The Child Inside

by Suzanne Bugler

  ‘Yes, I’m sure she has, but to deny she is Vanessa’s mother – it’s like denying Vanessa ever existed . . .’

  He turns his head slightly, as if to avoid my words. He sighs, and then he picks up the wine bottle, sees that it is empty and puts it back down in frustration. He looks at me again. ‘I know,’ he says simply.

  ‘But that’s just awful.’ The words come out thickly. There is a harshness in my throat, tightening it up.

  We sit there, just looking at each other. He smiles at me, but it is a small, sad smile, and the sorrow in his eyes is infinite. Suddenly I have this image of him from years back: he’s walking through the corridor to the den in their house in Oakley, carrying a beer and sort of half-dancing. I am on my way out of the den, in search of the loo, and we pass each other. He pulls back to make room for me, but I put my hand on his chest anyway and I pat him, affectionately, like you would a pet. Oh, Simon, I say, because that is what we all said; we toyed with him. And he put his hand on my hip, low down, not quite so much the kid that I thought he was. He caught me by surprise. I remember the shock of his fingers through my skirt. He smelled of soap and alcohol and boy.

  Now I watch as he dips his head into his hand for a second, then runs his hand back through his hair. I see him thinking what to say. For long seconds he just stares at me. Then, ‘When my sister died,’ he says at last, ‘we went through hell. You cannot imagine.’ He says this, but he’s wrong; I can imagine. I stare back at him and my eyes are burning, locked onto his. ‘My mother . . . struggled,’ he says. There is a long, loaded pause. ‘Now she denies she even had a daughter. It would seem to be the only way that she can cope.’

  This isn’t anything I hadn’t worked out for myself. And yet to hear him say it still causes a horrible needling in the pit of my stomach, and across the front of my shoulders, the re-emergence of dread. I remember walking round and round my house in the days after I’d left my dead baby behind at the maternity hospital; I remember looking out the window at the sunlight, and seeing the postman cycling about on his round. I remember Jono running up and down our living room, dragging his dog-on-wheels behind him, up and down, up and down, and the relentless cheer of Tots TV. I remember the normality, the seeming predictability of life still moving along, and then suddenly it would hit me again: the panic, the ice-cold fingers of dread, nailing themselves into my body.

  Without thinking, I reach across the table and put my hand on Simon’s. ‘I’m so sorry,’ I say and there are tears stinging the backs of my eyes. He looks startled for a second, as though taken aback by my gesture. And then he looks away and stares down at the table, frowning intently. For a long moment he is completely still, apart from a tiny muscle flickering away faintly at the side of his jaw. I watch as he fights for control, and my chest is tight as a drum. I have to breathe slowly to stop myself from crying.

  He turns his hand over now and takes my fingers in his, and he holds them tight. ‘Thank you,’ he says, but this exchange is more than twenty years too late. Again I imagine him at Vanessa’s funeral, helplessly locking every detail of it into his young head, to be replayed over and over, an endless, inescapable nightmare. I imagine him looking into the faces of the people who were there, looking for some sort of recognition – verification almost – of his own pain. And I imagine him noticing who wasn’t there; and who, in his eyes, didn’t care.

  ‘My mother didn’t want to see any of Vanessa’s friends,’ he says. ‘They came to the house. They wanted to talk about Vanessa. They wanted to see my mother, and me.’ He looks at me with his eyes so clouded, so blue. ‘But she didn’t want to see them. She started making excuses, telling them she had to go out, or that she was busy.’ There is a darkness back in his voice now, lacing the edge of his words. ‘Soon they stopped coming. There was just me and her in the house. It was unbearable.’

  ‘What about your father?’ I ask.

  ‘They divorced,’ he says dismissively. ‘They’d more or less split up anyway. Vanessa’s death was the final straw.’ Again, that sarcasm. He loosens his grip on my fingers and moves as if to take his hand away, but then doesn’t. Instead he starts tapping one fingernail against my knuckle, just as he did with his wine glass, earlier. A nervous gesture; I don’t think he knows that he’s doing it. ‘When I started seeing Fay, my mother was furious. Wouldn’t have anything to do with her.’

  Now he does let go of my hand and sits back in his chair. He picks up the empty bottle again, puts it back down again and says, ‘We need some more wine.’ Then, before I can object, he says, ‘We can’t.’ He looks at his watch, runs his hand back through his hair, leaving it standing in ruffles, and sighs. ‘I’ve got a meeting at two-thirty.’ He drills his fingers on the table now, thinking what to do, what to say. Then, ‘Can I see you again?’ he asks. ‘I’m sorry. I’ve got to get back to the office.’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ I say quickly, but instantly I’m thinking, How? How will I see him again? I know nothing about his current life, and he knows nothing about mine; we haven’t touched on any of that.

  He beckons the waiter for the bill, and when it comes he signs it impatiently. He glances at his watch again, then leans towards me and says, ‘I have a daughter; Charlotte. She is five years old and my mother cannot bear to be in the same room as her. I have two boys too,’ he adds quickly, ‘but she tolerates them. She won’t even look at Charlotte. On Christmas Eve I drove all the way up to Kew to collect her and bring her down to our house in Kingham, and the day after Christmas I drove her back again.’ He pauses, and I’m thinking, Just like Andrew; that’s just like Andrew. I almost say as much. Almost, but I don’t. ‘She didn’t speak to Charlotte once. My little girl – my beautiful, gorgeous little girl – asks me why her grandma doesn’t like her, but what can I say to her? How can I answer that?’

  My feelings must be clear upon my face because, when I open my mouth to speak, he raises his hand slightly and says, ‘No, please don’t. This is what we’ve lived with. This is what we’ve lived with . . . ever since . . . ’ Then, suddenly, ‘Look, I have to get back. I’m sorry.’ He takes a business card from his wallet, and his pen, and shoves them at me across the table. ‘Write your number on here,’ he says.

  I scribble down my mobile number and he puts the card back in his wallet. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says again. ‘I’ve got this meeting.’

  ‘That’s okay.’

  ‘No, really.’

  And I say, ‘Really.’

  Outside the restaurant we are assaulted by the cold and the rain and the hammering grind of the street. The change in air makes me light-headed; I have drunk too much and eaten too little.

  ‘Which way are you headed?’ Simon asks as we shelter by the doorway, putting up our umbrellas, buttoning up our coats.

  And because I know that he is anxious to get back now, and because I don’t want the awkwardness of the two of us shuffling along together under our separate umbrellas, I point in the opposite direction to his office and the station. ‘That way, I think,’ I say vaguely.

  He looks as if he’s about to question me, but doesn’t. Instead he says, ‘I’ll call you.’

  And I say, ‘Thank you for lunch. It has been good to see you again.’

  He sort of flinches, an impatient gesture. And then he leans towards me suddenly and grips my arm. With his other hand he’s holding his umbrella, but at a bad angle; rain is already soaking the right shoulder of his coat. I notice this and I look at it, to break the intensity of his stare. ‘You will let me see you again, won’t you?’ he says. ‘You won’t just disappear again.’

  And, taken aback, I say, ‘No. I mean, yes. Of course.’

  He lets go of my arm as suddenly as he took hold of it and stands back now. ‘Yes,’ he repeats, ‘Of course. Thank you.’ But there is a bleakness in his voice, as if he cannot believe me.

  I watch him go. He walks fast, one man under his umbrella, vanishing into a sea of men under their umbrellas. For a long while I stand there, with peo
ple shoving past me on the narrow pavement. The rain is metal in my mouth, the cold of it creeping like a ghost into my skin. I wonder if he will call me, and how I will see him again if he does.

  But you can’t let something like this go. You just can’t.

  And then I start walking too, back to Bank station. It is too wet to go shopping, too wet to do anything other than go home. And besides, the wine is already making my head ache. I need a drink of water, and I think I’ll buy a bottle at Waterloo, but when I get there the next train to Surbiton is about to leave, so I get straight on it, and of course there’s nowhere on the train to buy water. I sit there, looking at the rain lashing the carriage windows, with my mouth drying up and a heavy lethargy creeping into my veins. I want to think, but the rhythm of the train lulls me into leaden doze, and so by the time I get home my head is pounding.

  I let myself in to the stillness of my house. In the kitchen I pour myself a glass of water, and then another. The morning’s breakfast things are still piled around the sink and the dishwasher is waiting to be emptied, but I cannot face any of it. I have to lie down. And so I go upstairs, where my bed is strewn with various items of clothing from this morning’s last-minute panic over what to wear; I push them all to one side and collapse down on top of the duvet.

  And that is where I am when Jono gets home. The ringing of the doorbell penetrates my weird, kaleidoscopic dreams and wakes me up. I lie there disoriented for a second, and the bell rings again. Slowly I sit up, then stand, and the blood rises dizzily to my head, starting up the pounding once more. Again the bell rings, and again. I know it’s Jono; no one else would be so impatient.

  ‘What took you so long?’ he barks at me when I open the door, and flings his bag into the hall, barely missing my legs.

  ‘I was asleep,’ I say quietly. ‘I have a headache.’

  He kicks off his shoes, rips off his jacket and drops them down on the doormat.

  ‘Why didn’t you use your key?’ I ask.

  And he says, ‘Couldn’t be bothered to get it out,’ and pushes past me, to go straight into the living room.

  I call him back. ‘Jono, don’t just leave your things here. Put them away, please.’

  He ignores me.

  ‘Jono, come and move your things, please.’

  ‘Why?’ he grunts from the living room. I can hear that he’s turned on the TV.

  ‘Because they are in the way,’ I say patiently. ‘People will trip over them.’

  ‘There’s no one here,’ he snaps.

  ‘I’m here,’ I say, but I say it quietly. I say it to the walls, to the air.

  He switches channels. I hear the grating whine of an American cartoon.

  ‘Jono,’ I say again.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Come and move your things, please.’

  ‘I’m watching this.’

  ‘Jono!’

  I hear him throw the remote control on the floor, and he swears, just loud enough for me to hear. But he comes back into the hall.

  ‘Thank you,’ I say.

  He flings his shoes into the cupboard and slings his jacket at a coathanger. It slides straight off, to lie rumpled on the cupboard floor unless I pick it up again in a minute, which we both know that I will. He starts kicking his bag along the hall.

  I take a deep breath. I try again.

  ‘How was your day at school?’ I ask after his retreating back.

  He doesn’t answer.

  And so this is it; I come crashing back to earth with a heavy thump.

  I clear up the kitchen and start to prepare supper. I put some washing in the machine. I drink a cup of tea, and then another, followed by a glass of water and an aspirin; all of this within the closed five o’clock world of my kitchen.

  I chop an onion and throw it into the pan. I add the garlic, the tomatoes, the meat. I put the water on for spaghetti. And while it all cooks I stare out of the window at the dark. Someone has left the outside light on, and in its foggy glow I can see the constant flicker of rain still falling. If Andrew was here he’d pull the blinds down, but I cannot bear to be so totally closed in. And I like the dark; I like its secrecy. I push open the window, to let a little air in, and I can hear the rain now, the faint, whispering patter. The air smells of river water, and petrol.

  And now I think about Simon. I recount the details of the day with slow, precise scrutiny. I stand here, within the solitary island of my domestic life, and I picture his face: his eyes, his nose, his forehead, his chin. I put the pieces of him together in my head and I study them.

  He said he lives in Kingham, which is a place I have never heard of, but he said he drove all the way up from there to Kew, so it must be in the country somewhere, away from London. Not in Surrey; I’d know it if it was in Surrey. Somewhere further out, then. And he has three children, and a wife. I try to picture him in his life, but I can’t. All I see of him is these vague, fleeting images from years ago; Simon at fourteen. I hardly know him. I tell myself this and yet there is a pull, as though on the air around me, fingers dragging at my soul. I hardly know him, and yet . . .

  I refocus my eyes; instead of staring out at the dark I stare at the glass of the window now, and at my reflection in it, distorted, unworldly. I see myself as a ghost, captured out of time, just passing through this life. I see myself at sixteen, hungry for life, for newness, believing that the world was out there for me, in all its unknown possibilities.

  And here I am now, cooking other people’s meals, tending to other people’s lives.

  I turn away from the window and the kitchen crowds in on me.

  ‘Jono, supper is ready,’ I call down the hall.

  I can hear the false, chippy laughter of American TV.

  ‘Jono.’ My voice is hollow, an echo of itself, a repeat on autodrive. ‘Jono.’

  ‘I’ll come when this has finished.’

  ‘Come now, please.’

  His spaghetti is in a bowl, waiting for him. His fork is there too, and his spoon. And his orange juice, and a small bunch of grapes, the small, sweet, red seedless ones that he likes. All ready for him, all waiting. I wait. And eventually, when it suits him, he comes. My son, the lord of this house. He sits, he eats. I sit opposite him, I watch him eat. I make conversation. I watch gratefully as each strand of spaghetti disappears inside him, and I ask: how was school, tell me about your day, do you have any homework?

  And he reacts as though I am interrogating him.

  ‘Why do you want to know?’ he complains. ‘Stop going on.’

  And I say, ‘Jono, I’m only asking.’

  ‘Well, don’t,’ he says. ‘You ask me the same things, over and over.’

  ‘Jono, I’m your mother,’ I reply. ‘I care.’

  He frowns at his plate, his cheeks flushed and puffy as a toddler’s. I get up and turn to the sink, and start clearing up.

  I see myself inside a vacuum, sucked in until the sides are all gone. I see my face, pulled long, trapped on the same old words. I cannot move, I cannot breathe. I see myself growing old, putting out plate after plate of food for those who grudgingly come to eat it. I hear myself, pleading for a return. How are you? I plead, at the door, on the way out, on the way in. At the bottom of the stairs, the top of the stairs, in the morning, again at night, on the phone. Soon, it will always be by phone. My shrunken face, talking into the nothingness: How are you?

  And Jono, wherever he is, however far from me, however longed for, never, not even once, asking me the same thing back.

  Andrew is going to be late. He phones me to tell me so.

  ‘I’ve got to get this report out. I don’t know what time I’ll be home,’ he says in a warning tone, the same sort of tone that a plumber or a builder might use to brace you for a ridiculous quote. He uses this tone because he expects me to object. After all, I would have done once upon a time. Only nowadays I realize that I am just as much on my own when Andrew is in the house as when he is not.

  ‘Oh’ is all I say.


  And then he asks, ‘How’s Jono? How did he get on at school today?’

  ‘Okay, I presume. He didn’t have a lot to say.’

  Now it is Andrew’s turn to say, ‘Oh.’ Then there is a pause, during which I can hear him tapping at a keyboard. ‘Well,’ he goes on, ‘I’d better get on, or I’ll be here all night.’ And then, as if it is an afterthought, he says, ‘And how are you?’

  And, as usual, I say, ‘Fine.’

  And so there are just Jono and me in the house, but Jono is busy with his homework. I cover Andrew’s supper with a bowl and stick it in the fridge, and then I move about the rooms, picking this up, putting that away. I move slowly; my headache is more or less gone now, but the memory of it hangs there like a threat. And then, faintly within the quiet of the house, I hear the muffled ringing of my phone and my heart jumps. I know it’s Simon. It could one of any number of people, but I know that it’s him. My phone is in my bag still, in the hall. By the time I get to it the ringing has stopped. I dig my phone out and stare at the screen. One missed call, it says, and up flashes the number, a new number. And then the voicemail message pops up. I sit on the bottom of the stairs and my heart is thumping. Jono is just across the hall in the dining room, doing his homework. I press the voicemail answer key and put the phone to my ear.

  I hear his voice, familiar now. ‘Rachel,’ he says, ‘hi. It’s Simon.’ He pauses, as if thinking what to say, then, ‘I hope this isn’t an inconvenient time. I just wanted to thank you for seeing me today. I’m sorry I had to rush off like that. It was so good talking to you. I’d really like to see you again.’ There is another pause, and then, ‘I don’t want to put pressure on you of course if you’d rather not . . . but, well, I do hope you will return my call.’

  The self-doubt in his voice pulls at my heart. Again I imagine him at Vanessa’s funeral, looking around at all those familiar faces, at all those people who’d piled in and out of his house at the weekends, all of them there except for me. I saw Leanne’s invitation to the funeral; she’d put it on her dressing table, up in her room. The very idea of a funeral invitation seemed strange to me. It was a small, square card with coiled silver lettering, much like you’d get for a wedding invitation or a christening. A celebration of the life of Vanessa Lydia Reiber it read, or something like that. I suppose Yolande must have gone through Vanessa’s address book, though surely some of the others would only have heard the arrangements via word of mouth. Not everyone would have got an invitation. I wouldn’t have been the only one who didn’t, and yet why did I act as if I was? Why did it feel as if I was? Leanne and I could have gone together, but she never said anything along the lines of Are you coming? Just as afterwards, when she talked about it, she never said that I was missed. No, it was very clear to me that I wasn’t included. I was an outsider. I knew and adored Vanessa, but I was the audience on the other side of the rope, reaching over. I never had the chance to become more than that.