He sat on the edge of the settee. “So how are you feeling?”
“Okay.” Colin looked at his hands, the TV, and finally his hands again. His face was pale, thinner than the last time Ben had seen him. The enormity of what he’d tried to do stood between them. So did Ben’s sense that he’d let him down. He felt he didn’t know him any more.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
Colin switched his attention back to the TV. “What is there to talk about? I tried to kill myself. I didn’t.” He shrugged, then broke out coughing. “Sorry,” he said when the spasm had passed. “Still a bit wheezy.”
“Why did you do it?” The question that had been pushing at Ben finally surfaced. “Why didn’t you fucking say something?”
“There was nothing to say. Jo finished with me.” Colin gave a wan smile. “Another fucking cliché, eh?”
Ben found he was vetting all his questions and responses before voicing them.
“When?”
“Last week.”
The first thing he felt was relief that it had been a sudden thing; that he hadn’t been so wrapped up in his own problems that he’d missed the signs. Then he felt ashamed for feeling that way.
“What happened?”
“She’s been offered the chance to work for the record company’s New York office. She’s going next month, but she said it was better to finish now so there were no loose ends. End of story.”
“That’s what made you... you know...”
“Try to kill myself? I suppose I didn’t like thinking of myself as a ‘loose end’.”
“Does Jo know?”
“I doubt it. Most people at work just think I’m ill. There’s no reason for her to know anyway. I didn’t do it to make her change her mind, or to spite her. I did it for me.”
The matter-of-fact way he spoke was unnerving.
“You’re not going to try anything again, are you?”
Colin put his head back and stared at the ceiling. “No, I don’t think so,” he said, thoughtfully. “To tell you the truth I can’t even really remember how I felt when I did it. It might be the sedatives they’ve pumped into me, but it all seems a bit distant now. I can’t imagine getting that worked up about anything at the moment. I just feel sort of hollow.”
Ben remembered how he’d felt after Sarah had died, and then again when Jacob had gone to live with Kale. But he’d never felt suicidal. He wondered if that said anything about him.
“What about Maggie and the boys?” he asked, feeling obscurely cheated. “How’ve they taken it?”
“Oh, okay. Maggie’s been very good. Andrew doesn’t really understand what’s going on, but I wish Scott hadn’t found me.” He pursed his lips. “Or, at least, I wish it had been someone else.”
Maggie had told Ben how their eldest son had gone into the garage and seen his father sitting in the locked car with the engine running. Ben didn’t like the boy, but he wouldn’t have wished that on him.
“What did she say about Jo?”
Colin glanced uneasily towards the door. “She doesn’t know about her.”
“Even now? She must have some idea!”
“She thinks it was pressure of work that got to me.” Colour had come back to Colin’s face, but it only emphasised its shadows.
“So aren’t you going to tell her?”
“What for? It’s finished. There’s no use upsetting her any more than she has been.”
Ben made no comment, but he was thinking about how Maggie had behaved. He wouldn’t have called it upset.
“The doctor’s signed me off work,” Colin continued, “so I think we’re going to go away somewhere in a week or two. Try and put all this behind us.” He didn’t sound enthusiastic.
Before Ben could answer, the door opened and Maggie came in. The smile could have been on her face since she left.
“I think that’s enough chat for one night. Don’t want to tire him out, do we? Doctor’s orders.”
She stood by the open door, waiting for Ben to leave. He looked at Colin, expecting an objection, but none came. Colin was looking down at his hands again.
Ben stood up. “I’ll be in touch. We’ll go for a beer before you go away.”
Colin nodded, but without conviction, and Ben knew they wouldn’t. Even if Colin wanted to, Maggie wouldn’t permit it.
“He just needs rest,” she said, after she’d ushered Ben into the hallway. “He’s been doing too much lately, that’s the problem. I’m going to make sure he has an easier time in future. No more working weekends and nights, and having to stay out with silly little bands till all hours.” She opened the front door and turned to him. “There’s been too many things pulling at him lately, but that’s over now. He needs to spend more time with his family. We’re all he needs.”
Her smile was as bright and determined as a beauty queen’s, and seeing it Ben realised that Colin was wrong. She knew. Not all the details, perhaps, not names and places, but enough. And now she knew she’d won.
Footsteps sounded on the stairs. He looked around as Scott came down them. The boy regarded them sullenly, making no attempt to speak as he went past.
“Say hello to Ben, Scott,” Maggie said, but he didn’t even slow. Her smile twitched as she watched him disappear down the hallway. “He’s still a little upset.”
Ben said goodnight and left. The door clicked shut behind him. He found he had tensed himself, as though the entire house would shatter like glass.
As he went back to his car he thought that a family could stay together and still be destroyed.
The case conference was scheduled for the following week.
He’d finally begun to accept that he wasn’t going to get Jacob back. Or, if not accept, at least realise that there was nothing more he could do about it. He knew he’d have to come to terms with it and get on with his life. More than that, he had to try and rebuild one, because there wasn’t much left of the life he’d had. But knowing that didn’t make it any easier to do. He felt he was just treading water, waiting for the day of the conference to arrive.
He told himself things would be better afterwards.
The night before it was held he went to the launch party of a new magazine with Zoe. He had tried to cry off, but she wouldn’t listen.
“What are you going to do if not? Sit at home by yourself, watching telly and getting pissed while you worry about what’s going to happen tomorrow?”
Actually, that had been almost exactly what he’d had in mind. “No,” he said. “Of course not.”
The party was at a cellar bar in Soho, a dark place of blues and purples that made everyone look cyanosed. He knew a lot of the people there, had either worked or drunk with them at similar occasions. Zoe, her hair red once more, stayed with him long enough to make sure he wasn’t going to go straight home, and then disappeared into the crowd.
Ben found himself talking to the magazine’s picture editor, who seemed to presume he was there touting for work and obligingly offered him some. Then there was another photographer, an almost-friend he hadn’t seen for over a year. Talk moved on to censorship, and Ben enmired himself in an argument with a writer, a vehement man with bad breath, over the responsibility of the artist. He was enjoying it until the writer called him a commercial photographer, as if that made him some sort of photographic hack whose views were invalid. Ben began to object, but realised he couldn’t.
The man was right.
Everything that he did had a shelf-life. The fashion photographs were valid only for as long as the fashions they contained, and while some of his advertising work might lay claim to a sort of kitsch value, that was all. He was good at what he did, but what he did was nothing. It was disposable.
And he had chosen to do it.