Darling

by Rachel Edwards

  Wow, was I in a bad mood before! #stopthepityparty. I’ve just given Will a call – he does seem to like talking to me, I don’t know what I waited for all this time. We chatted for ages. He gets the whole Darling thing and said it must be really quite shit for me now. I said it was and he went, ‘It’s fucking outrageous. Babes, are you OK?’ And because he asked like that I got all teared up and said ‘No’. Then he said, ‘I wish I could do something to make you happier.’ And I laughed instead and said, ‘That would be good, don’t suppose you could kill Darling for me, could you?’ and we joked about that for a while, just some dumb stuff. He’s so funny and he kept calling me ‘babes’! I think we really could become a thing. OMG I can’t even think about it.

  So yes, I need to cheer the hell up. Like AT says, I can choose what becomes of me and what I do with my life. #inowpronounceyoumrsbenton #asif. Seriously, I already have a fair idea of what I want most of all, which is not a bad start. But for now, do not adjust your sets, kids, here’s what I have DONE:

  Achievements

  Managed to hear not a single wedding speech by pretending I had a crisis with my eyeliner, my hair, my period, my shoes. It would have made me puke (lol) to hear Dad going on and on about that woman.

  Lost the homage-to-KFC wedding breakfast. Also my Sunday lunch and a midweek dinner or two. Missed some lunches at college: that’s my new college, the place no one here cares about because of the bloody wedding and because it’s free. It’s OK. No really.

  Only just stopped myself from running screaming on to Hotels.com waving Dad’s credit card, on at least 27 occasions this week. #ifyoudontgetaroomiwill

  Talked on the phone to actual Will Benton for over half an hour this week in total. Even managed to flirt, pretty badly. This is unheard of.

  Decided what I have to do. Need to stay strong. Finally stopped crying.

  PART II

  Darling

  MONDAY, 26 SEPTEMBER

  My first week as a step-mother saw Lola staking out our shared territory as hostile ground. I waved white flags, made peace offerings. I tried to weave in and around her and her father’s lives like a colourful ribbon, and to give generously of myself and a well-managed Stevie. Nonetheless we remained unwanted.

  ‘Ohmigod, what is this programme?’

  ‘Actually, no, I’ll be at Chloe’s for dinner, I did say.’

  ‘Really, do people still wear those?’

  ‘It’s OK, you wouldn’t get it.’

  ‘Urgh, gross.’

  ‘Joking!’

  ‘No, I didn’t mean it like that.’

  Snip, snip, snip and soon the ribbon was in shreds.

  ‘How do you wash your hair, anyway?’

  I cut back: ‘You know: shampoo. Water. Washing.’

  ‘Oh. Right. I like it, though.’

  If the snippety sentiments were bad, then proof of premeditation was worse.

  The execution was often faultless. My innocent glass of red wine, which had been resting on a side table for a moment, was somehow knocked over when I popped to the loo, marking the carpet beyond repair and marking me out as a clumsy liar.

  Music which had always been played at a reasonable volume or on headphones was now, whenever Thomas left the house, played over the house speakers at just one notch below intolerable, a challenge to me to dare disrupt her home space. It kept my nerves on edge all day; a face-off more disruptive to my headspace than the actual decibels.

  My wedding dress still hung inside my wardrobe door. I planned to dry clean it and pack it away, perfect as it was, forever. When I turned it around to marvel once more at the beading and the sweep of short train, it appeared that a chunk of material had been cut out of the hem. Too neat to have been caught by a rogue heel. I had not checked but would, surely, have noticed such a tear. The best version of me: ruined.

  I did panic then, no use denying it. Lola’s relentless shittiness was trashing my good step-mum intentions. She was doing a dozen secret things that only a madwoman would call her on; they ate away at my nerves like acid, corroding our new-forged relationship. Ultimately, they could not fail to dissolve the bonds between her father and me. Our scheming little Lola was to marriage what aqua regia was to a wedding ring.

  Eh go so.

  One evening, having endured blaring music and so many snippish comments that I wanted to tan her snooty behind, I cried to my new husband:

  ‘She hates me! And intimacy without love …’

  ‘She’s just a girl!’ said Thomas.

  ‘She’ll have some massive nightmare meltdown as soon as you’re out, I swear.’

  ‘That was a one-off. She’s delighted we’re married.’

  I needed not to panic, it was not my style. I was a nurse; I would treat the patient, Lola, not the disease of step-relativity, or its sometimes vicious symptoms. I would look after her.

  Days calmed, nights turned over. I decided that a wonderful marriage was always destined to be so, but still it never hurt to start off on the soundest possible footing. Which meant that Lola and I had to be friends.

  I was putting considerable effort into giving this asinine notion a chance. Following an afternoon of hydrotherapy with Stevie, I pulled her aside:

  ‘So, Lola.’

  ‘Hi.’

  ‘I guess you might be feeling a little bit strange now that we’re married.’

  ‘Strange. That’s one word for it.’

  I settled clasped hands on my knees. ‘What’s another word?’

  ‘Shit!’ This was Thomas, back from the garden. ‘Sorry, but I just got blood on the chair, look. Nearly put a nail clean through my finger. Damn!’

  Lola and I rose and hurried to him, both wanting to get there first, to help more, to offer greater comfort, to be needed more. And any words we had been waiting to share were lost somewhere between the cupboard that stored the antiseptic cream and that grand and silent mindscrew of an Aga.

  I bought her a little top from the market that I was sure was her size. It was a mint green vest with spaghetti straps and teensy tassels at the bottom, the sort of thing girls loved to wear for summers in Gran Canaria or Kos. Thomas thought it looked great, but I could tell by the magnesium glint that Lola hated the tasselled mint green top, hated the very idea of mint, hated my green taste. This stupid whim, this foolish insult, would disappear into her wardrobe, never again to emerge. And that is just what happened.

  ‘But,’ I said to Thomas. ‘We won’t have any babies together.’

  ‘We could.’

  ‘Don’t—’

  ‘OK, no we won’t. We have babies. But your new baby is being delivered in two weeks. It’s a wedding present, a honeymoon baby (just without the honeymoon).’

  ‘What?’

  ‘She’s beautiful, she’s silver and she’s called Mercedes. Not new, actually, more of a toddler, maybe. But yours.’

  ‘Oh yeah, here comes my chauffeur in his cap.’

  ‘Didn’t have the budget—’

  ‘You got the personalised number plate, right?’

  ‘I nearly died of shame buying one, but yes, that too.’

  ‘You are kidding. Aren’t you?’

  ‘The whole deal for you, boobaloo.’

  ‘No. Tell me there’s no Merc, no way.’

  ‘I even bought you that key ring. Way too girly, disgraceful, but …’

  He held up a crystal and silver heart from which dangled a key.

  ‘Tommy! What can I say?’

  ‘Just say what Lola thought I didn’t hear her say on the phone the other day. “Fuck me!”’

  ‘Then … what she said. And please do.’

  Jamaica was near to us, within the walls of my childhood suburban home, but as soon as we stepped outside on to the tarmac and rain-spattered grit, it was ten thousand miles away. When I was eleven, we made plans to visit for a fortnight. They must have saved for months, even with their good jobs. My mother, Grace, had worked as a nurse practically from the day they touched down at Hea
throw. My father worked in planning for the council.

  We were all packed to go to the airport. It took us a week to pack the car, box by bag, with good things for Auntie Pearl, Miss B, Auntie Marcia and Auntie Claudette, things they could not get ‘back Home’ but would marvel at – like entry-level Bordeaux, Quality Street, supermarket Cornish pasties and crumpets. A few items of clothing from Marks and Spencer. The surprise bras, kept secret from Dad, were the absolute highlight. Yuh tink Claudette is a C or a D? Metink a D, she can grow into it, yuh see? Then that window-rattling laugh.

  Even with my luggage allowance all used up for such gifts (Yuh can wear yuh cousins’ tings) I could not wait for that Friday-night flight. Soon come, said Mum. We got into the car early and sat chatting while Dad went around the house to do a final check of door and taps, to unplug every last appliance and do all the other eleventh-hour chores that would inevitably mean it would be a nervous race to Heathrow despite our best efforts. Soon come. Meanwhile we listened to the car radio, chatted about how hot it would be, how relaxed, how strange and yet familiar to a British-born girl, how beachy and brill, how Jamaican. After a while we turned the radio off to spare the battery. We talked about the many sometimes tenuously connected family groups over there: a beginner’s guide to who was who, what was where and why. Soon come, girl. I had started to bounce in my seat with eagerness to get away by the time Mum finally said she would just check how Dad was getting on.

  But Dad was gone.

  Gone as in dead, passed clean away on the floor of the bathroom. Heart attack, they said.

  ‘I knew,’ Mum said much later, when words began to return. ‘I saw that damn fat magpie on our windowsill this morning, and I knew.’

  It took us a week to face unpacking that car. And we never did go to Jamaica.

  I heard Lola, though she did not hear me. A loud retching coming from her en suite as I passed along the hallway. I turned back to go to her, reached her door and about-turned once more.

  While it wasn’t my specialist area of nursing, I figured that the right food had the power to heal all ills. The great thing about Jamaican food was that it celebrated every pod, root and gourd of the gotta-live, gotta-grow island bounty: fruit and vegetables that had themselves been nourished by gold sun, green goodness and black soil, in that fantastical corner of God’s good Earth. Mother-food, prepared with passion and peppered with the same love that also did you the honour of kicking your ass. Caribbean food healed, no doubt about it. In the right hands, it could work wonders.

  Lola needed fresh, junk-free, tempting food. I could only think of one offering worthy. Jerk chicken. I would make it exactly the way Mum said it was ‘back Home’ in Jamaica, with no ready sauces or shortcuts.

  A true jerk dish was made with three elements: the dry rub, the marinade and the dipping sauce. Each of the three jerk elements married together to make the spicy whole; each was irreplaceable. There was, of course, the fourth main element: the chicken, this to be free range and from the best butcher in High Desford. The shop was a short drive away, which gave me yet another chance to slip into my new silver friend, Mercy.

  As I walked out to gather my ingredients I stepped over another leaflet from Bright New Britain on our doormat. Now here was a political movement headed by a man who wrongly thought he was wronged – an him de biggest battymout’ of dem all! He was leading a group, two dozen respectable faces atop a whole stomping of bovver boots, all of whom wanted their Brexit to be hard and white and red and cross and biting. I finished reading it, jangled my keys at it, put it in the waste bin. I would not recycle it; it was already recycled.

  Later, I set out my stall on the worktop, measuring out the right spices, from allspice to thyme, into neat white porcelain dishes. Using a wooden spoon, I worked all the ingredients into each other in a large bowl, until they were thoroughly blended. Rub done.

  I trimmed scrappy bits of fat, sinew and skin off the chicken quarters, then got to work washing them in lime juice. Then I worked it all over: pressing oil into flesh, rubbing in spices for long minutes until it was fit to leave in the fridge for at least four hours.

  Next, the sauce. Good people did bad things to protect their own family jerk recipe – my only sin was to swap out some chopped escallion, as I was short, for half a chopped onion.

  Yuh put a likkle bit in, tek a likkle bit out. Mek it yours.

  As for the killer kick, I added two fresh, unapologetic Scotch bonnets; we four Waites, this new Anglo-Caribbean entity, were all on full-heat rations now.

  Then I just needed patience, to wait until the dish was done. One, one, coco full basket, as my mother used to say. Bit by bit, things will eventually come good.

  Later, the chicken went down a storm, and from her bathroom – silence.

  But the evening had another surprise in store.

  She walked in on us. And she meant to, I know it.

  Lola walked in on us having sex. Over her father’s shoulder I saw her, an empty expression with full eyes, watching like she was taking notes. Racing towards the moment of climax, I could no more stop my husband with a warning movement of my body than I could have stopped a high-speed train. For the longest millisecond my eyes locked with hers, then I had to scrunch my eyelids.

  ‘Tommy!’

  With cheeks like punched peaches, she shrugged herself around 180 degrees and out of the door:

  ‘Oh. Sorry.’

  ‘Shit,’ said my husband to the trailing ends of blonde hair.

  I said nothing but pulled some cotton up over my chest; a modesty come too late. I was wrapped up to my chin, but strangely I felt colder. Time to put the duvet back in its cover; autumn was coming in.

  Red-pink and black. The whole night I dreamed of shutting doors and of a ringing in the darkness and of poisonous lies that pranged me awake. Hot, I sidled out of bed before 5 a.m. and went straight to my laptop. The site was launched in seconds. Articles, ads and announcements. A baby boy. The wedding plans of the local carnival queen. Discounts on pest control. An upcoming car park refurbishment. I was scrolling down ‘Obituaries’ when he came in:

  ‘What are you reading?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘The Elm Forest Herald?’

  ‘Yes, just … old habits.’

  ‘It’s really late. Really early.’

  ‘I’m coming,’ I said, powering down.

  We went up and got back into bed, but I made sure we checked the doors were all locked first.

  One of my biggest flaws was that when I was in love, I got jealous. Like crazy jealous.

  My new husband – We should have been more careful, Darling – made the decision to spend even more time with his sulking, skulking girl. Thomas and Lola popped out to the shops together, had under-their-breath conversations together, headed up to her bedroom together for urgent door-shut chats.

  Like two pea in a pod, yuh see?

  I was tempted to engage but did not know whether I should join in or intervene. Neither: she was simply showing me how she wished to treat our marriage, deep down. She would ignore it, belittle it, side-step it, and constantly brief against me to a loving paternal ear. That was how it was going to be and it was intolerable. Yet Thomas simply wandered on behind her, along the path of least resistance. I might love him, but my love was never blind. I was not blind.

  My Stevie noticed nothing, Lola acknowledged nothing and sure enough a week drifted past without Thomas and me having a meaningful conversation, or for that matter sex, for the first time since we had officially got together. My body felt the loss long before my mind. By day four my hopeful feet were flirting in vain, pointing, tiptoeing, kicking up across the kitchen, wiggling their tough little digits on the sofa. By day six they were dragging, two plump reluctant bridesmaids supporting my jilted legs; then my chest joined in, growing heavy, but too scared and dull to burst with its boiling yell for conjugal relief. In the end, my throat constricted and a panic seized my gorge such that I began to cough, too hard, as if
to dislodge a terminal itch, which in turn left me wheezing and still stranded on my unhappy thoughts a good ten days later.

  Still, I could not say it. I would not ask or it would mean nothing.

  Things had to shake the hell up. For a start, although the house itself was more welcoming than its eldest child, we urgently needed a new theatre in which to play out our daily dramas. Littleton Lodge was not working right for us, already. Rooms were now too close, others too far away, and who after all held which keys to what? The sooner we could build our own house, the better for our mangled newfangled family. The sooner we laid out plans that made the most of deaf walls and lengthy corridors, then the easier I would breathe. Maybe a doer-upper that had teetered for decades on the edge of dementia, with landing floorboards that groaned louder than bedrooms; perhaps a newborn white and glass box. Either way, we needed a home with no plastered-in memories shared by only two of us.

  That morning I made him up a tray with poached eggs on toast, a flute of Buck’s Fizz, coffee and the property section; I laid a snipped autumn rose on the tray and slipped on my silliest silk wrap (Lola was still sleeping). Then I served him with one steady hand as I whispered sweet house-for-next-to-nothings in his heating ear.

  The following day we registered with three estate agents. And my feet no longer dragged.

  It was late morning and feeling optimistic, I headed to the supermarket. As I arrived, this guy was standing just inside the electric doors, to the left. I clocked the eagle tattoo at the base of his shaven head; that slowed my entrance. As I wheeled my trolley in he said, loud enough for half the first aisle to hear: