Buying Time Page 6

  He pushed the dress back into the wardrobe and slammed the door shut.

  He backed towards the bed until his legs collided with the mattress and he sat down heavily, holding his head in his hands.

  Then he looked up and stared at his reflection in the wardrobe mirror.

  “No…”

  He stood up and approached the mirror like a sleepwalker.

  He touched his top lip. His moustache was gone. He’d only started growing the thing when Anna had said she thought men with moustaches were sexy, six months ago… He examined his hair; was there a touch less grey in his sideburns?

  He backed away from his reflection and turned, taking in the room as if for the first time.

  Now that he looked, really looked, he noticed other tell-tale signs of Sam’s presence. Her old hairbrush on the mantel-shelf above the empty hearth; a pile of her scripts on the bookshelf under the window; the toes of her slippers peeping out from under the bed.

  “Oh, sweet Jesus Christ…”

  He sat down on the bed again, gripped his head in his hands and tried to make sense of what was happening.

  The only explanation he could think of, the only possible rational answer to the situation he’d found himself in, was that he was going mad. This was a psychological reaction, perhaps engendered by Anna leaving him, and everything he’d experienced today since waking was taking place inside his head. He was living through a very convincing hallucination. Perhaps he was still unconscious from all the drink on Friday night; perhaps this was his subconscious, punishing him, and soon he would wake up to blessed normality.

  He felt the sunlight that slanted through the window and warmed his hands; he felt his trousers beneath his fingertips. He heard the ticking of the alarm clock and inhaled: he detected, faint in the warm air, the subtle musk of Sam’s perfume.

  If it were an hallucination, it possessed a fidelity beyond anything he’d ever experienced…

  It was no hallucination.

  But what else could it be?

  He’d heard about people being hypnotised, reliving what they thought were past lives. They reported the absolute reality of their experiences, the thoughts and feelings of the person they had been, the scents and sounds and sights of that earlier reality… So if the brain could convince itself while under hypnosis, then perhaps he was imagining all this?

  It was a frightening thought – but more worrying was the alternative,that this experience was real.

  He needed a drink. He recalled the ‘idiopathic episode’ he’d suffered a week ago… Perhaps that was responsible?

  He hurried downstairs to the kitchen. The wine rack was full of the chianti and prosecco that Sam favoured. He opened the fridge and reached for a beer, then stopped himself. What he needed now was coffee.

  He filled the kettle and sluiced the dregs from the cafetière, rinsed the mug he’d used that morning and made himself a black coffee.

  He sat at the table, mug in hand, and tried to think through what was happening to him.

  He pulled his mobile phone from his pocket and stared at it. Should he find Sam’s number and call her?

  He activated the phone, scrolled down to her name.

  He pressed the call button and held the phone to his ear.

  “Just to hear her voice again,” he promised himself, “then I’ll hang up. I won’t even speak to her… What would I say, anyway? What could I say?”

  The dial tone sounded.

  His heart thudded.

  There was a click, then a voice, “I’m sorry, the person you called is unavailable. If you would like to…”

  Relieved, he cut the call and dropped the phone on the table.

  Had Sam picked up her phone and spoken, he would have been unable to maintain his silence. Would he have told her that he loved her, knowing what would happen when she returned home?

  The phone rang – the theme tune of Sam’s last TV show – startling him.

  His hand shaking, he reached for the device and said, “Hello?”

  “Eddy, did you just ring?” A pit opened in his gut at the sound of her voice, her light, modulated Home Counties accent.

  “Sam,” he heard himself saying. “Just wanted to see how it was going.”

  “Just finished for the day. It’s great. The director’s a pussy cat. Did I tell you I’m working with Sally? You know, the lead in the Ayckbourn we saw in Leeds in November?”

  “Great.”

  “We’ve got the afternoon off. I’m going into the West End with Sally, doing a little shopping. How’re you? Getting along without me?”

  He could have wept. “Just about.”

  “Don’t drink too much, Eddy. Only kidding. Eeek! That’s Sally. Must dash. Loves. Bye-eee!”

  She rang off and he sat staring at the phone in stunned silence.

  There was so much he had forgotten about her. The softness of her voice, her pet phrases. Loves. Bye-eee…

  Three weeks, he thought, standing up suddenly and striding to the window. He stared out at the fields in anger. Must he endure three weeks of soul-destroying purgatory, isolated here in the house, knowing exactly what would happen when she returned?

  She had sounded so normal just now, so natural… Loves. Bye-eee… Had she met her lover yet, the detested anonymous ‘someone,’ or was that to come? Did she still love Richie?

  He sipped his coffee, pulled a face on finding it too bitter, and decided that he needed a beer after all.

  He took an Italian lager from the fridge and sat at the table, drinking from the bottle.

  He pulled the phone towards him, scrolled down to Digby’s number, and called his friend.

  For the second time a pre-recorded voice told him that the person he’d called was unavailable.

  He cut the call and tried Digby’s home number.

  “Hello?”

  “Caroline. It’s Ed.”

  “Edward! Lovely to hear from you. When are you coming over? I haven’t seen you for weeks.”

  “As soon as possible. You okay?”

  “I’m well, Edward. Are you wanting Digby?”

  “If he’s there?”

  “He’s just popped over to Manchester, delivering that script for Rogers. You know what he’s like – he doesn’t trust emailing things. But he set off early, and said he’d be back mid-afternoon. Look, why don’t you come over and we can have a drink? Digby shouldn’t be long.”

  “Would that be okay?”

  “Of course. I’m kicking my heels here all alone. And why not stay for dinner, Edward? Steak and kidney pie, your favourite.”

  “I’d love to. See you in half an hour.”

  He rang off and smiled at the phone, at the blessed, mundane normality of the exchange with the woman he’d known for almost twenty-five years; Digby’s staunchly loyal wife and companion who…

  Who in nearly a year from now would have an affair with a bohemian potter.

  He still found it almost impossible to believe.

  Almost as impossible as what was happening to him.

  This is insanity, he thought as he found his car keys and left the house.

  DIGBY AND CAROLINE lived thirty minutes away over the moors on the border of Yorkshire and Lancashire, one of the most beautiful areas in all England. Fifteen years ago they’d moved from London, bought a tumbledown farmhouse on the edge of a small town, and lived in a caravan while the house was being renovated. After enduring a smallish study in their Islington town house, Digby wanted a huge room in which to work and house his extensive library. Caroline, a legal secretary in London, had worked for a few years in Manchester after the move, before giving it up and devoting herself to, in her own self-deprecating phrase, ‘good causes.’

  They had a son who’d long flown the nest and worked as a graphic artist in London. Now they lived with a pair of hyperactive red setters which Digby claimed kept him fit, though judging by his friend’s waistline and omnipresent wheeze, Richie doubted that.

  He pulled his b
attered Rover into the drive and braked next to Caroline’s Mazda run-about. The dogs galloped from the house, a deranged welcoming committee, flopping and bounding around him as he climbed from the car. He endured their slobbering attention until Caroline appeared at the door and called them off.

  She beamed and held out her arms, a tall, matronly woman, handsome and greying; she reminded him of a character actress from the ’fifties – no-nonsense, kindly, and very English.

  “Come here, you,” she laughed. “What have you been doing with yourself? It must be a month or more. What are you working on at the moment?”

  They hugged. Richie ransacked his memory for what he’d been writing this time last year. “The same damned script as the last time I saw you,” he temporised.

  “I thought that was almost finished?” she said, leading him through the stone-flagged hall to the sitting room, a vast, low-beamed room overlooking the rolling green countryside.

  “Rewrites,” he said.

  “I hope you don’t mind my saying, Edward, but you don’t look well. Are you okay?”

  He smiled. “Fine. Just burning the candle at both ends.”

  “Can I get you something? Digby bought a crate of Theakstons the other day.”

  “If you don’t mind, I’ll just have coffee.”

  “You must be under the weather. Black, isn’t it?” She pointed to a small table near the hearth. “I’m on my first sherry already.”

  She moved to the kitchen to fix his coffee, and Richie strolled around the room and examined the bookshelves where Digby kept his travel books. Too lazy to travel himself, he told friends, he loved reading about the exploits of intrepid travellers to exotic, far-flung climes. It was his comfort reading, he claimed.

  Caroline returned with the coffee and they sat on an old sofa redolent of dog. “And how’s Sam?” she asked. “Enjoying the shoot?”

  Richie sipped his coffee. Odd how the mere mention of Sam’s name was like the twisting of a blade. “She’s fine. I spoke to her an hour ago. The filming is going well and she was just about to indulge in some retail therapy in the West End.”

  He wanted the conversation to move on from Sam, but Caroline had other ideas. “I like Samantha, Edward. I really like her. She’s a good woman.”

  Richie smiled and sipped his coffee.

  “You know, when you first met her, and you introduced us… I wasn’t sure.”

  “In what way?”

  “Well, she was so much like all your other women – your harem, I often say to Digby. That is, physically. And she was an actress… I’ve met enough of them to know what they’re like.”

  He smiled. “Surely you can’t lump them all –” he began.

  “Most actresses I’ve met are all of a certain type, Edward. For the most part egotistical and vain, and not a little neurotic.”

  “Not Sam.”

  “No. No, I realise that now. She’s… this might sound trite, Edward, but she’s truly devoted to her craft, and she’s a generous, warm-hearted person.”

  Richie maintained a lockjaw smile, wondering where this might be leading.

  Caroline went on, “And I think she loves you.”

  He felt himself give vent to a mental wail of despair. “You do?”

  “Believe me, I know about these things. I’ve watched her when you’re together. The way she looks at you… it’s love.”

  He shrugged, uncomfortable. “I don’t know.”

  “The thing is,” Caroline said, “how do you feel about Samantha?”

  He stared down at his coffee, thinking that coming here today had been a big mistake. “Well, naturally, I feel a lot for her.”

  “How old is she, Edward?”

  He thought about it, wondering where this might be leading. “Forty.”

  Caroline smiled, looking more than a little self-satisfied. “The sort of age when she might be thinking of settling down. I was talking to Digby the other day… I said that you really ought to pop the question.”

  He laughed. “Pop the question? That sounds so…”

  “Ask her to marry you, Edward.”

  Oh, Christ… He floundered. “I’m… I’m way too old for her. The age difference, sixteen years.”

  She corrected him, catching him out. “Fifteen, Edward. Don’t make yourself out to be older than you actually are.”

  Fifty-five, he thought. I’m fifty-five now…

  “You do love her, don’t you?”

  He hesitated. “I don’t know. I thought I did, and then…” And then Sam left me.

  “And then?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. You know me. I’m not the marrying type. The idea of settling down with one woman…” He let the sentence trail off.

  “You’re a strange man, Edward Richie. I’ve known you for so long, and yet there are times when I wonder if I really know you at all.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment.” He smiled. “Clearly I’m deep and mysterious.”

  She held his gaze. “Or insecure.” She stopped and looked away. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.”

  “If you can’t be honest with friends…” he said. “Actually, I think I will have that beer now.”

  “Good.”

  While she fetched it from the kitchen, Richie glanced at a newspaper on the sofa. It was open at the sports pages, and he scanned a preview of tomorrow’s Premiership match between Newcastle and Manchester City: it came to him that he knew the score.

  He stood and moved to the picture window. The sun beat down on farmland dotted with sheep and grazing cows. A tractor patrolled a distant field, so far away it resembled a child’s toy. A vortex of crows, like vultures, trailed in its wake. For some unholy reason – if he were not going mad – he had been pitched back in time to inhabit the body of his younger self, supplanting his younger self’s memories with his current, fraught neuroses. He tried to think back to this time last year, as it were, and work out what he had done on this day. A Monday, so he would have been at work on a script… He certainly hadn’t driven over to Digby’s and had this conversation with Caroline.

  She returned with a bottle of Theakstons best and a glass.

  She started a new topic, probably thinking it politic. As he poured himself the beer, she sat down on the sofa and said, “I’ve been trying to persuade Digby to take up novel writing again.”

  He joined her. “I think that’d be a good idea.”

  “You do?” She sounded surprised. “The last time I mooted that idea, you said you thought he was happy enough knocking out TV scripts.”

  He shrugged, caught out again. He’d said he thought it might be a good idea because of what Digby had told him on Friday night… or would tell him… about being so pissed off pounding out hackwork.

  “When I first met Digby,” Caroline said, “he had dreams of becoming a novelist. Science fiction.”

  He smiled. ‘Speculative fiction’ was the term Digby had preferred, while Richie had dismissed the genre as sci-fi. “You’re going to blame me, now, for putting him off that idea.”

  “Certainly not. You helped him out no end in the early days. He was getting nowhere writing novels, and you opened up new avenues.”

  In London, in their late twenties, he’d criticised one of Digby’s early novels so caustically that it had caused a rift in their friendship that had lasted for years. Later, in their thirties, he’d introduced Digby to a few BBC bods he’d written radio scripts for, and gradually, over the years, his friend’s career had taken off, moving from radio scripts to TV work.

  “So what makes you think – ?” he began.

  Caroline interrupted. “That he needs to write novels now?” she asked. “He was complaining the other day about how demeaning he found it, working on the current series. So I suggested he write a novel. He’s had more experience; he’s lived, and he has contacts.”

  “What did he say?”

  “Well, he didn’t dismiss the idea out of hand. He said he’d think abou
t it.”

  Richie drank his beer, then said, “Caroline, do you think Digby’s happy?”

  She opened her eyes wide, as if she found the question strange. “Why… I must admit I haven’t really thought about it. Or if I have, then…” She shrugged. “Then I assumed he’s happy enough. We’re comfortable. We have a nice place here, and we get along…” She looked away and sipped her sherry.

  “And you? Are you happy?”

  She smiled, and to Richie she looked like someone putting a brave face on a situation that could be far, far better. “Let’s say that I’m accepting, Edward. I often think that that is far more important than being ‘happy,’ whatever that might mean.”

  He nodded. She was ‘accepting’… for the time being.

  A car engine sounded outside, and Caroline jumped to her feet as if with relief. “Digby’s back,” she said, moving to the window and waving.

  The front door slammed and Digby’s booming baritone sounded. “Is that Ed’s jalopy I espied in the drive?”

  He appeared in the doorway of the lounge, filling the frame with his girth. Dressed in a navy blue business suit, he looked constrained and sweaty.

  “Come here, you old reprobate. I see Caroline’s been trying to get you pissed.”

  Richie hugged his friend and hoisted the glass. “My first,” he said.

  “Uncharacteristically, he started with coffee.”

  “The man’s ill,” Digby opined. “Myself, I could kill a beer. Another, Ed?”

  “I’d love one. I’ll take a taxi home.”

  He fetched two bottles from the kitchen. “And to what do we owe the honour, Ed?”

  Richie temporised. “I have… an idea I’d like to try out on you.”

  “Ideas? Meat and drink,” Digby proclaimed, taking a long swallow straight from the bottle. “Christ, that’s better. I had a long meeting about the storyline on Henderson’s. Pure bollocks. But I’ll tell you all about it later.”

  “Edward’s staying for dinner,” Caroline said. “Steak and kidney pie.”