I don’t reply, my thoughts disordered by the wine. The memory I thought I’d recovered is now unreliable, his explanation feasible; muddying my recollections with the certainty of his clarification. I feel nauseous again, wondering if I’m the one at fault.
‘Come on,’ Rob says, standing up. ‘I think you need to go to bed.’
‘I’ll sit here a while, sober up,’ I tell him, holding up my half-drunk coffee. ‘Feel a bit sick.’
‘Want me to stay up with you?’
‘No, you look tired,’ I tell him; wanting to be alone.
I listen as Rob climbs the stairs, his long feet taking them two at a time and then I lay my head on the sofa and close my eyes, trying to make sense of it all, but my head spins even more and the nausea gets worse. I open my eyes and run to the downstairs cloakroom, only just making it in time.
July – This Year
Maybe I’m jealous; although it feels like anger which is building inside me. There’s certainly a trace of envy, for at her age I didn’t have a white-washed apartment with a picture window showcasing an amazing view of the park. I look around the spacious sitting room, filled with beautiful furniture, dominated by two squashy pastel sofas, one of which I’m sitting on, pale carpet beneath my feet. As usual, everything has landed in my daughter’s lap, and although I don’t begrudge her a better place to live, maybe I resent the indulgence of it; just a little. Rob’s told me the apartments usually sell to parents of the privately educated children at the college down the road. It was by pure chance he saw this one was available to rent, fully furnished. Someone at work was looking to move and Rob had been trawling through the rental properties with them.
‘Did he find somewhere?’ I asked as we drove here for Saturday-morning coffee at our daughter’s apartment; a surreal and somewhat daunting prospect.
Rob turned the car into the underground car park and entered a code into a keypad before replying, ‘Sorry, did who find somewhere?’
‘The guy at work who was looking for a rental when you spotted this place?’ I said, checking my reflection in the mirrored sun visor. ‘You said that’s how you found it.’
‘Oh yes, I think they did. On the new estate near where we used to live,’ he told me, reversing into a visitors’ space next to Sash’s blue Fiat, then opening my door to guide me towards the rear entrance to the flats.
‘The new estate?’ I asked as we’d waited for the lift to the top floor.
‘Yes, there’s a new development beyond our old house,’ he replied as the doors opened.
Our daughter greeted us very much as I’d imagined she would, a big smile on her face, and no trace of embarrassment. ‘Mum! Dad! Welcome!’
Sash has been desperate for me to see the apartment ever since I told her I knew about it. She said if I could see it, how beautiful it is, then I’d understand why her father had decided to help her out. But I knew why he’d done it, and so did she. It was a bribe; one Rob knew would win her back. Thomas’s continuing presence wasn’t mentioned either, there seemed little to be gained by poking at that particular bear. I’d refused her previous invitations, but I couldn’t avoid a visit forever; both Sash and Rob wrongly assuming my reluctance has been a protest against the cost, which I suppose it was in part, but mainly I’ve been terrified at the thought of seeing Thomas again. Who’s to say what he might do when the four of us are thrown together again? Last time it had ended in a fight, Sash storming out of our lives. This time it could be so much worse.
I look across at Rob and Sash, seated on the other sofa, facing each other, Sash’s bare feet tucked up beneath her. She’s deep in conversation with her father, something about the landlord refusing to fix the broken fan in the bathroom. I allow their voices to drift on in the background as I take in my daughter’s good fortune, casting my eyes around the large bright space. The appliances in the kitchen look expensive, a chrome designer kettle and toaster and a complicated-looking coffee machine resting on the oiled wooden counters, and the corner of a very large bed is visible through an open bedroom door. It all seems so excessive. Am I a bad mother to think she might have struggled a bit longer, paid her own way before this? But it’s a moot point as clearly I’m the worst kind of mother for other reasons entirely. I pick up my phone, illuminated by a rare message from Fin, a photo in fact. He’s standing in front of an undulating field, rows of crops behind him; strawberries, I think. I enlarge the image. The caption reads Backbreaking work! but he’s grinning at the photographer, presumably Ryan. I look across at Sash, still engrossed in discussion with her father. It was Fin’s birthday last week, we sent him money for a new guitar, but I don’t think Sash will have remembered to send her brother a card.
‘Well you can open the window,’ Rob is telling Sash, his long legs stretched out in front of him, crossed at the ankles. ‘Or use the ensuite.’
‘There’s only a shower in there. You know I like a bath.’
My scream isn’t loud; although I wish it was, more of a gritted-teeth inward exclamation of fury, but it draws immediate attention.
‘Mum, what is wrong with you?’ Sash asks, her eyes wide with alarm. ‘You’re acting crazy.’
‘This!’ I stand up and look around the apartment. ‘You have two bathrooms?!’
‘Jo,’ Rob warns me, sitting on the edge of the sofa as if he might spring up at any moment. ‘Not now.’
I stare at them both, my palms raised to the ceiling, waiting for some recognition of the falsity we’re all perpetuating. ‘You can’t just pretend that everything’s normal,’ I tell them. ‘You didn’t speak to one another for months.’ I look at Rob. ‘She’s living here with him, have you forgotten that?’
‘Mum, don’t,’ Sash says, close to tears. ‘Just don’t.’
‘It would be funny if it wasn’t a fucking tragedy,’ I tell her.
‘Mum! You never swear!’ Sash looks more shocked by the swear word than the scream. ‘I didn’t want to move again,’ she says, sitting up too, although she stretches her feet out before her in the air, admiring the darkly lacquered toenails. ‘Three moves in less than a year is not ideal, but this place is amazing. Do you want me to go back to living over a noisy bar, or that shitty bedsit?’
The temptation to challenge Sash on her willingness to set aside her independence, taking the easy option once the novelty of roughing it wore thin, is hard to suppress.
‘And what does Thomas think of it all?’ I ask, the sound of his name unnatural in my mouth, as if I shouldn’t use it, only hers to mention, but this is our reality, with him at the centre of it.
‘He likes it.’ She must catch my expression, just a twitch but she knows me too well. ‘Don’t raise your eyebrows at me, it’s been difficult for him too. He’s very principled, but—’
‘Not too principled to take your father’s rent money,’ I tell her, catching Rob’s eye, a warning in his expression. I sit down, my leg bouncing up and down. ‘When will he be here?’ I ask her.
‘Any minute,’ Sash says, smiling at the thought. ‘And it’s really important to me that everyone tries to—’
We all look at the door, the sound of the key sliding into the lock echoing in the silence. I look away, aware of the heat in my face at the sound of Thomas’s voice as he calls out to Sash, and the prickles that break out across my skin as the air around me is disturbed by his presence. I shouldn’t have come, this is far too dangerous a situation, but when my curiosity can be contained no longer I take a chance and glance up at him.
Thomas’s demeanour surprises me, such a change, his eyes cast down, away from not only me, but Rob and Sash too. Rob moves to sit beside me, Thomas taking his place next to Sash. I avert my eyes to look at my husband, but Rob is staring at his phone. He must sense my irritation for he pockets it, studying his fingernails instead.
‘Have you told them?’ Thomas asks Sash.
I look over at them and notice that Thomas’s ever-present smile, always at someone else’s expense, is surprisingly missin
g.
‘Of course not, I was waiting for you,’ Sash replies, grinning as she reaches for Thomas’s hand.
Until that moment, I’d been consumed by my own selfish thoughts. Analysing Thomas’s every nuance, every gesture, afraid to look and yet fascinated by him, but now a warning siren is ringing somewhere in my head, distracting me. I look at my daughter, everything else in the room out of focus, even Thomas. She’s so happy, parading him in front of us, presenting a united front when even she would know it would be wise to be more circumspect on our first joint visit. And Thomas, why has he agreed to this? Surely under any other circumstances he would have stayed away.
‘You’re pregnant,’ I tell her, the world up until that point falling away from me as the words leave my mouth. ‘You’re fucking pregnant.’
Then I laugh, stupid raucous laughter, because it’s so ridiculous. This cannot be true, but it is. Of course it is. We’re all being punished. This will never, ever, end. And although it’s my actions I abhor, then Sash’s, and of course Thomas’s, I choose to blame Rob, because he gave them this place. A home to make a baby in.
‘Mum, don’t!’ Sash says, tears in her eyes. She looks at Thomas, but he looks straight at me, and although I’m not certain of it, I think he shrugs, a half-apology.
‘Is this true?’ Rob asks, a crack in his voice.
‘Be happy for us,’ Sash says.
‘Happy?’ I’m shouting now. ‘You seriously think we’ll be happy about this? What about your job, your future?’ I push Rob away as he tries to reason with me. ‘This is a living nightmare!’ I tell her, standing up. Then I look at Rob, his hand reaching out to me. ‘This is your fault!’ I scream as I push him away.
I’m striding out across the park, blinded by tears, attracting the stares of concerned bystanders when I hear Rob’s voice, calling my name over and over. I turn around, making fists to punch his chest, his arms, his head, but he grabs my wrists, restraining me and then supporting me as I fall to my knees, sobbing into the sun-warmed grass.
‘Look what you’ve done!’ I tell him. He’s kneeling at my side, bearing witness to my desolation. ‘You gave her a place to make a family; a fucking family, Rob! With that awful man. That terrible, terrible man.’
‘Jo, stop it!’ Rob tells me. ‘You have to pull yourself out of this. She needs you. We have to be there for her.’
‘Why would she do this?’ I ask him, sobs taking away half the words. ‘Why? She’s beautiful and clever and he’s . . . nothing.’
‘I don’t know why,’ Rob replies. ‘I just don’t know.’
We go back inside and we try to be grown-ups, because that’s what we must do. And we tell her we’ll support her; ignoring Thomas. We even force a smile at the thought that we’re going to be grandparents, and won’t Fin be pleased, he’s always wanted to be an uncle? It’s very early days she says, but it was planned. I want to scream again, this time the words that shout so loudly in my head, Planned? You planned to make Thomas the father of your child? A man who has no ambition, no morals, who is fifteen years older than you. You stupid, stupid, girl. But I say nothing, and Thomas is silent too, staring out of the window at the view below, the cocksure attitude dropped, in its place quiet mistrust, as though we three are once again a unit and he is an unwilling adjunct, co-opted into a family he never meant to be a part of. But there’s small victory in his defeat, because he will leave our baby, and his. It’s just a matter of time. I look at him and see his fear, and I smile at him as he once smiled at me, a wide grin at his expense, and Sash is happy when she notices, because she must assume I’m making the effort, but she knows nothing of that smile, the hate it contains, and the warning.
And when it’s all over, when the emotion wears us all out, Rob and I leave, and once we’re back home we piece back together a semblance of normality. We eat dinner, even pour a glass of wine, to steady our nerves, and when we tire of the endless discussion, only one subject on our minds, we watch television. I see nothing beyond blurred images and Rob just stares at his phone, tapping out a message, to someone at work he says when I ask, about something which feels unimportant to me; but what would I know? Then we dovetail our use of the bathroom, and we climb into bed and say our goodnights and there is resentment in mine and he must hear it, but he chooses to say nothing in his defence. We are done talking, there is nothing left to say; except now the initial shock is subsiding I feel something other than the pain and bitterness of before. I feel remorse for how I dealt with the shocking news.
‘Rob.’ I lean across. ‘Please, wake up,’ I tell him, shaking his arm. ‘I need to tell you something.’
‘What?’ he says, rolling towards me in the darkness. ‘I’m too tired to argue any more, Jo.’
‘I don’t want to either,’ I say, reaching out to touch him, his skin warm beneath the pads of my fingers, his broad shoulder, then an arm, lean and strong. ‘I need to say I’m sorry. I blamed you for renting the flat, but I think I understand now.’ I sit up and switch on my bedside lamp. Rob shields his eyes with his arm, then he sits up too. ‘You did it for me, you did it all for me,’ I tell him. ‘You promised me you’d do whatever it takes to sort out the situation with Sash and that’s why you did it. I understand.’
Rob turns to me, his face slack with tiredness, his eyes still adjusting to the light, and in them I see tears. ‘Doesn’t matter, though, does it? I’ve ruined everything,’ he says, covering his face with his hands. ‘Sash pregnant; it’s too awful. The way you looked at me, Jo. I know you hate me.’
‘No, that’s not true. It doesn’t have to be so awful. Only if we let it.’ I hold him to me as he cries and I tell him I’m so sorry, over and over.
‘I thought you were going to say you’d finally remembered,’ he says, pulling away from me. I’m about to ask him what I’ve forgotten when he opens the drawer beside him and removes a gift-wrapped box. ‘Happy anniversary, Jo.’ He hands it to me, a sad laugh at the irony of his comment. ‘Twenty-four years. Most of them pretty good, I think.’
I open the box and find a bracelet coiled inside, delicate gold filigree. I tell him I love it, such a thoughtful gift, and I say I’m sorry again, this time for forgetting our anniversary, and we kiss and say we will get through this together, and Rob goes to sleep, his world once more settled into a neat order, or at least as much as it ever will be after today. Soon I hear his even breaths, but I am far from sleep. The light is switched off, the darkness enveloping, but something is still wrong; as though we’ve broken something, and although we have all the pieces and we’re saying we can put it back together, it’s already too late.
19
Seventeen Days After The Fall
I suffered for my over-consumption of wine on Friday, the next day a complete write-off. Rob had seemed keen it should be ‘just us two’ over the weekend, telling the kids I needed to rest, which I guess was true, although the claustrophobia of the barn, with him in it, felt at times too much, the garden my only real escape. If he noticed my animosity or distrust, then he chose not to comment, and I too have kept my thoughts to myself; deeply troubling thoughts. Thoughts of the men in my life who all seem to control me. Thoughts which have kept me from sleep in those dark waking hours. My husband’s slow breaths counting themselves in and out of my subconscious whilst I have travelled to other places, recesses which repel and attract me in equal measure. I have seen terrible things. Nick and I behind that door to his office, so close to one another, his face almost touching mine, my back against the wall. Thomas’s smile, so secretive, dangerous even. Rob screaming at me at the top of the stairs before I fell, his anger enough to wrench me from sleep and drive me from our bed. The relief I’d felt when Rob went back to work this morning was exhaled in a long-held breath. Alone at last.
I sit at my laptop with my coffee and look up at the window above my desk, the view of the back garden brightening my spirits, just a little. It’s a sunny day, a late-summer treat, and I decide I should go outside, make the mo
st of this rare day of calm, weather-wise at least.
The wind has dropped, but I notice signs of previous weather damage which have beaten the late-flowering plants to the ground. It’s as I step on to a flower bed to pick up a crushed rose that my shin knocks hard against a low branch; the familiar pain precipitating a memory. I’d run. I look down at my shin and rub at it, allowing the memory to form, detached at first and then more settled, an unravelling narrative. I’d run and I’d caught my shin on something, a table I think. I was running from Nick’s office. But when? And where to? Think, Jo! Think! I straighten up and close my eyes, the wind in my face now, once again gathering force. It was cold outside, and dark, I had my coat; so it must have been months ago, before the summer; that first time when I was drunk and I kissed Nick. February, was it he said? I made the first move, he told me, then I ran away. But where to? The drop-in centre was in darkness, the door slammed behind me. I ran out into the street, disorientated, upset, just running, until I looked up and saw the flat above the bar. I’d wanted my daughter, but she wasn’t there; Thomas was. I look down at my shin, a bruise already blooming and I know I will have to go back to the bar. Now. Before my courage fails me.
The Limes is quiet, only three people to greet me as I walk in, their faces swivelling towards the door. There’s the barman with alarmingly large holes in his ears, and a couple seated in the corner with empty glasses between them. It’s early, Thomas and the regular clientele will be in later, or maybe not until tonight. I should have waited; but I was desperate for answers and afraid my resolve may desert me as before.
‘Hey!’ the young barman says, pulling on a distended lobe. ‘What can I get you?’
‘I’m looking for Thomas, is he here?’ The barman shrugs, says he’s in and out, hard to say when he might turn up. I notice a weariness in his response. I ask for a coffee and sit up at the bar as he prepares it. He keeps glancing over at me, asks if he knows me then he says, ‘Oh yes, you’re the sexy mum.’ He laughs. ‘Like mother; like daughter.’
Close to Me Page 24