The woman in a shiny PVC mac and matching boots cut in front of Emily at the entrance to St Brigid’s and almost tripped her.
It took Emily a good ten seconds to dismiss her annoyance and then to register who it was. She raced after the woman and tapped her on the arm. ‘Kate? Kate Sinclair, isn’t it?’
‘Oh, my God, it’s little Emily. How are you?’ Kate Sinclair had been a stalwart of the Mia set at school, and something of a bully. The PVC crackled as she dropped a kiss on Emily’s cheek. ‘Not ill, I hope?’
‘My grandmother is. And you?’
A shadow crossed Kate Sinclair’s now pleasant, settled expression, which made her look older than Emily knew she was. ‘My mother. Chemo.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘Actually, the train from Northampton was late. Whenever is it not? I don’t like to keep her waiting.’
Emily stepped aside for a woman who was pushing, with some difficulty, a trolley stacked with a library books. She heard herself say, ‘You haven’t heard from Mia at all, have you?’
‘Mia! The wonderful Mia. Not for ages.’ The penny dropped. ‘Of course, you had a family falling out. She told me all about it. Like the rest of the world, I was training at the time to be a counsellor and I think she was desperate for a sympathetic ear … How many counsellors must there be in this country?’ She laughed. ‘That didn’t work out. I got married instead. But, no, I haven’t heard from her – not since she was teaching at the … Oh, where was it? That place near Hammersmith … The William Davies. That must have been four or so years ago. We seem to have lost touch. Pity. But what can you do?’ Again, she glanced at her watch. ‘Must go. But we should catch up. Yes? Facebook me.’
‘Sure.’
Serendipity. How extraordinary it could be. The casualness with which a momentous and burning piece of information had been dropped into her lap whistled the breath out of Emily’s lungs. She watched Kate Sinclair’s shinily clad figure shoot into the lift with all the astonishment that she might have experienced while looking at Niagara Falls or the Grand Canyon. And what would she do with this knowledge?
Her grandmother was not good. Even the medically ignorant, and Emily was profoundly so, could have told that at one glance. Propped up on her pillows, she was shrunken, motionless and, if Emily could describe her this way, removed.
It was a scene that – once – she might have tried to write. The ritual of the handwash at the ward entrance, the reverent procession along the corridor lined with machinery and stretchers, the silence, the urgency and the waiting.
The ward was stuffy and smelt of age and other unmentionable things that they had endeavoured to mask with disinfectant. There was no getting away from it and she tried not to mind. No one else seemed to, which made Emily ashamed of her squeamishness. As surreptitiously as possible, she lifted her wrist to her nose and sniffed the scent she had sprayed over it before leaving the office.
Her parents were already there, talking to the staff, and Emily elected to sit awhile by the bed. A woman shouted from across the corridor. No one paid any attention. Someone else coughed horribly and wetly. A nurse came into sight carrying a covered bedpan.
Sitting by a bed was a tiny thing to do and yet it wasn’t. Emily couldn’t help feeling that she had been put to a test that it was important to pass. Neither must she flinch. The writer should be able to stare death and the bedpan in the face. This was followed by: So should a sentient human being who cares about others. A calm, matter-of-fact acceptance would be, she imagined, a state of mind that one grew into. Watching her parents confer with the staff nurse, she hoped that this was true. In fact, it was vital that it was. If most people felt as she did, and were overcome with a craven desire to run, then the world would, indeed, be a charnel house.
‘Hallo, Gran,’ she said.
There was no reply. Her mother had warned her that her grandmother would probably be doped up.
‘You could brush her hair,’ her mother had suggested. ‘It usually helps.’ Helps whom? wondered Emily. She opened the locker and extracted Hermione’s hairbrush. A few grey hairs and some fluff were trapped in the bristles. She swallowed, her stomach twitched queasily, and she almost shoved it back. She made herself think about the sick and the suffering in Africa. She made herself think of cities in the poorest parts of the world with sewage flowing down their streets. She made herself think of those whose illnesses had condemned them to a living hell or death. Consider those, she admonished herself. Of course she could bring herself to brush her grandmother’s hair.
Gingerly, she made a pass over Hermione’s now tangled locks, which needed a wash. Hermione did not move but, as she continued to brush, Emily was sure that she relaxed a little. ‘There now, Gran,’ she said. ‘Hope that feels better.’ Hermione sighed and murmured and Emily was sure she’d said, ‘Nice.’
That made it more palatable. It really did.
After a while, she replaced the hairbrush in the locker. Hermione lay quiet and motionless so she joined her parents in the corridor.
‘It can’t be …’ Annie was clearly distressed. ‘We’ve done everything, everything we can …’
Emily looked from one parent to the other for elucidation. ‘They’re doing tests for MRSA,’ her father murmured in her ear. ‘I’m going to get some coffee.’
The staff nurse did not trouble to hide a suggestion of Schadenfreude. So much for Administration’s statistics and targets, was the message her body language conveyed. Now you’ll understand that it’s quite different when it happens to you. ‘I’m sure we’ve all done what we can, Mrs Nicholson, but until there is more space between the beds, and more time is allocated for cleaning …’
It was educative to observe her mother in her work capacity. Emily watched as Annie pulled herself together. ‘No, of course not. What I mean is that we’re all in the fight together.’
The staff nurse softened. ‘Let’s not jump to conclusions. There are other things. It could be just an infection.’
Annie looked exhausted, and Emily’s conscience and pity pricked in equal measure. The grudges she had nurtured against her mother, the so-called lack of mutual comprehension, plus her impatience with Annie’s tendency to meddle, did not exactly vanish but were relegated to a minor, insignificant slot. All she could think of was that Annie had suffered, and continued to suffer. She slipped a hand through her mother’s elbow. ‘Don’t worry.’
It was as anodyne a gesture as you get, but the effect was almost miraculous. Annie turned to Emily and said, her voice quivering with gratitude, ‘Thanks, Em.’
Such a fervent reaction could not fail to touch the newly activated deeps in Emily. Oh, Mum, she thought. Directing a smile at Annie that was far more adult and confident than she felt, she said, ‘Don’t worry.’
The test results came. As it turned out, Hermione was not suffering from any of the feared hospital infections. Shock, the anaesthetic and a reaction to her medication had probably triggered the fever and left her very weak. She would be in hospital for at least a fortnight.
Tom visited most afternoons. He took in grapes and soft drinks and fed them to her. In the morning, he searched the paper for articles he thought might amuse her and read them to her. He even took Rollo in the car and held him up among the dustbins so that Hermione could see him out of the window. Once Hermione’s memory had been jogged, she begged Tom to bring Rollo in more often. Tom couldn’t make up his mind whether Rollo or Hermione was affected more.
Occasionally Annie swept in for a quick visit and they conducted a halting, three-way conversation because Hermione’s concentration was not at its peak and the subject had a habit of slipping between the floorboards.
The hospital visit became routine and, however hard Tom tried, other things fell by the wayside. The level of job applications dropped and the vegetable plot never did get under way. Nor was he as free to babysit Maisie as he had expected – which meant Jake did not get as much done at the workshop as he had planned.
Returning home one day in the late afternoon, he discovered Jake and Maisie holed up in the kitchen, with Rollo on ever hopeful patrol under Maisie’s chair. When she saw her grandfather, Maisie laughed and held out her hands. Tom swept her up and settled her into his lap, as always poleaxed by feelings of love and protectiveness triggered by a pair of blue eyes and a fairy body.
How could he have permitted himself to miss this with his own children? All those times when he hadn’t read a story, played the game, comforted a childish sorrow, or shouted himself hoarse at the finishing tape in the egg-and-spoon race. Had failed to hug Jake. These were memories that weren’t there – because they hadn’t happened – and he regretted them.
Extremely pleased by her perch on his lap, Maisie tried out one of her new noises on him: ‘Ga.’
‘Am I Ga?’
‘Sounds like it.’
He kissed the top of her head. ‘Ga I am, then.’
Jake asked, ‘Cup of tea, Dad?’
It was a simple offer, but Tom felt inordinately pleased that Jake was making it. ‘Love one,’ he said, which was a white lie as he had already drunk two cups of brown liquid at St Brigid’s, sufficient to put one off tea for life.
He watched Jake boil the kettle and dunk two teabags into mugs, and decided closer proximity to him was good. Tom was acquainting himself with the physical reality of his son. How he walked. How he gestured. The sound of his voice. These were all pieces of information to store in the memory bank that Tom would have known when Jake had been the small, trudging twin but had lost sight of in the adult.
But he knew enough now to see that the spring had gone out of Jake’s step and, for a young man, he was weary. ‘Jake?’
Kettle in hand, he looked around. ‘Yes?’
‘Do you want to brief me on what’s happening about Maisie and Jocasta?’
Jake grabbed the milk bottle. ‘I’ve declared war.’ He described what had taken place in Pat Anderton’s office. ‘And don’t think that my decision is just a desire for revenge, because it isn’t.’
‘Jake, listen. No, really listen to me. This is vitally important. It would be extraordinary if you didn’t feel badly towards Jocasta, but you must never let it get the better of you. What you have to do is to prove Maisie will flourish better here.’
Jake stirred his coffee. ‘Point taken.’
‘Have you got a stack of paperwork from the lawyers?’ Jake nodded. ‘Can I ask if you’ve done it?’
Jake screwed up his face. ‘Not quite.’
‘Would you like me to go through it with you?’
Jake was startled by this unusual offer. ‘Do you mean that?’
Tom could have taken umbrage at Jake’s scepticism. The sins of the negligent father. ‘What have I just said?’
Jake fetched the relevant papers and Tom his calculator. With Maisie relegated to the baby-walker, they sat down and worked their way through the financial calculations.
Jake consulted his order books and totted up his out goings. ‘Forty per cent down on the previous year,’ he said, and Tom added the figure to the list.
A little later, Tom asked, ‘Our wedding present to you, does that have to be included?’ He was referring to the money given to Jocasta and Jake when they married. ‘And, Jake, you will have to think seriously about the house.’
Jake gestured at the papers. ‘I don’t mind what she gets, as long as Maisie stays.’
Tom chose his words carefully. ‘You will need every penny to bring up Maisie.’
Jake’s eyes narrowed. ‘Dad, nothing is more important than Maisie. The rest can follow.’
Tom revised tactics. ‘OK, Jake, it can be done.’ As he spoke, his former resolution sneaked back. ‘I’m going to ring up one or two contacts who know about this sort of thing and see what they think.’
Jake dropped his head into his hands and muttered, ‘Old-boy network.’
‘Yup,’ said Tom. ‘That.’
Which was the reason he found himself waiting three days later (evening paper turned down at the Cassandra-warning of economic forecasters) for Roger Gard in L’Estimet on the South Bank.
Not having seen Roger since they had sat on a broadcasting committee several years back, he was lucky to have made contact so easily. Such were the riches that Roger had accrued in his successful legal practice that he devoted most of August and September to the historic and beautiful French manoir on which he had lavished them. ‘Tom,’ he said silkily, down the phone, ‘it’s good to hear you and I happen to be flying over for a visit.’
Never mind any qualms Tom might have had at exposing himself as the-man-who-had-lost-his-job or appearing the washed-up loser: this had to be endured for Jake, and for Maisie.
Roger swept in: tanned, in control, expensively dressed. Once upon a time, Tom had been up there with him in the confidence and expense-account stakes. The two men enacted the hearty greeting rituals, ordered a good bottle of wine – ‘On me, Tom, for old times’ sake. Really, it’s nothing’ – and discussed the cricket scores until the bottle was three-quarters empty. This was a familiar game, and Tom fell back into the moves without too much trouble.
Eventually, he opened the batting. ‘I need a bit of advice. My son … divorce … custody.’ He explained the position. ‘How should one play it?’
Roger tapped his nose with a forefinger. ‘We’d better have a second bottle.’
An hour later, Roger got to his feet and shook Tom’s hand. ‘Did I say I was really sorry about the job? Have you anything else lined up?’
Even a few weeks previously, the question would have caused Tom acute pain. Now, he answered matter-of-factly, ‘No.’
‘You should have. Man like you.’ Roger sent him a shrewd look. ‘Got to you, did it?’
‘It did,’ Tom admitted. ‘But that has passed.’
He observed Roger’s manicured, emollient figure make its way out of the bar and hail a taxi. If someone admitted to weakness, however transient, then that someone was perceived as weak, ran his old way of thinking. Never, ever expose the flank. But that, too, had changed and the lift in his spirits confirmed it. He had been weak. He had been anguished. But he had survived. End of story.
When he got up the next morning, Annie had already left and Tom was surprised to find a text from Roger Gard waiting on his mobile. Ring Ian Watt at Carbon Trust.
Jake pinioned his wriggling daughter on the orange and white flowered mat and changed her nappy. Neither of them was paying much attention to the operation, which resulted in it taking longer than necessary, and, more than once, he checked the time on the Donald Duck clock. Nappy anchored, he aimed a damp flannel at Maisie’s face, ran the baby brush over her head, and carried her downstairs.
Tom was waiting to take over in the sitting room where he had rigged up a play area with cushions and toys – thus absolutely guaranteeing that any elegance the room might have clung to was relegated to distant memory. Jake’s mother had not been pleased. ‘I’m going to go crazy with the mess,’ she said.
‘All in a good cause, Mum.’
‘Do you know what I dream of?’ His mother hadn’t waited for an answer. ‘Uncluttered white rooms.’
‘You’ve been looking at the mags again, Mum. Don’t do it. You’ll end up incurably anal, like Emily.’
‘Do you know how patronizing you are?’
‘Never,’ he had said, and they had laughed.
Jake wasn’t as unsympathetic as he sounded. Everyone should have an aesthetic vision. It was important. Jocasta had agreed with him on that – one of their rare moments of accord.
The sick feeling that always accompanied any thought of Jocasta took its customary bow. They hadn’t spoken since the mediation failure but she sent regular emails asking for details of Maisie’s size, her food preferences and sleeping habits, which he considered tactless in the extreme. Yet Jake imagined that he detected a touch of desperation behind the requests – a hint that Jocasta’s achieving persona was being buffeted by normal emotions of loss, regret and, possibly, guilt.
His father prised Maisie from him, settled her down in the makeshift play area and gave her the tokens to push into the plastic box. ‘Ready?’
‘As ready as I’ll ever be.’
‘It’s a risk, Jake, taking this route. But it may be a justified one.’
Tom seemed tense and Jake hastened to reassure him. ‘I understand, Dad.’
United by their mutual adoration of a small child, father and son watched Maisie who, having discovered the joys of feeding different shapes through their corresponding slots, was noisy with her stupendous achievements.
Jake let himself out of number twenty-two and headed for the first of two buses that would take him to Hampstead. It being no longer rush-hour, the passengers were the normal payload of shoppers, students, mums and babies and unemployed, some of whom were so shabby and depressed-looking he couldn’t bear it.
Menton Street was situated in an area of tranquil, well-tended but unflashy affluence. It was a street that acknowledged its exclusivity but didn’t make a fuss about it and number five’s front door had been recently repainted in the lime-based green much favoured by the heritage organizations.
He knew he had been living in Cloud Cuckoo Land for far too long and was neither confident nor optimistic but black-spirited and heavy with anticipated disaster. This was a last-ditch gamble – and the odds were against him. His being here meant he had surrendered the powers of decision to others and there was a strong probability the ground would be cut from beneath his feet. He assessed the green paint, the garden with its good-taste shrubs and flowers and the expensive curtains in the windows, ratification if he needed it that, even with help from his parents (which he hated accepting), the fees would be hefty.
Recommended by Roger Gard, whose network spanned far and wide, Reginald Brown, FRCPsych, fiftyish and big, with the bulky mien of a regular gym user, was younger than Jake had expected and seemed pleasant enough. Which, to put it more precisely, meant visceral dislike did not smack him in the face as it had with Pat Anderton. Jake was even a little surprised: he had been expecting a more obvious intellectual – a cross between Einstein and Freud.
Reginald Brown wasted no time in preliminaries. ‘This is a difficult situation. You are the father of Maisie, and in order to fast-track proceedings you have agreed with your wife not to wait for the Cafcass expert because there is a waiting list of nine months. Instead, you have agreed to hire me in a private capacity because you wish for a quicker hearing. This is something I do frequently. Just to be clear, I will interview you and your wife separately and at length, and I will prepare a report and submit it to the judge. You have also put in an application for an emergency hearing.’
‘Very often a psychiatrist doesn’t see the child,’ Roger Gard had told Tom, who had passed it on to Jake. ‘And they see spouses separately. Cafcass insist on home visits where all manner of evils can be winkled out by them. Or they think they see all manner of ills.’
The questions began.
‘You and your wife have tried mediation, but agreement was impossible because of the situation with your daughter.’
‘Correct.’
‘I see.’ Reginald Brown smiled neutrally. ‘Can you tell me why you want this dealt with so quickly?’
‘Anyone would wish it resolved … for Maisie’s sake.’
‘Ah. So we agree the interests of your daughter come first?’
‘Yes.’
Reginald Brown made a few notes. ‘We have a starting point. The interests of your daughter come first. It’s a regrettable situation and you do not wish your wife to have the main custody. Why?’
‘Isn’t it obvious?’
‘Because she isn’t a fit parent?’
Jake hesitated for a tiny fraction. ‘Because she would be taking Maisie out of the country.’
‘I see. And you don’t feel your wife has a right to look after Maisie as well?’
If he says ‘I see’ again, thought Jake, I’m leaving. ‘Look,’ he said, in a reasonable voice, ‘it’s hardly likely I’m going to escape from the breakdown of a marriage without negative feelings. But they’re totally under control and it doesn’t mean I’m not fit to look after my daughter.’
‘Was I suggesting you weren’t? It’s natural that you will feel hostile towards your wife.’
The session continued for a couple of hours. There were moments when Jake thought anger would overpower him, others when he felt utterly at bay as they fought each other to establish who and what Jake was. Reginald Brown ferreted and dug and harried – and gave no quarter. Again and again, Jake slammed up against his terror of losing Maisie – and up against the implacable professionalism of his interlocutor.
‘Everyone has blotted their copybook, one way or another. You mustn’t be afraid of me,’ said Brown, at one point.
I’d be a fool not to be, thought Jake.
‘How deep do you rate Maisie’s attachment to her mother?’ Trick question? Jake had a vague recollection of Mia, in the days before she became political, describing a psychoanalytic theory of attachment and loss. But it was no good, he couldn’t remember the hypothesis.
Brown observed him calmly and said, ‘I’m not trying to catch you out, Jake. I’m trying to sort out the situation.’
‘Yes. Maisie was attached.’
‘If you’re awarded custody of Maisie, you’ll face upheaval. Have you thought of this?’
‘The balance will shift,’ replied Jake. ‘Sometimes fathers feel part-timers in the business. But that won’t be an option any more.’
‘Do you think your wife was a good mother?’ Jake shrugged. Then he nodded. ‘And do you think you can be a mother?’
Jake was ready with the answer to that one. ‘What is the main requirement for my daughter? The answer is absolute unconditional love, consistent attention, and to keep her warm and fed. Those things I can give her.’
Brown was expertly drilling down into the reservoir of bitterness that Jake knew, in order to keep sane, he had ignored. Now the point-counterpoint of speculation and blame gathered like hornets. How long had Jocasta deceived him with Noah? Had she done so right from the beginning? Surely not when she was pregnant? (The idea made him feel nauseous.) How could he possibly not have known? How, in God’s name, given all this, had he persuaded Jocasta to marry him in the first place?
‘Let me ask you again. How do you feel about your wife?’
‘She left Maisie,’ he said. ‘Doesn’t that speak for itself?’
He had been a love-struck fool. Worse, Jocasta had seen him entirely for what he was and, for whatever reason, had ridden on the back of his deepest feelings. He thought of the times in the large soft bed when, curled up with her, he had murmured to her of his love. He thought of the moment when, in the worst part of labour, she had fixed wet eyes on him and implored, ‘Help me.’ He thought of the trust he had placed in Jocasta.
‘Actually …’ A surge of bitter anger smashed up against him. ‘There are times when I hate her.’ To his surprise, the relief of voicing it was total. Saying it was like plunging into bright, clear water. ‘Yes … yes, I hate her.’
‘I see,’ said Brown.
Limp and wrung out, he left Reginald Brown, took himself off to the main street and into the nearest coffee bar.
There were two messages on his mobile from his mother and father, each requesting to know how it had gone. He ignored them. The barista rearranged individual panettones on a tray, and ground more coffee. Its unmistakable fragrance drifted across the steamy café.
Jocasta had gone. And he was facing it. ‘You were so … needy …’ Her words would retain their sting for years … decades, even. He would think about them at fifty and seventy, turn them over and see what he had made of them. He had never explained properly to Jocasta that being a twin had its advantages and disadvantages and that, overall, it was inescapable. He might have turned to her and said, ‘Sharing the first flutter in the womb, the first spurt of blood through the veins, the first kick of the limbs, was to be roped and bound for life.’ But he never did.
He drank a mouthful of the over-sweetened coffee and almost gagged.
Water under the bridge. (His mother would appreciate the cliché.) The plain fact was that even if he longed for Mia like you might long for a phantom limb she wasn’t there and she hadn’t been there for more than five years. Mia had chosen Pete over him … and the family.
He twirled his mobile between his fingers. Lying on the corpse-strewn marital battlefield was some useful plunder: never expect happiness and, in the end, everyone was on their own, were the most obvious of conclusions to this affair. Above all: never give up – which was where Maisie came in, of course.
As he drank his coffee and energy crept back, his distress and worry subsided a little. He called Ruth. ‘That was gruelling. But I got a few things straight.’
‘I’m glad you rang,’ she said simply. ‘I wanted to put an idea to you. Are you coming up to the workshop any time soon?’
‘Actually, I’ve got some repairs to do. Could you look after Maisie?’
‘I’d like to.’
Something of Ruth’s quietness … no, it would be more precise to say her centredness … flowed down the phone and over Jake. ‘Thanks,’ he said.
She hesitated. ‘Jake, you sound good.’
The previous night he had dreamed of carved devil and witch gargoyles grinning at him from their wooden vantages. Lolling tongues … hollow sockets … screaming skulls. In this black dream, the witch had had a stake driven through her heart.
He had loved Jocasta. Now she was the enemy.