School Run (10 page)

She had been taken aback by his coolness – he must have thought this all through before. ‘Don’t you miss the kids?’ she asked.

It was her trump card, even though she hated to admit it. Charlie adored them – though he found Bruce hard work – and she knew he had to be missing them, even if he was happy to leave her. They needed him too. I might be old-fashioned, she told herself, but kids need two parents. Charlie can’t just walk off like this. He can’t.

It had been Pippa who had suggested counselling. ‘You need to talk it through,’ she had said, during one of their lunches soon after Charlie went. ‘See it from all the different angles.’

‘I’m sorry. It must be boring for you to have me sounding off all the time.’

‘Don’t be daft. But I know you too well – and I don’t really know Charlie – so I can’t be objective. Frankly, I think he’s behaved appallingly but maybe there’s a reason for it.’

‘You mean me?’

‘Will you get off your guilt trip?’ Pippa had shaken her head in mock horror. ‘Only a prat would blame his wife for not showing enough affection when he hardly went over the top himself in that department. No, you need to think why he’s doing it. Middle-age crisis . . .’ Pippa’s voice tailed off.

‘An affair, you mean,’ said Harriet quietly.

Pippa had shrugged. ‘Well, you’ve got to admit it’s possible. Even if he says not. A counsellor might help you work out what you’d do if it turned out that way.’

Harriet had made an appointment with her doctor, who then referred her to the counselling centre.

As luck would have it, she received a phone call from the counselling centre two weeks after Charlie had gone. There had been a cancellation. Would she like to come for an assessment and, after that, a course of five sessions? Monica, a calm, quiet woman in her late fifties, wearing lavender Jaeger, was refreshingly normal and not too dissimilar from how Harriet saw herself in fifteen years’ time. Nor did she seem surprised by what Harriet told her, which made her feel as though this ghastly mess could be resolved. From then on, Tuesday mornings at nine o’clock – straight after the school run – were circled in red in her diary. Today was the last session and, depending on what happened on Friday, she might or might not need another course.

It all seemed so far removed from the giggling threesome in the back. Would Kate, Beth and Lucy ever have to go through what she was enduring? Would Bruce, who was quiet for a change, listening to his iPod, ever behave as his father had? Harriet fervently hoped not. The girls were still happily into miniature ponies, whose hair constantly needed plaiting or blow drying. She had been the same – even then she had dreamed of a family. And now it was about to collapse around her.

‘Shall we practise those spellings again?’ she asked half-heartedly. ‘Just in case your teacher remembers today.’

‘She won’t. It’s Tuesday. We don’t have spellings on Tuesday.’

How nice to be able to say ‘I don’t have spellings on Tuesday’, or ‘I don’t wait in on Tuesday for international calls that never come’, or ‘I don’t need to go to a counsellor on Tuesday’. Harriet blinked back the tears. There were times when she would do anything to go back down the years and swap places with the girls laughing in the back seat.

The trouble was, Harriet reflected, you only really knew you had been all right when you weren’t all right any more. Then you looked back and wondered why you hadn’t enjoyed being happy.

Once upon a time she might have been able to share that thought with Charlie. But not now. She couldn’t even confide in her mother, who lived miles away and would have been devastated if she’d suspected her daughter’s marriage was shaky, after her own divorce.

‘Mum?’

Kate’s voice rose above the radio.

‘Mmm?’

‘What’s masterbation?’

Harriet stiffened. ‘Why?’

‘Because that’s what Bruce has written in his homework diary.’

‘Give it to me, bitch.’

‘Bruce, don’t you
dare
use words like that!’

‘Well, she shouldn’t read my stuff.’

‘Anyway,’ said Lucy, clearly, ‘you’ve spelt it wrong, Bruce. It has a
u
and not an
e
. Isn’t that right, Mrs Chapman?’

‘Mum!’ Bruce’s voice was indignant. ‘Mum, Kate is nipple-crippling me. Stop her!’

Harriet forced herself to keep her eyes on the road. ‘What do you mean – nipple-crippling?’

‘It’s when someone twists the bits on your chest,’ said Beth. ‘It teaches boys a lesson. Some girls do it at school.’

‘Well, we’re not doing it in
this
car. Kate, stop it immediately or I’ll tell Dad when he gets back. Now, be quiet, everyone. I want five minutes’ peace without
anyone
talking. OK?’

‘You’re so embarrassing, Mum,’ said Kate, reproachfully.

‘It’s a perk of the job,’ replied Harriet, smartly. ‘Just wait until you’re a mum. Embarrassing your kids is one of the few pleasures you get.’ She smiled at them in the mirror. ‘That’s a joke, by the way.’

‘Sorry about Mum, everyone,’ said Bruce. ‘She’s being really weird this week.’

NICK

‘Meanwhile, in America, the schoolboy holding his classmates hostage shows no sign of giving himself up.’

Nick checked the clock. Late again. They should have reached the roundabout by now. ‘Keep your eyes on the road Julie. That’s right. Keep looking in the mirror. Watch the Volvo that doesn’t know where it’s going.’

‘Roses. Look.’ Julie pointed to the lamp post on the left. ‘Last week, they were freesias. Now they’re roses. How romantic. Someone must have loved that person very much.’

He couldn’t work her out. Sometimes he couldn’t even mention death without his daughter’s eyes filling with tears, and at others she seemed to wallow in it by pointing out things like those bloody roses.

Amber had suggested that she was confused. It was one of the few sensible things she had said during their sessions. The rest of it was, frankly, the kind of amateur psychobabble that he could have got from a self-help book. So, why did he keep going? Part of him felt he owed it to Julie and to Juliana. Amber was a qualified psychotherapist. Maybe it was his fault she wasn’t helping him. He really would try to listen to her today and see if any of her stuff made sense. Nine o’clock, his appointment was. Straight after the school run.

‘Doing anything nice today, Dad?’ asked Julie, as she reversed swiftly into a space.

Yes, I’m seeing a counsellor. ‘Just work. Not so fast. Watch that Mini. OK, sharp left now.
Stop
.’

Julie leaned across to open his door and check how close she was to the kerb. Not close enough, thought Nick. With any luck, she’d fail, even though she’d passed the theory with ease last month.

‘Hi.’ It took Nick a few seconds to translate the grunt. Jason was standing next to him – too close: those pimples were sharply in focus. Julie’s eyes sparkled. ‘Hi, Jason. How are you doing?’

‘What do you
see
in him?’ Nick wanted to ask. But he couldn’t. He didn’t need a counsellor to tell him that that was the worst thing a dad could come out with.

‘Don’t worry about picking me up, Dad. Jason’s going to give me a lift home.’

Nick’s mouth went dry. Julie knew perfectly well she wasn’t allowed to be driven by other teenagers. It was a rule he had instituted when all her friends had started.

‘Actually, I’ll be passing, love – and, besides, we were going shopping. Remember?’

Julie gave him a challenging look from under her eyelashes. ‘Shopping! Well, that’s an offer I can’t turn down. Maybe tomorrow, then, Jason.’

Off they walked. Not quite hand in hand but close enough. Nick breathed a sigh of relief. He had got out of that one but he’d have to have another word with his daughter. He was damned if that boy was driving her anywhere.

9

HARRIET

Harriet would have liked to have turned down the radio in the waiting room, even though it was on low. It was usually tuned to Radio 2 to put people at ease, along with the cold water and coffee machines, the pile of magazines (surprisingly more up-to-date than those at the doctor’s surgery) and the posters on the wall. One showed a woman with her head in her hands, slumped over the kitchen table.
‘Battered but daren’t say anything?’
Another had a cartoon of a surprised baby in a thought bubble coming out of a woman’s head.
‘Pregnant?’

No chance of that, thought Harriet, wryly. When she had first started coming here, she had sat on the edge of the brown-upholstered chair, terrified in case someone she knew came in. Now she felt almost relaxed. There was so much she wanted to tell Monica. How stupid she felt about booking an appointment for highlights this week, followed by a manicure, because she still, after all he’d done, wanted to look good for Charlie – show him what he’d been missing and how she could get on without him. But also how much she yearned for him to put his arms round her and say it had all been a mistake. If only his phone calls had given her some indication of how he felt. But, on the whole, they were to the point. Sometimes warm and sometimes cool. So confusing. Such a mess.

‘You don’t happen to have change for a pound, do you?’

She looked up at the tall, broad-shouldered man in the brown suede jacket who was examining the coffee machine. Harriet felt a twinge of panic. He was familiar and she’d been so careful not to let anyone, apart from Pippa, know she was coming here. Seeing a counsellor was tantamount to admitting you couldn’t cope, and she didn’t want the whole world knowing that.

She looked down at the magazine. ‘Afraid not. I used my last coin in the car park.’

‘Never mind. I’ll have water instead. Sorry to bother you.’

He was nervous, she realised – picking up one magazine and then another.

‘Does it work for you?’

‘Sorry?’

‘The counselling.’ He grinned shyly. ‘Does it help?’

She was reluctant to be drawn into such intimacy with a near stranger. ‘Depends who you get, I think. My . . . er . . . counsellor has helped me.’

‘Mine hasn’t. I’ve been seeing her for three whole months but she doesn’t say anything. Just listens to me spouting.’

‘That’s what they’re meant to do. But then Monica . . . my counsellor will ask a question and it helps me formulate thoughts in my head that had been there all along although I hadn’t registered them.’

The man was nodding. ‘I can understand that. But Amber – she’s mine – repeats everything I tell her like a parrot. And then – can you believe this? – last week, she said, “I want to give you something – a gift.” Well, I thought that was a bit odd but then she said, “Imagine I’m wrapping up all your thoughts and giving them back to you. Then I want you to open them up and examine them as though you’re seeing them for the first time”.’

Harriet was taken aback. ‘That’s weird.’

‘Pure psychobabble.’ The man took a gulp of water, then looked at her again. ‘Listen, this is probably very incorrect of me and all that . . . but don’t I know you from somewhere?’

‘I was wondering the same thing,’ admitted Harriet.

‘You’re not a model, are you?’

For a chat-up line, that had to be the worst. Disappointed, she looked down at her magazine. ‘No.’

‘Sorry – it’s just that I’m a photographer. I tend to notice things – and not see the things I should sometimes. But I know I’ve seen you somewhere.’ His face cleared. ‘At school. St Theresa’s. I drop my daughter off every morning – well, she drops me off. Do you have a child there?’

‘Two. One is in year seven and the other in year nine.’ She leaned forward. ‘Look, I’m not being funny but I’d rather you didn’t tell anyone you’ve seen me here.’

He looked appalled. ‘Wouldn’t dream of it. I’d be grateful if you did the same.’

‘Of course.’ She smiled awkwardly. ‘Your daughter drops you off, you say. Is she learning to drive?’

He smiled ruefully. He was a very attractive man, thought Harriet, surprising herself. She had never, during her fourteen-year marriage to Charlie, looked at anyone else. But she felt unusually drawn to this nice man with the understanding greeny-blue eyes: he seemed so interested in what she had to say.

‘I’m trying to keep her a learner as long as possible. But since her mother died it’s one of the few things that has made Julie happy.’

So that was why he was here – bereavement counselling. The look on his face showed he could see she had made the connection. Something inside her made her want to put him at ease. ‘My husband’s left me. Well, not exactly “left me” but gone away for two months so we can think things over.’ Even as she spoke, she was horrified with herself for being so open.

‘That’s not very fair on you – or the kids. Can’t he make up his mind?’

That was exactly what Harriet had been asking herself since Charlie had left. She smiled faintly. ‘Apparently not. He says there isn’t anyone else.’

‘And you believe him?’

Harriet nodded emphatically. ‘Yes. That’s the one thing I’m sure about. Charlie wouldn’t lie to me. He’s not that kind of man.’