The Not So Perfect Mother: A feel good romantic comedy about parenthood

by Kerry Fisher

  ‘It’s just that when we spoke to the store manager tonight, she remembered Bronte very well because she had tried to steal a sequinned top. Put it on under her school uniform.’ A surge of fury shot through me. I almost forgot Bronte was missing. I hadn’t brought up my daughter to be a common little thief. Serena probably thought I’d been too lazy to teach her right from wrong.

  ‘Why didn’t they call the police straightaway? Then she would never have gone missing,’ I said.

  ‘They were about to call the police. The security guard saw the sequins hanging down under her blazer. She’d taken the top off and given it back to him when someone else triggered the alarm and in the confusion, she made a run for it. He did chase after her but didn’t manage to catch her and because they had the top back, I think they opted for an easy life.’

  Bronte had always been a quick runner. She was lean and fast. I wasn’t surprised she’d outsprinted the security guard. I had to squash down a glimmer of pride. I’d always been a hotshot in the hundred metres on school sports days but I didn’t realise the top talent my daughter would inherit from me would be the ability to give a dozy security guard the slip.

  ‘Which other shops does she like apart from Next?’ said Serena.

  ‘Next? I thought she was in H&M?’ I felt my eyes close with the split-second despair that comes from dropping someone you like in the shit.

  Serena looked at me. Hard. Brown eyes suddenly matched the harsh hairdo. ‘How did you know which shop she was in?’

  ‘I had a phone call just before you got here.’ I was hoping she’d think it was someone from the police station.

  ‘From whom? Why didn’t you tell me?’

  Jesus. She was going to start taking up the concrete in the back yard if I didn’t get my act together.

  ‘Mr Peters rang.’ I practically heard the splash as the sewage closed over him.

  Serena pursed her lips. ‘I told him that in strictest confidence.’ Her eyes flicked over me. ‘Is there anything else you haven’t told me?’

  ‘Like what? Why would I keep anything from you when my daughter is missing?’

  ‘Let’s start with Mr Peters. You seem very close. Are you seeing him?’

  I stared at Serena. ‘Seeing him?’

  ‘Yes, Ms Etxeleku. Seeing him. Having an affair?’

  ‘No, of course not. He’s one of Bronte’s teachers, that’s all.’ I could feel myself blushing. ‘He was trying to help, he knew how worried I was.’

  ‘So it would be wide of the mark to suggest that you having an affair with Zachary was one of the reasons Bronte ran away?’

  I could see how criminals would crumble under her stare. ‘Are you joking? I hardly know the man. He’s been helping me get the kids settled in at school. He told me something which, unless I’ve got the wrong end of the stick, you were going to tell me anyway, so big whoopee-doo.’ Shock had made me slow but I could feel the armies rallying. ‘I’m not interested in shagging Mr Peters. I’m interested in getting my daughter back.’

  Serena winced at my language. Bad language except when it came out of my mouth always jolted me too. If I’d wanted to sound like a thicko, I’d done a good job. However, it seemed to do the trick. She stopped banging on about ‘Zachary’, and started outlining what would happen from now on.

  ‘We’ll keep reviewing CCTV in the area. If we don’t find her tonight, we’ll go to the press tomorrow, pull out all the stops to bring your little girl to everyone’s attention.’

  ‘Why haven’t you already done that?’ I knew by the way her eyes shot open that I’d sounded rude.

  ‘Statistics show that children usually turn up within forty-eight hours. If we went to the media as soon as a child went missing, ninety-nine times out of a hundred the child would be safely back home before the newspapers hit the stands. The evidence so far leads me to believe that Bronte has run away, not that she has been abducted. I know it’s hard but you have to trust me. I’ve done this before.’

  I refused to feel like I’d been told off. Forty-eight hours! That was two days. I’d have died of worry before then. I sat picking at the loose threads on the arm of the settee while she ran through how to deal with journalists if any contacted me. Right at the end as she got up to leave, she shook my hand. Her eyes were watchful, suspicious. The big easy smile had made for the hills but I was too tired to work out whether she was mad at me or furious with Mr Peters.

  As soon as Serena left, Sandy shot out of the kitchen. ‘Well? Have those useless boys in blue managed to come up with anything?’

  I felt so knackered that I could have easily dropped off mid-sentence as I gave her a rundown of Serena’s visit. In different circumstances we’d have hooted our heads off that Serena had thought I was having it away with Mr Peters. Instead Sandy looked all serious. ‘Are you?’

  ‘Don’t you bloody start. I’ve got enough on my hands with one bloke, let alone trying to find time for a bit on the side. Anyway, Mr Peters wouldn’t go for a rough bird like me. He could have anyone.’

  ‘Yeah, he looked a bit of all right,’ said Sandy, handing me the phone. ‘You’d better give Colin a ring, let him know what’s going on. It went straight to voicemail when I tried before.’

  I could hear a mixture of hope and dread in his voice when he answered. Like me, hearing that Bronte had been seen in the shopping centre didn’t reassure him much.

  ‘She ain’t there now. I just walked round that way. I’ve been right up onto the hill in case she decided to go up there. I even drove halfway to Guildford – thought she might walk along the cycle path we went on in the summer. I done the leisure centre, the riverbanks, the shops on the parade, the train and bus station. I’m freezing,’ he said.

  ‘Come home. We can’t do anything now. Serena said to trust the police to find her.’

  When Colin arrived back about half an hour later, drenched and irritable, he was still cottering on about the bloody police, piss-ups in a brewery and the like. Usually I couldn’t stand him going on because Colin couldn’t find anything himself if it wasn’t dancing a jig and ringing a bell, but on a day when so much had changed, it was comforting to have him rumbling on. I suppose it was like living next to a railway line where the noise of the trains becomes a soothing murmur. While Colin collapsed onto the settee next to me, Sandy was in and out with coffee and toast. It took all the energy I could muster to rub some warmth back into his numb hands. ‘I’ve run you a hot bath, Col,’ Sandy said, helping him to his feet.

  I loved her for babying Colin. I didn’t want to, couldn’t do it myself. I was filled up with worry about Bronte, with no room left for taking care of anyone else. Although he was quiet now, if he ran true to form, he’d find a way to make his agony over Bronte all about him, his suffering much worse than mine. Eventually it would go full circle and be my fault.

  I flicked on the TV. The crappy sitcoms, which usually filled the evenings in our house, seemed pathetic. I pushed back the front room curtains and peered into the darkness. I heard the water slopping over the sides of the bath upstairs. Even with Bronte missing I still felt irritated about having to mop up after Colin. Sandy appeared in the doorway.

  ‘I’ll be off now, love. Let us know if you hear anything.’

  She leaned in and hugged me. I pulled her to me gratefully. I lay down on the settee after she’d gone, wondering whether I’d ever be able to sleep again. How anyone, ever, got on with their lives if their child never came back. I looked at my watch. Nine o’clock. My body ached to sleep, but it seemed wrong. I closed my eyes, terrified that my imagination would parade awful images of Bronte across my eyelids. Nothing. Just black. I was drifting, my mind still turning, walking the estate, the shopping centre, winding down into slow motion when I heard the beep of a text message. I leapt up.

  Just wanted you to know that I am thinking of you. Sorry for causing trouble and telling you things I shouldn’t have. Done with best intentions. Let me know at once if any news. Take care. Zachary.
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  Bloody Serena. She’d obviously left here and trotted back to tell him off. I should have warned him. It was alien to have someone apologise to me when I was the one who’d screwed up. I lay back down and concentrated on thinking about Mr Peters to stop replaying my last conversation with Bronte that morning. His hair always looked as though he’d just washed it, maybe in some of that Jo Malone lime, basil and mandarin stuff I often saw spring up in the houses where I worked after Father’s Day or birthdays. I was pretty sure he’d never smell of kebabs, or hash, or Guinness. I loved his manners, all that pulling back of chairs, opening doors. I hoped Harley was learning from him. Mr Peters wouldn’t laugh if I told him I wanted to do an Open University degree. He’d sit there looking all public school handsome and show me how to fill in the application form. I wondered what it would be like to kiss him. That was the last thought I had before my limbs sank into the lumpy old foam of the settee and sleep weighed me down like pockets full of stones.

  The sound of hammering reached down the dark tunnel to drag me out. Colin was shouting at me to wake up, shaking my shoulder on his way to the door. I blinked for a second before reality rushed in on me again and I sprang to my feet. I glanced at the clock. With a flash of guilt, I realised I’d been asleep for an hour.

  By the time I made it the few feet to the door, Colin was on his knees, sobbing, wrapped around Bronte on the front doorstep. All I could hear was ‘fucking hell, fucking hell,’ repeated over and over again like a mantra. Bronte looked up at me, brown eyes wide and uncertain, her curly hair so wet it was almost straight, her blazer splattered with mud, a squashed hat under her arm. I flung myself on her, smelling her, touching her face, kissing her head.

  ‘Where have you been? We were so worried about you.’ My voice sounded harsher, higher than normal.

  Her face crumpled and she started to cry. I couldn’t make out what she was saying.

  ‘Leave it, Mai, let’s get her warm. We can have it all out later, don’t matter now.’

  It was only then I remembered the vague shape I’d seen standing in the shadows as I’d run to the door. I looked out.

  ‘Tarants?’

  He stepped forward into the dim porch light. ‘Was it you that found her? Thank you, thank you.’ I threw my arms round him, registering the stiffness of someone who was used to receiving aggression, not affection. He clamped his arms to his side until the first surge of gratitude had subsided and I remembered the rules of our estate.

  He dug his hands in his pockets and shuffled. With a scarf covering his tattoo and his white spiky hair flattened by the rain, he looked quite normal. ‘S’nothing. I owed you. See you around.’

  ‘Wait. Where did you find her?’

  He waved. ‘She’ll tell you.’ Then he was gone, my thank yous and questions washed away with the rain.

  12

  For at least the first hour, I couldn’t stop touching Bronte. Kept holding her hand, asking her if she was okay until she got irritated with me. The day had come when Bronte shrugging and telling me to get off filled my heart with joy. I bathed her and wrapped her in a snuggly dressing gown, while Colin phoned the police – ‘Better tell the fuzz that we’ve done their job for them.’ Over endless peanut butter sandwiches, she stumbled out the sorry story of wanting to be like Sorrel and Saffy with a new sequinned top. The escape from the security guard. Hiding at the cemetery where we’d buried Mum three years ago.

  ‘Why did you go there? It’s such a horrid place to be, so grey and depressing,’ I said.

  ‘I dunno. Just wanted to be near to Amatxi.’

  Amatxi was Bronte’s name for Mum, grandmother in Basque. They were so alike in some ways. Mum couldn’t stand in a queue at the supermarket without discussing the price of plums with the person next to her, but she also had a way of hugging secrets to her, just like Bronte, filtering out information as and when she thought you needed to know. If ever. Bronte was only six when Mum had died, but the long afternoons at the park, the noisy jam tart making sessions in my kitchen, the hours reading and re-reading Room on the Broom had helped my mother connect with Bronte in a way I could only dream about.

  ‘How did you get there?’ I said. ‘Surely you didn’t walk?’

  Bronte nodded. ‘Yes, I did. I followed the tow path along the river.’

  ‘That’s about four miles.’ I bit my lip. I hated her walking anywhere lonely on her own.

  She carried on. ‘It took me ages. It was getting dark when I got there but I thought I’d just go in quickly and see if her grave was tidy.’

  For God’s sake. This was the girl who wouldn’t sleep without the landing light on. It was all my fault – she’d been asking to go and visit Mum’s grave for ages but I’d kept making excuses. I never went there. I preferred to remember Mum sitting in my kitchen, stirring brandy into her coffee and giving me grief about not going to university nearly twenty years later. ‘You could ‘ave been the Premier Minister. But you meet that not good for anything boy. Colin. Pah.’

  Bronte’s intensity, her desire to do what she set out to do even though she was scared reminded me so much of Mum. ‘I got a bit carried away because the grave was quite overgrown so I started tidying up, pulling the weeds off it. I didn’t realise how dark it had got because of that streetlight next to Amatxi’s grave. Then when I looked around me, I was really frightened. I was about to leave when these two boys came past and started laughing at me, going on about me being a mentalist cos I was talking to myself. I think I must have been whispering to Amatxi about the disco and all that.’

  I waited. That graveyard had a reputation for gangs of teenagers hanging about, doing drugs.

  Bronte stirred her hot chocolate. ‘I told them to get lost, then a whole gang of them appeared and started throwing stones at Amatxi’s grave and teasing me about my school uniform. My hat’s ruined. I’m really sorry. They snatched it and played Frisbee with it until it fell in a puddle. They said they were going to rip off all my clothes and make me go to school in my knickers. They wouldn’t listen to me when I told them I lived on the Walldon Estate. They kept saying, “Okay yah” and asking if I went to gymkhanas and where Daddy’s yacht was. Then they surrounded me. They were holding hands and I couldn’t get out of the circle.’

  Even though we’d put the heating on high, I felt cold. I’d spent nine years protecting her but when she’d needed me, I hadn’t been there. If I’d left her at Morlands, none of this would have happened. Colin was silent, chewing the skin round his nails and looking like he might burst into tears at any minute.

  ‘Why did they let you go?’ I said.

  ‘It was that girl, Mum. You know, the one who used to go out with Tarants. She was with him that day when he hurt his head. She’s called Stace. She doesn’t live here any more cos her mum’s moved in with her boyfriend on that estate near the underpass. Eastward or something. She’s going out with a bloke called Colt now.’

  I tried to conjure up the girl’s face. I could only remember thick black eyeliner. Bronte seemed impatient to get her story out. ‘Anyway, she turned up with Colt and her dog, Zip, a long-haired Alsatian thing. I was crouched down in the middle of the circle, covering my head with my hands while they were all shouting and throwing cans at me.’ She stopped, looking worried. ‘I don’t know whether you’ll be able to clean my blazer. It’s got all beer and Coke down it.’

  Colin rolled another joint. I stroked Bronte’s hair. ‘I don’t care about the blazer, love. We can sort it out.’ I did wonder how I would ever say no to anything again.

  ‘I tried to run out of the circle but the dog started barking at me. Stace came over to get the dog and then she recognised me from the day that Tarants got hurt. She shouted at them to leave me alone. She told me I shouldn’t be hanging about in the graveyard when it was dark and asked me where you were. So I explained what had happened, you know, about the top in Next and stuff. She said you’d be worried and told me to go home. The others didn’t believe that she knew me, they thou
ght she was just being wet and kept telling her she’d get chucked out of the gang.’

  I was ashamed that a part of me wanted to swing round and say, ‘See? See?’ to Colin and remind him what an arsehole he’d been when Tarants had hurt himself. I wished my life was like Clover’s where thank yous could be sent by Interflora to people who lived at the same address for more than three months. I’d be lucky to bump into Stace again.

  Like Colin, I listened in silence as Bronte told me how Stace had had a big screaming match with Colt because she’d dared to mention Tarants – ex-boyfriend and rival gang member – when she was explaining about Bronte. Colt had smacked her in the mouth, but Stace hadn’t gone without a fight either.

  ‘Was she okay?’ I said.

  ‘Not really. The others stood round laughing. Colt’s the head of the gang so I think he was really angry that she’d dissed him. Her tooth cut her lip so her mouth was bleeding. Then Colt made it worse cos he wears a studded bracelet and it slashed her face. She went nuts at him. He tried to hold her back but she just kept kicking and kicking.’ Bronte’s face was all fidgety and tense.

  ‘What did you do, lovey?’ I twisted my hair round and round my finger until it hurt.

  ‘That’s just it, Mum. I didn’t do anything. There were about seven of them, all clapping and cheering, watching Stace get really hurt. I was so frightened. Colt pushed her over and she hit her head on one of the gravestones. The dog went for Colt, so Stace grabbed me and we ran for ages. She was worried about them coming after us so we went a really long way round all the back streets until we got to that pub by the roundabout. She made me hide by the bins while she got herself cleaned up in the toilets. Then she phoned Tarants. He didn’t want to come at first cos he was at some club. But when she told him she was with me, he said he’d come and fetch me. It took him ages to get there, though. Stace bought us some KFC and we waited in a bus shelter because it was so cold.’

  In the end Bronte looked like she could stay up all night, whereas Colin looked on the verge of collapse. His unspent fury seemed to have turned in on itself. Great surges of shock carried me from one horror to another – drug addict graveyards, bullying teenagers, aggressive dogs – mixed with a sing out loud high that Bronte had made it home safely.