The split, p.21
The Split, page 21
‘So, tell me, dearest Esther, how you are managing. I’ve got to jump on a call, but not for at least ten minutes…’
‘I’m fine, Shone, truly. It’s just been such an age and I wanted to touch base. Fix up a time we could meet. Just you and me?’ Esther could hear the beat of a pause as Shona hesitated. She and Carole ‘moved as a team’, was what she always liked to say, and Esther, in the past, had done her best to respect that; but, with her new, clear head, it seemed suddenly just as reasonable that members of teams should be allowed some time away from each other, especially if it was to enable a long overdue catch-up with an erstwhile close friend.
‘Can I get back to you on that? I mean, it would be lovely. But otherwise… how are you, Esther?’
The readiness to pity was there again, and it made Esther defiant. ‘I am seriously happy, thanks, on all fronts. Dylan and Lily have been going through various ups and downs, but nothing that can’t be sorted. Work is in a good, busy phase and… well… you might be interested to know that you are speaking to a woman who has recently enjoyed a night of unbridled passion with a hot young actor…’
Shona yelped. ‘Who? How? When? Is it serious?’
Esther laughed. ‘No, it’s not serious, and that’s the best thing about it. But you get to your call now and I’ll tell you all about it another time. Just let me know some dates that work, even if it is months away, and we’ll make it happen.’
Esther drove for a few more miles before ringing Viv. Since the chances of a call being taken were slim, she wanted her voice message clear in her head. No rambling, no hint of self-pity. She would make it about wanting to see Viv, for Viv. The Marcus adventure would get a mention, and feeling on top of life, but not a lot else. She would suggest the cinema, Esther decided, pleased at the idea, some soppy romcom for just the two of them. She would say she missed their closeness and wanted it back. She would say that she bloody loved her.
‘Why did you drive anyway?’ Lily said, clutching the chocolate and putting her nose in the carnations after they had said their hellos.
‘Because I actually like driving and didn’t fancy a dark and dingy train-ride back tonight,’ Esther replied mildly, inwardly flinching at how much more washed-out her daughter looked since the weekend; her normally shiny hair tucked, thin and flat, behind her small ears, and her lovely milky skin broken by faint red patches round her chin and mouth. ‘Something smells good.’
‘It’s just onions and beef for a Bolognese. Matteo hates to break the no-meat rule, but as he’s not here I thought I’d be wicked,’ she said, speaking in the colourless voice of one taking no joy in her crime. ‘And you like it, right?’ She opened the door wider so that Esther could step from the outside staircase entrance into the little kitchen.
‘I love it,’ Esther cried, finding it hard not to overcompensate for Lily’s lacklustre mood, ‘and to be cooked for is such a treat. I am one spoilt mum.’ She kicked off her heels and removed her bright jacket, draping it on the overladen peg behind the kitchen door, pursuing a deep protective instinct to dial down her appearance to something more in line with her daughter’s; though, in truth, that would have been hard, given that Lily was in her oldest, baggy-kneed, tracksuit bottoms and a shapeless, long-sleeved T-shirt, grey from wrong washing cycles. Her small, pale feet were bare and, like her fingers, sporting now broken flecks of red nail varnish from their treatments at the weekend. ‘Right then.’ Esther rubbed her hands together. ‘Set me to work.’
‘There’s nothing to do. Just relax. Thanks for these.’ Lily dropped the bunch of carnations – in their wrapping – into an empty coffee jar that barely reached half way up the stems and added a splash of water, before picking up a wooden spoon and prodding at the chunks of pink mince and glistening onion sizzling in a small blackened frying pan on the hob. ‘Maybe the mushrooms, then?’ she said as Esther hovered. She nodded at a box of large muddied field mushrooms sitting on the little table squeezed up against the wall, next to a recycling crate overflowing with cardboard and paper.
‘There’s a chopping board, and a decent knife somewhere, in the sink, I think.’ Lily gestured vaguely with her spoon.
Esther wiped the board, which was dirty, and rolled up her sleeve to fish inside the washing-up bowl, packed with several meals’ worth of crockery. She managed to pluck out a thick-handled, serrated knife and ran it under the tap before returning to her task.
The mushrooms peeled beautifully, the skin coming off in long thick sheets. ‘So, is Matteo rehearsing or—?’
‘Why are you doing that?’ Lily was standing over her with the spoon.
‘What?’
‘Peeling them. The skin is the best bit.’ The spoon dripped a couple of blobs of mince on the floor as she swung back to the hob.
‘Sorry, darling. No more peeling. Guide’s honour.’ Esther cast round for something with which to wipe down the mushrooms instead, eventually settling on a grubby tea towel. ‘All those auditions must have been quite a pain for you,’ she pressed on. ‘Has Matteo found a good new lead singer?’ She shuffled the tea towel to find a clean corner.
‘Actually, Matteo’s in New York.’ Lily rammed some spaghetti into a big saucepan and carried on chivvying the meat in the pan, turning it and chopping at it. ‘A last-minute grand gathering of the clan. They were going to wait till Thanksgiving, but a bunch of rellies – there are so many of them – couldn’t make it.’
‘Oh, well, that’s nice,’ Esther said cautiously. ‘So, he’ll be seeing his dad.’
‘Amongst all the others. Hey, do you want a drink? We’ve got some white, I think.’
‘Juice, water – anything is fine. Whatever you’re having… but, darling, I expect you wish you were in New York too, don’t you?’
Lily snorted. ‘No way. I could have gone, but I’ve got a load of work, and it’s nice for Matt to do that stuff alone.’ She had opened the fridge door and was staring inside, gripping the handle, with white knuckles.
Esther hesitated, torn between pushing too hard and not asking enough, understanding only too well the reluctance to spill one’s problems on demand. Her daughter’s back was rigid, and Esther’s conviction that there was a serious problem with Matteo deepened. All the auditions with girls, some of them from Matteo’s and Lily’s school days. Maybe something had happened. Lily and Matteo had been together for so long after all; a point of make-or-break was bound to be reached. ‘I don’t mean to pry, and I know I’ve asked before, but are you sure everything really is okay between you two? I would love you to feel you can tell me anything, Lily darling.’
‘We’re totally okay. I mean, he drives me nuts, but yeah… totally.’ She snatched a half-empty bottle of white wine out of the fridge and kicked the door shut with the back of her foot. ‘It’s nothing special, sorry.’ Lily landed the bottle on the table with a thump, and swung back to the hob, her slim shoulders performing a steep rise and fall in what looked like a concerted effort to summon calm.
For a few moments neither of them said anything and the silence felt oddly awkward.
‘By the way, Mum. I’ve been wanting to ask.’ Lily had taken the chopping board and begun beating the mushrooms into the meat – to a pulp, by the look of it – between adding generous squirts of ketchup. ‘About Dad and Grandad. I mean, Matteo’s family have been shitty to each other, but somehow, they still muddle along. But Dad not seeing him, it’s because of Granny, right?’
‘Yes, that certainly brought things to a head,’ Esther said, her caution intensifying. She had never known Lily like this, so spiky, so angry.
‘But how bad was Grandad, anyway?’ Lily blurted, spinning round and folding her arms, sticking her chin out in her determined way. ‘Was there physical abuse – to Granny? Or Dad?’
Esther shook her head. ‘Oh no, nothing like that, at least not that I’m aware… in fact, I am sure not.’ Esther hesitated, maddened that, even now, she had to be the conduit for information that belonged to Lucas, not her. ‘No, the awfulness then was more about the general misery when Dad was growing up, the mood-swings – you know, from Grandad’s drinking – and all of it compounded by him being pretty lonely, I think. When Grandad got struck off, I know there was some bad bullying – children can be so cruel—’
‘Shit, I was going to make garlic bread,’ Lily cried, bringing the interrogation to an abrupt end, ‘and there’s no Parmesan. Will you be okay with normal cheese?’ She became a whirlwind, draining the spaghetti, dishing out the Bolognese, and grating a nugget of Cheddar into a cereal bowl, before setting two heaped plates of pasta on the table and dropping into the seat opposite Esther.
Through it all, Esther sat, a model of serenity, on the stool that was too high for the table and always gave her a backache, feeling like someone waiting for a storm to pass. Behind Lily’s head she noticed a photo stuck on the fridge door among several others, of Dylan, looking goofy with a pint of beer. She bit her lip.
‘So, how’s your garden?’ Lily asked, as if making a polite effort at conversation with a stranger at a formal dinner.
‘My garden is fine, thank you for asking,’ Esther replied evenly. ‘This is delicious, darling. Garlic bread would have been too much.’ She eyed Lily, busily turning the contents of her own plate into a goulash instead of actually eating it. ‘Not hungry?’ Despite not wanting it, she took a small sip of the wine, which was tart.
Lily raised a few threads of spaghetti to her mouth with her fork and then set them down again. ‘Mum. There’s something I’ve got to tell you.’
Esther’s pulse quickened. Here they were, then. At long last. She looked properly at Lily’s pinched face, wishing only that she possessed a magic wand with which to wipe away the wretchedness. ‘I guessed there probably was…’ she ventured, keeping her expression steady, as a new thought flowered inside. An obvious thought. Her own skin had gone to pot at similar times. It wasn’t ideal. It would be tricky. But it would be fine. Lily was shaking her head, tightening her folded arms and chewing at her beautiful lips.
‘It’s Dad.’
‘Dad?’ Esther’s Zen state collapsed in sheer surprise, shattering the comforting chat about accidental pregnancy for which she had been preparing. ‘What about Dad?’
Lily was folding her entire mouth inwards, in a bid not to cry, Esther realised, reaching past their plates and catching hold of a hand, which was immediately pulled away. ‘He has… has…’
‘What, sweetheart, what has he done? Take a deep breath, Lily. It will all be all right. Whatever it is—’
‘No, Mum, it won’t – it can’t – be all right,’ she wailed. ‘There was this rumour, from one of the singers, she didn’t know Dad was my… but I didn’t believe it…’
‘What rumour, Lily?’
‘That Dad had been… involved… with a student, Mum.’ She spoke through sobs, dabbing roughly at her running eyes and nose with her long sleeves. ‘But now it’s in the papers. The girl called him out. Inappropriate behaviour. It says the college have been trying to hush it up and that Dad has been suspended. Until the girl has finished her degree. See for yourself.’ She reached into the recycling box and slapped a folded newspaper between their plates. ‘Not pressing charges, it says, but that’s obviously because they have reached some kind of settlement. I’ve tried to call Dad…’ her voice thick with disgust ‘…but his phone’s off. And I was actually glad, because I wouldn’t know what the fuck to say anyway. And I am also glad that Matteo is away, because I can’t face telling him either. It is so gross… and I’ve got so much going on, and now this… from Dad.’ She buried her face in her hands.
Esther had already picked up the paper. It was the local Evening News, from the day before, folded open at the relevant page. She studied the small paragraph of text, under the headline Professor in Alleged Sexual Harassment Case. There was a tiny smudgy photograph of Lucas beside it, in full peacock regalia at some ceremony or other. Esther read the sentences quickly, and then a second time, more slowly. The identity of the student wasn’t disclosed, beyond the fact of her being a first year. Only Lucas’s name and position were outlined in all their glory. It had to be some sort of leak, Esther speculated, since colleges were big on protecting their public images. ‘But he wouldn’t do such a thing…’ she murmured, scanning the piece again.
She looked up to see Lily staring across the table, no longer crying, her eyes huge and aghast. ‘How can you even say that, Mum? How can you even know?’
‘I just do. I know your father. He wouldn’t.’ Esther spoke very quietly, surprising herself at her own certainty. ‘It was probably just one of those things—’
‘One of those things…?’
‘I mean, a hideous misunderstanding.’ Esther looked again at the article, her mind leaping to how Lucas would be taking what had happened: his precious job, his precious popularity, gone, the sledgehammer to his pride. Her ex-husband was maddeningly cocky, maddeningly charming, every student’s mentor as well as best friend; he revelled in adulation; he knew how to flirt, but he was not a man to make stupid and ill-advised advances to a barely formed adult. Besides, he had Heidi. It didn’t make sense. She reached into her handbag and pulled out a pack of tissues, handing one to Lily.
‘Have faith in your father, Lily. He’s going to need it.’
‘Mum, why the hell are you protecting him?’
‘I’m not. I’m just saying what I think,’ Esther countered quickly. ‘How’s Heidi about it all, anyway?’
‘Heidi? I’ve no idea, Mum. She was in Germany last I heard.’
For a moment Esther tried to feel glad, but it was all too ugly. She concentrated on Lily instead, getting up to put her arms round her, having to bend awkwardly because of her being on the lower stool and there not being much space. ‘Thank you for telling me, darling. I had a feeling something big was wrong.’ She cupped the back of Lily’s head, feeling her soften as she stroked her hair. ‘No charges being brought is good. Being suspended will be very hard for your father, but he is pretty resilient, as we know, right? And he will talk to you, soon, I am sure, once he has got his head round it all himself. Okay?’ She pulled back, holding Lily’s gaze until she had managed a nod. ‘In the meantime, I have reason to believe you are in possession of a quantity of chocolate, and if there was some tea to go with it, we could perhaps take both and settle in front of the telly for a bit.’
The suggestion was leapt on, and they were soon wedged snugly on the sofa, watching an episode of a Netflix drama that Lily was deeply into, about separated siblings finding each other as adults. They dunked their chocolate chunks in the tea, as they always used to, demolishing the entire bar, Lily saying it would make her skin even crappier than it currently was, and Esther lamenting the obstinate mound of her belly. Hugging out their goodbyes an hour later, Esther dared to believe that, for all the circling problems, they had at last found their way back to some of what had been in danger of getting lost. ‘I want more regular chats from now on, okay?’ she commanded from halfway down the steps.
‘Yes, Mum,’ Lily replied, blowing her a kiss. ‘You’re the best.’
Driving down Lucas’s street was not Esther’s original intention. She had been on the third roundabout heading out of town when the car, almost of its own accord, it felt like, completed the circle instead of going straight on. It was ten o’clock and several lights still blazed in un-curtained windows dotted across the block, a handsome sandy-bricked Georgian conversion with a big white portico of an entrance. Esther double-parked, letting the engine run as she stared up at Lucas’s lounge, evidently lit up too, behind firmly lowered blinds. She had been there a couple of times in the early days, dropping off and picking up various bits, but it felt odd, still, to imagine him in there, living his separate life. Especially now, alone, processing the body blow that Lily had shared.
Esther looked across at her phone, silent on the passenger seat. There was no ‘duty of care’ any more, she reminded herself. There was nothing. Except knowing him. Better than he wanted to be known. Yes, he had grown to hate that. Being seen through, and criticised. But then she hadn’t liked it either. A good marriage took fortitude as well as kindness, she reflected sadly, and maybe, among all their other obvious problems, neither of them had possessed enough of either. Inhaling slowly, she picked up the phone, quickly pressing Lucas’s number and then ending the call when it cut straight to a recorded message.
A little further down the street, there was a large space, easy for pulling into. Gritting her teeth, muttering to herself, Esther drove on and swung into it, getting out and slamming the car door in one swift motion. Having reached the entrance porch, she sent a text.
Am downstairs. Just had dinner with Lily.
She gave it a minute and then pressed the buzzer to the flat once, long and hard. When there was no reply to that either, she gave it a second go before striding back to the car.
She had reached out. Reaching out only worked if the other party reached back. Maybe Lucas imagined she wanted to crow over his disgrace. Maybe he didn’t even know she knew. Esther let out a small screech, slamming her palm against the steering wheel. It didn’t matter. It was none of her business. She turned the engine on, but then snatched her mobile again, texting.
Hope u ok. Remember it will be fish and chips soon. Please talk to Lily.
30
Lucas stood with his back to the wall beside his front window. Edging a couple of fingers under the blind, he lifted it an inch or two and peered through the crack. Newly alert to the dangers of unwanted attention, he had heard a car pulling up outside, and the hum of the engine as it idled. The vehicle was half out of view, and in the late evening darkness it was hard to make out anything except that it was small and silver. By the time the door buzzer sounded, he had retreated to the sofa, his bunker for most of the day. He sat up with a moan and reached for the cushion that had been under his bad leg. Hugging it with both arms, he rocked slowly, through the next ring and the silence that followed, willing whichever bloodhound it was to give up.
