‘No!’ she replied, before whispering again, ‘Freddie said he loves me.’
I tapped the empty side of the bed next to me, and she laid down and told me all about it, the excitement in her voice touching.
I’m so relieved that my daughter’s first experience of falling in love is with Freddie. He’s the perfect boyfriend. Tall like her, sporty unlike her – Flo says he’s in the first team in tennis, cricket and rugby. He’s polite and kind, even offers to do the drying-up after meals. But the best thing about these two is they’re great friends already. There has been none of that ‘Why won’t he call me, Mum?’ or ‘I’m not sure he likes me anymore’.
With Freddie it’s been extraordinarily straightforward. He has been in love with Flo for months but Flo was adamant she only wanted to be friends, until eventually his persistence paid off.
They spend most of their time hanging out at each other’s houses. When they’re here, they play music and chat in Flo’s bedroom. They spend a lot of time not chatting too, before coming downstairs for supper with flushed faces, zips undone or buttons skew-whiff.
I catch the subtle glances, the little touches, Flo playing with her hair and Freddie reaching for her hand when he thinks I’m not looking. It’s a special time for them because they’re learning about love for themselves, instead of watching it on TV or reading about it in books.
‘Who was your first boyfriend, Mum?’ she asked, resting her head on my shoulder.
How I wished I could come up with an innocent and romantic story like theirs, of a young boy who had also made me discover how love makes the world seem a brighter place.
When I feel overwhelmed by guilt that I haven’t told Flo about my teenage years, I try to reassure myself that equally Flo hasn’t had to worry about me in the same way I used to worry about my father. If I can give my daughter a relatively trouble-free childhood for as long as possible, then at least I’ll have done something right.
Instead, I confided to Flo that her old mum has been a late starter. I used to go out with a chap called Ben when I first went to art school. He and I worked together in a bar and used to stay up late, chatting, after everyone had gone home. I didn’t tell her that I more than made up for lost time by having a series of one-night stands and dating a string of unsuitable men, Ben being one of them.
‘Have you ever loved anyone, Mum?’
‘I love you,’ I said, which received a ‘that’s not what I mean’ nudge.
‘You loved Graham, didn’t you?’ she persisted.
I nodded. ‘Yes. Very much.’ That part of my life feels a world away now, almost like it never existed. Flo has often asked why I haven’t met anyone else after Graham, and why he walked out on us. All I can do is give her the same old tired answer, which is that we knew in the end it wasn’t right, and that sometimes it takes courage to walk away no matter how painful it is.
She then asked me if I ever felt lonely, and why didn’t I go online to find a date.
‘Lots of people do it,’ she insisted. ‘You could meet the man of your dreams. You’re not a wrinkly old bag yet,’ she added, making me laugh. ‘Anyone would be lucky to have you, Mum, and your awesome macaroni cheese.’
I pulled her into my arms, saying I was lucky to have her, and that seeing her so happy was the greatest gift she could give me. I told her I prayed she’d go on to do art for her A levels, because she was very talented, just like her grandfather. But Flo wriggled from my grasp.
‘Sometimes I wish Mark wasn’t married, don’t you?’
‘He’s a good friend, that’s all,’ I said, realizing I wasn’t fooling myself, let alone Flo.
‘Freddie used to be a good friend. Now look at us. You’ve always said friendship is the most important—’
‘He’s married, darling.’
‘I see the way he looks at you when he comes here for coffee, Mum. He can’t take his eyes off you.’
‘Oh, Flo, we’re fond of one another, that’s all.’
‘You look at him in the same way too.’ She crossed her arms defiantly, jutting out her chin. ‘It’s so obvious.’
‘He’s married’ was the only thing I could say again.
‘I know, but I can spot true love when I see it.’
‘Flo, that’s enough,’ I said, not wanting to offer her false hope, even if there have been many times when I’ve found myself wishing too that things could be different between Mark and me.
I know there is a connection, a spark. Aside from Graham, he is the only person who knows I’ve taken the test. He is the one person I can turn to when things get rough, and each time we meet our bond deepens. When I’m with Mark, I can truly be myself.
When he kisses me goodbye on the cheek, I feel a stab of regret and jealousy that he is going home to his wife. Alone, I can’t help but imagine what it might feel like to be the object of his affection.
Occasionally, I wonder if it would be easier not to see him, not to be around someone I can’t have. Yet a life without Mark isn’t a life I want. I’d rather have his friendship than nothing at all.
‘Mum, what’s wrong with your hand?’
‘Nothing,’ I said, steadying it immediately. My legs have recently felt restless too, but it could easily be this condition called ‘restless leg syndrome’. Apparently, it’s common.
I’m thirty-seven. Dad’s troubles began when he was forty, or possibly before that. Symptoms can go unnoticed, especially if you’re not looking for them. I’m probably looking out for mine too much. I’m sure it’s nothing. Maddie’s mother says her legs always feel restless, just when she wants to sit down and relax.
‘Mum? Are you all right?’ She was still looking at my hand.
‘All fine, just a twitch,’ I lied, hating myself for it. ‘Anyway, what did you have to eat tonight?’ I asked, desperate to change the subject.
The last time I saw Mark he told me it was natural to want to keep on protecting Flo for ever. As a father, all he wants is to iron out every single bump for his two sons.
‘But at some point I’m going to have to let them go over the bumps on their own,’ he’d said, ‘and hope they make it to the other side in one piece. You’ve got to trust her, Beth, trust that she can find a way to deal with it.’
He’s right. I think of all those times when I’ve dropped Flo off at a party and watched her disappear behind the front door in a skirt far too short for my liking, and I’ve had to trust that she’ll come home by ten as promised, and not once has she let me down. If she goes shopping with her friends, I trust they will stick together, not talk to strangers and take the tube or bus home together.
Flo is old enough to fall in love. She’s old enough to work part time – she has a waitressing job, and is currently saving up to go travelling across Europe by train next year. She has always been responsible, and in many ways far older and wiser than her years. I know it’s time I trusted her with my secret.
I’m going to tell her the moment she finishes her exams. I’ll pick the right time, and then I’ll talk to Mum.
The ironic thing is this isn’t so much about the HD anymore. It’s about not being in control. For years I have become an expert at parking all my worries and concerns. When I tell Flo and Mum, it will feel frighteningly real, and there will be no place for me to hide.
‘I want you to be as happy as me, Mum. Don’t you get lonely?’ she asked again.
I stroked her hair. Sometimes I feel so lonely it hurts.
‘No. I have everything I need right here.’ I squeezed her hand. ‘Now, you haven’t told me if you said you loved Freddie back.’
She nodded. ‘Oh, Mum, it was amazing,’ she said, and as she continued, I wished I could press a pause button to stop Flo growing up so quickly, and to stop my precious time with my daughter slipping through my fingers.
60
Flo
It’s early morning on the second Sunday of December, and I’m on week nine of my training programme, a week that James’s chart te
lls me is all about building endurance. My goal today is to run ten to twelve miles.
‘Holy shit,’ says Iona, my new running partner, who has just come over to train with me again. She looks out of my bedroom window. ‘Is it ever going to stop raining?’
James loves to remind me that he’s still in charge, but he can’t always be jogging by my side, especially since he’s now officially dating Chloe, so I’ve become more involved with a few of the other runners that I’ve met through the HDA charity. They set up a Facebook group page for all of us who secured a place in the marathon, to say hello and give each other tips and encouragement during our training, and when I discovered one of the runners, Iona, lived close to me, we decided to meet up.
During the past few weeks, we’ve trained together at weekends and occasionally after work, but the best thing about it is we’re as bad as each other. Iona must only be about five-foot tall, so she’s unable to take great big strides with her short plump legs, and so far as her technique goes, ‘I just keep on running,’ she wrote on our page, which immediately made me smile, along with the fact that she also confided that she still eats whatever she likes.
‘Swapping doughnuts for Hobnobs is about all I’ve done so far, but I’m not quitting booze. There is no way I’m not going to have a glass of wine after a crappy day at work,’ she’d written with a smiley face attached.
She also wasn’t too proud to admit that, when she had her gait tested, she was told it was so tragic she could break her ankles if she kept on running. ‘It’ll take a lot more than that for me to give up,’ was her reply.
Aside from the helpful tips we share, we also share our stories, which has been surprisingly cathartic. My running buddies and I may have nothing in common, yet we are all linked in some way by a rare condition, so Iona doesn’t need to ask what I’m going through, nor do I need to imagine how hard it is for her to know that she’s gene positive.
She took the test when she was twenty. She’s now twenty-two and engaged to be married next year, a few months after the marathon.
‘I need to get it over and done with first,’ she’d said. ‘Fingers crossed I won’t be carried up the aisle on a stretcher.’
‘Nearly ready,’ I say to her, before putting on my turquoise waterproof jacket that I begrudgingly bought a few weeks ago. Practical gear has queue-jumped stylish clothes. Iona is wearing a similar rain jacket, only hers is bright purple, along with leggings and trainers that almost match the colour of her striking red hair.
We set our watches to record our distance, speed and heart rate, though I’m trying not to beat myself up over my times anymore.
Iona’s attitude has really helped. She’s running for her Dad, she reminds me. Her best friend, who used to be a piano tuner and loves the unlikely combination of classical music and the heavy metal band Iron Maiden, her father who is in a nursing home in the later stages of HD.
I walk past James’s room; his bed wasn’t slept in again last night. He was at a party with Chloe. For a moment I miss him, wondering what he’ll be doing today, and wondering what she’s like. Things appear to be getting serious between them.
Outside Iona touches my arm. It’s a pat of solidarity. It’s asking ‘Are you ready?’
And we’re off.
*
I feel sore. Every part of my body aches, but I tell Iona the pain isn’t quite as bad as the run before. ‘We must be getting fitter?’
‘You are, we are,’ she says, as we grab a table with the comfiest-looking chairs at a café close to Iona’s flat where we are to have some brunch together before she visits her father.
‘Feels good, doesn’t it?’ I reflect, finally realizing why people do catch the bug. Exercise really does release endorphins.
What might I be doing otherwise? Sitting at home, worrying. Feeling anxious and depressed. Watching TV. Instead, we’ve just jogged to Richmond Park, and all the way back to Earls Court. We saw deer, we saw dog walkers also braving the wind, rain and cold, and we cheered on other runners.
Slowly, I’m beginning to feel like I belong in a group. I imagine it’s the same for dog walkers. You become part of a pack.
‘Dad’s expecting me at about half one,’ Iona says, as we order two plates of eggs Benedict, coffee and freshly squeezed orange juice, Christmas music playing in the background. ‘Not that he’d actually notice if I were late; he doesn’t even know what day it is now.’
‘How is he?’ I ask.
‘Happy enough.’ She shrugs. ‘He didn’t want to go into a home to begin with – it terrified him – but he’s safe and well cared for.’
Iona found out about her father’s HD when she was twelve. Her mum told her, but what she didn’t add was that Iona had a chance of inheriting the gene. In so many ways her childhood was similar to Mum’s. Both Iona and my mother knew about their fathers, but what was never discussed was how it could potentially affect them.
It was the elephant in the room.
Iona only worked it out after learning about genetics in a science class in school when she was fourteen, but she was still too frightened to bring it up with her mother.
HD was fast becoming this big scary monster that made her father, normally so even-tempered, fly into rages, one time cutting up her mum’s clothes before threatening to attack her with the kitchen scissors too.
No one in her family talked about it – it was easier not to – and yet it was there, in bold. It was only when Iona was sixteen that finally she broke down in tears in front of her mum, saying, ‘Why didn’t you tell me this could happen to me too?’
‘How are the wedding plans going?’ I ask.
‘Great. We’re keeping it dead simple, Flo. I don’t understand these people who get into a right old tizzy planning it. Steve and I are inviting fifty people; it’ll be fish and chips, bubbly and dancing.’
‘Sounds perfect. How did you two meet?’
She grins, as if I’m going to like this story. ‘It was four years ago. I was eighteen and miserable, Flo, in therapy, trying to work out if I wanted to take the test or not. I was just like you, one minute thinking I wanted to, but changing my mind the next. I was all over the shop. You know what it’s like.’
I nod, knowing only too well.
‘Anyhow, we went out on a date and I told him about Dad’s HD, sparing no details. I told him that it was so bad I’d self-harmed.’
‘That’s brave of you to admit that. Especially on a first date.’
‘Nah, it wasn’t brave. It was the drink talking. Apparently I said to him, “I’ll be the worst mistake you ever make, Steve”.’ Iona cringes just thinking about it. ‘He bundled me into a cab home. “That went well,” I thought, thinking another man bites the dust. The thing is, a lot of men had messed me around before that, and I’d always thought it was the HD, but it wasn’t. It was either me getting plastered and pushing them away, or they were just arseholes.’
‘Back to Steve,’ I say, enjoying the story since I know it has a happy ending.
‘So he calls me the next day and asks me how my hangover is, and if it’s better, would I like to go on another date.’
Steve is surely the mayor of the island where the right people live.
‘I know,’ she says, clocking my surprise. ‘I was as stunned as you are, but he’s a decent bloke, a caring one too without being soppy. He came to all my genetic counselling appointments with me.’
‘Did he want you to take the test?’
‘Yes, but only because he knew I was going mad not knowing. That’s what made my decision easier in the end. If I tripped or fell or my legs felt restless, I’d think “Could this be the start of it?” The second-guessing, the paranoia, became impossible to deal with. I felt as if my life was constantly on hold. Finding out was the biggest weight lifted off my shoulders.’
‘Even though—’
‘Yes, even though. The night after we found out I tested positive wasn’t easy, I’m not gonna lie. Steve and I were lying in bed wit
h our eyes wide open, thinking “holy shit” but then we just turned to one another, sat up, switched the light on and began to draw up a list of all the things we needed to think about and plan. My dad got Mum into a whole lot of debt because he couldn’t manage his money, so one of the first things I put on that list was to save for the future. I didn’t want us to buy a house with a massive mortgage. That’s why we’re not having a huge fairy-tale wedding either.’
‘That makes sense,’ I admit, just as our food arrives.
‘You think you can’t cope, Flo,’ Iona says more gently. ‘There were days during my counselling when I’d hear this snide voice inside my head saying, “If you find out you’re positive, are you sure you won’t self-harm again?” I knew I could only take that test if I were the strongest version of myself, and I was lucky too, because I had Steve and my mum and all my friends supporting me. People in Dad’s day disowned him. Just years ago we’d have been locked up in a loony bin. I don’t regret taking the test for a minute.’ She stops, recovers her breath. ‘Sorry, I’ve been rambling on and on about myself.’
‘No, it helps talking about it. You’re amazing, Iona.’
‘Nah, I’m not.’
‘You are.’ And so is Steve. He is cut from a different cloth to Theo.
‘Well, so are you then,’ she says, as if that’s settled. ‘How are you feeling about it all? When’s your next appointment with Dr Fraser?’
‘Next month, just after Christmas.’ It will be my third one. ‘I still don’t know what to do.’
‘Do you know what helped me in the end?’
‘Go on.’
‘Thinking about HD in a scientific way. It’s not some big hairy monster that’s out to get us. It’s a genetic problem. Steve is constantly tweeting the scientists, asking about the latest treatments.’
‘James does that too.’
If You Were Here Page 21