Miss You

TWENTY-TWO Tess

Anne was all for organizing a meal in a posh restaurant with a tasting menu; I thought Hope would be happier with Pizza Express, but it was Dad who came up with the perfect suggestion. “It’s Hope’s eighteenth. What do you do when you’re eighteen? You go to the pub!”

We were on the point of objecting when he added, “And Thursday’s karaoke night!”

So we booked a table for an early supper because they did a carvery, and there was also a salad wagon, depending on how hungry you were. Then Hope said, “Can Martin come?”

Hope now worked full-time at Martin’s Music. After her work experience, he had asked her to come in on Saturdays, paying her minimum wage, because, as she told me proudly, “I’m useful, Tree.”

So it seemed like a natural extension when he’d offered her a full-time job after she left school at sixteen.

When customers came in, Hope was marginally less rude than Martin was, and the arrangement allowed him to take on more of the lucrative instrument repair work, so it suited them both.

Pushing open the heavy door of the pub, I felt a kind of draught, as if someone else had come in behind me. I turned round.

Mum was wearing the navy dress and jacket she wore for weddings.

“Oh my God! You’re here!” I cried.

“I wouldn’t miss this for the world, would I?” she said, smiling at me.

I woke up, the fizz of elation suddenly flat in the chilly morning air. I lay with my eyes closed, trying to summon back the feeling of her presence, telling her, “Hope’s eighteen, Mum. And she’s fine, you know. You’d be so proud of her!”

I wanted to add, “...and of me!”

But as a single tear rolled a ribbon of coolness down my cheek, I wasn’t so sure about that bit.

They gave us a rectangular table for six, so it was Dad and Anne, Martin and Hope and me opposite an empty chair. For Mum, I thought, still disoriented from seeing her so clearly that morning.

I felt like a maiden aunt, sitting at the end of the table, but at least I was out of range of Anne’s be-ringed fingers gripping my arm and her Silk Cut breath reassuring me, as she often did, that it was never too late for love, and “The One” could come along at any time.

None of them knew that I was in love. Just recently, though, I’d occasionally caught myself wondering if it was only a pretend relationship, the dilapidated hut a kind of grown-up play house where we role-played being a proper couple. Instead of a kitchen we had a single gas burner; instead of a bedroom we had an old mattress; instead of watching telly together we read musty-smelling orange Penguins, their pages brown with age, and I fussed around, making mugs of tea and anxiously hoping to inspire Leo. Did we fool the City couple, Marcus and Keiko, in the converted hut next door, all glass and ceramic floors, who came down from London for weekends with their cute half-English, half-Japanese children? Was it obvious that I was Leo’s mistress?

I’d been so swept up in the romantic impossibility of our love, believing our time together more piquant than other couples’, that the question of why it had to be like this hadn’t really occurred to me before. Now that Hope was growing up and Leo’s kids had left home—one was doing a Masters at Stanford University in California, one was earning a fortune as City actuary, a job that Leo claimed to despise, but often boasted about to Marcus—why shouldn’t we begin to think about our future, or at least do something together like a normal couple?

I’d floated the idea of going to Glastonbury.

There would be bands from all eras...

“And mud,” Leo said.

“But don’t you think it would be just amazing to experience the energy in that huge sea of people?”

“Sweet Tess! How do you manage to stay so relentlessly optimistic?”

These days, his compliments increasingly transformed to critique if I dwelled on them.

And yet there was always a tantalizing promise that things would be different one day.

Like last time, after sex, when Leo had asked me, “Shall we elope to a finca in Spain, Tess? Shall we lunch in the shade of an olive tree and drink good wine and grow oranges and fuck like there’s no tomorrow?”

“Or Italy?” I’d suggested, unsure what a finca was. “I’ve always wanted to go back.”

He gave me such an amused look I felt like a fool for failing to understand that the offer was only another of his metaphors, as insubstantial as a wish.

And yet, I told myself, even a metaphor must mean that at some level he wanted it too?

Martin was talking to me. Not talking, exactly, more making an announcement.

“Hope wants to have singing lessons,” he said. “Now she’s eighteen, she can do what she likes.”

“Good idea!” I agreed.

“You can’t stop me!” Hope chimed in. “I’m eighteen!”

With everyone at the table looking at me, I wondered how long I’d been in Leo world and whether I’d missed something.

“I’ve never tried to stop you!” I laughed.

“You wouldn’t allow her to have music lessons,” Martin pressed.

“Hang on,” I protested. “I’ve never stopped Hope doing anything!”

Wasn’t I the one who’d bought her the keyboard? Wasn’t I the one who’d listened to her singing all these years?

“You said lessons are too expensive,” said Hope.

“Well, yes, that was piano lessons and it was a long time ago, wasn’t it? Nobody said anything about singing.”

“Martin did.”

“Yes, but...” I’d thought it was just him being nice.

I looked to Dad and Anne for support.

“You should have said,” Anne now joined in. “You only had to ask.”

Dad appeared poised to come to my rescue, when Martin added, “What about the church choir? Hope says you wouldn’t let her go...”

“Now, she has a point there, Tess,” said Dad. “Weren’t you always dead set against her going to church?”

Inside I was screaming, How dare you? Didn’t I do enough?

I remembered telling Mum she should stick up for herself more, and now I was staying silent just like she always did. Trouble was, I couldn’t think of a way without it sounding like Hope was a burden, and I didn’t want to do that and I expect that’s why Mum didn’t either.

My eyes blurred as I stared down at the grey slices of lamb and the bullets of roast potato in the puddle of gravy on my plate. Mum always said that we mustn’t cry on birthdays because it would bring bad luck.

“I’ve got a bit of a headache,” I said quietly, pushing back my chair. “I think I’ll leave you to it.”

None of them said, “Don’t be silly!” or “Of course you can’t go!”

In fact, as I glanced back at them from the door, Dad picked up the menu and asked, “Now, Hope, will it be the black cherry cheesecake or the banoffee pie?”

I stood on the street just outside the pub door for a few minutes, wondering whether I was being over-sensitive and should go back in. I was half-waiting for one of them to come out and get me. When it was clear that wasn’t going to happen, I started walking towards the seafront in a bit of a daze. I didn’t feel like going back to a house all decorated with bunting and balloons; I couldn’t call Leo because he was attending a graduation ceremony with his wife, and he’d hardly welcome his phone going off in Canterbury Cathedral.

I stood, staring down the coast, the dark outline of the land against the pale apricot light of dusk, the sea breeze making my tears taste even saltier.

All this time, when I thought I was the one making the sacrifices, had I really been preventing Hope from doing the things she wanted? Had I expected too little of her and stopped her from becoming the person she wanted to be? I was so shocked by what Hope had said, I couldn’t even be sure whether Mum would have had any comfort to offer me. I think I felt more desolate than at any time since she died.

There was only one person in the world who I knew would be able to tell me, one person who’d been there from the start. I found myself dialing a number I hadn’t used in a long time.

The phone was answered on the first ring, giving me no time to rethink.

“It’s Tess,” I said. “Can I talk to you?”

“Where are you?” Doll asked, instantly recognizing the despair in my voice. “Stay there, Tess! Stay there! I’m sending a taxi for you.”

The gates opened automatically as the cab approached Doll and Dave’s house and I fumbled in my bag for my purse.

“Fare’s paid,” the driver told me. “Mrs.Newbury has an account.”

Mrs.Newbury. Maria Newbury was a celebrity, who regularly appeared on South Today or Meridian to give her opinion about women in business or the importance of apprenticeships. Mrs.Newbury had a big house and a thriving business; I had nothing to show for all the time we’d spent apart. We spoke a different language now and we wouldn’t have anything to say to each other. Why had I even called her?

The door opened as I went to press the bell.

“I like your hair like that,” Doll said.

She stepped forward and hugged me so hard it felt like she was trying to transfer all her regret and apology straight into me, and I hugged her back until we were both shaking with tears and laughter.

The living room had one completely glass wall. As we sat there, a big white leather sofa each, the light outside faded and the window was dark like a giant television screen with the two of us reflected in it.

Doll listened without ever interrupting me, but when I paused, she said, “I’m so relieved, Tess, because I thought it must be cancer when you called, you know, with your mum getting it young? Sorry. Not helping. I mean, obviously, this is bad in a different way...”

“Do you think Martin’s right?” I asked her. “All of them obviously thought so.”

“First of all, Tess, I’m not being offensive or anything, but your dad was always a bastard who’d say anything to put himself in the right, and Anne’s the daft bitch who shacked up with him.”

“What would you say if you were being offensive?” I asked.

“And Hope, well, she says things, doesn’t she, but she doesn’t put all the meaning in like you do,” Doll continued.

“Subtext,” I said, using one of Leo’s favorite words.

“Whatever,” said Doll. “You know Hope doesn’t mean to be unkind. Hope doesn’t really do kind, does she? And this Martin guy sounds a bit on the spectrum himself. They’re obviously well suited.”

“It’s not that sort of relationship!” I protested.

“No?”

“Hope doesn’t have a romantic bone in her body!”

“How do you know?”

“I just know!”

“You didn’t know you were stopping her from doing things.”

That was a bit harsh, but it was why I’d come.

“But not... surely?”

I’d never even considered Hope having a relationship with Martin. And yet, now I came to think about it, I’d noticed him taking her jacket and hanging it up for her like a real gentleman. Surely they weren’t...?

“Isn’t this what every parent of every teenager goes through?” said Doll. “You have to learn to let go.”

“Easy to say, but who picks up the pieces if it goes wrong?”

“True,” Doll conceded.

“Maybe I was overprotective. Maybe I didn’t get everything right,” I admitted.

“Nobody in the world could say you didn’t do your best.”

“Did I, though? Maybe I should have taken her to Mass.”

“And have Father Michael terrifying her with all his warnings about—”

“—the pleasures of the flesh!” we both said together, mimicking his ominous tone.

I glanced around nervously as if the elderly priest might be lurking, listening in the shadows.

“Fred said the football team never got changed as fast as when Father Michael was refereeing,” Doll confided.

“Was Father Michael why you didn’t marry in church?” I asked.

“It nearly killed my mum. She still thinks Dave and I are going straight to hell!”

Once Dave’s name had been spoken, it sort of hung between us.

“I’m sorry about Dave, Tess,” Doll said eventually.

“Oh, it’s so long ago, I’ve kind of forgotten how to be cross about it,” I told her. “Or even why I was, really.”

“I was sure he was The One for you, Tess,” Doll said. “Honest I was, but then, when he and I got together, it was like there’d been this blip in destiny and really he was The One for me.”

“Do you really believe in destiny?” I said. “Isn’t it more that you had the opportunity to see that Dave was reliable and romantic and handy with a plunger, which you wouldn’t have known if you’d bumped into him at a disco...”

Doll stared at me. “God, I’ve missed you SO much, Tess! You never let me get away with anything!”

“Me you same!” I said.

My mind kept going back to Hope.

“You did what you did,” said Doll. “Doesn’t every parent go through these feelings? Nobody can do more than their best, can they?”

The way she kept saying “parent” when I wasn’t actually sounded almost like she’d been thinking about the challenges of parenthood herself, which, I guessed, could only mean one thing. “Are you pregnant?”

She stared at me. “Jesus. Does it show?” She smoothed her hand over the flat front of her white jeans.

“No!”

“How did you know, then?”

“Because I know you,” I said.

“We’ve been trying so long, we thought it would never happen. But it’s almost twelve weeks now. I just went for my first scan and when you phoned, I was sure it was Dave calling to see how it went. He was meant to get back from a trade fair last night but his flight was delayed. Anyway, I’m glad it was you,” Doll said. “Because you’re the first person that knows. It’s the big moments I’ve missed you most, Tess.”

“Me too,” I said.

Doll pointed a remote at the window and a white blind rolled down.

“So what about you and your fella?” She tucked her knees up on her sofa in anticipation of a girlie chat.

“What fella’s that?” I asked.

“Come on! I saw you a couple of weeks ago!”

“Where?”

“I was having lunch at the Oysterage in Whitstable. I sometimes take the franchisees there. So anyway, there I am, sitting on the decking, pretending I’m listening to sales figures and stuff, when suddenly I see you like fifty yards away reading in a deckchair...”

“What are you talking about?” I laughed, still thinking I could get away with it.

“So this bloke pulls you to your feet and gives you this massive snog, and you’re practically undressing each other walking back up the beach, not that you’ve got a lot on, just the neon-yellow Gucci bikini I brought you back from Dubai, remember that time I went with Fred?”

“What did you think, then?” I asked. It was actually a relief finally to admit it to someone.

“He’s quite mature, isn’t he?”

“He’s a professor,” I said.

“Figures,” said Doll.

“How’s that?”

“Jo and the old professor bloke in Little Women!”

“You wanted to be Amy...”

“Because she was pretty. And, she got nice Laurie.”

Of course she did.

We both sat in silence for a few moments.

“You’ve got to go back and see Hope sing, Tess,” Doll said. “I’d come with you, only I want to be here to show Dave the first photo, you know, that they do with the ultrasound?”

She came with me to the door, but just as I was reaching for the handle, it opened, and Dave was standing a foot away from me. He was wearing a well-cut grey suit and his hair was a little longer. He had the type of all-round tan that rich people have, but his smile was just the same, perhaps slightly whiter.

“All right, Tess?” he said.

“All right,” I said.

“Great stuff!”

I stepped back to let him pull his suitcase inside and we gave each other a quick, embarrassed kiss on the cheek.

“How’s the writing going?” he asked.

“Writing?”

“You said, you know, last time... you were going to a writing group?”

I was amazed that he’d remembered.

“I started,” I told him. “Then I stopped.”

We all laughed, dissolving the tension.

With Leo, all my imaginative space seemed to be taken up with our relationship. And I suppose the stakes were higher, because if I’d given him something to read and he’d torn into it, I’d have been devastated. I’d never gone back to his class, because I knew Liz and Vi would see what was going on. Occasionally I wondered if they ever mentioned me, but I didn’t ask, in case Leo would think I was being silly.

“I work in Human Resources now,” I said. “At Waitrose.”

“That’s a good company that,” said Dave.

Which is what everyone said, except Leo, who couldn’t understand why I would want to work in a shop, although technically, since my promotion I wasn’t in the shop any more, but upstairs. Being from the academic world, Leo didn’t understand how difficult it was to get a good job, any job, in the middle of a world recession. When we’d advertised for a shelf-filler recently, we’d got seventy applications for the one post. And you’d have thought we were looking for the chief executive from the interviewing process the candidates had to go through, like building a tower from spaghetti and marshmallows, saying what they’d be if they were a food, that sort of thing.

“I’m head of department,” I said.

“You’ll be managing the store next,” said Doll.

I suddenly remembered how nice it was when somebody thought you were clever.

They were both smiling at me.

“Look, I’d better run. I’m going to watch Hope sing.”

“Say hello from me,” Dave said.

“I will. She’d like that.”

“You should let us know when she’s singing again,” said Doll.

“It’s just the karaoke.”

“We’d like to see her, wouldn’t we, Dave?”

“We would,” he said, going inside and leaving us to say our goodbyes, as if he’d sensed I was starting to feel a bit awkward with all those “we”s.

Doll gave me another really tight hug.

“Good luck!” she said. “I’ll call you tomorrow, shall I? See how it went?”

“Yeah, speak tomorrow,” I said, same as we used to.

I pushed open the pub door just in time to see Hope being led onto the stage by my dad.

“Now, listen up,” Dad said, tapping the mic. “Because this here girl’s got a voice. Her name is Hope Costello and you heard it here first!”

Hope stood there. Anne had loaned her a black dress with three-quarter sleeves, which Hope had chosen to accessorize with a maroon hoody from the Gap and sneakers. Holding the mic, she looked straight ahead, which happened to be directly at me, but I don’t think she could see me through the nerves.

The intro to “Crazy” started playing. Hope missed the first cue. A sigh of sympathetic embarrassment rippled around the room. My hands were clenched by my sides, my heart beating really fast, and inside my head, my voice was urging her, Come on, come on, Hope, please, you can do it!

Shutting her eyes, as if to block out the crowd, Hope came in for the second verse on exactly the right note.

If you’d closed your eyes, you’d have thought you were in the room with Patsy Cline herself. I think Martin must have picked the song. Country’s probably the nearest thing you get to classical on a karaoke machine. He certainly knew what suited her voice.

When Hope sang the final line and stepped back from the mic for the last few bars of instrumental, there was a stunned silence for about a millisecond. And then the roof came off.

A month later, Hope told me she wanted to move into Martin’s flat above the shop. I don’t think it occurred to either of them that I would feel anything about it. Hope had never done sad, lonely or totally-at-a-loss.

I didn’t know how to approach Hope about the nature of their relationship. Neither of them seemed very interested in physical contact, but who knows what goes on behind closed doors? Hope had never liked “the kissy stuff.” If you hugged her, she’d stand stiff as a board, enduring it until you’d finished. Over the years, whenever I’d tried to initiate chats about reproduction or contraception, Hope informed me that they’d done it in Personal, Health and Social.

I’d been putting off the inevitable talk we’d have to have about genetic testing as well, assuming the right moment would emerge, maybe when I decided to have the surgery myself, because Hope wasn’t very good with hypotheticals. Now, anxious not to be accused of letting her down again, I took her to see the nice female GP and sat outside while she explained about the reasons for being on the Pill, and was relieved when she came out holding a prescription.

“Do you take these pills, Tree?”

“Yes.”

“It’s a good idea if you’re not ready to look after a baby.”

“Yes.”

It was about as close to a woman-to-woman chat as we ever got.

The great thing about Martin is that he never saw Hope as being any different from anyone else. As Doll said, he’s probably on the spectrum himself. Maybe we all are, to an extent. Isn’t that what “spectrum” means?

Neither of them knew about the tenancy of our house, of course. Dad wasn’t prepared to remain liable for the rent when it was just me there. Why should he? I was a grown woman earning wages, and it was about time I sorted out my own living arrangements. I did hang on as long as I could, just because Hope was such a creature of habit, I was worried she wouldn’t adjust to everything being different. But, as she said, whenever we met for a milkshake on the seafront together, “It’s much more convenient for work.”

Martin’s flat extended over all three floors above the shop. The loft was a music room, with a big window looking out over the rooftops towards the sea. If you walked down the High Street in the evenings, when it was quiet because the shops were all closed, you could sometimes hear them up there with Martin playing the piano and Hope singing. Occasionally, you’d hear laughter too, if Martin hit a wrong chord, or Hope forgot the words, and then they’d start up again.

It certainly sounded like they were happy.

Not that I was stalking Hope, or anything. It’s just tough to stop worrying, when you’ve worried for so long. Maybe it was me who’d become the creature of habit?

My salary stretched to renting a one-bedroom flat, with its own little garden. I wanted a bit of outside space because of Leo’s dog, Ebony, an old black Labrador who sometimes came to the hut with us. To be honest, I did assume that once I had a place of my own, we would spend some of our time there, but I wasn’t necessarily thinking that Leo and I would set up home together. Or perhaps I’m kidding myself, and that’s why I asked him with me to IKEA, although I said it was about having the car to bring stuff back. I could tell straight away that he wasn’t keen on the idea, and the Friday before, he called and asked me to meet him in Whitstable. I had a sense that something was wrong, but as I hurried along the concrete path by the beach and saw the door of the hut open, my heartbeat quickened with excitement, as it always did, at the prospect of seeing him.

The woman’s hair was long, dark and streaked with grey. She was wearing one of those quilted cotton jackets made out of Indian fabric in a pink-and-orange pattern, an elegant bohemian kind of look. I couldn’t help noticing, because she’d kicked off her orange Birkenstocks, that her toenails were painted the exact same deep pink color of the jacket, which made me wonder, fleetingly, if she was one of Doll’s customers.

“You must be Tess,” she said, looking up at me standing on the path.

I almost said, “Teresa,” because I didn’t know her, and as far as I was concerned, she was sitting in my chair.

“I don’t understand,” I said.

“Oh, I think you do. All good things must come to an end, as I’m sure your mother told you!”

“My mother’s dead,” I said. “And she never said that in her life.”

The supercilious mask slipped.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said.

“That’s OK. You had no way of knowing.”

She looked different from the way I had imagined his wife. I’d always clothed her in a dark suit with a round-neck jersey top in a muted color. The only brightness I’d granted was a silk scarf. My version of her wore shoes with a bit of a heel that tapped as she hurried down the university corridors to her next lecture.

“You’re not the first, you know,” she said. “I don’t suppose he told you that he had to resign from the university after his last conquest complained of sexual harassment.”

“This isn’t sexual harassment!” I said.

She gave me a wry smile. “I don’t know what it is you all see in him!”

“Why are you with him, then?” I countered.

She sighed, wearily, just like Leo did when I said something that displayed my lack of education.

“Leonard and I have been together nearly forty years,” she said. “We’re old mates. We enjoy each other’s company.”

“Leonard?” I echoed.

“Oh, he’s not doing that Leo thing again, is he?” She chuckled. “I don’t know why he thinks Leo is any better.”

I did. Leo sounded like a writer. It was the name on his novel. Leo sounded like it was short for Leopold or Leonardo or something. Not Leonard. Leonard just sounded like a bloke in the pub. Someone old.

It was beginning to drizzle.

“Does he know you’re here?” I asked.

She stared at me.

“You’re sweet, you really are. I should have insisted he did his own dirty work.”

“I’m not sweet,” I said.

But then I couldn’t think how to prove it, short of smashing the coffee mugs or throwing pebbles at her, so I just stood there, with scenes from our affair flashing through my mind.

“You told him to take me out!” I said.

“I’m sorry?”

“The ticket you couldn’t use, for the National Theatre. Much Ado about Nothing...”

Still, she looked blank.

“When we got stuck in London in the snow,” I added, trying to jog her memory.

“Oh, it’s been that long, has it?”

Now she was the one looking ruffled. I was stung with momentary guilt for dumping him in it with her. How was I supposed to know what story he’d told?

“Why now?” I heard myself asking.

“It’s only natural for someone of your age to want children...”

“But I don’t!”

Leo knew that, didn’t he? Hadn’t the decision I was going to have to make about surgery been hanging over us all this time? Didn’t it contribute to the exquisite poignancy that laced the silences after sex? Weren’t we in a metaphorical “Pending” tray waiting till one of us had the courage to face dealing with the inevitable? Surely he hadn’t forgotten the first time we talked, properly talked? Surely I hadn’t been alone in thinking that was the bond that made our love uniquely profound?

It was raining now, drenching my hair and soaking through my uniform blouse to my skin.

“You were asking him to choose,” Leo’s wife said. “Like most men, he’s lazy. It’s too much effort even to think about leaving his nice comfortable house. However much he likes to think he’s still an Angry Young Man, he’s got used to his en-suite bathroom and the four-star hotels his wife pays for. He’s not going to go back to camping and room shares at sixty-one, is he?”

“Sixty-one?”

A small smile played around her lips.

“Why are you telling me?” I asked, still clinging to the mad hope that this wasn’t actually happening. Perhaps he didn’t know she was here? Perhaps it was her attempt to break us up, which would actually backfire as soon as he arrived? I glanced over my shoulder. There was no sign of him.

“So long, Tess,” he’d said on the phone. He’d never used that expression before.

“For your information,” I said, trying to hold myself with dignity, “I never asked him to choose. He’s invented that.”

“Well, he is a writer,” she said.

I suddenly realized why the situation I was in, standing there in front of her with the rain plastering my hair to my forehead and dripping down my face, felt so weird but somehow familiar. In Leo’s novel, Of Academic Interest, there was a scene where the main character’s wife tells a female student that the affair is over, except it’s not a fisherman’s hut, it’s a gazebo at a faculty garden party.

Writers see everything that happens as material.

“What a fucking coward!” said Doll.

“I’m as angry with myself as I am with him,” I told her.

How could I have been so stupid? He’d told me his favorite novel in English was The End of the Affair. Shouldn’t I have known, from that and everything else I’d ever read, that things never turn out well for adulteresses?

“And now I’ve got nothing,” I said.

“You could see it like that,” Doll said. “Or you could make it the opportunity to do what you’ve always wanted.”