Lifesaver Read online

  Ken came out and walked towards me, back in his boxer shorts. He put his arms around me and pulled me towards him. His skin was almost burning hot, and the thick hairs on his chest felt comforting.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said again. ‘It’s not that I don’t fancy you, or want you. You know that, don’t you?’

  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘Don’t worry.’

  We stood in silence as the deep bassy thump-thump, ker-chink of the music floated over us and away into the cloudy night sky, more of a feeling than a sound.

  Chapter 5

  By the following night I still hadn’t heard from Vicky. I’d left two messages for her, and, while it wasn’t unusual for her not to return my calls straight away, I was worried about her. Her ancient answerphone tape had distorted and stretched her voice on the message out to a slow, miserable drawl which, illogically, seemed to me another indication of her state of mind.

  I’d go round there the next day, I decided, as I sat with Ken in a reddish fug of backlit cigarette smoke, at a small table on an empty balcony at his gig. My glossy lips felt like flypaper, and I was leaving big sticky prints around the rim of my cocktail glass. But at least I was there, smiling brightly, being the dutiful executive wife.

  Ken was talking to the head of Human Resources from his office, who was small and blonde, and who scrutinized me intently for signs of manic depression (she’d sorted out the details of my post-natal bereavement counselling with the private health insurance people, so probably felt she already knew me). While they chatted I thought, this is his real life, the one which challenges and stimulates him, the one where he’s respected and admired, where people routinely laugh at his jokes and feel honoured to have lunch with him. Where he doesn’t have to worry about getting it up, or miscarriages or dead babies.

  This was the life where he had close friendships with at least four people, three of them women, with whose names I was familiar but who I’d never met. Through throwaway snippets of overheard phonecalls, and Ken’s rare pieces of volunteered information, I knew about Corinne’s commitment-phobic boyfriend, the fleas in Julie’s eye-wateringly expensive carpets, and Marie-Therese’s battle to give up smoking, but I wouldn’t have recognized them if they’d passed me in the street.

  I’d already asked Ken if they were coming that night, but apparently none of them were. It was odd, I thought. For all I knew, any or all of them could have been madly in love with him. They certainly spent more time with him than I did.

  It was boiling up on our balcony, and the tabletop was metal, cool and inviting-looking. I had a sudden urge to pull up my t-shirt and lean forwards on to it, embracing its soothing metallic smoothness against my hot bare breasts. Imagining the horrified reactions from Ken and his employees made me smirk.

  ‘That was a secretive little smile,’ Ken said, signalling to the waitress to bring over more frosty drinks.

  As soon as he said ‘secretive’, I thought of Max. Then I thought how strange it was that Max was a secret, when logically, he shouldn’t have been. Tell Ken, I told myself. It was only a letter. I felt even hotter, even though the dryness of the air-conditioning was ebbing in wafts around me.

  ‘I’m roasting. Are you hot?’ I asked instead.

  ‘You know me. I’m always hot,’ he replied. It both bothered and reassured me, the fact that he hadn’t even asked why I was smiling secretive little smiles. What if I had had a secret? Not just Max, I meant, but a real, deep and sordid secret. A lover.

  ‘Ken,’ I began. The tone of my voice made him look cagily at me.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Do you believe that old Chinese saying, that if you save someone’s life, you become responsible for them?’

  But before he could answer, a tall, thin woman in a brown suede mini burst onto the balcony, grabbed him, and kissed him effusively on both cheeks.

  ‘Kenneth, darling! How are you? So glad you could make it—the girls were delighted to know you’re here. You will come for sushi with us afterwards, won’t you?’

  ‘Hello Shawna. This is my wife Anna. Anna, this is Shawna McKenzie, the Cherries’ manager.’

  I smiled as heartily as I could manage. ‘Hello,’ I said, and stuck out my hand, but Shawna had already given me my allocated nanosecond’s worth of attention, and had gone to drag a chair away from the other empty table to join ours. She perched on the edge of it, leaning keenly forwards, her knees touching Ken’s leg. They began a lengthy and involved chat about marketing budgets, of which, due to the loud R&B in the background, I caught only the odd word here and there: ‘recoupable’, ‘royalty break,’ ‘studio time.’ I tried to listen and nod interestedly, but after a few minutes it was clear they’d forgotten I was even there.

  As the tiny venue filled up and the noise increased, floating up to our balcony as if borne on the thick clouds of cigarette smoke, I stopped stressing about Ken and his impenetrable conversations, and drifted back to Max again, a far more pleasant subject.

  How could I do it? How could I get to know him? All I knew is that I didn’t want to go about it in the way that Adam would be expecting - a straightforward reply to his letter. I realised it was over-complicating matters, but I had to protect myself. I had to. If I was merely to write back, then it was obvious what would happen: we would start a self-conscious correspondence. Like in his first letter, Adam’s every word would be infused with the knowledge that he owed his son’s life to me. I didn’t mind being responsible for Max—in fact, that was why I wanted to meet him so badly, to fill the emptiness in my hands and head and soul—but the important thing was that nobody else, including his dad, knew that I was now responsible for him.

  After the self-conscious correspondence, which would probably have been upgraded to email chats and maybe a couple of phonecalls, we would have inevitably made an arrangement to meet. In a café or a park, I expected; possibly—nightmare—in the presence of a photographer on behalf of the Anthony Nolan Trust, in whose quarterly magazine we would then feature; a small photo of the three of us grinning awkwardly. Then it would be there, in full colour, for everyone to see: I, Anna Sozi, was the person responsible for this child’s life.

  Perhaps to anybody else it would simply have been a source of pride, but for me it felt like an unexploded bomb. It was all well and good whilst he had pink in his cheeks and plenty of strong white blood cells—but who knew how persistent his disease might be? It could be hiding in the secretive shadows of his body, lurking in the undergrowth of his health, biding its time to emerge and take us all by surprise.

  Then I’d have let him down, and everybody would be hurt. Including me.

  I supposed the obvious solution was to just let it go. Tear up Adam’s letter and get on with my life. I already had one small ghost haunting me, the brief wave of tiny furled fingers and struggle of walnut-sized lungs far stronger in my dreams than they ever were in her ten minutes of real life. I didn’t need another one.

  But on the other hand, I honestly believed that in some strange way I was now responsible for Max. Obviously I wouldn’t be able to swoop down to Wiltshire in my Superwoman outfit and materialise in front of him if he ever decided to chase a football into the street, but I needed to know him. So that if I ever could protect him in any practical way, I would. I’d saved Max’s life. A part of me had settled into his body and made itself at home, and now he was alive, and healthy again after being ill for years.

  I couldn’t stop feeling, well, faintly triumphant about it. And then, immediately afterwards, guilty for gloating, and after that, terrified again. What if this was only a temporary respite for him? What if his body ultimately rejected the transplant, and he died? It would be the third time that I’d have caused another person’s death, however indirectly.

  I knew what Vicky would have said, if I could have brought myself to tell her about it all: ‘Don’t be so melodramatic. He’s been given the all-clear, hasn’t he? He’s no more likely to die than the rest of us.’

  But doctors we
ren’t infallible, and children were such fickle and fragile creations, easily sucked under by the beckoning finger of the undertow.

  ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake,’ Vicky would say. I heard her voice in my ear as clearly as if she had been sitting next to me. She’d point at Crystal, with her sturdy scabby knees and chunky crossed arms. ‘Look at her! Fickle—yes. Fragile? Ha! You must be joking.’

  Vicky, of course, had no idea how lucky she was, to have that sort of confidence. It was why I didn’t want to tell her about the letter.

  By eleven thirty we were in a pre-booked black cab on our way home. I felt tired again, but not as unhappy as I’d felt the day before. Sometimes the very act of appearing ‘up’ in public had the knock-on effect of making me feel better for real. Ken was checking his emails on his Blackberry and talking on his mobile at the same time, telling someone in LA what a huge success the showcase had been. I leaned against his shoulder and let the headlights of the oncoming vehicles blur and dance together. Eventually, with the series of beeps and chirrups which had practically become a part of my husband’s vocabulary, an electrical extension of himself, he put away his gadgets.

  ‘Are you OK, baby? What did you think of it?’

  ‘I’m fine. I enjoyed it. They’re great.’ I thought about whether I really meant any of that. My t-shirt was sticking to my back, so I pushed the cab window down enough to let some of the sultry cloudless night into the taxi. As a blast of exhaust-scented air blew my hair out of my face, I decided that ‘I’m fine’ was debatable, ‘I enjoyed it’, true; and ‘they’re great’ a patent lie.

  In a way, though, I had enjoyed it. I’d enjoyed being out of the house. I’d enjoyed the glamour, and the sequinned hopes of the young band. These were the halcyon days for them, when everybody was making a fuss about their talent and their looks. When expectations were packed at their feet but without the pressure of results pushing down on top, like trying to close an overstuffed suitcase. The pressure would come later, when the single bombed or the album barely troubled the murky lower reaches of the charts - unless they were extremely lucky, of course. I was no expert, but something told me that this might well have been as good as it was going to get for The Cherries.

  It was, I reflected, a bit like being pregnant—for those fortunate women who’d never suffered miscarriages, at least - the blissful optimism, the plans, the excitement of it all. Once you were past the three month danger zone and began to relax into it a bit more, faith in the outcome was what became essential. You knew, technically, that things could and did sometimes go wrong, but not for a second did you ever allow yourself to believe they would. Ken would never have sat down to a band like The Cherries and said, ‘well, I’m afraid you probably won’t be all that successful. It’s an impossibly difficult market, and actually, you aren’t very good singers.’

  Some women who’d miscarried babies were cautious and superstitious throughout their viable pregnancies, buying nothing except maybe a pack of plain white newborn sleepsuits, and then having to rush frantically around at the last minute, decorating nurseries and test-driving pushchairs. I had been like that for the first three months with Holly, but once I got the all-clear, even after what had happened before, I just didn’t have it in me to hold back I wanted to enjoy my pregnancy after the earlier miscarriages, and I did, even the shitty stuff; sciatica, nosebleeds every day for six months, itchy shins. It had all been wonderful. I’d been so, so sure that Holly was the one—and she had been, I suppose, insofar as she made it full term.

  The doctors hadn’t known that Holly would not live; any more than Ken had no idea whether his band would be successful or not.

  Chapter 6

  ‘Darling, it’s me, Fenella. It’s about your audition…so sorry—they’ve just rung to say that you were soooo close for Trina, but in the end they decided to go back to their original idea of having her as a redhead. The babies are gingery, I understand. Lord knows how they’re going to manage with twins on set—I mean, what will they do for standins? Anyway, I’m sorry, darling. Hope you’re not too disappointed.’

  ‘I could have worn a frigging wig,’ I said, a dark mood stifling me like a mass of synthetic orange curls. ‘I mean, that’s the lamest excuse I’ve ever heard! Hair colour?’

  I heard my agent spark up a cigarette, inhale, then exhale. I imagined the smoke billowing out of the receiver into my face and resisted the urge to cough. It was only ten o’clock in the morning, and as I lay in bed, I could still faintly smell the previous night’s smoky club on my own skin and in my hair. The thought of it in my lungs made me feel sick.

  ‘Well,’ said Fenella. ‘If you ask me, they knew who they wanted all along. I did tell them not to waste my time, or yours, but you know what the politics are like with these people.’

  ‘Whatever,’ I said. I pushed back the duvet and got out of bed, moving across the room to stand in front of the bedroom mirror in my pants, where I examined the faint silver stretchmarks on my belly. You could only see them in a certain light. ‘So, have you got anything else for me at the moment?’

  Another inhalation, a nicotine sigh. ‘I promise you’re top of my list if anything suitable comes up. How do you feel about doing panto this year?’

  I could have cried. It made me shudder to even think of it: the forced jollity and fake fairy-dust, the thigh-slapping and stupid hats. The tedium of bad puns twice a day for two months.

  I climbed wearily back into bed again. ‘You know I loathe panto.’

  ‘Yes. Just thought I’d ask, though. So that’s a no, is it?’

  ‘That’s definitely a no. I’d rather be on the dole.’

  After we’d said our goodbyes—mine somewhat grumpily - I rang Ken at the office to tell him that I hadn’t got the job. But his voicemail clicked on, after what seemed like an eternity. I hated leaving messages on his machine, it was such a palaver: press ‘1’ to do this, press ‘0’ to terminate the call (why on earth wouldn’t you just hang up, if you wanted to terminate the call?); listen to Ken himself running through a variety of options: ie. ringing his secretary on this number, trying him on his mobile on that number. Then eventually, by the time I’d lost the will to live - or at least forgotten what I was ringing to tell him in the first place - you got offered the chance to leave a message. I hung up long before that. It was hardly important, after all.

  The day stretched ahead of me as all the others did, with not even the promise of the distraction of work. No lines to be learned, no research to be done, no cast to meet. I didn’t have the energy for a run. Lil had said she was going on a coach trip with her Women’s Institute friends up to the National Gallery—and, besides, I didn’t want to get too reliant on her company now that we were friends again. I thought of visiting Vicky, but then remembered that Wednesday was the day she took Pat to his toddler group.

  So I decided to get up and go for a drive instead. I liked driving, it was a great de-stresser. I hadn’t left the house for ages after Holly, and had missed my car so much that once I was back behind the wheel again (Ken having discreetly disposed of the brand-new ladybird-print carseat), I found myself going out more and more. I could listen to CDs or the radio, and it somehow felt far more productive than doing the same sitting at home. I was covering miles, swallowing distance. And I admit, the first few weeks I went out there was more than a niggle of a self-destructive element to it: I was testing God. Or myself. If I pushed up to ninety along this stretch, what might happen? Might I lose control, spin over the central reservation? Would I care? Might it just be the easiest way out?

  I felt that less now. I took fewer risks on the road, although that was mostly because I was afraid of causing death or injury to somebody else. Somebody who, unlike me, was a hundred percent sure that they wanted to live.

  I honestly hadn’t set out to drive to Gillingsbury. I’d just decided that I needed a change of scenery, I wanted to get out of the house, and I had my Daniel Bedingfield CD to listen to. The bottom of the M3 was only a co
uple of miles from where we lived, and I often drove down there—if you went against the traffic, the road was rarely busy, and the scenery wasn’t bad, either. It was miles to the first junction, which I liked. No option but to keep going.

  By the time I reached Fleet, I remembered—consciously, at least - that the M3 was the route to Gillingsbury. My mood had lifted a little: I’d had plenty of rejections in my acting career, and this was just another one—but the thought of visiting Max’s town grabbed me under the armpits and hauled me right out of my sough of despond. Aunt Lil’s words rang in my ears: ‘You could just…suss it out.’ It was the first time I’d taken those words seriously. The idea really had seemed preposterous when she’d said it, so casually, but I found myself getting more and more excited at the thought of maybe meeting Max’s father. How sad and empty was my life, I thought to myself; that this was so thrilling to me?

  The first sign to Gillingsbury took me off the motorway and onto the A303. Salisbury 24, Gillingsbury 17, it said, and my left foot tapped with excitement against the floor of the car. There was a storm brewing to one side of me; the sky had turned an amazing lowering sort of yellow, and everything seemed so clear—I could see individual leaves on trees fifty feet away, and felt as if I was looking into the eyes of the reclining cows in the fields.

  It only took about an hour. The town of Gillingsbury lay in a valley, and as I approached it, I thought: Max is down there somewhere, with a part of me having rooted and blossomed inside of him, helping make him well again. The yearning to meet him was so strong that it was literally a hunger—my stomach rumbled with anticipation.

  I stopped at a petrol station on the outskirts and asked directions from the man in the glass booth. It was easy, he said, handing me change for the two chocolate bars I’d purchased in the hope that they would take my mind off the nerves and the hollow longing fluttering inside me: halfway around the ringroad, then first left. It was another five minutes’ drive to the college, by which time all the chocolate was gone.