Make or Break

‘We’ve got rubbish seats,’ Pete said, examining the boarding passes with a defeated air as we joined the back of the long, long queue to board. ‘Right at the back by the toilets.’

‘Well, you should’ve checked in online.’ I searched my handbag for my phone while also doing a check for liquids over 100ml.

‘Hold this?’ I said, holding out my handbag while turning my attention to my hastily packed carry-on tote.

When the handbag was not taken from me I looked up to see Pete’s pained expression.

‘Take it.’ I jiggled it at his chest.

Pete looked around at the surrounding cluster of disinterested, impatient-to-board travellers. ‘No.’

Admittedly the handbag was quite stand-outy. It was wicker and in the shape of a sitting camel with a decorative harness complete with tiny bells and multi-coloured tassels. I called it Alice.

‘Women come with boobs, a vagina and a handbag,’ I said. ‘You wanna play with these,’ I circled my hand over my lady areas, ‘then you have to hold this.’ I thrust him the bag.

Pete did want to play with those, so he begrudgingly took the handbag strap and held it by his fingertips, making himself look even more conspicuous than if he’d just held it like a normal person. I gave him an affectionate ‘you’re such a loser’ headshake and went back to searching for my phone.

The rush to the airport meant I hadn’t been able to text Dave, our flatmate, to tell him we’d be away for the next two weeks, allowing him to have his zombie-obsessed mates over to eat pizza and shun all things outdoor for the chance to stay on the sofa ripping apart the storylines of movies they’d seen three hundred times before. Pete abhorred zombie fests. And pizza fests. And Dave’s mates. So Dave, my friend from film school who was currently working as a night shift dispatcher for 999 until he became a director of ‘epic zombie movies’, kindly kept his ‘fests’ to a minimum. I’d also been unable to alert anyone to the exciting news that I was off on a last-minute trip to Cape Town to be bridesmaid for my best friend Priya’s last-minute wedding. Or to thank Priya.

The week before, after I’d said we couldn’t afford a trip to Cape Town at such short notice, Priya had called Pete. Apparently she’d offered to pay for the flights and put us up in her apartment if he could get us both some time off work. Priya was an actress on a Netflix show and had been in Cape Town six months a year for the past three years, so paying for two people’s flights was an achievable and amazing reality. But even if it wasn’t, that was just how Priya was; she was generous even when we were poor film school students living in a basement flat that had mould, mice and a view out of the living room window of the ankles of people running for Cricklewood station. If Priya could afford only one beer she ordered it with two glasses.

During the tube ride to Heathrow, Pete had said that getting two weeks off work had been surprisingly drama-free. Lana had been only too happy for me to take my nearly expired leave, and the head teacher of Pete’s school had a son who, in his final year at teacher’s college, was gagging for the chance to cover someone’s lessons. As he told me about the crafty coordinating Priya and he had been doing for the past three days I felt a rush of affection for them both. But only one of them was going to get lucky because of it. (I just want to be clear, that someone was Pete.) Images of us getting engaged (again, I’m talking about Pete here) had been filling my head on the journey to the airport. Surely the wedding and proximity to diamond mines would motivate that question being asked. We were at the end of our twenties and, unlike Annabelle with her two illegitimate children, or my commitment-picnicking parents, I wanted to do the marriage-before-kids traditional thing. Call me boring, but life was complex enough these days with software updates (seriously, must there be an update every time I turn on my computer?), austerity (something I was still intending to look up the definition of), and the fickle social challenge of trying to be the right kind of feminist, so why not keep the other stuff simple.

‘If we’d come straight from Annabelle’s, like I’d planned,’ Pete stressed. ‘We’d have better seats. I bet our chairs don’t even recline all the way back.’

‘Well, I’m sorry, but we had to go home,’ I said, still digging around in my carry-on. ‘I couldn’t spend two weeks in Cape Town with yoga leggings, three gym T-shirts, my gym shoes, a nightie, nineteen pairs of underpants – did you think I was going to have an accident, by the way? – and the bra I wear when I’m hung-over.’

Pete looked upset I’d questioned his clothing choices.

‘We made it, didn’t we?’ I leant towards him, abandoning the phone search and lowering my voice. ‘And I got to pack the naughty knickers you like.’

‘I guess that’s something,’ he said, thawing. ‘So, you’re really OK leaving Annabelle?’

Despite the fact that Pete thought Annabelle and the kids had outgrown the need for Mum and my daily assistance, I could tell his enquiry was genuine. Back at the house, when Pete had shown me the printed tickets to Cape Town my initial thoughts were sun, wine, Pete in board shorts tanning his sculpted torso, beach, sex, cocktails, sand, safaris, Pete’s tanned calf muscles in safari shorts, and yet I’d hugged him and said, ‘I can’t go.’

‘Wh . . . what?’ Pete had stammered, looking mystified.

‘I can’t go,’ I’d said, folding the printout in half and handing it back to my baffled boyfriend. ‘Annabelle needs—’

‘You to take millions of photos of elephants,’ Annabelle had said, handing me my coat.

‘But—’

‘And giraffes.’

‘But—’

She’d held me by the shoulders and said in a steady voice, ‘Jess, get on that plane with your boyfriend and go watch your friend get married.’

‘But the kids?’ I’d said, looking at Hunter, who was helping Katie button up her pink pyjama top. His patience with his Down’s Syndrome sister could burst your heart. It was the only time he ceased operating at Spinal Tap’s level eleven. A knot of emotion caught in my throat as he slowly did the last button up then signed ‘You did it!’ to his sister, who grinned back at him.

‘We’ll be fine,’ Annabelle had said with a look of firm determination. ‘Go. I insist.’

Pete and Annabelle, admittedly not huge fans of each other, had exchanged appreciative acknowledgements. I’d chewed my lip. Could I leave her? She hadn’t been without Mum or my help since falling pregnant with Hunter when she was a 24-year-old Art History student. Why did Mum have to be on her silent lentil retreat at the exact time I’d be in Cape Town? Dad was apparently somewhere in Scotland showing some blustery isles to a Russian, and who knows how long he’d be away this time. Not that Dad had ever been very effective in dealing with his wayward eldest. He was far too much of a softie towards Annabelle; the lovable black sheep of the family who did no right but could do no wrong.

As a child she threw temper tantrums; as an early teen she got pierced; as a late teen she took drugs and ended up in rehab then got out of there and ended up at Anorexic Camp (it was called something else ‘official’ but Annabelle and I only ever referred to it as that). Those days were tense and because Dad was often away, and Mum was trying to contain the catastrophe that was Annabelle, I’d become an independent child. I’d ordered my own organic almond-meal birthday cake from the bakery when I was eight because Annabelle had been suspended for turning up to our private school with pink hair and Mum was trying to take the neon edge out of the hot pink with henna. She ended up turning it Fraggle orange and Annabelle had pre-teen-raged the house down.

When university entrance time came around she surprised everyone by nailing her A-levels and, after a gap year in Costa Rica where she came home with a back tattoo and a worryingly extensive understanding of cannabis oil, gained entry to an Art History degree. Then fucked that up by having an anonymous one-night stand, which only I knew to be a twelve-week stand, with her very ‘nonymous’ (what is the opposite of that word?) married professor. It resulted in a darling nephew for me but also meant Annabelle had to drop out of uni to care for him. The professor moved to Arizona with his family and sent Hunter cards and money and was ungenerous with both. When Hunter was four Annabelle went back to studying accountancy part time but then Daniel the superyacht skipper happened. He came, he impregnated (came again) then buggered off leaving Annabelle with a broken heart and a two-week-old daughter with Down’s Syndrome.

Daniel adored Katie, though, and, having bought Annabelle a teeny-tiny flat in Balham just around the corner from his place, visited as often as his sailing schedule would allow. Which usually was only once or twice a year. But he didn’t know how to be a father, much less to a child who needed as much careful attention as Katie. Her speech is delayed because of low muscle tone, which makes articulation difficult, hence the baby signing. So she has a speech therapist and regular physio. She has vision difficulties so wears adorable little elasticised pink bendy glasses and has regular trips to the ophthalmologist. Winter can be a tough time because weak lungs mean pneumonia is a concern. Her paediatrician is seen so regularly that she’s almost family. It’s a busy schedule of appointments, tests and therapies. Not to mention the unscheduled trips to the casualty department; which is why Mum and I have always been on hand to help. We all have up-to-date first aid training and have taken baby signing classes. Except Pete, so we make jokes at his expense that he attempts to be good-natured about. After Daniel broke up with Annabelle she swore off men and the family cocooned around her, breathing a sigh of relief. She’s now thirty-three and totally on the straight and narrow. If by straight you mean ‘cannabis oil in your smoothie’, and your definition of narrow is ‘Mum is her supplier’.

In the last year Annabelle had started making noises about not needing so much help, but it had become a routine nobody was ready to break. Mum would finish her radio show around 11.30-ish and head over to Annabelle’s to help get Katie through to nap time while Annabelle did accounts at the kitchen table for her small handful of clients. I’d pop over most days after work and help get the kids through the evening routine before heading home to Pete, who’d invariably made a well-balanced meal and had started eating it by himself in front of the sports channel.

The queue to board shuffled forward a few steps and I considered laissez-faire Annabelle, hyper Hunter and love bug Katie being on their own until Mum got home in ten days’ time.

‘She’ll be fine,’ I said, more to comfort myself. ‘She’ll be fine.’

‘She will.’ Pete smiled, looking relieved. ‘Like Annabelle said, the kids are older now and the alone time will be good for them.’

I stretched onto tippy toes and gave Pete a kiss, not worrying about the rub of red I left on his cheek. ‘You’re amazing. I love you very much and you are going to get very lucky later – Dad . . .?’

‘No . . .’ Pete mused. ‘No, that’s an inappropriate pet name. I’m going to have to put my foot down on that one.’

I smacked him playfully on the arm. ‘Look.’ I pointed ahead at the segregated business class politely drifting through the final passport check while our logjam of riff-raff battered each other with scruffy baggage and swelled towards the passport check waiting to be loaded into the back.

‘Oh yeah,’ Pete said, craning around the shuffling mass. ‘I thought he was in Scotland?’

‘Me too.’ I dug around in my handbag again.

‘Why don’t you just yell out?’ Pete said as I finally located my phone.

‘Because,’ I dialled Dad’s number, ‘he’s miles away. And I might get arrested for causing a disturbance at an airport. They’re very strict in these places now, you know. They might think I’m a terrorist.’

A Japanese woman to our side gave a condemnatory scowl.

‘Keep your voice down,’ Pete said. ‘And why would a terrorist call out “Dad”?’

Her Japanese partner gave a condemnatory scowl.

‘To distract everyone.’ I craned my neck over the rabble and watched Dad register his phone ringing. He shifted his leather satchel and draped suit jacket from one arm to the other while patting trouser pockets, shirt pockets, carry-on luggage pockets, satchel pockets and suit jacket pockets, then eventually discovered it in the first explored pocket. ‘You know, before letting off a bomb.’

We received matching condemnatory scowls as the couple moved away, and Pete coloured all the way down his neck.

‘Hello, Plum.’ Dad’s smooth voice came down the line. ‘How are you?’

‘Great! How’s Scotland?’ I said with a smile.

I fully expected him to respond with, ‘Actually, I’m off to Cape Town’, for me to answer, ‘Actually, so am I – turn around’; for us to have a giggle, then try and wangle seats with him in business. But instead he said:

‘Oh, fine. Lots of meetings, so not much time to get out and about. Lovely views.’ He said this as he looked out of the vast airport window.

My jaw dropped. He was lying. Barefaced, standing not fifteen yards from me looking at the Heathrow tarmac, lying. I turned to Pete but he was on his phone playing ‘stick cricket’ and therefore unable to register the dramatic event.

‘Ah—’ I managed.

Dad took a step towards the desk and handed his passport to the smiling business class steward. ‘Plum, I’m sorry, I must go. I’m being called.’

‘Uh . . .’ I said, struck dumb by the development. ‘But—’

‘Bye, my love.’

‘Yeah . . .’ I croaked. ‘Dad . . .?’ But he had already hung up.

I watched him pocket his phone, smile to the young steward, take back his passport and disappear through the door beyond. Then re-emerge to collect his forgotten carry-on case.