Perfect Daughter (23 page)

Jacks sighed and started to tell Pete about her horrible conversation with Allison, who had made her feel like an outsider in her own family.

‘I felt left out,’ she admitted. ‘Jealous.’

‘Well, that’s just rubbish. You’re her mum!’

The bell rang upstairs.

‘Yes, but I don’t feel like her mum right now. I feel more like the enemy.’

She hurried out of the kitchen and up the stairs. When she opened her mum’s bedroom door, the smell was overpowering. Her eyes watered as she flung open the window.

‘Come on, let’s get you into the shower.’ She pulled her mum up a little more roughly than she’d intended.

‘Ow! You are hurting me!’ Ida yelled.

Jacks ignored her as she propped open the bathroom door with her foot and slid back the shower door. She stripped her mum and nudged her clothes into a pile with her toes.

‘It’s too hot!’ Ida screamed. ‘You are burning me!’

Jacks thrust her own hand under the running water. ‘Look! No it’s not, it’s cool! For God’s sake, how many more times do I have to tell you that?’ she snapped.

The two tussled in the shower, both soaked and covered in lather. Jacks sniffed back the tears as she wrestled her mum into her clean nappy and clothes.

‘Everything okay?’ Pete asked from the doorway.

‘Oh, everything is peachy!’ Jacks said flatly as she gathered up her mum’s soiled clothing.

‘I’m worried about you.’

‘Well, I’d say you’ve quite a lot to be worried about, wouldn’t you? It’s been a bit of a time of it, hasn’t it? Our eighteen-year-old daughter is up the spout by some bloody lout and my mother goes wandering off into the night so we have to call the police! I expect the
Jeremy Kyle
research team will be on the phone any day, asking if we want to star in a summer special. We might as well – they might pay us enough to afford a crib and it’s not as if the whole fucking town doesn’t already know all our business!’

‘Why are you fighting?’ Neither of them had heard Martha approach.

Jacks rounded on her daughter. ‘Why do you think, Martha? What could Dad and I possibly have to argue about? As if our life wasn’t perfect enough, we now have your baby to consider and as Jonty asked earlier, where exactly will this child sleep? What do you suggest? That we put a cot in the hall? Or maybe give you the lounge and we can all sit on our beds like in a student bedsit! Not that you would know about that, as you are never going to be a student, are you? I forgot!’

Martha started to cry.

‘That’s great, that’s exactly what we need – more tears. Because, trust me, if tears were the answer, Martha, I’d have fixed everything a long time ago! I tell you what, why don’t you tell your dad how you got on at the hospital yesterday? I’m sure, like Allison, he’d love all the details.’

‘Go easy, Jacks,’ Pete interjected.

‘Go easy? Oh yes, I forgot it’s all my bloody fault. As usual.’ She was shaking now. ‘Do you know what? I’m sick of it, sick of it all. I’m going out.’ She placed her mum in the stair lift and fastened the strap. ‘See you down there, Mum!’ she yelled.

‘Where are you going at this time of day?’ Pete said worriedly, not used to such erratic behaviour. ‘It’s almost dark.’

‘Anywhere, it doesn’t matter where. Somewhere I can have a little think. And I’m taking her with me.’ She pointed at her mother. ‘God forbid I should get time off from nursing her for five minutes, that would be too much to ask!’

Pete looked hurt. ‘You can leave her here, of course you can.’

‘Can I, Pete? I had one day to myself and it was like I was being punished when I got back. It’s just not worth it.’ She recalled coming back from London, tired and emotionally drained, to be greeted by Ida, clearly out of step, giving her bell even more exercise than normal. She had rung three times that first night. ‘I might as well just accept that I’m tethered to her, whether I like it or not!’

‘Toto?’ Ida called.

‘You’ll have to shout a bit louder than that,’ Jacks yelled. ‘He’s been six feet under for the last twenty years!’ Ida stared at her. ‘Come on.’ She lifted Ida from the stair lift and put her coat on, then slammed the front door shut behind her.

It was getting dark as they drove through town and out on to the motorway. Jacks gained speed as she gripped the steering wheel, ramming her foot down and pushing the gears through their paces.

‘Do you know the worst thing, Mum? It’s that you hated my dad. You must have. You made his life a fucking misery and all he ever did was work hard to keep you in fags. He was a wonderful man, what did he do to deserve that treatment? You were so horrible to him so many times and it affected how I loved you and in return how you loved me. I couldn’t get close to someone who treated him that way, how could I?’ Her eyes welled as she sped down the outside lane.

‘Are you capable of loving anyone? Why did you have me? Why did you bother? No one forced you! You’d have thought you might have been happy to have a child after all that time, and yet you shut me and Dad out like we were lepers. Why couldn’t you have joined in our laughs, just once, instead of sitting to the side, looking on, judging. My whole life I felt like an inconvenience and isn’t that a turnaround? Now you’re the bloody inconvenience!’ Jacks glanced at her mum, who stared out of the window, seemingly oblivious.

‘And now Martha… She’s throwing away her life. Throwing it away. I can’t believe it. I can’t! And who did that bloody woman think she was today? How dare she tell me what I should be doing or what my daughter needs!’ Jacks shook her head as she thumped the steering wheel.

Ida didn’t stir; she was looking at the pretty streetlights that lit the way along the wide lanes as they turned off the motorway at Gordano Services and headed towards Bristol.

‘I thought it was a good idea to give you that bell in case you fell or got scared or needed something. But instead it’s like my remote control: you ring it and I jump. I hear it all the time. I hear it over the telly, over the kids’ voices, everything. It rules my life and I fucking hate it!’

Jacks drove with no direction in mind until she found herself at a turning for the Clifton Suspension Bridge. She reached into the cubby in front of the gearstick and selected a pound coin from the little hoard she kept for emergencies. She tossed it into the barrier bucket before driving slowly over the magnificent bridge.

‘Lovely!’ Ida commented as she looked out to her left at the wide bend of the river, on its way through the Avon Gorge.

Jacks drove along the grassy downs and stared enviously at the grand five-storeyed Georgian houses lined up like sentinels. They were all beautifully lit from within. She gazed at the tall sash windows, which allowed glimpses of carefully poised lamps and plush curtains. She indicated and slowed as they passed Clifton College, its ancient buildings gathered in front of a pristine playing field, its interior lights sending out a golden glow. ‘Looks like bloody Hogwarts,’ she observed as they slowed over the bumps in the road.

She stopped by an ancient stone arch to let a boy cross, a tall, dark-haired boy in a fitted blue suit with a burgundy scarf at his neck and a stack of files and textbooks in his arms, a boy who smiled and waved, polite, yet in a hurry to get wherever he was going. The kind of boy who would go to university, where there would be a girl…

‘She’s having a baby. It doesn’t matter how often I say it, I feel sick every time. Why did this have to happen?’

They drove past the zoo and up on to Circular Road with its incredible views of the Avon Gorge and the Severn Estuary. Jacks pulled over and parked on the downs, which were deserted at that time of the evening. She sat for a minute before cutting the engine and stepping outside. She hauled the wheelchair from the boot and pulled her mum into it, ignoring Ida’s groans as she manhandled her and put her seatbelt on.

She pushed the chair up the path until they reached the high viewing point that looked down over the gorge. It was hard in the dark, navigating the dips where the gravel had been scuffed away to nothing. The wheelchair teetered to the left and right. Ida sat very still as Jacks steered her with determination. The chill breeze whipped their faces as they neared the cliff edge, drying Jacks’ tears almost as soon as they fell. They could see the bridge illuminated in the distance. It was stunningly beautiful.

Jacks stood very still, gripping the handles of her mum’s wheelchair, her knuckles white. The beeps and revs from the traffic below were the only thing to break the silence. ‘I feel like everything is going wrong for me. My heart is beating too quickly, pushing my blood round so fast that I feel like it might burst.’ She stared at the top of her mum’s head. ‘I don’t expect you to understand, but to love so deeply makes you vulnerable, makes you weak. And now I know what they say is true: the opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. The boy I loved, the one I still dream of nearly twenty years on… It turns out he’s indifferent, and maybe he always was. The idea of him, the memory of what we had and the dreams of what we might have had, kept me going for years, through all the down times, and now that’s gone too. Everything I used to rely on is turning to dust.’ She released the sob that had been building in her chest. ‘I’m tired, so bloody tired.’ The lights twinkled far below. ‘And poor old Pete, we had so many hopes, thought we were kindred spirits, but were we? Or were we just a couple of bloody rejects making the best of a bad situation? I don’t know. And now it’s happening all over again with Martha, marching into a life I didn’t want for her.’ She shook her head. ‘I don’t know how I can live with all this disappointment, all this bitterness.’

‘I need to find my treasure. And that letter. I’m waiting for them.’ Ida’s voice carried on the breeze.

‘You are not!’ Jacks screamed. ‘You are not! Just like I’m not waiting for a blonde stranger to come and take me away from the shit, you are not waiting for a letter! Do you understand?’

Ida twisted round to face her daughter. She was crying. ‘Toto?’

‘I can’t do this any more. I can’t.’ Jacks spoke into the darkness. ‘I’m so tired and everything feels so hopeless.’ She sobbed as she moved the chair forward an inch. Loose stones clattered off the edge of the path and down the cliff face below. ‘I’ve got nothing to cling to. Nothing. It’s like I’m floating, rootless, homeless. My life punctuated by that bloody bell! I can’t do it any more. I can’t. And I don’t want to let Dad down. I tried, Dad, I really did.’

Jacks drew back her arm and closed her eyes. With all the force she could muster, she lunged forwards. She stood back and listened to the sound of metal pinging and bashing against the rocks until there was nothing. Silence.

Sinking down on to the damp ground, she breathed deeply and calmly before giving way to tears. She slid further down on to the hard gravel, where she lay in the dark on the cold cliff edge. With her face pressed against the ground, she felt the sharp bite of stones against her cheek. ‘What do I do now? What on earth do I do now?’ she cried into the darkness.

Nearly two hours later, she opened the front door on Sunnyside Road to find Pete standing in the hall.

‘There you are! I was getting really worried. Where on earth have you been? It’s late. I kept trying your phone until I realised you’d left it on the kitchen table.’

Jacks shrugged, staring at her husband, unable to find the words and feeling too weak to converse.

‘Come on, Ida,’ Pete continued. ‘Why don’t I take you through for your tea? You must be starving. I’ve made fish fingers. Kitchen looks like an explosion in a food factory, but the food tastes good.’

He took the handles of his mother-in-law’s wheelchair and steered her along the hallway. ‘I’ll see to your mum, Jacks. Why don’t you go and have a lie down?’

Jacks stared at him with a blank expression on her face.

‘Don’t worry, love, it’s all okay. All I want to do is help you, look after you. We are on the same team, remember? I’ll get Ida settled and she can ring if she needs anything. Take your time.’

‘She can’t ring, actually.’

‘Why not? Where’s her bell?’

‘At the bottom of the Avon Gorge.’

Jacks climbed wearily up the stairs and collapsed into bed. As she pulled the duvet over her head, welcoming the dark escape it offered, she pictured Ida’s tear-stained face. ‘God, I’m so sorry, Mum,’ she whispered, overcome with guilt at the thought that she might have frightened her mum. She decided to try extra hard tomorrow to make it up to her.

22

Nineteen Years Earlier

‘Next!’ The receptionist shouted into the crowded room of the Health Centre.

Jacks looked at the number on the board. She’d be the next to go in. She placed her Walkman headphones over her ears and pressed play, letting the soothing sounds of her mix-tape take her away. She smiled as D-Ream’s ‘Things Can Only Get Better’ played loudly in her ears.
Ain’t that the truth…

As she sat practising what she needed to say and how she might say it, praying she’d get one of the female doctors, the door opened. She glanced up and was horrified to see Pete Davies limp in, looking nonchalantly around for an empty seat.

‘Shit,’ she muttered under her breath, sinking down as far as possible into the orange plastic chair and wishing she’d brought a book with her so she could bury her head in it. He did a double-take as he spotted her, lifting his hand in a hesitant wave. She cringed. The last time they’d been alone together was when they’d snogged on the dancefloor of Mr B’s.

‘All right, Jacks?’ He lowered himself into the chair beside her, keeping his right leg straight as though it was splinted. He was as usual wearing a tracksuit.

She pressed pause on her machine and lowered the headphones so they sat round her neck. ‘How’s your knee? I heard you’d damaged it.’ She felt her cheeks colour, unsure if mentioning it was the right or wrong thing to do.

‘It’s knackered.’ He sighed, patting the thigh of his damaged leg.

‘Will it get better?’

Pete laughed and shook his head, as though even saying the words required the disguise of humour just to make it bearable. ‘Nope. I’ve done the ligaments and it’s a weakness, apparently. I’m having physio, but that’s just to get me walking properly.’