Chapter 13 112 Steps to a Difficult Conversation and One Angry Garden Gnome
When I wake up, I can still smell him on the pillows; a vague echo of his aftershave. My senses luxuriate in it, and in the vivid memories of the night before. I allow myself a few brief moments of respite before I force my eyes awake, force my brain to become alert, force myself into a new day.
He is gone, I can tell immediately. I have a second where I am both disappointed and relieved, and then I see the note that he has left on the pillow next to me.
I pick it up and read:
Doing the Drive of Shame home to get a shower before work. See you later, gorgeous. PS: On this day in history, I discovered that Gemma Jones snores!
I hold the paper, roll onto my back, smiling at the ceiling.
“No I don’t!” I protest to the empty room. Though I am forced to concede the point that I usually sleep alone, and therefore can’t really make a solid case for my defense.
It is still, for a little while, a distraction, this thing with Karim. This undefined, ever-changing, pretty damn spectacular thing with Karim—but I know that it will not distract forever. That I must reenter the real world at some point. I glance at my phone on the bedside table, see that it is almost 9:00 a.m. I should be at work by now.
I bite my lip, screw up my eyes against the weak fingers of sunlight that are curling around the edges of the curtains.
I pick up the phone and do something I have never done before in my entire working life: call in sick. In all my years, through coughs and colds and all the other sniffles that students like to share, I have managed to fight my way in to teach.
Perhaps it is because I am so committed to my job. Perhaps it is because I don’t have anything much else to do that is more important. It is easy for me to be committed, I know—easy for me to be organized, to cope with the long hours, the meetings, the politics, the planning, and the grading. Easy for me not to get ground down by it all—because it is the biggest single thing in my life.
I know my colleagues have to fit a lot more life into the hours they have available. They need to make marriages work, look after babies, their own teenagers, in some cases care for elderly parents. In the case of a few of the women, they have menopause thrown in as an extra treat. It is hard to find the time and energy and have anything left over for themselves.
I have none of those commitments or challenges, and it frees me up in a way that is a strength in my career—but, I suspect, a weakness in my life.
Today, I decide, rolling around on the sheets and building up to a dismount, I will be kind to myself. I will be gentle in the way I think, delicate in the demands I place on my time and my mind, as polite to myself as I would be to anyone else. I will “throw a sickie,” as they say here, to buy myself the day I need to rediscover my equilibrium.
I get up, shower, eat a slice of toast. I tidy up the glasses from last night and smile at the thought of how it ended.
I lounge around the flat, imagining it filled with laughter and love and light. It is a strange idea, a foreign concept, the thought of deliberately opening myself up to what will probably end badly.
That, of course, is what I am up against: the mental roadblocks that tell me nothing good can come of all of this.
By the time I am dressed in my running clothes and ready to pop down to see Margie, it is almost 11:00 a.m. I have wasted so much of the morning, and it feels decadent.
I jog down my fourteen stairs, planning to take Bill out and then to take Margie out. We will go to one of the nice coffee shops in town, possibly in disguise in case I bump into anyone from work. I tell myself it will be good, that we will eat overpriced pastries and watch the world go by while I tell her all about Katie. I will tell her how sad I feel, how empty, how I had pinned so many unspoken hopes and dreams on it all—but I will also tell her that I will cope. That I will grieve for my losses, that I will look to the future, and I will be better and stronger for it.
I might even, I decide, tell her all about Karim—the edited version at least. She’s getting on, after all; I don’t want to give her a heart attack.
As I make my way around the side of the building to Margie’s terrace, though, I hear voices. This is not unusual—Margie is well known in the area, and dog walkers often stop to chat to her as they stroll past.
But this time, the voice sounds familiar. The southern accent, the lighthearted tone, the infectious laughter.
I come to a standstill and peek round the corner, seeing that I am right. Erin is standing at the gate, scratching Bill behind the ears as he stands on his back legs to get closer to her, licking her fingers and making her giggle.
I pause, consider turning back—neither of them has seen me, and Bill has been distracted by affection. I could still make a run for it. Immediately I give myself a telling-off—so much for my brave new world if I run and hide at the first sign of an awkward situation.
I arrange my face into something approaching okay and push myself onward. I can do this, I think. These people are friends, and I need all the friends I can get. Normal people have friends, and even if I don’t always feel normal, I should at the very least bloody well try.
“Hi!” I say breezily as I walk round the corner, feigning surprise. “I see you two have met!”
They both look at me with odd expressions, and I wonder if I have overdone the breezy and edged into manic.
“Gemma! You look . . . okay,” says Erin, frowning slightly. “After last night, I was a bit concerned, and then Katie messaged me to say you were off sick today. I didn’t have your address, but you’d described this place and Bill and Margie to me so well that I thought I’d amble along and hope for the best.”
Margie is brandishing a jar, a bemused look on her face.
“Erin brought this for you,” she says.
“Thank you. What is it?”
“It’s beetroot juice,” Margie replies, “you know, to help with your anemia?”
Margie’s tone adds an unspoken “that you don’t have” to the end of the sentence, and I feel a flush of embarrassment creep onto my cheeks.
“Oh. Right. That’s really thoughtful. Except, well, I was lying last night, Erin—I’m not anemic, as far as I know.”
“I see. Are you pregnant, then?” she asks, eyebrows raised in curiosity. Clearly, that is the only other reason she can come up with for my incredible fainting-woman routine, and possibly my odd behavior. It makes a lot more sense than the real reason, that’s for sure.
I shake my head, and all three of us are silent for a moment. I have no idea what to do or say next.
“Tell you what,” says Margie, breaking in and saving me, “why don’t you two take Bill for a trot while I get the kettle on? I’m sure you’ve got plenty to catch up on.”
She meets my eyes and purses her lips, and I know that she is trying to telepathically communicate with me. To tell me that I should come clean, open up, confess all.
Or maybe she’s just cold and wants to get rid of us so she can go inside and watch Homes Under the Hammer.
“Good idea,” I reply, “if you’re up for it, Erin?”
She nods, and I unlock the little gate that marks out Margie’s territory. Bill knows what’s afoot and slinks out, wrapping himself around Erin’s legs before bounding off toward the sand hills.
We follow and make small talk about the history project as we explore, heading along one of the paths that crisscrosses the dunes until we reach the shoreline. One hundred and twelve steps for me, maybe more for Erin.
We come to a halt by the steps that lead down to the sea, and I perch on them, as I usually do, but this time with Erin by my side. It is cool but sunny, the sky vivid blue, zigzagged with streaks of white cloud. The storm from last night has left the waterfront battered and wild, debris strewn across the sand, the plants that edge the dunes flattened and damp and tangled.
Bill is frolicking in and out of the frothy waves, living his very best life, playing with a little brown spaniel called Twig. He runs out of the water, starts to inspect a pile of driftwood, and pees on it.
Erin laughs, and I say: “Yeah. He’s like a one-dog comedy routine, isn’t he? At least he isn’t bringing us any gifts. One day over summer he found the decapitated head of a gull and brought it over to me, spinal cord still attached.”
“Nice. Sounds like something from a horror film.”
“It was a bit. You get quite a lot of jellyfish washing up, but he’s learned to leave those alone . . . Anyway, I’m sorry I lied.”
“About being anemic?”
“Yeah, and—well, I haven’t lied about anything else, but there have been what you might call some omissions.”
She nods and looks serious, and I see the side of her that is capable of working in law and seeing through nonsense for a living.
“And these omissions, they’re my business, are they?” she says gently.
I nod, and suck in some air, and decide I might as well jump right in. I like Erin and would enjoy continuing to see her. I want to be honest, to clear the air, but I’m also concerned that it is going to freak her out. That my clearing of the air is her horror story, with or without a decapitated seagull head.
Katie is my student, and her daughter, and even though we have formed our tentative friendship outside of the school environment, there are still probably a million and one safeguarding protocols being broken.
Damn it, I decide—it’s either trust that she’ll understand, or never see her again outside parents’ evenings. To which I will wear a disguise.
“It’s a bit of a long story,” I say eventually. “In fact, it starts over eighteen years ago.”
“Crikey. That is long. Come on, then, let’s be having it!”
She smiles encouragingly and pats my hand, and it is enough—enough to give me the final push over the edge of reticence and into honesty.
“Right. Yes. Well, when I was sixteen, I had a baby. I had a baby on the third of October almost eighteen years ago. She had red hair, just like mine, and she was perfect, not like me, and—well, she was adopted, for lots of good reasons, and I’ve never seen her since.” I speak briskly, in a matter-of-fact fashion, as though I am discussing the best way to assemble an IKEA wardrobe, not the darkest day of my life. It is, I think, the only way I will be able to do it.
I speak, and I wait. She is no fool, of course, this woman, even if she is wearing a pink bobble hat and has a passing resemblance to a garden gnome today. I see Erin process the information, see it register, see a flicker of emotion cross her face. I can’t quite tell what the emotion is, though—maybe it’s a lawyer thing.
“Same day that Katie was born,” she says quietly. “Same hair. Not the same child, though. Katie came to us from a—well, from a difficult background. She was in care on and off from when she was born, and finally removed by the courts when it became clear that nothing at home was going to change, that she wouldn’t be safe. That’s when she came to us.”
“I know that,” I reply. “Now. After last night.” She nods and is still and silent for a moment as she pieces it together.
“But before that,” she says, “you didn’t. You thought, what, that Katie might be your daughter?” I feel wretched and miserable and oh so out of my depth here. I am not good at this stuff. I am not good at honesty, or people, or friendships, and it feels unnatural to be laying myself so bare and exposed.
I count the Iron Men for a few moments while I gather myself, then reply, “I did. And I’m really sorry.”
“About what?”
“About everything. I mean, I had no idea you were Katie’s mum when we met at the yoga class—I just liked you. And I had no idea Katie was adopted until then either—I just liked her too. Of course I did—she’s very likable. But when I did find out, and also discovered when her birthday was, it just—I don’t know, it grew and grew in my mind. I think I might have gone a little bit crazy.”
“So that evening, when you came around for dinner, you were already wondering about it?” I nod and bite my lip. I want to say more. To apologize more. To humble myself somehow—but I don’t have the right words to express it all.
“That’s why you went a bit funny looking at the pictures, right? And that’s why you passed out last night.”
“It is, yes. It was a shock, and I just suddenly—suddenly knew how wrong I’d been, and how stupid I’d been as well. And now I feel like you must think I’m some kind of lunatic stalker, and I’m not, I promise.
“I didn’t say anything because it didn’t feel right. Even back then, when I thought I might actually be her birth mother, I knew you were her real mother. I never, ever wanted to intrude on that. Especially because of what you’ve both been through recently—I didn’t want to just make everything even more messed up for you.”
“So, what, you just thought you’d hang around with me, teach Katie, and hope that one day you’d magically find a way to know for sure? How did you think that was going to happen, Gemma?”
Her voice is level and calm, but I can see a red sheen to her cheeks and know that she is angry. I shake my head and clench my eyes against tears. I am not the wronged party here. I have no right to tears.
“I don’t know. I just don’t know. I completely get why you’re pissed off. This whole thing is a mess, and it’s all my fault. I probably shouldn’t have even told you.”
Bill runs back over to us, nuzzles Erin’s hands. He has abandoned me in my hour of need, and I can’t say that I blame him.
She strokes his long head and says, “Why did you even tell me? You could have gone with anemia, and we’d have been none the wiser.”
It’s a good question, and right at this second I’m wishing that’s exactly what I had done. Blame the emotional rollercoaster, blame the sex, blame loneliness—whatever the reason, I’d felt the need to come clean.
“I know,” I reply, laughing bitterly. “I probably should have! It’s—well, I don’t really know what it is, Erin. Except that I like you and hope we can be friends, and I like Katie so much too and want her to do all the brilliant things I know she can with her life, and—well, I guess I wanted to be honest. Believe me, it feels weird at my end too.”
She does not speak for a while, simply gazes out at the horizon, jaw clenched.
“I totally understand,” I say when I can’t take the silence anymore, “if you want me to get Katie moved into a different class. Heck, I totally understand if you want me to leave completely.”
“Leave the school?”
“Yes. I will, if you want me to. I’ve made an almighty mess, and—I don’t know, maybe it’s for the best anyway. I’ve already been here too long.”
She stands up suddenly, catching both me and Bill unawares. He responds quicker, trotting alongside her as she walks briskly back toward the dune path.
When we near the houses, she stops. Somehow, even though she is almost a foot shorter than me, she makes me feel intimidated with the look on her face.
“Look,” she says seriously, “this is all a bit weird. I suppose you might have hit a nerve with me—no matter how confident you are as the mum of an adopted child, there always seems to be a bit of you that knows they must wonder, they must at least consider their ‘other’ mum. We’ve never hidden anything from Katie and have always said we’d support her if she wanted to look for her birth parents, but so far she’s said she doesn’t want to—and if I’m honest, even though I know it’s selfish, that’s been a bit of a relief. So this . . . this is a bit of a . . .”
“Head fuck?”
“Precisely that. I know, when I think it through and get my balance back, that I will understand it all better. I know I like you too, and that Katie thinks you’re the bee’s knees, and that it’s probably best that you’ve been honest. Right now, I’m just a bit caught off guard, and freaked out, and in the same spirit of honesty, a bit angry as well. So I’m going to go home and have a glass of wine, even though it’s not even lunchtime, and have a soak in the bath, and later on talk to Katie about all this.”
I cringe slightly as she says it, and she notices.
“I have to. We don’t keep secrets from each other, but I’ll make sure she’s discreet—she won’t be sharing your secrets with the rest of the students, I promise,” she says.
“I know. That’s fine. I’m also happy to talk to her directly, if that helps. Whatever I can do. And I’m sorry. Sorry I was such an idiot.”
“I’m sorry too,” she says, reaching out and holding what I see is my trembling hand. “I’m sorry you were ever in this position. I can only imagine how much it hurts.”
She strides away, and Bill lets out a resigned whimper as she disappears into the distance.
I know exactly how he feels.