Miss You

TWELVE Tess

“Asperger syndrome?” Dad repeated, as if he had the slightest idea what that was.

For the first time in my life, I felt a tiny stab of pity for him because he’d been so stubborn in his refusal to believe that there was anything wrong with Hope, it must be humiliating to be told there was, especially in front of me. I was careful not to look at him, but I could sense the authority seeping from him, making his presence in the pediatrician’s office seem smaller, somehow.

“So it’s not autism, then?” Dad asked, which made me think he’d been more concerned than he’d let on.

The pediatrician regarded us over the top of his glasses. There was a chilly, dispassionate air about him, more what you’d think of as a bank manager than someone who specialized in children. The room was clinical, with no personal touches except for a silver frame on his desk, which was turned towards him so I couldn’t see the photo.

“Asperger syndrome is classified as being on the autistic spectrum. But as Hope doesn’t appear to have any significant learning disabilities, we would say that she is at the less severe end.”

“So it’s not autism exactly?” Dad pushed.

“If you want to put it like that.”

“So, what is Asperger syndrome?” I was determined not to go home without information because of Dad getting into a stand-off about the terminology.

It had taken months to get a referral to the children’s unit in London, and a whole morning of tests. Hope was currently in the waiting area outside with a student doctor who’d mistaken me for Hope’s mother—she was only about my age, herself, so God knows how dreadful I must have looked—and Dad had promised Hope a trip to the zoo if she behaved herself, but there wasn’t an endless window of opportunity to ask all the questions we couldn’t ask with her there.

Nowadays you’d look it up on the Internet, wouldn’t you? But not everyone had a laptop then. Google hadn’t become a verb. I went to the local library every week to get our reading books, but the selection of non-fiction was very limited, and even though I’d read the entry on autism in the medical dictionary, I’d never seen a reference to Asperger syndrome.

“It’s characterized by difficulties in social communication, social interaction and social imagination,” the pediatrician explained.

The words would mean even less to my father than they did to me.

“Could you give us some examples, please?” I asked.

“Each person is different, clearly. Some might have perfectly good language skills, but they won’t understand that people often say things they don’t mean. They may find it difficult to make friends. They may only want to talk about one thing that they’re interested in...”

“That’s Hope with her CDs, isn’t it, Tess?” Dad exclaimed.

His recognition felt like a giant step forward.

“They may like routines or playing the same game,” the pediatrician continued. “They may have some problems with physical coordination. They may also suffer from anxiety or depression...”

Which would account for the moods.

I wondered if he had picked out all the symptoms that applied to Hope just to prove the point to Dad, or whether Hope was a textbook case.

There was a wedding ring on his slim, bony hand. Was it a picture of his wife in the silver frame? Or his children? If there was ever anything wrong with one of them, was he the first or the last to see it?

“What causes Asperger syndrome, then?” Dad asked.

“It only became a distinct diagnosis fairly recently, in the nineties. We’re still not sure about the exact cause.”

“We’ve had a lot of sorrow in the family with my wife dying,” Dad said. “My Tess does her best, but she’s young, you know what I’m saying, doctor?”

I couldn’t believe he’d said that! Though I’d given up everything to look after Hope, while Dad’s life had hardly changed at all, I was still somehow to blame for her difficulties! A ball of fury rose in my throat and I had to consciously purse my lips and grip the chair to keep myself seated instead of getting up and walking out there and then. That wouldn’t do Hope any good, would it?

“It’s not a matter of upbringing at all, Mr.Costello,” said the pediatrician.

I wanted to rush around the desk and give him a hug.

“This is something Hope was born with, I’m afraid. And it’ll be with her all her life.”

No cause for hugging then.

“There’s no cure?” said Dad, sounding so bewildered that I started feeling sorry for him again.

“What we can do is help Hope and the people involved in her life with some strategies.”

“Strategies!” my father shouted. “You’ve brought us all this way for strategies! Have you any idea how much we’re paying for the parking?”

On the way to the zoo, we stopped off at the children’s play area in Regent’s Park and Dad bought us ice pops from the kiosk. I think we all felt exhausted from being inside such a long time, breathing hospital air, being told things that affected our lives profoundly by people who didn’t know us at all. Neither Dad nor I were saying anything, but you could almost hear the levers in our brains cranking to reconfigure the implications.

I was relieved to have a diagnosis, because that meant we’d be able to get a statement of medical need so that Hope could get some funds allocated for a trained helper, but there was also a drumbeat of guilt for insisting on having her assessed. If nothing was really going to change, Dad was right, what was the point?

There was also this strange, empty feeling of loss, because now I’d never again have the comfort of telling myself it might be nothing.

I watched as Hope tried to negotiate her way up to the top of the climbing frame, knowing the determination on her face would turn to anger when she got stuck. Wasn’t anger an emotion? Why was she capable of that, but not of affection, or empathy, or any of the ones that would make her life easier?

“Come on now, darling,” said Dad, lifting her high above his shoulders and placing her at the top of the slide so she could whoosh down like the other kids. The diagnosis seemed to have knocked the stuffing out of him, softening him, for the moment. “We’re going to the zoo, zoo, zoo...” he started singing.

“You can come too, too, too,” Hope sang back.

I thought it might be an idea to leave them together.

“Would you mind if I met up after?” I asked Dad.

“What will you do?” he asked, immediately suspicious.

“Just have a bit of a wander, you know...”

“You’ll be outside the zoo entrance at four, or we’ll get caught up in the rush hour,” Dad warned.

“What is the rush hour?” Hope asked.

“From five o’clock to around six-thirty there’s terrible traffic because of all the people going home from work,” Dad explained.

“Five o’clock to six-thirty o’clock is one and a half hours,” Hope pointed out.

“Clever girl,” said Dad, with a bit of a gulp in his voice. “She’s clever to work that out, isn’t she now, Tess?”

Dad, Doll, even Dave, would have thought I was mad walking into University College quad just to stand there imagining what my life would have been like. Groups of students were sitting on the grass eating their lunch, some lying on their backs reading, books aloft to shade their eyes from the September sunshine. I thought they looked a lot younger than me now, with a casual confidence that allowed them to wear cut-off shorts and flip-flops on a weekday, whereas I was dressed in smart navy trousers and a blouse for the hospital. I was aware of quizzical glances, which made me feel like I shouldn’t be there at all, but they were probably only wondering what this crazy person was doing staring up at the grand colonnaded portico like it was some kind of shrine.

What I love about London is the complex jigsaw of neighborhoods, each with its individual character: the elegant Georgian squares of the university district; the solid Ionic pillars of the British Museum; the narrow cobbled streets around Seven Dials, lined with shop windows displaying items you think would somehow change your life if only you could afford them, like pretty boxes of tea, Florentine writing paper, or a vintage bikers jacket slung over a fifties dress patterned with giant yellow roses.

I wound my way down to the river and stood in the middle of Waterloo Bridge, looking at the panorama, my hair blowing in the dazzling breeze, and water churning below, the color of coffee with milk. I’d forgotten that feeling of sheer exhilaration I’d always had when Doll and I used to come up to town as teenagers to explore and fantasize about our future.

The Millennium had changed the skyline. The London Eye was like a giant, incongruous paddle-steamer wheel stuck onto the South Bank. To the east, new skyscrapers were going up in the City, mirror windows glinting in the sunshine. Just down the river they’d converted an old power station into the Tate Modern.

I looked at my watch. There wasn’t time to go today, but what was to stop me coming back? Dave always claimed he didn’t like London, but he’d only ever been once on a school trip to the Natural History Museum. We wouldn’t have to do museums, or art galleries. I could show him all the little villagey bits that Doll and I had discovered, or explore some new ones. Kentish Town, Pimlico, Swiss Cottage, even the names were intriguing. Dave had never even heard of Portobello Road, but what was not to like about pubs and antique shops and market stalls piled with pyramids of luscious tropical fruit?

I got on a 168 bus to Chalk Farm. When we were teenagers, I’d insisted on learning the Tube map and the major bus routes. I used to test Doll on the train journey up.

“I’m at Charing Cross. What’s the quickest route to Holland Park?”

“Why do we have to do this?” Doll always moaned. “There’s a map in every station, isn’t there?”

“But we won’t look like Londoners if we’re reading the map, will we?”

The bus crawled back up through Bloomsbury and across the Euston Road to Camden Town. I got off at the final stop and walked across the railway bridge to the street that curved around towards the bottom of Primrose Hill. People were sitting at cafe tables, leisurely drinking coffee, with their children running around the wide pavements, like they did in Italy. The appetizing scent of charcoal grills and frying garlic drifted out of restaurant doors, the evening specials chalked up on boards outside.

What must it be like to live somewhere where you could choose to eat Greek, Italian, or even Russian food and see a different film or play every night of the week? Somewhere nobody knew who you were, so you had the freedom to discover the person you were meant to be?

I had to run the last couple of hundred yards to get to the zoo on time.

Dad was looking up and down the street, then at his watch.

“The lion was sleeping, Tree,” Hope informed me as we walked towards the car.

“There were hundreds of other animals, though, weren’t there? All of them awake!” Dad’s voice had that edge of someone unused to spending three hours with Hope.

“The lion was sleeping,” said Hope.

I started humming the tune of “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.”

“Will you get a move on, now!” said Dad, increasing his pace so we had to run to keep up. “At this rate, I’ll miss the karaoke.”

“Karaoke?” said Doll, the following Sunday.

Fred’s team were just back from pre-season training in the Emirates. She and I were in the back seat of Fred’s Range Rover, with Fred driving and Dave in the front passenger seat.

It was supposed to be a nice lunch for the four of us, but with Doll making the arrangements, it wasn’t just lunch. When she’d read about the facilities at the hotel, she’d booked us girls a program of treatments in the spa, and the boys a round of golf to make a day of it.

“Dad used to sing before he got married,” I said. “His voice is OK, to be fair. He practices ‘Islands in the Stream’ in the bathroom. What with him and Hope...”

“She’s Kylie at the moment,” Dave told Fred. “Puts a sheet around her head and writhes around singing ‘Can’t Get You Out of My Head.’ Sounds exactly like her, though, doesn’t she, Tess?”

I didn’t quite like Dave talking about her like that to Fred, although I wasn’t sure why, because Dave and Hope had a great relationship. His knowledge of pop songs was encyclopedic and he could do things like tell you every track on an album in the right order and how long they were, right down to the second. Sometimes when we were driving somewhere, Hope would get his CDs out of the glove compartment and read out the number of the tracks to test him; he’d test her on her collection when he came round to our house. For her ninth birthday, he’d bought Hope her own personal CD player that she wore around her neck like a giant medal, and that had earphones, which improved everyone’s lives. There’s a limit to the number of times most of us can listen to ABBA’s Greatest Hits.

“So, who’s your dad’s Dolly Parton, then?” Doll asked me.

“How do you mean?”

“‘Islands in the Stream,’ duh! It’s a duet, isn’t it?”

It was so obvious now that she’d said it. Dad had been paying much more attention to his personal hygiene recently. He’d even bought himself a couple of new shirts, but the idea that there was a woman in his life simply hadn’t occurred to me, and I wondered now whether that was what had made him so reluctant to babysit Hope today.

I pictured Dad and some woman with big hair singing at each other with microphones in front of the dartboard. How long had it been going on? And was it serious? Should I prepare myself for sharing the house with her? How would she react to Hope? And Hope to her? Were the three of them even now sitting at our usual table in the Carvery?

In the front of the Range Rover, Fred and Dave were talking about who they’d buy in the transfer window if they were football managers.

Before they met, I’d wondered how the two of them would get along. Dave was so impressed when I first told him, because he was a lifelong supporter of Fred’s team, I’d been terrified he’d ask for an autograph or something. Thankfully, he didn’t. With Dave being that bit older and able to do proper man’s stuff like unblock a U-bend or install a boiler, Fred respected him. They played off the same handicap in golf and though Fred was the professional footballer, Dave seemed to know just as much as he did about the game. Listening to them picking dream teams, I was struck by how similar their conversation sounded to when Dave was talking to Hope. The pediatrician had told us that Asperger syndrome was more common in males than females. Perhaps they had a touch of it themselves, I thought. Maybe we all do.

“It’s great they get on so well, isn’t it?” said Doll, linking my arm and pointing me towards the spa entrance, where the staff handed us big fluffy robes, slippers and complimentary baskets of aromatherapy toiletries.

“It’s funny,” she said, as we stripped off in the changing room. “When you’re rich, people are always giving you stuff. Chocs on your pillow, goody bags... you don’t get that at the Travelodge, do you, even though you’d be much more grateful? Talking of which”—she delved into her pink leather tote bag—“I got you a little something in Dubai.”

Inside the small cardboard carrier bag was a Day-Glo yellow Gucci bikini.

“You’re not wrong about it being little.” I held the tiny pieces up against my robe.

“Bought one for myself,” said Doll, pulling the exact same item in Day-Glo pink out of her bag, which made me feel less guilty about her extravagance.

I couldn’t help noticing that Doll had got rid of all her body hair, which was a shock because, with her petite frame, it made her look like a child again. Standing shamelessly naked in front of the mirror, she pushed her tiny breasts up to give herself a cleavage.

It must be far easier for Doll to check herself, I thought, because there was hardly any flesh to probe, nowhere for the lump you thought you’d felt to slide away and hide.

“What d’you think?” she asked. “Fred wants me to get them done.”

“A boob job?”

“It’s all right for you”—she nodded at my chest—“but everyone else does.”

I drew my robe tighter around me. I didn’t consider my breasts an advantage. Clothes never looked like they were supposed to on me, which is why fashion models are flat-chested, I guess. Until meeting Dave, I’d been such a good Catholic girl, I’d genuinely believed that letting a man touch your breasts was something you did only when a relationship was serious because men were driven by lust. It hadn’t even occurred to me that I was supposed to like it too.

“You’d have to buy all new clothes,” I said.

“You’re supposed to be putting me off, not encouraging me!” Doll laughed, which was a relief, because for a moment there, I’d thought she was seriously contemplating surgery, and I would have found it difficult to be neutral about that. Mum had one breast removed, and it wasn’t pretty and had given her a lot of pain, so I didn’t have much time for perfectly healthy women choosing to go under the knife voluntarily.

Our massage tables were side by side. The lights were low, and the soothing sound of running water was coming from somewhere, I thought probably speakers rather than an on-site waterfall.

“Is Dave into porn?” Doll asked, as our masseuses ran surprisingly strong fingers over our backs.

With the noise of the trickling water, I wasn’t a hundred per cent certain that she’d said “porn,” but I couldn’t think of any similar-sounding word I might have mistaken it for. I wasn’t going to repeat “Porn?” louder.

“I mean, when you first get together, you want to try everything, don’t you?” Doll continued. “But with Fred it always has to be something new, and now, as often as not, we have to film it!”

After three years of regular beauty treatments, like full-body waxing or facials or having her eyebrows threaded, which for some reason was better than plucking them, Doll had become so used to people doing stuff for her that she didn’t really notice them any more. She was doing that thing she’d hated her clients for at the salon.

“They talk to each other like you’re not even there!” she used to cry, outraged.

I’d always been way behind Doll as far as sex was concerned, but after losing my virginity to Dave, I’d naively imagined that I’d caught up. But it seemed I was still the innocent one, because porn hadn’t even crossed my mind, let alone the do-it-yourself idea.

“Not that Fred’s into S and M, or anything,” Doll carried on. “It’s just, well, I’m not a bloody gymnast, know what I’m saying?”

There was a part of me that would have liked to admit that I had no idea, so she’d tell me, because it’s natural to be curious about what other people get up to, isn’t it? But it’s funny how sex is taboo even with your best friend, so you never talk specifically about what happens “down there” or “behind closed doors,” as Mum used to say.

Were Dave and Fred discussing X-rated fantasies on the golf course, I wondered, or worse still, comparing statistics on our performance? I didn’t think so. I trusted Dave completely. He was always very patient and very gentle with me. After what Doll had just revealed, I felt even luckier to have found a man like him.

“How’s work?” Doll asked, as we reclined with some special seaweed-enriched clay plastered all over our faces, and slices of cucumber on our eyelids.

The new school year had just begun. After all Doll’s sex and shopping, our Victorian Day sounded pretty lame. Hope and I had dressed up as chimney sweeps, with daubs of soot on our faces, and sung “Chim Chiminee” all the way to school, although, strictly speaking, Mary Poppins was Edwardian, but Hope was a bit frightened of Oliver!

When we arrived there’d been embarrassed glances from the other staff, because I’d misunderstood the instructions. The grown-ups were supposed to dress up as strict Victorian teachers. Mrs.Corcoran, in full black Queen Victoria regalia with a white lace cap on her head, had ordered Hope to go and wash her face, which caused all sorts of problems because Hope hadn’t understood about her being in role. I’d spent a miserable day wearing a shirt covered in soot and a pair of Dad’s old trousers held up with string.

Doll laughed so much her face mask cracked all over like a puddle in a drought.

“I miss all that, you know,” she said.

“School?” I was astonished.

“I mean work. I really miss working. How stupid is that? I miss the goss. There’s days when Fred’s training when I don’t talk to a soul.”

“Don’t you go out with the other girls?”

“They’re not like you, Tess. They’re not like me, really,” she added, wistfully. “I mean, there’s a limit to the number of shoes you can buy. Will you listen to me! Those are words I never thought I’d say!”

Pores cleansed and skin exfoliated, we sat dangling our feet in a pool, with small fish chewing off the dry bits of skin. It felt slightly tickly, but not exactly unpleasant.

“What’s to stop you going back to work?” I asked.

“It’d be different if I was a model or something, but junior stylist doesn’t really cut it, does it?”

I remembered when almost every girl in our class had wanted to be a hairdresser. It had seemed like the ultimate in glamour back then.

“Fred says having a baby would give me something to do...”

I knew Doll well enough to know that the casual way she let this slip belied a deeper concern.

“What’s your current thinking on that?” I asked carefully.

It’s difficult with your best friend’s boyfriend, isn’t it? You’re never going to think that he’s good enough, but there’s a limit to how critical you can be in case they stay together.

“I’m only twenty-one, and Fred’s just a big kid himself,” Doll replied. “Do you think it’s old-fashioned to want to be married first?”

“Not if that’s what you want,” I said, thinking boob jobs, porn, baby factory, what’s happening to you?

“Fred says we should have a kid and see how it goes.”

“It’s not just up to Fred, though, is it?”

Doll’s face broke into a smile.

“I’m so relieved you said that, Tess,” she said. “I can pretend to be trying, can’t I?”

That wasn’t really what I’d been suggesting.

I couldn’t help looking at Fred differently when we all got back together for our lunch. Good-looking, yes; not the sharpest knife in the box, but good-humored enough. He’d probably make a decent enough dad, if you forgot about the porn, which I couldn’t. But did the house, the cars, the clothes, the jewelry and the glamorous holidays make him the person Doll should marry? If he’d been on an average income, like Dave, would she still be with him? Who was I to judge, sitting there with my free lunch and my fish pedicure?

“I went to church with Mrs.O’Neill,” Hope announced, as soon as I got in the door. “We sang hymns.”

The warm cloak of well-being the massage had placed around my shoulders slipped straight off.

“Father Michael says it’s shocking how little she goes!” said Dad. “He says she should join the choir.”

“You could have asked me,” I muttered.

Once Hope had got into a routine, it was difficult to wean her off it.

I’d stopped taking Hope to Mass after Mum died. I thought I was doing enough without that. I knew Mum wouldn’t like it, but as she said herself, you don’t have to go to Mass to believe in God. Not that I was sure I still did, although I quite often found myself praying—that the other kids would pick Hope for their team in games, or that she wouldn’t throw a tantrum, or even that she would throw a tantrum when we were doing the tests at the hospital, because with her being so well-behaved, there was the danger of them thinking I’d made it all up.

“She’s my daughter, Tess!” said my father.

“Did you go along with her, then?” I demanded, knowing full well that he hadn’t. He’d gone to the pub. I could see it in his face and smell it on his clothes.

Gallivanting, Mum used to call it. I looked it up. It’s a nineteenth-century word, apparently, from the French, meaning “to go about in search of pleasure.”

In the ensuing silence, Hope said, “Dad went to pick up Anne.”

“That’s your karaoke partner, is it?” I met his glare full on.

That surprised him. The “who the hell told you that?” look on his face gave me a little kick of triumph.

“What’s Anne like, then?” I asked Hope.

“Anne likes strawberry cheesecake,” she said.

To be fair, Anne was a bit of a godsend herself, as I found out the following weekend when she invited us over. She was a widow, her husband having suffered a massive heart attack at Sandown Park on the final race of a big accumulator. His horse had come in as he was taking his last breath, which meant, Anne said, that he had died happy—“We’ve all got to go sometime, haven’t we?”—and Anne was enjoying his winnings for both of them. She had a nice new detached house, and a little red Mazda two-seater with an open top, which she allowed my father to drive quite soon after their relationship went public. Best of all, Anne had a jukebox in her kitchen, which looked exactly like a proper one from the fifties, but played CDs.

“Hope’s welcome here as often as she likes,” she said.

Of course she had no idea how literal Hope was at that point; Anne was just keen to be on the right side of my dad. I couldn’t understand it, because I thought she had a lot more going for her than he did, but Dad scrubbed up well and he could be generous and charming when it suited him.

Living life to the full was Anne’s philosophy, and I suppose that’s exactly what Dad needed. She was certainly a striking woman, with a pile of ash-blonde hair on her head and a different tight dress every time you saw her. She claimed to be fifty-one, same as Dad. But from the look of her neck, I thought she’d probably been that age for several years, although Doll said the sun can do that to your skin. Blousy is the word that best conjured up Anne’s bright pink lipstick, her full cleavage and the little roll of fat around the top of her Spanx. With her full-throttle laugh and the cloud of scent and cigarettes that she carried into a room, she couldn’t have been less like my mother.

I decided Anne was probably a good thing, and tried not to mind her attempts at flattery, placing a be-ringed hand on my arm and telling me, in a confidential whisper, “Your dad says he doesn’t know what he would have done without you,” when I’m sure he never said any such thing.

It was Anne who found an article about Asperger syndrome in one of her magazines, which said that people thought Albert Einstein had suffered from it, and that was clever of her because it gave Dad a way of talking about it, boasting almost. Dad always liked to bring something to the party.