Marcia flicked my arm. “Pay attention, hon. James is jealous.”
I made a face. “Don’t be ridiculous. Judging from the lovely Vanessa, he’s given up on golden girls in favour of brunette babes. Sweetness and light for real this time.”
Marcia grinned. “He hardly looked at you.”
“So of course that means he wants me.”
“Yup, I speak testosterone now, remember? James was sizing me up out there, studying his competition. The question is, do you want him?”#p#分页标题#e#
I slumped back, or at least I tried to. The seat was narrow and there was very little space to stretch my legs. “Nope, all I want is to see Ryan.”
She sniggered. “So why do you look constipated?”
“Because I feel like a teenager again, trying to understand what is going on, why I can’t control how I feel around James. I’m angry as hell and yet I want him to smile at me. I came back to London to see Ryan, not fall back into lust with James.”
“Lust?”
“What else? James is intransigent, impatient and high-handed—and just as superior as I remember. And what’s worse, he’s going to make Ryan a posh blue blood like he is, arrogant and heartless.”
Marcia let out a low whistle. “You are unbelievable,” she said disgustedly. “You told James he was the father of your child and now you’re angry he didn’t play the game your way. He didn’t hand over monthly support and let you—a drug-addicted teenager who couldn’t control her drinking—bring up his son. You want him to let you see Ryan, disrupt his life because you say you’re different so of course he should believe you. You’ve always been honest with him before, right?
“But for all your bitterness I don’t remember you giving up your life in Valencia to camp out on his doorstep until now. You stayed there, licking your wounds and getting your addictions under control. I’m not knocking you for turning your life around, hon, but James didn’t force you to do it in Spain. Or stay away for all these years.”
I gritted my teeth. “He got his revenge by taking my baby, making it impossible for me to stay.”
Marcia threw her hands in the air. “You can’t blame James because you were unfit to be a mother. He did what any responsible parent would, and if that constitutes revenge in your book then you haven’t grown up one little bit.”
I stared at her, hurt by her brutal honesty. “I’m Ryan’s mother.”
“Oh for fuck’s sake! Is that how you’ve been justifying your demands? No wonder James won’t let you see Ryan. I don’t blame him. Parenthood is twenty-four seven. It’s loving your child more than you love yourself and making sure you protect him. It’s preventing his heart from getting sliced and diced by a mother who’ll run off to Spain if she can’t cope. For seven years James has been there for Ryan when you haven’t, so I would cut the man a little slack.”
I wished she’d been shouting; then I could have got angry. Shouty Marcia was prone to exaggeration and divalike leaps from reality; quiet Marcia told it straight and to that there was no comeback.
For years I had shifted the blame onto James’s shoulders and now I had to face the truth, ugly as it was. It was my fault—and mine alone—that Ryan didn’t have a mother. No matter how much I had ranted about James’s actions or cried that Francesca had taken Ryan from me, after the sorrow and despair had turned to glum acceptance I had felt relieved.
Relieved I wouldn’t be a single parent and relieved that I could concentrate on getting clean and sober.
True, my mind agreed sadly.
The theatre lights dimmed and the play started. The opening score had a low, drumming cadence that suited my mood perfectly. Gut-wrenching and painful, just like the days after Ryan was born. Like my childhood and adolescence, when I’d felt as much a prisoner as the people on stage, chained to my awful reality. Once I was free I had fled and not looked back, too much a coward to face my past.
As the play progressed, I tried to push the sorrow away, determined to enjoy my visit to the theatre. But it seems that misery really does love company because Les Miserables resonated with my sorrow and it refused to budge.#p#分页标题#e#
Forget the French Revolution and the obsessed policeman with too much time on his hands. For me the story was about Fantine, the prostitute, and the miraculous twist of fate that saved her daughter from a life like hers.
Marcia and I held hands, crying our eyes out at the utter desolation of her life. All I could think was that I could have been her. Of course, I didn’t live in France in the seventeen hundreds, but still. What would have happened had I been left to my own devices? Drugs and alcohol? A descent into the misery I was watching from the discomfort of my seat? What would have happened to Ryan?