Grace, page 35
‘Yes please.’
‘Glad you said that,’ she said. ‘I am desperate for more caffeine.’
‘Thank you so much for agreeing to see me,’ said Amelia, as she watched Lesley prepare a cafetiere of ground coffee. ‘I can imagine my phone call was a bit of a surprise.’
‘No, not really,’ replied Lesley, spooning coffee into the cafetiere. ‘Although I was surprised that he decided to send you. He usually likes to take charge.’
Amelia got a sudden jolt.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I don’t follow…’
‘Piers didn’t send you?’
‘No. He doesn’t know I’m here.’
‘Ah,’ said Lesley, turning around to face Amelia. ‘Then why are you here? I assumed you wanted to see me about the letters, you see.’
‘I… oh… God,’ said Amelia, suddenly putting two and two together. ‘Those letters were from you?’
Lesley’s eyes opened wide.
‘Yes. Right. Okay, I see we have a lot of catching up to do, not least, who this little girl is,’ she said, looking at Grace, who was just starting to wake.
‘Yes,’ said Amelia, barely able to speak.
‘I’ll just put the lid on this, grab us some milk and some cups, and then we’ll talk while we drink it, okay?’
Amelia nodded, and picked Grace up out of the chair, whilst Lesley finished making the coffee.
‘So,’ said Lesley, sitting down opposite Amelia at the oak kitchen table. ‘Where shall we start?’
‘The letters. I saw Piers reading a couple of letters, and I saw him rip one up and put it in the bin in his office. But I thought he was being threatened or something. I didn’t know they were from you.’
‘I see,’ said Lesley. ‘Well, it was sort of a threat. I’ve written to him twice, once a couple of months ago, and once more a few weeks ago now, a final demand, chasing maintenance payments for Seb. I’m going to have to seek legal help now, I think. He stopped paying them last year. I suppose the baby’s arrival might explain why he now wants to rid himself of his previous responsibilities.’
‘Oh my God. Did he? He didn’t tell me.’
‘Yes, I’m afraid so.’
Amelia sat there for a few seconds, thinking. Why would Piers not have told her about that?
‘I’m so sorry. I had no idea,’ she replied, finally. ‘But I will do my best to get it sorted. I promise. Where is Sebastian?’
‘Oh, in the other room, gaming,’ Lesley replied. ‘I can’t get him off the bloody thing. But at least it’s giving us time to talk in private. I don’t want him knowing that his dad isn’t paying for his upkeep anymore. Anyway,’ she said, taking a sip of coffee, ‘why did you want to talk to me, if it wasn’t about those?’
‘Piers has been acting… oddly,’ she said, hugging the warm mug of coffee in front of her on the table. ‘He’s changed a lot in the past few months. I mean, it’s been a difficult time. Grace – that’s this little one – she’s not mine – not ours, I mean – we are hoping to adopt her. But there’s been a huge setback, and now it seems like she might be sent back to live with one or other of her birth parents.’
‘Oh no,’ said Lesley, with sincerity. ‘How horrible for you.’
‘Yes. It is horrible. It’s shaken us both up. And then… yesterday. He went for a job, a promotion at the school, a deputy headship, and he didn’t get it. When he got home last night he was furious. Raging. Distraught. Out of control. I’ve never seen him like that before.’ Lesley nodded, as if she was far from surprised. ‘But as I say, he’s definitely been acting strangely for a while, and I thought you might know why. With all this shit we’ve been through, I’ve realised over the past few months how little I really know about what happened to him before. I was wondering if he has been drinking secretly, or something like that? Did he do that when he was with you?’
‘Alcohol? God, no, not really. He only had the occasional heavy night. But if you were asking me about drugs, then I’d say a big fat yes,’ said Lesley, deadpan.
‘Drugs?’
‘Yes. Cocaine, mostly.’
Amelia caught her breath.
‘Really?’ she asked.
‘You didn’t know? I’m surprised. He got terrible at hiding it when we were together. It was part of the reason I left him.’
‘You… left him? Oh my God,’ said Amelia, suddenly feeling vomit rise up her gullet.
‘Are you okay?’ asked Lesley.
‘Could… you… take Grace for a few secs?’ Amelia said, thrusting her into Lesley’s arms. ‘I think I need some fresh air.’
‘Sure,’ said Lesley, receiving the baby without question. ‘I’ll open up the French windows for you, you can go and have a wander in my wilderness of a garden.’
‘Thank you,’ said Amelia, bolting out of her chair at speed and taking deep breaths as Lesley found the key and unlocked the doors. Once she’d pushed them open, Amelia stepped outside and took a series of deep breaths, filling her lungs with frozen winter air. Then she bent over and allowed her body to sink down to the ground, as if she was recovering from a long run. Except she wasn’t. Instead, she was feeling the aftershock after years of lies had exploded in front of her, without warning.
Piers takes drugs, she thought. Piers is no longer paying maintenance for his son. Piers’ first wife, Lesley, left him, rather than the other way around. So much of her accepted reality had been shattered in the past few minutes and she needed time to process it.
She stood back up and looked around her. Lesley’s cottage was on the outskirts of Lymington, within a mile of the sea. She could smell it. The air was different down here; it felt dense in her lungs, and damp. She was grateful for that, as it seemed to be soothing her, like a balm. She wrapped her arms around herself to ward off the cold and walked around the small cottage garden, which featured raised beds, a vegetable patch and a centrepiece of roses, which were all cut back brutally for the winter.
She heard knocking and looked up. Lesley was standing at the double doors cuddling Grace, who looked tearful. Shit, thought Amelia. I have to get myself together. I cannot behave like this. She waved acknowledgement and walked back and felt a wave of warm, coffee-scented air hit her when she opened the doors and stepped back into the kitchen.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what came over me there.’
‘That’s fine,’ said Lesley, holding Grace out for Amelia. ‘Absolutely fine. Sit down. I’ll get you some water.’
‘Thank you,’ said Amelia, sitting back down at the table, searching Grace’s bag for the milk powder and a bottle so that she could give her a feed.
‘Shall I make up a bottle for her?’ asked Lesley, noticing what Amelia was doing. ‘I think I remember how to… vaguely.’
‘Thank you, that would be great,’ said Amelia, incredibly relieved. She wasn’t sure that she had the energy left to stand up again.
‘No worries,’ said Lesley, taking the powder and the bottle from her. ‘So,’ she said, putting the items down on the kitchen side. ‘I’ll pop some of the water from my kettle in here, and then put it in the freezer for a minute or so to cool it down, shall I?’ Amelia nodded. ‘Okay. So… I take it a lot of what I said earlier was news to you?’
‘Yes,’ said Amelia. ‘All of it, frankly. Apart from that there had been letters. I knew about those.’
‘Ah, yes. I sent two. The last one a few weeks ago.’
‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Nothing more recent than that?’ Amelia was thinking about the last letter she’d seen him with. It had to have been sent in the past two weeks.
‘No, definitely not.’
Grace was crying now and Amelia felt like joining her. Who were the other letters from, and what else hadn’t Piers told her about?
‘I’m just going to put this in the freezer, okay? It should be cold enough in a few minutes.’
‘Great,’ said Amelia, rummaging around in the car seat for Grace’s dummy. She found it, popped it in her mouth, and to her relief it soothed her, albeit temporarily.
‘So tell me again, in more detail, about Piers and drugs,’ she said, now that the crying had stopped and she was able to process her thoughts better.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes. Seriously, I’ve driven all of this way for answers. And I feel, frankly, like an idiot for not asking any of these questions before. It’s like I’ve just woken up. Please, tell me. Everything.’
‘Okay,’ said Lesley, dropping two pieces of bread in the toaster. ‘So, when I met Piers, he was clean. We had been at uni together, and aside from a bit of weed, he was straight as a die. He was really fit, really active, into mountaineering and expeditions. He had this big ambition to work in the Arctic. He was completely obsessed with it. He applied for various Masters courses and tried to get taken seriously as an academic, but he failed to get anywhere with it. Every door he tried to open just slammed shut. It hit him hard. Teaching was only meant to be a stopgap; he did it just because I was doing it, I think. We got married after our PGCE year, moved to London and he got a job at this huge comprehensive school in Wandsworth, with a super head, you know? It was very intense. He worked incredibly long days there, proving himself, I suppose, and there was a culture of drinking and partying afterwards. I think one of the other student teachers offered him some coke in the pub, and he accepted it. It gave him a huge buzz, he told me later; a whole load of energy. Then he accepted more, and met this guy’s dealer, and then, I think, it became a habit. I didn’t know anything about it at the time. I was pregnant with Seb, and naive. And you know how he is – he was so amazingly charming in the early days, I just couldn’t believe he was anything but perfect.’ Amelia nodded, her eyebrows raised. She knew exactly what Lesley meant. ‘Anyway, to cut a long story short, I began to notice that he was acting oddly – he was suddenly sweating a lot at night and he was either bouncing off the walls, or almost comatose. And then, I noticed the money was going down. He hadn’t wanted us to have a joint account, so I only noticed when we got red bills through the post,’ said Lesley, taking the butter out of the fridge, the jam out of the cupboard and placing them on the table, along with two plates and two knives. ‘He was spending so much money on drugs, he stopped paying for important things like rent. But I really hoped this was all ancient history. He promised me he’d kicked the habit after we separated.’
Amelia thought about Piers’ odd behaviour in the past few months – his unexpected, unprompted warmth, his keenness for her to get out of the flat, the hours spent shut in his study.
‘I wonder,’ she said. ‘I wonder.’
‘I think the bottle will be cool enough by now,’ Lesley said, retrieving it from the freezer, pouring the milk powder in, screwing on the lid and giving the bottle a shake. ‘There you go, little Grace,’ she said. ‘For you.’
Amelia took the bottle gratefully, took out Grace’s dummy, and inserted the bottle, which she began to suck greedily.
‘Thank you for that,’ she said. ‘For the bottle, and for the truth.’
‘It might not be the same in your case, though, remember that,’ said Lesley, sitting down next to her, and pulling a plate of toast towards her. ‘Do you want a piece? I made you one.’
Amelia decided that she needed something to line her stomach.
‘Yes, please. That would be great.’
Both women spent a few seconds buttering the toast and spreading jam. When Lesley took her first mouthful, Amelia spat out the question she’d really come here to ask.
‘Why did you break up? Was it the drugs?’ she asked. ‘I can imagine that put huge pressure on things.’
‘You’d think so, wouldn’t you?’ she said, picking up the cafetiere, pressing it down and pouring coffee out into two mugs. ‘But it turns out I’m a complete fool. I thought we were so in love, we could cope with anything. I stayed with him, supported him while he went to Narcotics Anonymous, dealt with all of the stress when he went for promotions. As far as everyone outside our marriage was concerned, he was amazing. Charismatic. Charming.’
Amelia put her mug down.
‘But not with you?’
‘Not with me, no. He’d started out showering me with gifts and praise, but it didn’t last long. Behind closed doors, he was… how should I put this… angry with me, very often. About everything I did. Looking back on it, it was truly hideous. I felt useless, utterly useless. I felt like I was going mad. I’d been on maternity leave with Seb, so out of the workplace, and that gave me low self-esteem anyway, so I didn’t question it for a long time. But it was when he was at nursery, and I got back to teaching a few days a week, that I began to see it.’
Amelia sat back in her seat.
‘Did you find yourself losing things a lot?’ Amelia asked, as two well-trodden paths in her brain suddenly collided and her adrenaline surged.
‘Yes. At first, I thought I was simply no longer capable. But later on, I began to believe he had been hiding them from me. Deliberately.’
‘Oh my God,’ said Amelia. ‘Oh. My. God.’
‘Does he try to control what clothes you wear?’ Lesley asked.
‘Yes.’
‘And have you suddenly figured out that his generous gifts to you are in fact no replacement for a bank account?’
‘Yes,’ said Amelia, now almost unable to speak.
‘Oh shit, now I feel really, really bad for not reporting him to the police.’
‘The police? For the drugs?’
‘No, I mean for coercive control. It became illegal in the UK in 2015, you know. I should have gone to the police about it, I know that now, but we had already separated and it seemed easier to let things lie. He was paying maintenance for Seb and I didn’t want to rock the boat. But when I heard he’d got married again, I should have done something. I really should have. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’
Amelia sat in silence for a moment, listening to Grace drinking the final dregs of her bottle. Lesley was silent too, except for an occasional swallow as she made headway through her mug of coffee.
‘Fuck. I feel like a total and utter fool,’ Amelia said, finally, bringing her left hand up to her face, while her right hand continued to hold Grace, who seemed to be falling back to sleep.
A storyboard of memories from her relationship with Piers was running riot around her head: the glamorous man who’d wooed her in the wine bar; the expensive gifts he’d showered her with before they had become engaged; the showy wedding in the college chapel; the insistence that they should not share their infertility troubles with anyone else. He had been manipulating her all along, like a marionette, and she had willingly gone along for the ride. What. A. Bloody. Idiot.
Lesley got up from her seat, came around to Amelia’s side of the table and placed her hands on Amelia’s shoulders.
‘Look. I know this is a lot to take on board, and I really, really shouldn’t have left it this long. But it’s not your fault. Seriously, it isn’t.’
Amelia took a series of deep breaths, trying not to cry.
‘At least you left him,’ Amelia said. ‘I’ve clung to him all of this time, like a complete idiot.’
‘Oh, I took a lot of shit before I threw in the towel, don’t get me wrong,’ said Lesley, moving over to the kitchen cupboards and opening a door. ‘A whole load of shit, trust me. It took him actually flirting with other women on WhatsApp, and various dating apps, before I finally saw the light. And that was probably just the tip of the iceberg.’ Lesley walked back to the table and slapped a large pack of chocolate biscuits down on the surface. ‘I think we need these,’ she said. ‘Chocolate helps most things, in my experience.’
Amelia looked across the table at Lesley. She was astounded by the other woman’s honesty, her willingness to welcome her into her home, and the support she was offering her. And she was grateful that she’d been forewarned about this last element of Piers’ behaviour – something which, she was fairly sure, he had yet to demonstrate to her, at least.
‘Mum, can I have a snack?’
Amelia turned her head and saw that a boy had walked into the kitchen. He had closely clipped brown hair, pale skin, and looked tall for nine years old. She was transfixed; he was so much like his father.
‘Yes, you can, but only after you tackle your homework,’ Lesley replied. ‘You have spellings to learn for Monday.’
‘Seriously?’ he said, his face a picture of injustice.
‘Yes, seriously,’ replied Lesley, smiling as Sebastian returned to the lounge, presumably, Amelia thought, to tackle his spellings. ‘Boys. They are the worst,’ she said.
‘I can only imagine,’ replied Amelia.
‘Oh, sorry. I shouldn’t be insensitive. I didn’t think…’
‘Oh, honestly, don’t worry at all. But changing the subject… I should say thank you,’ said Amelia, reaching out for a biscuit. ‘Obviously for the chocolate, but also, thank you so much for everything you’ve said. I can’t quite work out why you weren’t more angry with me when I first arrived, given that Piers is trying to cut you off financially.’
‘Oh, I know him well enough to know that he will still be totally in charge of his finances,’ she said. ‘He’s obsessive about money. It’s all about power.’
Amelia saw that Grace was coming round from her nap. She lifted her up and placed her head over her shoulder, rubbing her back to help remove any wind she’d developed from her energetic feed.
‘So, this little one,’ said Lesley. ‘You said you’re hoping to adopt her…?’
‘Yes, well, we were,’ said Amelia. ‘But I fear very much that we won’t be able to. There’s a court case going on in Worcester, right now, which will decide it all. That’s why I came here today. I had to do something. Something I could control. Otherwise I’d feel completely powerless.’
‘I get that,’ said Lesley. ‘But why do you think you won’t get to adopt her? She seems so happy with you…’
‘Believe it or not, the adoptive parents don’t even get a look in during the trial,’ she replied. ‘We aren’t relevant. This battle is between the birth parents, both of whom want her back, and social services, who want her to come to us.’
