Missing You (20 page)

Every now and then somebody tripped over one of the guy lines and the canvas would lurch and they would both laugh.

Connor was thin and slightly built. He spoke with an Irish country accent. He was missing a front tooth. He had a cough. Fen remembers he coughed long and hard into his fist. He asked if she wanted anything to eat; he had some pasties in a carrier bag hidden beneath a corner of the airbed and she laughed because it was funny that food was in such short supply that it had to be hidden, even out-of-date Ginsters’ pasties. She was not eating anything much at the time, but it was nice of him to offer to share. She was talking a lot, too much; she can’t remember what she was saying but she remembers the boy’s cold lips on hers, and his tongue finding a way between her teeth, and him whispering: ‘Will you shut the fuck up?’ And that was the beginning of the beginning of Connor.

The sand is hard underfoot now. As her feet press down, the perfect shallow indentations fill with water. She looks over her shoulder, and sees a double trail of footprints, hers and Connor’s, side by side.

A wet black dog with a red collar and three legs hops by, its tongue hanging from the side of its mouth, its feathered tail held low, but happy. It pauses to grin broadly at Fen and Connor and then carries on its way.

Connor cannot believe it.

‘That dog, Mum!’ he cries. ‘What happened to its leg?’

‘I expect it had an accident,’ says Fen.

‘I want a dog like that,’ says Connor.

Fen can see where the sea starts now. It is as calm as glass. The fierce, fast-rising estuary tide seems like a myth in these flat shallows where the sea is so placid it can’t even be bothered to break into waves. The sand has turned to darkish mud. Fen has heard of accidents, children getting stuck in the soft, containing mud-sand when the sea was subdued and still and harmless, like this, and nobody panicking, because there was no obvious danger, and adults trying to dig the children out and the tide quietly turning while they struggled with the mud, and then, by the time they realized that the water was hurtling in, it being too late to summon help. Terrible stories. She holds tightly to Connor’s hand. They reach the water’s edge.

She stayed in the boy’s tent all night, pressing herself against him, and they were both bony and their skin was cold. He coughed into his fist, and then he wrapped her in the damp blanket and held on to her, and the tops of her thighs were pressed together, hot and slippery.

Neither of them slept.

In the morning gloaming, she lay on her back under the blankets and wriggled back into her pants and her jeans.

‘Where are you going?’ asked the boy.

‘Toilet. Can I borrow a jumper?’

‘Sure,’ he said. He squinted at her with one eye. ‘You are coming back?’ he asked. ‘Aren’t you?’

‘Yes, of course,’ whispered Fen.

She remembers squatting on her heels while she leaned over to kiss him and him putting his hand in her hair, pulling her head down, and how she felt a little sick and giddy, dry-mouthed, but also how she wanted to fuck him again, to have him inside her with his weight on top of her and her hip bones sticking into him. She liked sex. It was all that stopped her feeling lonely.

‘Bring me a mug of tea, would you?’ he asked. ‘And some fresh orange juice and a bacon sarnie and some hot toast and jam.’

‘Yeah, sure!’ she said, laughing, for these things were the stuff of festival fantasies.

She unzipped the front of the tent and sat down to put on her boots, then she zipped the canvas flaps together again and stood and stretched, gazing out across the site.

It was huge, a city of multicoloured tents – the hues soft in the early morning mizzle beneath a wide, low sky – with the great cathedrals of the stages dominating the central area.

There were curls of smoke here and there; people with carrier bags flat on their heads to keep off the rain squatted and poked at tiny, ineffectual fires, and others emerged from tents, yawning, stretching, rubbing their eyes, their hair all messed up, wearing layers of jumpers over pyjamas. They drank from plastic water bottles, lit cigarettes, brushed their teeth, hawked and spat.

It was like being part of an army on the way to battle, part of a huge army: everyone on the same side, everyone with the same goal.

Connor’s little blue and green tent was in the middle of the field, packed close to its neighbours. Fen was careful to notice the long, triangular flag featuring the red dragon of Wales, which hung like a beacon from a pole on a nearby tent. She would use it as a point of reference. She fully intended to come back. She liked the boy, Connor. She planned to stay with him for the rest of the festival, maybe longer.

Picking her way between the tents, stepping carefully over the guy lines, it took her ages to find a proper path, and she wove such a circuitous route that she was soon disorientated. But she kept looking back over her shoulder, keeping an eye on the pointed flag.

Most of the site was still asleep, but as she came closer to the toilet blocks there were more and more people heading the same way.

Fen did not have to queue. She took a breath, pulled the neck of the boy’s big jumper up over her mouth and nose, closed her eyes and went into the portable toilet.

Afterwards, she tried to find her way back to his tent, but she couldn’t. There were Welsh flags everywhere and she did not know which direction she had come from. She walked for ages. She searched high and low, but in the end she had to give up, and although she scanned the faces of the boys at the site for the rest of the festival, she never set eyes on Connor’s father again.

Connor insists on filling the bucket himself. It takes a while. Fen stands in the shallow water and watches it cover her feet. She watches how the pale skin goes faintly green and mottled when it’s underwater. She wonders where the water came from, where it’s been.

She shades her eyes and gazes out. The two bridges to her right, further up the estuary, are hidden by the Weston promontory. To her left, in the distance and forming the other arm of the bay, is the silhouette of the recumbent hulk of Brean Down and, further out to sea, the dark islands: Steep Holm and Flat Holm. She can’t remember the legend exactly but the islands are supposed to be the exposed head and shoulder of a giant who drowned himself in the estuary out of grief. He accidentally killed his brother or something.

‘Look, Mum.’

Connor holds up his little yellow bucket and sloshes a couple of inches of water back down his arm. He squeals and jumps.

‘Here,’ says Fen, taking it from him. ‘I’ll carry it back for you, baby boy. We need to go back to our things now, the tide is turning.’

‘I’m
not
a baby.’

‘No, no, you’re not.’

‘Is it ten miles back as well?’

‘At least.’

‘Whoah!’

twenty-eight

‘Fen, hi, it’s me. Listen, would it be all right if I bring the family back to Crofters Road for a couple of hours?’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘Only they want to see where I live and . . .’

‘Sure.’

‘Mum’s dying to meet you. I’ve told her all about you and she’s really pleased for me. Well, us – she’s pleased for both of us. She’ll probably ask you loads of personal questions.’

‘Oh, I—’

‘You’ll like her. ’

‘But I’m not at Lilyvale, Sean. I’m in Weston-super-Mare.’

‘Oh.’

Something, some genuine disappointment in his voice touches her. It soothes the sore part of her heart.

‘I told you I was going out for the day,’ she reminds him gently.

‘I know, I just thought that maybe you’d be back by now . . .’

‘I’m sorry,’ she says.

‘Don’t worry. There’ll be plenty of other times for you to meet them.’

Fen sucks her lower lip. She looks down at Connor and smiles.

‘Maybe we could go up for a weekend sometime? Would you like that?’

‘Yes,’ she says. She takes a breath. ‘Say “hello” to them from me. Your family. Tell them I’m sorry I missed them.’

‘I will. Fen . . .’

‘Mmm?’

‘I missed you today. I wish you’d been there.’

‘Oh . . . I . . .’

‘I mean I
really
missed you.’

Fen breathes very slowly.

‘I don’t know what’s going on,’ he says, ‘but stay with me. Please . . .’

Fen says nothing.

He draws a breath. His voice changes. ‘Well, look, have fun at the beach.’

‘OK.’

‘I’ll save you some cake.’

‘Thank you. Sean . . .’

‘What?’

‘Oh nothing. I’ll see you later.’

She disconnects the call and holds the phone to her heart.

‘What?’ asks Connor. They are sitting on the promenade wall, eating hot dogs.

‘Nothing,’ says Fen. ‘Just that everything is going to be all right. I shouldn’t have worried. I should have known better.’

She leans down to squeeze and kiss her son.

‘Oh, Mum . . .’ He wriggles away. ‘Stop it! Get off!’

twenty-nine

Connor is fast asleep in the buggy, his head to one side, his mouth slightly open. Fen looks tired. There are freckles on her cheeks and across her nose, her cheeks are pink and even her hair looks a little fairer. A tatty old straw hat slides down her back, its elastic loose around her neck. Her shoulders are sunburned. She smiles at Sean, and shakes her feet out of her flip-flops.

‘Did you have a good day?’ she asks as Sean helps lift the buggy into the hall.

‘I did,’ says Sean. ‘It was great. Did you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Fen, I . . .’

‘I got you this,’ says Fen, passing him a white envelope with his name on the front.

He takes it and smiles.

‘An Eastern European birthday card?’

‘How did you guess?’

‘Is there a cheque inside?’

‘You’ll have to open it and find out.’

‘Thanks,’ he says. ‘Fen . . .’

‘Yes?’

He takes a breath.

Fen blinks.

‘I’m not very good at this . . . relationship stuff,’ he says.

Fen looks at his hands as they turn the envelope.

‘I know something’s wrong and I don’t know what it is but I don’t want you to go and take up with some sweet-talking older man just because of something I said, or didn’t say, or—’

‘Sean, I will never stop feeling like I do about you,’ she says simply.

‘Oh.’ He scratches his head. ‘Wow. Thank you. But . . . what is it, then? Why wouldn’t you meet my family?’

Fen looks at her feet. She is very gauche. Sean’s heart rushes with affection.

‘Lina said something . . . She wasn’t trying to cause trouble, she just wanted to warn me . . .’

‘A bout what?’

‘She said that your sister told you to have an affair to make Belle jealous.’

Sean exhales. ‘Yes, she did, and I did tell Lina, but that was before
us . . .
Oh Christ, Fen, you
know
it’s not like that. You
know.
’

She nods. ‘It’s just . . . well . . . I didn’t think I deserved to have anyone like you . . . I couldn’t actually believe that anyone could like me that much, especially you . . . and when Lina told me, it sort of made sense . . . I thought—’

‘Stop it,’ he says.

She stares down at the top of the buggy. ‘It’s just that we don’t ever talk, do we? We’re not the kind of people to say what we want or how we feel . . .’

‘We don’t have to. We know how we feel. Don’t we?’

‘Yes.’

He thinks for a while. Then he says: ‘When I said I missed you today, well, it was the truth. It was like . . . um . . . it was like Sky Sports on Saturday without Jeff Stelling! That’s how much I missed you.’

Fen looks up at him through her hair. She is smiling.

‘You are a bloody idiot,’ he says.

Later, in her bed, he combs her hair with his fingers and he puts his mouth close to her ear, so that the stud in the rim of its curl presses into his lip, and he whispers: ‘Fen . . .’

‘Mmm.’

‘I’ve been thinking . . . It shouldn’t be all about my family. What if I were to drive you to Merron? You and Connor? You can introduce me to your sister and the baby and show me around the city’s fleshpots.’

‘There are no fleshpots in Merron.’

‘Don’t be pedantic,’ he says. ‘I’m sure Connor would like to meet his cousin and we’ll take photographs, and you and your sister, you’ll both probably cry and—’

‘Lucy won’t cry.’

‘You’re doing it again. You’ll definitely cry and it’ll all be lovely and then we’ll find somewhere to go, on the coast maybe, and we’ll have a little holiday, just the three of us. I’d obviously rather take you to Paris but, as you don’t have a passport, it’s the best I can come up with.’

She sighs.

‘I don’t know . . .’

‘Oh, go on, let me take you. We don’t have to stay long. We don’t even have to stay overnight.’

‘I suppose . . .’

‘What’s the worst that could happen?’

She thinks: Oh, if I told you that you wouldn’t want to take me there.

‘I’ve never been that far into Wales,’ says Sean.

She turns in his arms, wriggles down the bed and he holds her close.

‘Is it all ladies wearing lacy collars and pointy hats and fields full of sheep and men called Dai saying “boyo”?’

‘Yes, that’s exactly what it’s like.’

He kisses her hair.

‘I can’t wait,’ he says.

He closes his eyes and is at the point of sleep when the phone trills on the bedside table beside him. Fen groans. He turns over and picks up the phone and he can see from the number on the illuminated screen that it’s Belle.

‘It’s Belle,’ he murmurs.

‘Aren’t you going to answer it?’

‘It’s the middle of the night.’

‘It might be important.’

Sean presses the green key.

‘Belle? Are you OK?’ he asks.

Fen slips out of the bed, switches on the light, unhooks her dressing gown from the back of the door and leaves the room.

Belle says: ‘Yes, I’m fine. I just wanted to wish you a happy birthday.’

‘At this time of night?’