Chapter 12
Fridays were my official day off. Nicky’s comments about taking care of myself still lingering in my head, I’d had every intention of trying a run once I’d dropped the kids at school, but after falling asleep at five-thirty, I’d then snoozed the alarm one too many times and had an even more hectic morning than usual. Instead, I forced myself to walk a longer way home, adding maybe another kilometre to my journey.
It was a start, I tried to kid myself as I trudged along the footpath. I’d try running next week, when hopefully I’d had more sleep.
While my body might have been slow, my head flew along thought pathways and sped through worries as if it were competing in the Olympics.
I briefly considered the postcard, before dismissing it as far too vague and insubstantial to bother about yet. I fretted for maybe half a kilometre about Isla. She’d seemed slightly more settled this morning, until Finn had mentioned their fortnightly outing with Brayden the next day and she’d had a full-blown meltdown on the pavement outside school. I had no idea what to do about her reaction to seeing her dad, which seemed to grow increasingly fraught the older she got. Isla was struggling to relate to this man who took her to the park but showed no further interest in her life. A couple of weeks ago she’d asked Theo if he could be her daddy, and when he’d gently explained all the benefits of being an uncle, she’d settled on Finn taking on the role when he was older.
How obligated was I to force a relationship if it seemed to be more harmful than helpful? Was this a blip to work through, or a slippery slope? Wouldn’t a daughter benefit from having a father around if he was, underneath all the nonsense, a half-decent guy?
But then that thought, as I skirted the edge of a sweetcorn field, segued into Brayden having the audacity to turn up to my antenatal class without checking with me first and how on earth I was going to handle the next four weeks of him plus a post-birth reunion party. With gritted teeth, was about all I could come up with. After all, his baby deserved parents who were well equipped for the role as much as anyone. I decided I’d do it for Finn and Isla’s half-sibling, if not for my own sense of pride and proving to Brayden and Silva that I was totally cool about however my ex-husband treated this child compared to his others.
I spent a brief minute, while following a bridle path back towards the cottage, thinking about the Bloomers. I made a note to visit Daisy and check she wasn’t being bothered by Raz as well as following up with Courtney and Toby after Hazel’s unhelpful input, then moved on to the topic taking up by far the biggest space in my head.
Jonah.
And Ellis, of course.
I hoped the promise of a manicure would be enough to bring her back on Monday.
I wondered if Jonah would drop her off, which led to questions like when had he passed his driving test? Who’d paid for lessons? Where had he been living at the time? Did he work? Doing what?
Why was he here, and what on earth would that mean?
Would I ever sleep properly again, unless I found out everything?
The last two questions, the biggest ones, jostling about behind the others, only managed to worm their way to the front of my mind once I reached my back gate.
Had I ever stopped loving Jonah?
How did he feel about me?
A shower, late breakfast and two hours of strenuous cooking later, I still couldn’t stop thinking about it, so decided to distract myself with some real problems.
Firstly, I walked over to Daisy’s house and dropped off a pot of chilli. As well as caring for Daisy and Bolt, Lisa was currently fostering sisters aged two and three. When Daisy handed the dish to Lisa, she had to blink hard a few times before offering me a cup of tea.
I made Lisa and Daisy a much-needed lunch, then sat on their living-room rug playing one-handed with the girls while cuddling Bolt so both mums could rest for an hour.
After that, I whizzed over to Courtney and Toby’s house. It was two-thirty, Hazel was still at the hair salon and Toby’s brothers and sisters would be at school, so I was hoping to catch Courtney and baby Hazel alone.
It took several knocks before she answered the door. I would have given up if the television weren’t blaring.
‘Oh. It’s you.’
Courtney wore pink jogging bottoms and a grey sports bra, revealing an almost flat stomach. Her hair was perfectly straightened and she had on a full face of make-up.
‘Is it okay if I come in for a few minutes? I brought you some chilli.’
‘I’m going out soon. But the others can eat it.’
‘I’ll put it in the fridge.’ I nudged my way in, not waiting to be invited, and waded through the cluttered living room to find the kitchen in an even worse state.
The fridge was practically bare, so I left the dish on an empty shelf and turned on the kettle.
‘You’ve got time for a drink before you go? It feels like a while since we’ve had a proper catch-up.’
Courtney glanced at her phone, face pinched. ‘Sure.’
‘Where’s Hazel?’ I asked, rinsing out two mugs after failing to find any clean ones in the cupboards. I wasn’t normally so bossy and interfering, but I was genuinely worried about Courtney and could see that she wasn’t going to reveal anything easily.
‘At work.’
‘I meant baby Hazel,’ I said, my concern twitching. ‘Is she okay?’
‘Yeah, fine,’ Courtney said, with zero enthusiasm.
I waited until the drinks were ready and we’d cleared enough debris off the sofas to sit down before resuming my interrogation.
‘And how are you?’ I asked, attempting a careful balance between warm and casual.
‘You know. Knackered. Bored. I was meant to be going to this thing at my mate’s house. Like, it was really important to me, everyone was going, and I’ve not been round to theirs in ages. But Toby refused to skive his college assessment, and Hazel wouldn’t let me leave the baby in the salon. I mean, it’s hardly a big deal if she sleeps in the corner for a few hours.’
Courtney was scrolling down her phone as she talked, sending off a couple of quick-fire messages. ‘She’s always on at me. Why haven’t I done this, gone shopping, waited on them hand and foot? She just wants a slave.’ Courtney screwed up her face, continuing to scroll as her voice grew increasingly bitter. ‘Always interfering with me and Toby. I reckon she’s jealous because I’ve got a man and she tried three and they were all losers.’
‘Wow. I hope you didn’t tell her that.’
Courtney narrowed her eyes, still on the screen. ‘Why not? It’s true.’
She suddenly sat up, face brightening. ‘Oh, wow. My mate went and got the sickest tattoo. Check this out.’
And so the next half an hour went on. When cries started drifting down the stairs, Courtney swore, ignored it for three more TikTok videos she had to show me, then stomped upstairs to fetch her daughter.
‘You want a cuddle?’
I most certainly did.
‘Oh, bless you,’ I cooed, after patting her bottom. ‘She’s sopping wet, Courtney.’
Normally I wouldn’t hesitate to change a baby’s nappy while visiting a mum, but I wanted to see whether Courtney showed any emotion towards her daughter while caring for her.
It was worse. She glanced up, saying, ‘Marnie will be back in a few minutes. She’ll change her. I told you, I’m going out as soon as they’re back.’
‘When the kids are back?’ Marnie was fourteen. It wasn’t illegal for her to be left responsible for a baby, but I’d met Marnie and I wasn’t sure it was advisable. ‘You aren’t waiting for Toby, or his mum?’
She rolled her eyes. ‘Nah, they’ll be gone ages. We’re meeting at four for predrinks.’
After finding a pack of nappies behind an armchair, I got on with it.
I had to leave well before baby Hazel’s uncles and aunties finished school, but my visit had done nothing to ease my worries about Courtney. She didn’t seem especially depressed – she’d been positively enthusiastic when talking about her new outfit or a friend’s new boyfriend. But she’d not referred to her daughter by name the whole time I’d been there. Generally speaking, new mothers talked about their babies all the time. Especially with their antenatal and parenting group leader, who wouldn’t get bored as her peers might.
Courtney’s example of motherhood up until now hadn’t been great. But she had Grandma Hazel, and Toby, and numerous friends at Bloomers, and while pregnant had directed a fair amount of her enthusiasm towards her baby, rather than her social life.
I was very concerned that Courtney was deliberately dissociating herself from Hazel. I’d seen this type of behaviour before, and it rarely ended well.
The Friday night before the kids saw their dad, I always tried to keep things calm and cosy. On the way home from school we stocked up on ingredients, and, due to the main oven being broken, made a sort of pizza toast we’d invented, Isla and Finn going to town with a multitude of random toppings – carrot and pea pizza, anyone? No? They took turns in the bath, then we grilled the cheesy toast before eating in front of a favourite film. Once Isla hit that sweet spot between snuggly and overtired, I tucked her into bed. Finn was allowed a secret extra half-hour downstairs on a Friday, and this evening he asked if I could read to him for the first time since he’d learned to process the words faster than I could say them.
‘Are you feeling all right about seeing Dad tomorrow?’ I asked, once we’d finished two chapters and despite his eyes growing soft and heavy he’d asked for another one.
Finn shrugged. ‘Yeah.’
‘You don’t sound too sure.’ I tried to keep my voice casual, but my mum antenna was on full alert.
‘No. I am sure. I like seeing Dad, mostly.’
‘Why only mostly?’
I followed him up the stairs, but he did the classic move of waiting until he’d brushed his teeth, been tucked in and my hand was on the light switch before answering the question.
‘It’s just if Isla starts screaming in Café Fried Chicken like last time.’
‘What?’
A ripple of panic skittered up my back.
‘Dad forgot to get her a straw, so she started crying, and that got on my nerves, so I sort of accidentally hit her over the head with mine, and, well, you know.’
I did know.
‘What did Dad do?’ I scooched up beside him on the bed.
‘He made me sit on a different chair and then just kept telling her it was okay. But it didn’t work.’
‘Did he get cross?’ Brayden didn’t have much of a temper, but I couldn’t imagine him keeping calm in that situation.
‘No.’ Finn’s narrow shoulders shrugged underneath his football-covered duvet. ‘But his eyes went big and his hand was shaking. He kept looking about as if someone else would come and help while Isla got louder and louder, screaming for you.’
‘Oh, honey. That must have been stressful.’
His solemn nod made my throat tighten. There was no point berating him for hitting Isla with a paper straw. The look on his face showed how bad he felt. I hated the thought of Isla being in so much distress when I wasn’t there. Screaming for me but instead getting Brayden flailing around, clueless. I couldn’t bear to think of my precious boy having to sit there feeling terrible as he watched his father unable to cope.
My anger at Brayden buzzed like a bees’ nest kicked by a cow.
‘Well, it was at first, but then I told Dad he should try that game on his phone, the pony one. We took our food to the car, and he drove around for a bit while I held the phone and pressed the buttons for her, and in the end she stopped.’
‘Sounds like you saved the day. Why didn’t you tell me about it?’
He yawned. ‘Dad bought us an ice cream and said he was really sorry, it was his fault for forgetting the straw and he was the dad so he shouldn’t have got stressed, then I said sorry too, so he said we could forget it happened. Then he made a joke, so Isla started laughing and it was okay. It’s not that big a deal, Mum.’
No big deal?
Sitting downstairs, thinking about Isla screaming for me in the café, Brayden pointlessly pleading with her to be quiet, Finn feeling terrible, I grew increasingly irate. Why didn’t he call me? Why didn’t he tell me? If he’d been a proper dad, the kind who showed up for meetings about their daughter’s emotional health, who was around enough to know what she was going through and how to help her manage it…
I had to settle for a torrent of one-sided, imaginary arguments with my ex-husband that evening because he didn’t answer or return my calls. When he pulled into the drive the next morning as if he’d not even bothered to listen to the brusque message on his voicemail, I stepped outside to talk.
‘Is there a problem?’ He folded his arms across his chest. ‘If it’s about the antenatal classes, then?—’
‘I’m not going to start a professional discussion when you’re here to pick up your children, Brayden.’
‘It’s Brayve.’
‘You really want me to call you that?’
He glanced to the side before looking back at me, shoulders drooping. ‘No. Brayden’s fine.’ He paused. ‘As long as Silva’s not around.’
‘Right. Anyway, Finn told me what happened at Café Fried Chicken.’
‘What?’ He had the audacity to look momentarily baffled before realisation suddenly dawned on his face. ‘You mean Isla getting upset?’
‘Yes,’ I ground out, making every effort to keep my voice down.
‘It was nothing. I forgot her straw. We sorted it.’
‘And by we, you mean my eight-year-old son?’
‘Our son. Who initially didn’t help before he showed me the game she likes. The place was heaving, so the sensory overload didn’t help, but once we’d moved to the car she soon settled. No harm done.’
‘No harm done?’I retorted. ‘You don’t think they found it upsetting, Isla screaming for me? Finn seeing you clueless?’
‘I wasn’t clueless!’
I narrowed my eyes.
‘Okay. So I did panic a bit. I’ve not seen her like that before. But we handled it.’
‘And what, I’m supposed to just merrily wave the three of you on your way today, knowing you’ve no idea how to prevent something like that happening?’
Brayden tipped up his chin. ‘From what Finn told me, it’s been happening for months. Yet this was the first time she lost it with me.’
‘Your point being?’
He shrugged. ‘Maybe I’m not the problem, here.’
I was too stunned to speak.
‘Maybe,’ he went on, ‘if you’d bothered talking to me about it, I’d have been able to deal with it better.’
‘Maybe if you’d turned up to the meeting, you’d know.’
‘I was in Amsterdam with work! You messaged saying there was a school meeting, with no explanation. I assumed it was parents evening.’
‘You didn’t bother to check.’
‘No. Which is my bad. Next time I’ll be sure to check. But you also didn’t tell me.’ He put his hands on his hips. ‘Almost as if you were setting me up to fail.’
Again, speechless.
‘If you’d put aside your grudge against me long enough to prioritise your daughter, you could have made a simple phone call warning me that she might flip out and that the pony game sorts her out. Perhaps then our son wouldn’t have to act as go-between.’
He did his best to stare me down. I resisted the urge to say what I really thought, knowing I’d regret it later.
‘If Isla gets upset again, please let me know. And if you can’t sort it quickly, call me.’ I wrangled my rage back under control, for my children’s sake. ‘I’ll send you the links to some helpful websites.’
I stepped back inside and called for the kids to come and get their shoes on. To my irritation, Brayden followed me in.
‘Have you considered that some changes in your parenting strategy might resolve the issue?’ he asked as the children thumped about upstairs.
‘What the hell do you mean by that?’ I whispered.
‘If you instigated some healthy routines and, I don’t know, a less chaotic environment, it might help your children to feel less anxious. I mean, for goodness’ sake, Liz. Look at this place. It’s a shambles. You’re not twenty any more. Surely it’s time to take responsibility for yourself before you hit a full-on nervous breakdown and drag our kids down with you.’
Mercifully, at that point Finn and Isla appeared, preventing me from dragging Brayden down onto my scraggy hall carpet and throttling him.
I gave both kids a reassuring hug, despite my urge to bundle them back inside the house and lock the door, and went to make my shambles of a house slightly less shambolic.