by Karen Cole
‘I should probably go anyway,’ he says. ‘I’ve got school. They’ll wonder where I am. Are you going to be okay, Grace?’
She looks at the floor, barely acknowledging him.
‘How will you get home?’ I ask.
‘I’ll get a taxi to the border. Then phone my brother to come pick me up.’
I nod. I don’t really care what he does. It’s better if he’s out of the way.
I wait until he’s left the room and is out of earshot.
‘You can’t stay here, Grace, it’s illegal. What will happen if the soldiers find you?’ I say. ‘We’ve all been so worried. The police are looking for you. Your dad, Jack . . . They’re devastated . . .’
She shrugs and stares at a cockroach scuttling across the floor. Then slowly, deliberately, she takes her shoe and crushes it.
‘You should have thought of that.’
I don’t ask what she means.
‘You’ll get ill if you stay here.’ I pinch the skin on her arm. ‘Look, there’s nothing there, no flesh. You’re so skinny. What are you even eating?’
No answer.
I take a deep breath. This subject is not easy, but it has to be broached. ‘Grace, I know about the baby . . . Maria told me. You need medical attention . . .’
She laughs then, a short, bitter laugh, and turns her face away.
‘Oh, Grace, sweetheart . . . I’m so sorry. It’ll be okay. We can deal with this together, like we always deal with everything . . .’ I reach out and try to touch her hand.
But she snatches it away. Her eyes are burning flames of anger and hatred.
‘Grace . . .’
‘Don’t call me that,’ she spits.
‘What?’
‘Don’t call me Grace, when it’s not my name.’
Her voice is like ice.
‘What do you mean?’ I whisper. Though, of course, I know what she means.
She stands up, her blue eyes blazing.
‘Grace is dead, isn’t she, Mother?’
Chapter 45
2001
I’m lying in my bed and sunlight is flooding in through the flimsy curtains. I must have crawled up here sometime last night, but I don’t remember when or how; I was so drunk. I drank to help me forget but it hasn’t helped. I haven’t forgotten anything. Hakan doesn’t love me and he’s not coming. He probably never will. Tears of self-pity roll down my cheeks. My head aches and I feel nauseous. My breasts are painful, swollen with milk.
I roll over and look at the clock by my bed. Eleven o’clock. That’s weird. Why hasn’t Gracie woken me?
I pull myself to the other end of the bed and peer down at her Moses basket. The stand broke a couple of weeks ago and I can’t afford a new one, so for the moment the basket is just on the floor by my bed. By your bed is the safest place for her, the health visitor said. But looking down now, I see to my horror that a pillow has fallen on top of her during the night. Suddenly fully awake, my heart pumping, I snatch the pillow up and look down at her. She’s lying perfectly still, her little hands clenched above her head like she’s hanging on to something. I reach down and touch her cheek tentatively.
It feels cold.
‘Gracie, wake up!’ I grab her and shake her frantically.
She doesn’t move.
She’s stiff and still like a doll. She’s not breathing.
No, no, no, NO, NO, NO!! Please God, NO!
I pick her up, lie her on the bed and kiss her on her cold, empty mouth, trying to breathe air into her lungs. Then I pump her chest desperately with the base of my palms. I’ve seen people do this on TV, but I can’t remember how many times you’re supposed to do it or exactly where.
Nothing.
I stand up and shake her, slapping her cheeks.
‘Wake up, Gracie! Wake up!’
Nothing.
Time and space stand still. Somewhere someone is screaming. My knees buckle under me and I collapse on the floor, rocking her backwards and forwards, sobbing uncontrollably. There isn’t enough room in my body to contain this pain. It rages inside me, a monster of grief. Please let this not be true, I pray. Please God, let this not be true.
Nothing.
The silence is deafening.
Chapter 46
I sink backwards, rocking back on my haunches. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ I say shakily.
‘Yes, you do. Don’t lie to me,’ Grace hisses. ‘You’re such a liar.’
‘Grace, I—’ As I reach out and try to touch her, she gives a cry of rage and frustration and leaps to her feet.
‘Get away from me!’ she hisses. Then, before I can stop her, she’s run out of the room into the foyer.
‘Grace, wait!’ I scrabble to my feet and dash out after her just in time to see her racing up the stairs, taking them two at a time. I have no choice but to follow her.
‘Grace, stop! Where are you going?’ I shout, struggling up seemingly endless flights of stairs. ‘It’s not safe.’
In places the concrete has crumbled and there’s no handrail but Grace carries on regardless until we reach the top of the building and she ducks out of the door. I hesitate a moment, gasping for breath and gripped by fear, before I climb out after her onto the roof.
Outside, a vicious sea wind is gusting across the open space. I cling to the wall, feeling dizzy, vertigo already kicking in.
‘What are we doing up here?’ I say.
‘Well, I was trying to get away from you.’
She turns and smiles at me – if you can call it a smile. It’s a grotesque imitation of a smile that makes me shudder. Her eyes are glittering in her unnaturally pale face and I’m so very afraid for her.
Then my heart is in my mouth as she saunters right up to the edge and leans on the low parapet.
‘Come back, Grace. It’s dangerous.’
The sun, an angry, fresh red wound, has appeared on the horizon and is rising rapidly, bleeding into the sky.
‘You’re too close to the edge. You’ll fall.’
‘Every day I look down and think about what it would be like to fall. Would it be like flying? What do you think?’
Terror constricts my throat. I can barely speak. ‘It’ll be okay, baby. We’ll sort it out together . . .’
‘Will it? Just how exactly will this be okay? In what universe is this okay?’ She turns on me and stares at me with so much hatred my knees buckle. ‘It’s too late,’ she says. ‘I know the truth. I know what you did, Mother.’
The wind whips across the rooftop and there’s a loud roaring in my ears. I stagger back and slump against the wall, landing on hard concrete. The air is suddenly toxic and it’s difficult to breathe.
‘Grace . . .’ I gasp.
‘But why am I calling you that, when you’re not really my mother?
‘Of course I am,’ I manage with conviction because it’s true. I’ve fed her, cared for her, taught her, loved her since she was a baby. If that doesn’t make me her mother, I don’t know what does.
‘Bullshit.’ She walks towards me, her face twisted with anger. At least she’s moving further away from the edge, I think, as she squats beside me. ‘I didn’t want to believe it at first,’ she says. ‘When Grandad Dave came to the house last week and started dropping hints, I told myself it was just Dave being an arsehole as usual. After all, it’s pretty unbelievable, isn’t it? But there were things, small things, that gnawed away at me after Dave left, like I always felt, you know, that I didn’t quite belong in our family – that I was different . . .’
‘Everyone feels alienated when they’re a teenager.’
‘And then when I met Hakan he showed me the photo of Grace as a baby. In the photo she had brown eyes . . .’
‘You were a baby then. Babies’ eyes change colour.’
‘Yeah, from blue to brown, not the other way around.’
‘Sometimes . . .’
‘And then there’s the small matter of my birthmark.’ She lifts her T-shirt, swings around and shows me the large strawberry-shaped mark on her back. ‘Birthmarks can fade, I guess. Maybe they sometimes even completely disappear. But they don’t just appear, do they? That’s why they’re called birthmarks. Because you have them from birth. The baby in that photo doesn’t have one.’
‘I must have photoshopped that photo. I’m pretty sure I did,’ I say feebly.
Grace lets out a cry of rage. ‘Stop lying! You’ve done nothing but lie to me my whole life.’ She stands up. ‘I really don’t want to speak to you anymore. I can’t stand the sight of you. You disgust me,’ she fires, turning and walking back to the edge of the roof.
Then, without warning, she climbs up onto the parapet.
‘Grace. Don’t be an idiot. Get down, Grace. Please, let’s talk about this. Just get down from there, please.’
She laughs. ‘Only if you stop lying. There’s no point in denying it. I can always do a DNA test.’
‘Okay, okay. I give in. You’re right. I’m not your real mother.’
Chapter 47
2001
How long do I lie there with Gracie wrapped in my arms? I’ve no idea. All I know is that it’s getting dark by the time I finally let go of her and stumble downstairs.
I’m not sure what I’m doing; I’m demented with grief. I only know I need to deaden this pain somehow. On the kitchen worktop is the bottle of vodka I was drinking last night. I drink some more, as much as I can stomach. But the pain doesn’t go away. It just seems to grow inside me, until my body can’t hold it anymore. I let out a wail and bang my head against the wall. Maybe I can cancel one pain with another. But it doesn’t help. I thought I knew what sadness was until this moment, but nothing – nothing – has prepared me for this.
I pick up the phone. I need help. Maybe I can get help, I think vaguely. But who should I call? Not an ambulance. There’s nothing anyone can do for her now. I’m sure about that.
I’m still holding the phone when it rings, and I stare at it blankly, watching it vibrate in my hand. Hakan’s number flashes up on the screen and I automatically press ‘answer call’.
‘Hi, Jojo,’ he says cheerfully. And his voice seems to be coming from a whole different world – another universe; a place where Gracie still exists. ‘How are you?’
‘I . . .’
But he doesn’t wait for an answer. ‘I’ve got some good news. I’m coming to England after all. I should be here next Monday. I’d like to finally meet my daughter. Is that okay?’
I can’t speak. Why this? Why now? I wonder.
‘Jo, you’re very quiet, are you okay?’
‘Yes . . . I’m okay.’ My voice comes from far away. ‘What time do you think you’ll be here?’
‘About six . . .’
‘Okay.’
‘And how’s little Gracie?’
‘She’s fine.’
‘I can’t wait to see her.’
I hang up. Time passes. I’m not sure how long. I fall asleep on the kitchen floor and I wake again, writhing like a worm on the cold tiles. My breasts are bursting with milk, which I squeeze out and watch as it splashes onto the floor. My head feels muddled and there’s a hole in my chest where my heart should be – a hole the size of a planet. Grace is gone, I think vaguely. But where? I must find her. Hakan’s coming. He’ll want to see his daughter. If I don’t have Grace, I’ll lose him too.
I pull on a coat over my nightshirt, put on a pair of trainers and head outside. The sun is shining brightly, blinding me. I shield my eyes and head down the road in the direction of town. An elderly couple shuffle past me along the road and a woman pushing a pram gives me an odd look, then looks away quickly when she catches my eye. She senses it, I suppose. She’s senses the wrongness inside of me and she’s afraid. She’s right to be afraid. I’m carrying a black hole inside me and it’s threatening to suck everything into it.
I turn into Church Street. I’ve no idea where I’m headed. I’ve got no plan at all. I’m just walking, one foot in front of the other, propelled onwards by an awful dark energy. And I find myself in the old part of town. The houses here are posh, Victorian semis with well-tended gardens and BMWs parked outside. In a driveway a man cleans his shiny new car. In a garden, children bounce up and down on a trampoline, shrieking and giggling. The noise hurts my head.
But that’s when I hear something miraculous. Over the noise of laughter there’s the sound of a baby crying drifting in the air. The sound hooks into me and pulls me towards it. Grace, I think.
Grace.
The crying is coming from a black SUV parked in the street. The boot and the back door are both wide open, and she’s strapped in her car seat, her face red and wrinkled with crying, gasping for breath between sobs. She’s not Grace. I know that. At least part of me knows that. But why have they left her here all alone? It’s not right. Who would leave a baby alone like this?
I can’t stand the sound of her crying and I find myself unclipping the straps and pulling her out of the seat. Weighing her tenderly in my arms, I kiss her soft cheek and smell her pure baby smell. She looks up at me then and stops crying.
‘Gracie,’ I say, and she smiles.
It was meant to be.
Chapter 48
The sun is rising rapidly in the sky, an angry red ball. Grace balances on the parapet, her hair whipping around her face.
‘Grace . . . please . . .’
‘I told you not to call me that. We both know I’m not Grace, don’t we? It was her in the lake, the baby they thought was me, wasn’t it?’
I nod. ‘Yes, you’re right, but come back downstairs. We can talk there. Please.’
‘But I like it up here.’ She walks further away along the wall and opens her arms wide like she’s being crucified. For a heart-stopping second, she teeters on the edge. Then she sighs and sits down, facing me with her back to the drop.
‘How could you do it?’
‘You don’t understand. I was so young. Not much older than you are now . . . and I was so scared and alone. At first I think I believed you were really her.’
‘You let me believe Hakan was my father. All those years I kept that stupid doll, thinking it was from my father.’
‘It was you,’ I realise. ‘You cut up the doll.’
She looks at me directly. Her eyes are dripping poison.
‘What did you do with the real Grace? Did you kill her?’
‘No, of course I didn’t!’ I exclaim. ‘What do you think I am?’
Grace gives me a cold, assessing stare. ‘I don’t know. You’re not a normal human being, that’s for sure.’
‘Maybe not.’ I sit down next to her on the wall, keeping my weight firmly on my feet, trying not to think about the huge drop behind me.
‘How did she die then?’ Grace demands.
The truth is, I can’t be sure. There are fourteen hours, fourteen hours that I can’t remember – a huge black hole in my memory. Most likely I dropped the pillow on her in my sleep but how can I be sure that I didn’t smother her in a drunken rage? I only know that I loved her and that, in a normal state of mind, I would never have hurt her. But then I wasn’t in a normal state of mind that night, was I? There’s no point in telling Grace that, though. She doesn’t need to know. Instead I tell Grace the same story I’ve told myself all these years.
‘It was cot death. It happens sometimes. Babies just die for no reason. There was nothing anyone could have done.’
Grace kicks her legs against the wall. ‘How do you know that? Did you call an ambulance? Was there an autopsy?’
‘No. I was only eighteen. I was half mad with grief and I didn’t know what to do. You’ll understand when you have
your own children. There’s nothing so bad as losing a child.’
Chapter 49
2001
Everyone’s talking about it. It’s in all the newspapers and on the TV all the time.
I sit in the living room with Grace feeding in my arms and we watch the press conference together. The mother and father are both there, flanked by two grave-looking police officers. Her parents both seem bewildered, blinking at the flash from all the cameras. They don’t cry; it’s worse than that. They look hollowed out, devastated. The mother tries to say something but breaks down halfway through the first sentence. The father isn’t much better, but he manages to splutter out the bare facts of the case – that they left her in the car outside, just for a couple of minutes, and when they came out to get her, she was gone. The police appeal for anyone who knows anything to come forward and the parents stand there looking shattered, clutching the hand of their little boy. At four years old does he have any idea what is going on? You would have to have a heart of stone not to feel sorry for them.
I don’t have a heart of stone. I know right from wrong. I know that what I’ve done is wrong. I know that this baby is not really my Gracie. Twice, I dress her and get her ready to go out. I even put her in the car seat and drive to Church Street, but the house is surrounded by reporters and, even though I could probably smuggle her round the back, I can’t go through with it. It would be like ripping out my heart all over again. They shouldn’t have left her like that, I tell myself. Her father lied when he said they left her just for a couple of minutes. It was more like ten minutes at least. They weren’t looking after her properly. They don’t deserve her.
Grace starts crying in the back seat, so I put a dummy in her mouth and drive back home. At home, I curl up in bed with her in my arms and we drift off to sleep together.
After a while I forget she was ever not mine. It seems like she’s always been my Gracie.
But the nursery is starting to smell. The postman commented on it when he delivered a parcel this morning – another present for Grace from Hakan: a rattle, with an apology note. It turns out he’s not coming after all. Strange how I really don’t care anymore.
