Waiting for Grace (24 page)

“Hi, it’s Grace, leave a message.”          

I called that number so many times just to hear her voice for months after I realised she wasn’t coming home.

The journey was difficult after I knew that I wouldn’t be speaking to Grace, and that I wasn’t sure how we were going to work this out. I replayed the fight we had had over and over in my head, and realised how badly I had misjudged things. I was shouting, spewing venom, saying every hateful thing that I had buried deep down just to hurt her like she was hurting me. Grace was a tough cookie, and her stubbornness forced me to try to break her. We had never fought like that, and I wasn’t prepared. It transported me back to fights with my brothers where you said whatever you had to just to win. I hadn’t meant it. God … I was sorry. God, I could never take that back. I closed my eyes and my head fell back again, and all I could see were those low-rise jeans and her tangled hair. If only I could jump off this train and be in that moment again. Shit. Shit. Shit.

When the train arrived at Preston I flew out of the train like a bolt of lightning and almost ran into my mum as she stood on the platform waiting.

“Robert,” she cried, grabbing me. Her eyes met my manic blue stare. “What on Earth …?” She looked behind me. “Where’s Grace?”

“Oh, God,” I cried. My heart ached and I fell into my mother’s arms. “She didn’t come home; she wouldn’t come,” I whispered.

“What?” she snapped, pulling me back to arm’s length.

“I left her,” I said, looking to the floor, “We need to get home and then I need to borrow the car, I need to go back for her.”

“Robert,” she began. I grabbed her arm to walk to the car.

“Come on, Mum, have you missed something? I left her alone in London, I need to get home and get back to her.”

She shrugged her arm away and pulled me to a stop. “Just stop, Robert, please, just stop.” She held her hand up to the air. “Let me get this straight. You have been gone all summer and then at the last moment you, what, had an argument?”

“Mum, we’re wasting time.”

“I need to understand, Robert, why did you leave your girlfriend on her own in London?” She narrowed her eyes at me.

“She didn’t want to come home, didn’t want to come back to Irene, she’s desperate to find her bloody sister, and she has this idea that if she finds her it’ll all be okay and we found this woman who knew her and …” I was running out of breath trying to explain.

“Whoa.” She shook her head. “This is all brand new Robert, what were you really doing in London and what about her sister?”

“Mum, please I need to go back, I need to try and find her.”

“Robert, please, explain.”

“She has a sister, Diane. She had an address from some old cards she found and we went there, but she was long gone. Some old woman remembered her and I suppose it gave Grace hope, and I wanted to come home. I’d had enough but she didn’t think she had anything to come back for.
  I lost it, I really lost it, Mum.” I looked to the floor. “I was awful to her because I was so angry and tired and I was sick of her shit, and I just wanted to get on that train so badly that I went mad.”

“Oh …” She reached out for me as tears filled my eyes.

“I said some nasty stuff that I can’t take back, and she basically told me to get lost and then took off, so I did because I was so mad. God, now, I tried her phone and it’s off, and I’ve no idea where she’s gone.”

“Robert!” Mum yelped. “You left her all alone in bloody London? What were you thinking? Well, I suppose if you’d have stayed you wouldn’t be here now, but you should have let me come down, oh my goodness.”

“We need to get back to her, I shouldn’t have left her!” I shook my head. “I pushed her away. If I can’t borrow your car I’m going back on the train.”

“Fine.” She sighed. “Let’s get you home and discuss this with Dad. If you’re going, we’re going, too.”

***

As soon as I arrived home I rang the hostel we stayed at, but she hadn’t been back there, or so he said. Then I called the police station to try and speak to the officers who had helped us the night my car died, but no one would put me through. She wasn’t a missing person. I tried her mobile so many times. Mum and Dad convinced me to sleep on it, and hopefully await her return. After that night I knew I needed to go back, needed to try and find her. Mum came with me. We hit the hostel, took some photos with us, and asked passers by, tried local cafes, restaurants and hotels. She had vanished. It wasn’t a shock to Mum who knew that Grace was a needle in a very large haystack, but the whole city reminded me of her, and us together, so I kept expecting to see her turn the next corner. She never did. Our last ditch attempt after two days was to go to Ange’s flat. I could tell that Mum was horrified by the neighbourhood, but she waited in the car and watched as I begged for any information that the old woman had. She hadn’t seen Grace and had forgotten to look for the card. I reminded her and wrote my mobile number down for her again.

The pain never left. It only got easier to deal with. It was the not knowing that kept me awake at night. It was as if she had vanished. Mum always maintained that we would never have found her if we had turned up ten minutes after the argument. She was lost in the millions of faces that ploughed through Euston every day. I, however, had sinister thoughts, that someone saw her and grabbed her. Someone took advantage or she was attacked and left for dead. Dad rung the hospitals and assured me that she wasn’t admitted. After months of searching, eventually I had to let it go and I had to pretend to my parents that I was getting over her, getting over what I had lost.

I finished sixth form; I did well in my exams because I rarely went out. I saw my friends at college, but I didn’t socialise very often and I became a recluse. My Dad bought me a new car for my 18
th
birthday and I applied to universities. My Dad wanted me to apply to Durham, Cambridge, and Oxford, but the only place I wanted to be was London, and so we settled on Oxford, which was close enough. If they thought it was strange, they never said. They accepted the shell of a man that I became that year. They accepted that I returned from that summer only a fraction of the Robert I was, and they loved me, regardless. I think my mum was just relieved that I had returned and accepted it no matter what the cost.

I worked that summer; I worked hard. I was a labourer for my Dad’s landscape gardener friend. When I finally started university in the September for freshers’ week, I was hard bodied. I had grown a few inches and I was bronzed. With my floppy blonde hair and blue eyes, I did attract a lot of female attention, all unwanted. It had been a year since Grace, and I was struggling to move on, but despite the feeling of loss there were also feelings of anger. Over the year I replayed our fight and sometimes I felt remorse and other times I was angry that she pushed me away, that she wouldn’t attempt to come home with me and make a life. I had fully intended for my future to be with her wherever that may be, and now all I had ahead was an uncertain future … alone. I knew she wasn’t coming back. I knew she would never turn up at my house in Poulton, and I knew that if I saw her now we would be poles apart. She would have someone else by now. It was impossible for someone else not to fall in love with her and claim her.

It was in those moments of drunken clarity that I would allow someone else to be Grace for the night. I would invest my energy into a drunken shag only to be dissatisfied in the morning that it wasn’t Grace. She became the Holy Grail, and I got a reputation as a ladies’ man about campus. I worked hard, and with my uni friends I finally learnt to play hard. We drank, we shagged, and we made the most of our dwindling teenage years. I got my degree and a bloody good deal at a firm in London to do my LPC. I was going to be a lawyer, and I needed to address the issues that wouldn’t leave me alone, the ghosts that haunted me day and night, and the one single regret of my life.

Sometimes, late at night, after a few drinks, I would silently cry. Sometimes it was not for Grace and sometimes not for any reason other than the fact that my heart was heavy, and I needed relief. After so many years I wasn’t sure if I was still crying for her or in reality I was crying for me, the poor hapless fuckwit who once had it all and had no idea.

Twenty-Two

Now

“So have you thought about Christmas?” Robert asked a few weeks after my birthday. “I would really love you to come; I know my other brothers would love to see you.”

“Really?” I squirmed. We were at brunch on a Sunday morning, Devon playing on Robert’s iPhone whilst we waited for our food. “I’m not sure, Maria and I are each other’s family, and I can’t leave her.”

“Bring her.” He smiled brightly.

“Oh,” I said, looking down at my latte, “she wouldn’t come and Robert I’m not sure I’m ready …”

“For what? Us?” he said solemnly.

“No,” I took his hand, “Poulton, the memories, home,” I emphasised, “I’ve never thought about returning and what that would mean. I’d probably need counselling.” I laughed.

“You need to face it one day,” he said softly.

“Why? I never have to go back if I don’t want to.”

“That’s hardly healthy, and you do have a mother there.” He sighed, “Perhaps one day it would help if you forgave her.”

I looked away from him to Devon, changing the subject, and he followed my lead. The last few weeks had been amazing. Robert hadn’t pushed anything beyond our “first date,” and we spent a lot of time together with Devon, and also with Maria and Max. He seemed happy just to tag along with us, his job was demanding, but he made time to leave early a couple of nights a week to see Devon. He was still staying at a hotel, but was getting the keys to a flat nearer to us in the next few days. I hadn’t wanted to leave Maria babysitting again for us to go out alone, and Robert understood that. Maria has been there for me through everything these past seven years, and so I owed it her to help her deal with recent events, and our time together was also important. We were still doing our self-defence classes on Tuesdays. Robert babysat the kids and they loved having him to themselves. I was struggling to find any reason why Robert wasn’t the perfect man, but at night the lingering doubts remained. Did he mean what he said seven years ago?

We spent the afternoon browsing the shops. Robert held one hand and Devon held the other. If anyone were to look at us they would see a perfect family, the daughter who resembled her father’s every feature, and the man who clearly adored both his girls, but in reality this was all so new. Robert bought Devon a magazine that she asked for and we looked at some furniture for his new flat, considering all he had for himself was a lamp. He didn’t ever mention Cecily or the life they had had together, but I was sure it was a far cry from this. She had money, and together they earned a fair amount, and so they probably never worried about how to pay the unexpectedly large gas bill or borrowed money from each other for essential work clothes after the last top had been eaten by the washing machine. Christ, Maria and I were without a washing machine for the first three years we lived together. We used to go to the laundrette, as we didn’t consider it an essential item. Being with me would definitely be a different option for Robert.

We still hadn’t discussed our fight years ago in any detail or the future, and at the moment that suited me fine.

***

“So Robert’s family wants us to go to them for Christmas,” I said later that night, sitting on the sofa with Maria. The kids were in bed and we were sharing some wine and a box of Jaffa Cakes. “We eat too much crap,” I said, popping another whole Jaffa into my mouth.

“You should go,” she said firmly.

“Oh no.” I shook my head. “It would be hell.”

“Come on, Devon would love a big family Christmas, and it’s about time you and me got better at facing our demons rather than running from them. You told me that.” She smiled to me, sipping her rosé. “Hence the self-defence classes.” She chinked her glass with mine.

“Touché.” I laughed.

“Well,” she sighed, “maybe us two being holed up in here, being each other’s husband, best mate, and family hasn’t been particularly healthy.”

“It’s been great,” I said, wounded.

“But not healthy. I mean we’re like Jackie’s longest living twosome and I think that’s ‘cause we both needed someone so much that we fit each other’s bill and we clung together.” She took another sip. “I mean if Robert hadn’t appeared, we might have ended up in a civil partnership because there were never any men ‘round here.”

“I know, but we hate men.” I sighed.

“Not healthy.” She nodded. “We can’t be like this forever, we deserve our happy endings.”

“True.”

“So I say, face those demons, and let Devon meet her family.”

“You’re invited,” I said tentatively.

“Oh no,” she shook her head, “I’ll be at the other end of the phone for advice and your whines about the mother in law, but I’ve got my own demons to face.”

“She’s not my mother in law.”

“Yet,” Maria said. We laughed and I shook my head.

“Anyway, what demons are you facing here all alone?”

“Exactly that, I need to learn how to be alone, how to function knowing that my crazy brother breathes out in the open, and I need to know that I can do it.”

“Do what?”

“Survive without ya,” she said as she shoulder bumped me and we both smiled. As jovial as the conversation had been, we were both preparing to set each other free. After all these years it had only been us, and we hadn’t let anyone else in. Deep down we had both known that one of us might meet someone, want something different, and live independently, but it hadn’t happened. This was the first reminder that we were leaning against each other for strength and hiding in the shadows when there was a whole wide world out there in the light. She wanted me to go, she wanted to see how she could cope on her own, and she was right. Perhaps her demons were scarier, but mine were just as real. I needed to face my past, maybe even face my mum. I had to get some closure and move on. I was never destined to find Diane and the life I had imagined for myself. What I did find was Maria, my true sister, my true confidante, and true friend. In looking for Diane, I did find unconditional love, but just not from the person I thought it would be.

***

“So will it be snowing at Nana and Grandad’s?” Devon asked as we packed for our trip two weeks later, the day before Christmas Eve. Groucher didn’t open over Christmas and I had managed to negotiate a few days off between Christmas and New Year, considering I had always been his most faithful employee. I was nervous as hell, but Robert was as giddy as a kipper. He had found a flat in Bethnal Green to rent; it was exceptionally better than our flat, but close enough for him to see Devon as much as he wanted, and me too. He was happy that everything was coming together, and I was, as always, wary.

“Maybe,” I said, packing her small Disney princess wheelie suitcase, useless in the grand scheme of things, but she wanted to have her own case. “However, it is close to the coast and so the snow doesn’t come very often.”

“Is this where you lived with your Mummy?” she asked. I nodded. “Will we see her?”

“Well, it’s a tough one with my Mum, she wasn’t very well, and we didn’t get on very well before I moved here. I don’t know how it would be to see her now.”

“I bet she misses you,” she said softly, “I’d miss you if I didn’t see you every day.” Her innocence tugged at my heartstrings, and I jumped up hugging her close.
 

“You’ll never need to miss me, baby.” I kissed her forehead. “I’ll be here for you every day forever.” She laughed. It broke my heart to think that at her age I was already making my own dinner, walking myself to school, and attempting to understand why my Mummy slurred her words, and why she cried all the time. I hadn’t been beaten, I had just been neglected, and my daughter had given me so much love and fulfilled my life in a way that I never thought possible. It now seemed so much harder to deal with. I should see my mother, should face her, but the more I thought about her, the more I hated her weakness. I was an innocent child, her innocent child with no one else but her, and she shunned me.

“All set?” Maria asked, walking into my room. I had clothes strewn everywhere trying to get packed. “I got you something for the journey,” she said to Devon. “Look, it’s brilliant, you pop out all the clothes on the back page.” She showed Devon a magazine. “And then you dress the girl here in whatever you want.”

“Wow,” Devon looked on amazed, “thanks Auntie Maria.”

“And these.” She handed Devon a large bag of jelly babies and a notebook and pen.

“Wow,” Devon said again.

“Not for now,” I said, taking them off her. “I’ll put them in my bag for the car ride, okay?”

“Okay,” she said, rolling her eyes.

“Why don’t you get the toothbrushes?”

“Okay.”

“So, you all ready?” Maria asked.

“Almost, thanks for that stuff you are so good at being prepared, she’d have been bored rigid if it were left to me.”

“It’s fine.” She sighed. “It’ll be weird, just me and Max.”

“I know, are you sure this is okay?” I asked suddenly worried. “Will you be okay?”

“Look we’ll be fine, we’re off to Jackie’s on Christmas Day for dinner and then Boxing Day we are volunteering at Jackie’s latest house. Max will love it with all the kids, so please we won’t even notice you’re gone.”

“I’ll miss you.” I smiled.

“Me too, now go and make some memories lady.” She hugged me close. “Not everything has to be painful, try and remember the good times.”

“You’re right,” I said into her hair as we hugged.

“I usually am.” She sighed.

***

Robert arrived at midday to collect us. I was nervous as hell and kept wondering if I was doing the right thing. This would most likely be awkward, painful, and also a massive leap forwards in our relationship. I was attending Christmas as Devon’s mum so she could meet her family, but also as Robert’s girlfriend for the first time in seven years. We hadn’t spent enough time alone to define anything and we hadn’t had any time alone to be intimate, but it seemed to be working at the moment, and I loved spending time with him. I didn’t doubt how he felt, but I hesitantly worried that things wouldn’t work out, so I couldn’t become too comfortable.

We loaded the car and Robert was excited for Christmas. He seemed practically euphoric.

“This is gonna be the best Christmas ever,” he said as we pulled away, “Me and my girls and all my brothers home. It’ll be like the Walton’s Christmas Special.”

“Let’s not go mad.” I laughed.

“What’s the Walton’s, Daddy?” Devon asked from the back seat.

“Oh, just a big happy family programme sweetheart.” He looked over to me and smiled. “Nervous?”

“Yep.” I nodded, taking a deep breath. “I’m sure it’ll be fine and Devon deserves to have a happy Christmas with her family.”

“So do you.”

***

When we pulled onto the motorway that led home, I had that sinking feeling. We could see Blackpool Tower and Robert was trying to excite Devon. “Can you see it?” he said. “Whoever spots it first wins.” She won.

I watched Robert at ease and the way he playfully spoke to Devon. I wondered why I had stayed away from him for so long. True at first, in those early months it had been because of his harsh words, and I suppose later embarrassment, and also I was ashamed. I was worried that I would never be good enough, fit into a world where he had succeeded, and a teenage pregnancy would only ever have held him back. However, on days like today I was reminded what a thoroughly nice, well brought up man he was, and despite knowing how different we were, I was lucky that he was ever in my life. I always seemed so well turned out, so together, but behind the scenes I was crumbling like our old house, and only Robert really knew that.

He was happy to be going home, happy to see his brothers, and excited for them to meet the little daughter he was now so proud of. It pleased me and made me feel accomplished that Devon was such a prize. I wanted her to be and have everything I never had, and so far she was doing a wonderful job.

The road from the motorway was fairly rural and not many landmarks had changed. The creeping feeling of dread was threatening to overwhelm me but I held it at bay. Robert must have sensed my angst and placed his hand on mine giving it a gentle squeeze.

“Is this near your house, Mummy?” Devon asked.

“No,” I said quietly. “We’ll pass my street and I’ll point it out.”

“Okay,” she said enthusiastically. “So we’re nearly there?”

“Sure are,” Robert said as we pulled towards the town. We didn’t drive through the centre, instead heading to the Banford’s house on the outskirts in a new build housing estate. We would still pass my mother’s lane, though.

“Here,” Robert said slowing, allowing Devon to look. I glanced, as well, “This was Mummy’s street.” It was so achingly familiar and nothing seemed to have changed, every house different and the large whiteness of my house shone through the leafy street. There it was, my childhood, and in that house probably sat my Mum. Perhaps she was alone for Christmas again this year, but I was betting that she didn’t even know what day it was.