The Flavours of Love (33 page)

‘What time did they say they’d be here?’ Aunty Betty asks, causing us all to glance at her and then to look again in sheer disbelief. Alarmed, more than a little unnerved, both Zane and Phoebe immediately frown at me.
What’s wrong with her?
they’re asking.

The same as is wrong with you
, I silently reply. ‘They didn’t say a specific time, around ten-thirty to eleven,’ I say to Aunty Betty.

‘Didn’t say a specific time? Is Norman sick, do you think? That’s not at all like him. Or her.’

‘I’m sure they’re both fine,’ I reassure. ‘You look nice,’ I add to Aunty Betty diplomatically.

All of them – including the lady herself – glare at me like I am mad. ‘Fine,’ I state to their collective incredulity. ‘You look like a different person, is that what you want to hear?’

‘It’s closer to the truth,’ she says. Her hand, the one that fought me for her cigarette holder, reaches up and adjusts her wig, then tugs at the back of her bra to force it into place. She must be really uncomfortable because I’ve never seen her do something like that – far too classless. The only time I’ve ever seen her with such a demure, monotone outfit was for the ‘official’ bit of Joel’s funeral. When it came to the wake she reappeared in a crimson trouser outfit that had earned
a smile from me and instant disapproval from her brother and sister-in-law. Maybe she’s trying to make up for that outfit with this one.

There was a time, of course, when I would have been the same, the knowledge of their visit would have sent me to the scales, to working out how many calories I could get away with eating without alerting Joel to the fact I was restricting, to spend half the morning trying on different outfits to see which one would say, ‘Not trash’ or at least, ‘Not fat trash’. Since
that day
, things like that aren’t important any more.

*

They arrive in their old Ford Fiesta and have smiles on their faces as they walk through the door, hug the children and sit down and accept tea with the triple chocolate (white, dark and milk) banana muffins I made earlier.

I notice almost straight away the assessment of my wrongdoings has begun: the lingering gaze on Zane’s hair tells me it’s the wrong type of haircut for them; the uncertain stare at Phoebe’s upper arms reveals to me that there is too much flesh on display there, and the look at Aunty Betty tells me that it’s business as usual, despite her outfit. Once upon a time, my anxiety would have me babbling, constantly on my feet, hissing to Phoebe to put a cardigan on, willing Zane’s hair to grow, wondering how I could make Aunty Betty acceptable. Once upon a time,
that
once upon a time I had a husband who knew how to help me reframe my anxiety.

‘These fairy cakes are lovely, Saffron,’ Joel’s mum says. It might have been me being so traumatised by Phoebe’s pregnancy, the letters, the fight with Fynn, and the photo, but even to my Mackleroy-criticism-trained ear, she sounds like she means it.

‘Thank you,’ I reply, waiting for the slight, the backhanded part of the compliment that comes with almost everything she says to me.

‘Did you come up with the recipe yourself?’ she asks.

Why would she think that?
I look at the children – which one of them has told her what I’ve been doing? Phoebe is smiling banally, probably counting down the seconds until she can escape back to her phone
and her room, while simultaneously wondering if someone’s going to tell on her to people she’s actually scared of. It’s Zane.

‘Erm, yes,’ I say. ‘I’ve been experimenting with different ingredients with varying degrees of success.’
I’ve been looking for the perfect blend of flavours, the one that used to be Joel
, I want to tell her.
And when I find it, everything will be all right. He’ll come back to me, to us. I won’t be selfish, you know, I’ll share him with you, it’s only fair since you brought him up
. ‘How did you know?’

‘Zane told me,’ she says. Before I can silently ask my son what possessed him to tell her this, she smiles at me. In response, I stare at her, transfixed. It’s such a beautiful smile, one that our wedding photographer captured as she adjusted Joel’s buttonhole minutes before the ceremony, one that she often gave to her son when she thought no one was looking. Her face, so set with the lines that sorrow has scored upon it, is suddenly alive with this smile – her eyes gentle and open, her lips slightly parted to show some of her teeth. The beam rips my breath away, and I have to look down because tears are spiking behind my eyes.

I didn’t realise, not until this second, that I’ve longed for even the briefest glimpse of niceness from her.

‘You’ll have to give me the recipe,’ she says.

‘Right, yes. OK.’ I cannot lift my gaze for fear of her smiling at me again and making me cry.

‘Phoebe,’ Joel’s dad says, making all of us jump. ‘How’s school?’

‘It’s good, Grandpa,’ she says. Sweetness and light. She can definitely turn it on for the people she’s actually afraid of.

‘Have you decided where you want to go to university yet?’ he asks. Even if I wasn’t on the verge of sobbing, I couldn’t look up now. He asked her this the last time he saw her, well over six months ago, and she’d given him the stock answer of having to see which university had the best reputation for the course she wanted to do. What would she say now?
Actually, Grandpa, I’m pregnant so I may be delaying uni for a while, if not for ever because I’m going to be having a baby. Yes, that’s right, I’m no better than my piece of trash mother
.

‘Erm, no, not yet.’

‘Well, don’t leave it too long,’ he says, good-naturedly. ‘It does a person good to have a clear path in life. Even if it does take some pleasant detours along the way … Don’t you think, Saffron?’

Me? He was talking to me? In that tone? As if anything I thought meant anything to him and them and the world?
‘Erm, yes, I suppose so,’ I say without facing him, either. If I look at him and he’s smiling, I will have a breakdown. There are things that can send a person over the edge, and after eighteen months of nothingness, of business as usual with a side order of ‘what if he hadn’t met you, would this have happened to him?’, sudden pleasantness is not something I can assimilate or process at all.

Aunty Betty has been strangely quiet, too. The tension we always seem to have in the air is coming from us, I realise, each of us waiting for our turn in front of the firing squad. Something is not right, here. I knew this before with Phoebe in the lead-up to finding out she was pregnant but I ignored it. I glossed over it because in the midst of everything, in the process of ‘moving on’ like a good bereaved person is meant to, I was jealous she was happier, I was grateful that she seemed to have moved on when I couldn’t even contemplate it.

Something is wrong now, the world is off-kilter.

Before I know it, before I can tell myself I am being ridiculous and paranoid, I am on my feet. ‘Zane, Sweetheart, can you come and help me with something upstairs, please?’ I ask him.

He glances down at where he’s left his DS, looks at each of his grandparents, then warily he rises. I’m right. It’s a wrench in my already mangled stomach, but I’m right.

*

In his bedroom, I shut the door. His room is neat, tidy, everything slotted away in its rightful place even though I only do a minimal clean, vacuum and take the laundry down. He keeps it tidy himself, returns toys to their shelves, pulls his duvet over in the mornings, folds his pyjamas and leaves them neatly on his pillow – his dad’s influence, in the main, but his own conscientiousness spurring on the rest.

I smile at him as we sit on his bed together. ‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘I haven’t paid you enough attention and I’m sorry.’ I slip my arm around his shoulders, pull him towards me and gently kiss the top of his head. There’s a stopper in my throat, preventing me from speaking properly, and there’s a knife in the centre of my heart, stopping me from doing what I have to do. Is this how it felt for Joel? Knowing you’re bleeding to death, knowing what is coming is inevitable but being powerless to stop it? Knowing that at this point, there is nothing you can do.

‘It’s all a bit much at the moment, isn’t it?’ I say to him. ‘With Phoebe, with Aunty Betty, the drama last week, my car, me running around trying to fix things – it’s too much, isn’t it?’

‘Yeah,’ he says and I’m grateful at least, he can admit that. He’s not going to pretend any longer.

I inhale, gathering strength from the ability to pull air into my body. ‘Do you want to go and stay with Granny and Grandpa for a while?’ I ask him. I do not breathe, do not move, do not even think as I wait for his answer.

It takes him all the time in the world to screw up his courage and tell me he doesn’t want to be here any more. He doesn’t want to be with me any more. ‘Yeah,’ he whispers.

Is this how Joel felt, when the knife was first inserted into his being? Like nothing could ever hurt this much?

‘OK, Baby, OK.’ On Tuesday I’ll need to call St Caroline’s, but they have been so considerate, offering support and staggered school days, I’m sure they’ll understand now. I have to pack him enough stuff for his time away. I’ll have to give Joel’s parents some money. I’ll have to find a way to file this away in my mind and my heart, to remind myself for every second of every day until he comes home that this is for the best, so I don’t spend the next few days breaking down if I see a young boy in the street.

‘Sorry, Mum,’ he says quietly.

I tug him as near to me as possible, surround him with all the love I have for him, press my lips against his forehead again. ‘You
have nothing to be sorry for. It’s me that’s sorry that I didn’t notice earlier that you need a time out. If staying with your grandparents is what you want for now, then that’s fine.’

‘Can I come home whenever I want?’

‘Yes, of course. This isn’t for ever, you’re coming home really soon. Any time you want. Even if it’s the middle of the night, call me and I’ll come and get you.’

‘For honestly, real?’ He hasn’t said that since he was six. His dad, on the other hand, said it right up until he died.

‘Absolutely. Any time you need me, even if you just want to talk to me, just call me.’ I drop another kiss onto his head. ‘In fact, it’s a condition of you going that you call me at least once a day. And, at least once every few days, you must call in the middle of the night for a chat and to complain about something. OK? Deal?’

I raise my hand and he averts his mortified face when he realises I was going for a high-five. Suitably shamed, I lower my hand and hug him instead.

‘Right, I’d better get on with packing some stuff for you,’ I say briskly, to cover the sound of the earthquake happening in my heart. ‘Can you go down and get Granny to come up for a minute so I can talk things through with her?’

‘Is this for honestly, real OK, Mum?’ Zane asks.

‘Yes, it’s for honestly OK. It’ll do you good to have some time with them, but I’m telling you this like I’m going to tell Granny, you’re coming back really soon, OK? This isn’t for ever. It’s a bit of a holiday while things calm down. OK? Go on now, get Granny and I’ll get packing.’

*

‘Zane isn’t your second chance,’ I say to her when she has crossed the threshold and shut the door.

‘I know that, Saffron,’ she says, still with the pleasant tone that revealed she had been speaking to my son and they were buttering me up to convince me they could take care of him in my place.

I am arranging his clothes in neat piles on his bed. I’m packing
fourteen of everything, so he can stay for up to two weeks without needing stuff washed. Under his clothes, hidden from view, I have put his memory box of Joel. I gave them both the A4-size boxes with individual photos of them with their dad, and the same group photo of them at the beach hut. I also put in a notebook, a pen and a note saying how much he loved them. It was the best I could do and I’d told them to fill it with whatever they wanted and I would never look in there. They could show me things, but it was their space to fill however they chose. Zane would need it if he was away from home, and he could maybe add stuff from his grandparents’ place.

‘Well, I don’t think you do, actually,’ I say. ‘He may look like Joel did before he met me, when Joel was all yours, but Zane isn’t Joel. Zane is his own person. And he’s
not your son
.’

Her hand, placed tenderly on my shoulder, causes me to jump. ‘I know that, Saffron,’ she repeats, kindly.

‘And this isn’t for ever. I’ve told Zane that, and I’m telling you, this is only for a short while and then he’s coming back home. Because
this
is his home.’

‘I know.’

I can’t start crying in front of her. It’s always felt wrong to do so. No matter how she’s treated me over the years, no matter how she treats me now, she has lost her only child. I don’t know how I’d cope with that. It’d be churlish to cry in front of her, knowing that I could, theoretically, find another husband but she’ll never find another son.

‘I’ve told him, too, that he has to call me at least once a day. The day that passes without me speaking to him is the day I come and get him, is that clear?’

She nods.

‘Good,’ I say, aware that she still has her hand on my shoulder, probably the first time she has touched me so gently. ‘And don’t say anything bad about me to him. He
will
tell me, he
will
hate you for it and I
will
come and get him.’

‘We wouldn’t do that,’ she protests, but at least she has the grace to not sound hurt or incredulous that I would suggest such a thing.

‘Yes you would. So just … just cut out the snide remarks. If you’ve got
another
issue with me then take it up with me and leave Zane out of it.’

‘Fine. Yes.’

I have her on the ropes, she’d agree to anything right now.
Admit you’ve been an unfair bitch to me all these years
, I should say.
Admit that I was actually good enough for your son
.

‘We’re going to look after him,’ she says and I snap back to the stark reality where my son is leaving. ‘That’s not to say you’re incapable of that. He just wants to be somewhere else right now.’