fault. I never wrote to her when I left Cornwall for Arran. I hurt her a lot. I realised that today.’
‘Only today, Mum?’
Ruth met his eyes. She had given Adam the edited version of her early life. ‘I thought Jenny would forget me pretty quickly. She had three sisters and one brother. We were good friends, but she had a large family…’
‘But friends are different,’ Adam said firmly. ‘Friends are people you make on your own, that are separate from family. They see you in another way. So you become different with them and it’s the same for them. Friends are important.’
Ruth stared at him. You learnt new things about your children all the time. Adam was right. He was his own person, not just the person she knew, but another boy she didn’t know; a person who acted in a different way when he was not with his mother.
He said now, with butter on his chin, ‘Did you explain about your parents, about Auntie Vi looking after you? About me?’
‘A little. I didn’t have time to tell her everything,’ Ruth said carefully, as Adam watched her across the table. ‘But she knew your grandparents and what they were like.’
The phone went and Adam dashed for it. It was Peter. His flight had been delayed. As Ruth listened to them chatting happily she thought with a pang, I take Peter and the life I have here for granted.
At seventeen you believed that your dreams might come true. At thirty you tried not to have any illusions; yet the essence of some impossible hope lived insistently on. Somewhere out there was an exciting shadowy figure who could provide all emotional and sexual succour; a soulmate. Him.
She did love Peter, they were good friends, but her heart did not leap at his touch. She was not in love with him. He had always known that and Ruth knew she should never have let him persuade her he could change it.
Adam handed her the phone. Ruth listened to his voice, warm and loving and glad to be coming home, and she saw in a flash of familiar angst how little it took to please or make him happy. She understood herself. Childhood had taught her she must only ever rely on herself, never let anyone hurt her again, and the result of that was her inability to commit wholly to a relationship. It was a self-destruct button. Peter loved her and Adam unconditionally. What more could she ask? What more could she want?
Look at Jenny, for God’s sake. Look at Jenny.
I took a taxi to my hotel to drop off my case. I ordered coffee and a sandwich I could not eat. I got under a power shower. I let the water pour over me and I blanked my mind of all thought in order to get through the afternoon.
I walked to my first meeting. Danielle had done most of the hard selling and the buyers for the department store seemed keen to have both our designs selling on separate fashion floors. Our clothes were quite different. Danielle’s work was fairly conventional and classic, the exact opposite of her character. She designed for the slightly older woman. The cut and shape of her work was stunning, with each piece having a small quirky difference that marked out her labels.
My work was mostly for the boutique and high street. I designed for the trendy fashion-conscious twenty-year-olds and my clothes were not meant to last more than a season. I did the bags and belts, the shrugs and the sandals. If I had a gift, it was for sensing what trend was coming next.
Coffee kept me going, but the afternoon seemed endless as the buyers poured through my sample books and decided on exactly what and how many different designs they wanted.
It was dark when I emerged into the street; that horrible lonely time when all the lights have sprung on and people are hurrying home. A light rain was falling. I got a taxi to my hotel with the familiar sick remembrance of loss churning in my stomach. It felt as if a huge wave continually hovered over my head, waiting to swamp me. I wondered if the loneliness would ever turn into anything I could endure.
I kicked off my shoes as soon as I got into my room and ran a hot bath. I went to the mini bar and pulled out a small bottle of wine, switched on the six o’clock news as background and took the wine into the bathroom. I closed my eyes and soaked, closed my mind.
The wine acted like a sleeping pill. It was still early, but I climbed gratefully into bed.
Snapshots of Tom filled the dark. They seemed to surround me, come from everywhere. Tom throwing his head back, flicking his hair out of his eyes to a backdrop of sea. Tom running across a rugby field, his legs pumping, clutching the ball. Turning to look at me in the garden in London, eyes half closed in a glance that made my heart turn over. Tom in uniform, leaning against a palm tree, blinking from some hot, unknown country.
Had it been a trick of the light, an illusion on that station as I looked at Ruth’s boy? For a second I had seen Tom so clearly. A younger, childlike Tom. Was it wishful thinking? The sort of boy Tom must have been before I knew him. Was it just a mirage conjured by my tired mind, like an oasis in a desert?
A frightening enervation crept over me like a shroud. Why was I here in Birmingham? What was the point when I didn’t care about anything? I searched for a purpose that would give value to what I was doing and could find none as I lay under the cold hotel duvet.
After a while the telephone started to ring persistently, at intervals. I left it. I let it ring on and after a while it stopped. People passed my bedroom door, laughing, talking and going down to dinner. I lay in an anonymous room, disconnected, floating.
Then I thought of Flo alone in the London house worrying about me. I switched on the bedside light and rang her. I tried to keep my voice light and cheerful. I talked business, talked up my day.
But Flo knew me too well. ‘Oh, Jen, you sound so tired. Come home. It’s all too soon. Just come home.’
Night came behind the curtains. Car lights passed across the windows and over the walls and ceiling, and I watched the moving lights, mesmerised by their changing patterns. The hotel became still, the traffic outside subsided.
If only I could wish myself backwards to treasure every second that I had in that life I had lost. I fell into a strange half-sleep of feverish dreams and woke early in the morning with a raging thirst. I got up dizzily to put the kettle on and then sat drinking tea until I felt better.
I saw a white envelope had been pushed under the door:
Mrs Holland, we note you are not answering your telephone and trust all is well. A Miss Florence Kingsley has rung twice this evening. A Mrs Ruth Hallam also rang more than once and appeared somewhat concerned. She asks that you return her call.
I took my tea back to bed. The boy on the platform remained absolutely clear in my head. I saw his fair hair flopping over his eyes, his profile sweet, snub-nosed, not yet entirely awkward in adolescence. Fawn anorak over navy blazer. Black trousers, blue-and-red school holdall. I saw him dart forward towards Ruth, his face lighting up.
I jumped out of bed and showered, got dressed and took the lift down to the foyer. I ordered a taxi from reception. As I waited I took the crumpled envelope from the pocket of my bag and smoothed out Ruth’s address.
She lived in the suburbs. Eventually the taxi turned into a wide, tree-lined road of large Victorian terraced houses. I made the driver slow down while I looked at the house numbers. When I found Ruth’s house I asked him to park a little further back on the opposite side of the road. The driver impassively picked up his newspaper. I sat and waited. I did not know what I was waiting for.
At five to eight a dark man came down the steps of the house and started up his car. After a few minutes he hooted a couple of times on his horn and the boy, Adam, came flying out with his clothes askew, eating toast. Ruth appeared at the top of the steps and, smiling, waved down at them both, calling something to the boy I could not hear.
A sudden, unfathomable anger