Chapter 12 #2
I have my scan pictures stretched out on the table and only tear my eyes away from them to look out at the water.
The sun is shimmering on the waves, and my skin is warm beneath its touch.
The air is rich with the tang of salt and the cries of the gulls wheeling overhead.
It is as perfect a moment as I can ever recall.
I log it in my mind, vowing to remember this scene, this sense of contentment.
I can use it to calm myself when the inevitable jitters kick in.
‘It’s a big commitment,’ I say, after sipping my water. ‘Huge.’
‘It is. How do you feel about that?’
‘Right now, I feel fine. Better than fine. But I don’t have a good track record at staying still, at facing up to problems instead of running away from them. I just hope… Well, I hope I can figure it out. I hope I can find a way to just stay, and be a mum, to enjoy my life and be happy. Be normal.’
He raises an eyebrow at me, and says: ‘Normal? You? They are not two words that go together for me.’
‘I know. Me neither. But I keep remembering something my mum used to say to me. She used to say I didn’t have to be normal – I just had to be me.’
‘She sounds like a wise woman.’
I glance at the pictures on the table. I have no firm beliefs about what happens after we die.
I have lived all over the world and experienced many different cultures.
Everything from atheism through to Buddhist reincarnation holds some appeal.
Whatever the truth of it all, whatever the answers to the big questions, I hope that somehow my mum can see me now.
That she is looking down on this scene, seeing those scan photos, and that she is proud and pleased.
‘She was,’ I tell him simply. ‘But she earned her wisdom, too. She was more like us than them, if you know what I mean.’
‘Us and them? That sounds slightly combative.’
‘I know it does, and I hate that my brain still thinks like that. It’s not that one path is right and another is wrong, it’s just that they’re very different.
My dad, my siblings, a lot of the people in the village, they never wanted to leave.
Never wanted to see more of the world because the world they had was enough for them.
I can never quite figure out if I think that’s awful or if it’s wonderful. ’
‘It can be both,’ he answers, sipping his orange juice. ‘And we can be both. Just because you were one thing before doesn’t mean you’ll always be that. We change.’
‘Maybe. How have you changed?’
He thinks about it, and I wonder if he is going to move on to something else. He doesn’t especially like talking about himself.
‘Well, when Miranda was born,’ he finally says, ‘there was no way I was ready to be a father. I tried, but I couldn’t handle it – not without being away for long periods of time.
Now, though, I feel like she’s given me the chance to try and make up for lost time, and I’m pretty determined not to stuff that up.
I still feel the same as you sometimes, like I want to make a run for it, but then I remind myself of what I’ve already missed, and what I don’t want to lose. ’
He shrugs and adds: ‘I’m a work in progress.’
‘How old were you?’ I ask. ‘When Miranda arrived?’
‘I was eighteen, and so was her mum. We’d met in the system, and I suppose we had this misguided idea that we’d build our own little family, make it perfect. Give our child everything we never had.’
It breaks my heart to picture the younger Guy, striving to offer a better world to his own daughter while he was still too young to understand the demands of being a parent.
‘I guess it wasn’t that easy in the real world?’
‘No, it wasn’t. We were babies having a baby.
I’d joined the Army because there weren’t many options for me.
I wasn’t academic, and I didn’t come from the kind of background that exactly nurtured my strengths, you know?
It seemed a solid option, and it gave me structure, which I realise now I desperately needed.
But while I had that, she – Miranda’s mum – didn’t.
She was… I don’t want to criticise her.’
He folds his arms over his chest, and his lips set in a line of silence. Guy is not exactly the oversharing type, and this is clearly hard for him.
‘Miranda said she was unpredictable.’
He nods. ‘Yes. That’s a good word for it.
She loved rows, loved the drama of them.
Loved trying to provoke fights. I think she felt more alive when she had a battle going on.
When I stopped giving her that, when I retreated, she left me.
She waited until I was away on deployment, and she took Miranda, and she left.
All I got was a note, saying she needed a fresh start and that she’d be in touch once they were settled – which she never did.
It was like she just cut me out of their lives, and I was too young and too damaged to even try and fight it. ’
He sounds desolate, destroyed. Full of regret.
‘You said a while back that you thought maybe you didn’t deserve them. Could that be part of why you let them go so easily?’
‘I suppose so. I’m not one for self-analysis but, over the years, yes, I’ve thought that.
My childhood was one rejection after another.
I was too old, too wild, too physical, too much.
Wherever I landed, I was too something. I suppose that took its toll.
I thought that Miranda was better off without me.
And I was a coward who abandoned his duties. ’
I reach out and take one of his hands in mine. He’s reluctant, and I can tell he does not want comfort or consolation. That he is still wrestling with his own guilt, with the things he has done and, more importantly, the things he has not.
‘You did the best you could with what you had,’ I tell him, stroking his palm with my fingers. ‘You made mistakes. You weren’t perfect. None of us are. Not me or you or Miranda’s mum. Nothing you can do now will change the past, Guy – all you can do is focus on the present, and the future.’
He manages a half smile and raises my hand up to his mouth. He kisses the back of it and lays it down on the table.
‘Now you’re sounding all wise, too,’ he replies. ‘And you haven’t flirted with me for hours. Motherhood is already changing you.’
‘No, it’s not,’ I answer. ‘I promise. I’m just recharging my flirting batteries. Maybe you can flash me your abs, give them a bit of a jump start?’
He laughs, and all feels right with the world. I don’t get to see his abs, but his smile is worth even more.