Before I Knew You Read online

  Next time she caught it halfway through the first ring. ‘And how on earth would you know that Andrew is in America anyway?’

  ‘Beth knew and she told Nancy when they met in the mall …’ She could hear the smile in his voice, as if there was nothing for either of them to worry about, no risk in the world. ‘You know how women get to talk.’

  ‘Beth Stapleton?’ Just saying the name made Sophie’s throat dry. Andrew was in America, after all. Who knew what the woman was planning to do. ‘Remember that stupid note you put in that book?’ she hissed. ‘Well, you should know that Beth found it.’ She had turned her back to the sitting room and had her palm cupped over the mouthpiece to prevent her words travelling anywhere other than into Carter’s ear. ‘What were you thinking writing such a thing? After Beth found it she emailed me, threatening to tell Andrew … Christ, you have no idea what you’ve put me through, Carter. And now phoning like this … you have no right. I want nothing from you, do you understand? Nothing. Except for you to leave me alone. I thought I’d made that plain.’

  ‘Hey, sweetheart, slow down. You’re mad – I understand that – but surely the occasional brief phone conversation can do no harm? As to Beth finding my billet-doux – that’s too bad, but not so terrible either … though, by the way, how the hell did that happen?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Sophie admitted quietly, miserably, checking again on her daughter’s elbow. ‘I threw it away, I swear.’

  ‘But you know what? I don’t give a damn what my neighbour thinks or doesn’t think and neither should you. People meet for a reason, Sophie. We met and it was real special. What we had – it meant so much to me. Fifteen days, was it? Fifteen days but it was like for ever … and I mean that in the best possible way. You were so sad, Sophie, remember that? You were sad and I made you happy. Didn’t I make you happy? And you helped me too – that’s partly why I’m calling. You broke my heart, sure …’ he paused to release a bitter laugh ‘… but out of that – somehow – I’ve started writing again. I’ve been longing to tell you, Sophie. An old script I’d thought worthy of the trash – I’ve rewritten the whole thing, got a director interested. I was dead, sweetheart, dead. You – my feelings for you – brought me back to life.’

  ‘Carter, I’m glad. And, yes, you helped me, but please, I’ve got to go.’

  ‘Okay, but don’t worry, least of all about Beth Stapleton. So what if she talks?’

  ‘So what?’ Sophie echoed disbelievingly.

  ‘What happened, happened. It will all work itself out. Life does that – finds its own route for each of us, often not what we had planned. You and I were meant to meet, that’s all I know.’

  ‘Don’t call again,’ Sophie pleaded. ‘If our friendship meant anything, promise me that at least.’

  ‘But, honey, you’re in my heart for ever –’

  Sophie put down the phone. The elbow had moved. Moments later Olivia was standing beside her. ‘Are they okay, then, all the way over there in the “Big Apple”?’ She spoke in a mock American accent, putting quotation marks round the words with her fingers.

  ‘They … Oh, yes, fine … At least, I think so – the line was funny.’

  ‘Dad fretting as usual, is he?’ Olivia sauntered over to the fruit bowl, picked out a banana, peeled off its label and put it back again.

  ‘You know Dad. And Milly was there … I had a word with her.’

  ‘Yeah, right … You okay, Mum? You look kind of … weird.’

  ‘I miss them … you know.’

  Olivia hesitated, her eyes briefly widening with surprise. ‘Me too, sort of.’ She went back for the banana, screwing up her nose in distaste as she bit off the top. ‘Not long, though, is it?’ She peeled away the skin and dropped it into the bin, shooting her mother a quizzical look.

  When the phone went again, Sophie felt the blood drain from her face. Olivia was still there, watching her closely, eating her banana.

  ‘Milly … darling …’ Sophie gasped, trying to disguise her relief.

  ‘Say hi from me,’ Olivia mumbled, through a mouthful. She traipsed back out of the kitchen, casting her eyes skyward by way of silent disdain for the evident neediness in her sibling, requiring a second home phone call within the space of five minutes.

  ‘Bed by eleven,’ Sophie called lamely, aware that she was merely seeking comfort in the habit of the command rather than meaning it. She then embarked on an interrogation about the choir’s transatlantic journey, which astonished even Milly (fresh from a paternal warning about the cost of phone calls) in its thirst for detail.

  18

  The cold in New York that December contained for William the distinct suggestion of hostility. Clamping his briefcase to his chest and tipping his head against the icy cut of the wind as he trudged the ten blocks from Grand Central to his office each morning, he had begun to feel not only unprotected and old but unwanted, as if the city itself had turned against him. Beth, in her new state of loving, glassy-eyed penitence, had taken to slipping hand warmers into his gloves and tucking the flaps of his scarf inside his overcoat as she said goodbye. But the moment he was away from the false blast of the car and train heaters it made no difference. His eyes ached and his nose ran. The cold slithered up his trousers and down his neck, folding itself round his torso and legs like an extra layer of icy skin.

  It was absurd, of course. It was only weather. And not even the coldest snap lasted for ever, William reminded himself, fighting this now habitual onslaught of negative feelings as he laboured down Fifth Avenue on the penultimate Thursday before Christmas. A hardy group of Salvation Army musicians had gathered under the awning of a department store and were trumpeting carols. On the opposite side of the street a classically rotund Father Christmas was shaking a bell and rattling a collection box. Foam snowdrifts, fairy lights and nylon Christmas trees adorned every window. No city did Christmas better – William had always thought so. The buzz, the tackiness, the shopping frenzy, it all fed off the compressed occupation of Manhattan like wild-fire through dry bush.

  Arriving in front of a display of glittering reindeer, he paused to wipe his streaming eyes with the back of a glove, wishing his sons were going to get a proper chance to enjoy the festive atmosphere, instead of arriving at the end of December, as he had recently (sympathy compounding the usual guilt) agreed with Susan. Beth was already gushing with plans for what they could all do – movies, ferry rides, skating, catching a hockey game – how she would make sure it was the best New Year’s ever, but William wasn’t so sure. Entertainment for teenagers was a tricky business, especially during the anticlimactic aftermath of Christmas. And the prospect of fielding Alfie’s grilling on how plans were going for the installation of a swimming-pool by the summer didn’t fill him with much joy either.

  As William tossed a handful of change into the Salvation Army bucket a flyer was pressed into his hands by a woman in pink ear-muffs. ‘Treat yourself, mister.’ She grinned, revealing long smooth teeth.

  William found himself smiling back. Everyone was braving the inclement weather, after all, most of them with far more to complain about than him. Thinking of the boys was a reminder that he had still to buy their plane tickets – he had reserved a brand new credit card for such necessities. It would be brilliant to see them (all three of them, he still hoped), whatever the time of year. And what was the big deal about being cold anyway? Hadn’t he been just as frozen every day of a skiing holiday on a glacier in his twenties, not to mention during a memorable early happy Christmas on a Scottish island when he and Susan had been snowed in and the boiler responsible for heating their cottage had broken down?

  William walked on with more of a lift in his stride, keeping an eye open for a pavement bin in which to drop the flyer, now flapping awkwardly between his gloved hands and his briefcase. But then a tug of wind blew the paper up straight for a moment and his eye was caught by the word ‘Chapman’. William stopped, forcing his fellow rush-hour walkers to stream round him, like river
water round a rock, many of them muttering volubly at the inconvenience. The flyer was a promotion for the concert Andrew’s school choir were giving the following evening in St Thomas’s, New York’s one and only cathedral. Entry was five dollars, with a retiring collection for a charity supporting Peruvian street children. William studied the details, savouring amazement at such a thing finding its way into his hands.

  He wouldn’t go, of course. He wasn’t musical and Beth wouldn’t want to. She knew about the St Joseph’s music tour because he had told her that Andrew had told him. But any reference to the Chapmans – even in relation to Harry’s turnaround – was still liable to elicit such pained looks from his wife that William had lately taken to avoiding them altogether. Without the dreadful implosion at the end of her mother’s visit he might have been tempted to press Beth for a more thorough explanation as to why this should be so, given that the Dido was business was long done with and the Chapmans’ kindnesses towards him had been exceptional. But he hadn’t the energy or heart. All his strength – all Beth’s – was now focused on the painstaking, brick-by-brick business of rebuilding trust. A labour of love, literally, for both of them, since while Beth might have been dishonest, the reasons for that dishonesty – a fear of his reactions if presented with the truth – William recognized as falling squarely upon his shoulders. Children had never been part of their original commitment. He had allowed sentimentality to sweep him away, boxing Beth into a corner as a result.

  The business of forgiving had therefore been taking place on both sides; and hard as William had found it at times – Beth was as needy and clinging as he had ever known her – a detached, self-congratulating part of him had also been rather relishing the effort for the proof it offered of how committed he was to his second shot at marital happiness. They were, as the platitude went, working at it. Two bare, forked souls stripped to the core, as the Bard might have said, facing each other properly for the first time, all the early heady flush of love spent, the masks torn away, with nothing left to be but true and tender.

  And Beth, most importantly, was allowing food to stay in her stomach. In response to William repeating the suggestion that she seek medical help, she had even insisted on incorporating him into her morning ritual of climbing on the scales. ‘Anything but doctors,’ she murmured each time, closing her eyes so that he had to be the one to read the verdict on the dial out loud.

  Pushing through the revolving doors of the high-rise that housed his employer – and several others – William dropped the flyer into a waste bin. As he did so his phone beeped with a message: Just to say I love you Bx

  William quickly typed Me too x before joining the swarm of office workers moving across the foyer. There were many such messages these days, all of them much appreciated, all of them needed. His elevator was full and silent. One woman blew her nose. A man coughed into a handkerchief. The small space smelt of damp fabric, damp skin. When the doors slid open for his floor, William, momentarily pinned to the back wall, fantasized about staying there. He could ride to the top and down again as the sole occupant; the rebel, with air to breathe.

  Instead he elbowed his way out, turning left for the coffee machine as usual. He nodded at familiar faces, clamped to phones or bent over desks, working with a humourless intensity that seemed to have shifted to a new level since his week away. Ed Burke, having taken the same week off, had not come back and the rumour-mill was at full stretch – a breakdown, gardening leave, divorce, early retirement; every possibility had been feasted on and picked clean. William had tried phoning his old mentor’s cell a couple of times only to be greeted by the answering machine.

  When William got to his desk, there was no sign of Kurt, and Walt, his younger, muscle-bound neighbour, was staring at his screen, rubbing his freshly shaven jaw and shaking his head.

  ‘Cheer up, it may never happen.’

  ‘That’s where you’re wrong, buddy. It has happened.’

  William tipped his chair sideways to peer at Walt’s PC, laughing out loud when he saw playing cards instead of share prices. ‘That bad, eh?’

  ‘We’re screwed. All of us. No bonuses. Not one dime. It’s not official but Lou says so and Lou is always right. We’re fucking screwed, I tell you. Great fucking Christmas present, right?’ He carried on clicking his mouse, glaring as he moved his cards.

  To William’s surprise, he felt very calm. He sipped his coffee, scalding his lips, then carefully prised off the lid for it to cool down. He turned his computer on, going not to the S&P 500 or NASDAQ, but the spreadsheet he had assembled of all his personal accounts. Seeing the numbers, the terrible numbers, a dim notion about life as an equation – a balance of opposing forces needing equilibrium – suddenly crystallized into wisdom. There had been too much going on to see straight, too many elements pulling in different directions, but now, like some unwittingly well-aimed blow to the head, Walt’s news had brought him to his senses.

  The calmness stayed with him all day, buoyed by the clear path that had opened up in his mind. Walking the ten blocks back to Grand Central, it wasn’t the cold that made him hurry so much as an eagerness to get home and share his revelation with Beth. They were on a new road together anyway, newly raw and honest – for that reason alone it was perfect timing. And then on the train, as if some invisible deity had his hands clasped in relief that William had seen the light at last but wanted to preclude the possibility of him changing his mind, Susan rang.

  ‘I can’t really talk, I’m on the train.’

  It didn’t matter, she said, since all he had to do was listen. Another lump had appeared, she went on to explain, in a tone of manifest irritation, under her arm this time, which meant she was being advised to have her lymph nodes out as well as the tumour. ‘Add on the joys of chemotherapy and radiotherapy and it’s going to be a helluva new year.’

  ‘Christ, Susan, I’m so, so sorry … ’

  ‘Oh, God, don’t be dramatic, please, William – it doesn’t suit you and makes me angry. I’m only telling you because you got so shirty about not being “kept informed” before. Lymph nodes can be lived without – I’ve looked them up. Swollen legs seem to be the main problem. Support tights in the summer, that sort of thing. Since my legs don’t warrant displaying, these days, it hardly matters. My op’s booked for the week after Christmas so, timing wise, our new dates for the boys’ visit works perfectly. Although it seems only fair to warn you that Harry is still saying he won’t go …’

  After the call, William found his thoughts drifting to the length of time it had taken to fall out of love with Susan – the drip-drip business of disappointment and misconception disintegrating over years into the mess of infidelity and, finally, the slow, grisly traffic-accident of divorce. It occurred to him for the first time how ghoulishly ironic this was, given that falling in love (at the wedding of mutual friends – they had been in each other’s hearts, and underwear, by the end of the day) had been so speedy. It was surely no coincidence that his courtship with Beth had been contrastingly steady and slow. Indeed, instigating that first meeting in Starbucks had, for William, been merely a bit of fun – checking his charm levels.

  But afterwards, the smell of her had stayed with him – a soft, enticing, womanly perfume – along with the faint mocking look in her dark eyes, as if there was nothing he could tell her that she didn’t know already. On their first proper date – a cripplingly expensive lunch overlooking Rockefeller Plaza – he had been spellbound by the jutting triangle of her collarbone, visible between the open buttons of her cardigan. She was so slim and the bones looked so strong; it had seemed a marvellous combination of delicacy and power, suggestive – he grew certain, as the day wore on – of untold alluring personality traits. It was nonetheless several weeks and many hours of conversation later that they had sex, and a good couple of months after that before William – world-weary cynic of a divorce, as he believed himself to be – capitulated to the acknowledgement that he appeared, once again, to have fallen i
n love with a fellow human being.

  ‘You’re early.’

  She was breathless, a towel slung round her neck, wisps of hair sticking to the sheen on her face.

  ‘Exercising?’

  ‘Yes, but only because it makes me feel good,’ Beth gabbled, fighting so hard not to look guilty that it tore at his heart. ‘Pilates moves mainly – it’s too darn cold to run. We’re having a special dinner – salmon in filo pastry. I’ve made it myself.’

  ‘Clever girl.’ William kissed her, pulling her close and sliding his mouth onto her neck.

  ‘Hey, I should shower first.’

  ‘I love the smell of you, don’t you know that?’

  Beth flicked her towel at him, laughing. ‘Yeah, right, my clean smell. I’ll go shower.’ She spun on her heel, still so thin, William noticed sadly, seeing how the tracksuit bottoms hung straight off her waist, without the interruption of undulations from her stomach or bottom. The scales said she had gained eight pounds but, really, it was hard to see where.

  Halfway up the stairs Beth stopped and leant over the banisters, tossing her hair off her face. ‘I’ve decided I’m going back to work – I mean, it makes sense, now, doesn’t it? But I want to do something totally different – and local, like, say, working in a bookstore or a gift shop, or even … well, I’ve been thinking maybe I could become a personal trainer or something. Would that be so crazy?’ She frowned suddenly, as if sensing the weight of William’s still unannounced decision, crouching inside his chest now like a ticking bomb.