The Day Of Second Chances (38 page)

Falling in love.

Marcus tilted up her chin. ‘Are you all right?'

‘How did you know we were here?'

‘We heard that something happened with Lydia at the bridge. Is she hurt? Are you hurt? Why do you have your arm in a sling?'

‘Lydia was … she thought she wanted to jump off. It's the same place where her father died.'

He tightened his hold on her. ‘But she's OK?'

‘She's all right. I mean, physically. She's all right.'

His scent, the grey-blue of his eyes, the way his hair curled against his neck. The way her body fitted into his. The way he was looking at her. Why hadn't she noticed the meaning of this, either?

‘What's the sling for?'

‘I was on the bridge with her. On the ledge. I fell off, but she caught me.'

Marcus's face went white. ‘You fell?'

‘She caught me. And Honor caught her. And then the police were there.' She touched his cheek: he looked frightened to death. ‘We're all alive. Honor broke her wrist. I dislocated my shoulder and tore some tendons. Lydia's got a few bruises and scrapes, that's all. She's with the consultant now. Talking to her about why she did it.'

‘My God,' whispered Marcus. He kissed her forehead, her cheek. He stared at her face, as if he couldn't believe she was there.

What had
he
been doing all this time they were together?

‘I knew she hadn't turned up for her exam,' Marcus was saying, ‘but I didn't think that she'd … I came right here as soon as I heard.' He smoothed her hair back. ‘Why did she do it, Jo?'

A nurse walked by. She didn't pay any attention to Jo and Marcus, but Jo extricated herself gently from Marcus' arms.

‘She's broken up with her best friend,' she said. ‘And she's being bullied because she's gay.'

Marcus was still pale. ‘How did I miss this?'

‘I missed it too. She said it was on Facebook.' Jo took her phone from her pocket and called up Facebook. ‘She's such a sensible girl that I haven't checked this for a long time. I should have …' Lydia's page came up and Jo gasped. The comments, over and over. Some from children that Jo recognized. Instinctively she went to press the button to get rid of the website but Marcus took the phone gently from her hands. He swore, and dug his own phone out of his pocket and dialled a number.

‘Ahmed?' he said into it. ‘I need you to go to Lydia Levinson's Facebook page and take a screenshot of it. Yes, in Year Eleven. There are some comments that are going to be deleted soon and we need to have a record of them. Thanks.'

Jo's hands were shaking and she was cold. ‘I know those kids. They're children.'

‘We'll delete the page,' Marcus told her. ‘But not till we've collected the evidence. Come here.' He led her to the hard chair, and pulled up another beside it, lacing his fingers with hers on her uninjured side. ‘The school will get involved. Those kids will be punished. I'll make sure it happens, Jo. I promise you.'

‘She never told me,' Jo said, and all the tears that had stayed away while she'd been trying to save Lydia, while she'd been in the hospital trying to make sure everything was all right, welled up in her eyes.

Marcus gave her a handkerchief. Because he carried a clean handkerchief in the pocket of his trousers. Because that was the sort of man who made her heart melt, the sort of man who she could fall in love with.

He put his arm around her, being careful not to hurt her shoulder, as she cried. She didn't let herself cry for long, because her daughter was behind that door and she might come out at any time, with a doctor who had the power to decide whether Lydia was able to come back home or had to be admitted for psychiatric help; a doctor who might not approve of Jo having a younger boyfriend, who might point out that it was bad for Lydia's mental health. Just two minutes, tops, where the tears flowed from her eyes and she allowed herself to lean against Marcus, hear his breathing and feel the cotton of his shirt, the strong arm embracing her. Then she sat up and wiped her eyes and nose with his handkerchief and folded it. She looked upwards, at the Styrofoam tiles of the ceiling, taking deep breaths to calm herself.

‘It's my fault,' said Marcus.

‘What?'

He'd got some colour back, but his hair was messier than usual. He hadn't shaved. His shirt had a scorch mark near the collar.

‘I should have known. I saw her every day, and those kids too. I saw all of them. I saw her run out of an exam yesterday. I'm her tutor. It's my job to notice, and I didn't.'

‘No,' she said. ‘It's my job to notice. I'm her mother. I've been … too busy.'

‘You've got two other children,' said Marcus. ‘But I've been too distracted. Every time I saw Lydia, I couldn't help thinking about … so I never really pressed her. Never really talked. And then yesterday, when she accused me, I was shocked. I had no idea she knew about us. If I'd been paying more attention—'

‘We shouldn't have done it. We should have stayed away from each other.'

‘I know. It would have been wiser to wait, maybe.' He squeezed her hand, and ran his thumb over the back of it.

‘We shouldn't have done it at all.'

His thumb stilled. ‘Jo?'

‘I can't do this.' She swallowed, tasting the tears that she hadn't yet shed. ‘I can't be so selfish. I can't think of myself instead of my children. I was too busy having an affair with you to notice what was happening with Lydia. I can't do it, Marcus. I have to stop now.'

‘You don't mean—'

‘It was fun,' she said firmly, ‘but it has to be over now.'

She attempted a smile.

He took his hand away from hers. ‘It was fun,' he repeated. ‘After this. All that's just happened. That's what you think it's been between us?'

No, I'm in love with you, and that's even worse. Because if I'm in love with you, and you're in love with me, we have to change everything about our lives to be together. And I've got enough changes to deal with right now. I have to concentrate on my children.

She nodded. ‘It's what we were both after, wasn't it? We knew it couldn't be anything else.'

Marcus stood up. ‘So why am I here?'

‘Because you're a nice person? A good neighbour. Lydia's tutor.'

‘And someone you had fun with.' He wasn't disguising the anger in his voice. ‘This is why you haven't been returning my calls.'

‘I haven't been returning your calls because I've been worrying about Lydia.'

‘So have I.'

‘But you're—'

‘Not part of your life. A bit of fun. Nothing compared to your first husband, the hero. I get it. I get it loud and clear. I should have been listening before.' He shoved his hands into his pockets. ‘I'll be off, then. Ring me if you need anything. I'll help you in any way I can. But I won't hold my breath.'

The door of the consulting room opened and the doctor stepped out. ‘Mrs … er … Levinson?'

‘Merrifield,' said Jo. ‘Yes.' She stood up, peering past the doctor's shoulder to where Lydia sat in a chair, her hands clasped between her knees.

Marcus hesitated, and then he turned and left. Jo fought not to glance at him.

Inside the consulting room, Lydia reached her hand out to her mother. Jo sat close to her, in an echo of the pose she'd just sat in with Marcus.

‘I've had a good chat with Lydia,' said the doctor, sitting in her own chair, ‘and I'm satisfied that she knows exactly how serious this attempt was. However, she tells me that she had decided not to go through with it, before the police intervened.'

‘Yes,' said Jo. She searched Lydia's face. ‘Yes?'

Lydia nodded.

‘She tells me this is at least partly in response to bullying at school and online.'

‘The school knows about it. They've promised to help.' She felt Lydia scrutinizing her, the same way Jo just had scrutinized Lydia, and she turned to her and smiled. Incredible how she could smile now, here. ‘We're all going to help. I'm not going to get distracted, Lydia. I'm going to be there.'

‘My experience is that she'll need significant support at home.'

‘And she'll get it. You'll get it, Lydia. Your grandmother and I will give you everything you need. We love you and we want you to come home.'

‘I want to come home,' said Lydia, and her voice was so small and vulnerable that Jo gathered her up in her arms, ignoring the pain from her shoulder.

‘Nothing,' she whispered fiercely. ‘Nothing is more important than you.'

BEING HOME WAS
weird. She felt like she'd been away for much longer than a few hours. She kept on walking around touching things: OscanIrie's toys, the vase of flowers on the kitchen island, the soft face of her childhood teddy bear. Thinking that she might not have been able to touch any of this again. She might have been gone, nothing more than an absence.

OscanIrie were at their dad's for a few days, but it felt as if they were going to be back any minute. Oscar's wellies had toppled over by the front door, and Iris's beaker sat on the draining board. Lydia ran her finger over the marks Iris had made in indelible marker on the tablecloth. If she'd jumped, would it have felt this way for the people she left behind? As if she were about to come back? She remembered it feeling that way when Dad had died. It was the reason she'd waited for the post and spirited away the letters. She'd been angry, as a child, at Jo for clearing Dad's stuff away: getting rid of his clothes, his books, his shoes by the door. But picturing herself in her father's place, she started to understand the reason for it. That brief moment of hope when you saw something that belonged to your dead loved one, that split second of believing they were still there, must be the worst torture in the world.

She wore pyjamas and slippers, as if she were ill. She kept on hugging her mum, all the time, even when her mum was in the middle of something – making tea or whatever. She was taller than her mother – she'd never even noticed it happening, growing taller than her mother—but she ducked her head under Jo's chin as if she were still a little girl and inhaled her scent of rose perfume. She kept curling up on the sofa with Honor as well. Honor was bony and you had to be careful of her broken wrist, but she touched Lydia's face and hair and hands in a way that made Lydia feel understood. It was Honor's way of seeing.

‘Why didn't you tell us you were blind?' she asked her grandmother.

Her fingers trailed over Lydia's mouth and chin. ‘I was afraid that admitting it would change everything. I would no longer be allowed to remain in my home; I would be seen as useless and vulnerable. And I was ashamed.'

She tilted Lydia's face towards hers. Lydia could see now, that Granny H's eyes moved too much; that she was looking out of the sides rather than the centre, looking at parts of things instead of wholes. She'd thought it was diffidence, before. It was sort of amazing how knowing one simple fact about a person could change your entire perspective of what they were like.

‘Did you feel that way,' Granny H asked her, ‘about how you are? Ashamed? Afraid?'

‘Sometimes.'

‘But now it's the truth that's important.' Honor lowered her voice. ‘Except about those flapjacks your mother made this morning. I had to hide mine under a cushion before it broke all my teeth.'

‘Mostly I felt alone,' confessed Lydia. ‘All alone, even when I was with other people.'

‘Yes. Loneliness is powerful and terrible.'

She nodded against her grandmother's meagre shoulder, feeling her fingers seeing her. Said, ‘I'll read to you. You must miss reading.'

‘We shall have to teach you Russian.'

Now that she was without the mask she'd worn for so many years, she felt raw and delicate, like newly-formed skin. But clean, in a way. She thought of the things that had been said to her and they still hurt, but it was at a distance almost. It was like the idea of exams, going on without her: something that belonged to a different girl, a different life, somewhere far away from this house with her mother and her grandmother and her. Those moments on the bridge had been more real.

She would have to go out into the world without her mask soon. Not yet. But soon. She'd stand up straight, like Granny Honor did. She'd believe that things would get better, like Mum did.

And yet the ache for Avril didn't go away. It stayed with her all the time. Sometimes it melted into the background, but mostly it was a sharp knife in her middle. The person she had lost; the person she was never getting back.

TWO DAYS PASSED
in the sort of slow-and-fast-motion that Jo remembered from having a newborn in the house. Lydia seemed to be sleeping a lot, mostly on the sofa under a blanket. Honor and Jo crept around her when she slept, and when she was awake, they held her and talked with her – about everyday things, normal things, but sometimes about things that mattered. Sometimes they just watched television.

Sara came round the first afternoon with an enormous takeaway curry and two bottles of white wine, which she put straight into Jo's fridge. ‘I can't cook for shit, not compared with you,' Sara said, ‘but I can use a telephone, and you need to eat.' she ‘Sara,' Jo began, and then she faltered. ‘I … haven't told you everything.'

‘OK,' said Sara. ‘You will. Later. Right now, look after your daughter, and yourself. And don't forget to eat.'

She hugged Jo before she left, and sent Bob round after work to cut Jo's lawn.

When Jo held Lydia, she felt calm, with a sense of purpose. At other times, she drifted around the house and tried not to think. She missed Oscar and Iris, even though their absence was only temporary; her body craved their little bodies, their wriggling and their scent and their high voices. She missed Marcus. She found herself standing at her kitchen sink, looking over at his house through the gap in the hedge. She tended the sweet peas he had given her, removing dead heads, trimming the stems, replacing the water. They would fade very soon and so would this feeling. So would the memory of his hands on her, his clothes discarded on the floor, the cups of tea he had brought her in bed, every one of which he made sure she would drink right to the bottom. The way he looked at her and made her heart sing.