Until Next Weekend

by Rachel Marks

  ‘I’ve been a total idiot.’ I shift my position on the sofa, sitting up straight. ‘You make me happy, Mimi. And you make the boys happy and, yes, you’re my best friend, but I also want you to be so much more than that.’

  Mimi looks at me for a few seconds and I wish I could read what she’s thinking. I get the sense that maybe she does feel something for me too, but then she shakes her head slowly and I feel my heart sinking into my stomach. ‘I don’t want to be someone’s second best.’

  She looks so sad and I’m desperate to hold her, but I can tell that she doesn’t want me to. ‘You’re not. I was just blind. In denial.’

  She shuffles a little further away and I can tell she’s preparing to leave. ‘I’m going travelling in a couple of months, anyway, and I meant it when I said I’m not looking for a relationship.’

  I nod, my heart on the floor, wishing I’d figured it all out sooner. Maybe then we would have had a chance. But it’s too late for ‘what ifs’. And, besides, I’ve got a lifetime of those stacked up already.

  Mimi stands up and puts her glass on the side. ‘I’m going to go. But thank you for the trip. Please tell the boys I had a wonderful time.’

  ‘Will do.’ I see her to the door and she opens it and then pauses.

  ‘If things had been different …’

  Mimi tails off and I nod, then she kisses me on the cheek and leaves. And I go back to the sofa, torturing myself by picking up the camera and pressing play.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Once I’ve herded the class into assembly, I hurry to the office.

  ‘Has anyone heard why Harley’s not in today?’

  Verity taps away at the computer and shakes her head. ‘No, he’s often late though, isn’t he? Expect Mum just couldn’t be arsed to get out of bed.’

  I check my watch. ‘He’s not normally this late. Can you call, please?’

  ‘I’m busy inputting data at the minute. Can you do it?’

  ‘Of course. I’ve only got a class of thirty children in my care, how silly of me to suggest you do it.’

  Verity sighs. ‘They’re in assembly, aren’t they? That gives you ten minutes, surely?’

  ‘You’re right. I can’t imagine how I was going to fill the time. Good idea.’

  I find Emma’s mobile number on my phone and ring that, but it’s turned off so I root through the class files to find her home number. It rings for ages before I get to the answerphone so I leave a message. Then, for some reason, I try again. After a few minutes, it picks up.

  ‘Hello, is that Emma?’

  There’s a muffled noise on the other end of the line and then it goes dead. I dial the number and try again. This time it picks up more quickly.

  ‘Hello? Emma?’

  I can hear a voice, but it’s too quiet to make out what is being said.

  ‘Hello?’

  The same voice again and this time I can tell that it’s Harley’s.

  ‘Harley? Harley, put the phone up to your ear,’ I say loudly.

  ‘She won’t wake up.’ This time, his voice is almost too loud.

  ‘Mummy won’t wake up? Have you tried to wake her, Harley?’

  I can hear Harley crying on the other end of the phone and my heart starts to race. ‘I’ve shook her and shook her but she won’t wake up. I think she must be super-tired.’

  A bolt of fear shoots through my chest. ‘Hold on, OK, buddy. I’ll be right there.’ I put down the phone and turn to Verity. ‘I’ve got to go. It’s an emergency. Find someone to cover my class.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I don’t care. I’ve got to go.’ I run out of the office, sneak back through the hall and run down the corridor to my classroom, grabbing my keys and then heading out through the back door. I buzz my way out the gate and run to my car, nearly crashing into someone coming through the school gates as I try to pull out. Whoever it is beeps at me, but I power through and race to Harley’s flat. En route, I call Mimi, but it goes straight to answerphone.

  As I get closer, I’m fairly certain what I’m going to find, but I’m hoping with all my heart that I’m wrong. When I get to the door I pummel it with my fist, and after what feels like forever, I hear Harley on the other side struggling to open it.

  ‘Harley, it’s Mr Carlton. I think the door is bolted. Can you reach up and there should be a little switch that clicks?’

  ‘I can’t reach.’

  ‘Get a chair from the kitchen and climb up on it.’

  ‘OK.’

  I can hear the chair scraping across the floor and then, finally, the door latch releases.

  ‘Now move the chair back so I can get in.’

  I hear Harley jump off the chair and then pull it back along the floor. Then the door is free. When I enter the flat, Harley is still in his pyjamas and I notice that his trousers are wet and he smells of wee.

  Harley follows my line of sight. ‘I didn’t reach the toilet in time in the night, but I didn’t want to tell Mummy because I thought she might be cross.’

  ‘It’s fine, Harley. We’ll get you cleaned up in a minute. First, where is Mummy?’

  ‘She’s in her bedroom. She won’t wake up. That’s why I’m late for school. Am I going to have to miss my playtime?’

  I run past Harley up the stairs and call down. ‘Of course not. You’re not in trouble, Harley. I need to check on Mummy, OK? Can you go and put the TV on?’

  ‘I want to help Mummy with you.’

  ‘I need you to just stay down here for a minute so I can make Mummy better, OK?’

  Harley nods and I rush to Emma’s bedroom, praying she’s just taken a super-strong sleeping tablet and Harley’s touch hasn’t been firm enough to wake her. But as soon as I see her, I know my fears were founded. Her mouth is open, her skin pale. I slap her face, but she doesn’t respond. I put my hand on her chest; she’s still breathing, but her breath is shallow. For a moment, I’m catapulted back in time. Opening the shed door to find Mum lying on the floor, the smell of sick hitting me immediately, then finding it all over her face, in her hair. Shaking her over and over again, but her body feeling heavier than normal. More stiff. Colder.

  I focus on Emma, call an ambulance and frantically search the room for clues that might help the paramedics, but there’s nothing. Once the ambulance is on its way, I call Mimi again. This time, she answers.

  ‘Hey, Noah. What’s up?’

  ‘It’s Emma. I think she might have tried something stupid. I’m with her now at the house.’

  ‘What the fuck? What do you mean?’

  ‘Just come now. I’ll stay with Harley. You can go in the ambulance with Emma.’

  ‘Ambulance? Bloody hell, Noah. She’s OK though, isn’t she? She’s not going to die?’

  I don’t want to give her false hope, but I don’t want to panic her either. ‘The ambulance will be here soon. I need you to come now.’

  Mimi seems to switch into action mode. ‘Of course. Give me five minutes and I’ll be there.’

  In less than five minutes, I hear Mimi charging through the door and up the stairs and then, seconds later, two paramedics follow.

  ‘She’s in here,’ I call out and they appear at the door.

  The female paramedic pushes past us to get to Emma. She feels for a pulse and then checks for various things, making comments to her male colleague using terms that I don’t understand, and then he hurries downstairs and comes back moments later with a stretcher, which he squeezes on to the minimal floor space, and then they both lower Emma on to it. Just as they do that, Harley appears at the door.

  ‘What’s happening to Mummy? Why are they carrying her?’

  ‘Can one of you please get the boy out of here?’ the male paramedic says.

  I hold out my hand to Harley but he doesn’t take it. ‘Come on, Harley. Let’s go watch a film.’

  Harley throws himself on to the stretcher, resting his head on Emma’s chest, before the female paramedic gently lifts him off and passes him to me.
I pick him up, cradling him in my arms tightly as he fights to escape, and carry him into his bedroom so that the paramedics can get Emma out of the house and into the ambulance, followed by Mimi.

  I place Harley on his bed and he tries to run away so I grab him and wrap my arms around him, trying my best to hold him back.

  ‘I want to see my mummy. I want to see my mummy.’ Tears that seem too large for his face begin to fall from his eyes.

  ‘I know you do. But the doctors need to take her to the hospital to make her better and Mimi is going to be there to look after her too.’

  ‘I want to go with her.’ He elbows me in the stomach and I tighten my grip, then he does it again as the door slams downstairs.

  ‘I promise I will take you as soon as they phone and say she’s ready for visitors. I promise. The second they call, we’ll go to the hospital.’

  ‘But I want to go with her now.’

  ‘I know. I’m so sorry, Harley.’

  And then, almost without realizing it, I am crying too and Harley stops fighting and climbs on to the bed beside me, kneeling up so he can wrap his arms around my shoulders.

  ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.’

  I shake my head. ‘You didn’t. It’s not your fault. None of this is your fault, Harley.’

  ‘So are you crying because Mummy is poorly?’

  ‘Sort of. But mostly because you’re sad. I don’t want you to be sad, little man.’

  ‘Perhaps we could look after each other?’

  I wish all the parents from school who have written Harley off could see him now. That they could see the sweet, caring boy hidden beneath the difficult behaviour, and I feel guilty that I was just like them at the start, judging him and wanting rid of him.

  ‘I think that sounds like a plan. How about you go and choose a story whilst I quickly ring school and then we can make a cosy den and I’ll read to you in it?’

  ‘A den? Yeah.’ In a transformation of mood that is only possible when you are a child, Harley rushes off the bed and starts piling pillows and cushions in the corner of the room. ‘Do I have to go to school, though?’ Another rapid transformation in mood.

  ‘No. Neither of us is going to school today. I just need to ring them to let them know. Oh, and grab some clothes out the cupboard, buddy. I’ll put those in the wash.’

  Harley goes straight to his cupboard and I go out into the hallway and ring school, explaining, much to their annoyance, that I won’t be in for the rest of the day. I don’t tell them exactly why, just that something’s come up, and Verity takes great pleasure in informing me that the head has had to cover my class for the morning and isn’t going to be impressed that she now has to put aside all her other more important and pressing jobs to cover the class for the rest of the day. But I figure, when it all comes out, she’ll get over it.

  When I re-enter Harley’s room, he’s draped his quilt across the top of his chest of drawers and piled several boxes on top of each other to support it at the other side, creating a canopy over the cushions he has placed in the corner of the room.

  ‘I’ve made a den.’

  ‘I can see. It’s great. Have you chosen a book?’

  Harley holds up one of the Albie adventure stories Finn loves. I notice from the sticker on the side that it’s the one he chose from class on book-choosing day.

  ‘Great choice.’

  He nestles in amongst the cushions and I get down on my hands and knees and crawl in next to him. I lower my head on to one of the cushions and my legs protrude out from under the canopy. I loosen my tie and pull it out from my collar and then take the book off Harley and begin to read.

  He’s transfixed, as if I’m the world’s best storyteller and it’s the most exciting story he’s ever heard. When I finish, I close it up and put it on the floor but he lifts it up and hands it back to me.

  ‘Again. Please.’

  ‘OK.’

  As I’m reading, I notice him slipping down until his head is resting on one of his pillows and his body is curled up like a millipede. I lower my voice and slow my words, and sure enough, his eyes start to close until he’s breathing loudly, almost snoring.

  When I’m sure he’s definitely asleep, I sneak out from the den and go back into Emma’s room, opening cupboards and drawers in the hope I might find something to explain what’s happened. I must see the note, but not really take it in, because I close the drawer with it in, but then open it again, reading the words on the front. ‘For Harley – when you’re old enough to understand.’ I feel a wave of panic wash over me, first as a kind of sickness in my throat and then as hotness in my cheeks and across my forehead. I take the note out of the drawer and sit on the bed. I know I shouldn’t read it but I have to see what it says. Opening it up and looking at the page, I feel so dizzy I can barely make out the words. As they fall I wipe the tears from my face, like I’m trying to tear off my skin. I remember Mum’s note word for word, even though I’ve tried so hard to forget it. Dad scoured the house for ages looking for one. He tore through her shed, smashing her canvases against the wall, but they wouldn’t break, launching her paints at the door, ripping the hairs from her brushes. I was the one that found it, as I meticulously put her paints back where they belonged, her canvases in the exact position she’d had them in on the walls, her work in progress propped back on her easel, which I reassembled. It was in her ‘special box’. She’d shown it to me once. It had Grandma’s wedding ring and her favourite gold brooch inside. Mum had thrown the rest of Grandma’s stuff away. They’d never been close anyway. In fact, the only positive thing Mum ever said about her was, ‘She was excellent at darning socks so the seam didn’t feel uncomfortable in your shoes.’

  When I found it, I opened it with trembling hands, read it and then took a lighter to it right there in the shed, tempted to drop it to set the whole bloody place alight, but instead I threw it outside and stamped on it until it was just a smattering of ash on the gravel. I never told anyone what it said.

  I stuff Emma’s note in my pocket and feel my phone buzzing so I answer it without looking at who it is.

  ‘She’s going to be OK. They’ve pumped her stomach. Suspected overdose.’ Then Mimi starts to cry, loud splutters crackling down the phone. ‘How did I miss this, Noah? I knew she had her lows, but this?’

  I remember the conversation I’d had with Emma when I last came over. The weird way she was acting. If anyone should’ve known this was going to happen, it was me. But I didn’t take enough notice. I was too wrapped up in how uncomfortable she was making me feel. How she was unearthing emotions I didn’t want to face up to.

  ‘It wasn’t for you to spot, Mimi. We all missed it. It’s not your fault.’

  ‘I really thought she was doing better. Why didn’t she feel she could talk to me?’

  Again, the guilt. Because she did talk to me. And what did I do about it?

  ‘Is Harley OK? Poor baby.’

  ‘He’s fine. I read him a story and he fell asleep so I’m just letting him rest.’

  ‘Thank you. I’ll come and stay with him tonight. I just want to wait for Emma to wake up so that she has a friendly face to look at and then I’ll come back. Is that OK?’

  ‘Of course. Take your time.’

  ‘Thank you so much, Noah. For looking after Harley. For noticing. For caring enough to ring her to see where he was. Without you …’ Mimi sniffs. ‘Well, I can’t bear to think about it.’

  ‘Don’t. She’s going to be fine. Do you need me to pick you up from the hospital?’

  ‘No. I’ll get a taxi. I don’t want Harley to come here. Not yet anyway. See you later.’

  ‘OK. See you soon.’

  I put the phone down and go back into Harley’s room. He’s still asleep in the makeshift tent so I take up residence on his bed and wait for Mimi, my head a garbled mess of images and words and emotions. Looking at Harley asleep, he looks so innocent, and, despite it not being her fault, I feel so angry with Emma fo
r risking tainting that. Because finding your mum lying on the floor dead is not something you ever get over. And knowing that she chose it, that leaving you was better than staying with you, well, that’s enough to ruin a whole life.

  I’m not sure how much time it is that passes before I hear the door open and footsteps on the stairs. And then Mimi’s there, red-eyed and pale. When she sees me sitting on the bed, she smiles, but I can see the effort behind it, how utterly sad she’s feeling. She comes in and sits beside me, looking over at Harley still asleep on the floor.

  ‘Thanks so much for staying with him.’

  ‘Of course. No problem.’

  ‘Have you had anything to eat? Do you want something?’

  Although I haven’t eaten all day, I know I couldn’t stomach anything. ‘No, I’m fine. Actually, I thought I might get going.’ My voice sounds almost robotic, like it doesn’t even belong to me.

  ‘Oh, OK, unless you fancy a walk? I thought I might take Harley to the park when he wakes up. Take his mind off stuff. And you could probably do with the fresh air after being stuck here?’

  I could. I feel like my lungs are shrivelling and fresh air is exactly what I need. But I know that I can’t find it with Mimi and Harley. Not right now. I need to get out of here. I need a drink.

  ‘Thanks, but I might just go home and have a shower and stuff. If that’s OK with you?’

  Mimi nods, but I can tell that she’s not just looking out for me – that she wants someone to look after her, and I hate myself that I’m not man enough for the job. But really I’m doing her a favour. I failed to help Emma when she tried to reach out to me. I couldn’t save Mum. Mimi’s so much better off without me. I don’t deserve her. Like I didn’t deserve Kate.

  ‘Of course, you go. Harley’s much better company than you anyway.’

  I know she’s just putting on a brave face but I stand up ready to leave, feeling wobbly as I get to my feet. ‘OK. Well, call me if you need anything, OK?’

  ‘Will do.’

  I bend down and gently stroke Harley’s hair. ‘I hope he’s OK.’