The Choir on Hope Street

by Annie Lyons

  I’ve never fancied being a celebrity. This week I have had a small insight into exactly why. I’m not likely to grace the pages of Hello! and it is unlikely that my bottom will ever break the internet but for three solid days I have had to deal with phone and house-calls from journalists who claim that they ‘just want to chat and hear my side of the story.’ It was bad enough having to deal with my mother weeping down the phone because Daphne from the Bowls Club had shown her a picture on her iPad of me kissing Tim Chambers (curse those internet-savvy grannies). It was worse when Woody saw it and didn’t speak to me for two days.

  All of this neatly coincided with the run-up to the Choir Finals. We had a week of solid rehearsals planned and to say that the thought of these filled me with dread was a little bit like declaring George Clooney to be ‘okay-looking’. I was plain terrified.

  I also didn’t have anyone to look after Woody. I couldn’t ask Dan because we weren’t speaking. He had tried to call, so I had sent him a text saying that I didn’t want to talk at the moment. His reply – ‘Of course, just call when you’re ready. I only want to help.’ – made me want to punch him in his ever-reasonable face. Anger Management 0, Simmering Rage 1.

  I knew that I was getting everything wrong by blanking out what had happened with Tim, denying Woody his father’s presence and generally being a crap mother and individual, but I didn’t know what else to do. I felt as if I was just trying to exist, to get through the days really. I had tried to call Tim a couple of times but his phone had gone to voicemail and I decided that trying to visit in person would only add fuel to the fire of speculation. I had fielded calls from my editor (supportive, concerned), my agent (unhelpful, ranting) and Guy (sweet, worried). I hadn’t heard from Caroline or any of the other choir members, but to be honest I had stopped answering the door and my phone after twenty-four hours.

  I did have to pop to the shop for milk one day. I tried my best to channel my inner Grace Kelly by wearing gigantic dark sunglasses and a scarf wrapped up around my ears, just in case there was a photographer lurking. When I caught sight of myself in the shop window, I looked like less like a Hollywood star and more like a weirdo. I removed both before entering the shop. Doly’s brother-in-law, Hasan, was behind the counter. He looked up and smiled when I entered but didn’t seem to recognise me. I darted to the fridge, grabbed a four-pint bottle of milk and carried it over to the till. On impulse I grabbed a two-hundred-gram bar of Dairy Milk as well. On the survival-kit list of the broken-hearted, chocolate has to be the number-one choice. Along with wine. And ice cream. And possibly biscuits.

  Hasan keyed in the prices. ‘Two pounds forty please,’ he smiled. ‘Would you like a bag?’

  ‘No thanks,’ I replied, reaching hurriedly for my purse. I didn’t want to run the risk of bumping into Doly.

  ‘Natalie!’ cried a voice. I turned to be confronted by the ample bosom of Pamela. Without further comment or warning she pressed me to her chest before holding me at arm’s length. ‘Oh, lovey, how are you?’ she clucked, chucking me under the chin like a three-year-old.

  ‘I’m fine,’ I muttered, glancing furtively at Hasan, who gave me a polite nod, which confirmed that he recognised me now. ‘Bit busy.’

  ‘But you’re coming to choir tonight aren’t you? You’re not going to let all this shenanigans stop you, are you?’

  I stared down at my feet. ‘Not sure. I haven’t got a babysitter, so …’

  ‘Hasan!’ came a voice from the door at the back. ‘Do we need to re-stock the chewing gum?’ It was Doly’s voice and I wanted to be away but it was too late. She appeared from the back of the shop and stopped to stare at me.

  She was embarrassed and I couldn’t blame her. I was ashamed too.

  ‘Doly!’ called Pamela. ‘Could your lovely husband watch Woody while Natalie’s at choir this evening?’

  ‘Oh no, it’s fine, don’t worry,’ I said, starting to back towards the door. Must get home before I start crying again.

  ‘Please, Natalie,’ said Doly. ‘Wait.’

  I stood still as she approached me. She had such warmth and grace. I must have seemed so shabby in her eyes. She stopped before me and took my hands. ‘You must not be embarrassed,’ she said. She gestured towards Hasan. ‘We are Muslims and we understand more than most that you should not believe or judge by the things you read in the news. It is the person that is most important and you are a good person. Of course Woody can come here this evening. Sadia would love to see him.’

  I stared into her beautiful kind eyes and started to cry. I couldn’t help it. Suddenly I felt Doly and Pamela wrap their arms around me and for the first time in so many weeks I remembered that I had friends. I had been such an idiot, completely missing the point as usual. I had thought that I was alone, that no-one cared and yet, here they were, where they’d been all along. Right in front of me – my friends.

  Before I left, Doly touched my cheek. ‘All will be well,’ she said. ‘You will see.’

  Doly’s words consoled me and I decided that I had to try and talk to Woody after school. On the walk home, I told him that he was going round to Sadia’s house for an hour or two while I was at choir. He took the news with a satisfied nod but didn’t speak the rest of the way. Once at home, I made us both drinks and fetched the biscuit tin. We’d had a little ritual of sitting down and discussing our day ever since Woody had started school. It had lapsed lately but I decided that it was probably more important now than ever.

  ‘Would you like a biscuit?’ I called up the stairs.

  ‘I’ve got homework,’ he shouted down from his room.

  ‘Please, Woody. I need to talk to you.’

  Whether out of curiosity or a grudging sense of love, he sloped down the stairs and followed me into the dining room. Helping himself to a chocolate bar, he immediately set about devouring it, like a task that had to be completed. I could see that I would need to be quick.

  ‘So I wanted to tell you firstly, that I’m sorry about those pictures you saw of me kissing that man.’

  ‘Who was that man?’ he asked.

  I swallowed. ‘His name is Tim Chambers.’

  ‘Is he your boyfriend now?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So why did you kiss him?’

  Honest. Always be honest with your children. ‘I don’t really know.’

  Woody frowned. ‘That doesn’t make any sense.’

  ‘I know.’

  He sighed. ‘Grown-ups are weird.’

  ‘That’s very true.’

  ‘And they make everything far too complicated.’

  Quick, put this boy in charge of the world. ‘Also true,’ I smiled. ‘I need to talk to you about your dad as well.’

  ‘He’s not coming back.’

  ‘Yes.’ I was surprised. ‘How did you know?’

  He shrugged. ‘He was unhappy for a bit and now he doesn’t seem so unhappy, so it kind of makes sense.’

  I felt sick. ‘How did you know he was unhappy?’

  Woody shifted in his seat. ‘I just noticed stuff.’

  ‘What kind of stuff?’ I demanded. Nat, calm down, don’t interrogate him. Let him tell you. ‘Sorry. I just want to know.’

  He thought for a moment. ‘Well, there was that day when we watched your wedding video.’ I nodded. Family tradition. Every year on our anniversary. ‘And Dad went out to get a beer but he didn’t come back for a bit.’

  He glanced up at me, unsure of whether to continue. ‘It’s okay. You can tell me, Woody.’

  He took a deep breath. ‘So I went to find him. I said I needed the loo and you stayed and watched.’ I remembered. We had got to the funny bit where Auntie Vi was drunkenly showing everyone her verruca. Disgusting, but funny. ‘So I went to the kitchen but Dad wasn’t there and then I heard a noise.’

  ‘What kind of a noise?’

  ‘Crying.’

  I stared at him. ‘Well maybe he was sad because he saw Grandpa on the video.’

  Woody shook his
head. ‘He wasn’t, because I walked into the dining room and I saw him.’

  ‘Did he see you?’

  ‘Not at first. I watched him for a bit. His shoulders were shaking. I thought he wasn’t going to stop. So I did one of those coughs, like grown-ups do when they want someone to see them. Like this.’ He cleared his throat with great noise and drama. My dear boy. My dear Woody.

  ‘And what happened?’

  ‘He wiped his eyes really quickly and turned round with this massive smile on his face and said, ‘Hey, Woody, I thought I saw that cat in the garden again. You know, the one that poos in between Mum’s geraniums, so I was shooing him away.’

  ‘Well, maybe that’s true,’ I said. And maybe the moon is made of marshmallow.

  Woody fixed me with a look, like that of an adult instructing a child. ‘He didn’t want me to see. He didn’t want me to know that he’d been crying.’

  My mind filled with horror as I scanned memories of the last year and saw a pattern emerging.

  Christmas Day. Dan disappeared while we were watching the post-lunch-slump film. I found him sitting on our bed staring out of the window, rubbing his eyes and claiming that he’d fallen asleep.

  My birthday. We’d just had a family breakfast and Woody had given me his home-made card – a picture of the three of us on the beach in Brighton. I had remarked that Dan’s expression looked a bit sad. We laughed it off and Dan had offered to fetch me another coffee. He had disappeared for a long time but returned empty-handed, his eyes red and puffy. ‘Bloody hayfever,’ he’d said before remembering the coffee.

  I was filling in the blanks with blanks – big black holes where my husband should have been.

  You utter, bloody fool, Nat. He was disappearing from your life right in front of your eyes and you didn’t even notice.

  I stared at Woody, unsure of what to say. He looked worried. ‘Are you okay, Mum? Was it my fault?’

  Oh, Woody. I saw the little boy with his father’s eyes and guilt clutched at my heart, shoving the anger out of the way and filling it with pure love. Love for my boy. It had always been there, it had just become hidden behind my stupid rage.

  I reached for him and he accepted my arms. ‘No, my darling boy. It isn’t your fault. None of this is your fault.’ It’s mine. For letting it happen. For being blind. For not seeing what was going on right in front of me. For not seeing what was happening to Dan and not trying to stop it. ‘I’m sorry. I’m so unbelievably sorry. I wish I’d known.’

  ‘You can’t see everything all the time, Mum,’ he told me.

  I smiled down at him and stroked his beautifully earnest face. ‘No, I suppose you can’t.’

  ‘Doesn’t Dad love you any more then?’

  I swallowed. Man, this is hard. ‘It’s quite complicated but your dad was very sad after his dad died and it affected how he was feeling. It changed the way he felt about me. He still loves me. He loves us both. He just doesn’t want to be married to me any more.’

  ‘So will you get a divorce?’

  ‘I don’t know how we can stay being married, so probably, yes.’ He started to blink rapidly and I could tell that he was trying not to cry. ‘Oh, Woody,’ I said, cupping his face in my hands and kissing him.

  Fat tears rolled down his cheeks. ‘I miss him,’ he cried. ‘I miss my dad.’

  I wrapped my arms around him, protective and fierce, kissing the top of his head. For once I didn’t cry. I just held and comforted him. ‘All will be well. You will see,’ I soothed. At that moment, I knew what I had to do.

  I had become too caught up in my own hurt to see Woody’s bubbling below the surface. I had let my anger towards Dan get in the way of my love for Woody and I was ashamed of this, but I would sort it. I would sort everything.

  In that second, sitting there with the warmth of Woody’s body in my arms, I was strong again. Call it mother-love or just maternal instinct but it was bloody powerful. I would do anything for my boy and nothing would stand in my way. If Woody was okay then I would be okay.

  I felt braver walking into the choir rehearsal with Doly later that evening. Everyone seemed as friendly and welcoming as usual – everyone apart from Caroline, that is. She was in discussions with Guy as I arrived. She looked over at me as if I were a freshly barfed pile of vomit. It was disdain mixed with disgust and just a sprinkling of scathing judgement.

  I was distracted by Pamela giving me one of her more bosomy hugs and telling me that she’d made a batch of my favourite chocolate brownies.

  ‘Okay, let’s make a start,’ said Guy from the front of the room. I took my place next to Doly as usual and turned to greet Caroline. It was almost impossible for her to blank me, she couldn’t avoid my gaze but she managed it somehow.

  ‘Good evening, Caroline,’ I said loudly and with more than a little irritation. She couldn’t ignore me now, surely. She was the queen of disparaging looks and she managed to issue me with a particularly withering one before floating her gaze directly over my head towards Guy. My blood was boiling but Guy had gestured for us to stand. I rose to my feet, staring straight ahead, shaking with anger.

  ‘Okay, let’s do a run-through of “Fix You”, shall we?’

  It sounded bloody awful. We were out of tune, the harmonies were discordant and the whole song dragged like a saggy-bottomed dog. Even Guy couldn’t pretend. ‘I don’t want to worry you lovely people but this is our last rehearsal before the Final. We’re going to have to do better than that,’ he grimaced.

  Doly and I exchanged worried glances. Something wasn’t right. I certainly wasn’t feeling the love tonight and evidently I wasn’t the only one. I looked behind at Caroline but she was still staring past me, refusing to make eye contact. I felt my anger bubbling up again.

  I thought she might be peeved by what had happened but I didn’t expect a cold shoulder. We had been through a lot together, some of it fun, much of it maddeningly irritating, but I had considered her to be a friend and felt that it was about time that she climbed down from her extremely high horse and gave me a break. I turned back to the front, my eyes fixed on Guy, but I could feel my fury simmering below the surface. How dare she? I think I deserved sympathy for what I was going through with Dan. Surely that wouldn’t kill her.

  We struggled our way through another couple of runs before Guy held up his hands. ‘Maybe some tea and cake will help,’ he said.

  ‘This isn’t good,’ murmured Doly. ‘There’s some bad karma floating around tonight.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘And I know exactly where it’s coming from.’ Caroline was already heading towards the tea table. I made my way over and tapped her on the shoulder. She turned and gave me such a superior look of dislike that I almost took a step backwards.

  That’s enough. I made a mistake. I didn’t kill your dog, you judgemental old bag.

  ‘What is your problem?’ I demanded.

  She regarded me with flared nostrils. ‘Seeing as you ask, my problem is that you have effectively ruined months of time and effort, all our time and effort,’ she declared, spreading out her arms to bring in the rest of the room.

  Clearly, she wanted to hold me up as the villain so that she could save face if we lost the hall. People carried on talking but their voices were hushed, listening but pretending not to. There was nothing better than a good drama, particularly if you had no part in it. I would have done the same.

  In days gone by, I would have run a mile from conflict, said ‘Whatevs’ to a woman like Caroline and left her to stew in her own juices. But not any more. These days I lurched between wanting to cry and wanting to punch someone. Unfortunately for Caroline, the latter was taking precedence tonight.

  ‘How dare you blame me?’ I cried. ‘How dare you stand in judgement on me? I made a mistake, pure and simple, and if you had given me half a chance or even taken a moment to ask how I was, I would have apologised to you as I have apologised to others. But you wouldn’t do that, would you Caroline? That’s not in your nature, is it
?’

  I probably should have stopped there. That would have been the sensible thing to do but everyone was watching now. The show must go on and there was stuff that needed to be said. I needed to say this stuff. She was staring at me, looking a little unsure. I decided to set her straight.

  ‘You don’t actually care about anyone, do you? About me. Or this choir. Or even this hall. Because you’re only in this for yourself, aren’t you? To make yourself look good and affirm your sad lonely stay-at-home mum’s existence by spouting a load of crap you don’t believe about communities and people.’

  ‘Natalie …’ began Guy.

  ‘No, Guy, I’m sorry but sometimes these things need to be said.’ I squared up to Caroline. ‘You are a control freak and a bossy cow. You have zero empathy or self-awareness beyond the needs of your own ego.’

  Caroline had gone pale and I feared I’d overstepped the mark but to her credit, she faced me head on. ‘How dare you? How dare you question my motives and intentions? Just because I am organised and keep my emotions in check, it doesn’t mean that I don’t care. I have given my all to this campaign and for what? For some chaotic, emotional train-crash of a woman to wreck it all by sleeping with an MP!’

  There was a gasp from Pamela. I stared at her open-mouthed. ‘I did not sleep with him,’ I said. ‘It was one kiss and that was all.’

  Caroline turned on me. ‘Maybe, but it didn’t help, did it? Your sordid moment of weakness will probably be the nail in the coffin of this campaign.’

  ‘You don’t know that,’ I said. ‘Nothing has been decided.’

  She shrugged. ‘Perhaps, but you haven’t helped, and worse still, you’ve behaved like a sulky teenager throughout. I’ve had to hold your hand, listen to you weeping and wailing, and all for what?’

  I glared at her. ‘Whereas you’ve shown about as much compassion as a dustbin. Hold my hand? Keep an eye on me, more like. You’re a glory-hunter, Caroline. You don’t care about anyone but yourself.’

  She regarded me with contempt, her body completely still, like a lion just before it pounces on its prey. Then she delivered the killer swipe. ‘I’m not surprised your husband left you. You’re a mess. He’d probably had enough of picking up the pieces.’