‘Yes, love. One second!’ she called over her shoulder.
Without warning, the sob built in her chest and her tears came in a torrent. Come on, Jacks, you’re just tired. Just tired. It’ll be okay. Pete’s right, things have a funny way of working out.
8
Nineteen Years Earlier
Sven marched ahead as they tramped across the playing field, tripping in the dips and stumbling over the uneven tufts. Their clumsiness, along with their nerves, made them laugh. Jacks tried to ignore the tremble in her limbs as Sven quickened his pace heading into the encroaching darkness. She didn’t dare look at the large trees that edged the field. At that time of night they conjured a myriad of shapes, all sinister. The wet grass soaked through the gaps in her school shoes and drenched her white over-the-knee socks.
‘This is it,’ he announced matter-of-factly, as though there were something scientific to his decision. He stopped in the middle of the field and placed his hands on his hips, then promptly lay down on the ground. ‘You need to lie flat on the grass and look up at the sky!’ Sven urged, pulling her down on to the damp ground.
‘My uniform will get soaked!’ she protested as her knees buckled in submission.
‘Come on, don’t be such a baby! What does it matter if your clothes get wet? They’ll dry. I don’t think you ever heard Vasco da Gama say, “Oh no! I can’t cross the ocean in my quest for knowledge because I don’t want my cloak to get wet!”’
She stared down at him. ‘I never heard him say anything actually and the difference is, he didn’t have to go home to my mum and explain why his cloak was soggy.’ She laughed, knowing she would do his bidding.
Tucking her skirt under the backs of her legs, she slowly sank down, positioning herself next to him in the darkness, her body centimetres from his. As the evening dew seeped through her cardigan and shirt, cooling her skin, she regretted declining the earlier offer of her dad’s cagoule. But it took only a few seconds for her to stop thinking about the ruinous mud and grass stains on her clothes or the fact that her hair was curling against her neck; instead, she felt her head grow heavy as she relaxed and looked upwards as instructed into the night sky. It looked vast and beautiful. And the more she stared, the more she saw. It had never looked so clear or so close.
Sven reached across and took her hand in his. She smiled, happy to have her palm coiled inside his like a warm secret. He raised his free hand. ‘If you look straight up at three o’clock you can see the Plough. It’s a constellation of seven stars and you will always be able to make it out by the shape…’ He traced the edge with his fingers. ‘Because you can see the seven stars quite distinctly. Some people call it the Big Dipper because it looks a bit like a ladle. Can you see?’
She nodded. Yes! Yes, she could.
‘And even more amazing, if you follow a line from the two stars on the right of the Plough and look upwards, about five times the length from those two, you’ll see the Pole Star, part of what’s known as Ursa Minor. It’s one of the brightest stars in the sky and my absolute favourite. Can you see?’
‘Yes!’ Jacks squinted as she stared at the inky sky, where stars punched pockets of light in the most intricate pattern. The silver moon looked huge, hanging on the edge of the sky. They were silent for some seconds, breathing clouds from warm mouths.
‘Okay, now do this. Make a fist and then lift your thumb and close one eye – you can fit the whole moon behind your thumbnail.’ They both did just as he described. ‘Amazing, isn’t it? The moon is about a quarter of a million miles away and it’s just over two thousand miles wide and yet you can fit it behind the nail of your thumb! That one fact alone makes me realise how very mysterious our little universe is and how our understanding of things can be dramatically altered, depending on how you look at them.’
They both stayed like that for some seconds, with one eye closed and an arm sticking up into the air.
‘How do you know so much about everything?’ Jacks asked, hoping not to sound too much in awe of him.
Sven laughed. ‘I don’t. I only know a little bit about a few things, but I figure if I keep impressing you then I’m in with a chance.’
More than a chance. I think I love you. I really do…
‘You know more than a little bit,’ she gushed. ‘Don’t forget, I’m in nearly all your classes. You never seem to get stuck like I do.’
‘The secret is to read ahead. You only need to know a bit more than what they’re teaching you at any one time – it’s not about being clever, just good planning. I try to stay one chapter ahead.’ He laughed again.
‘I don’t know if I could be bothered to plan like that, it’s bad enough having to do homework.’
‘You are lucky. You don’t need planning or homework, you are special. You are unique, not like those sheep-girls who all look the same and chase the same sheep-boys and listen to the same sheep-music and waste their miserable lives. You’re different. And you are beautiful, beautiful inside and out. And as unfair as it is, your beauty will take you places. You will have an amazing journey. I, on the other hand, I need clever. It’s all I have.’
She squeezed his hand. I’d swap it all for a small slice of clever. That would be my ticket and I’d take you with me.
‘What do you think you’ll do when you leave?’ She tried to sound nonchalant. Less than a year from now and you will be gone, I know it. University and travel… Even the thought of you leaving makes my heart flip.
‘I suppose architecture, same as my dad. That will make my family happy. But if I could do anything…’ He paused.
‘Go on, tell me. If you could do anything…?’
She heard him exhale and watched the plume of breath spiral upwards.
‘If I could do anything, I would like to be a sailor.’
‘A sailor? What, like the navy?’ She pictured grey gunships, jaunty hats and shared bunks.
‘No, not exactly.’ He paused again. ‘I’d like to get a big boat and sail round the world, hopping from one place to the next and speaking to as many different people as I could find. I’d like to try everything, see everything and fill in the detail in my head where at the moment there are just shapes and outlines.’ The enthusiasm spilled from him.
‘Wouldn’t you get homesick?’ She hated the naivety of her question, regretting it the moment it had left her mouth.
‘No. I’ve moved around so much that now I don’t think of home as a place, I think of it as a state, a feeling. I am home right now, here with you.’
She felt her gut churn with a warm longing for this clever boy who sounded like a poet and looked at the world like no one else she knew. He was quite unlike the other boys, who lived for football and pooled their money for chips and a battered sausage after school.
‘Maybe I’ll come with you!’ Jacks laughed, to give her suggestion an edge of frivolity, masking the neediness.
‘You can always come to where I am.’
‘Oh yeah?’ She was curious, wondering how that might be possible with her meagre savings and the fact that she always had to be home for her tea.
She felt him shift on to his side until he was blocking the silver light of the moon. His shadowy outline sat against the star-riddled sky. ‘It’s easy.’ He laced his fingers against her own. ‘Every night when you go to sleep, look at the moon and let yourself drift to the Lake of Dreams.’
‘Is it a real place?’ she whispered.
‘Yes. It’s right there on the nearside of the moon and it’s where I’ll be waiting. We can sail away together, far away from all the sheep-people, and nothing and no one can get to you, ever. It’ll just be you and me with all the time in the world to go wherever we want.’
‘It sounds lovely.’
‘It is lovely. Meet me there tonight. It’ll be the beginning of our adventure!’
She nodded as he bent forward and kissed her on the mouth, his full lips soft and warm. She reached up and pulled him down on to her. ‘The beginning of our ad
venture…’ she sighed as he leant in for a second kiss. His hands travelled up under her shirt to where her skin bristled with goose bumps under the lightness of his touch. She closed her eyes and wished they could stay right there on the damp ground forever.
9
It was a cold November day. A biting wind and driving rain meant Weston town centre was virtually visitor-free. Jacks always thought that a seaside town in the cold and rain felt like one of the saddest places on earth. Elderly local residents in plastic macs congregated behind the rain-lashed windows of the coffee shops and tea rooms, staring out across the bleak, windswept seafront, mirroring the seagulls who huddled together on the beach looking equally miserable.
‘Chilli?’ Jacks muttered under her breath as she perused the supermarket shelves. ‘No, I did that quite recently.’ She pushed her hair from her eyes. ‘Chicken? Possibly. Oh, I know, something Mexican with wraps. They like that.’ She placed a few items in the basket on her mum’s lap. ‘Guacamole, is that Mexican? Not sure.’
‘Jacks?’
She turned to see Lynne Gilgeddy, who lived on the Bourneville Estate. She was a few years older and Jacks had known her for as long as she could remember. They had danced in the same sticky-floored nightclubs in their youth and strolled the Grand Pier in their crop tops and shorts, giggling whenever they caught the eye of a good-looking Midlander of a similar age. Later they’d organised play dates for their girls when they were at nursery. That was a long time ago now and Lynne bore the marks of someone who’d had it tough – her hair was brittle, her eyebrows were beginning to thin and she had deep furrows either side of her mouth from the constant drawing on a cigarette. Jacks noticed this matter-of-factly: she was fond of Lynne and knew she was probably having similar thoughts about her. But Jacks at least tried to keep her few grey hairs at bay through the regular application of cheap highlights and, despite her thickening waist and sagging bust line, she still had the slim legs of her younger days.
‘How are you?’
‘All right, Lynne. Yeah, not bad.’ Jacks knew people didn’t want the truth; it wasn’t an invitation to list all that was wrong. ‘You?’
‘Good, yeah. Ashley’s doing great, still dancing. She’s got a spot on a cruise. She’s gonna see the world, Jacks. Amazing, isn’t it?’ Lynne shook her head. ‘But the biggest news is, I’m going to be a grandma. Caitlin-Marie’s having a baby!’ She beamed and her whole face changed, as though even the thought of the child lifted her spirits.
‘Oh!’ Jacks concentrated on fixing her smile. ‘Well, congratulations! Is the dad around?’ It just slipped out.
‘No. Just a bit of a fling, you know what these blokes can be like.’ She tutted.
Jacks nodded as an image of Gideon Parks floated in front of her eyes.
‘But what can you do, Jacks? We either get on with it or sink, right?’
Jacks nodded again. Not my girl. There’ll be no dancing on cruise ships for her, no walking the seafront with a secondhand pram and a baby clad in her second cousin’s cast-offs. She is going to be a professional woman, a lawyer. She will go to meetings all over the world, she’ll have a little black case on wheels that she trails behind her and people will see her confident walk and her beautiful face and they’ll know she’s a someone, a someone who is really going places… And it all starts with university. Her applications are in and now we just need to wait for the offers.
‘How are you, Mrs Morgan?’ Lynne spoke directly to Jacks’ mum, for which Jacks was grateful.
‘She’s fine,’ Jacks answered. Ida stared blankly ahead, her mouth opening and closing, her fingers fidgeting in her lap.
‘Do you still see Gina?’
‘Yes, we’re still good mates.’ Jacks smiled, thankful for Gina’s friendship.
‘Give her my love, won’t you. I haven’t seen her for ages.’
‘I will. And good luck. When’s the baby due?’
Lynne beamed again. ‘Ten weeks. I can’t wait!’ She clapped with joy.
Home safe and sound, Jacks propped her mum up with some pillows. Ida’s bedroom was the one room in the house that was warm all day. Economising meant all other radiators were off while the kids were at school, but her mum’s room was always toasty.
‘It was nice to see Lynne today, wasn’t it? Fancy her going to be a grandma! I remember her eighteenth birthday and that feels like a couple of years ago.’ She spoke with a singsong tone as she changed her mum and ran a wet wipe around her mouth. ‘Do you want to come downstairs or would you like to sit up here for a bit, Mum? I think Bargain Hunt is on, you like that, don’t you?’
‘I need to find this letter!’ she shouted. ‘It’s just not good enough!’
‘Well, as soon as it comes, I’ll run it up to you, okay? Tell you what, sit here for a bit. I’ll pop your little telly on and then you can come down for lunch and a change of scenery, how about that?’
Jacks tucked the cover over her mum’s legs, gathered up the soiled nappy and knotted it into a carrier bag. She cleaned the bathroom, finishing up yet another bottle of bleach. I should buy shares in bloody Domestos, she sighed to herself. She made the kids’ beds, then headed into her own bedroom to retrieve the nest of dirty laundry that Pete left at the foot of the bed each night. As she smoothed the creases from the duvet, the telephone on the bedside table rang.
‘Gina! That’s funny, I was just talking about you earlier. I bumped into Lynne Gilgeddy.’
‘Ah, bless. She’s had a bit of a life, that one.’
‘Yes, and she’s going to be a grandma!’
‘Oh God, don’t! She’s not that much older than us! Don’t tell me her Kyle is reproducing? That’s all we need, the next generation of graffiti artists!’
‘No, well, not as far as I know. But Caitlin-Marie is having a baby.’
‘Ah, lovely. Well, I hope it works out for them. Listen, I’ve got something funny to tell you.’ Gina giggled.
Jacks sat back on the bed and set her bundle of laundry and waste to one side. ‘I’m all ears.’
‘Well, you know I took Rob up to London for the Boat Show earlier in the year?’
‘Uh-huh.’ Jacks wondered where this was going.
‘Well, they sent us a brochure through in case we want to go again next year – fat chance, we argued all the way home. Anyway, I was just having a flick through and guess who is on the bloody cover, the star exhibitor with some mega pricey, flashy yacht thing?’
‘Don’t know,’ Jacks replied flatly. She was thinking of all the chores she had to do before she picked up the kids – she didn’t want them coming home on foot in this horrible weather. And she was wondering how to make the Mexican chicken spicy but not too hot as her mum wouldn’t like that.
‘You’ve got to guess!’ Gina insisted.
‘I don’t know… Gary Barlow? The Pope?’
‘One and the same, but no, not even close. It’s Brains! Your mate Sven!’
All other thoughts disappeared. Jacks felt her pulse race and her heart quicken.
Gina continued. ‘There’s a picture and everything. I mean, he’s got older, but it’s definitely him! It even says, “Sven Lundgren world-renowned yacht designer is launching his new blah blah boaty thing at this year’s Boat Show” and there he is, larger than life, stood on the bloody deck! “World-renowned”, can you believe it?’
Jacks remembered that night all those years ago, his words indelibly etched on her memory. ‘I would like to be a sailor… I’d like to get a big boat and sail round the world, hopping from one place to the next…’ She remembered the weeks after he had gone without saying goodbye, the way her heart had felt like the heaviest weight, trying hard not to burst with all that it contained. Crying herself to sleep every night as hot tears soaked her pillow and her thoughts churned: What am I going to do? What on earth am I going to do? And then Pete popping up quite unexpectedly, the solution she had been looking for. Dear, kind Pete. It was as if she had simply transferred her relationship with Sven ov
er to Pete, without thinking about or questioning it, not then.
‘Jacks? You still there?’ Gina shouted.
‘Yes! Sorry, mate. Wow! There’s a turn-up for the books!’ She swallowed the many questions. Does he look happy? Is he married? Is his hair still blonde? Where does he live?
‘Do you want to see it?’ Gina asked casually.
Yes! I want to see it! Right now! Bring it over, please! ‘If you like, G.’ She tried to sound equally casual. ‘Drop it in, but only if you’re passing.’
‘Will do. See you soon, lots of love.’
‘You too.’
Jacks replaced the phone and sat back against the headboard. She looked at the flattened pillow where Pete Davies laid his head every night. She placed her palm in the dent, closing her eyes and picturing his kind, hopeful face on the day he had proposed. Things had been so good then, so full of possibility. But now it felt like her life had become one long treadmill, running around looking after everyone else, wiping her mother’s arse at a moment’s notice. Peeling wallpaper and chipped paint everywhere, cardboard boxes full of crap stuffed into every available corner. Watching as she and Pete slid further into mediocrity with everything in short supply: money, heat, space and physical affection.
Sven… I can’t believe it! She shook her head. ‘Come on, Jacks. Get a grip, woman,’ she muttered, sighing heavily. She stood, gathering the bundle of laundry and the stinking carrier bag into her hands.
As she tiptoed down the stairs, trying not to snag her socks on the gripper rods that remained firmly glued to the treads despite having long since lost the carpet they were meant to be holding down, she reminded herself that Pete was not to blame for how they lived. It wasn’t as if she had married David Beckham or Pierce Brosnan and he had morphed into Mr Average. She’d known what she was taking on, kind of.
Opening the front door, Jacks placed the carrier bag in the wheelie bin and let the lid bang shut. She was about to go back inside when she heard Martha calling from the end of the street.
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