Little Disasters

by Sarah Vaughan

  Not that anything happened, of course. Not, truly, in the physical sense, not in the way he would recognise. He hadn’t lied to Jess about it, but he hadn’t quite told the truth. A drunken kiss, post-finals, a stumble into her single bed and then, before they could really do anything, he had passed out. The next morning, he was characteristically charming and then he’d asked, ‘We didn’t, did we?’ and she had seen his apprehension. The fear that he’d had sex with her: his ex-girlfriend’s housemate – good to have around, funny, interesting, but a mate. Too tall, too clever, too assured of herself to be desirable. Not his usual type. Not someone he would intend to have sex with at all.

  How was he to know that she felt closer to him than any boyfriend? That she’d hankered after him for the past two years. That she’d watched him all night, memorising his bone structure, his long lashes, the curve of his lips, because deep down she feared this was a fluke. That she’d kept her breathing shallow whenever he stirred in case she broke the spell; in case he woke and she managed to scare him off.

  ‘Would it be disastrous if we had?’ she’d teased, but she didn’t get the tone right, and he saw quite how much he’d hurt her.

  ‘No, no of course not,’ he’d blustered. ‘Look, it’s not you, it’s me.’ He’d gestured at his beautiful, hungover face. ‘Believe me: you wouldn’t want to get involved.’ And then he’d trotted out a cliché that made her despise him for a second. ‘We can be friends, can’t we?’ He’d brushed her forehead with his lips: platonic, chaste.

  ‘Of course,’ she’d murmured, trying to memorise his smell, to hold it together. She had made it too easy for him. Within a couple of minutes he was gone.

  But of course she couldn’t be friends with someone with whom she was in love and about whom she continued to think, if only. Rejection fanned her infatuation and she became briefly obsessed. Graduation meant she no longer needed to see him and she shunned parties and later weddings she knew he would attend. Eventually the humiliation eased. Time helped, as did finding a man who wanted to have sex with her, who liked and even loved her. Not someone who aroused passion, but someone solid, quirky in his own way, and clever. A fellow geek.

  Of course she googled Ed; looked him up on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter; knew which building he worked in. (She considered finding him on the electoral roll but managed to exercise some self-restraint.) She focused on her career, on getting married, and on getting pregnant, the last more difficult than she’d anticipated since Andrew, the supposed safe bet, turned out to have a low sperm count. And she worked very hard at excising all thoughts of Ed Curtis from her head.

  Until that blustery autumn night when he walked into that antenatal class in that nursery and the old humiliation – and yes, a surge of desire, intensified by the pregnancy hormones – resolutely kicked in. She watched as he recognised her, the familiar shame creeping up her neck. ‘We must catch up,’ he’d said, and in the pub afterwards alluding to what occurred: ‘I haven’t seen you since . . .’ He’d had the grace to look embarrassed. ‘Since nothing happened?’ she’d said, playing it cool. ‘It didn’t, did it?’ he agreed, rather too quickly. ‘I was worried I’d upset you, if that doesn’t sound arrogant? You disappeared completely. Here, let me take those. I’d love you to properly meet Jess.’

  She was proud of herself then; proud, too, of how she managed to be friends with his wife, though they were so different; had little in common except Ed and a child the same age. But she couldn’t get over him choosing a wife like Jess: nervous, complicated, emotionally high-maintenance; not stupid but apparently happy not to pursue a career. (She’d worked in events, hadn’t she?) Obsessed with creating the perfect home and being the perfect mother to their kids. And that wouldn’t matter, except that Ed, though not in the least bit complicated, liked an intellectual challenge, and she sensed he felt a bit lost.

  And then Jess announced she was pregnant for the third time, and she experienced the most irrational rage: not just because she had struggled to have one baby and Jess was so effortlessly fertile; not even because Jess dared to appear ambivalent about this child; but because, on some barely acknowledged, completely irrational level, she knew Ed could never be free now. Three children tipped the balance: Jess had him well and truly trapped.

  She’d had to withdraw from her after that. Still shared their Friday football lifts but had little other interaction. She’d increased her hours in the past year, she explained when Liz mentioned her apparent distance, and had to ration her time. George was moving schools at the end of year five, and she’d moved on: didn’t feel she had much in common with someone preoccupied with a baby, any more. She didn’t add that she had no time for someone so self-absorbed who had no idea how bloody lucky she was. For her own carefully buttressed sanity, she tried not to engage.

  And she had managed it. At the barbecue it had been easy: Jess had spent the entire time fussing inside with Betsey, and Ed had been so warm, so entirely uninterested in helping with this baby girl. And then from September, the boys started Tuesday night training. Andrew had offered to go but she’d said it was only fair to divvy up the football duties, and suddenly she could see Ed most weeks. Of course, there were always other dads around, but they slipped back into a decent friendship, distinct and discrete from anything she shared with his wife or the other women. It wasn’t hard to imagine that if only could one day be.

  And now here he is alone, in the spitting rain, outside their local Tube station, and it seems only natural to say hello.

  ‘Hi, Ed,’ she says, touching his arm. ‘Are you OK?’

  Under usual circumstances he might have told her that of course he was fine, but for some reason he doesn’t. Perhaps because he is clearly so stricken; or perhaps because they once shared a physical closeness (and before he passed out, he had buried his head in her breasts). Whatever the reason, he gives a little laugh and all artifice slips away in that moment. ‘Not really, no,’ he says.

  And he isn’t disloyal, he goes out of his way not to be critical, but still he says enough in the three minutes they shelter under her golfing umbrella for her to glean that he has come home because he is so worried about Jess.

  ‘Can I ask: did you ever feel detached . . . after George?’ He looks at her, craving reassurance, hoping she will know the answer: Charlotte, who is Jess’s friend. ‘I don’t think she was like this after the boys but Kit was born during the crash so I wasn’t around, and work was still fraught when she had Frankie. I can’t remember if it’s normal for her to be like this?’

  ‘No I didn’t,’ Charlotte says, failing to point out that she was back at work by the time her boy was three months old, corporate law being more desirable than the tedium of looking after a baby who scared her. (Those long hours stuck at home with him, sensing that she wasn’t doing it right; that she wasn’t a good enough mother; the rapid loss of her identity.)

  ‘Maybe we tipped the balance, having this third baby. Maybe I asked too much?’

  And then he looks uncomfortable because Charlotte has made no secret of wanting a second child, and had to admit to her failure when she underwent three unsuccessful rounds of IVF.

  ‘No you didn’t,’ she reassures him. ‘You could never ask too much,’ and she gives him a quick, awkward hug, there in the street.

  She walks away, cocooned under her umbrella as the rain begins falling more heavily, fixating on his comments and his concern. Detached. Maybe I’ve asked too much of her. I’m worried about Jess.

  Poor, precious Jess who has everything, and yet it still isn’t enough. And yes, she knows she ought to be sympathetic – perhaps Jess is suffering from postnatal depression; she’s just the type, isn’t she? But perhaps she should bloody well pull herself together, and recognise what she has instead.

  And then her phone rings and it’s Jill, asking if she would mind swapping and picking the boys up from football next week instead of this – there’s some work event she wants to go to – and Charlotte suddenly has an hou
r to spare.

  She would never have done anything were it not for that call, she tells herself later, but it seems serendipitous: having this unanticipated slot of time in which to talk to Jess. She could tell her how she is in danger of squandering everything she has: Ed; three beautiful children; even her looks, because she always makes Charlotte, with her height, her strong nose, her dark brows and eyes, feel physically awkward. A handsome woman, that’s how Andrew describes her, whereas Jess is dainty; Jess is beautiful. No one has ever described Charlotte as this.

  And yes, she might even admit to Jess that Ed was the one who got away. Not to hurt her – and she won’t vent her anger; she has too much self-control for that – but just to make her realise how fucking lucky she is.

  How her life is the sort that Charlotte sometimes thinks she might like.

  That’s all she intends when she knocks on the front door. Just to talk to Jess.

  FRANKIE

  Friday 19 January, 6.22 p.m.

  Forty-seven

  ‘Is Mummy in?’ Charlotte asks, as she steps into the hall. ‘Hello, sweetheart,’ she adds, smiling at Betsey. Bets holds her arms out to her and Frankie hands her over to this familiar adult before he realises quite what he has done.

  ‘Where’s Kit?’ he asks, relief at seeing a mother who might make everything right undermined as he realises he can’t see his brother. ‘Why are you here?’ he manages to ask.

  ‘I came to chat to Mummy but then I heard Betsey screaming. It’s been going on for a long time, so I was worried, wasn’t I, little one?’ She says this last bit in a silly voice as she jiggles Betsey. Then her tone reverts to normal: not unfriendly but bossy – the voice she used when George got out all his Lego – and she asks a question he doesn’t want to answer. ‘Where’s Mummy, Frank?’

  He says nothing. He mustn’t tell anyone she’s gone out. She’d looked guilty when she left them. I’ll just be five minutes. Don’t answer the door to anyone. And he hadn’t. Until this moment, he has stuck by her rules.

  ‘Jess?’ she calls, when he doesn’t reply, and walks through to the kitchen. ‘Jess?’ she sings up the stairs. ‘Is Mummy asleep, Frank? Is that it?’ Her eyes are beady, like a black-bird’s pecking for worms. He doesn’t like it and he doesn’t like her calling him Frank.

  ‘Frank.’ She bends down to his level, Bets snivelling against her shoulder, and her voice is so soft it’s almost a whisper. ‘Can you help me? Is Mummy ill – or isn’t she here? Did she leave you alone?’

  He doesn’t nod, he is sure he doesn’t nod, but perhaps the relief of being able to tell an adult is so intense he moves his head a little. Charlotte straightens – she’s so tall for a mummy – and there’s a very worried look on her face.

  ‘Right. Well, let’s try to stop you crying, little one.’ She smiles at Betsey. ‘You’ve got a stinky nappy, haven’t you?’ She tickles his baby sister under the chin but Bets doesn’t like that and her cry cranks up until she’s screaming again.

  ‘It’s OK. Mummy will be back soon to sort it.’ She bounces her on her hip, and Bets starts hiccupping. The movement must jolt her because a brown stain spreads down her thigh.

  ‘Oh!’ Charlotte pulls a funny face. ‘My. That is a full nappy.’ She transfers his sister to her other hip, and stops the jiggling. Her special baby voice vanishes. ‘Gosh. You do stink. Still, I expect Mummy will be back very soon and then we can get you changed . . .’

  But Bets is wriggling and screaming, and Frankie knows that if her foul nappy were taken off she would calm down immediately.

  ‘I can show you where to change her,’ he jabbers, the words racing from him he is so excited. ‘I was going to change her. Mummy wouldn’t want her sitting in a stinky nappy. I could help you. I know where the Sudocrem is.’

  He is beaming because it all seems so simple: they can stop her crying and please Mummy. She’ll be relieved if Charlotte cleans Betsey. And he could help. He could entertain his sister while it’s being done.

  But Charlotte looks worried.

  ‘I don’t think so, Frank. Mummy might mind and I expect she’ll be back very soon to deal with it, won’t she?’ The poo is spreading up Betsey’s back now, seeping through her vest and top. ‘Oh! Euurgh.’ She stretches her arms out, holding her away so her legs dangle down. She doesn’t look as if she’s used to holding babies and Betsey, screaming louder, seems to sense this, too.

  ‘She wouldn’t,’ he says, ‘and we’ve got to stop her crying. Come on,’ he races to the bottom of the stairs, his excitement spilling over. ‘Come on.’

  He starts running up as she slips her shoes off. Eventually, he hears her feet padding behind him. It feels a bit strange but Charlotte’s been here plenty of times before they had Betsey. He remembers George, always a bit sly, stealing a car from Kit . . .

  ‘Won’t Mummy mind?’ Once they are in the bathroom, she looks reluctant to touch the nappy but as she puts Betsey on the changing table, the poo squelches all the way up her back. ‘Oh my God,’ Charlotte adds. ‘Shit.’ For a moment, she seems paralysed. ‘Well, I suppose we can’t leave her like this.’

  Betsey’s screams are getting louder.

  ‘Let’s sort out this nappy!’ she says, in an over-jolly voice, as she rips off the tape at one side.

  And suddenly this doesn’t feel OK. Frankie feels it in his tummy, and he thinks Betsey feels it, too. She is really screaming, despite Charlotte using that increasingly desperate, frantic voice.

  ‘What a mess, Betsey, but I’ll make it better, just like Mummy . . .’

  She holds Betsey’s ankles up with one hand and eases away the full nappy. The smell hits the back of his throat and makes him gag, makes Charlotte flinch.

  ‘Oh! That’s quite foul. Where’s a bag, Frank? A nappy sack?’ She is suddenly sharp; her face pinched. ‘Come on. Quickly now.’

  ‘I don’t know.’ He is confused. He didn’t know he was meant to be helping: he thought she’d taken over. They’re usually on the shelf under the changing table, in a special white box, the vanilla-scented plastic peeking out for easy access, but they’re not there.

  ‘Frank, come on! Quickly.’

  ‘I can’t see it. I don’t know.’

  ‘Argh, well, we can’t have this mess on the mat.’ She makes a parcel of the nappy with her fingers but there’s so much poo it bulges. ‘We’ll have to clear it up later.’ And she picks it up between two fingers and tosses it onto the floor.

  He stares at it. She shouldn’t have done that. It doesn’t go there but in a bag and then straight in the black bin outside so that there’s no remaining stinkiness, no extra bacteria, in the bathroom. That’s what Mummy does, and she won’t like this one bit.

  ‘Now, where are the wipes? Ah, here.’ She grabs a packet from the shelf and starts wiping Betsey. He can’t stop looking at the soiled nappy which squats in the corner like a malevolent, bug-ridden toad.

  ‘Where did Mummy go, Frank?’ Charlotte asks as she rips out wipe after wipe, her questions vying with Betsey’s crying. ‘She’s a silly mummy, isn’t she?’ she tells his sister, and her voice has an edge to it as if she’s desperately trying to jolly things along. ‘A silly, naughty mummy.’

  Betsey hiccups, and it sounds like a giggle.

  ‘Isn’t she a naughty mummy?’ Charlotte repeats.

  But she’s not. She’s not at all. She’s not a naughty mummy, and Frankie would never describe her as silly. Sad, perhaps: she’s sad a lot these days.

  He hates the word ‘naughty’: so fat and jolly but with a mean edge. His teacher says he’s naughty. It means he’s difficult. Mummy’s the only one who doesn’t think he is. She’s been gone twelve and a half minutes, now, and he wants her so much. Perhaps it’s this that makes him speak out: this fear for Jess, and his pain at her being mocked like this.

  ‘She’s not,’ he manages. His fists clench tight.

  ‘Not what?’ Charlotte turns, a hand on Betsey’s tummy.

  ‘She’s not naughty. And
she’s not silly. She’s not stupid!’ He is suddenly shouting. ‘She’s not naughty. That’s not a kind thing to say!’

  ‘It’s not kind to leave your children alone,’ Charlotte says, under her breath.

  ‘She is kind. She is kind. She loves us!’ He starts to whimper, distraught and troubled by the stench on the floor, the nappy that just slumps there. Then Betsey starts screaming again.

  ‘Where can I find a fresh nappy?’ Charlotte raises her voice above Betsey’s cry.

  ‘On the shelf,’ he shouts back, hating her now.

  She gives him a hard stare.

  ‘On the shelf – here!’ He starts to rummage under the changing table, anger coursing through him at her failure to bag up that nappy. Why can’t she find it? She’s the adult. The one who should know how to do everything. He wants her to go home now. He wants to make her go home. And so he shoves her legs hard to push her away.

  She steps back, taking her hand off his sister’s tummy, holding both up in mock-horror.

  ‘Why did you do that?’

  She has a hurt face on; seems genuinely puzzled. He’s embarrassed and frightened and so he ignores her, searching the changing table shelf, burying himself underneath.

  ‘Why did you do that?’ she repeats, bending down so that she peers into his face.

  The thud and the wail are almost instantaneous: a scream far more terrifying than any Betsey’s made before. Frankie freezes. Betsey lies flat on her back, between the table and the bath, her mouth a perfect O as the sound shoots from her; a look of disbelief on her face.

  Charlotte crouches next to her, looking guilty and very scared.

  He doesn’t understand. How did Bets get on the floor? ‘How . . .’ he begins.

  ‘Please be OK, please be OK.’ Charlotte cuddles his sister to her. Then: ‘Look what you did!’ she screeches.