‘You were just a little girl, Lucy, and your dad had just died. It was a terrible time for us all.’ Her mum reached up her sleeve for her handkerchief and dabbed at her eyes before blowing her nose. ‘I spoke to the social workers and the doctors. They said it was likely you wouldn’t have been able to cope. They said it was in the baby’s best interest and I agreed. They said the baby—’
‘Stop calling her “the baby”. Her name is Bella, Bella May! That’s the name of your eldest granddaughter. Bella May!’
‘I know! I know her name and I see her little face all the time, and if you think that was an easy decision for me, then you are wrong, but I could only think about you, my daughter, my little girl, and what I thought was best. I didn’t want that one mistake to ruin your life.’ Her mum reached for a wet wipe from the dispenser on the bed and blotted at her eyes and nose.
‘I was sixteen, Mum, and I was old enough to get pregnant, and that one mistake, as you call it, did ruin my life, but not because I brought a child into the world, but because my choices were taken away from me!’
‘You have no idea, Lucy, no idea at all what it was like. I was hanging on by a thread. I was trying to make things the best they could be for Fay, who had just lost her dad too, money was tight, I was grieving and then that happened to you.’ She shook her head, her voice tight with distress, as her tears fell. ‘I couldn’t see any other way. The social worker who interviewed you said you were a very young sixteen-year-old, and you were. She said you were vulnerable, fragile. You weren’t worldly, you wouldn’t have had the first idea about the pressures and stresses of raising a child, and I didn’t want you to have to find out. I thought I could restore your childhood and leave you free to have a life, a good life, and you have!’
Lucy tried to imagine arriving back from the hospital, walking into her childhood home with a baby in her arms, and strangely she couldn’t.
She thought of Camille and her tone became calmer. ‘I was probably more worldly than you thought, and I have had a life full of holes. Bella-shaped holes that get bigger with every day that passes.’
‘How, Lucy? How would you have cared her for? Paid for her? How would it have happened?’ Jan pushed.
‘I . . . I don’t know,’ she admitted. The words of her conversation with Camille came flooding back. ‘A baby will change your whole future. It will become your future, taking the space of any thoughts or ideas you might currently have. It doesn’t mean you can’t have the things you have planned for, but it means they will undoubtedly be harder to achieve, and it means you can’t put yourself first. That’s before you even consider the practicalities, like how you can earn a living and where you might live . . . This will change every aspect of your life.’
‘No. I don’t know either, love.’ Her mum’s voice was soft. ‘If money had been no object and we had had the space, we could have considered it, but things were terrible for me, for us all. You were already frail, broken over your dad, and I can’t imagine how much worse it would have been if you’d had to leave school and get a job and care for a child.’ She shook her head.
Lucy opened her mouth, but had no response. She pictured Camille, and for the first time saw a life with her own child that wasn’t happy and carefree; instead she saw poverty and struggle, and it sent a shiver along her limbs.
Lucy gently rocked Maisie, who had stopped crying. The sound of the creak of a floorboard in the hallway caused both her and her mum to turn their heads. Fay crept into the room with tears streaming down her face. She calmly walked over to the baby monitor that was set on the sideboard and turned it off before making her way over to Lucy. She placed her arms around her and held her tight, while they sobbed. Her mum leapt up and held both her girls, as the three generations stood locked together, united by a common sadness. Lucy cried loudly, ‘I miss my dad!’
Fay pulled away and spoke to her big sister. ‘I miss him too, and for the record I have never thought you were useless. I have always, always, thought you were absolutely brilliant.’
Fay and Adam went home, leaving Lucy and her mum sitting opposite each other at the kitchen table.
‘I love you, Lucy,’ Jan began.
Lucy felt lighter, relieved and hopeful. ‘I love you too.’
‘Well that’s a very good start.’ Her mum swiped the pad of her index finger under both eyes and sniffed. ‘You have always been fascinating to me, Lucy. I find it incredible that this little baby I had is such a strong, capable, clever woman.’
She felt her heart twist at the compliment that left her feeling a little light-headed. To hear these words from the woman she had felt closed off from for so many years was the most wonderful gift imaginable.
‘But you weren’t always this way.’ Jan shook her head. ‘You were a daddy’s girl when you were little, clinging to him and waiting for him to come home, and when he walked into a room you lit up. It was wonderful for me to see two of the people I loved most in the world feel that way about each other.’
Lucy felt the creep of tears at the memory of her beloved dad and how safe he had made her feel. She pictured him poking his head around her bedroom door. She would make out that she was asleep and he would whisper into the darkness, ‘Sleep tight, Lucy. Have the sweetest of dreams’. How she wished she had not feigned sleep, but had instead leapt out of bed and held him tight, asking him question after question, getting to know him better and making sure he knew just how much she loved him. She hadn’t known her time with him was about to be cut short. She thought she had all the time in the world to chat to her daddy.
Her mum continued: ‘And when he died, part of me died too, and Fay was openly devastated, but you . . .’ She paused. ‘You seemed to clam up like a little nut. Everything about you was muted. You didn’t smile so much, you didn’t talk as much . . . it was like you weren’t really present and I didn’t know what to do for the best, didn’t know how to handle it. I was in the middle of my own grief, which didn’t help. We lived in a fog.’
‘I remember that time. I kept thinking I would wake up and Dad would be in his chair or in the garden. I hoped I would wake up.’
‘I know.’ Her mum clasped her hands on the tabletop.
‘And then I started talking to Scott and he didn’t know about Dad and so there wasn’t the pressure of having to talk about him or have him ask me if I was okay. He made me feel happy, made me feel good, took my mind off things. I had never really kissed a boy before him, not properly, and yet I was uninhibited like I was someone else. I think I wanted to be someone else.’
‘I can understand that,’ her mum whispered.
‘When I found out I was pregnant’ – Lucy stopped speaking and looked up at the ceiling – ‘I could not believe it. I didn’t think for a second that it would happen to me. Having sex with Scott and actually having a baby seemed about a million miles away from each other.’
‘It often does,’ her mum confirmed.
‘But then once I understood what was happening to me, I looked forward to becoming a mum, couldn’t wait to get my hands on that little baby.’
‘Weren’t you afraid? Because I was.’
‘Not really, Mum. Only about giving birth, but not afterwards. I thought it would be lovely.’
Jan placed her fingers over her lips and took a deep breath. ‘I was so, so scared for you. I could only see struggle ahead, for us all. I was certainly battling the onset of depression. I was lonely without your dad. I still am.’ She closed her eyes. ‘I was figuring out how to pay the mortgage without your dad’s income, wondering how to get a job and what kind of job I could get. I was desperately worried for you and Fay and how it was all affecting you both, trying to keep things as normal as possible, trying not to let my fears become infectious, and then you told me you were pregnant.’ She shook her head. ‘It felt like the final straw.’
Lucy thought about the impact Camille’s news had had on Jonah, whose life was on an even keel; she could only imagine what it must have felt like f
or her mum, whose life had been crumbling.
‘I never really thought about what it must have been like for you,’ she admitted.
‘Oh, Lucy, it wasn’t me I was worried about. Things were tough, yes, but my only concern was what this would mean for your life. All the things you were capable of would be curtailed because your life would have been one of struggle, and when you are struggling and things are tough all choices go out of the window; you don’t have that luxury and you can’t plan. Life becomes about meeting your immediate needs, doing what you must, unable to think further ahead than the now. I didn’t think that level of struggle would have been fair on you or Bella.’ Her lip wobbled as she spoke the baby’s name. ‘That wasn’t a life I wanted for you.’
Lucy nodded, beginning to understand, and she recalled many of Camille’s outbursts that seemed to have little reason to them. Had she been the same?
It had been a day that Lucy would never forget. A day of openness and a day of healing. Later she settled back into the bed in her childhood room, where memories lined the walls. She thought about Scott, the bookish boy she had loved, and wondered how his life had turned out. Was he happy, fulfilled, a father again?
Did he have the right to know, as she believed Dex did?
Her mum knocked on the door and entered. She sat down in the chair in which Lucy had studied for her exams.
‘How are you feeling?’ Jan asked.
Lucy looked up at her. ‘I’m okay. Drained, but I feel a bit better, Mum. Just to be able to talk about her is a good thing, I think.’
Jan looked into her lap. ‘I tried to talk about her soon afterwards.’
‘I don’t remember that,’ she confessed. ‘In my mind it was like I was forbidden from mentioning her.’
‘No, it wasn’t like that, not at all, but I understand that you might not remember things that accurately. You were so zipped up, hurting and withdrawn, and I didn’t know how to get through to you. I will never forget the look you gave me when I sat you down and tried to ask you how you were feeling. It was one of pure hatred, and I understood, but I never wanted you to look at me like that again, and I thought I was taking your lead by staying silent about it and burying what happened.’
‘Burying Bella.’
‘Yes. I suppose so. I thought it was easier than bringing up the subject, opening up the wound again and again. I figured what you wanted was to put it behind you, and the more years that passed without her being mentioned, the more it seemed that it was for the best. I honestly didn’t know how to start.’ Her mum shook her head from side to side, as if even the memory of that time was painful.
‘You told me not to tell anyone. You made me promise to keep it a secret,’ Lucy reminded her.
‘Yes, because you were at school! And they would have ripped you to shreds. You would have become that girl, the one who got into trouble, the one who had a baby, and you were already so fragile, paper thin, grieving for your dad, and I didn’t know how much more you could take. I was afraid for you, Lucy, and I only ever wanted to keep you safe.’
‘I think I was already that girl, Mum. I was already broken.’
‘Oh, Lucy.’ Jan ran her fingers over her face. ‘I want you to know that I only ever did what I thought was best. I went with the professional opinion, I read their reports, and maybe, looking back, if I hadn’t been so wrapped up in my own grief, I might have acted differently, but I couldn’t and I didn’t and I am sorry.’ She bowed her head then, crying yet more of the tears that seemed to be constantly hovering near the surface.
Lucy let her hand creep over the floral chintz duvet and rest on the back of her mum’s. ‘It’s okay, Mum. It wasn’t your fault. It was a horrible situation that has left its mark on me, but it wasn’t your fault, just like it wasn’t mine. It was just how it was.’
Her mum bowed her head. ‘You have no idea how long I have waited to hear you say that.’
They sat in quiet contemplation for some time.
‘There is something that I have been thinking about for a while now.’ Jan swallowed her nerves.
‘What?’
‘I’m sure you know already, but there are these agencies you can apply to, both as a parent who has placed a child for adoption and as a child who has been adopted, once they reach eighteen. Both can register an interest to be found. Thousands of people are reunited in that way. I’ve read about it.’
Lucy looked up with eyes full of sorrow. ‘How could I, Mum? How could I look her in the eye and tell her that I was fit and young and healthy but I gave her away? Do you think she would understand that I had very few choices?’
‘I don’t know, darling,’ Jan answered in earnest. ‘But you would find a way. And I know that with Jonah by your side, you can do anything.’
‘But he’s not by my side. He’s barely talking to me and things between us are horrible.’ She sniffed.
‘Don’t give up, Lucy, and don’t close down or run away. Talk to each other. You two have such a special thing.’
‘Maybe.’ Lucy wasn’t so sure. ‘Camille is pregnant.’
‘She is?’
‘Yes, she’s having a baby, a little boy.’
‘Oh my word.’
She watched as her mum sat back, digesting this new piece of information.
‘Well, if anyone can guide that girl in her time of need, it’s you, Lucy. You better than anyone know what she is going through. And Fay is right, you are absolutely brilliant.’
Her mum’s words were like music, sweet and welcome in her mind, and though she knew it would be a while before they could sweep away all the memories of hurt and things said that couldn’t be unsaid, this was definitely a wonderful start. Lucy looked at her mum and felt lighter, as if a large chunk of the boulder she hauled around in her gut had been chipped away.
‘And you should never ever forget the joy you brought to the door of the couple who adopted her. A woman who couldn’t conceive and would not have had a daughter were it not for you.’
A woman like me . . . She let the thought bob to the surface of her mind.
She lay back on the pillow and pictured again the woman who had become Bella’s mum, imagining the moment the woman was handed the swaddled child.
I bet she cried. I bet she held her to her and kissed her little face . . .
Leaving the hospital without you was the most horrific thing that I have ever had to do and, I am certain, ever will have to do. They told me you were going into temporary foster care; I think they were worried I might change my mind. Oh, if only I had known that I could! I felt empty, hollowed out, and that’s a feeling that has stayed with me. You went from foster care to your adoptive family when you were just three weeks old and I knew very little about them other than how happy they were, this married couple, to be given such a gift. My mum said once that I must have seemed like an angel to them and I know I would feel the same if someone gifted me a child. At the time, however, I remember placing my head on the pillow and feeling wave after wave of anger, because you weren’t a gift, not from me. In my mind you had been stolen, and that was something very different. It was weeks later that someone from the court came to see me and explained that now you were six weeks old, the formal adoption process could begin. My mum sat by my side, scared, I guess, that I might say or do the wrong thing. I signed the document and I could barely see the dotted line through my tears. And I’m crying now and the feeling is as fresh today as it was then. By my own hand, I denied my heart and I signed you away, my Bella May.
TWENTY
Lucy had been back at work for a couple of weeks, returning seamlessly to her role and ignoring numerous enquiries from Tansy as to why she had been away. She did what she had always done: compartmentalised her work and home life, presenting her normal, friendly, yet efficient self so that none of her colleagues would ever guess what was going on at home. She and Jonah had exchanged a couple of emails; reading their mundane content had been like taking a dagger to her heart.
&n
bsp; ‘You have had a delivery, looks like books, should I forward to flat?’ he wrote.
And her response. ‘Thank you, yes.’
He had also texted her late one night; she suspected from the spelling and grammar that it was probably after a few glasses of wine: ‘Were are yoru my Lcuy?’ She replied instantly: ‘I am right here and I miss you.’ His sober reply came three days later: ‘I need some time.’ His words sent a bolt of frustration through her.
‘You know what, Jonah?’ she announced to the empty walls of her bedroom. ‘To steal a phrase from you, this is not all about what you need.’ She pulled the duvet over her shoulder and threw the phone further down the mattress.
One night, Lucy arrived home from work and switched on the dazzling recessed LED lights. They lit up the entire apartment and made all the glossy surfaces shine, mirroring the shimmering array from the buildings across the river. It was beautiful, the apartment she had always dreamed of, and yet still her heart twisted at the thought of a seat on the squidgy sofa in front of the real fire in Windermere Avenue.
After showering and changing into her pyjamas and robe, she sat on the sofa with her hair in a messy topknot and casually scrolled through her emails. Without the routine of family life, and without Jonah to chat to of an evening, her working week was fluid, and it was now normal for her to work until she fell asleep.
The knock on the door made her jump; she wasn’t expecting anyone. She tightened the belt on her robe and stood close to the door to reach the spyhole, and her heart leapt when she saw through the little glass-covered hole that it was Camille. Reaching down she eagerly slid the bolt and twisted the deadlock to greet her stepdaughter.
There were times when Lucy’s desire to become a mother slipped into the background of her life. There were days, even weeks, when she would be so preoccupied with the task in hand that she could, for a while, thankfully forget the debilitating yearning that dogged her. And then there were times when something small, a reminder, would hit her with such force that she felt the blow against her breastbone, and the air would leave her lungs as if she was winded. As the door opened to reveal Camille standing there, this was one such moment.
The Idea of You Page 28
