by Adele Parks
Then yesterday, a week after the awful wedding that never was, Mum got another call from the police station saying that there was no need for me to make a statement after all, that they had all the information they needed on the matter now.
‘What does that mean?’ I demand.
My mum looks tired, tired of the whole business. ‘It means you can put it out of your head,’ she replies.
‘But does that mean Mrs Harrison has been charged with pushing Abigail Curtiz down the stairs?’
‘I don’t know.’ She says this in a way that means she doesn’t care. My mum can hardly bear to hear the name Harrison in our house.
‘I need to ring her,’ I say, sitting up in bed, scrabbling around for my phone.
‘No, you don’t,’ says my mum, firmly.
‘I do,’ I insist. ‘Mrs Harrison didn’t do it!’
‘No one is saying she did.’
But Mum has to go to work and can’t babysit me for ever; the moment she leaves the house I call Mrs Harrison. I have to call their home phone because I don’t have her mobile number. As it rings, I panic, dreading the possibility that Liam will pick up. I heard he moved back there. To my great relief, it’s Mrs Harrison who answers.
‘Melanie speaking.’
‘Mrs Harrison, it’s Tanya here.’
‘Tanya, sweetheart, how are you?’ Her voice oozes concern, which immediately makes me want to cry. My eyes sting and I scrunch them up.
‘It’s my fault the baby is dead,’ I gush. ‘I pushed Abi.’ The words tumble out, I can no more keep them in than I can keep the tears in.
‘No, you didn’t,’ she says carefully.
‘I did. I hate myself. I killed that baby.’ I start to sob now because it’s too awful. I hated Abigail Curtiz for what she did to me and Liam, I might even hate her still, but I never planned on hurting her and I’d never have deliberately hurt an innocent baby. Never.
‘You are not to blame.’ Mrs Harrison sounds firm. ‘You aren’t remembering events clearly. You were over-wrought when it happened and shocked since. You’re confused. Abigail tripped.’
‘No.’ My tears are coming thick and fast now. Shame and sorrow flood from me, compounded by Mrs Harrison’s obvious desire to protect me, rather than punish me, which is what I deserve.
‘Yes, she said she tripped.’
‘Abigail did?’
‘Yes. She sent an email to the police station yesterday saying that she’s regained full memory of the events and she remembers her heel getting caught in her dress and losing her footing.’
‘Seriously?’
‘Yes.’
While I think Mrs Harrison would say anything to make me feel better, I can’t imagine Abigail Curtiz doing me any favours. It must be true. I must have remembered things falsely. This news doesn’t bring the baby back, it doesn’t fix everything, but it does assuage my guilt.
‘How’s Liam?’ I ask. My voice is small. I’m humiliated that I care still, but you can’t switch feelings on and off like a tap, even if you want to, even if it would be wise or convenient.
‘He’s sad,’ admits Mrs Harrison. ‘But he’ll be OK.’
‘I’m so very sorry,’ I whisper.
‘I know you are. We all are.’
‘What can I do?’ I ask.
‘What you need to do now, Tanya, is to go to Liverpool, study hard, become a vet and put all this behind you. You deserve to be happy and you must decide to be so.’
65
Melanie
Tuesday 3rd July
‘Rob, it’s Melanie Harrison here.’ I pause and then for clarity add, ‘Melanie Field.’ The words seem strange on my lips. Melanie Field was a lifetime ago.
‘Yes.’ He sounds polite but cautious. I know he does at least recognise my name because he coughs and asks, ‘What can I do for you?’ He thinks I’m bringing trouble to his door. That’s what he believes I’ve always done. I sigh and refuse to care what he thinks of me.
‘Are you alone? Can you speak for a few minutes?’ I’ve never felt entitled to his time. The brief hours we spent together that resulted in Liam were stolen; the time I visited him to tell him I was pregnant, and he offered me money to abort, felt sneaky, pilfered. Now I take my time and his. He owes me. I’m entitled, or at least, Liam is. I tell him everything I can. Embarrassed, I recall how I flung open my doors to Abi; he doesn’t ask why. Maybe he doesn’t care or maybe he cares enough to understand that I felt I owed her. I’d betrayed her long ago and I needed to make it up; it’s just possible that he has enough about him to understand that. I tell him that she had an affair with Liam.
‘Your Liam? Your son?’ he demands with incredulity. I hear how he is careful not to claim Liam and I don’t know what that means. Is he being elegant and generous? Does he understand that Liam is mine and Ben’s child, that he has no right to him? Or is it that he has no interest in him? I don’t know and I don’t know which I need it to be.
‘Yes.’
‘The crazy bitch.’ I quickly tell him that their affair is over now. ‘You’re sure about that?’
‘Certain.’
‘How do you know they won’t get back together?’
‘I can’t tell you everything. It’s private between the two of them, but I can give you my word, it’s over.’ I hope he can’t hear the fear and pain in my voice. I hope he believes me. I’ve a favour to ask him. I never wanted to owe him a thing. I never wanted to prostrate myself in front of this man but I will for Liam. I’ll do anything for Liam.
‘He’s the bloke in the video? That’s why you’re ringing me?’ guesses Rob. There’s a hint of bewilderment, possibly disgust in his voice.
My heart contracts. This is a risk. I don’t know Rob well enough or at all. I made a child with him but I don’t know him. It was biology, nothing more. I feel a flash of dread and panic. I should never have called. He could destroy Liam. He might do so to spite Abi, or me, or simply for the hell of it. I have no idea.
‘Yes,’ I confess. ‘I’m ringing you to ask you to destroy the video. You got your quickie divorce. You are rid of Abi. You don’t need the video anymore and I don’t want Liam to have to start his adult life with this hanging over him.’
‘I see.’
I think I can hear the cogs of his mind. He’s weighing it up. I imagine he’s wondering what would happen if he exposed Abi and Liam. He’d become the sympathetic party in their celebrity divorce. No doubt the opinions of their friends and colleagues have been swaying like a pendulum. He did, after all, have an affair – rumours will be emerging, women will be coming forward with stories of their own encounters, keen to claim their fifteen minutes of fame. It can’t be good for his career or his ego to be badly thought of. This video scandal would take the spotlight of shame away from him and shine it on her. What have I done? I should never have called. I should have left well alone. You’d think I’d know by now not to get embroiled in Rob’s and Abi’s messy lives.
‘What the fuck did she do that for?’ he mutters.
‘She knew who Liam’s father was and in some sort of twisted way used Liam to get closer to you.’ I say cautiously. I don’t give him any more details. The pregnancy, the loss of the baby, is still too difficult to talk about. Her plan didn’t work so Rob doesn’t need to know quite how desperate and damaged Abi was. I risk adding, ‘I suppose she loved you very much, in a crazy, obsessive way.’
He sighs. ‘You say she targeted Liam for this video because she knew who his father was?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well Melanie, I know who his father is, too. I’ll destroy the video. I’ll never let it see the light of day. You have my word on that.’
The relief is enormous. A tidal wave that nearly washes me off my feet. I breathe out and feel the tension leave my body, my shoulders, my head; my heart beat regulates. I mutter, ‘Thank you.’
‘Of course. It’s the right thing to do.’
I admire his word choice. He didn’t fall into the platit
ude of ‘it’s the least I can do’ or ‘it’s nothing’. He found words accurate and fitting. He’s recognising something but demanding nothing. I imagine he’s as relieved as I am to be closing the door on this. ‘Well, if there’s nothing else?’
‘No, nothing else,’ I assure him.
‘Goodbye.’ He hangs up.
I don’t imagine we’ll be in contact again. I listen to the sound of a dead line. It sounds strangely soothing in its finality. I turn to Ben, who has been nervously standing by my side, listening to my half of the conversation, supporting me and hoping, praying for the best outcome. His eyes are wide with concern, his eyebrows raised in anticipation. I smile and nod. He smiles back as I fall into his arms.
66
Liam
Friday 20th July
It’s Mum’s idea to do something to say goodbye to the baby. At first, I didn’t know if I could bring myself to make a thing of it but, after a few weeks of walking around feeling lost, I admitted I probably needed to. I don’t miss Abi. It surprises and shames me to realise as much, but I just don’t. Those last couple of weeks that we lived together had started to get weird. I knew she was hormonal because of the pregnancy and stressed because of the wedding, but things changed between us. If it wasn’t for the baby, I’d probably have called it a day, but I just couldn’t. It wasn’t an option.
Today is not about Abi though, it’s about the baby. We buy a pink balloon.
‘Pink?’ asks Mum.
‘Yeah, I always had the feeling it was a baby girl.’
‘Did you?’ she smiles.
I nod. ‘And even if it wasn’t a girl, I’d have had the sort of son who was comfortable enough with his masculinity to be OK with pink. You know . . . I was terrified about becoming a dad,’ I admit to my mum.
She nods. ‘Understandable. Nearly everyone is terrified about becoming a parent.’
‘But I was also determined to make a good job of it. To be a good dad.’
‘And you will be, one day. You have time.’
We let the balloon go at the children’s play park. I picked somewhere noisy and vibrant. Not sad, at all. Dad asks if I want to say anything. I don’t. I don’t want them to say anything either. It’s enough that they are here, by my side, looking grim but supportive. A few of the kids in the park spot the balloon as it floats away. They leap up and try to catch the trailing ribbon, although there’s no chance; it’s out of reach. We watch it bob and drift until it floats right out of sight. I take a deep breath and whisper goodbye.
Then we walk to Wolvney Sixth Form College to enrol in upper sixth again. I’m going to have to repeat the year but I’m OK with that and, luckily, Mr Edwards the principal is, too.
Epilogue
One year later
Abigail Curtiz was in love. She had not been certain that she’d ever fall in love again, but she had – more deeply, more profoundly and more assuredly in love than ever before. She realised now that being in love was not about subduing her own needs and desires, as she had with Rob for so many years, and it certainly was not about manipulating or controlling to get her own way, as she had with Liam. Thinking about both relationships was uncomfortable for Abigail. She’d made mistakes. Some dreadful ones. She’s been extreme and even cruel.
Sometimes, she couldn’t believe her luck. Sometimes, she didn’t believe she deserved this little baby, with her sparkly flashy eyes which were so very beautiful although they were not blue like Liam’s or Rob’s but brown, almost black, like her own.
Abigail’s daughter, Mila, was safely delivered six months after her mother and father had been due to marry and now she was six months old. When she recognised this, Abi found herself thinking, Time flies when you’re having fun. As the slightly banal cliché scuttled through her head she thought of Mel, with her endless platitudes and faintly hackneyed truisms, and she found that she had a sudden affection for them, an understanding of them. Maybe it was motherhood, maybe it allowed for a softening or commonality.
Abigail and Mila lived together in southern Italy, in a small, white, dry-stonewalled house with a conical roof, called a trullo. When she had initially been hunting for somewhere simple and remote to escape to, she had stumbled across these pretty dwellings. She read that they were initially constructed as temporary shelters for agricultural labourers, in a particular historical period when the construction of stable dwellings was highly taxed. As a consequence, the clever inhabitants of the region boasted a great capacity to adapt. The trulli were now much sought after and had successfully transitioned from precariousness to stability. They somehow symbolised recovery and endurance. The limestone walls, cool in the summer, warmed by open fire in the winter, called to her.
Mila lay in the centre of the trullo, kicking on a rug as Abi collected together the things that they would need to spend the day at the beach. She stopped to stoop and kiss her baby’s stomach, letting her lips melt into her delicious skin, which was as soft and velvety as fresh cream. Abigail drew in her daughter’s smell, lovelier than recently cut grass or cakes baking in an oven and sweeter, purer, clearer than mint or lavender. Mila started to grumble. Abi recognised the particular tone of the gripe. She was hungry. If she was not fed soon she would start to scream: an unforgiving, piercing scream which would draw their lovely Italian neighbour out of her house with enquires of whether she could offer assistance. It was true, what was said about Italians: they loved babies. Abi had never felt alone here, with a constant stream of kind and interested people offering to hold the baby, play with the baby, feed the baby. Mila might not have a father, but she had a village. Abi felt no stigma about being a single mother in Italy; all mamas were beloved warriors here.
Abigail picked up Mila and pacified her with cuddles while she unfastened the buttons on her simple summer dress. This dress was one of Abi’s favourites, not because it was especially flattering or fashionable, but because it offered easy and reasonably discreet access to her breasts. The baby started to feed, content. Abigail sighed, gratified. It still surprised her that she was good at this mothering business. A natural. That’s what her own mother had said when she came to visit in the spring. Abigail had made some mistakes in life, but Mila wasn’t one of them.
Abigail had left the wedding in an ambulance, bleeding, sure she was losing her baby. The one she’d tricked and schemed to secure. The one she had longed for and would love with all her heart. She’d never been a religious woman or even a superstitious one but suddenly she found herself making pleas, pacts and bargains. She promised whoever – God, fate, herself? – that she’d let Mel keep Liam, if only she could keep her baby. That was all she’d ever really wanted him for, anyway.
Her plan had been a selfish, merciless one, she saw that now. She had been driven by fury and pain to seek revenge and retribution. It was only when she thought she might lose her baby that she began to develop some understanding of what she had subjected Mel to. How Mel must have thought about losing Liam. Abigail had thought she was owed; she’d believed Mel had cheated her and that she was justifiably equalling an old score. But, lying in the ambulance, in physical and emotional agony, she had wondered for the first time whether perhaps she’d got it wrong. The hospital could bind up her foot and give her painkillers to ease the ache in her ribs, but all they could do about her baby was instruct her to lie still and to hope. At that point she was still bleeding, but the doctors said there was a viable heartbeat, a possibility. Her baby was a fighter.
Tanya had pushed her down the stairs. She knew that because a few days after the fall, she remembered it quite clearly. Abigail realised that Mel was under suspicion for the shove. The photographer had proven to be a slightly hysterical and very insistent individual. She said she was sure but in fact her view was obscured, through a lens. Her brain made the connection that Mel – an argumentative, angry woman – was the most likely suspect, while the helpful teen who had carried her bags of equipment seemed blameless. The photographer swore it was Mel who had committed
the crime and the police had no reason to disbelieve her. Abi could so easily have added fuel to the fire. Abi had a feeling that if she incriminated Mel, then Mel would do little or nothing to clear her own name, as she would not implicate Tanya – she would protect the teenager, at all costs. She was obsessed with teenagers getting to live their youthful lives to the full, having the chance to unfurl and develop into adults, not to be forced, pushed, shoved into unexpected maturity. Abigail supposed it came from Melanie’s own experience. Her time as a young adult had been curtailed; she had not been able to immerse herself in all that was gifted at that period of life: optimism, incredulity, naivety, innocence, fun.
Abigail supposed it was because Mel was selfless.
She could see it now. Mel had moved away from the university because she believed it would be the least damaging thing. The least hurtful thing for Abigail. Yes, she had slept with Abi’s boyfriend, which was horrendous, but after that she had tried to make amends. Mel had wanted to minimise the disruption and pain for Abi, even if it cost her the chance of finishing her degree. Abigail lay in the hospital bed and considered the possibility that perhaps Mel had simply sent the photo of Liam to Rob on a whim, because she was proud of him, grateful even to Rob for helping create him, even though he’d never nurtured him. Maybe she was grateful that Rob hadn’t been involved, that he’d let her forge a new life with Ben. Undeniably, things had worked out well for them. At least they had until Abigail had turned up.
