The Godmother

I knew my luck had changed when I was upgraded to business class on my return journey. My curious gold-encrusted traveling companion made the long flight pass too quickly. He turned towards the transit lounge with the unforgettable words, “If you're ever passing through Vladivostok…” I waved him off, set my wheelie bag on the ground and, after five wound-licking, soul-searching weeks away, headed for home.

This was it. My moment to start again. I had dealt with what had been a hideous year and I'd put it behind me. OK, it was only September, but I had decided to return to the academic timetable. Anything to be able to punctuate what had been and now. New year. New start. New me. Tessa King was back. I smiled at everyone. Sharing the love and our good fortune at being alive. The Customs official eyed me warily and promptly took my bag apart. I didn't mind. Nothing was going to ruin my return. Having found nothing but festering clothes and gifts for my godchildren, he let me go. I was almost jogging by the time I reached the sliding glass doors. An expectant smile quivered at the side of my mouth, ready to burst forth the moment I saw my welcome-home party. The doors opened. I stepped through and yelled “Hi” at a woman I'd never met before.

“Sorry,” I said. “You look just like my friend.”

Francesca would have been mortally offended. The woman was older, shorter and wearing velour. I looked around me to check I was where I thought I was. I was. But she wasn't.

I must be mistaken. Francesca and I had made this plan on the day of my tearful departure. My greatest friend from university had promised to escape the clutches of domesticity to spend a lost afternoon drinking wine and catch
ing up. It was only imagining this moment that had got me through the previous five weeks. I looked around again. Double-checking the faces of people who averted their eyes, and the placard-holding drivers who didn't. My smile wouldn't accept there was no friendly face waiting for me and kept grinning at people who didn't want to be grinned at. Maybe I was early? I checked my watch, knowing full well I wasn't. Eventually my smile accepted its fate and retracted. I sat down on my suitcase while all around me travelers ran into the open arms of their loved ones. I chose not to notice the many others who hurried on alone to the trains and buses. I only saw what I feared. I had gone to India hoping I could downward dog my way out of trouble and I was sure I had succeeded. A peppery heat prickled my eyes. Damn it, how many uddiyana bandhas would it take?

“Tessa, over here. Tessa!”

I stared at my phone, wondering whether I could be bothered to go through a month's worth of messages to get to the one Francesca may have left if she hadn't forgotten completely.

“TESSA!”

It was my name, but a man's voice, so I didn't register it.

“TESSA, you deaf old cow, it's Nick!”

I looked up. Francesca's husband, red-faced, was waving frantically at me. Nick and Francesca had been together since our first year at university. A staggering eighteen years. I knew him as well as I knew Fran and immediately my spirits rose.

“Welcome home. So sorry we're late, traffic. Anyway, you don't want to know about that. How are you? You look terrific.”

We? Was Francesca here? Who was with the kids? And then I saw Caspar, my fifteen-year-old godson. The fact that I had a godson who was beginning to resemble a man was alarming, but he had arrived early to our party and I still marvel at Nick and Francesca's brave decision to keep the baby and make a go of it. These days Caspar reminds me of how far I have failed to come. He sloped towards me. We are very close, my godson and I. Throwing down my bag, I opened my arms wide. Not so long ago he would have run the length of the airport and buried himself under my neck. But he was about to turn sixteen; times were changing. I didn't realize then, how much.

“Hey, handsome, you are getting so big…” I saw the smile in his eyes, but nothing else in his body language changed. He was bristling with awareness. I know a defensive position when I see it. I'd been carrying myself around like that for months. I lowered my arms.

“You might like to know that my plane had a four-hour stopover in Dubai.”

“Huh?”

“United Arab Emirates.” There was no register on Caspar's face. “The Middle East? Ever heard of it?”

“Yeah,” mumbled Caspar.

“Caspar, don't mumble,” said Nick.

“Well,” I interrupted, not wanting there to be a teenage scene, “it's the shopping capital of the world. Tax-free. Very iPod friendly.”

That got his attention. Caspar has wanted an iPod Nano since they came out. But Nick doesn't earn that sort of money and Francesca doesn't work. Which is where I, the fairy godmother, often come in. No wonder he loves me…I'd love me.

“Isn't it your birthday next weekend?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, let's just say I got so friendly with the sales assistant he gave me a photo of his kids. Who, by the way, live in a different country and only get to see their father every two years—just in case you were feeling a little hard done by today.”

“I get enough of the Third World shit at home, thanks.” Caspar sloped away. I turned to Nick with an open mouth. Sloping? Backchat? This wasn't my godson.

Nick shook his head, exhaled long and hard, then lowered his voice. “He's being a nightmare, I'm so sorry. Fran was desperate to come today, I mean desperate, but someone at school has swapped birthdays around, and she's got to bring Katie's party forward three weeks to tomorrow.”

“Swapped birthdays?”

“Don't ask. We got gazumped.”

“On a house?” I asked, not following.

“EuroDisney.”

“Are you OK, Nick?”

He screwed up his face. Reminding me of Caspar. Reminding me of the Nick I met in the library, a spotty nineteen-year-old, a smitten Francesca standing goggle-eyed next to him. Didn't see the attraction myself at first, which is probably a good thing. They were inseparable from that moment onwards. They just fit, those two, always had. Two weeks into our third year, Francesca appeared on my doorstep in tears. She was two months pregnant. I look at the photos now, and though we thought we were grown up at the time, we were children. It was an awesome responsibility to take on.

“I'm fine,” said Nick. “Birthday parties just don't seem to be what they used to be. You know how it is…”

That's one of the strange things about my friends. They all assume I know what it's like. But how could I? I have no kids. I don't even have the responsibility of a goldfish. What I do know is that family comes first, always. Lost in Legoland, I call it. Five weeks away, after everything that had happened, and still Francesca couldn't escape for one day. It wasn't like she was a novice, it wasn't like she didn't have a willing partner, it wasn't like she didn't have five weeks' warning…

“It doesn't matter,” I lied. “Do you mind if I pick up a coffee before we get in the car?” I needed a pick-me-up. Look at me—not been on British soil for an hour and already I was back to my old toxic ways.

“Course. My shout,” said Nick.

I walked over to where Caspar had thrown himself on to some seats and handed my bags to him. “Look after these for me while your dad and I get some drinks.” I left him before he had a chance to protest.

I rejoined Nick. “Sorry about your welcome-home party,” he said, glancing over at his bolshy son.

I couldn't think of anything nice to say. It was only later that I realized Caspar had thrown himself a little welcome-home party of his own. In my wallet.

Sitting in Nick's beaten-up old Volvo, it felt like I'd never been away. Was that a new banana skin wedged under the hand-break or the same one that had been there on the day I left to cleanse my soul? I counted seven squashed mini-cartons of juice in the footwell, a drawing, a reminder from British Telecom and a ruler. Domestic detritus. Something I thought I left to others. But
now, well, I'd had a long time on my own to think about what it was I really wanted. The mess in the footwell was beginning to look less like rubbish and more like the collage of a happy, fulfilling life.

It became clear very quickly that father and son were not speaking to one another. But I, who had been in contemplative silence for weeks, was now high on caffeine and had verbal diarrhea. I told them about the other people on the yoga retreat and the many embarrassing positions I had found myself in. Caspar, who normally shared all his secrets and those of his classmates with me, didn't say a word and pretended not to be listening. His stubborn little face made me want to be all the more outrageous.

“The worst moment was when I farted in the middle of a tricky balancing position, burst into giggles and came tumbling down to the ground with an unladylike thud.” I watched Caspar carefully in the wing mirror. He smiled at that one. I found his secret smile reassuring. Encouraged, I went further and told them about the unreciprocated advances of a short Swiss woman who took rather a shine to me.

“At first I was grateful to have a friend. I should have pretended to be a recovering trust-fund junky with two kids called Zebedee and Dewdrop, but I blew it. Lawyers and hippies don't mix. Anyway, this Swiss woman got friendly over a bowl of tofu in the second week and I was desperate by then. I believed her when she told me she was studying to be a masseuse and needed the practice. I didn't even flinch when she told me to remove all my clothes as it made it easier to get to the hips.”

That broke the deadlock.

“Did you?” asked Caspar, unable to hold out any longer.

“Oh yes I did.”

“What happened?” asked Nick.

“She said my sexual chakra was blocked and she wanted to work deeper.”

“Oh no,” laughed Caspar.

“Oh yes.”

“What? What happened?” asked Nick, sounding worried.

“What do you think happened, Dad?”

Nick looked perplexed. “I don't know.”

“I don't think we should tell him,” I said, looking back at Caspar. “He's not ready.”

“He may never recover. Just tell me, though, did she…?” Caspar let the question hang in the air.

“Oh yes.”

“Did what?” shouted Nick.

“Bloody hell, what did you do?” asked Caspar, streaks ahead of his father.

“What do you think I did?”

“Stood up and decked her?”

“No, I lay there like an English prude, then said thank you very much, yes, that was interesting, and spent the rest of the week in hiding.”

Caspar laughed. “You wimp.”

We drove on as Caspar continued to laugh intermittently in the back of the car until Nick suddenly piped up.

“Oh my God! Deeper, as in deeper.”

I looked at Caspar and we laughed again. Nick had finally worked it out. Then another thought came to him.

“How do you know about this stuff, young man?” It always made me laugh, when Nick tried to be a grown-up. “In my mind, what a fifteen-year-old boy doesn't know about girl-on-girl action isn't worth knowing,” I answered for Caspar.

For that I got his full-blown, toothy grin and I felt happy again. That was a smile worth coming home for.

Nick pulled up outside my building. It's a modern block full of vastly superior flats to my own, but thanks to a government initiative, I have one of the two studio apartments that property developers have to put in or they don't get planning permission these days. I am a professional with a view of the river and I tell you now, although small, it is my pride and joy.

The doorman peered at the arriving battered brown Volvo, saw me grinning through the window and waved with two hands.

“I'm so happy to be home,” I exclaimed.

Nick and Caspar ferried my bags into the open-plan hallway while I allowed myself to be fussed over by Roman. Roman is the man, after my oldest male friend Ben, who knows more about me than anyone at this moment in my life. This Georgian émigré, in his late fifties, with an arthritic knee, was the one who called the police when my ex-boss came calling at all hours of the
night. Roman blocked the door when he tried to get in. Roman learnt to recognize his handwriting and siphoned off the tortured prose that the postman delivered on a regular basis and warned me in advance. But he is equally good at turning a blind eye to men of all sizes, shapes and colors who have come and gone in the night. He has occasionally pressed the button on the lift when I couldn't see straight, and in emergencies let me into my own apartment.

“Welcome home, Mizz King.” He took my hand in his hand and shook it vigorously.

“Hello, Roman.”

“I've been counting the days,” he said. “So much to tell…”

Roman and I often swapped gossip about my fellow residents.

“Can't wait to hear.”

Nick and Caspar took their cue. “Then we'll leave you in this gentleman's capable care. It's great to have you back.”

“Thanks, Nick,” I replied. “And thanks for picking me up, you really didn't have to.”

“I know. But if I hadn't got Caspar out of the house, Francesca would have killed him. Heathrow was as good as anywhere.”

I smiled and wondered whether he knew how belittling he'd just been. Of course he didn't. It was Nick, the softest man I knew. Still, I didn't want to be anyone's last resort any more.

Nick reached the door. “Francesca won't be happy unless I can tell her you're better. Are you? Have you recovered?”

Did he mean had I recovered from being sidelined by my friend's children? Or being stalked by my boss? Or from just being single? Barren? Alone?

“Yes.” I smiled. “Absolutely.”

“Good. I'll tell her.” He went off happy. Taking me at my word.

I put my arm around Caspar. “I know you're cross with your parents for some reason, but please try and remember that I am not the enemy. And if that isn't a reason to be nice to me, remember the iPod.”