Anna

by Amanda Prowse

  Anna tucked her hair behind her ears and sat forward with her elbows on the table. For most of her life she had been told how to feel, where to live, how to travel, given clothes from a communal box, shipped this way and that, until she’d finally been able to find her feet when she left care. Being part of any decision-making process when it came to her life was very important. ‘I will be. I am excited for you, happy you’re following your instinct, I get all that...’

  ‘But?’ he prompted, rolling his hand, hoping this might bring her to her point quicker. She noted the flicker of irritation in his eyes.

  ‘But we’re just about to have our first chat with the agency. Adoption is what we’re working towards. That’s what we’re supposed to be excited about.’

  ‘It doesn’t have to be the end of your plans.’

  ‘Our plans, Theo. Our plans.’ She spoke sharply, and hated the look of disappointment on her husband’s face. ‘I just need to let it sink in a bit, that’s all, and I hate that you did this thing without talking to me first. I even ask you before buying a pair of shoes!’

  ‘Yes, but you don’t have to. You know that. You’re free to do as you please, of course you are.’

  ‘I know I don’t have to, but I still do. I do it out of courtesy and because I believe in transparency. No secrets, remember?’ She took a sip of wine. ‘And because at the back of my mind I’m still more than a little aware that our home, our lifestyle is only possible because of your family money and not the few shekels I toss into the pot each month. I guess this action from you enforces that.’

  There was a beat of silence.

  ‘Anna, you’re my wife! I have never, ever wanted you to feel—’

  ‘And I don’t!’ She cut him short. ‘But that’s the difference, I guess. I would never feel like I could do something like that with our money, but you do, you did! And I get it.’

  A wave of unease washed over her. Talking about money made her feel uncomfortable. ‘What will happen if you don’t get planning permission?’

  Theo held her gaze. ‘I will. You have to trust me on this, Anna. I will show you and I will show my dad.’

  ‘Is that why you’ve done it, to prove a point?’

  ‘No. I’ve done it because I believe I can turn a million pounds into three and I can give kids who need it a helping hand, and if I can do it once, I can do it again and again. I thought you of all people would get that?’

  ‘I do, I do. And I love that you want to do something like that, but from a purely selfish point of view, I don’t want to do anything that might get in the way of our adoption plans.’

  ‘I need to do this, Anna—’

  ‘I know,’ she interrupted. ‘To prove you’re not the little boy eating alone in the dining hall, the little boy who no one thought would amount to much. The little boy who wants to show his dad what he’s capable of. I get it. But you should still have spoken to me first.’

  Theo stood up and ran his fingers through his hair.

  ‘I... I need to get to bed, I have an early start tomorrow – I’m getting the first train to Bristol. It leaves at stupid o’clock.’

  ‘Please, Theo, don’t just walk out! I want to talk to you.’ She hated the desperate tone to her voice. She pictured herself on the stairs at her Aunt Lizzie’s house. No one wants me, I am annoying, weird.

  ‘I’m very tired, Anna.’ He unbuttoned his collar.

  ‘No, you’re not! You’re just tired of talking to me.’

  She cursed the tears that spilled, aware of how quickly their conversation had deteriorated, as if this was always the destination and it was only the route they took that differed. ‘We are supposed to be a couple, but it doesn’t always feel like it. I’m your wife! It’s not just the Bristol thing – there’s so much you won’t discuss. And it seems to be getting worse. Ever since... Ever since Spud went to the States. Is that it? Is it that now he’s not here you can’t even talk to me?’ She sobbed. ‘It makes me feel like less of a person – what am I if you can’t even face me, talk to me? I don’t want to be confrontational, but it often feels like that’s all I’m left with, the only way to talk to you and the only way to get a response.’

  Theo sighed. ‘I thought you’d be happy!’

  ‘And you can sigh, but it doesn’t make the problem go away, Theo.’

  ‘Can’t this wait? I really do have to be up very early.’ He looked at the floor, and at that moment she hated his cowardice.

  ‘I want to be a mum,’ she levelled. ‘I really do, more than anything. I want us to adopt! It was your idea and it’s the best idea you’ve ever had, not to mention my only chance now. I don’t want to run out of time.’

  ‘We’re not running out of time,’ he whispered. ‘We’ve started the process, we’ve got a meeting with the adoption agency in a few days, and I’m right behind you. And if after that things have to be put on hold because—’

  ‘Don’t you dare!’ Anna raised her voice and it surprised them both. ‘Don’t you dare throw another reason, another justification into the mix! You can’t do that!’ Her tears fell freely.

  ‘Don’t cry. Please, Anna, don’t cry.’

  ‘You think I want to cry? You think I like feeling this sad? You just don’t understand what this would mean to me. I can do it on my own.’ She brightened as she spoke. ‘I’ve been thinking about it – if you don’t want this, then I can do it alone!’ She clasped her hands in unconscious prayer. Her next words were slow and considered. ‘I don’t want to do it alone, Theo. I want you by my side. I honestly, truly believe that once you see a child in our home, you’ll feel differently and all your doubts, all your worries will disappear! I am begging you. Please, Theo, let our adoption be a priority...’ She let this hang in the air.

  ‘You think it’s the answer for everything.’

  ‘What if it’s the answer for me?’ Her voice was croaky, stretched reed-thin with emotion.

  ‘Then maybe you’re with the wrong guy!’ he shot back angrily.

  Anna felt herself shrink backwards. Her mouth fell open and her fear wrapped itself around her throat, making breathing difficult. Her husband’s stricken expression told her that his words had either not been meant or had inadvertently revealed the truth. Either way, she was aghast.

  ‘Don’t say that! Don’t say that, Theo!’ she managed.

  ‘Oh, Anna, I’m sorry!’ He leant forward and kissed her hair.

  ‘And I always thought...’ She took a deep breath. ‘I thought if I loved you enough, I could make you see just what an amazing person you are. I thought if I listened, really listened, you’d understand that what you have to say is always of interest to me. But I’ve come to realise that there is no such thing as loving you enough to fix you, Theo.’ She beat her fist against the scrubbed wooden tabletop. ‘It doesn’t matter how much I love you. You need to love yourself and I can’t make you do that.’

  Theo ran his thumb along the pale underside of her arm. ‘It’s complicated.’

  Anna’s laughter exploded from her. ‘You’re telling me! That much I know, but it was never meant to be complicated, it was meant to be easy.’ She sat up straight in the chair and collected herself, chugging the remainder of her wine and thinking of all the people who had drifted in and out of her world for whom life had been impossible – Joe, Shania, even Jordan, who lived a half life, cloistered away from his parents. But her and Theo? They could have had the moon! ‘And it should have been so easy: we met, we fell in love, we got married, one way or another we should have had kids and stayed together, happy ever after! That’s it! Nothing complicated at all!’

  ‘Nothing is ever that simple.’

  ‘Correction, nothing is that simple with you!’ She was yelling now. ‘Nothing! You turn every event into an excuse for even greater introspection, shutting all the little doors in your mind and your heart. You are so closed in!’ She formed her fingers into a tight ball. ‘All I wanted was for you to love me and for us to have our babies. That was all.
And I thought I deserved you. I really did! Things have always been so shit for me, I thought I deserved you!’ Her tears came again, beating a path that was as familiar to them both as the discussion itself. This was what happened: they drank, they fought, she cried and fell asleep and he stayed up and drank some more.

  ‘I cannot bear the idea of a child going through what I went through, but I have said that I will try.’

  ‘God, listen to yourself!’ Anna wiped her face with the back of her palm, smearing her make-up across her cheeks. ‘I’m sick of hearing it! Why is it always about you? Why is everything about Theo and what’s best for you? Do I not count? Do you think because I don’t come from money or because I’m common, I count less? Is that what you think? Is that why you feel able to go and blow a million fucking pounds on a shed somewhere without discussing it? Oh, it’s only Anna, she won’t mind!’

  Theo shook his head.

  ‘And you know what, buster?’ She jabbed her finger at him. ‘You didn’t have it so bad. Okay, so you didn’t have friends, and your parents are useless, but you weren’t on the streets, you were in a real fancy school and your dad collected you in his sports car and whisked you away for foreign holidays. I can hear you telling that to the social worker right now! Poor Theo!’ She laughed, but this quickly turned to more tears – this too was part of their routine.

  ‘I don’t expect you to understand,’ he whispered. ‘There’s other stuff too. Difficult stuff, but I can’t—’

  ‘No, you’re right, I don’t understand because you can’t explain it to me.’ She balled her fingers into fists as her frustration bubbled. ‘Because I lived with kids who’d come off the streets, kids whose parents were in jail! My mum and my brother died, the only family I had ever known, they died, Theo, and I was only a little girl and I went into care and slept with one eye open, trying to hide from a man who came into my room and put his fingers in my knickers!’ She was yelling again now, banging the table. ‘So don’t you dare tell me how tough you had it because your tuck box ran out or the nanny forgot your name!’

  ‘I don’t know how to make you understand what I went through. I don’t know what to say to you. I don’t know how to make things better,’ he said quietly.

  ‘No, Theo, you never do!’ She raised her palms. ‘And that one stock phrase doesn’t mean anything any more, not when you don’t do anything to change the situation. They’re just words that you hand out like Band-Aids.’

  ‘I can’t do this,’ he murmured.

  She heard his words and felt a stab of fear right through her core. She heard defeat in his tone and it felt as if the room was spinning. It was all she could do to hang on, trying not to fall.

  * * *

  Melissa stirred her coffee and licked the foam from the teaspoon. ‘God, it’s good to see you. And lovely to be out in the world of grown-ups!’ She looked around the coffee shop.

  ‘It’s good to see you too.’

  ‘And as much as I love them, the best bit is having a morning without some little person saying “Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!” fifteen times a minute. I swear to God, I often think about changing my name to something they can’t pronounce, like Algernon or Myfanwy.’

  ‘Myfanwy would work.’ Anna smiled weakly, finding it hard to see beyond her own sadness and thinking how utterly joyful it would be to hear someone calling ‘Mummy! Mummy! Mummy!’ fifteen times a minute.

  ‘So let me get this straight – you were gabbling a bit on the phone.’ Melissa folded her arms on the table and looked at her friend. ‘Theo has blown all your cash on this random building project?’

  ‘That’s about the size of it, yes.’ She bit the back of her knuckle.

  ‘So what does that mean? Are you having to sell the family silver? Live off beans?’ Melissa waved her teaspoon in the air. ‘Should you not be delighted that he’s got this off the ground?’

  ‘I probably should be, yes.’ Anna sighed and rubbed her eyes. ‘But what it actually means is that Theo is one stubborn idiot who has taken a gamble with our future, and right now I don’t know if we need to sell the house, or whether we’re broke or...’ She raised her hands. ‘I don’t know much.’

  Melissa squeezed her arm. ‘Will you have to quit the broker’s and go get a proper, better-paid job?’

  She’d gone part time at Villiers House eighteen months ago, but she smarted at Melissa’s derisory tone. She was still good at her job. ‘Possibly, I really haven’t thought that far ahead. We may even have to go and live in a bloody warehouse in Bristol.’

  ‘Where is Bristol exactly?’ Melissa asked.

  ‘I’m not entirely sure, but it’s up the motorway or across the motorway – I don’t know. West. And the worst thing...’ She looked up at her friend, trying to keep her emotions under control. ‘The worst thing is that this project is a distraction, another reason to avoid the whole adoption thing. It might mean another delay.’

  Melissa winced. ‘Well, I’ve already told you what I think – you need to go for it! Fake his signature, lie, do whatever it takes! Do you think Gerard would have smiled and agreed if I’d told him I wanted a big wedding, two kids in quick succession, a dog, a large mortgage on a tiny house with no storage that we can’t afford, and that my mom would be coming over from the States to stay for three months of every year? Of course not! He’d have run a mile. You have to be subtle, keep the sex good, make him feel like a king and quietly do exactly what you want to, or rather what you need to.’ She winked. ‘It works for me.’

  Anna actually laughed out loud. ‘I think that might work for a new car, but not for adopting a little person. I need him to be invested in it, otherwise it’s a no go, at least not for us as a couple. And I don’t see why it should be about pleasing him. Plus it’s already killing me to have to ask for permission.’ She shook her head. ‘I just wish it were simpler. I wish he felt differently. But I’m getting desperate. I can’t force him.’

  She stared at the sugar shaker in the middle of the table. ‘We had our initial interview with the adoption agency a couple of days ago and it was a disaster. Theo kind of fell apart...’ She hung her head, remembering the awkward exchange where he’d given self-incriminating answers and had done anything but shine.

  ‘Why do you think you would make a good parent?’ they’d each been asked in turn.

  To which he’d replied, ‘I don’t...’ And then he’d gone all taciturn and rabbit-in-the-headlights, giving one-word answers, acting like exactly the sort of potential father no one in their right mind would go near. She still had no idea why he’d gone so weird all of a sudden, though despite her reservations she was pretty certain it had nothing to do with the Bristol thing.

  Anna wasn’t quite ready to share with Melissa the full horror of this, or their row afterwards, but she was confident her friend had got the gist.

  Melissa banged the table. ‘Well, you know what they say: desperate times call for desperate measures and wishing never changed jack shit. It’s “doing” that does that.’

  ‘True. It’s his birthday next month and I’m thinking of really going to town, making him feel special, a way of wiping the slate clean. I need to do something to try and get us out of this arguing rut. I must admit, Mel, I’m getting close to—’

  ‘Ditching him as the dad and adopting with someone else?’

  Anna had been going to say, ‘close to giving up’. Her friend’s option hadn’t entered her thoughts, until now.

  She kissed Melissa on both cheeks and waved as they walked in opposite directions along Marylebone High Street. Preoccupied with thoughts of Theo’s birthday, Anna wondered if tickets to a concert would be a good idea and whether she should invite his parents over for supper. It might heal the rift with Perry over this Bristol project.

  A party! That was what she would do, a big old surprise party! Sod the expense – it would give them all a wonderful lift. Now, which cake...?

  *

  As her taxi back from Marylebone High Street pulled up outsi
de the house, she noticed someone sitting on the wall. Shania! With a bubble of excitement in her gut, she jumped out onto the pavement and ran over to her friend.

  ‘Hello! Shania! It’s so lovely to see you! You should have said you were coming over, have you been waiting long?’ Anna spoke as she rummaged in her bag for her keys.

  ‘Not long, no.’

  ‘Come on, come in!’

  ‘This is pretty nice.’ Shania stared up at the front of the house.

  Anna watched, with a pulse in her womb, as Shania rubbed the front of bump. ‘And that little fella is growing! How far are you now?’

  ‘Nearly four months and, actually, Anna, it’s not one little fella – it’s two!’

  ‘What?’ Anna screamed and grabbed her friend by the arm. You are so lucky and I am trying to be happy, but part of me wants to cry with how unfair it all is. How I would have loved, loved to get my Fifi and Fox... ‘No way! Oh my God, that’s amazing! How do you feel?’

  ‘Tired, nervous, excited – the usual.’ Shania shrugged, pulling at the open front of her coat, which had no chance of meeting over her distended stomach.

  Anna pushed open the front door and watched as Shania walked in and stared up at the ceiling and the landing above. ‘God, Anna!’

  ‘It’s beautiful, isn’t it?’

  ‘I should say. That bloke of yours got any brothers?’

  Anna gave a wry smile, thinking of Alexander, whose name was not to be mentioned, ever, by anyone...

  Shania shook her head in awe. ‘To think we had to share that little wardrobe and a chest of drawers.’

  ‘I gave you the biggest drawers, even though you were so grumpy!’

  ‘I loved you, Anna. You were the first person in my whole life who wasn’t mean to me. The first person who told me I was brilliant.’ The two women exchanged a look of understanding.

  Anna felt the swell of sadness at her friend’s admission. ‘You are brilliant. Now come on, let’s get the fire going and I’ll make us some tea.’ She ushered her friend into the sitting room and sat her on the sofa, then put a match to the fire Theo had set.