The Mistake I Made (2 page)

‘Remind me,’ I said.

‘That you have to go the extra mile if you’re to survive. The ones who just do the necessary in business fail … the ones who don’t give the extra customer satisfaction—’

‘My business has already failed. It’s too late for that.’

‘Yes, but if you’re going to get back on your feet, Roz, you can’t just do the bare minimum. People expect more, they expect more today than ever before. What with the economy the way it is. Everyone is chasing the same money. Jobs are disappearing and—’

I looked at him.

‘You’re not seriously justifying what you’re asking me to do by debating unemployment levels, are you, Keith?’

Shiftily, he looked sideways, before biting down on his lower lip.

‘Eighty quid,’ he said. ‘Eighty quid, cash. Right now. You don’t even have to pretend to like what you see.’

‘I
don’t
like what I see.’

‘A hundred quid.’

‘No, Keith,’ I said firmly. ‘Now get your trousers on.’

2

AS THE FERRY
groaned away from the shore, I got out of the car.

For tourists, it’s a given they exit their vehicles the moment the ferry gates close – taking photographs of each other smiling, the lake as their backdrop, pointing to the pretty mansions dotted along the shoreline. But like most locals I took the beauty for granted. I forgot to look at the slate-topped fells, the ancient forests, the glistening water.

The sheer majesty of the place can become invisible when you’re faced with daily worries, daily concerns.

The villages of Bowness and Hawkshead are separated by the largest natural lake in the country: Windermere. The ferry crosses it at its midpoint, the lake’s widest point in fact, and there has been a service here at its current site for more than five hundred years. It’s a fifteen-mile trip to go around the lake in either direction, and in the heavy summer traffic that journey can easily take more than an hour, so the ferry is essential. Early craft were rowed over, then later a steam boat ran. The current ferry, which carries eighteen cars and runs on cables, is powered by diesel.

On good days I would feel so fortunate. My heart would swell at the splendour of the commute home to Hawkshead, and I would feel glad to be alive. Blessed to live in one of the prettiest places on earth. The kind of place people dream of retiring to after working hard all their lives.

Today, I was late.

The
no excuses
kind of late.

Tall tales of temporary traffic lights, tractors with trailers loading sheep, or flat tyres would not wash. And no matter how late I was, the ferry couldn’t go any faster.

Two weeks ago, my car sat alongside an ambulance carrying a casualty, and the ferry couldn’t go any faster in that instance either. It was an arresting sight, the ambulance stationary, its blue lights on, as we crawled across the lake. The passengers were casting nervous glances at one another, wondering who was inside, who it was that required urgent medical attention. We never did find out.

I wasn’t going to make it to after-school club until well past the deadline and by then George would be anxious, probably a little tearful. He was nine, and though generally a tough kid when he needed to be, since his father and I split, the past couple of years had been hard on him. I could see his easy-going nature gradually seeping away and being replaced by a sort of moody apprehension, a state more akin to that of a displaced teenager. More and more, he wore a guarded expression, as though he needed to be properly prepared for the obstacles thrown our way by the constant state of flux in which we found ourselves.

I took out my mobile and pressed redial.

The sun was still high in the sky and the heat beat down hard.

The diesel fumes from both the ferry and the couple of car engines still running gave the air a heavy, polluted feel, a contamination that was incongruous to the clean, clear lake water through which we cut. I stood against the rail, cradling the phone in my hand as I listened, once more, to the recorded message from the after-school club.

Then I dialled Dylis again in an attempt to locate my ex-husband. This time, she picked up.

‘Dylis? It’s Roz.’

‘Who?’

‘Roz,’ I repeated. ‘Where’s Winston?’

‘Oh, I don’t know, dear,’ she said vaguely, as if she’d just woken up. She was often like this, acting as if she were mildly drugged, not quite with it. ‘He’s at work, I think,’ she said. ‘Let me find a pen and paper and I’ll write the message down, because I’m terrible at—’

‘Dylis,’ I interrupted, ‘Winston doesn’t have a job. He’s out of work, remember? That’s why I don’t get any child-support payments. Are you saying that he’s working at a job
right now
?’

‘Oh – no,’ she stammered, ‘I’m not saying that. No, that’s not it. I’m not exactly sure where he is. Perhaps he’s out helping someone, you know, for free?’

‘For free,’ I mirrored flatly. ‘That sounds just like Winston. Look, Dylis, if he gets back in the next five minutes, can you get him to run and pick up George for me? I’m late.’

‘But it’s not our turn to have him,’ she said, confused, and I could hear her flicking through pages; must have been the pages of her diary.

‘It’s not your weekend to have him,’ I explained, ‘but I’m very late. And it would really help if you could locate Winston and—’

‘Ticket, Roz,’ came a voice from behind.

With the phone lodged against my ear, I turned, withdrawing a note from my wallet and handing it over. ‘I need a new book, Terry,’ I whispered to the aged attendant. ‘I used my last ticket this morning.’

We made the exchange, Terry being a man of few words, and I went back to explaining the situation to Dylis. She couldn’t drive, so I didn’t suggest she should get George herself. She lived in Outgate, a hamlet a mile and half or so from Hawkshead. But Winston Toovey, my ex, who was obviously doing work cash-in-hand – had been since Christmas, if my suspicions were correct – was probably breezing about nearby, passing the time of day with folk, no real hurry to be anywhere whatsoever now that he was living with his mother and had absolved himself nicely of all major responsibilities. And since he didn’t always carry a mobile phone, we couldn’t locate him.

I ended the call with Dylis, not for the first time filled with the urge to slam my phone against something solid. She got me like that. It was like trying to get information out of a child. Often, she’d slip up, make some comment about Winston she wasn’t supposed to – to me, in particular – and when I pressed her about it, she’d go mute and stare at her feet.

Pressed really hard, Dylis would lift her head and look at me, woefully, as though she knew she was in deep, deep trouble. She would look at me as if to say,
Please don’t tell Winston
.

I wanted to shake the woman. I wanted to scream:
How can you let your son walk out and leave me with this mountain of debt?
But I didn’t, because I was aware on some deeper level that Dylis’s dreamy, scatterbrained manner was the best she could do.

By the time I reached the school it was 6.28.

Twenty-eight minutes late.

I pushed open the front door and was greeted by a silent corridor, naked coat hooks, the odd PE bag dangling.

I took a breath and went into the classroom. The after-school club used the Year 1 classroom and, whilst waiting as George gathered up his belongings, I liked to look around at their first attempts at writing, at portraits of parents – which were often surprisingly true in their likeness, highlighting qualities perhaps parents wished they’d not (jug ears, shuffled teeth).

Now George was seated on the floor, his legs stretched out in front of him, his eyes cast downwards as he played on a Nintendo DS. He didn’t raise his head when I entered, even though he was aware of my presence. Instead he gave one quick flick of his head to shift his hair out of his eyes.

Iona, the young woman in command of after-school club, glanced up from her desk and offered a wan smile. One to suggest that this really was going to be the last time.

It was Friday. The sun was out. She was ready for a bikini top, shorts, flip-flops and a cold, dripping bottle of Peroni in the village square.

‘So sorry,’ I said emphatically. ‘I’m so, so sorry. George, quickly, get your things.’

‘Roz?’ said Iona.

‘I know. This is unacceptable. How much extra do I owe you?’

‘Ten pounds,’ she said. ‘We’ve had to start charging five pounds for every extra quarter of an hour, or parents don’t seem to see the urgency.’

‘Here,’ I said, pulling out a note, ‘take twenty. I know you can’t keep on—’

‘Roz,’ she said sadly, ‘it’s not the money. It’s my time. I’ve been here since seven-thirty this morning, and I have a life, you know?’ Iona didn’t raise her voice as she spoke. She was too professional to get angry in front of George. It was almost worse in a way. She spoke as if I were letting myself down. Letting my son down.

‘I’m sorry,’ I repeated. ‘It won’t happen again, I assure you.’

‘We’re going to have to call an end to this arrangement. It’s just not—’

‘Don’t,’ I said quickly. ‘Please don’t do that. I can’t manage without it.’

‘It’s not that I don’t understand, Roz,’ she said. ‘I can see that you’re struggling. But you’re late practically every day, and it’s not fair. It’s not fair on us and it’s not fair on …’ She didn’t finish her sentence, simply gestured towards George, who was pretending not to listen as he collected his lunchbox from the windowsill. Having run out of biscuits, I’d stuck a peach yoghurt in there this morning and was now regretting it. The school had a policy of sending the kids’ rubbish home with them so you’d know if they’d eaten all of their lunch. That empty yoghurt pot would be supporting its own ecosystem.

Turning back to Iona, I saw she was waiting for me to speak.

‘I don’t know what to do,’ I said honestly, as I thought through the logistics of the following week.

Iona didn’t offer a solution. Unsurprising, really, since her patience had run out over a month ago. I’d had second chance after second chance.

I could ask my sister.

No. Today was her fortieth birthday. We were attending her party this evening and she was off to New York next week. My parents were too far away and I’d made a promise to my sister that I absolutely would not put on them again. I’d let them down in the past, and I couldn’t bear to ask for their help. At least not for a good while anyway.

Winston was unreliable. He had left George waiting at the school gates more than once when he’d become fascinated by extreme weather and had gone off storm chasing at the coast.

Iona cleared her throat. She was still waiting for me to speak.

But then, oddly, as she attempted to stand, she winced.

‘Are you okay?’ I asked as I watched her adjust her weight, moving from one foot to the other.

‘Not really, no,’ she answered, and she sighed. Twice.

‘Oh, okay,’ she said eventually, her expression beaten, jaded. ‘Okay, Roz, one more chance.’ And before I had time to express my gratitude, before I had a chance to tell her I would
absolutely not let it happen again
, she reached down and lifted her trouser leg.

‘I don’t suppose you’ve got ten minutes to have a look at my knee, have you?’

3

LOOKING BACK, I
can see how everything was ultimately building towards this point, the point when life went off at a crazy tangent, but I think it was the note itself that was the trigger for the series of events that followed.

DON’T GO INSIDE
I SMELL GAS
LOVE CELIA

It was taped to my front door and had been put there by my neighbour. Celia had lived in the village for five years and was not a native; she was in fact a Scouser. But if you asked her where she hailed from, she’d say, ‘Southport, Lancashire’, in her best telephone voice. (Notice: Lancashire, not Merseyside. An important distinction, apparently.)

When I first moved into the cottage we had a few run-ins – Celia getting herself into a state of fractious agitation if I left the wheelie bin at the end of the garden path for more than two days running, or if my living-room curtains remained closed while I was at work or, heaven forbid, if I left my washing on the line when her book club was in attendance. Celia was a terrible snob. A working-class woman who liked to let you know that she was than everyone else. It was terribly amusing and, unexpectedly, I had grown to love her for it.

We reached an agreement early on whereby, because I didn’t have time to give the cottage the kerb appeal Celia deemed necessary, and because she lived in mortal fear of falling property values, Celia had a key to my place. Anything that was going to fray her nerves, I told her to address herself. So her husband would bring my bin in the very second the waste wagon left. I would arrive home to find the fringe of grass edges neatly trimmed in the front garden, or small pink stains on the path where Celia had poured weed killer on my dandelions. Lately, I could feel her itching to affix a hanging basket or two, to match her four, but she hadn’t yet broached the subject.

I pulled the note from the door. ‘Come on,’ I said to George, ‘let’s go to Celia’s.’ This was the last thing I needed, to be honest. We were supposed to be out the house again by 7.30 for my sister’s party. George needed feeding and we both needed smartening up. Glancing his way, I noticed some hair missing above his right ear. How I’d missed it earlier, I had no idea, because there was quite a chunk gone.

‘What’s going on there?’ I said, gesturing.

‘I’m not sure.’

‘George,’ I said.

‘I don’t remember.’

A quick word about fibs. You’ve noticed, I’m certain, the inability of little boys to tell the truth. Don’t hold it against them. They’re simply afraid of making us cross. ‘George, I’m not angry with you, I just want to know why you’ve cut away such a large piece of your hair.’

‘I needed it for a creature I was making,’ he said.

‘Seems reasonable,’ I replied.

We made our way down the path, out the front gate and along the short stretch of road to Celia’s. ‘I’m really thirsty. I need a drink, Mum,’ George said, and I said, ‘You and me both.’ The heat was fierce: thick, heavy air trapped in the basin formed by the surrounding fells. I pulled my tunic away from my midriff in a wafting motion, a lame attempt to get some ventilation. Sweat trickled down my skin, making me itch.