River Deep

by Rowan Coleman

  Across the field, Sam stopped dead in his game and looked over at his mum and sister. Without a second thought he began running towards them.

  ‘You were right!’ Becca screamed through her tears. ‘You were right, because I am going to find him, right now. I’m going to look him up on the Internet or something, anything. I’m going to find him, and when I do, I’m going. I’m getting as far away from you as I can, and I’m never coming back. Not ever. How could you? What gives you the right? No wonder he didn’t want you, you stupid, fat, selfish bitch. But he wants me, and that’s more than you do, because if you did, if you cared about me at all, you’d have let me see him. You’d at least have let me know that he cared!’

  As Becca turned on her heel and began running across the field, Sam slid into her mother’s arms. He wound his arms around her neck and began sobbing.

  ‘Mummy, where’s she going, where’s she going?’ he pleaded. Sarah rocked him gently, kissing the top of his head.

  ‘It’s OK,’ she whispered, looking desperately at Maggie. ‘It’ll be OK, Sammy baby.’

  ‘I’ll go and find her,’ Maggie said. ‘I’ll calm her down and try and explain things to her. I’ll bring her home. But …’ She paused, glancing over her shoulder at Becca’s rapidly retreating figure. ‘Sarah, everything you said about me today was true. I know that, and I promise you not one of those things matters now, not until we’ve sorted this out. OK?’

  Sarah nodded, rocking her son close against her.

  ‘I’m sorry, Maggie …’ Sarah began.

  ‘Don’t be sorry. You were right about me. I’ll go and find her. Don’t worry, OK?’ Maggie knew the request was pointless. As she began to follow Becca into the town, the sky darkened and rumbled and the first few heavy drops of rain began to fall.

  Maggie felt like the summer was over for ever.

  She lost Becca as she disappeared around the back of the abbey, half running, half walking, her head down, her hands over her face. But Maggie thought she knew where she would find her, and she was right. The cybercafé could only have opened minutes ago, but Becca was there, sitting at one of its two terminals staring blankly at the screen with tears streaming down her face. She looked completely lost, Maggie thought. Completely desperate and lost.

  ‘Maggie, hi! Good to see you!’ Declan appeared by her side. ‘You’re quite the early bird, aren’t you? Come in to get out of the rain? I’d almost forgotten what it looked like, it’s been such a dry summer. I haven’t seen you in a while. Everything’s OK, is it, between us?’

  Becca’s head snapped in Maggie’s direction when she heard Declan say her name, and she began to scramble her stuff together in preparation for a quick exit. Maggie kept her eyes on her as she talked to Declan.

  ‘Yes, Declan, of course it is, but look –’ she nodded at Becca – ‘I have to speak to my god-daughter, OK?’

  Declan took one look at Becca’s blotched face and made a hasty retreat behind the counter, mouthing ‘talk later’ at Maggie as she went. Maggie heard the clatter and bubbling of the cappuccino machine crank into action.

  ‘Becca.’ She grabbed her arm as she tried to rush past.

  ‘Let me go,’ Becca said, shaking her arm vigorously. ‘I don’t want to talk to you! You’re just the same as her. Both of you, you think what I feel, what I think, doesn’t matter. Like, just because I’m not grown-up yet I don’t have any feelings.’ She yanked her arm hard. ‘Let me go!’

  Maggie let go of her arm, relieved that she didn’t immediately run out of the door.

  ‘I’m not the same as your mum,’ she said, desperate to get Becca to stay. ‘I didn’t know about it, did I? The letter and all that? I assume that you were listening to everything we said, and not by accident, so you know. I didn’t know about it, did I?’

  Becca shook her head slowly. Maggie brushed her damp hair back from her face.

  ‘Oh Becs, why were you eavesdropping anyway?’ Maggie asked, pulling her into a hug.

  ‘Because I thought you were going to be talking about sex. And because I thought you were going to be talking about Pete, and I wanted to know if you were going to go out with him. I didn’t think you’d be talking about … Not, not …’ Becca began sobbing again, her slight frame shaking against Maggie’s body. Maggie guided her to a chair in the corner, grateful that the café was still empty. Becca would be mortified if she thought any of her friends had seen her like this.

  ‘Here you go.’ Declan appeared at the table and set down two steaming mugs topped with whipped cream and marshmallows. ‘Hot chocolate. I thought the rain storm merited it.’ He smiled at Maggie and went back behind the counter. For those two moments of silence that followed his gesture, Maggie thought he was the nicest, kindest man in all the world.

  ‘She’s just a lying, conniving bitch, that’s all,’ Becca said with brutal frankness. ‘She doesn’t want anyone else to be happy because she isn’t. She doesn’t even want you to be happy, Aunty M. She wants to split you and Christian up because she’s so bitter and twisted and …’

  ‘Shhhh.’ Maggie took Becca’s hand. ‘That’s not true, Becca, it isn’t.’

  ‘Yes it is,’ Becca said. ‘Why can’t she just be a normal mum, like Leanne’s mum or the other mums at school? Why does she have to sleep around with any bloke? She thinks I don’t know, but I do, I can see it – and soon Sam will. Why can she never have a proper boyfriend, like Marcus? All she does is work and go out. She’s hardly ever there for me and Sam. If she loved us she’d be a proper mum. You don’t know what it’s like. I feel like I’m having to grow myself up. That’s how I feel. At least if I had a dad to talk to that would be one person in the whole world who’d stand up for me.’

  Maggie dropped her head and thought for a moment. Everything that Becca had just said could have been her words at fourteen, or at twenty-four. Her words earlier that morning. But Maggie knew that Sarah loved Becca. She knew Sarah would die fighting for her children’s happiness and do anything to make them happy. Would her mum do the same, Maggie wondered? Had she ever given her a chance to?

  ‘Listen. Your mum, Becca, loves you so much. So much. It was a shock for her when you were born, admittedly. She was hardly much older than you are now when it happened. She was only your age when she fell in love with your dad. I suppose what you said is true – no one then thought they could really feel anything for each other. Everyone – even me – assumed that it was over as soon as your dad’s family left the country. I thought that she’d been unlucky and got caught out. I never realised how much his going hurt her, not really. Your mum’s always put a brave face on things, always been determined to show that she can cope on her own. She’s had to because her mum didn’t want her any more. Can you imagine that? Out in the world on her own with a baby on the way at just eighteen?’

  Maggie thought back to the Sarah she had known then, defiant and hard-faced on the outside, but, Maggie then and now thought, a terrified, lonely little girl on the inside.

  ‘It was hard for her, Becca, harder than I think I understood at the time. For most of it, her pregnancy, when she moved into the hostel, I wasn’t even there, I was at college. But I was there when you were born. I stayed with you both for a while, and I can tell you, your mum used to hold you in her arms and just look at you for hours and hours, and she’d say to me that looking at you was like looking at a tiny rose bud. A tightly closed rose bud. And that each day you opened up just a little bit more and grew just a little bit more beautiful. She told me she wanted to spend the rest of her life watching you blossom. That your happiness was the only thing that mattered to her.’

  Becca’s tears had stopped and she wound both her hands around the warm mug in front of her and held it close to her chest.

  ‘I think maybe over the years she’s been so busy trying to give you security and a home, trying to make sure you and Sam had everything you needed, that she’s forgotten, sometimes, just to be there for you,’ Maggie bit her lip. ‘And sometimes,
Becca … Well, sometimes you’ve made it pretty clear you don’t really want her there.’

  Becca took a noisy sip of her chocolate and gazed out of the rain-sheeted window.

  ‘I’ve only got sandals on,’ she said eventually.

  ‘I know,’ Maggie smiled cautiously. ‘Me too. Flip-flops, actually. I’m going to get soaked.’

  Becca shrugged and looked at her.

  ‘She was wrong, though, wasn’t she?’ She seemed to be testing Maggie. ‘She was wrong not to write to Dad and tell him about me. Not to let us have a chance to know each other. That was wrong, really wrong, wasn’t it? Now he might have moved, or anything, and I might never find him. He might think that it’s because I don’t want to know him and that …’

  Maggie intervened before Becca could work herself up again.

  ‘Yes, Becca. Yes. She was wrong. She was even wrong for the wrong reasons.’ Maggie paused, searching for a way to explain things clearly. ‘It’s like you said earlier about grown-ups thinking that kids don’t really feel things. Well, I think sometimes you forget that your mum really feels things. Sometimes you think she should just be this sort of big cosy cushion for you to come to and hug when you want her. In some ways maybe she should be. But she’s also a real person and she makes real mistakes. She made the wrong choice over that letter, it’s true, but it’s one wrong choice out of hundreds and thousands of right ones, all of them made for you and Sam. Whatever she did, Becca, whatever the reasons, she loves you so much, so much. And I think that if someone loves you that much, you owe it them to give them as many chances they need to get it right, don’t you?’

  Becca said nothing as she drained her cup, leaving traces of chocolate around her mouth. For a moment she looked like that little rose-bud baby girl again.

  ‘I don’t really want to leave home,’ she said finally.

  ‘I know,’ Maggie said. ‘Why don’t we finish these and see if we can borrow an umbrella. We can go back and talk ––’

  ‘I’m not going back there unless you promise to stick up for me!’ Becca said. ‘I want to see my dad. I want her to promise to call him for me and arrange things. And if he’s not there any more, I want her to look for him and not stop looking until she finds him.’

  Maggie nodded. She knew it would be difficult for Sarah to do all of these things, but she also knew that Sarah would do all of them. That Becca deserved no less.

  ‘OK, Becca, I’m sure your mum will agree to that. But you do understand, don’t you, that your dad has another life now. He won’t just come over here for ever. He’s married to someone else. There won’t be any fairy-tale endings for him and your mum. You might not even like him,’ Maggie said, stopping short of saying “he might not even like you”. It was harsh, she knew, but it was a possibility, and she wanted to be the one to say it to Becca. She wanted to spare Sarah that at least.

  ‘I know that,’ Becca replied tentatively. ‘But I can’t go through life not knowing, can I? I can’t just go on wondering what it might have been like.’

  Maggie sat on the floor of Sam’s room whilst he performed South Pacific for her with his toys. Right now his Action Man was getting it on with one of Becca’s discarded and headless Barbies as he crooned ‘Some enchanted evening’ over the top of the makeshift scenery.

  Becca and Sarah had been in the living room for over an hour now. There had been shouting, at which point Sam had stopped mid-song and turned to look at the door. Then there had been a loud thump, followed by a crash and then silence. Maggie had quickly got things going again by starting to sing ‘Happy talk’, which annoyed Sam intensely as she got the words wrong and it wasn’t even in the right place. Finally, as she’d listened over the top of Sam’s singing, there had been silence from the rest of the flat. She clapped as Action Man, headless Barbie and a couple of teddies took a bow.

  ‘Shall we go and see how Mummy and Becca are now?’ she asked Sam, supposing it was probably safe.

  ‘But I was going to do you Chitty Chitty Bang Bang next!’ he cried, holding up his model of Dougie the Digger. Maggie stared at it and felt inexplicably sad. She pulled herself together with a smile.

  ‘I know, darling, maybe later, OK?’ He nodded, and with her hands on his shoulders Maggie guided him into the living room. The worst case scenario, she supposed, was that they could have knocked each other out. She didn’t think either one of them would go for out-and-out murder.

  She pushed open the door. Sarah was on the phone, holding a tatty-looking piece of paper in her hand. Becca was standing beside her, staring at her intensely.

  ‘Oh, hello?’ Sarah said. Her voice was shaking. ‘Is that you, Aidan? Hi! It’s, um, Sarah, Sarah Mortimer, here. Hi! Yes, it is a bit out of the blue, isn’t it?’ She looked at Becca and nodded. ‘Um, Aidan, I’m sorry to call you so early, but have you got a minute to talk? It really is important.’

  Maggie guided Sam back out into the hallway.

  ‘So, big fella, what were you saying about Chitty Chitty Bang Bang then?’

  ‘Hooray!’ Sam shouted as Maggie followed him back into his room and shut the door behind them.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Pete had spent his Sunday writing and deleting at least twenty half-baked versions of the things he wanted to say to Stella. He’d get so far each time, work his way through a lengthy preamble to prepare her for what he had to say, and then he’d stall. The thing is, Stella, he’d begin, and then he’d stare at the liquid blue-white of the screen and sit back on his rickety chair borrowed from the kitchen and he’d wonder what exactly was the thing?

  It wasn’t that he didn’t love her any more. He was fairly certain that he did still love her, he thought, after the third attempt, at which point he went for a walk and kept walking, even though a sudden shower of hot rain soaked him through to the skin. Sheltering under a tree for a moment he closed his eyes and thought of her, testing his response to her image. He saw her standing in front of him, that special half smile of hers the tiniest implication that she might, just might, be his after all. A promise which had been enough to keep him in love with her for over five years. But it was more than that wasn’t it? It had to be.

  Pete opened his eyes and felt the sting of a heavy droplet of water, which temporarily blinded him. Shaking himself like a dog, he stepped out into the rainstorm and kept walking – he was saturated anyway; it was pointless to try and resist it. The real reason he’d loved her for so long, the reason his friends and family couldn’t see, was that Stella had something else buried deep in the middle of her, under layers and layers of artifice and theatre. Deep inside all the magic and light, Pete had found a very ordinary person, just a girl who had first-hand experience of the hard edges of the world. A girl who was petrified of making the wrong choices.

  After all, her mum had got married at sixteen, when she was three months pregnant with Stella. Her father, barely eighteen himself, had left them within three days of her birth. Left because of her, Stella always said, as if her presence alone had wrecked what otherwise would have been a perfect romance. Stella and her mother had never seen him again, and she remembered a childhood of endless shifting from hostels to council B&Bs and finally a flat on the thirty-second floor of a high-rise on the outskirts of Leeds. Stella had told him that she used to pretend she was Rapunzel letting down her long hair, waiting for a prince to carry her away. Stella explained to him that her mum had made all the wrong choices too quickly without ever stopping to think what might happen, as if life was just something you could leave up to fate, and that both their lives had been blighted because of it. She told him she was terrified of doing the same, terrified of ruining everything because of the wrong choice. She had to make absolutely sure she was making the best possible choice for herself, giving herself the best possible chance in the future.

  Once he’d known this, Pete thought she’d given him the key, the vital clue to, understanding her and keeping her. Pete had asked her often if the fact that he loved her and
would stand by her and be with her whatever happened wasn’t enough. Stella would look at him sadly and tell him that no, it wasn’t enough. She needed more. God knows he’d stayed long enough in that well paid, dead-end job trying to make enough to make her feel as if she had enough. It seemed he’d never manage it, though. There was always the chance that someone, sooner or later, might be able to give her more.

  Pete felt the rain trickle down the back of his T-shirt, which clung ever closer to his skin. He could understand, he supposed, her need to surround herself with material proof of her happiness. He’d grown up in a literally solid family in the posh bit of Oldham, an ex-Coronation Street actress had lived at the bottom of his road. He’d never thought of his family as rich, but he knew they were nothing like poor. He’d never really worried about cash, never really had to. Maybe if he had, he reasoned as he turned on to the high street, he’d feel the same as Stella did. She kept a dog-eared copy of Breakfast at Tiffany’s which she’d stolen from a library as a teenager that she took with her everywhere, and although Pete had never found time to read the book, he’d watched the film one Stella-less Sunday afternoon on TMC. He imagined that Stella thought she was Holly Golightly, using her charms to find herself the security she craved. But in the end, George Peppard had prevailed and Holly had realised that love, even dirt poor love, could be enough to make life worth living. That was two years ago, and Pete had been certain that in the end Stella would one day stop in her tracks in the same kind of pouring rain he was standing in now and come to the same conclusion. She’d realise that Pete loving her would be enough. But that day hadn’t come yet, and Pete realised, as he mounted the steps to his front door, that it might never come.

  He opened the door and listened to the house, the sound of him dripping on to the tiles magnified by the quiet. There was no noise coming from Angie’s ground-floor bedroom and nothing else resonating on the two floors above him.

  ‘Hello!’ He called out to be certain, uncertain why he wanted to be so absolutely alone. He supposed he wanted to be sure he wouldn’t be interrupted. Just to talk to anyone right now, he knew, would break his train of thought. He couldn’t risk the thin, frail, brightly shining thread that was leading him through his maze of emotions. The house was silent in reply and Pete breathed a sigh of relief. He mounted the stairs, and once he had shut the door of his bedroom he peeled his wet clothes off layer by saturated layer. A warm wind billowed through the net curtains that hung at the open window, raising goosebumps on his skin.