If Only

by Kate Eberlen

  At eight o’clock in the morning, Gina had called the school to let them know she would be late.

  If Alf had been thinking straight, he probably should have called Gary to come and give him a lift. But with Gina screaming at him that they couldn’t be seen together, he’d decided to wait and hope that the rescue service would turn up in time. When they still weren’t there by noon, he phoned the school to say that he had a stomach bug and he didn’t think he was going to be well enough to sit the exam.

  What he hadn’t reckoned on was Mr Marriot dialling his home number to ask how bad Alf really was, because the exam was so important, and Donna ringing Alf to ask what the fuck was going on. Then he’d made it worse by telling her he’d been in an accident, so she was panicking, even though he said he was fine.

  The trouble with lies was that a little one could so easily become an intricate web of deceit. When he finally showed up at home, Donna was so happy to see him back in one piece he didn’t have to go into too much detail. When she asked what would happen about the exam, he told her it would be fine. He could retake it if necessary.

  Mr Marriot wasn’t as easy to fool. Perhaps he’d heard rumours. Perhaps it was too much of a coincidence that Miss Jones hadn’t come into work on the very day that Alf had missed his exam with a clearly fictitious excuse.

  ‘I can’t make a case for you if I know you’re lying to me, Alf,’ he explained patiently, maintaining eye contact, even though Alf was doing everything he could to avoid looking at him. ‘So I’ll ask you again. What’s going on here? You’re a decent chap, Alf, but please don’t sacrifice your future on behalf of someone else.’

  Alf reckoned that they couldn’t do anything to Gina if it was just speculation. If he admitted nothing, she’d be fine.

  Mr Marriot said he was very disappointed in him, which felt worse than if he’d been angry.

  Gina was convinced Mr Marriot was just saying that, and would relent.

  Now, as Alf stood outside the school gate with his results in his hand, he saw the Head of English get into his car and his hopes lifted for a few seconds, but Mr Marriot drove straight past him, without even winding down the window to see how he’d done. He already knew, Alf thought. Teachers got the results the day before the students did, so they could ring up and advocate for the ones who’d missed their grades. Mr Marriot was cutting him adrift.

  In a way it was a relief, Alf thought, because now he could think properly about what he was going to do. He started walking towards Gina’s flat, then turned back towards home, realizing that Gina wasn’t the person he wanted to be with – she would be all sex and cuddles and reassurance that everything was going to be all right. He knew it was about not wanting to see him unhappy, but it was also about not wanting to feel guilty herself, which was why she always had to make it seem like it wasn’t such a big deal.

  What he needed to do was to tell his mum. Lying to her all this time had eaten into him. Now at least it would be out there. I’m sorry I’ve disappointed you. I’m sorry I’ve thrown away an opportunity. But I will make you proud of me, Mum. Promise.

  He wanted to feel her hug, and to hear her say, ‘I’m always proud of you.’

  Even if she didn’t quite mean it right now, but she was his mum, and that’s what family was for, wasn’t it? To be there for you, whatever happened.

  Donna was sitting at the kitchen table where he’d left her that morning before going up to school. She was pretending to act normal, except that it wasn’t normal for her to be doing nothing. With the breakfast things put away, the washing-up done, the table wiped clean, she’d usually have the sewing machine out, or be struggling with her invoices on the software Gary had downloaded for her that was meant to make things easier but was twice the work, as far as she could see. As Alf walked in, she was trying hard to keep her facial expression neutral, but her eyes were darting between happy expectation and fearing the worst. At that moment he loved her so much, and felt so bad at letting her down he couldn’t look at her.

  ‘Failed English.’

  ‘You’re joking? You are joking, Alf?’

  ‘Not joking. Got an A in Drama though!’

  He was trying so hard not to cry it came out sounding flippant.

  ‘You failed?!’

  ‘It was the exam I missed.’

  ‘But you can retake . . .’

  ‘Can’t. Not going to.’

  ‘So which is it? Can’t, or not going to?’

  ‘Decided not to go to dance school.’ Alf still couldn’t answer the question directly. ‘Don’t want to have all those debts.’

  ‘But Gary and I have been saving for you, and Mum and Dad have got a bit put aside too. We’re all going to help you—’

  ‘Can’t see the point.’

  ‘Can’t see the point? The point is, you’ve got a gift! Point is, we all believe in you . . . Alfie . . . what’s happened to you?’

  He’d thought his mother didn’t want him to go down to dance school in London. Nobody had told him that they were planning to support him. But how could they have done? For the past few months, he’d rarely been at home long enough to have a proper chat.

  Alf couldn’t hold the tears back any more. They came out in great coughs, as if he was choking out all the lies that had stuck like phlegm in his lungs. He could feel his mum hovering beside him, not knowing whether to touch him or not. And that was his fault too, because whenever she asked him something he didn’t want to answer, he’d accused her of nagging him. So she no longer knew how to comfort him. He’d spent his life walking on eggshells round her, and now he’d made her do the same round him. He hated himself for that.

  ‘Alfie,’ she said softly. ‘I need to know. And I promise I won’t tell anyone. Are you on drugs?’

  How out of touch they’d become that she could even think that.

  ‘No,’ he said, sniffing back tears.

  ‘Is it a woman?’

  He said nothing.

  ‘Is she married, Alf?’

  He felt ashamed that he’d allowed his mum to develop fears that were much worse than they needed to be.

  ‘No. She’s not married.’

  ‘Is she in trouble? I mean . . .’

  She meant pregnant.

  ‘No! Course not!’

  ‘Who is it, then?’

  He owed it to his mum to tell her. He wanted to tell her. He wanted to say that it wasn’t what it looked like. But he’d promised Gina.

  ‘I’m the one who fucked up the exams,’ he said. ‘It’s on me.’

  The silence in the kitchen felt deep and sticky, like it was clutching at him, trying to pull him in, like he couldn’t free himself from it without telling the truth.

  He went to the fridge for a drink. In the door, next to the four pints of semi-skimmed, stood a bottle of proper champagne.

  He turned round and saw that there was an envelope with his name written on in his mum’s lap.

  They had believed in him; they had bought champagne and a congratulations card. For all he knew, they’d organized a surprise party at the dance hall in his honour. Alf had never felt so rotten in his life.

  He closed the fridge and backed out into the hall.

  ‘We don’t deserve this, Alf,’ his mum said, her voice rising as she realized he was going out again. ‘If you leave now without giving me an explanation, then don’t bother coming back!’

  She was bluffing, he thought, as the front door closed behind him.

  ‘So, I know it hurts now, but really, it’ll be easier with you living here, won’t it?’ said Gina.

  She came across from the kitchen area and sat next to him on the sofa, taking his hand. It was generous of her to offer instantly to share her home, but he was expecting a bit of a discussion, a bit of sympathy maybe. Living with someone was a step you made together out of choice, not necessity. He didn’t like the idea of swapping the feeling that he was taking up too much room in one place with feeling indebted in another, and not really hav
ing a home that felt like his.

  ‘I can’t be in hiding all my life,’ Alf said.

  Gina smiled, smoothed his hair back from his face.

  ‘So, you’ve finished with school now. You’re almost nineteen. I mean, I’m not saying we put an announcement in the paper, but we don’t always have to be looking over our shoulder any more!’

  It took a moment for the meaning of the words to sink in.

  ‘You could have said that before!’

  It came out sounding angrier than he meant. Gina shifted away from him on the sofa.

  ‘You didn’t ask,’ she said. ‘You never even bothered to text me about the A in Drama, which you seem to be forgetting in all this, Alf. I mean, an A in Drama is really good. It’s not like you’ve got nothing.’

  She made it sound as if he was being ungrateful.

  ‘You knew?’

  Of course she did. She’d been in school the previous day, preparing her classroom for the new term. Had she actually asked Mr Marriot? Alf wondered.

  ‘Why don’t we go away for this last week of my holiday?’ Gina suggested. ‘When we get back, if anyone asks, we’ve just hooked up.’

  He wasn’t going to London now, so he could. The idea of getting away appealed. But then he’d have to come back, and nothing would have changed.

  ‘I can’t just go away and leave my mum,’ he said.

  ‘I thought she’d kicked you out.’

  ‘She hasn’t really, not if I explain . . .’

  ‘You mean tell her I’m the reason you failed your exam?’ Now Gina was the one who was on the verge of tears.

  ‘I wouldn’t say that!’

  ‘That’s what she’ll think, though,’ said Gina.

  It was what Donna would think. Because in a way it was true, wasn’t it? If Gina hadn’t decided to book them into the luxury hotel, the situation wouldn’t have happened. But you couldn’t turn history back. If the tyre was always going to blow out on the motorway, who knew how things would have been different in busy traffic on the Sunday evening? They might really have been in an accident. Things might have been worse. You couldn’t live your life thinking ‘if only . . .’

  No one died, as Gina often said.

  ‘Let her cool down a bit . . . tell her when we get back.’ She shifted her bottom back along the sofa. ‘Everything will be all right, I promise, Alf,’ she said, taking his hand and guiding it under her summer dress. She wasn’t wearing anything underneath.

  All his peers would be going out clubbing tonight, or celebrating with their families. Alf would probably serve some of them later in the pizzeria. Their lives were changing, but it felt like his had just stopped. And yet he knew that if he asked any of his mates if they’d rather be out getting rat-arsed at ’Spoons right now, or shagging Miss Jones, most of them would say he was the lucky bastard.

  When he returned to Gina’s after work, she’d already booked tickets for a week in Lanzarote, leaving him just a day’s notice for his boss at the restaurant, who wasn’t best pleased.

  Another bridge burned, or another fresh start. It depended on your perspective.

  There was nobody at home when Alf went back to get his passport. He’d flown without his mum a few times when he and Aimee competed in the Baltic countries. Donna always texted him – Safe journey. Love you always – before the flight, as if in case anything went wrong, it would be the last message that he’d see. And he always texted her – Landed – as soon as they touched down. He couldn’t get on a plane without telling her.

  He sat down at the kitchen table, trying to compose a note, but nothing seemed to begin to cover what he needed to say. Eventually, he wrote:

  Dear Mum and Gary,

  Need a break. Going to the Canary Islands. I’ll text when I get there.

  I’m sorry.

  Love, Alf

  Turned out they would have known anyway, because the taxi driver who picked them up at five in the morning from Gina’s for the airport was Terry, the drummer in the Stag Beetles, who didn’t seem to get that Alf didn’t want to chat. But when he finally stopped firing questions at him about what he was up to these days, Alf wished he’d kept him talking because he could see Terry checking Gina out in the rear-view mirror. It was early in the morning, so she wasn’t wearing make-up and she looked young, but the matching suitcases weren’t what you’d expect someone of Alf’s age to own. Alf knew that a report would go back, and he wondered if ‘petite, pretty, blonde, nice luggage’ would be enough to give the game away.

  There was no text message on his phone before he switched it off for the flight. He still texted Landed when they touched down, but didn’t receive a reply.

  30

  October

  LETTY

  A new academic year, a new beginning, Letty thought, as she walked through the Parks towards the Bodleian on the first Saturday of her third year at the university.

  The sky above the honey-coloured colleges of Oxford was almost as blue as it had been in Greece, where Oscar and Raj got married.

  ‘Very Mamma Mia!’ was the way Oscar had wanted it, which had turned out to be a literal description; one of Oscar’s first jobs in theatre had been assisting the producer on the first run of the ABBA musical, and many of the guests had, at one time or another, starred in productions all over the world.

  The wedding was perfect. The sun shone, the wine flowed, and several of the actors sang songs, giving it the vibe of a fantasy karaoke party where the singers sounded exactly like the original artists. Everyone was beautiful and happy. Real life felt a very long way away.

  Frances had rented a villa with a pool at the top of a hill, which had an uninterrupted view of the sea. There were fig trees in the garden laden with green fruit that split to reveal luscious pink flesh inside, or fell to the ground and lay drying to a sticky toffeeness in the sun. With yoghurt and honey from the adjoining farm and lamb chops grilled on the barbecue, Letty’s appetite began to return.

  Swimming hundreds of lengths in the pool, she gradually began to re-engage with her body. In the afternoons, Frances donned a big straw hat and sat in the shade reading the Booker longlist on her Kindle. Letty lay feeling the sun on her skin, and started on the reading list for her third year, choosing to concentrate on Ancient Greek texts in the place where they had been written. The alphabet and a lot of the vocabulary of Modern Greek was the same, so when she went down to the village she could read the street signs and the local newspaper. But the pronunciation was so different that even when she practised sentences in advance, she still had to make do with pointing in the village shop.

  It was as if the family had come to an unspoken agreement not to mention Marina or the fate of the house in Belsize Park, but to enjoy a two-week holiday away from everything, including mobile phones. Frances, who always rose to a challenge, declared after just two days’ abstinence that it was the best thing she’d ever done. Letty hadn’t even bothered to bring her phone with her. So she was a little surprised to see Ivo, who generally used his as little as she did, standing in the square near the water trough in the village early one morning with his handset pressed to his ear, speaking in an agitated way.

  ‘OK then, Rollo,’ he said, quickly switching it off when he saw Letty approaching.

  ‘Dad!’ she scolded.

  ‘I know,’ he said, smiling at her. ‘Me of all people! Promise you won’t tell your mother?’

  It was like the pacts they’d made on childhood holidays. Can I have another gelato? Only if you promise not to tell your mother. Letty readily agreed, and they walked back up to the villa arm in arm.

  On the evening they returned to London, Frances could wait no longer to reveal a plan that she’d obviously been devising all the time they’d been away. She had decided to propose to Rollo that they convert the house into three flats. One could be sold and the money split between both parties; another could be Rollo’s to do what he liked with. She, Ivo and Letty would downsize, converting the basement and raised g
round floor into a duplex, which would give them ample space. If there was enough money, they might even be able to go into the roof, converting the property into four flats instead of three, one of which could be for Letty after university.

  It sounded like a huge amount of work to Letty. She was surprised Frances was so keen to hang on to the house. Letty had lived there all her life, but it didn’t feel like the same place without Marina. Maybe they should all move on?

  What surprised Letty was Ivo’s decisiveness.

  ‘Actually, I don’t think it would work,’ he declared. ‘Surely it would be better for everyone to have a fresh start.’

  It was uncharacteristic of him to express such a definite opinion.

  ‘What about what I think?’ Frances demanded.

  ‘You can’t always get what you want . . .’

  ‘But you’re getting what you want.’

  It was the same old argument, but Letty wasn’t as certain that on this occasion Frances would win. Ultimately, it was her father’s family house. This was the one instance when his view would trump hers, especially since his agreement was needed in order to have any hope of bringing Rollo round to her plan.

  Letty was quite relieved to escape back to the attic room in North Oxford, with its sunny view of treetops turning from gold to terracotta.

  Having enjoyed swimming in Greece so much, Letty found a pool in Summertown and bought a second-hand bike to ride there. Physical exercise gave her an appetite for food. It was a way of ensuring she ate without having to think about it too much, and became as much a part of her routine as being first into the lower reading room of the Bodleian each morning.