Stop at Nothing

by Tammy Cohen

  The nerve of her.

  ‘Absolutely right, I wouldn’t. And if you don’t mind, I’m busy trying to earn a living. I don’t know if you’ve heard, but my husband left me, so money is quite tight.’

  ‘Look, I don’t blame you for being antagonistic, Tessa, though I had hoped it might be easier after so long.’

  Her voice was lower than I’d imagined. But then I’d only ever heard it one time. Screaming at me, ‘Once and for all, can you just leave us alone!’

  It’s ironic, because I hadn’t even been doing anything that time, just walking past. It was just the final straw that broke the camel’s back, after all the phone calls, and the letters that used to pour out of me in the middle of another sleepless night which I’d stuff through their letterbox, a coat pulled on over my pyjamas.

  I have no excuses, really. Except that it just seemed like the end of everything. I felt as if my life was imploding, like one of those black holes that swallow themselves up, folding in on themselves until they don’t exist.

  It wasn’t Phil I was so scared of losing. It was me.

  Now, when I think back to the woman I was then, I don’t recognize her.

  ‘I’m here about Rosie,’ said Joy, and I felt a quickening of my heart, remembering the link I’d sent and thinking how badly Rosie must have taken it to have sent Joy here on her behalf.

  I stood back to let Joy inside, wishing that Dotty wouldn’t give her quite such an ecstatic welcome and feeling childishly pleased when I saw strands of white fur clinging to her expensive-looking trousers.

  I took her into the living room, reluctant for her to see the kitchen which I considered the heart of the house, where Em’s exam schedule and various family photos were stuck to the fridge.

  She didn’t have the right to see who I was when I was most myself.

  Joy glanced at the dark grey sofa with its dusting of dog hairs before opting for the leather armchair instead. She was so perfectly put together. Her figure neat and firm – well, she did meet my husband in the gym, after all.

  Up close, she wasn’t exactly pretty – her features were too heavy for that. But she was what would once have been called handsome. Her make-up was that understated, ‘natural’ look that I knew took hundreds of pounds’ worth of cosmetics to achieve. Her nails were neatly manicured. I was momentarily thrown by the long scratch on the back of her right hand before remembering that she ran an upmarket florist’s.

  I sat down opposite her on the sofa, trying not to mind my toothpaste-spattered sweatpants and ancient jumper. At least I wasn’t wearing one of Phil’s old T-shirts he’d left behind. He’d told me to bin them but I hadn’t got around to it and occasionally threw one on. Just for old times’ sake.

  Worry for Rosie wound itself around my heart but I forced myself to remain silent. Let Joy be the one to speak first. I imagined Rosie had sent her to fetch me, as I no longer had a car. And I’m not proud to admit that there was a part of me that relished the idea of the woman who’d replaced me having to ask for my help, forced to acknowledge that when Rosie was at her neediest it was her mother she turned to.

  ‘Look, Tessa, I know we got off to a rocky start, which is probably only to be expected, given the circumstances. But I want you to know I love Rosie and Emma very much. They’re very special girls. And I want the best for them, just as you do. Isn’t it time we put aside our differences and worked together, for their sakes?’

  Joy was sitting in the chair, her long legs together and sort of folded to the side, like Princess Diana, I swear to God.

  I focused on her legs and the way she was sitting and how I’d read somewhere that the royals sat like that so that there was no chance of an intrusive camera lens capturing more than it should, because I didn’t want to hear what Joy had to say and be forced to agree with her. Not on anything.

  Her expectant smile dimmed as my silence stretched on.

  ‘It’s not the same man,’ she said suddenly.

  Now, I looked up.

  ‘The link you sent. The DJ. That’s not Rosie’s new boyfriend. In fact, she couldn’t believe you’d imagine he’d be her type. She’s actually pretty upset about it.’

  ‘But—’

  Whatever I was about to say was washed away by a wave of conflicting emotions. Relief that Rosie wasn’t, after all, mixed up with Stephens combined with anguish at how far this would set back our tentative rapprochement and, underneath it all, the thin whine of panic about what it meant that I’d made such a colossal misjudgement.

  I stood up.

  ‘I’ll go to her now.’

  ‘No, Tessa, I’m afraid you can’t.’

  The fury I’d been keeping at bay swept over me like a rash.

  ‘You don’t intimidate me, Joy. Rosie needs me.’

  Still, Joy remained seated.

  ‘I’m really sorry, Tessa, but Rosie doesn’t want to see you right at the moment. She says she wants a break from the drama.’

  I took a step back.

  ‘Drama? But that’s ridiculous. Everything I’ve done for the last two decades has been about creating a calm, happy life for my children. Everything.’

  ‘Well, don’t forget you had a career as well. It wasn’t only about the children.’

  ‘Don’t you dare judge me for that. You, of all people.’

  Joy held up her hands in surrender.

  ‘I’m not judging. Not at all. I admire you for the way you managed to carve out a name for yourself at work and bring up a family at the same time. It’s not easy. I didn’t go back to work until the twins were in secondary school – I couldn’t have managed, so I take my hat off to you. Genuinely. All I’m saying is that your job must have been very exciting, a real adrenaline rush, and since you haven’t been working—’

  ‘I’m what? Creating drama purposely by pissing off my own kids?’

  Was I so angry because I could hear the echo of that school mums’ WhatsApp conversation? Sometimes I think Tessa thrives on the drama. Who’d said that? Mel? Ayesha?

  ‘No, not at all. Look, I’m not expressing myself very well. I’m just saying there was bound to be a period of readjustment after you left work, where things might not have gone completely to plan.’

  ‘And do you think maybe my husband having an affair and walking out on me might have made that readjustment just a tiny bit harder?’

  Joy sighed. Close up, her face looked a lot older than it had appeared all those times I’d watched her from across the street, with a latticework of fine lines fanning out from her eyes and upper lip.

  Phil must really love her. The thought arrived with a painful jolt. Up until now, I’d convinced myself, in some deep part of me, that it was her physical attractions that had drawn him in and that once he got used to those, or they lost their appeal, he’d grow bored and regret the choices he’d made.

  But now I could see that she was just ordinary. Like me. Sure, she made the very best of herself, but underneath the perfect make-up and the gym-toned skin she was just another middle-aged woman with black shadows on the inside corners of her eyes muddling through, as we all were.

  I felt something shift inside my head, a realigning of the tectonic plates of my hostility and sense of betrayal. There was a gap created after they’d moved that I probed carefully, as with a missing tooth, finding there, in place of the hatred, a curious indifference that felt almost like peace.

  ‘Rosie will come around in time,’ Joy said wearily but not unkindly. ‘She’s a strong character. Just like her mother, I suspect. But this is her first experience of being in love and she just wants everything to be perfect. Give her some space. She loves you an awful lot.’

  I don’t know if it was the generosity of that last sentence, or that gentle, unexpectedly James Stewart-esque adjective ‘awful’, or just the fact that someone, anyone, was offering me some comfort, telling me it would be all right, or just the bloody hormones again, but I found myself suddenly weeping.

  ‘I just want to turn bac
k time, you know?’ I said between sobs. ‘Just wrench back the fucking clock. Why can’t I do that? Why?’

  I knew on some level, even then, that I would regret this the next day. Falling apart in front of Joy, of all people. But now I’d abandoned myself to it there was no way to stop, like sliding down a sandbank, the only option to close my eyes and just give myself over to falling. If Joy had come closer, or made some attempt to comfort me, humiliation would have cracked me clean in two like a coconut, but to her credit she stayed calmly on her side of the coffee table while I grieved for a life I hadn’t realized I wanted until after I’d let it go.

  I am in a soft-play centre called World of Fun. It is hell on earth.

  I sit at a table that is bolted to the floor and sip vending-machine coffee that tastes like hot and nothing else. But Henry is loving it, and every time I look at his face, shiny with excitement, with those two perfect circles of pink in his cheeks like a storybook child, I know that I would do this a hundred days in a row, two hundred, just to see him so happy.

  I have my phone out and I am scrolling through social media. I have developed a habit now. First, I go through my own pages. And then yours.

  I do Twitter first. You have retweeted a couple of things. A clip of a comedian I’ve never heard of, a joke about Brexit.

  Then I go on to Instagram. And my heart stops.

  There is a photograph of Matt. My Matt. He is wearing a T-shirt we bought together on our honeymoon in New York. It was the happiest I’d ever been in my life. I’d waited so long to be with the love of my life. But he was so worth it. In the picture he is smiling in that half-dreamy Matt way, his lips full under a two- or three-week black beard. I hated that beard. But God, I loved that mouth.

  Underneath the picture you have written: Thinking of my mate Matt – kind, funny, great listener, terrible cook. Nearly a year since we lost him and I still think of him every day. Please, guys, talk about how you’re feeling. Don’t bottle it up. #Samaritans #SuicidePreventionLine #BetterOutThanIn #MissYouMatt

  For a moment I think I will vomit. Right here on this plastic, wood-effect table. With the air ringing with the screams of excited children.

  Your photo has twenty-seven likes, and three comments. Dude, I know this particular pain well. You’re not alone, reads the last one.

  Matt continues to smile out at me from my phone screen. I see the scar on the bridge of his nose from a long-ago motorbike crash, and the chickenpox dent above his left eyebrow. I remember how it felt those weeks before he died when he stopped smiling at me. When there were only pleas and anger and accusations and more pleas. He’d aged ten years in just a couple of months, looking nothing like this relaxed, smiling Matt in the photo.

  ‘Mummy, watch me!’ commands Henry, standing feet apart on a yellow padded plastic platform, looking, in his Superman outfit, like he has just conquered a mountain rather than climbed a three-foot-high red nylon net.

  So I do. I watch my boy. But I am thinking about you. I am thinking about the message you are sending me. That it is not over. It will never be over.

  32

  Three days after Joy’s visit I was still cringing whenever I remembered how I’d broken down in front of my husband’s girlfriend. Over the previous two days I’d cycled from anger with her for putting me in a position where I’d wound up indebted to her, to anger with myself for being so weak and then gratitude to her for being so tactful.

  Now, I felt strangely empty and realized it was due to the space at my core where my animosity towards Joy had once lived. Its loss left me feeling lighter, but unmoored, as if the slightest gust of wind could blow me away.

  The day after seeing Joy, I’d been racked with self-doubt, going over and over what had happened, wondering how I’d been so terribly wrong about Stephens and Rosie. Paranoia had made me jump to conclusions that seemed preposterous now I was able to think them through rationally. Stephens was about to have a baby. Would he really go to the lengths of seducing a young girl, just to get back at her mother? Plus, the timings were all out. I could see now that Stephens would have had to have planned to target Rosie from the second he found out about her. None of it made sense. And yet I’d been so quick to believe it.

  What else might I have talked myself into?

  But as the weekend had gone on I’d started to feel better. Even though Rosie still wasn’t returning my calls, I knew she was safe. And that was the main thing.

  By the Monday, I’d resolved to make a new start. I’d invited Nita over for a drink and a chat that evening. Since I’d told Frances the story of my crash with Rosie and her friends, it felt as if someone had pulled out the plug of shame that had been blocking up my throat and kept me from communicating with the school-mum network. I hadn’t forgotten what I’d read on that WhatsApp chat, but some of Rosie’s friends’ mothers had been my bedrock through the long, fraught years of the girls’ early childhoods. I’d frozen them out since the accident, out of shame. Now, belatedly, I wanted to seek them out to apologize and explain, and I needed Nita’s help to do it.

  I cleaned the house, realizing as I started just how long it had been since I last did it properly – when Frances came round on the day of the ID parade, maybe. There were balls of Dotty’s fur collected in corners and I found a couple of rogue kernels of popcorn under the coffee table. I scanned the CD rack and found a CD of Oasis that I hadn’t played in years and blasted it out while I ran Henry the Hoover around and Dotty hid behind furniture, the better to launch attacks on this age-old enemy.

  When this album was first in the charts, Phil and I had just moved in together – weekends where we wouldn’t get dressed from Friday night to Monday morning.

  Enough. Enough. Enough.

  I sang over the sound of the vacuum cleaner, the lyrics magically coming back to me through the lost years. Everything felt lighter, better, now I was free of the iron ball of resentment that had chained itself around my ankle ever since I first found out about Joy.

  I called Nick on impulse.

  ‘Want to meet for lunch?’

  Less than an hour later we were perched side by side on stools, looking out of the window of a tiny coffee shop in Lamb’s Conduit Street, ten minutes’ walk from the university where Nick had lectured for the last twenty-two years.

  ‘At least tenure lasts longer than marriage,’ I joked.

  His face froze.

  ‘You wouldn’t laugh if you knew how hard I tried to make my marriage work,’ he said coolly. ‘I loved my stepson so much. I’d have done anything to spare him from being hurt. After my divorce, I felt like such a failure.’

  I’d upset him. I was such an idiot.

  ‘I know what you mean. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to make light of it.’

  To my relief, he smiled and reached out to take my hand.

  ‘No, I’m sorry. For being a cantankerous old git.’

  The nerve endings in my fingers tingled where they touched his.

  ‘What happened with your ex?’ I asked, emboldened by the gesture of intimacy.

  Nick shrugged. ‘Out of the blue, she announced she wasn’t happy. Said she was going to take her boy to stay with her mum for a while as she needed space. Omitted to mention that she’d been screwing her ex-husband – one of my old friends, to add insult to injury – for the last six months. He was the love of her life, apparently. Sorry.’ He squeezed my hand. ‘Nothing less attractive than a bitter middle-aged man wanging on about his divorce.’

  Nick was supposed to leave after forty-five minutes but in the end it was well over an hour before he reluctantly rose to meet with a first-year undergraduate who had plagiarized his mid-term paper in its entirety from an online essay-mill site.

  ‘I honestly think they consider us to be such old crocks we don’t know how to check the internet,’ he said.

  I put on a puzzled face.

  ‘What is this internet of which you speak?’

  When I made my way home again I felt as if my very bones
were glowing.

  It was going to be all right. From now on, things would be okay again.

  Em came home from school and surveyed the newly mopped kitchen floor, the sofa with the plumped cushions.

  ‘Are you feeling well?’

  ‘Yes, why?’

  ‘All this housework. I thought you must be having a funny turn.’

  ‘Very droll.’

  I looked at Em fondly and she smiled, and for a minute or two it was just normal, a mother and daughter sharing a joke at the end of a school day. Then:

  ‘Oh, by the way, Frances is coming over in a bit. You don’t mind, do you?’

  I was taken aback by the twinge of annoyance that shot through me at the news. Not that I had anything against Frances. How could I, when she’d been so helpful? And of course, we owed her so much. It was just that I’d temporarily allowed myself to forget everything that had been going on, to feel as if I’d turned a corner. But Frances would bring it all with her. Treading Stephens into my freshly mopped floors and my newly vacuumed carpets.

  ‘No, of course not. She’s not staying long, though, is she? Only Nita’s coming over later …’

  ‘A quick catch-up, she said.’

  It was sweet, really, I told myself as I took Dotty out for her evening walk. Nice for Emma to have someone else to confide in who wasn’t family.

  But still, I wished she’d picked some other night.

  Frances had already arrived by the time we got back and was sitting with Emma at the kitchen table, the two of them talking in low voices, their heads close together. She had her hair up in a round, shiny brown knot like a large conker. She looked up and smiled, the gap between her front teeth coming as a surprise, as it always did.

  ‘Tessa. So good to see you.’

  I became aware of a pressure on my leg. Dotty pressing herself against my calf. Since she came home from wherever she’d been, her moods were unpredictable. Could dogs get PTSD? I wondered.

  We sat and chatted for a while, but I was conscious that Nita was coming over soon and I wanted to finish getting the house in shape. I was very fond of Nita, but it wasn’t the same as with Kath or Mari, where I knew they accepted me exactly the way I was. With Nita there was a conditionality. Not that I felt she’d judge me or I wanted to impress her, but it felt important that she should know I was capable. Respectable, if you like. It was like that with people you met through your kids, that sense of responsibility to present yourself in the best light, not to let the side down.