The Stepmother (33 page)

I pulled her to me. “I'll get help. Whatever it takes. It's not you, none of this is your fault.”

She swallowed. “Is it Tessa's?”

I kissed her head. “No, my love. It's mine. And I'll sort it out.”

It was only nine o'clock, but Amber was exhausted. So was I. We washed up the bowls and went upstairs. We didn't talk about tomorrow. It was enough just to get through today. I discovered that Amber was sleeping in Tessa's room, but Tessa was still nowhere to be seen. I brushed my teeth and got back into the squishy bed, eyes burning with salt and exhaustion. I prayed for sleep, but sleep didn't come. A drink would have helped. Just one.

O
BVIOUSLY, NO ONE WAS GOING TO POUR A HOUSEHOLD'S WORTH OF
alcohol down the sink. Surely Mr. K liked a glass of something occasionally, even if Mrs. K was off the sauce. Moderation, that was the key. Just a glass to stop the shakes.

I opened the door a fraction and listened. The house creaked under the weight of sleep. Emboldened by need, I hurried down the stairs, keeping to the edge, and slipped into the kitchen. The cupboard I'd taken the Teacher's from was bare. Sticky circles marked the places where the bottles had recently been. One was the color of Night Nurse. They hadn't had to hide the crème de menthe from me. I wasn't that bad.

My quick search of the cupboards revealed nothing. But there was a pantry I had yet to explore. A single forty-watt lightbulb hung from the slanting roof. I pulled its cord.

Homemade jams and chutneys displayed their chests proudly from the top shelf. Damson '05. Blackberry '06. Plum '06. Greengage '05. Apple and Cider Chutney '06. I picked up a pot of blackberry jam and
turned its cool glass between my hot, sweaty hands. I could make out the plump berries, lovingly picked, stewed, and bottled, waiting to be scooped out onto warm bread and butter. I pressed the jar to my forehead. I wanted this sweet, preserved life, firesides and tea, not one where I snuck around at night searching for hidden bottles, afraid of where one drink would take me but too weak not to start.

Go to bed, Bea, I told myself. Go. To. Bed. Don't begin tomorrow. Begin now. I was reaching up for the switch when I saw it between some rolls of loo paper. I reached over and picked it up. Amontillado.

I was unscrewing the cap when I heard Tessa's voice in the hallway. I pulled the light cord, closed the door behind me, and sank to the floor, clutching my prize.

“…Hang on. I don't want to wake anyone.” I heard the kitchen door close and a beam of light shot through the gap at the bottom of the door. “Where the hell have you been?”

While the person I presumed to be Jimmy replied, I heard Tessa open the fridge door. From the glutinous splodge sound that came next, I imagined she had heaved out the heavy two-liter milk container and dumped it on the kitchen counter.

“Well, I called the bloody hotel and told them to…Yes. This was a real emergency…It was early evening your time—where were you?…What do you mean, ‘out'?” Then Tessa, who had obviously been keeping it together, burst into tears. “Oh, James, Mum's eyes have gone. The doctor took me to one side and said I shouldn't get my hopes up too high.”

I nearly gave myself away by lamenting out loud at hearing this, but Tessa was beside herself and probably wouldn't have noticed. “Even Dad and Peter got my message and they're in the middle of fucking nowhere!…” I heard the perforations on a paper towels tearing. “They're here…Yes, all three…Well, I didn't have much choice…” She blew her nose. “Yes. Lying facedown on the kitchen floor in puke…She's lucky she didn't choke…Didn't you listen to my messages?…Pissed, you mean! Great. Fucking pair of you!…I don't want to know…”

I heard Tessa slosh some milk into a saucepan and the hiss of gas. “Whatever, it doesn't matter. What plane can you get on?”

A couple of cupboards opened and closed. I started praying, trying
desperately to remember if I had seen chocolate powder on the shelves above me. “What do you mean ‘can't'?” The cupboard door slammed. “James, your ex-wife is an alcoholic. Amber has been covering for her for weeks. She's at her wit's end. Bea obviously needs help. I need to look after Mum. I haven't even thought about work. James, I can't do this…I need you here. No. It's the Easter holidays, remember…No. I am not sending them back with her…No! James, you're not listening to me. This was not a one-off…I know because Amber has told me. Oh James, I didn't want to tell you this until you got home. I'm so sorry but the night of our engagement party Amber went home and found Bea drunk. Please, James, you have to hear me out. She was aggressively drunk. She told Amber only a slut would dress up for her daddy like that and tried to rip her dress off her. Amber lied to you about Caspar because she didn't want Bea to—”

The pantry door opened. Tessa jumped. “Shit!” She dropped the phone. I stared up at her and put up my hands in surrender. She looked at the jam and the sherry, then bent down to retrieve her phone.

“I'll call you back,” she said, then frowned. “No, James. I'm not going to tell you what the right thing to do is. Work that out for yourself for once.” She lowered the phone. For a second, I thought she might club me over the head with it. But instead, her eyes glistening with unshed tears, she held out her hand. I passed her the jam. A tiny laugh escaped her throat but she took it and put it on the side. I didn't move. For a while, nor did she. I watched her brush away the tears she didn't want me to see and turn back. She stretched out her hand again. Reluctantly, I passed her the sherry. Then, to my surprise, she held out her hand a third time. For me. It was shaking slightly. “You'll get piles sitting on that floor,” she said.

“Already got them,” I replied. Her hand was the same as her mother's. I took it. She gripped my forearm with the other and pulled me up. I saw the tin of chocolate powder as I rose. I took it off the shelf. “Is this what you were looking for?” I offered.

“Might be better than sherry,” she said.

“It's marginal,” I said.

“I know,” she agreed.

The one nice thing about being caught red-handed is that you don't
have to exhaust yourself with lies. I stepped out of the pantry. The kitchen was Gestapo-bright.

Tessa went back to the stove. She poured more milk into the pan. It was a battered old metal thing with a warped wooden handle. I looked at the clock on the wall. It was past two but I was wide-awake.

“Is that true, what you said? Or were you just trying to get Jimmy back?”

She glanced over her shoulder. “I would never have said those—”

“But is it true?” I interrupted. “I called her a slut?”

“Yes it is. I'm sorry. You shouldn't have to hear this from me.”

I pulled out a wooden chair and sat down on it heavily. “She didn't tell me,” I said, mostly to myself. Tessa didn't reply. Not an easy thing to say to your mother. Of course she didn't tell me. I knew what it was like to have a mother you couldn't trust. I was never sure what would come out of my mother's mouth. Not because she was drunk. And it was never hurtful. Just bloodcurdlingly embarrassing. What I had done to Amber was far worse.

For a while the only noise was the gas, the slow scrape of a wooden spoon on aluminum, the ticking clock, and an occasional hoot of an owl on the hunt. I watched Tessa; the hem of her nightie was trembling. Was she cold or afraid? I heard Lizzie King's voice in my head. Was any of this really Tessa's fault?

“Won't James come back?” I asked.

“The fact I even had to ask him,” said Tessa. She remained standing with her back to me. “He can't just…” She stopped herself. I was not her natural confidante. But then again, who better than me? She must have a million questions she wanted to ask. I would. I did.

“Abdicate responsibility?” I ventured.

She turned. “It's a bit weird talking to you about these things.”

“There's no one better, if you think about it.”

“Dad and Peter packed up their worms the moment the message got through to them,” she said. “Dad I understand, but Peter? He could have stayed, but he wouldn't hear of it. You and the girls are too important to him. James, on the other hand, their
father
…” Tessa rubbed her eyes. This was her second night without sleep, and I could tell the adrenaline was waning. She turned away before I could see the tears again.

“Sit down,” I said. “I'll make the chocolate.” I could tell she didn't want to. I wanted to think it was because she liked lording it over me, the disgusting drinker, the weak worm, but it wasn't that. This was awkward; she was as uncomfortable as I was. But it was strangely enticing, too. I pulled out a chair. Her legs betrayed her and she slumped into it. I spooned the sweet brown powder into mugs and watched the milk fizz beneath its skin. I could hear Tessa's brain whirring, so I decided to put her out of her misery. “I was only going to have one,” I said. “I couldn't sleep.” She looked at me for a long time. I suppose we had reached a major crossroads. Honesty versus fantasy. I'm glad we chose honesty. Or that Tessa did, anyway.

“I don't think that's true. It's what you tell yourself, but it's not true.”

I stirred the hot chocolate. “It's not as bad as it looks.”

“It sounds terrible. Trouble is, you can't remember those bits. Or choose not to. I can't decide.”

Selective amnesia, perhaps? Now that I'd been told about the night of the engagement party, emotional flashcards appeared in my brain. I couldn't recall exactly what I had said, but there was an echo that was just loud enough to shame me. I could still taste the irrational anger. Trouble is, it hadn't felt irrational at the time. It had felt justified and justifiable. But it is not justifiable to scare your children like that. Ever. Guilt snaked around my gut like a girdle. Suddenly I understood the meaning of “vicious circle.” Guilt and shame made me thirsty.

“I'm not an alcoholic,” I said defiantly.

“It doesn't sound like recreational drinking to me.”

“Come on, alcoholics sleep in parks, drink strong lager at eight in the morning, and piss themselves,” I said, forcing a laugh.

Tessa was not in a laughing mood, and again I saw she was doing her best to hold back the tears. “I'm not James. Don't expect complicity from me.”

Fair enough.

“I've been on the Internet,” she said. “It's not about having a drink. It's about not being able to stop. And you can't stop. There are a million testimonials from drinkers who thought that because they lived
in a nice house, kept down a job, they weren't actually alcoholics. But it's bollocks. Functioning alcoholic, the biggest oxymoron of them all.”

“I am functioning.”

“You might be, but the rest of us aren't doing so well.”

“You think your problems with Amber are all my fault?”

“You've hardly been making it easy for her.”

“Jimmy and Amber have always been thick as thieves. You would have had a tough time with or without…” Me drinking? Am I really a drinker? It had been only a matter of weeks. Maybe months now. Since…I put a mug of hot chocolate in front of Tessa. Since…along came a spider.

“I was only trying to lose weight,” I said, and sat down beside her.

Tessa blew a small storm across the top of her cup. “Strange weight-loss program.”

“Admitted, but I've lost twenty-one pounds, so something's working.”

“Not your liver,” she said. “And I'm sure your children would prefer you overweight and conscious.”

“Does it matter what I would prefer?”

Tessa studied me carefully before answering. “I don't know. You have children. So probably not. Jesus, no one's saying it's easy. But neither is being single and approaching forty with no kids. You think this is my romantic ideal? Sitting alongside my fiancé's ex-wife in the middle of the night having cocoa?”

“It's good chocolate at least,” I said, taking a sip.

“Small mercies.”

We smiled fleetingly at each other, then sat quietly. I relished the thick, sweet taste. The clock struck three. “In the First World War the frontline troops called a mini-armistice on Christmas Day and emerged from their respective trenches to play a Germans versus British football match.”

“Who won?” asked Tessa.

“I don't know. Neither, I guess. By Boxing Day they were killing each other again.”

She looked at me for what felt like a long time, then returned to her drink.

A minute or two later, she went to a bowl on the side, picked out two apples, fetched a knife and chopping board, and sliced them. She sat down opposite and offered me a piece. “Thank you,” I said, taking it.

“Can I ask you a question?”

I imagined a heavy, muddy ball in her hands. I nodded, and the whistle blew.

“Why did you have an affair?”

The ball sailed past me. “What?”

“James told me.”

Jimmy told you what he thought he knew, but that was not the same thing.

“I didn't have an affair,” I said.

Tessa arched a single eyebrow. I held her gaze. I may be many things, but I'm not a liar. Well, not about that, anyway.

“I did not have an affair,” I stated, once more, for the record.

Something must have rung true in my voice, because she hesitated. I wondered what Jimmy had told her, how much.

“Why would he tell me that?”

“It's complicated,” I replied.

“I know.” She paused again, and I knew that she knew my dark secret. “James told me about Sophie Guest,” she said.

I bit down hard on my lip. Sophie Guest. What a sweet way of saying “abortion.” Why hadn't I written “Minnie Mouse,” like everyone else who'd snuck in to do away with unwanted business? Sophie Guest was real. She was me. The other me. The one who'd go through a procedure like that and damn the consequences. And then, a few weeks later, leave me to live with those consequences alone. Always alone.

“Did he tell you why?”

“You got pregnant. It wasn't his.”

There was the King directness I was so enjoying. Many responses flooded my head. I could not articulate a single one.

“I take it you've never had an abortion?”

Tessa shook her head.

“Well, lucky you, but be careful to judge too harshly before you know what you're judging.”

Tessa seemed to accept this remonstration well. “Sorry,” she said.

I exhaled loudly. “It's hard talking about this,” I said. “Hard” wasn't the word. “Torture” was better. I'd rather swallow seven Battenburg cakes whole than put into words what I did.