The Stepmother

  “Of course not. Silly me. Big white dress, then, I guess?”

  “Somehow I doubt Tessa King is the big-white-dress type.”

  “Second wives rarely are. More wine?”

  “Are you allowed?”

  “My ex-husband’s getting married,” I said. “Sod the points.”

  I refilled my glass and topped up Honor. She watched me. When my marriage had been failing, Honor was the person who had tried to talk to me about it. She was an astute woman and that rare breed of mother who could love her son and still see his faults. I should have confided in her then. But I couldn’t. I still couldn’t. “Are you finding this Tessa thing difficult?”

  I sat back in the chair. A little bit of truth would make the lie sound convincing. “What I find difficult is that no one’s telling me anything. That makes me feel weird. I don’t like being kept at arm’s length and I don’t need protecting.”

  “What makes you think you’re the one being protected?”

  I blinked at my ex-mother-in-law.

  “Do you have any idea what a daunting prospect it must be to follow in your footsteps?”

  “Me? Overweight, overwrought, over-the-hill me?” I laughed. “I don’t think so.”

  Honor folded her arms in front of her chest. “Shall I tell you what we see?”

  I wanted to say no. Sometimes it was easier to believe the bad things.

  “I see a woman who is bringing up three children pretty much single-handed. Jimmy’s wonderful with the girls, but he spoils them—”

  “So would I if I only had them every other weekend.”

  “Maybe. But it means the nuts and bolts of it are down to you and you alone. The organizing, the arranging, the picking up and dropping off, every meal, the washing, and that’s before any of the discipline stuff. You have three lovely girls, you must be doing something right.”

  I stood up and went to the sink. I brushed away a tear. “You’re describing pretty much any mother I know. Married or not, the buck stops with us. I can’t imagine you got much help from Peter.”

  “It was different then. The pace of life was much slower, expectations lower. Jimmy and Luke spent hours playing football in the street. Couldn’t do that now, could you? I think you’re under much more pressure than I ever was. Motherhood has become some sort of competitive profession. I’ve collected the girls. I’ve seen the club lists, chess, Mandarin, debating! All the women look immaculate. It’s terrifying and I’m not easily terrified.”

  I leaned against the sink. “You know why we do it?”

  Honor shrugged. “Why?”

  “Because deep down we don’t value what we do. If I really believed that being efficient, sewing hundreds of school scrunchies, helping out on school trips was an achievement, I wouldn’t feel like such a waste of space. I’m just as educated as my children will be. And I do nothing.”

  “Weren’t you listening to me? What you do is amazing. You have wonderful children.”

  “So do my friends who work. Trust me, I’ve been waiting for that not to be the case.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  I finished my second glass of wine. “I’m not as altruistic as you think. Actually, I’m not as nice as you think.”

  “Bea—”

  “It’s true. All that worthy crap is peppered with a terrible hope that somehow my presence at the cake stall will make my children happier than those of the mothers who aren’t there because they’re still at the coal face. There’s nothing scarier than discovering their kids aren’t distressed and, in fact, the children who don’t have any balance are yours.”

  “I had no idea you felt this way.”

  I bit my lip. “Neither did I.” I went to the fridge. “Fancy another?”

  “Better make it a small one. I’ve got to drive home.”

  “Well, I’m not going anywhere,” I said, topping up Honor’s glass and filling my own.

  “Has all this been brought on by Jimmy getting married?”

  I thought for a while. “Partly, I suppose. My daughters are going to have a stepmother who is a better role model than I am. That sticks in the throat a little.”

  “Single, childless, and nearly forty. You want that for your daughters?”

  “Independent, working, old enough to know what she’s letting herself in for. It won’t be twenty years of unpaid servitude for Tessa King, I tell you that. And she isn’t single, childless, and forty. She’s soon to be married, will have three lovely stepdaughters, no war wounds, and a great relationship. I’ll be the one who’s single, childless, and, God damn it, nearly fifty.”

  “You are not.”

  “I will be. They’ll grow up very soon and then Tessa and I will be equals. We’ll share an adult relationship with each of them. Eventually childhood will be forgotten. What will all those scrunchies do for me then?”

  “But the base, who they are—”

  “Is who they were always going to be unless we did something terrible. Well, I’ve done one of the most terrible things you can do to children. I took them away from their father. Between her and me, she’s the one who’s looking pretty amazing. And the annoying thing is, it’s no more than your lovely son deserves.”

  Honor reached over and took my hand. “You are the mother of my grandchildren, Tessa King or no Tessa King. Nothing will change that. I love you like a daughter and I thank you for them every day and I will continue to do so. I know this is hard. Maybe you’re right and it will get harder. But, please, never, ever tell me that what you do is of no value. It is invaluable, Bea. Invaluable. Do you hear me?” I couldn’t speak. So I drank instead.

  I HEARD FOOTSTEPS ON THE stairs and dragged myself off the floor in a hurry. I was back on the sofa when Amber came in. “You okay, Mum?”

  I smiled at her innocently. “Hmm?”

  “I thought I heard a crash.”

  “Must have been next door. You should be in bed.”

  “I was,” said Amber, watching me closely.

  “I’ll come and give you a kiss.”

  “What are you watching?”

  “There’s nothing on. I thought I’d watch a video.”

  She stood looking at me, then peered over the sofa to get a better view of the TV. I noticed too late that I’d left the cover open on the floor.

  “Please, Mummy, don’t watch that again.”

  “What do you mean ‘again’? I thought you must have had it out. Getting some tips for your best-man speech.”

  “Did Gran tell you about that?”

  “She shouldn’t have needed to. You should have.” She looked at her feet. “Amber?”

  “I didn’t want to upset you.”

  “I wouldn’t be upset.”

  She looked at me. Hearing my words, believing them, because she knew I could be trusted, but sensing a trap regardless. The ground seemed safe, but…She hesitated.

  I lured her in. “It’s very exciting. A real privilege. And very grown-up.”

  “Daddy asked me,” she said suddenly, beaming broadly, bursting to tell me her plans. “It’s almost the most important role on the day, he said. I’ve got to carry the rings. Usually a boy does it, and they have pockets, but I want to wear that blue dress from Harrods. I’ve already asked Granny if she’d buy it. She said yes, but it’s got no pockets and, um, so, I was thinking maybe a handbag to match, and shoes.”

  “Were you really?”

  “To carry the rings.”

  “Daddy has already got a ring.”

  She didn’t pick up the danger signs. Neither did I.

  “And I’m going to sing my speech. I’ve got a friend helping me with it and he’s brilliant. I think he’s going to be a songwriter and I could sing his songs. He has all these big thoughts, you know, about the world and poverty. He’s so refreshing.”

  Refreshing? You’re fourteen! How refreshed did you need to be? “You’re going to sing a song about poverty?” I said, through an aching jaw.

  Amber laughe
d. She thought I was joking. “No, Mum. I’m going to sing about Daddy and what a brilliant guy he is. He’s so kind and funny and he’s just the best dad. All my friends say so. I tell you, Clara’s dad barely speaks. He’d never play dress-up and sing.”

  “Daddy does that?”

  “Well, he did. Until…” Amber’s beautiful face frowned with confusion. I knew what she was thinking: Where did that happy feeling go? Alarm bells were ringing. She was learning to read the early-warning signals, but still wasn’t sure what to do with them.

  I jumped in. “Until Tessa came along. It’s okay, Amber, you can not like her, you know. It’s difficult to share sometimes.”

  “I do like her, Mum. That’s okay too, isn’t it? I’m allowed? Shouldn’t we be glad that she makes Daddy happy? That’s good, isn’t it?”

  My anger rose like lava. “Good?” I laughed meanly. I could see Amber feeling the cracks underfoot. She tried to leave. I wanted to let her, but the anger put a mallet in my hand, and all I wanted to do was smash those cracks until the house came down. “Jesus, you’re naive. Happy! Refreshing! Good! You have no idea what the real world is like.” I laughed again.

  If there was terror on her face, I couldn’t see it. The red mist of alcohol had descended. I was in a Baskervillian fog and I couldn’t see the beasts. Or the damage they could cause. It was the laugh that scared my daughter most. The mealy, mean laugh, that condescending, ugly sound that echoed my drunken, irrational thoughts about my beautiful child. I turned back to the television screen. “No, Amber,” I said, “it’s not good. It’s not good at all.” I picked up the remote control from where it had fallen. From where I had fallen.

  “Please, Mummy, don’t watch that again.”

  “Go to bed, little girl,” I said.

  Consumed with irrational anger, I rewound the tape and watched our pristine white invitation emerge on the screen. Mr. and Mrs. Harold Frazier request the pleasure of your company at the marriage of their daughter Belinda (Christ, how I’d fought that, fought and failed, as usual). No one knew me as Belinda, I lamented, but I didn’t understand that my wedding had nothing to do with me and was, in fact, all about my mother showing the rest of us how it should be done.

  I have to give it to him: Jimmy was a saint. We’d lie entwined at night, bitching about her ridiculous, snobby ways, and how we would stand up to every stupid request she was making. And then, the following day, we’d acquiesce again. Maybe it pushed us together. Whatever my mother did was irrelevant. Because as long as we were there and said “I will” at the right time, what else mattered? We were so young. We knew so little.

  Now I was laughing at the camera. My hair in rollers. My nails drying. Wearing a green silk kimono, which had worn so thin now it was translucent in places. I was holding up my nails, my hands about fifteen inches apart. And I’m laughing because Suzie, another friend I no longer see, was asking me whether that was how “big” Jimmy was. We were using my dad’s old eight-millimeter camera. It had long since been transferred lovingly to video by Jimmy but, thankfully, hadn’t lost any of the slipping, skipping quality of the old home movies.

  I fast-forwarded to the wedding. My dad. Alive again. Holding my hand. Holding me up. It was only when I’d got out of the car that it had hit me. I was getting married. Nine months of painstaking minutiae, of sugared almonds and placements, of hemlines and hors d’oeuvres, and only now did it register, one foot on the gravel, that I was going to a place from which I would not return.

  I looked at my bare hand. Divorce or no divorce, I’d been right about that. I still had not returned. I looked at the girl I had been. Her tiny waist, her shiny black hair, her bright, bright blue eyes. Immaculate ivory shoes, a dress so pinched I could barely breathe, a dress that only Amber could wear now, a dress I kept hidden in a vacuum-packed bag because of the grotesque comparison it made when I held it up against my postpartum silhouette. It had two hundred silk-covered buttons from the neckline to the end of the train. And Jimmy had undone every single one. Slowly, methodically, each one accompanied by a kiss, stripping me down to what was finally, rightfully, his. And I had been laid bare.

  What had that day done for me—to me? It had given me my children. My wonderful, beautiful children, whom I loved beyond comprehension, whom I loved beyond breath, for whom I would gladly die and die again. Whose sleeping bodies I stood over and cried because I was looking at perfection. Whose chubby baby fingers had gripped mine, who had depended on me for life, and a life it had cost me. I stared at the television screen—where had I gone? Where had that smile gone?

  I watched my perfect form turn into the church doorway and be sucked into the darkness inside. The camera did not follow me in. That had been deemed inappropriate by my mother. The film cut and a second later I emerged a wife. I paused it, and stared at my shuddering form. Was there a difference already? A tiny atomic shift? Had I shrunk? Had Jimmy grown?

  Who giveth this woman to be married to this man? I hadn’t thought of the implication of the traditional words. My mother had wanted them. Said it was tacky to have anything else and, once again, we had acquiesced. If I had been thinking about the implication of the words, maybe I would have fought harder. But I wasn’t thinking about anything beyond the day. Frankly, I wasn’t thinking at all. I loved Jimmy. What did the words matter? So my father had stepped up and given me away.

  What was the difference between the girl who had gone in and the one who had come out seconds later? I knew the answer. The one who came out had been given away. I wasn’t even allowed to do that for myself. We think we are so in control of our futures. We think we are in the driving seat of our lives. We believe our decisions are our own. But it isn’t true. We are molded, manipulated, forged, and formed by society and expectations and biology—especially biology. Our biggest strength is our womanhood. It is also a profound weakness. The species needs to feed off us to survive. We die so that they may live. Procreation falls to us. Men might give up part of themselves to their offspring, but we offer up our whole. We give everything we can and they owe us nothing. They didn’t ask to be born. We did that. Jimmy and I thought we were making a decision to start a family, but that outcome had been put into motion before I was born. I had eggs before I had eyelashes. In my mother’s womb I already carried my unborn children. All of them. The three I had given birth to and the one I had killed.

  I threw the remote control at the television set. What did I know? What the hell had that stupid, naive girl known? Nothing. No wonder she had made mistakes. The anger slipped away, the hole reopened, and regret flooded in.

  “I’m sorry,” I sobbed. “I’m sorry…I’m sorry…I’m sorry…I’m so, so sorry.”

  TO MAKE IT UP TO the girls, Jimmy had called me and asked if they could stay with him on Friday night. I said no at first, it was too disruptive, but he told me Amber had rung and asked specifically if they could come to stay. It was fear that had made me change my mind. The fear of a dream you can’t quite remember. The plan was that he’d take the kids to Faith and Luke’s on Saturday morning and I would collect them from there at lunchtime.

  I didn’t quite stick to the plan. It wasn’t yet eleven when I arrived at their lovely double-fronted house in East Acton. “Sorry,” I said to Faith. “The house was too quiet.”

  Faith laughed loudly, which I didn’t understand. “I bet. Come on in. You look amazing. I can’t believe how much weight you’ve lost.”

  Funny how hearing that wasn’t making me feel as good as I’d thought it would. I was winning the battle with food, but it was an empty victory. All my willpower went into denying myself solids. Which left me dangerously open to liquids. Once again I’d woken on the sofa with a throbbing head and the taste of death in my mouth. It always happened when I was alone. The emptiness consumed me. The bitter regret. The acrid self-loathing.

  “The kids are in the garden. Coffee?”

  “Love some.” I followed Faith to her immaculate kitchen, where Charlie’s artwork hung fra
med on the wall, alongside his week’s itinerary and meal plan. “We’ve had a giant trampoline put in. Can’t get them off it,” said Faith, putting fresh coffee in the pot. “Lulu’s pretty good.”

  “Maybe it’s the circus for her. Her reading’s still atrocious.”

  “I think Amber’s more likely, isn’t she? After her dramatic running-away performance.”

  “What?”

  “Last night.”

  “I’m getting a bit fed up about not being told anything. What’s happened now?”

  “Haven’t you seen Amber?”

  “No, Faith. She’s here.”

  Faith was beginning to look deeply concerned. “She’s not. She went home.”

  “When?”

  “Last night. I thought you were being sarcastic about it being quiet at home.”

  “She stayed with Jimmy. They’re all here.”

  She grabbed the phone off the wall. “Call Amber now. She isn’t with him. They had a fight.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Calling Jimmy.”

  Panic was swelling in my chest. I was racking my brains. Had she come home? Would I have known? “Bea, call her. Jimmy, hi, it’s Faith. You said Amber didn’t stay with you last night, right?”

  I was frantically pressing buttons on my mobile and listening, trying to remember to breathe. I pressed the wrong button. “Shit!” I tried again. “It’s ringing,” I said.

  “She left the flat at about nine last night,” Faith said.

  “They let her leave without calling me?”

  Faith shrugged.

  The ringing in my ear ceased. “Yeah?”

  “Amber, is that you? Thank God…Where are you?”

  “Home,” she replied.

  I ignored the surly tone and glanced at Faith. “She’s at home.”

  “It’s all right, Jimmy, she’s at home. Yes, I’ll tell her.”

  “What happened?” I asked.

  Silence.

  “Amber?”

  I looked at Faith again, confused. “I’ll tell you,” she mouthed.

  “Stay there. I need to talk to your father. I have absolutely no idea what’s going on.”