We’ve been warned about theFamily-Tree project by a friend of Shazz’s. In theory: it’s a lovely idea. A big chart with as many of the pupil’s family members pictured or drawn on it as possible. Lovely if you come from a traditional family but tricky if you’re one of the three kids in Luke’s and Raffie’s class without an actual father.
‘Don’t remind me,’ I groan.
We always talk gently aboutJean-Luc the night before Luke’s birthday which is coming up. Hearing about the fatal car crash sent me into instantaneous labour. My son was born hours after his father died. I can’t see that fitting well onto theFamily-Tree project.
As time progresses, I find it harder and harder to remember a time when it was myself andJean-Luc, when we were a blissfully married couple with a baby on the way. I must have been another person then.
Now, I’m Bea, single parent, widow, adoring mother of Luke, with a tough shell on the outside that I let very few people penetrate.
I wasthirty-eight weeks pregnant when my husband died, which means thatJean-Luc never saw his son and Luke, my baby boy who has recently turned gangly and long limbed, never saw his dad.
This is not a sob story – I don’t believe in that. I don’t want pity. If people dole it out, I smile and mentally give them the bitter version of Taoism: shit happens.
It’s true. Appalling things happen amidst the most wonderful of love stories, destroying them.
Love does not stop drunk drivers ploughing into cars.
Love does not mean that your beloved husband will be miraculously revived at the scene of the accident.
Love does mean that when your waters break when you hear the news your husband has died, you fight to bring your son into the world and vow that nothing will ever hurt him.
Actually, that’s mother love. The tough kind, theanyone-who-hurts-my-son-will-regret-it love.
Being solely responsible for a child toughens you up. We mothers will do anything for our kids. But for ourselves? Who has the time to do anything for themselves?
Mothers never stop looking after their children. WhenJean-Luc’s anniversary and Luke’s birthday arrives, my mother will bring me flowers and hug me extra hard.
‘Love you, darling girl,’ she’ll say. ‘Wherever he is,Jean-Luc is looking down on you and he’s so proud of how you’re raising Luke.’
My dear mum: I couldn’t have got through any of it without her. But I’m not sureJean-Luc is gazing down at me from anywhere. I truly believed in heaven until he was killed and then – then, I didn’t believe in any heaven or deity because no decent God would rip my unborn baby’s father away so cruelly.
I’ve never feltJean-Luc’s presence, although I’ve dreamed of his arms around me. Once, when that happened, I woke up and cried.
Now, the truth has seeped into my dreams too. I dream of him gone and I’m searching for him, aware that time is ticking and that if I don’t find him, it will be too late.
It’s hard to know which is worse.
I decided that when Luke was very small and I was weeping – yes, such a biblical word, but it’s how it felt – weeping over the only man I think I could ever love, that I would go on because of Luke. I have my friends, mainly women, but I try to hide my vulnerability by holding that rod of steel in my back because it’s better that people don’t see how broken hearted I am. Fake it till you make it, right?
I feel that dear Finn, one of the people left over from that other life whenJean-Luc and I were together, somehow knows how wounded I still am. Finn will phone and invite me out to dinner forJean-Luc’s anniversary. Loyal, lovely natured and clever, Finn cannot cook, so we have to go out and we have fun choosing restaurants. But I hold my pain close to my heart.
And Marin and Nate, whom I dated years ago when I was atwenty-year-old idiot, will call and say they’re having a few people over for supper and would I come?
‘Just bring yourself and Luke, no cooking dessert or anything. It’s going to be jeans and sweatshirts at the kitchen table, promise.’ That’s what she always says.
Even though Luke and Joey get on like a house on fire, and I know everyone well, those dinner parties sometimes make me consumed with sadness.
They’re a memory of a life I no longer lead.
The doorbell rings snapping me back to the here and now and the two boys yell that it’s Christie with the girls.
She’s the third part of our triumvirate of square pegs in the round holes of school mums. The girls, Daisy and Lily, who are the girliest girls you will ever see, erupt into the house. Shazz and I go down to meet them. They’renon-indentical twins. Daisy is blonde and favoursHeidi-style pigtails at the moment with sparkles on everything. Lily is dark and looks like she was ordered from a Parisian catalogue. On her, the cheapest garment looks chic, even at age eight.
‘How’s the online profile going?’ says Christie, herself a stunning blonde with a blunt haircut and arazor-sharp mind.
‘I am a French sex kitten with hidden talents,’ I murmur, as the four kids get together.
‘Shazz!’ says Christie.
