I looked away, p.2
I Looked Away, page 2
‘Dad behaved very badly but he’s sorry,’ my daughter told me when it all came out. ‘Can’t you forgive him? I don’t want to be one of those families where the grandparents don’t talk. My friends are constantly saying how lucky we are. Josh loves you both so much.’
Josh! My real reason for carrying on. At times I can’t believe my only grandson has been with us for four years – nearly five. It’s impossible to imagine life without him. ‘Ganny!’ he calls out excitedly when he comes round to visit, using his baby name for me, which has stuck.
Officially, Monday is my ‘Josh day’, when I look after him while my daughter works. Unofficially, I see my precious grandson every day. Try keeping me away! From the minute they put him in my arms, I felt a melting in my solar plexus and an intense rush of love that took me totally by surprise. It was – dare I say it – even stronger than the love I’d felt for my own children when they’d been born. How could that be?
As Josh has grown older, I’ve become even more besotted. Nothing else in the world is as treasured as his slobbery baby kiss on my cheek: those soft, chubby, warm toddler arms around my neck; the joyous amazement on his face when we blow dandelion clocks and make footprints in the snow; his look of intense concentration as he spells out flashcard words (M … U … M), or bakes chocolate crispy cakes while standing on his special little stool in our kitchen.
But Josh’s ‘best’ treat is the Swiss music box my mother gave me which now sits on my dressing table. After she died, it was such a comfort, making me feel she was still close. It’s a wooden box with a flower carved into the top. You have to turn the key twice and then lift the lid. ‘Close your eyes,’ I often say to him. Instantly he will squeeze them tight with that total trust that only children have. The sound of ‘Edelweiss’ fills the air. Then ‘Open!’ I say, and his eyes will be full of wonder.
‘Magic, Ganny!’
My grandson has made life worth living again. I won’t allow Roger or some prowling divorcee like Carole to ruin his life in the way my stepmother destroyed mine.
‘You’re always welcome to come out here, Mum, if you need time to think,’ offered my son on Skype after I’d told him about Roger’s latest affair. ‘Here’ was Australia – the furthest away he could get from his father, whose ‘philandering’, as he put it, ‘makes me sick’. But the thought of not seeing my only grandchild for weeks, maybe months, was unbearable.
So too is the idea of sharing him with another woman. How can I allow Josh to grow up calling Carole ‘Granny’? She would be the glamorous gran and I would be the small, mousy, dowdy one. She would shower him with gifts to win his affection. I could just see her taking him to the zoo or a show. He might – the very thought made me wince with agony – grow up to love her more than me.
‘Hi.’ My husband emerges from his study, brushing his mouth against mine. I try not to think that this same mouth was on Carole’s not so long ago. Those hands caressed the most secret parts of her body. His voice told her he loved her. Maybe still does. But it doesn’t matter, I decide, providing he stays.
‘Hi.’ I step back, feeling like a minor character in a play. Actually, Roger would make a rather fine lead actor, and not just because his lines are so convincing. He is a good-looking man, my husband. Plenty of hair still, even for his age (sixty-five). The sort of bonhomie that comes from charming flocks of students for years. A need for an audience coupled with a natural gift for making people laugh, though he generally saves it for a crowd rather than wasting it on me. A prepossessing figure of six foot three, which he carries off well in his Home Counties uniform of beige chinos and open-necked shirts. It’s too hot today for the tweed jacket.
‘Did you have a good time in town?’ he asks.
I almost break my self-imposed promise not to mention Carole but stop just in time.
‘Yes, thanks.’ Our clipped politeness feels unnatural, but at least it’s better than the old rows.
‘What have you been doing?’ I ask.
In an ordinary relationship, this might have been a perfectly acceptable question, but after an affair, as I’ve learned all too well, everything you say, watch on television or read about in the papers is stacked with new meaning. So my ‘What have you been doing?’ could easily be translated as ‘Who have you been sleeping with today?’
‘Just some DIY,’ he replies. ‘I’m not happy with that wiring for my stereo in the study so I’ve bought some thinner cabling that won’t look so intrusive.’
Roger has always been a practical man. It was one of the things that appealed to me when we met all those years ago. If he could fix things, my naive eighteen-year-old self had thought, then maybe he could fix me too.
‘And the new neighbours came round to tell us they’re re-landscaping the garden,’ he adds. ‘They wanted to check we weren’t being disturbed. We got chatting and they asked me round for a coffee but then Amy called. There’s some crisis with a deadline and she wondered if we could have Josh for a couple of hours.’
Yes! Suddenly the day has got a whole lot better. When our daughter announced that she and her husband had decided to move out of London to be near us, I’d felt an intense rush of love and gratitude. Apparently, I am part of a growing trend. I do have my own ‘work’, although I see it as more of a hobby, to be honest. Making the odd mosaic table for craft fairs in aid of charity is hardly a full-time occupation. So when the children need an extra pair of hands – like now, during the summer break, just before Josh goes to ‘big school’ – I make sure I am always there.
There’s something about a child who has come from your own child. It feels like a miracle that the daughter I gave birth to has now had a baby of her own, formed partly from my own genes. It has created an invisible umbilical cord between us.
My grandson, Josh, doesn’t just love me. He trusts me. He idolizes me – rather than telling me what I should or shouldn’t be doing in that patronizing manner that adult children are so fond of. He will never betray me like his grandfather did (and might still be doing). But, just as important, he really is a clean start. My chance to get family right this time. I won’t repeat the terrible mistakes I have made before.
Forcing myself to put Carole out of my mind, I begin to plan the day ahead. The three of us will have a jolly lunch together instead of Roger and me attempting to make polite conversation. I’ll get out the sugar-free, everything-free bottle of juice for Josh that my daughter insists on, while my husband will have a glass of dry white. I will stick to my usual sparkling water with a slice of lemon. Afterwards, we’ll play in the garden. Perfect.
Then Roger spoils it.
‘I don’t feel like lunch, if you don’t mind. I’d rather get on with that rewiring job.’
‘OK,’ I say slowly, thinking of the counsellor’s advice. Keep busy. Retirement brings its own stresses if you don’t do enough.
He reaches for my hand and squeezes it as though seeking reassurance. I get a flash of that long hair, those long legs. I squeeze my husband’s hand back, but inside, that invisible wound begins to burn all over again.
There’s the sound of a door slamming outside. Little feet running up the path. Hammering on the door knocker. My daughter’s voice calling out. ‘Josh! Wait for Mum.’
My grandson, in the little red T-shirt I bought him last week, is leaping into my arms. Wow! He’s almost getting too heavy to hold now but I breathe him in. Josh is proof, as if any were needed, that I’ve done the right thing in keeping my little family together.
‘Throw, Ganny! Throw!’
My grandson is going to play cricket for England one day. I just know it! He has the most amazing eye for the ball.
‘Too high!’
I try again.
Smash! Josh whacks it with the plastic cricket bat we brought back from our springtime ‘let’s-make-it-work-again’ mini-break in the Scilly Isles.
‘Brilliant!’
‘Again. Again!’
I glance up at the sky. The sun has gone in. It’s getting muggy now. The air has become close, as if a thunderstorm is imminent.
‘Just one more!’
The ball soars into the air. Over my head and towards the house. ‘Race you, Ganny!’
I hang back, letting him win. And as I do so, I glimpse Roger through the French windows of his study. There is something about him that, even at this distance, doesn’t seem right. He is walking up and down the room, phone to his ear, waving his arms as if arguing. Didn’t he say he needed to fix that cable?
A nasty cold feeling snakes through me. ‘We’re still seeing each other.’
‘I’ve got the ball, Ganny!’
I don’t want to row with my husband in front of my grandson.
‘See how far you can hit it, darling. I’ll be back in a minute.’ I draw closer to the house. Roger’s back is now to me. Then he turns sideways. Tears are streaming down his face. And in that instant, even though I can’t hear the words, I know. My husband is talking to Carole. He still misses her. He’s going to leave us. All my resolutions to turn a blind eye disappear.
Furiously, I rattle the handle. It’s locked. The noise makes him start. Guilt springs to his face. Instantly he tries to cover it but it’s too late.
He mouths something while making signs that this is an urgent call. I bet it is. ‘Open up, you bastard!’ I yell. (I should add here that this is not a word I use frequently.)
He turns his back on me!
I rattle the handle again. This time so hard that it threatens to come off the door. Reluctantly, or so it seems, he puts the phone in his jacket pocket and opens up.
‘It was her, wasn’t it?’ I demand, storming in.
‘What are you talking about?’
‘You know damn well. Give me your mobile.’
His hand covers his pocket protectively.
‘No. Please.’
Too late. I’ve swooped and got it. Feverishly I try to check the last number but he pulls the handset from me. I grab it back. He snatches it again. His face is red, his eyes scared.
‘Carole was with you when you chose the bloody playhouse, wasn’t she?’ I yell. ‘Come on. Admit it!’
He hesitates. Only for a second. But it’s enough. ‘It wasn’t like that …’ he says haltingly.
‘You bastard!’ I scream. ‘You’re not worth it anyway. You’ve blown it, Roger. This is it. Keep your tart. She’s welcome to you. But don’t think you’re having the family too. I’d rather die than let her play granny.’
And then I remember. Josh. Where is he? Oh my God. How could I have taken my eye off him? Damn Roger. But I am also horribly aware with an itchy crawling sensation that sends my arm hairs standing upright that this is my fault too.
The lawn is empty. Panic rises in my throat, blocking my windpipe. I try to reason myself out of it as I race down the garden. It’s child-proof, isn’t it? After Josh’s birth, we reinforced the existing fence between us and the neighbours. He can’t get over the padlocked side gate that leads to the road. It’s too high. He isn’t on the wooden slide set we bought for his fourth birthday. The playhouse, perhaps? I rush over, peering inside. A table and chair with his colouring book, half scribbled in. Nothing else. Nor is he in the summer house.
The church clock chimes.
And then my heart stops. When people say that, they mean it as a turn of phrase. But mine really does feel as though it’s stopped beating at precisely the moment that I look behind the playhouse and see a broken panel in the fence. How did that happen? We checked it only last week. There’s a gap. Big enough for a child to get through …
I tear at the splintered wood, cutting my hands, oblivious of the pain, fighting my way into next door’s garden.
That’s when Roger’s words come back to me. ‘The new neighbours came round to tell us they’re re-landscaping the garden …’
There’s a pond. A large pond with a fancy water feature in the centre.
And there, floating on the surface, is a small red T-shirt.
Part One
* * *
BEFORE THE ACCIDENT
Forget-me-not (Myosotis sylvatica)
A blue wildflower.
The story goes that, once upon a time, a pair of lovers were having a picnic on a cliff. The girl spotted a beautiful blue flower growing on the edge. ‘How lovely!’ she exclaimed.
The young man immediately jumped up to pick it for her, but he lost his footing and fell. ‘Forget me not!’ he cried as he plunged to his death.
A reminder – as if we need it – that love can be lethal.
1
Ellie
HMP Longwaite, Oxfordshire
Four months later
I look round my cell. It’s bare apart from a Formica-covered table, a stiff upright chair, a cardboard box to store my clothes in, a bowl to do my business in after lock-up and two narrow beds. Mine has a pillow that’s as hard as a rock because it’s new. They’re always like that when you start a sentence. ‘Reckon they make them tough so you can’t get a bloody wink of sleep,’ my cellmate told me.
She’s not here at the moment. So I lie on my back and let my mind drift. I’ve spent all my life trying to forget the past. But perhaps now it’s finally time to face facts.
My freedom might depend on it.
When I look back at my childhood – the part before the accident – it is the small things that stand out. Silly, almost trivial incidents. Only later did I realize they were the harbingers of the horrors to come.
Take boiled eggs. When I first showed my grandson, Josh, how to crack one open, I heard my mother’s voice as clearly in my head as if she was standing next to me in our kitchen in our leafy north London suburb. ‘You gently tap its head with a spoon,’ she’d said. ‘Then take your knife and carefully slice it across the top.’
‘But doesn’t it hurt the egg?’ I’d asked.
My mother gave me a lovely warm hug. I can still feel it now. ‘You silly sausage! It’s not a person. You’re so sensitive, Ellie. What am I going to do with you?’
But she’d spoken in a kindly way. I don’t have many memories of my mother but I rarely recall her being cross, apart from one occasion.
My parents had bought me a doll. It must have been a birthday or Christmas because in those days, children only got presents on special occasions. She was very beautiful, with a china face and yellow curly hair. When I turned her over, she said ‘Mama’ in such a heart-rending fashion that I wanted to hold and keep her safe for ever. ‘I wish she was real,’ I said. ‘Can’t you have a baby, like my friends’ mummies?’
‘No,’ my mother said. She glared at me as if I had said something very rude. ‘I can’t.’
Then she picked up a pretty blue bowl which she had always loved, and threw it against the wall. For a second she stood there staring at the pieces on the floor. Then, without saying another word, she left the room.
As I knelt down to gather the pieces of china I began to cry.
‘It’s all right,’ my father reassured me, helping gather up the bits. ‘Your mother just needs to lie down for a bit. She’ll feel better when she’s had a rest. Now let me finish this off or you might cut yourself.’
The lines on my father’s forehead reminded me of something called ‘corrugated cardboard’, which he used to wrap things up.
‘I’m sorry, Ellie,’ my mother said when she finally came out of her room. ‘I was tired. Sometimes it makes me snap.’
Even now I can hear my childish reasoning in my head. ‘Snap’ meant broken. Twigs snapped when you walked on them. Did that mean she was going to be broken too? Just like the pretty blue bowl? Maybe that’s why pavements had lines across them, I thought: because someone had tried to smash them up. My mother had once told me that if you walked on a pavement crack, it could be bad luck. Instead, we had to step over each one in order to stay safe. But we mustn’t tell anyone that or they’d think we were silly.
I began to have nightmares. ‘Shhh,’ my father said when he came in to comfort me because my mother wasn’t feeling well again. ‘It’s all right.’
But I knew he was lying because his forehead had turned into corrugated cardboard again. Before long, my mother couldn’t walk me to school because of the tiredness. So my father took me instead. His legs were too fast for mine but we had to rush because he needed to get back and open the stationery shop. The shop had been in my mother’s family for years, and Dad had taken it on after my grandfather had died. Once, however, we stopped by a tree, which was hollow in the middle. ‘Look down there,’ my father said with a note of wonder in his voice. ‘Can you see the mushrooms growing at the bottom? Don’t touch. They might be poisonous.’
Yet I wanted to. Supposing they were actually magic and could stop Mum being tired?
Sometimes our neighbour Miss Greenway would collect me if my father needed to look after Mummy. She smelled of talcum powder and had pretty yellow hair like the girl on my shampoo bottle. She also asked if I needed the ‘toilet’ instead of the ‘lavatory’, and when she took me home for some tea once, I noticed that she held her knife and fork in a way that my mother called ‘common’, whatever that meant.
‘It’s no trouble at all,’ she would always say to my father when she took me back home. Then I would run up into my mother’s darkened bedroom with the blue striped curtains and tell her about my day. Occasionally she would listen to me talk about my new best friend at school – they always seemed to change. But often she would turn over, moving her pillow to a different position as if it was annoying her, and tell me, ‘Come back later.’
When it was my sixth birthday, I wasn’t allowed a birthday party because ‘your mother isn’t well enough’.
‘Couldn’t you do one for me?’ I asked my father.
