*
I’m back in the village just after seven.
‘D’you wanna cup of tea?’ Saul asks, leaping down the stairs as I get in the door.
‘You’re a sweetheart. That’s exactly what I want. How did you know?’
He shrugs and I want to hug him, tell him how he lifts my heart. How I love him more than words can say.
‘How was your day?’ I ask instead, pulling off my boots.
‘Shit.’
My mood dips.
He switches the kettle on, puts a teabag in a mug for me.
‘Not getting better?’
‘It was school. So what d’you expect? I don’t really want to talk about it now, Mum. What’s for supper?’
‘You OK with pizza? I’m off out tonight. With Jules.’
‘Sure. Pizza’s cool.’
‘The dough should be ready. Oh, and I got you some of that nice mozzarella from Carlo’s.’
‘You could’ve just got a bought one,’ Saul says, and I grin at him. He knows how I frown on shortcuts when it comes to food. When I’ve assembled Saul’s pizza and put it in the oven, I take my cup of tea upstairs. I’ve had a shower, changed into clean clothes, sprayed a bit of Coco Mademoiselle behind my ears and am putting my earrings in when Saul appears in my bedroom doorway.
‘I can’t get on the internet,’ he says. ‘Broadband’s down. That’s going to screw up my evening.’
‘Shouldn’t you spend it doing homework?’ I say to his reflection in the mirror.
‘It’s done.’
‘Saul, you can’t have done it in an hour.’
‘I’ll show you the essay I’ve written on An Inspector Calls if you like, but it’ll bore you to tears.’
I have to restrain myself from launching into a lecture about the nuances of the play, its subtle shift of blame for a woman’s suicide from one character to another to another until we realize everyone’s implicated.
‘It’s dumb we can’t get broadband,’ Saul growls.
‘Saul, we do have broadband. It’s just—’
‘It’s just it doesn’t work. What’s the point in living here? What’s the point in a fucking house with no broadband?’
It’s true our connection is erratic, and that neither Pete nor I have had time to sort it out.
‘You want me to do my homework, but half of it they put on the fucking website, and if I can’t go on it, how am I supposed to do it?’
Saul raises his iPad, knocking my bottle of perfume flying as he does so, narrowly missing my ear, and for a second looks as if he’s going to hurl it at the mirror.
‘Saul, watch it.’ He stops at the last minute, but not before my bedside lamp has tumbled sideways, smashing onto the floor. He’s only got to lift an arm these days and things go flying. He doesn’t realize how long his limbs have become.
‘I’m so bored! There’s nothing to do in this arsehole of a village.’
I take a deep breath. Saul’s mood swings are new. I know rationally they’re due to the massive hormonal changes he’s undergoing. Changes that mean he can’t cope the minute he’s overtired, bored or hungry. But when he’s in this state, my sweet boy seems possessed by someone else entirely.
‘Your pizza will be ready. Go and get it out of the oven.’
*
He’s playing some game on his phone, thumbing the screen, eating pizza with the other hand when I go down to him fifteen minutes later.
‘I was starving,’ he says without looking up.
‘Can’t you use your phone,’ I say, nodding at it, ‘if you must go online?’
‘Used up my data allowance.’
‘How about I ask Jules if you can use her internet round there? Then you could come over with me.’
He doesn’t reply.
‘Saul?’
‘I guess.’
*
‘Of course,’ Jules says. ‘Saul’s welcome. He can keep an eye on Saff at the same time. Rowan’s away and she’s objecting that she has to do her homework. Saul can be my security guard.’
I laugh, go back to Saul. ‘All sorted. Rowan’s away and Jules was worried about leaving Saffie so she’s thrilled to have you there.’
He glances up. ‘Why’s Jules worried about leaving Saffie?’
‘She’s been acting out lately. Finding her teenage feet. You can keep an eye on her. Make sure she doesn’t spend the whole evening on her computer.’
‘So Jules wants me to be, like, her minder?’
‘All you have to do is be there. She says Saff’s got homework to do. You can watch their home cinema. And they have everything – Netflix, Sky, the lot.’
*
It’s a twenty-minute walk to Jules’s house, across the green and down what Fenlanders call ‘the drove’.
‘They ain’t from round ’ere,’ Saul mimics as we pass the pub. ‘Them’s townies. Don’t trust ’em.’
‘You’ll find a lot of the pub clientele are commuters,’ I say. ‘Like me.’ He knows this, of course, but I’m trying to distract him from what I know is coming next.
‘Why did we have to move out of London?’
I glance at his bowed head. He kicks a stone along in front of him. I sigh. We’ve had this conversation so many times. ‘You weren’t that happy in London, if you remember, Saul. You hated your school.’ He doesn’t reply, and I don’t blame him: he’s not exactly happy here either. He was subjected to a lot of bullying at school when we first arrived, and even went through a stage of refusing to go at all. I try another tack. ‘You love the photography course at this school. They didn’t even offer that in London.’
‘It’s still all revision and exams for another whole year. It’s shit.’
‘And some of the kids on the green look . . . well . . . nice. Can’t you make friends with some of them? I don’t like to think of you being lonely. Being alone.’
‘“No man is an island,”’ Saul quotes, ‘“entire of itself.”’
I stop. Laugh.
‘Since when did you read Donne?’
‘Since . . . I dunno. Since I found the poetry book in the loo.’
‘That’s not technically a poem, you know.’ I’m delighted to discover Saul actually reads the books I leave on the bathroom shelf. ‘It’s what he called a “meditation”. He wrote it when he thought he was dying. He became obsessed with sin, and what might happen to him in the afterlife . . .’
‘Anyway’ – Saul senses another imminent lecture and diverts me – ‘I don’t want new friends.’
Having watched Saul on the green morning after morning, I know this isn’t true. I know he’s hoping someone will notice him standing there alone and invite him to join their group. But one of the edicts of good therapy, and therefore good parenting, Pete says, is to reflect back what your kid tells you. Not block it or deny it. I should echo Saul: So you don’t want new friends? Instead, the words burst out before I can stop them: ‘You need new friends. It’s not good for you to spend so much time on your own.’
‘You spend time on your own.’
‘That’s a choice.’
‘It’s a choice for me too.’
And now I do know I should stop.
*
We walk on in silence for a bit. Then Saul says, ‘At least the countryside here’s sick.’
Is he trying to placate me? It would be just like him. But he’s gazing up at the sky, which is crystal clear now the clouds of earlier have blown away.
‘You can see the Plough – look.’ He stops and points upward. ‘And that’s the Milky Way.’
I draw alongside him and look up. The air is sharp, the stars bright as pins in the dark sky. On cue, an owl hoots as if it’s conspiring to connect us to the countryside and we both laugh.
‘It’s another world here. I mean, I’d never seen swans’ nests or muntjacs before we moved. I’d never heard the word “drove” for a road, or “roddon”.’
‘Roddon?’
‘It’s a dried-up silt bank,�
�� he says. ‘Don’t you know? That’s the kind of shit they teach us at school here.’
‘Never heard of it.’
‘It’s mental. We could be in another country. Oh, stop looking so worried, Mother.’
‘Do I look worried?’
He mutters his reply and I have to ask him to repeat it.
‘I said, you look worried all the time.’
‘I’m fine,’ I tell him, hooking my arm through his. I’m surprised that he lets me, but then it is pitch-dark and there is no one else for miles around. ‘I’m fine if you are.’
‘I’m fine if you are,’ he says.
*
Jules’s house is the other side of the railway line, and overlooks the open countryside and the river. From her large picture window, you can just see the lock, and the bridge that crosses it, and miles of straight horizon. As Saul remarks, you could fit our house into theirs five times.
‘Rowan loves his extensions,’ Jules told me soon after they moved in. ‘He’s got a builder friend to construct a deck for us and he’s going to install a hot tub.’ They extended the kitchen too and had a Corian (‘It’s the new thing’) work surface put in, in Glacier White. Everything else they painted a fashionable pale grey.
In the summer, Jules and Rowan’s parties are legendary. They invite everyone, all the villagers, Jules’s staff from her shop and various franchises – she has a very successful business selling high-end children’s clothes – and Rowan’s golf club mates. They fill plastic buckets with ice and bottles of wine, and everyone lies on black rattan deckchairs under patio heaters and talks or dances until late. I imagine Saul will enjoy sitting in their big house, lounging on their enormous comfortable corner sofa, watching films on Netflix, once he’s finished whatever he wants to do on his iPad. Secretly I’m pleased, too, that he has agreed to come. I don’t like to think of him in his room on his own, evening after evening.
‘Saffie’s upstairs doing her homework. She might not come down at all,’ Jules tells Saul. ‘So you can hog the screen and help yourself to whatever you want from the fridge. Put your head round the door about ten and make sure she’s gone to bed, will you?’
Jules is wearing her black lace dress, and high suede heels. I wonder if I’m too casual in my jersey tunic over leggings and flat boots.
‘Holl, I poured you a G and T. And there’s beer in the fridge if you want it, Saul.’
‘Thanks, darling.’ I get the drinks from the side in the kitchen. Saul takes the beer I wave at him and levers off the top.
‘You’re looking very handsome, Saul,’ Jules says, standing at the mirror in the hall putting on her mascara. ‘You’re going to be a great asset in the shop once you start. How does the Saturday after next sound? That way, my present Saturday assistant, Hetty, can train you up before going off.’
Saul gives an awkward shrug and lets the hair flop over his face to cover his blush.
Saul’s very tall for his age. He had a premature growth spurt at twelve and it was like being catapulted into the body of an adult while he was still into doing magic tricks and coming into my bedroom at night when he had nightmares. He hates his height. I’ve told him one day he will appreciate being six foot, but he continues to see it as a terrible affliction where he’s exposed, where it’s impossible to hide. As a result, he’s crippled at times with shyness. He freezes like this every time he’s in a social situation. I want to tell him to relax, and other people that this gormless, gangly thing isn’t the real Saul. That the real Saul is affectionate, funny and considerate. I love Jules for offering him a job in her shop to ‘get him out there’, but I worry sometimes that he isn’t going to be up to it, that his poor social skills will let her down.
‘That’s great, Jules,’ I say when it becomes clear that Saul isn’t going to reply. ‘Let’s put the TV on,’ I chirp, and he follows me across Jules’s vast sitting room and slumps down on the sofa. He does look nice this evening, I notice, sipping my drink. He’s in a grey lambswool jumper I got him last Christmas, dark jeans and trainers that make his feet look huge. He’s getting a look of Archie about him. He’ll be just as good-looking once he emerges from the chrysalis of adolescence.
‘What time will you be back?’ he asks.
‘Not too late. Eleven? Eleven thirty? Jules?’
‘I guess.’
‘What’s the Wi-Fi password?’ he says.
‘You’ll have to ask Saff. Saffie!’ Jules shouts up the stairs. ‘We’re off. Can you come down? Saul needs the password for the Wi-Fi.’
My ‘odd daughter’ appears at the top of the stairs. When Jules and I became mothers – just three years apart – we bestowed upon one another the greatest honour of all: I asked her to be Saul’s honorary godmother and she asked the same of me for Saffie. Since neither of us was sure about our religious beliefs, we adopted the title ‘odd mother’.
Now, the change in Saffie almost knocks the breath from me. She’s become, overnight, it seems, a young woman. She’s in her school uniform, tie loosely knotted, her short skirt and tight black V-neck jumper hugging her newly curvaceous figure. She looks like Jules’s mini-me. She thumps down the stairs. She’s been trying on some smoky eye make-up and overdone it, and there’s a waft of sweet fruity perfume as she comes over to me for a hug. I feel a pang for her, remembering how excruciating it feels when you want to keep up with your peers who all seem to know how to dress, and how to be. When your body starts to gallop ahead of your mental age.
Saffie’s not so different to Saul in that regard, of course – it’s just that they have responded differently: Saffie’s accentuating her changes, whereas Saul is plain uncomfortable with his.
‘I’ve told you, Saffie, you’re not to wear all that make-up. You don’t need it,’ Jules says into the mirror.
‘I’m not,’ Saffie says, barely audibly.
‘But you are!’ Jules turns to me with a ‘what on earth do I do?’ gesture.
‘Leave her be,’ I mouth.
‘I’m not compared to what most of the girls wear at school,’ Saffie snaps. ‘I’ve toned it down like you said. But you just don’t notice. You just don’t notice anything.’
Saffie’s blushing under her veil of foundation. She doesn’t need lecturing in front of Saul and me.
‘You look gorgeous,’ I tell her. ‘You’re becoming a stunner, just like your mum.’ Saffie glances up at me, and the little girl she was last time I saw her emerges as she flashes a wide-eyed, grateful smile at me.
‘Flattery will get you everywhere,’ Jules says, winking at me.
I put my arm round Saffie and kiss the top of her head.
‘I thought you might like to come to the ballet with Freya and Thea and me again this Christmas, Saff.’ Freya and Thea are Pete’s girls – my stepdaughters. Freya and Saff are good friends. ‘The Nutcracker Suite. Shall I get you a ticket?’
‘Oh my God! I love the ballet!’ Saffie leans her head against my shoulder and I catch another blast of sickly perfume.
‘Saul won’t come, will you, Saul?’ I say. Saul goes a little pink and shakes his head, his hair swinging over his face.
‘It’ll be girls only, then, won’t it, Saff?’
She smiles up at me.
‘Right, we’re off, Saffie.’ Jules reaches out to kiss her daughter, but Saffie ducks away from her. She stomps into the sitting room and curls up a few chairs away from Saul. He barely lifts his eyebrows in greeting and I’m tempted to tell him to say hello, as if he were six years old. Saffie recites a password, letter by letter. Saul punches it wordlessly into his iPad. You would never know they virtually grew up together back in London, in the days before Jules moved. Saffie flicks on the TV and Saul fixes his eyes on his own personal screen.
‘No more than half an hour of that, Saffie,’ Jules says as we leave. ‘Then you’re to go and finish your homework.’
We leave them in silence and I follow Jules into the cold night air, where the taxi’s waiting.
*
‘She’s fine, Jules. Poor girl. Don’t you remember how it felt? Thirteen years old! She’ll be on an emotional rollercoaster.’
‘Try living with her,’ Jules says. ‘It’s more like the dodgems.’
I laugh.
The road ahead of us is slick with the rain that fell earlier, the headlights picking out the raised banks of ditches that separate us from the land beyond. Through the passenger window there’s an uninterrupted stretch of night sky and, far away on the flat horizon, a thin strip of orange lights. The only sign there is any human habitation out there at all.
‘Good day?’ Jules asks.
‘Apart from this blasted trolling. Which is getting worse.’
‘What are they saying now?’
‘That I’m a feminazi for helping with the consent workshops. That I say yes but no one would fuck me anyway.’
‘Nasty. D’you have any idea who it is?’
‘Impossible to know. I’m maintaining a dignified silence for the time being. I can’t abandon the workshops – they’re important. I can’t believe boys – men – think it’s OK to have sex with girls for a laugh. Or for kudos. And that girls need reminding that only “yes” means “yes”. You’d have thought the women’s movement never happened. All that marching to reclaim the night we did! All that shaving of heads and burning of bras our mothers did.’
I Thought I Knew You Page 2