Queen Mum (25 page)

‘Ally?’ Tom’s face dropped.

‘There’s more to it than I said on the phone.’

‘Oh, hell, is he really hurt?’

‘It’s not his foot. You need to hear what he’s done, you won’t believe it.’

The air was clammy with steam. If I had a motorbike, Tom’s expression seemed to say, I’d jump on it this minute.

*

Tom took Ben upstairs for a man-to-man chat. ‘I think it’s best,’ he told me. If you stay out of it, is what he meant.

By the time he came down again I was beside myself with temper.

‘So?’

‘I’m not absolutely sure.’

‘Was it my fault?’

‘No,’ he said straight away, because yes, or even a pause, would have destroyed our marriage at a stroke.

‘It’s not the fact he hurt himself, though God knows, if he’d fallen on his face—’

‘I know, I know.’

‘But it’s the deceit. He’s never been a liar, Tom. Did he use that phrase “out of the loop” with you?’

Tom nodded.

‘What does it mean?’

‘What it is—’ He came and sat next to me, put his arm round my shoulder. I stiffened my muscles under his touch. ‘I don’t want you being upset, but it’s good
if we can get this out. He should feel he’s able to tell us things, shouldn’t he?’

‘Go on.’

‘He says he wants more freedom.’

‘So it is my fault.’

‘Why do you assume that?’

‘Because you think I stifle him.’

‘I don’t.’

I laughed bitterly. ‘Yeah, right.’

‘All I’m saying is, I think there’s room for manoeuvre. Yes? Don’t go all brittle on me. Please, Ally.’

Which one of them was it used to come to me all the time with Lego bricks and ask me to un-stick them? Whatever I was doing, even in the bath, they’d follow me round. Perhaps it was both
of them. When I took the bricks, they were always slippery with spit and covered in baby tooth-marks. I used to dream of a time I’d be able to sit and read a book or eat my tea without
constantly having to get up. I’ve poured a million cups of squash, emptied a thousand packets of baby wipes. But in the end, you know, you’re redundant.

When Tom stroked my arm that night in bed I jerked it away. Whatever he was after, sex, forgiveness, forgiveness-sex, I wasn’t interested. If I was a useless mother, I might as well be a
useless wife. At about 2 a.m. he suddenly said to me out of the darkness, ‘You don’t think it’s drugs, do you?’

You know all the bloody answers, why ask me? I told him silently. He must have thought I was asleep because he didn’t speak again.

I woke up still furious.

‘Are you going to phone school and tell them Ben won’t be in today?’ Tom asked me.

‘Why don’t you do it?’ I snapped.

I’d dreamt we were both standing on the edge of an orchard; we might have been looking over a fence or a wall. Juno was under the trees picking fruit, although, now I thought about it,
they were rowan berries she was pulling down. They’re poisonous, aren’t they? I didn’t register that in the dream. And Manny was there too with Soph on his shoulders, but she was
about four, tiny, like the ones I work with at nursery. I’m not sure where Pascale was, or Ben, or Joe. I wanted to go in and help Juno gather berries but Tom was complaining all the time
about needing to go to the garage and pick up his car because he’d had those monster truck-type wheels fitted to it. He wouldn’t let me go to them over the wall. In the dream I hated
him.

‘Mr Hannant’s promised me they’ll swing a few room changes so he doesn’t have to go up and down stairs so much,’ Tom said when he got off the phone. ‘But
they’ll need a day to sort it. I’ve told him Ben might be in tomorrow unless his foot suddenly gets a lot worse. He was scooting round the kitchen last night like an old pro on those
crutches. I said to him, “There’s not a lot wrong with you, is there?” ’

‘I’m glad you can laugh about it,’ I said sourly.

Tom glanced at his watch. Then he registered I had my nursery tabard on over my blouse. ‘You going into work?’

‘Yes. Why shouldn’t I?’

He exhaled noisily. ‘Oh, Ally. I could have done with knowing . . . All right, I’ll have to phone Mattison and tell him I’ll be in after lunch, although he’s not going to
be pleased, because we’re just into a new project with Jensen.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘You don’t get it. Go into work. If Ben’s old enough to “have some freedom”, he’s old enough to be left for three hours on the sofa,
with plenty of drinks and the remote and his mobile. He can call me if his foot drops off.’

Tom looked defeated. He went pointlessly to the bottom of the stairs, then came back.

‘Ally, don’t be so angry.’

‘I’m not angry.’

‘You bloody are.’

He stood for a moment, debating with himself. I turned my back on him and went into the kitchen to assemble an invalid tray. I heard his feet pounding up the stairs, then the quick bib of
Juno’s car horn out the front.

‘That’s terrible,’ she cried when I went out to explain why Ben wouldn’t be needing a lift that day.

I started to pour out the tale of what a rubbish mother I was, but she just talked over the top of me.

‘Building sites should be well fenced-off, locked up. I should think you’ve a case for suing. Which site was it? Do you want me to ring the council about it?’

‘Yeeowch,’ said Pascale. ‘Right through his foot? So it was sticking out the top?’

‘Can I go see him?’ asked Sophie, opening the car door.

‘We haven’t time,’ said Juno.

‘Gotta go get my French book anyway, forgot it was Wednesday,’ she chirped, and was gone, sprinting across the drive, her tie flapping over her shoulder.

‘Look at that. She’s been shortening her skirt again,’ said Juno.

*

There’s no one at nursery like Joe, but some of the things the little ones do remind me of him. They churn out the same scraggly drawings, figures with legs like tentacles
and hands like pincushions. The boys all fiddle with themselves continually, dreamily, looking up with mild surprise when you tell them to stop. They all ask questions, all the time, and they tell
interminable stories in a machine-gun delivery that carries them through all other activity, e.g. going to the toilet.

I try to treat them all the same but you can’t help liking some more than others. Favourite last year was Ella Greaves, whose mum had been killed in a car accident when Ella was only two.
I used to brush her hair for her, even though it didn’t really need it; I’d say, ‘Your bobble’s coming out,’ and then I’d pull the elastic off and smooth the
strands down with my fingers. We used to have to take her out of the room when the others made their Mother’s Day cards. Her dad had a kind of absent, shell-shocked quality to him that made
me wonder what he was like with her at home, and once I saw him put one of her pictures in the bin on the way out. I ran after him with it into the car park, pretended I thought he’d dropped
it by accident. Later, Geraldine told me he’d got a new girlfriend who Ella liked. I was relieved about that.

This year my soft spot was for Charlie Castle, a redheaded boy who’d had a lot of trouble with his hearing and been in and out of hospital. It was difficult sometimes to tell what he said.
In fact, Geraldine reckoned I was the only one who could make him out properly. His ears were more or less OK these days but he was seeing a speech therapist, and he still didn’t always take
notice if you gave him an instruction. ‘He’ll have to learn how to listen,’ his mum told me. ‘You need to be patient with him if he doesn’t respond straight
away.’ So I never shouted at Charlie if he didn’t do as he was told, I’d squat down so I was on a level with his face and make eye contact, then speak.

‘You’ve got the gift with him,’ Geraldine commented one lunchtime as I helped him wash his hands. ‘You know he used to have the most awful tantrums in the other room?
Louise was at the end of her tether.’

‘I expect it was frustrating for him, not being able to join in. He’s never any bother for me, are you, Charlie-boy?’

Charlie made a fart noise and ran off. It was a nice thing for Geraldine to say, though.

This morning he was being a nuisance with a long cardboard tube that he’d filched out of the modelling box on his way through reception.

‘No, Charlie,’ I said, but I didn’t look at him directly because I was supposed to be playing letter-match with Jules and Megan. I was dimly aware of him stomping round the
room saying he was an elephant after that, I suppose the tube would have been his trunk, thinking about it. I should have stopped and taken it off him. The next thing was, Charlie lying on his back
yelling with his hand over his eye and Geraldine staring in through the open door.

I jumped up, letter cards everywhere, and ran to him. He was incoherent with grief.

‘Can you take your hand away from your eye, sweetheart?’ asked Geraldine.

I pulled gently at his arm and we saw to our relief his eye was fine. There was a curved red mark underneath on the cheekbone, though.

‘He was playing pirates,’ said Jules, helpfully.

‘I think,’ said Geraldine, wiping Charlie’s face with a tissue from her pocket, ‘he had the tube to his eye and I knocked the end when I opened the door. His eye’s
all right, though, isn’t it?’

‘It looks OK. Probably needs a magic ice pack, though.’

‘I’ll go and get one from the kitchen. And an accident form, while I’m at it.’ She chucked him under the chin. ‘You’ll be fine in a minute, won’t
you?’

Geraldine left us sitting on the mat, Charlie sobbing against my chest, and the moment slipped and became nine years ago with Ben, in the garden at the old house, crying into my blouse because
he’d fallen over the step and burst his nose: melted again and became me, lying on the ground screaming, holding my arm while the bike wheels spun in the air and my father waved uselessly, a
dot in the distance. Charlie’s hair tickled my collarbone and his elbows dug into my stomach.

When Geraldine came back I told her I thought I had a migraine coming on.

‘It wasn’t your fault, it was a classic accident,’ she said as she knelt down beside me to examine Charlie’s progress.

‘I know.’

‘I don’t want you going home and worrying.’

‘No. I do feel grim, though.’

‘I’ll get Mo in from Big Toddlers. Off you go.’

She’s a good woman.

I could have rung Ben but I needed to see him, check for myself he was all right, perhaps talk some more. I had to be at home with my son as quickly as possible.

Some bouncy theme tune was playing on the TV as I walked through the front door. I dropped my bag by the hall stand and went straight through into the lounge. No Ben, but a whole lot of Penguin
wrappers round the sofa and an empty can of Coke on its side. I righted the can without thinking, then turned and ran up the stairs.

‘Ben, are you OK?’

What if he’d collapsed in the bathroom and the door was locked? No, he was in his bedroom, I could see the crutches on the floor and his foot sticking out.

‘Ben?’

But it was Soph I saw first, sitting on the bed and pulling her school shirt on over her head, her bra strap flopped down over her bicep, her navel ring glittering. Pulling her shirt on?

‘Sophie?’

She looked completely terrified of me. I watched in amazement as she grabbed her tie and her shoes, then bolted past me.

‘Fuck,’ said Ben. ‘Oh fuck.’