‘Sorry, mate. I’m sorry. Don’t cry.’
It was too late. Arthur whimpered pitifully. Still in neutral, Nick reached around to squeeze Arthur’s foot, murmuring to him that it was all right. He suddenly remembered Carrie, when Bea was so small that he was actually frightened of holding her, murmuring to him that babies could feel what you felt, so when you touched them, you had to be calm and relaxed so that you didn’t communicate negative emotions to the child. He let go of Arthur’s foot. He wanted to cry himself.
Ed and Maureen were right. Daphne would no doubt agree. He needed help. He couldn’t do this. He wasn’t good enough to do this by himself.
10
Heather sat up in the middle of the massive bed, her back against the upholstered headboard, and arranged the soft white sheet around herself. The cup of black coffee Scott had made her before he left, and put gently on the side so as not to wake her, was still warm, and she cupped the mug in her hands. The bed faced two large windows onto the garden at the back of the house, and the sunrise was just beginning outside, black giving way to a delicate coral pink, the trees at the back of the plot silhouetted dramatically. It was still early – Scott typically left, silently, for his train at around six, and she needn’t get up for the girls until seven or so. It was six twenty now. The next thirty or forty minutes were hers. In her Insta-life, the one she shared, she would probably call it meditating. Mindfulness. Maybe yoga. But in truth, and in private, this was Heather’s ‘pinch me’ time.
Everything about being here surprised her. Being married to Scott, being in England, in this extraordinary home, being comfortable … it was all so new. Most of all, it was being safe and feeling secure that dazzled her.
For so much of her life, she hadn’t been. She’d been born to an angry father, who drank too much, and a mother who lived in fear of his drunken tempers, in a rented home, where money was usually in short supply, seldom spent on shoes and heating, more often on booze and all too brief treats to make up for the booze. Heather’s childhood had been shadowed by anxiety.
None of it had been dramatic. There was never anything to alert the teachers, the authorities or the neighbours so no help ever came. There was no one to see that it might be needed. Her parents never had any friends, and the neighbours were wary. It was a solitary, strangely quiet childhood. Her father growled rather than shouted; her mother used silence as a weapon against him. And Heather was mostly irrelevant. She wasn’t starving. If she was sometimes hungry, it was because, often, no one bothered to cook, not because there wasn’t any food in the cupboard. That was why she had learnt, balancing on a chair in front of the stove, when she was seven or eight. No one ever hit her, barely threatened to, but they didn’t hug her either. That was why she’d started having sex with boys when she was sixteen. She was smart enough, always, to recognize and understand that sex wasn’t love, and that those boys didn’t care about her. But the exchange was worth it to her for the brief moments of contact: the sensation of being held, of being important, at the centre of things. You could tell yourself almost anything in those moments, and believe it.
She went to school in clean clothes, even if they weren’t often new or ever ironed, but no one read her report card, or helped her with a science project, or made her a costume for a play. That was why she’d worked so hard, wanting to believe that doing better might change things. And always, always dreaming of getting out. Before she even knew where and what out was. As she grew older, she realized that New York was where ‘out’ was. Like it had been for Melanie Griffith in Working Girl, the Hudson river seemed to separate miserable mediocrity from gilded happiness and opportunity.
She knew what she had going for her. Chiefly, an evangelical determination to have a different life. Second, an unshakeable faith in the qualities she possessed and could use to make that happen. She knew, although her parents had never told her, that she was pretty. Pretty enough for girls to be catty towards her. When girls were quite pretty, other girls wanted to buddy up with them. When they were really pretty, they hated them. She knew she was sexy. The rolled-back eyes, quivering spines and moans of more than a dozen boys had shown her that. She was more sharp than clever, more quick than intellectual. She could organize, and she could get people – men – to do things she wanted them to do, and that was maybe the biggest skill of all.
She crossed the Hudson the minute she could, and she didn’t look back. She rented a tiny room in a dive apartment in Midtown East and she went to work, temping in offices and teaching herself business software packages and basic accounting in the evenings, specializing in going the extra mile, until she found a permanent job. Another company, another rung up the ladder, evening classes and diplomas, a bigger room in a less dive-y apartment, it was always less about success and ambition than safety. She saved her pay, the cushion making it easier to sleep. And she dreamt.
The girls’ father was a mistake from the start. A blip. That was how she thought of him. She’d let herself be distracted. Fooled, even. She’d got them. She could never quite reconcile the joy of their existence with the misery of her marriage to their dad. She couldn’t wish she’d never met him because without him there’d have been no them, but despite that he remained the biggest mistake of her life. She’d been pregnant when they married at City Hall. Pregnant again before Hayley was walking. She’d had a warm home, and enough money for food, their clothes and shoes, and for a while she’d tried to pretend to herself it was enough. That for a girl like her it should be enough. But it wasn’t.
He was a lousy husband. Controlling, mean-spirited, selfish. And, just like at home, there’d been no outward sign. He’d never laid a finger on her in anger. Or the girls. She’d have killed him for that with her bare hands. He wasn’t even cruel. But there was nothing about him that sustained her. He wasn’t supportive, or kind, or proud. He didn’t seem to know her, or to mind that he didn’t. Like ‘wife and kids’ had been a box he’d thought he was ready to tick.
And when he’d ticked it he’d lost interest.
When she’d finally caught him out in infidelity, she was almost grateful. As hard as it was to raise the two girls, work a full-time job and keep all the balls in the air, she vowed she wouldn’t be fooled again, even if it meant she was alone for ever.
It wasn’t money with Scott, whatever anyone said. There were plenty of guys in New York with money, obscene amounts of it. It was kindness, and manners, and the respect with which she saw him treating people in the office – everyone from the mailroom boy with the metal cart to the receptionist and the boss. He had a gentleness about him and for ages she’d confused it with Britishness. That wasn’t it. One day he’d overtaken her on the sidewalk between the revolving door of the office and the steps down to the subway. She was carrying a large bag of groceries. At first she hoped he hadn’t seen it was her – she tried hard to keep her home life away from work – but the bag was heavy, and she was hot, and tired. Like Melanie Griffith. She’d changed into sneakers, her court shoes on top of the food in her bag. He was walking much faster than her, with his long legs, unencumbered by shopping. He was on his cell phone. But he’d noticed her. He stopped, turned and smiled uncertainly, took a few steps back in her direction. ‘Heather? May I help you with that? It looks heavy.’ And he’d taken the bag before she’d agreed.