Chapter 36
THIRTY-SIX
Home isn’t where you’re born, it’s where you want to be. Third in a terrace of four, the terracotta Victorian house was quintessentially English. From its large bay window, which looked out on the street, to the navy front door with its stained-glass window and brass knocker. When they’d moved here, Erica, newly pregnant with the twins, had been entranced by all the traditional features. The tiled front step, the ornate white coving, the cast-iron fireplace. It’s a cliché that Americans in England want to live in a house with history, but for Erica, it had been true. She’d loved it from the moment they’d walked inside.
After leaving Celeste’s office, she’d needed some time to clear her head before returning home to Andrew and the children. Not knowing where to go, she’d ended up here. Their first family home. Parked outside, she had an unsettling sensation of familiarity and strangeness. It was their house, but it wasn’t. Whoever had bought it had clearly spent a lot of money on restoring it to its best. Looking at it from the road, no one would know that it had once been ravaged by fire.
Speaking about the fire to Mollie, and to Andrew, had brought it all back again. The memory so vivid of standing almost exactly where she was parked right now, searching the windows of the house for movement as smoke billowed from the front door, waiting for her daughter to be brought to her, not knowing if her mistake – letting Mollie’s hand slip from hers – had been fatal. Erica pressed her clenched fists into her stomach to try to stop the churning there. It was a nightmare that she’d tried to push down and not think about. But pushing it down had just made its effects more potent.
A face came to the bay window, a woman maybe a decade younger than her looked out at her car, maybe wondering who was this stranger staring at her house. Erica avoided her gaze by turning her head forwards, placing her hands on the steering wheel as if she were about to leave. Legs trembling, she didn’t trust herself to drive away yet. Five more minutes and she’d go.
One of the things she’d loved about this street was the trees. Strong oaks lined the pavement, so different to the young saplings on their new housing estate. Many afternoons, she’d walked back along these pavements with the twins asleep in the buggy after attending a music group or storytelling at the library. Before the fire, they’d been so happy here. Even after Ben’s diagnosis, after he’d started at a different school and she had to try to split herself in two every afternoon at pickup. They’d still been together, still been a family.
It wasn’t Ben. She knew that now. His needs weren’t the thing that had cracked their family open. Her sweet, sensitive boy had not been the catalyst for all that was to come. It was that night. The fire. The moment where she’d had to make the decision that haunted her to this day. She pictured Andrew’s face yesterday when his anger, suppressed for so long, had come to the surface. Her guilt, his anger, their inability to listen to one another. That’s what had caused this.
After the fire, she hadn’t been able to even think about coming back here. It didn’t matter that Andrew had promised that the insurance pay out would ensure that all the electrics could be redone and they wouldn’t have to worry about anything like that happening again. Even stepping into the hallway afterwards – seeing the destruction first hand, the children’s toys blackened by smoke, the wooden banister eaten by flames – had made her feel nauseous. Nothing on earth could have persuaded her to bring her precious children back here again.
Buying the new build was supposed to be a fresh start for them all. Somewhere modern and safe. She’d wanted to put that nightmare behind them. Start again. Learn how to manage the needs of both her children. Keep her marriage alive.
But juggling everything had been so hard. Fighting the system for what Ben needed was a full-time job in itself. And she also had Mollie and a job that demanded a lot from her. Some days she felt overwhelmed, overwrought and it was no surprise that she had so little energy left for Andrew. Why hadn’t he understood that? Why hadn’t he seen how much she was struggling?
When the accident happened at Easter – and a boy had been hurt on her watch – it fed the fear that had been lying in wait since the fire. It grew inside her until it was all that she could see. How vulnerable Ben was. How no one else could keep him safe. How much he needed her to be his advocate. His voice.
Erica knew that every mother worried about their child going into the world. Who among her friends hadn’t lain awake thinking about how it was going to be when they let their babies walk to the corner shop alone, meet their friends at the park without them, catch a train unsupervised, learn to drive a car? It didn’t matter if your head tried to tell you that everyone does those things – that you did those things once for the first time – you still worry about how your child, that tiny little person still in front of you, will ever be safe in this world.
For most people, though, it was a natural process. As their child grew older, they become more separate from them. Independence made them brave and they took tentative, increasingly confident, steps into the world.
But when your child has special needs, that doesn’t just evolve. They don’t say, Mum, can I go to the shops with my friend or everyone else’s mum lets them do it or I promise I’ll be back before it’s dark . No. That change won’t – can’t – come from your child. It has to come from you. You have to be the one to decide when they’re ready for the next stage, for something other than you. People can suggest, advise. Teachers, educational psychologists, carers. But they can’t make the decision for you. And they can’t tell you that your decision will be the right one. For him or for you. Because what mother is ever really ready to push her child – however gently, however lovingly – from her nest?
Andrew had accused her of being happy to move out of their home, to leave him and Mollie alone. That wasn’t true: she’d missed them both as if two slices of her heart had been left behind. But she’d be lying if she didn’t admit that there was a relief, too. With only Ben in the apartment, she would never again be forced to make a decision between the two of them. She closed her eyes and let her forehead rest on the steering wheel. How she’d failed Mollie, her beautiful girl.
After the events of the last few days, she knew that things had to change. Mollie needed her more than she’d realised, and Ben needed her to be braver about what she expected from him. And Andrew? He had his own mistakes to own. She still loved him, but Celeste was right. He’d let her take everything onto herself. He did need to take responsibility for the fact that he didn’t do more. And if he wouldn’t? Maybe it would be over between them.
She glanced back at the house again. The woman had gone from the window. The house was back to its best. It’d survived the fire and was now the home for another woman, maybe another marriage, another family. Could her family get back to its best, too?
She turned the key in the ignition and the car engine roared into life. At the end of their meeting at the school, Celeste had tried to make her understand that everything could be fixed. She’d offered counselling for Mollie at the school and also – tentatively – suggested that it could be something Erica and Andrew might want to consider for themselves. ‘Please can you stop beating yourself up about all of this? There’s no guidebook to parenting. This thing that’s happened with Mollie could easily have happened anyway, it’s rife. I know it’s scary, but this could be the beginning of a whole new level of honesty that lots of teenagers and parents don’t have.’
Maybe that was the solution. Honesty. Transparency. Truth.
And asking for – and accepting – help.
She couldn’t fix everything at once. And Mollie – her glass child – deserved to be seen first. In bed last night, she’d thought about something that might help her take control of what had happened to her. It might be crazy, but it was time to start taking some risks. Before pulling away, she called Celeste’s mobile to leave a voicemail.
‘Hi, Celeste. It’s me, Erica. Do you still have that friend that works at the local TV station? I might have an idea of how I can help Mollie.’
Tomorrow she had to attend the Teacher Misconduct Panel to determine her professional fate. Whatever the outcome, she would need to make some big decisions about the next stage of her life.