The Flavours of Love (39 page)

‘I fell pregnant very quickly after Damien,’ Imogen is saying. ‘I couldn’t believe it, I was breastfeeding and I thought we’d been careful, but six months after Damien I was pregnant again. My husband, my first husband, he made all the right noises in the beginning, said he was pleased but I could tell he wasn’t. I knew he was worried about how we’d cope moneywise because it would mean I couldn’t go back to work for a bit longer than we planned.

‘I didn’t care about all that, but the more we talked about it, the more I could see he was right. We really couldn’t cope with another … I didn’t want to do it, but it was the only way to keep my husband. If I didn’t I knew he’d leave me and I couldn’t handle being a single mother. Children need two parents. Damien deserved the best and I couldn’t give him that if it was just me.’

She pauses to draw breath and I still can’t bring myself to look at her, instead I continue to examine the cherries on the blinds.

‘So I went through with it, and I … I cried for a week afterwards. I was so broken by it. I felt like I’d let Damien down. Nothing ever felt right after that and I never forgave my husband for making me do it.’ She sniffs, and I sense her wiping her nose, trying to mop up her tears with her fingertips. ‘The worst part is he left me anyway. Had a grubby little affair with some young tart who threw herself at him, and then left. I should never have done it for him.’ More sniffing, more tear-wiping. ‘You see? I
do
know what I’m talking about, I
do
have some idea of what it’ll do to her.’

‘No, you don’t,’ I reply quietly. I feel awful for her, but what she has done to Phoebe is still bubbling away in my chest. ‘I am so
so
sorry for what you went through, Imogen. It sounds horrific, but all you know is how
you
were affected by it. Just because you felt like that doesn’t mean everyone else will.’

‘How can they not?’ she says. Her tears have evaporated and she is back in the position of ‘right about everything’.

‘Oh come on, Imogen, everyone’s different, how they react to things is different. You
know
that. You are
not
Phoebe. You can’t know what she’ll feel whether she goes ahead with the pregnancy or not.’

‘I think I—’

‘If you were fourteen when you had your abortion, that might take you a step closer to understanding her,’ I interrupt. ‘If your father was killed when you were twelve and they still hadn’t caught the killer, then that might take you a step closer. If you had a mother who has been on the edge of a nervous breakdown since your father died, that might take you closer. If some bastard lying to you to get into your
knickers resulted in a pregnancy you never wanted, that might take you fractionally nearer. But you are and were none of those things so you have no idea how she’ll react. None of us have any idea about anything that hasn’t happened, not even Phoebe, so
please
, let’s drop this.’

‘Saffron—’

‘Unless you are about to say, “Saffron, I’m really sorry for being so unutterably vile to your daughter, I’m going to apologise unreservedly to her and tell her I was wrong” then please do not finish that sentence.’

‘I hope someone can talk some sense into you before you let—’

The rage boils my veins, blisters my muscles and scorches my chest as it erupts through my mouth: ‘STAY AWAY FROM MY DAUGHTER! STAY AWAY FROM ME! NEXT TIME, I WILL NOT GIVE YOU THE OPTION OF CALLING THE POLICE FIRST!’ My bellow is a sound I’ve never made before. It doesn’t matter who hears me, it’s not important who is frightened by my words, all that matters is that Imogen understands. I don’t care what she believes, I don’t care if she expects the whole world to do as she says and not as she does, I simply need her to believe that if I ever again have to listen to my daughter talk about killing herself, permanently removing herself from me because of something Imogen has said, it will be the end of Imogen. ‘DO I MAKE MYSELF CLEAR?’

Although most of Imogen’s body is rigid, her large, hazel-green eyes are fixed on me as she nods.

These are the things I know about her: Imogen wears make-up every day, she has her hair professionally washed and styled every week, she started to go to church to get her son into St Caroline’s because of its outstanding Ofsted report and her house being technically out of the catchment area, she runs her home with military precision.

These are the things she doesn’t know about me: I have done some unthinkable things to protect my daughter; I’d do virtually anything to protect my daughter and my son; if it came to a choice between hurting Imogen and allowing my children to be damaged, there’d be no choice at all.

*

‘I was about to come out and look for you. I was worried.’ He doesn’t want to be around me any longer, he doesn’t want to speak to me, but Fynn has waited here for hours for me to come home. My heart aches at the thought of that, at the thought of him.

‘Thank you,’ I say. ‘For the lift to get Phoebe, for bringing her home, and for staying here to wait for me. And for being worried.’

He won’t look at me, he stares straight ahead as I speak.

The walk home hasn’t cleared my head, it has simply made it swim, made me feel as if I am on a piece of driftwood in the ocean, bumped around, taken here and there on the will of the tide, the whim of someone else. I need to cook something. Or eat something. I need something that is going to make all of this
everythingness
go away. A talk to my best friend might do it.

‘Fynn—’

His navy blue eyes look sharply at me, then. Cold, unflinching; warning me not to do it, not to go
there
. It was done with and we all had to get on with it.

‘Nothing. I’ll see you.’

‘Take care of yourself,’ he replies, his line of sight back on the windscreen. He pulls away from the kerb without looking in my direction again.

Entering my house seems too much effort right now. I sit on the fourth stone step, my bag on my lap, the cold of the night air seeping into my skin. I know she’s probably out here, watching me from wherever she is. But if I go inside I will not be able to stop myself from bingeing. I will need to stuff away all these feelings, all this hurt, and I don’t want to. I need to, but I don’t want to. I can’t fight it for much longer, but being out here will delay it a while.

I hear the car before I see it. It has a familiar growl, it is a striking British racing green colour, it has a driver with navy blue eyes who looks in my direction and meets my gaze. He throws a regretful but affectionate half-smile at me before accelerating away.

Come back
, I think at him.
I want to do it again
.

Monday, 13 May
(For Tuesday, 14th)

Saffron
.

I think it might be a good thing that Joel didn’t get to live to see this happen. His precious, adored daughter is as big a slut as her mother? It would break his heart.

I didn’t even know she was pregnant. I wanted you to see how badly you were letting her down, how you weren’t protecting her from all the bad people out there. Do you know how easy it is to befriend her friends online? Too easy. They don’t even bother to check who a person is before they become ‘friends’. I know Phoebe kept rejecting my requests, but her friends accepted me. And I just made up the rumour and put it out there. And suddenly it’s true. She’s a slut, just like her mother.

She doesn’t know when to keep her legs shut.

As I said, maybe it’s a good thing he isn’t here to see this. It would break his heart.

Some lessons need to be taught the hard way. I’m sorry, Saffron, but you’ve just learnt one. I think you may have to learn a few more.

A

XLVI

In my fantasy I am not here. I am at the beach.

In my fantasy, the beach isn’t the place where I go to explore thoughts of ending the pain. In my fantasy I am sitting at the beach hut, with the doors propped inwards. We have put up the rickety camping table, its Formica top cracked and peeling away from its metal surround. We have canvas deckchairs – four in total, but we have room for five people because one of the deckchairs is a doubler. In my perfect life, I am curled up on my husband’s lap as he reclines in the double deckchair, his long legs support my body and I am substantial and real, but not grotesque and huge as I often feel. He has his arm slung around me, the other playing with my hair. My eldest child, a girl, has her legs curled underneath herself and she is alternating between texting and reading a book. My youngest child, a boy, is sitting on the hot, uneven tarmac in front of his deckchair, sorting through his heaped pile of stones and shells, industriously categorising them.

In my mind, I am landed here, on my beach, with the sea rushing in and out to say hello like an excited, noisy child who can’t quite believe how many people have turned up for a visit. There are people wandering past on their way to somewhere else, but we are cocooned inside our little world, the pieces of our lives slotted together, so from up close, from far away we are the same: a complete picture. We are a family.

In my real life I am here. My grey-white dressing gown puddles at my feet when I discard it to step into the shower. Instead of my usual rush to move straight into the shower, avoiding the faint reflection of my shape in the limescale-splattered glass of the shower cubicle
and the full-length mirror behind the door, I stop. Air goes in and out of my lungs, forced to expand and contract my chest, giving me courage. I have not done this for a long time. I have weighed myself every day but this I avoid. I have repeatedly binged and purged but I have side-stepped this. I constantly take handfuls of the excess parts of me, feeling their disgusting mass ooze between my fingers, but I have shunned this.

I am naked, and I turn first to the ghostly reflection in the shower cubicle’s glass. It has a build up of white flecks of limescale because it was Joel who used to do the bathrooms. I haven’t kept up with that job as regularly as he did.

A very faint version of me is there in the glass, and the outline is not what I expect. From the numbers on the scales, from the amount that goes in and comes out, from the touch of myself sometimes, this should not be my outline. My outline should be bigger, much, much bigger.

‘
I thought you’d stopped doing this, Ffrony. You said you didn’t need any help and you promised me you would stop.
’

‘
You are thin.
’

I hear those words all the time, they are with me constantly, in there in the never-ending swirl of thoughts, feelings and memories I constantly hear in my head.

My body revolves until, slowly, bit by bit, who I am when everything is stripped away is revealed to me in the mirror.

In my fantasy life this is not who I am. I am perfect, and whole, and relaxed. It doesn’t matter what my body looks like, it doesn’t matter what the number on the scale says, I am complete. This outer part of me doesn’t matter, all that matters is what’s inside me. I will be loved no matter what, I will be held and cherished and wanted. In my perfect life I can let go of the digital numbers that go up and down, I can release the need to stuff things down and away, only to do
whatever it takes
to feel empty again. In my mind, my clear mind, I know that food is not love, it is not reward, it is not punishment, it is not perfection, it is not control, it is not unmanageable, it is not
hate, it is not a sin, it is not one of the many things I use to torture myself with every day. Food is fuel.

In my dream existence I know that thinness is not perfection. Thinness is not happiness. It is not the answer to all my problems, it is not the place I need to be so my life can begin. Wanting to be thin is another way of being elsewhere while life goes on around me. It is no different from being fat. Large. Big. Obese. Thinness is not going to change my life because I am thin and I am not happy. I am in control of my food and my body and I am not happy.

In my ideal life I do not look in the mirror and see what I do now. I don’t see that I am thin and know that I am not happy. I don’t see that I am in control of my body, I control every element of it, and I am not happy. In my ideal existence, I don’t look at myself in the mirror and I don’t see the only thing Joel and I ever really argued about, I don’t see that Fynn was right.

In my blissful world, I don’t remember the voice inside I chose to ignore when I was nineteen so I could restart on this journey to thinness and I don’t see clearly and painfully why I split myself in two so I can make it through the day.

*

I often cry in the shower. With my hair pushed under an elasticated clear shower cap, I stand facing the large metal head and I let the water drum onto my face, I let its rhythm resonate over my sensitised skin and I cry. I allow my body to shake, I wrap my arms around myself and I sob, I breathe in and out rapidly, like the short bursts of a machine gun. I can do that in here with the sound of running water as cover so no one can hear me. I am never alone enough to properly cry, to completely let go and wail. So I do it here, as alone as I can get.

When I am exhausted, tired of crying, agreed that this is enough for today, I right myself. I force myself to stand upright, I release my body from my own tight grasp and I open my eyes ready to focus and face reality.

It takes longer today, to right myself, to drag myself out of the
fantasy life where I long to dwell and into this life. In this life I have devastated my body, I have constantly painful teeth that are so damaged they have often crumbled from eating cereal; I haven’t taken care of my family and they are fragmented, frightened, fragile; I have lost my best friend. I have messed up on every level. It takes longer but with determination, I prise my eyes apart, reaching to the side for the sliver of unperfumed soap that should be sufficient to wash my body. As my eyes, probably a vivid crimson and thick with the heaviness of attempting to weep my heart out, open they take their time to focus.