The Child Inside

by Suzanne Bugler

  They will know, as I know, that I will never be one of them.

  When the concert is over, and we have all applauded the boys, the headmaster and – bizarrely – ourselves, the boys are released to locate their parents in the audience. Ten minutes of jovial chaos ensues as boys force their way through the baying and beckoning crowds, accompanied by more bursts of spontaneous applause and shouts of, Well done, William/ Harry/George. Brilliant performance! Your parents are just over there. Tell them we’ll meet you outside in five/in the restaurant/back at yours.

  Like one vast family, they collect and come together. And within this moving sea Andrew and I stand and wait, as Jonathan peels his way towards us. He greets us woodenly. As I was ashamed of Andrew, he is ashamed of us both.

  ‘Well done, Jono,’ Andrew says and makes to give Jono a quick, matey hug, but Jono recoils as though burnt.

  ‘Get off,’ he hisses, and he looks shiftily around lest any of his friends should have witnessed his dad’s monumental gaffe.

  The colour rises from the collar of Andrew’s shirt, up his neck, up the sides of his face. He hesitates, he tries to laugh. I know how hurt he is. I know it, because I feel it too, a swift, sharp blow to the heart.

  ‘Can we just go?’ Jono whines, and his face is pulled in like a prune, dark with embarrassment. Around us the masses are still basking in the communal hug of congratulation, but we three, we slink out from that church unnoticed, each of us an island, each of us alone. I walk behind Andrew; I see the stiff set of his shoulders, and the back of his neck so vulnerable somehow, and flushed still. I see him, my husband, and I feel for him. Tears prickle in my eyes. I long to touch him. I long to put my arm through his and rest my head on his shoulder; I wish that we could lean together, laugh together. I am a bitch for minding about his shoes. He is a good man. He is a good, kind, caring man, but the truth is – the awful, terrifying and heartbreaking truth of it is – that he is lost to me, as I am to him. We lost each other, a long time ago.

  Christmas arrives and with it Lois, Andrew’s mother. She lives near Leicester, in the small, neat bungalow in which Andrew grew up. On Christmas Eve Andrew drives all the way there and back to collect her, and on the day after Boxing Day he will do the same again to return her, because she will not, thankfully, leave the cat for longer than that.

  It is of course a good thing that Andrew will make this journey for his mother, and I hope that one day, if necessary, Jono would do the same for me. Andrew is setting his son a good example. But in those three hours or so alone together in the car Andrew becomes entirely hers again. Andrew is her only son, as Jono is ours. When Andrew was ten his father died, and then there were just the two of them in that claustrophobic, lace-trimmed bungalow, and now of course his mother is alone, apart from her cat, and whatever scraps of our lives we throw her way. On the rare occasions when I am with her I see the horrible potential that life has for repeating itself. I see the way she looks at Andrew, as though through a mirror in which longing and pain are equally reflected. And I see the way that he becomes around her: reduced and pulled back; the ghost of the umbilical cord still caught around his neck.

  But that is not all.

  Like Andrew, and like Jono too, she is tall and thin and dark, and so I, by physical default, am the outsider. I am outnumbered by the strong, commendable Morgan genes. I feel that she regards my lack of height, my tendency to freckle and my rather thick, wavy hair as combined proof of my failings.

  At Jono’s christening Lois got hold of Jonathan and rocked him in her vice-like arms. ‘He looks just like his father. Just like him,’ she said proudly, to anyone who was listening. And then, as if it was meant to be amusing, ‘And I think we’re all rather relieved about that!’

  I have never forgiven her.

  On Christmas morning the three of us watch as Jono opens his presents. Lois is properly dressed already, but the rest of us are not and I am very aware of my messy hair and my pale, soft skin under my bathrobe. Jono performs for us; he reverts to childishness, ripping paper off presents and letting it pile up discarded around him. Each unwrapped present he holds in both hands for the necessary amount of time before moving on to the next; I can almost see him counting out the seconds in his head. ‘Thanks,’ he says as he works his way through. ‘Thanks, that’s cool.’

  And then my parents arrive later in the morning, and we do it all again. Now there are five people, all with their eyes on Jono. He is like a monkey in the spotlight. I see the stress of the circus, pink upon his cheeks.

  There is a present for me, from Andrew. He has bought me earrings, small gold moon-shaped drops. I make a big show of putting them on. I look in the mirror. I tuck my hair behind my ear; I preen. I behave like a woman who is loved. My parents tell me how lucky I am. Lois tells me how lucky I am. Andrew basks in their approval like a boy who has done well at school. I have bought him a jumper, and a kit for cleaning his golf clubs. I do not hear anyone telling him how lucky he is, but these things of course are not so special.

  My sister was unable to come. She decided to spend Christmas in Devon, instead, with friends. I try not to think of her going for long walks on a windswept beach, or lazing by the roar of an open fire. I try not to think of Amy, either, and her house filled with the exhilarating noise and laughter of sixteen people. I spend much of the day in the kitchen. Andrew has our guests to entertain, and a Meccano rocket-launcher to build with Jono. And I find that there is only so long that I can bear to be in the living room with them all, yet another pair of eyes upon Jono. I cook lunch, I serve lunch, I eat, I clear away. It goes as smoothly as ever it could. My son sits or moves among us – the pet, the idol, the raison d’être. One day he will escape all this; he will leave as soon as he is able. The inevitability of that is a large, immovable rock in the pathway of everything that I do.

  Later, when it is over, and my parents have gone home and Jono is curled up in front of a film in his pyjamas, Lois decides it is time for her to go to bed.

  ‘Thank you for a very nice day,’ she says to Andrew.

  And Andrew says, ‘You’re very welcome,’ followed by the measure of all nice days: ‘I think Jono enjoyed himself.’

  She turns to me then, and I think that she is going to thank me, too, for after all, I did all the work. But instead she pulls a very wistful face and says, ‘You want to make the most of Jonathan while you can, Rachel. Before you know it, some woman will come along and steal him away from you, and you won’t like that, I can tell you.’

  ‘Did you hear her?’ I ask Andrew, when she’s gone upstairs.

  ‘She didn’t mean anything by it,’ he says. We are in the kitchen, putting away the last of the plates.

  ‘She didn’t even thank me. She just thanked you.’

  ‘Don’t be like that now,’ Andrew says in his patient but warning voice, as if I am the one who is wrong, as if he is being patient with me. His tone goads me.

  ‘When Jonathan gets married, I’ll have the sense to make a friend of his wife,’ I snap. ‘I’ll be her best friend.’ I swallow hard. ‘She’ll be the daughter I never had.’

  I see the weariness cross his face; I swear, he almost rolls his eyes. ‘But what if you don’t like her?’ he says so calmly, so apparently reasonably. He says it as if I don’t know that it’s meant to hurt.

  ‘That won’t even come into it,’ I snap. ‘But is that what you’re saying? That your mum doesn’t like me?’

  ‘I’m saying it’s hard for her, that’s all. I’m her only child.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ I say. ‘And Jono is mine.’

  The unsaid words hang between us.

  Andrew carries on putting away the crockery, and then he moves on to the glasses, his contribution to the day’s meal. I stand there, mute now, and I watch him. He moves so precisely, so controlled. Inside I am bubbling with a rage I cannot define.

  When there is nothing more to be done in the kitchen Andrew very carefully folds up the tea towel and places it on its rail. Hi
s composure infuriates me. I want to see him undone.

  ‘It isn’t my fault that Jono is an only child,’ I say and my voice is loaded.

  ‘No,’ Andrew says. ‘I suppose, like everything else, it’s mine.’

  My heart is thumping. ‘Babies don’t conceive themselves, you know.’

  He looks at me coldly. ‘And is that supposed to be a turn-on?’

  The anger inside me floods over into despair and I feel tears rush into my eyes.

  But we cannot argue, we cannot even talk, with Jono still up and Lois in the house, no doubt with her ear against her door. Andrew sighs, and he leaves the room. Moments later I hear him in the living room, talking to Jono, and to his mother, and laughing. And I am stuck in the kitchen, trapped within myself, unable to join them. Always, unable to join them.

  That night, I take off my earrings and I put them away in their box. I get into bed, alone. Inside my heart is a vast, hollow space.

  Andrew is downstairs, watching something on TV, and I know he will stay there for a while, until I have gone to sleep. Perhaps, if I had behaved differently, we would have had sex tonight. Perhaps those earrings were more than just a present, perhaps they were a bigger gesture, a held-out hand. But I have blown it now. I have slapped that hand away.

  And so on we go.

  I close my eyes tight and the tears slide into my hair. Is this it? Is this all there is for me? To be useful till I am no longer useful? To be grateful for my small domestic slice and cling to it, no matter what? To hang on and on, till one day I will end up like Andrew’s mother or, worse still, like Mrs Reiber, old and alone.

  I see my life run away from me. I see it, skittling down the years like leaves in a breeze. How bitter will I be then, when everything is gone and I am stuck here still in this terrible glue?

  EIGHT

  Janice comes to visit us the weekend after Christmas. She brings books for Jono and champagne for Andrew and me, but she doesn’t bring her boyfriend.

  After lunch we go for a walk in the park, and she and I walk and talk while Andrew and Jono kick a ball. Janice doesn’t have children, and now, of course, she swears she’s never wanted them. She observes Jono with a carefully studied disinterest. I ought to find this refreshing, a break from the intensity with which Jono is normally viewed. I ought to find it liberating; it should free me up to be just myself with her. But the fact is that Janice regards all family life with the same indifference, verging almost on disdain. We are part of the domestic otherworld, Andrew, Jono and me, and as far as Janice is concerned, I am cemented squarely in the middle of it.

  ‘How was your Christmas?’ I ask.

  ‘Fantastic,’ she says decisively. ‘No cooking, no relatives – best Christmas ever.’

  The feeling that I am a lesser being somehow pervades me, the dull footsteps of predictability creeping over my skin.

  ‘How about yours?’ she says now, with forced enthusiasm.

  ‘Oh, fine. You know, the usual,’ I say. ‘Have you seen the parents?’

  ‘Yes, I went down yesterday. Getting all the family done in one weekend.’

  ‘Oh.’ That is what I am then; something to be done.

  ‘Paul’s still stuck with his in-laws in Bristol,’ she adds, by way of explanation.

  ‘You’re still seeing him, then?’

  ‘Of course.’

  Janice is just over one year older than me. I remember when she used to roam around the house at night-time, dragging her stuffed donkey behind her, terrified of the witches hiding in the dark. Now, she holds her hardness in front of her like a huge, giant bat, with which to smack us all away.

  ‘Did you see him over Christmas?’ I ask kindly. She is my sister, after all.

  ‘He came to Devon the day after Boxing Day and stayed over.’ She laughs, triumphantly. ‘Told his wife he had to go into work.’

  She is my sister, but her harshness frightens me. I don’t know what to say.

  As if she senses my disapproval she says, ‘All men have affairs, you know.’

  ‘No, they don’t.’

  ‘Well, most do,’ she says. ‘Ian did.’ Ian was her husband. ‘And Paul is. I’m doing no worse than was done to me.’

  ‘That’s hardly a justification,’ I say, and then, because I don’t want to argue with her, ‘I worry about you, that’s all. I don’t want you to get hurt.’

  She loops her arm through mine suddenly and I am overwhelmed with a thickening sadness.

  ‘You don’t know how lucky you are,’ she says. She gestures to where Andrew and Jonathan are now wrestling over that ball, the picture of familial bliss. The shriek of Jono’s laughter cuts clean through the cold winter’s air. ‘Andrew is one of the few men I know who wouldn’t have an affair.’

  I watch him, grappling with his son. And I see his love for Jono, fierce and absolute, stretched wide across his face.

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘I don’t suppose he would.’

  ‘He’s a great dad,’ Janice says, with detached finality.

  ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘He is.’

  I almost tell Janice about Mrs Reiber. As we walk, I am hunting for the words with which to mention her. Casually, of course; it would have to be casually, as a bit of an aside. You’ll never guess what, I’d have to start, or perhaps, A weird thing happened to me the other day.

  But the story gets stuck before I can say it. There are too many connotations, too many layers.

  What are you doing snooping around old ladies? she might ask. And, If she says she’s not your friend’s mother, then she’s not your friend’s mother. Why are you so obsessed? Let it go.

  She might well ask these things; after all, I ask them of myself.

  She may not even remember Vanessa. In fact she may not have known about her at all. As children, our social lives were entirely separate, as they are now. And I can’t bring myself to have to explain. I can’t think how I would explain, not just about who Vanessa was, but about how important she is to me – now, as well as back then. I’d have to reveal the feelings that seeing her mother like that has stirred up in me, about the frightening parallels I see in our lives. I’d have to talk about the loss of my own baby daughter.

  And I can’t do that.

  When Andrew is back at work and Jono is back at school and the tree has been taken down, there is just me again, pacing the house. My thoughts dance in and out of my head like nimble demons, and I find myself back at that computer, typing in Simon’s name again. And up he comes, just as before: partner at Sutton and Wright. I click on the link and there are the details about his office: where it is, the phone number. Before I even have time to think what I am doing, I pick up the phone from the table beside me and I dial that number.

  It is answered almost immediately.

  ‘Sutton and Wright Associates,’ chirps the female voice on the line. ‘How may I help you?’

  My heart starts to thump. ‘Can I speak to Simon Reiber, please?’

  ‘Just putting you through.’ The line rings again, six times. With each vital ring I think to hang up; I think to chicken out. I ask myself, What am I doing? What am I going to say? Then the phone is picked up again and my heart kicks into overdrive.

  It’s another woman. His secretary, I presume. ‘Simon Reiber’s office,’ she says.

  ‘Oh, hi,’ I say, trying to sound like a client or something, like I do this all the time. ‘Can I speak to Simon, please?’

  ‘Who’s calling?’ she asks and my heart sinks.

  ‘Rachel,’ I say. ‘Rachel Thompson.’ I give her my maiden name, but Simon won’t remember me. I don’t actually know if he ever even knew my surname, and look how many years have gone by since then anyway. He won’t have a clue who I am.

  ‘Just a moment,’ she says, and I expect that to be the end of it. I expect her to come back and say he’s not available, or would I like to leave a message? And of course I won’t leave a message, I’ll just hang up and crawl away from all this, as I should have done in the first pl
ace.

  But then I hear a faint click and a male voice says, ‘Simon Reiber speaking.’

  I so didn’t expect to hear him speak. I so didn’t expect to be put through, and now that I have been, I don’t know what to say. I hesitate, and in those seconds I sense the fast impatience of a busy man.

  ‘Can I help you?’ he asks, and I am thrown just by his voice. It’s a confident voice, a professional voice; last time I heard Simon speak he was a boy still, his voice on the cusp, too deep for his body, too deep for his thin, awkward bones, till it lilted on a pitch and caught him out, cranking up on a high note and sending the blood rushing scarlet into his cheeks.

  ‘Hi,’ I say. ‘I’m sorry to call you like this. I hope you don’t mind.’ I pause and he waits. My heart is banging against my ribs. I take a deep breath and look out the window, at the cold dank grey of a January day. ‘You probably won’t remember me. I’m Rachel Thompson. I was a friend of your sister.’

  There is a short, awkward silence in which I close my eyes. I think of Mrs Reiber chasing me away, saying, Go. Just go . . . Just leave me alone. I think of the suspicion in her cold blue eyes. What do you want from me? she asked.

  And I said, I don’t want anything.

  I think of Vanessa, dancing, singing, with one arm around me and the other around Tristram. I think of her body, swaying, bumping up against mine, her body both hard and light, brittle as sticks. I think of her hair tickling my face, her cheek hot against mine. I think of Tristram’s arm and mine, linked together around her back, holding her, holding her.