Finding You (9 page)

12 - Julia

‘Sorry we are so late ...’ I begin as Alys opens the front door, but Alys doesn’t appear to have noticed.

‘My dear, you look positively …’ Alys doesn’t complete her sentence about how it is I positively look, but I am hoping the word she has just refrained from using isn’t
haggard
.

‘Sleep-deprived?’ I finish for her, but she’s already hanging up my jacket and pushing Hadyn’s shoes away neatly into the corner of her brightly-lit entrance hall.

‘Radiant,’ she insists. ‘You look radiant, darling.’  This isn’t the first time she’s seen me since we’ve had Hadyn back. Alys left her kids with her husband and came out to spend a week helping me out in Spain just after we found him—an act of friendship I won’t forget in a hurry.

‘I don’t feel radiant,’ I laugh. ‘I feel ... harassed.’
I’ve just had a pretty unwelcome email from Charlie’s sister-in-law come through this morning.

‘Journalists?’ Alys straightens immediately, sensing a good bit of gossip.

I shake my head.  ‘They’ve not been too bad. We’ve had a few come by asking for interviews since we arrived.’
A couple of weeks ago now. The time has gone so fast.
‘But Charlie’s engaged an agency to handle enquiries, so it’s all been very civilised.’
    

‘Good for him. Charlie back at work?’ Alys ushers us both into the sitting room.

‘He’s gone into the clinic this morning, but he won’t start back properly till Monday,’ I begin.

‘Hello. Do you want to come and sit here with me and Lucien?’ Tatiana, Alys’ youngest, who’s eight, gestures for Hadyn to join her at the large family table. There’s another little boy about Hadyn’s age already sitting there.

‘My nephew,’ Alys nods at him, ‘Lucien.’

Tatti’s brought out an enormous piece of paper and a box of coloured crayons ready to occupy them with.

‘I’m guessing Hadyn’s still fond of art?’ Alys grins. She’s remembered. She’s already witnessed firsthand how he’ll happily spend hours scribbling away on a paper with coloured pencils.

‘Oh. What’s
that
for?’ She blushes suddenly as I bring a large tied spring bouquet out of my bag and hand it to her.   

‘Your support that first week meant a lot to me, Alys.’ I give her a big hug.

‘It was the least I could do.’ She bats me away, but I can see that she’s pleased. ‘You sit yourself down,’ she commands. ‘I’ll just pop these into some water ...’ She ducks into her large side-cupboard to get a vase. I sink onto one of her lovely big settees and close my eyes for a moment. It’s a fatal decision. Right now, sitting here in Alys’ house on her ultra-comfortable chair, I could be out like a light.

‘And then,’ I hear Alys saying, ‘you can spill the beans and tell me all about whatever’s going on for you this morning if it isn’t those pesky journalists ...’   

If Alys is hoping for some intrigue, she isn’t going to get any.
There is nothing going on for me,
I think,
other than the fact that Hadyn and I have been up since five a.m. again and I am bushed
.

And Eva’s email, which I certainly could have done without.

‘I’ll fetch us through some tea,’ I hear my friend say. ‘I have it all prepared; you just wait there.’ I don’t need telling twice. I’m not actually going to fall asleep, of course. I’m just  working out how I should best respond to Eva and trying to relax; listening to the ordinary  sounds going on in the house around me, the murmur of Tatti’s voice, a little bit bossy like a teacher, as she instructs the  small boys at her table on what they should be doing. The other little chap—Lucien—asks her for a different colour pencil now and again. ‘Blue’, he’s saying, ‘wed,
owange.
’       

‘Please,’ Tatti prompts him.

‘Pweese.’

I can hear the soft sounds of their pencils, scraping against the paper, their colouring in. I can hear Lucien sigh every so often, and the cheerful sound of the family budgerigar cheeping from a nearby room, and the chinking of china mugs as Alys sets them out on a tray for us, the sounds of the tap water running as she fills up a juice jug for the children. These are all things I associate with being back in England, I think, and let myself take that  in: that we have returned, that I am at last back in my own world, surrounded by things that are all reassuringly and comfortably familiar.    

It’s a little bit warmer today, the end of the second week in April. Alys has got her sitting room window open. It backs out onto her garden, and I can hear the buzzing of the neighbour’s strimmer coming from somewhere right down the bottom. I can’t hear the sounds of the sea anymore, my hazy brain takes in. I’d got used to that, the sea being there all the time in the background. In four months, I’d got so I never even heard it anymore, but now that it’s not there, I can
hear
it not being there. I wonder if Hadyn notices it too, I think idly. I wonder if the sound of the sea has become part of his familiar backdrop? What if I got him a tape that played the sounds of the waves—would he settle better at night?    

‘Not getting enough rest, hun?’ Alys is back.

I open my eyes with a start, smile at her ruefully. ‘Our little man appears to need very little sleep.’

‘How unfortunate.’ She perches down beside me, placing her tray on the coffee table. ‘I hear if the kids don’t let you rest, it can be utter hell.’

I look at her blearily, rub at my eyes.

‘Have you been getting him out of the house enough?’ she suggests. ‘Have you been taking him out to the park?’

‘We go to the park every day,’ I tell her.

‘How about that Mum and Toddler group I told you about, Mummies and Bubbies—the one Lucien’s mum runs?’

‘We did try Mummies and Bubbies earlier this week,’ I begin cautiously. I feel awkward telling her it wasn’t a great success when it’s her sister-in-law who runs it. I don’t like to mention that Hadyn got into trouble when he repeatedly ran off with another child’s tipper truck and refused each time, point blank, to give it up. ‘Hadyn hasn’t quite grasped the concept of sharing and turn-taking yet.’ I put it delicately.

‘At this age, a lot of them haven’t,’ she asserts. ‘That’s partly what the toddler groups are for—to socialise them.’

‘A lot of them seem to have developed a much better idea of what it means to be in a group than Hadyn does, though.’ 
A much better idea. As in: my son seems to have no idea at all
. ‘I felt a few of the mums were starting to get a little cross with him,’ I admit to her after a while. ‘It was getting a bit awkward, so I didn’t keep him there too long ...’       

‘Good idea,’ Alys supports. ‘He’s probably never been to anything like it before, so take it slowly, let him get used to it. Once he starts nursery, you see he’ll soon pick up.’  Alys slides her bottom down onto the seat beside me and pats my arm.  ‘So ... how’s everything else been? Hadyn settling in okay back home?’

‘Yes,’ I say, my voice strained. I have been feeling so strangely tired and flat after the initial jubilation in the two weeks since we’ve been back, though I’ve been putting that down mostly to the disrupted nights. ‘Well, no.’ I glance at her uneasily. I take a sip of the tea she’s poured out for me and wonder how much to say. Shall I tell her the reason we were so late this morning was that Hadyn refused to let me put his new shoes on, the ones I got him that were better suited to the British weather instead of the sandals he’s been wearing up to now?

He doesn’t take kindly to even small changes, I’ve noticed.

I decide not to mention the shoes episode. The fact that it ended when—to my astonishment—he ran to throw one of the new ones down the toilet and it got all wet. I’m sure he put it there because it was the first thing that came to him. He couldn’t have understood how naughty that was. That took another good few minutes, didn’t it, explaining that to him; that the toilet is not a place where we put things we don’t want to have anything to do with. 

‘I’m not sure,’ I tell Alys candidly. ‘I mean ... I’m not sure what it would be fair to expect, really.’

‘Oh.’ Alys seems bemused. ‘Well, what did the health visitor advise? You told me she popped in briefly last week, yes?’

I look at my friend wearily. ‘She gave me some sound enough advice on bedtime and mealtime routines—all common sense stuff, really. She left me some picture books we could look over together on sharing and so on ...’

Alys smiles. ‘Has it been of any use?’

‘All of it would be, I’m sure. For most children his age.’

‘But not your one?’ She’s looking at me intently. ‘It’s early days yet, hon.’

‘We’re seeing Dr Fraser tomorrow, though.’

‘Dr Fraser’s good, always really helpful, I find. He might also have some worthwhile advice on how to settle Hadyn in. Is it just the problems sleeping?’  Alys’ eyes crinkle sympathetically.     

‘He wasn’t sleeping too well in Spain. I hoped he might settle but since we’ve arrived back in the UK, it’s got even worse …’

‘Well, Blackberry House may be home to
you
,’ she notes, ‘but think of it from Hadyn’s perspective. To him, it’s just another new set of circumstances he’s got to readjust to. It’s going to take time, Jules. And your departure was all rather
rapid
, wasn’t it?’ Alys glances at me, suddenly curious. ‘Tom and I would have picked you up from the airport if you’d given us any notice, you know. We were slightly amazed at how quickly you got out of Spain,’ she adds with a significant glance at me. ‘I’d have
imagined
these things might take a bit more time ...’  

‘They do. They
would
.’ That’s what Eva’s miffed email this morning was about. ‘Charlie’s sister-in-law would agree with you,’ I snort. ‘The poor woman’s been left with the task of sorting out all the things me and Charlie just couldn’t get through at the villa before we left. Most of it can go to charity, but some of the documents are way too sensitive to go in the post.  So now Eva’s asking if I’ll need her to organise a courier or something, and it’s all because we had to leave in such a tearing hurry!’

I spread my hands helplessly. ‘Charlie was just so insistent that we leave immediately, Alys.’

‘He’d had enough,’ she suggests.

‘I know he was worried about his dad,’ Then I add, ‘Charlie made such an issue of it, I thought he’d be up there practically the next day but ...’ I lower my voice, ‘we’ve been back two weeks and while he’s been on the phone to the care home several times, there’s been no mention of him going up to see Tony yet ...’    

‘So you think it might have been something else?’ Alys suggests.

‘Well, no.’ I stop.  ‘What do you mean? Like
what
?’

‘Well ...’ Alys leans over and pours some more tea carefully into both our cups. ‘I thought something like Illusion being released from custody—that might have been a factor.’

‘As far as I know,’ I inform Alys, ‘she’s still
in
custody.’

Alys is shaking her head. ‘I Googled her,’ she says, totally matter-of-fact now.

‘You did what?’ I stare at my friend. ‘
When
?’

‘I Googled her. I’ve been doing it every now and then ever since I got back from Spain. There are translations available of some newspaper articles about her.’ Alys looks slightly discomfited now. She leans over to spread out the tea things more evenly on the tray. ‘I hope you don’t mind? Look, did
you
manage to find out anything about this woman in the end, Jules? The family were being pretty cagey about telling you anything when I was in Spain, as I recall.’

‘They were,’ I agree. If I ever brought the subject of Illusion up in Eva’s house, everyone would immediately clam up.

‘So I Googled her,’ Alys says. ‘I imagined you might have done the same. Just been ...
curious
, you know?’ 

I feel my face going pink.  ‘Charlie’s relatives always gave me the impression that it would be best for me to let the subject go.’

Alys glances over at the children to make sure they’re still fully occupied with their drawing before lowering her voice to answer, ‘I think
I’d
want to know. I’d want to know everything I could find out about her, if it were one of
my
children who’d been looked after by another woman for a whole year.’

‘Well maybe you would,’ I throw at her. ‘You would until it became perfectly obvious from the negative responses of everyone around you that no one wanted to tell you anything. Until you began to wonder
why
that might be  ...’

‘My goodness, Jules.’ Alys looks mortified. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to sound ...’ She puts her tea cup down, remorseful. ‘I’m sorry if I’ve told you something you didn’t already know and didn’t want to know.’

‘That Illusion has been released?’ I breathe.

‘Last Monday,’ she nods. ‘The day after you left Spain.  Wow ... you really didn’t know anything, Julia?’

I shake my head.

‘I bet Charlie did, though,’ she gives me a significant look and I feel my face flush. 

‘And not told me anything?’  I spread open my hands, at a loss with that one, feeling a strange mixture of both fear and anger that Charlie might have known something that I did not know and deliberately kept it from me.