Dead Lovely (4 page)

When Sarah left me that night I brought Robbie into the bed with me. I felt guilty. I would try harder, I told myself. Okay, so the first day of my attempt to be a good mother had been a disaster, but I shouldn’t give up. I decided as I lay there that I would hang out with him more, play with toys on the living room floor with him, make Santa beards in bubble baths, don clever voices at story time. I would do all of these things, selflessly and with great pleasure.

I gazed at him breathing gently beside me on the bed – so wee, so perfect, so helpless – but then I worried I’d smother him, like Fraser’s mum said, so I lay rigid, my right arm tingling with pain, listening to the hours click over on my alarm clock.

I still had a week to go before the holiday. On the first morning, I woke to a wonderful five-second
oblivion, where everything was numb and painless. Then with a stretch I remembered what I’d done the night before. I’d left Robbie alone to shag an idiot neighbour. And that was me trying! That was me being a good mother! I sighed as I looked at him
gurgling
beside me on the bed, completely dependent, completely at my mercy.

It took me two hours to get us fed and dressed. I then bumped the buggy down four flights of stairs, one slow step at a time. My back was aching when I reached the bottom. I opened the heavy front door but it swung shut before we’d managed to get out. I spent several minutes trying to extricate us, to the amusement of several unhelpful passers-by, and then walked in the rain along three main roads filled with pot-holes and students who seemed physically unable to see babies. Drenched and exhausted, I dragged the pram backwards up the steps into Kyle’s surgery.

Kyle looked different there. Official and serious. I’d never seen him at work and his stiff-backed
awkwardness
would have made me laugh had I not been there to talk about my terrible failings.

‘Postnatal depression is not a failing,’ Kyle said. ‘It’s very common. And it’s good you’ve recognised it.’

He printed out a piece of paper and I have to admit that the whole thing did make me feel better, knowing I wasn’t alone, that there was help, that I deserved and needed a break. Even the paper itself
with its lovely little druggie words made me feel better.

The day after that, Robbie and I made play dough. It would be lying to say I enjoyed it, especially cleaning up afterwards, but I started to understand that there was something dreamlike about slowly kneading flour, salt, oil and colouring, and something funny about having your nine-month-old baby squash your yellow elephant.

The next day I lay on the living room floor beside the baby gym, looking up at the squeaky bright things Robbie was chuckling at, his wet mouth wide open, before I drifted off to sleep.

The day after, I pushed Robbie’s swing and then jumped on the one next to him, and I may have even felt a tinge of joy when our eyes met.

But there was no understanding and no joy the next day, because I had to pack Robbie’s things, and this daunting task had expanded in my head to the point that it was oozing out my ears. I was sweating and shaking by the time I was ready to take him over to Mum and Dad’s.

‘Have you brought his formula?’ asked Mum.

‘Has he had a morning nap?’ she asked.

‘Has he tried solids yet?’

Has he got a good Mummy?

I kissed them all goodbye. As they shut the front door a mixture of guilt and relief overwhelmed me. By the time I got to my car, the guilt was gone. I was
going to have some adult conversation. I was going to get some fresh air. I was going camping!

Camping! I loved it. Loved the baked beans, the smell of the campfire, the scary stories and the huddled stinky sleep. As I drove home I remembered the last time I went camping with Kyle. I’d come home from lectures one evening, sick to death of sitting in
semicircles
or breaking off into small groups, and exclaimed to Kyle and Chas: ‘Let’s go camping!’

I grabbed my two-man dome tent, my gas cooker, foam mattress, sleeping bag and light. Kyle had driven us in his rich-boy Mini, our gear spilling out of the boot. Chas sang all the way along Great Western Road – funny, silly little songs that he knew every single word to. We laughed so hard at him, Kyle and I, but not so much when we realised that his repertoire could carry him all the way to Loch Tay and back. He sang around seventy different songs, I reckon, without even a tiny break. Tunes about Mrs McVittie having only one titty and wishing Campbelltown Loch was whisky,
Cambelltown
Loch och aye.

He was still singing when we erected the tent in the rain, still singing when we realised the gas cooker was out of gas, and still singing after we ran a mile, only to find that the food at the local pub was ‘aff’. So we had vodka for dinner, and crisps, and I
fell on the tent after a midnight barf and it collapsed on Chas and Kyle.

It was the funniest, best night of my life, and I found myself laughing out loud as I packed the tent the next day, even though it still smelt of
cheese-and-onion
puke.

The night before they went camping, Kyle had spent two hours sitting on the bed watching Sarah try on her hiking gear. The boots matched the Tiso trousers perfectly, he had to admit, and the
jacket-with-cute-pocket
was surprisingly well cut, and the raincoat did fold perfectly into the side pocket of the
Gore-tex
rucksack, and Sarah had indeed done all the tasks on her list of things to do.

He thought wistfully back to camping trips with Chas and Krissie. They’d once decided to go camping for the weekend at five o’clock on a Friday night and were on the road by five-thirty. He’d packed a cagoule and matches, Chas had packed a quarter ounce of Dutch skunk. Krissie had hardly packed anything besides chocolate. It couldn’t have been more different to this.

Kyle was almost sweating with relief by the end of Sarah’s fashion show. He’d said all the right things, and was now allowed to go and read his paper (which had been placed in the recycling bin). He wasn’t always so lucky. Once, when he’d had a hard day and wasn’t thinking straight, he’d told Sarah the truth about a pair of shorts. ‘Maybe they shrank in the wash,’ he said, before shrinking into a tiny ball of regret himself.

Kyle was used to feeling regretful by this stage.

He regretted that Sarah was failing in her
desperate
attempt to build a different life from the one her mother had slapped together for her. She had it all mapped out – the stable home, the holiday house, the babies, the hard-working parents who would stay together and always be around. As time went on, Kyle realised he was witnessing a losing battle, because Sarah didn’t have the wherewithal to build a different life, didn’t have the role models or the confidence. She was trying to do brain surgery with a spoon.

When Sarah had arrived at Kyle’s flat years before he’d been immediately besotted. She was the most beautiful woman he’d ever met and he spent most of the next nine months looking at her. He’d gaze at her while she was sleeping, look into her eyes across restaurant tables, and smile at her in shops while proudly noting the shopkeepers’ awe.

But the infatuation had long died away.

Back in their student days, when Chas was
proclaiming
the truth about beauty, he said: ‘Some folk get uglier the more you look at them, whereas some folk get more beautiful.’ This was true, Kyle now knew, because Sarah’s perfectly symmetrical face had become less intriguing over the years. She had slightly too much flesh at the sides of her mouth, which time and an extra stone had accentuated. At thirty-three, she looked puffy. It wasn’t only that, though – there was nothing striking in her eyes, nothing sparkling in her smile, nothing that he wanted to spend time looking at.

Krissie, on the other hand, had many things he wanted to look at. Sitting on the sofa beside Kyle, with Krissie doing sit-ups on the living room floor, Chas had said, ‘When I first met Krissie, for example, I thought she was a dog.’

Krissie hit him, pinned him down on the ground and began tickling him.

Through screeches of wonderful ticklish pain, Chas continued, ‘But now, I think you’re the most beautiful woman in Glasgow.’

‘Where?’

‘Scotland.’

‘Where?’

‘Okay, okay, the universe! Stop!’

Krissie then looked at Kyle and raised her
eyebrows
questioningly.

‘I still think you’re a dog,’ said Kyle, jokingly.

Kyle hadn’t really thought Krissie was a dog. And now he thought she was the opposite of a dog. Over the last ten years, her boy-body had, when in ‘functional mode’ become a lean, perfect female specimen, and when in ‘going out mode’, it could have been used on the Paris catwalks. Her features had metamorphosed into captivating elegance. She seemed to throw outfits together within seconds and come out looking both sexy and comfortable.

Chas had also said that women always, without exception, become their mothers. And this had proved true. Sarah had become Vivienne Morgan, the-stage-actress-turned-soap-star, last seen in the Glasgow soap
The Lake
for a three-episode story-line involving a long-lost mother, but best known for her work in the eighties power-drama
A Life for Rizzo.
In her prime, Vivienne Morgan was sex on a stick. Now the ‘stick’ was more like a large vodka-filled trunk, and the ‘sex’ was two round balls of silicone perched beneath an implanted, injected face.

Sarah had inherited personality traits from her mother such as a ‘fix-it’ approach to life. For instance, Sarah’s mum did not talk to her daughter about periods and sex. Instead, after she noticed the stain on the back of her daughter’s school uniform, she sent her off to the chemist, alone.

Krissie’s mum, on the other hand, was a sixty-three-year-old hill-walker with rosy cheeks, a beaming smile, a nicely thought out wardrobe and a ‘let’s talk about it’ approach to life.

Why had Kyle been so blind? Why had he fallen for a woman who was destined to be as miserable as her mother?

Other things Kyle regretted included buying the house on Loch Katrine, which Sarah expected him to work on non-stop. He regretted following in his father’s footsteps and doing medicine, because he did not like hard work and being a doctor was hard work. There was no way of skiving, even as a GP, and he was constantly plagued with guilt and
self-loathing
because he had no ambitions to study or write or further his career. He wanted the opposite. He wanted to leave and take people on skiing trips. But he could never do this. Doctors can never leave.

And when Sarah decided not to talk to Kyle for two whole weeks, refusing to pass him both the salt and a message about a vulnerable patient needing to be seen immediately, he regretted telling her that her shorts were too tight.

After Kyle left to dig his paper out of the recycling bin, Sarah packed her perfect camping clothes in her perfect rucksack and smiled. Things were in order.

Therapy had helped her to admit that she was a control freak and that her aggressive perfectionism was a reaction against the adults whose behaviour towards her had been less than perfect – her mother, her father, and her stepfather, Mike Tetherton. What
therapy hadn’t clarified was: what was wrong with being a control freak? What was wrong with having things in order? If things were in order, and if it all went according to plan, Sarah might succeed where her mother had failed. She might keep her man and build a happy family.

Mike Tetherton had tried escaping once before. He’d left his wife, Vivienne, and his stepdaughter, Sarah, and had boarded a train.

Now, as he sipped on his hot chocolate, and placed the thermos safely on the grass, he felt the same way he had when the 2.40 to London had pulled away from Glasgow Central twenty-seven years earlier. He was excited, but nervous as he looked at the South Ayrshire countryside around him – the rolling green hills which meandered towards the coastline. Moving his deckchair to face the sun, he sat down on the chair, which was poised smack-bang in the middle of a fenced plot of land in the middle of nowhere. This was Mike’s dream – to be totally and wonderfully alone, away from the gossipy commuter town where he had lived for years, away from the cutthroat world of filmmaking. Away from temptation.

Mike Tetherton looked younger than his
fifty-nine
years – he could probably pass for forty-five – and his features were smooth and cheerful, the mouth turned up slightly, the eyes smiling.

After taking another sip of his milky drink, he closed his eyes, and breathed in deeply. As his lids opened, he soaked in the empty, warm Scottish
countryside.
This was to be his new life, his fresh start.

But first he had a decision to make. He had paid the deposit on the plot months earlier, and wanted to build a minimalist German kit house made mostly of glass. But he could not decide where to place it. Which direction should the living room face? What would he see from the French doors in his bedroom? Should the sun set over the decking or over the forest? Would the trickling of the stream in the valley be more soothing in the bedroom or in the eat-in kitchen?

Following the advice of a home show host, he’d brought a chair with him the first Sunday after buying the land. He’d sat on the chair for a few minutes so he could begin to imagine where the house should go. After the initial embarrassment of sitting still and alone, Mike had settled into it and found the experience illuminating. He drove home that night knowing exactly where his house should be positioned – diagonally, one-third of the
remaining
land at the front, two-thirds at the back, the kitchen facing south-west.

But when he came back the following week, he sat down for a cup of hot chocolate in a different position. He was straight on, directly in the middle of the land, the kitchen facing due south. As he watched the sun move into the evening he felt
confused.
This position also had its merits.

The weekend after, Mike tried a few other spots, and sat at each for a bit longer.

After three months, he was still sitting on his chair for several hours at a time, staring at views that might possibly be the views of his future.

Mike was ‘in-between jobs’, and he busied himself during the week with community projects.
Everywhere
he went people gravitated towards him. His smile, his dog and his willingness to help, seemed irresistible. It was tiring, being so nice, and as Mike folded his chair yet again and placed it and the thermos in his twenty-year-old Mercedes, he sighed, no closer to a decision about his escape, and headed back towards his hectic, helpful life in Drymlee.

And sure enough, there were three messages on the answer phone and one neighbour at the door before he could even unpack. ‘Mike! Good news,’ said his elderly neighbour Netty. ‘The Pirates have won!’

This
was
good news. It meant the community had beaten the developers, and that the green patch
across the way, Greensleaves, would not be littered with luxury two-bed apartments but with swings and slides for the local children. Mike and Netty had campaigned hard for this, planning the site, getting quotes, organising workmen, standing at the council’s buildings with placards held by several kids. Mike had been interviewed by the local radio station and spoken impressively about the need to provide communities with facilities to glue them together. For decades the acre of green had provided kids and dogs with space to express themselves, said Mike, and this should not be taken away.

So the Pirates had won, which meant Mike had a hard week of physical labour ahead of him, having been elected project manager of the pirate-themed adventure playground.

Three cups of tea later, Netty closed the door and left Mike to do what he needed. Unpack. He was anal about this. He’d learnt over the years how to close a house for several days, taking exactly what was needed for a trip away, and how to prepare a house for homecoming so that ‘Aah’ is the reaction, and not ‘Jesus, shit, when will I ever finish that ironing?!’

Mike put a load of washing on, placed his
suitcase
in the eaves cupboard, and looked out the window at the greenery opposite. He loved this flat. It was private and bright and, while his view was fresh and panoramic, no-one could see into his windows at all. Next Mike ordered his shopping
online and ran a long bubbly bath. He then surfed a while longer before attending to the three messages on his answer phone.

The first was from his ex-colleague Paul, a cameraman who’d worked with him on several
documentaries.
Paul had heard a rumour that the BBC was looking for ideas for a new series aimed at teens. They should get together, he said, at that Italian place in the West End, maybe.

The second was from the builder who was
interested
in the job if the Pirates won, and could start immediately.

And the third was from a neighbouring
housewife
who took her job as treasurer of the residents’ association as seriously as she took baby massage and cello tuition.

‘Congratulations!’ she said. ‘We are all so very grateful! And the pup’s been fine with us; come get him when you’re ready.’

Mike’s puppy was a black labrador that, to Mike’s consternation, shat and peed all over the place.

Mike would get him later. Right now, he needed a bath.

Over the next week it was mayhem at Greensleaves. Mike had arranged for the acre to be levelled and the diggers had scraped the land flat, leaving a huge pile of earth at one end that had turned to mud with the
rain, and which six or seven kids were tobogganing down with windswept faces.

He’d felt a little weird lately. Maybe it was
tiredness
from working on the playground. Organising workmen and harassing suppliers had been hard and for a week he didn’t finish till ten at night. He’d not even had a chance to walk his dog. Netty and her granddaughter, Isla, had taken over this duty, and he was glad of it. But he was becoming a little paranoid. Since working on the site, he often felt the treasurer of the residents’ association, Netty and several other neighbours were looking at him oddly, that they had been talking about him. He hated feeling this way. It was pathetic. But he did.

‘Get over here, Isla!’ Netty yelled from the window of her flat across the road to her
granddaughter
, whose uniform was dishevelled and covered in mud. ‘Your mother will be furious!’

Isla waved back at her gran with a grin and Netty couldn’t help but smile back at her.

‘Lucky she’s away for the weekend!’ Isla yelled.

Mike gave six-year-old Isla a high five as she ran back towards the muddy hill where the other
children
climbed and descended with gusto.

‘Okay!’ Mike yelled to the group at the top of the mud pile. ‘First one down wins a pound!’

Mike smiled as the screams of excitement and pleasure trailed behind the children.

The following morning was Saturday and
Greensleaves
had been temporarily abandoned for family time involving Ikea and arguments. Mike had no role in this so he packed his car to head south. As he packed, he could hear his dog barking inside Netty’s house, scratching at the door to be let out. Mike had dropped the puppy off a few hours earlier, because Isla was staying for the weekend and had begged to look after him.

‘That dog,’ thought Mike.

He made a flask of hot chocolate, packed
sandwiches
, cake, fruit, his chair and sunscreen, and put his house in order – online shopping done for his arrival back on Sunday, plants watered.

As he drove out of Drymlee, he knew today was the day that he would make the decision. All he had to do was get the builders out and point somewhere, and they would pour the concrete foundations, which would solidify. End of story.

He had just set up his deckchair on the plot when his mobile rang.

‘Hello?’

‘We got the gig!’ It was Paul, the cameraman. ‘We’re in pre-production as of Monday.’

‘My God! Fantastic!’

Mike hung up and took a deep breath. He then walked towards his car and drove fast along the country road, taking several roundabouts, and
rejoining
the road north. Excitement brimmed inside him.
This business, it was addictive. Like an alcoholic on his way to the off-licence with money in his pocket, Mike was about to be relieved of a tingling and everything else would just have to wait.

Mike left his deckchair on the land, sitting in the field in the middle of nowhere, empty.

Netty was on the landing chatting to her downstairs neighbour, Jim, when Mike returned. Jim owned a comic-themed shop in Glasgow and told everyone an enormous amount about it. ‘I have a vision that one day there will be Daffy mugs in my shops all over the central belt!’ he’d said to Mike the previous week. But they were not talking about Daffy when Mike approached his front door. He was sure of it. They were talking about him, and they hardly even tried to hide it.

‘Mike!’ Netty said. ‘Jim’s just saying what a
fabulous
job you’re doing over there. We honestly don’t know what we’d do without you!’

Mike chatted as openly as he could. He had nothing to hide, despite their apparent suspicion. The traffic was terrible through Glasgow. He’d just heard he’d landed a documentary. The playground would be finished in a week tops. The weather had cleared up, yes, and as Isla poked her head out of Netty’s front door he reassured her that his
premature
return did not jeopardise her pup-sitting for the
weekend. She squealed with delight as Mike’s little labrador bit at her legs energetically and then ran to his owner for a scratch.

‘Let me put that begonia in my side window. It needs to face south for a bit,’ Mike said, shooing the pup back to Isla with his leg, and waving farewell to his neighbours.

‘Thanks,’ Netty said, handing over the plant to Mike. ‘Oh, and Mike,’ she said, with what seemed to him knowing eyes, ‘it will be finished for Guy Fawkes, yes?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘So we could all meet down there after tea? For fireworks?’

‘Of course.’

Netty sighed as Mike went inside. After her divorce at fifty-six, she had reached the conclusion that all men were bastards and she had lived happily with this truth for sixteen years. But then Mike moved in – good-looking, polite, helpful, honest, emotional Mike – and this had thrown her theory to the wind.

Mike shut the door and also sighed. Here we go again, he thought.