The Way We Were Page 15

  Mummy said okay, but that we had to talk to her about Daddy when we were sad and not to worry about upsetting her. She said we had to let our grief out, or it would make us ill inside.

  I talk to Daddy all the time. I look at his picture and talk to him. Sometimes I actually think he talks back. When I close my eyes, I can hear his voice. Like the other day, when I didn’t know what to do about Simon. He’s always calling me a ‘swot’ and a ‘freak’ and I try to ignore him, but he just keeps saying it and some of the others laugh and I feel really bad. I told Daddy about it and I could hear him saying, ‘You have to stand up to him.’

  I was really scared, but the next day when Simon called me a ‘swot’ I told him I’d rather be a swot than always coming bottom, like he does. He just laughed, but I felt a bit better.

  I’m not sure if Simon would have stopped being mean after that. I’m not the sort of girl who can frighten people – but then Jools heard about it from Simon’s cousin, Jeremy, who is in her year. So Jools and her friend Lance, who is in year twelve too, and captain of the rugby team, went up to Simon the next day, pushed him up against a locker and told him that if he ever even looked sideways at me again, Lance would use him as a human rugby ball. So now Simon leaves me alone.

  I worry about Jools, though. She doesn’t talk about Daddy enough. Mummy tries to get her to talk about him, but Jools just keeps saying she’s fine. Mummy and she are fighting a lot because Mummy is helping Jools with her homework every night and it’s always a battle. Mummy tries really hard not to get annoyed, but Jools is annoying. She’s not trying. She said she’s worn out with all the studying she did for her GCSEs. She did better than any of us thought she would but not exactly brilliantly – although she did get an A star in art. She said her mind needs a break and she’ll work harder when the next lot of exams are coming up. She doesn’t seem to care that she’s at the bottom of her year.

  Mummy is trying to get her to read more – she even said she’d pay her for every book she finished, but Jools refuses. I heard Mummy telling Kevin that she was worried Jools would end up stacking shelves in Tesco.

  Kevin said there were worse things she could be doing, like ‘swinging around a pole in a dodgy nightclub in Soho’. Mummy didn’t think it was funny. She actually just looked really worried.

  When we were all dressed, Kevin took us to a fancy restaurant called Le Toit. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Kevin eat so much. He ordered all of the side dishes, including the creamy potatoes, which he never usually does because he’s always watching his weight. He said he was starving because of all the awful food Axel was cooking, which he had to spit into his napkin when Axel wasn’t looking.

  We had a nice time and then we went home and Mummy took us out to the garden where Daddy’s cherry tree was growing and she asked us all to talk to Daddy. That’s when things got really sad. Jools totally lost it. She said, ‘I needed you, Dad, and you left me. I hate you for going to Eritrea. I HATE YOU.’ Then she ran inside and locked herself in her bedroom, and even when Mummy said she could watch Keeping Up With the Kardashians and eat a whole box of Celebrations she wouldn’t come out.

  Mummy then said she had a headache and would I mind if she had a little lie-down. I said it was fine and that I might do the same. Mummy said I could come and snuggle up in her bed, but I knew she wanted to cry and she wouldn’t in front of me, so I said I’d rather just go to my own room. That wasn’t true.

  After about an hour I went to check on Mummy and she was fast asleep, surrounded by tissues. I could see the light on in Jools’s bedroom, so I knocked on her door. She didn’t answer. I went in. I wish I hadn’t. It was awful. I feel sick every time I think about it. I don’t know what to do. She made me swear I wouldn’t tell Mummy or Kevin or anyone.

  But it’s serious. She said she’s only done it once or twice, but the scars were all the way up her arms. When I went in, she was in the middle of cutting herself with a razor and there was blood dripping down her arm into the black towel she had underneath. Her face looked really weird – like she was in pain but also happy.

  I’m really scared now.

  Alice: December 2013

  Alice sat with her handbag on her lap, twisting the strap around her hands.

  ‘Thank you for coming, Mrs Gregory. I know that your family has suffered greatly in the last year and we’ve turned a blind eye to a number of misdemeanours in Jools’s case, but I’m afraid I can’t let this go.’

  ‘What exactly did she do?’ Alice asked.

  Mrs Kennedy clasped her hands together. ‘She rang the school switchboard and said there was a bomb in the science lab.’

  ‘What?’ Alice was shocked. How could Jools do a thing like that?

  ‘Obviously we had to evacuate the building until we were able to establish that it was a hoax.’

  ‘Are you sure it was Jools?’

  Mrs Kennedy pursed her lips. ‘Yes. We called the mobile number back and Jools answered.’

  How could Jools be so stupid? ‘Did she say why she did it?’

  ‘Apparently she was trying to avoid doing a test.’

  She must have been really desperate to get out of it. Alice felt sorry for her daughter and furious with her in equal measure. ‘She’s finding it difficult to keep up. I’m helping her as much as I can, but her father … well … he was better at it, more patient, than I am.’

  ‘Perhaps you should consider hiring a tutor to help,’ Mrs Kennedy suggested. ‘After all, the next two years are important.’

  Alice nodded. ‘I was planning to do that. It’s just … I didn’t want to push her too much because she’s been so upset and I knew she’d hate having a teacher coming to the house to do extra work. I’ll sort it out this week. I should have done it before now. I just … It’s been …’

  Mrs Kennedy reached over and patted Alice’s hand. ‘You’ve had a terrible shock. We understand. I just want the best for Jools and it’s time she had some extra tuition. She’s a bright, lively girl. She just needs her energy channelled in the right direction.’

  Alice smiled. ‘That’s what Ben used to say. How’s Holly getting on?’

  Mrs Kennedy smiled. ‘She’s a pleasure to have in the school. Such a serious and studious girl. As I mentioned to you earlier in the year, we have noticed that Holly has been a little withdrawn but her year head, Miss Long, assures me that she is doing very well in her work and has a nice little group of friends.’

  Alice sighed and loosened her grip on the strap of her handbag. ‘That’s good to hear. I worry about them so much. I’m trying to make things as normal as possible.’

  ‘They are two lovely girls and you are doing an excellent job. I think the extra tuition will help Jools immeasurably and take some of the pressure from your shoulders. I’m sorry to have called you in, but it was a serious incident.’

  Alice nodded. ‘I understand. Thank you. I promise it won’t happen again.’ She stood up and shook Mrs Kennedy’s hand. As she walked through the quiet school corridors, she saw classrooms full of children working. She peeped in at Holly’s class. Her daughter was writing, a frown of concentration on her sweet face. Along the next corridor she saw Jools’s class. Jools was using her ruler to flick balls of paper at the girl in front of her.

  Chalk and cheese, thought Alice. She’d have to have a serious talk with Jools after school. She dreaded it. Ben had been so much better at dealing with her. Alice always ended up saying the wrong thing or just losing her temper. But this was serious. Imagine calling the school to say there was a bomb! Mrs Kennedy could have excluded her. Alice was going to have to be firm. No more dancing around Jools’s feelings. This was unacceptable and she’d have to be punished.

  Alice knew what would bother Jools most: confiscation of her phone. She knew her daughter would freak and make her life miserable, but she was going to do it. Enough was enough.

  When Alice got home from work, Nora was taking a roast chicken out of the oven.

  ‘Perfect timin
g,’ Nora said, as she put the chicken on the island. ‘The girls are upstairs doing their homework.’

  ‘Thanks, Nora.’ Alice took off her coat. ‘I was called to the school today.’

  ‘Jools?’

  Alice nodded, and filled her in on the ‘incident’. Nora threw back her head and laughed.

  ‘It’s not funny.’

  ‘You have to hand it to her, she’s original.’

  ‘She could have been kicked out of the school!’

  ‘Well, she wasn’t. Lookit, Alice, the poor divil doesn’t know what she wants or where she’s going. All teenagers are a nightmare. My lot drove me wild and turned my hair grey. And that poor child had her dad die in the middle of all those swirling hormones. It’s a wonder she isn’t stone mad.’

  Alice sat down on a stool and rested her chin on her hands. ‘But she has to behave or she’ll land herself in big trouble.’

  ‘Go easy, Alice. She’s fragile, that one. She pretends to be all big and bold, but she’s a ball of mush. She misses Ben more than anyone. Holly’s stronger.’

  Alice rubbed her eyes. She felt exhausted. She’d stopped taking the sleeping tablets because she was afraid of becoming addicted to them, but that meant she was back to fitful sleep and wakeful nights.

  ‘It’s not easy, Alice, I know. But you’ll be fine. What you need is a good ride.’

  ‘What?’ Alice’s head snapped up.

  Nora swatted her with a tea towel. ‘Don’t look so shocked. I’m sixty, not ninety, and I know what a woman needs. You need to have a one-night stand with some handsome fella, no strings attached. It’ll do you the world of good, wake your body up.’

  ‘Jesus, Nora, I couldn’t even think of being with another man.’

  ‘Nonsense. Just drink a few glasses of vodka, close your eyes and get on with it. It’ll break the cycle.’

  ‘What cycle?’

  ‘The misery cycle.’

  Alice felt herself flushing. ‘I couldn’t. I can’t even bear the thought of being with someone else. It feels wrong – as if I was being unfaithful or something.’

  ‘He’s dead, Alice. He hasn’t gone on a holiday. He’s not coming back. You need to start living. You’re a young woman – you need to get out there and start smiling at men instead of going about like a ghost.’

  ‘But it’s only been a year.’ Alice was shocked at Nora’s advice. In one way it felt as if it was only yesterday that Ben was there, beside her. On the other hand, she sometimes felt as if she’d been on her own for ever.

  ‘It’s been fourteen months now and you need to have some fun and feel like a person again. You’ve spent the last year looking after those girls. Now it’s time to look after yourself. The first thing you need to do is go shopping. Your clothes are all falling off you. Get yourself some nice new outfits and put on some lipstick and go out and find yourself a strapping young lad to give you a night of passion. You don’t want it to dry up.’

  ‘Nora!’ Alice was not comfortable having this conversation.

  ‘I’m right and you know it. Now, I’d best be off before Himself runs off with the young one next door. I’ve seen him lusting at her over the hedge.’ Nora put on her coat and headed for the door. ‘Remember now, don’t be too hard on Jools.’

  Alice was reeling from Nora’s pep talk, so she went to pour herself a glass of wine to calm down after an eventful and revealing day – Jools causing a bomb scare and Nora telling her to get laid by a stranger. As Alice drank her wine, her eye caught a picture of her and Ben at a fancy-dress party. They’d gone as Bacon and Eggs – Ben was the bacon and Alice was the fried egg. They looked utterly ridiculous and extremely happy.

  Could she sleep with another man? It was so long since she’d had sex with anyone but Ben. She wasn’t even sure if she’d be any good at it. She and Ben had had their own rhythm. They knew each other’s bodies so well, so intimately. Alice didn’t even particularly like her body. Her boobs were saggy from her years of breast-feeding plus gravity; her stomach and thighs had stretch marks that looked like train tracks. Even if she wanted to have a one-night stand, she wouldn’t be able to find anyone to have sex with. Could you hire someone? Maybe she could get sex lessons.

  Her phone rang. It was Kevin.

  ‘Can women like me hire a man to have sex with?’

  ‘How many Xanax have you taken?’

  ‘Seriously, is there an escort service for sad women in their forties?’

  ‘Okay, you’re not slurring your words, you don’t sound out of it, what the hell is going on?’

  ‘Nora told me I needed to have sex.’

  ‘Go, Nora!’

  ‘I’m not going to. I can think of nothing worse. But is there a service for women like me?’

  ‘Honey, this is London. There’s something for everyone.’

  ‘Nice men, not seedy, smelly, nasty, rotten men.’

  ‘You don’t need to go to an escort service. Believe me, this is a big city. There are plenty of very nice, hot, fragrant, fit men.’

  ‘Nora said I should go for a younger man with no strings attached.’

  ‘Nora’s a dark horse.’

  ‘How do you meet someone like that?’

  ‘Tinder.’

  ‘What’s Tinder?’

  ‘Alice, seriously, get with the program.’

  ‘What is it?’ Alice repeated. She was beginning to realize how clueless she was about everything.

  ‘It’s an app for matchmaking.’

  ‘How does it work?’

  ‘You sign up, then other users can check out your Facebook profile so they can see what you look like and how old you are. The app will pair up potential candidates who are most likely to be a good match, based on where you are and if you have mutual friends or common interests.’

  ‘That’s it? You see a photo and their age – which they can lie about – and then you meet them? It sounds mad and probably dangerous.’

  ‘There are some downsides. I hooked up with a guy recently. In his headshot he looked very handsome, but when I met him he was tiny and really fat.’

  ‘Never mind short and fat, what if he’s a psychopath?’

  Kevin sighed. ‘I use it all the time and I’ve never had any problem.’

  ‘I don’t understand how you can be in a relationship that isn’t monogamous. How can it not cause problems? I would have been insanely jealous if Ben had been with another woman.’

  ‘I’m not into monogamy and nor is Axel. It works for us.’

  ‘Do you think Jools is on the Tinder?’

  ‘God, Alice, please don’t call it “the Tinder”. You sound so old.’

  ‘Okay, Tinder then.’

  ‘No, she isn’t. I checked. She’s too young. It’s aimed at eighteen and over. I’d say Nora might be, though, the dirty old thing.’

  ‘Nora can barely use her ancient Nokia mobile phone. I doubt somehow she’s meeting up with strangers on Tinder.’

  ‘I dunno. After the advice she gave you, she just might be.’

  ‘Anyway, it’s not something I need to know about.’

  ‘Maybe not now, but in time you’ll come around to it. We all have needs.’

  ‘Time! Time heals all wounds. In time I’ll feel better. All time does is crawl slowly by and remind me of how shit everything is and how bad a parent I am.’ Alice opened the fridge and poured herself another glass of wine.

  ‘I forgot – you had that meeting. Go on, what did Mrs Kennedy say about Jools?’

  Alice drank deeply. ‘Your niece made a hoax bomb-scare call to get out of doing a test.’

  Kevin hooted down the phone. ‘Genius.’

  ‘Why does everyone think this is funny? Nora laughed too. It’s very serious, Kevin. Mrs Kennedy wasn’t remotely amused.’

  ‘Give Jools a break. She was obviously terrified about failing the test. I know how that feels. I remember faking chickenpox before a history exam.’

  Alice had a flashback to Kevin lying in bed with white mak
e-up all over his face and spots painted on with red marker. She laughed. ‘I’d forgotten that. You looked ridiculous. You could smell the stuff from a mile away.’

  ‘I was desperate. But Mum let me off. She pretended she bought the story and she allowed me to stay at home. I knew she knew I was faking and she knew I knew she knew, but she still let me off.’

  ‘So what are you saying? I should let this thing with Jools go? The whole school was evacuated until they figured out that it was Jools’s mobile. Which they did by just ringing the number, by the way. No fear of our Jools becoming a criminal mastermind. That’s something, at least.’

  Kevin laughed. ‘I’m saying you shouldn’t go in there all fired up and start giving out. Talk to her, let her tell you why she did it. She’s just a confused teenager who’s lost the most important person in her life.’

  ‘Jesus, Kevin, I have feelings, you know.’

  ‘Oh, come on, she loves you too, but we both know that Ben was her hero.’

  I’ve lost the most important person in my life too, Alice wanted to shout. But no one was listening.

  ‘Okay. Well, I’d better go up to her.’

  ‘Good luck – and if you need me to pop over later, I can.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  Alice downed the rest of her wine and went upstairs to talk to Jools.

  Ben: February 2014

  Ben was dreaming about Alice. He was walking towards her, arms outstretched, but just as he got close, she turned to dust and vanished.

  ‘Ben! Ben!’ Someone was shaking him.

  Ben’s eyes snapped open. It was Yonas. ‘You come, you come now.’

  Beside him, Declan sat up. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘My wife, she sick. Baby coming.’ Yonas looked wild-eyed with worry. He unlocked the chains with shaking hands.

  Ben stood up and put his hand on Yonas’s shoulder. ‘It’s okay, we’ll help her.’

  Yonas ushered the two men into the operating theatre where his wife, Segen, was hunched on a chair.

  Ben and Declan brought her over to the table. She whimpered as she rolled onto her back. Ben examined her abdomen. He couldn’t feel the baby moving or hear a foetal heartbeat with his stethoscope.