Close to Me Read online

  Sash smiles. ‘Nice to return the favour.’

  Fin and Rob are upstairs tidying, at Sash’s insistence. She seems to have taken charge, shouting instructions up the stairs every now and then. ‘And bring the washing down with you!’ she calls up to them now, pushing up the sleeves of her jumper as she rejoins me in the kitchen. It looks like she’s borrowed the shapeless garment from a male friend. I keep looking at her, hoping I’ll get used to the new Sash, but silently mourning the version I remember; girlish and softer. She grasps the onion she was expertly chopping, her eyes streaming as she picks up the knife, dark rivulets of eyeliner tracking the contours of her face.

  ‘What are you making?’ I ask.

  ‘Pasta with peppers and mushrooms,’ she replies, wiping her eyes with the back of her hands so they too are streaked with black. ‘And there’s salad and bread.’

  ‘Mmm, sounds wonderful, darling. Can I help?’ I slide down from the stool, but Sash rushes round to stop me.

  ‘You stay there; you’re doing nothing until you’re better. When Dad’s back at work Fin can take over. About time he did something useful with himself.’ Sash looks up at me with alarm.

  ‘What do you mean?’ I ask, repositioning myself on the stool, using my good hand for support. ‘Fin needs to get back to university.’ I look across at her. ‘Doesn’t he?’

  Fin walks into the kitchen with armfuls of bedding and towels and asks Sash where she wants them, Rob at his shoulder.

  ‘Why aren’t you at university?’ I ask my son.

  Sash looks at her father, her eyes widening. ‘I didn’t tell her, Dad. Honestly.’

  ‘Oh for god’s sake, Sash!’ Rob shouts. ‘I leave you alone with your mother for ten minutes . . .’

  ‘Rob, calm down,’ I say, frowning at him. ‘You’re overreacting. Sash didn’t say anything. I guessed.’

  I look at Sash and smile, but she’s still staring at her father, her eyes locked on his, as if she’s daring him to challenge her. ‘I said I didn’t tell her, okay?’

  ‘Well someone did, and you were the only one here,’ Rob replies.

  ‘Fin?’ I ask, ignoring Sash and Rob’s argument. ‘Why aren’t you at university?’

  He’s looking at Rob as though his father’s reaction were more important than mine, the washing falling from my son’s skinny arms. ‘It wasn’t for me, Mum,’ he replies, flicking his fringe back and then looking down at his feet, covered by the dropped laundry.

  ‘You’ve left your course?’

  ‘I’m really sorry.’

  I tell him he doesn’t need to apologise, but it’s hard to conceal my shock. Maybe there’s more to it than I know; a better plan. I just don’t understand why no one said anything. I challenge Rob, who mutters something about not wanting to worry me, pushing past Sash to pick up the discarded washing.

  ‘Well you are worrying me.’ I stand up from the stool to look at Fin, whose head is still bowed, his eyes to the floor. ‘So where did you stay last night?’

  Fin looks at his father, then to me. ‘With a friend.’

  I ask him which friend and he says he’s called Ryan, and no, I don’t know him.

  ‘Are you home tonight?’ I ask, the thought of Fin sleeping just a few doors away from me a comforting one.

  ‘I don’t live here any more, Mum,’ Fin says, again glancing at his father.

  My head is filled with lead. I’m unable to process the fact he’s left university, let alone left home, which I guess proves Rob’s point that I’m not up to all this, although I’m not ready to give up on the truth quite yet. Fin shrugs when I press him further, but says nothing.

  ‘Ask Dad.’ Sash answers for him. ‘He’s the one pulling the strings, telling us what we can and can’t say.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ I ask Rob. ‘Is there something else I should know?’

  ‘No, nothing.’ He glares at Sash. ‘Like I said, I didn’t want to worry you.’ He smiles at me, throws the washing into the utility room and comes back to give me a hug which I accept because the children are watching, then he guides me towards the dining table. ‘Just try to relax. We’re all fine and we’re all together, okay?’

  But it’s not okay. I don’t understand what’s going on; all the looks, all the secrets.

  We eat in relative silence, every topic a sticky one, and I find I have no appetite for the food, only the lost information. I ask questions, but every answer is guarded, passed through the filter of Rob’s approval; the kids both looking to their father for his blessing when they tell me anything of their lives since last September. I glean some facts: Sash has moved out of the grotty bedsit she’d rented after she came back from university. She’s somewhere much nicer she says, which is a relief, and she’s seeing someone called Thomas, the name provoking a beat of silence at the table. Fin is happy, he says, living with a friend and playing guitar in a band.

  They leave because I’m tired, but more so because Rob insists. He sees them out and when he comes back to sit beside me on the sofa, his arm along the back of the cushion, fingers almost touching my shoulder, I ask the question that encompasses everything I’ve wanted to ask all evening. ‘What is it you’re hiding, Rob?’

  He tips his head back and looks up at the ceiling, taking an audible intake of breath. ‘I’m not hiding anything, Jo.’

  ‘Start with the kids. Tell me everything,’ I say, folding my arms and ignoring his excuses until he begins to unravel the past, or at least his edited version of it.

  Fin had stayed at university until the end of the first semester, Rob tells me. Rob and I went on holiday, redecorated a bit, had my birthday meal, which was nice, then it was almost Christmas. I ask how Fin had seemed when he came home at Christmas, trying to work out how we could have neglected him for a whole semester, three months of ignoring the signs whilst we went on holiday and redecorated, celebrating my birthday without him. What was I thinking? Fin’s always been a loner, bullied at school, retreating into himself at home.

  ‘He was . . .’ Rob pauses, then says, ‘He was definitely quiet. But that’s Fin, isn’t it?’ He rubs his face then supports his chin with fingertips dug into his square jaw as he tells me more. ‘It was the New Year when he told us. We were starting to pack up his stuff to take him back when he announced he wasn’t going, had decided it wasn’t worth it.’

  ‘He must have said more than that,’ I say, sitting up to fend off the tiredness which is threatening to engulf me. ‘Was there a problem; friendship issues? The course?’

  Rob tells me Fin just kept repeating how it wasn’t for him. It had seemed ridiculous to abandon his studies with no other plans, not even a job lined up, but he’d been adamant. I concede that I can’t imagine a scenario where either of us would have allowed Fin to leave university without a fight and Rob says we both tried our best.

  ‘You really don’t remember?’ Rob studies me again, as if I’m lying to him and might give myself away if he watches me carefully enough.

  ‘No, Rob. I really don’t remember.’

  ‘There’s no need to speak to me like that,’ he says, standing up to collect our glasses from the floor, water for me and another glass of wine for him. ‘I’m only telling you what happened. Don’t make me accountable for it all over again.’

  He walks to the kitchen and I can hear him loading the dishwasher. When he returns he reaches out his hand to cup my face and tells me he’s sorry, and I allow him that contact because I want him to start talking again. He glances the pad of his thumb across my cheek and I curl my feet beneath me on the sofa, resisting an involuntary shiver at his touch, looking away as he insists again that he will look after me; I’m not to worry. I’m so tired, but I force myself to stay awake and ask him how we could have missed the signs with Fin.

  ‘You had your suspicions,’ Rob tells me. ‘You’d noticed how there was barely any contact from him after we’d dropped him at university. I told you to give him more space, time to adjust, but you were right. He strug
gled from the start, never really took to student life.’

  ‘Poor Fin,’ I say, more to myself than Rob.

  I look over at Rob, imagining how he’d suppressed my concerns, told me not to fuss, to give Fin some space. But I’d been right. Our son was miserable. I swallow my recriminations and ask, ‘So why did he decide to leave home? Surely he would have been happier living here?’

  Rob clears his throat; tells me he wasn’t there when Fin left home the next morning.

  ‘The next morning? I assumed he’d only recently moved out.’

  Rob scratches his arm. ‘I lost my temper with him, Jo. He wouldn’t see sense.’ He looks over at me. ‘It was so frustrating to see him throw everything away like that.’

  ‘You hit him?’

  ‘Why on earth would you say that?’ Rob asks, his voice raised, his body turned to face me, his face full of obvious hurt. ‘You always have to think the worst of me.’

  ‘Sorry, I thought—’

  ‘You’ve only lost the last year, Jo. It’s like you don’t know me at all. You honestly think I’d hit our son?’

  ‘No, of course not,’ I tell him, and I do know that, because Rob would never ever hurt the kids, he idolises them both. That’s what makes his frustration so understandable, and I feel it too. I may not remember it, but I can imagine the impossible position we were in, witnessing our fantastically bright son throw away everything he’d worked for, and knowing there was nothing we could do to make him change his mind.

  ‘So what happened?’ I ask, and when Rob doesn’t respond, his face turned away from me in protest, I add, ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it. Please tell me what happened.’

  Rob looks back at me and sighs. ‘What happened was I gave Fin a lecture about making choices that could affect the rest of his life, how he was too young to know his own mind.’ Rob arches his neck, looks up at the ceiling with his eyes half closed. ‘I wish I could undo it, but then again . . . If I hadn’t said those things, maybe I’d be kicking myself for not trying.’ He catches my eye and says, ‘Sometimes you just have to be the grown-up, unpopular as that is.’

  ‘Do we know this boy Ryan he’s staying with?’

  Rob shakes his head. ‘You met him the day Fin moved out. He came here to pick Fin up. You said he seemed nice, a bit older. Fin’s very vague on the details, doesn’t want us involved.’

  ‘But he’s not found a job?’

  ‘A day here and there, nothing permanent. He and Ryan helped at a festival in the summer, and he went to a fruit-picking farm in Devon for a week.’ Rob raises his eyebrows as he tells me. ‘It’s disappointing, to say the least.’

  ‘Oh god.’ I look away from him, trying to process everything he’s told me. There’s an unreality to it, which cushions the blow, but only a little. ‘How does he manage? Do we help him?’ Rob tells me he sends him rent money, but it’s best not to mention it to him.

  I nod. ‘He’s always been so independent, must be killing him to take your handouts.’

  Rob rubs his hands over his face. ‘It’s a mess.’ He glances at me. ‘Are you tired?’

  ‘No, not really. Tell me about Sash.’

  Rob sighs, asks again if I’m sure I’m up to this. I tell him I need to know. He shifts his position, angles himself towards me on the sofa, one knee raised up to rest beside me. ‘You remember her flat? The grotty bedsit.’

  ‘Unfortunately I do; she was there before I . . . I mean it was over a year ago when she moved in.’

  ‘She only stayed a few months in the end,’ Rob says, grimacing when I say, ‘That’s good, isn’t it?’ He looks like he’s going to tell me something, but isn’t certain how to word it; a few false starts before he says, ‘It’s complicated. She met this guy called Thomas.’

  I nod, recalling the atmosphere at the table when his name had come up.

  ‘Do I know this Thomas?’ I ask, looking at Rob.

  ‘We’ve met him a couple of times.’ He sighs, as though the effort of telling me is almost too much. ‘He works in a wine bar in town, manages it in fact, but only because his friend owns the bar and the flat above. Thomas is one of those liberal posh boys, the kind who think they’re going to save the world from the likes of us because they joined the Labour party and turned vegan.’

  ‘You don’t like him?’

  ‘Neither of us do, Jo. He’s a nightmare.’

  ‘And Sash is living with him?’

  ‘Unfortunately, yes.’ Robs rubs his eyes.

  I think of our daughter’s appearance, so altered. Her hair shorn into a roughly cropped style, her clothes unfeminine, her lipstick red and dark. I’d told her I liked it, but I hadn’t, not really. I ask Rob how they met and he says at the bar, maybe, he’s not sure.

  ‘When did she cut her hair?’

  ‘Don’t know,’ Rob replies, still deep in thought.

  ‘You must have noticed; it’s so different.’

  Rob shrugs. ‘We didn’t see her for a while. At least, you did, but she was angry with me. I told her I didn’t approve.’

  ‘Of this boy, Thomas?’

  He sighs. ‘She brought him here, I told him off. He was a complete idiot. It’s been a huge compromise, but at least Sash is back in our lives. I suppose for a while you blamed me, and it’s true, I shouldn’t have . . . Jo?’

  The painkillers I took at dinner must be wearing off; my head feels heavy, the weight of it too much to bear. I lean against the back of the sofa and close my eyes for a second. ‘It’s all such a mess,’ I whisper.

  ‘Jo.’ Rob pats my knee with his hand, the force of it causing me to open my eyes. ‘I’m sorry it’s not better news,’ he says. ‘But the important thing is we’re all still in each other’s lives. The kids will get past this; we’ll get past this.’

  ‘Will we?’

  Rob smiles at me. ‘Of course we will.’ He leans across and kisses me on the cheek. ‘I promise.’

  I recoil from his touch, the pain in my head obliterating everything else, even the questions which remain unanswered. They can wait. For now, my headache throbs so hard it’s all I can do to stagger up the stairs, Rob worrying at my side until I crawl into bed, the sheets cool and soothing as he leaves me to rest.

  Rob joins me much later. I turn away from him, protecting my wrist perhaps, although it’s more a feeling I can’t stand to have him anywhere near me.

  September – Last Year

  ‘So you still like your job?’ I ask my daughter, smiling at her across the café table, the tea things laid out between us, although Sash has chosen, as always, her favourite marshmallow-topped hot chocolate. Her long hair falls across her face as she leans forward to pick up the end of the long-handled spoon. Then she looks up from her drink, her lips pressed tightly together in that determined way she has when she’s asserting her right to independence. I first saw that expression when she was a one-year-old trying to walk, her frustration arriving in angry bursts as she struggled to move around on her own, batting away my helping hand.

  ‘It’s okay,’ is her considered response. She licks cream from her top lip. ‘Just a job.’

  ‘Not a career?’ I pour the loose-leaf tea into my cup, the strainer balanced across it, catching the delicate dried leaves.

  ‘I don’t know, Mum.’ She raises her eyebrows at me. ‘Maybe I’ll jack it all in and work in a bar or something. It would pay more!’

  I reach across the table to pat her hand, the rings which cover each of her fingers catching the light from the small window. It’s a dark café, small and expensive; I’m not sure why we always come here, it’s not even particularly near her work.

  ‘You need to give it a year or two, then you’ll be doing more interesting stuff; you said so yourself. Bar work won’t offer you any progression.’

  ‘It might.’ Sash slurps her drink from the spoon. ‘How’s Dad?’

  I tell her he’s fine, thinking how much easier it’s been for Rob to adjust to our empty nest, his career filling up the spaces the childr
en have left behind. He’s also thriving on the extra attention he gets from me, says it’s like we’re newly-weds again, although I decide not to share this nugget with our daughter, imagining her reaction.

  ‘And you?’ Sash asks, looking up.

  ‘I’m okay.’ I smile back at her. ‘It’s quiet without you and your brother.’

  She asks how Fin’s coped with freshers’ week – ‘Hardly little bro’s sort of thing’ – and I tell her she’s right, her brother is very different from her. She’d loved the whole experience of university, throwing herself into it from the start, gathering friends like the badges she pinned to her rucksack, the same one she still uses, although I’ve offered to buy her something better. I suppose it reminds her of student life and the friends she made; I can only hope Fin finds his tribe as easily as she did.

  ‘I couldn’t tell you if he’s enjoying it,’ I reply. ‘You know what he’s like; not a lot of communication.’

  ‘Oh, for god’s sake!’ Sash discards the spoon, dropping it into her drink. ‘I told him you’d worry if he went all quiet on you. Why doesn’t he listen?’ Sash lifts her hair from her neck, a ribbon of silk that almost reaches her waist as she leans back in her chair. ‘So what are you doing with yourself, now you don’t have to tidy up his mess all the time?’

  ‘Oh you know, generally lying around, painting my nails, that kind of thing.’ I curl my fingers in and blow on imaginary wet polish. ‘I have nothing else to do, after all. No purpose in life . . .’ I smile at her.

  ‘You know what I mean.’ She rolls her eyes at me. ‘You must have more time on your hands.’

  I tell her how we’re thinking of redecorating her room, turning it into a guest bedroom so Rob can have the smallest room as his study. ‘It’s a project for me, really—’

  She pounces on my words. ‘What if I want to stay the night?’