In the car Ethan barely spoke. He was pale and looked very young, hunched in the passenger seat beside her. She knew he wasn’t sleeping either – she’d heard him in his room on several nights, moving about. He had dark circles around his eyes, and there was a fresh crop of sore red spots across his cheeks and chin.
She’d made him talk, the first night, after Saskia’s parents had gone. Once he’d finished crying, and the adrenalin had subsided enough for her to stop shaking, she’d made hot chocolate and pancakes, the comfort food of his childhood, mostly so she could face the stove and keep busy for a few moments. They’d sat at the kitchen table. He didn’t eat or drink. She’d poured a heavy measure of whisky into her mug when he wasn’t looking. She had a million questions, but she sensed it would be better for the information to come out of him in his way. He took some time to process, and then, through ugly, angry tears, he spoke. Every few minutes he rubbed snot on the sleeve of his plaid shirt, and he kept squeezing his eyes and wiping tears. She wanted to hold him again, but when she took his hand on the table, he pulled it away.
Shock had seemingly removed whatever sense of privacy Ethan might have had, and fear made him speak. He was animated by the need to explain. He’d told her everything, she thought. It had been his first time, he said, that first time with Saskia, and she believed him. He told her that the two of them had talked about it before it happened. That Saskia had gone to the doctor, that he’d bought condoms anyway, from the chemist.
The word rape hung in the air, ugly and stark. He said it several times, in stunned disbelief. Laura was amazed by how comprehensive his understanding of the word was.
‘Rape is some poor girl getting hijacked by an Uber driver and taken into the woods and having a knife held to her throat. Rape is some shithead thinking he can do whatever he wants cos a girl is out of it. Rape is having sex with someone who says no. Whether that person is your wife or your girlfriend or some randomer. Whether you’ve had sex with them before or not. Whether you’re drunk or not. I get it. It’s 2019. You’ve banged on about it often enough. I know about “no”, for fuck’s sake. That’s not what this was. How can he say that? How dare he say that?’
That was the bit she didn’t understand. ‘Could she … I mean might she –’
His voice crescendoed: ‘No. No.’ He was horrified. ‘She wouldn’t do that.’
New and terrifying information spilt out of him. She couldn’t believe she had been ignorant of it. She should have realized. Most of his mates were sixteen. Why hadn’t she realized – been ahead of it? She was instantly afraid she knew the answer. She’d been consumed by her own pain. She’d stopped parenting. Not the practical stuff. She’d cleaved to domesticity – his socks were washed, the fridge was full, school forms were signed. But for the real stuff, the stuff that matters, she’d been sleepwalking. Apparently all his mates had done it. If not all, then most, he promised. At parties, in the back of cars, in tents at festivals. Some with girlfriends, more with relative strangers whose names they might not even have bothered to learn. Boys he knew – hell, boys she knew, boys she’d watched grow up, boys whose mothers she spent time with – were treating girls like dirt. ‘Stats don’t have faces,’ Ethan said. That was what one of them had said. A frightening number seemed to be off their heads on those ghastly alcopop VKs or, worse, on weed or MDMA while they were doing it. At least one had caught something and had had to take antibiotics.
Five minutes ago those boys were playing Minecraft and watching football. Their mothers believed they were raising them with morality, with respect for women. Every generation pushed the envelope, she knew. Social mores changed. Kids were almost obliged to do things that perplexed and, yes, horrified their parents. But this – this was bewilderingly out of sync with what she had thought. Had she just been colossally naïve? Did everyone else’s mother know this stuff was going on? Did they think it was okay?
He was incandescent at the injustice of it. He’d done it right. And he was the one who was going to get into serious trouble. It made no sense to him at all. And she couldn’t tell him it did to her.
Concern for their son defused Laura. Alex smiled easily enough when he opened the door. Genevieve wasn’t there. She might have been curious about the flat, some other time, might have taken in the fashionable glass furniture and statement cushions that Alex would probably have dismissed had she suggested they buy them for their house. In the clinically clean and white kitchen, he made mugs of coffee in his fancy machine.
‘So what’s this all about?’
Ethan looked at Laura.
‘Do you want me to explain?’
He nodded.
She’d been tempted to ring Alex and give him the basic facts before they came, a heads-up, but something had stopped her. She’d needed to see his face. ‘I’m not sure whether you’re aware that Ethan and his girlfriend Saskia were sleeping together.’
Alex gave a rather sharp intake of breath. ‘I –’
‘Here.’ She tried to keep the blame out of her voice. Tried very hard.
He looked down at the table. ‘I see.’
Laura shook her head. ‘Anyway. They were. They are. They’ve been going out for a while. It’s all been consensual, exclusive, all that …’
Alex nodded, clearly uncomfortable.
‘But Saskia isn’t sixteen. Not for a few weeks. She’s fifteen.’ She waited for the penny to drop, but Alex still didn’t say anything.
She sighed. ‘And it seems, and we’re not sure yet how, but it seems her parents have found out about the two of them. And they’re furious. The other night they came to the house and started shouting the odds. Well, her father was, at least.’
Ethan made a small strangled sound. This time he let her put her hand on his arm. He couldn’t meet his father’s eye.
‘That seems a bit OTT.’ Alex wasn’t grasping the seriousness of the situation.
‘He’s saying it’s statutory rape because Saskia is under age. He’s saying he’s going to the police.’
‘They won’t want to know, surely?’
‘They have to take it seriously. If Saskia’s parents make an accusation.’
‘And?’
Why didn’t he know any of this? He hadn’t sat through the excruciating sex chat at school. He hadn’t thought about it. He’d been too busy with his own selfish sex life. It wasn’t a kind thought, and maybe it wasn’t fair, but the yoga mantra wasn’t working right now, and her mind entertained it.
‘And if it goes like it could, that’s a conviction on his record. That’s the sex offenders’ register. For years.’ She spoke slowly and deliberately.
At last the seriousness of it was beginning to dawn on him. ‘But that’s ridiculous. He’s barely sixteen himself.’
She couldn’t protect Ethan from knowing the full implications of Saskia’s father’s thoughts. He knew already.
‘They’re both kids.’
‘Not in the eyes of the law. Not about this. One is capable of informed consent. One isn’t.’
He was opening and closing his mouth, like a guppy, searching for the right thing to say, the most important question to ask. ‘What does Saskia have to say about that?’
‘We don’t know. They must have taken her phone. Ethan and Saskia’s year isn’t at school at the moment. They’re on study leave. So he hasn’t spoken to her. And there’s no way they’ll let him see her. Saskia’s father just came around, shouted the place down, made his threats and left.’
‘So you don’t know if he’s been to the police?’
‘No. You know what we know now.’
‘Christ.’ Alex ran his hands through his hair, and held his breath, then blew it out through his mouth.
‘I’m sorry, Dad.’
Laura turned to him, and heard her voice, fierce. ‘Don’t do that. You don’t need to be sorry.’ She looked at Alex.
For the first time in a long time, he didn’t disappoint her. The colour had drained from his face. He shu
ffled his chair awkwardly around the table, and put his arm around Ethan’s shoulders. ‘Oh, my poor boy. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’ Ethan laid his head on the table, and Alex laid his beside his son’s and they stayed like that for a short while. Ethan was crying quietly. Laura squeezed his knee.
When Alex raised his head, he looked at her across their son’s prone, stricken form, and gave a grim, tight-lipped smile. ‘We’re going to sort this out, I promise you. I’m so glad you’ve both told me. And we’re going to sort it out. Okay.’
She didn’t know how or even if that was possible. Or how long it was since she had seen him standing alongside them, on their side, on her side. Or how long it was since she had felt gratitude towards her husband. But she felt it now.
21
Nick was catching up on emails, the ten o’clock news in the background, when Bea appeared in the kitchen doorway, rubbing her eyes. He went straight to her and picked her up, holding her tightly. She was bed-warm, and smelt like fabric softener and sleep. ‘What’s the matter, my love?’
‘Can’t sleep.’
It was a weirdly adult expression, like something she’d heard someone else say. And it was patently not true. She’d been asleep. He’d checked on them all at around half past nine. And she looked so sleepy, here in the kitchen, her eyes half closed against the light. ‘Warm milk?’
She nodded, and nestled into his neck. He held her on his hip while he filled a small mug with milk from the fridge, and blasted it once, then twice, in the microwave. He stuck a finger in it to make sure it wasn’t too hot, then went into the living room holding his daughter and the mug, and settled himself and her in an armchair. Bea rearranged herself to lie on his chest, and he stroked her hair for a few moments.
She sat up, pushed her hair back from her face, and reached for the milk, drinking it and looking at him.
‘Better?’
She smiled. ‘But I don’t want to go back to bed yet.’
‘Okay.’
‘I want to stay with you for a bit.’
‘Okay.’
‘You’re doing work.’ She’d seen the open computer on the kitchen table.
‘Nothing important. Not as important as you, anyway.’ Nick winked at her. ‘We could read a story?’
Bea shook her head. ‘Tell me about Mummy.’
Nick’s guts twisted. This had happened a few times now. The counsellor said it was perfectly normal. Healthy, even. Keeping Carrie alive for the children was important. As long as you let them bring it to you, not the other way around. Only Bea did it. She seemed to know instinctively only to do it when they were on their own, never in front of her siblings. This nocturnal encounter of theirs was almost a regular thing now. Delilah was too young to pose the question, although she looked at pictures of Carrie, and Arthur, of course, would have barely any memory of her.
‘What do you want me to tell you about?’
‘Tell me about when I was in Mummy’s tummy.’
‘Ah. You in Mummy’s tummy!’ He ruffled her hair. ‘Would you like to see a picture?’
Bea nodded. Nick took his phone out of his shirt pocket, and scrolled quickly through the photos. ‘Here’s one.’ It was the obligatory scan picture. Bea’s spine, her heart, her face in eerily accurate detail. Bea glanced at it, but shook her head. ‘I want to see Mummy.’
He swiped. ‘Okay. This is that same day. This is Mummy the day they took that picture of you in her tummy.’ Carrie, looking rueful, standing by a water-cooler, drinking from a plastic cup. Trying to achieve the required balance of a sufficiently full bladder that you weren’t completely desperate to empty, as required by the sonographer.
But Bea didn’t seem satisfied. Nick caught her drift. She wanted full on Moby-Dick. Which was, he almost smiled, exactly the way Carrie had always described herself in the third trimester.
He moved forward a few months. And found what he wanted. A picture of Carrie taken in early May 2013. About two weeks before Bea’s due date. In the garden, on an unseasonably warm day, feet up on a stool, hands clasped under the belly the better to show its huge swell. Her face a bit rounder than normal, smiling excitedly. ‘There you are.’
‘Mummy looks happy.’
‘She was. We were. We couldn’t wait to meet you.’
‘Was I born soon after this?’
‘Yes. Very soon. Mummy had already packed her suitcase to take to the hospital. She had put it by the front door, because she knew otherwise I’d forget it.’
Bea giggled. ‘Like swimming kit.’
Nick nodded, mock-sad. ‘Yes, like swimming kit.’
‘Why did she need a suitcase?’
‘She needed some pretty things for you to wear to come home.’ He scrolled quickly past all the shots from the delivery room. Found one of the three of them the midwife had taken – Carrie all neat and cleaned up, smiling triumphantly in a fresh nightie. Him shell-shocked and delighted. Bea in their arms, tiny and wrinkled and swollen-eyed.
‘I look funny.’
‘You look gorgeous.’
‘My Babygro isn’t pink.’
‘No. We didn’t know whether you were a boy or a girl until we met you.’
‘Really?’ This thought intrigued her.
‘Nope. Mummy wanted a surprise.’ He remembered how badly he hadn’t wanted a surprise. But Carrie had insisted. He remembered going out and buying an armful of pink stuff the first chance he’d got, so completely chuffed with his daughter.
Carrie had been ready. Calm, joyous and competent. He hadn’t. Not if he was honest. Not until the second he’d held her in his arms. He’d been playing the part of expectant father, scared stiff. He’d done every single thing that was expected of him but he’d lain wide awake, almost every night, next to Carrie and her ever-expanding form, wondering if he was ready.
She’d set the pace for almost everything in their life, and she’d done that with this too. He trusted her completely. He just didn’t necessarily trust himself as much.
‘Were you glad I was a girl, Daddy?’
He squeezed her. ‘Oh, yes. Of course. I always thought you were. I thought Lila was a girl too, and I had a funny little feeling that Arthur was a boy.’
‘Why?’
‘He kicked Mummy a lot more than you two did.’
Again the chuckle. He felt rewarded by it. ‘Naughty Arthur.’
‘Not naughty. He didn’t know, did he? He was just in a hurry to get out and play football.’
He could hear Carrie, moaning beside him, in their bed. Arthur had been the heaviest of their babies – a whopping nine pounds two ounces to Bea’s tiny seven pounds four.
‘I remember that!’ She sounded delighted. ‘You could see his feet in her tummy.’
‘That’s right.’
Sometimes when they’d been talking like this, Bea would bring herself to the present and say she missed her mum. Other times, she seemed happiest to dwell in the past. Tonight was the latter, so that it was almost like the two of them were pretending Carrie was in another room, attending to Arthur, maybe, or folding laundry in the kitchen. It was as comforting as life got, these days, and Nick went willingly along with Bea’s unspoken fantasy.
Eventually, Bea laid her head on his chest again, and put her thumb into her mouth. Nick laid his own head back against the sofa. Quite soon he felt Bea get heavy, and her breathing slowed. The weight of her, and her peace felt good, so he lingered there awhile before taking her back to bed and returning to his laptop.
In some respects he’d come a long way from that callow youth in the delivery room, wondering if he would cope with a family, in others no distance at all. He’d always taken strength from Carrie, aped her confidence, her fake-it-till-you-make-it attitude towards everything new and untried, and, God, he was still trying to now.
22
Laura got to town far too early and parked higher than she normally would in the multi-storey, so that she had further to walk to where she had agreed to meet Claudia. Her legs
were disconcertingly jellylike. She had felt almost disoriented with anxiety since she’d received the text from Saskia’s mother last night, asking if she would please meet her after work the next day, to talk, she’d said. Just the two of them. The mothers. She’d called Alex to ask if it was a good idea, surprised at how easily she’d slipped back to consulting him when it came to Ethan. He’d said, yes, he thought so, but warned her not to admit anything or apologize, as though what had happened was a fender-bender at a roundabout. She’d fought the urge to remind him that ‘Never apologize, never explain’ was more his mantra than hers, and promised to report back on what happened. They didn’t, by mutual agreement, want to tell Ethan. Until they knew what Claudia’s agenda was, it would only pile on stress, and he was already buckling. Alex volunteered to take him out for a pizza or a curry. Ethan didn’t like curry. But she acquiesced: he’d go to his dad’s after work, and it meant he needn’t know she wasn’t at home, where he always, always found her at five thirty. Somehow, work didn’t seem a barrier to Alex’s doing this, and she tried not to mind that, in a crisis, he could find time, when so often, without one, he hadn’t made any.
She hadn’t even told Mel what was going on. Or Dad. Too much of a maelstrom was swirling. Their broken little family had coalesced around Ethan and what was happening to him. It was discombobulating – a Daphne word from her childhood. It had probably never been more appropriate.
She had no idea what Claudia wanted. She hoped that, in choosing a public place, she was signalling there wouldn’t be any shouting. It was late in the day. The after-school crowd had gone home, and the after-work one was in the pub, not the café. One of the staff was already washing the floor and putting chairs on the tables. The other was clearly irritated by her ordering a pot of English breakfast tea, although they didn’t actually close for another half-hour.
The Family Holiday Page 10
