Missing You Page 8

  Now Sean’s mother sends him out of the bedroom so that she can wrap his presents.

  ‘You don’t need to wrap them, Mum,’ he says. ‘I’m a grown man. I don’t believe in Father Christmas.’

  ‘Oh, don’t say that. Pretend, for me,’ she says, blurry with affection, giving him a squeeze and a kiss on the cheek.

  Sean smiles and rubs his chin.

  ‘Go and have another drink,’ says Rosie. ‘Cheer up. Get into the festive spirit. I want my number-one son to be happy.’

  Downstairs, Grandma Vera is watching television in the living room and Sean’s father, Darragh, is in the kitchen, standing at the sink in an apron and rubber gloves, preparing the vegetables for next day’s dinner. The kitchen window is steamed up and there’s a smell of poached apples. Darragh pushes his spectacles up his nose and nods in the direction of the fridge.

  ‘I’ll have a beer with you,’ he says, ‘and Lola’s on the way over, so you’d better open another bottle.’

  On cue the back door opens and Lola comes in, wrapped in a scarf; behind her, and six inches taller, is Boo, his shoulders hunched, his head held low. Boo is wearing low-slung jeans that reveal the top three inches of his boxer shorts, and a green hoodie. He has the hood up to cover the acne on his neck. When he sees his jilted uncle he colours in embarrassment and stares at the floor.

  ‘Hello, darling, how are you?’ Lola says, embracing Sean. Her cheeks are cold and she smells of peppermint. Sean feels a pricking at the back of his throat. He wants to hold on to his sister and cry like a baby.

  ‘Good,’ he says, ‘great.’

  Lola pecks her father on the cheek, unwinds her scarf, takes off her coat and pulls up a chair. She helps herself to a mug of wine, filling it right to the top. Darragh sighs but says nothing. Sean has to hide a smile. Lola has always got away with murder.

  ‘Boo, I expect Great-grandma’s watching telly. Go and be nice to her for a bit, would you?’ she asks.

  Boo pulls a face. ‘I don’t know what to say to her.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter what you say. Just mumble, like you normally do.’

  ‘Oh, Mum …’

  ‘Let him stay,’ says Sean. Lola ignores him.

  She leans back in her chair and squeezes her son’s arm. ‘Go on, Boo, I promise I’ll come and rescue you in ten minutes.’

  ‘Lola …’

  ‘Give him a can of beer, Sean. You’ll be all right, won’t you, Boo?’

  Boo grunts. Sean passes his nephew a can of Carling.

  ‘Cheers,’ says Boo. He slouches out of the room. Lola watches him fondly.

  ‘Bless,’ she says, and the moment the door shuts behind him she leans forward across the table and looks earnestly into Sean’s eyes. ‘So what’s going on? Did you leave Belle off your own bat, or did she make you go?’

  ‘No, nothing like that. Neither,’ Sean says, picking a clementine out of the fruit bowl in the centre of the table, pushing his thumbnail into the fragrant skin and working it through the flesh.

  ‘Why are you here on your own, then?’

  ‘We’re just on a break,’ says Sean, pulling off a strip of orange skin. ‘It’s just temporary. Belle said she needed a little breathing space.’

  ‘Oh. So she’s with another man.’

  ‘No, yes, well sort of. Bloody hell, Lo, how did you know?’

  ‘Women always say they need a little space when they’re shagging somebody else.’

  ‘Lola, please, there’s no need for vulgar language!’ says their father, wagging a half-peeled carrot at his daughter. He spatters his apron with droplets of water.

  ‘Sorry, Dad. Who is he? The man she’s … seeing?’

  Sean puts a plump segment of clementine in his mouth, pierces its skin with his teeth and sucks the juice. It’s cool and sweet and clean.

  ‘Her tutor.’

  ‘What does he tute?’

  ‘Creative writing. She was doing that degree course, remember? He’s a proper writer. He’s quite famous. He’s been on television.’

  ‘Sounds like an arrogant twat.’

  ‘Lola!’

  ‘Dad, I’m a grown woman!’

  ‘You’re still my daughter.’

  Lola exhales and rolls her eyes. ‘Sorry. Sean, is he older than her?’

  Sean nods.

  ‘Don’t worry, it won’t last.’

  ‘That’s what I think,’ says Sean, relieved beyond measure that Lola concurs with his point of view. Lola is usually right when it comes to matters of the heart.

  ‘Has it been awful for you?’ she asks.

  ‘No, I’m fine.’

  ‘Yes, but really, has it been awful?’

  Sean nods. He swallows. He has to concentrate to stop his lower lip from trembling as it used to when he was a child. He feels about five years old. He remembers the first time he realized that life wasn’t fair, that you could play by the rules and be a good boy, and still be punished for something you hadn’t done, and there was nothing you could do about it, nothing at all.

  ‘You ought to have a little affair,’ says Lola, ‘nothing heavy, just a sweet fling with a nice woman. It would take your mind off Belle and, also, it would make her want you back.’

  ‘Lola, really, that wouldn’t be right on any level.’ Darragh peels off his gloves and unwraps his apron.

  Lola smiles down into her mug.

  ‘There’s nothing like a love-rival to make a woman see her man in a different light,’ she says.

  ‘Lola …’

  ‘It’s all right, Dad,’ says Sean. ‘I’ve had enough of love, for now.’

  ‘Oh God.’ Lola grins. ‘That’s a lyric if ever I heard one. You’re writing songs again, aren’t you?’

  Sean nods. He grins under the gaze of his sister.

  ‘Well, that’s a good sign, I suppose,’ says Lola. ‘It’s an indication that you’ve started the healing process.’

  ‘Lo, you’ve got to stop reading those bloody pseudo-psychological self-help books,’ says Sean. In reply, she pushes his shoulder and he pushes her back, and he thinks that maybe he will get through Christmas after all.

  thirteen

  Christmas Day is a beautiful, ice-white and sky-blue day, that starts with a perfect frost and a mist that hangs over the city, way below Crofters Road, so that only the spires rise up through it, like trees in a lake. From then on, the day works its way slowly towards a perfect sunset, the frost never melting on the grass that the sunlight does not reach, the air hazy with winter.

  It is Fen’s loneliest day.

  She told her sister that she and Connor were spending the holiday with friends. She does not want Lucy to phone and hear the isolation in her voice; the last thing she wants is to spoil her Christmas. And it’s true, there have been invitations, but she has turned them down with plausible excuses, because she doesn’t want to intrude on anyone else’s day and has persuaded herself that it will be good to be on her own, with Connor.

  Fen tells herself a million times how lucky she is to have the liberty to spend the day exactly as she wishes. Connor has already enjoyed myriad Christmas-related activities at school and he is quite happy to have a low-key day at home. He likes having Fen’s undivided attention, he is thrilled with the stocking at the end of his bed, the carrot stump on the doorstep that proves the reindeer came and the modest stack of presents piled beneath the little artificial tree in the living room. Fen thought a real one would be over the top. She thought it might remind her of her own childhood, and she can do without that.

  After lunch, Fen takes Connor out for some fresh air on his new, second-hand, bicycle. It has a good pair of solid stabilizers. She takes off his Santa hat and straps on his helmet, his knee and elbow pads, and he stands beside his bike grinning proudly, like an Edwardian hunter, while Fen takes photographs on her phone. Up and down the street other children with protective headwear are out on skates, scooters and bicycles, or driving remote-control cars. Fen smiles at her neighbours and their e
xtended families. She says, ‘Hello, Happy Christmas,’ and if they try to strike up conversations, she is friendly, but brisk. She doesn’t want anyone to feel sorry for her. She says that it’s lovely to see them, but she has to get on. She talks as if there is somewhere else she has to be.

  Connor is a demon on the bike, fearless.

  ‘Connor Weller, you’ve been having me on with this cerebral palsy malarkey,’ says Fen, as he masters the pedals immediately.

  Connor looks over his shoulder and laughs and Fen feels her heart swell with love.

  ‘I want to go down the hill,’ says Connor.

  ‘Oh no, Connor. It’s too steep.’

  ‘Aw, Mum, please, I promise I won’t fall off.’

  Fen thinks: But you might. And then she remembers being a child and what it felt like to ride a bicycle downhill, her legs sticking out, the pedals spinning, the wind in her eyes and the rush in her ears, and she remembers how she swore to herself that she wouldn’t make Connor afraid of life. So she says: ‘Go on, then! But be careful, and keep your hand on the brake in case you need to stop!’

  Connor sets off freewheeling down the hill, for once empty of traffic, and she has to run to keep up, and they’re both laughing and she’s soon breathless and happy and wondering how she’ll ever get him back up again.

  Most of the people who live on that side of Bath head up Solsbury Hill on fine bank holidays, but when Connor has had enough of his bike, he and Fen simply loop around the roads, up through the alleyway, into the garden and through Lilyvale’s back door.

  They watch a little television, an animated film, then they share a bath, Connor and Fen. Fen keeps topping up the hot water, to make the time go more slowly, and she talks to Connor, telling him stories. Connor lies beside her and rests his wet head on her chest, his damp breath cooling and warming her throat. He’s so solid, so set in his body. The rise and fall of his shoulder blades beneath her fingers is a validation of everything she has done to keep him. Fen kisses his cooling hair. The window is steamed up and, beyond it, the night is falling and there’s another Christmas nearly over.

  She climbs carefully out of the bath and wraps Connor in a towel that’s been warming on the radiator. She puts on her dressing gown then takes the child into her room to prepare him for bed. She enjoys their little rituals, relaxing into his sleepy pleasure as she talcs him and helps him into his soft, fleecy nightclothes, the baby smells as soothing as Valium in her bloodstream. He’s perfectly capable of dressing himself for bed, but it’s something they both enjoy.

  Downstairs she draws the living-room curtains, and sits with Connor on her lap, stroking his back. He is her anchor. He is all that stops her spinning away into deep, outer space, this heavy-eyed child with the fair eyelashes that are so like his father’s.

  He falls asleep, and she sits there still, until his weight makes her uncomfortable, and then she carries her son up to his little bed. She leaves the night light on for him, tucks him in, and he murmurs in his sleep and instinctively takes hold of his teddy and snuggles down into the bed.

  Now she’s alone, the ghosts of her past come to Fen. They tap on her shoulder and whisper in her ear. Quietly but persistently, they demand her attention.

  She tries to push them away, but they will not leave her be, so she sits on the window ledge in Connor’s room, stares at the shadows on the wall and lets the ghosts into her thoughts. Tonight it’s not Tomas or even Joe at the forefront of her mind, but Emma Rees, Joe’s mother.

  Fen remembers a slight, tired-looking woman who always slipped into the background of any situation. She had mastered the art of self-effacement so successfully that Fen would find it difficult to describe her. She was always kind to Tomas and Fen. She was, in her quiet way, kind to everyone.

  She had been widowed young and Joe was Emma Rees’s only child. He must have been everything to her. He must have been her reason for living, as Connor is to Fen. She must have delighted in looking after Joe. Her heart must have leaped when she heard his voice in the hall, his voice calling her to let her know he was home. When he was out with Tomas, Emma Rees must have lain awake in bed at night, waiting for the sound of his key in the door. She would not have slept until she knew he was back safe.

  Fen sighs. She looks down at her sleeping child, touches his forehead gently with the back of her fingers, and he moves a little in his sleep and murmurs something.

  The last time Fen saw Emma Rees was at Fen’s father’s funeral, six or seven months after Joe died in the accident. Mrs Rees sat towards the back of the church. She looked shrunken, gaunt, a shadow of her former, shadowed self, and much older than she was. She was wearing a hat with a veil and you could see the shape of her jaw beneath the gauze. She sat there, on her own, perfectly still apart from her gloved hands, which twisted and twisted a lace-trimmed handkerchief on her lap. She took care not to look into anyone else’s eyes.

  Later, after the service, Fen’s stepmother, Deborah, spoke to the woman, and the two of them were like mirror images of each other, Mrs Rees holding Deborah’s chill hand between her trembling palms, trying to offer some comfort.

  They were friends, Emma Rees and Deborah Weller, of a kind. Mrs Rees was devoted to Deborah and would do anything for her. Even after the accident she would go out of her way to please the wife of the headteacher of Merron College. But although Deborah always smiled when she saw Mrs Rees, although she had the clothes she no longer wanted dry-cleaned before she passed them on to the college’s kitchen supervisor, there was a reserve to her friendship. Behind Emma Rees’s back, and never in front of any of the kitchen staff, Deborah Weller would roll her eyes when she spoke of the woman and her ‘funny little ways’. Although she insisted Mrs Rees was always welcome in her home, she complained about her every time Emma turned up looking for some company, or some sympathy. On the odd occasions when she did not have a convenient excuse at hand to avoid inviting Mrs Rees in for a cup of tea, Deborah said ‘the Rees woman’ always outstayed her welcome. She would mimic the other woman’s voice, imitating her turn of speech, her accent, her nervous, continuous apologies. Deborah felt duty-bound to appear to be kind to Mrs Rees, especially because of the circumstances of Joe’s death, but her graciousness was not heartfelt. Everyone knew how Deborah felt, except Mrs Rees, whose adoration of her employer’s wife was unconditional.

  Fen is certain that Mrs Rees will have been to church today. She won’t have missed the Christmas service. Probably it is the only thing she will have looked forward to over the holiday, the only crack in the infinite ice of her loneliness. She will have tucked herself into a corner at the back of the church, dabbed a tissue at the corner of her eyes when the children in the choir sang ‘Once in Royal David’s City’, and gracefully received the kind words of the congregation, the vicar’s friendly handshake. Then she will have visited Joe’s frost-hardened grave. She’ll have brought some holly in a jar, perhaps a small gift. She’ll have lit a tea-light in a glass jar with tinsel at its neck. She’ll have had a quiet little chat with her only child.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Fen whispers, her pain making her curl into herself, like plastic in a flame.

  She drifts downstairs to switch off the lights and lock up. She does not want to put the television on; she does not want sentimental, nostalgic programmes to remind her of her isolation. She does not want to think about her sister with her swollen ankles, or her poor father, or Deborah, who now lives in Australia; and she definitely doesn’t want her thoughts to return to Mrs Rees or Joe or Tomas.

  So she chases her ghosts away. She fills her mind with thoughts of a different man, a new man, and thinking of Sean brings her only pleasure. She wonders what he is doing, whether he has thought of her at all today; she thinks that, probably, he won’t have. She bought him a small gift, a little soapstone statuette of Ganesh to watch over him and keep him safe. He thanked her for the gift when she gave it to him and slipped it, unopened, into the pocket of his bag, and she suspects that he will have forgotten
it is there.

  Lilyvale feels empty without Sean. There is too much space, too little noise. And the neighbours on either side are away so there is nobody around and the quiet is deafening. In the silence Fen can hear the mechanics of the fridge and the ticking of the timer on the central heating system. She double-checks that the windows and doors are locked. She draws all the curtains. She feels jumpy, nervy. It’s too quiet. She wishes there were somebody she could ask over, but nobody else she knows is entirely on their own.

  It’s her fault. She has kept herself to herself. She has not made many friends.

  Sean will be back in a few days’ time, but those days, right now, feel like forever.

  Fen goes back upstairs and pushes open the door to Connor’s room. Carefully, she lies down beside him on his bed, and listens to his breathing until Christmas Day becomes Boxing Day and there’s a touch of light in the sky beyond the window, then, turning her face into the pillow, she sleeps, at last.

  fourteen

  Sean is standing on top of the Lady Chapel roof, in the rain, wearing a safety harness and gloves. He is taking photographs of the Victorian cupola, which is much larger from where he stands than it looked from the ground.

  Two days previously, during a storm, a chunk of masonry fell from the roof and shattered so violently that the concrete of the path below caved and cracked. It is obvious, from Sean’s vantage point, that the cupola is unsafe. Water has found its way to the steel rods which pin the structure together so the rods are corroding and, as they swell, they are putting pressure on the fine limestone blocks from the inside; now the stone has begun to concede and crack. Sean walks around the cupola and counts the visible fissures. He checks the condition of the roof. Frost-blackened weeds choke the guttering; there is a filthy mess of feathers and bird-shit; that’s probably a seagull’s nest crouching by the rear wall; some of the leading is loose or missing. It’s clear that nobody has been up here to carry out any maintenance for some years.