‘This is lovely, isn’t it? It’s so long since it’s been just the three of us together. Years, really.’
Joss took a sip of wine and smiled across the table at her daughters, happiness rising in her, flooding her with an almost physical love for them both. Zannah had bought lots of delicious food (‘All M&S, though. Can’t do cooking on a school night. Not proper cooking.’) and during the meal they’d laughed and she’d described the lengths to which their father had gone to avoid accompanying her to the places she’d wanted to visit.
‘Mostly shops, I suppose, but also the Palais de Cluny to see the Lady and the Unicorn tapestries. They’re my favourite things in the whole of Paris and he only came with a moan and a sigh, muttering about “that unicorn novel you ladies were all so keen on”. I did point out to him that there’s more to the past than Egyptian mummies, but he wasn’t happy. You could tell. His attention span, for a scholar, is dreadful if he’s not actually studying the thing that’s in front of him. Never mind … It was lovely, really. A wonderful break.’
Zannah and Em said nothing, which surprised her. Surely they couldn’t tell, from that anecdote, how difficult some parts of the last couple of days had been? True, there had been good times: pleasant meals when she and Bob had started to speak to one another in a way that Joss had almost forgotten was possible: as though they were single people without jobs or children. Bob talked about Egypt. She tried to talk about her poems, but it was hard to articulate how she felt about them and it was clear that he wasn’t interested, even though he made an effort to pretend to be. After about a quarter of an hour, though, Joss noticed that they always went back to discussing the girls (their name, still, for Zannah and Emily) and Isis and Bob’s work. The wedding. A long debate about the music for the service took up the whole of one lunch and that was the nearest Joss came to forgetting about everything else. The rest of the time, she felt as though she were carrying a burden and couldn’t identify what it was, but only knew she couldn’t put it down.
Each night, Bob had made love to her, in the same way he had made love to her for over thirty years: gently, pleasantly, kindly. Joss grew to dread bedtime, but she couldn’t refuse him and, in a way, she didn’t want to. She was used to him. It was soothing to be held and kissed, even absent-mindedly. She closed her eyes and went through every kind of mental contortion to stop herself thinking about Gray. She did what men were always advised to do, to defer their orgasms: she made lists. Lists of flowers she would have in the bouquets, if it were left to her. Things to do when she got home. People to whom she had to send postcards. Anything to distract her mind and body from the weight that had taken up residence in her being: her love for another man. The heaviness, she knew, came from uncertainty and doubt about the wisdom of leaving Bob and everything she’d known for so long to live with Gray. When she thought of the two families being broken up, it was a visual image of ruined buildings and smashed wooden beams that came to her mind, just like the pictures that followed a bombing. It wasn’t like the ships on the walls of the Shipwreck Café. Those were going down, broken into pieces, but they were alone and separate. She was going to help explode two entire families … Was she capable of doing that?
‘Ma?’ Zannah had sat up in her chair and adopted a pose that Joss recognized from her daughter’s earliest childhood: a sort of alertness, a neatness, the hands clasped together in front of her on the table. It was the way she always looked when she wanted to broach a difficult subject. Joss glanced at Emily. She was staring down at her plate, and to anyone other than her mother, the tension in her wouldn’t have been apparent.
‘Yes?’
‘We … I mean, there’s something we’ve got to ask you and I don’t want you to be cross. D’you promise?’
‘That’s a bit much, isn’t it? I don’t know what you could possibly ask me that would make me cross, but I don’t know if I can promise.’
‘Okay, then, but be calm. Right?’
‘Now you’re worrying me. What is it, Zannah?’
Zannah and Emily looked at one another and Zannah took a deep breath. Then she said, ‘Ma, are you having some kind of relationship with Graham Ashton?’
Here it is, Joss thought. Okay. She took a deep breath. Her heart was thumping so loudly that she heard its beat in her ears. Blood rushed to her face and she knew it must be scarlet. Part of her was detached from what was happening, as though she were floating above herself, but she was aware of something like an explosion taking place where only she could feel it, deep within her. There was a sudden, agonizing pain in her stomach, which she recognized as fear. Was her love for Gray capable of standing up to this sudden exposure? She knew, with a certainty that surprised her, that she wasn’t up to it. Couldn’t cope with the girls knowing. And, it occurred to her, if they knew, others might also have found out. I can’t do it. I must give him up. I’m not brave enough to leave Bob. But I can’t … I can’t live without Gray. Can I deny everything? She took a deep breath. How many seconds had passed since Zannah had asked her question? Don’t panic, she told herself. Must be calm. Mustn’t say anything I’ll regret. Play for time. Stall. Think. When she spoke she was conscious of picking her way from one word to the next, as though they were unsteady stones in a stream: wobbly footholds that might collapse beneath her and plunge her into disaster. At last, she said, ‘Well, we know one another, of course. I mean, not only because of the wedding … because of you and Adrian. He … I mean, he writes poetry and he came on my course. The Fairford course.’
‘But you know what I’m asking, Ma. I don’t just mean that. I saw the way he looked at you in the restaurant. And Em saw you saying goodbye to him. It didn’t look … I mean … ’
‘Yes,’ said Joss. Perhaps she ought to tell them everything? But if she spoke now, what about Zannah’s wedding? She was determined not to jeopardize that. And she couldn’t, she didn’t have the strength to face the breakdown of her family, and Gray’s family, without any kind of mental preparation. Perhaps she never would. For one blind moment, she was ready to renounce Gray and never see him again just to have a bit of space in which to think. In the few seconds before she spoke again, she’d arrived at a compromise. Would it be enough for the girls? Keep them from worrying? Put them off the scent? For the first time in their lives, she was going to lie to her daughters, or at least not tell them the whole truth.
‘Well, if you must know … this is a bit embarrassing. He … he’s rather keen on me.’
‘How keen? What does that mean, Ma?’ Zannah asked.
‘He says he’s in love with me.’
‘And you?’ Em sounded tentative. ‘What about you? Are you in love with him?’
‘No, no,’ Joss said. ‘He’s just … well, he’s an attractive man and of course it’s flattering but … no, of course I’m not.’ Oh, Gray, forgive me. I can’t say the words. I can’t tell them how much I love you. They’re Bob’s daughters.
‘Have you slept with him?’
The split second before she answered seemed, to Joss, to go on for hours. She said, ‘No. No, of course I haven’t.’ (How firm was her voice? Had she sounded convincing?)
And there it was, out in the open: a second lie. Now that she’d spoken it, said it aloud, Joss wondered what its effect would be. Would it stop the questions? Would they be satisfied?
‘And you won’t?’ Emily wanted to know. ‘You wouldn’t, Ma, would you?’
‘No, I wouldn’t.’
Lie number three. How easy it was, once you’d started. She was even going to elaborate, to embroider, just in order to make her daughters feel better. She said, ‘You’ve got to understand, you know. Much as I love your Pa, there are huge … huge parts of my life that he’s just not interested in and when I met … Graham Ashton, well, he knew how I felt about so many things that Bob just … isn’t … that aren’t part of my life with him. We were drawn to one another. We’re … friends. Good friends, that’s all.’
‘But it’s not all, Ma. You’ve just said he’s in love with you.’
Make light of it, Joss thought. Downgrade it as much as you can. ‘Well, people sometimes say things they don’t quite mean. And he’s devoted to Maureen.’
‘Really?’ Zannah smiled for the first time since they’d started this conversation. ‘Can’t think why.’
‘You’re biased, darling,’ Joss said, seizing gratefully on the lighter tone. ‘She’s a wonderful homemaker and a terrific cook and these things are important, you know. She’s the mother of his son and they’ve been together for years.’
‘Like you and Pa,’ Emily added.
‘Yes, like me and Pa. And, girls … ’
‘Yes?’ Zannah spoke for both of them.
‘I want to ask you a favour.’
‘Go on,’ said Em.
‘Promise me not to say a word – not a word, to anyone – and especially not to Pa. Promise?’
‘God, Ma, you sound like a teenager.’ Zannah was cross and impatient, Joss could see. ‘We won’t say anything, but you’ve got to promise us something as well. Okay?’
‘It depends. What d’you want me to promise?’
‘That you won’t see Graham Ashton again. Alone, I mean.’
No, Joss thought. Not that. If I promise that, what’ll happen? What’ll I tell him? I can’t break my word to Zannah and Em. Tears pricked at her eyelids and Joss looked down at her lap to hide her anguish, to blink them away.
‘I promise,’ she said. In her head, she was frantically calculating what she’d say to Gray, because she meant to keep her promise. It wouldn’t be so bad. Perhaps if she broke off entirely with him, never saw him, never spoke to him, simply severed every tie, she really could learn to love Bob properly again. Paris had been okay. She’d had fun. The lovemaking wasn’t spectacular but it was comforting and good and what she’d been used to for years. Surely she could go back to where she’d been two and a half years ago. But did Zannah, did anyone, have a right to tell her what to feel? Joss knew that they didn’t. She said, rather tentatively, ‘You seem quite upset, both of you, but you don’t have to worry, really. Nothing’s going to change.’
Zannah said, ‘You know how I felt about Cal, Ma. I hate anything like this; it … Well, it upsets me. I don’t think adultery is something you can get over, just like that. I don’t want you to be unhappy. And you would be. I know you would. How could you live with yourself if you … Well, you know what I mean.’
Joss said mildly, ‘It’s not true, though, is it? You can get over adultery. Look at you and Adrian. You’re in love with him now, and going to marry him, and presumably you’ve forgiven Cal. People do get over such things, you know.’
Zannah had the grace to blush. ‘Yes, I know … I was lucky to meet Adrian, and of course I have sort of forgiven Cal but … I can still get quite upset if I start thinking about that time. I was so unhappy. I really did think I’d never get over it.’
‘What about you, Em? How d’you feel about all this?’
‘I don’t want you to hurt Pa and I can’t imagine you doing it. It’s not going to be too hard, is it? Not seeing Dr Ashton unless it’s for a family thing? And you and Pa are happy together, aren’t you? He’s never said anything about … well, about anything like that, really.’
‘Well, no, but he wouldn’t, would he? Not to you,’ Joss said. ‘You’re his daughter.’
‘I’d know if he wasn’t happy. And I’m certainly not going to tell him about this conversation, because I don’t want to make him miserable.’
Joss said nothing. Neither of her daughters had ever been able to guess at her own state of mind. She’d made a decision early on not to include her children in any quarrels she might have had with their father, and it had worked almost too well. Now Emily thought they were idyllically happy. Not for the first time, Joss wished she were a different kind of woman. There seemed to be thousands of her sex who managed to carry on two relationships at the same time, who could be casual about extramarital sex, who could sleep with another man without falling in love utterly, completely, painfully. What was the matter with her? She wondered whether Em believed her denial. Had she sounded convincing? As she was wondering about this, Em added, ‘Pa would be devastated if you left him, you know.’
The unfairness of this remark made Joss catch her breath. What about me? she screamed, inwardly. I might live to be ninety. Is it fair to me to be denied real love, real passion, and be asked to spend the rest of my days with someone who very rarely reads a word I write and doesn’t understand it when he does? Why am I the one who has to make sacrifices? God, if I had any gumption at all, I’d just tell them, ‘I’m leaving and the rest of you can get stuffed.’ I wish I were that kind of person. I’m not. I can’t. I can’t do it to Zannah now and I don’t even know whether I can do it after the wedding. ‘Don’t worry about it, either of you. I’ll make sure your father’s not hurt.’
‘Ma?’ Zannah took her hand across the table. ‘You don’t think we’re bullying you, do you? I don’t want you to be hurt. Nor Pa. Nor Isis.’
‘Isis? What’s she got to do with this?’ Too much, Joss thought. Much too much, to use darling Isis in this argument.
‘She loves visiting you both. Your house. She loves Grandma and Grandpa as a kind of unit. You’re the solid people, the unchanging people in her life.’
‘Well, I’m delighted she’s happy with us, but you didn’t stop to think of the effect you’d have on her when you left Cal. You simply did what you needed to do.’
Zannah’s eyes filled with tears. ‘That’s not fair, Ma. She was much, much younger. And it’s not the same. You’ve said that this is all on his side and you haven’t slept with him. You’re not committed. Nothing’s happened. It’s easier for you to … well, to step away.’
Nothing to say to that, Joss thought. All she wanted now was to talk to Gray. It would have to be on the phone. She made rapid calculations. She didn’t have to leave at any particular time tomorrow. Would he be able to come up to London at such short notice? Probably not, but at least they could discuss things on a landline. She could phone him from Euston. Her mind was racing. ‘I think I’m off to bed, girls,’ she said, standing up. ‘Don’t worry about this, please. And remember, not a word to anyone. D’you promise? Both of you?’
Zannah and Emily both nodded. Joss walked round the table to kiss them goodnight. She went slowly up the stairs, trying to seem collected and composed but inside every bit of her was frantic to get to her mobile and text Gray about tomorrow.