‘Have I?’ She looks disconcerted. Then she smiles. ‘Well, lucky me. He’s rather easy on the eye, isn’t he? Buff, isn’t that what people say these days? Nice bottom.’
Carl, who’s caught sight of himself in the mirrors on the café wall, seems to be thinking exactly the same thing. I sigh, in a way that may or may not be affectionate. What is it with Carl and older ladies? He must emit some pheromone that can only be detected by women in possession of a free bus pass.
‘Oh, please,’ I say to Gloria. ‘Just don’t let him hear you say that. We’ll never hear the end of it.’
‘And how are my two favourite ladies?’ asks Carl.
‘Oi,’ says Mum.
‘Oh yes,’ Carl says, winking at us. ‘I was forgetting Alice.’
Alice kicks him. ‘I’m not a lady.’
‘And of course,’ he says, putting his arm round Mum, who’s grinning at him in that alarming My Heathcliff kind of a way, ‘My beautiful wife-to-be.’
‘What?’ I say.
‘Yeah, we’ve got a little announcement,’ Carl says. ‘We’re getting married.’
‘Jesus.’ I put my head in my hands. ‘What is the matter with you people?’
‘Aww,’ says the café owner, who happens to be within earshot. ‘Did you hear that everyone? They’re getting married.’
There’s an impromptu but mortifying cheer and round of applause. Alice crawls under the table.
‘But not yet,’ says Mum, hastily. ‘Just . . . one day.’
‘Maybe next year,’ says Carl.
‘Or the year after,’ says Mum. ‘And not with any fancy stuff. No big dress or castle or wedding favours that match the flowers—’
‘Or peach bridesmaids’ dresses?’ I say. ‘Thank you, GOD.’
‘Oh, no,’ says Carl. ‘We’re definitely having the peach bridesmaids’ dresses. Great big puffy ones with bows – OW!’ Alice has kicked him again from under the table.
‘Maybe by the sea,’ says Mum.
‘Wait,’ I say, as we walk down towards the cottage. ‘I just need to post this.’
I take out of my bag a postcard that Gloria and I wrote together in the café. It says:
Dear Edie, just to let you know we reached the end of our journey and are now starting on a new one. I have the locket you sent to Gloria all those years ago. I will treasure it always. Gloria says thank you for everything, then and now. We both hope we’ll see you again soon. Love to Tariq and Yasmeen too. Love, Hattie and Gloria xxx
I watch the girl, Hattie, as she runs off down the street. It is freeing, knowing that she knows. My granddaughter. I will forget the things I have told her, but she will not forget them now. She knows it all. After all, no one ever knows the whole story. There are always secrets. Secrets we keep from others, secrets we keep from ourselves. There are things I have held back without realizing I’m doing it, I’m sure. Our memories are both real and made up. And of course there will be other things that I have left out by mistake, because I’ve forgotten them or got confused. But there is only one secret that I have chosen to keep, to be washed away when the tide comes in.
It is better that way. It is not my secret to tell.
‘I should have done it sooner.’ Gwen says, standing at the door of my flat in Battersea, late at night. I haven’t seen her for more than a year. We’d agreed then it was better that way.
‘Come in,’ I say, still half asleep, confused by her being here, by her words. She looks pale, thinner than I remember.
She shakes her head. ‘I should have done it sooner.’
‘Done what? Gwen, what’s up? You’re shaking.’
Even now my thoughts flash to him, to my boy who is now Gwen’s boy, and I have to work to quell the panic. No, if something had happened to him Gwen wouldn’t be pale and shaking on my doorstep, smelling faintly of – can it be whisky I can smell on her breath? Gwen never drinks . . . But no, if anything had happened to the boy, her boy, she would be hysterical, inconsolable. She would be with him, I know that. She would never leave him.
‘Gloria, I know what you wanted to tell me that day,’ she says. ‘I know now. Perhaps . . .’ Her voice falters. ‘Perhaps I knew it then. I don’t know. I don’t know.’
She is so agitated that I take her hand to try to calm her.
‘What day? Gwen what are you talking about?’
‘Do you remember? We were in Lyons. You said, “I love you Gwen. Nothing can ever change that”.’
‘Yes,’ I say. I remember that day. The baby still inside me and hers no longer inside her, the unfairness of it clear to both of us.
‘I love you too.’
She turns to go.
‘Gwen!’ I call after her.
She looks up at me from the shadow of the stairs so that her face is lit by the bulb on the landing.
‘I’m sorry, Gloria. I should have done it sooner.’
Back at the cottage, while we’re all packing I can hear Mum and Carl talking in the room next door to mine. It’s so hot that all the windows are open and their words drift out into the sunny late afternoon.
‘If I could get my hands on that toe-rag Reuben I’d wring his bloody neck. Running out on her like that,’ Carl says.
‘I know,’ I hear Mum reply. ‘But if he can’t handle it, maybe it’s better that Hattie knows that now.
‘Maybe. But he’s broken Hattie’s heart and that’s enough to make me want to throttle him.’
There’s a pause.
‘Oh, come on, honey. Don’t cry. She’ll be okay,’ I hear Carl say.
‘But she’s my baby, how can she possibly have a baby of her own? She hasn’t got any idea what she’s taking on. I just wish I could make her see. All the responsibility. All the things she’ll miss out on. And I think she’s doing it out of a misguided sense of love for Reuben. Do you suppose she’d have kept the baby if it had been Adrian’s? Because I don’t.’
I close my eyes. Is she right? ‘People have babies for all sorts of crap reasons,’ Carl’s saying. ‘They have ’em to save their marriage, or because everyone else has already had one and keep putting cute photos of them on Facebook, or because they want to live their life through someone else, or because they suddenly realize they’re going to die one day and they think it’s a way of making themselves immortal, or because they hate their job. My sister’s mate Kayleigh had one because she saw a pair of baby UGG boots in Selfridge’s and she couldn’t resist buying them and then she thought she needed a baby to wear them. She’s not the brightest, Kayleigh. But that said, as it turns out she’s a great mum and her little ’un, Kai, he’s a lovely lad. People make decisions for bad reasons all the time. Doesn’t always make them bad decisions.’
‘But this is Hattie we’re talking about,’ Mum says. ‘Is she really going to be able to handle going to university with a baby? Is she always going to be waiting for Reuben to come back? What’s she going to do when he finally grows up and gets married to someone else and has a family?’
Carl sighs. ‘I don’t know the answer to that, babe, and I don’t suppose Hattie does either. But it’s her decision. You’ve said your piece and now you’ve got to trust her. I know you’re worried for her. So am I. But she’ll be all right because she’s smart and she’s kind and she’s got you, hasn’t she? She’s got us.’
I carry on packing my case, with tears trickling down my face and off the end of my nose and landing on my clothes and washbag and Gloria’s hen-night deely boppers, thinking about the fact that this is the end of the journey for me and Gloria, remembering the places we’ve been together. I cry because of all the things Gloria went through, and because I love her and she is losing her memory and she is scared and maybe it won’t be long before she won’t even know who I am. I cry because I am pregnant. I cry because Reuben is gone and because I knew he would be. I cry because things will never be the same between us again, and because he is sad and I can’t help him. I cry because I love him.
Then, when I’ve stopped
crying, I type this:
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: How Not To Disappear
So, I was talking to Gloria the other day – and I realized something really important.
I didn’t say it very well and I probably won’t explain it right now, either, but the thing I realized is this: you can’t be lost – you can’t disappear – however lost you may feel, however far away – if you are loved.
Love is an anchor and that can be a bad thing because sometimes we want to float off and drift away and it weighs us down, it’s heavy and it keeps us in a place we don’t want to be.
But it is a good thing too, Reuben, because it means when someone’s feeling lost or when we don’t know who we are and even when we hide ourselves away – we can’t disappear. However distant or lost we feel, love means that we can’t disappear because it places us and knows us and is inside us whether we like it or not, and love is bigger than us – outlasting us like landfill or nuclear waste, except in a good way.
So anyway, that’s it really. I said it to Gloria, because I know her and I think I understand her a bit and I know she is scared and I love her and that means that even when she is lost she can’t disappear.
And that is also why I’m saying it to you.
Just so you know.
Hattie xx
But of course I don’t send it.
We all travel back together in Carl’s boss’s people carrier that has Pec’s Appeal – the gym 4 u! emblazoned on the side.
‘Could you not at least have said something about the apostrophe, Carl?’ I say.
‘Well, NO actually, Hats,’ he says. ‘Seeing as my BOSS had very GENEROUSLY just given me free use of his nice shiny people carrier because my almost-stepdaughter had totalled my almost-wife’s car after taking it to YORKSHIRE without asking, I thought it probably wasn’t the best moment for grammar pedantry.’
‘Still, though,’ I say.
‘Walk then,’ he says, and then smiles at Gloria, holding out a hand to help her into her seat.
‘And who are you?’ she says, smiling at him, like the queen.
‘I’m Carl,’ he says.
‘Ah yes, Carl. I think Hattie’s mentioned you,’ she says. ‘I thought you said he was an annoying idiot, Hattie,’ she calls back over her shoulder. ‘He seems quite delightful to me.’
Bloody Gloria. Never forgets the stuff you want her to.
‘I said at times he was an annoying idiot. Other times he’s really quite bearable.’ I smile at Carl. ‘‘‘delightful’ is definitely pushing it, though.’
‘Nice bottom too,’ Gloria adds appreciatively as she settles herself into her seat.
‘Easy, tiger,’ says Carl, looking pleased. ‘Still got it,’ he says to me as I push past.
‘Only cos no one else wants it,’ I say. He laughs and then he squeezes my shoulder. We both know the banter is because he feels sorry for me.
‘Look, Hattie,’ he says in a low voice, so the others won’t hear. ‘I know I’m not your dad but I really do—’
‘I know, Carl. So do I.’ I give him a kiss on the cheek. ‘Now just drive, will you?’
Mum and Carl sit in the front and Carl makes us listen to terrible Dad Rock all the way, despite the howls of protest from everyone else.
‘Are you all right, love?’ Mum calls back to me every five minutes. ‘Not dizzy, are you, Hattie? You know the doctor said you’ve got to tell us if you are,’ or ‘How’s your head?’ or ‘Let us know if you feel car sick. I couldn’t get in a car without projectile vomiting when I was pregnant with the twins.’ At which Carl gives me a look that says he might just dump me at the next lay-by.
Alice and Ollie play card games and Kat teaches them new ways to cheat while trying to avoid questions from Alice about how lesbians do sex and why.
‘Now’s really not the time, Al,’ Mum calls back.
‘Hmmm, I dunno,’ says Carl hopefully.
‘Shut up, Carl,’ we all chorus.
‘Pervert,’ Alice adds, for good measure.
I sit at the very back with Gloria.
‘Like being in the back row at the flicks,’ says Gloria. ‘Except without the You Know.’
‘Definitely without that,’ I say.
I watch the world flash by outside: hills, fields of sheep, vast cooling towers, villages and cities. There’s so much of it. Eventually I feel myself dozing. I look at Gloria and see she’s watching me.
‘I didn’t think it would end like this,’ I say to her as I begin to drift off.
She half smiles.
‘No one ever does,’ she says.
Mum throws her bouquet over her shoulder and it soars through the air. I keep well away from it. Carl’s sister Estelle runs across the sand, impressive given she’s wearing platform sandals, elbowing people out of the way. Alice’s natural competitiveness kicks in and she launches herself in front of Estelle like a goalkeeper making a save and manages to get there first. She looks triumphant until Carl’s mum explains to her that this means she’ll be the next to get married, and she drops it, appalled.
Mum laughs. She looks so happy. It only took her four years to get round to actually marrying Carl – just a few friends at the registry office near his mum’s house in Cornwall and then a barbecue on the tiny sheltered beach nearby to celebrate. No co-ordinating wedding favours. No peach bridesmaids’ dresses. Just paddling in the sea for those brave enough, and sausages and champagne.
It’s a perfect early autumn day, the sky blue above the rocky cove, the wind strong but not cold, carrying the shouts and laughter of the children scrambling in the rock pools and the smoke from the barbecue Carl and his mates have set up. The beach is deserted except for us. The coppery light of the late-afternoon sun and the heady fizz of the champagne making everything look a little bit magical.
Gloria sits on the deckchair that Carl set up for her, sipping her glass of champagne and watching it all happily, though how much she understands of what’s going on I don’t know. Not much of the detail, exactly who is who, or why we’re here. But she knows everyone’s having a good time, knows it’s a party, and she’s still in her element at a party.
I try not to feel sad as I watch her. So much of who she was when I first met her is gone. There are things I never got to talk to her about, that I never asked her about while I could and now I never can.
When I helped clear out Gloria’s flat after she moved to the home I found all sorts of things. One of them was a letter from Nan dated a couple of months before she died.
Dear Gloria,
I know it will be a bit of a shock for you to get this letter. I do hope that you will read it, after all this time.
I am dying, Gloria. I’m not writing to ask for pity, I don’t mind. Since Dominic passed away I have been waiting to die. The nuns used to tell us we would be reunited with our loved ones in heaven, didn’t they? I stopped believing in such things a long time ago, but I tell myself perhaps they were right after all. He was my life, Gloria, and I have you to thank for him. I can never thank you enough for the gift you gave me. The gift of a son, the gift of my beloved boy. I can’t imagine what my life would have been without him, and I owe that to you, Gloria. At the time I told myself it was simple, it was for the best. And I still believe it was for the best, but it was certainly not simple. I know the pain it must have caused you and I am so very sorry for it. I hope you can forgive me. I was young and I was desperate, for a child, for love, for something to prove to me that I was worthy of being alive. (My husband, as I think you know, had done a very good job of convincing me I was not.) I believe I was a good mother, as good as anyone could have been. I was devoted to Dominic and I believe he loved me as much as any son could love his mother.
I just wish, now, that I had allowed you to be part of his life too, if you had chosen. Perhaps you didn’t want to be. The fact is, I never gave you the chance.
I enclose the addre
ss and phone number for his family. He had a daughter, Hattie, who is now ten and baby twins, Alice and Ollie. If you should wish to contact them, I am sure they would be very pleased. And if, at some point, you choose to tell them the truth of what happened, do it with my blessing but not until after I am gone, if I can ask that of you.
With love and gratitude,
Your sister, Gwen
There was another letter in the same box. It was creased, as though it had been screwed up into a ball and then smoothed out again later. This letter said:
Dear Harriet,
You don’t know me but I know you. Sorry, that isn’t quite what I meant. It makes me sound like a deranged stalker, which I’m not. (Not a stalker at least; there have always been those who have said I am deranged). All I mean is I know a bit about you. You are Dominic Lockwood’s daughter, and he is someone I cared very greatly about and so, by default, I care about you. He didn’t really know me either. I am a relative of his but
(There is a bit of an ink blot here and a rather fierce crossing out,)
I’m not doing this at all well so I think the best thing would be if you came and saw me, don’t you? I can explain it better then. I’m not very well you see and while I can I would like to explain would like to tell you would like to get to know you
damn
I would like to
I would like for you to
I would like
a gin and tonic
At which point it stops and was, I presume, scrunched up and thrown aside.
I asked Peggy about it and it turned out she had found the letter and quizzed Gloria about it. Gloria had told her everything. She told her that Nan had got in touch with Gloria when she was ill, and talked to her about Dad, about me and Alice and Ollie, and said that if she wanted, Gloria could tell us after Nan was dead that she was really our grandmother. At the time Gloria hadn’t known whether or not she wanted to, but as her memory started to get worse she decided she would. They had agreed that Peggy would contact me. But then Gloria bottled out at the last minute and decided it was all a mistake. Luckily Peggy had decided it wasn’t. The letter had been tied up with a pile of newspaper cuttings. Articles that Dad had written, right back to his student days, and his earliest stories about school fêtes and retiring dinner ladies and obituaries. Gloria had followed his career every step of the way.
How Not to Disappear Page 32
