Life Begins Read online

  At home she had found Jessica asleep on the sofa, her laptop open, her books strewn across the carpet. Embarrassed to be woken, the girl scrambled for her possessions and shot off into the night on her bicycle, the rear light bouncing as she rode the bumps. Charlotte, her head icily – terrifyingly – clear, had gone straight from the doorstep to Sam’s bedroom. He, too, was asleep, mouth open, showing the strong, even line of teeth that looked curiously manly against the still childish lips and the little-boy peachiness of his skin. She knelt by the bed and moved a single hair off his forehead, lifting it between her forefinger and thumb and placing it on his head, his lovely head with the new, ridiculously long, messy fringe and the geometrical precision of the crown, so many thousands of strands, such a miraculously perfect interlocking circle.

  Charlotte wanted, more than anything, to crawl in next to him, under the duvet of swarming superheroes. But she could smell the wine on her breath and skin, and Tim, she could smell him – his citrus aftershave, his sweat, his seed. In her shock-induced state of heightened sobriety, she fully recognized the dubiousness of any instinct to reach for Sam. The abyss that had opened up under her that night was hers and hers alone. It had been waiting for her, she realized, yawning and invisible, behind the years of complaint, the wifely railing, the recent superficial efforts to pick up the pieces, the claims of desire for independence. She had loved Martin so much. She had forgotten. She had wanted to forget. The trigger for such feelings could never be packaged in bottles. He had been her belief system, her world. She didn’t want Martin back but that lost faith was something to mourn indeed. Did he feel the same thing now with Cindy? Charlotte wondered. Did feeling it twice make it any less real? Was love only an act of imagination anyway, a willingness to believe? Without that what was there?

  Charlotte stared hard at the sweet sleeping face of her son – the product of honest passion and yet from the first so much simpler than that, so unbreakable, as easy to respond to as a smile and a thousand times deeper. When had the trouble started? The distance, the distrust, the resentment – had it been after Sam or before? And who had written that note? Who had wanted so badly to bring their miserable struggle to an end?

  The little car rocked again, backwards and forwards this time, as if some giant malevolent hand was gripping the back bumper and trying to tip it on to its nose. Charlotte tried not to think of everyone at the party – Sam, Theresa and Henry, Naomi, Jo, Paul, Graham, all of them – except her. She tried not to think of Martin, moving on with Cindy, going through the ritual of opening up their home, inviting people in, heralding, sealing their public partnership, even though, she recalled, there might already be problems there too, cracks behind the scenes. Hah! Cracks – hah! But even her vitriol felt half-hearted. Vitriol took energy and she had none.

  Sickened, a little hungry, Charlotte decided it was time to end her pathetic vigil and head home. She would dig out the treacherous note, she decided fiercely, some resolve returning, have another proper look, burn it, even. But as she reached for the ignition a fresh patch of colour rose above the clumps of flowers outside the cottage. Brilliant red… the pom-pom hat – again. The horrible hat, and a matching scarf, too, this time, blowing round his neck like a noose. Charlotte gawped: Dominic Porter was on the doorstep, shaking Mrs Stowe’s hand – shaking Mrs Stowe’s hand.

  Her next thought was flight. He mustn’t see her. This horrible, hateful, gaunt-faced man, with his equally hateful daughter, criss-crossing her and Sam’s path like a pair of bullying incubi. He mustn’t. Indifference, defiance, friendliness – whatever might be called for during the course of an encounter, she couldn’t manage it, not now, she just couldn’t.

  She turned the key. The engine made its grating sound, its special dreadful sound, reserved for late mornings, late afternoons, as if the only cue required was a sense of urgency in her fluttering fingers. Charlotte tried again, twisting the key viciously, only to produce a grinding sound even worse than the first, like metal striking metal.

  Dominic’s mind was on fixtures and fittings, on the persistent serendipity of connections (the Stowes knowing Benedict, who had mentioned his need for a house), and whether it was too late in the day to call his solicitor to discuss exchanging and completing on the same date. It was the stalling scrape of the Volkswagen engine that caught his attention. Even then, when he turned in search of its source, it was not Charlotte Turner he first saw behind the wheel of the little black car but the blurred image of his fiery-haired wife: Maggie in her old black Mini, crooning at it, coaxing it to start, as she did with anything uncooperative, regardless of whether it happened to be a person or a machine.

  Except it wasn’t Maggie, of course: the hair was longer, smoother, closer to chestnut than red, and the eyes were green instead of blue and there were no freckles to speak of and this woman was much slimmer too, with the hips of a boy and long, agile fingers that looked designed to curl round flutes or whip up and down piano keys. Dominic had no need to approach the car to contemplate these details. He had studied Charlotte Turner closely, not just in the grim circumstance of Miss Brigstock’s office but before that, in the narrow confines of her front hall and the kitchen with the south-facing garden and the waste-disposal unit built into the sink, warning himself even then against the private pitiful indulgence of being drawn to a woman with red hair.

  ‘Having trouble?’ He lowered his head, mildly put out that she did not immediately wind down the window, this woman whose son had briefly traumatized his daughter (though Rose seemed far from traumatized now) and whose plight he could easily have chosen to ignore, given the number of important phone calls he had to make and that he had promised Rose spaghetti Bolognese and had yet to purchase the ingredients.

  ‘It does this.’

  She had lowered the window, but only halfway, as if fearful of contamination, from the violent weather, Dominic assumed, rather than him. ‘I’m parked back there. I’ve got jump leads.’

  ‘No need.’ She tried the engine again, visibly gritting her teeth as it delivered another cacophonic response. ‘It does this,’ she repeated, with evident mounting desperation. ‘Sometimes, if I wait, give it a moment… please, don’t concern yourself. If the worst comes to the worst, I’m a member of the AA.’

  ‘Ah. Right-ho. The fourth emergency service. Excellent.’ Dominic straightened, baffled more than hurt that she should give his Good Samaritan act such short shrift. Sam had been horrible to Rose, hadn’t he? The woman should be on her knees. And she didn’t look anything like Maggie, he decided in the same instant, not a trace, nil. And Maggie would never in a million years have been so hostile to an offer of help. Never. ‘See you, then,’ he muttered, backing away from the car, a small part of him reluctant still to admit defeat. Was he that ghastly?

  ‘Excuse me… I hope you don’t mind my asking…’ She had wound the window right down now and was projecting her mouth out of it. Her face, Dominic noticed, was not pale so much as white – white as the startling teeth – and her eyes, though electric green, were pink-rimmed, like Rose’s when she was on the verge of tears. Her voice was firm enough, though, shooting at him across the whirr of the wind. ‘But I couldn’t help noticing that you came out of number forty-two and it made me wonder… Do you know Mrs Stowe? I mean, obviously you do, only…’

  Dominic stepped back towards the car, tucking his hands into his pockets. ‘Yes – at least, my brother does. Mrs Stowe’s daughter is an actor and so is he. They were in something together last year. It’s thanks to that that I’m buying the place – been on the cards for weeks now but we’re finally there.’ He took his hands out of his pockets and rubbed them together. ‘They’ve just kindly agreed to move out before Easter so I don’t have to renew my lease. It’s a private sale,’ he added, driven to add the clarification by the expression on Charlotte’s face, as she ducked her head back into the car. Like a tortoise withdrawing, Dominic decided, studying her.

  ‘I know – I knew it was for sale. I want
ed to buy it.’ She stared at the windscreen.

  Dominic hesitated, absorbing the implications of this. One finger, seeking warmth in the corner of his coat pocket, had found a hole, a bad hole, big enough to lose keys through as well as pound coins. Maggie would have seen to it in an instant – anything to do with thread and needles, wool and homecrafts, she had been a wizard. And cooking, she had loved that too, to the point sometimes where he had had to insist on taking a turn, reminding her that food preparation was as much of a passion of his as aeroplanes and that getting the short straw on doing the dishes every night simply wasn’t fair. Arguments – who would have thought one could miss them? ‘How unfortunate… I… It’s a delightful house.’

  Yes, yes, it’s lovely. I wanted it very much. Except it was out of my price range and only shown to me unofficially, and almost certainly shouldn’t have been by the sound of things… I mean, I knew about the possibility of a private sale but had no idea they already had someone in mind.’ Charlotte twisted the key again and the Volkswagen chortled smoothly into action, as it tended to when she was drained of hope.

  Dominic bent closer to the window, raising his voice against the engine, resenting the certain impression that he was being told off. ‘Look, I’m sorry, okay?’

  ‘No, I am,’ she shouted back. ‘I shouldn’t have said anything. It doesn’t matter.’ She offered him a broad, rueful grin, displaying the extraordinary teeth. ‘Good luck with it all.’

  ‘There are always other houses…’ he began.

  Charlotte shook her head, shoving the gearstick into first and glancing in her wing-mirror. ‘I’ve decided to stay where I am, make the best of what I’ve got.’ The grin was still there, but hanging on now, the lips tightening.

  ‘Great. Good luck with that,’ Dominic offered, feeling a little helpless now. ‘Good luck indeed,’ he murmured, as she raced off down the road.

  For the walk back to his car the wind was directly against him, squeezing tears from his eyes and batting at the flaps of his coat. Divorced, with a difficult little boy and quite an attitude, he told himself, as the helplessness threatened to bulge into sympathy. His thoughts shifted to the needy, embittered woman with whom he had briefly – unsatisfactorily – shared a bed: all that history, all that baggage when he had quite enough of his own to contend with; he wasn’t going to make that mistake again. Making the best of what one had wasn’t a bad adage, though, he decided, recalling Charlotte’s parting words as he slid behind the wheel of his own car. And he was certainly managing that now, with Rose so much more settled and the pair of them on the verge of making a new start in a house that had fallen into his lap like a gift – thanks to Benedict, dear Benedict, with his own complicated private life but a relentless ability to shine light into other people’s. It was also thanks to his wonderful, scheming brother that on top of this huge blessing he now had the clever, striking Polish girl more within his sights. She was called Petra and had recently left him a message about lunch, suggesting somewhere local as she was working out of studios in Battersea – if that wasn’t too inconvenient, if he had the time, if he would like to, some time in the next few weeks, or months, if he was busy. It had been a long message, suggesting, behind the too-long clauses, the stilted English, both an appealing uncertainty and real eagerness.

  The prospect of following up on it was exciting, Dominic acknowledged happily, blowing on his frozen hands while the car heating got into its stride. He’d ask Benedict to recommend somewhere good locally. He’d look ahead in his office diary and find a quiet day, maybe arrange to work from home, pick Rose up from school, pin down the paperwork for the move… Yes, a good plan, something to get his teeth into. Dominic took a deep breath. Sometimes he was sure he forgot to breathe. He summoned an image of Petra’s fresh intelligent face, the silky bobbed hair, the long legs; he lovedlong legs. ‘And it’s time to move on, my darling,’ he murmured, pausing for a last admiring look at his future home. ‘It really is.’

  Dear Rose,

  We aren’t moving house any more. I am pleased because it means Mum is less stressy and I won’t have to keep my room tidy all the time. The only bad thing is that she said if we moved we could get a dog, so I suppose we can’t now. The other bad thing is she says we’ve got to have lots of painting and stuff done here and clear out junk, etc. Right this moment I am supposed to be sorting out things I want to give away like old toys and stuff. BORING. And also to pack for going away. BORING. It is only to Suffolk, to George’s dad’s house. We went there once before for a weekend and it rained all the time. Sony this letter is so BORING. Sam

  PS For my birthday I got an ¿Pod, an upgrade on my mobile and loads of new PlayStation games.

  PPS You are really good at drawing.

  Sam folded the letter into a tight, fat square, pondering whether he was the only boy in the world to be spending the Easter holidays missing school. It would be impossible ever to admit to such a thing; almost as impossible as admitting that the person he had once been famous for hating had somehow – how? – morphed into a friendly pen-pal. Exchanging notes with the class weirdo – not only unpopular but a girl– he would be a laughing-stock.

  Except the funny thing was, Sam had never felt less in danger of being a laughing-stock in all his life. With the Rose business – the new Rose business – and having to be on his best behaviour work-wise, he had stopped trying to hang out with George’s gang and detected, to his astonishment, a new keenness on their part to hang out with him. It was insane, like getting something after – or because – you’d stopped wanting it. During the last week of term George had even hinted that, if there had been the remotest chance of wriggling out of a new plan of his mother’s to visit his granny in Cornwall, he would have welcomed an invitation to Suffolk. He had a kite in the attic there that he’d never flown, he said, and there was a place he wanted to show Sam among the dunes, perfect for a hideout. He had scribbled a map of it, with arrows and crosses, like directions to buried treasure.

  Sam missed Rose’s notes and little pictures. But more than that he missed the thrill of their secret handovers, the looks over the top of books and behind people’s backs, the lovely warm feeling of having something going on that no one else knew about, not even Mr Dawson, to whom he had told all sorts of stuff but whom he didn’t have to see now, unless he wanted to.

  Sam hovered on the landing, scared suddenly as to how his latest effort at written communication might be received. Rose’s last missive, slipped into his hands two weeks before, during the enforced tedium of a lost-property session on the last day of school, had ended, ‘see you next term’. Like she meant it to be just a school thing. And there had been no hint of exchanging mobile numbers either, which had been a bitter blow.

  And now there was just the afternoon left and they were going to Suffolk, where his mum said mobiles didn’t work and posting a letter required a car journey. Sam leant over the banisters, craning his neck in a bid to establish Charlotte’s exact location. He had last seen her entering the spare bedroom on the first floor clutching a pagoda of empty cardboard boxes, but now the door was closed, and she was kneeling on the wrong side of it, one hand rummaging in a dusty, battered suitcase, the other tucking strands of hair behind her ears, from where it immediately fell forwards again, dangling against her nose.

  ‘Hey, you,’ she said, not even looking up.

  ‘Hey.’

  ‘Have you done what I asked?’

  ‘Nearly,’ Sam lied, folding his fist tightly round the note. ‘Can I go to the shop to get some sweets?’

  ‘If you’ve sorted out your cupboard and packed, yes.’

  Sam made a noise designed to sound like a yes, while not actually being one, so that, when accused later, he could deny having lied. Rather to his surprise it seemed to have worked because as he ventured down the stairs towards her she carried on talking, not about sorting his gear but about other tedious things she had already mentioned at least five times since breakfast.

&nbs
p; We’ve got to leave early or we’ll get stuck in traffic. I’m sorry it’s only for four days, but I’ve got to get back to help out in the shop because of Dean still being so ill. And then not long after we get back your godmother’s coming to stay – did I tell you that?’

  ‘Yeah, Eve, who started sending you emails out of the blue and who I’ve never met because she lives in Boston,’ Sam chirruped, leaping on to the banister, bracing himself for the usual telling-off as he let go, but too keen for the thrill of the slide, not to mention the chance to whip an envelope out of the sideboard drawer while she was still upstairs.

  ‘And George’s dad has promised to drop by with the keys before we leave tomorrow,’ she continued, as if he hadn’t said anything and wasn’t riding the banisters, ‘which is so kind of him.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘And, Sam . . .’

  Here it comes, he thought, in full flight now, a split second from the tricky final leap on to the hall floor, skidding on the rug if he was clever. Here it comes.

  ‘While you’re at the corner shop could you buy some bread – sliced, brown, white, whatever you fancy having under your scrambled egg.’

  ‘Yeah, sure,’ Sam puffed, glancing back up the stairs in surprise. He had missed the pad of the hall carpet but landed safely on all fours. She was still on her knees bending over the suitcase, singing something softly as she took out clothes and papers and arranged them in piles. She had been at it for days now, like someone who was about to move house instead of one who had decided not to.