Something to Tell You

by Lucy Diamond

  ‘Um,’ said Craig, who looked similarly discomfited, ‘Frankie, this is Julia. Julia, Frankie.’

  ‘I guessed,’ Frankie blurted out. ‘Fergus looks so like you.’

  At the mention of his name, Julia’s face lit up. ‘I gather he’s at playgroup,’ she said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Frankie, trying not to stare too nakedly at her. So here you are. Then her nerves got the better of her and she started babbling whatever came into her head. ‘He always has a great time there. The staff are brilliant and he’s got this fab best friend called Preena, who he loves playing Lego with, and—’ She broke off, struck by the strangeness of this conversation: the unlikely fact that she was having to tell this woman details about her own son. All the countless things Frankie knew about Fergus, yet Julia didn’t. All the cuddles and conversations and silly jokes that Frankie had enjoyed and Julia hadn’t.

  ‘So how often does he go there, then?’ Julia asked.

  Was it Frankie’s imagination or did Julia sound a bit critical, as if she thought they were outsourcing Fergus’s childcare because they couldn’t be bothered to look after him themselves? ‘Three mornings a week,’ Craig replied tersely. Not that it’s any of your business, his expression added.

  ‘It’s good for his social skills,’ Frankie said, in a bright TV-presenter sort of voice that didn’t sound like her at all. ‘He’s made lots of friends. And with school coming up, we thought . . .’ Craig shot her a look and she trailed off, biting her lip. ‘Yeah,’ she mumbled. Craig was right, she told herself, they didn’t need to explain their decisions to Julia, not when she’d abandoned Fergus just when he needed her most. They didn’t owe her anything. So why did Frankie feel as if she was the one being judged here?

  ‘Great!’ said Julia, clapping her hands together. ‘Well, I’ll have to get the details from you sometime.’ She smiled widely. She was an attractive woman, toned and healthy-looking, wearing a turquoise kaftan-style top, spotless white cut-off jeans and sparkly silver flip-flops. In the past Craig had told Frankie that Julia was depressive and unpredictable – ‘unhinged’ was a word he’d used – but she looked completely normal to Frankie. Radiant, even. But what did she mean, about getting the playgroup details from them? Surely she wasn’t saying . . . ?

  Frankie swung questioningly towards Craig, who was scowling and shaking his head at his ex. ‘Julia – no,’ he said. ‘You can’t just walk in here and—’

  ‘Oh, but I can,’ she said, and suddenly her smile was as toothy and gleaming as a crocodile’s. ‘Because I’m his mother.’ Her eyes glittered and the temperature in the room seemed to plunge. ‘You’ve had him for four years. I think it’s my turn now, don’t you?’

  ‘What?’ cried Frankie in anguish, just as Craig said, ‘Julia—’ again, in a tone of voice that Frankie had never heard before, one so stern and terrible that it chilled her to the marrow.

  A whimper escaped from Frankie’s throat because, deep down, there was a part of her that had always known this day would come: that Fergus’s real mother would return, seeking some kind of reparation, and stake a claim. He’s mine. Not yours. And even though Frankie loved every last inch of that little boy, she couldn’t escape the fact that he wasn’t hers. Not properly. Not according to the paperwork. She’d only ever had him on loan. And if Julia wanted to be back in Fergus’s life, get to know him anew, then how could Frankie deny her that privilege?

  She stared fearfully at Julia, wondering how Fergus would feel about all this. He would be confused. He thought she was his mummy. How would they explain it to him? And was it selfish and pathetic of Frankie to be worrying already that he would love Julia more than her?

  ‘I’ve had a lovely chat with the people at the Citizens Advice Bureau,’ Julia was saying, and Frankie jolted back to the room, ‘and they told me: a mother’s rights are sacred. A mother’s rights have more weight than a father’s rights. And while I couldn’t cope before, that was because I was ill. I had some problems. But I’m better now, and I’m ready to pick up where I left off.’

  ‘You’re ready?’ Craig repeated with such blistering sarcasm that Frankie half-expected the paint to start peeling from the walls. ‘You’re ready to pick up where you left off.’ He shook his head, incredulous, before rounding on her. ‘You can’t do that with a child, Julia. It doesn’t work like that, you can’t just press pause and then play when you feel like it. Because, tell me: where were you when he was having surgery, when he was teething, when he was ill, tired, upset, scared? On his birthday, at Christmas, when he took his first steps? Why weren’t you ready for your own son four years ago?’

  Frankie flinched at the bitter fury in his voice. His words came out so fluently, so vehemently, she had the feeling they had been rehearsed many times in his head before. Craig had always been rather tight-lipped about Julia in the past, intimating that he had cut her completely out of his thoughts, detaching her from his life like a broken old piece of furniture. Frankie hadn’t realized just how much hurt and rage were still seething volcanically away inside. ‘Craig,’ she said timidly, because she couldn’t bear to see him like this. And actually if Julia had been ill and suffered some kind of breakdown, then he should cut her some slack. You could hardly blame a person for that.

  ‘What?’ he retorted, his face contorted with anger. ‘She wants to take Fergus away. What part of that don’t you understand?’

  The words were like a slap. ‘Take him away?’ Frankie repeated in horror, turning to Julia. ‘But I thought . . .’ She’d assumed – perhaps naively – that Julia merely wanted to spend a bit of time with him. Start a new relationship. Maybe have him for the occasional afternoon here or there, building up to a night. A weekend. That would be all right, wouldn’t it? Seeing as she was his mother and all? Nobody could deny her that much, surely. But to take Fergus completely away – to rip him from Frankie and Craig, from this flat, their bedtime routines and favourite play parks and silly family jokes – no. No. This could not possibly be an option. No!

  ‘He’s my son,’ said Julia, playing her trump card. The card that could not be denied or beaten; not by Frankie anyway, she thought helplessly.

  Shock and fear flooded her system. Her heart contracted painfully, as if there was too much to process; it felt hard to breathe. Was this what happened when you meddled with other people’s families – that someone turned up, days later, to meddle in yours? It was as if, by going up to York to investigate her own parentage, she’d somehow let loose some celestial mischief that was now set to wreak havoc in Frankie’s own small world, to put in jeopardy everything she loved.

  ‘What’s his favourite story, then? What’s his favourite food? You don’t even know him,’ Craig said. His nostrils flared, his hands gripped the side of the table, his whole body seemed braced to spring into action, as if adrenalin was pumping through him by the gallon. ‘Go on, get out. We don’t want you here.’

  ‘Craig, wait,’ said Julia, and Frankie wanted to echo the same words. Craig, wait, you’re making this worse. Craig, wait, don’t attack her, listen to what she has to say. Craig, wait, there has to be a sensible way around this. He hated Julia, though, she realized uneasily. He really, really hated her.

  ‘You heard me,’ he snarled, bristling like a wild animal. ‘Kindly leave.’

  Julia stuck out her chin in defiance. ‘I didn’t come here for an argument,’ she said, eyeballing him right back. Then she scribbled down her number on a piece of paper and pushed it across the table. ‘Here are my details. Ring me when you’re ready to discuss this like an adult.’ Her chin jutted. ‘But you need to know that I’ve got a solicitor. I’ve got people who will help me. And I have every right to see my son!’ Her composure suddenly crumbling, a sob swallowed up her voice. ‘Because he’s my son too, and don’t you forget it.’

  She banged the table as she got to her feet, and Frankie quailed as the woman’s angry gaze swung between Craig and then her, before she slammed her way out of the flat. The silence that foll
owed her departure seemed deafeningly loud, filling the small room. Everything in there was the same as it had been an hour ago – the cheerful yellow walls, Fergus’s paintings Blu-tacked on the doors of the cabinets, two spotty mugs upside down in the draining rack, the photos of happy days stuck on the fridge, along with a load of Thomas the Tank Engine magnets. And yet Julia’s appearance seemed to have cast a spell over the place, so that the window now looked small and grimy and Frankie couldn’t help but notice the dust balls in one corner of the floor, a teabag splash on the counter, the cupboard door that hung wonkily where the hinge had been broken for months.

  Feeling as if her heart had become a gigantic painful rock, she set one of the lukewarm cappuccinos in front of Craig and sank into a chair with the other. ‘What are we going to do?’ she asked, her voice a fearful bleat. ‘What are we going to do, Craig?’

  Chapter Seven

  ‘This is a nice surprise,’ Alison said as Robyn sat down opposite her at the beer-garden table. It was Friday, Robyn’s day off, and she’d originally planned to spend the afternoon getting the house in order for the weekend: catching up on the laundry, with a quick whip around the supermarket if she had time. As it turned out, what she really wanted was to see a friendly face. Don’t suppose you’re free for lunch today? The White Horse? she had texted her mum hopefully.

  It must have been serendipity because, not ten minutes earlier, Alison had just had a cancellation and so here they were now, at a pub equidistant from them both. Alison was being her usual comforting self, handing over a menu and saying knowledgeably that the home-made pasties were very good here, before she lifted up her sunglasses to peer more closely at her daughter. ‘Is everything all right, love?’

  Robyn smiled wanly. What was it about mums that meant they had a built-in worry detector? ‘Not really,’ she replied with a sigh, turning the laminated menu over in her hands. ‘John’s lost his job.’

  ‘Oh no.’ Alison’s jaw dropped, mirroring the shock Robyn had experienced on hearing the news. ‘He hasn’t!’

  ‘He has. Redundancies across the department, apparently,’ Robyn said, grimacing. John had worked at the university for eighteen years; a job for life, or so he’d thought. He was the main breadwinner of the family, the mortgage payer, the holiday provider, the man with the golden credit card. More than that: he prided himself on his ability to provide for them, and was old-fashioned in the sense that he thought this was what a husband should do. But then two days ago, when Beth Broadwood had approached Robyn with her attempted solidarity – I was sorry to hear the news – it turned out that John’s job, and all that it meant for the family, had fractured and collapsed to the ground while she had been looking the other way.

  ‘I was going to tell you,’ John said glumly, when she’d built up to asking him if it was true. ‘I was just . . . trying to find the right moment.’

  He looked ashamed, poor man; he looked broken by his confession. He’d hardly been able to look Robyn in the eye as he revealed the facts in a weary, defeated voice. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she cried passionately in response. ‘What a nightmare.’ She took his hand and squeezed it, wishing she could make things better for him. John’s job defined him; it was all he’d ever done. He was the sort of person who became restless during the long vacations; he much preferred being at work and getting on with the job. ‘Are they scrapping the course, or what? Is everyone going?’

  He’d shrugged. ‘Dunno.’ He opened his mouth as if he was about to elaborate, then seemed to change his mind. ‘Anyway. Now you know,’ he continued, heaviness in his voice. ‘I’m sorry. I feel as if I’ve let you all down.’

  ‘John, no!’ she’d exclaimed. ‘Of course you haven’t. You haven’t let anyone down – it’s not your fault. It’s just bad luck, that’s all. Really rotten luck.’

  ‘He’s gutted,’ she went on to her mum now, remembering John’s glum face. No doubt the redundancy was the cause of all those dark moods of his, the excessive drinking, the silent withdrawal from her. He hadn’t wanted to burden her, clearly. Somehow this made her feel even worse.

  ‘Oh dear. That is bad news,’ Alison replied. ‘Will you be all right for money? I mean, he’s been there a while, hasn’t he? They do have to give you a decent pay-off at least when you’re made redundant – employment law and all that.’

  ‘He didn’t seem to know what they’d give him,’ Robyn said. ‘I’m sure he’ll find something else, but . . . It’s such a shock. He seems so crushed.’

  ‘Poor John. It’s a blow to his manly pride. Your dad was—’ Alison broke off, the words hanging mid-sentence between them.

  ‘What?’ Robyn asked. That was two mentions of her dad in the space of a week; unheard of. ‘Did Dad get made redundant?’ she asked, wondering if it had affected his health, contributed to the heart attack that had ultimately felled him. Maybe she wouldn’t have a fattening home-made pasty for lunch after all, she decided, picturing her own heart keeping time inside her ribcage.

  ‘It was a long time ago,’ Alison said dismissively, before changing the subject back again. ‘Anyway, no offence, but I’m guessing your job doesn’t pay all that much,’ she went on. ‘So if you’re stuck, let me know, because I’ve got some savings put aside, remember. Or maybe . . .’ She cocked her head and considered her daughter. ‘Well, you said yourself not so long ago that you might look for a more interesting job again, didn’t you? So—’

  ‘Yes, but . . .’ Whoa, thought Robyn. They were leaping all over the place here. She’d hardly been able to digest John’s redundancy news yet, let alone start making plans for her own career revival.

  ‘So this could be your chance. You know what they say – when life gives you lemons, and all that. The kiddies are old enough now not to mind, aren’t they? You could contact your old department, I’m sure they’d welcome you back with open arms. Lemonade all round!’ Alison had perked right up, with the brilliance of her idea, and was leaning forward, eyes alight with excitement. Oh, but she had been the proudest mum in the world when Robyn had passed her degree (‘The first in our family!’), and then her Masters (‘I don’t know where she gets her brains from’), and then worked as a postgrad at the university, before rising through the departmental ranks.

  How Robyn had loved working there, though! She’d felt interested and challenged every single day; almost able to hear the synapses in her brain fizzing and buzzing from the stimulation. She relished being surrounded by highly intelligent people, everyone keen to learn, foraging for discoveries and information. And of course she’d met John there on a rainy night too, at an open lecture on the ‘Unknown Universe’, when Fate persuaded them both through the door in the first place, and then sat them next to each other. (‘And about time, and all!’ Alison had cried in relief, when Robyn told her she was seeing a new bloke. ‘I was starting to think I’d have to dust off a space for you on the Old Maids’ shelf soon, next to me.’)

  All of this felt like such a long time ago now, of course. When Sam had been born, Robyn had taken maternity leave, fully intending to return to her job, but he’d been a sickly baby, plagued by eczema, and when it had come to the crunch, she hadn’t felt able to leave him. Then Daisy had arrived; a clingy little thing who roared with sorrow and outrage if anyone but Robyn dared try to hold her. It had been eleven years since Robyn had considered herself any kind of career woman, in short.

  Had she left it too long now to return? she wondered. She did her best to keep up with New Scientist magazine when time permitted, but was surely out of the loop in terms of the minutiae of the latest developments in her field. Besides, she had lost confidence in her own abilities. Once upon a time she had been able to stand in front of hundreds of students in lecture halls and talk to them enthusiastically about genetic engineering and molecular biology. Nowadays the thought made her feel kind of terrified. She could actually feel her top lip starting to sweat with nerves as she pictured herself there again.

  ‘Mum, no, it’s fine. I’ll keep y
ou posted, I’m sure everything will work out,’ she said after a moment.

  ‘I’m sure it will too,’ Alison replied. ‘But honestly, why do these things all happen at once? It’s been one of those weeks, hasn’t it? Did you have a massive storm on Monday as well? My electrics went and everything for a while, it was a right pain in the neck. And then there was John’s mum and dad having their bust-up, too . . . Crikey. Must be something in the air. Anyway –’ she grabbed her menu theatrically – ‘we should order, because I’ve got Elizabeth Perry’s highlights to do at two-fifteen and she doesn’t half get narky if I’m late. What do you fancy? I’m going for the pasty and some potato wedges. Sod it, it’s Friday after all.’

  Robyn studied the menu. It might be Friday, but she was going to have to watch the pennies from now on, she reminded herself, at least until John found a new job. ‘Salad and a diet Coke,’ she replied, reluctantly.

  It was Saturday morning, and Jeanie Mortimer stirred sleepily in the double bed, the enormous ceiling fan whirring lazily above her head. One more day of paradise, she thought, opening an eye to see bright sunshine already streaming through the gaps in the shutters. One more day, before she was due to pack up her swimming costume and floaty dresses and return to the real world. Despite the rocky start to her holiday, she’d gone on to have a very nice stay here.

  She’d spent the first day in tears, mind, replaying over and over again the moment when she’d seen the young woman – Frankie – staring at Harry, frozen to the spot, and some dreadful sixth sense had sent the hairs prickling on the back of her neck, a descending scale of notes playing ominously in her head. Was there such a thing as female intuition? Whatever, Jeanie had just known.

  Kathy Hallows’s daughter, Harry had confirmed to her miserably later on. ‘Me and Kathy, we—’