INTERNATIONAL PRAISE FOR THE NOVELS OF DOROTHY KOOMSON
GOODNIGHT, BEAUTIFUL
“Amazing book, but be warned: I bawled my eyes out on the plane reading this. Truly a must-read.” —Netmums.com
MY BEST FRIEND’S GIRL
“A three-hankie delight.” —Publishers Weekly
“Both funny and moving, this will have you reaching for the tissues.… A heartbreaking tale.” —Closer (U.K.)
“Witty, with bits to make you laugh and cry, we loved it.” —Real (U.K.)
MARSHMALLOWS FOR BREAKFAST
“Koomson’s highly accessible writing style draws the reader into Kendra’s world of pain—and healing.” —USA Today
“Koomson … keeps readers captivated.” —Publishers Weekly
“So darn good that we had to read it all in one evening … Marshmallows for Breakfast will make tears run down your face, but leave you feeling that whatever happens, there’s always hope.” —Heat (U.K.)
“Incredibly moving and intelligently written … Enjoy being moved by this story and give in to its irresistible charm and wit.” —Woman (U.K.)
“A touching and engaging story of what happens when love demands that you open the Pandora’s box of the past.” —Good Housekeeping (U.K.)
Also by Dorothy Koomson
MY BEST FRIEND’S GIRL
MARSHMALLOWS FOR BREAKFAST
Goodnight, Beautiful is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
2010 Bantam Books Trade Paperback Edition
Copyright © 2008 by Dorothy Koomson
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Bantam Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
BANTAM BOOKS is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc., and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
Originally published in the United Kingdom by Sphere, an imprint of Little, Brown Book Group, a Hachette Livre UK Company, London, in 2008.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Koomson, Dorothy.
Goodnight, beautiful : a novel / Dorothy Koomson.
p. cm.
“Originally published in the United Kingdom by Sphere, an imprint of Little, Brown
Book Group, a Hachette Livre UK Company, London, in 2008.”
eISBN: 978-0-440-33926-7
1. Surrogate mothers—Fiction. 2. Parenthood—Fiction. 3. Female friendship—
Fiction. I. Title.
PR6111.O66G66 2010
823′.92—dc22
2010010070
www.bantamdell.com
v3.1
For Pebble
Contents
Cover
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Prologue
Part One Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Part Two Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Part Three Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Part Four Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Part Five Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Part Six Chapter 60
Part Seven Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Epilogue
About the Author
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I have so many people to thank, and not enough space to do it in. But I’ll give most things a try, so here goes:
To my family, one and all, thank you; you have been, and continue to be, fabulous.
To Jo, Kirsteen, Emma, Jenny and everyone at Little, Brown, thanks for everything. That’s a small word, but everything you’ve done means so much to me.
To Ant and James—you’re so much more than agents to me, and thanks for indulging my loooooonnngggg phone calls.
To my lovely friends—you all know who you are—I love your enthusiasm and support, and thanks for continuing to like me despite my “misappropriation” of pieces of your personalities and stories to create my characters.
And last but not least, to “The Children,” thank you for letting me live with you for six months. I had the best time.
PROLOGUE
He cries all the time.
Even when there are no tears, his eyes have the haunted hollowness of someone who is sobbing inside.
I want to help him but he won’t let me near. The crying he does alone, shut away in the room that was once going to be the nursery. He sleeps with his back to me, like a solid wall of flesh that keeps the world out. He talks to me with empty words, in sentences that hold no deeper meaning. He used to weave everything he said with the strands of the depth of his love. Now, he talks to me because he has to. Now, everything he says is flat and meaningless.
The grief is so huge, so immense that he is floundering in it. Swimming blind as he would in a raging sea at night. Swimming against the crashing waves and getting nowhere. Every day he is dragged further down, into those depths. Away from the surface. Away from life. Away from me. All he clings to is the loss. Nothing else matters. I want to take his hand, swim us both to safety. To make him whole again; to soothe his wounds and help him heal.
But he will not reach for me. Instead, he flinches away, preferring to do this alone. He blames me, you see. He blames himself. And he blames me.
I blame myself, as well. But I also blame her. Nova. This is her fault, her responsibility, too. If not for her …
Mostly, I blame myself. Mostly, I want him to stop crying, to stop hurting, to stop grieving with every piece of his soul.
I don’t understand this loss that he and Nova share. I doubt I ever will. But I understand my husband. And soon, I’ll lose him. The one thing I tried to stop by doing what I did, saying what I said, will happen. But this time I won’t lose him to another woman and her unborn baby, I won’t lose him to her and her child, I’ll lose him to himself.
I can see it happening: he’s going to drown in his grief, he’s going to be pulled so far down he won’t be able to break the surface. He’ll be dragged down to those bleak, gray depths and will never start living again. And all I’ll be able to do is stand on the shore and watch.
&nbs
p; She fumbled at his shoes, took them off, and he watched her roll off his sock and then it was cold under his toes. Like in the bath, before his wash, cold.
And there is water.
A big, big, BIG bath.
“This is the beach,” Mummy said.
“Beach!” he said.
“And that’s the sea.”
“Sea!”
“Come on, let’s get our feet wet.”
He pointed. “Toes?”
“Yeah,” she said. “Toes in the sea.”
She took his hand, it was warm like always. Her hand warm, his toes cold. She walked with him to the sea.
“It’s going to be cold,” she said.
“Cold!”
Then his toes were gone. No more toes, just sea.
“Whoa!” Mummy screamed—her toes were under the sea, too.
“Whoa!” he screamed.
“Whoa!” they screamed together. “Whoa!”
Leo, age 18 months
PART ONE
CHAPTER 1
H ey, Marm.”
It’s going to be one of those days.
I knew it when I opened my eyes this morning. I had that strong pervasive feeling of everything being skewwhiff, off-key. That I’d have to endure a day of it. I was hoping I was wrong as I showered, as I got dressed, as I flicked on the radio to keep me company whilst I stirred porridge and cut up fruit.
But Leo has just confirmed it for me. It’s going to be one of those days. Nothing will go right, tempers will be frayed, life will play nasty tricks on me. My seven-year-old will play nasty tricks on me. Or try to aggravate me.
He only calls me “Marm” when he is trying to rile me. He knows how much I hate it; he knows that he could call me “Nova” and I’d hate it less than “Marm.” He picked it up from watching American TV shows, their intonation when they say “Mom” (“Mum”), and every time it reminds me that he could be one step away from saying “rowt” instead of “route,” “aloominum” instead of “aluminium.” That he could start talking with a stateside inflection.
I stand at the sink, filling the porridge saucepan with soapy water, and through the reflection in the window I watch Leo saunter across the room to the solid oak wood table, climb up onto his chair and settle himself in front of his bowl. He’s going all out to wind me up today. Not only has he called me “Marm,” he is wearing his Teen League Fighter costume. On a school morning.
I turn off the tap and spin away from the sink to face him. Fully ingest him in all his glory: the costume is bright green with a detachable red cape that currently hangs at an awkward angle from the corner of his left shoulder by a small square of Velcro. He’s tied on his red mask, which serves to emphasize his huge, long-lashed eyes, just as it disguises part of his face.
He’s a four-foot-nothing, seven-year-old superhero with bulging biceps, rippling chest, six-pack abdomen and sculpted bottom.
Deep breath in, I think. Deep breath out.
I close my eyes. Count to ten. Count the memories that make me love him: two days old when he smiled at me as I held him in the crook of my arm. Eighteen months old when we first stood on the beach and watched the sea foam up to shore and effortlessly swallow our feet, then just as easily spit them out again. Five years old when he took my hands in his and told me earnestly, “You’re the best mummy in the world” because I’d made him cheesy beans on toast for his birthday dinner.
This is the way I have to deal with Leo sometimes. This is the only way to remind myself not to lose it. There are only two people on earth who can slip through the layers of my calm and push my buttons, who can make me shout. Leo is the one who does it most regularly.
I open my eyes. He is still wearing the suit. It is still a school morning. I am still unimpressed.
“So, Marm, is this all there is for breakfast?” he drawls, spoon raised, his head on one side as he stares at me.
The blood rises in my veins, heat rushing first to my throat, then to my cheeks. Very soon, I’m going to start crying. If I shout at him, I’ll feel awful and will have to go to my room and cry. If I don’t shout at him, I’ll probably have to do something else like ban him from the PlayStation until the weekend, which will make him cry. Which will, of course, make me cry—silently, privately, but certainly—because I can’t bear to make him cry. Either way, I’m going to be crying at some point this morning if I can’t reason with him.
“Leo, you need to go and get ready,” I say, calmly. “Put on your uniform.”
“I am ready,” he says.
“No, you’re not.”
He nods, furrows his brow. “I am ready,” he insists. “This is what I’m wearing.”
“I don’t want to argue; go and get ready. Now!”
“This is what I’m wearing. This is what I have to wear.”
“Leo.” I grit my teeth as I continue. “Ple—”
Ding-dong! chimes the doorbell. Leo’s dark eyes light up as if it’s his birthday and he’s expecting the usual glut of presents to be handed to him by the postman. He’s out of his seat and racing through the kitchen door before I can completely comprehend what he’s doing. I dash out after him with “Don’t you—” on my lips.
But even as the words leave my mouth, he is doing what he knows he’s not supposed to do. He is reaching up, his wide, chubby hand closing around the knob, and he is pulling the door wide open.
Suddenly the hallway is flooded with light. A brilliant, glorious white light. I raise my arm, use my hand to shield my eyes from the brightness that is drenching the hallway, making everything around us luminescent.
There is no postman on the other side of the door, in the white light. Just a tall, rakishly thin man wearing a white suit with white shirt, white tie and white shoes. He glows with the light surrounding us. His hair is black and neatly combed, with a perfectly straight side parting and a lock of black hair that lies across his forehead; his skin is a pale white that highlights his large, walnut-brown eyes; his mature features are friendly and open. He smiles at me, reassuring and friendly, then turns his attention to Leo, the smile becoming wider and more affectionate.
“Are you ready, young man?” he asks Leo. He speaks without moving his lips. He talks straight into my head, my heart. I know him, I realize. I know him, he knows me, but the full memory of him is out of reach and I cannot place him.
“Yes,” Leo says with a nod and a grin. “Yes, I am.” Leo speaks with his mouth.
“What’s happening?” I ask.
“You do look ready,” the man says to Leo.
“You’re not going anywhere with him,” I say.
The man looks up at me again, fixes me with his warm, friendly brown eyes. A stare that is kind but firm. Definite. “It’s time, Nova,” he says, again without moving his lips.
Leo runs to me, throws his arms around my waist, buries his head in the area above my stomach, snuggles me for a moment, then pulls away. “I miss you, Mum,” Leo says, looking up at me, a smile on his face. “I miss you lots.”
I reach out to hold him, to keep him near, but I’m reaching for air, clutching at nothingness. Leo is with the man, holding the man’s hand. They are so different, but so similar. I know Leo will be safe with him. But I can’t let him go. How can I let him go?
“Where are you taking him?” I ask. “He’s not even dressed. Where are you taking him?”
“It’s OK, Mum,” Leo says, “I want to go. I’m ready. I told you, I’m ready. This is what I’m wearing.”
I shake my head. No. He’s not ready. How can my little boy be ready to go somewhere without me? How? He’s not ready. I’m not ready. “I’ll come with you,” I say.
Leo grins, raises his hand and waves. “Bye, Mum. Bye.”
“No—”
My eyes snap open and I am still—startled and confused—for a moment as my mind scrabbles around, trying to get my bearings, trying to remember where I am. The room is in virtual darkness; slivers of orange street lighting creeping in through the
horizontal blinds and white light shining in from the corridor outside through the squares of safety glass in the door make it not quite black in here. I was asleep, but I wasn’t lying down. My eyes move around the room, finding it full of unknown angles and shapes.
Then I hear them, the bleeps. The rhythmical bleeps in the background that remind me where I am, and my eyes fly to the bed.
He is still here. Still there. Still in the bed. I sit forward in the chair, and gasp as every muscle and sinew in my back and neck screams in agony. I brush away the pain, trying to see if there is any change, if Leo has moved while I was sleeping.
Leo still lies on his back, his eyes gently pressed together as he remains in that world he inhabits now. That between world: not awake, not on the other side. I sit further forward in my chair so I can examine his face closer. The dream was so vivid. He’d been active. Walking, talking. Surely that must have translated into the here and now? Surely?
His eyes rest lightly together. His lips are soft and slightly parted. His features are smooth and expressionless, not like when he is usually asleep. I can remember in detail the many expressions he has when he is asleep, the way he is animated, his muscles moving and twitching as he lives out as exciting a sleeping life as the one he has when he is awake. This, this sleep, is so unlike him: he is rarely still for long, something always happens to make him light up or speak or want to run around. He never stops for this long.
“It’s OK, Mum. I want to go.” This time he had taken the man’s hand. In the dream, this time, he was really going to go.
My eyes flick over the bed to Keith; his muscular, six-foot-five frame is slumped in the chair on the other side, his shaved head lolling to one side on his shoulder as he sleeps, still wearing his police uniform. He obviously came straight from his shift and found me deeply asleep because I hadn’t stirred when he came in. Usually I’m awake when he arrives, and he asks me about my day before I go home to bed, but today I was out for the count. The vague memories of his lips on my forehead, his fingers stroking my cheek, drift across my mind. I’d been out of it, but I’d been aware of him.