Something to Tell You

by Lucy Diamond

  ‘I didn’t mean to do it,’ she had said brokenly to the police officers in the hospital, tears running down her swollen cheeks until they pooled damply in the bandages that cradled her smashed jaw. Except – if she was being honest – in the dark, wild heat of the moment, she had meant to do it, when he punched her face so hard they both heard a crack and one of her teeth fell out, shining and bloodied on the kitchen floor. Hell yes, she meant to do it all right, as she grabbed the kitchen knife with its natty red handle and plunged it into his side. A Kitchen Devil, it was called; she remembered thinking later that that was a good description of her own self at that very moment. A kitchen banshee, screaming insults back at him, her hands sodden with his splashing crimson blood. That jolt of satisfaction at seeing the shocked look on his face at what she’d done. There. See how YOU like it.

  ‘He just kept on hitting me,’ she’d explained, her voice so tiny that the police officer who was jotting down her words in a notepad had to lean closer to hear. ‘I thought he was going to kill me this time.’

  But he hadn’t managed that at least. The neighbours must have heard her screaming because they’d called the police, although she couldn’t remember any of that: the ambulance journey, his arrest, nothing. For six weeks she’d remained in hospital, being patched and stitched and splinted, off her head with strong painkillers most of the time, but safe from him at least. Safe from harm. Those six long weeks had passed, one after another, while she thought and she pondered and she made a few decisions. Meanwhile, pound by pound, the weight was already beginning to drop silently off her as she lay there recovering.

  Afterwards there had been the court case, when he’d been sent to prison on charges of Grievous Bodily Harm and she’d been allowed to walk away free. Free of him, free to start again. Or so she thought. Except that people kept acting strangely around her. The local press – which had always fawned over Mark – seemed to have taken his side, portraying her as some kind of psycho, even hinting in their comment pieces that she should be the one in prison. Friends went quiet on her, scared no doubt that she had become the knife-wielding maniac of the news stories. Even her own family appeared repelled. Her mum was embarrassed about what the neighbours thought and didn’t want to talk about it, whereas her sister-in-law went even further. ‘I’m sorry,’ her brother Stu had said awkwardly, when Bunny was newly out of hospital and had dredged up the energy to drop round, ‘but Sonia’s not happy about you seeing our Chlo any more. I’m really sorry.’

  Another woman might have been permanently defeated by this. And in fairness, Bunny had gone home and wept copiously for the loss of her adored nine-year-old niece with her shining black hair and giggling fits. Bunny had been the most doting aunty to Chloe until then, always willing to play tea-parties or read stories or create Lego constructions together. She still had a card Chloe had made for her birthday one year – Deere Arntie Raych, I love you xxx – written in wavering, wonky letters, with a picture of two smiling stick-people holding hands (‘That’s me and you’).

  Eventually, when she had been cold-shouldered from all sides, she had felt a burst of defiance appear from out of nowhere; her old fighting spirit fighting back. She was not a bad person, whatever they thought. She deserved a second chance. And so she had packed up her pitifully small collection of belongings in order to make a new start, somewhere that nobody knew her. York, she decided, randomly jabbing a finger at her road atlas. It seemed as good a place as any.

  York was beautiful and the people were friendly. She left Rachel behind and became Bunny, a name from happier times, and set about finding herself various cash-in-hand jobs – cleaning, bar work, waitressing – as well as a tiny flat to rent. She sorted out a divorce and took back her maiden name, then settled on her current job, which she enjoyed, working at Grains deli, a small café in town that specialized in healthy snacks and wholesome salads. Above all, she went on losing the weight, joining a Zumba class and walking to work, finding strategies to stop herself from slipping down to her bad old comfort-eating habits. Slowly but surely, strength began to bloom within her like a Yorkshire rose.

  Then of course she had met Dave – sprinting to his rescue in the street, only for him eventually to rescue her right back, by being so trustworthy and good and kind, restoring her faith in the possibility of love, when she’d believed it to be gone forever. He’d asked her her name in the A&E department as he lay there, woolly-headed and drowsy, and misheard her reply. ‘Bernie?’ he’d said. ‘What’s that short for – Bernadette?’

  She’d twinkled at him, arched an eyebrow. ‘Bernie is usually short for Bernadette, yes,’ she’d agreed, without correcting the misunderstanding. ‘But my friends call me Bunny.’

  ‘Bunny,’ he’d repeated woozily, smiling up at her. He had a lovely smile. ‘Hello there, Bunny. Do you come here often?’

  Later, he’d introduced her to members of his family as ‘Bernadette’, but she always cried, ‘Oh please, call me Bunny! Bernadette sounds too severe. I’m really not a severe sort of person.’ And somehow she’d never quite managed to say, By the way, Dave, my name isn’t actually Bernadette at all. It’s Rachel Roberts, but you probably shouldn’t Google me, if you know what I mean. It was easier to go along with the story, to spin a little fairy-tale of goodness around herself. Rachel Roberts was a torrid tragedy that had been someone else altogether.

  Things like bank cards and post were slightly trickier to explain, sure, but Bunny arranged for any important mail to be forwarded to a PO box in town, swooping by and picking it up now and then. It wasn’t as if she was lying, exactly, to Dave. More that she was edging around the truth, keeping certain things from him. Self-preservation, she saw it as, and who could blame her? Because she’d been kicked to rags down on the floor already, and it had been enough for one lifetime. Never again would she let a person hurt her like that; never again would she be the powerless, scared sheep on someone else’s tether.

  This had all been fine at first; a means of sealing that tender, bruised part of herself away from the rest of the world. But as she began to fall in love with Dave, and trust him, as she moved into his house and they took holidays together, and his mum dropped hints about Dave popping the question and making things ‘official’, Bunny had been feeling less confident concerning what she had omitted telling him about her life, about her. ‘I’m not in any hurry to get married,’ she said pre-emptively before Valentine’s Day, terrified he was going to propose. That was the moment when she should have told him she’d been married once before, but something stopped her. Why jinx her relationship by letting the past sneak in and taint it? Why jeopardize the second chance she’d so painstakingly created for herself?

  Back when she was a teenager, there’d been an advert in the local paper one week for a Saturday girl at the New Age shop in town. She’d rung up to find out more, only to be asked for her date of birth. ‘The manager needs to study your star chart to see if you’re suitable,’ she was told. A few long moments later the judgement came. ‘Sorry,’ the woman on the phone said, ‘but it’s a no. We don’t think you’d be right for the job.’

  ‘Oh,’ Bunny – Rachel, rather – had replied, taken aback by this unorthodox recruitment process. She’d gone on to get a Saturday job in a supermarket instead, where they were more interested in your numeracy skills and friendliness with customers, rather than your star sign, thankfully. It had niggled at her ever since, though, that brusque rejection, the lack of further explanation. What had the manager seen in her birth chart that had been so off-putting, she sometimes wondered. Had they known from her planetary alignments that she would turn out to be the sort of person who plunged a knife into a man in a desperate fight-or-die adrenalin rush?

  She had spent eighteen months trying not to think about Mark Roberts, but after the Cotswold slimmers-group nightmare, he was back and lurking in her head like an evil spirit. Is it true you stabbed your husband? the man from the other evening repeated in Bunny’s ear as she ate breakfast
with Dave, as she folded their laundry, as he made them spaghetti carbonara for dinner, whistling and sloshing extra wine into the sauce. She didn’t deserve such a lovely boyfriend, she thought as she listened to his breathing in bed at night, as he rolled over in his sleep and flung a loving arm across her. Oh, Dave. And he was going to find out the truth about her one day – he was certain to – and he would be so, so disappointed. He would look at her in shock, wounded by her betrayal, devastated by her double life.

  It would only take one suspicious member of the Cotswold audience to think, That was a bit weird. I wonder if . . . ? and then begin hunting about on the Internet, for the walls to start crumbling. She could already imagine the tabloid headlines: ‘Slimmer of the Year’s Secret Shame.’ ‘Former Fattie’s Hunger for Violence.’ ‘Slice Vegetables? I’d Rather—’

  All right, calm down. No need to get carried away, she told herself, as her imagination spiralled out of control. It felt as if her luck was trickling through her fingers, though. As if all the skeletons in her cupboard were scrambling to get out and catch up with her, their bones clicking and clacking like castanets. As if Rachel – poor old unhappy Rachel – was resurfacing once more, clawing her way back up into Bunny’s nice new life, like it or not.

  She didn’t want that to happen. She had too much to lose – Dave and their home, his family, their friends, the tender shoots of happiness and hope that she had nurtured so carefully. The feeling that she was in the right place, with the right people, at last. She couldn’t let it all slip from her grasp. She mustn’t!

  Not suitable, the manager at the New Age shop had said all those years ago. Bunny was starting to think she wasn’t suitable for anything. She’d failed at marriage. She was failing at being a girlfriend. She was even starting to fail at being slim, because she kept tucking into wine-laced carbonara, when it was one of the most fattening dinners out there. So should she call the whole thing quits, bail out and just leave while the going was good? Or should she risk blowing any future chance of happiness here by revealing herself to Dave – her true, ugly, shameful self – before somebody else did?

  Craig had been predictably livid when he heard about Frankie’s encounter with Julia in the park, promptly ringing her solicitor and telling her that Julia could stuff her suggestions of mediation somewhere painful. Fergus, in contrast, took a while longer to respond to what had happened.

  He was a deep thinker, Fergus, you could practically hear him tussling away with an idea sometimes, the cogs grinding. And, chatty as he was, with all his questions and observations and jokes, there were times when he nursed a worry to himself, when Frankie didn’t have a clue what he was thinking. What a funny lady, she had exclaimed brightly on the way back from the park, but he hadn’t really replied, just held her hand and walked beside her, jumping over cracks in the paving slabs, his blue trainers bright in the sunshine. Had he picked up on the peculiar tension between her and Julia? And what had his little-boy brain made of Julia’s extraordinary parting shot – I’m your real mummy? Should Frankie raise the subject with him or pretend it had never happened?

  It was only later on that evening that she saw any manifestation of his feelings. Craig was bathing Fergus, and Frankie was putting away clean vests and T-shirts in his drawers, when she noticed that the teddy Julia had given Fergus had been fiercely stuffed head-down into the toy-box. ‘Oh dear,’ Frankie said as Fergus emerged pyjama-clad from the bathroom a few moments later, hair tousled and damp. ‘Teddy’s stuck. Help! I can’t get out,’ she added in a growly-bear voice for good measure, lifting one of the bear’s legs and waggling it around.

  Fergus laughed, but only pushed harder at the teddy’s rounded bottom, wedging it further into the box. ‘He’s silly,’ he said scathingly and then flopped face-down onto his bed. ‘Who was that lady?’ he asked in a muffled voice.

  Ah, the big question ‘She . . . she’s somebody Daddy used to know,’ Frankie replied carefully, smoothing a hand over his springy wet curls, curls so similar to Julia’s it made her heart ache a little. Then she paused. Was it her place to say anything else here, or should she dodge the bullet and start discussing which bedtime story they would read tonight instead? ‘Um . . .’ she said, uncertainly. ‘So anyway . . .’

  She had hesitated too long, though. ‘I don’t like that lady,’ Fergus pronounced, his face still in the bedcovers. ‘She said she was my mummy. But you are my mummy!’

  Oh, help – here they were, right at the very nub of it, and she had no idea how to respond. Tell him the truth and break his world into a hundred confusing pieces? Or fob him off, leave the facts to be tackled another day? Frankie quailed at having been put in such an impossible position. But then again, hadn’t she put herself there, the very first time she let Fergus call her ‘Mumma’? She thought of Julia’s coolly enquiring eyebrow – He calls you that? – and took a deep breath.

  ‘Well, you are definitely my boy,’ she replied, heart thumping. Was this the right thing to say? Or was she making matters worse? ‘So I’m pretty sure that makes me your mummy. Hooray!’ she cheered, tickling his feet. ‘Because I really like being your mummy. ESPECIALLY . . .’ she added dramatically, ‘when you let me choose the bedtime story.’ She lay down next to him, so that her face was beside his, and put on a funny high-pitched voice. ‘Oh, please let me choose the story tonight. Please please please let me choose the story tonight!’

  Fergus started to giggle, because this was one of their running jokes. ‘No, no, no,’ he replied bossily, squirming to get off the bed. ‘I am choosing the story. Because it is MY story,’ he said, scurrying over to the bookcase. ‘And I am choosing . . . THIS one!’

  The dinosaur one again. Of course. ‘Excellent choice,’ Frankie said warmly, as he hopped back onto the bed and snuggled against her. She hugged him close and dropped a kiss on his head. ‘My goodness me, I am the luckiest mummy that ever, ever lived,’ she said, putting the book on her lap. ‘And do you know why?’

  ‘Why?’ he asked, sliding his thumb into his mouth.

  ‘Because you are the best boy that ever, ever lived. And actually . . .’ She walked her fingers down his plump little pyjamaed thigh, and he giggled again in anticipation. ‘You are also . . .’ Walk, walk, walk, went her fingers. ‘The. Most. Ticklish. Boy. Ever-ever-ever!’

  And then he was squealing and breathless, and throwing himself around on the duvet – and she was allowing him to get far too worked up, frankly, considering it was nearly his bedtime and she still had the dinosaur book to get through first. She’d pay for it ten minutes later, she knew, when she was trying to get Fergus to sleep and he was still hyper and silly, but right then, his face split open with rich chuckles and yelps, she wanted to live in the moment forever, and never, ever leave.

  She and Craig discussed the situation in low voices after Fergus had eventually calmed down and fallen asleep. The whole incident in the playground was starting to feel like a bad dream now, but Frankie’s mind kept fixating on Julia’s wide, almost manic smile, the threats she’d issued in that friendly-sounding voice, and she felt distinctly uneasy. She wished Craig hadn’t been so impulsive about ringing Julia’s solicitor and telling her to shove her meeting. Frankie knew already that Julia was not going to be a pushover.

  ‘We’ve got to take her seriously,’ she warned Craig. ‘It’s not like she’ll fade away again into the background, just because we don’t want her around. And Fergus is asking me really hard questions – I don’t know how to answer him. Maybe . . .’ She swallowed, because she’d been dreading this moment. ‘Maybe he’s old enough to sort of understand that he has two different mummies,’ she said miserably. ‘Maybe we should just . . . have the talk. Then do our best to reassure him.’

  Craig shook his head. ‘It’s too confusing,’ he said, drumming his fingers on the arm of his chair. He’d been in a grunge-band as a teenager and still played percussion on inanimate objects if he was thinking hard. ‘And as soon as we tell him about Julia, then we’ll have t
o let her into his life. Trust me, we don’t want that to happen.’

  ‘But . . .’ Frankie felt conflicted. Just because Craig hated his ex, was it right to keep her completely away from Fergus? Was he acting in good faith for his son, or out of revenge? He had once loved Julia after all. She couldn’t be that bad. Could she? ‘The thing is, I don’t think a court would actually refuse to let her see him, though,’ she ventured. ‘I mean . . . is that in his best interest?’

  ‘Yes!’ he cried. ‘Because she is a terrible mother. We have proof – solid proof – that she was crap. The fact that she bailed out on him so early, and has been entirely off his radar ever since. You can’t switch parenting on and off like that, out of some kind of whim.’

  ‘I know, but—’

  ‘Why are you taking her side?’ Craig’s face was accusing. ‘You don’t know her! She’s bad news. I’ve a good mind to put a protection order on her, stop her coming anywhere near him or us.’

  Frankie hesitated, doubtful that this would ever be granted. Doubtful that that would be in Fergus’s best interest, either. Imagine him as a teenager, finding out he had another mother somewhere – his real, biological mother – and then them telling him that they’d legislated against Julia seeing him. It had been strange enough for her, hearing about Harry Mortimer, but at least she’d had the choice of going to find him. Denied this, Fergus might end up hating them. ‘You can’t stop her from wanting to be in his life,’ she said quietly, ‘when she gave birth to him. That’s not going to happen.’

  Craig’s eyes were mutinous. ‘We’ll just see about that,’ he replied.

  Chapter Fifteen

  ‘Goodness, you’re very tense,’ the woman said, pushing her knuckles into Paula’s shoulder blades and grinding them around. ‘Try to relax. Let yourself go limp. Deep breath out . . .’