by Karen Clarke
‘She’s eight weeks old.’ My voice sounded scratchy, as though I hadn’t used it for a long time. My old voice; the one that belonged to me before I met Patrick. ‘Her name’s Lily.’
‘Lily.’ Morag nodded her approval that I’d chosen her mother’s name. ‘I’m a great-aunt, then.’
‘I … yes, I suppose you are.’
‘Congratulations,’ she said dryly. ‘Does your mum know she’s a gran?’
‘No, not yet.’
Morag nodded again, as though it was what she’d expected. ‘Go on then.’ Her gaze was still on Lily. ‘If you need to spend a penny.’
The old-fashioned saying tumbled me back to childhood. It was the sort of thing my grandmother Lily used to say. I crossed the room clumsily, bashing my knee on the corner of an ugly dresser pressed against the exposed-stone wall. The bathroom door was low and I had to duck through, pulling the light cord as I entered. The room was clean but basic; bottle-green and white ceramic tiles on the floor and walls, the toilet seat hard and cold beneath my thighs. The frame in the big square window above the old bath was loose, chilly air pushing through the gaps.
I washed my hands quickly and splashed my face with water at the basin before patting it dry with a faded green towel. I was trembling. There was a shaving mirror on the windowsill, angled so I could see my face. My muddy brown eyes looked enormous behind the reading glasses. I looked away and returned to where Morag was standing with Lily pressed to her shoulder, one large hand tracing circles on her back.
‘I’ll take her.’
As she handed Lily over, a spasm of torment crossed my aunt’s face, gone so quickly I thought I must have imagined it. ‘She looks like you.’
‘You haven’t changed much,’ I said at the same time, refastening a popper on Lily’s sleepsuit as I slotted her back into my arms. ‘Your hair …’ I gestured to Morag’s springy mop, still mostly jet-black but with iron-grey strands running through it. Her sun-browned face was scored with lines, deeper than I remembered. She wasn’t tall, but stood straight-backed, heavy brows and a square set jaw giving her a forbidding air. Her dark, penetrating eyes seeming to look inside me. She was a more defined version of her sister, or maybe my mother was a less vivid version of Morag.
‘You have,’ she shot back. Her words were harsh, but I could tell they masked concern. ‘Since when did you start wearing glasses?’
‘I don’t.’ I pulled them off, blinking as the world shrank back to normal, feeling an ache behind my ears where the arms had pinched. I shoved them into the deep pocket on the front of my sweatshirt and took off the baseball hat, shaking my shoulder-length hair loose. The room tilted for a moment as a wave of dizziness overtook me. ‘I was trying out a new image.’
Morag gave me a sceptical look. She must have a thousand questions. I tried to organise the jumble of words pushing up through my chest, but saw she was shaking her head.
‘We can talk tomorrow.’ She shrugged off her fleece-lined jacket and hung it on a hook by the door before easing out of her mud-encrusted walking boots to reveal blue woollen socks. Her feet were large, not dainty, like Mum’s. ‘You need food?’ she said. ‘Something to drink?’
‘No, thank you. I ate on the way.’ A stale croissant, I remembered now, picked up at the airport. Exhaustion rolled through me as the adrenaline that had flooded my bloodstream for the past twenty-four hours seeped away. ‘Just sleep.’ I was swaying, Morag a blurry figure in front of me.
She took the baseball hat from my fingers and hung it up with her jacket. Turning, she unexpectedly touched my hair, smoothing the ends through her fingers. I realised she was overcome with emotion. ‘Still brown, then.’ Maybe she’d expected me to have dyed it. ‘You can have the crog loft,’ she said gruffly. ‘It’s not much, but the bed’s comfortable. I’ll take the sofa.’
‘Crog loft?’
‘Bedroom in the loft space.’ Her hand fell away from my hair. ‘I thought you’d know that,’ she said. ‘Traditionally, the furthest area away from the cooking hearth.’ It rang a distant bell from long-ago visits to my grandparents’ Welsh home, but my brain felt like cotton wool. ‘Be careful going up there with the little one.’
Holding Lily tightly, I followed Morag up the worn, wooden steps to a low-ceilinged room dominated by a wide bed loaded with pillows and blankets, a brightly coloured throw draped across the bottom. ‘It’s lovely.’
Morag’s whole body seemed to soften as she turned in the cramped space to look at Lily, whose eyes were wide open as she gazed around. ‘I don’t have anything for the baby to sleep in.’
‘She’ll be fine in with me.’
‘Really?’ Morag sounded dubious. She had no idea that for weeks, I’d barely let Lily out of arm’s reach, keeping her beside me in bed as I fitfully dozed.
‘What if you fall into a deep sleep and roll on top of her?’ Morag spoke bluntly, one hand on her hip. I’d forgotten that about her. How she tended to say whatever came into her head.
‘I won’t.’
‘You might.’ She turned to a heavy, mahogany dressing table carved with roses and tugged out the bottom drawer, emptying socks and sturdy knickers – mostly black and beige – onto the deep-pile rug. ‘She can sleep in here.’ She pulled a clean blanket from a chest at the foot of the bed, arranged it in the base of the drawer, laid a pillow lengthways on top and arranged a smaller blanket over that. ‘This will do.’
‘I don’t—’
‘I’ll come up and check on her,’ she interrupted. ‘You need to sleep properly, Grace.’
‘She’ll want a feed in the night.’
‘Do it now and get her settled.’
Morag’s tone didn’t invite argument. I felt myself surrender, grateful once more to be given instructions, feeling as if I was dreaming again as I handed Lily to Morag. I stripped to my underwear and climbed into bed, sinking against pillows as soft as clouds.
‘Here we are.’
Aware of Morag watching, her expression unreadable, I took Lily back and hoisted up my vest. As she latched on to my nipple and suckled, my eyelids immediately drooped shut. I felt myself being dragged towards sleep. As Lily was lifted from me, I let myself sink deeper, limbs loosening, breath slowing.
My last waking thought was, I’m home.
Chapter 5
In the serene space between sleeping and waking, I heard comforting kitchen sounds downstairs. For a moment, I thought I must be at the house in Berkshire where I’d grown up, Mum making sure my father went to his office with a cooked breakfast inside him, preparing his coffee the way he liked it, strong with a heaped spoonful of brown sugar.
It had been a long time before I realised that preparing his breakfast, packing his lunch and cooking his dinner every day wasn’t so much an act of love as a way of ‘keeping him sweet’ as my mother put it when I asked her once why Dad couldn’t make his own meals. Andrew Evans had a temper and our role was to stop it emerging; though it didn’t always work.
I stirred, feeling the tug of tiredness deep in my bones. Soft light poured through a rectangle of uncurtained window sunk into the wall above the chest of drawers. Prising my eyelids wider, I frowned at the gaping space in the chest. Lily. Sleep scattered as I bolted upright, pushing off the heavy blankets. My gaze scoured the drawer at the side of the bed, though I knew already she’d gone. There was barely a dent in the pillow-and-blanket nest Morag had created. What had I been thinking, letting my baby out of my sight and sleeping soundly for God knew how long?
‘Lily!’ I stood up too quickly. Everything spun. ‘Where’s Lily?’
‘It’s OK, she’s here.’ Morag’s voice rose from below. ‘She’s fine.’
I rushed down the short staircase, turning at the bottom to face what could only loosely be termed a kitchen. Morag was perched on a three-legged stool at a wooden table that might have once been a door. ‘She’s sleeping,’ she said, nodding at the bundle tucked inside her tartan dressing gown. Only a dusting of dark hair and the soft cu
rve of a cheek was visible.
A bottle, half full of formula, stood on the table, Lily’s changing bag open on the quarry-tiled floor in front of a stone fireplace with a heap of ash in the grate. No sign of any sterilising equipment, of course. Morag didn’t have children, had no experience with babies.
‘You should have woken me.’ My voice was sharp with anxiety. ‘The formula’s for emergencies. I prefer to feed her myself.’
‘She only took half.’ Morag’s eyes were like shards of granite as she studied me, standing there in my vest top and knickers, skin pimpled with gooseflesh. The kitchen was cold in the unheated room, my breath misting the air.
‘I didn’t hear her crying.’
‘She wasn’t.’ Morag’s tone was abrupt. ‘I came up to check on her and she was awake. I thought I’d bring her down before she disturbed you.’
‘Oh.’ What must she think of me, standing there barely dressed, practically a stranger in her home, accusing her of … what? ‘I’m sorry.’
‘You talk in your sleep.’
‘I do?’ A fragment of a dream came back. A woman yelling, the thud of someone falling, a pale arm flung out. Pulse skittering, I rubbed my arms, resisting the urge to snatch Lily back as I sat gingerly on a spindle-backed dining chair. ‘What was I saying?’
Morag’s gaze was steady. ‘“Please don’t, leave us alone”, something like that.’
Nausea swirled through me. I swallowed, unsure what to say. ‘What time is it?’
She glanced at an old Mariner’s clock on the dresser. I vaguely recognised it from my grandparents’ house. ‘Just gone seven.’
‘Lily never sleeps all night.’ I rose and moved closer, unease sweeping through me.
‘Maybe she was as worn out as you were,’ Morag said. ‘I changed her nappy; it was soaked.’
Nappy. I’d got used to calling them diapers. ‘Thank you. I’ve got some nappy bags.’
‘I know, I found them.’ She looked at Lily again, still blissfully asleep, rocking her slightly. ‘She’s a good girl.’
‘Yes, she is.’ My stomach growled, heard plainly in the silence.
Morag rose, stool scraping on the tiles. ‘Take her back to bed and I’ll make you some breakfast.’ She relinquished Lily with obvious reluctance, one weathered hand hovering after she’d placed the baby in my arms. Maybe she didn’t trust me. I didn’t exactly ooze maternal instinct, even if I felt it with every cell in my body. My heart had seemed to double in size the second I held Lily, but Morag probably remembered me announcing that I never wanted children, that they were a ‘nuisance’. I’d had bigger plans for my life than being a mother. Yet, here I was.
‘Thank you,’ I said again, noticing half-moon shadows under Morag’s eyes, a deepening of the grooves around her mouth. Had she stayed up all night, watching over us? I breathed in Lily as I kissed her velvet cheek, catching a trace of Morag under her milky, talcum-powder scent. ‘If you’re sure you don’t mind.’
She’d already turned to the ancient-looking stove. I was relieved to see it was free from grease and grime and left her reaching for some eggs in a china bowl by the kettle as I retreated to bed. It was still warm where I’d lain and I settled down to feed Lily, overwhelmed with relief as my milk released.
Grace, please, don’t do that.
Don’t look if you don’t like it.
‘Here you go.’ My eyes flew open, lashes damp with tears. ‘I’ll put it here.’ Morag placed the tray she was holding on top of a heap of magazines serving as a bedside table, her dressing gown gaping to reveal a faded black Guns n’ Roses T-shirt underneath. ‘Come down when you’re ready,’ she said, eyes grazing Lily as she moved away as if checking she was OK. ‘I’ve got fresh coffee.’
When she’d gone, feet padding softly on the stairs, I stared at Lily for a long moment. My chest was heavy with love and fear. Sometimes, they felt like the same thing.
The smell of buttery scrambled eggs and crispy bacon wafted from the plate by my side. I lowered Lily back into her makeshift bed, covering her gently. She curled her hand by her cheek and sighed softly, eyelids fluttering closed.
I watched her while I ate, shovelling food in quickly, uncaring it was lukewarm or that the toast was burnt on one side. I remembered Morag marvelling on a visit to my parents’, before she was sent abroad by the paper she worked for, that I’d cooked a proper dinner, being ‘hopeless’ in the kitchen herself. Aged thirteen, I’d discovered the love of cooking that eventually led me to New York, and Patrick.
I wondered what he was doing now; whether he’d tracked me here, to this room in the eaves in a remote Welsh village in Snowdonia. He had the means – contacts, sources, money. He might not trust that I would keep quiet, despite my promise, and I’d given him every reason not to trust me. Even so, he was the one who’d broken his marriage vows. All I’d wanted was Lily, and to make a new life without him in it. As long as he let me do that, I would keep my side of the bargain; leave him free to pursue his dream of becoming New York District Attorney with his reputation intact. Curiosity burned inside me. What story would he spin? One that showed him in the best possible light, of course.
My mouth was suddenly dry and a chill swept through the room. Trying to hold on to the feeling of safety I’d had the night before, I swung my legs out of bed. Checking Lily was sleeping, I opened the suitcase Morag must have placed on the chest at the foot of the bed, and I pulled out some of the clothes I’d bought on my way to the airport – nothing like the dresses I used to wear, patterned with flowers or birds, worn with sandals and bare legs in summer and cardigans, thick tights and boots in winter. I wasn’t that person anymore, and dresses were too frivolous for my new surroundings anyway.
I found my toiletries bag and rooted inside for my grandmother’s ring, left to me when she died – a thick gold band, set with a sapphire, that had belonged to her mother and which I’d always admired. It was too big for my narrow fingers, and I hadn’t got round to putting it on a chain to wear, but I liked to keep it close.
‘I’ll watch her if you want to take a shower.’ Morag’s voice made me jump. I dropped the ring as her head appeared over the top stair, her gaze seeking out Lily. ‘It’s an old shower but the water’s hot.’ There was no apology in her voice for the lack of facilities. This place must be a palace compared to the hovels she’d stayed in during her years taking photographs in conflict zones.
‘Thanks,’ I said with a grateful nod. When she’d gone, I placed the ring on the dressing table, next to a cracked blue vase of dried lavender. There were no items of jewellery in little saucers on the dresser, no tubes of lipstick or foundation, or bottles of perfume; just a basic brush and comb set and a tub of moisturiser for dry skin.
By daylight, the bathroom looked just as basic, the shower an attachment fixed to the tiles above the bath, but as promised, the water was hot and surprisingly powerful. As I cleaned myself with a slab of lavender-scented soap and supermarket own-brand shampoo, I felt some of the tension wash away with the grime of the last couple of days.
Wrapped in a scratchy grey towel that smelt of fresh air, I looked at the small heap of clothes on the toilet lid, realising in my hurry in Walmart I’d bought the wrong size. The olive-green hoodie was too big. I pulled it on anyway over clean underwear – glad I’d thought to buy a maternity bra – with the jeans I’d worn the day before, and rolled up the cuffs. A glance inside a small airing cupboard by the washbasin revealed a stack of thick socks. I chose an incongruous pink-and-green striped pair, so unlike anything I usually wore that I instantly felt better – until I caught sight of myself in the mirror of the old-fashioned medicine cabinet on the wall. The hair Patrick once compared to the colour of chestnuts was almost black with water, hanging damply round my pale face, and the dark eyes I realised were the same shade and shape as Morag’s had lilac crescents underneath.
I tilted my chin and pressed my fingers to the soft skin at my throat. The bruises had gone as if they’d never been there b
ut if I closed my eyes, I could feel the imprint of fingers, smell the sour waft of coffee breath in my nostrils, sense the frustration in the clench of the hand closing around my windpipe.
My eyes snapped open. ‘It’s OK, you’re safe,’ I told myself, softening my jaw. ‘You’re safe now.’
Maybe if I said it often enough, I’d believe it.
Chapter 6
‘Does he know you’re here?’
I shook my head, not trusting myself to speak as Morag handed me a mug of freshly ground coffee. There was a gleaming cafetiere on the scarred wooden counter, beneath a pine-fronted cupboard on the wall.
She traced my gaze. ‘Can’t stand instant stuff. I grind the beans myself.’
I nodded, as if all I was capable of were head movements. I breathed in the fragrant scent of roasted beans as I took a sip, overwhelmed by a wave of gratitude.
‘The baby’s sleeping. I just checked.’ Morag had seen me glance at the stairs, my ears attuned to the sound of Lily’s cry.
‘Thanks.’ I dropped down on the three-legged stool, cradling my mug, disorientated by the awareness of how different everything was; how much had changed in twenty-four hours. Already, the flight from New York, Lily howling on my shoulder as I paced the aisle, had taken on the quality of a dream.
‘I’ve got to drop off some produce,’ Morag said, popping the bubble in my head that contained an image of the glossy kitchen, with its freestanding island, breakfast bar and enormous fridge-freezer, where I’d been just days ago.
‘Produce?’ I managed.
‘I supply the pub and the local shop in the village with stuff from the garden.’ Morag nodded towards the window. ‘I run a market stall there on Wednesdays. It brings in extra money.’
‘That’s great.’ It made sense somehow, even if it was a world away from her old career. Thinking of my aunt in Afghanistan with her camera, surrounded by horrors I’d never know or experience, made me feel small and silly, ashamed I hadn’t made more effort to stay in touch, beyond the infrequent postcards that barely scratched the surfaces of our lives.
