Seven
KARLA
I was hoping the children would be worn out after an hour spent kicking a football around the park. I should have known better. They’re still bounding with energy while I’m flagging. We troop dutifully across the park to my parents’ house for our regular Saturday visit, which Jason, understandably, prefers not to accompany us on, usually going off to the supermarket, or else to the office. I find Mum in the kitchen when I let myself in with my key. ‘Trainers off, guys,’ I instruct Holly and Josh, who need no encouraging. Having had the usual lecture about not treading mud onto the carpet, they’re already halfway out of them in anticipation ofStar Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones– the second prequel to the originalStar Warstrilogy which is showing on Sky, Josh has reliably informed me – and Mum’s home-made cake in front of the TV.
I head towards the kitchen as the children skid to the lounge. They’re possibly already on a sugar high, I realise guiltily. I was a bit distracted in the park, not quite as ‘brilliant in goal’ as Holly claimed I was. My mind was on the photo I’d found on Jason’s phone, his exchange of messages with Mark. Jason and Mark go back years, right back to their errant youth. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that they swap boyish messages. I’m more surprised that Jason would comment chauvinistically about a woman’s appearance. But then, women do that sort of thing all the time. The gossip about six-packs and who’s met who online is rife in the administrative assistants’ office at work. As I’m the office manager as well as personal assistant to the chief executive – to whom they imagine I might report back – there’s usually a lull in the conversation whenever I go in, but not for long. I’m as up for the juicy details as the rest of them. That Jason hadn’t immediately deleted the photograph though, and that he’d scored the undeniably beautiful woman, bothers me. If he’d replied ‘not my type’ or even ‘nice’, I might not feel so uneasy, but to have been so impressed, to have actually asked Mark if she had a sister…
I know it’s just a turn of phrase, but I can’t help thinking that Jason might be tempted elsewhere. That – with the problems between us and the many arguments lately – our marriage might be floundering along with his business. Might Jason be growing tired of the responsibility of having a family? We were so young when we married, after all. Is he fed up of being tied to one woman? A woman who’s constantly nagging him and apparently not overjoyed at the prospect of having sex with him?
Icy trepidation prickles my skin, despite my repeated attempts to reassure myself. I so wish I hadn’t looked at his messages. With things so unsettled between us, my suspicion seems to have gone into overdrive.
Checking the phone Jason had eventually rushed off without is safe in my bag, I push the kitchen door open and freeze as, out of nowhere, stark memories of my childhood assail me: sheet rain lashing against the window, my mother oblivious to me as she gazes at the windswept trees in the park beyond it. I see them: ethereal, solemn-faced funeral guests, whispering in hushed tones, warily watching my mother as she goes into the lounge. Following behind, I watch her carefully from where I hover uncertainly in the doorway. I see the look in her eyes as she locates my father, who’s stoically circulating, despite his grief. My gaze travels between my parents, but I focus on my mother, trying to read the expression on her face, to find some comfort there. I see the confused incomprehension in her crystal-blue eyes, which fleetingly hardens to deep hatred. And I wonder, does she know? Has he told her that Sarah didn’t move when she fell, but lay on the path like a porcelain doll?
‘Karla!’ My mother says delightedly, yanking me back to the here and now, to the smell of home cooking, which is supposed to be comforting, but somehow isn’t today. ‘How are things, my lovely?’ She downs her baking tray, atop which sits her own-recipe cinnamon apple pie, reaches for the dish towel to dust off her hands and comes across to me.
‘The same,’ I say, with a wan smile. Mum knows that with Jason’s business problems on top of the demands of two children, things are not all rosy at home.
She looks at me kindly and then pulls me into our ritual hug. I hang on to her for a second, wishing I could truly go back, to a time before the dark days, and make all the bad things go away.
‘He’s not managed to get things sorted out then?’ she asks, scanning my eyes, her own peppered with concern as she eases away from me.
‘No,’ I admit, with a disconsolate shake of my head.
Mum nods, a small sympathetic nod, and turns to put the kettle on for a cure-all cup of tea. The way she is, always cooking and cleaning, you would imagine an older woman, a mumsy mum, living a life of dull domesticity. But Mum’s not dull or dowdy, always dressing trendily but understatedly and never without a wisp of make-up – just enough to accentuate her high cheekbones and fine features. I’m not sure who I take after, but it’s definitely not her, with her natural beauty and elegance. Why does my father cheat on her, I wonder, as I’ve often done over the years. How is it that she’s always seemed so indifferent to the fact that he does?
‘And he won’t consider talking to your father?’ Mum asks.
‘No. He’s adamant he won’t take money from him.’ I sigh and wander across to drop my bag on the table and take the weight off my feet. I’m tired. Unfit, obviously. I’m not used to running around, playing football. That’s usually Jason’s job.
‘Oh dear.’ Mum sighs in turn and joins me at the table with two mugs of tea. ‘It’s a self-esteem thing,’ she imparts, pushing the biscuit barrel towards me. ‘A man’s ego is a delicate beast.’
Aware of that, and that I’d badly bruised Jason’s last night, I smile sadly and help myself to a biscuit, reminding myself to watch the calories. After giving birth twice, I’m not likely to be able to compete with the perfectly sculpted woman on his phone. Piling on the pounds now, therefore, is possibly not a good idea.
‘We’ll each have to get ourselves a carefree toy boy,’ Mum says, giving me a conspiratorial wink.
I smile half-heartedly. I wish now that I hadn’t danced quite so enthusiastically with him. A nice mover, muscular and very well-packaged in a tight white T-shirt and jeans, his attributes would certainly score a ten. I think of the double standard regarding men ogling women and vice versa. Am I being too judgemental of Jason? Paranoid, because of the problems between us? He was jealous. He would hardly have cut in, looking most definitely put out, if he didn’t care about me, would he?
But does he love me? Caring is not loving, and he doesn’t often say that he does.
‘Can I ask you something, Mum?’ Furrowing my brow, I reach for my bag.
‘As long as it’s nothing technical,’ Mum says, glancing uncertainly at the phone I pull out.
‘It’s not,’ I assure her, and quickly check over my shoulder. I’d hate one of the children to wander in. ‘We argued,’ I explain, taking a breath, ‘after the party.’
‘Not about the toy boy?’ Mum’s expression is a cross between bemused and amused.
‘No,’ I say quickly, feeling defensive of Jason. ‘Well, sort of. Jason was a bit miffed I was dancing with him, but that wasn’t what we argued about.’
‘I don’t see why he’d be miffed,’ Mum says, looking po-faced on my behalf. ‘You’re an attractive young woman. If he couldn’t be bothered to dance with you, then he really shouldn’t object to you dancing with someone else.’
‘Dad had been on at him,’ I say.
Mum’s face straightens at that. ‘Oh. I see,’ she says. She’s seen how Dad belittles him sometimes and has reprimanded him for it. She tries to make Jason feel welcome here, but sadly he doesn’t. The way Dad treats him, I can’t blame him.
‘I broached the subject of him approaching Dad for a loan again when we got home,’ I go on. ‘Stupidly, so late at night. We had a few words, and… The long and short of it is, Jason tried to kiss and make up and I… Well, I just didn’t feel like it.’ I don’t elaborate on why – that the things I try to forget had swamped me, thanks to my father’s behaviour at the party, and then Jason reminding me of it, as if he’d needed to.
Mum reaches to squeeze my arm. ‘Things are that bad between you then?’ she says understandingly.
