What She Left

by Rosie Fiore

  ‘Sorry,’ I said quickly.

  ‘Don’t be sorry,’ said Sam, his smile tight. ‘You were saying?’

  ‘No, no, you first. Sorry.’ Why was I saying sorry again? Bugger. Now I was awkward, dull, scruffy and needlessly apologetic. What a winner.

  ‘I was saying. . . that you were a dancer?’

  He phrased it somewhere between a question and a statement.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘When I was younger.’

  Despite the intensity of her conversation with Frances, Miranda’s ears must have been attuned to the sound of the word ‘dance’, because she broke off and turned to us.

  ‘When did you start dancing, Lara?’ she asked. I remembered that she had always had that calmly self-confident way of addressing adults by their Christian names. Another Helen trait, I assumed.

  ‘When I was three or four.’

  ‘Me too!’ she breathed. ‘And did you do ballet? Or modern? Or jazz?’

  ‘I did them all. It seems like I did nothing but dance after school and on Saturdays. I must have had days off, but all I remember is rushing from school to various studios. I got shoulder problems from lugging bags of dance gear around for years.’

  ‘I used to do ballet and jazz and tap,’ said Miranda, ‘but I had to stop my Tuesday ballet and Friday tap because Daddy’s at work. I only go on Saturdays now.’

  The corners of her mouth went tight, and I could see she wasn’t being sulky, just trying not to cry. I understood. Oh God, I understood. I remembered all too well the hierarchy of the dance studios. The girls who only danced on Saturdays were considered lightweights – not doing nearly enough to be taken seriously by the teachers or the three-or-four-times-a-week girls.

  ‘I’m sorry about that,’ I said. ‘That must have been hard.’ She nodded, and I suddenly found myself saying, ‘Did you dance up at St Augustine’s?’ Miranda nodded. ‘Frances goes to a ballet class there on a Tuesday too. I could take you as well, if you like. You could come home with Frances after school and I’ll take you up together.’

  Miranda’s eyes widened, and she looked over at Sam, her face contorted with pleading.

  ‘Oh no, I couldn’t possibly expect you to. . .’ he began. He didn’t want to be beholden to me. I understood. When you’re a single, working parent, it can feel like you’re always begging favours that you’ll have no way to repay.

  ‘It’s genuinely no bother at all,’ I said, and, leaning close to him, I added quietly, ‘Miranda’s influence might help Frances. She’s been asking me to let her give up because the class is too hard and she doesn’t have any friends there. If Miranda goes. . .’ I let my words hang for a while, and then a brainwave struck. ‘If I do Tuesday, could you drop Frances back at mine after the Saturday jazz class? I want to start taking Jonah to swimming lessons and I just can’t get the times to work.’

  ‘Of course!’ he said quickly. ‘Listen, are you sure about the ballet? I mean. . .’

  ‘Please, Dad,’ said Miranda fervently.

  ‘Of course I’m sure,’ I said. ‘What about Marguerite?’

  ‘She’ll be at after-school club,’ said Sam.

  ‘Will she be okay without Miranda there?’

  Simultaneously, Miranda said, ‘Yes,’ and Marguerite said, ‘No, I won’t.’

  Miranda shot a venomous look at her sister. ‘You little. . .’ she began.

  ‘I can take Marguerite too!’ I said quickly. ‘If she doesn’t mind sitting with me during the class.’

  ‘I don’t mind,’ said Marguerite, looking back at her drawing. ‘I went there before – loads. I play with my friend Isla. Mummy brings us both snacks.’

  Sam shot me a look at this casual, present-tense mention of Helen. I glanced away. If someone was going to correct Marguerite, it wasn’t going to be me.

  ‘I’m sure we can make it work,’ I said. ‘I know Miranda’s a talented dancer. If there’s a way to make sure she gets to her classes, I’m happy to help.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Sam, but I could see his assent was reluctant. I could have pressed the issue, but the waiter came to take our order. Was he reticent about my offer because he found it hard to accept help? Or because he didn’t want to entangle his family’s life with mine?

  Miranda cheered up immeasurably once we’d agreed about the dancing. She did her best ‘making conversation’, asking me all sorts of polite questions and being the picture of the perfectly behaved girl. I could see Sam watching her in wonderment. I guessed that maybe she hadn’t been easy at home lately. Nevertheless, it eased the stilted awkwardness of the interaction between Sam and me.

  When the food came, we all relaxed a little, and chat flowed more readily. Sam was on his third beer (or was it more? I was pretty sure he’d had at least one before we arrived. I hoped he wasn’t driving). He did seem to be less distracted. He laughed with the girls and made walrus tusks by putting his chopsticks inside his upper lip. Miranda groaned and rolled her eyes; clearly this was an old dad joke. But even the eye roll lacked conviction. She was clearly so happy at the prospect of dancing again that nothing could dampen her spirits.

  Sam tucked into his dinner with evident relish. I glanced at him and noticed how deftly he wielded his chopsticks.

  ‘You’ve had some practice at that,’ I said.

  ‘Hmm?’ He effortlessly scooped some rice into his mouth, then swallowed. ‘Yeah, I lived in Japan for a few months. If it’s the only way to eat, you gain some dexterity.’

  ‘You lived in Japan? When was that?’

  ‘Oh, years ago now.’

  Miranda, who was listening in, said, ‘Dad and Mummy used to travel all over the world.’

  I was momentarily confused, partly at hearing Miranda say ‘Mummy’. I’d never heard her say it before. And when had Sam and Helen found time to travel and live abroad for months at a time?

  But Sam was smiling at Miranda. ‘You’re right. We did.’

  ‘And when you came back from Japan, Mum was pregnant with me,’ said Miranda.

  ‘Indeed. And then along came you.’

  They shared a little secret smile. It was obviously a family catchphrase, often repeated. The penny dropped. Miranda wasn’t talking about Helen. She was talking about her real mother. Sam’s first wife, the one who died. It occurred to me I didn’t even know her name.

  The enormity of the losses that little family had suffered struck me so hard I put down my chopsticks and sat quietly for a second. Those poor little girls. To lose their mother before they were old enough to know her, and then to lose the only maternal figure they’d ever known. . . It didn’t even bear thinking about. Not to mention poor Sam. No wonder he was knocking back the beers. Someone else in his position might well be face down in a bucket of whisky. The fact that he kept going, kept working and functioning, was a miracle.

  After dinner, Sam insisted on ordering a taxi for Frances and me. He had had quite a lot to drink, so I was relieved he wasn’t driving the girls home – we were a five-minute walk from their house. As we stepped out of the restaurant, the taxi pulled up on the yellow line in front of us. The driver put on his hazard lights and was clearly impatient to get going.

  ‘Thanks for a lovely evening,’ I said, and I meant it. It had been strained at times, but I felt like we’d all managed to have a reasonable time in the end.

  ‘No, thank you,’ Sam said, and he took my arm and leaned in to kiss me goodbye. His lips, warm and firm, landed close to the corner of my mouth. He looked properly into my eyes for one brief, intense second and then stepped back. Frances and I climbed into the taxi and were whisked away down the high street.

  Sam

  I was actually quite drunk. No, scratch that, very drunk. I’d had a few beers at home before we went to the restaurant, and then quite a few more during the course of dinner. After so many years in the media industry, I’m used to drinking heavily and maintaining a facade of reasonably acceptable behaviour. I was competent, I remained upright and didn’t slur my words, but I w
as actually very drunk.

  I hardly remember getting the girls home. Marguerite was sleepy, so I carried her the last block or so and then upstairs. I let them skip their baths and got them to brush their teeth, pull on their pyjamas and fall into bed. Then I fetched another beer from the fridge and went through to the living room. I settled on the sofa without bothering to turn on the light.

  I drank the beer down in one long swallow. I should have brought through more than one, I thought idly. Now I’d have to get up and get another. But I didn’t move. I sat staring at the orange glow of the London night sky through the window. I hadn’t bothered to close the curtains either. I could see the silhouette of a tree outside. We were heading towards December and it had lost all its leaves. Its bare, jagged branches looked like clawed hands flung up in surprise outside the window. Marguerite had named winter trees ‘spike trees’ when she was two or three.

  Hark at me, a cynical voice said inside my head. Hark at me, going out for a polite suburban dinner with a hot woman and our various kids. I almost managed to make it look normal. Chatting about lifts to and from dance classes and passing the spring rolls, when all the time the rage was roiling inside me like great, black, oily waves. Because it was all so wrong. The whole bizarre, stilted situation. Because the woman sitting opposite me wasn’t Helen. Because my current account was so low, I had to put the dinner on my credit card, and I wouldn’t be able to pay off the balance this month because the girls needed new school shoes and I’d just had confirmation that there’d be no bonus from work this month. I took them out for a dinner I couldn’t afford to say thank you for one favour, and now she’d offered to do another one. I genuinely didn’t have the energy to get to know Lara, even though I was sure she was a perfectly lovely woman.

  And anyway, I found myself thinking, what’s the point? Our lives are going to become intertwined because we’re two single parents, so why wouldn’t we help each other out? But what’s the point of getting to know her, starting to sleep with her, which I’m sure will inevitably happen? What’s the point of our ‘falling in love’, dating, moving in together? It was all so pointless, along with everything else in my life right now. No wonder I’d got drunk.

  The night before had been a bad one. I’d had more than a few beers, and had stayed up too late, so I’d barely made it getting the girls to school. I felt so sick after I’d dropped them off that I actually had to go home and throw up. I cleaned myself up, but I felt so dreadful, I went into the kitchen to get something to eat before going to work. When I opened the fridge, there was only a tiny splash of milk left in the bottle. I knew I’d given the last of the cereal to the girls and the bread was mouldy. There was, however, one beautiful ice-cold bottle of beer lying on its side in the middle of the middle shelf. Like a gift. Before I could even think about it, I took it out, opened it and necked it. Yes, it was just past nine in the morning, but needs must. Instantly my head cleared. I went to the sink and rinsed my mouth out with water to get rid of the beery smell, and headed for the station. I’d be late for work, but at least I was feeling better.

  When I got in to work, there was a Post-it on my desk asking me to pop in and see Chris as soon as I arrived. I’d have liked time to get a coffee, sit down, get my bearings, but whoever had written the note had underlined ‘as soon’ in a firm, passive-aggressive way. I sighed. I suppose I had come in late, even for me. I got up and headed for Chris’s office, checking my reflection in the glass wall of the boardroom as I passed.

  Chris glanced up as I walked in, and his eyes took in my untucked, unironed shirt and unshaven chin.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘Didn’t have any meetings today. I know I’m a bit scruffy.’

  ‘Won’t you shut the door, Sam?’ he said. ‘And have a seat.’

  ‘Shut the door’ should have been a clue. Chris has this cool, egalitarian, open-door policy. We’re all supposed to be able to pop in and see him anytime. If the door is closed, something serious is going down.

  I settled myself opposite him. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Not a lot, to be frank.’ Chris is not one for small talk and he launched straight in. ‘I’ve been looking at your figures for this month, and frankly. . .’

  ‘They’re shit,’ I said. ‘I know. I’m sorry.’

  ‘They’re not shit, Sam, they’re non-existent. You’ve not brought in any new business this month at all. Not even a little leaflet campaign.’

  ‘I’ve got a couple of big deals about to break. . .’ I began.

  ‘Is one of them with Bright Time?’ he asked. ‘They emailed me this morning to say they’ve been waiting three weeks for you to get them a competitor analysis they asked for. They can’t wait any longer, so they’ve given the project to their other agency.’

  Fuck, I thought. I knew something was falling between the cracks. I’d started the competitor analysis weeks ago but had got distracted.

  ‘Jesus, Sam,’ Chris said. ‘Don’t make me be the bastard here. We go back a long way. And you know how fond I was of Helen. . .’ His eyes slid away from mine then. He had the decency to look guilty. ‘But you’re putting me in a hell of a position. You keep dropping balls, not being here when you should be. . .’

  ‘I’m looking after my kids alone,’ I said. ‘This isn’t easy, Chris.’

  ‘I know, Sam. I know. Fuck, I really know. I feel awful doing this. But we’re struggling here. Times are lean and we are falling well short of our forecast for this quarter.’

  Dear God, I thought. Was he about to let me go?

  But he carried on. ‘I have to give you a warning, because of the Bright Time thing. The board will have my nuts if I don’t. Just. . . pull yourself together, okay? I need you to do that.’

  I almost laughed. Chris had always been emotionally stunted, but that was blunt, even for him. I think he realized how heartless he sounded because he rose to reach across his desk and pat my shoulder in an awkward gesture of kindness. As he got closer, I saw his nose wrinkle and when he sat back down his expression was quizzical and suddenly cold. Obviously my drink of water hadn’t entirely rinsed the booze smell off me.

  So here I was, on the bones of my arse financially, contemplating starting a relationship with a woman I liked only slightly, and very possibly about to lose my job. What a fuck-up. Without thinking, I leaned forward, held the beer bottle by its neck and smacked it hard against the edge of the coffee table. It broke with a muted, ringing crack. Not loud – not loud enough to wake the girls. I looked down and in the half-light I could see tiny, bright shards of glass glinting on the carpet. I was too drunk to clean it up. And as I stared down, I saw a dark drop fall from my hand and spread in the pale pile of the carpet. There was a jagged gash in the skin between my thumb and forefinger. I’m not good with blood. I felt a sudden surge of nausea. I stood up, a little unsteady on my feet. I wobbled but managed to lurch to the bathroom and slam the door before I vomited up a nasty mess of beer and Chinese food while my gashed hand steadily dripped blood on to the floor.

  When the retching was over, I wiped the floor and toilet bowl clean, flushed, and then sat with my back resting against the bath, my hand swathed in toilet paper. My head throbbed painfully and for the first time I realized how sore my hand was. I gingerly unwrapped it. I didn’t think it would need stitches. If it did, it was too bad; it wasn’t as if I could go to A & E now anyway, not with the girls asleep and no one to look after them. I stood slowly and looked at myself in the mirror. I was a mess and no mistake. Face puffy and blotchy, hair plastered to my forehead with sweat. I washed my face and brushed my teeth. The only consolation was that I was at least sober now. I took the first-aid box down from the bathroom cabinet – Helen had put it together, so it was still well stocked with plasters, wound wipes and gauze. I clumsily dressed my hand and tided up the bathroom.

  I went through to the living room, painstakingly cleaned up the broken glass and scrubbed the blood out of the carpet. I used the little handheld hoover but was terrified I mig
ht have missed some bits of glass, so I moved the rug to cover that part of the carpet. Marguerite liked to kneel there and watch TV while she ate her cereal. I thought about one of her plump little pale knees being pierced by a shard of glass I’d left there after drunkenly smashing a beer bottle.

  The tears came unexpectedly and with great force. I made it to my bedroom, shut the door, lay down on the unmade bed and sobbed and sobbed, burying my face in the pillow to muffle the sound. This was rock bottom. It had to be. I was incapable of helping myself. I needed someone to help me and soon, or everything was going to come crashing down.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Miranda

  Last Christmas, we put up our Christmas tree on the first Sunday in Advent. It was a real tree, and Helen decorated it with big tartan bows she made herself, and silver balls, with smaller ones at the top and larger ones at the bottom. There were six presents each for Marguerite and me, and they were all beautifully wrapped and under the tree weeks before. There were also loads of presents for everyone else – teachers, friends, even my ballet teacher and the dustmen and the librarians. They were all perfectly wrapped as well, put under the tree and then given out.

  Last Christmas, we had Christmas dinner at our house. We always had Christmas dinner at our house, and Granny and Uncle Tim were each allowed to bring something for everyone to eat, but Helen was in charge. It was always the same. Helen would get up early – even earlier than Marguerite and me – to get the turkey in the oven and set the table. And once we were up, we’d open our presents and then go to church. We’d get back and Helen would go into the kitchen while we played with our new presents, and then Granny and Grandpa and Uncle Tim would come with more presents and Uncle Tim’s famous gammon and Granny’s Christmas pudding.

  It isn’t happening like that this year. This year, we nearly didn’t get a tree at all. I think Dad forgot, and when I asked him, he said there was no point in getting a tree because we’d be at Granny’s house for present opening anyway. But then Marguerite cried like the giant baby she is. I normally get irritated at that, but this time it worked because it made Dad feel bad, and when he picked us up from after-school club the next day, he had a plastic tree from Tesco and a bag of baubles and tinsel.