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I wish I had an easy way out of my life too.
I guess I do.
I’ve already gone through all my options on that score and I’ve made my decision but it isn’t a very thrilling one. I’m going to have to tell someone soon because keeping it all to myself is killing me. Ha ha.
It has to be someone who won’t say anything, though, or my plans will be ruined. I have to tell Mum, of course, but I want to tell someone else as well. I don’t know if I can trust Surinda. I want Krok.
SugarShuli says: I wish you could be happy for me.
ShelleyPixie says: Don’t think I’m not. Once you’re married you’re stuck with him, though, aren’t you, Surinda? I mean, with your family being the way it is, you won’t have the option of a quickie divorce if things don’t work out.
SugarShuli says: I’m content, girl. I couldn’t be happier. I see your Kieran boy was in the papers this morning?
She means Krok. Kieran is his real name.
ShelleyPixie says: Was he? What for?
SugarShuli says: He must have got them places he was after. They were doing a piece about how today’s youth have such high expectations and it’s all because of the hype surrounding game shows. They all had to say what they hoped to gain if they won. Kieran’s bit got the biggest coverage—they said because he’d tragically lost his parents and here was a lad who wanted to do something positive in their memory, but I think really they’re targeting him because he’s so photo…photoginetic.
ShelleyPixie says: Photogenic?
SugarShuli says: ’God damn gorgeous, girl! Anyway, he’s on tonight’s show.
Christ, is that what he’s been up to? I didn’t know. He hasn’t even bothered to let me know…I feel like not even watching it now. Plus, now there’s the added worry that everybody else is noticing him. I don’t want everyone else making a fuss of him. He’s mine.
ShelleyPixie says: Not been talking to Krok lately.
SugarShuli says: He pissed with you?
ShelleyPixie says: Why would he be?
SugarShuli says: Dunno. Maybe because you wont send him a photo? And he hasn’t sent you them tickets.
ShelleyPixie says: NOYB, is it? Anyway, even if we did get tickets—assuming he’s not eliminated in the next few weeks—how would we get there? Mum won’t take us so how would we…
SugarShuli says: Yes she would. Your mum is the best mum in the world. She gives you everything. You’re so lucky. She’d give you the lingerie I’m after if it was you in my place.
ShelleyPixie says: If it were me.
SugarShuli says: That’s what I said, if it was you.
ShelleyPixie says: If it were me, not was me. Anyway, why don’t you ask Jallal if he’s so loaded? It’ll be mainly for his benefit, won’t it?
SugarShuli says: lol. Big brother wants the computer off me—he’s looking for jobs now. Speak to U tomorrow.
ShelleyPixie says: Okay, CU then.
God, she’s so excited. She’s like a jumpy bunny. I’m a cow, I know, but I don’t want to hear all about it really. I wish I had some proper friends I could speak to, like Miriam, not just Surinda. I wish Krok would come back online. Maybe I could phone him and speak to him at the DVD shop? Just the thought of doing that gives me butterflies in my stomach. What if he doesn’t want to take my call? I’d be so embarrassed.
I was thinking about that last night. I looked up his shop but they aren’t listed on the Internet and Mum keeps the telephone directories upstairs so I can’t get to them without her wanting to know why, and I don’t want to tell her so I’m stuck. Unless Surinda does it for me?
ShelleyPixie says: B4U go—could you look up the telephone number for David’s DVDs for me? It’s in Kensington somewhere.
SugarShuli says: Did you think of trying directory enquiries?
ShelleyPixie says: I haven’t got the full address—you might have to hunt for it.
Surinda’s brother works in telesales. He’s got a huge pile of directories beside his bed at home. Surinda told me he keeps his collection of top-shelf magazines hidden underneath them too, but that’s more than anybody wants to know.
SugarShuli says: Give me a little while. If Yusef goes out later I can search for you, otherwise not.
ShelleyPixie says: Thanks for that, Surinda.
She’s not so bad after all. It’s not her fault her life is on the up and mine isn’t. I think I’ll make out a ‘May resolutions list’. I’ve got such little time left. I need to focus on what I want to get done before I go. It’s a pity I won’t make Surinda’s wedding like she thinks. I would have liked to have seen her all decked out in her orange sari.
But I promised myself I wouldn’t do the ‘if-onlys’.
I said I’d never do that.
My ‘May resolutions list’ would look like this:
1 Meet Krok. Okay, I do want to meet him. I want to say hello and goodbye. I want to know if I really would have fallen in love with him. I want to know what that must feel like. I can’t leave earth without doing that.
2 Sort out my stuff. I’ll make a list. Danny gets my computer. Surinda can have the emerald ring that belonged to my dad’s mum. That can be my wedding present to her.
3 Be independent. Find out who I am. Do something brave.
I reckon I can do those things before my birthday at the end of May. I can if I put my mind to it.
9 Rachel (#ulink_87866a5e-ace5-5e90-aa72-3c89a323daed)
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?’
