*
As I turned to go, I saw the encampment, a group of mobile homes, four or five of them in a neat row and the others grouped haphazardly around. The first few, the neatly arranged ones, had not attracted controversy – they had been placed there by the landowner who had registered them as holiday homes. The others had been added more hurriedly and local migrant workers moved into them at the landowner’s request – some deal he had struck with the leaders of the group concerned. It had made the local newspapers due to planning concerns.
From where I was, I could see down into the patch of land in the middle of the haphazard grouping. Two cars were parked next to each other, both with their bonnets up, and men stood around regarding the cars, raising their arms occasionally. Beyond the mobile homes, there were four other cars, three of them second-hand saloons but the fourth a new-looking fourby- four. It stood out enough for me to wonder if it was a collective decision amongst the group to pool resources into one smart car that was the public face of the group, while the rest of their vehicles were half-broken, run down. As I watched, a woman descended from one of the mobile homes with a bundle in her arms and crossed the land, ignored by the men, before disappearing behind another of the homes. It was a brief glimpse of other lives, different from my own, a reminder of how narrow my own concerns had become. I chided myself as I strode back down the hill.
*
All I’ve proved is that suicide isn’t an option, I thought, walking back to the car park, and I think I knew that already. I had left my car unlocked but no one had come near it. There was no one else around at that time on a Monday morning.
I went shopping. I bought myself underwear in the tacky new womenswear shop that had opened up when the betting shop closed down and while I was paying for it got into a long conversation with the assistant about how well maroon contrasted with pale skin. Afterwards, I ordered a coffee with amaretto syrup in a large white mug at the only decent Italian café on the esplanade and sat conspicuously in the window for the rest of the morning, reading the newspapers.
*
There was one moment, though. It came around three weeks later and was completely unexpected. Julie was babysitting for me. There was a meeting at the school about the new numeracy and literacy programmes. I didn’t normally go to that sort of thing – Betty was doing fine and Rees wasn’t anywhere near that stage yet – but I was going through a phase of making myself go out. I had been hoping that some of the other mothers that I liked would be there and that there would be a move to the pub afterwards. As it was, nobody I liked had shown up, not even Sally, and everyone else had sloped off home immediately.
It was around 8.30 p. m., already dark. A deep mist had descended upon the town, as it often did on damp winter evenings. I had left the car at home in case there was any chance of a drink and as Julie wasn’t expecting me back immediately, I turned left at the roundabout and walked into town. I couldn’t go to a pub on my own and there was nowhere else to go, bar the chippy, so I descended the stone steps at the end of the esplanade and went for a walk on the pebble beach in the dark, not feeling particularly glum or contemplative, just because I had the freedom to do it when most evenings I was trapped at home.
No one else was around. The mist was heavy and the sea lost behind the mist. I walked into it, down to the water’s edge, then stopped still to listen.
I felt it then. I felt its pull, in the deep quiet of the enveloping fog and the constancy of the waves. The gravity of the clifftop had not done it, but the chill mist, the invitation in the gentle shushing sound of the water, they spoke to me in a way that the drama of vertigo had not. Perhaps you are not a coward, after all, they seemed to whisper, perhaps you just needed to be asked nicely. How easy it would be, I thought to myself. Remove your shoes, remove your coat – you don’t need to strip completely. Or you could keep everything on and weight your pockets with pebbles if you want to make it quicker. You’ve never been a strong swimmer and the water is very cold. If you just keep going as far as you can, you’ll never make it back, even if fear gets the better of you. Just a few determined strokes and you’ll be too far out before you know it. The waves shushed-and-fell, oh so gently, shushed-and-fell, against the shingle. Nothing was visible beyond the mist – out there was chill water and more mist. Its density was an illusion. If I walked into it, it would part to reveal itself and more of itself, its apparent solidity always just beyond my reach. The water is freezing. You’ll be numb before you know it.
I would like to say it was thoughts of my two children that kept me from walking into that mist – it was, in a way, but not in a way that reflects well upon me. I thought of Chloe’s pregnancy and how pleased Betty and Rees would be when they found out they were going to have a baby brother or sister. Then I thought of how, if I died, they would be raised as part of a brand-new family, whole and logical, of how Rees, not much more than an infant himself, would regard Chloe unquestioningly as his mother. I thought of him saying to a friend, when he was grown, ‘My real mother died when I was just a toddler, so I don’t really remember her.’ It wouldn’t matter if he got on with his step-mother or not. She would still be the dominant figure in his life, for good or ill. If I did what I wanted to do, that misty night, Chloe would have it all, everything I had ever loved or cared for. It wasn’t love of my children that kept me safe that night, it was hatred of her.
*
Strange, the way the little things get to you, the way they slide in like acupuncture needles and like acupuncture needles have disproportionate effects. Some months after I found out Chloe was pregnant but before Harry was born, Aunt Lorraine rang me one evening to ask what Rees wanted for his birthday. We had an earnest discussion about just how many Hot Wheels cars a three-year-old needed. He was desperate for more plastic track so that he could make a loop-the-loop for the Hot Wheels cars to whizz around and had also put in a formal request for a hamster. I was a little concerned the two requests might be connected.
‘More cars,’ I said to Aunt Lorraine. ‘Utility vehicles, you know, fire engines and tow trucks and police cars.’
‘Has he got an ambulance?’
I thought about it. ‘I think he’s got three.’
‘Well at least they don’t get lost all the time, not like all those tiny doll things Betty liked.’ It wasn’t the dolls themselves that got lost, it was the tiny rubber clothes; the tiny pink bikinis and stretchy orange mini-skirts and tiny-tiny turquoise rubber boots. All the mass-produced dolls that Betty loved came with outfits only suitable for lapdancing but they seemed domesticated souls at heart. There were tiny dogs as well, and tiny dishwashers. ‘That yucca you brought round for me for my birthday’s still going strong, you know. I’ve still got the ribbon round it.’
I had not seen Aunt Lorraine on her last birthday – it had occurred during the period when David and I were not even on speaking terms. I had remembered the date and bought a card for her but was paralysed by indecision over what to write in it. I had no idea how much his family knew about what had happened between me and David. I could have written simply love, Laura, but my name, standing alone, was still such a strange concept. Love, Laura, Betty and Rees? Equally odd. I hadn’t yet accepted we were a trio, that a whole corner of our lives was irrevocably gone. In desperation, I signed the card, Laura & co, put it in its envelope and sealed it, then tore it in two and put it in the paper-recycling tub.
So I hadn’t sent Aunt Lorraine a birthday card and I had felt bad about it because it was always me that did the cards and presents for David’s family, of course, and I thought well she won’t get anything from us then, and she might wonder why.
But, clearly, David had remembered Aunt Lorraine’s birthday. And so had someone else, someone Aunt Lorraine was, in a momentary lapse of concentration, confusing with me. David hated plants. He would never dream of buying a plant for anybody, let alone putting a ribbon round it.
There were only two people in the world that I still trusted to love m
e: my children.
*
When Chloe and I eventually met, it was, of course, a huge anti-climax. David engineered it with his usual efficiency, making sure it was in a public place and that we were diluted by the children. He sprung it on me one Saturday morning, ringing me at home and saying that he wanted to take Betty and Rees to the new rollerblade park that had opened up at the leisure centre in Lower Banton. (It was a disappointment, I later learned. The rink was tiny, they played hard rock at unspeakable volume and there was nothing to eat except junk and fizzy drinks from vending machines.) I told him I had already promised Betty we would go to Wellingtons, the discount clothing store in the High Street, to try on new trainers. He agreed she needed the new trainers, then added, oh so casually, ‘Well, why don’t you do that first and then we’ll meet you at the beach café and take the kids off from there?’ We. Us. Him and Chloe and the tadpole of unknown gestation she was carrying inside her.
*
Unlike many beach cafés, ours was actually on the beach, in the lee of the esplanade wall. You could only meet at it rather than in it as it was no more than a sheltered kiosk with a couple of firmly anchored windbreaks either side of four or five cheap tables. The fare was unpleasant – sugared drinks in cartons and white-bread sandwiches with processed cheese – it wouldn’t have lasted two minutes on the High Street but the kiosk’s location gave it a spurious charm. It’s surprising what tastes good after a walk on a cold, windy beach, as long as you have no desire to linger over it. David had chosen the venue for the handover with great care. We would all be feeling cold and brisk and businesslike.
The kids and I were there first – I made sure of that. I bought them each a hot chocolate made from a machine, the froth on top induced by some sort of chemical reaction between hot water, sugar and the additives in the powder. I had a black coffee. The three of us sat huddled at a green metal table, cuddling our drinks. Rees and Betty were moany because it was getting near lunchtime. The sky overhead looked as chemical as our drinks, a swirl of greys and yellows, high and motionless.
After five minutes, I saw David and Chloe approach, walking carefully alongside each other with their hands shoved in their pockets, like a couple who usually hold hands but have decided not to on this occasion. David saw us and raised a hand. At his gesture, Chloe looked up from where she was stepping carefully across the shingle and as she spotted me, she stumbled. She was small, shorter than me and tiny next to David. She was wearing a purple duffel coat over jeans and a purple and brown hat in a tea-cosy shape. She dropped her gaze as soon as she saw us, allowing me to watch her approach in exactly the way I had anticipated. I was surprised. I had expected something a little more glamorous. I felt both relieved and insulted. I stared, hoping she would lift her gaze again and see me watching her but she did not.
‘That’s her, Mum,’ said Betty, and I was bolstered by the disdain in her voice.
‘Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!’ called out Rees.
‘Now you will remember what I said, about being polite?’ I said to them both, leaning in towards them. Betty pulled a face. I put my mouth close to her hair and whispered, ‘I love you, darling.’ She smiled at me.
As Chloe and David approached, they would have seen the three of us leaning conspiratorially together.
Rees hopped down from his chair, making the table rock. The Styrofoam cups containing our drinks wavered dangerously and some of Betty’s lukewarm chocolate slopped on to the table. ‘Rees…’ she hissed, furiously.
‘Hey, you!’ cried David, sweeping him up.
Chloe crunched to a halt on the gravel, standing before us. ‘Hi, I’m Chloe,’ she said brightly, looking at me, keeping her hands in her pockets.
‘Hi,’ I said back, equally brightly. Betty looked to one side.
David went up to the kiosk to get him and Chloe a coffee. Chloe sat down on the metal chair next to me. Up close, I saw that she was, in fact, incredibly pretty, fawn-like, with a delicately boned little face and wide pale eyes. In her loose coat it was impossible to tell how pregnant she was but her features had none of the puffiness some women acquire in the later stages. Her skin had a pink glow and her eyes were bright. Her woollen hat was pulled down over her ears giving her a goofy, quirky quality, but I could see that underneath it she had hair the colour of a brown envelope, in corkscrew curls. Her earrings were small silver teardrops. I had the feeling she had dressed down.
I was only able to glance rather than stare, but even that was enough to see what David might have seen in her when they first met – beauty and fragility combined with a ready, brave little smile. No wonder he believed her incapable of malicious phone calls or hate mail. Regarding her like this, so normal, so cheerful, it was hard to believe it myself. I was profoundly disappointed. I had hoped to see that she was wrong for David and to be able to feel that their relationship, baby or no baby, would be a disaster – but they fitted, I could see that. I could see that here was a woman who would bring out his protective and possessive side.
I had always thought of myself and David as right together, but now I saw there was a sliding scale about these things. Maybe he and I had always been like two pieces from one of those ridiculously difficult jigsaw puzzles where the picture consists of nothing but autumn leaves. You keep selecting pieces that look as if they must match but when you try and jam them together you find they are slightly unaligned. They used to have those jigsaws in the nursing home where my mother had lived for the last few years of her life. I always thought they were made so difficult in order to take an elderly person long enough to die, and perhaps give them an incentive to do so.
There was no queue at the kiosk and David returned almost immediately. As Chloe wrapped her hands round her milky coffee, I saw that her nails were manicured and painted with translucent, pearly varnish. The hands of someone who doesn’t have kids, I thought. Yet.
‘It’s not very windy at least,’ I suggested.
Eagerly, they both agreed.
We managed ten minutes or so of careful conversation. Rees sat on David’s lap throughout. Betty refused to join in, in any way, swinging dangerously on her chair and shooting me sidelong glances that said, why are you making me do this? She was wearing a pink puffa jacket and jeans – jeans were the thing, these days, rather than the dresses and tights she had loved so much less than a year ago. Pink was still in, just about, although other mothers had already warned me that any day now she would extract every single pink item from her wardrobe and declare that pink was for babies. Every time she turned her head to me, her long fine hair whipped across her face. I had wanted her to have a ponytail that morning but she had refused. She didn’t acknowledge Chloe at all, which was uncharacteristically rude of her.
After a while, David checked his watch, rather clumsily I thought, and said, ‘Well, we’d better get going. It’s going to take us forty minutes.’
‘What are your plans?’ Chloe said to me.
I looked at her blankly. Plans? Then I realised, oh yes, I’ve got the afternoon to myself. I had not thought beyond this encounter. A variety of responses occurred to me. Well, as you pair of lying toads are taking off with my children maybe I’ll just walk into the sea and drown myself – or, perhaps – I have a toy boy who works at the chippy. I thought I might go and fuck him for a couple of hours.
I looked down the beach. Two elderly couples were wandering in the distance, a few dog walkers were out. A dog would come in handy at moments like these, I thought.
‘Go for a walk, probably,’ I said, lamely. ‘Get some exercise.’
We all rose from our chairs. As we did, a sudden gust blew up and our near-empty Styrofoam cups somersaulted off the table, scattering a few drops of liquid from each in their varying shades of brown. Chloe gave an awkward little laugh and grabbed at hers, then turned and ran a few steps down the beach in pursuit of mine.
While her back was turned, David gave me a steady, grateful look. I wondered if he had expected a scene.
&n
bsp; I was wrapping a scarf around a protesting Rees as Chloe returned to us. As soon as I had finished, tucking the ends into his jacket, he pulled it out and unwound it again. ‘He won’t wear a hat,’ I said.
‘Do they have to have helmets for rollerblading?’ Chloe asked David.
He shrugged.
‘Well, I’m not wearing one,’ mumbled Betty.
‘You’d better give them something to eat as soon as you get there,’ I said, carefully addressing this remark to David alone. ‘Low blood sugar. You’d better make sure they eat first.’
‘I’m sure there’ll be something,’ David said.
I bent and kissed my children. Betty leaned into me, no longer a sullen pre-teen but a shy, sad eight-year-old saying goodbye to her mother. ‘I don’t want to go,’ she mumbled into the folds of my coat, a catch in her voice.
I felt a rush of guilt and protectiveness towards her. Here was I, thinking only of my own drama, and here was she, the most important thing in all this, along with her brother. ‘It’s okay,’ I whispered gently, ‘I’ll be fine. You’ll have a good time. And I’ll be fine, I promise. Go on, now. Go on.’
‘Bye, Mum. Love you,’ she whispered.
‘Love you too.’
*
I watched the four of them walk off down the beach together, Rees holding his father’s hand, Betty slightly apart. I sat back down at the table for moment then decided I wasn’t in the mood for sitting on my own. There would be plenty of opportunity to do that at the weekends from now on, after all. I rose again, turned my face to the wind, to the wide curve of the bay, and set off down the shingle. Black seaweed was strewn across my path as I walked down to the sea, a brown, foaming grumble. The crunch of my boots on the pebbles was loud in my ears.
Whatever You Love Page 16
