Love Is a Secret (5 page)

The girl was wide-eyed. ‘What did you do?’

Susan laughed bitterly. ‘I called out the GP but he said that a small number of children do react like that and that it was “normal” especially as she’d soon stopped crying and her temperature had come down reasonably fast. He assured me there was less than one in a million risk of a child getting meningitis or encephalitis due to the measles part of MMR. And that even these rarely caused brain damage. He also said there was no evidence that MMR causes autism.’ She tried to swallow the lump in her throat. ‘But by the time she was two, Tabitha still wasn’t walking or talking.’

‘You took her to a specialist?’

Susan nodded. ‘He said there was a possibility she had been deprived of oxygen before, or during, the birth. But I couldn’t see how. There was nothing in the notes to suggest it and, anyway, as I said, it had been a really fast birth. The consultant said that normally this kind of “cerebral palsy”, as he called it, is caused by a long labour where the baby gets stuck and deprived of oxygen. He also said a really fast birth could cause brain damage too but he couldn’t be certain if this had been the case with Tabitha. You’d be amazed at how many kids have an unexplained disability.’

She blew her nose. ‘We had some other tests too, but they showed nothing. No one could find a particular reason for Tabitha’s condition. Instead, there were all these possibilities. We’ve had so many medical advances over the last few years that we expect to know all the answers. But Tabitha and half the other kids here are living proof that we don’t.’

The girl’s eyes were filling with tears. ‘And is there any hope for her?’

‘Put it this way. We were told that she’d probably never walk,
although she can, after a fashion. We were also told that she’d never talk, even though she can say enough for me to understand her.’

‘It must have affected your relationship with your husband,’ said the girl, sympathetically.

Susan looked up at the ceiling. It was dirty and there was a large cobweb in one corner. She’d learned long ago that it helped to concentrate on irrelevant things when the pain was particularly bad. ‘Josh left soon after Tabitha was diagnosed.’

‘That must have been terrible.’

‘Yes,’ she said slowly, remembering the gripping terror she’d felt when he’d shut the door behind him, leaving her with a small child. ‘But by then I hated him.’

‘Why?’

‘Because he’d been in favour of her having the MMR in the first place. I hadn’t been sure – I’d been scared by some of the stories in the papers about it – but he told me I was overreacting.’

The journalist’s green-brown eyes were like a cat’s. ‘So you think it was his fault?’

‘You could say that. Or you could say, like Josh did, that I’m just trying to pin the blame on someone.’ She stood up. ‘Look, I’m sorry, I don’t want to talk any more. But my friend Joy is dying to tell you about her problems and she’s got more of a story. You will let your listeners know how important the centre is to us all, won’t you? It’s open in the holidays as well as term-time, and it’s got much smaller classes than the big one on the other side of town.’

Somehow Susan found her way to the loo. As she bolted the door behind her, she had a nasty feeling she’d said more than she’d meant to in the heat of her emotion. Maybe she should take some of it back. Quickly, she washed her hands and went out
into the hall, almost colliding with the centre manager who was carrying a lunch tray. The stench of cauliflower was nauseating.

‘Where is she? The journalist?’

‘You’ve missed her. Said she’d got everything she needed and would let us know when we’re on air. Exciting, isn’t it? She spoke to nearly all of us including –’ she lowered her voice ‘– Lisa, who insisted on butting in. Honestly, I sometimes think that girl’s a bit simple.’

Susan made her way back to Joy, who was already sitting at
the table for lunch. ‘Did she interview you? After me?’

Joy’s eyes glittered with disappointment and jealousy. ‘No.’

‘Bitch.’

‘That’s not like you.’

‘This place makes me not like me.’

‘I know what you mean.’

Susan took her plate next to Tabitha’s wheelchair. Her daughter was scooping up carrots and thin slices of lamb in anaemic gravy, then shovelling the ghastly mix into her mouth. Cutlery skills were a barrier they still had to conquer.

‘Moremoremore.’

Tabitha leaned over to her mother’s plate and closed her fist over the cauliflower. Cheese sauce oozed through her fingers on to Susan’s untouched lunch. Laughing, Tabitha took her fist back to her mouth, slopping some of the cauliflower in and allowing the rest to fall down her T-shirt, which had already been changed twice that morning.

‘Whoopsadaisy,’ said one of the helpers. ‘Let’s mop you up, shall we, Tabs, and get Mum another helping?’

Susan closed her eyes to hold back the tears. ‘It’s all right,
thanks. I’m not hungry.’

‘Go on.’ The girl was sponging Tabitha’s T-shirt.

‘No, honestly.’ The sight of liquid cauliflower in Tabitha’s fist had taken away her appetite. If only Josh had listened to Susan’s gut instinct about those bloody jabs, she thought, Tabitha might have been a very different child.

7

WHAT MUMS KNOW – MESSAGE BOARD

From Scummy Mummy: The best way to discipline the kids is to be consistent. If you say you’re going to do it, DO IT!

Mark watched Freddy sitting at the top of the tall, shiny blue swimming-pool slide, fear and determination etched on his face. He wanted to go down, needed to go down, to save face in front of his sister.

‘Get a move on, Freddy!’ he called, from the spectator gallery, cupping his hands round his mobile phone. There was so much shouting and laughing it was difficult to make himself heard. He raised his voice: ‘Just do it. You’ll be fine once you let go.’

He turned to speak into the phone to his client, a company that made electronically coded building bricks. ‘Sorry, there’s a lot of noise here. Right. I’ve got
Kiddy
magazine to agree to run a piece in November.’

Go on, Freddy.
Go on
.

A mother next to him, wearing a baby sling, tutted. ‘Poor kid’s scared. That jumbo slide is really steep.’

Couldn’t she see he was talking? OK, so a noisy indoor swimming-pool in the summer holidays might not be the best place to take part in a telephone conference but he’d had no choice. His client had been insistent on this particular time, just as the kids had been insistent about coming here. It was so hot and steamy that he could feel sweat breaking out under his armpits.

‘Well, I’ll push for December, but it was November they were talking about.’

The woman nudged him. ‘Your son’s in trouble up there. Aren’t you going to do something about it?’

Mark wavered. Freddy looked terrified. ‘Hello, can you hear me? Sorry, I’m losing you. The reception’s terrible. I’ll ring back.’

Sometimes lying was the only option.

‘Freddy,’ he called, ‘just let go and you’ll be OK.’ He glanced at the woman, whose lips were tight with disapproval. ‘He’s well within the age limit,’ he said defensively. ‘He’s small for eleven but he can do things when he wants to.’

Like telling his dad to fuck off. What would the woman, who was dressed in neat pink jeans that co-ordinated with the sling, think of
that
? Maybe that was why he didn’t feel much sympathy for Freddy at the top of the slide. It was easier to be nice to kids when they were nice to you – he hadn’t appreciated that when he was working in a proper office and only saw them in the evening.

‘He’s at Coneywood School, isn’t he?’

‘Sorry?’

It was so noisy, with the kids’ voices bouncing off the walls, that he could hardly hear himself, let alone the woman.

‘I said, he’s at Coneywood School, isn’t he?’

Mark nodded, bracing himself.

The woman shifted the sling and stroked the baby’s cheek with one finger. ‘Thought I recognised you.’

Her perfume, which was strong, reminded him of a heady, expensive fragrance Hilary had worn in the early days and which he’d never liked. The combination of that with the chlorine was potent.

‘Really?’ Be polite. Don’t say anything that might lead to more conversation.

Florrie’s voice floated down from the platform where her brother was sitting. ‘Come on, Freddy, just one little push.’

Visions of the labour ward flashed into his head. The word ‘push’ always did that to him. Hilary, eyes wide with panic. Hilary, out of her mind with pethidine, swearing at him, telling him how much she hated him for putting her through all this.

‘Scaredy-cat, scaredy-cat,’ chanted Florrie.

‘Don’t push me!’

There was a queue of impatient kids behind his son. Mark felt as though the walls were closing in on him – why the hell had he agreed to come here? ‘Just turn back and come down,’ he called.

‘I can’t. I’ll fall.’

‘No, you won’t.’

Mark felt hotter. Every mother in the place was looking at them now: the over-ambitious father with the terrified child at the top of the slide.

‘I’ll get him,’ yelled Florrie. ‘This way, scaredy-cat!’

Mark watched his children disappear over the back of the slide and, hopefully, down the steps.

‘I wouldn’t let him do that again,’ said the mother. Her baby whimpered and she put her finger into its mouth. ‘There, there, Mummy’s here.’

‘Thanks for the advice,’ said Mark, stonily. He stared hard at her, willing her to appreciate her rudeness. But the message in her eyes was all too clear.
Single dads can’t cope. Children need their mother
.

And the worst thing was that Mrs Busybody, with her pristine pink jeans, matching sling and hair that was blonde all the way through, not dark at one end and light at the other like Hilary’s, was right.

The walk home through Cornmarket and down past the old Jam Factory was a nightmare.

‘Scaredy-cat, scaredy-cat. Couldn’t jump from the mat,’ chanted Florrie.

‘Shut up, Florrie. You used to hate heights too.’

‘Didn’t.’

‘Did.’

‘How do you know? Mum was at home then.’

Mum, alias Hilary, who had been so like the other mothers they were threading past now – taut, intelligent, highly nervous, and usually graduates who had found themselves unable to leave the city of spires. Who had married and had children they were incapable of looking after. Who needed to get out to preserve their self-esteem.

Two months. That was how long she’d been gone. Another four to go.

‘Dad, when’s Mum coming back?’

‘I told you,’ said Mark, carefully. ‘Just before Christmas.’

‘I don’t see why she had to go to America.’

‘We’ve been through this before. It was a great opportunity and she couldn’t turn it down.’

Freddy kicked a Coke can along the pavement. Honestly, the rubbish problem in Oxford was getting worse, Mark thought.

‘If Mum was here, she wouldn’t have told me to go down that slide.’

‘How do you know?’ demanded Florrie.

Freddy spun the can so it landed in the gutter. ‘Just do.’

‘Don’t.’

‘Do. Why can’t we ring her when we get back?’

Freddy was walking ahead. The back pocket of his shorts, Mark suddenly noticed, was ripped off, making him look uncared-for.

‘Because it’s difficult to get through. It’s easier for her to ring us, you know that. And what happened to your back pocket?’

‘He tore it off. It’s cool.’

‘Shut up, Florrie. Why can’t we email Mum instead?’

‘I told you that, too. She’s still getting her email address sorted. They’ve had big problems with the server.’

‘Anyway, you need to get on with your project,’ said Florrie sharply. ‘I’m doing mine. It’s on foreign holidays.’

‘I didn’t know you had holiday homework, Freddy,’ said Mark, ‘and you promised me you’d try really hard at school next term.’

‘What’s the point?’ Freddy scowled. ‘One of the richest men in Britain left school early so why should I bother?’

Thanks a bunch, Richard Branson. ‘He was unusual, Freddy.’

‘I want to be unusual too.’

Why couldn’t Mark ever win? ‘What’s your project about, anyway?’

‘Your anus.’

‘
Freddy!
’

‘It is.’ He grinned wickedly. ‘It’s the planets. Uranus, Mars, Venus, that kind of stuff. It’s no big deal, Dad. I can download it from the internet.’

‘But you don’t take it in if you do it like that. In my day, we made notes from books and really understood it.’

‘My very envious mum just stole Uncle Ned’s underpants,’ said Florrie.

‘What?’

‘It’s how our teacher taught us to remember the position of the planets from the Sun. The first letter of each word stands for a planet. Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars . . .’

‘Shut up, Florrie. You’re such a show-off. And it’s all crap, anyway.’

‘Freddy! You’re not to use words like that.’

‘Why not?’ Freddy glared at him. ‘What will you do?’

Refuse to take him on holiday, even though they couldn’t afford one anyway? Threaten him with a lifetime’s pocket-money deprivation?

It was at times like this that you wanted to punish them, but you had to carry out your threats. That was what some woman had said on
What Mums Know
today, and she was right. And occasionally, as someone else had added on the message board, you had to ignore bad behaviour so they took notice of you when you
did
get mad.

Besides, all things must pass. That was true too. One day Hilary would be home. So why didn’t that make him feel better?

He waited until after supper (Daphne’s lasagne from the freezer), when Freddy was doing his trumpet practice, to write to Hilary, saving the important bits for the end.

We had some problems at the swimming-pool today. Freddy got stuck at the top of the slide and Florrie called him a scaredy-cat. He’s still kicking other kids, by the way.

How’s it going at your end? Mark

He was the scaredy-cat for not having the balls to accept it was all over, even before she’d gone. But no, here he was, pretending as usual that everything was fine and telling her about Freddy’s problems as though she was capable of caring. How did other single dads manage? More and more men were left to bring up their families. Daphne had cut out an article from the
Sunday Times
, which was meant, presumably, to make him feel better. He was, he thought wryly, as he made his way upstairs to the office in the top bedroom, almost as fashionable as his son’s torn shorts.

He shut the door, turned on the computer (still so slow – he really ought to get it checked out) and stretched back in his ergonomically designed office chair, gazing at the book-lined wall in front of him. For the first time that day, he felt at ease. This was his only refuge. The only place in the house where he could pretend everything was normal.

Squawk, squawk.

What the hell . . . ? It sounded as though a parrot was loose. Bet Freddy had gone and downloaded another of his screensaver sounds. Yes. It was the Jungle Jingle, which made him feel as though he was in the Amazon instead of outer Oxford. Honestly, the things kids could do nowadays. Mark turned down the speaker volume and opened his inbox. For once, it was relatively empty. Nothing that couldn’t wait until tomorrow, apart from a very small parenting magazine that wanted a sample of a baby holdall that one of his clients had designed.

‘Please let me know when you hope to run the review,’ he emailed back. Probably never would. Most journalists asked for samples and it was only after persistent nagging that one or two might mention the product on their pages so that he earned his commission from the client.

Still, he was lucky, or so everyone kept pointing out, that he had the kind of job that lent itself to working from home. What they didn’t realise was that there was no dividing line. He couldn’t switch off when he left the office because the office was constantly there, in the spare room at the back of the house. And he had to get the kids to be quiet when important clients rang so that he didn’t look like some unprofessional nerd as he had at the pool.

Mark took a sip of water. His finger flirted with the keyboard.
What Mums Know
.
Nicely designed home page. Easy to read. Log in. Username:
Mimi
.

MESSAGE BOARD

Hi, everyone. I’m new to this site. But I’d really appreciate your advice. I took my eleven-year-old son swimming today and he didn’t want to go down the jumbo slide. I tried to get him to do it to get over his fears, but he freaked out and his big sister had to haul him off. Was I wrong? My son has also started kicking and pushing other kids at his new school, even though he should be too old for this kind of thing.

PS My husband is scared of heights. Could it be hereditary?

PPS My husband works away from home and the kids only see him every few months. I’m worried this might be affecting their development.

Send.

He hadn’t meant to say so much but it had been scarily easy to bare his soul to a screen that didn’t frown at his sex.

www.nortypics.com

Mark stared, shocked, as a picture of a semi-naked blonde flashed up on his screen. How had that happened? He hadn’t touched anything.

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