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I glanced towards the desk and kept my voice low. ‘God, no, nothing like that. It’s all resolved now. I just need to collect my belongings. Things got slightly out of hand. It was six of one and half a dozen of the other.’
‘So what did happen?’ Octavia said.
‘Same old, same old.’ A sudden weariness engulfed me. I was tired of talking about what had happened, of thinking about it.
Octavia was shaking her head. ‘Hardly same old. You’ve never been arrested before.’
‘Same old, but one step further. Scott was furious because I’d let Alicia wear an off-the-shoulder T-shirt to go to the cinema. It wasn’t a sexy thing, just an ordinary T-shirt. He thought it was too tarty.’
‘So?’
My stomach clenched as I remembered Scott shouting in my face, his Sydneysider accent becoming more pronounced.
‘The Australian side of the business isn’t going well and he’s been a fight waiting to happen recently. I carried on cooking dinner, refusing to get dragged in. He wouldn’t let it drop, kept on and on, right at me, how I’m so self-obsessed I can’t see that my daughter is turning into a little floozy, and I’ll be lucky if he doesn’t disappear back to Australia with her, the usual stuff. I tried to push him away but he was standing there, holding me back with one arm and laughing.’ I paused to stop the sob leaking out into my voice. ‘Then he said it was probably a good job that we hadn’t had any more kids as I was such a hopeless mother and I just lost control.’
A look of disgust flashed over Octavia’s face. ‘Vicious bastard.’ She squeezed my hand. She was one of the few people who understood how much my two miscarriages still hurt, over a decade later.
‘I picked up the frying pan and cracked it into the side of his head. The edge caught his forehead and it poured with blood. You know me, I was lucky not to faint. I shouldn’t have done it. Though if I’d known he was going to send me here, I’d have cracked it a bit harder.’
Octavia flickered out a smile at that. ‘Whoo-bloody-hoo. Poor little Scott got a bit of a bang on the head, bless his little cottons. Presumably he didn’t bleed to death and stain the limestone?’ As the words left Octavia’s mouth, I saw her lips twitch. I started to giggle too, a spirally sort of laughter that made a good alternative to crying.
Octavia grew serious again. ‘So how did you end up here?’
‘He phoned the police. Said I’d assaulted him. So Watermill Drive had the glorious spectacle of blue lights flashing outside our house and me being escorted away in handcuffs. No doubt the Surrey grapevine is quivering as we speak.’
‘He called the cops on you? Did they not look at the fact that he’s about fifteen stone with arms like hams and you are, what? About eight stone? Bloody hell. I suppose they don’t count all the times he’s locked you out or sworn in your face? Talk about a piss-up in a brewery. No such thing as common sense in British policing, then.’
Octavia’s shoulders went back. For one horrible moment, I thought she was going to march off and start grabbing a few ties over the reception desk. I was poised, ready to grip her arm. Luckily, they were busy dealing with a drunk who was complaining that his bike had been stolen and collapsing into hysterics every time he tried to spell his name.
I attempted to answer her. ‘Scott’s behaviour has never been serious enough to report. And I shouldn’t have hit him.’
‘He bloody deserved it. Anyway, it doesn’t take a brain box to work out that he could probably stand up for himself. What was it? A scratch? I’ve got a plaster in my bag. Perhaps I’ll pop over there and put some ice on his little head while I’m at it. Maybe he’ll piss off back to Sydney and do us all a favour.’
‘Don’t. His mother arrives tomorrow for Christmas.’ I looked at the floor.
Octavia stared. ‘Tomorrow? Make her stay in a hotel. You can’t go home as if nothing has happened after this.’
‘I have to. It’s Christmas and I am not ruining it for Alicia. When it’s over, I’ll work out what I’m going to do. If anything.’
Octavia was shaking her head. ‘You can’t stay with him now. You just can’t.’ It was astonishing how much disapproval I’d managed to engender in my life.
I shrugged. ‘It’s not as though I’ve got a proper criminal record. It’s just a caution.’
‘A caution? What for?’
‘Actual bodily harm.’
‘Actual bodily harm? For a scratch and a bit of a bruise? That’s bloody ridiculous. What an arsehole.’
‘I shouldn’t have allowed him to antagonise me. I’m sure he didn’t mean what he said about the babies. You know how devastated he was at the time. And a caution doesn’t mean anything unless I want to work in a school. Which obviously I don’t.’ I tried to smile. I loved my own daughter but had nothing like Octavia’s natural affinity with kids.
‘Could you have refused to accept the caution?’
‘Yes, but if he didn’t drop the charge, then it would have gone to court.’
‘Scott wouldn’t have done that, surely? Maybe he liked the idea of you sweating in a cell for a bit. He should have married some brainless drip, who never stands up to him. What would all his beefy business mates say if they found out his missus had clouted him one with a frying pan? He’d be a laughing stock.’
Octavia knew that Scott had a quick temper but I’d been economical with how often and how ferociously we’d argued. She simply wouldn’t get it. She’d always seen marriage as a pie chart of household chores, parenting and work, with the tiniest sliver of romance and passion. The rollercoaster ride of love and anguish that I’d experienced with Scott was alien to her, though we’d never plumbed these depths before.
Octavia had her hands on her hips, waiting for me to explain.
‘Scott made a statement. He said he would definitely press charges, so the solicitor advised me to admit “the offence”, as he called it, and agree to the caution. I just wanted to get out of here.’
Shock washed across Octavia’s face. She spoke in a low voice. ‘Robbie. Where is all of this going to end? Are you going to stay with him until he’s sucked every last bit of joy out of your life? Perhaps next time he’ll get you sent to prison. You can’t go on like this.’
‘I know that.’
Octavia was expecting me to be like her. Make a decision, there and then, pack suitcases and be gone. I owed it to Alicia to get through Christmas, at least one more time. It was a massive leap from accepting that I couldn’t live like this to separating from Scott permanently. If he went back to Australia, I’d probably never see him again. My growing- up history, the bedrock of my adult life, would be wiped out at a stroke.
There would be plenty of people celebrating that.
‘Do your mum and dad know you’re here?’ Octavia asked.
‘No. I decided I didn’t need to burden them with this latest escapade. I think I’ve probably heard enough “Oh darling!” to last a lifetime.’
‘You wouldn’t consider going to stay with them for a few days?’ Octavia asked.
‘Definitely not.’ There wouldn’t be enough room in Surrey to accommodate such a vast quantity of ‘I told you so’s.
‘Come and stay at mine, then. Bring Alicia. I’ll put Immi in with Polly. You can have her room,’ Octavia said.
‘I won’t, but thank you. Alicia’s been looking forward to spending Christmas with her grandmother for months and I’m not going to disappoint her. Scott probably didn’t mean to push it this far. It’s a cultural thing. You know how he feels about people respecting him. I suppose smacking him over the head with a frying pan wasn’t quite the adulation he thought he deserved. I imagine he’ll be grovelling apologies when I get home.’
Octavia rolled her eyes. ‘Respect. He doesn’t know the meaning of the word. Whatever he says now doesn’t take away from the fact that he’s downright bloody cruel. Are you really going to go home and act like nothing’s happened? Cup of tea, darling? Polish your shoes?’ She was throwing her hands up in frustration. ‘Blow job?’
Black. Or white. That was Octavia. I usually envied her decisiveness. And I loved her for her loyalty. But right now, I wasn’t in the mood for a lecture on the absurdity of my life. I could see her point. I didn’t know how I was going to go home and put my Happy Christmas face on.
But going home I was.
Octavia (#ubd8e30cc-5ea7-5a8b-81b1-a8ca67489f11)
I sat on the bench watching Roberta sign for her stuff. I was reeling from the idea that my friend, my funny, gorgeous friend, now had a police record. I had no doubt that a week from now she’d be blaming herself and make out that Scott landing her in the clink was no big deal, simply the inevitable downside of a passionate relationship. God knows why a woman like her put up with a man like him. This was the girl who got a new boater and lacrosse stick every year while us scholarship girls were fannying about in grey gym kit and blazers several sizes too big. The girl who carried off her posh name with such ease, whereas I still cursed my working-class parents for landing me with the cumbersome ‘Octavia’ in the hope that I’d be ‘someone’, someone who’d require a name that stood out. Roberta was the girl who never had to sit out at school dances, who should have glided into the perfect life, bubble-wrapped from care, struggle and worry. But she could never pick the easy option.
I watched her talking to DC Smithfield and another policeman. The faint sense of guilt I always felt surfaced again. At heart Roberta was a goody-goody, all dainty teacups, poncey art exhibitions and god-awful obscure authors. But she’d been desperate to be my friend at school, joining me on my shoplifting jaunts, though never stealing herself, hanging out with me while I smoked my dad’s fags at the park, helping me pierce my ears with a needle we’d sterilised in some hot Ribena. The fact that my dragon tattoo was on my arse rather than my shoulder was down to Roberta taking charge in the tattoo parlour.
If she hadn’t met me, she’d probably think that taking back her library books late was a walk on the wild side. I’d introduced her to the joys of rebellion and that had led her straight into the arms of Scott, the biggest rebellion of all. I wondered, not for the first time, if I could have done more to stop her marrying him. On the few occasions I’d broached the subject, she’d made it quite clear that if we were to stay friends it was a case of ‘Love me, love my feckless, repugnant choice of husband’.
I looked at my watch. Nearly three o’clock. I was going to be knackered for open day at work the next morning. I needed to be firing on all cylinders to convince sceptical parents that my outdoor nursery with its dens and mud kitchens would inspire their toddlers far more than plastic saucepans and dolls’ prams. Bed would be good right now. The dark-haired police officer was emptying a plastic bag and passing things to Roberta. I strained my ears to hear what he was saying and managed to catch, ‘Is there somewhere you can stay for the time being until you get things sorted out?’
I wondered if he’d be so bothered about a chubby, brown-haired woman with the beginnings of a double chin and no ankles – just feet stuck onto legs.
Roberta flicked her long black hair over her shoulder. The gesture was familiar. I knew she’d be dropping her head and raising her eyes, those dark brown eyes that whistled men to her. She had no idea how attractive she was. Yet another thing Scott had squashed out of her.
‘I’ll be fine, don’t worry. My friend is going to take me home,’ Roberta said.
He handed Roberta a leaflet. ‘Don’t forget about the domestic abuse helpline. You don’t have to put up with it, but we can’t help you unless you report it.’
The words ‘domestic abuse’ shocked me. We’d both dismissed Scott’s outbursts as him ‘having a short fuse’. Roberta’s catchphrase was, ‘You know what he’s like.’ But the policeman was right.
I walked up to the desk and tried again. ‘Please come back with me. You can text Alicia from mine.’
‘No, it’s OK. I’d better get home and check on her.’
I glanced at the police officer. I wanted him to forbid her to go back. For him to have the argument with her so that I didn’t have to. His eyes flicked to Roberta, then to me, in a way that was more than just a casual taking-in of scenery. The pressure had somehow switched to me to prove I could make Roberta see sense. I couldn’t bring myself to disappoint the Plod. ‘Robbie, Alicia will be asleep by now. You can talk to Scott in the morning when everyone’s calm.’
I glanced over at Plod. He was nodding. I looked at him expectantly. It was on the tip of my tongue to say, ‘Come on, mate, you get your shoulder behind the elephant and give it a shove uphill. I’ve been pushing for over a decade now, so a bit of a hand any time soon would be a right old bonus.’
Roberta had that set face on. She managed to look tear-stained, fragile and defiant. I was quite sure that I would have looked like a lump of defeated corned beef had the tables been reversed.
Plod finally waded in with a feeble, ‘It’s sometimes better to let the dust settle, Mrs Green. Why don’t you go with your friend?’
Roberta smiled warmly and thanked him, without actually answering. DC Smithfield led her into a side room to get changed, carrying her boots for her. Everyone wanted to look after Roberta.
Except the bloke she married.
Roberta (#ubd8e30cc-5ea7-5a8b-81b1-a8ca67489f11)
Usually Octavia kept a very tight silence when I tried to explain away Scott’s bad behaviour. Now, as she drove me home, she’d abandoned all pretence, adopting my mother’s helpful stance of ‘But what about …?’ as though that particular set of soul-sapping doubts would never have occurred to me.
I turned away from Octavia and watched the trees flash past in the dark. I knew he could be a bastard. I didn’t need telling.
‘You can still change your mind and come to mine,’ Octavia said, without taking her eyes off the road. The immense effort she was making not to overrule me engulfed us, killing all conversation.
Octavia was so generous but I knew what Jonathan would be like. He’d pretend to be happy about me staying, then walk into the kitchen with a little too much purpose, radiating huffiness like a cat ejected from the warm spot in front of the fire. He’d snatch up my coffee cup before I’d finished and pass me my handbag every time I put it down somewhere. In this fragile frame of mind, I knew I’d also struggle with the chaos of Octavia’s household in the morning. The children would be wandering about spilling Coco Pops everywhere, while Jonathan followed them around with a dustpan and brush. I never understood how Octavia could stand the children screaming with laughter, Charlie on his drum kit, often with Stan, their huge Alsatian, barking away, far too big for their little house. And that was without the TV on in the sitting room and kitchen.
I’d trained myself to find one child noisy enough.
No, I didn’t want to go to Octavia’s. I wanted to disappear up to the second floor of my own home and lock myself in the guest suite. Every bit of me yearned to snuggle under a clean duvet, pull down the blackout blinds and blank everyone else out.
Octavia rolled to a halt under the big chestnut tree outside our house. ‘Shall I come in with you?’
‘No. You’ve done enough, thank you. I’m not going to talk to Scott now, even if he’s still awake. Don’t wait. You’re going to be worn out at nursery – go and get a few hours’ sleep.’ I gave her a big hug. Everyone needed someone they could call in the middle of the night.
I pointed the fob at the electric gates, got out of the car and walked up the lonely drive of my life, the cold slicing into my lungs. My key wouldn’t turn in the front door. I stood fiddling with it for a moment, but I knew. Of course, I knew. Scott had dropped the latch.
Bastard.
Octavia’s car still hadn’t moved. Her concern was beginning to smother me. I wanted her to go so I could sift through the debris of my life in peace, even if it meant sleeping in the summerhouse.
I flicked the fob at the garage door and it rolled back. I waved at Octavia, forcing a smile, making shooing motions with my hand. This time I heard the creak of her ancient suspension as the car lumbered into reverse.
I picked my way past the gas barbecue and huge gazebo Scott used for summer parties, in his guise as the neighbourhood Lord of the Manor. The door into the utility room was unlocked. Not a total bastard, then. I put my boots in their little space on the shelf and tiptoed upstairs. The house was still. I prayed that Scott was asleep. The morning would be soon enough for that confrontation. Our door was shut, thank God. I looked in on Alicia, bunched up into a tight ball. I smoothed her hair, tucked the duvet round her and hurried to the top floor.
I could smell the stale air of the police station on my skin. The en suite shower was singing its siren call to me but I didn’t want to wake Scott. Before I did battle with him, I needed some sleep. I stripped off my clothes, then hesitated. I put my underwear back on. Some discussions couldn’t happen naked. I climbed under the duvet, my shoulders and neck releasing tension into the fat, downy pillows. Contrary to my expectations, sleep sucked me down into immediate oblivion.
And Scott catapulted me out of it.
He strolled into the room, clean-shaven, favourite blue shirt, handsome. A more sophisticated version of the spirited surfer boy who’d enchanted me in Venice nearly nineteen years ago. Far too flaming refreshed for someone who should have been lying awake, guilt-ridden and repentant.
‘Hi. What time did you get back?’ He sounded as though I’d been up to London for cocktails with the girls. He put a cup of tea on the nightstand. I was failing to match the affable man in front of me with the vindictiveness of the previous evening.
My head felt as though someone had filled it with stones. My eyes were dry and gritty. It was years since I’d gone to bed without cleansing and moisturising. I was blinking as though I’d been living underground, my mind slowly ordering the events of the previous day.
‘I don’t know what time. About three-thirty, maybe, no thanks to you.’ I was scrabbling for accusations and anger. I had expected to fly at him, grab him by the perfectly ironed collar of his shirt and shake an explanation out of him. Instead, I was like the split beanbag in Alicia’s den, a million little polystyrene balls littering the floor, leaving an empty casing in a heap. I waited for him to piece together some fragments of the puzzle that had transported me to that pit of a police station.
Instead Scott drew the curtains a fraction, running his finger along the sill. ‘I’ve never understood why this room suffers so much with condensation.’
I hadn’t either, but unlike Scott, that conundrum was number four thousand and twenty-nine on my list of immediate worries. Silence sat in the room. I just wanted him out of there, so I could have a shower and pull myself together. ‘You’re up and about early.’
Scott rarely scheduled any meetings before ten-thirty. ‘Mum’s landing at 11.30. You never know what the traffic’s going to be like round Heathrow.’
I started. Adele! I had to get up, get going. The cleaner had changed her bed, but I needed to sort out some toiletries, towels, pop out for some flowers. I wanted to check that Alicia was OK before Adele swept in, taking over with her incessant chatter.
Scott standing there so nonchalant filled me with fury, giving life to my limbs. I felt as though I might leap out of bed and start snatching pictures off the wall to crash over his head. My throat had tightened so much, I wasn’t sure I could force enough air through it to produce speech.
‘Just so you know, I’m staying for Christmas. For Alicia’s sake. Over the next few days, I am going to forget what you did to me and do my best to carry on as normal. But when your mum has left, we need to have a serious talk.’ My jaw was so tense, I could feel my wisdom teeth grinding together.
I expected him to bristle and start off down the ‘Don’t threaten me’ route. He shrugged a brief acknowledgement. I waited for an apology or an excuse. Something that indicated that he understood I wouldn’t just brush this under the carpet along with all the other hurts that had gnawed away at the great monolith of love we’d started out with. This time he’d pushed me too far. Instead he said, ‘After you left yesterday, I took that quiche you were making out of the oven and put it in the fridge. Wrapped it in silver foil. Hope that was OK.’
Quiche. My God. I’d been in a cell half the night and we were talking about quiche. We’d be auditioning for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest next. It was like being trapped in a reality show where the participants were selected on their ability to behave like lunatics. I could easily have obliged, launching myself at him, pummelling his chest and clawing his face with sheer frustration that all the love that we’d treasured, fought for and defended, lay shattered around us, with barely enough strength to plead for one last chance.
Scott walked towards the bed as though he was going to kiss me goodbye.
Before I could react, he stopped a couple of feet away and waved. ‘I’ll be off then. See you later.’
Either he’d read my face or he saw that there was something of the great unwashed about me. Scott was a man who liked his women fragrant, plucked and waxed. I didn’t know whether I could go back to being that person now. I tried to imagine going downstairs, packing my stuff and walking out of the door.
The problem was I couldn’t conjure up any images in the black beyond.
Octavia (#ubd8e30cc-5ea7-5a8b-81b1-a8ca67489f11)
There weren’t many days when I regretted setting up my holistic nursery but today, two days before Christmas, was one of them. My eco-ethos meant I couldn’t fob off the kids with sticking a bit of glitter on a few polystyrene stars. Instead, we’d done a full-scale expedition down to the woods to gather ‘material’ for decorations. This had led to a couple of four-year-olds getting covered in dog poo, a little girl collecting rabbit droppings to use as food for Rudolph and another boy sitting in a puddle pretending he was a duck. The morning had ended up being less about decorations and more about turd control.
By the time I’d picked the girls up from my mother’s and popped into the supermarket on the way home, I was officially knackered. My heart lifted as I squeezed the car in next to Jonathan’s Rover. His company had obviously found a little Christmas cheer and let them go early. He could help me lug in the shopping. I’d fought my way round Tesco trying not to barge into people who’d left it until the twenty-third of December to decide they needed a Christmas pud. I’d got all the basics in place but I liked my vegetables fresh. Immi and Polly had bickered from start to finish: the illogical mind of an eight-year-old pitched against the pedantic tendencies of the ten-year-old. They were still having a ding-dong over who was having the chocolate Santa on the Christmas tree. With the last pinch of patience I could muster, I told them to ring the doorbell to ask Daddy to come and help. Charlie eventually came to answer, bringing with him the distinct smell of an unshowered teenager who’s been glued to a screen all day.
‘Where’s Dad?’
‘He’s in bed.’
