The Simple Rules of Love

by Amanda Brookfield

  The footsteps came out of the kitchen, receded towards the front door, then grew louder – and much brisker too, as brisk as Jessica's beating heart. A moment later the door handle was twisting this way and that, like it had a life of its own.

  ‘Are you in there?’

  Jessica put the flannel over her mouth and sucked out the water through her teeth.

  ‘I know you're in there, so there's no point in pretending. I've had that head of yours on the phone – again. Why aren't you at school? Jess… you are in there, aren't you?’ She sounded less shrill suddenly, much more uncertain. ‘Come on, love, talk to your mum.’

  ‘I didn't feel well,’ Jessica snapped. ‘And school's a waste of time cos I've messed up all the exams anyway and I'm leaving the stinking place for ever in two weeks.’

  ‘Are you going to open this door, or what?’

  ‘No, I'm not. Piss off.’

  ‘Well, that's nice, isn't it, with me trying to find out if you're okay? You can piss off too, for all I care, the way you've been acting lately.’ There was a final vigorous rattle of the door handle followed by steps clomping back down the hall and the angry thwack of the front door.

  Jessica shouted, ‘Fuck you,’ after it, then closed her eyes only to find tears streaming out of them, mingling with the perspiration on her cheeks. The bath was hot – too hot, she realized, sobbing quietly as she heaved herself out and reached for the grey towel, which was still damp from her mother having used it that morning. She pressed her face into it, breathing in the damp mildewy smell in a bid to banish both the tears and the dizziness, which she knew soon – any minute – would convert itself into the need to throw up. The only thing that stopped the puking was food, but there was only a couple of yoghurts and a lump of rock-hard cheese in the fridge and she'd eaten so much lately to suppress the sickness that she feared all the thickening round her belly was nothing to do with a baby, just flab.

  She unlocked and opened the door to let in some air, then sat down on the loo, pulling the towel round her like a cape and using a corner to wipe her nose. She wasn't normally one for crying. She despised girls who turned on the waterworks all the time to get what they wanted. But since getting pregnant she'd found she wanted to bawl her eyes out most days, especially when she was alone and not having to pretend that everything was okay and normal, nothing to worry about but finding a decent job on no qualifications, and how to stop Jerry pawing her every time she had to go to the store room. ‘You started it, you little tart,’ he had hissed the last time, his breath all fishy and vile, making her feel so bad that she'd let him have a grope, saying eventually that she had to go back into the salon. He was right, she had started it, back in the days – centuries ago – when she had thought sex was a laugh, a bit of fun, a way of getting what you wanted, getting noticed – like landing the job in the salon, or wearing a short skirt to waitress at the old aunt's funeral and letting the hem ride up to her knicker-line when Ed's uncle Peter drove her to the station. She had seen the old man looking, felt the heat of his interest, a sucker for a bit of flesh, like all blokes. She'd even considered taking it further, offering more, just to see where it would lead, show the old geezer that he wasn't so different as he imagined. It was the thought of Ed that had stopped her, poor Ed, freezing his bollocks off in the car park. And she had been so glad of that later, when the pair of them got together properly at last and the sex hadn't seemed like a laugh but something deep and fantastic, and as romantic as anything she'd ever seen in a film. Who could blame her for not wanting to ruin it by asking if he had a condom? They were ugly, stupid things. When the biology teacher had put one on a banana Jessica and her mate Sue had almost wet themselves laughing. Letting Ed think she was on the pill had been so much easier and hadn't felt risky: getting pregnant after one screw – what were the chances of that? She'd got away with it before, after all.

  Jessica lifted the lid of the toilet and got her head within reach of the bowl just in time. She'd had a cup of tea earlier so at least it was more than retching, though she couldn't stop crying while she was doing it and ended up with the taste of sick up her nose. After she'd finished she rinsed her mouth and padded into her bedroom to lie down. She checked her phone, which she had left charging, hoping as always that there was something from Ed. When there wasn't she read his last message several times, though she knew it by heart already. ‘I've left home to think things through. Don't worry, I will take care of everything, whatever you decide. Please say nothing to anyone until you have heard from me. Ed xx' She liked the way he'd written it in full words like a letter, and how he'd signed it too, with two kisses, like he really cared, after all.

  Jessica kissed the smeary little screen and turned on to her side clutching it to her chest. She could feel the sleepiness descending like a hammer-blow, as it always did now, like she was drugged. She wanted badly to give in to it. Being asleep was the only time she felt okay, or rather, felt nothing, which amounted to the same thing. Yet this time the worry wouldn't let her go. All her life she had worked at not caring about things, not letting the crap get to her. But now the not caring was like this paper-thin outside of her, while underneath she felt like she was hurting all over. She didn't know anything any more – what she cared about, what she really wanted, what to do. She had never meant to sling out the news to Ed about her being pregnant as she had, firing it like a missile. She had envisaged something much softer and better, sharing it gently, and then Ed being loving and concerned, and the two of them talking it through like a proper couple. It was him trying to end things that had done it, casting her off like she was a piece of rubbish, like he could just stuff her into the bin when he'd had enough. She had wanted to shock him, hurt him but, above all, to keep him.

  Of course it would be sensible to get an abortion. Three months was the deadline everybody talked about for that, and she was only just into the fourth, so she still could presumably. It would make Ed happy, but she'd lose him just the same. On top of that, Jessica honestly wasn't sure how she felt about abortion. Blood and doctors and pain, all to get rid of a little life? It didn't seem right. Sometimes, blocking out the crap, she could picture herself with a pushchair and a baby with tufty hair in cute outfits and her being a great mum and Ed coming round and the pair of them making something of it together, something patchy maybe, but good. With him being a Harrison there would be money, so it wouldn't be like when she was little, her mum raising her on benefits in a string of mouldy flats shared with whatever bit of scum happened to be passing, all of it tacky and difficult, full of shouting, and her, Jessica, in the middle, feeling always like the reason for all the problems. No, it wouldn't be like that at all, not with Ed. And what else had she to look forward to anyway, except some lousy job and hoping to find someone else as rich and handsome and funny? Fat chance. Better to dig in with what she had, see it through, wherever it took her.

  Aware of something stirring in her stomach, Jessica pulled back the towel and stared at the moist pink bulge of her belly. It was too early, surely, for the baby to move. She tensed, wide awake suddenly. If it was moving then it really was too late. You couldn't kill something so alive – you just couldn't. In a panic now, Jessica gripped her phone and wrote a message to Ed. ‘I need u 2 call. Can't keep this secret 4ever.’ As she typed the last word, an acrid bubble of air belched out of her and the tension in her belly eased. Indigestion. But she sent the message anyway. Ed couldn't hide for ever. Neither, in spite of her past threats, did she want to spill the beans about their situation without him at her side. He was all she had. However her future turned out, he would be a part of it.

  Driving past the churchyard as she left the village, Serena glanced over the wall at the familiar zigzagging lines of headstones pitched at different angles in the sloping grass, their patches of lichen gleaming in the midday sun like swatches of green velvet. Charlie, back at work, had made a big to-do of the blue sky that morning, clapping his hands as he drew back the curtains, as if the res
pite to the damp summer offered hope for them too. Serena had pulled the duvet up to her eyes, unmoved either by the weather or her husband's efforts to be cheerful. He would cut the grass over the weekend, he declared, maybe even make a start that evening as it was Friday, get a grip on things. What were her plans? Uncertain even of her grip on the duvet, Serena had murmured that she had none, beyond an invitation to lunch from Elizabeth, which she was thinking of cancelling, and a trawl round the supermarket for food.

  ‘Lunch with Lizzy? That's nice. Send her my love.’ He had swung his tie round his neck, then asked for help with a cufflink, holding out his arm like a challenge for her to move, show some sign of normal marital affection. Serena had responded without eye-contact, struggling with the stiffness of the cuff, which Pamela, who got to the ironing pile before her, these days, had over-starched.

  ‘Do you think he will ever come back?’ she whispered, letting his arm drop so abruptly that a glimmer of hurt flashed across Charlie's face.

  He tweaked the cufflink. ‘Of course he'll come back. You heard the police – they've seen this sort of thing a thousand times. Money, food, home comforts – he'll be back.’

  ‘But why did he leave?’

  Charlie turned away to tug open the curtains and hook the tie-backs round to keep them in position. Bathed in morning sunshine, the South Downs looked blue and huge, as if a bank of water was rolling across the fields, preparing to swallow them whole. ‘As to why he left, there's no point in going through all that again.’

  Serena sat up, latching with some gratitude on to the anger that had risen like bile in the back of her throat. It was never far away now, especially where her husband was concerned. It was a new, disturbing state of being, but something to hold on to. ‘Well, I want to go through it again. Why did he leave? What did we do wrong? Other than not return when he needed us.’

  ‘Oh, here we go! I might have known! You don't want to discuss Ed at all. You want to beat me about the head again for daring to tell him not to behave like a drunken imbecile. For daring to behave like any decent father.’ Charlie snatched his suit jacket off the bedroom chair and made for the door. ‘Even if we had come straight back from the hotel he would have been long gone… at least that's what my mother reckons, isn't it? And anyway,’ he continued, regrouping quickly, ‘if my telling-off triggered Ed's departure then he's got even more to learn than I thought. I'd do the same thing again, I tell you, the bloody same.’

  ‘How can you say that? How can you?’

  Charlie, half out of the door, glanced longingly at the spindles of the banisters marking the start of the stairs at the end of the landing. A few strides and he would be safely out of the front door, cushioning himself from this hateful reality with a CD in the car, the paper on the train, meetings and phone calls and all the other blissfully impersonal, absorbing demands of the office. Just as he had when Tina died. What they were going through now was so resonant of those days it was impossible to ignore. Yet it was worse too, as anything bad a second time round was worse and because Serena hadn't been hostile then: she had closed down like an animal in hibernation, doing only what had been necessary to survive, adapting to the grief as if it were a new element in which she had to learn to live. It had been hard on him – on all of them – but this… This was in another league, like fighting on a cliff-edge, sick with the knowledge that they were adversaries when they should have been allies. She had been fragile all year, Charlie knew, but hadn't he done his best? Just as he had with Ed. He felt wretched about his son's absence, more wretched than he could express to Serena or anyone else. It riled him beyond words that she seemed unprepared to acknowledge this, that she was instead busy taking this crisis – as she took every crisis, he reflected bleakly – and trying to make it hers. But Ed had needed that talking-to, no matter how his mother tried now to twist things, he bloody had. And even when he turned up, as Charlie was sure he would, nothing – no amount of joy and relief – would make him stand down from believing that.

  ‘The truth is,’ continued Serena, her voice tremulous now, the tears not far away, ‘we have failed as a family.’

  Charlie groaned, dropping his head against the door.

  ‘We have, Charlie. We have. First Tina… that was bad enough – my failure, if you like – but then taking up the reins of Ashley House, trying for the fresh start, trying to keep everyone together, we've failed at that too. I mean, what with your mother…’ Serena swallowed, though her mouth was dry. ‘And then there's Helen, she hates coming here, while Peter behaves as if he owns the place, as if he is so superior to you… and you just let him. Nobody knows who's in charge any more or where they're going. Elizabeth's a disaster, her birthday was a disaster. Maisie's gone, Clem's gone, Ed's gone. We couldn't even persuade a handyman to stay with us. At this rate we might as well give the house back to Peter because there'll be no one left in our family to run the place. It's all a mess, a fucking mess, and it's our fault,’ she wailed, burying her face in her hands.

  Charlie went to sit on the bed with a heavy sigh and handed her his handkerchief. ‘Maisie will be back in September. Clem is only in London. The various travails of the rest of the family are not our fault.’ He patted her head, but without conviction. There was too much distance between them for him to believe any longer in his capacity to offer comfort. He was too much a part of what she was railing against, too much the enemy. ‘As for handing this place back to my brother, believe me, the thought has crossed my mind more than once. Peter is not only considerably wealthier and wiser, but in possession of a son who shows some kind of willingness to behave like a responsible adult… Look, I've got to go or I'll miss my train.’ He felt exhausted suddenly, all the fight gone out of him. ‘See Elizabeth, it will do you good. Ed will come back. He's asserting himself, being a teenager, blind as they all bloody well are to anybody's feelings but their own.’

  Trembling at the recollection of the argument, Serena pulled up on to the grass verge that ran along the church wall and got out of the car. The same sun is shining on Ed, she thought, squinting at the sky and trying to imagine where her son might be, what secret venom had turned him against them. Charlie was wrong – they had failed. Misery had made her overstate things, but the kernel of truth was there. No secure, well-loved child ran away, no matter how selfish. And the family had been falling apart all year, scrabbling for a foothold, a direction – she had been aware of it for months, in spite of Charlie's efforts to reassure her. The only truly decent, joyful thing to happen in ages had been Cassie's engagement. Serena moved closer to the wall, resting her forearms on the warm stone and seeking solace in the prospect of the wedding: pin-stripes and top hats, a crisp frosty morning, Ed adorably handsome in a hired morning suit, Clem and Maisie reluctant but radiant bridesmaids, Cassie at the centre of it all, buzzing around in a cloud of white lace like a queen bee at a flower. Maybe they would all feel some sort of proper cohesion then; maybe it was just what they needed.

  The images shimmered inside Serena's head, refusing to form clearly, as if they were too fictional to materialize, even in the wide universe of her mind. At the same time a dim bell rang deeper inside her consciousness – a bell relating to Cassie. Her phone message, of course, on that terrible Saturday night in the hotel. Could I talk to you… urgently?… I need to meet, just to talk… Serena slapped the wall, irritated and even a little afraid that she should have forgotten such a thing. In the aftermath of Ed's disappearance Charlie had called round to alert the family. She hadn't spoken to anyone but Pamela, Elizabeth, Charlie, and hapless, gormless boy-policemen for days. Serena pulled out her phone, then put it away again. She was already late for Elizabeth, and she didn't want to use her mobile in case Ed chose that moment to get in touch. Cassie's call had no doubt been about something trivial, she decided, turning back to the car, something about arrangements for the wedding – where to pitch the marquee, whether to have salmon or beef, which field to use for parking. Whatever it was could wait.


  Elizabeth had gone to a lot of trouble with the lunch, laying her small kitchen table with mats, wine glasses and linen napkins. She greeted Serena on the doorstep, keeping her arm round her as she stepped inside, as if she was too unstable to cross the threshold alone.

  ‘No news, then?’

  Serena shook her head, aware suddenly of how their roles had changed and not liking it much. To have Elizabeth all purposeful and taking care of her felt both peculiar and wrong.

  ‘Roland has been calling everyone he can think of to ask if they've heard or seen anything. He says he'll ask around at the station too – he's off up to Clem's on Sunday to show her a couple of his paintings. And Clem's calling everyone she can think of as well – at least, that was what Charlie said.’

  ‘Did he?’ murmured Serena bleakly, feeling almost as cut off from the rest of her family as she was from her missing son.

  ‘Anyway, what about his bank account? Can't they trace withdrawals or something?’

  ‘Tried that. He took all his money out on the first day – Chichester apparently.’

  ‘He's working something out,’ said Elizabeth, firmly, once they were sitting at the table in front of steaming plates of lasagne, which had seemed like a good idea when she prepared it that morning but looked now too huge and glutinous for a hot day. ‘Something in his head… He's just working it through. Or maybe he's mucked up his exams and can't face it,’ she added, desperate to trigger some flicker of hope in her sister-in-law's grim expression and thinking, for by no means the first time, how unfair it was that one so kind, so well-intentioned, should be made to suffer so. It had certainly put her own troubles into perspective. Roland was growing up, growing away from her, but at least he was there. He would never leave in such a manner, she was certain, and she loved him all the more for that. Since his cousin's disappearance he had been particularly sweet, making an effort to tell her where he was going, what he was thinking, responding as he so often did to needs of which most children would have remained oblivious. And as for Keith… Elizabeth gripped her knife and fork, tensing as always as the longing swelled inside. Curiously, the Ed business had helped there too. Not just by offering a distraction but because Keith had been right to point out that her family needed her. She called round at Ashley House most days now, not saying much, but knowing she was helping by being there, doing the odd bit of washing-up and deflecting Pamela, who so far seemed oddly disengaged from the drama, almost as if she didn't want to admit it was going on.