by Helen Walsh
I turn and let her go.
The NCT classes were Faye’s idea. She just appeared at my desk, that permanently concerned expression etched across her brow. She gave me the leaflet but, no time to read it, I put it on top of all the other jumbled correspondence, smiled a quick ‘thanks’ and turned back to my laptop to let her know I was busy. Faye jabbed a finger at the leaflet.
‘It’ll be a chance for you to meet new mothers,’ she exclaimed, tapping the NCT logo. ‘Excellent organisation – if you’ve got half a brain. And you’ve definitely got half a brain.’ My face must have said it all. I picked up the leaflet again to humour her. ‘Don’t be like that. You’ll be glad of the support when you’re stuck in that flat of yours, going out of your mind. You know what they say about strength in numbers.’
‘God, Faye – you make it sound sooo appealing!’
She snorted and batted my objections away with a flap of her hand.
‘Look, love – all I’m saying is it’s your first. You’ll be glad enough of the company once the baby’s here. Who else is going to be as fascinated as you are by the colour of your baby’s doings? Hey? Only the other mums.’
‘Now you’re really selling it.’
She picked up the phone, passed it to me. Gave me The Look.
‘Go on.’
I sighed and shook my head, made a big thing of taking the receiver.
‘If it gets you off my back. But I guarantee you, Faye mate, I will have nothing in common with those women.’
About that, I was right. I didn’t bond with any of the other mums and it was crazy of Faye to hope otherwise, just because we all happened to have had sex around the same time. But still, I’m glad I went and it’s good that she made me. I found myself genuinely enjoying the classes, and I’ve more than had my money’s worth. And they are a good bunch really – just chalk and cheese to myself when it comes to the things that matter. None of them is big on music, or walking, or movies; all of them are living with the fathers of their babies. I’m neither bashful nor proud about Ruben. I made my decision. I’m comfortable with it. That’s that.
We did have a few things in common. We were all early thirties or thereabouts; we were all first-time mums; and we were all soon to be negotiating the great modern challenge of working parenthood – another thing dear Faye has been needling me about.
‘You only get one shot at this, love. There’s no reason on earth you have to come rushing back here.’
And she’s right, Faye is absolutely right about that – in theory. In practice, I just don’t see how this works without me there to cajole, bribe and bully my clients into making the choices that might somehow improve their prospects. And, if I’m honest, do I really want to hand over to Siobhan? Let’s see how she gets on without me to hold her hand, ha! She may turn heads but I don’t see Shiv turning young lives around.
But the baby, the baby. Who will look after the baby when I go back? There’s no one; or no one I’d trust, at least. Christ, he’s not even born and I’m already a slave of guilt to my bambino! I smile to myself, flushed right through from head to toe at the thought that soon the little mite will be squinting up at me through tiny, squiffy eyes.
I let myself in through the front door. I’ve barely managed two flights of the five when my work phone starts to ring. I have to sit down just to fish it out from my bag – how the hell will I haul a toddler up here? I don’t recognise the number. I’m tired now; hot, wet through and aching all over, desperate just to soak in the bath, take the weight off for a while. My mobile has rung off by the time I retrieve it. I heave myself up, praying it doesn’t ring again. It does.
‘Will you accept reverse charges?’
Here we go.
‘Yes. Yes, I will.’
‘Rache, it’s me.’
James McIver.
‘I’ve been kicked out the hostel.’
‘Andy? Well . . . why did he kick you out?’
No answer from James.
‘I’m officially on maternity leave, you know?’
‘I know. I just spoke to Shiv.’
‘So. Shiv knows the procedure.’
‘Behave. She knows fuck all.’
‘She’s your key worker now, James.’
‘She’s a fucking kid, Rache! I could teach her more than what she knows.’
I smile at the truth of this. And, as though sensing the chink, he leaps forward to ram home his advantage.
‘Please, Rache?’
‘Where are you now?’
‘By ours.’
‘Your mam’s?’
‘It’s fucking pissing down, you know.’
‘Do not go near your mother. You hear?’
‘I’m fucking soaking.’
‘Go back to The Gordon. I’ll meet you there.’
‘You will?’
‘Yes.’
‘Ah, thanks, mate. I mean it. That Shiv’s nothing on you.’
My neck flushes crimson and the phone clicks dead. I sit a while there on the stairs, listening to the rain on the roof. I’m laughing as I picture Faye’s face when I walk back into The Gordon.
4
Right from that very first day, I knew how things would be with Faye Farley. I’d been at Kirkdale Community Centre for less than two hours in my newly appointed role as Youth Exclusion Officer, and that’s how I was answering my phone calls:
‘Kirkdale Community Centre?’
Faye bustled over, smiling but stern with it.
‘Love! You haven’t been here five minutes and you’ve managed to rename a local landmark. It’s The Gordon to everyone round here. Has been for the last hundred years or so.’
Funny, thinking back how I used to object to ‘love’ in those early days. I wouldn’t go as far as to say I like it now, but from Faye . . . well, it’s almost a compliment.
I knew instinctively we’d rub along just fine, Faye and I, but it was going to take time, and it’d need more than a couple of success stories with the local youth to win her over. If I wanted her on my side – and I needed Faye Farley on my side – I was going to have to do this right. I’d have to live, sleep and breathe Kirkdale. The Gordon, the red brick former boxing club where her father had sparred as a kid, was Faye’s life. She bought the place for a peppercorn rent when it was threatened with demolition in the eighties, and since then she’d transformed the centre into a thriving hive of communal activity. Its giant parquet floors and echoing corridors were persistently abuzz with classes and workshops, local MPs ran their surgeries from there. The Gordon also doubled as a drop-in centre for the area’s hardened truants, of which there were many, and these were now my brood.
Faye knew most of these kids, had gone to school with their parents, still went to church with some of their grandparents, and every morning she opened up the doors to them and gave them access to a TV, snooker table and a round of hot, buttered toast. The conventional wisdom was that the skivers were better off here than roaming the streets, but the authorities saw things differently, not least because of the health and safety hazard The Gordon posed. So Faye was faced with an ultimatum: supply the police with a list of names and addresses of the kids on a daily basis or employ a full-time Youth Exclusion Officer.
And as soon as I stepped through The Gordon’s doors, for the second time in my adult life, I felt at home. I was way overqualified, and the pay was far from brilliant, but it was everything I aspired to. More than anything, I wanted the hours and days of my life to mean something; to make a difference. My role, in short, was to steer bunking school kids back into mainstream education. Failing that – and I failed, often – I had to help them find alternative vocations. There were targets to hit at three months, six months, a review once I’d done my first year. Connexions, my overall employer, wanted miracles, they wanted to move mountains, and with limited resources, too. I didn’t even have access to email during my first three months – maybe they didn’t expect me to last that long. But if I could effectively reduce the
number of truants in the area then Connexions would commit to a long-term contract and look seriously at funding Faye’s plans for equipping The Gordon with a dance studio and bringing its closed-off gym back into use.
*
A couple of my girls are loitering outside the community centre as the bus pulls in, instantly recognisable in their red and black school uniforms. They look guilty as I step off, but they’re too hard-faced, too hardened, to make a run for it.
I shuffle over. The prettier and by far the cockier of the two, Kerry Anne Casey steps forward, all smiles.
‘Hey, Rache, you look brilliant, girl! I can’t believe you’re ready to drop. Are you having that, Danni? She don’t even look half gone, does she?’
Danielle Lawson, her sidekick, nods nervously and furtively snuffs out her smoke on the wall behind. She’s all right, Danni. If I was her mum, I’d stop her seeing so much of Kerry Anne. But Danni’s mother doesn’t give much of a fuck about anything. I offer a half smile to let them know I’m not biting.
‘Come on, you two, first week back . . . what happened to new term, new leaf, hey?’
Kerry Anne places her hands on her perfectly taut abdomen and grins at me, victorious.
‘Preggers, aren’t I?’
I don’t even try to disguise the futility, the rank stupidity of it. I shake my head once, twice.
‘Right. You as well, Danni?’
‘No . . . I . . .’
‘She come with us to the surgery.’
Danielle rolls her eyes, wishing this charade over, but Kerry Anne is in full flow.
‘Yeah. I needed her there, like – as me witness.’
‘Witness? Witness to what?’
‘That Paki doctor.’
‘Listen, Kelly. His name is Dr Kumbah.’
‘He gropes us. Serious.’
‘You want to be careful spreading rumours like that, Kerry Anne.’
‘It’s true. And if anyone says anything abar ’im, he’ll get them done in by the Taliban. I’m not messing, Rache – his brothers are proper hardcore al-Qaeda an’ everything.’
‘Really? Muslims in turbans! Multiculturalism must really be taking off round here.’
Kerry Anne wrinkles her nose, knowing I’m taking the piss but not sure how or why. There was a time when I might have tried to explain, to enlighten – but not any more. Not Kerry Anne.
‘I’ll be ringing school first thing Monday to make sure you’ve checked in. Adiós, skivers.’
I head for The Gordon’s big green doors. Kerry Anne shouts after me.
‘Oi! Where’s me congratulations, then?’
I turn. She’s patting her tummy, and she isn’t joking. I shake my head once more and go inside.
Faye is pleased to see me for all of ten seconds.
‘What are you doing here?’
I don’t answer. My attention has been snagged by Siobhan, holding court at the other end of the room. Three lads – boys I’ve given up on, more or less – are listening as Shiv sits on top of her desk, her knees tucked under her chin, arms folded across her bare legs as she runs through some course options with them. Her face is set in a way that says, I’m pretty, I don’t have to try that hard. Eventually, she registers my presence. She mouths a meek ‘hi there!’ and with a swish of her ponytail she scatters her moon-eyed groupies. One of them shouts back to me from the doorway.
‘F’ckin’ ’ell, Rache, you got triplets in there or something?’
I try to smile through the sting in my throat. He has no idea how heavy I feel, how clumsy.
‘Rachel?’
Faye is now standing in front of me, probing me with the whites of her eyes. ‘What on earth is going on?’
‘James Mac. You seen him?’
Faye shakes her head, not so much in response to the question but out of sheer dismay. ‘Shiv, call her a taxi, will you? She’s going straight home.’
Shiv reaches for the phone, her big wide eyes flitting from Faye’s face to mine, unsure. I glower at her. She puts the phone back down.
‘Jesus,’ Faye wails. ‘Would you look at yourself, Rachel? You’re soaked through! Are you insane?’ She comes behind me, tugs the wet sleeves of my coat from my arms. She eyes my globe-tight tummy. Her tone softens. ‘It’s not even madness, it’s just plain daft, honey.’
She sighs as she finger-dries my hair.
‘You’re thinking for two now, love.’
I hold up one hand to let Faye know I mean business. She’s been like a surrogate mum to me these last few months, a real tower of sense and strength. She’s helped out hugely with the practical side, taking me for my scans while Dad was out in Laos, running me to the big retail park and helping fit out the nursery. She’s even transformed the weed-ravaged communal garden behind the flats into a thriving little oasis; right now the rockery she’s made is a riot of mauve and lilac heather. Nonetheless, this over-protective Mother Superior routine is jarring. Does she really expect me to switch off on my kids, just like that?
‘Faye. James has been kicked out of the hostel. You know what that means, don’t you?’ I train my eyeline right on to her, drilling home my point. ‘You know what’ll happen if he goes back home? You know what she’ll have him doing?’
‘I hear you, darling. I know. But it’s not our problem, Rache – and it’s certainly not yours for the next six months at least.’
And she’d be right, ordinarily. This, along with clients harassing me for money to buy baby formula because they’ve spunked their tax credits on Lambrini; girls phoning up from the police cells because they need a lawyer; kids who want to go to school, but are being forced into gang-life; the Albanian girl with straight-As who was being sent home for an arranged marriage; none of them were our problem. None of it fell within my remit. But we’re fucked, aren’t we? We’re snared, because we care about these wretches. Then I look up and catch Shiv flashing Faye a guilty look and it slaps me in the face. I stifle a hurt laugh.
‘He’s been here, hasn’t he? James was phoning from here.’
My heart starts to thrash along with the baby. I place a protective hand on my stomach.
Siobhan dips her head, retreats behind her fringe.
‘I didn’t know what to do, Rachel! I thought it best just to refer the situation to his social worker.’
Faye is already ushering me out into the hallway, trying to calm the storm before it hits.
‘Come on, Rache, let’s get you out of those wet clothes, hey? You’re starting to shiver.’
‘No!’ I shrug her off, step back into the office. And this time Faye climbs down. She knows I mean business. ‘You should have called me,’ I say, stabbing my finger at Siobhan.
‘But Faye said . . . you’re supposed to be on maternity leave.’
‘Shiv? Don’t, yeah?’
I pick up a phone, punch in the number of the hostel. Siobhan slips out of the room, muttering to herself. And before Faye has the chance to switch on her poker face, I see the crease of a smile flicker by her mouth.
*
The hostel manager Andy buzzes me in. A retired social worker, Andy affects a world-weary ennui at everyone and everything. Every time I see him – and I try to keep interaction with Andy to the absolute bare minimum – he’s at pains to let me know that there are no new tricks to teach this old dog, nothing he hasn’t already seen a thousand times before. I’d love to set the Indian Professor loose on him one day. Andy is sat at his desk, munching an apple. He doesn’t look up from his newspaper as he waves me in.
‘So. Ms Massey. Aren’t you supposed to be—’
‘Yes. We need to talk about James.’
He’s piqued. He makes a thing of overconcentrating on his newspaper as he takes another bite of his apple.
‘What about him?’
‘You kicked him out this morning.’
Now he looks up.
‘No. No we didn’t. Technically, we just didn’t let him back in. Not till he’d sobered up.’
My n
eck starts to prickle.
Andy’s loving it. ‘What? He didn’t omit that part of his sob story, did he? Sorry then, yes; James failed to come home yesterday evening, didn’t even grace us with a call, tried to swagger in at four this morning – incoherent I might add – virtually frothing at the mouth with insobriety and lust and with a girl in tow who looked, how-d’you-say, not yet of age.’
He knows he’s got me. He smiles infuriatingly, awaits my comeback. Andy knows there will always be a comeback.
‘So, let me guess – because he was a bit tipsy, yeah, you didn’t even bother to sit him down to let him put his case to you?’ But I’m all pink and foolish now, angry at James for another half-story, angry at myself for jumping to his tune, jumping the gun. Andy just sits there, goading me with those piggy little eyes.
‘He’s sixteen, Andy,’ I say. ‘Still a kid.’
‘True. But old enough, nonetheless. James knows the rules, and he knows the consequences. We can’t have him just coming and going when he pleases, disrupting the other kids.’
‘You do realise that if you make James homeless, there’s a very real risk he’ll go back to his mother’s?’ I pause, shifting the onus right back on to him. ‘And if he goes back under her roof . . .’ I’ve got him, ha! He can’t keep the panic out of his eyes, now. I try to sound as matter-of-fact as possible as I deliver the death blow. ‘There’s a good chance she’ll have him back out on the street before the weekend is over.’
