Whatever it takes, p.15
Whatever It Takes, page 15
Sometimes her longing for a family was so agonising that she thought she might actually die of sorrow. She wanted to lay her head on the table and sleep; sleep for a very, very long time. It wasn’t just the drink, she was just so weary. She was disconnected from the faces swimming around her. She tried to focus, tried to stay part of the evening. She glugged back a large glass of chilled water and looked around the table.
Jackie and Ken were one of those couples who looked like one another. They were both of average height and weight, they both had light brown hair (although hers was a fraction longer than his), they both had blue eyes, ruddy faces and pierced ears (although only Ken’s left ear was pierced). Sara observed that it was not just that they looked alike, but also that they looked like an awful lot of people. Middle-aged people. They seemed to want to compound the impression that they were twins because they’d selected virtually the same outfit: jeans and a white T-shirt. Hers was a plain white T-shirt with a round neck and long sleeves. Its only notable feature was that it had no notable features; it looked a lot like the sort of thermal top Sara wore under her ski kit. Clearly high fashion had flown right above her head. Ken’s T-shirt had a slogan on it, which read ‘Slogan T-shirts are boring’. Very droll. The most pleasant thing Sara could think of to describe them was that they looked hearty and honest, they oozed clean living. She imagined that the most dangerous thing Ken had ever done in his life was wear that supposedly witty T-shirt. Sara couldn’t imagine why Eloise had invited them to her home; surely she must find them very dull.
Arabella and Patrick were opposites. She was dumpy and he was gangly. Sara had christened them Jack Sprat and his wife, and she couldn’t wait to share this with Eloise. They’d always given their friends fun nicknames; well, Sara had. Sara referred to Eloise’s London friends as ‘The Perm’, ‘Little Miss Neurotic’, ‘The Handbag’, etc. This name-calling wasn’t mean, just a harmless bit of fun. A sign of affection even. Besides, all Eloise’s North London friends had names like Isadora, Imelda and Iraida, so it was hard to remember who was who. In fact, Sara had a couple of names for Eloise, ‘Hostess with the Mostess’ was common knowledge, but she’d never shared ‘Princess Perfect’, which was what she called her friend to Charlie. She called Mark ‘The Man’, as he had a way of swaggering around the place as if he owned the planet. It wasn’t arrogance, it was genuine confidence. Sara rather envied it. She hadn’t confided Mark’s nickname to either Eloise or Charlie.
Sara hoped that Eloise would appreciate the fact that, despite the earlier upset – when El had cut herself and all the gore and sadness of the miscarriage had come flooding back – Sara had made a sartorial effort that must offer an impressive example of how to dress for a dinner party. Just in case there was somewhere special to go this weekend Sara had packed her Joseph black twill wide-leg pants (that exuded androgynous cool) and a Rebecca Taylor ruffled silk-Jacquard camisole (it had the most adorable delicate cut-out details) and, because Sara knew it could get chilly in the country, she had the foresight to throw in a Wool and the Gang, Jolie Mimi open-knit cotton cardigan. It really was a good look, even if she said it herself. Sara had taken the time to re-apply full make-up in an effort to disguise her sobbing. Considering she’d been finding getting out of bed a struggle, she hoped that Eloise would appreciate and understand the superhuman strength it took to make such an effort. Eloise must welcome the glamour in her dining room, considering the obvious trouble she’d gone to with the food.
It was clear Eloise really was trying to establish her credentials as Hostess with the Mostess. Sara had never seen her quite so prepared to be impressed and to be impressive. She was being a bit thick with the compliments and compliance, though; Sara might have to tell her to ease up on that, it was embarrassing. There was no way Arabella was going to buy that Eloise actually did want to join the gang of volunteers who combed the beach and country lanes for litter every Tuesday afternoon. Yes, Sara could see it was a good thing to do, unquestionably, but ‘noble’? Noble was a bit over the top. And whilst Sara was sure that Jackie did make a good pineapple upside-down cake, calling it sublime about a thousand times was just plain creepy; of course the kids at the school enjoyed having it as a dessert – juniors weren’t known for their discerning palates, were they?
‘How many children do you have, exactly?’ Sara directed her question to Arabella. She’d lost track of Arabella’s anecdotes about her kids. She must have at least three. Sara couldn’t stop herself asking this question although she knew the answer would distress her. Eloise blanched and put down the broccoli. Earlier, Eloise had made Sara promise that she wouldn’t think or talk about her fertility tonight. It was too much to ask that Sara wouldn’t think about it, but she had agreed to respect her friend’s desire and not openly discuss her problems. Sara told herself that she wasn’t breaking her promise but simply making a polite enquiry, the way people did when they were getting to know one another. Asking about someone’s children was simply civil, not leading or loaded. Besides, Sara just had to move the conversation on from the problems of parking near your home and finding a good cleaner. She could have stayed in London for those middle-class exchanges.
‘Four. Two girls and two boys, very even,’ said Arabella cheerfully. She beamed as she replied and then rolled her eyes playfully, as though she was surprised and exasperated by the number every time she confessed it. ‘Aged nine, six, three and ten months. Quite a handful but so much fun.’
Sara knew Arabella’s beam all too well. She was the Olympic gold medal mum. In polite circles five or more children suggested an inability to conquer the rudimentaries of any form of contraception; no one wanted to be thought of as thick. Five or more and you had to start writing self-indulgent, self-justifying articles like that stupid one Sara had read before dinner. Three kids might seem a pleasant, manageable number but it came with the threat of middle-child syndrome, two was respectable but a bit dull, one child was simply selfish or half-hearted and none . . . well, not having children, that was failure. Sara knew that more than anyone. Even the women who actively opted not to have children were viewed as failures by other mums, if not themselves. Four was quite definitely the number to aspire to. The Queen had four children. It was the number that suggested a particular ease and confidence with mothering, as well as a certain financial security or – at the very least – a wild abandon for rejecting anything as prosaic as money cares (because the act of parenting was so important and all-consuming). Four was heaven.
The number conjured up endless, longed-for Kodak moments. Scenes of domestic bliss splattered across Sara’s cranium. She could see children gambolling along a seashore in mismatched but hand-knitted hoodies, she imagined giggling infants gathered around a large dining table, packed with jars of home-made bramble jam and freshly baked bread, and she visualised scenes of boisterous babies splashing in the bath. She followed the fantasy and thought of them as they became more passive and fell into a restful, peaceful sleep in one huge bed (having been indulged with a bedtime story and a copious amount of hugs). It was beautiful and perfect.
She hated Arabella.
‘What about you, Jackie? How many children do you have?’
‘Help yourselves to veggies,’ interjected Eloise. Her voice was unnaturally high, betraying a note of tension.
‘More wine?’ Mark jumped up from his seat and started waving the bottle around as though it was a white flag. He sloshed alcohol into everyone’s glass no matter what they’d replied. Mark and Eloise put Sara in mind of a couple of novice Samaritans who had a suicidal teenager on their watch. They wanted to walk her away from the edge but she wouldn’t be led. Sara couldn’t help herself. Any self-control she might have dredged up had been soused in alcohol and she no longer felt tethered to her promise to Eloise. Why couldn’t she talk about her fertility to Eloise’s new friends?
‘Do you have four?’ She knew that whatever Jackie replied would wound. She knew that it shouldn’t matter that this plain woman who was married to a man who expressed himself through T-shirt slogans was a mother when she was not, but it did.
‘Three,’ Jackie said with a grin. ‘And that’s enough for me. I sometimes think I should have stopped when I ran out of hands,’ she joked. ‘Arabella is a saint. A paragon of efficiency and patience, but four? No, not for me, I’d never pull it off.’
Three not four. Four was dismissed. She could have had four but she’d chosen not to because she wasn’t patient enough. Sara’s knuckles were white with the pressure of gripping her knife and fork. She slowly chewed her food but couldn’t swallow. Jackie detailed the sexes, names and ages of her children but Sara couldn’t take it in. It didn’t matter if they were called Peter, Paul and Sally or Satan, Xavier and Miss Piggy, she had an embarrassment of riches and Sara faced a drought. Sara felt Charlie prise her fingers off the cutlery. Did he think Jackie was in danger? Sara glared at him in annoyance. The table fell silent as all eyes were trained on what Charlie had hoped would be a discreet manoeuvre.
‘What about you two?’ asked Ken, cheerfully pulling the pin from the grenade.
‘None,’ Sara stated bleakly. ‘No live ones.’
The table was as still as a crypt, the very air slowed and then ground to a choking halt. Sara’s pain flooded on to the table and soured every mouthful of the carefully prepared meal, those still on the plates and those already digested; no one had an appetite now, everyone felt nauseous. Every face around the table settled into different expressions of horror and shame, embarrassment and, in Eloise’s case, frustration. ‘There were two,’ Sara stuttered. ‘Abigail and Ross.’
‘Oh my God,’ said Jackie. She pulled her napkin up to her mouth as though she was actually going to be sick.
‘You lost your two children?’ asked Arabella carefully.
As Sara nodded Eloise jumped in. ‘No. Not children. Two miscarriages. Early miscarriages.’ Sara thought adding the word early was particularly disloyal and unnecessary; she glared at El to communicate as much but Eloise wasn’t looking at Sara, she was staring at her other guests. Eloise felt their discomfort, their twinges of uncertainty as to what to do next to paper over this social hiccup. But their smarting was minuscule in comparison to Sara’s boiling grief.
‘Miscarriages are very upsetting,’ said Arabella gently. She leaned across the table and patted Sara’s arm. ‘I had one between Dorcas and George. I do sometimes think of that baby. It would be nearly eight years old now.’
‘Still, there’s plenty of time to try again,’ added Jackie confidently and ignorantly. Sara kept her eyes on her plate, she didn’t trust herself to look into Jackie’s dumb, encouraging face or else she might be tempted to tell her exactly how dumb and ignorant, rather than confident and encouraging, she found her.
None of the men said a thing. Every last one of them would have liked to have started talking about the parking issues again.
‘Who fancies apple tart?’ asked Eloise jovially. Those who didn’t know her as well as Sara did might assume she was unaffected by the conversation but Sara was fully aware of just how hard El was working to retain her happy face. Sara thought it was possible that El would like to throw the tart she was about to serve right at her, since she’d sliced through all the tedious small talk and catapulted Eloise into a deeper intimacy with her new friends. The atmosphere of her carefully prepared, precious dinner party was well and truly dampened.
No one replied straight away so Eloise was forced to push on genially. ‘It’s a favourite family recipe. I’m sure you’ll remember it from London, Charlie.’ El turned to Charlie and cast out a look which pleaded with him to fall into cahoots with her. He nodded obligingly, although he’d never eaten an apple tart made by Eloise. Sara seethed; it was typical of Charlie to be so accommodating of Eloise. It would have been funnier to hear him say that he’d rarely eaten anything home cooked of hers, even though they used to eat at the Hamiltons’ a couple of times a week. Still, Sara understood that he was in a difficult position now he was working for Eloise; he could hardly upset his boss. ‘I’ve paired it with lavender cream. Have you ever tried that, Ken? Patrick?’
Sara had often noticed that Eloise had a tendency to address most of her comments to the men in the room. Sara wondered why she courted male approval all the time, when she was so happily married to the gorgeous Mark. It was madness. Of course it might just be a harmless old habit from her advertising days; from what Sara could gather, half her job had seemed to necessitate flirting with the clients. ‘It’s so simple to make and very light,’ she added as she started to gather up the plates from the main course. ‘I won’t be a minute. I’ll be right back with it.’
Then she disappeared out of the room into the kitchen.
17
‘Do you want to read for a few minutes?’ Ray asked as he climbed into bed next to his wife.
‘No, not really.’
‘Don’t you like your book?’
‘No, not especially. I can’t get into it,’ replied Margaret with a sigh.
‘What’s it about?’ he asked.
Margaret reached for the novel that had been lying by her bed for weeks and weeks now and passed it to him. From the cover she was certain that it was a thriller but, to be frank, she couldn’t remember exactly what it was about. They all became a bit samey after a while. She used to read at least a book a week. The librarians at The Flavel used to say that Margaret was there as often as they were. ‘This is overdue,’ commented Ray.
‘Is it?’
‘Yes.’ He sounded cross. Ray might be retired but he still had a solicitor’s mind. He was a stickler for details, systems and order. Failing to return a library book in the correct time was tantamount to a criminal act in his mind.
‘Not by much,’ Margaret assured him.
‘By a month!’
‘I’ll take it back tomorrow.’
He seemed mollified and pulled the duvet up around his chest. ‘Maybe you’ll find something that holds your interest a bit more.’
‘Hmmm,’ she said without committing. For a moment or two they lay silently. Margaret was wondering when he’d turn out the light. She could see a hat box on the top of the wardrobe and she idly wondered what was in it. What was kept in a hat box?
‘Why don’t you ever go to your reading group any more?’ Ray asked suddenly. ‘You used to love catching up with all your friends.’
‘I do go,’ said Margaret defensively.
‘No, you don’t,’ replied Ray carefully.
‘I was there just the other week. We read that one about the fossil collector.’
‘Mary Anning.’
‘I don’t think she was there.’ Margaret didn’t know who Mary Anning was. ‘Mary Cape was there.’
‘No, Mary Anning is the fossil collector.’
‘Absolutely. Mary Cape doesn’t collect fossils. She teaches.’
‘Music. I know.’ Ray let a little sigh escape. He couldn’t keep all of them in. ‘That was nine months ago, Margaret.’
They fell silent for a while again. Margaret was chasing the name of the writer of the novel of the fossil-collecting book. It ran away from her, scampering through her head. Ray wound up the small bedside clock that had sat next to their bed for donkey’s years. It had been a wedding present from Margaret’s mother’s best friend, Auntie Kathy.
‘Early night will do us both good.’ Ray leaned over to Margaret’s side of the bed; the mattress sagged in a comfortable, familiar way. He popped a kiss on her cheek and then turned out his light. She paused for a moment before she turned out her own. The cat was in. The TV was unplugged. She knew, she’d checked it twice. Tomorrow was Saturday so she could return the library book then. The library was open until lunchtime. She’d closed the back bedroom window, put the iron away. All was fine. All was right. Except.
The smudge had been joined by a bell. And the bell kept ringing – or squeaking might be a better description. There was something nagging. Something big. She ran through her nightly check list. Ray, Mark, Emily, Erin and Poppy were all in good health, safe and well. Just round the corner now. And Eloise too, of course. Safe and well. But there was something about Eloise that was not ideal; Margaret was sure. But what? What? She had no idea.
As she snuggled under the bedclothes Ray and Margaret began the routine they’d followed almost every night of their married lives. She cuddled into him, her arm thrown over his now sizable bulk. He’d been a slim man when they’d married. She could never have imagined he’d get so fat. She didn’t mind. That sort of thing never worried her. More of him to love. They stayed in that position, two question marks pressed into one another, for about five minutes, then Margaret found Ray’s body heat too much and she rolled over on to her left side. Ray was normally asleep by then and she fell to sleep within ten minutes, lulled by the sounds of his constant, slow breathing and the tick tock of their bedside clock. Their street was away from the embankment, on the edge of town and generally enveloped in silence and stillness by ten p.m. Occasionally, a daring fox could be heard rummaging through the bins but, on the whole, sleep was expected, and deep and unperturbed when it came. But not tonight. Tonight Margaret couldn’t sleep.
There was the ringing in the back of her mind and now . . . what was that? Was that knocking?
18
‘Mark, could you come in here and help me for a moment?’ Eloise was certain that the strain was audible in her voice even though she was desperately trying to sound cheery.
Mark jumped up with an enthusiasm he normally reserved for when Apple announced they were launching a new gizmo. The kitchen wasn’t generally his room of choice when they were entertaining, he liked to limit his input to pouring the alcohol but, considering Sara had just effectively urinated on the dinner party mood by announcing the deaths of her children and Eloise had clumsily tried (and failed) to put her new friends at ease by pointing out that, in fact, Sara had lost two foetuses not two babies, Mark seemed quite keen to get away from the scene of the crime.
