A Not Quite Perfect Family

by Claire Sandy

  Explosive with adrenalin, Fern took off her shoes to sprint the last couple of streets. Letting herself in, she yelled, ‘Nora!’

  ‘Yes, dear?’ Nora emerged, small, fat, Mrs Tiggywinkle-like, from the sitting room. ‘Did you have a nice time?’

  ‘Oh. God.’ Fern slumped and suddenly she felt where the pavement had damaged her feet. ‘I thought Maz would be here. He is watching the house, Nora. He lied, you see, about passing by each Thursday because Donna and Ollie don’t only go out on Thursdays, so—’

  ‘Calm down, Fern.’ Nora unwrapped a Fisherman’s Friend. ‘I’ve locked Maz in the utility room.’

  That’s when Fern heard the thumping. And a weedy ‘Let me out!’

  ‘Tea?’ asked Nora, making for the kettle as the utility room door juddered.

  ‘This is false imprisonment!’ whined Maz through two inches of wood.

  ‘How long has he been in there?’ Fern took Nora by the shoulders.

  ‘An hour or so.’ Nora stroked Binkie, who was oiling about her legs. ‘He’s been ever so nice and quiet. Hearing your voice set him off again.’

  ‘Nora, shouldn’t we let him out?’

  ‘I think not. That boy has some apologizing to do. He turns up, all big eyes, saying you told him he could see Amelie any time.’ Nora opened a new packet of cat treats as Maz hollered and thumped. ‘I give him one of me looks. I was suspicious, see, ’cos you’d only just driven off. All a little too coincidental for my liking.’

  ‘He’s been watching the house. That’s how he knows when Ollie and Donna are out.’

  ‘I says to him, I says, I’m not Fern. You run along, sonny Jim. Well, he didn’t like that.’ Nora groaned as she bent to fill Binkie’s dish. ‘Fancies himself a charmer. Kept this big smile on his face the whole time.’

  Fern remembered the doe eyes and the hand on his heart. ‘I can imagine.’

  ‘He talks and talks, thinking he’s winning me round. All about Oh, I love Donna and Donna used me to have a baby and how he wants to be a proper father, and all this flim-flam. I says to him, your smile doesn’t reach your eyes, young man. That’s when he pushes me out of the way!’

  Fern had brought this on her infirm aunt. ‘Did you fall?’

  ‘I did not.’ Nora seemed insulted. ‘I grabbed the little sod’s arm as he pushed past me. We wrestled for a bit.’

  Not exactly a fair fight. ‘Are you hurt?’

  ‘Did me the world of good. Made a nice change from doctors prodding me and shaking their heads. There’s life in the old girl yet!’

  Fern could only agree.

  ‘So, anyway, he rushes up the stairs.’

  Fern thought of Amelie, soft and vulnerable in her cot, and put her hands to her face.

  ‘But I think quick. I shout, “Tyson, quick! Put the baby in the utility room!”’

  ‘Who the hell’s Tyson?’

  ‘Tyson doesn’t exist, Fern,’ said Nora patiently. ‘But Maz isn’t to know that, is he? Tyson’s a scary name. Maz comes running down and crosses the kitchen in two strides, looking around for the utility room. In he goes and bang!’ Nora clapped her hands. ‘I slam the door and lock him in. I wanted to ring you, but of course I’d left the phone in there when I was getting a choc-ice from the freezer.’

  Fern drew a veil over Nora’s doctor’s-orders low-fat diet. ‘You, Auntie Nora, are a heroine.’

  Voices in the hall and feet-stamping and mickey being taken announced the arrival of everybody else, high on the after-show party.

  ‘Mum!’ Tallulah was first in, bursting with news. ‘It was fabulous! There were little umbrellas in the drinks! Lincoln Speed fell over! He smelled of tramps!’ The thumping redoubled. ‘Who’s in there? Is it a werewolf?’

  ‘It’s Maz.’ Fern put up her hands as the outrage started. ‘Listen! We have to decide what to do with him.’

  ‘He was going to take Amelie,’ said Nora, never slow to throw petrol on a fire.

  ‘We don’t know that,’ said Fern.

  ‘Who’s Maz?’ said Penny.

  ‘Maz?’ Donna was still taking it in. She turned and dashed upstairs to see her daughter. ‘This is all your fault, Fern!’ she yelled. ‘You encouraged that bastard.’

  ‘Now, Donna,’ began Adam, but Fern put a restraining hand on his arm.

  ‘Let her. She’s right.’ Fern pointed her thumb at the door. ‘Police?’

  ‘Let me at him,’ said Ollie, face screwed up with fury.

  Fern knew her son was a lover, not a fighter. ‘We won’t fix this with fists, darling.’

  ‘Daddy said you fix things with talking,’ said Tallulah. ‘Can we get him out quickly? The freezer’s in there, and I want Viennetta.’

  ‘The kid’s right,’ said Fern. ‘Donna won’t like it but if we’re going to resolve this, we need to talk. Maz is obviously an arrogant so-and-so who’s not used to hearing “no”, but if he and Donna can behave like adults they can lay down some ground rules.’ She turned to Ollie, pulled him to her. ‘The first rule is that he respects you, as the man who’s bringing up Amelie. As Amelie’s daddy.’

  Ollie nodded, his face tight with emotion.

  Promises were made on both sides, through the door, and Maz emerged. ‘I couldn’t find the light switch,’ he said gruffly, looking shaken, as Tallulah barged past to get at the Viennetta.

  Aware he had nowhere to hide, Maz took Adam’s lecture meekly. Adam was grave but measured; Penny looked up at him adoringly the whole time, like a First Lady staring up at the President of the United States. ‘No turning up unannounced,’ he ended. ‘Agreed?’

  ‘Agreed.’

  Tallulah leaned against her dad and trained sad eyes on Maz. ‘You can’t help being a man, but try to be a nice man.’

  Donna refused to come down. Fern could imagine the atmosphere upstairs. She walked Maz to the gate and asked him, in a low tone, ‘Would you have taken Amelie, Maz?’

  He didn’t reply, just looked at her for a long time with those ladykiller eyes. ‘If I had,’ he said eventually, ‘it would have been the biggest mistake of my life.’

  ‘Show’s over.’ Fern shooed out the mob in the kitchen. ‘Ollster, go up and see to your little family. Tell Donna I’m sorry, and she can yell at me all she likes in the morning.’ Fern sounded jaunty but inside she churned with regret, hoping against hope that her intimacy with Donna wasn’t ruptured for good. ‘You, young lady. Bed.’ Tallulah made a disgusted noise. ‘And you too, not-so-young lady.’ She smiled at Nora. ‘We have so much to thank you for. You cleared up my mess tonight, Auntie, and you saved little Amelie from a foolish boy.’

  ‘I’m not quite ready for bed,’ said Nora.

  ‘Your energy levels—’ began Fern, nurse-like.

  ‘Twenty, nineteen, eighteen, seventeen . . .’ Nora’s counting was interrupted when a voice at the kitchen door made them all turn. ‘Are we going to finish our game of Scrabble, Nora love?’ asked Walter.

  ‘Walter,’ said Fern stupidly. She turned to Nora. ‘Nora.’

  ‘Yes, they’re our names,’ said Nora, stomping haughtily by.

  ‘But . . .’ said Adam, who, like Fern, had noticed that although Walter was immaculately turned out as usual, he was also a little tossed. Tie askew. Top button undone. Dear God – lipstick on his papery white cheek.

  Ollie had the decency to wait until the sitting room door had closed before gagging. ‘Old people. Doing it. Gah!’

  ‘I’m sure they’re not doing it,’ said Fern, putting her hands over Tallulah’s ears. ‘Maybe a bit of kissing.’

  ‘That’s bad enough.’ Ollie was still young enough to believe that love had an age limit.

  ‘I hope she’s on the pill,’ said Adam, and Fern thwacked him, forgetting they’d fallen out earlier.

  ‘Ooh, careful,’ said Penny. ‘He bruises like a peach.’

  ‘This time I mean it,’ said Fern sternly to Tallulah. ‘Bed.’

  ‘I want to cuddle Amelie.’

  ‘She’s asleep.’<
br />
  ‘No. She’s there.’

  Donna had stolen down in novelty slippers. ‘Amelie won’t settle,’ she said, holding out the baby. ‘Here, Fern. You’re the only one who can get her to sleep when she’s like this.’ She smiled. ‘She needs her grandma.’

  ‘Get in,’ said Nora, turning back the covers.

  Fern clambered in beside her, enjoying the old-lady smell of talc and eau de toilette. ‘This is cosy.’ She remembered how she used to peer in, afraid of the battleaxe in the bed.

  A tray balanced on the hillocks of the duvet. The two women munched buttered toast thoughtfully. The loft was tranquil, its angled ceiling throwing soft shadows in the lamplight. Fern considered confiding in Nora about Hal, but thought better of it. A leopard couldn’t change every one of its spots and she couldn’t bear to be preached at. She inched closer to Nora, wondering which shops still sold the winceyette monstrosity her aunt was wearing and realizing that the mum-shaped hole in her life was partly filled by this odd, endearing woman.

  ‘He’s the one, you know,’ said Nora, brushing crumbs off the covers. ‘Walter. He’s the one for me.’

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  May: Fromage

  French hospitals smell much the same as English hospitals: disinfectant, cabbage. Moreover, Fern felt much the same in the small Hôpital Saint Honoré as she felt in English hospitals. Worried. Helpless. Impatient to see a doctor, fearful of what he might say.

  Plus he’ll be saying it in French. Her grasp of the language didn’t extend beyond asking where the station was.

  Looking down at her feet, Fern was surprised to see the decrepit trainers she kept for around the house. Tucking them under her, she fidgeted on the chair. When Luc had answered Fern’s daily Skype call, telling her he’d just come home to a scrawled note from Layla to say she’d dialled 15 and called an ambulance, Fern reacted like a cat reacts to a bucket of water. She’d jumped a foot in the air and booked an air ticket online; cats, obviously, leave out the second part.

  I let Layla down before. Fern had learned her lesson. Layla now lived under a microscope of love. As she riffled through flimsy gossip magazines in the waiting room, probably picking up thousands of French germs on her nervous fingers, Fern dredged up all she knew about pre-eclampsia.

  Not good on detail, she could remember only lurid headlines. Bed rest until birth! Possible premature birth!

  A mumble of voices in the fluorescent-lit corridor, and there was Layla, being wheeled along by an orderly. Stately in her wheelchair, she was like a pregnant queen, both hands clasped over her stomach.

  The sight of the much-talked-about bump moved Fern to tears, but she wiped them away and jumped up as the orderly spoke in French and left his patient there.

  ‘Is it pre-eclampsia?’ No need for a hello; with old friends, the nitty-gritty is got down to immediately.

  ‘No.’ Layla fluttered her eyelids, as if irritated with herself. ‘Just high blood pressure. I felt faint. I panicked.’

  ‘So no bed rest?’ Fern knew that bed rest sounds lovely, just what every working mother would prescribe for herself, but in reality it was lying on your back for weeks, even months. The allure of endless Judge Judys would soon wear off. ‘Phew.’

  ‘I can’t believe you’re here.’ Layla was ashen, her face gaunt for somebody in their fifth month of pregnancy. ‘You nutter.’

  ‘What’s in the envelope?’ Fern gestured to the large, stiff brown envelope on what was left of Layla’s lap.

  ‘Ah, yeah.’ Layla swallowed and tapped the envelope. ‘This is my eighteen-week scan.’ Her voice was stretched wafer-thin. ‘It’s not good, Fern.’

  ‘How not good?’ Fern’s grammar fell out of her brain. ‘Not good how?’

  ‘The image shows a possible problem with the nose bone. It’s not developing like it should.’

  ‘Oh.’ Fern absorbed this. ‘But a nose . . .’ she said, ‘that’s not so bad, is it? They can do amazing surgery now.’

  ‘That’s not the point,’ said Layla, closing her eyes. ‘A lack of nose bone can signify serious problems.’

  ‘Are they sure?’ Fern spoke low and soft in the harshly lit room.

  ‘No. The baby’s in an awkward position. Not cooperating.’

  ‘Wonder where it gets that from?’ Fern was kneeling now, looking up at Layla’s face, which drooped like a flower after rain.

  ‘How very dare you,’ said Layla gamely, trying not to cry. ‘Unfortunately, the pregnancy’s too far along for a nuchal fold test.’

  ‘Is that the one that measures the fluid at the base of the baby’s neck?’ Fern remembered the tense sojourn waiting for Tallie’s nuchal fold results. There’d been talk of ‘possible abnormalities’ which had been forgotten with sprightly relief the moment they were ruled out.

  ‘Instead they’ve offered me something called a quadruple blood test. That doesn’t rule out or confirm the problem, just calculates the risk.’ Layla sighed. ‘As you can probably tell, I’m an expert at this stuff by now.’

  ‘So there’s no way of knowing for sure?’

  ‘Yes. An amniocentesis. They offer that if the blood test gives you a high-risk outcome.’

  ‘Right, right.’ Fern absorbed this unwanted information. ‘Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that, eh?’

  ‘They gave me a stack of leaflets to take away.’ Layla paraphrased starchily: ‘Mothers must be aware that there’s a risk of the baby miscarrying.’ Layla ended the sentence on a dry sob, looking down at her body. ‘Not the baby,’ she said, her mouth turned down. ‘My baby, Fern.’

  ‘I know, I know.’ There didn’t seem to be any words available to Fern. ‘I know, Layla.’

  Luc appeared, his dark features set. ‘Mon trésor, Layla, mon ange.’ He bent and took one of her hands, kissing it passionately, as if it was all that kept him alive. Fern looked away, feeling like an intruder, but Layla held on tight to her with her other hand.

  ‘Oh, Luc,’ said Layla, and all pretence at self-possession disappeared. She was talking and sobbing and drumming her heels on the wheelchair footrests. ‘I don’t want these tests. I won’t let them put a needle near my baby. Don’t let them, Luc.’

  Full of sadness, Luc managed to be firm. ‘We need to be prepared,’ he said.

  ‘Why?’ Layla’s hair had escaped its elastic band and was floating around her head in wild, coiled curls. ‘We made a baby at last. It’s growing inside me. I don’t want to know if something’s wrong.’

  ‘But I do, Layla.’ Luc was sad as he pressed his point.

  ‘They mentioned termination.’ Layla’s voice rose to a screech.

  ‘No such thing will happen.’ Luc shook his head. ‘This is our child and we’ll look after it and love it, him or her, but we should do that the best we can. We must be strong for the child. If we’re prepared it will be easier. We owe that to le bébé, non?’

  This was love in action. Fern felt privileged to be so close to the white heat of it. Love takes on the big topics, and renders them down into bite-sized pieces.

  Eventually, Layla said ‘OK,’ and let out a huge breath of air as if expelling something.

  They all said nothing for a long while as the hospital bustled around them.

  The traveller next to Fern on the hard plastic airport bench was scrolling through gossip sites. Fern envied her state of mind; how lovely it would be to flit across silly stories of reality stars’ wardrobe malfunctions. Fern’s mind was alive with statistics and facts and fear.

  The colourful screen paused for a second before moving on, but not before Fern had recognized the distinctive foxy features of Lincoln Speed.

  What’s he done now? Fern knew that Adam lived in fear of Lincoln endangering Roomies’ success by falling off the wagon, as the star had done so many times before. Hell, he not only fell off the wagon, Lincoln usually set fire to the wagon beforehand.

  Accessing the gossip portal on her iPhone, Fern found the piece. There was Lincoln Speed, his slash of a mouth smug as
he posed in the midst of a gaggle of schoolgirls. His leather jacket, bristling with zips and flaps, was out of place among the navy blazers and ponytails. The girls’ uniforms looked very like Tallie’s uniform. Hang on! It was Tallie’s uniform. And that’s Tallie!

  Blushing, thrilled, Tallie was in the crook of Lincoln Speed’s arm as her schoolmates crowded around, fit to burst at being so close to a real live celebrity.

  St Garvan’s School for Girls in Kingston-upon-Thames had a very special visitor today. Superstar bad boy Lincoln Speed (49) dropped by to say howdy. A source close to the star tells us that Lincoln is a family friend of lucky pupil Tallulah Carlile (8).

  The charismatic soft-hearted playboy chatted with the girls and signed autographs before school head Sister Mary Augustus remonstrated with him for smoking on school property and asked him to moderate his language.

  As the heart-throb was driven away in a blacked-out limo, the girls shouted, ‘We love you, Lincoln!’

  The high street looked very English after Fern’s twenty-four hours in France. It was a relief to readily comprehend signs and posters, even if they were only offering her ten sunbed sessions for the price of eight, or telling her not to leave donations outside the charity shop overnight. She’d left Layla and Luc promising she’d stay positive; Fern tried to stay positive that Layla and Luc would stay positive, but that was proving a big ask.

  The guy in the estate agent’s, his blingy suit making him look even younger than he was, half rose as Fern entered. His expression clearly said I’m supposed to be on my tea break, but he managed to say, with professional good will, ‘How can I help you?’

  Fern took in the pictures of house fronts all around the walls, their prices and dimensions underlined, as if they were hopefuls who’d joined a property dating agency. ‘Actually . . . you can’t help me,’ she said, and turned around.

  I mustn’t interfere. I must not interfere.

  Stepping out into the street, Fern dodged back into the estate agent’s, crouching a little as she peered out of the window over a rack of property brochures.

  Across the road, in overalls, Hal ate a Twix and stared in at a chemist’s window.