Because of You

by Dawn French

  In 26A, Rosie is the only person who remains seated. She gazes calmly out of the window with her forehead tilted onto the glass. She has been sitting just like this for the best part of the journey, lost in thought. No, not lost. Found in thought. Thinking such a lot, working out how she feels about flying away from everything and everyone that she knows and starting an impetuous new adventure like this. She feels strangely calm, accepting. She has surely surrendered to her future, whatever it might bring. So why is she the only one still sitting, whilst the others have filed off the plane in an impatient orderly line, exiting past the very polite, well-rehearsed air stewardesses?

  ‘Thank you for flying British Airways.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Thank you for flying with us today.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Have a lovely day.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Goodbye.’

  ‘You’re welcome.’

  ‘Thank you for flying British Airways.’

  ‘Cheerio.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Yes, thank you, yes, get off, yes, go away, sod off, goodbye.’

  Why isn’t she moving?

  You know that tiny fragment of time, just exactly before the point of no return? The golden moment where you might … could … just maybe COULD change your mind, and reverse it all? Take it all back, say no, don’t jump, be safe, go home. That moment? That’s where Rosie is. Part of her wants to remain on the plane and let it bounce her back home on its return journey with all the new crew that will come aboard, fresh faced, fresh make-up, fresh hairdo, fresh smell. Spit spot. Bound for home. For home. For lovely familiar drizzly comfy old England. Where, even if she knows it’s wrong, at least she knows how to be. That’s where Rosie Kitto, thirty-eight, primary school teacher, is assuredly grown up, reliable and emotionally tuned in. This new Rosie Kitto seems to be running away like a ser iously immature selflsh twit. Very ungrown up.

  Who is she?

  Well, she is the person who, a couple of weeks ago, said no to all the even keel, and yes to grabbing life by the throat, yes to jumping off the edge, yes to what the hell’s it going to be like?, yes to being afraid. YES, YES, YES PLEASE!

  That’s right.

  So, get out of your seat, Rosie, this is New York … here goes … COME ON!!

  ‘Thank you for flying British Airways today, goodbye.’

  AN EXTRACT FROM

  ONE

  Ed

  Wednesday 10am

  He sits with a sense of being watched, although he himself is the watcher. Momentarily, the others have stepped outside so he is suddenly, shockingly, alone with her. It’s odd for there to be no voices. No sound, save those of two human beings just being alive. He becomes acutely aware that for the first time in a very long time, he feels irrefutably more alive than her. She’s always making sure you know she’s chock-full o’ life. She lives big and loud. Right to her fingertips. Her presently somewhat swollen fingertips. Look at them. Someone, perhaps a nurse, has tried to remove the coral-red varnish, but it is stubborn and has bled into her skin, revealing the nails beneath to be unbeautiful, nicotiney. Blotchy red fingers. Yellow nails.

  She wouldn’t like him to see such a personal thing, so he tries to stop looking … but of course he can’t. He is transfixed by the unusual sighting. He feels her watching, and although she isn’t and although he so wants to remain defiant, he looks away.

  So. Here they both are again. Alone. They haven’t been alone in a room for … well, since they were married. What’s that? About … God … What is it now? Five years? Something like that.

  There she is. Breathing.

  Here he is. Breathing.

  That’s it.

  Pretty much like it was at the end of the marriage, really. Two people occupying the same air. Nothing else in common. Just oxygen. He remembers when sharing breath with her was exciting, intimate. He would lie close to her in the night, happily breathing in what she breathed out. The breath of life, their joint breath from their joint life.

  This breathing now, though, is very different.

  He hears his own. It’s quick and halting. It fits with his heartbeat, which is anxiously fast and occasionally missing altogether, when he finds himself holding his breath whilst urgent frightening thoughts distract him.

  Her breathing is entirely unfamiliar. It’s regimented and deep. Her lungs are rhythmically resonating loudly around the room, chiming in with the bellow-like wheezing of the machine. She’s being breathed for, through a huge ugly tube in her throat.

  Because Silvia Shute, despite all the supposed life in her, is in a coma.

  AN EXTRACT FROM

  ONE

  Dora (17 YRS)

  My mother is, like, a totally confirmed A-list bloody cocking minging arsehole cretin cockhead of the highest order. Fact In fact, I, of this moment, officially declare my entire doubt of the fact that she is in fact my actual real mother. She can’t be. I can’t have come from that wonk. Nothing in any tiny atom of my entire body bears any likeness to an iota of any bit of her. It’s so, like, entirely unfair when people say we look alike because like, excuse me, but we properly DON’T thank you. And I should know. Because I look at her disgusting face 20/7 and excuse me, I do actually have a mirror thank you. Which I’ve looked in and so NOT seen her face, younger or otherwise, staring back at me. If I do ever see that hideousness, please drown me immediately in the nearest large collection of deep water. I would honestly be grateful for that act of random mercy.

  At 5.45pm today she had the actual nerve to inform me that I will not apparently be having my belly button pierced after all, until my eighteenth birthday. She knows I booked it for this Saturday. She knows Lottie is having hers done. It was going to be our like together forever thing. Fuck my mother and all who sail in her. I hate her. She’s fired.

  TWO

  Mo (49 YRS)

  All things considered, that went rather well. Big pat on own back, Mo. I am definitely getting better at not letting her appalling language upset me. No one likes to be referred to as an ‘evil slag’, or ‘hell whore’, let’s be honest, but I’ve suffered worse at the sharp end of her tongue, so ironically I’m grateful for these comparatively lesser lashings.

  I am reminded of the trusty old David Walsh mantra I often recommend to my clients, ‘When, in argument, you feel like taking the wind out of her sails, it is a better idea to take your sails out of her wind.’ It certainly was no breezy zephyr I felt battering my aft as I purposely walked away, it was a Force 10 brute, but I am broad in the beam and made of suitably sternish stuff. As yet, unscuppered. If lilting a tad.

  Yet again, no sign of Husband at the eye of the storm. He scuttled off to a safe port in the study to spend time with his ever-ready, ever-understanding lover, MAC. His endless muttered bleatings about female politics being a mystery are weak and wobbly to the point of jelly. Why does he constantly refuse to back me up at these critical moments? I have repeatedly explained the importance of consistency and continuity as far as the kids are concerned. We must present a united front. We should share my opinion at all times. I am, after all, the qualified child psychologist in this family. Other than fathering two children (total of six minutes’ commitment to the project), I’m not aware of his training. However, have to give it to him, he is certainly a supremely skilled slinker-off-er when voices are raised, no one can better his retreating technique. He certainly gets the gold in that backwards race. Oh yes.

  Then, he had the audacity to sit in Dora’s bedroom with her for an hour whilst she apparently ‘emptied out’ and explained to him that she feels she and I are enemies and have been for years. I am not her enemy, I am her mother. Sometimes it’s probably the same thing. It needs to be. I am not here to be her friend.

  What am I here for actually? To be a guide, a judge, an inquisitor maybe? At the moment I am purely transport, bank and occasional punch bag.

  E
verso recently, it would have been me sitting next to her on that bed getting a wet shoulder complete with smeared mascara splats.

  What a huge difference between fifteen and seventeen years of age. An entire personality flip has happened. Where has my sweet little goth gone? She of the smudgy eyes and red nylon dreadlocks and Tank Girl industrial boots and clamp-on nose-rings? It was so easy to love that one. That one was endearingly injured and tragic. Why have I been sent this Tango-skinned bleached-hair designer slave? I own a human Cindy. Her insufferable rudeness grows with every waking moment. And quite a few sleeping moments I suspect. I’m sure she doesn’t waste any dream time NOT hating me. Does hate have a cumulative effect? If so, Dora will be earning buckets of interest on her massive deposits of mum-hate. I just have to accept it, she loathes me.

  Today’s particular loathing is about refusing to let her have her belly button pierced. In this particular respect, I feel entirely vindicated. Was there ever an uglier mutilation? The very thought of it makes my unpierced and considerably larger stomach turn. Her choice of ‘parlour’ is that nasty dirty little dungeon opposite the carpet shop in the high street, ‘Pangbourne Ink’. Obviously I’ve never ventured in, but I know the sister of the troll who owns it and she had chronic impetigo last year, so if Dora thinks I am sanctioning such a dreadful thing and in such a dirty place, she can think again.

  Of course, soon she will be eighteen and if she chooses to maim herself then, she can pay for the privilege. I am not a medical doctor, but if something terrible were to happen to her belly button, an infection of some sort, wouldn’t that seal her umbilical tubes? How would any potential grandchild of mine get its nourishment? She is risking any future child-bearing possibilities. Is there no end to her selfishness?

  THREE

  Oscar (16 YRS)

  The suffering of the last hour has been unutterably awful. Both of the Battle harridans, the monstrous mater and the dreadful daughter, have been shrieking sufficiently enough to wake as yet undiscovered molluscs at the pit-bottom of the ocean’s silty depths. I have mastered the art of ear-fugging – the application of twisted curls of wet kitchen paper administered to the inner ears. One would imagine this would provide a merciful relief. Yet still, their damnable harpy squawking prevails.

  What unlovely wretches they prove themselves to be, abandoning all vestiges of class and style, allowing the vulgarity of their lower-middle-class shackles to triumph. How very very very disappointed I am in both of them. It is so extremely tiresome. I am exhausted from the disappointment. I must needs take to my bed. The confines of my room offer the succour and solitude I sorely need. Increasingly, I discover that the delights of the Nintendo III Dance Mat Challenge are my only worthy companion. There, at least, the red fires of my passion are sated. Farewell, dear diary, ’til anon.

  THIS IS JUST THE BEGINNING

  Find us online and join the conversation

  Follow us on Twitter twitter.com/penguinukbooks

  Like us on Facebook facebook.com/penguinbooks

  Share the love on Instagram instagram.com/penguinukbooks

  Watch our authors on YouTube youtube.com/penguinbooks

  Pin Penguin books to your Pinterest pinterest.com/penguinukbooks

  Listen to audiobook clips at soundcloud.com/penguin-books

  Find out more about the author and discover

  your next read at penguin.co.uk

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  UK | USA | Canada | Ireland | Australia

  New Zealand | India | South Africa

  Penguin Books is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.

  First published by Michael Joseph in 2020

  Copyright © Dawn French, 2020

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

  Cover illustration by Ryan McAmis

  ‘Catching of happiness’ taken from ‘Born Yesterday’, in The Complete Poems by Philip Larkin, is reprinted by permission of Faber and Faber Ltd

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  ISBN: 978-0-718-18424-7

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  About the Author

  By the Same Author

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Start

  Eighteen Years Later

  Back to the Start

  1 January 2000

  The Chance

  Gone

  The Journey Home

  Anna’s Pleas

  Isaac’s Big Decision

  The Press

  Isaac’s Second Decision

  Eighteen Years Later

  Back Then: Hope

  Minnie’s 1st Birthday: Isaac

  Florence’s 1st Birthday: Julius

  Florence’s 1st Birthday: Anna

  Minnie’s 1st Birthday: Hope

  Anna

  Minnie Grows Up

  Hope Decides

  Minnie’s World Changes

  Anna

  The Box

  Hope and Minnie: Mum and Daughter

  Anna: the News

  Julius: the News

  Back Home: Hope and Minnie

  The Morning After

  Hope and Minnie to the Hospital

  Nesting: Hope’s Flat

  1 January 2018

  The Meeting; the Mirrors

  The Trial, London

  Anna and Hope: April

  Minnie in Hospital

  The Birth

  Hope

  Minnie’s Heart: A Week Later

  Acknowledgements

  Read More

  Copyright