Straight on Till Morning

by Lynne Barrett-Lee

  I filled the kettle and directed Nick to the cupboard.

  ‘What a business,’ he said, slipping off his jacket and hanging it over the back of the door, over her Amnesty International carrier bag holder. Such a good person. Such an honest person. How could this have happened to her?

  ‘What a bastard. I can’t believe it. I simply cannot believe it. I mean he was always such a – ‘I stopped. ‘No. I don’t know that at all. I know nothing about him. All I know is that – God, what a mess. I mean, her wedding. It’s only three months away.’ I could feel tears springing unbidden into my eyes. So many horrible implications. Nick was standing across the kitchen from me. A distance of only a matter of feet. He was tapping a teaspoon against his palm.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Oh, Nick, I wish you weren’t here. It feels all wrong. It feels’

  ‘It’ll be all right,’ he said firmly. ‘He’ll make a statement and it’ll all be sorted out. You’ll see. And better now. Better she’s found out now, at least. Better than afterwards.’ The kettle boiled behind me, belching great clouds of white steam into the air. He was spooning coffee into mugs now. ‘Come on,’ he said crossing the kitchen with them and lifting the kettle from its rest. ‘You need a cup of coffee.’

  I watched him pour hot water into both mugs. Watched the tendrils of steam dance and fade. Watched him stirring in milk with his big strong hands.

  ‘What I need is a hug,’ I said.

  We got home a little before two in the morning. Morgan had slept for much of the journey and I had to shake her gently awake once the car was parked on the drive. I helped her to the front door – she was weak as a rag doll – while Nick brought her case in from the boot.

  And my mother was still up. I was just putting my key in the lock when the hall light came on and the door opened wide, spilling light all around us. She was in her dressing gown, all smiles.

  ‘I thought I’d wait up and – oh! Gracious! Morgan! You’re here!’

  She stepped back to allow us in, hand clamped around Merlin’s collar.

  ‘I’ll put this here then, shall I?’ Nick asked, stooping and placing the case just inside the door. I nodded.

  ‘Oh!’ said my mother again, glancing at us both. ‘Are we all right?’

  This was, I presumed, directed at Morgan, who, fully awake now, was once again crying.

  I shook my head. ‘Not really,’ I said wearily. ‘Put the kettle on, will you, Mum?’

  She let go of Merlin’s collar and enfolded Morgan in her arms instead, clucking and stroking her hair.

  ‘Right,’ she said, with the absence of fuss for which I loved her so much. ‘Let’s get you in the warm.’ She glanced at me, and nodded minutely. ‘Come along, Morgan love. Let’s get you sitting down.’ She started off down the hall with her, Merlin trotting behind. I turned to Nick, who was by now back on the doorstep. My stomach was all churned up again. Over and over and over and over. When would I stop feeling like this?’

  ‘I’ll get off then,’ he said. He looked tired.

  ‘You don’t want another coffee?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Better not.’ He turned to go.

  ‘Thank you so much,’ I said, reaching for his hand and wishing I could pull him back in over the doorstep and keep him beside me forever. He stopped on the step and looked into my eyes for a long, long moment. I squeezed his hand briefly and then let it drop.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said again.

  He opened his mouth. ‘Sally, I –’

  ‘Please, Nick. Please.’

  ‘OK,’ he said quietly. He held my gaze for a moment more, then he turned and walked back to his car. I shut the door, very quickly, behind him.

  Chapter 26

  It had been almost four before we’d put Morgan to bed. For once she’d started talking it seemed she couldn’t stop. Despite her shock at the events of the previous evening, it seemed she had had her suspicions about Cody for some time. Nothing tangible really, just that his behaviour seemed erratic, just a feeling he was keeping something from her. Her first thought had been that he was having second thoughts about the wedding, but as the weeks had gone on she’d come to the conclusion that his problems were more about money than anything else. There had been his car – he’d always driven a rather swanky BMW, but one night three weeks back he’d turned up to collect her from her office in an ageing Ford instead. And then there had been his ever more frequent disappearances. He’d be out of the office for long spells, and though his work, as far as Morgan knew, made him fairly autonomous, he’d become increasingly difficult to pin down.

  More tellingly there’d been young guys calling at her flat. On one occasion one had turned up there at midnight, demanding to know where Cody could be found.

  She didn’t at that point know a great deal more. Only that he’d gone to work on Friday morning, from her place, and that he hadn’t arrived and had not been seen since. She’d spent much of Friday and Saturday trying to track him down. It was only the arrival of the police on her doorstep that had put all the pieces of the jigsaw into place.

  ‘I thought he’d been killed,’ she said now, her voice tiny. ‘I stood there and just held my breath, waiting for them to tell me. But they didn’t. They just asked to come in then showed me some paper and said they were going to search my flat. I’ve never been so scared. Never.’

  ‘And they definitely found drugs?’ I said. ‘At your flat?’

  The policewoman I’d spoken to had been unforthcoming on that point, except to say that they’d already found drugs at Cody’s. Morgan nodded.

  ‘Oh, yes.’ She spread her hands and sighed. ‘This great big plastic bag full of pills. God, I don’t even know where they found it!’

  My mother shook her head slowly but said nothing.

  ‘And then they arrested me. It was completely unreal. The older one – the one with the moustache – started saying ‘you don’t have to say anything’ and all that stuff. I couldn’t take it in.’ She shook her head. ‘And then they took me off. No time to do anything, get anything. Nothing. He just picked up one of my jackets from the back of the sofa and said ‘this do?’ and next thing I was in the back of a police car. It was so degrading. How could he do that? How could Cody do that to me?’

  As it turned out, we weren’t long in finding out. I had decided there was no point ringing Jonathan in the small hours, but I telephoned him as soon as I woke the next morning, and he was back in the house before ten. I had braced myself for some serious ranting, but in this really big thing he was uncharacteristically calm. The first thing he did was to call the police and the second was to tell us that Cody had been released on Bail during the night. By teatime it was evident, following Jonathan’s subsequent conversations with Cody’s father, Morgan’s subsequent conversations with Cody himself and our subsequent conversations with Morgan herself that our jail-bird speculations were probably wildly inaccurate. Cody was in trouble, certainly, but their main target was the man he’d become involved with at work, and who had, it seemed, quite a little empire on the go. Cody’s clean record and co-operation would stand him in good stead. But though a custodial sentence had been pretty much ruled out, there would be no wedding happening come September. Morgan could cope, she’d announced tearfully, with being married to someone with a drug problem, but she couldn’t, and my heart went out to her at this point, be married to someone who told her lies.

  By bedtime it was evident that Cody had other ideas. He had rung up on no less that eight occasions, the last of which Kate had picked up, en route to bed. She put her head round the living room door.

  ‘It’s the Drug U Like man,’ she announced, rather gaily.

  From Morgan this elicited a watery smile. From me, who had half risen from my armchair by now, a furious cochineal blush.

  ‘Well, it’s not such a big deal, really,’ observed Russell in the pub on Monday night. ‘Half the population have probably t
aken drugs at some time in their lives. Sounds to me he’s just been a bit of a prat, more than anything. I mean, you head down most nightclubs on a Saturday night and you’ll find any number of people dealing E. It’s pretty common, Sal. And, hey. Could have been worse. It could have been coke, given he’s a toff.’

  This, to my utter consternation, had been the verdict of Morgan herself not twenty four hours earlier. That the experience she’d been through had been harrowing in the extreme, but that it was only E. That it could have been worse. Only. I felt like I’d been beamed here from Mars. I had tried to persuade her to stay for a couple of days but she’d been firm. She had work to go to, a big media campaign to get organised, and she needed to get home to get things sorted out. Home meaning her home. I was struck once again by the simple truth that her life was not with us any more, but in London. She went off early with Jonathan, with promises to call me in the evening – and reminded me we were supposed to be meeting up the following Wednesday.

  So here I was, plopped back into my own life, with a new sheaf of things to do. Or un-do, it now seemed. My mother, likewise had toddled off back to Eastbourne. Looking forward to a bit of peace and quiet, she’d said. Or what passed for that in her hectic life, I guessed. I felt very lonely, all of a sudden. Kate would be off out with Carl, no doubt, and the one person I could talk to was out of bounds.

  ‘Finish that,’ Russell said now, ‘And I’ll get you a refill.’ He stood up and smiled as I drained my glass of wine. ‘Only difference between us and them, you know, is that our drugs are legal. That’s all.’

  Ruth rubbed her hands together then jiggled a finger at me.

  ‘Your life,’ she said, ‘is one long round of crises and disasters. I’m going to have to write it some day, you know.’

  ‘Hmm,’ I said, thinking how much I’d like to get drunk now. ‘Just make sure you give it a happy ending, then, will you?’

  When I got home from the pub, Merlin was the only living thing in the house. Since finishing her exams Kate had become a bit like the Pleiades. Always on her way to or from somewhere. Only visible out of the corner of your eye. There was a note from her on the kitchen table to say that Jonathan had phoned and to call him back later. And something else. A text message from Nick, which said, ‘Just wanted to check in and find out if all’s well. Much love, N.’ I decided the best thing I could do under the circumstances was not to reply. I erased it instead. As you do. I was hurting so much I didn’t know what to do with myself, but I was getting better at this. Slowly.

  Wednesday dawned fine and clear and all the things one would wish for at the beginning of the school summer holidays. Unless you were me, of course, shrouded in clouds. The train was packed, delayed, sweaty and, well, all the things you could expect at the beginning of the school summer holidays. Given the above. Which kind of suited, somehow.

  By the time I had emerged from Oxford Circus tube station and threaded my way through the slow moving syrup of tourists to the restaurant, I was almost forty five minutes late.

  I’d phoned ahead to warn her, so when I got there Morgan was already sitting at a table, a menu open in front of her and a bottle of wine in a silver bucket on a stand at her side. She saw me, and reached across to pull it out.

  ‘Are you driving? She asked as I approached.

  ‘No,’ I answered, slipping off my jacket. ‘Briony was going into Oxted so she dropped me at the station. I’ll grab a cab at the other end.

  ‘Good’ she said, filling my glass almost to the rim. ‘Because I’ve taken the afternoon off work and I feel like getting seriously drunk.’

  It was good to see Morgan looking more like herself again. Smart and polished in her slim fitting suit. There was a slight edge to her voice, but why wouldn’t there be? I sat down and opened my menu also. This was nice. This was good. This would be a tonic for us both. Perhaps I would get tipsy as well. Why not? The smiling waiter, anxious to regain the initiative after being pre-empted by Morgan’s actions plucked my napkin from in front of me, shook it out with a snap and spread it carefully over my knees.

  ‘So,’ I said, picking up my wine and sipping it gratefully. It felt good to be away from home for a while. ‘That’s the plan then, is it? Not a good move in my experience. The last time I drank in quantity at lunchtime I came home with a motor powered juice extractor.’

  She smiled. ‘Shopping I can do without, Mum. I am all shopped out. I thought we might just sit here and talk. Maybe take a taxi down to Tate Modern later. There’s a new exhibition I fancy taking a look at. If I can still focus by then.’

  Her laughter sounded slightly forced.

  ‘So. How’s things with Cody?’

  She shrugged.

  ‘Cody is – well, I’d say as well as can be expected. He’s lost his job, of course, but that was on the cards anyway. And for the best, in my view. He’s looking at courses.’

  ‘What, college?’

  She nodded. ‘His father’s fairly unimpressed, but he’s going to take him on part time for the moment.’ Cody’s father was a partner in a big architectural practice.

  ‘And you?’

  ‘I don’t know yet. One step at a time.’

  ‘But the wedding’s definitely off.’

  She shook her head. ‘Not off. Just postponed.’ She toyed with her fork. ‘I can’t just leave him, Mum. I love him. I know what Dad says is all sensible advice, but I can’t take it. I love him.’

  I had barely spoken to Jonathan since his brief rant on the Sunday evening about it. No change there, then. And then he’d gone off to London, returned late on Tuesday, and had gone this morning before I was up. All of which suited me right now. If I didn’t have to see too much of him I could at least toy with the prospect that spending the rest of my life with him and without Nick would be bearable. One row, one put-down, one cross word just now and I knew I would snap. ‘What did dad say?’

  ‘All the usual stuff. That he’s no good, that he’ll do it again, that I can do better for myself, that I should keep my options open, that there are lots of other pebbles on the beach etcetera. All of which is probably true, but entirely meaningless. I’m not after another pebble. I’ve chosen the one I want. It just needs a buff and a polish, that’s all.’

  I liked her metaphor, but I wasn’t so sure of the sentiment. ‘It’s never a great idea to think you can change someone, Morgan.’

  She was on that like an exocet.

  ‘Who said anything about changing him? I don’t want to change him. I’m talking support, respect, giving him a chance to be the person he is instead of the person everyone thinks he should be. That’s what’s crippling him. He’s been stifled by everyone’s ridiculous expectations of him. If I’d got engaged to someone who then got diagnosed with MS or something, would anyone expect me to dump him? I don’t see it’s much different. He just needs some space to find out what he wants to be.’

  And get through the court case, of course. I didn’t want to think about that right now. ‘Well,’ I said, thinking what a wise and thoughtful human being my daughter had become. ‘You certainly seem to have thought things through.. ‘And it’s your life.’

  ‘That’s what I said to Dad. And at the end of the day, I’ll have to live with the consequences. He’s not a bad person, mum. He’s just – he just got himself into a mess, that’s all. Hooked up with some idiot people. I don’t think Dad really understands that, you know? The pressure. The pressure to be someone, achieve all the time. You know, all he always wanted was to go to horticultural college. But his father was having none of it. No son of mine – you know the drill. I think there’s a fair amount of soul searching going on chez Southgate right now. But yes, off as in off in September. One step at a time. We’re going to see how things go for a few months, and have a re-think after Christmas. His solicitor thinks he’ll get community service – did I tell you? – but then, well. Move out of London even. If he gets on to a course, we could be talking moving right aw
ay. I think he’s asked for a prospectus from some college in Scotland. Which is fine. My skills are pretty portable.’

  My daughter talking about community service as if it were just a different kind of Saturday job. Such breathtaking confidence. Far from being traumatised she seemed positively energised. Had she stepped off a rollercoaster she didn’t want to be on? I tried to imagine Cody as Alan Titchmarsh and Morgan swapping her slick suits for wellies. Though it would never have occurred to me, I could suddenly see it. She topped my wine up, even though there was barely an inch gone from it. The bottle, I noticed, was already almost empty. The waiter was back again. He tipped the remainder into Morgan’s glass and upended the bottle in the ice.

  ‘We’ll have another of those,’ she said.

  ‘My, you’re on a roll.’ I watched her as reached for her glass once again. She was looking composed and assured but there was an edge of fragility about her too, somehow. Not brittle exactly, but as if she was made of newly blown glass. One tap at a weak point and she’d shatter.

  ‘Funny,’ she said, as if reading my thoughts and anxious to prove them wrong. ‘I don’t think I’ve felt so sorted in months. Strange, isn’t it? I should be feeling wretched and yet all I feel is this overwhelming sense of relief. As if I’ve taken control of my life again. You know?’

  ‘And Cody’s, by the sound of it. And I don’t think it’s strange to feel like that at all. But I wish you’d told me sooner, Morgan. Why didn’t you tell me what was going on? If you’d only told me – if I’d only known how serious things were, I’d have – ‘

  She flapped away the end of my sentence.

  ‘I wouldn’t have told you, mum. I thought I would, but, in the end, I knew I wouldn’t. What difference would it have made? It was something I had to sort out for myself.’

  The wine was beginning to find it’s way into my veins. ‘By getting arrested? Fairly dramatic means!’

  She laughed again. ‘But it did need to happen. I can see that now. I’ve spent far too long trying to pretend everything was OK. Letting you trundle on with the wedding arrangements…. Anyway, it’s done now. If I’d told you and dad it would have been all too easy to let you take over and cancel the wedding.