Darling Read online

  ‘Come on, Stevie, sweetheart, they want to see you!’

  ‘No, Mum!’

  ‘Please, baby, come on, I’ll help you. My little Wonderboy …’

  Just like that: the cheekster smile. My son took an inordinate, lips-pulled-wide pride in his name, especially when we played ‘Fingertips’, turned right up. He would not have to sing or perform, ever. But from the moment my future mathematician or philosopher or astronaut had first been flopped on to my chest, I knew he was Stevie (never Steven) Marcus White. My little star, my baby emperor.

  ‘Please, my love, for Mummy.’

  In the distance a train shrieked its passage through the town into the fast-rolling fields.

  ‘Choo-choo!’ said Stevie.

  ‘Yes, sweetness, that’s right,’ I said. ‘Now … please?’

  With a damp frown up at the strangers, Stevie swung his legs sideways, exactly the way I had shown him, and eased on to my arm, on to his sticks and out of the car.

  Once again the door was already open, but this time Thomas stood on the doorstep, a controlled explosion of blonde hair behind his shoulder. She’d washed it and let it dry curly and natural, and I knew there was a reason for that but could not think what it might be. Was she unwinding follicle by follicle or simply trying to make us feel more at home? Both?

  ‘Hello, Darling! And here’s super-Stevie …’ said Thomas.

  This for his daughter’s benefit. Stevie the Wonderboy, I wanted to correct him but I didn’t. Let them get to know him in their own time.

  Then I saw her face.

  Her father’s shoulder and shadow could not hide her. There it was, the spark of disgust, swiftly snuffed out, when she looked down at my boy. This is why I needed to protect him, right there, in that look.

  ‘Stevie, Thomas, remember? And this is Lola.’

  When I turned the spotlight on her she sprang into action:

  ‘Ah, OK, would … you … like … to …’

  I had to jump in: ‘It’s fine, it’s only in his body. He’s a smart boy, aren’t you, Stevie?’

  A squirming, wide-eyed nod.

  ‘That’s good,’ said Lola, looking at her feet.

  Young. She would learn.

  Morning unfolded into afternoon with an unhurried Saturday vibe; we were all to hang out together and enjoy the blueberry bran muffins that Lola, Thomas swore, had insisted on baking all by herself in Stevie’s honour.

  Stevie winced at the murky sponge and the berries that bit back, but I caught his eye in time; good boy. Lola sat with him for over an hour after lunch and left Thomas and me to chat, mostly about surviving the summer and binning off the school run.

  Lola had finished now, but Stevie had another week to go until he got his end-of-year medal. I was so proud of him. Once, home-schooling had appeared to be the only way, but he had been a true lion as ever:

  ‘I want to play with my friends, Mummy!’

  I could not hold him back, I would never do that. So off he went to High Desford’s best primary, no trouble at all. Lola had gone to that nicety-nice girls’ place up the road, of course. Lovely blue uniforms, but – la! – they all wore them so short. My mum would have slapped me upside my head if I’d tried that on.

  From the kitchen we could hear them discussing favourite cartoons. That was kind of her, helpful; good to see.

  Meanwhile, I twitched. I had vowed not to smoke, in honour of us all. I would end those dashes into the en suite to brush my teeth before kisses, before talking, before breathing; the dashes out of the door to top up on nicotine; the miserable yellow-toothed excuses to the one person who wanted to see me happy. Straight-up cold turkey quitting. No fags, no patches, no nicotine chewing gum, no sugar-free mint chewing gum, nothing but the taste of Thomas. Who needed cigarettes when we had us? Lips were for lovers; from now on I would practise full oral fidelity.

  More than the urge to smoke, the blueberry muffins had set off in me a strange urge to bake. It was Stevie’s birthday in a few weeks and I figured I could whip up a dozen or so soppy little chocolate frosted cupcakes with those silver balls.

  I am not a natural baker. I like preparing things with skin and bone, skimming fat and salting sauces. But this afternoon something made me want to try. Maybe it was a faint hope that Lola might sniff out a mother figure. We needed a crumb of that sticky stuff. She was embarrassed: we both knew, from as soon as the actual dust settled, that we both knew she had locked me in the cellar. But I was an adult; I had moved on. Just a little kick-out at the nasty ole lady who was kissing her daddy, all pretty textbook. More than that I was a nurse: caring was my life and so was understanding. I got it. And I never planned to try to be ‘Mum’; that would have been wrong, insensitive, futile, crazy. I would simply, as people liked to say, be there for her.

  It took me a moment to realise that Stevie had walked in, holding something.

  ‘Put that down, Stevie! That’s not yours …’

  I could not hide the panic in my voice. Dark red-pink and orange in his hands: he had walked in holding a Bright New Britain flyer, snatched up from the hallway. What words – incomprehensible to us both – might he try to read?

  ‘Come and see our garden, Stevie,’ said Lola, taking the leaflet from him and placing it on the side. ‘Can he …?’

  ‘He’ll be fine, he can get around with his sticks, just watch him a little.’

  ‘OK.’

  Thomas pulled me to him as we watched them disappear up the garden.

  ‘We can go and see the pond!’ The small voice drifting over the lavender.

  ‘Sure,’ said Lola.

  The girl didn’t go outside much. A gorgeous garden, but she preferred Facetiming her friends all day. So many friends too; Ellie seemed to be the closest at that time, but it changed from week to week. Girls were strange, these days; I had either had someone for good, or not at all.

  I lifted the leaflet from the work surface:

  BRITAIN FOR THE BRITISH

  We are taking back:

  Our borders

  Our jobs

  Our NHS

  Our streets and our kid’s futures … today!

  ‘What the hell is this?’

  ‘We never used to get them but they come every few days now. They must be targeting the area …’

  ‘Oh God, we—’

  ‘No, sorry, ignore me. We get all sorts of crap through, every day.’

  ‘And what about my kid’s future? Are we no longer British?’

  ‘Just ignore it, Darling, please.’

  ‘I was British, apparently, when I was cleaning up their wasted kids’ fluids and saving their bleeding lives in A&E. Or when I spoon-fed their grandmas. Or when I—’

  He pulled me into a hug, into that compelling, hard-won privacy that only parents could know. ‘Time is short,’ he said. ‘Too short,’ I said. ‘I love you,’ he said. ‘Me you,’ I said. The urgency of our kisses became uncomfortable.

  Hands on cheeks, hands on shoulders, at my waist, his hands …

  ‘Dad!’

  Lola running up, nearly at the door, no Stevie. No Stevie. Blood? A forever loss, a fall, a drowning – I sprinted, seeing it all already. My boy. I raced past the flowerbeds and bench and vegetable garden, far to the back, by the chestnut tree where the pond hid, dank and gorge deep, skulking away from our eyes. So wide and deep: with those things strapped around his legs he would sink to the bottom. Stevie was nowhere, no Stevie.

  ‘Darling! What’s wrong?’

  A bewildered bass; Thomas running behind me.

  ‘Stevie,’ my voice snagged. ‘Where’s Stevie?’

  Thomas held up his arms, shrugging his whole body. I wanted to punch him in the chest.

  ‘Stevie! Where?’

  ‘He’s—’

  ‘Dad!’

  We both spun. Lola was ambling up towards us. I could have flown at her, tugged answers out of that tousled hair. She could see it.

  ‘He’s fine, Darling, he’s just on the swi
ng.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Look.’

  She ran-skipped back up the garden and parted branchlets of willow tree. There was Stevie, sitting immobile on a wooden swing, no longer hidden by the weeping canopy. I ran to him.

  ‘Push me, Mum!’

  It was then that I realised my feet were cold, dirty and bare once again.

  ‘I was only calling for Dad,’ said Lola, ‘to ask if he would be allowed to swing—’

  There, that. Was that triumph in her voice?

  ‘Of course he can’t fuh—’ I said; Thomas was walking closer. ‘He can’t go on swings, Lola, sorry.’

  ‘Push me!’

  ‘No, Stevie!’ The look I gave her was as direct as I could make it. ‘If he breaks a leg he’ll be … it could set him right back. Permanently.’

  Thomas took in a rapid breath. Lola lowered her chin.

  ‘Yes, of course. Sorry. It’s OK, you meant well, Lollapalooza,’ her father said.

  ‘Of course you did,’ I agreed. ‘No harm done.’

  I never wanted him to feel he had to defend her from me. We both knew how well she had meant.

  We binned the leaflet and tied up the swing.

  Later, Lola disappeared off with a group of friends to something that gloried in the name of ‘Mungojaxx’, a ‘festival for faux-boho future bankers’, as Thomas described it, which drew a tight snort from me. The girl seemed keyed up as she walked out of the door and as she went a certain tension in the breeze whistled right out with her.

  The next time we came over, I arrived with two small overnight bags.

  Lola had let us in; Thomas hurried into the kitchen ten minutes later, fresh from work.

  ‘We were just saying yesterday,’ said Thomas, ‘it’ll be lovely to have him stay over. Weren’t we, Lollapalooza?’

  ‘Were we?’ she asked.

  My back to them both, I pressed down on banana flesh with my masher.

  ‘Come on, Lo …’ he said.

  ‘What?’ She walked out of the kitchen.

  ‘Lola!’

  ‘It’s fine,’ I said, breaking eggs into a bowl. ‘It’s all still so new to her. Go get changed, relax, I’ll bring you something.’

  That won his smile back. We were still so new to ourselves that every hackneyed and cosy gesture felt daring, sexy; mixing him a drink in his own home, baking in his Aga. I was now spending so much time at Littleton Lodge that we had decided: time for our first sleepover with Stevie.

  ‘OK. I’ll just go see to Lola first.’

  I nodded and started whupping the eggs, quite hard. After he left I googled on my phone. As I had thought:

  Lollapalooza

  /ˌlɒləpəˈluːzə/

  Noun, North American, informal – A person or object that is more than usually impressive or attractive.

  I had heard the word out of that soft mouth a few too many times already. Time after time. I found it irritating, but I needed to stay calm. To relax. Vodka. I would make vodka tonics to ease us into our weekend. First, I scrolled down:

  Lollapalooza; also, a gambling term for a made-up hand of cards.

  In other words, tricky. I never claimed to be an intellectual, far from it, but I did indeed read into things. Meaning lurked everywhere, even though we could only look back or around us, never see what was to come.

  And what was to come?

  It had been over a month since the referendum. A lucky seven days since I had last smoked. Things in this country – as with things in my lungs – might have been calming down, or they might not. For a few days after the referendum I had raged. Raged. Then, Thomas had called and I had started to hope we would all just get on with it; rise in the heat, as we always had done. We got on with it. High Desford – not famous, not distinguished, beautiful to few – excelled in that it had become a truly blended town. White English people, Sikhs, Poles, Hindus, Afro-Caribbeans, Chinese, other Europeans and yes, Muslims; genders and sexualities every colour of that proud rainbow; all generations, everyone; even one local character who liked to drape a Partick Thistle scarf across his chilled wares in the market square. Surely, unless you mixed it all up, gave it some heat and bit in brave and hard, you never could know. And maybe a Swedish-born oven, raised in Shropshire, was always destined to bake some bloody lovely Jamaican banana bread.

  As it rose in the oven, I went to the drinks fridge. But the bottle of vodka had gone, and the tonic too. I did not stress: that sunshine aroma was already billowing out from the cast-iron conundrum, filling such cracks in our day. Wine would do.

  ‘Mum?’ Stevie wandered into view. ‘The cartoon finished.’

  ‘OK, sweetie, I’m coming through.’

  ‘Can I have some ’nana cake, please?’

  ‘Not right now, after supper.’

  No, the youth was not in charge, today; the grown-ups had already plotted. As our reward, the evening had passed off quietly – Stevie, having seen the size of his new room, lit up the longer silences – and everyone had gone to bed early and eager. None more so than Thomas and I.

  Lights left on, always. Our pampered mouths – brushed clear of crumbs and newly minted – were now more than stunned by their discoveries, they were over-sexed and delighted for it. Our bodies were ahead of even our lips. Thomas had seized a no-messing handful of right thigh. With my toes pointing past his shoulder, he eased my thigh higher as we sat, naked, facing each other on the bed; higher he stretched me, back and higher …

  ‘Mum!’

  ‘Oh God!’ A hamstring twanged, good as snapped. ‘Stevie darling, hi—’

  Thomas had already yanked up the duvet.

  ‘What are you doing, Mum?’

  ‘Exercises, poppet. Physio.’ I gave Thomas my first cross look. ‘Door?’

  ‘It was locked, I swear!’

  ‘What did you want, baby? You can’t sleep?’

  ‘I dreamed of Lolly and she came.’

  ‘What?’ we said.

  ‘Lolly was here, she told me you wanted me.’

  Neither of us spoke for a moment. Then:

  ‘Of course,’ I said. ‘We always want you, my lovely one.’

  Stevie, free of his callipers but broken by bad dreams, clambered on to the bed so he could throw his insubstantial arms around me. I sat back on my haunches, the right one aching like hell, and I pressed my lips to his crown. He wormed into the bed, nestled down under the duvet.

  Behind me, a swallowed sigh.

  In the morning, Thomas was all smiles and ‘more coffee?’. As the first sure-bring-Stevie sleepover it had not been an unqualified success. Not knowing which child to blame, we yawned, gulped the breakfast blend faster than normal, and blamed neither. But I knew.

  I watched as Lola, triumphant, made a show of cutting soldiers for Stevie’s dippy egg.

  ‘… and this is the soldier that guards the queen!’

  She caught my eye; we smiled. Yet my faking lips fell when she said:

  ‘Next time, Stevie, you’ll have to top-to-toe with me!’

  Thomas laughed, grateful. I said:

  ‘His legs, though, you see …’ and the laughter died.

  Maybe I was being too harsh on her, on all of us. Thomas doted on Lola, and Lola might have been coming to dote on Stevie.

  I never meant to panic, to make a big deal, to give the impression that he was totally helpless. But that was what thinking about Duchenne muscular dystrophy did to a mum. Thomas understood that; I ought never to forget that he was the man who got me. Thomas understood the sadness in my smiles when Lola petted and teased my boy. I always watched over him, it was my job, my joy. And Thomas understood, deep down, how glad I had to be that his girl wanted to reach out to my baby, even for a moment.

  A few days later, we endured a lockjaw-inducing dinner. A meal sucked up through clenched teeth.

  Lola needled and carped at everything I said. As I offered her potatoes:

  ‘You know I’m off carbs, right?’

  ‘No, I didn�
�t.’

  ‘Well, I am.’ A look. ‘I don’t want to get fat.’

  And, as a nineties dance tune played on the radio:

  ‘Tune!’ I cried. ‘I used to love this.’

  ‘God, it’s really annoying.’

  And, as I confirmed to Thomas that I was indeed wearing a new top:

  ‘Wow, you love shopping, don’t you?’

  ‘No more than most, I imagine,’ I said.

  ‘How do you afford it?’ A beat. ‘That top … yes, I think Lizzie HJ’s mum has the same one. You’ve met her, haven’t you, Dad? God, she’s so pretty it’s sickening.’

  And, as Thomas reached out to touch my hand:

  ‘Don’t look, Stevie, old people alert!’

  And, as Stevie pulled back one arm and pointed with the other, his favourite Lightning Bolt pose – aimed straight at my loving chest – I said:

  ‘The Olympics should be pretty incredible. And the Paralympics.’

  ‘Yeah, but they’re spending all that money on it and clearing out the favelas.’

  ‘I know, you’re right but—’

  ‘The games are just so the better countries can show off to—’

  Thomas smiled. ‘It’s OK, Lolapoo, relax.’

  If she were mine I would have made sure she did more than relax. So much sharpness, such spite; you could catch a nerve on it, trip up and gash your good intentions. Why did he not notice?

  Later that night, I was no longer in a receptive mood. I wanted to get the hell away. I wanted a cigarette. But Thomas was ready to share his stories. He wanted to tell me more about what mattered to him. So: Dad George dead, Boise, Idaho, America. George could drink a bottle of vodka for breakfast and defend a rape case before lunchtime. (I popped a mint in, started listening.) This combination of talents gave Thomas the cold sweats to this day. He had died over thirty years before and Thomas still felt weird; cheated that it was a car accident that got him – he had been in a taxi – rather than the burst liver for which his Tommy had spent his whole childhood preparing. His mum, Sal, a Brit, was not much inclined to live in the land of pumpkin pie and prairies. She fled sniffily to England, only to return, in crumpled Chanel, to Idaho, because that was where George was buried. The pull of that car-crash love, beyond pride and maternity and oceans, was such a shock to that practical woman that she never recovered. Thomas still retained some pride in this familiar yet foreign half of him; the US was the sassy, stacked superpower the whole world secretly fancied so he flashed his generous half-Yank teeth as he said: