Freeing Grace (36 page)
On the brighter side, Matt’s a new man. He’s stopped truanting
and is trying to catch up on coursework. We’re getting on so much
better.
Well, I hope your arrangements are going smoothly. I hear you’ve
got yourself a heroic new truck, simply bristling with machismo. Boys
and their toys. Have you reconciled with Anna yet, down on bended
knee? Go on, risk a little.
We look forward to your return, whenever that may be. Mealtimes
are rather ghastly, as you can imagine, and we could do with a little
cheerful normality.
With love,
Susie, or Deborah, or whoever I am x
I folded the letter and slipped it between the pages of my book, intending to read it again later. If they put their minds to it, maybe the Harrisons could pull this thing off. They were, after all, the baby’s family.
I hopped out of bed and headed for the shower, wondering whether or not I was pleased to represent a little cheerful normality. Perhaps it was better than nothing.
I’d arranged to see a solicitor later that morning. It seemed like a good time to get a will drawn up, since I was planning to drive across the Sahara and various war-torn regions. It wasn’t going to be very complicated. Mum got the lot, or my brother Jesse if she checked out first. Dad was specifically to be excluded from everything, whatever the circumstances. It would almost be worth getting myself killed in Chad or somewhere just to see the old git’s face when he found out.
That same evening I had dinner with Lucy at an Italian near her flat. She was nipping down to Coptree the following morning, to see Grace and meet the assessment team. She’d been going home quite a lot, apparently.
‘I’m slightly worried about Dad,’ she remarked casually, her eyes determinedly on the menu. ‘He’s not in a very good place.’
I was concerned despite myself. Lucy was always a mistress of understatement.
‘How’s that?’
She squeezed some garlic bread between her finger and thumb. Her mouth had tightened a little.
‘He went downhill fast when Deborah left,’ she said. ‘He seemed to improve when she first got back, but it was short-lived. In fact, now he’s worse. He puts on a wonderful act for the social workers and then collapses.’
‘Anything to be done?’
‘Well, maybe he could try a change of medication. But he’s refusing to see the doctor again.’
With an obvious effort, she changed the subject and began gossiping about Kenneth the bored security guard who had got himself onto a reality television show. This, I have to say, was riveting news. We forgot Perry for a while; we laughed and chatted just like old times, until, innocently tucking into my cannelloni, I mentioned that I’d heard from Deborah. Fatal mistake.
Lucy looked as though I’d laced her wine with paint stripper. ‘You’re not still hanging around her, are you?’
‘I’m not hanging around anyone.’
There was a burst of applause from a group of young professionals at the next table. Stripy shirts. Loosened ties. Eating, drinking and being merry as tomorrow they might be sacked. One of them was opening birthday presents.
‘Relax,’ I said. ‘I don’t fancy your stepmother.’
‘Jake.’ She shook her head, sadly. ‘You fool no one except yourself.’
‘Bollocks.’
‘You don’t know yourself.’
‘That’s a mercy.’ I leaned closer. ‘Don’t you feel even a little bit sorry for Deborah? She’s never had the freedom you have, and her brain’s just as good as yours. You probably owe your success to her.’
‘Some of it, certainly. And your point is . . . ?’
‘She had to give up her education and her freedom when she was just a kid. And now here she is, back where she started.’
‘She made her bed. She can damn well lie in it. You just watch out she doesn’t lie in yours, too. If she hasn’t already . . . ?’
Exasperated, I dropped my fork with a clatter. ‘Look, I’ve told you . . .’ I stopped, suddenly baffled. ‘Why the anger, Luce? It doesn’t suit you at all.’
A waiter brought us salad in a square bowl, casting a longing glance at Lucy’s legs. She thanked him in a spray of Italian and watched with narrowed eyes as he hurried away. Then she said, ‘You have no idea.’
I waited, but she just attacked her pizza like George sighting the dragon. At the next table, they were arguing about the bill. Someone asked to see the manager.
‘So tell me,’ I prompted. ‘If I’ve no idea.’
She tipped back her chair, eyeing me. ‘She’s left me and Dad before, you know.’ Her chin was tilted, dark head high on her ballet dancer’s neck. ‘Yes, I see you
do
know. I was a tiny child. She slipped into the place of my mother, made me love her, and then . . .’ She gave a little shrug. ‘She left. I cried for weeks. I wrapped myself up in a curtain, hiding from life. I thought the world had ended.’
‘But she was young. Much younger than you are now.’
‘Is youth an excuse, Jake? Really?’ She let her chair drop forward with a reverberating crash. ‘The day she came back to us was one of the happiest of my life. Ironic, isn’t it? She only scurried home because she was pregnant.’
‘She missed you. She told me so.’
Lucy looked cynical. ‘My father is worth a thousand of her. He forgave her infidelity, he forgave her betrayal. He did the right thing and he married her. Took her word for it that Matt was his. And was she grateful? Oh, no
.
She had to start going on her smutty holidays.’
‘I don’t think it was as simple as that.’
‘Oh? Were you there?’
I met her eyes. There was a dangerous gleam in them.
‘Well, I
was
. I didn’t suspect a thing until a few years ago. Couldn’t believe it when I found his letters.’
I was lost. ‘Found whose letters?’
Her mouth curved, bitterly. The manager had arrived at the next table: a small, bald man in a suit. He was looking at the bill while a waiter hovered nearby.
‘What’s his name?
Rod
, that’s it. Rod. How appropriate. Perhaps you’ve met him? No, don’t answer that, I don’t want to know. He writes a sizzler, does Rod. Ought to send them off to
Playboy
, make his fortune. I found lots of them in her desk. The pile hasn’t grown recently. I expect he sends emails instead.’
Lucy knocked back her wine, lowered it to the table, glared at me. ‘Right up to that moment when I found her little gold key and opened the drawer, I worshipped her. I thought she was the most beautiful, the sweetest, the cleverest woman in the world. Matt and I were her little team of cheerleaders. We thought she loved us as much as we loved her. And the whole time, we were no more than an
inconvenience
.’
‘No,’ I protested. ‘No. That isn’t right.’
‘What other interpretation is there? All those years she brought us up, she was longing to be somewhere else,
with
someone else. Not with us or our father. All those years, she wasn’t the person I thought she was. And as final proof of our irrelevance—whoops!—she’s dumped us again.’
I considered whether I could safely repeat anything Deborah had told me. Probably not, I decided. I’d only dig myself into a hole.
‘Did you have it out with her?’ I asked.
‘Of course I did. She never tried to deny it. She couldn’t, could she?’
‘I hope you didn’t show these letters to Perry?’
‘I spared him that. But he
knew
, for God’s sake, he isn’t stupid. He was vulnerable, her prisoner. But she didn’t care, oh no. She just dangled her next trip to Africa in front of him with her pussycat smile.’
The group at the next table were finally paying the bill and standing up to leave. Lucy leaned forward, looking into my eyes.
‘It was evil. He was down, and she kicked him, just for fun. Not once, Jake. Again, and again, and again. Year after year, she trotted off with her tail up like a bitch on heat. He was forced to wave and smile and chirrup, “See you soon, my darling, come home soon!” ’
There wasn’t anything I could point to as factually incorrect in all of this. But it wasn’t quite fair, all the same.
‘I think she has her own side of the story,’ I argued. ‘And Perry’s symptoms began before they were even married.’
‘Agreed. But if she had been loyal, he might have beaten them.’
‘It can’t have been easy to be married to him.’
She snorted. ‘Do me a favour. There are plenty of women who would be delighted to take Dad on. He’s cultured, he’s dignified, and he’s still a handsome man.’
I sighed. ‘Even so . . . not easy, Luce.’
‘I had to come home and be with him,’ she said. The fine, clear eyes were brimming. ‘Every time she went away. I watched my darling father disintegrate, and at the hands of a person I had once adored. How would
you
feel, Jake? Would you want to forgive?’
I thought about my own father. Jesse and I could tell when he was in a rage just from the way he thrashed his quad bike up to the sheds; just from the fury of the engine note. We used to hide in the orchard, and we could hear him yelling and Mum crying, but we couldn’t protect her. Forgiveness wasn’t on the cards, so far as he was concerned.
Lucy was watching me. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I thought not. Well, neither do I.’
It was a week or so before Florence delivered another letter.
Dear Jake,
Well, it’s been grim. The Gestapo have turned up repeatedly—as
promised—and the novelty is wearing very thin, but I’ve been
domesticated and steady enough to look after ten granddaughters. Grace comes here as part of the assessment, and she has stolen all our
hearts. Her cot’s in my room! Perry is sweet with her, seems genuinely head over heels. He picks her up at the first murmur and never wants
to put her down. She’s the only thing that lifts his mood.
As for Matt, I’d say they have a real bond. Grace lights up when
he hoves into view. But it insults our precious time to have these people
watching us. Turns our love into a spectator sport.
Someone called the ‘Children’s Guardian’ showed up today. A
scarily elegant Indian woman. Effortlessly authoritative. Her job,
apparently, is to speak for Grace. That must involve some mental
gymnastics, since the poor child’s only four months old. Anyway, we got
on rather well. I wanted to confide in her.
The court hearing is next Thursday. Stuart thinks the local
authority will withdraw their application on the day. Then they’ll
‘place’ her with us. That’s Big Brother speak for letting us have her. There will still be some sort of order—Stuart did explain it all to me,
but I got bored and started writing shopping lists.
Despite all this success, Perry’s not doing well. He is sinking into
one of the worst pits I’ve ever known. It’s actually quite frightening. I’ve made about ten trips to the recycling with his empty whisky bottles
in case someone pokes their big nose into the dustbin. Every evening
the three of us sit around the kitchen table in a dour silence. It’s just
horrible, Jake. Sometimes I want to scream. Matt and I bolt down our
food and take refuge in our bedrooms. I’m skulking in here now, while
my adoring husband props himself up in the kitchen and breathes out
fumes. I don’t know when Perry sleeps, or even whether he does. I don’t
know how we can carry on like this.
Is this, then, to be my life? I’ve forgotten what normality is. Sorry
to be so irremediably miserable. Could you come back? Please?
Love,
Deborah x
Well, I’d had enough of the Big Smoke anyway. On Friday afternoon, just as I was leaving Bill’s, I had a text from Matt.
They liked Mum. We won. C U 2nite.
Leila sat at the kitchen table and wondered how she was going to tell him.
It had been a beautiful winter’s afternoon and now the last light of a blue and yellow day blazed across the walls, glancing off her face and hands, making her hair glow. How could nature rejoice?
The radio was still on. She’d been listening to it when the call came, but now she was barely aware of its carefree chatter. A lorry had jackknifed on the M25 and spilled its load, and the tailback was fifteen miles long because everyone was trying to get somewhere. All those people, all those weekends. So much irrelevance.
How could she tell him?
His key was scraping in the lock. She stood up, sickened by dread.
‘Hello, my lovely!’ he called cheerfully, using his Welshman voice. He was in a good mood, she could tell, and that made it worse. ‘All well in the world?’
Standing in the kitchen doorway, she took a long breath. She felt as though she were hiding a knife behind her back. ‘I’m afraid not really, Davie.’
He froze warily in the act of hanging up his overcoat. His hair fell across his brow, and he pushed it back distractedly. ‘They’ve rung?’
She gulped, overcome. She shrank from saying it aloud.
David’s eyes were shadowed depths in the dim light of the hall. ‘They like her.’ His voice had deadened.
Leila swallowed hard. ‘The baby is to be placed with her birth family.’
David’s coat missed its hook, scraping down the wall before crumpling in a desolate heap on the floor. He left it there. Taking a step towards Leila, he peered into her face. ‘Is this definite, though? They’ve messed us about before. They might change their minds again.’
Bleakly, she shook her head. ‘I don’t think so. The court hearing’s next Thursday. Linda says everyone . . .’ A sob rose up in her throat; she forced it back, covering her mouth with one hand. ‘She says everyone’s agreed, and the hearing will take two minutes.’
‘Two minutes.’ David laughed shortly and then smashed his hand against the wall. ‘Everyone’s agreed, are they? Nice for them. I don’t remember being asked.’
He sank down onto the stairs, eyes wide, staring straight ahead. He looked dazed, as though he’d just been coshed. ‘That’s it, then.’ After a silence he added, ‘Not unexpected.’
Inevitably, the telephone rang. Like a sleepwalker, Leila went to answer it. David pushed himself to his feet and limped into the kitchen. He hobbled gracelessly, on stiff legs, as if he had suddenly grown very old. Perhaps he had.