that, eh?’

  ‘Roll?’

  ‘A race.’ William had already thrown himself back onto the grass, parking his body for release down the hill.

  ‘But it’s prickly …’

  ‘Sissy.’

  A moment later they had both set off, a few feet apart, their arms crossed over their chests, their faces clenched against any hostilities lurking in the ground. Laughing, crashing, restarting, crashing again, it was several minutes before they were close enough to Beth for William, sitting up between tumbles, to notice that the determination in his wife’s uneven stride was grim rather than cheerful. Alfie set off on another roll, but William stayed where he was, his own cheerfulness subsiding under the realization that she was cross. No, not cross … upset. She was wiping her face … crying.

  ‘Beth … darling … what is it?’ William stumbled towards her, almost twisting his own ankles in his haste, his heart surging with terrors. His mother? His father? Harry, God forbid? He had never seen her so distraught.

  Alfie, realizing the fun and games really were over, got to his feet with a sigh and started back up the hill for the putter.

  ‘Beth, darling, what is it? What on earth has happened?’

  She stopped to wait for him, flinging the stick to the ground, her shoulders heaving. ‘She’s gone! She’s gone. They’ve lost her! For DAYS she’s been gone and they never said … they NEVER SAID. Those fuckers … they’ve LOST her. They left a phone message. I went with your mother to the shops and got a signal and …’ She dropped to her knees, sobbing.

  ‘You mean …?’

  ‘DIDO! Who else could I mean, William? Oh, God, we should never have done it – letting those people into our home. I knew it was wrong, in my heart, I knew it and I never said …’

  ‘Hey, darling, calm down …’ William crouched next to her, stroking her shoulders, inwardly relieved but recognizing that it was no moment to confess as much. ‘Let’s get a little perspective here, shall we? You’re overwrought and upset and no wonder, but if Dido has gone walkabout she may yet come back and –’

  ‘I need to return now.’

  For a moment William thought she was talking about his parents’ grey-brick cottage, its dark slate roof just peeping into view from a patch of trees in the valley below.

  ‘I need to look for her. The Chapmans must leave our home.’ She had stopped crying and was talking with the calmness of one believing their words made sense.

  ‘Beth, for heaven’s sake …’

  ‘I need to, William. I’ll phone Virgin – I’m sure I have the number in my purse … Maybe I can get a signal up here, do you think?’ She stood up, fumbling with the catch on her bag, which she had strung across her chest like a satchel.

  William took a deep breath. Above them, Alfie was making his way back down the hill, thwacking the golf club at clumps of grass. ‘Sweetheart, you’re not thinking straight.’

  ‘Oh, but I am … very straight, straighter than I have for weeks.’ Beth swallowed. Her mouth was dry and still tasted horrible from the post-breakfast throwing up that had preceded the excursion into Skipton. A drastic measure, not resorted to for many years, the relief of evicting her mother-in-law’s irresistible heaped plates of sausages, bacon and scrambled egg had been euphoric. And with the hideous news about Dido she was even gladder she had done it. She could cope with many things, but not getting fat … not now, on top of everything else. ‘I need to look for Dido. If that family won’t move out then I’ll ask if I can stay with Carter and Nancy, or perhaps use the Travelodge. I need to call to her, William, she knows my voice. The longer we leave it the less likely –’

  She broke off, overcome by more tears. Alfie, back within earshot, blushed and darted off in a different direction, jumping on molehills and hoping to look like he didn’t think anything was wrong.

  ‘Beth, baby …’ William hugged her, half amused, half moved by the violence of her reaction. It was mad, but sweet. That she had a big heart was one of the things he adored about her. It was the same heart, after all, that was so possessively crazy about him. And Dido was aptly named, a queen of cats who would be a great loss to their small household, particularly for Beth whom the creature made no secret of loving above all other. ‘There is no way you’re going back early – this is our holiday and I need you. And we couldn’t possibly boot out the Chapmans, could we? Or impose on Nancy and Carter … It’s only a few more days and, besides, cats are famously brilliant at finding their way home, aren’t they? Mum has this story about one that got stuck in a removals van and walked back to Clapham from Lands End.’ He kept his arm firmly across her shoulders, half supporting, half propelling her for the walk back down the hill.

  Beth, calmer for her outburst but still muttering, leant on him heavily, allowing herself to be led. ‘People said I should have had her claws removed, to stop her straying, but she was such a house cat, wasn’t she, from those two years in my apartment, that I never saw the need … and how cruel anyway to remove an animal’s claws – I just couldn’t do it, and she didn’t scratch too much, did she?’

  ‘No, sweetheart, she didn’t. Hey, you know what? Dido probably just didn’t like the look of the Chapmans and is holed up somewhere waiting for your return.’

  Beth managed a bleak smile. ‘Yeah, maybe … I’m sorry, honey, I guess it would be crazy to go back early, but I just feel so sad, so helpless …’

  ‘Of course you do,’ William soothed hurriedly, fearing more tears, ‘but we’ll be home soon enough – with everything back to normal, Dido included … I say, what about a piggy-back for the rest of the way?’

  ‘Ride on your back? I don’t think so.’

  ‘Come on, it’ll be quicker – and better for your poor ankle.’

  ‘But, William, I weigh a ton.’

  ‘Silly, you’re a bird. Get on.’ William bent his knees and took hold of her legs to help her clamber aboard. ‘Hey, Alfie, take the stick, could you?’

  Alfie obeyed, trying not to look at his stepmother’s puffy eyes, but the stick was pleasingly smooth and solid with a curved brass handle and soon he was whirling it in the air along with the putter, barking equestrian commands.

  ‘Tally-ho,’ shouted William, breaking into a canter.

  ‘You’re mad,’ Beth shrieked, clinging on, laughing in spite of herself.

  William galloped faster, suffused with a sudden glorious certainty that his world would right itself again; that the people he loved would love each other; that worries about money, cats and exam results would dissolve as quickly as they had appeared.

  When they finally reached the road his arms and legs were burning. ‘There we are, my lady.’ He set Beth down gently, breathing hard. ‘Your knight is forever at your bidding.’ Alfie handed back the stick without being asked and ran on ahead to open the gate that offered a short-cut along a wooded path to his grandparents’ back garden. The sun, meanwhile, had come out in full strength, making the tarmac gleam like treacle and the hedgerows look bejewelled instead of merely wet. William was happy to keep pace with Beth and the stick, linking arms on her good side, revelling in his restored faith in the world and its power to give pleasure.

  They reached the gate to find Alfie squatting in front of a large spider’s web strung between two lower slats. ‘It’s midway through its lunch.’ He pointed gleefully at the occupant of the web, a creature as large as a hazelnut, busy masticating through the corpse of a fat fly.

  ‘Ohmygod.’ Beth bent down, clapping her hand to her mouth. ‘That is so gross … would you lo
ok at that, William?’ She clutched her throat, exchanging eye-rolls with Alfie.

  William did look, but not at the web. It was his wife and his son that he found so transfixing, crouching together, joined in the simple unity of shared wonderment. His wife and his son … As the image burnt before his eyes an idea exploded inside William’s head, an idea so huge, so right, that he felt dizzy just from trying to accommodate it.

  ‘Hey, Dad, don’t you want to see?’

  ‘Yes, of course. I – I was just wishing I had my camera … You two and that spider – it would make such a great shot,’ William bluffed, stepping up for a closer look.

  ‘But I’ve already taken some pictures with my phone.’

  William laughed. ‘Oh, good. Of course you have.’

  A few minutes later they were almost at the house, Alfie out of earshot.

  ‘Beth?’

  She turned sharply, her expression taut and distracted, the arresting spectacle on the gate clearly forgotten.

  ‘I love you,’ William mouthed, reining in the urge to say what was really on his mind. It was a massive idea after all, a total volte-face, in fact. It would need the most finely tuned moment for release, the gentlest persuasion.

  8

  ‘A white doughnut,’ was Olivia’s pronouncement on the Guggenheim as she followed her mother across the foyer out into the street. Through the glass wall, Andrew and Milly were just visible, deep in the long queue for the checkout in the gift shop. And all for three postcards – of a cardboard sculpture, a Van Gogh and a Jackson Pollock – so painstakingly chosen that Sophie caught herself wondering if it was the recent immersion in some of Europe’s oldest cities that had suddenly bestowed on her younger child such a precise certainty of her cultural preferences. The tour had already produced an endearingly meticulous scrapbook, comprising not just the predictable photographs of friends posing on hostel beds and at café tables, but programmes and tickets from venues, all interspersed with snaps of monuments and neat blocks of handwritten description.