Come Away With Me

Ruth looked miserable. ‘I think he’s away more than he needs to be because the child issue is unresolved between us.’

That evening round the supper table I watched Peter and Ruth. They talked in a companionable, friendly way, but they were too polite with each other, too careful. They never touched or exchanged a look. They were not like Tom and I had been together.

That night I couldn’t sleep. I lay thinking about Adam and about his life in this house. I thought of him lying in bed below me and I had a sudden urge to watch him sleep. I went down the thick carpeted stairs, tense for any creaks. His room was next to the bathroom and the door was ajar. I held my breath, pushed it open and peered into the room.

He lay on his back, one hand thrown out. He looked smaller and younger in sleep, vulnerable in his blue-striped pyjamas. He stirred and turned away from me, pulling his legs up with a little grunt.

I watched the way his hair grew round his face and conviction flared inside me. I turned quickly, pulled the door to and went on down to the kitchen for water from the fridge and a reason to be walking about at night.

Peter left for the airport before I woke. Ruth and Adam were up early, gathering things together for the long journey to Cornwall. They were going to drive away and leave me here.

‘Will you be all right, Jenny? I hate to leave you. You must take care of yourself.’

‘Why don’t you come?’ Adam said suddenly. ‘It’ll be company for Mum now Peter can’t come.’

My throat was dry and I couldn’t answer for longing to go with him.

‘Darling,’ Ruth said quickly, ‘Jenny has a busy life and people expecting her in London. But maybe one day, when you go to see your parents we could be in Cornwall at the same time?’

‘Yes,’ I said and smiled at Adam. ‘Thank you for asking me. Have a wonderful holiday, both of you.’

At the door Ruth kissed me carefully.

‘Thank you for everything,’ I said. ‘I’ll post the keys through the letter box, shall I?’

Ruth nodded. ‘I’ll call you.’

I watched Adam bumping his knapsack down the steps, his hair flopping over his face. He threw his head back and turned and grinned up at me, and the pain lived and breathed inside me.

‘’Bye,’ he called. ‘See you again.’

I watched them until the car turned at the end of the street. I stood on the steps of the house where this boy lived until they disappeared. Then I closed the door.

TWELVE (#ulink_65124cf4-5b7c-56f3-a5aa-3d76fd862543)

When the car had disappeared round the corner I moved around the empty three-storeyed house. All houses smell different, they gather the essence and scent of people. I looked at the cork noticeboard in the kitchen. Ruth was very organised. All Adam’s activities were carefully pinned up there with her own appointments and Peter’s schedules and flights.

I moved up the stairs and stood outside Adam’s room like a thief. Then I pushed open the door and went in. The room smelt of boy; of gym shoes and clothes he should have put in the wash. I lifted a football shirt and held it to my face, then folded it carefully and placed it back on the chair. Posters were pinned to the walls: birds and maps and a group photograph of him playing the clarinet in a youth orchestra in Glasgow. I stared at his sweet, concentrated face and Tom stared back at me.

What is it like to have a child of thirteen? To have a child with a formed and independent mind? I don’t know what that feels like.

I lay back on Adam’s bed slowly like an old woman afraid that her bones might break and I let my darling into my head; just for a second or I would go mad.

Rosie. I will never have a conversation with you. I will never know what sort of person you would have grown into. You—with your little busy footsteps on the polished floors and your funny, throaty little chuckle.

I heard myself moan softly in the empty house. How loud it sounded, like an injured animal.

There was an added anguish that would not leave me alone; it burnt inside me like a fever, keeping my body hot and dry. A nagging, persistent little doubt rising up, damaging and relentless, and part of me like a steady beat.

Tom…You took Rosie with you. You had my baby in the car. You were always so careful. Were you careful that day? Or were you late leaving the zoo and worrying about the traffic. Were you careless, Tom? Were you?

I lay on Adam’s unmade bed and watched the afternoon sun move round and slant across the floor and catch the dust, and I fell into a strange daytime sleep, and the dreams were so vivid that I longed to wake, but when I woke I longed again for oblivion.

I am running across Porthmeor beach in St Ives and Tom is chasing me. He catches me and we fall laughing on to the sand, rolling over each other, getting covered in wet sticky sand. We are kissing each other over and over again. We are playing truth or dare, and I have rolled over on top of him, tickling him.

‘Come on, tell! Tell me the most terrible thing you have ever done?’

Tom is twisting away from me, trying to get free and laughing. ’Get off me, woman! I’m getting covered in sand.’ He sits up, brushing down his sweater. Then he says, suddenly serious, ‘The worst thing I ever did was get drunk one night at a party and I screwed a girl in a bedroom full of coats. She was very pretty and she had been throwing herself at me all evening, so I thought, Why not? She’s obviously keen and willing. But I had no idea until later that she was only seventeen and still at school. I felt guilty and ashamed about that night for a long time. Even talking about it now makes me cringe.’

‘Did you ever see her again?’

‘No. I was at university and in Plymouth with the cadets, doing my obligatory scholarship time. We had driven down to Cornwall just for the party. We went back the next morning.’

‘What was she like?’

‘Tall and blonde is all I remember in my drunken haze. OK, goody two shoes, what’s the worst thing you’ve ever done? Stick your tongue out at the back of a nun? Ow! That hurt.’

I sat up in the dark and the rage inside me was all-consuming, sucking me dry, making me tremble with anger. Is Adam Tom’s child? Ruth can’t even remember the boy’s name or face. It can’t be right that Adam is hers. It can’t be.

As I lay on his bed I knew that I had been guided to Adam. Why otherwise would Ruth and I have met on a train to Birmingham when we’d not met in fourteen years? It was fate. Adam is part of Tom. He is part of my life because of Tom. He is part of me.

I felt light-headed, as if I were floating, as if I might blow away. Like the night of Tom’s death I felt curiously out of my body, watching myself from the ceiling. I got off the bed carefully and pulled the duvet straight. I switched on the landing light and went dizzily downstairs. I made tea in Ruth’s kitchen.

Tom seemed abruptly near me in this house that belonged to another family. To people he did not know. As if I had conjured him. I looked around at the shadows beginning to fill the empty house and I willed him to stay close to me.

Tom, you have a son.

I walked through to the living room and looked out into the road full of lit houses. The front door of the house opposite was open and light spilled down the dark steps. The family were piling their possessions into a camper van. Up and down the stone steps they ran, laughing and excited, the children in bright clothes like small ladybirds.

They were placing bicycles on the back of the van. They were going to carry their house away on their back. I watched, fascinated, until they were ready to leave, then I wrote down the number of the hire company written in large letters on the side of the camper van.

THIRTEEN (#ulink_ffc0f7b8-227d-5ad3-9874-303b5391de02)

Ruth and Adam beat the traffic and arrived in Truro triumphant. They stopped in the town to have lunch and shop for food, then headed for St Minyon. As they turned off the main street and took the narrow road to the creek, Ruth’s heart soared as it used to when her godmother was alive and she knew that for an afternoon she could be completely happy in her skin.

Beside her Adam unwound the window and Ruth heard his small sigh of contentment. As soon as the car was unpacked he would be off with his binoculars heading for the other end of the creek. For a few days he could run free and wild, as she and Jenny had done as children.

The tide was out and the smell of mud and hawthorn filled the air. Ruth backed the car as near to the cottage as she could and they unloaded. Then she parked it neatly facing the water near some upturned rowing boats. Mrs Rowe had been in and opened the windows and made up the beds.

An ancient Rayburn and night storage heaters stopped the house from getting damp, but Ruth knew she would have to put in central heating soon, holidaymakers now demanded what they were used to at home.

Adam looked at her hopefully, then at the wave of shopping bags on the kitchen floor.

Ruth laughed. ‘Off you go!’

She handed him some chocolate and a bottle of water, and he shot out of the front door singing like a bird.

From an upstairs window she watched him lift his binoculars to the dense woods on the other side of the creek. Then he lowered them and stood for a moment quite still, looking over the mudflats. Ruth recognised his moment of peace. It brought home to her his carefully guarded misery at a school he had never wanted to go to. She should have listened to Peter. Her work had taken her to a big city and it was a good career move, but it was Adam who was paying the price.