The Lost Child (28 page)

The fact that I'll probably never live with him again. That I'll never again walk into a room and find him there, asleep, arms flung out, mouth open, cat curled against him, and be able to know that he's a hundred per cent safe. The fact that he asked me with real interest the other day what I was writing and I was so tempted to tell him. Tempted yet terrified.

The fact that it's getting cold outside again now and he hasn't got a winter coat. There are holes in his shoes. And the other day, when it was raining so hard, he told me he had plastic bags on his feet over his trainers and people in the cafe were laughing at him. The fact that he too was able to laugh when he told me this. His sense of humour. That and his warmth and his crazy, unnerving optimism.

The fact that I'm not allowed to buy him things because if I do I will be padding his comers, enabling and encouraging his dependency on drugs. The fact that he will only truly be able to hit rock bottom when he's cold and hungry and desperate and can go no lower. The fact that I find this fact very hard to think about. The fact that I ignored all of this the other day and topped up his phone and bought him a sandwich and didn't tell his father. The fact that I can't decide if! feel guilty about this or not.

Things I can't do any more: I can't go near the baby departments of any stores, not ever, not even to walk through them to get to another department. Just not worth the pain.

I can't open our photo albums. Not at the moment. I can't risk seeing that small boy smiling at me from between those pages, having fun in a time when the future was still a place alive with possibility. I can't risk seeing myself there either - a light-hearted, long-haired girl in a red Miss Selfridge coat, a girl who believed that, caring for her children as she did, only good things could possibly lie ahead.

I can't drive the car fast any more. I've accepted that. I haven't been able to drive on a motorway or even a fast A road in six months. I'm afraid of what will happen if my heart speeds up and I lose control. Obliterated by my own momentum. For the moment, I take the train. Better for the planet, I tell myself

I don't want anyone to ask me how I am because I don't know how I am. OK, I do. I am raw. I am boring. I am flattened, deadened. I have nothing in my mind except the deep black hole that is the loss of my child. The feel of him spilling and spilling out of that hole. How do I feel? Please don't ask me. You don't want to know how that feels.

There is never a single moment when he's not in my head and heart, the backdrop to everything I think or feel or do. Whole days go by now when I don't really think of him at all. Both of these statements are true.

Mary?

Even though it's not possible, still there you are - a young, fair-haired woman, a curl bouncing on your neck, hand briefly on or near the door. Almost, but not quite, visible to me.

Mary? Is it you?

Silence. The cat yawns, gets up, stretches, lies back down again. Somebody laughs and I don't think it's me.

My mother says I don't need to worry. She says that all she needs to do is go back to court and they will make him pay. She wants me to write a nice letter, addressed to him, telling him exactly why I want to stay on at school:

There was never any question really, my mother assures me. It was always agreed that he would pay for your education for as long as you wanted to study. Now at least there won't be any problem when your sisters' time comes.

I dread the next weekend I see him. I am terrified, tense with guilt and dread. What will he say, what will he do?

He says nothing at all. He is cool with me. He does not make eye contact, only speaks to me If he has to. He is normal with the girls, laughing, chatting about TV. Otherwise it's OK. Nothing terrible happens.

Now, every weekend I visit is the same - cool, tense, yet uneventful. Sometimes - in fact more and more - he cancels at the last minute and we stay at home and I am so relieved. And in my memory now, those cold, angry weekends are a blank. I've lost them, chosen to let them go. If anything else bad ever happened, it's slipped off the edge of my mind and is safely gone.

And then, finally, a letter comes - for me, from him. He says that, in the light of all that's happened, he thinks it would be better if he didn't see me again.

And I stand in the garage at the back of the house and I sob quite hard, but not for long. Tears cancelled out by the thought of all those free weekends.

I'm seventeen and my father doesn't want to see me any more. I don't tell many people. The only thing I know is that when I grow up I will be a better parent to my children than my father has been to me. No parent should ever reject a child. I will love my children. They will never be afraid of me. There will never be any terrible, stupid rules. I will love them. I will just love them.

Following Jeremy Howard down the dark corridors at Carrow Abbey. Standing on the windy parapet at Narborough with Joanne and David - both the man and the boy, as the wind lifts his hair - the whole of Norfolk spread out before us. Watching the brown owl rise through the trees in the churchyard with Julia. Drinking tea in the converted stables with Steve and Elaine. Eating Bryony's stewed apple while Fred the greyhound and a whole undiscovered box of Yelloly treasures watch me do it. Your mother's little purse, found all over again and safe at my feet in the Town Hall where Regina Spektor sings. A family romance, a lifetime of faith and hope, drowning in volume, feeling the beat.

You go too fast and you can't slow down. So you panic. All those unanswered questions clenched like dust between your teeth.

But you discover little things about a person and you start to get a picture. You can't help it, you just do. And soon it's irresistible, you start to let yourself think this might not necessarily have to be all, might not have to be the end. Why should it all grind to a halt right here, right now, when there could just be a better resolution? A lovelier one. A more hopeful one.
Oh! Let it be Thy pleasure to turn these shadows to our eternal benefit.

Turn these shadows.

Some days I even think I could have got to know you, been your friend. I could be your friend. And if that's true, then surely death could lose its grip? And it can't be long then before the inevitable happens.

You. Or, not you, but her. She.

She'll have her back to me - her slender, narrow-shouldered back. Pale-blue dress, white sleeves, tattered brown shawl, dirty blonde curls -

And after a moment, sensing me, she'll turn. And we'll both stand there looking at each other for a second or two. She'll regard me with calm curiosity, neither especially warm nor cold. She'll know who I am. I'll know who she is. It'll be just exactly as it's always been - as we always knew it would be. Except that now, for the first time, her face isn't blank.

Her face.

I stare, I do, I can't help it. I just can't take my eyes from that face, so very nearly familiar, but seen properly now for the very first time.

Greyest grey eyes, slim nose, pencil-dot freckles.

Hey. It's you.

Yes. It's me. Who are you?

I can explain. Can we talk?

Yes, but where?

The church. Can we go in the church?

She doesn't answer. You don't answer. I no longer even know who's asking the questions. Neither do you. But still, sensing an opportunity, we start to move towards the church. Because everything always leads back here - back to Woodton, back to the church.

Walking beside her, glancing downwards, I decide not to notice that her feet don't quite touch the ground.

The other day he rang and asked if he could borrow 3 quid.

I'm going busking and I'm meeting this girl and I need enough for a coffee and £1 to put in the hat. I don't want her to think I'm a complete scumbag.

But you are, aren't you? I said as softly as I could.

What?

A scumbag. What I mean is, you have no money. You have no home. You have nothing. You sleep all day and stay up all night. Don't you think it's time you kicked the drugs and tried to get a job?

I'm hardly doing any drugs and I don't need a job. I make as much as I need. The other day I made 40 quid in one hour's busking!

But - then where did that go?

I spent it.

Spent it on what?

On drink, I suppose. may be some coke.

The speed with which he said it made my heart tighten.

So you're admitting that?

Somewhere on the streets of London, I felt him shrug.

At least I'm being honest, he said. Surely that counts for something?

The speed with which he said it. The road slips under the car so fast, I can't keep my balance. What if I had to stop?

All you can do is keep on loving your children, keep on hoping. But what if loving and hoping aren't enough? What if you can't stop? What if you can't?

We should go and visit, he says. Take the boy, give him a chance to bury the hatchet. His first grandchild - how can he refuse?

I think my father could easily refuse, but I can also see that he is right. We should give him a chance. It's because he says things like this - and is prepared to act on them - that I love him. So I say OK, let's do it.

Well done, he says. He knows how terrified I am.

He lives in a different house now, in a small executive estate off a country lane. Clipped lawns, shiny cars, birds singing. We don't tell him we are coming because we don't want to give him a chance to tell us not to. We stand on the doorstep on a bright February day and press the bell. Our boy is a few weeks old, in my arms, a tight white bundle, fast asleep.

My heart bangs so hard it feels like my chest will explode. No one answers. may be he's out? I say hopefully. Then there's the slow sound of footsteps. A chain being taken off

The man who opens the door is smaller, older, a mottled face. He looks puzzled, troubled, upset, wary.

Julie? he says - and I think it's funny that after all these years he knows exactly who I am, he knows it's me.

Hello, Daddy, I say. We've brought your grandson to see you.

And he washed his hands at the sink, drying them on the tea towel instead of the towel just like he always did. And then he sat there at the kitchen table and cut up some goat's cheese to put on it. Extra goat's cheese, just like in the old days. He sat at that same old circular pine kitchen table where he once knelt up on a chair to paint with finger paints. The table where he did homework. The same kitchen table where he must have blown out so many cakefuls of birthday candles over the years.

And I tried not to look too hard. I tried not to like it too much, having him here. His curly, unkempt head bent over the cheese. His dear head. The head that I wanted to go over and hold as close and hard as possible against me, bending to plant a kiss.

I tried so hard to be normal and light and to ignore him that I almost forgot what I was doing. I did. I almost forgot. I boiled the kettle and poured the boiling water down the sink. He didn't see. I refilled it and set it to boil again. Steam clouds in the sink.

And when the pizza was ready to put in, he went over to light the oven and, because he doesn't live here any more, he picked up the wrong lighter, the broken one that's just been sitting there but needs to be fixed. And then when that didn't work, he got down, frowning, on his knees to see if it was the oven itself that was broken.

I had to go over and show him that the oven was fine and which was the correct lighter to use and I don't know why but this fact really shook me up. Just the simple act of having to explain our own oven to our child who used to live here, who ought to live here, that was bad.