Finding You (19 page)

25 - Julia

‘Hello girl!’ When I open the door this morning, there’s Naseem standing on my doorstep after all, with a big grin on his face and his arms open wide. ‘I came, Jules.’

‘Naz.’ I’m suddenly laughing, in the middle of a hug, aching with joy to find my oldest friend so unexpectedly there. ‘I thought you said you were flying out to Malaga today?’

‘Ah, that. Last minute alterations to the engineer’s specs, and now my services are not required out there till the seventh of June. Apparently.’ He peers into the hallway and I move back, gauging his reaction because despite us going back such a long way, he’s never yet set foot in my house. He steps in and takes a second for it all to sink in. Then he lets out a low whistle. ‘This is some place you’ve got here, Jules.’

‘Thanks.’ I beam, feeling ridiculously pleased and proud that Naseem’s so impressed. But then again, he should be. He knows where I’ve come from.

‘Come on through; we were sitting in the garden.’ He couldn’t have timed this better, I think. I need someone on my side today
.
After Charlie came home yesterday evening with that shocking news from the psychologist at work and then I spent the night awake and wrestling with myself over what I should do about it, things were so awkward between me and Charlie at breakfast. Did we actually have a fight last night? I don’t think we did. But ... something shifted, nonetheless. It felt as if he’d moved subtly in one direction and I’d moved in another. I didn’t want it to be like that, but ... there it was. He gave me a brief look on his way out to work this morning that told me he felt it too, that bruised place in our relationship. For a moment, he’d lingered by the door, touching the edges of the freesias he’d brought me last night and I’d longed for him to say something:
we’ll talk about this J, we’ll talk it all over again later
, something like that, anything, any acknowledgement, it would have done, but he didn’t say anything. He kissed me. On the cheek.

And then he went to work.

Afterwards, the men came about hour later and removed the offending sandpit. They left little piles of sand all gathered in the corners of the patio, and I didn’t sweep them up.  I just stood there, with my arms folded, feeling angry about it. And also, somehow, helpless. Because if I disagreed with Charlie’s appointed expert, I’d be somehow seen as standing in the way of Hadyn’s rehabilitation, wouldn’t I? Hadyn came rushing out to see what they were doing, and I could see he was distressed when he realised what it was. He kept looking at me, his eyes filled to the brim with all the questions he would not ask, and I’d thought for a brief moment of hope that he’d come to me for some consolation, for ...
something.
But in the end, his shoulders had just slumped and he had walked sadly away. I’d felt so mad at having to do that to him, having to let him down over something he’d clearly been looking forward to. I shouldn’t have had to do that.

He’s playing with his water gun now—
until she bans that too
, I think grimly. Naseem, however, doesn’t know about any of this.

‘So, this is the little guy who all the fuss has been about?’ We’ve walked straight through to the back, where Hadyn’s sitting on the step, all by himself. Naseem takes him in for a good few minutes, my son, the jewel in my crown he knows, and again I feel that rush of pride.

 ‘Handsome guy,’ he observes. ‘Like your partner?’ He’s teasing me I know, and this at least elicits a small smile.

‘Like his dad,’ I acknowledge.

‘Though I see
you
in him, too,’ Naseem concedes. ‘I think he’ll be the type to get freckles ...’ He ducks away as I try to land a thump on his arm.

‘This is it then, Jules, eh? Your happy ever after. Wow.’ He turns his head to admire the rambling garden at the back of Blackberry House and, I have to admit, it is an impressive sight.  Even since yesterday, more of the flowerbeds are miraculously coming to life with everything in the garden looking particularly fine, the deep cherry peonies and the white flowers on the hawthorn while the first papery pink blossoms on the apple tree are making a show.

‘You always said that one day, you’d make it,’ he says softly. ‘And I have prayed for you, my dear friend, all these years.’ Is it my imagination or are his eyes moist, shining, on this beautiful morning?

‘Thank you for being so pleased for me,’ I say thickly.

‘And you are happy?’

I bite my lip and out of the corner of my eye, I see him do a double-take. ‘
Not
happy?’

I hesitate. ‘I am happy, yes.’
As for my happy ever after ...
  ‘Let’s just say it’s my happy for the moment,’ I concede. ‘The truth is,’ I allow when Naseem remains silent, waiting for me to elaborate, ‘The truth is, I feel as if I haven’t properly slotted back into my own life yet.’

‘No?’ Naseem sits down on the bottom step beside my son. ‘What is it—too much dealing with other people’s curiosity since you’ve got back from Spain, press intrusion and the like?’

‘They’ve not too been
too
bad. Charlie appointed a press agency to deal with it all, and we’ve had to give a few interviews here and there, but it‘s been contained. It’s not all been as overwhelming as I feared. It’s not
that.
’ I plonk my bottom down beside him on the step. ‘It’s that I still don’t feel what I expected to feel.’

‘What did you expect to feel?’

‘As if this is all over,’ I whisper.     

‘Ah.’ Naseem leans over to gingerly ruffle the curls on my small son’s head. Hadyn looks round to see who it is, but for once, he doesn’t object to being touched. He’s been sitting quietly on that step overlooking the garden for an hour now, squirting the ants with his water pistol.

‘Your son was gone for nearly a year,’ Naseem muses after a while. ‘It’s going to take time to recover from that, Jules. You’ve got to expect it,’ he warns.

‘Oh I did expect it. I
do
...’ I lean forward, elbows on knees, and cup my face in my hands. ‘The thing is, Naseem, despite everything, I don’t feel as if we
have
really got him back yet.’ I shake my head, fighting back the tears I refused to shed in front of Charlie last night. ‘Charlie’s so convinced Hadyn’s just got to get acclimatised, get used to us, forget all about Spain, but I think ... our son really doesn’t know where he belongs anymore. And if home is where the heart is, his home’s not here, I promise you that.’

‘Still not settled?’ Naseem’s eyes fill with sympathy.

‘Things are much, much worse than not settled,’ I blurt out. ‘Hadyn’s not been eating, not been sleeping properly. He’s having all sorts of difficulties. No,
really
,’ I insist as Naseem looks at me askance. ‘Charlie’s about to embark on some drastic rehabilitation programme that I swear will only make a bad situation ten times worse. He and I have already fallen out over it last night ...’

‘You argued?’ He looks really surprised. And not without reason. In my email, I asked Naseem if he’d agree to be a witness for us at our forthcoming marriage and when he comes round here, it must look as if Charlie and I are about ready to fall apart at the seams. I shake my head a little.

‘No? What’s happened?’ he asks gently.

‘We
disagreed
, but it feels as if there’s an argument brewing, and surely arguing has got to be the worst thing we could do for Hadyn at the moment?’

‘If you think Charlie’s plan will make things worse, he should at least hear you out, Jules. You’re Hadyn’s mother, after all.’

‘I know. The problem is Charlie’s been utterly convinced by a work colleague that everything we’re seeing is down to abduction trauma and all I can think is the complete opposite: that maybe all that’s wrong with our little boy is that he’s missing this other woman like crazy.’

‘And Hadyn doesn’t talk, so he can’t tell you?’ Naseem looks at my son tenderly for a moment. ‘You could be right,’ he agrees. ‘When my nan left us to go back to her home village, I felt as if my own mother had gone away. I even tried to do a runner a couple of times. I’d have been about four.’

‘Did you?’ I look at him in surprise. ‘That’s what Hadyn’s been doing, too.’

‘Shame,’ Naseem sympathises. ‘Would it do any harm to make contact with the woman—find out, maybe?’

‘God no. That’s not happening!’ I give a strangled laugh. ‘According to Charlie’s trauma theory, anything that might remind Hadyn of Spain is out. And Charlie’s whole family have got such a conspiracy of silence going on about her, you’d think the woman was a real psychopath.’

‘Not you, though?’ Naseem puts it to me now. ‘You think ... in her own way, she might have loved him?’

A light flashes briefly in my memory when he says that. Something comes back. Something I’ve been pushing down ever since the day it happened.

‘Illusion did something the day we took him back, Naseem. She kissed her fingers and then she touched them to his head. Very gently.’

‘An affectionate gesture,’ he agrees.

‘Then she bent down close to his ear and she whispered,
She’ll bring you back to me. Do not worry
.’  I look at my old friend uneasily as a cold shiver goes right through me. ‘Why do you think she would have said that?’

‘Reassuring him?’

‘Would he
need
that reassurance if he’d actually been traumatised by her?’

‘I guess you’ll never know
what
Hadyn’s feeling unless you take him out there, will you?’

‘I can’t,’ I tell him again.

‘Jules. If you want to take Hadyn out to Spain, you know I’m going on the ...’

‘No,’ I get out rapidly before this goes any further. ‘I don’t. I’m not taking him to Spain. For a thousand, thousand reasons, I cannot.’  

‘Hmm. What are
you
thinking, young man?’ Naseem bends right over now so his dark curls are right on a level with Hadyn’s bright ones, and stays in that position for a good few minutes as if he’s trying to see what Hadyn sees. 

‘Hey, remember the old days when you and I used to go round squirting all the neighbourhood kids with our water guns?’ he recalls suddenly.

I smile wryly. ‘Your mum’s empty
washing up liquid
bottles, you mean?’ We used to jump up from behind a wall, soak them head to toe, and then hare-tail it out of there. ‘Some of those kids used to get really mad at us. They’d come looking for revenge! We lived dangerously back then,’ I smile.  ‘Why did we even do it, Naseem?’

‘Because they were bullies,’ he comes back immediately.
Have you forgotten
; his brown eyes look sad for a moment,
have you forgotten Ahmed in his wheelchair, how those kids at school used to taunt him mercilessly?

‘We lived in a rough area then, didn’t we?’ I say lightly.   

‘You had a rough life.’ His look penetrates right through my breezy stance. ‘Living in that cramped flat above the corner shop with your dad.’ Naseem goes quiet now. The cramped flat wasn’t the worst of it. I know Naseem hasn’t forgotten the number of times he’d walk down to The Crown to help me fetch my dad back after he’d had a night on the tiles. Naz never wanted to let me do the route on my own, it was so secluded and dark. He always insisted on coming with me, and at thirteen, fourteen, I was grateful for it. But we aren’t in that place now.  

‘That’s why I always prayed for you, Jules,’ Naseem is saying.

‘Thank you for your prayers.’ I reach for his hand and squeeze it gratefully. His eyes search mine and, for a telling moment, neither of us speak.

‘You see much of him these days?’ he mumbles now. ‘Your dad?’

I shrug. Ever since Dad and I met up with each other again last year, we’ve done what we could to repair our relationship. It is what it is. Maybe my dad is never going to be the person I’d hoped he would be.

‘He doesn’t drink any more, if that’s what you mean.’ I shoot my friend a significant look. ‘It seems the day I finally had enough and left him to fend for himself was the day that changed his life.’       

‘Bugger could have done you the favour and stopped drinking while you were still at home living with him,’ my friend mutters darkly now.

‘Apparently not.’ That’s the irony of it, isn’t it? ‘It was me
going
that made all the difference. He said it made him realise; if even I couldn’t stand him anymore, things really must be unbearable ...’   

‘I’m sorry, Jules.’

I blink. I don’t like to talk about this. It still hurts that I had to make that decision to let my dad go, believing that I would never see him again. It wasn’t right.

I shouldn’t have had to make it.

‘So ... um ...’ I get in quickly before he starts talking about all the other things I know he could bring up if I gave him the space, all the bumpy, rocky moments that made up our shared yesterdays. ‘You been okay, then? Nadia, the girls—everyone good?’

‘They are
more
than good,’ he says softly. ‘But I see now perhaps ... not as good as I thought at first, for you?’

‘Oh, they aren’t so bad,’ I breeze. ‘I just need to ...’ I swing my hands together, ‘I need to remember how I used to be, before, back in the days when you were Bad Naz and I was ...’ I give a small laugh, trying desperately to lighten the moment.