by Adele Parks
‘Hi.’ I drop my handbag on the floor and stand in the doorway.
‘Hi,’ he replies. He looks up. His face is a mix between defiance and terror. The last time I remember him wearing this expression was when he was fourteen and he’d sneaked into town to have his nose pierced. I try to look at him objectively. Is he a boy or a man? It’s almost an impossible call. But I try. He’s six foot two. Three inches taller than Ben. He has a broad back and relatively muscled arms, for his age. I don’t imagine he’ll get any taller but I know he’ll fill out some more; he’s not done growing. He’s good looking. Others no doubt can see a man, almost a man. I can only see the boy. I think of the times I’ve sat on the edge of his bed reading stories, listening to his excitement after a good day when he’s scored a goal or aced a test, and on a bad night when he’s been woken in fear after a scary dream about Dr Who. I try not to think of the things Abi told me last night, when I thought she was describing an anonymous twenty-something.
‘Your principal called today; he says you’ve been missing college.’ I start with this because it’s my territory: education, rules, procedures, guidelines. For seventeen years, I’ve checked temperatures of baths, food and bodies, I’ve checked start and end times of clubs, parties, exams, I’ve checked contents of bags, pockets and rucksacks. I’ve checked attendance of school. It’s firm ground. Asking him about this is carrying on as normal.
Liam shrugs. ‘I’ve been going to London with Abi.’
I’d worked that much out. I shrink, praying he won’t give me any details. Abi gave me details. She told me how she and her lover had taken a swanky hotel, how she’d fleetingly demurred about the age gap, how he’d said it was unimportant – if she is to be believed, I don’t know what to believe – how he couldn’t get enough of her. Now, I must bury those memories, silence the words rattling around my head.
Liam says, ‘We did a tour of the Houses of Parliament, once.’
I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. He’s telling me this news as though that will excuse his affair, his bunking off. Does he think I’m going to be pleased and ask what he thought of Westminster Hall and the Queen’s Robing Room? I wonder if a small part of him still wants my approval. Or maybe it’s just habit, he’s just telling me his news because that’s what he’s always done. I somehow manage to resist the urge to shout that he’s clearly been getting quite the education and force myself to stay on track.
‘You need to go to college. Your A-levels start in June, less than two months.’
‘For fuck’s sake, Mum, is this all you want to talk about?’
‘What would you like to talk about?’ I ask coolly.
‘I thought you’d have something to say about Abi and stuff.’
I try to remember Ben’s advice. ‘I think the age gap might be difficult to negotiate,’ I say carefully. My throat is dry, tight. I’m trying so hard not to say the wrong thing and alienate him, so it’s almost impossible to say anything at all.
He folds his arms across his chest, his stance challenging. His smile is cold. He’s a stranger. ‘What was it you said to Abi last night? “What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.” That was it.’
She’s told him. They spoke about me. I imagine them laughing at my antiquated turn of phrase, maybe my pathetic willingness to ingratiate myself with her by trying not to appear shocked by her news. I glare at Liam, furious with him, with her, with the whole disgusting thing. I don’t know why I spouted that crap. To please her? I hate her. I want to do serious damage to her. I take deep breaths and hope my son can’t read my mind.
He carries on, ‘And I agree with you, Mother. It’s just sexist. No one passed judgement, or even so much as passed comment, when Rob started sleeping with his PA and the age gap was almost the same as it is between Abi and me.’
‘That was different.’
‘Why?’
‘I didn’t give birth to Rob’s PA. If I had, I’d have had plenty to say.’
Liam looks bored, embarrassed for me. ‘You’re so suburban, Mum,’ he says with a slow, sarcastic roll of the eyes.
‘Well yes, that’s true. I was born in the suburbs and have chosen to live my adult life in suburbia. I like having a garden. It doesn’t mean I’m stupid.’ Against my better judgement, because I’m riled, I add, ‘This isn’t going to work, Liam.’
‘Yeah, it is.’
‘What do you even talk about?’
He grins, slowly, secretly. He thinks I don’t know what is going on in his mind but I do. I read the smile just as clearly as if he’d said the words: they don’t do much talking.
‘But she’s so old,’ I yell, frustrated, abandoning my plan to play it cool, bite my tongue, carry on as if nothing had happened. It was a stupid plan, anyway. Not mine, Ben’s.
‘Thirty-eight isn’t old.’
‘Liam, I’ve been seventeen and I’m almost thirty-eight. I’m not exaggerating when I say there is no common ground. I was a completely different person at seventeen compared to the person I am now.’
‘She’s nothing like you,’ he snaps. ‘She doesn’t fawn and grovel at the world, she grabs it by the throat. Shakes it, makes it her own. She’s exciting, and I like being with her. There’s nothing you can do about that.’
We stare at one another, both of our chests moving up and down rapidly.
Do I? Do I fawn and grovel at the world?
‘I’m going to move Abi’s things into my room.’ He’s not asking me, he’s telling me.
I nod and seize the only advantage I can. ‘OK, but you go to school.’
Liam’s face breaks into a wide beam; he’s my boy again, but only for a moment. He doesn’t hug me, he leaves the room. I’m about to ask him what he wants for tea but I stop myself. That’s a question for children.
We all six sit together to eat the roast chicken, sweet potato chips and broccoli that I’ve made. This dish is Imogen’s favourite, so she is happy, at least. We’ve all sat together and shared meals for weeks now, meals that I’ve enjoyed immensely; chatty, funny, loud occasions. Tonight is completely different. The conversation is stilted, no one is laughing, I can’t bring myself to look at Abi or Liam. I keep my attention focused on my food, only just managing to meet the gaze of the girls or Ben. Not that it would matter if I was trying to make eye-contact with either Abi or Liam – they only see each other; they seem to be oblivious to the fact that the rest of us are in the room.
The sexual chemistry between them is obvious. How could I have missed it? Or is it a case that because I now know, and the genie is out of the bottle, they’re being extreme and no longer wary or careful? Instead they are flagrant. Blatant, immodest, brazen. They reach for one another’s hands, she squeezes his leg under the table, he throws his arm around the back of her chair and caresses her shoulders. Ben tries to talk about – oh I don’t know, his work I suppose, or the traffic. It doesn’t matter, there’s no way in. They’re a unit and we are consigned to the role of spectators. There’s no place for us in their private world. I can’t follow Ben’s attempts at conversation. I can’t even hear it. I feel like I’m submerged underwater. I can’t hear, see, speak, move or think at my usual pace. Everything has been turned off inside me. Maybe it’s the only way I can function.
Watching Liam and Abi together is like watching a catastrophe on the news unfold behind the glass wall of a TV screen. You can see it being reported but you can’t do anything. You can’t change it. You’ll probably watch the same footage several times. Each time you see the footage you’re horrified, shocked that the events have not turned out differently, that it’s always the same horrible thing.
I can’t touch them, or reach them. I can’t change things, but I know it is coming.
A tsunami is rolling in. The earth’s crust is cleaving apart, a volcano spluttering, and then there will be a deluge. People will drown, scream, wail, flee. I wonder which people.
I feel the earth tremble.
35
Melanie
‘You did well, tonight,’ says Ben. As if I am a child. ‘It wasn’t so awful, was it?’
I’m already in bed. I came up with the girls. After they were tucked up I didn’t bother going back downstairs. No one came to check on me. I didn’t offer any excuse. No one seemed to expect it. I heard Ben making conversation with them, I even heard the occasional shot of laughter. I know my son’s and husband’s usual laughs and what I heard didn’t sound natural; they sounded forced. Even so, it feels like a stab in the back that Ben is trying to make jokes with them.
I am flopped on the bed; I’ve taken off my trousers but I’m still wearing all my other clothes. I haven’t bothered to clean my teeth. I don’t answer Ben’s question because it was awful. It was the worst night of my life. He doesn’t want to hear that.
He comes to bed and tries to snuggle into me. I edge away from him. Throw him an infuriated glare.
‘I wasn’t suggesting sex, Mel,’ he says, offended. ‘I thought you might appreciate a cuddle.’
I would, but now can’t bring myself to admit as much. Instead, I say, ‘Oh my God, to think that when she talked about The Stud, I was actually turned on. It’s disgusting. I was turned on and she was having sex with my son.’
‘Look, Mel, you didn’t know it was Liam. You had no clue.’
She’d made the relationship sound so romantic and yet at the same time erotic. I remember her telling me how beautiful it was. He was. She described his beautiful body in detail. She talked about taking his cock into her mouth. It is too much. Why? Why? If she planned on me finding out his identity one day, why would she tell me those things? Did she get off on it? Before, I felt like an intruder but, I admit, I was curious. Now, I feel I am in a headlock forced to look when I want to turn away; my eyes are prised open when I just wish I could shut them tight.
‘The cradle-snatching bitch, whore,’ I mutter.
‘Mel, you need to calm down. Stay cool.’
‘She failed to mention it was my son she was shagging, presumably in my house. I think you have to admit that omitting that particular fact colours our relationship.’
‘Our son. Our house,’ he corrects.
My stomach clenches with anxiety. I don’t respond to his comment. I have no time to mollycoddle his feelings with careful words. I am devastated. I feel physically weak when I think of the times I have changed the sheets in Liam’s bedroom. Their sheets.
We lie still, listening to the sounds of the house. The TV has been switched off, they have put on some music. It drifts up the stairs, a mellow, slow tune. I don’t recognise it; it might be his choice, it might be hers. It’s the sort of music people have in the background when they— I stop the thought. I can’t allow it in my head. I know they are going to go to bed at some point, together. I don’t imagine it will be the first time they’ve done so in this house, but it’s the first time I’ve known, and it’s hard.
‘How can you bring yourself to be nice to her? You do fancy her, don’t you?’ I ask. I’ve been mulling over what he told me. She came on to him too.
‘No, not at all.’ Ben sighs. ‘I’ve thought she was hard work for some time now, I’ve only put up with her for you, but I can see that Liam would think she’s smoking hot. Absolutely shaggable.’
So, what was she doing when she flirted with Ben? Was she just flexing her muscles or maybe throwing me off the scent? Or maybe if he’d taken her up on her offer, she wouldn’t have moved on to Liam? Why did she have to have one of mine? Was it proximity alone or was it something else? Something more worrying? I’m so mixed up I can’t work this out.
‘Maybe you should have taken her up on her offer.’
‘What?’
‘Taken one for the team, kept her away from Liam.’ I don’t mean this. It’s another bad joke but this time Ben stares at me horrified, hurt. He thinks if I had to choose, I’d sacrifice him. I’d sacrifice Us.
‘I thought for a while there that you were a little bit in love with her yourself,’ he counters.
‘I hate her.’
‘No, you don’t.’
‘I do.’
‘That makes me pretty certain you must have loved her fiercely, once.’ It’s true. I was under her spell, too. I know these past few months I’ve been prioritising her, pandering to her needs, giving her my attention. ‘Why did you invite her into our lives, Mel?’
I shake my head. Why indeed? Gratitude? An old debt? Those things seem irrelevant now. We fall silent again, which means we can’t help but hear Liam’s and Abi’s voices drift up from the kitchen. They must be clearing away the drink glasses; Liam never does this without being reminded to. The small domestic act irritates me, because they’re doing it together.
‘The Cougar Who Came to Tea,’ whispers Ben.
‘What did you say?’
‘You know, a twist on the book we used to read to—’
‘Liam. We used to read that book to Liam. For fuck’s sake, Ben. This isn’t funny.’
‘Come on, Mel. He’s a grown man. At least you got him to agree to go back to college. That’s the important thing.’
We listen to them come up the stairs; they’re giggling, murmuring, speaking in low, exclusive voices.
Abi suddenly calls out, ‘Good night Mel, night Ben.’ I clamp my hand over Ben’s mouth to prevent him calling back; I don’t want her to think we heard, I’d rather she assumes we are fast asleep. I hear her and Liam collapse into giggles. Then I hear his bedroom door open and close behind them.
‘Oh my God,’ I whisper. ‘She doesn’t seem to be accepting any responsibility for this . . . this wrongness.’ I want to say ‘this evil’ but I just stop myself.
‘It won’t last,’ Ben says, firmly.
‘What if it does?’
‘This is a short-term thing.’
‘If he stays with her, they won’t be able to have kids.’
‘Well, Liam might not want kids.’
‘But he does! He’s always said he does.’
‘Well, they might be able to have kids: she’s thirty-eight, not fifty-eight.’
‘Aghhh. I don’t want them to have kids! I don’t want him to be a father before he’s twenty!’
Ben hisses, ‘Stop being over dramatic, Mel, this isn’t helping.’
But what would help? We are beyond help. I turn away from him. I’ve nothing to say.
36
Abigail
Thursday 12th April
Abi hated the way Melanie was behaving as though she was some innocent, passive victim here. As if everything that had happened to her was so unfair and unreasonable, when the truth was that Melanie was the architect of her own destruction.
People remembered things differently but always wanted to know how others remembered them.
Was it vanity? Or insecurity?
It depended on the person. Maybe, it was incredulity that two people could go through something together but still see it so differently. Abi didn’t know. It was awful thinking about how alone everyone was.
Abi and Liam had lived at Mel’s, as a couple, for a week now. Liam seemed to be taking the situation in his stride. He flaunted their togetherness with an amused casualness that Abi believed to be sincere and not simply designed to irritate his parents; he seemed to give their feelings no thought at all. His selfishness was so natural for a teenager – it was also incredibly convenient. Abi had watched as Mel had shrunk in front of her. She looked loose skinned, baggy, boneless. Spineless. She had lost substance.
Abigail had always thought of Melanie as a sturdy, capable person. She remembered when they first met one another in the student union bar twenty years ago. Most students had been standing around looking nervous and overwhelmed; Melanie had struck up a conversation with a couple of botanists or biologists or whatever. She seemed jolly and open, somehow pure. Abigail had thought she’d make a wonderful wingman and had made a beeline for her, disentangled her from the embryonic friendships she was making, claimed her for herself. Even
when Melanie had announced she was just nineteen and pregnant, she hadn’t seemed cowed. She’d been sure of what she wanted. ‘I’m keeping my baby.’ Abigail had admired her confidence, her grit. But then she didn’t know everything at that stage. When Abigail had arrived on Melanie’s doorstep back at the end of February, she’d been struck by how much Mel had grown. Abi didn’t mean her waistline and thighs (although they had) she meant something a little grander. Melanie looked beyond substantial, she’d looked complete. Her devoted, handsome husband, her tall, beautiful man-boy son and sweet, impish girls completed her. Abigail had felt such rage surge through her body; Mel had so much and Abi had nothing. It wasn’t fair.
Now, the tables had turned. Now, Melanie looked like a refugee, lost, disorientated. Reduced.
It was obvious that she wanted to ask Abi to leave, but she couldn’t. Abi had to hand it to her, Mel was playing a clever game; not throwing her toys out of the cot was wisest. Abi had not anticipated any sort of self-control from her. She was so unreasonably wrapped up in Liam, Abi had thought she would instantly explode; it looked like it might be a delayed implosion instead. Abi had expected to be thrown out immediately after she left her phone lying around, knowing full well that Mel would not be able to resist prying. Ben must be working miracles, continually talking her down from the roof.
Mel had maintained a cool politeness in front of Liam, managing to stay a breath away from rude, although a long way from friendly. Naturally, Liam was surprised too, but he was pleased that his parents had been so accepting of their status as lovers. He’d kept his end of the bargain; this week he’d attended college every day. He pointed out that they no longer had to sneak off to London to be together, so he had time to study. Abi knew Mel was hoping that by taking away the secrecy, not objecting too much, too often, too vocally to their affair, then the passion would be dulled. Or maybe she was hoping that, eventually, the tedious domesticity of living in the small house with his parents and sisters would make Abi bored or squeamish, possibly even repentant, and that she would leave of her own accord. Mel was hoping that the great raging blaze of their lust would cool to smouldering embers, and that it would ultimately be stamped out altogether now they were surrounded by the ordinary clutter of day-to-day living. If Abi left the house, then Melanie could exercise her influence on Liam more.