Mouths of Babes

by Stella Duffy

  Four of five people stood in the room and looked at each other. Waited. Waited some more. The silence was solid until Will crashed through it. “A toast!”

  “To what?” Saz asked.

  Will smiled across the glass. “Us. Seeing each other again. Being here.”

  “Old times?” Daniel offered.

  The two women exchanged glances, Andrea adding her own coda. “Better times, perhaps?”

  Saz looked at her glass for a moment and then spoke up. “To Ewan?”

  “OK.” Andrea nodded. “Why not? To Ewan.”

  There was a lull which turned into a silence and then a yawning gap. The empty place where Ewan wasn’t. Followed quickly by an awareness that Janine Marsden was waiting to hear from them.

  Will spoke first. “Well, this is nice. The wine, the people. But, quite obviously, none of us really needed a reunion. Janine rang again yesterday. I told her we were seeing each other this afternoon. I said if she calls after two I’ll let her know when we can meet.”

  “She’s going to call here?”

  “I didn’t give her your number, Sally, calm down. She’s going to call my mobile.”

  “You still don’t have a phone number for her, any way for us to get hold of her?” Daniel asked.

  Will turned to him. “No, I don’t. Janine grew up too and she’s clearly not quite as stupid as she used to be. I might not want to tell the authorities I’ve heard from her, she’s counting on that, but she also knows well enough that I could afford to find her if I really wanted to. I thought it safest to play this part out on her terms anyway.”

  “So when do we see her?” Daniel asked.

  “Well, for my own reasons, which I’m sure Sally has alerted you to, I’d like it as soon as we can. Though I don’t imagine I’m the only one who doesn’t fancy the idea of Janine Marsden dragging our collective pasts through their current life, right?” He looked round at the group, silent now, didn’t bother waiting for an answer. “No. So. We’ll agree a time with her and find out what she wants.”

  He looked around at the others. Saz and Daniel nodded, Andrea asked, “What did she say when you told her we were meeting?”

  “Just that she was looking forward to seeing us.”

  Saz asked, “All of us?”

  He nodded.

  Daniel looked from Andrea to Will, “So where the hell does she think Ewan is?”

  Will shrugged. “No idea, mate.”

  Will’s mobile rang then and Saz watched as he composed himself before he answered. “Yes?” He listened for a while and then smiled and held out the phone to Saz.

  “What?”

  “Janine would like a word.”

  Saz shook her head, horrified, whispering, “No, I can’t. Not now. I’m not ready.”

  Daniel grabbed the mobile from Will’s hand and pushed it at Saz. “Take the bloody phone!”

  Saz held the mobile to her ear. Opened her mouth to say hello but her tongue was dry. Janine heard her breathing.

  “Sally? Is that you?”

  “Mmm. Yeah.”

  “Hello.”

  She sounded the same. Not older but the same. Same Janine and Saz could see herself the first day she walked away from Janine and into the waiting arms of what would become her safe little group. Same Janine and Saz could see herself walking away from Janine’s house that afternoon, ready to hand her over to the others. Same Janine and Saz could see Ewan’s body twisted and broken on the cold concrete.

  “I’m really looking forward to seeing you, Sally.”

  Saz shook her head. Daniel was laughing at her, she couldn’t do it, couldn’t speak. She gave the phone back to Will, took Matilda from Andrea, Daniel wrote down the meeting time and place as Will agreed it. Tomorrow afternoon. Two pm. After five minutes of haggling over venue, he finally gave Janine his own address. She wanted public as possible, he wanted the opposite. Janine let him win.

  The others left soon after Will ended the phone call.

  Saz closed the door behind her teenage years. She had less than a day to get used to the idea she was about to see Janine Marsden again. It had all happened so fast – even though she knew this was where they were heading, it had come too fast. But there was something else upsetting her, something she knew she wasn’t quite getting. While they were waiting for Janine to call, Will had been laughing about Daniel’s relationship with Becky. Saz carefully watched both Andrea and Daniel to see if any more evidence of their apparently recent relationship would emerge, but other than a sharper than usual remark about shagging underage girls, Andrea kept quiet. But she’d felt it then, something else not right, other secrets not told. Saz knew it was stupid to rely on her feelings with this group, that of course they had all changed, they must have, but she also knew how very well she’d known them years ago. And despite the veneer of polite behaviour this afternoon, she was sure there was something else she just hadn’t quite grasped. Some other alliance yet to be revealed.

  Saz shook herself into action. No matter how she was feeling, she had to get on, make this evening seem normal. If she didn’t, she knew she’d want to tell all to Molly. And she didn’t think she’d ever want to do that. She sped through the flat, daughter-soothing, dinner-preparing and running back over jump-cut flashes of their brief meeting. Daniel had said something when he’d just arrived in the flat and they were – the four of their five – finally all together again. Whispered something under his breath to Will about how while some people looked totally different, as if life had gouged itself into their faces, Andrea was just the same, if not more gorgeous. Saz had thought it dodgy, given he was talking about Will’s childhood sweetheart – and especially in light of what she now assumed she knew about Andrea and Daniel’s recent or current relationship. But as she chopped the onions she wondered who he could have been talking about. In her opinion neither she nor Will looked all that different from how they’d been at school. Daniel’s hair was thinner, Will had filled out, he was definitely man, no longer man-boy, but still very good looking, and despite one or two light wrinkles, she was probably slightly fitter than she had been back then. Apart from the beginnings of her grey hair and the wife-and-mummy costume she was wearing, this Andrea was almost identical to the sixteen-year-old version. None of them looked that different, not really. So maybe Daniel had been talking about someone else.

  Then Molly turned her key in the lock and Matilda’s face was a glorious smile and it was dinnertime. Here and now. New life, real life.

  “What’s going on?”

  “How do you mean?”

  Saz knew exactly what she meant. Her distractedness all that evening, the way she couldn’t talk to Molly about anything to do with herself in case she told her everything, her eagerness to talk about Molly’s patients in a way she never normally showed.

  “I can hear your head, Saz. We’ve been together long enough for that. I know when you’re here with me and when you’re not. And right now, in fact for the past couple of weeks, you’ve been definitely not.”

  Saz could feel herself sinking, the desire to confess, to be heard, to be soothed. She trusted Molly to make it all better, always did. Only this time she didn’t want to say it, didn’t want to say anything. Her partner was looking at her, holding out her hand, offering warmth and understanding. Offering herself. Saz leaned in to kiss her.

  “Piss off.” Molly’s body was eager, but her head was not that keen. “I asked what’s wrong. And I may be cheap, but I’m not totally easy.”

  She was still smiling, still imagining that maybe it was something she could deal with, but Saz could see the small wrinkles at the corner of Molly’s right eye – the right ones heavier than the left – could see the faint crinkling that went along with a slow-smouldering anger. She had to say something. So she chose the lesser confession over the bigger lie. Told the truth about the job for Claire. That she’d taken it anyway, asked Carrie to babysit for her, had done the work Claire wanted doing, sorted it all without Molly
knowing, without disturbing Matilda, without a break in anyone’s schedule. Without it mattering at all in fact. Except that in not telling Molly she had been holding back. And she was sorry. Really sorry.

  “I’m glad you told me.”

  “You are?”

  “Yeah. I knew something wasn’t OK. In fact I thought at the time that I was probably wrong anyway.”

  “About what?”

  “Not wanting you to work. I was feeling so bad about leaving Matilda myself that I just wanted to know you’d be with her. If both of us couldn’t be here, then at least having one of us with her is better.”

  “No, Moll, really, I understand … ”

  “I’m sorry, Saz. I should have listened to what you needed more. You’ve been brilliant about my dad, dealing with Matilda and all my grief and everything. I couldn’t have asked for more support. I’m sorry, I should have trusted you to know if it was a job you could handle or not.”

  If Saz didn’t know better she’d have sworn Molly was only saying all this to wind her up, to force the true confession from her. But she did know better. Did know that Molly trusted her, could see her partner was pissed off – but not with Saz, with herself for not being more generous. Saz couldn’t have felt worse if she had told the truth.

  “It doesn’t matter. Honest, really. I shouldn’t have done the job after we agreed I wouldn’t. Or I should have told you. I hate not telling you things.”

  “I know.”

  Later that night, as she was falling asleep, Molly turned to Saz. “That was all, wasn’t it? I haven’t driven you away with all my crap?” “Don’t be stupid, babe. I love you. It’s me who fucked up, not you.”

  “OK. Well, at least it shows we’re a proper family now.”

  “How do you work that out?”

  “That’s what all good families are made of – half-lies and part-told secrets.”

  “Oh, and there I was thinking the model lezz family would have to be better than the rest, that we might be the ones to finally get it right.”

  “Silly you.”

  “Silly me.”

  The next morning Molly’s mother’s neighbour called and saved Saz from having to find any further excuses. Molly’s ma was sick. Not coping, not eating, not drawing the curtains at night, pulling them in the morning. Asmita had left her curtains closed for three days in a row now and when Shelagh went over to have a chat she didn’t even ask her in. She’d opened the front door and looked out and past her neighbour, their conversation had been brief and stilted. Shelagh was worried, Molly was a doctor, as far as the neighbour was concerned, the solution was obvious.

  Molly had called work and packed her bag within an hour.

  “Dad was always a doer, he got on with things, stopped her getting too low.”

  “You said this might happen.”

  “Ma’s done pretty well until now. It’s not that I don’t think she should be unhappy, she should, she’s lost her partner. But she’s still here and I maybe need to help her move forwards.”

  “Fair enough. Poor Asmita.”

  “I won’t go just yet if you don’t want me to, I could wait until the weekend? Or you could come too?”

  Saz didn’t even need to think, opened her mouth and let it out. “I can’t. I’m sorry. I promised Mum I’d help with Tony’s party stuff.”

  “That’s not until next week.”

  “Yes, and my brother-in-law’s going to be forty and Cassie has decided it’s this great big deal. They’re really into the whole surprise thing. Two of the kids have nearly ruined the secret about a dozen times, and my mother is already in a severe state of panic that the combined efforts of me, you, my mum, Tony’s mum and her sister Mary can’t possibly make enough vol-au-vents to feed sixty guests. I told her I’d go over and work through a plan with her and then start on some baking she can freeze. I’m sorry, I mean, I’ll get out of it if you really want me to … ”

  It was astonishing to Saz how easily she lied. Yes, it would be Tony’s birthday and yes, she had offered to help, but it wasn’t really that big a deal. And the detail that spilled from her mouth amazed her. Though she was stupid to mention baking. Saz really didn’t like baking, Molly knew it. Surely she’d call her on it?

  But Molly just smiled. And trusted her partner. “No, it’s fine. It’s easier if I go by myself anyway. Make a couple of extra cakes for me? I’d love to taste your efforts.”

  “Don’t mock me. I’m being a nice sister-in-law.” She was being a liar and a cheat. And getting away with it.

  “OK, you take care of your half of the family, I’ll take care of mine. I’ll call when I get there and see what state Ma’s in. I can’t take more than a few days off anyway, so at the latest I’ll be back Saturday afternoon, all right?”

  “We’ll have dinner waiting for you.”

  Saz booked the flight while Molly finished packing, then waved Matilda’s hand as the cab took Molly off to the exorbitantly priced hour-long trip. Not for the first time Saz reflected on the fortune airlines must make from emergency flights. Then she called Carrie who, though she answered her phone as readily as she always did, was less keen than usual to come out and play.

  “I just don’t think I should.”

  “Things working out well with the new girl then?”

  “They are actually.”

  “Then bring her over with you. If it’s a proper relationship she’s going to be meeting Matilda sooner or later.”

  “Saz, you’re not listening, I didn’t say I wasn’t free, I said I didn’t think I ought to.”

  Saz’s voice was calm but she found herself biting an irritated chunk out of Matilda’s rusk, dry crumbs spiralling from her hand to the floor, the sweet biscuit rough on her tongue as she explained herself slowly.

  “No, Carrie, I did hear you say it, but I figured that since ought and should were words you’ve been telling me to ignore for years, that you probably didn’t mean to say them. Since when did you get so well behaved?”

  “Look, it’s not as if I don’t enjoy being with your daughter and I certainly like having you pass me nice chunks of money every time I come over … ” Carrie took a deep breath. “But I just don’t think you should keep lying to Molly.”

  Saz’s laugh came out as a snort, rusk crumbs flying from her mouth. “Since when have you cared what Molly thinks?”

  “OK, well not just her, but partly that. It’s also because I feel like you’re lying to me. Or not being totally honest anyway. You told me Ross Gallagher turned up out of nowhere, and I didn’t even know you knew him. You’re saying you need me over there, right now, but not explaining why.”

  “I don’t have to tell you all my stories, Carrie, we’re not lovers anymore.”

  “No, but I do know a lot about you, Saz, and it’s weird that I don’t know what’s going on right now. I find it even weirder that Molly doesn’t know what’s going on either. I mean, if you were having an affair, I might understand … ”

  “It certainly bloody isn’t that. I just need to go and see someone. It’s a school reunion.”

  “With an urgent time imperative.”

  “Big word, Carrie.”

  “Don’t try to put me off.”

  “I’m not, look, we’re just trying to arrange a chance for some old school friends to get together. Will – Ross – has a busy schedule, he needs to meet today and there’s someone I need to talk to first.”

  “Right, and this is the same Will – Ross you greeted by telling to fuck off out of your home and screaming at me for letting him hold your baby?”

  “I was surprised to see him, that’s all.”

  “Bollocks. You’re not telling Molly what’s going on and you’re not telling me what’s going on, which makes me think something is going on that isn’t good for you. And I may not be your over-protective partner, but I do reckon if you’re not telling either of us what the problem is, then there’s something you need to sort out … ”

  “Yes, there i
s. And I’m asking you to help me with it.”

  “No, you’re asking me to help you hide it.”

  Saz was silent for a while, her anger at Carrie twisted around a core of fear that her old friend had found her out. She let the anger take over. It was far safer that way.

  “Jesus, Carrie, you’re a fucking hypocrite. You love it when I do things Moll doesn’t know about. You always have.”

  “Yep.”

  “You get off on being my little helper and hiding things from her, it’s like you get to keep a piece of me back for yourself.”

  “That’s right, I do. It’s something I enjoy about working with you. But I’m not working with you right now, I’m working for you, as a childminder. And much as I can understand that in any longterm relationship there needs to be a few secrets, it’s me that you’re hiding from at the moment and I don’t like it.”

  “So you won’t help me? I can get you more money if you want.”

  “Piss off, Saz! Give me some credit, it’s not about money. It’s about you not telling me the truth.”

  Saz waited. “OK. I’m sorry. Fair enough. I’ll tell you about it later. But right now there isn’t time. I do need to go and see someone. And I do need your help. I’ll tell you later.”

  “Promise?”

  “Cross my heart.”

  “All right. I’ll be there in half an hour.”

  “Where are you?”

  “New girl’s. She lives close.”

  With Carrie on her way, Saz sat Matilda down with a pile of coloured bricks and pulled several cardboard boxes from the top of the wardrobe. In the third one she found what she was looking for, ripped a page from an old magazine, folded it into her bag. And then, having washed the old paper grime from her hands, she changed into proper, grownup, don’tfuck-with-me clothes. Stupidly expensive jeans she was usually too scared to wear in case they were ruined, a birthday present long sleeved T-shirt where the lettering alone cost more than the bolt of fabric the piece was cut from, and a pair of green leather boots that never failed to bring a smile to her face and a kiss to Molly’s lips. She was going to see Daniel’s Becky again. The shoes were her finest armour. Carrie was still slightly cool when she arrived. But she said the boots were fucking gorgeous.