Chapter 18: Conclusions

M25, March 2002

“Will Mrs Anya Philips please go to the Information desk. Mrs Anya Philips to the Information Desk.”

Anya just about heard and understood the announcement. She looked around her to find the information desk and dragged her unwieldy case through the airport crowds.

“I’m Anya Philips. You paged me?”

“Ah Mrs Philips. Yes. This gentleman asked us to locate you.”

Anya turned in the direction the man was indicating.

“Tim!” She wasn’t sure she kept the relief out of her voice. As she had waited in the queue for immigration control she had been wondering if she could stretch to the extravagance of a taxi home, she wasn’t sure she could face the train into London, the tube and then an over-crowded rush-hour train into Kent.

“Anya. You look wonderful as always.”

“So gallant of you Tim but we both know I look dreadful. The plane was five hours late leaving and then took longer than it should, then the arrivals hall was packed and it’s taken ages to get through customs and immigration. They seem to think everyone’s a terrorist intent on wreaking death and destruction.”

“Welcome to England.” Tim spoke ironically. “Here, let me take your case.”

“Well I have to admit I’m glad to see you. How did you know I was coming?”

“Geoffrey e-mailed, he said he was worried about you.”

“Geoffrey e-mailed you?” Anya was surprised.

“When he left for his trip I made sure he had my e-mail address, it’s far more sensible than a phone number.”

“May I ask why?” That Anya was hurt showed in the coldness of her voice.

“Please don’t be so suspicious Anya. It was so he could contact me in an emergency.”

“He could contact me.”

“But emails are so much easier and you weren’t on-line when he left. Are you now? I didn’t think so. Look Anya, I’ll answer all your questions when we get to the car. The simplest answer to your original question is that Geoffrey said it would be a great favour if I met your flight so I did.”

“Thank you Tim. I do appreciate it, it’s just a bit of a surprise to find you seem to think it perfectly normal that you should be in touch with Geoffrey. What else did he say or write or whatever it is you do on e-mails?”

“Let’s get to the car.” As he took her arm and led her through the airport he was wondering whether the hour he would have her in the car as his captive audience would be enough for all the explanations that were necessary.

“I was more than happy to meet you, it’ll give us an opportunity to talk.” Tim turned to Anya who half smiled. She was relieved to be in the comfort of the car but she was not sure she was looking forward to hearing what Tim had to say.

He started with a compliment. “Geoffrey’s a lovely young man, you did a brilliant job with him. Had Fiona hung around God knows what the children would have turned out like, spoilt oiks probably.”

“Oh no, I don’t think so, there was too much of Geoff in them for that.”

“Fiona never let Geoff have any influence over them on the things that mattered. Take my word, they’d have been insufferable oiks.”

“Well thank you very much for the compliment, it is much appreciated.” Anya wondered where this was leading.

“Jim and Rose are exceptional too. Not just Geoffrey, though I know Geoffrey better of course.”

“Why ‘of course’?” she asked but Tim didn’t answer so she continued, unsure where Tim was heading and wanting to delay wherever it was. “Has he told you he got married?” Anya continued.

“Yes, I’ve checked out Lizzy’s family, very suitable I’d say.”

Anya snatched a look at Tim but was unable to tell whether or not he was teasing her. “She’s a nice girl but tell me Tim, how long have you had to check the family out? When did he tell you about Lizzy?”

Again Tim didn’t answer her questions. “Well I wish them luck. They’re going to need it, marrying so young I mean.”

Again Anya snatched a look at Tim and decided he knew exactly what he was saying and that he was choosing his words very carefully. “Are you or are you not going to answer any one of my questions? How long have you known Geoffrey was married? How do you ‘of course’ know him better than the other two? And what did Geoffrey tell you this morning?”

“Well, last question first.” Tim started slowly, “He emailed to ask me to meet you off this flight. He said you were worn out, that you were depressed about things and would I make sure you got home safely.”

“Depressed?” Anya picked up on the one word she didn’t like.

“Yes. And frankly I’m not surprised.”

“Not surprised?”

“No. I’ve seen it coming for a while.”

“You’ve seen it coming?”

“Anya, darling, will you stop repeating everything I say? Yes. I’ve seen it coming.”

She didn’t ask him to expand. She was uncomfortable with the idea that he had been keeping tabs on her children and she wasn’t sure why he called her ‘darling’. She hoped he would change the subject so she would have a chance for some of this to sink in. When he did she rather wished he hadn’t.

“Can we talk about New Year’s Day?”

“No. I don’t think so. Will you answer my questions?”

“We must talk about New Year, in a way it’ll allow me to get round to some answers for you.”

She nodded with what she hoped was condescending grace.

“Have you ever wondered at the coincidence of our being in the same restaurant that night?” He asked eventually.

“Not really. I’ve tried not to think too much about any of it though now you come to mention it, it probably was a bit odd. Of all the restaurants in all the towns in all the world and you had to choose that one…”

“It was no coincidence.”

“No?”

Anya tried to remember who would have known what restaurant she had decided on. She might have told David and Linda. She didn’t think she had told them where she was spending the evening. She had told Geoffrey. He had called from, she tried to remember where. The thought occurred to her that he must have been married by then and he hadn’t told her, perhaps he was going to but it had been a really bad line and their conversation had been cut short. He had asked what she was doing for New Year’s Eve, she had told him she as going out on her own. She had probably told him the name of the restaurant.

“It was Geoffrey wasn’t it? He told you.”

“As I said, you have raised a lovely young man there.”

“Tell me what’s going on. He rang you?”

“He emailed me to wish me a happy New Year, I replied asking what you were doing and he replied telling me. Emails are, apparently, rather more reliable than long distance telephone lines.”

“Did you know he was married?”

“I did. But before you get all shirty he made me promise not to tell you.”

“When has a promise ever stopped you from doing something you wanted to do?” She asked tartly.

“He said it was something he really had to do face to face after you had met Lizzy. He said only then would you understand. He didn’t want you to have time to brood and worry.”

“Brood and worry?”

“His phrase. Well you would have done wouldn’t you? You would have wanted him to get back to the UK, you would have wanted to know where he was and go out to meet him. Well he didn’t want that. And I agreed. It was best you didn’t know until he was able to tell you personally and to explain.”

“They are obviously very fond of each other. But they’re so young.”

“About the same age you and Geoff were.” Anya knew there was no arguing with that. “So don’t do a Kathleen, be generous to them, believe in them and believe in what they believe in.” Anya thought that was very wise of Tim but wasn’t going to admit it to him.

“You haven’t answered when this relationship with Geoffrey began and why he seems so happy to talk to you about such personal things.”

“It started a long time ago.”

“Are you going to tell me?”

“When you were going through all that trouble with the court and social services to get custody of the children…”

“Then?” Anya was incredulous.

“Geoffrey felt I wasn’t helping you, he thought I should and he came round to my house one day to find out why. He was very adult about it, he simply wanted to know why I wouldn’t help.”

“Why wouldn’t you?”

“I will explain Anya, but so much has to be said first, there is so much you need to understand.”

The car lurched as they drove up the ramp onto the M25, switching lanes in the traffic and the road works. It was an excuse not to talk for a few seconds. Anya’s mind raced. She was trying to find reasons why Geoffrey had said nothing about being in contact with Tim all these years. She was trying to find a reason that didn’t make her feel he loved her less.

When the car had settled on a steady course again Tim gave her an explanation. “Don’t worry about Geoffrey being in touch with me. Remember he was 16 when his father died, it’s a really difficult age for any boy but it was an especially difficult time for Geoffrey. His mother had abandoned them under humiliating circumstances, his father was dying and suddenly this woman who he had never met but of whom he had heard scandalous things, appears and takes over the role of his parents. Of course he needed someone to talk to. He needed a man to talk to.”

“But why you?”

“It would have to be me David or John. David was too involved with the legal side of things and perhaps he didn’t think John knew you well enough. He knew I knew you better than most so he came to me. He needed a friend, Anya. It wasn’t a slight on you, it didn’t mean he didn’t grow to love having you as a mother. Please think about how he felt then. The others were younger, able to respond more easily to the changes in their lives but Geoffrey needed a friendly father figure.”

“You.”

“Me.”

Anya sat back and thought back to the conversation with Miriam. She had only ever thought about how she felt about her life with children. When had she thought, really thought, how they felt about their lives with her?

“I did it all wrong then? I didn’t think enough about them?”

“I’m not saying that, no one could possibly say that. I think you just believed because you loved them they would love you in the same way. Life doesn’t always work out like that.”

Anya thought over Tim’s words. She had spent her life worrying about who she loved, what she felt, how she thought about people. She had spent nothing like enough time looking at herself as others saw her.

“Am I really that selfish?” She asked rather tentatively after a long silence.

“Yes, I think you are.”

“Miriam said that as well.”

“Miriam?”

“The manager of Fishermen Rock.”

“She said you were selfish?”

“Selfish, self-centred, and a lot of other things as well. Maybe you are both right. Maybe I’ve just gone through life just using and hurting people.”

She thought of her mother, could she have done more for her? Should she have recognised that she was ill, lonely and frightened? She thought of Kathleen and Margaret and now, with her reaction to seeing Geoffrey with Lizzy, she realised something of what they would have felt when this highly unsuitable girl breezed into their lives and took over their son. And then she thought of the men she still thought of as boys, Tim, David and John. She had led them on, she had undoubtedly used them and she had never, not until now, wondered how they had felt. She had stolen years of Peter’s life, and years of happiness from his new wife Jenny and her children. How much damage had she done to them? And how well did she really know the children who, for nearly seven years, she had been mother to? She had been so intent on doing the right thing, and being seen to do the right thing, she may have missed so many opportunities to get to know them as people. Had she ever worried about how they felt? Asked them about anything? Or had she always known best? She hadn’t known that Geoffrey loved to sail, what else didn’t she know about the children she had called ‘hers’? How many other people had she hurt? How many other people’s lives, wittingly or unwittingly, had she influenced for the worse? Matthew and Maggie, Tim’s children who would have been humiliated by their father’s humiliation, how many others? She began to feel as though all she had ever done was harm.

“I’m so sorry.” She said, quietly and sincerely.

“You have absolutely nothing to be sorry for. Anya, you have always done what you thought was best at the time, often, though not always, for the right motives.”

“But I never looked at anything from other people’s points of view.”

Tim didn’t argue. He took hold of her hand and squeezed it. “That’s not an easy thing to do, Anya, I don’t think any of us do it particularly well.” They sat for a while, Anya’s hand under Tim’s. She couldn’t bring herself to hold his hand properly but she was pleased for the reassurance the contact gave her. Since Vincent and Kenneth’s visit three days earlier she had been questioning so many things about herself. And now Tim was saying much the same thing. She was, and had always been, self-obsessed.

It was some while before Tim broke the silence. “I want to apologise for New Year’s Night.”

“There’s no need, let’s simply forget it ever happened.”

“It wasn’t supposed to happen like that Anya, really it wasn’t. Nothing in our relationship has happened the way I wanted it to.”

“What relationship?”

“Nothing has happened the way I wanted it to happen since the moment I first set eyes on you.” Anya went to interrupt but Tim shook his head. “Listen. Please. Enough is enough. It’s time for you to listen. We’ve got at least an hour until we get you home just listen.”

Anya gently took her hand away and listened.

“It all began to go wrong under the clock that first evening. Geoff had wound us all up about meeting you after work. He had said you were the most beautiful girl he had ever met. He believed you would be able to hold your own against his mother and sister. He said you were clever, far cleverer than he was, and that you were beautiful. He also said that you were the most promiscuous girl he’d ever met. He didn’t particularly like you screwing around with so many other men but accepted it because you always came back to him in the end.”

“Which I did. Ironic that really.”

“We were expecting, well I don’t know really what we were expecting, at Charing Cross, I just know it wasn’t anyone like you. The moment I first saw you, even before I knew you were you, if you see what I mean, I knew I shouldn’t marry Margaret. I shouldn’t marry anyone if I felt the kind of feeling I had for you that evening. It wasn’t just lust, it was a recognition of a similar soul. I know that sounds ridiculous but it’s the only way I can explain it. When you first looked at the clock I thought this wonderful person might be Anya, then you walked out of the station and I thought you couldn’t be so I followed you. I had to know who you were. I have often wondered if it was love at first sight and have decided it was. You walked out onto the Strand, looking at shops, looking very lost and alone, you walked as far as the Savoy and then you turned back again.”

Anya tried not to think of the word ‘love’. “I remember that. I was scared. I wanted to go back home. I should have done and then everyone I’ve hurt would have had different lives. I wouldn’t have ruined everything for everyone.”

“Don’t flatter yourself Anya, you didn’t ruin anyone’s life. Certainly you influenced them but you should know that people are sometimes strong enough to ruin their own lives or just too weak not to. I watched you walking back down the Strand towards Charing Cross and I knew you were going to be Anya. I knew there was going to be a good reason for me to know this beautiful girl. I knew that we were meant to be together. Sometime.” Anya was surprised at the simple honesty in Tim’s voice.

His tone became harsher as he continued. “I should never have married Margaret. I was far too young, far too immature to marry at all, especially to marry someone like Margaret with a mother like Kathleen. I should have been strong enough to say no. I should have been a lot of things I wasn’t. Isn’t it sad when you realise that too late?”

Tim looked at Anya’s hand and turned it over. He raised the palm to his lips and kissed it. Anya did not resist.

“You were brilliant at the wedding, all my friends asked who you were and how I knew you and why wasn’t I marrying you, even my mother. The moment I stepped out of the church, no it was earlier than that, the moment I woke up that morning, I knew I shouldn’t go through with it. I knew, and I think Margaret did too, that the marriage was going to be a disaster.”

“But you did go through with it.”

“I shouldn’t have but I did, I felt that I had no choice. There were so many reasons I had to go ahead with it, half the town was coming to the bloody wedding, mother would never have been able to face Kathleen, I would never have been able to face anyone. None of them seem like good reasons now but then? What choice did I have?”

“None I suppose, though if you really felt it was wrong…”

“I did. But I also knew I couldn’t do anything about it against the combined force of my mother, Kathleen and Margaret. It was just all too much.”

“I seem to remember you waited at least until the middle of the wedding reception before breaking your marriage vows.”

“Anya that was not your fault. It was mine completely. I wanted you more than you can imagine I wanted you to be with me and I suspected you’d have a bet with Geoff. I wanted you to win. Was I a bet?”

“You were. I think that reception earned me more than a thousand pounds.” Money had seemed so easily come by and so easily spent those days. She felt the contrast with her current situation sharply.

“Did you ever let me screw you other than for a bet?”

Anya wondered at the question. Did he want her to answer yes or no? Which would be the less hurtful response? She answered simply and truthfully. “Those three days in January in that hotel in Covent Garden.” She saw the smile in his eyes and felt the pressure of his hand on hers.

“It seemed so strange that you felt you had to escape from Geoff, you always seemed so happy with him.”

“Appearances can be deceptive.” She wasn’t sure he had heard her.

“I hated seeing you with him. It was so unfair. I thought at first that we had both married the wrong people, that you should have married me. But then I realised you and Geoff were happy, the glorious Anya happy with boring old Geoff! But you were.”

“We were, at the beginning anyway. That first year was great. But then there was Kathleen.”

“If you’d married me you wouldn’t have had that cow of a mother-in-law on your back all the time. My mother always liked you, she stood up for you and had real rows with Kathleen about you.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“How could you? Why would you?”

“I was happy with Geoff, we loved each other whatever it may have looked like from the outside. It was only later when Kathleen and Margaret began to put all that pressure on him that it all began to go wrong.”

“I know. You were so happy with Geoff but I knew I never would be with Margaret. You know she tricked me into having the family so young?”

“I did wonder that Christmas. You weren’t exactly acting the overjoyed expectant father.”

“We’d agreed to wait for a couple of years and I’d hoped to be out of the marriage before children were involved, I could have left Margaret at the drop of a hat, but not children. Once Matt and Maggie came along I just had to sit back and watch you and Geoff being happy.”

A suspicion began to form in Anya’s mind. She looked at Tim to see whether there was guilt written on his face before saying anything.

“It was the only thing I could do.”

“What was?”

“I had to split you up.”

“You what?”

“I couldn’t face seeing you with Geoff for what might have been a lifetime when I was tied to Margaret. She would never have divorced me unless really forced into a corner, Kathleen would never have stood for it. And there were 18 years or more until the children grew up. So you and Geoff had to be split apart. With Geoff married to Fiona he would be as miserable as I was, I wouldn’t have to stare at happiness all the time.”

Anya tried to comprehend the enormity of Tim’s confession.

“So if you couldn’t have me you were damned if Geoff would?”

“If I couldn’t be happy you weren’t going to be either, especially where I would be seeing you all the time. It wasn’t that I wanted you to be unhappy, just that you should be happy out of my sight.”

It was some time before Anya could bring herself to say anything. She eventually slowly withdrew her hand from under his. “What an incredibly awful thing to do.”

“Probably.”

“No probably about it.”

“You made it easy though. Once you realised Geoff loved you and would even stand up against his mother for you, the challenge went. Your marriage would have ground to a halt of its own accord one day, I just brought that day forward.”

Anya wondered if there was a grain of truth in what Tim said. Perhaps she and Geoff would have fallen out of love with each other when they were in a world of routine.

“You wore the chips on your shoulder like badges of honour. Do you realise how much time you spent bickering with Kathleen in those early days when we were all together on Sundays? You found fault in everything, had nasty little asides to Geoff which we could all hear, you put him in an impossible position. Geoff hated being torn between the wife he loved and his mother. It was so easy to suggest he left you at home. You really weren’t very attractive at that time. I almost stopped loving you.”

“Love?”

“Oh yes, Anya darling, I have always loved you.”

She let the phrase hang in the air. The sound of the tyres on the concrete road surface seemed hypnotic as she gathered her thoughts.

“Let me make sure I understand you correctly. You wanted me and Geoff to split up. You drove wedges between us including excluding me from the family yet why, when I wanted to divorce Geoff, wouldn’t you help me?”

“Wedges were easily driven Anya. I may have sown seeds of doubt in Geoff’s mind but they would not have taken root if he had not, somewhere at the back of his mind, realised that you would leave one day.”

“That doesn’t answer why you wouldn’t help me.”

“I couldn’t. I couldn’t be seen to have anything to do with you. Since I was stuck with Margaret all I wanted to be was what the Golf Club wanted me to be, and the party. I was probably as arrogant and self-centred as you were.”

She could not let that pass without interrupting. “You had no idea how lonely I was, how much I hated you, and Kathleen, everyone and everything.” She was surprised at how all those feelings of frustration still hurt. “It’s over 25 years ago and it still hurts that you all despised me, you all wanted rid of me. I was the ‘Highly Unsuitable Girl’. I was always going to be a misfit, I would always be on the outside and it still hurts like hell.” She realised she had tears in her eyes and wiped them away quickly. “I’m tired what with the journey, the delays, now all this reminiscing. Don’t make anything of it.”

While she made a big thing of finding her handbag and opening it, searching for a handkerchief and wiping the minute amounts of moisture from her eyes he spoke, as if to himself.

“I could never show you how much I loved you.”

Anya rummaged in her handbag again. She needed time to think. All this history was leading somewhere, but she didn’t know where.

“Anya. I was a shit then. Not even I would have liked me.”

“What’s changed? We’re going through our lives, pulling them apart, trying to identify motives and make excuses for our actions when we were completely different people. What is that quote? The past is a foreign country they do things differently there.

“L P Hartley, The Go-Between I think you’ll find.”

“Very erudite.”

“Life has changed us Anya. I know you think I’m still the same Tim that you screwed at the Golf Club Ball but I’m not. And you’re not the same person that went there with the sole aim of humiliating me.”

“I didn’t see it like that. Not really.”

“Yes you did. Why else would you seduce Matt and me?”

“I seduced no one, you both wanted it without any persuasion on my part.”

“You were too elegant, too beautiful, too available.”

“I hated all of you that night. I hated what you all stood for, all that privilege, everyone being someone just because they were born to it rather than because they were good enough. Matthew’s friends were swanning through life without a care, worrying only about who would be captain of the golf club or acceptable to the local committee for this that or the other. You, they, and your son, were all shits from another world.”

“Were we really that bad? Are we?”

“Not as people. Not all of you. I just hated the way of life, the assumption that you were all better than everyone else. Geoff wasn’t like that when I first met him but then, when we moved south, he absorbed it, he became what his mother had always wanted him to be. He fitted back into that life of privilege and money as if he’d never had those four years in Liverpool. He eased into his mother’s view of what his life should be. It wasn’t mine.”

“So all this was about class?” Tim seemed genuinely perplexed.

“I suppose it is, was. If not about class what was it about? I had an attitude to life none of you could possibly understand because of who your parents were, and where and how you had been brought up. I may have had a good degree and been better educated than most of you but, as they say ‘you can take the girl out of the terraced house but you can’t take the terraced house out of the girl.”

“No one ever said that.” Tim almost laughed.

“It’s true though, you all saw me as Geoff’s bit of rough. None of you could understand where I came from, what I had gone through. None of you wanted to know anything about who I really was.”

“Now that’s not fair. No one ever knows what other people go through even if they’re from the same family or background.”

Anya realised here was yet another example of her self-obsession. She spoke slowly and sadly. “I was probably so tied up with myself I never tried.”

“We’re different people, both of us, now.” Tim reached down and took Anya’s hand again. “Don’t be so hard on yourself Anya.”

Anya decided to change the subject away from herself and her shortcomings, it had been an uncomfortable few minutes. “In all these times you were Geoffrey’s friend what did you talk about? And don’t say ‘man things’.”

“He talked about his girlfriends and cricket and sailing, about his worries about exams but mainly about his Dad. He loved to talk about Geoff. I remember he went through a phase of wanting to talk about Geoff and Fiona. He needed reassurance that his mother and father had, at some time, loved each other. I suppose they were all the things he felt he couldn’t ask you.”

“I suppose I should thank you. No, that’s horrid. I do thank you. You’re absolutely right. I couldn’t have helped him with those things.”

“We didn’t speak all the time, and I’d always wait for him to contact me. I knew enough to know you were doing just fine.”

“But you never helped me get custody. You didn’t help when I was fighting the courts. You could have done but you didn’t.”

“I didn’t because if I had done and it had all gone wrong you would have blamed me and I couldn’t risk that.”

“So you did nothing.”

“You did it on your own.”

“Only with a lot of help from David. But when I was respectable, you didn’t talk to me, you more or less ignored me for years.”

“I didn’t think it was a good idea to get involved.”

“You never came near us. Those years weren’t easy but you never offered help. You hardly even talked to me. How could you be like that if you loved me?”

“I was always there for Geoffrey and for you, and the others, if you’d ever really needed it.”

“How?”

Her aggression and disbelief stung him into an admission he had promised himself he would not make.

“Have you wondered how easily some of your properties sold? Oh yes. I know every single one of them has gone, the last one last September I seem to remember, very few properties sold that month.”

“You?” Anya could hardly speak for the humiliation. He didn’t answer, she took his silence for agreement.

“I’ve done what I could, I still own the cottages in Rye but the rest have been sold on. You wouldn’t have thanked me would you? It was far better I did it in the background.” Tim bit his tongue to stop adding more. This was not how he had planned the conversation.

It was some time before he broke the uncomfortable silence. “I was so jealous of you with your children.”

“Jealous?” Anya was tired, she wanted to go to sleep not listen to Tim talking so seriously about such important things.

“I’ve been on my own for years.”

“You’d never be on your own Tim. Never.”

He looked at her meaningfully before answering sadly. “Well, Anya darling, there you are very wrong.”

“You could have found someone. You’re not bad looking for someone nearing 60, you’re comfortably off despite the vast amounts of money you must have paid your ex-wives, you would be quite a catch.” She tried to be light-hearted but knew she failed.

“Anya, would you believe me if I said there was really only one woman in the world I have ever wanted to be with?”

She couldn’t answer him. She was tired. She was worried. She had gone back through the ups and downs of her life in the past hour and now she was having to face what was obviously a declaration of love from Tim, the man she had variously lusted after, disliked and even, at times, loathed.

“The children are grown up now, they’re leaving home, you can have your life back. For seven years you’ve put your life on hold as you’ve looked after them. It didn’t seem to matter to you that they weren’t yours,”

“They are mine. I adopted them.”

“You’ve got years ahead of you, Anya darling, you can’t keep living your life through Geoff and his children. Look we’re at Reigate Hill so I haven’t got you long as a captive audience. I need to know something. And, honestly, if you tell me to piss off I will but I need to have asked and I need to have had a response.”

“Well?”

“Well what?” He knew he was going about this all the wrong way.

“What do you need to ask?” She knew what was coming.

“I need to ask if you think we could make a match of it.”

“God you sound like some Regency buck!”

“I mean a match. Not necessarily a marriage. We probably don’t need to go through all that. What I mean to ask is do you think Mrs Anya Philips and Mr Tim Cross could link arms and face their future together? Equals. A match.”

“You know the funny thing Tim?” Anya was suddenly relaxed, smiling. “I have never lived with someone without marrying them. I lived with Geoff and married him, then Peter. I don’t think it would go down well at the golf club if we weren’t married so I think you should put your proposal as one of marriage. Then I might think about it.”

“Would you? Think about it I mean?”

“Well, there’s an awful lot to be said against it. I would have had sex with my step-son for a start.”

“When was that? Ten years ago? He’s a big boy now and he can cope with the disappointment of his old man winning.”

“What about your daughter?”

“Maggie? She’s been on at me for years to find someone to spend my latter years with so she doesn’t have to worry about looking after me in my dotage. She gives me graphic descriptions of how she really does not want to get involved with clearing the house and finding a suitable care home.”

“Is that what it has come down to Tim? We’re both afraid of being alone as we get older and all we’ve got left is each other?”

“I can think of worse reasons for being together. But look what I’m offering Anya. Financial security for one, and don’t say you don’t think that is worth thinking about because I wouldn’t believe you. Then there’s respectability, a position in society? No don’t look at me like that! It is not and can never be unimportant. And don’t forget I love you and have loved you for 30 years. No one has loved you more or for longer. Marry me Anya. Please.”

Anya looked out of the window as the sun set. She closed her eyes and saw herself standing in a food queue at university and seeing Geoff for the first time, standing under the clock at Charing Cross wondering what his friends would be like and then having fun flirting with them, challenging Kathleen at every turn throughout the years and losing Geoff to her, fighting for her own career and prosperity with and against Peter. She had been told by Miriam, by Vincent and Kenneth and now by Tim that others saw her very differently.

She still wore her unsuitableness as a badge of honour yet it was a very long time since she had been that unsuitable girl. All the years of her marriage to Peter had been in pursuit of money, comfort and respectability. As mother to Geoff’s children she had made sure their life was as near as possible that of their father, and other children of his class. She had been absorbed into their privileged world. She valued the private school education, the skiing trips to Switzerland and the Concorde flights to luxury in Barbados. She had become one of them, indistinguishable from Kathleen or Esme, Margaret or Gill or Fiona or even Linda. Money had been her obsession even though she professed to despise people who felt that way.

“Can you drop me off at home, Tim? Give me a day to think things through?”

“Is that a ‘no’ then?”

“No, it’s not a ‘no’, it’s a ‘please let me think about it’.”

She looked around her bedroom thinking if only the walls could tell their tales. She had first slept in it with Geoff on the weekend of Tim and Margaret’s engagement party. Kathleen had last slept in this room on the night before her husband drowned. It had been Geoff’s room throughout his childhood and then again after he had married Fiona. And for the last seven years it had been her own refuge, where she felt close to Geoff and could talk to him of the trials and tribulations of being mother to his children.

Anya sat on the side of her bed thinking about Tim’s offer. It was certainly tempting. He knew her better than most people and yet he still professed to love her. He offered comfort, friendship and sex. She knew it was an offer any woman of her age should jump at. Everything he had said about what he had and hadn’t done through the years rang true. For once she believed he had not been lying. He had cared about her, he had done what he thought was best most of the time. He had made mistakes. She had made mistakes. They had, perhaps, mistaken sexual attraction for something far more important. Perhaps.

She reached up and undid the clasp of locket she always wore around her neck. She opened it and looked into Geoff’s fearless, happy eyes. When she had taken the photograph they had had their whole lives ahead of them. How little they had known. She put the chain back around her neck. Dot’s locket would always remind her that she should have high expectations of herself and never accept second best. She held her hands out in front of her and looked at the rings that never left her fingers. There was Geoff’s family emerald that she would have to give to Lizzy one day. ‘Not yet’ she spoke to Geoff as if he were in the room with her, ‘not yet’. She wore two wedding rings, hers and Geoff’s, together. She looked at her empty right hand where her mother’s ring had been for so many years. She had taken it off as Vincent and Kenny had driven away after she had signed away Fishermen Rock. She would sell it, as her mother should have done. She looked down at her hands and clenched her fists.

Whatever she thought of Tim, however much she was tempted, she could not do it. He may have loved her for many years but she did not love him, and never had. She loved Geoff.

It was as simple as that.

She picked up the phone and dialled the number he had given her.

“Tim? Is that you? Tim, I’m touched, a little angry that you have been checking up on me all these years, but really touched, and flattered.”

“It’s a no then?”

“It’s a no.” She confirmed.

“May I ask why?” There was something in his voice other than regret.

“There are so many reasons.”

“The children? Geoff?” Anya tried to find the right word to describe the tone in his voice.

“No, Tim, not them.”

“Something wrong with me then?” Was it upset ego she heard?

“No Tim, you are a fabulous man in many ways. You must re-marry, you need to be married. But not to me.”

“Then why?” He did seem to want to know her reasons, but it wasn’t curiosity she heard.

“I would be so wrong for you.”

“Unsuitable?”

Anya smiled. She realised that subtle tone was relief.

“Highly.”