The Family Gift

by Cathy Kelly

  ‘Liam, it’s lovely. You worked so hard on it,’ I say, remembering to praise the work rather than tell him he is one of the most wonderful human beings on the planet, which is what I want to do. Psychologists keep telling modern parents that praising kids to the skies merely makes them think they are celestially brilliant beings and they don’t know how to be normal or actually get a job later, so you have to say: you worked so hard, darling.

  The rules about being a parent and raising normal kids are worse than the rules of the road and it took me two goes to pass my driving test.

  I hug him, because well, he is fabulous and then Angela appears.

  ‘Hello, Freya,’ she says in a perfectly normal voice and I sigh that sigh of instinctively knowing everything is all right.

  ‘Everyone’s fed,’ she goes on. The kitchen looks tidy and there’s a pot of tea waiting on top of the stove. ‘Sorry I missed your call. I texted you back,’ she said. ‘But I knew you wouldn’t pick it up in the car.’

  ‘The traffic was mental,’ I say, delirious to be home.

  I think I’m going to cry again, seeing the children, and lovely Angela with her warm open face, dark hair tied back loosely. Angela has reared her own children already, although, as she says herself, she did have her first ones when she was very young.

  ‘Married at eighteen,’ she says wryly. ‘It was either that or a shotgun. My father was old school and determined I was going to be married since I had a baby on the way.’

  For a brief minute, I think of Dan and Elisa, stupidly married for the same reason. How had he even liked her, never mind fancied her . . .?

  I realise that Angela’s talking to me.

  ‘. . . and Dan rang to say he’s going to be a little bit late and I know you had some fish in the fridge, but I went ahead and gave the children shepherd’s pie for dinner because they’re tricky with fish.’

  Once they all ate everything – now, mealtimes are a battleground of ‘I hate this!’ or ‘I told you last week, I don’t like this anymore.’

  ‘Where’s Lexi?’ I say.

  ‘Gone upstairs to her room with her phone,’ Angela says. ‘She’s been stuck on it all afternoon, even though I only allow her to have it for half an hour after she has done her homework.’

  ‘It’s a long-running battle,’ I say lightly, knowing exactly what she’s looking up. ‘They’ll probably have phones implanted in their heads by the time they’re in their twenties.’

  After hugging Liam and admiring his pictures some more, I put Teddy down and run upstairs to pull on some sweats and find Lexi. Anglea will be going in five minutes, I want to be ready to take over properly.

  Lexi’s door is locked and I knock on it, as per the most recent instructions.

  ‘Yeah,’ she shouts.

  ‘It’s Mum,’ I say.

  ‘Come in, come in.’ She’s sitting on the bed and I see she’s wearing some of the make-up she got last Christmas. She begged and begged, so I said, ‘All right, but only on special occasions.’

  Somehow, and I don’t know how, she’s managed to turn a couple of pastel colours into something much heavier; did she add water? I’ve had my photograph done professionally enough times to know that you can do anything with the right tools, the right sort of application, but how did Lexi learn how to do this?

  ‘Mum,’ she said. ‘You’re not going to believe this, sit down.’

  I sit down. I won’t mention the make-up now, I decide; maybe at the weekend we’ll have a talk about it. I think how I can bring it up and explain that she’s got to stay young, because racing to grow up isn’t as much fun as you think and . . .

  ‘Elisa is all over the internet,’ she says dramatically. ‘It’s so exciting. There is going to be a big launch next week for the Surella brand and she’s going to be here. I can’t wait. Her Instagram shots – look at them, look, look, look.’

  I lean over, feeling sick.

  Elisa’s Instagram feed, which I admit to following myself, just to see what she’s up to, is normally wall-to-wall pouting selfies with her by pools, sipping cocktails and gazing at the world through mirrored aviator sunglasses. Sometimes she’s pictured ‘out with the girls’, a gaggle of women who seem to want to show the world how much cleavage you can get if you use one of those push-up bras or have had surgery performed by surgeons for whom no cup-size increase is too big.

  None of the ‘girls’ appear to have any actual jobs, from all the pool-and-party shots I see.

  But today’s uploaded post is different, the amateur selfies replaced with professional-looking shots of her advertising Surella.

  Elisa still looks like her spoilt brattish self (my opinion) and the 747 nose is still huge (also, clearly my opinion) but there is professionalism behind them. Lancôme it ain’t, but she’s clearly promoting a brand and they have proper shots of her.

  ‘Mum, I WhatsApped her, and she replied,’ said Lexi with the breathlessness of pure joy.

  This cannot be happening. Not now. It’s too soon.

  ‘She replied?’ I say, attempting to get normality into my voice.

  Elisa rarely replies when Dan – with me watching over his shoulder like an angry parrot – contacts her before Christmas to see if she will be joining us and her mother to meet Lexi.

  If she does deign to tap her gel nails over the phone keys, it’s generally ‘No, in Dubai, but Happy Christmas! Love, love, kiss, kiss.’

  The sort of thing you’d say to any fan and not to a person she used to be married to, with whom she bore a child.

  Still incandescent with joy, Lexi shows me the message.

  Love to see you soon, hun, kiss, kiss, love, love. I’ll talk to Dad.

  My heart sinks. Dad. Dad as in Dan, as in bloody Elisa has a plan to talk to Dan about seeing my Lexi. Suddenly I wish I had that photographer there again, so I could hit him very hard with his bloody camera. Someone needs to take some of this anger.

  ‘Isn’t it wonderful, Mum?’ said Lexi.

  I hug her in close to me and do my best to keep the mingled fear and anger flattened down. I’m her mother: I can’t let her know how I really feel.

  ‘Yes darling, wonderful. You’ll hear all about the new make-up now. So tell me, sweetie, how was your day at school?’

  Dan arrives home just before seven, by which time Lexi is watching an animated Japanese show on the television, Liam is drawing, and Teddy is bathed and is sitting in bed, talking to her cuddlies and awaiting a story from Daddy.

  She likes a story every night. But she has a sort of I’m not sure who I’ll choose tonight thing going, so that generally the person she chooses is the person who isn’t there. Tonight I am not suitable for storytelling duties, even though it’s now late and she needs to get to sleep.

  Although I have been keeping an I am a normal mother routine going for the evening, I have been on 440 centigrade. Truly, no lamb shank would survive that heat. Every time I’m on my own, I catch myself having mental conversations with Elisa.

  Why don’t you just leave her alone? You’ve left her alone for a long time and now you are getting your mother to try and see her, and you want to see her and what is this all about? Do you have any idea the damage you could do with picking her up and then just dropping her?

  Worse, I begin to think about life if Elisa is in our lives.

  ‘Hello, all,’ says Dan as he comes in, slamming the door behind him. He can tell there’s something wrong as soon as he sees me. Because normally I hug him and we have a little kiss and I say, ‘How was your day, big man?’ and he says, ‘Ah, pretty good. How was your day, baby?’

  It’s a joke going back to our early days when we were first living together. I’d had a very 1950s-style apron I’d put on for cooking and one day he said I looked like an adorable 1950s housewife with my blonde hair all looped up on top of my head (I wasn’t plaiting it the
n) and that pinny.

  ‘That’s me,’ I used to say, ‘I’m just a cute 1950s housewife, waiting for her big strong man to come home.’

  Today there is no ‘big man’ pleasantry as he leans close.

  I hiss: ‘Bloody Elisa has been in touch with Lexi and she wants to see her. What’s more, she’s going to be in Ireland and, and—’

  ‘Daddy,’ shouts Lexi, swinging into the room and launching herself at him.

  ‘Hello, darling,’ he says, hugging her and giving me a slightly anguished/slightly guilty gaze. At that point I realise that Elisa has already been in touch with him. I don’t know how I know. But I know. It’s not so much female intuition as some sort of female Sherlock Holmes-iness that all women possess. If humans lost their sixth sense somewhere along the way, there is still an ability in most women to detect when their husbands have something they want to hide.

  Maura says she has worked very hard on honing this ability. To be frank, I don’t see why, because Pip wouldn’t dream of hiding anything from her. Scarlett and Jack are so much in tune that they are almost the one person; there is no need for any intuitive lying or a session with a polygraph machine for them.

  And as for Con – Con is never with a woman long enough to need to know if she’s lying or not. He’s the one who lies.

  I rarely use my detective abilities, as Dan’s a hopeless liar.

  But then I used to consider myself a hopeless liar too and now look at me: lying about going to a group therapy session for my mugging.

  ‘I have so much to tell you, Dad,’ says Lexi excitedly.

  ‘Yeah,’ I say with a hint of saccharine, which leaks out. ‘Lots, and Dad has things to tell us too and I’m sure of it!’

  ‘Ah no, nothing, just the normal day at work,’ he says, looking a bit green about the gills.

  It seemed to take ages to get Liam and Lexi to bed. Dan was definitely delaying the moment. Liam wanted to watch his favourite programme where people fall over stuff and the camera catches them and it is, I have to admit, absolutely hysterical. I have a juvenile sense of humour somewhere, except when it comes to small children: that’s the bit I don’t understand. Your very small child is about to face-plant themselves on the ground and what do you do? Rescue them? No, you reach for your camera. I can’t look at the small children being hurt. But some of the other stuff, like holidaymakers thinking it was wise to kiss a camel, cracks me up every time.

  ‘OK,’ I say. ‘Liam, bed.’

  Liam goes to bed, a full twenty minutes before Lexi. She’s insisted upon that twenty minutes for quite a while and it’s vitally important.

  ‘I mean, I’m fourteen now, Mum,’ she says every time I mention bed as if being fourteen is on a par with being forty-five and she should have her own credit card, electric car and apartment.

  ‘I know,’ I agree gravely. ‘You are fourteen, but teenagers still need a lot of sleep.’

  She loves being called a teenager. I remember I loved being called a teenager too. It spoke of being nearly grown-up and boyfriends. Mind you, I was hopeless with boyfriends.

  I was taller than almost all of them. Boys do not like this, it turns out. My nicknames in school were Big Bird or Skyscraper.

  How I longed to be one of the tiny girls who fitted neatly into the school uniform, the utter picture of femininity. Scarlett was tall too, but not as tall and the boys swarmed around her. Sex appeal, you see.

  As for me, the only boy who came close to dating me was the captain of the football team (a major coup) and he and I had absolutely zero in common apart from height. Nevertheless we ended up together at a school disco on one memorable occasion. Even now, many, many years later, this date makes me shudder with horrified embarrassment. There was a bit of hands wrapping around each other and we tried to figure out where to put our mouths for the kissing. He had a big nose which got in the way. There were no explanations for that sort of thing in any of the romantic books I read. People just kissed – nobody ever mentioned anything about where you put your nose. Myself and Football Dude attempted a sort of sideways attack on each other’s faces and there was some sticking in of tongues. Yuck.

  But I was not to be deterred. I had a boyfriend, sort of. I could do this.

  Except for the tongue thing. Seriously gross. I was waiting for the chorus of joyous angels and pure happiness flittering down from on high and it felt as if he was trying to examine how many fillings I had.

  Finally, he spoke.

  ‘D’ya want to go into a corner and shift?’ As he uttered these romantic words, he was trying to get his hand up under my shirt. The embryonic magical spell, such as it was, was broken.

  ‘Shift?’ I asked, stupidly.

  In those far distant days to shift meant to kiss the face off another human being. Think octopuses pressed against tanks with those suckers glued to the glass.

  ‘Uh . . . I’m going to the ladies,’ I muttered, and ran.

  And that was it.

  Rumours circulated that Big Bird couldn’t kiss. Oh yes, and that I was frigid, still a popular stick for beating girls with.

  Being a teenager was not all it was cut out to be, not for me.

  I’m lost in this weird reverie of teenagerdom when Dan’s voice breaks into my musings.

  ‘OK honey, you can stay up a little bit later.’

  My head swivels, sort of like that kid in The Exorcist.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I was just saying that Lexi could stay up a little bit later,’ he says, giving me his oh my God, I’m really in for it, aren’t I? look.

  ‘Maybe not tonight,’ I say, getting my careful Mummy voice out of its tissue-paper wrapping.

  ‘But Dad said I could,’ Lexi interrupts.

  ‘Dad forgot you have an . . . um, French test tomorrow,’ I said, delving deep into my brain and coming up with the facts. There’s always an exam looming in secondary school. ‘You need a good sleep.’

  ‘Oh gosh, yes!’ she says.

  It takes another fifteen minutes before she’s showered and settled in bed with her bedside lamp on and reading. For the first time, she’s got the beginnings of a few spots, I notice with a pang. Spots are so horrible and they are part and parcel of the whole teenage hormone thing.

  Tomorrow, I vow, I’m going to get her some really good skin products that are good for both young skin and acne.

  Lexi looks at me dreamily.

  ‘Mum,’ she says, ‘I feel so happy.’

  I sit down on the side of her bed. I normally love these special times with Lexi, talking to her, trying to help her negotiate life, subtly give her the tools to move on . . .

  ‘Elisa WhatsApped me! I mean wait till I tell everyone in school, they won’t believe it. I bet she gets loads of Surella products. They’re really, really cool.’

  The happy mum bubble inside me bursts, like an acid rain cloud.

  She is still on Planet Elisa and it hurts so much. Even our special time in bed is tainted with it.

  ‘That’s wonderful, darling,’ I manage to say. Just because I’m jealous and enraged doesn’t mean Lexi needs to know this. ‘You think about it now and we’ll talk more tomorrow, because I think Elisa talked to Dad.’

  ‘Yeah,’ she said happily, putting her book down on the bed. ‘Maybe she could come over here and see us. She’d love the house. She’s always saying she loves big fancy houses and we could do it up, right?’ Lexi looks at me with those big, beautiful dark eyes that are just like Dan’s.

  Perhaps they don’t come from anywhere: perhaps they’re just Lexi.

  I hug her tightly, more tightly than usual.

  ‘Mum, you’re squishing me.’

  ‘Sorry,’ I say, ‘the Mum squish – it’s a new type of hug.’

  She giggles.

  ‘’K.’

  ‘I’ll be up in fifteen minutes t
o turn out the light, OK?’

  ‘’K,’ she says again, giving me a little wave. But she doesn’t pick up her book again as I leave the room and she lies there in the bed, propped up by her pillows, surrounded by the threadbare teddies she still loves and hasn’t got rid of over the years. She’s not thinking about her book, she’s thinking about Elisa: I can almost see the thought bubble over her head.

  I turn and go downstairs thinking, could I get away with killing Dan and do what the French do and say, ‘it was a crime of passion, m’Lud’ when I got to court? Would it have been such a big deal for him to warn me what was coming?

  Finally I shut the kitchen door where he’s sitting down finishing the last of his dinner, having been interrupted several times by Teddy wheedling for ‘One more leetle story’, and having to be tucked back into bed again.

  ‘So, what happened?’ I say.

  Happy Mummy has gone, to be replaced by Very Angry Freya.

  ‘Elisa sent me a WhatsApp.’

  ‘A WhatsApp,’ I said incredulously. ‘Is that the only form of communication these days? Do people not phone or do sensible things like leave a message for you along the lines of: ‘I’m in Ireland and I would like to see the child I gave birth to, the child I never set eyes on anymore. Do you think we could arrange this? Or should I just randomly WhatsApp this kid and confuse the hell out of her?’

  ‘Freya, we’re not going to get anywhere if you’re going to be like that,’ he says. ‘This is difficult, you know that.’

  ‘Difficult?’ I shriek, and then somehow, I think of my mother.

  ‘You’re not just a second wife, you’re enmeshed with his former wife’s family because of Lexi. Yes, she is now your child, darling,’ she said when Dan and I got engaged. ‘But it is not as simple as if you had given birth to her yourself. Bitterness and jealousy will not help your forthcoming marriage or little Lexi,’ she said. I paid attention.

  My own mother, who repurposes her clothes from things she finds in charity shops and who is now caring for one disabled and two challenging elderly people, and still has a smile for everyone, is such a font of wisdom and kindness.