Chapter 6
SIX
ERICA
On a quiet Sunday afternoon, Erica could get from her old house to her new apartment in fifty-eight minutes. Clutching the steering wheel tightly, she cursed herself for forgetting to take Ben’s cup back inside before she left. Mollie’s anger had been more worrying because it was cold. It wasn’t the heated petulance of a teenage hissy fit. She’d been seriously upset. At the traffic lights at the end of her street, Erica banged the heel of her hand onto the steering wheel. Why had she forgotten the cup? Idiot. Idiot. Idiot.
At least there was an empty bay on the street for her to park in and she didn’t have to waste time looking for a space. The small modern apartment was on the second floor of a white painted block of six. Her front door was dark green which opened onto an oatmeal carpeted hallway with doors to the bedroom and bathroom to the left and right respectively. The bedroom was Ben’s so that he had his own space and enough room for his toys. At the end of the hall was the living room: a pale-grey rectangle with space for a TV, a sofa bed and a fold-down dining table with two chairs. From there, a small kitchen led off to the right.
The living room was where she spent most of her time. Though she’d intended to make sure she unfolded the sofa into a proper bed each evening, invariably, she’d fall asleep in front of the TV with her head on the arm of it and would end up staying there for the night, curled up under the large blanket she left folded over the back. When she hurried in, Jade was sitting on that same sofa, while Ben paced up and down in front of her, flicking his hands on either side of him.
Though Erica didn’t know her exact age, Jade couldn’t be more than nineteen. From the moment she’d started working with them, she’d wanted to feed her up: there was nothing of her. Skinny black jeans and t-shirts from bands Erica had never heard of were a constant. The colour of her hair was not. When she’d turned up this time with some kind of blue-green tint, the look of wonder on Benjamin’s face had been a picture.
‘You didn’t need to come back, Erica. I just called in case you knew where the cup was.’
It amazed Erica that Jade could stay so calm when Benjamin was so agitated. Every inch of her own body was taut with the need to soothe his stress. ‘I could hear he was upset, so I wanted to come and calm him down.’
Jade twisted a bright-green lock in her fingers. ‘That’s what you’re paying me for. He’s okay. He’s safe here. He just needs time to work it through. Have you got the cup? I’ll pop to the kitchen and get him some of his juice.’
She knew that Jade was caring, but – once Benjamin got himself upset – Erica was the only one who could soothe him. She passed the cup over to her and turned to her upset boy.
Ben was beautiful. His floppy blond hair – in need of a cut she kept putting off – curled at the ends so that it kissed the tops of his ears. Despite the height and breadth he’d gained in the last year, his face was still that of the little boy whose hand she’d always held so tightly. Especially at the times the world had been cruel. The people who stared at them in supermarket aisles when he was heartbroken because they didn’t have his favourite flavour of yogurt, the children who wouldn’t play with him at the park because he couldn’t speak to them, the mother at the school gate who’d loudly told her friend it was ‘such a shame’ that a boy as handsome as him was ‘y’know, different’. If only he were still small enough to be held in her arms and kept safe from the world. If only they both were.
‘Hey, baby. Mum’s here. I’ve brought your cup.’
Jade emerged from the kitchen with the cup of juice – Morrison’s Summer Fruits, of course – and she passed it to Erica.
Ben made a grab for it and glugged it down as if he’d just emerged from a week in the desert. Guilt ripped at her heart. ‘He must’ve been really thirsty.’
Jade indicated the cup of juice on the coffee table. ‘I did offer him a drink, but…’
‘Oh, I know.’ Erica smiled at Jade. She didn’t want her to feel bad. The fault wasn’t with her; it was with Erica. ‘I should’ve checked it was in the kitchen before I left to go to see Mollie.’
Jade shrugged her tiny shoulders. ‘I was happy to persevere. I bet he would’ve had a drink eventually.’
Erica wasn’t so sure. On top of his fixation on the green cup was the stubborn streak he’d inherited from his father. But she didn’t want to get into that. Ben had had a drink, he was calmer. The dark clouds had dispersed before the full force of the storm could hit. ‘Did you find his letters?’
On her way to Mollie’s this morning, she’d sent a text to Jade to tell her that Ben might want his letters to play with. He’d become so fascinated by the ones they were using at school that she’d bought him a set for home. ‘Yep. They were exactly where you said they’d be. You’ve got them now, haven’t you, Ben?’
Sure enough, Benjamin’s left hand was clenched full of the plastic magnetic letters, his thumbs rotating as he stroked them. Ignoring Jade’s question, he held out his cup for another glass of juice.
It was obvious that he wanted another drink, but Jade didn’t move. ‘What do you want, Ben?’
Erica pushed herself up from the sofa. ‘He wants more juice. I can go and get it for him.’
She held out her hand for the cup, but Jade was still looking at her son who was rocking from one foot to the other. ‘What do you want, Ben?’
Irritation prickled. Erica was home now. Jade could leave. She knew what her son needed. But, as she opened her mouth to say that, Ben brought the back of the fist holding his letters onto the palm of his right hand.
‘More! You want more juice. Great signing, Ben. I’ll go and get you some more juice. Great work.’
Swallowing down what she’d been about to say, Erica smiled at her son. ‘Great signing, honey. Shall I get the board out so that you can put the letters on it?’
Without waiting for him to react, she opened the drawer beneath the TV and brought out an A3 magnetic whiteboard. She held it out to him, but he was pacing again as if she wasn’t even there.
This was probably one of the most difficult parts of looking after Ben. When she couldn’t find the way to bring him back to her. It was like a shutter went down between his world and hers and she didn’t have the password to get through. He only stopped pacing when Jade returned with another cup of juice, which he emptied in about three gulps.
When people talked about autism as a superpower, they didn’t see what it was like when her son was having a full-on meltdown. How heartbreaking it was to see your child in mental anguish and not be able to help them. When your child is at the profound end of the spectrum, there was nothing ‘super’ about it.
Mollie’s accusation that Benjamin was her favourite child had cut deep. It’d felt wretched to leave her back home, but what else could she do? If Benjamin had wound himself up into a real upset, it would’ve taken hours to bring him down again. Mollie knew that as well as she did. Mollie was brilliant with him. She loved him. So where had those bitter words come from?
Once Jade had gone and Ben was happily arranging his plastic letters onto the board, she tried to call Mollie. As was becoming the norm, she didn’t answer. Erica sent a text.
I’m sorry I had to leave, sweetheart. Ben is settled now. Can I call you?
Though she checked her phone in the next fifteen minutes – seven, eight, nine times – there was no reply. So she texted Andrew instead.
Can we talk?
Though it was at least immediate, his reply was brief.
Sorry. I’ve had to go into work and sort a few things out. Talk tomorrow.
She frowned at his words on her screen. He hadn’t mentioned anything about working today when she’d been there earlier. He didn’t work shifts any longer since his promotion, so why had he had to go in? Or was he lying about work? More importantly – why was he leaving their daughter alone on a Sunday afternoon when she was clearly upset?
Lynn’s words in the garden came back to her. I’m worried about Andrew, too. I don’t know if you already know this. What might she already know – or not know – about Andrew? What was going on?
For a moment, she considered calling Lynn to find out what she’d meant. At the same time, she could ask her to check in on Mollie. But that would make Erica look pathetic and would make Mollie even more mad at her. The worst thing you could do to a teenager was treat them like a child. She closed her eyes and leaned back into the unyielding sofa bed. Exhausted and worried and baffled as she was, she still needed to get the energy from somewhere to make dinner for Ben. She opened her eyes to watch him with his letters. You had no choice. She told herself. You had no choice.
It was around the twins’ second birthday that Mollie started to pull ahead of Ben in her milestones. When Erica had voiced her concerns, Andrew wasn’t much help. ‘You’re overthinking it. They’re just babies still. He gets there in his own time, doesn’t he?’
He had been walking and playing, it was true. ‘He doesn’t point at things. Mollie points at what she wants. And she’s stringing words together.’
He’d shrugged and laughed. ‘Mollie’s just forward for her age. She’s clever. Like her mother. And why does he need to point? The women in his life pander to his every whim because he’s handsome, like his father.’
Then he’d winked and kissed her and pulled her close. He’d made her think that it was all in her head. That she was worrying about nothing. He’d scoop up the children and make them giggle and she’d try to put it out of her mind that Mollie was picking up a little handbag and filling it with the things she wanted, chattering away to them and making tea with her little tea set while Ben preferred to sit with his blocks, lining them up, stacking them, getting upset if anybody tried to move them or him away.
However much Andrew tried to reassure her, however much she wanted to be reassured, she knew there was something different. It was always there, that nagging voice in her head. When she watched Ben, played with him, fed him, loved him…she just knew.
After watching him for a while, trying to gather her strength, she took a deep breath and pushed herself upwards out of the couch. ‘How about a pizza, Ben?’
True to the way this day was going, there were no pizzas in the small freezer compartment. Though she had no spare cash to be splashing around, she couldn’t leave Ben alone, so she’d have to order in. Before she could locate the menu for the local pizza place, her phone rang in the other room.
Flying back into the lounge, hoping it was Mollie, she snatched it up from the couch. When she saw the number, however, her heart sank. She didn’t have the time or emotional energy to speak to her mother right now. She cancelled the call and let it go to what – she knew – would end up being a very long voicemail.