Marshmallows for Breakfast

by Dorothy Koomson

I will not let you get to me, I thought at her, because that is what you want. I'd sat here for over an hour with my mobile off. That wouldn't be so bad if I'd turned it off, but for someone else to do it… I opened the top drawer and picked up my silver phone. Calmly, not revealing even a sliver of the irritation that was building inside me, I turned it on and dialed my answer machine.

  I had six messages. Six. They'd obviously been calling and calling and not getting hold of me. Inhaling deeply, taking in tranquillity and exhaling the urge to go slap Janene into April next year, I listened to the first message.

  Mrs. Chelner had a very soothing voice. You could tell she was a person who could put “calm under pressure” on her CV or on an application form without feeling guilty that she'd never actually been tested. She had been in a highly charged, stressful situation where she needed to keep herself and everyone in her immediate vicinity from coming apart at the seams, and she hadn't even begun to panic. Mrs. Chelner really could be calm under pressure.

  Take now, for example: she was calling me, had called me more than eight times, to tell me that Jaxon had had an accident and they were taking him to the hospital. And could I possibly meet them there because they hadn't been able to get hold of Kyle, Ashlyn or their grandmother and I was the fourth person on their contact list.

  Well, of course you can t get hold of Kyle, he's at the bank trying to rework his finances and get a loan because he's so broke at the moment. He'll have turned off his mobile, I thought as I hung up the phone and stowed it in the depths of my bag. And you can't get hold of Ashlyn because she's in New York, I told the Mrs. Chelner in my mind as I switched off my computer. And you can't get hold of Naomi because she's on holiday in the Algarve, I thought as I stood up.

  And, I thought as I slipped on my raincoat, you couldn't get hold of me because someone wanted revenge on me and turned off my mobile and didn't give me your message.

  “Gabrielle,” I said, sounding very far away to myself. Far away, and so shocked, so scared, I couldn't engage in any other emotion. “Is it OK if I have the rest of the day off? Jaxon has had an accident and I need to go to the hospital. They didn't say on any of the messages if he was OK or how serious it was, but they can't get hold of Kyle and there's no one else. I suspect Summer will be a bit worried.”

  My boss, my friend, Gabrielle went white; even her lips lost their color. Teri's face did the exact same thing even though she hadn't met him. I knew what they were both thinking. How scared they both were. They didn't need to be—I had enough of that for all three of us. “Send him my love,” Gabrielle whispered.

  “I really hope I can do that,” I said placidly.

  I didn't even look at Janene as I left.

  The last time I saw Will he was doing this, I thought as I walked down the high street towards the main road where I could hail a taxi. He was heading for a hospital not knowing what he was going to find.

  After his wife made him leave, he didn't come running to me.

  Far from it. I hadn't heard from him for three months, which was nothing new. We were so inconsistent, always trying to stay away from each other, that months without contact was normal. The first I knew that he and his wife weren't together anymore was when I received a white envelope from a solicitor.

  Upon unfolding the letter I discovered they were writing to inform me that when Mrs. Craigwood filed for divorce in just under a year, she was going to name me as a corespondent. She was going to tell the world that I was the slut who had slept with her husband and had ruined her marriage and, by default, her life.

  This is what being involved with a married person means, she was telling me in that letter. This is what you get for sleeping with my husband.

  Except, I hadn't slept with her husband. Not in that sense. I'd spent a few hours curled up beside him, but I didn't make love to him nor did I have sex with him. In eighteen months I'd kissed him on three different occasions. We were more friends than anything else.

  A few hours later Will showed up at my apartment. He'd never been there before, but he, like his wife, seemed to have found out where I lived. It was far too easy to find someone in Sydney. Far too easy.

  “What's going on?” I asked him as he sat on my sofa.

  That's when he told me what had happened, that his wife had found an e-mail and that he'd been staying with his sister. He hadn't wanted to come to me because he didn't want to lay this at my door, make it my problem. He'd only come now because his wife had rung him and told him what she'd done. He'd been hoping to get to me and have the chance to explain before I got the letter.

  “But why didn't you tell her we weren't sleeping together?” I asked.

  “I thought I had,” he replied. “I said I wasn't sleeping with anyone else.”

  “So why did she come after me like this?” I asked, staring at the letter. “She must hate me. All her friends—your friends— are going to hate me. Evangeline's already pissed off like you wouldn't believe; this is going to make her go mental.”

  “My friends won't hate you. And Sarie doesn't hate you.”

  “Are you sure about that?” I waved the A4 sheet with two precise, neatly spaced folds in it, at him. “Are you sure about that?”

  My whole body seemed to catch fire—the burning sensation was localized in my cheeks and I pressed the palms of my hands on them to try to cool them.

  “This is such a nightmare. It's going to be on record what I've done. That I'm ‘the other woman.’ If anyone ever does a search on me this is what will come up. No one's going to listen to me when I say we just kissed. They'll think I'm a whore’.” Al l I'd done was fall in love and now I was going to be forever marked as a homewrecker. It wouldn't matter that the home was pretty much wrecked before I came along that I didn't mean for this to happen, that I hadn't had sex with him.

  “I'm sorry, Kendra. You don't deserve this.”

  Will looked so tired: his beautiful face sprinkled with stubble, his hair an ebony mess on his head, his suit crumpled. He must have been going through hell.

  My arms slipped around him, took him close to me, stayed still to feel his heart beating against my body. “Don't say sorry. I mean, where was this going to end? I didn't want you to leave your family, you didn't want to leave your family. It's not like we were planning for the future or having sex in the present,” I said. “But it wasn't pure friendship so we have to take responsibility for that. We were walking a very precarious line and this is what happens.”

  His breath fell on my neck as he sighed and I felt my body responding as it always did to him. I was coming alive. My heart starting to race, my breathing deepening, my knees weakening, my core becoming a soft, melting pool of desire. He was the only man who'd ever done this to me. To make my body crave being touched. Most of the time—all of the time— I couldn't bear to be that close to another human being, I couldn't stomach another person's body close to mine, nor hands touching me. If they did I had to hide my revulsion and fake being interested in physical intimacy. It was easier than explaining why I'd rather be left alone.

  His body began to respond to mine. I could feel his heartbeat increasing as his hand moved slowly and gently over my curves. I closed my eyes and inhaled him, took him in whole. I was suddenly drunk on him. Intoxicated with longing. I got up, took his hand and led him towards my bedroom. He didn't resist, didn't protest. We could now. He was single. Everyone thought we had. It would go down on record that we had, so we might as well. Plus, I wanted to. I was aching to. For the first time ever I was desperate to.

  His mouth was on mine, my hands ran over his chest. I slipped off his jacket, he pulled off my top. In between deep, lingering kisses I unbuttoned his shirt, he unhooked my bra. The smell of him filled the room, the taste of wanting him filled my body. And yet…

  “I can't do it,” he said suddenly, stepping away from me.

  “Neither can I,” I replied. I held my bra over my chest as relief washed through me. I'd been trying to work myself up to it, but I
couldn't. It was easy to say we might as well do the crime we were going to do the time for, but the reality was it didn't work like that. I couldn't. Wanted to, longed to, but couldn't. “It feels like you're still married.”

  “I know,” he replied, stepping forwards and lightly running his thumbs along the outline of my jaw. “And I am. But it feels like I'm still with my wife.”

  “I know, and despite what that piece of paper says, I don't want to sleep with a married man.”

  “We're a right pair of plonkers, aren't we?” he said.

  I laughed, I hadn't heard that in an age. Even British people over here didn't say that.

  “I'd say we're more like a pair of wallies,” I replied. And he laughed.

  We lay on the bed and Will took me in his arms, resting his head on my chest, listening to my heart. “I want to hear you,” he said. “I want to hear how you feel.” One of the things I loved about him was his ability to be joking one minute and in the next, saying things so emotional. He had no problems with being honest about his feelings with me.

  I ran my fingers through the fine black shards of his hair, enjoying this. Sliding easily into this part of just being together.

  “I want to hear if your heart starts bitching to your lungs that you don't eat enough salads because you don't like cold food… Oh, I think your lungs are saying you don't get enough fresh air… Ah, yes, now your liver's piped up. It's asking your heart how it feels about that British git… And hark at your spleen, giving it some. It's saying it reckons that the British git is in love with you.”

  “Well there you go,” I replied. “Of all my organs my spleen has always been the most over- optimistic. Silly thing”

  “Nah, I think it's spot on.”

  “Well you listen to my heart and hear what it has to say on the matter.”

  Will was silent for a moment, then snatched his head away from my chest as though he'd been burnt. “I regret to inform you, Ms. Tamale, but your heart is filthy! The things it was saying…”

  I went to laugh, and he stopped me by stroking his thumb over the well of my cheek and the outline of my lips. “I could do this forever,” he said seriously. “I could be with you forever.”

  His mobile broke into the moment, sliced into our intimate circle. He hesitated, toyed with the idea of not answering it. And then he peeled himself away from me, reached off the bed for his jacket and retrieved it. Flipped it open and put it to his ear.

  He said hello. And then there was silence. A deathly silence that seemed to stop time.

  He cried out. A deep, feral shout that came from a place of pain. It rang through the room, reverberated through my body.

  “I'll be there,” he said loudly, his voice wild and urgent. “I'll be there.” He hung up without saying good-bye. “She tried to kill herself,” he said. “Sarie tried to kill herself.” He was off the bed, buttoning up his shirt, pulling on his jacket, all the while shaking. “Because of me,” he kept saying. “Because of me.”

  No, I wanted to say to him. In the fifteen years they were together she'd never tried to kill herself; no matter how bad things got, she never tried to kill herself. She didn't do that until he met me. Not because of him. Because of me.

  “I'll call you,” he said, as he headed for the door.

  “No, don't,” I said to him. “Just don't. I can't, not after this. Don't get in touch with me again.”

  He stopped, turned and took my face in his warm, gentle hands. “I'll call you,” he repeated, earnestly, looking deep into my eyes. “I'll call you.”

  The door shut behind him and I knew I couldn't see him again.

  Two days later I got the e-mail from Gabrielle asking if I wanted a job back in England.

  CHAPTER 24

  Summer was sitting beside Mrs. Chelner in the emergency room.

  They were in the front row of seats, closest to the reception desk, sitting side by side in silence. Her feet didn't come anywhere near to the ground. She looked tiny, a fragile little doll dressed in a blue and grey school uniform, who seemed incomplete without her blue rabbit in her arms and her brother at her side. She leapt off her seat and came to me as I approached them. Her hand curled into mine and clung on. She didn't say anything, but I was someone she knew in all of this, so she held on for dear life.

  She didn't realize I was clinging onto her, too, relieved and grateful she at least was OK.

  Mrs. Chelner, an older woman with grey-streaked brown hair secured back in a bun, a blue coat that she wore zipped up and a very matronly manner, stood up. “You must be Kendra Tamale,” she said to me.

  She didn't smile and I felt my heart dip. A smile would have meant he was OK; a smile would have meant “He's going to be just fine.”

  “How is he?” I asked, aware of Summer's cold hand trembling in mine, or was it my hand trembling around hers?

  “We're waiting to hear,” she replied. “They're not willing to release any information to anyone other than a relative, but he was never in any serious danger. I don't think it's going to be anything more serious than a broken arm and concussion.”

  “Can we see him?” I asked.

  She looked uncertain. “You're not a family member are you?” she said gently.

  No, I'm not. “In the absence of his father and his mother and his grandmother I'm kind of responsible for him,” I said.

  She didn't look convinced. “We were just waiting for his father. All we could get out of Summer is that her mother was a long time away, on a plane.”

  Summer knew where her mother was, but the shock had probably erased the knowledge from her mind. “She's in New York.”

  Mrs. Chelner nodded.

  Despite what she had said about me not being a relative, I decided to try with the receptionist. I didn't want Jaxon to be alone. Not when his sister and I were there. Summer and I walked the short distance to the long reception desk, waited patiently in line to be seen.

  “I wanted to see Jaxon Gadsborough.” I said. “He was brought in about two hours ago, suspected broken arm and concussion.”

  She tapped into her keyboard, looked at the computer screen as Jaxon's details came up.

  “And you are?” she asked.

  “I'm Kendra Tamale,” I replied.

  “Are you a relative?”

  I paused. I didn't want to lie. I tried to avoid lying at all costs, even felt uncomfortable telling so-called “white lies,” but the thought of him lying there all alone, scared and in pain … “Sort of,” I said.

  The receptionist's face gave me a closed-lip smile. “Sort of” wasn't good enough. “Sort of” wasn't going to get me to see him.

  “Kendie's my other mumma,” Summer piped up suddenly to the receptionist. “She lives in my house and she makes me and Jaxon special Saturday breakfast. It tastes like marshmallows.”

  “Really?” the receptionist asked Summer. She replied with three short, decisive nods. I could see the receptionist wasn't buying it, but she could see my worry and Summer was Jaxon's relative and I was with Summer. And he was only six. She called a nurse to show us into the back of the emergency room, saying that they wouldn't be able to release any medical information, but if we wanted to wait in the back until Jaxon's parents arrived, then that would be OK.

  “What happened?” I asked Summer as we followed the nurse past the empty cubicles and cubicles with drawn curtains. I hadn't found out in all this time. Hadn't thought to ask.

  “He fell,” she said quietly.

  “Off what?”

  “He fell. We were climbing and he fell.” Her little face crumpled and she stopped walking and I crouched down to her height. She was so incredibly pale, her face streaked with tears. “He fell. He fell.” She'd been there, had seen it. Had witnessed the one person who'd always been with her during her mother's drinking and her dad's flakiness being hurt right in front of her. I could imagine it. One moment he was next to her on the climbing frame, the next he wasn't. She must have looked down and seen him lying motionl
ess on the ground. Maybe she called his name but, like her mother on countless occasions, and her father a few months ago, he didn't reply. I scooped Summer up. Held her close. “He fell. He fell,” she kept repeating as I rubbed the center of her back, tried to soothe her. I told her it was OK and we carried on walking towards her little brother.

  He was asleep.

  He lay flat on his back, a few bruises slowly turning red on the left side of his pale torso from where he'd landed, a graze on his cheek, another on his temple. His left wrist was propped up away from him in a splint and whorls of his dark hair were plastered to his forehead. He looked so peaceful, calm, still. I wanted to touch his face to check that he was warm and still with us. That he was really only sleeping.

  Still holding onto Summer, who had buried her face in my neck, we sat down on the chair on his right side. The nurse pulled the curtain around us, shutting out the world and enveloping us in a pale yellow cocoon.

  “We're here,” I told her. “We're with Jaxon.”

  Now that we were with her brother, she turned around and sat on my lap, staring at him. I wondered what she thought. If she counted the ribs faintly outlined in his chest, or wanted to touch the bruises on his skin.

  “Is Jaxon going to wake up?” she asked me quietly when she'd stared long and hard at him.

  “Yes,” I replied with conviction. “He just needs to sleep now. Sleeping helps him to get better.”

  She nodded. Without another word to me, she clambered onto her feet on my lap and I had to steady her as she pulled herself over the rail surrounding Jaxon's bed, curled herself up in the space between his body and the metal bars. “I'm going to sleep,” she told me. “So Jaxon can get better.” She closed her eyes. Not knowing what else to do, I moved my chair closer to the bed, took Jaxon's limp hand in one hand and Summer's hand in the other. And sat watching them sleep.

  I must have gone into a trance or fallen asleep with my eyes open.

  The next thing I remembered, the curtain was being moved aside and Kyle stepped through the gap. He stopped short, shoved his hands into the short curls of his hair. “Ah, mate, mate,” he said, quietly, staring at Jaxon's arm, his bruised body, his marked, motionless face. “Mate.” I let go of their hands and allowed their father to step into the breach, into his rightful place. He rested his hand on Summer's back and stroked his other hand over Jaxon's forehead. They were both still asleep.