I am not getting the reaction of relief that I was expecting from Ben. Instead his frown deepens, and his expression is complicated and closed.
‘If that’s what you want,’ he says eventually. ‘Whatever you want.’
‘Well, isn’t that what you want?’ I ask him, confused.
He sits down opposite me, his long skinny legs folded inwards. He looks like some kind of bird – a rook or a crow, a portent of doom.
‘I want to keep you safe,’ he says. ‘And you want to have sex. And, well, if you are going to have sex with someone, I want it to be with someone who will care for and respect you and take care of you, and not be a dick, like pretty much all guys my age are, including me at times. I want it to be nice, and warm, and kind and friendly, and full of love. And even if it’s not lust-type love, actual real love for this person you are doing this amazingly intimate thing with.’ He leans forward. There’s a gravitas about his expression I’m not used to seeing – something that makes me sit up and listen. ‘When you first asked me, I thought, fuck that’s weird, and I went home thinking, shit we can’t do that. I’ll turn up tomorrow and she’ll say “what a joke” and everything will be fine. But then, I was awake all night thinking, thinking about the sex that I’ve had …’
‘Ben, really …’ I don’t want to know.
‘No, just listen.’ Ben shifts in his chair. ‘I’ve been with a few girls. Not that many, actually. Fewer than ten …’
‘Ten is loads!’
‘I didn’t say ten, I said fewer than ten.’ Ben looks exasperated.
‘Fewer than five?’ I feel that clarification is important.
‘Oh God! Six, I’ve had sex with six girls,’ he says.
‘Well, why not just say six? What’s this whole “fewer than” thing about? Because six is sixty per cent of ten.’
‘Hope,’ he says. ‘Do you think you are maybe getting off the point on purpose?’
‘Six,’ I say. ‘Sex with six girls.’
A sharp rip of disapproval and jealousy tears through me, though I’m not sure if it’s the six anonymous girls or him I am jealous of.
‘Yes,’ he says. ‘Yes. And it’s nice, it’s great, sex with girls. You know. It’s fun, and they are mysterious and fit, and they all look different naked, and it’s great. All the sex I’ve had in my life has been great, but it’s never been …’ He hesitates, struggling to express himself, which is most unlike Ben. One thing Ben is usually very good at is talking.
‘It’s never felt safe, or kind, or caring, or special,’ he says. ‘And I’ve never felt … cared for. Worshipped, sure, but not cared for.’
I look at him. Here is where I would normally laugh out loud, or tease, or insult him fondly, but I can see what it’s cost him to tell me that. And I know how his life has been so often absent of care. There’s his mum, who drinks cider in front of the TV all day and takes pills, and his stepdad, who blames everyone but himself for everything he’s ever done wrong. Ben was the kid in the unwashed shirt, the scuffed, too-tight shoes. The boy who had beans on toast every night for a week, unless I took him home for tea. I know how he has longed all his life to feel cared for, except I thought he’d grown out of that now – that now he is so vibrant, so present in every moment, that he would never need anybody. But now he’s saying that if we do what we said we’d do, it wouldn’t just be for me, it would be for him too. Shit.
‘Is this an elaborate plan to make me feel better about emotionally blackmailing you?’ I ask him. ‘Because it’s sort of working.’
‘It’s your call,’ Ben says.
‘Well, if we are mainly doing it for you,’ I say. ‘It’s worth a try.’
With that he reaches out and takes my hand, and though my heart is pounding, I let him lead me out of the door.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
STELLA
No rain, no moon.
After Vincent left, I slept like I haven’t in months. Deep, dreamless, certain sleep. I woke to the sound of a bus creaking pass. It’s troubling, this sense of peace. And I wonder, why now? Is it simply because the man I love, the man whose happiness and well-being I’ve worried about and obsessed over for so long, isn’t here any more? Did I exchange my marriage for deep, dreamless sleep?
Perhaps it’s the relief. The pain of living a life that is less than you always imagined, hoped it would be, is excruciating. It’s so restful to stop trying to make things right. To make life smaller.
I’m not due at work tonight, but I go anyway. I have no idea what happened while I slept so soundly – if my delivery has had any consequences yet. Hugh, that was the name of the son, the poor man whose life I dropped a hand grenade into yesterday, he’s probably been to Marie Francis by now. I need to find out what’s happened, to apologise. To make amends for letting the tragedy of my life mix and mingle with something that had nothing to do with me. I need to make amends, as much as I can. I need to start again, reset, restore factory settings.
So the first thing I have to do is find Grace and tell her what I did, explain. Apologise. It might be too late; she might already be gone. The battery in my phone is dead, and I didn’t have time to charge it before I left. What happens, whatever is waiting for me inside the walls of Marie Francis, on the other side of the green-painted door, I won’t know until I am there.
As I run, falling into that easy comforting rhythm, it occurs to me I could just not go in and not face the consequences. I could just keep running now, and there would be no reason to turn back. I could run and run on to the next town, perhaps somewhere by the sea, and start again, start fresh. Like the night I packed up my rucksack. It’s a thought that won’t let me go, as I plod through the chilled night. There’s a lure to it, a deep, abiding attraction to simply sweeping all of my mistakes away and starting again. And yet, deep down, I know I can’t do that. I have to face them; I know that much. I just don’t know how or what will happen next.
It’s a quiet evening. The streets are empty of people, cars sweep by infrequently, as I make my way steadily towards Marie Francis. Across the street I see the fluorescent lights of the bakers flicker off. Two more minutes and I slow, ready to walk. In the next moment I become aware of a stranger’s hand on my arm, stopping, holding me, attempting to control me. Adrenaline kicks in and my legs move faster, but he accelerates with me, pulling me backwards. It’s happening so quickly there’s no time to think, except to decide that my charmed life as a woman alone in the night is over; I’ve been seen. I do not know if he intends robbery or worse, but I try to shake him off. He stops me, holds me. I flail at his shins with my soft running shoes, and he lets go. I career off, shouldering a wall, feeling the stab of pain shoot inwards, using the impact as a launching point to run again.
‘Stop. Wait!’ he calls after me, his voice echoing in the almost-empty street. Once I get up on to the high street, well past the entrance to Marie Francis, there will be more people, who may very well be indifferent to what happens to me, but still somehow I think a crowd will deter him. I can find a place to go inside, ring the police. I just keep running, and so does he. I am sprinting, and I’m fit, and I realise with an unexpected thrill that I will lose him. He’s further behind me but still calling after me, and I am yards from the busy high road. And then it hits me: what mugger or would-be rapist asks his victim to slow down so that he can catch up?
I turn around and look. He’s stopped a little further down the street to catch his breath. I recognise the bag and the shoes, the scarf, the fishing jacket. It’s him. The man I gave Grace’s letter to. Hugh.
I just stand there, in the dark, and wait for him to reach me.
‘I’m sorry,’ he wheezes. ‘I didn’t really think that through – pouncing on a woman alone in the dark. You’re very quick, though.’
‘What are you doing?’ I ask him. ‘Why are you here?’
He laughs, and it’s full of anger. ‘You deliver that letter to me and you don’t know?’
‘I’m sorry, I …�
� I don’t know what to say. ‘I shouldn’t have.’
‘I didn’t know what to do,’ he said, his gaze falling away from me. ‘You gave it to me, and I didn’t know what to do or think. Whether to laugh or cry or … what? And I can’t … I can’t see her. This woman who says she is my mother. I can’t just go and see her. So there is only one other person I can talk to, and that’s you.’
‘I don’t have any answers,’ I tell him. There are a few feet of pavement between us. Passers-by walk in and out of our conversation, oblivious to this moment that means so much, just within this few square yards of grubby street.
‘I have to talk to someone, and I can’t talk to her, you see. She’s a ghost. She’s a dream. She’s … a monster.’
‘She isn’t.’ I shake my head. ‘I can tell you that; she isn’t. She has been broken. Life’s broken her, and it’s hurt you. But she isn’t a monster. She just wanted to leave a clean slate.’
His laugh is bitter, cold, and I take a step back. I don’t blame him, I can’t blame him, for the way he feels. I can only blame myself for bringing him the news.
‘She wants to leave a clean slate.’ He shakes his head. ‘No matter what pain she leaves behind. Well, yes, I suppose that is her MO.’
‘Hugh.’ I hesitate. ‘May I call you Hugh? I understand how you must feel. When I wrote the letter for her, I was shocked, but … Grace is your mother.’
‘My mother.’ His smile is so wretched as he says the word, pregnant with meaning. ‘The mother who left me a suicide note and vanished into thin air. The mother I’ve thought was dead since I was ten years old.’
Dear Son,
The last letter I wrote to you was supposed to be just that. It’s important that you know that. It wasn’t a trick, or a lie. It wasn’t an excuse or a get-out clause. I meant to do it. I meant to die.
I wanted to love you so much, my little boy. So much. And you poured all of your love into me, no matter what a terrible mother I was. No matter how many afternoons I was passed out drunk on the sofa, or not there to collect you from school. Or the days that you didn’t eat until your father got in. I’d fail you, day by day, year on year, and yet still you greeted me with shining eyes. You deserved so much more than me – than my selfish, capricious, cold-hearted self. No, it’s not even that. I wasn’t cold-hearted. I knew what a sweet, funny, clever, lovable little boy you were, but I couldn’t feel it. I couldn’t feel anything but the dragging down of this great sadness like a millstone around my neck, and I thought, I thought what a relief it would be to let it take me, to not have to fight to come up for air any more.
And I thought about you without me there any more, and I was certain life would be better for you, and for your father, without having to battle my black cloud that covered us all.
But I am a coward, darling boy. I’m a coward and I always have been. I didn’t want to live but I was too scared to die, so I ran away. And I did have a sort of death for a long time. Day after day, drunk, lonely, I let life use me up. Sleeping rough, doing things … things I am ashamed of.
One day, years and years after I left, I found a friend, or rather she found me. A stranger, a passer-by. She lifted me up from the gutter and took me somewhere where I could wash and be warm, and eat food and feel safe. And she let me stay there. Every day I thought I would leave, but every day I stayed. And first one, then two, then three days went by without a drink, and the days turned into weeks, and months. It wasn’t as easy as that: I cried, I beat my fists, I threatened her and myself, but I could have left at any time. Only I didn’t. I stayed. And one day I got up, and the black cloud, it hadn’t gone, but it had lifted – enough for me to see a far horizon. That’s when I cried for you, my darling boy, for you and your father. That’s when I cried and grieved over what I’d done to you. That’s when I fell in love with you, when I wanted you, adored you, longed to hold you. At the exact moment I knew it was too late. I knew that I could not come back. That you were both better off without me.
Well now, my son, I am dying, and I am still a coward. I don’t want to go. I don’t want to leave this world that I feel like I have only just learned how to live in. But I have to pay the price; there is no choice.
When you read this letter, I will already be dead. You will hate me. You will be angry, and bitter and outraged; you will not understand why. I don’t ask you to forgive me, or to even care that I am gone. But dear, dear boy, please know you had a mother who loved you – not for long enough, and from afar, but she loved you with every waking moment, and in every sleeping moment dreamed of you.
Your mother,
Grace
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
STELLA
Looking at him across the table is a curious experience. It’s the first time I’ve seen him in full light. The chase must have taxed him; his face is waxy with sweat, his dark hair turned wavy with damp. He has a sort of sweet softness to him – the polar opposite of Vincent’s rugged good looks. He has a face that has read a lot of books. There was nothing to do but to cross the road with him to the twenty-four-hour café next to the taxi rank and buy him a cup of milky white, strong and sweet.
I smiled at Hussein behind the counter. He knows all of us from Marie Francis; we come in a lot throughout the night, and sometimes he’ll bring us over a tray of doughnuts as a treat.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say to Hugh. It seems like the only sensible thing to say. He’s lost so much, and even the things he’s found, he’s going to lose again. ‘Perhaps, though … Perhaps this might be for the best …?’
‘Because everything happens for a reason?’ he says wearily. ‘Sounds like one of the posters you see with kittens on, pinned up in an office. Not everything happens for a reason. Most things happen for no reason at all.’
‘Believe me, I know that,’ I say. ‘You must have had a very long time of missing her. Life must have been hard for you.’
He shakes his head once. It’s a tight, tense movement, guarding so much pain. I feel it radiate from him. I recognise it: it’s anger.
‘Not at all. I had a wonderful father; I never wanted for anything. She was right, what she wrote in the letter. Life was better without her.’
I don’t respond; there is no response. Looking out of the window, I watch the empty street, existing beyond the reflected lights of the café, and I wait.
‘She doesn’t know that you gave me the letter?’ he says finally.
I shake my head. ‘I was on my way to tell her, when you stopped me. I broke my promise to her. I’ve betrayed her, and I don’t know why, really, except that last night … I was hurt and angry, and tired of life never being the way I think it should be. So I made a gesture. I thought that you both deserved a chance to say things to each other’s faces before it was too late. But that wasn’t my choice to make. It was foolish and selfish. And I’m sorry.’
Once again he is silent, and I let him be.
‘I think … well, I think perhaps my marriage fell apart last night. And I’m not offering that as an excuse, or even a reason. It’s just … fate has this way of throwing a bomb into our lives and standing back as everything we thought was certain is scattered to the four winds. I came here tonight because I knew I had to see Grace. But after that … I really have no idea what is happening next. I’ve come to this point in my life – thirty-two years old – and I believe that from today I have to start again completely. I have to start from zero. So what I’m trying to say is, it feels shit right now, but eventually, knowing everything, knowing it all, as bad as it is, means you can start from zero again. You can build your life on the truth instead of lies.’
‘You like to talk, don’t you?’ he says wearily, and somehow I know it’s an effort for him to keep from resting his head on the tabletop. I know, because it’s an effort for me too.
‘I’m sorry.’ I shrug. ‘You know, I think that’s partly my problem; I always want to fix everyone, everything, whether they want it or not. I think that’s why I became a nurs
e in the first place. I trained to be a trauma nurse, and that was simple. I mean, it wasn’t simple, it was hard, but we knew what we were trying to do; we were trying to fix bones, hearts, heads – people. After my husband got his leg blown off in Afghanistan, I couldn’t face it any more, going to work to fix other people when I couldn’t fix him. And I needed a job out of his way, so when I saw this job, I thought it would work well for me. No fighting against anything any more, just caring. I thought that would be good. I don’t know. Maybe I’m not cut out to be a nurse after all.’
‘You could retrain to do a job in talking the hind leg off a donkey,’ Hugh mutters. ‘Sorry, that was rude. And I’m sorry to hear about your husband. And actually it’s not you that I’m angry with. It’s just, it took Dad and me a long time to get our act together, but we did it. And now I’m at a point in my life that is settled, even optimistic – a point where I find myself thinking about a life with someone else in it. It felt nice, and now this. Now I have this to deal with.’
‘So all this time you thought she had killed herself?’ I ask him.
He nods, hunching his shoulders against some cold that only he feels.
‘When I was ten years old, I came downstairs one morning, and there was Mum’s letter on the table, written on a piece of lined paper ripped out from my exercise book – my homework was on the back. Her watch, a cheap gold watch Dad had given her when they were married, was weighing it down, along with her rings.’
He stares at the tabletop as he talks, reliving that moment, watching it play out on the Formica.
‘Dad was still asleep. It was Saturday, and my dad always had a lie in on a Saturday. I always got up and came down and had toast with Mum. She’d be wearing her nightie, we’d sit and eat and talk, and she’d tell me jokes and make me laugh, she’d ruffle my hair. Sometimes I helped her sort socks or iron pillowcases. It was this small amount of time we used to spend together, before my mates came to knock and I was gone for the day. It was a certain thing. My mum, for all of my childhood, was a certain thing, until the day I found the letter.’ He pushes his cup of coffee away, as if tracing the outline of a long-lost letter on the surface of the table with his forefinger.
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