The Bones of You (9 page)

I sat in my car and stared at those near-denuded trees, and was overcome by a sensation of bleakness. How the hell had it come to this, with me driving out to a crappy service station to pick up my daughter every other weekend? Didn’t I deserve a normal life, one like other people enjoyed? Wasn’t I good enough for that?

I rested my forehead on my knuckles, which were gripping the steering wheel so tight that they hurt, and tried to push away the self-pity. Life was hard, people were often harsh, and everybody had their own problems. These problems were mine—I had created them. Nobody had forced me to take up with an addict and have a child with her. I had made my own decisions, followed the paths I had chosen, and whining about the results would help no one.

I got out of the car, locked it, and strode across the car park toward the little café that was attached to the side of the main services building. Inside the building, there were a few shop units, a Burger King, and an M&S that sold fancy sandwiches, but we preferred the unassuming little café. It didn’t even have a name, just a stencilled sign saying “Food & Drinks” above the main window.

I went inside and sat down, waiting for the waitress to approach me. I scanned the menu, but I wasn’t hungry. Nothing appealed. Everything looked the same.

“Hi.” The waitress was small and thin, and looked about nineteen years old.

“Hi. Could I just have a black coffee, please? I’m meeting someone. We’ll order something more substantial then.”

“No problem.” She walked away, glancing around the small café, checking that everyone was satisfied.

Below the hem of her short skirt, her legs were pale and veined. I noticed a bruise above her left ankle. It looked bad, was turning dark through age. I wondered how she’d sustained the injury. She didn’t look particularly sporty, but perhaps she’d stumbled off a curb or fallen off a bike…why the hell was I bothered by this? More and more lately, I was finding it hard to focus. My mind kept shooting off on tangents, latching onto things that didn’t really matter.

I had my paperback in my jacket pocket. I’d read half a page when the waitress returned with my coffee.

“Thanks,” I said, putting down the book on the table.

“Good book,” said the waitress. “I read it at Uni.”

“I’m enjoying it,” I said.

She smiled, walked away.

I watched her as she headed toward a table in the corner. The sunlight came through the window and caught in her hair, turning the tips of her brown locks gold. She looked beautiful for a moment—like an extraordinary being trapped inside an ordinary moment—and then everything returned to normal. She moved out of the sunlight. Her hair was all brown again. She was human after all, just another plodding being making her way in the world.

I took a sachet of brown sugar from the small white bowl at the center of the table, tore off the end, and added the sugar to my coffee. Perhaps if I concentrated on these small, everyday rituals, I’d regain some of my focus. Like Zen: a universe of peace and beauty found in the banal choreography of an ordinary life.

I was just about to open my book and resume reading when I heard the door open. I looked up, and they were standing there, in the doorway, looking for me.

Jess saw me first. Her face seemed to open up, like a hand showing the world that it is empty of weapons. My heart curled and clenched, a small fist inside my chest. Her hair—white-blonde, like her mother’s—was done up in bunches and she was wearing faded jeans with a padded red jacket. On her hands she had a pair of wool mittens. They were red, too, to match the jacket. I noticed her little running shoes. They looked so small; their size made me feel like crying, but I wasn’t quite sure why.

This was the effect she always had on me: I could never be in control of my emotions when she was around. Like a hurricane, she entered my life and caused chaos, leaving behind a world of emotional debris.

Jess ran across the café toward me. I stood, smiling, and Holly finally noticed me. Her face was hard. She looked pale, brittle, as if she was on the ragged edge of a whiskey bender. She probably was; she never seemed to be able to get her drinking under control.

“Hey, baby.” I scooped up my daughter in my arms and held her tight, being careful not too squeeze her so hard that it hurt.

“Daddy!” Her voice screamed right in my ear, threatening to damage the membrane. I felt her wet lips as they plastered kisses across my cheek. For a moment they felt like my own tears.

I watched over my little girl’s shoulder as her mother, my ex-wife, walked slowly into the café and across the room. She’d lost a lot of weight. She was wearing a short skirt, and her legs—always on the thin side—looked like they might snap in a strong breeze. Her waist, above the knee-length skirt, was narrower than I’d ever seen it. Thankfully, her upper body was wreathed in a baggy overcoat, so I didn’t get a chance to see how her breasts had probably shrunk, and her ribs might be visible through her shirt. I could tell at a glance that she wasn’t eating. I’d seen this kind of behavior before, and it had broken my heart to watch her whittling away her own body on drink and drugs.

“Hi,” she said, sitting down at the table. She moved slowly, with elaborate care. I could tell that she was drunk. Maybe even stoned. With her, it was sometimes hard to tell the difference.

“Did you drive?”

She shook her head, not even taking the bait and arguing. “He’s in the car. He brought us here.”

I stared at her.

“He’s sober…for now.”

I held on to Jess even tighter, feeling her little body through her clothes. At least she seemed well-fed. Holly might be many things, but she was not a neglectful mother. Despite her alcohol problems, and the fact that her boyfriend was an unrepentant junkie, she always made sure that Jess ate properly, got dressed in the morning, and made it to school with a healthy packed lunch. Sometimes I wished it were different; I prayed that she would slip up and start to be less attentive toward our daughter, forgetting to make sure she was okay. That way I might be able to take over, to be the main parent.

Then, when I saw how much my girl loved her mother, I felt bad for thinking those things.

The whole situation was such a fucking mess, and the only people to blame were Holly and me. Our daughter was innocent; she’d done nothing to deserve such shitty parents.

I sat down. Jess sat in my lap, pleased to see me. She kept talking at me, telling me about her friends at school, the recent trip she’d been on with her class, her favorite teacher…but I kept staring at Holly, shocked by how old she looked. She wasn’t wearing much makeup, so I could see the aging effects the alcohol had on her skin. She wasn’t the same woman I’d once loved; she didn’t even look like her, not anymore.

“Do you want something? A sandwich? Cup of coffee?”

Holly shook her head. “I have to get back…to the car. We have plans.”

I gritted my teeth. I didn’t want to know what those plans were or what kind of self-abuse they might involve. Part of me still loved her, but another, greater part of me just wanted her to stop what she was doing because it meant I could cease caring. Every time I saw her, even if it were just for a little while, it felt like the knife that was still lodged in my gut slipped a little, cutting across my abdomen, causing me another moment of pain.

“I’ll meet you here on Sunday. Noon.”

I nodded. “See you then.”

She stood up to leave.

“Holly?”

She turned to me, and I wanted to see something on her face—some expression that said, “Save me, take me away from all this,” but all I saw was a cracked shell, a flimsy barrier against the world that was crumbling even as she stood there. Her armor of alcohol, the needy, dependent boyfriend, and her own rage, were no longer enough to protect her.

“What?” Her eyes gave nothing away. They could have been drawn on, for all the life they contained.

“Nothing. I’ll see you on Sunday.”

She turned around and walked to the door, opened it, then slipped back out of my life, like a creature vanishing between the cracks on a rocky landscape.

“Come on, baby,” I said to Jess. “Let’s get you home. How would you like to see your new room?”

“Yay!” she said, her voice so high and fine and filled with all the hope that I could not experience.

We stood. She took my hand. I led her outside to look for the car, trying to remember where the hell I’d parked it.

Back in the vast car park, I caught sight of Holly sitting in the passenger’s seat of a battered old Ford Escort whose color had faded to something neutral. The man in the driver’s seat was familiar. Pace had a beard now, but I could still recognize him from the last time we’d met. The black eye had healed, but his nose was still crooked from the break. His eyes still possessed that shifty look I hated so much, the look of the habitual addict: all mute paranoia and cold, relentless hunger. They were talking animatedly. Not an argument exactly, but certainly a heated debate. I wondered if Holly was back on the drugs. I knew she was still attending counselling for her alcoholism, but she seemed to be staying clear of the harder stuff.

I couldn’t know. It was impossible to tell. Whenever I even thought of this subject, an image invaded my mind. A memory: Holly, lying on her back on our marital bed, locked into a sixty-nine position with a thin, muscular black man. She was sucking his cock and he was snorting a line of coke off her belly. Her old supplier, the man who had got her hooked on drugs.

God, I hoped she wasn’t returning to her old ways. Everything about her screamed that she was, but the authorities seemed to think she was okay, she was managing her addictions, that she could still be a good mother to our daughter. She was officially classed as a “recovering addict,” but that was a broad definition.

I tightened my grip on Jess’s hand as we made our way to my car. I don’t think she noticed the tension in my body, and even if she did, she didn’t mention it. She was a good girl, my Jess. A great daughter: the best there was.

I glanced over my shoulder and saw the grubby Ford Escort pull out of the parking spot and drive slowly toward the exit. Holly turned and caught my eye. She held my gaze, and a small, sad smile lit up her face for the briefest moment before she looked away.

Betrayal is like a knife in the gut, but the knife is left there once the attack is over. And each time you think about what happened, every time you look at your betrayer, the blade slides sideways, making the cut that little bit wider and deeper, and prolonging the hurt.

Other memories tried to break through the wall of my mind, these ones much darker and more dangerous than the recollection of finding my wife in bed with her old drug dealer. I pushed them away. They had no business here in my new life. They were part of an old life that I no longer even recognized as my own. Those things had happened to someone else, a man who was still mired in darkness, standing knee-deep in a pool of his own nightmares. I wasn’t that man. I didn’t even know him.

We got in the car and I started the engine, feeling profoundly alone. Jess was singing a song from the backseat. I didn’t recognize the words, but it had a chirpy tune. Probably some recent chart hit, a forgettable number from the latest boy band on the block. I listened to her sweet, light voice as I drove, letting it fill me, allowing it to reconnect me with the world outside my own head. Her voice sent those twitching bad memories away before they could even form into proper visuals. It burned them like a flash fire; burned them to ashes.

EIGHT

It Was Like This

I remember being in the car with my dad. My mother was still alive. I must have been eight or nine years old.

I have no idea where my mother was at the time—it was just me and my dad, out for an early evening drive, or maybe going somewhere specific, perhaps to visit someone. I can’t remember. It doesn’t matter. We were in the car, just me and him. That’s what matters here.

The sky was growing dark outside the car windows. I have a vague notion that it was late in the year but not quite winter. We were alone on the road, one of those freak pockets of traffic-free driving. On either side of the car, the bleak moors stretched for miles. I think we were heading toward Manchester, or we might have been returning from Manchester to Leeds. Again, this isn’t important. Just the darkening sky, the empty road, the moors…they’re important.

I glanced sideways, at my dad, and saw that he was frowning. He was staring straight ahead, through the windshield, but in the reflected light of the dashboard I could see the worry lines on his face. His forehead was creased. His mouth was a tight slit in his face. He might have been worried, or scared. I think it was probably a little bit of both.

This was a few months before my parents split up. I didn’t know why they broke up back then, but I do now: my mother was having an affair with a work colleague. It started slowly, with clandestine lunches, a quick drink after work, and then developed into illicit sex in badly decorated hotel rooms during weekend conferences. Then there were no conferences; they were just a lie to facilitate the sex.

I think my dad knew about the affair for a long time before he confronted my mother. What held him back—the thing that stopped him from asking her outright—wasn’t his fear of her, it was me, what it would do to me if their marriage broke apart.