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Chapter 7
The plane sat at the top of the runway awaiting clearance from air traffic control. Permission granted, it thundered down the runway and into the air. After watching Edinburgh shrink to ‘Toytown’ proportions then disappear into the distance from her window seat, Laura sat back and felt guilty. She knew she’d be back in a week or two but the pain she suddenly felt at leaving her daughters behind hit her like an unexpected punch in the gut. She stifled a sob, glad she had a row of seats to herself. A few minutes later Lilly, one of two BA cabin crew on the one-hour-thirty-minute flight to Heathrow, poured her a large glass of white wine, which helped numb the pain somewhat.
Her guilt extended to Nathan as well. Deep down she knew he’d be fine. He had the girls to keep him busy and eventually he’d come to realise it would be the best solution for everyone. He’d pleaded with her not to leave with tears in his eyes and she’d almost caved, before remembering that in the whole of her adult life she’d never had the chance to be by herself.
Getting pregnant at nineteen had robbed her of the years her friends had enjoyed partying, experimenting, travelling and learning who they were. She’d never figured out how to be comfortable in her own skin or to set her own life expectations. Nathan had denied her all of this and she’d always be bitter and resentful about that, even though deep down she knew she’d been partly responsible. She felt justified in shifting most of the blame onto him as he’d been the older out of the two of them when they’d met and should have known better, even though over the years she’d come to realise that Nathan had never really grown up – perhaps men in general never did, never had to.
She sipped her drink and tried to put the negative thoughts to the back of her mind. She settled back into her seat, loosened the seat belt and tried to relax, telling herself that for the first time in years she’d broken free from the shackles of motherhood, free from Nathan and free from the fractious nature of their relationship. The problem seemed to be, though, as soon as she reminded herself about her husband it inevitably brought the girls back into focus and she ended up trying to analyse it again. Yes, she’d loved Nathan once – back in the days when he’d had fire in his belly and ambition in his heart.
When the girls had been born, though, it felt as if each one of them had robbed him of a little bit of that fire. After Daisy had appeared it had all gone – no ambition and no get up and go. It appeared as if his mission in life had been fulfilled with the birth of his daughters and now he channelled all his efforts into them. Helping Millie with her school project work, dancing competitions and drama, spending countless hours with Chloe to make sure her reading and writing were perfect and even devoting time to Daisy’s scribbled drawings and silly songs.
In Laura’s mind it wasn’t normal for a father to do all that. Maybe she had old-fashioned views, but she expected her husband to be a provider, a hunter who went out into the world and made a niche for himself that allowed him to bring home money, so she could kick back and take it a little easier, possibly do some of the things that Nathan took it upon himself to do. To be the care-giver, the mother, the educator, even though she much preferred being at work verbally jousting with adults across a boardroom table to arguing over who had the pink pram first and whose turn it was to choose which DVD to watch.
Now that she’d broken free, at least for a week or two, she could make some decisions. Belatedly decide where she wanted her life to lead, where she would live and maybe one day who she would live it with. Turning her musings to her new life cheered her up. It would be exciting and scary. She’d rented a small flat in Putney, south of the river and only a short journey from her new office in Fulham. Even though it had only one bedroom the rent came to nearly £1200 a month. The flat would be cramped whenever the girls came to stay but they’d manage. It would be like camping, at least that’s how she’d try and sell it to them. She’d arranged everything online and hadn’t yet, set foot in the apartment. That afternoon she’d pick up the keys at the letting agency and sign the last of the paperwork.
The expectations of her bosses would be higher too, now that she’d relocated to the head office, but she looked forward to having that pressure. It would mean long hours and hard work but all of it had to be easier than being a mum.
The plane bumped down onto the tarmac at Heathrow and she noticed with dismay the rain lashing against the windows and the strong wind making the water ripple across the ground. Great, she thought.
She spent an hour and a half travelling across London, dragging two suitcases and a laptop bag. Thankfully the evening rush hour hadn’t started yet, which made the Underground bearable. She emerged from Putney Bridge Tube station and discovered the rain still hammering down with very little shelter nearby. Even though the letting agent’s office could only be a five-minute walk, she hailed a taxi. She had too much baggage, both physically and metaphorically at that point, to travel any distance on foot in this weather. Even the short time it took to clamber into a taxi left her soaked. As the water dripped down her face it hid the tears that she tried to stop spilling from her eyes as they made their way along Fulham High Street onto Fulham Palace Road, where the taxi sloshed to a stop outside the pokey letting agent’s office.
She pulled herself together, paid the driver and entered the agency. Inside an older man with Greek or Turkish heritage greeted her. He reeked of stale cigarettes and stared at her cleavage the whole uncomfortable ten minutes it took to complete the last of the paperwork.
‘Will you be living alone, Mrs Jones?’ he asked creepily in a heavily accented voice.
‘No, my husband will be here later. He had some business to attend to in the City.’ She lied, allowing a small smile to creep across her face at the thought of Nathan having anything to do in the City apart from maybe drink coffee.
Laura detected an expression of disappointment flick across the man’s face as he handed her two sets of keys. She almost fled from his presence and then hailed another taxi. Ten minutes later it deposited her outside a large brown sandstone building. She stood on the pavement staring at her new home. Guarding the main entrance were two wilting New Zealand palms that looked as miserable as she felt.
She entered the communal hallway, which smelled old and mildewed, and trudged up the four flights of stairs (no lift) to the fourth floor where her new home awaited.
Four numbered doors, 11–14, confronted her on the landing. Her flat, number 14, had a grey door and as she inserted the key and pushed the door open it bounced back, locking itself again. She opened it more carefully this time and discovered a badly built inner wall that stopped the door from opening fully.
She struggled inside with her cases and eventually managed to squeeze the front door shut. She left her bags where they lay on the floor and toured her new home for the first time. It didn’t take long. A small living room and kitchen, an even smaller bedroom with a double bed and a tiny built-in wardrobe. The mattress on the bed displayed some suspicious-looking stains and she decided she wouldn’t be sleeping on that for long.
The bathroom, just off the bedroom, only had a shower cubicle so no soaks in the tub after a long day for her. She sighed and sat on the edge of the stained bed. The whole place smelt stale and unloved, which pretty much described how she felt as well. This time she let the tears come and they flowed down her face as her body shuddered with huge sobs. She’d never felt so lonely and so alone.
Chapter 8
Nathan should have been ready for the tears and the bad behaviour from his girls on the day their mother left but how did you prepare for something like that? He didn’t know. His own emotions were raw, which made dealing with his daughters’ feelings even harder.
Millie withdrew to her room and cut all the hair off two of her Bratz dolls. Chloe demanded to watch a documentary about elephants. Nathan searched all the channels and the various on-demand options, finding programmes about lions, rhinos and even hippos but nothing on elephants. Chloe cried and flung herself to the ground like a two-year-old. Daisy sat and played with her Sylvanian Families, occasionally coming into the kitchen to check that her daddy hadn’t left and to bash him on the head with a large plastic hammer that she’d recently taken a shine to. Then she promptly peed her pants for the first time in nearly a year.
Thankfully the first day represented the peak of their discontentment; next morning everyone had to attend school or nursery and were too busy to worry about much. Finally, left alone, Nathan sulked for a while, partly about Laura leaving and partly about the ridiculous amount of work he had to do in getting everyone ready and out of the door in time for everything.
Laura had been right about that – he really hadn’t known what it involved. By the end of the week he’d managed to get into a sort of routine, only interrupted by the evening call that Laura made to speak to the girls. This went reasonably smoothly for the first few weeks, then one Friday Laura announced to Nathan, ‘Next weekend I want to bring the girls down here for a few days.’
‘That’s a hassle, Laura. They’ll hardly get there, and they’ll have to turn around and come back.’
‘Not really; it’s only an hour on the plane and they’ve got an in-service day at the school on the Monday, so they don’t need to be back until Monday night so that gives me an extra day with them.’
‘How—?’
Laura interrupted him. ‘My mum’s going to bring them down; all you need to do is drop them all at the airport for 3 p.m.’
‘You’ve worked it all out, huh?’
‘I’m organised, Nathan.’
‘You said your flat’s tiny.’
‘It is, but we’ll manage as it’s only for three nights.’
Nathan had detected a hint of regret in Laura’s voice on the phone each evening. Perhaps having the girls over a weekend would be a good thing and she might realise how much she missed both them and him. Well, them, at any rate.
Nathan hadn’t imagined Laura would completely abandon her kids, but he’d expected her to fly up and down at the weekends, not drag them all down there. So far, she’d only made it home once since leaving, but she said this had been down to having to work extra hard, including weekends, to ‘make her mark’ in the office.
On the following Friday he dutifully drove everyone, including his mother-in-law, to the airport and waited until the flight took off before heading home to an empty house. He hadn’t made any plans to do anything so when his friend Graham phoned and suggested a beer he readily agreed.
Nathan arrived at the pub first, but, it only being five minutes from his house, this wasn’t a surprise. He ordered two pints and went to sit at a table near the back where he could see the TV. Some lower-league football match played out for single lonely males who had nothing better to do on a Friday night. Nathan’s local wouldn’t be described as lively; it lacked the thumping dance music and flashing lights of uptown bars. The muted dark atmosphere attracted a certain clientele, older with less testosterone. During the week some of the patrons were local MSPs from the parliament building nearby.
As it was a Friday most of the MSPs had returned to their constituencies, but Nathan recognised Steven Cowley, a large sweaty man sitting alone at the bar nursing a glass. He’d been all over the news in recent weeks, having been caught having an affair with a young intern. His wife had taken their children and left.
The affair had been revealed on the Channel 5 breakfast show hosted by ex-celebrity chef Lance Donaldson. The show tended to focus on the more salacious news items and frequently wheeled in those in the public eye who’d become embroiled in some scandal or other, though Lance’s team wasn’t averse to using ordinary members of the public if celebrity scandals were thin on the ground.
Nathan didn’t usually take much notice of such things, but this stuck in his mind because the intern had been exceptionally pretty, and he couldn’t understand what a young girl saw in such a fat oaf as Cowley. Power must be a powerful aphrodisiac to attract someone like that to him. Well, he’d paid a high price, as the intern had dumped him in the end, unable to cope with the publicity.
He got pulled from his thoughts by the arrival of Graham, who waved across the bar and made a drinking motion with his hand. Nathan shook his head and pointed at the two drinks already on the table. Graham sat down opposite him.
‘How’s things?’
‘Oh, fair to crap, I suppose.’
‘Laura’s taken them all weekend?’
‘Yeah, the flat’s so quiet.’
‘I wish Alison would take our two and disappear for the odd weekend.’
Graham had two children, Jack and Emma, with his partner Alison. They weren’t married, which didn’t appear to be an issue for either of them.
‘Yeah, but it’d be different if Alison had left you. You wouldn’t be so keen then.’
‘Does that mean you’re going to sit and mope about for three days?’
‘I like moping about.’
‘It’s not good for you.’
‘How would you know? Have you been studying up on the dangers of moping?’
‘It’s not healthy; you need to get out and about, do something new.’
‘Like what?’
‘I don’t know – maybe you should try and find a girlfriend.’
‘What?’
‘A girlfriend. Laura’s not coming back, you know.’
‘How do you know that? You know nothing about it.’
Graham smiled. ‘I know enough about you two to know you’ve been unhappy for years. One of you had to make a move and now that she’s done it, she’s not going to come back.’
‘She might realise how much she misses our life and—’
‘You make each other miserable.’
‘We don’t.’
‘You do. I’ve listened to you for years go on and on about it; so has Alison.’
Nathan sank the rest of his beer in silence, knowing his friend was right but not wanting to admit it in public. Graham went to the bar and came back with more drinks and changed the subject. ‘I’ve got some work coming in over the next few weeks that I can send your way if you’re up for it?’
‘Yeah, of course, I’ve not got a lot on the go right now, so that would be really useful.’
‘Okay, the first one is from one of our farming clients. It’s not a huge account but they need a campaign put together to sell their range of nettle drinks.’
‘Nettle drinks – what, like stinging nettles?’
‘Yeah, they had fields full of nettles, so they decided to harvest them and make them into a range of drinks. Nettles are good for you.’
‘Is that the slogan you want me to use?’
‘Mm, maybe something a bit more imaginative will be needed; the public perception of nettles isn’t great.’
‘What kind of drinks do they make from nettles?’
‘Well, they make nettle-ade, which is I suppose is like lemonade with nettles instead of lemons, and they have nettle iced tea, which is like—’
‘Yeah, okay, I get the picture.’
‘I’ll send you some of it over on Monday, so you can try it.’
‘Have you had some?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Well?’
‘I suppose you’d say it’s an acquired taste.’
‘You mean it’s disgusting.’
‘Yeah, pretty much.’
‘Thanks, mate.’
‘You’re welcome. The other thing I’d like you to look at is in the pet-care line, but I’ll send it over rather than try and describe it.’
‘Pet-care?’
‘Yeah, I’ll talk to you once you’ve seen it.’ Graham smiled. ‘We’re definitely not out on the pull tonight, then?’
Nathan looked around the bar. Besides Steven Cowley still drowning his sorrows there were three blokes in overalls, an old chap with stained brown trousers and a large backpack-wearing tourist worrying the barman with a map and exaggerated gesticulations. ‘Nah, I’m not in the mood. Besides neither of us have pulled anything for more than a decade. I wouldn’t know what to say any more.’
‘Nobody would be interested in you anyway in your current state. You’d scare any woman away with chat about your wife.’
Nathan supposed he might be right, but the image of Kat flashed into his head. Her dark eyes, pretty face and white teeth occasionally appeared in his dreams, but she didn’t deserve to be burdened with his troubles. She probably had enough of her own to be going on with. He downed his drink and headed for the bar.
*
The next morning, he awoke with a mouth that felt, and probably tasted, like the bottom of a budgie’s cage and a head that thumped incessantly. It even hurt to move his eyes. He hadn’t been drunk for a long time and could only vaguely remember getting home. He still had his clothes on from the night before so obviously he’d just fallen into bed.
He very slowly made his way to the kitchen and swallowed two paracetamol and a bottle of water before returning to bed to wait for the painkillers to kick in, thankful for the first, and only, time that weekend that his girls weren’t there.
Later in the afternoon he went for a walk in Holyrood Park to clear his head and ordered Chinese for dinner. He needed some stodge to make him feel better.
After his Friday night excesses, he spent the remainder of the weekend in the flat tidying and getting the girls’ stuff ready for the next week at school. On the Monday, Graham couriered over some of the nettle drinks, which were even more disgusting than he’d imagined. Selling them would be a challenge. The pet-care thing he’d deal with tomorrow.
Later, with the girls back from their first long weekend with their mother, his world descended once more into comfortable chaos. Laura had brought them back late in the evening, tired and irritable, partly due to the lateness of the hour and partly due to the fact they hadn’t slept well over the weekend, crammed into her tiny flat.
Nathan felt annoyed at Laura for bringing them back so late, especially with Millie and Chloe having school the next day. Despite this he bit down his irritation and they worked in partnership once more as they’d done for years. Within an hour all three of their drowsy daughters were tucked up and asleep.
It almost felt like old times as they both collapsed onto the couch and sipped red wine whilst watching the ten o’clock news.
‘I don’t think I’ll do that again in a hurry; my flat’s too small. I’ll try and get a bigger place soon.’
Nathan didn’t reply as all he’d have said was, ‘There’s a big flat here you could stay in,’ and the argument would have started up all over again. Apart from that, it felt reasonably normal – that was if he ignored the fact that, although Laura would be sleeping beside him in their bed, they’d be miles apart mentally, then tomorrow after she’d helped get the girls ready she’d be out of the door, leaving for London on a lunchtime flight. Then none of them would see her for weeks. It was an arrangement that suited only her.
*
Nathan awoke to an empty bed, which he’d grown used to by now. He could hear the shower in the en suite bathroom and glanced at the clock beside the bed: 6.12 a.m., an early start even by her standards. He rolled over, clutched her pillow and breathed in the familiar scent. He sighed and closed his eyes. A few minutes later his wife appeared wrapped in a big fluffy bath towel. She even managed a smile as she caught him staring at her legs. She walked over to their wardrobe, which still contained many of her clothes due to the lack of space in her London pad. She dropped the towel and quickly pulled on a pink G-string and matching bra. Nathan watched in rapt appreciation; he could feel himself becoming aroused simply by the sight of his wife putting on her clothes. He knew he could do nothing about it and it was a relief for both of them when he pulled a towel from the ottoman at the foot of the bed and went for a shower, possibly a cold one.
After a mad breakfast and the usual morning chaos only Nathan, Laura and Daisy remained in the flat.
‘I’ll drop Daisy off on my way to the airport if you want?’ offered Laura. ‘Spares you going out and means you can get some work done, and it would be nice to spend a little bit of extra time with her before I go.’
Nathan thought but didn’t say, You could spend as much time with her as you want if you only decided to live with her. Instead he said, ‘Yeah, okay. Thanks,’ and wandered into his study and shut the door. Having her home, even for an evening, had been hard on him. He knew that she’d left him but somehow this coming and going made life difficult; it meant he couldn’t ever get any perspective on his feelings. He imagined it might be like that for lots of couples with kids who split up.
An hour later she came into his study and sat on the only other chair in the room beside his desk. Nathan noticed she’d dressed impeccably in a new Paul Smith black V-necked dress with black Kurt Geiger Chelsea boots that she’d proudly shown him the previous evening. He’d commented that she worked in Fulham so she’d better be careful wearing Chelsea boots. It had made her laugh and his heart had ached when she’d smiled at him.
He noticed her make-up had been perfectly applied and her hair, which had been straightened and tumbled down over her shoulders, no longer had any traces of grey in it. Even that pained him as she’d not bothered to do that when she’d been living with him. It felt as if every action she took had been carefully designed to hurt him. She’d also changed her perfume to a subtler product that reminded him of apple blossom.
*
Laura noted his pained expression; she’d expected it. She knew her coming back to the flat to stay would be hard on him. It felt uncomfortable for her too. She found it difficult to stay angry when she didn’t see him every day. Maybe the old saying about familiarity breeding contempt had more than a ring of truth to it. She missed her daughters much more than she’d expected, but she’d come to realise that she could never come home. Nathan would drive her bonkers, especially now when she had other distractions in her life. She forced a smile. ‘Right, then, that’s me off. I’ll drop Daisy at nursery; don’t forget to get her at three o’clock.’
‘I haven’t forgotten any day when you’ve not been here so I’m not going to start now.’
‘Yeah, sorry.’
He sighed. ‘Laura, can we not try again? All this coming and going is silly. We could sell up, buy a new bigger place and start afresh.’
‘We’ve been over this – all we would do is take our problems with us. It’s not like we can pack them in a box and leave them in a cupboard somewhere. Anyway, we couldn’t afford to move; you hardly make enough to cover the mortgage as it is with your fannying about on the internet.’
‘I don’t fanny about. I run a top-end advertising consultancy.’
‘Any time I’ve ever come in here, you’re on some football website.’
‘I only do that whilst waiting for inspiration and sometimes it’s just research.’
‘You must do an awful lot of waiting for inspiration, then. Also, how many football accounts are you working on?’ she asked with a laugh.
*
Nathan sighed. He found it hard to be mad at Laura when she knew him so well. He wondered if he would ever have that again with someone, that intimate ‘knowing’ that took so long to establish.
‘What are you working on just now?’
He opened a drawer in his desk and pulled out a small plastic photo frame and handed it to Laura. On the bottom of the frame a tiny fan whirled around.
‘Is it a photo frame that keeps you cool?’
‘That would probably be easier to sell.’
‘What is it, then?’
‘It’s a fish comforter.’
‘A what?’
‘Yeah, that’s what I said when they sent it to me. Basically, there’s a small battery inside that powers the fan, which is actually a propeller.’