The Silent Treatment

by Abbie Greaves

  I wanted to make a scene. I wanted to be that man—the authoritarian, the disciplinarian, the stand-up-and-come-home-immediately father who gets the job done. I have tried and tried and tried, but we both know that it is not the man I am, Mags. It doesn’t mean I wasn’t desperately reaching out to her, throwing every last item in my personal arsenal her way. For months, ever since the dinner party, I’d asked every possible question, I’d hinted and suggested and supported and nudged and needled. I had read into pauses and the smattering of words we exchanged, I’d interpreted her gestures and movements, the shape of a shrug and the speed of an exit. I gave everything, we both did, and still we were no closer to finding out what had happened that night that so obviously changed Eleanor. It is always hard to accept that sometimes your best isn’t enough. When it comes to your children, it’s impossible.

  “Did you find her?” I am barely in the door before you ask.

  “No. She must be at a friend’s house. I’m sorry, Mags.”

  “She hasn’t texted.” You are practically wringing your phone in your hands.

  “She’s fine.”

  “How do you know?” There’s an accusation in your eyes.

  “I don’t, Mags. But look, we have to trust her.”

  “How? How, Frank? She’s a child. Our child. And we’re losing her!”

  The truth hits me like a smack, square in the face. I start to respond, but I have nothing. You drop your palms onto the windowsill and slump.

  “Hey, Mags, hey, hey now.”

  I manage to turn you back around and steer you to the sofa.

  “She knows we are here, that we are always here when she needs us.” I wonder if you doubt my words as much as I do. “She knows we love her.”

  “Does she?”

  I wasn’t sure what I knew anymore. I suppose that was why I was so surprised one day a year later when Eleanor came home, at the start of her second year of sixth form, with talk of university. I think it’s fair to say that we were both concerned what her future would hold, but we were too scared to push. She never gave us much in terms of courses, university cities, what would come after. No, it was far more perfunctory than that. But it was progress, right? That was how it felt to me.

  When Eleanor’s offers came in—two that we heard of, at least—we wanted to mark the occasion. We settled for something low-key, a bottle of cava on ice the day she texted to say she had taken up an offer from Manchester. By the time we got home she was already in her room, curtains pulled and the light off. The bottle returned to its previous home in the dust at the back of the drinks cupboard.

  Was there some part of you, Mags, that felt relief? Relief that she would be out of our hair, even if she was already out of our hands? I could never bring myself to phrase it quite like that, but you must have known what I was getting at when I joked about having the house to ourselves again. It wasn’t me giving up as a parent, Mags. The very idea is a contradiction in terms. How can you admit defeat when that would mean turning your back on a very part of yourself? You could cut me open and see Eleanor and Maggie tattooed down my breastbone—the words intertwined like the blazing colors on a rock candy stick. No, if anything my relief was an admission of failure. Something had gone wrong with our ability to get through to her after whatever the hell happened that night. We had to let time take its course and hope damn hard that it would wind Eleanor back to us both.

  You went through the motions of preparing for her leaving home with such patience. In the months following her last exams, Eleanor became an increasingly distant lodger. There were whole days, beautiful, sunny days, that summer she turned eighteen when she wouldn’t leave her room. While I worried she wouldn’t get out of bed to make it there, you lined up crates in the hallway with military precision: bedding, stationery, kitchen equipment.

  The drive up to university was excruciating. I can’t imagine you have forgotten that. After fifteen minutes of asking if Eleanor was excited, nervous, had she forgotten anything, I settled for a blast of Magic FM loud enough to kill the awkwardness. When we arrived at her halls, we zipped into motion, trailing the boxes up to her new room. There was strictly no talking, to other students or to their equally burdened parents. Once everything had been unloaded, we stood in our isosceles formation, Eleanor ahead, the two of us huddled together behind.

  “Well, shall I make the bed for you?” You are relentlessly chipper, but I can sense tension at the corners of your mouth.

  “No, it’s fine, Mum.” Eleanor’s back is to us as she surveys the families jostling for parking outside. You are already wrestling the lid off the plastic bedding crate.

  “Really, Mum.”

  “Please, darling, I’ll feel so much better knowing you have a nice fresh bed to get into tonight.”

  The fitted sheet is out and you are off.

  “Saves you having something to worry about when you get in from your first freshers’ party.” I am trying to keep the show on the road for just a few minutes longer.

  I walk to the window, where Eleanor is plucking threads from her frayed jumper sleeves, wrapping the longest strands around her index finger until the flesh between them bulges. I place a hand on her shoulder blade, lightly. She recoils. I am glad you are too entrenched in the duvet cover to see. Eleanor turns around again sharply.

  “Really, Mum, that’s enough. I mean it. You can go.”

  “Darling, I’ve only done one pillowcase.”

  “I only sleep on one anyway.”

  You let the spare case you are holding drop onto the bed. I can hear my heart pounding, or is it yours?

  “Right then, we’d better be off, Maggie.” You are looking at the carpet, an industrial taupe stained with years of student debauchery. I am cautious of moving you too quickly in case the tears have started.

  In that moment, I hated Eleanor. Hated her for being so cruel. Hated her for what she did to you, how she cut you to pieces and made no effort to stitch you back together again. Left you with more holes than the sodding colander we had lugged the whole way up there. What sort of father does that make me, to admit that? One strung out by love and clinging on for dear life to the very end of his tether.

  I approach Eleanor. I’ve never been effusive with physical contact; instead I give her arm a firm squeeze, hoping it will encourage her to go and hug you. You look up, your eyes glassy. For once, Eleanor performs.

  “Thanks, Mum,” she mumbles, “for this.” Eleanor gestures in a vague semicircle.

  On the car ride home, we return to silence. Every so often I glance across and catch you in my peripheral vision. You are looking at your lap, head bowed. When we pull up outside the house it is dark, the October chill already settling in, but neither of us makes a move to go inside. The fan heater rattles out its last gusts of musty air as the engine cuts. I take my hand off the gearstick and reach for yours.

  “We have done all we can, Mags. We have to accept that.”

  Silence.

  “I can’t. She’s my daughter.” There is a wobble in your voice.

  “She’s mine too.”

  “I know. I didn’t know it would be so hard. That she would be so hard.”

  All those years when it was just us two, when we thought it would always be just us two, that had been enough for me. Would it have changed anything if I had told you? If I had explained that I had never factored in a third, the nativity plays and parents’ evenings and first boyfriends, or lack thereof. I’m not sure I could have risked you walking away to find that someone who wanted more, who wanted all that. I realized in that moment, the car windows steaming up from the cold, you had thought of barely anything else, even in the early days. It is one thing to have a dream realized, quite another to have it play out as a nightmare.

  “Let’s get inside, Mags, it’s getting cold. I’ll get us some soup.”

  That night we ate from the bowls my sister had given us as a wedding present. They were dusty blue, with a pair of lovebirds on them. A little twee,
but you were attached to them and I loved the joy they brought you, the feeling that I was somehow a part of it. I washed them first, as they had been accruing dust over the last eighteen years. We only had the two.

  Chapter 12

  For the first few weeks after we dropped Eleanor off at university, we didn’t hear a peep from her. I could see you checking your phone first thing in the morning, last thing at night. Every couple of minutes in between. I told you this was what we should expect, it was a good sign! Surely she was making friends, missing lectures, losing her keys—normal student behavior.

  Only, we’d known since that summer two years back that she wasn’t a “normal” teen. She was withdrawn, and when we could draw her out, she was irritable and permanently on edge. On the edge of what? Well, we never knew. Do you know, Mags, I often dreamed of a hybrid Eleanor? Her spherical toddler’s face fused onto her teenage body, all angles and uncomfortable poses. That mind buzzing with curiosity melting into something bigger, some vast force behind it all, wasting away before our eyes. I would wake in the morning and immediately check my phone as well. Nothing from her.

  I told you not to text her, not to bother her. In reality I was terrified of how you would respond if she didn’t reply. I texted her, though. The odd How are lectures? Bought any fruit and veg yet? I was quite used to going unanswered. And what could we do about it anyway? We couldn’t go to the police over our errant student daughter, though God knows what they would discover if we did. It would be so melodramatic. Besides, what would we even say? Our eighteen-year-old daughter is ignoring our texts. We’re worried about her. She was an adult now, in the eyes of the law, if nothing else. They’d laugh us out of there.

  If I’m really honest, Mags, I wonder if this was just another way for us to avoid acknowledging what was really going on? To delay the inevitable conclusion that now seems so achingly apparent: you were right; we were losing her.

  December rolled around and, along with the habitual flurry of round robins and drinks-party invites, we got the call from Edie asking if the three of us fancied coming to hers, like the year before. As soon as you hung up, I knew the weeks of burying our heads in the sand were over.

  “I need to know that Eleanor will be coming home for Christmas.” You haven’t moved from the phone cradle.

  “Of course she will. Where else would she go?” Even as I say it, I feel doubtful.

  “Frank, you need to go visit her.”

  “Me? Why? Surely we go together.”

  “She doesn’t want to see me, Frank. You are better at this; you know how to handle her.”

  For the last two years I have approached parenting like a round of roulette, with the same nauseating sense that each turn was spinning me ever more wildly out of my control, and now this? I have tried all my chips—kindness, concern, earth-shattering fear—and none of them have brought me any luck. I look at you, the grand master, trembling beside the landline, and even now I can’t bring myself to believe you are as at sea as I am. It is you who has this wrapped up, Mags, not me.

  “It’s nearly the holidays, and she won’t want to see me either.” I am aware that my excuses sound hollow, insincere.

  “Please, Frank.” You fix me then with a look so blatant in its desperation that I know I have no choice. I wrap my arms around your waist.

  “Fine, tomorrow. I’ll go tomorrow.”

  “Morning?”

  “Yes, in the morning. Just . . . let me get a few things sorted.”

  The next day you have left for your rounds before I am up and breakfasted. On the kitchen table, there is a note in the red kitchen planner, in the ruled notepad section that sits to the side of the shopping list. You wish me a safe journey and ask me to bring the bag in the hallway. As I head out to defrost the car, I take a look at what you have packed for her: a scarf, hat, gloves, and, at the bottom, one of those mini portable heaters, the sort that burn through a lot more energy than they give out. I imagine you painstakingly selecting one that will fit under her desk, keep her feet warm as she works. I feel broken before I have even left the house.

  I drive fitfully on the way up, chopping and changing lanes in the way you hate. I don’t stop at the services. Throughout the whole journey, I feel the same foot-tapping urgency I had in the delivery suite at Eleanor’s birth, only this time I have even less of an idea what to expect.

  Outside the halls, I try to remember which window is hers. With all the curtains drawn it is hard to tell. I am cautious about spending too long staring up at the first-year rooms lest I get mistaken for a Peeping Tom and instead make my way to the entrance door, which some late-night partygoer has propped open with a twelve-pack of Carling, a couple of cans of which remain, remarkably, untouched. In the foyer, a few pigeons are pecking crumbs from the crenulated ridges of the ribbed carpet, their beaks peppered with loose fluff. I am thankful you weren’t there to see that, Mags, really I am.

  There is a board that lists the names of the students and their corresponding room numbers, and I am relieved to see Eleanor is still on there—43. I take the stairs, unsure which section of the local bird population I’ll find in the lift, and pause for a minute to catch my breath when I reach the fourth floor. It’s just gone eleven, but there is little sign of life here yet. I could wait. For what, though?

  I knock, loud and crisp, hoping to convey a little authority. Or at least enough to wake her. After a few seconds I hear the creak of bedsprings and the sound of the key turning the lock on the inside. I am met by a young girl, bleary-eyed and disorientated, with the same dark circles as Eleanor, the same messy bedhead. Only this is not her.

  “And you are?” Her voice has an accent I struggle to place.

  “I could ask you the same thing.”

  The standoff is turning nasty rather too quickly, and I realize my mistake. I need her help, her intel.

  “Sorry, I appreciate this must be a shock, me arriving unannounced. My daughter is Eleanor, Eleanor Hobbs? This was . . . well . . . is her room. It says so downstairs, on the board? Do you know her?”

  “Yes, Nell had the room before me. She found somewhere else to live. This is now mine.” Her vowels are sharp and clipped in a way that gives the impression that she wants me gone. Quickly.

  “How long have you been here—in this room, I mean?” I slip my foot against the door frame as subtly as I can. I can’t afford to be blocked out.

  “Three weeks now. Nell did my course. She knew I needed a cheap place and offered me this, no rent till end of the term; then I will take over.”

  My mind is spinning. Nell? Somewhat ungenerously, I wonder why she hasn’t told me we are bankrolling her friend’s accommodation, even if she didn’t mention her new identity.

  “Look, I need to go soon. Lectures . . .”

  “Yes, yes, I completely understand.” I gather myself. “Look, do you know where Eleanor might be? A particular bit of town? I need to get hold of her—today.” I flash her a look that I hope reads as urgent. I would take desperate if I had to.

  “I haven’t seen her in a while, but most students go to Moss Side.” Then she adds, almost as an afterthought, “It’s cheap.”

  “Thank you, really, thank you.” She is beginning to edge the door shut, her impatience palpable. “If you hear from her, hear any more, will you let me know?” I root in my pockets and find a crumpled receipt. “Do you have a pen?”

  I detect an exasperated sigh as she turns to fetch one while I hold the door with the sole of my shoe. When she returns, I scribble my name and number on the back of the receipt and hand it to her, leaving the pressure of my thumb on her palm for just a beat too long. I want her to feel my fear. I want to share it with someone, anyone, in case that will lessen it somehow and give me just a few more inches in my tightened chest to breathe freely, like I used to. Before Eleanor. Always before Eleanor.

  “Please call.”

  The door shuts, and I barely withstand the temptation to crumple against it. Where is she? I touch th
e home screen on my phone; it lights up with email notifications from work. Nothing from you. I can see you at the surgery, your mind anywhere but on the young mums needing postnatal care, fixated on your own baby, miles from home, fighting every urge to call, to text, to scream at me to bring her home.

  Back in the car, I consider my options. I could try the student accommodation services. Surely the university must keep track of these things? But even if they did, would Eleanor ever forgive me for getting them involved? While I wrestle with my conscience, I google Moss Side and find myself distinctly concerned. I am looking in a haystack I couldn’t be more unfamiliar with and for a needle that doesn’t want to be found.

  Even with no leads, I decide to start by following the satnav to the first address it suggests there. The streets are busy: a mum struggles to push her pram up a hill while the two tots behind her narrowly avoid a mobility scooter coming in the opposite direction; across the street, a group of teenage boys slouch against a wall, a jumble of limbs they are still growing into, their eyes flicking between their phones and the busy intersection I have just come from. I park, lock up, and begin to head toward them.

  “Excuse me?” I approach a boy on the edge of the group. He is engrossed in whatever is on his screen, and it takes a second or two for him to look up.

  “All right?” He is younger than I had guessed from the car, a mound of angry red spots flaring across his forehead, a downy dusting of hair on his upper lip. The rest have clocked my arrival and begin to look in my direction. I feel like a Victorian curio dropped onto the street.