The Art of Losing Page 12

  ‘Mum, this is Lydia,’ drawls Adam. Only by watching very closely does Lydia see a flash of pain pass over Naomi’s face before she smiles and holds out her hand. This is the power my mother’s name has, she thinks, even after all this time.

  ‘Nice to meet you,’ Naomi says. ‘Are you at college together?’ This last is addressed to Adam, and he looks panicked. Lydia realises that he is remembering her entreaty not to tell his friends that she does not attend the university, and is wondering whether this extends to his family. ‘Yeah,’ he says, shooting her a nervous glance. She smiles reassuringly; it makes very little difference to her either way. Emboldened, Adam adds a few explanatory and fictional words about how he and Lydia met.

  ‘Lovely,’ says Naomi. ‘So, are you two planning on doing something this afternoon, or—?’ She trails off, obviously at a loss as to why else Lydia would be there.

  ‘Actually, Mum, I wanted to ask you something,’ Adam answers. ‘Why don’t we go and open up the car boot and then we can meet Lydia back in the room?’ He steers his mother away towards the lodge, looking back and giving Lydia a significant look. She watches them go, wondering how Naomi will react to the news of her coming to stay. Perhaps she will refuse, berating Adam for his impulsiveness and lack of prior warning. As she wanders back up to Adam’s room, Lydia toys with the idea of saying that she no longer needs a place to stay; a sudden desire to return home, a helpful friend or relative. But she’s gone too far to turn back now, and when Adam and Naomi return she can see by his face that everything is settled.

  ‘That’s cool about you staying for a bit,’ he says offhandedly.

  Naomi smiles and nods. ‘It’ll be nice for Adam to have someone to knock around with,’ she says. ‘He gets so bored in the holidays, don’t you, love? I don’t think his father and I are stimulating enough company for him.’ An obviously well-practised mother–son ritual follows, Naomi stretching out a hand to ruffle Adam’s hair, Adam ducking and diving to escape it.

  ‘God, you’re embarrassing,’ he grunts. ‘Come on, let’s get this stuff in the car.’

  Naomi makes an expressive face at Lydia behind his back as he grapples with one of the heavier boxes. She’s trying to include her, to make them co-conspirators, and Lydia can’t help but appreciate the gesture. She smiles, pointing at a pile of papers that Adam has stuffed behind his desk in a bid to forget about packing them, and Naomi grimaces again and laughs. Together, they follow Adam down the stairs.

  ‘Will you come with us now?’ Naomi asks brightly when the last of the boxes is packed into the boot.

  ‘I suppose I should go and collect my stuff.’ Lydia thinks of the box room at Sandra’s house, which has never felt remotely like home. It gives her a perverse sort of pleasure to think of stripping her few possessions away from that room for good, along with any obligation she feels to Sandra. ‘If you wouldn’t mind, I could come to your house later on today.’

  ‘Fine, fine,’ Naomi says, waving her hand in a way that shows she is not overly concerned with the details. ‘We’ll see you later.’

  ‘Thanks for helping to pack,’ Adam adds, resting his hand briefly on her shoulder as he moves towards the car. As he gets in he looks back, over Naomi’s head, and gives Lydia a wink. It’s a tiny gesture, but it sets off something inside her body, her stomach lurching as if she has plunged off the edge of a cliff. She smiles back at him, crossing her arms protectively across her chest. She watches until the car has disappeared from sight, and then runs for the nearest bus. If she hurries, she can be out of Sandra’s box room and in a taxi carrying her towards Adam’s home in an hour.

  She hesitates on the driveway when the taxi has left, suddenly shy. The excitement that has sustained her through cramming her possessions into the holdall that is threatening to burst its seams, and the long ride out of town towards the Steiners’ house, morphs into something closer to dread. Their house is far grander than she had imagined, a miniature palace standing in state in what must be an acre or more of lawn. She can barely remember their old house in which she used to play sullenly with dolls, sidelined by her parents and Adam’s, but she is sure that it was far less majestic than this. The family has obviously come up in the world, buoyed up perhaps by Nicholas’s growing profile as a lecturer. She knows through snippets she has read in local papers that he gives talks that go beyond the remit of drip-feeding students knowledge, and that he has gained a reputation. All the same, it surprises her that it should have converted itself into this sprawling piece of real estate.

  She sidles forward, her eyes darting from window to window to check that she is not observed. Through the largest of these windows, she can see a long sofa in creamy buttercup yellow, a pure white rug thrown across the expanse of floor, a dangling crystal chandelier. Already she envisages a hastily knocked-over cup of coffee or an idly placed biro, imprinting a mortifying and indelible stain on the room’s perfection. Her mind shrinks back from the thought and she bites her lip, wondering whether it is too late to turn back. Even as she considers the possibility, her feet have taken on a life of their own, leading her to the front door. Standing in the elegant porch, flanked with waxy-leaved plants bursting with red button berries, she raises her hand and presses the doorbell. Adam answers with suspicious haste, and she wonders whether he has been watching her from one of the windows after all, unseen.

  ‘Hey,’ he says, affecting nonchalance, but she sees a faint blush creeping across his cheek. ‘Come in. Mum’s making dinner and Dad’s not back yet, so I can show you round.’

  ‘Great,’ she replies, lugging the holdall inside after her. Adam doesn’t offer to carry it, but this doesn’t surprise her. Men are probably seldom thoughtful in this way. ‘This is an amazing house,’ she ventures, as, although he presumably knows this, not to comment seems perverse. They are standing at the bottom of a huge oak staircase, winding up on to a mezzanine landing. Someone, presumably Naomi, has placed bowls of white winter roses along the table in the hallway next to them, and Lydia can see them reflected in its highly polished surface. When she follows Adam into the room that she glimpsed through the window her steps seem to echo.

  ‘You like it?’ Adam asks. She nods, although this is not precisely what she meant. ‘It used to belong to my grandmother,’ he explains. ‘When she died, Dad took it over.’

  ‘Ah.’ So it is family money, and not a lucrative career, that has brought Nicholas here. She feels her grudging admiration turn to faint scorn.

  Adam leads her through the hallway again and into a lavish country-style kitchen, where Naomi is vigorously whisking something in a bowl with her back to them. Adam rolls his eyes and leads her quietly out again, only pausing to explain when they have reached the mezzanine landing. ‘I warn you, Mum is a pretty bad cook,’ he says. ‘You have to smile politely and say it’s delicious, but it won’t be.’

  Lydia laughs, unsure whether to take him seriously. ‘My mother is a pretty bad cook too,’ she says. Even in life, this would have been slander, she thinks, remembering the stories her father has told her. Adam whisks her past a couple more rooms – bathroom, master bedroom, a closed door at which she briefly lingers.

  ‘Dad’s study,’ he says. ‘Avoid at all costs. He doesn’t like anyone messing with his papers. Like I’d want to,’ he adds irritably, his slip into the personal revealing an ancient grievance. Briskly, he leads Lydia to the end of the landing and flings open another oak door. His bedroom is larger and cleaner than the square box he litters with books and beer cans at college – all wooden floors, slanting ceiling and wide sash windows. His bed is a double, tucked cosily under the eaves in a way that makes it seem like a private den. They stand in front of it together. More because it is becoming too heavy than for any other reason, she puts the holdall down beside the bed. His eyes flick to it and back to hers in a question that she pretends not to understand, wanting him to make some sort of move.

  He clears his throat, laughing a little embarrassedly. ‘So, your sleeping a
rrangements,’ he says. ‘There are a couple of other bedrooms, so you could take either of those, if you wanted. Or we could make up a bed for you here, or, well …’ He laughs again. With a flash of insight, she sees that his diffidence is at least partly feigned; he’s looking at her with a cocky, charming smile which she reluctantly responds to.

  ‘Let’s just play it by ear, shall we,’ she says wryly.

  He shakes his head in mock exasperation. ‘Tease,’ he says softly, and she thinks that this may be the time at last, but before he can approach her they hear the front door slam downstairs, loud footsteps moving across the hall. Adam breaks away from the bed, smiling lightly. ‘That’ll be Dad back,’ he says. ‘Come and say hello.’

  This is the moment she has been dreading the most. As she follows Adam back out to the mezzanine she turns over in her head the possibility of feigning non-recognition, in the hope that the encounter in the café will have slipped from Nicholas’s mind. She doesn’t have long to ponder. From her vantage point above, she sees him standing in a dark pressed suit, his sleek black head bent over the hall table as he sifts through the post that has been left out for him. When he hears the movement above him he looks up sharply, shading his eyes against the light.

  ‘Adam?’ he calls. Adam clatters down the stairs. Lydia hangs back, leaning over the mezzanine rail. The two men share a tersely affectionate greeting, hands slapped on backs and general enquiries. ‘Good to have you back,’ Nicholas says cordially. ‘I hope we’ll see something of you these holidays.’

  ‘Yeah, I’ll be around,’ Adam says. ‘I’ve got someone staying – a friend. A girl.’ He looks around, apparently only just noticing that Lydia has not followed him. ‘Lydia!’ he calls. She sees Nicholas’s neck stiffen at the name, and descends the staircase slowly. When she is halfway down she stops and stares, as if struck by puzzlement. He’s looking up at her, mouth slightly open in surprise, brows furrowed.

  ‘Hello,’ he says.

  Adam catches the unusual note in his voice and looks between them enquiringly. She smiles, deciding to play the coincidence lightly. ‘Funnily enough, your father and I had a brief conversation in a café recently,’ she says, glancing at Nicholas, hoping that he will not mention her tears or the strangeness of the conversation.

  ‘A small world indeed,’ he says breezily, shaking off his bewilderment. She is reassured by the corresponding lightness of his tone. ‘I had no idea you and Adam knew each other. Well, I wouldn’t have, obviously, as our conversation was very brief, as you say.’

  ‘Small town, more like,’ Adam says, not seeming too put out by this revelation. ‘Well, I won’t bother to introduce you, then. Lydia’s going to stay for a while – they kicked her out of her room in college for a conference and her parents are abroad just now.’ She listens to his words in amazement; clearly this is a story he has cooked up himself over the course of the afternoon. She can’t fault it, but wishes he had run it past her first.

  ‘Fine,’ Nicholas says crisply. He runs a hand through his dark hair, rubbing it against his scalp as if he has a headache. His face is a mask, impossible to read.

  ‘I’m going for a slash,’ Adam announces, perhaps deliberately crudely. ‘See you back down here for dinner in a sec.’ He clatters off up the staircase.

  Lydia and Nicholas are left alone in the hallway. He has turned back to the post, rifling through the letters with what seems to her to be an exaggerated concentration. His shadow looms and twitches against the polished surface of the table. The silence lasts what feels like a long time; a fraction longer, she thinks, than it would have done had they been nothing more than two polite strangers thrown together.

  ‘So,’ he says, not looking at her, ‘are you all right?’

  She knows he is referring to her tears in the café, but cannot tell whether he is asking out of a sense of duty or something more. ‘Yes, thank you,’ she says. ‘It was just a bad day.’

  He nods, collecting and aligning his post into a neat pile now. ‘Well, we’re very glad to have you staying with us, Lydia.’ The words, and the tone, are formal, and she is not sure whether the faint whiff of unease she catches is real or imagined. He turns to her, his face thoughtful and a little puzzled. ‘You know,’ he says abruptly, ‘I knew someone with your name once, a long time ago.’

  Lydia stares at him, not trusting herself to speak. Besides, what answer could there be? For a moment he looks at her expectantly, as if waiting for some kind of prompt; then the mood flickers and changes. ‘It was a very long time ago,’ he says again, almost dismissively, and yet not so; she can hear the edge in his voice, anger and regret and sadness all muddled up. He shoots a quick look in the mirror over his shoulder, and what he sees there seems to reassure him. He clears his throat, stands taller. ‘I’ll just go up and change, and then I expect Naomi will be serving dinner,’ he says.

  He nods at Lydia, giving her a small, tight smile, and heads up the staircase. She is left alone, swaying slightly with the unexpected adrenalin that has hit her, blinking back thoughts. In that moment she wonders whether she should not have come, and looks over to the front door. She could walk out of this house and never return, but she hesitates a moment too long, and when she turns the other way instead, inward, towards the kitchen, she knows that the chance has closed up. She will stay here, now, until whenever the time comes for her to leave, and that time will be shown to her, not chosen.

  Dinner is roast chicken with mashed potatoes, gravy and vegetables. The simplicity of the meal notwithstanding, Lydia can find nothing much wrong with it and her compliments to Naomi are more sincere than she had feared they would have to be. On hearing them, Adam and Nicholas share a conspiratorial grimace, Adam’s exaggerated and disgusted as he pokes his fork searchingly in to the food. When Naomi glances at him, he beams ecstatically and echoes Lydia’s own compliments before looking slyly back at Nicholas. Lydia realises that the conceit of Naomi’s cooking being appalling is a piece of father–son bonding that probably dates back years, and which is clung to despite its being out of date and inaccurate. She also sees, as the meal continues, that Naomi is fully aware of it and panders to it, making self-deprecating remarks and suggesting that perhaps they should have gone out for dinner.

  Lydia feels that the situation should have made for a tense affair, but in fact the mood of the evening is decidedly relaxed. In an open-collared shirt, light grey spliced with pale pink stripes, Nicholas looks easy and approachable, his earlier formality cast aside. When Adam reels off an anecdote about his eccentric tutor’s latest escapade, he throws his head back and laughs unashamedly. Lydia sees a flash of sharp white teeth, glinting in the dark cavern of his mouth. They are eating in the kitchen diner in front of a crackling log fire, and he rolls up his shirtsleeves as the room heats up, exposing strong forearms sprinkled with dark hairs. Once or twice, Naomi reaches out across the table to smooth her hand down his arm, her pink-painted fingernails affectionately scratching the skin. The bond between them is evident. Naomi looks at her husband with adoring eyes, blinking every so often as if he dazzles her. Nicholas is less demonstrative, but when he rises to help her collect the plates, Lydia sees his hand slip briefly to the wide swell of her bottom. She would not have thought that physical desire would survive much past forty, but it seems the Steiners are the living and contradictory proof.

  Naomi brings out a lemon meringue pie for pudding, with a self-conscious fanfare. Adam eats his piece in two minutes and demands seconds, explaining to Lydia that it is a favourite of his. Irrationally, she feels warm and loving at the minor revelation, as if Adam’s fondness for lemon meringue is somehow further evidence of his likeability. She concentrates on her own plate, scraping up the last flakes of pastry. This is hardly the time to be having tender thoughts or making doe eyes at Adam across the table. Nicholas rises and announces that he is going to make some coffee. Naomi is effusive in her praise, something that gives Lydia to understand that this is a relatively infrequent event. Watching him
measure coffee granules into the cafetière, Naomi looks rapt and attentive, far more so than such an ordinary activity warrants.

  ‘Sorry for all the family talk,’ Nicholas says as he carries the cups to the table. The evening has been largely taken up with Adam’s term-time stories and catching up on extended family news. ‘I wouldn’t want you to think that we’re not interested in you.’ He laughs, a quickly suppressed bark.

  ‘Oh no,’ Lydia says quickly. ‘It’s fine.’

  ‘No, Nickis right,’ Naomi interjects. ‘Tell us a bit about yourself. Where do you usually live out of term time? Are your parents just abroad for a holiday?’

  ‘I live in Devon,’ Lydia says. She has never been to Devon but likes the idea of the place, which conjures up images of smiling locals, cream teas and long walks on the beach. ‘Yes, my parents have just gone to Spain for a while. They have friends there, but I don’t really know them.’

  ‘Tell us more about your family,’ Naomi urges. ‘Do you have brothers or sisters?’

  ‘A sister,’ Lydia invents. She produces a ready-made family out of thin air: parents called Margaret and Keith, who left the bright lights of London a decade ago to live out a rural idyll; a sister, Helen, a couple of years younger, who is currently studying at art college in Bournemouth. As she talks about this cosy imaginary family, she watches Nicholas. He is leaning forward, polite and attentive, his powerful hands locked carelessly around his coffee cup. A lock of black hair threaded with silver falls over his heavily lined forehead. His expression is tolerant but a little bored. As she spins a fantasy about Margaret’s talent for the piano, the thought flashes through her head that she could make his face change in a matter of seconds, just by letting slip some unmistakable detail. The power is in her hands, but she chooses not to use it, and she feels it sit tightly in her chest, growing ever more significant and precious.