Finding You (7 page)

9 - Julia

Home.

I’ve been waiting for this moment for so very long. Just to
be
here again, in our house in Richmond which Charlie and I moved into three months before Hadyn was born. I still have such good memories of routing around for all of the beautiful things we bought when we were still building our new home together. This beautiful five bedroom Edwardian house was going to be the foundation from which the three of us built the rest of our lives. We’d had so many exciting plans ... and then  the shock of the abduction on the New Year before last happened and disrupted the lot. 

We arrive back as it’s coming up to six p.m. The evening’s drawing in already and it’s getting chilly.

Home; I am home
. I want to feel ... the way I once felt. That I belong here. That I have come back to a place that is mine. It’s the beginning of April and there are all the tell-tale signs that it must have rained earlier; when I brush past the overgrown bushes along our front drive, all the leaves are shiny and I can feel my legs getting wet. On the garage side, the tiny Kerria bush I once planted in the ground out of a plastic cup bought at the local church fete has sprouted into a huge confection of yellow flower heads. The tulips and the daffs are out, standing boldly green and red and yellow in their pots out front and I think:
see, things carry on, life carries on happening it doesn’t just stand still
and now, coming back here, we’re going to join back into the flow of it, too. We’ll carry on where we left off, if it is possible.

It’s what I’d like to do.

But coming up to the front door, I see a little pink flower pot with a solitary plastic dahlia in it that was never there before, that wasn’t put there by me, and the unexpected sight of it pulls me up. It catches me by surprise, as if I have come back to the wrong house. And I remember: the truth is that this has not been my home for such a long time, has it? The last time I came back to this place was in November. The house had been all shut up, then. By then, Charlie and I had been estranged for several months. He’d been away working in France for a while, and I hadn’t even known.  I’d come back here hoping to find him and all I’d found was a letter he’d left for me, agreeing that maybe we did ‘need our space’ away from each other. When I’d listened to the messages on the answerphone, that’s when I’d learned of Agustina’s passing away.

I remember how Blackberry House had been so dark and shut up that last day I’d visited. I’d sat at the bottom of the stairs and caught a whiff of Lourdes’ perfume on the scarf that had still been hanging from the banisters, and it had no longer felt like the loving and welcoming home I’d always dreamed of.  The reality was, with Charlie gone and the place virtually abandoned, I’d barely even recognised the place. It had felt like a dream only barely remembered; I’d left it in order to go and find my son, and in the meantime, everything I’d once had here had turned to dust.

I shiver, and Rafaela from the market comes back to me now:
this is a time to rejoice,
she’d said to me.
And you are rejoicing. But there’s also a confusion,a loss; a fog like a big mist coming in over the sea ...

 Is it because coming back is never as easy as one-two-three? Because when you come back to the place you started from, you are always changed, altered in your perspective by the journey?      

 ‘Looks like your mum and step-dad must have made it after all.’ Charlie gives me a start as he nudges me now. There are no other cars on the drive, but there’s the soft glow of welcoming lights coming from various rooms. When Charlie gets the front door open, we’re greeted by the aroma of fresh coffee, a vase full of pink lilies—along with a large pile of letters—on the hall table, and a house which I am mightily grateful to see has now been cleaned and freshened for our arrival, rather than one which has been shut up for months.

‘Hello? Anyone there?’ he calls out.

‘Welcome home!’ Mum and Dick peer into the entrance hall, him with a vacuum cleaner still in his hand and Mum with her marigolds on. ‘We took the train down yesterday afternoon,’ Mum says, talking fast, the way she does when she’s excited. 

‘We’ve been slowly going through the rooms since. Just the main ones, mind. I managed to get most of the sheets laundered, though, and there were a few towels that I thought ...’ Mum stops now as I come up behind Charlie, immediately transfixed by the sight of Hadyn, dozing in my arms.  Her face twists in a strange way, tears coming into her eyes, which are crinkled up with joy. 

‘Oh. He’s grown so ... so
big
.’

‘And heavy,’ I smile ruefully. My arms are aching. ‘Sorry you’ve caught him asleep. He’s been raring to go, desperate to run up and down the aisle the entire flight.’ She comes up and touches one of his dimpled fingers with her rubbery yellow glove.  She and Dick both look pleased and proud as punch. She gives me a tentative hug, mindful not to wake him.

‘We still had the key. I hope you didn’t mind us coming into your home unannounced?’

‘On the contrary.’ Charlie gives Mum a hug. ‘We couldn’t give you much notice, I’m afraid. But we’re very glad you’re here.’ 

‘You’ve brought our grandson home. Wild horses couldn’t keep us away,’ Dick smiles.

‘We’ve got Hadyn’s bedroom all ready for him upstairs,’ Mum whispers to me now. ‘Do you want to take him up?’

I look towards Charlie, in case he wants to come up with me but he just smiles, kisses the ends of Hadyn’s fingers.

‘You go on and take him up, hon. I’ll be along in a bit. There’s still the rest of the luggage to bring in from the taxi, yet.’ The luggage. And then we’ll have my parents to entertain for the rest of the evening. I’m happy they are here—of course I am; I wouldn’t have had it any other way—but it does mean I’ll have to put off all the things I wanted to talk to Charlie about for a little longer. Still. We’ll each have plenty of time to say what’s on our minds in the days to come. We will now that we are back home.

I hope so.

Dick goes out to the taxi with Charlie now and as I go up the stairs, I hear my step-dad reminding Charlie that his own car will be out of battery. It is such an ordinary thing to bring up at such a momentous moment that it seems to me almost surreal
.

‘If you intend to use it tomorrow, you’ll need to go ask your neighbours for a jump-start,’ I can hear Dick saying.  I hear the sound of the front door going as the men go out, and then Mum coming hurrying up the stairs after me.

‘You know we’d have stayed with you in Spain for longer,’ Mum’s saying in a sotto voice, two steps behind me. ‘But Dick’s not good abroad. He suffers so from prickly heat.’

‘I know he does, Mum. It’s perfectly okay.’ I’m barely listening to her, really. I’m concentrating on the familiar feel of the plush stair carpet beneath my feet. I left my shoes at the bottom, just like I always do. It is all so comfortable and well-known to me. Three years ago, I helped choose this carpet; I picked out this wallpaper. I was the one who scoured through the catalogues for those light fittings. I bought those picture frames.

Upstairs, when we go into Hadyn’s room, the wood on the sides of his old cot have been washed down and it is practically gleaming. The fresh scent of his laundered sheets is filling the room. The window’s been left slightly ajar, and Mum hurries over to close it now.

‘Don’t want him catching a chill,’ she worries.

‘No, Mum.’ I lay him down to rest in his cot and he sprawls out immediately, his elbows and knees touching the wooden bars at the side. He looks so big in that cot, I think. She is right. He has grown so big. Did I imagine he would look the same as he used to look in it? Of course I did not, and yet ...          

‘Will Hadyn be all right in his own room? We weren’t sure if you’d prefer to have him in your own bedroom.’ I catch the anxious undertones in Mum’s voice.

‘He’ll be perfectly all right.’  I look around at his bedroom now, at all the toys he has long since grown out of, the teething rings and the pile of teeny-tiny clothes Mum’s fetched out and laid on top of the chest of drawers. God, I didn’t even realise we still had those. It brings home the fact that the son we have brought home is a different child from the one who left.

‘I didn’t know if any of those would still be any good?’

‘They won’t.’ I shake my head. She must have known that they wouldn’t be. She wanted to empty the drawers for his new things, and didn’t know what to do with the old ones so she’s left them to me.        

‘Are you pleased to be back, Julia?’ It’s a rhetorical question.

I laugh, realising that I haven’t said too much up to now, and letting the relief of it all flood through me. I’ve dreamt about this moment for the four months we were waiting in Spain and now it’s happened, all I can do is marvel at how it is possible to sometimes turn things around in life. There were times when I never thought we’d make it.

But now, we are here.   

‘I am
more
than pleased, Mum,’ I say with feeling. ‘Thank you so much for what you’ve both done. The cleaning and so on. We left Spain in such a hurry in the end; there was no time to arrange for anyone to come in ...’

‘The cleaning is the least we could do,’ she says quietly. She’s smiling, happy, but I can tell she’s also a little sad.  She twitches the blanket a little higher over Hadyn’s sleeping form.  She’s barely been able to take her eyes off him since we’ve arrived. 

‘Do you know, I didn’t say it in Spain,’ her voice catches now, ‘but I want you to know that I
do
feel very proud of you, Julia. Of what you did. You followed your instincts, and it turned out to be the right thing.’

I open my mouth to say something, and I can’t think of a single thing to say. Because she is right. My God, if there is one thing I have been waiting to hear people say, it is this. That they realise now how much their support would have meant to me at the time. We can’t go back, but it is good to hear her say it at last.

‘I only wish ...’ she tucks in the bottom corners of his cot now, making fiercely neat right angles, making things straight in the best way she knows how. ‘Well, I wish I’d stood by you more when you were still looking for him, that’s all. You’re my daughter and I
should
have done.’

I bow my head, acknowledging her words.

‘It’s just that you’ve always been ... a creature of instinct like your dad, and perhaps I haven’t always responded in the best way.’ She hurries on, sounding nervous, ‘I know I haven’t always understood you ...’

‘Mum.’ I stop her at last. ‘It’s okay.’

‘Oh.’ She stares at me for a moment, and then she rushes straight into her next thought.  ‘Well. I’ve brought us over a casserole,’ she hurries on now. ‘It’ll only need heating up in the oven. I’ll go and sort that out for you now, shall I?’

‘That’d be lovely,’ I tell her gratefully.  When she goes back downstairs, I sit on the edge of Hadyn’s little wicker chair and just take it all in for a moment, being back.

I cut Mum short just now, but the truth is, I’m really touched that she had the courage to come out and admit just now what she did.  And I’m pleased too, that she and Dick made the effort to come; that they’ve wanted, even at such short notice, to make something of our homecoming. I imagined we’d slip in, unnoticed, into a cold and dusty Blackberry House, and I’d spend the evening sourcing linen from the airing cupboard while Charlie did all the blokey stuff like turning the gas back on and going through the answerphone messages.

I’d also imagined we might have a bit of privacy and alone time; that we’d finally get the chance to talk. There are things I’ve been wanting to bring up with him ever since he sent us along to that party without him on Friday.  If I am honest, ever since the two of us have got back together, but he’s never been in a place yet to want to talk about it. 

Because Charlie is a man who avoids conflict, I’ve discovered. I think he’s more like his brother Roberto than he knows; he’d rather walk away from it. I suspect that’s the real reason why he opted out of joining us for Antonio’s party on Friday: because he didn’t want to face Lourdes. Part of me still worries about it: that maybe he had a
reason
for not wanting to face her.

When Mum goes downstairs, I go through into the master bedroom. Quietly, almost holding my breath. I tell myself it’s so as not to wake my son in the next room, but I know that isn’t the real reason. It is because I know, deep in my heart, I am scared of what I might find.

It’s because the last time I was here, I had picked up traces of Lourdes in almost every room in the house.

Just flashes of her, here and there. I remember it now: the bright floral notes of that salon shampoo that she used—not my shampoo—still discernible at the edges of the shower; the deep, muskier notes of her signature perfume etched into her scarf that had lingered about the hallway. Will I find it up here now, in our bedroom, too? Will I find traces of Lourdes in the most intimate places in my home?  I shudder, wishing that I wasn’t doing this to myself.
I left her
, Charlie  insisted this morning at the airport.
I came for you that day at the park. It’s you I want.

Maybe it’s unworthy of me.  Maybe it’s a destructive thing, this curiosity, this need to know, and yet ... ever since we’ve left Spain, I’ve had this nagging sense that Charlie’s been holding out on me.
Something’
s been eating away at him, and he’s not come out with it yet.