Tell Me Where You Are

by Moira Forsyth

  ‘And what about Susan, did you speak to Susan?’

  Frances’s heart jolted. What did he mean? Had he forgotten, in the shock of illness, what had happened? She looked at her mother, trying to catch her eye, but Grace was smoothing the bedcover and shaking her head.

  ‘Don’t worry about Susan,’ she told her husband.

  ‘Worry?’ He shifted his legs and moved his head from side to side. ‘Ach, hospitals,’ he muttered. ‘Bloody hard bed.’ Then he lay still and closed his eyes.

  ‘Jim?’

  He grunted a response but did not speak. Frances and Grace sat in silence, waiting, but the change in his breathing, the way his head sank onto the pillow, arms relaxed by his sides, told them he had fallen into a doze.

  ‘He’s not quite himself yet,’ Grace said.

  They went on sitting there, watchful beside the sleeping man. All at once the old fellow in the bed opposite sprang awake, raised his head, shouted Get tae fuck! and fell back grumbling and fidgeting and calling for the nurse. Frances caught sight of one going past the ward and got up to attract her attention.

  The nurse tucked the old man in again, more firmly this time, but he went on cursing and grumbling, so she pulled the curtains round his bed. ‘I’ll be back in a minute, Billy,’ she told him. ‘You lie still and dinna disturb other folk.’

  She raised her eyes at Frances and Grace as she went out. ‘Sorry about the language,’ she said.

  Frances looked at her father but he was asleep, unperturbed. Grace leaned across, whispering, ‘They must get all sorts in here. You feel sorry for the nurses.’

  As they sat waiting for Jim to wake again, listening to the muttered oaths from the curtained bed, Frances’s thoughts jumped to Kate. How were she and Alec getting on? She had an impulse of longing to be with them in her own house, then immediately felt guilty. She looked at her mother, who was watching her husband’s sleeping face with an expression Frances could not read. Not anxiety or sympathy, but something else. She is preparing herself for him dying, Frances decided. She thinks she may have to face that. Yet it did not seem her father had even brushed close to death. As a doctor arrived with the nurse, and disappeared behind the curtains of the bed opposite, the slight disturbance woke Jim and he opened his eyes. For a few seconds he was bewildered, but as soon as he saw Grace he knew who and where he was.

  ‘How are you, Dad?’ Frances put a hand on the bed to draw his attention.

  ‘I think they’ve given me something. Keep nodding off.’ He looked at Grace. ‘Your mother’s the one who has the cat naps usually. Not me.’

  ‘You need to sleep,’ Grace retorted. ‘Get some rest, till you’re a bit stronger.’

  Jim turned to Frances again. ‘What about the boys, where are they?’

  ‘They went to some concert in Glasgow. I’ve left messages on both their phones.’

  ‘No sense in worrying them anyway.’ Jim turned his head to look at Grace. ‘You don’t have to stay. No need.’

  ‘Well …’ Grace hesitated. ‘Maybe we’ll leave you in peace for now. Come back this evening.’

  ‘Aye. You do that.’ He was drifting again, his eyes drooping. Quietly, Frances and Gillian got up, replaced chairs and left the ward.

  ‘He’ll be fine, Mum,’ Frances said as they waited for the lift.

  ‘We’ve had a fright,’ Grace sighed, ‘but it could have been much worse.’

  It is much worse, Frances thought, you don’t know how much worse everything is. They stepped into the lift beside someone in a wheelchair with a nurse, and two other visitors. What could happen Frances wondered, as they descended in silence to the ground floor, so bad that my mother would not say it could be worse. Maybe this was it: a pregnant Kate.

  When they reached the car and she switched on her mobile phone, there were two messages, from Gillian and Jack. She spoke to her sons first; when she called Gillian the connection was poor with a lot of background noise.

  ‘I’m on the train,’ Gillian said. ‘People with mobiles are always saying that. I get in at five something, so will you meet me? How’s Dad?’

  ‘Out of intensive care. Sleepy, but all right.’

  ‘Thank goodness, what a relief for Mum. Five fifteen, Ok?’

  Before Frances could reply the connection broke up and Gillian vanished.

  As she drove her mother home, Frances decided not to say anything about Kate yet. It was too complicated and her mother had enough to worry about. I wish I had my old ordinary life back, she thought. But she did not wish Kate away, even a pregnant Kate. Not that.

  8

  ‘What’s happening about Kate?’

  Their mother had gone to bed exhausted, while Frances and Gillian remained downstairs, having a drink together. Frances would have liked to go to bed too, but Gillian was restless and wanting to talk. They had finished discussing their father. What more could they do except put aside for now their fear that he might die? It looked as if that wasn’t going to happen. In the house his presence was still powerful though he was out of it: they saw his jacket hanging in the hall, his business room with the chair pushed back from the desk just as he had left it, papers spread out, a pen laid on top, his diary on the top right hand corner. On top of the bookcase were his golfing trophies and a framed photograph of a rural museum he had designed many years ago.

  In the living-room there was more of their mother, less of him. Her plants crowded the windowsill and she had assembled family photographs in pretty frames on the sideboard. Her tapestry bag leaned against her chair and her glasses lay on the table with the lamp. These things, this house, made Gillian restless.

  Frances was taking too long to answer.

  ‘Has anything happened?’ Gillian demanded.

  ‘I can’t remember when we last spoke about it,’ Frances said. ‘I told you about Alec. Andrew’s back on Saturday so I’ll have to tell him then.’

  Gillian flung herself back in the armchair. ‘She’s still pregnant, isn’t she?’

  ‘It was too late for anything else,’ Frances protested. ‘Anyway, she didn’t want – ’

  ‘I don’t believe this. You’re actually letting her have a baby at fifteen?’

  ‘It’s not a question of letting her. By the time we’d seen the doctor, she was twenty weeks.’

  ‘Twenty!’

  ‘I can’t imagine what you’re so worked up about,’ Frances snapped. ‘It’s not as if it’s going to make a blind bit of difference to your life.’

  ‘Of course it will!’

  ‘You’re not the one who’ll have to support her while she goes through all this. Organise childminding and help Kate get into college. Have a house full of nappies and all the paraphernalia babies bring with them.’

  And then, of course, Frances realised just what she had said. Gillian did not give her time for apology or retraction.

  ‘How can you be so fucking insensitive?’ she wailed, springing up from her chair, compelled to move but having nowhere to go except up and down the living-room, kicking a footstool out of the way.

  ‘Sit down. Don’t get so – I’m sorry.’

  Gillian sank into her chair. ‘She’s got a mother, hasn’t she? And a step-father. I don’t see why you have to make some sort of martyr of yourself.’

  ‘I am really sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.’

  ‘I asked for it, didn’t I? Set myself up for this.’

  ‘You didn’t want to have a baby. Did you?’ Frances’s heart sank. ‘You’re not regretting it?’

  ‘No.’ Gillian shrugged. ‘Och, whatever. It has quite an effect on your hormones. I’m touchy, emotional. I wish somebody had warned me, that’s all.’

  ‘There’s no good solution, is there?’

  ‘It doesn’t seem like it. At least I’m grown up, I’ve got a job, a life. Kate’s not done anything yet.’

  ‘If it’s any comfort, I feel absolutely terrible,’ Frances admitted. ‘But an abortion at twenty weeks – well, twenty two at least, by t
he time it happened – that would be awful, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Was it bad?’ Frances wasn’t sure she should ask this when Gillian was so volatile, but the words were out, in a tone as gentle as she could manage.

  Gillian’s eyes filled with tears. ‘It was foul.’ She looked round for her bag to find a paper tissue, but Frances reached hers first.

  ‘Here.’

  ‘I’m pathetic. I was fine you know, I was over it. I coped very well. All this with Kate – I suppose it’s upset me.’

  Frances waited while Gillian blew her nose and recovered.

  ‘You’re right, of course, about Kate having a mother. And a father of sorts. But who knows when Susan’s going to reappear.’

  ‘How did Alec react?’

  ‘Shocked. It’s quite a good thing I’ve left them together, since he’s going to have to come to terms with it. He wants to help, somewhat to my surprise.’

  ‘It seems weird to me,’ Gillian remarked as she poured them both another drink, ‘that you and Alec are fussing round the girl as if she’s your daughter and she doesn’t belong to either of you.’

  Maybe she’s not our daughter, Frances thought, but she does belong. Not to us – there isn’t an us – but we both love her. She flushed, as if Gillian might read these thoughts and sense how much they moved her.

  ‘Anyway,’ Gillian went on, more calmly, ‘Alec said Susan was all right, she came back for clothes and stuff.’

  ‘That doesn’t mean she’s all right.’

  ‘Are you sure Alec doesn’t know more than he’s telling? Look at his life. He’s got no job, no business any more, his wife’s mysteriously vanished, and now Kate. You’d think it would be hell.’

  ‘I don’t know, I can’t see him straight. I dare say I’m too hard on him. The past gets in the way.’

  ‘Every time I see him he’s anxious, sure, but not what you’d call devastated. Not even at Christmas, when no-one knew what had happened and she could have been in the – what’s the river – the Tyne?’

  ‘He wasn’t worried because she’d done it before. Gone off, come back,’ Frances protested. She was suddenly uneasy.

  ‘So has he got desperate now, after all these months have passed and she hasn’t come home?’

  Frances thought of Alec saying he would sell the house, move. I have waited, quite a long time. ‘Not desperate, no,’ she said.

  ‘Well then.’

  ‘Alec gives up easily, he always did. Line of least resistance. That’s his strong point, you could say.’ Frances was thinking about what Gillian had said. ‘If he did have some idea of where she’s gone he would tell Kate. He wouldn’t keep her in this awful limbo.’

  ‘Maybe he thinks she’s better off without her mother. Or maybe he doesn’t want to tell her Susan’s never coming back.’

  ‘He doesn’t know if she will.’

  ‘I think he does know.’

  Frances whitened. ‘You’re imagining things.’

  Gillian did not answer, just raised her hands, palms upwards, and for a moment they looked at each other in dismay as Susan hovered between them like a ghost they both longed and feared to materialise.

  Alec and Kate were in Frances’s kitchen and she was making hot chocolate. He had cooked a risotto for them both earlier in the evening and Kate, who had now wakened three mornings in a row without nausea, had eaten more than he had.

  ‘I think I’ll have toast,’ she announced. ‘Do you want some?’

  ‘No thanks.’ He smiled. ‘Glad to see you’re eating for two.’

  She made a face at him. ‘Shut up, I’m hungry. ‘I’ve been throwing up for weeks, I’ve hardly eaten anything. I need to catch up.’ She put two slices of bread in the toaster.

  Alec sat down with his coffee, watching her as she stirred her hot chocolate then rummaged in the cupboard till she found a packet of marshmallows. She dropped two on top of the chocolate.

  ‘That looks disgusting. How can you drink it?’

  ‘Easily.’

  As she buttered her toast he said, ‘Well, this is a fine mess you’ve landed us in.’

  ‘Stop saying that, it’s boring.’ She began eating toast and poking at the marshmallows with a spoon as they melted slowly.

  Left to themselves they had fallen into their old relationship with its accustomed banter.

  ‘Right then,’ Alec said, ‘what’s Plan A?’

  He had forgotten, suggesting his Plans A and B to Frances, it was not something that went back to his marriage to her. It was what he and Kate did, dealing with Susan, or the absence of Susan. When she was younger it was his device for giving her the illusion they had some control and something could be done. Sometimes it could but not for Susan, only themselves.

  ‘I dunno,’ Kate said, her mouth full. ‘Haven’t got any plans.’

  ‘That seems to be the trouble.’

  ‘Frances has got plans,’ she admitted. ‘She’s got enough plans for everybody in the world.’

  ‘Do you want to come home?’

  Kate looked surprised. ‘To St James’s Street?’

  ‘Well, yes.’

  ‘Mum’s not there, is she?’

  ‘You know she’s not.’

  ‘Where is she then? Tell me where she is.’

  Wearily, Alec rubbed his hands over his face. ‘Don’t, Kate.’

  This was the black side of their easy sparring. He went down into silence, not answering her, however hard she pushed. Whatever he said, she would not believe him.

  ‘You shouldn’t have had that row with her.’ She had stopped eating, but went on stirring the remnants of marshmallow around in the bottom of her mug. He did not say ‘what row’, because there was no point. He did not say anything. After a moment, Kate said brightly, ‘You know what? Frances gives me a straight answer when I ask her anything.’

  ‘A straight answer about what?’

  ‘Whatever I ask.’

  ‘Is that right. So what are you asking me?’

  ‘You know. Tell me where she is.’

  He cast his eyes up to the ceiling. ‘Tell us where you are,’ he murmured, ‘for Christ’s sake.’

  ‘Don’t!’ Kate scraped her chair back. ‘Shut up.’

  ‘Sorry.’ He finished his coffee. ‘Drink your cocoa or whatever that disgusting mess is. I can’t tell you anything, you know that.’

  Kate folded her arms. ‘Plan A is Mum coming back and being Ok.’

  He nodded, miserable. That was always Plan A.

  ‘And Plan B, I stay here.’ She glared at him. ‘I’ve got lots of friends here. You can’t move me about like a parcel, you know.’

  ‘I do know. You must stay wherever you’re happiest.’

  ‘So what are you going to do?’

  ‘I might move up here to be nearer to you.’

  ‘But what if Mum came home? Then she wouldn’t know where we were. Would you leave her a note or something?’

  ‘She could ring your mobile.’

  ‘Oh right. She could ring it now, according to you, except she hasn’t.’

  ‘I was thinking of a more permanent move. I could sell the house and buy one here.’

  ‘But then she’d come back and somebody else would be living in her house! She’d totally freak. That’s not fair, you can’t do that.’

  ‘No,’ he said, helpless, ‘it doesn’t look like it.’

  ‘So,’ she went on, having gained this point, ‘she comes back, we’re not there, I mean, not even our clothes, and she rings my mobile, though she’s obviously lost the number, so I don’t see how she can, but anyhow, she’d say, tell me where you are, and I’d say, Auntie Frances’s house.’ She stopped, putting her head on one side, as if she had just proved something and was waiting for him to catch up and understand.

  He had had enough of this fantasy. ‘Her clothes aren’t there either.’

  Kate looked blank. ‘What did you do with them?’

  ‘Nothing. She came back and c
leared out the wardrobe one day while I was at the restaurant.’

  Kate went white. ‘When?’

  ‘Before Easter. I told Frances and she thought it was best not to say anything. So maybe she doesn’t always give you a straight answer.’

  He was sorry he had said that. It was petty.

  Kate was struggling with this new, appalling information. ‘Mum came home and you never told me?’

  ‘I thought, well, we both thought – ’

  ‘We?’

  ‘Frances and me.’

  ‘It’s Mum you’re married to, not Frances.’ She was hot with fury and terror. ‘Where is she then, where did she go after she came home?’

  ‘I can’t tell you. I never saw her.’

  Kate stumbled to her feet. ‘It’s not fair, why can’t she just come home and be ordinary?’

  Alec reached out a hand to her then let it drop. ‘I don’t know Kate, honestly. She can’t help the way she is, can she?’

  Kate was standing very still. Slowly, she put both hands low on her stomach, and waited. She had moved away from him, from their argument, from the world they were in. Abstracted, her eyes wide, she waited. Then with a cry, she let her hands fly to the back of a chair, gripping it to steady herself.

  ‘I felt something,’ she gasped. ‘I felt this weird little – flick. Oh God.’ Mesmerised, she put her hands over her belly again, and whispered, ‘there’s really something there.’

  In an instant, they baby had invaded both of them like an incubus, from which there was no escape.

  9

  Frances had been away for two days and when she came back, Alec seemed to have moved in. He had few possessions and was not obtrusive, but he had familiarised himself with the kitchen and there were new, foreign cooking smells. The wine rack, which often had as many bottles of beer and Irn Bru as of wine, had been replenished, and there was something different about the way dishes had been replaced on their shelves.

  Kate looked different too. It surely wasn’t possible that in two days the pregnancy had become obvious but that was what Frances saw. Could Kate go back to school now? It was Friday evening and there was no possibility of doing anything until Monday, when Frances herself would be in her own school for an in-service day. She told Kate she would call the Academy and arrange to see her Guidance teacher.