Missing You

by Douglas, Louise

  ‘Thanks.’ She smiles, raising the glass then taking a sip. Her lips are still sore where he kissed her earlier.

  When they have finished their pizzas the waitress comes round and asks if anyone wants dessert. The children ask for ice cream, Sean asks for coffee.

  ‘And what about your mummy?’ the waitress asks Amy. ‘What would she like?’

  ‘Oh, I’m not—’ Fen begins.

  ‘She’d like ice cream too,’ says Amy.

  They walk back through the city. The air is already cooling. Connor rides on Sean’s shoulders. Fen wraps her cardigan around Amy’s shoulders and holds her close. They look at the lights, at the buildings, and swerve to avoid the bundling, lairy young people, but they’re all very quiet.

  When the children are in bed, Fen asks: ‘Why was Belle crying?’

  Sean sighs. ‘Same old same old.’

  ‘Do you think she’s well enough to look after Amy?’

  ‘I don’t know. Not on her own. Not as she is now.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  Sean runs his fingers through his hair and scratches his head.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he says again.

  He thinks for a while then says: ‘Well, Amy’s staying here until the end of the school holidays. I guess I’ll have to go back for a couple of weeks when term starts, just to keep an eye on things and make sure they’re all right. I don’t see any way round that. But I’ll come back as soon as everything has settled down. And we can still see one another. I’ll still be working in Bath. We can go out for lunch and—’

  ‘No.’

  Fen moves away, she walks into the dark dining room and looks out through the window with her back to him, so that Sean won’t see her face.

  ‘I can’t do that, Sean. I won’t be your Other.’

  He says: ‘But I won’t be with Belle, not like that, I—’

  ‘No,’ says Fen. ‘No. Amy needs you. She needs to know how things are and where she stands. She can’t be sitting at home wondering who you’re with and where you live and whether or not you’re coming back, and whether she’s responsible for her mother – not in the state she’s in now. I won’t let you do that to her.’

  Sean steps forward to touch her; she sidesteps away.

  He says: ‘Fen …’

  ‘No,’ she says again.

  In the silence she hears Sean breathing. She hears him scratch the back of his head in frustration.

  ‘Fen …’

  ‘Please don’t say anything else.’

  ‘But I—’

  ‘I’ve got a terrible headache,’ she says. ‘I’m going to bed.’

  And she pushes past him and runs up the stairs before he can say anything else. She goes into her room and closes the door and also her eyes, and she presses her back against the wall as she feels her world fall away.

  forty-five

  The next four weeks, the last month of the school holidays, are the most precious. It is because Fen knows her happiness is finite. She treasures every second of the month and tries not to think of the days going by, the dates following one another on the calendar, the time slipping through her fingers like sand.

  August goes by – slowly at first, and then more quickly – in a succession of beautiful, hot days, days when waking up to the brightness of the morning is a pleasure that repeats itself, days that are spent together in the park, by the river, and, for one wonderful week, in a tent on a hillside overlooking the sea in Pembrokeshire.

  Sean and Fen don’t mention the future for the whole month. They don’t talk about Belle. And when it comes to the last week, the week when they decide, on an impulse, to buy a tent and run away to the coast, they leave their phones at home so that they are unreachable.

  For seven days, they exist only in the moment, with their children, in the sunshine. They are a unit of four. They spend their days on the beach and in the evenings Sean and Connor gather driftwood and build fires and together they cook whatever food is to hand. Sean plays his guitar. It’s magical: the music and the heat of the flames and their fingers sticky with smoky marshmallow. Most nights the children fall asleep beside the fire, their heads on the lap of one or other adult. Inside the tent, the four sleep in the same tiny space, bundled together like puppies. Their clothes are soon salty and sandy and smell of smoke but they all smell the same, like a pack of dogs, and nobody cares. They unzip the sleeping bags to make one big, communal bed. They eat in cheap, family restaurants by the little fishing harbour, the fresh air making them all wonderfully hungry, they are hungry all the time and food has never tasted so good. The children clamour for hot pasties and ice cream. Amy’s eczema clears up like magic and the shadows disappear from her eyes. Connor becomes stronger and more confident every day. People no longer stare at him so much; Fen is less patronized. She feels as if this week is where she has been heading all her life.

  And Fen and Sean, they are so easy together. There is no discord and everything fits. Fen sits between Sean’s legs, on the beach, watching the children play ball with the children of a neighbouring family. Sean kisses Fen’s sea-tangled hair as she warms herself in the towel wrapped around her shoulders, and she resists the temptation to wonder if she will ever be so happy again.

  The last day, the day before they must pack up the car and travel back along the M4, crossing the bridge that spans the estuary, Fen and Sean hardly say a word to one another but they are full of little kindnesses and considerations.

  As the sun sinks into the sky and the temperature falls, Sean rinses out their swimming things under the tap at the edge of the field, his bare feet cold in the muddy puddle he’s making beneath the tap, and he watches the other campers packing up, because all the children have to be back home for the start of school in two days’ time. Fen shakes out the sleeping bags outside the tent. The children are lying on their stomachs on the grass in the last of the sunlight, between the shadows of the trees. Amy is reading a story to Connor.

  Sean takes the wet swimming clothes back to the tent and ties them to the guy line to dry.

  ‘Shall I open the bar?’ he asks Fen.

  ‘Good idea,’ she says.

  He upturns two plastic beakers and fills them from the wine box. He passes one to Fen.

  ‘Come and sit with me and watch the sun go down,’ he says.

  Fen smiles up at him.

  ‘It’s the working title for a new song,’ he says and he means the words to be slightly self-deprecating and funny, but instead they sound forlorn, and rather sad.

  She sits beside him on the hillside.

  ‘Do you know how far it is to the horizon?’ he asks.

  She shakes her head. ‘Fifty miles? A hundred?’

  ‘Three miles,’ he says. ‘If we got in a rowing boat and kept going in a straight line, we’d only have to go three miles before we disappeared. That’s all it would take. Three miles and nobody would know where we were.’

  The sun turns the sky a violent apricot and the sea is alive where the light catches the rolling waves, and where it doesn’t the sea is dark and deep and cold.

  Fen leans against Sean and he puts his arm around her.

  They both know what the other is thinking. They are both wondering how they will cope with the next day, and the inevitable separation, and all the days after that.

  ‘We could always just not go back,’ Sean says quietly. ‘We could put the tent and the kids in the back of the car and fuck off to France. We could be refugees. I could busk and you could pick grapes. We’d get by.’

  ‘Connor and I haven’t got passports,’ she reminds him.

  ‘You could both hide in the car boot, just until we were safely on the ferry. Amy and I would talk our way through passport control. It’d be fine.’

  She smiles. She rests her head on his shoulder.

  ‘Ah, Fen.’ He sighs.

  He rests his head on her head. Then he shakes the wine box, and fills up their beakers again.

  ‘Maybe the wo
rld will end tonight,’ he says.

  ‘If we’re lucky, ’ says Fen.

  But it doesn’t.

  forty-six

  The day–night relationship has turned on its axis, the evenings begin earlier than they did last week, and Sean noticed condensation on the inside of the windows this morning. October is waiting in the wings of the year. Already the light is fading.

  Sean has been back in the family home, with Belle and Amy, for two and a half weeks. He has not spoken to Fen in all that time. She doesn’t answer the phone when he calls and each time he’s called into the bookshop she hasn’t been there. He has driven past Lilyvale several times hoping to catch sight of her. Once he saw her walking through the city centre, holding Connor’s hand, her head inclined towards the child as if she were listening to what he was saying. She was wearing a purple hat, her hair billowing over the shoulders of her old green jacket, and her flat brown boots padded along the pavement. She looked smaller, younger, untidier and more tired than Sean remembered. He wanted to call after her, to take her for coffee, but he did not, because he could not imagine being with her and at the same time not being with her. He could not think what they would talk about, what he could say to her. The last thing she would want to hear would be the details of his revised life with Belle.

  Lina has told him that Fen is all right. Lina is being a good friend to Fen, she’s looking after her, but Lina’s attitude to Sean has changed. She doesn’t take the time to talk to him any more; she makes a point of not passing on messages. Sean assumes this is because Lina blames him for somehow hurting Fen.

  She must be struggling with the separation.

  As he is.

  He misses her with every molecule of his being. He feels instinctively drawn to her, like a tide to the moon. He exists in his new-old life but he does not feel he is living it. He does not know what to do. He can’t imagine a time when he won’t have this longing for Fen inside him, unless he finds a way to deaden it.

  He thinks it’s so bloody ironic that it’s doing the right thing that is keeping him and Fen apart when it was lies and dishonesty that threw them together in the first place.

  Sean takes off his clothes, piles them on top of the linen basket and steps into the shower of the family bathroom. It’s a proper, walk-in shower, not an over-the-bath affair like the one in Crofters Road. It smells of bleach.

  Belle used to be meticulous in her domestic routines, but since the summer things have slipped. Her mother has employed a cleaner to come in for a couple of hours, three times a week, to help Belle keep on top of the housework, and Amanda herself pops in regularly to lend a hand. She’s doing everything she can to help, bringing round casseroles and cakes and offering to babysit; perversely her overwhelming desire to smooth the way forward for her daughter and son-in-law only serves to make them both feel more anxious and uncomfortable. Neither has much of an appetite. Neither feels like spending a night out.

  The day he moved back, Sean realized the house had been comprehensively gone-over to ensure no atom of the Other remained and he appreciates Amanda’s thoughtfulness but at the same time is embarrassed by it. His motherin-law clearly put herself in his shoes, and went to the greatest lengths to remove all evidence; he has not found a single strand of Louis’s grey hair, no overlooked sock or nail-clipping.

  Steaming still, with a towel wrapped around his waist, he goes into the spare bedroom. It is a large, pleasant room overlooking the garden. A built-in wardrobe takes up one whole wall. Enlarged photographs of flowers hang above a Habitat chest of drawers.

  Sean sits on the bed and dries his hair with the towel. Although it feels like a hotel room, he is more at home and less lonely here than he would be in the master bedroom. Belle has not objected to the sleeping arrangements, nor questioned them. She seems relieved that Sean has made no physical move towards her. She’s keeping her distance too. Sean can’t tell what she’s thinking. He keeps asking her, because he knows that is what he must do, and always she says she’s all right, that she’s glad the family is back together again. Her smile is bright but there’s something artificial about it. Her fragility terrifies Sean. She breaks down at the slightest thing, a word misconstrued, or because she can’t find a key or because Amy has not eaten her cereal, or spilled it, or made a mess in her room. Sean is acting as a buffer between Belle and the world. He can see no end to this situation. Because of this, he tries not to think ahead.

  Sean dresses and searches for his comb. His bag, still only half unpacked, is on top of the chair beside the window. He puts his hand in the side pocket and his fingers close around a small object. He pulls it out and holds it in his palm. It’s an oddly shaped thing wrapped in Christmas paper. Sean unpicks the Sellotape and finds a stone statuette of Ganesh. He holds it to his lips.

  Before he goes downstairs, he pushes open the door to Amy’s room. She is lying on her stomach, reading a book.

  ‘Oughtn’t you be in your pyjamas, Amy Scott?’

  She looks up and smiles sleepily.

  ‘I’m so happy you’re here, Daddy.’

  ‘Even so, you should be getting ready for bed.’

  Amy rolls onto her back, holding the book to her chest.

  ‘You won’t go away again, will you? We’ll all stay together now and you can look after Mummy and we can have a dog and I’ll call her Polly.’

  ‘Amy …’

  ‘I like to know you’re home. I don’t like Mummy and me being here on our own.’

  ‘Five minutes, OK? Then into the bathroom and brush your teeth.’

  She nods.

  ‘You didn’t answer my question,’ she says.

  ‘Everything will be all right,’ Sean says. ‘I promise.’

  He blows her a kiss and she blows him one back, and he pulls the door to.

  forty-seven

  Fen lies in Connor’s bed, her arms around the child. If she lets go, she fears she will simply float away and disappear.

  She feels insubstantial. She feels like a square of tissue paper that has been set alight and vanishes as it drifts towards the sky. She feels that her existence is no more real than that of an exhaled breath or a dream or the memory of a feeling.

  Connor shifts in his sleep. He sighs. His breath is warm and damp, organic, sweet. Fen rests her lips against his forehead.

  The world beyond the curtain is waking. She hears the milk float, the heels of dog-walkers and the rattle of leads, the odd car engine as it starts up.

  She thinks: Oh, here we go, another day.

  Another night without Sean has gone by.

  Another day without Sean is about to start.

  She is in the bookshop when the door opens and Emma Rees comes in. Fen does not recognize the woman at first, and when she does her heart starts to pound and her legs feel weak. The blood in her veins evaporates and is replaced by a mixture of adrenaline and fear.

  Fen thinks, at first, that Mrs Rees has come to her by accident. She browses the local guide books, picking them off the shelves and reading the blurbs on their back covers, until the jolly American couple have bought their souvenirs and left the shop. Then she slips the guide book she had been holding back into its slot and crosses over to the counter where Fen stands. Fen wishes she could disappear into the floor, she wishes she could vanish, go away, not exist.

  Mrs Rees is wearing dangly earrings. Her hair has been cut short and coloured chestnut brown, with dashing red highlights. She is wearing an orange coat with a rainbow scarf, trousers and boots, and she carries a hessian bag embroidered with flowers. She looks about twenty years younger than she looked the last time Fen saw her.

  She looks less broken.

  And Fen realizes that, although she has always thought of Mrs Rees as elderly, it was grief that was distorting her. In truth, the woman is in her prime.

  ‘Hello, Fen,’ she says.

  ‘Hello, Mrs Rees,’ says Fen. She glances at Vincent.

  They have worked together for so long now that there
is telepathy between them.

  Vincent looks at his watch, coughs and says: ‘Would you hold the fort for half an hour, Fen?’ She nods and he disappears out of the shop, turning the OPEN sign to CLOSED on the way out.

  There is a pause, then: ‘I was coming to Bath on business,’ says Mrs Rees. ‘I thought, while I was here, I’d come and see you. Your sister told me where I’d find you.’

  Fen doesn’t know what to say. She thinks it would be impolite to comment on Mrs Rees’s appearance; it would imply there was something wrong with it before. Instead she asks: ‘Would you like a cup of coffee?’

  ‘No, no. I didn’t come to put you to any trouble.’

  ‘It’s no trouble. There’s a secret kitchen behind that door.’

  The older woman smiles and shakes her head.

  ‘No, really, Fen. I’m all right. I have a meeting in half an hour and I’m sure I’ll be plied with sandwiches, or paninis, or whatever.’

  Fen bites her lip. She would like to ask about the meeting, but doesn’t know if she should.

  Mrs Rees, the new, more vibrant Mrs Rees, takes a breath and says: ‘A lot of things have changed since you came to see me, Fen. I’ve been thinking about you every day. I have been praying. I asked God to show me the right thing to do and He told me to come and see you.’

  Fen smiles as if she understands.

  ‘I’m not saying this to hurt you but, for quite a while after you came, I struggled not to hate you for what you had done. Then I realized that you were the answer to my prayers.’

  ‘Please …’

  ‘It can’t have been easy for you to come to my house and tell me what you did.’

  ‘I should have come sooner,’ says Fen. ‘I should have told the truth straight away.’

  ‘But I’ve been thinking about this,’ says Mrs Rees. ‘Deborah is a very strong woman; you and I both know that. When she’s made her mind up about something, she is an unstoppable force. And you, Fen, you must have been so frightened. You’d made promises to Joe and Tomas too. It would have been difficult for anyone to know what was the right thing to do at the time. Your loyalty – your responsibility – was to your family. When I put myself in your shoes, with God’s help I could understand.’