Chapter Ten
Comments:
Matt Simons: Well, how did the date go? Did you poison her?
Alex Hill: No, but I was a dick. Why do I always think that any time anyone says something about Scarlet, that they’re calling my parenting skills into question? Why can I not just smile and nod and take it on board? I am, sorry to say it, a shit.
Matt Simons: Nah, you’re just oversensitive, mate. You gotta learn to shake it off. Unless they really are insulting your parenting skills, then you can smack ’em.
Alex Hill: Thanks. I think.
Lucy Charlton: Next time I see you I’ll teach you how to make a soufflé!
From: [email protected]
Subject: Advice
It’s not a soufflé I need. Winter picked up that Scarl is having problems at school and I bloody nearly bit her head off. What can I do about the whole bullying thing? Am I letting Scarl down?
Al x
From: [email protected]
Subject: Advice
You are NOT letting Scarlet down. It’s not easy for you and you are doing an amazing job — I wish all the parents were as dedicated as you are, some don’t even listen to their children read because they think that’s our job! Look, do you fancy having a coffee one evening? We can discuss a strategy for managing Scarlet’s behaviour at school and how we can help her. I might even bring a soufflé recipe! Oh, only if you think Winter will be okay with us meeting as I don’t want to upset anything between you — am presuming you’ve told her we’re just friends these days?
Lu x
From: [email protected]
Subject:
Hi. How are you this morning? Still upright, no signs of acute rice poisoning?
I know I hate saying it, but I’m going to have to do it again . . . I’m sorry. Sorry about last night, about so much of last night you cannot imagine. Sorry that I’m too chicken to admit that the last time I cooked a proper meal was in school, partnered up with that Shakespeare of Facebook, Matt-bloody-Simons, sorry that I didn’t share a bottle of wine with you, sorry that Scarlet ruined the mood (although she couldn’t help it, she didn’t know there was a ‘mood’ to ruin, only that her friend Winter had come over). And, most of all, I’m sorry about the way I acted.
I’ve got this thing, you see. This I don’t know what you’d call it. An inferiority complex? Something like that. The permanent feeling that I’m getting it all wrong. I love Scarlet. Unquestioningly, I adore her. I want you to know that, here, upfront. I would die for that little girl. But. Oh, and now I’ve had to have another drink (it’s okay, Mum has Scarlet tonight, she does sometimes, when she’s in early, when she’s ‘feeling strong’ as she puts it, as though Scarl is some kind of Incredible Hulk who destroys furniture and knocks down walls). But. Scarlet isn’t mine. She’s not my daughter, you know that, she’s my niece. Would it be different if she was mine? Maybe, maybe that genetic thing would cut in and make it all easier but she’s Ellen’s daughter. Ellen and some loser from up north somewhere, who only hung around long enough for the positive test, then buggered off again. So, when Ellen . . . when El died, who else was there? She couldn’t live with Mum, and I wouldn’t . . . would not have her taken away from the only home she’s ever known and taken into care. But I didn’t know, I still don’t know, how to look after a little girl. I’m doing my best, I’m pretty rubbish at the clothes thing, and I have no idea how this make-up effort is supposed to work, but hell, she’s only eight, I’ve got years to get the hang of all that before she needs it, yes?
And the guilt. The absolute knowing that I’m getting it all wrong. It’s constant, Winter, the gnawing little thoughts that Scarl should have her five a day, her vitamin tablets, her proper calcium intake, the sunblock and the vitamin C and a good education and friends and pets and brothers and sisters and . . . you know, there’s a list somewhere. Probably being kept by all those people who tut when she rides Light Bulb into the supermarket or reads nothing but those pony books — you know she can spell Lipizzaner but she can’t spell competition? So every time anyone says anything about Scarl . . . oh, can be something like ‘she should have a coat on’ or ‘she looks a bit pale or tired or sad’ . . . I take it personally. Like an insult. As if they’re saying ‘you can’t look after that child, can you?’ And every time I’m called into school, every time Lucy mentions her behaviour in the classroom, it just heaps more shame onto my head. And then I think, ‘what if they take her away? What if they decide that she really would be better off in a family? What if I lose her?’
It’s stupid. I’m stupid. I know you didn’t mean anything, I know you were just trying to show concern, but all I could hear was ‘you don’t even realise she’s being pushed around in the playground, do you?’ And then there’s the guilt about that. Oh, they pick on Scarl because of me, I know that. And because she doesn’t have a mummy or a daddy, and, you know what? That’s my fault too. So it’s all on me. I was a rude, ungrateful bastard.
Sorry. Again.
Alex
I’d just finished reading the email when there was a knock at the door that made me jump. At least the glass panelling gave me a good idea of who was there, which was something to be grateful for, because flinging it open to Margaret without a moment’s priming wouldn’t be recommended, especially with today’s outfit of something knitted which was the nearest I could come to a definition.
‘I came to see if you need any tea towels washed,’ she said, stepping down into the living room. ‘Because you’ve been here nearly a fortnight and that’s a long time with nothing but a J-cloth. And we don’t have a laundrette for miles, I think the nearest might even be in Stockton, there used to be one on the High Street but I think it burned down. Or went bankrupt, I just remember there was smoke involved.’
‘Hello,’ I said, somewhat weakly. I was rather relieved that she’d come for something as, well, yes, it was completely peculiar, obviously, but at least it wasn’t an attempt to talk about Alex. ‘I think I’m fine on the tea towel front, actually, thanks.’ I couldn’t tear my eyes away from her costume, which was either a woollen dress or a very large and slightly camp fisherman was missing his jersey. ‘That’s a very nice . . . umm . . . you’ve got on.’
Years of Daisy’s affliction with fashion had given me an acute eye for people who were ‘trying something new’ in the clothing department, which usually meant dressing ten years younger or older. In Margaret’s case it seemed to be dressing pink and Icelandic. She looked like a boiled Bjork.
‘Thank you, dear. A friend made it for me on her machine. I like something bright at this time of year, livens things up a bit, don’t you think?’
Well, yes, but so does crystal meth and orgies.
Margaret gazed around the room. ‘Oh, are you working? I shouldn’t have interrupted . . . there was just another tiny thing? I wondered, well, it’s rather an imposition I know, but we were supposed to be having a lady from Newcastle who writes about Victorian sad people, but she’s had to cancel. We get so few creatives through Great Leys, though Mr Park likes to think of himself as a writer, but he’s only ever managed a rather angry letter to the editor of the local paper, so he’s not really suitable. We’re having a meeting tomorrow, you see, and if I could tell them that you were in agreement then it would be a feather in my cap, so to speak.’
No. Not feathers. Not with that knitwear. It would be like the blue bird of happiness dying a terrible death. ‘I’m sure I’d be happy to do whatever it is that you’re asking me to do,’ I said, being as tactful as I could.
‘Oh. I’m sorry, yes, of course. Just to drop in at the book group on Wednesday, maybe give them a bit of a talk? You’d be very welcome to sell your books there, they always like to buy one or two from authors, although I can’t say we’ve had very many. We nearly got John Grisham once, you know,’ she said, proudly, as though they had been hunting him through the undergrowth for weeks and he’d scampered away from their spears at the last moment.
I looked over at the laptop. The December deadline was beginning to look as though it was peering in through the window at me, but publicity was publicity. ‘Of course, I’d be glad to,’ I said.
Glad is probably pushing it. Grateful for the opportunity to procrastinate is more like it.
‘Wonderful!’ Margaret turned on the heel of her comfortable shoes. ‘Now I’d better go and see if Alex is in. He promised to come and help me move a table today and I haven’t seen hide nor hair of him yet.’
I wanted to put a hand on her arm, ask her if Alex was really as worried about bringing up Scarlet as he’d seemed in that email, as anxious and self-doubting about her wellbeing, but I stopped myself in time. She didn’t seem to be particularly well-bundled in the concern and reassurance department — which, now I came to think of it, might have something to do with the way Alex had turned out, a childhood of that kind of parenting was going to leave a bit of a mark — and I didn’t want her to turn up on his doorstep full of a ‘what’s this I hear?’
I just smiled instead. ‘Tell him thanks for dinner.’
She gave me a swift nod and went off out again, her dress bulging and rippling as she walked as though she had a couple of large boa constrictors in there with her. With Margaret, that wasn’t totally improbable either.
Oh well. Could have been worse, I could have been standing in for Ewan McGregor.
I slumped for a bit longer, but the shaft of lengthening sunlight which had been growing across the floor for the last hour or so decided me. I’d go up onto the moors, pop in to a couple of small chapels that were marked on the map but I’d not yet had a chance to see, take some more pictures and generally enjoy the brightness outside. Being out of doors might just jazz me up enough to get down to some writing. Last time round Dan had been there to cajole me out of the mid-book slump, now it was down to me, and if I couldn’t cajole myself then I had no business calling myself a writer.
I got into the car, which was still festooned with the remnants of Scarlet’s biscuit extravaganza. You should do something about that. The thought was there, but I just couldn’t work up sufficient disgust in the state of my passenger seat to do anything like hoovering, so I just turned a blind eye and headed out of Great Leys and up onto the road that ran over the high moors, a track so old that it was grooved into the landscape with the centuries of passing traffic. The high sun cast brittle shadows from the ancient marker stones and crosses which marked the way and the road was so empty that I could almost imagine myself riding across the moors, leading a string of pack ponies down towards the town.
I suppose I must have been daydreaming a bit, lulled by the straight road, the flicker of the passing stones, the warmth of the sun, because the next thing I knew a horn was blaring at me. On the opposite side of the road a big four-wheel drive thing had been forced to put two wheels up onto the verge to avoid my somewhat erratic approach along a part of the road not quite wide enough for two vehicles to pass easily. I should have pulled over, even slowed down, but my fugue state had meant that I hadn’t even registered the road’s degradation from smooth two-lane tarmac to single track. The sudden slicing of the horn into my thoughts made me jump and flick the wheel, so that we passed each other at speed, narrowly avoiding clipping wing mirrors, and adrenaline was dry and powdery in my mouth as I realised what could have happened. A quick glance in my rear mirror showed me the other car driving slowly down off the grass and heading the way I’d come, but the brief glimpse I’d had of the annoyed other driver was what was really sending those iced-acid pulses through my blood.
Dan.
I pulled into the little lay-by and put my head down on the steering wheel. It can’t have been Dan. You’re just being stupid now, transposing his face onto every dark-haired man you see. You went by far too fast to get a proper look anyway, and Dan drives an Astra, not that big silver monstrosity, the kind of thing favoured by people who tow caravans or ferry umpteen children to a private school.
I repeatedly licked my lips, trying to bring some fluid back into my mouth but my tongue was sticky with lack of moisture. Not Dan. Just a bloke with a similar haircut. You’re losing it, Winter.
I had to speak to Daisy.
‘Daze, I keep thinking I see Dan everywhere.’
‘Define “everywhere”. In your bathroom, hiding in the boot of your car?’
As everything settled down I began to feel ridiculous. ‘I might be overreacting a bit. It might not have been him — it can’t have been him now I come to think of it. Dan doesn’t understand the countryside and he thinks sheep are out to get him.’
Daisy sighed. ‘How long are we going to have this going on for? Win, you have to get over him, however you choose to do it, confront him, ignore him, burn down his house. He shouldn’t be able to make you feel this bad just by existing. I mean, so what if you did see him? He can’t do anything, not now, not as long as we’re strong. He can only affect you as badly as you let him, can’t he?’
With my sister’s wise words ringing in my ears, I restarted the car and headed towards my original destination, the overgrown churchyard which lay off this hardly-used bit of roadway. The wheel was still clammy between my hands but the panic had abated. Daisy was right, of course she was. In fact, she usually was. That artistic temperament that should, by rights, have made her flighty and inconsequential had in fact given her a sensible and rational outlook on life, which was why I loved to talk things over with her. She’d see what lay behind my knee-jerk reactions and force me to see it too.
It wasn’t Dan. It can’t have been Dan. And even if it was, so what? He can’t touch us now.