It is the strangest things that get you in the end. For me, it was an innocent-looking yellow plastic nappy bin. The nanny had taken the boys out for an afternoon walk and I was left alone in Helen’s great big house with nothing to do but think about what was happening to her broken shell a hundred miles away down the M4. I was mute. I was on standby. I had gone into sleep mode. Everything felt very removed. So I went upstairs to the nursery to find something to do. That was when I saw the nappy bin. I knew it was full because I’d struggled with it earlier. The nanny had tried to teach me how to work it. You had to twist something and push something else and hopefully the bin swallowed the nappy whole with all its odorous outpourings. How difficult could emptying a nappy bin be? I prised the yellow plastic lid off and was hit by the smell. It was supposed to work like a manual compressor, so why could I see the stained, wet nappies bursting out of the top? I tried to do the twist thing, but I just managed to loosen the bag, so I gave it a good yank instead. It held steadfast for a second then ripped. I stumbled backwards, spilling filthy old, throat-clenching sodden nappies all over the floor. It wasn’t the stinking mess that made me cry. It was the two empty miniature vodka bottles buried in among it.
I turned the cute-looking bottles around in my hand and experienced a very vivid memory. I was a few days off being sixteen when my parents and I went on a rare family holiday. On the plane the air hostess had offered me a drink. Boldly I’d asked for a vodka and tonic. Dad didn’t bat an eyelid. I felt like such a grown-up. She passed me this beautiful miniature of Smirnoff and a small can. In the end I drank the tonic alone. I couldn’t bring myself to ruin such a perfect-looking object. It is still at my parents’ house with an assortment of oddities from my life that I keep in a box; I never felt desperate enough to crack open its tiny red-foil lid. I’d been pretending to be a grown-up then, and I was still doing it now.
Stepping over the nappies, I pulled open the wardrobe doors. Everything was folded and ironed in stacks. Bibs. Muslins. Babygros. T-shirts. I ran my hand under and over all the piles, trying to find a hard object in among all this fairy-smelling softness. Once I felt something and retreated my hand rapidly. It took a few moments to find the courage to look again. Here I was, standing in a nursery, asking questions that I didn’t want to know the answers to. Wasn’t that the story of my life? I pulled out a clear plastic box. There were two pacifiers inside. I doubted I’d be so lucky again. I knew what two empty bottles of vodka meant. It meant there were more. Sure enough, inside a box holding an unused baby bath, I found several others. I started pulling out the contents of the cupboard and throwing them on the floor. In among all the baby paraphernalia, more and more vodka bottles were hidden. I threw them on to the Beatrix Potter characters until I was surrounded by dirty nappies and dirty secrets.
I was still in tears, sitting amid the detritus of Helen’s miserable secret life, when the door to the nursery opened.
“Get out!” I screamed, leaping towards the door and slamming it back in the nanny’s face. I would not have this information spreading like wildfire through her chattering community. I would protect Helen now, since I’d so palpably failed to do so while she’d been alive.
“Please, just leave me alone. Take the twins downstairs…”
“Tessa?” It was a woman’s voice. “It’s Rose. I’ve come back.”
I was leaning against the door, trying to barricade myself in with the evidence. “Rose?” I turned and reached for the door handle. She stood there in her hat and coat, with the same suitcase still in her hand. “Rose,” I lamented. She dropped the case and held open her arms. I fell into them and together we sobbed. The tears kept coming and coming.
Just as suddenly I stopped crying because somewhere part of me couldn’t accept what was happening. It was too far-fetched. Too surreal. Other people died in car crashes. Other children got ill, became drug addicts, forced their parents apart. Other people fell in love with the wrong man and wasted their lives endlessly drawn like a moth to a flame. Not me. I was a lawyer. I wore sensible shoes from Monday to Friday. I had dark-colored suits in my wardrobe. I thought I was in control. I thought I had my say in the future. Wrong, Tessa. The future toyed with us, it was up to us to try to enjoy the game. But not everyone liked the game, or they weren’t given the tools to play. I held out my palm to Rose and showed her the perfect little bottle I had been squeezing. It looked so sweet, so harmless. Drink me, it said. If it had been full, I would have.
I registered no surprise on Rose’s face as she reached down to pick up the scattered remnants of Helen’s hidden existence.
“You knew about the drinking?”
Rose glanced at me before placing the empties in a sickly sweet scented nappy sack.
“I suspected. She always denied.”
“And the pills?”
“They were for pain at first. After the Caesarean. But she became dependent on them quickly.”
“But she was feeding the boys herself?” It was this that had quieted my suspicious heart. Helen was obsessed with breastfeeding her babies. She had fed them for five months. I didn’t believe she’d ingest all those pills and carry on feeding her children. But I had only learnt about the vodka habit.
“She wasn’t,” said Rose.
“But I saw her…” Hadn’t I? I thought about this for a minute. No, I hadn’t. I’d seen her try to. I’d seen the babies fuss. I’d heard her talk about it. About the need to feed them alone, in the quiet, because they were easily distracted. I thought she was just being a weirdo new mother. There were plenty of them about.
I wiped a streak of snot down my sleeve. “What about all the milk in the freezer?”
“She put formula in bags.”
That definitely sounded bonkers.
“If they ever went out as a family, she would take the bags with her, pretending she’d expressed it. She said she didn’t like feeding in public. Neil didn’t like it either. He said it was common.”
I remembered my disastrous attempts in Starbucks with the curdled milk and the way the boys had happily sucked away at formula. I remembered too the way she’d latched herself on to that spooky little machine that had tugged at her breasts until they’d bled. Why would she do such a thing when she’d known there was no milk? I told Rose.
“She did a lot of strange things when she’d eaten too many pills.”
I couldn’t quite absorb what Rose was telling me. “She was pretending to breastfeed the whole time?”
Rose nodded sadly.
“Did she know you knew?”
“Yes.”
“And you didn’t tell her she was being mad?”
“She was afraid of Neil. I believed her fear.”
I recalled the deranged conversation I’d had with Helen that same Sunday. “Did he hit her?”
“I never saw, if he did. No bruises.”
This was getting more and more complicated as the hours went by.
“But he was a bully,” said Rose. “I’m afraid I never liked him, God rest his soul.”
“Nor me, Rose. Nor me.”
“I suppose Marguerite will get the children.”
I took Rose’s arm. “Not if I have anything to do with it.”
“But, Tessa, she is their grandmother.”
“I know. Do you remember what she was like when Helen was little?”
Rose lowered her eyes to the floor. I don’t know what slide show went through her mind, but she looked pained.
“Helen didn’t want her to have the boys,” I stated.
“I understand,” said Rose, “but she is so”—Rose searched for a word that didn’t cross the boundary—“strong.”
“Let me worry about that. But I’d like your help with the boys.”
“Of course. Where are they?”
“Out with a temporary nanny, but I’ll send her home if you’ll stay. They don’t really know her, they don’t know me…” I knew it wasn’t a question of money. “Will you stay?”
“I should have stayed with Helen.” She looked pained again. “There were a lot of things I should have done.” Finally she looked me in the eye. “I will stay with the boys.”
“Thank you, Rose. And please, don’t feel bad, you didn’t know this was going to happen.”
Rose sat down in the blue gingham nursing chair. As she rocked gently back and forth, I was reminded of her age and all she’d given up to care for a child that was not her own. She stared out of the window. “I didn’t know what was going to happen. But I knew something.” She turned back to me, a look of steel in her eyes. Did Rose suspect what I suspected? Did she, like me, think Helen had masterminded this fatal solution?
“Something like a car crash?”
“No, not that.”
So it was just me, then.
“I feared she would hurt herself.”
I stared at her hard, trying to understand her. Trying to understand. I had to know. “But not Neil as well…”
Rose did not answer at once. Then she shook her head. “I couldn’t see how.”
“But now you can?”
Rose handed the miniature bottle back to me. “I think we both can now, can’t we?”
Yes, we could, but the clarity was hurting my eyes.
“No one must know,” I said to Rose, firmly.
“No one will.”
We cleared up the rest of the mess together, lost in our own private thoughts. I heard the nanny call up from the hallway to let me know she’d safely returned. I liked the woman, I thought she was good with the boys. Clear and uncomplicated. In other circumstances I would have hired her permanently, but now I wanted her out of the house, and fast. It wasn’t that Rose was back. It wasn’t even that her services came at a considerable price. It was because I feared there were more secrets lurking within the house, and I didn’t want anyone but myself or Rose to find them.
Two days passed. I meant to go home and change, but the house was like a hotel, it had everything I needed, so I stayed with Rose and waited for news. I knew what the coroner’s report was going to say: Helen was driving while under the influence of alcohol and medication. I’d caught one story on Sky News. Neil and Helen had been at some party in Bristol. There was footage of Neil leaving the party, clearly inebriated. Rumors of a marital argument were circulating. Oddly, Helen looked completely composed, but her composure no longer convinced me. There was an almighty chemical balancing act taking place in her blood stream. The newsreaders talked about the twins; how they were only six months old. They were talking tragic accident.
I hadn’t heard another allegation of drunk-driving since that first odd phone call in the hospital and what Marguerite had told me. That would all change when the coroner’s report came out. It wouldn’t take long before something was leaked to the press. Marguerite was right, she wasn’t powerful enough to prevent that. Helen hadn’t been famous, but she was too beautiful to ignore. Who better to make an example of for those silent, long-suffering mothers than Helen? If a rich, well-married mother of two can crack, then maybe they weren’t doing so badly after all.
On the third morning, while I toyed with breakfast, my mobile rang. It was Ben. He asked whether I wanted him to come over as he had every day since Helen had died. This time I said yes. After Helen, the person I’d been thinking about most was Ben. Life had to be grabbed. Things had to change. And if I didn’t grab and change things now, then maybe I never would and losing Helen would have taught me nothing. I had been warned, but Cora hadn’t been enough. It had taken a death to shake me out of my stupor; I was going to make damn sure I didn’t betray her memory by pissing away whatever time I had left. The girl in the hammock was not going to die, I would take her with me, wherever I went and in whatever I did. I had emailed Al and Claudia, but they were on an elephant somewhere in the jungle, rediscovering the bare necessities of life—each other. It had taken a death for them, too, I should have seen it sooner. How foolish I had been to think that I lacked love in my life. My life was full of it, with all the risks involved. The pain I’d been feeling since Helen’s death was proof of one thing: I was alive. I was alive.
Half an hour later, Ben was on Helen’s door step. I had the twins ready. He helped me lift the enormous and now very heavy pram down the steps. Then he hugged me tightly.
“Everyone is in shock,” he said.
“It’s unbelievable, isn’t it?”
“Completely…”
We stared at each other. I looked away first. “I thought we could take them to the park, if that’s OK with you. I could do with some fresh air.”
“Whatever you want. I’ve managed to sneak a couple of hours, told work I was pitching a new account,” he said. “But I can come back after work too. Sasha will understand.”
“Thanks, Ben.”
He put his arm around me and kissed my head. “Got hold of Claudia and Al?” he asked.
“Not yet. I can’t bear the thought of a funeral without them.”
“You’ll have me. Don’t you worry about that.”
“I can’t believe she’s dead,” I said, more to myself than to Ben.
“I know.”
He stroked my hair.
“I keep expecting her to walk through the door.”
“It’s such a shock. One minute we’re all at a party together, the next…” Ben sighed. “They had the twins, Neil’s career was just beginning to take off; it’s too unbearably tragic.”
Neil had his career. And all the added perks. I could not bring myself to mourn his death. I leaned my head against Ben’s chest. I wanted to tell him about the real tragedy that this “accident” had exposed, but I couldn’t.
“It doesn’t make sense,” he said. “These things never do.”
It made horrible sense to me.
“When I first heard, I thought the twins were with them, you said she never left them.”
I’d been thinking about that too. “I told her it was time to get out of the baby bubble.”
He pushed me away and held me in front of him. “Don’t you dare, Tessa. This is no one’s fault.” He knew me too well. “It was an accident. A terrible accident.”
“I don’t know, Ben.”
“Of course it was. Tessa, stop it. Come on, let’s go for that walk.”
He let go of me to push the pram out on to the pavement. I immediately missed the physical contact. We walked out to Holland Park Avenue, up the hill and through the innocuous white stone wall of Holland Park. Within a few meters of leaving the gate behind us we were in a woodland labyrinth, surrounded by precocious squirrels and fat pigeons. A world away. This was the kind of setting I needed. It was time.
“Ben, you know what happened the other day, I need to talk to you about it.”
He stopped.
“Keep walking,” I said. “Or I may not get this out.”
“Get what out?”
“Keep walking!” I insisted. We started moving again, slowly. “I’ve been trying to tell myself we had an excuse—”
“We did,” said Ben, interrupting. “Our oldest friends had lost yet another baby; for a split second it was all about the four of us. It was late, we were emotional—”
“That’s the thing, Ben, it wasn’t about Al and Claudia. Not for me.”
“What?”
“It was about us.”
I put my hand to my chest to reassure it. I asked it not to panic. I asked it to continue calmly rising and falling, so that I could get the words out. “I adore you, Ben. OK?” I shrugged. The single biggest confession of my life was no confession at all. “I always have.”
“Me too.”
“I know. But I adore you too much.”
Ben stopped walking again and looked at me strangely. “What are you saying?”
What was I saying? I was trying to say those three little words, but I couldn’t. “I’m saying that I value your friendship above all others, but the thing is, you’re married, which is great. For you. But it doesn’t work so well for me. I compare everyone to you and no one comes close. How could they? Our foundations are so deep and I don’t have to wash the skid marks out of your boxers.”
“Excuse me?”
“Never mind, I know what I mean. The thing is,” I said, forging ahead, “I have to move on to a new plot, find someone to make some new foundations with. Or maybe not, maybe I won’t find anyone. But I can’t go on like this. I mustn’t.” I kicked at some freshly fallen leaves. There. I’d said it.
Ben took my hand. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”
“If you think I’m saying that I want to move house, no.” Big, deep breath. “But if you think I’m saying that I have imagined a life with you in another role, then yes.”
“But not a priest or an electrician, or a bus driv—”
“No. None of those.” It was all right to make light of this, but only if it was me, and only if it wasn’t too light.
There was a lengthy pause after that.
“I didn’t know.”
I found that hard to believe, but men are wired up differently, so anything was possible. “For a long time I didn’t know myself. Or I pretended not to, I can’t really remember. It’s all been going on for such a long time, through most of which I’ve been having fun.”
“A lot of fun,” reiterated Ben. “You’ve never been anything but fun.”
“Have no fear, I shall be again.” I managed a smile. “But somewhere along the line I got tired of doing it all by myself. I got tired of being strong; of paying all the bills; of having to make all my own plans; of working; of living in London; of going on dates that came to nothing. I got tired of it all. I guess you became an easy option.” I looked at him. My breath left me. Damn those eyes. I had to see this through to the end. “Which was madness. Because you are not the easy option.”
“Is that why you took those pills?” asked Ben.
“How the hell do you know about that?”
“I have my sources.”
I frowned.
Ben shrugged. “You put the phone down on me then disappeared off the face of the earth. I didn’t know what was going on. Eventually I went round to your flat. You weren’t there, but Roman told me what had happened.”
“He shouldn’t have done that.”
“He was worried too.”
“I had no idea how strong they were.”
“Maybe. But I would be worried if you took junior aspirin if it was with vodka.”
“A foolish oversight.”
“Do you promise me?”
“I promise.”
“It’s just that everyone I know who’s got into trouble with pills, took them with vodka.”
I thought about those innocuous miniatures strewn over Beatrix Potter characters, the bag of pills. Motherhood had not brought Helen the peace she craved. It was not the solution. If anything, having the twins had compounded all of Helen’s insecurities and sent her spiraling out of control. I wanted so much for Helen’s death to be an accident because then I could stop imagining Helen going into the nursery for the last time and kissing her children goodbye, knowing she was never going to see them again. I didn’t want to think that my friend had sunk so low that she thought killing herself and her husband was the answer. “Ben, I haven’t been having the best of times recently, but I promise you, it wasn’t even an accident, it was nothing.”
He looked even more concerned now. “What do you mean, haven’t been having the best of times?”
“I’ve been wasting so much time peering over the fence at you lot, wondering how the hell I can get over, that I’ve forgotten how to enjoy it over on my side. Life is pretty good over here; it has many, many advantages.”
“That’s what I’ve been telling you,” said Ben. “We’re the ones who are jealous of you, didn’t you know that?”
I shook my head. I didn’t believe him, of course. It was one of those perfect lies that Ben told me all the time to make me feel better about myself. Lies that a few days earlier I would have chosen to believe. But things were different now. A seismic shift had taken place. Helen’s death had altered everything. I couldn’t pretend to myself, or anyone else, that my view on life hadn’t changed—suddenly, dramatically, changed for ever.
“Everything looks different from where I’m standing now and that is because of Helen. My only regret is that I didn’t see it sooner.” I looked at Ben. “I honestly feel I’ve got her in here, a piece of her.” A pretty big piece, since there weren’t a lot of people to share her memory with. “Ben, she had so much potential.” I felt the tears again—was it possible there were still more? “I don’t want to be like that…”
“You’re not.”
I rubbed my face with the palms of my hands.
“One of the headhunters I called to arrange an interview with asked me whether I would be interested in a posting abroad.”
“What did you say?”
“It doesn’t matter now. It was this week, I missed it.”
“Tessa, you should have gone.”
“I couldn’t. Until I know what’s happening with the twins, I can’t leave them.”
“They’re not your sole responsibility,” said Ben.
“They are for the moment,” I insisted. “Until something better comes along.”
We walked along in silence for a while. “You’ll rearrange the interview though, right? You know what the job market is like, the longer you stay out, the harder it is to get back in.”
I must do that, I reminded myself. I nodded then fussed with the blanket covering the sleeping babies.
“So what did you say about moving abroad?”
I’d said no, of course. But I wasn’t so sure. I looked at Ben. I was free to go anywhere in the world. I looked back at the twins. Then again, maybe I wasn’t. “I said I’d think about it. Forty is not as far off as I’d like. I’ve been doing the same thing for nearly twenty years. Twenty years, Ben! Where did that time go?”
“I don’t know, Tessa, but I tell you one thing, it wouldn’t have been nearly as much fun without you.”
There was that word again: fun…“Thank you,” I said. “But I don’t think you really understand what I’ve been saying.”
“I do.”
“No, you don’t.”
“I do, Tessa.”
“You don’t. I’m not here just for you to have fun with!”
“But I don’t have fun with anyone else.”
“Yes, you do! You have fun with Sasha.” I stressed her name. If I didn’t get this point across we were back to the beginning and God might think I’d ducked again and kill off my mother. “I’m the one who doesn’t have fun with anyone else, because I haven’t got an anyone else.”
“We have a nice time, sure, but it isn’t fun, fun, fun. It’s talking about whether to have chicken or steak for dinner. It’s about whether to take the promotion or move to Germany. It’s life stuff. It isn’t fun. You, on the other hand, have fun with everyone. Everyone adores you. Everyone who meets you adores you. You have more fun than anyone I know.”
“I’m not going to argue about who has more fun with whom. It’s ridiculous. All I’m saying…”
“Yes?”
“All I’m saying is…”
“Yes?”
“What I’m trying to say is…”
“What?”
“I wish we’d stayed in that passageway.”
In Ben and Tessa speak, you can’t get more clearer than that.
“Oh,” he said.
Oh, indeed.
I don’t know what I’d been expecting from this monumental revelation, but “Oh,” followed by a swift departure through the woods, wasn’t it. He had the decency to look at his watch first, then gawp at the time, and make the old excuse about a forgotten meeting. Before hugging me and telling me that I was the most precious thing to him, before hurrying off down one of Holland Park’s many paths. But that was basically it. “Oh.” Followed by a swift departure. I had imagined so many variations, over so many years—how was it possible that I hadn’t imagined that one? Surely the possibilities were finite. Surely I’d covered all angles. But no: “Oh” it was. “Oh,” indeed. I sat on a hard bench in the Zen garden and watched koi fish blow kisses at me. I concentrated on them for a minute or two, until the numbness I was feeling faded.
Now, of course, the truth was all too apparent. “Oh” was the only ending to this. What on earth was he going to say? Sorry? That was too patronizing. Me too, let’s get married? No, because he was married to an amazing woman whom he adored. Me too, let’s have an affair? No, because he was an amazing man married to an amazing woman whom he adored. The reality was that “Oh” was the only answer. I hadn’t been dealing in reality, though; I’d been playing make-believe. The game had gone on for so long that I had lost my grip on reality. I will forever be sorry that Helen had to die in order for me to realize that I’d been sleepwalking through life. When the twins started to stir, I stood up and began pushing them home. Feeding time at the zoo came round quickly. I increased my pace.
When I got home, I mean Helen’s home, I recognized the shabby brown Volvo parked opposite. It was incongruous among the Cayennes and Range Rovers. There wasn’t anyone in the world I was happier to see, except Helen, of course.
“Fran!”
“The housekeeper said you’d be back at 2:30, and you’re bang on.”
“Amazing how quickly you get into a routine,” I replied, smiling down at the twins.
Francesca got out of the car and looked into the pram. “Wow, you forget how small they can be.”
“How dare you…These boys are enormous.”
Francesca looked at me, then hugged me. “You all right?”
My friend was dead, Cora was in hospital with pneumonia, Billy and I had fought and I’d just ended a twenty-year imaginary relationship. I rocked my hand back and forth. I was doing so-so. I waited for the lump to let go of my throat.
“How’s Caspar?”
“He’s OK for the moment. He wanted to come and see you, actually, make sure you’re holding up.”
“Tell him I am. Just. I spoke to Nick, that feels like a long time ago. I’d only just heard.” I tried to clear my head of the memory. “How is he, you haven’t…”
“Said anything?” Francesca shook her head. “No, but he’s getting a bit freaked out by all the love notes I keep leaving him.”
I managed a weak smile. “And the girls?”
We walked back to her car to place the ticket on the dashboard. “Katie wanted a pair of knickers with cherries on the front. One had a bite out of it. She’s still not speaking to me.” She shook her head. “If I’d known what I was letting myself in for…” She shook her head again. “Just as you get over one hurdle, another looms in front of you.” Francesca had been trying to cheer me up and for a moment it had worked, but for some reason I found that last scenario really disturbing. Maybe that was her point. We ambled back to the house.
“You heard about Cora?” I asked.
“Poor Billy. I just popped by the hospital with some more expertly made cupcakes. She rang and told us what had happened.”
“I was an arsehole.”
“Huh?”
“We had a fight. She didn’t tell you?”
“No. She just told me about the nightmare with Cora.”
I stared into the pram. Two moon faces peered back at me. I had a very new, very real litmus paper for life. Gone were the days of creating storms in teacups. Gone were the days of making mountains out of molehills. Amazing how unimportant many things had now become. “I went over there and like an idiot got all heavy about Christoph.”
“Probably not the best timing.”
“You think?” I started humping the pram up the steps.
“Do you want help?”
“Actually, I’m getting the hang of this monstrous thing.”
“So what happened with Billy?”
I gave her the quick version, without the usual Tessa King revisionism. I unbuckled the babies, handed Tommy over to Francesca and followed her downstairs with Bobby.
“I promise you, she didn’t mention it. In fact, she’s concerned about you, as we all are. She knows about Helen and Neil, obviously. So please don’t worry about a silly argument.” She looked down at Tommy. “What’s happened kind of puts everything into perspective.”
She was right about that.
We stowed the twins safely in their matching bouncy chairs, ready for take-off. Thankfully, I was no longer confounded by the NASA-style harnesses you had to strap them in and out of twenty times a day. Next job was to make their bottles. Seven scoops in seven fluid ounces. Repeat. Quick shake, repeat, and hey presto—meal for two.
“How are these little ones?” asked Francesca, playing with them while I stood behind the vast stainless-steel kitchen island.
“They’re getting a bit fussy, actually. I think they know Helen isn’t coming back. It breaks my heart just to think about it. Tommy is much happier now on goat’s milk, though, he’s not been sick since, but he’s more needy. He likes to be cuddled all the time. And Bobby just keeps looking around like he’s lost something. You know when you go into a room to get something, then forget what it is, so you look around trying to remember what it is you’ve forgotten? That’s exactly the expression on Bobby’s face. And it’s weird, because sometimes he looks just like Helen. Helen without the skin coloring. They’re actually very cute, you’ve never felt anything so soft as their ridiculous cheeks.”
Francesca looked at me strangely.
“What?”
“Listen to you.”
I felt foolish. It must have registered on my face.
“No. It’s nice. Just, maybe you should be careful.”
“Of what?”
“Falling too much in love.”
“With the twins? That’s not going to happen. Between you and me,” I said lowering my voice, “I never even liked them.”
“That was then.”
I handed a bottle to Francesca, and we sat on the sofa with one baby each. “Rose does this most of the time, but I don’t want her getting too tired, she must be in her fifties by now.”
“Where is Rose?”
“We have a little system going. She does the mornings, I do the afternoons and then she comes back to help me with bath-time. It’s working pretty well.” I glanced at my watch, I never knew what it was going to say. I seemed to have lost my sense of time and place. Sometimes hours flashed by in minutes with the twins, other times they ticked past excruciatingly slowly. “We make a right pair, she and I.”
“Tessa…”
I stared down at Bobby. His big eyes looked up at me. I smiled at him as he sucked hungrily. “I like being here, Fran. The twins keep me busy. This terrible, terrible thing has happened, but bang on eleven o’clock those boys need feeding. You’ve got no choice but to go on. It’s a blessed relief. I hate it when they go to bed. Too much thinking time. Except there’s washing to do and bottles to sterilize and sheets to change. I’m sort of hoping that if I keep on going through the motions, eventually the motions will feel real again.” They were being fussy, they didn’t like being put down, they needed to know I was close by. Me. Not Rose. Me. They smiled at me whenever I looked their way. I couldn’t get enough of those wide, wet, gummy mouths grinning at me, so I looked their way a lot. They were terrible time-wasters. Francesca was right, of course, I’d fallen—hook, line and sinker. It had taken three days. Sasha had been right too. Being a parent didn’t have to begin with birth.
“I think Tommy is getting teeth,” I said, apropos of nothing. “Two, right at the bottom.”
“Tessa, what’s going to happen to the twins, where are they going to go?”
A happy home.
“I don’t know. Helen left it up to me to decide.”
“You need to make that decision then. They can’t stay in limbo.”
Why not? I was rather liking this limbo. Nothing hurt as much when I was with them. “No decisions will be made until after the funeral.”
“On Thursday, right? The 28th.”
“I don’t know. Marguerite is organizing it.”
“It is. I read the announcement in the paper. Don’t worry, we’ll be there.”
“What announcement?”
“The Times. Yesterday. Both of them are being buried up the hill at St. John’s.”
I swore, then apologized to the twins, who looked at me quizzically. “The body hasn’t even been released yet,” I whispered.
“I’m pretty sure that’s what it said.” She lifted Tommy over her shoulder to wind him.
“Actually, he’s better if you just sit him on your knee and lean him forward,” I said. Francesca smiled at me. “Marguerite wants the boys, of course; she’s already staked a claim. Whatever I decide, there will be a fight because they aren’t going to that witch. She hasn’t even had the decency to tell me about the funeral, which, by the way, Helen didn’t want, and to be buried with him…” I growled. Bobby’s face creased in concern. “Sorry, hon, shh, not you…”
“You know what I think?”
That I’d make a perfect mother? I looked at Francesca expectantly.
“I think that you should consider Claudia and Al. Claudia is their godmother too, isn’t she? They’ve been trying to have a family for years, they’re set up for it. They have a lovely house and Claudia would be a spectacular mother, and Al, well, you can’t fault Al. They want children, and those babies need parents. They’d make such a happy family.”
All you’d have to do was find them a happy home.
She said home, not family.
“Claudia seems to have moved on from that…” I wasn’t convincing myself and, by the look on Francesca’s face, I wasn’t convincing her either. Nine years of trying for children could not compete with a couple of weeks in a Singapore spa, however good the salt scrub was.
“Just think about it. If you are going to have a battle with Helen’s mother then you will need to present her with a realistic alternative.”
Meaning I’m not a realistic alternative?
Meaning “Oh.”
I felt tears welling up again.
“I’m sorry,” said Francesca, “I didn’t come over here to make you cry.” It wasn’t her. It was everything. She took my hand. “You’re obviously doing a grand job here, but, darling, do you really want to take this on permanently?”
I shrugged.
“Are you sure that’s what the twins need?”
I tried to tell her that I hadn’t been thinking I would take them, but it would have been a lie. Why shouldn’t I look after them? We’d make an odd family, but I knew now that odd families worked just as well, if not better. I couldn’t think of anything to say.
Francesca went on. “After all they’ve been through, what they’re going to need is some serious stability. Tessa, this is a very big decision and, you’re going to hate me for this, but you have a tendency to be a bit whimsical when it comes to commitment.”
But I’d changed, couldn’t she see I’d changed?
“And don’t you have your own life to sort out? Like going back to work?”
I sighed. Going back to work didn’t seem like such an appealing prospect at that moment. I was getting used to having other things fill my day. I kissed Bobby on his round, fat cheek and he giggled. “No one knows what’s going to happen,” I said. That was true, at least.
Francesca didn’t stay for very long after that. I was quite relieved after she left; I felt her beady eye on me every time I did anything for the boys. Rose was much less judgmental. I stopped cleaning the bottle and leaned against the sink. What was I doing? What on earth was I doing? I had to get out of there. I had to have time to think, away from all these distractions.
As soon as Rose walked back through the door I told her I had to get home. She assured me she could handle putting the boys to bed on her own that evening. She’d done it every weekend since they’d been born, they would be in good hands. I’d been at Helen’s for four days. I’d locked myself away for four days. I needed to go home. I needed some space. I needed to regroup and get some perspective. I needed time to think about what Francesca had said: if I was to fight Marguerite successfully, I needed a plausible alternative. I would love those boys until my dying day, but was that enough for a court of law? If I wasn’t good enough in the eyes of my friends, would I be good enough in the eyes of the law? Was anyone?
Another memory came back to me. This time it was my own voice. He has a problem with drugs, and a problem with booze. What court in the land would give a parent like that the twins? Well, I didn’t have a problem with drugs and drink, but I wasn’t squeaky-clean either. As for Helen…My words must have felt like daggers in her side. I’d only wanted to reassure her.
I put the key in my own front door for the first time in an age, closed it behind me and threw myself down on the sofa. I stared up at the ceiling. Had my reassuring words pushed her over the edge? Was this my doing? What court in the land would give a parent like that the twins? None, she’d replied. I could not imagine how desperate and alone she must have felt at that point. It was me…I had pushed her over the edge. I had to think very carefully about what I did next.
A couple of hours later I called the solicitor. “It’s Tessa King,” I said to the receptionist. I waited for the call to be put through.
“Hi, Tessa, I was just leaving,” said Helen’s solicitor.
Where’d the day gone? I’d been up since dawn. “Apparently there was an announcement in the paper about a funeral. Do you know anything about this?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t understand. What about the post mortem?”
“It was all done yesterday. I think Marguerite put some pressure on them to move quickly, but it was just routine.”
“What did they find?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“No. What were you expecting them to find?”
“It makes no sense,” I said, not answering his question.
“No, it doesn’t. What they’re saying, though no one will know for sure, is that she fell asleep at the wheel. Neil was drunk, but everyone knew that, so Helen would have had to drive. It was a long way home, no one to chat to, sadly it happens all the time. The insurance will be paid out.”
“Insurance?”
“Helen’s life insurance. The boys aren’t going to have to worry about money.”
“The boys were never going to have to worry about money.”
“Helen had funds, yes, but everything is wrapped up in Hong Kong businesses. She had capital. Not cash.”
I didn’t really care about the details. “So she hadn’t been drinking, or…” What was I going to say?
“It was an accident, Tessa. Nothing more. At least the boys will be OK. Neil didn’t have any money. If it had been drunk-driving, the insurance company wouldn’t have paid out.”
I was stunned. I’d been so sure. The pills, the bottles…Had she stopped? Was she sober? Had she really fallen asleep at the wheel and driven into a tree, or had she, in a moment of madness, driven into a tree? Worse still, had she been in control enough to sober up in order to be able to drive into a tree? This had to stop. I was sending myself mad. I would never know the answer, and perhaps it was better not to.
“What about the funeral?”
“I’m sorry. Marguerite got her way, as expected.”
Yeah, this had Marguerite written all over it.
“Have you decided what you’re going to do about the twins?”
“I’m working on it,” I said.
“Well, now you know how quickly Marguerite can move, you ought to hurry up.”
“It’s all right for her, I’ve been changing nappies for days. My hands have gone all scaly from the amount of Carex I’ve washed in…”
Why was I telling this man about my hands? Bloody Marguerite was more conniving than I thought. Of course she’d been happy to leave the twins with me, she’d known full well I wouldn’t have a moment to myself.
“Knowing Marguerite, she’ll make her move as soon as the funeral is over,” said the solicitor.
“The 28th,” I said. “When is that?” I couldn’t remember what month it was. I glanced out of the window, across to Battersea Park; the leaves were turning golden brown. It was nearly the end of October. In two short months my life had been shaken like a snow globe and the flakes were far from settled. No wonder I didn’t know what day of the week it was.
“Three days,” said the solicitor.
Three days. I had three days to find a happy home.
It was pointless, I knew, but I fired off another email into outer space in the hope that Al and Claudia would pick up my distress signals. I couldn’t fight this battle without troops, but my troops were gadding about on an elephant somewhere, finally having fun. Was it fair of me to summon them home? No. But I needed them. They were the only ones who could back me up. It was six in the evening but the conversation with the solicitor had finished me off. I went to my bedroom, lay on the bed and fell fast asleep.
I awoke from a nightmare, sweating, fully clothed and completely disorientated, to the sound of my doorbell buzzing. My arm was numb from sleeping on it. My watch had left an imprint on my face. It was dark outside. The doorbell buzzed again, followed by a knock. I couldn’t think of one good reason why someone would be knocking at my door at two o’clock in the morning. Not one. I sat up and put my feet on the ground. The knocking came again. Firm and insistent. Phone calls in the middle of the night are bad enough, but messages delivered face to face are far worse. I only knew one person who was in a situation that might require such a message. Something had gone wrong with Cora. I could not push myself off the bed. I couldn’t take any more. I peeled my eyepatch off my face.
Knock, knock, knock. Buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
“Coming,” I whispered. “I’m coming.”
Knock, knock, knock. Buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
I stood up and walked into the living room.
Knock, knock, knock. Buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
Not Cora. Please, God, anything but Cora. Anything but Cora.
I reached the door and opened it.
It was Ben.
“Ben?”
“I have to tell you something.”
So, they’d sent Ben to soften the blow. That made sense. I braced for impact.
“You may have wished you’d never left the passageway, but I never did,” he said.
“What?”
“I thought I had. But I hadn’t. I’ve been waiting there for years, I didn’t even know it.”
This wasn’t about Cora. This was about—
“Us,” said Ben, finishing my thoughts for me. “I’m here about us. You and me. Tess, my darling, ridiculous, wonderful Tess, don’t you understand? It’s you I love. You.”
I stared at him.
“Aren’t you going to say anything?”
I held open the door. No. Yes. “You’d better come in.”
We stood in my flat, lit only by the lights along the river, looking at one another. He glowed a strange murky color and the pattern of raindrops on the glass made his skin look blistered. I’d never seen a man look so beautiful.
“I don’t understand.”
“What’s there not to understand?” said Ben. “We’ve been bloody idiots.”
“You said ‘Oh.’”
“Well, obviously I said ‘Oh,’ I was in shock. I had no idea you felt that way. I had no idea I felt that way; I’ve lived with it for so long.”
“With what?”
“Being in love with you.”
I put my hands to my face. “I don’t believe this,” I said.
He took a step towards me. “Believe it. Helen’s accident made me see it too. I love you.” He took my hand and led me to the sofa. This was my dream come true and I was scared to death. “What about Sasha?”
“I’ll tell her. I fell in love with you when I was fifteen years old. But we were friends, I never thought it could last.”
“Me too, I thought we’d split up and wouldn’t be a group any more; I didn’t think it was worth it.”
“But it has lasted, hasn’t it? You still make me laugh, you’ve never annoyed me, you’re more gorgeous than you were back then, you understand me like no one else, you’re my best friend, I’m never bored in your company, when odd things happen I call you first, when sad things happen I call you first, when funny things happen I call you first. I’d tell Sasha when I got home, if I remembered, but I always called you first.”
“Me too,” I said again. “The hardest thing about the last few weeks was not being able to speak to you.”
“Exactly. I’ve been in a bloody grump and I didn’t even know why. It’s because we weren’t talking. I didn’t realize why until that moment in the park. And then I realized just how pivotal you are in my life. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been happy with Sasha and I do love her, I do, but the person who makes me feel really great is you.”
Sasha. Sasha. This was bad for Sasha. I grimaced. “Where does she think you are?”
“She’s in Germany, but I would have told her. I nearly rang her, but this is not the sort of thing you tell your wife over the phone in the middle of the night. Maybe we should tell her together.”
“God, no.”
“She should have someone to love her wholly. Not partially, as I’ve been doing.”
“You really love me? Seriously?”
He grinned. “Absolutely. And I want everyone to know.”
“She’s going to hate us.”
“This has only just happened to me. I can look her in the eye and tell her I have not, and I would not, cheat on her. I’ve thought about it, as you know, but I’ve never acted on it. It even makes sense to me now why I sometimes had a wandering eye. I didn’t love Sasha enough, but I didn’t realize. She deserves better and she’ll find someone like that.” He clicked his fingers.
“Probably. She’s an amazing woman.”
“I think she’ll be fine.”
“Really?”
“Really?”
“I can’t look her in the eye and tell her this just happened to me. I was happy for you both, I was, but I was jealous.”
“I probably would have been too. I hated James Kent, married or not. But you didn’t meet anyone, so I’ve never had to live without you. You’ve always been there. I didn’t mind the flings, because I always knew they weren’t going anywhere. You made that abundantly clear, so I guess I’ve always thought of you as mine anyway, not consciously, you understand, but…” He took my face in his hands. “I just love you,” he laughed. “I know this is the worst possible time in the world to be ecstatic; Cora is ill and Helen…” He couldn’t finish his sentence. Nor could I. “But, I am.” He laughed again. I started laughing too. “It’s ridiculous. I had to come and tell you. I was lying in bed, unable to sleep, thinking, I love her. I love her. I love Tessa King.” He pulled me towards him and kissed me gently on the lips, then sat back. “And I do.”
I smiled again. “Do you have any idea how long I’ve been imagining this?”
“Tell me.”
“First I thought you’d follow me to Vietnam.”
“I was in traction, you fool, but I thought about it.”
“Why didn’t you say anything when we got back?”
“You went weird on me,” said Ben.
“You went weird on me!”
“I thought it was all in my head.”
“I thought it was all in mine,” I said.
Ben kissed me on the forehead.
I frowned. “You let me go off to university without so much—”
“Tessa, all you talked about was how excited you were, what fun you were going to have.”
“I was trying to tell you that it was OK that you didn’t like me that way, I’d get over it.”
“God, women are strange—why didn’t you just tell me?”
“Why didn’t you ask?”
“I did. You left the passageway. Not me. Next time I saw you was in the hospital, pretending nothing had happened.”
“You were with Mary.”
“I could hardly throw her out of the hospital room, and anyway, you weren’t giving me cause to and frankly I wanted someone to keep me company. You buggered off to Vietnam, remember?”
“I missed you so much; I banged on to Helen all about it.”
“Helen?”
“Yes. She’s the only one who knew, who’s ever known.”
“God, we’ve been idiots,” he said again, reaching out for my hand. “And the sooner we put that right the better.”
“What are we going to do?”
We? We? I’d never been a we before.
“Get married and have a host of children, obviously.”
“I didn’t think you wanted children.”
“But you do. So bring it on. I don’t care. It’ll be fun. Let’s just have lots and lots of fun together.”
“Nothing happens between us, until Sasha knows.”
“Nothing. I’ve waited twenty years to get you into bed, I think I can wait another day.”
“Day?”
“Sasha is home tomorrow.”
I thought I heard a faint pop. Was it my imagination or did our bubble just burst?
“Tomorrow? Wow.”
“What are we waiting for? Helen and Neil were wiped out in a car crash. I mean, what the fuck are we waiting for?”
Neil and Helen. Bobby and Tommy. Ben and Tessa. Ben and Tessa plus Bobby and Tommy. Equals. Happy. Family.