The Practicalities of Freezing Time: Chapter Twenty

CHAPTER TWENTY

“It’s okay, Jo.” Mr. Plant squeezed her mum’s hand. “It’s okay.”

     “She needs to know, Jo.” Miss. Schnabeltier was firmer, but kind now, not angry like before.

     They were all sat at the kitchen table.  Naledi was wearing a heavy jumper, head aching, body tired, but feeling better than she had done what seemed like a whole day or two ago but was apparently only half an hour or so past.

     She grasped a cup of tea far too hot for her to even think about drinking, even if she liked tea.  Her mum did likewise, but was drinking hers without even thinking about it.

     “Okay,” started Naledi’s mum. “Okay.” She took a deep breath and smiled at Mr. Plant, then moved her eyes down to the table again, not daring to look up at her daughter; unable to shift them upwards. “This is about Henry; about your dad.” She sighed again.

     “Go on,” said Miss. Schnabeltier, eyes piercing into Naledi’s mum’s head.

     “Your Dad and I, we… we were not in love,” carried on Naledi’s mum. “We were of course, once, and when you were born, but then… it just stopped. One day, we just knew. We weren’t in love anymore.” She sounded more at ease now; better now it was coming out. “We didn’t want to divorce though, not when you were so young, so we made a decision. We’d stay together, wait until you were older, and explain everything then. We didn’t want to hurt you.” She looked up and smiled at her daughter now. “Oh, Naledi. My darling, darling girl.”

     “I don’t… I don’t understand…” started Naledi.

     “It was easy. We decided to just keep going, act as if we were happy and married and everything was okay until you were older, but we were free to do what we wanted to do.” She shrugged. “It worked, weirdly. It wasn’t easy, but it worked. I changed jobs and started to work at the school, and there I met this strange, young man who couldn’t change a lightbulb but could tell me how the planets span and why.” She looked over to Mr. Plant and smiled. “Clive. We fell in love, so quickly.”

     “And… and Dad?”

     “Henry liked him!” She laughed. “She thought he was nice. I promise you, Naledi, he was okay. But we both knew we couldn’t say anything, because we had our deal and we had to stand by that.” Mr. Plant nodded at this. “Oh, it was so hard, Naledi. We wanted to tell you, to try and make it easier, but we thought it would just make it worse. But then… but…”

     “But then we had a change of heart,” continued Mr. Plant. “Henry decided it was silly, all this hiding. He thought you were old enough to know. So, we decided that we should tell you, altogether. And then…”

     “And then he died,” finished Naledi. “And then Dad died.”

     “Yes,” nodded her mum. “Yes. So sudden; out of nowhere, just everything not working suddenly. I didn’t know what to do. We didn’t know what to do. We couldn’t tell you, not now, not yet.”

     “And so you decided to not say a thing and just, what, flirt in front of me?” Naledi shook her head. “You thought that was okay?”

     Her mum shrugged, unsure. “We didn’t think. It was just so hard, Naledi. After all this time, so close to telling you, and then everything else… it was just so hard.”

     “Selfish,” said Miss. Schnabeltier, and no-one disagreed with her.

     “The pills?” asked Naledi, and she explained about the phone call she had recently taken.

     “Anti-depressants,” said Naledi’s mum. “Henry and I made our decision. It didn’t make it easy though.”

     “And the… the drawing?” Naledi held up the drawing with Mr. Plant’s number on the back. “There’s something about this drawing, but I can’t quite remember what.”

     Naledi’s mum plucked it out of her daughter’s hand. “Ah. The drawing.” She looked at it and smiled. “The night you drew it, you walked in on me and your dad having a row. Such a row…. It was the night we decided to divorce. I don’t think you knew what the word meant, and we didn’t explain, but you knew that it was a bad word, something you weren’t meant to hear. I remember how quiet you were the next day. But then you were fine again, so I forgot all about it.” She flipped over the drawing and saw CLIVE PLANT written there. “I should never have forgotten.”

     There was a silence as Naledi’s mum sipped on her tea and Mr. Plant kissed her forehead affectionately.

     “Naledi,” said Miss. Schnabeltier. “I am so sorry that your mother, she is a coward.” She leant forward and hesitantly placed a hand on her shoulder. “How are you?”

     “I am…” Naledi thought about it.

     She was, what? Tired? Angry? Upset? Shocked? Confused? Betrayed? Happy, in some weird way she couldn’t quite place? Relieved? Sick? Well?

     “I don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore.” Naledi started to cry. “I just want my dad. Daddy. I want my daddy.”

     Miss. Schnabeltier held her close to her and stroked her hair, stroking it until she moved aside and let Naledi’s mum do it instead, do it now when she should have done it so very long ago.

     “I’m so sorry,” said Naledi’s mum and she kissed her daughter. “I’m so, so sorry.”

     “Daddy…”

     “I know, Naledi, I know. I am so very sorry.”

     Naledi sniffed. “It’s all rubbish, isn’t it? It’s all going to change now.”

     “Yes.” Naledi’s mum nodded. “I think it is.”

     Naledi cried, for her mum and her impossible position, for Mr. Plant who had only ever tried to do the right thing, for herself who had been so thoroughly lied to and let down, for her poor dad, for the betrayals and Miss. Schnabeltier sorting it out.  She cried for all of it, every last bloody thing, and never once did she think about telling them about freezing time.