The boys.
I’ve loved them with every fibre of my soul since the moment I clapped eyes on them. They fill me up with so much love and meaning that there are times when I’ve thought I might explode with the joy of being their mother. And I fill them too. They need my love, they need me. I know that it was part of my appeal to Mark that I loved them so entirely. He wanted a lover, maybe even a wife but he needed a mother for the boys. Someone to unfurl his boys. I put my cool hand on the heat of their grief and drew it away, soothed. What you need and what you want being perfectly aligned is a rare and wonderful thing. Mark grabbed it with both hands. The boys blossomed under my care. When I married Mark, I officially adopted them.
I reach for the water bottle; the label is smeared with my diarrhoea. It’s disgusting. I’m disgusting. I carefully tear off the label and then take some sips, regardless.
The worst days are the ones when Mark thinks I am away with work and really, I’m just sat in Daan’s flat. Sometimes, when I’m certain Mark isn’t going to be working from home, I do sneak back to the house to put on a load of washing so that the chores don’t add up at the weekend. On Wednesday afternoons the boys often play sports. I’d like to go to those games, but I can’t because how would I explain being away on a Wednesday night and how can I justify to Daan living away from him for more than four days a week? He is patient enough giving up every weekend of his life because he thinks I am nursing my sick mother. I have to be strict. Disciplined. I have a lot to lose. Twice as much as the next woman. I see the boys play football at the weekends. That’s enough. It has to be.
The boys were aged seven and eleven when I met Daan. They had just started to break away from my tight and constant maternal clench. I realise now, that as all boys turn into tweens, teens and ultimately young men, they have to push their mothers away. It’s natural. It is still hurtful though. I couldn’t help but feel saddened when they quickly turned their heads away from me and a kiss might land on their ear or simply die in the space between us. The boys had started to edge into the stage when all they needed me for was to locate a stray trainer or charger cable, cook a meal. I still needed them.
My arms felt empty.
It was around that time I suggested to Mark that we consider fostering or even adoption. ‘Maybe a girl,’ I said hopefully. ‘A toddler, someone who needs a loving home.’ Someone who would accept my kisses without question. He instantly dismissed my idea, not giving me or my needs even the dignity of a debate. ‘I don’t want to go back to nappies and broken sleep, Leigh. Besides, adoption’s such a risk. If you are not genetically related, you don’t know what you are getting. How can you be sure you’ll bond?’
‘I’m not genetically related to Oli and Seb,’ I pointed out.
For a moment Mark froze, he looked caught out, afraid. Then he pulled me into a hug. ‘God, I forgot. Isn’t that wonderful?’
And it should have been wonderful. If maybe, momentarily, Frances wasn’t sat in the shadows of our relationship and Mark had thought of me as the boys’ mother – simply that, not the stepmother, the stand-in or make do. But I didn’t really think that was what was being said. When he’d said that if a parent wasn’t genetically related to the child, you couldn’t be sure you’d bond, Mark was not talking about my relationship with a future child or indeed the children we had, Mark was referring to his own feelings on the matter of nature versus nurture. So, in fact, it was far from a compliment. Really, he was revealing that he didn’t believe my bond with the boys could ever be quite as strong as his. It was as though he’d stabbed me. Then left me to bleed out.
Two or three weeks later my father died. It was a very intense time.
My reflections are punishing. Stopping, examining, recalling is something I’ve studiously avoided over the past four years. I change track. Pull to mind the thoughts that I’ve always used to console myself.
I never got behind on the washing, no one ever opened the fridge and despaired that there was no milk for their cereal. When I went to Daan’s to become Kai, my last act before I walked out of the door was to check in the freezer, count the Tupperware tubs of bolognese and shepherd’s pie. Checking there were always organic meals made from scratch by me, enough to last until I returned.
No one was neglected.
I close my eyes. Let the darkness of the room take me. Sleep isn’t restful, but it’s better than the nightmare I’m living.
24
DC Clements
Friday 20th March
When DC Clements returns to the station after visiting Daan Janssen, she is immediately called into her boss’s office, she doesn’t even have time for a fag. She
