The Lies We Tell, page 15
‘We’re so lucky, aren’t we?’ I would say to Sarah during those walks, taking her hand in mine.
‘Yes,’ she’d say, with that sunny smile that had captured my heart when I’d first seen her in the arts centre. ‘We are.’
After a few weeks, I suggested we tried sleeping together again, but I couldn’t rest if Freddie was in bed with us. I was scared of rolling onto him.
‘Maybe you’re right. Perhaps you had better go back to the spare room. Just for a while.’
The ‘while’ led into more weeks and then months. It wasn’t perfect. But I felt better with more sleep and Sarah was a different woman now she was a mother. Freddie definitely recognized me at last and made ‘excited’ noises when I came back from work.
‘We’ve missed you,’ Sarah would say, nestling into my chest.
Occasionally I thought back to that night in the hospital where I’d been on the point of leaving for a different life.
Thank goodness I’d made the right decision.
I look down now at the barrister speaking and the judge’s intent face as she makes the occasional note. I cannot bring myself to look at the man in the dock.
Of course, Hilary doesn’t know I’m here – in court – today. She thinks I’m at a conference. Hilary has been helping me. She didn’t know I was going to the trial because I was ashamed, but when I came home after the first day, I had to tell her everything.
‘You didn’t mention that before,’ she said last night, after supper.
‘Didn’t I?’ I replied, carefully folding up my newspaper.
Another lie.
To add to all the others.
22
Sarah
When Freddie was two, I allowed Tom to take him to the local playground. This was Olivia’s idea. ‘You need to let Tom take charge sometimes. I know you’re worried in case he takes his eye off him. I feel the same with Hugo. But it shows them what hard work it is to bring up kids instead of the doddle they appear to think it is. It will also give you a break.’
Mothers nowadays seem to think nothing of men looking after children. Yet back then it wasn’t so common. And I couldn’t help feeling nervous about letting my son out of my sight.
I should have listened to my gut instinct. When the two of them came back, Freddie was crying inconsolably and holding his arm.
‘He fell off the slide,’ said my husband sheepishly, taking off his glasses and wiping them.
‘Where were you?’
‘At the bottom, waiting. It wasn’t my fault. Boys do things like that. It will toughen him up.’
‘Were you on your phone?’
‘I was taking a quick work call. But I was still watching him.’
‘You can’t do both,’ I snapped.
Freddie wouldn’t stop crying. ‘My arm,’ he kept saying.
‘It doesn’t look right,’ I pointed out. ‘We’d better get it X-rayed.’
‘Don’t you think you’re fussing –’
‘No! I don’t!’
I was right. Freddie had something called a buckle fracture.
‘How did that happen?’ asked the doctor sharply. It was a time when there were frequent newspaper reports about parental abuse.
‘He fell off a slide when my husband was watching him,’ I said, unable to keep the anger out of my voice.
Tom’s face looked like thunder.
‘Why did you blame me in front of the doctor?’ he demanded after Freddie’s arm had been set in a plaster cast.
‘Because it was your fault.’
‘Keep your voice down,’ hissed Tom. We were leaving the hospital now but people were coming in and out of the main doors. ‘You’re not exactly perfect,’ he said coldly as we headed for the car park.
‘That’s got nothing to do with this,’ I retorted. ‘Besides, we agreed to put all that behind us. Didn’t we?’
‘Don’t argue, Mummy and Daddy,’ pleaded Freddie.
Tom fell silent. But the answer to my previous question was obvious. That was the trouble with lies. Once they came out in the open, they could not be buried again, however much earth you tried to shovel on top.
After our son’s accident, everything changed. I became scared stiff that Freddie would get hurt again. It had taken us so long to have him. He was so precious. But with this incredible gift came a weight of responsibility. How could I live if anything happened to him?
Then, one night, Tom came back even later than usual.
‘Where have you been?’ I asked, cross because he’d woken Freddie by not shutting the front door quietly enough.
‘I had a meeting that went on late. We all went out for drinks afterwards.’
I was so besotted with – and exhausted by – Freddie that I didn’t even think to question him about who was there. ‘How are we going to conceive another child if you come back late, too exhausted for sex?’
Tom sighed. ‘We’ve already talked about this. Look at what we went through to get Freddie. It caused so much strain. Let’s be grateful for what we’ve got.’
I should have left it there for another time when he was less tired. But I didn’t. ‘I just want him to have a brother or sister,’ I pleaded. ‘Neither of us had that.’
‘He can have friends instead,’ said my husband.
‘It’s not the same,’ I retorted, turning my back.
As time went by, I kept hoping Tom would change his mind. Freddie was coming up to three now and everything around him seemed brand new. ‘Look at the sky!’ he said one day when we were walking down the high street, his little hand firmly in mine. ‘It’s lots of different colours!’
He was a fluent talker for his age – something I was immensely proud of.
‘It’s called a rainbow,’ I said, kneeling down and putting my arm around him while pointing up at the arc. ‘It happens when it’s raining and sunny at the same time.’
‘It’s magic!’ he said, his eyes wide.
If Tom was here, he’d go into the scientific facts. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It is.’
‘It’s like a smile,’ he added. ‘The rainbow is happy!’
He was right.
‘Shall we paint it when we get home?’ I suggested.
Freddie was a natural artist. I could tell that from the way he noticed things around us. He held a pencil as if he had been born with one in his hand. He even tried to scoop up the pictures from the pages of his books with his fingers, trying to get hold of them. I remember doing the same myself as a child. ‘That’s good,’ my mother had said, smiling. ‘It shows you’ve got a great imagination.’
He was cheerful, too. He had a smile like mine. Everyone said so. He always saw the bright side of everything. Once, when we got caught in a shower on the way back from the shops, he opened his mouth wide to catch the drops. ‘I love the taste of rain,’ he said.
We used to dance as well. Oh how we danced! Round and round to one of my favourite albums, Ziggy Stardust.
Sometimes, if Tom was going to be even later than usual – something that was happening more and more – I would delay Freddie’s bath time and take him for an evening walk to see the stars. ‘That one is called Orion’s Belt,’ I said, pointing out the line in the sky. ‘Do you see that shape over there? What does it look like to you?’
‘A saucepan,’ he said.
‘Exactly!’
‘Is there a Starman up there?’ he asked. ‘You know. Like the music we dance to?’
‘Maybe.’
I hugged my little boy close to me, breathing him in. Yet I also felt a terrible sense of impending loss. Before long, Freddie would be too old for these magic moments. I simply had to have another child. It wasn’t just the maternal longing. It was, as I’d said to Tom, really important for our son to have the company. How much easier life might have been for me if I’d had a brother or sister to share it with.
I would do anything to get one for him.
23
Tom
After the playground accident, I completely lost my confidence. I wasn’t fit to look after a child.
Sarah didn’t exactly say that. But I knew what she was thinking. That’s why I was so cross with her. It’s all too easy to take out one’s own anger or disappointment on someone else. The truth is that if I had not been on the phone, I might have been more observant of my son.
Hilary did not adopt this point of view, although I have to confess that I left the ‘talking on the phone’ bit out and just said that I ‘took my eye off’ Freddie for a short time. ‘It’s impossible to watch a child all the time,’ she said. ‘It was one of those unfortunate accidents. One could argue that it will teach your son to be more careful. Little people have to start learning at some point in their lives.’
Hilary had a nephew with asthma so she understood about that too. In fact, she was very encouraging. ‘He has grown out of it now,’ she said. I noticed that Hilary often said ‘he has’ instead of ‘he’s’ or ‘I have not’ instead of ‘I haven’t’. I liked that. The English language can be so sloppy at times.
It was comforting to have a sensible female perspective, especially as I was beginning to feel more and more that Sarah and Freddie were against me. When we went for the final hospital check-up for his arm, the doctor questioned me again. How exactly did it happen? Was anyone else there to see it? I almost began to believe I had hurt him myself deliberately.
Of course, I’d never do that. Freddie was my son. Yet I now made up excuses not to be in charge of him alone again. What if he had another accident? It was partly why I didn’t want another child. We had enough pressure to cope with as it was.
Sarah’s incessant nagging not only affected my mind. It also meant I was unable to perform in bed. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Sarah one night. But I sensed the disappointment in her voice.
This made me feel inadequate as well as frustrated. I had my urges, like any man. To my shame, I found myself thinking of Hilary instead and getting relief that way. Afterwards, I felt awful. She was only a friend. I wasn’t the type to be unfaithful. Besides, it had only been in my head.
It turned out, as the next three years went by, that Hilary was right. Freddie did grow out of his asthma. But he remained what they called at the hospital a ‘chesty child’. His behaviour also became erratic, even though Sarah claimed he was ‘very good compared with other children’.
At times, he would play quite happily with me. Our favourite was the electric toy train set I had bought him. But sometimes he could be impossible. One morning, when I was helping him to put together a three-hundred-piece jigsaw, he actually punched me on my arm because I placed a piece of the sky in before him.
‘How dare you!’ I shouted. ‘That hurt me and it’s also very rude. I was trying to help you. Go to your room.’
‘No.’
My son was standing there, his hands on his hips, glaring at me as though he was an adult telling off a child instead of the other way round.
I would never have dared to say no to my father and I had no intention of taking it from my son. He needed to be taught a lesson.
‘MUMMY!’ roared Freddie. ‘Daddy smacked me on my bottom.’
‘What?’ Sarah came running in. ‘Why did you do that?’
‘Because he hit me on the arm for helping him with his jigsaw.’
‘And you think that smacking is going to teach him a lesson?’
‘Well, someone has to teach him right from wrong.’
‘I do that, Tom. I reason with him.’ She turned to Freddie. ‘You mustn’t hit Daddy. It’s wrong.’
He pouted. ‘The boys at school do it.’
‘Then they shouldn’t. It’s not kind.’
‘All right, Mummy.’ He was cuddling up to her now while sending dark looks at me.
‘There you are,’ said Sarah. ‘He understands now.’
‘Is that it?’ I said.
‘No, actually, it isn’t. I don’t ever want you smacking him again. How can violence stop violence?’
‘I wasn’t being violent,’ I pointed out.
‘My bottom hurts,’ whined Freddie.
‘Let me see.’ Her voice rose. ‘There’s a red mark on it. How hard did you hit him?’
Both of them were staring at me accusingly. ‘This is ridiculous,’ I pointed out. ‘He’s the one who stepped out of line. Besides, everyone got smacked in my day.’
‘Well, I didn’t.’
‘Then maybe you should have been, Sarah. It might have stopped you getting into trouble later on.’
There was a cold silence. Had I gone too far? Then again, it was true.
‘We’re going out,’ she said to Freddie, ignoring me.
‘Fine. If that’s the way you want to play it, go ahead.’
I expected them to come back soon and apologize. But they didn’t. I tried to do some work to clear my head but it didn’t help. I was tempted to ring Hilary to tell her what had happened or Hugo. But I was too ashamed to tell them I had a child who hit his own father. What kind of son did that? Yet underneath it all, I felt mortified. Was it my fault? Could it be that Freddie had inherited that terrible bullying streak of mine from school?
By the time my wife and son returned, two hours later, laughing and chatting to each other about their time on the swings in the park as though nothing had happened, I felt a cold distance between me and them.
I was beginning to feel more and more like an outsider. Freddie continued to behave badly towards me. One evening, when Sarah was out on a ‘girls’ night’ with Olivia, he refused to stay in bed and kept coming downstairs. ‘You’ve got to behave,’ I kept saying.
Then he’d smile at me as though he was enjoying the fact that he was making me annoyed.
Despite my earlier conviction that I’d made the right decision to stay, I found myself wondering what might have happened if I hadn’t asked Sarah to come back from Olivia’s after Freddie’s birth. We might have got divorced. We’d have had to sell this house to afford separate homes. Or maybe a judge would have ruled that Sarah and Freddie would stay until he was older and I’d be out on my ear. Freddie would have come back and forth between the two of us. No, I told myself. That wouldn’t have been right. Things would get better when he became older.
‘I don’t feel well today,’ he said a few weeks later. ‘Do I have to go to school?’
‘Is this something to do with the maths test?’ I asked.
He had one every Tuesday at school. I’d spend time helping him prepare every week. But the child just didn’t have a head for figures. At his age, I was doing long multiplication. He had problems adding simple single figures like nine and four.
‘No.’ Freddie gave me that look again. It was as if I had done something wrong. ‘I feel sick.’
‘Oh dear,’ said Sarah. ‘Perhaps you should stay at home then.’
‘He seems all right to me. Have you taken his temperature?’
It was normal. ‘Better play safe,’ said Sarah firmly.
When I got home from work that night, the two of them were sitting at the dining-room table, crayoning.
‘Better, then, is he?’ I asked pointedly.
‘Your son’s right here,’ said Sarah. ‘You can ask him yourself you know.’
‘There’s no need to be hostile.’
Sarah, for her part, was only interested in him, or so it seemed. She hardly ever asked me about the office. Instead, it was Freddie this and Freddie that. ‘I’m worried he’s not making enough friends at school,’ she said. ‘He never gets asked back to play with others.’
‘Maybe there’s a reason for that.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, perhaps he’s not very nice to them, like he’s not nice to me.’
‘Oh grow up, Tom. It’s not all about you, you know.’
In the end, I took the plunge and confided in Hugo during one of our tennis games. ‘Join the club,’ he said. ‘I feel it’s Olivia and the girls against me all the time. So I’ve given up. I let them do what they want. I don’t interfere with her ways of child-rearing. We almost live separate lives during the week. I have dinner on my own now when I come back from the office. She says she can’t wait so eats with the kids.’ He slapped me on the back. ‘Don’t worry. You’ll get used to it.’
‘An acquaintance of mine suggested some family therapy.’
‘That’s a sign of failure, in my book.’
‘She says that –’
‘She?’ Hugo stopped. ‘A female acquaintance? Are you not telling me something, Tom?’
‘Of course not.’
‘You’re going red.’
‘It’s just a woman in the office. She’s simply a friend.’
‘But you don’t have women friends.’
‘Forget it, can you?’
‘What’s her name?’
‘Actually I don’t feel like playing that third set. I think I’ll go home now.’
Hugo grinned. ‘Suit yourself.’
Even though I hadn’t done anything wrong, Hugo made me feel uncomfortable. My friendship with Hilary was the only thing that helped the situation. We had some intelligent discussions about current affairs. Occasionally, I would mention things that had happened at home. But I stopped short at confiding in her about Sarah’s past. That felt too much like a betrayal.
Then, of course, there were my Wednesday evening meetings, which I still went to. ‘Thanks, Tom,’ said one of the group members when we left. ‘You’ve really helped.’
This made me feel better. If only I could help myself in the same way.
Another two years passed. Freddie was seven now, almost eight. It was perfectly clear that he preferred Sarah to me. Sometimes I’d come back from work and find the two of them engrossed over a book or some arty thing. ‘Say hello to Daddy,’ Sarah would prompt.
But often he wouldn’t even look up.
‘He’s tired,’ my wife would say.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ I’d reply, going upstairs to change out of my suit and into a pair of corduroy trousers. But it did. It hurt more than I could say. All I’d wanted was to create a family. No one had told me how hard it was to be a good father when your own child wanted nothing to do with you.
