I hold the first book in my hands, my arms outstretched in front of me so both children can see. Their heads rest on my shoulders, and they’ve snuggled in so close I can smell the mint on their breath. The book is about a group of children who go on an adventure in the woods behind their house. It’s Oscar’s favourite. The children get deeper into the forest, and as I build up the tension I can feel Oscar’s breathing stop momentarily. He is awaiting the characters in the story hearing a strange noise coming from behind a pile of wood. Hannah knows what is coming too and decides that today she won’t spoil the punchline. I take a deep breath as the characters look under the sticks and then let out my loudest:
“EEEEEEEEEEYYY-OOOOOORRRRRRRRREEEEEEEE!”
I feel Oscar jump alongside me, as shocked today as he was the very first time he found out that the strange noise was coming from a ragged-looking donkey. Then he breathes heavily, and I squeeze him closer to me using the crook of my arm. In mock-shock, I dramatically throw the book across the room, as if it has suddenly become white-hot, and Hannah laughs loudly. Oscar laughs too, and for a moment I wouldn’t be anywhere else.
Oscar kneels up on the bed next to me. “More, more,” he says, slightly bouncing.
Hannah sits up and embraces him across my chest. She puts on a pretend toddler-voice. “Oh, aren’t you so cute?” she says. They part, and as they do, they kiss one another on the lips.
I want to frame the moment. I want to ask them to recreate it, so I can properly capture it in my memory. So I can see every movement they make, every breath that they take. It is the simplest of moments, yet I don’t want to ever forget it. I wonder why it can’t always be like this.
There is nobody in this world who wouldn’t think that what I have just witnessed was beautiful. If this is the case, why can’t my two children spend their time focusing on these spontaneous moments of pure joy? When the room is filled with nothing but pleasure. These are the moments in life that bring happiness, so let’s create more of them.
I feel a lump appear in my throat, which is suddenly too dry to allow me to swallow. The children lie back down alongside me, and my heart immediately hurts. Like it is being stretched in every direction. Pulled apart. I imagine that I can feel my ventricles slowly widening, my arteries suddenly becoming taut, like when the lawnmower cable gets trapped on the corner of the house or the hoover plug is unexpectedly caught under a door.
I feel tears gathering in my eyes as I replay what has just happened over and over in my head. I suddenly feel anger rise inside me. I am uncomfortable. The children are like hot water bottles strapped to my side, and I am too warm. I have to get out. I sit forward, toppling the children to each side, and claw at my hoody to remove it. I pull it over my head, almost taking my t-shirt with it. Within seconds, I’m cool again.
“Sorry,” I say to them.
Oscar is half on the bed, half on the floor. His little hands are clutching the duvet, like those photos you see of mountaineers with a sheer drop behind them. He flashes a quick smile. It asks whether I am okay. I smile back.
I notice that Hannah is crushed by my hips, her face up against the wall.
“I’m really sorry, sweetheart,” I say to her. “I just got really hot.”
“Like a fire?” asks Oscar. “Yes, like a fire,” I say.
I see the concern on both their faces.
“I’m okay now, though,” I say.
Their faces visibly relax.
“Another story?”
They both nod.
I still feel emotional as I close the bedroom door. Hannah blows me a kiss for the third time and I catch and swallow it. I pull the door closed and stand on the landing for a moment, trying to figure out the thoughts swimming around my head. I am confused by the way my feelings metamorphosed from bliss to anger in seconds. Two emotions that are spectrally so far apart that they are like caterpillar and butterfly.
I try to push it out of my mind; after all, soon it won’t matter. When all I can see in every direction is endless plains, this moment will be a distant memory, lost in the passage of time. I rub my hands on my face and grasp my hair, pulling at it till it hurts. Then I go back into Oscar’s room to make sure that he is still asleep. To ensure that the duvet is still covering him. That he is warm enough.
I push open the lounge door and I’m relieved to see that my chair is vacant. I notice the tiny travel clock on the bookshelf. I’ve been upstairs with the children for nearly two hours. It’s just before eight.
“Hello,” says Lisa, smiling.
I flop down into my chair. “Hi.” “Busy time?”
“Yeah,” I say. “Bath. Dressed. Story. Goodnight kisses. You know the drill.” I decide not to mention the incident of near spontaneous combustion.
“They okay?”
“Yep,” I smile. “Oscar’s asleep. Hannah’s reading.”
Lisa leans forward from the sofa and squeezes my leg.
“You’re a star, aren’t you?”
Kenneth looks up from the newspaper. “We thought you’d left the country,” he says.
“Okay, can we put it on?” says Dina excitedly.
“We waited for you,” smiles Lisa. I suddenly realise what she is talking about. I’d completely forgotten about this evening’s trip to Jurassic Park.
After the opening credits, the television greets us with a dinosaur mauling a park employee and a few minutes later a mosquito encased in amber. “Oooh, what’s that?” asks Dina. “It’d make a lovely brooch.”
I know we are in for a long night.
I try my very best to remain interested – or at least give the impression that I’m interested – during the film. I sense that the mood between Dina and Lisa is strained. Each time Dina speaks, Lisa tuts. In some instances, this is totally unjustified; in others, well…
“It’s more of an island than a park. Jurassic Island sounds better to me.”
“There’s no chance a T-rex would eat a car. They don’t like the taste of metal.”
“Is that him from The Fly? He obviously likes being in films about imaginary creatures.”
I keep one eye on the television screen for the benefit of the family, but mostly I concentrate on the atlas that is open on my lap. Directly opposite me, Kenneth sits in a similar position with his newspaper. His face is lit in pink and green by the lights of the Christmas tree. I can’t be sure, but every so often, when our eyes meet, he seems to look overtly at my atlas and then raise his eyebrows. It’s a look that makes me feel uncomfortable, a telling I-know-exactly-what-you-are-doing-over-there-Richard. I immediately look away.
I decide to look at pages featuring countries and continents that I haven’t mentioned in my notebook. It’s part test, part diversion. When I get up to go to the toilet, I leave the atlas open on the coffee table facing him. The pages show ‘Fiji, Vanuatu and the Solomon Islands’. I don’t manage to catch his look as he peers over the top of his newspaper, but I hope that he is suitably confused.
When I return to my seat, Lisa has paused the film, and she and Dina are arguing. I am greeted by a frozen headshot of a velociraptor.
“Why the hell do you have to talk endlessly?”
“I’m only asking questions.”
“If you just watch, you’ll understand what’s going on.” “It’s not my fault I don’t know anything about dinosaurs.” “You don’t need to know anything about dinosaurs.”
Dina sneers. “Er, I think you do, Lisa. That’s what it’s about.”
“I mean –”
“See.” Dina points to the screen. “Di. No. Saur.” “Oh, forget it,” says Lisa, pressing the play button. “No, I won’t.”
Lisa presses pause again. The screen freezes. The youngest of the two children hides in what looks like a kitchen.
“You’ve been awful to me all day,” Dina continues, “really short with me.”
Lisa screws her face up. “No, I haven’t.”
“You have.”
Kenneth slips lowe
r behind his newspaper. I raise my atlas. I can just see Dina and Lisa through a gap between my hand and the atlas. I am taken by how similar they look. Weight and age aside.
“I haven’t.”
“You have. Ever since I came down this morning, you’ve been snippy.” Lisa tuts.
“And you’ve been constantly tutting.” Lisa tuts. “I haven’t.”
“You have, Lisa.”
“You’re being stupid.”
“Excuse me?” Dina says. Her voice sounds strict, and I imagine this is how she sounded when Lisa was younger. “Look, you may not have wanted me and your dad here for this long, but we’re stuck with it. Okay?”
Before Lisa can speak (or tut), Dina continues: “And let me tell you that we don’t want to be here either. We’d rather be at home, where we can hear ourselves think, but we’re trapped here. So let’s just make the best of it, instead of acting like one of those bloody Pellosserraptures.”
Lisa curls her lip. “What?” she says. She sounds disgusted. “Well, that’s what you’re acting like. Snippy. Snappy. Biting at everything I say.”
“What did you say?”
“I said” – Dina forms the words very deliberately – “you. Are. Act-ing. Like a Pelloss-er-rapture.” She points at the screen.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Lisa’s face change. Her frown disappears and her face relaxes, and she begins to smile – and then laugh. She suddenly looks pretty, and I notice reflections from the Christmas tree lights sparkle in her eyes as she pulls Dina towards her and they embrace. She is still laughing when they separate again, and although Dina looks confused, she seems to have decided to abort the conversation. She is beaming at Lisa, and Lisa continues to laugh until she announces that she will need to leave the room before she “wees herself”.
While she is out of the room, Dina asks me what Lisa was laughing at. I fake ignorance, and now that there seems to be no need to hide, I move the atlas back onto my lap. Lisa returns to the room and begins the film again. Dina moves the tin of biscuits onto the sofa between them, and I watch as they both reach a hand into the tin and blindly select exactly the same type of biscuit.
I think about the incident upstairs and the argument that Dina and Lisa have just had. I contemplate why I got so angry, and I come to the conclusion that I wouldn’t want to leave if the children could behave well every day. I am angry because it’s their behaviour that is forcing me to leave. In fact, it’s everyone’s behaviour that is forcing me to go. Forcing me to be alone. I am angry at the fact that I have no control over my everyday life. Leaving it all behind is the only way to take back control.
My eyes scan down to the atlas, and I realise for the first time that it is opened to a different page than it was when I left it on the coffee table. On the right-hand page, I see Switzerland and eastern France. I pass the crease down the centre of the page, and I see Toulouse and southern France. Then, almost like a tiny turquoise ink spill on the page, Andorra. The rest of the left-hand page is filled with salmon-coloured northeast Spain.
I look up and notice that Kenneth is looking at me. I am sure that he winks at me, but it is difficult to see with the flashing of the Christmas lights over his shoulder.
thursday 20th
CHAPTER_FORTY-FOUR
This is the last time.
I’ve tossed and turned all night, unable to get comfortable. I know that I have been asleep, because Lisa has woken me twice to ask me to stop kicking her. And I’ve dreamed – about dinosaurs and a strange-looking French detective dressed in a grey mac who followed me everywhere I went.
Even though it’s still cold outside, I’ve had to remove my t-shirt and pyjama bottoms, due to both becoming soaked in sweat. I’m sweating: because today is the final day of my life as I’ve known it. My plane tickets are stored in my emails, and they are dated tomorrow. Once it is a reasonable time for me to get up, I will begin packing my essentials for tomorrow’s trip to Lyon.
It is understandable, given the significance of the days ahead, that I didn’t sleep soundly. I am pleased that I managed even an hour. There can’t be many people who are acutely aware that something life changing is happening the very next day and yet can still manage a few hours’ sleep. I bet Ted Bundy didn’t get eight hours the night before he met his maker. I put my ability to catch some sleep down to the fact that I know I am ultimately making the right decision.
There is no light in the room, and I lean over to the bedside table to check the time. The screen of my phone illuminates, and I am surprised to see that it’s just before five. I lie back down and stare through the darkness at the ceiling. I can just make out the brass light fitting above the bed, a faux chandelier with five candle-shaped bulbs. It’s been here longer than we have. Lisa and I laughed when we first saw it, agreeing that it ‘had to go’. I’ll leave before it does.
Outside I can hear water.
I listen for a moment, and I am able to pick up bass-like drops coming, I expect, from the enormous icicles which are just on the other side of the curtains. Rapid drips coming from the trees provide an overarching melody. From time to time, Lisa provides deep hog-like snores that pierce the darkness. The regular drips form a mini symphony, and I listen to the simple orchestra play until the first cracks of sunlight begin to appear.
After more than an hour of listening to the sound of the thaw, my bladder can no longer hold and I slide out of bed. I pull on my damp t-shirt and creep along the landing, being careful to dodge the creaking floorboards that I’ll never get the opportunity to fix. I close the bathroom door behind me quietly and wee against the porcelain to temper the sound. I’m not ready for the children to be awake just yet.
I leave the bathroom and sit on the third step from the top of the stairs. I am wearing my t-shirt and boxer shorts. From here I can see through the window at the bottom of the stairs to the pavement outside the house. The water is flowing tap-like from the roof to the ground. It is now possible to see fragments of colour reappearing through the omniscient white.
A figure appears, bringing more colour to the scene framed by the window. It is standing at the end of the drive. Then the figure disappears from view almost entirely. I move my head to try to make it out. It looks like the upper half of a man dressed in a royal-blue coat. The lower half of his body is obscured by the wall at the end of the drive. I can’t see his face. When he disappears, I decide that it must be the postman, so I wait for him to come to the door. He doesn’t.
The blue-coated man comes slightly back into view. Waiting. Staying in the same place. Quietly, I move down a few more steps to get a better view. I can see his face now. It’s Bill from across the street. I can see too that he is not wearing a blue coat; it’s a pyjama top, fastened by a single button halfway up the front. His hands are resting on the wall at the end of our drive and he is staring up toward our bedroom window.
Something isn’t right.
As I get further down the stairs, I can see that his hands are red from the cold. I quietly unlock the door to the porch and slip on my duffel coat. I push my feet into an old pair of trainers and open the front door. I stand for a moment, hoping to silently attract Bill’s attention, but he doesn’t look at me.
I take a step out onto the drive. The snow crunches beneath my feet and tiny pieces of ice make their way inside my trainers. I stay still for a moment, separated from Bill by Kenneth’s car. I can see from here that he is silently crying. I wonder what has brought him to the end of my drive, and I crane my neck to try to see what he is staring at. Aside from the water sliding down the icicles, I can’t see anything above me.
The snow is shin deep as I make my way past Kenneth’s car toward Bill. The bite of cold somehow doesn’t bother me. As I reach Bill, I see the tears flowing down his cheeks. Tears that would have frozen a day earlier are now falling freely. I ask him if he is alright, knowing that he isn’t. He doesn’t answer me, but somehow it doesn’t matter. I notice he is wearing matching royal-blue pyjama bottoms,
but no shoes. His feet are as red as his hands. I put my arm around his shoulders, because it seems to be the right thing to do. Then I stand and stare up at my house with him. I’m not sure what we are doing, but it feels right.
For a minute or two, I am again surrounded by the water symphony. I feel Bill’s arm around my waist, and I watch as the world returns to its former state right in front of my eyes. Little drips of water fall from the conifers in the garden next door as the green branches begin to reappear. The world, like a snake, sheds its white skin in favour of colour once again.
Bill leans in just slightly and I can feel his shoulders, rigid and frozen, through my coat. We just stand.
The spectacular sight that is unfolding is interrupted by two things that happen almost simultaneously. Ahead of me, just to the left of where I was looking, I see the curtains at my bedroom window move. From behind me, I hear a voice. Soft and low.
“Come on then, Bill,” it says.
Next to Bill appears a man, and our two becomes three. I’ve seen the man many times before. I instantly notice that he is much better dressed than Bill, and for this type of weather. Instinctively, I take my arm away from Bill’s shoulders. The man leans forward so he can see me. He speaks across Bill.
“Hello,” he says.
I smile.
“Come on then,” he says, using his hand to direct Bill away from my house. Bill complies, and I watch his feet turn in the snow. He needs to get them warmed up soon.
The man turns Bill and they follow the footsteps they left earlier back across the street, towards the bungalow. Bill looks over his shoulder as he walks, smiling kindly at me. I smile back. The man also turns, he looks apologetic.
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