Pandora’s Box

Hi Bill, yes, I’m doing just fine. The kids are well too. So kind of you to enquire. Bill was never one for small talk—cut to the chase, he always said. Okay, here I go with the chase:

‘This is about Shelley wanting to go to Cornwall for her birthday, Bill.’

‘Yeah, you said. We emailed. I thought we’d agreed. No.’ There’s the sound of a door shutting far away in the place where he is, as Nikolai’s high-pitched screaming blocks out all else for an instant. ‘Sorry, he’s teething. It’s a bit noisy here.’

Teething, yeah, right.

‘Bill, Shelley really wants to go to Summer Bay for her birthday.’

‘Look, things are kind of difficult here at the moment.’ I can just feel his eyebrows lifting. ‘Anyway, what on earth does she want to go for?’ He sounds preoccupied. He sounds as if he hasn’t slept in weeks. Nikolai probably makes sure of that. ‘It’s a bit far away, isn’t it?’ He is thinking about the long drive down there; what it will mean to squeeze it in between a late finish on a Friday and an early start on a Monday morning.

‘You don’t have to come, Bill. In fact, she doesn’t really want a crowd. She’s been quite clear about that. She just wants some girl-time.’

He doesn’t seem to be listening. He’s got the desk diary in front of him, I can hear him turning over the pages, flick, flick, till he arrives at the week at the end of May.

‘Not possible, I’m afraid. I’ve got a meeting first thing on that Saturday morning which won’t finish till about one. Nope. No can do, Rachel.’

‘That’s all right, Bill,’ I explain patiently. ‘She just wants me and her to go. You don’t have to be there.’

There is a silence at the other end while he takes that in.

‘We can do all the tea and cakes and presents bit when we get back,’ I offer.

‘No, we can’t.’ He sounds petulant. ‘It’s Stella and my anniversary. When my meeting finishes on Saturday I was planning to take her away for a few days. In fact, there was something I was hoping to run past you regarding that. We were sort of hoping you might have Nikolai for us; just for a few days?’

I am stunned into silence for a minute; astounded really that he can even think of asking me. Okay, so we keep up a good front for the kids’ sake but Bill and I hadn’t exactly parted best of friends. I glance up as Sol taps gently on the kitchen door and lets himself in. I can see the darker patches on the bottoms of his socks where they are soaking wet. I watch him sit down at my kitchen table and peel them off.

‘The conversation we need to have at the moment is about Shelley’s birthday,’ I remind Bill, ‘not your anniversary. Perhaps we can discuss that another time?’ I don’t know why I say that. There is no question of me ever taking Nikolai off their hands—not even for a couple of hours, let alone a couple of days. I have my own hands full enough as it is. Why the hell do I find it so difficult to just say NO?

‘Can’t do it, Rachel. Anyway, weren’t the kids due to come to me for that Saturday? I was going to take them all out to the park and then on for a burger. That way Nikolai can come too.’

Hmm, and maybe you can then palm Nikolai off onto me later?

‘The park?’ I say. Sol chuckles into his hands at that. He knows who I’m talking to and what we are talking about. ‘I think you’ll find it’s the week after that they’re due to come to yours, Bill. I’ve just checked. The Summer Bay thing is just for Shelley and me, as I’ve said. It’s what she’s asked me for…’

And she so seldom ever asks me for anything. If only he could see that and break away from his enclosed little Bill-Stella-Nikolai world for a minute.

Had we ever been like that? I wondered now. A little self-contained, totally enclosed unit; a bubble of a family, where inside the fold everyone is totally ‘right’ and outside it you are likely to be considered completely in the wrong?

‘I’ll just check on that with Stella. I’m sure you’re wrong there.’ Bill’s tone is defensive now. I hear him put the receiver down and go out and close the door to talk to Stella.

Were we? Were we ever like that together, Bill and I?

I close my eyes for a minute. I count to ten. Once, a lifetime ago, lying under the canopy of an oak tree on Hampstead Heath:

‘I want to know why it is you love me.’ Bill had been lying flat on his back, hogging the lion’s share of the shade.

‘Because you’re…you’re wonderful!’ I’d told him enthusiastically.

‘No, I mean precisely why. Tell me the reasons.’ His eyes had opened, caught me laughing, then, while he’d been dead serious.

‘I just do,’ I’d said helplessly. ‘Because you love me. Because you accept me as I am. Because you believe in my dreams. Because when I’m in your arms I feel, oh, I feel I could conquer the whole world, but even better than that, I feel I don’t need to…’

‘The real reason,’ he’d rolled over, businesslike, ‘is that you know that with me, you’re going to be going places, right?’

I didn’t know what he meant at the time. Some little village on the outskirts of Mumbai? To Turkey; to Greece, where we could look up the lost city of Troy?

‘Women need to know they’ve got someone to look after them, that’s all. You’re right, Rachel. Stick with me and you won’t need to conquer the world. That’s because I’ll do it for you.’ He’d been so sure of himself. I’d been so besotted with him. He’d meant he’d look after me materially. I thought he’d meant in all the other ways that count.

‘Any luck?’ Sol glances up at me from the papers he’s been scanning.

‘You know Bill,’ I mouth. ‘He’s never going to make this easy.’

Sol does know Bill. He and Adam were our neighbours for four years before their business took off and they were able to afford pastures greener. I sit down beside my one-time neighbour and sometime employer and prop my face in my hands.

‘Never mind him, though. What interesting work have you got lined up for me today?’

Sol pulls a face, then straightens it immediately. ‘Wrinkles,’ he tells me, ‘I must remember not to do that. Anyway, I’ve got a pile of typing for you, darling. I think most of it is legible. Let me know what you think of the hero.’ He sits back, his white linen shirt half-open, showing off his all-year tan to good effect. He is gorgeous, actually—the thought pops irrelevantly into my head. No wonder Adam was heartbroken when they split up. Annie-Jo has a point. Why do I never notice men at all these days—even the gay ones?

‘The hero? Oh, it’s your novel then? Not the new brochure for the shop?’

‘Justin’s doing the brochure.’ Sol waves a hand airily. ‘He understands the new publishing program better than anyone. He’s a whiz-kid. He’s young. They’re all whiz-kids.’ He looks a bit tragic as he says this.

‘Adam had a pretty good handle on that side of things…’

‘Adam was a dinosaur, Rachel. Old-fashioned in the extreme. In all his ways.’ He gives me a significant look. ‘Life’s an adventure to be tasted, isn’t it, sweetie?’

‘So, the whiz-kid is helping you with the brochure?’

‘Actually, he’s being such a bitch about it I told him he could bloody well do it himself.’ His voice is blasé, but the pain in his eyes when he mentions Justin is etched deep.

‘Justin playing up again?’ Uh-oh, trouble at the ranch. I’m still holding the phone to my ear, but there’s no sign of Bill coming back just yet. Bill works for a law firm and no doubt he’s used to keeping people on hold for great lengths of time, I think. I will hold for exactly two minutes more.

‘If I didn’t love him so much I would dump him, truly I would. But we’re soul mates,’ Sol tells me, ‘we were destined to be. He’s making me suffer to show me what I put him through in our previous existence together.’

‘Won’t that mean he’ll have to come back and suffer the same thing again himself?’ I swap the phone over to my other ear, and hand Sol the corkscrew and a bottle of cabernet sauvignon.

‘I don’t know. Good point. I shall put that to him. He won’t care, though, that’s the thing. He’s a Gemini, isn’t he? I was warned. Aquarius rising, too; he won’t be tied down.’ He pours out a small amount of wine and swivels it around in the glass, savouring its bouquet.

‘I’m sorry,’ I say. He never used to look this sad. Or even so careworn as he does at the moment. Well, stands to reason really. I know Adam was the one who used to take care of the troublesome things in life, like shop brochures and acquisitions and keeping the website updated. Making sure there was milk in the fridge. In short, all the boring little necessities of life, which allowed everyone else—aka Solly—to go out and be ‘carefree’.

‘Will he let Shelley go with you?’ Sol indicates the phone with his head. ‘He should let her do what she wants to, poor darling.’ He pours out a large glass and hands it to me.

‘I’ve made up my mind I’m going to take her anyway,’ I tell him slowly. ‘I might need to ask for your help with some things, though. Hattie, for example, will you look after her for us?’

‘The tortoise?’ Sol grins amicably. ‘Sure.’

‘Will you be around the last week in May, though? This is really important, Solly. Are you sure you can do it?’