The Marriage Mender (3 page)

‘Hall, please, if you’re horse racing.’ I smiled. ‘I’ve got hot potatoes about to come out of the Aga.’

‘You heard your mother,’ said Chris, galloping into the hall, Matilda clinging on to his neck and grinning.

Josh came back downstairs, loaded up and looking somewhat like a roadie. ‘Right,’ he said, ‘I’ll see you later.’

‘You’re gonna miss Mouse Trap,’ Matilda shouted out from Chris’s back.

‘I’ll get over it.’

Matilda poked her tongue out at him.

‘If you need me to give you another lesson, just call,’ Chris said to Josh.

‘No chance. You are so playing Mouse Trap all afternoon,’ Josh called out before pulling the door shut behind him.

* * *

Of course, the thing with Mouse Trap is it takes so long to set up that by the time you’re ready, you’ve lost the will to live – let alone play a board game.

We’d been at it for about half an hour when there was a knock on the door. Usually, Matilda would leap up and dash for it before Chris and I even moved. But she was at the particularly delicate stage of replacing the mouse trap, and when I said it would probably be the window cleaner coming back for his money, she decided she was staying put. I got up from my cushion on the floor, being careful not to jog the board, and stopped to pick up a ten-pound note from the pot in the hall, at the same time making a mental note to check before I went back to the game that I had enough icing sugar in the cupboard to finish decorating Josh’s cake for tomorrow.

I opened the door, ten-pound note in hand. A dark-haired woman stared back at me, her smoke-coloured eyes rimmed with kohl. She was wearing skinny jeans and a black top and holding a large present wrapped in black and silver paper. I noticed her hands were shaking. I knew who she was straight away, even though it had been years since I’d looked at her photo, which had been taken years previously. You don’t forget cheekbones like that. And besides, I was reminded of them every time I looked at Josh.

I watched her look me up and down. The corners of her
mouth turned up slightly, whether in an attempt at friendliness or simply satisfaction that she was still the brightest star in the sky, it was hard to say.

‘Hi, is Josh in?’ she asked.

‘Er, no, he’s not.’

‘Oh, is there a time I can call back to see him? Only I’d like to give him this myself.’

I was taken aback by her gall. She still hadn’t even introduced herself. I might not have had any idea who she was. She didn’t know who I was, for that matter, although she could probably guess. I wasn’t sure what to say. I couldn’t send her packing without consulting Chris first. And I couldn’t accept the present without checking with him either. She was back. And whichever way you looked at it, Chris needed to know.

‘Chris!’ I called from the hallway. I tried to do it in a casual tone so as not to bring Matilda running out with him. But at the same time I couldn’t help thinking I should have tried to warn him in some way. No one should be flung from an innocent game of Mouse Trap unwittingly into the jaws of their ex. It wasn’t right.

She flinched as I said his name. The corners of her mouth returned to neutral, her eyes narrowed slightly. I thought for a second that she might simply dump the present and make a run for it. Fight or flight. She stood her ground, though, until he appeared behind me in the hallway. His footsteps faltered as he caught sight of her. He stopped dead behind me. I felt his breath fast and shallow on the back of my neck before he spoke.

‘Lydia.’

She smiled at him. Not at her full wattage, I was sure, more of a seductive glow.

‘Look, I know I should have called or something.’

Chris was in front of me now. On the edge of the doorstep, his face doing a good impression of a question mark. Many question marks, to be honest.

‘What …? Why …? I don’t understand.’

‘I wanted to give him his present,’ she said.

‘Well, you can’t. He’s not here.’

‘I know. She’s already said.’ Lydia nodded in my direction but didn’t bother to remove her gaze from Chris’s face.

‘You can’t just turn up like this,’ said Chris. ‘What if Josh had been here?’

‘Then I could have given him the present.’

‘And what would you have said?’

‘The truth,’ she said. ‘It’s usually the best thing to start with.’

‘Jesus,’ said Chris, shaking his head.

They paused for a second. It was long enough for my mediation training to get the better of the lurching feeling in my stomach.

‘Look,’ I said, ‘I don’t think this is the time or the place for this conversation. We’ve all had a bit of a shock. How about we take the present for Josh and let him decide what he wants to do.’

‘OK,’ she said with a shrug. ‘There’s a note inside the
card. Could you give it to him, please? Make sure he reads it. It’s got my contact details on.’

For a second I thought Chris was going to tell her where to stick her present and card. Maybe he would have. But at that moment Matilda came out into the hall.

‘Oohh, that’s a big present,’ she said. ‘Is it for Josh?’

I saw Lydia look at her and straight away back to me. Presumably spotting the maternal resemblance but perhaps seeing Chris’s eyes too. Because for the first time that afternoon she appeared to have been rendered speechless.

‘Yes, it is,’ I said, filling the silence. ‘The lady’s just leaving it for him.’ I took the present from Lydia, my look warning her not to say anything, give any clue as to who she was.

The box was heavy. Whatever it was, I suspected it wasn’t cheap.

‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘We’ll be in touch.’

Lydia looked at Chris and then back to me and nodded, turned and walked out of the garden. She stopped just outside the gate and lit a cigarette with shaking hands before carrying on down the lane.

I shut the door, needing to feel safe inside my own home. I wasn’t any more, though. None of us were. That much was clear. I only had myself to blame. Chris had offered to move when we got married, but I’d said no because I hadn’t wanted to uproot Josh. It was a big enough deal acquiring a stepmother without being kicked out of the only home you’d ever known as well. I hadn’t wanted
to be one of those stepmothers out of fairy tales. I’d wanted to break the mould. Yet in doing that I’d left myself open to attack.

I turned to smile at Matilda, knowing we had to pretend that everything was fine for her sake.

‘Right,’ I said, ‘I do believe I was in the process of beating you at Mouse Trap.’

‘What do you think it is?’ asked Matilda, ignoring my taunt and nodding towards the present.

‘I don’t know, love,’ I said, putting the box in the tall hallway cupboard in the hope that it would be a case of out of sight, out of mind.

‘Who was that lady? Why haven’t I seen her before?’

I hesitated, unsure whether to let Chris answer. He remained silent.

‘Someone Daddy and Josh knew years ago,’ I said. ‘Now, let’s get on with that game.’

Matilda nodded and ran back into the lounge. I turned to look at Chris. His face was ashen, his eyes burning fiercely.

‘She has no right to see him,’ he said. ‘No right whatsoever.’

‘Listen,’ I whispered, taking hold of his hand and squeezing hard, ‘try not to worry. We’ll work out what to do. We’ll talk later, when Matilda’s gone to bed, OK?’

He nodded and tried his best to smile. I followed him back into the lounge, realising I still had the ten-pound note for the window cleaner in my hand.

* * *

It was gone eight before Matilda finally went to bed. As soon as I came down after reading to her, I went out the back door. I knew exactly where Chris would be. The wooden bench in the back garden faced west, allowing huge vistas of the sunsets over our beautiful part of the Pennines. The sun had set more than an hour ago but Chris was still sitting there, soaking up the faintest trace of colours left in the sky. Staring out into the darkness beyond.

I sat down next to him. Put my hand on his thigh. Wanting to let him know I was there, but not attempting to wrench him out of wherever he was right now. It was bad enough for me, coming face to face with the woman who’d come before me. Who, for all I knew, had sat on this very bench with him, sharing this view. But what it must be like for him to have the mother of his son turn up after all these years. The maelstrom which it must have unleashed inside him, I couldn’t begin to imagine. I sat with him a while longer before I finally spoke.

‘She’s never been in touch? Not until today?’

He shook his head. Closed his eyes for a second. ‘I did what she asked,’ he said. ‘I never came after her or tried to find her. And now she decides she wants to bloody see him.’

We sat silently for a minute or two. Each immersed in our own thoughts.

‘What do you want to do?’ I asked eventually. ‘About the present, I mean.’

‘Personally I’d chuck it off the edge of the crags, but I guess that’s not one of the options.’

I smiled at him and stroked his leg again. ‘If she’s come here once, she’ll presumably come again if she doesn’t hear anything. We can’t just stick our heads in the sand. Josh could be here next time.’

‘I don’t want her anywhere near him.’

I took hold of his hand. ‘Maybe Josh won’t want to see her, anyway. The key thing is that we ask him. Give him the present so that he can make his own mind up. Can you imagine what he’d say if he found out she’d turned up and we hadn’t told him?’

Chris looked at me. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘It’s difficult, that’s all. What if he wants to see her?’

‘Would that be such a bad thing?’

He gave me one of his ‘What do you think?’ looks.

‘Maybe she’s changed,’ I said. ‘People do.’

Chris made a ‘
pppfffft
’ sound and shook his head.

‘Well, let’s wait and see, shall we? We don’t even know where she’s living. It might be a flying visit, and she’ll be off again.’

Chris sat for a while, staring up at the sky. It was getting cool now. I pulled my cardigan further across me.

‘OK,’ he said. ‘But if you don’t mind, could you talk to Josh? I’m not sure I’d say the right things. Not sure I’d be capable of saying anything, really. I’m pretty numb with it all.’

‘Sure,’ I said, rubbing his arm. ‘Tonight, when he comes home?’

Chris shook his head. ‘No, I’m not having anything spoiling his birthday. Tomorrow. After Mum’s been and Matilda’s gone to bed.’

‘OK,’ I said, standing up. ‘You coming in?’

‘In a bit,’ he replied.

I nodded, kissed him on the lips and walked slowly back indoors.

I should have realised that Matilda would say something. She lulled me into a false sense of security by chatting away about a random selection of innocuous subjects on Sunday morning without so much as a passing reference to the present.

But as soon as Josh appeared in the kitchen she chirped up, ‘A lady came to the house yesterday with a massive present for you.’

Chris put his mug down heavily on the table.

Josh looked at him. ‘What lady?’ he asked.

‘The pretty lady with long dark hair,’ said Matilda.

‘Oh yeah, I know loads of those,’ replied Josh.

‘You do know her. Mummy said you and Daddy knew her years ago.’

Josh turned to look at me. There was no way we were going to hold this conversation back until the evening.

‘Right, Matilda,’ I said, deciding a diversionary tactic was needed, ‘hadn’t you better go and get ready?’

‘Ready for what?’

‘Swimming. Daddy’s taking you to the family fun session.’

‘Yay!’ said Matilda, throwing her arms around Chris.

He looked up at me, no doubt ruing the loss of his Sunday-paper-reading time but also realising what I was trying to do.

‘Yep,’ he said, taking a last slurp of coffee, ‘and if you get a move on, we might even have time to go to the scooter park beforehand.’

Matilda disappeared to her bedroom and returned with her swimming bag and scooter helmet in record time.

‘Right, then,’ said Chris, bending to give me a kiss, ‘I’ll see you later.’

I could hear the tightness in his voice as he said it. He looked at Josh – a slow, regretful look – and patted him on the shoulder before he left. A forlorn gesture, but a gesture all the same.

Quiet descended on the house.

Josh sat down at the table. ‘So who’s the woman?’

I sat down next to him.

He knew about his mother. Chris had answered the inevitable questions when he was growing up. He had photos of her somewhere that Chris had given him when he was younger, feeling the need to make her tangible, so she wasn’t up there with Father Christmas and the Tooth Fairy as someone you couldn’t be one hundred per cent
certain existed, because no one had ever actually seen them.

I had no idea if he still looked at the photographs. If he thought about her, wondered about trying to find her one day. I’d done my best to fill the gap but I’d never tried to replace her. I’d always been Alison to him, not ‘Mum’. And here I was, about to bring the past crashing rudely and unrequested into his present.

‘It was your mum.’

I said it as gently as possible, but sometimes words weigh so heavily that it doesn’t matter if you breathe them out, the impact is still the same.

Josh stared at me, his mouth gaping open. ‘My mum? She came here? Why?’

‘To see you, Josh. She wanted to give you a present.’

‘But she hasn’t wanted to see me for like virtually my entire life. Why is she bothered now?’

The hurt was seeping out of him. Collecting in a pool under his chair. I wanted to hug him to me, as I had done when he was younger, but I wasn’t sure if I could do that any more.

I squeezed his arm instead. ‘It doesn’t mean she wasn’t bothered, Josh. Maybe she had problems to sort out.’

‘Must have been bloody big problems to take nearly sixteen years to sort …’ He sat quietly for a bit before curiosity got the better of him. ‘What did she say? Did you see her?’

‘Yeah, I answered the door. She seemed fine. A bit nervous, but that’s hardly surprising. She said there’s a note
inside the card with the present. She asked that you read it.’

He said nothing for a few moments. His brow was furrowed, his hands clenched. ‘Where is it? The present, I mean.’

‘It’s in the hall cupboard. Would you like me to get it for you?’

He nodded. Like Edmund being offered Turkish delight by the White Witch and knowing he shouldn’t take it, but being unable to resist.

I brought the present in and laid it on the kitchen table. Josh didn’t open it first, though. He took the envelope off the front and tore across the top. The card had an arty, graffiti-style ‘Happy Birthday’ on the front. He opened it; the letter fell out on to his lap.

He sat there for a minute looking at it, picked it up and put it down again before passing it to me. ‘Can you read it, please?’ he asked.

‘Are you sure?’

He nodded. I opened the pieces of paper. I was struck instantly by the writing. She wrote in what appeared to be a black fountain pen. The letters were tall and beautifully formed with flourishes on the loops. It looked like a work of art, not a hastily scrawled note.

‘ “Dear Josh,” ’ I began, ‘ “you probably hate me – if you know I even exist, that is. I understand that. I wish I could explain why I did what I did, but I’m not sure I can. I’m not going to try to justify it and I don’t want to make excuses. All I’ll say is that I wasn’t thinking straight at the time.
I was pretty messed up. And the trouble with being messed up is that you do things you should never have done and then afterwards, when you’re not so messed up, you wish you could take them back. But you can’t, and nor can you explain to the person you hurt why you did it.” ’

I glanced over at Josh. He was sitting staring at his hands. He nodded for me to continue.

‘ “What I want you to know is that I didn’t get in touch because I thought it would be best for you, not because I didn’t want to. I’d already screwed up big time and I was worried that, if I came back, I’d do the same thing again. And I knew that your dad would be doing a brilliant job of looking after you.

‘“But I don’t want you to think that I didn’t get in touch because I wasn’t thinking about you. I’ve thought about you every single day since I left. That’s why I wanted to give you this present now, on your sixteenth birthday. Because I always vowed that I would and that it might help you to see that I was thinking about you all the time, even when I wasn’t there.

‘“If you’d like to meet up, or speak on the phone, that would be fantastic. But don’t feel you have to. I understand if you don’t want to see me, but always know that I am thinking of you and that I love you.” ’

My voice caught as I read the last line. I’d never hated her. How could I, when I hadn’t known her? I’d hated what she’d done. Hadn’t been able to understand how she could have done it. But at that moment I simply felt sorry for the woman who had poured her heart out to the son she had
never known. Although not as sorry as I felt for the son who was sitting before me, crumpled and contorted with emotion.

‘Come here,’ I said, pulling him to me. Stroking his hair, kissing him gently on the top of his head as his shoulders shook beneath me.

‘She’s not my mum,’ he sobbed. ‘I mean, how could she do that to a baby? It’s not right. Not right at all.’

‘Sometimes, love, people do the most awful things. Things you can’t begin to get your head around. I hear about them all the time. People who come to see me who’ve behaved in such a bad way to the very people they say they love the most.’

‘And do the people they say they love hate them?’

‘Sometimes they do,’ I said. ‘But often they love them too. There’s a thin line, as they say.’

‘Chrissie Hynde from the Pretenders,’ said Josh.

I managed a smile. ‘I wasn’t sure if you’d know that one. My era, really.’

‘She’s class,’ said Josh.

‘You know what?’ I said. ‘Your mum looks a bit like her. Dark hair and eyes, dead slim.’

Josh nodded. I let go of him.

He sat and thought for a bit. ‘Dad doesn’t want me to see her, does he? That’s why he got you to talk to me.’

‘Your father wants what’s best for you. He’s a bit shaken up, that’s all. He wasn’t expecting her to turn up like that.’

‘And what about you?’ asked Josh. ‘What do you think?’

‘I think it should be up to you. And I’ll understand if
you do want to see her and I’ll understand if you don’t. Whatever you decide, I’ll support you. We both will.’

Josh put his head down and sighed. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘All these years it’s been like she never really existed. It’s so weird to think I could get to know her. I’m not sure if I want to, though.’

‘Take some time, then. You don’t have to make your mind up straight away. See how you feel in a few days.’

Josh nodded.

I got up to put the kettle on. ‘Are you going to open it, then?’ I asked.

‘Oh,’ he said, turning back to the present on the table. ‘Yeah, I guess so.’

He picked it up and unpicked the tape from one end, sliding the paper off the large cardboard box beneath. It was a widescreen television box. For a moment I thought that’s what she’d got him. I was wondering where the hell we were going to put it. And then he opened the box and took something out and I saw that it wasn’t a TV at all. It was a red guitar. An electric one. Like the one we’d got him, only better.

‘Jeez,’ said Josh. ‘Look at this.’

He pointed to a scrawled signature in black marker pen on the front. Above it, I could just make out ‘To Josh, London’s Calling!’ followed by a signature.

‘It’s Joe Strummer’s guitar,’ said Josh, his mouth gaping open. ‘She’s given me Joe Strummer’s fucking Fender Telecaster.’

For once I ignored the language. In the circumstances it
was probably justified. She’d managed to give him the one thing which would now make it very hard for Josh not to want to meet her.

‘I don’t get it,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘How could she have got this?’

‘Your dad said she used to work in music promotion. One of the big record labels, I think.’

I could almost hear the cogs going round in Josh’s head.

‘She got him to sign it for me,’ he said. ‘Even though she hadn’t seen me since she left. She still got him to sign it for me.’

I nodded and smiled. Realising at that point that Josh was lost to her. And there was nothing we could do about it.

* * *

Josh was upstairs in his room playing the guitar when Chris and Matilda came home. Tom was up there with him. Josh must have texted him. He’d come round pretty sharpish.

It was Matilda who realised first. She never missed a thing. Her brow furrowed as she looked at Josh’s guitar from us, which was lying on the sofa.

Her head spun round, the ends of her still-wet hair flicking water as she did so. ‘What’s he playing?’ she asked. ‘That’s not his guitar.’

‘No. It’s a different one. He’s playing it with Tom.’

‘So did Tom bring it? Has he got one too?’

I hesitated. Chris looked at me. He twigged before I said anything. I could see it in the way his eyes darkened.

‘Er, no. It’s his. It was the present the lady brought round yesterday.’

‘So he’s got two guitars? Can I have one, then? Or just borrow his when he’s playing the new one?’

‘Maybe ask him nicely, later, if you can have a quick turn.’

‘I want to ask him now.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘Grandma’s coming round soon. Why don’t you put on a DVD while I finish cooking?’

She ran over to the TV without another word. Chris followed me into the kitchen, shutting the door behind us.

‘Great,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘I suppose she thinks giving him a guitar will make everything OK.’

‘Look, I need to tell you something,’ I said. ‘It’s not just any guitar. It’s signed by Joe Strummer.’

He stared at me as if he thought I was having him on for a moment. His jaw set with the realization that I wasn’t.

‘It’s signed “To Josh”,’ I continued, sitting down at the kitchen table.

He frowned again. It clearly didn’t fit with the scenario he had in his head.

‘It must have been within a few years of her leaving, then,’ he said. ‘He’s been dead a good ten years or so.’

‘She wrote a letter,’ I said. ‘It was in with the card. Josh asked me to read it to him.’

‘What did it say?’

‘That she never stopped thinking about him. That she screwed up and wants the chance to put things right but that she’d understand if it’s too late.’

Chris blew out and sat down next to me. ‘Has he said what he wants to do?’

‘He’s pretty mixed up. I suggested he take a few days to think about it. I suspect the guitar’s probably swung it, mind.’

Chris nodded. Put his head in his hands.

‘They might only meet up once,’ I said, rubbing his shoulder. ‘Maybe she simply needs to get it out of her system.’

‘No,’ said Chris, ‘that’s not Lydia’s style. All or nothing. That’s how it is with her.’

‘I still don’t think we can say no,’ I said. ‘He’s sixteen. We couldn’t stop him. And I’d rather not try if it’s going to push him away. We need to be here for him. Need to let him deal with it in his own way.’

‘It’s easy for you to say.’

I looked down at my hands. He was right, of course. I’d never met the woman until yesterday. I hadn’t been the one she walked out on. The one who’d brought Josh up single-handedly. Who’d made so many sacrifices that I didn’t know where to start.

‘No one’s taking him away from you,’ I said. ‘She can never compete with what you did for him. But at the end of the day she’s his mother. It’s natural that he’d want to meet her, even if it’s just out of curiosity.’

Chris shut his eyes and bowed his head. I put my arms around him. Pulled him in to me.

‘OK. I guess we’ve got no choice,’ he said eventually.

‘Thanks,’ I said, knowing that although he was doing his best to sound reasonable and rational, inside he must be feeling anything but. ‘Right. Well, I’d better get on with dinner,’ I said, squeezing his shoulder.

‘I’ll give Mum a ring,’ said Chris. ‘See what time she wants picking up.’

‘She said she’d come by bus.’

‘I know. But it’s started to rain. You know how slippery the cobbles get.’

* * *

By the time Chris arrived back with Barbara, Tom had gone home but Josh was still up in his room. Matilda had built some kind of set for
The Muppets
movie in the hallway and was busy perfecting her Miss Piggy voice.

‘Grandma!’ Matilda yelled as soon as she heard the key in the door.

I hurried out from the kitchen as she leapt at Barbara, almost knocking her off her feet.

‘Steady, please,’ I said, wiping my hands on my apron before taking my turn to give Barbara a hug.