‘Again?’ his dad cried. ‘That’s the fourth in a row!’
‘I would say I’m sorry. But . . .’
‘Are you sure you’ve never played this before? You’re not some sort
of card shark we’re going to lose our life savings to? In five pence
pieces, admittedly.’
‘I’m saying nothing,’ Esme said, dragging a stack of six small silver
coins towards her, joining the pile that she had already amassed.
Though he joined in with the mock exasperation and frustration,
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Tom was in fact quite happy. Esme had worried about this for weeks. So had he. There is a particular type of familial assimilation
Christmas at a relative stranger’s home requires. Get it wrong and
one or both of them would be trapped for hours, if not days, in a
maze of traditions they could neither understand nor break.
Between occasional glances over at his mum (who was joining in
happily now, the scene in the kitchen apparently forgotten), Tom had
been watching Esme, looking for any signs of discomfort or stress.
But at no point did she look anything except content and at home.
She had told Sarah and Nathan about her work in early years speech
development. Then told Nathan specifically about Angry Matt, the
drummer she had dated for a few months before meeting Tom and
whose band he was a fan of. Gordon asked her about studying at
Oxford, as if it was a different planet rather than a university. Anne gave her a potted history of Lowestoft, told primarily through gossipy anecdotes concerning her friends and their friends.
He thought back to when they almost vetoed the idea.
‘Maybe it was a mistake,’ Esme had said one evening in mid-
December, while she was wrapping presents and drinking mulled
wine in her Pimlico flat, with Tom watching on.
‘What?’
‘Using Christmas as the meet-the-parents time.’
‘I’ll be fine.’
‘Oh that’s good,’ she said, sarcastically. ‘I’m actually talking about me. If I screw up at Christmas they’ll remember it for ever, won’t
they?’
‘You won’t screw up.’
‘I might. What if I drink too much and say something stupid?’
‘Well, just don’t drink too much. I won’t be.’
‘What about the games? You said they play games.’
‘ We do.’
‘Well, like what?’
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‘We play cards. Sometimes have a quiz.’
‘Right,’ she said nervously, then fell silent.
‘What now?’
‘I’m worried that I won’t understand the rules. I’m crap at learn-
ing new rules, Tom.’
‘Esme, you’ve got an MA from Oxford. You’re probably the
smartest person I’ve ever met. I’m sure you can remember the rules
to Old Maid.’
‘What’s Old Maid?’
‘We might not even play it,’ Tom had said.
For a moment she went quiet, bowing to the Kate Rusby album
Tom insisted on listening to because he believed it contained the
only truly good festive songs ever recorded. But then her worries
bubbled up and over again.
‘Do you think they’ll like me?’ she asked.
‘Of course. Why wouldn’t they?’
‘Well, did they like your last girlfriend?’
‘Niamh?’ he asked, thinking back to the almost embarrassingly
quiet and shy Irish girl he had brought to Suffolk for the long ( really long) Easter weekend two years ago. ‘Hard to say.’
Esme took a deep breath.
‘They’ll love you, Esme,’ Tom said. ‘How could they not?’
And now everything seemed so right. So fitting, he thought, as he
looked over at Esme again, holding his gaze until she looked back.
She smiled and took a sip of wine, draining her glass.
‘Another?’ Tom asked.
‘We’ve run dry,’ Gordon said.
‘It’s fine. I’ll grab a bottle.’
Tom got up from the table and went into the kitchen. The wine
was stored on top of the fridge in a small, six-by-six bottle rack, along with the bottle of Smirnoff his mum kept for the occasional vodka
and tonic she’d drink on a Saturday night. The bottle that always
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used to last her a year, until her son grew up and started to sneak mouthfuls, and then Coke bottles-full of it.
He pulled down a bottle of red. Screwtop. Maybe as recently
as six months ago the feel of it in his hand would’ve been different
from what it was now. But the temptation was gone. Replaced by a
kind of unfamiliar satisfaction with life. He was looking at the bottle when he heard the soft patter of slippered feet.
‘You didn’t answer me earlier,’ the voice behind him said. He
turned to see his mum in the doorway.
‘Answer what?’
‘You know what I mean, Tom,’ Anne said. She looked serious –
braced to bring her most hated topic of conversation to the surface.
‘Mum, please. Can’t this wait?’
‘It’s been bothering me ever since you got here,’ she said, fixing
him with a stare.
‘Well it shouldn’t.’
‘It wouldn’t if I thought she knew. Because if I had to guess by
the way you ran off, I’d say that she doesn’t.’
He stopped, unsure of how best to answer this. The truth would
annoy or upset her. Perhaps it was kinder to tell a white lie. Harm-
less, really. But then Tom looked into his mother’s eyes. The same
ones he’d seen distraught beside his hospital bed.
‘She doesn’t,’ he said. ‘Not exactly.’
The news seemed to hit her like a punch to the gut. And Tom
knew why. For all the talk of this relationship being different, there were a lot of things about it that looked the same as the others.
‘Not exactly?’ she said, echoing him incredulously.
‘She knows that I don’t drink,’ he said.
‘But you’ve not told her why that is?’
‘Mum—’
‘She deserves to know, Tom.’
‘I know.’
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‘Well you should—’
‘Please, Mum. All I’m saying is not today. I need you to give me
some time, okay? It’s Christmas.’
‘I don’t like talking about it, either. You know that. Especially at
Christmas.’
‘So why are we?’
‘Because there’ve been others, haven’t there? They’ve stayed around
for a couple of months. But they didn’t know. And I always say,
Tom,’ she said, holding up her hand to thwart his interruption.
‘I always say that to know you, they have to know all of you. That included.’
‘She will. I promise that she will.’
‘When?’ she said firmly.
Tom hesitated. It was impossible to put a time on it. To plan that
kind of conversation. He had thought about saying something on the
drive up. But instead he’d talked about growing up in Lowestoft and
pointed out banal personal points of interest, like the pub where he
spent his eighteenth birthday, o
r his old secondary school.
‘Soon,’ he said. ‘When the timing’s right.’
‘And what if it’s never right? I know it’s such a hard thing to say.’
‘Harder for me,’ he said, which he knew was a little cruel. They
had argued when his mum had told him she’d kept things from his
grandparents. Not wanting to upset them, he was told. It wasn’t fair
to her to bring that up now.
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘But I’ve told you this is different and I don’t want to mess it up. You have to let me do it my way.’
‘Yes. But in the past your way hasn’t been that honest, has it?’
‘Mum,’ he said, almost hissing, desperate to keep their voices
down. ‘I will. That’s why it’s different. I’ll tell her.’
‘Everything?’
Tom sighed.
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‘It has to be everything, Tom. Al of it. Otherwise it’l al come out when you don’t want it to.’
Tom hesitated again.
‘It will be.’
‘Promise me.’
Tom nodded. Then, without warning, Anne Murray went over
to her son and embraced him. She was crying when she let go, tears
creeping down the gentle lines of her face.
‘What is it?’
‘I want it to be different, too.’
‘I know,’ he said.
‘I know it’s silly,’ Anne said, collecting herself. ‘But I’ve been
thinking.’
‘What?’
‘I know it doesn’t work that way. And you’ll get annoyed at me
for thinking it.’
‘Mum, please don’t.’
‘I’ve just been wondering, you know? If she can help you. Make
you . . . better.’
‘Mum.’
‘No . . . not better,’ she said, admonishing and correcting herself.
‘Happier, I mean. So you’re not—’
‘It’s not as simple as that, Mum. You know it isn’t.’
‘Of course I bloody know,’ she snapped. ‘My son tried to kill
himself.’
The words stunned them both. Until a few years ago Tom had
never seen his mum like this. Now, these moments of raw anger came
out occasionally. He knew he was to blame. Still, they shocked both
of them, trapping them beneath a silence akin to a heavy winter quilt.
‘I just always hope,’ she said, softening, the moment having
passed. A flash of anger rather than an argument. ‘When I see you
like this. It’s just so different, Tom. So much better than you were.’
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Tom watched her face fall as she stepped away from him. Despite everything he had told her, every link he sent for her to read and
every news story about the condition, Tom knew that his parents
would always seek a cure. It annoyed him.
‘I am happy,’ he said. ‘And she is helping.’
His mum nodded. She was lightly biting her bottom lip to keep
herself from crying again when a look of surprise overtook her. She
seemed to be looking past Tom now.
‘Everything alright?’ Esme said from behind him.
‘Fine love,’ Anne said. ‘Got a bit of Fairy Liquid in my eye. Daft
of me. I’ll go and sort myself out,’ she said, brushing past Esme in
the doorway. ‘Tell Sarah to deal me in.’
Tom turned to face Esme. He worried that the emotive nature of
his talk with his mum was still obvious in his sad eyes or a worried
look. Obvious tells that she might pick up on.
‘You sure everything’s alright?’ Esme said. ‘You’ve been ages.’
‘She’s fine. We were just chatting.’
‘Sarah told me to come and get you.’
‘We should go back,’ Tom said, picking up the bottle of wine he
had been dispatched to get. He went ahead of Esme, who was still
in the kitchen doorway.
‘You know if there’s anything—’
‘There isn’t,’ Tom said.
‘I know. But if—’ Esme began, as the kitchen cooker beeped and
the red-lit digital clock showed 17:00.
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PART 2
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CHAPTER SIX
3 – 4 pm
ONE DOWN, TEN LEFT
June 2008 – Just outside Whitstable, Kent
‘ Tom,’ Esme hissed. ‘Don’t. They’re all looking at us now,’ she said, directing his attention to the surrounding cars.
Tom thumped the car horn again, his head craned out the
window in an attempt to spot the problem on the road ahead, before
slumping back into the seat of the sickening, blueberry air freshener-
scented Vauxhall Corsa they had rented for the day. The traffic had
barely moved ten metres in the last hour.
‘This is a bloody disaster,’ he said. ‘As soon as we turn off we’ll
have to go home again.’
‘We might get a couple of hours.’
‘Yes, but it was meant to be the whole day, wasn’t it? Lunch,
beach, dinner. We’ll be lucky if we see the tide go out.’
‘Come in.’
‘What?’
‘Come in. The tide comes in at night. Didn’t you grow up by
Tom said nothing. Instead he turned the radio up for another
traffic report, during which an overly cheerful woman he could only
assume had never sat in a stationary car reminded them again of the
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reason their anniversary trip to Whitstable had so far mostly been spent on the M2, fifteen miles from the junction that would take
them to the coast.
‘Fucking camper vans,’ Tom said, referring to the Volkswagen the
traffic news had told them was quietly smouldering in the middle
of the two lanes, its engine having blown up, spilling oil across the
road three miles away, near a village called Boughton-under-Blean.
‘Come on. It’s not their fault.’
‘Four fire engines, she said.’
‘These things happen. At least no one was hurt.’
‘Probably some bloody hippy who didn’t bother to look after it,’
he mumbled. ‘Couldn’t give a toss about anyone else.’
‘Tom.’
‘And what kind of place is bloody Boughton-under-Blean anyway?
Who names a fucking town Boughton-under-Blean?’
‘Tom, I’m serious. If you keep on like this I’m going to make you
stand with the dads,’ she said, pointing at a group of middle-aged
men who had absconded from their family estate cars and collected
around the bonnet of a Volvo. ‘Maybe you could borrow one of their
copies of the Daily Express.’
‘Hey!’
‘Well, you sound like someone ranting on a radio phone-in show.’
Tom didn’t say anything to this. Mostly because Esme was
right. Instead, he sat back and considered how their hopeful trip to
Whitstable on a sunny Saturday had instead become four hours stuck
in a small rented car with no air conditioning, quietly broiling as
half the population of the South East made for the Kentish sea
side
at once.
The whole thing had been his idea. Instead of dinner or a picnic
on Hampstead Heath, they would go somewhere new. Get out of
London for the day. Rent a car that gave them the freedom of where
to go and when to come back. Celebrate the three hundred and
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sixty-five days that had passed since their meeting at Ali’s costume party and the strange, heady, exciting hours that followed it.
Whitstable was picked from a Google search of ‘best beaches near
London’. Tom needed little more than a Time Out article to convince him that this was the place, and his plan was immediately in action.
‘It’ll be nice,’ Tom had said when he told a slightly dubious Esme
about his idea. ‘Oysters, a walk on the beach, seeing a new town.
Then fish and chips for dinner.’
‘Only if you’re sure you don’t mind driving.’
‘Not at all!’
But that wasn’t quite the truth.
Indeed, the trouble had started at the very beginning of the day,
when Tom had collected the car from a muddy yard in Kilburn, the
dealer a man whose demeanour gave Tom the instant impression of
a career thief and conman. He had eschewed a more reputable rental
firm for this one, which was cheaper and recommended to him by
the drummer in one of his covers bands. Never trust a drummer, he’d told himself as he waited for the grizzly clerk to find the keys to the Vauxhall Corsa they would be driving.
Tom hadn’t driven for a while, and never in London. Having
grown up and learned in an area without so much as a motorway,
suddenly being thrown into lane after lane of slow-moving – yet
somehow perilous – traffic was something he’d always been desperate
to avoid. Even when playing gigs in Greater London he refused to
drive, instead arranging for a band member to bring his amplifier
to whichever backwater town pub or community centre they might
be playing at.
So when he found himself on Vauxhall Bridge Road, reckless
cyclists one side of him, a police car on the other, and the turning
towards Esme’s flat two lanes away, Tom started to realise that his
idea of a little jaunt down to the coast was possibly going to be a
little more fraught than he had anticipated. Nonetheless, after a few
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diversions and changes in direction, he eventually made it to Denton Road in Pimlico, pulled up five doors away from where Esme lived,