by Claire Sandy
‘Something in my stupid eye!’ Fern had promised herself never to let her little girl witness proof of her falling apart. It might scar her forever, on top of whatever scars the child had already accrued from the separation.
‘You’re crying!’ Tallulah looked astonished. ‘Aw, Mummy, it’s all right to cry. Let me squeeze you.’ Closing her eyes, Tallulah closed her short arms around her mother as tight as they would go. ‘Is that better?’
‘It is.’ So much for scarring; Tallulah could teach her a thing or two about emotional intelligence.
‘After all I’ve done for this family.’ Nora was working her way through her repertoire. ‘Looking after Mother, throwing away any chance of my own happiness.’
‘Auntie, let’s not discuss it again. You’re welcome to stay as long as you like.’
Nora’s mouth closed, her face a vision of surprise.
Perhaps, thought Fern, I’ve stumbled on the way to control her. Just say ‘yes’. The old girl was so accustomed to battle that she seemed unable to cope when her opponent just rolled over. ‘Oll-ie!’ Fern knew that if she didn’t shout up for the smeared plate she’d find it under his bed at some point, crusty and supporting its own miniature ecosystem.
As Ollie clattered into the kitchen, Donna at his heels like a cat, Fern asked, ‘Fancy some ice cream?’ She’d always had a fond and jokey relationship with her son’s girlfriend, but since the rapprochement Donna had clung to Ollie’s side, padding in and out of the house on silent feet.
‘No thanks, Fern.’ Donna’s eyes were on the floor. A self-possessed young woman, the same height as her beau, she had slender limbs the colour of wet sand and wore her exuberant afro pulled back. There was an austerity to Donna that belied her age, and she ignored her own beauty as if it was insignificant. Preferring to lead with her brains, she was a superb role model for Tallulah, who could sometimes be heard saying she wanted to be a lawyer ‘like Donna’s going to be’.
‘No ice cream? I don’t understand you young people.’ Fern laughed as she bent over the new dishwasher, a plate in each hand. She loved that dishwasher; she loved it hard. ‘Kids, standing there like that, you look as if you’re about to sing.’ Fern waved a dirty spoon like a baton, and sang, in the cod-operatic voice she knew her children hated.
Sometimes stuff just seems to get you down
Feelin’ like there’s no one else around
You wish you could reach out and find a friend
Who’ll be here today, tomorrow, until the bitter end
‘Oh, come on,’ she begged. ‘Worth some applause, surely?’
‘Mum,’ said Ollie, his fingers closing over Donna’s hand. ‘We’re having a baby.’
‘Jeshush, Mary and Josheph,’ whispered Nora into the silence that blossomed in the space where Fern’s brain used to be.
‘I’ll ring your dad,’ said Fern eventually, picking up her phone on automatic pilot. ‘Sit down, kids. We’ll sort this out. Don’t worry. It’ll all be fine.’ Fern planted a smacker of a kiss on both Ollie and Donna’s foreheads as they sank like bags of flour onto kitchen chairs.
The teenagers looked as stunned as Fern felt; perhaps it was only properly real to them now that they’d told her. Ollie’s defection from sixth form fell into place. As Adam’s mobile rang in her ear, Fern asked Donna, ‘Do your parents know yet?’
‘Are you kidding?’ Donna’s family could out-Puritan Nora.
‘Adam!’ Fern was relieved to hear his voice, the crisis instantly downsized by a millimetre or two. This man had been Fern’s first port of call when things went wrong since her late teens; at least that hadn’t changed. ‘We need you here. Something’s happened. We’re having a family pow-wow right now.’ Fern reached out to Ollie, succumbing to a primeval need to touch her son. Leaning sideways on his chair, he bent instinctively into her, then stiffened so she was hugging a plank.
‘It’s a bit tricky now, as it goes.’
‘Adam, I said we need you.’
‘Can it wait?’
‘Is somebody . . .’ Fern stopped herself, ignoring the female mutters in the background. ‘It’s an emergency, Adam.’
‘Is somebody ill?’
‘Well, no.’
‘Then surely it can wait. I’m not feeling great.’
‘This is important, Adam.’
‘I’m coming down with something.’
I bet you are. I can hear her. ‘Donna’s pregnant.’
The journey from penthouse to Homestead House took fifteen minutes; Adam made it in eight. ‘Christ on a bike, what’s going on?’ he said instead of hello, joining the family in the kitchen and almost tripping over Binkie, who prided herself on winding around visitors’ legs like a furry noose. Nodding sternly at Fern, he ignored the wordless question in her expression.
It was Tallulah who supplied the words. ‘Daddy!’ she squealed. ‘What happened to your face?’
Peering through dark glasses – another boozer’s trick – Nora said, ‘You look just like Mr Spock in them Star Trek Wars films.’
Manfully pretending he had no idea what they were talking about, Adam shrugged off their puzzled looks, saying, ‘I’ve washed my hair, that’s all.’
‘It’s not the hair.’ Fern missed the old shaggy shapelessness. ‘Is that gel?’ The Adam she’d lived with had been vehemently anti-hair-product.
‘It might be.’
Nora put her head to one side. ‘No, it’s not the hair. It’s definitely your face.’
Ollie laughed. ‘Dad, you’ve totally had Botox.’
‘Language!’ said Nora.
‘He said Botox, Auntie,’ said Fern. ‘Not . . . what you thought. Adam, it’s not true, is it?’ She squinted at his face, wondering if perhaps he’d had a stroke on the way over.
‘OK. Full disclosure. I’ve had Botox.’ Adam stood straight, nose in the air. ‘What’s the big deal?’
‘You tell us,’ said Ollie. ‘You’re the one who looks amazed.’
Fern studied Adam surreptitiously as she made his coffee. It came together in her hands just the way he liked it: mug not cup, not too milky, one sweetener; another skill rendered useless.
The kids’ teasing was relentless. Nora was confused, asking only ‘But Botox is for actresses, surely?’ over and over.
Once two wickedly waggling stripes, Adam’s eyebrows were now stark inverted Vs, as if two suicidal seagulls had crashed into the vast open spaces of his forehead.
‘So they inject poison into your face?’ Nora struggled to understand. ‘And you pay them?’
Adam took it all in good part, nodding, accepting the insults raining down on him. Then Tallulah put her finger on it, the way eight-year-olds sometimes can.
‘You don’t look like my daddy any more.’
Fern handed Adam his mug and their eyes met. His were shiny and round, like a teddy’s. My eyes must look like withered raisins to him now. This permanently startled, smooth-faced man didn’t look like Tallulah’s parent, nor did he look like Fern’s ex. She felt something prod her already beleaguered heart as she wondered why Adam didn’t respect his sweetly ageing face the way she did.
‘Never mind the surgery face,’ said Ollie. ‘What’s with the velvet pantaloons, Dad?’
All eyes went to Adam’s lower half. ‘They’re not pantaloons, you little sod.’ Tallulah wolf-whistled – a new accomplishment she was proud of – but Fern, knowing she was a party pooper, said, ‘Never mind Dad’s alarming trousers, we’re here to discuss . . .’ The word, such a soft word, felt like a rock in her mouth. ‘The baby.’
‘What’s to discuss?’ Ollie sought Donna’s fingers again as if groping for a hand-hold on a cliff face. The look he attempted was ‘not bovvered’, but Fern, who had seventeen years’ practice in translating Ollie’s looks, read it as ‘terrified’.
Fern glanced at Adam: I’ll go first. This tag-match parenting was an old trick of theirs. One parent starts laying down the law; loud expostulations from child; other parent takes t
he reins, going in harder with their agreed strategy.
‘Ollie, Donna,’ said Fern, in presidential candidate tones, ‘we’re glad you’ve shared this with us. From now on, Adam and I will do everything in our power to help. You’re not on your own.’
Tallulah put her hand up. ‘If it’s a girl can we call it Beyoncé? And if it’s gay can we call it—’
‘Shush, darling.’ Fern pulled Tallulah to her side. Pregnancy fascinated the girl, so it was vital to close her down with a firm cuddle before she got onto her theories about how babies can see out through their mothers’ belly buttons. ‘The thing is, Ollie, Donna, this doesn’t have to derail your lives. You have many options. You’re not stuck. We’ll talk them all through with you.’
When Ollie set his chin like that, he was the image of Adam. Adam in a stinking mood. ‘What’re you on about, Mum? Nobody’s life is derailed. We don’t need options.’
‘Look at your girlfriend’s face before you say that.’
‘She’s nervous, yeah. So am I. But we’re doing OK. We told you ’cos it’s the right thing to do, but we’re not looking for advice. We’re not children.’
‘Says he,’ said Fern. ‘Standing there in clothes I bought him. You’re a sixth former, Ollie.’ She wanted to yell You’re my little Ollster and scoop him up the way she had in the playground when the class bully nicked his champion conker.
‘Not any more. I’m a DJ. Well, I will be, when I save up enough for some decent gear.’ Ollie looked to Donna for endorsement. She lifted her head and nodded at him, both of them rock-solid, as if a plan to DJ at some point in the future was the time-honoured way to welcome a new life.
‘What about your law studies?’ Fern turned to Donna, the brightest student in her competitive girls’ school, the one who’d wanted to be a barrister before other girls could spell the word.
‘I can go back to it later.’ Donna didn’t have Ollie’s fire. Her eyes slid around the room, never landing.
Your go, Adam. Fern had to signal him twice before he got the message; maybe the Botox had leaked into his brain.
‘Ah. Yes.’ Adam coughed, looked his son in the eye, every inch the Victorian papa, despite the lady’s face and the skin-tight trews. ‘Congratulations, guys!’ he said. ‘Why not have a baby? It’ll work out.’
‘But—’ Fern was flummoxed, the only one holding back from the noisy group hug, disentangling herself from the arm Adam held out from the scrum. Even Nora was on her feet, and she believed that sex before marriage was right up there with genocide in the sin stakes.
If this pregnancy was planned, thought Fern, I’d feel differently. It was clear that it had been a mistake.
After the euphoric hugging, both Nora and Tallulah were lured away to their respective bedrooms – Tallulah to cluck over puzzled ants in a jar, Nora to tut at the ten o’clock news – so Ollie and Donna could flesh out their future.
‘We’ve really thought about this, Mum,’ said Ollie. ‘We’re going to live apart until the baby’s born, so we can save up. We’re not fools, we know it costs a lot to look after a kid, so save the speech you’re dying to do, yeah?’
The speech battered at the back of Fern’s teeth, desperate to be free. Ollie’s idea of what it cost to ‘look after a kid’ would be unrealistic; his perception of money related to how many pairs of trainers it could buy.
‘Let him speak, Fern,’ said Adam, as if she’d shouted Ollie down. Fern knew this tranquil acceptance of the youngsters’ kamikaze ‘plan’ was part and parcel of Adam’s new-found grooviness, just like his frozen face and gelled hair.
‘When I can afford decks, oh, and a van actually, and I guess, printing flyers’n’shit, I’ll set myself up as . . .’ Ollie paused for effect. ‘DJ Dirty Tequila.’
Fern stared at her son, feeling approximately a thousand and three years old.
‘Kickin’,’ said Adam.
The hard look that said Come OFF it that Fern sent Adam’s way simply slid off his smooth new face. ‘Kickin’?’ she hissed in disbelief.
Animated now, Ollie couldn’t keep up with his own thoughts. Words tumbled out, his confidence boosted by Adam’s approval. ‘Donna’s going to, like, nanny, ’cos she can keep doing that after the baby arrives. We’ll find somewhere to rent, somewhere small with a garden, and we’ll move in when the baby comes.’ He sat back, pleased. ‘Simples!’
‘We haven’t heard much from Donna.’ Fern felt it was time the woman who would actually grow this baby inside her had her say. ‘Did you see yourself becoming a mother in your teens, Donna?’
‘Not really.’ Donna, usually so mouthy, the girl who out-glared hard girls on the bus on Tallulah’s behalf, was cowed. She shrank against Ollie in a neat reversal of their usual roles; Fern and Adam used to giggle together about how their son was dominated by his girlfriend. ‘These things happen, don’t they?’
‘No, they don’t.’ Fern was tired of tiptoeing around a basic truth. ‘These things happen only if you fail to take basic precautions.’ She’d gone to great lengths to educate Ollie about contraception, repeating herself no matter how much he blushed or begged her to stop, squealing, ‘TMI, Mum. Way TMI!’ The thought of her little boy ‘doing it’ was tough – no parent can look that one straight in the eye – but she’d never been naive enough to think he and Donna would be content with holding hands. Fern’s sex life had been a constant source of naughty joy; she didn’t want Ollie’s early fumbles to result in a lifelong commitment he simply wasn’t ready for.
A thought struck Fern, like a wet haddock in the face. Is my sex life over?
‘There’s no point going backwards.’ Adam was the voice of tolerance, of forbearance, of making your ex want to beat you with the nearest wok. ‘These two crazy kids should have been more careful but, hey, they weren’t.’ He coughed meaningfully, deliberately not looking at Fern. ‘They wouldn’t be the first couple in history to have a baby before they were ready. Let’s deal with the here and now.’
Many times, Fern had been grateful for Adam’s talent for cutting the crap and getting to the heart of the matter, but tonight she felt they should linger awhile in the crap. ‘Adam, you know as well as I do that these crazy kids are totally unprepared for the stresses and responsibilities of parenthood.’ His crack about Ollie’s conception was irrelevant; Fern had been a twenty-four-year-old woman, and she’d been with Adam for seven years. ‘They’re seventeen! When you were seventeen you chickened out of a camping trip because you didn’t want to wee in a bush. Ollie here can’t boil an egg without setting off the fire alarm, but suddenly he’s a world-famous DJ who can raise a child on the side? Can we please talk realistically about this?’ Fern hated being so combative with the people dearest to her; but that was why she was being fierce. She had to do her best by Ollie; parenting isn’t a popularity contest. ‘Our son and this lovely girl are at a crossroads, Adam. I won’t let you sacrifice them on the altar of your quest to be cool.’
Hands on hips – somewhat slimmer hips, Fern noticed – Adam blew out his cheeks, puffing like a weary horse. A suspicion, hot and ugly, flared in Fern’s mind. How much did that female voice she’d heard peeping in the background have to do with Adam’s waxwork face and hip attitude?
Blinking rapidly, Donna jumped up, flapping her hands in front of her face. ‘I’m sorry. I’m just really really sorry. Ollie, you don’t have to stand by me. I understand.’ She tried to bolt, but Ollie grabbed her by the waist. Donna turned her face away as if his words were blows.
‘Donna, it’s not your fault!’
Appalled, Fern said softly, ‘Donna, love, nobody’s suggesting that you do this on your own.’
‘But it’s all my fault.’ The girl bent over, crying hard, tears rolling off the end of her nose, looking pitifully young.
‘It is not.’ Fern was firm. ‘It takes two to tango.’
From the doorway, an earwigging Tallulah put her right. ‘You don’t make babies by tangoing, Mummy.’
‘Scoot!’ Fern
clapped her hands at Tallulah, who darted away. ‘Ollie, Donna, you share the responsibility. I know my son and he would never walk away at a time like this.’ Fern’s heart swelled with the truth of that. Her son trembled with the need to protect his girl. You look just like your dad, she thought, before suppressing such an observation as unhelpful. Adam didn’t feel that way about her any more.
‘Mum’s right. Why not—’
Adam got no further. ‘Will you both just back off!’ yelled Ollie, as if his flesh and blood were conspiring against him instead of doing their best to help. ‘Me and Donna are going to raise our little family and love our baby and each other and it’s all going to work out.’ His nostrils flared as he panted out the words. ‘Don’t you dare lecture us on something you failed at.’
Seeing Adam out to his car, Fern wrapped her arms about herself. August had turned huffily cool, and her tartan shirt was inadequate. ‘Thanks for coming over.’
‘What else would I do?’ Adam seemed irked by her gratitude as the roof of his Mercedes peeled itself back. ‘I’m the little bugger’s dad.’
‘I didn’t mean . . .’ The ground around Adam was strewn with booby traps. Tired of negotiating them, Fern didn’t try to explain. ‘Just, you know, it was good to have you here. This has really thrown me.’
‘Me too.’ Adam looked up at her from the driving seat. The Botox couldn’t disguise the strain.
Melting slightly, Fern risked a sad smile. She remembered how comforting Adam’s arms were at times like this.
He said, ‘You look soooo tired.’
‘And you look twelve,’ snapped Fern, who knew she looked tired, thank you very much. There was no way she could ask this distant, kooky-looking man the questions banging around inside her head: is Ollie right? Did we really fail at raising a loving family?
The car revved throatily, its headlamps painting a bright stripe on the trunk of the old yew that stood guard over Homestead House. ‘Look, if Ollie and Donna can’t cope, we can afford to bail them out.’
‘Not everything can be cured with money.’ Fern wasn’t sure if he heard her over the bite of his tyres on the gravel.