The Lie of Love (7 page)

‘Mum?’

Darcy spun around to find Jake at
the doorway. In the dim light from outside, she could just make out his
bleary-eyed and puzzled expression.

‘I couldn’t sleep. What are you
doing out of bed? You’ll be tired in the morning now.’

‘So will you,’ Jake said. ‘Can I
sit with you?’

‘In the dark
kitchen in the middle of the night?’
Darcy smiled.

‘I don’t care about the dark and
the moon looks cool like this.’

Darcy hopped onto a breakfast
stool and patted the one next to her. ‘Just ten minutes and then we go back to
bed.’

Jake made his way over and
climbed up beside her. She shoved the glass of milk his way. ‘Want to finish
that? I’ve had enough.’

He took the drink and Darcy
ruffled his hair as he drank it. He was much blonder than the rest of them, and
they had often pondered how he had come to have such golden tresses.  A
family throwback, they supposed, though neither she nor
Ged
could recall anyone in their families being quite
so blonde.  But the current of deep thoughts that ran beneath the
boisterous exterior of a normal carefree boy – Darcy knew that he got that
particular trait from her. Where she could never quite work out what was going
on in Sophie’s head, Jake’s was like a mirror of her own. He was a born worrier
and he would always worry, and for that she felt truly sorry, because she knew
exactly how that would limit his life choices if he let it.

‘Miss Pearson says we should have
a non-uniform day and give the money to Sophie,’ Jake said, interrupting her
thoughts. ‘I forgot to tell you.’

‘That’s alright. I expect she
would have sent a letter home. It’s very kind of her…. did you put that idea in
her head?’

‘I told her about the plan to
take Sophie to America
and that you were trying to get the money and she went online and saw the
website.’

Darcy smiled. Good old Amanda had
struck gold again when she cajoled a friend of a friend – a web designer – to
do them a beautiful site for free in return for endorsing his services. He had
even included a constantly updating totals page and a link to an official donation
site. It made the whole campaign seem much more genuine when the information
about it was freely available to those who wanted to see.

‘Well, that’s brilliant. I’ll
write a letter to thank her and you can take it into school.’

They were quiet for a moment as
Jake drank some more milk.

‘Do you think we’ll get all the
money?’ he asked, breaking the silence. ‘Dad says he’s not sure. But you think
we will?’

Darcy looked at him.  He
needed answers. He needed to know that his life would still continue as it
always had done, despite the extra pressures Darcy had brought into their home.
She wasn’t sure she could give him those reassurances.

‘I’m going to give it my best
shot,’ she said slowly. ‘Because I love you and Sophie so much that I would do
anything to make you happy and I know that walking would make her happy.’

He gave a serious nod. ‘I think
so too.  She doesn’t say it but I think not being able to walk upsets
her.’

‘Next year…’ Darcy said, pulling
him into a hug, ‘when she’s racing up and down, she’ll be able to thank her big
brother for all his help and hard work in making it happen.’

He snuggled further into her – a
sure sign he was tired – and folded his arms around her waist.  These
moments, when he was still her baby boy with no interest in computer games or
wrestling or football, but only wanted to be close to his mum, got rarer by the
year and Darcy treasured them all the more when they came around. She took a
deep breath, the smell of his clean hair filling her nostrils, and kissed him on
top of the head.  ‘We should get back to bed or we’ll be snoozing when
everyone else is starting classes.’

‘You don’t do classes so it
doesn’t matter.’

Darcy laughed. ‘I’ll get in
trouble with the school though if you aren’t sitting at your desk bright eyed
and bushy tailed for yours, though.’

‘I sound like a squirrel.’

‘You do. Can you imagine a class
full of squirrels waiting for Miss Pearson to take register?’

‘
Muuuumm
,’
Jake groaned, more like his normal self. ‘That’s just lame.’

‘Come on…’ Darcy leapt from her
seat and nudged him.
‘Time for bed, both of us.
You
know I get silly when I’m tired.’

‘You must be tired all the time
then,’ Jake said with an impish grin.

‘That’s because I have to look
after you… stairs – bed – now.’

‘Alright…’ Jake jumped down from
his stool. Darcy took the now empty glass to the sink and followed him in the
direction of the stairs.

‘Out of all the mums,’ Jake
whispered as she tucked him back into his bed, ‘I’m glad we got you.’

Darcy smiled. Tomorrow he would
be back to normal: alternately noisy beyond belief and sullen beyond reason,
but times like this showed that underneath it all he loved her.

‘And out of all the kids I’m glad
I have you two.’

Closing the
door softly, Darcy crept to her own bedroom where
Ged’s
snores still rumbled like a distant rock fall,
and prepared herself to lie awake until the dawn lit up their room.

The first official weeks of fundraising had passed in a
blur. It had been mostly low key – packing bags at supermarkets for donations,
raffles, non-uniform day at Jake’s school and other easy targets, but
non-stop.  Amanda was pleased with their progress, as Darcy had been, but
she was keen to step things up a gear and although Darcy had put it off, she
knew that her friend’s insistence that they needed to get the local press
involved was founded on good sense.  Darcy half hoped Amanda would be the
media face of
Sophie’s Steps
to spare her the attention she was
dreading. Her hopes were soon dashed as Amanda broke the news to her over
coffee that a reporter from the local free paper wanted to see her and
Ged
.

‘It’s only the free rag, of
course,’ Amanda said as Darcy pushed a plate of fairy cakes toward her, ‘but
it’s a start. As soon as the
bods
at the
Echo
see the other local paper has featured you they’re bound to want a piece of the
action.’ Amanda bit into a cake drizzled in lemon icing. ‘These are fantastic.’

‘I whipped them up this morning,
the quickest thing I can bake. I don’t seem to have much time lately for baking
and
Ged
has been pulling his
face about it so I thought I’d better make an effort.’

‘Pulling his face? I’d punch it
for him if I were you. I haven’t seen him at any of our events yet… anyone
would think he doesn’t want Sophie to have her operation.’

‘He’s just busy,’ Darcy said,
wondering why she was bothering to defend him but feeling the need to just the
same. The truth was that she had felt resentful about his lack of engagement
with the campaign but she hadn’t really known how to tackle him about it. ‘He
will come when he gets a chance, and he’s looking forward to the end result
too. I suppose he doesn’t see what goes on first hand and probably doesn’t
understand why it’s taking up so much of my time.’

‘He would see first hand if he
got off his backside and attended a few things.’

Darcy frowned.
 

‘Alright,’ Amanda laughed. ‘It’s
your domestic situation, not mine. Consider my nose firmly out.’ She popped the
last morsel of her cake in her mouth and licked her fingers. ‘You’ll be making
these for the bake sale?’

Darcy nodded. ‘I expect so.
They’re easy to decorate too so I can get Jake and Sophie to help.’

‘They’ll have fun doing that. So…
back to this reporter… you’re ok to do the interview?’

‘Can’t you do it with me?’ Darcy
asked. ‘
Ged
won’t want to
and you have done a terrific amount of work so it’s only right that you get
some of the credit.’

‘It’s not about credit or work –
their angle is the story of Sophie and her battle to walk so it’s the family
they need to see, not me.’

Darcy sighed. ‘I’ll ask him. The
kids will be only too happy to be in the paper but I don’t know what
Ged
will say.’

‘He ought to say yes and if he
says anything else I’m going to be round here having words with him.’

‘God, that will terrify him into
cooperation for sure,’ Darcy laughed.

‘That’s the
idea. Now, pass me those cakes again; I’m sure I can fit one or two more in.’

‘Why have you told him that?’
Ged
reached for the TV remote and began flicking idly
between channels. Darcy hated when he did that but she resisted the urge to grab
the remote from him and smack him over the head with it.

‘Because we’re supposed to be a
family united in our goal and that’s the image we have to present, even if one
of us doesn’t care.’

‘I care,’
Ged
said in a voice that suggested he couldn’t care less about anything other than
finding the highlights of the previous evening’s international football
friendly, ‘but I don’t want to sit posing for some journalist. It’s just not
me. Why can’t Amanda do it? She loves all that.’

‘She’s not Sophie’s dad, is she?’

‘Neither are you,’
Ged
shot back with a grin.

‘
Urgh
!
You can be so infuriating!’

‘It’s why you married me.’

‘So you won’t do it?’

‘Seriously, I’ll ask people at
work for money and I’ll put up with you never being here… I might even be
persuaded to run a marathon or something, but don’t ask me to be in the paper.
It’s just not my thing.’

‘It’s not mine either but I’m
doing it.’

‘I suppose that makes you the
better person.’

‘That’s not what I’m saying.’
Darcy let out a huge sigh. It was clear that she wasn’t going to get any
further with this conversation. ‘Fine... I’ll do it with the kids. We’ll say
you’re working all hours or something like that so that we can put more of our
own money to the cause.’

‘In a way that’s not really a lie.
I do work all hours.’

‘So many that you can’t spare
half an hour for this, apparently.’

‘And we
are
sinking all
our spare money into the cause,’ he replied, ignoring her jibe. ‘I’m even
borrowing from my parents.’

‘I know. But they wanted to help,
remember?’

Ged
grunted a reply and turned his attention to the
TV screen. Darcy pushed herself wearily from the sofa. ‘I’d better get the kids
bathed and ready for bed.’ When no reply came, Darcy took herself off to the
bathroom. 

After
fetching a couple of clean towels from the airing cupboard, she sat on the side
of the bath, watching the bubbles blossom as the water ran deeper, her mood
wavering between thoughtfulness, frustration and utter emotional exhaustion.
 She could understand and even empathise with
Ged’s
reticence to be in the spotlight, but some
sacrifices were necessary. She just wished
Ged
would see that the way she did.  As well as
giving Sophie the sort of chances in life that she could never have imagined
otherwise, Darcy had half hoped, in some secret corner of her mind, that the
endeavour would pull her and
Ged
together again as a
couple – united in a common goal and so united in love. Because, these days,
all they seemed united in was bickering and downright stubbornness with each
other.  She was beginning to see that she was wrong. She was beginning to
see that their campaign might just have the opposite effect and drive a wedge
between her and
Ged
. And in
that same secret corner of her mind, part of her didn’t really care anymore.

‘Those look stunning.’ Julia peeled back the layer of
greaseproof paper on a shallow box of brightly coloured cupcakes adorned with
sugar flowers and butterflies. ‘I can’t believe you don’t do this for a
living.’

Darcy smiled as she hauled a
second box onto the folding table they had just covered in a pink checked
tablecloth. ‘I’d hate baking if I had to do it all the time.
Doing
it as a hobby is just fine, thank you.
Besides, I hardly have time to
shake a bag of icing sugar into a bowl just lately let alone anything else.’

‘They taste as good as they look
too,’ Amanda cut in as she tipped a bag of coins into a cash box. ‘Believe me;
I’ve done some extensive testing on them to make sure.’

‘I suppose the kids must keep you
busy,’ Julia agreed. ‘I forget just what it was like when they were little,
especially now Harry is at the age where he doesn’t really need me anymore.’

‘Don’t boys always need their
mums, no matter how old they are?’ Amanda asked.

‘They need their washing doing if
that counts,’ Julia laughed.

What Darcy wanted to ask, more
than anything, was whether Harry would show his face at the bake sale that
afternoon, but she couldn’t trust herself to keep a neutral expression,
whatever the reply was. Instead, she went about industriously uncovering trays
and boxes of cakes and laying them neatly out and trying not to think about the
tingles in her gut that exploded when he looked her way.

‘But he’ll always be my baby I
suppose,’ Julia added with a fond smile. ‘Even when some pretty girl turns his
head and steals him away from me.’

Darcy looked up, suddenly struck
by guilt at the thought that she could be looking at herself in less than ten
years time, talking about Jake. How would she feel if someone she trusted, a
woman old enough to know better, harboured thoughts about her son like the ones
she had about Julia’s? Wouldn’t she be sickened and betrayed, concerned only
with protecting him from all emotional pain? Wouldn’t she fight to the death to
keep that woman away, knowing that a relationship such as theirs could only
bring sadness in the end?  There could be no future in an affair like that
and only a fool would think otherwise. ‘I hope we’ve got enough,’ she said,
arms folded, appraising the row of cake-laden trays and trying to shift her
focus back on the task in hand.