by Alex Brown
‘Self-sufficient?’ Chrissie’s voice rose an octave. Her cobalt eyes flashed as she quirked an eyebrow. And the uncertainty Sam had felt earlier vanished in an instance – he knew exactly what she was thinking now; her hackles were well and truly up. ‘Is that how it works then? I’m the self-sufficient one, just getting on with it all, while you’re the one who travels around the globe, having only yourself to think about? Like, what gourmet meal you’re going to choose from the restaurant in your luxury hotel-apartment complex, or what film you might enjoy as you kick back and relax on the super-king bed the maid has made for you? While, meanwhile, I look after our daughter – make sure she keeps on top of her diabetes, her homework, friendships, guitar lessons, gymnastics, packed lunches, school uniform, cake sales, netball matches, sleepovers … and all the rest of it.’ Sam watched as Chrissie counted off the list of tasks on her fingers. ‘And I make sure all the bills are paid, the house is kept running, the garden is tidy, the bins are emptied, the hedge is trimmed, the lane isn’t littered with leaves, the monthly parish magazine is paid for, the village charity collections are contributed to, the May Fair cakes are baked, the summer school show costume is made. Honestly, the list is endless! And I do it all. I keep everything going!’ Her voice cracked. ‘But who’s keeping me going?’
Sam immediately wished he could go back out to his car and start this all over again. This wasn’t what he’d had in mind at all. Of course, he knew that Chrissie was going to be hostile, that was her way … their fight pattern, if you like. Whenever they had fallen out in the past, had an argument, she would be super-cool with him afterwards, and as soon as he’d calmed down and invariably realised what an arse he was being, he’d apologise. They’d talk it out, do something nice for each other, and they’d make up. That was the way it was. His dad, Rob, had shown him long ago that it was best to back down and be the appeaser – ‘happy wife, happy life’; that’s what Rob had always said. Sam remembered it clearly – Dad invariably in the back garden, his favourite domain, snipping some roses to take into the house for his mum, Linda, even though she’d been scolding him only moments earlier for not having done something or another exactly the way she liked it. But Rob never seemed to hold a grudge and always let it wash over him. Maybe that was the key to happiness, Sam had surmised, but he wasn’t sure he managed it as well as his dad had. He and Chrissie had different ways of doing things – it wasn’t always possible to keep the peace and maintain a state of continuous calm.
But Sam had tried hard, always apologising, even if he felt he was in the right – Chrissie could be very black and white, not always able to see things from the other person’s perspective. So he’d pull Chrissie in close for a nice cuddle on the sofa, followed by making love as soon as Holly was asleep, and they would wedge the laundry basket behind their bedroom door so she couldn’t barge in unannounced, as had happened one time when she was about three years old. Thankfully, she had still been young enough for them to pass off Chrissie bobbing up and down astride him, naked, as ‘mummy dancing’. And they had giggled silently together like a pair of silly teenagers for ages over that afterwards, whenever Holly had asked to see ‘mummy dancing’ again.
Sam put the coffee mug on the kitchen counter and dropped his hands down by his sides, his heart sinking at the sadness of the current situation. He and Chrissie at loggerheads, no mummy dancing on the immediate horizon and their daughter upstairs bravely hiding her heartache. The feeling was quickly followed by an even greater determination to fix things.
‘Please, Chrissie, I don’t want to fight. Can we talk, properly? I’m back for goo—’
‘It’s too late for that,’ she said quickly, as if instantly throwing up a brick wall to protect herself. Sam wasn’t sure if she even really believed the words herself; it was as if she was saying them on autopilot, without conviction, just to keep him at a distance … or maybe that was just wishful thinking on his part. ‘Besides, now isn’t a good time …’ Chrissie’s eyes flicked to the watch on her left wrist.
‘But I’ve just got back. I thought we could try and have some time together …’
‘There have been plenty of opportunities for us to have some time together over the last year. But you didn’t take those chances, Sam.’
‘But I’d like to now … if you’ll let me?’ Sam tried.
They stood in silence momentarily, until Chrissie took a big breath, exhaled and then added, ‘I honestly don’t think there are any chances left.’ She fixed her gaze on the kitchen floor tiles.
‘Come on, Chris, that isn’t fair. You know as well as I do that this job was 24/7. I was doing it for us. It was what we agreed.’
There was sadness in Chrissie’s eyes now, as well as the anger, and her voice was more gentle as she spoke this time. ‘No, Sam, I never agreed not to see you for months and months on end, and that isn’t what you thought either. Why did you stay away so long? Why didn’t you come back months ago when you knew I’d taken as much as I could? I still don’t understand, and you gave me the impossible job of explaining it to Holly.’
Sam scraped his hands through his hair. Trying to find the right words. She was right; he knew that he was avoiding something, but he wasn’t sure he could even explain it to himself, let alone Chrissie.
‘Well?’ Her eyes were full of questions. Ones he couldn’t answer.
‘I don’t know.’ They stared at each other. ‘I just don’t know the answer, Chrissie, but I’m trying to work it out – I want to work it out, you know how much you and Holly mean to me, don’t you – how much I—’
But before he could tell Chrissie how much he loved her and Holly, how he desperately wanted to sort things out, she stepped towards him and placed the tips of her fingers over his mouth. ‘Don’t say it,’ she whispered. ‘Please. I can’t bear it. You need to go back to Dolly’s house now.’
Sam could feel the situation slipping away from him. He reached out to Chrissie but she gently pushed him away.
‘Please don’t send me away, Chris. You know how good we can be together,’ he said, the desperation in his voice impossible to hide.
‘I used to, Sam.’ More silence followed. ‘But now …’ She paused and briefly closed her eyes before carrying on, ‘I’m not so sure.’ Silence swung in the air between them like an enormous pendulum pushing them further and further apart. ‘It’s time to go,’ Chrissie continued. ‘Maybe you should take some time to really work out why you didn’t come home until now.’ She looked away. ‘Because I’m not sure about anything any more.’
As Chrissie followed Sam towards the front door, both of them turned on seeing Holly standing on the stairs. They looked at each other, united briefly in concern in case their daughter had overheard the conversation.
‘I don’t want Dad to go!’ Holly stated, her voice a mixture of petulance and fear.
‘Dad has to go now, Holly. You’ve got your homework to finish.’
‘But that’s not fair. Dad has just come back and I got hardly any time at all with him.’
‘Holly, will you please do as you’ve been asked?’ Chrissie said tightly, fiddling with the crystal drop necklace that he and Holly had chosen together for her fortieth birthday. At least she was still wearing it – that was something, Sam thought, resisting the urge to play peacemaker; he didn’t want to undermine Chrissie. He knew how much she hated that, trying to remember all the rules around bedtime or screen time; he’d always been useless at keeping on top of all the boundaries. But before either he or Chrissie could play their next move, Holly suddenly exploded.
‘Fine! But I HATE you!’ And then, after glaring at Chrissie, she shot back up the stairs to her bedroom, two at a time, and slammed the door, making the mini-chandelier hall light jangle precariously above them. Sam instinctively stepped towards the foot of the stairs and called after her.
‘Come back here and apologise, you mustn’t talk to Mum like that—’
‘Just leave her, Sam.’ Chrissie indicated with her
head after Holly, before turning to look him in the eye. ‘She doesn’t mean it … Besides, there’s been a lot of that lately. I’m hoping it’s just a phase and she’ll grow out of it.’
‘But she shouldn’t say stuff like that to you. Or slam doors.’
‘True.’ Chrissie lifted her left shoulder. ‘Maybe not. And having you around to tell her so every now and again might have been quite helpful, don’t you think?’
Sam knew that Chrissie had a point. He hadn’t been around to do his proper share of parenting. And, on top of everything else, this tension between her and Holly was another worrying development.
‘Look, I’m sorry but I really need to get on …’ Chrissie glanced at her watch.
‘Err … OK,’ Sam said, baffled by her distraction now. ‘But we really need to spend some proper time together – tomorrow, the day after, any time,’ he urged, keen to have a plan, however tentative …
‘Yes … we’ll sort something out,’ Chrissie said, quickly glancing at her watch again. Why does she keep doing that? And why does she look so edgy now? Sam followed her line of sight and saw her staring at the door.
And then a weird feeling shrouded him. He inhaled sharply. And then the proverbial penny dropped. He got it.
‘Are you expecting someone?’ he asked, turning to go. Chrissie nodded quickly, as if keen all of a sudden to get rid of him as swiftly as possible. She even darted around him to pull open the front door, standing by it to make it absolutely clear that his time was up. Sam went to leave and then something inside him – a feeling, a hunch in the pit of his stomach, he wasn’t sure, he couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but whatever it was made him stop, abruptly.
Of course! The perfume, the lipstick, the new hairdo.
‘Is it a bloke?’
Sam’s heart lurched as he stared at her, willing the pulse in the side of his neck to stop flicking like an overcharged piston. But it was all too much to take in.
His wife?
Another man?
‘Is that really any of your business?’ Chrissie’s face was hard to read, but Sam could feel a jumpy anger rising inside him, making his own face smart.
‘Are you seeing someone else?’ As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he hated how pathetic and whiny he sounded. He had to pull it back. Chrissie was never going to give him a second chance if he carried on like some kind of possessive teenage boy. But Sam often felt as if he was muddling through when it came to women and properly understanding them. His mother had always been the boss in their house when he’d been growing up, and sometimes unreasonably so. Yes, his dad had always been the peacemaker, but he had also pandered to her too, almost as if he was overly grateful to be her husband and would do whatever it took to keep her. As if he was punching above his weight. But Chrissie wasn’t like his mum at all.
‘I can’t believe you have the nerve to ask me that question,’ Chrissie said, clearly annoyed now too … but she hadn’t denied it.
Sam suddenly felt a strong urge to run, a feeling he always had when things were going badly. ‘Look, I’ve gotta go. But we really need to talk.’ He backed away before turning on his heel and setting off down the path towards his car.
Chrissie called something after him. But Sam couldn’t really hear any more. He had to get away. Suddenly, he felt like a teenage boy again, out of his depth, making it up as he went along, trying to get it right.
Sam reached his car and, after quickly diving in and pulling the door closed, he sat for a second before letting his emotions spill over. His heart was pounding with panic and anger and fear and sadness … Chrissie with another man. It didn’t bloody bear thinking about. He loved her. And he was almost certain that she still loved him.
Or maybe not.
Maybe she had moved on already.
After willing himself to get a grip, he managed to shove from his mind the thunderous thoughts of hunting the other man down and ripping his arms off. It could happen, the mood he was in now. But Sam wasn’t a violent man, never had been. So he clenched his jaw and drove away, heading back to the five-bar gate that led to the fields behind the station. He knew where he was there. It was his spot, ever since he’d been old enough to cycle to it as a kid.
As he sat there, he tried to figure out how things had gone so catastrophically wrong between him and Chrissie, but the answers wouldn’t come. He had thought things were bad before he came home, but he now realised … they were much, much worse than he could ever have imagined.
Chapter Four
Holly Morgan swept the bedroom curtain aside and looked out down to the path. She pressed her hand to the window, wishing she could bang on the glass or, better still, push the window wide open and shout out after Dad. Beg him to come back. But the window was double-glazed and locked, plus he was gone and inside his car before she had a chance to do anything. She thought about going after him, but it was pitch black outside in the lane and across the fields. And Mum would only go mental if she caught her sneaking out instead of doing her homework. She felt her eyes fill with tears as she whispered, ‘I still love you, Dad. And I know Mum does, deep down in her heart. She does, I’m sure of it – why else has she been really moody since you went away? Please come back and fix it. Tell Mum you love her, that you really do … and then we can all be happy.’
After lifting her headphones from her head and scrubbing her face dry with the paw of a big white teddy bear, Holly lay down on her bed and stared at the ceiling, counting the numerous luminous rainbow and unicorn stickers, as she came up with a plan. If her parents were going to behave like children, then it was going to be down to her to be the mature one, the sensible grown-up around here. She wasn’t a kid any more. She was a teenager. Thirteen years old, and that was practically an adult. She’d be able to drive a car in a few years’ time. So she was pretty sure she could navigate her parents’ marriage onto steadier ground.
Yes, her mind was made up. Holly leapt up off her bed and rummaged around in her desk drawer for a new pad. She had loads of half-used pads, mainly with stories in, she liked making up stories … usually about animals – she loved animals, or girls going on adventures to exotic, faraway places like the moon, or Hawaii, or even Antarctica. And sometimes she wrote magical, mythical stories about a magic unicorn called Lily. But this called for a brand-new pad. She retrieved a pen from her fluffy pencil case – a Finding Dory one with a big blue feather on the end – hmm, it was a bit babyish, but it would have to do under the circumstances, as there really was no time to waste.
It would be her birthday soon, and there was no way she was going to let it be ruined because they couldn’t all be together at Granny Dolly’s house like they always were every year. It was tradition. And it would be no fun at all if she was stuck at home with just Mum on her own, moaning about everything and bossing her around all the time like she had been ever since Dad first went away. And Mum had been in a bad mood ever since Dad had missed her forty-first birthday. And it wasn’t like Dad did it on purpose … not coming home like he had promised. He couldn’t help there being a last-minute emergency at work. Dad had explained it all, and he was so sorry, Holly could see for herself how upset he’d felt when she’d FaceTimed him. And also he had sent Mum the biggest bunch of flowers to make up for it. But Mum hadn’t been the same since. Holly had overheard her on the phone to Auntie Jude, saying, ‘he knew things were bad and he still didn’t come back, not even for my birthday. I feel so let down, yet again.’
Ever since it had all gone wrong with Dad, Mum had been a nightmare to live with, and she didn’t even try to remember Holly’s feelings before saying mean stuff to Dad and upsetting him. I bet that’s what she did just now. Ruined it all … And Mum should also remember who pays for everything. If it wasn’t for Dad, they’d have nothing, Holly surmised, glancing at the new iPhone in her hand, which Dad had sent her, and she absolutely loved. She had customised it with pink crystals. Then there was the computer on her desk, the TV/DVD player, iPad, lap
top, and all her lovely shoes lined up by the wall near her wardrobe that Mum had bought for her … using Dad’s money. Exactly.
Holly opened the pad.
Get Mum and Dad Back Together in Time for My Birthday.
On the fifth of June.
She wrote the words at the top of the second page (she never used the first page, not ever, because it just ruined the whole pad) underlined the date and flipped the feather against the side of her nose as she thought about what to write next. Yes! Good idea.
Granny Dolly and Aunty Jude. Holly wrote down their names and underlined them. They’re bound to help me. Dad is her grandson, after all. And Aunty Jude, not that she’s my real aunty, but she’s Mum’s best friend and was a bridesmaid at their wedding, so the last thing she will want is for them to split up properly. I know that for a fact as I heard Mum telling her on the phone about Dad coming home, but staying at Granny Dolly’s house instead of coming here, and Aunty Jude had said it was such a shame. Mum had the phone on hands-free in the kitchen cos she was making some jam and it had just reached the ‘crucial bit’, she had said, where she daren’t leave the saucepan unattended or it would boil over.
Holly numbered the lines one to ten down the left-hand side of the page, figuring if she could come up with ten things that she could do to get her parents back together in time for her birthday, then that would be a brilliant start.
Send Mum a bunch of flowers. BUT write on the card that they are from Dad!
Send Dad some flowers. BUT write on the card that they are from Mum!
Holly wasn’t sure about number two. Dad wasn’t really the ‘getting flowers delivered’ to him type of man. No, she had better come up with something else. Beer. Or brandy – Dad likes ‘three fingers full’, as Granny Dolly always says on special occasions when she pours from the decanter on the sideboard into a tumbler. But Holly knew that would be hard to get. Even if she tried the supermarket on the industrial estate, they were bound to see she was too young to buy alcohol. She tried really hard to think of more ideas. A bag of wine gums … hmm, not much of a present. Socks … boring. Phone case. A good leather one would cost a lot. And it had to look like it had come from Mum. But she wouldn’t buy Dad a new phone case after the way she just was with him.
