don’t think I would have survived down there if it hadn’t been for Steve.’
Vicky noticed that she didn’t look at Steve as she said it. As if she couldn’t trust herself to look at him as well, in case her face lost its composure.
There was a moment’s silence before Vicky said, as lightly as she could, ‘You were lucky to have one another.’
Neither Annie nor Steve spoke. It was left to Vicky to talk, and she did her best to fill the awkward quiet with snippets of gossip from her world and from Steve’s.
In a little while, when she judged that it wouldn’t look too much as if she were running away, Annie looked at her watch and then stood up.
Involuntarily, Steve’s hand reached out to catch her wrist. He made himself let go as soon as his fingers touched her.
‘Don’t go yet.’
‘I must. I’ll call in next time.’
She picked up her bag from beside her chair, and as she stooped her face was level with Steve’s.
Vicky sat still, knowingly watching for the goodbye peck on the cheek from which she could gauge how far their relationship had gone. But although neither of them moved for a second, they didn’t kiss each other. They looked, and then the wings of Annie’s hair fell forward to hide her cheeks. She scooped up her belongings and stepped away from the little group of chairs.
‘Goodbye, Vicky,’ she said formally and then, in a much lower voice, ‘Goodbye.’
She can’t even bring herself to say his name, with me listening, Vicky thought.
Annie went, not looking back.
Steve’s face was dark and stiff, and for the first time since they had met Vicky didn’t know what to say to him.
She tried, ‘It must help, being able to talk to someone who went through it too.’
‘It did.’
Summoning up her courage she asked, ‘Are you fond of her?’
‘Fond?’ Steve turned to her, examining her expression as if he had never noticed her before.
‘Yes,’ he said, and the word fell like a hard pebble into black water.
Vicky’s face didn’t change because she was too self-possessed to let her feelings show, but still the words formed inside her head. That’s it, then.
Annie walked back to the tube station with her shoulders hunched against the cold. Here in the middle of town the streets were littered and there were none of the tiny signs of spring that had triggered off her happiness this morning. She thought back to it in bewilderment as jealousy crystallized inside her. She could see Vicky’s face in front of her, younger than her own, with clear, pale skin. Steve’s girl had a clever, rather hard expression. She was the kind of ambitious, single-minded woman Annie had always found intimidating, and Steve had chosen her, hadn’t he? He had talked about her in the darkness. That was before Vicky came along, he had said.
Annie made herself breathe evenly to counteract the panicky waves that rose in her chest. She thought, What right do I have to be jealous? I’m going home now to my husband and children. I don’t have any claim on Steve. We can’t claim each other.
But she wanted to be able to. That was the truth, and the significance of it made her shiver in the February wind.
It was on that day too, Annie remembered later, that Martin first showed that he knew something was wrong.
He came home earlier than usual. Annie was washing up after the boys’ supper, and the kitchen was still untidy with dirty plates and scattered toys and crayons. She heard Martin’s bag thud on the step, and then the sound of his key in the lock. As the front door opened Benjy, who had been lying on the floor watching television, suddenly rolled sideways and snatched at Thomas’s Lego model. There was an immediate howl of protest and the children fell in a heap, shouting and punching each other.
Annie jerked her fingers out of the washing-up water. It was too hot, and she had thought that she was in too much of a hurry to cool it. She wiped her scalding hands on her skirt and pushed past Martin as he came in, without looking at him. She bent over her children and pulled them apart. She was trembling with anger as she shouted incoherently at them.
‘Stop it. Stop. Fighting all the time. I can’t stand it. I can’t stand it. Do you hear?’ She aimed an ineffectual blow at the nearest bottom as they wriggled past her. ‘Upstairs. Both of you. Get ready for bed.’
‘Dad …’
‘Do as your mother says,’ Martin said evenly.
They went, still squabbling. When the door had closed behind them Annie’s shoulders sagged. Her anger drained away as quickly as it had come, and left her with the blood throbbing dully in her head.
‘Hello,’ Martin said. ‘Remember me?’
Annie looked at him, seeing him framed against the closed door with its grey finger-marks, part of the family furniture in the oppressive room.
‘How could I forget?’
She walked back to the sink and began to lift out the dripping plates. He followed her and took her arm so that she had to stop, standing with her head bent over the popping suds. From overhead she heard thumping feet, and then the splash of bathwater.
‘Annie, we’ve all had enough of this. What’s the matter with you?’
The bathwater was turned off again and in the sudden quiet the bubbles in the sink burst with the sound of smacking kisses. Suddenly, insanely, Annie wanted to laugh.
‘Nothing’s the matter.’
‘Ever since you came home, it’s been either silent martyrdom or frothing rage. I know that something terrible happened to you …’
Is it so very terrible, to fall in love with a man who isn’t your husband?
‘… but sooner or later you have to forget it, and start to live your life again. If you need help, Annie, have the sense to ask for it. And if it’s something else, tell me and stop taking it out on the kids.’
He broke off, and the silence closed down again. He had given her the opening, deliberately. But Annie knew that she couldn’t find the right words to deny what was happening, or to convince him that everything was all right, after all.
Martin sighed, and turned away from her. ‘What needs doing now?’
‘You could bath the boys and put them to bed.’
‘Of course I will, if that’s any help.’
He went out and closed the door behind him, and in a moment Annie heard the three of them talking and then laughing in the bathroom. In solitude she finished clearing the kitchen and then she scoured the sink until it shone at her.
Later, when the boys were asleep, Martin and Annie sat down opposite one another at the kitchen table and ate their evening
