by S M Mala
‘I think you’re amazing, that’s the god honest truth and I want you to have a wonderful birthday.’
‘What did you have planned for me today? You might as well say because it’s not going to happen.’
‘We’ll do what I had arranged tomorrow,’ he said, picking up a lock of her hair and sniffing it. ‘All day tomorrow.’
‘Ah!’
‘It’s good to keep you in practice.’
‘For as long as we’re together?’
There was little look he’d seen time to time, the one where she was unsure of them. He knew what she meant but never questioned what was going through her head.
‘And have you sorted the dates for going to Zurich?’ she asked gently as he closed his eyes and knew which way the conversation was going. ‘When do I get to see the back of you?’
‘I’m flying over on 19th and I’ll be back a few days later. The results will be back in no time, from what they say.’
He felt something sink in to the pit of his gut.
‘You know that school do on 23rd, well you don’t have to take me. I don’t mind if you take someone else.’
Finlay frowned at her for a second as she glanced away.
‘I want you to come with me. I’ll be really upset if you don’t.’
‘What if I’m upset if I do?’ she said, quietly, before gulping. ‘I don’t want to embarrass you and-.’
‘Stop it,’ he said, grabbing her hands. ‘You won’t embarrass me. Enough of the moaning, please? Leave that for tomorrow.’ She laughed. ‘Now go and do some work as I’ve got a million and one things to do. Mother wants me to go and work at her offices but Piers got me out of it. I think I might have to compromise and go and see her. Juliette’s company is haemorrhaging money and we don’t know how.’
‘It’s not going to affect your company is it?’
‘Just our profit and loss. My mother thinks I’ve not been concentrating and because it’s ‘Le Font’, she’s not happy that we didn’t notice it earlier. I have a lot of work to do. They might have been swindled or, I don’t know.’
‘And going by your investigative skills when it came to me and the police, they’ve not really got much hope of you finding out.’
‘Sylvie!’ he said as she grinned. ‘That was a mistake!’
‘Yes, well, don’t make a mistake when it comes to Juliette,’ she said and Finlay got the immediate impression she wasn’t just talking about the money.
‘Let’s get the birthday girl a drink!’ said Toby loudly as Sylvie sat down in between Rosalind and Piers at ‘Rick’s Café’.
She noticed Samina was literally sticking against the side of Matthew, further on down the table
‘Won’t she give up?’ asked Sylvie, shaking her head in dismay. ‘She’s going to get her heartbroken.’
‘The older you get, the sillier you behave, I find,’ laughed out Rosalind as she peered past Sylvie to look at Piers. ‘And he’s a perfect example! Starting up a sex toy e-commerce operation at your age! I put that down to all the bloody pot you’ve been smoking for the last fifty years!’
She let out a load roar.
‘Who said you could employ her?’ sniffed Piers, while trying to put some wine into his glass as Sylvie stopped the amount being poured. ‘And are you my mother now?’
‘You were drinking yesterday, don’t think I’ve forgotten,’ she whispered.
‘And what were you doing?’ he whispered as she glanced away and turned to speak to Rosalind.
‘Are you enjoying working with us?’
‘To be honest,’ Rosalind sighed. ‘It’s a bit of an eye opener some of the things you sell. I never knew about nipple clips and other things. The people are lovely but I expect they’ve all got a back story.’
‘There is that link we-.’
Then she noticed Finlay walk in and something stopped.
She’d only seen him a few hours ago but every time Sylvie caught sight of him, her twingy twangies were in serious high voltage.
‘You escaped your mother then?’ asked Piers as Sylvie noticed Rosalind smile at her. ‘Come and sit here near the birthday girl.’
Slowly he walked towards them and she noticed he was deciding where to sit before opting to squeeze in between Rosalind and Marianne. Sylvie then caught Stephen staring hard at her as she smiled.
‘What are you doing for your birthday?’ he asked with an exceptionally wide smile which unnerved her.
‘I’m going home to have dinner with my mother and daughter,’ she politely replied and realised she wished Finlay could be with them before shaking off the thought. ‘My mother is going to make a curry and Daisy likes that. I don’t really like to celebrate by birthday.’
‘Why not?’
‘Since my husband died it’s pretty tricky to enjoy,’ she said, with all honesty, and noticed Piers turn to look at her. ‘I can talk about him sometimes without totally clamming up.’
‘It’s good that you feel comfortable enough to,’ the older man said.
He squeezed her arm gently.
‘I was with someone once, many years ago, and he passed away. It’s an awful feeling of staying in limbo. You’re totally bereaved by what happened and then you’re expected to carry on,’ Rosalind said with a pained smile. ‘If only life was so simple.’
‘What happened?’ Sylvie asked and noticed Finlay’s frown as he turned to glance at her.
‘I was forty five years old and he was thirty three. The most amazing-.’
‘What, like he was younger than you?’ asked Toby leaning forward.
‘I’m pleased your expensive school taught you maths,’ Rosalind sighed before pinching his cheek. ‘What? You think an old sow like me hasn’t lived? I’ve lived alright.’
‘Yes Rosalind, we know,’ mumbled Piers.
‘Anyway, we wanted a family and I knew it was cutting it fine with my age, but we tried, god how we tried!’ she laughed out loudly as if remembering something. ‘Then it became upsetting until I realised we weren’t going to have a child together. There was no possibility. Anyway, one night we had a frightful quarrel, he was telling me he could live without kids and, well, to cut a long story short he was on a motorcycle, stormed out then the next thing I heard, he’d been hurt in an accident.’
Sylvie saw the tears before realising people were listening and gently touched her hand, knowing exactly what she had gone through.
‘I got to him in time to say ‘goodbye’,’ Rosalind said, smiling through her sadness. ‘But it was hard to realise I had to live the rest of my life without him. Oh goodness, here’s me talking stuff and nonsense when we should be celebrating… how old?’
‘Thirty!’ smiled Sylvie and grinned at the older woman. ‘Plus some.’
‘So aunt,’ Toby said, concentrating hard. ‘Why didn’t you have children?’
‘I never found the right person to have them with when I could and when I couldn’t, he came along,’ she said with a sigh. ‘Mind you I seemed to have inherited Finlay and yourself one way or another. And Toby? Can you stop calling me aunt? It drives me round the bloody bend.’
‘I don’t want anyone to call me uncle, not even if it’s Finlay’s kid,’ Toby said and Sylvie then noticed Toby look over at Finlay, whose face didn’t betray a thing.
‘Are you going to be a dad?’ asked Marianne.
‘I don’t want to be a great aunt yet!’ laughed out Rosalind, gulping hard, obviously trying to cover for Toby’s slip-up. ‘So keep that on hold.’
‘But you’re planning to have kids?’ continued Marianne. ‘I can’t wait to have children. I know I’m cutting it fine but we’re saving hard to get treatment. I’ve tried once but hopefully we’ll get there.’
Sylvie glanced at Finlay and knew he was stuck.
Any other time he would be shouting it out to anyone who would listen but, right now, he was confused and she wished she could help him knowing it was all in the hands of fate, whether she would be with him longer or not at
all.
Forty four
‘I don’t know where my fucking passport is!’ he shouted, packing his bag.
He watched Sylvie looking around the room but stood there wanting to scream as he was so confused.
‘Can you remember when you last saw it?’ she gently asked.
‘If I fucking well knew that I’d have found it!’ he barked, storming into the bedroom and pulling out all the things in the drawer.
He’d slept badly for the past few nights and knew Sylvie had made an effort to come and see him, but Finlay had other things on his mind.
It was barely half an hour since she’d arrived and he was losing the plot, stomping, swearing and shouting. The large clock in the corridor told him he had twenty four hours before he’d be on the flight and he felt sick.
The past few weeks, other than Sylvie, had been unbearable. They’d found out that money had been leaving the company but Juliette wasn’t playing ball. Everyone pleaded amnesia, saying it was down to the large overheads but something didn’t add up and a company with a high turnover making little money was a ridiculous operation, and one his mother didn’t want to run.
The conversations with his wife were fraught and tearful, often her saying he was causing stress on the baby. Alice couldn’t even summon the patience to deal with her daughter in law, constantly making Finlay ask her about the money. They’d left it to the accountants and lawyers to come to some agreement but when the invoices started coming in about unpaid bills, they knew it was serious.
All in all, he was dreading going to Switzerland, knowing everything had to be resolved, there and then, for the sake of his marriage, business and possible child.
Finlay sat on the bed and realised he was being a shit as he got up and walked out to apologise to Sylvie. As he went into the living room she wasn’t there, then he turned to see her coat and boots were gone, so was she.
‘Fuck!’ he shouted before running out of his flat and down the stairs as she was about to open the door. ‘Sylvie!’
‘Oh,’ she replied and, as she turned, he knew she’d been crying before she put on a happy face. ‘I thought I’d leave you to it. You’re really busy and I’m just-.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, grabbing her arm to stop her from opening the door. ‘I’ve got so many things going on in my head and I didn’t mean to take it out on you. Sly, come back up.’
‘Listen you,’ she said gently, stepping forward. ‘I don’t want to be an added burden. Go find your passport and sort yourself out.’
Reaching up, she touched the back of his neck and stroked it as he closed his eyes.
‘I won’t shout or swear again, I promise,’ he said quietly, taking her hand and kissing her palm. ‘I’m so worried, you can’t imagine.’ Finlay gulped for a moment, feeling a panic stir in his chest. ‘Thing is, I don’t know what to do about anything and my mum is sort of blaming me without saying.’ Then he let out a sigh. ‘What time do you have to go? I mean later not now.’
‘I have a pass for the night,’ she said and he thought he misheard. ‘Told grandma I had to go to an urgent business meeting about hold-in underwear and she believed me. I wanted to stay with you but I don’t think that’s the best idea considering what-.’
‘No, it’s a wonderful idea,’ he said, holding her hand tightly. ‘I need you so much, do you know that? Please stay.’
Sylvie stood there and he looked at her face as she thought hard before holding his hand then walking back up.
‘Do you want to go out for lunch?’ he asked as she shook her head from side to side. ‘I don’t know if I’ve got anything in and-.’
She turned and pulled him closer, before kissing him gently on the lips. With his eyes closed he felt better on feeling her as Sylvie wrapped her arms around him and stroked his face.
‘Passport first and everything else later.’
They were eating sushi at the table as the passport was located in his carry on suitcase. Sylvie helped him pack and, though he’d done it a thousand times before, he liked the idea of her being there. Her legs were resting on his lap as the room was silent, other than the hum of the radio from the kitchen.
‘It’s good not to be in a rush,’ she said, wiping her mouth with a napkin. Finlay glanced at her as she was building up to something. ‘Do you want to talk about it? Just if you want to let off steam, I’m here and I won’t go.’
He rubbed her legs and put some pickled ginger into his mouth before wondering where to start.
‘It’s really difficult. I’ve not seen her since she was fucking on our couch,’ he said and chewed really hard before taking a sip of his water. ‘That’s just emblazoned in my mind. I want to be level headed but I can’t. Then she’s asked for the accountants to turn up so we can go through the ‘misunderstanding’. What’s that? They’ve been taking money out of the company and I don’t know for how long. And you know why? It never occurred to me that my wife would be stealing money from me, from my mother.’
‘Finlay,’ Sylvie said and leaned closer. ‘What if the baby’s yours? What are you going to do?’
‘It’s not,’ he said, not wanting to betray that he wanted it to be, he needed it to be to get some pay back from what he’d been through.
Sylvie removed her legs off his lap and sat closer to him before putting an arm around his shoulder, then kissed his cheek.
‘Can I tell you a story about me? It might be boring but pretend you’re interested?’ He smiled for a moment at her challenging expression. ‘Yes?’
‘Yes,’ he said, before eating another piece of sushi.
‘I got pregnant pretty quickly with Daisy and then a few years later, I got pregnant again. I went for the tests, not even thinking that something would be wrong to find out that the baby has a chromosome defect which meant it was going to die before she ever turned one.’
‘Sylvie,’ he said, putting down his chopsticks, feeling sick on hearing it. ‘That’s horrible.’
‘Roo was beside himself in pain, couldn’t deal with it and at twenty one weeks I decided the best thing to do was to terminate the pregnancy. They call it ‘feticide’. I couldn’t deal with it. I couldn’t cope knowing my baby was going to die. Every day I wonder if I did the right thing and every day I’m not sure. The doctors told me that there was no choice but still it wasn’t a good choice.’ Sylvie let out a sigh. ‘It was horrific, the whole thing and all the way through it, my husband tried to be brave but he wasn’t. He was a mess and I felt so bad about not giving him another kid, so bad at failing this last hurdle to make us the parents of two.’ She stroked his face and he noticed the tears in her eyes. ‘I know how precious having a child is. How special. I would die for my child, you know that. If that child is yours or even if it isn’t, think carefully about the decision you make.’
Without any hesitation, he put down the chopsticks and bit his lip, knowing he wanted to cry.
‘I want to be a dad and I want that child to be mine,’ he said, in all honesty. ‘And I don’t know if that’s ever going to happen. I wanted Juliette, since the moment I laid eyes on her, and now I realise she didn’t want me and, if she did, she wanted the company more and probably the money. I still love her, I can’t help it. I want my perfect life back and it seems like a lifetime away.’
As soon as Finlay said it, he knew not to look at Sylvie.
It was a massive admission and one which sounded as if it didn’t include her. Then he turned and noticed the smile, the one that was sympathetic but was hiding so much, probably pain he thought, but he couldn’t tell as she leaned forward and kissed him gently on the cheek.
‘You’ll get your perfect life back, I promise, you will.’
Taking the plates away, Sylvie went to the kitchen and washed up. It felt like every second he was slipping away and it would soon be over. She was going to have to force every ounce of happiness. She had to show him she was fine.
Suddenly she looked at her feet and her right foot in particular. If y
ou looked closely you could see the difference, the imperfection, the gnarled ugly toes that she had been born with.
A congenital deformation.
It occurred to her, just then, maybe that’s how her happiness was supposed to be, a deformed thing that would never be perfect for anyone, especially Finlay.
Sylvie was far from perfect and that’s what he wanted.
Something she couldn’t give him.
Finlay walked into the kitchen and she knew he was standing directly behind her as she squeezed the sponge out and put it to the side.
‘What do you want to do today?’ he quietly asked, as she stood there, unable to shake off the knowledge he didn’t really want her at all, he was biding his time and she was the perfect cover.
‘I don’t know,’ she said, barely audible for a moment, realising that’s how she felt deep inside and desperately not wanting to cry, especially the day before he went back to his wife. ‘I need the loo.’
Quickly, she slipped around him and walked to the bathroom before shutting the door, standing by the toilet and pulling up the seat. Sylvie waited for a moment, to suck back in her tears knowing any drops would betray everything and the day would, in turn, be a shit ending for her. But they fell quickly and heavily as she made no noise, knowing not to touch her eyes as the rims would go red.
Waiting a few moments, she flushed the toilet and washed her hands. Gently, she dabbed the tears with a towel before glancing at herself in the mirror and smiled.
It looked hidden enough, her pain.
She was back on track.
‘I was thinking Fin, maybe we could go for a drink at that-.’
She got a surprise when she noticed Finlay standing on the other side of the corridor looking at her, arms folded.
‘Is that what you do? When it gets too much and someone upsets you, you walk away, put on your happy face and it makes it okay?’ he asked, sounding agitated. ‘I think that’s pretty unhealthy.’
