The Kindest Thing - страница 19

‘You want perfection,’ Jane had said, when I was dumping my first boyfriend at uni. ‘It’s impossible. Give him a bit longer.’ She finished rolling a joint, lit it and sucked hard.

‘No, I feel trapped. When I think of carrying on I feel panicky.’

She’d shaken her head. ‘He’s so sweet.’

‘It’s not enough. I know he’s sweet and pretty good-looking, and he’s not dumb but… I can’t change how I feel. I can’t unthink what I’ve been thinking about him.’

‘Unthink?’

I held out my hand for the joint, the first two fingers splayed. ‘Exactly, not possible.’

So when I asked Jane to be a marriage witness for Neil and me, she reminded me of how picky I was. ‘What if you go off him?’

‘We’ve lasted six years.’ I laughed. ‘It’s him going off me I’m worried about.’

‘You love him more than he loves you.’

‘Do I?’

Had that been true? Back then or as time went by? Had the power in the relationship shifted? I wasn’t sure. Rather, I thought, the intensity of feeling we had, the desire for love and the need for independence, ebbed and flowed between us like a subtle tide.

Jane was one of our witnesses and Tony Boyd, Neil’s old school friend, the other. Tony was a lovely man who could consume more illegal drugs then anyone I’ve ever met and still acquit himself decently. He’d got hold of cocaine for our wedding party. It was pretty rare then and more expensive too.

We’d all booked into a hotel in the Derbyshire peaks, and once we’d checked in we took a picnic out into one of the deep valleys, still in our finery. The four of us got stoned and went paddling, drank champagne and rolled about in hysterics. We’ve a handful of photos left from the day – I had my camera with me – but there’s only one with all of us in. We roped in a passing hiker who did the honours. I look so young; we all do. The dress, its strappy top and flared skirt, glows against the green of the grass, the colours acidic.

When friends heard we were married, some were quite shocked. They’d assumed we had rejected the institution, that we’d live together in defiance of hidebound rituals. If Neil hadn’t proposed perhaps we would have. But I liked my new status. I think I needed the conspicuous commitment, though I kept my own name. And bank account.

Jane once asked me whether I thought Adam’s troubles might have been made worse because we’d taken a relaxed approach to drugs, never hiding our own history of experimentation. I gave her question some thought. Had he needed limits that we’d failed to provide? Had he needed different boundaries? But in the end I couldn’t see it. If we’d hidden our views and adopted a rigid just-say-no stance, his dabbling would have been even more covert and we’d only have learned later how the drugs were affecting his mental health.

I look across the courtroom at Adam again and try the smile. A little better, perhaps, though Ms Gleason frowns. I am to be the grieving widow for the duration of my trial, a hollow shell of a woman. They have warned me against sly remarks or clever answers. I must show some humility. It’s not me, at all.

My brother Martin is not here. I didn’t know whether he would come or not. We’ve grown apart – not that we were ever that close. There was a flurry of contact when Mum was sick. Adam was only a month old when she first saw her doctor about her weight loss. She was dead before he was three. He was a wonderful baby but he never slept and he couldn’t bear to be alone. He’d be up at five every day and happy as Larry if he was carried everywhere. It was exhausting. We had a baby sling, and for the first year we lugged him about in it constantly. I remember hoovering with him strapped to my back. Then we bought a back-pack with a frame. Those years were a blur of broken nights and driving back and forth to my mum’s, Martin and I conferring over who would do the next hospital visit.

Neil and I were both shattered, ill-tempered with each other, bickering about the chores – all the new ones that came with parenthood. I didn’t cut him any slack; he would do everything bar breastfeeding or die trying. I knew other couples where the advent of a baby seemed instantly to dissolve any intentions of domestic parity, to rob them of political intelligence and plunge them back into the stereotypical gender divisions of the fifties. The man was working harder than ever, all the overtime going, quickly losing faith in his skills as a parent; the woman did all the housework, the shopping, cooking, cleaning, the baby. She was up night after night, simmering with resentment and careful not to disturb him because he was tired and he had to go to work the next day. As if child care wasn’t twice as demanding.