More Than Us Read online

  He nodded, and I saw how hard he tried to smile.

  * * *

  The next morning, we both lay in bed before the alarm went off. I knew Paul was awake; I knew he knew I was awake too, but we both lay still, feigning sleep, listening to the sounds of the day beginning. A dog barked in the distance, a car door slammed, and an engine started. A train’s horn sounded from the tracks, three kilometres away. Usually Paul was up by now, out walking off the stiffness by 6am, or off to training while the kids were still eating breakfast. I’d wanted so many times for him to skip his morning routine and be with us, but now that he was here, my heart ached for him.

  Eventually, the alarm on my phone began to chime. I reached onto the bedside table to switch it off. Paul stretched out, yawning loudly.

  ‘Did you sleep okay?’ I asked.

  ‘Yeah, pretty well,’ he said. We both knew he hadn’t.

  I wriggled over to his side of the bed. He automatically raised his left arm up so I could lay my head on his bare chest, then he curled his arm around me and rubbed my back. My mouth was dry and my head pounded; I hadn’t slept either. The worries about him and our future had niggled at me every time I closed my eyes. I had reminded myself that everything seemed depressing in the middle of the night, and worries always dissipate with daylight. And now, as I listened to the magpies cooing and kookaburras cackling outside, I let the fear evaporate off me like the morning dew in the sun. It would be okay; it always was. We were good like that, Paul and I. We always coped; we always found solutions.

  I heard feet thumping along the floorboards as Tilly ran into our room.

  ‘What can I do while I wait for you to get up?’

  ‘Good morning to you too! Come here.’ I laughed, lifted my head off Paul’s chest, then held up the sheet for her; the duvet lay rumpled at the end of the bed after the cloying hot night. She climbed up and snuggled into me. I ran my hand over her hair, nestled my head into it and inhaled. She was getting so tall now, and I loved every inch of her. She was eight now, already seeming to grow away from me as she grew up, but at the start and the end of the day, she forgot to act like the teenager she so desperately wanted to be.

  ‘Do you promise to always give me cuddles? Even when you’re older?’ I murmured into her ear.

  ‘I don’t know!’ she smiled and I gently flicked my finger on her freckled nose.

  ‘What about Dad?’ I said, nudging Paul.

  ‘Where’s my cuddles?’ he said in a fake deep voice and Tilly laughed, clambered over me and squeezed into the gap between us. I sighed as the last remnants of my nocturnal anxiety floated away. We would be fine.

  * * *

  ‘Cameron!’ I shouted. ‘Come on, time to get out of the shower!’ I turned to Paul, who was sipping his coffee and flicking through the paper as he sat at the breakfast bar. ‘Go and knock on the door, would you?’

  Paul slowly stood up, not moving his gaze from the newspaper.

  ‘Now, Paul, please. Help me. We’ve got to be out the door in twenty minutes.’

  Every morning I swore it would be different. I’d ignore the pit of dread in my stomach. I wouldn’t yell and let myself get into a frenzy. I’d smile, be calm. I’d have packed everything the night before. And maybe Cameron, for once, would get ready without any fuss.

  I thought this morning in particular might be different given that there were two adults to get them ready for school today.

  ‘Paul. Please! They’ll be late.’

  ‘There’s plenty of time!’ He looked at me, frowning and shaking his head.

  I raised my eyebrows and spoke tightly. ‘No. There isn’t. Cameron takes forever to get dressed. If we don’t get to school on time, we don’t get a car spot outside, and if Cameron’s not at school early enough to go to the library first to settle himself down, it will all fall to pieces. If he thinks he’s late, he’ll escalate until he’s in a frenzy. I do this every day.’

  ‘Yes, I know you—’

  I held my hand up. ‘Not now, Paul, that’s not what I meant. Please just help me, and get him out of the shower. Maybe he’ll be better with you.’ You always say I overreact and make him more stressed, I wanted to say. Let’s see if you can do it any better.

  He took a big sip of coffee, shook his head, then stomped off. I looked up and exhaled slowly, like I’d learned in yoga. This was day one of Paul’s new life and I was already thinking that it was easier without him.

  I should have gotten up at 5.30am as usual. It really did take me two and a half hours every morning. Paul never believed me. But he never saw what I did: showered first, before the children woke, because otherwise, exactly like now, I’d still be rushing around in my pyjamas with my glasses on and my hair unwashed and I’d have to put my gym gear on and pretend I’d been for a run when I did school drop off to explain why I looked so bedraggled. After showering, I’d do the usual things: emptying the dishwasher, filling the water bottles, making sandwiches and slicing fruit and trying to put something healthy in the lunchbox in case a teacher looked in it and thought I was a bad mother for giving them a honey sandwich and a hot cross bun on the same day. The rest of the time was taken up by Cameron.

  Paul came back through. ‘He’s coming.’

  ‘Did you hear the water go off, he always says –’

  ‘Yes!’ he glared at me.

  I felt my eyes fill with tears. Since when did we talk to each other like this? When did the respectful, warm conversation stop, and bickering and resentment creep in? I blinked hard and swallowed down my retort. There was no time for this now. Paul had just lost his job; he was allowed to be snappy.

  I opened the top drawer and took out the correct spoons. I walked over to the dining table and put Cameron’s cutlery down in exactly the right way, parallel to the grain of the wood and placemat. Oh, how I longed to swipe it and spin it around sometimes. But I never did.

  * * *

  I often try to remember a time before my life tiptoed around Cameron. I know that memories can be deceiving, pages of a history book written with the bias of hindsight. I also know that memories are etched more deeply into us with the acid of strong emotions, and for Cameron, the more powerful emotions have been negative.

  My own first memories aren’t really my own: they are my mother’s, laid down in my mind from her desperate repetitions as we looked through old photo albums, trying to keep her Alzheimer’s at bay as it crept in to steal her memories away. She was far too young to have dementia. I remember her smile as she recalled that my first word was ‘more’, and that was why I was a chubby child in those photos, and how I wailed and clung to her leg on my first day of nursery just after the smiling photo of me on the doorstop was taken.

  Then the memories become my own: the fumbles of my first kiss; the devastation of my first breakup; the joy of being accepted into the physiotherapy course at Glasgow University; the pride of marrying Paul when we were both so young and in love.

  I do have special, wonderful, first memories of Cameron too, those that make me smile as they bubble up: the first time I told Paul I was pregnant; the first time I gave birth and cried with exhilaration and relief to see a healthy little boy; the first tiny nappy I changed with the midwife hovering over me telling me it was on backwards.

  Tilly’s first sweet smile and gurgling laugh.

  My face burns to admit that I don’t remember Cameron’s first smile. I’m sure he did smile at me, look into my eyes and let out a laugh, once, many times. He must have. It seems so long since he’s been happy that I’ve just forgotten what it ever sounded like.

  * * *

  When Cameron was born, Paul and I were like any other parents, I imagine. We were convinced that Cameron would be the most handsome baby – of course. He would be bright, like me, and athletic, like Paul. His hair would be red – not bright orange, but a handsome, dark auburn – which was exotic in Australia rather than ordinary back home in Scotland. He was a handsome boy. He’s still beautiful, at ten.


  But as his fine strawberry-blonde baby hair fell out and his thicker hair grew, just brown, we still searched for highlights of red in the sun. It was ridiculous to spend so much time looking for uniqueness in him, when now I would give anything for him to be ordinary.

  Cameron was a fractious baby, always on the go. Paul said he was destined to be a striker. We wondered whether he’d play for Scotland or Australia. When Tilly was born eighteen months later, and was so sweet and calm, I knew that it proved that my parenting wasn’t to blame for Cameron’s behaviour. She slept better than he did at night; she allowed me to soothe her while he raged for hours; she ate what I put in front of her. Cameron’s milk always had to be in the same blue sippy cup. His bowl had to be the one with Peter Rabbit on it, and the spoon yellow. He wore the same pair of shorts and dinosaur T-shirt for, I swear, a year. Paul told me to just throw it out, but when he tried to dress Cameron in something different, he too would give up after the screams and tears started. Gradually we just gave in.

  As he became a toddler, Paul and I looked at each other with strained amusement when he threw his dinner across the room. Paul always thought I was overreacting. ‘He’s just a boy,’ he would say. ‘I was just like him when I was a kid. You should hear some of Mum’s stories about the things Alasdair and I used to do as kids.’

  My own mother was, by then, in a nursing home in Scotland and Dad was working in Canada where, eventually he’d marry again and settle. I had no one else in Australia; Paul was my only family, and he was busy. I joined a local mothers’ group and craved our weekly catch up, when we’d all trudge in, exhausted from another relentless night, comparing stories to reassure each other that none of us were failing: this was just the way babies were. But as our children grew, I started to dread the mothers’ group meetings. Everyone else’s boys were, well, normal. They cuddled into their mothers’ chests while Cameron ran the other way from me. I began to feel nervous every time I went out with Cameron, always ready to leap to my feet and sprint across the room to grab him. It was as if the magnet that was meant to pull us together had flipped over in one of us, and instead, we repelled each other.

  As a little boy, Cameron wasn’t just angry; these weren’t the normal temper tantrums that Tilly grew to have, where some distraction and bribery could make her calm down and look at the beautiful butterfly or the pretty bird. Cameron was never just angry; he was completely consumed with his distress. Sometimes I wondered if he was really my child: I saw none of myself in this feisty little boy. Cameron’s real strength wasn’t in his little arms that pummelled into me when I tried to put him in his room; it was in his ability to know exactly how to push me. When he was calm, I tiptoed around him, taking the time to sit on my bed with the door closed for ten minutes, my cheeks burning with the awareness that I felt better when I wasn’t with him.

  When he went to school he had to have the same sandwiches (white bread, butter, two slices of ham, and the crusts cut off and cut into three equal fingers), a strawberry yoghurt (only one brand, no bits in it), six rice crackers and a green apple, peeled, cut into even slices and sealed in a sandwich bag. At birthday parties, he wouldn’t eat cupcakes because he hated the texture of icing on his lips and the idea of getting messy was too much for him. I smiled when the other mothers told me how lucky I was that he didn’t like junk food. But I wanted him to like junk food; I didn’t want him to be different.

  Paul told me he’d grow out of it eventually. But he didn’t; he became more restrictive. But it wasn’t just food. It was everything: the route we took to school, the bedtime routine, the way I made his bed. And before I knew it, Paul had given up complaining. Sometimes I saw him open his mouth as Cameron’s face contorted with anxiety, but he learned to close it again. We all learned to live Cameron’s way. As long as his world was the way he needed it to be, he was happy. And what other job does a mother have but to make her children happy?

  * * *

  Now, Cameron was ten years old, but I still tiptoed around him and arranged his cutlery on the table just the way he liked it.

  I finished setting the table for breakfast. Maybe Paul would be able to handle Cameron better than I could, now that he was going to be home more to help. He’d lost his job, his entire career, only yesterday. We all had to adjust and I had to let Paul try things his way too. It wasn’t fair of me to push Paul out; he needed us around him.

  ‘Hey, Paul. I’m going to have a quick shower now, okay?’

  Paul nodded, not looking up from the paper, which he had resumed reading.

  I made my voice calm and sweetly pitched. ‘I’m sorry to say it again, but if Cameron’s not out in five minutes, can you give him a gentle reminder to get dressed?’

  I saw Paul’s chest rise, then fall. He looked up this time, and nodded again.

  I started to walk out then stopped and turned around again. ‘I forgot. I’ve got a meeting with Cameron’s school this afternoon, before pick-up, just to talk about how he’s settling into Year 5. Can you make it, or do you have…?’ I paused. ‘It’s not that important, it’s just routine. But I’d love you to come.’

  He glanced up at me. ‘I’m going to the physio this morning, but then I can come.’

  ‘That’s great.’ I smiled.

  He nodded and smiled back, then his eyes glistened and he quickly looked back to the paper again while I pretended not to notice.

  Two

  Paul

  I watched Emily’s back as she retreated towards the bathroom. I took a deep breath, cleared my throat and sat up straighter on the kitchen stool. It was no good letting the kids see me like this. I glanced at the clock on the front of the oven; she was exaggerating, there was half an hour before they had to leave. I drained my coffee, then stood up and went to put another pod in the machine. I felt hungover, even though I’d only had a couple of beers last night with dinner, just to try to keep the panic down. The alcohol hadn’t helped me feel more relaxed; it only made me feel hot and thirsty and anxious in the middle of the night. In the end, I had gotten up and taken an extra painkiller, the strong ones left over from my last arthroscopy, even though the pain wasn’t any worse than usual. At least they helped me sleep, even if they had done nothing at all to help my knee. Although now that I wasn’t playing, what did it matter if I’d had a bad night’s sleep or a headache?

  I had known when I left Scotland for Australia that I couldn’t compete in the UK leagues any more, even though I was barely in my twenties. There were lads of sixteen, seventeen, coming through and they were far fitter and hungrier than me. They were the ones the managers, and fans, wanted. Emily and I were both smart enough to know that it was a great deal to be offered a contract in Sydney. Not only would the team pay us to move to Australia and set us up with a house and car, but I would have more chances to play: the competition wasn’t as fierce as in Scotland, or Europe, but it was gathering momentum and everyone was getting behind football – or soccer as they called it in Australia. I was a good player – it’s not easy to get to the premier league in the UK – but I was never going to be a superstar. But here, people had loved me, loved the team, and I played well. But as the years went on, I started missing games, then missing parts of seasons because I just couldn’t do it. Really, I had known for a long time that I had passed my peak, no matter how much I tried to tether myself to the top.

  When they told me yesterday that my knee had finally failed me, I let go. I knew my time was up. Still, I had wanted it to be my decision to go, not the medics’.

  I sighed, rubbed at the back of my neck and tried to quell the stress rising up towards my throat. What would I do? How would I support my family now? If I had chosen a career other than sport, now, in my thirties, I’d be soaring.

  ‘Dad,’ Tilly said.

  I looked up suddenly, my heart racing. ‘Sorry, sweetie, I was daydreaming. You okay?’

  ‘Where’s Mum?’

  ‘She’s just having her shower. Can I get your brekkie? What do you usually hav
e?’

  She shrugged. ‘Nutella toast?’

  I frowned, and looked at her face as she stared straight back at me for a moment, then her lips began to twitch.

  I smiled too. ‘Does your mum really let you have Nutella on toast before school? I thought that was just a treat on the weekends…’

  ‘Sometimes…’ She broke into a grin and started giggling as I cocked my head to the side and grinned back. I stepped towards her and ruffled her long brown hair, then pulled her into a hug, the stress receding again. What did work matter, as long as I had moments like this?

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Go and sit at the table, but don’t tell Mum.’

  ‘Yay!’ she squealed and jumped up and down.

  I laughed. ‘Go and give your brother a shout, will you? Does he like Nutella?’

  ‘Nah, he just has cereal, but he’ll do it himself. He’s very…’

  ‘Particular,’ we both said in a fancy voice, laughed, and then Tilly skipped out of the room to fetch Cameron.

  * * *

  That afternoon, I waited for Emily outside the school gates in the shade of a fig tree. The sun was scorching, the humidity choking. My knee throbbed from the physio and my face ached from forcing myself to smile all day as I reassured everyone in the team that I was okay, that I had expected it, that I was excited about life after playing. And I was. A cloud of anxiety about my future had been suffocating me for months, as I lay awake with my knee achingly stiff in the dead of night. Now that I knew it was over, some of that had lifted. Throughout the day, I’d had moments when a lightness bubbled up in me, a sense of possibility that I’d never really had until now. My life from when I was a teenager had revolved around the structure of soccer and a strict schedule of training and games and events. It was always about the team. I had loved that, but now, for the first time, I could think about what I wanted.