Another Love

by Amanda Prowse

  The pain in Romilly’s heart was so real, she thought her heart might stop, and she half wanted it to. Celeste looked so beautiful, and she’d got taller! Her hair had been cut and sat on her shoulder in a handsome thick blunt line. Her school cardigan was buttoned up and she was wearing her red kilt with her school coat over the top. Over her shoulder was her leather satchel, more battered than it had been and now adorned with graffiti and a couple of stickers. Romilly squinted at her name on the label, just visible through its little plastic window. I wrote that! That’s my writing, Celeste! I wrote your name for you. My little girl! She concentrated on listening to the girls and could just make out a few words as her daughter burbled to her friend ‘… and we all went outside… so embarrassing, I like him, but I don’t love him… nine pounds fifty… Amelia said… not pizza, but if…’

  Romilly stared, one hand on her chest and the other reaching out into the shrub, trying to feel the air that her little girl had breathed. Celeste, I’m here, my baby girl! I’m here and I love you so much! I love you, Celeste. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry!

  Her daughter sounded and looked so much older. A large gulp of distress came from her throat as she realised that she was older! Celeste was now ten and she had missed her birthday. She’d missed it. An image from one of Celeste’s past birthdays came into her head; it might have been her sixth. She saw herself icing the cake in the kitchen – in the shape of a butterfly, was it? – while her daughter skipped on the spot behind her, flexing the little plastic rope that made a ‘clack’ sound every time it hit the tiles and singing, ‘Teddy bear, teddy bear, turn around, Teddy bear, teddy bear, touch the ground…’ Where did that time go, Celeste? What happened? Where did I go?

  Romilly watched as the trio rounded the corner and disappeared out of view before sitting back on the damp grass and sobbing. Several hours later, just as Celeste was taking her pink plastic lunch box out of her satchel, Romilly picked herself up off the ground, steeled herself and began making her way down the hill. She had just made the toughest decision of her life.

  *

  Late that afternoon, Romilly stood with a clear view of the tearooms on The Downs, dithering on the grass, unsure if she could find the courage to go through with it. She breathed in through her nose and out through her mouth, just as she had been taught. She was shaking so much, her teeth chattered.

  And then she saw him and he looked… beautiful.

  The tears flowed unbidden. It had been over ten months and she had forgotten how it made her feel to see him. She remembered the time all those years ago on the steps of the Wills Memorial Building, recalled his shy smile, his face young and mesmerising: ‘So, is that a silent “Yes, I’d love to come for a light supper on the docks,” or a silent “Sod off”?’ The memory filled her with such longing that she closed her eyes and had to fight hard to resist the urge to banish it with drink.

  She ran her hand over her stained sweatshirt and rubbed at her face. She knew she smelt and wished she could clean her teeth. David, on the other hand, looked sparkling and neat. She felt a jab of anguish when she noticed that he was wearing the shirt her parents had bought him one Christmas. His wedding ring glinted on his finger, where she had placed it more than a decade earlier, till death do us part… She had meant every word. He glanced down at his watch, the one she’d bought him when he became a father, a matching pair with the one he’d bought her, and she felt a stab of disgust as she recalled coming home from that stranger’s house and noting that her watch was missing.

  David looked up and their eyes locked. Romilly knew him better than anyone, knew every nuance of every gesture and expression. She had watched as he’d set eyes on his daughter for the very first time, had seen his joyous disbelief at the fact that this beautiful little miracle was theirs. She had watched his face as he’d read the letter confirming his first grown-up job, seen the smile of self-congratulation and its undercurrent of panic. She’d seen him cry, and laugh, and laugh until he cried; she’d seen him drunk, and angry. And one sunny holiday afternoon, as he’d found himself struggling in a rip tide off the Mexican coast, she’d seen his look of serene resignation at the prospect of meeting his maker. There was not a single look she could not read, and at the precise moment his eyes fell across her face, she knew exactly what he was thinking. His expression was one of shock, sadness, revulsion and regret.

  And it broke her heart.

  He gave a small nod and a slight smile. She wiped her eyes and made her way to the table.

  There was a strange formality about the way they sat and snatched glimpses of each other; no one could have guessed that they’d been a couple since their teens.

  ‘How’s Celeste?’ She stared at him, forgetting to look away, eager to capture every clue as to her daughter’s wellbeing.

  ‘She’s pretty good. She is busy, clever, noisy!’ He coughed.

  Romilly had promised herself that she wouldn’t cry, but it was a promise she couldn’t keep. Hearing her beloved girl described in such a way helped her picture her at home so clearly that her heart split with longing. David’s tone, as if he was talking to someone that had never met Celeste, made it even worse.

  ‘She misses you of course,’ he said, his voice faltering.

  She wondered if this was an afterthought, to make her feel better.

  ‘But you know how she is, she gets on with it, and she’s in a routine. Mum stays a lot, helps out and that’s working out quite well, because it’s familiar.’

  ‘I miss her.’

  David nodded and handed her a paper napkin, which was a little stiff and didn’t so much soak up the tears as push them around her face. She sniffed. ‘I hope it was okay to call you at work. I remembered the number.’

  ‘You said you needed to see me, Rom,’ he prompted, kindly but a touch impatient.

  Don’t call me Rom! It reminds me of the old me. ‘I’ve… I’ve decided to go away, to London.’ She hung her head, distracted by the thought of where she might get her next drink.

  ‘I see.’ He cleared his throat.

  ‘I think I need to go to a different city.’ She spoke slowly. ‘One where I’m not going to bump into Celeste, because that’s not fair on her and I know I couldn’t take it.’ She shook her head at the memory of what had happened that morning: glimpsing her little girl through a shrub as she lay next to a bin, her head inches from a bag of dog shit.

  ‘Do you need money? I can help you out until you get back on your feet.’ He tapped the table, awkward at having to raise the topic, yet again showing her how far they had slipped.

  ‘No. I still get family allowance,’ she whispered, conscious she had no right to it. ‘But thank you.’ She meant it. Financially he would be finding it harder now that there was only one salary coming in. ‘Just look after Celeste,’ she stuttered.

  ‘Of course I will.’ He sounded a little cool at the idea that he might need reminding to look after his daughter.

  ‘I miss her so much. Can… can you tell her that I love her?’ she rasped.

  He nodded awkwardly. She knew he would be true to his word, no matter how difficult he might find it, and all the questions that might follow.

  ‘Your mum said your phone was out of action.’ He sipped his coffee.

  ‘I lost it.’ A man called Frog took it. I saw him get beaten up, but I can’t think about that, so I shall block it out, shut it away with all the other images…

  ‘Make sure you give your parents a ring, they’re worried about you.’

  ‘Here we go, a bowl of tommyatoes for my girl!’

  ‘Can you tell them I’m fine?’ she asked, reaching for the napkin again and blotting her eyes.

  He gave another nod. ‘What are you going to do in London?’

  ‘I’m going to… to try and… to try and get some help.’

  He looked up at her with a flicker of recognition in his eyes, a flash that made her think he saw something that reminded him of the girl she used to be, the girl he fell in love
with.

  ‘That’s good.’ He sighed. ‘I wish you nothing but good things. Good health.’ He smiled. ‘Goodbye, Romilly.’

  She saw his hands twitch, as if debating whether to touch her arm, her hand. He knitted his fingers, clearly thinking better of it. He stood and hesitated for a second before leaving her alone at the table. She watched him walk away, without looking back.

  …for an adult butterfly; a broken wing spells danger. It is fully formed and therefore cannot grow and doesn’t really heal. The insect is probably never going to fly again. The butterfly can, however, live, the question I suppose is, does it want to?

  Celeste

  My life was pretty settled. Granny Sylvia was living with us by then and she was a stickler for routine, which gave my life a certain rhythm that I hadn’t really noticed had been missing, and that was comforting. She had some mad ideas; I loved how energetic she was and how she encouraged me to spread my wings. I was allowed to walk to school with my friend and her mum, and I could go straight out after school as long as she knew where I was and I came home before dark. I liked the freedom she gave me. She was an accomplished cook, my favourites were lamb, and a vegetarian bake that she served at least four times a week once I’d expressed a preference for it. My poor old dad would smile gratefully, pushing bits of broccoli around the plate and winking at me.

  It was a strange thing that happened with Mum. We kind of stopped mentioning her as much, carried on as though it was the way things had always been. It was a bit like when you cut yourself and there’s this gaping split in your skin and then weeks pass and it disappears to nothing and after that you don’t think about it or remember it. The hurt I felt when she first went was a bit like that; it just healed. I was too young and too busy to fully appreciate what was going on but old enough to know I shouldn’t be talking about it, as if we were all playing the same game of not mention Romilly. But then after a while that game became real, we didn’t mention her so we didn’t think about her as much and then we didn’t need to mention her. When I did think about her I felt guilty for not thinking about her more and sad all over again that she was gone.

  The only exception was if Nanny Pat came to stay. She always wanted to talk about Mum a lot, and Dad would scowl at her across the table during supper, as though she was breaking some kind of agreement. If she gave me any snippets about Mum or reminded me of things that had happened in the past, like talking about the day I was born or when Mum was at school, Dad would always make a point of coming up to my room while I did my homework and telling me that it was okay to talk about Mum, even though it clearly wasn’t. He would really go overboard, reassuring me that he wasn’t going anywhere and that he would never leave me. This had the strange effect of making me think that he might be leaving me, and so I’d try to get to sleep with this worry in my tummy that Dad might leave too, and then what would I do?

  It was my biggest fear, that something might happen to Dad and I’d be really stuck. People told me not to worry, that nothing was going to happen to my dad and that dads didn’t just disappear. But I knew different. I knew that parents did just disappear. I knew my dad’s dad had vanished and so had my mum, but I didn’t say this.

  Eighteen

  Pat shouted into the receiver, ‘For the love of God, Romilly! Where on earth have you been?’

  Romilly heard the clatter as her mum placed her palm partially over the mouthpiece of the phone in the hallway that sat on a little table next to the front door. It had been a cast-off of Aunty Margaret’s and had graced her parents’ hall for as long as she could remember. She could picture her mum, probably with tea towel in hand, panicking as she took the call she had been waiting for.

  ‘Lionel! Lionel! It’s her, she’s on the phone!’ she hollered in the direction of the shed.

  ‘Wh… where are you? We’ve been worried sick! I got the message that you’d lost your phone, and then David said he saw you and you looked ghastly, and I said to your sisters, she might have lost her phone, but she knows our number, it’s the one we’ve always had and I learnt it to her… I learnt it to her in case she ever got lost…’ Her mum’s voice broke away in sobs. ‘I’ve been so worried.’ She took a deep breath. ‘I can’t sleep worrying about you. Dr Morrison said he’d give me something, but I don’t want to go down that route and end up like Marjorie up the road. Are you okay?’ she asked, finally.

  ‘I’m okay, Mum.’ It was the best she could offer. ‘And I’m working at getting myself together. I just wanted to say don’t worry. Don’t worry about me.’

  ‘Don’t worry about you? How can you say that? I’m your mother! Don’t worry about you? Of course I’m going to worry about you. And the girls keep asking for updates and I have nothing to tell them, because I don’t know myself. I don’t know what’s going on, I’ve hardly heard from Celeste.’

  Romilly felt her chest cave, as if she’d been stabbed. The image that she’d suppressed of her beautiful girl was there in an instant. Her mum carried on.

  ‘I said to your dad, I feel like everything is broken and I don’t know how to put it all back together again! My family is spread all over the bloody place. I’ve got Holly in Ibiza getting up to God knows what, Carrie in Bath with Dr Whatsisname and now you, just gone!’

  ‘I’m not “just gone”, Mum, I’m in London and I’m trying to find my feet.’ She was still getting used to speaking without two of her teeth, the canine to the right of her mouth and the molar next to it, which had flown out of her mouth and rolled away like marbles when she’d fallen face first down some steps. Her tongue had acquired the habit of falling through the gap mid speech, making her sound drunk or stupid. At this thought she gave a small, ironic smile.

  ‘Oh, wait a minute, hang on! Your dad’s here, he’s coming. Hurry up, Lionel! I don’t know how long she’s got!’ There was a thud and then fumbling and crackling down the line and then the wonderful sound of her dad’s voice, his kind and soothing voice, unflustered. My same old dad. It was almost more than she could cope with.

  ‘Hello, Romilly,’ he began in his slow, singsong tone, as though they’d been catching up as they always used to, with her sitting in the kitchen of the house in Stoke Bishop, chatting over a cuppa while she planned what to make for supper and kept an eye on the clock, or during her lunch break at work, nattering to him in the lab while she ate a plastic-wrapped sandwich and he pottered in the greenhouse. He used to read her snippets of a scientific nature that he’d gleaned from magazines, as though she had an interest in all aspects of science, from space exploration to brain surgery, as though science was science, and she loved him for it.

  ‘Dad…’ She was overcome with emotion, which made her feel weak, and that made her feel scared.

  ‘I’m right here. You know you can always come home and you know that I will come to wherever you are, whenever you need me, to bring you home. You know that, don’t you?’ She could tell he was smiling, from the gaps in his breathing and the way he was sounding out his words. ‘You just need to say the word and I’ll be there, quicker than you can say Jack Flash. I love you, Romilly.’

  This was a rare and heartfelt admission from a man who was better at saying it with the gift of tomatoes.

  ‘I love you too, Dad.’

  *

  Father Brian had been quite clear when she’d told him that she didn’t even know if she believed in God. She’d thought it best to be honest. ‘In fact I’m pretty sure there is no God. I’d say I’m ninety-nine per cent certain, with one per cent of scepticism in reserve, in case I’ve got it horribly wrong and when the time comes I have some explaining to do.’

  He had thrown his head back and laughed loudly, slapping the thighs of his grey slacks. ‘Romilly, dear…’ He stroked his dense grey beard. ‘That’s the great thing about doing his work: he doesn’t specify who we help. And maybe your one per cent of scepticism is a gateway that will lead you somewhere really interesting. I mean, you’re not saying that the door is closed completel
y.’

  She smiled at the kindly priest, licking her dry lips. Sobriety was the one condition of staying here and she was finding it challenging. Even the medication prescribed to take the edge off her cravings was only helping a little.

  ‘I think if it’s not closed completely, then there’s a massive boulder blocking the way,’ she levelled.

  Father Brian leant forward. ‘Ah, Romilly, if that’s all it is, then we’re laughing. Might I suggest you read Luke 24:3; we do a good line in boulder removal.’ He winked. He liked her and this gave her hope that he might be able to help.

  The hostel, Chandler House, was a pale brick Victorian building housing a rabbit warren of rooms that were reached via narrow corridors with concrete floors and bare light bulbs. On each corridor hung a large cork pinboard with the rules of the establishment printed out in big fat bullet points, and various leaflets for charities offering Fresh Start training, counselling or therapies for people with addictions. Each room had two bunk beds with a narrow strip of floor visible between them, and each room smelt of human misery. The ones that housed the frail and the incontinent were the worst.

  The smell of the place was part of the problem. If she left her room and went out into the fresh air of the pretty little garden at the back or walked the streets and saw the sun, there was a painful period of readjustment when she came back inside. By staying put, she spared herself this. There were showers and loos on each floor and for this small comfort she was extremely grateful.

  The hostel was situated a couple of streets back from the designer shops and neon signs of Covent Garden’s Long Acre. In her previous life, she too had once sauntered round these shops, brandishing heavy paper bags with fancy ribbon handles. She’d come with her sisters a couple of years back. They enjoyed a posh afternoon tea, went to see the musical Mamma Mia, ate noodles late night in Chinatown, bought high-heeled shoes and giggled like teens. It had been the best couple of days. Now, though, Romilly didn’t venture too far from the hostel, and she rarely went anywhere after dark. Instead, she lay in her top bunk with the window open and listened to the cabs beeping their horns, the buses with their squeaky brakes ferrying people to their homes, and the loud, drunken voices in the streets that made her own cravings pulse.