by Shari Low
To Mac’s joy, they’d abandoned plans to visit the Natural History Museum, and decided to head south after they’d dropped me at the airport. They were going to try to get back down to Florida by the following evening. Something about racing at Daytona. I decided it was better that I didn’t know the details.
Everything packed, the guys said their goodbyes to Hannah, then headed out to the van. I took her hands and we stood there just like that for a moment, as if we were holding on to the connection, savouring every moment until we had to let go.
‘I’m so glad we came,’ I told her, lump sliding right into position in my throat. ‘I’m not being glib when I tell you that this has changed my life. I’m so grateful.’
‘I second all of that,’ she said, walking that fine line between laughing and crying. We didn’t need to bring it all up again. We knew that this had been a turning point for both of us.
‘Remember, we’re family. We’re always there for you, so please, please lean on us. Tell Ryan that too. We like it. We’re at that age where it makes us feel useful.’
‘My mum always thought it was hilarious how you dealt with emotional situations by making jokes.’
‘Did she tell you about…’
I didn’t even need to finish the sentence. ‘The time you got asked to leave a funeral? Yeah.’
I sent a silent reprimand up to Sarah.
‘Not my finest hour.’ I admitted.
There was a honk on a horn outside.
‘Natives are getting restless. Goodbye, my darling.’ I threw my arms around her and hugged her tight. I was so sad to leave her, but at the same time there was a peace, a deep feeling that she was going to be okay.
I paused in the hall, touched one of the pictures in the black frames on the wall. Sarah, me, Carol, Jess and Kate, on my wedding day, the five of us hanging on to each other, helpless with laughter, as we reached the marriage hall with only minutes to spare. I sent her a silent message. I knew she could hear.
Goodbye, beautiful. We’ll see you at a kitchen table again soon.
I gently closed the door behind me.
‘Are you okay?’ Mark asked when I climbed into the passenger seat of the RV.
‘I am.’ He started up the engine. ‘We’ve decided we’re going to come over to visit Hannah every year. Sarah would like that.’
I wondered if he was going to say something about the cost of that, but he didn’t.
‘I think you should,’ he said, surprising me. I was beginning to think I had no idea who this new Mark Barwick was at all… but I liked him.
Mark switched on the music and the intoxicating brilliance of Michael Hutchence oozed from the speakers. INXS had been one of our favourite bands back in the days when we listened to albums over a bottle of wine and a plastic tray of chips.
I waited for the usual complaint to come from the boys in the back – something about ancient music and could we please put on some Drake – but nothing came. Surprised, I turned round to see Benny with his earphones in, eyes closed, and Mac deep in concentration on his phone. I almost left it. I was so close to just turning back round and singing along to ‘Need You Tonight’. But there was something in the angle of Mac’s brows, the firm set of his lips, the pulse in the side of his jaw that made the nerve endings under my skin begin to crawl with dread and fear.
‘Everything okay, honey?’
No response. He was still scrolling through something on… it looked like Snapchat. Or maybe it was a group chat on WhatsApp. It was hard to tell when it was upside down and I didn’t have my specs on.
‘Mac!’ I said, louder this time, startling him. ‘Is everything okay?’
There was a split second where I could see he was deliberating whether or not to tell me. Thankfully, he came down on the right side of it.
‘Mum, you should probably see this, but please don’t lose it and go mad.’
Now I was getting seriously scared.
‘I’m only showing you because I know you’ll help her.’
Oh fuck, he really had got someone pregnant. And he needed me to help! I was almost fifty and I was going to have to start again with nappies and prams and bring up my son’s child because the girl already had her career planned out and wasn’t ready to be a mother.
‘Help who?’
‘Toni.’
Toni? What did Toni have to do with Mac’s child’s baby mamma? I didn’t get it. Maybe there were two Tonis?
‘Our Toni?’ I clarified, and now it was his turn to be confused.
‘Yeah, our Toni. Who else would it be?’
‘Honest to God, this is excruciating,’ Mark interjected, keeping his eyes on the road. ‘Mac, your mother has gone into full-scale panic mode inside her head, so she’s jumping to 237 wrong conclusions in the time it takes you to answer every question. Best thing to do is just tell her really quickly what’s going on so that she’ll calm down to just moderately traumatised.’
Staring at him, I pursed my lips in irritation, even though every word he’d just said was absolutely correct.
‘I think Toni’s in trouble, Mum.’
My gut started to twist. I’d known for days, maybe weeks that something was wrong, but I hadn’t been able to get to the bottom of it.
‘What’s happened? It doesn’t matter what it is, Mac, tell me the truth and tell me everything. You know I’ll do what I can.’
He stretched forward in his seat, turned his phone round to show me the screen.
‘It’s a group chat with a load of the guys who do the fantasy football stuff. Toni was dating one of them – Paul Dorico’s big brother, Taylor. Paul’s cool, but Taylor is a dick.’
‘What age is this guy?’ I knew nothing about him but I already hated him. If he was harming Toni and Mac disliked him, that was all I needed to set off my inner tiger aunt.
‘Nineteen. Maybe twenty. I think he was the year above Toni in school.’
‘Okay. So what’s happened?’ I was already beginning to get a pretty good idea, but I needed to find out if I was right. And for once, I really didn’t want to be.
‘She dumped him because… well, because he was a dick. And because he’s off his face on MDMA every weekend and becomes an even bigger idiot.’
‘Glad to hear it.’ It was all I could manage to say over the noise of the screaming in my head.
‘But the thing is…’ I could tell Mac was hating every moment of this. It wasn’t in his nature to spill secrets, but I was so grateful that he had the maturity to realise that Toni needed support from an adult for whatever was going on. ‘… He has some photos. Toni sent them to him months ago, right at the start, when she thought he was a good guy.’
‘How do you know this?’ My feeling of dread was growing by the second. It didn’t take a genius to suss that the photos wouldn’t be of cute puppies.
‘Because he told one of my mates. I asked her, but she said it was rubbish and I believed her ’cause he bullshits all the time. Only, I guess it wasn’t because… Look.’
He held his phone closer, and I could see a picture of a female, topless, hands covering her breasts as she leaned into the camera, as if trying to tease the person the photo was meant for. The face had been cut off, but her brown hair fell loose over her shoulders. It wouldn’t have been enough for a stranger to make an ID, but it was enough for us, because there, on her shoulder, was a tiny mole, the same one I’d seen every time my niece lay on a sunlounger next to me for the last fortnight. It was Toni.
‘He says he’s got more, but I think he’s just putting this one up because she dumped him.’ An image flashed up behind my eyes. A text.
Really, bitch? Don’t you fucking dare or you know what’s coming.
Don’t you fucking dare what? Dump him?
You know what’s coming? The photos?
‘Mac, when did Toni start seeing this guy?’
He shrugged, thinking. ‘Maybe about six months ago?’
It all made sense. Carol had first mentio
ned Toni’s mood shift just before Mother’s Day, and Toni had definitely been upset and edgy at Kate’s barbecue. Had all this been brewing then? Had she already sent the photos and realised it was a mistake? Was her every waking moment consumed by fear over what he’d do? She checked her phone constantly, but I’d just put that down to teenage habit. It now made absolute sense that her unpredictability and outbursts must have been a result of relief or fear over what she saw there.
Oh God, poor Toni. She must have been in hell and so scared.
As I continued to process it all, my swirling gut morphed in to pure, visceral rage that made my head explode. How dare he? How fucking dare he do this to her?
‘Thanks for telling me, son. I promise I’ll handle it and we’ll sort it. We’ve got her. Don’t worry.’
The uncharacteristic anxiety on his face began to soften. I turned back to the front, my breaths coming hard as I tried to get my head around it.
‘You okay?’ Mark asked, one hand on the steering wheel, the other taking mine. ‘I can contact someone at the office to look into the legal side of this. See what can be done, what the options are.’
Mark specialised in corporate law, so I knew this wasn’t his field.
‘Yeah, that would be great. But please, can you ask on a hypothetical basis? Don’t say it’s Toni or discuss her identity with anyone.’
‘No problem. Leave it with me. I’ll do everything I can.’
Wow. I’d forgotten what it was like to have a true partner, someone who stood beside you to help fight your battles and protect the people you love. I’d also forgotten what a decent guy Mark really was.
The flight I’d booked back to LA left from Newark, and when we pulled into the drop-off zone my stomach was lurching. I didn’t want to leave my boys. To my surprise, I didn’t want to leave Mark either. But I knew I needed time to think about his proposition, had to decide whether I wanted to give our relationship one more try.
We all jumped out of the RV and Benny got my case from the back. I squeezed him tight, then did the same to Mac. ‘Remember what I said about your internal organs and take care of yourselves and your dad. I love you so much.’
‘Ma, we’ll see you in about four days,’ Benny said, trying to console me. ‘And you’ll probably FaceTime us at least 500 times before then. You won’t get a chance to miss us.’
‘Yeah, you might have a point. But give me another hug anyway so I can make sure I qualify for Needy Mother of The Year.’
‘You won that a long time ago,’ Mac joked. At least, I think he was joking.
The boys jumped back into the van and left me with Mark. He put his arms around me, then his lips touched mine and for a few seconds I was lost in him.
‘Come back to me, Carly. Please.’
‘Let me think things through.’ My head was still spinning, and it wasn’t fair on him or our family to make a snap decision now. For once in my life, I was going to take my time. Be measured. Make sure I was thinking with my head as well as my heart. And besides, I couldn’t focus on this while my stomach was churning over all this stuff with Toni.
‘Take as long as you need, but remember I love you.’
‘I love you too.’ I meant it. I just wasn’t sure if it was enough. I waved until they were out of sight and then took a deep breath. Somehow, I had to decide exactly what I wanted.
Meanwhile, I had absolutely no idea how I was going to handle it, what I was going to say or do, but I had almost six hours on a flight to LAX to work out how to help my niece.
26
Los Angeles, 8.12 p.m
When We Were Young – Adele
It was like night and day, touching down at LAX from a domestic flight instead of an international one. No immigration queues, no fumbling for passports, no worrying if some devious criminal had somehow managed to stash three kilos of crack in your Ted Baker trolley bag… Again, that last one might just be me.
For the five hours and fifty-three minutes of the flight from New York, I’d allowed myself to be a seething mess of mixed emotions. The pain of losing Sarah was more acute than ever, but there was also a true sense of gratitude and relief that my misconceptions and guilt had been laid to rest. Confusion and uncertainty over my feelings for Mark and our future had my stomach churning. But I was overwhelmed by how good it had felt to be a family again.
All of these mixed emotions sat right next to apocalyptic anger at that spineless prick who was targeting Toni. However, as I marched through the arrivals terminal, geared up for my last four days in LA, I wrapped that rage in a box and sat on it until it was shut. Anger was no use to me. Toni needed calm reason and support, and a solid, effective plan to deal with this and that’s what I was going to deliver. Until I spoke to her though, I just wasn’t quite sure how that plan would look.
I’d texted my flight details to Kate and she’d offered to ask Arnie to come and get me, but I’d told her not to bother. I didn’t want to trouble him when it was just as easy to jump in a cab. I scanned the signs above me, and followed the one for the exit, head down, feet moving fast as I charged through the sliding doors into the daylight and…
‘Cooper!’
It was loud, male, out of breath.
I stopped, turned around, really hoping it was nothing to do with three kilos of crack in my trolley bag.
‘Sam? What are you doing here?’
Under the baseball cap and the dark glasses, I could see his face was flushed. ‘Oh, I don’t know… I went out for a jog and took a wrong turn,’ he said, the heavy dose of sarcasm making it clear it was a ridiculous question.
The absurdity of it cut right through my fury and made me laugh for the first time since I stepped out of the RV at Newark airport. Sam Morton. Hollywood icon. Sweating his bits off in the middle of LAX and not a paparazzo in sight. I loved it.
‘I came to collect you, but you came out of arrivals like your arse was on fire and I was waiting at the other end,’ he explained, his breathing starting to regulate. ‘I called you, but…’
‘Sorry. I was a bit distracted. Stuff on my mind.’
He didn’t ask. I didn’t offer.
There was a weird pause until he snapped back into action. ‘Uh, okay. Cool. Any chance we could go get the car and get out of here?’
‘Absolutely. Just as long as you promise not to give up the movie career for a job driving taxis. You’d be pretty crap at it.’
He took my trolley case from me, and started walking in the direction of the nearest parking structure. ‘I’ll bear that in mind. Thanks for the tip.’
We were in his open-top Jeep and on the freeway by the time I noticed something felt weird.
I gasped dramatically. ‘Sam, I’ve just realised something… this is only the third time we’ve been alone together since the day I got here.’ For the purposes of maintaining my dignity and composure, I refused to allow myself to revisit the dressing-gown moment of mortification or the meltdown over the girls’ announcing we were going to New York. Instead, I reverted to type and went for really bad wit. ‘Does Estelle know you’re out? Oh my God, Sam, she’s probably alerted the authorities that you’re missing. She’ll be sending an army of drones into the sky right now to track you down.’ I went into full-scale drama-queen mode, scanning the skies like Gerry Butler in that drone/lake/save the President scene in London Has Fallen.
‘You’re really not funny, do you know that?’ The corners of his mouth turned up though, betraying his words.
‘I’ve been told,’ I said, giggling. ‘By the way, the boys asked me to tell you that they were missing you and Mac wants to come and live with you because he’s got a massive crush on Estelle. She might want to take out a restraining order.’
‘I’ll let her know. And yeah, I was thinking we hadn’t had any time together and tomorrow I’m away on a set visit that I can’t put off – that’s why I came to get you. All part of the service.’
There were a few seconds of silence as my mind went low and ambushed
me with thoughts of a very different kind of service Sam had once provided. God, he was hot. And kind. And funny. Did I mention hot? More than that, he had been one of the most important loves of my life. I just wasn’t sure that my heart was still putting that in the past tense. Thankfully, he couldn’t read my mind, and if he could, he was intent on changing the subject.
He broke the pause with, ‘So… can I ask you something? And bearing in mind we’ve got a twenty-five-year history and have always been straight with each other.’
‘You mean, apart from the time I promised to come back to Hong Kong and didn’t? Or the time you forgot to mention you were the number one tax write-off for every bored, wealthy woman on the island?’
His chuckle was carried over the noise of the traffic around us. ‘Yeah, apart from those times.’
‘Excellent. Okay, I’m all ears,’ I told him, enjoying the escape from reality that the easy banter was delivering. Whether we’d been friends, lovers or somewhere in between, that had always been there with us and I loved him for it.
‘On a scale of one to ten, how much are you hating Estelle?’
‘Twelve,’ I shot back immediately, then groaned. ‘Look, I’m sorry, Sam, but why would you ask me that? You know I’m going to be honest with you and then you’ll hate me until the end of time.’
‘I don’t hate you,’ he sighed, staring straight ahead.
‘I wanted to love her, and you know I’m a girls’ girl. It would have been amazing if we’d hit it off and we could have spent every morning together doing the downward dog and comparing thigh gaps…’
He still had his eyes on the road in front, saying nothing.
‘… Okay, I haven’t got a thigh gap, but you know what I mean. She’s just so… territorial. And I understand. If you were mine, I’d be territorial too.’
Bollocks! Why had I just said that? I’d had that thought last week, but it was one that was supposed to live inside my head and never see the light of day, especially not in front of Sam. Shit. Damn. Bugger.
‘Hypothetically speaking,’ I added weakly. ‘And get your eyes back on the road, because if we die in this car, the media reports will only mention the celebrity and I’ll get forgotten. My ego couldn’t take it.’ My brain was sending cease and desist orders to my gob, but it wasn’t listening. ‘Anyway,’ I kept rambling right on, ‘I guess all that’s important is that you love her. My opinion doesn’t really matter. I just want you to be happy.’