A Different Kind of Happy

by Rachaele Hambleton

  No, Molly wasn’t a slag or a slut; she wasn’t a sket (whatever that is) or the ‘c’ word. She was a beautiful teenage girl whose father was absent and whose mother had never taken the time to educate her on self-worth, safe sex or choosing your friendship groups more carefully. She was desperate to be part of a family and be loved.

  When she left, I told Belle I had concerns over Molly. I didn’t tell her why; I just said, ‘Be her friend, always and if you can, make her a part of our family.’ Thanks Pat, once again, for passing down your knowledge and guiding me through the universe without even knowing that that’s what you’re doing.

  Tuesday

  Pat and I took the kids out after school today. And the dogs. Why the fuck I thought taking Stanley out with five kids and another (perfectly well-behaved) dog was a good idea is beyond me. Every time I’m bordering on desperation with this bloody puppy, I re-google ‘Labrador dog help’ and I see it flash up that they are ‘easy to train’. I can’t work out if I am just an incapable dog trainer or if I ended up with the only Labrador puppy that cannot be trained.

  When Jamie comes on the walks, he says it’s me that’s the issue – not the dog. He mutters things like ‘Do NOT start being neurotic’ when he sees me spot a dog in the distance and reach for Stanley’s lead. I wonder if it is partly me – panicking about how he will behave and worrying about other dog owner’s reactions so that I end up making him worse. Probably. Probably not. I don’t even know. Either way right now it’s utterly painful – but the kids are still as obsessed as ever and seeing the way they constantly throw him balls, chase him round, or lay with him on the rug in front of the TV when he finally crashes and burns, makes my heart happy.

  Jamie sent a message to Laura today. We spoke about it first and I said I thought it was a good idea because it may help her see we’re not her enemies, plus Will and Ruby are her children and hopefully by hearing about them it may keep her focused to get well.

  He sent a picture of them together from the garden last weekend. They’re beautiful children, they have Jamie’s olive skin and both have dark hair – Will’s is coarse and thick making it easy to style and Ruby has a real curl in hers that bounces up tight and short when her hair has just been washed. He wrote alongside the picture that both kids are well, happy, doing OK at school and they’re both missing their mum; he then ended it by saying he hopes she is OK and gets well soon. Weirdly the kids haven’t mentioned her, which I find odd, but their days are busy and Jamie is hands on so I think they’ve just adjusted – we regularly tell them Mummy loves them and misses them, just so they know it’s OK to say it too and they don’t pick up on any bad feeling.

  Truth is, Laura makes my head tick so often; she makes me wonder about my biological mum more than I ever have before. When my adoptive mum was alive, I rarely thought about my bio-mum. My mum always just told me that my biological mum was too unwell to keep us and she couldn’t put our needs above her own. And I suppose since I’ve ended up taking Will and Ruby on full-time, it’s made me question how some mothers struggle to care for their children even more.

  I feel annoyed that these things that are happening to us now make me think about things that for the past thirty years haven’t ever really been in my head. Like other people’s actions make me question and go over my own life and people that are or once were in it. I feel like I should be happy for the here and now and grateful for what I have rather than looking backwards, but maybe looking backwards and learning about what happened to me and my own biological parents may somehow teach me things about moving forwards?

  Anyway, Pat and I had a lovely afternoon. I love seeing her with the kids, too; she has all the time in the world to teach them things and explain the unexplainable to them, and she is calm and patient. They love listening to her stories about when ‘she was a girl’, and they ask her all sorts of questions that make me smile. Questions about things I didn’t even know they knew about, like the Fire of London or the Plague. Of course they’re asking because they believe their Grandma was around when these things happened and she knows all the answers from her own experiences; I love watching them listen intensely to her answers. Having her here has filled a hole that I didn’t even know was there.

  Wednesday

  Laura replied to Jamie late last night, but we didn’t see it until this morning. She wrote ‘Thanks to you and Jo for taking such good care of them, please tell them I love them’. It wasn’t much of a reply, but it was a reply, and not a negative one, so it can only be a good thing.

  I thought about my dad today, a lot. I’ve realised of late I have always thought about my dad. Even when I haven’t realised that’s what I’m doing.

  I wrote an email to Kitty and Joseph, but I haven’t spoken to either of them now in such a long time that I didn’t really know what to write. When I see pictures of Joseph’s two boys on Facebook, it makes me sad that I’m not a proper auntie to them. Yes, I send them both a gift and card at Christmas and birthdays, but what’s that in real life? They don’t know who I am – and my kids don’t know who Joseph is really … and that’s such a shame because if you’d have said that to any of us while we were growing up, I don’t think we would have ever believed it.

  Once upon a time, we were all so fiercely close, and Mum would be devastated to see how we have drifted apart. I will finish the email though, and I will send it. See how they are, see if they’ve spoken to Dad. See if there is a chance of the three of us getting together to catch up. I don’t know whether to just ring Dad. I haven’t discussed it with Jamie – I feel embarrassed and worried if Jamie asks why we stopped talking that I will have to tell him, and I’m ashamed of how I acted at that time, so I have always just told him that after Mum died he never recovered and it was easier for us to walk away – which is kind of true, and kind of shit.

  I suppose since then I have just buried it away, but with Pat being here it reminds me of how my parents once were, and how I was, and despite my dad now being the opposite of what he once was, I know that he used to be a really good guy, and that he loved us. I wonder if I should perhaps just go and see him, alone, and try to speak to him properly before it’s too late. I hate to think of him rattling around the house alone, with no one to look after him – or him even having no one to speak to. He must just drown in loneliness and it makes me wonder why life is so unexplainably cruel at times.

  The whole time I have been writing tonight, Stanley has been curled up in between my legs. He has to sleep on you, not next to you or near to you; he has to lie his bodyweight on yours and, despite him driving me crazy, he really is the most loving pup – although he covers the conservatory windows in dog slobber where he tries to catch the flies with his mouth, although he’s been stung twice by bees, whenever anyone in the family sits down he sits with you, on you. It’s almost a relief to him that he can just stop, chill out and have cuddles – and isn’t that what we all want at the end of the day?

  Friday

  I took Will for a haircut after school this evening. Pat watched the other three and Belle went to Molly’s to get her overnight stuff as Molly’s staying at ours tonight. She came for tea last night too. Her mum doesn’t get back from the office until late, and her housekeeper clocks off after she’s made her dinner at 5.30pm, so she’s in the house alone most evenings. I couldn’t bear to think of Belle home alone each night with no one to speak to. I worry about not having enough time for Belle in our crowded home, but no one has time for Molly in hers and it’s empty. I can’t help but feel like she’s neglected – yet as a society, we always think neglected children are the ones that come from families living in poverty – not career-driven, wealthy people. It’s funny how we all parent so differently.

  I realised tonight that when I was driving across town to the barbers, I have never been alone with Will before. Not once. I have never ever been in his company without one of his siblings or Jamie with us. There has never been a time where it’s just been him and me. It seemed odd
. But a really nice odd. He was so inquisitive about things; he asked me questions and my opinion on various topics, and he wanted to know things about my childhood and family. It made me see there is still so much for us all to learn about one another – and that the children act so differently when you are one-to-one with them than they do when they’re together.

  After his haircut we walked along the seafront together and sat outside an American diner. Will ordered an Oreo milkshake while I sipped a latte. I told him if he ever needed to speak to me about anything regarding his mum or anything else at all, I was there for him. I tried not to get emotional, but when I told him I loved him very much and how proud I am of everything he’s come through, and the fact he’s looked after and protected his baby sister so well – a job and responsibility that was never his – I’m afraid I did shed some tears.

  He looked embarrassed, probably because he could see I was trying not to get upset, but he said thanks and then he finished it with the sentence, ‘Thanks for making us a proper family, Jo,’ and my heart almost broke in two.

  I knew that’s what we were. It really didn’t matter that we weren’t all related by blood in one way or another. It didn’t matter that we had various surnames. We love and care for one another, we argue and shout and fight and we giggle, make jokes and laugh under one roof.

  We are a proper family.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Doing Nothing by Halves

  Monday

  Lou left for her holiday yesterday and I am now running the café until Saturday when the girls and Belle take over and cover.

  Surprisingly I don’t feel nervous. Belle is in the café helping me this week too as it’s half term and we were really busy today; the joy of living in a seaside town in school holidays – I can’t believe how crazy it gets with tourists.

  Belle’s so good; she’s really quick and ran rings round the other girl who has been there for the last few months and is a few years older. I watched her as she was wiping and clearing tables and scooping ice creams onto kids’ cones, and my heart swelled.

  She speaks to people – all types of people. Little old ladies and babies in prams. Families on holidays and the delivery driver.

  We have a little old man called Oscar who comes in every Monday when he comes into town to collect his pension. He is eighty-two years old and his wife died three years ago after they’d been married for fifty-one years. They lost their daughter in a car accident when she was just twenty-two and their son emigrated to Australia when he was in his early thirties, leaving Oscar all alone.

  Whenever he comes into the café, he finds an unsuspecting customer and tells the exact same story every time. He makes my heart hurt. It’s obvious he has learned to live with a broken heart – and I wonder whether he is living, or just surviving.

  Today it’s a young couple, one of them wearing their baby in a sling. ‘Ah, what a bobby dazzler,’ Oscar says with a huge smile. ‘I remember when my lad was small like that, but to look at him now you’d never believe he had been. This one will grow up before you know it and be running around having his own adventures. My youngest used to write notes and pop them into bottles and drop them into the stream at the bottom of our garden. My boy would chase them down the lane and fish them out in one of our neighbours’ gardens to see what she had written, cheeky boy!

  His life sounded like once upon a time, it was idyllic. He carries on chatting to the couple but moves on to the delicious bakes his wife would create and their weekends spent on the moors in Devon, frying sausages on a camping stove and feeding apples to wild ponies. When he tells me the stories it reminds me of my parents, and our family, and the hurt I see in Oscar makes me feel so sad for my dad, and men in general. Good men who love their wives are left to somehow cope when they pass away.

  I watch Oscar get up from his table and bump into Belle, stopping altogether to tell his story to her, and I can see her face taking it all in as she asks him question after question, which I know he loves. Afterwards she comes into the kitchen with a tray of dirty dishes and bursts into tears. When I hug her and ask her what’s wrong, she explains that she hates the thought of him living alone and she genuinely can’t fathom why he doesn’t have anyone.

  My heart hurts at her’s breaking and I think about how our babies learn most about life – and the stuff that goes on in it – through other people’s stories and experiences. They learn about the good and bad in the world by sitting in a local café and speaking to a man in his eighties about his life, and that’s how they understand what goes on, and that’s what gives them the empathy and feelings to turn them into better people who can hopefully go on to help others.

  Despite being left sad after speaking to Oscar, Belle continues to speak with genuine interest to anyone and everyone about what they’re doing – if they’re having a good day, if they enjoyed their food – but I’ve also noticed that she also speaks with pride to total strangers about our family. She tells anyone who asks her that she has ‘three brothers and a little sister’; she doesn’t add the prefix ‘step’. She refers to Jamie as her dad and Pat as her gran, and when she speaks of our lives and what she gets up to, she seems genuinely happy and settled, but more than anything, she seems proud of our little family unit.

  As we wander home together later that day, I tell her she doesn’t have to tell people we’re something we’re not. She can be honest if she wants to say that Jamie is my partner and his children live with us; she doesn’t have to make out we’re the ‘perfect family’. She responds by saying, ‘We are, Mum. We’re perfect compared to a lot of my friends and we’re perfect compared to what we had with Mark.’

  Mark.

  How devastating that this was how she sees her own dad. I try to remember the last time she spoke of him at all, but can’t. Part of me feels crushed at how things are but part of me wonders if it’s a good thing that she sees it like this and is protecting herself from him causing her any more damage.

  One thing I need to always remember, as hard as it feels at times, is that I am not responsible for the actions of Mark, and Jamie isn’t responsible for the actions of Laura.

  We are two parents out of four, just trying to hold it all together.

  Wednesday

  The café has been crazy for the past two days. Usually that would be fine as all the customers are regular, but with it being the holidays it’s heaving and the tourists don’t take it as well as locals when there’s a longer wait on food or you serve them a latte instead of a cappuccino because your head is exploding with too many orders.

  The locals still come in each day, though. I am lucky to know so many people around here now, and it’s shown me what a ‘home’ feels like in a town, rather than it just being a town (which, it’s clear to me now, is what I had in Canterbury).

  I am so thankful Belle has been there to help as I have had to order in loads more stock than normal as we have just been inundated with customers. I love the café, and everything about it. I would love, one day, for us as a family to have something similar. I realise now how much I love speaking to people and hearing about people’s days, where they’re from and what they’re up to – and I like people asking me about me.

  When Jamie and I first got together I almost felt embarrassed – perhaps even ashamed – of our family unit. Explaining we had five children, but they weren’t ‘all mine’, then watching people trying to figure out the dynamics and who stays where with which parent how often, but now that’s stopped. We have five children, my ‘partner and I’. When I get remarks such as ‘Is there no TV in your house?’ or ‘You don’t look old enough’, I laugh it off. I don’t explain some aren’t biologically mine or that mine don’t see their dad. I take my lead from Belle – we are a family, there are no steps or halves, Jamie and I have five children who all live together, under one roof.

  One family, that’s all people need to know – and now, when I talk about ‘us’, I burst with pride at what we have created.


  Friday

  I am SO glad the week at the café is over. As much as it was fun to run the show full-time and I enjoy being there, I am exhausted.

  I asked Pat to help me write a letter to my dad tonight. After hearing the way Belle spoke in the café last week about our family situation it made me see how important it is to have a dad around. As we started, it was like turning a tap on. There was so much I wanted to ask, so much grief there for my mum, and him, that I realised I’d just locked everything away in a box. Even with all the therapy after Mark left me, I had never dredged this up. Pat asked why I didn’t just go and see him, why I didn’t just knock on his door and see how he was? After all, he was never a nasty man, just broken-hearted and distant.

  If I sent a letter, she said, I was making it too easy for him to ignore me; if I rocked up in person, he wouldn’t have that option.

  I gave up on the letter and agreed to try that. It had been almost sixteen years since I last spoke to him and I felt such a pang of guilt for that. I started thinking about what I would say if I did ring that bell, and he answered the door.

  The thought made me feel sick to the pit of my stomach …

  Sunday

  Jamie and I had a fight this morning.

  It started when we went downstairs for breakfast and Jamie just started nagging at the kids. I know everyone nags at their kids but it pissed me off because I felt like he was picking faults simply because he was tired and miserable.