The Accidental Mother (16 page)

They were in the park, Sophie with her brand-new portable CD player that weighed ton. They’d just bought the new Manic Street Preachers CD, and they were sitting on the grass listening to it, turning up the volume as loud as it would go—which wasn’t very loud. Dressed entirely in black, they looked especially cross and sullen as they listened because that seemed the most appropriate expression for listening to the Manic Street Preachers, who were, it seemed, quite cross and sullen about most things. But when “Motorcycle Emptiness” came on, Sophie had been unable to stop herself from humming along under her breath and tapping her bare toes against the rough grass in time to the catchy tune.

Carrie maintained her scowl as she studied the CD’s sleeve. “Yeah, too fucking right, Sylvia,” Carrie said.

“Sorry, who?” Sophie asked, looking over her shoulder, a little slowly because just at that moment she had been wondering what the chances were of her getting James Dean Bradfield to sleep with her, and if he did what the chances were of him being cheered up by it, and if he was would she still fancy him so much, as his sullen good looks were at least half of his appeal.

“Sylvia Plath, dummy,” Carrie said, rolling her eyes. “On the cover under the title ‘Motorcycle Emptiness’ there’s a line of her poetry, about God. About there being no God to be precise.” Carrie read Sophie the line, which she couldn’t quite remember now but which she knew she hadn’t really “got.” Sophie had blinked at her friend from behind her shades.

“You are such a plebe,” Carrie said, rolling her eyes. “And anyway, James Dean Bradfield wouldn’t sleep with you, you’re too middle-class.”

Carrie sighed and flopped back onto the grass. “There is no God, Soph,” she said. “There is no order or truth. Nothing in the world is fair or just. You just have to fight, you have to fight for everything you want in this world, because no one, no one will give it to you. Not even God. Especially not God.”

Sophie sat up and looked closely at Carrie. She realized that her usually effortlessly cheerful friend wasn’t feigning anger. She was genuinely furious.

“What’s up?” Sophie said simply.

“It’s Mum, isn’t it? It’s always Mum. Nothing I do is good enough for her. She’s never just proud of me. She’s never just happy for me. And now this course I’m starting—even that’s not good enough. Never mind it’s one of the most competitive art courses in the country. She wants me to change to something more academic, like history. It’s like she’s my mum and she doesn’t know me. She knows nothing about me. Why can’t she just support me for once instead of throwing flipping God in my face every five minutes and trying to control everything I do? I just want to be me. I can’t wait until I can get as far away from her as possible and have my
own
life, a normal happy family life, and be free of her for good.” Carrie shook her head as if an angry wasp had somehow got inside.

“She’s not that bad,” Sophie said. “I think she’s going to miss you. I think she’s scared about you going.”

“I know,” Carrie said. “So why is she doing her best to make me so keen to leave?”

Sophie shrugged. “I don’t know, Carrie,” she said. “Your mum is even weirder than mine.”

“Well, I’ll tell you one thing,” Carrie said. “From this moment on, I’m never going to do a thing I don’t want to do. I’m never going to miss another chance, another experience or feeling. I’m going to take everything I can out of life, and whenever I forget or feel like I can’t be bothered or look like I might be turning into Mum—God forbid—I’m going to play this song to remind me. A song about living life to the fullest.”

They both paused and listened to the exhilarating guitar riff once again.

“Actually, I think it’s about political apathy and oppression,” Sophie said.

“Yeah, I know,” Carrie said, winking at her. “But it’s got a rocking good chorus.”

It took a few more seconds for the trio to repeat to fade, but when they had finished and Izzy had covered her face and giggled and Bella had kissed her grandma’s cheek with no-nonsense firmness, Mrs. Stiles did seem to be a little happier and more calm.

“You should be on TV,” Sophie said, applauding gently.

“It was Carrie’s favorite song,” Mrs. Stiles said. “A load of old rubbish, of course, but she and the girls sang it all the time.”

“Not all the time,” Bella corrected her, with her usual passion for total accuracy. “It’s our cheering up song. I don’t really know what it means but…”

“It’s got a rocking good chorus?” Sophie said. Bella nodded and smiled.

Sophie felt more or less in control as she walked the girls to the bus stop. Her equilibrium was restored after the gathering tide of feeling that had threatened to breach her defenses at Mrs. Stiles’s house. She felt as if she knew how to deal with Louis now, as if somehow Carrie had told her. She knew she couldn’t shut the door on him, because after all, she had been the one to open it. She knew that she had to let him in for the girls’ sake, and that what was best for them was what was important, no matter who else it hurt. This might be their only chance to know their father; she couldn’t stand in the way of that. But she also knew that they needed someone to guide them and support them as they got to know him and as the possibilities of a future with him opened up. They’d need someone if, as Mrs. Stiles predicted, fatherhood was too much for him and he decided he couldn’t take the children on after all. They’d need another option.

For some reason, ever since Sophie had spoken to Louis on the phone, she had felt doubly angry with him. She was angry with him for going, she was angry with him coming. It was an impossible way to feel, but she couldn’t let it go. None of this should have been her responsibility. If he had been where he should have been, looking after his family, then maybe none of this,
none
of this would have happened. Maybe Carrie would still be alive a few hundred miles and just a phone call away.

When Sophie tried to imagine what effect Louis’s return would have, there were all sorts of obstacles, all sorts of corners that she couldn’t see around, but she knew one thing. The girls’ atheist mother had made her their godmother for a reason, to stand by them in times of need, and Sophie was going to do it. Not because she had to, she discovered as they waited at the bus stop, but because she wanted to. And she wanted to not only for the children, whom she had gradually started to admire and even like, but for Carrie, whom she was slowly beginning to miss from the outside in, like a spring thaw. Sophie was missing her friend—fierce, strong, and independent Carrie, who had been her best friend once, on that sunny afternoon in Highbury, lying on the grass, playing the air guitar.

Carrie, who was more alive to her now that she had been for years.

It was almost dark when they got back to the flat. The pale winter sun had sunk beneath the bare tree branches that laced the horizon, leaving the cold gray sky with a faint amber glow. Sophie stopped by her much missed black VW Golf with cream leather interior and patted it fondly. And then she had an idea. She thought about the dog book and the chapter she had read on puppy car sickness. She thought about her CD collection, which was spread mostly over the floor in front of the passenger seat and contained the Manic Street Preachers’ greatest hits.

“This is my car,” she said to Izzy. Izzy looked at the car.

“She’s got a name—can you guess what it is?”

Izzy blinked and looked at it. “Car?” she said after a moment.

Sophie shook her head. “It’s Phoebe,” she said. Of course the car hadn’t ever had a name in its life. Sophie loved her Golf because it went very fast on the highway and still felt like it was cruising. “She told me last night that she’s lonely, and she knows you don’t want to go for a ride in her or anything like that, but she wondered if you fancied just sitting in her for a bit because it would really cheer her up.”

Izzy’s face became deadly serious. “No thank you, Phoebe,” she said.

The main difference between three-year-olds and dogs, Sophie realized, was that three-years-olds-talked back. “Never give up until you’ve cleared that first hurdle,” the dog book said, so Sophie persisted. She opened Phoebe’s rear passenger door and nodded at Bella to get in. “Well, how about if Bella sits in the back and I sit in the passenger seat here, like this”—Sophie opened the front passenger door and perched on the seat sideways—“with my feet on the pavement, and
you
sit on my lap? That would cheer Phoebe up no end.”

“That’s a good idea,” Bella said, climbing in and sitting on the edge of the seat, her legs dangling over the side. Izzy remained motionless on the pavement, and although she was less than a foot away, she suddenly seemed almost out of reach.

“I was in the car with Mummy,” Izzy said in a low voice. “And there was a big bang and I was a bit shaken up, wasn’t I?”

Sophie bit her lip. “I know,” she said.

“And Mummy went out of the car,” Izzy said. “And she hasn’t come back yet. Is she coming back?”

Sophie felt the waters close over her head and suddenly realized exactly what the expression
out of your depth
really meant. She had been prepared for crying and tantrums and holding of breath, but she hadn’t been prepared for this. She looked over her shoulder at Bella, who sat perfectly still, her mouth and chin tucked into the neck of her coat, her eyes downcast.

“No, Izzy,” Sophie said after a moment, because there was no other answer. “Mummy isn’t coming back. Not because she doesn’t love you or Bella or want to be with you but because she’s gone now to be in the sky and the stars—” Sophie stopped, because she realized that Izzy took everything she said quite literally. She was now squinting up at the sky, looking for stars that had been blotted out by the city’s orange glow.

“But I know one thing,” Sophie said, regaining Izzy’s attention. “Mummy wouldn’t want you to be scared of anything, because you are such a very brave girl, and I know you don’t want Phoebe to be sad, do you? So why don’t you come and sit on my lap, and we’ll sing ‘Motorcycle Emptiness,’ okay?”

Izzy looked confused.

“She means the little car song,” Bella said out of the half dark. “We used to sing it a lot in the morning in our Mini on the way to school.”

“The little car song,” Sophie repeated.

Izzy took a step forward and climbed awkwardly onto Sophie’s knees, winding her fist into Sophie’s hair for support. She looked around the interior or the car. “Ready, Phoebe?” she asked the car.

“Vroom, vroom, ready,” Sophie said in a gravelly voice out of the corner of her mouth.

Izzy started humming first, and then Bella, who was the only one who knew all the words—or at least Carrie’s version of the words—chimed in. Awkwardly at first, Sophie joined in here and there. Gradually the mumbles and humming grew louder and louder until they finished the song on a rowdy crescendo.

“Yay!” Sophie said, applauding with her arms still around Izzy’s middle.

Izzy smiled. “Did you like that, Phoebe?” she said. “Do you feel all better now, Car?”

“Vrooom, yes I do,” Sophie said in her newfound car voice. And to think only a few weeks ago she was chairing meetings of international import in boardrooms. Still, you did what you needed to do. “Do you want to come for a ride with me next time? Um…vrooom?”

Izzy climbed off Sophie’s lap and hopped back onto the pavement. “No thank you, Phoebe,” she said. “But I will come and see you again soon. I promise.”

Sophie’s downstairs neighbor emerged from the communal front door and walked briskly down the steps just as Izzy chimed, “Please let us go in now, we are ever so cold,” with Dickensian feebleness. The neighbor cast Sophie a chilly look over her shoulder and headed off to her Saturday night yoga class.

Izzy was already in bed waiting for Bella to tell her the next part of her story when Bella came into the kitchen with her glass for some fresh water. Sophie took it, tipped the old water away, and refilled it.

“That was a good idea today, Aunty Sophie. With the car, I mean. I think you helped Izzy a bit,” Bella said.

Sophie looked at Bella and, with a surge of newfound confidence concerning child/dog psychology, asked her a question. “Listen—are you okay? Because, you know, if you wanted to talk about your mum…or your dad even…”

“I’m fine,” Bella said, taking the glass carefully out of Sophie’s hand, her expression completely neutral.

“Look, Bella,” Sophie began. “All I’m saying is that—”

“I’m fine, Aunty Sophie,” Bella said, smiling just to prove it, with a wide-toothed mirthless grin. “Come on, it’s the pen-ult-i-mate part of my story tonight.” Bella used the word she had heard the BBC announcer use about half an hour before with considerable care.

“Okay.” Sophie said. “That sounds exciting.”

Later, thrilled and relieved that Blossom the fairy pony looked like she would make it back to her home with the mermaids by the sea after all, Sophie went back into the living room and fished the dog book out from underneath some cushions. Artemis came out of the kitchen and gave her a passing glance before curling up on her chair and turning her back on Sophie just to make sure she didn’t make any more reckless stroking attempts.

“What do you reckon, Artemis.” Sophie asked the cat’s back as she flicked through the pages. “Do you think there’s anything in here about telling your abandoned puppy that Daddy’s coming back?” Of course there wasn’t, so Sophie threw the book on the floor and stared up at the ceiling. He was coming, so she had to tell them. But how? Then Sophie had, in her opinion, a quite brilliant idea.