I’d stopped mentioning things about my childhood a long time ago. Dan used to look at me with this bizarre mixture of pity and love, like he couldn’t understand that I’d never ridden a bike, or been on a holiday, or been to the beach. Whenever I had that childlike joy at something he’d examine me, wondering if it was a new experience, or I was just excited. That look made me feel like a weirdo.
‘Actually, I was hoping to make amends. Leave the past in the past. Forgive and move on.’ I tried not to throw it in his face: You told me I didn’t forgive, you told me I wallowed. Here I am, facing things head on. Love me, love me again. I’m doing what you want.
‘She was a monster, Taz.’
‘You never even met her.’
‘You said the night she left she emptied out all your pocket money and took your hamster!’
‘Well, I was a child, maybe Hammie died, or she left the cage open. It might have been a coincidence.’
I’d forgotten about the hamster. A kid on the estate was selling them for a fiver. I’d saved up all my pennies. I’d smuggled him in with a shoebox and Sharon next door gave me her old cage. I loved that hamster. It was weeks before Mum even noticed.
‘A house full of vermin, excellent,’ was all she said when she saw him. And once at night, ‘You don’t love that rat more than me, Tasha, do you? You love Mummy more than your rat?’
‘He’s a hamster, Mum.’
‘That’s not an answer, Natasha.’
She was holding me so tight, tucked up in bed, and yet I had this feeling that if she didn’t like my answer, Hammie was going to disappear. She didn’t like competition.
‘I would have come with you, Taz,’ Dan’s voice cut through the memory. ‘If you’d told me it was important, I would have come.’
I tried to find a way to say it without being accusatory. ‘You’ve taken enough time off work already. It’s clear they need you back there. And with these late nights I didn’t know when you’d be free.’
He didn’t say anything.
‘I… it’s best I deal with it myself, just get it sorted. I’ll hear her out, let her say sorry. Ask about the hamster maybe.’ I tried to laugh but it sounded choked. ‘And I’ll be home, all better.’
‘All better,’ Dan exhaled loudly. ‘All better.’
If we were at home having this conversation, I’d have put my hand on his forearm, on that crappy compass tattoo he had done at nineteen, my touchstone. I’d have rested my forehead against his chest, and known without words that we’d get through this together. Without touch, it was hard to reach him.
We’d fought for a normal life for a long time, and we’d been happy for a good chunk of that. But maybe that was all we got.
The scariest thought of all was that sometimes love isn’t enough, and it’s no one’s fault. So many of the people on the loss and grief forums I read were going through divorces and separations. Sometimes you just couldn’t make it through together. You had to split up to survive.
But even the thought of that made me homesick for my husband.
‘Taz, maybe when you get back we should… talk.’
‘Talk.’
‘About us. About everything. We can’t keep going on like this, can we?’
And there it was.
In another life I slammed the brakes so hard I went flying through the windscreen and it was all over. But the traffic on the motorway crawled, and the sun shone, and the world didn’t end.
‘No,’ I croaked, ‘I suppose not.’
‘I better get back to work,’ he said quietly. ‘I love you.’
‘Love you too.’
The way I’d ended a hundred phone calls, maybe a thousand. The idea that those might be limited was unbelievable.
He hadn’t mentioned the notebook. The way I showed I still looked after his dreams, still pushed him to reach them. He’d be too busy to draw, he’d say, he was working flat out, he didn’t have time for that silliness now.
His priorities had changed. And maybe mine should too.
To be fair, the fact that we’d even made it this far was a miracle. No one thought we’d survive. We were mismatched teenagers, drawn to each other through difference. Daniel transformed me. Before him, my job was to be invisible. Invisible on the estate, invisible at school, invisible at home. I had quiet dreams of university, and my teachers said I was smart enough, if I worked hard and didn’t dream too big. All I had to do was survive.
Because of Daniel, I blossomed. I stopped hanging around with Jemma and Chelsea, the only people who used to talk to me before. They were racing to get knocked up to see who got the biggest flat off the council, and made fun of me for studying. Jemma said I always chose the harder way of doing things, that I wasn’t being smart about it. I don’t think they even noticed when I stopped smoking with them by the bins.
I took my hair out of that tight ponytail and I wore it loose, softer. I nicked tinted lip-balms from Woolworths and pinched my cheeks to a blush.
He took me to the cinema, he held my hand like he wasn’t ashamed, took me to parties like it wasn’t completely ridiculous that someone like me was with someone like him. He said I knew him, really knew him, in a way no one else could. It was childish silliness, but it felt true.
He never took me home though, and actually, I was relieved. I knew I wasn’t good enough for Daniel White. I didn’t need to stand in the hallway of that giant house with two fancy cars on the drive and hear it from his mother.
We’d been dating for about six months when he started thinking about breaking up. I could just tell. He’d not been around much, and there were other girls on the scene now, pretty girls with swishy ponytails and houses like Daniel’s. They went to the same parties and their parents knew each other. He was getting bored of slumming it, I was sure. I spent every moment together just looking at him, soaking it in so I could remember it all after he’d gone.
The idea of being alone again was unbearable.
And then everything changed. All I did was wince. One involuntary action, and there was no going back.
The thing is, people like Daniel, they’re fixers. They believe in the system, they trust that everything works out the way it should. That there’s good and there’s bad and that’s it. That the good guys win. People think everyone believes that as a kid, but it’s a privilege. Some of us have always known better.
‘The next time it happens, Taz, you need to call me, okay? Call me and I’ll come get you.’ He’d sounded so young when he said it, and I almost pitied him. I wanted to tell him this was the way the world was, this was how people were. That he didn’t need to get upset, he just needed to get real.
But he was so attentive again suddenly, he wanted to be with me all the time, to protect me, to make me feel loved. And I knew I should have railed against the pity, pushed him away if he wanted to go, but I clung on, just a little longer.
If I’d been strong enough to set him free, it wouldn’t have happened. I wouldn’t have called him in a panic and he wouldn’t have rushed over.
He wouldn’t have stood up to my father, trying to reason with a drunken, staggering bear of a man who was accustomed to getting his own way.
He wouldn’t have got in one decent punch, just one, and my dad wouldn’t have fallen with a heavy thud, hitting his head on the back of the coffee table.
As easy as that.
Miranda said I’d ruined her son’s life and it was true. But it was more than that. If not for me, my father would be alive. Daniel wouldn’t have a criminal record. He never would have fallen out with his family, and most likely of all, he wouldn’t be married to me.
I destroyed his life, and yet I had him. So how could I regret it?
There was more than enough to feel guilty about, but that was the main one. And maybe now he was finally realising what I’d known all along. He had stayed with me out of pity, out of obligation, because I had been so loyal and so grateful. Because his parents hadn’t given him another option.
The grey skies and motorway gave way to vast greenery and I rolled down the window to let the crisp air in. The sun was watery, gentle, but she was there. It was so easy to get lost in the past these days. The guilt had been worse since we lost the baby.
The drive was exactly what I needed, to focus. The hours had crawled by on motorway after motorway, nothing changing until that last final push through Scotland, the Highlands proving themselves to be another world entirely.
Had Dan gone back to work, relieved to have finally said it? Had he already prepared for that conversation he wanted to have, his eyes resting on the rich, intelligent, appropriate women that his mother had been placing in his way for years? Finally, Miranda must be cackling, finally I got him back. She could have her version of him, without a reminder of all the things he went through, of her own failings as a mother.
As I followed the signs for the town, I focused on slowing my breathing. Being present. I wondered what my mother would think of my marriage, my life. She was always one for making the best of a bad situation, getting what you could before you moved on. It was easy to imagine her words in that smoky, rough voice, like a kernel of her was living in my head:
You shag him, keep him fed, make him feel clever. If he’s looking elsewhere, babe, you better hurry up and pull another trick from somewhere. Get pregnant again, for God’s sake. If you lose him you’ll be all alone. You do what you can to survive. That mug loves you, somehow. So use it.
Or perhaps it would have been the other side of the coin. Divorce him, play the injured wife abandoned after the death of her baby. Get the money and start again somewhere new. Be someone completely different.
Either way, survival was her game. Smile and play nice, wink and tease and be perfect for as long as you can, then drop the act when you’ve got everything you want. Poverty could do that to you. Nina never stopped being disappointed with her life, angry that the world owed her more and it had never delivered.
I nurtured the smallest spark of hope that she’d changed, that whatever sickness she had, it had given her perspective. Maybe she’d met a man, the right man, maybe she’d softened. Maybe she finally found that thing she thought she deserved.
As I approached a roundabout, trying to shake her from my head, I noticed a man standing on the bridge that led over the main road. He looked down from the top of the stairs on one side, just watching the traffic, leaning against the railing. He was completely relaxed, dressed in a suit and he even had a trilby on. I slowed down in the traffic to look at him, intrigued. Who hangs out on a bridge in the middle of nowhere?
The traffic moved, sky darkening, and I was forced to look at the directions. I was only five minutes away. I still hadn’t worked out what I would say to her. It was almost nineteen years. What do you say after nineteen years and a sad birthday card?
I pulled off the road down a dirt path, following it around until a house appeared.
It wasn’t what I expected. A sweet chocolate-box cottage in the middle of nowhere, attached to a farm. The sun was setting behind it in a picture-perfect tableau, and suddenly I realised two things: travelling across the country to see a mother who had abandoned me decades ago was ridiculous, and I was so very, very tired.
A sign in the front garden said ‘Any children found wandering will be sold to the circus!’ There was a tractor parked around the corner of the cottage, and in the nearby fields there were hay bales. I couldn’t imagine my mother in a place like this.
The Nina I knew before liked opulence. She liked impressive. She wanted everyone to know that our sad little life living off baked beans on toast wasn’t good enough for her. She made up stories all the time, about wealthy men she’d known, places she’d been. She told me fairy stories about a man in the south of France who wanted to take her away from everything. Sometimes my dad hovered in the hallway during these stories, and snorted. ‘When have you been to France? You haven’t even been to Southend!’
There were good times though, too. I remember him reaching out and stroking her hair, or pulling her close to him, or tapping her bum as she walked past. He often looked around for her, as if when he couldn’t see her he was afraid she’d left.
And clearly he was right to worry.
I parked up and turned off the engine, my hands shaking as I gripped the steering wheel until my knuckles turned white. I had planned to spend the journey working out what I’d say. How I’d be warm and kind, appealing. I’d stand there in my nice clothes, with a life that would make her jealous and I’d say, ‘I’m fine, I did okay without you.’ And yet suddenly I wanted to cry. To be a child again, diving beneath a duvet cover and refusing to come out into the real world.
What if she looked me up and down in that way she always had, and simply smirked? What if I was found wanting, the same way I was by Dan’s mother? I had tried to grow into a decent sort of person. But what would impress a mother who once said, so matter-of-factly, that having you had ruined her life?
I couldn’t get out of the car. I rested my head on the steering wheel and tried to breathe, tried to get myself together.
I needed to do this, for Dan. More than for her or for me, I needed to do this for my marriage. To show him I could be forgiving, I could let things go, that the past could stay the past.
The sharp rapping on the window scared the life out of me. When I looked up, a drawn woman in grey clothing glared at me, her lips a thin line and her eyes narrow.
‘No loitering!’ she mouthed, pointing at a sign at the end of the driveway. At least she wasn’t pointing to the one about kids being sold to the circus.
I could barely lift my head from the steering wheel, and settled for tilting my face towards her instead. Her features seemed to change, briefly, and she beckoned me out of the car.
Oh God, it was going to be someone my mother had ripped off, wasn’t it? There were enough of those times on the estate, people yelling after me, asking where my parents were. Mum always said to pretend I didn’t understand, didn’t speak English. How many times had she sent me to the window as a child, to shake my head at the big man knocking down our door, and say I didn’t know a Nina?
But the woman didn’t look angry, or upset, or any of the other emotions my mother used to leave in her wake. She looked concerned, and a quick look at myself in the rearview mirror told me I couldn’t blame her.
I was a mess. I’d run my hands through my hair endlessly on the drive down, yanking at it in frustration. My lips were chapped from where I’d nibbled at the loose skin and torn it, and the eyes staring back at me were void of warmth or understanding. I looked like a runaway.
I got out of the car, breathing in the fresh air with a sort of relief. Yes, my lungs could still function, I was still here, still alive.
‘Who are you?’ I asked, then paused, rather shocked by my own forthrightness. I could hear the way my voice curved sharply around the vowels, so London. She raised an eyebrow as a warning and snorted.
‘I’m the owner, who were you looking for?’ The Scottish twang in her voice was soft, muffled by something else. I suddenly heard how demanding I was, so imperiously forward.
I ducked my head, ‘Nina Clarke, is she still here?’
The woman’s eyes widened, and a softness appeared around her mouth. It couldn’t be considered a smile, but it was an attempt.
‘You’d better come in,’ she turned on her heel and left, sprinting back to the house at a pace I had to jog to keep up with. She was in her mid-sixties, I’d say, and yet she looked solid and strong, with a fierce determination. And a flair for the mysterious, it seemed.
‘I really don’t need to…’ I called after her, but she was already gone.
I had no choice but to follow.
The house was dark inside, but warm. The walls and ceilings seemed to slant slightly, as if they were drunk. I followed the woman through to the kitche
n, where she filled an old-fashioned kettle and put it on the stove, gesturing for me to take a seat at the wooden bench by the kitchen table.
‘Tea?’ She tilted her head back towards me.
‘Oh, um… sure?’
‘That’s the least sure a person has ever sounded,’ her voice was sharp but when she turned she had a cheeky smile on her face. ‘Would you like to try again?’
I half-smiled, amused despite the anticipation that had settled itself around my shoulders and in my jaw. ‘Yes, tea sounds lovely. Please.’
‘Good.’
I waited in silence, watching her fetch the cups, arrange a tray and put the teabags in the teapot, awaiting the water. It was only when I saw her add a stick of cinnamon to the pot that I started.
‘Sorry, I forget it’s not to everyone’s taste… I’ll take it out.’
‘No… no, it’s not that, it’s fine… My mother made her tea like that, with cinnamon.’
The woman looked at me as if I should know better, but her voice was gentle. ‘Of course she did, hen, it’s the same way our mother made it.’
I looked at her again, trying to trace similarities in their features, looking for something that confirmed her story. The tilt of her head, or the narrowing of her eyes. But there was nothing.
‘You’re sisters.’
‘Half,’ she nodded, pouring the water into the teapot and letting the steam rise. ‘Half sisters. I’m Kit.’
‘Short for Katherine?’
‘Short for Kitten,’ she said, then snorted when I didn’t respond. ‘Of course it’s short for Katherine. What does that have to do with anything?’
She put everything on a tray, brought it over and placed it carefully on the table. She busied herself pouring and stirring and then sat back, tapping her fingernails on the edge of her mug. ‘You’ll be Natasha, then.’
‘Taz,’ I shifted my weight uncomfortably, ‘I go by Taz.’
Kit seemed to consider this, sipping at her tea, though mine was too hot to even hold the mug. She seemed to be the sort of woman who was comfortable with silence. There was no rush to her movements, she was just considering her options.
The Things That Matter Page 7