Cherry Girl

Neil drove me home. I was numb and it wasn’t from the cold rain. Subdued was a good word to describe how we both were after that blow up on the pavement. I’d never seen Neil lose his temper like that. So angry. He’d driven his car up onto the pavement for Christ’s sake.

He pulled into the drive of my house and I found the courage to ask him.

“Are you coming in? Mum wants you to stay.”

He turned and met me head on, his big hands still gripping the steering wheel. “What about you, Elaina? Do you want me to stay?”

“Well, is it—is it all right for you to be here?”

He looked puzzled by my question.

“What?”

He wasn’t going to make this easy on me apparently. I swallowed and went for it.

“Are you married?”

His eyes widened for an instant. “Come again?”

“Don’t make me ask that again, please.”

He paused for a minute before responding, as if he really needed to choose the right words. “I’m going to chalk that one up to the fact you’re not yourself right now. You’re soaked through to the skin, and we’ve had a row that’s upset both of us—but did you just ask me if I’m married?”

“Yes,” I whispered.

He scoffed and shook his head, looking away from me now and out the window. “No. I’m not married.”

“So you and Cora didn’t stay together?”

He flipped back toward me. “Umm, no,” he said slowly, shaking his head again, his lips slightly parted.

“Why didn’t you, Neil?”

“I didn’t want to, Elaina.”

Fear had started to bloom in the pit of my stomach and I suddenly felt ice cold again. “But the b-baby…I saw Cora after you left. She was pregnant and showing. I saw with my own eyes.” While Neil sat glaring at me, a thought rushed through my mind. Oh no. “Did she lose it?”

“No, she didn’t lose it. She had a son.” Neil had turned away again, as if he couldn’t stand the sight of me. He was answering my questions while speaking to the window and looking out at the rain.

“Oh. What’s his name?”

“I don’t know. I only saw him one time and she didn’t tell me.”

“You don’t—you don’t see your son?” This wasn’t the man that I knew. I didn’t understand any of this. Why didn’t he see his son or even know his name?

He turned back to me once more and told me why, his eyes full of sadness I could read clearly even from the dim light inside his car. “I don’t see him, because he is not mine.”

I shuddered as a chill rushed through my whole body and froze me. I was speechless for a moment, unable to speak, afraid to look at him. Terrified for what else I’d see in his eyes.

I don’t see him, because he is not mine.

“But—but she said—I saw you with the doctor scan…You never denied it…”

I don’t see him because he is not mine.

“I wrote you a letter. I told you I understood why you had to be with Cora…”

Neil didn’t react at first. He just looked at me, his expression growing darker and darker as understanding dawned for both of us. I realized why he was so angry.

I don’t see him, because he is not mine.

“Oh, God.” I slammed a hand over my mouth, trying to quiet the rising panic flooding me.

As if that would work.

Involuntary reactions, nothing more.

He still hadn’t said anything. Neil was letting me do all the talking, giving me plenty of rope to hang myself on.

“If he wasn’t your baby, then why…why didn’t you say something? You let me go and didn’t tell me…Neil—please say this wasn’t all for nothing.”

I could feel the hysteria letting loose. The truth dawning on me with such brutal force I could barely breathe.

I don’t see him, because he is not mine.

He leaned in very close and grabbed me by the shoulders, forcing me to own up to my horrifying mistake, gripping tightly and shaking me a little with every sharp bite of each word he spoke.

“Why did you leave without ever giving me a chance to tell you anything? You just left me there on the eve of my deployment. You let me go. Didn’t you love me enough to even listen at all, Elaina? Was I not worth even that much to you?”

I closed my eyes as my heart collapsed in on itself. My tragically grievous error now apparent, I had nowhere to escape. What had I done? I’d been the cause of so much needless pain for the both of us, all because I’d been afraid to listen, and to share any part of him with anyone else.

Silent tears poured out of me as I tried to find the words. “No, no, noooo.” I sobbed, “I saw her pregnant—we all believed it was your baby…even you believed it…” I lost the ability to say any more. What could I say to him, anyway? What words were there to offer?

Very few. Actually, none at all.

I’d not stayed around to find out the truth back then, why should he believe anything I said to him now? I couldn’t fathom why Neil was even beside me at this very moment, giving a thought to my needs, and seeing me safely home at night. I didn’t deserve it from him. He must be doing it only out of a sense of devotion to my family, after all, they’d never let him go. I had been the only one to do that.

I spoke. The words came out of me and they were all I had to give to him. Words. Bitter sawdust in my mouth—that gave no comfort, only more pain—in the realization of what all this really meant about me and him, and our long years apart.

“You were worth it, Neil. You were. I wasn’t though. I—I—I am so sorry…”

He closed his eyes, still holding onto me, as if he couldn’t bear to hear the confession of my regret.

From somewhere deep inside me, a source of adrenaline started pumping because I pulled out of his tight grip and got the hell out of his car. I bolted.

Running was something I was really good at.

I managed to stumble inside the house, ignoring my mother’s comments about trying to walk home alone in a storm, her inquiry about Neil, and wasn’t he having dinner with us? I don’t know what I said to her.

I reached the safety of my bedroom, somehow. A sanctuary of sorts. A place where I could weep in solitude, and in peace. I’d figure out what to do tomorrow.

I just wanted to sleep and grieve for what I had done to him. To us.

To even accept it, hurt so much, I was afraid to close my eyes for fear of what my dreams would be like once I finally slept.

I had to see for myself. There are some things a woman cannot take on good authority and this was one of them. I had to see her and ask her why she’d done it. She may not tell me, and more pain was surely coming my way for my efforts, but I had to ask.

I stood on a street, looking at a house in a Barnet neighbourhood, the address of which I’d pried out of my brother. The house, where Cora lived with her husband.

Just as I was about to cross the street, the door opened and out came a mother with two small children. A little boy holding her hand, and a younger girl in pink, riding in a pram. It was her. Cora looked mostly the same, maybe not quite as fit as before she’d given birth to two kids, but it was her.

I followed them to the park.

It didn’t take long to understand how apparent it was that Neil was not the father of her son. The children were very dark with skin that couldn’t have come from Neil and his Anglo DNA. At one point, the boy came over to where I sat on my bench and dug around in the sand pit with some toys. He was a handsome little lad, but not Neil’s son. This little boy’s father was Black.

“I thought it was you sitting here.” Cora had spotted me and made her way over. “I heard you’d returned to England.”

I stared up at her and asked one word. “Why?”

She sat down on the bench beside me.

“Why did I tell Neil that my little Nigel belonged to him? That’s a story that you won’t like to hear, I’m afraid.”

“Tell me anyway,” I said, numbly. Here it was. The truth behind everything I’d sacrificed on the back of a lie and my fear of losing my heart.

“I’m not proud of what I did to him. Having children of your own changes your perspective on things, though. I’ve learned a lot since. But basically it came down to survival.”

“Survival, Cora? Who’s survival?”

“I needed money and Denny Tompkins came along at just the right moment for it. He hated Neil for taking you away from him. I told Denny I was knocked up and without any good prospects, and that you and Neil could just sod off together in lover’s land. He offered me a tidy sum to show my scan to Neil, and to tell him the baby was his. I did my part and Denny made good on the payment.”

“So, I left Neil over a lie.” It wasn’t a question I was asking. Just greater understanding of what I had done.

Cora was still beside me. No harsh words or gloating, she only shared the bare simple truths.

“Denny didn’t make out so well, though. You wouldn’t take him back and a few months later you went away to Spain.”

“Italy…I went to Italy.” Even the sound of my own voice was nearly unrecognizable to my ears.

Cora kept talking. “Wherever you went, you were gone, so Denny didn’t ever get you back. I owed it to Neil to tell him though, and I did that as soon as I could. He even saw us in the market once and gave his regards. It all worked out. Nigel married me and we had little Allison not two years after Nigel Jr., so yeah, it all worked out in the end.”

“It didn’t work out for me,” I said, staring out at all the busy children and parents in the park.

“So, why didn’t you ever ask him about it then? Neil would have told you what I told him, that the baby wasn’t his.” I could tell she was staring at me with a puzzled expression.

So simple a question. Why didn’t I ever ask him? Why didn’t I stay and try to work it out with him? Why didn’t I ever give Neil the chance to tell me what had really happened?

“I don’t know,” I whispered.

Neil

I watched it all. I followed her at a distance and surveyed her visit to the park with Cora. I was still trailing her, curious as to where she was off to. It probably made me a sick bastard, but I was stalking Elaina and had no intentions of stopping.

Thank Christ Ian had rang me to say what he thought his sister was up to. She wanted Cora’s address and that meant Elaina was going to confront her.

Observing their exchange in the park surprised me, though. I read their lips through some of the conversation thanks to the high powered lenses I was privy to in my line of work. The surprising part was precisely how non-confrontational their exchange was. No screaming catfight for me to break up. No hair pulling or gloves thrown down. Nothing. They were both very well behaved throughout the whole thing. At the end of it, Cora asked her a question about me. I could tell she asked her a question because I got the words why and Neil clearly, through reading her lips.

Elaina answered her very shortly with just a word or two. And then, she got up off the bench and left the park. I saw her brush at her eyes a few times. Her head was down in the autumn wind, a long, trailing blue scarf blowing back away from her body as she walked.

She looked to be crying and it was easy to see she was upset, but I left her alone. She would resent what I was doing, and I would’ve too if the tables were turned. We were both private people.

I watched her walk to the nearest Underground station and go down to the trains.

There was no choice but to follow in the Rover and make a guess as to where she might end up. I texted Ian and told him to ring her and find out for me.

I had to be there for her. I was going to be there for her.

There was no place else for me to be.