Marshmallows for Breakfast (40 page)

“I need your help,” he said.

“Why, what's happened?” I asked, alarmed at his urgency.

“I've left the kids alone, I need you. Summer is going mental because I've done breakfast wrong or something. Jaxon's going mental as well, but quietly. You know, like he does. They want you. The only way to get them to stop crying was to say I'd get you to do it. Will you come?”

“Course,” I replied. “I'll be over soon. Just let me get dressed.”

“You are dressed,” Kyle replied.

I knew I was, I wasn't that far gone. I just needed time to prepare to see them. I'd spoken to them on the phone but
prepare to see them. I'd spoken to them on the phone but hadn't seen them since the conference and needed time to prepare for that torture. “So I am,” I said with a hollow, short laugh.

His face creased with concern. “Are you all right?” he asked softly.

“Me? Fine. Just suffering the aftereffects of long hours. Let's go.”

The kids were in their differing states of distress when I entered the kitchen behind Kyle. Summer was taking small gulps of air that shook her entire body in short, hiccupy movements. Her little oval face was red, her rounded cheeks streaked with tears. Jaxon had his head resting on his folded arms and his shoulders were moving up and down in heavy, sighlike jerks. Surely they couldn't be this upset over breakfast. Surely? I turned to Kyle, wondering what he'd done to them.

Kyle's face flamed up with indignation. “I was just trying to give them their breakfast, like I do every other day of the week,” he said in answer to my silent accusation.

“But it's Saturday,” I stated.

He threw his hands open. “Why does everyone keep saying that?”

“He was doing it all wrong,” Summer declared between her gulps, obviously having no problems about telling on her dad.

“Could someone explain to me how I could be doing cereal wrong?” Kyle growled between gritted teeth.

He doesn't know,
I realized. I cast my mind back. Since I'd moved in they'd pretty much had breakfast with me either over here or over at the flat every Saturday, apart from the odd weekends when they stayed over at their grandmother's
place or last weekend when I was away, which meant they'd made breakfast themselves.

This was important to them. This breakfast ritual I'd conjured up out of thin air and desperation was important to them. It was something special the three of us shared. I had something amazing with these two. I'd never be a mother. Never be
their
mother, but I had something wonderful. Especially considering how insular they were. After all their experiences, they rarely let anyone in, but they'd welcomed me. If I wanted, I could ask Hoppy to sleep in my flat for the whole night; with Jaxon's coaching I was starting to understand Garvo's language. We had a breakfast ritual.

What I'd been doing, shutting myself away from them because I was in agony, wasn't fair to them. Hadn't I started this as a way to atone for what I did in Sydney? It wasn't about me, it was about them. I couldn't just shut down from these two, I had to be with them. I could grieve in the spaces in between.

I reached for the cereal box. “OK, we're going to have to teach your dad how to make breakfast on Saturdays,” I said. “But only if you both stop crying.” Summer rallied first, sniffed back her tears, gripped the bottom of her pink T-shirt and wiped her face clean, leaving a trail of red streaks from how hard she rubbed. “And you sit up,” I said to no one in particular. Jaxon realized I was talking to him and sat up. He used the sleeve of his long-sleeve top to scrub away his tears.

Over breakfast?
I thought again, although I didn't look at Kyle this time, didn't want to upset him as well.

“OK, Kyle, could you get us four bowls please?” I said.

For a moment, Kyle went to say there were bowls on the table but then ran the wisdom of doing that through his mind.

“Any in particular?” he asked.

“Nope, not as long as they match.”

He looked at the white bowl, the bowl with blue stripes around its rim and the bowl that was red in the middle that currently sat on the table.

“Ah, right.”

Once he'd retrieved a new set of plates from the cupboard, ones that matched this time, and laid them in front of each place setting at the table, we started to teach him how to make Saturday breakfast properly.

PORRIDGE & THICK,
GLOOPY CREAM

CHAPTER 36

G
ood things come in threes.

Bad things also happen in threes. I forgot that.

CHAPTER 37

E
louise, one of my former flatmates from college who lived in Leeds, came down to London for a few days on business. She called me, told me off for not turning up in Leeds the other weekend to meet her and our other flatmate, Meg, said I
had
to come up to London to meet her. We could do the whole London thing like tourists: dinner, a show, drinks back in her hotel.

It was the start of the summer holidays so Kyle was going to take the kids on a surprise trip to Brighton. He'd managed to scrape together enough to afford two nights at a B&B. He'd asked if I wanted to come, but I'd declined—I hadn't seen Elouise in four years and felt guilty about blowing her out that time.

Elouise and I had dinner—Thai—in Soho, we went to a show on Shaftesbury Avenue, and we went back to Elouise's hotel and sat up talking. We fell asleep and I woke up in the early hours of Saturday feeling sorry for myself. I hated sleeping in my clothes; I had to go all the way back to Kent and I'd be lucky if the taxi driver didn't ask for my cash card and PIN just for the pleasure of listening to where I wanted him to take me. Besides, the walk of shame would feel the same whether I'd spent five hours sleeping in my clothes or eight. I rolled over and went back to sleep.

Saturday, with nothing to rush back for, we mooched around the shops on Oxford Street. (I'd had a shower and
borrowed some of Elouise's clothes.) We went to dinner again, I fell asleep again, this time in Elouise's clothes. Enough was enough, I decided at 3 a.m.—I had to go home. I changed back into my clothes, slung my bag across my body and left her room.

The concierge called me a cab and when it arrived, I sat in the back, valiantly ignoring the digital figures that told me I'd be eating tinned soup for the next month.

I opened my side gate and, feeling scrunchy and in need of my pajamas and bed, I rounded the corner into the courtyard.

On the step outside my flat, where the kids usually sat when they were waiting for me to come home, was a figure, hunched over its knees, its face hidden in the blackness of 4 a.m.

My heart leapt into my throat and I stopped short. The figure, which was definitely a man's, hadn't seen me—I could still turn and run. I thought this as the figure looked up and saw me. The familiarity of the movement and my eyes becoming accustomed to the dark allowed me to see it was Kyle.

“Jeez, Kyle, you gave me such a fright,” I whispered because of the hour. I pressed my hand over my chest to still my leapfrogging heart.

He clambered to his feet and seemed to deflate in relief when he saw me. I moved slowly forwards but he crossed the distance between us in three strides, threw his arms around me. Automatically my body stiffened, uncomfortable, edgy; scared, almost.

“Oh, thank God,” he said as he clung to me, oblivious to the fact I wanted him to let me go. “Oh, thank God,” he said again, then slackened his hold a little, looked into my face, his eyes running over my features as though desperate to
confirm I was real. His hand moved towards my face and I jerked my head away before he made contact, pushed out from his hold.

“What's going on?” I asked. It took me a moment to remember, he wasn't supposed to be here.
They
weren't supposed to be here.

“I've been ringing your mobile for the past couple of days. Gabrielle's been calling you as well.”

“It ran out of battery and I was meant to be home Friday night so I didn't take my charger. But that's not important. Why are you here, why aren't you in Brighton?”

“I thought something had happened to you, too,” he said, ignoring my question.

“Too?” I asked cautiously.

“It's the kids,” he said, his face crumpling as he said it. “They're gone.”

“Gone?” I asked. “What do you mean, ‘gone’?”

“Ashlyn's taken them and I don't know where.”

Kyle paced my living room floor as he told the tale. I, meanwhile, having left my body, hovered a little distance away watching myself sitting, stiff and openly incredulous, on the sofa listening to him.

At lunchtime on Friday afternoon he'd gone to collect the kids as usual. As soon as they got home, they'd pack and set off. They'd planned to go straight from school, but they'd taken so long over breakfast and Kyle had a meeting so they didn't have time to pack their things nor tidy the house before they left.

They weren't at school. Mrs. Chelner was confused. Had scrunched her face up as she told him their mother had picked them up. She was on the list, her picture was there on the consent form along with Kyle's.

Ashlyn picking them up wasn't even that unusual. When she'd first moved out she did it all the time; would take them for dinner, spend time with them at her flat and drop them home before bedtime. They even had spare clothes and toys at her place. When she went to America, Kyle assumed those belongings she had kept at her flat had gone to her mother's place, but no, Ashlyn had put them in storage. Apparently, ready for a time like this. She usually called when she was picking them up. Let him know so he wouldn't worry. This time she hadn't called. It'd been two days and she hadn't called.

Kyle found out where she'd been staying in England this time around from her mother and he'd gone there, but the place was packed up. Her neighbor said that she had moved out a few days earlier—Ashlyn had said she had worked out an arrangement with her husband and she was leaving London with her children. Her mobile was off, Naomi didn't know where they were and hadn't heard from her.

Naomi had been distraught, Kyle said. She said they should call the police and track them down, but Kyle had said no. To give them a few more days before they went down that route. Kyle knew how much animosity there was between Naomi and Ashlyn. They had a complex relationship—even though Ashlyn loved her mother, they had so many unresolved issues and unspoken resentments that they limited the time they spent together. Of course Naomi didn't know that Ashlyn was an alcoholic and if they went to the police, he'd have to tell them and Naomi would find out. And if, as he suspected, they were going to be back in a few days, that would be one of the worst things he'd ever done to Ashlyn.

He knew she hadn't left the country because he still had their passports and birth certificates but she had planned it with them. He knew because Hoppy, Roald Dahl's
Fantastic Mr. Fox
and Summer's eye mask/tiara were gone; Garvo's food and water bowls, Ashlyn's sunglasses and Jaxon's favorite steam train were gone. The last weekend they'd spent with her she must have told them to bring the important things to school and not to tell Kyle.

I listened patiently for the part of the story where he said, “And then I called the police and they're combing every inch of the country to find them.” Obviously “And then I woke up and found it was all an awful dream” would have been better, but, “And then I called the police and they're combing every inch of the country to find them” would do.

It never came.

While I was sitting in a hotel talking about Elouise's engagement, and how I ended up in Geelong when I'd meant to go to Melbourne, the kids were being moved farther and farther away from home. The kids were being stolen.

Kyle wasn't talking anymore. His large frame stood in the center of the room, very still, as though waiting for me to say something. As though I had an answer.

I was trying to remember the last thing I said to them. “Enjoy your surprise,” I think it'd been. I think. But I couldn't be sure.

My mind raced. Did I hug and kiss them? Probably not. I'd had Friday off to spend with Elouise, I'd got that weekday lie-in I'd been craving for so long. I'd only spoken to them on the phone.

What did we talk about the day before? The summer holidays?
“My holidays,” Summer had called them, believing they'd been named for her.
Maybe. But what did we say we'd do during that time? Did we talk about that at all? What was the last conversation we had? Did Jaxon talk about Garvo? Or am I thinking about every other time?

I sat staring through Kyle, my mind trying to race through the memories, things we'd talked about, the things
we laughed about, the things we'd done in the past few days. Weeks. And then my mind remembered the week I'd spent avoiding them. Those seven days when I squandered precious moments with them.

I didn't know. I didn't know you were meant to savor and hang onto every moment in case it was your last.

CHAPTER 38