Another Love (25 page)

‘Hey, Mum.’ She tried to keep the sigh of irritation from her voice, not willing to be subtly dressed down by her mum’s hints and inferences again. The way she disguised her notes of caution, suggestions for recovery and handy parallels that demonstrated just how lucky she was left Romilly feeling quite depressed. Even her mum’s downbeat tone had the ability to filter the joy from an otherwise regular conversation.

‘I was thinking that lunch on Sunday would be nice. Shall we come to you, or is that a bit too much? Are you up to it? Would it be better if you came here? The girls thought it might be best, as long as you don’t drive, because that would worry your dad to death after everything…’

Romilly counted the seconds of silence, not sure whether her mum had finished wittering or whether there was more to come. She appeared to be done.

‘Can I let you know, Mum? Lunch would be lovely. I know Celeste would love to see you all, but I just want to check with David.’
I want to see if he can stand being in a car with me for that journey, if he can stand being with me for a whole afternoon without respite, trapped in your cosy house.

‘Ah, and we’d love to see her, the poor little thing…’

I get it, Mum, a poor little thing because she landed me as a mother and not Ponytail Mum.
She swallowed her tears, feeling a rush of love for her little girl, counting the hours till it was time to collect her. She was keen to wrap her in a hug, as though the regular squeezing and streaming of words of affection could make up for the feeling in her gut that she had let Celeste down.

Pat was still talking. ‘And yes of course check with David, but tell him I’m making hotpot, you know he loves my hotpot, and if he’s good, bread-and-butter pudding for afters.’

‘I will.’ She nodded.

‘And how are you doing, miss? You sound a bit glum.’

I wasn’t until you rang.
‘No, not glum. I’m fine. You know…’

‘Yes, well…’ She paused.

Romilly could hear her considering what pearl of wisdom to let drop from her mouth.

‘Oh sorry, Mum, that’s the front door. I have to go. I’ll speak to you in a bit.’ And she hung up, just like that, not prepared to hear more of her mum’s words, not today.

Romilly fell onto the sofa and had a cry. Her mum was right, Celeste deserved better. She closed her eyes and tried to recapture the feeling of positivity that she’d felt when she’d looked in the mirror at the clinic; she remembered the breathing technique that seemed to slow everything down, including her cravings, and she recalled the way she’d walked tall around the lake, breathing evenly and picturing a healthy future when she was drink-free and happy.

The phone in the kitchen rang again. Romilly wiped her face and took a deep breath before she lifted the receiver, hoping it wasn’t her mum again and praying it was Mike. She needed to get out of this rut, she needed to pull herself together and get on with her life.

‘Hello?’ She kept her tone formal, businesslike.

‘Red! Hello, gorgeous. It’s Jasper and guess what? I’m outside your house!’ He laughed.

One of the worst days was the day she didn’t collect me from school. I’d made a cake and it was a bit of a disaster – burnt on one side, collapsed on the other and with ugly blobs of caramel-coloured icing slapped on to cover the damage. But I thought Mum would like it anyway and I had it all ready to take home on a tray.

We had a system where parents and guardians had to come into the classroom at the end of the school day and sign you out. That day I waved off all my friends one by one until the classroom was empty except for my teacher, Miss Clements, and me. I wasn’t so worried about the fact that Mum was late, it was more the way Miss Clements kept sighing and looking at her watch and then her phone, as though she wanted to be somewhere else and I was annoying her. It made me feel awkward and embarrassed and it wasn’t like her. I saw another side to her that day and that made me feel worse, as though Miss Clements had lost some of her sparkle.

We waited about an hour and it felt like an eternity. She took me to the school office, which was both thrilling and petrifying; you usually only went there if you were dropping off the register or if someone was sick. I sat on a padded chair that swivelled round, while she tried calling the house and both of my parents’ mobiles. Eventually Miss Clements put me in her car and drove me home. I sat in the back seat with my enormous cake on my lap, wishing I could disappear so she wouldn’t keep tapping her thumb on the steering wheel and saying ‘Come on, come on…’ every time we stopped at a red light.

When we got to the end of our driveway she pulled a funny face and took a good long look at our big, comfortable house. She went ahead and rang the doorbell. A man I had never seen before answered it; he had blonde floppy hair and was quite young. He was smiling and grateful and apologetic all at once and I could tell Miss Clements was flattered by the exuberant thanks and the way the man crushed her to him in a hug. He was well dressed and well spoken and Miss Clements seemed to have got some of her sparkle back as she ushered me up the driveway with her hand on the narrow back of my little red cardigan. I carried my cake in my outstretched arms.

I walked past the man, who ruffled my hair, like he knew me. He stood and waved to Miss Clements.

‘Sless… Sless…’ That’s what I heard coming from the sofa in the TV room. I walked in and Mum was lying on the cushions in her pyjamas. She couldn’t say my name properly and her eyes were closed and her head kept tipping backwards until she would jolt forwards as if trying to keep awake.

‘Kissittoyourmummynow…’ she slurred, puckering up as if she wanted a kiss.

I didn’t want to kiss her. She stank. It was a grown-up smell of booze and bad breath and sweat. I shook my head and stood on the spot staring at her.

‘Whathefucks wrongwithyou?’ She sat up, toppled from the sofa and crawled towards me on the floor, like she used to when we were playing horses. I could see down the front of her pyjama top and she wasn’t wearing a bra.

‘Youdontfuckinwantokissmehey?’ she slurred. Her eyebrows flew up as though she was trying to open her eyes, as though she was looking at me. I wondered if it was because she didn’t have her glasses on, maybe that was why she was struggling. I searched all over the floor, which was strewn with cushions and plates and cans, thinking that if I could find her glasses and help her put them on, then she’d be able to see me, but I couldn’t find them.

The man came in from the kitchen with an open bottle of wine. He swigged from the top and handed the bottle to Mum, who sat back on her haunches and did likewise. ‘What’s that?’ He pointed at my cake.

I held up the tray so they could both see it.

Mum opened one eye and let out a loud cackle. ‘What?’ she screeched. ‘Whatisit?’

The man sank down onto the sofa and he and Mum laughed and laughed. The two of them were bent double laughing at my cake, clutching at their stomachs and then pawing at each other for stability. I felt my cheeks go red and hot tears slid down my face. I wasn’t crying because of what they said about my baking, I already knew it was rubbish. I cried because I thought Mum would pretend it was great and tuck into it, but she didn’t. She was laughing at me. It was mean. I’ve never forgotten that.

‘Is it a shit?’ He laughed. ‘It is, isn’t it! It’s a big fat lump of shit! You have actually brought us some shit!’

This sent my mum into overdrive, laughing so hard she placed her fingers between her legs and screamed, ‘StopstopstopJasper! Ivewetmyself! Jasperivepissedmyself!’ She batted his arm as she roared. Sure enough, a dark, wet stain spread across her grey cotton pyjama bottoms and down her legs.

I didn’t like it one bit. I was scared and that felt wrong, because I was in my house but I was scared. ‘I want my dad.’ I remember saying that over and over before finding the courage to leave the room. ‘I want my dad. I want my dad.’

I lay in the gap under my bed until it became hot and uncomfortable and so I sat on the bed and waited. Dad did come home eventually. I heard him shouting, so angry. He tore round the TV room like a tornado. He was furious and he was swearing. I’d never heard Dad swear in anger before then, not properly, but that day he used every conceivable word, and it wasn’t only what he said but his tone. He sounded like a stranger. I didn’t hear Mum make a sound.

He was out of breath when he came upstairs, as though he’d been rushing. He told me he’d come hurtling down the motorway to Bristol the moment he’d got Miss Clements’ message. I was still in my uniform, sitting in the corner in the dark. He clicked on my bedside lamp and sat down. I saw his fake smile, a smile for my benefit, and even though I knew he was putting it on, I was glad that he was trying. He stroked my hair as he cuddled me.

‘Do you want some supper?’ he whispered.

I shook my head. I didn’t want anything apart from to rewrite the day and make it happen differently.

He rocked me gently and told me that everything was okay. It didn’t feel okay, not at all, it felt about as far from okay as it could get. He pointed to the tray on the floor and asked me what it was and so I told him. ‘It’s a big fat lump of shit.’

He pulled away and held me by the arms and he shouted at me that I was never to use words like that,
never
! He left me alone and I lay on my bed feeling the loneliest I ever had. It was like everything was messed up and I was scared. First Miss Clements and then my mum and then my dad. It was like they had all been turned inside out and I could see their ugly insides.

I kicked off my school shoes but stayed in my white socks and grey pinafore with my red cardigan buttoned up. I was too scared to go to sleep.

That was a horrible day. I saw worse, heard worse, but that one day sticks in my memory for so many reasons.

‘Cup of tea?’ Sara croaked from the landing.

‘Thanks,’ Romilly answered from beneath the duvet.

‘I’ve got a banging headache.’ Sara giggled as though this were a badge of honour, proof that a good night had been had by all. Romilly remembered announcing the same thing with the same undeniable note of triumph. She had been sixteen.

Sara hummed as she skipped down the stairs. Romilly knew her friend was over the moon to have her staying with her, guessing correctly that not only did Sara find Romilly’s tangled life a good diversion from her own worries, but she was also very glad of the company. For her, however, the situation was as embarrassing as it was distressing. She resented her friend’s cheery optimism, as though this was some kind of student gap-year adventure and not a temporary safety net while her whole world fell apart. Romilly could only really cope when she was drunk and didn’t have to think about the fact that there was only the space of a football pitch between her and her family; her family in her home, the home which she’d been thrown out of. She was torn between hating her dependency on the woman who she knew was a bad influence and feeling eternally grateful that she at least had somewhere to go. She closed her eyes and wished Sara would stop humming.

Smacking her lips, she could tell she had slept with her mouth open and had probably been snoring as the back of her throat was horribly dry and her tongue thick. Her spit had a rancid bitterness to it. She tried again not to think of her daughter, breakfasting with her dad only four doors away, with her hair in bunches and her bag packed ready for school. She ached for her. Instead, she buried her face in the pillow on the spare bed in her friend’s house and let herself cry.

David had been quite clear. She couldn’t precisely recall how she and Jasper had ended up on the driveway, him with a bloodied face and her in her pyjamas with her trainers by her side on the grass. And she couldn’t remember the finer detail, but she did remember the sense of panic, the shouting, the feeling of utter desolation, as she walked up the cul-de-sac, barefoot with her trainers in her hand. Mr and Mrs Rashid had watched her, and she might have shouted at them. This piece of information was new, actually. She winced as a few more snippets from that evening began to reveal themselves, as they often did days later, bursting through the fog of confusion like a magician’s assistant from a box, only instead of a round of applause these came with a dollop of shame and regret.

What had she said to the lovely Rashids? She wasn’t sure, but what she could remember clearly was knocking on her own front door the following day. David had opened it a few inches and had spoken through the gap, like she was selling something of which he had no need or was talking about a faith in which he had no interest.

‘I don’t want Celeste to get upset,’ he’d growled, ‘so just go.’ He hadn’t even waited for her to ask if she could come in.

‘David… David, please, I’m—’
I love you! I love you so much, proper love!

‘You’re what?’ he spat. ‘Sorry? Is that what you are, Rom? Are you sorry? Again?’

‘I just—’
I want to come home! I need you!

‘You just what?’

‘I’m—’
I’m sorry! I am!

‘Here’s the thing. I’m sorry too. Sorry I ever thought you might be able to change, because I was wrong, you can’t. And all I want to do now is protect my daughter.’

Our daughter…
‘I love her.’ She couldn’t stop the sob that was building in her chest.

‘She was so frightened. Can you imagine what it must be like for a little girl to have to come home with her teacher and to find a strange man and her mother so drunk that she couldn’t stand and then pissed all over the room?’ He shook his head. ‘The carpet, everything stinks!’ He spoke through gritted teeth. ‘She is nine years old and I’m damned if that’s how she’s going to be brought up. You forgot to pick her up from school! You were so drunk, you…’ He wiped his brow, exasperated. ‘There is no point, Romilly. No point whatsoever. What exactly is it you want?’