Vera’s father picks her up from the station in his new Honda saloon. She misses, suddenly, the old, rickety jeep, and the sheepdog who was once the main occupier of its back seat. As her father approaches across the station yard, she misses too the sight of his moustache, which she notices has disappeared from its perch above his lip. She misses feeling entitled to tell him how naked his face looks now, how silly. But he greets her as he always has, as though it hasn’t been months since they’ve last spoken, years since she’s spoken truth. And when she bursts into tears, he wraps her in his arms.
The 20 minute journey to the house is familiar, though a few new shops have opened since she was here last and a row of houses have sprung up next to the Pitman farm. Somehow, the refuge of childhood places, the sanctuary of countryside space makes Vera tearful all over again. Against the back-lit sights of her youth, the darkness inside of her feels darker, the heaviness heavier. She does not know if she is coming home, or still running away. It has been three days since Venice.
In Vera’s old room, her mother has replaced her single bed with a double that she’s made up with new linen, positioned a bowl of tangerines on her night stand, and somehow managed to unearth the stocking Vera used to hang by the fireplace, now lain out ready for her on the bed.
“I made the spare room up too,” Vera’s mother winks as she begins to unpack. “In case Luke manages to make it down for a night. I’d like to meet him, before the wedding.”
“I don’t think it’ll happen, Mum,” Vera replies.
“Oh well,” her mother smiles, squeezing her tentatively on the arm. “More mince pies for us then.”
It isn’t until Christmas Eve that Vera initiates real conversation. Both her parents have been tiptoeing carefully around safe topics, and even after two days they have not strayed far past what her cousins are up to, the state of her mother’s garden, and the weather. Vera is both grateful and saddened by their efforts. They should not have to feel so very thankful to have her home. They should not feel her presence with them to be so fragile. They should feel confident to demand the truth, the hard, breakable things. That is what she is here for.
She edges open the door to the living room and pads in slippered feet to the piano. The old mahogany instrument reminds her of the tunes of her childhood, and she lowers herself onto the leather stool gingerly. Her father looks up from his New Scientist magazine and nods approvingly at her hands caressing the keys. Her mother lowers the volume of the television, bursting with kitsch Christmas specials that somehow this year strike Vera with their brassiness. Vera allows her right hand to play a gentle scale, an exercise of preparation, then she closes the piano lid.
“I need to tell you both something,” she says.
Immediately the television goes off and her father’s magazine is dog-eared. Again, Vera feels ashamed by her parents’ eagerness to accommodate. “We’ve been hoping you’d, well, maybe want to talk to us. Is everything alright with Luke?” her mother asks, but Vera’s father flashes a warning look: don’t ruin it, he is saying, don’t pry, don’t risk making her stop. “Since you’ve come home, I mean, since you’re here… ”
“It’s okay, Mum,” Vera says, and she takes a long, audible breath, filling her lungs, replenishing her courage. Her parents wait patiently, respectful of the pause, of the breath, of the world tipping. And when she exhales, even before she utters a word into the painful space between them, it is as though the dark heaviness is rushing out of her, the countryside infusing her instead with fresh, free air, un-riled by city clamouring. The truth, it turns out, when allowed, dances on the tiniest breeze.
“The truth,” says Charlie, “Is that you don’t have a leg to stand on. I’m the father. I’ve been there since the second I found out he existed. I wanted to be. You on the other hand left him for dead on a doorstep.”
“Not for dead, for a better life,” she protests.
“And you placed him into better arms did you? Made sure of better parents? Watched him take his next better bottle? Vera, you thought he was dead.”
“I wished he wasn’t.”
“It’s irrelevant.” Charlie gets up and opens the door for her. He has been persuaded to let her in by a short dress and contrite, fluttering eyelashes, but has not taken kindly to her suggestion of friendship, shared parenting, separate relationships, hers with Luke. Not that she has run any of this past Luke. Nor does she intend to until she knows for sure that she will be able to see her son. In Venice, the very mention of Charlie sent Luke reeling, so she knows that proposing they share their lives with his offspring, and hence with him, may be just too much. It probably will be too much. In any case, she and Luke haven’t spoken since she left Italy without him. She wonders if he knocked on her bedroom door for a long time before stepping into its emptiness. She wonders if, when he found her gone, he was surprised, or regretful, or perhaps relieved. She wonders if what happened in the bathroom was indeed a well-meant test, or Luke’s own wobble, or the beginning of the end. She knows that it may already be over. But the thought of this pains Vera deeply and she will not believe it is so. Despite frothy, foamy memories, the idea of a future without Luke in it makes her heart squeeze itself against her chest and her lungs feel taut again, the way they were for so long before that deep, tearful breath at St George’s. Without him, even as briefly as it’s been, time has started to slow again, to muddle, to pause. And the hands on her shoulders have become lighter, less apparent. She should not have shrugged them off so hastily. She does not want to lose that clarity. She does not want to lose Luke. She should, perhaps, have walked through the bathroom door. But she cannot again lose her son. And so she is here.
“Look Vera, the second you declare yourself his mother, the authorities will be after you,” Charlie continues. “And you’ll end up in jail. Is that what you want?”
“How is it any different if you and I are together then?”
“Because you’ll be there as my partner. Nobody ever needs know there are real, biological ties between you and him.”
“Not even Charles?”
“Well, I guess - well he’ll think that anyway, won’t he?”
Vera remains where she is seated on the sofa and Charlie sighs by the door, reluctantly closing it.
“Look, I’m sorry V, but that’s the only way I’m having it. If you want something else, you’ll have to take it to the authorities. And you better do it quick ‘cos my lawyer’s confident I’ll have him by the end of January.”
“Why?”
“What do you mean why?”
“Why? Why?” Vera hears her voice rising but cannot stop it. “Why do you have to tie me to you? Is it punishment? Do you want to punish me? Here, punish me!” She begins tearing at her hair, a wild tugging that yields a handful of blonde strands before she stops, aghast at her own fragility.
For a moment Charlie stares at her in silence, then he sinks down into a crouching position on the floor. There is a small Christmas tree in the corner next to him, and a box of newly-bought decorations. She can see that one of them bears their son’s name. “I don’t want to punish you,” Charlie says finally. “It was both of our responsibility. I know that.”
“Then why - ”
“Because you should be with me, alright?” he shouts suddenly. “Wasn’t that the plan? Ultimately? Some virgin messiah arrives and bowls you over and you just drop out?”
“Out?”
“Of my life. Wasn’t the plan that we’d end up together, eventually?”
Vera furrows her eyebrows. “It’s not a plan you ever shared with me.”
“Yes, okay, I know that. But I’m sharing it now.”
Vera pauses. “But I love Luke.”
The simple words resonate for a moment around them and they are locked in unfamiliar silence. It occurs to Vera that in all the years they have known each other, there has never really been silence between them. Never quiet, always noise. She breathes awkwardly into the taut air, then Charlie stands up. “Then, goodbye Vera.” His voice is soft but firm, and he does not look at her. “I can’t do it your way.”
“I just want to see him. I just want to know him,” Vera pleads.
But Charlie shakes his head. “He’ll be here in an hour,” he says. “You need to go.”
“He’s coming here?” Vera whispers this as though a holy secret.
“He’s been coming here,” Charlie responds, just as solemnly. “I’m serious about him V.”
Slowly, Charlie reopens the door and motions towards it. He waits, keeping his glance fixedly towards the door, but when seconds pass and Vera still doesn’t move he claps his hand hard against the wall, then takes a deep, steadying breath and finally looks her in the eye. “The chaperone will be with him. She’s asked about you. Don’t make me angry Vera.”
From behind a post box, Vera watches Charles arrive. He skips out of the car cheerfully and holds his chaperone’s hand as they walk together up the path towards Charlie’s door. A backpack much too big for his small body is slung over his arm and he is holding a piece of paper that even from her hide-out, Vera can tell is a Christmas card covered in glitter and glue. Standing on the doorstep he asks to be allowed to be the one to press the bell. He has the confidence of his father. When Charlie opens the door, he shrinks back ever so slightly, but then beams under the manly ruffle of his hair, lets go of his chaperone’s hand, and reaches up, to be lifted up. Vera thinks she can see him mouth the word ‘Dad’.
“But as much as he’s the dad, you’re his mum,” says Vera’s mother.
“Why didn’t you tell us?” asks her father. “We would have helped.”
“You’re a mother,” her mother declares again, her hand never leaving her chest.
Her father stands up. “That whole time you were pregnant. And that whole time you thought he was dead. And these past months when - we would have helped.”
“You can’t just walk away,” says her mother.
“We’ll call a lawyer,” decides her father.
“But wait, Vera can’t go to prison,” says her mother.
“That’s what the lawyer’s for.”
“And what about Luke?”
“And what about our grandson?”
“And what about our daughter?”
Now her parents notice that Vera, who is sat between them on the sofa, is weeping. And smiling as she weeps. And fingering the Scrabble board on the table. And not storming towards the door and out of the house and out of their lives. Nor asking either of them to stop.
In the afternoon the three of them take a walk crossing the same fields they used to when she was still a child. From somewhere deep inside the hall closet, her mother unearths Vera’s wellies and as they hike across the fields of her childhood she fixes her gaze on them. The last time she wore this particular pair she was 19 and sharing a tent with a group of university friends at Glastonbury. Swirling ink symbols whose meaning she can no longer recall stamp across them like insistent flakes of mud. Sticky reminders of the past. In them, Vera cannot understand why she feels so light-footed. “The Lord is near to all who call upon him, To all who call upon him in truth”, she hears in explanation inside her head, or through the wind perhaps. Vera smiles cynically, then laughs into the wind, amused that finally, finally she has read enough of the bible for her subconscious to quote a verse back to her. Your subconscious, or Jesus? whispers the wind again, and Vera laughs again, this time loudly, oblivious to her parents’ confused glances. She laughs, but it is not an answer, the truth has not yet freed her. She is so far from being free. If anything, having laid it all out to her parents – the facts, the problems, the inconceivable things that have passed – the longing for her son and for Luke is more intense than ever, more paralysing with the force of desire. And although there is a fresh openness between herself and her parents, and despite gargantuan efforts on their part to understand, they do not like what she has asked of them: to wait. To wait until she knows what it is she wants to do.
She does not know if this will ever be the case. If she will ever see her son, if she will be arrested if she tries to, or even if, in a few weeks time as was the plan, she will be married to Luke. “Don’t be a martyr,” her mother cautions, as though guessing her thoughts. But Vera’s overwhelming sensation is that she owes something. She owes Charles a parent. She owes Charlie a child. She owes Luke a true, baggage-free, clean-slated life. Yet these are separate, mutually exclusive obligations. They cannot be given together. And if given, they leave her with what? Christmas is a time for generosity, but she is just one person, with just one heart to break. It would be so helpful if those guiding hands would return to their shoulder perch.
Without them, Vera strides ahead. Truth, truth, whispers the country wind insistently. Or perhaps it is saying Luke, Luke. Or move, move. Don’t pause, keep moving.
Luke calls at 3.45 on Christmas morning. “I think it’s going to happen today,” he whispers. “Can you come?”