Читать книгу Pandora’s Box - Giselle Green - Страница 15

Stella is having a difficult time with little Nikolai. I can hear him kicking and struggling in the background.

‘He’s always like this whenever one of us gets on the phone!’ Stella tells me. She sounds strained, distantly polite as always. I wish she would just accept that the last thing on my mind is any desire to steal my ex-husband back from his new wife. I don’t want Bill back. If they are happy together then I am truly glad of it.

‘Nikki and I were just about to go and play in the garden.’ The tone of her voice suggests that I have phoned at a most inconvenient time. The sun has been beating down all day in Surrey, apparently. Lucky Surrey. We, on the other hand, have been blessed with unremitting rain since the beginning of April. My garden is a veritable sea of mud.

‘I’ll see if I can locate Bill for you.’

Stella could be a secretary screening calls for a high-profile executive. I bite my lip irritably. I’ve already phoned Bill twice this week about our daughter’s birthday; the least he could do is get back to me.

I must be frowning more deeply than I realise because Sol—out there in the treehouse fixing a leak for Daniel—catches sight of me through the window and pulls a face. I pull a face back at him but then force myself to smile. I am going to be pleasant to Bill, no matter what it takes.

‘Hi, Rachel,’ Bill’s breathy voice comes down the phone suddenly. I get a momentary vision of him, a half-eaten piece of toast in one hand, his jacket half-on and scooping up the car keys from the sideboard as if he needs to be off, quickly, somewhere else.

‘Bill, I’m phoning about Shelley’s birthday. Have you got a minute?’

‘A minute, yes.’

Hi Bill, yes, I’m doing just fine. The kids are well too. So kind of you to enquire. Bill was never one for small talk—cut to the chase, he always said. Okay, here I go with the chase:

‘This is about Shelley wanting to go to Cornwall for her birthday, Bill.’

‘Yeah, you said. We emailed. I thought we’d agreed. No.’ There’s the sound of a door shutting far away in the place where he is, as Nikolai’s high-pitched screaming blocks out all else for an instant. ‘Sorry, he’s teething. It’s a bit noisy here.’

Teething, yeah, right.

‘Bill, Shelley really wants to go to Summer Bay for her birthday.’

‘Look, things are kind of difficult here at the moment.’ I can just feel his eyebrows lifting. ‘Anyway, what on earth does she want to go for?’ He sounds preoccupied. He sounds as if he hasn’t slept in weeks. Nikolai probably makes sure of that. ‘It’s a bit far away, isn’t it?’ He is thinking about the long drive down there; what it will mean to squeeze it in between a late finish on a Friday and an early start on a Monday morning.

‘You don’t have to come, Bill. In fact, she doesn’t really want a crowd. She’s been quite clear about that. She just wants some girl-time.’

He doesn’t seem to be listening. He’s got the desk diary in front of him, I can hear him turning over the pages, flick, flick, till he arrives at the week at the end of May.

‘Not possible, I’m afraid. I’ve got a meeting first thing on that Saturday morning which won’t finish till about one. Nope. No can do, Rachel.’

‘That’s all right, Bill,’ I explain patiently. ‘She just wants me and her to go. You don’t have to be there.’

There is a silence at the other end while he takes that in.

‘We can do all the tea and cakes and presents bit when we get back,’ I offer.

‘No, we can’t.’ He sounds petulant. ‘It’s Stella and my anniversary. When my meeting finishes on Saturday I was planning to take her away for a few days. In fact, there was something I was hoping to run past you regarding that. We were sort of hoping you might have Nikolai for us; just for a few days?’

I am stunned into silence for a minute; astounded really that he can even think of asking me. Okay, so we keep up a good front for the kids’ sake but Bill and I hadn’t exactly parted best of friends. I glance up as Sol taps gently on the kitchen door and lets himself in. I can see the darker patches on the bottoms of his socks where they are soaking wet. I watch him sit down at my kitchen table and peel them off.

‘The conversation we need to have at the moment is about Shelley’s birthday,’ I remind Bill, ‘not your anniversary. Perhaps we can discuss that another time?’ I don’t know why I say that. There is no question of me ever taking Nikolai off their hands—not even for a couple of hours, let alone a couple of days. I have my own hands full enough as it is. Why the hell do I find it so difficult to just say NO?

‘Can’t do it, Rachel. Anyway, weren’t the kids due to come to me for that Saturday? I was going to take them all out to the park and then on for a burger. That way Nikolai can come too.’

Hmm, and maybe you can then palm Nikolai off onto me later?

‘The park?’ I say. Sol chuckles into his hands at that. He knows who I’m talking to and what we are talking about. ‘I think you’ll find it’s the week after that they’re due to come to yours, Bill. I’ve just checked. The Summer Bay thing is just for Shelley and me, as I’ve said. It’s what she’s asked me for…’

And she so seldom ever asks me for anything. If only he could see that and break away from his enclosed little Bill-Stella-Nikolai world for a minute.

Had we ever been like that? I wondered now. A little self-contained, totally enclosed unit; a bubble of a family, where inside the fold everyone is totally ‘right’ and outside it you are likely to be considered completely in the wrong?

‘I’ll just check on that with Stella. I’m sure you’re wrong there.’ Bill’s tone is defensive now. I hear him put the receiver down and go out and close the door to talk to Stella.

Were we? Were we ever like that together, Bill and I?

I close my eyes for a minute. I count to ten. Once, a lifetime ago, lying under the canopy of an oak tree on Hampstead Heath:

‘I want to know why it is you love me.’ Bill had been lying flat on his back, hogging the lion’s share of the shade.

‘Because you’re…you’re wonderful!’ I’d told him enthusiastically.

‘No, I mean precisely why. Tell me the reasons.’ His eyes had opened, caught me laughing, then, while he’d been dead serious.

‘I just do,’ I’d said helplessly. ‘Because you love me. Because you accept me as I am. Because you believe in my dreams. Because when I’m in your arms I feel, oh, I feel I could conquer the whole world, but even better than that, I feel I don’t need to…’

‘The real reason,’ he’d rolled over, businesslike, ‘is that you know that with me, you’re going to be going places, right?’

I didn’t know what he meant at the time. Some little village on the outskirts of Mumbai? To Turkey; to Greece, where we could look up the lost city of Troy?

‘Women need to know they’ve got someone to look after them, that’s all. You’re right, Rachel. Stick with me and you won’t need to conquer the world. That’s because I’ll do it for you.’ He’d been so sure of himself. I’d been so besotted with him. He’d meant he’d look after me materially. I thought he’d meant in all the other ways that count.

‘Any luck?’ Sol glances up at me from the papers he’s been scanning.

‘You know Bill,’ I mouth. ‘He’s never going to make this easy.’

Sol does know Bill. He and Adam were our neighbours for four years before their business took off and they were able to afford pastures greener. I sit down beside my one-time neighbour and sometime employer and prop my face in my hands.

‘Never mind him, though. What interesting work have you got lined up for me today?’

Sol pulls a face, then straightens it immediately. ‘Wrinkles,’ he tells me, ‘I must remember not to do that. Anyway, I’ve got a pile of typing for you, darling. I think most of it is legible. Let me know what you think of the hero.’ He sits back, his white linen shirt half-open, showing off his all-year tan to good effect. He is gorgeous, actually—the thought pops irrelevantly into my head. No wonder Adam was heartbroken when they split up. Annie-Jo has a point. Why do I never notice men at all these days—even the gay ones?

‘The hero? Oh, it’s your novel then? Not the new brochure for the shop?’

‘Justin’s doing the brochure.’ Sol waves a hand airily. ‘He understands the new publishing program better than anyone. He’s a whiz-kid. He’s young. They’re all whiz-kids.’ He looks a bit tragic as he says this.

‘Adam had a pretty good handle on that side of things…’

‘Adam was a dinosaur, Rachel. Old-fashioned in the extreme. In all his ways.’ He gives me a significant look. ‘Life’s an adventure to be tasted, isn’t it, sweetie?’

‘So, the whiz-kid is helping you with the brochure?’

‘Actually, he’s being such a bitch about it I told him he could bloody well do it himself.’ His voice is blasé, but the pain in his eyes when he mentions Justin is etched deep.

‘Justin playing up again?’ Uh-oh, trouble at the ranch. I’m still holding the phone to my ear, but there’s no sign of Bill coming back just yet. Bill works for a law firm and no doubt he’s used to keeping people on hold for great lengths of time, I think. I will hold for exactly two minutes more.

‘If I didn’t love him so much I would dump him, truly I would. But we’re soul mates,’ Sol tells me, ‘we were destined to be. He’s making me suffer to show me what I put him through in our previous existence together.’

‘Won’t that mean he’ll have to come back and suffer the same thing again himself?’ I swap the phone over to my other ear, and hand Sol the corkscrew and a bottle of cabernet sauvignon.

‘I don’t know. Good point. I shall put that to him. He won’t care, though, that’s the thing. He’s a Gemini, isn’t he? I was warned. Aquarius rising, too; he won’t be tied down.’ He pours out a small amount of wine and swivels it around in the glass, savouring its bouquet.

‘I’m sorry,’ I say. He never used to look this sad. Or even so careworn as he does at the moment. Well, stands to reason really. I know Adam was the one who used to take care of the troublesome things in life, like shop brochures and acquisitions and keeping the website updated. Making sure there was milk in the fridge. In short, all the boring little necessities of life, which allowed everyone else—aka Solly—to go out and be ‘carefree’.

‘Will he let Shelley go with you?’ Sol indicates the phone with his head. ‘He should let her do what she wants to, poor darling.’ He pours out a large glass and hands it to me.

‘I’ve made up my mind I’m going to take her anyway,’ I tell him slowly. ‘I might need to ask for your help with some things, though. Hattie, for example, will you look after her for us?’

‘The tortoise?’ Sol grins amicably. ‘Sure.’

‘Will you be around the last week in May, though? This is really important, Solly. Are you sure you can do it?’

‘Sure thing, honey bunch.’ He is still thinking about Justin, I can tell.

‘Hello, Rachel?’ Bill is back on the phone.

‘Hello. All sorted then?’

There is a pause.

‘No.’ Bill is sounding surprisingly determined. You’d think he’d got enough on his plate with the demon child he and Stella have produced, but no. ‘This might be what Shelley’s asked you for, Rachel, but there are other people’s feelings to be considered here too. She’s used to getting too much of her own way, I think. That’s the trouble with it. When she comes over to us we stick to a much stricter regime and she has to deal with it. She has to eat whatever Stella puts on her plate for one thing.’

‘Meaning?’ What the hell has that got to do with anything? The two of them have obviously had a very long conversation while I’ve been hanging on that damned phone. I can feel my ire rising. Why do I always let him do this to me? I swore that I wouldn’t, not today.

‘She’s as thin as a stick, Rach. She can’t eat more than a morsel of food on an ordinary day, be honest now. We weighed her when she came to us for that week over Christmas, at the beginning, and then again at the end.’ I can hear him sounding a little bit sheepish as he realises what he is admitting to but he ploughs on with it anyway. ‘And she’d put on five pounds at the end.’ Sheepish, but triumphant nonetheless.

‘Now you’re telling me that I don’t feed her?’

‘Stella said when she handed her the bath towel she could see her ribs sticking out. You’ve got to be aware of this, surely? I have to say it, even if it hurts you to hear it.’

‘If you think you could do a better job then we could talk about options here. I’m worn out myself, with being her carer. I love her, but I’m worn out. Maybe you’re right. You two might be able to do a much better job than I can manage these days.’ My voice is surprisingly calm. A year before I might have made that as a throw-away comment in temper, knowing full well he would never agree to take me up on it. I wouldn’t have wanted him to, anyway. But this time I really mean it.

Sol’s face is a picture. I cover the phone with my hands while Bill relays what I’ve just said to his wife. ‘He won’t take me up on it, of course. There is no way they could hack it. They are both stressed up to the eyeballs with their own child as it is. And,’ I turn my face away from the phone to make doubly sure they won’t overhear, ‘to tell you the truth I think there is nothing wrong with little Nikolai, not at all. It’s just that some two-year-olds don’t want to learn the violin and take French language lessons and gymnastics classes every week. They get tantrummy about it. It is all very well to keep up a military regime for one or two days every couple of weeks but it’s not so easy when the child is resisting you all the way, on a day in, day out basis. Shelley won’t eat much because the tablets she has to take with her food sit like a pile of gravel in her belly and they ruin her appetite. She copes at her dad’s because she just doesn’t take the tablets for those days, just so as not to make a fuss.’

Sol nods sympathetically.

I know she’s too thin. I’d like her to be a lot heavier. I’d like a lot of things that just aren’t going to happen.

‘Let’s not argue over this.’ Bill is back and has gone into reasonable mode. ‘You know that suggestion isn’t practicable.’

‘I thought not.’

‘But to get back to my previous point, there are certain procedures you could put in place…’

‘Save it.’ I am the one feeling tetchy now. ‘Save your parenting theories for the one you have to deal with, will you? And let’s keep our conversation to the birthday plans. That’s what I rang about, and I too have a schedule to keep to this afternoon.’

I have to ring the surgery after speaking to Bill and ask why they’d only given me one month’s supply of Shelley’s tablets again. They used to give me six months, then it went down to three months, and then it became a ridiculous one month’s supply! I can’t spend my life going up and down putting in repeat prescriptions every four weeks. Everything takes up so much time. Bill doesn’t have to deal with any of that, and so he can’t possibly know what it is like.

‘I want to spend time with her on her birthday too.’ He is sad. I can hear it in his voice, and I wish now I had been kinder to him. Why do we always do this? Why can’t we just be civil to each other? I can’t bear to hear him feeling sad. It reminds me of that small battered place in my heart where I keep all the cherished memories of what we used to mean to each other.

‘We don’t know if she’ll have any more birthdays.’ His voice breaks here and I just cave in. It is true. He is right. I don’t want to be unfair about this.

‘Look, we can work something out. Perhaps you can come down and spend the Saturday with us down there then? She specifically asked to be in Summer Bay for her birthday. And she wanted some time alone with me. But if you could make it down for the Saturday, that would be a lovely surprise. We could throw her a party—organise something that she’d never even suspect. You can bring Daniel and Nikolai too. And Stella, of course.’

‘It’ll be a long drive,’ Bill grumbles, but he is caving, I can tell. ‘Just for the one day.’

‘Stay for the long weekend then. Make it worth your while.’

‘Maybe,’ Bill concedes. ‘I’d have to discuss this more with Stella.’

‘Do it then. I know Shelley would love to see you on her birthday.’

‘Don’t make any plans,’ he warns me, ‘not just yet. There’s a lot we’ve got to think about here. I’ll get back to you about it within the next couple of weeks.’

The next couple of weeks, I know, will be too late. I have a letter, still on the kitchen table, that I received this morning from Maggie at the bed and breakfast; we have to confirm straight away or the last two spaces will be taken.

‘We’ll talk about this again,’ he tells me.

‘Sure,’ I say, and I remember all over again just what he is like. I know I am never going to get anywhere with him. Bill isn’t the reasonable sort. ‘We’ll talk about it soon.’

Deceit, I think now. This isn’t like me at all. This is another one of Pandora’s vices. Oh well. Looks as though they’re thrumming through the air at a rate of knots at the moment, just waiting to home in on us at any opportunity.

‘Who are you ringing now?’ Solly watches me curiously as I punch the next number into the phone. ‘All sorted, is it?’

‘All sorted,’ I tell him. ‘I’m booking Maggie’s place for Shelley and me for the last week in May, just like she wanted.’