Rosie Thomas 4-Book Collection: Strangers, Bad Girls Good Women, A Woman of Our Times, All My Sins Remembered
we belong to one another, good or bad.’
There was another silence. Annie rubbed her cheek against his hair, moving it so that her mouth touched the thin skin at his temple. She felt a tiny pulse flickering there and was reminded of their pathetic, physical frailty under the mounds of rubble. But they had survived. Perhaps they were more resilient, all of them, than she gave them credit for. They would survive.
Would Benjamin? And Thomas?
She straightened up abruptly and began to walk around the kitchen, touching a spoon and a silver-plated toast-rack that Barbara had given to her, straightening the glass jars that held coffee and tea.
‘What would you like to do now?’ Steve asked her gently.
Annie looked at the oven clock.
‘I collect Benjy from his nursery at twelve,’ she said. ‘Before that, perhaps we could go for a walk?’
He smiled at her. ‘All right. A walk it is.’
‘A very short, gentle one, because of your leg.’
His smile broadened. ‘I’m faster than you think.’
They went out together into the March sunshine.
Steve’s car was a big grey BMW, parked at the kerb at the opposite end of the road.
‘I wasn’t sure which was your house,’ he said. He unlocked the passenger door and helped Annie into the plush interior. She was interpreting his words inside her head. It was tactful to park a car like this a little way away. Someone might see it, and wonder who you are.
As they purred out of the quiet street Annie stared straight ahead through the windshield. She knew that her face was pink and that her expression was unnatural enough to make anyone who knew her, and who might be watching, look just a little harder. She thought back to the moments of happiness that she had felt with Steve in the hospital, and wondered at her own naïveté in letting herself believe, however briefly, that loving him as she did was simple and natural.
Steve drove smoothly away from Annie’s immediate neighbourhood. As they left the streets behind she began to relax. She let her head fall back against her seat, passively watching the shop windows as they rolled by. She felt somehow that now she had left the house and come with Steve, the first of a long chain of decisions had been made, irrevocably, and that was a kind of comfort.
It was a short drive to the north side of Hampstead Heath. Annie noticed that Steve seemed well-acquainted with the belt of expensive housing immediately surrounding the Heath. He turned briskly into an unmarked side-road that led directly to the open space. He raised his eyebrows at her and she nodded her assent. Steve took his stick from the back of the car and they crossed on to the grass, walking slowly, shoulder to shoulder.
Annie glanced back at the large houses standing half-hidden behind their high fences. ‘Are you a regular in places like this?’
Steve shrugged and laughed. ‘Here? Film-producer country? Not exactly. I’ve been asked to one or two private functions in houses around and about. And they are functions, believe me. There was a very stiff party, I remember, in one of those houses over there. The green-tiled one, I think. I walked across here afterwards, in the very early hours of the morning, talking to someone. It was so quiet,’ he recalled. ‘Like somewhere very remote, an island or a stretch of moorland. Not London at all.’
Annie wondered whether he had been with Cass, or Vicky, or someone else altogether. She knew that her retrospective jealousy was inappropriate, but it took a moment to overcome it. She put her hands in the pockets of her jeans, dismissing the image of some film woman in a Dynasty dress. She concentrated on their path over the short, tussocky grass.
‘Are you all right to walk like this?’
‘Perfectly, if we don’t go too far or too fast. If we do, I shall have to lean on your arm.’
‘My pleasure,’ she whispered.
They smiled at each other, suddenly warmed by happiness that was stronger than the sunshine, and Annie forgot her jealousy again.
‘Why do you come to film-producer functions?’ Annie asked. ‘I don’t know anything about what you do, do I?’
‘I can tell you, if you really want.’
The open heath dipping in front of them was deserted except for stray joggers in their tracksuits and one or two solitary walkers whose dogs sniffed at the dead leaves still lying in the hollows: for Steve and Annie their isolation here in the empty space under the blue sky was comforting.
‘I do want. Tell me everything.’
They walked on, absorbed in one another, talking about little things as they had done in the long hours in hospital.
It was Steve who looked at his watch and reminded Annie at last that they must turn back to the car. Their steps were heavier as they retraced them, and they drove back through the streets towards Annie’s home in deepening silence.
Two streets away from the nursery Annie said abruptly, ‘Could you let me out here?’
‘Of course not,’ Steve answered, unthinking. ‘I’ll take you right to the door.’
‘No,’ she said sharply. ‘I …’ She was thinking of the group of mothers on the church hall steps, watching her.
Steve glanced at her face and then he drew in to the side of the road. His hands stayed gripping the steering wheel.
‘I’m sorry,’ Annie said softly.
Steve was silent, looking out at the suburban street. Annie wanted to whisper his name, to lay her head against his shoulder, but she made herself sit rigid.
‘When will I see you again?’ he asked her.
‘I don’t know. As soon as I possibly can. Will … the daytime be all right?’
‘Come at any time you want, my darling.’
‘I’ll … come to you, this time.’ She said the words very quietly, almost with distaste. She was thinking, then we’ll be committed to the lies. Or else to making all the hurtful steps towards the truth.
Oh, Steve, don’t go and leave me.
Go now, why don’t you, and leave us in peace?
She felt herself torn, the pain from all the ragged pieces as severe as any of the physical hurt she had felt in the darkness.
‘All right, then,’ Annie said wearily.
Steve took a little square of pasteboard from his wallet and gave it to her.
‘That’s my address. And my number. You can always reach me there.’
‘Thank you,’ she whispered. She opened her handbag and slipped the card without looking at it through a tear in the lining, where it could lie safely hidden.
She lifted her head to look at him then. His face was soft, and his eyes were clouded with sympathy. Not a despoiler at all, Annie thought. Why was I thinking that of him? She leant forward very slowly and touched the corner of his mouth with her own. For a second they held together, burning, motionless. Then, as stiffly as an old woman, she sat back again.
‘Goodbye,’ Annie said.
He nodded, his eyes fixed on her face.
Annie fumbled for the door catch and stepped out on to the kerb. She raised her arm in an awkward wave and then she began to walk, too fast, heading for the church hall nursery.
Steve watched her until she was out of sight, but she never turned to look back.
‘Can I do this puzzle?’ Benjy asked. He was sitting at the kitchen table, already tipping the pieces out of their box.
Annie glanced briefly over her shoulder. She was standing at the sink, peeling potatoes.
‘All