Losing You (2 page)

‘I’ve been wanting to ask,’ Rick moved closer to me and spoke in a low tone, ‘how’s Charlie doing now, Nina? Are things better?’

‘I think so,’ I said cautiously. ‘You can’t really tell. At least,

I can’t with Charlie. She’s quite private, you know.’

‘She’s a teenager,’ said Rick. ‘Teenagers are meant to be private. Especially with their parents. Look at Eamonn, for Christ’s sake.’

‘What’s this?’ asked Karen, moving in closer, a flicker of interest in her eyes.

‘Charlie’s had a rough time at school,’ I said. I didn’t want to talk about this because it was Charlie’s story, not mine. I didn’t want to discuss it lightly, give it a trite meaning. I imagined Charlie’s pale, truculent face, its look of withdrawal behind the turbulent fall of her reddish hair. ‘Rick found out about it. He talked to the girls who were bullying her, and to their parents. And to me. He was very helpful. As much as anyone can be.’

‘Girls can be cruel,’ said Karen, with a sweeping sympathy.

‘She was at a sleepover at one of their houses last night,’ I said. ‘Tam’s. Maybe that’s a breakthrough. I haven’t seen her yet. It would be a good way to end the term.’

‘She’ll be fine, you know,’ said Rick, putting down his mug, reluctantly picking up the spanner once more. ‘Being bullied is horrible. Sometimes I think we forget how horrible it can be, how undermining. Especially if we’re teachers, because we come to take it for granted, don’t you think? But Charlie’s a resilient young woman. Very bright, with a mind of her own and wide horizons. I always enjoy having her in my class. You should be proud of her.’

I smiled gratefully at him.

‘She’s got all those piercings, hasn’t she?’

‘For God’s sake, Karen, what on earth has that got to do with anything?’ Rick tweaked a knob with his spanner.

‘I just thought that maybe she got picked on because she seems different.’

‘Different? Have you seen Amelia Ronson recently? She’s had her right eye half sewn together, and talking of different, look at our own son… Oh, speak of the devil.’

A baroque figure had appeared on the doorstep, wrapped in a bottle-green trench coat that almost reached the ground, bare grubby feet poking out beneath it. Eamonn had a face so pale it almost looked like a mask, although a mask that was pierced several times with rings: on his eyebrow, through his nose and ears. His eyes were Rick’s eyes, but sad. His mane of tangled matt-black hair had green streaks in it. His fingernails were painted black and he had a swirling tattoo on his right forearm. He always appeared unwashed, hung-over, drugged-up and ferociously glum, though when he smiled, he looked sweet and lost, younger than his seventeen years. I knew from Rick that he was a problem-child, an all-out Goth on a small island that regarded him with suspicion or hilarity; a loner; a bright lad who felt he didn’t belong. I also knew that he and his parents, Karen particularly, could hardly manage to get through a minute together without arguing. But I’d always got on with him. He liked talking to me about funny little number problems he’d come across in books – after all, I am an ex-accountant who is now masquerading as a maths teacher – and about God (or the lack of any God). And he liked being around me in case Charlie walked through the door. Mothers notice these things.

Karen looked at her watch. ‘Do you know what time it is?’ she said.

‘No,’ said Eamonn.

‘It’s gone half past ten,’ she said.

‘Low tide’s in ten minutes,’ Eamonn said, as if it was the
most logical response. He wrinkled his face in distaste. ‘We’re surrounded by putrid-smelling mud.’

‘I thought you might have got up and gone out.’

‘How do you know I didn’t?’

‘That’ll be the day,’ said Rick, from somewhere inside my engine.

‘Hello, Eamonn,’ I said brightly, trying to forestall another argument.

‘Happy birthday.’ He gave an abrupt half-bow; his trench coat opened slightly and I could see he was naked beneath it.

‘Everyone really does know.’ I laughed. Flip-flops, I thought. Remember flip-flops and the camera-charger.

‘Charlie told me,’ he said.

‘Have you seen her recently?’ I began, but then my mobile sang in my pocket, an irritating jangle that Jackson must have programmed without me realizing, and I turned away from the car. He was already in mid-sentence by the time I brought the phone to my ear, and it took me a few seconds to separate out the stream of sounds into recognizable words. It was as if I had tuned in to a radio programme that was already half-way through.

‘…and if I’d known, fuck it, that you’d turn out to be the kind of mother who’d take my children away from me at Christmas and not only take them away but fly off with a man who hardly knows them to the other side of…’

‘Rory, Rory, hold on…’ I walked a few steps down the driveway.

‘Just because I went off the rails a bit, does that mean I’ve forfeited the right to see them and they’re growing up so quickly my little children only of course they’re not so little
any more and now there’s this Christian and soon they’ll stop thinking of me as their father that’s what you want isn’t it only you always used to say –’

‘What’s up?’ I hated the way my voice took on a calming, gentle tone, as if I was murmuring nonsense to a scared horse, all the while wanting to slide a bridle over its head. I knew what his face was like when he was ranting, screwed up in wretched anger, an unnerving replica of Charlie when she was upset. I knew there were tears in his eyes and that he’d been drinking. ‘You’ve known for weeks we were going away. You said it was fine. We discussed it.’

‘At least you could have let me see them before they go,’ he said.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Just for a bit, to say happy Christmas.’

‘That’s not possible,’ I said. I heard a crunching on the gravel behind me and turned to find Karen making exaggerated semaphores with her arms and mouthing incomprehensible words at me. Behind her, my car’s engine coughed and hacked and rasped, then stuttered into life. I held up a finger, signifying I’d only be a few seconds. I felt like a terrible hypocrite. I was having a suppressed row with Rory while making a pathetic attempt to suggest to the eagerly eavesdropping Karen that I was in a perfectly civilized discussion. ‘We’re leaving in an hour or so for the airport.’

‘I’m speaking theoretically. I’m speaking about principle. You know that word? Principle? The principle of a father seeing his daughter.’

‘You’ve got a son as well,’ I said. I had always hated the way he was besotted with Charlie and often seemed barely to notice Jackson, who adored him.

‘Of a father seeing his children. That’s what I’m speaking about.’ His voice broke up.

‘You’re on your mobile. You’re not driving, are you?’ Drunk-driving was what I meant but didn’t say.

‘I got your solicitor’s letter.’

I was wary now. I’d asked my solicitor, Sally, who was also a close friend, to write a letter to his solicitor. It had been the first step on an unpleasant road. The letter warned him that if his behaviour with Jackson and Charlie didn’t become more rational I would be forced to seek a restraining order. I’d done it after their last visit, when he’d got drunk and knocked Jackson over. The children hadn’t told me about it until I’d insisted on knowing how the bruise on Jackson’s shoulder had come about.

‘You just want to take them away.’

‘I don’t,’ I said hopelessly.

‘It’s Christmas and I won’t see them.’

‘I’ve got to go. I’ll ring you from home.’

‘Don’t cut me off.’

‘I’m not. I’m saying I’ll call you in a few minutes. Have a strong coffee or something and I’ll call you.’

‘What does that mean, “have a strong coffee”?’

‘’Bye, Rory.’

I clicked the phone off. I blinked and hoped it might look as if it was just the wind in my face.

‘Oh dear,’ said Karen. ‘Upset?’

‘He’s fine.’ I felt my pity flare into protectiveness before Karen’s blatant curiosity. ‘I mean, no.’

‘Christmas can be difficult for the absent father, can’t it?’

‘I guess.’

‘And, after all, Rory was always rather…’ She was searching
for the exact word. ‘Volatile,’ she said at last, with heavy-handed tact. ‘Like Charlie,’ she added. ‘Not like you and Jackson. You’re always so polite and methodical.’

I turned with relief to my now nicely chugging car. ‘That’s fantastic, Rick. Thanks so much.’

‘Don’t mention it.’

‘Now go and work on your boat,’ I said. I stood on tiptoe and gave him a kiss on both cold, stubbly, grease-stained cheeks.

‘Not just yet,’ said Karen. ‘I need him for something else.’

I sensed that I should escape before a really serious row broke out.

‘I’m going to collect Jackson and finish the packing. ’Bye, Karen.’ I kissed her too, missing her cheek and landing on her nose. ‘Thanks for the coffee. Take care, Eamonn.’

I got into the car, pulled the door shut and wound down the window.

‘Happy Christmas,’ I called, as I reversed down the drive.

I waved, then swung into the narrow lane. ‘And new year.’

I put it into first gear and drew away, free. The car rattled happily as I went.

As soon as I had turned inland and was out of sight, I pulled over, tugged my mobile out of my back pocket and phoned Christian. The engine was still running, and the heating system blew warm air on to my hands while my feet remained cold. Outside, gusts of wind rattled in the bare branches of the trees and blew twigs and tin cans along the road. He didn’t answer his landline, so I tried his mobile but only got his voicemail.

‘It’s just me,’ I said into it. ‘And I don’t really know why I’m calling.’

I had first met Christian when I was in the third year of my degree in maths. He was a graduate in marine biology. I was going out with Rory by then and I used to spend every weekend in London with him. We were planning our future together, and university already felt like part of my past. I liked Christian and his circle of friends. But because he was of the world I was preparing to leave, I didn’t remember him very well. I’ve tried, but he’s a blur, a half-remembered face. We had a drink together a few times. I think I once went to his house and had a meal with lots of other people there. He says we danced together more than once; he swears he once put his arm round me when we were in a pub by the river. A few weeks ago, he showed me a photograph of himself as a student, his thin face, the tumble of dark hair, the cigarette in the corner of his mouth. I studied it and felt desire stir in me for the youth he was then, but at the time I had felt nothing like that. He was a figure I passed on the road and, though we promised to keep in touch, we hadn’t really. He sent me a postcard from a conference he was at in Mexico several years ago, and it took me a few seconds to work out who ‘Christian’, signed with an inky flourish under a couple of lines I could hardly decipher, actually was. Two years ago I heard from a mutual acquaintance that the relationship he’d been in had broken up and I thought then of getting in touch, but I never did. I sent him a change-of-address card when we moved to Sandling Island, but assumed it would never reach him. I wasn’t even sure where he lived any more.

Six months ago, he called me up out of the blue to say he was going to be in East Anglia for a conference, and maybe we could meet. I almost made an excuse. Rory had left in a maelstrom of tears, unpaid bills, smashed dreams, and I felt
lonely, bewildered, reclusive and sad. By that time, I had already had a forlorn, short-lived fling, and I knew it wasn’t the answer to anything. Certainly not to loneliness, certainly not to sadness. All I really wanted was to spend time with the children, and when I wasn’t doing that, to work on the house and the small, nettle-filled garden. I was trying to create a tiny haven for us, filled with the smell of fresh paint and baking, and I didn’t really want to make an effort for a man I used to know but who was now a half-remembered stranger.

In the end, I arranged to meet him because I couldn’t think of a reason not to quickly enough. I told him as much at the end of that first meeting, because even by then – two and a half hours in – I wanted to be honest with him. I felt I could trust him. He didn’t seem to be trying to impress me or pretend in any way to be someone he wasn’t. Had he always been like that, I wondered – and why hadn’t I noticed?

He was still slim, still boyish-looking, but his unruly hair was shorter and streaked with grey, and there were crow’s feet round his eyes and brackets round his mouth. I tried to fit this fortyish face with the smooth, eager one from the past, and I could feel him doing the same with me. Our ghosts were with us. We walked along the sea wall, with the tide going out and the lovely light of a May early evening gradually thickening into dusk, and we talked or sometimes were silent. He told me the names of the birds that glided on the currents, although as an islander I was the one who should have known. But that became part of the flirtatious joke. He came back and had a glass of wine at my house; he played a computer game with Jackson (and lost), and when he met Charlie, who burst into the room with mud on her
shoes and a dangerous glint in her eyes, he was gravely friendly without being sycophantic or matey. He rang me almost as soon as he had left the house. He told me he was crossing the causeway and the water was nearly over the road, and would I invite him for dinner the next day? He would bring the pudding and the wine, and what did the children like to eat?

I set off once more, turning inland, to drive through the centre of the town, past the shops and the church, the garage, the old people’s home, the garden centre; past the building that had been going to be Rory’s seafood restaurant and now had a ‘To Let’ sign swinging in the wind above its blank windows. I already felt slightly detached from it all, as if I were five miles high and safely away. Mixed with the detachment was a twinge of guilt. I’d dropped Jackson off with his best friend, Ryan, just after breakfast and promised to collect him very soon. ‘Soon’ is an elastic concept but I’d heard Ryan’s mother, Bonnie, talk about Christmas shopping and the day was advancing. I got to Ryan’s house in just a few minutes – practically everywhere on Sandling Island was a few minutes’ drive from everywhere else – and knocked on the door. I was carried inside on a wave of apologies.