Liz Fielding - Wedded in a Whirlwind

‘Waited? Are you telling me that as the son of a Government minister you didn’t get instant attention?’ she said, still mocking him, but gently now.

‘The doctors were busy with more serious stuff. It didn’t matter. We talked about what I was going to do on my gap year. About the election. It wasn’t often I got him to myself like that.’

‘So the evening wasn’t a total wash-out.’

‘Not a wash-out on any level,’ He admitted. It had been the last time they’d been together like that. His father had been given a high-powered cabinet job after the election. He’d gone to university.

Manda knelt back on her heels, her hands gripped with painful tightness as Nick, seemingly unaware of her, relived a precious evening spent with his father. Did he, she wondered, realise how lucky he was?

She yearned for just one memory like that.

One day when her mother or father had taken time out of their busy lives to come and see her at school, take her out for tea. For her birthday to have been more than a date in a secretary’s diary.

‘I suppose now you’re going to tell me that I should remember all the good bits, forget the rest,’ he said, breaking into her own dark thoughts.

‘I wouldn’t dream of suggesting any such thing,’ she said.

‘Don’t be so modest, Miranda. We both know that you would.’

‘Then we’d both be wrong,’ she said vehemently. ‘I’d tell you to remember all of it. Every little thing. The good, the bad, the totally average and be grateful for every single moment.’ She caught herself. Shrugged awkwardly. ‘Sorry. It’s none of my business.’

The stone was hurting her knees and she shifted to a sitting position.

‘Here. Lean back against me, you’ll be more comfortable.’ Then, his arm around her, he said, ‘Tell me one of your memories, Miranda. Your first day at school. Was that good? Bad? Totally average?’

‘Not great. All the other new girls had been brought along by their mothers. Mine was away somewhere.’ She had always been away. ‘Let’s see…September? Shooting in Scotland, probably. Anyway, I told whichever unhappy creature was my nanny at the time to take me home since obviously it had to be a mother who delivered me to school.’

‘Did she?’

‘What do you think? The poor woman couldn’t wait to be shot of me and I was handed over kicking and screaming. No reprieve. A first impression that I strived to live down to. Can you remember your first day?’

‘I wish I couldn’t. My mother cried. I was so embarrassed that I wouldn’t let her take me nearer than the end of the road after that.’

‘Oh, poor woman!’

‘What about me? I had to live with the shame.’

‘What horrible little brats we both were.’

‘We were five years old. We were supposed to be horrible little brats.’

‘I suppose.’

‘Tell me about your first kiss,’ he said.

She sighed. ‘We’re doing all the horrible stuff first, are we?’

‘Was it horrible?’

‘I was fourteen. That dreadful age when you’re pretending to be grown up but you’re not. When kissing is a competitive sport, something to be dissected in detail with your friends afterwards and points awarded for technical merit, artistic style and endurance. Mine was with a boy called Jonathan Powell, all clashing teeth and acne. Of course, when we compared notes afterwards I lied through my back teeth. You?’

‘Thirteen. Her name was Lucy…Something. I think she must have been practising because I had a really good time.’

‘Not just a brat, but a precocious brat and, before you even think of taking this to the next logical step,’ she warned, ‘forget it.’

‘Okay. You choose. Tell me something that happened to you. Something that’s stayed with you.’

‘My very own heart-warming moment?’ she replied, mocking herself.

‘I don’t know. Have you got a heart to be warmed?’

‘Bastard,’ she said, but laughing now.

She’d never talked like this to a man. It was as if, sheared of all expectations, freed by the darkness, they could be totally honest with one another. Could say anything.

‘And now you’ve got that off your chest?’ he prompted.

‘Okay. A memory. Let’s see.’

She dredged her mind for something that would satisfy him-something big-and, without warning, she was back on the streets, scouting locations for the documentary. ‘At the beginning of the year I took my colleague Daisy on a worldwide recce to find locations where we could film our documentary.’

‘The one about street kids.’

‘Right. We’d been all over. It was all done and dusted and we were on our way home from the airport when Daisy told the taxi driver to stop-wait for us-and dragged me down a side alley.’

She could still see it. Smell it.

‘We were in one of the richest countries in the world, metres from the kind of stores where women like me buy handbags that cost four figures, restaurants where we toy with expensive food that we’re afraid to eat in case we put on a pound or two. And there was this kid, a little girl, Rosie, digging around in a dumpster for food that had been thrown away.’

He let slip the same word that had dropped from her lips. Shock, horror…

‘I’d known such things happened,’ she said. She shook her head, for a moment unable to say another word. ‘I’d known, but blocked it out. To see it with my own eyes…’

‘It isn’t your fault.’

‘Isn’t it? Isn’t it the fault of everyone who looks the other way? Blocks it out?’ Even now, her throat tightened as she remembered the shock of it. The horror. ‘I felt so helpless. It was freezing cold and I wanted to pick her up, carry her away, wash her, feed her, make her safe, but Daisy…’ she swallowed as she remembered ‘…Daisy just walked over and joined in, helping her look for the best stuff. It was the most horrible thing I’d ever seen in my life but she’d been there, lived it. Knew how to connect with her. And it was that child’s story that touched people, had the country in an uproar, demanding that something be done. Her thin, grubby, defiant little face on the cover of magazines, looking out of the screen, that won us our award.’

‘And you feel guilty about that?’

‘Wouldn’t you? Where was she when I was picking it up at a ritzy awards ceremony decked out in a designer dress?’

‘What were you going to do, Miranda? Take in every kid that you saw on the street? Your job was to focus on what was out there, raise public awareness. You helped all those kids, not just one.’ Then, when she didn’t say anything, ‘What did happen to her? Do you know?’

She shook her head. ‘As you can imagine, thousands of couples wanted to give her a home. Adopt her.’

‘But not you?’

‘No,’ she said, trying to keep her voice steady. ‘Not me.’ Then, ‘Have you any idea how tough it is to take in a feral child? To make her believe that you’ll never let her down, no matter what she does. Because she’ll test you…’

She faltered and Jago let go of one of her hands and wiped a thumb over her cheek. It came away wet, just as he’d known it would.

‘Something that you’d know all about, right?’ He didn’t need or wait for an answer, but pulled her into his arms and held her. ‘Tough as marshmallow.’

She dug an elbow in his ribs.

‘Ouch!’

‘Well, what do you expect?’ she demanded through a sniffle. ‘Marshmallow! I don’t think so!’

‘No? Maybe not,’ He said, remembering his earlier thought that she was like those sugar-coated, melt in your mouth chocolates. All hard shell on the outside…‘Turkish Delight?’ he offered, tormenting her to block out the image.

‘How about seaside rock?’

‘No way.’ His head and shoulder hurt when he laughed, but the very idea of her as a stick of bright pink mint-flavoured candy with her name printed all the way through was so outrageous that he couldn’t help himself. ‘I’ll bet the majority of your wardrobe is black.’

She didn’t deny it, but countered with, ‘Liquorice. I’ll settle for liquorice. That’s black. But it has to have been in the fridge.’

‘Now you’re talking,’ he said and his stomach approved noisily too. ‘Maybe we should stop talking about food.’

‘I’ve still got three mints left.’ She turned her head to look up at him. ‘They’re yours if you want them.’

‘With my three that makes a feast, but let’s save them for breakfast.’ Then, because he hadn’t eaten since early the previous morning and needed a distraction, ‘When we get out of here, you should go and find her. That little girl.’

‘It wouldn’t be fair, Nick.’

‘You’ve thought about it, then?’

She didn’t deny it, but shook her head anyway. ‘It’ll be tough enough for her to move on, for her new parents, without me turning up and bringing it all back.’

‘Maybe you could keep an eye on her from a distance. It would put your mind at rest. And you’ll be there in case she ever needs a fairy godmother.’

‘Kids don’t need fairy godmothers, Nick. They need real mothers who are there for them every day, rain or shine, doing the boring stuff. Parents who earn love the hard way every day of their lives.’

He knew she was right. Knew she was talking about more than a little girl whose life she’d changed.

‘You think I was hard on my parents, don’t you?’

‘Yes. No…I don’t know.’ She drew in a deep breath. ‘I don’t know anything, Nick. I’m just imagining what would happen if one of them was sick. If your mother needed you. Your father wanted to make some kind of peace…’ He thought she’d finished, but then, very quietly, she said, ‘Suppose you’d died here without ever having told them how much you love them-’

‘I don’t!’

‘Of course you do, Nick. It only hurts if you love someone.’

Her words seemed to echo around the chamber, filling the space, filling his head, until, almost in desperation he said, ‘We’re not going to die. Not today.’

MIRANDA drew a breath and for a moment he thought she wasn’t going to let it drop. Instead, with a little shake of her head, she said, ‘Is it still today? It seems a lifetime since I walked up that path, wishing I was somewhere else.’

‘You should be careful what you wish for.’

‘Thanks,’ she said, fishing the phone from her pocket and turning it on to check the time. ‘I’ll remember that for next time.’ Then, with a sigh of relief, ‘No, it’s tomorrow. Just. How long before it’s going to be light?’

He glanced at the screen. ‘A few hours yet.’ He felt her shiver but not with cold. Shock, hunger and thirst were doubtless taking their toll on her reserves. ‘Why don’t you check your messages?’ he suggested in an attempt to reconnect her to reality, the outside world.

‘The battery…’

‘We’re not going anywhere until daylight,’ He assured her, overriding any protest. ‘Read them. Text back. Tell them what you’re feeling.’

‘I don’t think so! Besides, what’s the point if there’s no signal?’ Then, catching his meaning, ‘Oh. I see. You’re suggesting I send them a last message. Something for them to find if we don’t make it?’

Did he mean that? Maybe…

At least she had someone to leave a message for.

‘We’re going to make it,’ he said with more conviction than he actually felt. Who knew what daylight would reveal? They might still have to climb their way out and they were weaker now and he’d be operating pretty much one-handed. He wouldn’t be able to catch her a second time. ‘You’ll be seeing them all before you know it, but sending a message will make you feel better.’

‘You think? And what about you, Nick?’

‘What about me?’

‘Is there anyone you want to leave a last message for? What will make you feel better?’

He knew what she was asking him. Telling him. To leave a message for his parents. He could see how she must find it difficult to understand how he could have walked away, how destroyed he’d felt. But they had been his world. They’d brought him up to believe in the cardinal virtues. Integrity, truth. He’d believed in them. He’d believed in a lie…

‘I’ll take another of those kisses, if you’ve got one to spare,’ he said in an attempt to stop her from pursuing that thought.

Manda heard what she was supposed to hear-a careless, throwaway remark, pitched perfectly to provoke her into giving him another poke in the ribs, to distract her.

But she heard more.

Somewhere, hidden beneath the banter, she caught an edge of something she recognised.

Nick Jago, with no other way to push back the darkness, to distract her from her fear, her hunger, had shared his story. To help her feel a little less alone, he’d exposed a hurt that went so deep he’d cut himself off from his world, even to the point of changing his name.

She understood that kind of pain. How it was tied up with everything you were. Knew how, in order to keep it hidden, you had to wear a mask every day of your life until it became so much a part of you that even those closest to you believed that was who you were.