‘Looks like you need some help with your footwear!’ She took Ellie by the arm as they made their – slightly wobbly – way to the bar.
As she licked the traces of blood from her lips, she was thankful that at least it would take her mind off the nagging question that was building up in her mind.
*
Much later, she flicked the light switch off and drifted into a fitful sleep on the hard mattress in the student room, her accommodation that night. She slept for a few hours under a paper-thin duvet, dreaming she was water-skiing across the Channel, the waves bouncing her up and down. She felt like she was choking on the water. Tim, her husband, was in a rescue boat beside her. What are you doing, Maddie? He was shouting at her. Where are you going? Where indeed?
She woke up drenched in sweat with the duvet wrapped around her neck. She slowly got up and eased her feet into soft slippers. She clicked on the bedside lamp and sat for a minute adjusting to the golden light of her unfamiliar surroundings. Opening the door, she wandered to the communal kitchen, filled up the kettle, put it back on its holder and switched it on. She stood for a while looking out of the window at the inky darkness, punctuated only by the orange lights outside casting a tangerine sheen across path. Stirring her chamomile tea methodically, she let out a breath and stood in the silence knowing now more than ever that she couldn’t keep those trunks of emotion shut anymore.
Once she was settled on her bed, she opened the lid of her laptop and clicked on the Facebook icon. She searched for any messages from her son Ed. Why hadn’t he been in touch?
And then, with one click, she did something she had avoided doing for so many years: she sent Greg Baker a friend request. Now that she had seen him again, she felt a weird sensation in the pit of her stomach. It was a sort of quiet excitement she had been holding on to, a yearning and a terror all mixed into one, rather like being at the top of a huge helter-skelter in a theme park and knowing there was no way back.
She had been carrying this knot of feeling, this anxiety, this heartache coupled with, what – desire? – for as long as she could remember. She had played the good housewife, she had raised a son, she had even joined a sodding choir. But now, even though he seemed so distant, she had to find out why. Surely that was her right, after what had happened? The sands had just shifted in the landscape of her life.
Genie out of the bottle? You bet.
2
Maddie
Maddie turned away from her husband, Tim, and pressed the button on the door to let the window slide down. She sat for a while with her eyes closed, a women’s magazine in her lap. She let the breeze from the window whisk her hair up and around her cheeks. She put her hand on her neck and squeezed it, longing for the journey to end. She shook her head experimentally and enjoyed the sensation of her hair sliding across her bare back.
Greg had always liked her hair down.
Tim had turned up yesterday, the day after the reunion. Said he was ‘in the area on wine business’ and had thought it would be a nice surprise. He’d done that thing where he’d used inverted commas in the air with his hands when he’d said ‘surprise’. Somehow his Welsh accent always came to the fore when he was animated. He said he had wanted to show her how his car handled country roads. As if she cared. And then she felt like such an awful wife, thinking these things.
They’d had yet another argument about their son, Ed, and how they hadn’t heard from him. Tim had told her she was being ridiculous, to stop being a mother hen. Ed was nineteen. But something wasn’t right. Ed hadn’t replied to her last private message.
Are you all right? Pls send a quick message. Mum x
Since Ed had left, it was as if the Ghost of Maddie Past had been unleashed, screaming at her to do something. But what? Looking at her and asking, Is this your life? She felt lonely, even with her mad terrier Taffie bouncing around. Last weekend she’d moped around all day, washing Ed’s hoodies and remembering how she used to complain about them. Now, all she wanted was to pick up hoodies from the floor.
Her mind drifted back to Ed as a baby, a toddler, remembering how he’d always been clingy. Not so anymore. She thought about how it had all come about, her wedding day and the events that had led up to it. Events that only she and Tim knew about.
She flicked open the CD case and pulled out an old Kate Bush album.
Tim glanced at the CD. ‘I don’t like that.’
‘You can choose the next one.’ She folded her arms and stared out the window. She could remember all the words to the song. It had been one of her favourites when she was at uni.
She felt unsettled today, but Tim had only come down to surprise her. What was wrong with that? Was in the area.
The girl who’d sung along to Kate Bush all those years ago with her hair flapping in a high ponytail as she walked along the corridor outside her lecture theatres was far removed from the uptight woman in the passenger seat now – determinedly sitting with her hair down, even though it was flicking her in the eye because of the breeze. Where was that girl who’d had sex in the cloakroom at the end-of-year ball? Where was that twenty-year-old who used to take risks, surfed, tried cigarettes? Hated them, mind, coughed her guts out, but she’d tried them. She’d lived a little. Where was the girl who’d danced on the top deck of the night bus home from the clubs at three in the morning, singing at the top of her voice, unable to sit down until the bus driver had shouted up at them all, leaving them in a fit of giggles? Sure, you grow up, you have responsibilities like a mortgage and toilets to clean. But what about fun?
She replayed today in her head. She’d been irrationally disappointed that he’d turned up. After everything Tim had done for her…
You said we don’t do anything together! She remembered their previous row. She glanced over. He was silent now, his face expressionless under those ‘driving’ sunglasses – the ones he kept polished in the glove compartment. She put a hand out to touch his leg – a peace offering. And what did she feel? She felt hollow – especially as she remembered the charge of two thousand volts when Greg had accidentally brushed her cheek last night.
They pulled up at some traffic lights; they changed from red to amber then green. Tim pulled away slowly. In the magazine there was a piece about a woman having an affair. She flicked past the page hurriedly and nearly ripped it in the process. Somehow, lately, thoughts of sex were all that were on her mind, whirling around like dandelions in the wind.
The countryside whizzed by in flashes of colour – first yellow rapeseed, then a brushstroke of azure-blue, and then field after field of sheep grazing. She used to point out sheep to Ed on any long car journeys to the coast, asking if he knew what they ate, letting him unpack the picnic. Later, they’d build Lego helicopters with multi-coloured pieces.
After about half an hour they passed signs for Tregardock beach, the place where it all started. No. She wound the window up and turned to the horoscopes. Life is there for the taking. Is it? She studied the coastal landscape as it passed her by, the rugged, rocky stretches of coast, the bluey-green sea laced with pale sand down below. The weather had put on a show today – it had hit nearly twenty-five already.
‘I got a call from Olive’s nurses,’ Tim said, breaking into her thoughts. ‘They said her drugs need topping up.’