Rosie Thomas 4-Book Collection: Strangers, Bad Girls Good Women, A Woman of Our Times, All My Sins Remembered
hold of her and she went stiff, trying to stop it because it shook the pain deeper into her side, like a knife stabbing her.
‘Yes. Yes, we’re happy together. I am. I think Martin is.’ She could hear herself gabbling and she made herself talk more slowly, shaping the words in her mouth before she uttered them.
Years, succeeding one another. Changing their texture a little, the colours fading from bright to dim, but all woven in the same, even way.
‘I’m just a housewife. I’ve got two children, boys, eight and three.’
Oh, Thomas, Benjy, I love you so much. Don’t let me die here without seeing you.
‘My husband’s a designer, interiors. His company does shops, that kind of thing. I used to do similar work, before Tom was born. Now I look after the children and Martin, and the house. I’m happy doing it. You can’t imagine what it would be like, can you?’
I know you now, Steve thought. I’ve seen you, all of you, in the park with your kids, or struggling to get off the tube with one in a buggy and the other hanging on to your coat.
‘Cass wanted to be like that, I think. For all her wild outfits and dotty behaviour. I think she really wanted to have dinner ready every evening at eight o’clock, get the holiday brochures in January and make plans for July, have a regular night out together every week.’
‘And you didn’t?
‘No, I didn’t. It was the routine of being married that I couldn’t bear.’
‘Like always going to Costa’s,’ Annie said.
‘I don’t always want dolmades. I like to see different things on the menu. I like to eat in different restaurants.’
She listened carefully to the sound of his words, and felt his hand holding hers. His hand was large, and still quite warm. Annie felt suddenly irrationally angry. ‘I think you sound a bit of a pig.’
Steve did laugh this time, a spluttering cough of laughter. ‘But I’m a pig who survives. And you’ll survive too, my love. I’ll make you.’
Annie’s anger went away as quickly as it had come. Hearing his conviction, a man she had never seen, she believed him. It was important to believe, she understood that too.
‘How long have we been here?’ Her voice sounded childlike now. ‘How long will it be before they come?’
‘We might have been here an hour. Perhaps not even as long as that. Does your watch have hands?’
‘Hands?’ Annie could only think of their own, linked together.
‘Mine’s digital. But if yours has hands, and it isn’t broken, we should be able to feel the time. We can keep track, then. It will help.’
He was practical, seemingly neither afraid nor disorientated. Annie closed her eyes. The pain in her head and her side made it difficult to think. All kinds of other impressions, memories that were more vivid than reality, came crowding in on her, but the simplest coherent thought slipped out of her grasp.
With an effort she said, ‘My watch is on this arm.’ She lifted her hand a little in his. At once the warmth of his hand let go. She felt him reach for her wrist, searching for the watch strap. It was a tiny buckle, and she heard the effort that the little, fumbling movements cost him. At last the strap loosened and the watch slid off her wrist. It dropped through Steve’s fingers and there was a faint chink as it fell somewhere beneath their hands. It was as if a lifeline had been thrown at them, only to drift out of reach.
Steve gathered his strength and hunched his shoulders, trying to edge sideways, reaching down another inch. With his fingertips he explored the rubble, to and fro, probing between the splintered wood and chunks of plaster.
Annie was silent, waiting. Then, miraculously, Steve’s fingers found the leather strap again, still warm from her wrist. He lifted it and touched the smooth, convex watch face. The glass wasn’t even broken.
Very gently he tapped it against a sharp edge of brick, then harder, and then harder still. The little circle of glass refused to break and he felt sweat gather under his hairline until a drop of it rolled down his forehead. It had suddenly become more important to know the time than anything had ever been. If he could find out what the time was they could hang on, counting the minutes together.
Trying to control his strength, he rapped the watch against the brick again. Then he felt the face again with the tip of his finger. The glass was shattered. He put the watch on his chest and picked the fragments of glass away. He touched the winder button and then felt for the hands. They felt tiny, like hairs, under his fingers. The second hand, moving against his skin, was like the touch of an insect on a summer afternoon. The watch was still going, then. He lifted his fingertip quickly.
‘It’s half past ten,’ he said.
He had come into the store as it opened, only an hour ago. They had been lying here for only three-quarters of an hour, perhaps not even as long as that. He moved a little, as if trying to gauge how far down they were. It would take a long time, that was all he knew.
‘Annie?’
‘Hold my hand again,’ she begged him.
He tucked the watch inside the fold of his coat and stretched out his hand. Their fingers touched at once, and they clasped hands.
‘That’s better,’ she said. Steve wanted to take her hand and rub it between his own, chafing the warmth back into it, and his powerlessness struck home to him. She was badly hurt, and if she were to deteriorate before they came, he could do nothing to help her. At the same moment he realized how important it was that she was there. If he were alone, would he want to fight so hard?
‘Tell me what you’re thinking about,’ he ordered her.
‘Not thinking. I keep seeing and hearing things. So vivid.’ Her voice sounded dreamy and distant now. ‘All the old things. They say that happens, don’t they?’
‘No. What things, Annie?’
She had been seeing last Christmas, and the decorated tree in the front window.
Benjy was just two, sitting on the floor with his eyes and mouth wide open, reaching out for the shimmer of it.
‘The boys. I was just seeing the boys. They grow up, and change all the time, but they still stay the same, themselves. If you haven’t got children yourself you can’t know what it’s like. I don’t think that even fathers have the same feeling.’
That was better, Steve thought, not really hearing what she said. Her voice was firmer now.
‘I never thought about it before they came. Even when we decided to have a baby, when I was pregnant, I never understood what it would be like.’
They had driven to the hospital together, Annie and Martin, when she went into labour. That was the last time, she understood afterwards, that little drive through the night, when they were just themselves.
Thomas had been born, a mass of black hair and a red, angry face. He had opened his eyes and looked at her.
In the days afterwards the weight of responsibility had been like a millstone, and at the same time the love had buoyed her up so that she felt she was floating. Whenever the baby cried she felt it inside her like a knife, and his hours of contentment filled her with a satisfaction she had never known.
Steve was listening now, compelled by the tenderness in her voice. Yet with half of himself he thought, Yes, I do know you. She was the kind of woman who undid the front of her dress at dinner parties, and serenely breast-fed a milky-smelling bundle of baby. She almost certainly went to classes to learn how to have her babies in the approved way, and demonstrated her success afterwards to an admiring circle of women around the table. She talked about children all the time. She was talking about them now, and the note in her voice held him. Yet she surprised him when she broke off and asked, ‘Sounds desperate, does it?’
He