The Bad Mother (17 page)

‘Maybe next time they’ll be at Sam’s?’ He looked down at her suggestively, his lips not far away.

‘Maybe. But now I’m going to tidy up and put the lights out,’ she added firmly.

He nodded and let go of her hand.

‘See you in the morning, Declan. And thanks,’ she added. ‘Really.’

‘No problem. Sweet dreams.’ He gave her a friendly smile and left the room.

Tessa wrapped her arms around her body and grinned foolishly to herself, invigorated by his admiration and elated by this further proof that she was slowly uncovering her lost self.

TWENTY-FOUR

It had become an annual custom, before the full onslaught of the summer season, for the proprietors of Felixham guesthouses and B&Bs to meet for lunch away from town to compare notes and streamline the system they had of passing on bookings when one of them had to turn away guests. Tessa usually enjoyed the event, although she knew that some of her colleagues, especially those who remembered the Seafront B&B in her grandmother’s day, disapproved of her refurbishment. One was jealous of her prices, while another made no secret of his opinion that her style was pretentious, unlike his own establishment’s home-from-home cosiness. Tessa took the view that there was plenty of room in the market for all tastes.

This year’s lunch was to be held in Orford, where those who could spare the time could make a day of it, and some friends had offered Tessa a lift because they knew she’d be coming on her own. She put on a final touch of lipstick then went to check on Mitch, who, now that his exams had finally begun, was allowed to stay home from
school to revise. For the past week he’d moped about the house, dark shadows under his eyes, stooped like an old man. The only time he perked up was when his mobile rang.

She found him lying on his bed, reading from a big lever-arch file. When he looked up, his face was a picture of misery. ‘My brain won’t take in any more,’ he told her. ‘I’m going to fail the lot.’

‘Go for a little walk,’ she advised. ‘Or a bike ride. Try and distract yourself, even if only for ten minutes.’

‘It won’t help.’

‘It’s important to take a break. Are none of your friends around?’

‘No. We’ve all got different papers on different days.’

As he sat up, he seemed to Tessa to have grown suddenly longer and thinner. Even his bare feet seemed spectrally elongated. ‘Are you eating enough? Bananas are good energy food.’

‘Not hungry. I’m never going to get the grades I need.’

She sighed, experiencing a mixture of sympathy and exasperation. He saw, and hung his head, his soft hair flopping. Abashed, she reached into her handbag and pulled out some cash. ‘Tell you what,’ she strove to speak more kindly, ‘go and get a haircut. Here.’

He came to take the money, giving her an ambivalent look that made her feel cheap. She reached up to smooth back his hair, kissing his exposed forehead. ‘No good sitting exams if you can’t see out.’

Mitch nodded. ‘Ok. Thanks.’

‘I have to go. Bobbi’s coming to pick me up.’

Mitch followed her, lingering in his doorway, fingering the paintwork on the door-jamb, obviously making up his mind about something. ‘Are Grandpa Hugo and Grannie Pamela coming over again soon?’

‘There’s been a lot going on,’ countered Tessa.

‘Only we never seem to see them.’

Tessa sighed. ‘It’s been difficult, this stuff about my being adopted.’

‘But you’re not adopted,’ he protested. ‘They’re your family. It was Erin who left home, not you.’

‘Yes, but it’s also complicated. We’re taking a little time to adjust, that’s all.’

‘Family is family,’ he said doggedly. ‘Finding a second mother doesn’t mean you lose your first.’

Tessa was touched by the earnestness with which he spoke, as if he were willing her to understand something more behind his words. He had always possessed such a sweet nature, and she was sorry for her impatience. ‘You’re right,’ she said, smiling at him. ‘Family is family.’

He nodded as if something had been settled between them, and disappeared back into his room.

Twenty or more familiar faces were gathered in the private dining room of one of the pubs in Orford. Tessa found it hard being expected to act as ambassador for Sam’s brasserie, which was a sufficient novelty to be a major topic of conversation. Although most people already seemed to know that Sam and Nula were living together, they still pumped Tessa for information, asking if he would
be offering an introductory commission to those who sent guests his way. Several assumed Tessa would join in the general praise for the design and decor, most of which was due to Nula’s firm, and directed rather too sharp-eyed remarks at her about the lucky combination of talents. And so, tired after all the chat and two glasses of wine, she found it dispiriting to travel home again with Bobbi and her husband, sitting in the back of their car like a child behind the grown-ups.

Entering Felixham, Tessa steeled herself as the car approached the brasserie.

‘Oh, look,’ cried Bobbi. ‘There’s Sam!’ Bobbi waved as the car sailed past, but Sam did not notice. He was hand-in-hand with Nula, laughing and almost dancing with her. She too was laughing, her head tilted back so her long wavy hair swung loose and free. Tessa shrank into herself, feeling flimsy and transparent, invisible to the husband she had lived with for seventeen years.

Bobbi twisted around to speak to Tessa. ‘When does he open?’ Not waiting for an answer, she turned back to her husband, who was driving. ‘We must go for lunch. We should book right away, or we’ll never get a table.’

Five minutes later Tessa waved them off and went indoors. The house was silent. Mitch must have gone out as she suggested, Lauren was at school, and it would be an hour or two before the first guests rang the bell. There was no one waiting to ask her about her day, and she was struck by how, immersed in her own small-town world, she had seldom looked outside the family-run business to
find friends of her own. The place seemed suddenly cavernous, too big for her yet offering no shelter.

Picking up the post, she went into the office. She could not bear to go upstairs to the bedroom she had once shared with Sam. She longed to believe that there could still somehow be life and love in their marriage if she could only explain how they could be different together now that she was beginning to know her real self; that, if only he could face the difficulty of telling Nula, he could prevent the waste of all their years together, put a stop to the final break-up of the family they had created. But she knew this was make-believe. She had witnessed the truth right there on the street beneath Nula’s jaunty blue-and-white signage.

Although Tessa had remained invisible behind the car window, she’d been close enough to witness the happiness shining in Sam’s face, to watch the unhindered way he laughed. She did not think she had seen him so carefree since they’d been at college. Had he even been like that then? She felt like an outcast, discarded by a marriage that had not worked because she had failed to grasp this one small subtle thing which, dancing hand-in-hand in the street with Sam, Nula appeared so abundantly to have mastered. Tessa’s sense of failure left her neutered and diminished. The final shreds of renewed confidence she had enjoyed for a few days after Declan’s flirtation faded away: that sort of urge, however vital, was not the subtle, precious intimacy she had just – cruelly, obscenely – witnessed between Nula and Sam.

Tessa wondered now if maybe she should have accepted Declan’s invitation after all. Even with ‘no strings’, sex might have offered some sense of connection, some evidence that she was still desirable. But the image she conjured up of herself in bed with Declan merely threw into greater relief the absence of what she’d been forced to witness between Sam and Nula. How had she failed to realise how sterile and unlovable Sam had found her all these years? He had taken the line of least resistance, as he always did, to escape from her, but his betrayal there in the street could not have been more public. The recognition of her loss was terrible, a grief that made her want to cry out in fury and lament.

She sat down at her desk, staring at the lifeless screen. The pile of post caught her eye, the corner of a now-familiar handwritten envelope sticking out. Seizing Roy’s letter, she read it twice, dug out one of the picture postcards of Felixham that she stored away for guests, and wrote simply:
Please may I come and see you again?

TWENTY-FIVE

Tessa arrived at HMP Wayleigh Heath a good hour before visits began and was among the first to book in, and to hand in her unsealed envelope containing a few photographs of herself as a child. She had brought a book to read, a promising-looking paperback left behind by a guest. Knowing now what to expect, she was able to look around more confidently and, when called across to the prison, to take in more of her surroundings. This time she had an impression of being on a ship, a spick-and-span naval vessel maintaining a constant discipline that heightened the awareness of how they were all alone, far from land, ever vigilant to the threat of violent mutiny. The sounds of the prison, too, reminded her of being on board a boat, where the constant background noise of metal striking against metal was reflected back off the hard surfaces of deck or water, with no soft edges to absorb its clarity. Like the sea, it was an environment that would not lightly forgive mistakes.

Arriving in the visits room, she saw Roy watching out for her. He stood up, waiting as she walked towards him.

‘I’m glad you’re on time,’ he said, smiling. ‘Means we’ll have longer together.’

Tessa felt obscurely deflated. She had taken pains to dress nicely, had paid Carol extra to cover for her absence, and it had been a long, rather tiresome, drive.

‘You look stressed,’ Roy observed. ‘A bit of a trek from Felixham?’

Instantly guilty at her oversensitivity, and certain his welcome couldn’t have been intended as an admonishment, Tessa tried to imagine how difficult it must become to empathise with the everyday realities of life outside. It was, after all, extraordinary that apart perhaps from a journey in a closed van from one establishment to another, Roy had not set foot outside these walls in twelve years. The comparison with her own life put his limited existence into full perspective, like a tiny dot at the wrong end of a telescope. And besides, Roy
had
asked about her journey. ‘I’m fine,’ she smiled. ‘An easy drive.’

As they sat down, she realised that, distracted, she had not offered Roy her hand or other physical greeting. But now the opportunity had passed, and she experienced a second pang of guilt. ‘Thank you for the VO,’ she said. ‘I hope I’m not depriving anyone else of a visit.’

Roy smiled and shook his head.

‘I brought some more photos, by the way,’ she told him. ‘Of me as a child, like you asked.’

‘Good girl. I want to catch up on those years I missed. Bring me as many as you can,’ he laughed. ‘I want at least one of you at every possible age. Of Mitch and Lauren too.
So I don’t miss out completely on my grandchildren growing up.’

‘Of course.’ Compromised by her ambivalence about associating her children with this place, Tessa turned the tables. ‘I don’t suppose you have any of yourself?’

Roy shook his head. ‘My mother died soon after I was sent down. So far as I know, nothing was kept.’

‘How terrible. Did they let you go to the funeral?’

‘I chose not to.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Let’s look forward, not back.’ He gave a rueful smile. ‘I want to know everything about you. Is that corny?’

‘No. I want the same.’

‘Good. So, start at the beginning.’ He sat back in the pose of a good listener.

Tessa realised that even if she hedged the topic now, the time would come when she would have to tell him about Erin not being in any real sense her mother. Why had she not considered this in the car coming here, when she had been busily imagining the conversations they might have? Unable to work out quite why she was so reluctant to reveal the secrets of her childhood, she glanced at Roy’s face, hoping to glean something from his expression; instead she saw something familiar, like a glimpse of herself caught while passing a hallway mirror: he was not a stranger. She relaxed. ‘Did you ever meet my grandmother?’ she asked. ‘Erin’s mother.’

‘Not that I remember.’

‘She made Erin give me up. Erin was only sixteen,
remember, and Felixham in the mid-seventies was hardly at the cutting edge of the sexual revolution.’

‘Suppose not.’ Roy retained his expression of concern.

‘Did you recognise Erin?’ she asked. ‘In the photographs?’

‘Of course. I remember she’d failed a music exam, and her mother was cross with her. Tell her that I liked seeing the photos, won’t you? And that I remember her fondly. Don’t forget, now.’

‘I won’t.’

‘Good.’ He seemed pleased. ‘So what happened to you?’

‘My aunt adopted me. Pamela. I don’t know if you ever met her? She was quite a bit older, and already married.’

‘Well, I suppose an aunt’s the next best thing to your own mother. Three cheers for Pamela.’

Tessa was touched by his evident relief at her fate.

‘But Erin was still around?’ he asked. ‘While you were growing up?’

‘Not really. She made a new life for herself with cousins in Australia.’ Tessa guessed from the way Roy studied her face that he expected more, but refrained from asking. ‘We’re not terribly close, to be honest,’ she told him. ‘So I don’t miss her.’

‘And do you have siblings? Half-siblings?’

‘No.’ Tessa felt protective of what she now knew to be her parents’ inability to mourn their childlessness because of the cuckoo planted in their nest. She chose to ignore how they might view her presence here, a reward for the accident of another man’s fertility. ‘No siblings,’ she said with genuine regret. ‘Just me.’

‘And your father?’ Roy asked lightly.

‘Hugo. A lovely man. He’s been a good dad.’

‘So what does he think about you being here?’

‘I’ve told my parents all about you.’ Tessa heard the pitch of her voice rise under the pressure of his scrutiny, and she licked her lips nervously. She did not want to risk wounding him by admitting that they had no idea she was here, and would be horrified if they did.