He is as still as the Sphinx, and as inscrutable, too. I did not come here for this. I came to escape the crazy thoughts, to ground myself in the motion of the sea and magnitude of the world. I did not come to not understand Mal all over again.
“This is where I first kissed my husband,” I say. “The last time we got back together, we had our first kiss here, down on the beach.” I stand.
The railings by the steps leading down to the pebble beach are cold under my hand as I move down the uneven, slick concrete steps. I hear Mal follow me, his footsteps crunching loudly over the dewy pebbles, following me to the water’s edge. “Amy was babysitting, and because he said we were going for a wild night on the town, she was going to stay over. We went for tapas down in the Laines—it’s the best tapas in Brighton, you should go there one day. Then we went to the Pier.” I grin as I am swept along in the memory and it unfolds in my mind like images on a cinema screen. All the colors were bright and wonderful, our soundtrack was laughter and familiarity. “Turns out dancing was on a dance machine. He fed coins into the machine and then challenged me to do it. I love dancing but it was so hard and I could hardly keep up. We were suddenly surrounded by a group of teenage girls, arms folded, all resting on one hip, like they do. With that look they get on their faces. That one that says, ‘What are you doing, old woman, why aren’t you hiding your face in shame, what with you being so old?’ I kept at it until the machine ran out of money.
“I virtually fell off the platform, completely out of breath and all sweaty, and those teenage girls pounced on it. And, my God, they hammered that machine. Jumping and twisting and making a total show of me. They’d clearly been practicing and had all the routines worked out. I slunk away in shame. ‘It’s OK,’ Keith said as we left, ‘you obviously just dance to the beat of your own drum. It’s not that you’re past it at all.’ ” I narrow my eyes, like I did then. “I gave him a dead arm, cheeky bastard. We walked back along the seafront toward my place, until we got to here. This spot. And he tried to point out Orion’s Belt and Cassiopeia. He didn’t have a clue, and obviously didn’t think me having a name like Nova might mean I have a knowledge of the heavens. When I was doing my duty and putting him right, he kissed me. To shut me up.” I drift back to that moment. How wonderful it had felt. Being back in his arms. Being kissed by someone I liked, after all that time. “I knew that this was it. I was finally ready to get married, like he’d always wanted, and we’d raise Leo.
“Six months later, we had a small service—despite our long, drawn-out battle because he wanted to wear his Army uniform—and he sold his place in Shoreham and moved in with us. And we just got on with it. Our lives weren’t remarkable or overly exciting, but that was what I wanted. We had a normal, happy life.”
I turn to Mal; he is listening intently to what I am saying, although what he is thinking is a mystery. “It’s all gone. My life is all gone and I can’t work out why. I keep looking back over my life, even way back to before Leo was born, and I can’t work out where it all went so wrong. What I did to make this happen.”
“You didn’t do anything,” Mal says with quiet certainty.
“Then why is this happening?” I ask. “Why do I have to spend every moment wishing and hoping and wanting Leo to wake up and be OK? Why do I know if I don’t spend every second doing that—”
“It’ll be in that moment, that one tiny moment when you’re not using every part of your soul wanting it to be OK, that it goes even more wrong. That something already awful becomes unbearable. It’s in that moment that the world will collapse.”
“Your mum?”
He is agonized all of a sudden as he nods.
I used to think I knew how Mal felt about Aunt Mer, that I felt it, too. All those years of being around her, living with her problems, her highs and lows, made me think I was right there with Mal. That his pain was my pain. But I only shared a fraction of it, the most minuscule amount of it. I could leave it behind for a while, could go to sleep at night not worrying about Aunt Mer; Mal couldn’t. He had never been able to, he never could. She consumed his life.
Stephanie. Tall, blond, blue-eyed Stephanie. An image of her is suddenly in my mind. So vivid, so clear, it is almost as though she is standing beside Mal. The feeling of her is so strong, I can smell her sweet, heady perfume, I can hear the clank of her bangles, I can feel the sharp edges of her aura. She is on the beach with us. The wind is blowing her hair across her face, tugging at her clothes.
Being with her consumes him like taking care of Aunt Mer consumes him. Maybe I didn’t understand what not being able to have a baby had done to her. How it had shaped her. Maybe I shouldn’t sometimes hate her because maybe she isn’t simply troubled, maybe she is damaged. Maybe she has been hurt and she needs looking after, like Aunt Mer does. And maybe I should stop being so understanding. She went out of her way to hurt me, she never liked me, she never tried to like me. Maybe all the times I have given her the benefit of the doubt should stop. They should always stop when someone sets out to deliberately harm you.
“She’s been so much better recently,” Mal says, and for a moment I think he means his wife. But he doesn’t, he means Aunt Mer. “There hasn’t been a major incident for years and years, but still, I cling on. Part of me believes that’s because I’ve been—how did you put it?—wishing and hoping and wanting so hard. It’s not simply the medication, the stability, the weekly trips to the psychiatrist; it’s me using every second to will for her to be OK.”
“I know,” I reply. “I know now, I mean. Except I’m not doing a very good job, am I? Leo’s not …” I can’t say it. I’ve said as much as I can to Mal, I can’t do it again. I can’t make it even more solid by repeating it. Because that would be saying I might one day have to live in a world without Leo.
Is there a world without Leo?
“Yes, there is,” Mal replies. I hadn’t realized I’d spoken that aloud. “But I don’t know if it’s one any of us will want to live in.”
Unbidden, the corners of my mouth turn downwards, the horror of that rips through me like a single, focused laser beam, cutting me in two. As the two sides of me start to fall apart, Mal is suddenly around me, holding me close, holding me up. He cradles my face in his large, warm hands, as though I am something precious, made from fragile glass that will shatter under even the slightest pressure.
“But, that’s the thing about all of this,” he says gently but urgently, “we survive. After each knockdown, each earth-shattering blow, we get up again. Even though we walk through hell, and we walk through hell, and we walk through hell, and it feels like all we do is walk through hell, we do eventually make it to the other side. Scarred. Mostly broken. But we survive. And then we start to rebuild ourselves. We’re never the same, but we do rebuild ourselves. Because something like this is just another way in which we change. We all have to change.”
“I don’t want to change. I don’t want to walk through hell. I just want things to go back to how they were. I want him to be constantly asking his questions. I want him to wake me up and pester me to play on the computer. I want him to call me ‘Marm’ like he’s an American. I want him to tell me that I could be a better mummy but I’ll do for now. I just want things back how they were. I don’t need change. I don’t need hell.”
“I know, I know,” he whispers the whole time I am talking.
“I want my Leo back. Whole. Perfect. Just like he was.”
Mal’s eyes search mine, like I had been searching the dark horizon, desperately seeking something that would make everything all right, before he came here.
“Let me make love to you,” he says.
“What?!” I screech. His hands on my face aren’t a gentle comfort any longer and I push him violently away.
“Let me take you to bed, let me make love to you,” he repeats.
“Are you on drugs?!”
“No—”
“I haven’t let my husband touch me in God knows how long, why would I l
et you? You of all people. Is that why you came here? For sex? Because if it is, you can go straight back to London.”
“It wouldn’t be sex,” he says quickly and earnestly.
“Oh, really? What would it be, the inevitable joining of two souls cruelly separated, or something equally unique and beautiful?”
“No, no, it’s a way to forget. A coping mechanism. I used to do it all the time—especially when I was in Australia. If I started to worry about what was going on at home, I would … I’m not proud of myself, but it was a way to forget. For a while, you feel something else, and unlike exercise or drinking, for a while the pain is gone but you’re not alone and you’re still conscious. It’s still there, it’s still waiting for you on the other side, but for a while you forget how to hurt about that thing. I still do it, I’m not proud of that fact, either, but it’s the truth. Sometimes doing that is the only thing that can stop the pain, even for a little while. Let me do that for you.”
I search his face, his eyes, explore his energy, and all I can feel is truth, sincerity. He means it. He is offering me the only thing he can to try to help. He wants to take my pain away in the only way he knows how.
For a moment, I waver. I want this to stop. I desperately want this agony and fear and the waiting to stop. I want respite, freedom from what has become my life: hospitals, medical journals, eyes wondering who I am. Being offered a few minutes of normality is tempting, like being offered thick-soled shoes while you’re walking on a path of broken glass. You’ll accept almost anything to stop the pain.
Are you crazy? I ask myself, shaking my mind like I would shake my shoulders if I could. “Thank you, no,” I say. “No. All this is awful, but it’s the hand I’ve been dealt and I’m still playing it. Doing that will mean that I know everything is over. And it’s not. It’s far from over. Besides, Keith and I would do that for each other.”
“I’m sorry, it was a stupid thing to offer,” he says, “but I couldn’t think of anything else.… I was being selfish, too, I suppose, because that’s what I need right now. This is one of my worst nightmares. I’m going to lose someone I love even though I only know him from the things my mum has told me. How come I turned into my dad without even trying?” He runs his hands through his hair, his whole body shaking as he does so. “I was offering for us both. Truly, I am my father—a completely selfish bastard.”
“Oi, Wacken,” I say, shoving him slightly with my shoulder. “I ain’t gonna shag you, so give it up, all right? And begging is highly unattractive.”
The sound of his laugh is steady and loud over the waves and the schlink of the pebbles moving over each other.
I startle him by slipping my hand into his, but after the momentary shock, he closes his fingers around mine, clamping us together. It feels so solid and safe, holding his hand, that one of the chains of anxiety belted around my chest loosens and I can breathe a little more.
“You want to know about Leo?” I ask him.
“Absolutely.”
We stand holding hands, watching the stars, looking at the white-foam-topped black sea while breathing in the saline air as I tell him everything I can about my most favorite person in the world.
CHAPTER 44
Y ou’ll back me up, won’t you, Nova, when I call the police and say I’ve hit an intruder with a wok and he’s out cold on the kitchen floor?”
Mal is pressed up against the worktop beside the stove, a pan has been removed from the heat but what looks and smells like porridge is in it, and two pieces of browned toast sit up in the toaster just behind him. Cordy is standing in front of him brandishing in one hand my heavyweight wok and it is aimed at Mal’s head, while four-year-old Randle is holding a little silver milk pan in both hands like a bat, aimed directly at Mal’s left kneecap.
Mal looks surprisingly calm, or maybe it’s resignation to the knowledge that he could expect nothing less from Cordy. He’s probably been waiting for this day since the day he finished with me. Out of everyone, he knew Cordy would always be the one who would react most violently to him breaking up our family.
His body is leaning as far out of reach as possible, though—resigned he may be, but not overly eager to get a dual panning.
A commotion, raised voices, had drawn me out of bed and I’d come downstairs to find this scene. Four-year-old Ria is standing in the doorway beside me, hopping from one foot to the other in glee, the ribbons at the ends of her twin black pigtails bouncing in delight as she jiggles. I can see why this is fun. A small part of me is laughing inside because this is what Cordy would like to have done to all her ex-boyfriends, all my ex-boyfriends and all of Mal’s ex-girlfriends—and probably her Jack a few times, too, if she could have got away with it. Better out than in is her way of expressing herself. I respect it a lot. She and Amy are similar in that respect—they rarely experience an emotion they don’t immediately expose to the outside world. It must be liberating to be that wanton with your feelings. I talk too much, they emote too much.
“Why are you trying to hurt Malvolio?” I ask Cordy, conversationally.
“Why?” she asks in incredulity. “Why? Are you serious?” She doesn’t take her eyes off her quarry, not for a moment.
“Yes, I’m serious, why?”
Mal’s gaze flitters between Cordy’s weapon of choice and me, probably trying to work out if I’ll let her hit him.
“I come here to make you breakfast before we all go to the hospital and there he is, large as life, making himself breakfast as though it’s his house.”
“I was making Nova—” Mal begins.
“Who said you could speak?” she shrieks at him, while jerking the wok dangerously higher.
Mal raises his hands in surrender and leans his long, muscular body even further back.
“I don’t even know how he dares show his face around here,” Cordy says, as though Mal is in another room. The emotion she is feeling the most of is betrayal. She has always idolized him because he has always taken care of her. Put her on a pedestal, treated her as though she is indeed his little sister, his little princess. She’s always been able to rely on him and now she’s wondering if she can. Now she thinks he is someone she doesn’t really know.
“I asked him here,” I say, leaning against the doorframe and folding my arms across my chest.
“Why would you do that?”
“Because it’s my house and I can invite whoever I want here.”
“After he got you to have his baby and then left you?” she asks.
Mal’s jaw clenches at this, his features tighten, his body tenses. I forgot that as far as he knows, everyone is only just recovering from the knowledge that he is Leo’s father. He doesn’t know that his wife told his mother everything. And Aunt Mer has told everyone else. Now everyone knows something about him that he’d rather they didn’t. And they’ll probably be asking him why, as well. Like me, they won’t settle for the excuse he trotted out, either.
“It doesn’t matter,” I say to Cordy. It does matter. It matters a lot. I would love to believe it didn’t, that there are bigger issues that negate all that.… There are, but they don’t erase the rest of it, they don’t stop what he did still being the cause of a painful breach that has never healed. But, just as I had to show people how to react when I told them I was a twenty-nine-year-old knocked-up teenager without the father on the scene, I had to show others how to treat Mal.
Back then, I said I was really happy, it was what I wanted, I preferred to do it without the father because he and I would never have worked out and wasn’t it great news? So they all knew that was how to react: with joy, elation and happiness. I was happy, so they had to be as well.
With this, I have to act as though I have set aside my hurt, because the most important issue could become everyone else’s anger at him and that will hijack what this is all about. Which I cannot allow to happen.
“How can it not matter?” Cordy asks, uncertain suddenly if I should be getting whacked around the head t
o have some sense knocked into me.
“Mal is Leo’s father. I want Leo to know that at a time like this everyone who cares about him—his father included—came to see him. No one forced Mal to come here, he wanted to come. So, in the grand scheme of things, what Mal did does not matter. The fact he is here now, when Leo needs him, does. If I can put it all aside, I think you should be able to as well.”
“I’m not a pushover like you,” Cordy says, although she has clearly understood what I have been saying, because the lines of her slim body have softened, the line between the wok and Mal’s head not as direct and inevitable any longer.
“No, you’re not. But you are wonderful and you are sensible and I know you’re the best person to go to the hospital and explain to Mum, Dad and Aunt Mer that Mal is here, and why they shouldn’t smack him on sight either.”
“And what will you be doing?”
“Getting Mal out of here before Keith arrives home to get ready for work, and finding somewhere for him to stay.”
Cordy still hasn’t lowered her wok.
“It’s OK, Cordy, truly, I’ve forgiven him. Which means you can, too.”
“I suppose so,” she says to me. “And you—” she says, swinging the wok under Mal’s nose suddenly, using it as a pointer.
Randle thinks the hitting has started and swings the milk pan with all his considerable four-year-old strength and connects with Mal’s knee with a loud, crunchy crack.
Ria jumps beside me; Randle drops the pan and immediately bursts into tears; Cordy is shocked and frozen for a second, then she moves to comfort her wailing son, dropping and denting my wok in the process. Mal crumples and falls to the ground, clutching his knee and gritting his teeth to stop himself howling in agony. Ria runs to her mother, not wanting to miss out on the cuddles being dished out. All three of them ignore Mal.
My family is insane, I decide. It comes to something when I, the person who hasn’t slept more than a few hours for the better part of a month, who has been living on the edge of a mental and emotional breakdown for weeks, am probably the sanest person in this room.
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