With that, he got up and left, flashing me that beautiful smile of his, and then he was gone, and I was alone again. But it didn’t feel bad, or wrong. David wasn’t Mark, even though I’d tried to make him so in my head, and I knew I’d been doing him a huge injustice, leading him on in a pointless dance that was going nowhere. He did deserve better, and more, than I could give him, someone who’d love David as David, not the substitute Mark I’d tried to make him into.
I went back to the office, had a little bit of a weep, then blew my nose and got back into my work.
Life rolled on over the next few months, and I slipped into a kind of routine. Nia, Shelagh and I would get together on Wednesday evenings and find a good curry-house, try something different off the menu each time, and see who could eat the most fiendishly hot concoctions they could come up with. I drew the line at eating a phal, which seemed to consist solely of red chillies, Nia and Shelagh jeering at me for my cowardice. If Jamie was home, he’d come along, and that boy could eat anything, from anywhere, not a drop of sweat or a raised eyebrow at some of the lethal, eye-wateringly fiery dishes we attempted to eat. We had fun, and I was learning how to have fun again. Doreen invited me on a few of her jaunts around town with Steven, but I declined; I wasn’t really up for that kind of fun again!
This became the pattern of my life. I was content to know that Mark was out there somewhere; once in a while a bouquet of purple Hyacinths, Orange Blossom and Primrose, wrapped in Maidenhair fern would appear, and my heart would leap; Mark had been here, only the thickness of a door away from me! It was almost enough…
Then, one evening, several months after I’d broken up with David, and almost three years since my Mark had been torn away from me by my crazed bitch of a mother, I was waiting for Shelagh to appear for a rendezvous at Nia’s place for coffee and her mum’s cooking, there was a knock at the door. Assuming it was Shelagh, I opened the door, not looking to see who it was.
“You took your time, Shel…!” I began, then looked up.
Mark.
“Hello Tink…” he began, and got no further before I slapped him so hard the whole street echoed. I’d planned and plotted how I was going to react when I finally saw him again, but my right hand overrode all that and made its own decision.
He stood there as I slapped him again, this time with my left, knocking his head around as the street echoed again.
I went to slap him again, but he intercepted my hand and held my wrist firmly, not harshly, more like he was trying to stop me hurting myself, the way we used to play-fight all those years ago.
“Tink, stop it, we need to talk, calm down!” he insisted, and I hit his chest again and again with my free hand, trying to vent over two years of pent-up longing and anger before I exploded. I was trying to say everything I’d rehearsed, and all that came out was disjointed cursing and snarling sounds as both sides of my need, my need for him, and my need to punish him, fought for dominance.
“TINK!” he shouted, cutting through my borderline hysterics, shocking me out of my haze. I stopped dead, stared at him, so pale and wan-looking, and immediately lunged for him, trying to get my arms around his waist to crush him to me, crying and gabbling as I held him again after so long wanting and needing him. His arms came back around me, holding me to him, and it was over, he was back, I had my Mark back, my lost boy had come back.
After a million years I heard his voice through the tumult in my head.
“Tink, please, we need to talk, I need you to hear some things, and I want to explain something to you, so please, baby, sit down!”
I heard the urgency in his voice, so reluctantly, I let go of him and let him lead me over to the sofa. Once I was seated, he sat opposite me and took my hands.
“First, I need to tell you how much I missed this, seeing you, hearing your voice, holding you, it’s been a living hell! The only reason I was able to come to you was because of Mum.”
I reared back at that, stiffening in outrage.
“Don’t ever speak of that bitch again, she’s dead to me, never mention her name, do you understand?” I gritted out, horrified that he’d even brought her up, after what she did to me.
“No, Tink, you don’t understand. I’m here because she can’t hurt you, or me, any more. She’s been sent to a secure Care Home, after she was sectioned under the Mental Health Act.”
Now I was intrigued.
“What’s wrong with her, Mark?” I asked
Mark looked grim for a second. “She’s suffering from advanced ARD, Alcohol-Related Dementia, with a whole bunch of other cognitive disorders, and possibly Korsakoff’s Psychosis caused by years of chronic vitamin deficiency coupled with alcohol abuse — apparently not content with turning her liver into a Swiss cheese with a bottle of vodka a day for twenty years, she’s also managed to turn her brain into a marshmallow by drinking dinner instead of actually eating something. The upshot is, she’s completely dissociated from reality, she’s forgotten you, she’s forgotten me, when I went to see her she thought I was dad. She got sectioned after she got arrested for kicking-off in a supermarket when the checkout people refused to let her buy vodka because she was already drunk, she was assessed, and she was placed in a secure unit in Richmond a few days ago. I came down because the police found my name in amongst her stuff, and I’ve been trying to get her affairs in order.”
I was trying to take this all in. Mum was suffering from dementia? For how long?
“Mark, how come you’re here, now? What brought you to see me?”
He suddenly looked tense, almost angry.
“Because you’re safe from her now! That night, when it all kicked off, she made threats, mostly against you, and I believed her; she said that if I didn’t leave you and transfer out of London, she was going to give your details to the police and have both of us charged with Incest, she was going to tell your employers that you were being charged with incest, and petition the Home Office to have you placed on the Sex-Offender’s Register, and she threatened give your story to the papers and let them pillory you. Her price for not destroying you that was that I go away, break off all contact, cut all ties with you. I had to do it, otherwise she was going to take away your life, your job, destroy you in public, make you a hate figure. I had to protect you, Tink, I had to do it!”
He drew a deep breath, his face flushing.
“She kept an eye on you, you know; she knew exactly where you lived, it’s only a half mile walk from her place to here, she used to come on little snooping trips, which is why I stayed away; if I’d come here and she’d seen me, it would have been curtains for you. Oh God, Tink, can you imagine, she used to come and stand outside at night and watch you? She was a fucking loony! But, she was lucid enough, vindictive enough, and malicious enough to carry out her threats if she thought I’d broken my word.”
He sighed, looking drawn and exhausted.