Chapter 52
52
GEMMA
We were more than halfway through January, and I hadn’t seen Crystal at all, or spoken to her, or messaged her, since New Year’s Day. I was still angry, every time I thought about her taking Poppy off in her car without my permission. I was too angry to even look out for her at work or wonder if she was going to our usual pub on her own. I spent my lunch breaks eating a home-made sandwich in my office, telling myself I was saving money and improving my diet. New Year’s resolution , I told my colleagues.
The truth was that, despite my anger, I missed her. Missed her infectious smile, her outrageous outfits, her exuberance and her ability to cheer me up. But worse than that was the way Poppy missed her. Nearly every day she was asking after Crystal, and I was running out of excuses for why we weren’t seeing her. It was now affecting Poppy’s behaviour; she’d developed an attitude I didn’t like, taking out her frustration on me and, worse, on Mum.
‘Don’t want Nanny, I want Crystal,’ she snapped when Mum had kindly driven all the way over to pick her up one Friday morning, to save me time in making the journey myself because I had a lot of work to catch up on. She actually started crying and stamping her feet when Mum tried to take her hand to take her out to her car, and I had to intervene because poor Mum – whilst pretending to be cheerfully unconcerned by the outburst – looked shocked and sad about it.
‘Come on, Pops, you know you’ll have a brilliant time at Nanny’s, like you always do,’ I said firmly. ‘How about taking your new sticker book with you? Perhaps you can finish it off together. Nanny can help you.’
‘OK,’ she said, running to get the book, leaving me to apologise, saying I hoped Poppy would settle down.
‘Oh, don’t worry, she’s cheered up already. She’ll be fine.’ She dropped her voice and added, ‘You’re doing the right thing, cutting that woman out of your life.’
‘I haven’t exactly cut her out,’ I said, flinching at the harshness of the term. ‘I’m just not… actively seeking her out. Not at the moment, anyway.’
‘Best to leave it that way, in my opinion. Poppy will forget all about her before long.’
Would she really, I wondered? And… would I?
Dad was working his final month up in Manchester, before moving back down to Devon permanently.
‘So he’s moving back in with you?’ I asked Mum that Sunday, while Poppy was engrossed in a children’s film. ‘Into this house?’
‘Of course!’ She stared at me. ‘Why wouldn’t he? We’ve been sleeping together whenever he’s stayed here, since we agreed to?—’
‘OK, OK,’ I laughed. ‘I didn’t ask for details! I just wondered… how that’s going to work, financially. Not that it’s any of my business, I just wouldn’t want you to be disadvantaged in any way… if it didn’t work out again.’
‘Look, the house still belongs to both of us. We paid the mortgage off years ago, luckily, and when we divorced, Dad decided the best arrangement would be to keep the house in joint names unless either of us ever needed their share of its value. We’ve always talked everything through together; even while we were apart, there was no animosity between us. Your dad only wanted that little studio flat for himself in Manchester – he was never sure how long he’d stay there anyway?—’
‘It’s beginning to make me wonder whether either of you was ever very sure about splitting up in the first place.’
She shrugged. ‘Maybe we weren’t. Perhaps it was just something we needed to get out of our systems. We should have just had a trial separation, instead of getting a divorce, but at the time…’ She hesitated and then went on, ‘We both thought we might meet someone else; we were open to that possibility. But, well, as it turned out, the grass wasn’t greener, at all. The grass, such as it was, was decidedly unappealing! It’s been a wake-up call, if nothing else. At least we appreciate each other more now.’
I gave her a hug, holding onto her for longer than I normally would.
‘I’m so pleased for you both, Mum.’ It was hard to stop myself from crying. ‘I… would have loved to spend almost my whole life with someone I loved, like you and Dad have.’
‘There’s still time for you to meet that person,’ she said, consoling me. Her own voice sounded trembly with emotion. ‘You’re still young, and beautiful, and?—’
‘And I’ve gone off men for life,’ I added a little bitterly.
‘Never say never, sweetheart.’
That evening, after Poppy was in bed, I sat on my sofa without the TV on, feeling sorry for myself, feeling lonely, wondering what all the other lonely people in the world were doing right at that moment, and trying not to think specifically about Crystal.
I need to get in touch with some of my old friends . It was no good continually telling myself that but doing nothing about it. All right, so several of them now had two or three children, to say nothing of partners or husbands, but even if they were too busy to get together, there was nothing stopping us being in touch on social media, was there? I picked up my phone and went into one of the WhatsApp groups I’d neglected ever since Poppy was born. It was still active, with two or three of the other girls regularly exchanging baby pictures, pics of their dogs or cats, their dinners, their children’s birthday cakes… I’d turned notifications off some time ago, as it had all seemed a bit pointless and boring compared with the joy and intensity of my real life back then. But now, well, surely it was better than sitting on my own, feeling left out and alone?
Hi all. It’s been a long time, how are you all? You might have heard, I’ve been on my own with Poppy since early last year. She’s three now and doing fine, and I’m… kind of surviving. Would love to hear from you all some time.
I wasn’t under any illusion that they’d all rush to my side now, after I’d failed to keep up the friendships myself. But at least I’d given it a try, made a start. I sat for a while, scrolling through Instagram, before giving up and going onto Google to look for a recipe for a pie I’d made once before, using up leftovers, and which Poppy had really enjoyed. From there I googled the weather for the week ahead, going on to look up the website of a new client who’d approached me, and then idly scrolling, as you do.
I don’t know what made me finally look for it. I think perhaps when we scroll through site after site like that without engaging our brains, eventually some kind of instinct takes over and we automatically bring up something that’s been playing on our minds. I’d looked for Crystal often enough, and after she’d told me she’d closed down all her social media years earlier, I never bothered to look again. But that evening, scrolling from site to site in my bored, subdued, somewhat depressed state of mind, something made me search, for the first time, for her real name. It helped that her surname is pretty unusual – and to my surprise, within minutes, a feature from a local Devon news site, four years earlier, popped up:
LOCAL WOMAN ARRESTED ON SUSPICION OF CHILD ABANDONMENT
Suzanne Fernsby, 33, was arrested yesterday, after police were called to an incident at an address in Upper Street, Claydon Leigh, where a two-year-old girl had been left alone. The child was considered to be at risk and has been taken into temporary foster care. Ms Fernsby was held in police custody overnight before being discharged into the care of the mental health authority. Police say there was no danger to anyone else in the vicinity. A neighbour who had alerted the police after hearing the child screaming in the empty property, said, ‘She seemed a nice woman but I didn’t really know her. I’m a bit shaken up. Things like this don’t normally happen around here.’
I logged off, my hands shaking. It must have been a coincidence, I told myself. There must have been more than one Suzanne Fernsby. But I knew, in my heart of hearts, that there wasn’t; not in Upper Street – where Crystal still lived – not in Claydon Leigh, not anywhere in the whole of the county. It was her. She’d been accused of abandoning her daughter – that was why Evie was taken into care.
For a full ten minutes I sat, staring at the screen, unable to move, shivers running down my spine, feeling like I was about to vomit. I’d let this woman take Poppy out for walks, to the park, to the shops – I’d trusted her with my precious daughter, without knowing, without her ever telling me, what she’d done to her own child.
Every instinct was telling me to call her – immediately – to tell her what I’d found out, to scream at her, to tell her to stay away from me, to tell her that if she ever came anywhere near me or Poppy again I’d report her to the police. I had my finger hovering over her name on my phone but I was horribly afraid that as soon as I started speaking to her, I’d burst into tears – and I didn’t want to. I needed to be in control, I needed to be cold and ruthless when I cut her out of my life, so that nothing she could say would deter me from my purpose, but at that moment I was still too shocked, too emotionally fraught. It wasn’t just Poppy that Crystal had befriended, after all – she’d come into my life just when I needed a friend; she’d rescued me from despair and heartache and now everything I’d believed about her was in ruins. I couldn’t even begin to talk to her until I could come to some kind of acceptance – to actually grieve the death of what I’d thought of as our special friendship.
I went to bed, but barely slept at all, and in the morning the heat of my shock and fury had begun to give way to the icy determination I needed, to cut all ties with my ex best friend. I decided the best thing would be to take her by surprise, rather than giving her any chance to think up excuses – not that anything could possibly excuse what she’d done. I put the carrier bag with the clothes she’d left behind at New Year in the car, took Poppy to nursery as usual and had a quiet word with the nursery manager, asking to collect her later than normal as I had an urgent ‘meeting’ at the end of the day. Then I drove to work and kept my head down, hoping above all that this wouldn’t be the day that Crystal finally decided to come to my office to beg me to go out to lunch with her again, or the day I bumped into her in a corridor and couldn’t avoid her.
I left work a little late, deliberately, to give Crystal time to get home – and then I drove straight to her flat. For a few minutes I had to sit in my car, taking deep breaths to try to calm myself down. I didn’t want this to be an emotional confrontation. It just needed to be… a permanent excision.
I could hear the excitement in Crystal’s voice when she answered the buzzer.
‘Gemma!’ she said. ‘How lovely – come up, I’ll get the kettle on.’
But when she opened the door to her flat and saw the look on my face, her smile dropped.
‘What is it? Are you still angry with me? Oh, Gem, I can’t tell you how sorry I am. Come in, at least, and let’s talk.’
I nodded and followed her inside. I didn’t want a confrontation on her doorstep.
‘Look, I’ve given us some space, haven’t I?’ she went on as soon as we were inside. ‘I’ve done some thinking – I know I’ve been too?—’
I was holding up my hand. ‘Stop. It’s no good, Crystal. I’ve… come to tell you, I’ve found out what happened, and frankly, the fact that you didn’t even tell me about it…’
I watched the blood drain from her face. She felt behind her for the sofa and sat down, heavily.
‘You know? How… how did you find out?’
There was no point pretending. ‘Googled your real name. There was an old news article. Child abandonment! How could you keep that from me, when I was giving you free rein with my child ?’
‘Oh!’ she said, looking up at me, wide-eyed. ‘You’ve found out about that ?’
I stared back at her. ‘What did you think I meant?’
‘Um…’
For a moment, we both just looked at each other. Her face went from white, to red, and she staggered to her feet again.
‘I think… obviously… we do need to talk again,’ she said slowly. ‘Do you mind if I make us both a cup of tea first? I… think I need it. And you might do, too, when I explain. I will explain,’ she added quietly. ‘I know I have to, now. I have to tell you everything.’