Chapter 24
The not-so-main-road stretches off into a desolated, silent, carless distance.
The sea crashes behind us, rolling waves lurching higher as the wind picks up and the sun goes down.
It’s an uninhabited wasteland, scrubby tired grassland waving listlessly in the wind, a few sad splashes of colour breaking up its winter captivity.
As we drag up to the road we stand there and we gaze in both directions, as if by looking we will conjure something – someone – up.
But nothing. No one is in sight.
‘What do we do now?’ Violet says, wrapping her arms tightly around herself and looking at me. Why is she looking at me?
‘I don’t know,’ I say.
Kat pulls her onesie hood further over her head. ‘All we can do is wait. We wait for a car and we flag it down. Surely someone’ll stop for us, when they see Barbara and everything.’
Barbara sits there in her wheelchair, backed onto the grass verge next to a crumbling drystone wall, bundled up in blankets and face pale with cold, yet smiling like she knows a secret, her faded eyes sparkling with merriment.
She is the only one who seems completely unmoved and unworried by our plight.
‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘I’m sure someone will be along in a minute or two.’
We stand there and scan the horizon. To our left the road stretches off into the mist-clogged horizon, and to our right it curves into a bend not far from where we are. But we cannot see anything and we cannot hear anything.
‘My legs hurt,’ Violet says, leaning over her walker and breathing heavily.
Mine do too. They feel wobbly as well, fragile and insubstantial, as if any moment they might shatter underneath me and slam me to the ground.
‘I am sure a car will come soon,’ Amina says, sliding her arm through Violet’s and placing the walker next to the wheelchair, by the wall. ‘But let’s get this set up for you, to have a little sit. A little bit of shelter here for you, from the wind.’
A car does come soon. It is coming now, hurtling around the bend at far too high a speed for this kind of road.
Kat waves at it.
Then it screeches past us without slowing, its taillights disappearing too quickly into the distance.
‘Damn it,’ Kat says.
We wait five more agonising minutes for another one.
It comes and it goes again, slowing slightly to look at us.
I realise we must look an odd sight, with our manic waving, with our strange attire and selection of walking aids.
We must look like a tableau in the London Dungeon, or a diverse hen party who have drunk too much and got lost somewhere in the wilds of the countryside.
Jodie stumbles back against a low section of the wall. ‘I can’t stand no longer.’ She hunkers down and lowers her head to her knees.
I sit down with her, my legs wobbling so much that I almost sprawl right over her.
I hold out the frog chair to Amina, who takes it and sits down so gracefully she might as well be in a period drama, all crossed ankles and folded hands.
Kat stays standing, shading her eyes as she stares up and down the road.
There’s nothing much to shade her eyes from, because the sun is low behind us, almost swallowed up by the sea.
It must be almost four by now. Nearly dark.
The sky draws closer over us, layers of clouds like great shrouds suspended across the heavens in rows and rows of whites and greys, so many shades I can’t take them all in, silver-grey and blue-grey and purple-grey and a grey so dark it is nearly black, so low the sky itself might break and fall on us any minute.
Violet groans loudly as her bones squeak and click. ‘I need a fag.’
‘Kane took them,’ Jodie says.
I look at Jodie and worry. Her skin seems even paler than before and she is breathing too shallowly, tiny gasps escaping from her mouth and forming puffs of cloud in the frozen air. She needs oxygen, I think. We should have brought oxygen for her.
We should have done so many things.
She is shivering in her wolf fleece and thin denim jacket with its useless cloth hood. I drape the picnic rug over her shoulders and she pulls it around herself, tugging the Santa hat further over her ears. I must thank Jake for not bothering to search for my favourite hat.
We sit there like drooping flowers as the darkness draws in around us and the road remains empty.
Another car comes, and goes, and then a white van, which slows to a crawl, the driver opening the window and hollering at us then leaving us with an obscene gesture to remember him by, the woman in his passenger seat screeching with laughter.
‘Seeing the best of humanity out here,’ Kat says dully. We huddle further into our coats and dressing gowns and blankets and the sun drops below sea level behind us back at the shore.
Jodie sniffs and I realise she is crying again, only this time it’s more silent, the tears scurrying down her cheeks, leaving great tracks of misery.
I sit closer to her and put my arms around her, and she leans into my shoulder.
Her body is rigid and shivering all at the same time so I pull her closer and unzip my parka, then I wrap it around as much of her as I can and try and infuse warmth into her. ‘Don’t cry,’ I say, helplessly.
‘But it’s my fault.’
‘It’s not,’ Kat says. ‘You have to see that.’
‘I did this, though. It was my idea. I dragged you lot out here, you kept telling me no, don’t be so stupid Jodie, and I wouldn’t listen, would I?’
‘Please don’t blame yourself,’ I say. ‘We all went along with it, didn’t we? We’re free agents.’
‘If anyone is to blame, it’s that great oaf of an ex-boyfriend of yours,’ Kat says.
Jodie peeks out of the top of her blanket at her, eyes widened. ‘Ex?’
‘Well, I bloody hope so,’ Kat says. ‘Left us all high and dry out here, knowing we’re all vulnerable, including an eighty-seven-year-old. What kind of person is he? Is he someone you really want to be with?’
Jodie gazes up at the murky sky. ‘I don’t know. He loves me, really, though. He’s just a bit, I don’t know, a bit impulsive sometimes. He’ll probably be back any minute, saying he’s sorry, he never meant to, he just got a bit cross, that he loves me really.’
‘He loves himself, sweetheart,’ I find myself saying. ‘And I know that, because I’ve been there.’
‘You have?’
I search under the picnic rug for Jodie’s gloved hand and take it in mine, squeezing it softly. ‘I was with someone like that.’
‘Jake’s dad?’
‘Jake’s father, yes. He’s never been any kind of dad to him, though. Never even laid eyes on him. Ran off with my so-called best friend and decided he didn’t want to be burdened with a kid.’
‘Bastard.’
‘Right?’ I lean my head on hers. ‘But you see, it was the same. He said the same things to me, about loving me I mean, about doing anything for me. Always made me believe it was me in the wrong. Made me think I could never be enough, or do enough, to deserve him.’
Jodie picks her fingernails.
‘But it’s him who didn’t deserve you,’ Kat says.
‘I never thought that,’ I say. ‘I always thought he was right. Thought it for years, that somehow it was some, I don’t know, kind of like a deficiency in me, that I hadn’t managed to keep hold of him, this man who seemed to want the best for me.’
‘But he wanted the best for himself.’
‘Yeah, I guess. And that’s just what I see, in Kane. He’s only all about Kane.’
‘But, he always says he loves me.’ Jodie’s voice is devoid of its usual colour. ‘He calls me his princess, see.’
Kat snorts. ‘That’s ’cause he sees himself as some kind of prince, like some kind of saviour dude. He wants any glory for himself.’
‘That was Marcus, too,’ I say softly. ‘Kept making it about him, and then it was too late, before I saw him for who he was. I thought I was lucky, see, thought any woman would want someone like him, so charming, so handsome, so thought it was my fault when he… when he did stuff. Took me a long time to realise it wasn’t, to be honest with you, even now I still think like that, sometimes. ’
???
It’s Christmas when it happens. I am newly pregnant, and bursting with excitement about telling Marcus.
We haven’t planned this, it just happened, probably because I wasn’t careful enough.
Maybe I forgot my pill or something. But I know how excited he will be, how he will whirl me in his arms and tell me that I am beautiful and that he can’t wait to be a daddy.
When I pee on the stick and see the blue cross stark against the white plastic my pulse speeds up, and just for a moment I panic, but then joy sweeps through me like a wave of warmth.
He comes in from work late. He’s been busy with clients toning up for Christmas parties, working until late into the evening, bringing in the money that means I can be kept in style, living in his sumptuous flat with its view over the town and out to the hills.
He’s gruff with me tonight. I’ve prepared his favourite meal, medium-rare steak with hand-cut chips.
I used to be vegetarian before I met Marcus, but he told me it was making me unhealthy and that it was important we ate together and developed the same tastes, so I started eating meat again.
I don’t ever tell him that I don’t much like it, because it would hurt him and I don’t want to do that.
So I keep quiet and force the meat down.
It’s good for me. Lately, though, I’ve been wondering, I’ve been thinking about asserting myself.
Maybe he will be proud of me, just another step along the way to the new me he has created.
‘What’s up with you?’
I’m twitchy, perching on the edge of my seat, wringing my hands under the table. For some reason I’m nervous to tell him this news that will change our world. I can’t seem to find the right words for it.
I shrug. ‘Nothing. Just… I just—’
‘Spit it out.’
I gulp in a breath and exhale slowly. ‘I just have something to tell you.’