Five Unforgivable Things

by Vivien Brown

  ‘He’s feeling ill, love. He’s had a lump in his neck he’s been trying to ignore. It’s what men do. Bury their heads, you know. And I don’t suppose he’s been eating properly. It will get better once he’s had the op and the radiotherapy.’

  ‘But it’s nearly Christmas and he’s going to be on his own.’

  ‘I know, love.’ Her mum closed her eyes for a moment and took a deep breath. ‘We’ll visit, make sure he’s got all he needs, try to keep his spirits up. I do still care about him, you know,’

  ‘Do you?’

  Her voice dropped almost to a whisper. ‘Everything was great at first. It was only later, when the problems set in and things got tough for us that it all fell apart. But he has no one else now. I do realise that. And, in many ways, neither do I.’

  ‘But you’ve got us, and Gran …’

  ‘It’s not the same, Jenny. Since your dad left … well, I’ve missed him.’

  ‘And now?’

  ‘Well, just for once, after all these years, it isn’t me who needs him, is it? It’s the other way round. Now he needs me. Needs all of us. A lot of water’s passed under the bridge, Jen, but I think maybe it’s time I put the past behind me and thought about the future … and your dad’s future. Doing what I can to make sure he still has one. I think I owe him that much, after all.’

  Chapter 33

  Kate, 1989

  So, Rich’s big secret. The secret he had to drag my husband out on a Sunday for, and keep him out for most of the day, leaving me looking after three tetchy babies and eating my share of a low-fat heart-healthy chicken casserole that it was obvious, despite my mother’s protestations, was only big enough for two. The secret Rich couldn’t possibly discuss on the phone. The secret Dan tried to keep to himself, even after he rolled home the worse for wear after four pints of beer, roast beef and a pile of crispy pub potatoes I would have happily snatched from him and gobbled in seconds, given half a chance. The secret that dared not speak its name …

  Rich had a rash.

  That was it. Nothing deadly serious. He hadn’t got some girl pregnant. He didn’t have heart trouble, or a liver so addled it needed replacing, or some incurable disease none of us had ever heard of. He hadn’t lost his job. Or his money. He just had a rash.

  ‘Where exactly is this rash?’ I asked, when Dan finally spilled the beans.

  I watched his face screw up into a sort of painful squirm and his hands involuntarily lower themselves to below the belt.

  ‘Oh, I see. There!’

  ‘He was worried, okay? And not much liking the idea of showing it to a doctor. Especially as his doc is a woman.’

  ‘So he thought he’d show it to you?’

  ‘Well, no. I don’t want to look at his bits. Not that I haven’t seen them before, what with sharing a flat and everything, but … Oh, I wouldn’t expect you to understand. It’s a man thing.’

  ‘So, why exactly did he need you there at all?’

  ‘Oh, you know, just someone to talk to. A bit of reassurance …’

  ‘But you could have stayed and talked to me, offered me some reassurance.’

  ‘What do you need reassurance about?’ He gave me a sloppy kiss that almost missed my cheek as I turned my head away. ‘You’re a fantastic mum. You’re doing a wonderful job, and I’m so proud of you.’

  It was no good. Why didn’t he understand what it felt like to be suddenly responsible for these three tiny creatures, left alone to deal with everything day in and day out, desperate for a few hours to myself, if only to sleep? Since when had discussing a mate’s spotty crotch become more important than spending the day with his own family? It wouldn’t do. It really wouldn’t.

  ‘It’s just hard work, Dan. Hard, hard work and sometimes, just sometimes. it would be nice to think I had you here sharing the load.’

  ‘And you don’t think that what I do is hard work? Slogging away at the office from nine to five, or more often than not to seven or eight, every day, just to earn enough to keep our heads above water? Don’t you think I deserve a day off, a few hours in the pub, every now and again, to help me unwind? And, besides, you weren’t on your own today, were you? You went to your mum’s. Didn’t she share the load, as you call it?’

  ‘Of course she did. But it’s not the same, is it?’

  ‘Why? Why is it not the same? I don’t think any of them care who changes their nappies or shoves food down their throats, do you? Look at them fast asleep without a care in the world. It’s you who seems to need the attention, not them.’

  ‘Dan!’

  I couldn’t believe it when he stormed off up the stairs and started running the shower. He’d use all the hot water and I’d have none left for the babies’ baths. Or I’d have to put the immersion heater on to heat up more and have Dan moaning about the bills again. It was no good. We just didn’t seem to understand each other at all any more. And, no matter what I did or what I said, I had a horrible feeling I couldn’t win. I just couldn’t win.

  ***

  I would so like to say that things got better, but if anything, over the next few months, they got slowly but surely worse. I watched it happening, felt life as we had known it slipping away, but I did nothing to stop it. Well, what could I do?

  Oh, Dan didn’t go off drinking all day with Rich again. No need, apparently, as the rash turned out to be some sort of allergic reaction to a new washing powder and not a sexual disease or the beginnings of leprosy.

  He didn’t beat me or shout at me. Or see other women. Or not as far as I knew. Not back then, anyway.

  But I’d look at him sometimes, when he was eating or staring at the TV, or when he was asleep and, through the strained line of his jaw and the beginnings of grey dotting at his temples I’d try to catch a glimpse of that young mousey-haired not-quite-handsome man I’d first seen dripping raindrops in the hallway and wonder where he had gone. And where I had gone.

  Becoming parents wasn’t what I had expected it to be. Yes, there were moments. Moments of sheer joy and wonder, as we watched them start to crawl, held their tiny bare feet in our hands and sang round after round of ‘This little piggy went to Market’. Moments when I looked at Dan, my lovely, cosy, dependable husband, and felt so pleased to have him there, looking after us all.

  And I loved my children. My gorgeous, cuddly, beautiful little children. Without any doubt. Loved them to distraction. Each and every one of them. And so did Dan.

  But most of the time it was a slog, and one that I felt bearing down on me, day and night, until I could hardly breathe. Do all parents feel that way? Or was it just me, suffering in silence, too proud to admit I might have a problem? That looking after my own children was dragging me down into depths I hadn’t known existed? But then, all parents don’t find themselves coping with three at once, do they? Or mourning the loss of another who, had she lived, would probably have made the whole hard work thing even harder. Oh, I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. How could I even think something like that?

  It’s just that I had so wanted us to be the perfect family, Dan and me, strolling through the park on sunny Sundays, gazing lovingly into a pram or holding the little sticky hands of a bouncy blue-eyed toddler swinging herself happily between us. But that had been the dream. Not the reality.

  Reality was more like a juggling act, an exercise in logistics, not being able to leave the house without thinking about where we would feed them or change them, getting them all in and out of the car and the pushchair, dealing with ear-splitting screams and random tears, not to mention packing bags of supplies so huge it looked like we’d just done a raid at Boots. But I don’t even know why I keep saying ‘we’ because most of the time it was me, just me, doing it all on my own.

  Becoming parents wasn’t a new and exciting phase in our lives, strengthening our marriage, bringing us ever closer together. It was slowly but unstoppably tearing us apart.

  ***

  ‘We shouldn’t have done it,’ Dan said, at two o’clock one
morning, when Natalie was squeezed in the bed and fast asleep between us and I’d had to pull Ollie from his cot because he’d been fretful for forty minutes and was refusing to go back to sleep at all.

  ‘Done what?’ I switched on the bedside light and sat on the edge of the bed, finally conceding that I was not going to be able to climb in and go back to sleep any time soon.

  ‘Had them all put in. All those embryos. We were crazy, Kate. The risk we took. Just imagine if we’d had all six. Three’s bad enough. It’s like a bloody nightmare sometimes.’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘Oh, come on. Be honest. I don’t know if I’m coming or going half the time, I’m so bloody tired. If we’d just had just the one we could have taken turns at night, paid for some childcare so you could go back to work, maybe gone on holiday …’

  ‘We can go on holiday.’

  ‘No, we can’t, Kate. It’s too much. All just too much. I should never have let you talk me into it. Any of it.’

  I could feel the tears welling up. ‘I didn’t know I’d had to talk you into it. Wasn’t it what we both wanted?’

  ‘A baby, yes. But babies, in the plural? I’m not sure that was ever the plan. Not all at once, anyway. I sometimes think we should never have gone in for the IVF. Or certainly never agreed to having more than one or two put in …’

  I felt a stab of guilt, knowing I’d thought the very same thing myself, often, but only for a few seconds at a time. ‘Look at them. Look at them, Dan.’ I angled my head towards Natalie, while rocking Ollie backwards and forwards in my arms. ‘Our beautiful, perfect babies.’

  ‘Yes, and look at what they’re doing to us. No sleep, no money, no time for ourselves. No sex life …’

  ‘Things will get better.’

  ‘Will they?’

  ‘Of course. When they’re a bit bigger, less demanding. This is the worst bit, but it won’t last for ever.’ For once it was me being the positive one, me trying to pretend everything was okay. But I had to. What choice did I have? Someone had to defend what we had done, defend the children who had had no say in their own making. We had done this. The two of us, together. And it couldn’t be undone now. ‘Oh, Dan, can you honestly say you wish we didn’t have them? That it would be better if they’d never been born?’

  ‘I don’t know. If we’d never had them, we’d be none the wiser, so we wouldn’t miss them, would we?’

  ‘But we did have them. And we love them.’ I pulled Ollie close to my chest, trying to calm him as he whimpered, both of us on the verge of tears.

  ‘Yes …’ Dan lifted the sleeping Natalie and carried her back to her cot in the room next door, me a pace or two behind, still holding Ollie. He stood for a while, just looking down at Nat, the light from the landing falling across her little face. ‘Of course we do. And nothing in the world would tear me apart from them now. I’m sorry, Kate, but it’s late and I’m knackered, and I’m not thinking straight.’ He bent over the cot and kissed Natalie, very gently, on the tip of her tiny nose. ‘Take no notice of me. It’s just the lack of sleep talking. Here, give Ollie to me and I’ll sort him out. You get your head down. No point both of us staying awake.’

  But I did stay awake. Of course I did. Long after Ollie had fallen asleep and Dan was back sleeping beside me, I lay awake, wild thoughts running through my mind. This wasn’t how I wanted things to be. Not what I’d expected at all. I wasn’t happy. Dan wasn’t happy. And, for the first time, ever, I wondered if we were over. If the Dan and Kate who had laughed and talked and kissed and made such passionate love so often and for so long, really were gone for ever.

  Chapter 34

  Natalie, 2017

  The wedding was just two weeks away and the nerves were kicking in. Natalie sat at the kitchen table and stared at the clock. It was only half-past six but she was already up, an uneaten bowl of cereal in front of her, going slowly soggy in its milk.

  There was something going on, but she didn’t know what it was. Twice in the last few days she’d caught her mum and Jenny in whispered conversation and been only too aware how quickly they stopped talking as soon as she came into the room. Was it something about the wedding? Something they were keeping from her? She would like to think they were planning some kind of surprise, but their faces said otherwise.

  She’d tried to talk to Phil about it but he’d said she was just being paranoid, stressing about nothing, and if she was really that curious about what they were keeping from her – if anything – then she should just ask them. Maybe he was right.

  She pulled her big notebook out from her bag and opened it to the guest list page again. Of the sixty people they’d invited, fifty-six had replied, with only two of them (including her own father) giving apologies, but there were still four who had not let her know one way or the other. How could people do that? Didn’t they realise the amount of planning needed to make a wedding work? That they’d have to pay for sixty meals even if only fifty-six turned up? That who would be sitting next to who had kept her juggling bits of paper around for hours on end, day after day, until she’d got it right?

  She put the notebook down and forced herself to eat. Looking at the list over and over again was not going to change anything. And, if she was honest about it, she knew that it wasn’t the missing four who really mattered. It wasn’t their thoughtlessness that was keeping her awake at night. It was the absence of her dad.

  ‘Oh, what are you doing up so early?’ Jenny came stumbling into the kitchen, rubbing her eyes. ‘I thought it was only me that had to get up at the crack of dawn.’

  ‘Couldn’t sleep.’

  ‘Wedding jitters, eh? Don’t worry, it’ll soon be over.’

  ‘You make it sound like some kind of horrible ordeal!’

  ‘Well, it is, in a way, isn’t it? All that worry and anguish, and all that scary expense, going on and on for months on end. Years, even. And for what? One day. It’s just one day out of a whole lifetime.’

  ‘But the most important day, don’t you think? And there are still some guests who haven’t even bothered to tell us if they’re coming. Don’t they realise how important this is to me?’

  ‘But it’s just one day, Nat, and what will be will be. If people don’t come, they don’t come. A few empty seats? In the grand scheme of things, they don’t matter. What matters is you and Phil, making your vows and starting your life together. Right? And who knows who might wake up that day with flu, even if they have already said they’ll be there, or have their car break down on the way to the church? If it rains, there’s nothing you can do to stop it. If Great Aunt Maud wears a hideous hat and ruins the photos, you can snigger behind your hand or fume about it in secret, but you can’t make her take it off. Not without causing a whole load of aggro …’

  ‘Jen,’ Natalie laughed, ‘we don’t have a Great Aunt Maud.’

  ‘I know, but I’m just making a point. Chill, Nat. It’s just a day, and whatever minor things may go wrong, it will all be okay. Really it will.’

  ‘Even without Dad there?’

  Was she imagining it, or did a guilty look flicker across her sister’s face?

  ‘Well, there’s not a lot we can do about that either, is there?’

  ‘Isn’t there? Jen, tell me, do you know something I don’t?’

  Jenny turned away and made a great fuss over opening a fresh box of teabags. ‘I don’t know what you mean. Know what?’

  ‘Well, if I knew that, I wouldn’t be asking, would I? Jen, please, do you know why Dad isn’t coming? Why he won’t give me away?’

  Jenny poured hot water into her mug, slowly swishing a spoon about so it made a chinking noise against the side. ‘Do you want one? A tea?’

  ‘Jen, stop it. You’re just changing the subject. And, no, I don’t want tea. I want answers.’

  ‘Do you? Really?’

  ‘Look, if you know something please tell me. Whatever it is, I can take it. It’s killing me, worrying about it, trying to work it all out. And whatever it
is, it can’t be worse than some of the things I’m imagining.’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘I knew it! You do know something, don’t you?’

  ‘Okay, yes, I do. You’re right, it’s not fair to keep you in the dark. But it’s not what you’re going to want to hear. Look, Nat, this is something everyone should know, okay? And talk about. All of us together. So I’m going to haul Mum out of bed now, and Beth. And I’ll call Ollie, get him to come round before school. All for one and one for all, remember? Just hang on half an hour and I’ll tell you everything.’

  ***

  She may not have had the most exciting of jobs, but Natalie did have the most amazing bunch of workmates, and the greeting she got that morning was just what she needed to lift her mood. She was late getting in, but then it wasn’t every day that you found out your dad had cancer and her brain still hadn’t quite processed the information enough to make sense of it, let alone know what to do.

  ‘Surprise!’ they all chorused as the lift doors opened and she rolled into an office that was normally a standard beige box but was now decorated like a magic grotto from floor to ceiling. But, even though Christmas was just around the corner, these were not the usual gaudy red and green baubles dragged out of their cardboard box at the back of the stationery cupboard. Strings of white paper doves dangled from corner to corner above her head, silver bells tinkled over every desk, and a brand new white glittery tree stood by the window, adorned with cupids and horseshoes and lines of silver tinsel. And there were flowers everywhere.

  ‘What …?’

  ‘For you, Nat.’ Her friend Josie stepped forward. ‘We do Christmas every year, but this year is different. We thought your wedding was more important.’

  ‘More important than Christmas?’

  ‘Christmas is everywhere. Every shop window, every street, every house. Even the funeral place has a wonky fir tree propped up outside. We can all get our Christmas fix from a thousand other places, so for the next week this office is all about you. And Phil, of course.’