Читать книгу Come Away With Me - Sara MacDonald, Sara MacDonald - Страница 17

When the car had disappeared round the corner I moved around the empty three-storeyed house. All houses smell different, they gather the essence and scent of people. I looked at the cork noticeboard in the kitchen. Ruth was very organised. All Adam’s activities were carefully pinned up there with her own appointments and Peter’s schedules and flights.

I moved up the stairs and stood outside Adam’s room like a thief. Then I pushed open the door and went in. The room smelt of boy; of gym shoes and clothes he should have put in the wash. I lifted a football shirt and held it to my face, then folded it carefully and placed it back on the chair. Posters were pinned to the walls: birds and maps and a group photograph of him playing the clarinet in a youth orchestra in Glasgow. I stared at his sweet, concentrated face and Tom stared back at me.

What is it like to have a child of thirteen? To have a child with a formed and independent mind? I don’t know what that feels like.

I lay back on Adam’s bed slowly like an old woman afraid that her bones might break and I let my darling into my head; just for a second or I would go mad.

Rosie. I will never have a conversation with you. I will never know what sort of person you would have grown into. You—with your little busy footsteps on the polished floors and your funny, throaty little chuckle.

I heard myself moan softly in the empty house. How loud it sounded, like an injured animal.

There was an added anguish that would not leave me alone; it burnt inside me like a fever, keeping my body hot and dry. A nagging, persistent little doubt rising up, damaging and relentless, and part of me like a steady beat.

Tom…You took Rosie with you. You had my baby in the car. You were always so careful. Were you careful that day? Or were you late leaving the zoo and worrying about the traffic. Were you careless, Tom? Were you?

I lay on Adam’s unmade bed and watched the afternoon sun move round and slant across the floor and catch the dust, and I fell into a strange daytime sleep, and the dreams were so vivid that I longed to wake, but when I woke I longed again for oblivion.

I am running across Porthmeor beach in St Ives and Tom is chasing me. He catches me and we fall laughing on to the sand, rolling over each other, getting covered in wet sticky sand. We are kissing each other over and over again. We are playing truth or dare, and I have rolled over on top of him, tickling him.

‘Come on, tell! Tell me the most terrible thing you have ever done?’

Tom is twisting away from me, trying to get free and laughing. ’Get off me, woman! I’m getting covered in sand.’ He sits up, brushing down his sweater. Then he says, suddenly serious, ‘The worst thing I ever did was get drunk one night at a party and I screwed a girl in a bedroom full of coats. She was very pretty and she had been throwing herself at me all evening, so I thought, Why not? She’s obviously keen and willing. But I had no idea until later that she was only seventeen and still at school. I felt guilty and ashamed about that night for a long time. Even talking about it now makes me cringe.’

‘Did you ever see her again?’

‘No. I was at university and in Plymouth with the cadets, doing my obligatory scholarship time. We had driven down to Cornwall just for the party. We went back the next morning.’

‘What was she like?’

‘Tall and blonde is all I remember in my drunken haze. OK, goody two shoes, what’s the worst thing you’ve ever done? Stick your tongue out at the back of a nun? Ow! That hurt.’

I sat up in the dark and the rage inside me was all-consuming, sucking me dry, making me tremble with anger. Is Adam Tom’s child? Ruth can’t even remember the boy’s name or face. It can’t be right that Adam is hers. It can’t be.

As I lay on his bed I knew that I had been guided to Adam. Why otherwise would Ruth and I have met on a train to Birmingham when we’d not met in fourteen years? It was fate. Adam is part of Tom. He is part of my life because of Tom. He is part of me.

I felt light-headed, as if I were floating, as if I might blow away. Like the night of Tom’s death I felt curiously out of my body, watching myself from the ceiling. I got off the bed carefully and pulled the duvet straight. I switched on the landing light and went dizzily downstairs. I made tea in Ruth’s kitchen.

Tom seemed abruptly near me in this house that belonged to another family. To people he did not know. As if I had conjured him. I looked around at the shadows beginning to fill the empty house and I willed him to stay close to me.

Tom, you have a son.

I walked through to the living room and looked out into the road full of lit houses. The front door of the house opposite was open and light spilled down the dark steps. The family were piling their possessions into a camper van. Up and down the stone steps they ran, laughing and excited, the children in bright clothes like small ladybirds.

They were placing bicycles on the back of the van. They were going to carry their house away on their back. I watched, fascinated, until they were ready to leave, then I wrote down the number of the hire company written in large letters on the side of the camper van.