The Flavours of Love (12 page)

I think he was trying to get it to you but didn’t manage to send it before he died. I hope you realise this is a genuine communication from someone who was there.

I’m writing this letter because I hope it will be of some comfort to you. I hope now you know it wasn’t how it sounded – it wasn’t a viciously planned murder, it was a sad misunderstanding between two friends.

We were very close friends, we cared for each other, deeply. I am only sorry it ended so tragically.

Please take care of your beautiful children. Life is short and precious, and we should cherish every moment we have with the people we love whenever we can.

Kind regards

A

The
Mr Bromsgrove is sitting today.

He stands when we enter and shakes my hand, firmly, formally, almost as though he hasn’t met me before. As I take my hand away, I admit to myself that this is another of those situations where I don’t know how to be, how to act.

‘
Be yourself
,’ Joel would say to me if I was stressed about something.

That’s easy, if you know who you are
, I’d silently reply.

‘
And who you are is amazing
,’ he’d add because sometimes, just sometimes, Joel could read my mind. He could look at me and know what he had to say to make me believe in myself.

Be yourself
.

Who am I in this moment? Oh yes, a widow with a knocked-up teenager; one of those don’t-have-a-clue mothers that are only fit for condemnation.

After our hellos, we all sit in our designated seats. Phoebe is nearer to me this time, not through choice, obviously. She hasn’t spoken this morning. She grunted at me when I asked if she was going to eat anything for breakfast; she gurned at her brother when he asked her if she was going back to school for the rest of the week; she shrugged at Aunty Betty when she asked if Phoebe’s school hairstyle was always afro-puff pigtails. Any meaningful communication had been conducted between her and her mobile. She knew she wasn’t meant to use it at the table and I’d been tempted to take it off her, but decided not to. I needed her onside. If we’re going to work out a way through this, I needed to not alienate her.

Especially since that letter arrived. Mostly unread, but what I have
read has told me I need to not alienate Phoebe right now. She, like me, could be in danger.

‘Mrs Mackleroy, it’s good to see you,’ the headteacher says and brings me away from the cream A4 sheets of paper back to the present and his modern, bright office. I glance at the black lettering on the bronze nameplate on his desk, something I didn’t notice the other day. Or maybe I did because his name – Mr Newton – isn’t a surprise to me. I simply didn’t take it in – too busy being shocked, I think.

Mr Newton is lying if he is trying to convince himself, me or anyone else it’s nothing short of a disaster that he’s having this conversation with a parent. I’m sure he’s had this conversation before, but that doesn’t make it any easier. I’ve had the conversation many, many times before about my husband dying, about who might have done it, about why the police investigation never found the killer, but it’s never got any easier. In fact, I search the lined face of the middle-aged-crisis-ridden man in front of me and wonder if, like me, he finds these conversations harder the more he has them.

‘How are you, Phoebe?’ He is tender and compassionate when talking to her, highlighting how clipped and hard-edged his manner is towards me. Why wouldn’t he treat me like that, though, when I am the woman whose daughter was too scared to tell her she was pregnant, who allowed her daughter to get into that condition in the first place? They blame me. Of course they do. And they’ve probably been imagining the horrors I’ve subjected Phoebe to in the intervening hours since leaving here.

My instinct is to tell him that I wouldn’t hurt her. To explain that while I don’t know why she couldn’t tell me herself about this, it’s not because I would hurt her. Even when she’s done something awful in the past I haven’t hurt her.

‘I’m OK,’ Phoebe says, proving that she’s capable of speaking nicely to people.

‘Good, good,’ Mr Newton replies, and manages a not-very-subtle look to
The
Mr Bromsgrove.
Good, good, she didn’t beat her
, he’s obviously thinking at his colleague.
Or least, nowhere the bruises can be seen
. ‘Well,
are you able to tell me what decisions you’ve made about Phoebe’s … condition?’ he asks, focused on me again and back to snipping the edges off his words.

I turn my head to Phoebe. ‘Have you made any decisions, Phoebe?’ I ask.

All eyes on her and in response she silently lowers her head and stares at her feet.

‘Understandably, Phoebe hasn’t wanted to discuss much of anything with me since I found out,’ I confess. ‘I think she’s still in a bit of shock, so she’s considering her options. We had a doctor’s appointment on Wednesday, and we’ll probably be having another next week, when hopefully we’ll be in a better position to decide how we proceed.’

The
Mr Bromsgrove and Mr Newton both look at me as if I have grown another head or two. I’ve done something wrong, clearly. Possibly I have not taken proper control of the situation and laid down the law about what was going to happen next, maybe I’ve been too hard on her by making a doctor’s appointment, or maybe, just maybe, whatever I do is not going to be right for these two. Maybe, being me, being in this situation is always going to mean I am in the wrong. I used to hear that phrase: ‘A mother’s place is in the wrong’ and smile to myself, understanding the vague sentiment behind it. I never realised that I would be living it at some point, that other people would be rephrasing it to: ‘Saffron Mackleroy’s place is in the wrong’.

A knock on the door accompanies an ‘
Ah-he-hem!
’ from Mr Newton clearing his throat and we all wonder for a moment if he’s created that sound. Then it comes again:
Rat-a-tat-tat!

Mr Newton knits his whole face into a frown as he looks up at the door, bemused at the interruption. ‘Yes?’ he calls.

His secretary, Ms Taylor, opens the door and appears in the doorway, purposely filling the gap with her slender frame. She has the manner of a woman who is trying to hide something outside from those of us in the office.

‘Erm, Mr Bromsgrove, may I have a quick word with you outside?’
she says, nervously. She keeps moving her body, blocking something from being seen, or, rather, stopping someone from seeing into the room.

Perplexed,
The
Mr Bromsgrove replies, ‘Not really, Ms Taylor, we’re in the middle of a meet—’

‘Dad!’ A boy’s voice calls out from behind the school secretary when he hears
The
Mr Bromsgrove speak. ‘Dad, I need to talk to you.’

The
Mr Bromsgrove stands, embarrassment pouring off him like sweat off a man who has just run a four-hour marathon on a summer’s day. ‘Curtis?’ he says.

Mr Newton throws himself backwards in his chair, irritation and contempt plain on his once flabby face.
I’m surrounded by amateurs
, he’s thinking with an unsubtle look of disapproval in my direction.

Resigned, but not a little disgruntled, Ms Taylor steps aside and allows the boy into the inner sanctum. In walks a tall young man, impeccably turned out in his school uniform, a short, neat haircut, his skin a gorgeous hazelnut brown and large, inquisitive eyes. Apart from the lighter shade of his skin and the absence of the gold-rimmed glasses, he is almost a miniature replica of
The
Mr Bromsgrove, right down to the way he walks and sets his face as his eyes scan the room to see what is going on.

The boy, Curtis, now that he has gained entry, ignores everyone and goes to what he came for: Phoebe. Their eyes lock and horror immediately overtakes her features, settling in her eyes, in the way she holds her body. She shakes her head really fast at him.

‘I’m doing it,’ he says. ‘I don’t care.’

‘No,’ Phoebe replies. ‘No, don’t.’

Anyone would think they were conducting this intimate, short-handed conversation alone.

‘
Yes
,’ he declares. His voice has broken, but it does not have the slants and nuances of maturity that are added by experiences of the world. He is tall but does not have the height of a fully grown man. He is good-looking, but in a youthful way that will develop with time.

I study him and my daughter, watch them talk verbally and nonverbally.
The language of their bodies shows a certain closeness, a familiarity of non-physical touching.

‘
No
! Just
don’t
!’ Phoebe insists.

He is on his knees now, crouching at her side, staring into her eyes, trying to communicate with her.

‘Excuse me, Mr Bromsgrove, perhaps you would care to explain what you think you’re doing in here?’

‘Yes, Curtis, what do you think you’re doing?’
The
Mr Bromsgrove says.

My gaze shifts back to the two older men. ‘Do you two really not understand?’ I ask, because no one can be that clueless. The two older male faces that were full of judgement and disdain merely a few minutes ago swivel towards me with confusion.

‘OK,’ I say, stupefied by them. ‘This young man, Curtis, is the one responsible for Phoebe’s “condition” as you called it, Mr Newton.’

If I didn’t know how awful it felt to be in that situation, how shocking and sickening and frightening, a trickle of Schadenfreude, pleasure at the misfortune of others, would have run through my veins at the look dawning on
The
Mr Bromsgrove’s face. But I take no pleasure from this moment. No one needs to find out that no matter how hard they’ve tried, they’ve let their children down.

‘Is that true?’
The
Mr Bromsgrove asks. I’m not sure if he is questioning Phoebe or his son but my daughter lowers her head as tears spring into her eyes. Young Bromsgrove stands to face his father, his stance one of a prize-fighter about to go toe to toe with his greatest opponent.

‘Yeah, Dad, it’s true,’ he says.

And for a moment I think I’m going to stand up and punch his stupid lights out.

Outside the school, I lean against my car and centre myself.

By ‘centre’ I mean I take a moment to stop the shaking, to stop my mind going to those words on that letter which will cast me back to reliving the events of eighteen months ago all over again.

Phoebe is in class, having insisted that she wanted to stay at school. Curtis, in the year above, is in class, too. The office after the revelation had exploded with quiet pandemonium: Mr Newton had virtually kicked Mr Bromsgrove to my side of the desk with stern looks to go and stand with his son. (He was obviously stripped of his
The
and downgraded from heart-throb, ‘good guy who teens confide in’ status to common or garden bad parent.) Phoebe sobbed for a bit, not loudly, but enough to have Curtis drop to his knees again and awkwardly encircle her with his arm, putting his head against hers and whispering that it would all be OK. Mr Bromsgrove, diminished without his
The
, stood near the pair of them, impotent and confused. I’d watched them all like I watched myself relive the early weeks and months of losing Joel last night – there but with no real role in it. Sometimes it feels like no one would notice if I fell off the face of the planet.

Except, Kevin. He’ll notice I’m not there. He will be sitting in his little glass-walled office, looking at the clock he’s had installed on the wall to the right of my desk, noticing with every tick of the red second hand that I am not there.

I’d wanted to take Phoebe home, to cuddle up with her and talk to her about this guy Curtis, ask her again how she felt about him. Ask her again if she had any idea what she wanted to do. Not what she wanted, though. She wanted to get back to normal, stay at school, be away from me.

‘Mrs Mackleroy,’ Mr Bromsgrove shouts to me from the school gates. I pause in opening my car door and stand waiting for him to approach.

‘I hoped I hadn’t missed you,’ he says. He is a little breathless because he’s probably run from wherever he was in the maze that was the school. Understandably, neither he nor Mr Newton offered to show me out. They allowed me to walk Phoebe in the general direction of her class and then probably hoped I’d drop off the face of the Earth. ‘If I were you, I don’t think I’d be able to simply drive away, either.’ He smiles a smile that would make a couple of dozen other playground mothers swoon. He is undeniably good-looking.

I say nothing to him because his pleasantness and smile have been so absent since all this began.

Disconcerted by my lack of response to his small talk, Mr Bromsgrove tries again: ‘Would you like to go out and have a drink so we can talk about this situation?’

‘Not especially, no.’

He blinks at me in surprise, obviously not the reply he was expecting from a mother as bad as me. I am supposed to be grateful, I think, that he wants to talk to me at all, and desperate to share this with him. Mr Bromsgrove shuffles his surprise away behind a serious expression. ‘OK, how about if I put it this way – I would like to talk to you about the fact our children have not only had sex, but they’ve potentially created our grandchild and what that will mean for our families. I would like to do that in a non-school environment. Would you be so kind as to meet me at eight-thirty tomorrow at The Cuthbert, which is near where you live, I believe?’

‘Fine,’ I say. Phoebe talks to him, she talks to his son, it could help me to talk to him, find out what she’s thinking. ‘Seeing as you asked so nicely.’

‘Eight-thirty, then.’

I nod and don’t bother with goodbyes before I get into my car and leave. Mr Bromsgrove is openly puzzled as I drive away. Probably because his good looks let him get away with treating most people
however it suits his mood. And if his mood changes, if he decides the person is now in favour or has fallen out of favour, they usually accept it, allow him to dictate the terms of their interactions because, well, he’s the good-looking, confident one. I am not most people.