by Clare Boyd
Francesca’s lashes blinked slowly and heavily across her eyes.
As Dilys knocked back her espresso, the children appeared.
‘I’m late for work. I’ll see you later, John.’
Harry and Beatrice said their goodbyes to their mother, but Olivia did not.
‘Dad, could I have a pound, please, for the drinks machine?’ Olivia asked.
‘Don’t I get a goodbye, Olive?’ Dilys asked.
Ignoring her mother, Olivia said, ‘Dad, can I have it?’ She stood defiantly in front of John, expectant of her pound.
‘Say goodbye to your mum, Olivia,’ John coaxed, tweaking her nose.
Olivia pinked and was just about to turn, when Dilys said, ‘No, it’s okay. If she doesn’t want to say goodbye to me then I don’t want to say goodbye to her, either.’ And she stormed out.
Olivia shrugged. ‘Can I have that pound?’
John gave her the pound. He did not know what to say to Olivia.
‘Right. We’d better get off, then. John, why don’t you come over for lunch? I’ve got a chicken pie in the freezer.’ Francesca looked at him.
Beatrice and Alice jumped up and down, ‘Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!’
‘Can you drop me off at Max’s before?’ Harry asked.
‘Okay, I’ll drop Harry off and we’ll come over after that. Thanks.’
‘Good,’ Francesca said. ‘Come on, you scallywags, let’s get going.’
They followed her out to the car. John watched Olivia lag behind, her arms folded across the racket she held to her chest. She then ran back to him.
‘I love you so much, Daddy,’ she said.
‘Oh, Olive,’ John said, bending down to his haunches, hiding the pain in his back, holding her by the arms. ‘I’m so sorry you had to see that. It must have been really horrible for you. I’m so, so sorry.’
Her bottom lip wobbled. ‘Are you going to get a divorce now?’
John’s heart broke. ‘Mummy and Daddy are going through a bit of a difficult time at the moment, that’s all. Mummy didn’t mean to get cross and she’s said a big sorry and given me a big cuddle, just like you and Beatrice do after your fights. It’s just the same. You know how annoying Beatrice can be sometimes?’
‘Yes!’ Olivia cried.
‘Well, it’s the same for me and Mummy. Mummy gets really frustrated with me because, as you well know, I can be really, really annoying, can’t I?’
Olivia smiled a little and nodded.
‘See? So, you mustn’t worry about us. And if you’re ever upset about it again, just come to me and we can talk about it, okay? Or to Auntie Fran. She’s a great listener. Otherwise it scrunches around in your tummy and you’ll feel worse. Promise?’
‘Okay, Daddy,’ she said. ‘I’d better go.’
John squeezed her tightly and kissed her repeatedly until she was begging him to stop. ‘Love you, Olive.’
‘Love you, Daddy!’ she cried over her shoulder as she ran to the car.
John had just fed his clever, impressionable daughter a despicable lie. He had made it sound normal that his mother should hit him violently like that.
A memory floated just outside his reality, in a bubble, not real, not false; like a dream, or a nightmare, but more solid.
Her knees cracked as she sank to his level.
‘What did you see, John?’ she had asked him. Her breath had smelt of wine.
A man’s voice rumbled from inside the poolhouse.
John had been too confused to answer her.
She slapped his face.
‘You are both very wicked for getting out of bed and coming down here. If Robert tells any lies about what he saw, you’ll be punished, do you understand?’
She wiped a finger under each eye to clean away the leaked make-up.
‘I didn’t see anything, Mummy.’ He sniffed, tears falling over his burning cheek.
As she straightened to standing, her gold chain necklace had swung from her chest towards him like wrecking ball on a bulldozer, capable of knocking him off his feet.
‘Good boy,’ she said, sickly-sweet, the charm and beauty returning. ‘Don’t you worry, I won’t tell Daddy what a bad, bad boy you’ve been when he gets back from Berlin. Now, off you pop to bed.’ She had patted his bottom affectionately as he scampered away.
John scraped his fingers across his scalp, feeling a rawness across the hair follicles, as though his fingers had taken that same path before, over and over.
Anger for his mother resurfaced, as he reconsidered her duplicity. Tomorrow, she and his father would leave for Italy, for a week, for their yearly romantic jaunt through Tuscany. The perfect couple. The perfect love. How brilliantly she had played out her role as their father’s loyal and loving wife, while screwing another man behind his back. How loyal and loving she had been towards Robert; her first born, her pride and joy, while her love had been laced with dirty secrets, slowly smothering him, like a pillow over his face.
All their lives, John and Robert had been lulled into the idea that it was best to toe the party line, where status and appearances were more important than the truth, where a cover-up was more acceptable than the idea of authenticity and morality and happiness. An affair was one thing – titillating, glamourous even – but a drug addled son, rumoured to have stolen from his old uncle? That was damning. It would have annihilated the image of perfection that she had worked so hard to maintain. The gossip would have spread around the village like wildfire. And everyone would have known that there had been more to their childhood than good schools, swimming pools and bluebell woods; there had been so much more.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Francesca
Rain prevented us from having lunch outside. While the children ate around the kitchen table, John and I picked at the remainders of the pie.
When the heavy rain turned to drizzle, we put on our rain coats and wellies, and walked onto the green. After a couple of circuits of the pot-holed, puddled road that circled the green, we settled on the soggy bench to watch Olivia and Beatrice teach Alice how to do cartwheels. The occasional car splashed along past us, and a dog-walker crossed the grass. Otherwise it was quiet and empty.
It was the first opportunity we’d had to talk to each other without the girls overhearing. I wanted to talk to him calmly, but I was a little shaken, still. Hours later. I didn’t know whether I was angry with Dilys for her frenzied attack or with John for his acquiescence.
‘What exactly did I witness this morning?’
‘Seriously, Fran, it’s not your problem.’
He leant his elbows onto his knees and stared at the children. The rain had dampened his hair, which he had scraped back. The eye where the bruise had been had a dark circle beneath it. I imagined the marks and bruises forming across his right arm and down the right side of his back, where Dilys’ blows had landed.
‘Has she done this before?’
‘No. We had a row. It’s over.’
‘And the black eye?’
He pressed his face into his hands and stood up. ‘For Christ’s sake! I told you what happened.’
‘No. You haven’t.’
‘Do you tell me everything?’
An accusation. It left me speechless.
I watched him walk away, over to the children, one hand twisting at a chunk of hair, the other in his pocket.
He said something to them, and I heard Beatrice wail.
I followed him over to see what was going on.
‘Come on, it’s time to get home, you two,’ he was saying, wearily.
‘Why?’ Beatrice screamed.
‘Because I say so,’ he shouted back, losing his temper with uncharacteristic speed. Beatrice ran away, across the green.
‘BEA! Come back here, now!’ he yelled.
I could tell that he was at the end of his tether.
‘John, why don’t you leave them here for a play. I’ll bring them back later.’
He refused to look me in the eye. ‘N
o. Thanks. I want to get them home.’
He began striding after Beatrice.
A large, black van swung around the corner of the green from the B-road, behind John’s sightline. It was going faster than it should down the lane that Beatrice was now running towards.
‘JOHN!’ I screamed. ‘Olivia, watch Alice!’
I began to run, as did John.
The energy and momentum of Beatrice’s tiny limbs was terrifying as she darted towards the lane, towards the van careering along. John was making headway, but not quickly enough. It was happening too fast.
Beatrice looked left behind her to see her daddy, and the van came at her from the right.
I heard John bellow her name. The fear in his voice reverberated through me; just as it had done two years ago on Hornsey Bridge.
The van’s tyres screeched across the wet lane. Beatrice’s piercing howl split the air. The van was diagonal across the road, obscuring my view of her.
As I got closer, I saw John collapsed over her. The van driver was climbing out. My head was pounding.
When I reached them, I could hear Beatrice’s quiet sobs into John’s chest.
‘It’s okay,’ John was saying, ‘it’s okay.’
Her little body was enveloped in his arms as he kissed her forehead, over and over again.
‘Is she hurt? Are you hurt?’ I cried.
I knelt by them, feeling the road bite my knees.
‘She tripped. It’s just a graze.’
I saw that her leggings were torn on both knees and there were beads of blood forming through raw skin. Relief swamped me. I almost passed out.
The psychological echoes of Robert’s death were roaring through me, and I clutched John’s arm. ‘Thank God.’
Was he, too, thinking about the dent in the bonnet of the red car that had hit Robert? Was he, too, thinking about Robert’s internal injuries when he held Beatrice just now? Was he, too, thinking about the view down from that bridge?
The van driver was standing next to us, wheezing. He was wide, with stocky calves and forearms, both exposed in spite of the damp weather.
‘I didn’t see her,’ he repeated.
‘You were driving too fast!’ I screamed at him, adrenalin rushing through my bloodstream. ‘This is a twenty zone, and you must’ve been driving at fifty, at least!’
He backed off, holding his hands in the air. ‘No harm done, all right, lady. The kid’s fine.’
‘You’re lucky she is!’ I yelled back.
The driver inspected his van where its bumper had hit a bollard as he swerved. ‘The bumper’s dented and there’s a scratch,’ he grumbled. ‘You should keep a better eye on your kid.’
John stood up and pushed Beatrice into my arms, saying under his breath, ‘Take her back to the others.’
‘John. It’s not worth it,’ I warned, backing away.
But John’s eyes had glazed over. He was not listening.
He stalked over to the van driver, grabbed the front of his T-shirt, and slammed him against the side of his van.
‘You drive like that around this green again and I will kill you, do you understand?’ John hissed right into the man’s pocked face.
‘All right, all right, mate, calm down. I’m sorry, all right! I had a bad day and I was late. I’m sorry, mate, really sorry,’ he pleaded, sounding genuinely contrite.
John let him down. The man clambered back into his van and drove, very slowly, away. I wanted to clap and cheer.
‘Naughty Daddy,’ Beatrice said, looking up at me with a tear-stained grin on her face.
‘Naughty Beatrice for running away from us like that,’ I scolded gently. And then gave her a big kiss and squeezed her body tighter to me. ‘That was a narrow escape, you little rascal. I hope you’ve learnt your lesson.’ I scooped her up into my arms and stood, beginning to walk back to the two small figures waiting for us on the bench at the edge of the green.
Bea nodded very seriously as John fell in step with us.
‘Are you okay to walk, do you think, Bea?’ I said.
I put her down and she hobbled along in between John and me, sniffing loudly.
We headed over to Olivia and Alice, who were huddled together on one end of the bench.
John and I did not speak on the way back to the cottage.
Once we were inside, I cleaned and dressed Beatrice’s grazes, before snuggling the three of them up under a blanket in front of a film.
John and I retreated to the kitchen. I closed the door and poured two small drams of whisky.
The surface of his drink rippled in his trembling hands. ‘Thanks.’
‘You certainly told him.’
‘He caught me on a bad day.’
‘He was going too bloody fast.’
He nodded, and then shook his head, holding eye contact with me for the first time that day. ‘Beatrice was reacting to my bad mood. We’d already had a fight in the car on the way here.’
‘It seems to be the theme of the day.’
‘I didn’t get any sleep last night.’
The conversation from last night came into the room again.
‘The black eye was her, wasn’t it?’
He nodded, and pressed his fingers hard into his recovered socket.
‘She’d had a bad day at work.’
‘How long has this been going on for?’
‘A long time.’
‘When did it first happen?’
‘Remember Robert’s first secretary at Aspect?’
‘Tessa. She’s Head of Documentaries at the Beeb now.’
‘That’s the one. Apparently, I was shagging her.’
‘How the hell did she jump to that conclusion?’
‘Robert and I had been at a party after a screening and Tessa had left a message on our landline by mistake – instead of Robert’s mobile – to tell me that she’d ordered a cab to take us home, but it was garbled and she’d been drunk and Dilys had jumped to the wrong conclusions. She went nuts when I got home.’
‘What kind of nuts?’
‘She pushed me, over and over again, until I lost my balance and fell back onto the corner of the marble mantelpiece.’
I stared at him aghast. ‘I remember you had stitches in the back of your head. For…’
‘Falling over. Yes.’
‘Into that mantelpiece in the mansion flat.’
‘That’s right.’
‘Dilys did that?’
I reminded myself of the Edwardian marble mantelpiece in their flat in Maida Vale, and how happy they had seemed in their first home together. Dilys had fallen pregnant a few months after they had moved in. Everyone guessed the ‘mistake’ was Dilys’ ruse to force John’s hand in marriage. In spite of how smitten John was with Dilys at the time, we knew that he could have pottered through their relationship for the rest of their lives without formally committing to her. Camilla and Patrick had approved of Dilys’ pushiness.
John offered me a sad smile. ‘Harry was only eleven months old. He never slept back then.’
‘You both looked bloody knackered all the time.’
‘I was working long hours on Robert’s films. And she was on her own too much, I guess.’
‘It’s no excuse.’
‘Her attacks didn’t happen as much when Valentina came to help out with Harry.’
‘Her attacks? My god, John. This is insane.’
John hung his head, and his hips tipped back to lean into the worktop. I stared at his stooped form, his crumpled head of blond hair hanging between his shoulders. A broken man.
‘Sorry. But seriously,’ I said more gently, ‘she needs to get professional help. Some counselling or something.’
‘She’d never see a counsellor.’
‘But she can’t go on treating you like this. You have to tell her to get help or your marriage will fall apart.’
‘What if all the counselling in the world couldn’t change her?’
‘Maybe it’s some kind of p
ost-natal depression, which has festered, and it comes out in all this anger, and she doesn’t know how to control it.’
‘I agree that she can’t control it.’
‘But if she got therapy, she’d be able to find ways to pre-empt those outbursts. Find the triggers and stuff. You could work through it together.’
‘I’ve tried. Apart from one period, when I’d had enough and I told her I was leaving her, but then she got pregnant with Olivia.’
‘I had no idea it was so bad.’
‘We’ve had some happy times with the kids. Of course.’ He looked down at the floor, scuffed his shoe on the lino, and then looked up at me. ‘But the kids aren’t always enough, are they?’
‘People stay together because of their kids.’
It seemed important to uphold the idea. My thoughts were in turmoil. It was like a complete rewriting of everything I had believed about their marriage.
‘It’s a miserable way of living, believe me.’
‘Oh, John, I’m so sorry. You’ll find the love for each other again.’
‘What if it was never there in the first place?’
My mouth hung open for a second, flummoxed. ‘You guys were head over heels in love when you first met. I remember you telling me and Robert about her after your first date. I remember it so well. We were sitting in the kitchen at the flat eating cottage pie. You said you couldn’t believe your luck. You said she was an extraordinary woman.’
‘I used to think she was.’
I took a sip of whisky, and remembered my envy of her back then.
‘I guess she played the game well,’ I said.
‘Just like Mum.’
‘Let’s face it, you married your mother.’
‘I always thought I’d found someone more straightforward, someone who wouldn’t stand for Mum’s manipulative crap.’
‘Dilys doesn’t stand for it. But they clash, big time. Because they’re so alike, I suppose.’
He sighed. ‘I’m a Freudian cliché.’
‘Textbook.’
There was a pause. He scraped his hands through his hair.
‘I’m glad Mum’s away right now. I’m still so bloody angry with her. I just can’t believe she knew Robert was taking those pills.’