The Mother I Could Have Been (ARC) Read online

  I moved out the next day. I gave Liv a hug, the dynamics already changing – ‘You’ll come clubbing with me on your night off, won’t you?’ ‘Let me know when you can pop up for a swim.’

  Her mother hugged me tightly, making a show of thanking me for the plant I’d bought for her. ‘We’re here until September, so don’t be a stranger.’

  It was funny how I needed to leave to be welcome to stay.

  I settled in quickly at Freddie’s, becoming more and more entrenched in my bohemian persona. Whenever there was time to chat to punters at the bar, I felt as though I was juggling the lies of my life until they arced up into a circle of truth. ‘Yeah, I’m hanging out here, just finished my degree. Prefer it that way, can’t stand being tied down. Who knows what will come next? Maybe head off to France for a ski season?’ I said it as though I’d be zipping down the black runs, jumping over moguls, no poles required, when the closest I’d got to skiing was barrier-clinging at the local ice-skating rink.

  But I’d see the faces of those holidaymakers in their early twenties flash with envy as they counted down the days before their commute started again. And admiration that I’d had the courage to cling onto the sunshine without worrying about the future. Of course, they didn’t know I had nothing to go back to.

  If the conversation ever turned to family, whether I missed them, I’d just say, ‘I’m not that big on family’ with a strange pride that at twenty-one I was already ploughing my own furrow. Even when Freddie tried to delve deeper, I’d wrinkle my nose and say, ‘They sort of chucked me out. Did me a favour really.’ And I’d laugh, revelling in my newfound rebelliousness, conveniently ignoring the texts sitting unanswered on my phone from Mum. I meant to answer, really I did. But the conversation was so big, it was too hard to see what the opening line would be. Anyway, I knew if I let her off the hook, she’d stop trying and forget about me again.

  Then one evening, when Freddie and I had finished clearing up after everyone had been in to watch a football match and the bar was even messier than normal, he said, ‘Stay up for a bit.’

  We sat sipping cocktails, watching the stragglers leave the nightclubs, the occasional drunken scuffle, the arguments between boyfriends and girlfriends, alcohol turning the dial up to ‘You always…’ ‘I saw you…’ ‘I’m sick of you…’ It was incredible that anyone got or stayed married.

  Freddie leaned towards me. ‘You’re a complete enigma to me.’

  My God, the man had me at enigma. I’d never felt so fascinating in my life. When he kissed me, the person he thought I was responded, playful, teasing and in charge.

  ‘Come to bed with me?’ he asked, his tone uncertain as though he thought he was punching above his weight.

  I couldn’t find the shy and stumbling words to tell him I’d only had one long-term boyfriend throughout most of university, that I didn’t do casual sex. Freddie was so impressed by me – ‘I’ve never met someone like you before. You don’t seem to need anyone else at all’ – I didn’t want to let him down. I marched up to his glorious whitewashed room with the dawn sun creeping through the shutters as though I was used to men falling over themselves to have sex with me.

  After that night, I never moved back to the box room. I became the barmaid whose boyfriend owned the bar. Who was sometimes late to work because I’d just stepped out of the shower and he’d lie back on the bed and say, ‘I can’t go down there thinking of you up here. It would be such a waste.’ And I’d pretend to refuse and he’d beg and, for the first time in forever, I had power. Over a man who was eight years older than me. Nearly thirty. With his scruff of dark hair and a sleeve of tattoos, I’d be embarrassed if my mum saw me with him. But with a jolt, I realised I’d never have to introduce him. At some point, I’d probably go home, get a job my mum could boast to her friends about and spend weekends putting together flat-packed furniture with a bloke named Sam.

  Liv was all agog when she came to the bar. ‘You’ve fallen on your feet. Free booze and free lodgings. Is it serious? What will you do when you come back to England after the summer?’

  ‘I’m not coming back.’

  ‘What? You’re not going to just stay here and be a barmaid for the rest of your life? What about your career?’

  ‘Plenty of ways from A to B,’ I said, parroting Freddie’s favourite refrain.

  I detected envy beneath her bemusement, a slight draining away of her superiority at landing a job for £25k a year when the rest of us weren’t yet out of the starting blocks.

  We partied till the early hours the night before she left and I walked her to the bottom of the hill that led to her villa. She hugged me. ‘You will pop over and see me, even if you stay out here?’

  I couldn’t envisage banging on the door of her London apartment with its river view. She’d no doubt be sharing with posh girls, with high blonde ponytails, long eyelashes and slightly quizzical expressions, wondering why Liv was friendly with this girl with a big bum and wooden beads. It would be like turning up to a party just as someone had thrown the last paper plate into a bin bag. There’d be a brief flurry of greeting, then an awkward silence as everyone wondered what to do with me. ‘I’ll see you next time you come out here. Hope the job goes brilliantly.’

  She started up the hill, blowing kisses and waving. Tears prickled at my eyes as I wandered back to the bar.

  Freddie was already in bed when I got upstairs. ‘Everything okay?’

  My voice sounded brittle even though I laughed as I spoke. ‘Yep. Just waved off another person who doesn’t realise they’ll never see me again.’

  ‘I’m going to nickname you Scorched Earth. I hope you don’t do that to me.’

  I forced some levity into my words. ‘You’d better watch yourself then.’ I wished I could explain I’d discovered that breaking off contact with people I cared about was less painful than living with them loving me less.

  I snuggled up to him, facing away, while tears dripped into my pillow.

  By September, the novelty of being the girl making cocktails for the kids having their last hurrah before starting university was fading. They just seemed so young, talking about how they were going to be out clubbing every night and that they only had eight hours of lectures a week. ‘Eight hours!’ I was finding it harder to put on my smiley face for them all, especially when they were drunk and took forever to tell me what they wanted, then had a go at me for getting the order wrong.

  Freddie shrugged. ‘Yeah, it gets a bit wearing after a while. Why don’t you take a couple of days off? Go to the beach and top up your tan before the winter comes? It’s not sunshine every day then.’

  I was knackered from all the three a.m. finishes and the idea of lying in the sunshine was very appealing. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Course. I can manage.’

  I grabbed a bottle of water, my swim stuff and headed off. ‘Ring me if it gets busy.’

  It was the first time in weeks that I’d been on my own. I kept catching glimpses of myself in the shop windows. I searched for that people-pleasing me, the girl who never had to ask for an essay extension, the one who needed several glasses of wine to get on the dance floor. With my big Jackie O sunglasses, tie-dye wrap and battered straw hat, I could have been one of those girls whose name buzzed above all the others in the crowd, who was used to men competing to buy her a Sex on the Beach cocktail.

  I wasn’t that person, though Freddie thought I was. And the notion that I could be made me reckless.

  I walked to a cove that the locals frequented where there was just one little beach shack that served fantastic pitta stuffed with fresh calamari and a barbecue where they grilled whichever fish they’d caught that day. It was never crowded, unless the sailing fraternity turned up. And, as Sod’s Law would have it, just as I made my way down the rocky path to claim my place among some rocks that provided a bit of shade at the height of the day, a small yacht anchored in the shallows. With any luck, they’d grab their food and disappear.

  W
ith a lot of yahooing, five or six young men leapt over the side of the boat, dive-bombing and swearing at each other in that casual way that denotes both belonging and a sense of entitlement, rendering them oblivious to the sensitivity of anyone around them.

  I flapped out my towel, and lay face down, listening to snatches of conversation.

  ‘Leave the boat here and go into Kassiopi?’

  ‘Nah, prefer a barbecue on the beach – I’ve had enough of drinking for a bit.’

  ‘Can’t handle the pace?’

  ‘Just want to give it a rest.’

  I lifted my head slightly so I could see who was speaking. The bloke who was all ‘count me out, I’m chilling at the beach’ was tall, with curly dark hair in a pair of faded swim shorts. Even from where I was lying, I could see he had the most amazing eyes, the sort that had really thick lashes and such bright whites against his tanned skin. He bought a pitta while the rest of them raced up the beach, pushing and messing about, shouting about burning the soles of their feet. I watched him settle on a rock a few metres away, so at ease with himself. He didn’t look the slightest bit bothered that no one from his group had stayed behind to keep him company. I’d have worried about what my friends were saying behind my back.

  A Greek family nearby gestured at him, asking whether the calamari was good. He made all the right noises and they laughed as their little girl wandered over to him with her bucket and spade. He helped her make a castle, which was no easy task given that the beach was mainly pebbles rather than sand. She kept asking him something and he was trying to understand, glancing over at her parents for clarification. They were trying to explain with their hands but didn’t speak English and the girl shouted in frustration: ‘Ochi! Pyrgos!’ at him.

  I sat up. ‘She wants you to build a tower.’

  He grinned, his face brightening as he appeared to notice me for the first time. ‘Thank you! Thought I was going to cause an international incident there.’

  He obliged, patiently balancing stones on top of one another. The little girl clapped her hands in delight, rushing off to find shells to decorate it. Eventually she got bored and went off with her parents to get an ice cream.

  The bloke came over to me. ‘You’re English, right?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Do you speak Greek?’

  ‘Not really. I’m living here at the moment, so I’ve picked up the odd thing.’

  ‘I’m here for a while as well, just till real life catches up. I’m William, William Cottingdale. Do you want a drink? It’s bloody hot out here.’

  I asked for a Coke and offered him the money.

  ‘Don’t be silly. I’ll get it.’

  It was ages since I’d had a proper conversation with someone from home that hadn’t revolved around which cocktail had the most alcohol in it. Freddie talked about the football and the rugby, but he wasn’t interested in reading, which I simply couldn’t understand. When I tried to explain to Freddie what he was missing, he just said, ‘Can never get into books. I prefer telly.’ And he’d been away from England for so long that he’d become part of a little group of expats who moaned about what didn’t work properly in Corfu without having a clue how bad things were at home. He never trusted any of the local tradesmen, always getting in ‘Frank’s mate’ to fix the electrics or ‘that bloke who used to run the plumbing business in Bognor’. I couldn’t see the point of moving to Corfu if you just wanted to create the England you remembered, not even the actual one that existed.

  I loved hearing William talk about where he lived in the Surrey Hills. I was reassured by the fact that I wasn’t the only one who’d left England under a bit of a cloud. Apparently his parents were very keen for him to get started on a career but he wanted to have a bit of time out. ‘I just feel like I worked really hard to get my GCSEs, then there was no let-up for A levels, bust my arse to get into Durham, managed to get a decent degree and then all that lies ahead is endless job applications, loads of bloody rejections and, if I’m really lucky, I’ll be commuting into London for years without ever being able to afford anywhere to live.’

  ‘So what is the plan? Can you find some work to keep you going?’ I asked.

  ‘Christ, don’t turn into my mother on the first meeting!’

  ‘Sorry, sorry, I don’t mean you have to have a plan, I just wondered what you might do next.’

  Liv would have handled this conversation so much better. Known all the cool things to say rather than sounding like a pensions adviser on her day off.

  He laughed. ‘It’s a fair question, I’m only joking. I really like it here. It’s pretty cheap to live too. One of the lads has got a house here, so it’s just beer money and food really.’ He juggled a couple of pebbles. ‘And you, what’s your story?’

  I allowed the truth to become the truth as I saw it, the version most likely to make me interesting to a boy way out of my league. ‘I’m just working out what comes next really. There’s a lot of world out there to see. I don’t really have anything to go back for, no real ties.’ I hoped I sounded mysterious.

  ‘Don’t you have any family in the UK?’

  ‘Don’t know my dad. My mum got married again. She’s got a new family, that I’m not really part of.’

  William’s eyebrows shot up. ‘That’s hard. Where do you stay when you’re in England?’

  ‘Good question,’ I said. ‘I’ve just graduated, so I’ve been in Bristol for the last three years. Gave all my stuff away to charity when I left. So just me and a rucksack now. Wherever I lay my hat and all that.’

  ‘Makes my family look boringly normal.’

  I could tell by his face that for all his poise and confidence, he couldn’t visualise life without a parental safety net. I bet he had a car sitting on the drive for him at home, a father with plenty of ‘chaps’ he could call to organise an internship, a mother who cooked his favourite food and reminded him about dental appointments. I let him believe that I was alone in the world, damaged, daring and up for an adventure. I quite liked that new version of myself.

  I omitted to mention that my last text from Mum asked when I was coming home and went on to say that if I gave her a bit of notice, she’d try and pick me up from the airport. I didn’t bother to reply. I wasn’t going to put myself in a position where I’d be all hopeful that she’d be waiting for me in the arrivals hall, and then there’d be some drama and I’d end up fighting to get a last-minute ticket for the National Express.

  Eventually, the sun started to drop, his friends came back with bread and cheese and a massive watermelon they smashed open on a rock. William introduced me and some were more charming and interested in me than others, but no one seemed to mind me being there. I kept making murmurs about heading off, and was still mumbling about it later when the Greek families were long gone and we kept running in and out of the water, swimming out to the boat, then clambering on board for a beer. I couldn’t enjoy the moment. I was either terrified that my bikini would somehow slide to one side and they’d all laugh at a great expanse of pubic hair hanging out or I was dreading that William would say, ‘Right, we’re going to get off now.’ I sagged with relief every time they engaged in a boisterous race back to the shore.

  I kept squinting guiltily at my phone, to see if Freddie needed me at the bar. At nine, he texted me: You OK? Been a long day without you!

  I replied, All good, just chilling out, enjoying the quiet of the beach now everyone’s gone and fancy going to get a bit of dinner if you can manage without me?

  No rush! Not that busy! Missing you!

  I didn’t know why Freddie’s exclamation marks annoyed me.

  About ten-thirty, the boys made noises about nipping up the coast in the boat to go clubbing and I started packing up my towel and book, determined to look like I wasn’t hanging around waiting for an invitation. William shrugged and said, ‘I’m going to head back to the house. Not really feeling the party vibe tonight.’

  The other blokes did an exaggerated sta
re at me, then at each other. The stocky one with a crew cut that did not flatter him winked at William. ‘See you later then. Or not.’ And with that they all splashed off back to the boat.

  I sat on the rock clutching my bag to me. The waves were rolling in and out. I couldn’t look at William, though I was aware of him, to the left of me, running his fingers through his hair.

  ‘Hey.’

  I forced myself to meet his eyes.

  I don’t know what answer I gave to the silent question he was asking, but he came to sit by my feet, and leaned against my legs. I didn’t move, though I was desperately hoping my leg hair wasn’t prickling his arm.

  ‘So, Little Vick, what have you got to say?’

  I felt under pressure to come up with something witty, something that all the girls who’d attended his posh school might come out with, to show that they weren’t taking all this being left alone together on a deserted beach seriously.

  All I could manage was, ‘About what?’

  ‘Life. The universe.’

  I felt like the thick girl in class, frowning over a maths equation that everyone else had solved in seconds. I reached for my flip-flops. It was better that I left before he realised that I was nowhere as interesting as he’d hoped.

  ‘Oh bugger it. I’m going to have to make the first move, aren’t I? Just come down here and let me kiss you.’

  And there we lay, kissing, listening to the waves and talking in a gentle manner, the sort that holds a light and kind teasing tucked inside the tone. I’d never lain on a beach stargazing with anyone. I wasn’t even sure people really did that – well, not girls that grew up in a little terraced house in the Fens and spent school holidays working at the local mushroom farm. William actually knew some of the constellations – ‘We live on a big hill in the middle of nowhere and on our top floor, we’ve got a telescope. On a clear night, the stars are amazing.’ I rested my head on his arm, lost in the perfection of the moment, of the romance I thought only existed in films. My mind pinged between the gorgeousness of William and the miracle that he’d bothered to speak to me in the first place.