Marshmallows for Breakfast

by Dorothy Koomson

  “You know what my tattoos are of?” he asked, even though he hadn't acknowledged my presence at all. “They're Summer and Jaxon's names in binary code. That's why there's one on each arm. If I ever lost either of them, you might as well chop my arm off because I'd be useless without them.” He shook his head slightly. “I can't believe I wasn't there when they needed me.”

  “You weren't to know,” I replied.

  “This is what I used to panic about. That I'd get the call saying Ashlyn had wrapped the car around a tree or there'd been a fire and that I'd lost them.

  “They're all the family I've got,” he said. “I don't see much of my brothers. My dad died a decade ago and I never got on with him. And my mum remarried some bastard who was always leching over other women, including Ashlyn. Didn't want him anywhere near me or her or our kids. They're all I've got.”

  “Well, they're going to be fine,” I said, sounding more positive than I'd felt in all the time since I picked up Mrs. Chelner's message. “Jaxon's going to be fine—I'm sure he'll love having a cast on his arm—and Summer's only sleeping because it'll make Jaxon get better.”

  “They're all I've got,” he repeated, staring at them.

  When the doctor arrived to talk about Jaxon's condition, I went to step out, but Kyle asked me to stay. He'd taken Summer off the bed and was holding onto her. While the doctor explained that they'd probably keep Jaxon in for a few more hours because he lost consciousness for a few minutes at the scene of the accident, and that he had a clean break of the wrist and very mild concussion, and could go home after his cast had been set, the pale semicircles of Jaxon's eyelids began to flutter as he started to wake up.

  We all stopped and watched him as he slowly felt his way back into the waking world.

  His pale lips began moving as he stirred and as his eyes came fully open, he said, “Mumma?”

  It was the middle of the night by the time I drove us home.

  Kyle sat in the back between the kids, who were both out for the count, and we didn't speak much. He'd rung Ashlyn while we were waiting for Jaxon to be discharged, and they didn't row this time. They couldn't because she became hysterical and was all for jumping on a plane there and then. Kyle had calmed her down and said Jaxon was fine, but if she did want to come back, the kids would love to see her, of course. His phone battery had died halfway through the call and he'd used mine to call her back to say he'd call her when he got home.

  I carried Summer and Kyle carried Jaxon up to his bedroom and after carefully changing them into their pjs, we settled them both in the middle of the bed putting them together as they might have slept before birth—facing each other, heads down, knees up.

  Kyle stood perfectly still, gazing down at his children, marveling, I think, at how close he came to losing them. How easily this could have ended badly. How he couldn't bear to be without them.

  “Don't go back to the flat tonight, Kendra,” he said, still staring at his kids. “Stay here. You can sleep on that side of the bed, I'll sleep on this side. I won't touch you or try to touch you, I swear.”

  It wasn't that that I was worried about. It concerned me a little, obviously, but if I slept here … If I stayed with the children this time, in this bed, like it was a normal thing to do, how would I be able to go back to the flat? Back to sleeping alone? I shook my head. “I can't,” I said to him. “I'm sorry, but I can't. I'd love to, and I do believe you when you say you won't try anything, but I can't.”

  He nodded, as though half expecting that answer but hoping he wouldn't get it. “OK.”

  I touched his arm gently on my way out, accepted his thank-yous and made the long walk across the courtyard.

  If I'd stayed, I could have found out. I could have found out, for those short hours, what it felt like to be a wife and mother.

  I could have found out what it was like to be the first person a little boy asks for when he wakes up from a long sleep.

  EGGS, BACON, TOAST, HASH

  BROWNS & BLACK PUDDING

  CHAPTER 25

  As we moved further into summer and the days got longer, the weather grew warmer and the air felt alive with possibilities, my life with the Gadsboroughs seemed to become almost permanent. As though I belonged with them and nowhere else.

  I loved it. I loved being with Summer and Jaxon and their father. I'd already started reordering my life to fit in with them, and they made room for me. There was never any question of me slotting into the hole their mother and wife had left. I avoided thinking about Summer calling me her “other mumma” and simply enjoyed the place I had with them.

  The arrangement to pick the kids up from school once or twice a week, bring them home, leave them with Kyle and return to work became permanent. On days he was working on-site I'd fix it so I'd go in early and stay late other days, then leave work early and spend the afternoon with them. All calls would be diverted to my mobile, I'd pick up e-mails at home. Gabrielle was understanding that I had to rework my hours to pick up the kids, but that's because I made up the time. In fact, I worked more than the required hours to make up for it. She'd often call, “See you tomorrow, super mum,” as I was leaving.

  On our afternoons together we'd do their homework, we'd detour via the park and run around, we'd sit and watch after-school television, we'd play computer games, we'd sometimes lie in the middle of their playroom, being starfish and talking. A few times back at my flat we moved the dining table into the kitchen area and we had a campout in my living room.

  I started to think about Will again. Only in little moments, when I wanted to tell him something Summer and Jaxon did or said, but he was there in my mind. In my head. I didn't freeze in fear whenever he came to mind. It took a little longer each time for the urge to throw up to overwhelm me whenever I looked at his letter.

  Slowly he was allowed into my life again. Very slowly, in the tiniest increments, but I didn't shut down whenever I thought of him. And that was because I was happy. This happiness, this sense of strength and hope I got from being around Summer and Jaxon, meant I was moving ever closer to the time when I could one day possibly even maybe consider opening the letter. Finding out what had happened. Finding out if…

  Being with the kids was empowering. I was becoming a different person. I was becoming a person who was settled and had found a home. I knew I could never replace Ashlyn. I'd never try. I simply went with the flow of having three new friends. Spending time with them, luxuriating in their company.

  It couldn't last.

  One June afternoon, the door to the office swung open and Kyle stepped in. His face was pale, his hands were trembling, his jaw was so tightly clenched the muscles in his neck stood out. Janene didn't even have a chance to throw herself across his path because he marched straight over to me. Alarmed, a little scared, I got up from my desk and without saying a word, I led him to the computer room where we held tests. From his jeans back pocket he took out a crumpled piece of paper, thrust it at me in lieu of speech.

  Carefully, I smoothed it out, all the while throwing anxious looks at Kyle's face. I looked down, saw a set of solicitors’ names on the letterhead on the piece of paper and time stopped. Not again, I thought as sickness welled up inside. Being named in a divorce cant happen to the same person twice in one lifetime let alone happen to me twice in one year.

  The sickness subsided and became transmuted into pure, unadulterated horror by what the letter actually said. My terrified eyes flew up to meet Kyle's.

  “She can't do this,” he said, finally able to speak.

  Ashlyn's solicitor was informing Kyle that she was going to make an application for a residency order if he and she couldn't come to an amicable agreement outside of court. Her son's accident during her absence had confirmed in her mind that the children would be safer with her.

  Reading between the lines she was saying: “One way or another, I'm going to get custody of the children”

  “She can't do this,” Kyle repeated, looking to me for reassura
nce.

  Unfortunately, she could.

  CHAPTER 26

  She's beautiful. Exactly like her pictures. And beautiful.

  She was sitting in the back of the large, bright café in Beckenham, three towns away from the flat. It was a stylish café, light wood floors, white walls, chrome fixtures— Ashlyn fitted right in.

  In front of her was a squat white cup and a packet of cigarettes, even though it was a no- smoking establishment. I stood at the doorway, pretending to be looking for someone when I knew exactly who I was meeting. I was just holding off the moment of first contact for as long as possible. I was going to have to go over and say hello, introduce myself and tell her that even though her husband had arranged to meet her on this neutral ground, he wasn't coming. He was very sorry, but he'd thrown himself on my mercy and made it abundantly clear he couldn't meet her today to discuss where their children were going to live.

  “I can't see her,” he'd said as he frantically paced the kitchen floor. “I can't sit down and talk to her.” I'd reminded him that he had to because the children had to come first. And he'd explained: “It's not because I don't want to talk to her. It's because I'm afraid I'll beg her to come back to me. Most of the time I don't want her back, but if I see her, I'll probably say anything to get her to come back. I was doing it before. I was using the kids to get her to come home. I'm not doing that anymore and I don't want her back. But, God help me, if I sit opposite her, look at her, I know I'll lose it. I won't remember the hell, I'll remember everything else. I did in New York.” Not long after that he'd hit upon the “inspired” idea of me going instead. Despite my protestations, he'd begged. And begged. And begged. I'd agreed to go and listen to what she had to say because he was so sincerely terrified by the prospect and, I have to admit, because I was curious, I wanted to find out for myself what Ashlyn Gadsborough was like.

  After Jaxon's accident she'd flown back for a long weekend. She hadn't seen Kyle then, either. Instead she'd picked her kids up from school on a Thursday night and stayed with them over the weekend at her mother's place, let Kyle pick them up on the Sunday afternoon and had flown out on Monday morning.

  As I approached her table I noted the differences between the photographic Ashlyn and the real one. She'd had her caramel- colored hair trimmed a couple of inches into long layers that danced around her shoulders. Like any woman our age she had crow's feet around her eyes, but her skin was flawless because of makeup.

  For this meeting she'd obviously made an effort with her appearance. She'd blended several shades of pearly green and blue eye shadow around her eyes to make their deep green stand out; she'd curled on black mascara; she'd slicked on a shimmery red-pink lipstick; she was wearing a brown silk camisole top with a small sequin butterfly motif at the heart of the slightly plunging neckline. Her bare shoulders were a smooth, dark cream color.

  “Hi,” I said to her as I arrived at the table and smiled. “I'm Kendra, you must be Ashlyn.”

  A confused, cautious smile moved over her face as she looked me over. I'd made an effort with my smart navy-blue jeans, white T-shirt and red corduroy jacket, but it'd taken me awhile to decide on that—it's hard to know what to wear to meet your landlord's estranged wife to discuss how they were going to proceed with custody arrangements for their children.

  “Kendra,” Ashlyn repeated. “Kendra … Kendra … Kendra … ?” she mumbled over and over as though trying to recall where she'd heard it before. “Kendie?” she asked, catching on. “Are you Kendie?”

  I grinned, should have remembered the children didn't call me anything else. “Yes, that's me.”

  “Ah,” she said, spearing me to the spot with a look of understanding, “Kyle's not coming is he?”

  “No, I'm afraid not.”

  Her disappointment was heartbreaking: the light went out of her eyes and her face fell. She'd made such an effort, she'd made herself beautiful to see him and now he wasn't coming. It was for nothing.

  “Sit down,” she invited. “You might as well.” Her thin, white fingers reached for her cigarette packet, unsheathed a cigarette. I noticed the slight tremble in her hands. Nerves, I assumed.

  “He hates me that much,” she said, tapping her cigarette on the table in a nervous gesture.

  “No, not at all. Not at all. He was just nervous about seeing you. He wanted me to talk to you instead.”

  It wasn't difficult to see how they had once meshed together, how his quiet, barely contained strength fueled her bright exuberance. How her outward joyfulness inspired him. When that had changed was anyone's guess. “I suppose he's told you everything about me,” she said, a hopeful note suggesting she didn't want it to be true. That her estranged husband had kept her secret from the lodger.

  “He's told me some things,” I said diplomatically.

  Ashlyn's carefully painted mouth twisted into a bitter little smile. “You mean he's told you that I used to be a raging alkie.”

  Ashlyn had her first drink at fourteen.

  She was with Tessa Brandhope, whose parents were going through a divorce. They were the only parents in the whole school who were splitting up. Ashlyn s parents were never going to get a divorce. Even though Ashlyn s father was always in a bad mood with her mother and her mother suspected he was having an affair, Ashlyn knew that people like them didn't get divorced. They didn't show to the outside world that anything was wrong. They hid their problems, got on with it. Ashlyn got on with it. Ashlyn and Tessa sneaked the alcohol from Ashlyn's parents’ drinks cabinet.

  They glugged the whiskey into a tall, straight glass almost to the top, then refilled the bottle to the right level with water. Upstairs in Ashlyn's bedroom they drizzled the strong- smelling amber liquid into their half- empty cola cans until the glass was almost empty.

  She started coughing after her first gulp. It burnt her throat, made it impossible to breathe, caused an intense bout of spluttering. I don't like this, she thought. It's disgusting.

  She pretended to Tessa it was the most delicious thing ever. She pretended she was like all those people on television who knocked back alcohol and loved the taste of it. They spent the afternoon giggling in her room. Tessa passed out. Laughing one minute, then out cold on the bed. Ashlyn tried to wake her, shook and shook her best friend but she'd just flopped around like a rag doll, a silly grin fixed to her face.

  When Ashlyn's mother called them for dinner Ashlyn had been giddy. The burning in her throat had become a warm glow in her stomach and a gentle fuzziness in her head. She was happy inside; calm and excited. She could feel the blood flowing through her veins for the very first time. She felt alive. Ashlyn had smiled at her mother from the gap in her bedroom doorway and said they weren't hungry.

  She saw her mother's face contract in displeasure; she knew she was in trouble. Her mother didn't argue, she wouldn't raise her voice with a guest in the house, but Ashlyn knew she'd be in trouble the next day. And she didn't care. Everything was soft and fuzzy around the edges; smoothed out and easy. The world was nicer, softer, gentler. Tessa was still snoring in the middle of her bed, saliva dribbling from the side of her mouth, her face flushed. Ashlyn sat on the edge of her bed, draining the last of the cola from her can, and then gulping down Tessa's half-full can. Ashlyn still didn't like the taste. But she was buzzing. She didn't feel sick, out of control or like passing out like Tessa had done. Ashlyn climbed on the bed beside Tessa, a smile spreading across her face. Bliss. This was bliss. This was what it must feel like to be someone other than Ashlyn Clarke-Sellars.

  I watched Ashlyn raise her cigarette between her forefinger and middle finger. Her nails were long pale ovals that had been manicured awhile ago so were now ragged when the rest of her was polished. “Kyle exaggerates you know,” she said. “He exaggerates how bad I was.”

  She woke up fully clothed on her bed. Her eyes were swollen and felt like two gritty tennis balls in her head; her mouth was so dry her tongue hurt. The space where her head used to be was banging like an army
of miners who were eking out a very good living. She rolled over onto her side and pain bolted through the left side of her body. She lifted her hand, the mound of the palm and wrist were scraped raw, grit and gravel embedded into the wound. She balked as she stared at it. How did that happen? she asked herself as she became aware that her knee was throbbing. Looking down, she found her black tights in shreds around her knee, long ladders snaking up and down her leg. Instinctively she touched her face. It was tender. Bruised. Bits of dried blood sticking to her fingers as she took her hand away. What happened?

  Ignoring the pain, Ashlyn lay flat on her back, stared up at the ceiling. The night before she'd been out with Tessa, Audrey Narten and Lesley Trindale. They'd gone down to the swings at the local park—a few of the boys hung out around there. Justin Sharpe hung out around there. Audrey looked oldest out of all of them and she'd managed to steal her older sister's driver's license so she'd bought a couple of bottles of Crazy Cat 40/40 fortified wine and a bottle of whiskey. Crazy Cat was too sweet for Ashlyn—in the past two years she'd grown ac customed to the smoky taste of whiskey and liked the way it spiced up cola, the way it produced quicker results if she drank it neat. They'd changed into short skirts; Ashley hated the mottled skin on her legs so she'd pulled on tights. They'd been playing Bros and Culture Club, Ashlyn remembered that. She remembered that the edges of her day—revising for her mock exams, listening to her mother complain about her father, watching her dad avoid looking at her or her mother once during dinner—had been planed off very quickly by her drinks. Quicker than usual. Lately, she hadn't needed as much for the fuzziness to descend. For the world to be a nicer, brighter place; for her to be pretty, to be good enough to speak to Justin. Or any other boy. Nowadays it didn't take long for the world to become the kind of place where she fitted, felt wanted, felt important.