Close to Me Read online

  That’s when I’d spotted the golf cart, its meandering journey drawing my attention as it navigated the ups and downs of the landscaped roads which linked the villas to the restaurants and bars. It was ferrying a large tourist sporting a very small pair of swimming trunks, the slender young Dominican driver smiling happily to himself as he hauled his overweight cargo towards their next visit to the buffet. I’d turned away, the scene I’d witnessed at odds with my middle-class principles, but I was also aware of the double standard it highlighted in me. The corpulent passenger below was no different to us, the ubiquitous all-inclusive wristbands bearing constant testament to that.

  ‘I’m not saying the locals would come here for a holiday,’ I tell Rob, swallowing the last morsel of steak. I look around me, lowering my voice. ‘It just struck me as quite a stark image that no one in that queue is anything other than white.’

  ‘You’re being silly,’ he replies, his eyes returning from the buffet to me, the lids slightly narrowed, eyebrows knotted.

  ‘Don’t patronise me!’ I drop my fork on to my plate and sip my wine. ‘You know what I mean.’

  I look away, towards the doors which lead out from the restaurant to a wide patio, and beyond that the sun setting over the beach. I can just make out the silhouette of a young man raking the sand to a smooth till, the cooler evening breeze returning the scents of the salty waves which crash in at the shoreline. ‘At least I have a conscience about it,’ I mutter to myself.

  ‘The inference being that I don’t?’ Rob asks, still chewing.

  ‘No, I’m not saying that, but doesn’t it make you feel awkward? It’s like we’re the Raj or something; cocktails brought to us on trays as we lie on sun loungers. Is this what our retirement will be like, getting fat and drunk?’

  ‘No,’ he says, raising an eyebrow. ‘But we’ve worked hard for this; why not enjoy it? Besides, it supports the local economy, brings in dollars.’ He butters another bread roll, then adds, ‘It’s not like they’re oppressed, we’re just their guests.’ He refuses the waitress who offers him a water jug, a shake of his head as he chews. ‘It’s a business transaction.’

  ‘Yes, I know.’ I accept a top-up to my water glass with repeated thanks to the heavily pregnant girl. ‘Maybe it’s because I haven’t worked in years, not really. Maybe I feel a bit . . . undeserving?’

  Rob tells me off in a good-natured way, saying how I had the hardest job of all, bringing up the kids. ‘You did a great job. We both did.’

  I shrug and look away. ‘Maybe.’

  ‘What do you want to do tomorrow?’ Rob asks, finishing his meal, the plate pushed away from his waistline, which is still surprisingly lithe despite the amount of food he’s consumed in the last few days, although maybe the shirt buttons are straining a little.

  ‘I guess we could get up early, grab a cabana by the pool?’ I suggest. ‘Or there’s a dancing lesson at eleven. Salsa.’

  Rob wrinkles his nose at the idea. ‘The cabana sounds good,’ he says. ‘And maybe we can plan a different kind of holiday next time, a bit less participative.’ I catch a hint of irritation in his tone. ‘You know how I hate organised fun.’

  ‘Not for a while,’ I say, sipping my water.

  ‘You still worried about leaving the kids? You know, if you allowed yourself to relax and stopped worrying about home . . .’

  ‘You’re right.’ I glance at my phone on the table beside me and smile back. ‘But . . .’

  ‘Fin?’ he asks, leaning back in his chair.

  ‘Don’t you think he’s been overly quiet?’ I ask. ‘I know that’s not unusual for him, but even so . . .’

  Rob launches into his usual speech about allowing our son to settle into university life, and how Fin’s probably trying to give me some space too.

  ‘I sometimes wonder if it’s our fault Fin finds it hard to make friends,’ I say, but Rob tells me of course it isn’t, his tone dismissive. ‘I’m not blaming you,’ I say. ‘I love the barn, you know that, but the kids were so young when we moved.’

  ‘Do you?’ he replies. ‘Love the barn, I mean?’

  It’s well-worn territory, although we haven’t touched this subject in years. When we do, it always begins with Rob seeking my assurances that the move he pushed for was the right one. ‘It was a joint decision,’ I reply, smiling at him. ‘Live the dream!’

  ‘And was it the dream?’ he asks, his tanned face creased with concern.

  ‘Yes, I think so.’ I twist my glass by the stem as I consider my response. ‘But maybe now it’s just us—’

  ‘Not when Fin’s home in the holidays,’ Rob replies.

  ‘No, not then. But I’m sure we could manage with somewhere a bit smaller, maybe nearer town and your work. You could cycle, keep fit. I could walk to town, meet Sash, and we’d be more central for Fin when he does come back in the holidays.’

  ‘I think we’ll still need the extra space,’ Rob replies. ‘All it takes is for Fin to get a girlfriend, then we’ll have to accommodate her too. And Sash is bound to find someone to tempt her out of that filthy flat, then she’ll have lots of babies and the house will be filled with visitors; little ones again.’ He smiles and takes my hand across the table. ‘Let’s wait a year or two, see how the barn suits us then?’

  ‘I’m not quite ready to be a grandmother, but I take your point,’ I reply, although his easy dismissal of my idea has left me out of sorts again.

  ‘And I’m not quite ready to be sleeping with one,’ he says, squeezing my hand. ‘Come on, let’s go and find that cocktail waiter, the one at the beach bar who actually knows how to mix a drink, Mr Ex-ce-len-tay,’ he says, mimicking the charming young waiter’s inflection.

  We walk via the terrace, drawn by the exquisite view of the sunset. ‘Let’s take a selfie,’ Rob says, pulling me towards the balustrade and holding his phone above us. I smile at the obvious reference to the kids’ vernacular, Rob holding me tightly by my waist so we’re close together, but he fiddles with the camera settings for too long and my smile becomes set.

  Rob finally takes the picture, passing me his phone so I can see the result. The smile I’d managed to hold is surprisingly convincing, our happy faces looking back at me. ‘It’s perfect,’ I tell him, handing back his phone.

  ‘We make a great couple, Jo,’ he says, still looking at the image. ‘Always have, always will.’

  6

  Three Days After The Fall

  I reach out to touch his naked back. His skin is taut but soft, a sheen of sweat polishing the contours. I run my fingers along the curve of his thigh, the dip of his waist, the breadth of his shoulders; and I shiver in anticipation.

  Startled awake, I sit up, shaking my aching head as though that will free me of the man I’d dreamt of. The tangled bedding constricts my movements as I turn on to my side to glance at Rob’s alarm clock. It’s later than I’d expected, almost evening, the hours endless and yet truncated by sleep so they’ve passed unnoticed. The afternoon has evaporated into nothingness, my confused thoughts constantly disturbing me, whilst Rob’s movements downstairs have travelled to me through the barn’s ancient timbers, filling up the empty spaces between us. He hadn’t even lasted a day back at work. I’d barely been alone for two hours when his call had woken me, his tone at first concerned, then abrupt. He’d called me a dozen times on my new phone, he’d said, angry when I’d told him it was switched to silent so I could sleep. By the time the landline had woken me he was already on his way home and I couldn’t persuade him otherwise.

  I kick the duvet away, images of the naked man still tormenting me, although I tell myself it was only a dream, not a memory. I have no reason to doubt myself, not really, but my head feels heavy as I lie back, bile in my throat. I thought the memories would have formed more clearly by now, but they’ve tantalised and teased, darting in front of me then receding again. I sit up and check my phone, then lie back and force myself to think back to my fall, collating the facts as I know them.

 
It was 18:02, the nurse had told me. I’d woken on the floor in the hallway, banged my head on the wall, the damaged plaster a testament to that. I run a finger over the lump and find it’s a little less swollen, less painful to touch. I’d clearly tried to save myself as I fell, reaching out with my right hand, but for what: the bannister, the wall, Rob? Then I’d blacked out. I turn over and try to find a comfortable position so I can focus properly. Concentrate, Jo. Think! Rob and I were definitely on the landing, arguing, but I think the argument had started in our bedroom. I remember him out-striding me and catching up with me at the top of the stairs. Rob says I slipped, lost my footing, but I have no recollection of the fall itself.

  The image of the naked man reappears and with it a stab of guilt. Maybe it would be better not to know what I’ve missed in the last year. Rob clearly feels that way, choreographing what the kids should say and sketchy with the details when I press him to fill in the blanks.

  I sit up in bed and listen intently for my husband, catching the sound of a microwave ping downstairs and the scent of reheated food, the thought of joining him for dinner filling me with dread. What is it I’m afraid of? His devotion to me has been absolute, not only in the last few days, but throughout our marriage.

  I negotiate the stairs with care, joining Rob in the kitchen as he’s spooning the contents of a plastic tray on to two plates, any anticipation the smell had created immediately dispelled by the food’s gelatinous appearance. He looks up at me, a flicker of surprise on his face, then a half-smile. ‘I thought you were asleep; I was going to bring this up to you.’

  ‘No need,’ I reply. ‘I’m quite capable.’

  I open a drawer to take out the place mats, but Rob stops me with a hand to mine, ushering me towards a dining chair, his palm on my back, his other hand supporting me under the elbow of my left arm.

  ‘I told you; I can manage,’ I say, freeing myself from his grasp.

  He lays the mats out, then puts a plate of food in front of me and a glass of water and two painkillers beside it. I concentrate on chewing, the microwaved pasta thick and tasteless in my mouth. Rob eats too, the space between us much greater than the width of the table, the silence stretching out. I wonder at how we’ve cancelled out the previous twenty-three years of marriage in a single year; become strangers to one another, distrustful ones at that. I look up at him and find he’s regarding me with a look of deep concentration, as if he’s working me out as I try to do the same with him.

  ‘I’ll go food shopping tomorrow, get something better for dinner,’ he says. ‘I just called in at the village shop for this, but there’s never much choice in there.’

  I look beyond Rob to the window behind, the blind still open. It’s almost dark, the rain tapping out a staggered beat. It seems odd that he rushed home – leaving a meeting, he’d said – and yet he’d stopped at the shop to buy pasta. I remark on this and Rob looks up from his food and tells me of course he was worried, but we need to eat; and besides, he’d spoken to me on the phone by then, he knew I was okay. He frowns, then stabs a tube of pasta with his fork. ‘I feel like I always have to explain myself.’

  ‘You do,’ I say, then before he can reply I change the subject and ask, ‘Wasn’t there anything in the freezer?’ An image of bags of frozen Bolognese sauce is in my mind, decanted from a bubbling pan into two-person portions.

  Rob gets up and opens the freezer door, holding up two solidified bags, their contents reddish brown. I nod, swallowing down one of the painkillers. ‘They’ll do for another day.’

  Rob returns them to the freezer; telling me they’re dated months ago as he sits back down.

  ‘They’ll still be okay,’ I reply, but he says he hadn’t meant that, pointing out how I’ve remembered something pre-fall; the frozen Spag Bol.

  ‘I’ve always batch-cooked,’ I tell him, dismissing his smile. ‘That’s a general memory, nothing specific.’

  ‘You remembered anything else?’ Rob asks, reaching across towards my hand.

  ‘No.’ I lean away from him, tired of the question. If I’d remembered something important then I would have told him, although maybe I wouldn’t. The idea Rob is concealing something, maybe many things, and that perhaps I too have secrets, has begun to inform what I share with him. ‘Where are the kids?’ I ask.

  ‘I told them not to visit tonight.’ He smiles at me. ‘You need the rest.’

  ‘I didn’t mean that.’ I sip my water. ‘I mean where exactly are they living?’

  I need to collate the facts, they’re Rob’s currency and it’s ridiculous I don’t know where my own children live.

  Rob looks up from his food. ‘I told you, Fin is sharing a house with a friend called Ryan and unfortunately Sash lives with Thomas.’

  I ignore the impulse to ask more about Sash and Thomas, because if I allow myself to become diverted I will forget what I had meant to ask. Since my fall I’ve noticed I’m easily side-tracked, which makes recovering information even more difficult, especially when Rob is so evasive. Perhaps I should write everything down, the connection between pen and paper more reliable, but then I’d have to hide my notes and remember where I’d hidden them; more secrets.

  ‘I’ll need their addresses,’ I tell him, wishing I’d brought my new phone down with me so I could input the details straight away.

  ‘Is this important right now, Jo?’ he asks. ‘We’re trying to eat.’

  I tell him, yes, it’s important to me; I’ve lost a year and he seems to want to make it as difficult as possible for me to catch up. I stare at him, waiting for his reply.

  Rob sighs. ‘That’s just not true.’

  ‘Then tell me where they live,’ I say. ‘So I can imagine them being there.’

  Sash apparently moved out of her bedsit and in with Thomas quite quickly – an unlikely scenario for our somewhat pampered eldest child, sharing a flat above a bar. Although maybe it’s an improvement on the damp bedsit. I try to picture The Limes, where Rob tells me Thomas works, and have a vague recollection of once standing on the other side of the road, looking across at it, but Rob says we’ve never been there so I decide not to share that with him. He confirms my initial thoughts by telling me Sash hated living above a bar. It was noisy and cramped, so he’s helping her with the rent on a flat overlooking the park, one of the newish ones. I nod to indicate I know which ones he means; they’re impressive and, I imagine, hideously expensive. ‘How much is that costing?’ I ask.

  ‘You don’t want to know,’ he replies.

  ‘Can we afford it?’

  ‘Just about,’ Rob says, rubbing his eyes so they make a squeaking noise which goes right through me.

  Our son’s new home is not so nice apparently. Rob tells me the road name and, although at first I don’t recognise it, I do know the area. It’s in the roughest part of town, row upon row of tired terraced homes, trainers suspended from the telephone lines which criss-cross the narrow streets to indicate the availability of drugs, or so I’ve heard. We haven’t been invited round there, Rob says, but we’ve been to Sash’s flat.

  I ignore his comments about them both growing up, how it’s natural, because to me Fin is still a boy, and Sash is living with Thomas, which is clearly a bad thing, because Thomas is, to quote Rob, ‘a nightmare’. I take the second painkiller, adjusting my focus away from Rob’s enquiring stare, my attention falling on the framed photos behind him, the ones he showed me last night, of a holiday I don’t recall.

  Rob looks over his shoulder to see what has caught my attention. ‘Do you remember it at all?’ he asks, standing to retrieve the frame, his back to me as he looks at our smiling faces.

  ‘Not really,’ I say, coughing, the tablet now lodged in my throat. I sip the water to help the bitterness on its way. ‘Maybe a faint recollection, but I think it’s only because you showed me the photo.’

  Rob stares at the sunset and our smiling faces. I can’t see his expression, but his hand is clutching the frame tightly, as though he doesn’t wa
nt to let go, then he looks back to me and says, ‘That’s a shame; we were so happy.’ He holds up the picture to me again. ‘Perfect couple.’

  He looks at me for a response, but there’s such an intensity to his stare that I look away, coughing again, the tablet still there, acrid on the back of my tongue.

  I leave him to clear up the dishes, pulling myself slowly up the stairs with my good hand. He told me Sash’s address, and Fin’s – clearly no secret, and why would they be? But as I reach the top I realise I’ve already forgotten the details. They’re my children, so precious, every movement monitored, and now I can’t even remember how to find them.

  November – Last Year

  Despite Sash’s poor choice of venue for our lunch date – ‘The park in November, are you sure, Sash?’ – I’m pleased we’re here together. I suspect her insistence is more to do with finances than preference, although I’d insisted I was happy to pay.