Chapter 9 #3
W: Yeah, so with kids plural during holidays. And just Fiona during term time.
S: Are things between you still… difficult?
W: Um. Well, yeah, they are a bit. But I think the break is doing us good.
S: Still working through it all, then?
W: Something like that. Please stop talking about Harry. And you two?
S: Oh, we’re great. Perfect. Brilliant. And all thanks to you, of course!
W: Introducing you to each other is my one great regret. Ha!
S: No, seriously. I often think I should thank you more for introducing us. It changed everything really. D’you remember how miserable I was single?
W: And how happy I was? Well, you’re welcome. So what’s new otherwise?
S: Oh, work’s terrible. Not that that’s new at all.
W: More cutbacks?
S: Endless cutbacks. Child protection is so underfunded that I doubt we’re protecting anyone at all.
W: Fifi’s convinced they’ll get massacred at the next election.
S: Well, everyone in social services is hoping they will. Um, Neil’s fine, in case you were wondering but didn’t dare ask.
W: …Well, good. I’m glad.
S: Can I…?
W: Yes?
S: I… um… I mean, I know this is difficult and everything…
W: Oh God, no! Please don’t go there, Sue. What is, honey?
S: But Neil won’t talk about it either…
W: Ha, the list of things my brother won’t talk about…
S: So I’m going to come right out and ask you, I think.
W: Please don’t. OK…
S: Did you two fall out about something specific?
W: Oh.
S: I mean, you must have. I know you must have. But I really don’t know what it was.
W: Perhaps leaving Mum’s end of life care to me and phoning twice between the moment she was diagnosed and when she died might have something to do with it. No, me neither really. I mean, sometimes you drift apart, don’t you? Busy with our lives and everything.
S: Really?
W: Yeah. Yes, I think so.
S: So it wasn’t anything to do with me? Because I sometimes feel like it was.
W: Well, my brother stopped phoning me, visiting me and in general giving a shit about me when he met you. And you didn’t seem to care too much about our mother dying either. No, honestly, Sue. We’re good.
S: He was going through a lot when your mum died, you know. I’m sure he’ll tell you all about it one day.
W: Was he?! I can’t wait for that conversation. I can finally tell him about Mum’s final months and exactly what the two of us were going through. Yeah. I’m sure. We all have so much going on, don’t we?
S: But we’re definitely OK, you and me?
W: I’m phoning you, aren’t I?
S: Well, I’m actually phoning you.
W: OK, well, texting you or whatever.
S: Yes.
W: Oh, gosh, I’ve got to go, Sue. My French teacher’s coming up the path. She’s early.
S: French lessons! Get you! Well, I’m glad we had this chat. Call me soon, OK? Don’t leave it so long next time.
W: Yes, I will. Got to go.
S: I miss you.
W: Moi aussi ! Au revoir !
Her French teacher is not coming up the path – not at 11 a.m. That, obviously, was a lie. Why did she lie? Well, because all the lies she was having to tell to stay in the conversation were making her uncomfortable.
Her relationship with Sue has become so difficult to navigate that every time she does speak to her she remembers why she so rarely does so.
Without honesty, it’s become completely hollowed out.
But if she were to tell Sue the truth about how she feels she knows she’d never speak to her again.
Sometimes she wonders if this wouldn’t actually be better.
Manon arrives at 5 p.m. on the dot, carrying the first of Wendy’s boxes of groceries.
‘You get them please,’ she tells Wendy, her tone unusually abrupt. ‘They are too heavy.’
So Wendy, after discreetly pulling a face, makes trips to the car for the remaining two boxes while Manon leans against the kitchen counter sipping water.
‘Are you OK?’ Wendy asks, once the groceries are stacked against the wall.
‘Oui,’ Manon says unconvincingly. ‘?a va…’
‘You look tired,’ Wendy says. ‘Bad day?’
‘Not tired, worry,’ Manon says. ‘Too many worry.’
‘Too many worries,’ Wendy corrects. ‘With an “S”. Your brother?’
Manon nods.
‘Do you want to t—?’
‘My father goes to pick him up this morning,’ Manon interrupts. ‘To take him to… I forget this word.’
‘The clinic? Rehab?’
Manon nods. ‘Rehab is easy. Like Amy Winehouse. I can remember it that way. And he is completely… Again… I don’t know this word. He had taken a lot of drugs.’
‘High?’ Wendy offers with a wince.
‘Yes, but more. In French we say he was complètement perché…’
‘High as a kite, maybe?’
‘Maybe,’ Manon says with a sigh. ‘Though this sounds funny. High as a kite, but not funny.’
‘Off his face, then,’ Wendy suggests.
‘OK, then. He was off his face. On the one day Papa will take him to the clinic. C’est un manque de respect total.’
‘It’s totally disrespectful.’
‘So he phone me from the car and Bruno is singing and laughing in stupid way. And my father he sounds so… I don’t know. Without hope. I hate Bruno. This morning, I really hate him.’
Wendy places the coffee cup in front of Manon and settles in an armchair with her glass of wine.
‘That’s hard,’ she says. ‘It’s really hard.’
Manon is glancing at her phone. ‘Maybe I don’t stay today,’ she says. ‘I don’t think I can think about words.’
‘OK,’ Wendy says with a resigned shrug. ‘But if you feel you need to talk about your brother, that’s OK too.’
‘No, I don’t want this,’ Manon says. She chews her bottom lip for a moment, visibly weighing something up. ‘Perhaps I tell you about my mother.’
‘Sure,’ Wendy says, jumping up for a bowl of peanuts she’s forgotten on the kitchen counter and giving her glass a quick top-up in the process. ‘Anything you want to talk about is fine,’ she says, returning to the armchair and settling back in.
‘So my mother,’ Manon says. ‘It’s a hard story.’
‘I can imagine,’ Wendy says. ‘And only tell me if you want to.’
‘I do,’ Manon says. ‘I do want to tell you, but I think maybe you will not like this story so much.’
‘It’s OK,’ Wendy says again. ‘If you want to tell me, please…’
‘She starts drinking, my mother, when she is fifteen. Fourteen, maybe.’ Here Manon nods towards Wendy’s glass to make clear that she isn’t talking about Coca-Cola.
‘OK,’ Wendy says. ‘That’s early.’
Manon shrugs. ‘Earlier, probably. As a kid they sometimes have wine with water. Many French families do this in the old times with dinner… But she begins to drink really when she is fifteen. She has friends who are like this, too.’
‘Party animals.’
‘Yes. Party animals. So, at first she drinks like everyone, like her friends. Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen. This is OK.’
‘Because everyone parties at that age,’ Wendy says, nodding, starting to reach for her glass and then arresting the movement before it gets started and pushing her hair behind her ear instead.
‘She meets my father in – how you say – a discotheque?’
‘A nightclub, probably. Discotheque sounds quite old-fashioned.’
‘And they are both drunk. This is the start of their romance. Drunk in discotheque.’
‘I think quite a few relationships start like that,’ Wendy says with a forced laugh.
‘They go out together. They have big fun. For years, it is like this. Big fun. Good fun. And then she gets… how you say? With baby. My brother. So, she must stop drinking. But she does not.’
‘It can be hard to suddenly stop when you’re used to drinking. I know.’
‘So she drink, and my brother when he comes, is not normal. Not really bad, like some, but he is a small baby. A bit slow to walk, to speak… They say this is because of the alcohol.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry, that’s awful.’
‘And now she is pregnant again with me. So, she must stop. And she knows she must stop. The doctors tell her. Papa tells her.’
‘Yes. After what happened with your brother…’
‘They argue. With Papa. Because she don’t stop. They argue a lot. And at the end she stops the last three month. This is probably why I am OK.’
‘Thank God,’ Wendy says.
‘But when I am born, she starts again.’
‘Well, motherhood is hard. Sometimes you need a drink.’
‘My mother does not need a drink. Believe me. They argue. And my father leave her. Because my mother is drinking – always drinking.’
‘But was she drinking reasonably? Or—’
‘No. She is not. She is drinking like you, one, two bottle every day. She starts at midday dinner, and then eleven, and then ten. And then she is drinking with breakfast, before breakfast, three bottle every day, sometimes four. Then whisky, vodka, anything.’
‘Oh, I don’t drink that much,’ Wendy says with a fake laugh. She can feel herself blushing. ‘I couldn’t do two whole bottles of wine! I’d be on the floor!’
‘You do,’ Manon says flatly. ‘I bring these boxes. I take the bottles to the… the recyclage ?’
‘Yes, but my friend Jill—’
‘And I see you. Every time I come. One glass, two glass, three glass… First you are funny, like my mother. And then you are… how you say? Noisy.’
‘Noisy?’
‘You speak noisy. Because you drink.’
‘Really, um… this is making me a little—’ Wendy can sense beads of sweat forming on her brow. She chews the inside of her mouth and tries to remain calm.
‘I see this with my mother. This you must understand. Then she crash the car, because she drinks too much wine. We are in the car, me, my brother, but we’re OK.
Then she crashes new car and loses her permis.
So she makes us to go to the shop. We are too young, but she tells the shop man it’s OK.
And we do this every day. We bring new bottles, and we take away old.
Because if we say “no” she will go crazy. ’
‘I’m really sorry, Manon. That sounds horrific.’
‘And then one day, she is dead, you know? I am nine.’
‘Oh, you poor things,’ Wendy says, tears welling up in response to the tremble in Manon’s voice. ‘I’m so, so sorry. That’s a terrible thing to have to live through.’