Frankie, my son, who I couldn’t look after, who I gave to Jeanie when he was just three months old, because I was scared I’d hurt him, like our mother hurt me.
Because I knew Jeanie could do a much better job than I would. And she took him, and she didn’t argue, not after she’d understood that I was buckling. She said, ‘It can be temporary,’ but I knew it couldn’t. Only seventeen myself, I didn’t want to mess him up. I didn’t want him to feel he’d been rejected. I loved him, of that there was no doubt. But I was too scared of my own black feelings; the post-natal stuff, the savage dog of depression that was hauling me down into the pits, its jaws clamped around my head.
I look into Frankie’s freckly face – he gets those off his dad, those freckles. His dad, Sammy, a freethinking musician who didn’t believe in bonds, whom I loved fiercely. And whom I could never trace after I told him I was pregnant.
He went to America, I think, Frankie’s dad. Vanished. Me, who could trace anyone; I’ve never found him. Sammy really didn’t want to be found.
And I see Frankie is crying too. Tears on his cheeks, sparkling in his eyes, which are so very like mine.
I wipe them away, those tears, from my boy’s face, and I think, However much I want to, however much I’m tempted, I can’t tell you the truth.
I owe Jeanie that much; I can’t ever tell him now. I’ve left it too late.
But I’ll love him till the day I drop dead – I’ll love Frankie with every tiny sinew, with every cell and vessel of my being.
Take love where you find it I say, if it’s the good and pure type.
We hold hands, and we walk into Jeanie’s room to see her eyelids flutter for the first time in days.
Sixty-Four
Jeanie
The Last Part
It took me a lifetime to understand that, all too often, people are just plain nasty. They can’t see beyond their own stuff. They’re scarred forever, and they want to take you down too.
I refused to believe it for so long – too long – and it was painful to accept, but I know now absolutely that it’s true.
Marlena always knew, of course, and it was natural she would. We are so very different, my sister and I.
She was too hard, sometimes, maybe. It was just a layer of protection. And I was always, no doubt, pretty na?ve.
I’d believed in the fairy tale. I’d subscribed to the myth. A bit like – before Otto – the daft way I believed in all the smiling faces on Facebook, all the snaps of blue skies and turquoise seas. The cuddling, kissing selfies; the couples that couldn’t live apart. Families having brilliant times.
I missed what lay beneath: I just saw the fantasies and sucked them up. I believed it all and aspired to it.
But when it happened to me, the ‘fantasy life’, it wasn’t long before the beautiful idyllic stuff fell away, shiny and unreal. It all fell apart.
How daft could you be?
As daft as me apparently.
Though I wouldn’t have said daft or na?ve back then. I would have said… optimistic. Always looking for the best in people.
But actually I always had ‘unrealistic expectations’, as the doctor in Hove said after I resigned from Seaborne; as he breathed too loudly and, not meeting my eye, prescribed pills I couldn’t pronounce the names of.
And I had hidden them away, those pills, a secret stash, and my descent had started again, for a while.
When I got off them that time, I kept the leftovers for a rainy day – just in case. There’s always a just in case I think.
Sixty-Five
Jeanie
19 June 2015
9.35 p.m.
* * *
When I open my eyes and see Frankie, I am overcome. He comes into the room, which I understand to be a hospital room, as the nurse and the doctor with me explain.
I’m so groggy, I can’t speak; my lips are so cracked and dry – but the sight of Frankie’s face is enough, the warmth of his hug is more than enough, as is the kiss he gives me as I see the tears in his own eyes.
The guilt is enormous, but the relief is bigger. I love this boy so much; how could I think I’d let the devil take me down?
* * *
Matthew wants to give it another chance. He came to see me just as I left the hospital, took me out to lunch in a nice Derby pub called The Silk Mill. We had fresh pies and thick chips and cider, and spoke little really.
I would never ever go back there again, to the horror of Malum House. Matthew wasn’t ready for a relationship when we married; I doubt he’s ready now – but I’m sure it won’t be long before Mrs King number three is bowled over by the fairy-tale house. Hopefully he’ll clear the spare room for her and keep it unlocked this time. Less Bluebeard, more real.