On Wednesday, the day after Boxing Day, Joan goes home. There are parcels of leftovers and promises to go up and see her, and several assertions that it’s been lovely to spend time as a family, but eventually she is in her car and we’re standing in the driveway, waving her off.
It is that curious time between Christmas and New Year, when you have to look on the calendar to check the date, and every day seems to be a bank holiday. Mark takes out the recycling, and I lie with Ella on the floor of the sitting room. She is enthralled by the crinkly pages of a black-and-white book we gave her for Christmas, and I turn them over for her, one by one, repeating the names of the animals on each page. Dog. Cat. Sheep.
It has been three days since Mum came back. I promised myself that, after Christmas—after Joan left—I would tell Mark, and we would go to the police together.
And now Christmas is over.
I wonder if my failure to come clean is a criminal act, and whether such an offense becomes progressively serious over time. Is twenty-four hours acceptable, but seventy-two a matter for the courts? Is there mitigation for whatever offense this is I’m committing? I mentally tick off the reasons I’m keeping this secret.
I’m scared. Of the newspaper headlines, the harassment by the press, the looks from the neighbors. The Internet means there’s no such thing as tomorrow’s fish wrappers; Ella will deal with the aftermath of this forever.
There’s a more immediate, more urgent fear, too. Fear of my father. I have heard from Mum what he’s capable of; glimpsed enough of it myself to take it seriously. If I go to the police with everything I know, I need them to move fast: to arrest Dad and make sure he can’t hurt us. But what if they can’t find him? What might he do to us?
I worry about what Mark will say. What he’ll do. He loves me, but our relationship is still new, still fragile. What if this is too much? I try to imagine what I’d do if the tables were turned, but the thought of sensible, straight Joan faking her own death is too ludicrous to consider. But I’d stay, wouldn’t I? I’d never leave Mark because of something his parents did. Still, I worry. For all the time Mark and I have been together, my grief has been as present as another person in our lives. Mark has worked around it, made allowances. If we take that away . . . I finally pinpoint what I’m scared of. That without the grief that brought us together, we might start to pull apart.
I turn the page for Ella. She grabs a corner in a tightly clenched fist and brings it to her mouth. There’s another reason I haven’t been to the police.
Mum.
I can’t condone what she’s done, but I can understand why she left. I wish with all my heart she had done it differently, but going to the police won’t change that. The choice I make now will either send her to prison or keep her out of it.
I can’t put my own mother in jail.
In the last few days I’ve watched Joan with Ella and seen the joy of a relationship that crosses generations. We’ve bathed Ella, walked through the park, and taken it in turns to push the pram. I want to do those things with my own mother. I want Ella to know both her grandmothers.
My mum has come back, and I want so much to keep her in my life.
I need to clear my head. I find Mark.
“I’m going to take Ella for a walk.”
“Good idea. If you can wait five minutes I’ll come with you.”
I hesitate. “Would you mind if we went on our own? What with Joan here, and the party at Robert’s, I feel like I’ve not had a second to myself.”
His face tells me he’s weighing up my request. Do I need time out because I want some peace and quiet, or because I’m cracking up?
Despite how I feel inside, evidently I don’t look like I’m a danger to myself—or to Ella—because he smiles. “Sure. See you later.”
I walk to town. The wind—hardly noticeable inland—picks up and whips along the seafront. I stop to clip the plastic cover across the front of the pram. The shingle is dark and shiny from overnight rain, and it’s quiet, with most of the shops still closed for the holidays, but there are people out walking on the beach and the esplanade. Everyone seems in a good mood—filled with festive cheer and the joy of an extra day off work—but perhaps it only feels like that because of the turmoil in my own head. Everyone has troubles, I remind myself, although I think it’s unlikely anyone else is wrestling with parents who have come back from the dead right now.
I don’t mean to go to the Hope, although I suspect it was inevitable. My feet find their way there, and I don’t fight them.
It’s an unprepossessing house, rubble-rendered in gray, and wider than it is tall. I ring the bell.
The woman who comes to the door is still and gentle. She stands like a ballerina, with her feet in first position and her hands together at her waist.
“I was wondering if I could see Caroline . . .” I hesitate, deciding not to use her surname. “She’s staying with you.”
“Wait here, please.” She smiles and closes the door again, gently but firmly.
I wonder if bad people come here. Abusive husbands, wanting their wives back home. I doubt this woman smiles then. I wonder if Dad’s looked for Mum here. I look around. Has he been watching me? He must have done, to know that I went to the police. I start to shake, my fingers gripping the handle of Ella’s pram.
“I’m afraid there’s no one of that name here.” She’s back so quickly I wonder if she went at all, or whether she simply stood behind the door for a moment. Perhaps this is a stock answer, delivered regardless of whether the owner of the name is in residence.
It’s only when the door closes again that I realize my mistake. Mum wouldn’t use her real name—first or last—not when she’s supposed to be dead. I walk away, wondering if I should go back and describe her; wondering if it is a good thing I didn’t find her here. If it’s meant to be this way.
“Anna!” I turn around. Mum is stepping out of the door, wearing the same clothes she wore on Christmas Eve. She pulls the hood of her coat over her head. “Sister Mary said someone was looking for Caroline.”
“She’s a nun?”
“She’s amazing. Fiercely protective—she’d have said no, whatever name you’d given.”
“I did wonder. I’m sorry—I didn’t think.”
“It doesn’t matter.” We’ve fallen into step, walking back toward the seafront. “Angela.”
I look at her, momentarily confused.
“The name I use now. It’s Angela.”
“Right.”
We walk on in silence. I didn’t go to the Hope with a prepared speech or plan. I feel awkward. Tongue-tied. I take my hands off the pram handle and move to the side and, wordlessly, Mum takes over, and it’s so easy—so right—that I could cry.
I can’t send her to prison. I want her—need her—in my life. In Ella’s life.
There are people on the pier. Children race up and down, letting off steam after days cooped up inside. I see Mum pull her hood tighter and keep her head down low. We should have walked somewhere quieter—what if we see someone we know?
The giant spiral slide is covered over, the coconut toss boarded up for winter. We walk to the end and look out at the sea. Gray waves throw themselves against the legs of the pier.
We are both trying to think of something to say.
Mum goes first. “How was your Christmas?”
It’s so ridiculously mundane, I feel laughter welling up inside me. I catch Mum’s eye, and she starts to laugh, too, and suddenly we’re crying and laughing and her arms are wrapped tightly around me. Her smell is achingly familiar. How many embraces have I had from my mother? Not enough. It could never be enough.
When our sobs have subsided, we sit on a bench and pull Ella’s pram close.
“Are you going to tell the police?” Mum speaks quietly.
“I don’t know.”
She says nothing for a while. When she speaks, it comes out in a rush. “Give me a few days. Till the New Year. Let me spend some time with Ella—let me get to know her. Don’t decide until then. Please.”
It’s easy to say yes. To delay my decision. We sit in silence, watching the sea.
Mum puts her arm through mine. “Tell me about your pregnancy.”
I smile. It seems like a lifetime ago. “I had awful morning sickness.”
“Runs in the family, I’m afraid. I was sick as a dog with you. And the heartburn . . .”
“Horrendous! I was swigging Gaviscon from the bottle by the end.”
“Any cravings?”
“Carrot sticks dipped in chocolate spread.” The look on her face makes me laugh. “Don’t knock it till you try it.” There’s a warm glow inside me, despite the wind that whistles across the pier. When the women in our NCT group moaned about the unwanted advice from their mothers, I thought how much I longed for pearls of wisdom from my own. How I wouldn’t care how much she interfered; how I’d value every visit, every call, every offer of help.
“All I wanted when I was pregnant with you was olives. Couldn’t get enough of them. Dad said you’d come out looking like one.”
My laugh dies on my lips, and Mum quickly changes the subject.
“And Mark—is he good to you?”
“He’s a great dad.”
Mum looks at me curiously. I haven’t answered the question. I’m not sure I can. Is he good to me? He’s kind and thoughtful. He listens; he helps out around the house. Yes, he’s good to me.
“I’m very lucky,” I tell her. Mark didn’t have to stick by me when I fell pregnant. Lots of men wouldn’t have done.
“I’d love to meet him.”
I’m about to say how wonderful that would be if only she could, when I see her face. She’s deadly serious. “You can’t be . . . It isn’t possible.”
“Isn’t it? We could tell him I’m a distant cousin. That we lost touch, or fell out, or . . .” She trails off, giving up on the idea.
In the choppy water below the pier I see a flash of movement. An arm. A head. Someone’s in the water. I’m half standing when I realize they’re swimming, not drowning. I shiver on their behalf; sink back down on the bench.
My self-imposed deadline gives me four days left with Mum before I either tell the police or let Mum disappear to somewhere she won’t be recognized. Either way, I have four days before I have to say good-bye to my mother for the second time.
Four days to have what I’ve longed for since Ella was born. Family. Mark and Ella and Mum and me.
I wonder.
She looks nothing like the few photos Mark has seen. She’s thinner, older; her hair is jet-black and cut in a way that changes the shape of her face.
Could we?
“And you’re sure you’ve never met him?”
She raises her eyebrows at my abrupt questioning. “You know I haven’t.”
“The police found one of Mark’s leaflets in your datebook.” I try to keep my tone neutral, but it still sounds like an accusation. “You made an appointment with him.”
I take in her furrowed brow, the movement of her jaw as she worries at the inside of her lower lip. She stares at the wooden planks beneath our feet, at the swimmer, who cuts cleanly through the waves.
“Oh!” She turns back to me, relief showing on her face now that she has solved the mystery. “Counseling services. Brighton.”
“Yes. You made an appointment with him.”
“That was Mark? Your Mark? God, how extraordinary.” She picks at a loose piece of skin around a fingernail. “It came through the door after your dad left. You know what I was like—I was in pieces. I couldn’t sleep; I was jumping at the slightest thing. I had no one to turn to, not really. I needed to tell someone—get it off my chest—so I booked the appointment.”
“But you didn’t keep it.”
She shakes her head. “I thought whatever I said would be in confidence. Like confession, I suppose. But when I looked through the small print it said that discretion couldn’t be guaranteed if the client’s life was at risk, or if they disclosed a crime.”
“Right.” I wonder if Mark has ever betrayed a client’s confidence by going to the police, and if he’d ever tell me if he had.
“So I didn’t go.”
“He doesn’t remember.”
“He must deal with a lot of people.” She takes my hands, rubs them with her thumbs. “Let me be part of a family again, Anna. Please.”
A beat.
“He’ll know it’s you.”
“He won’t. People believe what they want to believe,” Mum says. “They believe what you tell them. Trust me.”
I do.