Putting Alice Back Together

by Carol Marinelli

  ‘I’m not going to get upset.’ Mum was very patient. She was putting on a very reasonable voice. ‘You don’t have to pretend to me.’

  And I stood there in the kitchen and realised how far we’d come.

  I wasn’t hysterical that she had dared to think…

  Mum wasn’t having kittens that maybe I was…

  I started to laugh.

  ‘Mum…’ I was laughing so much I was crying and in the end Mum was laughing too. ‘I’m not a lesbian!’

  We were a bit hysterical really.

  ‘Oh.’ She looked a bit disappointed once she had calmed down. ‘But if you were,’ she checked, ‘I mean if you had been, did I handle it well?’

  We had the best evening.

  Mum and Roz just hit it off. So much so I went and had a bath.

  I could hear Roz and Mum laughing and chatting and it was nice to be able to relax, to know they were getting on. I came downstairs and they didn’t stop their conversation.

  ‘I’ve had three,’ Mum said. ‘I know exactly what it’s like.’

  ‘Yeah, but Lizzie had to put up with a lot,’ Roz said.

  ‘So did mine.’

  I was combing my hair and pretending to watch the TV but just listening.

  ‘You weren’t gay!’ Roz pointed out.

  ‘No, but I had loads going on when they were teenagers—all the way through, really. To tell you the truth, Roz, I was in a right mess, trying to keep tabs on him all the time, and then he went off with some lovely young thing. He was always stalling with money. I know I wasn’t great with the girls, but I was trying to keep things going…’ Mum said.

  And they chatted on, about how hard it was dealing with your kids’ issues when you had issues of your own, and I felt not jealous, not excluded, but an outsider. I heard a different side to my mum and a different side to Roz too.

  ‘You need to get out there,’ Roz said later, and Mum just harrumphed.

  ‘I wouldn’t know where to start.’

  ‘I didn’t either. Get your hair done,’ Roz said, ‘join a social club.’ Mum just shrugged. ‘You should do something just for you.’

  ‘I keep meaning to ask Noel to do my teeth,’ Mum admitted. ‘That’s Eleanor’s husband—he’s a cosmetic dentist.’

  ‘You should, Gloria.’ Roz nodded furiously.

  Yep, Mum does have a name, and I listened as Roz used it.

  I have a pretty spectacular friend.

  I could never have had the night I had with Mum without Roz there. Could never have learnt so much about Gloria.

  We showed Mum YouTube and she was delighted. She kept asking if it was legal as she typed in her searches, pushing the enter button as if she expected the police to jump out of the screen and arrest her, but she soon got over it.

  There was even the Bionic Woman there.

  I lay in my bed that night. I could hear Roz snoring across the hall, Mum was back on YouTube. ‘I Wanna Go Back’ wafted up the stairs, and then it stopped and I could hear Mum flicking the lights off.

  It felt good to be home.

  Seventy-Two

  Christmas Eve, was… well, Christmas Eve.

  Hand up turkey’s bum, dashing to corner shop for Sellotape, and then at two p.m. Roz asked what I had got Mum for Christmas. I showed her the perfume I had bought at the airport and the next three hours were spent with the last of the last shoppers, choosing a necklace and nice jumper for her.

  And Christmas Day was Christmas Day at the Jamesons’.

  I will spare you the details except to say it was nice and, like any family at Christmas, it had its share of drama.

  I worried that Roz would get bored. I mean, it was her first time in London, but she was so genuinely happy to be around us mad lot that I realised how much she must miss her own family.

  Eleanor was a misery—excused herself three times during Christmas dinner.

  I could see Mum’s lips disappearing; saw my niece and nephew getting awkward when she had been gone one puke too long, and went upstairs to check on her.

  ‘Everything okay?’ I asked as she came out of the loo.

  ‘Fine.’ She brushed past me and I had that terrible repeat feeling again. I saw Eleanor rinsing her mouth in the sink and then she went to go downstairs, and just as Lex had to me, at this very spot, I called her back.

  ‘You can talk to me.’

  I never really expected her to.

  Eleanor is an enigma, this distant older figure who happens to be my sister.

  I never expected her to start crying.

  ‘I’m pregnant.’

  This time last year I’d have congratulated her. This year I stood there.

  ‘I can’t tell Noel.’

  We sat in her old room, filled with her kids’ presents. The kids are twelve and thirteen. Maybe she and Noel didn’t want to start over again.

  ‘Doesn’t he want any more?’

  ‘He’d be delighted.’ She was crying in earnest now. ‘It might not be his.’

  Is it just mine, or are all families like this?

  I stood there as she crumpled and asked myself that question. I got a very rapid answer.

  Yes.

  Yes.

  Bloody hell, yes!

  If you look, if you take your blinkers off, if you dare to be honest, if you dare to ask and stop for long enough to hear.

  Well, I stand corrected.

  My family isn’t dysfunctional—it’s crazy, yes, but completely normal.

  ‘I can’t have an abortion…’

  ‘Okay.’ I sat with my arm (awkwardly) around her. (I’ve never cuddled Eleanor before.)

  ‘I don’t want to break up the marriage,’ she sobbed, ‘but if he finds out…’

  ‘Do you have to tell him?’ I was all for honesty (well, not really, but I was trying now), but if it had been but a moment’s madness… I guess I was offering options—but you may have realised by now that when my family fucks up they do it in style.

  She stood up, went into her bag, pulled out her purse and her shaky, skinny fingers dug inside and she took out a picture.

  She wanted to be caught, I realised.

  I mean, you don’t carry a picture of your lover in your purse if you don’t want to be found out.

  ‘What if the kids went in your bag? Or Noel?’ I said as she handed me the photo.

  I looked and looked and I looked again.

  There was going to be no mistaking who the father was when this baby arrived!

  ‘He’s my personal trainer,’ Eleanor said and I started to sweat because was I supposed to not comment that he was black?

  I honestly didn’t know what to do. I should have just stayed quiet, I suppose, like Lisa does, but I stared at the photo and then I looked at Eleanor.

  ‘Whatever happens…’ I watched her flinch as she braced herself for an incoming platitude ‘… your baby is going to have beautiful teeth!’

  We laughed.

  On her worst day, with more to follow, we sat on the bed and laughed, a sort of hysterical laugh, because sometimes that’s all you can do.

  I told her to tell Mum.

  She said Mum wouldn’t understand.

  I said try her—Mum’s a lot stronger than she seems. And if she doesn’t understand when you tell her, find someone to help who does understand, and that included me.

  And by the time we were down the stairs and back in the dining room I realised I had another sister.

  It was Christmas and it was fab and then it was the lull that preceded New Year. There was some place I needed to be and I did not want Mum to come with us.

  I made some vague excuse, and I could tell she felt left out as she waved us off, but there was no question of bringing her.

  It was a fifteen-minute walk to the hospital. Roz had rung from Australia and there was a package for me to collect.

  The medical records department was suitably dreary. The miserable clerk said that it was only skeleton staff on over the Christmas break and
that I’d have to come back in a couple of weeks. I nearly turned to go, but Roz was insistent. She had it already arranged, she said. Could she check again if there was a package for me?

  I stood there sweating, sure I would hear that due to an administration error those little pieces of paper that had meant so little at the time but seemed vital today were lost.

  And I promised I wouldn’t make a scene.

  I didn’t exactly have the right to, ten years on.

  Whatever happened, I had promised I would just accept it.

  But I got a large envelope that I wasn’t ready to open, so we walked to the cemetery.

  I had no idea where to go, but Lex had given Roz instructions and off we headed—to stare at some signature in a book of remembrance, probably.

  I was determined not to fall apart—not just for me. I wouldn’t do it to Roz.

  The grass was icy and it crunched under our feet. We sat on a bench and I opened the envelope.

  There was a little armband, ‘Baby Jameson’, and it had the date.

  There were photos too—I looked so young and scared and she looked so tiny and perfect.

  There were footprints and handprints and I traced the outline of her toes just as I had that day, and suddenly I wanted to hold her.

  There was the little yellow blanket too, a sort of nappy square in faded lemon, and I buried my face in it and inhaled. There was no scent of her, but there was the feel of her, and I held it on my face for a while and I wanted to hold her so badly, how much I cannot adequately describe.

  Roz sat in silence till I was ready and then we headed over to a little wall.

  And there it was.

  There, amongst so many plaques, we found it easily.

  Lydia Jameson

  You are loved

  Not were.

  I was so grateful that Lex hadn’t written were, because till now, by me, she hadn’t properly been. I didn’t want love to be past tense, some proxy love I would later read about and agree with—I’m glad for the time Lex gave me with that single word to catch up.

  To grow up.

  Lydia Jameson, you are loved.

  Seventy-Three

  I don’t think I could have done this trip without Roz.

  Actually, I know I couldn’t.

  Dad, Lucy and Charlotte had been away over Christmas and were heading off skiing for New Year and could cram me in for a couple of hours on our way to the wedding.

  After the wedding I was heading back to Mum’s for a couple of days and Roz would be picking up Lizzie and doing the touristy stuff.

  ‘Stay for another week?’ Mum asked, and I really wanted to. I wanted more time with her, but I had shifts lined up at the supermarket and I knew that I couldn’t.

  ‘You should think about coming out soon for a holiday,’ Roz said for the umpteenth time, only this time I realised that Mum was actually considering it.

  ‘Where are you and Lizzie staying?’ Mum asked.

  ‘Bed and breakfasts and a couple of pubs,’ Roz said, and her face was going pink with pleasure and pride as her new friend Gloria continued.

  ‘Why don’t you both stay here?’

  Dad wasn’t home.

  Nope, he was freezing on the golf course, but Lucy assured me he would be there soon.

  She made us coffee, and she’d bought nice cakes from Marks and Spencer and made a little selection plate for us.

  And then she offered us some wine.

  ‘No, thanks,’ I said.

  ‘Sure?’ she checked, sloshing some into her glass.

  ‘Not for me,’ Roz said.

  And it had nothing, nothing to do with being strong. I just knew that if I scraped even the top off my inhibitions I would rip in two.

  Charlie came home.

  She has a pony, you see, so couldn’t be there to greet us.

  All long-limbed and buck-toothed (not the pony, Charlotte, but the teeth were about to be corrected by Noel, Lucy hurriedly pointed out), she opened the present I had bought as an afterthought at the airport, then dashed off. She had Lucy’s tiny frame and Dad’s air of confidence and she was quite a stunning mix.

  It was pretty tense, like sitting in the dentist’s waiting room, so I excused myself and headed to the loo, then came back down the stairs and Lucy was waiting.

  ‘He just rang.’ She gave a too-bright smile. ‘He’s on his way; he’ll only be five minutes.’

  ‘No problem.’

  ‘Alice…’ I so did not need this, I so wanted to keep walking, but she didn’t read the signs and kept talking. ‘I’m sorry this is awkward.’

  ‘It’s not,’ I assured her. ‘Dad will be here soon.’

  ‘Yes,’ she insisted, ‘it is awkward.’

  ‘It’s really not,’ I said.

  ‘I know you hate me…’ And thank God I hadn’t had a drink or I’d have punched her lights out. ‘For taking him from your mother.’

  I didn’t say the first thing that came into my head. There was a pause, because that’s what I do now—I employ the pause where I think, where I stop, where I step back before I speak.

  You took him from me, you stupid bitch.

  You justify it because my mother was too fat, too lazy, too slow. You don’t blame him for not wanting her, but what man doesn’t want his kids?

  Did you think about that?

  When he should have been a father, when he should have been dealing with teenagers and angst and doing what a father bloody well should, you took him from that. You took him away and you stopped him from being the father he should have been.

  You had your baby while his grandchild died.

  Thank God I hadn’t had even a thimble of wine. Instead of punching her lights out, instead of saying all that, I just looked at her. And Lisa had taught me well—too well, perhaps—because in that slice of time I knew it wasn’t really about her. It wasn’t, in fact, her fault. He was probably treating her just as poorly as he had my mum—the blame lay with my dad.

  I understood all that, and I might have learnt a lot of lessons, but it doesn’t make me Mother Teresa—I can still be an utter bitch.

  ‘You didn’t take him.’ I frowned, and then there was a strange, almost sympathetic laughter in my voice, as if to say, You poor deluded fool, is that what you’ve thought all these years? ‘You don’t take people.’ I watched her blink. ‘Clearly my dad wanted something else—all through the marriage he wanted something else and he regularly got it. You didn’t take him, Lucy, he just walked away—from his wife, from his children, from his responsibilities—to someone younger, sexier and prettier. You were just the one who happened to be there. It wasn’t even about you, Lucy, so why would I hate you?’

  I might as well have slapped her, because I knew the words had hit, but then the door opened and there he was.

  ‘Hi, Alice.’ He didn’t say Hi, baby girl, because I wasn’t his baby any more. He had Charlie.

  We chatted—a bit but not much.

  About how well his work was going, though regrettably it took him away a lot—lots of weekends away, which he hated, of course—I glanced over at Lucy, who sat there rigid.

  We couldn’t talk much because his phone kept bleeping.

  A few texts that he had to answer, and one call that he had to go out into the garden to take.

  People do change, of course.

  Just not my dad.

  ‘It’s been great…’ He ruffled Charlie’s hair instead of mine. ‘Maybe we’ll try and make it over there.’

  I doubted it.

  ‘You enjoy the rest of your holiday,’ Dad said.

  I hugged him goodbye and gave a small smile for Lucy; I felt a bit sorry for her. I didn’t resent Charlie now: she wasn’t the baby I could have had, but the stepsister I’d ignored. And Christ knows what she was dealing with, with that pair as parents—and doing it without siblings too.

  Eleanor and Bonny are right royal pains, but I wouldn’t want to do this life without them.

  ‘Here
.’ I wrote down my email address and gave it to her. ‘I’m good at email.’

  And then we were out through the door and it was a relief.

  A relief to walk to our little hire car and head for the motorway.

  ‘Nearly there,’ Roz said a couple of hours later.

  Yeah, just the wedding to get through..

  And then the best bit. I had to face Hugh.

  Some bloody holiday.

  Seventy-Four

  The hotel where all the wedding party were staying was something like three hundred pounds a night if you added early check-in and late check-out. Two nights in the pub over the road only cost about half of that.

  And it was a lovely old-fashioned place that smelt like a pub, and I remembered when I was little and Dad would take us to a pub for lunch and I’d have steak and kidney pudding or ice cream while he chatted up the landlady. And it had been a nice memory, but it wasn’t at all nice now—he should have brought Mum.

  Or at the very least left his kids at home.

  We knelt up on our single beds and watched the wedding party arriving.

  Nicole directing them with military precision.

  Roz noted her hips and her boobs and so too did I.

  There were bags, dresses, flowers and relatives, and though I watched in glee and chatted with Roz, all the time I looked for Hugh—but I never saw him.

  ‘We should ring Nicole,’ I said about nine p.m., when I was desperate to know for sure whether or not he was coming. ‘Let her know where we are and maybe catch up for a drink.’

  ‘She’ll be busy tonight with her family,’ Roz said.

  So I read one of Roz’s self-help books and learnt precisely nothing.

  I was bored with self-help—I didn’t need help any more; I just needed it to be the day after tomorrow.

  I am rather ashamed to admit that I slept marvellously. In fact, I was out like a light by ten—no fitful stirring, no waking up and thinking that soon I would see him.

  According to Roz I snored my head off, and was woken at seven a.m. by the tiny kettle and Roz swearing like a sailor as she tried to divide three sachets of powdered coffee into two mugs.

  Sorry—it really was as boring as that.

  Seventy-Five