by Ali Mercer
How typical, as she stands there in silence with a daughter who looks as if she’d much rather be spending the next few hours somewhere else, that there should be one of those conspicuously happy mums in front of them.
The woman has the kind of blonde hair that speaks of regular cossetting at the hairdresser’s, and is wearing slim-cut mustard-yellow corduroy slacks and a tobacco-brown peacoat: the overall effect is cute rather than misguided. She has two children – naturally, she wouldn’t have an only child – a small, over-excited girl in a raspberry-pink princess coat and a scampish boy.
There had been a time when Becca had asked when she could have a little sister or brother. Then, somehow, she had known to stop.
The mother-of-two has put her handbag on the floor, open, while she sorts out the tickets. The boy pulls the girl’s plaits and the girl shrieks and lurches away and knocks the handbag over, scattering some of its contents. The woman turns round and Rachel sees that her coat is open at the front and she’s pregnant – not heavily, but maybe five months or so. Of course. Why stop at two?
Rachel moves to help pick everything up, but the woman thanks her and waves her away. Fair enough: even the seemingly perfect don’t want strangers picking over the bits of their life they would rather keep out of sight. Sometimes you just want to be left to pick up your own snotty tissues.
As the woman gathers up the last few bits – a broken-toothed comb and a pair of very small flowered underpants – a shadow falls across the slightly sticky, unpleasantly patterned carpet and a loud voice declares: ‘Becca! Didn’t expect to see you here.’
It’s Amelia Chadstone. No sign of her parents, thank God, but her older brother, Henry, is loitering nearby.
The other mother ushers her children away. Amelia offers Rachel a polite smile. ‘Mrs M, how nice to see you.’
‘Nice to see you, too, Amelia,’ Rachel says.
Thankfully, it’s Rachel’s turn to be served, so there’s no need for further small talk.
She asks the attendant for two tickets to the film Becca has chosen, having picked it out as the least bad available option. It’s a CGI love story with monsters. A little bit of artificial threat, pretty young stars building up to their first kiss – a couple of hours of escape for young girls who may have faced real threat at home.
Behind her Amelia and Becca are discussing the school production of Oliver!, which both of them are in. Or rather, Amelia is talking about it, and Becca seems to be agreeing with her.
‘I’m sorry, your card has been declined,’ the attendant says.
Oh no. No. Not now. Not here. Not in front of Amelia Chadstone.
Rachel rummages in her bag. She has no other cards on her – she has been trying not to use them. In her purse there is some loose change and a solitary tenner. Not enough to cover two tickets, and certainly not enough for pizza.
Shit.
The attendant tries her card again. Rachel studies the floor as if the solution to her woes might be there; a lone fiver miraculously dropped by another cinema-goer, or a magical mechanism that will swallow her up.
How could she have let this happen?
Behind her the queue is growing. Becca and Amelia fall silent. She’s going to have to admit defeat.
‘No joy, I’m afraid,’ says the attendant.
Rachel takes her card back and turns to Becca.
‘We’ll just have to have a little bit of a rethink,’ she says, and steps out of the queue.
‘What’s the problem here? Do you need cash? I have cash,’ Amelia says to Becca.
‘Thank you, but that won’t be necessary,’ Rachel says.
Henry Chadstone says to Amelia, ‘Our film’s about to start.’
Inspiration strikes. ‘Why don’t you go with them?’ Rachel says to Becca, holding out her last tenner. ‘I’ll wait in the car for you.’
Becca hesitates. Rachel is reminded of herself on Park Place, accepting Viv’s gift of the foil-wrapped barm brack even though she’d already decided to stay away.
‘Have fun,’ Rachel says. ‘Enjoy the film.’
She thrusts the crumpled tenner into Becca’s hand, which opens to receive it. And Becca smiles, and says, ‘Thanks, Mum.’
Seeing that smile makes Rachel want to cry. Instead, she stands back as Henry gets the tickets and a couple of tubs of popcorn, and Amelia starts chatting with Becca again. There’s no real reason why that should make Rachel uneasy, but it does. One of these days those two are going to discuss her. Maybe they already have.
Everyone has things they don’t want other people to see. Or remember. But that is no consolation. She has apologised to Henry and Amelia’s parents, and they have responded graciously; things have been smoothed over, at least on the surface. But the thought of what all four of the Chadstones know fills her with deep, abiding shame, and she can’t help but feel apprehensive as she says goodbye to her daughter and scurries out to the car park alone.
Twelve
Rachel is some way through Kramer vs. Kramer, which she had bought after Leona mentioned it, when Becca reappears.
Please let her have enjoyed the film. Please, please can at least that part of today have gone right?
‘How was it?’ Rachel asks, switching the radio off and putting the book aside.
Becca gets into the passenger seat, slams the door, shrugs. ‘It was all right. Can we get something to eat? I’m starving.’
Of course she is; it’s well past lunchtime. Rachel has been fretting about this ever since they said goodbye at the entrance to the cinema. Given her complete lack of funds, there is only really one option – unless she’s prepared to take Becca back to Rose Cottage early. Which she isn’t. This is it: this is their time. It’s down to her to make the best of it.
She takes a deep breath and starts the car. ‘I’ll take you back to my place.’
They don’t talk much on the way to Barrowton. Rachel tries asking about school and Becca gives her the shortest possible answers, and in the end they both settle for silence.
When they get out of the car it’s impossible to miss Becca taking in everything that makes Rachel’s current address so different to Rose Cottage: the close-packed houses, the weeds, the smell and sound of traffic, and, in the middle distance, the trains rattling past.
Rachel’s upstairs neighbour approaches, head bowed over a pushchair. She’s a pale, heavy woman Rachel has christened Miss Spank, after what her boyfriend likes to do to her – or so Rachel assumes, judging by the sounds that filter down through the thin fabric of the building at night.
Rachel attempts a smile. Miss Spank ignores her and trundles on.
There is something scuzzy, a caked substance that looks suspiciously like old vomit, on the path that leads to the front door. Inside the dark hallway, the floor is littered with flyers that nobody has bothered to clear away: invitations to sell gold or old clothes, pizza deals, club nights, opportunities to make ‘quick cash fast’. Rachel unlocks the door to the bedsit; Becca mooches in, and Rachel follows her.
There isn’t much to see. A net-curtained window looks out onto the road; there are four beige walls, a sofa bed, a tiny table, a TV, a table-top cooker, a microwave, a sink. A lorry rumbles along the road outside, and everything in the room trembles.
‘It smells kind of funny,’ Becca says, sitting down on the sofa bed. She sniffs. ‘Like old sausages.’
‘Yeah, that’ll be the guy in the next room. He doesn’t seem to eat anything else.’
Rachel opens her one and only food cupboard. It is almost bare.
‘Spaghetti hoops on toast OK?’
‘Whatever,’ Becca says.
Rachel sets about heating up the spaghetti hoops and puts some bread in the toaster. It’s a bit on the stale side, but not actually mouldy yet. How long is it since she has made food for Becca – or for anybody other than herself, come to that?
She spreads what’s left of the margarine on the toast and pours the hoops on top, puts the dishes on the tab
le and finds some cutlery to go with them. Becca comes over from the sofa to join her.
‘You know what, I always used to really like these when I was little. I haven’t had them for ages,’ Becca says.
She tucks in. Rachel thinks of the father in Kramer vs. Kramer, finally mastering the art of making French toast. She decides Leona was wrong to be so dismissive of that scene. There’s nothing quite like the satisfaction of feeding your child, especially if you’re out of practice, and even if you suspect she’s pretending to enjoy it to make you feel better.
After they have eaten she takes Becca back to Kettlebridge, and they park near the river and walk along the towpath to the weir.
The drizzle is fine but steady, and they have the scenery more or less to themselves, apart from a couple of dog-walkers and one very determined jogger. How often have they walked along here together? Countless times, with Becca at so many different childhood stages: the squalling toddler in a pushchair, the imperious girl demanding a ride on Mitch’s shoulders, the slouchy pre-teen.
‘We used to come here often when you were little,’ she tells Becca. ‘Do you remember? It always seemed to cheer you up.’
But Becca looks at her blankly, as if Rachel is talking about someone else.
They walk over the narrow bridge that crosses the weir, and gaze at the still, pooling water on the upper side and the foaming torrents downstream, bisected by the rigid structure of the sluices. The turbulence in the air is like being beside the sea; the place seems to belong to a different kind of time, where there is constant movement and yet nothing ever really changes.
And then Rachel dares linger no longer.
She hurries Becca back to the car. Mitch will be watching the clock, and she has to prove herself. She has to be reliable.
They make their way through the Kettlebridge traffic and pull up by the bridge on Rose Lane with minutes to spare. Rachel rings the bell, the door opens, Becca disappears wordlessly inside and Rachel is left face to face with Mitch.
She has left the umbrella in the car and the rain is falling a little more heavily now, soaking her jacket and her hair and running down the back of her neck. She moves a little nearer to the doorway so that she’s sheltered by the storm porch, as close to Mitch as she dares.
‘Good day?’ he asks. His arms are folded and she can’t see the scar on his hand. She can’t help herself, she always has to look at it; it’s as if she hopes it will look less bad than she remembers. But of course it doesn’t.
‘Yeah. We just came back from walking by the weir,’ she tells him.
Does he remember that as something they used to do together? He shows no sign of it. He says, ‘How was the cinema?’
‘We bumped into Amelia Chadstone. With her brother.’ She clears her throat. ‘Becca went in to see the film with them.’
‘With them? And you didn’t go?’
She can’t bring herself to confess about the disaster with the money, which is yet to be resolved. At least she has enough petrol in the car to get back to the bedsit. She shakes her head.
Mitch frowns. ‘So what did you do?’
‘Sat and read my book in the car.’
Now it is Mitch’s turn to shake his head. ‘Well, I suppose if Becca’s happy…’
‘She seems to be quite good friends with Amelia these days,’ Rachel says.
Mitch regards her with suspicion. ‘Like I said before, Rachel, you need to be able to deal with that.’
‘I know. And I can. I promise.’
‘What does your counsellor think?’
‘About what?’
‘About, you know, whether you’re better.’
‘She doesn’t really make that kind of judgement.’
Sophie’s last words before saying goodbye had been: Remember, it’s all a work in progress. But Rachel decides that now is not the time to relay this, or to explain that she has come to the end of the programme and won’t be seeing Sophie regularly any more.
Mitch sighs. ‘Well, I hope she’s helping. See you next week.’
He shuts the door in her face. There is nothing for it but to turn and walk back to the car. It shouldn’t feel like defeat, but it does. Worse than defeat. It’s like being a ghost, colourless and invisible, and almost, but not entirely, cut off from the ones she loves.
Thirteen
Viv
Somehow she gets there, though someone nearly bangs into her at a crossroads – her fault entirely. He hits his horn, she brakes, and she glimpses his furious face, framed by rain-streaked windscreen, as he pulls out and speeds out of her way.
Keep that up and you’ll be next, her husband might have said.
She isn’t normally such a terrible driver. But coming here, seeing Aidan like this, in hospital, is a trial, and her nerves aren’t bearing up terribly well. It’s been a horrendous time for him: not only has he been through the agonising pain of a ruptured appendix, but he’s also had to cope with an unfamiliar environment, far from the staff at his care home who know him and are used to him. For him, the abrupt, brutal change in his usual routine is as much of a torment as physical pain. And because it’s been an ordeal for him, it’s been awful for her, too.
It is a great relief to reach the hospital and find a parking space, but only for a moment, because now she has to go and see him. She isn’t ready. She’s never been ready for Aidan – has spent her whole life trying, and failing, to be as good a mother to him as it was possible for her to be.
She would love to think that poor George had known exactly what she was up to, and had chosen to turn a blind eye; that he had understood she bore him no ill will for wanting a clean break, everything cut and dried, but still, she needed to do what little she could. Any marriage is full of necessary mysteries, and nobody can ever really know all the secrets of somebody else’s heart.
But no, this is just a guilty fantasy. Might as well face facts, she had spent forty-odd years lying to her husband, and the only thing that could have made her feel worse would have been to toe the line and do what he wanted in the first place and never see Aidan again.
And she had lied to the girls, too… If only she had been bolder while George was still alive. She could have told him she was still visiting Aidan, and then she could have told her daughters about Aidan, too. Instead they had found out at the worst possible time, when they were deep in mourning for George – who, despite being a rather rigid sort, had been a good dad, kind and loving and steady.
They had lost a father and gained a brother – but one who had been shut away from the world for most of his life. It had been a shock to both of them. Too much to take in… and too late, much, much too late.
They had their own lives, their own problems and responsibilities. Elaine was bringing up her girls on her own and things obviously still weren’t brilliant between her and her ex, though she refused point blank to talk about it and always insisted things were fine – she’d always kept Viv at arm’s length. And Louise had done so well in her career, qualifying as a pathologist and climbing the ranks, but it was a stressful, all-absorbing job and she didn’t have much time or energy for anything else.
Aidan knows, in theory, about her other children, but has never shown the least desire to meet them. He responds to any mention of them the same way he does to anything that he senses she’s reluctant to talk about – by becoming intensely preoccupied with something else, so he can block her out until she gives up and changes the subject to one she’s more comfortable with.
This is all new, this hospital. Well, relatively new. Still, she can’t help but be reminded of the old building where she had taken Aidan as an outpatient, before he was diagnosed and put into care full time. He had hated it. Had behaved dreadfully. As if he knew what was coming, what the doctors were preparing to say: infant schizophrenia, ineducable, will never live a normal life…
Over the years, she has often wondered whether it is not the case – as the doctors imply – that he knows too little; maybe the c
ause of all the trouble is that he knows too much.
They have tried to make the new hospital nice – nicer than the old one, anyway, though no doubt bad news is still broken here on a daily basis. There is an atrium, as high and airy as a cathedral, with escalators leading up to the different floors, and on the ground floor there is a café that is almost like a real café that people go to out of choice, its boundaries marked out by a grove of small artificial trees standing in steel pots on the marble floor.
She passes the shop where you can buy Slush Puppies and toothbrushes and bunches of wilting yellow chrysanthemums, and tightens her grip on the Tupperware box she has brought for Aidan. Chances are he’ll be in no state to eat cupcakes, but they’ll keep for a couple of days. That’s one thing she has always been able to do for him: bake. Back when he was small she’d been reprimanded by the health visitor for it. It’s true that he has always been a little podgy, but he has barely eaten since he came down with appendicitis and was admitted to hospital, and the weight has dropped off him; without it, it is more apparent than ever what a handsome man he is.
Damn it, why shouldn’t Aidan eat cake? It’s one small pleasure that he shares with the outside world.
She takes the escalator to the first floor.
When he is better maybe they will let him off the ward, and she might be able to take him down to the café. It is some years now since he has seen an escalator; she can barely remember the last time. These days, she doesn’t take him out much. She’s no longer confident of her ability to manage if things go wrong.
