Rosie Thomas 4-Book Collection: Strangers, Bad Girls Good Women, A Woman of Our Times, All My Sins Remembered
Ben. Just don’t get cross if it isn’t finished before you have to go upstairs.’ Annie’s response was patient, automatic. She wasn’t listening, because her thoughts were busy elsewhere. Benjy spread the pieces out over the table and stared fiercely at them.
‘I want you to help me.’
‘I can’t, love. I’m busy now. You do it.’
Benjy reached out across the table and with a lazy sweep of his arm he tipped the puzzle pieces over the edge and on to the floor. They fell with a satisfying clatter.
Annie threw down her potato peeler, the second clatter like an echo. ‘What did you do that for, Ben?’
The little boy gazed at her, his face a pucker of defiance. Then he asked, ‘Why are you always busy?’
Annie stood still, holding on to the sink edge, staring at her children.
Thomas lifted his head from his drawing. He said, as if he were stating the obvious for his brother’s benefit, ‘Because she’s a grown-up.’
They watched her, the two of them, accusing and vulnerable at the same time, their uncertainty clear for her to see.
‘Oh, Thomas,’ she said.
Annie went to them. Benjy slid off his chair and wrapped his arms around her legs. Thomas stood up awkwardly, his shoulders hunched, feeling that he was too old to run into his mother’s arms. She held them out to him and then she hugged them both, burying their faces against her so that they wouldn’t see her own expression.
‘I’m sorry,’ she managed to say. ‘I’m sorry that I haven’t been very much fun, lately.’
I’m doing this all wrong, Annie thought. I’m thinking about myself, and Steve, every minute of the day. Instead of my kids. It would be better for them if I weren’t here. If I just went, and left them, would they be happier in the end, than if I took them away from their home and their father, to a stranger? Suddenly, she was almost overcome by the physical pull of her love for them. She drew them closer, smelling their warm, grubby scent, her cheek against Thomas’s hair.
I can’t leave them, she thought. If I go, they must come with me.
‘I love you both,’ she whispered. ‘You know that.’
She hugged them one last time, and then let them go. The button on her cuff caught against Thomas’s ear and he clapped his hand to it, yelling, ‘Ow!’
‘Baby,’ Benjamin said sternly and then the three of them were laughing, the tension breaking up like mist.
‘Come on,’ Annie said. ‘It’s bath time.’
Another day negotiated, she thought, as they went up the stairs.
The boys were asleep before Martin came home. He was tired after a meeting with a particularly exigent client, and he came into the kitchen wearily rubbing his hand over his eyes.
‘Was it a bad day, then?’ Annie asked.
Martin pecked her cheek, reaching past her for the wine bottle at the same time. ‘Mmm? Only fairly bad. Dinner smells good. How was your day?’
‘Oh. Usual,’ Annie said carefully.
Martin poured himself a drink and took the evening paper over to the sofa at the far end of the room. He cleared a pile of clean washing out of the way and sank down with a sigh of relief.
‘Thank God for peace and quite,’ Annie heard him murmur.
She stood at the stove, poking unnecessarily at a saucepan with her wooden spoon. She was thinking, If I say something now, will it sound as if I haven’t been able to hold it back? If I don’t mention it till later, will it come out sounding contrived? Annie frowned down into the bubbling casserole. Lying didn’t come easily.
‘Martin?’ she said, too loudly.
‘Yes?’
‘I thought I might go shopping tomorrow. Down to the West End. The boys need some things, and so do I. Benjy’s going out to play for the afternoon, and Audrey will come in at tea-time …’
Martin looked up from the paper. It was a good sign that she felt safe enough to go into crowded stores again. He smiled at her, trying to gauge if it was anxiety or the effort of concealment that made her voice sound strained.
‘Good idea. Look, shall I come with you? I couldn’t manage all day, but I might take a couple of hours after lunch.’
‘There’s no need.’ Look down into the saucepan. Stir in one direction, then the other, take a deep breath. ‘It’s boring things, like a new duffel coat for Tom.’
I hate lying to him.
Martin watched her averted profile for a moment. And then he said lightly, ‘Okay. If you’re sure you’ll be all right. Take the joint account chequebook. There’s a couple of hundred pounds in that account.’
‘Thanks,’ Annie said. And so, she thought, she would have to rush into John Lewis’s on the way home, and buy things to make her husband believe that she had been shopping all day long. Annie realized that the sight of the food was making her feel sick. She wondered bleakly whether it was her love affair itself that was sordid, or whether it was the lying and the subterfuge that made it seem so.
She had telephoned Steve two days ago, when she knew that she couldn’t go any longer without seeing him. Her hands shook as she dialled the number, but they steadied again as soon as he answered. His voice sounded very warm and confident.
‘I can arrange for a whole day. Until the children’s suppertime, that is,’ she said.
‘When?’
‘On Thursday. Is that all right?’
‘Of course it is. I’ll take you to lunch somewhere.’
And so it had been arranged. Annie dropped the wooden spoon into the sink with the rest of the washing up.
‘Dinner’s ready, Martin.’
‘Wonderful.’
Another ordinary evening. Annie slept badly that night, restlessly turning between guilt and happiness.
In the morning, when the house was empty and quiet after the rush of work and school, she walked dreamily through the cluttered rooms. She put the cushions straight on the old chesterfield, and wound up the pretty little French clock that stood on the mantelpiece. Then she went upstairs. She touched the bottle of body lotion on her dressing table, then opened one of the drawers and looked at her underwear neatly folded inside. Annie owned an expensive set of cream lace and silk underthings, but Martin had given them to her for her birthday a year ago. Annie took out her plain, everyday things and slammed the drawer shut again. She lifted a blue corduroy dress off its hanger and put that on too, defiantly not looking at herself in the wardrobe mirror. When she was dressed she went into the bathroom and combed her hair into waves around her face. Almost as an afterthought she took out a pair of jet combs that Tibby had given her, saying, ‘I won’t need these now that my hair’s so thin.’ She pinned the waves of hair back, and stared into her own eyes. They seemed very bright, and there were spots of colour on her high cheekbones. She looked, Annie thought, as if she were about to do something very dangerous, and desperate.
At midday she put her grey coat on, bought to replace the blue one she had worn to go Christmas shopping, how long ago? She picked up the chequebook that Martin had left for her on the dresser in the kitchen, and put it into her bag. For a moment she stood looking at the telephone, thinking, I could still ring. I could tell him that I can’t come, after all. And then she thought of Steve, waiting in his empty flat for her to come to him. I must go. I can’t not do it, not now.
She left the house. She was going to slam the front door, but in the end she closed it behind her with a tiny, final click.
Steve lived at the top of an anonymous block not far from Harrods.