There was a picture of him and Abby on the sideboard. They were standing in the portico of a church and Abby’s arm was around him. It was the day of their wedding and he was looking away from the camera, off into the middle distance. He couldn’t remember where his gaze had been directed, whether towards Lee, or Mouse, or one of the pretty Course wives holding a baby in the churchyard. But Abby’s eyes stared straight at the camera, hopeful, her smile full of pride. It made Marcus sad to look at her. He realised that, in his mind, there had never been a time when he had been truly faithful to Abby. He had fucked girls behind her back throughout university and, even though — until his most recent indiscretions — he had kept his infidelity in check since joining the Course, cheating was always there in his mind as an option. Perhaps, he thought, his parents had been too happy together, presenting an unattainable ideal which, because he could never replicate it, he had to destroy.
Now he had the opportunity to start again. He picked up the photograph and looked into his wife’s face. He felt a great swelling of love. They were having a baby together. He was going to be a father. He heard her keys in the door. Abby struggled down the corridor and dropped the shopping bags on the kitchen floor. She took off her coat and flung it on the counter. Marcus stepped behind her and folded his arms around her large frame. She leant back against him, closing her eyes, her head on his shoulder.
‘I’m coming with you,’ he whispered.
Her eyes snapped open. A smile broke gently over her face.
‘Really?’
‘Of course I am. We’ll make a new life out there.’
‘Oh, darling, I’m so happy. I couldn’t have gone without you.’
They stood, breathing heavily, listening to the cars on Notting Hill Gate, an Underground train rattling over a bridge, the distant thump of music. Very gently, he slid his hand up under her jumper and let it rest on her hot, soft stomach.
Five
Marcus discovered that it was possible, with a degree of concentration, to pretend that Lee had never existed. He found it easier still now that Mouse had stopped coming to church. Abby and Marcus had hosted the final Course session together, both groups squeezed into the one room. Marcus seemed especially galvanised as he led the discussion. David and Sally Nightingale looked on with pride as the two young people, heads bowed, prayed with the new members. An atmosphere of quiet contentment hung over the group: they had made it through. They were part of the Course. At the end of the session, the members came up one by one and thanked Marcus and Abby.
The twins bounced in front of them, squealing. Neil slipped Marcus a business card with a sly nod. All the pale, quiet girls from Marcus’s group came up to him and hugged him. David opened some bottles of champagne and they toasted each other, toasted the missing members. Neil suggested they toast Jesus. When the last members went home, Marcus and Abby walked out into the night with David.
‘Well done, you two.’ The priest sounded a little drunk.
‘It was a good way to finish,’ said Marcus.
‘I always knew I could count on you guys. Lee and Mouse were too young, too fragile. I should have realised that. But you two are my stalwarts, you have repaid the faith I showed in you.’
‘It does feel good, to see the new members like that, to know that the Course is now central to their lives. I feel like we have achieved something, that maybe it was worth all the pain, worth losing Lee and Mouse.’ Marcus smiled at the priest and took Abby’s hand.
‘I’m glad you feel that way. Have you heard from Mouse?’ David asked.
Marcus shook his head. ‘I’ll go up to the boat at the weekend. I’ve left him a few messages. I’m sure he’s just feeling shell-shocked by the whole thing. He’ll be back.’
‘He’ll want to see you before you go. And he always loves Christmas at the church. I’m sure he’ll come to the service on Sunday. We’re singing carols.’
Marcus and Abby got into the car just as the first flakes of snow began to fall.
*
On Saturday morning, when the snow had been reduced to a grey dusting on slate rooftops, Marcus and Abby walked up to the canal. They would have to leave Darwin behind when they went to New York, and they looked at the dog fondly as he capered alongside them. Sally Nightingale would care for him until they returned. Marcus led Darwin along the towpath, allowing him to burrow into mounds of wet snow, where he’d draw his muzzle out dripping and dirty and fix Marcus with an accusing glare. When they got to the Gentle Ben there were no lights on. Marcus tried the door, but this time it was firmly locked.
‘Shall we call his mother?’ Abby asked, as they walked back towards Ladbroke Grove.
‘I don’t know. I think if he wanted to see us, he would.’
As they walked back, Abby took his hand.
‘Do you think you'd ever give up smoking? It would mean a lot to me.’
He reached into his pocket, drew out a packet of cigarettes and crumpled it into a ball. He hurled the ball into the canal.
They made their way up the ramp and onto the bridge. The canal was healing over with ice. Darwin poked his nose through the bars of the railings and sniffed the cold air. Marcus looked up through skeletal trees into the graveyard. He could make out the roof of the chapel in the distance, the peaks of the obelisks that lined the avenue where he had slipped. Abby was watching a pair of Canada geese waddling sedately along the towpath.
‘They look like old women,’ she said. ‘Querulous old women complaining about the weather.’
The geese, seeing a gaggle of their companions squabbling over husks of bread thrown from a narrowboat moored further up the towpath, started to run. Flapping their wings and squawking like old-fashioned bicycle horns, they rose up into the air and were suddenly majestic as they wheeled over their comrades. Marcus and Abby walked arm in arm down Ladbroke Grove, inexplicably cheered by the sight of the geese transformed in flight.
Days passed in busy preparation for their move. They would be spending Christmas with Marcus’s mother in Surrey and then flying to New York on the twenty-seventh. There was still no sign of Mouse. Marcus tried his mobile every few days, but it always rang through to the answerphone. He had stopped leaving messages. Snow began to fall again, and this time settled in heaps outside the front door of the block of flats. Marcus persuaded himself that he could see Abby gaining weight. He kissed her very carefully in the mornings before he set off for work. Barely allowing his lips to graze her skin, he’d lean down over her and watch as she smiled in her sleep.
Marcus had handed in his notice to Michael Faraday, his senior partner at the law firm.
‘But you’re doing very well here,’ the sharp-faced little man had said, running his eye down Marcus’s evaluations. ‘There’s a big future for you at the firm if you stick at it.’
Marcus just grinned and shook his head. It was agreed that he would work until Christmas.
In the event there was very little for Marcus to do. No one wanted him to start a case when it was known that he was leaving. The Chinese bank had dropped its case against Plantagenet Partners due to lack of evidence. Marcus spent his days organising the move. They would let the flat in Notting Hill to a couple from the Course. With this income and the salary that he had agreed with David, Marcus worked out that they wouldn’t be much worse off in New York than in London. As he strolled out for long lunches during those weeks in early December, he thought ahead happily to the life they would build in another city, to the child who would come.