Finding You (31 page)
Authors: Giselle Green
44 - Julia
Charlie is so sad. He’s vulnerable tonight, softened by his loss, worried around me because of how we parted. Should we
be
like this with one another? It feels so wrong, and yet how can we be natural with each other when there are so many things we need to thrash out, yet? Big things, a hundred things:
Lourdes
, Illusion and Atlanta—
hurdles as high as skyscrapers—stand between us.
Charlie gets up, his eyes trained on his son and for the moment, we both let that one little bit of joy—Hadyn speaking—override all the other things.
‘Shall I put him to bed?’ Charlie defers to me. I know he likes to do this. He likes to be the last one to plant a kiss on his son’s cheek every night. I nod, a tightness in my belly because I know when he comes down in a while, there’ll just be the two of us left, just us and our problems with no little guy to inject any light into the proceedings.
‘Have you eaten?’ I push my chair out as Charlie does. ‘I’ll make you an omlette if you like.’ I haven’t eaten yet, either. Hadyn ate some chips when we came out of the airport, but I couldn’t stomach a thing then. I had a feeling after I rung Charlie while we were still in Spain that his dad might have died and he’d be in a bad place. I hadn’t wanted to open it up over the phone, knowing he’d still have the drive back, but I’ve had a strange, hollowed-out feeling in my belly since then. Maybe we both need to eat. Rest and recover. Do normal things. Maybe we can make like the Allied troops with the German soldiers that Christmas Eve in World War One and call a truce ... all the issues between us can wait until another day?
‘I’d love an omelette.’ That ghost of a smile on Charlie’s face that looks so much like his son’s,
the relief
, when I ask him that, I think, it’s worth a whole roast dinner. It’s worth cooking a banquet for. He takes Hadyn upstairs, and when he comes down twenty minutes or so later, I have our supper all ready and there is a kind of peace in the kitchen. A quiet, winter-sun-amongst-the-rain-clouds unsteady peace founded on our mutual grief and exhaustion; founded on the laughter that we shared just a moment ago when Hadyn spoke. It will not last, but for the moment, this is just how it is.
So let us now, for the next while or so, pretend. I want to pretend I never sat with Lourdes in that dark coffee shop in town on Friday afternoon and I never heard her say the cruel words:
Love? Was that really the reason why he chose you ... When the child was gone, so was he ...
I will pretend I did not come back and find the Hermosa clinic card and that Charlie did not admit to having been there with her; that there might be some other,
acceptable
reason for it, even if he did go, just as Naseem has said. I will pretend that I did not go to see Charlie’s new best friend Dr Killman on Friday and she did not as good as say to me, brow furrowing, that I was probably a pretty large part of Hadyn’s problem;
me
, because
doting parents are often the root of far more damage than they realise.
I will pretend that Charlie, with his full-on enthusiasm for the whole project, won’t go straight back to insisting on Atlanta as soon as he’s over his grief about his dad. I will pretend I don’t still have to admit to him that I took Hadyn to Spain this weekend, back to the one person he’ll never have wanted his son to see.
I will pretend that, when I tell him about it, he won’t mind.
‘We need to talk.’ When Charlie sits down at the table, our omelettes cooling on their plates, he’s got a new, determined air about him that he did not have when he went upstairs. I look up, my heart beating a little faster. Has he figured out that I took Hadyn to Spain, then? Was it Bap-Bap that gave the game away? I pick up my knife and carefully butter a piece of bread.
‘Okay.’ I deliberately keep my voice steady. ‘You go first, then.’ After all, he is the one who wants to talk.
‘I need you to know,’ he says, his voice thick, ‘that you and Hadyn matter to me more than anyone or anything else in the world. I only want the best for you. For
us.
’
‘I know that,’ I tell him quietly. I have never doubted that. ‘We just won’t agree on what’ll be the best route forward, do we?’ We never will. I’ve already accepted this. No matter how much we have loved each other, we come from such different places, such opposite mindsets. How can we ever work anything out between us, really? Then I add, as he might as well know if he hasn’t worked it out already, ‘You should know ... Hadyn
isn’t
pining for Illusion. I found that much out this weekend while you were away.’
Charlie hasn’t even touched his food. Did he see the sand-covered clothes strewn all over the bedroom floor? While he was up there with Hadyn, I was going over in my mind all the clues I must have left all over the place for anyone to see that we’d been away if they’d a mind to.
Has he realised
?
He spreads his arms now, acknowledging this. To my surprise, he doesn’t ask me
how
I know that, what’s changed my mind. Instead, he comes straight out with an admission of his own. ‘I found out something, too ... I found out that Atlanta’s not going to be the way to go for our son, either.’
I put my knife down and stare at him in astonishment. If I had expected anything at all, it would not have been that.
‘You did, Charlie?
How
?’ He’s not going to insist on Atlanta, then? A huge weight is suddenly lifted from my shoulders. I feel like ... I want to cry right now. A huge part of the dread I’ve been feeling since I brought Hadyn back home has been around precisely this. When Charlie left Friday, we scarcely had the chance to discuss this, had we ... I’d never even got to mention my horrible meeting with his blessed Dr Killman, but I’d been well aware how enthusiastic he’d been. How he’d come home banging on about some last-minute place on the programme that had opened up for Hadyn and how lucky we were and how we’d need to be away very, very soon...
Has the dreadful spectre of the Atlanta programme really melted away so easily, so
effortlessly
then
?
Charlie shrugs.
‘Being up there with Dad—it brought it all back to me. How
bad
it can be, being sent away from your home. Rob reminded me. If I hated it myself, it might not be the right way to go for Hadyn.’
I nod slowly, taking this in. ‘Wow,’ I say. I wipe at the corner of my eyes with a paper towel. ‘I’m so pleased to hear that. You have no idea ...’
‘Well. I’m mightily pleased you’ve decided he isn’t pining for Illusion too,’ he admits. He cuts up a piece of his omelette and starts to chew. He looks like a man who’s had no food for many hours and has forgotten just how hungry he might be. When he’s nearly finished the food on his plate, the thought occurs to him, ‘Do you mind if I ask how
you
came to your conclusion, J?’ he asks tentatively.
I take a sip of the wine I’ve poured out ready for the two of us, just in case it came to this. I hadn’t wanted to open this up tonight. I’d wanted us to spend some time
pretending
everything was normal. But it is not going to turn out like that, is it?
‘I took him to her.’ I say it straight out. Charlie stops chewing his food. He puts his fork down. For a moment, I think he might be about to choke. I hand him his wine glass and he takes a slug. A big slug. Then he finishes off the whole lot. He puts the glass down on the table.
‘You went there ...
by yourself
?’ he gets out, his voice faint. I’m shaking my head, pouring him out another glass of wine because his glass is empty and it seems like it might be a useful thing to do.
‘I went out with Naseem. We were together all the time. We went looking for her, and we found her on the beach.’ Charlie’s gone quiet, taking it all in: where I went and what I did while he was up in Yorkshire tending to his dad. He can scarcely believe it and yet, almost miraculously, part of him seems almost resigned, I can see it already. He picks up his glass again but does not drink from it.
‘
And
...’ He prompts, his throat sounding dry.
‘And Hadyn reacted towards her in
exactly
the same way he does towards us,’ I conclude. ‘He pretty much ignored her until he wanted something from her, even though she ... she
doted
on him, Charlie.’ My words are coming out faster now, for one moment forgetting that we’re supposed to be acting like polite but slightly hostile strangers. ‘You know what she said to me, Charlie?
He is like that
. That’s what she said.’ Charlie stares at me blankly and I continue.
Doesn’t he see?
‘Charlie ... all the things we’re seeing in Hadyn, I’m coming round to think that this is just how he is, just like Illusion said.’
‘How he
is
?’ Charlie gives a brief shake of his head, not understanding, but I can see from his face he’s not entirely denying me now, either.
‘Yes. You and I were both wrong about him. He doesn’t need to spend more time with her, and he doesn’t need to go to Atlanta, either.’
‘You went to Spain ...’ He’s shaking his head, but he looks more astonished than upset. He drinks some water now, leaves the rest of his wine untouched. ‘So ... if we’re both wrong about Hadyn, then ... what does he need?’
I lift my shoulders. ‘Maybe we’ll have to get alongside him to find that out,’ I suggest. Instead of pulling ourselves apart at the seams. I look down at my hands. ‘We can agree to work together for his sake, can’t we?’
‘We can,’ he agrees, his voice shaky. ‘And ... for ours, too?’ He sounds sad. But there are too many things for us to get through them all in one sitting. Far too many. And he is tired now and I am bushed, too. I shoot Charlie a sad look, the wariness I felt before all draining out of me. I love him and I’m glad that we’ve opened up at least some of the things we needed to speak of. We’ve been honest. But whether Charlie and I are going to make it through the next set of hurdles, that remains to be seen.
‘We’ll talk again in the morning,’ I say, standing up, putting my plate to rinse under the sink. We’re back to all the reservations that I felt when we first came back to Blackberry House in April. Can I really commit to living my life with a guy like Charlie who will never,
ever
put me and his family first? There are some fundamental things about a person that never change, no matter how much you love them. They never change. As Naseem was at pains to point out in Spain, I’ve already been through this once before with my dad, haven’t I? Do I want to keep going through this same spiral of hope and then disappointment again and again and again? I don’t think so. I love Charlie more than he’ll ever know, but I’m not the same person I was when he left me on Friday; something shifted in me in that moment when I saw Hadyn run straight past Illusion. I saw ... what Naz has been telling me my whole life—that I don’t have to keep trying so hard anymore; that I am good enough not to have to hold on so very hard when things aren’t working anymore.
That I can let go.
45 - Julia
When I wake up at seven this morning and check the answer machine there are five messages waiting: three from Alys, desperate to know if everything’s still okay between me and Charlie after I’d spilled my guts out to her about Lourdes on Friday evening and one from Mum, who’s wondering where we’ve all got to this weekend. The last one, very brief, is from Naseem.
Hey Jules, it’s Naz
.
Just checking you both got in okay
. Brief pause.
Glad I was able to help you get a chance to see the other side to the story in Spain. Catch you soon.
Click.
The kitchen seems unusually quiet for this time on a Monday morning. There would normally be more activity by now, but the other two are still upstairs, sleeping. At least, Hadyn was when I popped into his room to check. Charlie, I did not check on. He slept in the guest room last night. He offered—it would have felt too weird us sleeping in the same bed when things are so strained between us. I still missed him when I got up, though, and it perplexes me. I sigh, waiting for the kettle to boil. I am trying
not
to think about Charlie too much just now. I am trying to see what happens if I let my imagination run on ahead a little, to all the quiet, empty spaces I will be encountering in my life if the two of us go our separate ways again. We were already apart last year, I tell myself; I should know what to expect. What it will feel like not to have Charlie in my life anymore.
It’s not what he wants, I know that much. I just ... I need a bit of space to figure out what
I
want, now, and that’s not so easy. How do you say goodbye to someone if you love them with all your heart and yet you still know they are not good for you? How long should you keep on hanging on in there, believing them when they say all the right things but they continue to
do
all the wrong things, continually leaving a trail of havoc and heartbreak in their wake? Perhaps a different woman would make him happier?
When I met with Lourdes on Friday, there was no questioning how desperate
she
still is to have Charlie back. Would she make a better match for him than I do? I sit down, stirring the peppermint tea bag in my mug round and round with a spoon. Before this weekend, I would have said maybe. Charlie’s ex belongs to his mother’s people and culture, and there’s a part of him that still yearns to reconnect with that. Maybe she would be the one to do that for him? Before I stood on that beach yesterday and watched, heart racing, as Charlie’s son ran towards Illusion’s open arms ... I’d have said it could be very likely.
But after what I witnessed yesterday ... I just don’t know if it could really be that simple. I think, maybe it is not.
Which is why, when Charlie comes down with Hadyn after about half an hour, I don’t immediately jump into trying to talk about Lourdes and all the unfinished business we need to go to, with the Hermosa clinic. It’s not just that Charlie is so subdued and quiet, dark rings round his eyes that make me think he’s been crying; despite all the questions I still long to ask, there’s a cautious part of me that holds back, saying,
Wait. Bide your time, Julia. This thing cannot be rushed into. This is a place where you must tread carefully.
We must tread carefully, and Charlie knows it, too. While I’m pottering around in the kitchen, making toast and jam for breakfast, I hear him on the phone to Angus, quietly remonstrating. Though I’m not exactly eavesdropping, I can get the gist of what’s being said:
Sorry for your loss,
Angus will go.
That’s a terrible thing, old man
. And then, after a brief pause, slightly anxious:
You do remember the partners are coming in to discuss my proposal that you join them? That’s today. You do recall I told you that?
While I can’t actually hear what Charlie’s boss is saying, I can hear Charlie well enough, murmuring, ‘I can’t, Angus. Not today. Some things have cropped up that I have to deal with. No. Not the funeral. That’s a week on Wednesday. Yes, the care home are dealing with the details of that ...’ And then his painful pause while Angus tries to persuade him that—albeit for the best reasons in the world—he’s had enough time off. Can’t he just come in for an hour at least, show his face, because if he doesn’t—if he can’t—the partners might start wondering if he really is the best man for the job? To which Charlie replies, ‘That is a risk I’m going to have to take, Angus. I am truly sorry. I need to be at home, today. I can’t be anywhere else.’
I spread some strawberry jam on Hadyn’s toast, cut it up into little soldiers, and my heart gives a little sad cheer when I hear Charlie saying that. Finally.
Finally
, he’s decided that this is the place where he really needs to be. Is it too little too late? Or could there be hope for us, yet?
Because this latter is what I’d like to believe, I offer Charlie some toast and coffee and we all eat breakfast peacefully, just as we would on any normal day. We talk about how the dahlia buds we can see out of the kitchen window are finally starting to open up in our garden, and how an Indian summer is being forecast for the months to come. We talk about how the lawn needs cutting. We even talk—as if it were the most normal topic in the world at our table—about how the weather was already so hot and sticky in Spain, the restaurant teeming with flies. And when I recount to Charlie what Illusion was really like when I met with her, he remains calm and thoughtful, as if this is no longer the thing he dreads the most. He’s willing to listen, willing even to accept that I took Hadyn to see her. Maybe it’s because we are already home and safe, a fait accompli?
He asks me about Naseem, who he has never met; what’s he like? He tells me that he’d like to meet him someday; he’d like to thank him for looking after his family, taking care of them for the weekend. Through all of this, I’m aware that something’s
changed
Charlie in some indefinable way. Is it his father’s passing away that’s made him so much more amenable to all these things he’d never have countenanced before? Is it the shock of what happened Friday night when his cover with Lourdes was blown? I can’t tell, but for now ... for now, I play along.
Hadyn is well aware something is up, though. While he normally scarcely pays us any mind, today, he keeps looking from one of us to the other curiously, trying to figure out what it is that’s different about us, though on the surface, we’re acting so civilly to each other. Now that he has discovered this new word—Bap!—he keeps saying it over and over, making us look at one another in wonder, and smile.
After breakfast, we take an early morning walk out to the park to catch the first rays of the sun while the sky’s still new, before the kids start using it to cut across on their way to the big school. I often bring Hadyn out here this early. I like this space when it’s quiet and contained like this. At this time of morning, we don’t have to queue for the swings. I don’t have to keep dragging Hadyn away from other people’s footballs and remote control cars and anything else that takes his fancy that he doesn’t quite understand isn’t
his
. I don’t have to keep making excuses. The woman with the brown hair who I also sometimes spy out here at this early hour with her little boy and their dog is already here and she smiles curiously, seeing Charlie with me. I nod at her and we keep walking.
Today, the trip to the park is an excuse to keep the civilities going between me and Charlie for just that little bit longer. It’s unlike me these days to put the moment off, I know. Maybe I’m dreading having to hear him out because once I do ... that might just be the end of us. While we don’t speak of the thing that’s stalking our minds, we don’t have to deal with it. I don’t have to make the decision that I don’t want to make, which may well be that I have to go. So instead, we just walk together, talking of everything and nothing, Charlie pushing the buggy till we get to the green and then Hadyn immediately starts bucking the way he does when he wants to be let out. We take him into the fenced-off play area before letting him go, and he bounds off straight to the slide, the elephant tucked firmly under his arm.
‘He slept through last night,’ Charlie notes, a little distractedly. ‘You think it was having Bap-Bap back that did it? Maybe he’s been missing him all along?’
We’ve just sat down alongside one another on the sunlit park bench, and I turn to face Charlie. ‘Like we were missing him, you mean?’
A faint, sad smile crosses his face. ‘Like I’ve been missing
you
,’ he admits. Then, without any warning, he blurts out, ‘Whatever made you do it, J? Why did you go?’
‘To Spain?’ We’ve come to it, then? I knew I’d have to answer for this sooner or later. But Charlie is shaking his head.
‘Why did you go to see Lourdes? Why go see her without
saying
anything to me first?’
I shrug. ‘How was I to have known you had any reason for me
not
to?’
Charlie winces. He looks away for a moment, and I follow his gaze out over the play area to the place where Hadyn has now climbed all by himself to the top of the slide. He’s pushed the elephant down it. Now he’s climbing down again, backwards, very carefully, down every single step. Charlie looks at his hands.
‘You weren’t to know,’ he’s mumbling. ‘But it still isn’t like you to have gone to visit her, just on a social call. I know she’d brought some papers over, but to leave Hadyn with Alys and take a special trip up to London ...’ He looks up at me now. ‘Lourdes could have dropped those papers off at the clinic and been done with it.’
‘She could have,’ I agree. ‘She’d have preferred that, no doubt. The opportunity—
the excuse
—to make some contact with you?’ I shuffle on the bench. That was probably the only reason she agreed to bring the papers over in the first place. ‘Is that what you’d have preferred?’
‘
No!
’ He looks at me, pained. ‘I would have preferred for them to have been posted, sensitive documents or not. I’d have preferred to pay some courier to bring them over for us, not to have involved her at all, but you ... you
wanted
to speak to her didn’t you? Why, Jules?’
I look him straight in the eye. Okay. I will admit to it. I had an agenda. One that also had been precipitated by him.
Well, then. I sit on my hands. ‘You haven’t asked me how the meeting with Dr Killman went on Friday,’ I point out.
‘No.’ He shakes his head a little. ‘We haven’t spoken of that yet.’
‘Well ... it went
badly
,’ I tell him. So badly I’d come out of her clinic shaking with distress and with anger and I’d pushed Hadyn all the way to Alys’ house in the rain because I’d been determined to find some other way,
any other way
, to get to the bottom of Hadyn other than her way.
‘Really?’ he says softly. He’s looking distressed, himself. ‘I’m sorry, J. I’d have been there if I could. I’d have gone in with you to see her if I’d ...’ He stops, suddenly running out of words and out of reasons. ‘I should have gone in with you,’ he corrects himself now. ‘I should have made that my priority. I’m sorry that I didn’t, J. I’m sorry that you ended up getting so upset by that meeting with Pippa ...’
‘So after that,’ I tell him quietly, ‘I knew that you’d be pushing to send Hadyn to Atlanta. I knew it, and it felt so wrong to me. I went to see Lourdes because I was desperate to find someone who could tell me about Illusion.’
He takes in a breath. ‘
That’s
why you ...’
‘None of you would ever tell me anything,’ I rush on. ‘She was a taboo subject, for some reason, with everyone except Lourdes.’
‘She spoke to you about Illusion? And you ... told her you were planning to take Hadyn there?’ Charlie breathes.
‘I doubt she guessed that.’ I pull a face. ‘She told me whereabouts I’d be able to find Illusion, though. I explained that I wanted to make contact. And
why
.’
‘Ah,’ he says. That is all. And now I have come to the end of my part of the tale. It’s his turn, and we both know it. What happens next in our lives pretty much depends on what he says next, on how I take it.
I already know what he’s going to tell me, though, don’t I? He’s going to tell me now that, yes, they did go to that clinic together, but not to try for a baby just yet,
just to see if he could ever again make anyone pregnant
—or something like that. As a preamble to the fact that Lourdes was hoping for another baby, Lourdes was hoping they would get back together. On her terms, of course. On the terms that he’d be able to give her a child.
I suddenly shoot him a look of deep disappointment. Hasn’t Charlie got any more pride than that, to be willing to get together with a woman who only really wants him for his status points and wants him for the baby he’d give her, like some sort of stud? Sheesh.
Away in the corner, Hadyn’s got the elephant under his arm and he’s clambering up those metal steps again, a determined look on his face. When he gets to the top, he
flings
Bap-Bap down with a flourish and the thing goes sailing through the air more than actually sliding down the slide, but Hadyn’s already coming backwards down the steps. The woman with the brown hair and her little guy are already halfway up, though. There’s a moment’s stand-off while she tries to encourage Hadyn to continue on up,
do what he’s expected to do
, but he isn’t having any of it. She doesn’t make a fuss, thankfully. She comes down backwards for my son to exit and continue his Retrieve the Elephant game.