1
BEFORE
Dear Lexie,
For some reason, I was thinking back to when you and Ollie were little children. I know what you’ll say – that it’s no good living in the past! But lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about those days when you were young.
I’m not sure I’ve ever told you before, but it was probably the happiest time of my life. There were days it might not have seemed like that. Change is one of life’s certainties – our family’s seen more than its share. And I don’t always find it easy to talk about it, which is why I’m writing to you. You know me! I’ve always loved writing letters! There’s something about putting your words on paper. And more than anything, I want you to be able to understand…
The arrival of new life brought hope, I’d always thought. That’s how it was when you came into a world where hope gleamed like sunlight on mirror-flat water. Where the force of the maternal love I felt was no less a force of nature than the most powerful storm.
If our small, brief lives had meaning in some way, I could see no greater manifestation of that than in parenthood. I watched your first days and weeks; as you took your first steps as summer folded into early autumn on grass bleached by weeks of blistering sun, tottering to smell the parched petals of a blowsy pink rose before sitting down hard, you turned to smile.
It was a smile of pure innocence, joy; touched my heart. A milestone moment – one of many over the nine months since you’d come into our lives. Ollie, your brother, went over to you, clumsily helping you up, holding on to your hands while you tried to get your balance, as love overwhelmed me for you both; and hope, that even if for any reason I wasn’t, he would always be there for you.
I was distracted as my phone rang, a call from Ryan. ‘Lexie just took her first steps,’ I said excitedly. ‘I wish you’d been here! She looked so pleased with herself.’
‘Cool.’ Ryan sounded distracted. ‘I was just calling to tell you I’m going to be late tonight.’
‘Oh.’ For no reason, I was taken aback. It seemed to happen more and more often that instead of coming home after work, Ryan would be somewhere else. ‘Anything in particular going on?’
‘Just some of the guys meeting after work,’ he said.
I took it to mean he was going to the pub; one of the other demands in his life that increasingly kept him away from us. Before I could reply, I watched Ollie just about to kick a football towards you. ‘I have to go,’ I said to Ryan, switching off my phone before calling out to my son. ‘Hey, Olls.’ I watched him freeze. ‘I think she’s a bit little for that.’ Seeing his face fall, I added, ‘How about you and I play?’
You sat there, your chubby fingers pulling at blades of grass, watching as three-year-old Ollie and I kicked his football around the garden. After, we had a picnic tea in the shade of the apple tree. I adored these late summer days, this little bubble of us; the faintest tinge of gold in the leaves, the short time your lives were untouched by the outside world.
And I knew it had to, but oh, how quickly it changed.
That weekend, after his usual few drinks, Ryan was funny Daddy, pulling faces, talking in silly voices, you and Ollie laughing your heads off.
‘Why aren’t you laughing, Mummy?’ Ollie asked. ‘Daddy’s so funny!’
‘I know he is.’ A smile crept across my face, if only for Ollie’s sake. And I wished I could have laughed with him. But something was stopping me.
Ryan had always liked a drink. When we met, we were all doing it. He was funny, then, and everyone used to gravitate towards him. I knew it was his way of winding down after work, but now that we were parents, I couldn’t help wishing he’d drink less. And the two of you didn’t know that I inhabited two contrasting worlds; that these days, when you were both in bed, Ryan’s humour could turn to something darker.
I told myself to be thankful that neither you nor Ollie had seen that side of him – at least, so far you hadn’t. And naïve though it was, I didn’t think about the future too much. This now was precious. In our own little world, you were safe. For as long as I could, I wanted to preserve that.
Those early years were blissful – mostly. And I wouldn’t have changed a second of the time the three of us were together; the simplicity of your innocent days. But it wasn’t just the three of us. Looking back, it was hard to define when what had niggled at the back of my mind suddenly blazed to the forefront. But there was a line between what was normal and what wasn’t, I’d always told myself. Especially when it came to bringing up our children. Intent on preserving the image of a happy, united family, it rocked my world when Ryan crossed it.
It happened one Saturday afternoon, when Ollie was three. He came into the kitchen, distraught; tears streaming down his face.
‘What’s up, Olls?’ Reaching down, I tried to comfort him.
‘Dad… Dad… Dad…’ he stuttered, following it with something unintelligible, sobbing his heart out as though the world was ending.
‘It’s OK, Olls.’ A strange feeling took me over as I picked him up and went to find Ryan. In our sitting room, he was watching the football. ‘Ollie’s really upset,’ I said. ‘Do you know what happened?’
‘I told him off,’ Ryan said sharply. ‘He knocked my drink over.’
On the table, a can was lying on its side in a pool of beer. I stared at Ryan in disbelief. ‘He’s three years old. It was an accident.’
‘He needs to learn to be more careful,’ Ryan said.
‘You can’t tell him off for something like that.’ I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. ‘It’s OK, Ollie,’ I said gently to my son, tenderly wiping the tears from his face. ‘Daddy didn’t mean to be so cross with you.’
But it was as though Ollie wasn’t there. ‘For fuck’s sake, Edie,’ Ryan said irritably. ‘So I told him off – it happens to all of us. Kids need to learn.’
