Torn (3 page)

‘Sheila! Sheila! Jude's taken the dumper truck. I was playing with it first!'

‘All right, Aaron. No! No fighting!' As Sheila went to deal with the problem she looked back at Jess and mouthed the word ‘coffee' with a raise of the eyebrows.

Up till now the children who yelled, jumped, and skipped in front of Jess's eyes might just as well have been a projected film for all the attention she'd been paying them. But now that she was temporarily alone she needed to divert her thoughts and what better diversion than to watch children play?

The variety amongst them was marked. Some were clustered around the tables engaged in constructive play. Many, unable or unwilling to remain focused, had given up. The free-ranging boys were generally louder and more boisterous, their attempts to seek attention more direct. Some marched about as if competing for the most exaggerated, convulsive gesture. They turned, they twisted, they flailed the air. Only Rory stood apart from the general activity, an observer for much of the time. If and when he did join in he was quick to take offence at some over-boisterous play. Too often his elbows would come out, his brow darken, his mouth compress. And he was not above giving tit for tat.

After a typical altercation she observed him squaring up to Jordan – a boy with light tufty hair and chipmunk cheeks. They looked like a couple of gunfighters from an old style western. Both were scowling deeply, Rory with his arms folded belligerently above his pot tummy. Of the two, Jordan looked the best equipped for the shoot-out. In the absence of a toy gun, forbidden in the nursery, a complete set of plastic construction tools were tucked gunslinger style into the waistband of his joggers. For no apparent reason, Rory gave up on the confrontation, stomped over to the Wendy house, and kicked it. The girls inside, pottering happily with their miniature domestic appliances – like a coven of Stepford Wives – gazed out imperiously at the vandal. Bianca shooed him away. Rory froze, hands clenched into fists, his narrow shoulders raised spikily. Jessica held her breath. But instead of striking back at the offender he turned and ran to where his mum sat, head butting into her ribs. She raised her arm to allow him access.

‘Mummy! B'anca hitted me!' he mumbled against her sweater.

‘Poor boy.' She stroked his straight dark hair. ‘But I expect she was just busy and didn't want to be disturbed, you know? Like me sometimes. I'm sure she didn't mean to hit you.'

‘What's all this about hitting?' Sheila had come back with a tray of mugs and a plate of biscuits. She put the tray down on a side table, well away from the mêlée of activity, and waved to the other women in the room indicating the freshly made coffee. Rory still stood, his face pressed against Mum's bosom; as damp breath warmed her ribs. Jess shook her head at Sheila.

‘He's fine. If there was any contact it was unintended. Bianca just flapped her hand at him,' she whispered.

Sheila called out to another girl who seemed at a loose end. ‘Sasha, why don't you show Rory how good you are at painting?'

Rory raised his head from its humid nest and stared at Sasha suspiciously.

‘Come on!' Sasha said, imperiously, ‘You can look at my painting of Bluebell.'

‘You sure he's all right?' Sheila queried.

‘Just being over sensitive.' It was impossible for Jess to resist making the boy/girl comparison as her son followed Sasha over to the easels. Rory was shorter and sturdier than his willowy companion and though similarly dark, the girl's jaw-length hair was curlier than his.

‘How is he generally these days?' Sheila handed over a mug. ‘Be careful, it's hot.'

‘Much better than he was.'

‘Sleeping any better?'

‘Seems to be … touch wood.' She smiled but felt her cheek muscles grow tight. ‘He does still plague me with questions sometimes. But there's no doubt he's more relaxed, more accepting. I just have to remember to count my blessings.' Her teeth bit into her bottom lip as she stared into the coffee mug. ‘I so wish Sean hadn't put in his surprise re-appearance! I just want to forget about the guy. Oh, that sounds lame … stupid. How can I forget someone who was part of my life for four years?'

‘Not stupid at all. It's perfectly understandable. About Friday … I blame myself for rushing off.'

‘Hardly
your
fault.'

‘The bloody burglar alarm's always going off for no reason. The sensor was probably tripped by nothing more threatening than a cat on his nocturnal prowl!'

‘It could have been a real emergency.'

‘You had the real life emergency to deal with … on your own. Thank God you had someone there willing to step in and help you. These days that's rare. Too many prefer not to get involved. If only I'd known. You needn't have had to rely on the kindness of strangers.'

‘Stop beating yourself up about it. If I'd had the slightest inkling my ex was lurking outside planning to kidnap me, do you think I wouldn't have left with you?' Yet again a flinch of remembered emotion kicked her in the gut. The lights of the Christmas tree sparked and jumped, doubling then quadrupling into a fuzzy network of stars. Jessica blinked away the momentary blurring.

Though Rory and the other children had made many of the decorations which now adorned the room, they'd not seen them go up. Since Friday, their lick and spit paper chains had been looped across the ceiling and the irregular gold and silver shapes they'd laboriously cut out with blunt-nosed scissors had found their way onto the walls, representing a starry sky. Christmas was still so new, so magical to Rory, he was stunned by the transformation. Even the tree with its tarnished baubles and thin, moulted tinsel seemed to him to have arrived from wonderland. It had choked her up to witness his wide-eyed awe.

‘There's no need for you to stay, you know. I've enough help today.' Sheila nodded towards Lynn, Sara, and Jan who were assisting.

‘I'll only brood. I'm better with company. All weekend I felt really paranoid, imagining Sean really did know where I lived. That he was skulking around somewhere, just waiting to pounce and force us to go back with him.'

‘But he can't make you. Not even if you
were
married.'

‘Brute force and intimidation are hard to resist.'

‘Men!' Sheila exclaimed. ‘And people ask why I don't allow them in my life. They're all chameleons. They wait till they've got their feet under the table, and you're starting to trust them, before turning into Mr Hyde.'

It was a valid point. ‘Story of my life. In future it's me calling the shots. I'm not dancing to anyone else's tune ever again!'

‘Right on, sister.' Sheila said, with an approving smile.

‘I'm really going to take my time before …'

‘Before what? You're better off without. Who needs ‘em?'

‘Quite right. Why swap independence for the dubious benefits of permanent coupledom?'

‘Enslavement you mean.' Sheila stood up abruptly, hands on hips. ‘Yasmin! Don't grab! I want to see you share with Chanel.'

‘I'm not planning to rule men out of my life altogether,' Jess continued, ignoring the interruption. Sheila sat down again, but her eyes were on the squabbling children.

‘Give me one unarguable reason why not.' She sat straight-backed, alert to what was happening in the room. Lynn intervened in the dispute between the two little girls who both wanted to use the pink glitter. Sheila sighed, pushed her fingers back through her curly, mahogany red hair, then turned and smiled at Jessica.

‘Tell me just one thing they're good for?'

‘Putting up shelves? Oh, and I'd miss the sex.'

Sheila grimaced. ‘Get a vibrator! And a power drill. You can put up your own shelves.'

Though Jess laughed, she couldn't join wholeheartedly with Sheila's condemnation.

‘I rather like men, really. Some of them, anyway. And there's got to be someone out there, somewhere, who's kind and sensitive.'

Sheila grunted dismissively. ‘If there is he's bound to be gay.'

‘You're such a cynic,' Jess said. ‘All I ask, expect in a relationship, is to be treated as an equal.'

‘Equal? We're their superiors. Anyway, kind and sensitive ain't sexy … apparently.'

‘There was Ben!'

‘And what happened to Ben?'

‘Ran off with a long-legged blonde.'

‘And was that kind? Was that sensitive?'

Despite the brevity of their affair Jess still considered her relationship with Ben the nearest to love she'd ever been. He was the one who'd made the earth move. But Sheila was right of course, he'd been a bastard too, like the others who'd gone before him, and the rebound one-night stands who'd come after. Then she'd found herself pregnant with Rory and it had been Sean who offered stability. At last it seemed she had found a good man, someone uninterested in raking over the past, who was willing to take on Rory and to provide the emotional support she needed at that critical time. But it became clear – but not soon enough to get out easily – that even he had another side.

‘But I'm certainly not in the market for any kind of new relationship. Not for a long while yet. Anyway, chance would be a fine thing. I don't come on my own any more. There's not many men interested in lumbering themselves with a single mother. Good thing too. It'll keep temptation out of my way. I plan to concentrate on being a mum and making Rory's life safe and secure.'

Though she tried to shrug off her fears, Jessica remained anxious about the walk home at lunchtime. Sean's almost supernatural reappearance the previous Friday night had upset and undermined her even more than she cared to admit. The possibility that he might appear again like a genie, from behind a tree or wall, was impossible to discount. But she refused to be cowed by such illogical fancies and she'd deliberately walked Rory to the nursery, challenging the morning shadows. Now, with his mittened hand tucked trustingly into hers, they set off for home. He was blithely unaware of her edginess, or that the man he called Rawn might be anywhere in the vicinity. Indeed, despite Sean's increasingly impatient and dictatorial behaviour with her child, Jess knew that Rory would have been delighted to see him.

Much of her history with Sean, and her reasons for running out on the relationship, had been explained to Sheila, and none of it had surprised the older woman. Despite setting up the nursery, Sheila had no children of her own, nor had she ever been in a long-term relationship, “let alone married” she'd told Jessica. At an age somewhere in the late thirties, she was tall and strongly boned. Her eyes were an arresting golden green, her face strikingly sculptural. Her hair was almost certainly henna'd. Yet Jess had never seen her in make-up and, given the odd assemblage of clothes she wore, she appeared to be a woman uninterested in the impression she made. While this was an attitude she found it hard to identify with, Sheila's strong anti-male viewpoint was an endorsement and a comfort.

Still feeling vulnerable and defensive over her decision to leave Sean, Jess knew he was the only father her son had ever known, and though it was too late now to change her mind, her emotions were still in dispute with her intellect. She tried to convince herself that leaving him was the lesser evil, allowing the situation to drag on would have put her child at greater risk of emotional damage. Rory was only three; there was every chance the loss would soon be forgotten. Or was this rationalisation? Had she exaggerated the problems? Could she have been more understanding, more forgiving of Sean's behaviour? Had she put her own needs above her son's? There was so much criticism of single mothers, some of the mud had to stick. But the decision was made; useless to go over the arguments. Now all she could do was her best for Rory.

Having determined to get him into a nursery as soon as possible, Jessica reflected on her good fortune that Cherubs – housed in an annexe extension to Sheila Jordan's Victorian villa – was just a short walk along the lane from home. Only later had she discovered that there were several pre-school nurseries in the district but that Cherubs, in Northwell Lane, was sought after. It attracted its children from Warford, and beyond. There was almost certainly a waiting list. She now suspected that Sheila had taken pity on them, making room for Rory only because they had turned up on the doorstep looking desperate.

As it was Rory's first experience of nursery school he only stayed for the morning session. And Jess was particularly grateful to be invited to stay around to help him settle into his new surroundings. He'd now been attending for ten weeks and as often as not she stayed on, but it was the wish to remain close to her son that motivated her, rather than a desire to help supervise the kids. Teaching had once been her ambition, but the very young were irrational, unpredictable creatures. Having graduated with a good mathematics degree, Jess had set her sights on a quality secondary school, but life had taken a different turn. Even after Rory's arrival she still didn't consider herself a natural mother, but in helping at Cherubs she'd found unexpected reserves of patience. Perhaps the fact that all but one were not her own lent a necessary distance to her relationship with them.

The lane ran approximately west to east. To the north, beyond the dry-stone wall, the bare fields, intersected by hedgerows and walls, sloped gently down to a boundary of trees. Beyond this line of sepia and charcoal smudges, distant hills were faintly outlined against the sky. Gulls swooped and soared overhead or peppered the fields like confetti. To the immediate south of the lane, on their right as they walked home, a hump of land thrust up abruptly, its long ridge heavily wooded, its slopes overgrown and wild. The lane at its foot followed the shallow curve of it and as mother and child rounded the bend they could see the original hamlet of Northwell – a terrace of artisan cottages clung to the hillside, at the end of which their home was now situated.