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Come Away With Me
Sara MacDonald


A chance meeting between two old friends.The unveiling of long-hidden secrets…Jenny and Ruth were best friends at school until Ruth abruptly moved away from their Cornish village and they lost all contact. Fourteen years later, a chance meeting on a train throws both their lives into turmoil.One glimpse of Ruth's son Adam sends Jenny into a spiral of love, grief and obsession. Adam is the image of Jenny's husband, Tom, killed suddenly and tragically six months earlier. As Jenny discovers the truth about Adam, a powerful bond springs up between them that will have unforeseen consequences for both families.‘Come Away with Me’ is a moving and provoking portrayal of how two women challenge each other's identity in what becomes an unbearable life swap.






SARA MACDONALD

Come Away With Me








In memory ofNikki, my cousin, who lit up a room.

For Jackie and Pete at Redcoats.

For Toby, Nicola and Phoebe(Sweet Pea).

With love.


Writing on Water

Single white goose quill

what are you writing

drifting gently on

water’s silk surface

making your mark

between liquid and air

leaving behind you an

imprint of movement

the hint of a message?

There’s more to writing

than words.

Jenny Balfour-Paul, 2006




Table of Contents


Cover Page

Title Page (#uf4c0e967-59ee-5291-b4a2-2ff746dc73d8)

Dedication (#u70fe3e3d-edd9-53b7-9534-1e771f3539f9)

Epigraph (#u4b823729-a143-560e-bb08-07443e31ef23)

PART ONE (#ubd9b5c10-99f2-58f5-acef-ea538a668f28)

ONE (#u4d79feb6-14b2-56db-a85b-7a0d289ab090)

TWO (#uea39bccc-96d2-53ff-b2dc-710d1b21971b)

THREE (#u227affda-9cba-5ece-9136-c12ab3fb5acb)

FOUR (#u8be79b46-c161-5251-a3bf-db1f2ae0095f)

FIVE (#u322e55c1-c656-5889-b7d0-002fd01a05c0)

SIX (#ue6fd6846-414c-5e8d-a417-77af1d4143f3)

SEVEN (#uf6bf5846-ca75-5e9e-8071-af10e73855c8)

EIGHT (#uc3b879fc-77a4-55ba-8e79-68b7481a6f45)

NINE (#udadab561-c4bf-53b1-9ea8-0493c0540d24)

TEN (#u8aa25e51-710e-5cf6-b1f4-11712cf5c69b)

ELEVEN (#u6588f90c-94d0-533a-afdb-01bc1fa5c467)

TWELVE (#uf7cd33d9-10f3-5b8e-ba67-3242333cdc59)

THIRTEEN (#u6db8a3dc-ec9f-5641-a42a-5887ca623ff6)

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FIFTY (#u8d2f7669-ffa8-5846-8afe-f8fe51311d38)

PART TWO (#u0d4cbe83-e605-51f1-90cc-6a5fbf130c58)

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SEVENTY-TWO (#u973aa004-9e25-52a6-8137-f0442de8bfc5)

SEVENTY-THREE (#ub2d197ff-9809-523f-b580-3157f6b14ba5)

SEVENTY-FOUR (#ufd38b204-5cfd-5c66-ba99-2061b4856b2c)

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SEVENTY-SIX (#u49c14f62-9f20-5d0b-b181-4676bbb1d85a)

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EIGHTY (#ua19e0663-0d6e-5bf5-afb9-d4a16bf362cf)

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EIGHTY-THREE (#uab93f664-d72a-5719-be5d-cbf742e6424f)

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS (#u2e273db6-4f30-553a-b604-94c5e63fda77)

About the Author (#u91ad023e-06bf-5260-a982-55120f51a3ae)

Other Books By (#u8d34f74d-885a-5441-b58c-87e64133f8f0)

Copyright (#u114eebbb-7e1f-561a-86c2-f80fc0e49ce4)

About the Publisher (#u9aec4788-d7cf-56f9-b5f7-7d6a0311f4e2)



PART ONE (#ulink_015874b2-7f8c-5665-8b8b-4a9d51cda393)




ONE (#ulink_8a93bece-9be9-5aac-bf31-108402001e00)


February 2006

Adam felt the hairs crawling on the back of his neck. The familiar nightmarish fear was back. He gripped his fishing rod tightly. The woods rose up from the creek behind him dark and dense. He knew it was up there, watching him, he could feel it.

A moment ago, as he turned and reached for his jacket and glanced up at the trees, he had seen that the shadows had changed, knew the dark shape where light had been was someone, something, up there watching him. Waiting. Waiting until he had to pass it on the path before it jumped out at him.

He started to reel in his line, his ears alert for someone passing, then he could rush to the path and walk behind them back to the cottage. There was no sign of anyone else out on the creek path now. The curve of foreshore was deserted, only the sounds of curlews with their thin, quavering cries and a heron standing on one leg and the mist rolling towards him obscuring the sun as the tide slid inexorably in.

When he had secured his line, Adam closed his tin boxes, gathered his binoculars and made a little pile of his belongings. Now, he must turn slowly behind him to reach for his knapsack. He made himself look upwards into the wood. The shadow had gone. His path was clear. He threw his things into the bag, grabbed his rod and straightened up as the sun broke out again from behind a curtain of mist.

He took a step towards the old barn on the wharf to reach the path beyond it. He jumped violently, as half blinded by the sun he saw something lying against the wall of the building. He stared down at it. It was a woman, curled up on a coat, knees to her chin, wild hair hiding her face. She looked tiny, like a child, her thin arms folded round herself and she was very still. Jenny.

Adam stood frozen. He stared down at her and pity welled up in him, startling him with the power of it. His heart constricted, his eyes pricked at the sight of an adult stricken. His fear evaporated. It all began to make a weird kind of sense. Jenny had lost it. People sometimes went crazy when bad things happened.

He should run back to the cottage. He should fetch his mother, but somehow, he could not leave her lying vulnerable on her own on an old coat like a tramp. He just couldn’t. She lay oddly still. He put down his fishing rod, placed his knapsack on the ground and inched nearer to touch her.

She was not dead. Her flesh was warm to his fingers. At his touch she moved and opened her eyes. Adam backed away slightly. He did not know what to say.

Jenny, seeing him, struggled to a sitting position. He saw that her hands shook.

‘It’s all right,’ he said quickly. ‘It’s OK.’

She stared at him as if coming from some faraway place.

‘Adam.’ Her voice was husky, as if she had not spoken for some time. She held out a hand towards him. Adam could not quite bring himself to take it. He could feel his heart hammering in his chest. He wanted to run for Ruth. He was out of his depth.

Jenny’s hand fell to her side. ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered. ‘I’m so sorry for frightening you.’ Her voice was dull, her face bleak.

Adam crouched in front of her. ‘Why…why were you following me and hiding in the woods? I don’t understand.’

Jenny didn’t reply and Adam said, ‘I’m going to get Mum. It’ll be OK. We’ll be back in five minutes.’

‘I wanted to talk to you, be with you, on your own…’ Jenny’s voice trailed off.

‘Why?’ Adam was uneasy.

‘You are so like Tom. So like him. I somehow thought you were my son; that I was your mother.’

Jenny’s eyes looked bruised and her face seemed to have shrunk under her mass of curly hair.

‘Forgive me,’ she said. ‘I must be going mad. I didn’t mean to frighten you. I would never hurt you. Please believe that.’

He nodded. ‘You’re not very well. It’s going to be OK. I’m going to get Ruth now.’ He hesitated. ‘Could you get to the cottage if I help you?’

Jenny shook her head. ‘Adam, I’m so very tired.’

Adam leant forward and touched her hand. ‘You stay there, Jenny. I won’t be long.’

He turned and started to sprint along the path that curled round towards the cottage and his mother. At the bend he slowed to catch his breath. Behind him, he heard the sound of disturbed birds rising noisily from the water, breaking the silence. He turned. Jenny had got up and put on her heavy coat. She was wading purposefully into the water, flowing in fast and black on the incoming tide.

‘No!’ Adam screamed, as he started to run back, his legs pumping, his breath catching painfully in his chest. ‘No, Jenny, no, no, no.’




TWO (#ulink_3eae81ab-d4ad-5933-a38f-c43b3bd6eec3)


August 2005

Rosie lies between us, asleep, fat little bottom in the air; dimpled feet upturned like the inside of pink shells. She is wedged hotly between Tom and me, her face against Tom’s arm. Their breath rises and falls in the same shallow rhythm. Asleep, Rosie still looks like a baby; dark curls stuck to her head, cheeks flushed. I have to stop myself putting my lips to those soft cheeks.

Tom is half turned towards us, one hand under his head, the other hand on his thigh, his fingers splayed outwards as if to protect Rosie. His face is buried in the pillow, his short hair sticks up, his face damp from the heat of all our bodies in one bed on a close summer night.

His bare arms and chest are brown and broad. His skin shines with health. He is very fit.

The window is open to catch every breath of wind and I watch him in the yellow light of a street lamp, my body limp with wanting him, with the urge constantly to touch him. I love these snatched moments, these still nights of watching him sleep. I store these nights against the time when he will disappear again.

It is the still hour between night and dawn when London stops briefly and in the silence of the dark I can kid myself that I can hear the distant noise of the sea and the seagulls screaming into a new day.

It is not homesickness, but the luxury of happiness. The knowledge that despite living in a city, I have a life here with the man I love. In a house that fits round us and holds all the people I need to be content, to do the job I love. It is not a perfect happiness because that would be impossible. There are these endless leave-takings which interrupt our lives. I never know where Tom is or when he will be home. These are the shadows.

I must have fallen asleep because when I wake the birds are singing and sunlight is pouring through the open window. I hear Flo slowly going up the second flight of stairs to the workroom on the top floor. What a wonderful day it was when she joined us. She will be checking the work schedules for Monday. In a while she will come in with tea for us and exclaim over Rosie being in our bed again.

I stretch contentedly and then reach over Rosie and rub my fingertip lightly over the surface of Tom’s arm. It is as smooth as a roll of silk. My hair falls over Rosie’s face and tickles Tom and they both stir.

He yawns, opens one eye and seeing me watching him smiles sleepily and turns on his back. He is unconsciously graceful in his movements. He reminds me of a cat.

He turns to Rosie leaning against him and brushes her hair away from her hot little face. He looks at me suddenly, his eyes intensely blue. It is a rare unguarded moment that shakes me with his vulnerability.

I have always supposed our love to be unequal. Tom is everything to me. I am important, but not the whole for him. In this moment I see his raw exposed love for Rosie and me.

I move towards him and he pulls me over Rosie, burying his head in my hair.

Rosie is instantly awake and laughing. ‘Me! Me! Dada!’

Tom puts out his arm and scoops her to us, making her squeal.

Flo knocks on the door. ‘Tea?’ she calls.

We fly apart and sit up. ‘Yes, please. Come in!’

Flo comes in carrying a tea tray. She makes a pretend surprise face at Rosie. ‘What are you doing there, young lady?’

Tom would leap out of bed, but he has no clothes on. ‘Flo, I wish you wouldn’t wait on us. It makes me inordinately guilty.’

‘Wisht your noise,’ Flo says cheerfully. ‘I like the kitchen to myself on Sunday mornings, as you well know.’ She puts the tray down and holds out her hand to Rosie. ‘Danielle is bringing back a present from Paris for a good little girl who eats up all her breakfast.’

Rosie does not want to leave us or the warmth of the bed. ‘Ellie coming home?’

‘Tomorrow. Come on, darling, let Mummy and Daddy get dressed, then you can all go out to the park.’

That does the trick. Rosie climbs over us and toddles out with Flo, who shuts the door on us. We drink our tea but we don’t get dressed. Tom pulls my nightshirt over my head in a practised sweep and we make love with the intensity of knowing we have only seventy-two hours left together before his leave ends.

I bury my nose in his skin and breathe in his smell. His muscular body emanates a faint edge of danger. He has this sexy trick of trying to keep his eyes open all the time he makes love. His eyes become like purple darting fireflies before they roll back and he explodes. The thrill is his wanting to see me, my face, as he climaxes. When we are out and I see women staring, I think with astonishment, He’s mine. He’s mine. He’s really mine.

He is holding me so tight against him he is hurting me. ‘Tom,’ I whisper. ‘I can’t breathe.’

He lets me go, alarmed. ‘Sorry, I’m like a bear, I don’t know my own strength.’

‘I like it,’ I say softly, moving to him again. And I do like it. I love the feeling of precariousness in the coiled power of his body; his constant alertness that lies just below the surface, like a second skin. He is unable to switch off totally when he isn’t working or in danger.

One night we were both asleep and were woken by a noise. In a swift, unnerving movement Tom was out of bed and across the room silently as a shadow. He slid open a drawer, took something out and crept across the landing. I sat up and froze at his catlike stealth. I watched as he leapt forward and pounced. I heard a scream, snapped on the bedside light and ran to the door.

Tom had someone in a headlock in the dark kitchen. The man was making grunting noises of fear and pain, but it was Danielle who had screamed. She and a boyfriend had come in from the other side of the house to look for coffee. They were both pretty drunk. The man fled down the stairs and out of the front door at record speed. Tom, furious, rounded on Danielle for being so stupidly irresponsible and creeping around in the dark.

I knew Tom’s anger was not entirely directed at her but at himself too. He could have seriously hurt the man. Danielle was equally furious and embarrassed. From that day on the door between our flats was kept locked at night. Tom and Danielle did not speak for three days and then they made up for my sake.

That was the only time I had seen the trained and aggressive side of Tom. It adds a sexual frisson to my feelings for him. Sometimes, in the days before he leaves us again he can turn into a withdrawn stranger and as we grow closer I realise how little I know of his other life.

I watch Tom wheel Rosie across the road towards the park from my workroom at the top of the house. I hate him out of my sight but I am waiting for a phone call from Danielle who is in Paris. Flo could perfectly well take the call but I know that Danielle thinks that I don’t take work seriously when Tom is home and it’s untrue.

Below me in the kitchen I can hear Flo singing as she moves about, making Sunday lunch. I wander about picking things up and putting them down again, squashing a faint ennui. I start to sketch in a desultory fashion, then, restless, I get up and go to the window.

The pavement is glittery and rain-washed way down below me. It has cooled the air and I can almost smell the wet earth rising up from the garden.

I look right towards the end of the empty road where Tom and Rosie had been a moment ago and panic grips me. I turn and run down the stairs, calling out to Flo that I am going to the park. I wrench open the front door and run down the wide road, cross when the traffic clears and bolt through the park gates.

I make for the pond and when I spot them both feeding ducks I slow down and bend over to get my breath. They are fine.There they are; a large man and a small child, heads together, throwing bread in an arc to a swirling, greedy mass of ducks.

I stand watching them. Rosie feels my presence first. She turns and cries ‘Mamma!’ and squeals for joy.

Tom laughs. ‘You’ve absconded, how lovely.’

As we throw bread together, Tom says, ‘Life here with you and Rosie makes me wonder why on earth I am not a civilian, you know.’

‘You!’ I laugh at the thought. ‘Oh yes! I can just imagine you catching the tube in the rush hour every morning in a suit.’

‘Well, it will come to that, I expect, even if I stay in the army. I will get a paunch and have a desk job with the MOD…’

Rosie, tired of throwing bread, climbs back into her pushchair and watches the ducks diving. She shakes with laughter at their waggling tails and claps her hands together.

Tom bends to kiss her. ‘What a happy little soul you are, Rosie Holland.’

We turn and walk slowly back to the gates arm in arm. A damp little wind brings the pungent scent of wet earth again. It is only August, but I am suddenly reminded of autumn and the end of summer, and I shiver.

Tom pulls me towards him. ‘Sometimes, on peaceful family Sundays like this, I wonder what the hell I am doing with my life, Jen. Chasing what?’

I am amused and cynical because I know him so well. ‘Family Sundays on a regular basis would bore you absolutely rigid. You’d prowl around like a leopard, driving us all mad.’

Tom grins down at me. ‘Talking about predatory, it’s been a great leave with Danielle in Paris.’

I sigh. ‘That’s unkind and she’s home tomorrow. I wish you’d try to get on better. You both have to challenge each other all the time. It’s become a habit.’

When we get in Flo has done everything and I feel guilty. I wish she wouldn’t do so much for us.

‘I would have set the table…’

‘Here we go.’ Tom is pouring generous gins.

‘My dear girl, every Sunday we have the same conversation. It’s not a chore. I love cooking Sunday lunch.’

‘Did Danielle ring?’

‘Yes. She’s sold everything except those long linen dresses; too long for Parisians, apparently.’

‘Damn. She was right then. I’ll have to try them up north. Did she sound OK?’

‘She sounded as if she was in the middle of a party,’ Flo says diplomatically.

‘That makes a change then.’ Tom lifts Rosie into her high chair.

Annoyed, I defend Danielle. ‘She has no family. There’s only Flo and me. Don’t you see? We are smug marrieds to her and when you get pompous you just reinforce her prejudices. You make her worse. Please don’t judge her.’

Tom immediately apologises. ‘Sorry, Jen. You’re right. I catch myself doing it. It’s just that she seems to get more promiscuous the older she gets. I do think the way she behaves is irresponsible. I know she has her own flat and what she does with her life is up to her, but I don’t have to like it.’

Flo turns from the oven. ‘Danielle does have sudden bouts of promiscuity, Tom, and I have talked to her about it because I worry about her safety too. You have to realise it is all about low self-esteem. I know nothing about her childhood, but something happened there. Try to be kind, darling.’

I fill Rosie’s little bowl with food and hand it to him. He places it in front of her and cuts it into tiny pieces.

‘Now I feel like a pig. Danielle’s such a head-tossing sultry beauty that it’s difficult to believe she’s promiscuous because she lacks self-worth and not because she just likes sex.’

Rosie lifts her spoon and bangs it in the gravy.

‘No!’ we all say together and Rosie, stunned to hear an almost unknown word, stops, plastic spoon in mid air.

That afternoon we leave Rosie with Flo and go to a gallery opening and then ice skating. After a Chinese meal that Tom insists on, we stumble home.

Tom has drunk too much. ‘I’m going to be dry for a long time, darling.’

‘Good thing too,’ I mutter, heaving him up the steps and getting the key in the door with difficulty. We stumble up the stairs and Tom wants to go in to see Rosie.

‘Don’t wake her, Tom. I’d like her to sleep in her own bed tonight.’

He watches her for a long time. He seems suddenly sober. ‘You don’t realise how much you’ll change when you have a child. The thought of anything happening to Rosie is…unthinkable. I feel so protective of you both. I don’t take either of you for granted, ever. When I’m somewhere grim, I think of you and know you’re both somewhere warm and safe. My mainstay. Without you, I couldn’t do the job I do without becoming bleak and hardened.’

We wrap our arms round each other and watch our child sleep. I want to weep because in forty-eight hours he will have flown away again, and the house will be quieter and emptier, and I will have this sick feeling in the pit of my stomach until he phones or a letter arrives without a postmark and I know he is safe somewhere and I can begin to count the days until he comes home again.




THREE (#ulink_343f25aa-1b64-5ba2-a728-2d0ff4e28c8d)


February 2006

When Bea got in from shopping the house was empty and she found a note from James on the kitchen table.

Darling, Flo rang from the London house. She is worried about Jenny who seems to have gone missing. Apparently, Jenny met Ruth Freidman again after all this time. Bizarre. Ruth is now on holiday in Cornwall and I have gone down to that creek house at St Minyon to see if they are both there. Try not to worry. I’m sure Jenny must be making her way home. J. x

Bea’s mouth went dry. She picked up the phone immediately and rang Flo. An Asian girl answered. Both Florence and Danielle were with a VIP client at the moment. Could she take a message?

‘Would you just say that Jenny’s mother rang? If Flo could get in touch as soon as she can, I’d be grateful.’

‘Of course. I will tell her.’

Bea went out into the garden still holding the phone. There was a cold east wind and the sea below her glinted fierce and navy-blue. She paced up and down the terrace among the wilted pot plants, a knot growing in her stomach with a chill premonition of disaster.

She turned and looked back at the house and the drive curling round to the gate. Ruth. Bea remembered clearly a thin child with fair plaits rounding the corner of the house, her small pale face anxiously searching for Jenny.

Ruth walking up the hill from Downalong each Sunday, desperate for an escape from home and a welcome here.

Bea looked up at the attic window on the right of the house, which had been Jenny’s bedroom. She could almost hear the giggles emanating out into the garden with the sound of the seagulls. Jenny and Ruth. Ruth and Jenny. The two of them had raced about together for all those years of childhood like odd little twins and then whoosh, Ruth was gone, and how Jenny had grieved.

Bea went inside again and into James’s study. She saw that his medical bag was missing.




FOUR (#ulink_e20f0374-62dd-59ad-9b36-89587cc119b0)


August 2005

Tom wakes with a start. His heart is thumping loudly in the silent house as if he’s had a nightmare. If he has, he can’t remember it. He turns on his back, sure there is something, some small niggling warning he should recapture from sleep, but he can’t conjure it up.

He gets out of bed and pulls on his bathrobe. He goes to the uncurtained window and looks out. It’s almost dawn and he watches the pink tinge grow behind the rooftops. He turns back to the bed and looks at Jenny sleeping. He feels such an overpowering sense of love and fear flood through him that he catches his breath.

He moves out of the room and across the landing, flinging the shadows away, swearing at these moods that always come on the last days of his leave. Rosie is curled like a dormouse in her cot, the same wiry hair as her mother, the same way of sleeping, a small clone. He smiles and tucks in her arms, carefully pulls up the covers over her plump little body. Rosie. Flesh of his flesh.

He shivers. The shadows in the room creep nearer, encroach from all sides. He can’t turn and face them because he doesn’t know from where the most danger comes.

He leaves the room, goes into the sitting room and sits in his battered leather armchair. He loves this house. This marvellous, lived-in Victorian house with its high ceilings and huge casement windows. He loves everything about his life except returning to this nasty little war he is unsure he still believes in. He has to cull these feelings; kill them with one blow before they take hold. He has younger, less experienced soldiers under him, nineteen-year-old boys who rely on him. It’s the life he’s chosen. He has no right to maverick thoughts, dread or self-pity.

Impatient with himself, he gets up to pour himself a brandy. He’ll sit and listen to the silent house move and breathe and creak around him. He’ll absorb into himself from the shadows of night the hub of Jenny’s busy days. The constant coming and going and chatter and giggles; the sound of the phone or doorbell; the noise of his daughter’s small footsteps on the polished floor; the touch of Jenny’s hand as she passes him clutching rolls of coloured material, turning back to smile at him, her face alive with love. All these things are the routine of her days when he’s away; her enclosed, safe, female world.

Marriage has made everything harder. There’s so much more to lose, risks become calculated, less instinctive. It’s hard not to grow softer, to lose your edge. He swallows the brandy quickly. Stop thinking.

He falls asleep in the armchair and dreams again. Dreams he’s getting off a plane in Northern Ireland, or Bosnia, or Iraq. It’s pouring with rain and his heart is heavy with the loss of something…

There’s something he should remember but it dances out of reach, just beyond memory. All he can feel is the icy night rain coming in on a wind that chills him to the bone.

He turns to look at the young soldiers following him off the plane. They shimmer in the heat blasts of the plane warming up behind them. They have a dreamlike quality as they float towards him and he realises with sudden clarity that time as he knows it does not exist. These soldiers, he himself, are shimmering in some timeless zone. They are the soldiers of yesterday and the soldiers of tomorrow. They are smiling, flirting with adventure, dancing with death. They do not understand it will never end, these brutal little wars against an unseen enemy. There they stride with their eager, innocent smiles and their new, squeaky boots and heavy packs, and he wants to shout them a warning. We’ll never win. It will just go on and on and on.

Yet, as he moves towards them he sees his own younger face among them, determined and alight with challenge. They move, laughing, through him as he stands facing them on the tarmac and he realises that they cannot see him for he is not there. He does not exist. His time has been and gone.

With relief he wakes. It is morning. He is in England. Sunlight shines across the polished floor. He laughs with relief. Where should he take Jenny and Rosie on this precious last full day of his leave?




FIVE (#ulink_b8dd544d-1522-5b61-aea7-7622b5cca4d1)


It was February and the neglected garden was full snowdrops and purple and yellow crocuses. Winter jasmine blossomed in a wave against the fence. Before I left to catch the train I went downstairs and gathered little bunches of snowdrops and dotted them about the rooms as if to leave a shadow of myself in the house. They looked like delicate ballet dancers bunched in white clumps against the stained-glass window on the landing, but they would all be faded and brown by the time I got back.

I was putting off the moment of leaving the house. I did not want to shut the front door behind me and find myself on the outside in the crisp cold air. I felt an irrational dread that something might happen to those left in the house or the high-ceilinged rooms would vaporise behind me.

I sat in Tom’s leather armchair and let the sound of the girls’ voices and laughter on the cutting-room floor above me filter down. I listened to Flo’s deep, soft voice on the telephone. I thought guiltily of how much Danielle had taken on these past few weeks and how it should be a small thing for me to make good the appointments she had set-up for me in Birmingham.

I heard the taxi outside and I got out of the chair and went downstairs. I gathered my bags from the hall and called up to Flo that I was leaving. She came down the attic stairs and stood on the first-floor landing looking down at me. I swallowed the urge to drop my bags and rush back up the stairs and admit that I had changed my mind and Birmingham was the last place on earth I wanted to go on my own.

Something must have shown in my face because Flo started to come down the last flight of stairs to me. ‘It’s not too late, lovey. Why don’t you give Birmingham a miss? Wait until Danielle gets back. A week is not going to make a great deal of difference. I can reschedule your appointments. Danielle will understand.’

I shook my head and lied, ‘I’m OK, honestly. I must go today, Flo. Danielle has set up these meetings and I don’t want to let her down, it wouldn’t be fair.’

Flo sighed and kissed my cheek. ‘All right, Jen. I’ll ring you tonight.’

I walked down the steps and into the waiting taxi. I waved and Flo watched me out of sight.

The traffic was horrendous and I had left myself short of time. As I hurried along the platform for the Birmingham train a figure ahead of me reminded me of someone. It was the small movement of her head as she walked, the straight back. I had a bewildering lurch of déjà vu; a sliver of memory just beyond reach.

I climbed into an almost empty first class carriage and found a seat. The silence was wonderful. I could do some paperwork.

All of a sudden it came to me who the woman walking ahead of me had reminded me of from behind: Ruth Freidman, my best friend at school. We had been inseparable as children. She had practically lived at our house in St Ives. She was one of those girls who was good at everything. She needed to be because she had older parents who were cold and critical of everything she did, and very strict. She was never allowed to take friends home and there had been a myriad rules she must not break. It had made her different, made her stand out from the rest of us.

Bea had instinctively scooped her up into our large noisy family, and away from home, when she was with us, Ruth seemed to blossom. She had been fun and clever. I had loved her very much, but I knew, even as a child, that once she left home she would never return. She was loyal. She never really spoke about her awful parents; she just seemed to accept how they were.

The train gathered speed into the suburbs. I had not thought of Ruth for years and it was strange that a glimpse of a woman’s head could trigger memories that flooded back, sweet and painful. I remembered her saying, ‘I’m never going to get married, Jen. Do you know that my parents have lived in Cornwall all their lives and they’ve never been anywhere? They have no curiosity about anything or anyone. It’s incredible. I’m going to fly, free as a bird…’

I wondered if she did fly free. Inexplicably, a few months later, as we were both about to sit our A levels, her father, a bank manager, accepted a posting to Toronto and the family packed up in extraordinary haste and in weeks they were gone. Vanished. Leaving us all with open mouths.

It had made no sense to pull Ruth out of school just before important exams. It was weird, especially as her parents were always so pushy and expectant about Ruth’s academic progress. Bea, anxious that something was wrong, had gone round to see Ruth’s parents. She offered to have Ruth to live with us until after her A levels, but her parents had been coldly determined that Ruth was to go with them and take her exams later at the International School in Toronto.

The strangest thing of all was Ruth’s odd, robot-like compliance. She put up no fight to stay at all. When I begged and pleaded with her to remain with us, she eventually became angry. It was the only time she turned on me and told me to mind my own bloody business.

What stung me cruelly was that she left her life and me firmly behind her without as much as a backward glance. She never wrote to me once. We had been inseparable and yet I could be instantly discarded for her new life. Ruth had made a mistake with the box number and all my letters were returned. It took years for the hurt and sense of loss to leave me.

I looked out of the window at the battered little gardens of terraced houses. What did Ruth do with her life? What had happened to her? She had always been a little mysterious and prone to mood swings. It was not surprising with the parents she had, but I wondered, when she left without a backward glance, if I had really known her at all.

I stared at my shadowy reflection in the window. Odd how memory could be jogged by such a frail thing as a woman’s back.

Someone hovered near my seat, and then threw their coat on to the rack above me. I hastily fanned out my newspaper. There were plenty of seats elsewhere. I looked up, annoyed, into the smiling face of an elegant blonde woman.

‘Jenny Brown! I thought it must be you. No one else could wear outrageous clothes as you do and look absolutely stunning, and your hair is exactly the same. It had to be you!’

I stared up at her, startled. Ruth Freidman stood before me. I don’t think I would have recognised her immediately, but her voice and laugh had not changed.

‘Ruth! Oh my God. I followed the back of your head walking to the train. I just thought it was someone who reminded me of you from the back.’

I was prattling and our eyes met and we both laughed as she sat down opposite me.

‘You walked past the carriage window, Jenny. I only caught a glimpse but I was suddenly so sure it must be you and it is.’

Amazed, we stared at each other, fourteen years on, examined the lines and shadows that made up our adult faces. Her tall, athletic body was still slim and effortlessly graceful, but now she had style, was immaculately groomed. Long gone were the thin plaits. Her face was carefully made up, her hair beautifully blonde and expensively cut.

How do I look to her? I wondered, bemoaning, as always, my own small compact body and dark unruly hair that I still couldn’t control. I wasn’t wearing any make-up and I was sure I had aged more than she had.

I said suddenly, surprising myself, perhaps because it had been on my mind a moment ago, ‘You just vanished, Ruth. You just disappeared off the face of the earth. You never wrote to me. We never heard from you again. It was as if you had died.’

A flicker of something crossed Ruth’s face, then she shrugged in a movement I remembered. ‘I…just thought it was best. Look, here comes the coffee, wonderful.’

We fiddled with our small cartons of milk.

‘What are you doing on a train to Birmingham, Jenny? Did you get to art college? If I remember rightly you wanted masses of children, like Bea?’

She laughed, taking in my wedding ring. I said, feeling sick and playing for time, ‘Which question do I answer first? I’m on a train to Birmingham because I’m working. Yes, I went to Central St Martin’s.’

‘Did you get your scholarship?’

‘Yes. I was lucky.’

‘Lucky? I don’t think so! You were incredibly talented. So what are you doing now?’

Ruth’s terrier-like persistence had not changed. ‘I have a partnership with a French designer, Danielle Sabot. We teamed together for the Royal Society of Arts Bursary Scheme and won. Because of that show, one of the London stores asked us to do some designs for them and it all sort of took off from there. Now we design for various companies here, and in France and Italy. Usually, Danielle does Birmingham. She’s a better businesswoman than me, but when she’s abroad it’s my job.’

‘You always were modest. I knew you’d be successful, Jenny. Well done you.’

‘So, what about you, Ruth?’ I said quickly. ‘What did you do in Toronto? When did you come back to England?’

‘Hey, not me yet!’ Ruth said, equally quickly. ‘What about the rest of your life? It can’t be all work.’

I looked out of the window as if I could escape. Outside, Lego houses flashed by back to back: tiny gardens, pin-board people going about their days, keeping to their own territories; life rolling inexorably on.

I thought I’d kept my face expressionless but something must have shown because Ruth tentatively put out her hand and touched mine. ‘I’m sorry, Jenny. It’s none of my business, is it?’

I stared at the slim hand lying near my own. The hand moved and gently placed itself over mine on the table. Grief shifted inside me. I stared out at the fields. Dark, wet earth being ploughed, seagulls wheeling behind the tractor. I said, for a lie was easier, like telling someone else’s story, ‘My husband was killed in a road accident.’ My voice sounded as if it were coming down a long echoing tunnel.

Easier to say it fast, like that. Ruth would not remember or connect those awful headlines and photographs with me.

Her fingers curled round mine and held them. Her voice was shocked. ’Oh, Jenny. Oh, God. I’m so, so sorry. When? How long ago?’

‘In August.’

‘Only six months ago. I was in Israel. I don’t know what to say. I’m so sorry, please forgive me and my insistent prying.’

The small fluttering movement of Ruth’s hands on mine triggered a warmth inside me that I thought had gone for good. ‘Tell me about your life, Ruth. Tell me about you. How long were you in Canada? When did you come home?’

Ruth searched my face anxiously, wanting to offer me comfort, but seeing my expression she let go of my fingers and leant back in her seat. She closed her eyes for a second. ‘I never went to Canada.’ Her face was closing, just as mine had done a moment ago.

I stared at her stupidly. ‘What on earth do you mean, you didn’t go?’

Ruth didn’t answer.

‘You gave us a forwarding address, even if it was the wrong box number. Your father had a job in Toronto, didn’t he?’

Ruth looked up and her face was bleak and expressionless, reminding me of the child she had been. There was bitterness in her voice clear to hear. ‘I mean my parents went. I didn’t. I was sent to live with an aunt on Arran. I did my A levels by post. I never got to any university.’

I stared at her. ‘I don’t understand…’

‘They wanted to be rid of me.’

I looked at her, shocked. ‘What do you mean?’

Ruth smiled grimly. ‘As you know, my parents had an absolute terror of scandal and were obsessed by what people thought of them. Do you remember that last Christmas before I left?’

I nodded. ‘I was in hospital having my appendix out.’

‘Yes. Well, I lied to my parents and said that we were both going to a party together. I went on my own and I got drunk and missed my lift home. I was eventually taken home by someone else’s father, still far from sober. Unfortunately, he happened to be a clerk in my father’s bank.’

She paused and took a deep breath. In her house drink was the devil’s brew. ‘My father went into a blind fury when he saw me. He told me, before I even had time to sober up, that he and my mother were not my biological parents. That I had been adopted. It was funny, really. My mother stood in front of me muttering darkly, Blood will out. Blood will out, like a demented Lady Macbeth.’

I stared at her, horrified.

‘A few weeks later my father took a job he previously had no intention of taking and I was deported as fast as humanly possible to the outer regions.’

‘I can’t believe this. I was your best friend. Why on earth didn’t you tell me?’

‘Because my father was paranoid and my mother hysterical about anyone knowing what they were going to do. I begged to stay and do my A levels with you. I knew Bea had come round. My father was very threatening and I was scared of him.’

‘You should have run away and come and told us everything. Bea and James could have stopped them sending you away. You should have confided in me.’

Ruth leant towards me. ‘It’s hard to explain now, but the stuffing went out of me. My parents waited seventeen years to tell me that they were not my real parents. They went on and on about how they had saved me from a terrible background. I felt defeated by them, and utterly wicked and valueless.’

‘They really were dreadful people,’ I said angrily. ‘I should have realised you were in deep trouble, I must have been blind.’

‘I hid my feelings from everyone. I think I was in shock. I didn’t want Bea—any of you—to know I was adopted. It seemed suddenly shameful. Later, of course, I was very relieved I did not have the same blood as them.’ She met my eyes. ‘Truly, I was afraid that you would all think less of me. I needed to remember a place and people where I was loved, your house. I needed that to take away with me.’

I closed my eyes and shivered at the random cruelty of life. ‘You should have trusted us, known us better. All you had to do was pack your bag and walk across to our house.’

I paused. It did not explain why she had never written. Had she believed she deserved to lose us?

Ruth studied the backs of her hands. ‘I’ve had no contact with my parents for fourteen years. They shipped me out to that Scottish island and they never wrote or got in touch with me again. I haven’t heard from them since the day they put me on the ferry at Glasgow and turned their backs. I lived with them for seventeen years and for them I simply ceased to exist. As far as I know they are still in Canada. Anyway…’

‘They were wicked, cruel people.’

Ruth put her chin in her hand and smiled at me. ‘How I loved your warm, chaotic family. How I envied you. I don’t think I would have survived childhood without your family. I always felt included. It was fun. I could be a child in your house. I always thought of my house as somewhere time stood still; a place with the slow, heavy ticking of a clock that marked the endlessness of my childhood.’

I stared at her. I had taken my childhood completely for granted. ’It’s unforgivable that your parents could just abandon you. What happened to you? How did you manage?’

‘I managed because of the wonderful aunt on Arran who took me in. She was amazing. Do you know, Jenny, I had more love and support in my years with her than I had in all my childhood with my parents.’

‘Could you study on Arran, then?’

‘For a while, by correspondence. Then I commuted to the mainland to study. Eventually, I had to leave the island to work and my aunt came with me. I got a job in a big department store in Glasgow, found I was good at selling, became a buyer, got ambitious, did a business degree and began to run my own departments. I also lecture on business management on a freelance basis at conventions. A few years ago I moved from Glasgow and joined the Fayad group in Birmingham.’ She laughed and threw her arms wide. ’That’s my story!’

I smiled at her. ‘Ruth, you’re amazing.’

‘No, but my aunt was. She was like your mother. Like Bea. She gave me a sense of self-worth and motivated me to succeed, despite everything. She died a few years ago and I still miss her.’

We were both silent. I looked at Ruth’s hand. ‘You’re married?’

‘Yes. He’s a good and lovely man, very kind…’

Kind is a giveaway line. Kind is a word you use instead of love.

As if reading my thoughts, Ruth said, ‘Sometimes I suspect my parents might have been right. I’m not always a nice person. I’m driven. I don’t make enough time for the people I should cherish.’ She fiddled with her wedding ring. ‘Do you have children?’

I shook my head and dug my nails hard into one hand under the table.

‘God, I’m sorry,’ Ruth said suddenly. ‘Here I am, prattling on about my life when it’s nothing compared with what you’re going through at the moment, Jenny.’

‘It helps to talk of other things. Do you have children?’

Her whole face lit up. ‘Yes. Just one. His name is Adam.’

The sun shone on the dirty train window in a thin ray touching our heads. It turned Ruth’s hair gold and reminded me of our schooldays long gone, hiding in a corner of the common room trying to avoid games in the bitterly cold winds that blew straight in from the sea and swept over the playing fields freezing us solid. Light from the coloured panes used to slant down on to the window seat where we crouched, ears straining for a nun’s footsteps coming our way.

‘Oh!’ Ruth jumped up suddenly. ‘I get off at the next stop to meet Adam on his way home from school. We both change trains here. We don’t often coincide, so it’s nice. We live out in the suburbs.’

She was tearing off a used envelope and writing down her address and telephone number. ‘My surname is now Hallam. Call me tomorrow, Jenny. Come and see us or I’ll meet you somewhere central. I can probably give you some contacts too. Which hotel are you staying in?’

I told her and gave her my card as she gathered her things together. ‘You shouldn’t be alone in a strange city, you should have company.’ She touched my face lightly. ‘It’s so good to see you again. You never make friends in the same way as when you’re very young, when you grow up together, do you?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t think you do.’

I put out my hand and Ruth clasped it. We didn’t say goodbye. It felt too final. As she moved away down the carriage I felt a loss at her leaving. I didn’t want the numbness of months to wear off, I needed its protection. Her tall figure moved out of the carriage and I turned to the window as the train slowed and stopped.

A lone boy was standing on the platform amid a sea of saris scanning the opening doors of the carriages. He turned my way. My heart seemed to stop beating, so familiar, so beloved were his features and the way he casually flicked his hair away from his eyes. The way he held his head, slightly to the side. The way he moved, darting forward suddenly to Ruth emerging on to the platform, his face lighting up.

‘Tom! Tom!’ I cried out his name in shock and people turned and stared. The train started to shunt, move slowly forward in slow motion through glass. I saw Ruth run and hug the boy to her. She turned to catch a glimpse of me and waved wildly.

I pressed my face to the window to keep them in sight for as long as possible. Then they were gone, behind me. The train carried me onwards alone, towards Birmingham. I got up from my seat and stumbled into the corridor. My breath came in sharp, painful bursts.

Tom. A lament started deep inside me. I felt the tears streaming down my face. Seeing that familiar face was like glimpsing my love again. I cried out in anguish. I did not understand. I did not understand.

I looked down and saw I still held the envelope with Ruth’s address and telephone number on it. I screwed it up violently and threw it away from me down the corridor. I wanted to scream, and I moved quickly into the lavatory.

After a while someone knocked and asked anxiously if I was all right. With a great effort of will I tried to pull myself together. I ran cold water over my face, pulled a comb through my hair, managed to put on some lipstick. My hands shook. I stared at my wild, pale reflection in the mirror. Was I going mad? Did something of Tom live on, but not with me? With Ruth?

I felt as if a pane of glass were shattering into a thousand pieces inside me. Then all feeling drained away. Numbness returned. I unlocked the door and moved back into the corridor.

The crumpled envelope still lay discarded on the floor. I bent and picked it up, smoothed it out. Ruth Hallam. I opened my bag and unzipped the small pocket that held the photos of Tom and Rosie. I placed the envelope carefully beside them, zipped the pocket shut and closed my bag. It was all I had left.

I looked out of the window. The train was coming into the station. People were pushing past me to get to the door. Everyone had reached their destination. Ruth has a husband and that boy. She has a home life waiting where life goes on. Where life goes on.




SIX (#ulink_4e37e570-94f1-522b-985d-4121240762f9)


I walk away from the noise of the party and lean against the huge trunk of a horse-chestnut tree. Its red blooms stand upright among the green foliage. It is like standing under an exotic, rustling chandelier.

The party is lavish, a PR exercise thrown by Justin, a designer friend Danielle and I had been at St Martin’s with. His clothes are a bit over the top, but celebrities and models flock to him for their competitive, reckless little red carpet numbers. He certainly has beautiful women here in abundance.

I watch Danielle networking. She looks like a celebrity herself, a perfect advertisement for our clothes. She is wearing poppy-red chiffon. I designed the dress especially for her. It was deceptively simple, low-cut with a straight silk bodice with floating chiffon panels sewn into the skirt. It looks as if she is wearing a scarlet hanky. Her dark colouring and long legs make her resemble an exotic butterfly.

I smile as I watch her. We need to come to parties like this, to be seen, and she is brilliant at networking. I am better at watching a party from a distance. I can spot emerging trends, get an instinct for the next fashion statement, and it helps to observe how women walk and sit in relation to the clothes they are wearing.

I can see a tall fair man standing with a bevy of women in front of the marquee. He stands like a fish out of water in this showy, arty-farty fashion crowd. He keeps throwing his hair back from his eyes and glancing sideways, as if seeking escape or at least another male. As the place is heaving with girly boys, gay or camp, I can perfectly understand why the women are dive-bombing him like noisy seagulls swooping at their prey, but it’s funny to watch.

I see Danielle looking for me, and ease myself away from the tree and walk back across the grass towards the noise and laughter. Danielle made me a classic white dress, cut exquisitely, as only she can, with narrow gold edging. I am brown from a week in Cornwall and I feel cool, simple and restrained.

Danielle had made me swear that I would not embellish it in any way and spoil the effect. It was hard, as I love colour and eccentric clothes, but this feeling of being almost invisible suits my mood perfectly tonight. I am secretly worrying about our premises, which have become too small, and the fact that although we are getting plenty of commissions we do not seem able to balance our books.

As I pass the group with the tall man I see he is looking at me. I smile and walk on. I am not about to become a member of his fan club.

I join Danielle and a group of friends, and we balance plates and drinks, perching on tiny wrought-iron chairs. Maisie Hill, a model Justin and Danielle and I design for, walks over to join us with the tall man in tow.

‘Hi, you guys. This is Tom Holland, an army friend of my brother’s. I invited them both to the party but Damien’s suddenly got posted off somewhere so he had to come on his own, poor thing. Tom, that’s Danielle, there. Jenny, Claire, Joseph, Milly, and Prue. I’ll be back in a sec. I’ve just got to check on the caterers for Justin.’

The man sits down gingerly on a tiny chair, with his plate of food and grins warily at everyone. Danielle and the other women focus on him relentlessly. He has a stillness about him; an economy of movement and a faint air of amused detachment as if he knows he is the interest of the moment, but it will quickly pass because he comes from a different world.

I notice the tightness of his thighs as he balances on the silly chair and the muscles in his arms where he has rolled up his sleeves a little way.

I like Damien, Maisie’s brother. He often comes to these parties. She had been worried sick when the Bosnian war blew up and he had been sent with the first wave to monitor the atrocities with the UN.

Knowing even one soldier had changed how we all read the papers and watched the news. I wonder if this man, Tom, had been with Damien out there. How frivolous we must all seem. Danielle is eyeing him under a curtain of glossy black hair. Oh, leave him alone, Elle. Don’t bed and dump this one. He won’t know what’s hit him.

When I look up he is watching me. His eyes are extraordinary, purple-flecked and iridescent. They hold mine intently, intimately, as if he is touching me. The blood rushes hotly to the surface of my skin. It is like being hit by a bus.

Maisie calls out to me and I leap up gratefully and walk over the grass. ‘For fuck’s sake, Jenny, don’t just sit there dumb as a daisy. That poor guy has been dying to talk to you all evening.’

I stare at her and fly to the loo, and when I come out Tom Holland is leaning gracefully against a silver birch. I stop in front of him.

‘Hi,’ he says.

‘Hi,’ I say imaginatively.

‘I’m sorry if it seems as if I’m following you. It’s because you are illusive.’

‘Am I?’

‘Like a ghost. Flitting mysteriously in the distance but never stopping for a proper glimpse.’ His laugh is infectious.

‘It’s what I do at parties. Flit. In case I get caught up or trapped.’

‘Very wise,’ he says gravely, then adds quickly, ‘Am I trapping you?’

I shake my head. We walk across the park together, away from the noise and the music towards the chestnut tree I stood under earlier.

‘This is where I first saw you. A small white phantom under a canopy of green. I blinked twice but you were still there, perfectly still. So I knew you must be real.’ His voice is addictive, with a lilt of a smile in it.

‘I was watching the proceedings from a distance. It’s how I sometimes get inspiration.’

‘Well, if Maisie’s clothes are anything to go by, it definitely works.’

‘Maisie would look amazing in a coal sack and bottle top earrings, and I’m afraid we don’t exclusively dress her.’

We walk on across the park in the growing dusk as the music and laughter drift behind us and ahead of us lights in buildings come on.

The evening is beautiful, utterly still. The heat has been caught by the day and trapped by the buildings of the city, keeping the air warm, filling the night with the smell of blossom.

I sense Tom Holland does not want to make small talk but draw in the peace of the night and we walk in a strange companionable silence, drinking in the night as if we have known each other a long time.

He looks at his watch suddenly and we turn without speaking and walk back towards the party going on uproariously ahead of us.

‘I have to go, Jenny. I’m catching a plane first thing in the morning.’

‘To Bosnia?’ I suddenly feel bereft. I haven’t asked him anything about himself. I thought there would be time.

He shakes his head. ‘No, just a training trip somewhere bleak.’

We stare at each other.

‘Thank you,’ he says.

‘What for?’

‘For walking with me on a warm London evening in summer and not making small talk, and for giving me a lovely peaceful memory to take away with me.’

‘You take care,’ I say.

He looks down at me. ‘May I ring you when I get back?’

I take my card out of my bag and give it to him. He holds on to my fingers, lifts them to his lips, then he turns and walks away, striding across the grass. My heart hammers like a trapped bird as the distance between us grows.

I call out ‘Tom’ before I even know I’m going to.

He turns and I run towards him. He scoops me up and turns in a circle with me. Then we just stand holding each other for a moment.

‘Please take care,’ I say again. I let him go and he walks quickly through the gate. This time I notice his step has a little bounce to it.




SEVEN (#ulink_c64df6d1-b962-5b21-9b00-dc57cc19c943)


February 2006

‘You look happy today!’ Adam said, grinning at his mother as she jumped out of the train.

‘How do I normally look?’

‘Stressed, Mum! You’re usually in your own little world of work, for at least an hour or so.’

Ruth felt a pang. So this was how she was. She bleeped the car doors open and when they were inside she said, ‘It was extraordinary. I met someone on the train I haven’t seen for nearly fourteen years. It was weird, Adam, we were best friends at school.’

‘Cool,’ Adam said. ‘You recognised each other then?’

Ruth shot him a look. ‘I’m not that old! Actually, Jenny looked more or less as she always did, except…’

She concentrated on backing out of the car space.

‘Except, what?’

‘She was sad. She’d lost her lovely bounce. I was stupid. I was so excited about seeing her that I didn’t pick it up, just prattled on asking about her life and then she told me. Six months ago her husband was killed in a road accident.’

Adam turned to her. ‘Poor woman.’

‘Yes. She’s in Birmingham on her own so I’m going to ring her tomorrow. I would have asked her to stay but Peter’s back tonight and he’s going to be tired.’

‘Are we going to the airport to meet him?’

‘No, he’s on a later flight. He said he’d get a taxi home.’

‘We are still going to Cornwall for half-term?’

‘Of course we are.’ Ruth concentrated on the traffic. ‘How was your day?’

‘OK,’ Adam said. ‘Is Peter coming to the cottage with us? It’s more fun if I’ve got someone to birdwatch with.’

‘I hope so, Adam, but…’

‘I know, Mum! Like, why do I have to have workaholic parents?’

He grinned at her to take away the sting, but the familiar guilt was back. She and Peter did work long hours and Adam was on his own too much. Occasionally he brought a friend home, sometimes he went to a friend’s house, but it was not the same as having someone there when he got in from school.

The irony was not lost on Ruth. Her aunt had always been the one to be there for him after school when he was small. After that, he had almost always been picked up by someone else or come home to an empty house. The difference was that until his secondary school he had been happy and had loads of friends. Now, they appeared to have dwindled to two or three ostracised loners who had been pushed together.

She thought suddenly of Peter’s wistful voice. ‘Wouldn’t it be great to have another child in the house? I think Adam would like that too. Will you think about it, Ruth?’

Ruth didn’t need to think about it. She didn’t want any more children. It had taken her years to get where she was. She loved working and she had no intention of giving up. Bringing up Adam had been too hard, even with help. She never wanted to have to juggle work, a baby and guilt again. In a few years Adam would be at university. She couldn’t start all over again. She just couldn’t.

Adam had taken her silence as hurt. ‘I was only joking, Mum. You worry too much. Most of my friends’ mothers work long hours too. It’s cool.’

Yes, but most of Adam’s friends’ mothers worked because they had to, not because they wanted to.

Peter had not been impressed by the huge comprehensive that had been their only choice in the area. He had wanted to pay for Adam to go to a private school. Ruth had refused on the grounds she did not believe in private education. But she knew it was really about whether she and Peter stayed together long-term. If they ever split up she could not have afforded school fees on her own and it would have been cruel to have to pull Adam out of private education. Ruth was not quite so sure she would refuse again. Adam said little, but was obviously fairly miserable at school.

She drove up their leafy road of Victorian terraces and parked. For once there was an empty space outside the house. Adam leapt out and ran up the steps, unlocking the front door and leaving it open for her.

As she walked in and hung up her coat Ruth had an image of Jenny, childless, entering a house where her husband was never going to move through the rooms again. Sadness shot through her. She remembered running, screaming with laughter, with a small curly-haired girl across the sands at St Ives towards the Browns’ house with its windows facing Porthmeor beach and the harbour, and her abiding image was of Jenny’s happiness, her security in childhood, in life.

If this tragedy had happened to me I might have been expecting it. Even as a child, Ruth had never trusted happiness. It could be wiped off her face in an instant. She had learnt not to show it. All pleasures had to be hidden or hugged secretly to her. She would compose her face on her way down the hill from the Browns’ house so that when she walked through the door of her own home her puritan parents would see no traces of joy left on it.

She composed her features into that blank expression she recognised sometimes in children in the supermarket. The closed-in, shut-off features of a child shouted at or slapped too often. Children who knew they could never do anything right and tried to melt into the shadows.

Her own parents’ relief that Ruth was out of the house so often and not under their feet making dust did not prevent their jealousy of people who might bring her happiness.

Adam was making toast and humming over his bird magazines. ‘Are you thinking of the woman you met on the train, Mum?’ he asked Ruth suddenly.

‘Yes.’ Ruth sat down opposite him, and he cut his toast and Marmite and handed her a piece.

‘How did you lose touch?’

‘My fault. I never wrote to her when I left Cornwall for Arran. I hurt her a lot. I realised that today.’

‘Only today, Mum?’

Ruth met his eyes. She had given Adam the edited version of her early life. ‘I thought Jenny would forget me pretty quickly. She had three sisters and one brother. We were good friends, but she had a large family…’

‘But friends are different,’ Adam said firmly. ‘Friends are people you make on your own, that are separate from family. They see you in another way. So you become different with them and it’s the same for them. Friends are important.’

Ruth stared at him. You learnt new things about your children all the time. Adam was right. He was his own person, not just the person she knew, but another boy she didn’t know; a person who acted in a different way when he was not with his mother.

He said now, with butter on his chin, ‘Did you explain about your parents, about Auntie Vi looking after you? About me?’

‘A little. I didn’t have time to tell her everything,’ Ruth said carefully, as Adam watched her across the table. ‘But she knew your grandparents and what they were like.’

The phone went and Adam dashed for it. It was Peter. His flight had been delayed. As Ruth listened to them chatting happily she thought with a pang, I take Peter and the life I have here for granted.

At seventeen you believed that your dreams might come true. At thirty you tried not to have any illusions; yet the essence of some impossible hope lived insistently on. Somewhere out there was an exciting shadowy figure who could provide all emotional and sexual succour; a soulmate. Him.

She did love Peter, they were good friends, but her heart did not leap at his touch. She was not in love with him. He had always known that and Ruth knew she should never have let him persuade her he could change it.

Adam handed her the phone. Ruth listened to his voice, warm and loving and glad to be coming home, and she saw in a flash of familiar angst how little it took to please or make him happy. She understood herself. Childhood had taught her she must only ever rely on herself, never let anyone hurt her again, and the result of that was her inability to commit wholly to a relationship. It was a self-destruct button. Peter loved her and Adam unconditionally. What more could she ask? What more could she want?

Look at Jenny, for God’s sake. Look at Jenny.




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