Authors: Kate Eberlen
‘That building is United Nations HQ,’ Hope said as we motored up the East River. ‘It says so underneath people on the news.’
Where most people would probably be watching the reporter and listening to what he’s saying about the latest meeting of the Security Council or whatever, Hope’s paying attention to
the shape of the building and reading the words in the red strip along the bottom of the screen. It’s two ways of looking at the same thing. I could see it was dawning on Kevin that Hope was
bright, but in a different way, and I was so pleased, because it’s difficult to explain to someone; they have to get it themselves.
‘What about that one?’ he asked.
‘Empire State Building, where the Giant Peach landed,’ she said, as if he was a complete idiot for asking.
‘Correct! And that one?’ He pointed at the Chrysler Building.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Well, I’ll tell you, shall I . . . ?’
It almost made me cry to see Kev putting his arm around his sister and talking to her about his adopted city. I think it was the first time Kev had seen Hope as a gift instead of a problem,
which sounds like something a priest would say, but is actually quite a good way of looking at her.
Shaun and I withdrew, leaving Hope and Kev out on deck, bonding.
‘What are you going to do when she goes to high school?’ Shaun asked me.
They didn’t have teaching assistants in the same way at big school, and even if they did, I knew it wouldn’t be a good idea for me to go with her. At some point, Hope had to tackle
the world on her own, and it seemed like the right time to start the process. If she didn’t panic in her upcoming SATs exams, she would get the required grade 4 to be in a normal form, and we
now had a Statement of Medical Need, so she would have a care worker with her at least some of the time. Which was all good progress, but it raised the question, what was I going to do?
‘Have you thought about training to be a teacher?’ Shaun asked.
‘That’s what everyone says!’
It was the most logical path for me to take, given that I still had to be at home for Hope outside school hours. Dad was mainly living with Anne by then and Anne didn’t want Hope
full-time.
‘Bad enough having Dad full-time,’ Kev said the previous evening, when I’d described Anne for him and we’d smiled at each other with that shared understanding only
siblings have, friends for a moment instead of rivals.
Several things were stopping me from going down the teaching route. First, I’d need to get a degree, which would mean studying in the evenings while I continued to work as a TA, and that
would take at least three years. Then I’d have to do a teacher-training course, with no income coming in, for another year. But my main objection was that I didn’t actually want to be
one.
‘I was at school, then instead of going away to university, I went back to school, and now I’m supposed to spend the rest of my bloody life in school!’ I told Shaun. ‘I
haven’t even learned anything yet!’
Shaun held up his hands, like he’d heard enough reasons.
‘So do you know what you
do
want to do?’
I was on a tourist boat in a foreign country, with a man who hardly knew me, but I found myself admitting something that I’d never told anyone before, except my mum – and that was
when I was ten years old, so it probably doesn’t count – not Dave, nor even Doll. It was almost like it was an opportunity to try out the words, see how they sounded. If Shaun laughed,
the mockery wouldn’t follow me round like it would at home.
‘I’d like to be a writer.’
He didn’t laugh. To be honest, if I’d believed there was the slightest chance he would, I wouldn’t have told him, so it wasn’t that brave.
‘Do you write?’ he asked.
‘I used to write poems at school, and I’m always making up stories. Do you think I’m crazy?’
‘If you’re asking if I think you can write, I can’t answer that until I read something you’ve written. What I do know is that you’re a reader and writers are always
readers. And you surely have a speaking voice that’s all your own, Tess. But that’s all I can say. The rest of it is up to you. Write some stuff. Go to a creative-writing group . .
.’
I felt like I was being given permission, which was exciting. But the question of how I was going to make my living remained.
‘I could always work for Doll . . .’
‘Doll?’
‘My best friend.’
It was hard to believe Shaun now knew me so well without knowing about Doll, so I gave him a potted history of our friendship. Doll had been spot on in her predictions about nails, and
she’d worked really hard, living back at home, spending all her time and savings on setting up The Dolls House. The business was now growing so quickly she was about to open her fourth nail
bar.
‘She sounds like an enterprising lady.’
I felt a tiny irrational twinge of jealousy. Doll had enough male admirers. She couldn’t help being pretty, which made men go out of their way to help her, but she was ruthless about
taking advantage, from the bank manager to the bloke who’d designed her logo and even Dave, who’d done a lot of work putting in sinks and stuff and only charging her at cost. I
didn’t want to share Shaun with Doll, even though he lived in New York, so it was unlikely they’d ever meet.
‘The name was my idea,’ I said.
‘But you don’t want to work with her?’ he asked, picking up on my ambivalence.
‘One, people say you shouldn’t work with your friends. And two, I’m just not interested in pampering and exfoliation and all that stuff . . .’
‘Maybe your work doesn’t have to provide all your intellectual and emotional satisfaction? Maybe you should do something that will leave you the imaginative space to write . .
.’
He was actually taking my ambition seriously.
‘So, what’s number three?’ he asked.
‘I don’t look right, do I?’
Shaun laughed out loud.
‘Well, if that’s your only problem, sweetie,’ he said, ‘let me tell you about what Kevin and I have been planning.’
The makeover. That probably makes it sound spookier than it was. We’re not talking plastic surgery, or Botox or anything like that.
‘You’re a blank canvas,’ Shaun said.
‘Thanks a bunch.’
‘I mean, my dear, that you have unrealized potential. Will you let me help you realize it?’
Hope and I both had our hair cut while Shaun instructed the stylist exactly what he wanted: a neat bob for Hope that suited the shape of her face and was easy to maintain; for me, a radical
restyle that left piles of nondescript frizz on the floor of the salon, and a face I barely recognized.
I’d had longish dark brown curly hair with a centre parting since I was a child. At school I’d worn it in bunches or plaits. Since then, Doll had bought me all the hair-straighteners
and serums ever invented to try to tame and smooth it, but nothing ever worked for more than a day or two. Usually I scraped it back in a big bushy ponytail, and if I wanted to look smart, pinned
and sprayed it up into a bun. Whenever I did that, people said I looked like my mother, which was nice, because she was an attractive woman, but I think what they probably meant was old.
Now, when I looked in the salon mirror, I saw someone young. The frizz, when chopped, had miraculously turned into glossy curls. With my hair now short, my eyes looked much bigger. Shaun said
the word was ‘gamine’, which the dictionary defines as an elfish tomboy.
After a session with the dance company’s make-up lady, who tidied up my eyebrows and showed me how to make the most of my cheekbones, and then the department-store trip, with Shaun as my
personal shopper, giving me the confidence to try on outfits I wouldn’t have dreamed of considering, I felt like a different person. The American sizing probably had something to do with it;
I’d never been an 8 before.
I drew the line at heels. It’s different in America, where everyone’s taller. Dave was going to find it difficult enough to get used to me in short A-line dresses with cropped
jackets, or ankle-skimming Capri pants, without me towering over him too.
‘Who’s Dave?’ asked Shaun.
It probably said a lot that I hadn’t once mentioned my fiancé, not that we’d set a date yet.
‘Dave is the Music Man,’ Hope explained, as if that was the only introduction required.
That night I sat with Shaun out on the roof terrace drinking Cosmopolitans, feeling very
Sex and the City
with the glittering grid of street lights stretching way into the distance. My
highball glass was full of ice, the lime and cranberry juice was tart and refreshing and you couldn’t really taste the alcohol, so I probably drank too much too quickly.
‘You’re marrying this guy Dave?’ Shaun asked.
‘He’s a lovely man and he’s got his own flat in Herne Bay and a van. Everyone likes him . . .’
I stared at a nearby apartment building. Behind each of those windows, there were little dramas going on, I thought. Thousands and thousands of little dramas. I loved cities.
‘But?’ said Shaun, leaning over and refilling my glass.
Was it so obvious there was a but?
I sighed. ‘I can’t seem to get rid of this stupid idea that there should be more. I know things probably aren’t as amazing out there as I think, but I want to find that out for
myself. It’s all right for Doll because she’s lived the dream and now she’s got work she loves, but why do I have to take her word for it?’
Shaun said nothing.
‘Same time,’ I argued with myself, ‘I love Dave. Everyone does. He’s like part of the family. Even Dad likes him! And Anne. And what would Hope do without him? I
can’t even think about that. So . . . I don’t know why I can’t just get on with it, and make everyone happy . . .’
If I was looking for confirmation, Shaun wasn’t going to offer it.
‘It’s not Dave’s fault, by the way,’ I tried to explain. ‘He loves me. But the thing is, he doesn’t really know me!’
‘What doesn’t he know about you?’ Shaun asked.
I took another long gulp of my pink cocktail. ‘The first time Dave saw me, I was at work with the kids, and you know how they are, they crowd round wanting to tell you things all the time,
so Dave had this vision of this caring, maternal type of person, you know? I don’t think he’d even have noticed me standing on my own at a student party . . .’
Shaun stayed quiet, giving me the space to continue with thoughts I’d never voiced before.
‘What Dave wants out of life is a nice little house and a family, and the thing is . . . I don’t even want kids!’
Still no reaction.
‘I am NEVER EVER going to bring a child into this world.’
The words seemed to reverberate in the air, like the moment after church bells cease tolling.
‘Why?’ Shaun said eventually.
‘Because I couldn’t risk dying and leaving them. I couldn’t do that to anyone!’
Suddenly there were tears trickling down my face and I didn’t know where they had come from.
‘It’s terrifying looking after a child, you know? I’m living in fear all the time because what the hell would happen to Hope if I wasn’t there?’
The tears were choking me now.
‘It must have been like that for Mum, mustn’t it? So why the hell didn’t she get herself checked? It was SO selfish of her, and I honestly can’t forgive her for that.
What was she thinking? What did she think was going to happen to us?’
Then crying totally took over, convulsing my body, drowning out the drone of traffic from below.
‘I’m sorry, Mum! I know you didn’t mean it . . . I’m so sorry!’
I felt Shaun standing beside me, gently resting a hand on my back, which made me weep even more because he was so lovely, and in two days’ time we’d be home, and I wouldn’t
have him to talk to, and I wouldn’t even have the holiday to look forward to any more.
And then, suddenly, I took a huge breath. There were no more tears.
One summer in Ireland when we were kids, we dammed up a little stream of water on the beach. When the time came to go home, the tiny trickle had become a huge lake, and we all stood there, with
Dad counting one, two, three, before smashing the wall with our spades, releasing a torrent that gushed down the beach to the sea. Then suddenly the sand was flat again, the water all blended into
the sea, and I’d stared at the sun going down over the horizon, feeling strangely sad, as if a little part of my life had gone.
‘I should’ve got through the anger stage, shouldn’t I?’ I said.
‘Grief’s not a checklist, Tess, it’s a process.’
‘I’m not really angry with Mum,’ I said. ‘I loved her more than anyone. I just wish she hadn’t always put everyone else first, because actually that didn’t
help, because Hope needed her to be there . . .’
‘And you needed her?’
‘But I wouldn’t have needed her so much if she hadn’t died!’
‘Tess, sometimes you’re almost as pedantic as Hope!’
When people talk about nature and nurture, I think they forget that nurture works both ways. It’s obvious children copy grown-ups, but nobody ever talks about how much grown-ups copy
children. Those funny little sayings that become part of a family’s language, they’re usually from the kids, aren’t they? So if there are ways Hope and I are alike, maybe
it’s genetic, or she’s picked stuff up from me, but maybe I’ve picked stuff up from her too.
‘Shall we try to unpack some of this?’ Shaun asked.
‘Unpack’ was a word he used a lot and not about suitcases.
I nodded.
‘Seems to me the major issue here is your fear of dying,’ he said. ‘You’re assuming you’ll die early because your mother did?’
‘And her mother did . . .’
‘So, isn’t there a genetic test you can have?’
‘There is.’ I repeated the article I’d read recently. ‘But only five per cent of people get cancer because of genetics. And at the moment the guidelines are that they
won’t give you a test unless there’s evidence that a close relation carries the mutation . . .’
I’d been to the doctor about it. The nice female GP I usually saw was on maternity leave, so I’d had to see the head of the practice, a much older man who’d known me since I
was a child and still treated me like one.