What Goes Down: An emotional must-read of love, loss and second chances

by Natalie K. Martin

  Seph smiled a little. ‘Thanks, George.’

  She wasn’t an atheist, but she didn’t really believe in an afterlife either. All she knew was that, regardless of the science behind it, coming here to talk to him had helped, just like it always did. She felt different. A bit less heavy. She felt how she had yesterday after meeting with Janice, but this time, it felt stronger, more determined.

  She closed a hand around the stag pendant hanging from her neck - her most treasured possession. George had given it to her a few days after telling her about his cancer, and she hadn’t taken it off since. Seph hauled herself up from the ground and put her hand on the cold headstone, feeling the strong firmness of it under her palm before leaving the cemetery.

  *

  A few hours later, she stood in the middle of her studio with her hands planted on her hips. She’d come home from the cemetery, galvanised with energy and took advantage of Ben being out to clean the warehouse from top to bottom. She’d cleaned skirting boards, windows, the tops of doors and the insides of cupboards, before finally turning her attention to the room at the very back - her studio.

  Seph surveyed the room. It was the smallest in the warehouse, but it suited her just fine. It had its own sink below a window that looked out onto the park behind and, at this time of day, the light that shone in was just perfect. The tiny dust motes she’d unearthed slowly fell back to the ground, like glittering confetti. The freshly mopped wooden floor was covered with splotches of old paint, and the dark patches of moisture slowly receded, soaking into the wood as the air dried them away. She had new brushes and paints, and a clean studio. Maybe now, she’d start painting something coherent instead of churning out rubbish. As it stood, all she had was a mish-mashed collection of paintings that had nothing in common. There was no theme to tie them all together.

  Seph looked at the last piece she’d finished. Something about the blending greys and mauves made the back of her neck tingle. They were colours she always associated with the way she’d felt in the year after George’s death. She looked out of the window and the park beyond. He didn’t need to be alive for her to know what he’d say right now. It was two days since she’d walked out of her parents’ house and they hadn’t spoken since. Seph knew that George would tell her to bridge the gap, if he could.

  She took her phone from her pocket. She’d ignored their calls and texts because even though she knew she had every right to be angry, she hadn’t wanted to say anything mean. Now that she’d had a bit of space, she knew that if she wanted answers, there was only one way to get them. And no matter how angry she was, the last thing she wanted was for her parents to worry because of her silence. She’d already made them do enough of that.

  She pressed ‘dial’ and held the phone to her ear.

  ‘Seph,’ Laurel answered after only two rings, her voice full of relief.

  ‘Hi, Mum.’

  ‘We’ve been so worried. You haven’t been answering our calls or messages and I thought…’ Her voice tailed away, and she took a loud breath in. ‘Well, it doesn’t matter.’

  Seph knew what her parents had thought. They’d probably wondered if she was going to go over the edge and have another panic attack.

  She sighed, leaning against the wall. ‘I’m fine. Confused and angry, but fine.’

  ‘I can only imagine. I’m so sorry, Seph.’ Laurel swallowed loudly on the other end.

  ‘Sorry that you lied or that I found out like I did?’

  ‘Both. I know all of this has come as a shock but I need you to know that I am sorry. We both are,’ Laurel said, and Seph gripped the phone in her hand. ‘We’re really, really sorry.’

  ‘I’m angry with you,’ she replied honestly, her voice breaking a little. ‘So angry.’

  ‘I know, and I’m sorry. And I’ll keep on saying it until you know I mean it.’

  Silence fell between them and Seph stared at her easel, ready and waiting for a new square of stretched canvas to be slotted into it. It seemed to hint at the possibility of a new start, with a clean slate. Could it really be that easy to do with her parents too?

  ‘This is so messed up,’ she said, letting her shoulders and her guard drop.

  ‘Talk to me,’ Laurel replied. ‘What are you thinking? Have you decided what to do, about meeting him?’

  ‘Not yet. It still feels a bit too abstract.’

  ‘You know you don’t have to do anything, don’t you? Not right away. You can take your time and think about it for a while.’

  ‘Why? So you can try to talk me out of it?’

  ‘Because you need to figure out what you want. It’s a decision only you can make and you shouldn’t rush it.’

  ‘It was a decision you’d always made for me until now.’

  ‘And if I could do things again I’d do them differently, but I can’t.’ Laurel sighed heavily. ‘Seph, I know you’re angry and hurt and confused. You have every right to be, but you’re still my daughter. I love you and I only want what’s best for you. We both do. We always have. Be angry at me, if that’s how you feel but I’m begging you, don’t be angry with Tony. He’s loved you like any dad would love a daughter. Maybe even more. This is hurting him, too.’

  ‘It’s not that easy, Mum. You two have known about this since day one. You can’t drop a bombshell like that and expect me to just carry on as normal. I don’t even know where I come from anymore.’

  A few seconds of silence passed on the line. It sounded dramatic to say it out loud, but it was true. She’d found herself questioning things she’d written into her history as facts, recalling childhood memories and going through them with fierce precision to check if they were real. The loss of her sense of self wasn’t total, but it was a loss nonetheless.

  ‘I know you don’t know how to deal with this, Seph, and neither do we. But we should try to get through it together. We might be dysfunctional right now, but we’re a family.’

  Dysfunctional was the right word for it. Her mum sounded just like Tony. He’d always been the voice of reason between them when they’d argued years ago during a wild patch in Seph’s teens. He’d always said that family was family, no matter what, and he’d said it knowing that he wasn’t related to Seph by blood.

  ‘You know we’ll support you whatever you decide to do, don’t you? About meeting him, I mean.’

  ‘What happens if we meet and hit it off? What happens if he wants to be a part of my life?’

  ‘Well, then we’ll have to deal with it.’

  Seph slid down the wall to sit on the floor and rested her elbows on her bent knees. ‘Was it really that bad, whatever happened with you two? You said he’d ruin my life.’

  ‘Did I?’ Laurel replied innocently.

  She let her mum’s question go unanswered. They both knew she had.

  ‘What was he like? I feel like I need to know more about him before I can decide what to do.’

  ‘Well,’ Laurel began, and exhaled loudly. ‘He was… charming, I suppose. And handsome. He was unlike anyone I’d ever met before, or since.’

  Seph’s eyebrows hitched up a little at what sounded like an unexpected compliment. ‘That doesn’t sound bad.’

  ‘I was seventeen when we met. I was bored and I felt boring. Nico was the complete opposite. He blew into my life like a hurricane. I used to compare him to Tom Cruise in Top Gun. He was like a real life version of Maverick.’

  Seph leaned her head back against the wall, drinking in the nostalgia seeping into her mum’s tone.

  ‘He was spontaneous,’ Laurel continued. ‘Quite unpredictable, really and always looking for adventure. I think he had an intense fear of boredom. We could be sat in front of the TV on a Friday night one minute and the next, he’d have packed us a bag to drive to Paris for the weekend.’

  ‘Really? That’s so sweet.’ Seph smiled at the thought.

  She’d always thought that kind of spontaneity was romantic. Unfortunately for her, Ben was the worst planner in the world and she was
unlikely to find herself being whisked away anywhere unless she planned it herself.

  Laurel dropped a short, unimpressed laugh. ‘It would’ve been if he’d have remembered his passport. We drove all the way to Dover for the ferry only to have to come home again. I never got to see Paris until I met Tony.’

  ‘Oh,’ Seph said.

  Her mum sighed. ‘That was the thing with Nico. He’d decide to do things on a whim and promise the earth, and you couldn’t help but believe in him because he had such a way of making things seem easy. He made anything seem possible, like he knew the simplest way to do things and everyone else just made things too complicated. And then he’d try these things and mess them up, and become someone else. He’d become, quite literally, hell on earth to live with. He was difficult, mean and utterly hopeless. Nothing mattered to him then. Nothing.’

  The nostalgia that had crept into her mum’s voice had quickly given way to hurt and undisguised bitterness.

  ‘But, maybe that just was his bipolar,’ Seph said, trying to offer an explanation as if her mum were a newly heartbroken friend.

  ‘Maybe, from a medical point of view,’ Laurel replied. ‘But from my point of view, emotionally, it was just him. It was his personality. And my experience was that for all the times he could be exciting, enigmatic and fun, he was also careless, irrational and untrustworthy, bipolar or not.’

  Seph had done a little research online and it all seemed to fit in with what she’d read. It made sense that his spontaneity and overzealousness could have been down to mania and his hopelessness explained by depression. But how much of it was him and his personality instead of a mental illness? Everyone was prone to those ups and downs, weren’t they? She certainly was. She only had to look at the last few weeks, frustrated with work, stressed with a rising credit card debt and a depleting bank account, and having panic attacks in the middle of a busy shopping village. But that was life, wasn’t it?

  ‘Maybe things have changed now,’ Seph said. ‘Maybe he’s on lithium or something and doing better. It doesn’t have to be such a big deal. Things are different than they were back then.’

  ‘I’m telling you this because you asked,’ Laurel said. ‘If you’re going to meet him then you should know what you might be getting into.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘And it’s important that you take care of yourself right now. This is all really stressful and new, and…’

  ‘Mum, its fine,’ Seph interrupted.

  ‘It’s just that I read online that it’s supposed to be hereditary.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘The bipolar, I mean.’

  ‘I know, Mum. I read up about it too, and I promise you I’m fine. I got an extension for submitting the series and I’m in my studio right now. Ben’s home, I’m happy. There’s no stress.’

  It was only a tiny lie. Of course there was stress but, again, that was life. Besides, her mum wasn’t being entirely accurate. Bipolar disorder wasn’t inherently hereditary. Seph had read that there was only a ten per cent chance of it being passed down, even less if most people on both sides of the family were at least reasonably mentally healthy.

  ‘Okay,’ Laurel said, clearly a little more relieved. ‘But I meant what I said earlier, you don’t have to decide anything yet about meeting him. There’s no need to rush.’

  Seph nodded, but it wasn’t as easy as that. Nico wouldn’t just go away by ignoring him. Even if she never replied to his email, the guilt of knowing that he was out there, waiting and hoping for a response would play on her mind. She’d have to make a decision sooner or later, and it would have to come down to whether she wanted to find out what he was really like for herself, or whether her mum’s word was enough.

  LAUREL

  Six

  June 1987

  Laurel sat on the desk in her bedroom, peering out of the window. Across the quiet cul-de-sac, an unfamiliar silver car and a blue van was parked up outside number twelve Alfred Close.

  ‘What’s going on, Peeping Tom?’

  Laurel turned just in time to see her brother, George, flop down onto her bed. ‘I’m not peeping. And don’t you know how to knock?’

  ‘It’s not like you’d be up to anything naughty in here, is it?’ he replied, arching an eyebrow.

  She sighed and turned back to look out of the window. It was best to ignore him, especially when he was right.

  ‘So, what’s happening?’

  ‘New neighbours. Number twelve have just moved in.’

  Laurel picked up her camera and nudged the curtain to one side. There was something about taking photographs that made life just that bit more interesting. Right now, there was nothing fascinating happening at all. Boxes and bin liners were being unloaded from the van and the sky outside was a dull, listless grey. But once the photographs were developed, they would take on another life of their own. The grey tones from the tarmac and cloudy sky would add drama, and the anonymous people in the shot could become whoever she wanted them to be.

  ‘What are they like?’ George asked.

  ‘Why don’t you come and look for yourself?’

  ‘You’re the one by the window, with a camera.’

  At nineteen, George was only two years older than she was, but he seemed to live in another universe altogether - one that she herself could never reach. Laurel briefly took the camera away from her face and looked at him.

  For starters, he had style. He was sprawled across her bed, lying on his side with legs that were so long, his feet hung over the edge, encased in stripy socks. He could’ve been in Duran Duran, with his perfect hair and uniform of black turtleneck and black trousers. He worked at a busy salon in town where MTV played all day long on the portable TV and people came in by the truckload to get their hair done for Friday and Saturday nights out. Laurel had loved every minute of her appointment, sitting in the swivel chair while George had hacked away at her hair, cutting it into a jaw length bob before dyeing it with peroxide. She’d loved the process of transformation, going in one way and coming out completely different. It was just like photography, really.

  ‘So?’ George prompted, and Laurel looked through the window again.

  ‘Middle-aged.’ She looked at a man and woman, presumably husband and wife, as they unloaded boxes. Their hair was dark and both were olive-skinned. ‘Mediterranean, maybe. They don’t look English.’

  ‘Ooh, foreigners. That’ll mix this place up a bit.’

  Laurel chuckled at her brother’s sarcastic drawl, but it was the truth. Bristol was only twenty minutes away but it might as well be on a different planet. Their cul-de-sac was quiet and as racially diverse as a sack of potatoes. It was a safe place for kids to play, but nothing interesting ever really happened. Apart from the time that couple a few doors down had had an enormous argument. Laurel and George had battled with the fern plants on the windowsill to get a better look as a stream of clothes had been thrown out of the window like a multi-coloured waterfall. The whole street had heard about the couple’s problems - their non-existent sex life, her coldness and his infidelity. It was like watching a drama on TV and their mum had told them not to be so nosy, but she’d watched too. The couple divorced and sold the house not long afterwards.

  Laurel picked up her camera again, just in time to see her mum, Alice, crossing the road and making her way to their new neighbours’ house. It was something she always did, welcoming newcomers and giving them the rundown. No doubt she’d be telling them which day the bins were collected and that, if they needed to, they should nip down to Allied Carpets in town where her husband, Laurel and George’s dad, was the shop manager. Alice would probably mention that they should ignore the grumpy ramblings of Mr Pratt at number six who was perfectly harmless but couldn’t resist trapping people in conversation, but that they shouldn’t ignore Mrs Oates from number four if they ever saw her wandering around alone because she was ancient and losing her marbles. And of course she’d mention number twenty, where two men lived in t
he same house. Together. Alone. This little piece of information would be said in a friendly enough way, not daring to offend, but with a definite underlying tone of disapproval.

  ‘God, I’m bored,’ George said with a sigh.

  ‘You’re always bored,’ Laurel replied, still looking through her viewfinder.

  ‘That’s because life is boring, and Sundays are even worse.’

  She chose not to reply, mostly because she had no idea what he could possibly have to be bored about. He had a job, and he had a car. It was ten years old and had more rust on it than metal, but it was still a car. And, George had a love life. If he spent a day in her shoes, he’d know what boredom really was. She puffed out a small sigh and kept her camera pointed across the road. She loved him, but he could be so dramatic sometimes.

  A man emerged from the house and Laurel blinked, dropping the camera from her face. She hadn’t seen him before. She moved closer to the window as if it could give her a better look than the zoom on her lens. She watched as he ran a hand through his hair, staring at him, unblinking, her heart inexplicably racing. It was only when she blinked again that the world around her seemed to set itself back into motion and he stepped down from the doorstep to pick up a box from the ground.

  ‘What is it?’ George asked as the man from across the street disappeared inside. She picked up her camera again, poised for when he came back out. ‘Lorie?’

  ‘Someone else was there. Their son, maybe, or a removal guy.’

  When he came back out, she quickly took a snap. He was also olive-skinned and dark-haired, and she decided he must be part of the family.

  ‘He looks like Tom Cruise,’ she muttered.