He says it anyway, because it needs to be uttered out loud, this needs to be confirmed.
‘Mrs Mackleroy, I’m afraid to say, Phoebe is about four weeks pregnant.’
My fingers were curled tight into the edges of the armrests, my body forced back into the seat as the aeroplane, Flight 4867 to Lisbon, lurched sickeningly to the left, then was immediately flung to the right. This was why I hated flying. This was why I’d thought long and hard about whether I really, actually needed to ‘get away from it all’. I hadn’t been sure that my need to escape the anxiety and stress of being at home was worth this. Was worth taking the chance of being trapped in a metal box with only the thought of teetering in the air, waiting for the aeroplane to either glide into calmer skies or to suddenly plummet meaning I’d have to scream or cry or pray my way to impending death.
Go to Portugal
, I’d told myself.
It’s only two hours on a plane
, I’d told myself.
It’ll be fine. It’ll only be one hundred and twenty minutes. How much turbulence can be crammed into that short amount of time? Some movies are longer than that. You’ll be fine, Saffron. Absolutely fine
.
I was not fine. I was clinging to the armrests of an aeroplane seat, securing my mind firmly to the present, refusing to allow my life to replay itself before my eyes because if I could stop that happening, the rest of it, the screaming/praying/crying to impending death wouldn’t happen, either.
The man seated next to me, whose girlfriend had his left hand in a vice-like grip, turned to me as the plane rollicked sideways and held out his right hand. ‘You can cling onto this hand if you want,’ he said. My gaze went from his large hand with its square, neat nails to his girlfriend. Her green eyes were wide and terrified, her straight
red hair ruffled, it seemed, by fear itself, but she still managed a nod to me to communicate: ‘Go
on, you idiot, grab on and squeeze tight. We’re all in this together
.’
The plane swooped into a dip and his girlfriend and I both closed our eyes after letting out simultaneous ‘Ohhhhhhh’s. I immediately clamped my hand over the one proffered and clung on for sheer life as we rocked and rolled our way into Lisbon.
*
I’ve fallen through a pothole in time, been to one of the places in my past with Joel, and I have come back to the present with a rising and falling tide of nausea at the pit of my stomach. Usually, the memory pockets that feature Joel and our life before
that day
give me an unexpected little boost, a little something to allow me to carry on in the present, but not this time.
This time, the cauldron of uncertainty and worry that lives where my stomach should be continues to whisk itself into a frenzy because I’m one of those parents.
Those
parents. The ones you read about in the papers or magazines and shake your head at; the ones you think
Where were the parents?
about when you hear of something terrible involving a child. I know I’m one of those parents because here I sit with my hands folded on my lap, my face set in a neutral expression, replaying the secrets a stranger has seconds ago revealed to me about my own life.
I hate feeling sick.
I hate feeling sick even more than I hate being sick because at least once you’ve vomited, have excavated your stomach of its contents, apart from the ache in your ribs or your throat, it’s done with; gone. Nausea, though, sits at the pit of your being, mixing itself slowly and potently, occasionally rising up, threatening to spill out, before it subsides again, folding and stirring, stirring and folding itself a little more intensely as a sensation that won’t be shifting any time soon.
Right now, I feel sick.
My daughter, who still wears a school uniform, who I have to
take shopping for shoes, who still has teddy bears on her bed, is pregnant.
‘Are you going to say anything, Phoebe?’ I ask my daughter, revolving in my seat to her.
Her slender, fourteen-year-old body, already twisted away from me, cringes ever so slightly – a tiny reflexive tensing of muscles – at my voice but she does not move or otherwise acknowledge me.
‘Phoebe?’ I say her name gently, carefully.
Nothing. Nothing from my daughter.
I return my line of sight to the men in front of me and focus on the youthful one, the handsome one.
The
Mr Bromsgrove. Why did she choose to tell him? Of all the people in the world, in this city, in this school, why did she choose to tell him? He is young, but not especially young, probably about my age, actually. Certainly old enough to be her father. He has a grade-one haircut all over, his features are strong – a man who can look like he takes no nonsense very easily, but also able to look soft and understanding an instant later. He’s slender, bordering on skinny, and wearing a form-fitting white shirt, navy suit jacket and tan corduroy trousers. His eyes, from what I can see behind his gold wire-rimmed glasses, are the same dark hazelbrown of his skin and seem kind. This is the first time I’ve regarded him properly, have
noticed
him, and now I can understand what the others in the playground have been whispering about. Why they have crushes on him. Why I would have had a crush on him if I were a teenager. Does my daughter? Is that why she told him this thing first? Because she thought it might bond them? Or is it more nefarious than that, does he have something to do with her condition?
My gaze goes to the headteacher.
How could you allow this to happen?
I want to say.
When she’s not at home, she’s here, at school, so this thing must have happened on school time
.
I contemplate
The
Mr Bromsgrove again. Has she mentioned him a little too much? Have I seen anything with his name on in her bedroom when I go in to check her computer? I am plundering my memory, trying to see if there is a moment that featured this man,
this potential father of my daughter’s child. Nothing. Nothing comes to mind, or pricks my memory. He doesn’t even raise a suspicion of anything untoward happening between them.
It could have happened anywhere
, I remind myself.
It could have happened with anyone, because I don’t know what Phoebe does in the time between leaving school grounds and walking into our house
. At home, she’s always studying, with the good marks to show for it, or she’s sitting in the corner of the sofa in the living room, phone in hand, texting away or on Facebook and Twitter and all those things I haven’t really been paying attention to. She’s home so I’ve always assumed she is safe. All the bad things happen ‘out there’. As long as she’s where I can see her most of the time, she’s safe.
‘Phoebe has declined to tell us who the father is,’
The
Mr Bromsgrove says. From the corner of my eye, I see her head turn a little as she looks at him. Is she annoyed and resentful that he’s telling me this, or is she incredulous that he’s saying that when he is somehow involved? I can’t know for certain because her face is hidden from me.
‘Mrs Mackleroy, I’m not sure what you want to do right now …’ The headteacher leaves his sentence open and expects me to fill it.
‘Are you going to tell social services?’ I say into the gap he has left for me.
The headteacher glances at
The
Mr Bromsgrove, and I wonder if either of them hears Phoebe’s almost inaudible gasp. Have they noticed she’s now holding her breath? Do they realise that we’re already on the social services radar and this sort of revelation would start the whole thing up again?
The
Mr Bromsgrove stares at the headteacher, then at Phoebe, then back at the headteacher. He doesn’t include me in his assessment of the situation, in fact, he’s avoided looking directly at me since I walked in here. I saw him look me over when I entered, but his visual attention to me has been conspicuous in its absence.
It’s OK
, I’d love to say,
I know I’m a bad mother, you don’t have to avoid looking at me in case your face shows your disgust. I’m disgusted enough with me for the both of us
.
The headteacher finally focuses on me again. ‘I think we should
play it by ear for now, don’t you? We think it would be best if you had a talk with Phoebe, see what you plan to do and then we’ll have another meeting to discuss our options.’ His face flames a deep crimson. ‘I mean, options in the school and education sense, of course.
Ah-he-hem!
’ He starts to desperately shuffle papers.
The cauldron of nausea at the centre of my being folds and stirs itself much faster.
‘What would you like me to make you, pretty lady?’ Joel asked me. We’d been dating for two months, not including the time we met on the plane to Lisbon and then not seeing each other again for a month, and this was our first date that didn’t involve some kind of physical activity – bowling, hillwalking (disastrous), rollerblading, rock-climbing, dry-slope skiing, clubbing. Tonight, though, he’d insisted on a slower, more relaxed date with dinner and drinks at his shared flat in Hove.
‘Nothing. I don’t think I could eat a thing.’ I rubbed my stomach to emphasise my point. ‘I’ve been eating all day, I’m stuffed.’
‘Nonsense.’ As always, his rich tones moved deliciously like warmed maple syrup through me. ‘You can have anything you like from the rather extensive selection in my fridge.’
Joel opened the door to his tall white fridge, unlocking the gateway to a world of pleasure: fresh vegetables, fresh pasta, apples, blackberries, strawberries, blueberries, butter, cheese, ham, fresh chicken, salmon were all stacked neatly onto the three shelves with raw meat, poultry and fish together, fresh veg and fruit together, deli foods sitting side by side. No open cans with their lids half on, furring up with every passing second; no putrefying foodstuffs that were going to rot away leaving a slimy pool of decay in their wake; no crustylidded jars with stained, faded labels.
The rest of the kitchen was pristine, too. Around the room, quite large for a two-bedroom flat, was evidence of cooking, eating,
living
.
The wall beside the cooker had two long shelves stacked with many different types of oils, some with suspended chilli peppers, garlic and herbs. The lower shelf had clear jars filled with different types of dried pasta, rice, beans and lentils. Below that stood a rack of dried herbs and spices. On one of the work surfaces there was a wooden knife block with six silver-handled knives – all of different sizes, I’d imagine – protruding from it. Along the sill of the large window that allowed light to pour into the kitchen, small pots of fresh herbs grew – I recognised three of them as lavender, basil and chives.
‘So, you and your mate Fynn live here all on your own?’ I said to him.
‘Yeah, have done since we got proper jobs after uni.’
‘And you’re both into cooking?’
‘No, that’s my thing. Fynn’s more into cars. And women. But mostly cars.’
‘How did two such different people manage to become such good friends?’
‘We’re not that different. Like I told you, we met at an open day for Cambridge. Kind of gravitated towards each other when we realised within ten minutes or so that we were both there to make our parents happy.’
‘Rather be a disappointment, huh?’
‘No, rather have a life. I wasn’t passionate about going there and it wouldn’t have been fair to take a place away from someone whose whole life was about going there. Same with Fynn. We met again at the interviews and exchanged numbers. After A-levels we decided to run away and live by the sea to escape the sound of our parents’ hearts breaking. We literally did nothing but work and party for a year before we both started college in Brighton.’
Closing the fridge door, I took his hand and stood staring at him for a few seconds. Just staring at him. He was easily the best-looking man I’d been ‘involved’ with. Easily. He was six foot or so, solidly built, with long, lean muscles that I kept eyeing up whenever he wore short-sleeved shirts. I hadn’t seen the rest of him in the flesh,
as it were, but I was hoping to change that. I was always trying to get lost in his eyes because they were like twin whirlpools of melted mahogany fringed with pitch-black lashes. His face could have been carved from a piece of walnut wood it was so smooth and dark, and begging to have my fingers stroke it. And his mouth – it was always smiling at me. Whenever I caught him looking at me, he was always either grinning or seemed to be on the verge of doing so.
‘Didn’t see anything in the fridge you fancied, no?’ he asked and reached for the silver handle again.
‘Not exactly,’ I said. To distract and get him to focus on me, I led him out of the kitchen and into their spacious living room, where I encouraged him to sit so I could drop onto the sofa beside him. ‘I’d much rather hear more about what you got up to in that year of work and partying.’
‘Really that interested?’ he asked and his smile lit up his twenty-six-year-old face again. I was instantly jelly-like inside. He reached out and slipped his arm around my waist as I’d been longing for him to do, before he leant back onto the sofa and pulled me towards his body.
‘Oh, yes, I’m very, very interested.’
*
We’re at the bus stop near the school. I’d been too shaky after the call to come to St Allison to even contemplate driving and spent all the spare cash I had on a taxi to get here. I had enough to get home on the bus and Phoebe had her pass.
We are propped two widths of a normal-size person apart on the moulded plastic bench under the shelter. It’s April and I, like everyone else, am still waiting for the faintest hint of spring to join us but the weather is not cooperating. The air around us is cool but not hostile. I wish it was warmer, though, waiting for a bus would be far more pleasant if the cool air wasn’t seeping in under my jacket and playing across my skin.
‘You’re going to have to talk to me at some point,’ I say to Phoebe.
The first thing I’ve said to her since, ‘We’re going to have to get a bus’ as she stood waiting to see which direction I’d go to get to the car.