Missing You

by Douglas, Louise

  After all this, Sean decides what he really needs is another drink. He’s already established that there are no spirits in the house, but there is wine in the fridge; even better, there is half a bottle of wine with a screw-top lid. Sean tells the wine bottle to ‘shhh’ as it clanks on the counter and he doesn’t trust himself with one of Fen’s nice glasses, so he unhooks a mug off the rack beneath the kitchen units.

  Then he has another good idea. He’ll take some wine up for Fen, lovely Fen, who is so gentle, who is so devoted to her son, who works so hard. She’ll like that. It will make up for whatever it was he did earlier that is making him feel vaguely guilty.

  He slots the mug over the top of the bottle, puts the bottle under his arm and goes back upstairs.

  He stands outside Fen’s door and whispers: ‘Fen!’

  There is no answer. So he taps on it with his knuckles. Still no answer, so he opens the door and goes in.

  He knows he won’t find his way to the bed without the light on, so he pats along the wall until he finds the switch. When he turns it on, the room is filled with brightness, and he catches sight of Fen’s sleep-tangled hair disappearing under the duvet, its cover patterned with faded forget-me-nots. He has never been in Fen’s room before. It is smaller than his, warm and untidy with female clutter: a hair-dryer, bottles of moisturizer and cosmetics, mirrors strung with belts and beads, Connor’s drawings tucked into their rims, a baby shoe, a collage of photographs, magazines, sewing paraphernalia and a dressmaker’s dummy wearing a sparkly silver dress and a hand-knitted scarf.

  ‘It’s me,’ he says in what he hopes is a whisper.

  He hears her sharp intake of breath.

  ‘Tomas?’ she asks, leaning forward, shielding her eyes from the light.

  He goes over to the bed but sits down a little too heavily so that he falls backwards onto Fen’s legs.

  ‘Oops,’ he says. ‘No, it’s me, Sean. Sorry. Shhh.’

  ‘Sean …’ Fen sighs and slips back beneath the duvet. ‘I think you’re drunk.’

  ‘I think I’m drunk too,’ says Sean, manoeuvring himself up into a sitting position. ‘So that’s good, we have something in common.’

  Fen puts the top half of her face above the covers, and squints.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘I brought you some wine,’ says Sean, feeling pleased with himself. This was a good decision. It will clear the air. He holds the neck of the bottle over the mug, and tips it.

  ‘I don’t want wine. I was asleep. I brushed my teeth ages ago.’

  ‘Oh,’ says Sean. He looks at the bottle in his hand, poised at a tilt, and the empty mug. ‘It’s empty anyway.’

  ‘It’s not empty,’ says Fen, wiping her hair out of her eyes. ‘You’ve still got the top on.’

  ‘You see, I knew,’ says Sean, ‘I knew from the first moment I saw you that you weren’t just a pretty face.’

  Fen smiles and wriggles further up the bed. She sits up.

  ‘Here …’

  He passes her the bottle and the mug, which she fills and gives back to him, then she puts the top back on the bottle, and the bottle beside the bed.

  ‘Are you pissed off with me?’ he asks.

  She shakes her head.

  He reaches out his hand, meaning to touch her shoulder, but misses and gets her chin. She winces and backs away a little.

  ‘You see,’ he says, telling himself to concentrate because this has to come out right. ‘You may not realize this, but you are actually getting the best of me, Fen Weller.’

  ‘Am I?’

  ‘Oh yes. Because one of the reasons, and there were many reasons, but one of the predominant reasons why Belle stopped loving me was because of my lack of empathivity.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Yes. She said I never knew what she was thinking. Are you with me?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘So now I have improved. Because I put myself in your position and I thought: If I was Fen, I would probably be pissed off with me.’

  ‘If that was an apology, thank you.’

  ‘I’m tired,’ says Sean. ‘It’s been a long day.’

  He lies his top half down on the bed. Fen strokes his hair. Her light, warm hand on his forehead feels very nice, comforting.

  ‘Can I stay here tonight?’ he asks very quietly and the last word he remembers hearing for a long while is Fen saying: ‘Yes.’

  seventeen

  He lies on his back, on top of the duvet, his hands folded on his chest, his eyes open, staring at the ceiling, and he talks. Fen lies beside him, beneath the covers. Her face is turned towards him and she sees him in silhouette. The diffused yellow light of the street lamp on the pavement filters softly through the curtains and, in the darkness, the shape of his face is outlined against them. Sean tells Fen how he met Belle, how he knew from the very moment he saw her that he would ask her to marry him. How, right from the beginning, he never doubted her, or their future happiness. He talks about the good times they shared. He describes Belle to Fen in loving detail.

  Fen is half-listening, but he keeps repeating himself, and she suspects his more sentimental memories are coloured by alcohol-induced nostalgia. She does not particularly want to hear about Belle. Sean’s marriage is none of her business; it’s a private matter so she pays little attention to what he says. She is enjoying sharing a bed with Sean, though. She wants to remember every moment of this night. She watches his face and she is infused with warmth and affection towards this beautiful, gentle, well-meaning man. She wonders, for a moment, what he would do if she were to kiss him …

  Oh, but he does not think of her in that way, she’s certain of that. At no point in all the months he has lived in Lilyvale has he looked at Fen with anything more than friendliness in his eyes. To him, she thinks, she is just part of the furniture.

  Sometimes this makes her feel frustrated, but not now. He’s lying on her bed. He’s confiding in her. His mind may still be full of Belle but it’s Fen who lies beside him.

  ‘Then she met the Other,’ he says slurrily, ‘who, of course, is very good at asking Belle how she’s feeling, the slimy-tongued bastard, and how she was feeling was that she had fallen out of love with me.’

  ‘I don’t think such a thing is possible,’ says Fen.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Fen draws one hand from the warm cave of the bed and touches Sean’s cheek very gently with the back of her fingers. His cheek is cool and bristled. He does not seem to notice. He concentrates on her words.

  ‘If you really love someone, then you never stop loving them. It would be impossible.’

  Sean blinks.

  ‘It’s not a temporary thing,’ she says, ‘it’s integral. If a person’s love for someone else is sincere, it’s with them forever. It changes them. They can never go back to how they were before.’

  ‘Like a cooked egg?’

  Fen has to think about this for a moment.

  ‘Yes,’ she says, when she recognizes the analogy. ‘Exactly. Once the egg is set, there’s no going back.’

  ‘So either she still loves me, or she never really loved me at all?’

  ‘Well … yes.’

  ‘She never really loved me …’

  ‘If that’s the case, she’s an idiot,’ says Fen.

  Sean moves his head slightly in her direction. His cheek rests on her fingers. Being so close to him, his skin on her skin, is thrilling. Fen feels him in the core of her being. She exhales shakily.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because any woman who had the chance to love you, but didn’t, must be a fool,’ she says quietly.

  Sean smiles. She feels his lips move against her fingers. He is so close to her, so close, only inches away, and she knows that if she reached out … if she touched him … if she showed him how she felt … She wants him so badly, she can’t understand how he cannot sense it. Can’t he hear how she is breathing? Can’t he feel the heat of her? Isn’t her desire lighting her
up like a firework?

  Apparently not.

  ‘Thank you,’ he mumbles, ‘for saying what you just said. You are a very kind person.’

  ‘You’re welcome,’ she whispers.

  Then he sighs and scratches his armpit and turns from Fen. He turns right away and curls his back towards her; in seconds his breathing becomes gruff and in minutes he is fast asleep.

  Fen lies awake.

  She thinks that if this is to be the only night she ever sleeps with Sean, then she wants to remember every moment.

  She has not shared a bed with anyone except Connor since the night her son was conceived.

  She feels the weight and warmth of Sean’s body beside hers. She feels his sadness and confusion seeping into the cool night air, and she prays to a God she has not believed in for a decade that she will find a way to make him happy.

  She is woken by her telephone ringing downstairs. It stops before she is properly awake. It’s early still, not yet light. She rubs her eyes, and becomes conscious of the way the mattress feels, how it’s different, and then she remembers, and turns and looks sleepy-eyed at Sean.

  He is still lying on top of the duvet, fully dressed. He is lying on his front, with one arm dangling off the side of the bed. He reeks of alcohol, his jeans are torn and bloody, but what she can see of his face looks peaceful. There is a dark saliva stain on the pillow. Fen smoothes his hair with her fingertips. She leans down and kisses him very gently, secretly, on his forehead. She watches him for a moment; it’s the second time she has watched him privately, and the intimacy of this fills her with tenderness. She notices a little scar just beneath his left eye which she never noticed before. She notices his eyelashes, the shape of his earlobe.

  Tomas comes into her mind unexpectedly. He used to sleep at unpredictable times. Sometimes she’d come home from school and find him in her bed, and she’d set out her homework on her table, listening to his breathing as she tried to muster an interest in whatever it was she was supposed to be studying. Even asleep he was present. He was always present. When he woke he would smile at her sleepily and he’d scratch his arms. He liked her to sit beside him and stroke his head. He said it made him feel like a cat, like all he had to do was lie there and be stroked, until it started to get close to the time when he needed his next fix and then he’d become all jumpy and anxious and he’d be off again.

  Fen slips out of bed, and carefully covers Sean with her half of the duvet, folding it over him and smoothing it straight. He mutters in his sleep. She smiles at him, then turns and picks up her clothes and goes out of the room, closing the door.

  In the kitchen, she picks up her phone from the counter. The missed call was from Lucy and Alan’s landline. Fen wriggles into her dressing gown, presses call-back, but now the line’s engaged.

  She tries again, and again, each time receiving the same signal. She fills the kettle, plugs it in, hops into a pair of socks, tries again.

  There’s a stink in the kitchen, but Fen can’t work out where it’s coming from. It’s neither the fridge nor the waste bin. She tries the line again, then makes a cup of tea. She hears Connor talking to himself upstairs. She presses redial, and this time the phone rings and is answered, immediately, by Alan. Fen hears the excitement in his voice and she relaxes. Everything is all right.

  ‘It’s a boy,’ says Alan, ‘the most perfect, handsome, amazing baby boy ever to come out of Wales. Not counting Connor, of course.’

  Fen smiles, she goes up the stairs with her tea, the phone tucked between her ear and her shoulder.

  ‘How’s Lucy?’

  ‘A little shell-shocked, but over the moon. She should be coming home after they’ve done their rounds, or whatever it is they do, this morning. You should be able to speak to her this afternoon.’

  ‘Oh good,’ says Fen. She goes into Connor’s room, sits down on his bed and touches his shoulder. ‘So how heavy is he? Does he have a name yet? Who does he look like?’

  ‘Seven pounds something or other, not sure; name – William or Ben. And I have to say, if he looks like anyone he looks like my father.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘We’re hoping he’ll grow out of it.’

  ‘I’m sure he’s beautiful. Was it a long labour?’

  ‘Not too bad. Lucy wasn’t sure if it was the real thing for ages so we rather left it to the last minute before we went to hospital. We got there just after two this morning and the baby arrived at three-thirty.’

  ‘I’m so happy for you all, Alan. Congratulations a million times. Give Lucy my love and tell her I’ll call this afternoon.’

  ‘I will do. Oh Fen, there are some photos, they’re up on the school website.’

  ‘OK,’ says Fen.

  They end the call and Fen holds the phone to her chest.

  She feels the warmth of her son’s skin beneath his pyjama top. She makes a bracelet with her thumb and finger, and slides it down his arm. He smiles up at her sleepily. He’s still so little, his bones are still so fragile. He is still her baby.

  ‘I should be there,’ she says to Connor, who is staring back up at her with his heavy, early-morning eyes. ‘She’s my only sister and she’s waited a lifetime for this baby, and I’m not with her.’

  ‘Are you sad?’ Connor asks.

  ‘No, I’m not sad, darling boy. I’m happy. You have a cousin, Connor. A boy, just like you! How good is that?’

  After they have washed, dressed and breakfasted, Fen starts getting things together for going into Bath, to the library, so that she can use one of the communal computers to go on the internet and look at the pictures of her new nephew, but the library won’t be open yet, it’s still too early. Connor is happy watching his programmes on the television, and it’s raining heavily. Fen looks out of the dining-room window. It’s streaming with water and outside looks awfully dark and miserable. Inside, the house is warm and light. Fen does not want to expose her son to the elements, but she really does want to see the pictures of Lucy and the baby.

  There is an alternative. Sean has a laptop with a wireless internet connection.

  She goes upstairs and quietly opens her bedroom door. Sean is now properly in the bed, under the duvet; his hair is sticking up and he is snoring. The air in the bedroom is rank and sour. Fen closes the door, goes into his room, picks up the laptop from where it has been charging on top of the chest of drawers, and runs downstairs with it, without giving herself time to think. She perches on the edge of the settee, next to Connor, opens the lid of the machine and goes online.

  ‘He owes me a favour,’ she whispers to Connor. ‘Don’t tell him, will you?’

  Connor shakes his head and snuggles into her side.

  It takes her just a few moments to navigate to where she needs to be. The screen fills with thumbnail images and she opens one, and sighs. There is Lucy, pale in her hospital gown and looking vulnerable and naked without her spectacles, and in her arms is a lopsided baby, wrapped in a pale blue blanket, squinting up at his mother, one eye open, one closed, his fists next to his cheeks and an expression of puzzlement on his little red face.

  Fen has never seen her sister look so peaceful.

  She nudges Connor, and turns the screen towards him.

  ‘Look, Connor! Look at the baby! That’s your cousin!’

  Connor points at the image. His finger leaves a wet smear around the outline of the baby’s face on the screen.

  ‘That’s Auntie Lucy’s baby?’ he asks.

  ‘Yes,’ says Fen, ‘that’s baby William-or-Ben. Isn’t he lovely, Connor? Isn’t he just perfect?’

  Connor pulls a face. ‘He’s yuk,’ he says. ‘He looks like a potato.’

  ‘Well, a bit,’ Fen concurs. ‘He hasn’t had time to grow into his face yet.’

  Fen looks at all the pictures. She wishes she were there, in the hospital, looking after Lucy, looking after the baby while Lucy rested. Fen has always been good with babies; she’s never been afraid of their vulnerability and she doesn�
��t understand people who are afraid to hold them. In Fen’s mind, there are few things less complicated than a warm baby held to the shoulder, its little back like a spiny loaf beneath the fingers, and its requirements so very simple and easy to manage.

  She smiles down at Connor.

  ‘He’s not as good-looking as you were, Con.’

  Connor grins. ‘I was a good baby,’ he says.

  ‘You were. You were a perfect baby. The best baby in the whole wide world.’

  Connor smiles and wriggles a little closer to Fen. He likes hearing tales of when he was little.

  ‘Baby William-or-Ben’s OK,’ says Fen, ‘but he’s not a patch on you.’

  Fen puts Connor’s breakfast plate and spoons into the sink, squirts in some liquid and fills the bowl with hot water. She swirls the water around listlessly, staring out of the window over the back gardens. Now the rain has thinned to a drizzle, the outside colours are lovely in the soft spring light. Wild daffodils are rioting down the alleyway at the back, nodding in cheerful groups among smaller, deep-blue flowers, and all the miniature apple trees in the gardens are sweet with pink and white blossom. The Ford RS in the lower garden is covered with blossom petals; it looks beautiful, as if somebody has gone to great trouble to paint it with flowers. It is a good time of year to be born.

  Fen plays with Connor in the living room for most of the morning. At lunchtime she takes a mug of tea up for Sean. He has migrated back to his own bed.

  ‘Thanks,’ he mutters as she places the tea on his bedside table.

  ‘Would you like some toast or something?’

  ‘Mmm.’ He shifts up onto his elbow, squinting into the light. ‘God, I feel like death.’

  ‘Ibuprofen?’

  ‘You’re an angel.’

  He drops his head heavily back down on the pillow and closes his eyes. Fen pushes her hair out of her face. Out of habit, she picks up the dirty clothes he took off and dropped on the floor and she takes them downstairs, the jeans and the shirt and the T-shirt he wears as a vest, the boxers and the socks. She holds them to her face and she smiles to herself as she thinks: Last night we slept together, Sean and I.