Secrets of the Tides (47 page)

‘I know I’ve not always been a good mother.’

‘Mum—’ Dora puts up her hand to interrupt but Helen stops her.

‘No, let me say this. I
need
to say it.’

Dora’s hand falls to her side again.

‘I’ve not been good to you. I’ve let you down.’

‘Mum, you really don’t—’

‘Yes I do.’

Dora is silent again.

‘I should never have let you carry one ounce of blame for Alfie’s disappearance, or wear one moment’s guilt. A good mother would have protected you from all of that.’

Helen sees a tear trickle slowly down her daughter’s lovely face. She reaches out and brushes it away with her hand.

‘I’m so sorry I failed you. I’m so sorry that I hurt you. Will you forgive me?’

Dora reaches for Helen’s hand.

‘Being a mother is a wonderful job, but isn’t easy. You’ll find that out soon enough. But I know you will be a good mother to your baby. And if you’ll give me a second chance, I’d like to try and be a better one to you?’ Helen feels her own tears falling again now. They land like late summer raindrops on the coat lying across her lap. She feels Dora’s hand in her own and squeezes it tight, both of them too choked to speak, until Dora finally finds her voice.

‘Let’s take it slow. Small steps, OK?’

Helen nods.

‘After all,’ adds Dora, ‘this little one’s going to need its grandmother, right?’ She indicates the swell of her stomach.

Helen feels her heart skip. ‘Perhaps we could do this again sometime?’ she asks. ‘Before the baby comes?’ She holds her breath, waiting for her daughter’s response.

Dora nods slowly. ‘I’d like that.’

The two women sit a while longer on the bench, quietly watching the progress of others as they navigate their way up the steep hill towards them. Some walk fast, others slow; some jog, and one or two creep very slowly, stopping every few moments to catch their breath; but no matter what pace they manage, Helen notices everyone carries onwards up the hill, putting one foot in front of the other, climbing ever closer towards the top.

DORA

Present Day

The builders are already clambering about on the roof of the old factory as she lets herself out of the heavy metal door and makes her way down the stairwell and out onto the street. They’ve been there since seven a.m., pulling up flashing and gutters and dropping large pieces of felt and asphalt down the chute into the skip below.

‘Cheerio,’ one of them shouts, giving her a wave as she steps out onto the pavement.

She smiles up at them. ‘See you.’

They’re a cheery bunch; they’ve been working the kettle overtime since they arrived on the job yesterday, but they’re hard-working and polite and Dora doesn’t mind their easy banter. It feels good to be finally doing something about the leaking roof, especially now the fleeting warmth of summer has faded and they’re back to the familiar grey drizzle of autumn. Thankfully it’s another dry day, brisk and breezy, and as Dora makes her way along the road she sees curled brown leaves and crisp packets racing along beside her on the pavement. She’s in luck: a half-empty number 38 pulls up as she reaches the stop. She clambers on and takes a seat near the back.

She’s still a bit annoyed with Dan that he hasn’t been able to rearrange his interview with the local paper. She knows it’s a great opportunity to raise his profile and that the feature might bring in a few private commissions, but the scan’s been booked for weeks now. She’s sad he won’t be there to share the experience with her and see the baby for himself.

‘Just make sure it hasn’t got my nose . . . or my teeth. We can’t afford the dentist’s bills,’ he’d joked.

‘I don’t think they’ll be looking for teeth, Dan! Have you even looked at those books I got you?’

‘Sure I have.’ But she could tell by the playful glint in his eyes that he hadn’t, not yet.

‘And you’re sure you don’t want to know the sex?’

Dan had shrugged. ‘I don’t think so . . . do you?’

‘No, I think I’d like the surprise.’

‘Good, me too.’ He’d pulled her close. ‘Try and get one of those photos, if you can, you know, the black and white ones that looks like a giant space prawn. I’ll call you as soon as I’m finished with the journalist. Let’s meet up later.’ He’d kissed her hard on the mouth, patted her growing tummy and headed off to meet his contact in some East End café.

Giant prawn indeed, she muses, watching from the grimy bus window as the shops and cafés of the Essex Road trundle past. She’s excited about the scan. This will be the second time she’s seen the baby, and she feels so differently about the pregnancy now. It’s not just because the dreadful fog of morning sickness has finally lifted, but because of how things are between her and Dan now. Ever since her visit to see Cassie at Swan House she’s felt different. Lighter somehow, brighter and more buoyant in herself, which is ridiculous because she doesn’t have to get on the bathroom scales to know that she’s nearly two stone heavier already.

The truth is that both she and Dan know the visit to see her sister has offered some form of release. She still feels Alfie’s absence, she still misses him and wishes things were different, but she doesn’t agonise over the details of his absence quite so much, she doesn’t berate herself with guilt, or search every crowd for his face; and perhaps most tellingly, she hasn’t had one of her nightmares or panic attacks since. It will never be OK that Alfie was taken from them, but Dora feels as though she is moving forwards, on the right track at last.

She places a hand on her growing stomach and strokes the firm, taut bulge of her belly. It’s hard and warm and she enjoys the feel of it under her fingertips; it’s so solid, so real.

There is a flurry of activity at the front of the bus as a group of kids push their way onto the vehicle, skimming their Oyster cards on the electronic reader by the driver with loud jeers and shouts; boys playing truant from school, she assumes. The barrage of noise and motion is an assault on her senses. She sees the wind whipping hair and scarves and suit jackets on people passing by on the pavement and suddenly longs to be blown along beside them. She jumps up and makes it through the beeping doors, just in time. It’s only two more stops; she can walk the rest of the way to the clinic.

It’s a treat not to be in the office. Most people, she knows, will be safely stashed at their desks by now, beginning the daily grind, staring at computer screens, talking into telephones, doing their deals, making decisions. She doesn’t get to experience this side of London very often, the hours when elderly people creep out onto the streets and young parents push prams towards parks. She can hear the buzz of bike couriers weaving through the traffic and sees a group of tourists sitting in a café window, squabbling over a map and guidebook. She sidesteps a wan-faced nurse, still in uniform, returning home from her nightshift, and declines the advances of an enthusiastic charity worker wielding a clipboard and accosting unsuspecting people as they pass by. It’s the same city – still home – but it feels different somehow, as if suddenly steeped in a different light, imbued with a different pace. She supposes it’s a side she might see a little more of, when the baby comes.

Everyone at the agency has been great. She’d been worried about telling Dominic about her pregnancy but he’d simply given her a big bear hug and told her to discuss her maternity-leave terms with HR. The job would still be waiting for her when she returned. If he was annoyed to be losing a newly promoted Account Manager for a few months he’d hidden his frustration well. Gradually, as the news had spread, the girls in the office had crowded around her desk, everyone wanting to know how she was feeling, when the baby was due, if she had picked out any names yet or knew what sex it would be. It had suddenly made it all dauntingly real to be talking so openly about the pregnancy. Thank God for straight-talking Leela, who had just looked her up and down and said, ‘Damn, I was going to ask where you’d got that amazing new bra from. Your tits look fantastic!’

The hospital isn’t far from the bus stop and she arrives early, making her way through the maze of corridors and wards until she finds the ultrasound clinic. Dora gives the receptionist her name and then settles into the waiting room with a tatty magazine. It looks as though she might be there a while; several women are already seated. She hopes it won’t be too long; she’d been told to arrive with a full bladder and she is already bursting for the loo.

With the magazine spread across her lap she pretends to read an article about how to get the perfect bikini body while actually sneaking surreptitious glances at the other women waiting in the clinic. They are mostly of a certain age, twenties and thirties she assumes, although one woman looks older; she carries a serious-looking briefcase and sits tapping urgently into her BlackBerry. There are partners there too, men shuffling around, some awkward and embarrassed, speaking quietly in hushed tones, others loud and proud, their hands placed with ownership on their wives’ swelling bellies. She sees a harried-looking man race past after a manic, giggling toddler while his partner looks on with indulgent smiles, and in the furthest corner a woman pale and miserable, breathing deeply through her mouth as she clutches desperately at an emergency paper bag. Dora recognises the symptoms of morning sickness and throws her a shy, sympathetic smile.

She tries not to stare at them all but she can’t help it; it is their bumps she is most fascinated by. She tries to compare her own growing stomach with those around her, sizing herself up next to them, but it’s too hard. They are all different sizes and shapes – some non-existent, some tiny, and some downright enormous. It seems extraordinary suddenly, to be sitting there, surrounded by so much hope and expectation, so much burgeoning new life.

A woman in a sari is ushered out of one of the examination rooms, her partner following behind looking proud and triumphant. While he settles up with the receptionist Dora watches the woman stare at a small black and white photo in her hand. She can’t seem to take her eyes off it. Dora thinks of Dan’s ‘space prawn’ and smiles. The couple thank the receptionist and leave the clinic, and as they exit through the swinging door two more women enter the room. They sport matching hairstyles – artfully razored bobs – and are holding hands; one of them is obviously pregnant. Seeing them, Dora is reminded of Cassie.

She has thought about her sister a lot over the last few weeks. It’s been hard not to. It makes no difference to her that her sister is gay. It makes no difference to her who her sister loves. She’s glad she has told her; she’s glad that Cassie can be open about her sexuality. Keeping an important part of herself hidden away like that . . . well, it can’t have been easy . . . and for all Cassie’s tough talk and bravado, Dora knows that her sister would have been scared to tell them, never really knowing how they would all react. But she’s glad she knows and she’s glad that Cassie might have someone in her life that makes her happy.

It’s the other secrets that Cassie laid bare that day in the gardens of Swan House, the secrets that shifted the very foundations of Dora’s own long-held guilt, those are the ones Dora has wrestled with. She meant what she told her mother last month up on Primrose Hill: she does believe it is time to move on and to leave the past behind them, and yet, whenever it comes to Cassie and the things she told her about that day, Dora’s struggled.

She’s lain awake at night staring at the ceiling, playing the scene over and over in her head, pressing pause, rewind and play over and over, until the new images Cassie has given her are intertwined with her own memories of the day. The pieces have fallen into place like a giant jigsaw puzzle; she can stand back now and see the whole sorry picture laid out before her eyes, the sum of all the various parts they each played, and while it has been a relief to understand the full picture at last, it has brought with it a new and troubling emotion.

It’s anger that she’s felt. Anger that Cassie could have been so cruel . . . so selfish . . . to push Alfie away like that and then to cover up her mistakes for so long and with such painful, enduring consequences. And yet she knows they
were
mistakes . . . selfish, teenaged mistakes, but mistakes nonetheless. Dora knows in her heart Cassie didn’t want Alfie to drown that day . . . she didn’t want him to die. There was nothing premeditated in her actions, nothing purposefully malicious or evil about what she did; and Dora knows, better than most, that if her own agonising guilt over the last decade is anything to go by, her sister will have paid in full. She will have suffered.

Yet something has held her back from contacting Cassie. She knows that if she can’t forgive her sister for her part in the day, then she can’t truly leave it behind and move forwards from the tragedy of their shared past. She knows that if she can’t do this the only person she will be fooling will be herself, and yet she just doesn’t know if she is ready to let go of the anger she has been feeling inside. It’s still there, hot and real, and she simply doesn’t know how to release it.

‘Dora? . . . Is Dora Tide here?’