London, the Nineties
The day David started school, Artemis felt like someone had pulled the rug from under her world.
‘He’s in excellent hands,’ the reception teacher assured her as they stood in the playground that first morning, her fingers gripped around his.
It was September and the trees swayed unsteadily above their heads. Artemis felt a flutter of nerves as she looked up. When was the last time those branches had been felled? People were killed by falling trees; even a smaller branch could damage a child if it landed on them from a height.
‘I’m just not sure that he’s ready,’ Artemis replied, refusing to let go of her son’s hand as the other children filed into the red-brick building where Clive had been educated, decades earlier.
The finest boys’ school in London, Clive had said proudly once they received the letter to confirm his place, for which they would be paying more each month than Artemis could fathom. She thought back to her own school, the lessons held in the dusty playground, desks shared between pupils. The taunting.
This place, by contrast, with its cricket grounds and computer room, was not so much a school as an establishment. Another institution to which she somehow found herself inadvertently attached.
She should be happy for her son. It was a blessing to be able to afford such privilege. Unlike her, David would not have to scramble for books to learn another language; he wouldn’t find himself derided for wanting to know more than the teacher had means to tell. But would he be happy?
She laughed at herself for that one. You can be happy anywhere, she had once heard Athena’s mother tell her when she complained of being bored on the island, of wanting to get away, of wanting a more satisfying life. Yes, Artemis thought now. You could be happy anywhere, and you could be miserable anywhere, too. But how could she be sure David would be happy here? How would she know what went on behind closed doors? Her parents had never known what she endured each day when they sent her off to school.
‘David will be absolutely fine,’ the teacher said firmly, as if reading Artemis’ thoughts.
She hadn’t allowed herself to watch as he moved away from her, towards the next stage of his life, the doors closing behind him, stealing her son away in a world to which she had only the most limited access. As she walked home, the familiar streets of Hampstead contracted around her, squeezing her out, so that by the time she reached the bottom of her street, she felt like an outsider again.
She spent the morning on the Heath, trying to sketch to help pass the time before collecting David. But as she looked out at the birds sweeping in and out of the willow tree that hung resignedly over the pond, she felt her hand freeze up.
How long had it been since she had last taken pencil to paper? Something that was once second nature now jarred. It felt like another lifetime that Clive had promised her the gallery, once they were in London. She had never pushed the point, not even when he suggested she wait until she was further along in her pregnancy and then revisit the idea. She had lost her nerve; any faith she had in herself and her identity had drained away. She had lost whatever voice she’d had, and what was an artist with nothing to say?
She had better get home, she told herself, in case someone called from the school. David might need her. How had she not thought of it sooner? She ran the short distance, heading straight to the answerphone. When she found it blank she wasn’t sure if she was relieved or disappointed.
As the months passed and Clive’s business gathered momentum, the ratio of time he was spending in London to that which he spent abroad, at various meetings and conferences and heavens knows what else, diminished so that often Artemis felt like she was raising David alone. Not that she would have minded if David was actually there for her to look after – she might have relished it if that had been the case. But in the months since he had started school, everything had changed. Even though she knew it was selfish, she dreaded the time between dropping him off and picking him up again, pink-cheeked and full of all the exciting things they had done in class. It was an affront, of sorts, how easily he fell into his routine; while other children clung to their mothers, David would run into school happily.
‘You’re lucky that he’s so keen to go,’ one of the mums noted in the playground. ‘He must feel very secure. Joel never wants to be more than a metre away from me.’
Artemis had spent the morning at a step aerobics class arranged as a fundraiser for a new computer suite for the school – as if the school didn’t get enough donations on top of the already exorbitant fees. Slinking off as soon as she could, she made her way back through Hampstead with a sense of relief. It wasn’t that she hadn’t tried to like them – she had attempted to connect with the mothers of David’s new friends, despite her instinctive aversion to their competitive socialising and unnecessarily obtrusive 4x4 cars with bull bars that would so easily break a child.
Dutifully, she turned up occasionally at the endless fundraisers or the coffee mornings where the teachers looked at her with an expression she could never quite read. But in the company of these women, her sense of loneliness was even more profound.
The sky was unusually bright this morning. Artemis nibbled at the corner of a chocolate bourbon she had snaffled from the tea tray on the way out. As she moved along Parliament Hill she cast her eyes over the houses that finally felt familiar, after more than five years. When she had first arrived here she had felt so claustrophobic inside the house, thinking of all the bodies wedged in their terraces along this street. But now, as she approached home, she longed for the feeling that she wasn’t entirely alone.
As if by some projected response, the moment she moved into the hallway, she heard movement from the middle floor of the house. Feeling her heart lift to know Clive was home, she moved quickly upstairs to the bedroom. The moment she stepped inside, she saw the suitcase.
‘You’re not going away again?’
Without looking up, Clive continued to place neatly folded shirts into the open bag. ‘You know I am. It’s been in the diary for weeks. We have a big meeting in Asia. A whole new market is opening up and Francisco has brokered some meetings—’
Artemis felt her chest tighten. ‘But I need you here.’
‘Why?’ He moved towards her, staring intensely as if he didn’t understand the person who was standing in front of him. ‘I don’t understand, I go away all the time …’
‘Exactly,’ Artemis muttered under her breath. Either Clive didn’t hear or he pretended not to.
‘You’re all sweaty,’ he said, his eyes glistening as he pulled the strap of her vest-top from her shoulder.
‘No,’ she said, moving away from him. ‘I’m serious. Maybe we could come with you?’
Clive laughed, as if it was the most preposterous thing he’d ever heard. ‘Artemis, I’m going now. It’s Tuesday, David’s at school.’
‘We could pick him up. He’s still our child,’ she snapped.
‘Look,’ he said kindly, ‘whatever is happening, whatever’s going on in your head, I wonder if you should talk to someone. I spoke to Athena – she’s worried too, after your last conversation.’
Artemis paused. ‘You spoke to Athena, about me?’
‘Don’t look so surprised. She rang and you were out and … Well, she mentioned you’d been distressed when you called her last week.’
‘I wasn’t distressed,’ Artemis snapped, her hands opening and closing like a clam. She tried to think back on what she had said, but nothing sprang to mind. She might have mentioned that she missed her friend, and her parents, but she wasn’t distressed as such. She was lonely. She was allowed to be lonely, wasn’t she? ‘Why would Athena say that?’
‘Because she cares about you and she’s worried. To be honest, she’s not the only one.’ He took her hand and she recoiled at his touch. Clive carried on regardless, as if addressing a wary animal, staying calm so as not to spook it. Not so worried that you’d consider actually spending time at home, she wanted to shout back at him, but he interrupted her thoughts.
‘She mentioned what happened to your sister, in the earthquake—’
Artemis took a step back. ‘I don’t want to talk about that with you. How dare you talk about me behind my back?’ Her face was stinging with heat, as if she had been slapped.
How could Athena do that to her? If she had wanted Clive to know about Helena then she would have told him. So why hadn’t she? What sort of marriage involved one partner withholding such a key fact from the other?
‘Go! Go and leave us again, I don’t give a shit!’ she said, suddenly furious, though she couldn’t say exactly why or who she was angry at. Marching out of the bedroom and into the hallway, she ran down the stairs and back out the front door, slamming it behind her, the whole house quivering with what was to come.