Marshmallows for Breakfast (29 page)

“Are you a relative?”

I paused. I didn't want to lie. I tried to avoid lying at all costs, even felt uncomfortable telling so-called “white lies,” but the thought of him lying there all alone, scared and in pain … “Sort of,” I said.

The receptionist's face gave me a closed-lip smile. “Sort
of” wasn't good enough. “Sort of” wasn't going to get me to see him.

“Kendie's my other mumma,” Summer piped up suddenly to the receptionist. “She lives in my house and she makes me and Jaxon special Saturday breakfast. It tastes like marshmallows.”

“Really?” the receptionist asked Summer. She replied with three short, decisive nods. I could see the receptionist wasn't buying it, but she could see my worry and Summer was Jaxon's relative and I was with Summer. And he was only six. She called a nurse to show us into the back of the emergency room, saying that they wouldn't be able to release any medical information, but if we wanted to wait in the back until Jaxon's parents arrived, then that would be OK.

“What happened?” I asked Summer as we followed the nurse past the empty cubicles and cubicles with drawn curtains. I hadn't found out in all this time. Hadn't thought to ask.

“He fell,” she said quietly.

“Off what?”

“He fell. We were climbing and he fell.” Her little face crumpled and she stopped walking and I crouched down to her height. She was so incredibly pale, her face streaked with tears. “He fell. He fell.” She'd been there, had seen it. Had witnessed the one person who'd always been with her during her mother's drinking and her dad's flakiness being hurt right in front of her. I could imagine it. One moment he was next to her on the climbing frame, the next he wasn't. She must have looked down and seen him lying motionless on the ground. Maybe she called his name but, like her mother on countless occasions, and her father a few months ago, he didn't reply. I scooped Summer up. Held her close. “He fell.
He fell,” she kept repeating as I rubbed the center of her back, tried to soothe her. I told her it was OK and we carried on walking towards her little brother.

He was asleep.

He lay flat on his back, a few bruises slowly turning red on the left side of his pale torso from where he'd landed, a graze on his cheek, another on his temple. His left wrist was propped up away from him in a splint and whorls of his dark hair were plastered to his forehead. He looked so peaceful, calm, still. I wanted to touch his face to check that he was warm and still with us. That he was really only sleeping.

Still holding onto Summer, who had buried her face in my neck, we sat down on the chair on his right side. The nurse pulled the curtain around us, shutting out the world and enveloping us in a pale yellow cocoon.

“We're here,” I told her. “We're with Jaxon.”

Now that we were with her brother, she turned around and sat on my lap, staring at him. I wondered what she thought. If she counted the ribs faintly outlined in his chest, or wanted to touch the bruises on his skin.

“Is Jaxon going to wake up?” she asked me quietly when she'd stared long and hard at him.

“Yes,” I replied with conviction. “He just needs to sleep now. Sleeping helps him to get better.”

She nodded. Without another word to me, she clambered onto her feet on my lap and I had to steady her as she pulled herself over the rail surrounding Jaxon's bed, curled herself up in the space between his body and the metal bars. “I'm going to sleep,” she told me. “So Jaxon can get better.” She closed her eyes. Not knowing what else to do, I moved my
chair closer to the bed, took Jaxon's limp hand in one hand and Summer's hand in the other. And sat watching them sleep.

I must have gone into a trance or fallen asleep with my eyes open.

The next thing I remembered, the curtain was being moved aside and Kyle stepped through the gap. He stopped short, shoved his hands into the short curls of his hair. “Ah, mate, mate,” he said, quietly, staring at Jaxon's arm, his bruised body, his marked, motionless face.
“Mate.”
I let go of their hands and allowed their father to step into the breach, into his rightful place. He rested his hand on Summer's back and stroked his other hand over Jaxon's forehead. They were both still asleep.

“You know what my tattoos are of?” he asked, even though he hadn't acknowledged my presence at all. “They're Summer and Jaxon's names in binary code. That's why there's one on each arm. If I ever lost either of them, you might as well chop my arm off because I'd be useless without them.” He shook his head slightly. “I can't believe I wasn't there when they needed me.”

“You weren't to know,” I replied.

“This is what I used to panic about. That I'd get the call saying Ashlyn had wrapped the car around a tree or there'd been a fire and that I'd lost them.

“They're all the family I've got,” he said. “I don't see much of my brothers. My dad died a decade ago and I never got on with him. And my mum remarried some bastard who was always leching over other women, including Ashlyn. Didn't want him anywhere near me or her or our kids. They're all I've got.”

“Well, they're going to be fine,” I said, sounding more
positive than I'd felt in all the time since I picked up Mrs. Chelner's message. “Jaxon's going to be fine—I'm sure he'll love having a cast on his arm—and Summer's only sleeping because it'll make Jaxon get better.”

“They're all I've got,” he repeated, staring at them.

When the doctor arrived to talk about Jaxon's condition, I went to step out, but Kyle asked me to stay. He'd taken Summer off the bed and was holding onto her. While the doctor explained that they'd probably keep Jaxon in for a few more hours because he lost consciousness for a few minutes at the scene of the accident, and that he had a clean break of the wrist and very mild concussion, and could go home after his cast had been set, the pale semicircles of Jaxon's eyelids began to flutter as he started to wake up.

We all stopped and watched him as he slowly felt his way back into the waking world.

His pale lips began moving as he stirred and as his eyes came fully open, he said, “Mumma?”

It was the middle of the night by the time I drove us home.

Kyle sat in the back between the kids, who were both out for the count, and we didn't speak much. He'd rung Ashlyn while we were waiting for Jaxon to be discharged, and they didn't row this time. They couldn't because she became hysterical and was all for jumping on a plane there and then. Kyle had calmed her down and said Jaxon was fine, but if she did want to come back, the kids would love to see her, of course. His phone battery had died halfway through the call and he'd used mine to call her back to say he'd call her when he got home.

I carried Summer and Kyle carried Jaxon up to his bedroom and after carefully changing them into their pjs, we settled them both in the middle of the bed putting them
together as they might have slept before birth—facing each other, heads down, knees up.

Kyle stood perfectly still, gazing down at his children, marveling, I think, at how close he came to losing them. How easily this could have ended badly. How he couldn't bear to be without them.

“Don't go back to the flat tonight, Kendra,” he said, still staring at his kids. “Stay here. You can sleep on that side of the bed, I'll sleep on this side. I won't touch you or try to touch you, I swear.”

It wasn't that that I was worried about. It concerned me a little, obviously, but if I slept here … If I stayed with the children this time, in this bed, like it was a normal thing to do, how would I be able to go back to the flat? Back to sleeping alone? I shook my head. “I can't,” I said to him. “I'm sorry, but I can't. I'd love to, and I do believe you when you say you won't try anything, but I can't.”

He nodded, as though half expecting that answer but hoping he wouldn't get it. “OK.”

I touched his arm gently on my way out, accepted his thank-yous and made the long walk across the courtyard.

If I'd stayed, I could have found out. I could have found out, for those short hours, what it felt like to be a wife and mother.

I could have found out what it was like to be the first person a little boy asks for when he wakes up from a long sleep.

EGGS, BACON, TOAST, HASH
BROWNS & BLACK PUDDING

CHAPTER 25

A
s we moved further into summer and the days got longer, the weather grew warmer and the air felt alive with possibilities, my life with the Gadsboroughs seemed to become almost permanent. As though I belonged with them and nowhere else.

I loved it. I loved being with Summer and Jaxon and their father. I'd already started reordering my life to fit in with them, and they made room for me. There was never any question of me slotting into the hole their mother and wife had left. I avoided thinking about Summer calling me her “other mumma” and simply enjoyed the place I had with them.

The arrangement to pick the kids up from school once or twice a week, bring them home, leave them with Kyle and return to work became permanent. On days he was working on-site I'd fix it so I'd go in early and stay late other days, then leave work early and spend the afternoon with them. All calls would be diverted to my mobile, I'd pick up e-mails at home. Gabrielle was understanding that I had to rework my hours to pick up the kids, but that's because I made up the time. In fact, I worked more than the required hours to make up for it. She'd often call, “See you tomorrow, super mum,” as I was leaving.

On our afternoons together we'd do their homework, we'd detour via the park and run around, we'd sit and watch after-school television, we'd play computer games, we'd
sometimes lie in the middle of their playroom, being starfish and talking. A few times back at my flat we moved the dining table into the kitchen area and we had a campout in my living room.

I started to think about Will again. Only in little moments, when I wanted to tell him something Summer and Jaxon did or said, but he was there in my mind. In my head. I didn't freeze in fear whenever he came to mind. It took a little longer each time for the urge to throw up to overwhelm me whenever I looked at his letter.

Slowly he was allowed into my life again. Very slowly, in the tiniest increments, but I didn't shut down whenever I thought of him. And that was because I was happy. This happiness, this sense of strength and hope I got from being around Summer and Jaxon, meant I was moving ever closer to the time when I could one day possibly even maybe consider opening the letter. Finding out what had happened. Finding out if…

Being with the kids was empowering. I was becoming a different person. I was becoming a person who was settled and had found a home. I knew I could never replace Ashlyn. I'd never try. I simply went with the flow of having three new friends. Spending time with them, luxuriating in their company.

It couldn't last.

One June afternoon, the door to the office swung open and Kyle stepped in. His face was pale, his hands were trembling, his jaw was so tightly clenched the muscles in his neck stood out. Janene didn't even have a chance to throw herself across his path because he marched straight over to me. Alarmed, a little scared, I got up from my desk and without saying a word, I led him to the computer room where we held tests. From his jeans back pocket he took out a crumpled piece of paper, thrust it at me in lieu of speech.

Carefully, I smoothed it out, all the while throwing anxious looks at Kyle's face. I looked down, saw a set of solicitors’ names on the letterhead on the piece of paper and time stopped.
Not again,
I thought as sickness welled up inside.
Being named in a divorce cant happen to the same person twice in one lifetime let alone happen to me twice in one year.

The sickness subsided and became transmuted into pure, unadulterated horror by what the letter actually said. My terrified eyes flew up to meet Kyle's.

“She can't do this,” he said, finally able to speak.

Ashlyn's solicitor was informing Kyle that she was going to make an application for a residency order if he and she couldn't come to an amicable agreement outside of court. Her son's accident during her absence had confirmed in her mind that the children would be safer with her.

Reading between the lines she was saying:
“One way or another, I'm going to get custody of the children”

“She can't do this,” Kyle repeated, looking to me for reassurance.

Unfortunately, she could.

CHAPTER 26

S
he's beautiful. Exactly like her pictures. And beautiful.

She was sitting in the back of the large, bright café in Beckenham, three towns away from the flat. It was a stylish café, light wood floors, white walls, chrome fixtures— Ashlyn fitted right in.

In front of her was a squat white cup and a packet of cigarettes, even though it was a no- smoking establishment. I stood at the doorway, pretending to be looking for someone when I knew exactly who I was meeting. I was just holding off the moment of first contact for as long as possible. I was going to have to go over and say hello, introduce myself and tell her that even though her husband had arranged to meet her on this neutral ground, he wasn't coming. He was very sorry, but he'd thrown himself on my mercy and made it abundantly clear he couldn't meet her today to discuss where their children were going to live.