Living With It Read online

‘I’m worried about Gabriella.’ I was the one to pour cold water on the boys’ excitement. ‘She’s not well enough to come and I think I ought to stay with her.’

  ‘No, come, Mum, please come!’ Vinnie stopped darting and flashing and began pleading. ‘Harvey wants you to come too. Don’t you?’

  He looked at Harvey, who simply shrugged. I suspected he was not bothered either way. Harvey has always seemed a little more Eric’s child, I’m not sure why. Perhaps because he’s the first boy, or because Eric makes an effort to make sure he doesn’t get lost in the family by being in the middle; or maybe because they are just more similar. Harvey is certainly more easygoing than Gabriella or Vincent, and if I had continued to say I couldn’t go with them to the dune he’d have accepted it, whereas Vincent would probably have carried on insisting I come too.

  ‘Yes, come, Bel. She can stay behind if she’s not keen.’ Eric clearly thought Gabriella was suffering from teenage lethargy, nothing more serious.

  But I was concerned. ‘I just don’t think it’s a good idea to leave her by herself.’

  ‘Why not? She’s fifteen!’ Ben, too, clearly thought I was being over-anxious.

  ‘Actually, I think I’ll stay here.’ Maggie unwittingly became the deciding factor. ‘It sounds like quite a climb, even without trying to carry a baby, and I’m happy to stay put.’

  ‘Well…’ I was torn between wanting to go, to be with the boys to see their triumphant faces when they reached the top of this giant sand dune, and wanting to keep an eye on Gabby.

  ‘That’s settled, then,’ Paddy was anxious to get going and Maggie said she was fine, staying with Gabs.

  ‘It’s probably just a summer cold,’ Ben said.

  But there was something else – a slight uncertainty, preying on my mind. Earlier in the week, before Gabriella had begun to feel unwell, she’d been down to the lake to call her boyfriend. Sam had not returned any of the texts she’d sent since we’d been away and she was clearly worried that a few days’ absence was enough for him to lose sight of her and move on.

  ‘He’s really ill!’ she’d said to me when she came back, clearly relieved rather than worried by the cause of his silence. ‘He’s got measles.’

  ‘Really?’ I’d tried to sound casual. ‘Well, I’m sure he’ll be fine in a few days.’

  Gabriella had seemed happy enough again, but when she started to get ill it was there, the question slowly forming in my mind. Was it measles? What were the symptoms? She didn’t have a rash, so it was probably just a cold.

  No one except Eric and I knew she’d not been vaccinated. Why would they? It wasn’t the sort of thing that came up in conversation.

  So it was there, in the back of my mind, when I left her with Maggie and her nine-month-old baby – the thought that it was possible Gabriella was going down with measles, and that, if she was, I should be the one staying to look after her.

  And that I should tell Maggie, even it was only a possibility and I was wrong.

  But I pushed the thought from my mind, worrying that I was worrying too much.

  And even if I’d known then what I found out today, would I have been able to do anything that changed how things have panned out?

  I imagine myself insisting on staying and, if I’d been there, Gabriella would not have got up and sat Iris on her lap and played with her while Maggie made them all lunch.

  Would I have said then, ‘Look, there’s a chance she has measles. If you’re worried about it, we should keep them apart?’ Perhaps Ben would have insisted on driving into town and finding a French doctor, demanding that Iris have the measles vaccine there and then, even though it was a little early.

  But I didn’t do, or say, any of those things.

  ‘Are you coming, then?’ Harvey asked, tired of my indecision.

  Vincent was buzzing around me. ‘I’m doing a waggle dance,’ he informed me. ‘It’s something bees do to let the others know where the honey is.’

  I laughed, as I tend to whenever Vinnie opens his mouth. ‘Well, if you’re sure, Maggie,’ I said, because I wanted to be with him, with all the others. I wanted to get out of the house and drive somewhere. I wanted to see this big sand dune, I wanted to earn my picnic lunch by climbing it, and I wanted to watch the boys scamper up and roll and slide down again, laughing, happy and carefree.

  So I went with them, and set in motion a sequence of events that I can’t reverse.

  Ben, Saturday afternoon

  By mid-afternoon, I really wish that we’d gone to the party.

  I keep checking my watch, thinking, they’ll all be there now; they’re probably having lunch now; maybe they are thinking about going home again; maybe someone’s told Isobel about Iris and she’s…

  Then, I think, she’s what, exactly? I’m not going to find out because we’re not there. Maybe we should have gone and then I could have told her myself, seen her face, seen how she reacted. We could have had an angry confrontation. We might have ruined Anton’s fiftieth. It might have been worth it.

  It wouldn’t have been fair, though. Not to Anton.

  It’s driving me a bit crazy, being at home.

  It’s three-thirty. Iris is having a nap and Maggie is reading her new book.

  ‘I think I might go for a walk,’ I say.

  Maggie looks up. ‘Good idea.’

  We’re still a bit out of kilter. I think it’s Maggie’s fault for being so calm. She doesn’t really seem to have noticed.

  ‘Where are you going?’ she asks, not bothered that I am not waiting for Iris to wake so that I can join them when she takes her out in the buggy.

  ‘Nowhere in particular. I just want to get out of the house,’ I say, and offer a grudging, ‘Is there anything we need?’

  ‘I don’t think so. I’ll take Iris out when she wakes.’

  ‘Do you want me to wait, then?’

  ‘No, it’s fine. You go now.’

  I don’t know if she means that it is fine or if she’s pissed off and would rather I waited, but I don’t hang around to find out. I grab my coat and keys and head off in no particular direction.

  The way Paddy went on about it, it was like something out of Lawrence of Arabia. All the time we’d been there, he’d been promising us that one day we’d take a drive, venture into the wilds of cultivated, second-home-dominated Gascony and climb the Dune du Pilat. ‘One day we’ll go and climb the biggest sand dune in Europe,’ he kept promising. And, on the day we eventually set off to conquer it, he was bombarding us with facts and figures.

  ‘It’s five hundred metres wide and nearly three kilometres long.’ He was behaving as if he’d built the fucking thing himself, with a bucket and spade. ‘And it’s a hundred and ten metres above sea level.’

  ‘What’s that in old money?’ I asked. It didn’t sound that high, although it turned out to be a tough climb in the summer heat.

  Maggie wasn’t sure whether to come or not, and by the time I was halfway up I thought her deciding against had been the right decision.

  ‘That’s about three hunded and sixty feet,’ Paddy converted for us and, looking at Conrad, added, ‘So if we took a step every second we’d be up there in six minutes, but it’s a bit harder than that.’

  Conrad ignored him and Anton muttered under his breath, ‘He’s not a fucking mathematical genius.’

  I knew this was the first time Yasmin and Anton had been on a holiday with other families, and Anton was almost as wary of people’s reactions to their gangly autistic teenage son as Conrad was of the rest of us. Paddy was the worst, in all honesty. I mean, he was the host and he’s a mate and he meant well, but he was clearly expecting some sort of savant, and had decided to welcome Rain Man into his holiday home. When he actually got a strange, surly, non-communicative, angry teenager (OK, so that makes him sound normal and without being rude I can only say he’s not fucking normal), Paddy decided to ignore this and carry on as if it was Rain Man he was trying to enthuse with the proportions of his great big sand
castle.

  It was the first time we’d been away with other families, too – new to children, new to the shared family holiday – and it was driving me a bit mad myself. It was like living in a shared house or student accommodation – apt, as we’d all been students together, but irritating, and starting to get to me by Dune Day.

  ‘Oh, no!’ There was drama in the way she said it. ‘Who finished all the chocolate spread?’

  Isobel had asked this over breakfast and Maggie had confessed she’d given it to Iris the evening before, with a banana, for her pudding. ‘I’m sorry,’ she’d apologised – unnecessarily, I thought. ‘There’s a jar of Nutella in the cupboard?’

  ‘It’s for Harvey,’ Isobel had retorted. She was making him toast. ‘He’s got a severe nut allergy.’

  ‘Oh, yes. I’m so sorry,’ Maggie apologised again. ‘I didn’t think.’

  ‘There’s jam,’ I’d said.

  ‘Harvey doesn’t like jam,’ she’d retorted, and I’d bitten back my urge to say ‘chill’ the way the kids at school do, in their pared-down, text-and social media-influenced language. I ask my students their opinion of Beckett and they say, ‘Like.’ I read them a hilarious passage and rather than actually laughing they say, ‘Lol.’ It infuriates me.

  So I didn’t tell Isobel to chill. Instead, I raised my eyebrows at Maggie, who shrugged, as if not particularly bothered.

  Later, when we were all getting ready to go, Isobel’s children were somehow still central to the proceedings.

  ‘Ben, would you mind shoving this lot in the car?’ Sally had asked me, nodding towards a steadily growing stash of picnic food.

  ‘Ah, the female imperative,’ Paddy had joked. ‘Sally uses it all the time. “Would you mind” meaning “Do it – or else”.’

  ‘And Paddy… would you mind buttoning it and trying to get everyone out of the house?’

  ‘I’m worried about Gabriella,’ Isobel had announced in a way that served to dampen the general air of excitement, especially from her boys. ‘She’s not well enough to come. I think I ought to stay here with her.’

  ‘Are you coming or not?’ Vincent sounded slightly miffed.

  Isobel always seemed to be fussing about one of the kids, but it was usually Gabriella or Vincent. Harvey just got on with it, while the others had ways of demanding her attention.

  Eric seemed to note the slight tone of pique in his voice.

  ‘Yes, come, Bel,’ he had urged Isobel. ‘She can stay if she’s not keen.’

  ‘I just don’t think it’s a good idea to leave her by herself.’

  ‘Why not? She’s fifteen!’ I snapped.

  But Maggie was more understanding. Jesus, if Maggie wasn’t always so understanding, maybe things would be different now.

  ‘I think I’ll stay here,’ she said. ‘It sounds like quite a climb, even without having to carry a baby.’

  ‘Well…’ Isobel looked undecided but Paddy made the decision for her.

  ‘That’s settled, then,’ he said, and began heading towards the door.

  I picked up the bags of picnic stuff I was under instructions to take to the car.

  ‘It’s probably just a summer cold,’ I said to Isobel, expecting her to look annoyed with me, but she didn’t. She looked anxious, hesitant still, as if she really was worried about Gabriella. I’d thought she was fussing, at the time. Now, I realise, she knew.

  She fucking knew.

  I think I may have said this out loud, as I walk past an office which until recently I’d thought was a café. It popped up a few months ago, on one of the roads just off the High Street, and brought itself to the attention of passers-by with a lot of lime-green, grey and oak. I didn’t really pay it much attention; it looked too hip, whatever it was. I just happened to notice that it had two or three tables in the window and the next time I walked past there were people sitting at them drinking coffee. It seemed safe to assume it was a café.

  It’s only today, when a woman standing outside appears to notice me talking to myself and hands me a flyer, also lime-green and grey, that I realise it is a solicitors’ office. Miller, McDonald and Magnusson, the flyer reads, in bold serif font. Specialist compensation claims and personal injury solicitors.

  ‘England, Scotland and Norway?’ I say to the leafleteer. I don’t really expect her to respond, other than with a blank look; I’m just amusing myself with a banal observation. That’s what Croydon on a Saturday afternoon does to you, especially when you are me and in a bad mood.

  But she smiles and puts out her spare hand, the one that isn’t clutching the flyers.

  ‘Hedda Magnusson,’ she says.

  ‘Like Hedda Gabler?’ I ask, again expecting her to look blank.

  My expectations are based on stereotyping. Hedda is very blonde indeed. Hedda is handing out leaflets outside what I had hitherto thought was a green and grey café. I am not expecting her to be a cultured Norwegian lawyer.

  ‘Yes.’ She nods. ‘My great-grandmother was a friend of Ibsen’s. I was named after Hedda Gabler.’

  ‘Oh, well, that’s a coincidence,’ I find myself saying, and this time she does look blank, which is fair enough. ‘I played Tesman, Hedda’s husband, in a production a few years back,’ I explain, realising that this isn’t actually a coincidence at all really. It’s just a thing.

  ‘You’re an actor?’ she asks, her face showing just a trace more interest, the way people’s faces do when you’ve said something that makes them think you might be more interesting that they first thought you were, while trying to disguise the fact that they presumed you dull in the first place.

  ‘Used to be,’ I said. ‘I teach drama now.’

  ‘That must be an interesting job.’

  ‘Yes.’

  I hate it. It’s not what I wanted to do. But failing to make it as an actor is one of the many disappointments life has thrown my way.

  ‘Well, if you ever need a solicitor…’ she says.

  And that could have been it – the end of the conversation, the turning point in my frustration-relieving walk. I could have said, ‘Thanks, bye,’ and gone on my way…

  ‘What were you doing all that time?’ Maggie is sitting at the computer when I get back. Iris is balanced on her lap, rolling a pen backwards and forwards across the desk, as Maggie trawls the NDCS website – for what? Information? She must have gleaned nearly all there is from it already. Hope? I didn’t see much of that on the site when I last looked.

  ‘You’ve been gone much longer than I expected.’ She doesn’t look up when she says this.

  ‘Did you take Iris out?’

  ‘Yes, just round the block. I thought you’d be back sooner.’

  It’s hard to work out if this is an accusation or just a comment. ‘I lost track of time,’ I say. I’ve no idea if she’ll be more annoyed if I tell her. So I don’t. I don’t tell her I made an appointment to see Hedda. I don’t tell her we might be able to sue Eric and Isobel for the damage to Iris. I decide there is no point in talking about it, until I’ve found out if it really is possible. But it makes me feel better knowing it might be.

  I can’t just accept this and do nothing.

  Isobel, Saturday evening

  The news is on but I’m not really watching it. Eric is, taking it all in before Match of the Day begins. I’m just letting it wash over me, trying to find the right moment and the right way to say what I have to tell him.

  ‘What if it’s not the worst thing that could happen to you?’

  There is a debate on the news about rape, and I look up because what the woman is saying catches my attention.

  I’ve missed the peg, the reason they are discussing this. When I look at the screen I see a well-known feminist writer, sitting alongside the ‘not the worst thing’ woman, and she is giving her a hard time.

  ‘How can you say that – ?’ the writer begins.

  ‘I’m not diminishing the crime,’ the woman cuts across her. ‘I’m just saying that there are other thing
s, murder for example, or the rape and murder of one of your children, which could possibly be construed as worse.’

  I agree with her, now. When I was the same age as the young feminist writer, I might have argued as forcefully as she is doing now. She is still in that state of unknowingness. She has no idea how having children changes your view of the world.

  I realised, as soon as my children were born, that the worst thing that could happen to me now was something happening to them. All the fears of the past – being raped, killed, becoming ill, losing someone close to me – began to recede. They gave way to a whole new set of fears: that any of those things might happen to one of the children.

  And now I have a new scenario: something happening to someone else’s child and being partly to blame.

  ‘You still don’t look well, Bel.’

  Eric is still in the state which I think ‘unknowingness’ is not a good enough word to describe. Some weeks later, I will hear, discussed on the radio, a condition known as ‘epistemic uncertainty’ – an uncertainty based on things we could know in principle but we don’t in practice – and I wonder if this is the state I was in.

  But now, back home after the party, Eric is still pleasantly drunk, both from alcohol and company. He went to a different party from the one I went to, and spent it thinking Ben and Maggie weren’t there because Maggie was unwell, a bit worried that I was sick too, but not unduly so.

  ‘Maybe there’s some sort of bug going round. Why don’t you go to bed? I’ll tidy up down here.’

  The boys are in bed and Gabriella is in her room, doing whatever it is she does up there for hours on end – a combination of schoolwork, Facebook and listening to music seems to be the sum of it.

  ‘It’s not a bug. It’s something I found out at the party; something I need to tell you.’

  Eric is switching from news to Match of the Day mode. He’s taken up his position on the sofa: feet on the coffee table, glass of wine beside them, remote in hand. Saturday evening is when he is most relaxed at the moment. Eric works as a sub on a popular tabloid newspaper, and, since we came back from holiday, he’s been working on the features desk. This means no early starts, no late nights and no working weekends but the best of it is Saturday evening. No work the following day, taking Harvey and Vincent to football and tennis and all the other Saturday running around done, and the prospect of a lie-in and an empty day ahead. Throw in the imminent prospect of footie on the TV and this is probably the best bit of his week.