Where the Rain Gets In (23 page)

“And then?”

“And then pretty much the same for quite
a few years, well into the Nineties. We were fairly well off by this stage – ”

“Legitimately!”

“Yes, legitimately, and also because
Margaret had returned to work, so we had two wages coming in.”

“So you started having fancy notions
again?” asked Katie.

“No, amazingly,” said Mike. “I just
carried on the same old same old, which I think now was a mistake but at the
time I thought was the right thing to do. Having the kids was not so easy for
Margaret – it’s not that glamorous being stuck at home all the time and I
didn’t always have that much to contribute on the rare times I might be around.
I guess it was Margaret’s time for wondering just what the fuck it’s all about.
So when she started back at work I thought we were getting through the rough
patch, that once she was back in the workplace she’d get back some of her self
worth.”

“And she didn’t?”

“Only up to a point,” said Mike. “I thought
if I just encouraged her it would be enough; I guess she needed more from me
than that. And there was something else going on at the time too.”

Mike poured himself the remaining water
from the jug on the table.

“Are you okay for a drink?” he asked Katie.

“I’m fine,” she said, “thanks – go on.”

“The kids were growing up – which you’ll
probably say is obvious, but it’s not so obvious when you’re right in the
middle of it. When they’re really young, you struggle on from one phase to the next
– especially with your first kid – and just when you come to terms with where
they’re at, they’ve moved on to the next phase. The second time around you
recognise things a lot quicker, and by the third you’re an old pro. We now had
two teenage sons, which was hard enough but nothing too tragic – the odd scare
was all. But then Jack was about to leave school – ”

“And Margaret was desperate for him to
go to college, and you didn’t care one way or the other?”

“Yes,” agreed Mike. “We went through all
that and it was as you describe, but we got over it. The point was – Jack was
going, he was leaving home. He tried college at first but really, what he was
doing was leaving home. And I don’t think Margaret had thought that through.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, it’s kind of accepted isn’t it,
that mothers love their children more than they love their partners?”

“Is it?” asked Katie.

“Put it this way – every bloke knows
that it’s true. It’s never said out loud but when it gets right down to it,
given the choice, mothers would go with their kids every time. And that’s fair
enough because most partners are a waste of space anyway, I know, but what
happens when the kids leave home? The mothers are left with the horse they
didn’t back.”

“So Jack was gone – ”

“And it was pretty obvious Mike junior
wouldn’t be far behind – he couldn’t wait to be either travelling, or earning,
or both.”

“And Margaret was left with you and
Katherine, and the feeling that her life was passing her by.”

“Yes,” said Mike.

“And now you’re thinking the same? That
once Katherine leaves, the two of you are going to be strangers to one
another?”

“It’s possible,” said Mike. “I hope it
doesn’t work out that way, but the thought has occurred to me.”

“And so now you’re thinking – did I make
the right choice all those years ago? What if I’d stayed with Katie? Would my
life have been so very different? Fucking hell, Mike – this is just mid-life
crisis nonsense and you know it. Please tell me you didn’t bring me here for
that – you know we could never have been together. We wouldn’t have lasted
twenty minutes and here you are, married to Margaret for over twenty years.”

Mike put down his glass and smiled.

“No,” he said, “I didn’t bring you here
for that. I loved you Katie, you know that, and I think I was right to love
you, but I don’t think that’s the answer to my problems. I’m here for a very
different reason altogether.”

“A few years ago,” said Mike, “Margaret
had sex with another man. She says it was just a one-off thing and I believe
her. It hurt me a lot at the time and it still hurts me now, but I can see why
it happened and that’s why I just told you all that shit. I can’t say I handled
it well – I don’t know how to measure these things – and I was in a bad way
there for a long time. But the way I feel now is, I love Margaret and I want us
to be together. I don’t think it will be easy, but I think that’s the only hope
I have of making sense of my life again.

“The way Margaret feels is different. I
think she hates herself and can’t get over what she’s done. I don’t think I
helped by going off at the deep end like I did, but I couldn’t stop that at the
time. Maybe some couples can brush this off, but I couldn’t and now Margaret
can’t.”

Mike paused for a moment.

“C’est la vie, you might think,” he said.
“Tough shit, get over it! There’s no reason why everything should be okay just
because I want it to be. I wouldn’t argue with you about that.

“Margaret’s reaction has been different
to mine: it’s been to shut down her feelings and to not let me in. She’s put
all her energy elsewhere – into her work and her studies – because, after all,
that’s the direction her life was heading anyway. But I don’t want to live my
life in that way.”

Mike was quiet again for a moment, and
Katie didn’t speak.

“That’s okay for the grown-ups,” he
said. “A couple of idiots who have fucked up the one good thing they had
together – we deserve all we get. But it’s not okay for our daughter – for
Katherine.

“She kind of got lost in all of this,
but I don’t think any of it was lost on her. You think you’re being so
sophisticated, keeping your fights and arguments and storming out for when
she’s up in bed, but of course she doesn’t miss a thing. And my solution was to
find reasons to be away from the house for days at a time, as though she
couldn’t see through what was really going on.”

“What age is she?” asked Katie quietly.

“She’ll be fifteen this year,” said
Mike.

“And you and Margaret have been fighting
for what – three or four years?”

“There’ve been good times in there as
well,” said Mike, “but yes, it’s about that – longer, actually.”

“So a third of your daughter’s life has
been spent with her parents falling apart?”

“Tearing each other apart would be a
more accurate description,” said Mike.

“And her brothers left home during this
time as well?”

“Yes,” said Mike.

Katie didn’t need to tell Mike what he
and Margaret done; she could see he knew well enough.

“It would have been better if you’d
left,” she said eventually.

“I know,” said Mike, “but I couldn’t. I
tried, and I couldn’t. That’s how I’m so sure now that I want us to be
together.”

“It takes two for that to work,” said
Katie.

“Yes, I know.”

“Three maybe, in this case.”

Katie thought of herself at fifteen, and
all she could remember was confusion. She always considered her conscious life
as an adult to have begun once she was allowed to leave school; anything before
that was just a chance rebounding from one nightmare situation to the next.
There are happy childhoods and there are unhappy childhoods, but you have no
control over which you get.

“You came here to tell me about your
daughter,” she said.

“Yes,” said Mike. “Or, at least, to ask
you about her.”

“She’s your daughter, Mike,” said Katie.
“You can start by telling me something good about her – something I’m going to
like.”

Mike cleared his throat.

“Well,” he said, “you know I’m going to
tell you that she’s beautiful – and she is – but she’s more than that. She’s
sharp and clever and funny and unique. She’s the perfect opposite in many ways
to Jack and Mike – not that they aren’t those things too, but she is just so
completely her own person. I guess she had her brothers there to help bring her
along, so she’s savvy and street-smart and wise beyond her years. She’s . . .
what – what can I say? I love her; she’s my daughter.”

“That would do it,” said Katie, and
smiled; though she knew there was nothing much here to smile about.

“She’s very sick,” said Mike.

“I thought she might be,” said Katie.
“And that’s why you’re here?”

“Yes.”

“You’d better tell me,” said Katie.
“Tell me what she’s doing to herself.”

Please don’t let it be cutting, thought
Katie. Please don’t let it be cutting.

“She’s refusing to eat,” said Mike. “She
. . . she just won’t eat anything.”

“For how long?” asked Katie.

“For nearly four weeks now.”

“And before that?” asked Katie. “Was she
trying it out before that?”

“We don’t know,” said Mike. “We don’t
think so but we can’t be sure. If you’ve got a teenage daughter then you watch
out for these things but really, if she wanted to hide it from us then it would
have been easy.”

“You mean yourself and Margaret were too
busy fighting to notice?”

“No, not really, no,” said Mike. “That’s
the thing – the house has been better recently. I’m not saying I don’t have
moments when I lose it – when I go off to my room like a little boy because I
get so upset – but we don’t fight any more, and the house is generally pleasant
and calm.”

“But Katherine could . . . she could
have been thinking about this for a long time?” asked Katie.

“Knowing Katherine,” said Mike, “then
yes, I think she’s deliberately set about to do this. I don’t think she’s just
fallen into it by chance. The doctors believe she must have been experimenting
before.”

“I’d say she could get away with
anything if she wanted to,” said Katie, “and I don’t mean simply because you
and Margaret were too preoccupied to notice – teenage girls find a way when
they want to. If it makes you feel any better, I doubt this is all down to you
and Margaret.”

“Thanks,” said Mike. “I mean – thanks
for saying that, but I think you’re wrong. I know what the doctors tell me, but
I don’t believe this is an eating disorder; I think it’s a protest against
myself and Margaret for letting her down.”

“Perhaps every eating disorder has its
roots in some form of a protest,” said Katie, “and then ends up just being what
it is.”

“That’s what they told us at the
hospital – not necessarily a protest, but some form of . . . anything, really,
before whatever grievance she has just doesn’t matter any more, but they don’t
know Katherine like I do – she knows exactly what she’s doing to us by doing
this to herself.”

“She probably blames herself more than
she blames you,” said Katie. “Is she very weak?”

“She’s barely conscious,” said Mike.
“She . . . there isn’t enough of her to have any kind of resistance.”

“Will she talk to you?”

“No,” said Mike, “she’s refused to talk
to me or her mother.”

“What – she hasn’t spoken in all that
time?”

“That’s right,” said Mike. “And now I
don’t know whether she can’t talk to us, or she won’t. She’s just slipping
away.”

“What do the doctors say?” asked Katie.
“Do they think she can she still hear you?”

“Yes,” said Mike. “They say I should
never stop talking to her – not that I would anyway – but again, I don’t know
whether she can’t hear me or won’t listen to me.”

“You mean she might still be
deliberately ignoring you?”

“Yes,” said Mike.

“So what’s to be done?” asked Katie.
“Can they force-feed her? I don’t know what happens – she couldn’t just die,
surely?”

Katie regretted her choice of words as
soon as she’d said them. Mike looked away, across the room to the bar.

“They can give her supplements,” he
said, “and she’s on a drip to at least give her something. And they’ve had
various attempts at giving her something more substantial, but they didn’t have
much success and it wasn’t pretty to watch. So yes, if something doesn’t happen
soon, she’ll slip into a coma and die.”

“And is she capable of eating anything
by herself?” asked Katie.

“I don’t know,” said Mike. “And the
doctors don’t know either – whether she’s capable and refusing, or past the
point where she can help herself. Sooner or later though, she’s going to reach
that point.”

“But you don’t think she’s there yet?”

“I hope she isn’t,” said Mike. “I hope
that if she really wanted to, she could find a way to pull herself out of
this.”

“But for now she’s determined not to?”

“That’s about the size of it,” said
Mike. “And I’m running out of things to say to her that I think might change
her mind.”

“I’m sorry,” said Katie, “I’m really
sorry.”