Find out who I am. Do something brave.
I reckon I can do those things before my birthday at the end of May. I can if I put my mind to it.
Stella is having a difficult time with little Nikolai. I can hear him kicking and struggling in the background.
‘He’s always like this whenever one of us gets on the phone!’ Stella tells me. She sounds strained, distantly polite as always. I wish she would just accept that the last thing on my mind is any desire to steal my ex-husband back from his new wife. I don’t want Bill back. If they are happy together then I am truly glad of it.
‘Nikki and I were just about to go and play in the garden.’ The tone of her voice suggests that I have phoned at a most inconvenient time. The sun has been beating down all day in Surrey, apparently. Lucky Surrey. We, on the other hand, have been blessed with unremitting rain since the beginning of April. My garden is a veritable sea of mud.
‘I’ll see if I can locate Bill for you.’
Stella could be a secretary screening calls for a high-profile executive. I bite my lip irritably. I’ve already phoned Bill twice this week about our daughter’s birthday; the least he could do is get back to me.
I must be frowning more deeply than I realise because Sol—out there in the treehouse fixing a leak for Daniel—catches sight of me through the window and pulls a face. I pull a face back at him but then force myself to smile. I am going to be pleasant to Bill, no matter what it takes.
‘Hi, Rachel,’ Bill’s breathy voice comes down the phone suddenly. I get a momentary vision of him, a half-eaten piece of toast in one hand, his jacket half-on and scooping up the car keys from the sideboard as if he needs to be off, quickly, somewhere else.
‘Bill, I’m phoning about Shelley’s birthday. Have you got a minute?’
‘A minute, yes.’
Hi Bill, yes, I’m doing just fine. The kids are well too. So kind of you to enquire. Bill was never one for small talk—cut to the chase, he always said. Okay, here I go with the chase:
‘This is about Shelley wanting to go to Cornwall for her birthday, Bill.’
‘Yeah, you said. We emailed. I thought we’d agreed. No.’ There’s the sound of a door shutting far away in the place where he is, as Nikolai’s high-pitched screaming blocks out all else for an instant. ‘Sorry, he’s teething. It’s a bit noisy here.’
Teething, yeah, right.
‘Bill, Shelley really wants to go to Summer Bay for her birthday.’
‘Look, things are kind of difficult here at the moment.’ I can just feel his eyebrows lifting. ‘Anyway, what on earth does she want to go for?’ He sounds preoccupied. He sounds as if he hasn’t slept in weeks. Nikolai probably makes sure of that. ‘It’s a bit far away, isn’t it?’ He is thinking about the long drive down there; what it will mean to squeeze it in between a late finish on a Friday and an early start on a Monday morning.
‘You don’t have to come, Bill. In fact, she doesn’t really want a crowd. She’s been quite clear about that. She just wants some girl-time.’
He doesn’t seem to be listening. He’s got the desk diary in front of him, I can hear him turning over the pages, flick, flick, till he arrives at the week at the end of May.
‘Not possible, I’m afraid. I’ve got a meeting first thing on that Saturday morning which won’t finish till about one. Nope. No can do, Rachel.’
‘That’s all right, Bill,’ I explain patiently. ‘She just wants me and her to go. You don’t have to be there.’
There is a silence at the other end while he takes that in.
‘We can do all the tea and cakes and presents bit when we get back,’ I offer.
‘No, we can’t.’ He sounds petulant. ‘It’s Stella and my anniversary. When my meeting finishes on Saturday I was planning to take her away for a few days. In fact, there was something I was hoping to run past you regarding that. We were sort of hoping you might have Nikolai for us; just for a few days?’
I am stunned into silence for a minute; astounded really that he can even think of asking me. Okay, so we keep up a good front for the kids’ sake but Bill and I hadn’t exactly parted best of friends. I glance up as Sol taps gently on the kitchen door and lets himself in. I can see the darker patches on the bottoms of his socks where they are soaking wet. I watch him sit down at my kitchen table and peel them off.
‘The conversation we need to have at the moment is about Shelley’s birthday,’ I remind Bill, ‘not your anniversary. Perhaps we can discuss that another time?’ I don’t know why I say that. There is no question of me ever taking Nikolai off their hands—not even for a couple of hours, let alone a couple of days. I have my own hands full enough as it is. Why the hell do I find it so difficult to just say NO?
‘Can’t do it, Rachel. Anyway, weren’t the kids due to come to me for that Saturday? I was going to take them all out to the park and then on for a burger. That way Nikolai can come too.’
Hmm, and maybe you can then palm Nikolai off onto me later?
‘The park?’ I say. Sol chuckles into his hands at that. He knows who I’m talking to and what we are talking about. ‘I think you’ll find it’s the week after that they’re due to come to yours, Bill. I’ve just checked. The Summer Bay thing is just for Shelley and me, as I’ve said. It’s what she’s asked me for…’
And she so seldom ever asks me for anything. If only he could see that and break away from his enclosed little Bill-Stella-Nikolai world for a minute.
Had we ever been like that? I wondered now. A little self-contained, totally enclosed unit; a bubble of a family, where inside the fold everyone is totally ‘right’ and outside it you are likely to be considered completely in the wrong?
‘I’ll just check on that with Stella. I’m sure you’re wrong there.’ Bill’s tone is defensive now. I hear him put the receiver down and go out and close the door to talk to Stella.
Were we? Were we ever like that together, Bill and I?
I close my eyes for a minute. I count to ten. Once, a lifetime ago, lying under the canopy of an oak tree on Hampstead Heath:
‘I want to know why it is you love me.’ Bill had been lying flat on his back, hogging the lion’s share of the shade.
‘Because you’re…you’re wonderful!’ I’d told him enthusiastically.
‘No, I mean precisely why. Tell me the reasons.’ His eyes had opened, caught me laughing, then, while he’d been dead serious.
‘I just do,’ I’d said helplessly. ‘Because you love me. Because you accept me as I am. Because you believe in my dreams. Because when I’m in your arms I feel, oh, I feel I could conquer the whole world, but even better than that, I feel I don’t need to…’
‘The real reason,’ he’d rolled over, businesslike, ‘is that you know that with me, you’re going to be going places, right?’
I didn’t know what he meant at the time. Some little village on the outskirts of Mumbai? To Turkey; to Greece, where we could look up the lost city of Troy?
‘Women need to know they’ve got someone to look after them, that’s all. You’re right, Rachel. Stick with me and you won’t need to conquer the world. That’s because I’ll do it for you.’ He’d been so sure of himself. I’d been so besotted with him. He’d meant he’d look after me materially. I thought he’d meant in all the other ways that count.
‘Any