Her Perfect Family

by Driscoll, Teresa

  Matthew stares at his blank page and frowns. Sally starts to write immediately and Matthew wonders what the hell she’s writing. Amelie draws a picture with crayons. She draws Sally with her blonde hair, using a bright yellow crayon. He is drawn very tall with big, baggy trousers and his curly hair a sea of squiggles. Next Amelie draws herself in a pink dress. Very small in the middle with stick arms and huge hands, reaching out to each parent.

  She then pauses and all the adults watch as Amelie takes a red crayon and draws ugly lines across the whole family. Huge, fat red lines.

  ‘That’s the blood,’ she announces as she presses harder on the paper, her face turning paler as she watches the family disappear behind all the red lines.

  ‘That’s my worry.’

  CHAPTER 29

  THE FATHER – NOW

  Back at the house, Ed feels utterly overwhelmed. He picks up the new post from the doormat and adds it to the huge pile already unchecked on the side table. Lord knows what could be lurking in there. Unpaid bills. Final demands. Speeding tickets. But who . . . bloody . . . cares.

  Until this moment, all the normal tiers of responsibility in his life – work, pay the mortgage, insure the car – have been kicked into the long grass, completely overshadowed by one thought only. Getting Gemma well.

  Technically he’s been freed up to concentrate on this one thing; he’s been given compassionate leave by his agency and has no immediate financial worries. They have savings and Ed hasn’t been thinking about work or the future or anything beyond Gemma and those blessed machines, ticking away in her cubicle.

  But on the drive home and now here in the hall, staring at his face in the mirror by the coat hooks, there is this new and terrible pressure, crushing down upon him. The horror of an entirely new future, even if Gemma does come back to them. Has he blown it? Will he lose it all anyway? His family? This home where they’ve been happy.

  He stands very still for a moment and then turns from the mirror. He can picture Gemma running through the hall in a fairy outfit – her wings so wide that they brush against the staircase as she passes. Look, Daddy. My wings are flapping. I’m flying.

  He turns his head, back towards the door and imagines packing boxes and a furniture van outside. The horror of another divorce. Another failure.

  Rachel won’t say why she wants a photo of Laura. She says she’ll tell him when he gets back to the hospital. So how did she know about the strawberry-blonde hair? What the hell is going on?

  The police asked for a picture of Laura too but he genuinely doesn’t keep one on his phone and in any case their last contact was so long ago, he has no idea what Laura looks like now. Short hair? Long hair? Grey hair? So DI Sanders is chasing an up-to-date, official photo from the clinic in Canada and also from the passport office.

  He told Rachel all this too; he told her that he only has a few very old photos in the loft but she still wants to see them. Says it’s important. Ominously she says they may need to speak to DI Sanders again together but he doesn’t understand why and, typical Rachel, she won’t say. If they had a different kind of relationship he would press her but that’s not how they roll, and how can he cause even more distress after what he’s put her through?

  He takes a deep breath and opens the under-stairs cupboard for the folding ladder. He drags it upstairs, click-clicking against each carpeted step. Normally he lifts the ladder high enough to prevent dragging but today he can’t be bothered. On the landing, he looks at the narrow loft opening and sighs. For years they’ve been debating a loft upgrade with proper flooring, a larger access and a fold-down ladder but the project’s always been bumped. How he wishes now that they’d gone ahead.

  It’s a ridiculous hatch and he has to twist himself awkwardly to get inside. He’s forgotten the torch so takes his phone from his back pocket for its light. He knows exactly where the photos are. He tucked them in an old school book at the bottom of a cardboard box of boyhood treasures. A set of marbles. A prize conker. A favourite Lego kit. He put a stack of musty old comics and superhero annuals in the top of the box to discourage Rachel from rummaging. She hates comics. Hates anything musty.

  Years back, long before he and Rachel moved in together, he sat in his old flat in his old life, wondering what he should do with the mementos of his life with Laura. Throw them all away to echo the pretence it had never happened? He decided to keep just three photographs of their wedding. It was a small affair, hosted at Laura’s family home in Canada under a beautiful awning, decorated with flowers in the garden. Laura wore a sprig of white flowers in her hair instead of a veil.

  He keeps very still thinking about it. It genuinely feels like it all happened to a different person. He closes his eyes and it’s a while before he can bring himself to creep from rafter to rafter to reach the box, carefully placed in a corner near the water tank.

  The photos, taken out of their frames, are now tucked into a fat copy of the works of Shakespeare – a prize given to him in the sixth form, just before he left boarding school. The head teacher had let him stay on after his parents’ death, awarding a scholarship of some sort to discount the fees. He forgets the name of the ‘award’ but always suspected it was a kindness rather than something he earned. Decent of the school really.

  Ed turns the pages to find the photos right in the middle. It’s a shock. They both look so young. Is that what Rachel wants to see? How young he was? What Laura was like? He frowns, again wondering how on earth Rachel guessed the hair colour.

  He takes a picture of the photos with his phone but there’s no signal, not even one bar. He’s promised to forward one to Rachel straight away and will need to go back downstairs so the phone can link to the Wi-Fi. The phone signal in their village is poor at the best of times but the Wi-Fi’s good.

  He’s careful as he twists himself back on to the ladder, climbing down and pulling the hatch back into place. He moves into his study to send the picture, adding a simple message. I’m sorry. I never meant to hurt you. Why did you need this, Rachel? Please tell me.

  He walks down the stairs, a pull in his stomach as he sits for a moment to stare at the phone, surprised at the ping of an immediate response.

  A text from Rachel. I’m calling the police. Come straight back to hospital. Will explain.

  He tries to ring her, desperate for an explanation, but her phone switches through to the answer service. No surprise and he can’t think what to say by way of message, so he hangs up. Rachel struggles with tough stuff face to face, never mind on the phone. He sighs, reflecting that up until now this has suited him. All those times he’s watched her descend these stairs to retreat into the kitchen to bake when things got tricky with Gemma in her early teens. Just leave your mum be. Let it go, Gemma.

  He needs to hurry back to the hospital. Make her explain. Make it right and make her forgive him.

  He stands, puts his phone back in his pocket and then frowns again as his mind seems to acknowledge something out of place. At first he can’t figure out what it is. He glances around and then notices there’s now a new letter on the doormat in a buff envelope. But he put everything on the side table, didn’t he?

  He assumes a circular of some kind but when he picks it up, he’s surprised to find it’s addressed to him. There’s a stamp but oddly no postmark. The address is written out on a large white label, the writing childlike. Lower-case letters. He doesn’t understand. There’s no post at this hour. Much too late. He looks up at the frosted windowpane in the upper part of the door, wondering if this was somehow hand delivered, but there’s no shadow. No sign of anyone outside.

  He tears open the letter and feels a rush of adrenaline at the contents.

  There’s a single postcard tucked inside. No message.

  Just a postcard of Wells Cathedral.

  CHAPTER 30

  THE DAUGHTER – BEFORE

  Explore the relationship between fiction and metaphysics and/or ethics in any work by D. H. Lawrence.

  Today h
as been just awful. The worst.

  When I woke up and set off, I really was clinging to the hope there’s an explanation; that ‘S’ has been telling me the truth and there’s a reason he’s not been in touch.

  Over the last couple of days, after the second (and third) pregnancy test came back positive, I tried again and again to arrange to meet him, but he just didn’t answer my texts. We keep messages to a minimum, obviously, and always delete them straight away, but he’s normally pretty quick to reply so this really threw me.

  These days we meet off campus – a small, low-key hotel somewhere. It’s become too risky to meet up in his office as most students don’t see their tutors very often – if at all – so ‘S’ has been worried someone would notice me coming and going. I’ve finished the module he was teaching so technically I have no call to see him, except in that ‘tutor’ capacity, and he says it would arouse suspicion to use that card too frequently.

  He normally texts the name of a hotel, different each time, and I meet him in the room. Not in the bar, in case we get unlucky and anyone sees us. To be perfectly honest, I’ve hated this because it feels sort of dirty and seedy and underhand. And yeah – I get that an affair with a married man is, in theory, dirty and seedy and underhand but I’ve always told myself it’s not like that with us because his marriage is over anyway.

  In the end, I realised there must be something wrong with his phone. I couldn’t find him around campus, not at all, and so I did something really risky. I’d already checked out where he lived online. Nosy. Jealous? Curious. Call it whatever you like, I couldn’t resist seeing what his house was like. I found him on the electoral register and I used Google Earth to look at the place. Big red-brick affair with bay windows. Lovely actually. I got this horrible pang of proper, full-on jealousy when I first saw it. I suppose I’ve put the fact he’s married in a box that I try not to think about. Looking at the house made it real, but then I remembered how he described his marriage – as like a prison, a place he just couldn’t yet escape – and so I realised it was important not to over-think it all. I haven’t forgotten that’s what ‘A’ said I always do.

  Over-think things.

  I tried to put the house out of my mind but when ‘S’ didn’t answer my texts, I couldn’t help myself. I started to look on Google Earth more and more. I started to fantasise. To imagine us in a red-brick house with our baby. I started to tell myself that, yes, ‘S’ would be a little shocked when he found out about the pregnancy, but ultimately he would be supportive. Surely. He’s a nice guy. One of the good guys. He cares about me. That’s what I expected deep down; that we would work out a way to be together and for me to get my career going after settling the baby into our new lives.

  When he still didn’t answer my texts, I began to panic because I need to know how he feels about the baby before I make any decisions. I can’t talk to Maddy or Mum or anyone still because ‘S’ will lose his job and Mum just won’t be able to cope and so in the end I couldn’t help myself. I didn’t see any other choice. ‘S’ still wasn’t on campus so I decided to make a trip.

  I took the bus and used Google Maps on my phone to find his street. He’s never given me his home address but, as I say, I found him on the electoral register. I don’t know what I expected exactly – either to feel or to actually do. I certainly wasn’t planning to walk up to his door or anything stupid like that. I just needed to be near him and maybe I hoped that he would catch sight of me at least and that would trigger him to contact me.

  What a mistake. It was all so horrible.

  I turned up mid-afternoon and I hid behind a bus stop on the other side of the street. I spotted his car in the drive and I could see right into the driveway with a clear view of the porch. A part of me was a bit worried that he might see me and be really cross but I didn’t approach the house or anything stupid. I was hoping that if he did see me, he would just get in touch and we could sort everything out. That I would be able to explain it was the only way I could let him know that I needed to speak to him. Urgently.

  And then the front door opened. She came out of the house ahead of him and it was such a shock. She was so much younger than I expected. And so pretty. She was carrying a picnic basket which at first partly blocked my view of her. Her long hair was in a ponytail and she was wearing sunglasses. The thing is she just looked so glamorous, so confident and so at ease. I had this picture in my head of her being some kind of mess – that’s the way ‘S’ describes her – so it didn’t fit. ‘S’ followed straight behind her, closing the porch door, and then came the next and even bigger shock. She put the picnic basket into the boot of his car and when she turned, I could see her properly. Her stomach. The bump. Not huge – maybe five or six months. I don’t really know but it was like a physical blow. And then before they moved to get into the car, ‘S’ took her into his arms really tenderly. He pushed her sunglasses up on to the top of her head and kissed her on the mouth. Not just a peck. Not just a duty kiss but a really tender and proper kiss. Like the kisses he gives me.

  I was dumbfounded. Anchored to the spot behind the bus stop. I was so shaken, I very nearly stepped out to make sure that he would see me and know that I had seen this.

  They embraced for quite a while. He put his hand on her bump and she stroked his back – the very bottom of his spine – and tucked one of her thumbs into the back of his jean belt while he brushed the hair back from her forehead and kissed her again. And I just couldn’t believe it. That I had let myself be so completely tricked. Such an idiot. That this was not a man who was living separately from his mess of a wife. This was not a man who was trying to leave his wife at all. This was a man who was having a baby with his wife.

  As they separated and he took his place in the driver’s seat and she moved round to the passenger seat, I leaned back against the bus stop and felt more shaken and more alone than I can ever remember.

  As I keep saying, I haven’t told anyone about the pregnancy because I just can’t confide in anyone about ‘S’. And now I have no one to talk to at all. No one to tell how truly stupid I’ve been.

  Only now, much too late, do I realise what a cliché this is. I’ve been taken in by a player. A snake. And I feel too stupid to begin to know what to do next.

  Since I got back to the flat, I’ve paced and cried and paced and cried. I’ve picked up my phone and thought about calling home; telling Mum that I need her to come and pick me up. But I just don’t have the courage to dial. I can’t do that to her.

  So all I’ve done in the practical sense is get back in touch with the clinic to make a new appointment to go over my options. How many weeks I have left to make a decision about what on earth to do.

  I’m just hoping and praying that I can get my degree finished and get through graduation before I have to make the call. Break both my parents’ hearts.

  And now, sitting here, I’m shocked at how angry I feel. Like I could hit something. Like I want justice. Revenge?

  A part of me wants to find out the number and phone ‘S’’s wife. To let her know exactly what her husband’s really like.

  But guess what’s happened to top it all? A new DM on Facebook.

  He’s not who he says he is . . .

  That’s the message. From a new ‘friend’ I don’t even remember accepting.

  It’s made a shiver go right through me. I suppose it could be ‘A’ hacking me again but it’s as if someone has read my thoughts.

  Because that’s precisely the message I would like to send to ‘S’’s wife.

  CHAPTER 31

  THE MOTHER

  I reach for Gemma’s laptop and rest it on the end of her bed in front of me, waiting for it to fire up. I’ve found the pictures from her birthday tea and click on the file. Gemma looks so happy. So pretty. There are photos of me and Ed too and it makes my stomach lurch to think of us back then. With no idea of what was to come.

  I’ve looked through some of her other files – curiosity – but it’s mostl
y coursework as far as I can see. A lot of essays. She was always telling me how much time she spent on them; pushing for that first.

  I scroll through some headings. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and another about someone I haven’t even heard of. I just read the essay title and click away. I love books but wouldn’t have a clue where to start; I feel out of my depth. I look again at some of the photographs – random shots with friends. Fancy-dress parties.

  I let out a sigh and put the laptop back on the cabinet next to Gemma’s bed. Extraordinary how the whole process of storing memories has changed in just a generation.

  My mother’s always loved taking and storing photographs. She began back in the day when you had to take your camera film to a chemist and wait for the photographs and the negatives. I remember telling a friend of Gemma’s about ‘negatives’ and she didn’t even know what I was talking about. I couldn’t find any so had to show them online. Images of the long, dark strips with punched holes along the edges.

  Mum also has stacks of photo albums on a shelf in that under-stairs cupboard; likes to get them out and re-tell the stories we’ve already heard a million times over. Me learning to ride a bike. Me learning the recorder. Me with my pigtails in the school nativity.

  I think of my mother at home now. Flu or just a virus; we can’t tell. Recovering well but still unable to visit Gemma. Messaging each day. I try so hard to keep upbeat when we talk but I know she watches the news and I worry how she will cope when she first sees Gemma. Like this.

  And then I think again of when I was little. My mother looking after me when I was unwell. Her voice. I’ve brought you some soup. All those photo albums. Sometimes, you know, I wonder if childhood memories are all real or if we conjure some of them from the photographs and anecdotes shared by our parents. When I listen to the story and look at a picture in my mother’s albums, I feel sure that I remember the incident. Smells come back to me – the floor polish in school. That soup on the stove at home. But with other photos, I suspect it’s my mother’s version I remember from her constant cycle of storytelling. I see images but fear I’m conjuring them to fit my mother’s nostalgia.