by Leanne Burn
When James was 3 days old I rang the number Keith had given me. A woman answered. I asked if it would be possible to speak to him and she asked who was calling. I wasn’t sure what to say so I just said “it’s Mrs Evans.” When he came to the phone I told him he had another son,
James. All he said was “thank you for letting me know”. And that was that.
Ben
And that was that as far as Keith was concerned. He didn’t see his children or support them. But at the end of the day it was his loss. I had three amazing children. We were a family, the four of us, my family and my close friends.
Money was tight but we managed. My mam and dad helped out all of the time. There always seemed to be something one of the kids had grown out of, or something broke. But all in all we were happy.
One by one the kids went off to school and some of the financial burden was released. When James went to school, I returned to work full time and used my child-minder to help with before and after school care as well as the millions of holidays they seemed to have.
I enjoyed work still and when I was feeling more like my old self I started having the odd night out with work colleagues, sometimes Karen and sometimes both. I wasn’t looking for a new man in my life, but I did enjoy time when I wasn’t just mammy.
My Granny died when she was 88. She hadn’t been well for a couple of years and it was terrible to watch her deteriorate. She had been my greatest friend and the hole she left in my life would always be irreplaceable. I was inconsolable when she passed and it took me a long time to accept that she had even gone, without collapsing in a heap on the floor. I loved her so much.
My mam and me grew closer. We supported each other through our mutual grief and helped the kids understand that their Granny Hannah had gone to Heaven.
Time is a great healer though and we eventually settled into a life without my Granny. Out of sight but never out of my mind.
The tables turned and it was my turn to be the comforter when Karen and Dave separated. It turned out that he had been seeing a woman he met at the cycling club. Karen was devastated, she hadn’t detected any cracks in her marriage, so his departure was a total shock. Of course she blamed herself. She said she didn’t blame him for running off (or cycling) with a fit bird. Since Charlotte’s birth she hadn’t really shook off the baby weight, her trade mark blonde hair had grown out and was now a dull brown and she was rarely seen out of leggings. He had told her he loved her however she was, obviously he hadn’t.
Dave told her she could stay in the house and he would pay the mortgage, but with no income to pay the rest of the bills, Karen was panic stricken. Together we made numerous phone calls to benefit agencies and her solicitor to see what she was entitled to. It wasn’t as bad as she had thought and if she got herself a little part-time job then she would be better off still. So it wasn’t all doom and gloom for her.
As the weeks wore on, Karen adjusted to life as a single mam. She was still furious with Dave and had attacked him on a number of occasions when he came to her house to pick up Charlotte. The time he turned up with his girlfriend in the car to drop Charlotte off he was treat to a bust lip and had to go scurrying back to the car red faced and bleeding. But like everything else, time healed.
Karen got a job as a waitress in a local pub. The hours suited her with Charlotte and she enjoyed the company. Slowly old Karen emerged. With all of the running to the pub from the pub and around the pub, the weight dropped off her. The blonde hair was back and she settled into life as a single parent.
The years ticked by. We had good times and bad just like every other family. My mam and dad were always supportive and had good relationships with each of their grandchildren, it was hard to believe that they were the same people who made such a hash at my upbringing. I was mam and dad, just as likely to be running up and down the touchline at one of the lad’s football matches as traipsing around the Metrocentre with Beth looking at the latest fashions.
I had a few relationships, but I didn’t particularly trust anyone so I was guarded and made excuses about the kids coming first before the relationship went too far. But for the next few years there was no one. Then one day there was Ben and my life would never be the same again.
Teenage Kicks
The house was always full of teenagers. Every weekend there would be a different combination of lads and lasses staying over. Our house seemed to be a refuge for any of the kid’s friends. But it was nice, I fed them and listened to them all having fun. It was all very different to my school days.
Thomas was almost 16. He was tall handsome, well I thought he was but then I’m biased. He had always been sporty and dedicated to whatever sport he was doing, football through the winter, cricket in the summer. His dedication went out of the window when he discovered girls. Suddenly he was all hair gel and aftershave. His mobile phone bleeped constantly and the PC we had in the corner of the living room became the most important thing in the whole house. And that was all 3 of them, not just Thomas. He had lots of friends and seemed to be popular with both sexes.
Beth’s friends especially liked him. They would follow him around the house and he would tease them by practicing his chat-up lines on them causing them to giggle and blush. I would laugh to myself, give those girls a couple of years and they would have Thomas eating out the palm of their hands. Poor Beth. She had just turned 15 and was still pretty as a picture. She had inherited one of my old traits, crushes; and I would look on in despair as she would fall in love with one of Thomas’s friends after another. Even when she got her first boyfriend, Liam, she still swooned over Thomas’s friends, they all appeared to be so much more mature than Liam even though there was only a couple of years between the lot of them.
James was the pest. He liked nothing better than winding up his brother and sister, their friends and me if the mood took him. He was 13 and was a smaller version of Thomas, without the insight of girls and lager. He always had a couple of mates on tow and they spent hours and hours in his bedroom playing computer games, only surfacing when they needed feeding and watering. I never thought about how he was conceived, it didn’t matter. The gypsy was right, he was my gift, he was all of our gift and I couldn’t imagine life without him.
I never saw the gypsy again even though I had often looked for her. When the annual town moor was on in Newcastle, where all the gypsies plied there trade, I would go along and scour the shiny caravans in the hope of seeing her. But I never did, I just wanted to say thank you.
Ben was one of Thomas’s school friends. Thomas had been friends with him when they had first when to the comprehensive but their friendship and dwindled and I hadn’t seen him for 3 or 4 years. I arrived in from work one teatime laden down with shopping bags full of the weekly food shop I had done on my way back from work. After making a couple of trips to the car, I eventually dumped all the bags in the kitchen, popped the kettle on and then went to see who was in for tea.
Thomas was sitting on the PC in the living room. With him was a tall dark haired lad I didn’t immediately recognise. It wasn’t until I had spoken to Thomas and asked him if he was ok did the lad turn around. My stomach did an involuntary somersault and I shivered all over. Ben Jacobs. It was a very grown up Ben Jacobs.
I quickly recovered and said “I hardly recognised you Ben, long time no see”. “Are you staying for tea?” I didn’t wait for his answer, just walked out of the living room and shouted for Bethany and James. In the kitchen I made myself a cup of coffee and while I waited for it to cool I unpacked the shopping. I had emptied almost half the bags when Ben walked in. Immediately all the hairs on the back of my neck stood to attention. “What the hell” I thought to myself. “Well then Ben, what have you been up to?” He pulled himself up on to the kitchen bench and told me how his family had moved onto the new estate that was just being built on the edge of the village. He said him and Thomas had stayed friends all the way through school but it was only since he moved to Kinsley that they had starte
d to hang around with each other out of school. He went on to say that his mam had had identical twin girls three months earlier, that’s why they had moved to a bigger house.
As I continued to put the shopping away Ben started to whistle ‘Sweet Caroline’. I looked up at him and smiled. “You are far too young to know that song” I laughed. “It’s my mam, she loves all that stuff and whenever she plays it, it always reminds me of you!” I stared at him in astonishment, his eyes locked with mine and once again I shivered.
“If we are going to ever get tea you best move yourself off my bench” I said. He jumped down and made his way back into the living room. I made tea in a bit of a daze. I couldn’t have eaten a bite, but I plated up everyone else’s and as they sat around the dining table I made my escape into the bath.
Over the next few weeks Ben became a regular visitor to our house. I felt totally unhinged when he was about and spent sleepless night tossing in turning in my bed wondering what the hell was happening to me. Thomas had always had friends at ours, they all flirted and joked with me, but they were kids and to be honest I never really noticed them.
Ben was a kid, he hadn’t even turned 16. But he was different. He didn’t look at me like he was a 15 year old, he looked at me like he was a man. He didn’t talk to me like a 15 year old, he spoke to me on an equal level, and he certainly didn’t look like a 15 year old, though he
didn’t look like a man, he didn’t have the awkward gangly way young lads have. But at the end of the day he was still a 15 year old and I was on dangerous ground.
My mam and dad had got the kids a rescue dog earlier in the year, when the novelty wore off it was me who had the twice daily walks to do. I didn’t mind it was exercise and I liked the time I had alone, Jasper was a good dog so I enjoyed our walks. When Ben suggested he came on one of my walks, I should have nipped it in the bud there. I didn’t. He was really good company and knew something about everything. Soon the dog walking became a regular occurrence, if my kids thought it was strange they didn’t say anything, I suppose they were happy I wasn’t dragging one of them out. We walked around the woods at the back of my house. Always a creature of habit, Ben laughed when the realisation hit him that I took the same route every time and when I got to a tree which had fallen down years earlier and whose roots were embedded across the path we walked on, which I always touched with my foot before turning around and heading for home. Ben started to say it was our tree and once again I shivered.
The worst thing was if we accidentally touched. It was like I was electrocuted, for ages after I would feel his touch on my arm or my leg. The whole thing was out of control. The sleepless nights continued and the times when I did fall asleep he haunted my dreams.
I would look for him in a room and when we saw each other our eyes would lock and it would take all my strength to tear my eyes away. If anyone noticed they didn’t say anything. There was nothing to see, just a silly middle aged woman mooning about a teenager and a young lad who maybe had a crush on his friend’s mam.
Of course Bethany had a crush on him. He was all she talked about. Ben this and Ben that. I snapped at her one day and said why couldn’t she think of poor Liam when she talked about Ben all the time. I wasn’t overly bothered about Liam’s feelings, I just couldn’t cope with having Ben from all angles.
Karen came for drinks one night, we were half way down our second bottle of wine when Thomas, Ben and another friend Dean came in. Karen took one look at Ben and went into full force flirting mode. At first I thought it was funny, he flirted back and Karen even had the decency to blush. But after a while it started to wear thin and I realised I was jealous. Karen was younger than me, prettier than me and had bags more confidence than me. I was once again on the outside looking in.
I made an excuse to go into the kitchen. Taking another bottle of white wine out of the fridge I leant against the bench and took some deep breaths. I sensed him before I saw him, he had followed me in. “I really want to kiss you” he whispered into my ear. I heard him take a
bag of crisps out of the cupboard and then he left. When I returned into the living room Karen was holding court, telling the lads about her latest weird date with someone she had met on an internet dating site. As I sat down Ben caught my eye. Once again our eyes locked.
My jealousy went crawling back into whatever hole it had come out of and a hot flush spread through my body. I was in big big trouble.
So Good at Being in Trouble
For the next few months thing carried on much the same. Ben came to the house, we went for walks and talked. We didn’t talk about anything important, just general stuff. He had my mobile number and would drop me the odd text, usually asking what time I would be taking Jasper out, sometimes he would text asking me to pick him up from somewhere or another. Of course I always went. I liked him.
On Thomas’s open evening at school, we walked slap bang into Ben with his mam, dad and baby sisters. I made a huge fuss of the twins, Lily and Poppy, anything to distract me to the fact that Ben was standing in front of me in his school uniform with his parents. The worst of it was that even in his uniform, I fancied the pants off him. What the hell was happening here?
More sleepless nights followed. I needed to stop this now before I got into trouble, if not with the authorities then with Ben’s parents. I would have been furious if one of Thomas’s mate’s mam’s started having a thing with him.
So for the next few days I pretended I had a cold and wouldn’t go out and walk Jasper. I even took to my bed early so it looked more authentic. When Ben text me to say he hoped I was feeling better, I gave up. I text him back saying yes I was and hoped to see him soon. I didn’t know how to stop it and to be honest the thought of not seeing him filled me with fear.
On our next walk it was Ben who took the bull by the horns. He said “I meant what I said in the kitchen you know”. The kiss thing. “Ben, I’m probably older than your mam, why would you want to kiss me?” “It is nothing to do with age Caroline, it’s about how I feel about you. This feels right doesn’t it?” he replied. What a grown up answer I thought. “I don’t know Ben, I think that you have a crush and I think I am flattered. I think it is a simple as that”. I didn’t know what else to say. “So if I was 30 this wouldn’t be a problem would it? We would be perfect together wouldn‘t we?” “Yes we would. We would be perfect.”
We would??? Yes we would!! I thought to myself. When Ben was about I felt complete. For the first time in my life I felt whole, I wasn’t scared or lonely. When he wasn’t about I was lost. I felt like I had been waiting for him all of my life. He wasn’t 30 though and it was just so wrong.
Karen had been dating the wrong men since her and Dave had divorced. She had tried internet dating, speed dating, blind dates, as beautiful and kind and funny as she was she just seemed to attract idiots. She had had a couple of serious boyfriends, but one turned out to be married and the other was a serial internet dater. They hadn’t broken her heart, but it had pissed her off.
The night she informed us she was going to be Scarlett, we were having one of our regular Friday night drinks. There were another couple of friends there as well and we hooted when she told us her intentions. Never thinking for one minute that she was serious, we were gob smacked when she whipped out her driving licence bearing the name Scarlett Brown. She had done it, she had changed her name by deed poll. “Why Scarlett” I asked her. “Scarlett O’Hara, why else”. Her favourite pick me up film was Gone with the Wind and obviously Scarlett was her heroine. “Frankly, my dear, I think it’s a hilarious idea” I laughed.
For the rest of the night we laughed and joked about it with Scarlett. We created a new profile on an internet dating site that promised a more exclusive and up market service. Uploading her photograph, we were shocked and thrilled when she started to receive little hearts and bunches of flowers from prospective suitors who claimed to be solicitors, doctors and policeman. She was delighted, her usual followers were often builder and
plumbers and blokes in between jobs. Scarlett was going to be a hit.
As I made my way home, Jasper came bounding up to me. Thinking it was Thomas I hurried along to meet him. It wasn’t Thomas though it was Ben. “Good night??” Ben asked. “Yes it was fun”, I then went on to tell him about Karen’s name change. “Charlotte won’t be happy about that, she thinks her mam already has problems with blokes and hates her doing the internet thing”. “It’s just a bit of fun Ben, and she is far too lovely to be sitting in the house night after night. Charlotte is growing up and will be off to uni soon then Karen will be on her own. You can’t blame her for wanting a bit of fun”. “Is that what you’ll do Caroline? When James leaves school and you have more time on your hands, will you go out dating men?” Ben asked. “That’s a long way off” I laughed. “And I haven’t got half as much confidence in myself as Karen has!!!.
We had reached the back door. “I’m staying at yours tonight. My Nan is at mine looking after the twins and we wind each other up, so if it’s ok with you I’ll stay the night.” This was a first. He had never stayed over before. Loads of Thomas’s friends stayed, but Ben never.
Upstairs in my bedroom, I was very conscious that Ben was there. Another night of tossing and turning followed. What was I going to do about all of this? As dawn approached and still I hadn’t slept I was no nearer an answer. Maybe it will sort itself out, I will just have to distance myself from him.
When I pulled open the living room curtains, something touched my leg. It was Ben. He had slept on the settee. I couldn’t look at him and I didn’t speak, I just pretended it didn’t happen. Making myself a coffee in the kitchen, my leg continued to burn where he had touched it. This needed some serious distancing.
So that’s what I did. One of the newly divorced engineers at work was looking for someone to go to his Mess Ball at the TA. I volunteered. Much to everyone’s surprise. I didn’t really want to go but it was a step away from Ben, but I felt that everyone could see straight through me and I was embarrassed. I tried to cover it up saying it had been a long time since I had done the ball gown thing.