by Fiona Gibson
Strengths: Scrabble. Eating. Enthusing about crisps to journalists. Being ‘a good sort’, as Rupert puts it.
Weaknesses: Chronic ditheriness. Worrying over insignificant things. Tendency to obsess over when this man beside me might next get in touch, despite being married and old enough to know better.
Fraser and I seem to have run out of things to say. How on earth are we going to fill a whole day? I envisage an awkward stroll along the beach, and lunch, and making some kind of ‘plan’ regarding Rosie, before he drops me back home.
Right now, I wish I was at home. Perhaps he feels the same. He clears his throat and gives me an anxious look. ‘This is the weirdest thing that’s ever happened to me,’ he murmurs.
To him? What about Rosie? Then, as if reading my thoughts he adds, ‘I don’t mean that in a poor me sort of way. I don’t mean that at all. I’m sorry, Charlotte – I’m just trying to explain why this feels so awkward, and why I’m being so crap, really—’
‘No you’re not,’ I say quickly.
‘I am. I’m being completely useless, inadequate … all I could think was, we need time together. We can’t sort all this out over a coffee in a busy café in about twenty minutes. It’s fucking serious, Charlotte. I want to get it right, I don’t want to screw up again—’ His voice wavers as he focuses determinedly ahead.
‘Fraser,’ I say hesitantly, ‘why didn’t you ever try to contact me? After your mum told you I’d phoned, I mean …’
He takes a moment to consider this. ‘I know it sounds ridiculous now, but I just believed what she said. My mother, I mean. It was a complete shock. I was devastated, you know. But then I thought, well, you must’ve had a change of heart, and panicked and thought it’d mess up your life – that I’d mess it up. I thought maybe your parents had stepped in, and persuaded you that you didn’t have to go ahead …’
I picture Mum, pacing around in my flat with my baby propped over her shoulder, winding her, and a spurt of curdled white stuff shooting out of Rosie’s little pink mouth and landing on Mum’s emerald green linen dress. I’d apologised madly and tried to dab it off with a wet cloth. ‘It’s only from Oxfam,’ she’d said, forgetting she’d told me what a find she considered it: vintage Jaeger.
‘No, they didn’t do that,’ I say. ‘They were brilliant, though. They came up to London as often as they could, and forced me to go out and meet friends, virtually manhandling me out of the door …’
I realise with a start that Fraser’s eyes are moist. ‘Well, I got that wrong, then. Honestly, I just thought maybe I’d make things worse by trying to stay in touch, when it sounded as if you just wanted me out of your life.’
I nod, wondering how things would have turned out if he’d tried just once, and made a single call.
‘I was an idiot,’ he mutters.
‘No, you weren’t. You were nineteen years old and had no reason to think your mum was lying.’
He nods. ‘So when did you meet Will?’
‘When Rosie was eighteen months old. Mum and Dad were babysitting and I’d gone to a comedy club with some friends. In fact, I hadn’t wanted to go at all, thought I’d have nothing to talk about apart from baby stuff …’ I laugh. ‘Which was true, actually.’ I glance at him. ‘So, did you never want children?’ It feels intrusive – maybe he and his wife couldn’t have kids – but it feels important to know.
‘I did,’ he says firmly. ‘I always wanted them, but Elise always said it wasn’t the right time, career-wise – she had a great PA job and was hoping to move up into office management. And then’ – he’s smiling now – ‘she started to show Chihuahuas …’
‘Chihuahuas?’ I repeat.
He chuckles. ‘Yeah. And that started to take up all her free time – the training, the grooming, the endless fucking blow drying and nail clipping and traipsing from show to show …’ He breaks off. ‘Anyway, you were saying how you met Will—’
‘Yes, at the comedy club. His friends had been heckling – not Will, he’s not the type – and he’d wandered off to get a drink and we started chatting …’ I sense a twinge of unease and quickly push it aside. Where is he now? Over 500 miles away, impressing the pants off the charity people. ‘He’s been a brilliant dad,’ I add firmly.
‘I’m sure he has. Rosie seems like a lovely girl.’
I want to point out that he doesn’t know that; all he knows is what he read in Front magazine. ‘She is,’ I say. ‘She’s a brilliant girl.’ I glance at him. ‘What did you think when you saw our picture?’
‘Oh, God, you both looked beautiful …’
‘Well, Rosie did.’
‘You too,’ he insists. ‘You were just as I remembered – apart from the hair of course, that was—’
I laugh. ‘I think the hairdresser on the shoot was going for some Brian May out of Queen look.’
He flashes me a big, fond smile. ‘Honestly, that’s not what I thought …’
‘Remember we both hated Queen?’ I prompt him.
‘God, yeah! That’s how we started talking’ As we both chuckle at the memory, it feels as if something clever happens with the air conditioning in this new-smelling car, as any remaining tension fades instantly. ‘Those Liverpudlian guys,’ he adds, ‘murdering “Bohemian Rhapsody” …’
‘You said if they carried on to the Beelzebub bit you might actually throw up …’
We are both laughing as we pick over details we’d forgotten until now: the woman we met, a stoical solo traveller who’d been all over the world yet still referred to a couchette as a ‘courgette’; our final night together in Paris when funds had run low – I was virtually broke by then, and Fraser’s bank card wouldn’t work – and all we’d had to eat was a couple of pickled eggs from a jar on the shelf behind the bar.
By the time we reach the outskirts of Brighton, I’ve almost forgotten that today is all about Rosie and Fraser, and what we need to do for the best. Right now, with the bright sky above us, I feel as if I’ve been snatched from my life as a grown-up woman, a hutch-cleaning serf and a marketeer of crisps, and dropped somewhere else entirely.
The beach is milling with children running in and out of the waves. Although we’re already two weeks into the school holidays, it still feels as if everyone is delighted to be let out, freed from lunchbox-packing routines. In our family-friendly corner of East London, the local mums tend to muddle through, having hordes of kids over for the day when other parents are working. ‘Gosh, I hope this isn’t going to be a regular thing,’ Tricia remarked once, as Rosie and Ollie and a huge bunch of friends tore around our dishevelled garden, screaming and throwing water balloons at each other. ‘For your sake, I mean,’ she added quickly. ‘You must be exhausted!’ In fact, I loved those full-on, mass-catering days when the sun blazed down and everyone was filthy and soaked to the skin. I was less keen when Rosie and her friends took to hibernating in her room on glorious sunny afternoons, shouting, ‘Just leave it outside my door, Mum!’ when I announced that pizza was ready, as if I were a Domino’s delivery girl.
We find a spot on the beach and kick off our shoes, close to a family who are setting out a picnic. I look at Fraser, remembering the only other time we were here together: the morning after pregnancy test day. How excited we were. How giddy and thrilled because, naturally, we hadn’t the faintest idea of what lay ahead. ‘Remember that picnic we had in Paris,’ Fraser muses, ‘in the Jardin des Tuileries? The cake picnic?’
‘Yes, because neither of us much liked the savoury part of picnics so we thought we wouldn’t bother with that bit.’
Fraser laughs. ‘How mature.’
‘Raspberry tarts,’ I remind him, ‘and those layered things with the flaky pastry and squidgy cream stuff inside.’
‘Millefeuilles,’ he says, accent perfect. ‘It means a hundred leaves.’
‘Your French was good. Mine was atrocious …’
He looks at me, as if about to say, No, you amazed me with your linguistic skills, then laughs. ‘Wel
l, that street seller did look horrified when you said, “Une piece de pasteque, s’il vous plait …”’
‘I know!’ I exclaim. ‘As if I’d said something disgusting or suggested we did something incredibly dirty with his watermelon …’
Fraser snorts with laughter. ‘Like what?’
I shrug. ‘I don’t know. Inserted it somewhere?’
We are creasing up with laughter now. ‘My God,’ Fraser says, ‘you haven’t changed a bit.’
‘Neither have you,’ I say, and it’s true: the finely honed cheekbones and elegant, curvaceous mouth bring to mind one of those ancient statues you see in a museum – all curly haired and pouty, the kind you look at and think, God, those Renaissance types were all right. What did Laurie say again on scouting day? You have amazing bone structure, Rosie. Well, it’s no surprise. Although we’ve often been told she’s so like Will, there’s no mistaking who her real father is.
Fraser fetches ice creams which melt so quickly I spend the next few minutes catching vanilla drips with my tongue. We lapse into comfortable silence, and when I turn to glance at him, he is looking directly at me, as if amazed to find me here. ‘Remember the last time we were here?’ he asks softly.
‘Yes, of course I do.’
He inhales deeply. ‘I … I want to make things right between us, Charlotte.’
I nod, understanding. It’s not just about him and Rosie, but us too. ‘So do I,’ I murmur.
‘D’you think we can?’
‘I don’t know.’ Then I add, ‘Maybe, yes.’
A couple of little boys run to the sea, squealing and giggling, pursued by a girl who doesn’t look more than twenty: their nanny, perhaps. A relaxed-looking older woman on a blanket waves at them. ‘Come in, Mummy!’ one of the boys shouts.
‘Maybe later,’ she calls back. It always amazes me when nanny does all the charging about while Mum sits there, smiling vaguely before turning back to her paperback.
‘I feel bad, Fraser,’ I say, ‘about being here with you.’
‘Do you? I wish you didn’t …’ My heart jumps as he gives my hand a reassuring squeeze. It’s okay – it’s daytime. On a score of badness it’s about twenty points lower than snogging a colleague in the spud store. I think about the last time I tried to touch Will, and he flinched away, as if I’d poked him with a stick with a bit of poo on the end.
‘It’s just, I didn’t tell Will about seeing you today,’ I add. My hand is sticky, I think, from the ice cream, and my heart is rattling away as if I’ve just guzzled a can of Red Bull.
‘I don’t want to cause problems between you,’ Fraser says.
‘You’re not. It’s not about you, not really. Will and I have a few, um, issues going on at the moment …’
‘Oh, I’m sorry.’ A teenage couple has arrived now, and proceed to splash each other in the sea and shriek with laughter. They could be us, Fraser and me – two young people, not even fully grown up, before lawnmowers and mortgages and angry husbands running away to Scotland. I’m no longer middle-aged Charlotte, thinking, Is this it? Is this as good as it gets?
Fraser is still holding my hand. I no longer feel bad; my heart is soaring, like the seagulls above. Right now, on this glorious August day, I’m the girl I was back in ’96, with no mortgage or shed or wonky pelvic floor, when it felt as if anything was possible.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
I had a flatmate – a roommate, in fact – at the time when I met Fraser. Beverley Savage was a no-nonsense girl with wiry red hair who’d recently dumped her boyfriend for being ‘too deep’, and ‘always reading’. Although she could have afforded it, she hadn’t wanted to go Inter-railing with me. ‘It’s crap, Europe,’ she’d declared, even though the furthest she’d been from mainland Britain was the Isle of Man.
‘Remember that time Bev was banging on the bathroom door?’ Fraser asks, lapsing into an exaggerated Yorkshire accent: ‘“Lemme in! Am bustin’ for a wee …”’ We convulse with laughter as we head back towards town in search of something to eat. This is better. We’re being silly. My heart rate seems to have returned to its normal speed.
‘“Warra ya doin’ in there?”’ I bark back, in Bev Savage’s voice. ‘“Yer better not be at it. That’s disgustin’. If you don’t ’urry up am gonna wee in the sink …”’
In fact, we hadn’t been ‘at it’, at least, not at that precise moment. We’d been messing about – partially undressed, admittedly – in the bedroom Bev and I shared, until we’d heard that terrible sound: her key in the front door lock. ‘She’s back,’ I’d shrieked, and we’d charged into the mouldering bathroom with its salmon-coloured tiles and actual fungi sprouting through the carpet.
Still laughing at the memory, we buy a picnicky lunch from a posh deli and sit on a bench on the seafront. Everything we’ve bought is in little pots, and I’m trying not to daub myself while ferrying small bits of stuffed pepper to my mouth with a wooden fork. ‘Tell me about Will,’ Fraser says. A piece of oily pepper pings off my fork and lands on my top, another non-special one – navy blue, with a small daisy pattern – chosen to show that I wasn’t excited about our day together at all. ‘Maybe I shouldn’t ask,’ he adds, ‘but—’
‘It’s okay. You can ask whatever you want. He’s actually away for a job interview at the moment. It’s in Scotland …’
‘Really?’
I nod. ‘It was a bit of a shock, to be honest. I didn’t even know he’d applied for it.’
‘Wow … so, um … will you all move north?’
‘No, no, that’s not the plan,’ I say firmly. ‘We’d stay in London – me and the kids, I mean …’
‘Oh, I’m so glad. Sorry. God, that sounds awful. It’s just …’ He pauses. ‘It feels like I’ve only just found you again.’ His words knock the breath out of me. Found me? Isn’t this supposed to be all about Rosie?
‘It’s sort of complicated,’ I mutter.
‘But … he wants to move away from you, and the kids?’
I’m primed to spout the line we’ll tell his mother and sister – and anyone else we don’t feel able to be honest with – if he gets the job: He’s only accepting it because he hasn’t been able to find anything closer to home. It’s a great position, after all, and he’ll visit … But Fraser isn’t Gloria, or my sister-in law. ‘He … he says we need a break, actually,’ I add, unable to stop myself.
‘You’re splitting up?’
‘Well, not officially …’ Fraser listens without interrupting as I explain how things have been lately: the angry-mowing and pill-gobbling and weeping on the stair carpet. He remains silent, sitting so close on this sun-faded bench that I can sense the warmth from him. I tell him about assaulting my husband with squirty salad cream, and how I mistook a blow-up doll for a real woman; I tell him everything, because it feels as if I can. Even though all of this makes me sound quite ridiculous, I can’t stop.
And then I do, abruptly. I study his face to figure out if he’s appalled, or thinking, Shit, Charlotte’s completely deranged. Better make an excuse and get her back to London, pronto … ‘God, Charlotte,’ is all he says.
‘I know. It’s all been a bit … eventful.’
‘Yeah. Sounds like it. I thought things were pretty crazy with me and Elise and the Chihuahuas.’
A smile tweaks my lips. I think about telling him about Guinness, gnawing through the crotch of Will’s leather trousers, but then he might think, Jesus, she married a leather trouser man, and I don’t want Will to seem tragically middle-aged, the kind who wears his hair long to compensate for it thinning on top, because he’s not like that at all.
‘So,’ I say, turning to Fraser, ‘what about you and Rosie?’
‘Well, I’d love to see her of course. But I don’t want this whole thing to freak her out.’
‘It won’t,’ I say firmly, ‘and it’s not a thing – I mean, you’re not a thing. You’re her dad.’
He nods, as if momentarily overwhelmed by the fact. ‘So … what d’you
think’s best?’
I consider this as we watch a runner powering effortlessly along the promenade, a black and white collie dog scampering beside him on its lead. They are keeping pace perfectly, both focused ahead as if they exercise together every day. What will Rosie make of Fraser? Will they connect in any way? Awful therapy-type speak, I know, but I’m not sure how else to put it. ‘Bond’ feels too strong, something built up over years of playing and drawing and building Lego together.
‘We should arrange for you to meet,’ I say.
‘Just the two of us? Or d’you think you should be there too?’
I picture Will and I shuffling into Face Models with Rosie. Quite the family outing! Laurie quipped.
‘No, I think it’d be better for her to see you by herself. I’ll come into town and meet up with her afterwards.’
Fraser smiles warmly. ‘You’ve really thought this through, haven’t you?’
Of course I have, I’m her mum. Although all I say is, ‘Yes.’
*
We are driving home to London in the grown-up car. I don’t want to go back. I want to carry on talking, as we have been the whole journey. I want Fraser to get a picture of what Rosie is like. It feels strange, condensing her sixteen years into random anecdotes and descriptions, but I’m doing my best. I break off and text her. All okay at home?
Yeah, she replies, Ollie being annoying but OK. How’s it going?
Good, I text back, will tell all, knowing that that’s not entirely true. Of course I won’t tell her how wonderful it is just to be myself, without that treading-on-eggshells feeling, and how ridiculously happy I feel today: no longer middle-aged, Ovaltine-sipping Charlotte, heading for old-lady facial sproutings, but young and ridiculously free.
‘We’re pretty near my place,’ he adds as the traffic slows to a crawl. ‘We could stop off, get a takeaway. How does that sound?’
It sounds like heaven. And it’s something I definitely shouldn’t do. ‘I’m not sure,’ I murmur.
‘There’s a fantastic Indian at the end of my road,’ he adds. ‘Best in South London, apparently. I’ll drive you home straight afterwards …’