Plan B (28 page)

I did not care about my daughter, but I was obsessed with my mother. I thought about her all the time. I wanted her to be watching over me. I tried to see signs. I made little bargains with her.
If you’re there
, I would whisper,
make that blackbird land on the window sill. If you’re listening, make that fly buzz around the light
. She never did anything I asked, so I made the tasks easier and easier until I started to get results.

Bella mentioned antidepressants repeatedly, but the idea of going to the doctor, who was a capable but terrifying woman, appalled me. I had always quite liked Dr Moulin, because I knew she would be a pillar in a crisis, but she had made me feel stupid every time I had seen her, and I knew she would find my garbled explanations of my situation tiresome. She was an immaculate, slender Frenchwoman twenty years my senior, who already thought I was perverse because I preferred to give my daughter Calpol rather than put a paracetamol suppository up her bottom. I had no desire to admit to her that I had failed to notice that my partner had already got a wife.

That morning, Bella had given me an ultimatum. She marched into my bedroom, yanked open the shutters and flung them back. I closed my eyes tightly and rolled onto my front, hiding from her.

‘Emma!’ she said sharply.

‘Go away.’

‘Right.’ She slammed a cup down on the bedside table. ‘This is your last chance.’

‘What last chance?’ I pulled a pillow over my head. I didn’t want to hear about last chances.

‘It’s Saturday,’ she continued. ‘No school. The boys are raring to get out to the beach. If you don’t get up right now, get some clothes on, eat some breakfast and come to the seaside, I’m going to make an appointment with the doctor, and I’m going to take you there myself, and we’re going to get you some happy pills.’

‘Go away.’

‘No.’ She stood there for several minutes while I tried to lull myself back to sleep. ‘Drink that tea,’ she added. I looked at her through slits of eyes. Bella was efficiency incarnate. She was dressed in a white dress with turquoise flowers on it. It clung to her body, to midway down her shins. I glanced at the clock.

‘It’s quarter past eight!’ I told her, outraged. ‘I was still awake at six. That’s not fair. You can’t expect me to do anything on two hours’ sleep.’

‘Come to the beach. You might sleep if you’re tired out.’

‘I
am
tired out! You don’t understand. I’ve never been so tired.’ I was exhausted to the point of hallucination. I could see nothing clearly and I had no concept of time. I was in pieces. I thought I was having a breakdown, but Bella didn’t take me seriously. She just told me I would get over it.

‘I know you’re tired,’ she said, a bit more kindly, ‘but it’s mental exhaustion. You spend too much time dwelling on things. If you spend a day kicking a football on the beach with the kids, you’ll sleep tonight and that will do you the world of good.’

I rolled my eyes. ‘Bella, you have no idea,’ I told her. I think I even laughed a bitter and mirthless laugh at the idea that chasing a ball on a beach might make me snap out of myself. Then I thought, with dread, of the doctor. I made a decision.

‘I’m not driving,’ I said sulkily.

‘Bloody right you’re not,’ she told me as she stalked out. ‘Breakfast’s on the table. We’re leaving in half an hour.’

Now I stared at the beach, frozen to the spot. There were too many people.

‘Of course it’s a good idea,’ Bella said briskly. ‘Look, there’s a piece of sand over there.’

Geoff came and stood next to us, with an entourage of children. ‘We can squeeze on,’ he said. ‘The boys and Alice will want to mess around in the sea anyway. Plus people will drift off for lunch, won’t they?’

‘Of course they will,’ Bella said heartily.

I raised my eyebrows at her. ‘I used to be the one who did that,’ I remarked.

She frowned. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘Being all jolly. Keeping people’s spirits up.’

She shook her head and dropped her sunglasses down over her eyes. ‘No idea what you mean,’ she said. ‘Now, where’s Alice. Alice? Come back, darling.’ Alice obediently ran to us. I looked down at her and tried, yet again, to feel the old surge of love. Her fringe was cut straight and dark, just above her eyebrows. Her eyelashes curled upwards, soft and long. Her skin was peachy. I waited for the old rush of tenderness. It didn’t come.

Alice was becoming part of Bella’s family. She ran around with Felix and Oscar, and sat on Bella’s knee. She adored Geoff who was far more a grandfather to her than a great-uncle by marriage. He was the only grandfather she would ever have, I was sure, because I would never bother to find my real father. I knew that she needed to live in London. I was never going to be able to look after her now, and if Bella took her in, Alice would have a ready-made family. She would have two big brothers who would dote on her, and a stable pair of parents. Every time this thought surfaced, I recognised, with detachment, that this was exactly how my own mother had felt about me.

Bella adored Alice. She had none of my ambivalence. She was a better mother to her than I would ever be. I was sure Bella would have liked a daughter. I needed her to take Alice off my hands so I could get on with drowning in this treacherous world.

I silenced the voice that reminded me that Christa was not my mother, that she was unmistakably an aunt, and that I would have given anything in the world to have been brought up by my real parents, however flawed they were.

I should have been starting to feel better, now that the shock was wearing off, but I was getting worse. I watched my little daughter running down the steps to the beach. She was trying to catch up with Oscar. He stopped, turned, and waited for her. He was wearing a pair of long shorts, and his hair had already been bleached by the French sun. Felix looked exactly the same. They were beautiful boys. I had wanted our second baby to be a boy.

Alice and Oscar threaded through the bodies on the sand and sat down, triumphantly, when they reached the designated spot. I decided that I felt more for Oscar, in his physical beauty, than I did for Alice.

Bella, Felix and Geoff started walking across the beach, too. I held back.

‘I’m just going to get a coffee,’ I told them. Bella turned, as if to stop me. Geoff took her arm.

‘Fine, Em,’ he said, with forced nonchalance. I wanted to laugh at him. He looked so silly, with his paunch overhanging his long shorts. He touched Bella’s arm. ‘I might join her,’ he said. I sighed ostentatiously. I probably sneered.

‘I’ll be over there,’ I told him, pointing at the smart café tables on the wide promenade.

It was all I could manage to do to get myself to a table. I slumped on a chair, and pulled my sunglasses over my eyes.

If he came back now, I would take him gladly. I didn’t know whether I loved him or not. That was not relevant. He had been holding me together for years, and I needed him. Only Matt had the power to pull me out of my swamp.

Geoff sat down opposite me, with a big smile.

‘Stop pretending,’ I said rudely.

‘Pretending what?’ he asked, looking hurt. I looked at the top of his head, which was now completely bald.

‘That everything’s great.’

‘I’ll go in and get some drinks,’ he said, huffing some air out through his mouth.

‘They’ll be out in a minute.’

‘I’ll get them anyway.’

‘Coffee,’ I said, looking away.

I stared out to sea. The waves were large and frightening. I knew that Bella would not let Alice be swept away by the fearsome current. There was a cluster of surfers out to sea, by the rocks to the left. I stared at them. The waves were enormous. Each time a wave approached, a few sleek black shapes disengaged themselves from the group, paddled frantically, then, as the wave carried them aloft, scrambled to their feet and stood triumphantly on their boards, carried towards the shore by the mass of water. Their arms were out to the sides, for balance. I watched and watched. I would have loved to have had the skill to do something as magical as riding on the sea. I thought back to Matt laughing at my ambition. He was right. I could never actually do it.

The sun scorched my face. I should have asked Geoff to get me some water. I looked at the bodies on the beach. The women depressed me. So many of them were slender and topless. After breastfeeding, I could not imagine that my breasts would ever be exposed to the gaze of the public. They never had been before, either. I was not a topless sort of girl. I was uptight, slightly overweight, and, I now realised, completely unstable. I had always been unstable. That was why I had exerted such a rigorous discipline on myself. It was the only way I had functioned.

The women of Biarritz were unfeasibly glamorous. I revised my earlier decision that people were just people, that stereotypes were lazy. Frenchwomen took much more care over their appearance than their British counterparts. That was a fact. They were not fat. They wore make-up every day. They dressed well. As a woman who looked like a retired ballerina slunk by with a fluffy dog on a pink leash, I noted that they had facelifts. That woman’s face was smooth and tight. She was probably ninety, but she looked about forty-five.

Two teenage girls strutted by. My body had probably been like that once. I had never appreciated it like these girls appreciated their beautiful bodies. What a waste that was. I had been divine-looking, like these two, and I had kept it all hidden beneath drooping skirts and men’s cardigans. The girls were tanned and sure of themselves. One wore a white bikini with a halter neck. Her dark hair was tied carelessly at the nape of her neck. The other was in bright blue, which set off her tan to perfection. Her blonde hair reached her shoulders. They both had clear eyes, firm skin, and only the right sort of curves. They walked with a slight wiggle, revelling in their beauty, laughing together. I watched them until they were out of sight, and then I looked at myself. My legs were white and chunky. I had spent the early part of the summer keeping Alice in the shade, and when we had been unavoidably out in the sun, I had plastered myself in factor fifty as a good example. The latter part of the summer I had spent festering in bed. My thighs were bulging against the metal chair, and they were covered in broken veins. I was wearing an old pair of denim shorts, and a pink T-shirt which was not quite long enough, and which, therefore, displayed an unappealing slice of midriff. No man ever looked at me twice.

I had felt much better in my Gap clothes in London. If I was up to it, I mused, I ought to let Bella or Coco sort my wardrobe out. I knew that I wouldn’t. I would carry on being messy and fat and ugly. It kept me invisible.

There were many things I should have been doing, yet I could not find the energy to brush my teeth in the morning. All I did was drink. I drank coffee all day and alcohol all evening. I forced food down when I had to, and felt slightly sick and trembly all the time, probably because of the caffeine. I knew I ought to visit the doctor, but I didn’t want to. I was a mess, and I was almost proud of it.

‘You do realise, Emma love, that Bella and I both have to go home?’ Geoff said, as he put an espresso and a large glass of iced water in front of me.

I managed to smile. ‘I thought you must,’ I agreed, sipping the water, then gulping the coffee. ‘Can you take Alice?’

Geoff raised his eyebrows and ran his hand over where his hair used to be. ‘Can we
what
?’

I kept my voice light. ‘Take Alice. I think she should live with Bella and Jon for a while. Or with you and Christa – whichever’s easiest. Whoever wants her.’

Geoff was shaking his head. ‘You want us to take Alice to London and leave you knocking round your big house in the middle of nowhere, on your own?’ I nodded, smiling. ‘We can’t do that, love. You know we can’t.’

I felt the tears starting. ‘You can.’

Geoff leaned forward. His face was red from the sun. ‘But what we can do,’ he said confidentially, ‘is to take you both back with us. That’s the plan. Come back to Holloway for a while. Get back on your feet. I know your aunt and I work, but we’ll help you out whenever we’re around. We’ll take Alice all weekend if you like, every weekend. You can just take your time and when you feel ready, you can come back here, or get a flat of your own in London, or Brighton. Whatever you like.’

He stared expectantly. I realised that Geoff had just imparted the plan that had been born of all the telephone conversations and whispered conferences that ended whenever I entered a room. I shook my head and looked away.

‘No,’ I told him. ‘I can’t do that.’

‘Love, it’s the only thing you
can
do. Come on, Emma. We all hate to see you like this. Bella says she never had you down as the going-to-pieces type, but Christa and I have been waiting for this for years.’ He shifted in his chair.

‘You hate talking about this kind of stuff, don’t you?’ I asked, mocking him.

‘It’s not
me
. You know that. But you need support. And that’s what we’re here for. And you need to learn to stop pushing us away, and particularly to stop pushing Alice away.’

‘I’m not,’ I said listlessly.

‘Alice needs you,’ said Geoff, slapping his hand down on the table. ‘She’s a very upset little girl.’

‘You said she’s fine.’

‘Well, she’s not. She’s lost her daddy and now she’s losing her mummy, too. She wants you to take her to school. She wants you to be a mother again. You can do better for Alice, love, than Sarah did for you. You’re not Sarah and you don’t need to become her.’

I was briefly furious at this, and then I couldn’t be bothered. I ordered another coffee, and Geoff ordered a demi pression for himself.

‘Geoff?’ I said. ‘Tell me what Sarah was like.’

‘I thought Christa already did.’

‘What did you think of her?’

Geoff’s eyes widened and he swallowed. ‘What did I think of her? She was complicated. She was different. Good company some of the time. I don’t know. It’s hard to see someone objectively after an event like that.’ He looked at me. ‘But I do know that you meant the world to her.’

‘Right.’