John had barely parked when Rory threw open the van door and jumped out. Just in time to see the front door to the house open, and a dishevelled-looking Belle come running out. She had her coat and bag clutched in her hand and her clothes looked wrong somehow. Make-up streamed down her face. She almost ran straight into Rory.
‘Mum! What are you…’ Her face crumpled into tears. ‘I’m so sorry, Mum. Everything is awful. I’m so sorry.’
Rory wrapped her arms around Belle tightly. Relief nearly made her legs crumple beneath her. Her baby was safe.
Gently, she held Belle away from her and looked into her face. ‘Are you okay? Are you hurt? What were you doing here?’
Belle hung her head. ‘Mum, please can you just take me home?’
Rory was torn between comforting her daughter and storming into the house to kill the boy inside. Belle was shivering in the cold evening. John got out and ushered them towards the van. Alfie would have to keep. Belle needed to get home.
John took off his jacket and put it around Belle’s shoulders. ‘Come on, love. I’ve got the heater up nice and warm.’
* * *
However hard Rory tried, Belle didn’t want to talk about what had happened. At least, she didn’t want to talk about it right now. All she wanted was to have a shower and go to bed.
John had tried to shoot off after taking them home, but Belle had asked him, practically begged him, to come in for a drink first. She was a clever girl. Rory couldn’t interrogate Belle whilst John was there. As soon as they’d got in, Belle disappeared upstairs to the shower.
John followed Rory out to the kitchen. She took four mugs and the hot chocolate powder out of the cupboard. John ran his hand along the counter. ‘You did a good job on this. Didn’t need me after all.’
Rory put a jug of milk into the microwave. She should confess to having recruited Call Me Adrian’s kitchen fitters. In her defence, she had put most of the remaining units together; it was just the levelling up she hadn’t managed. The walls in the kitchen were about as straight as Julian Clary. But she didn’t tell John that she had needed help. Just like tonight.
‘Only because I had a very good instructor. Shame I can’t get someone to show me how to manage a teenage daughter.’
Rory spooned hot chocolate powder into the mugs and filled them up with the hot milk. She counted sixteen marshmallows into Belle’s mug. Where had those years gone?
Being a teacher meant that she’d been around teenagers for half her life. The mood swings, the drama, the erratic behaviour. She had fooled herself into believing that she was doing a great job with Belle, but she had just been lucky up until now. Parenting a teenager was very different to teaching one. How had she got it so wrong?
John sipped the hot chocolate she gave him, grimaced at the sweetness, and put it down. ‘Don’t be so hard on yourself. I don’t think anyone finds it easy.’
Rory shrugged. ‘Fiona’s mother seems to manage it.’ She was not looking forward to the condescending looks she’d be getting from that direction in future. Maybe she deserved it.
‘Yeah, well. Appearances can be deceptive. I can remember the merry dance I led my own poor mother.’
John had mentioned this on the kitchen day, and Rory was eager for more details. Right now, she wanted to hear about anyone else who wasn’t perfect. ‘Really?’
John scratched the side of his head. For a moment, he looked like a young boy. ‘Yeah. Staying out late, not telling her where I was. The usual stuff. She was soft, my mum. I used to give her a hug and a kiss and she’d forgive me anything.’
Their relationship sounded like Rory’s with her dad. Her mum had always complained how she’d wrapped him around her little finger. ‘Did you never have contact with your father?’
‘No. That’s how I got to be so handy, fixing stuff. It was just me and Mum, so if something needed doing, we learned how to do it and we got on with it. She was pretty handy with a screwdriver.’
The way John spoke about his mother made it obvious how much he’d loved her. ‘She sounds great. I love a strong woman.’
John picked up the sickly sweet hot chocolate and scrutinised the marshmallows floating on the top. ‘Yes. Me too.’
Charlie came skidding into the room to get his hot chocolate. He looked from one mug to the other. ‘Why has Belle got more marshmallows than me?’
Rory shook her head. Was this what it was like to have two kids? ‘There’s a bag of marshmallows in the kitchen. Go and take some more. Then you can take your drink up to bed with you.’
John drank his hot chocolate in three gulps, shivered like he’d just done a tequila slammer, and stood up. ‘I’ll go. Let you talk to her.’ He paused. ‘Go easy on her, Rory.’
It was all right for him to say that. He wasn’t the one whose heart was breaking at the thought that her daughter had put herself into potential danger and Rory hadn’t even known about it. She was grateful that he’d been there, though. She could have found Belle on her own, but she was glad she hadn’t had to. ‘Thanks for helping me to find her and for bringing us home.’
As they made their way to the hallway, they could see a trail of marshmallows leading upstairs. Charlie must have snuck the bag up to his bedroom.
John pointed to them. ‘Just make sure they’ve both got a bag of marshmallows on them at all times from now on. Next time, we can follow the trail.’
* * *
Rory knocked softly on Belle’s door, but there was no answer. She pushed the door open gently. Belle was in bed, asleep, or doing a very good impression of it. Freshly washed and in her pyjamas, she looked like a little girl again. Rory’s little girl. But she wasn’t a little girl any more. Rory put the mug of hot chocolate on Belle’s bedside table and kissed the top of her head. The talk would have to wait till the morning. All she needed to do now was work out what she was going to say.
‘I love you, little girl.’ She whispered into Belle’s hair.
She crept back to the door.
‘I love you too, Mum.’ Belle whispered.
Chapter Thirty-Six
The next day, Rory woke up before her alarm and lay in bed for a while, staring at the ceiling. She was going to have to talk to Belle this morning and she wanted to make sure that she got it right this time.
First, she called her mum back to talk about George and Olive and fill her in on the two search parties. As she’d expected, her mum was cross.
‘Why didn’t you call me, Aurora?’
‘You couldn’t have done anything Mum and, anyway, you had enough to worry about with Olive.’
‘That’s not the point; you should have told me. I could have come with you. The thought of you driving around on your own: panicking. You might have had an accident.’
‘I wasn’t on my own.’ Might as well get it over with. ‘John was with me.’
There was a pause at the other end of the line.
‘John Prince?’
No. Rory wanted to say. John McEnroe. ‘Yes. John Prince.’
If it was possible to hear a smile breaking, Rory could have sworn she heard it. ‘Oh. Well. I’m glad. Glad that he was there to help you out.’
Rory had been glad, too. It had been such a tough day. She would never admit it to her mother, but maybe Sheila was right about this ‘need’ versus ‘want’ idea.
* * *
When Belle woke up, she was less hesitant than Rory had been in admitting that her mother was right.
‘Before you say anything, I know. You were right.’
That wasn’t how Rory had expected this conversation to begin. ‘Right about what?’
‘About men. About trusting them. About them all being after one thing.’
Rory felt winded. She hadn’t meant to give Belle that message. She had only wanted to protect her. Prevent her from making a mistake. Ensure that she was ready for a world which might hold some disappointments.
‘I never said that, Belle. I never told you not to trust men.’
This was too much to cope with at 7 a.m. Rory should be in the shower by now, but she couldn’t expect Belle to go to school as if nothing had happened.
‘Can we start with the events last night?’
Belle scrunched up her eyes and then opened them again. ‘Nothing happened last night.’
Rory put her hand up to her head. She was exhausted. ‘Belle, please.’
Belle jutted out her chin. And her hip. ‘I mean it. Nothing happened. We didn’t sleep together.’
Must not let the relief show on her face. Tread carefully. Teenagers are a volatile and unpredictable material. ‘But you had planned to?’
Belle’s face coloured. ‘Maybe. I don’t know. We’d talked about it but, I wasn’t sure. I do… did… think I loved him. But when it got to it, I just wasn’t ready.’
Slowly. Carefully. ‘And he didn’t try to… force you into anything?’
Belle shook her head. Then stopped. ‘He did try to persuade me a little bit. But I just kept saying not yet. And then…’ Her lip started to quiver.
Rory couldn’t bear it when the edges of Belle’s mouth turned down like that, but it was her fight to keep her voice from shaking that really churned Rory’s insides. ‘Then?’
Belle rubbed her nose. ‘Then he started to get cross. Well, angry.’
Rory was trying to keep a lid on the anger herself. ‘What did he say?’
‘He said I was being pathetic. Childish. That we were supposed to be a proper couple and I was just ruining everything.’
Rory had to squeeze her hands together to stop her from banging them down on the table. ‘And that’s when you left?’
Belle nodded. ‘That’s when I started to’ – she looked down at the floor – ‘to put my clothes back on and he… he said… he said…’ She started to cry.
Rory put her arms around Belle and pulled her in close. How could her baby girl be dealing with this already? Why hadn’t the world moved on by now? ‘Whatever he said will have been an absolute lie.’
Belle’s face was scrunched up against Rory so her voice was muffled. ‘He said that he was going to tell everyone that I had slept with him anyway and they would believe him. And he’d tell them that I was really rubbish and didn’t know what I was doing.’ She started to sob.
There was no way Rory could leave her and go into work. She would just have to be late for once. Let Nathan Finch call her into his office and complete one of his stupid ‘why I was late to work’ forms if she had to. Right now, she needed to be here with Belle. She laid her cheek on the top of her daughter’s head. ‘More hot chocolate?’
A soggy face nodded into Rory’s chest.
* * *
Rory called St Anthony’s to let them know she was delayed, packed Charlie off to school and then made hot chocolate for herself and Belle. Extra marshmallows.
‘Before we start to talk about this…’ Bastard? Demon? Excuse for humanity? ‘…boy, I think I need to apologise to you and clear up a few things.’
Belle nearly choked on a marshmallow. ‘Apologise? What for?’
This wasn’t going to be easy. ‘I think I may have… overdone the whole “life is not a fairy tale” thing.’
Belle put her mug down. ‘No, Mum. You were right. If I had been a bit more…’
Rory held up a hand. ‘You do not need to be a bit more of anything. You are absolutely exactly as you should be. A little naïve, maybe. But no more than any girl of sixteen. I think that I kept on about the fairy tale thing because I didn’t want you to be disappointed. To be hurt. To be…’
‘Like this?’ Belle gave a wry smile. ‘Didn’t really work out too well, did it, Mum?’
Rory put her hand onto Belle’s cheek and stroked her face with her thumb. ‘No, my lovely girl, it didn’t.’
Belle covered Rory’s hand with her own. ‘I’ll be okay, Mum.’
There was a lump the size of a fist in Rory’s throat. ‘Of course you will be, sweetheart. You will be absolutely fine. And I want you to know how proud I am that you stood up for what you wanted. Some girls are not that strong. They end up doing something they regret and that can make life complicated.’
‘Is that how you feel about Dad?’
Rory was surprised. Where had that come from? ‘Your dad? No. Definitely not. I loved your dad. And he loved me. I think. In his own “Scott” kind of way.’
‘So why didn’t it work out?’
‘We were really young, Belle. We probably weren’t ready to be parents. And we were both far too young to commit to one person.’
‘You mean Dad went with other women. I’m not a baby, Mum. I know what he’s like.’
‘It wasn’t just his fault. When your grandad died – my dad – I was pretty angry for a while.’ Pretty angry was an understatement. There had been a large glass table and several items of crockery which hadn’t survived that period of her life. Scott was definitely no saint, but he hadn’t been the one throwing breakable items around.
‘But you regret getting pregnant young and you were worried that I would be an air-head fairy tale princess who would end up doing the same.’
Rory sat back and looked at her daughter. When had she become so wise? Rory’s mum was right, Belle wasn’t a child any more. Perhaps that was part of the problem. Rory hadn’t seen that. She took her time before answering.
‘Maybe I did want to protect you. Make sure you were ready for the reality of life. But if you are asking me if I regret getting pregnant, the answer is no, Belle. Definitely not. How could I ever regret something that brought me someone as wonderful as you?’
Belle smiled. It took Rory’s breath away. It was like looking at herself, twenty-two years ago. ‘I am pretty wonderful, aren’t I?
Rory laughed and hugged her. She was going to be okay.
She held Belle out at arm’s length. ‘And I want to be clear about something. I don’t think all men are the same. Your grandad is a good example. He was a very good man.’
‘And John.’
If that fluttering feeling didn’t go away soon, Rory was going to the doctor. ‘John Prince?’
‘Granny says John reminds her of Grandad. And John’s a good man too, isn’t he?’
Rory smelled a conspiracy. She was going to kill her mother. ‘Yes. He has been very good to us.’
‘So maybe you could stop telling yourself that life is not a fairy tale, too.’
Rory sighed. How was she going to get out of this one?
Last night had been truly awful. But John had been wonderful. Having someone to share some of the worry, to help to find a solution, to tell her she was doing all right – it had helped more than she could have imagined. When they had talked about his mum she had felt… a closeness? She shook her head. That was just his way. He was a helper. That’s what he did. To read more into it was setting herself – and her mother and daughter – up for a disappointment.
‘Belle, John isn’t interested in me. He is a kind man and I am grateful, but there is nothing between us other than friendship.’
But Belle wasn’t to be put off that easily. ‘Do you honestly not like him, Mum? Do you promise me?’
Damn her clever daughter. She knew that Rory would not promise something she didn’t mean. They had never promised anything to each other that they couldn’t keep or that wasn’t true. Rory couldn’t promise Belle that she didn’t have feelings for John. But she couldn’t tell her how she did feel, because she didn’t really know herself. Just avoid answering. Change the subject.
‘Look, you don’t need to go to college today if you don’t want to.’
Belle groaned and leaned back on the sofa. You could always rely on the self-absorbed nature of teenagers if you wanted to distract them. ‘What if he’s told everyone we slept together? What am I going to do?’
‘Actually…’ Rory smiled; she
had been thinking about this when she’d gone to sleep last night. In between fantasising about which part of Alfie she would like to dismember first. ‘I might have an idea about that.’
But before she could explain, her mobile rang. It was Susie.
‘Where the hell are you? We got the call!’
Chapter Thirty-Seven
‘The Call’ is known to all teachers. The school inspectors are required to phone a school before midday on the day before they arrive. When that call comes, it sends a school into panic. Susie told Rory that the whispers had gone around during Period One: ‘We got the call! We got the call!’ When Rory arrived at school, the senior leadership team were congregated in the head’s office – not to be disturbed. Occasionally, one of them would scuttle out and collect some folders or ask someone a question. Then they would scuttle back into the enclave. No one saw Derek Brown or Nathan Finch until lunchtime. Rory imagined them with a huge floor plan of the school laid out on the conference table, pushing miniature versions of the teaching staff around with a long stick.
When they did emerge, it was to make an announcement in the staffroom at lunchtime. The room was packed. You could smell fear. Derek had readjusted his tie about three times, but Nathan Finch was the picture of calm. He was the one who led the briefing.
‘As you may have heard, we had a call this morning from the inspectors to let us know that they will be arriving at 8 a.m. tomorrow. Their visit will last either one or two days. On the first day, they will visit lessons and meet with myself, Mr Brown and the rest of the senior leadership team. The lead inspector would like me to underline to you that you are not to change anything that you were planning to do tomorrow; they would like to see your lessons delivered as planned.’ He looked slowly round the room with a face which contradicted that last sentence in its entirety. ‘But I would also like you to know that we are keeping the school open until ten o’clock tonight, in case you have any work you would like to get finished before you go home tonight.’
Happily Never After_A laugh-out-loud romantic comedy Page 22