Mum is looking at me, and she looks just like Mum. Like she knows me. I want to hug her, but I don’t want to break this moment.
“Nice place,” Mum says, looking around. There is no window in the office, just an extractor fan filmed with thick dust. An ashtray full of cigarette butts sits on the desk, because laws on smoking in the workplace don’t count for very much here.
“I’m sorry,” I say uneasily. “I know I should have told you what happened, where I was, and everything. I know I should have told you about failing my exams and…and that I am pregnant by this boy I’m not going out with anymore, and who…who doesn’t know that I am keeping the baby.”
I say it like a challenge. I say it like it should be followed by the phrase: “And what are you going to do about it?”
“Oh God, you silly goose,” Mum says. “And me spilling the beans about what a stupid cow I was over your parentage, that just tipped you over the edge, didn’t it? I’m so sorry, darling, come here….”
She holds out her arms and I go into them without hesitation. Twenty years old and I still need a hug from my mum. I expect I’ll be hugging my own baby and still need a hug from my mum.
“You don’t have to explain,” Mum says. I close my eyes and rest my head on her chest. “I’m guessing it hasn’t ever quite seemed like the right time to tell your increasingly senile mother that you were up the duff and had no prospects.”
I smile at her blunt assessment of the situation, but I don’t say anything; I don’t feel like I need to.
Gran is still standing in the doorway, staring up the corridor as though she’s expecting a raid. “Hey, Caitlin,” she says. “Your bosses—are they Mafia? Armenians?”
“No, he’s Greek, I think,” I tell her. “His mum owns a taverna up the road.”
“It must have been so hard for you,” Mum says into my hair. “I do understand. You have no idea what the future is going to hold, not mine or yours, not the baby’s. And then realizing that your dad didn’t ever know about you…I don’t blame you for wanting to run away.”
“You’re being too nice,” I say. “I left you. I didn’t have to. I didn’t have anywhere to go, just…here.”
“Yes.” Mum looks around her. “I must say that the fact you ran away to here is a bit insulting. And I was so worried about you, Caitlin. For you to not let us know you were okay…it was too hard. I think I get it but…every day I’ve wondered if I’ve lost you forever. I know I’m not really the best mother material, at the moment, but come home, Caitlin. Please. Let me look after you.”
“Shhh,” Gran hisses urgently from the doorway, flattening herself against the fake-wood-effect wallpaper. “I think someone is coming!”
I find laughter gurgling in my stomach.
“What’s so funny?” Mum asks me, grinning.
“You two,” I say. “It’s like some decrepit Scooby-Doo adventure.”
“Oh no,” Mum says. “This isn’t Scooby-Doo. In your gran’s head this is The Untouchables, and we are Eliot Ness.”
I’ve missed Mum.
“Remember when you were little, how you used to sit on my knee to read a book or watch a film? We were always together, weren’t we? I miss that, Caitlin. Come home. I’ll probably be a burden, and Gran will most likely attempt to smother you with carbohydrates as a substitute for love, but the fact remains that we do love you.”
“I finish my shift soon,” I say, winking at Mum. “If my boss catches you two here, he won’t like it. There’s a chance you might end up wearing concrete boots and sleeping with the fishes. There’s a café over the road. Wait for me there. I’ll be five minutes.”
But Mum doesn’t move; she just stands there, looking at me. “You were a lovely queen,” she says. “So regal, it was like you were born to royalty.”
Just at that second my boss, Pete, arrives, unwittingly barging my gran out of the way so that she clatters against a filing cabinet—not because he is a thug, but because he didn’t expect to find an old lady casing his office. He looks at my mother, who is clutching her hand to her chest and doing a passable impression of being frail, and then at me.
“What the bloody hell is going on in here?” Pete says, looking at me. “What is this, some kind of raid? Listen, I’ve dealt with you religious types before. No one round here needs saving, thanks very much, except from bitter old spinsters who don’t like anyone having fun.”
“What is it about me that makes me look so pious?” Mum asks me. “Honestly, I’m going to have to review my wardrobe. I’m clearly losing my scarlet woman status.”
“Who the bloody hell are you?” Pete asks, before looking at me again. “And what are you doing? The bar’s not manned, and there’s a bloody queue.”
“There are only two people out there,” Mum says. “And one of them is asleep.”
“Oh, fuck off.” He spits the words at her, and I watch open-mouthed as Mum draws herself up to her full height and grabs Pete by his grubby T-shirt, slamming him into the side of the filing cabinet—where Gran was standing a moment ago—with a metallic thud. He is stunned. I want to laugh, but I’m too surprised.
“You do not speak to me like that,” she says. “Now, I am taking my daughter, and we are leaving. And you, you vile little stain on humanity, if you don’t want me to rip the last remaining hairs off your head and stuff them up your arse, you can shut it.”
She lets go of him and marches out of the office. I grab Gran by the arm, my bag and coat off the peg, and I follow her through the bar, past the dancer, the bouncer, the girl on the door, and out into the chill of the dark afternoon.
Mum stands on the street, her face tipped up to the rain, letting it drench her face. She is laughing, her hands upstretched toward the sky, her fingers playing with the droplets of water.
“Mum!” I put my arms around her, laughing. “You were going to stuff his hair up his arse—that is the most hilarious threat of menace I have ever heard.”
“Well, it worked, didn’t it? He was menaced, wasn’t he?” She grins at Gran and me, and I feel a rush of relief that they are here, almost like my heart just started beating again. I remember that I am part of a family, and I always was. I am such an idiot.
“Are you coming home now?” she asks me, pressing her cold wet cheek against mine.
“Aren’t you angry with me?” I ask her.
“Aren’t you angry with me?” she replies.
“How can I be?” I say.
“Because of the AD?” she asks me.
“I understand now why you did what you did,” I say. “And I know that I’m going to do things differently. Maybe not just yet, because I’m still at the stage where I’m not sure if I want to kiss Sebastian all over or beat him to death with a blunt instrument, but at some point I will tell him about my baby, because then, whatever else happens after that, at least he will know.
“I’m sorry,” Mum says again.
“Mum,” I ask her. “Was my dad a terrible dickhead?”
She laughs, and takes my hand. “No darling, he was just very, very young and not half as clever as me.”
“I never liked him,” Gran says. “I only met him once, but he brought me a box of chocolates when I was on a diet.”
“Come home, Caitlin,” Mum says, placing her hand gently over my tummy. “And come home, baby, and you and I will figure this out together, just like the old days when you used to sit on my knee for a story.”
I tuck my arm under hers and, as we start back toward the bus stop, I realize it’s been a long time since I’ve felt so certain.
“What story would you like?” Mum asks me. “How about Pippi Longstocking? She’s always been your favorite.”
As we walk into the rain, Mum asks me if I want a hot chocolate before bed, just this once, as long as I promise to brush my teeth—and I know that, for now at least, I am around ten years old to her, and it doesn’t matter, not now. Because I feel safe.
friday, july 11, 2008
greg
>
This is the scan photo of Esther in the womb, at just six weeks. It’s the photo Claire gave me on the day she told me we were having a baby, and until now I’ve always kept it in my wallet.
We hadn’t been together for very long when Esther was conceived—less than a year. But I already knew that I loved Claire more than I’d ever expected to love anyone. Even though, most of the time, she didn’t believe it. She still thought the age difference was too big, or that I wasn’t serious about her. Nothing I could do or say would change that. That’s why I think she was so scared to tell me about Esther.
It was a very warm day. I had been working on-site, out in the sun all day, and I should have gone back to my flat to get a shower before seeing Claire, but there was just something pulling me to her. I’d been thinking about her all day, about the way she’d looked when I woke up that morning, so pissed off that I’d woken her up at six A.M. and the sun was fully up, which meant she couldn’t get back to sleep. There was last night’s makeup around her eyes, her hair was tangled and she’d scowled at me when I went to kiss her goodbye.
“I love you,” I’d said.
“Yeah, right,” she’d said. And then, just as I’d been about to go out of the bedroom door, she called my name. I’d stopped, but she’d just smiled at me and said, “I love you too, worse luck.”
After work, I arrived at her house, our house now, covered in muck and grime. She opened the door and told me I wasn’t coming in like that, so I stripped off on her doorstep—my boots, and my work trousers, even my shirt—looking her right in the eye the whole time. Claire leaned against the doorframe and watched me, with her arms crossed under her breasts, laughing, frowning, and flushing this gorgeous shade of pink all at once.
I stood before her on her doorstep in my boxers, the sun on my back.
“Good job. Mrs. Macksey’s privet hedge is so damned high,” she said, looking me up and down. “She’d have a stroke if she could see you right now.”
She led me into the kitchen, which wasn’t exactly the room I expected to be taken to, but I followed, my hand in hers. We stood there on the tiles and she went to her handbag. I could tell she was bracing herself to tell me something, and suddenly I was certain she was going to end things. I remember thinking, what sort of person lets a man strip down to his knickers to tell him it’s over? And that’s when she finally came out with it.
I was standing there in just my underwear when she told me I was going to be a father.
“I went to the doctor’s today,” she said. She looked so edgy and nervous that it worried me. I thought it might be something serious.
“Are you okay?” I asked her. I remember how she nodded, pressing the palm of her hand onto my bare chest. She closed her eyes for a moment, then presented me with this thin slip of paper.
“I was a bit worried, because I’d been bleeding a little bit, just a few spots when I shouldn’t have been. And I read somewhere it could be serious, so I went to get it checked out.”
“Oh, babe.” I was instantly worried.
“But it’s fine,” she said. “Sort of. Look at it.”
I stared at it, this odd grainy image, and I couldn’t make sense of it for a few seconds. I wasn’t sure what she was showing me.
I must have looked confused, because she laughed. “Gregory,” she said. “I am having your baby.”
I remember my knees going, and hearing myself gasp as I sank onto them, right there on the kitchen tiles, which I try not to bring up too much—it’s kind of embarrassing. And I remember the look on Claire’s face as she watched me. She thought I wasn’t pleased.
“I know it wasn’t planned or expected,” she said. “And it’s fine, you don’t have to worry. You can be as much or as little a part of the baby’s life as you want. After all, I know you weren’t exactly thinking of settling down and having a family with an older woman, so…”
“Yes,” I said, grabbing her hand and pulling her to me. “Yes, that is exactly what I was thinking about, Claire. All day today, I was thinking about you. You, and that having you in my life has changed me, for the better. Before I met you I was just a…bloke. But you love me and I feel…beautiful.”
It was maybe the most stupid thing any grown man has ever said to any woman, especially when he is wearing just his underwear and kneeling on her kitchen floor, but it was the way I felt, so I thought I’d say it out loud and see how that went. I expected Claire to do the usual thing she did when I told her I loved her, and laugh it off as if it were a joke, but she didn’t. She just stood there, in the kitchen, holding my hand, and I realized she was trembling.
“You are beautiful,” she said, reaching out and touching my face. “I should know, you are in my kitchen in your pants.”
We stayed there for a moment, looking at each other, and then we laughed. Without having to think about it for a second more, I put my arms around her middle, and gently pressed my face against her stomach.
“Claire, we are going to get married,” I told her.
“Because I’m up the duff?” she asked me.
“Because I love you, and our baby. And this is the best and happiest moment of my life.”
And amazingly enough, she agreed.
Whenever I look at this picture, of Esther in the womb, I remember that day, and I think it was then that I really became a man.
9
claire
I watch Caitlin’s profile as she is driving. I am taking her shopping—we decided it last night, during an impromptu sleepover. Caitlin didn’t want to go back to Becky’s house to get her things, not even her iPod. She didn’t want to see Becky, at least not for the time being, and I understood that: Becky was part of her old life, and Caitlin is getting ready to embark on a new one. Even so, Mum called Becky to tell her that Caitlin was coming home, and asked her to pop a few things in the post.
So even though she barely took anything with her to London when she ran away, and I am taking her shopping, it’s still a tenuous excuse to leave the house, but I’ll take it. I am allowed out if Caitlin is with me, and it’s the next best thing to being alone. Things have been a bit better between Mum and me since I went for a walk with Ryan, and she took me to London to find Caitlin. It’s not that we suddenly understand each other, or that everything is now okay between us, simply because we got a train and fronted up to a strip club owner, but it’s the first time in a long while that we’ve had a shared experience that I still remember. We’ve got something to talk about apart from the articles she cuts out for me from the Daily Mail. And we are trying to be kind to each other. She is trying her best not to be quite so in charge of me. I have even been allowed my credit card, and I know my PIN—it is the year of my birth, 1971. I am unlikely to forget the year I was born, which is why I chose it a few years ago, way before I was diagnosed, because I’d forgotten the standard issue one so many times that I was getting my card retained and cut up on almost a monthly basis. We used to laugh about it, Caitlin and I. We used to laugh about how ditzy and silly I was. How cute, I suppose. Silly Claire, never can remember her PIN, her head is so full of thoughts. Now it’s hard not to wonder if, even then, little chinks of darkness were breaking through the light, claiming little bits of me.
Caitlin yawns, just as she used to when she was a baby, her whole face stretching into a wide circle.
“Are you tired?” I ask her, unnecessarily, and she nods.
“I’ve been exhausted almost since it happened, I suppose,” she says.
I do remember that we got home after nine last night, but Esther was still up, engaged in a game of hide-and-seek with Greg. I felt odd seeing her with him: she looked so happy, so smiley, and yet I felt like he shouldn’t be looking after her. Almost like I’d left her with a stranger. Although I know he is her father and my husband, I didn’t like the fact that she had been with him. The sense of unease and disquiet I feel, whenever I see him, grows. I read what I have written, what he has written, in the memory book, and it’s such
a beautiful story. But that is exactly what it feels like to me: it feels like a story. It’s such a shame that the heroine has checked out already. Like Anna Karenina throwing herself on the railway tracks at around chapter three, or Cathy dying before Heathcliff even arrives.
Esther was overjoyed to see Caitlin, and she fell asleep in her big sister’s arms within a matter of minutes. Caitlin had carried Esther upstairs, but I’d steered Caitlin into my room and tucked her up in my bed, Esther still in her arms. Then I got in too.
“Remember when we used to have sleepovers, you and me?” I said.
“You must be the only mum in the world that wakes their child up so they can come and sleep in bed with them.” Caitlin smiled.
“I missed you,” I said. “I never got enough time with you when you were little. I was working or studying so much. There isn’t a rule book that says you can’t have a little midnight chat with your children!”
She settled down into the bed, and we put on the TV, keeping the volume low so as not to wake Esther. We didn’t talk about the pregnancy, or the boy, or the exams, or the secrets, or my illness—we only watched some terrible film until finally Caitlin drifted off too. For a long time after that, I watched my daughters sleeping—the colors from the screen playing out across their faces—feeling very calm, very peaceful.
At some point, I heard Greg stop outside the bedroom door, probably thinking about coming in, and my heart raced and every muscle in my body clenched, because I didn’t want him to. The idea of this man that I know increasingly less coming into my bedroom unnerves me. Perhaps he sensed it because, after a moment, the shadow of his feet at the bottom of the door moved away. I stayed awake a lot longer after that, though, listening, waiting. Anxious that he might come back.
When I announced that I was taking Caitlin shopping, I could see that Mum thought this was a bad idea—the woman with dementia going out alone with her fragile daughter—but still she let us go, watching Caitlin pull my car out of the drive, standing with Esther on her hip, my younger daughter still protesting loudly about being left behind.
The Day We Met Page 13
