The house was quiet, for a while. Shock, mostly, everyone walking on tiptoes as though the slightest tremor would bring the whole thing crashing down. They’d built a life together on a bed of sand, and now a wave had come along and washed it away, so that it hung over nothing.
“I’ve talked to a few people.” Liza found them downstairs, after the others were in bed.
Tom looked up sharply, saw Megan do the same.
“People I know from the... the camp. They want to help with the wedding, if they can. I know it’s not much, but…”
Megan answered first, reaching out a tired arm. “Come and sit down.” She sighed. “That’s really thoughtful, thank you. It’s just… with everything going on right now, Tom and I would like to have as little fuss as possible. What matters is the service, the fact that we actually end up married. The rest is just a party, just one evening.”
“Can I do anything, to help? I know you’ve got other things to think about, but I… I can’t help with Charley or Mars or any of that, but I can make a few bookings, write invitations, make decorations, come up with ideas… I can figure it out for you.”
“That’s really sweet of you.”
“Why don’t you show me what you’ve got so far?”
Tom met Megan’s eyes and she nodded. “You don’t have to. You have work, and school, and it really doesn’t matter. But if you know what’s going on too, it’ll save stress. Don’t make anything complicated.”
Tom pulled his laptop towards him. “It’s all on here… I’ll put it on cloud or something for you. We have guests, we sent the invitations already. And who’s doing what, and what we’ve booked, and an idea of timings, and the budget.”
Liza took the laptop from him. “Have you got bridesmaids? Or a best man?”
“We’re keeping it simple.”
“Just ‘cause… if you don’t want the fuss of asking anyone else, or you don’t have anyone, there’s always us. We’ll help. Charley and me can be bridesmaids… me at least. Mars can be an usher or a page boy or something. Mika can be a flower girl.”
Tom nodded. “Makes sense, but no gendering.”
“Well, whatever. We can carry bouquets, arrange dresses, look after the rings, hand out programs… or you can ask your friends. You should. People who won’t make fuss.”
Megan sighed. “You’re an angel, Liza. How are you doing, how’s everything?”
Liza shrugged. “I’m getting Bs now, and Cs in maths. Better than last term. And work’s fine.”
“That’s not really what I meant.”
Confusion. “So..?”
“How are you? Are you happy?”
“Of course I am.”
“And Charley and Mars? It must be bothering you.”
She looked at her shoes. “I don’t really talk to them. I mean, what would I say?”
“That’s okay,” Megan reassured her. “We don’t expect you to do anything, you know. We’re only worried about whether it’s upsetting you.”
“Oh.” Liza shrugged. “Don’t worry about me, I’m fine. How about you?”
Tom and Megan looked at each other. Typical Liza, just wanting to help them. Like she herself wasn’t still a child, with her own problems and concerns.
It was Tom who took Mars to counselling, and picked him up afterwards. Ruth was paying, having insisted, and Tom might have refused but Mars was only a kid and deserved help from whatever quarter they could get it. Charley had almost come to blows with the counsellor the first time they’d taken her and had refused to go back since. She was still waiting, still grounded, still beyond any of their ability to deal with. The police were investigating, another shadow over a scene that was already dark enough. The school searched her bag when she arrived every morning, and Megan searched it every time she came home. There was no moving on.
“Tom?” Mars drew his attention back to the present.
“Yes?”
“What are you? To us? Like, we don’t call you Dad, you’re not an uncle or anything. You’re not just a person who comes to visit, but you don’t live with us either.”
A difficult question, which Tom thought about as they waited at the traffic lights. “I suppose I think of myself as your foster dad, though I'm not officially. Megan’s your foster mum, she looks after you, and we’re going to be married soon, I’m trying to be as much like your foster dad as possible before then.”
“But what’s the difference between a foster dad and a real dad?”
“Well…” Even harder, not to make Mars worry about the future while not taking liberties. “Part of it’s legal. We aren’t legally your parents, we’re just looking after you for now. Like Joel and the others, we looked after them for a while before they went to live with permanent families.”
“So we’re going to move on too?”
Probably not; how could they do that to Mars, after everything? His anxiety had been worse, with regular nightmares and a jumpiness every time he left the house, but it was still better than before they'd taken him in. To move, again... how could they be confident it wouldn't break him?
“Only if you want to.”
“So I can stay?”
“If you want.”
“Forever?”
“Until you’re grown up, and have a job, or go to university, and you want to move out. And even then, we can carry on being your parents. We’ll still care about you, and want to see you, and be here to help when you need us.”
“But then, it’s not just for now.”
“No, I suppose not.”
“Then… you’re like my real dad, and Megan’s like my real mum.”
“Just not legally.”
“No.” he scratched the back of his leg. “Why do we call you Tom and Megan, then? Nobody calls their parents that.”
“Would you rather call us something else?”
He shrugged. “Dunno. It’s weird, though.”
“Well, the reason we didn’t ask you to call us Mum and Dad, or anything like that, is because when you came you didn’t really know us, we didn’t know if you’d want for us to be your parents. Especially as you’ve all had different kinds of parents. If you want to call us Mum and Dad, and tell people we’re your parents – unless it’s for official things, then you have to say foster parents – then… I’m certainly happy with that, and Megan would be too.” He wanted to talk about the adoption idea, but best agree that with Megan first. And wait until after the wedding, as they’d planned. This would do for now.
“Okay.” Mars was silent for a minute. “It’s just that… my counsellor was asking things. It made me think.”
Tom nodded. “I’m sure. Was it helpful?”
Mars shrugged and rolled down the window. “Dunno. We talked a lot, and he made me draw things, though I’m rubbish at drawing.”
“No doubt you’re better than me.”
“Was it bad, taking that stuff?”
Tom glanced across. “Hand inside the car, please…” He hesitated just long enough to frame his answer. “No, it wasn’t, and don’t let anyone tell you it was. You didn't know what you were taking, adults gave it to you, they're the ones at fault.”
“What if I did want it really, I just didn’t know it?”
“If you didn’t know it, you didn’t want to. You didn’t know what was happening, you couldn’t leave, that means it’s a bad thing that happened to you, not your fault.”
“Mmmm.” Mars hesitated. “What if they come back?”
They won’t. We’ll do everything we can to protect you. But what if they did? What did Tom and Megan know about protecting someone from a gang? “You’ve got my number, haven’t you? And Megan’s?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, you call us straight away and we’ll come and get you. Whatever time it is, wherever you are. Or if it's a real emergency, call 999 first.”
“Okay.” He stuck his arm out of the window again. “And when I’m older?”
“Hand in the car. Yeah, what about it?”
Mars brought his hand back inside with a sigh. “What if I want… a girlfriend? Or a boyfriend?”
“Well, that’s up to you.”
“But if they try to make me do something I don’t want to? Like Mark did with Charley.”
“Well, obviously you have to be careful. You can meet them in public places, especially at first, you can go to cafés or the park, and you can bring them home. And if there’s something you don’t want to do, you say no, and if they don’t like that then maybe they’re not somebody you can trust. If they’re fine with it, as most people would be, then you know they’re the sort of person you want to be going out with. If you wanted to do something with someone, and they didn’t want to, you wouldn’t make them, would you?”
Mars shook his head decisively. “No.”
"So you can say no, or you can tell them you need time to think. And if they're not okay with that, you find someone who is." And you make better decisions that Charley about what you want. Tom sat back, watching Mars out of the corner of his eye as he stared straight ahead out of the windscreen. Saw his fingers moving in his pocket, where Tom knew he kept his fidget cube. They'd told him he didn't need to hide it, but he preferred to.
“Tom? Um, Dad?”
Tom smiled slightly. “Yeah?”
“Do you get bad dreams?”
You poor, poor kid. “Yes, I do, sometimes.” The squeal of tires. The clean blue and white of a hospital bed. The straps of a wheelchair, tying him down, a leg that dragged behind like a useless lump of flesh, masked surgeons, flashing lights, sirens, Mick’s face. The phone ringing in the middle of the night. Charley, going out late at night, snapping at him, storming out and running into the darkness, where strange men snatched at him as he chased after her, until she was out of sight, screaming…
“It’s normal?”
“Well, everyone gets nightmares sometimes, but that doesn’t mean the dreams you and I get are normal. Your counsellor should help, if you’ve told him about them.”
“We were talking about other things.”
“Well, there’ll be plenty of time.”
“What do you do? When you have a bad dream?”
“Well, when I was little, I used to go and find my mum and wake her up, and she would cuddle me and let me sleep next to her. Now, I get up and turn the light on, and sometimes I walk around the room a bit, and I usually pray a bit, and I’ll read a nice book or a bit of my bible until I’m ready to go to sleep again. Sometimes, I listen to music, or an audiobook, quietly so I can eventually fall asleep to it.”
“We’re not allowed to use phones and stuff after bedtime, though.”
“If you want to listen to music to help you go to sleep, that’s okay. I’ll tell Megan I said so.
“Thanks.”
Megan caught him a few days later, after the kids were in bed. “Mars has started calling me mum…”
A smile grew on Tom's lips. “We had a conversation, after counselling. He wanted to know what we were, so I tried to explain, and he mentioned how weird it was calling us by our first names. I figured you wouldn’t mind if I told him he could call us Mum and Dad – only if he wanted to, which it seems he does.”
She put her feet in his lap, and he pulled her socks off, holding them at arm’s length and dropping them jokingly before massaging her toes.
“Did you mention the adoption idea?”
“No, I figured that could wait until after the wedding, and for us all together.”
“Good.” She wiggled her toes. “That’s nice.”
“When did you last sit down?”
“Um… dinner?”
He rolled his eyes. “Mealtimes don’t count.”
“Do so. They’re like a rest break.”
“What, with Mika learning how to turn a fork into a catapult?”
She rolled her eyes. “And laughing her head off when Charley gets pissed off with her. Family life, eh?”
He pushed her trouser legs up so he could reach her calves. “Lots of knots in here.”
“Cheeky. We’re not married yet!”
“What can I say, I’m a wild immoral man, already inflamed by the sight of bare ankles! Your honour is besmirched, and I shall have to go to confession…”
She kicked him in the face, lightly. “Something we’ve never really talked about. Why did you decide to be a priest?”
He caught her feet and held them still for a minute. “Well… I started doing it formally towards the end of university, but… God was kind of calling me before that, I just didn’t listen. But then at uni, I was thinking so much about what I was going to do with my life. It was a tough few years, university often is, and especially with all that had happened with Mick. And I’d kind of… found God again, after a couple of years of drifting away, just before I left for uni. That was really important. I thought about maybe taking religious orders…”
She raised her eyebrows. “Really?”
“Yeah, I looked into it, it just… wasn’t right.”
“Well, I’m glad of that.”
“Yes, I was going to say, now I know why. Well, I kept coming back to this idea of being a priest – and I had some great priests, Michael at home who did so much for Mum and tried to for me after the accident, and then the university chaplain, and the vicar of the church I went to in term time. I got involved, did a lot of exploring… I was studying English, but my course let me borrow a couple of theology papers. Was doing the discernment process stuff at home in vacations, with Michael, we finished it off in the summer after I graduated and then I was a pastoral assistant for a year, and then they sent me to selection panel and… I got recommended. And there’s a lot of “just knowing” in there, I just… can’t put it into words. I just knew God was calling me, and I wanted to go out and help people just like Michael and all the others had helped me. Never thought I’d end up an archdeacon.”
“Mmmm.” She shifted to make herself more comfortable. “Everyone keeps warning me about how awful it is, being married to a priest.”
He laughed, then was serious. “There’s something in that, I know I warned you myself, early on. We’re not known for being good at work-life balance.”
“I’ve noticed. But also, Steve’s said it, you’re a priest and that means I can’t always expect you to put me first.”
He looked across the room, at the crucifix above the boarded-up fireplace. “That’s true, too. I want to give you everything, but I’ve already promised myself to God, and… if it ever comes to a choice between you and God…”
“God wins. I know.”
“But I’m trusting that you’ll never ask me to do something that goes against what I’m being called to by God. I believe that being with you not only makes me happy but will make me a better person, a better priest. And I very much believe that our love is from God, because it’s the best thing in my life, and where else could it come from? Our marriage will help us both to grow in our relationship with God, not just each other.”
“They were definitely right, I don’t get you all to myself.”
“But I don’t get you all to myself either, do I? I mean, you’re a Christian too. And then there are the kids.”
“Of course.” She reached out to hold hands. “Getting married is complicated, isn’t it?”
“Oh, I can overcomplicate anything. Isn’t it also really simple?”
“Let’s stick to the simple version. Me, you, two become one.”
“I love you, you love me, together forever we should be?”
She kicked him. “That was terrible.”
“Why thank you…” He shifted her feet off his lap. “Do I get a massage now?”
She rolled her eyes. “Oh, I suppose so. Come here…”
“So we’ve talked about me. What about you? When I met you, you hated your job and lived in a box with a draconian landlord, and spent every spare hour volunteering with people who needed you. What do you want to do next?”
“Like being mum to these four isn’t enough?”
“Yes, I can see how that's a full time job. At the same time, it won't take the older ones long to be grown up. You want to keep focusing on them, or maybe add in something else?”
“I… dunno. Go on, I’ll be honest with you, I don’t know. I’ve changed a lot, the kids have changed me and you’ve changed me and… just the past year. The day-to-day and dealing with the schools takes a lot of time, then reading and meeting people to learn more about how to help them. I’m doing stuff at church, when the kids are all at school, but going back to work… not sure. Still exploring. At my age.”
He smiled encouragingly. “People do. You’ve maybe another twenty-five years of working life ahead of you, better make sure it’s right.”
“Yeah.”
“You know I’m here if you want to… bounce ideas. Talk through things. Get frustrated and swear a lot.”
She laughed, just for a moment. “There’s… no, I’m still at the early stages. It’ll come.”
“It will.”
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