She dropped her eyes from her mother’s face, taking a sip of her coffee. They said love was blind, but in her case it had been a question of deaf, dumb and blind.
As her mother continued to chat on, the while chopping and slicing vegetables for the chicken casserole they were having for dinner, Kay gave every appearance of listening but her mind had taken a trip into the past.
She had gone out with Perry for a year before they had got married on her twenty-first birthday, the same month they had both finished at university, but within a couple of months of the wedding she had been forced to admit to herself she had made a terrible mistake. The cocoon of university life, and especially the last frantic year when she had worked as she’d never worked before, had masked so much that had been wrong in their relationship.
Perry had been young, good-looking and very charismatic, drawing people to him like moths to a flame with the power of his electric personality, but he had also been a cold-blooded, manipulative control freak—at least with her. She had been so crazy about him, and so busy—it having been her final year—that she hadn’t even noticed that they’d done everything his way. But a few weeks into the marriage, due to a chance meeting with an old school-friend, she had been jolted free of the soporific bubble he’d carefully manufactured round her.
What had she been doing with herself? her old friend had asked in all innocence. Had she been ill? She looked terrible. Was she working too hard?
The conversation had been awkward on both sides and Kay hadn’t prolonged the encounter, but when she had got home to the one-bedroomed flat in Belgravia she and Perry had been renting she had taken a long, hard look at herself in the bathroom mirror. Her hair had been strained into a tight knot at the back of her head—Perry hated it loose—and she’d been wearing no make-up—Perry disliked any artifice—but it hadn’t been that so much as the drawn look to her mouth and the expression in her eyes that had brought her up short.
She looked dowdy and plain, she’d realised suddenly, glancing down at the dress she’d been wearing—one of many things Perry had insisted on buying her. She was killing herself trying to please Perry in every tiny thing rather than having to endure his cutting comments and icy silences when she said or did something he didn’t agree with.
She’d stood there, in stunned shock, for some minutes. How long had this been going on? she’d asked herself numbly as reality had hit. They were happy, weren’t they? She was so lucky to have him—wasn’t she? He treated her so well, was so kind to her…
And the answer sounded in her head—everything was wonderful when she was doing exactly as he wanted; he was the best husband in the world then. He told her how to dress, how to wear her hair; he was the one who decided when they went out and when they stayed in, even what programmes they watched on TV. Their friends were his friends; they ate the kind of food he liked and drank the wine he chose.
She had rubbed a shaky hand over her face, her mind racing. It hadn’t been like that in the beginning, had it? Not for the first month or two. But then an insidious change had taken place and the most absurd thing, the preposterous, stupid and unbelievable thing, was that she hadn’t seen it till now. She just hadn’t realised it had been happening. Because he was such fun and so irresistible and mesmerising when he was being nice, it hadn’t dawned on her that she was subconsciously subjugating her own persona all the time. It was as if she had turned into someone else, someone…alien. Even the fact that he had persuaded her not to look for a job immediately, but spend some time getting the flat round and creating a home for them now took on a new significance.
‘I want to be able to picture you here when I’m away,’ he had said beguilingly when she’d made noises about using her degree. ‘Know you’ll be here when I get home. We don’t need your salary, darling, not at the moment, and, with me working for Dad, money will never be tight.’
She had stared at herself for some time that day. And then she’d run a hot bath, washed her hair and creamed herself all over with a frighteningly expensive body lotion that had been a Christmas present from her parents. After getting dressed in a pair of tight black jeans and little top she’d found pushed in the back of her wardrobe—remnants from pre-Perry days—she had carefully made up her face and teased her hair into soft waves about her face. It had taken ages—her hair always wanted to go its own way and curl outrageously—but eventually she’d begun to recognise the girl in the mirror.
She had gone out and bought two steaks for dinner rather than labour over the chicken dhansak Perry had ordered, and she’d collected a paper detailing job vacancies at the same time.
When Perry had got home that evening he had found a dining table romantically set for two with candles and wine, a smiling, perfumed and groomed wife, and six envelopes containing job applications ready for posting. Even now she didn’t like to think of the things he had said and how cruel he’d been, but it had been the beginning of the end.
By the time she had realised she was pregnant a little while later—she had been taking the pill but had been ill with a stomach upset at one point, not that that had stopped Perry from all but forcing himself on her one night—the discovery that Perry had begun an affair with one of the secretaries in his father’s catering firm had finished the marriage completely. It had been a time of heartache and desperation and misery, but through it all she’d discovered she was stronger than she had suspected.
She had stayed on at the flat after she’d thrown Perry out, working right up to three weeks before the twins’ birth and returning shortly after once she had found a good nursery. She had hated leaving them, but Perry’s maintenance payments had not been forthcoming and as he had upped and left the area shortly after the birth she’d had little choice, other than moving back in with her parents. And somehow, and she couldn’t have explained to a living soul why, that would have seemed like the final defeat, much as she loved her mother and father.
Then had come her father’s massive heart attack, followed by the news his dabbling in the stock market had left his widow almost penniless. At the same time her married brother had lost his job just before his wife had been due to give birth to their second child.
Kay raised her head now, coming back to the present as she heard the front door slam. This meant their neighbour had dropped the twins off after school; several of them had got an efficient rota system established.
‘Mummy!’ As the kitchen door burst open and two little flame-haired figures catapulted into the room Kay prepared herself for the onslaught of small arms and legs with a feeling of deep thankfulness. Her girls were her life, her breath, her reason for living. They had brought her through the worst period of her life, her nurture of their tiny bodies in her womb meaning she hadn’t been able to let herself sink into the abyss of despair she’d felt at the time of her marriage breakup, and their birth filling her with wonder and joy that these two tiny, perfect little babies were really hers. All hers.
‘Mummy, I got a gold star today for sitting as still as a mouse during storytime.’
‘And Miss Henson’s put my picture on the wall. It’s you, Mummy, and Grandma.’
‘A picture’s not as good as a gold star, is it, Mummy?’
‘It is. It is as good. Better! Isn’t it, Mummy?’
Both Georgia and Emily had clambered onto her lap, their arms wrapped round her neck as they struggled for prime position, all but choking her in the process.
She was saved by the ringing of the proverbial bell.
‘It’s for you.’ Her mother had answered the telephone, which had begun to ring just as the twins had entered the room, and as Kay disentangled herself, kissing both small faces and telling them they were very clever girls, the older woman hissed quietly, ‘It’s him, Kay. That Mr Grey you told me about.’
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‘What?’ Her mother had her hand over the mouthpiece, which was just as well considering how high-pitched Kay’s voice had suddenly become.
Leonora now flapped her hand frantically as she pressed the receiver against her chest, mouthing, ‘Quiet, he’ll hear you.’
Kay looked down at the telephone as though it would scald her, making no effort to take it as she whispered back, ‘How do you know it’s him?’