by Kate Field
‘I thought we might have a word about Sunday.’
‘Okay,’ Helen replied cautiously. She could think of several words she’d like to hear, top of the list being ‘cancelled’.
‘I was thinking about a roast chicken for lunch, but I wondered if you’d let me know what Megan would like.’ There was a slight stutter over Megan’s name. ‘Would she prefer something else? Sausages? Fish fingers?’
Helen took the phone from her ear, and stared at it. Was this a trick? This was a Valerie she’d not come across before: hesitant, uncertain, polite.
‘Helen?’
‘She loves chicken. Don’t do anything special.’
‘And dessert? Would she like ice cream? Any flavour?’
‘Strawberry’s her favourite.’
‘Good. I’ll get some. Can you remember the way?’
‘Vaguely…’
‘I’ll ask Daniel to send some directions. And Helen?’
‘Yes?’
‘I wanted you to know how much I’m looking forward to meeting my granddaughter.’
Valerie hung up, and Helen stared again at the now silent phone. That last line – it had been Valerie’s way of apologising, she knew that. It didn’t matter that it was indirect, that she hadn’t actually used the word sorry. She had acknowledged Megan as her granddaughter. For Megan’s sake, that meant a great deal.
‘You’re miles away,’ Kirsty said, giving Helen a nudge. She had come in to mind the shop for a few hours while Helen attended her meeting. ‘Surely that wasn’t Valerie Blake on the phone? You’re far too calm.’
‘It was her.’ Helen put her phone away, and started to collect the loose rolls of thread in a daze.
‘What did she want? Has she found a new paternity test to try out?’
‘No. She was offering to make Megan fish fingers for lunch on Sunday.’ She looked at Kirsty. ‘She’s going to get her some ice cream.’
Kirsty laughed.
‘You said that as if she’d offered to import some exotic dragon fruit from Mexico. It’s only ice cream. But it’s nice of her to think of it, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, it is, and very unexpected. You’ve been spoilt with Ben’s mum, because she’s lovely. Not all mothers-in-law are like that.’
‘Interesting that you still see her in the role of mother-in-law.’ Kirsty grinned. ‘Is that a hangover from the past, or hope for the future?’
‘A definite hangover,’ Helen said hurriedly, kicking herself for the mistake. ‘And that’s exactly what I’m expecting to have on Monday morning, after I spend Sunday night trying to obliterate the occasion, so don’t be surprised if you’re needed for a spot of emergency babysitting…’
Valerie Blake lived in a respectable Edwardian house on a quiet street of other detached houses in Knutsford. As Helen drove in through the gates, dread gnawing her stomach, she saw no sign that any changes had been made in the five years since she had last been here. The paintwork was immaculate, the curtains at each window tied back in perfect positions, and even the garden appeared tidy, as if no autumn leaves dared fall on Valerie Blake’s land.
She held Megan’s hand tightly as they approached the front door, mainly for her own comfort. Before she could ring the bell, the door swung open and Daniel stood there, a broad smile covering his face as his eyes immediately sank to Megan’s level.
‘Hello Megan.’ He bent down and inspected the small tote bag she was carrying, which had a plastic leg poking out of it. ‘Is that Tallulah’s leg I can see there?’
Megan giggled. Daniel’s eyes rose to Helen, and his smile visibly dimmed.
‘Come in.’
He stepped back, and Helen led Megan inside. She stopped as the familiar smell assailed her, of polish and pot pourri, and something else she had never been able to define. If respectability had a perfume, it would be bottled in Valerie’s house. And there she was, lurking in the hall, the picture of an upstanding gentlewoman in her woollen suit, blouse and pearls.
Just as Daniel’s had done, Valerie’s eyes first dropped to Megan. A flush of colour rose above the collar of her blouse, and her mouth opened slightly, showing where the lipstick was almost worn away on the inner edges by anxious biting. Valerie looked from Megan to Daniel, but didn’t speak.
‘Mum, this is Megan.’
His words revived her. Valerie walked nearer to Megan, bent slightly and smiled.
‘Hello Megan, I’m…’ She faltered, and her eyes flicked to Helen anxiously. ‘I’m Daniel’s mother. Valerie.’
‘Hello.’
Valerie looked thrilled to hear
Megan’s voice. Little did she know, Helen thought, that Megan had been bribed with the promise of a new Barbie to be on her best behaviour today. Then Valerie surprised Helen by taking her hand, and squeezing it so that her rings pressed uncomfortably against Helen’s fingers.
‘Thank you,’ she said, in a low voice, as tears glistened in her eyes. ‘She’s lovely.’
Helen didn’t know what to say. She’d never had physical contact with Valerie before; but she’d never met this Valerie before. She simply saw a grandmother, overawed to be meeting her grandchild for the first time. And reacting as a mother, Helen squeezed her hand back, and nodded. Externally the house might look the same, but there had been a change at the heart of it.
Valerie led the way into the living room. Tasha at once bounded up to them, looking impossibly shiny.
‘Hello! You must be the famous Megan that Danny talks so much about!’ The voice and smile insisted she was happy but her eyes didn’t seem to have received the same message. Megan edged closer to Helen, and no wonder – she’d just been accosted by a hyperactive Barbie doll. Helen said hello, and turned to the other two people in the room. A tall, stocky man was standing in front of the fireplace, offering a kind smile. Daniel’s sister Alex was sitting on the sofa, a hand over her mouth and tears in her eyes as she gazed at Megan.
‘Hello Alex.’
Alex slowly lifted her head to regard Helen, and the expression in her eyes was impossible to misconstrue. It seemed that Alex hated Helen quite as much as her brother did, and it was almost as painful for Helen to see. Alex was eight years younger than Daniel, nearer in age to Helen, and they had been as close as sisters. They had spent hours together, never running out of conversation. They had run out now. Alex turned back to Megan without speaking a word.
Valerie brought in a plastic box full of toys, and placed it in the middle of the room.
‘It’s a few things that Daniel and Alex used to play with. I’ve been saving them in case…’ She stopped, and fingered her pearls. ‘Everything has been cleaned.’
‘That’s very kind.’ Helen smiled awkwardly at Valerie. This new Valerie was taking some getting used to. Part of her was still convinced it must be a trick, and was wondering what lay behind this transformation. It couldn’t be real, could it?
‘Look, Megan, here’s a tea set,’ Daniel said, unpacking the box. With a nudge of encouragement, Megan sat with him on the floor. ‘Come on, Alex, you used to love this.’ Alex joined them, having a tea party, and the resemblance between the three of them was remarkable. Valerie was transfixed, and didn’t notice when sherry spilled from her glass over her trembling fingers. They laughed and joked, Daniel every inch the proud father, delighting in everything Megan did. He only glanced once at Helen, but it was enough. She knew what that look meant. This is where she should be, it said, with her family. This is where she should always have been. And how could Helen disagree?
Lunch was an awkward business. Daniel continued to audition for Father of the Year – albeit an unacknowledged one – but the undercurrent of tension and hostility swirled around their feet. Helen didn’t dare speak, other than to Megan, terrified of what explosion one wrong word might set off. Alex’s fiancé, Phil, came into his own and tried his best to push forward a safe conversation. He was head of PE at a nearby boys’ school and had a convenient stock of stories to tell between mouthfuls of r
oast chicken.
‘Which school will Megan go to?’
Helen, busy cutting up a roast potato for Megan – one of the few tasks that Daniel hadn’t managed to snatch from her – turned to him. It was the first time he had voluntarily spoken to her, and though his face was carefully neutral, she knew him well enough to detect the first signs of trouble in his voice.
‘I’ll be applying to St Brendan’s.’
‘St Brendan’s?’ There was a flash of the old Valerie. ‘Is that a Catholic school?’ She could hardly have sounded more disapproving.
‘Yes. My family are Catholic.’
Though Helen wasn’t, as she had proved often enough in the past. It wasn’t the religious element that had inspired her to pick St Brendan’s. She had pored over OFSTED reports before renting her house, to make sure she found the best state school she could in the area.
‘But we both went to private schools.’ Daniel’s fingers tapped against his wineglass.
‘I know.’ And Helen knew what Daniel meant by that remark. When, in the past, they had discussed the imaginary Megan and Archie, those children who still should have been no more than a twinkle in the eye, they had agreed to educate them privately – nothing but the best for their children. And though in everything else she had tried her utmost to do what he would have wanted, it was simply impossible with schools. She could never afford a private school on her own.
She pushed Megan’s plate back towards her. Daniel was watching Helen.
‘We’ll talk about this.’
He could talk all he wanted, but words wouldn’t pay the school fees. It wasn’t a conversation she was looking forward to, or would encourage.
‘This weather is so dire, isn’t it?’ Tasha asked. Megan stared at her. As the afternoon wore on, she appeared to be increasingly fascinated by her, perhaps because of the strange accent or the Barbie looks. ‘I can’t wait to get home for Christmas and soak up the sun, can you, Danny?’ She put a possessive hand on his arm.
‘I can’t go away for Christmas.’
‘But Danny…’ Helen noticed the hand increase its grip. ‘When I said I’d come over here, we agreed to go back after Alex’s wedding.’
‘That was before.’ He didn’t say anything more, but his glance at Megan said enough. ‘You can still go, Tash. See your family.’
While he stayed with his family, continued the unspoken conversation. He was choosing Megan over Tasha. Would this be a good time, Helen wondered, to let him know that she would be visiting her family over Christmas, so he needn’t change his plans on their account? She opened her mouth, but closed it again when Tasha looked at her. Her expression was pure dislike. And who could blame her? Helen, of all people, knew the pain of being without Daniel. All it needed now was for Phil to find something to hate her for, and she would have a clean sweep round the table.
By the time the apple crumble arrived for dessert, Megan’s patience at sitting politely was wearing thin. Before Helen could stop her, she jumped down from her chair, ran round to Daniel, and waved a doll in front of him.
‘Guess who this is?’ she demanded, bouncing up and down at his side. ‘Guess, Danny!’
Helen’s breath caught. For a second, it had sounded like she’d said… But that was ridiculous, wasn’t it? Except the others round the table were suspended in silence, staring at Megan. And Daniel’s face… His whole heart was right there, for all to see. Helen’s spoon clattered into her bowl, splattering cream onto Valerie’s pristine tablecloth. She wasn’t sure she could do this. She’d always thought that the moment of telling him would be the worst; that there could be only one way to go from there. But she’d been wrong. Every meeting brought fresh pain, new examples of how she had injured him, that kept the wound raw. It hurt more than she could ever have imagined it would.
Seeing that Megan was occupied with Daniel, Helen excused herself and went to the bathroom. She leant her hands on the sink and stared at herself in the mirror. She looked entirely normal, perhaps a little tired around the eyes, but otherwise her ordinary self stared back. Nothing in her face suggested that she was the sort of person who would cause another so much suffering. But she was. She had. Her parents had spent years telling her what a bad person she was, and she had tried so hard to change. But this terrible thing she had done to Daniel could never be undone.
On her way back to the dining room, she called in to the kitchen for a glass of water. Valerie was there, making coffee.
‘It will get easier,’ Valerie said, as if continuing a conversation they had already started. She smiled at Helen, a sight so unexpected that a lump of emotion gathered in Helen’s throat. ‘He simply needs…’
‘This is the wrong juice.’ Daniel came in and banged a plastic tumbler down on the worktop. Some of the contents splashed out.
‘Is it for Megan?’ He nodded. ‘She doesn’t like fresh orange juice with bits in. She’ll want orange cordial if you have it.’
Valerie opened a cupboard and brought out an unopened bottle of cordial. She passed it towards Daniel, but he was too preoccupied glaring at Helen to notice.
‘How the hell was I supposed to know that?’ he shouted. ‘Perhaps if you’d had one degree of humanity and let me watch my daughter grow up – let me know I had a daughter to watch grow up – I might have known what she liked to drink and not got it wrong!’
‘Daniel! That’s enough…’
He clearly disagreed with his mother.
‘And perhaps,’ he continued, ‘I might even have heard her call me Daddy!’
It was the tremble in his voice that broke her. Helen began to cry, huge tears that fell faster than she could wipe them away, and sobs that almost choked her as she tried to swallow them down. She hadn’t shed a tear since he had gone; but now she had no control over herself, as every dream she’d had that somehow they would get back together slid away down her cheeks.
‘For God’s sake!’ Daniel’s hand crashed down onto the worktop. ‘Do you really think that’s going to work? I’m the only one here who deserves any sympathy.’
With another wholly unexpected gesture, Valerie put her arm round Helen. The shock of it gave Helen the shot of strength that she needed to pull herself together and to fight back. She wiped away the remaining tears.
‘You think you deserve sympathy for missing out on some things? Shall I tell you what you missed? You missed six months of agonising over whether the baby would be okay, and not damaged by what I’d done or not done before I knew I was pregnant. You missed the worst twenty-four hours of my life, when the baby stopped moving and I thought it had died; I thought I’d lost you both. You weren’t there for two exhausting days of labour, which I went through on my own. You missed every nappy change; every sleepless night when it always had to be my turn to get up; the months when she screamed with colic until I thought I would go insane; the impossible tantrums; the moments of absolute boredom when I would have given anything to have an adult to talk to. You can’t just focus on the big-money moments you didn’t get to see; there’s been a whole load of crap ones you’ve been spared.’ She took a breath, but there was more she had to say. ‘Hong Kong – the whole idea of a new life and new adventure – was my dream as much as yours. I let it go, so you could still have it. Some people would actually think you’ve had the best of both worlds here. You had the years of enjoying life while someone else minded your child. And now you can swoop back in and start playing Daddy with all the horrible messy bits out of the way.’
Briefly, she wondered if she saw something warmer in his eyes, something battling the dislike he usually bestowed on her. His arm jerked in her direction then fell back.
‘Christmas,’ he said, and his voice still wasn’t quite steady. ‘I want her to know by Christmas.’
‘That’s only a couple of months…’
‘You tell her or I will.’
Did he mean it? Would he really tell Megan who he was, even if Helen didn’t want him to? She sighed. She couldn’t ta
ke the risk, and he knew it.
‘Daniel, go and check on Megan while Helen tidies herself up.’
He left, and Valerie turned to Helen. Her expression was so severe that Helen feared the old Valerie was about to make her return. But as she handed over a box of tissues, her hands were shaking again.
‘I’m sorry,’ Valerie said. ‘I’m sorry for the way I always behaved towards you. I never thought you were good enough for Daniel. I misjudged you.’
‘You’ve been proved right. I’ve hurt him more deeply than you could ever have predicted.’
Valerie shook her head.
‘He’ll get over it. You did something wonderful for him. You’ve given him – all of us – the most precious gift, one that we never expected to have. I only wish you’d felt you could have told me, and maybe we could have worked something out. I will never forgive myself for that.’
It was the first murmur of support, and from the last person Helen would have expected to offer it. She shook aside the niggle of doubt over whether she deserved it, and absorbed the absolution. Perhaps it took the depth of the love they had both felt for Daniel to realise that he had needed Hong Kong and no other option would have made him happy. Valerie’s words chipped away at the block of guilt Helen carried round; it would always be there, but perhaps the edges weren’t quite so rough, weren’t quite so likely to snag her every day.
When Megan showed signs of becoming restless, Helen made her excuses to go.
‘Alex, wasn’t there something you wanted to ask Helen?’ Valerie prompted.
‘Oh, yes.’ Alex looked at Helen and spoke to her directly for the first time all day. ‘You know I’m getting married in December? We wondered if Megan would like to be a flower girl.’
A flower girl at her aunt’s wedding. It was such a normal, natural thing, how could Helen refuse?
‘I’m sure she’d love to.’ She squeezed Megan’s hand, and smiled down at her. ‘Do you want me to buy her a dress? Any particular colour?’
‘The bridesmaids are wearing pale blue, but I doubt the bridal shop will be able to make another dress in time,’ Alex said.