Did The Earth Move? (14 page)

'No. It's just an aeroplane, you div.'

Eve let it pass. Denny was upset and preparing himself for a big let-down. He was already expecting a poor show of presents and no word from his dad. He was so down and so gloomy, she began to worry during the walk back to the house that he was going to see her stunt for what it was – a way of dressing up the little money she'd been able to spend on them – and sink into deeper gloom.

She'd unlocked the front door and they had climbed the stairs to their flat's door on the first floor. On it there was a big green wreath tied with a red bow, which hadn't been there when they left.

'What's that?' she'd said, surprised herself. This was one of Harry's personal touches. The keys turned in the three locks and she pushed the door open.

The sitting room was lit with the tiny white fairy lights on the knee-high tree and by rows of flickering tea lights and candles on the window shelves.

'What's happened?' Denny had walked into the room and she felt happy relief to see the amazement on his face. Seven was obviously still too young for real cynicism to set in.

'Santa's been!' Tom rushed in now from behind her legs where he had been nervously watching.

'Oh my goodness,' Eve said, feeling almost as overwhelmed as the boys, because the room looked so beautiful, much more magical than she had expected. The little flames on the windowsills were reflected in the glass and it looked as if hundreds of lights and candles were burning in the room.

'There's a tree as well,' Denny said. 'I didn't know he brought trees!'

'Maybe just for us,' Eve answered. 'Maybe he heard how I didn't want one and he thought, "That's just ridiculous!"' The boys laughed.

'But how did he? We don't even have a chimney ...' Denny's musings were interrupted by Tom's more pragmatic question.

'Are these our presents?' he wondered, peering down at the gold and silver wrapped packages. 'And look – sweeties,' he added, seeing the dishes of Maltesers, Quality Street and Smarties which had been set out beside the parcels.

Eve knelt down now and looked at the gift tags she had carefully printed out so that her handwriting would be disguised.

'This is for Denny, this is Denny's, this is for Tom . ..' She divided the spoils until both boys had a little mound of parcels, small and medium-sized, nothing big.

"These three are for me!' She was really surprised now, because she had wrapped up some cheap pants and hair slides for herself, so the boys wouldn't be suspicious, but the other two parcels in shiny red paper were new.

She put them down so she could watch the boys' faces as they unwrapped their goodies.

A wooden box filled with 400 small, intricate building blocks for Denny. He seemed genuinely pleased. Then there were playing cards, yoyos, bangers, indoor sparklers, water balloons, a torch. He seemed to like everything.

For Tom, there were little fire trucks, trains, Jeeps, a wind-up crocodile, toy ducks, a fireman's hat and a spider which jumped when you squeezed its pump. He was just bubbling over with delight, his fingers probing into the crevices and feeling all the surfaces as he made the new things his own.

'Can we eat the sweets as well?' he asked, little face turned up to her with his best pleading, melt-in-the-mouth expression.

'Of course . . . well, a few. We want to save some for Christmas Day!'

They both scooped up as many as they could manage before she put the bowls out of reach on the bookcase.

'What about yours, Mummy?' Denny asked.

'Oh yes, I almost forgot.'

She opened the heavier parcel and out slid two fat bottles, very expensive shampoo and conditioner and, she guiltily thought now, she hadn't even given Harry so much as a bottle of wine to thank him.

The next parcel opened to reveal a sticky block of Christmas cake decorated with a layer of walnut halves and cherries.

'Wow,' Denny said. 'Can we have a piece?'

'Yeah, let's cut a slab and make cocoa and have a midnight feast.' For a moment, Eve was about to suggest opening the parcels hidden under her bed, which she was planning to claim were from 'her' in the morning. But no, she wanted them to have something else to open when they woke up when the little presents, which seemed so glamorous and magical tonight, might have lost their shine.

She got them into their pyjamas while the milk heated, then all three of them tucked up into her bed.

When the cocoa and cake were finished and Tom was already glazed-eyed and almost asleep, Denny cuddled in beside her and said in a teary whisper, 'I wanted to send Daddy a Christmas card, because I want him to know I still love him.'

'Oh, Denny.' She'd hugged him in hard beside her. 'I'm sure Daddy knows that.' How could he not know he'd broken their hearts? she thought with a surge of fury.

'But we don't know his address, do we? So I couldn't send him a card. But he might think it's because I don't love him.'

Just because her children had stopped asking about things or speaking about them, did not by a million miles mean that they had stopped thinking about them.

'Denny, Daddy knows where Grandpa lives,' she told him. 'He could write to us any time or phone Grandpa any time to get our address or give us his. For some reason that I don't understand, he has gone off on his own to another country. Maybe he'll write or come back one day soon, or maybe he won't. I just don't know. All the three of us can do is love each other and get on with our new life now and try and be happy. I'm never going to leave you and Tom, never, ever, ever in a million years.' She squeezed him in her arms and kissed the top of his head, which smelled of his own peculiar sweet sweat and self.

'But what if you die, Mummy? Who will look after us then?'

'Oh Denny.' She smiled at him and tried to make light of this gloom and doom. Although, it was a terrifying thought which occasionally woke her in the middle of the night.

'I'm not going to die for a very, very long time, I hope. But if I got sick and couldn't look after you for a while there would be Grandpa and Aunty Janie and Jenjen, lots of people who could help out. Please, sweetheart,' she brushed the hair back from his pale forehead – 'it's Christmas, it's a happy time. Try not to worry about it too much. I'm right here beside you.'

She rested his head back against the pillow and stroked his soft cheek and then his back until his eyelids drooped and he fell asleep.

Then she sat up and moved gently out of the bed. There just wasn't room for all three of them on the sofa bed now, she would have to sleep in their room. She watched the boys for a while after she'd arranged them more comfortably close together, away from the edges.

God damn Dennis for making them so unhappy, her precious children. She would never, ever forgive him for that, for as long as she lived.

Another thought occurred to her as she found the sweet bowl and took a big scoop of chocolates for comfort. She never wanted to be rich again. She thought of Scarlett O'Hara in the potato field, vowing never to be poor, and felt the opposite. She never wanted to be rich ever again.

She and Dennis and their shallow friends really had known
'the price of everything and the value of nothing'.
She and her children had once had more than they could ever appreciate and now they had little and appreciated everything, including each other and the kindness of their new friends.

What was the point of putting any store in things which could disappear overnight if the money ran out? She only wanted reality, the important stuff, the things she could truly own and afford now. And not to care too much about them either.

So when, three whole years later, word finally arrived from Dennis – via his lawyers, requesting a divorce because he planned to remarry – Eve had already decided she wanted no maintenance, just a one-off, clean break settlement. She bought herself a small, secondhand car, put the rest of the money in the bank for the boys and tried to erase for ever the memory of the reunion at the lawyer's offices.

Scraping chairs, untouched cups of tea, the joy, hurt and confusion of the boys, and Dennis – browner, balder, fatter – and his lamentably pathetic: 'I know this has been hard ... I don't know where the time has gone . . . I've been meaning to get in touch.' She had barely been able to speak because of the rage she'd felt on seeing him again and had agreed to everything and his offer to come and visit the boys when he was 'next in the country' with curt nods and the bare minimum of words. When he'd held out his hand to bid her goodbye, she'd kept hers jammed to her side.

Tom had cried all the way home and Denny had stared out of the bus window as furious and as silent as her.

'They're back early.' Deepa looked up from her position, prone on the somewhat decrepit brown sofa, when she heard keys rattling in the door of the flat.

'No.' Tom raised his head from the corduroy beanbag he was sprawled across. 'It's pretty late, almost midnight.'

They had spent the whole evening in front of the TV eating a not entirely bad chicken, noodle and broccoli concoction he'd cobbled together, discussing the pros and cons of three-wheeler buggies, endowment mortgages, creches and bridesmaids, before moving on to mugs of hot chocolate in front of
Pop Idols
and whatever else was on. Tom had found it all a bit heavy, but at least it was calm. Deepa was five months pregnant now and it felt as if she had been crying or shouting at some point on almost every single day of the pregnancy.

'Hello!' Denny opened the door and came into the room, Patricia following close behind. They'd wangled tickets to a film premiere and party, so they were looking gorgeous, Denny in black tie and Patricia in long, figure-hugging, backless glittery-black.

'Hello little Ma and Pa,' Denny was teasing them. 'Had a nice evening by the fire?'

'Ha, ha.' Deepa was hoisting herself up onto her feet. Then, hands on bump, she slid her feet into her slippers and headed for the door.

'I'm off to bed,' she told them, 'Good night everyone.'

'Night.' 'Good night.'

'So. Was it fun? Was it showbiztastic?' Tom asked the pair, who were wound round each other, snogging and rumpling hair, as if he wasn't there.

'You bet.' Denny broke off to answer him. 'It's the most bizarre thing though, how tiny celebrities are when you see them in real life. They're like little bonsai versions of themselves, with perfect plastic hair and teensy muscles.'

Patricia started to giggle helplessly at this, then whispered something into Denny's ear, giggled some more and went out of the room.

'Too much champagne,' his elder brother said and that was when Tom saw how lashed Denny was too.

'And the rest?' Tom asked.

Denny tapped the side of his nose: 'Little bit of hokey cokey on the go as well.'

'Oh God, I hate that stuff. Bad taste at the back of your throat for a week.'

Denny just laughed. 'You should have come,' he said, and sat down on the sofa opposite his brother. 'The party was fantastic, never seen anything like it, man. We only left early because Pat's got to work tomorrow. It was going to go on all night.'

'I'm not really in a very partying place right now.' Tom stretched his arms up above his head and gave a huge yawn.

'No. I can see that.' Denny made a gesture at the cocoa mugs, bank and pram brochures strewn all over the floor. 'You're a bit young to be giving up though, aren't you?' he asked. It was meant to come out a bit more teasingly than it did.

'And what's that supposed to mean?' Tom asked.

'Well, slippers and cocoas and prams . . . getting married . . . mortgage. All that stuff. It doesn't have to be like this. I've no idea why you're going along with it all.' Denny pulled his bowtie undone, opened his shirt and leaned back into the sofa. Tom felt like he was being offered advice by some low-budget James Bond.

'I already have a mortgage – with you, in case you've forgotten,' he replied. 'And I'm not "going along" with anything, thank you very much. Deepa's pregnant, which wasn't planned, but we both want to have the baby and we both want to get married.'

'All right.' Even in his pissed state, Denny could see he had really annoyed his brother. 'I'm just telling you that you don't have to give up and become a boring old fart, before the baby even gets here. I mean look at Rich and Jade. Are they boring? Do they drink cocoa in front of the telly every night? Is she mentally moving into a three-bed semi in Surbiton?'

'All right,
you've made your point,' Tom told him. 'Can you just shut up now?' But now he was thinking of Rich and Jade, unmarried friends who'd had a little girl last year. They ran an ultra-groovy interior design business and the baby seemed to have changed nothing. The couple still partied hard, worked all hours, lived in a fantastic loft, dressed in matching bespoke pinstriped suits – Jade's always worn with a nipple-revealing white vest. Baby Bethany seemed to accompany them everywhere in a sheepskin papoose, dressed in mini Paul Smith and cool shoes, causing no disruption whatsoever. It was all rather sickening, really.

And maybe he'd imagined that's what he and Deepa would be like as parents, but he hadn't banked on Deepa being this ill and exhausted, moody and
needy.
She changed her mind about what she wanted from one day to the next. At the moment she was going through a scarily coping, trying to be efficient, organized sort of thing, but any day now and they would be back to tearful, distraught... confused.

She'd really needed him to offer marriage. She'd felt better and seemed less anxious as soon as they'd made the decision. But the wedding was taking on a hideous shape of its own. It seemed to have become about what Deepa's parents wanted, what the owner of the hotel wanted . . . what the vicar wanted . . . the photographer . . . Whatever he and Deepa had planned seemed to have been forgotten long ago. But he was frightened to broach the subject with Deepa; she was in quite enough of a state as it was.

And bloody Denny-James-Bond here, what did he know?

'Denny boy, you have to come to bed now.' Patricia was at the door. Only her head, a long swish of hair and shoulder was visible, but both brothers could see the delicate pink strap against her white skin and guessed she was in some delicious silky concoction.

'Lucky me,' Denny said getting up from his seat.

'Yeah,' Tom agreed. 'Lucky you.' Lucky bloody Denny – aged 22, unmarried, childless, a fashion photographer dating a model. He didn't really have too much to worry about, did he?

Left along in the sitting room, Tom put on a CD and went into the kitchen in search of a bottle of wine.

An hour later, he had poured the last of the Australian red into his glass and knocked it back. He still didn't feel anywhere near drunk enough. He wanted to be out of it, he didn't want to think about all this any more. He turned the volume up on the stereo, although he was aware it was after one in the morning.

What about the crusty old bottle of tequila on the bookcase? Maybe that would hit the spot. He held it up to the light. At least two stiff shots' worth were swilling about the bottom. He poured the drink out into his wine glass and took a gulp.

Urgh, disgusting, but satisfyingly strong. Another big glass full and he could be in the state of happy oblivion he was hoping for.

Why was none of this proving to be as easy as he'd hoped? He and Deepa had spent the days straight after the pregnancy test cocooned in some sort of mad romantic dream about how amazing this was and how they were going to be married and looking after this wonderful baby together, la di la. Then the outside world had got in and trampled all over the daydream, and fuck, what a mess it was turning into. Worst of all, Deepa's parents had offered to lend her money towards buying a flat round the corner from her family home in leafy, bloody boring Chingford. And Deepa was trying to persuade him to accept.

He rinsed the last of the revolting fermented cactus liquid around his mouth and swallowed. Then he stood up and realized how quickly, horribly drunk he'd got. This was awful, not the happy numbness he was hoping for at all.

He decided to head for the bathroom and a glass of water.

Once he was in the cramped room, his fuddled brain began to register the inevitable consequences of his uncustomary binge. He knelt down at the toilet, lifted up the seat and began to vomit. Why was he such a crap drinker? He looked at the revolting blood-coloured spew, which the red wine had formed.

He heaved and heaved, feeling vomit chunks move through his nostrils. God, how long was this going to go on for?

'Just what is this supposed to solve, exactly?' he heard Deepa's angry voice demand from the bathroom door.

He turned and saw her framed in the doorway in the baggy knee-length nightshirt she'd bought about a hundred sizes too big because she was expecting to grow into it.

'I don't know,' he answered, trying to muster as much anger as he could from the depths of the toilet bowl. 'I just wanted to relax for a couple of hours. Not think about it. OK?'

'Oh well then, that's all right. Just leave it all to me to think about, why don't you? Have a few hours of fun while I'm stuck without being able to have a sodding drink.'

'Oh Jesus, don't start crying again. I can't stand it!' he shouted back. 'Just stop bloody crying. What do you think crying solves? It just makes me feel like the biggest shit in the world. This is not all my fault!'

'No, it's all mine. I wish I'd never had sex with you, I wish I'd never gone out with you. I wish I'd never met you. And I'm not bloody well going to marry you!!' She stormed off to the bedroom, sobbing.

Tom stood up and washed his face with cold water, then buried it in a towel. He wanted to cry too. This was so hard. He was 20 and not ashamed to admit to himself that right now he needed his mum.

He heard Denny's bedroom door creak open and then close again. All these evenings in and late night rows were not fair on his brother. He and Deepa would have to get it together somehow or find somewhere else to do their falling apart.

He went back into the sitting room and looked through his CD rack. Ha, there was the one Bob Dylan album in his possession, a Christmas present from Joseph. Poor old Joseph, he'd figured in Tom's romantic wedding plans too.

In those three blissful days when Deepa was first pregnant, Tom had imagined a family wedding so happy that all the divisions would be healed. He'd seen himself with an arm round his long-lost dad, smiled on by Deepa's father . . . his mother dancing cheek to cheek with Joseph while Anna and Robbie whirled round them. What a complete pillock he'd been. Instead, he'd stirred his oar into three different seething family cauldrons. And his own relationship was looking far from ideal. Love's young dream was turning into love's young complete fucking nightmare. He went back into the sitting room and slumped onto the sofa.

He knew it was far too late, but he picked up the phone anyway and dialled ...

'Hello, yes?'

'Mum? Don't worry, it's just me, Tom.' He heard the panic in her voice and felt immediately guilty.

'Is everything OK?' Eve, woken by the phone, was still lying in bed, in the pitch dark, heart hammering in a state of parent terror.

'Yes, everyone's fine. I'm just feeling awful,' he told her and she realized that he was crying. The first time she'd heard him cry for years.

'Is it your head? Have you got a temperature? Rash?' Even only 15 per cent awake, she automatically did the meningitis drill.

'No, Mum! I'm not ill. I'm... I just don't want to go through with this. I don't want to be a dad and a husband and have a bloody baby to look after. And Deepa—' big sob – 'she's a mess. She can't handle it.'

'It's OK,' Eve soothed and let him stumble on, spilling out his thoughts, while she switched on the light, shook herself out of sleep and listened.

When he was finished, she tried to calm him in a voice that sounded all thick and furry to her.

'Tom, it's a big thing. A really big thing that you're doing. It's going to take a long time to come to terms with it. But you're all going to be fine.'

'Yeah,' he said with a sniff and a teenagey lack of conviction.

I'm not going to let it not turn out OK,' she promised him,

'It's just not fair,' he added. Ah, the not fair thing. How did any parent reply to that? 'Tom, some people get to be teenagers well into their thirties, some of us have to grow up a lot faster. But it doesn't have to be awful. You've got to think about how to make it work for you both. You don't have to get married,' she told him. 'You don't even have to be with Deepa if it's not what you want. But you have to promise me that you won't walk out on the baby.'

He sort of sniff mumbled a reply to this.

'All my children are going to be really good parents,' she said and it sounded like a warning.

'It's 1.48a.m.,' she told him. 'Not exactly a great time to talk. Will you call me in the morning?'

'OK,' he said.

'And Tom, go to bed. Don't drink any more, you're a really rubbish drinker.'

'Ummm . . .' Had it been that obvious? 'OK. Good night, Mum. Thanks.' He hung up abruptly and within moments, was fast asleep on the sofa.

Unfortunately, Eve was now wide awake. For half an hour, she tried to fall back to sleep again, then decided it was hopeless. She got up, made camomile tea and began to mix up fertilizer for the houseplants; she'd been meaning to do it for weeks.

Children!
Grandchildren!

There was a sleep god up there somewhere who demanded a trade-off. If you stayed awake and worried about your children's problems for them, they could fall into deep, untroubled slumber. That was the deal.