As they separated and he took his place in the driver’s seat and she moved round to the passenger seat, I leaned back against the bus stop and felt more shaken and more alone than I can ever remember.
As I keep saying, I haven’t told anyone about the pregnancy because I just can’t confide in anyone about ‘S’。 And now I have no one to talk to at all. No one to tell how truly stupid I’ve been.
Only now, much too late, do I realise what a cliché this is. I’ve been taken in by a player. A snake. And I feel too stupid to begin to know what to do next.
Since I got back to the flat, I’ve paced and cried and paced and cried. I’ve picked up my phone and thought about calling home; telling Mum that I need her to come and pick me up. But I just don’t have the courage to dial. I can’t do that to her.
So all I’ve done in the practical sense is get back in touch with the clinic to make a new appointment to go over my options. How many weeks I have left to make a decision about what on earth to do.
I’m just hoping and praying that I can get my degree finished and get through graduation before I have to make the call. Break both my parents’ hearts.
And now, sitting here, I’m shocked at how angry I feel. Like I could hit something. Like I want justice. Revenge?
A part of me wants to find out the number and phone ‘S’’s wife. To let her know exactly what her husband’s really like.
But guess what’s happened to top it all? A new DM on Facebook.
He’s not who he says he is . . .
That’s the message. From a new ‘friend’ I don’t even remember accepting.
It’s made a shiver go right through me. I suppose it could be ‘A’ hacking me again but it’s as if someone has read my thoughts.
Because that’s precisely the message I would like to send to ‘S’’s wife.
CHAPTER 31
THE MOTHER
I reach for Gemma’s laptop and rest it on the end of her bed in front of me, waiting for it to fire up. I’ve found the pictures from her birthday tea and click on the file. Gemma looks so happy. So pretty. There are photos of me and Ed too and it makes my stomach lurch to think of us back then. With no idea of what was to come.
I’ve looked through some of her other files – curiosity – but it’s mostly coursework as far as I can see. A lot of essays. She was always telling me how much time she spent on them; pushing for that first.
I scroll through some headings. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and another about someone I haven’t even heard of. I just read the essay title and click away. I love books but wouldn’t have a clue where to start; I feel out of my depth. I look again at some of the photographs – random shots with friends. Fancy-dress parties.
I let out a sigh and put the laptop back on the cabinet next to Gemma’s bed. Extraordinary how the whole process of storing memories has changed in just a generation.
My mother’s always loved taking and storing photographs. She began back in the day when you had to take your camera film to a chemist and wait for the photographs and the negatives. I remember telling a friend of Gemma’s about ‘negatives’ and she didn’t even know what I was talking about. I couldn’t find any so had to show them online. Images of the long, dark strips with punched holes along the edges.
Mum also has stacks of photo albums on a shelf in that under-stairs cupboard; likes to get them out and re-tell the stories we’ve already heard a million times over. Me learning to ride a bike. Me learning the recorder. Me with my pigtails in the school nativity.
I think of my mother at home now. Flu or just a virus; we can’t tell. Recovering well but still unable to visit Gemma. Messaging each day. I try so hard to keep upbeat when we talk but I know she watches the news and I worry how she will cope when she first sees Gemma. Like this.
And then I think again of when I was little. My mother looking after me when I was unwell. Her voice. I’ve brought you some soup. All those photo albums. Sometimes, you know, I wonder if childhood memories are all real or if we conjure some of them from the photographs and anecdotes shared by our parents. When I listen to the story and look at a picture in my mother’s albums, I feel sure that I remember the incident. Smells come back to me – the floor polish in school. That soup on the stove at home. But with other photos, I suspect it’s my mother’s version I remember from her constant cycle of storytelling. I see images but fear I’m conjuring them to fit my mother’s nostalgia.
All I can say for sure is this: my father didn’t always drink.