Funny how the triangle thing happens with boys. Ben was first – broad shoulders and thin waist, so that when you watch them from behind sitting down, it’s all you see: a perfect triangle with a little head (circle) bobbing on top.
Theo took a little longer, not just for being younger but because he had a year of puppy fat. Gone now.
Sitting there this moment, twelve and thirteen – so tall and slim alongside the pool with their legs dangling in the water – it is extraordinary how alike they are. The crowns of their hair swirl in exactly the same way, like the beginning of a question mark. Makes me ask why I didn’t see it back then – invisible to me like so many things.
You will be wondering about the water? It surprises me too. A surge in my stomach every time I watch them together like this, not just swimming but diving. Competitive now, as all boys are – wanting always to go the fastest. Highest. Deepest. To see who can hold their breath under water the longest.
Sometimes I have dreams where I float back in time and try to whisper on the breeze to my old self. To tell the Sophie that first day on the village square to walk away. To tell the Sophie on the train that it will be all right.
To whisper that in the end Theo will be the one – not some special teacher on some special course, but little Theo who will coax Ben into the shallow water at the beach first. Into the river up to their knees with fishing nets. Then the baby pool at the swimming baths and finally this, which I would never have believed. Sad and silent little Theo. Who in the end would become the motivation for us all . . .
We have been coming here to the Midi every summer for the past eight years. An accidental discovery – through Helen. She has a relative of her late husband’s who has a large place in northern France and rents this place every Easter. We decided to steal the recommendation and haven’t looked back. It is a second home, with a proper family feel – untidy cupboards, mismatched furniture and a maid who does not believe in cleaning, sweeping the dust under the beds and playing with the children instead.
I love it for the flowers. The villa, white with green shutters, appears held together by a tangle of climbers which twist and turn, stretching up to the sun; and though the wisterias and clematis are all finished by the time we arrive, there is always a profusion of white, bell-shaped flowers which dance in the wind and fill the veranda with the most wonderful scent. I do not know the name but could recognise that scent anywhere.
The boys, indifferent to the horticulture, love it for the pool – bigger and deeper than most and with this spectacular view.
They are especially excited today for Helen arrives tomorrow with her ‘beau’ George, whom Theo and Ben both adore. They call him the Boyfriend, which he pretends to find embarrassing but secretly loves, roaring with laughter. Hardly a boy any more, chaps . . .
She met him a good few years back. Such a gentleman. Linen suits. Panama hat. He has a second-hand bookshop in Truro and always arrives with a suitcase full of epics for the boys to read. Also he does card tricks and recitations of comic poems, his face pink and happy after port at dinner – one of those perfect holiday guests who has so many stories to share and so much enthusiasm and energy for everything. Helen positively shines in his company. As do we all.
Ah yes. Helen. What to say? Back in the nightmare all those years ago, I didn’t even ring her to confirm what time we would be arriving in Cornwall. Or how long we would be staying. Soon after they discharged the boys from the hospital, I just piled everything into the car and set off – like that journey home for the fairy costume.
‘Stay as long as you like,’ was all she said, which was just as well because for the first few days all I could do was sleep. It was as if my body had finally given in to an exhaustion so complete that it consumed me utterly.
From the window that first morning I watched helpless as Helen took charge completely – leading the boys to an old garden shed from which she produced a swing that they hung from a large tree overhanging the path down to the sea. And that’s where Theo seemed to spend all his time initially. Sad and silent little Theo – swinging to and fro.
To and fro.
Social services were in touch very quickly – sent a nice lady in bright pink clothes from the local office to explain that ‘arrangements’ could be made just as soon as we were ready. But how could I?
Sad and silent little Theo.
To and fro.
They ran a check for next of kin and at first there was a part of me that was praying there would be some distant aunt or godmother or someone. But no. Not a single person in the whole world to take him, and I’m not going to pretend I was some saint about it – that I didn’t look at Theo some days and see them together. Emma and Mark. Her eyes looking up at me from Theo’s eyes. The shape of her nose in his profile.
But every time it overwhelmed me and I thought it might be for the best – to call the lady in the pink clothes – I would imagine Theo’s bewildered face at the car window as she drove him away and I just couldn’t do it.
So in the end we had to endure the nightmare of paternity tests. Lawyers. Forms. Meetings. And I had to sit in a room with Mark and find a way to be grown-up, instead of crying and lashing out which is what I wanted to do every time I looked at him in those early days. I remember thinking back then – what if Emma lied? What if Theo isn’t Mark’s?
And then, when the test came back positive – conclusive – I didn’t know what the hell to feel . . . or do. Mark couldn’t take Theo to London, at least not initially, and so we fudged this compromise – that Theo would stay with us in Cornwall and Mark would rent a little flat in Helston so that the boys could visit him at weekends. Breathing space.
Surreal. Like some parallel universe to think of it now. More than a year it went on like that. Mark desperate for me to take him back. Play survivors together . . .
For twelve whole months I said no. Definitely. And then I said maybe . . . and then after two years?
I watched him travel from London to Cornwall. I watched him take them fishing. I listened to the boys’ stories. How he taught them to bounce pebbles across the surface of the water. Took them to Kynance Cove; camping on the moors. And some weeks he used the sleeper, sometimes he flew, and some weeks he drove all the way from bloody London to the Lizard. Every other weekend until I just couldn’t keep it going.
The pretence of hating him.
But when I finally realised that I didn’t hate him, I realised that I was just as afraid to love him. So much sadder and more terrifying – that. For even in my anger I had never quite imagined a version of Sophie without him.
This Sophie who has her own PR agency in Truro which grows year on year. This Sophie who had two staff, then three and then somehow five, with offices and contracts and all the chaos once more.
We live in the heart of Truro now – a three-storey Georgian townhouse with a small, walled garden within walking distance of the city centre. For those first two years the boys spent some of the holidays with their father, during which Helen whisked me away and kept me busy – book-buying trips with George once he was on the scene so that I did not resort to sleeping in their beds. Sniffing their clothes.
For just a short time I tried to see someone else. A restaurateur. Charming. Funny. Divorced. He was setting up a boutique hotel in St Ives and even the boys quite liked him. But then he seemed to get rather keen and it was only then that I realised.
Mark wrote me a love letter on each of the anniversaries we were apart. Long letters full of sorrys and memories and his love for the two boys. And me. He was honest about trying to make a fresh start with someone else, but said he could never make that work. And so after that second letter that second year, I thought – maybe. Not because I was lonely and not because I was at all sure it could work, but because I understood finally what Emma can do to a person . . .
Still we are weekending. Mark sold the company in London and set up a new, smaller agency in Bristol, where he keeps a waterfront apartment for Monday through
Wednesday. The boys describe it as much cooler than Truro, Mummy. At least he can work from home too now. Still a compromise but we make it work. Not enough big-name local clients for a Devon base, alas.
These days, in our new life, I dream less often of Tedbury itself – so that it shocked me to the very core when it popped up on the local TV news last week. Like iced water on warm flesh. The church and the square just the same but the magnolia trees so much taller now. It was the lead item – the village finally getting its bypass after years of setbacks and political rows; bumped up the list of projects one moment then dropped down the list in budget bust-ups. Heather was interviewed and it was so strange but so lovely to see her. We exchange Christmas and birthday cards which she always stuffs with all the news. Last time she wrote, the gossip was all about the family that moved into the Hartleys’ cottage. Proper little entrepreneurs. They took over the post office when old Bert retired and are running the deli too. My deli. I sold them all the kit and the plans in order to be rid of it all, but apparently they’ve expanded it to a full village store-cum-diner, with a delivery service of local meat and organic veg boxes. Made a big success of it. Good for them.
Other news we get through Nathan, who has kept up a surprising yet enduring friendship with Theo. Every year he sends a Christmas card – always of a robin – and a generous present. Theo keeps all the cards in a box under his bed.
The other shock is that DI Melanie Sanders has moved into a house on the outskirts of the village, married now to Tom. Who would have believed that?
Nathan visits occasionally too, and it is strange and terribly sad how lost he is. He seems to believe that he was the one who should have seen through Emma. Sussed her. Stopped her. Not hearing when we say that the very same thought haunts us all.
Nathan says that Gill Hartley has been transferred to an open prison and will be due for parole soon. For a time I wondered if I should write to her. But to say what? From the trial we learned Gill had longed for a child for years but Antony said he wasn’t ready. And then Emma, from that wretched tent, was so cruel sharing Antony’s affair and his lover’s pregnancy. You have a right to know, Gill. If it were me? Humiliated like that? Used like that? The breadwinner while he . . . I can’t imagine what I might do . . .
At the trial they read extracts from Emma’s diary, recovered from her computer . . . Sophie the dopey, she called me. And Nathan? Turns out she put the brick through her own window to keep him close. Strange and chilling meanderings. Everything like a sum: A+B = I do this. She rowed with Antony at the fair but gave up on blackmailing him because he had no money. She apparently stalked me in Cornwall, intending to send the photos to Mark as a threat, but got cold feet, worried he might give them to the police. And so when Mark stalled, she was furious, under pressure from the banks and loan sharks, and lost patience.
Not my fault. Theo has my money . . . MY MONEY!
The last searches on her computer were for spots for wild swimming on Dartmoor. Deep pools. Secluded. Sometimes Ben still wakes with nightmares . . . She was taking us swimming, Mummy . . . She said it was a surprise for you. That she was going to teach me.
I have nightmares too, in which I watch her leading the boys down to the water’s edge and I am shouting at them to run! Run away . . . And then she is coaxing or pushing the boys into the deep water and I am shouting but no words will come out of my mouth . . . And then I am holding my breath and counting. How long can you last?
I went through a spell – obsessed with trying to understand how anyone could be that evil. That mad. I mean – why hurt Ben? To punish Mark for failing to pay up? How could anyone seriously hope to get away with that? But trying to understand in the end is both futile and a madness of its own. I traced the guy she lived with in Manchester. She was so exciting at first, he said. Spontaneous. Made me feel so special. And then suddenly she’s stealing from me. One night I woke up and she was just sitting up and staring at me with this really terrible look in her eyes. Later he wrote me letters. Pages and pages. Ranting. Railing. Reeling still. He said he felt not just foolish but afraid. That she had taken him in so easily. Seemed so very normal. She told me, Sophie, that she had never clicked with anyone like she clicked with me. And I believed her . . .
In the end I had to phone him. Get firm. Enough now.
They ran archive footage of the boys’ lorry crash on the news item about the bypass. I had to turn it off then. Unplugged the aerial to make sure the boys wouldn’t see.
It was Mark who had to tell Theo. About Emma.
I couldn’t do it. They phoned us at home not long before the boys were released and I took them to Cornwall: news of some unexpected complication from Emma’s surgery. Lungs gave out. Gone. And they were trying to find out about her next of kin – who to call . . .
And if it weren’t for Helen – dear God. Her friend Patrick – the retired child psychiatrist – came to Cornwall to save us. I was doing everything wrong with Theo – trying so hard to encourage him to talk. Coaxing and cajoling. Pretending that I didn’t understand his nods and pointing. Please, Theo. Will you please just talk to me?
But selective mutism is no easy fix; a child so anxious they are afraid even to hear their own voice in public. My prodding was making things worse.
Just love him, Helen’s friend advised. Pretend you don’t care either way. Whether he talks or not. Take the pressure off. Give him as much time as he needs.
Just love him.
And I look at him, over there by the pool right now, loving him as much as I do, and can’t believe I ever doubted it. But here’s the truth – I kept him with us initially not because I felt I would ever love him, and certainly not because he was Mark’s child, but because I felt so very sorry for him. Because I couldn’t bear the guilt and the judgement of others if I let them send that car.
I think I imagined that once he was stronger, talking again, Mark would take him to London. Get a nanny?
But a child without a mother has this unbearable ache in their eyes; this way of reaching deep inside you and squeezing so very tight that you cannot breathe.
And in the end I was the one Theo spoke to first. And it was into my bed he climbed in the early hours of the morning, trembling and holding on.
We turned the corner when Patrick taught me the ‘sliding-in’ technique. I had discovered that on his own in his bedroom, Theo would sometimes whisper to a favourite toy. The little black-and-white monkey with the long curly tail and dark beady eyes; the one I bought at the zoo. Patrick explained that sliding-in involved using indirect communication to coax conversation via an intermediary. Sometimes children with selective mutism will talk to just one sibling or friend. No one else. The trick is to watch and wait and use that bridge.
So one day when Theo was talking quietly to his monkey, I stood in the doorway and asked the toy a question. Does Monkey know if Theo wants a drink?
To my astonishment, Theo paused, tilted his head, then whispered into the toy’s ear and used it like a puppet. Theo says yes please. Orange juice.
And I stood there, trying to look relaxed as it swept right through my body. This deep and shocking realisation of what I had done and what it truly meant.
That Theo was to be my second child . . .
Progress from there was slow but steady. Eventually Theo began to speak openly to me as well as through the toy. And then he would speak through me to Helen, and once more to Ben. It was frustrating but also magical to watch – like a game of Chinese whispers to put Theo back in touch with the world.
We have no idea quite what he must have been through with Emma. What she was really capable of. Papers at the mother’s home confirmed years of covering up Emma’s mess. Drugs. Fraud. Debt.
There was talk of exhuming the mother’s body in France. Aveline, the nurse, was sure Emma was to blame. But in the end the inquiry stalled. I was angry about that. No budget, no one to charge, and worse – no one to care enough. But there were private papers lodged by the mother wi
th lawyers that confirmed Patrick’s best guess – that Emma was a sociopath. High-functioning.
Report after report from private specialists while Emma was growing up. All with the same verdict: No conscience.
Imagine that? No pang of conscience . . . ever. No ability, in short, to love or care about anyone but themselves.
There are research papers and books . . . ‘The sociopath on your street’. I have read too much. One in twenty-five, some research claims.
I worry that it could be hereditary, but Patrick says hush, for Theo is the sweetest and kindest child. And so for him I have invented a different version of Emma.
Tell me about my other mother, he still asks sometimes – too young at the time, thank God, to remember the worst. And so I weave stories of the beach trips that summer and I tell him that he was very, very loved and that she is looking down on him from heaven, watching over him. Every single day.
And sometimes he turns this against me. My real mother would understand . . .
Real?
I went on a website for adoptive parents once, and it said this – that some children are grown in their mummy’s tummies. And some are grown in their hearts.
And when we are having a tough day, when I doubt whether I am doing a good enough job, when I see him looking at a picture of Emma or find a cutting of a robin tucked under his pillow, that is what I cling to. That I am doing my best. And that he grows in my heart just as I, pray to God, grow in his.
For only now do I understand, through Nathan, about the bird. Poor Theo set that robin free; he watched it fly and he sent his little heart with it. He drew it secretly on his arm, and at night he dreamt of it flying free and safe because that’s what he needed himself.
I see Mark’s car arriving now. He has driven separately because of work. For years when I watched a car approach the house, in Devon or in Cornwall or here in France, I always imagined it would be it. The reckoning. The police.
I always believed they would come eventually; that it was just a matter of time; that someone would find some picture. CCTV? Or a witness?
The Friend: An emotional psychological thriller with a twist Page 25
