Buried Deep by Della Galton

Trying to get any news out of that boy was like chipping away at rock . . .

REBECCA opened the lounge door with a sense of trepidation. Jacob was on the sofa, watching a David Attenborough programme.

He didn’t look at her. Did the frown – the almost permanent frown he wore these days – deepen a little?

“I’m doing shepherd’s pie for dinner.”

He nodded. “About six,” she added. “K.”

When had her beautiful son turned into this uncommunicative grunt of a man-child? Was it because she and his dad had split up? Or would it have happened anyway? Was it her fault?

She ached for things to be normal again. How would they find their way back to where they were before? Was it possible?

As she peeled potatoes, standing over the kitchen sink, the cold water splashing over her fingers, she held a memory of the little boy in her mind.

They were looking for fossils at Lyme Regis, the dark cliffs arching up above their heads. Mark must have been there, but he wasn’t in the picture.

There was just the two of them, hunkered down by a rock, breaking open the soft shale to see what was within.

Usually there was nothing. Hour after hour of nothing.

Then that magic moment when they found the ammonite. A perfect tiny ammonite, curled in the rock.

“Mum! Mum, look!” She remembered his voice. The excitement.

“Wow!” she breathed as he showed her.

“Is it a hundred million years old?” he asked.

“It could well be.” “Two hundred million years old?”

“Maybe.” Her geology was slightly hazy. “They were certainly around at the same time as the dinosaurs.”

He ran his fingers over the circular ridges.

“So this one could have seen an actual T. Rex!” “I guess he could.”

He put the ammonite carefully in his pocket. “Dad’s going to love it.” Maybe Mark hadn’t been there that day, Rebecca thought. He’d been building up his engineering business, back then, and he’d worked every available hour he could, which often meant covering weekends, including the weekends he had custody of his son.

He’d never asked her if she’d minded looking after Jacob. He’d taken it for granted that she would.

And Rebecca hadn’t minded. She had adored Mark’s child from the moment they’d met.

The shy nine-year-old boy with the floppy brown fringe had held out his hand politely.

“Hi, Rebecca, nice to meet you.”

Impeccable manners and wary eyes, she’d thought, taking his small hand in the same serious manner it had been offered.

“It’s lovely to meet you, too, Jacob.”

Some of her friends had told her horror stories of sulky stepchildren causing chaos, but there had been none of that with Jacob. He hadn’t appeared to resent her at all.

It was as though he’d been resigned already to being passed back and forth like a hastily packed suitcase between his parents, both of whom, it seemed, had busy lives.

Lives that were so full they had to fit him in, squeeze him into the corners, Mark around his business and Gina around her new Italian husband and his family.

Rebecca put the potatoes on to boil and began to chop onions. Gina had moved to Italy when Jacob was twelve and she’d had two more children, a boy and a girl, with the Italian husband.

Rebecca tried not to dwell on the fact that some women could have children as easily as blinking. She bit her lip. The onions were making her cry.

Jacob had moved in with her and his father permanently. When he was small his favourite meal had been shepherd’s pie. She wasn’t sure what it was now. They didn’t see so much of each other. So much had changed.

She and Mark had divorced eighteen months ago when Jacob was seventeen.

She had finally given up trying to compete with his business, which needed even more time now it was established and prospering than it had when he was trying to build it up.

Since then Jacob had split the time when he wasn’t at uni between their homes.

He stayed with his father more often than he stayed with her. Mark had the bigger house – he lived nearer to town.

She told herself that was the reason.

Blood’s thicker than water.

The cliché banged around in her head. She and Jacob had always been close and she had never thought it would be any different, but it was.

They were growing apart, little by little, month by month and there didn’t seem to be anything she could do to stop it.

Maybe she would talk to her best friend. Kathryn’s youngest was three years older than Jacob.

Rebecca remembered a conversation they’d had once, years ago, when she and Mark had still been trying – and failing – to have a child of their own.

“It’s not all jelly beans and bouncy castles, sweetie. You could end up with a little madam like Bethany. Heaven forbid! At least you and Jacob get on well.”

In those days she’d had the whole future ahead of her. She hadn’t known then that she would only ever have Jacob.

“Dinner’s ready,” she told him, putting her head around the lounge door. “Shall we have it in the kitchen or would you prefer it in here on trays?” “Trays.”

She regretted asking. It was easier for him to avoid her when they weren’t sitting at the table. When the television was on. When he had his phone and his tablet within range.

“How’s your course going?” she asked over the credits of the David Attenborough programme.

“Good.” He blinked a few times. “Thanks.”

“And the people. Have you made any friends?” “A few.”

“What kind of stuff do you do when you’re not working?”

He shrugged. “Student bar – you know.”

She wanted to say, “No, I don’t. That’s why I’m asking. I want you to tell me bits and pieces – anything of your life so I can keep up with you, so I can still know who you are. I love you so much.”

But the last time she’d said something like that he’d looked at her, nonplussed.

She’d added him on Facebook once so she could see what he was up to – one of Kathryn’s ideas. But she’d felt a bit stalkerish and out of place on social media amongst his mates.

When Jacob went back to uni at the end of another silent weekend, there was a part of her that was relieved. Another part was desperately sad.

“I feel as though I’m losing him,” she told Kathryn when they met for their spinning class on Tuesday evening.

“You’ve both had to deal with a lot of change lately,” Kathryn said. “It’s bound to be hard.”

“He used to talk to me, though. Tell me what was going on for him. These days I feel like I have to chisel every sentence out of him.”

Like looking for ammonites on the beach, she realised. You might strike lucky, but it was one rock in every thousand.

“I have the same problem with Beth,” Kathryn said as they climbed on to bikes, side by side at the back of the hall. “I always feel as though I’m treading on eggshells around her.”

“What do you do if you want to talk to her about something important?”

“I just wait for the right time.” Kathryn shrugged. “Sometimes I have to wait ages.”

The music began and they focused all their efforts on the exercise.

Rebecca wasn’t sure whether it was the spinning that soothed her or Kathryn’s words, but she did feel a lot better by the

time they went their separate ways.

On Friday a card came in a green envelope.

Rebecca drew out a postcard of Lyme Bay.

Saw this and thought of you. Thanks for the weekend. Jx

She put it on her mantelpiece, relief stealing through her. Maybe she had been worrying prematurely.

She thought about the other stuff she’d asked Kathryn. Things she’d kept long buried, deeper than ammonites in rocks.

“Is it because I’m not his real mum? Is that why he doesn’t talk to me?” Kathryn’s eyes were soft. “Oh, of course it’s not. And you are his real mum. You pretty much brought him up, didn’t you? That’s what counts.”

Rebecca had nodded, her throat tight. It was a long time since she’d cried for the children she hadn’t been able to conceive.

Jacob had filled the child-shaped gap in her heart. He had lapped up all the love she could give him.

She glanced back at the postcard. She didn’t have anything important to talk to him about.

Well, actually, she did. She picked up the receiver.

“Thanks for the card, sweetie.”

“You’re welcome. Sorry if I was a bit, you know, distracted.” He sounded vulnerable.

There was a silence. She ached to fill it with reassurances, but she kept quiet.

“There’s this girl,” he said at last. “Carly. She’s doing a degree in marine biology, too.”

“Oh, yes?” she said, feeling the warmth creeping up around her heart.

“We went to see an Indie jazz band last night.” “Was it good?” “Yeah. Yeah. It was. We’re probably going to go out again tonight.”

“Cool,” she said. “Sounds great.”

“Are you still on Facebook? Only I posted some pictures.”

“I haven’t been on it for a while,” she said.

“I’ll e-mail you the pics.” He sounded so bright. So different from when he’d come to stay.

Rebecca hesitated. She’d wanted to tell him about Tim, the very nice man she’d met in the library. Tell him how they’d been chatting for a while, how they were going out for coffee on Saturday.

They had loads in common. Tim led walks along the Jurassic coastline. He collected fossils.

She had wanted to tell Jacob about Tim at the weekend. It hadn’t been the right time then. It wasn’t the right time now, either. Today was for Jacob and for Carly.

Maybe she would meet her one day. Her mind was already racing ahead. Jacob and Carly, and she and Tim, walking along the Jurassic coastline, where the past could be a hundred million years old or it could be right there beside you. Hidden in the next rock you turned over. The past and the present co-existing, side by side.

“I’ll look forward to seeing the pictures, Jacob,” she said instead. “Yeah, bye.”

“Bye, love.”

She put down the phone with a smile. Kathryn had been right, she thought. It didn’t matter whether you were biologically related or not.

Love was hard sometimes, but they were doing OK. They were muddling through, she and Jacob.

He was still there, her little boy from long ago, like an ammonite curled in the rock. Buried deep but still there, waiting to be found. n

They were growing apart, and she didn’t seem able to stop it “I wait for the right time to talk. Sometimes I have to wait ages”