by Kate Long
The sleet was piling down now and I began sneaking sideways glances at the rain-hood. Shoddy as Mum was, at least she was dry. That’s one advantage of getting old, of course: you don’t have to bother what you look like any more. I thought that might be quite nice in some ways. Let yourself go, stop worrying about boyfriends and stuff, a whole layer of hassle peeled away. My thoughts flashed onto Walshy for a moment, and I sighed. Why had I ever let myself get tangled up in that daft business? It was time on my own I needed, get my head straight, not Walsh-minding and general foolery. So there would be that to dismantle at some point. Further joy on the horizon.
We turned onto the lane leading to nursery. It was slightly more sheltered here if you kept close to the terraced houses. Mum moved in front of me to keep off the worst of the sleet, and I lowered my head and forged on. The next thing I knew, I’d run straight into her. She’d stopped without warning under someone’s porch.
‘Listen,’ she said. ‘I need to ask you—’
‘Eh?’
‘While we’re on our own. While you’re pleasant.’
‘For God’s sake, Mum. What?’
‘Don’t get stroppy with me, but I have to know. Is it completely over with Daniel?’
That very nearly floored me.
She said, ‘I think I know the answer, but I need to hear it, then I can put it to bed. It’s just, I was so fond of him. He was like family. And then to drop away like that. Would you not at least consider taking him back?’
I leaned against the pock-marked bricks while I tried to gather my thoughts.
‘I don’t want to talk about it. You’ll just be angry.’
‘No, Charlotte, I promise I won’t. One thing your dad’s accident’s taught me is what’s worth getting wound up about and what isn’t. So tell me, please. I’m not judging, only listening. Is there any chance we’ll be seeing Daniel again? I’d like to have said goodbye.’
‘It’s not up to me,’ I said at last.
‘What do you mean?’
‘He finished with me.’
Now it was her turn to gape. ‘Never.’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘But he thinks the world of you!’
‘I know.’
‘Whatever did you do to him?’
Straight away it was on the tip of my tongue to come back with, See, here you go, all ready to pin the blame. But as the grey flakes whirled around us, cocooning us in that one dry spot, I found I wanted to get it all out. Tell her and have done.
‘Daniel said I wasn’t interested enough in him.’
Mum’s eyes widened.
‘He said the bottom line was he loved me more than I loved him, and he’d realised it was always going to be that way and he needed to get out now before he got hurt any more deeply.’ I couldn’t meet her gaze. ‘He said I should have made the time to meet his friends and be nicer to his mum and ask him more about his Manchester life. Plus there was this girl from his department buzzing round him, sucking up to Mrs Gale, asking him to various social events and generally hanging on his every word. I don’t think he fancied her exactly, but he must have felt it, the way she paid him so much attention while I was all wrapped up in my own stuff. He might even be going out with her now I’m off the scene. She seemed pretty persistent.’
Again I saw that photocopied image from the Twenty-First Century Rocks booklet, Amelia’s glossy hair and bright, clear smile.
I said, ‘I tried to make him give it another go, I really did. I promised I’d see his uni friends, make more of an effort there. I said I’d be more tolerant of his mum, even though she patently hates my guts. It wasn’t any use. He just wasn’t having it.’
‘Was there – a boy in York?’ Mum ventured. I could see she was genuinely keyed up, so again I didn’t snap, I didn’t blurt out anything smart.
‘Not one that split us up. It’s true I’ve dated someone since, but he’s nothing, which is why I haven’t told you about him. He’s keen on me but he’s not interested in Will. Obviously that’s going nowhere.’
‘So you’re going to finish that?’
‘I am.’
‘It’s not the boy who you’re renting off, is it?’
‘Mmm.’
‘Oh, Charlotte. Will he not throw you out on the street?’
That made me laugh. ‘No, course he won’t. Good grief, Mum. He’ll just go, “Ah well, fun while it lasted,” and move on. That’s what he does. I bet he’ll have another girlfriend lined up before you can say Millennium Dome.’
‘I hope you’re right.’ Then she said carefully, ‘I do think sometimes you were quite snippy with Daniel.’
I nodded sadly.
‘I know I was. I could hear myself. The trouble is, I’ve just not felt as close to him this year. I feel like I’ve changed but he hasn’t. Because, I know he cares about Will, but basically his life’s carried on being more or less the same, an ordinary student life, while mine seems more and more laden down. I find it hard to relax the way he does. So, like, he tends to witter on about ordinary student things, which is OK except sometimes when I’ve a lot on my mind I can’t be doing with how trivial he sounds. You know what he’s like, you know the type of freakiness that fires him up. Super-size bacteria and bioluminescent mice. Nothing relevant. It’s tiring, I don’t always want to hear it. And then I get fed up with him because I think, How does any of this matter? And he thinks I’m being dismissive of him.’
She was frowning at me like someone working out a maths puzzle. ‘It’s put a lot of pressure on you, being away from home so much.’
‘I’ve hated it, Mum. It’s nearly done my head in. I know it had to be, and that it’s nearly over, but bloody hell, it’s been awful parting from Will each time. Like wrenching off a limb. Nobody seemed to understand and you all assumed I was coping.’
Rain had pooled in the creases of Mum’s plastic hood, dribbling off in a defeated way onto her mac and leaving dark patches across her shoulders. For a moment I could see the old lady she’d one day become, lined, stooped, confused by the world.
‘I thought we were doing all right. I did my best, with Will and that. I’ve really tried, Charlotte.’
‘I know.’
‘When you came home each time . . . I thought you were just being stroppy for the sake of it. You’ve not really said anything.’
‘What was there to say? You knew I hated leaving my son, no point repeating myself there. Plus you were so down over Nan. No, don’t – I’m not blaming you for that. I miss her too.’ We stood and looked at each other while the sleet dropped around us in a steady curtain. ‘It’s just been a really shit year, Mum.’
There was this catch in her voice that was upsetting to hear. I thought, Oh, love, it’s nearly been too much for you, hasn’t it? And I’ve not noticed because I was so wrapped up in missing Mum, and the business with Eric, and your dad. And all that time I’d been assuming it was you who gave Daniel the push, and now it turns out to be him. Him! I suppose he must have more backbone than I gave him credit for. Unless his snooty mother was behind it, or this uppity madam from his department. Oh, yes, I bet there’d been some encouragement from the Manchester end.
Indignation flared up in me, same as it had when Ryan Marshall’s mum was boasting about her perfect daughter’s job and flat and fiancé. Who were these girls to hold a candle to our Charlotte? I’d have liked to see them manage what she’d had to deal with the last three years.
‘And of course I’ve spoiled it for Will too,’ she went on. ‘He needed someone like Daniel in his life, a great role model, smart, loads of patience. Where the hell am I ever going to find another boyfriend as nice as him? I won’t, basically. He’s just about the kindest guy I’ve ever met. And I’ve blown it, like I always do.’
I pulled her closer into the porch, out of the wind.
‘Look, are you absolutely sure it’s finished? Only, I’ve never seen a lad as committed as he was.’
‘He did appear out the blue a couple of
times and I thought, you know, we were back on again. Then he’d turn round and say no. It was like he’d told himself he didn’t want me but at the same time he couldn’t completely leave me alone.’
‘Did you tell him what you’ve just told me? Did you really explain?’
‘I tried. It didn’t come out very well. How could I explain, anyway, when I didn’t understand it myself? I thought he was right. I thought the root of it was I’d stopped loving him enough. He said it would never be equal between us because he cared more about me than I did about him. But since we’ve broken up I realise that wasn’t true. Now I realise what I’ve lost. Now I get it. Believe me, Mum, if I ever had another chance I’d grab him and I’d never let go. He’d never feel second-rate again. I’d talk to him properly and I’d listen properly. No more rolling my eyes when he talks about his mum being “a bit emotional”, no sighing when he goes into how DNA replicates itself. No more bad-day moodiness. I’d be the best person I could be for him. I would.’
‘Then you have to go back and say that. Spell it out, if you didn’t before. And as soon as you can. It sounds to me as if he could still be talked round.’
‘I can’t, there’s no point. Honestly, this time he’s made up his mind.’
‘Prove me wrong. Give it one last try.’
Her mouth twisted into an unhappy half-smile. ‘Hah. Because he’s a doctor’s son?’
‘Because if you don’t, Charlotte, it’s going to eat you from the inside out.’
The sleet was beginning to stick where it landed on the grass verges, clumping along the tyre ruts. You could tell it wouldn’t last but it carried on piling anyway, wetly.
‘It’s too much of a risk,’ I said.
Mum frowned. ‘Where’s the risk? I don’t see what you have to lose.’
‘My dignity.’
‘Right.’
‘No, ’cause it’ll be so horrible if I fail again. If I deliver the big confession speech and then he still tells me to get lost, I’ll die.’
‘And if you stay here and never ever say anything? Let it roll round and round your head for the foreseeable future?’
I thought of the nights I’d already spent, awake and fretful under the weight of my mistake. All the Daniel-free days that stretched ahead. The slender chink of hope Mum had presented.
I said, half-joking, ‘Well, I can’t go now. We have to pick up Will first.’
She said, ‘I can get him for you.’
For a fraction of a second it seemed as if the sleet was suspended in the sky.
And then she just took off, belting down the street like she used to when she was a little girl, her feet slapping against the shiny pavement. I could see the soles of her shoes, her hair straggling behind her.
Dear God, let this one pay off, I thought.
When I got back with Will, Steve seemed brighter. I laid my coat over the back of the sofa and went to plump up his pillows.
‘Hey up, Karen. Any chance of a tea?’
‘Soon as I’ve changed Will’s trousers. We’re both wet through.’
‘I don’t know why you didn’t take the car.’
‘Because it was fairly bright when we set off. You never can tell how a day’ll turn out.’
The Metro had gone from the front, I saw. I hoped she was remembering to drive carefully.
I took Will into the kitchen and stripped and towelled him, then popped his pyjama bottoms on because they were hanging on the maiden just by me and I couldn’t be bothered to trail upstairs after fresh clothes. ‘Here’s two Kit Kats,’ I said. ‘One for you and one for Granddad, yes?’ He took them obediently and trotted through to the lounge. I glanced down at my own sodden jeans; they could wait till I’d made the hot drinks.
Of course my whole mind now was filled up with Charlotte and what she was doing. The kettle could have boiled itself into oblivion and I wouldn’t have noticed. I was thinking, It’s so easy to get lost in motherhood. Find it blocking out the rest of you, interfering with your ability to reason, your sense of perspective, particularly if you’re a perfectionist the way my daughter is. Good mothers learn to be kind to themselves, to forgive their own mistakes. But it’s hard when you’re caught up in the whirl of everything. I’d had a spell after the divorce where my brains just scrambled. I remember sitting up till the small hours obsessively filling in one of her magic painting books, too wound up to go to bed. And in those days, if she got so much as a spot of dirt on her clothes I made her change her whole outfit. Everything had to be just so or I got myself in a tizz. One time I lost a sock down the back of a radiator and I sat down and cried. Can you believe it? Over a bloody sock? Mum fished it out with a coat-hanger in about two seconds.
She’s a lot like me, is Charlotte, though she’d hate me to point it out. I should have spotted she was in trouble, let her know I was on her side. Thank God she’d talked to me at last. I just hoped I’d done some good. Oh, Daniel, I prayed, if you’ve an ounce of kindness in you, take her back.
‘Our Charlie gone shopping?’ said Steve when I handed him his mug.
‘Something like that,’ I said. There’d be time enough later to fill him in. When I knew the outcome.
Will was on the sofa, thumb in mouth, staring at a blank TV screen. I reached for the remote but before I could switch the Tweenies on, Steve waved his hand to stop me.
‘Hang about, Karen.’
‘What?’
‘We’ve summat to show you.’
He beckoned Will over and whispered in his ear. Will looked confused. Steve tried again. I watched as my grandson frowned, his eyes swivelling round the room. ‘On the TV,’ said Steve.
After a pause, Will trotted over to the set and reached up for the book which lay there, my family history.
‘Careful with that, sweetheart,’ I said.
Steve nodded, and Will slid it down, holding it against his chest to come back and stand by the bed.
‘Now,’ said Steve, ‘watch this.’
He laid the book against the duvet and opened the pages as best he could with his one good hand, angling them so Will and I could see. The first picture was of Mum, the last we’d taken before she died. She was sitting in a wing-back chair against a bay window at Mayfield, holding a tin of oxtail soup I’d just won in the tombola. Her eyes were half-closed and she looked far away, but there was a faint smile on her lips. You could just make out Bertie’s yellow tail wagging in the bottom corner.
Steve tapped the page with his index finger. ‘Who’s that?’
‘Nan,’ said Will without hesitation.
I caught my breath. ‘I didn’t know he recognised her.’
Steve flipped to the next photo, which was Mum and a sixteen-year-old Charlotte on the pier at Southport in a high wind. ‘And who’s that?’
‘Mummy.’
‘And?’
‘Nan. Mummy and Nan.’
He turned another page, pointed.
‘Nan.’
My heart swelled with pleasure. ‘How?’
‘Charlotte’s been coaching him.’
And I thought I’d won the jackpot this morning when she’d actually told me I’d been right about something.
‘So, Will, who’s this?’ I said, pointing at the photo of Mum by the door. I love that picture. She’s standing on the back lawn wearing a lilac jumper, and it looks like she’s got a bird-table growing out of her head. How we’d laughed when the print came back from the chemist.
Will left the book and came to inspect. ‘Nan,’ he said confidently. ‘Can I watch TV?’
We put the Tweenies on and I came and sat on the end of the bed.
‘What do you think of that, then?’ said Steve.
‘I haven’t the words.’
‘She thought you’d be suited. We know you’ve had a rough year. She wanted to try and make it up to you.’
I nodded. ‘I’m that touched.’
‘Good. We want the old Karen back. We miss her.’
‘I am trying.’
‘I know.’
‘And I’ve been better lately, haven’t I? Well, we’ve all had to shape ourselves and get on with it. It’s just – it’s such a shame he’ll never really know my mum.’
‘He will, though. We’ll tell him. We’ll teach him all her little rhymes, all her funny stories. Keep showing him photographs. Play him the tapes. He’ll come to know her even if she isn’t here. People don’t just stop being part of the family when they’re not around any more.’
Out of the corner of my eye I could see Dad’s tenor horn hanging next to Mum’s photo.
‘Steve?’
‘Yeah?’
‘Is there room for me to lie down?’
‘Hang on.’ Painfully he attempted to shift himself across the mattress.
‘No, it’s OK, don’t worry.’
‘If you want to lie down, love, you lie down. Come on.’
I squeezed in next to him.
He said, ‘Fancy, though.’
‘Fancy what?’
‘Us. After all that’s happened, me ending up back here.’
‘Yes. Fancy.’
His arm came round and pulled me close. The sharp edge of his splint was digging against my leg, and I could see the angry skin below the edge of his dressing. I almost lost you, I thought. You were so nearly toast. And what now? Where do we go from here?
Steve wriggled and sighed. ‘What time do you put Will down for his nap?’
‘In about an hour.’
‘Just time for another dose of painkillers to kick in.’
From the TV was coming an alarm sound and flashing lights. Tweenie clock, where will it stop?
‘And then what?’
‘Physio, of course.’ He began to unbutton the top of my shirt.
‘Physio?’
‘Well, my version.’
I watched his fingers moving deftly. ‘You know, as soon as you’re fully recovered, you’re going home.’
‘Course I am, Karen,’ he said. ‘Course I am.’
The examiner who’d passed me on my first test said I had the makings of a decent driver. He said I was ‘cautious but not hesitant’, which is what they look for, apparently. He said my positioning at junctions was good and I showed a mature awareness of other vehicles on the road.