The Goodbye Gift

by Amanda Brooke

  While Milly settled down between Julia and Helen, Phoebe sat quietly on the outer edges of the group, which was her natural position and one she was more than happy to occupy. When the opening music to The Little Mermaid began to play it was enough to pull her back to her formative years. Her best memories always seemed to be in someone else’s house.

  ‘I always loved your mum,’ she said.

  ‘My mum?’ Helen gasped.

  Phoebe had taken a sip of wine and let it warm on her tongue before she swallowed and replied, ‘Or Julia’s for that matter.’

  She had been expecting Julia to reply with equal flippancy but instead she asked, ‘Anyone’s mum except your own?’

  ‘Oh, Mum wasn’t that bad really,’ Phoebe said with a shrug before remembering what Paul had said about telling her friends everything. ‘She just wasn’t that good at looking after anyone, not even herself, especially not herself.’ Her voice trailed off as she recalled a vivid memory of sneaking into her mum’s bedroom unbeknownst to her grandmother. The sunlight was streaming through the cracks in the curtains as she peaked beneath the bedcovers to reassure herself that her mum was still breathing. This wasn’t a single memory but rather an amalgamation of a recurring theme. ‘When she was well, she was the sweetest, kindest person you could imagine. Her problem was that the world frightened her most of the time.’

  ‘Or your nan did,’ Helen said wryly.

  ‘Nan frightened everybody, even Grandad. But you shouldn’t be so harsh, she kept us all safe, Mum included. She was the only one who could make her take her medication.’

  This would have been the perfect time to continue, to tell them the things she had only told Paul, but Milly was listening intently. When everyone else had fallen silent and pretended to revert to watching the film, it was the youngster who asked, ‘What was wrong with your mum?’

  ‘She had manic depression, what they would call bipolar today,’ Phoebe explained while looking to Helen. She wasn’t sure how much an eleven-year-old would or should understand but Helen simply gave her a nod of encouragement. ‘Which means she had a horrible, horrible illness that sometimes made her so sad she couldn’t get out of bed for days, weeks even.’

  ‘What made her so sad?’

  ‘It doesn’t quite work like that, honey,’ Helen said. ‘It was an illness; one that meant her brain didn’t work the way healthy people’s do. Bad things didn’t have to happen for her to feel like the whole sky had fallen down on her.’

  ‘It’s a wonder she ever had the strength to up and leave when she did,’ Phoebe said.

  ‘She left you?’ Milly asked, her eyes wide with shock.

  ‘No, she took me with her. You see, as well as the times when she was desperately sad, there were times when Mum was really happy and optimistic – too optimistic. She convinced herself, and me, that she could stay well as long as we found a new place to live, which is what we did.’

  ‘And did she stay happy?’

  ‘No, Milly, she didn’t and I had to learn to look after us both.’

  ‘How old were you?’

  ‘Nine.’

  With the little mermaid singing away in the background, Phoebe imagined herself back in a threadbare flat in Manchester, sitting in the dark because there was no money to feed the electricity meter. It was during those times that she held onto her precious memories of sitting with Helen watching videos of gurgling sea monsters while in reality, it was the sound of her rumbling tummy.

  Milly innocently pressed on. ‘What happened to her?’

  No one was pretending to be interested in the DVD now, Milly was asking the questions that Helen and Julia had never been given complete answers to. When she had reappeared in their lives, Phoebe had avoided talking about her missing years and her friends hadn’t wanted to press her for information. Over time, those unspoken questions had been buried and forgotten.

  ‘When we arrived in Manchester, Mum was convinced the new start was all the medicine she needed. When you’re as ill as she was, it can be hard to recognize your own symptoms.’

  ‘Did she ever get better?’ Milly persisted as if she couldn’t comprehend such a sad story without a happy ending.

  ‘We managed for a while, eight years in fact, but … No, I couldn’t save her in the end.’ Before continuing, Phoebe needed to take a sip of wine, but her words were still hard fought for. ‘I came home from college one day and she was gone.’

  ‘Gone?’

  Phoebe looked again to Helen and this time Helen answered for her. ‘She died,’ she told Milly softly.

  ‘How?’

  For this, only Phoebe could answer because her friends had never been told the details. Even so, she had to edit her words carefully. ‘She took her own life,’ she said and thankfully only she could conjure the sight of what had awaited her when she stepped through the door. She had tried to grab her mum’s legs to take some of the strain from the belt she had used as a makeshift noose, and even though she knew it was too late, Phoebe had kept hold of her because she couldn’t bear to let her mum’s body drop again. Thankfully a neighbour had heard her screams and it was a paramedic who had prised her from the body.

  ‘Jesus,’ Julia whispered as if she could see the image in Phoebe’s mind’s eye but then she added, ‘Are you sure it wasn’t accidental?’

  ‘Oh, it was deliberate,’ Phoebe replied with a warning glare that no more should be said in front of Milly. The child had lifted herself off Julia and was now snuggling into her mum who held her tightly.

  Ariel was singing again, going on about wanting to be part of someone else’s world. It could have been written for Phoebe. ‘Now, if you lot were meant to be cheering me up, can I just say that you’re failing miserably?’

  Suddenly everyone was trying to do something – anything – to dispel the air of desolation. Julia grabbed the bowl of popcorn and offered it to Phoebe while Helen, still pinned down by Milly, scrambled for something to say. ‘We must have some good news to share.’

  ‘What about Olly?’ Milly said, but even she noticed Julia freeze momentarily. ‘Or not.’

  Julia had quickly recovered herself. ‘No, don’t be daft. Or at least I don’t mind,’ she said, looking over to Helen to check how she felt about it.

  Helen sighed. ‘Oh, go on, Milly. Bore everyone to tears by describing every burp and fart of your new brother.’

  Milly gave her mum a look which said, well, you asked, and then launched into a lengthy description of Oliver James Butler. Helen had been right about the level of detail but the look of love and delight on Milly’s face was enough to forgive her the lengthy descriptions, and half an hour later it was new life and not death that surrounded them, giving them all a little more hope for the future even though it still felt beyond their grasp.

  Helen was glad she had invited Julia and Phoebe over. It had been a while since they had shared a cosy evening in and she had forgotten how much she enjoyed them; it was certainly much less fraught than an emergency meeting at the Elephant and more relaxing than a snatched lunch or a hectic night out. It was a good reminder of the foundations their friendship had been built on, if not quite enough to reassure Helen that it could withstand the kind of threats she had been imagining since spying Phoebe hiding down a side street off Allerton Road.

  As the evening wore on, the three friends, four including Milly, alternated between quiet reflection and gentle chitchat as they watched one animated film after another. With the air thick with nostalgia, Helen began reflecting back on simpler times when boys were still a mystery.

  ‘Remember when I kissed David Sanderson?’ she said to Phoebe.

  ‘When? You never did!’ cried Julia.

  ‘It was when I was in reception, just before we were due to go into proper school,’ Helen admitted. ‘We were breaking up for the summer and I was so upset because I wasn’t going to see David again for weeks, which is forever when you’re four.’

  ‘If it’s the boy I’m thinking of,’ Julia sai
d, ‘wasn’t he kind of … weedy?’

  Helen shared a look with Phoebe and they both laughed.

  ‘He was quite short,’ Phoebe added, ‘even for a four-year-old.’

  ‘I can remember being in the cloakroom putting on my coat,’ Helen continued. ‘David had shoved past me and I just kept thinking how much I was going to miss him.’

  ‘I saw it all,’ Phoebe said. ‘Helen was maybe a foot taller and while David was distracted putting on his coat, she bent down and kissed the top of his head.’

  ‘Mum, you didn’t!’

  ‘He didn’t know a thing about it,’ Helen said. She still had her daughter wrapped in her arms and wrinkled her nose at her. ‘But when I kissed him there was a strong smell of grease in his hair which really put me off so that little crush was long forgotten by the time September came round.’

  ‘Is that how you pick your men now?’ Phoebe asked. ‘By sniffing their hair?’

  Milly gasped. ‘What men?’

  ‘There are no men in my life,’ Helen said slowly and deliberately so her friends would get the message that this wasn’t a subject she wanted to discuss in front of her daughter. The last thing she needed was another reason for Milly to think she would be better off at her dad’s.

  ‘Yes, I don’t blame you,’ Julia said. ‘It’s bad enough that you have to be jostled on the bus home by people with smelly hair.’

  Helen glared at her. ‘They’re not all bad.’

  ‘You must bump into those same people again though.’

  ‘No, Julia,’ Helen said, thinking of the business card from the newly divorced financial adviser that was still languishing at the bottom of her bag. ‘I can’t remember the last time I saw a familiar face.’

  ‘But it might happen?’

  ‘I suppose it is possible,’ Helen conceded.

  The conversation trailed off and by the time the latest DVD had ended, Milly was fast asleep with her head on her mum’s lap and her feet across Julia. She didn’t so much as stir when the doorbell rang.

  ‘That’ll be the chauffeur,’ Julia whispered. ‘Could you do the honours, Phoebes? I’m a bit stuck.’

  ‘Paul’s picking you up? I thought we were sharing a taxi?’

  ‘Don’t worry, we’ll be dropping you off too.’

  Phoebe had drunk a little too much wine to conceal her feelings and Helen wished she hadn’t noticed how her friend’s face lit up as she hurried out of the room. Groaning, Helen made a point of needing to stretch her spine.

  Using a cushion to replace her lap as Milly’s pillow, she stood up and said, ‘I’ll see if Paul needs anything.’

  Julia was preoccupied with making a restless Milly comfortable again and thankfully didn’t pick up on Helen’s unease. ‘OK,’ she whispered with a half-drunken smile, her eyes never leaving the little girl.

  Helen stepped quietly into the hall in time to hear part of a whispered exchange between Paul and Phoebe.

  ‘Hi, Paul,’ she said to let them know she was there. ‘Fancy a coffee to warm you up?’

  ‘I think I’d rather be getting home if it’s all right with you. Me and Julia have an early gym session planned for tomorrow morning.’

  Helen rolled her eyes in the direction of the living room and his wife. ‘Good luck with that one.’

  ‘She hasn’t crashed out again, has she?’

  ‘No, but Milly has. I know she’s a big lummox now, but do you think you could help get her to bed?’

  As Paul walked past Phoebe, she was stroking her hand softly across her bare midriff and it drew his gaze. That one look was all it took for Helen to stop doubting herself and begin seriously doubting her friend. Phoebe and Paul had unfinished business, business that Helen had put an end to once and she was prepared to do it again.

  The first time she had come between Phoebe and Paul, Helen’s intentions had been noble. Paul might not have turned out to be the crazed stalker she had imagined, but he hadn’t been right for Phoebe back then. In fact, Paul’s suitability hadn’t really been the issue at all; Phoebe was the problem. She had been desperate for someone to take care of her, someone other than her nan, and she hadn’t cared who that was or how it happened. The chances that this man she barely knew would be the one to save her, the one who would stand by her if she ‘accidentally’ got pregnant, were remote, and if Helen felt guilty at all, it was that Phoebe hadn’t been given the chance to reach that conclusion herself. It had been decided for her.

  ‘What should I do?’ Paul had asked when Helen had turned up at night school to act as Phoebe’s go-between. What Phoebe hadn’t known was that, by that point, Helen was a double agent. ‘I don’t want to cause any more trouble than I already have, but I like Phoebe and …’

  They had been sitting in a large dining hall that would normally be groaning with teenagers during the day but was only partly lit during the evening to accommodate what were significantly more mature students. At that present moment, most of those students were still in class so Helen and Paul had the hall practically to themselves.

  ‘I heard about her nan catching you,’ she had said.

  ‘She’s bloody terrifying, isn’t she? She came at me with her walking stick and dragged Phoebe out of the car.’

  Helen had been genuinely shocked since Phoebe had spared her the finer details of the confrontation. ‘You were lucky she didn’t. Theresa’s quite quick on her feet and the walking stick would have been Phoebe’s grandad’s. Now there was a man she probably did use it on,’ she had added, lowering her tone. She wanted Paul to feel unnerved. He had already been frightened off and now he had to be frightened off for good.

  ‘But I’d still like the chance to see her again. I take it that’s why she sent you?’

  ‘Look,’ Helen had said, taking a deep breath to steel herself for the lie she was determined to tell, ‘the way Phoebe sees it, the incident only forces an issue she would have had to face anyway. She likes you, but as far as she’s concerned it was never going to go any further. She isn’t looking for complications and she certainly isn’t looking for anything serious.’ Helen had held her breath as she checked Paul’s response. Her script was a well-rehearsed one and she didn’t think she could wing it if she had said something that contradicted what Paul already knew of her friend. Thankfully he didn’t look as if he was about to correct her. ‘Phoebe’s still trying to work out who she is, and she doesn’t need you to help her do that. But she does need her nan.’

  ‘Is she telling me to back off?’

  ‘Will you?’ Helen had asked, deftly avoiding an outright lie. ‘For Phoebe’s sake?’

  If Paul had been devastated by the proposition, he hid it well, which was enough to convince Helen that she wasn’t betraying Phoebe but protecting her – from herself as much as anyone. And as if she needed reminding about what could happen if emotions were allowed to run free, Helen heard the distant cry of a baby. Like Pavlov’s dogs, her breasts began to tingle as they prepared for feeding time. If she didn’t move fast, she would face the humiliation of saying goodbye to this decidedly dishy bloke with two large damp patches on her T-shirt.

  ‘If I’m honest, I got the feeling she wasn’t after anything serious, just a shoulder to cry on,’ Paul said, ‘but she’s a nice girl and you can’t help but want to look after her.’

  ‘I know,’ Helen had said, already standing up and bringing the summit on her friend’s future to a close.

  Phoebe’s reaction later on had been equally subdued. When Helen had told her that Paul hadn’t wanted to cause a family rift, Phoebe had quietly accepted defeat. She had cut herself off from Helen for a while, but when she returned she was more like the Phoebe of their childhood. She had been tamed at last, and was finally ready to accept Julia back into her life, little knowing that her old friend had been taking care of her from the wings anyway.

  For good or bad, Phoebe’s fate had been sealed a long time ago and there would be no second chances, not if Helen had anything to do with it. While P
aul and Julia took care of Milly, Helen grabbed the opportunity to tackle Phoebe alone in the kitchen.

  ‘What was all that about?’ she demanded.

  Phoebe had been putting empty wine bottles in the recycling bin and turned to question why her friend’s tone should sound so hard. ‘What do you mean?’

  Helen arched an eyebrow to punctuate her words. ‘You and Paul, whispering in the hallway?’

  Phoebe did her best to look affronted, but she sounded apprehensive when she said, ‘It was nothing, we were just saying hello.’

  ‘I heard you, Phoebe. What was it that Paul told you not to mention to Julia?’

  ‘I don’t know …’ Phoebe said. ‘Something about not minding picking us up probably.’

  ‘Really?’ Helen said, spitting the word out like an accusation, which was exactly what it was.

  ‘Seriously, Helen, I don’t know what you’re getting at.’

  Helen wished she hadn’t drunk so much wine. This was a conversation she ought only to have when sober, but she wasn’t renowned for holding her tongue at the best of times and couldn’t bring herself to put it off for another day. ‘OK, let me spell it out for you. I saw the way you got all giddy when you went to answer the door, I’ve seen the way you’ve been flirting with Paul and I’ve just heard you whispering secrets to each other,’ Helen said, counting out the evidence on her fingers. ‘Oh, and let’s not forget about you hiding down a side street in Allerton when coincidentally Paul drives along in his car.’

  Phoebe dropped the last bottle into the bin and it surprised them both that it didn’t shatter. ‘I’m not listening to this,’ she said. ‘You’re drunk and you’ll be embarrassed about it in the morning, so let’s not make it any worse than it already is.’

  Phoebe went to march out of the kitchen but Helen grabbed her arm. ‘I know what I saw, Phoebe. How can you do this to Julia?’

  Phoebe shrugged her off. ‘I’m not doing anything.’