I’ve been practising what I want to say to Alex since speaking to Julie earlier. And yet not a single word of my well-prepared speech comes to me now. I’m going to have to wing it, knowing that if I don’t say the right thing, I’ll provoke him into a rage.
‘Are you … you’re not leaving me, are you?’ I wasn’t expecting this. He looks like he’s about to cry. He has suddenly become weak and I have the upper hand.
‘No, Alex, of course not.’
‘You promised you’d never leave me.’
I reach for his hand, but it’s clenched tightly into a fist and I let go quickly, as if touching him has burnt me. ‘Alex, my father is ill, as you know.’ Damn! I shouldn’t have said that last bit. It sounds like a dig. ‘He’s had a stroke, as Julie told you on the phone …’ I’ve done it again. He’ll think I’m criticising him.
I pause. I need to do better than this. I need to avoid anything that might come over as reproachful. Alex is an explosive obstacle to be circumvented gingerly, like a land mine.
‘I know you wanted to protect me, Alex,’ I resume. The lines I rehearsed are coming back to me now. ‘But I do need to be there for my dad. I’m sure you understand. You’re always there for your mum.’
I pause again, hoping he’s thinking about how he looked after Sandy when she fell. ‘I’m going to Somerset for a few days,’ I continue. ‘I’m taking Chloe. I’ll ring or text every evening, like you do when you’re away.’
For a while, Alex looks at me and I get the impression he’s looking through me. His face is still contorted and I have no idea what he’s thinking or even if he has taken in anything I’ve just said.
Then he runs his hand through his curls and says, ‘OK, but on one condition.’
I bite my tongue to stop myself from protesting that this is unconditional. I need to hear him out.
‘Stay here tonight and leave tomorrow morning. It’s a long drive. If you set off now, you’ll arrive in the wee hours.’ It’s one of my mother’s expressions that Alex must have picked up from me. I don’t say that was the idea. I wanted to avoid traffic. I wanted to avoid drama and confrontation. I hoped Chloe would sleep for the whole journey this way.
Not leaving until tomorrow will mean not being there when Dad comes out of hospital in the morning. Staying at the Old Vicarage tonight will mean unpacking one of my bags and all of Chloe’s stuff. It may mean traffic jams. But as Julie often reminds me, marriage is about compromise.
‘OK,’ I agree, hoping that Alex isn’t using this to buy time. Maybe by tomorrow morning he’ll have come up with something to stop me going at all.
It’s not until I come off the M5 the next day that I relax. I really thought, right up to the last minute, that Alex would pull out some trick so that I couldn’t go. Instead, we had a lovely evening and Alex held me in his arms all night long. Glancing at the lush green hills rolling away from me towards Bridgwater, I wonder how I could have suspected that he would try to prevent me from returning here.
Before Chloe came along, I wanted to come back for a week or so to put in some KIT days – Keeping in Touch days – at university. I wanted to see some of my PhD students and stay in close contact with my head of department during my maternity leave. It would also have been a good excuse to visit my family and friends in Somerset.
Alex wouldn’t hear of it. I tried to argue that I could defer my return to work after the baby was born if I put in a few days at the university, but it wasn’t negotiable.
Somehow I got it into my head that Alex didn’t want me to see my family and friends. But now, reflecting on all that as I drive along the Bristol Road, past Minehead where I used to live, I think I’ve got it wrong. I feel bad for underestimating Alex. While I was pregnant, he didn’t want me to work or travel, by train or by car, and at the moment he thinks I need his help – and his mother’s help, too, clearly. I don’t, but I can see that he’s only looking out for me.
A few miles further along the A39, I drive past the ornate sign at the side of the road, welcoming me to Porlock, where my dad still lives in the house Julie, Louisa and I grew up in. For once, the sky is almost as blue as it is on the sign. My heart starts to thump in excitement, even though I haven’t come here in ideal circumstances.
I take a turning just after The Lorna Doone Hotel and, opening my window, I inhale the fresh salty air through my nose. I drive through a labyrinth of lanes, each one narrower than the previous one, and then up a steep hill. At the top of it, checking there is no one behind me, I stop the car for a minute to admire the sea view.
I took the beauty of this area for granted, I realise. I never appreciated how beautiful this village was when I was growing up here, feeling at times walled in by the hills of Exmoor on three sides and the sea on the other. I feel so small and unimportant in such a vast expanse of beauty that now I wonder how I ever felt enclosed here.
Now I’ve moved away and come back everything around me seems at once familiar and different. I know this view; I’ve seen it so many times that I can visualise almost every detail, even with my eyes closed. I know this place; I know these roads like the back of my hand. But I don’t feel I belong here. I’d like to, but it’s no longer my home and I don’t think you can ever find again exactly what you’ve left behind.
I feel nostalgic and homesick, but my longing is for the past, a time when my mother and my sister were part of my life, and not reduced to painful memories. There’s a word for this in Irish Gaelic, my mother once told me. Uaigneas. Melancholy and wistfulness for the past. The picturesque setting somehow only serves to accentuate my grief. I put the car into gear and drive down the hill. The very last leg of the journey now.
I park in the road in front of my dad’s house and behind my sister’s car, deciding to leave my bags in the car for now. Before I even undo my seatbelt, I send a text to Alex, as promised, letting him know we’ve arrived safely. Best to do that before I forget.
As I push Chloe in her pram towards the front door, I notice how unkempt the front garden looks. My dad used to mow the lawn regularly. The petunias in the hanging baskets either side of the door are wilting, too. That’s not like Dad. Any trace of my earlier excitement is now replaced with concern about my father’s health. I feel guilty for not ringing Dad more often since I’ve been living in Grasmere. I never really know what to say when I call, but that’s no excuse.
Opening the door without knocking, I hear Julie’s voice from inside the house.
‘Hello,’ I call, lifting Chloe out of the pram and leaving it in the porch. I nearly shout, I’m home, but instead I add, ‘It’s Chloe and me.’
‘We’re in the lounge,’ my sister calls back.
My father is sitting in his favourite armchair with a rug over his lap despite the warm weather. He looks just the same as the last time I saw him, which wasn’t long ago, but I expected to be shocked by his appearance and I’m so glad I’m not. A smile fixed on his face as ever, he reaches for his granddaughter. I’ll have to wait my turn. In the meantime, Jet greets me, although his welcome is less enthusiastic than usual. He thumps his tail on the floor and rolls over lazily for me to tickle his belly instead of jumping up and attempting to lick me to death.
I leave Chloe with Dad, as Julie leads the way into the kitchen, ostensibly to make tea, but really to give the two of us some privacy.
‘When did Dad have his stroke?’ I ask.
‘The day I got back from the Lake District. I didn’t tell you at first because he begged me not to.’ That’s typical of Dad. ‘He thought you had enough on your plate with Chloe being fractious and all. But I thought you should know and, well, I hoped you could help out a bit. I used up nearly all my leave coming to see you, unfortunately.’
‘Oh, Julie, I do wish you’d told me before.’
‘Listen, it’s no big deal. It was a minor stroke. Dad’s had an MRI scan and he’s taking anticoagulants. The main thing is there’s no permanent damage. You know Dad, he insisted on being discharged as
soon as possible.’
‘So he’s on the mend?’
‘Yes, but there’s still a slight risk of him having another stroke. It’s only been four days. It’s way too soon for him to come home, really.’
Julie, in full nurse mode, then proceeds to outline all the symptoms and tells me exactly what to do if Dad should have a stroke while I’m caring for him. I can feel the panic written on my face and Julie must see it because she reassures me that it’s very unlikely to come to that.
The first few days go by in a blur. I walk Jet, look after Chloe, look after Dad, eat, sleep, repeat. Dad says he feels well, and indeed he looks on form, but Julie has insisted he must rest and so I make sure he does.
Every day, I send a text to Alex, as promised, and every evening I phone him and leave him a message when he doesn’t answer. The few replies he does send to my text messages are laconic. They leave me with the impression that he’s determined not to strike up a conversation. ‘Hope your dad is better soon’ rather than ‘How’s your dad doing?’ for example. Or ‘Love to Chloe’ and no mention of me. To begin with, I’m annoyed. But then I just feel sad. It’s his busy season and life is getting in our way.
Each time I think about our emails and texts when we fell in love last year, my eyes threaten to brim over with tears. I miss Alex so badly. I have a visceral craving for him, a basic need for him to make me feel whole. Everything was fine when I left the Old Vicarage, or so I’d thought, but I can’t reach Alex from here. He’s not nasty; he’s not even rude. He’s just not there. But I realise I’ve been missing the Alex I fell for even when I’m with him. He’s not always there then, either, and he’s certainly not there for me.
One morning, after texting Alex and getting no answer, I go on Facebook. I posted some photos of Chloe just after we brought her home, but I hardly go on Facebook anymore. I rarely have my computer on these days for one thing, and I can’t usually be bothered to do it from my phone.
I used to spend a lot of time on here, though, checking out Alex’s wall, hungry for every single titbit of information about him I could come by. I would spend ages looking at his photos, zooming in on his handsome face. I would try to find out all about his friends. I needed to know who had commented on his posts, who these people were who shared in his everyday life while, unable to be by his side, I could only watch from the sidelines.
Out of habit, I check to see if Alex is on Facebook, too. We would sometimes send each other messages via Facebook, batting words back and forth like a tennis ball. The green light by his name is on. I fire off a quick ‘I miss you’, but he doesn’t reply. Instead, the green light next to his name disappears. I frown, wondering if he’s trying to avoid me.
I haven’t looked at his wall for ages. He seems to post every day, as he did before, and sometimes more than once. Alex is very concerned with his appearance. That’s immediately clear from the number of photos of himself he has published and the look-at-me captions. He has always done this. But looking at this now, it bothers me.
Nowadays, when the internet comes with any number of free disguises, you can promote any image of yourself you like; you can create a false persona and pretend to be someone you’re not. And yet so many people choose to share the most humdrum things about their lives, like photos of their dinner or their pets. That baffles me, but I also find it reassuring. Most people’s lives aren’t any more or less exciting than my own.
At the other end of the scale, are people like Alex, who cultivate their images with numerous selfies and other photos of themselves as well as with carefully worded posts. At first sight, Alex comes over as brilliant, beautiful and enviable.
But on closer examination, he appears to look down his nose at a lot of things and a lot of people. He also seems to be an expert on a wide range of topics. Is this recent, or did I just not notice it before? For a moment, I wonder if I’m on someone else’s Facebook page, but I take another look at the profile picture – a fit suntanned man wearing a short, tight-fitting wetsuit. Despite the hat and goggles, I can see it’s definitely Alex.
I start to read his posts. Some of it would be amusing if he wasn’t being so scathing, but he seems to criticise everyone and everything. We’ve never discussed politics, and yet he’s censorious of both Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn, not to mention Diane Abbott. He has no end of things to say about Brexit and its aftermath. He can’t abide breaststrokers in his lane at the swimming pool any more than ‘runtards’ at his marathons. He also has it in for Ed Sheeran, the French, The Guardian, The Voice, and vegetarians and vegans. And that list is far from exhaustive.
I scroll down Alex’s posts to the time when I first got in touch with him after a gap of twenty years. He kept cropping up, making comments on mutual friends’ posts and in my ‘People You May Know’ notifications, and so, curious to know what my school crush had become, I sent him a friend request. I reread some of my comments on his posts, seemingly innocent remarks with an in-joke that only he would get, or congratulations on his competitions. I remember how proud I felt.
There are no photos of the two of us, not even on our wedding day. In fact, Alex hasn’t added any information about his relationship status. Not for the first time, I feel insignificant, as if I don’t exist for Alex. But then I reason that there are no photos of Chloe either. Or of Poppy and Violet, come to think of it. Alex just likes to keep his private life private.
I scroll back a few months before we were together. There were fewer rants at that time. Fewer posts altogether. And then I see her name. Nicola Todd. My heart stops dead for a beat or two, just as it did when I read the dedication in the book about the triathlete that she gave Alex. I can still see the words in my mind. To Alex. With all my love, always. Nicola. X. It has to be her. She must be an ex-girlfriend, but he has never mentioned her by name. He may well have talked about her, though – he talked about his exes a lot until I got upset.
I click on her name. But her privacy settings are on ‘Friends Only’. I can only see her profile picture, which is a picture of her from the side, taken when she wasn’t looking at the camera. She has long dark hair and she is gazing at something only she can see behind the photographer. It’s not a great photo – it’s a little blurred when I zoom in – but it’s good enough for me to see that I’ve never met her.
Something about it disturbs me, but I can’t put my finger on exactly what it is. I stare at it, trying to pinpoint what has stirred some hazy memory, but even the memory itself is out of my reach.
As I try to work out what’s troubling me, Julie, Daniel and the boys burst in. I didn’t know they were coming and the noise they bring with them, the boys bickering and Julie shouting at them, makes me jump.
‘Shhh,’ I urge, putting my phone down on the arm of the sofa, ‘Dad’s having a nap.’
I stand up and hold my arms out to catch my nephews as they run to greet me, nearly bowling me over in the process.
‘We thought seeing as you’ve been caring for Dad for the last few days, you might like a break,’ Julie says, pecking me on the cheek. ‘Do you want to get out for a bit while we take over?’
Daniel suggests I leave Chloe with them, but she has got noticeably calmer as the week as gone on, and I’m enjoying her company.
‘Oscar and Archie will be cooking dinner this evening if you’d like to join us,’ Daniel says, holding up a shopping bag, ‘but if you have other plans, that’s OK, too.’
‘No, I’ll be back in time,’ I say, smiling. ‘That sounds great!’
I fetch my handbag and a cardigan and I get Chloe’s stuff together. Jet wags his tail, thinking he’s going for walkies.
I haven’t made any plans. But there is something I need to do while I’m here.
Chapter 17
~
It’s usually a fifteen-minute drive from my dad’s house to Minehead, but it’s the weekend, and the good weather and Butlins have attracted families in their droves, so it takes me a bit longer. I find a space to leave the
car in a side street and I walk to The Parks with Chloe in the pram, past a playground where a boy is pushing a younger girl, his little sister, perhaps, on a swing. There are children on the merry-go-round, too. I can hear their squeals from here.
‘Higher!’
‘Faster!’
‘Stop! I wanna get off!’
I stand still for a moment and watch. The boy has stopped pushing the girl now. The swing still goes up and down, but the highs are becoming ever lower. The merry-go-round continues to spin, though, going round and round at a sickening pace. Up and down, round and round. The story of my married life so far, I think, walking on.
When I get there, I stand on the pavement opposite for several minutes, trying to pluck up the courage to cross the road and go in. I think I’m going to bottle out and go back to the car, but then I take a deep breath and press the button at the pelican crossing. It’s now or never.
I push open the narrow door and walk in backwards, pulling the pram in behind me. When I turn round, she looks shocked to see me, but she quickly recovers her composure. Her hair is unusually tidy and she’s beautifully made-up. I’m amused to see she’s still wearing a hoodie and her Doctor Marten boots as always, her only concession to summer being that she has swapped her jeans for a short skirt.
She puts down her scissors and comb, saying something into the ear of the middle-aged lady whose hair she was doing, and then she comes towards me. There’s a moment’s hesitation before Hannah gives me a big hug and for a second or two it’s as if nothing happened, as if I never left, as if we’re still best friends.
‘How are you?’ She doesn’t pause for me to answer. ‘Ooh, let me see Chloe!’ She peers into the pram, where my daughter is sleeping.
I watch Hannah as she gently strokes Chloe’s cheek. She frowns and I wonder why. Perhaps she’s worried Kevin can’t have kids. There was nothing wrong with either of us, the doctors said; it was just one of those things. I hope the chemistry works better for them.
He Will Find You Page 17