Behaving Like Adults (52 page)

She ran across the room, stumbling past the coffee table, knocking a full cup of tea onto the yellow carpet, and wrapped her arms around me, rocking me. My father was suddenly there beside her, one hand on my shoulder, the other on hers. He stood there, numb, shaking his head. The tears ran down his cheeks, and he gave my mother's shoulder a squeeze before lifting his hand to hide his eyes.

I didn't want to cry but they were making me.

TELLING MY PARENTS
about the phantom baby was a mere scatter of rain in a great pool of grief. Their distress about the rape was so palpable it felt like a living thing. The loss of an idea couldn't hurt them in the same way. I'm not saying it didn't hurt them. They'd lost a future, hopes, dreams, had already invested love and emotion in a child who didn't exist. But to my surprise, they understood the
why?
instantly, and chose to focus on the child who did exist. I didn't have to explain, much. Perhaps they were relieved I hadn't done anything worse.

‘No harm done,' said my mother, when I tried to apologise about the lack of grandchild. Except she muttered it again and again, which inclined me to disbelieve her. My father held my hand, as if I were five. I could see him choking down his rage like he choked down my mother's Brussels sprouts at Christmas. I don't think I'd ever seen him angry. Actually, that's not true. Once, he put down the phone to a business associate and said the word c***. I remember being shocked to the core of my fourteen-year-old soul, so grossly appalled I barely knew what face to make.

Anger is part of grief, indeed anger
is
grief. Much of my father's anger was directed at Stuart. I think he and Mum found it incredible that a fellow human could be so free of morality. They were breathless at his insolence. Claudia and I recognised their disgust at having employed him (even though
we
were to blame, for hiding his crime against the family) and we both rushed to reassure them.
Claw was so eager to recount the ingenious tale of the fraudster trap, her words tumbled over each other. When, eventually, she finished, there was silence.

I glanced at Claw. Her eyes gleamed, but there was a hardness to them. I realised she needed my parents to gasp, ‘Why, Claudia, that's brilliant – we'll report him to the Law Society and now he'll go to prison and we'll all live happily ever after and our fair daughter Holly will be avenged by our own hands!'

Finally, my mother spoke.

‘But dear,' she said in a bewildered voice. ‘We
know
about the Paris apartment. It
was
on the final list of assets. Perhaps Camille saw an earlier copy. I know there was so much paperwork to do in regard to the flat that it had its own file, perhaps that was why the misunderstanding occurred. I'm afraid . . . oh dear, I'm so sorry to disappoint you . . . all your work . . . I'm very much afraid that as a solicitor, Stuart's actions were entirely above board. And, even if he
was
tempted to try anything, he knew Henry Flaherty was keeping a close eye – he's retired from law but we've known him for so long he's more of a friend, he's ever so fond of your father.'

I guessed my mother had seen the look on Claudia's face and was scared to stop talking.

I wasn't so bothered. To me, the idea of reporting Stuart to another gang of bureaucrats, gathering and giving evidence, involving my poor parents – it was all too much. This was not about forgiveness – I would never forgive Stuart, why should I? But if I had learned one thing, it was that I had to concentrate on
me
, not him. You can't always wreak the perfect revenge on your enemies, and if you're unable to accept that fact you endanger your health. The bitterness corrodes your life. Now, I'm convinced that your revenge on the people who wrong you is the certainty of their deep unhappiness – because I believe
that
is the root of evil.

Claudia ran out the room.

Mum put her head in her hands, but briefly. When she removed them, her eyes were dry. She addressed my father. ‘I had to tell her the truth.'

He touched her knee.

‘Holly,' she said.

I shook my head to indicate that I was untouched by the news. ‘That was Claudia's baby,' I was about to say but thought better of it.

‘You know, you
will
be okay,' declared my mother, as if it were fact. A bold statement but, I realised, the right one. She and Dad still believed in me.

‘We've been speaking to Michael and Lavinia,' she added, abruptly. ‘They've been ringing a lot. Poor Nick.'

I wondered if this uncharacteristic indiscretion was to save me from the burden of further confessions.

‘Oh right. So I suppose you can guess,' I blurted, ‘that Nick and I are off again.'

Not even a twitch.

‘In the circumstances,' said my mother gently, ‘it's not a surprise.'

My father placed a hand on my back. ‘We love Nick dearly,' he said. ‘But we would hate to see you two marry for the wrong reasons. And from what we can gather, Nick has a list of wrong reasons as long as his arm, and who could blame him? His head must be spinning like a top. Not that he doesn't love you, he
certainly
loves you, Holly, with all his heart. But now is probably not the right time. For him, or for you.'

I tried to bristle at this fairy-wing touch of parental guidance, but truly, I couldn't find fault.

‘I better go and see how Claudia is,' I said. I reckoned until I'd soothed her, no crockery was safe. I found her sobbing in the garden. I glanced back at the house and saw our parents standing at the sink window, not even pretending to do the washing up, gazing out at us. They looked small and sad, but determined. God, I'd read them wrong. I thought of the little things I'd despised – yes,
despised
– them for. Because you can love and loathe at the same time. I'd despised them for their delight in the cheap home shopping catalogues that came with the
Mirror
, full of items such as the Portable Urinal, the Roll and Store your Jigsaw, Outdoor Tap Jackets and the Sensor Owl (‘I hoot and turn my head as soon as someone approaches').

I'd despised them for rejecting our offer of an exotic holiday and choosing to celebrate their thirty-fifth anniversary at the Braunton Beach hotel in North Devon. (A parochial British four-star affair with the air and ambience of a prison – the prices of a luxury retreat in the Caribbean, chintzy sea view rooms reserved for guests staying a week or longer, non-refundable deposit of £150, a charge of 33% if a holiday was cancelled, no dogs, no fun, no children on the dance floor, only one child per person,
golliwog
postcards in the ‘boutique', foul food in the restaurant, and the four-star kitchen's interpretation of a banana milkshake a blend of milk and yellow syrup.)

I'd despised them for all the wrong reasons. I'd confused modest needs with small mindedness. In my heart of hearts I didn't regard my parents as classy. An error which merely revealed my own small mindedness. My parents might have been middle aged in their ways but they were also wise and, in their own manner, sophisticated. Not once, that day, had they shaken their fists at the ceiling and bleated ‘Why
us
?' I presumed their thinking to be ‘Why
not
us?' I wondered if any of the great philosophers – or even some of the mediocre ones – came from Penge.

I watched Claudia kick at the compost heap.

‘Don't do that, Claw, you'll probably dislodge a dead rabbit.'

She laugh-sniffled. A beloved pet, Concorde Ears, had been accorded the finest of funeral ceremonies by my father at this very spot. Claudia, aged ten, had worn a black veil.

Then she burst into a fresh round of tears. I could barely hear what she was saying – so clogged were the words with mucus and rage – but I got the gist. She'd so wanted to
do
something to punish Stuart. She felt so guilty about what had happened. She was the one who'd encouraged me to go on a date with him. She'd so wanted to make it up to me. She felt terrible, she thought about it every day. It would have been so
just
, she couldn't believe he was going to get away with it. If only he'd been defrauding our parents, there would have been a way of getting back at him, there had to be, it wasn't fair otherwise.

I hugged her shaking shoulders and she fell against me. She was wearing a taupe knitted top and the wool was scratchy. ‘Oh Holly,' she cried, ‘I am so sorry for you, it's a tragedy, a tragedy.'

We stood in silence, and I closed my eyes.

The garden smelt fresh, there were fat pink blossoms on the trees, and the sky was a cool blue. An aeroplane droned above us, the noise of its engines echoing in the crisp air of late spring. I sighed. Since I was very young, I'd prided myself on knowing if it was a sunny day without drawing the curtains, because every aeroplane drone echoed across the sky. I hadn't a clue why, but if it was grey or rainy the sound was different.

‘Claudia,' I whispered. ‘Please don't think that. It isn't a tragedy. A tragedy ends in disaster. This isn't the end. It's a fresh beginning.'

Claudia opened her eyes and pushed me away. ‘What, you
really
believe that? How can you
say
that? How can you turn such a terrible trauma into something positive? It's a travesty.'

‘Claw, of course I'm not turning it into something positive. It will always be . . . what it was. What I mean is, I don't need Stuart punished in order to lead a happy life. I don't forgive him, I don't think that's necessay. But I have to give myself permission to live well, not take my cue from
him
. It happened, and there's nothing I can do to
un
happen it. But I can try to accept it, file it and to go forward. I won't say I'm trying to learn lessons from the thing itself. I don't think being a victim of a crime teaches you anything
of value, and I don't think suffering teaches you anything that you couldn't have learned in a pleasant, civilised alternative way. But my reactions to the whole experience and afterwards have taught me a lot about me, some of which can be improved on. I hope to be happier as a result of the knowledge.'

Claudia shot me the weirdest look.

‘Well,' I said. ‘
You're
the one who told me to go to a therapist.'

Her mouth dropped open.

‘Yeah,' I added, ‘but before you say anything, only
some
of this is down to him – he's very good – but most of it is
me
.'

Claudia smeared the tears across her face with her bare arm. Her mascara remained at its station. She is one of those rare women who can look good on a beach. ‘I'm amazed,' she said, finally. ‘No, not amazed. I'm in awe. If you can go through what you did and come to
that
conclusion, well, Holly, you're something special. I'm grateful. I thank God that you have the strength and courage . . . to only be a
little
screwy. To come out of it and still have optimism.'

‘Thanks. A little screwy is perfect. Except you don't believe in God.'

‘This moment now, I do. Just don't ask me again in five minutes.'

I pulled gently on her ponytail, a traditional sign of affection, and together we went back inside.

We both stayed the night. My old room was a muted version of its young self – the bright pink walls vandalised with Walt Disney stickers screamed that it had once belonged to a child but all the toys and teddies had been tidied away, making it a respectable guest bedroom. I opened a purple wardrobe door, though, and stacked neatly inside were the novels of my youth. I pulled out
The Secret Garden
, jumped into bed, and clicked on the reading
light. For some reason, when my mother knocked with a mug of hot chocolate, I hid the book under the covers. I think I fell asleep in the middle of reading it, because when I woke in the morning, it had been placed on the bedside table, a Beatrix Potter bookmark keeping my place, and the empty mug had been removed.

I lay back against the pillows, closed my eyes again, and listened to an aeroplane's drone echo lazily across the sky.

BEFORE CLAUDIA AND
I left for London, my father suggested that he and I go for a walk. We walked, and I waited for him to speak. But he didn't and I realised he was waiting for
me
to speak. That was the thing about my father. The average person, if you confide a problem, will rush to give their opinion like a small child running into the road. When, often, all you want them to do is listen. Listening is the most generous kind of support.

For a long time I didn't know what to say.

Eventually, ‘I didn't want it to have happened because I was too trusting, I didn't want it to have happened because of
me
.'

My father continued to walk beside me, his thin grey hair wisping in the breeze. ‘The criminal is responsible for the crime. That's why criminals are sent to prison, not their victims.'

I smiled.

He added, ‘He'd have probably done it anyway, whatever you'd done. If not you, another woman.'

‘I know,' I said. ‘I know.'

I slipped my arm into my father's. The only other thing he said on the walk was, ‘When you have children, Holly, you never relax again. You are forced to care about the state of the world. Your dearest wish as a parent is to protect your babies. You're terrified to let them go, because you cannot stand for them to experience pain, yet you know that a life without pain is impossible. Feeling pain is the price of loving, the price of living. You paid a
terrible price, Holly. But don't shut out life because of him.'

Taking Dad's advice literally, I persuaded Claudia to let
me
drive home. We nibbled on my mother's rock cakes (fairy cakes according to the recipe, but strictly speaking all my mother's cakes were rock cakes) and discussed the visit. I suspect we were high on relief and sugar.