by Rosanna Ley
‘I think you’re getting this way out of proportion,’ Mel said. ‘Can you seriously imagine your parents—’
‘No.’ She couldn’t. Didn’t want to. She was beginning to feel not quite real, as if her identity had been snatched away, as if her very existence was now in doubt. ‘But … ’ A thought occurred to her. ‘Baby pictures,’ she said. She pulled the photo album back towards her.
‘Baby pictures?’ echoed Mel.
Ruby’s childhood had been captured on film and processed in the old-fashioned way, and she was glad. It was wonderful to have such a complete record of those years, of her family. But was it complete?
She flipped the pages. There was Ruby playing in her cot; Ruby crawling around the living-room floor; Ruby’s first tottering steps in the garden, amongst the grass and the daisies.
‘How old do I look to you?’ she asked Mel. In the first photo her eyes were alert and she was smiling at the camera. Blue eyes. A fair down of hair. Fiercely holding Ginger, her teddy bear. When she was seven Ginger had gone on holiday somewhere and she’d never got him back.
Mel frowned. ‘Six months?’
‘And how do you explain that?’ Ruby felt as if her head was exploding. ‘Why aren’t there any photos of me when I was first born?’ She flipped the pages back again. Two months old? Three? Four? Nothing. So this wasn’t such a complete record of her childhood after all.
‘Maybe they were too busy looking after you to take pictures.’ Mel poked Ruby affectionately in the shoulder. ‘Babies can be hard work, you know, darling. Though Stuart keeps reminding me that my time is running out and we should start a family before it’s too late.’ Just for a second she looked wistful. And Ruby knew what she was thinking. If she had a baby it wouldn’t be so easy to run the hat shop. And right at this minute, the hat shop was her baby.
But who was too busy to take baby photographs? Wasn’t it something you did automatically? Kind of top priority when you’d just had a baby? And hang on a minute … She turned back to the pictures of her parents in Cornwall. After that there was nothing but the odd landscape until Ruby was six months old. ‘There aren’t any photos of Mum when she was pregnant either,’ she whispered.
‘Honestly, Ruby.’ Mel sighed. ‘What is it with you? Who wants pictures of themselves when they’re fat?’
‘Maybe.’ Although pregnant wasn’t the same as fat, was it? Pregnancy was a time of hope, expectation and excitement. And she was doing the maths. ‘That’s no photos for about a year,’ she said. A year. Even before the digital age that was a long time.
‘Unless the photographs they took weren’t good enough to make the album,’ Mel said. ‘Or the camera broke and they couldn’t afford to get a new one.’
‘Yes. Or I’m not really their daughter.’ There. She’d said it.
How many times had she looked through this album? The truth was staring her in the face and she hadn’t been able to see it. No pregnancy. No newborn baby.
‘What about your birth certificate?’ Mel asked.
Ruby stared at her. Birth certificate?
‘You must have one.’
Yes, of course she had one. ‘It’s in London.’ With the rest of her stuff – at James’s flat. She hadn’t looked at it for ages though, she’d just tucked it away in a drawer. But she’d used it to get her first passport. The relief flooded through her.
Mel stood, hands on hips. ‘And who does it say your parents are?’
‘Oh, Mel … ’ Vivien and Tom Rae were her parents – they had to be; their names were on her birth certificate.
‘If I can’t convince you you’re imagining things then your birth certificate will,’ Mel said. ‘You’re getting into a state about nothing. Trust me. Ruby Rae is Ruby Rae in every sense of her. OK?’
‘OK.’ She took a deep breath. ‘Thanks, Mel.’ She would phone James, she decided. She would go to London and she would collect all her stuff. She would find her birth certificate and she would stop worrying. Mel was right. She could be getting all stressed out for no reason at all.
But after Mel had left, Ruby took the photograph out of her bag where she’d tucked it for safe keeping. The blonde girl with the little baby on a Mediterranean beach somewhere. She stared at the baby. Tiny face, a fair down of hair. A baby was just a baby – didn’t they all look much the same?
She stared at the girl too. At her mouth which was half-smiling and at the love beads she wore around her neck. ‘Who are you?’ she whispered. Secrets … If only photographs could tell.
CHAPTER 5
Dorset, 1977
‘I don’t understand,’ Tom said, ‘why it matters so much to you?’
Vivien’s fists were tightly balled. She felt that if she let her fingers relax, even for a second, she would lose the will to make him see.
‘Neither do I,’ she said. ‘But it does.’ She eyed him helplessly. They never quarrelled – but they were close to it now. She shifted her dinner plate to one side of the table; she couldn’t eat any more. She’d thought this would be a good time to broach the subject – in the after-dinner relaxation following Tom’s favourite sausage and mash. Not so.
Tom looked sad. ‘Aren’t I enough for you?’ he asked.
‘Of course you are,’ she said. ‘It’s just that … ’
She’d known, hadn’t she, when she wrote to him in the months after they’d met at the fair, when she sent him little drawings of stick-Viviens and stick-Toms swimming, cycling and kissing, that he was what she wanted?
And he seemed to want it too, because he’d stopped saving for a motorbike and instead saved up for train fares to visit Worthing as often as he could. But it was never often enough.
*
On Vivien’s eighteenth birthday he had phoned her. ‘If you were here, my lovely girl,’ he said. ‘I’d take you out for a slap-up dinner.’
Vivien had held the telephone receiver even closer. ‘And would you buy me some flowers?’ she said. Some of the girls at college envied her the boyfriend from Dorset who wrote to her and came to stay at weekends. They thought it was dead romantic. But Vivien wanted more.
‘Course I would,’ he said.
‘It’s almost the end of term,’ she said. ‘Maybe I could come and see you in the holidays.’ In September she was going on to teachers’ training college in Kingston upon Thames. It was all planned. It was what she’d wanted to do – before Tom.
‘I was thinking … ’ Noisily, he cleared his throat. ‘Have you never thought about coming to college nearer here?’
Vivien almost stopped breathing. ‘Now, why would I want to do that?’ she teased.
‘To be closer to me,’ he said. ‘We could move in together if you want.’
If you want … It was all she wanted. She’d just been waiting for him to ask. ‘All right,’ said Vivien, uprooting two years’ plans in one casual word.
And that was it.
‘You’re doing what?’ Her mother was horrified. ‘It’s ridiculous,’ she said. ‘How can you throw everything away because of some boy? You’re far too young to know what you want.’
But Tom wasn’t some boy, and Vivien did know what she wanted. Tom was on his own. He needed her. And she was quite keen to live in sin – it sounded both risky and thrilling.
Vivien never went to teachers’ training college although she did study art at evening classes. Tom was only just qualified and money was tight so she found a job as a shop assistant. Six months later Tom proposed and Vivien accepted and they got married in the register office in Bridport.
*
Now, Vivien looked at him with fond exasperation. Tom was her husband, lover, best friend, soulmate. She loved everything about him. Most especially she loved watching his hands as he worked with wood – chiselling and sculpting, planing and polishing. He had started off working for a local company, but he wanted to run his own business eventually, he said. He was ambitious. He knew where he was going. She liked the way he teased her and made her laugh. She liked it whe
n he was grumpy and she could rub his shoulders and kiss the corners of his mouth to make the bad mood evaporate. She liked the way he lost himself when they made love and came to afterwards with a sort of vacant wonder as he held her very, very tight. She liked the life in him, the love in him, his strengths and his vulnerabilities. And yes, he’d always been enough for her. But now she wanted more.
‘Why now?’ Tom asked. He pushed his plate aside. ‘What’s the hurry?’
My biological calendar, Vivien thought. ‘It’s been five years of trying, Tom,’ she reminded him gently. She’d thought it would just happen. She watched the candle flicker on the table, stared at the food sitting in congealed gravy on her plate.
‘That’s not so long,’ he said. ‘We’re still young. There’s plenty of time.’
So why did Vivien feel that time was running out? He didn’t want a baby as much as she did – that was obvious. How could she show him? A baby wasn’t a threat. A baby would be an extension of herself and Tom; part of their love. They would be, not just a couple, but a family. ‘Tom, I’m only saying let’s both of us do some tests—’ she began.
‘I don’t want to do any bloody tests. Don’t you get it?’ Then he was up and out of the room, slamming the door behind him.
No, she didn’t get it. What was Tom so afraid of?
She began to clear up. No one has it all, she thought as she stacked the plates. Why should they? She had Tom. He was right – that should be enough. It was just that over the years a little gap had opened up inside her and she knew there was only one thing that would fill it. She took the plates and dishes on a tray into the kitchen, put them down by the sink. It seemed like not much to ask. Because that little gap had grown into a well of emptiness. She leaned for a moment on the sink, staring out of the window into the darkness of the side passage. Some days Vivien had an ache so bad she didn’t know what to do with herself.
*
The following afternoon, Vivien called round to visit her neighbour Pearl Woods.
‘You’re not looking quite yourself,’ Pearl said, as they sat at her kitchen table with their cups of tea and a plate of digestive biscuits between them. ‘Is everything all right?’
‘Yes, of course.’ Though she and Tom hadn’t made up – not yet. And this was the longest – and worst – falling out they’d ever had.
‘You’re not … ?’
‘No, I’m not.’ Though Vivien had confided in Pearl that they’d been trying.
Pearl pushed the plate of biscuits towards her. ‘Have another.’
Vivien smiled. She noticed Pearl wasn’t eating any though. And come to think of it, she looked a bit peaky herself. ‘I went to the doctor,’ she said.
‘Oh yes?’
The house always smelt of lavender, Vivien realised. It was calming somehow. ‘He wants to do some tests to find out what the problem is.’
‘It may be just a question of time,’ Pearl said.
‘That’s what Tom says.’ And that wasn’t all Tom had said …
‘Tom doesn’t want to do the tests, I take it?’
‘No.’ And where did that leave her, with this ache inside and nowhere to put it? Where did that leave her?
Again, Pearl pushed the plate of biscuits towards Vivien, who took another one absent-mindedly. ‘How important is it to you, love? Having a baby?’
Vivien looked back at her wordlessly.
‘Ah, I see.’ Pearl nodded. ‘That important.’ She sighed. ‘It was like that for me too – more’s the pity. Then you should do those tests and find out the truth of the matter. Otherwise it’ll always come between you.’
Suddenly, Pearl’s face tightened as if she was in pain.
Vivien got to her feet. ‘Pearl?’ Her neighbour’s face was drained of colour and she had bent almost double in her chair. ‘What is it? What’s wrong?’
‘It’s all right, love.’ She held out a hand and Vivien took it. ‘It’ll pass. It always does.’ She took a couple of deep breaths as if to steady herself.
It always does? ‘Let me get you some water.’ Vivien went to the sink and ran the tap. Pearl was clearly far from well. And there was Vivien blathering on about her problems …
‘What’s wrong?’ she asked again. ‘Have you been to the doctor?’
And Pearl told her. About the cancer. About how long she had to live. A year if she was lucky. Maybe less.
Vivien was shocked. It struck her now that she hadn’t seen Pearl working in the garden lately, cleaning windows, dashing to the shops. She had always been so full of energy. She’d lived on her own since her divorce. But, ‘What about Laura?’ she asked. Pearl’s teenage daughter had gone off travelling over a year ago and Vivien knew for a fact that Pearl hardly ever heard from her. In fact she’d given up asking. ‘Does she know?’
‘I don’t want her to know.’ Pearl’s face had regained its colour now and she seemed almost back to normal. ‘There’s nothing she can do.’
But didn’t she deserve to be told? Surely it wasn’t fair to the girl not to tell her that her own mother was dying? Vivien thought of her own parents in Scotland. She still saw them, but not often, and they had never been close. They were so different from Vivien – so ordinary and conservative, prim and predictable. When they’d upped sticks and moved lock, stock and barrel to an isolated Hebridean island, Vivien could hardly believe it, hardly believe them. Perhaps, she’d admitted to Tom, she hadn’t known them quite as well as she thought.
‘If I tell her, she’ll feel she’s got to come rushing back.’ Pearl sighed. ‘I don’t want that. I don’t want her to come until she’s ready.’ She sighed. ‘You do understand, don’t you, Vivien?’
Did she understand? With no children of her own, it was hard to imagine how she might feel in Pearl’s situation. If she had a daughter, would she have ever let it get to this point? Vivien didn’t think so. She might not have been close to her own mother but Vivien was determined that it would be different for her. Her daughter would confide in her, rely on her, would turn to her in times of trouble. Not go off round the world with hardly a word of goodbye, and not even have the simple courtesy to let her mother know where she was and how she was doing.
‘I understand,’ she said. ‘But I think you’re wrong. Laura needs to know.’
Pearl sipped her water. Her face was so pale. She’d lost weight too – Vivien could see that now; her upper arms were thin and the skin hung from them in folds. ‘She was angry when she left,’ she said at last in a low voice.
‘I know.’ Vivien bowed her head. Her parents had split up and so of course Laura was angry. But it wasn’t Pearl’s fault. Her husband Derek had always played around but there was inevitably going to come a time when Pearl had had enough. Marriages broke up. It was hard for everyone concerned. But was it right to stay with someone for the sake of the children when you no longer loved one another? Vivien didn’t think so. It was dishonest. And sooner or later those children would find out the lie that their parents had told. She understood, though, that it wasn’t always that simple. It was hard and it was complicated.
‘I was the one who wanted a baby so desperately.’ Pearl smiled sadly, as if remembering that time. ‘It’s different for you, love, with your Tom. He’s a good man.’ She shook her head. ‘But I knew what Derek was like. And I could have just put up with things as they were. Maybe I should have.’
Vivien took her hand. ‘You have to lead your own life,’ she said. ‘You have to do what’s right for you.’
‘And if it wasn’t right for Laura?’ Pearl’s gaze slipped past Vivien. There was a vacancy about it, she thought, as if she was imagining her daughter – wherever she was.
‘Laura will understand,’ Vivien said. ‘In time.’ Children got over it. They had to.
Pearl glanced at her. What do you know? she might have said. After all, Vivien didn’t have a child, couldn’t have a child – maybe. But she didn’t say it. And would there even be enough time for a new understanding between mot
her and daughter? Vivien didn’t know how long Pearl had or when Laura might be coming home.
But Pearl didn’t look convinced. ‘I don’t want you telling everyone round here either, Vivien. I don’t need anyone’s pity. I can manage on my own.’
Vivien sank bank into her seat. Her heart went out to her. ‘I won’t.’ But she would have to do something.
*
She told Tom about it later, when they were cuddling in bed. Everything seemed to be all right again between them, but she’d caught a glimpse of a different side to the man she’d married, and it had shown her how fragile some things could be – things that you thought were built in stone, immovable, unbreakable.
‘Poor woman.’ He stroked Vivien’s hair. ‘I’ll go round and offer to do her lawn for her. See if there’s anything that needs to be done in the house.’
‘Thanks, love.’ She squeezed his shoulder. ‘But don’t—’
‘I won’t.’ He tipped her chin so that she was looking into his eyes. ‘I’ll be the soul of discretion. I can be sensitive, you know.’
‘I know.’ She held his gaze.
‘And about those tests … ’
‘It doesn’t matter.’ She turned her face away. She didn’t want to talk, didn’t want to argue. If they weren’t meant to have children, then that was all there was to it. It wasn’t worth breaking up a marriage for.
‘Oh, it does though, love.’ He held her face cupped in his palm so that she had to look back at him. ‘It matters to you, doesn’t it, having a baby?’
She shrugged. ‘Yes,’ she murmured, under her breath. Oh, yes.
‘Then we’ll have those tests. I want a baby too, you know.’
‘You do?’ Thank God, she thought.
‘I do.’
She cuddled in closer. ‘I’m scared too,’ she whispered. Scared of what she might find out. But Pearl was right – they needed to know.
