Part One Hundred And Twenty Seven
John had slept beside George on the Friday night, gently soothing away the dreams she wasn't aware of that made her call Charlie's name. He had no idea of the extent to which George and Jo had talked yesterday, but he guessed that Charlie had certainly been a part of that conversation. Waking at around seven on the Saturday morning, he observed that George was still sound asleep, and still looked utterly exhausted. Pressing a soft kiss to her forehead, he got out of bed and grabbed a quick shower. Leaving a hastily scribbled note on the bedside table to let her know where he was, he left the house, and caught the tube back to the Old Bailey to fetch George's car. She was still asleep when he got back, so he made himself a cup of tea and investigated the fridge. Finding only a couple of lemons, a lettuce that should definitely be certified as extra terrestrial, a box of dubious looking eggs and some condiments, he rolled his eyes and made a rapid dash round the nearby supermarket, picking up some of George's favourite foods to try and tempt her in to eating again. When he returned, it was just before ten. Making himself a cup of tee, he went back upstairs, and seeing that she was still asleep, he sat and read the morning paper. She began to drift in to the realms of consciousness around eleven o'clock, pretty much fifteen hours after she'd gone to sleep the night before. Pushing her hair out of her eyes, she looked over at him.
"What are you doing here?" She asked, her voice still husky from sleep.
"Waiting for you to wake up," He said, looking over the top of the paper. George gradually persuaded her reluctant body in to some semblance of movement, and turned over to reach the clock on her bedside table. Picking it up, she squinted at it. Putting it down again, she caught sight of his note and brought it closer to read it.
"Gone to fetch your car, and to find something edible to inhabit your fridge. If you wake before I come back, don't move. John." She looked up. "Find something inedible to inhabit my fridge, bloody cheek."
"Have you looked in your fridge lately?" He challenged.
"Not so as you'd notice, no," She replied, gently moving in to a sitting position.
"I think we need to talk, don't you?" He said quietly.
"Absolutely not," She replied, "I had quite enough verbal purging yesterday to last me a lifetime."
"Tough," He said gently but firmly.
"Really," She said, slowly getting out of bed. "Well, we'll see about that, but not until I've had a shower." As she walked towards the bathroom, she coughed.
"Oh, god," She groaned, "I think we must have smoked an entire Cuban tobacco harvest."
"You and Jo are a bad influence on each other where that's concerned," He replied, "At least Houghton made you give it up." Standing in the bathroom doorway, she swiveled round to glare at him.
"If all you're going to do is whinge at me, then you can disappear right this minute, because I am really not in the mood for it." Stalking in to the bathroom, she closed the door, not seeing the slight smile on his face. She was reacting, she was arguing with him, that was always a good sign.
When George emerged from the hot shower about twenty minutes later, she found a cup of tea waiting for her on the dressing-table. Wrapped in a towel, she stood in front of the mirror, brushing the tangles out of her wet hair. Whilst she was giving it a going over with the hairdryer, she watched through the mirror as John appeared in the bedroom doorway. Ignoring him completely, she finished drying her hair. After replacing the dryer in the drawer, she was about to make an attempt at deciding what to wear, when he moved forward and said,
"I'd like to weigh you first."
"Please don't," She said, but knowing of old that he would. John walked to the bathroom, and dragged out the scales from under the sink. Silently capitulating to his request, she approached this all too familiar piece of machinery.
"Hey," he said, as she lifted a foot to stand on the scales, "Lose the towel. That probably weighs a kilo all by itself."
"Fine," Said George, draping it over the radiator, "But don't you dare criticize what you see, because I can assure you, you won't like it."
"Have I ever criticised the way you look?"
"No, but there's a first time for everything." When she stood on the scales, he had to try extremely hard to keep the shock out of his face. She was literally skin and bone, her ribs far far too prominent, and with a waist he could probably span with his two hands. Baring her entire weight, the scales stood at five stone ten. George briefly glanced down at the glass plate between her feet, and then up at John's face.
"Do you know something," She said, stepping off the scales and resuming her outer layer of sarcasm, "I've never once heard you swear in the whole time I've known you, yet right now, you look like you could cheerfully utter the most vile word that ever existed."
"Yeah, well, get any thinner and I just might," He replied, slipping far too easily back in to their usual sparring. Then he softened slightly. "George, you haven't been this thin since..."
"I know," Replied George, pulling on a clean nightie followed by a thick dressing-gown, "Not since after Charlie. Five stone seven, wasn't it? So, I've still got a way to go." She knew she shouldn't antagonise him, but it was the only way she could maintain her guard.
"That isn't funny," He said sternly. Hating to give him any satisfaction at having the last word, she stalked downstairs ahead of him and made for the kitchen. On the table, there was a plate of grapes and sliced apple, and she was touched that he'd remembered that this was usually what she preferred to nibble on when she was getting back in to eating again. She hated this. First, he'd make her angry, and then he'd do something like this that reminded her of how much she still needed him. Opening the fridge, she was further thrown to see that he'd done exactly what he used to do in the old days to get her to eat again. Strawberries, smoked salmon, kiwi fruit, and that disgusting French cheese that she liked to eat when it was virtually walking off the plate, together with numerous other things, all with long sell by dates because he knew how long it took her to develop normal eating habits again. Pouring herself a glass of grapefruit juice, she closed the fridge door, knowing that she wouldn't be going near most of it for a day or two.
"Did you eat anything yesterday?" He asked, watching her from the doorway.
"For all the good it did me. I don't know who's the least subtle out of you and Jo in that line of persuasion,"
"Why for all the good it did you?" He asked, not immediately remembering the perfectly normal reaction to reintroducing food to a stomach that has got used to doing without.
"Throwing up in front of one's rival, can never, ever be called an aid to ego enhancement," She replied dryly. "Though I must say, your leading lady does have heights of sensitivity that I wouldn't previously have guessed at."
"You call Jo my leading lady as if I'm putting on a better act than you," He commented. She laughed, her smile very determined.
"Oh, Do I. Well, if you think that I'm the only one who will be having their script well and truly rewritten, you are very much mistaken. I'd say it was about time that your defenses were thoroughly dismantled, wouldn't you?"
"That wasn't my original idea, no," He said warily. Picking up the plate of fruit, she walked towards him.
"Well, I can assure you, I'm not going down on my own. This was your idea, so you're coming with me." Then, her tone becoming gentler, she said, "You've got just as much redirecting of thought to do as I have."
Following him in to the lounge, she saw that he'd lit the fire, which was now crackling gently and emitting a welcoming warmth. John had drawn up the largest armchair and placed it at right angles to the fire. He took the plate of fruit from her and put it on the coffee table, and when she moved to take her usual place on the sofa, he took her hand and they moved towards the armchair. In the old days, they'd often snuggled close together in this chair, it being large enough to take the two of them. It seemed almost natural for them to slip in to their old position, each with an arm around the other with her leaning against him. It occurred to her that they hadn't done this for years, but she didn't voice the thought. There were far too many things, simple, little, wonderful things they hadn't done for a very long time. He had moved the coffee table so that the plate of fruit, plus her cigarettes and an ashtray were in easy reach of her right hand. For a while, they simply sat there, John painfully aware of how thin she was, and George suddenly quiet, now that the time had finally come.
"Tell me what you talked about with Jo yesterday," John eventually prompted.
"Mostly about you, and Charlie. Jo's like you, she has a way of making you talk when it's the last bloody thing in the world you want to contemplate. We established the fact that I have more guilt festering away inside me than an entire congregation of Roman Catholics. What more is there to it." She picked up a slice of apple from the plate and stared at it. John simply watched her. He made no comment when she put it back down, knowing that she would eat it eventually.
"We'll come to why you did this again in a while," Said John, "But I think we ought to go back to what happened the first time." He felt her stiffen. "When Charlie was born," He continued, "You hid everything about the way you felt from me."
"And are you surprised?" She asked in disgust.
"No," He said patiently, "But I'd like to know why."
"John, you know why. For some wholly unfathomable reason, I didn't or couldn't love my own daughter." He felt her recoil from her own words. "How was I supposed to tell her utterly besotted father, that I didn't love the child he'd given me. The day you dragged that confession out of me, was without doubt the worst day of my life." In thought, John was forced to admit that it had certainly been one of his. "I felt like the most evil woman who'd ever existed," She said in a strangled voice, the pain being gradually dragged out in to the open like the excision of diseased tissue. "Charlie was, is, beautiful, but I was so bloody self-obsessed that I couldn't make room in my life for her."
"But you did," He said gently, "You cared for her far better than you ever thought you did. Outwardly, you never once let Charlie know how you felt, and that was what mattered."
"And we both know that only lasted until she was of an age where explaining my absence became necessary," Said George bitterly. "Charlie isn't stupid, John. She knows she lived with you most of the time because I couldn't deal with the responsibility, because that normal, maternal instinct never quite got turned on. Charlie knows that for years I only really tolerated her presence, and that even now, that what I feel for her is so mixed up that I couldn't ever begin to explain it. Whether she worked that out on her own, or whether you enlightened her, I don't know."
"George, I may have done a lot of regrettable things in my time," He said firmly, "But I have never been disloyal to you where Charlie's concerned. What Charlie may or may not have discovered about why things were the way they were, has never come from me."
"That's what I don't understand. Why have you always protected me in that way. It isn't as if I deserved it. Why will you never blame me for failing at the most natural thing in the world." Her voice had taken on a slightly hysterical quality and she turned her face away from him in an effort to hide the tears that had risen to her eyes. "I really can't do this, John," She said, aware of the ongoing mantra in her head that said, I will not cry, I will not cry, I will not cry.
"Yes, you can," He said slowly, feeling the familiar physical and emotional tension in her that meant she was about to flea, about to run as far and as fast as possible from the inevitable crumbling of her walls that was steadily catching up with her. She reached desperately for a cigarette, knowing that the breathing action necessary for smoking would bring her body back under control. She considerately turned her face to blow the smoke away from him, and the deep intake of every drag did have the desired effect of allowing her to temporarily regain her equilibrium.
"Why the frantic desire not to cry?" He asked, knowing exactly what she was doing.
"Because I loathe losing control with anyone, but especially with you. I'm not entirely sure that I'll be able to stop."
"Would it surprise you to know that I felt exactly the same with my therapist?"
"No, it wouldn't surprise me in the least, because I suspect that's why you then slept with her, to regain the reins so to speak."
"That's very astute of you," He said with a wry smile.
"I know you a lot better than you think I do, John," She said seriously. "You hate losing control just as much as I do. The difference is that I maintain the appearance of control by not eating, and you do it by screwing." He flinched at her last word, and she said, "Don't look at me like that. You don't make love to most of those women, because you don't hang around long enough to even possibly love them. Taking some random woman to bed is sometimes the one thing in your life that you understand, the one thing you almost always succeed at. For anyone who knows you, it is noticeable that you will pick up someone new when a part of your life is out of your control. Take that waitress friend of Charlie's for example. The only reason you started seeing her, I've forgotten her name."
"Carol."
"That's it, Carol. Well, I think you only started seeing Carol because Jo was getting to you by having the appearance of a fling with Roe Colmore. Then, with your therapist, she all but forced you to lose control, which I suspect isn't something you've ever done with anyone except perhaps Jo. The only time I've ever seen you cry was when Charlie was born because you were so happy. So, pursuing and eventually seducing your therapist was your way of reasserting your control. I'd even go so far as to say that that's why you came looking for a repeat performance with me. It got to you that I didn't enjoy it, especially when you'd discovered why I came looking for it. But it got to you even more that I'd attempted to hide that from you. You're not used to not being able to satisfy any woman you sleep with, and you wanted to prove that you could still do it for me." He looked at her with a contemplative gaze.
"I've never thought about it like that," He said, "In the old days, you'd never have even thought about faking it. If you didn't enjoy it, you said so."
"And I have memory enough to know that it hurt you whenever I said that. It didn't occur to me to lie to you about it, but sometimes I wish I had. For you, making love is how you express your love for someone."
"Isn't it for everyone?"
"Yes, most of the time it is. But for you, it's more important. Making someone writhe in total ecstasy is far more acceptable and far safer than admitting to your real feelings. I didn't know that when we were married, but I've worked it out since."
"I used to think you didn't love me," He said, slightly astounded that these words had been uttered.
"I know you did," She said softly. "It was me I didn't love, for want of a better way to put it, not you. I was so eaten up with guilt that I couldn't enjoy anything. I think part of me thought I didn't deserve to be happy."
"Will you tell me something?" He asked.
"What?" She replied, never willing to agree to something before she knew what she was committing herself too.
"Will you tell me exactly how you felt when you first found out you were pregnant?"
"I'm not sure you'll really want to know, but yes, okay." Detaching herself from John, she stood up and began pacing, occasionally eating a grape or a slice of apple. From her clear inability to keep still, he could tell she was incredibly afraid of what she was about to say to him.
"I remember," She began hesitantly. "I didn't go in to work that day, because I felt so awful." He could remember it like it was yesterday. The way she'd come downstairs as usual, and he'd put a mug of coffee down on the table in front of her. She'd stared at the coffee, all the colour draining from her face. The memory of the scrape of the chair over the stone flags in the kitchen, followed by her frantic dash upstairs to the bathroom, brought back flashes of the life they'd once had. "After you'd left for court," She continued, "I went back to bed and slept till lunchtime. I felt all right when I woke up, and I started thinking. John, you know how often we used to..."
"Make love?" He supplied, amused at her difficulty in finding the right phrase.
"Yes. The 'Just come in from work quickie' always had a certain extra frisson about it." He smiled, vividly remembering the urgency with which they'd sometimes greeted each other after a hard day's work. There'd always been something slightly naughty, yet incredibly sexy about that form of instant gratification for both of them. "What I'm saying is," Went on George, observing the smile that had lifted the corners of his mouth, "That even though I was on the pill, it wouldn't really have mattered how careful we were. We made love so often that it was bound to happen some time. But it wasn't something we'd really ever discussed. Okay, we knew that a family was something we both wanted some day, in the future, maybe, but other than that, it had never really come up as something to worry about." George lit another cigarette and kept on pacing. "I felt like time had stopped," She said, feeling the dread creeping over her like a thousand tiny butterflies. "When I realised the possibility, I felt detached, as if I was looking down on myself. The slightly crazy half of me wanted to run away, to hide. But the vaguely sensible, adult part of me knew that I needed to know. I couldn't wait, to allow my body to make its mind up. One way or the other, I just had to know. So, I went out and found the nearest chemist and bought a testing kit. I sat upstairs for hours after I read the result, just staring at it. I felt numb, confused, as if I was in freefall without a parachute. Even then, even at the beginning, I felt like my life was spinning out of my control."
"I remember," Said John slowly, "You waited till late that night, till we were in bed. That's when you told me."
"And you were so happy," Said George, her voice breaking and tears again rising to her eyes. "The last thing I could do was to even suggest that it wasn't what I thought I wanted. I couldn't do that to you." Tears had begun running down her face at this point. "How could I shatter the one dream you hadn't so far been able to fulfill." She moved to sit on the sofa, needing to keep her distance from him, but desperately wanting the comfort that being in his arms would provide. "I felt overwhelmed," She continued, "This thing that was growing inside me had taken over my entire life. Everything I did, everything I thought was tied up with a perfectly natural process that I didn't want to be any part of. For the last three months before Charlie was born, I barely looked in a mirror. I couldn't handle how much I'd changed. I knew that what I felt was wrong. I was supposed to be happy, to feel the same glorious sense of achievement and anticipation that I knew you did." John was aware of a lot of the feelings she'd had, from the first time they'd talked about this, but he could see that she needed to say it, so he let her continue. "The first time I looked at Charlie, the first time I held her, I knew. I knew that I didn't love this child who was part of me. I tried so hard to love her. Over the next few months, everything I did was in a desperate attempt to make myself love her, and all the time, I could feel the guilt becoming heavier, gradually pressing down on me till I thought it would flatten me altogether. You didn't know it till then, but starving myself has always been my reaction to stress, ever since I was fifteen. After Charlie was born, I didn't think I knew who I was. Not eating was my way of regaining something I knew, something I understood. I had to hide how I felt from you. I felt enough of a failure without you knowing what an utterly evil woman I was. I loathed everything I was in those days. I couldn't love my own daughter, I was going quietly crazy with all the feelings associated with that and what I was doing to myself, and I couldn't even maintain a vague sense of normality by sleeping with you. It hurt you so much that I didn't want you to touch me, that I couldn't even bare to have your arms round me. You tried to hide it, but I could still see it. I thought that any sign of love or affection from you would break me up all together, and I'd have to tell you what was really wrong with me, and in the end, that's what you did anyway. You're not as good at hiding your feelings as you think you are. When you finally forced me to tell you that I didn't love our daughter, the pain in your face almost did me in. It made it worse for a while, because I knew I'd hurt you immeasurably. But you didn't even reproach me for it, not outwardly anyway." She went quiet for a moment, her words seeming to have dried up in favour of the increased flow of her tears. "I'm so, so sorry," She said eventually, the grip on her control inexorably slipping, like that of a person's fingers after hours of clinging to a cliff edge. She looked so vulnerable, so defenceless, that he had an overwhelming urge to hold her close, to attempt to take some of the pain away.
"come here," He said, but she shook her head, feeling as she had all those years ago, that she didn't deserve any comfort from him. "come on," He said gently, not taking no for an answer. She got up, and slowly walked over to him, still not altogether sure if she should. He took her hand, and pulled her down beside him, wrapping his arms round her.
"I, I promised myself that, that I wouldn't do this," She said between sobs, her whole body wracked with the pain that had been festering for too long. He just held her, stroking her hair and allowing her the freedom to really give way. He didn't attempt to calm her down at first, knowing that she needed to do this, that she needed to fall apart completely before she began putting herself back together again. She clung to him, as if fearing that he would let her slip below the surface, never again to be truly sane. George had been close to cracking for a long time now, and he knew that this forceful breaking open of her soul was just the beginning. Only in time would she be able to gather together the fragments of her self-respect in order to start replacing her outer shell. When she began to show signs of calming down, he lifted her face from where it rested against his chest, and said,
"George, listen to me. You must stop blaming yourself for what happened with Charlie, you really must. No one can help the things they feel. You couldn't help feeling the way you did about her." He said all this in a slow, gently firm voice, which had the added bonus of slightly decreasing the level of violence in her gasps.
"I wanted to love her," She said, "I really did."
"I know you did," He said quietly. "But it doesn't always work like that. Just because you didn't, doesn't mean you failed."
"don't be so bloody ridiculous!" She replied, utterly unable to accept his affirmation.
"George, my real mother gave me up for adoption, either because she didn't want me or because she couldn't keep me. Either way, I don't blame her for it. You cannot force yourself to love someone, you just can't."
"Why are you being so nice to me?" She asked, unconsciously uttering the same words she'd said to Jo the day before.
"Because right now, you need me to be," He answered, "Because you are in serious danger of going right under, and I don't want you to do that. Don't hide from me, George. If nothing else, that's what I'm here for, it's what I'll always be here for. We didn't go through nearly nine years of marriage for nothing."
"I don't deserve you," She said miserably. He turned her face towards him, and forced her to look him in the eye.
"George, you went through an enormous amount of heartache for me, for the sole reason that you didn't want to deny me the opportunity to have a child. I'll always be indebted to you for that."
"Please don't," She said flatly, "I don't want to hear it."
"Maybe you don't, but you do need to hear it. You've beaten yourself up about this for far too long. It has got to stop. This form of punishment that you insist on putting yourself through, ends, now."
"It's not quite that simple, John."
"Why?"
"It's like your addiction to women," She said, her voice becoming angry. "I stop eating because it makes me feel good, in a weird and twisted kind of way, and you go to bed with numerous, nameless women because it makes you feel good. You don't like thinking of yourself as an addict, do you," She said, observing the retreat in his face, "But that's what you are, that's what both of us are. Anorexia for me is a fallback, a prop, the one thing I can lean on when the rest of my life is out of sync, and if you are remotely honest with yourself, you'll admit that that's what having more one night stands than you've had hot dinners is for you. I'm not passing judgment on you, because I know that what I do is just as screwed up, if not more so. I introduced you to the need to pick up women, because I couldn't let you love me. You went through the motions of loving them because I was so consumed with everything I felt or didn't feel for Charlie that it didn't occur to me that I was hurting you in the process. But once everything did come to a head, and I discovered that it was okay to be loved again, you'd already got the taste for it. It was too easy for you to do. You liked a bit of nameless skirt because it was uncomplicated. I got used to it after a while, because I thought you'd always come back to me. When I was aware of your playing away, it hurt like hell, and when you came back, I tried to make the most of you. But I couldn't hold you anymore, and part of me thought it was my punishment for not loving the child you'd given me." She reached for the box of tissues on the coffee table and blew her nose. An inextricable feeling of sadness came over John when she said this. He had hurt her so much, by not trying to understand hard enough as to why she hadn't been able to let herself be loved by him.
"I'm sorry," He said after a long silence.
"I know," She said gently, "But if I've got to stop blaming myself for being such a failure as a mother, then you've got to stop pushing away the woman who loves you, in favour of instant, temporary gratification with every other woman going. Jo desperately wants to be the one woman in your life. You've just got to let her."
"I didn't come here to talk about Jo," He said, feeling that George's probing was getting way too close to base.
"I know you didn't, but I think you should. Jo told me about her termination." He visibly flinched, never having wanted George to know about this.
"Not my finest hour," He said, and she could see the pain in his eyes.
"No, not hers either," George replied. "I think that part of why she puts up with you," George continued after a short pause, "Is because maintaining a link with you, somehow allows her to maintain a link with her unborn child. She didn't say so, and I doubt whether she ever would, but I think that the feeling of not quite being able to let go is mixed up with how much she loves you."
"I think she blamed me for it, for quite some time," Said John, "Even though it was her who had a husband and children, and it was her who really made that decision."
"At the time, blaming you was probably far easier than blaming herself, and though I hate to have to point this out to you, she does, or did, have the fragment of a point." At his look of outrage, George held up a hand. "Just listen to me before you get on your high horse. Did what happened with Jo, ever have any effect on the way you were with other women? I mean, did it ever make you think that actually, there are, or at least can be consequences of going to bed with someone, no matter how brief the fling might be."
"No, not really," He said, utterly shame faced. "Unless the woman I'm with brings it up as a problem, it's not something I ever really think about." George rolled her eyes.
"Do you not perhaps think that there is the slightest possibility," She said slowly, as if to a child, "That what happened to Jo might easily have happened to any one or number of your subsequent conquests?" John went quiet.
"If I started thinking like that," He replied eventually, "I'd wonder about every one of them, and that's something I can't afford to do. You're right, most of them don't mean anything to me. It's almost purely physical, like the normal, natural urge to consume food very occasionally," He said sternly, fixing her with his unwavering gaze, and attempting to transfer the focus of the conversation back to George. To shut him up on this subject, she ate the last slice of apple on the plate.
"The baby you nearly had with Jo," Said George slowly, "Was the reason you objected so vehemently to Charlie's having a termination, wasn't it."
"Yes, probably," He admitted, the force of the regret he'd felt at Charlie's decision hitting him anew. "Jo said that I was trying to make up for the past."
"And were you?" She asked gently. He heaved a big sigh.
"Yeah, maybe I was. I couldn't be strong for Jo when she needed me. You and me were getting divorced, I was trying to deal with looking after Charlie on my own, and because of Charlie, I'd moved in to teaching law rather than practicing it, which is how I met Jo in the first place. Taking on another commitment, just wasn't possible. Jo had a terminally ill husband, and two very young children plus her career to keep going. So, when she said she was thinking of having a termination, it seemed to be the obvious solution to a problem. I think I accepted the situation too easily. Jo's never said so, but I think she resented the matter-of-fact way I accepted what she decided to do. But it was her decision, George, I had to let her decide what she wanted. It was her body, not mine. I remember, she didn't say a word when I drove her home afterwards. We sat in the car outside her house. I tried to put my arms round her, but she wouldn't let me. She told me not to even think of trying to comfort her, because she didn't deserve it. For a long time after that, she did her best to avoid me, and would only give me the minimum amount of polite communication whenever she did have to speak to me. When her husband died, I tried to talk to her, just as a friend, but she told me to grow up and get over it." George couldn't help briefly smiling at this. "But as far as Jo is concerned, I never have," He said, and she could see the beginnings of him also coming apart at the seams. "I failed with Jo so spectacularly," Said John, "That when Charlie announced that she was going to do exactly the same thing, I had to fight for it, in the way I hadn't fought for Jo's baby."
"You do understand why I had to support Charlie, don't you, John," Said George seriously.
"I'm beginning to," He replied, not wanting his thoughts to continue down the path they were currently treading.
"I remembered from when I discovered that I was pregnant, that above everything else, I was frightened, terrified that I wouldn't be able to look after this child that was growing inside me. So, when Charlie said that she wanted to have a termination and that she'd really thought it through, I knew that if there was one thing I could do for her, it was to help her through it. That wasn't an easy decision for her to make, but it was her decision, and if that's what she thought was right for her, then I had to support her." John's inner turmoil which had started at the introduction of the subject of terminations came to a head.
"Did you ever think of doing that when you found out you were pregnant with Charlie?"
"No, of course not," replied George, but perhaps a little too quickly.
"Let me put it another way," Said John, wanting and not wanting an answer to this. "Is that what you wish you had done." George drew back from him slightly to examine his face.
"I don't know," She said eventually, "I really can't answer that. At the time, that wasn't an option for me. You wanted a child so much, that I couldn't have taken that away from you. But yes, you could say that I supported Charlie because I wanted her to have the choices I didn't have."
There was a long, awful pause, whilst they both digested what she'd just said.
"I wish you'd told me how you felt at the time," He said, referring to when she'd found out they were expecting Charlie.
"John, let's not go over all that again. You know why I didn't tell you, so let's just leave it at that." He played with a tendril of her blonde, slightly tousled hair. he could see that she was emotionally as well as physically exhausted, but there was still one area of painful memories that they hadn't yet touched on, and he knew it would be the most heavily guarded of all her "no go", areas.
"There's something, that in all the time I've known you, you've never once talked about," He said conversationally, trying to keep all signs of gravity out of his tone. But she wasn't to be fooled. She went almost rigid, as if inwardly retreating from him, but she didn't speak, for fear of confirming what she thought he was talking about. "Tell me about your mother," He said gently. Even though she'd been half expecting it, she recoiled as if he'd slapped her. When she attempted to stand up, to move away from him, he kept his arm tightly round her, not allowing her to put any distance between them.
"No, John," She said, her tone filled with frightened determination. "You are not making me do that."
"Well, I think it's about time, don't you? After all, it must be thirty seven years since she died, and I've never once heard you voluntarily mention her."
"John, I said no!" She asserted, with perhaps as much terrified frustration as Karen had pleaded with Fenner.
"George, you have to," He said firmly. George capitulated, feeling thoroughly defeated, but with still one card to play.
"Fine," She said icily, "I'll make you a deal. I talk about my mother, you talk about yours. Take it or leave it." Inwardly cursing himself for not having thought she would do this, he frowned, and after a moment's silence, said,
"Okay, you have yourself a deal. But I must be crazy for agreeing to it." George was furious. She'd banked everything on him not wanting to remotely discuss the most painful memory he had, but he'd called her bluff. Wanting to get this over with as soon as possible, she said,
"Well, quite what you want me to say about her, I don't know. My mother was killed in a car crash when I was ten. No one else involved, nobody's fault. Something I believe they call an accident. My father couldn't quite handle the thought of bringing me up alone, so when I was eleven, he sent me to boarding school, which was probably something of a relief to both of us. What more do you want?" Her tone was curt, emotionless, giving away nothing but the essential facts.
"How did you feel?"
"How the hell do you think I felt?" She demanded scornfully. "My mother was dead, and both me and my father wanted nothing to do with the constant memory that being around each other day after day would provide. He sent me to boarding school because he couldn't deal with the continual sight of me turning in to a replica of my mother, and the last thing I wanted was to stay in that house a moment longer than was absolutely necessary. I needed to be around new people, to be in a new place, anywhere that didn't persistently remind me of what I no longer had. My father doesn't know how to show affection, which is probably why I don't know how to do the same with Charlie."
"You're still very angry about that, aren't you."
"No, what I'm angry about, is that my mother wasn't there when I really could have done with her." George's voice had taken on the strangled quality that always heralded tears. But having started, she found she couldn't stop. "When I was growing up, I needed someone who could tell me what being a woman entailed, and when I was pregnant with Charlie, I needed her to tell me that it wasn't wrong to be frightened. for virtually the whole of my life, I've had to work all this out for myself. For the first four or five years after she died, I had no outlet for all the anger. It stayed inside, eating away at me, and sometimes making me feel like I'd never enjoy anything again. Then, when I was fifteen, I discovered that not eating gave me almost a sense of euphoria. Suddenly, I had control over one of the most fundamental parts of my life. I didn't do it in a big way back then, but starving myself for a couple of days here and there kept me going."
"Did your father ever know about it?" he asked, feeling as though he was intruding on a private exhumation.
"No, of course not," She said, the tears raining down her cheeks once again. "I think he might have suspected, over the years, but he's never said so. But do you know what hurts the most? She was a wonderful mother to me, I couldn't have asked for any better. But what happened with Charlie made me feel like I'd not only failed you and Charlie, but that I'd failed my mother as well. She did her best for me, and yet I couldn't do the same for my own daughter." She finished this outpouring in a flat, dead tone of voice that told John she'd reached rock bottom. Her far too visible ribcage no longer shuddered with the force of her grief, but she didn't seem able to stop the flow of tears. There wasn't anything he could say to her. It hadn't at all been her fault that she'd felt the way she had about Charlie, but he knew that asserting this one more time wouldn't go any way to making her feel better. He had no idea what George's mother would have thought of the situation, because he'd never met her, and he wasn't about to give George a whole load of empty platitudes, because he knew that she wouldn't listen to them. As she rested her head against his chest, he gently ran his fingers through her hair. After a significant silence, though she still couldn't stem her tears, she said,
"Well, now it's your turn." She had both arms round him now, and could feel his flinch. "don't back out on me, John," She persisted, knowing that she didn't have the energy or force of will to make him do it. She sat up slightly, long enough to reach for some tissues from the box on the coffee table.
"I was ten," He began, "And my sister was twelve. Mum was depressed, over what, I still don't know. She killed herself, with half a bottle of scotch and a whole load of sleeping pills." His voice had taken on the brittle quality George was only used to hearing in her own. He'd raised a hand, hovering in front of his face, as if to prevent her from seeing his torment. Gently, she lowered his hand, keeping it imprisoned in her own, softly caressing his knuckles with her thumb. She simply watched him, her soft, gentle gaze encouraging him to continue. "Dad, cut himself off from us. He was still there, but not somehow. You know how it is, when something like that happens, you seem to grow up over night."
"What did you miss most about her?" Asked George quietly, and now it was his turn to be under the spotlight.
"I, erm, I remember, there was a cupboard, under the stairs, where me and mum used to go when there was a storm. I can only have been about five or six." He turned his face away from her, half ashamed of revealing how vulnerable he felt.
"Did you ever go back there, after she died?" He laughed mirthlessly, trying to avoid the onset of tears, but failing utterly.
"I didn't ever want to come out," He said, the sorrow hitting George with the force of an oncoming train. He could no longer restrain his clear need to let out some of the grief which had been repressed for too many years. His whole body shuddered violently, as he fought for the control which was slipping through his fingers as sand falls through the hour glass of time. George reached up and wiped away one of his tears with a finger. Then, putting her arms round him, she did her best to offer him the kind of comfort he'd given so much of to her this day. "That's why I wanted Charlie so much," He said unsteadily. "I wanted to go back to that feeling of security and happiness I'd had before mum died." George really didn't know what to say. John had desperately needed to feel complete again, to have the type of family-orientated contentment that he'd lost with the death of his mother. But her lack of real love for Charlie, had meant that he couldn't achieve this. If she'd known all this at the time, George knew she would have been in a no win situation. If she'd said that she didn't want Charlie, then she would have been depriving him of the thing he craved. But in trying to give him his dream, she'd taken it away from him even more.
"I'm sorry," She said, her tears joining his. "I just wish I could have given you what you wanted."
"Hey, come on," He said, his voice slightly hoarse. "You did your best, and so did I. These things just happen." He knew it was a pretty feeble attempt to lighten the load for both of them, and they both knew it wouldn't help. When both their tears had dried, they sat close together, both immersed in private, self-destructive thoughts.
A good while later, George shivered, and realised that the fire had burnt low. Looking up at the clock on the mantelpiece, she saw that it was early evening. They'd been circumnavigating the treacherous landscape of their emotions for some hours, and they were both exhausted.
"You should go and see Jo," George said, feeling as though all positive feelings had left her for good.
"Are you chucking me out?" He said, lifting an eyebrow at her.
"Not as such," Said George, getting up to put another log on the fire. "But I think you need to be with someone who isn't a complete emotional wreck."
"I'm not sure I want to be with anyone," He replied, also feeling distinctly shell-shocked after the day's revelations.
"John, being alone is without doubt what I need right now. But it wouldn't do you any good, trust me."
"If I do leave you alone," He said carefully, "I want a promise from you."
"What?"
"Promise me that you'll never do what my mother did." She had been standing by the fire, warming her chilled hands in front of the blaze. But she turned to face him, the guilty expression all too evident on her face.
"I wouldn't," She said, a slight shake present in her voice. "And I can't believe you just said that."
"Yes, you can," He replied dully, "Or you wouldn't look as guilty as you do." The thought of ending her miserable existence hadn't actually occurred to her as yet, but she knew that she was certainly low enough for it to have done eventually.
"I'm not going to make you a promise I might not be able to keep," She said, all the desolation as prominent as her ribcage.
"Then you can forget my leaving you on your own," He replied, just as skilled as her at digging his heels in. George rolled her eyes at the Monet above the fireplace.
"John, please. I haven't got the energy to do anything more drastic than sleep." He studied her, taking in the enormous, terribly expressive eyes, the Channing bone structure, and the way the dressing-gown and nightdress seemed to drown her. She didn't look capable of anything more than sleep, and he just prayed that she wasn't fooling him.
"fine," He said, deciding that even George wouldn't do something like this to him after what he'd just told her. "But I'll be checking up on you."
"If you must," Said George wearily. When he stood up, she could see the patch of his shirt that had become stiff with the salt from her tears. As they were walking through the hall, he turned, and put his arms round her.
"I love you," He said in to her hair.
"No, you don't," Said George gently but firmly. "You love Jo, or at least, you should." But as he drove away, continually hoping that she would go straight back to bed and to sleep, he thought that yes, he did love George, and yet he knew he loved Jo. He couldn't help it, he loved both of them. George stood by the open front door, and watched his car disappear down the road. When she returned to the lounge, she reflected on what she'd said to John. Part of her wished she did have the energy and the willpower to end her fraught, struggling existence once and for all, but she knew she couldn't do that to John. She doubted whether or not he'd really meant it when he'd said he loved her, but she knew he thought he did.
"You complete and utter bastard!" She said miserably in to the empty silence, knowing that yet again, she was doing what he wanted her to do, or in this case not doing what he didn't want her to do, because of how much she loved him. She couldn't bare the thought of hurting him even more than she had done already. But it was this and only this that prevented her from taking such a desperate course of action.
John had slept beside George on the Friday night, gently soothing away the dreams she wasn't aware of that made her call Charlie's name. He had no idea of the extent to which George and Jo had talked yesterday, but he guessed that Charlie had certainly been a part of that conversation. Waking at around seven on the Saturday morning, he observed that George was still sound asleep, and still looked utterly exhausted. Pressing a soft kiss to her forehead, he got out of bed and grabbed a quick shower. Leaving a hastily scribbled note on the bedside table to let her know where he was, he left the house, and caught the tube back to the Old Bailey to fetch George's car. She was still asleep when he got back, so he made himself a cup of tea and investigated the fridge. Finding only a couple of lemons, a lettuce that should definitely be certified as extra terrestrial, a box of dubious looking eggs and some condiments, he rolled his eyes and made a rapid dash round the nearby supermarket, picking up some of George's favourite foods to try and tempt her in to eating again. When he returned, it was just before ten. Making himself a cup of tee, he went back upstairs, and seeing that she was still asleep, he sat and read the morning paper. She began to drift in to the realms of consciousness around eleven o'clock, pretty much fifteen hours after she'd gone to sleep the night before. Pushing her hair out of her eyes, she looked over at him.
"What are you doing here?" She asked, her voice still husky from sleep.
"Waiting for you to wake up," He said, looking over the top of the paper. George gradually persuaded her reluctant body in to some semblance of movement, and turned over to reach the clock on her bedside table. Picking it up, she squinted at it. Putting it down again, she caught sight of his note and brought it closer to read it.
"Gone to fetch your car, and to find something edible to inhabit your fridge. If you wake before I come back, don't move. John." She looked up. "Find something inedible to inhabit my fridge, bloody cheek."
"Have you looked in your fridge lately?" He challenged.
"Not so as you'd notice, no," She replied, gently moving in to a sitting position.
"I think we need to talk, don't you?" He said quietly.
"Absolutely not," She replied, "I had quite enough verbal purging yesterday to last me a lifetime."
"Tough," He said gently but firmly.
"Really," She said, slowly getting out of bed. "Well, we'll see about that, but not until I've had a shower." As she walked towards the bathroom, she coughed.
"Oh, god," She groaned, "I think we must have smoked an entire Cuban tobacco harvest."
"You and Jo are a bad influence on each other where that's concerned," He replied, "At least Houghton made you give it up." Standing in the bathroom doorway, she swiveled round to glare at him.
"If all you're going to do is whinge at me, then you can disappear right this minute, because I am really not in the mood for it." Stalking in to the bathroom, she closed the door, not seeing the slight smile on his face. She was reacting, she was arguing with him, that was always a good sign.
When George emerged from the hot shower about twenty minutes later, she found a cup of tea waiting for her on the dressing-table. Wrapped in a towel, she stood in front of the mirror, brushing the tangles out of her wet hair. Whilst she was giving it a going over with the hairdryer, she watched through the mirror as John appeared in the bedroom doorway. Ignoring him completely, she finished drying her hair. After replacing the dryer in the drawer, she was about to make an attempt at deciding what to wear, when he moved forward and said,
"I'd like to weigh you first."
"Please don't," She said, but knowing of old that he would. John walked to the bathroom, and dragged out the scales from under the sink. Silently capitulating to his request, she approached this all too familiar piece of machinery.
"Hey," he said, as she lifted a foot to stand on the scales, "Lose the towel. That probably weighs a kilo all by itself."
"Fine," Said George, draping it over the radiator, "But don't you dare criticize what you see, because I can assure you, you won't like it."
"Have I ever criticised the way you look?"
"No, but there's a first time for everything." When she stood on the scales, he had to try extremely hard to keep the shock out of his face. She was literally skin and bone, her ribs far far too prominent, and with a waist he could probably span with his two hands. Baring her entire weight, the scales stood at five stone ten. George briefly glanced down at the glass plate between her feet, and then up at John's face.
"Do you know something," She said, stepping off the scales and resuming her outer layer of sarcasm, "I've never once heard you swear in the whole time I've known you, yet right now, you look like you could cheerfully utter the most vile word that ever existed."
"Yeah, well, get any thinner and I just might," He replied, slipping far too easily back in to their usual sparring. Then he softened slightly. "George, you haven't been this thin since..."
"I know," Replied George, pulling on a clean nightie followed by a thick dressing-gown, "Not since after Charlie. Five stone seven, wasn't it? So, I've still got a way to go." She knew she shouldn't antagonise him, but it was the only way she could maintain her guard.
"That isn't funny," He said sternly. Hating to give him any satisfaction at having the last word, she stalked downstairs ahead of him and made for the kitchen. On the table, there was a plate of grapes and sliced apple, and she was touched that he'd remembered that this was usually what she preferred to nibble on when she was getting back in to eating again. She hated this. First, he'd make her angry, and then he'd do something like this that reminded her of how much she still needed him. Opening the fridge, she was further thrown to see that he'd done exactly what he used to do in the old days to get her to eat again. Strawberries, smoked salmon, kiwi fruit, and that disgusting French cheese that she liked to eat when it was virtually walking off the plate, together with numerous other things, all with long sell by dates because he knew how long it took her to develop normal eating habits again. Pouring herself a glass of grapefruit juice, she closed the fridge door, knowing that she wouldn't be going near most of it for a day or two.
"Did you eat anything yesterday?" He asked, watching her from the doorway.
"For all the good it did me. I don't know who's the least subtle out of you and Jo in that line of persuasion,"
"Why for all the good it did you?" He asked, not immediately remembering the perfectly normal reaction to reintroducing food to a stomach that has got used to doing without.
"Throwing up in front of one's rival, can never, ever be called an aid to ego enhancement," She replied dryly. "Though I must say, your leading lady does have heights of sensitivity that I wouldn't previously have guessed at."
"You call Jo my leading lady as if I'm putting on a better act than you," He commented. She laughed, her smile very determined.
"Oh, Do I. Well, if you think that I'm the only one who will be having their script well and truly rewritten, you are very much mistaken. I'd say it was about time that your defenses were thoroughly dismantled, wouldn't you?"
"That wasn't my original idea, no," He said warily. Picking up the plate of fruit, she walked towards him.
"Well, I can assure you, I'm not going down on my own. This was your idea, so you're coming with me." Then, her tone becoming gentler, she said, "You've got just as much redirecting of thought to do as I have."
Following him in to the lounge, she saw that he'd lit the fire, which was now crackling gently and emitting a welcoming warmth. John had drawn up the largest armchair and placed it at right angles to the fire. He took the plate of fruit from her and put it on the coffee table, and when she moved to take her usual place on the sofa, he took her hand and they moved towards the armchair. In the old days, they'd often snuggled close together in this chair, it being large enough to take the two of them. It seemed almost natural for them to slip in to their old position, each with an arm around the other with her leaning against him. It occurred to her that they hadn't done this for years, but she didn't voice the thought. There were far too many things, simple, little, wonderful things they hadn't done for a very long time. He had moved the coffee table so that the plate of fruit, plus her cigarettes and an ashtray were in easy reach of her right hand. For a while, they simply sat there, John painfully aware of how thin she was, and George suddenly quiet, now that the time had finally come.
"Tell me what you talked about with Jo yesterday," John eventually prompted.
"Mostly about you, and Charlie. Jo's like you, she has a way of making you talk when it's the last bloody thing in the world you want to contemplate. We established the fact that I have more guilt festering away inside me than an entire congregation of Roman Catholics. What more is there to it." She picked up a slice of apple from the plate and stared at it. John simply watched her. He made no comment when she put it back down, knowing that she would eat it eventually.
"We'll come to why you did this again in a while," Said John, "But I think we ought to go back to what happened the first time." He felt her stiffen. "When Charlie was born," He continued, "You hid everything about the way you felt from me."
"And are you surprised?" She asked in disgust.
"No," He said patiently, "But I'd like to know why."
"John, you know why. For some wholly unfathomable reason, I didn't or couldn't love my own daughter." He felt her recoil from her own words. "How was I supposed to tell her utterly besotted father, that I didn't love the child he'd given me. The day you dragged that confession out of me, was without doubt the worst day of my life." In thought, John was forced to admit that it had certainly been one of his. "I felt like the most evil woman who'd ever existed," She said in a strangled voice, the pain being gradually dragged out in to the open like the excision of diseased tissue. "Charlie was, is, beautiful, but I was so bloody self-obsessed that I couldn't make room in my life for her."
"But you did," He said gently, "You cared for her far better than you ever thought you did. Outwardly, you never once let Charlie know how you felt, and that was what mattered."
"And we both know that only lasted until she was of an age where explaining my absence became necessary," Said George bitterly. "Charlie isn't stupid, John. She knows she lived with you most of the time because I couldn't deal with the responsibility, because that normal, maternal instinct never quite got turned on. Charlie knows that for years I only really tolerated her presence, and that even now, that what I feel for her is so mixed up that I couldn't ever begin to explain it. Whether she worked that out on her own, or whether you enlightened her, I don't know."
"George, I may have done a lot of regrettable things in my time," He said firmly, "But I have never been disloyal to you where Charlie's concerned. What Charlie may or may not have discovered about why things were the way they were, has never come from me."
"That's what I don't understand. Why have you always protected me in that way. It isn't as if I deserved it. Why will you never blame me for failing at the most natural thing in the world." Her voice had taken on a slightly hysterical quality and she turned her face away from him in an effort to hide the tears that had risen to her eyes. "I really can't do this, John," She said, aware of the ongoing mantra in her head that said, I will not cry, I will not cry, I will not cry.
"Yes, you can," He said slowly, feeling the familiar physical and emotional tension in her that meant she was about to flea, about to run as far and as fast as possible from the inevitable crumbling of her walls that was steadily catching up with her. She reached desperately for a cigarette, knowing that the breathing action necessary for smoking would bring her body back under control. She considerately turned her face to blow the smoke away from him, and the deep intake of every drag did have the desired effect of allowing her to temporarily regain her equilibrium.
"Why the frantic desire not to cry?" He asked, knowing exactly what she was doing.
"Because I loathe losing control with anyone, but especially with you. I'm not entirely sure that I'll be able to stop."
"Would it surprise you to know that I felt exactly the same with my therapist?"
"No, it wouldn't surprise me in the least, because I suspect that's why you then slept with her, to regain the reins so to speak."
"That's very astute of you," He said with a wry smile.
"I know you a lot better than you think I do, John," She said seriously. "You hate losing control just as much as I do. The difference is that I maintain the appearance of control by not eating, and you do it by screwing." He flinched at her last word, and she said, "Don't look at me like that. You don't make love to most of those women, because you don't hang around long enough to even possibly love them. Taking some random woman to bed is sometimes the one thing in your life that you understand, the one thing you almost always succeed at. For anyone who knows you, it is noticeable that you will pick up someone new when a part of your life is out of your control. Take that waitress friend of Charlie's for example. The only reason you started seeing her, I've forgotten her name."
"Carol."
"That's it, Carol. Well, I think you only started seeing Carol because Jo was getting to you by having the appearance of a fling with Roe Colmore. Then, with your therapist, she all but forced you to lose control, which I suspect isn't something you've ever done with anyone except perhaps Jo. The only time I've ever seen you cry was when Charlie was born because you were so happy. So, pursuing and eventually seducing your therapist was your way of reasserting your control. I'd even go so far as to say that that's why you came looking for a repeat performance with me. It got to you that I didn't enjoy it, especially when you'd discovered why I came looking for it. But it got to you even more that I'd attempted to hide that from you. You're not used to not being able to satisfy any woman you sleep with, and you wanted to prove that you could still do it for me." He looked at her with a contemplative gaze.
"I've never thought about it like that," He said, "In the old days, you'd never have even thought about faking it. If you didn't enjoy it, you said so."
"And I have memory enough to know that it hurt you whenever I said that. It didn't occur to me to lie to you about it, but sometimes I wish I had. For you, making love is how you express your love for someone."
"Isn't it for everyone?"
"Yes, most of the time it is. But for you, it's more important. Making someone writhe in total ecstasy is far more acceptable and far safer than admitting to your real feelings. I didn't know that when we were married, but I've worked it out since."
"I used to think you didn't love me," He said, slightly astounded that these words had been uttered.
"I know you did," She said softly. "It was me I didn't love, for want of a better way to put it, not you. I was so eaten up with guilt that I couldn't enjoy anything. I think part of me thought I didn't deserve to be happy."
"Will you tell me something?" He asked.
"What?" She replied, never willing to agree to something before she knew what she was committing herself too.
"Will you tell me exactly how you felt when you first found out you were pregnant?"
"I'm not sure you'll really want to know, but yes, okay." Detaching herself from John, she stood up and began pacing, occasionally eating a grape or a slice of apple. From her clear inability to keep still, he could tell she was incredibly afraid of what she was about to say to him.
"I remember," She began hesitantly. "I didn't go in to work that day, because I felt so awful." He could remember it like it was yesterday. The way she'd come downstairs as usual, and he'd put a mug of coffee down on the table in front of her. She'd stared at the coffee, all the colour draining from her face. The memory of the scrape of the chair over the stone flags in the kitchen, followed by her frantic dash upstairs to the bathroom, brought back flashes of the life they'd once had. "After you'd left for court," She continued, "I went back to bed and slept till lunchtime. I felt all right when I woke up, and I started thinking. John, you know how often we used to..."
"Make love?" He supplied, amused at her difficulty in finding the right phrase.
"Yes. The 'Just come in from work quickie' always had a certain extra frisson about it." He smiled, vividly remembering the urgency with which they'd sometimes greeted each other after a hard day's work. There'd always been something slightly naughty, yet incredibly sexy about that form of instant gratification for both of them. "What I'm saying is," Went on George, observing the smile that had lifted the corners of his mouth, "That even though I was on the pill, it wouldn't really have mattered how careful we were. We made love so often that it was bound to happen some time. But it wasn't something we'd really ever discussed. Okay, we knew that a family was something we both wanted some day, in the future, maybe, but other than that, it had never really come up as something to worry about." George lit another cigarette and kept on pacing. "I felt like time had stopped," She said, feeling the dread creeping over her like a thousand tiny butterflies. "When I realised the possibility, I felt detached, as if I was looking down on myself. The slightly crazy half of me wanted to run away, to hide. But the vaguely sensible, adult part of me knew that I needed to know. I couldn't wait, to allow my body to make its mind up. One way or the other, I just had to know. So, I went out and found the nearest chemist and bought a testing kit. I sat upstairs for hours after I read the result, just staring at it. I felt numb, confused, as if I was in freefall without a parachute. Even then, even at the beginning, I felt like my life was spinning out of my control."
"I remember," Said John slowly, "You waited till late that night, till we were in bed. That's when you told me."
"And you were so happy," Said George, her voice breaking and tears again rising to her eyes. "The last thing I could do was to even suggest that it wasn't what I thought I wanted. I couldn't do that to you." Tears had begun running down her face at this point. "How could I shatter the one dream you hadn't so far been able to fulfill." She moved to sit on the sofa, needing to keep her distance from him, but desperately wanting the comfort that being in his arms would provide. "I felt overwhelmed," She continued, "This thing that was growing inside me had taken over my entire life. Everything I did, everything I thought was tied up with a perfectly natural process that I didn't want to be any part of. For the last three months before Charlie was born, I barely looked in a mirror. I couldn't handle how much I'd changed. I knew that what I felt was wrong. I was supposed to be happy, to feel the same glorious sense of achievement and anticipation that I knew you did." John was aware of a lot of the feelings she'd had, from the first time they'd talked about this, but he could see that she needed to say it, so he let her continue. "The first time I looked at Charlie, the first time I held her, I knew. I knew that I didn't love this child who was part of me. I tried so hard to love her. Over the next few months, everything I did was in a desperate attempt to make myself love her, and all the time, I could feel the guilt becoming heavier, gradually pressing down on me till I thought it would flatten me altogether. You didn't know it till then, but starving myself has always been my reaction to stress, ever since I was fifteen. After Charlie was born, I didn't think I knew who I was. Not eating was my way of regaining something I knew, something I understood. I had to hide how I felt from you. I felt enough of a failure without you knowing what an utterly evil woman I was. I loathed everything I was in those days. I couldn't love my own daughter, I was going quietly crazy with all the feelings associated with that and what I was doing to myself, and I couldn't even maintain a vague sense of normality by sleeping with you. It hurt you so much that I didn't want you to touch me, that I couldn't even bare to have your arms round me. You tried to hide it, but I could still see it. I thought that any sign of love or affection from you would break me up all together, and I'd have to tell you what was really wrong with me, and in the end, that's what you did anyway. You're not as good at hiding your feelings as you think you are. When you finally forced me to tell you that I didn't love our daughter, the pain in your face almost did me in. It made it worse for a while, because I knew I'd hurt you immeasurably. But you didn't even reproach me for it, not outwardly anyway." She went quiet for a moment, her words seeming to have dried up in favour of the increased flow of her tears. "I'm so, so sorry," She said eventually, the grip on her control inexorably slipping, like that of a person's fingers after hours of clinging to a cliff edge. She looked so vulnerable, so defenceless, that he had an overwhelming urge to hold her close, to attempt to take some of the pain away.
"come here," He said, but she shook her head, feeling as she had all those years ago, that she didn't deserve any comfort from him. "come on," He said gently, not taking no for an answer. She got up, and slowly walked over to him, still not altogether sure if she should. He took her hand, and pulled her down beside him, wrapping his arms round her.
"I, I promised myself that, that I wouldn't do this," She said between sobs, her whole body wracked with the pain that had been festering for too long. He just held her, stroking her hair and allowing her the freedom to really give way. He didn't attempt to calm her down at first, knowing that she needed to do this, that she needed to fall apart completely before she began putting herself back together again. She clung to him, as if fearing that he would let her slip below the surface, never again to be truly sane. George had been close to cracking for a long time now, and he knew that this forceful breaking open of her soul was just the beginning. Only in time would she be able to gather together the fragments of her self-respect in order to start replacing her outer shell. When she began to show signs of calming down, he lifted her face from where it rested against his chest, and said,
"George, listen to me. You must stop blaming yourself for what happened with Charlie, you really must. No one can help the things they feel. You couldn't help feeling the way you did about her." He said all this in a slow, gently firm voice, which had the added bonus of slightly decreasing the level of violence in her gasps.
"I wanted to love her," She said, "I really did."
"I know you did," He said quietly. "But it doesn't always work like that. Just because you didn't, doesn't mean you failed."
"don't be so bloody ridiculous!" She replied, utterly unable to accept his affirmation.
"George, my real mother gave me up for adoption, either because she didn't want me or because she couldn't keep me. Either way, I don't blame her for it. You cannot force yourself to love someone, you just can't."
"Why are you being so nice to me?" She asked, unconsciously uttering the same words she'd said to Jo the day before.
"Because right now, you need me to be," He answered, "Because you are in serious danger of going right under, and I don't want you to do that. Don't hide from me, George. If nothing else, that's what I'm here for, it's what I'll always be here for. We didn't go through nearly nine years of marriage for nothing."
"I don't deserve you," She said miserably. He turned her face towards him, and forced her to look him in the eye.
"George, you went through an enormous amount of heartache for me, for the sole reason that you didn't want to deny me the opportunity to have a child. I'll always be indebted to you for that."
"Please don't," She said flatly, "I don't want to hear it."
"Maybe you don't, but you do need to hear it. You've beaten yourself up about this for far too long. It has got to stop. This form of punishment that you insist on putting yourself through, ends, now."
"It's not quite that simple, John."
"Why?"
"It's like your addiction to women," She said, her voice becoming angry. "I stop eating because it makes me feel good, in a weird and twisted kind of way, and you go to bed with numerous, nameless women because it makes you feel good. You don't like thinking of yourself as an addict, do you," She said, observing the retreat in his face, "But that's what you are, that's what both of us are. Anorexia for me is a fallback, a prop, the one thing I can lean on when the rest of my life is out of sync, and if you are remotely honest with yourself, you'll admit that that's what having more one night stands than you've had hot dinners is for you. I'm not passing judgment on you, because I know that what I do is just as screwed up, if not more so. I introduced you to the need to pick up women, because I couldn't let you love me. You went through the motions of loving them because I was so consumed with everything I felt or didn't feel for Charlie that it didn't occur to me that I was hurting you in the process. But once everything did come to a head, and I discovered that it was okay to be loved again, you'd already got the taste for it. It was too easy for you to do. You liked a bit of nameless skirt because it was uncomplicated. I got used to it after a while, because I thought you'd always come back to me. When I was aware of your playing away, it hurt like hell, and when you came back, I tried to make the most of you. But I couldn't hold you anymore, and part of me thought it was my punishment for not loving the child you'd given me." She reached for the box of tissues on the coffee table and blew her nose. An inextricable feeling of sadness came over John when she said this. He had hurt her so much, by not trying to understand hard enough as to why she hadn't been able to let herself be loved by him.
"I'm sorry," He said after a long silence.
"I know," She said gently, "But if I've got to stop blaming myself for being such a failure as a mother, then you've got to stop pushing away the woman who loves you, in favour of instant, temporary gratification with every other woman going. Jo desperately wants to be the one woman in your life. You've just got to let her."
"I didn't come here to talk about Jo," He said, feeling that George's probing was getting way too close to base.
"I know you didn't, but I think you should. Jo told me about her termination." He visibly flinched, never having wanted George to know about this.
"Not my finest hour," He said, and she could see the pain in his eyes.
"No, not hers either," George replied. "I think that part of why she puts up with you," George continued after a short pause, "Is because maintaining a link with you, somehow allows her to maintain a link with her unborn child. She didn't say so, and I doubt whether she ever would, but I think that the feeling of not quite being able to let go is mixed up with how much she loves you."
"I think she blamed me for it, for quite some time," Said John, "Even though it was her who had a husband and children, and it was her who really made that decision."
"At the time, blaming you was probably far easier than blaming herself, and though I hate to have to point this out to you, she does, or did, have the fragment of a point." At his look of outrage, George held up a hand. "Just listen to me before you get on your high horse. Did what happened with Jo, ever have any effect on the way you were with other women? I mean, did it ever make you think that actually, there are, or at least can be consequences of going to bed with someone, no matter how brief the fling might be."
"No, not really," He said, utterly shame faced. "Unless the woman I'm with brings it up as a problem, it's not something I ever really think about." George rolled her eyes.
"Do you not perhaps think that there is the slightest possibility," She said slowly, as if to a child, "That what happened to Jo might easily have happened to any one or number of your subsequent conquests?" John went quiet.
"If I started thinking like that," He replied eventually, "I'd wonder about every one of them, and that's something I can't afford to do. You're right, most of them don't mean anything to me. It's almost purely physical, like the normal, natural urge to consume food very occasionally," He said sternly, fixing her with his unwavering gaze, and attempting to transfer the focus of the conversation back to George. To shut him up on this subject, she ate the last slice of apple on the plate.
"The baby you nearly had with Jo," Said George slowly, "Was the reason you objected so vehemently to Charlie's having a termination, wasn't it."
"Yes, probably," He admitted, the force of the regret he'd felt at Charlie's decision hitting him anew. "Jo said that I was trying to make up for the past."
"And were you?" She asked gently. He heaved a big sigh.
"Yeah, maybe I was. I couldn't be strong for Jo when she needed me. You and me were getting divorced, I was trying to deal with looking after Charlie on my own, and because of Charlie, I'd moved in to teaching law rather than practicing it, which is how I met Jo in the first place. Taking on another commitment, just wasn't possible. Jo had a terminally ill husband, and two very young children plus her career to keep going. So, when she said she was thinking of having a termination, it seemed to be the obvious solution to a problem. I think I accepted the situation too easily. Jo's never said so, but I think she resented the matter-of-fact way I accepted what she decided to do. But it was her decision, George, I had to let her decide what she wanted. It was her body, not mine. I remember, she didn't say a word when I drove her home afterwards. We sat in the car outside her house. I tried to put my arms round her, but she wouldn't let me. She told me not to even think of trying to comfort her, because she didn't deserve it. For a long time after that, she did her best to avoid me, and would only give me the minimum amount of polite communication whenever she did have to speak to me. When her husband died, I tried to talk to her, just as a friend, but she told me to grow up and get over it." George couldn't help briefly smiling at this. "But as far as Jo is concerned, I never have," He said, and she could see the beginnings of him also coming apart at the seams. "I failed with Jo so spectacularly," Said John, "That when Charlie announced that she was going to do exactly the same thing, I had to fight for it, in the way I hadn't fought for Jo's baby."
"You do understand why I had to support Charlie, don't you, John," Said George seriously.
"I'm beginning to," He replied, not wanting his thoughts to continue down the path they were currently treading.
"I remembered from when I discovered that I was pregnant, that above everything else, I was frightened, terrified that I wouldn't be able to look after this child that was growing inside me. So, when Charlie said that she wanted to have a termination and that she'd really thought it through, I knew that if there was one thing I could do for her, it was to help her through it. That wasn't an easy decision for her to make, but it was her decision, and if that's what she thought was right for her, then I had to support her." John's inner turmoil which had started at the introduction of the subject of terminations came to a head.
"Did you ever think of doing that when you found out you were pregnant with Charlie?"
"No, of course not," replied George, but perhaps a little too quickly.
"Let me put it another way," Said John, wanting and not wanting an answer to this. "Is that what you wish you had done." George drew back from him slightly to examine his face.
"I don't know," She said eventually, "I really can't answer that. At the time, that wasn't an option for me. You wanted a child so much, that I couldn't have taken that away from you. But yes, you could say that I supported Charlie because I wanted her to have the choices I didn't have."
There was a long, awful pause, whilst they both digested what she'd just said.
"I wish you'd told me how you felt at the time," He said, referring to when she'd found out they were expecting Charlie.
"John, let's not go over all that again. You know why I didn't tell you, so let's just leave it at that." He played with a tendril of her blonde, slightly tousled hair. he could see that she was emotionally as well as physically exhausted, but there was still one area of painful memories that they hadn't yet touched on, and he knew it would be the most heavily guarded of all her "no go", areas.
"There's something, that in all the time I've known you, you've never once talked about," He said conversationally, trying to keep all signs of gravity out of his tone. But she wasn't to be fooled. She went almost rigid, as if inwardly retreating from him, but she didn't speak, for fear of confirming what she thought he was talking about. "Tell me about your mother," He said gently. Even though she'd been half expecting it, she recoiled as if he'd slapped her. When she attempted to stand up, to move away from him, he kept his arm tightly round her, not allowing her to put any distance between them.
"No, John," She said, her tone filled with frightened determination. "You are not making me do that."
"Well, I think it's about time, don't you? After all, it must be thirty seven years since she died, and I've never once heard you voluntarily mention her."
"John, I said no!" She asserted, with perhaps as much terrified frustration as Karen had pleaded with Fenner.
"George, you have to," He said firmly. George capitulated, feeling thoroughly defeated, but with still one card to play.
"Fine," She said icily, "I'll make you a deal. I talk about my mother, you talk about yours. Take it or leave it." Inwardly cursing himself for not having thought she would do this, he frowned, and after a moment's silence, said,
"Okay, you have yourself a deal. But I must be crazy for agreeing to it." George was furious. She'd banked everything on him not wanting to remotely discuss the most painful memory he had, but he'd called her bluff. Wanting to get this over with as soon as possible, she said,
"Well, quite what you want me to say about her, I don't know. My mother was killed in a car crash when I was ten. No one else involved, nobody's fault. Something I believe they call an accident. My father couldn't quite handle the thought of bringing me up alone, so when I was eleven, he sent me to boarding school, which was probably something of a relief to both of us. What more do you want?" Her tone was curt, emotionless, giving away nothing but the essential facts.
"How did you feel?"
"How the hell do you think I felt?" She demanded scornfully. "My mother was dead, and both me and my father wanted nothing to do with the constant memory that being around each other day after day would provide. He sent me to boarding school because he couldn't deal with the continual sight of me turning in to a replica of my mother, and the last thing I wanted was to stay in that house a moment longer than was absolutely necessary. I needed to be around new people, to be in a new place, anywhere that didn't persistently remind me of what I no longer had. My father doesn't know how to show affection, which is probably why I don't know how to do the same with Charlie."
"You're still very angry about that, aren't you."
"No, what I'm angry about, is that my mother wasn't there when I really could have done with her." George's voice had taken on the strangled quality that always heralded tears. But having started, she found she couldn't stop. "When I was growing up, I needed someone who could tell me what being a woman entailed, and when I was pregnant with Charlie, I needed her to tell me that it wasn't wrong to be frightened. for virtually the whole of my life, I've had to work all this out for myself. For the first four or five years after she died, I had no outlet for all the anger. It stayed inside, eating away at me, and sometimes making me feel like I'd never enjoy anything again. Then, when I was fifteen, I discovered that not eating gave me almost a sense of euphoria. Suddenly, I had control over one of the most fundamental parts of my life. I didn't do it in a big way back then, but starving myself for a couple of days here and there kept me going."
"Did your father ever know about it?" he asked, feeling as though he was intruding on a private exhumation.
"No, of course not," She said, the tears raining down her cheeks once again. "I think he might have suspected, over the years, but he's never said so. But do you know what hurts the most? She was a wonderful mother to me, I couldn't have asked for any better. But what happened with Charlie made me feel like I'd not only failed you and Charlie, but that I'd failed my mother as well. She did her best for me, and yet I couldn't do the same for my own daughter." She finished this outpouring in a flat, dead tone of voice that told John she'd reached rock bottom. Her far too visible ribcage no longer shuddered with the force of her grief, but she didn't seem able to stop the flow of tears. There wasn't anything he could say to her. It hadn't at all been her fault that she'd felt the way she had about Charlie, but he knew that asserting this one more time wouldn't go any way to making her feel better. He had no idea what George's mother would have thought of the situation, because he'd never met her, and he wasn't about to give George a whole load of empty platitudes, because he knew that she wouldn't listen to them. As she rested her head against his chest, he gently ran his fingers through her hair. After a significant silence, though she still couldn't stem her tears, she said,
"Well, now it's your turn." She had both arms round him now, and could feel his flinch. "don't back out on me, John," She persisted, knowing that she didn't have the energy or force of will to make him do it. She sat up slightly, long enough to reach for some tissues from the box on the coffee table.
"I was ten," He began, "And my sister was twelve. Mum was depressed, over what, I still don't know. She killed herself, with half a bottle of scotch and a whole load of sleeping pills." His voice had taken on the brittle quality George was only used to hearing in her own. He'd raised a hand, hovering in front of his face, as if to prevent her from seeing his torment. Gently, she lowered his hand, keeping it imprisoned in her own, softly caressing his knuckles with her thumb. She simply watched him, her soft, gentle gaze encouraging him to continue. "Dad, cut himself off from us. He was still there, but not somehow. You know how it is, when something like that happens, you seem to grow up over night."
"What did you miss most about her?" Asked George quietly, and now it was his turn to be under the spotlight.
"I, erm, I remember, there was a cupboard, under the stairs, where me and mum used to go when there was a storm. I can only have been about five or six." He turned his face away from her, half ashamed of revealing how vulnerable he felt.
"Did you ever go back there, after she died?" He laughed mirthlessly, trying to avoid the onset of tears, but failing utterly.
"I didn't ever want to come out," He said, the sorrow hitting George with the force of an oncoming train. He could no longer restrain his clear need to let out some of the grief which had been repressed for too many years. His whole body shuddered violently, as he fought for the control which was slipping through his fingers as sand falls through the hour glass of time. George reached up and wiped away one of his tears with a finger. Then, putting her arms round him, she did her best to offer him the kind of comfort he'd given so much of to her this day. "That's why I wanted Charlie so much," He said unsteadily. "I wanted to go back to that feeling of security and happiness I'd had before mum died." George really didn't know what to say. John had desperately needed to feel complete again, to have the type of family-orientated contentment that he'd lost with the death of his mother. But her lack of real love for Charlie, had meant that he couldn't achieve this. If she'd known all this at the time, George knew she would have been in a no win situation. If she'd said that she didn't want Charlie, then she would have been depriving him of the thing he craved. But in trying to give him his dream, she'd taken it away from him even more.
"I'm sorry," She said, her tears joining his. "I just wish I could have given you what you wanted."
"Hey, come on," He said, his voice slightly hoarse. "You did your best, and so did I. These things just happen." He knew it was a pretty feeble attempt to lighten the load for both of them, and they both knew it wouldn't help. When both their tears had dried, they sat close together, both immersed in private, self-destructive thoughts.
A good while later, George shivered, and realised that the fire had burnt low. Looking up at the clock on the mantelpiece, she saw that it was early evening. They'd been circumnavigating the treacherous landscape of their emotions for some hours, and they were both exhausted.
"You should go and see Jo," George said, feeling as though all positive feelings had left her for good.
"Are you chucking me out?" He said, lifting an eyebrow at her.
"Not as such," Said George, getting up to put another log on the fire. "But I think you need to be with someone who isn't a complete emotional wreck."
"I'm not sure I want to be with anyone," He replied, also feeling distinctly shell-shocked after the day's revelations.
"John, being alone is without doubt what I need right now. But it wouldn't do you any good, trust me."
"If I do leave you alone," He said carefully, "I want a promise from you."
"What?"
"Promise me that you'll never do what my mother did." She had been standing by the fire, warming her chilled hands in front of the blaze. But she turned to face him, the guilty expression all too evident on her face.
"I wouldn't," She said, a slight shake present in her voice. "And I can't believe you just said that."
"Yes, you can," He replied dully, "Or you wouldn't look as guilty as you do." The thought of ending her miserable existence hadn't actually occurred to her as yet, but she knew that she was certainly low enough for it to have done eventually.
"I'm not going to make you a promise I might not be able to keep," She said, all the desolation as prominent as her ribcage.
"Then you can forget my leaving you on your own," He replied, just as skilled as her at digging his heels in. George rolled her eyes at the Monet above the fireplace.
"John, please. I haven't got the energy to do anything more drastic than sleep." He studied her, taking in the enormous, terribly expressive eyes, the Channing bone structure, and the way the dressing-gown and nightdress seemed to drown her. She didn't look capable of anything more than sleep, and he just prayed that she wasn't fooling him.
"fine," He said, deciding that even George wouldn't do something like this to him after what he'd just told her. "But I'll be checking up on you."
"If you must," Said George wearily. When he stood up, she could see the patch of his shirt that had become stiff with the salt from her tears. As they were walking through the hall, he turned, and put his arms round her.
"I love you," He said in to her hair.
"No, you don't," Said George gently but firmly. "You love Jo, or at least, you should." But as he drove away, continually hoping that she would go straight back to bed and to sleep, he thought that yes, he did love George, and yet he knew he loved Jo. He couldn't help it, he loved both of them. George stood by the open front door, and watched his car disappear down the road. When she returned to the lounge, she reflected on what she'd said to John. Part of her wished she did have the energy and the willpower to end her fraught, struggling existence once and for all, but she knew she couldn't do that to John. She doubted whether or not he'd really meant it when he'd said he loved her, but she knew he thought he did.
"You complete and utter bastard!" She said miserably in to the empty silence, knowing that yet again, she was doing what he wanted her to do, or in this case not doing what he didn't want her to do, because of how much she loved him. She couldn't bare the thought of hurting him even more than she had done already. But it was this and only this that prevented her from taking such a desperate course of action.