After she had stormed out of number twenty-two with Pete trailing behind, Mia had written to Jake: ‘Dad shocked me, Jake. He has shown how uncompromising he can be …’ which was precisely as Jake feared Jocasta would be when he faced her in the mediator’s office.
Robin Tyler’s advice had been: ‘Go and negotiate and see what you can get out of it while we work on the case.’ Jake had listened and acted on that advice. Not so long afterwards, he found himself sitting side by side with Jocasta in a carefully bland, neutral meeting room.
Jocasta had flown into London the previous evening and Jake marvelled at her composure. She was lithe and buffed, with no trace of jetlag, wearing a composed and, ominously, expectant expression. Jake searched her face for a hint of the past that they shared, some clue that would indicate that, once, they had been together. But there was nothing.
Pat Anderton, the mediator, was a lanky man with thinning brown hair who looked as though he could not tie up his own shoelaces. Careful. Jake issued himself the warning. It would be unwise to assume that this was the case. Jocasta would have made sure she hired the mediator equivalent of the Raptor.
Anderton launched in: ‘I am here as a completely neutral and non-directive presence.’ He indicated the paper in front of Jake. ‘In a while, I’ll be asking you to consider what’s on the paper but first I wish to discuss the reasons why you are here today. Are you both ready?’
Jake glanced at Jocasta. She was staring with a fixed expression at Anderton. At his question, she nodded and pulled her skirt a little further over her knees.
‘First of all, let me establish that you are both anxious to have matters run smoothly.’ He looked from one to the other. ‘Good. Together you got married. Together you had your daughter. There is no reason why together you cannot manage a divorce amicably and reasonably. That is my first point. The second is that matters will only run smoothly if you consider carefully the areas of contention now and resolve how best to deal with them.’
Jake decided that he disliked Anderton more than anyone he could think of.
‘My third point. What most people don’t understand is that marriage is a legal process and so, too, is divorce. Divorce always has to go through the courts in one way or another, and there are procedures over which the parties involved have little influence. Once the procedure is under way, you will have limited control. In this case, Jake, your wife, the petitioner, has cited incompatibility and no common interests.’
The new dark Jake said, ‘I noticed there was no mention of adultery.’
Jocasta swallowed but her composure remained intact. ‘The adultery was irrelevant.’
‘My God,’ said Jake.
Anderton extracted a pair of glasses from his pocket. ‘I reiterate that it is best to try to discover now the areas on which you do agree, which you will then report back to your respective solicitors.’
Jocasta shot Jake a look as if to say: See how reasonable I’m being in consulting this man.
‘I understand,’ said Jake.
Anderton regarded him thoughtfully and Jake suddenly perceived the Raptor strolling into view. ‘Your wife, the petitioner, has given me the background, but I would like to hear your version of events as the respondent. When she left, she agreed at first to sign over the house and its contents to you. Since then, the position has changed and the courts will take note of your separate resources. It is noted that you always maintained separate finances and held nothing else in common.’
Jocasta nipped in: ‘Correct.’
‘The main considerations, however, are your daughter and her maintenance.’
Here Jake interjected: ‘My wife left Maisie to my care. She was quite clear that she did not wish to take her. I, on the other hand, want her.’
Anderton observed the notes in front of him. ‘I have to ask you both to think carefully. Is it possible that you could reach an agreement over this?’
Jocasta stared at the floor. Then she lifted her eyes to Jake’s. They contained an unmistakable light of battle, with no trace of shame or guilt.
‘Once you go through the door of a court, you will be at the mercy of what the judge decides.’ Anderton paused to allow this to sink in. Was he daunted? Was he haunted? If not he ought to be. What sort of person was it anyway who wished to dig around in other people’s marital traumas? Sniffing up the rankness. Measuring the poison. Lapping up the details. Not adultery. Incompatibility and no common interests. How inept language was. All the same, Pat Anderton knew what he was talking about. ‘You have no idea how devastating this can be for the party who feels they have lost out …’
Jake could not bear to look at him. Outside a horn blared and he focused on its discordance, and tried to still the judders of his heart. Even the merest hint of losing Maisie induced agony and almost murderous anger.
‘… I can’t tell you what to do, or advise a particular route. All I can do is encourage you to talk and to guide you gently towards a solution.’
Jocasta got to her feet. ‘OK. Back to the beginning. I’ll give you the house, Jake, if you let me have Maisie.’
‘A house in return for my daughter?’
Anderton’s intervention was practised and measured. ‘You should be aware that the term “custody” has been abolished in favour of “residence” orders, and emphasis is laid on the idea that each parent is equally responsible whichever the child may be residing with.’
‘Could you stop right there?’ said Jake.
‘I understand you are angry,’ said Anderton.
‘Shut up,’ said Jake.
He knew – he certainly knew now – that he had the fight of his life on his hands. The death of his passionate mistaken love had left him with a vacuum at his centre. Nature being what it was, the vacuum was quickly filled with other feelings, bitterness, hatred, anger being only fractions of the complexity of the emotions currently buffeting him. As much as anything, he would have to come to terms with the recently discovered vengeful aspects of his own nature.
Jocasta said, ‘Jake, be reasonable.’
‘You left her,’ he said, with such ferocity that it startled even him.
‘Jake.’ Jocasta had assumed her business voice. ‘You don’t have a job and, God knows, you hadn’t much of an income when you did. How are you going to look after Maisie?’
‘I’ll manage as I am managing.’
She looked so glossy, so organized, so – if it was pos sible – American. In the short time she had been away, Jocasta had sloughed her old identity and slid into a new one.
‘Jocasta?’
She flushed and, her composure slipping a trifle, she fiddled with the big bracelet cuff on her right arm.
‘It was the deal.’ Jake also rose to his feet and faced Jocasta. ‘You went and you left Maisie to me. You freed yourself up for what you wanted to be and to go … with Noah.’
‘I didn’t know … I hadn’t thought …’ She frowned. ‘I was trapped by you, Jake … so needy.’ She averted her face. ‘It drove me crazy at times. And I couldn’t bear all that sanctimonious stuff about how awful commerce was, and how you hated to conform like everyone else. How else did you think you were going to live?’
‘You never said.’
‘It should have been obvious.’
‘Whenever we talked about my feelings, you seemed happy enough to be in the driving seat. You liked all that. You wanted to do it. That’s what made us special. We worked things a different way.’
‘That’s just it,’ she said. ‘You never grew up. Our life was fantasy.’
‘Look at me, Jocasta …’ It was extraordinary but it seemed to Jake that this exchange, raw and painful as it was, cut to the heart in a way they should have done months ago.
But she refused to meet his gaze and addressed Anderton: ‘My husband’s business has more or less collapsed.’
‘For the moment. There’s a recession on. Things will get better.’
‘And he’s been forced to move in with his parents.’
Anderton did not miss a beat. ‘I’m not here to pass judgement.’
Jocasta readdressed herself to Jake. ‘I offer stability.’
Jake said, ‘Stability? I don’t think so.’
‘A good home, plenty of space, an education. Everything that you could wish for your daughter.’
‘And a boyfriend who might, or might not, be permanent.’
She shrugged. ‘I’ve said I’ll marry Noah if that’s what is required.’
‘And you reckon you will give Maisie a better home than I will?’
He recollected the times Jocasta arrived home late – ‘sorry, sorry, meeting’ – which meant she had been networking in a bar. Or, as she had neglected to mention, networking with Noah. He thought of her spiky, restless energy, which infected anyone who came into contact with it – a force field that had drawn him to her – and her impatience with domesticity and carelessness with promises.
‘Yes, I do.’
He turned his back on Anderton, and willed Jocasta to remember what had been between them – moments of mental and physical intimacy that she could never deny because they had happened. The memories would shame her and maybe, he thought, in his new murderous guise, hurt her.
It was High Noon and they were emerging from cover into cruel, blaring daylight to shoot at one another.
‘Here I should reiterate …’ Anderton reasserted his authority ‘… that a child will benefit ultimately from the knowledge that its parents have decided on its fate together.’
In a gun battle, no doubt, nerves screamed and bodies flooded with adrenalin, which triggered the fight-or-flight reflex. Jake was aware that he should not allow anything so crude or overwhelming to master him. The situation called for cleverness, subtlety and strategy, with a softly twitching long tail, and those he would give it.
He considered what had grown in him since the arrival of Maisie – a heart palpitating with love, the acceptance of a finer, unselfish commitment and the commanding imperative to guard his daughter.
‘Come on,’ Jocasta said. ‘Give in.’
She was taunting him. The blackest feelings swirled in Jake but also the determination to control the situation. He glanced at Jocasta. Lips pressed together, chin tense, her features were as stiff and implacable as those of a marble bust.
He said. ‘I won’t agree to you taking Maisie out of the country. If you wish for custody, residence or whatever it is called …’ however hopeless, however pointless, he was going to take the gamble ‘… you’ll have to live in the UK.’ He gestured at his soon-to-be-ex wife. Take it or leave it. ‘It’s as simple as that.’
Hurrying across the patch of ground edged by flowerbeds (hubristically named the Millennium Square), which served as a short-cut between the Middleton and Chambers wings, Annie stooped to pinch a salvia leaf between her fingers. She couldn’t remember the last time she had stopped to relish a flower or plant and, because it was a moment of pleasure, she lingered. Satisfied, she straightened up and the Sea Island cotton T-shirt under her jacket pressed against her skin. Spotted on-line, it was new, expensive and luxurious – and she had ordered five.
Tom had been standing behind her as she did so. ‘I can’t afford it,’ she had said.
He had dropped a hand on to her shoulder and squeezed the muscle that ran from neck to shoulder. ‘Go on. To hell with it.’ She had dickered further. ‘They would be a change from the blouses,’ he pointed out, ‘your uniform.’ That did it. Decades earlier as the new widow, Hermione had picked on the tweed skirt, cashmere sweater and leather lace-up shoes as her uniform and it hadn’t changed. Annie wasn’t going to do the same.
Hoping to find a trace of the old Buccaneer Tom, she had searched his face and found only a sea-change in the dark eyes. ‘Smile, Annie,’ he said, as pity, powerful and erotic, surged through her. She had reached up, pulled down his head and kissed his mouth.
The first autumn leaves were falling. A few had drifted into the square and lay, mustardy splodges, on the ground. The spicy salvia aroma clinging to her fingers, she moved on.
Chuck sent her one of his ‘now-now’ looks as, a trifle late, she let herself into the meeting room. Annie settled herself into her chair and greeted the board members.
Top of the agenda was the Samuel Smith case. ‘The board needs to be reassured,’ said the chairman, on opening the discussion, ‘that this is not a negligence case.’ The non-executives nodded vigorously.
Chuck referred them to the report, which broke events down minute by minute. ‘All the guidelines were observed,’ he pointed out. And they had been – guidelines drafted to create the best of all possible worlds.
Annie looked around the table. She was aware that all of them were thinking much the same thing: how could they have gone so wrong?
The non-exec Lady Carter – sharp, successful, power-suited – said, ‘I’ve been through this report very carefully. Of course, I’m not a medic but it seems to me that these systems don’t do their job. Tell me,’ she addressed Chuck, ‘when the guidelines were agreed was everyone consulted?’
‘So what are we doing?’ Annie asked Chuck, as they walked together back to their offices. ‘Did we make the mess?’
He surprised her. ‘I don’t know.’ Normally Chuck didn’t tolerate woolliness – he was in too much of a hurry – but, today, he acted chastened. He halted by the castor-oil plant in the trendy glassed-in atrium that the hospital was currently struggling to pay off: ‘When rationing comes in this will be the least of our worries.’ He was not given to introspection either but, on this occasion, he gave in to it. ‘And come it will, Annie. The money will run out. The money is running out. Think of the rows as we try and sort out who merits which treatments and who doesn’t,’ he said darkly.
‘But Samuel Smith died on our watch,’ she reminded him painfully. ‘We should never lose sight of that.’
Before leaving at the end of the day, Annie stopped to check on Hermione.
It was not official visiting time and the ward sister huffed and puffed a little before allowing her in. This was partly to underline that Admin might think it had the upper hand on most things but when it came to some things the medical staff were in charge.
Sheathed in sheets and tubes, her pinned arm at an awkward angle, Hermione had her head turned towards the window and was gazing out of it at the vista of dustbins and concrete flanked by overgrown sycamores. At Annie’s approach she asked, ‘When can I go home?’ She looked flushed and seemed uncomfortable.
‘Are you feeling worse, Hermione?’
‘I want to go home. Take me home.’
Annie wondered which home she meant. ‘I promise we’ll get you home as soon as you’re better.’
Hermione clung to Annie’s hand. The white hair was streaked with sweat and straggled over the pillow. ‘Please, home.’
Annie arranged the black grapes on the plastic plate alongside an apple and an orange. ‘As soon as we can.’ She poured a little elderflower cordial into a mug. ‘I thought you might enjoy this. I got it from the deli near us. The one you said you liked.’
She helped Hermione to drink a couple of mouthfuls and searched in the locker for a flannel with which to bath her face and hands. ‘Here, let me do this. You might feel better.’
Hermione’s skin felt dry, and burned with fever. Annie settled her back on the pillow and said, ‘I just want to have a word with Sister.’
At the nurses’ station, she waited for the sister to terminate a long conversation with the discharge sister about an elderly man who required transport. Finally, she turned her attention to Annie and assured her that Hermione was under observation.
Annie abandoned her plans to do an evening shop and returned to Hermione’s bedside. She took Hermione’s hand and held it in silence. Figures came and went. The girl with the hot drinks trolley stopped to tell Annie that the new equipment had arrived, and a porter bringing in a new patient said, ‘Nice to see you, Mrs Nicholson.’
Hermione’s over-bright eyes fixed on Annie. ‘You’re someone here, aren’t you?’ She only just managed to get out the words.
‘Yes,’ said Annie. To divert Hermione she asked: ‘Do you miss Bill much?’
It was clear that Hermione had to think who Bill was and Annie prompted her. ‘Your husband?’
‘Bill … yes. Of course. But he died.’
Annie asked carefully. ‘And Max? Do you miss him?’
‘Max …’ Hermione’s good hand crept up to her neck and covered it as if to shield Annie from its reptilian folds. ‘What do you know about him?’
‘You told me about him one night.’
‘Ah.’ Blotched with age, Hermione’s hand now rested on her chest and her frown imperfectly masked an old longing. ‘You shouldn’t be asking.’
Annie considered. ‘But I am.’
Hermione moved her head restlessly. ‘Things were different then. I told myself … I told myself that I didn’t really want him. Only the idea of him. But it’s in the past. It’s gone.’ Her voice drifted away.
Annie continued to mount vigil beside the bed. Did one manage at the end of life to make sense of it? Or was it as slippery to master as ever? ‘Rollo sits in your room, waiting for you,’ she said.
Hermione frowned. ‘Rollo? Rollo?’
‘The dog you found in the park.’
‘The dog I found in the park …’ She repeated the words as if they should be learned by rote. They seemed to exhaust her and that was the end of their conversation.
On arriving home, number twenty-two echoed to the sound of Maisie’s evening wails. Annie put her head around the kitchen door. Tom was seated in front of a furious baby, endeavouring to feed her puréed broccoli and cheese. Jake was on his phone, a hand over his free ear, and Emily was consulting Nigella Lawson while an ever-hopeful Rollo paraded up and down under the table.
Go, Team Nicholson, she thought. And then, Team Nicholson? Sounded good.
Tom looked up, smiled at her and wiped spatter off his hand.
Emily said, ‘Do you think Mirin Salmon would do? I’m cooking at Mike’s.’ She looked up. ‘Oh, hi, Mum.’ The greeting wasn’t particularly friendly. ‘Do we have any mirin? We used to.’
‘What do you think? And don’t say it.’
Emily mouthed, False economy.
Annie put down her briefcase and shook her unruly hair loose. ‘We need to have a talk about Hermione.’
Jake snapped his phone off. ‘She’s OK?’
‘I’m not sure. Bit confused, if I’m honest, but that might be the effect of the anaesthetic. But she probably won’t be able to cope quite as she has been doing.’
Tom fetched one of the remaining bottles of his good wine, then poured it. Jake sat down first and grabbed gratefully at a glass. ‘You look tired.’ Annie tipped her glass with his.
Tom and Emily drifted about the kitchen.
‘Sit down, please,’ said Annie. ‘I can’t concentrate otherwise.’
Emily perched on a corner of the table and swung a leg.
Tom wheeled a chair round and straddled it. ‘Mum can’t do it all,’ he pointed out to Jake and Emily. ‘Her job is getting bigger all the time.’
There was only a tinge of regret in his tone and Annie admired him for it.
He continued: ‘I think we were over-optimistic when we offered your grandmother a home. We didn’t fully understand what it entailed. We didn’t foresee the problems when someone gets older and their health isn’t so good. We’re going to have to look after her more than we have been. Especially when she gets out of hospital.’
A voice in Annie cried: There goes my freedom.
‘Bit like looking after a baby?’ said Jake, which didn’t go down well with any of them and he backed off. ‘Only joking. But I do have my hands full.’
‘I’ll do what I can.’ Emily levered herself upright and took a chair in a businesslike way. ‘I know I must and I want to. But, cards on table, I’m thinking of moving out. If things continue to go well. I’ve been meaning to talk to you about it.’
Jake leaned over to his sister. ‘You haven’t listened to me. Treat ’em mean, keep ’em keen.’ He pulled his vicar’s face. ‘He won’t respect you, Em.’
She grinned and swatted him on the arm. ‘Not with Mike,’ she said. ‘Katya.’ She added affectionately, ‘As if you’re the expert.’
‘You’re really thinking of leaving?’ She sounded calm, but Annie’s inner voice was at full throat: Please don’t. Not my last daughter. At least, not with their differences unresolved and their relations still (as the weathermen might say) cool with storms threatening.
‘I can’t stay here for ever,’ said Emily, tactfully.
Annie took refuge in her wine and kept up the normal voice. ‘Of course not.’ There was no need to take this personally, she told herself. Emily’s moving out was the logical result of an evolving process throughout human history. The young left. It would leave space for her and Tom to mend fences … properly. A programme of banging in rickety posts and rehanging the picket gate. Would they? Could they? Was it worth it? Perhaps a better phrase was the one favoured by the self-help guru: with no children around, it would leave time for Annie and Tom to mend their souls.
She cast a look at Tom and thought, Yes, maybe there is life after children. ‘You’ll never guess what,’ she said. ‘I wanted the builder to come and put in a handrail for Gran. Bear in mind he’s six foot two and burly. He’s busy until the thirty-first of October but he said he wouldn’t come on Hallowe’en because of the churchyard down the road. He’s frightened of the spirits.’
‘As well to be careful,’ said Tom, catching her eye.
They talked over the various options, and routines to be put in place for Hermione’s return, but Annie knew, as she suspected Tom knew, their children’s hearts were not engaged in the process. Whether they wished it or not, they were being drawn to wider horizons and towards a future that did not contain the needy elderly – and that, concluded Annie, with a wry grimace, would in time include her and Tom.
‘I’m sorry.’ Emily glanced at her watch. ‘I’ll do what I can. Of course I will. But, right now, I’ve got to go.’
‘Sorry,’ said Jake, indicating his sleepy baby. ‘I don’t think Maisie can stay awake a moment longer.’
He carried Maisie up to bed and Emily rushed around, gathering up the salmon recipe ingredients. ‘Dad, would it be possible for you to give me a lift to the bus stop?’
The phone rang and Annie answered it. It was the hospital. She listened intently and put down the phone. ‘Tom,’ she said. ‘That was the ward sister. They’re worried about Hermione. They’re doing some tests.’