The Soul Room

by Corinna Edwards-Colledge

  'Oh John.' I knew what was coming, felt empathy clutch at me, bringing my demons behind it.

  ‘I just didn’t see her. She wasn't there when I got in the tractor...’

  'It wasn't your fault. It was an accident.'

  'So everybody said, but I know that if I’d just got out to check behind me, or had sounded the horn…she’d still be alive. I should have double-checked, there were kids around. After that I couldn't stay. I couldn't be around my family, couldn’t bear to see their faces, even though they never blamed me. Life became a nightmare.'

  'So you joined the police. That was your penance?'

  'I couldn't take back what I had done, but at least as a copper I could stop bad things happening to other people. I was doing well I thought, until you came along.'

  'What do you mean?'

  'Because you started to make me think about myself again, to accept that I was lonely, you opened up a part of me that had been locked away for years.’

  'And what was wrong with that?.

  'It wasn't part of the deal I'd made with myself.'

  ‘So you believed that you deserved nothing? No happiness at all?'

  'At first.' He looked up at me briefly. Despite his size, at that moment he looked childlike, a little lost. 'And then you started to soften me. At last I started to believe I could have some joy for myself, that maybe I'd done my time. And then that afternoon, in your living room, when we kissed; I burst open, everything in me was exposed at last. It scared me, but it was exhilarating too.'

  'And then I told you about my step daughter.'

  'I saw it as a message. I’d overstepped the mark. How could you love me after you found out? You'd lost a child because of someone else’s negligence. You'd look at me in the same way as they did. Maybe not with hate; but at least with pity and embarrasment.'

  'Never.'

  'You say that - but do you really know?'

  'We're the same John, we've been to the same place. Maybe that's one of the reasons we were drawn to each other in the first place. I feel responsible for my step-daughter's death as surely as if I'd been driving that car, but at the end of the day, it wasn't my fault, it was an accident. Come here...please!' He hesitated, but eventually came over to me and I pulled him towards me and kissed him.

  Brighton 2007

  I woke up, feeling disorientated. It took me a few seconds to remember that I was back in Brighton, back in my Dad’s house. For a moment, I had the crazy notion that everything that had happened to me over the last year had been a dream. I felt around in front of me on the sofa for Jacopo; he wasn’t there and my heart fluttered. The cushion was cool. I sat up, wincing with soreness, blood buzzing in my head. As my mind sharpened, and I accepted that I had a real baby, and he had gone; my next thought was that he must have rolled off the sofa. I scanned the floor with a sense of rising panic.

  Dad was sat in a big rocking chair by the French doors that opened on to the garden. The dappled shadows from the light coming through the clematis around the door played across his face. Jacopo was peacefully asleep in his arms, his lips pursing as if dreaming of milk.

  'God; Dad, you scared me!' He carried on looking through to the garden, rocking gently, his cheeks were glossy with tears. 'Dad what is it? What's the matter?' Still he didn't reply, I started to get up off the sofa.

  'No!' He said suddenly, making Jacopo stir. 'Please, stay there. It's OK'

  I longed to take Jacopo off him, his presence tugged at me from across the room. Something didn't feel right. He's your father, it's OK I told myself and sat back slowly.

  'I wanted to be with him.'

  'That's OK Dad, I understand.'

  'He's my grandson after all.' He said in a strange staccato voice, looking round at me.

  'Yes Dad, that's right.'

  He held my gaze, his eyes were wide open and unblinking. His grip on Jacopo seemed to tighten a little. 'That's OK then. Just thought I should check.'

  'What are you talking about Dad? How could he not be your grandson?' Then I finally twigged. After everything that happened to me in the last few days I hadn’t properly processed what my father had been through 'I'm so sorry that you found out about Mum and Dan like this. You must be...'

  'The two of you, why did you have to poke and pry? Why couldn't you just leave things be? It was better that way!'

  'Sometimes you just have to know.'

  He turned his head away and I could tell he was crying again. Jacopo started to murmur.

  'I think he needs a feed.'

  'He's OK

  'No really, I should have him now.'

  'He's OK, I told you.'

  The buzzing started up in my head again, I got up slowly.

  'Looking back I think I knew,' he said softly, 'at least I thought she may have had an affair to get back at me.' There was an edge to his voice that checked me and I sat back down. 'I'd known things weren't great for a while, but I pretended to myself we were muddling through. I can't believe I was so stupid, so cowardly - but I paid the price; and so did she, poor woman! When we were there on holiday, I could see what was happening, the extra attention he paid her. Never anything obvious you understand - just little things. But more than anything I saw how it made her feel; how her eyes shone, how her smile lit up her whole face again like it had used to. I couldn't remember the last time I'd made her look that way.'

  'Dad she loved you , you know she did.'

  'Shush Maddie please!' He rocked Jacopo a little vigorously making him whimper, soon it would turn to real tears. I couldn't bear it, but I thought better of trying to stop him, after all these years of repression I suddenly realised that he could be on the edge of something catastrophic. He had always been the strong one, the rock, there for us all, to keep us steady. I had to let him speak. 'I hoped against hope that a little bit of harmless flirting would give her what she needed;’ he continued, ‘shore her up against the disappointment of our relationship for a few more years.

  I was too scared to confront her, too scared that she might leave me. When Dan was born I convinced myself that he was mine. We had made love once on that holiday so it was possible. But there was always that doubt; I looked for differences, I saw them. I loved him, maybe just the same as if I had known for sure he was mine. I've never had it in me to hate a child, he would have won me over either way. And he gave me and your Mum a second chance. I got to make things better - help out more - pay her more attention - listen to her properly, spoil her sometimes. She seemed grateful for it, happier at times. To find out now the secret she kept for my sake, what it did to her. To be in that man's house - to have talked to him - sent my daughter to him - now, to be holding my grandson and know his blood is in his veins it's more...'

  'Dad please!' I was sobbing now, 'give him to me please! He's crying, he needs me!'

  Jacopo was screaming, his face screwed up, his fists beating the air. Dad turned and stared at me, his face wild as if he had just been distracted from looking at something horrific. He got up and walked over carefully, handed him to me with shaking hands.

  'He's so beautiful, I love him, I would never...' he put his face in his hands, 'it's just been such a terrible shock.'

  'I know Dad, I know, it's OK.' Shaking too, I held Jacopo against my chest and he nuzzled softly in the nape of my neck. I reached out with my spare arm and grasped my father's hand. 'You are wonderful, you have loved us all unconditionally. You made mistakes with Mum, were complacent sometimes perhaps, but you can't blame yourself for that man's monstrosity. He’s taken enough from this family already. We can’t let him destroy us Dad – we can’t let him take our future. That at least we can do for Mum, that’s what she would want, she’d want us to fight it and keep going as a family.'

  He took my hand and kissed it. We stood there in silence for a moment, listening to a pigeon hooting its soft serenade to the lowering evening sun.

  Brighton, seven years later

  It’s a sunny morning. It's my turn for a lie-
in and I can hear Jacopo laughing downstairs with John. I doze, half dreaming, half listening to the birds singing outside, the sound of the first stirrings of life - cars starting, dogs barking, a kid rattling down the road on a skateboard.

  A little later Jacopo appears at the door, beaming.

  'Dad says we can have chocolate biscuits!'

  'Ooh lovely, what a treat.'

  'It's because it's a Saturday and because I fed the cats.'

  'I see, well done.'

  He clambers into the bed with me. His feet are cold. He's all wiry now, long and lean and strong. He cuddles up in the crook of my arm, his head nestled neatly under my chin. Suddenly he sits up - a look of delight and surprise on his face. He drags the duvet down, pulls up my top a little and rests both his hands on my belly. He pauses, then: 'Ah ha!' He laughs out loud.

  'What is it sweetheart?' I look at him quizzically.

  He looks down, kisses the palm of his hand and rests it again on my stomach.

  ‘Go back to sleep Mum!’

  ‘Why?’

  'Because she's waiting for you!' he replies with a smile