by Rachel Marks
‘I’m so sorry. I must’ve fallen fast asleep.’ She looks over at the grill. ‘Oh, you didn’t have to cook. I was just about to sort him something now. We usually don’t eat until about six.’
‘He was hungry,’ I say and then realize it sounds like a criticism. ‘I thought I’d let you rest.’
‘Thanks. I would’ve done it, though. I wouldn’t have let him go hungry or anything.’ She starts frantically tidying up the kitchen as if she wants to prove to me how ‘on top of it all’ she is.
‘I know.’ Although I’m not convinced. She has this vacant expression today that makes it feel like she may not have remembered that a child needs to eat at all.
The timer beeps on the grill and I take the fish fingers out and scoop them on to the bread, four for Harley, four for Emma, then squash the other pieces of bread down on top.
‘There you go, buddy.’ I give Harley his plate and he carries it into the lounge, and I give the other plate to Emma. ‘I made you one, too. It’s a culinary speciality – fish finger sandwich.’
Emma smiles, but again it’s barely a smile, only given to acknowledge my joke but with nothing behind it. ‘I don’t need you to cook for me.’
‘I know. But I was making one for Harley anyway.’
‘Well, thanks.’ She takes her plate through to the lounge and sits next to Harley. There’s something almost childlike about the way she sits, her knees pulled up to her chest with the plate resting on top.
‘Right. Well, I suppose I should get going.’
‘OK. And thank you for all this.’ Then just as I’m about to leave, out of nowhere, she bursts into tears. ‘I’m sorry. I feel so useless.’
I stand still on the spot, unsure what to do. Should I give her a hug? Normally if I saw someone crying, I would, but she’s the mother of one of the children in my class and it already feels like I’m way more involved than I should be.
‘I just can’t do it any more,’ she continues. ‘I can’t even look after myself. How am I supposed to look after a child?’
I immediately glance at Harley, not feeling comfortable at him hearing his mum say this stuff, but he’s intently watching a Spiderman cartoon, ketchup smeared around his mouth, seemingly numb to his mum’s outburst. It makes me think perhaps he sees her like this a lot.
‘Shall we go in the kitchen?’ I nod my head towards Harley.
Emma follows my gaze. ‘Oh, he’s OK.’
The thing is, I know she’s wrong. That just because seeing his mum like this has become Harley’s normality, it doesn’t mean the scar tissue isn’t being formed.
‘I think we should go in the kitchen.’
I don’t give her a choice because I leave the lounge and, with a noticeable sigh, she follows me. Her clothes hang off her and she looks like she’s got weights attached to every extremity. Her eyes are still brimming with tears and one escapes and rolls down her cheek.
‘You’re a good mum, Emma. I know it’s hard, but I think you need to try to put some of the other stuff aside and focus on him.’
It’s probably stupid advice, impossible for Emma to do, but I wish someone had said something similar to Mum when I was growing up.
‘I do. I think about him all the time. I’m just no good at any of this. He deserves better than me. Maybe Mimi would take him for a while. Do you think she would? Just until I get my head straight. He loves Mimi more than me anyway. He’d be happier there.’
I shake my head. ‘You’re his mum. He loves you more than anything in the world and he needs you. I’m sure Mimi is happy to help out when you need it, but Harley needs to be here and he needs you to step up to the plate.’
Emma nods repeatedly, more tears falling down her cheeks and dripping from her chin.
‘I do love him. I don’t want you to think I don’t love him. I just think he’d be better off without me.’
‘He wouldn’t.’
Emma nods, but I can tell she’s somewhere else. That nothing I say is really going in.
‘I better go now. Make sure you eat your sandwich.’ I put my head around the door to the lounge. ‘I’ll see you at school in the morning, OK, little man?’
‘Bye, Mr Carlton,’ Harley says, but he doesn’t take his eyes off the screen.
On the drive home, I can’t stop thinking about them. I know I’m in too deep, but I just feel so responsible for Harley and I don’t know what to do for the best. But, at the same time, being with Emma is like someone pulling the stitches out of old wounds. I’m still so raw about everything that happened with Mum and, if I’m ever going to make something of my life, I’ve got to start to face up to it.
I pick up the memory box from my bedside table, a beer in my other hand, locate a pen and some paper and sit on my bed with my back against the headboard. I try to think of some happy memories of Mum to write down. I write about a family holiday to Spain where she spent the whole time playing with us in the pool, even though I could tell she really wanted to read her book. About a trip to the circus. I remember the clown falling off his unicycle head first into a five-tiered cake, emerging with a face covered in cream. We all laughed until we had tears streaming down our cheeks – it was rare to see Mum so unashamedly happy and looking at the joy on her face just made me laugh all the more.
I try to conjure up more positive memories but I can’t ignore the sick feeling in my stomach. I feel like a fraud. Because in Spain Mum also told me that she wished she’d never had children – that we’d ruined her chance of making anything of her life. And the thing that really sticks in my head about the trip to the circus is the walk home, the way Mum’s demeanour changed completely like she’d just received terrible news. The way she refused to hold my hand. The way, when Dad was chatting to us about all the funny bits of the show and Ben and I were giggling, she said, ‘I thought the whole thing was a bit immature, to be honest’ and stomped off ahead of us. I rip the piece of paper into thin strips and push them off the cover on to the floor.
Then I pick up my phone and text Mimi.
What if the memories aren’t good?
It’s a few minutes before she replies.
Write them down anyway. x
I stare at the fresh piece of paper, doodling around the hoops at the top, then I push it to the side and lie on my bed, pressing the button on my biro so that the nib goes in, out, in, out, the clicking sound strangely hypnotic. It feels like a betrayal, to fill a box with all the times Mum hurt me, when I loved her so much, love her so much. But then I sit up and grab the pen and the words flow out of me like the water when you unblock a dam. I write about the time she told me that she thought Ben was better than me, the time I broke down in tears in front of her because Kate and I had fallen out over something and she shouted at me for being ‘pathetic’ and ‘weak’, the way she never let me have a birthday party because ‘birthdays should be spent with family, not friends’. And then suddenly I’m able to write about the way she’d always sleep beside me when I had a bad dream, the time she took me for ice cream after school because I’d been kind to one of the boys in the class who was being picked on, the times she came home from parents’ evening with an array of treats because she was ‘bursting with pride’, the time she taught me to paint, the stories she read, the way she’d sing to me for ages when I couldn’t get to sleep.
And then, as if the pen isn’t under my control, I start writing about Dad too. About the time he’d been out drinking all night (not unusual) and Mum had told us that the reason he was barely there was because he couldn’t stand to be around us and then, later, I’d woken up from a bad dream and gone downstairs to get myself a cup of milk and he’d been there on the sofa, sobbing. At first, he’d shouted at me to go back up to bed, but then he’d caught up with me on the stairs, wrapped his arms around me and apologized. As a kid, I always wondered why he’d held me that night if what Mum said was true. But she could be pretty convincing.
I write about the time Mum was screaming at Ben and me because we�
�d got some paint on the table and Dad just stood in the doorway and watched. But I also find myself writing about the time Dad taught me and Ben to skateboard, how the three of us collapsed on the grass in fits of giggles after Dad was showing off speeding down a hill and then hit a piece of gravel and fell flat on his face. The trips to the beach. The games of frisbee. The nights sleeping in the tent in the garden because Mum wouldn’t let us go ‘proper’ camping. Sometimes, I think it’s easy to reach a point where all that’s left is resentment, like the opposite of rose-tinted glasses, skewing all versions of events.
When I’m too tired to write any more, I stuff the pieces of paper into the box and close the lid, putting it back on my bedside table. And it’s ridiculous how cathartic it is to shut it all away. Whenever I’ve read stuff about therapy or worry boxes or any of that stuff, I’ve always thought it was bullshit, that it’s too simplistic, idealistic, but as I get undressed and climb under the covers I feel lighter, and when I rest my head on the pillow I manage to go to sleep.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Just as we arrive at the campsite, the heavens open and the rain starts hammering from the sky like the start of the great flood. It’s just my luck. We’ve had the most unbelievable start to spring so far, and the day I decide to go camping, the British weather decides to revert to its usual dismal self.
‘Can we go to the beach now?’ Finn shouts from the back of the car.
‘Do you have a window next to you?’
‘What?’ Finn says, not taking his eyes off the in-car DVD player.
‘Look out the window.’
‘The beach isn’t there. I said I want to go to the beach.’
I bang my head against the steering wheel and Mimi laughs.
‘He means it’s raining, duh brain,’ Gabe says.
‘Soooo,’ Finn says, ‘we can wear our coats.’
‘Well, I’d like to get the tent up first really, little man. Let’s give it five minutes to pass. Just finish watching your film.’
Mimi looks over at me and bites back a smile.
‘What?’
She leans forward and looks out the windscreen. ‘Are you sure it’s going to pass in five minutes?’
‘The weather forecast said it was going to be sunny all weekend.’
‘And we’re trusting the weather forecast rather than the view outside the window because …?’
‘They can see from their satellites. This is obviously just a minor blip.’
‘Perhaps a flock of birds flew past and blocked the view for a while so they missed the ginormous rain cloud filling the sky.’
‘Perhaps.’
We sit in the car for about fifteen minutes, watching the rain bouncing off the windscreen.
‘The film’s finished now, Dad,’ Gabe says. ‘Shall we just put our coats on? We can do the tent when we get back.’
I look at Mimi to gauge what she wants to do.
‘Fine by me,’ she says. ‘I can’t think of anything I’d rather do than head out into the torrential rain and battering winds with only a thin cagoule.’
‘Seriously, though, is this OK?’ I sweep my arms to encompass the car, the weather, the campsite, my two boys.
‘It’s great.’ Mimi taps my thigh and I fight the desire to take her hand and hold on to it, instead smiling at her and then opening the car door. It’s odd, but I felt this sort of nervous excitement picking her up, and I feel it again now, along with an almost desperate desire for her to have a good time on this trip.
‘Come on, then. Coats on. Hoods up.’
As soon as we exit the car, it’s obvious that putting on our coats is as pointless as listening to the safety instructions on an aeroplane, but, in a similar way, it makes us feel like we’re doing something to protect ourselves against our impending doom. We head towards the beach path, running at first, and then, as if accepting our fate, we slow to a walk. Luckily it’s not too cold, so although we may be drowned rats, we are not shivering drowned rats. Our clothes stick to us like they’ve been glued on with wallpaper paste and the rain drips from our hoods, our noses, our chins.
Eventually we reach the beach and the boys run straight towards the sea. I’m about to stop them with a ridiculous, ‘Careful you don’t get your clothes wet,’ but I stop myself just in time and the boys charge into the white water, squealing at the temperature and running back out before turning and running in again.
‘Shall we join them?’ Mimi says.
‘That’s a whole other level of wet and cold. But you go ahead if you want.’
Mimi looks out to sea and then strolls over and sits beside me on a relatively flat rock that I’ve found. For a while, we just watch the boys, giggling and splashing each other, setting each other challenges for who’s brave enough to go in the deepest. Over time, somehow I forget the rain pouring from the sky and just enjoy watching my boys so happy, getting on, not attached to a screen or badgering me for sweets.
‘Thank you for inviting me.’
‘Really? In this weather?’ I hold my hands, palms up, to the sky.
‘It’s not your fault. And what’s a British camping trip without a little rain?’
‘Bloody weather forecast. I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be silly. It’s fun. And look how happy the boys are. That’s what matters, right?’
‘I’m really glad you came.’
‘Me too.’ Mimi smiles at me and there it is again, the weirdly charged atmosphere I’ve felt since I picked her up this morning. Then the boys come running back to us, their teeth chattering in tandem.
‘Can we go and get dry now?’ Gabe says, holding out his arms like a scarecrow, his clothes hanging off him, weighed down by the intake of water.
‘I’m hungry,’ Finn says, his default setting whenever there’s a momentary break in proceedings.
‘Come on then. Let’s go and get the barbecue started.’
Mimi looks up at the sky. ‘You’re still going to do the barbecue in this?’
‘I brought a load of sausages and burgers in the cool box. They won’t keep until tomorrow. One way or another, I will get that barbecue going.’
‘OK, if you say so,’ Mimi says, a sceptical look on her face. Then she turns to the boys. ‘Come on, you two, I’ll race you to the top.’
And as I watch her, grabbing the boys to hamper their progress up the dune, making them giggle until their eyes run, I suddenly wonder why I’ve been fighting the feelings that now seem so obvious to me. When I kissed Mimi at the wedding, it felt right because she is right. And not just for me, but for the boys too. She’s right for all of us.
I’m suddenly desperate to run towards her and tell her everything. But then it hits me that, only a week ago, she was trying to help me get Kate back – how can I ever explain how blind I’ve been? Plus she’s going travelling in a couple of months, and despite the tension I feel whenever she’s near me, who’s to say she feels it too? Especially now I’ve wasted all this time chasing the wrong person.
They run ahead over the top of the dunes so I can no longer see them and I trail behind, my head a mass of questions. When I get back to the campsite, Mimi is getting the boys undressed, folding up their wet clothes as she goes.
When she sees me, she shouts, ‘Open the car.’
So I press the remote and she bundles the naked boys into the car, then slips off her shorts, her jacket long enough to maintain her decency but not long enough to prevent my eyes being drawn to the tops of her thighs. Then she gets into the car. I slip my shorts off too and climb in with them. Mimi has found the bag of pyjamas and is helping Finn put his on, whilst Gabe does his own.
‘Now, that’s better. So, Super Dad, what’s going on with this barbecue? We’re starving.’
I’m not sure how the hell I’m going to get a barbecue going in the pissing rain when I struggle to get one going on a bright day with only a breath of wind, but I’m determined to make it work. To show Mimi I’m not completely useless.
I reach behind my seat and pull out a bag of Kettle Chips. ‘Share these to keep you going. I’m going to go and set up under that tree over there. It should be sheltered enough.’
Mimi opens the crisps and gives a handful to each boy before offering one to me and then tucking in herself. ‘Well, careful not to start any forest fires.’
‘I’ll try my best.’
I find some old joggers festering in the footwell in the back of the car, leave the others stuffing their faces, and carry the disposable barbecue in a plastic bag over to the shelter of the tree. I kneel down, put the barbecue on a rock and try to light it. It’s at times like this I wish Mum had encouraged us to join the Scouts. She always said it was too regimented, that we were stuck in the institution of school for enough hours as it was without the added commitment of extra-curricular clubs, but looking back I think she was just lonely. With Dad always at work and no job of her own, Mum was alone all day and was always desperate to pick us up from school, despite the fact that by the time we’d walked home, she was often so tired she’d just go to bed.
So, without any Scout training, the best I can do is to use the lessons I’ve learnt watching series like Castaway and Shipwrecked, which basically amounts to turning my body into the wind (which has conveniently picked up just in time for our barbecue) and cupping my hands around the match in a desperate attempt to stop it from blowing out. It fails, of course, and after more attempts than I can count, I have to admit defeat.
I skulk back to the car with my disposable barbecue and bag full of wasted meat and open the car door.
Mimi tries to stifle her giggles but fails. ‘Fish and chips?’
I push out my bottom lip like a toddler. ‘It’s such a waste.’
‘Don’t worry, I’ll pay.’
‘It’s not about the money. It’s just there are starving children in Africa.’
‘The meat will probably survive until the morning in this wonderful weather. Burgers for breakfast?’
I sigh. ‘Come on then, fish and chips it is.’
Mimi slips on some joggers too and we drive to the local chippie and bring our fish and chips back to the campsite, Mimi and I squeezing in the back with the boys, who choose to put The Lego Ninjago Movie on the tablet. I’ve not really sat down and watched it properly before, just heard and seen snippets whilst busy with something else, and it’s actually really funny. When Mimi or I laugh, the boys do too, even though I’m pretty sure most of the humour goes over their heads.