Or grow down, in Simon’s case, I thought bitterly, then damned both him and myself for letting him intrude on the day. I felt as if he was always there, lurking in the back of my mind, no matter how hard I tried to be positive and enjoy myself.
We were heading up an incline that was steep enough to keep my trap well and truly shut, so I just nodded and smiled.
We’d been on our travels for more than half an hour, passing fewer houses and more semi-derelict buildings guarded by barking dogs and rusty wheelbarrows.
James came to a halt and I stopped next to him, trying not to cry with gratitude. I looked ahead and saw nothing but a huge hill, with an incredibly steep path wrapped around its contours like a ribbon. The path seemed to be made of nothing but loose shale, and I could see rocks freefalling down.
‘Right,’ said James, ‘just up to the top of this hill, and then we’re done…’
My eyes widened to the size of flying saucers. Or at least the one that wasn’t swollen half shut did. No way, no way at all was I going to attempt that. It would be downright dangerous. Definitely, one hundred per cent, totally not. Ever.
‘Oh…okay,’ I muttered, like the jellyfish I am.
James burst out laughing, which wasn’t very gentlemanly.
‘Your face is a picture,’ he said, ‘priceless. Don’t be daft – we’d kill ourselves up there. Come on.’
Oh ha-bloody-ha I thought, stabbing him mentally in the back as I followed. We took a much more solid-looking path round the side of the hill, edging upwards so gently that even I could cope with it.
About ten minutes later we arrived at what looked to be somebody’s house. There was a small courtyard laid out haphazardly with tables and chairs, glowing pink flowers trailing from the whitewashed walls, and pots of herbs lined up along the path to the front door. Over to one side was a car without wheels, and a washing line with several football kits flapping in the breeze. I could hear the obligatory dog barking somewhere behind the building.
There was stunning view down over the bay. The Aegean was like shards of blue glass, reflecting sunlight in glittering patches.
‘Gorgeous, isn’t it?’ said James, gesturing for me to sit. A woman wearing an apron and a headscarf came bustling out of the house, trailed by twin boys of about ten.
‘James! You back!’ she said, hugging him. ‘Where my boy Jake? And who this – girlfriend?’ She eyed me up and down without shame before giving me a wink.
‘You hurt, James?’ she said, reaching out to twist his head roughly to one side to inspect it.
‘No, no, I’m fine, it’s nothing. Leyla, this is Sally, my friend. I’ll bring Jake to see you soon, I promise. How are these two doing?’ he asked, gesturing to the boys, who were kicking a football to each other in the gravel driveway.
‘Ah, big trouble, as usual, James. Sit, sit, I bring you apple tea and cakes.’
I raised an eyebrow at James as he obeyed and sat.
‘This is a bit like a Turkish greasy spoon. I found it by accident when I was out biking, and she kind of adopted us. I come back every year. She likes practising her English on us,’ he said.
Leyla was back out in minutes, depositing pastries made of calories, glued together with honey. She gave James a pat on the shoulders and headed into the house, pausing only to shout at her boys in rapid-fire Turkish. The universal instruction of ‘behave yourself, or else’.
As he’d dragged me halfway up the Turkish Mount Everest for this chat, I decided now would be a good time to ask some of those questions I’d been dying to get to. Plus it might do me good to focus on the imperfections of someone else’s life instead of the disaster zone of my own.
‘So,’ I said, ‘how come you ended up on your own with Jake in the first place?’
I saw him tense slightly. This was clearly not a subject he found easy to discuss. I felt embarrassed for having asked at all, as he stayed quiet and stirred his tea.
‘I was going to say it’s a long story,’ he said at last, ‘but it’s not really. Just complicated – but I’m guessing you can handle a bit of complicated, can’t you, Nurse Nancy?’
He smiled to break the tension. My heart flipped.
‘I met Jake’s mum in a club in London. She was younger than me and I should probably have known better, but she was gorgeous and wild and had this sassy New Yorker thing going on. She has these rich hippy parents who took her on safari all the time as a kid, and she ended up being a wildlife photographer. I know. Not the kind of thing I’m used to either.
‘She moved into my flat while she was staying in London, and I couldn’t get enough of her. I suppose I got a bit too much of her, because she ended up pregnant. She didn’t want it. I did. I persuaded her to go ahead, and told her I’d raise the baby. Which is, as you can see, what I’ve done.’
‘Goodness. Didn’t she change her mind once he was born and she saw him? I can’t imagine walking away at that stage.’
‘She kind of did,’ James continued, ‘but her heart wasn’t in it. She was like a caged animal in a little flat in a city. She loved Jake, but as soon as she got offered a job in the middle of nowhere, she was packed and gone. At least he was just a baby so he’s never known any different.’
‘But what about you? You must have been gutted.’
‘I didn’t have time to mope. I had a four-month-old baby to look after, and my own career. But yeah, whenever I stopped and thought about it, it hurt like hell. She’s selfish and beautiful and can charm everyone she comes across into doing what she wants – including me half the time, even when I know she’s manipulating me. Jake’ll probably bugger off to New York as soon as he’s old enough, and I’ll be sat at home looking at his baby pictures wondering where the time went…’
‘Believe me, we all do that. Haven’t you met anyone else since?’ I said, dipping my fingers into the calorie cake and licking off the delicious goo. I’d been so wrong about him, and I was feeling a bit guilty now. About that, and the cake.
‘No. I’ve been too busy, and I’ve been concentrating on Jake, and my job. There’s no room for anything else.’
‘No other women? In six years?’ I asked incredulously. Was there something wrong with him? I’d never known a man go without a shag for that long. One of Diane’s favourite phrases was ‘men need sex like they need a shit – it’s a bodily function’. Not pretty, but accurate. Surely he’d have exploded by now?
He shot me an amused look. ‘When I say nobody, I mean nobody serious – I’m only flesh and blood. I don’t live like a monk. I’ve had a few friends over the years. Women who don’t want a relationship, some of them in the same boat as me, too busy for it.’
‘Like a subs’ bench? You can call on them when you need them, but they’re not playing the full game?’
‘Exactly,’ he answered, ‘and I’m on their subs’ bench too. But I can’t go on like this for ever, and maybe one day I’ll meet the right woman, for me and Jake. But don’t, under any circumstances, tell Mike and Allie that I’ve been speaking about this. He’d take the piss out of me for talking about my feelings like a big girl, and Allie’d have her mates jetting out to Dublin for blind dates. Anyway, what about you?’
Me? What about me? Surely he didn’t mean I should be jetting out to Dublin for blind dates?
‘What happened with you and your husband?’ he clarified.
‘Oh. Well. He ran off with a teenager. She’s from Latvia and she’s a lap-dancing catering student. She’s called Monika and Ollie thinks she might be a man with fake boobs.’
‘Ouch. Not much I can say to that. And when did this happen?’
‘Six weeks ago,’ I said, staring into my tea. It was unexpectedly hard to talk about when sober.
‘Jesus. You must be all over the place. How long had you been married?’
‘Oh, only seventeen years or so.’
He reached out across the table to take my hands in his. I felt embarrassed and tried to avoid his eyes. Tears started to trickle do
wn my face and he gently smoothed them off my cheeks as they fell.
‘You must have been a child bride. And, for what it’s worth, I think he’s an idiot. Look at you – you’re funny, you’re brave. You’ve given him two children. You’re sexy as hell even with a black eye. If I wasn’t a dedicated relationship-free zone, I’d be chasing you round the swimming pool every night.’
I was still crying. And laughing. And wondering – he was a relationship-free zone. So was I. Did they cancel each other out, or was that just a polite way of telling me he wasn’t interested? And did that even matter, as I wasn’t interested either? Much.
‘Thank you,’ I said, managing a smile.
We were still holding hands. He was drawing little circles on my palm with his fingers, which was sending direct signals to places much further down. We were staring into each other’s eyes. I was thinking that any minute now I might climb over the table and into his lap. He was starting to look slightly nervous, as though he knew exactly what I was imagining.
Luckily, the twin Ronaldos in the driveway chose that exact moment to kick their football right at us. It whacked James in the nose, ricocheted off, and crashed spectacularly on to the table-top, shattering the glasses and sending the plates crashing to the floor. Leyla came bursting out of the house waving her tea towel and screaming full blast. The boys took one look at her and legged it in the opposite direction.
‘Well,’ James said, screwing his eyes up in pain, ‘at least it was me this time.’
Chapter 16
‘How’s Lucy this morning?’ Allie asked at breakfast a few days later. My daughter had been out with Max the night before, as usual.
‘Erm…fine, as far as I know. I left her comatose in bed about half an hour ago. Why? What’s she done?’
Allie sighed and sat down at the table. There was no way this was going to be good.
‘Her and Max had a huge row. It was about smoking…he’s very anti, being Mr Health Nut and all, and he told her he was sick of kissing an ashtray.’
‘Ouch,’ I said. That would kill her. And probably me, later, when she woke up in a foul mood and went scapegoat shopping. Max and Lucy had been inseparable ever since they met, and she fairly glowed around him. She’d had boyfriends before – but, well, she’d never actually seemed to like any of them. Which wasn’t saying much, as she didn’t like any member of the human race – but with Max it seemed different. Real. Maybe it was just the intensity of the Blue Bay circle – but if they’d escalated to rows already, something unusual was going on.
‘I know,’ said Allie, ‘I smoked at her age as well, and I tried to tell him it was just a phase she was going through. But being a man-in-the-making, he went ahead and said it, without thinking through the consequences.’
‘Did she kick him in the balls?’
‘No. Although he said he had a pair of socks shoved down there just in case. Nope, it was worse, in a way. She just gave him a look that reduced him to rubble and walked off. I think he almost wet his pants.
‘He thought it over and went to look for her later. He found her crashed out on the beach. Looks like she drank a whole bottle of raki and passed out.’
I’d gone to bed early last night, exhausted by a full day of sunbathing and a long chat with Jenny. The Blue Bay Accelerated Friendship Machine – plus several pints of lager, I suspect – meant that she already knew all about my situation, and I knew about hers.
We’d sat together after dinner, watching the younger kids splash around in the pool, talking about her and Ian’s work as teachers – her at the local primary, him as a secondary school geography teacher.
It was impossible to miss the yearning in her eyes as she watched Jake and his pals at play, but I hadn’t felt comfortable raising the issue of her fertility until she did.
‘You know,’ she’d said, ‘when I first found out, I never wanted to see a child again. But given my job, that would have been logistically challenging. And coming here…well, that’s part of our routine now. We’d miss everyone too much if we stopped. So we decided we just had to be British about it – keep calm and carry on. Some days, though,’ she added, gesturing at the splash-a-thon in front of us with the slight sheen of tears in her eyes, ‘it’s easier than others.’
I felt for her, I really did – I had two children and still mourned for the time when I was a busy mum to my young brood. These days, it was more about damage limitation – and that night had been no different.
I’d heard the usual scuffling outside just before midnight and then slept easy, knowing she was back. Turns out the scuffling was Max carrying her back to the room and tucking her in.
Shit. I really couldn’t ignore this – it was one escapade too far.
‘God,’ I said out loud, ‘I must be the worst mother in the world.’
‘I think you have a way to go before you qualify for that title, Sally,’ replied Allie, patting my hand reassuringly. ‘You’ve had a lot going on, and Lucy…well, she’s independent, isn’t she?’
That was one way of putting it, I thought, before I thanked her and made my way back to the room.
Lucy was pretending to be asleep. I knew she wasn’t, because I’m her mum, and I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve snuck into her room to watch her sleeping. As a baby because I was scared she might stop breathing. As a little girl because seeing her face filled me with more love than I’d ever known before. And more recently, because it was the only time I got to look at her without having to field a mouthful of abuse.
I went to the fridge, got out a bottle of water, and sat beside her.
‘Luce,’ I said, ‘I know you’re awake, so give it up. And don’t start effing and blinding at me, because I’m not going away. We need to talk. Here, drink this.’
A hand emerged from under the covers, took the water and retreated. After a few awkward horizontal gulps she emerged. Her eyes were glued together with fatigue and last night’s mascara. I could smell the booze seeping out of her pores.
‘Okay. Go on then. But try not to shout too fucking loud because I think I might need to go to hospital,’ she said, sipping the water.
‘I’m not going to shout – I’m going to talk, and you’re going to listen. Now shut up until I’m finished, or I will go downstairs, borrow the loud-hailer from the sailing crew, and yell in your ears for the rest of the day.’
She grimaced in horror, but stayed quiet.
‘I don’t really know where to start, Luce. Maybe with the smoking – and yes, I knew anyway, so don’t blame Max for dropping you in it. I’ve been meaning to talk to you about it for ages but, well, I suppose I haven’t been the world’s most switched-on mother recently.
‘You know, you happily flaunt everything else in front of me – the bad attitude, the swearing. You enjoy upsetting me; it’s one of your hobbies. But not once have you rubbed my nose in it about the smoking – it’s the only vice you’ve ever hidden from me.
‘I think it’s because deep down you’re embarrassed. You know the risks and you know what you’re doing is dumb. You remember my mum dying of lung cancer, and the way she looked at the end, hooked up to that oxygen tank. Not a good look, and I suspect they don’t come in black either. I think you’re ashamed, and that’s why you’ve been keeping it a secret. Max was right, and you know it.’
She was silent. Unusual.
‘And then there’s the drinking. I know girls drink at sixteen. I was sixteen myself about a million years ago. But last night was stupid and dangerous – by drinking raki, you could have really ended up in hospital. You’re not a Turkish man with chest hair and a moustache, so don’t touch it again. And what if Max hadn’t found you? Anything could have happened.’
She was shaking and gulping a bit. Tears – actual real-life tears – were starting to squeeze themselves out from between her crusted eyelids. I felt a bit panicky. I hadn’t seen her cry for years, and I was way out of practice on the comforting mother front. If I touched her these days s
he tended to karate-chop my hands.
‘I know,’ she murmured at last, ‘you’re right, about all of it. And Max is really great. I threw up on him, and he still looked after me. I think I love him, Mum!’
The last few words rode on the back of a body-wrenching sob.
Oh shit, I thought. How I handled this could shape our relationship for the rest of our lives. I reached out, tentatively, to touch her shoulders, prepared for a slap.
Instead she jerked herself into my arms and started to sob on my shoulder. I stroked her hair and held her, almost crying myself. Okay, this was a mess, and I am probably a very selfish person for even thinking it – but it felt so good to have my daughter back again, to be able to touch her and console her and at least try to make her feel better.
She was weeping so hard her whole body was popping with grief. I squeezed her tighter and rubbed her back and told her I loved her.
‘And I miss Dad!’ she yowled, her voice full of anguish, ‘even though I know he’s a prick and I’m not sure I’d even want him to come back after what he’s done, but I miss him!’
I took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. That arse really did have a lot to answer for. Sadly, I knew exactly what she meant – that complex blend of hating him and loving him all at the same time. No matter how selfish he’d been, he’d left a Simon-shaped hole in our lives that we were all struggling to fill.
‘I know, I know…me too,’ I said. ‘Don’t worry, it’ll all be okay…’
‘And Max probably never wants to see me again because I acted like a skanky alky, and he might think I’ll grow up to be like you!’ she bawled. Hmmm. More deep breaths, for different reasons this time.
‘No, don’t be silly, Luce. If he didn’t care for you, he wouldn’t have brought you up here like he did, would he? You both just need to apologise and see what happens next,’ I said.
The Birthday That Changed Everything Page 9