6
Something To Talk About
‘And I’m going to ride in a plane? Over the Atlantic Ocean?’ Ben cried, his arms tight around my neck.
‘Yes, my darling, you are,’ I assured him and hugged him fiercely. I had also booked a session with an American specialist, Dr Ellenberg, to see his leg, but that was a surprise. The cherry on the cake.
‘I’m not coming,’ Chloe pronounced, crossing her arms like whenever she was on the warpath.
Ben and I stopped. ‘What do you mean?’ I asked. ‘It’s the chance of a lifetime.’ Now that I had finally embraced my hopes and dreams without any fear, she went and pooh-poohed it all? Really?
‘I’m not going to have any part of you demeaning Dad.’
And here they were, my fears finally rearing their ugly head. Bloody brilliant. Not that she had ever read my books, of course, so I began to wonder who her source was. ‘Where did you hear such nonsense, Chloe?’
‘Everyone is always talking about you at school,’ she said in a tight voice. The voice that came out when she was truly upset and not just throwing one of her strops.
Crap. Sooner than I’d thought. ‘And… what are they saying?’
‘That you got your own back with your books. That at least Dad found one way to be of use.’
And then the tears streamed down her face. ‘Why do you always have to make me the laughing stock of my school? Why can’t you just be like the other mothers and have a proper job?’
Ooh, I could see this was going to be a mother of a tantrum. Ben saw it too and released himself from me and slinked off upstairs. Smart kid.
‘Chloe, sweetheart, please try to understand that this is the best thing that has ever happened to us.’
‘Nothing good has happened to us since you kicked Dad out,’ she insisted.
Was that the yarn he spun to our children? That I was the big bad wolf? ‘You might not remember, but he left of his own volition, Chloe.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
I stretched out my arms and took a deep breath. ‘Chloe, sweetheart, come here.’
She glared at me in response and I sighed. I knew this conversation was coming, only I didn’t know it would be so soon. Chloe had been content, until now, to live this life, just the three of us, perfectly happy and serene, seeing her father twice a month. But as he sank his fingers into her young mind, Chloe had begun to turn against me.
And after he had finally gone through all of our savings and moved to Truro because he didn’t have the gall to show his face in Penworth Ford after what he’d done, all the unanswered questions and doubts had come to the fore. He was still in debt, lived in a rented flat he paid for God knew how, seeing as he didn’t work anymore. At least not that I knew.
Whether they were really Chloe’s doubts or prompted by her school friends, and their curious mothers, was another issue.
When Chloe refused to move towards me, I sat next to her on the settee facing the garden. The daisies were out, gloriously bright like stars in a dark sky.
‘Chloe,’ I ventured. ‘Please understand one thing. My books are not about your father and me.’
She snorted, her eyes still lost on the garden, and once again I saw myself in her. The delicate but angry brow, the full but grim-set lips and the gathered tears that refused to spill.
Was this what I was to expect in the future? A rebel of a daughter? Was she going to become one of those furious girls who ran away from home and never returned? Please God, help me make her understand that I love her and that I only want to keep her safe?
I was doing my damnedest to keep her from the ugliness of the world, but she would one day, all too soon, see it for what it was. A mixture of wondrous, tremendously beautiful but bad things and bad people like Phil. Simon from school would look like the angel Gabriel in comparison.
‘Well, then who is it about?’
I shrugged. ‘Someone like me. And most women today. But it’s made up. It’s fiction.’
‘But everybody says it’s all true…’
‘Who?’
‘The mothers at Northwood…’
‘What do they know, Chloe? Most of them haven’t even read my books. Nor do they know what happens in other people’s homes. Not even you and Ben know all the details of how your father left, so how can perfect strangers, let alone the Northwood mothers, know?’
But she just stared ahead, refusing to rejoice for us.
*
The first person I called was Jack. Or rather, the first person I told. He had stopped by with a whole bushel of early summer peaches and I just had to share it with him, and the look of pure wonder – and then delight – on his face was a gift of its own.
‘I’m so proud of you, Nina,’ he said, giving me a bear hug. ‘You truly are Wonder Woman.’
I laughed, finally feeling my ribs expanding for the first time in many many years with something akin to joy.
‘Have you told Emma?’ he asked.
‘The kids went round to bring her over. I want to see her face. And I’ve just made cannelloni for dinner. Are you interested?’
‘Always. And to celebrate,’ he said, whipping out a bottle of his prime cider, ‘a bit of bubbly!’
I clapped my hands. ‘Ooh, yummy! But how did you know?’
‘I didn’t. I just thought the three of us could have a drink tonight.’
‘Yes, let’s get sloshed!’ Not that I would, with my kids around. But if I did, Jack was the kind of bloke who’d carry you upstairs and pull the covers up to your chin and sit by your bed all night to make sure you didn’t choke on your own sick.
‘But when you get back from Los Angeles I want to cook for you and the kids myself. And I’ll bring it over
