by Lucy Lawrie
But underneath the panic there was something else. Something from that lesson when she’d talked about Argenteuil, and Grieg, and I closed my eyes.
Sunday afternoon walks in the park with the other love of her life.
The love of her life had been Emil. But the other love hadn’t been a man. It had been a little boy. A little boy of two and a half, with dark hair, and a smattering of freckles over the bridge of his nose, who loved to feed the ducks.
‘Inverleith Park,’ I said to Cleodie, who nodded and pressed her foot harder on the accelerator.
45
Janey
Inverleith Park. She was there, sitting on a bench, shielding her eyes from the low winter sun, holding the string of a red helium-filled balloon. And Pip. He was crouched at the water’s edge, crumbling fragments from a muffin. He waved when he saw me. It took all the resolve I had not to sweep him up against my chest and squeeze to feel the life in him.
When I sat down next to her she didn’t look at me, but waved an empty Costa bag over my lap.
‘Would you believe it, we got here and I realised I’d forgotten the bread. So we popped into a coffee shop to get something. Mr and Mrs Duck and the ducklings would be so cross if we came with nothing. Jamie seems to have been to this . . . Costa before, but I must say I can’t think when. They gave him this balloon.’
Jamie . . .
I remembered the day, just a few weeks ago, when I’d knelt before her in the music room. How I’d hurled my Marlowe questions at her, trying to summon her out of Cash in the Attic, or whatever other world she’d escaped to in her head. How she’d come alive, briefly, at the sight of Pip. She hadn’t said ‘Janey’ at all. That small, strangled noise of distress had been ‘Jamie’.
‘I know Renee has sent you, dear,’ she said now. ‘But please don’t ask me to give him back. Please don’t ask me. Please don’t.’ She pulled her thin tartan skirt further down over her knees, and I saw that she’d forgotten to put on her tights.
She was an old lady, that’s all. An old lady with varicose veins, and legs blue with the cold.
‘It’s okay,’ I said softly. ‘Renee’s not here.’
‘It’s just that . . . No,’ she said, frowning. ‘That’s not right. I haven’t seen Steve, have I?’
She searched my face, seeming to think I would know.
‘Which is a nuisance, dear. He usually keeps me right. I meant to ask him. I meant to ask him, before he left, who was collecting Jamie today. I didn’t know, so I came just in case.’ There was a shiver in her voice.
‘Okay.’
‘If you see him, ask him about my blue pills, would you?’
‘I will.’ I nodded towards Pip. ‘When does he usually have his bath? Perhaps we should be getting him home.’
‘Oh, seven on the dot,’ she said firmly, as though any other time would be preposterous. ‘As soon as piano time’s finished. Emil plays the piano in the drawing room, little songs and what not, for James . . . when he’s at home. Is he home at the moment, dear?’
‘I’m not entirely sure.’
‘Emil won’t let Jamie play on the Steinway, though.’ She tutted. ‘It’s one of the things we don’t agree on. What’s it there for if not to be played? When I give Jamie his little lessons, we have to use the upright on the top landing. He just plays a few notes, up and down, but his touch is just beautiful. And I know he’s got a good ear. He loves the Carnival of the Animals. And the Chopin nocturnes, at bedtime. He lies with his wee head on my lap, and his thumb in his mouth, just gazing out of the window as the evening falls, and, oh, my dear, sometimes I can hardly breathe. For the love, you know. It gets you in the chest.’
‘I know. I know how that feels.’ If I didn’t get my arms around Pip soon I’d stop breathing myself.
‘I brought this with me.’ She drew some folded manuscript paper out of her handbag. ‘Blue Bear’s Dance. I thought I might get a chance to play it for him today.’
‘Maybe another time. But, you know, it’s getting late.’
‘Just ten minutes. Please?’ Her voice was thin, almost lost on the wind. She sounded much younger. It struck me that she’d have been younger than me at the time she’d lived at Regent’s Crescent, playing mother to James. All that love she’d felt, with nowhere to go in all the years that followed.
‘It doesn’t seem fair,’ I said.
‘It was never going to be fair. And I did it anyway. I’ve been such a foolish, foolish woman.’
‘Did what?’
‘Gave up my heart. To that little scrap of a child. Gave up my heart.’
It was the almostness that got me, then. The drab December trees where she’d always dreamed of blossom. The scum-covered pond that should have reflected the trees, and the endless sky. The crowds she’d never played for. The man who’d never quite loved her. The six babies who’d never lived. And the little boy: the warm, breathing, growing boy who’d never been hers.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I’m just so sorry.’
A gust of wind caught the Costa bag, which scuttered out of her lap onto the ground. As she bent to pick it up I called softly to Pip, holding out my arms. He hopped across and draped himself over my lap, lifting his feet off the ground and stamping them down again. I curved myself around him, buried my face against him.
‘Mamma.’ He climbed up on my lap, muddy shoes scrabbling against my jeans, arms round my neck, sticky hands in my hair.
‘Oh, Jamie,’ said Miss Fortune in a whisper. ‘Beautiful boy.’
Out of all this, there was one truth that I could say.
‘I lost a baby once, too.’
She turned to me then, and her old face seemed to crack across the middle.
‘Oh my dear.’
I put my spare arm around her thin shoulders and drew her towards us.
Hattie
I’d got her text of course, the one saying that Pip was safe. But still. The sight of Janey, Pip and Miss Fortune, lined up on my doorstep, was a bit of a shock. Not what I was expecting at all. Not least because Mum and James were due any minute.
Miss Fortune was crying: silent, slow tears. Janey was babbling, actually pushing the old woman over the threshold, telling me about the police, and how they’d been planning to just take her home because she wasn’t going to make a complaint in the circumstances, and it was a matter for social services. They were creating a referral. They couldn’t get hold of Steve. She was telling me how she couldn’t just leave her.
‘Please, Hats,’ she said. ‘Just for an hour or so and then I’ll come and get her. I’ll take her home, or she can stay at mine or something. I’ll keep trying Steve. He’ll know what’s going on with the carers and everything. But I have to take Pip to Murray’s. He’s been frantic.’
She looked at me and shook her head. ‘I can’t show up at Murray’s with her in tow, Hattie. I just can’t. They’ll use it against me . . .’
Then I realised. She’d forgotten about the party. She’d forgotten that Mum and James were about to show up. Why should she have remembered, after everything with Pip that afternoon?
‘Where’s Steve anyway?’
‘He’s leaving,’ said Miss Fortune, sniffing back her tears. And then, softly and sadly, to the tune of ‘New York, New York’: ‘He’s leaving to-day . . .’
I took hold of her hand.
‘Off you go,’ I said to Janey and Pip. ‘Go, go . . .’ and I flapped them out onto the street.
Janey
Murray opened the door and snatched Pip up into his arms, burying his face in the crook of his neck. His back heaved as he held on and held on.
Gretel appeared behind. Her nose wrinkled briefly at the sight of me, pink-eyed and tousle-haired, holding on to the end of Pip’s balloon.
‘Have they arrested this mad old woman, then? Who is she anyway?’
‘She’s an old teacher of mine.’ I faced Gretel and kept my voice low and calm. ‘A music teacher. She’s very sadly suffering from dementia a
nd didn’t know what she was doing. The police said it wasn’t a matter for them. Social services are going to take it from here.’
‘So you’ve been slinging accusations around about Mutti when all along this was one of your nutter friends. Unbelievable. Mutti got a huge shock when the police turned up at the Rhino Watch Lunch. You owe her a big apology.’
‘Where Bingo?’ shouted Pip and wriggled out of Murray’s arms.
‘Come through,’ said Murray, recovering his wits and leading me into the kitchen, an enormous extension to the back of their property. The back wall consisted entirely of floor-to-ceiling glass doors giving out to the patio and long, striped lawn. He opened a cupboard and then stood looking into it as though he couldn’t remember why he’d opened it in the first place. He’d aged since the last time I’d seen him. His nose looked beakier than ever, thread veins standing out on his cheeks. His hair a little wild, the grey showing more than usual.
There was a large metal cage built into the far corner of the room. I started when I saw Pip open the door and climb into it.
‘That’s Bingo’s cage,’ said Gretel with a sigh. ‘He’s still with the dogsitters. We haven’t had time to collect him yet.’
‘Tea?’ said Murray, finally remembering why he’d opened the cupboard.
‘Don’t start getting all cosy,’ said Gretel. ‘Tell her.’
‘Tell me what?’
‘We’re going for full residence,’ said Gretel. ‘In light of today’s debacle, we really have no choice. We can’t tiptoe around your feelings any longer, not when Pip’s safety hangs in the balance.’
Until recently, I might have almost thought she had a point. Not any more. Something had changed in my thinking, crystallising with my encounter with Miss Fortune at the pond.
‘Pip’s safety is not hanging in the balance. If you want to blame someone, blame the nursery. They’re the ones that let him walk off with a stranger.’
‘Ah, but she wasn’t a stranger, was she?’
I walked over to the cage. ‘Come on, Pip. Let’s go home.’
‘Going for a residence order would be a last resort,’ said Murray in a tight voice. ‘But I am concerned, Janey. I know this situation today wasn’t all down to you, but I think you need to take a step back and get yourself on an even keel. I mean, all this business about hammers, and slotted spoons and so on, come on. I know you’d never actually harm him, but it’s a sign of stress and I think you need to get some proper help. In fact, I’m going to have to insist on it.’
He’d missed the sharp look from Gretel.
‘Slotted spoons?’ I said.
‘Yes. Gretel said you’d confided in her about the intrusive thoughts you’ve been having.’
I stared at Murray. As if I would confide in Gretel. But . . .
Cleodie.
Cleodie, with her too easy, frog-eyed friendship. The instinct that had made me pull back, mid-confession.
It all fell into place.
‘So Cleodie is . . .’ I turned to Gretel and shook my head. ‘I don’t know how you’ve done it, but you’re using her as some sort of spy.’
‘What?’ said Murray. ‘Gretel, who is Cleodie?’
‘I’ll tell you later,’ she said.
‘Tell me now.’
She turned on him, quick as a snake. ‘This is your son, Murray! Your only son! You can’t expect me not to do my homework – your blurdy homework in fact – on something as important as this!’
‘What else have you done?’ I demanded. ‘Apart from getting her to befriend me, the poor pathetic single mother? What else did you pay her to do?’
An image flashed into my mind. Pip being sick in Cleodie’s sitting room the first time we went for coffee. Me grabbing the changing bag but leaving my handbag unzipped by the side of the couch. And later, of course, I’d slept the afternoon away while she minded Pip and Rose in the flat. Her gleeful description of ‘Back Door Switches’. She lived in a flat identical to mine, on the next street, backing on to the same patchwork space of shared back gardens. From her kitchen window, she’d have been able to watch and learn my routines. Pip’s pirate magic lantern switching off at 7.30 p.m. The bathroom light snapping on at 2 a.m. every night, after I’d woken from the dream. And the juicy gossip from the art class – including a full account of my meltdown over the hammer picture – would have flown freely from Jody once Cleodie had wormed her way into that set.
‘You told her to shake me up a bit, didn’t you? Just little things, to unnerve me. Moving things around in the flat. The knife appearing in the fridge, and so on? Yes?’
Gretel just looked at me, eyebrows raised, mouth pushed out in a ‘so what?’ pout.
‘It was to see how you’d react under pressure. We do it all the time with our trainee candidates: take them away for a week and observe how their decision-making skills are affected in different situations. Think of it like that: a robust vetting process.’
‘A vetting process? To be my own son’s mother?’
‘It’s the modern world,’ said Gretel. ‘Get used to it.’
‘It’s not the modern world, you delusional bitch. You were trying to get your hands on my son because you’re a spoilt cow who thinks she can get whatever she wants. Well, not this time, Gretel. Not this time.’
But as soon as the words were out, I found I was on the verge of laughing. My heart felt like it had been released and could soar into the sky.
Because if it was Cleodie who’d done all this, it hadn’t been Steve.
*
I drew my phone out of my bag and dialled his number.
‘Where are you? I’ve been trying to get hold of you.’
‘Janey.’ The phone gusted and crackled, as though he was walking in the wind. ‘I’m on my way to Waverley station. My phone was off, sorry.’
‘Where are you?’
‘I’m off to Newcastle.’
‘I’ll meet you at the station.’
I drew Pip gently out of the cage and led him out of the house, raising a hand in acknowledgement to Murray.
‘Balloon, Mummy.’
I made a loop in the end and slipped it onto his wrist, and he walked with his face upturned, watching as it bobbed along above him.
A taxi passed by and I flagged it down: quicker than driving and parking. As we rumbled along, over the cobbles, down the Mound, I became aware that two stories were running in my head at the same time, each demanding the whole of me, each making the other impossible.
Steve loved me. He was the only man who’d ever seen me. Who’d ever ‘got’ me. I’d lose half of myself if I lost him.
Steve was a damaged man who’d lied to me, who I could never trust.
Both of them couldn’t be true. They couldn’t run on the same track. I was hurtling, hurtling towards the point when my world would simply split in two.
I seemed to hover outside of myself for a moment, watching myself sitting there in the taxi with Pip clutched to my side, waiting to see what I’d do.
Would my hand reach forward and tap the glass? Would I tell the driver to stop, to turn around, to take me home?
But, no.
Steve was waiting on the concourse by the train information displays. He looked cold, hunched down inside his jacket. A wheely suitcase stood by his side.
‘You’re leaving for good.’ It didn’t need to be a question. I could already see the answer in the closed-off look on his face.
‘Yeah. Katya and Calum are on their own again. Martin’s left.’ He shook his head. ‘God knows what that was all about, some kind of argument. I’m not getting involved. But she needs support. I’m going to stay with them for a bit, at least till she sorts herself out. I can take Calum to day care, and pick him up when she’s got late shifts. Help with the physio side of things. Then, I don’t know, maybe try and get a job teaching in Newcastle so I can be near them.’
‘What time’s your train?’
He looked at the clock up on the noticeboard. ‘Till
half past. Walk me to my platform?’
Stay.
All the agonising, the racing to get here, and I still wasn’t quite brave enough to say it.
We walked through the concourse and over to Platform 2. Pip, now in his element after realising he was in a train station, trotted happily alongside me, and insisted on walking right to the end of the platform until the concrete stopped and there was just the grey sky above us and the track stretching ahead of us, all the way to England. All the way to Steve’s new life.
I gathered up my courage. ‘It wasn’t you. It wasn’t you who broke into my flat and did those things.’
His face creased in disgust. ‘For God’s sake, Janey.’
‘It was Cleodie. On behalf of Gretel.’
‘You’re kidding.’ His voice softened. He reached out a hand and touched my arm. ‘That’s shocking. Really shocking behaviour. Have you spoken to Murray?’
I nodded. ‘I’ve just come from there. It’s been quite a day. Miss Fortune took Pip on a little unscheduled outing from nursery.’
‘What?’
‘She was very confused. But also kind of lucid, in a weird way. The police have created a referral or something. She’s going to need to go into a home, Steve. Or have more carers at least.’
He nodded. ‘That should be happening.’
‘Does the council even know you’ve gone?’
‘I just had to leave a message with social services. It might take a while to filter through.’
‘She was kind of stuck, back a long time ago. I wanted to say sorry for what I did. For not saying – doing – anything about Renee. But Miss Fortune caused Renee to find out, you know. About the affair. She planted one of Emil’s letters in Hattie’s music case.’
‘God. Why?’
I shook my head, thinking of her small life, enclosed within the four yellowing walls of the music room, where she’d smoked, and dreamed, and listened to the music she’d once been able to play. Where she’d taught an endless stream of pupils who didn’t care.
Maybe she just wanted to make herself known. To stand up and say, ‘Here I am. This is me.’ To stop being invisible.
‘I can only be me if there’s you,’ I said simply.