To Dare

by Jemma Wayne

  That’s what they were doing the evening that Noah smashed the window. Dominic must only have been about four, but by then Noah wasn’t living with them. The locks had been changed and he was banging at the door, kicking and thumping. At first Simone had simply turned up the volume of the TV, but suddenly there was a clattering of glass from the window. She’d left Dominic on the sofa while she went to sort him, and in the end, all that had happened was she’d called Noah a fool, among other things, and let him come in, wrapping his bleeding hand in a bandage before pushing him back into the night. But after she closed the door, she’d spotted Dominic hiding behind it, trembling, standing guard with a steel saucepan he’d somehow dragged from the kitchen drawer. “I would have hit him for you, Mum,” he’d told her with a fierce, frantic sincerity. And it had been all she could do not to laugh at her little knight, who she pulled playfully towards her and carried back to the sofa. “I wish he was dead,” he’d said then. To which Simone hadn’t known what to say, so had only looked at her brooding, intense son, who until then she’d imagined only adored his father, and wondered what else about him she didn’t know.

  This time, lying on the floor, there was no Dominic to pick her up. Jasmine had started to cry and for a moment she’d heard Dom’s footsteps moving towards his sister’s room, pausing at the door to the lounge where she was crumpled, but then, abruptly doubling back.

  She knows that endeavour – the dodging of disaster. Though when she was a child her fight was to be seen more rather than less, her parents somehow blind and deaf, despite their esteemed qualifications to the contrary. Was she blind now to Dominic? She tried not to be. In fact, that’s how the afternoon had first got out of hand, her trying to see him more clearly. He’d come home from school and thrown his bag on the floor and plonked himself straight in front of the television.

  “Don’t you have homework?” she’d asked.

  Terry was already sat watching some kind of fringe-movements documentary that he’d saved and urged her to watch too. He’d relaxed into an easy unwinding since the bowl-smashing tension of the morning, and now with a beer in hand, he’d welcomed Dominic by passing it to him for a swig. They did this sometimes. Terry only ever allowed Dom a little, and only when he was in good humour, but sometimes this sharing of manliness led to a game of football, or a pleasant hour spent together in front of the TV, and so Simone didn’t ordinarily mind it. Since the move to the new flat, however, she’d been mulling the possibility of restructuring things for Dominic, reinstating just a few of the rules that her own youth had been assembled upon, and she’d cast aside. It was after all her fault and not Dominic’s that his youngest years had been so chaotic. So much was her fault. And still is. She knows this, and in case she forgets, Terry reminds her. But there was still time to put things right.

  “Yeh,” Dominic answered. “So?”

  At this, Terry sniggered, and protected by his approval, Dominic kicked off his trainers and settled further into the sofa.

  Simone stood in front of him. “Homework first,” she insisted.

  “Fuck off,” said Dominic. He said this with blithe nonchalance, not aggression. It wasn’t an unusual way for them to talk to each other, mother and son. They often cursed in jest, and she’d considered more than once over the years how inane the idea of sanitising language for children, when life itself was so dirty, especially for children. But now, in the face of her newly grown parenting ambitions, Dominic’s words felt deflating.

  “Don’t you swear at me,” she countered.

  At this, Terry looked up from the television. Dominic did too, his face painted into confusion. Terry was less confused.

  “What are you on?” he asked her. “He’ll do it later if he wants.”

  “It’s not optional,” said Simone. “It’s homework. He’s gotta stop thinking it’s a question of ‘if he wants’.”

  “And where have all your fancy grades got you?” laughed Terry. “Jog on,” he told her.

  Perhaps, if she’d left it there, that would have been the end of it. She could have taken Jasmine off for a walk, or put the chips in the oven, or gone to the bedroom on her own for a smoke. But instead, she answered him.

  “You’re right,” she said. “They should have got me a lot further. That’s why I’ve got a job.”

  “Fuck off,” Terry laughed again. But now Dominic was looking at her with a new expression. Was that perplexity she saw still around the edges, or admiration?

  “I’m not joking, Tel. I’ve got a job at a gym down Camden. Just reception work for now, but you know, it’s a start.”

  For a moment, Terry said nothing. He just sat and looked at her as though she was talking a foreign language, or had come home with a new haircut and he didn’t recognise her for it. The pause was unsettling. Still, Simone stepped with an attempt at boldness into it.

  “So, homework,” she told Dominic.

  Dominic looked first to Terry, and then back to her. Compared to Jasmine, Dominic always seemed so grown up to Simone; but in that brief moment, navigating the intensity of Terry’s disdain and the determination of his mother, he looked painfully small.

  “Fuck off,” Terry exploded suddenly, with forced, loud laughter, slapping Dominic on the shoulder in an effort to make him join in. Dominic smiled awkwardly. Then to her, in quieter tones: “Are you undermining me? Are you trying to say something? Speak, woman.”

  “He’s my son,” she muttered.

  Simultaneously, they both looked at Dominic, but it was too dangerous now for the child to move in either direction, and Simone knew it. She wished desperately that she could take it all back. Why on earth had she picked a fight? She really was a dense one, just like Terry told her. But it was too late to unravel. And just this one time, she didn’t want Dominic to see her back down. Tension threaded itself around them and knotted tight. For what seemed like an unfathomably long time, nobody moved, nobody spoke, nobody did anything. Until, like an angel from heaven, Jasmine burst into tears, and Dominic leaped to pick her up. The two of them bustled away.

  Terry continued to stare, almost as though he was daring Simone now, now they were alone, to keep looking back at him; but she didn’t dare. She lowered her eyes and turned away, walking hurriedly to the kitchen area where she got out the chips and took a pizza from the fridge, and twenty minutes later served it up in front of the TV.

  For the next three hours, Terry didn’t say another word. He only looked at her, and looked at her. And then went out with a fistful of his father’s money without saying or doing anything.

  It was much later, when he was back from wherever he’d been to get a fix, and she was lying in bed in foolish sleep, that he woke her with a blow to her jaw, and then pulled her by the hair into the living room where he first berated her with all the words he hadn’t come to earlier, then chose, with what she was sure was calculation, the sole wall that adjoined the new neighbours’ house, to throw her against, again and again.

  Veronica

  When Sarah’s husband arrived that Friday to collect Amelia, Veronica signalled for a word. She’d been watching him all week, an increasingly absorbing pastime, distracting her from competing thoughts of next door, and her ever empty stomach. Days earlier, she’d already mentioned that she was an old friend of his wife’s. He’d smiled amiably at that, acknowledging that Sarah had indeed told him as much; but so far Sarah herself had replied to Veronica’s dinner invitation only with apologies, and not yet provided an alternative date. Veronica had restrained herself from texting again, pretending not to feel the thump of rejection or the seed of resentment that planted, but when she glanced now at Sarah’s hovering husband, and their perfect daughter, she felt a dark tension creep through her chest.

  Now that she knew what she was looking for, Amelia Beckham was so very much like her mother. Veronica saw it in the way she double-wrapped her skinny legs around each other when sitting, and tucked her wild hair determinedly behind her ears. She saw it in the earnest way
Amelia approached the reward chart on the wall at the front of the class, carefully making sure that each of the oval-shaped stickers next to her name were coloured gold. And she had seen it very specifically that afternoon, when Amelia flouted the playground code of not telling, and to the chagrin of her own best friends reported to Veronica that the small, unfortunately round boy who also had the lamentable habit of being a nose-picker, had been excluded from a game of chase and was crying behind the scooter shed. Amelia led Veronica to the spot and quite seriously gave an account of what had happened, before taking the boy by the hand and striding bravely back to the playground where she started her own game with him herself, handing Veronica the perfect excuse to corner her father.

  It was a protracted procedure. Before they could talk, Veronica had to see all the other children out of the classroom. Parents arrived with scooters and snacks, and warnings of just a short visit to the school’s adventure playground since a seeming array of ballet/piano/tennis/Mandarin teachers would be waiting. On behalf of the less advantaged children she’d years ago taught in Kenya, Veronica sometimes rolled her eyes at this; but then she remembered how unlucky she had often felt as a child, in the throes of such overt, material fortune, and she looked harder at the children who leaped onto, or unfolded themselves into, or reluctantly conceded to depart with their arriving carers. Veronica reproached the parents who sent nannies in their stead. Silently of course, and in spite of identifying herself as a career woman, but Lack had a way of hardening judgment. Without intention, every day, she spent countless minutes imagining how, if she had a child of her own, like these, like Amelia, she would cling to every moment possible, and stuff the Mandarin, she would play with them and create with them and tell them a million times a day how very wanted they were. Sometimes, into these ponderings would seep a toxic feeling of injustice: how unfair it was that parents like some of these, like her own, were gifted with children they rarely seemed to desire; how unfair that the dreadful man who lived next door was able to spawn a baby whose cries he wilfully ignored and she had to listen to each night, in mockery; how unfair that her childhood friend, the same age as herself, had been granted not one but two children already.

  Amelia and her father, David, greeted each other every day with the same not-so-secret secret exchange: a thumbs up, followed by a wink of the left eye, and then when they were within touching distance, a hug that lifted Amelia’s feet clear off the ground. David was not arrestingly handsome in the way that George was. He was of average height, not skinny but certainly not fashioned from an athletic mould. His dark hair was just beginning to grey, but it flopped across his brow in a pleasing, comfortable fashion, and beneath a pair of tortoiseshell glasses, his eyes were soft and warm, if not striking. He wore jeans and t-shirts, either unconcerned or oblivious to both the other fathers in their city suits, and the mothers who regarded him with territorial friendliness. Usually he had the little boy, Amelia’s brother, strapped into a sling on his chest.

  “Mr Beckham, thank you for waiting. Just a very quick chat.”

  David leaned over to deliver another kiss to Amelia’s forehead before she ran off to the playground, then he entered the classroom, perching easily on one of the tables and with another kiss, this time to the cheek of his son, let the little boy down from the sling. “So how’s the first week?” he asked Veronica warmly. “You’ve survived I see.”

  “Just,” she laughed, distracted by the tenderness of the man’s interaction with his children, and remembering abruptly how Sarah’s parents had smothered Sarah in similar affection, declaring their love every time one of them left the room: “Love you” “Love you”. She recalled how alien that had felt to her back then, and how she’d wondered if it was a Jewish thing, and thought about converting. She shook herself. “Actually, with the help of your daughter.”

  “Oh?”

  David looked to her expectantly, but instead of offering an explanation, suddenly, with ridiculous belatedness, it dawned on Veronica that this was a totally unnecessary conversation. She had already held an extra Carpet Time with the children to talk about inclusion. The boy at the centre of the incident seemed unscathed. And obviously, it was his parents, if anybody’s, that she should have spoken with. Why had she wanted this meeting with David?

  David smiled patiently.

  “So, actually it’s not urgent,” she laughed quickly. “Only I wanted to let you know that during lunch break today, Amelia stood up for another child who was being excluded. Amelia came to tell me about it, we sorted it out together, and what was so striking is that she really showed such maturity and empathy.”

  “Oh. Good. Well, that’s nice to hear.” David waited for a moment.

  She should speak. What had she imagined she would say? Awkwardness spilled into the silence. David looked back to her.

  “Was there… Sorry… is there something you’d like me to reinforce with Amelia at home?”

  Veronica’s arms felt awkward as she stood in front of him. Her legs too, itching horrendously. It was as though she’d forgotten how to stand normally, and now gangly, misshapen limbs made best attempts but fooled nobody. The idiocy of it maddened her. The unnecessary meeting. The weak unsteadiness. This wasn’t her. The Veronica of old would have effortlessly manoeuvred this conversation into easy repartee, she would have had him eating out of her hand. The Veronica that Sarah had known would, at the very least, have faked confidence. Now, all she seemed able to do, was nothing. She listed her failings. So far that week she had: failed to get her own husband to desire her, failed to knock on the door of a woman who was possibly in danger or alert any authority to it, failed to talk comfortably to an eleven-year-old boy, and now she couldn’t even speak to a parent with elegance. “I was just touched by it,” she hurried. “And I’ve been trying to find a moment to chat to each parent this week, and I thought it something that you, and Sarah of course, would like to know. How is Sarah?” Veronica listened to her stream of seemingly rambling inquiries as though it wasn’t her speaking them, as though she was only just now, impartially, observing the direction the conversation was about to take. But as she listened it dawned on her: of course there had been a reason for the meeting, of course, and of course it had never been about Amelia.

  “Oh,” said David. “Okay. Well thank you, yes, it’s always nice to hear good things.” His little boy toddled back over to him and David bounced him on his foot. “Sarah’s, fine. Busy as ever.”

  “We’re trying to arrange a dinner; did she tell you?” Veronica pressed with a little more ease. “For some non-school-oriented conversation. It’s been such a long time. I think she just needed to check your schedule actually. Do you have your diary on you?”

  David lifted his son into his arms, planting another kiss onto his squidgy cheek, and took his phone out of his pocket. “Oh, she didn’t mention. But sure.”

  Veronica went to her handbag for her own phone. “Sorry, I hope it’s not inappropriate to do this at school. It’s just that I know Sarah’s always at work so it’s easier when we’re both right here, isn’t it? How’s next Tuesday? Or Friday? Come to ours.”

  “Thursday’s good,” said David, naively, typing the arrangement into his phone.

  As he typed, Veronica felt her spine straightening. “Lovely,” she smiled. And inhaled deeply. Breath came tinged with June humidity, warmth lapping with giggles from the playground. Balmy air tickled her nostrils. Suddenly, however, all Veronica could smell, was February.

  One February in particular. It cleaved like fresh wallpaper, giving off that new room aroma, cleaning the space where it sat in her memory with immaculate, unsullied lines. She was nine. Veronica’s father was between postings – after Holland, before Belgium. She was ‘between’ too; transferring after half term to the alternative primary school in Brussels. In the meantime, they had taken a chalet with another family in the Swiss Alps. There were two children: one, a boy a year younger than herself, and his sister four years older. Having neve
r had but always longed for siblings, Veronica responded to the admiration of the younger and the sophistication of the older with equal pleasure, and she spent the next weeks locked in the fantasy of an extended family who lived in a cabin on a snow-coated mountainside, and whose parents never worked but guided them off-piste and made them hot chocolate, and were still there in the evening when the lights were out and their wine-tipped voices reverberated pleasantly through the wooden rooms, and lulled her to sleep.

  In the intervening twenty-odd years, there had been only two other periods in which she’d felt the same illusive contentment of that February. Not to say that she hadn’t felt joy; there had been plenty of moments that had thrilled and pleased and satisfied. But those emotions bounced around unchained and unreliable, drifting off at their whim, and very often they were accompanied by other feelings: desire, hollowness, longing, envy. What Veronica identified aged nine that February was different: a sense of everything being just, perfectly, enough.

  The longest and most significant of the two other occasions, was during her first few years with George. They had met in Nairobi where for almost a year she had been teaching in a neighbourhood school. George was there for just a few days as part of a more expansive Kenyan safari, but one evening they’d found themselves entangled in wine and debate at a party thrown by a mutual expat friend named Hugo. Hugo was not only a colleague at the school where Veronica taught, but he was the reason she taught there, or taught at all. Like George, she had begun her own journey in Kenya on a holiday – a one-month break from her job in celebrity PR, a role at which she was exceedingly good, and most days left her with the same conviction she had harboured throughout her childhood – that something was stubbornly, relentlessly, missing. Hugo was joking really when he suggested she try teaching. But when Veronica visited the school in one of Nairobi’s slums, when she met the children, and saw the look on Hugo’s face when he interacted with them, she knew immediately that that was it, that candid joy – she wanted that delight for herself. And so she began to teach.