by Claire Sandy
‘We’re learning about ess ee ex,’ giggled Tallulah, shoulders hunched.
‘Sex?’
‘Shush!’ Tallulah was happily scandalized. ‘Miss Shore calls it reproduction but we know what she means. Is it true? Did you and Daddy actually do all that sperm stuff?’
‘Yes.’ Fern had known this moment would come, but she’d expected a little notice. She braced herself to answer all questions openly and honestly, leaving out anything too graphic.
‘Urgh.’ Tallulah looked her mother up and down. ‘I’m never doing it. Don’t the sperms go everywhere? Up the curtains?’
‘Umm . . .’
‘What are the sperms’ faces like?’
‘Err . . .’
‘Is Daddy’s willy detachable? I couldn’t quite work that bit out.’
‘Well . . .’
‘Next we’re doing pregnancy but I’m already an expert because I looked it all up for Donna’s baby.’
Yes, yes, please stay on pregnancy and don’t veer back to detachable willies. ‘Shall I test you?’ Fern knew Tallulah couldn’t resist a test. ‘Question one: where does the baby grow inside Donna’s body?’
‘Too easy!’ Tallulah flicked her plait. ‘In her womb.’
‘OK, a hard one. Question two: how long does the baby spend in the womb?’
‘Right.’ Tallulah thought hard, scraping the silver dish. ‘Thirty-eight weeks! Which means Ollie detached his willy in . . .’ Tallulah counted on her fingers. ‘April!’
‘No, can’t be, darling.’ Maths wasn’t Tallulah’s strong point. Whenever Adam blamed Fern’s genes, he pointed out that she herself often put two and two together and got five. ‘The baby’s due in January, so nine months backwards is December, November, October, September, August, July, June, May . . .’
‘April!’ yelled Tallulah. ‘More sorbet, Mummy, pleeeease!’ She widened her eyes. ‘Say something, Mummy. You look as if you’ve been frozen by the Snow Queen.’
The steamy Beauty Room smelled of eucalyptus.
‘What have you been doing in here? Massaging koalas?’ Adam perched on the treatment couch before remembering how rabidly protective of it Fern could be and leaning instead against a glass cabinet.
‘Epic pimple procedure, but never mind that now.’ Fern was speaking in low tones, as if this dreadful development might leak through the walls. ‘Adam, did you hear what I just said? That baby isn’t Ollie’s.’
‘We don’t know that for sure.’ Adam looked on women’s bodies as a strange land that was nice to visit but had many odd traditions. ‘The baby could be premature.’
‘A baby’s only premature when it arrives. I’ve peeked at Donna’s pre-natal folder and—’
‘You’ve snooped, you mean.’
‘Yes, Gandhi, I’ve snooped. Sorry to be such a low-life, but we need cold, hard facts. Donna’s date of conception is bang in the middle of April.’ When Adam’s expression didn’t change, Fern prompted him. ‘And where was our son in April? The whole of April.’
It dawned, finally, on Adam. ‘California. That school exchange thing.’
They’d been so proud of Ollie when he won a place on a prestigious exchange with a prominent San Francisco high school.
‘So, unless he posted Donna his sperm, that baby is most definitely and definitively and certainly not his. It’s Maz’s.’
‘Who?’
Fern often wished for a laminated card with Keep up! on it, but this was no time to squabble. They must pull together on this one, like oxen. Tired oxen who’d rather be watching telly. ‘The bloke Donna had the fling with. He’s a bit older, a player, I think. I don’t really know. It’s easier to break into the Kremlin and steal the nuclear code than get a straight answer from your own teenagers.’
‘Does this Maz know about the baby?’
‘Why are you asking me?’ Adam always expected Fern to know things. Is this cheddar off? Why does my scalp feel itchy? Do I have a pension? ‘What do we do, Ads?’ The nickname slipped out. They both noticed it, and pretended they didn’t. If he mentions Penny in the next few seconds, I swear I’ll . . .
Adam didn’t mention Penny. He made all the right parental noises, and when they called Ollie and Donna down to the sitting room – having turfed out a suspicious Evka and Nora, who were busy disparaging a female newsreader’s hair – they were as one.
‘This is difficult to talk about,’ began Adam.
‘Then don’t talk about it,’ said DJ Dirty Tequila.
‘Ollie . . .’ said Donna, with a squeeze of his thigh.
Fern surmised the future pattern of their relationship from that one gesture; Ollie pulling ahead, Donna guiding gently back. If they survive the next few minutes.
‘Mum and I did some sums.’
Donna straightened, as if her spine had spasmed.
‘And?’ Ollie’s cool fell away.
Adam had taken Fern’s advice to be as straightforward as possible without being brusque. ‘The baby was conceived in April. Ollie, you were in Fresno for the whole of April.’ Adam faltered. Donna’s face, slightly puffy from the sterling work her body was doing building a new life, was painted over with pain. ‘I’m sorry, Donna, but there’s no way that Ollie can be the dad, is there, love?’
Donna shook her head slowly.
Fern leaned forward on the sofa. ‘We hate this, guys. But it has to be faced.’
‘Why?’ Ollie was on his feet.
‘Sit down, son,’ said Adam.
‘No,’ said Ollie, sitting down.
‘We’re not laying down the law.’ Fern carried on over Ollie’s ostentatious ‘yeah, right’. She took in Donna, who was looking at a spot somewhere over Fern’s head, quivering with the effort not to cry. ‘We love you, Donna. You’re one of the family.’
‘Don’t say but, Mum!’ Ollie’s voice was torn from him.
Adam said it for her. ‘But this inevitably changes things.’
‘Dad’s right.’ Fern hadn’t said that for a while. ‘This is heavy-duty decision making. Donna’s having another man’s baby. He has rights—’
‘No.’ Donna was fierce. ‘Maz gave up his rights.’
Ollie screwed up his mouth. ‘He’s a bastard.’
‘That’s not the point,’ said Adam. ‘We don’t have to like him. He’s the father.’ He left a pause before saying ‘And you’re not, Ollie.’
Fern looked at the bump filling out Dawn’s fluffy jumper. And it’s not my grandchild, she realized, as the point of an arrow pierced somewhere soft inside her.
‘I am.’ Ollie punched one palm with his fist. ‘I am, Dad. Shut up. And you, Mum. Just shut the fuck up.’
‘Listen, you,’ said Adam, who was always galvanized when Ollie swore at them.
In an echo of Donna’s earlier movement, Fern laid a hand on Adam’s arm. ‘Let’s leave it there. We’ll talk again, when we’ve all calmed down.’
Grabbing their reprieve with both hands, Ollie and Donna disappeared upstairs, to the dark and whiffy sanctuary of Ollie’s room. Down the stairs came Tallulah, Evka and Nora, all eager for titbits.
‘Why’s Daddy sad?’ Tallulah peered in at Adam, who sat with his head in his hands.
‘He’s not, he’s just thinking.’ Half-truths littered the house.
‘That child,’ said Nora, ‘has been talking about sperm all evening.’ Unable to bring herself to say sperm, Nora mouthed it, her eyes fluttering at warp speed.
‘Sperm sperm sperm,’ warbled Tallulah, as Nora blessed herself.
‘Catchy,’ laughed Evka, reaching for the gin bottle.
In her overall pocket, Fern’s phone cheeped. Turning away from the nosey parkers, she read: Hey! Where R U? I’m at park with T. x
The ‘x’ was new. It reared up at her. Will I have to add a kiss to my texts now?
Another text dropped in: Come on! It’s cold! xx
Two kisses? Practically an orgy.
The park, though cold, would be clean and simple, with none of the knotty
complexities of her nearest and dearest. Fern felt the tug of Hal’s artless expectancy, the cold-milk purity of just walking a dog and chatting to a man she liked who seemed to like her back.
I’ll be there in five mins.
As her finger wavered over the ‘x’, the stairs shook. Ollie stormed past her into the sitting room. Fern deleted the message and followed him, shutting out the others, almost flattening Evka’s nose with the door.
Ollie stood with his back to the fireplace, legs apart. ‘Mum, Dad,’ he said curtly. ‘I’m only talking to you ’cos Donna said I should.’
Great start. Fern sat beside Adam, and he took the lead.
‘Then at least one of you has some sense.’
‘You didn’t say that when I was acing my exams, Dad. Suddenly I’m an idiot? Because I’m not doing exactly what your so-called society wants me to?’
‘My so-called society?’ If it wasn’t for the Botox Adam would have raised an eyebrow. ‘You big drama queen, this isn’t about society. It’s about your future.’
‘Giving up your education for your child is one thing,’ said Fern. ‘But darling, packing in sixth form for another man’s child is crazy.’
‘Is it crazy to love Donna?’ Ollie pulsed with energy. ‘Is it crazy to know I never want to be with anybody else?’
There was no answer from his parents, who’d both felt that way when they were teenagers – and been proved wrong.
‘All we’re asking is that you to stop and think,’ said Fern. Ollie’s idealism was a thing of beauty but she couldn’t stand by while he shot himself in the foot. ‘You can support Donna as a friend, without giving up all your opportunities.’
‘This is the only opportunity I want.’ Ollie crossed his arms and hung his head. ‘Are you really asking me to dump my girlfriend when she’s seven months pregnant? Leave her just when she needs me? Are you?’
They weren’t. They couldn’t.
Fern said, with immense weariness, ‘We’ll make the best of it, like we always do. Go back to Donna. Tell her it’s lasagne later.’
‘If you’re worried,’ said Ollie, as he left the room, ‘that we’ll make a mess of things like you and Dad, don’t be. We’re staying together.’
‘Well, that told us,’ said Fern as Adam shrugged on his sharp-shouldered coat.
Propelling Tallulah into the hall, her hands on the child’s shoulders, Evka said, ‘You might want to take off coat.’ She kissed the back of Tallulah’s head. ‘Tell Daddy.’
‘I’ve been excluded,’ mewed Tallulah. ‘For shoplifting.’
‘Ding ding, round two.’ Adam hung up his coat.
The text said: Oi! Have U gone off dog walks??! xxx
Fern switched off her phone. Some voodoo rendered her unable to message Hal while Adam was in the house.
Talking it over, being gentle with each other, Fern and Adam agreed that the shoplifting was more to do with their split than with Tallulah’s possible future as a crime overlord.
‘It’s so out of character,’ said Fern, as they slumped on opposite ends of the big old chesterfield. She had the end where the spring stuck out, but she didn’t care; Fern was so tired she’d have sat on a bed of nails. In the past she would stick her feet in Adam’s lap, but tonight she kept them curled beneath her.
‘If anything, Tallulah’s too honest.’ Adam looked scrawny rather than slender, all the colour bleached from his face. ‘This is about us, isn’t it?’
‘Yup,’ sighed Fern, whose job these days seemed to be best described as Blame Taker. ‘It’s classic. Children go through a period of instability after their parents split.’
‘This is a separation, though.’
‘How does that differ from a split?’
‘It doesn’t,’ admitted Adam, with a sorrowful shake of his head.
A moment bloomed between them. It shone with potential, a moment in which one of them could reach out and bare themselves, ask for forgiveness, plead for understanding, so they could just be Fern and Adam again.
The moment grew and grew. Fern was shackled by her knowledge of Penny. Adam was shackled by . . . Fern couldn’t guess; possibly Penny stood in his way, too. The moment dissolved, and they were just two weary people on a chesterfield at the end of a day full of bad news.
‘At least she confessed,’ said Adam.
‘She’d never lie.’
‘Before today I’d have said she’d never steal.’
‘Are we making a huge deal out of this?’ Fern searched for a way out. ‘It’s practically a rite of passage for most people. Nicking a few sweets from Woolworths.’
‘Tallie’s not most people. And she didn’t steal from a faceless high-street store. This was a little corner shop run by an old gent who knows her. If Ollie had nicked something at his age, I’d have told him off, made him return it, then early to bed. But with Tallie – it’s a signal.’
‘A distress signal.’ Fern looked up at the ceiling, beyond which her daughter had sobbed herself to sleep beneath her camouflage duvet. ‘I’m disappointed by the school’s attitude.’
‘Suspending a good kid the moment she does something wrong seems harsh.’
‘I’ll go and talk to the head,’ said Fern.
‘Shall I come with you?’
‘I assumed you would.’ Nothing could be taken for granted. ‘I mean, if you want to.’
‘Of course I want to.’ Adam’s face creased in discomfort. ‘She does know we love her, doesn’t she?’
‘Yes.’ Fern was strong; he needed that. ‘Tallie is loved and cared for. She’s just having a wobble.’
‘I know how she feels.’ Adam looked at his watch.
Penny waiting up for you? Fern was impressed with the speed she could jump to conclusions; she never moved that fast at the gym. ‘Look, do you have to dash? I could open a bottle of something.’
‘Um.’ Adam looked undecided. ‘I guess I could hang around. For a bit.’ He sat up politely, as if in a waiting room. ‘I don’t want to keep you up.’
‘I won’t sleep tonight.’ Fern would have to fight the impulse to go to her daughter’s room and curl up round Tallie’s warm body.
With the bottle opened – Fern made a palaver of it, Adam had to step in, no change there – and a glass or two downed, the atmosphere lightened enough for Fern to get out her probe. It was a clumsy instrument: ‘Penny,’ she said, and got no further.
‘Penny,’ repeated Adam.
‘She’s your . . . what, exactly?’
‘I don’t know that she’s my anything.’ Adam shifted in his seat. ‘She’s my manager, of course, and great at it. Plus a lot more besides. Penny’s amazing.’
Great. Amazing. Fern waded through the slag heap of compliments. ‘When are you going to get round to telling me you live together?’ At Adam’s quick look, she gabbled, ‘Not my business, sure, but then again, in a way, it is my business, isn’t it? It would’ve been nice to find out from you. We’re not really us any more, but there was an us, so . . .’ She tailed off.
‘Not us any more? What’re you on about?’ Adam was laughing. ‘Who are you now, then? Liza Minnelli? Queen Elizabeth the First? I’m still me, just thinner.’
‘I preferred you before.’ That came out wrong. ‘There was nothing wrong with you that needed fixing.’
‘That’s not what Penny thinks. And I trust her implicitly. She’s not living with me in that way.’
‘Which way is that way?’
‘The shagging-each-other-senseless way. She’s in the spare room. Did you think . . . ?’
‘What was I supposed to think?’ Fern felt a weight disappear inside her, as if an anvil had grown wings.
‘Penny’s got a rat infestation at her flat. She’s just staying at mine. It works well. She’s a laugh.’
How about you mention Penny’s name just the once without praising her? Fern no more believed in Penny’s rat infestation than she believed in the tooth fairy. Clearly something was going on, but apparently it was unconsumma
ted. ‘Adam, about Christmas. What if you were to come here after all? If we have a normal-in-inverted-commas Christmas Day?’
‘I was just thinking that.’ Adam seemed chuffed, even though his forehead barely moved. ‘For the kids.’
The bed didn’t seem to be quite as wide as it was most nights. When Fern had invited Adam for Christmas she’d felt like a shy teen asking her crush out on a date. Christmas would be a glittering amnesty to round off the year. Perhaps somewhere in this mess there was an answer, an obvious answer, to the mess they’d made.
Downstairs, on its charger, Fern’s mobile sang.
Where’d U go Fern?
CHAPTER SIX
December: Relevé
Pale. Flabby. Somewhat pimply. And far too large. The turkey and Fern had a lot in common as they stared each other out on Christmas morning.
This was it, the moment when all the to-do lists kicked in. When Fern proved herself against this age-old adversary. Fern and turkeys had history.
Crying into a tea towel was one tradition Fern planned to avoid this year. She’d chosen the turkey from a line-up at the butcher’s, stipulating ‘Organic, please,’ just as the magazine articles insisted. She’d paid for it, after double-checking the price and wondering if the butcher was under the impression he was selling her a small car. She’d taken it home and weighed it. She’d wiped it inside and out, stifling a ‘Yeew’. She’d stuffed it. Then she’d weighed it again. Then she’d calculated the correct cooking time with the spectre of Boxing Day salmonella at her shoulder. Fern knew that turkey better than she knew her own children, and now that it was time to put it in the oven at the correct temperature in a specially bought roasting tin, she had a sudden attack of self-doubt and re-did the sums.
Clanging chords from Tallulah’s new guitar drifted down the stairs, competing with the carols on the kitchen’s tinny radio. Heaving the bird into the oven, Fern ticked the list. Only one thousand and three things left to do before lunch. Homestead House’s residents had congregated for a noisy breakfast as they opened their presents together, and now the sitting room was knee-deep in discarded wrapping paper. Boudicca patrolled in her new quilted coat, nosing out fragments of Terry’s Chocolate Orange and coughing up satin bows.