The Child's Secret

by Amanda Brooke

  Jasmine shook her head and teardrops splashed down onto her hands, the salty water stinging her wounds. ‘Daddy was the one who was brave,’ she said in a hoarse whisper.

  ‘Yes, he was,’ Sam replied, sounding surprisingly envious. ‘And I know today is a day to remember your dad and all the good things he did, but I’m sorry Jasmine, I can’t let you spend the rest of your life blaming yourself while your dad is turned into some kind of saint. He wasn’t always a good person, was he?’

  Sam was waiting for Jasmine to agree but she couldn’t hold his gaze and pushed her chin against her chest as she brought her knees up close.

  ‘No one is all good or all bad,’ he continued. ‘We all make mistakes, we say things to hurt other people for no better reason than because we’re hurting too. Your dad was no different and neither are you. He was very angry when he found you and he didn’t just hurt Jasper, did he? He hurt you too. He hit you, Jasmine, and he shouldn’t have done that. You can’t blame yourself for wanting to run away, just like you won’t blame Jasper.’

  When Jasmine spoke it was only a mumble. ‘But it was me who made him angry.’

  ‘I’ll tell you something, Jasmine. You’re making me angry now,’ Sam told her, momentarily lost for words: there were things he wanted to say but couldn’t. When he found his voice again, it was full of bitterness. ‘Your dad chose the life he lived. He chose to be a husband and father and he ought to have made you and your mum the centre of his life. He didn’t. He thought only of himself and blamed everyone else when things went wrong, even when it was his fault – like losing his job. I wish he’d faced up to his responsibilities. I wish he’d seen how precious you were and how his one and only job was to protect you.’

  When Jasmine looked at him again, his eyes were glistening.

  ‘He should have felt like that from the moment you were born, not seconds before he died,’ Sam told her.

  Jasmine’s tears began to surge and she tipped her head back and looked up at the branches reaching out over her. She couldn’t tell if the tree was trying to protect her or ensnare her. ‘What if it is still magical, Sam? What if it heard me the other day?’

  ‘What do you mean, Jasmine?’

  ‘When we were here last time, I spoke a wish out loud,’ Jasmine said, although at the time she hadn’t thought the tree was listening. ‘I wished that you were my dad instead.’

  Sam took a breath that caught in his throat. ‘And if you had been my daughter,’ he managed to say, ‘then I would have gladly laid down my life for you. I’m glad your dad did what he did because believe me, if he hadn’t saved you, Jasmine, then he wouldn’t have been able to live with himself.’

  Jasmine could feel her heart pounding. It was as if she could see into his soul and he into hers. When she blinked, a tear trickled down her cheek. ‘Do you think he ever liked me?’

  ‘I think he loved you, Jasmine.’

  ‘But why did he shout at me all the time? I must have been so bad.’ Jasmine was gasping for air now as she tried to hold back the pain. ‘If I was a good girl—’

  ‘Stop that!’ Sam scolded. ‘Stop blaming yourself. Think how much your dad must have loved you to do what he did. Think about all those times when he wasn’t angry. I saw you at the caravan playing together with those board games, you were like two big kids sometimes.’

  Jasmine’s body was heaving now and when she let go of the first sob it was quickly followed by another. Sam leaned over and placed his hand firmly on hers, stilling her bleeding fingers if not her tremors. ‘Remember him, Jasmine. Not just the good times, and not just the bad. It’s OK to remember.’

  Her lip was trembling as she tried to speak but the words wouldn’t come. She swallowed back the pain in gulps until she was drowning in it. When she pulled her hands free, for a moment she was tempted to scramble backwards and let the yawning hole in the tree trunk swallow her up whole, but instead she flung herself towards Sam and almost toppled him over. She buried her head into his neck and clung on to him. It took only a moment to realize that Sam’s arms were still hanging by his sides. His body had tensed and she could feel the tendons in his neck bulging. Sensing his rejection, Jasmine went to pull away.

  Sam wasn’t simply frightened of returning Jasmine’s hug, he was terrified. The last little girl he had held in his arms had been limp and lifeless and even though that memory haunted him, he needed it to remain intact. He wanted his daughter to be the last child he would ever hold. He couldn’t help Jasmine, he told himself but when she began to move away, it felt as if she were falling. He panicked and closed his arms around her.

  He expected to feel a cold shiver as Ruby slipped further from his grasp, but when Jasmine hugged him back, it felt so right that it made him gasp. He squeezed his eyes shut and time slipped backwards so fast that his body tensed for the impact. He could smell the musty damp earth around the Allerton Oak, but there was something else there too, something sweet like popcorn and candy floss. It was the smells of the circus where he had taken Ruby when she was the same age as Jasmine. Halfway through the show, a clown had run up the aisle and stopped right beside his daughter who had jumped onto his knee in terror, her arms wrapping tightly around his neck as the monster with the painted smile threw a bucket of confetti over the crowd.

  Desperately holding his breath to keep the vision intact, Sam’s lungs began to burn. He prised open his eyes carefully to see autumn leaves rather than the brightly coloured strips of paper falling around him and above his head crooked boughs had formed cracks in the sky. Ruby was gone and he would never hold her again. He should have had the sense to push Jasmine away but he clung to her as he released his breath with a strangled sob. In desperation, he held his next breath in a vain attempt to regain composure but the sobs just kept coming until he simply stopped trying. It took a moment before he realized that Jasmine was gently rocking him back and forth. Her grip on him had loosened and when she lifted her head, she cupped his cheek in her small hand and said, ‘It’ll be all right, Sam.’

  Reappearing from around the tree, the first thing Laura noticed was how red and swollen her daughter’s eyes were. Before returning to her mum, Jasmine glanced back over her shoulder towards someone or something out of Laura’s eye line.

  ‘Sit, Jasper!’ Jasmine said, pointing a finger towards him. With a broad smile she added, ‘There’s a good boy. Now stay!’

  When she skipped over to her mum she kept the smile on her face. ‘Sam says he’s not taking Jasper with him so do you think I could take him for walks sometimes?’ she asked. ‘Only with you though. I wouldn’t want to go on my own.’

  Laura was too stunned by her daughter’s transformation to digest fully what she was asking but she nodded anyway. ‘Of course, honey.’

  Happy with the answer, Jasmine took hold of her mum’s hand as if to lead her away.

  ‘What about Sam? I need to say goodbye.’

  Jasmine yanked on her arm. ‘No, Mum, it’s best that we go. Sam’s going to be fine and so are we. Come on.’

  Laura didn’t want to leave but her daughter spoke with such authority that she found she couldn’t argue. She assumed it was what Sam had wanted them to do, but the more distance she put between them, the more she wanted to ignore what Sam McIntyre might want and put herself first. It was a concept she was still getting used to and so she continued walking.

  ‘Do you think Keira will still be at the pub?’

  ‘I should think so,’ Laura said. Finn had never been so popular since his death and along with all his drinking buddies, there had been countless other friends and acquaintances who wanted to raise a glass to the hero of the hour. And he was a hero, she knew that. She hadn’t seen the accident, only the chaos and there had been a moment when she thought the fear that had shadowed her all that day had become a reality. She had thought she had lost Jasmine and when she discovered how Finn had saved her, she had loved her husband again. The shock had been slowly wearing off, however, and now that they had said
their final goodbyes, she was finding it more and more difficult to grieve that old life.

  ‘Finn’s mum’s looking for you,’ Natalie said when they walked into the pub.

  ‘Could you do me a favour?’ Laura asked. ‘Could you ask her to look after Jasmine for an hour?’

  Natalie raised an eyebrow. ‘You’re leaving again?’

  ‘Please, Natalie,’ Laura said, her expression adding a second plea for her friend not to ask why. ‘Will you ask her for me?’

  ‘I’ll do better than that,’ she said, ‘I’ll look after Jasmine myself. Your mother-in-law is already a little worse for wear and you’re probably doing the right thing keeping away. You don’t need another drunk to deal with after only just burying the last one.’

  Laura and Natalie shared a smile laced with guilt and honesty. Now may not be the most appropriate time to acknowledge Finn’s faults but a noble death didn’t absolve him from his past deeds.

  ‘Thank you, Natalie,’ Laura said and left as soon as she was sure Jasmine was happy for her to go. Her daughter didn’t question what she was doing either; it was as if she knew what her mum was going to do. Laura was thankful that at least one of them did.

  Her heart was in her mouth when she pressed the doorbell and when Sam answered the door, her voice was shaking. ‘Can I come in?’ she asked.

  Sam’s mouth was agog and he too struggled to speak. ‘Yes, of course. I was just—’

  ‘Leaving?’

  He led her into the house and up to his apartment without answering her question. Seeing the holdall by the door, he didn’t have to.

  ‘I’d offer you a drink, but I’m a little short on supplies.’

  ‘Will you be going far?’

  ‘I expect so,’ he said.

  Laura sat down on an armchair and watched Sam do the same. He was waiting for her to say something but other than coming over to see him, she hadn’t thought about what might come next. She was waiting for him to look at her, to see the woman who had emerged from the traumas of Jasmine’s disappearance and Finn’s death; the woman who wasn’t afraid any more. She waited, but Sam refused to look.

  ‘Why, Sam? Why are you going?’

  ‘Why not? I only stayed last time because I thought you needed help getting away from Finn.’

  ‘And you don’t think I need you now?’ she asked bluntly.

  ‘I can imagine it’s going to take some time for you and Jasmine to adjust, but I don’t see how I could be of much help. I’m the last person to give advice on how to rebuild your life, Laura.’

  ‘If it wasn’t for you, Sam, then I would never have stood up to Finn, I would never have recognized how weak and pathetic I had become.’

  From the look on Sam’s face, it was plain that he didn’t have the faintest idea of the effect he’d had on her. Should she tell him? She had learnt to face her fears head on but was she brave enough to tell Sam how much she wanted him to stay?

  ‘It might not mean anything now,’ she stumbled on, ‘but I won’t forget how empowered I felt standing up to Finn. Don’t get me wrong, Finn’s death was and is devastating. I didn’t want him in my life, but I still cared about him. I never stopped hoping that one day he would find the strength to beat his demons and be the kind of dad to Jasmine that she deserved. It’s going to take a lot to come to terms with everything, harder still for Jasmine, but I keep thinking back to that moment when I pushed him out the front door.’ When she smiled, her eyes brimmed with sadness. ‘Although it’s not the greatest memory to have of our last conversation together.’

  Sam had been looking more and more uncomfortable but it was her final comment that tipped him over the edge. He stood up so quickly that it gave Laura a start. ‘I can’t do this,’ he said and moved towards the window as if searching for a means of escape.

  Laura asked herself again how brave she was feeling. In answer, she followed him to the window and put a hand on his back.

  Sam immediately pulled away. ‘Don’t, Laura. Please, don’t,’ he begged.

  She couldn’t and wouldn’t give up, not yet. She understood why Sam was so afraid – she could see how tempting it could be to cocoon yourself from the rest of the world, but she imagined it would be a very lonely place. She didn’t want that for herself or her daughter and she didn’t want it for Sam either, but she suspected that telling Sam how she felt could send him flying out of the room and out of her life for good. She had one chance and she had to get it right.

  ‘Tell me what’s going on inside your head right now,’ she demanded, thinking that together they could confront his fears. ‘Talk to me, Sam.’

  Sam shook his head slowly, as much to free himself from the thoughts Laura had provoked as it was to refuse her plea. It had taken years of self-discipline for Sam to stop himself dipping into the past. He had created an imaginary chest in his mind and had visualized placing his most precious and painful memories inside where he could keep them under lock and key, or so he had thought. But in recent months the chest had rattled, demanding his attention, and then, when he had held Jasmine in his arms, its lid had been flung open wide. He couldn’t repress his memories any more and when Laura talked about her last conversation with Finn, Sam immediately recalled the last time he had spoken to Ruby. Her cheeks had been bulging as she shoved another spoonful of cornflakes into her mouth, and when she smiled at him, milk had trickled from the corner of her mouth.

  ‘You’re getting milk all over your uniform,’ he had chided. ‘Now stop messing about and eat up or you’ll be late.’

  Ruby had wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. ‘Can you pick me later? I’m allowed to bring my violin home tonight.’

  Sam raised an eyebrow. ‘Are they making violins out of lead these days? Too heavy to carry, is it?’

  Ruby had shovelled in another mouthful of cereal before replying. ‘I just thought you might not be able to wait to hear your super-talented daughter play enchanting melodies,’ she had said wistfully as her eyes danced with mischief. ‘You will fall under my spell and you will do my bidding.’

  ‘Like picking you up from school, I suppose?’

  She had tried a less subtle approach next. ‘Pleeeease, Daddy.’

  Sam had made a play of looking as if he was thinking about it and then said, ‘No chance. Now get on with you or you’ll be late for school.’

  She had sulked after that, and the last expression he would ever see on his daughter’s face was a scowl rather than a smile.

  ‘I’m not as strong as you think I am, Laura,’ he said, his voice trembling. Sam’s chest was tightening and there was a sharp pain at the back of his throat as he struggled to contain his emotions. ‘I’m of no use to you.’

  ‘Yes, you are, Sam. In fact, one of the reasons I came here was to thank you for helping Jasmine,’ Laura said.

  He shook his head and refused to look at her.

  ‘Yes, Sam. I don’t know what you said to her before but as we walked out of the park, she was a different girl. Not quite the Jasmine of old, and I’m not fooling myself that she’s still not scared and desperately unhappy deep down inside, but she is stronger. You did that, Sam. You brought Jasmine back to me, in more ways than one.’

  The sob came from nowhere and tore the back of Sam’s throat. ‘Stop it. Please. Laura, please just stop.’ Running his fingers through his hair, he dug his fingernails deep into his scalp. He tried to concentrate on the pain, but there was a far deeper and inescapable agony that was all-consuming. Sam was still reeling from having made a fool of himself in front of Jasmine and he was about to do it again. At last he caught hold of an emotion he could handle; humiliation. ‘I didn’t say anything to her, Laura. I didn’t help her. She helped me!’ He turned to face her, stepping back so he could fling his arms wide. ‘If you want to see what pathetic and weak really looks like then take a look at me! I was crying in Jasmine’s arms like a baby, Laura!’

  ‘I am looking at you,’ she argued gently, ‘and I’ll tell you what I see, S
am. I see a man who can be strong and caring and selfless – someone who puts other people before himself – but most of all I see someone who wants to be loved if only he would stop torturing himself.’

  She reached out again, taking hold of Sam’s arms and this time he didn’t recoil. The flash of anger had left him as quickly as it had arrived, and what little strength he had left was focused on holding back the tears.

  ‘Don’t run away. Please, Sam.’

  He took a deep, shuddering breath as he fought one urge to run and another, equally strong, to put his arms around Laura. He did neither and dropped his hands, balled into fists, at his sides. ‘I ran away from my life in Scotland so I could start again with a blank page.’

  ‘Yes, and keeping it blank by the look of it. But is that any way to live? Is that ever going to make you happy?’

  ‘But that’s the point, Laura,’ he said quietly. ‘I don’t want to be happy. Selina convinced me to give it a try and I did, I swear I did, but I’m not ready, I’ll never be ready. I lost everything when Ruby died. There’s no going back and there’s no going forward. Holding Jasmine today was like having my heart ripped in two. I can’t do it, so please don’t ask me to.’

  ‘Not that long ago I thought I was consigned to a life of hopelessness and insecurity and then you came into my life, Sam. You have no idea what kind of impact you had on me.’ Laura had begun to weep silently as she spoke, but even through her tears she smiled. ‘I can remember the first time I met you at Jasmine’s school play. You looked at me, Sam,’ she said, her words choked with emotion. ‘You looked at me when I thought I’d all but disappeared. You looked at me.’

  They stood staring at each other, and for one solitary moment the chaos inside Sam’s mind stilled. He wasn’t thinking about Ruby and the guilt he would never truly escape from, nor was he aware of the holdall on the floor ready for him to pick up or unpack. He relaxed his hands and placed them on Laura’s hips, pulling her to him as she slipped her arms around his neck. Their faces were only inches apart and Laura’s breath felt warm against his lips. He had stepped out across a chasm and was walking along an emotional tightrope. One wrong step would see him slip and he might fall – or then again, he might fly. He didn’t know which and so he froze.