12

I watched Ethan make his way back from the buffet car, a paper cup in each hand and a packet of crisps clenched between his teeth. He sidled into the seat opposite, handed me my tea and pulled a cellophane-wrapped muffin from his pocket.

‘Thought you might be hungry.’

I wasn’t, but I opened it and took a bite anyway. The least I could do was keep up the pretence that we were off on a spree – Ethan to replenish his wardrobe with an uncharacteristically lavish float from Nick, me to meet up with Jude for an afternoon of pampering. In fact, we both knew that Ethan was my chaperone and Jude my counsellor, enlisted by Nick to probe my state of mind and feed back her impressions later in a phone call. ‘Is it just me, or is she losing it again?’

Ethan devoured his crisps greedily, like the child he once was, and then wiping his hands on a paper napkin, reached for his phone. He caught my eye and turning it guiltily face down on the table, searched very conspicuously for something to say.

‘Lucky it’s not raining…’

I smiled and nodded. Seconds dragged by.

‘When did you last see Jude, then?’

‘Month or so ago. We had a housewarming.’

‘Oh… nice…’

There was a pause. I took a dog-eared paperback out of my bag and opened it pointedly, smiling to myself when he reached once more for his phone. I read half a chapter without taking in a word and then stared aimlessly out of the window, watching the telegraph wires rise and fall over the fields and housing estates, the goods yards and retail parks. When I looked up again, Ethan had nodded off; head slumped against the window, a bead of drool gathering at the corner of his lip. He had always had the knack, I mused, seeing his forehead bump gently against the glass; had always been an easy baby, contented, smiling. We’d been able to take him anywhere – at least until his father had become squeamish about my breast-feeding in public. And later, a childminder being, according to Nick, beyond our budget, I had simply hoiked the toddler Ethan onto my hip and carried him down to the basement to keep me company while I potted. Turned out Ethan and clay were a match made in heaven. I had only to dump a wodge in a washing-up bowl on the floor and while I worked mine up to throwing consistency on the bench, he wrestled his around the lino until he looked like he’d crawled out of a swamp. Then I’d put him in his bouncy chair with a bottle and the hypnotic thrum of the wheel would send him off to sleep. That had been the start, I supposed, looking back. Me and Ethan, Ethan and me; joined at the hip from infancy, Nick somehow cut adrift. Did that make it all my fault?

The train entered a tunnel and jolted him awake.

‘Your tea’s gone cold,’ I said, smiling at him, ‘do you want me to get you another?’

He looked at me for a moment, as if trying to recollect who I was, then shook his head pleasantly.

‘’S’all right,’ he said.

A fine rain was falling as the train pulled into Paddington, and the platform was teeming with not especially good-tempered people. I had lost the habit of negotiating crowds – that instinct that enables you to swim in them like fish. Ethan still had it. He had to keep hanging back for me, his exasperation thinly disguised with a cocked head and a patient smile. A man swore at me under his breath and a porter driving a wagon along the platform blared his horn as I stepped momentarily into his path. I jumped and clasped my hand to my breast and then I started laughing and couldn’t stop. I still had a stupid grin on my face as we moved through the ticket barrier and out across the concourse.

‘Are you OK with the tube?’ Ethan asked and I frowned at him comically. What other mode of transport would a Londoner take? All the same, as we made for the entrance, I found myself turning my old Oyster card over and over in my pocket, as if it might let me down. What if I were turned back at the border? What if they recognized me for the interloper I now was? But the gates slipped back, just as they did for everyone else.

I had never noticed before how beautiful the Tube was. In the brief phase during my early twenties when I had commuted to a poorly paid administrative job with a theatrical outfitter in Covent Garden, I had moved through its windy corridors with the same air of world-weary indifference as my fellow travellers. Only now did I see it in all its Brutalist splendour. The soaring arched ceilings and the majestic sweep of the escalator, the Soviet-style brick tiles and the clinical white down-lights, the digital adverts for tooth-whitening gel and executive recruitment services. And the people. I couldn’t take my eyes off the people: metropolitan sophisticates staring vacantly ahead, gawping tourists annoying everyone by standing on the left, gangs of giggly teenage girls with armfuls of carrier bags. All of them pleased me – their proximity, their remoteness.

‘Are you feeling OK?’ Ethan asked, as we shuffled along the platform.

‘Fine,’ I said, ‘why?’

‘You just look…’

‘Happy,’ I said. ‘I’m happy.’

The train arrived with a gusty moan of its brakes and we surged forward and crammed in as if it were a children’s party game.

Reaching awkwardly across my fellow passengers to claim my few precious inches of hanging rail, I jerked and shimmied like a puppet as the train rattled along. It heaved perilously over the points and I stumbled, but Ethan took my arm to steady me. I thought I might burst with pride then, even though no one in the carriage seemed to notice. This is my son, I wanted to tell them. This tall, self-assured young man may be on his way to Topman now, but he has come via Phnom Penh, Chiang Mai and Myanmar, so a little respect, please.

In the ticket hall at Oxford Circus, Ethan slowed down to work out which exit we needed, but I took his arm and led him decisively to the correct one.

‘You’ve done this before.’

‘Just a few hundred times.’

‘God, you’re so…’

‘Knowledgeable?’

‘Old.’

It was true. I had been coming here most of my life. I had seen retail empires rise and fall. C&A, BHS, Freeman, Hardy & Willis. Even after I got together with Nick, and he used to try and drag me to the more exclusive environs of Kensington and Chelsea, I would sneak back here, given the choice. I found the high-end shops intimidating and the few items of designer clothing I had bought to please him always made me feel, when I was wearing them, as if I had raided the dressing-up box. Nick never said anything and neither did his friends, but I always felt, entering a room on his arm, as though the ghost of his first wife came with us – poised, elegant, effortlessly stylish. There was always that moment of frozen politeness on people’s faces, as they tried to disguise their surprise and disappointment that Nick had exchanged that for this.

No, I was a chain-store girl at heart. That’s why I gravitated back here. I liked the buzz, the sleaze, the sense of anonymity. I knew all the back streets and short cuts, could get from John Lewis to Soho in ten minutes flat.

As we emerged from the Tube, a ray of sun, hot as an electric fire, hit the sodden pavements and made them steam. I took Ethan’s arm and steered him past Muji and River Island towards the Levis shop.

‘Woah,’ he said.

‘I thought you wanted jeans.’

‘Yeah, not from here, though. They’re crazy expensive.’

‘Dad’s paying,’ I pointed out.

‘Even so…’

Everything was too dear all of a sudden – even a multipack of boxer shorts at nine ninety-nine. As we left Primark with one flimsy carrier bag, containing less than thirty pounds’ worth of clothing, it occurred to me that he was probably squirreling the money away to pay back the Aussie girl. I felt a little indignant on Nick’s behalf, then realized it was really on my own behalf, before finally acknowledging to myself that whatever the motivation for his new-found thrift, it was none of my business. Nevertheless, once I’d had that thought, it took a supreme effort of will to keep up my stream of friendly prattle all the way to Soho, especially as I could tell he was only half listening. I suppose I was conscious that this might be the last afternoon we would be spending together for a while, and I wanted to make it count. I felt slightly manic, truth be told, the energy of the city buoying me up, but never quite rescuing me from an undertow of melancholy, which, were I to yield to it, I knew might drag me under.

‘Are you hungry?’ I said on a whim, as we passed a trendy new eatery calling itself The Soho Refectory.

‘I doubt we’ll get a table,’ Ethan shrugged, but we did. A hipster waiter showed us to a booth, took our drinks order and then disappeared for twenty minutes to chat to his friends.

We pored over the menu, discussing how rare was rare, and whether blue cheese dressing would be nice or not, and then Ethan ordered the Wagyu burger with the lot, and mindful of the full body massage to come, I went for a salad. While we waited for the food, I watched Ethan study the other diners – a couple of tourists Instagramming their latte art, a handful of geeky creatives on their iPads and a table of young women, so preternaturally beautiful that they could only have been models, picking at a shared bowl of fries.

‘What?’ he said, defensively, when he saw that he’d been rumbled.

‘Nothing,’ I said, with a smirk. It would have been unusual, I suppose, for a heterosexual nineteen-year-old not to ogle beautiful women, but it felt like a minor triumph nevertheless – one in the eye for her in Queensland.

‘You know you could always stay on in London for the weekend,’ I suggested casually, as the waiter served our food. ‘It might be fun. I bet some of your mates’d be glad to see you. What about that girl, Sophie, you used to hang out with. Didn’t she take a gap year…?’

Ethan shook his head, his mouth full of burger.

‘Noh boghered reahy…’

‘Because I know Jude’d be only too pleased to…’

He forced down his mouthful half chewed.

‘No thanks,’ he insisted, mustard still clinging to his lip, ‘I’d rather come back with you.’

I tilted my head in surprise. ‘Well, that’s nice.’

‘Because I’m not going to see you for a while once I go, so…’

Always the sucker punch.

‘You’ll be back at Christmas…’

He screwed his face up, doubtfully.

‘We’ll pay…’ I wheedled, aware, even as I said it, that I wasn’t helping my cause.

He closed his eyes in exasperation.

‘No, no. You’re right,’ I said, ‘it’s an adventure. It should be open-ended. It’s great. I wish I’d done it.’

All the same, it spoiled the day. We walked from Soho to Covent Garden and I kept up my banter – ‘See that fancy cinema? That used to be a right fleapit. Dad and I had our first date there. And that place – the Italian Patisserie – the one they’ve franchised. That’s where I told him I was pregnant with you!’

Ethan gave a ‘too much information’ wince, but I heard myself prattle on all the same, trying to re-imagine it as the romantic watershed moment I had longed for, instead of the damp squib it had turned out to be.

‘He guessed something was up when I ordered the second chocolate éclair!’ I smiled. ‘God, you wouldn’t believe how hungry you get in early pregnancy. Not that I made a habit of eating unrefined sugar, of course. It was wholefood all the way after that – that’s why you’re so smart – but this was a celebration of sorts… well, it turned into one… once I’d told him…’

Not quite.

‘I thought you were taking care of it!’ Nick had said, pushing his teacup away, running his hands through his fringe the way he did when he was worried.

‘Yeah… I… it’s supposed to be ninety five per cent reliable, but hey.’ I gave him a cheery grin, false jollity covering up for nerves, guilt, crushing disappointment that he hadn’t been as thrilled as I was. ‘It was only a matter of time. It’s not like we didn’t discuss names… do you still like Ethan for a boy?’

‘Jesus, Karen…’

I should have heeded the warning then. In his mind this was entrapment. I was a fling, a bit on the side, consolation for a marriage that kept him too much on his toes – a trophy wife so brightly burnished he felt tarnished in comparison. I was never supposed to be her love rival, just an also-ran. But a baby is a baby and Nick’s sense of chivalry – his sense of himself as a righteous man, wouldn’t allow him to slip me the price of an abortion. I don’t know what he thought would happen – perhaps he imagined he could lead a double life, have two families on the go, two wives, two sons: the glittering public version and the secret gimcrack one. But before I was into my seventh month she found out and chucked him out.

Jude was waiting on the steps of the spa – her punctuality an indication of how seriously she was taking her responsibilities. Usually she rocked up at least fifteen minutes late, arms laden with designer carrier bags.

‘Ethan!’ she cried, assailing him like an overfamiliar auntie, all lipstick and condescension, ‘long time, no see.’ She almost managed to bully him into coming to the café with us for a full debriefing, but he extricated himself with his usual awkward charm and I watched him disappear into the crowds, his footsteps getting quicker, his gait jauntier the further away he got from us.

‘Got your cossie?’ Jude asked, cheerfully. She linked my arm and led me through the reception area, where beautiful women in starched white uniforms wafted about on clouds of frankincense as though it were the antechamber to heaven itself.

‘We didn’t need to come here, you know,’ I told her as I put on my white waffle robe in the changing rooms. ‘I’d have been just as happy with a natter at your place.’

‘Wait till you get your massage. Then you’ll see…’

‘It’s very generous of you.’

‘Actually it was quite selfish. I’ve always wanted an excuse to come here and Dave couldn’t argue when I said I was bringing you.’

‘Ah, the Loonytunes Freedom Pass. Well, glad I’m good for something.’

She put her head on one side and gave me an admonishing smile.

We entered a tiled atrium, which housed three glass booths – a sauna, a steam room and an ice chamber.

‘Ooh, posh,’ I said. ‘What shall we do first? Steam room?’

‘Whatever floats madam’s boat.’

We hung up our robes, opened the Perspex door and peered into the hot, eucalyptus-scented fog. I could just about discern the silhouettes of two women on the other side of the room, but couldn’t quite make out the echoey murmur of their conversation and was soon so engrossed in my own with Jude that we might as well have been alone.

‘How’s Dave?’ I asked.

‘Oh, you know.’

‘Well, no, I don’t. That’s why I’m asking.’

‘He’s driving me nuts. He’s worried about his mum, but he won’t do anything about finding a home for her because he thinks if he leaves it long enough, his sister’ll just cave in and have her to live with them.’

‘And will she?’

‘Will she hell. She can’t stand her. And I’m damned if she’s coming to living with us. It’s bad enough having one child in the house, let alone two. Anyway, never mind Dave and his fucked-up family. How are things in Ambridge?’

I cast my eyes heavenwards.

‘Seriously, though. Have you made any progress with that bed and breakfast couple? What were they called again…?’

‘Min and Ray. Yes. Well, sort of. They had us round the other night. Introduced us to another nice couple who run a gallery. They might sell my work if I ever get round to making any…’

‘Karen, that’s fantastic! Just what you need to get you back to norm…’ she checked herself, ‘… back in the saddle. You’re all set now. That lovely new studio, a local gallery, friends, potentially…’

‘Well…’ I pulled a doubtful face and knowing me well, Jude folded her arms across her chest and waited for the full story.

‘I’m not sure I made the most of it, to tell you the truth…’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Well, I fell out with Ray – the B&B guy, ’cause he sneaked off halfway through dinner and took Ethan to the pub on the back of his motorbike…’

Jude rolled her eyes; I wasn’t sure whether at what Ray had done or how I’d reacted.

‘And I spilled wine on the gallery woman’s dress…’

‘Could happen to anyone.’

‘It was leather…’

‘Ah.’

‘And I think I might have made a bit of a fool of myself flirting with her husband.’

Jude turned to me, her face a cartoon of delighted surprise.

‘Atta girl!’ she said.

‘He’s Italian,’ I boasted, ‘name of Luca. Invited me out mushroom foraging. Nick got a bit antsy about it – don’t look like that, I’m not actually going!’

‘You should,’ Jude said, ‘you definitely should. Even if you don’t fancy the guy, it wouldn’t do any harm for Nick to think you do. Give him a taste of his own medicine, after what he put you through.’

I laughed but inwardly I winced. She meant well, Jude, but did she really think there was equivalence there; that some silly flirtation with a local lothario would balance the scales? Make things fair and square between Nick and me? Because that was… I couldn’t put it out of my mind after that.

Long after we’d left the perfumed fug of the steam room, long after we’d stepped into and quickly out of the icy shower, long after we’d helped ourselves to fresh robes and padded upstairs to the treatment rooms, the phrase still chimed in my head: ‘What he put you through… What he put you through…’

My masseur was a Filipino called Jorge. He seemed a gentle soul, but he didn’t talk, except to introduce himself and ask me if I preferred music or silence. I chose silence. He placed a jasmine-infused towel over my bottom, and after uttering what sounded like a prayer in a language I had never heard before, he began to knead me with firm authoritative strokes. His hands were smooth and strong, his touch utterly non-sexual and the relief of it almost undid me. As his palms moved from neck to shoulder, shoulder to back, back to thigh, I stared through the face-shaped hole in the massage-table and the past came up to claim me.

I’d made quite the effort. A knife-pleated ankle-length skirt dressed down (because I was going to a gig) with a T-shirt that said ‘PSYCHEDELIC’ in a groovy Seventies typeface. I’d ignored Ethan’s meaningfully raised eyebrows when he clocked my outfit, and refrained from reminding him, as he loaded Tekken onto his PlayStation, that he had a Government and Politics A level re-sit in two days’ time. The evening ahead felt stressful enough already.

I was at the bus stop when the first text came.

‘Running late. Bear with… X’

‘How late?’ I texted back. No kiss, because I was annoyed. This was Nick’s gig – I didn’t even like Fleet Foxes – and we were going with his friends, Justin and Bridget, whose superabundant charisma and flamboyancy always returned me to the tongue-tied, mousy imposter I had felt like in my first year at art college. It didn’t help that they’d been Nick’s ex’s friends first and that, despite their supreme tact in never mentioning her when we were out as a foursome, her presence still cast its long shadow. I never came away from an evening in their company without the impression that their smiles had been false, their laughter hollow – that the whole thing had been the most enormous effort.

And yet I’d been unable to bring myself to opt out, to leave Nick to pursue this friendship solo. I needed to be there to assert my status. I was his wife now. Besides, it had seemed much less intimidating two months ago, when I’d signed up for it. I suppose I’d imagined that by the time it came around I’d have magically transformed myself into the kind of person who enjoys swaying to impeccably harmonized indie folk alongside people who look like they’ve stepped out of a Jean-Luc Goddard movie. I should have known better. If I hadn’t managed to become that person in eighteen years, why should it have happened in the last nine weeks?

By the time Nick’s second text came – ‘Half an hour max’ – I was feeling slightly panicky. We were meeting at the venue and I had the tickets. Even when Nick was there to keep the conversation flowing, I found Bridget and Justin hard work. Half an hour on my own with them would feel like purgatory. I was queuing to get off the bus when the final text arrived.

‘Best leave my ticket on the door.’

As I joined the hoard of hipsters massing on the pavement, waiting for the lights to change, I gave myself the pep talk. They’re just people. Knock back the first drink and then keep the questions coming. Doesn’t matter how inane. What was their daughter called again? Scout? Shiloh? You can do this. But then the lights changed, the crowds surged across the road and I caught sight of them standing on the steps, Justin in his Rupert Bear suit and pointy shoes, Bridget in a leopard print coat, her hair cut in a funky, asymmetric bob.

‘Guys,’ I said, thrusting their tickets at them before they’d even worked out who I was, ‘I’m really sorry… I know this sounds crazy but I’ve just had a call from Ethan. He’s locked himself out and the neighbours can’t find the set of keys that we normally leave with them and he needs to get his stuff because he’s booked on a train from Euston in an hour’s time and if he misses that one he’ll have to upgrade…’ On and on I went, until they were the ones telling me I must rush, and to think nothing of it and if I got back in time for the second half that would be fantastic, but if not they’d see me soon and then I plunged back into the mêlée, my cheeks burning, my own voice repeating on a loop in my head, ‘Guys, I’m really sorry… Guys, I’m really sorry…’ Who said that?

My bus home had just lumbered round the corner, when I remembered I still had Nick’s ticket. I made a cancelling gesture at the driver to indicate that I had changed my mind. As peeved as I was that my husband had dropped me in it, I knew he’d be gutted to miss the gig. Not just gutted – angry. We’d paid fifty quid apiece, apart from anything else. I took out my phone and tapped Google Maps. It should be easy enough to walk to Nick’s office from here, once I got my bearings.

The interior was in darkness when I got there, except for the sleek blue strip lights around the reception desk and the pale glare of the security guard’s TV. The receptionist was long gone. I jiggled about on the pavement, waving foolishly until I caught Samuel’s attention and he buzzed me in. I was all set to explain the whys and wherefores, but to my surprise he recognized me and with an absent-minded smile and one eye on Top Gear, waved me through. I hadn’t planned on handing the ticket over to Nick in person but already my righteous indignation was ebbing away. The weighty imperative of a work deadline seemed a more convincing excuse, somehow, with a fifteen-storey office block looming over my head; the smoked glass and lavish flower arrangements, leather sofas and corporate art, part reproach, part aphrodisiac; reminders all of my husband’s diligence, of his status, of how good he looked in a suit. I would hand over the ticket myself, with a good grace; hell, the way I was starting to feel, I might yet go with him… I pressed the button to summon the lift.

As I waited for it to descend a second light came on, indicating that another one was on its way down from higher up the building. So Nick wasn’t alone in putting in the hours. I felt ashamed of myself by now. How could I have failed to acknowledge the pressures he was under; they were all under?

When I got out at the second floor, the lights were off and Nick’s office was empty. I glanced up and down the corridor, confused. Could he be in the boardroom? Hotdesking somewhere? A thought occurred to me then. That other lift; I must have just missed him… the doors would be opening now in reception. He’d be saying goodnight to Samuel, touching his lanyard to the target…

I hurried to the end of the corridor, where a floor-to-ceiling plate glass window gave onto the street. I saw the electronic door swing open and watched Nick emerge, followed by a colleague. A woman. Hair in a ponytail, pencil skirt, heels. Not his type. I raised my hand to bang on the window, but something stopped me. As they moved away from the ambient light of the office frontage, their demeanour changed. They moved closer together, there was an ease, an intimacy in the way they fell into step beside one another. My forehead was throbbing now from being pressed so hard against the glass. They were almost at the corner of the street. They were slowing… stopping. They were about to go their separate ways. He put a hand on her shoulder, she inclined her head; he kissed her mouth.

I thought I was doing OK. I walked home from the bus stop doing a passable imitation of a person. My limbs moved, I registered immovable objects – litter bins, bollards, and negotiated my way around them. I even muttered ‘thanks’ when a man walking in the opposite direction stepped off the narrow pavement into the gutter to make way for me.

But when I got to our front door and tried to put my key in the lock, it was as though I’d had a stroke. I had to clutch my right hand in my left and guide the tip of the key, which still skittered across the slot as though it had a life of its own. At the third attempt, I managed it.

‘Hello?’ Ethan’s voice sounded alarmed and slightly indignant.

‘Only me,’ I called, my voice high and fake, like a bit-part actress who only had one thing to do and nevertheless blew it.

‘I thought you said you’d be late…?’

‘Yeah, not feeling great. I’m just gonna…’ With a huge effort of will, I hauled myself to the top of the stairs, so I should be out of sight of the lounge door, if he opened it. He didn’t.

I didn’t know what to do when I got in the bedroom. I felt as though I was outside my body. The script required me to throw myself onto the bed and sob into the pillow, but it was a hackneyed script, which reduced my situation to the cliché it was and I couldn’t do it. It felt both too histrionic and not histrionic enough. The thing I had expected to happen from the moment I got together with Nick had finally happened and I was shocked at how shocked I was. Too shocked to act. Too shocked to move. I needed to shatter.

‘Finished!’

Jorge’s voice in my ear was so gentle that I was almost more aware of his breath, stirring my hairline. I looked up from the massage table, and blinked at him, dumbly, a tissue paper halo still sticking to my face, where it had been thrust through the hole.

‘I’ll leave you to get dressed. Drink plenty of water.’

I nodded and lowered my face back over the portal, almost as if expecting my past to be down there still, but all I saw was the herringbone sisal flooring, liberally spotted with massage oil, or possibly tears.