by Nikki Ashton
“I’m supposed to tell the truth,” Frankie said with a pout. “And that’s the truth. No one else was at the table, so why can’t I listen to my music?”
“It’s not good manners,” I explained, kind of seeing it from his point of view. “Just like Josh or I don’t bring our phones to the table, we don’t want you listening to music.”
“But you talk about grown up stuff.”
“Hey,” I warned as Frankie rolled his eyes. “I’ve warned you before about rolling your eyes at me. Don’t do it.”
“Sorry Mummy.”
He looked at me sheepishly, before going back to scoop up a forkful of spaghetti hoops.
As I washed the pan that I’d warmed Frankie’s dinner in, I heard Josh moving around upstairs. He’d be having a shower and changing out of his suit into track suit bottoms, a t-shirt, and his slippers as he did every night. Josh was nothing if not predictable, it had to be said.
“Mum.”
Frankie’s voice drew me away from the sink, to turn around and face him.
“Hmm.”
“What were you talking to Sam about?”
It was a good job I wasn’t washing a glass, because I was sure I’d have crushed it as my hand fisted so tightly.
“Your swimming,” I said, trying to sound unaffected by his question.
“But you were shouting at him.”
I took a deep breath and looked over my shoulder. “I wasn’t,” I lied.
“Yeah Mummy, you were.” Frankie wasn’t looking at me, but scrolling through the music on his player. “You had your shouty face.”
“I was asking him not to push you too hard, that’s all.”
“What do you mean?”
I moved over to sit with him and rested my forearms on the table in front of me.
“It means,” I started. “That I don’t want him trying to make you do things in the pool that you’re not ready to do. I think you should stick to becoming a stronger swimmer, not learning a whole load of new strokes.”
It wasn’t a total lie, I wanted Frankie to enjoy swimming club, not think of it as an extension of school.
“But I’m good, Mum,” he said, his brow furrowed as he stared at me. He didn’t understand why I’d hold him back, but he was also daring me to contradict his conclusion that he was a very gifted swimmer.
I couldn’t help but laugh, eliciting a sigh from Frankie.
“I am,” he stated.
“I know,” I replied, nodding my head and grinning at him.
God, he had enough confidence to sink a battle ship and he definitely didn’t get that from me.
“So why can’t Sam show me extra things to try?”
“Well, he can, but I don’t want him to make you try too many things, I want you to have fun as well.”
“I do. Today was much better than when Danny teaches us, last year he just got us to swim up and down. Sam played games with us that taught us the strokes.”
His little face was full of consternation and I knew he had already had a fascination with the man who was his father. I knew then that I had to find a different swimming club for him, because I couldn’t stand the thought of his heart being broken if he found out who his father was and that he wasn’t interested in him.
Samuel
the past
I looked over at Elijah and groaned, he looked grey and as though he was about to puke – again. He’d been on a permanent bender since Amy, his wife, had fucked off and left him almost three weeks earlier. According to her, she caught him in bed with Lauren Proctor at Alex’s party. Elijah couldn’t remember anything, except at one point seeing some hazy figure that he couldn’t focus on, writhing on top of him and wondering if it was Amy before passing out again. It was only when Luke, his mate, threw cold water on him and told him that Amy had apparently rushed out of the house in tears, and that Eli needed to get up, that he realised something was wrong. He’d finally got hold of Rachel, Amy’s friend, who chewed his balls off over what he’d supposedly done.
Eli had rushed to Rachel’s house, but Amy wouldn’t see him and Rachel had slammed the door in his face. When I got to Eli at one in the morning, after a frantic call from him, he was huddled in Rachel’s doorway, even though I’d told him to stay at our apartment, and was insisting he was staying there until Amy came out. I managed to persuade him to go home, but he was back there at six the next morning waiting it out. Amy however, still refused to go to the door. After four hours of Elijah constantly banging on the door or calling her and Rachel’s mobiles, Amy finally spoke to him, but no matter what he said, she didn’t believe that he hadn’t realised it wasn’t her on top of him. Eli had gotten angry and so had she, both of them screaming at each other, until finally she’d shut the door on him. I’d tried to get Amy to see reason, we all had, as she’d known how paralytic he’d been. He could barely stand up, but she wouldn’t listen. Now she’d left town and no one was telling Elijah where she’d gone. It was all a big fuck up, because they were obviously too damn immature to be married in the first place.
“They have to fucking tell me,” he slurred, pointing at me with the neck of a beer bottle. “She’s my fucking wife. I have a right to know.”
Without waiting for me to answer, he pulled his phone out of his pocket and started to text what I guessed was probably the fiftieth text that day to her.
“She has to come back. And why the fuck wouldn’t she believe me.”
I shook my head and sighed. “I have no idea, bro. Now how about you get upstairs and sleep some of the alcohol off. You need to go to work tomorrow, otherwise you’re gonna get the push.”
Elijah shrugged. “Don’t fucking care.”
At that moment, Mum came into the kitchen asking me silently with her eyes whether I’d been able to talk any sense into him. I gave her a short shake of my head and felt my heart constrict when I saw tears welling in her eyes.
“Eli, sweetheart,” she soothed, moving over to wrap an arm around his shoulder. “Why don’t you let me make you something to eat? I think I’ve got a homemade chicken pie in the freezer, it wouldn’t take long to heat it up.”
“I don’t want your fucking pie,” he growled, shaking off her touch.
“Right,” I snapped, snatching the beer from his hands. “You don’t get to speak to Mum like that and be a total wanker to her at the same time.”
I emptied the contents into the sink and slammed the bottle onto the draining board before turning back to my brother.
“Can’t tell me what to do,” he said, glaring at me. “Neither can she and why isn’t she on one of her fucking crusades?”
Mum whimpered beside me and I reached for her hand and gave it a quick squeeze.
“Because she’s looking after your sorry arse.” I grabbed him with my hand around his bicep and pulled him toward the door into the hallway. “You’re getting some sleep then you’re going to get a shower and eat something, because if you want her back, you’re going the wrong way about it. As if she’d want to come back to you in this state?”
Elijah tried to pull away from me as he swung a hand in my direction, but I dodged it and he stumbled.
“Oh god,” Mum whispered.
“It’s okay,” I told her over my shoulder. “You get the pie out and when he’s had a couple of hours of sleep, he’ll be ready for it.”
She flattened her lips together and nodded, leaving me to deal with my broken brother.
Dad came back into the lounge with a grim look on his face, rubbing a hand over his thick thatch of dark hair. For a man of fifty-seven, he was still in good shape and looked a lot younger than his years, but the past few weeks had aged both my parents.
“Nope,” he said. “They won’t tell me. All Lee said was that she’d moved away for a while and Elijah would be hearing from her solicitor. I tried to tell him that Elijah had no idea what happened until he spoke to Rachel later that night, but he says Amy is adamant what she saw.”
“Alcohol,” Mu
m snapped. “Bloody alcohol, it’s damned evil at times. I know my son and I know how much he loves that girl, he would never do that to her if he was sober.”
“He says he didn’t do it at all, Mum. When he woke up all that was missing was his t-shirt, he even had his boots on. Luke has vouched for that, but she won’t listen.”
“Well if he hadn’t been in that state, that stupid Lauren girl couldn’t have taken advantage of him, and what the hell is Amy thinking, just running away like that. Twenty whole minutes she gave him to talk, after being together for six years.”
“Hey, Yvetta, come on,” Dad said, rubbing a hand up and down her back. “She saw what she saw and she’s in an emotional state of mind. She’s still grieving love, we have to remember that. I agree she should try and think more logically about it all and listen to Elijah, but we have no idea what her mental state is like at the moment.”
I thought back to my conversation with Amy in the kitchen at the party, and she was definitely still struggling with losing their baby, especially as it was coming up to her due date.
“This is why I don’t do damn girlfriends,” I muttered, as my phone call to let Maisie down ran through my head.
During our night together, I could imagine myself falling for her, wanting to make it something more than a hook-up that was for sure, but Elijah’s current fucking shit storm had soon put an end to that. I needed to be there for him, he was struggling, and even though Luke and Alex tried to help at times, they were about as much use as a one-legged man in an arse kicking competition. They had no idea what to do with him, except help him get plastered. It had also shown me that even the best of relationships could turn fucking toxic and I did not want to go there. I’d had my heart ripped out once, and it was once too often. No, Maisie West was best finding some nice bloke who took her out three nights a week, rang her every lunchtime, told her he loved her after a month, and then proposed after six, only to marry her a year later. She was pretty, funny, and sweet and she did not need me and my black heart fucking her life up because I couldn’t commit.
“Oh,” Mum said, gasping and putting a hand to her cheek. “I totally forgot, a pretty blonde girl called here for you earlier. Said she needed to speak to you, but has lost your number and didn’t have the address of your flat.”
My heart gave an extra beat. “Did she give her name?” I asked, wondering if by huge coincidence it was Maisie. Although there’d been a few pretty blondes in my life, Maisie was the only one I’d ever brought to Mum and Dad’s house.
“She didn’t say, but she left you a note. I’m so sorry love, it went clear out of my head with Elijah coming home in that state.”
“It’s fine Mum.”
That was another thing worrying me – when was my brother actually going to go back to the flat and continue to live his life. He couldn’t stay at Mum and Dad’s forever, and call me a fucking shithead, but I couldn’t afford it on my own, especially as I was saving like mad to have enough to offer to my boss to buy the recruitment agency I worked for.
Mum’s hand came into my view as she handed me a piece of paper. I unfolded it and read the neat handwriting.
Sam, I’m really sorry that Elijah is having a bad time and I know you explained why you can’t see me anymore, but I need to talk to you. Do you think you could give me a call on my new number 07783 098451. Thanks, Maisie.
I swallowed, my mouth suddenly feeling dry, as my lungs began to work extra hard. There were a couple of reasons why a girl wrote you a note like that, and seeing as I’d worn a condom that night, both those reasons didn’t seem possible – so why was my fucking heart hammering at one hundred miles an hour?
Samuel
the present
It was official, my brother hated me. He hadn’t spoken to me for three days, and it didn’t look like he was going to any time soon. Amy had told me to be patient, but that was something I definitely wasn’t, so I’d made her tell me where he was and I was going to meet him.
Walking along the path to the kid’s park, I could hear Bella’s chuckles of enjoyment as Elijah pushed her on the swing. Her little legs kicked excitedly as she clung on to the chains, her dark curls blowing behind her.
“She loves that, doesn’t she?” I said, coming up alongside him.
“What are you doing here?”
“Well it’s not to go on the slide, Elijah,” I retorted sarcastically. “Hey Bella.”
I waved at my niece and blew her a kiss.
“Unca Yam,” she cried before bursting into giggles again.
“Hi beautiful.”
I couldn’t help but break out the biggest smile in my arsenal for the light of my life. I bloody adored her and couldn’t ever contemplate her not being around now. She filled all our lives up with joy.
“See, Bella loves me,” I muttered to Elijah’s back as he continued pushing his daughter.
“She’s two, she doesn’t know any better.”
“’Gain Dada.”
We both grinned like love sick idiots as Bella held her hands in the air.
“I’m not sure what you want me to say,” Elijah eventually said, glancing at me.
“I don’t want you to say anything. I just want you to try and understand.”
His gaze landed on me and lingered there for a few seconds before he exhaled and turned back to Bella.
“I can’t, Sam. I can’t understand how you can have a son and not want to spend every fucking waking hour with him. How you can just dismiss him from your life. How the fuck do you do that?”
I could do it because I was screwed over once before, because I fell in love with a child growing inside the woman I loved, only to be told it was all a big fucking lie – was what I wanted to say, but knew if I told Elijah that he’d hate me even more for keeping that from him too. Truth was, I was also ashamed, ashamed that I’d let myself be tricked by someone who I trusted and loved. Someone who stepped so far over the line she was in danger of falling off a cliff edge.
“It’s just not me,” I replied with a shrug. “The whole couple and family thing. I’m too busy with work and too fucking selfish to give anyone else any time. I was even more selfish then; when Maisie got pregnant. I was working towards buying the business and it was my only focus. I’d have been a shit dad to him and that wouldn’t have been fair.”
“Yeah,” Elijah said, grabbing hold of Bella’s swing. “But he’d have had a dad and I think you’re kidding yourself. I see you with Bella, you’re great with her. Do you think Amy would have let her stay overnight with anyone else when we went away for our anniversary, aside from our parents?”
“I dunno.”
“No, you know she wouldn’t. You asked us, instead of Bella going to one of the grandparents, could she stay with you and Amy said yes straight away, because she trusts you and knows how good you are with her, so don’t give me the ‘I’d have been a bad dad’ shit.
He moved to pull Bella from the swing and blew a raspberry on her cheek when she started to complain about it. I watched carefully as he strapped her into her buggy and gave her a cup of juice, wondering whether to follow him or just walk home and let him work himself out of his shitty mood.
“Another thing,” he snapped, turning to me. “Why the hell didn’t you tell me? I’m your fucking brother, we tell each other everything.”
I inhaled deeply, wondering how I could tell him without sounding like I was using him as an excuse.
“It was a difficult time, bro,” I sighed. “You were going through your shit-.”
“You could have told me,” he hissed, glancing down at Bella who was snuggling down in her buggy. “I know I was in a bad place, but you’re my fucking brother; I’d have been there for you.”
I placed a hand on his shoulder. “It wasn’t just losing Amy, you’d lost a child. How the fuck did I tell you that I wasn’t going to have anything to do with mine without you hating my damn guts.”
Elijah’s eyes softened as he swallowed. “I could
never hate you,” he said in a quiet voice before turning back to the buggy.
As he started to walk toward the gate to the little park, he glanced over his shoulder at me.
“We’re calling to see Matty and Carla, Bella is going to play with Jacob if you want to walk with us part of the way.”
I nodded and walked over to him, edging him out of the way so I could be the one to push the buggy.
“So, you telling Mum and Dad?” Elijah asked.
“No.” My response was short and sharp. No way were they to find out, it would only lead to a load of arguments and problems.
“Do you not think they have a right to know?”
“The point is, Eli,” I said, carefully manoeuvring the buggy over a cracked paving stone, “I have no rights, which is fine. I don’t deserve any, don’t want any and we both know they’d go ape and insist on meeting Frankie, and that’s not what Maisie wants. Not what I want.”
We stopped at the edge of the pavement and turned to each other.
“You have no desire whatsoever, to be in his life?” Elijah was evidently stunned as his eyes grew big and stared at me. “Seriously?”
I didn’t answer immediately as we crossed the road, double checking no cars were coming, but when we reached the other side I pulled to a stop.
“I admit, it felt weird seeing him at the pool, spending time with him. Yeah, there was part of me that enjoyed it, I felt proud that he was good and probably got that from me, but being a dad, a family man, that’s you Eli, it’s not me. The kid is happy, or seems it, and me suddenly announcing who I was, could only mess with his head. Even if I wanted to, it wouldn’t be fair on Frankie.”
Elijah looked down at Bella and ran a hand over her sleeping head, before bringing his gaze back to mine.
“I don’t get it, Sam. I really don’t understand how you can feel like that, but it’s your decision so I’ll respect that.”