‘Boys, we have a guest.’
‘I’m Jake. Who are you?’
‘Jake – I’m your grandmother. You can call me Dot.’
The boys seem a little perplexed. Hannah’s head swings around, glaring at me.
‘We thought you were dead,’ says Ted coolly. A little bit of tea bubbles out of my nose. ‘That’s what Uncle Adam told us.’
‘Well, she’s not dead is she,’ adds Matt.
‘She could be a zombie,’ says Jake. Matt has no response. My mum smiles politely. Not a zombie, more a ghost.
Ted retrieves something from his back pocket.
‘Well, I made this for Mum but you can have it. It’s a flower. It’s made out of toilet paper.’
I hold my breath for a bit, wondering if Adam fashioned it upstairs and may have rubbed his backside with said paper before telling the twins to give it to her. But it’s the same flowers they were taught to make for Mother’s Day last year, with little stalks made out of glittery pipe cleaners. My mother takes them, looking very surprised at the gesture, and pats their heads. Hannah’s reaction is more cautious. She stands by the door and carefully studies the faces of everyone in the room. Matt goes upstairs to retrieve Millie.
‘I got you kids some presents.’
This makes the boys perk up and they jut their heads out, staring at her as she goes for her handbag in the corridor. Hannah comes over and sits in my lap.
‘Honey, what’s up? You OK?’
She nods and takes a chunk of my hair to twizzle in her fingers. Ben puts a hand to my kneecap. He looks elated, free of anything that may have sat on his shoulders for that moment too long. She returns with little immaculately wrapped boxes. Cars for the boys, hairclips for the girls. The boys tug at me to open them up, loyalties bought. Hannah is taking her time though.
‘Do you like them, Hannah?’
‘I suppose. Thank you very much.’
Hannah smiles at her while Millie is brought in for inspection. My mum puts the hairclips in her hand.
‘You shouldn’t do that.’
The room freezes except for the boys, who zoom their cars over the sofa and across the skirting. Ben looks over at Hannah, I squeeze her body tightly.
‘Millie eats hairclips and earrings and stuff. You shouldn’t do that.’
I smile and nod, taking the present off my mum. My hand skimming past hers to feel her skin, still Fairy soft like it used to be. I flinch. Mum feels it instantly and looks up at me. Ben pushes the plate of biscuits over to Mum as she goes to pour the tea.
‘How do you take it, Benny?’
Hannah interrupts.
‘Two sugars with lots of milk. Mum has hers with one sugar.’
Her tone is indignant and she crosses her arms. I hold her close to me.
‘Han, why don’t you, Daddy, and the boys go upstairs for a bit?’
The boys hear this and scamper away but Hannah doesn’t seem to budge. Matt looks over at me. Where do the boundaries of common courtesy and allowing someone to just be able to have a natural reaction to someone merge? She doesn’t have to do anything she doesn’t want to but her unwillingness to befriend my mother makes me ask to what extent she can read the papers or at least has picked up on what’s been happening in the house. Ben urges Hannah to come and sit with him and she sits in his lap as he cradles her head underneath his chin. Matt holds on to Millie, who’s staring curiously at my mother as she nibbles away on a biscuit.
‘So where’s Adam today?’
I interrupt Hannah before she has a chance to say he’s upstairs in the boys’ bedroom. Ben reaches over to Mum, nestling his hand in hers. I simultaneously admire and despise how he can be so tactile with her.
‘He’s not ready, Mum. I think he’s going to need more time before …’
Before what, Ben? There’s something in Ben’s tone which makes me think he’s talking about a time after all this. When we meet again? When we sit down together around a table and forget certain life events didn’t have majorly altering consequences? Never mind Adam not being ready, I don’t think I am. My little brother has well and truly ambushed me and made me confront my biggest fear, the saddest part of my life story. Here, in my own house. Surrounded by kids I have to explain things to, a husband who doesn’t know what’s going on, and an overwhelming urge to go medieval on her ass. What is Ben saying? Does he want her to be a part of his life further on from now? I thought he had questions. I have many but they have no form or structure and if I attempt to speak now, I’m fearful they’ll just come out in tearful Neanderthal monosyllables. I’m studying Hannah’s hair in another bid to distract me. Is that a nit or a bit of fluff?
‘Well, it was nice to be invited round, to be able to see you all after all this time and tell you …’
Eeeks. Cloying moment here. Mainly because you weren’t invited by me, at least. But what do you need to tell us? You’re sorry? If you could you would turn back time and do everything differently? I am tempted to hold my hands up to my ears like earmuffs. Ben seems to be on tenterhooks, holding on to her every word.
‘I thought it was time I came here and was totally upfront with you. About why I left. I mean, I have to apologise for the papers. So much of that article was untrue but … the part about wanting to be in touch. That bit was correct.’
Ben nods. I want to ask about motives, money, betrayal. Still, I say nothing. Ben pipes up.
‘I guess the first thing I wanted to know is if you are all right now. We didn’t know if you were still ill or in remission. The papers didn’t make it clear.’
She pauses.
‘I had breast cancer. But they caught it early, stage one. I’m better now, thanks.’
She makes it sound like a touch of flu. The article made it sound as though she’d been on her deathbed and we’d been at home playing Scrabble not really giving two hoots.
‘I guess Jools and I both … I mean, if we’d known, then we would have liked to have lent some support.’
Ben grabs my kneecap, hoping he can get me to nod along. Would I? I guess. My heart is not completely made out of stone. I think.
‘Oh, well. Brian and the boys were there and we got by. But thank you for saying that.’
And that is when the room freezes. Like a big giant tableau. Brian with the David Bellamy beard we knew about, but there was something lobbed on the end of that sentence. And the boys. Ben looks over at me. I look over at Matt.
‘Which boys?’ says Ben
‘Well, I … thought you knew. Scott and Craig, my other sons.’
She dives into her handbag to retrieve her phone, scrolling through menus, then holds a photo up to Ben.
‘So this is us in Turkey last year; that’s Brian and Scott and Craig. I think he looks a lot like you, Benny.’
I can’t seem to move my face. The colour drains out of Ben’s and Hannah’s little hand slips into mine and grasps my fingers tightly like barbed wire. Who? What?
‘You mean your father never told you?’
Ben and I are on mute. Matt steps inside the room.
‘Ummm, I don’t think Frank did, no.’
Her tone becomes quite matter of fact, almost like she’s telling us what she had for breakfast.
‘I mean, it was the hardest choice I’ve ever had to make. Leaving you all and starting anew. But I loved Brian, he was my soulmate, the person I was supposed to be with. I couldn’t stay here knowing my heart wanted to be elsewhere. So I left. I didn’t want to make things hard for your dad and I’m sorry about the pain I caused him but I thought the best thing I could do was to leave you with him. I loved you kids but …’
Leave us with him? Like a consolation prize? I say the first thing I’ve said to her since she got here.
‘But you loved him more.’
She looks down at the picture.
‘A year later we had Scott and Craig and moved to Suffolk. I never forgot about you lot but I think it worked out for the best. You all seemed happy. I was h
appy. I left it at that.’
Ben can’t suppress his emotion any more and tears rain down his chin, falling as little black dots all over his jeans. I can’t quite believe what she’s saying. My breath just sits loose in my mouth, neurones fire anger, hate, fury emotions through my skull. Get out of my house. How were we happy without a mother for a majority of our childhood? And she was happy? Fucking good for her. Happy without us. That’s just great. Because happiness and us as your kids is surely something that can’t co-exist. God, even if new love beckoned elsewhere, she could have made some attempt to still have us as part of her life, to not have it engrained into our skulls that we made someone so sad with their lot in life that we forced them out of it. Yet I can’t tell her this. Matt looks over at us and is also at a loss for words.
‘Awww, Benny. I didn’t want to upset you. The boys are keen to get to know you. I’m willing to build bridges so you and your brothers can be friends. This is our place in Turkey, you’re welcome any time.’
I still can’t talk. Because this wasn’t even about abandoning the three children she already had, this was about replacing them. Ben who was always the baby was now lumbered in the middle somewhere. Hannah sees how upset he is and turns to throw her hands around his neck. Ben has no option but to hold on to her. I sit there still taking it all in. We’re all silent for a moment. Until one person dares speak.
‘His name is Uncle Ben. No one calls him Benny. If you were his mummy, you’d know that.’
Air rushes up my nostrils as she says it. Ben doesn’t respond. Matt looks mortified.
‘Hannah! Upstairs now!’
‘It’s all right, think we’re both gonna go,’ announces Ben, and he bundles Hannah away as they both exit the room. My mum follows them with her eyes and I watch Hannah give her evils as she exits. Now I’m sitting here with my husband not knowing where to look and what he should be doing. And my mother.
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset anyone.’
I still can’t bring myself to talk to or at her. I look down at my hands, fiddling with the creases in my fingers, studying the dirt caked into my fingernails. No, to drop a bombshell like that on us after twenty years, of course that wouldn’t have upset us. We sat here like lemons, almost apologising to you about not being there when you were ill, and now you sit here defiant that abandoning your children twenty years ago was all right. You were in love, that excuses everything. There’s nothing about how sorry you are, how we are, or any questions pertaining to our schooldays, our graduations, our relationships. She just swans in and tells us life’s fine and dandy for her because it’s all new and we’re not part of it. She turns to Matt.
‘Matthew. I just wanted to let them know the truth. After all this time, I thought they’d be able to deal with it.’
The air, dry and raspy, rises from my throat.
‘My husband’s name is Matteo.’
It’s only been in the papers every week, if she’d bothered to read anything about me. She studies my face, frozen with shock.
‘That’s Italian, isn’t it? That’s nice.’
Matt nods slowly.
‘If you were my mother you’d know that.’
She stares over at me and for once I look her straight in the eye. I see so many things. I see Adam’s forehead and Ben’s lips. I see that little mole about an inch into her chin. The eyes. The eyes are mine. I see a lot of things, but mostly a woman. Just someone I used to know.
‘I wasn’t happy, Juliet. I was stifled, verging on depressed, but couldn’t see a way out. No one needs a mother like that.’
‘No. We just needed a mother.’
I stare at her, taking in every word and every millimetre of her face so I can preserve this memory for ever. Because I know now that this is the last time I will ever see her. I’m not sure if I had a memory of her before then that pertained to that. Just a jumble of images, all the good ones that I plastered on to some sort of collective montage that made me think there was a good and valid reason as to why she left. But there wasn’t. Only her own fear of an unfulfilled life, a quick get-out clause based on instinct and lust that meant she abandoned three young children. It was selfish, it lacked any true thought for those she was supposed to have loved and had a responsibility for. There’s anger simmering away in there but also a fair amount of disappointment. It turns into tears that roll bulbous down my cheeks. Matt looks at them and I see him get her coat from the rack in the hallway.
‘Dorothy. I think it’s best if you left.’
She shrugs her shoulders; the nonchalance almost overpowering me to pick up a teacup and chuck it at her head. But she picks up her coat and takes one last look at me before she leaves.
‘You’re doing very well for yourself, Juliet. With all that cooking stuff. You and your brothers are a credit to your father.’
And then she goes. The door clicks softly, I hear her footsteps down the path and then all I feel are Matt’s arms clamped around me as I sit in a ball on the living room floor dousing his shoulders with tears.
Later that night, Dad returns to find me in the kitchen clutching on to a glass full of whisky and flat Coke. Matt is upstairs sleeping with the kids while Adam and Ben have adjourned to the nearest bar/pub to get plastered. The news has come as no huge shock to Adam, who expected the worst and might as well have told us so, but Ben has understandably not taken the news well. He had his arms out wide like a great big love-filled albatross only to be taken down over the high seas. He’s now quiet, withdrawn, not the Ben I know. Adam’s solution is thus to fill him to the brim with alcohol to numb the shock, or at least help him to pull so he can replace these feelings with regret from a dodgy one-night stand.
Dad comes in and puts on the kettle.
‘So guess who came around today?’
‘You finally got that gas man round?’
‘Nope, guess again.’
‘Not ’effing McCoy?’
I shake my head.
‘Dorothy.’
He doesn’t turn to face me. He stands there resting his head slightly against the kitchen cabinets.
‘Ben ambushed me. In my own house.’ He remains silent. ‘Invited her round for tea.’
He gets two mugs out of the cupboard.
‘Did you know about the other two?’
He looks over at me and returns to watching the kettle bubble and hiss.
‘About the other two boys? I’d heard.’
I want to ask him why he’d never said anything but I know. Why kick us when we were already down? He did it to protect us, to not invoke any more hate and bad blood between us. Still, we were adults. Well, I was. Don’t know about the other two.
‘How was she?’
‘Not sure I was part of the conversation for long enough to find out.’
‘Are you seeing her again?’
He says it a little resigned, like one hour with our mother would mean everything between us was going to have changed and we’d head off with her to go and play happy bigger families. I shake my head resolutely.
‘I don’t think I will be. Plus, who needs more brothers? Two is enough for me.’
He smiles. There is a huge wall of emotion that I need to knock down, but not here, not now. The woman has taken up far too much of my time this evening. Given she’s someone I have no love for, who has drummed up nothing in me tonight except bile and tears, I just want rid of her in my brain. Tonight, I’ve realised being a mother is more than nature, the fact I lived inside her once. The relationship is symbiotic, it needs nurturing, it needs care and attention that she stopped providing twenty years ago. Dad comes up behind me and puts a hand on my shoulder.
‘Where are they? How’s Ben?’
‘Not good. They’re out drinking’
He inhales deeply and closes his eyes.
‘I just didn’t know how to go about it with you three. I did what I thought was best. I always hoped she’d come back or put in an appearance when it mattered but … And you?
How are you?’
I shrug my shoulders. I should still be crying but I think I’ve been drained of tears tonight. Nothing has been levelled out, questions still line my brain like tissue paper. I change the subject for some sense of release.
‘So did Gia enjoy the dancing?’
Dad looks at me for a while. He knows when not to dig, he knows that I’m the sort who in time will come forth with how I feel but first I like to file through my head and come to resolutions of my own accord; twenty years of seeing me through my teens has taught him that much. He smiles at me.
‘She’s quite graceful. Ned took a liking to her.’
‘He would. The pervy old twat. Did you finally ask Alma to dance tonight?’
He goes through my drawers and finds the spoons nestled amongst the children’s cutlery. He pours the water over the teabags and steeps them for just long enough.
‘You know, there’s been talk. Apparently, she drove her last husband to drink and her hair smells of Horlicks.’
I laugh under my breath. He goes to the fridge, glancing at the list on the door before opening it to retrieve the milk.
‘Any closer to finding this dish you’re gonna prepare then?’
I look at him as he splashes just enough milk into the cup, stirring it in and clinking the spoon on the side of the cup three times like he always does. There are so many questions for Dad too. Was there a reason Mum felt so stifled? Why didn’t you remarry? Do you still love her? But as much as I can fire the questions at him, I know deep down none of this was ever his fault. He just did what he was supposed to do. He had his moments like any parent (he left Ben in a Tesco once; he thought tinned peaches was an unacceptable dinner). But he was there. Always there.
‘I was thinking, well, hoping, you could teach me how to cook your chilli. Maybe I could do that.’
He looks at me and smiles, before putting his hand in mine as we sip our tea in perfect silence.
CHAPTER TWENTY
It’s a Thursday and lo and behold, I’m in the kitchen. Only this time I’m not cooking, I’m being resourceful. A quick trip into Kingston this morning to buy some deli goodies for dinner also found me two light grey Primark handbags that will eventually become rhino costumes for the annual school play. In Primark, I was also asked for my autograph by an old woman scouring for tights. After I had scribbled on the back of her phone bill, she told me I seemed like a lovely young girl and she hoped I was going to kick that bugger into next week with my cooking. The fact she thought me both young and capable of such a feat made my day. So now I’m cutting into the handbags with garden shears and going crazy with the superglue, calling the boys in every so often for fittings. Gia stands by the hob doing interesting culinary things with courgettes while Donna is also by for a coffee, grumbling because Ciara has been cast as a dolphin, one of the starring roles but with an infinitely more difficult costume predicament. Justin, on the other hand, is a tree and she is debating just dying his little afro green so all he’ll have to do is wear some brown cords and he’s all set to go. In between, she also reads out from a newspaper on the table that is comparing the big cooking showdown.
Souper Mum Page 22