by Fiona Harper
Her mother gives her an exasperated look. ‘I know, but you’re almost eleven weeks. We can’t wait much longer.’
Heather stares back at her. She knows this. Of course she knows this. It’s all she’s been thinking about. She doesn’t want to be one of those girls: just another teenager down the High Street with a pram. She has plans to go to university, to get away from this crap hole for good. She knows what her mother is trying to push her into doing makes logical sense, but it’s just…
Her hand drifts to her stomach and she splays her fingers against the hint of a bump there. When she first found out she was horrified. One day, she actually leaned over the wall of the bridge next to Bickley station. Would it hurt if I climbed up and stood there, she thought to herself, if I let myself fall? Would I flutter down like a leaf and just melt away or would I land with a sickening smack and still be alive when the wheels of the carriages tore over the top of me? It really scared her, because it took close to ten minutes before she could make herself stop staring at the tracks and walk home.
At least she didn’t have to face everyone at school. She hasn’t been back since the incident behind the pavilion. How could she? She just refused to go in.
Her mum was livid at first, but when she found out the real reason, she continued to moan but didn’t insist. Heather’s hoping she’ll be able to switch schools in the autumn. It’s that or dropping out altogether because she’s not going back to Highstead. And her mother can’t make her, either, because who can she call? No one. She’s not going to report her own daughter for truancy. That would mean someone from the school might come round to the house.
And then Dad would find out too. Something Heather fears almost as much as her mum does. She doesn’t want him to look at her and think his Sweetpea has turned into a knicker-dropping ho. She wants to keep being his little girl.
‘What if I want to keep it?’ she asks her mother suddenly, her thoughts flinging themselves out of her head and off her tongue without warning. As much as she was gutted when she first realized she was pregnant, she’s got used to the idea now. It’s amazing to think she’s growing something inside her, something alive. Something that will be cute and smiley and love her back no matter what.
Her mother’s so shocked at her outburst that she turns the TV off, which has to be something, because it’s bargain hour. She stands up. ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Heather! You’re too young. You’ve haven’t even taken your GCSEs, for goodness’ sake! Just think for a change, will you? After all, you’ve got your whole life ahead of you.’
Heather has thought all of these things herself, but she’s angry at her mother for saying this, because it’s becoming clearer with each passing day that she’s not thinking about her daughter’s best interests, only her own. She doesn’t want doctors or midwives or social workers involved because that would endanger her precious stuff.
‘You said it was my choice!’ Heather yells back at her. ‘That means I get to pick, not that the right choice is the same as your choice because that’s no choice at all!’
Heather turns and runs from the room before her mum can say anything else, but instead of dashing back upstairs and slamming her door, she heads out of the front door and down the road. She walks and walks until she starts to feel hungry, which means feeling queasy too these days. She remembers that there are some digestives in the kitchen which will deal with the sicky feeling quite nicely.
I’m keeping it, Heather thinks as she turns and heads back home. I’ve come to my decision. There.
She doesn’t care how this baby was made or how much of a rat its father is, she will love it. It is something that is truly hers and hers alone, something her mother can’t lose or trash or bury.
She feels almost peaceful for a few brief minutes, but as she nears the house she begins to feel chilly, as if clouds have moved in overhead, even though the sun is shining and the sky is blue.
When she reaches the gate, she stops and stares at the house. Not the way you do when you’ve lived somewhere for years – the present reality mixed in and blurred with a million memories of how it used to be – but the way someone standing there for the first time would see it.
Heather doesn’t need to walk up to the front door and open it to look inside. She can pull up a mental snapshot of each and every room, of just how cluttered and filthy and messy it is.
How can I? she thinks, the cold feeling in her stomach growing. How can I introduce a child I know I would love, even given my young age, to all this chaos? She knows exactly how toxic it is, exactly how much the poor kid would get screwed up even if she tried to be the best mother in the universe.
She has no choice, does she? Not really. Because her mother has already made it for her. She did it years ago, after Dad and Faith left, when she decided to start filling the house up again even though Heather begged and cried and pleaded with her not to.
Heather opens the gate and her body feels like lead. She drags herself up the path. It’s a horrible thing to acknowledge, because it makes her feel so small and worthless, but she has to face the fact that her mum has never done what’s best for her children. In that moment, as Heather pushes the front door open and returns into the gloom and the stale smells, she decides she is brave enough to be different. She is not, and never will be, like her mother.
Heather feels numb as she returns to the living room and finds her mum staring at the blank television screen.
‘Okay,’ she says. ‘Take me to the doctor. Let’s make whatever appointments we need to make.’
Her mum leaps up, all smiles and kisses now, and she hugs Heather, rocks her like she’s her little girl again. Heather lets her even though she wants to vomit all down her back – not because of the morning sickness, but because of the awful, twisting unfairness of it all – but as her mother rocks her to and fro she’s thinking, I hate you. You stole this from me, and I will never, ever forgive you for this, not for the rest of your life and certainly not for the rest of mine.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
NOW
Heather finishes her story. Jason listened patiently, if stony-faced.
‘You think this is why you took things?’ he says eventually.
Heather nods. ‘Faith keeps speculating as to whether I’m trying to nurture my inner child because of our horrible upbringing, but I don’t think that’s it. After it was done… gone… my mum and I didn’t ever talk about it again. I never told her how I felt – how devastated and angry I was – and then I was furious with her for bailing out on me before I had the chance. It wasn’t long after that it all started.’
‘But now you’ve stopped?’ he asks, not entirely confidently, it has to be said.
‘Yes. I hope so.’ Heather looks at the floor again. Keeping eye contact has been exhausting. She feels as if she might be fading away. ‘I don’t want to do it. I never wanted to do it. But all the stuff with Lydia… The abduction… It was enough to send it all spiralling out of control. I’m glad it did, though, because it meant I finally had to deal with it.’ She turns to stare out of the windows into the garden. ‘My mother buried her “stuff” with actual stuff. I stupidly thought that because my physical space was so different to hers, that my mental space was too. Seems I was wrong. Seems there was a lot I wasn’t facing, but I am now. Or at least I’m trying to.’
Jason is reflected in the glass. She sees him stand up behind her. ‘Good.’
‘Lydia told me I needed to forgive my mother,’ Heather says, finding it easier to look at Reflection Jason than the real one. ‘I think she’s right. It’s the only way to fully put the past behind me. I struggled with that for a bit, until I realized it wasn’t the same as saying what she did was okay.’
He moves closer, until he’s standing just behind her. They’re not actually looking into each other’s eyes because it’s just ghostly reflections superimposed onto the dark garden, but Heather still feels something spear her through the chest when she sees the concern in his express
ion.
‘You’ve actually forgiven her for this? For what you’ve just told me?’
The questions just keep on coming, don’t they? It feels a bit like an interrogation, and just as uncomfortable as facing that sergeant in Hastings police station, but she understands the need for it. There was so much she didn’t tell him.
‘I’ve forgiven her for a lot. Looking at my own issues… compulsions… and talking through them with someone who has a professional understanding of them, has helped me see her differently. I’m finding that the more I can understand, the more I can let go. But not this. Not yet.’ She shrugs and feels tears threaten. ‘I’m trying,’ she adds hoarsely and blinks the now-blurry version of Jason away.
Don’t cry. Not now. Don’t cry.
She turns around again. One last thing to say, and then she can go and collapse in her car and sob. ‘So… That’s why I’m glad you let me explain myself to you. I was hoping that if you understood, even just a little bit, that you might be able to forgive me?’
He rubs a hand over his face, shows the first chink of emotion. It looks as if he wants to step forward, to reach out and touch her, but he doesn’t. It gives her the tiniest bit of hope.
‘I would like to be your friend again,’ she says hoarsely. ‘One day, anyway.’
He sighs. ‘I am your friend, Heather. You just… You know… It was a lot to deal with. Still is.’
She nods. ‘I get that. I really do.’
Just friends, then. Maybe. Nothing more.
It’s more than she deserves, she knows, but she still feels like curling into a ball and crying, right there in the middle of Jason’s living-room floor. Instead, she straightens her spine, looks at him, and does her best to smile.
‘Okay. Good. Thank you, Jason. That’s all I wanted to say. I won’t take up any more of your time.’
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
NOW
‘You’ve been ever so quiet since you got back from seeing Jason,’ Faith says later that evening after dinner.
Heather shrugs. She knows. She wasn’t ready to share about it straight away, and she appreciates her sister’s patience in bringing it up.
‘I did what I went there to do,’ she says blankly. ‘I think it helped.’
‘But not in the way you wanted it to?’
‘No.’
Faith sighs. ‘I wish I could say it’ll all work out, but I really don’t know that. What I do know is that you were incredibly brave to go.’
‘It wasn’t that brave. I should have gone months ago.’
‘But you told him, you know, everything?’
Heather nods.
‘I wish I’d known,’ Faith says wistfully. ‘But that was the summer after my A levels. I was all full of getting ready for uni, letting off steam with my friends…’
‘I wish I’d told you,’ Heather echoes, realizing now that Faith, although she had been even more blunt and spiky in those days, would have had her back.
‘You must have been so scared,’ Faith says.
‘Yes,’ Heather replies quietly, staring out into the garden, but she can’t see any of the shrubs and trees through the glass, just her own pale face staring back at her. ‘And although Mum was there with me all the time, I felt very alone too.’ She turns to look at Faith. ‘She was just kind of powering through it. I could tell that once it was all over she was just going to shut the lid on it and pretend it had never happened. I wanted to feel that way too, but there were so many mixed emotions. I knew it was a choice I had to make, but it wasn’t one I wanted to make. But it was what it was. I’m learning to deal with that.’
Faith nods. ‘There’ll be other chances in the future.’
‘You really think so?’
‘I do. I know things didn’t work out with you know who, but you’re in a much better place than you were a year ago. When you’re ready, you’ll meet someone, I just know it.’
Heather wishes she could believe her sister, but she’s not convinced. A tear slides from her eye and Faith hands her a tissue. ‘Thanks,’ Heather snuffles as she mops her face. It’s such a relief not to get the lecture she knows she deserves, that she just starts crying harder.
But the next morning, as she sets off to Gatwick with Faith and her brood, she determines to dry her tears and concentrate on having the best Christmas the Lucas family have had in years.
They take a taxi to Nerja and arrive at their father’s whitewashed house in a modern development, feeling tired and gritty. Their dad hugs them while Shirley bustles round, offering everyone drinks.
That evening after they’ve put the two strung-out kids to bed, Faith and Heather sit down with their father and have a long talk, and Heather tells him everything, even the secret she’s kept from everyone for more than fifteen years. He sits back in his chair looking pale and shell-shocked, and then he hugs both sisters in turn, holding on a little longer than normal, before they retire for the night.
The next day, Shirley is like a wind-up toy, running this direction and that – chopping, frying, tidying, and plumping – but she shoos the sisters away when they offer to help, saying they’re supposed to be on holiday. Why don’t they go to the swimming pool in the centre of the development? The kids will love it and there will be more than a few British families for them to make friends with.
So that’s what they do. Matthew affixes armbands to his kids and splashes around with them in the pool, while Heather and Faith lie on sun loungers, sipping ice-cold drinks. As the afternoon wears on, they graduate to sangria, which is probably a mistake.
Heather sighs. ‘Do you know that I caught Shirley “tidying up” all the cutlery before dinner last night? I’d laid it nicely, but it obviously wasn’t good enough for her because when I walked past the dining room ten minutes later she was readjusting it all. When it comes to Christmas lunch, I wouldn’t be surprised if she gets out of those measuring rods out they use for state dinners at Buckingham Palace. She probably keeps one tucked up her sleeve, just in case!’
Faith chuckles from behind her sunglasses. ‘She is a bit OCD, isn’t she?’
‘A bit? I swear, if she plumps one more cushion, I’m going to scream!’
‘Driving you nuts?’ Faith asks.
‘Yes!’
‘Because she won’t accept help from anyone and, even though she invited us here, you can’t help feeling that she’s secretly fretting we keep messing up her stuff?’
‘Yes!’ Heather says again, more emphatically.
Faith arches an eyebrow and gives her a slow, knowing smile. ‘Welcome to my world,’ she says drily.
Heather sits up so fast she almost spills her sangria down her front. ‘I am not like that! I am not!’
Faith just chuckles.
‘I’m not, am I?’ Heather repeats, sounding a little less sure of herself.
‘Maybe not exactly the same, but I can see parallels.’
Heather finishes her drink while she absorbs this information. ‘You think I’m being too tough on her?’
‘A little. She’s a bit high-maintenance, yes, but she adores Dad and she’s got a heart of gold underneath those marigolds. I’m just saying you should give her more of a chance. You’ve never really got to know her.’
‘You think I might end up like that if I don’t mend my ways?’ Heather asks, half smiling, half serious.
‘Oh, almost certainly,’ Faith says, closing her eyes and sinking into the sun lounger. ‘I happen to know for a fact Santa’s put a pair of bright-pink rubber gloves in your Christmas stocking.’
‘He has not!’
Faith just smiles, and Heather starts to get worried. She knows Matthew and Faith have done stockings for everyone, not just for the kids.
‘Oh, shut up and drink your sangria!’ Heather directs at her smug-looking sister, but she’s also smiling. She pretends to ignore Faith and settles down to read her novel for another twenty minutes. When she’s starting to feel a little bit sleepy from the combination of reading
and alcohol, she puts her book down and turns to Faith, who doesn’t seem to have moved a millimetre since their last exchange.
‘In this new-found spirit of Lucas-family honesty, I think I ought to come clean and tell you that Lydia came down to visit me at the end of November.’
That gets her sister’s attention. Faith pushes her sunglasses back on her head and sits up.
‘Lydia? Isn’t that a bit weird?’
Heather exhales. On the face of it, she supposes it is a bit weird, but she and Lydia have kept in contact. For some reason, Lydia feels like family now, even after what happened all those years ago. Or maybe even because of it.
‘She lives in a horrible little bedsit in Hastings, Faith. You should see it! And she has no one. Mainly because I think she’s been punishing herself all these years for doing what she did.’
Faith snorts. It seems her forgiving mood only extends as far as the boundaries of her family at the moment. ‘Maybe she should.’
‘Stand down, Mamma-Bear Faith,’ Heather retorts, which earns her another eyebrow-raise. ‘If I can get past it, so can you. Anyway, Lydia fell in love with South Devon. I’m deliberating over whether I should encourage her to move there, maybe even see if I can talk to Louise about getting her a job locally. I think it’s the fresh start she needs.’
‘I get why you wanted to see her again, to say thanks for what she did with the police and all that, but I’m not sure I get why you want to stay in touch long term,’ Faith says. ‘Like I said… it’s weird.’
It makes perfect sense to Heather, so she pauses for a moment and tries to reformulate her argument in a way her sister can digest.
‘Helping Lydia will help me too,’ she explains, ‘because I don’t think I can let go of it all if she can’t. Does that make sense?’
‘Almost,’ Faith says grudgingly.
‘She’s nice. Heart of gold underneath all that guilt and self-loathing. Maybe you ought to give her a chance?’
It looks very much as if Faith is searching hard for a witty comeback, but eventually she gives in and says, ‘Touché! Nicely played, little sister.’
