Dragons redemption, p.7
The Split, page 7
She had got as far as boiling and draining the potatoes for the pie when Lucas, sporting a smile that was almost shy, sauntered into the kitchen.
‘Could I crush a garlic clove or something? Or chop an onion? Save you reaching for the Kleenex? And tomorrow night I’m going to cook.’ He turned his back on Esther’s double take to set about scything the large red onion that she had placed on the chopping board, converting it into the meticulous, gossamer-thin slices which, once upon a time, during early days of shared meal preparation, had provided easy fodder for ribbing. ‘Grilled prawns, or something simple. I could go to the fish market. Here, let me do that. This is ready for the frying pan.’ He pushed the board towards Esther and seized the masher she had just removed from its hook, along with the saucepan of potatoes, embarking on a pulverising so energetic that flecks of mash flew across the hob and up the wall tiles.
Esther had to suppress a prickle of irritation. He was trying. It certainly made a welcome change from working in his study until being summoned, and then taking so long to arrive the meal was half cold. She directed her energies to the carrots instead, swiping the peeler deep into their skins and mentioning the David Attenborough as a possible source of evening entertainment, tentatively, because Lucas was big on fighting the temptation to watch telly while eating.
That Lucas was making a serious effort only really dawned on her after the flamingos had finished strutting, when he took their plates and went to wash up without being asked. He returned with mugs of tea, saying he’d like the telly off if Esther didn’t mind, and what music would she like to listen to instead? Esther, disarmed, even a little suspicious, said Debussy, and reached for her Kindle, only to find Lucas joining her on the sofa and quizzing her about the new museum catalogue job, saying it sounded a serious step up the ladder and who knew where it might lead?
‘I know I work too much and I am sorry, Esther,’ he went on, once the subject of her working life and career hopes had received an unprecedentedly exhaustive analysis. He turned the music off and left his armchair to sit next to her on the sofa. ‘I am not supportive enough of you. It will get better, I promise.’
‘Lucas…’ She gave him a despairing, affectionate smile. Such promises had been made before, though not for a while. ‘Thank you. I would like that. Very much.’ She returned her concentration to the page of Mick Herron on her screen, thinking the moment was too lovely to risk ruining by saying anything else.
Lucas had picked up a paper to read, but tossed it back onto the coffee table. ‘Sometimes, Esther, I feel like Sisyphus, hauling his boulder; the need to prove something – to myself, to the world – over and over again. It’s exhausting.’
He turned to her with an expression of such bleakness in his eyes that she felt fear as well as hope. He wanted to talk. Properly. Such moments were gold dust.
‘The Viv brigade would probably say it was because of my mother,’ he went on, laughing harshly and averting his gaze from the flash of astonishment that escaped Esther before she could stopper it.
‘Because?’ she asked gently.
Lucas shook his head. ‘Oh, you know. The son who wasn’t enough to stop his own parent deciding to sling a noose of bed-sheets round the branch of an apple tree, then having to spend the rest of his existence proving his worth. That sort of thing.’
‘Lucas, that’s not—’
‘Don’t worry, I know it’s all hocus pocus.’ He was smiling suddenly, unnervingly. ‘I only blame one person, who, I am happy to confirm, rarely crosses my mind. But all of it does seem to have left me with this relentless hamster wheel of a need to justify my presence on the planet. And you, my dear sweet Esther, bear the brunt.’ He took the Kindle off her lap, and then laced his hand with hers.
They intertwined fingers, Esther acutely aware of the hard ridges of her marriage rings against his skin. ‘It is all right, Lucas,’ she murmured, feeling that it truly was, and glimpsing the entirety of them suddenly – how they had begun and all that they had weathered as part of an inseparable whole.
Upstairs, in the dark of the bedroom and the new quiet of the house, they had reached for each other again and differently, with what had almost felt like the tenderness of strangers. Afterwards, with Lucas asleep on his back, his arm up against Esther’s, she had lain awake, heart still pounding from pleasure, and reflected on the invisible, yawning chasm between having sex and making love; a difference that Lucas had never found easy to acknowledge. The stuttering of her libido during the exhaustion of early motherhood had, unquestionably, been integral to the start of their difficulties, Lucas insisting on taking it personally, despite her repeated reassurances. Even when more regular relations were restored, those times – Lucas’s hurt and umbrage every night she put sleep before sex – had left a sour note that had never quite dissipated.
But not last night, Esther reflected, unable to resist smiling to herself as she hopped off her bicycle outside the entrance to Lucas’s college. Last night had been of a new order. Like before but better. More honest. More loving. Respectful to the point of reverence. And the talking properly too. Communicating. It felt like a new phase. It lent the tinge of something like a second honeymoon to the two children-less weeks stretching ahead.
‘Good morning, Mrs Shaw. Long time no see.’
‘How are you, Arthur? And how’s Smudge?’ Esther laughed as the college cat hopped up onto the counter, headbutting the man’s square chin.
‘We’re both very well, thank you. And yourself?’
‘Great, thanks. Both children away – yippee.’ Esther pulled a comical face and then waited for the electronic security gate to take its usual age to open. ‘See you,’ she called, enjoying the flap of her summer skirt against her bare legs as she pushed the bike across the courtyard, keeping to the path between the grass that was not for walking on and the pristine borders of yellow and purple pansies.
Parking the bike out of sight under the arch of Lucas’s staircase, she took the flight up to the first floor two steps at a time, humming to herself. His door was slightly ajar, so she went straight in.
‘Surprise…’ she began, breaking off at the realisation that the room was empty; although not for long, to judge from the open door. Esther went to peer out of the window, down at the bright, geometric beauty of the empty courtyard, absorbing the pleasing hush of the place without the students. Lucas had said something about seeing Ralph Conway, his closest friend as well as the college’s Senior Tutor, to discuss admissions.
Esther strolled to his desk, where his laptop was flashing its screensaver of the Grand Canyon. Printer paper, she remembered suddenly, thinking of her own laptop, now containing a finished summary of Barbara Hepworth’s life, which she had been unable to print off because of running out at home. Esther opened the desk’s side panel of large drawers in search of stationery. The bottom, final one contained paper, but only a thinnish wad, so she knelt down to separate out ten or so pages to keep her going. As she slid the remainder back in, her eye was caught by a small, grey phone, lying along the back of the drawer. She fished it out, seeing that it was a mobile, a very small old-fashioned one, not dissimilar to the first model they had bought Lily. Esther turned it over in her hands. Lily’s had been blue. This one was stone grey. A Samsung. Heavy footsteps and men’s voices sounded on the stairs, and a moment later Lucas bounded into the room, followed by Ralph, his crinkled light brown hair in the wild mop that always made her think of candy floss.
‘Esther,’ Lucas exclaimed in surprise.
‘Yes, I thought I’d drop in.’
‘Hello there, Esther,’ Ralph said, in his warm Glaswegian rumble, waving over Lucas’s shoulder and grinning. ‘How lovely to see you. Are you well? You look well.’
‘I am, thank you, Ralph.’ Esther had got to her feet, still clutching the paper and the phone. ‘I decided to come by and then remembered I needed some printer paper.’ She flapped her pages. ‘The Hepworth retrospective, I’ve been doing a bit of the catalogue.’
‘Splendid. Catherine and I saw her stuff in St Ives a few years ago. Mind-blowing.’ He turned to Lucas. ‘I’ll leave you both to it. Take that coffee another time. Lovely to see you, Esther.’ He flashed his big bearded smile and shot off, slamming the door behind him before thumping back down the stairs.
‘I needed some printer paper,’ Esther repeated, aware that Lucas had a slightly fixed look on his face. ‘And I found this.’ She twiddled the phone.
‘Ah, thank you.’ He smacked his forehead in a demonstration of his own gormlessness. ‘A student left it. I’d completely forgotten. I’ll drop it at the lodge.’ He stepped towards her, holding out his hand.
‘Oh, I see.’ Esther looked again at the phone. ‘A bit retro for a student.’ Something odd had happened to the air around them; a stillness. Lucas was grinning extravagantly, his palm stretched in front of her. Like a Master asking a pupil to hand something over, Esther found herself thinking; something she shouldn’t have. ‘Which student?’
He laughed loudly. ‘Ah, well, that I don’t know, I’m afraid. I found it. Down the back of the sofa…’
‘We could try and find out, surely.’ She carefully placed her thin sheaf of paper on the desk and started to examine the phone more closely.
‘It was a while back, and who knows how long it had been there? It’s probably dead.’
It had a button saying ‘OK’, which came to life when Esther pressed it.
‘Here, let me see.’ Lucas tried to swipe the device from her hands, but Esther, acting on sheer reflex, whipped it behind her back.
‘Don’t be silly.’ Lucas tried a laugh, but was clearly annoyed. ‘Come on, Esther, give it to me and I’ll take it to the lodge.’ He rolled his eyes like a parent with an impatient child.
But the atmosphere had grown stranger still. The air between them seemed to be vibrating, to the point where Esther could almost hear the thrum of it. A sense of a choice – a crossroads – was unfolding at the same time. She could hand the phone over and it – along with Lucas’s annoyance, the very last thing she wanted to invoke on this day of all days – would go away. Instead, she clenched the little mobile to her chest and moved round the desk so that it could sit between them, a bulwark. Keeping half an eye on Lucas, standing rigid, his expression darkening, she pressed the menu button. The phone was so simple, it did not have a passcode. Calls received. Messages received. But the sent messages box was empty. Wiped clean. Aware of Lucas advancing round the desk, Esther edged the other way, selecting a text at random.
‘Come on, Esther, for God’s sake. It’s not nice to snoop on someone else’s stuff.’
Fyi I still WANT you, Lucas. Now. NOW…
Lucas made his move, lunging round the desk, and she flew, hurdling his briefcase, wrenching the door open, and on up the stairs to the top-floor toilet. She heard his thunderous feet behind her on the old wooden stairwell. The crash of shutting the toilet door and the snap of managing to slide the lock across was followed by the slam of his fist on the other side, so hard the hinges rattled.
‘Esther, come out. Please. I beg you. Come out.’
Keeping her eye fixed on the door, Esther shuffled backwards, reaching behind her to lower the toilet seat before sitting down. She leant back against the cistern, holding the mobile delicately now, like the bomb it was, containing their end.
7
The August sun was so blinding that Esther left the door open and ran back for her sunglasses. Feeling the protest in her little toe – compressed inside smart shoes for the first time in three weeks – she raced upstairs to grab her flip-flops for driving, putting her car keys down on her bed and then having to go back for them too.
‘Morning, Esther.’
‘Sue!’ Esther exclaimed, startled, hastily finished locking the door and doing her shoe-swap, juggling her smart handbag and mac. Her neighbour was crouched on her doorstep with a trowel, bedding a tray of fragile green tendrils into a flower tub. ‘Nice to see you. I’m in a bit of a—’
‘We took a parcel for you.’ Sue glanced lazily up, smiling at Esther through her fringe.
‘Oh, goodness, thank you…’
‘Came yesterday morning. Dimmy took it, actually. I was out for the count.’ She patted a patch of the soil round a new sprig with the back of the trowel and scooped out another from the tray.
‘That was kind of him. I was at a client meeting and now I’m afraid I’ve got to…’ Esther paused to yank at her dress, a dusty pink stalwart that she always forgot bunched round her midriff, emphasising exactly the section of her she was most keen to mask. ‘Could I possibly collect it later, do you think, Sue? Only, I am in a bit of a hurry.’
‘Well, you must be going somewhere nice is all I can say. You look gorgeous.’ Sue got to her feet as she spoke, dusting dirt crumbs off her palms.
‘My daughter’s graduation,’ Esther admitted with a smile, her heart sinking uncharitably as Dimitri emerged to join the doorstep chat, his broad grin baring the big gap between his two front teeth.
‘Doesn’t she look gorgeous, Dimmy?’
‘She surely does. All right, Esther?’ He draped his arms over Sue’s shoulders, his dark eyes twinkling in a way that drew attention away from the dark under-pouches of fatigue.
Driving people home all night. Esther couldn’t imagine it. ‘Yes, thank you, Dimitri… I…’
‘Go get her that package, Dimmy, there’s a love. She’s in a hurry.’
‘Okay, babe. Won’t be a tick. Hold your horses, Esther.’
‘Then it’s done, right?’ Sue said sweetly
‘Yes.’ Esther smiled, surrendering to the waves of determined kindness.
‘Daughter’s graduation, now that is nice,’ said Sue, ‘and with your lovely Dylan too – you must be one proud Mum.’
‘Oh, yes…’
‘Something I’m hoping to know about one day. We’re trying madly.’ She had lowered her voice and was holding up crossed fingers. ‘Dimmy hates me telling anyone. He’s starting to worry about his sperm count.’
‘Oh goodness, best of luck,’ Esther murmured, a little distractedly, because Dimitri was taking his time and Sue mentioning Dylan had given her one of the heart-lurches that had being going on since Thursday morning.
‘Not one C, but three,’ Lucas had roared down the phone. ‘That means the child hasn’t just failed to get the mediocre grades kindly demanded by the good people at UWE, he has ploughed the whole fucking lot. Quite how you managed, all these months, to dupe yourself, and me, into believing he was doing any work at all, remains a complete, bloody mystery.’
‘Blaming me solves nothing,’ Esther had countered furiously, her own upset compounded by the possibility of Dylan overhearing his father’s crushing words, and with the imminent celebration of his sister’s academic triumph somehow making everything worse. ‘Getting angry won’t help either,’ she had added miserably, having a horrible sense of being sucked back into the marital quagmire she had sought to escape. Lucas bossing everything. Rowing about Dylan. Her the good cop, him the bad. ‘I have no idea what happened either – I need to speak to Dylan. But there are re-sits, right?’
‘He will have to work his bloody socks off, padlocked to his laptop if necessary. I’ve already told him. A day off for Lily and then revision starts.’
When Esther had finally got Dylan himself on screen, hunched and wan-faced, her son’s shrugs and dejected dunnos had shredded her heart. He had done his best. He didn’t know what had gone wrong. He would do what his father said. He didn’t want to come back to London anyway. He had just started a job in a pub, which he hoped he’d be allowed to carry on with. When she’d ventured a question about Mei Lin, hoping to cheer him up, he had retorted that she was just a friend and what did that have to do with anything? A response that bore out Lily’s brusque claim to be unaware of any girlfriend. He had felt unreachable, and one of Esther’s aims for the graduation day was to find a way back to him.
When Dimitri finally bounded out of the house with a small, thin, cardboard box, Esther unceremoniously jammed it into her handbag, calling thank yous as she ran to the car.
‘Better late than late,’ he shouted cheerily.
After a morning in the sun, the inside of her little Ford was a furnace. Esther dumped all that she was carrying onto the passenger seat, wound down the windows and had just turned the engine on when Sue’s face popped up beside her.
‘Meant to say. We’re having a bit of a do tonight. Barbecuing. Nothing fancy. Do come.’
‘Thanks, Sue, though I doubt I’ll be back in time.’ Esther rammed the car into gear.
‘And Dylan too, if he’s around.’ Sue peered into the back of the car, as if Dylan might be lurking there.
‘Right. Bye, Sue.’ Esther lurched out of her space, stopping only just in time as a motorcycle whined past. It cut in front of her, swinging up to the front door of her other neighbour. The rider gave Esther a hard stare as he pulled off his helmet, shaking out a mane of dark, corkscrew curls.
Esther ignored it, using the moment to check a route on her phone and finding that she would still make it in time. She messaged Lily to field her parents, who would be absurdly early because they always were, and then set off more gingerly, Dimitri’s merry ‘better to be late’ ringing in her head. It was going to be a good day. Lily’s day. Lucas had all the tickets, and would no doubt stroll up to the Senate House in his casual way with five minutes to go, because that was what he always did. And tomorrow she would be packing for France, because Viv had insisted, and resisting Viv was always useless. Go with the flow, woman, Esther warned herself, putting on the radio and settling back into her seat.
