by Freya North
Scott glanced at her. ‘Can you let me worry about you – not the other way around, honey? That kind of role reversal – it’s the first sign of old age.’
Jenna made soup for dinner. Just as they sat down, a picture message came through from Frankie; a blurred selfie of her holding up an ice cream that looked like shaving foam with what Scott assumed to be a chocolate stick tucked into one side. It made him laugh.
‘What’s so funny?’
Scott looked at his phone, looked hard at Frankie, looked over to Jenna and thought to himself do you want to meet my girl?
‘What?’ Jenna laughed. ‘You OK, Dad?’
‘Huh?’
‘You’re looking at me funny.’
‘Oh.’
‘You OK?’
‘Sure – you OK?’
She frowned. ‘Yes?’
‘You fed Buddy?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’
‘He’s been out?’
‘Yes! How’s the soup – I put three more portions in the freezer for you.’
‘When I was in England –’
And Jenna simply thought that some anecdote about British soup was coming. That it was served lukewarm like their beer. Or eaten in bowls carved from Stonehenge or something like that. But her father had stopped mid-sentence and, when she glanced over at him, he was looking at her unflinchingly.
‘So, Jenna, when I was in England – I met someone.’
Jenna stared and stared at the photograph of Frankie with the ice cream.
‘If you scroll through, there are some more,’ Scott said, eyes fixed on his daughter’s response as she scrolled very slowly backwards, forwards, backwards, forwards through the last week of his life. Scott picked up on an emotion that was curiosity mixed with disbelief.
Finally, she met his gaze. She blinked, a lot.
‘Wow,’ she said. ‘Just wow, Dad.’ She thought, this is weird. This is crazy! ‘I don’t know what to say.’ She shook her head, laughed, frowned. She looked from Frankie on the phone, to her father sitting there opposite her.
What the hey – perhaps this is not so crazy!
‘I’m so happy for you,’ Jenna said. ‘I’m just so happy for you.’
* * *
It felt to Frankie that she was now inhabiting three different worlds. Home. Alice. Scott. It was as if these three components that defined her were unanchored pontoons, sometimes floating close to each other, at other times precariously distant in the suddenly fast-flowing waters of her life. Sometimes she felt utterly grounded, sometimes thoroughly adrift. She wasn’t getting much done.
They wrote to each other daily; lengthy emails sharing secrets and intimacy as well as just chatty prose outlining their day-to-day. They attached photographs detailing everything about their lives now and then – from their children growing up, to corners of their rooms, the views outside, current selfies and old pictures, anecdotes, memories and news, that filled in all the gaps of their histories and, somehow, enabled each to feel part of the other’s past.
‘Look what we’re having for supper,’ Frankie emailed one picture. ‘Fish ’n’ chips – the “a” and the “d” are always silent.’
‘Why are you photographing our food?’ Sam wanted to know.
‘It’s not like you cooked it yourself,’ said Annabel.
‘My friend wanted to see,’ said Frankie.
‘Your friend is weird,’ Sam said under his breath.
Regardless of the time zones, despite Scott’s unpredictable mobile signal and Frankie’s ineptitude when it came to digital communication (forgetting to attach photos, thinking she was leaving voicemails when she wasn’t, simply not pressing send on an email) their contact was regular and easy and defiant of the miles separating them.
But talking to Scott by phone when it was his morning, her evening, or his yesterday while she was already in tomorrow, suspended reality. It was like time travel in some ways, somewhere without borders where they could meet and privately pick up from where they’d left off. Their conversations were unstilted, whether searching and involved or lightweight and mundane. They chatted as easily as if they were sitting knee against knee in Maison Bertaux, tucking into the details as though they were gateaux. They exuded tenderness as intense as if they were lying in each other’s arms replete from lovemaking. Their calls took them to the still point in their turning worlds whilst they spoke, but the echo of each other’s voice afterwards was unsettling. FaceTime too alternately brought them within an inch of each other and yet amplified the distance between them. Frankie and Scott never quite knew whether it was to be praised or cursed. A moment ago we were together but now I’m alone.
Frankie’s children noticed a change in their mother’s mood – it was excellent most of the time, amusingly distracted some of the time and, just occasionally, downright bad. She appeared to moan less about Alice, or their homework, or time spent by Sam faffing on his phone or by Annabel not doing her recorder practice. They noted, with delight, how she seemed to have forgotten to question TV time – in fact, some evenings she actively encouraged it.
‘Just going to make a phone call,’ Frankie might say. ‘Why don’t you two chill out with some back-to-back Futurama?’
Frankie had promised the children toad-in-the-hole for supper. Which wasn’t going to be easy with no eggs or sausages in the house so, with strict instructions not to even look at the remote control let alone turn the TV on until all homework was done, she left Sam and Annabel in the house and drove to Howell’s in Binham.
‘I don’t have much homework,’ Annabel told Sam. ‘Just art. I have to draw a self-portrait but I do that all the time anyway so I’m just going to stick one of those in my book.’
‘I have German revision – but anyway, we have the whole weekend to do homework. Mum seems to have forgotten it’s Friday.’
‘So therefore we don’t have any homework to do – right now?’
‘I guess not.’
‘So therefore, we can watch TV?’
‘I guess so,’ said Sam, surfing channels. ‘South Park!’
‘But Mummy says –’
‘Only if Mummy finds out,’ said Sam.
‘Just phone her, though – and see how far away she is. So we have time to switch off and pretend.’
Sam dialled Frankie’s number. And over on the kitchen table, her phone rang.
‘She forgot to take her phone!’ said Annabel.
‘Duh!’ said Sam. ‘Don’t worry, we’ll just keep the volume down.’ Out of all the programmes at their disposal, South Park and Family Guy were contraband.
Frankie’s phone rang out again.
‘Who’s that?’ said Annabel, imagining the TV Police somehow tracking them down.
‘That’s not a call, that’s FaceTime,’ said Sam, a little confused. He left the sofa and walked over to the kitchen table. He looked at the screen very intently until all was quiet.
‘Who was it?’ Annabel wanted to know.
A moment later the same FaceTime alert trilled through again.
‘Annabel,’ said Sam. ‘Come here.’
‘Who is it?’ Annabel asked.
‘I don’t know,’ he said, ‘but I think it’s why Mum’s been acting – weird.’
Annabel came over and peered at her mother’s phone. ‘Who’s he?’
She read out loud: Scott would like to FaceTime. ‘Oh – I think he’s the work man she had to see in London last week.’
‘Only one way to find out,’ said Sam, accepting the call.
It was midday and Scott had just returned from taking Jenna back to Whistler. She’d given him a long hug, told him perhaps they’d go to the farmer’s market on Sunday, and then off she went, looking over her shoulder and waving, giving him a wink and a grin. Dad’s got a girlfriend? No way! Crazy weird!
He’d heated up the soup she’d made and thought how right she was; lunch was a good idea and his daughter’s soup was excellent. He thought, I’ll share this soup with Frank
ie – it’s around her dinner time over there.
‘Zucchini and dill!’ he said as soon as the call connected.
But two young faces came into view, staring at him so unflinchingly he wondered whether the connection had stalled.
No, they were live. All of them.
‘Hi,’ he said, putting down his soup bowl.
They didn’t reply.
He took a spoonful of soup and peered in very close so that his face was huge, then sat back again and gave them a little wave. ‘Hi,’ he said again.
Still nothing.
Did Frankie know?
‘Is your mom home?’
‘She’s at the shops,’ said Annabel. ‘She forgot her phone.’
Scott nodded. This was – odd. He showed them the soup. ‘Zucchini and dill. I’m having a bowl of soup for my lunch,’ he said.
‘It’s supper,’ said Annabel.
‘Not here it isn’t,’ he said.
‘Where’s here?’ Sam asked suspiciously, taking the phone from Annabel.
‘Well – I’m in Canada.’
Scott heard Annabel repeat Canada in the background and watched Frankie’s home shake as she jostled her brother for the phone. There they were again, the two of them, watching him eat. Scott took another spoonful, buying time to think what to do next. So he ate and they watched and every now and then, he nodded at them while they glanced at each other.
‘So,’ he said. ‘My name is Scott. I know there’s a Sam and an Annabel – you want to tell me who’s who?’
Annabel giggled but Scott could clearly see that Sam thought him a bit of a jerk.
‘I’m Annabel.’
‘Oh,’ said Scott as if the penny had only then dropped. ‘So your mom’s gone to the stores?’
‘She’s gone out because she forgot eggs and we can’t have toad-in-the-hole without eggs,’ said Annabel.
Scott had no idea what that was. Did the kid just say towed? It can’t be toad, surely? I mean, OK, the French with their frog’s legs, but he’d never heard of the British with their toads eaten whole. He was about to tell them that he’d licked a toad once, when he was at college, but then they’d ask why and he’d have to say for the trip and they’d ask what kind of a trip and he really wasn’t going to start explaining about the weirder hallucinogens in life. So they all just sat quietly, looking at each other. Scott thought how Sam looked more like Frankie than Annabel did – but that Annabel had her mother’s mannerisms – tipping her head when she listened and talking with dancing eyes, which glinted and darkened.
‘Is that South Park I can hear in the background?’ Scott laughed.
The children looked at each other, alarmed; looked at Scott, guiltily.
‘Did my mum come and see you in London?’ Annabel suddenly spoke up. ‘When I stayed with Auntie Peta and had my nails done and watched Pitch Perfect?’
Where was this going? ‘Yes,’ said Scott, ‘she did.’ Did the children know? Frankie hadn’t mentioned anything. ‘I had to fly home the next day.’
‘Oh.’
Still, Sam was not saying anything.
‘You were at a cricket match – right, Sam?’ said Scott. He watched Sam give a reluctant nod and then whisper something to Annabel.
‘Don’t be stupid,’ Annabel told her brother, giving him a shove. ‘Don’t say that.’
‘Ask him,’ Sam challenged his sister.
Ask me what, Scott wondered.
‘Mum’s coming back!’ Annabel suddenly exclaimed. ‘We have to go! Sam – switch him off!’ And Annabel disappeared from view.
Sam and Scott looked at each other a moment longer.
‘Well – it’s nice to meet you Sam,’ Scott said. ‘You look after your sister. You look after your mom.’
‘I do,’ said Sam and he cancelled the call. ‘Don’t tell Mum,’ he said to his sister. ‘I mean it.’
They ate an entire tray of toad-in-the-hole between them and polished off a tub of chocolate ice cream for pudding. Later, when the children were showered and ready for bed, Frankie encouraged them to watch even more TV, justifying what she called ‘any old dross just to rest your brains’. She wanted a little uninterrupted time with Scott. She took her phone upstairs to her bedroom, sat on her old loom chair which was sandwiched between the wardrobe and the chest of drawers.
Scott was expecting her call. God knows what they’d said to her, the kids. Your soup-eating Canadian boyfriend has never eaten toad – can you believe that?
‘Hey,’ said Frankie.
‘Hey,’ said Scott. In an instant, he knew the children had said nothing and he knew it wasn’t his place to say anything either.
‘Hello,’ she said and she laughed. ‘Are you having a lovely day? We’ve just had supper. Toad-in-the-hole.’
‘What the fuck?’
‘It’s sausages,’ Frankie explained, ‘plonked in a tray with a sort of batter that puffs up.’ She paused. ‘You don’t look convinced.’
‘Tell you what – if I try your toad, you can try our poutine.’
‘What’s that?’
‘So – it’s French fries.’
‘I love chips –’
‘And you slather them in gravy.’ Scott laughed. ‘And cover it all in cheese curds. We also eat beaver tails.’
‘You what?’
‘My favourite is spread with chocolate hazelnut and chopped banana.’
‘That’s barbaric!’
‘It’s a pastry, Frankie. Fried – you’d love it.’
‘I would?’
‘I know you would.’
‘This time last week,’ said Frankie, softly.
‘Only a week ago?’
‘And here we are.’
‘Pretty cool, hey?’
The downside of a long phone call was the subsequent knot of emotions binding buoyancy with aloneness which took time to carefully untwine. Frankie looked around her room blankly. She remembered back to nine months ago, how hard she’d worked at making everything just so before the children spent their first night there. Pictures up, beds made, favourite possessions placed perfectly, clothes put away, wellies lined up by the back door, familiar furniture in place, the TV tuned, the Wii set up, candles lit, central heating on and supper all prepared. Home. Welcome home, kids, we’re going to be so happy here.
Now, today, this man who’d flipped her heart was sitting down to an afternoon’s work while she was having thoughts of a bath and then bed. She looked around her bedroom – at the painting on the wall, the scatter cushions and the reed diffuser, the photos of smiling Frankie and her beautiful offspring at various stages of their lives. She regarded the black hammered-iron light switch she’d spent a fortune on, the skirting boards Farrow & Ball-ed to perfection and she thought, I wish I wasn’t here. She closed the curtains on a darkening sky which curved over the land like the ceiling of a planetarium.
In bed the next morning, Frankie thought of Alice to whom she’d given so little time these last few days and she knew it wasn’t all down to the maddening impasse she’d suffered with her writing. Gazing out of windows had been devoted to Scott, not the new book, and emailing had been exclusively to Scott, not her editor. It struck her too that time she should have spent with her children, helping with homework or just hanging out together the way they’d usually do, had been given to sneaking off to phone or FaceTime Scott. She understood how Sam and Annabel would always have mixed feelings about Alice, but Scott? They couldn’t fail to love him, and him them. Really, it was time to tell them about him but she wasn’t quite sure how she’d do that.
‘Brancaster or Holkham?’ Frankie asked the children. The sky was cloudless.
‘Why are you so obsessed with us having fresh air?’ said Annabel.
‘Because!’ said Frankie. ‘Now – Brancaster or Holkham?’
‘Brancaster,’ said Annabel.
‘Holkham,’ said Sam.
‘That’s helpful,’ said Frankie.
She looked from Sam to Annabel.
They were in a silent tug of war on opposite sides of the kitchen table and neither was going to let go.
‘OK,’ she said, ‘the Jolly for lunch – or the Victoria?’
‘The Jolly.’
‘Victoria.’
What Frankie really wanted to do was say right! We’re not going anywhere then! But she yearned for the beach and so she tried a different tack.
‘Heads,’ she said. ‘Or tails.’
‘Heads,’ said Sam.
‘Tails,’ said Annabel.
This certainly made things a little easier.
‘Tails it is,’ Frankie said, uncovering the flipped coin from her hand. ‘Brancaster, then.’
‘We could go to the Victoria for lunch,’ Annabel told her brother with a sweet diplomacy.
‘It’s fine,’ said Sam, as if the world was against him.
‘You like the pizza at the Jolly,’ Annabel reminded him.
‘It’s fine!’ said Sam. ‘God!’
‘Sam –’ Frankie spoke in her warning tone.
‘What,’ he mumbled. ‘God.’
He stomped away and Annabel told her mother, don’t worry, he’s just being teenagerish. But I do worry, thought Frankie, I do.
Sam unwound as soon as they were out of the car and the salty air whipped over the dune and encircled him, luring him towards the sea with a smile on his face. Annabel scampered off to see just how far out the tide was and Sam walked alongside his mother.
‘Sorry,’ he mumbled. ‘About before.’
‘It’s not a problem,’ Frankie said, linking arms. ‘I’m sorry if I was stroppy last night. I just have stuff on my mind.’
Sam shrugged it off and, while doing so, surreptitiously wriggled free from his mother. Frankie was used to it. Sometimes, Sam let her hold his hand until he suddenly realized what she was doing and how old he actually was and then dropped it as though it was a leper’s. But he usually made amends without making a fuss. A hug in the privacy of the house, or taking her hand and placing it on his head for a hair-ruffle while they watched television, or his arms suddenly around her neck when he was sleepy in bed and she came in to kiss him goodnight. Just now, he extricated his arm from hers as if running to catch up with Annabel was the main reason. Frankie watched them scamper, heard them jabbering, grinned as they came running and skipping back to her. A fighter jet tore across the sky, long gone from view by the time its sound caught up. The jets had unnerved her when they’d first arrived in Norfolk; now she saw them as an exciting part of the sky, never knowing when they’d come, never quite knowing where to look to locate them as they went roaring past.