SOPHIE
3 October 2017
Thirty-four
The charcoal waves suck up the shingle and spit it out again as they pound relentlessly on the Sussex shore.
Sophie watches, transfixed: lulled by the regular rhythmic motion; imagining them washing over her; bombarded by thoughts that make her heart ache, her mind churn.
This being Brighton, she has struggled to be alone. The promenade is thronged with delegates and lovers, and she has to walk to Hove to find a bench where she can sit by herself and think. She keeps her tears in check, alert to passers-by who give her more than a cursory glance, their attention piqued by a sombre woman who stares out to sea or, avoiding eye contact, looks down at her feet.
Sitting there, she thinks of Alec. Not just some rich cokehead but someone’s son, someone’s brother and, whatever the Libs might have claimed afterwards, their friend. She remembers the photographs of his funeral, covered in all the papers: his father, stooped under the burden of his grief; his mother, prematurely aged, her grey eyes pools of pain shining from a mask of a face.
She remembers James the morning after Alec’s death: his rabbit red eyes; his sense of crisis; his vulnerability. She hadn’t known the dead boy, and so the bulk of her anguish had been for him. She had been so terrified he would be arrested and had managed to convince herself he was loving, loyal, almost noble in throwing away the smack to stop his friends from taking it – and in getting Tom away. She didn’t learn that they had seen Alec’s fall for many years – still doubted she knew the full story – but she knew enough to understand quite what Tom owed him. She didn’t think James so noble after hearing that final, chilling fact. And, if there had been an intense, if misplaced, loyalty then she knew his strong self-preservation, his ruthlessness about shaping the truth to suit him, was also at play.
She thinks, sitting here by the shore: really thinks, lets the thoughts keep on coming. Wonders why she pointed Chris in the direction of this secret: a secret he will keep while he works for Tom, at least, but which now gives him excessive power. Was it just the presence of that journalist which jittered her up? Or was it a dog-weary exhaustion with Tom and James’s belief that they were somehow untouchable? They said Blair was Teflon-like; but these two believe they are in a different league, now.
She remains dry-eyed as she makes her way back to the conference hotel. It is a quarter to nine. The point at which drinks receptions are petering out or segueing into drinks in the bar for those without a pre-arranged dinner. But the reception for LGBT Tories is still in full swing. The air is rank with the sweet vinegary scent of crisps and too much alcohol and her instinct is to leave and call James from their room. But then she catches sight of him and feels that instinctive leap she imagines she will always feel, though the feeling is one of sharp recognition rather than anything warmer. He doesn’t see her. Well, of course he doesn’t: he is too busy working the room.
And he does it so well, head inclined as he talks to a young woman as if she is the only person who matters: eyes focused, one hand lightly touching her arm. And there is something perturbing in his smile and the flush on the face of the prospective parliamentary candidate for Sutton North who is allowing her professional guard to slip just a little and who, despite knowing about his reputation – about his court case, for goodness’ sake – is letting herself act just like any normal young woman flattered by the attention of a good-looking man.
She watches, transfixed, as her husband double-clamps his hands over this woman’s petite hand and looks at her warmly. She knows what it feels like to bask in that smile. To give oneself up to this gaze that says, frankly, unashamedly: Hey, you’re rather lovely. That says that, in a different situation, sex would be more than a possibility; and that it would be rather good.
And she knows then, with that glance, with that tiniest of betrayals, that she can never trust him again properly – and that her well of wifely goodwill and loyalty which has overflowed for so many years has been drained quite dry. That she will never feel that love for him ever again. It is over. Quite emphatically. She has reached her tipping point.
The knowledge comes to her starkly. She feels no rage – or not at this moment – just a calm numbness. This is just how it is. If it involves women, or telling the truth, or facing up to the past; if it involves showing any real integrity, then James will never change.
She has always believed in redemption, and she has tried so hard to think the best of him. Their marriage has continued, her hoping that he might have some sort of Damascene conversion; might see that his is not the true version of events. But, though she’s an optimist, she is no fool. She glances at him again: watches the warmth play across his face, so that he could be in his mid-thirties. And then she sees it: a quick glance sideways to check there is no one more interesting before he focuses on the young woman again.
She leaves the reception, abandoning him to the crush and to the general adulation; to an evening during which he will try to call her – but not more than once for he will be confident hers is the body he can curl up to late that night, after a little light extramarital flirtation; his calm port in any storm. Her anger is growing now: welling in her throat as if it would choke her. A physical thing: this rage. Breathe deeply, she tells herself; calm yourself; think properly and clearly. Do nothing impetuous.
She will leave him: that much is clear. In their room, in the conference hotel, she brings out the thick card that has been hidden away in her purse, behind the John Lewis card and the black Coutts card. The business card given to her by Rob Phillips: reassuringly authoritative and expensive-looking, the card of someone who is able to help. She runs her finger over the watermarked creaminess, reading the raised font like a line of Braille that will provide all answers in her state of current blindness. Though she is clear-sighted about her husband and his inability to ever change, she does not know how to navigate the future; cannot see all her options; knows she must just take tiny steps, now; one at a time.
An image of Emily hugging James as tight as can be, as if trying to keep hold of her daddy with the force of her passion, crosses her mind – then one of Finn. A mini James, physically, but unlike him in character; more unquestionably her child. She imagines hugging him now; the curve of his cheek against hers, the memory of babyhood a ghostlike whisper still, and she feels a sharp twist of guilt at the pain she knows she will inflict on them once she calls this number; once she sets in train the process of separating from their father. And then she thinks of her current half-life: her continual emotional pain.
She lies down on the bed, with its heavy cover that slips and slithers and gives the temporary illusion of opulence; feels the reassuring heft of the Egyptian cotton pillowcase beneath her head. From this angle, things seem a little more clear. Her marriage is over; and though she doubts this will be a calm process of conscious uncoupling, she knows James will do the right thing by the children. He is not a mean man.
Oh, but he is flawed. She thinks of his casual acceptance of his perjury and his assumption that she will keep his secret. She thinks of his arrogance: those words that spool through her mind in the middle of the night.
‘I told the truth, near enough. Or the truth as I saw it,’ he said.
‘You committed perjury.’ She can taste her horror.
She remembers his shrug – and his taunt: ‘And what are you going to do about it?’
And what is she going to do? She remembers the female detective outside the court: conscientious-looking, mid-thirties. DC Rydon, the name James mentioned. Blood whooshes through her: how would she react if Sophie gave her a call?
But she knows she couldn’t face another case. Wouldn’t her motive be questioned? An archetypal woman scorned. Besides, she couldn’t do that to her children, however morally right it might be; however much it is what Olivia, poor disbelieved Olivia, deserves.
And then she thinks of Chris Clarke. She could call him and furnish him with further details that would ensure James’s political hopes were not just scuppered but buried so deep that they could never resurface; that he would forever languish as a backbencher, perhaps rising to be the chair of a select committee but not one with any real power? And it is not that she’s vindictive; it’s that the thought of him and Tom riding roughshod over the truth, like this, more than perturbs her. Gilded youths whose gilt has worn thin; is really rather tarnished now.
Her breath quickens at the riskiness of it all. She could call Jim Stephens, or perhaps James’s contemporary at college, now on The Times, Mark Fitzwilliam? And though she knows she will do none of these things immediately, perhaps not for years, still the possibility strengthens her; makes her feel less impotent, less alone.
‘The trouble with women is they lack the courage of their convictions,’ James would say, of female colleagues or of her, when she was torn by indecision. And she knew he was only half-joking. His certainty has always been stronger than hers.
But then she thinks of the women who have shown courage and strength: Olivia, standing in court, her most traumatic experience scrutinised and questioned; who risked James’s lies proving more persuasive than her truth. Kitty, steadfast, supportive: doing the right thing, though it must have been difficult; even Ali Jessop, showing such fierce loyalty to Holly, a tigerish protectiveness, even as she revealed her best friend’s secret. And perhaps, in some drunken, cack-handed way, she had wanted to help Sophie, too.
She curls up, watching the motes of dust that dance in the beam of her light, and makes herself think of Holly: studious, unworldly; somehow soft around the edges; and, just before she vanished, so painfully withdrawn she was almost a recluse. A barrister now, Ali said. The very definition of an assertive woman. Her mind drifts to Kate Woodcroft as she bore down on James, provoking that telling flash of anger. No lack of conviction, there.
She toys with a chain around her neck, touching the bones of her clavicle, at the top of her ribs; feeling her frailty and then imagining the layers of muscle that could grow firmer and stronger, binding her body in a tight embrace. She is sculling on the Thames: the power surging through her feet, legs, glutes, back and arms; her body poised, connected, invincible; happiness surging as she cuts through the water and she watches it puddling from her blades.
‘The trouble with women is they don’t know what they want,’ she once heard James expand to Tom, and the two of them had laughed, like schoolboys. But she is inching her way to a better understanding of what she wants, at least.
She swings her legs to the side of the bed and sits up straight, knees primly together, phone in her lap: a stance that suggests she is concentrating, that she means business. And with one slim finger, she touches the screen.