Chapter 4
4
W alking home, which was only a hundred yards, lumpy great sobs racked her frame, so by the time she reached her own door Kay was so blinded by tears it took her three attempts to get the key in the keyhole. Her father hadn’t banished her, but he had suggested in the gentlest way possible that he needed a little time and space, and as she’d gotten up to go, her legs had almost given way, so weakened was she with shame and guilt and remorse.
She managed three mouthfuls of her microwaved dinner, which was three more than she’d expected to. She slung the carton and its contents into the bin, and turned for respite to what never failed. A cup of tea and the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.
One housewife was designing her ex-husband’s mansion, another was having a coming-out party for her new nose and everyone was drinking rosé in the sunshine. Squeezing away the image of her father as she’d left him, sitting alone at the kitchen table, Kay dropped into the nearest armchair, stretched out her legs and raised a mug to the screen. Relax, relax relax… Her phone rang. Helen Helen Helen flashing across the screen.
Just what she didn’t need.
She pressed her head back against the cushion and stared at the ceiling. The last time she’d spoken to Helen was over two weeks ago, when she’d rung to talk through the implications of Caro’s positive pregnancy test. Yes, Caro would be fifty-one (and a half) when the baby was born, yes nearly seventy by its eighteenth birthday. But they already knew this, and with everything feeling so much more manageable in her own life, Kay had made it crystal clear that she didn’t want to re-hash things. At which Helen had taken offence, retreating into a sulky terseness which, perhaps for the first time ever, Kay had ignored. She’d been a sounding board for her friends for so long, they’d battered her paper-thin. It was beyond time that she put her own needs first. So the conversation after had been brief, and only now did she remember that it had ended with Helen telling her that Lawrence wanted to try marriage counselling. Sitting up, Kay took the remote, paused the TV and picked up her phone. She was emotionally exhausted, as wrung out as a flannel, but the image of an all-cycling, all-climbing, all-action Lawrence wedged into a counselling session had been impossible for her to imagine then, and could be just the distraction she badly needed now.
As soon as Kay answered, Helen’s voice blew into her living room, as loud and clear as if she were standing outside the front window.
She was. Almost.
‘ Kay! I’m outside your house!’ Helen babbled. ‘But there’s a parking cone in the only parking space!’
Confused, Kay heaved herself out of the chair and went to the window, pulling the net curtain aside. Yes, there was Helen, sat in her car, blocking the road, pointing at the parking cone.
‘Can you move it?’ Helen mouthed.
‘Do you have an appointment?’ Kay said into her phone.
‘Move the bloody cone,’ Helen answered with such a tone of weariness that, watching through the window, Kay’s smile died. ‘I have news,’ she finished.
‘OK. OK.’ Dropping her phone onto the chair, Kay hurried to her back door. She didn’t have shoes and she couldn’t find shoes and a man in a white transit van behind Helen was now blasting his horn as if Helen wasn’t aware he was there, as if he and his van were cloaked in invisibility and hence the horn was the only way of attracting Helen’s attention. ‘ Men, ’ Kay muttered and set off down the narrow passageway that led to her road, stones pricking, damp seeping through her socks. At the pavement, she tiptoed into the road and picked up the cone.
Helen reversed into the space and hopped out in one swift move. ‘Asshole,’ she muttered, waving cheerily at the man as he screeched past. ‘Where are you parked?’ she asked, still waving.
‘Outside my parents’.’
‘Right.’ Helen nodded. ‘How’s things?’
‘Fine.’ Kay’s voice choked as she turned away and put the cone on her gatepost. She wasn’t ready to try and explain what had just happened. Right now, she wasn’t sure she ever would be. ‘So,’ she said cheerily, busying herself with brushing non-existent dirt from her palms. ‘What brings you here on this fine evening? Let me guess. Marriage counselling was a huge success and you’ve decided?—’
‘Libby’s pregnant,’ Helen blurted.
‘Li—’
‘I just got back to the house, and she was there—’ Helen stopped, because for the first time she was now looking at Kay directly. ‘Your eyes?’ she whispered. ‘What on earth has happened?’
‘Libby?’ Kay pressed her hand to her cheek. ‘Pregnant?’
‘Yes.’
The ground scooped away. Kay felt light-headed and fragile. Libby? The gorgeous little girl, who Alex had always been in awe of? Sleepover Libby, with Alex, the two of them tiny dots in her double bed, munching on popcorn, watching Dora the Explorer on the bedroom TV? How could that child be…? A square-shaped sob forced its way into the round of her mouth and she couldn’t swallow it down. ‘Libby’s pregnant?’ she managed.
‘Please don’t cry.’ Helen reached out, took Kay’s hand and squeezed it. ‘Please… or I will and if I do I won’t be able to stop.’
But it was too late. Already huge tears rolled down Kay’s cheeks, one after the other after the other.
And now Helen’s eyes too had filled. She opened her mouth but no words came out and so they stood together on the pavement, crying.
‘How long?’
‘I’m not sure exactly,’ Helen sniffed. ‘She says it’s due in September. So, seven months?’
They’d retreated to the kitchen, backs against the counter, waiting for tea to brew.
‘Seven months!’ The teaspoon Kay held fell from her hand, clattering against the counter. ‘God, Helen!’ Her face was chalk white. ‘When you said pregnant, I thought…’
Helen shook her head. ‘It’s too late. Far too late.’ And it was. Her child was going to have a child before she’d ever had a chance to grow up, and the stark truth of that was a spear in Helen's gut. It physically hurt, so much so that she put a hand on her stomach and held it there.
Neither of them spoke. Kay reached up to get a cup. Holding it to her chest she said, ‘I’d offer you something stronger, but you’re driving.’
‘Yes.’ Helen sighed. ‘I’m driving, and Lawrence has gone on a bike ride! Can you believe that?’
‘Perhaps he just wanted to clear his head.’ Kay’s hand shook as she took the handle of the teapot.
‘And perhaps he just didn’t want to miss his Tuesday training!’ She was looking at Kay’s trembling hand. Kay, who would have loved a daughter, who had always had the softest spot for Libby. It was horrible, just horrible to upset her like this. Especially as there was obviously something else going on.
‘Helen…’ Kay let the sound drift. ‘I’m sure he’s… He’s probably shocked.’
‘He is,’ Helen said quietly. ‘But the difference is, Kay, he’s unaffected. This won’t make a jot of difference to him. You know Lawrence.’
‘I do,’ Kay answered, equally quietly. She poured the tea, added milk and handed it to Helen. ‘Where’s Libby now?’
‘Asleep,’ Helen whispered, as softly as if her daughter were asleep upstairs, rather than three miles away. ‘Jack said he’d call when she woke, but I could see how exhausted she was so… I didn’t know what to do… Except come here.’
‘Of course.’
‘She’d caught the train. God knows how long she’s been hiding it… I didn’t notice anything at Christmas, and she didn’t come home for Easter.’
‘Didn’t she…?’ Kay paused. ‘She must have known…’
Helen shook her head. ‘She said she thought her periods had stopped because of stress. I think it was more like denial.’ Helen sighed. ‘Then she said she just wanted to get through her finals, which she hasn’t. Why? Why didn’t she talk to me, Kay? I could have helped her. I…’
‘I don’t know.’ Again, Kay’s eyes filled with glassy tears. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Just…’ Helen put her cup down. ‘I feel so guilty. Like I’ve let her down. Perhaps if I hadn’t been so wrapped up with my own unhappiness… If I hadn’t gone to Cyprus…’ Her head dipped and she pressed her hands to her eyes.
Silently Kay moved across to the roll of kitchen paper sitting on the table, tore two sheets off and handed one to Helen. ‘There’s only so much we can do, Helen. They’re not children any more. That’s the problem,’ she added sadly.
In unison they blew their noses and dabbed their eyes, and as they did Helen saw such a clear mirage of a sunny afternoon years and years before it made her wobble, had her putting a palm flat on the counter for balance. Tears and nose-blowing, here in Kay’s kitchen the day that Alex and Libby had had a fight and fled to their mothers for comfort. She remembered it so clearly. Kay and she looking at each other over the tops of their sobbing children’s heads, utterly secure in the knowledge that they could make it alright again. Which they did easily – a pat on the bottom, a beaker of juice and a cartoon. And it felt to Helen as she stood now in the same spot, barely fifteen years later, as if she were experiencing the cruellest evolutionary trick in existence. The understanding that motherhood was a state that only becomes less powerful, that indeed, as the love grows, the ability to protect the child fades. She held the tissue at her nose and shuddered. Mother Nature was one heck of a bitch.
And beside her Kay shook her head, as if she too was coming to exactly the same conclusion.
‘So,’ Helen breathed, ‘that’s my news.’ She gave a weak smile. ‘Your turn.’
‘My turn?’ Kay shook her head. ‘Stuff,’ she said unconvincingly. ‘Just stuff.’
‘Your mum?’
Kay nodded.
‘Is she OK?’
‘We just took a call from the dementia team.’
Helen frowned. ‘Not to be confused I suppose with the A team.’
And beside her Kay tipped her chin to the ceiling.
‘I’m sorry… that was a stupid weak joke that…’ Helen put her hand over Kay’s. ‘What’s going on?’
‘I have to…’ Kay stopped talking, shook her head at the ceiling and turned to Helen. ‘We… Dad and me, we have to decide whether to put Mum into a nursing home… permanently. And this is the first step.’
‘Oh.’ Helen pressed her lips together. Kay’s mother should have been in a nursing home a year ago. The strain, for anyone on the outside looking in, was obvious. She’d said as much to Caro many times, but never of course to Kay. Still, this was a start and for the first time since learning Libby's news, Helen felt a pang of soft relief. If Cyprus had helped Kay come to this decision, she was pleased for her friend. Pleased and relieved.
‘And…’ Kay said falteringly, ‘if we do decide… it could go very quickly. A couple of weeks,’ she whispered.
Helen didn’t speak.
‘My poor dad! I feel like I’ve betrayed him. Both of them. I feel awful…’
Nursing the cup at her chest, Helen’s mouth turned down. ‘You’re not betraying them, Kay,’ she said firmly. ‘What else can you do?’
‘I don’t know. Something? There must be something else.’
Blank eyed, Helen stared across the room. ‘We put Mum in a hospice at the end and she didn’t want to go.’
Kay turned to her.
Helen shook her head. ‘She didn’t say as much, but I could tell.’
‘You never said, Helen.’
Helen nodded. It was true she’d never talked about this, either with Caro or Kay. Sometimes, some things are just too hard to hear. ‘What was I going to say, Kay? That I forced her?’
‘I’m sure you didn’t?—’
‘But that’s the thing. In a way, I did. My brother and I persuaded Dad, and he persuaded Mum.’ She blinked hard, her eyes smarting, the memory tender.
Kay pressed the back of her hand to her nose. ‘I'm sorry. I didn’t realise.’
‘Don’t be.’ Helen managed a smile. ‘Please don’t be. In the end it was the right decision, and I don’t regret it. The pain Mum was in couldn’t have been managed at home. That’s what I hang onto.’ She smiled again, easier now, a door gently closing on those half- remembered, always unbearable conversations. What she’d said was true, she didn’t have regrets. She had experience, which was just as heavy, and like a weary pioneer raised its head now to point the way forward. She’d been here, done this; she knew the way. ‘Your mum will be fine,’ she said. ‘She’ll be well looked after, and it will be better for everyone. I really do believe this, Kay.’
‘I think so too,’ Kay sighed. ‘I do. It’s just my dad. He’s adamant he can manage, with the carers, and me of course.’
‘And what do you think?’
Kay turned back to the cupboard, took the sugar out and piled a teaspoon into her cup, stirring noisily. ‘I think…’ she began, and stopped stirring. ‘I think I want my life back, Helen. I think I’d quite like to join that tap class on Tuesday evenings, instead of stopping in at my parents’ house every single day.’ She scooped another spoonful of sugar.
‘Kay, one is enough?—’
‘I saw you in Cyprus,’ Kay interrupted. ‘You were so alive, Helen! And I just want some of that before it’s too late. Is that wrong? I want my mum in a home, so I can go to a tap class!’ She picked up her cup and immediately put it down again. ‘What on earth is wrong with me?’
‘ Nothing! ’ Helen's voice was loud. ‘Nothing, Kay!’ She looked down at her own mug and then across at Kay’s. And without saying a word, she tipped her tea down the sink, did the same with Kay’s and stalked across to the fridge. ‘I’ll get a bloody taxi,’ she said, as she opened the door. ‘You…’ she continued, scanning the inside of Kay’s fridge.
‘Bottom shelf,’ Kay said flatly.
‘… Are just about the most selfless person I know, Kay Burrell.’ Bottle in hand, Helen slammed the door shut. ‘There’s nothing wrong with you for wanting some time back.’ Elbows wide, face flushed with emotion, she opened the bottle and sloshed a couple of generous inches into two glasses. ‘You know what I thought when I heard about Libby? Of course, I’m devastated, but you know what else I thought Kay? I thought about me! I don’t want to be left looking after a baby.’ She handed Kay a glass. ‘So, if there’s something wrong with you, then there’s double the amount wrong with me!’
Taking the glass, Kay said, ‘Are we selfish, Helen?’
‘Yes,’ Helen answered decisively. ‘I think for the first time in our lives we are! And I’m not sure there’s anything wrong with that.’
For a long moment Kay didn’t speak, then she raised her glass, knocked it against Helen’s and said, ‘Well cheers to that!’ in a voice as grim as a January Monday.
From the living room a burst of excited voices bubbled through. Kay turned to the sound. ‘ Real Housewives of Beverly Hills ,’ she murmured.
‘Which season?’ Helen too had turned to the voices.
‘Six.’
‘Mind if I join you?’
‘Why the hell not.’
As Helen sat herself down in the armchair closest to the window, something hard pressed against her spine. She picked it up, saw it was Kay’s phone and squinted at the screen. ‘Caro’s texted.’
‘Has she?’ Kay was moving piles of schoolbooks from the settee to the coffee table.
‘Have you spoken to her lately?’ Helen passed the phone across and leaned back. ‘I always wanted to get my nose done,’ she said and nodded at the TV.
Kay looked from Helen to the screen and then back to Helen. ‘There’s nothing wrong with your nose,’ she said, then, ‘I rang to say congratulations. Not since.’
‘Me neither.’ Helen pressed her finger to her nose. ‘It could do with being flatter here.’
‘Oh,’ Kay said. She had her reading glasses on, scrolling through Caro's text.
‘Caro had hers done, didn’t she?’ Helen said. ‘You’ve got to hand it to her, Kay. She always has just gone out and gotten what she wanted from life. And I know you said you didn’t want to talk about it?—’
‘She’s on her way.’ Kay looked up, her glasses tipped right to the edge of her nose. ‘Caro.’
‘Where?’
‘She wants my advice. Something to do with the baby… She says it’s urgent.’
‘Not here?’ Flustered, Helen inched to the edge of her seat. ‘She’s not coming here?’
Kay didn’t answer. She fell back in the settee and took her glasses off.
‘She’s barely a month gone, Kay! What could be so urgent?’
Kay shrugged. ‘Stick around and find out?’
But Helen was already on her feet. ‘I can’t,’ she said, halfway to the kitchen. ‘It’s not that I don’t want to see her, but I can’t. Not today. Not today of all days.’ And standing at the sink, swallowing back a mouthful of wine, Helen could think only one thing – she must leave. Because how could she tell Caro about Libby? After everything Caro had gone through to get where she was, all the soul-searching that had gone on to get to this odd and tentative place (that even now Helen wasn’t entirely comfortable with) – how could she possibly sit there and tell her about Libby, who obviously hadn’t searched further than her knickers… Libby. Her little girl… Her head dropped quicker than a clipped rose. She turned the tap on, squeezed a drop of washing up liquid into her glass and swished it out, rubbing at it as if it had been filled with blood, not wine.
How could Libby have been so bloody stupid…?
‘Helen—’ Kay was right behind her. ‘I’ll do that.’
‘I have to go, Kay,’ she muttered, her voice thick with tears. ‘I have to?—’
‘ Hello the house! ’ And up the passageway and through the open door of Kay’s kitchen, Caro’s voice swept in like a tsunami. Hello the house! Hello the flat! Their old calling signal from the flat-sharing days of university. Used to signal an arrival, the starting gun on what inevitably would turn out to be an evening of laughter and gossip. Where on earth had all that gone? The sublime confidence that everything would be fun – the evening ahead, life in general. Where had that certainty gone?
Kay, who still had her phone in her hand, glanced down at it. ‘The text was sent twenty minutes ago,’ she whispered.
‘Kay?’ Caro called, sounding very close.
‘You have to stay,’ Kay mouthed.
‘Don’t say anything,’ Helen mouthed back.
And Kay was still shaking her head as less than half a moment later, Caro stuck her head around the open back door and exclaimed, ‘Helen! What are you doing here?’
Helen opened her mouth, shrugged and closed it again without managing a word. Caro looked amazing. They hadn’t seen each other since Cyprus and the sight of her now, dressed in a neatly tailored trouser suit and gorgeous emerald-green polka dot blouse, stunned her. She’d always had a fantastic wardrobe, but this wasn’t about clothing. Yes, the holiday tan helped, but added to that was a peachy softness that had settled all over Caro’s cheeks and lightened her eyes, that had melted the hard-set line of her jaw. She looked as if she’d been dipped in happiness.
‘What’s wrong?’ Caro turned from Helen to Kay.
‘Nothing!’ she managed, then, ‘You look great, Caro. Doesn’t she?’
Beside her, Kay nodded vigorously.
Caro dumped the pile of brochures she was carrying onto the closest counter top. ‘What’s wrong?’ she said again.
‘How’s everything? Is everything OK?’ Helen stammered. ‘With, umm…’
‘Everything is absolutely fine,’ Caro squinted, pacing her words like they were coded instructions. ‘Now, what is wrong ? Your eyes are like raisins, Helen.’ She turned to Kay. ‘And yours are no better.’
‘Helen came to help me,’ Kay said quickly. ‘It’s…’ she waved a hand. ‘I had some news, that’s all.’
‘What news? What do you need help with?’
Back to the sink, Helen took a tea towel and began drying her glass. There would be zero chance of bluffing Caro. Her stomach twisted like the cloth in her hands. She wasn’t ready, she’d barely processed it herself. Telling Caro was going to be like announcing an engagement at a wedding. She wasn’t ready.
‘My wardrobe!’ Kay blurted and the tea towel fell limp in Helen’s hands. Wardrobe? Kay didn’t have a wardrobe. She had a built-in cupboard in which fabric went to die. Why on earth would she need help with that?
‘I need help with my wardrobe, and Helen came to help me.’ This time, Kay’s voice was steady. She nodded at Helen. ‘Didn’t you?’
‘Wardrobe?’ Caro said and the three of them looked at each other incredulously.
‘I have a meeting at school next week.’ Kay went to the fridge and took out the wine. ‘You remember that thing I told you about?’
‘The thing you thought had gone away?’ Caro said crisply.
‘Well… it hasn’t.’
Helen switched a glance at Caro. She looked back at Kay, who was making urgent eye signals at her.
‘What does that mean?’ Caro frowned.
‘It means… that what was a concern, is now a complaint. It’s on my record.’
‘On your record!’ Caro gasped.
‘Forever.’
Helen dropped the tea towel. She pressed back against the counter for support, hands spread. All the way over, the image of Libby’s swollen stomach had blinded her. It was there huge in her mind and she couldn’t get past it, huge in the empty passenger seat and she couldn’t see through it. Low as a rain cloud, impenetrable as a wall, and yet, already the first person she’d told was facing problems of her own, equally daunting, easily tragic. Life goes on. Like a sulky teenager it just keeps stomping on! She shook her head. ‘How can you stay so calm?’ she said, and she meant it. Swollen eyes aside, Kay was already back at her swan act. Calm exterior, furious paddling underneath the surface.
Kay shrugged. ‘I may look calm, but I don’t think I feel it.’
And how many times, in thirty years, had she heard Kay admit even this much? Helen stared at her.
‘So,’ Kay said. ‘I just wanted some advice on what to wear. When I meet this boy’s mother.’
‘The mother?’ Caro looked as if she were trying to frown. ‘The one you told us about?’
‘Yes.’ And Kay’s head wobbled, halfway between a nod of affirmation and a shrug of distress.
‘The bitch has made it official now?’ Helen said, grateful and relieved to be off the hook, but also newly enraged on Kay’s behalf and… she glanced at Caro whose forehead hadn’t really moved, even though her eyes had narrowed. Botox. Definitely Botox. ‘So it’s on your record?’ she said, turning back to Kay. ‘Permanently?’
‘ Yes, Helen,’ Kay said tightly. ‘As I told you? Remember? Before Caro arrived?’
‘Yes… Of course.’ Helen’s jaw fell slack. She was having trouble keeping up. So much so that Libby’s pregnancy actually fell out of view, just for a moment.
No one spoke.
And then Caro said, ‘Have you started?’
‘What?’ Kay said. ‘Started what?’
‘Picking something out?’
‘No. I… We were?—’
‘Good.’ Caro picked up the brochures. ‘Because if there’s anyone who knows how to dress for success, it’s me. Let’s get going.’ And she went to the cupboard, pulled out a glass and handing it to Kay said, ‘Orange juice for me.’