by Jill Childs
‘Let’s keep looking.’
We moved on to the next aisle.
‘A game?’
I tried to remember being eight. I played a lot of board games with my father. He was patient. I realised now that he must have been tired when he came home from the lab but he always had time for me. He spent a long time teaching me chess.
I reached up, past the stacks of draughts and chess and classic family games and lifted down a box. The glossy picture showed a family of actors, a beaming mum and dad and a perfect boy and girl sitting between them, all waving their hands and exclaiming in delight. It didn’t look like any family I’d ever seen. His face, taking it all in, was dejected.
I pushed the box back, moved him on past more games and a bank of jigsaws and came finally to a small display of books.
‘The Hobbit.’ I took it down and handed it to him. ‘Loved it. Didn’t you?’
He thumbed through in silence.
‘Just the right age for it too. Eight.’
He stopped, looked more closely at one of the old-fashioned line drawings. ‘Maybe.’ He didn’t sound convinced.
‘And you can write a message in the front with the date. She’ll have it forever.’
He hesitated, thinking this over. ‘She might already have it.’
Of course she might. He could say the same about any book I suggested. About any game we found. He closed the book.
‘I don’t think so.’ He put it back. ‘I’m being a bit useless, aren’t I? I’m sorry.’
I reached up to him, kissed his cheek. His forehead was tight with worry. It was clear how desperately he wanted to get this right and I loved him for it.
‘It’s OK.’
We had almost exhausted the shop when he pulled out a box. Make your own charm bracelets. A girl smiled out, her chin cupped in her hands, her wrists resplendent with pink and white loops of plastic.
‘What about this?’
I took it from him, read the blurb on the back. It was a mixture of beads and miniature charms. I had no idea whether she’d like it or not. It was a blind guessing game. I said: ‘Well, there’s a lot to it.’
He took it back, looked again at the picture, at the smiling girl.
‘It’s not too babyish?’
‘I don’t think so.’
He sighed. We chose a card and a sheet of Happy Birthday wrapping paper, decorated with pink cupcakes, and he finally queued to pay, weighed down by the burden of it all. His shoulders were hunched and he seemed so vulnerable, so fragile. It was a side of him I hadn’t seen before and I felt a surge of affection for him, for this man who had appeared from nowhere and inserted himself in our lives, who tried so hard to look after me when he saw me struggle.
Afterwards, he found me at the door of the shop with his plastic bag in hand and we ventured together into the bustle of the shopping centre. He looked dazed. I threaded an arm round his waist and hugged him and his face, when he turned back to me, was sad.
‘Thank you.’ He kissed me on the tip of my nose. ‘No one’s ever done that with me before.’
‘Let’s get some lunch.’
‘I’ve got padded envelopes at home.’ I nodded down to his bag. ‘You write the card and I’ll sort the rest.’
‘That’s sweet.’ He smiled. ‘Thank you.’
That evening, I left Matt in the kitchen, where he was chopping and stirring and steaming, and went for a long, hot bath. I lay soaking, surrounded by bubbles, and thought how unfair life was. That Ella, blessed with a beautiful baby girl, could care for her so little and yet Matt, clearly besotted with his daughter, was so cruelly forced apart from her.
I picked up the set of ducks on the side of the bath and set them free to bob round the islands of my knees. I wondered if you were asleep in bed now, tucked up under your rainbows and unicorns with bear. I missed you, my love. Always. The house was never the same without you in it.
I read an article once about a mother with terminal cancer who bought and wrapped Christmas and birthday presents for her young children, all the way through to their twenty-first birthdays. I often thought about that.
First, about how anyone could bear to do such a heart-breaking thing. Then, about what I would choose for you, if I knew I were being taken away, leaving you to grow up without me. It struck me as a courageous act, that woman’s desperate attempt to defeat time and to stay present in her children’s lives for all those years into the future. And yet it was strangely melancholy too. What if the gifts were the wrong ones? If the children simply didn’t grow into the people she expected them to be, without the tastes, the interests she imagined? Like Matt, she simply couldn’t know.
* * *
‘I was beginning to think you’d drowned.’
Matt was sitting at the kitchen table, looking over the newspaper. The air was rich with the smell of chicken and the strains of one of my old CDs.
‘I didn’t know you liked Springsteen.’
‘I didn’t know you did.’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘Saw him in concert three times. Amazing.’
I smiled, imagining him as a younger man. I remembered how desperately lonely the evenings were before he came along, the silence and the solitary glass of wine and the early nights. And how normal it seemed now, to have him here in my own kitchen.
He opened an arm to me and I perched on his knee, wrapped my hands round his neck and kissed him.
‘You smell nice.’ He murmured into my neck. ‘You’ve been away far too long.’
‘Sorry.’ My body felt clean and relaxed in sloppy trousers and shirt and I shifted my weight as he ran a hand under my shirt and across my skin. ‘What time’s dinner?’
‘Soon. If you stop distracting me.’ He lifted me down, got to his feet and lit the gas under a pan. ‘About ten minutes.’
I took scissors and tape from a drawer and went through to the sitting room to wrap the bracelets craft set, then sealed the present and birthday card in a padded envelope.
I called through: ‘I can post Katy’s present tomorrow for you, if you like?’
‘That’s OK.’
Before I went back into the kitchen to join him, I sat for a moment, looking at the parcel, trying to imagine the young girl who’d open it, what she’d feel as she tore off the paper, what she remembered, if anything, of the father who’d chosen it with such love and such pain.
Forty-Four
Matt was working a late shift on Sunday and left straight after lunch. I pottered around the house, stacking the dishwasher and putting a wash on. I made your bed and arranged your toys along the bottom. A few more hours and you’d be home again. Then I picked up the photographer’s address and set off.
The bell jingled when I pushed the shop door open. The girl behind the counter didn’t lift her head. She bent forward over a magazine, her nails painted vivid pink. Her hair was long and swept up in a ponytail, tied with a green ribbon.
The interior was shadowy after the bright sunshine of the street. I made a show of looking at the frames: wood, plastic, metal, multi-frames, singles.
I crossed to the display wall towards the back. Portraits by Stella. She offered several styles. Young children playing, dressed up as pirates or princesses. They laughed, open-mouthed and joyful as only a small child can be, looking up and slightly to one side, their attention caught by someone or something offstage. I wondered how many shots it took to get those perfect photographs and thought with a pang how gorgeous you’d look.
Others were more formal, portraits of families sitting together in posed groups, children with slightly strained faces, in the protective hoop of their parents’ arms.
The final section was artistic. The face of a girl, about your age, on the far side of a bubble, just before it burst. A boy, a chubby toddler in a sailor suit, reaching for a falling balloon. It was hard to believe the images weren’t faked.
‘Can I help you?’ The girl, finally. She spoke without moving.
‘I’ve come to see Stella. Jen W
alker.’
She blinked. ‘Have you got an appointment?’
‘I called yesterday. You told me to come around three.’
She frowned. ‘You didn’t speak to me.’
‘Well, whoever it was, that’s what they said. Is she in?’
She sighed, heaved herself down from her stool and padded to the back. Her heels echoed on the wooden floor as they clattered through.
Stella was about fifty, with long, unashamedly greying hair and no make-up. She strode out in baggy trousers, flat shoes and a loose, blouson top. Her eyes were quick and her handshake firm.
‘You wanted to see me?’
‘I was thinking of arranging a photo shoot as a present for a friend,’ I said. ‘Could I ask you about it?’
The back room had the feel of an artist’s gallery. The walls were exposed London brick, the woodwork painted a brilliant white. The ceiling gave way to a long, strutted skylight down the centre, which flooded the whole area with light. Around the walls, individual framed pictures were picked out by spotlights on tracks.
Against one wall hung a screen: the pull-down, rolling type, which offered different coloured backgrounds. Next to it, there was a large wicker basket that overflowed with props and children’s costumes.
‘May I have a look round?’
‘Feel free.’ She settled at a long desk in one corner of the room, covered with mounts and prints, and bent over her work.
I walked round, past the wedding portraits, the family shots. They were standard colour prints, not the old-fashioned sepia of Ella’s pictures. I hesitated, wondering if I’d got the right place. Perhaps it had kept the name but changed hands.
After a few minutes, I sensed her watching me and turned. She got to her feet and came to join me, handed me a brochure and price list.
‘Was there something in particular?’
‘My friend’s having her first baby next month,’ I said. ‘I wanted something special for her. You did some striking pictures for another friend of ours, a few years ago. Of her newborn.’ I hesitated, pretended to think about it. ‘Well, seven or eight years ago, actually.’
She looked at me more closely. ‘I don’t really do newborns.’
‘Really?’ I opened the brochure, looked down the prices. They started at three figures. ‘I’m sure she said Stella. They were such lovely shots. The baby only looks a few hours old. There’s one of her in her mother’s arms and another of their hands together, the baby’s little fist curled round her mother’s finger, you know? They were really evocative.’
She didn’t speak for a moment. She just stood there, staring at me with an odd expression on her face. I turned away and studied the price list, feeling my face flush. I always was a terrible liar.
‘Your friend, the one who’s expecting a baby,’ she said at last, ‘is everything alright?’
‘Yes, well, I think so.’ I faltered.
Her face became stern. ‘Are you a lawyer?’
‘A lawyer?’ I blinked. ‘No.’
‘I’m sorry.’ She looked at me thoughtfully. ‘I get them, sometimes. I don’t want any part in all that. Good luck to people, if that’s what they need to do. Personally, I don’t think it helps.’
She stood for a moment, looking me over, then seemed to come to a decision. She crossed to a shelf and ran her finger along a bank of large albums there before lifting one down. It was ivory and tied with cream ribbon. She opened it on her desk, gestured me across to join her as she started to turn the pages.
‘I don’t put these out,’ she said. ‘Are these the ones you mean?’
I recognised the style at once from the pictures hidden away at the back of Ella’s drawer. They all had the same timeless sepia tint, the same stillness in the features. Tiny babies, some of them impossibly small and fragile, some with blue veins bulging at their temples through marble skin, some wrapped round in fluffy white towels, other dressed in baby grows and bonnets, all with their eyes screwed closed.
‘I don’t charge for these,’ she said. ‘But I only take referrals from the hospital. The midwives know me.’
I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t understand.
‘I went through it myself, you see, years ago,’ she went on. ‘There was nothing available then but a lot of people find it helps. It gives them something to remember. Otherwise, the whole experience, well, it can seem very unreal afterwards.’
She glanced at me. My eyes moved again to the photographs. Slowly she turned the pages, showing me family after family. I started to see the dreadful sameness in the pictures. How still the babies lay. Not one of them was crying. Not one had its eyes open.
‘Your friend,’ she said. ‘The one whose baby I photographed. You didn’t know her very well, did you?’
I shook my head.
‘How did you see her pictures?’
‘At her mother’s house,’ I stuttered. ‘That’s all. She had them on the wall.’
She narrowed her eyes and looked thoughtful. ‘Did your friend suddenly drop you after the birth? Avoid you? Some women do that, you know. Don’t take it personally. You can’t imagine, until you go through it yourself. The pain of being the only woman on the maternity ward without a baby. Your breasts filling with milk, just as if your baby needed it. And all those well-meaning people, people who haven’t heard, phoning you, texting, asking if it’s a boy or a girl, wanting names, weights, pictures.’ She closed the book. ‘It’s not an easy thing to talk about.’
She put the album back on the shelf. When she turned back, I was still in the same spot. My feet were rooted.
‘Now you know why I don’t do newborns,’ she said, ‘in the normal sense. Plenty of other studios do.’ She paused. ‘I’m sorry if there’s been a misunderstanding.’
She turned and escorted me to the door.
At the entrance to the shop, she said: ‘Born sleeping. That’s what I like to say.’ She paused. Again, the curious, appraising look. ‘If you thought your friend’s baby was really alive, well, I must be doing something right.’
Forty-Five
I barely remembered getting home. My body carried me along. The rest of me was numb. Ella’s baby girl. Stillborn. God, how awful. The pavement, the passing traffic, swirled and blurred as I stumbled on.
I couldn’t make sense of it. Was it true then, after all? Was there really some medical problem, a reason she couldn’t have children? My palms sweated.
And I believed Stella. There was so reason for her to lie to me. Stillborn. How did she bear it?
I remembered the calmness in the baby’s face. I’d thought she was just sleeping, but it was more than that. I saw it now. It was true. She was already at peace.
I thought again of the pictures. Of the tender look on Ella’s face as she held her newborn baby, Catherine Louise. She knew, even as she looked down into that scrunched face, that she’d already lost her baby. That those tiny eyes would never open and fasten on hers. What courage it must have taken to hold back her grief, her anger and cradle her dead baby’s body with such love. I kept walking, my hand on my stomach, trying to imagine it, oblivious to the world around me.
My thoughts were jumbled, confused. I thought of the strangeness in her eyes when she saw me teasing you, cuddling you. It was there too when you ran to her and hugged her. A hardness I always read as loathing. Evidence of her bitter hatred of us both. Now, knowing what she’d been through, what she’d lost, it seemed something else. Something far worse. Pain.
At home, I crawled into the crumpled, unmade bed and pulled the covers over my head, trying not to feel, trying only to hide. I shook for some time, my eyes screwed closed. Then a fresh blow hit me. I sat bolt upright, my hands to my cheeks.
What about the medical reports? The seizures? How could both things be true? I drew up my knees, wrapped my arms round them and hugged them to me. Had Matt’s brother, Geoff, made a mistake, looked up details of the wrong case?
I stared at the wall, struggling to figure it out.
Was there more than one Ella Hicks? It wasn’t such an unusual name. I hesitated, forcing my brain to work. But both with babies called Catherine, born around the same time and both dying? I shook my head. It didn’t add up. Someone was lying and I didn’t think it was Stella.
I moaned, lay back on the bed and curled into a ball. I saw it all again. The club. Ella, there in front of me. Her face when I’d taunted her about Catherine. My body flushed hot with shame. I didn’t know, how could I? What had she thought of me? She was very upset when she came home, Richard had said. His face was stern. I didn’t have you down as cruel. I put my hands to my face, trying to scrape away the memory, too ashamed even to cry.
Later, when Richard dropped you home again, I couldn’t look him in the face.
I waited until he left, then lifted you into my arms and pressed you against my chest, holding you tight even as you struggled, my wet face pressed into your hair. My own sweet girl, the day you were born was the most miraculous, the most wonderful day of my life. The thought of anyone losing their baby, just as their child’s life was meant to begin, made me tremble and I clung to you as if you were the only solid creature in this sad, swirling world.
Before you went up to bed that evening, we crayoned together at the kitchen table. You were happy and full of stories about the weekend. You told me about the little boy you’d met in the park. You’d grabbed his hand when he tried to run through the open gate and escape onto the road.
‘He was so naughty, Mummy,’ you said. ‘I held his hand very tightly like this because he wanted to run away. What a silly banana.’
You shook your head, fondly despairing of a boy who sounded only about two. You sounded so adult that I had to look up to reassure myself that you were still only three years old, crayoning with passion, your hair spilling forward down your cheek. Your words sounded at times like a window on your future, as if time could fold and past and future merge right here in the kitchen and show me your much older self.
