Whatever Happened to Vicky Hope's Back Up Man?

by Laura Kemp

  ‘Well, there’s those fit band things, and they track heart rates and steps and all that so, no, it’s not you talking out of your arse at all.’

  Shit. She was right. Not in any technological way but in her understanding of where he was heading. She’d got it out of him and given her support. Backed him.

  ‘You’re wasted you are,’ he said. ‘What are you going to do with your life then?’

  It was her turn to draw down the shutters.

  ‘Oh you know, perfect the art of serving artisANAL cuisine.’

  ‘Come on, there’s got to be more that you’d like to do.’ Don’t joke about it. For once. Talk to me about your dreams - I want to know what's going on inside your head.

  ‘Once I wanted to be a teacher. But it didn’t happen. I let myself be persuaded.’ By a man? he wondered, feeling an anger that whoever it had been had stopped her from contentment.

  ‘You can train, can’t you? They’re always looking for teachers.’ He sounded so unlike himself - upbeat, positive.

  ‘Just train,’ she scoffed. ‘You make it sound so easy. It’s money that I haven’t got.’

  ‘Get a loan? You could ask your mum and dad, couldn’t you?’

  ‘I could but I wouldn’t. Why should they pay for it?’

  ‘Well, someone else then… like me…’

  Jesus, he’d been going to end all of this just five minutes ago and now he was offering his cash. ‘…you could pay it back when you’ve got it. When you start earning.’

  ‘Oh God, no, I couldn’t. Thanks but… no. I’ve got to sort myself out. I’m thirty, for God’s sake!’

  ‘They might have bursaries or whatever they call them, grants. It might be worth checking out.’ He so wanted to help her.

  ‘Why bother though?’

  ‘Why bother? Because you’d be the best teacher ever.’ He had his shoulders hunched, his arms splayed because this was a no-brainer. She was perfect for the job. And she was perfect.

  ‘Really?’ He could tell by her suspicious frown that she was waiting for a punchline. That's how they did things. But that was before this…

  ‘Yes,’ he said, smacking his fist into the palm of his hand. ‘You’re a doer, you see the good in people, you bring out the best in them.’ He had the urge to shout it out loud, beat his chest and even jump up and down!

  Still, she didn't believe him. She screwed up her face, lifting her sunglasses to inspect him. ‘Really? Do I?’

  This was it: the question he had to address. Would he be her cheerleader, not just as friends but as a team? As a couple. As lovers and partners. Or would he step away, avoid the inevitable pain…He pushed his shades to the top of his head. His gut was talking and he wouldn’t silence it.

  ‘Yes, Vee,’ he said, ‘you do. Mam always said you were special.’

  And then he couldn’t stop himself: she looked so lovely with the breeze tickling her hair, her sweet rosy lips, her freckled shoulders bare. He moved towards her, staring deep into her eyes.

  ‘Victoria Anwen Hope, you make me want to be a better person.’

  And then they kissed.

  *

  University Hospital of Wales, Cardiff, December 2008

  A crack in the peeling magnolia ceiling slashes a crooked wounded path to the hushed voices beyond the tatty curtain.

  ‘This will do her no good.’ Mother is hissing. Harsh and direct while Kate lies there sagging, deflated and haunted, dreading the moment, whenever it comes, when she is to surrender her son.

  Mother suggested the arrangement as soon as she found out ‘to save her career’. It was a terrifying, revolting concept. But as Kate’s belly grew, her helplessness and fear deepened her anxiety - she was too young, too unprepared, too weak to bring up a child alone. The midwife and consultant had told her that medication would help: untreated depression in pregnant women presented a bigger risk for children’s development than antidepressants. She would be able to go out, meet other mums-to-be and see that an unplanned pregnancy could be a source of joy. But Kate refused - she didn't want to engage with the world and fill the baby with drugs. Then they offered her a space in a special unit to make her see she would survive if she had help - they had to make every effort because the best scenario was always to keep mother and baby together. Kate only wanted to pretend it wasn't happening. She didn't want to bond with the baby because she didn't want to keep him. So when Charlie caressed her bump and sat with her for hours as she swung between mute misery and primal wailing, unable to function and too unstable to face motherhood, giving up her baby to her became the only solution.

  ‘Nothing is going to make this easier for her,’ Charlie whispers. ‘She wants to do it. And it’s best for the baby too.’

  Even now when the crunch had come, when she’d kissed her own son fresh from her body, she remained convinced of her decision - it was about the baby, giving him security and love. And there was no one better than her sister and Tom to do that. No matter how hard her instinct wanted to resist it, to claw out the eyes of anyone who would take him away.

  Kate turns to see him lying in a plastic see-through cot next to her bed. It takes her breath away: so delicate, so helpless. A white hat with a little pom-pom gives way to a downy olive face, luxurious eyelashes and a puckered mouth. His tiny fist pokes out from beneath the waffle hospital blanket, revealing a little-too-big-for-him white babygro. His chest rises and falls quickly and then his brow knits in a flash as something passes over him. It’s a look she’s seen before in his father.

  Kate gulps and finds herself filling up and flooding again, oozing grief in her blood. She closes her eyes and feels every cell spasm. She is a mother but not a mother. The vessel who gave birth only a few hours ago. No drugs, no intervention – the overwhelming, contorting fever of delivery was the trial she had to suffer.

  When a night of pain fanfared in the most glorious moment, when this creature was placed on her naked chest, red and waxy, bawling with fury. She kissed his wet scalp then passed him, fighting herself so hard, to Charlie, her birthing partner. Both cried their hearts out. But not for the same reasons. Kate, for giving him up. Charlie, for the joy of receiving her child, for promising Kate she would give him the world. Baby Griff, whose name, suggested by Kate, was picked from a shortlist drawn up by her, Charlie and Tom.

  Charlie handed him back to Kate so she could cut the cord. That was all it took for him to search out her dark plump nipple and take his first suck. A reflex, an instinct, something so simple in this turmoil. Kate and Charlie stared urgently at each other: what to do? They had agreed bottle-feeding, Charlie would be able to bond from the start. But now he was latched on, how could they pull him off? Frantic eyes and tight throats. Kate tried to assess things: would breast-feeding make it harder? That she would find it impossible to give him away? But there was nothing worse; there were no degrees of this torment. The fact she wouldn’t be his protector was all there was. And they were doing this to give him the best start – it had to begin surely with her milk?

  ‘We can make up our own rules,’ Charlie said, her chin dented with emotion. ‘Just a few days if that’s all you want to or can do.’

  It was Charlie’s gift to her.

  He knew what to do straight away, drawing the goodness of her colostrum, nuzzling into her breast. The midwife warned that her milk wouldn’t come in for thirty-six-hours. ‘The baby will get hungrier and hungrier, his cries will stimulate the production of milk in your body,’ she’d said.

  Charlie and Kate had kept him their secret for a few precious hours before surrendering to their mother and ringing to tell her he had arrived. By the time she swept through the ward, Griff was on Kate's breast mother and Mother was horrified. She’d wanted the baby to be taken off Kate straight away.

  ‘Mum, Kate is going to be part of this forever,’ Charlie says wearily because neither of them have had any sleep. It’s barely past seven a.m. and Kate cannot drop off because she fears her baby will be gone. This precious m
oment when he remains her property will end.

  The curtain swooshes back and Mother’s face is taut.

  ‘Katherine. How long will they keep you in? Because the sooner we get out of here, the sooner we can…’ She rolls her hands forward. ‘Your father will pick you up.’

  Kate looks away from her, hating this woman, this child snatcher. She knows her mother thinks this will all be over when they leave the hospital but for Kate it will never be over. In a blister of spite, she prays she is told to stay here in hospital so she has more time with her son.

  ‘There’s no rush,’ Charlie says, sitting at the edge of the bed, taking Kate’s hand in hers. ‘The midwives said we need to let Kate recover. And establish feeding. I can introduce the bottle later on.’

  Their mother leans in to them. ‘You think it’ll be that easy? Babies become attached. Neither of you wanted anyone else when I was…’

  Kate is sickened that she drank from her mother’s breast. She can’t imagine such tenderness.

  ‘We want to try. For Griff. Kate will do the feeds, I’ll do everything else. The midwife says we can gradually switch to a bottle.’ Switch mothers, Kate thinks, that is the brutal fact of the matter. But she will do anything to have him with her just for a while.

  Mum takes in a deep breath and runs her ring fingers along her eyebrows.

  ‘You’re making a mistake.’ Then she throws her hands in the air. ‘All right, all right. But Charlie, you and Tom have to come to our house. Where I can keep an eye on you.’

  Make sure I let him go, Kate thinks, tumbling and rolling and fearful of what comes after all of this. If there is anything ever again.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  V

  Murphy’s flat, Cardiff City Centre

  Two weeks they’d been together. If you didn’t count the seventeen years beforehand.

  Yet that was the point: dating your best friend was, well, The Best, Vee thought, staring dreamily at Murphy in the early morning light creeping through his white shutters as he slept beside her on his enormo bed. He was on his side facing her and the soft sheet cascaded down his ripped downy stomach: the urge to run a fingertip from his cheek to his hips was overwhelming. But she didn’t want to wake him, so instead she looked around at his stylish mix of antique and modern furniture, pinching herself and blinking hard to prove to herself she was here. Which was delightfully silly because of course she was: it was meant to be.

  Vee had stayed over last night for the first time: his flat was gorgeous and cool and all to themselves because his dad was having a trial run at living by himself again. He’d planned to cook but they’d ended up horizontal and ordered in noodles instead.

  Pointing her toes at the memory, they’d had ‘almost sex’, both of them intuitively wanting to work up to it, to enjoy the discovery of their bodies, but it was only a matter of time before it spilled over. Because this situation, this whatever-it-was, seemed to have a will of its own. It was effortless, but that wasn’t to say they were like boring marrieds: knowing one another meant there was no small talk or awkward silences yet the new dimension to their friendship, or dare-she-say-it relationship, was thrilling. Not because it was illicit – it felt right, Christ, so right, she thought, squeezing her buttocks – but from the headiness and stomach-twirling of being able to touch one another – naked, NAKED! – and of the tension it created. It was intense in a way she’d never known. The shift magnified everything as if they were walking through a hall of funny mirrors. God, it was bloody fantastic. She could feel it everywhere, like jingle bells, the adrenalin forcing her awake, despite her tiredness, just to watch him sleeping… Then, some kind of hymn starts up, it’s his alarm, she realizes, not proof they're in heaven.

  ‘What you smirking at?’ Murphy said, his big brown eyes laughing as he stretched an arm over her. But from his lazy smile he knew she was simpering.

  ‘Am not,’ she said, poking out her tongue, suddenly self-conscious of their heart-stopping attraction. It was as if they’d unscrewed a bottle marked ‘chemistry’ and sniffed, drunk and bathed in it. To think it had been there, bubbling under all this time. Mind you, maybe it was only so intoxicating because they’d waited so long.

  The last fortnight had been so different from every other honeymoon period that Vee had had with a man. Not that that stretched beyond a couple of school boyfriends, her uni ex and Jez. It was because their compatibility was already proven and they trusted one another. As for loyalty, they may have had a blip – an eight-year blip admittedly – but they’d come back together. And then there was all the stuff they knew about one another – their parents, their friends, his preference for red sauce, hers for brown. They knew what they were getting themselves into.

  Yet the beating of her heart wasn’t a pedestrian rhythm – it was a hypnotizing throb of drum and bass proportions. Because she was only finding out now he had lovely hairy legs – that holiday in France, they’d been physically adolescent – and he had a delicious dark dot of a freckle just to the left of his right hip.

  ‘You got the kettle on?’ he asked, pulling her towards him, which made her shiver.

  ‘I’m the guest, you do it.’ Then recognition of the music…‘Coldplay! This is bloody Coldplay!’ she squawks, ‘After all you ever said about that band!’

  ‘What?’ he says, her insides flipping as his hand slid from her clavicle through the middle of her breasts to just below her waist.

  ‘You hypocrite!’

  ‘It’s Paradise,’ he said, kissing her shoulder as the music soared around them.

  She should've been laughing at him but the way he said the title of the track made her quiver.

  ‘Paradise…’ he said again, now a whisper. On her belly. His hot breath making her even hotter.

  ‘It is.’ She surrendered then, moving her hand slowly down his chest, through the hair of his groin and onto his cock, making him groan. Overcome by his desire for her, she had to let him know she felt the same. She moved closer still, wrapping her leg over his hips, pushing him into her, realizing what was forever meant to be. Them and only them, their bodies making the physical form of their love which had been between them for years. Feeding off one another's intensity, they fell into a twilight of their own, tumbling and soaring as they moved to a unique rhythm which Vee had always known. To touch the parts she had never touched before was all consuming: and as they came together, Vee felt completed, whole.

  Spooning afterwards, flushed by the step they’d taken, Vee reached her arm back to him to ruffle his hair. ‘Coldplay, indeed.’

  ‘News just in: I don't care any more, it's a good song and it’s you and me.’

  She felt his lips on her wrist as she began to play with the soft tufts on his head which had grown in since they'd bumped into each other on Barry Island.

  ‘You’re reaching boy band status,’ she said. ‘With this hair.’

  ‘Less of the boy, I reckon, now,’ he said. ‘Not a kid anymore.’

  She heard a crack in his voice: he had something to say. It didn’t worry her because what could he tell her that she didn’t know already? Instinctively, she took his hand to her mouth and kissed his scar. ‘Mmm?’

  ‘Yeah. Like… this… it’s happening.’

  ‘Yep, sure is.’

  ‘And I want it to, you know?’ He wanted her reassurance. And she felt the requited thrill that he’d admitted it first.

  ‘I do, Murphy, I do.’ Relieved, liberated to be able to show she’d been thinking the same.

  Then a big breath.

  ‘There’s some stuff I need to say…’ She rubbed his hand, which was tucked round her waist and she nodded. ‘Before we go on because it’s important and I wish I could park it. Like, it isn’t a big deal because we’re past it but it’s always been on my mind and…’

  He was going to express exactly how she felt and she was so glad.

  ‘When you went away, I missed you so much.’

  ‘Me too,’ she said, echoing h
im.

  ‘But I’ve always wondered… what happened?’

  ‘I know, me too, ever since we lost touch.’ She turned her head to the side to kiss his cheek. They were beyond ruining this now, they had sealed their love and she was no longer afraid of knowing where it had gone wrong because now it would be eternally right.

  ‘No, I mean “what happened” what happened?’ There was a different tone now, a vulnerability, which made her face him because she wanted to see he was safe with her. Then she realized they needed to broach this because then it could be put away or all time.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said, ‘I thought we might… that you’d come to see me and we’d… but then I guessed the letter had put you off, that I’d got the wrong end of the stick. But, we’re here now, eh?’ She smiled.

  But his face frowned, his eyes clouded.

  Suddenly, she lurched inside: what was going on?

  ‘Letter?’ he asked, confused, ’Do you mean the emails because I thought you were going to email me when you’d got to Cambodia to say where to fly to but I never heard anything.’

  ‘Not the emails, no,’ she said, lightly, because surely he knew. ‘The letter… I gave it to Kat to give to…’ Murphy was shaking his head. ‘…oh my God…Didn’t you get it?’

  ‘No.’ He whispered it and his eyes searched hers, going back and forth, as if he was looking to see if she was lying.

  ‘The letter,’ she repeated, to show it had been real, ‘I remember what it said word for word…’ She’d never forgotten it, how could she when it had been the first time she'd acknowledged her feelings for him? And what she’d taken as his rejection had seared itself onto her soul, that, she realized now, was why she’d abandoned herself to Jez, because she’d felt the real her was so worthless after Murphy had ignored her declaration.

  ‘I said “I might give you a promotion from back-up man”, that “the more people I’d met and the more places I’d been made me realize how special you were”.’