As we pull away, back down the long school drive, we hear Hugo wailing. Dad says, ‘Don’t turn round.’ But it’s too late. Mum and I see Mr Barry restraining Hugo from running after us. Fido is tossed on to the ground.
‘What have we done?’ Mum says.
*
That night, I can’t sleep. On my way to the bathroom I hear Mum and Dad talking in the kitchen. I creep downstairs and sit on the bottom step. My heart lifts. Maybe they’re saying they might collect Hugo tomorrow?
‘You know it’s the right thing, Gina,’ Dad’s saying. ‘The sooner Hugo can be with other children like himself, the better. We’ve got to be brave, let him go.’
‘I know, but I feel guilty. He’s only seven, he’s so young.’
‘The specialist said now is the right time. I know he’s only little, but Polly’s school could never give him the same opportunities.’
Mum has explained to me why he is going too. All the pupils have eyesight problems, the classes are small, and the teachers will be able to help children like Hugo overcome barriers. The specialist had told Mum and Dad how important it was to integrate Hugo with others like him as soon as possible. The longer they waited the harder it would be, not only for them, but for Hugo too.
‘This was your idea. I took the promotion for Hugo! For you!’ Dad continues.
‘I know!’
I hear a bottle being opened.
‘Here,’ Dad says.
‘No.’
‘Come on, you can have a small one, Gina.’
‘No.’
‘For God’s sake, one won’t hurt!’ I’m not used to Dad raising his voice. ‘It’s brandy.’
‘No.’
‘Think of it as medicine. It’ll help you sleep.’
‘I don’t want it! It’s poison!’ I grip on to the banister when I hear glass shattering against the floor.
‘Gina, you’re not Vivienne!’
Who’s Vivienne?
‘Don’t you dare mention her name in this house,’ Mum shouts now.
‘Fine, but if I want a drink, I’ll have one. He’s my son too.’ He pauses. ‘It’s going to be strange without him but we have Polly to think about. She needs us to be strong.’
‘I know, but …’
‘You’re tough on her.’
‘It’s hard not to love Hugo more.’
Fighting back the tears, I jump up.
‘Polly?’ they call.
I rush back upstairs and into my bedroom, hiding under the duvet, tears rolling down my cheeks as I pretend to be asleep when Mum opens the door.
6
2013
It’s Louis’s first day back at school after the Christmas holidays and we need to leave in fifteen minutes. ‘London’s burning, London’s burning,’ I sing, gathering his packed lunch. ‘Get the engine.’
‘Fetch the engine!’ Louis corrects me.
‘Pour on water, pour on water!’
Louis leaps off the sofa and clambers into his toy fire engine that somehow Uncle Hugo and I had assembled over the Christmas holidays. Our flat is open-plan. One room merges into another so I can see Louis from the kitchen putting out the fire with his party balloon pump that acts as an imaginary hose.
*
We need to leave in five minutes.
‘Sing it again, Mummy.’
I shake my head. ‘We’ll be late.’
‘What did the big tomato say to the little tomato?’
‘Don’t know. Now, come on, put your socks on!’
‘Ketch up. Why don’t we have a car?’
We can’t afford one, that’s why. ‘We have legs, Louis.’
‘Maisy’s dad has legs and a car.’
‘Good for him. Now come on!’ I say, urging him to put his other sock on.
Finally I help him into his coat. Zip it up. On go the gloves and the woolly lion hat. We gather his PE kit and rucksack. I try not to think about the chaos left in the sitting room. As we’re about to head out of the door, ‘Mum, I need the loo,’ he says.
*
Louis and I race across Primrose Hill, there’s no time to admire the BT tower or point at the pretty apricot house today. When Louis slows down to admire a small dog, asking the owner if he can pat it, I grab his hand and yank him away, terrified that the headmistress will tell me off for being so late.
Ben and Emily arrive in a heap at the school gates at the exact same time as us. I notice Emily’s coat is buttoned skew-whiff and her hair is in an odd sort of plait. ‘I used to get to the office at 6.30,’ Ben mutters out of breath as we make our way towards the classroom. A voice in my head tells me to ask him out for a coffee.
I help Louis hang up his duffel coat and put his school bag into one of the pull-out trays before he darts over to his friends, who are sitting at a table covered in fake grass and toy farm animals. ‘Oh silly me!’ he says when he realises he hasn’t signed himself in. There’s a seaside chart on one of the walls; each child is a sea creature. Louis grabs a Velcro-backed crab with his name on it and thrusts it in the sandy section of the picture, next to all the other crabs. ‘Well done,’ I say, kissing him goodbye. ‘Be good.’
Outside the gates, mums congregate in small groups, while I talk to Jim, our stay-at-home dad, keeping an eye out for Ben at the same time. Jim has two children; Maisy, who is one of Louis’s best friends, and Theo, two years old and clutching Jim’s hand, dressed in red cords that clash with his carrot-coloured hair. Jim is slim and fit from spending hours in the gym. When his two children are older he wants to train to become a sports teacher. When he first pitched up at the school gates there was a wave of curiosity around him. When one of the mums saw him in the swimming pool dressed in his snug-fitting pair of trunks that left little to the imagination, ripples of excitement were shared at the school gates the following morning.
Just as Ben heads towards us, hands deep in pockets, head down, it seems I’m not the only one keeping an eye out for him. Gabriella, Italian and voluptuous, totters towards him in her heels and fake fur coat carrying a bright orange dish. She’s married, but that doesn’t stop her from flirting. ‘I don’t believe it,’ Jim says, humour in his voice. ‘Why don’t I get a lasagne anymore?’
Ben has attracted lots of attention for different reasons. Losing his sister and adopting his niece has made him both a subject of pity and something of a local hero. I sense this makes Ben deeply uncomfortable, and I’m guessing this is why he never hangs around, giving nobody the chance to get to know him, not even busty Gabriella.
I watch as she touches Ben’s arm and flicks her dark wavy hair as she tells him to how to heat the lasagne. Her hand rests on his shoulder as she asks him how he is feeling with a sympathetic nod. Before I know it, I’m over there. ‘Sorry to interrupt,’ I say to Gabriella, before turning to Ben, ‘but I was wondering if you’d like to join Jim and me for a coffee.’
‘I don’t drink coffee,’ Ben replies, Gabriella standing close to him, reeking of Italian perfume.
He glances at his watch. ‘But I’ve got time for a ginger tea.’
*
Jim, Ben and I sit at our usual corner table in Chamomile, a small lively café on England’s Lane, close to my flat and always packed with locals.
Jim and I discover Ben lives in Chalcot Square, a cluster of imposing houses, each painted in different shades of pastel. Ben apologetically tells us he used to be a broker in the City, back in his twenties. He’s thirty-six now. ‘It’s fine, you can hate me.’ He shrugs. ‘I know we’re world-wreckers. To be honest, I went into the City because I didn’t know what else to do. No imagination.’ His mouth curls into a slight smile and I decide there’s something attractive in his manner but looks-wise he’s definitely not my type. I’ve always preferred blonds.
‘Well someone has to run our economy,’ admits Jim.
Ben shrugs. ‘You know, it wasn’t all that bad but I had to give it up in the end. The lifestyle wasn’t for me.’
Is that why he was at AA?
‘What do you do now?’ I ask.
‘Accountant. Deeply unglamorous,’ he says with that dry smile, ‘but I like being freelance, being my own boss, and I work for some really interesting clients, a lot of them in the creative industries. To be honest it’s useful now, working from home. I need to be around for Emily.’
‘How’s Emily doing?’ Jim asks.
‘The headmistress told me she’s quiet, subdued, which isn’t surprising. As I’m sure you know my sister, Grace, Emily’s mother, died last summer.’
We nod. ‘I’m so sorry,’ I say, trying hard not to do that sympathetic nod. ‘I’ve wanted to talk to you for a while, but wasn’t sure you …’
He stops me. ‘It was sudden.’ Ben gives nothing away in his eyes as he tells us she died from hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a heart condition that causes enlargement of the heart muscle. She had no symptoms; they didn’t even know she was unwell. She died in the early hours of the morning. ‘Emily had gone to wake her up. Poor child.’
Jim and I remain silent.
Ben explains that he is Emily’s only living blood relative. ‘Grace and I were close. When she had Emily, she made me promise I’d be her guardian if anything happened to her. Of course I agreed at the time, believing that if anything bad was going to happen, it was going to happen to me. You see, Grace was fit and happy. She was an acupuncturist, worked from home. Unlike me, she’d barely touched a drink or smoked in her life. She lived in the country, didn’t believe in polluting the environment so cycled everywhere and meditated each morning. She was only three years older than me. Ironic thing is she’d kept on joking about not wanting to turn forty. She died only a few days before. Why does the world behave in this absurd way? I should be the one in the grave.’ He shrugs. ‘I’m not married, have no commitments, I’m all she has, so I owe it to Grace to be there for her, but to be honest I’m not sure I’m cut out to be a dad. I’m not even a dad, am I? I’m Emily’s uncle, but now that Grace is gone, it’s like she doesn’t even know me anymore.’
I wait for Jim to say something. He doesn’t. I’m about to, but Ben beats me to it. ‘Sorry, bet you wished you’d never asked me out for a coffee now.’ He grabs his pack of Marlboro Reds, saying he’ll be back in a second.
*
Five minutes later Ben is still smoking outside. Jim opens the lid of the lasagne dish to take a peep. ‘Gabriella once made me a tiramisu. Her husband must be the size of a house.’ He pauses. ‘What do you think happened to Emily’s dad?’ He doesn’t wait for an answer. ‘Poor Ben, he must be …’
‘Shut up.’
Jim looks up. ‘You shut up.’
‘He’s coming,’ I mouth.
‘Oh.’ The lid slams back on as Ben returns to an awkward silence. ‘Please don’t stop talking about me.’ He sits down, tosses his cigarette pack on the table.
‘I’m sorry. I was just saying to Jim,’ I improvise, ‘that I can’t imagine what you’re going through, but being a single mum I do sort of understand the pressure and I’m happy to look after Emily any time.’
Jim backs me up. ‘Me too, mate. If there’s anything I can do.’
‘Well, there is something.’
‘Yes?’ both Jim and I say.
‘Those muffins look pretty good.’ Ben gestures to the glass cabinet filled with cakes and pastries.
Over muffins, Jim tells Ben about Violet Reid, head of the PTA. ‘She thinks I’m a weirdo not working. I love to wind her up, tell her I’m busy all day with a feather duster.’ Jim pretends to dust our table. ‘This one time, right, before a meeting I overheard her saying to one of the other mums …’ Jim prepares himself to mimic Violet with her la-di-da voice, ‘“I’m all for men being more hands-on and changing the odd nappy, but if my hubby suddenly started walking round the house in a pinny I swear I’d lose all respect for him!”’
‘What do you call men like us?’ Ben looks at Jim, a tiny glint of humour now in his eyes.
‘Stay-at-home-dads or lazy sods, according to Granny-in-law,’ Jim says. He goes on to tell Ben what his wife, Camilla’s family, think about their swapping the traditional roles and how Christmas with them en masse is always a challenge. ‘Truth is Milla wasn’t cut out to be a stay-at-home mum and missed being a lawyer, and she earns more too. I was hating my job with the local council so it made complete sense to us, but Granny doesn’t see it like that. Christmas Day went from bad to worse,’ Jim continues, enjoying the captive audience. ‘Not content with calling me a lazy sod, she says, “I mean, what do you do all day? It’s not right my daughter has meetings up to her eyeballs while you fanny around eating muffins!”’ He picks up his blueberry muffin and takes a large deliberate bite, making Ben and me laugh.
‘Jim, I wish I could clone you,’ I say. ‘Seriously, most men are too proud to do what you do.’
If only they knew about Matthew. Jim knows my relationship went badly wrong and he’s aware I go to AA, but that’s only half the story. I shudder hearing his voice. ‘If I hear that baby crying one more time before I’ve had a coffee I swear I’ll throw it out the window.’
‘He does everything, Ben,’ I carry on, wishing I could wipe away those memories. Rub them out like a teacher rubs things out on a blackboard.
‘It’s not a hardship,’ Jim declares. ‘It’s a choice and a privilege. I think it’s fine having someone look after your child when they are so tiny, like puppies in your arms that you feed and rock to sleep, but I wanted to be around when Theo said his first few words. I think it’s important that one of us looks after our children. Sorry, that was crass,’ he says to both Ben and me. ‘I wasn’t thinking.’
Ben nods. ‘What I’m struggling with is how do you know the right thing to do, the right way to bring them up? At night I’m lying awake thinking this girl, this little person, her happiness now rests in my hands. It terrifies me.’
‘Me too,’ I confess.
‘This morning she asked me to plait her hair,’ Ben continues.
‘Ah, the hair thing,’ says Jim. ‘It gets easier with practice.’
‘I’ll give you a lesson,’ I suggest.
‘You and me, Ben, we’re in the minority, so we need to stick together.’ He raises his mug to Ben’s.
‘To stay-at-home-dads-slash-uncles then,’ Ben says.
‘And single mums,’ Jim adds.
I join in. ‘So stick that up your pipe and smoke it, Granny.’
*
When Jim heads off to pick Theo up from nursery, Ben and I leave the café.
We walk along the pavement, quiet in our thoughts until I pluck up the courage to say, ‘Ben, do you mind me asking … ?’ Tell him you saw him at the meeting. I wimp out. ‘Where’s Emily’s father?’
‘Oh, right. Him. When Grace told him she was pregnant he did a runner. She wrestled with the decision, but she’d always wanted children.’
‘Your parents, are they around to help?’
‘Mum is no longer with us and my father died when I was four. My stepdad’s still around, sadly.’
‘Anything “step” is never the easiest of relationships.’
‘Forget the title,’ he says sharply. ‘It’s about the person, the man, and in this case he’s a horrible jumped-up little man.’
We turn into Chalcot Square.
‘Right, well I’d better get to work,’ I say, feeling that conversation was killed. ‘It was great to …’
‘Are you around tonight?’
‘Tonight?’
‘I wouldn’t mind taking you up on that plaiting lesson. Emily keeps asking for a fish plait?’
‘French plait?’
‘Yeah, maybe that was it. Who knows, but you sound very clued up in this area, so if a French plait is something you can teach me, I might earn brownie points and Emily might be a bit happier.’
He mentions her name with little emotion, which unsettles me. ‘It’s a date. Well, not a date date.’ Oh put a sock in it, Polly.
‘Shall we meet after sch
ool? We can eat Gabriella’s lasagne,’ he says, gesturing to the orange dish. ‘You’d be doing me a favour. She’s cooked enough to feed the south of England.’
‘I’d like that.’ I’m not so sure Gabriella would, mind you.
‘Good. Well, I’ll see you later.’ And for the first time that morning his smile reaches his eyes and I catch a glimmer of the man he could be, underneath that mask of loneliness.
7
Ben leads me into his sitting room. I stare at the modern fireplace, the brown leather sofa with matching armchairs that look as if they’ve never been sat upon, and the stark white walls. ‘I’m bored,’ Louis says, clearly realising that this isn’t a child-friendly place. No toy diggers, trucks or toolboxes scattered on the carpet, only pristine wooden floors.
‘Why don’t you play a game with Emily?’ I suggest, distracted by a painting with a giant orange splodge in the middle of it.
Emily edges away from us as if we’re poisonous. She hasn’t said a word since we collected her from school. I can’t imagine what’s going on inside her head. She probably doesn’t know either. She must be confused and scared, yet unable to express it, and from the little I know about Ben, I doubt he can help her either, especially when he’s grieving too.
‘Do you want to read your book, Emily?’ Ben asks, as if reading from a script. ‘Or have a snack before dinner? Juice? Watch television?’
Unsurprisingly they opt for television and a juice.
I follow Ben into the white kitchen, with nothing on the counters except a music system and coffee machine. In the middle of the room is an island with two modern silver stools. He opens the fridge, reaches for the milk and two cartons of apple juice. He switches on the kettle. ‘Cup of tea?’
‘Thanks,’ I say, feeling faintly uncomfortable in this show home. I look at Louis and Emily watching television, their mouths wide open like goldfish. ‘The moment that thing is on, they turn into zombies.’
Ben hands me a mug. ‘Emily probably watches too much, but I don’t know what else to do with her. She won’t play with her toys.’
One Step Closer to You Page 4