Page 21 of If I Could Say Goodbye
‘I don’t want to go to school, Mummy.’ He pulls his arm free and wipes his snot on the sleeve of his jumper.
Ed interjects.
‘If that little bugger—’ Ed corrects himself: ‘If Erica gives you any more trouble, you punch her right in the nose, OK?’
‘Ed! I’m not sure that is the best advice,’ I murmur as I manipulate Oscar’s arms into his coat.
‘She’s always been spoilt, Jen, she needs bringing down a peg or two. Nessa always gave in too easily, even when Kerry tried to tell her—’
‘Yeah, well Kerry’s not here, is she?’ I snap. ‘Cut Nessa some slack, we need to support her, not make things worse.’
‘I have a tummy egg.’ Oscar pleads, his lip wobbling and his eyes filling.
Hailey appears, coat on, the blue bows at the bottom of her plaits swinging. ‘Can we go now?’
The walk to school goes better than I expected: Oscar is easily distracted by Hailey playing the Guess Which Disney Character I Am game.
‘Do you have black hair?’ Oscar asks.
‘Yes.’
‘Are you a baddie or a goodie?’
The questions continue, but as we near the school, it is me who is becoming anxious, it is me that is tightening my grip on his small hand. I kiss Hailey goodbye as she goes to the upper school playground, leaving Oscar and me watching the school doors with trepidation. They are opened by the smiles of the teachers and are flooded with small, eager feet in shiny shoes and swinging lunchboxes, the faces of superheroes and unicorns battling for the spotlight, but Oscar isn’t moving. I crouch down and wipe away a stray tear with my thumb, but my thumb can’t go with him through those doors; my warm arm won’t be wrapped around his body, there to comfort him.
‘Please don’t make me go.’ The words explode from his mouth: they are urgent, desperate, their meaning indisputable.
He catches a glance from a girl in his class whose steps hesitate; the swing of her pink lunchbox changes trajectory, the arc of movement slowing. Oscar inhales a deep breath, trying to stop himself from crying, trying to be a brave soldier, but a tear drops from his lashes. I watch it fall down his perfectly pure skin, over the curve of his cheek, tainting it with a track that shouldn’t be there. The swinging lunchbox gathers momentum and passes us by.
‘Please don’t make me go.’
I don’t want to make him go.
So I don’t.
Chapter Fourteen
Ed
I’m not a complainer. OK, so I know I’ve only just been complaining about the sex stuff so I’m kind of contradicting myself, aren’t I? But do you know how scary it is to have the school on the phone telling you that your children aren’t there? How scary it is when you then can’t get hold of your wife?
I can understand why she did it, I mean, don’t get me wrong, I don’t like my little lad looking so upset, but the fact of the matter is, well, that’s life, isn’t it? You get knocked down and then you get back up again . . . well, Kerry didn’t, but you know what I mean. Life isn’t easy, is it? Oscar needs to ignore the crap it throws at him, or learn how to deal with it at least. You don’t run away to the river and feed him ice cream, and if you do, you don’t just take him and his sister out of school without at least phoning in with a sicky.
This little episode has worried me for a few reasons.
1) Jennifer does things by the rules. She makes cakes for the school fair, she sews name badges into school uniforms, she keeps receipts in alphabetical and date order . . . ‘just in case’. So why has she decided to not just break a small rule but a big whopping one?
2) She never makes a fuss. Once we went out and she ordered a steak sandwich where the meat was so tough, she was chewing the same piece for about five minutes before she spat it out. When the waiter came over and asked how the meal was, I was all for sending the plate back, but Jen, well she smiled and said it was beautiful. Telling the school when they finally got hold of her that her kids needed a day out, is making quite a big frigging fuss.
I spent three hours thinking my family were hurt, or dead or abducted, but do you know what was the most worrying about it? It was almost like, deep down, I was expecting it. That deep down I know that something is wrong with Jen.
Do you know how I found out that my family weren’t dead? Instagram. Thanks to Instagram I have now made an excuse about a ‘family emergency’ and am currently exceeding the speed limit and on my way to Muddy Creek.
Which brings me to concern number three:
3) She didn’t even care if people could see that she had blatantly taken the kids out of school. There they were, smiling on a grass bank, eating ice cream.
An hour later, and I am parking the car next to the small café overlooking the stream. It’s where we always brought them when they were little: toilets, café, tadpoles, all within parking distance.
