We met when I was twenty-two and Jack was twenty-four, at a Spanish evening class. I only went on Monica’s suggestion. ‘You’re too young to be stuck in all day on your own, love,’ she said. ‘I don’t like seeing you so lonely.’
I had been desperate to meet someone, perhaps have children – a family of my own. I’m not sure I would be in so much of a rush, had I the chance to start again; I was far too young, but I had no friends and hardly ever went out. I had just finished university and was applying for at least twenty jobs a week.
Before the first class, Monica took me into Boots to have a makeover.
‘Could you do something with her eyebrows?’ she said to the lady dressed in white – plastered in thick foundation and bright-red lipstick. ‘They’ve gone a bit wild.’
‘Monica!’ I said through gritted teeth, as I sat on a pedestal for everyone in the shop to see.
‘We might as well, while we’re here.’
After my face had been transformed, Monica took me to the hairdressers: my first visit for several years.
‘She has beautiful hair,’ Monica said to the stylist, ‘but perhaps we could put some highlights at the front … to frame her lovely face.’
On the way home, I caught sight of myself in her car’s vanity mirror and got a fright. I didn’t look like me any more.
When I walked into the classroom that evening, I thought Jack was the teacher. He was standing at the front, talking to the students with such confidence. But when he opened his mouth, he spoke with a broad Yorkshire accent and was worse at Spanish than I was. I learned that he’d stayed in Lancashire after university, after his parents abandoned him to go and live in Brighton.
Jack said I wasn’t like other women he met. ‘You’re an innocent, Anna. It’s like you’ve been sheltered from the world.’
But that was my act – the character I chose to present to others at that time. Self-preservation. I didn’t even look like the real me. I could act like I had no silly fears − of heights, swimming pools, and other irrational things. But I couldn’t pretend forever. When I confessed my greatest fears three months later, Jack hadn’t laughed at me. ‘They’re perfectly reasonable phobias,’ he’d said. ‘But life’s about risk sometimes.’
Jack’s parents moved away so long ago – Sophie has only met them six times. They think it’s enough to send my daughter ten pounds in a card for her birthday and Christmas.
I think because Jack isn’t close to his parents, there’s no love lost between him and my dad. When he’s drunk, Jack often ponders out loud whether my dad had anything to do with my mother’s disappearance, and rolls off the possible ways in which it could have happened.
‘Why else,’ he said one night, ‘would he end up married to Debbie’s best friend?’
I switch off when he starts talking like that. He has stopped saying sorry about it in the morning – if he remembers saying it at all. I console myself that he’s only so boorish when he’s had a drink.
‘Dad … well, Monica … got an email from someone saying they’re my mother,’ I said to him when he got in last night. I was sitting at the kitchen table – the champagne, which had long gone flat, still in three glasses.
‘Is that why you’ve taken to drink?’ he said, shrugging off his suit jacket and hanging it on the back of a chair.
‘It’s not funny,’ I said.
I thought he would be more surprised. It was like his mind was elsewhere.
He grabbed the glass with the most wine in, and downed half of it. He winced.
‘It’s flat.’ He pulled out a chair and sat down. ‘Do you think it’s really her? It can’t be, surely. It must be some lunatic wanting a bit of attention.’
‘I’ve no idea if it is or isn’t. How would I know that?’
Jack raised his eyebrows. He hates anything that borders on histrionic.
‘If it is,’ I said, ‘then it means she left us … That she left me.’
I saw the briefest flicker of irritation on his face. He gets like that when I talk about Debbie in that way. He hates people with a poor me attitude. It’s bad enough that I have a fear of swimming pools and spiders. I don’t want to be a victim. I have tried to overcome that feeling all my life.
He pulled off his tie, in the way he always does: wrenching it off with one hand, while grimacing as though he were being strangled. Who’s the victim now, eh? I thought to myself.
‘What a day,’ he said, as usual. ‘Have you got a copy of the email?’
‘Yes. Dad gave me and Robert a print-out. I wonder if we could trace the email address. Do you think I should ring Leo?’
‘Will he care?’
‘Course he’ll care … he grew up with us. At least, until I was ten.’
‘Sharing a bedroom with your brother would make anyone want to flee the country.’
I don’t laugh.
‘I’ll look at the email later,’ he said. ‘I’ve had a really long day. Is there anything in for tea?’
I looked at him for a few seconds, waiting for him to realise. But he didn’t. Sophie had claimed the balloon my dad gave me; it was floating from her bedpost. My cards were on top of the fridge, but Jack hadn’t noticed them.
I stood.
‘I’m going to bed,’ I said. ‘There’s a new volunteer starting tomorrow.’
He snorted. ‘Ah, the ex-con. And on a Sunday as well.’ He made the sign of the cross with his left hand. ‘Lock up your handbag.’
‘Yes, very funny,’ I said as I walked towards the door. ‘It’s part of the offender-rehabilitation programme Isobel’s been going on about.’
His chair scraped on the stone floor as he stood.
‘Guess I’ll just stick a pizza in the oven then.’
I tried to stomp up the stairs, but failed in bare feet. Happy sodding Birthday, Anna.
I look at him next to me in bed now, jealous of his ability to sleep soundly at this hour. He’s never had anything big to worry about. It’s 3.45 a.m. If I get up now, I’ll be a wreck later, but I can’t lie here with only my thoughts.
I manage to avoid all the creaking floorboards and make it quietly downstairs to the kitchen. The ticking of the clock is too loud. On the table, Jack’s plate is covered with pizza crusts, and crumbs litter the floor under the chair.
The three wine glasses are now empty. Why the hell did he want to drink flat champagne? I go to the fridge to count the bottles of beer left: there were six, and now there are none. No wonder he’s sleeping so soundly. I don’t
